Chapter 10
All the Mediums gathered, putting our heads together. I included Gwyn because I wanted her to see what these discussions were, but also because I wanted her to know the plan.
“All right, who wants to do what?”
Lachlan lifted a hand. “I’ll take caves, if anyone wants to join.”
Eli high-fived him. “Hell yeah.”
Why were the two crazy ones volunteering for the mines? Well, they were touched, that did follow.
With a snort, Beau drawled, “I ain’t going in there after you, so watch yourselves. Gwyn, why don’t you and I set up a door to pass ghosts on? You’ve done that yourself once, Mack said.”
“I have, yesterday.”
“Then let’s do it again. Pace yourself, but it’s not too draining. It’s why a Medium can pass ghosts all day long.”
Er, he was mostly correct? Unless you were trying to pass, like, three hundred ghosts who a Slaugh had partially eaten… Eh, let’s not go there.
That left li’l ole me by my lonesome, but I preferred our breakdown, all things considered.
Beau had Gwyn well in hand, and if someone was going into the mine, then they absolutely needed backup more than I did.
Brandon was fully outfitted today, so he could shoot rock salt and cover my back while I worked.
We had a mystery to solve here, too, of why the ghosts weren’t able to leave.
They didn’t seem distressed, so was this by choice?
Or was there something else going on, something I couldn’t pick up on in a glance?
The ghosts, like the ones in Black Rock, were way too physically present.
An anchored Medium should be able to tell ghost from flesh, but these guys were giving me trouble.
Damn, this whole location was truly problematic.
And something about this area was off. Like an instrument being played when it was a little out of tune.
There was a pressure, too; subtle, but bearing down on my shoulders.
We all sensed it, even if we couldn’t put our finger on how.
I knew why—that river was right there, clearly heard even if not visible from here.
Plus, the limestone was incredibly thick.
But knowing why didn’t mean we all understood the true effect it would have here.
Brandon encouragingly said, “All right, let’s break and start carving up this elephant.”
We grabbed what elements we needed and split. Lachlan took one of the cars and drove closer to the mines, as they were almost a mile north of here. It was partly why I was glad Eli, Quinn, and Booker went with him—he’d have plenty of backup on hand.
Since the sidewalks were crammed full of ghosts, it was easier for me to walk in the street.
Not like I had to worry about cars or anything.
We were the only ones alive up here. Brandon walked alongside me, eyes peeled.
I knew he was actively on the lookout because his head kept panning back and forth.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was in one of those reenactment tourist spots.
Come see an old gold mine from the late 1800s!
It was just like stepping back in time in many ways.
The women all wore long dresses, bonnets on, walking with baskets over an arm like they were doing the shopping.
The men wore suit coats, suspenders, and wide-brimmed hats.
I’d walk, pause, evaluate a ghost, but couldn’t seem to catch anyone’s eye.
Most of the time, I was inundated with ghosts just because they wanted attention.
This was strange. Almost like they couldn’t see me.
Like they were still “living” their daily lives. Did they even realize they were dead?
“How is it, Mack?”
“Strange beyond belief, cher. I haven’t been this ignored since my last blind date.” I paused to study another ghost, this one a young woman who seemed Gwyn’s age or thereabouts. She walked right past me without even a glance. “I can’t figure out why. It’s honestly disturbing.”
“Are they even looking at you, or…?”
“Non, it’s like they can’t see me at all. I’ve had three almost walk right through me.”
“I wondered, as I keep seeing you turn sideways, like you’re avoiding someone.”
“That’s precisely what I’m doing.” I shook my head, baffled. What was going on here? I’d never seen the like before. “Hang on, cher, I’m going to try something direct.”
I touched the shoulder of a male ghost walking past. In life, he’d likely died near my age, maybe a few years older.
“Sir?”
He stopped, blinking at me as if suddenly realizing I was there. “Oh, hello. You are…alive?”
“I am, oui. Could you not see me before I touched you?”
“Well, no. How long have you been here?” His eyes scanned me from head to toe again, expression growing perplexed. “And what are these strange clothes you are wearing?”
“I’m from the current era,” I told him. This was somehow getting weirder. I wasn’t a fan of weirder. What the H. E. Double FUCK was going on here? “A lot of time has passed since you died. Over a hundred years, in fact.”
