Lost Souls

4

When next she opened her eyes, Cait stifled a sharp gasp.

An old woman with slate-gray hair and a wart on her nose stood over her bed, staring down.

Ignoring her for the moment, Cait gave her surroundings a quick glance. She was in a treatment room at Methodist University Hospital. A place she’d visited too often in the last few months not to be intimately familiar with. Same sterile walls and cabinets. Same hard foam mattress on a narrow cot. Same glaring fluorescent lights above. The astringent smell of rubbing alcohol was oddly reassuring.

A faint beeping sounded beside her, and she turned her head, still ignoring the woman standing beside her bed. The beeping must have had something to do with the wires running from the machine and attached to her chest with stickers. Were they running an EKG?

She glanced back at the old woman, whose rheumy brown eyes blinked in surprise but then quickly narrowed.

“You the ghost whisperer Gladys Digby was talkin’ about?”

Ghost whisperer? Digby? That name rang a bell. Cait’s senses sharpened, and she pushed up on her elbows to give the nosy woman a scowl. This time her expression succeeded because the other woman leaned away. Her shoulder passed through the IV stand.

Another question answered. “Is this Gladys five feet tall, with white hair, and pushing an oxygen cart? Dead as a doorknob?”

The old woman folded her thick arms over her substantial belly. She was dressed in a faded green hospital gown, no robe. Cait hoped she’d remembered to close the ties in the back.

“That’s her.” The grumpy woman nodded. “Haven’t seen her since she left with that blond cutie. She find her house?”

“I assume so. I’ve been a little too busy to go check. But my partner Jason drove her home.”

The woman’s scowl deepened. “I’m asking because her husband Frank’s here and I haven’t seen Gladys. Worried about the dingbat. She forgets things on account of the Alzheimer’s.”

“Frank’s here?” Well, damn. She’d thought she was done with the elderly dead woman she’d dubbed “Miss Daisy.” Eyeing the ghostly menace beside her, she asked, “There something you expect me to do about it?”

A curt nod expanded the woman’s double chin. “Find her. You’re a detective, ain’t ya?”

Cait wondered if she fluttered her eyelashes and pretended to faint whether the woman would leave her in peace. But the stubborn set of her jaw and hawkish glare told her that the ghost standing next to her hospital bed wouldn’t be fooled. Cait sighed. “What room is Frank in?”

“They have him in the ICU. Old fart’s not gonna make it. Gladys should be here.”

She remembered something Miss Daisy had told her about a pushy woman who guarded the most critical patients. “By chance, you wouldn’t be Mrs. Klein, would you?”

“That’s me. Been here thirty years now. Gladys mentioned me?”

The old woman’s widened eyes held a note of hope, and Cait’s irritation faded. Mrs. Klein missed her friend. “She did. She said you were an angel of mercy, ringing the bells when the comatose patients couldn’t do it for themselves.”

Mrs. Klein sniffed, and then shored up her expression, lifting her chin. “I’d like to hire you. To find her, that is.” When Cait raised an eyebrow, she continued. “Can’t pay you, of course, but I’ll owe you a favor. Someday, you might need one.”

The number of times she’d been in the emergency room these past months, Cait didn’t doubt her. “I’ll find Gladys. But I have something else I have to take care of first. Will you mind Frank in the meantime?”

“I’ve been hovering over the old goat, waitin’ for him to pass. If he does, I’ll make sure he stays planted.”

Cait flipped off the blanket covering her legs, then, at the cool breeze on her skin, quickly pulled it back over her. They’d taken her pants. Shit.

“Your clothes are in the third cupboard,” Mrs. Klein said, pointing.

Cait pulled the stickers off her chest and then sat on the edge of her bed, keeping the white sheet covering her hips and thighs while she removed the IV from her arm. At the sting, she winced and sucked in a breath.

Mrs. Klein chuckled. “Don’t be such a baby.”

