“Great,” I said. “We can lay those out today before we crash.”
“And what do we do if I’m unable to get Gus and the other ghosts across to the other side?” Heath asked.
“We tag the other partner and let them have a crack,” I replied with a smile as my eggs and hash arrived. “Just like wrestling.”
“So we start with Gus on the fifth floor then?” Heath said.
I pulled out from my pocket the list of spirits we were tackling and eyeballed it. “Yep. We start with him; then I say we move down to the dining hall. Let’s check out that woman in the mirror too while we’re there, and that’ll put Carol Mustgrove last.”
Gilley was jotting this down on a pad of paper he’d brought with him. Looking up after scribbling, he said, “Which mirror are we going to focus on?”
“The one in the Renaissance Room. We can’t get into the one located in the ladies’ room—remember?”
Gilley looked at me blankly.
“It’s sealed off by the crime-scene tape,” Heath reminded him.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Cool.”
We all ate in silence for a bit before Gopher asked, “Do you think you’ll be able to get all the spirits over in one night?”
I chewed my food before I answered. The hash was delightfully salty, just the way my tipsy self liked it. “I hope so. That’s the aim, at least, and if we can manage it, that will leave us with one final night to deal with the demon.”
“How are we even going to find it?” Gopher said. “I mean, if that thing is on the move, isn’t it going to be tough to pin down?”
I looked at my plate and didn’t answer him right away, and I could feel all eyes focus on me. Finally I said, “We’ll catch it the same way you catch any predator.”
“How’s that?” Heath wondered.
“By setting up some bait.”
The boys all looked around the table at one another as if to say,
Not it!
I held back a smile and said, “I’ll be the bait. But, Heath, I’ll need you nearby.”
Gilley didn’t look happy. “Is that your entire plan? You’re going to set yourself up as a lure and hope that this thing comes after you?”
“Pretty much,” I told him. “I mean, I’m still working out the logistics and all, but it’s about the only thing we can do.”
“But how are you going to fight it when it shows up?” Gil complained. “M.J., that thing is tied to a portable portal! We’ll need to find the key, and by key I mean knife, and by knife I mean murder weapon, and by murder weapon I mean murder
er
; and by that I mean,
Are you insane
?!”
I flung my hands up in surrender. “Then what would you suggest, Gil?”
Gilley opened his mouth to say something, but nothing other than, “eh . . . ah . . . er . . .” came out.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “We’ve got no choice, when you think about it. We’ve got to try, and hope for the best.”
I noticed then that most of the men had stopped eating. It appeared I’d ruined their appetites. “Anyway,” I continued, “we’ve still got a day to work it out. Maybe another idea will come to me, and we can go with that instead.”
“Oh, if only,” said Gilley dryly.
I polished off the last of my breakfast and pushed my plate away, giving in to the huge yawn that indicated I was more tired than I’d thought. Reaching for my purse and pulling out some cash, I said, “Let’s all head back to the hotel, set up those gauges, and get some decent shut-eye. This feels like it’s going to be a long night, fellas.”
Back at the hotel Gopher asked Knollenberg if he could change rooms to something a little closer to the ground floor and was given the key card to a room on the first floor. Gilley and I thought that was a brilliant idea, as it would keep us all close to the action and less spread out, so we also asked for new rooms near Heath and Gopher and got them.
As I was waiting for Knollenberg to assign me a new room, I had the chance to ask him about the mirrors that Beckworth had purchased at auction. “I’m so sorry,” he said while his fingers tapped on the computer. “I haven’t had a chance to ask Mr. Beckworth about that yet.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured him. Wanting to take it easy on the guy, but needing that information, I pressed, “Can you please remember to ask him the very next time you speak to him?”
“Of course,” said Knollenberg with a blush.
“Oh!” I said, thinking of something else. “And would you happen to know about a man who committed suicide here in the early nineteen hundreds?”
Knollenberg hit one final key on his computer and gave me a small smile. “No, that was a little bit before my time.”