He stared at me without comprehension. “No, I died recently.”
“Today’s year is 2021.”
“I… What? No, it’s 1856.”
Brandon muttered, “Is he even aware he’s dead?”
He didn’t seem to hear Brandon at all.
On a theory, I lifted my hand off his shoulder.
The ghost blinked, looking around, clearly startled. “Where did you go?”
My god, he really couldn’t see me unless I was touching him. I replaced the hand and his attention fixed on me again.
“There you are.”
Brandon went very still, realizing the implications as well. If the ghosts couldn’t even see us until we physically interacted with them, then no, passing them wouldn’t be an easy peasy job. It would be tedious and incredibly time consuming.
Also, why the hell couldn’t they see me?! This was not a rhetorical question.
“Sir, would you like to pass on?”
“Oh! That would be grand.”
“Can you hold my shoulder while I escort you over? Another Medium will guide you through from there.”
“Sure, sure, many thanks. Been wondering when that bright light would appear. Kept waiting, but it never showed.”
I walked him over, Beau took him and guided him through, and then Beau came back to me with a confuzzled expression.
“Why’d you bring him over? He was strong enough on his own.”
“Because he couldn’t see me unless I was directly touching him.”
Beau went very, very still. “At all?”
“At all. It’s almost like they’re on a slightly different plane than the rest of us.”
Beau looked about us grimly, muttering under his breath, “I hate being right.” To me, he said, “Call up Eli. Or one of them, I don’t care. They need to check something.”
I was scared of what they might find.
Half an hour later, I called Sylvia. I sat in the back of the SUV with its doors open and my legs dangling to touch the ground. I had my phone in one hand, using the other to hold a cold water bottle to the back of my neck because I was both hot and wanting a nap.
She answered with her usual “Speak.”
“Boss. The fuckening has arrived.”
“I need you to understand I spilled coffee all over myself on the way to work this morning, that’s how well today’s going, so you can tell me the problem but there better be a solution.”
“I hope the solution’s viable, anyway. Here’s the problem. No, better, I’m going to let Beau explain.”
My mentor jogged over to me, and he kept Gwyn close. She clutched her tablet to her chest, looking about warily. Beau didn’t trust this area any more than she did.
Beau pointed to the phone, brow cocked in question.
I nodded. “You’re on speaker.”
“Sylvia, it’s Beau.”
“Hi there. Tell me something good, Beau.”
“This area’s beyond fucked, energetically and spiritually speaking.”
“I said something good, not something migraine inducing.”
“You’re familiar with residual hauntings, of course.”
“Obviously.”
I murmured an explanation to Gwyn, who braced her foot against the bumper so she could frantically write on her propped-up tablet.
Beau’s wrinkles grew proportionally deeper with his scowl as he spoke.
“This is something like a residual haunting, only it’s much, much worse.
The area has become a time capsule, in a sense.
It’s frozen in time, collecting the dead but not releasing them.
I’d bet if anyone died here now, they’d be just as trapped.
It only looks like an old-timey ghost town on the surface because no one’s lived here in a hundred years. ”
Hence my headache and strong desire for a nap.
I took over. “We can interact with the ghosts, but we have to physically touch them before they can even see us. This is an entirely different issue from Black Rock’s ghosts, who are mean spirited and like to charge people.
These guys can’t see me at all until I’m physically in contact, and if I let go, I become invisible again.
We’re having to stop, talk to a ghost, convince them across the street, and then hand them immediately over to Beau to pass them on.
It’s taking a good twenty or thirty minutes per ghost.”
Sylvia groaned. “That’s three times as long as it normally takes you. I expected this to go much faster. Shit. Beau, you’ve seen this before?”
“Years and years ago now. I was brand new to the FBI, maybe been in the force two years. Strangely enough, it was also in the desert, with a river nearby and lots of limestone and quartz in the area.”
Too much of a coincidence to dismiss.
“I’ll tell you something else. We weren’t able to do a damn thing about it until a chaos magician came in.”
The term rang a very, very faint bell. I felt like Beau had mentioned chaos magicians before, but god help me if I could recall.
Gwyn piped up. “What’s that?”
Thank everything good I had an apprentice to ask questions for me and cover my lapse in memory.