“You try getting electrocuted. Everything hurts.” And her body did. All her muscles felt stiff and achy. Her head throbbed. She pushed off the bed and hobbled to the cupboard, relieved to find her clothing neatly folded in a clear plastic bag. She dressed quickly, and then went to the treatment room door, which she pushed open a crack.

“Coast is clear,” Mrs. Klein barked in her ear.

“Shhh!” Cait turned her head, shooting her a glare.

“Like anyone’s gonna hear me? And why should you care if they see you? You’re perfectly within your rights to leave.”

“Have to check no one’s here to make sure I stay put,” she muttered.

But the hallway was indeed empty of people. She slid out the door and made her way to the exit doors. Just as she pressed on the round automatic door button, she heard someone tsk behind her.

She angled her head to look behind her and saw the EMT who’d been at the hotel standing there. The exit doors closed again with a hiss.

“Something tells me you didn’t bother waiting for a doctor to give you the all clear.”

“What’s it to you?” she snarled grumpily. “Gonna narc on me?”

His green gaze swept her frame. “Don’t think it’s me you have to worry about. Your detective friend looked pretty mean.”

Cait rolled her eyes. “Don’t suppose you’re on your way out of here?”

“I am. Whatcha need?”

“Can you drop me off somewhere?”

“Only if it’s on my route.”

“Anywhere but here would suit me just fine.”

“Figured that.” He grinned and reached past her to hit the button again to open the door. “After you?”

She glanced at his brass nameplate. “Thanks, Bradley.”

“First name’s Eddie. Have a feeling we’re gonna be on a first-name basis,” he murmured, still smiling.

She followed him to his truck and climbed into the cab. “Anywhere near a trolley stand will be fine.”

He started the engine. “No one said, back at the hotel, but how’d you manage to get yourself electrocuted?”

Cait smiled. “A demon living in the walls of the hotel hit me.”

“Uh-huh. I can see why he wanted to sit on you all the way to the hospital. He your boyfriend?”

One look, and she knew he was angling to find out if she was available. Which had her reaching for her hair. It was still poofed out like she’d stuck a finger in a light socket. “You always this flirty?”

“Only when the girl’s a spitfire.”

She laughed and turned to watch the streets they passed.

When she neared the trolley stop on Union, she tapped the dashboard. “You can drop me here.”

“Got cash for the trolley?”

Her brows lowered, and she felt in her pockets. Her wallet was gone. So were her keys.

“Boyfriend took them. I think maybe he was trying to make sure you stayed put.” Eddie fished into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed her a five. “Now you owe me. Meet me for drinks sometime?”

Cait sucked in a deep breath. Rather than the setdown the situation called for, she found herself saying, “I like O’Malley’s. If I see you there sometime, I’ll buy you a drink.”

He gave her a lopsided smile as she scooted off the seat to the pavement.

As his vehicle pulled away, she wondered what the hell she’d just done. Last thing she needed was an excuse to drink. But maybe that was the point. She wasn’t ready to quit. Although she’d been sober for almost two months, she wasn’t past wanting a drink. The smell of rubbing alcohol assailed her again, and she ran a hand over the skin exposed above the edge of her tank. The smell intensified.

Maybe when this case was over, she’d treat herself. One last swig of her favorite scotch. Eddie wouldn’t rag on her about it.

But the image of Sam’s stern expression shimmered into her mind. The thought of disappointing him again, of giving him a good reason not to trust her, caused a welling up of guilt that ate at her stomach.

She needed something to eat. That was all this burning was.

Sam closed his phone and cussed. Cait had escaped the hospital. Not that he was truly surprised, but they were supposed to be working this case together. He had every right to keep tabs on where she was and what she was doing. He’d have to sign off on her time sheet.

Or at least that was the excuse he made to himself for his irritation. She’d been buzzed, knocked right on her ass. Her instinct might have her running to a bar for a stiff scotch—for medicinal purposes, he was sure.

