Chapter 6 #3
“Thanks, that would be great. I’ve got maybe an hour’s work to do in the office, and I want to check in with Josh too. So you’ll have the room to yourself while you get settled,” Kieran adds, looking in my direction but not quite at me.
“Sounds wonderful. That will give me a chance to prep…” Skye’s eyes go wide, and Daniel sucks in a breath. “…my plans for the next few days. And make some calls.”
Kieran’s smile is distant and a little shaky. “Of course. You’re welcome to use the landline if you prefer. And Skye will give you the Wi-Fi password—the staff one, Skye.” He glances at me. “It’s more secure than the one the guests use.”
I murmur my thanks and watch with a satisfied smile as he all but runs out of the house.
“Well.” I turn back to Skye. “This is going to be awesome.”
Twenty minutes later, I shut the door on Skye and flop back on my twin bed, grinning.
Maybe I’d be more comfortable at the motel in town, but aside from it being a twenty-minute drive away, if I was at the motel, I wouldn’t be able to sleep three feet away from Kieran.
If I lie on the edge of the bed and stretch my arm out, I can touch his bed.
He’s going to hate this so much.
I can’t wait.
In the meantime, though, while he’s busy downstairs is the perfect time for me to call Gabe.
The call connects on the first ring to the sound of my name being yelled. “Connor!”
I can’t stop my smile. It’s dumb, but I miss my baby brother when he’s not around. “Didn’t I ever teach you it’s rude to answer other people’s phones?” I ask, and Ian laughs.
“Yeah, you threw me in the lake in the middle of winter and then locked me out of the house and told me to consider it a learning experience.”
“The middle of winter? Please. It’s Southern California.
You could barely even call it winter.” I think fondly back to the days before I’d left my home state and realized what cold really is.
Last year I spent January in northern Minnesota, and I will never again whine about a “cold” day in San Diego.
I’m just grateful my balls didn’t actually freeze off.
“Sure thing, Grandpa. Back in your day, you walked fifteen miles through the snow. Or whatever.”
“Dude, I grew up in the same place you did, and I’m only twelve years older. How the fuck did you get into college?” I lean back against my pillows, relaxing fully for the first time in a week.
“Fuck you, everyone knows I’m the smart one in the family.”
Jeers erupt at the other end of the line as whoever’s with him—probably Gabe and Matt—put him in his place.
“The smart one? Uh-huh,” I drawl.
“Whatever. Listen, switch to FaceTime so we can all say hello.”
Obediently, I pull the phone away from my ear and tap the FaceTime button. The camera activates, and a second later, I see my brother’s stupid face that I love so much.
“Hiiiiii!” he yells, then glances over his shoulder. “Come say hi to Connor.”
Jesus, how’d he get to be twenty without accidentally getting murdered for being annoying? It’s a miracle.
Two more faces squish into view. One is the face of my best friend, Gabe. The other is the face of Gabe’s little brother—and my little brother’s best friend—Matt. They look like slightly different versions of the same person.
“Hi, Connor! Gabe says you’re in Illinois. Bet you’re sorry you missed us,” Matt says, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“I didn’t expect you to come home so soon. What, you couldn’t cope for a few weeks on your own?”
“Nah, we had laundry.” Ian reaches over to grab some of Matt’s popcorn. “It seemed really stupid to do our own laundry when the Collective has a whole team that gets paid to do it.”
Gabe closes his eyes and sighs. “You came all the way home just to avoid doing laundry?”
Matt scoffs. “It’s not like it’s far. Even with traffic, it only takes an hour.”
I try not to think about how fast they must have been speeding on the highway to have made it in an hour with traffic. Were Gabe and I ever that dumb and reckless?
That might be a question best left unanswered.
“Learn to do laundry,” I say instead. “Or you’ll end up on a job someday with no clean underwear and your favorite shirt permanently stained by demon slime because you didn’t wash it right away.”
“I’m sure we could do laundry if we tried.” Ian rolls his eyes. I have no idea where he gets all this attitude from.
“Yeah,” Matt agrees. “How hard can it be? You do it.”
“And on that note…” Gabe snatches the phone from Ian, and I’m treated to a dizzying view of walls, ceiling, arms, and floor while he tells them to “go play like good boys.”
“Fuck you,” Ian announces cheerfully. “Bye, Connor!”
“Bye,” I call, listening to the thud of their retreating footsteps. A moment later, Gabe’s face reappears on the screen.
“Were we ever that fucking stupid?” he asks me.
