Ghouls Gone Wild (14 page)

Gilley’s face drained of color and he looked at me with buggy eyes. “M. J.!” he pleaded. “Do something!”

“Sir,” I said, “this is all just a simple misunderstanding!”

The man finished handcuffing Gilley and regarded the body in the street. “Tell that to the man’s family,” he said gruffly before reaching for Gopher, who looked ready to bolt.

Heath laid a firm hand on his shoulder and said, “Easy, guy. Just go along with them for now and we’ll work all this out in time.”

Gopher’s jaw clenched, but he turned cooperatively around so that the constable could cuff him.

Gilley, however, was still crying and staring at me with pleading eyes. “But, M. J.!” he said again. “I’m too pretty to go to jail!”

“Gil,” I told him softly, “just go along for now and we’ll figure this whole thing out as soon as possible, okay?”

My partner didn’t have a chance to answer as he was pushed roughly toward a police vehicle and placed inside. A minute later, Gopher joined him.

 

It took much longer than expected to get Gil and Gopher out on the British equivalent of bond. First, we had to locate a barrister willing to help us, and that took several calls to the United States embassy as loads of red tape and diplomatic channels had to be navigated.

But eventually, after meeting with our barrister, we understood that both Gilley and Gopher were being charged with the equivalent of vehicular homicide.

We were also told that our friends would need to remain in jail for a day or two until they had an opportunity to go before the court and be let out on bond—and at that preliminary hearing, both men had to surrender their passports and were ordered not to leave the area.

This was a major setback for us, as after the incident with the van I fully realized that the only safe place for Gilley was anywhere but Scotland. The ghost of the Witch of Queen’s Close and her coven were hell-bent on doing him in—of that I was certain. So when I greeted him with a warm hug the moment he emerged from the police station, looking a little thinner and depressed, I wondered if I’d be able to keep him out of harm’s way long enough to figure this whole thing out.

“Get me out of here,” he whispered desperately in my ear as he gripped me tightly.

I pulled away from him and stared him straight in the eye. “Soon, honey,” I promised.

Gilley’s head hung and a tear leaked down his cheek. “She’s going to kill me, isn’t she, M. J.?”

I was saved from answering when Heath came up next to us and handed Gilley a bag. “Your new sweatshirt, buddy,” he said, indicating the one we’d put together after the old one had been shredded in the accident. “I’d put it on and leave it on no matter how hot you get.”

Gilley ripped open the bag and immediately donned the shirt. While he was shrugging into it, Gopher came down the steps of the police station with a thick file in his hand and his cell phone to his ear. “I know it’s bullshit, Mike!” he was saying, and after a pause he added, “Sure, we can beat it. No sweat. The barrister we hired is one of the best in Scotland. We’ll have this whole thing cleared up in no time.”

“Who’s Mike?” I asked Heath.

But it was Gilley who answered. “One of the network dudes. Gopher had to call him and let him know we’d been charged and that our shooting schedule’s been delayed.”

“What do you mean, ‘delayed’?” I asked, and then it dawned on me. “You mean to tell me Gopher still wants us to continue the ghost hunt?!”

Gilley nodded. “Yep.”

I waited impatiently while Gopher wrapped up his call. “
What
are you thinking?” I shrieked the moment he clicked the End button.

“Hey, M. J.,” he replied with an unfazed smile. “Yes, it is nice to breathe fresh air again after my incarceration. Thank you so much for asking about how I’m doing!”

“Cut the crap,” I snapped. “How can you even
think
about having us finish this bust after what’s happened? Gilley was almost killed and both of you are now facing criminal charges!”

Gopher’s eyes swiveled to Heath, but if he was looking for loyalty there, he came up short. My fellow medium merely folded his arms across his chest and raised a judgmental eyebrow.

Gopher frowned. “You have to finish it,” he told me bluntly. I opened my mouth to tell him where he could stuff it, but he cut me off quickly by saying, “And the reason you have to finish it, M. J., is because Gilley’s freedom and possibly his very life depend on it.”