I laughed. He’d said it so dryly that it was unexpectedly funny. “I understand that,” I said, still giggling. “Do any of your hotel records go that far back?”
“I can check,” he offered. “But you might also find some information in the archives of the local newspaper.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said. “I’ll get Gilley right on it.”
Once Knollenberg assigned me my new room, I went up to my room to pack and move my stuff down a few floors. I saw Gilley just coming out of his new room as I was making my way down the first-floor hallway. “Hey,” I said.
“What room are you in?” he asked me.
“The one right next to yours,” I said, stopping to eyeball the brass plates. “By the way, I have an assignment for you, and I need you to look it up before tonight.”
Gilley yawned dramatically. “Oh, yippee,” he said drolly.
I ignored his sarcasm. “Can you look into the on-line archival records of the local newspapers to see if there’s an account of a man with the first name of Gus who committed suicide here at the hotel in the early nineteen hundreds?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard. Sure,” he said. “I’ll look it up.”
“Great!” I gave him a pat on the back. “Print off anything you can find.”
“What time will you be rising and shining?” he asked as I made my way through my door.
I glanced down at my watch. “I’ll probably get up around two and go for a run. Want to grab a bite to eat around four?”
“We’ll need to set out the extra electrostatic meters,” he reminded me.
“Oh, crap,” I said, pausing in the doorway. “I forgot. Okay, then we’ll place the meters at four and eat around five.”
“Did you want to get started before midnight?”
“Might as well,” I said. “That sky looks like rain, and if it starts pouring, then we can start anytime we’re ready.”
“Thank God for rainy days,” said Gil. (Ghost hunting is best when the atmosphere is damp.)
“Cool, see you at four.”
I slept until about two thirty, then went for a run, which was tougher than I thought on the slopes and hills of San Francisco. I made it back to the hotel by three fifteen, showered, and met Gil in the mezzanine by four to set up the electrostatic meters—which, thank God, we had plenty of.
“Do we want to put these only on the floors we’re going to be working?” Gil asked me.
“How many do we have?”
Gilley looked into his duffel bag. “Eight,” he said.
“We have that many?”
“You know how fritzy they can be,” he reminded me, referring to how easily the meters tended to short out. “I wanted to make sure we were well stocked for this gig.”
“I think it’s a good idea to put them in all the places we’ll be working, plus maybe a few in the higher-traffic areas, like down here on the ground floor.”
My partner and I went through our plan for that evening and placed all the meters in their strategic locations. Gil then wanted to go back down to his command center and make sure he was getting a reading off each meter. I joined him, as we were going to get something to eat afterward.
Sitting next to him and taking up the clipboard with the numbered meters and their corresponding locations, I went through them with him.
“Number one reads slightly above normal,” Gilley said, starting to go through the meters one by one.
I glanced at the sheet on the clipboard that documented each meter assignment and said, “Check-mark for fifth-floor meter. Next?”
“Meter two readings are normal.”
I scrolled down the sheet again and found meter two’s assignment. “Check for dining hall meter,” I called.
“Meter three readings are normal.”
“Check for lobby meter.”
“Meter four readings are slightly elevated,” Gil said.
“Check for ground-floor elevator.”
“Meter five readings are . . .” I looked up from my clipboard as Gilley paused, only to see his eyes widen with alarm before he shouted, “Off the freaking charts!”
I leaned in and glanced at his laptop and noticed that the electromagnetic meter on the third floor next to room 321 was in the red zone. “Jesus!” I gasped. “Have you ever seen them so high?”
Gilley shook his head. “Never! It’s got to be a faulty gadget,” he determined, but his face looked worried.
“Come on,” I said, setting the clipboard down. “Let’s go check it out.”
I hurried to the door and pushed it open, holding it for Gilley, whom I expected to be right behind me. When I glanced back, however, he was still in his seat, looking at me skeptically. “You coming?”
“I don’t wanna,” he said feebly. “What if that
thing
is up there, and it’s causing the meter to jump?”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, grab some grenades and let’s go!”
