Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Regge, blue-eyed firefighters, and con artist memories
I used all my conman skills to reassure the firefighter that everything was a simple misunderstanding. Being a kid from the streets, I’d never really trusted constabulary. Even though some of my trusted friends were in law enforcement. I heeded Theo’s advice. Speak little, listen more.
Jimmy, the blue-eyed firefighter, used his pickax to open a couple of walls to peek inside.
Assured that nothing was on fire, he insisted on giving me his number.
Just in case I needed some help in quenching another fire.
That was the word he’d used—quench—and his tone spoke of a different kind of fire altogether.
He was nice-looking with his ocean-colored eyes, but I hadn’t a flicker of interest. Still, I flirted back automatically, reading the man as one who would overlook a hastily constructed story if there was a chance of something else.
After a fairly thorough search and finding no fire or gun-toting bad guys, we crowded into the tiny lift.
I had no intention of calling him, no quenching of fires would be necessary, but Jimmy didn’t need to know that.
I was dutifully plugging his number into my phone when the elevator doors opened.
I looked up to catch Hunter’s troubled gaze across the lobby.
With a quick nod and a wink, Jimmy left to join his fellow firefighters. I noted that all of them were youthful and fit. I was mildly surprised to see two females among them. The modern age had certainly expanded their viewpoint on women and what they were capable of.
I sauntered to Hunter’s side and focused on the constables. No, they were called officers now. The night clerk kept insisting he was simply the night clerk. The two uniformed cops eyed each other, eyebrows raised.
“Clark,” Hunter interjected into the conversation. “He means Clark. This is Mr. Clark, and he is the night clerk.”
“Nigel Clark,” I added, leaning more into a convincing story.
Instinct told me not to divulge too much.
And the revelation that the night clerk was actually a ghost would be too much.
“From what I gather, he’s worked here a long time.
I think he works days as well.” I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial tone and used a smattering of modern words to imply that the clerk had some sort of disability.
It was amazing to me how quickly people believed different meant incapable. I knew several different folk who were odd, quirky, or unusual, but also incredibly talented.
The officer squinted as the radio on his shoulder squawked. With a nod to his partner, they sighed and walked away to answer the call.
Another firefighter approached us. “We’ve cleared the building. But this building has been closed to the general public. It’s unsafe. You’ll need to vacate.”
Hunter made up something about us being contractors inspecting for renovations, as I studied the large fire chief.
He was handsome as well. I wondered if fire personnel were all of a certain stature and build.
Because the police force came in all sizes and shapes, yet the fire brigade—at least this one—was hearty. I’d ask Hunter about it later.
“Thank you.” I spoke to the fire chief. “Sorry to call you out. We panicked.”
“Better to be safe than sorry.” With a nod, he headed outside to where a boxy vehicle with flashing lights waited. Jimmy gave a little wave before climbing in the vehicle. I waved back.
Hunter made a weird noise in the back of his throat. I turned to him, but he was speaking to the clerk. “Look, you have to be careful. You can’t be weird around these guys, or they’ll want to investigate more, okay?”
The ghostly man’s eyes widened in his sallow face, his Adam’s apple bobbing, but he nodded his understanding.
The cops returned to us. “We have another call. Fender bender down the block. A black SUV. Witnesses saw two white men running from the scene.” He gave a brief description. “Does that sound like the guys?”
Hunter nodded, escorting them to the door. He returned and spoke to our man Nigel.
“When someone official like that comes, they’re going to want details like your name and such. You can’t say night clerk over and over.”
“But that’s what I am.” His voice rose in pitch as he blinked several times. Could ghosts cry real tears?
“Let’s sit down,” Hunter urged him, and we moved to the musty Victorian-style couch. “Tell us everything, but first do we need to check on the old man? Anu?”
The clerk, Nigel—I decided to think of him as Nigel—tilted his long chin toward Hunter.
“Master Anu is ill, I’m afraid. It is so, so, so sad. I don’t know what I am to do.” His ghostly hands twitched in his lap. “Without Master, I am nothing.” His body shimmered, flowing from transparent to fully there and fading again.
“Nigel,” I said. “May I call you Nigel? I chose—” I glanced at Hunter. “Or rather, we chose something close to night clerk. Is Nigel Clark agreeable?” Previous conversations had made it obvious the spirit didn’t remember his true name.