“Don’t tell me. Cait disappear?”

Sam aimed a glare at Jason, who sat beside him at the long scarred metal table in the break room where they’d been interviewing a steady stream of hotel guests. So far, they hadn’t come across anyone who’d seen or smelled anything. He tapped the last names on the list Mr. Lewis, the hotel manager, had given him. The Reel PIs crew.

This ought to be good.

“Hey, if you want to go find her, I can handle this.”

Feeling edgy, Sam almost agreed. But he decided he’d see this through, then go hunt her down. He’d give her just enough rope. Someday he’d have to learn to trust her again or they’d never work as a couple. Sam didn’t dare let his imagination roam any further than that. Memories of their marriage, of their constant fighting about her drinking and the secrets she kept, had left him feeling pretty hollow for a long, long time. Being back in her life now, he was satisfied taking their relationship slow.

Add the fact he’d discovered things that she’d never even hinted at—the magical other world she traveled—and he wasn’t sure they were still a good fit. How could he hope to compete with or even understand the things she was capable of doing? And then there was Morin.

Morin Montague. Her teacher. Her first lover. Although Cait swore up and down that the night she’d gone to Morin to draw down the moon had been all about siphoning off the sorcerer’s power to battle a demon, she hadn’t hedged about the fact that siphoning called for the two of them to get naked and for Morin to draw an orgasm from her.

That was Sam’s sticking point. The magic, he might be able to handle. The fact she had to take things a step beyond what he considered staying faithful… well, he was still working on where that left him.

Confused? Hurt? Neither emotion was something he wanted to let her know about. Angry? Well, she’d seen hints of that. He supposed he’d just need time to work on his trust issues. Time and education. Google was key to the things he’d dredged up about mystical practices that he’d once considered pure fantasy.

“Want to talk to them together?”

Sam roused, giving Jason another glance.

Jason’s eyebrows were raised as he studied Sam’s expression.

Not knowing what his face might have revealed, Sam pasted on a frown. “Together would be fine. Let’s just get it over with.” He flipped to the next clean sheet in his small spiral pad and clicked the ballpoint pen he’d swiped from Cait’s kitchen.

Jason pushed away from the table and walked to the door. With a curl of his fingers, he gestured to the threesome sitting on folding chairs in the hallway outside.

As they shuffled into the room, Sam studied the crew. Before his introduction to the paranormal world, he would have dismissed them as slightly out-there pretenders at best, con artists at worst.

He glanced down at his printed list. “So who’s Clayton Dempsey?”

The chubby dude with the Fu Manchu lifted his hand. Then he turned to the tall man beside him whose face bore acne pockmarks and a scraggly beard. “This is Booger Dane, and she’s his girlfriend, Mina Tattersall. Our producer.”

“Producer?” Sam studied the girl, barely twenty. She was slender and small with black hair cut to her chin and purple cat’s-eye glasses.

“I handle the camera work too,” she said, her husky voice at odds with her pint-size appearance.

“You have a TV show?”

Clayton waved a hand. “We’re in the development stages of doing a show. Reality-TV stuff. Real ghost hunters.”

“And you’ve found ghosts?”

Clayton gave him a look that said he thought Sam wasn’t his intellectual equal. “We have reels of orb sightings. And tapes we’re still going through to clean out the white noise.”

So, not-so-real ghost hunters. Sam smiled. “Why are you at the Deluxe?”

Clayton leaned an elbow on the table and eased to the side. “A Facebook fan of ours turned us on to the hotel. Said he stayed here once and heard all kinds of unexplainable things. Noises in the walls. Odd smells.”

Although his interest piqued, Sam didn’t betray a tic. “Noises? Smells? Did he describe them?”

The large man pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and then he tapped the sheet. “He was on the third floor. Said the sounds were like something moving in the walls. Not thumps. Rustling. And he smelled sulfur.” Clayton raised his head and gave Sam a smirking smile. “A sure sign of demons.”