“I wanna say it’s impossible, but then I remember some of the shit we did. Coming home to get laundry done isn’t a big deal. Though… who gives up a weekend of parties just so they don’t have to wash their own clothes?”
“See? Stupid.” He laughs. “I hugged them so tight, Matt said I burst his spleen.”
I snort. “Like he even knows what a spleen is. Give ’em both a hug from me when they leave.”
“Sure thing. Now, tell me about this gateway.”
Sighing, I let my head drop back and stare at the ceiling, trying to get my thoughts together.
“It was ripped open by a demon fifty years ago,” I begin, then fill him in on the details.
“It would be a great job for you, easy. Only two entities have come through since it opened, so you could probably spend most of your time studying for your PhD.” In addition to being a gatekeeper, Gabe’s a historian and archivist for the Collective.
He’s working on his doctorate in a really obscure offshoot of medieval arcane practices.
Or something. It all ties in with our calling, though of course his thesis supervisor doesn’t know that.
“So this place is, what? A hotel?”
“Kind of. You should look it up—I’ll send you their website.
They’ve got limited accommodation on site, but mostly it’s for day-trippers who want to see what life used to be like in ye olde days.
The house and grounds are nice, though, and when the place isn’t overrun by visitors, it’s quiet.
A bit out of the nearest town, so if something got through, you’d have space to deal with it before you had to worry about mass casualties. ”
“Always a good thing,” he agrees. “And how does it tie in with the Scottish house that had a demon? Because Illinois is not Scotland.”
I laugh. “They played me. I get why—these people knew nothing before I got here, only that they had a source of energy and a bunch of ghosts. So they made up a backstory that would keep me from finding them if I turned out to be untrustworthy.”
“They sound like our kind of people. Protectors,” Gabe muses, adding to whatever notes he’s making. Gabe never talks work without making notes.
“I guess. The ghosts kept it safe for fifty years, and the living are doing their best now. It’s the weirdest accidental grouping I’ve ever seen, though,” I add, unable to help myself.
“One’s a medium—strong. Maybe stronger than any other medium I’ve met.
And one’s a conduit, also really strong.
And the others…” I shake my head, unable to put it into words. “There’s something going on.”
“Well, I’ll get a chance to give you my opinion,” he says.
“You’ll come?” It was my idea, but regret pangs in my chest now that it might actually happen.
Gabe finished his last gatekeeping assignment a little over a year ago, and it’s been so great to see him every time I go home between jobs.
If he’s here in Illinois, we won’t be able to get together anywhere near as often.
I love what I do, but fuck, it can be lonely, and I miss my best friend.
“I’ll come and check it out,” he hedges. “No promises about staying. But even if I don’t, at least I’ll be able to give the council a detailed profile of the gate to use when assigning someone.”
“Good plan. You’ll fly out, then? I’ll ask which airport is closest and get someone to pick you up.
” I don’t need to tell him that I can’t leave the gateway long enough to pick him up.
Once he’s guarded it, he’ll be able to leave for short spans of time, but not before then. The risk factor is too high.
“Great. So now tell me what’s bothering you.” He smirks at the camera, and I roll my eyes.
“Nothing’s bothering me. Seriously. I’m not bothered.” I hesitate. “Uncle Norval’s here.”
Gabe instantly groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, you just can’t catch a break. Why isn’t he haunting the dipshit duo at college and forcing them to study?”
“Uncle Norval’s dead, not stupid. Even he can recognize a lost cause.” From the corner of my eye, I see a ghost drift through the door and stop. My gaze swings that way.
“What is it?” Gabe asks, immediately alert.
“Nothing to worry about.” I hope. I haven’t met this ghost yet, but Josh assured me all the estate ghosts are friendly. “I gotta go, though. I’ll text you in a bit.”
“Yeah, bye.” He ends the call. Those of us who deal with the otherworld are used to interruptions.
I keep hold of my phone but lower my hand to the bed beside me while I study the ghost. She presents as a young woman, but I get the impression she was middle-aged when she died.
As a ghost, she’s not young—at least a hundred and fifty, if not more.
It’s her outfit that has my attention, though.
She’s wearing leather booty shorts and thigh-high, high-heeled boots with a white blouse that looks like it came out of a period movie, buttoned to the throat with a little collar and pin-tuck pleats down the front.
She’s absolutely laden with jewelry—rings, bracelets, necklaces, a tiara, and about six piercings in each ear.
It makes for a discordant yet somehow complete effect.