“But . . .” Gil said, looking from his laptop screen to me and back again as if he were searching for another excuse.
“Oh,
fine
!” I snapped. “Stay here then!” And I let the door close. I walked down the hallway in an aggravated huff and nearly slammed right into Heath, who was likely coming to look for us.
“What’s up?” he asked me.
“We’ve got a meter spiking on the third floor, and Gilley the Girl has decided he’s too scared to come with me to check it out.”
“I’ll go with you,” Heath offered.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling better immediately. I hadn’t wanted to go up there alone, and I was glad that he was willing to tag along with me.
We hurried to the elevators and rode up to the third floor. I handed Heath one of the grenades from my tool belt, which I’d luckily strapped on before I left my room. “Just in case,” I told him.
“How high was the meter spiking?” he asked.
“High enough to proceed with caution,” I warned, gripping the cap on the grenade firmly as I watched the floor count on the control panel of the elevator. “But it might be a false alarm. I mean, the thing was spiking way beyond anything we’ve ever seen before, so it could just as easily be a faulty meter.”
“How often do you get a false reading?”
“Often enough,” I said as the boxcar stopped and the doors began to open.
We moved out of the elevator and proceeded down the hallway with caution. I was in the lead, and Heath had my back. We got to the first corner without incident, and I had my senses wide-open, but nothing much was hitting me.
“You feel cold?” I asked Heath, thinking that the telltale sign that indicated ghosties were about might give us an early warning.
“No. You?”
“No,” I said. I paused before turning the corner and reached into my tool belt for one of the last three electrostatic meters that we’d each be carrying that night. The readings were normal.
“What’s it say?” Heath asked.
“It’s normal. No unusual hits at all.”
My cell phone rang at that moment, and both Heath and I jumped. I took a breath and answered it. “What?” I barked, seeing that it was Gilley calling.
“The meter ’s gone back to normal,” he told me.
“Are you getting a bead on the one I’m holding or the one down the hall?” I asked.
“The one we planted outside room three-twenty-one,” he confirmed.
I began moving forward again. “Okay,” I said. “We’re almost to it, and we can check it out.”
“I have a good reading on your meter, by the way,” said Gilley. “I think we can cross it off the list too.”
We came to a stop outside room 321, and I looked down. The electrostatic meter was resting peacefully right up against the door. It hadn’t been moved or touched that I could tell. I bent down to pick it up and examined it. “It looks fine. Gil, what do you want me to do with it? Do you want to replace it with the one I brought along?”
“I don’t know, M.J. I mean, it seems to be working now.”
“It does,” I agreed.
“Is there a light socket nearby?” Gilley asked me. “You know how those things can spike when they get near a hot outlet.”
I looked up and down the hallway, and I finally spotted an outlet about ten yards away. “There’s no way it could have gotten a buzz off the plug in the hallway, Gil. It’s too far away.”
“Okay, well, let’s switch it out with the one you’ve got; that way we’ll know if we get big spikes again that it’s not that particular meter.”
I clicked off the phone and swapped the gadgets, then motioned for Heath to head back down to the main floor. But before we took even two steps we both froze. “You feel that?” I asked as a cool breeze seemed to blow across the back of my neck.”
“Cold air?” he said, pivoting on his heel to look back.
“Yep,” I whispered. I held my hands up and closed my eyes, concentrating. It was then that I heard the familiar clicks and blips coming from the electrostatic meters. My cell rang again and I flipped it open. “We’ve got action,” I said to Gil.
“On both meters,” he confirmed. “What’s your location, M.J.?”
“We’re standing in front of room three-nineteen.”
“So you’re next to three-twenty-one?” he asked.
“We are,” I said, holding my hand up and feeling the air in front of the door.
“I’ve got a female,” said Heath. “I think this might be Carol.”
“Gotta go, Gil. I’ll call you back in a few.” I clicked off the phone and focused all of my intuitive radar on picking up what was in the ether. Meanwhile, the cold around us intensified, and the electrostatic meters continued to blip noisily.