The man blinked his watery eyes again and gave us a tremulous smile. “Yes. Nigel sounds official, doesn’t it? That’s lovely.”
Now that we were out of immediate danger, I studied the being closer.
His dark hair was thin and flattened against his head in an old-fashioned style.
Dark eyes, deep set into his long face, held enough innocence to make him seem quite young, but I figured his mortal age to be late thirties.
Nigel was a mortal being, fully present and touchable as evidenced by couch cushions indenting under his physicality.
Yet he could appear and disappear at will, like a purely spiritual entity. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Who is Master Anu to you?”
Nigel’s chest heaved as he struggled to gain control of himself. “He brought me here. I have a purpose. The before I do not recall.”
“So how long have you and Master Anu been here? At the hotel?” Hunter asked.
“Before we had our lovely bar, it was a clandestine place.” He beamed with the memory. “A speakeasy. Oh, the ladies with their fringe and glitter! The gentlemen in their Panama hats. It was all so glamorous and…and—”
“Fun?” Hunter supplied.
“Oh yes. Now things are so dull and dreary.”
Hunter gave me a look. “Okay, so you’ve been here since the 1920s, I think. That means that Master Anu is… over a hundred?”
“A hundred what?” Nigel asked.
“Years.” Hunter’s tone lost some of its patience. “He’s over a hundred years old?”
“Don’t be silly. He’s much older than that.”
This time it was me who rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We will talk to him. Would you translate for us?”
“I would indeed. I am happy to be of service to all our—”
“Yes. We know, Nigel.” Hunter shook his head, and we went upstairs again.
We found Master Anu lying down in the room with the broken window, a thin blanket over him. Nigel fussed over the broken window for a moment before stepping into the hallway and snapping his fingers.
“We will move him to another room.” Hunter looked at Nigel, waiting for him to translate. After a moment, the old man rose, and we shuffled him out of the room.
In the hallway, we met a middle-aged, brown-skinned man in coveralls. Nigel seemed to know him.
“Kenny, we need new panes for the window in room 306,” he said in a businesslike tone. Kenny looked accusingly at us but said nothing as he turned and headed back downstairs. Nigel turned to us. “Kenny is our jack of all trades around here. I could not do my job without him.”
“Great,” I said. “Where was he when we were being chased by blackguards with guns?”
“In the basement of course.” The clerk looked ridiculously nonplussed.
“Of course.”
Once Master Anu was settled back into a fresh bed and clean room, we asked questions about the men who chased us.
Nigel had that annoying expression again. “I know what the men wanted. They wanted the Master of course.”
I wondered if this man had been as irritating when he was alive. My next question was interrupted by a smattering of gibberish from Master Anu.
“He says they wanted him and his record. His tablet,” Nigel translated.
“Like an iPad? Really?” Hunter asked.
“iPad? I don’t know what that is, but the tablet is the Master’s record, his instruction book, if you will. It contains the script.”
“The script?” I looked at Hunter and then the ceiling. Now we were all sounding dim.
“Yes,” Nigel replied. “For raising the dearly departed and those not so dear. The Master is a necromancer of—”
“Of course,” Hunter said.
“Bloody hell.”
A necromancer? In my time, necromancy was widely thought of as demonic witchcraft.
A theory I was inclined to agree with, but I’d never actually believed it was possible.
I looked at the frail old man in the twin bed.
With his skinny arms and gray complexion, he didn’t look like he could raise himself to a sitting position, let alone raise a dead person to life.
After a bit more conversation, Anu decided he’d had enough of talking and he yawned, rolled over to face the wall, and covered his head.
Not much point in staying after that.
Outside the hotel, Hunter stomped ahead of me to his car. “Do you have to flirt with everyone?”
“What are you on about?”
“The fireman? You practically skipped upstairs after him.” Hunter got in and slammed the driver’s side door.
I ran around to the passenger side.
“Fireman? Jimmy? He was… nice. And I haven’t ever skipped in my life.”
His head tilted back and forth in a mocking gesture. “Jimmy, huh. You got his number in your phone, don’t you?”
“I, well, it was just…” I squinted into Hunter’s velvet brown eyes, his angry and slightly hurt expression. It was the hurt that got me.
Except for the occasional gathering with the gang, we hadn’t spent this much time together in months. Less than twenty-four hours and we were already arguing.