I shut my mouth but continued to glare at Gopher, hoping that he’d just offer more information without my needing to ask. But he played the game well, because he waited me out and I finally grumbled, “
How
exactly do you figure
that
?”

Gopher continued down the last few steps to the sidewalk and raised his arm to hail a cab. “I figure,” he said over his shoulder, “that unless you can prove that a ghost was responsible for pushing that van down the hill, we’re going to spend a long time in a Scottish jail. We’ve
got
to get evidence on tape that not only does the spirit of Rigella actually exist, but that she’s powerful enough to cause some serious damage.” When I looked at him skeptically, he added, “You saw the way our own barrister responded to the idea that a ghost moved the van down the street. He laughed in our face and he’s on
our
side, M. J.!”

Gopher had a point. Still, I wasn’t fully convinced by his logic. “It’s too dangerous,” I told him just as a cab pulled to a stop in front of us.

“Yes,” Gopher said, holding open the door and waving us inside. “But the alternative isn’t much better.”

I stewed on that the whole way back to the inn. When we got out of the taxi and headed inside to the sitting area, I made sure to put Gilley in a chair close to the fire and rub his shoulders supportively.

“Gopher’s right,” Heath said, taking up the seat across from us.

“I know,” I groused.

“We’re all doomed,” Gilley moaned, burying his head in his hands.

Just then Meg came in with Wendell, and the puppy must have sensed Gilley’s distress because he went right over to him and nudged his shin. Gil looked down forlornly and picked Wendell up, cradling him in his lap like a talisman.

“You guys okay?” Megan asked, noticing the glum mood.

“No,” I said softly. “Not really.”

“Anything I can do?”

I smiled at her. “You can watch Wendell for me for the next couple of days. I won’t be around much.”

“Where’re you going?”

“On a bust,” I said firmly, then addressed my team. “Gil, Heath, we need a plan.”

 

Several hours later Gilley was looking a little more like his old self as he suggested for the tenth time, “Guys, I’m telling you, information is power! We’ve got to do some more homework on this Rigella chick and her coven.”

“But what will that gain us?” I asked. My suggestion had been to skip the history lesson and go straight into the close with a truckload of magnet grenades, pound them into the walls every five feet, and hope that we got lucky and shoved one square into her portal—the gate she used to travel from the lower, nastier realms to our plane. Barring that, I knew that if we went in the close and started to agitate her by pounding in the magnets and disrupting the electromagnetic frequencies, she’d show herself by emerging from her portal and then we’d get her on film. Once we’d documented her, we could chase her back into her portal, shove a spike into the gateway, and the ghost of the Witch of Queen’s Close would be locked in the lower realms forever, unable to interact with the living and cause any more havoc. “I say we attack her underground and we don’t let up until we’ve got her cornered and on film. Then we’ll shut her down for good.”

“But, M. J., we don’t know that her portal is even
in
the close!” Gilley said. “And we know that she’s just as comfortable aboveground as below and she can attack in both places. The close appears to be only where she died—”

“Which is the most typical location for a ghost’s portal,” I argued, cutting him off. “And why my idea is the most sound.”

But this time, Heath wasn’t on my side. “I think it’s too risky to assume that, M. J.,” he said gently. “Gilley’s right. We have to find out more about her and isolate each and every possible location for her portal. I think we then have to hit all those suspected locations at once, and hit them hard.”

“That would involve more people than just you and me,” I reminded him, and why I was so against the proposal, which Heath had mentioned earlier on in the discussion. “And that would also mean sending unqualified people into harm’s way.”

“Not necessarily,” Heath said, his voice calm and reasonable. “I mean, we could give them all sweat-shirts like Gilley’s to protect them, and if we can pinpoint the two most likely locations and have a few others as options, then you and I can handle the hot spots and have our crew deal with the others for backup.”

“I think it could work,” Gil said. “In fact, I think it’s our only choice, really.”

“I agree,” said a voice right behind me. I looked up to see Gopher coming in to join us.

“Surprise, surprise,” I said woodenly, still irritated that our producer was mining our current predicament for ratings gold.