The scraggly bearded man nodded. “We were wondering if we could interview you.”

“About what?” Sam said, keeping his voice flat.

“About what happened up there. We think that space is a point of confluence.”

“A point of confluence?” Sam drawled.

“An intersection between this world and the next.”

“And what leads you to believe that?”

Booger Dane blinked. “The dead girl in the walls. The night clerk says the cops told him she was there for forty years, but then they asked to see his records of a woman who’d checked in last night. Said it was her body they found.” He nodded. “See, time has no meaning in the other realm.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam stifled a sigh, silently cursing the clerk for his big mouth.

“We think we could be helpful to your investigation,” Booger said, excitement tweaking his voice to a slightly higher pitch.

Sam ignored the nudge Jason gave him below the table. Judging by the careful crimping of his lips, Cait’s partner was having a hard time holding in a smile. “How so?” Sam asked, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

“We have all the equipment. We could monitor the paranormal activity and find the point of conflux.”

Sam shook his head. “I think we can handle the investigation all on our own.”

“Forgive me for sounding a little condescending,” Clayton said, with a slight sneer, “but you need us. You need someone with experience who can navigate these waters. Messin’ with the dead is dangerous. More so with dark entities. Booger here is a qualified exorcist. Once we trap that demon, he can banish it from the hotel.”

Sam flipped his notepad closed and forced a smile. “I’ll take your offer under advisement.”

Clayton’s expression slipped to reveal a hint of anger tingeing his cheeks. “We’ve booked rooms for the next week. Here’s my card.”

Sam took the card, eyeing it doubtfully. A Casper-like ghost was to one side, a large magnifying glass to the right. Both looked as though they’d been hand sketched, most likely by Clayton himself. Sam slipped the card into his shirt pocket.

Jason cleared his throat. “Thanks for your time. Sorry about the wait.”

Booger shrugged congenially, looking like he hadn’t noticed his friend was pissed. “We don’t have anything else to do until it gets dark. We’ve been reviewing footage.”

“See anything we might find interesting?” Jason asked.

“Not yet. We’ll have to enhance the images.”

“Uh-huh.” This time, Sam didn’t disguise a snort.

Clayton’s brows lowered. “I know we sound kinda out there, but this stuff is real. So are we.”

Sam’s glance cut straight to Clayton. “Just make sure you stay clear of the third floor. The entire floor’s a crime scene now.”

After a two-second stare-down, Clayton offered a tight smile and stood. The others quickly followed.

Mina shoved her glasses up her nose and offered her hand. “If we find anything interesting, we’ll let you know.”

“If we find anything,” Clayton interjected, “we expect quid pro quo. And if you change your minds about doing an interview for this episode…”

“I’ll let you know,” Sam said, then stared pointedly toward the door.

When they trailed out of the room, Sam looked at Jason, whose lips were pressed into a straight line. “You think they have a clue?”

No way. “I think they know enough to get in the way.”

“My thoughts too.”

“Still, photographic surveillance isn’t a bad idea.” Jason shrugged.

Sam let out a deep breath. “You think following orbs around might lead us to something?”

Jason grunted. “Most orbs are just dust particles blown up with the flash of a camera. But you never know. They might get lucky. If we can find that conflux—”

Sam let loose a chuckle. “The only thing they might find is trouble. Especially if they get in Cait’s way.”

“Yeah, what do we need with them when we have our own ghost girl?” Jason dismissed the group with a wave. “Speaking of which, any ideas where to start looking for her?”

“Yeah, one or two,” Sam said, grinding his jaws.

“I’ll head to the office to dig up what I can on the Internet about strange happenings and disappearances surrounding the hotel.”

Sam gave him a nod. “Regroup at O’Malley’s tonight?”

“Sure it’s safe for her to be there?”

Hoping the place was about the habit and not the substance, Sam lifted his shoulders. “Later.”