“We’re in,” said a female voice behind Gopher. I craned my neck farther and saw that Kim and John had also just come into the room. “That is, if you need us,” she added shyly.

“We’ll need you,” Heath assured her.

“If only to help get the witch on film,” Gopher said. We all looked at him and he added, “The union rep called. A complaint’s been filed. We’ll have to do our own camera work for the rest of the shoot.”

“Okay,” Gil said, and for the first time in several days I saw his face take on a slightly hopeful cast. “We do our homework, find out everything we can about the witch and her coven, and shut the spooky bitches down.”

 

That night I moved into a new room with Gilley. I was still worried about the ferocity of the witch and wanted to be close enough to protect him should she rear her ugly face again.

For all the trouble he’d been through recently, he had a much easier time of getting to sleep than I did. At least the sound of his soft snores brought me a little comfort. I tossed and turned and slept restlessly throughout most of the night, until about three a.m., when I finally fell into a nice deep slumber.

I don’t think it was much after that when my dreams turned disturbing. A woman with sharp features and jet-black eyes interrupted the cozy chat I’d been having with my high school English teacher. With a firm clasp on my wrist the stranger yanked me out of class and pulled me into a long, dark cave. “He’s marked,” she told me, her voice cutting into my dream like an icy dagger.

I knew exactly whom she meant, and I knew exactly who she was. “You keep away from him!” I shouted at her, feeling a small surge of energy trickle through me as I stood up to her.

“He’s one of them,” she replied. “Therefore, he’s cursed.”

I could feel my hands ball into fists. “He’s done nothing to you!” I shouted. “Nothing! What happened to you and your family took place hundreds of years ago with people long since dead! Leave their descendants in peace.”

“I cannot,” she said simply. “It would defy the curse.”

I could feel myself growing frustrated, but I worked to lower my voice, thinking maybe I could reason with her. “But why?” I asked her. “What will you gain? The people from the village who came after you were panicked by their fear of the plague and their own superstitions. If they had been in their right minds, I’m sure they never would have caused you or your family harm.”

The witch spat derisively on the floor. “Bah!” she snapped. “You know nothing! This is what they did to my family!” And with a wave of her hand the darkness of the cave behind her became illuminated by a soft glow punctuated by the flicker of torchlight as shadows bounced and undulated along the walls. I could hear something of a roar in the distance. Angry shouts echoed incoherently all the way down to where I stood with the witch. From around a corner dashed a group of five women. I squinted and saw that they struggled to carry a beaten and bloodied female whose limp body hung between them. As they dashed forward toward us, I gasped when I saw that one of the people struggling with the weight of their burden was the very image of the woman standing next to me. Another girl—clearly related to the witch—shouted, “She’s dead, Rigella! Our sister is dead!”

Rigella stopped abruptly, panting heavily under the labor of carrying her broken sister. Steeling a look behind her at the bouncing shadows, she gave one curt nod and lowered the body gently to the floor. She stroked her cheek, while her sisters all cried, then kissed her lightly on the forehead and stood. She then grabbed the hands of two of her other sisters. “Quickly!” she said. “To the back of the close!”

One of the women—more of a girl really—stopped next to the body and refused to move. “That’s where they send the sick ones!” she protested. “Rigella, we can’t go in there!”

“We’ve no choice, Sabina! We’ve already lost Daire! My love’s been driven to his grave not half a mile from here! And now our sister Vacia, beaten to death by that murderous crowd! We’ve got to hide and the back of the close is our only hope! Now no more arguin’! Follow me and not another word out of you!” With that, Rigella dashed forward again and the other women followed—except Sabina, who continued to stand undecided by the body of her sister. She gave one last forlorn look to her fleeing family and squatted down and lifted Vacia’s head into her lap, stroked back the tangle of hair from the bloodied face, and began singing a soft lullaby.

My heart felt panged because it was obvious that Rigella thought Sabina was still with her as she and the others raced by where we stood to disappear down the close. And all too soon the angry mob chasing the witch and her family came upon Sabina and the body of Vacia.