Good Will Ghost Hunting: Hell's Bells [Good Will Ghost Hunting 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (33 page)

He looked at Purson. “Your job is to find out as much about him as you can. Origin. Purpose. Strengths and weaknesses.” He set his jaw. “Family even. It’s personal at this point. Unless proven otherwise, there are no innocents where Boorman is concerned. I’ll help you cross so you can speak with Cyadna personally.”

Osmond smirked. “Slash and burn, baby.” He took a swig of his bourbon. “Back to the old days and the old ways.” He took another deep swallow, grimaced, and looked around the table. “Can’t say I’m glad we’re here but you can count on me.”

Nods and noises of agreement echoed around the table.

Ryan eyed his men. “Yes. All of you are well aware of the past and how leadership in The Firm has evolved. As threats have decreased, we’ve been able to move away from that kind of enforcement and turn to more practical, diplomatic solutions to ensure peace here in this realm. However, I am not exaggerating when I say we are now under a return of our former scorched-earth policy, as it were.”

Aidan spoke, his voice low and harsh, his eyes still dark and angry. “The dark and crazy days are back with a vengeance,” he muttered.

“Absolutely,” Ryan agreed, his green eyes darkening to the shade of bloodstone. “With complete and utter vengeance.”

Feeling bone weary, Kal settled back in her chair in front of the bank of monitors and closed her eyes. It’d been a long drive to South Dakota, the first of five stops in a jaunt through western haunts the Otherworlds show would feature. It was nice getting back out here to revisit some places they’d seen on their honeymoon.

There’d been an early morning meeting at Ryan’s a few weeks before, with all the boys in attendance. Well, the archdemon boys. Since then, Kal sensed a hidden heaviness among all of them, including Purs and Gery. When she questioned them about it
,
they all denied anything was wrong.

Strange.

They assured her it was simply routine business for The Firm. Somehow, she didn’t quite believe them, although she didn’t want to accuse them of lying to her.

She sent her mind out, knew Will was with Aidan on the top floor of the old three
-
story hotel, going over final arrangements for the night with the network film crew. Purs and Gery were taking a break outside. They hadn’t gone dark yet, but soon would.

She sensed rather than heard Jeff walk into the room, alone.

“Hey, Jeff,” she said.

He softly chuckled. “That’s spooky.” He sat next to her.

She grinned, finally opening her eyes and looking at him. “Yeah, tell me about it.” She patted his thigh. “Hopefully, one day soon, you
,
too
,
shall experience the joys of soul mate supersensory perception.”

Jeff laughed, then blushed. His voice dropped. “Um, yeah. Can I ask you a personal question along those lines?”

Kal sensed his nervousness. She sat up straight. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I guess.” He met her gaze. “Do you hear Will’s thoughts?”

She nodded. “If I’m actively listening to him, especially if he’s trying to speak to me.” There was more to his question. “Why?”

He shrugged. “What about random stuff? Like if he’s not really thinking to you, do you pick up stuff sometimes?”

She nodded again. “Yeah. If he’s not guarding his thoughts I do. Why?”

He took a deep breath, reddening even further. “When you first got together… Did it feel like you couldn’t keep your hands off each other?”

She smiled. “Ohhh yeah.”

He wasn’t finished. She waited him out. “What else happened? Like better hearing and stuff?”

“Yeah. I can hear things now I never could before, sense things. Ryan told me everyone’s different though. It depends on their soul mate’s strengths and their own latent abilities. Why?”

He shrugged. “If I ask you something else, will you promise not to say anything to anyone?”

“Of course.”

“I feel all that now, with Aidan. Since… Ever since the first night we slept together. I feel different. Like I’m changed. How will I know when we become soul mates if I feel like that now and we’re just living together?” He picked at his fingernails. “What if he decides he can’t go through with it and do it? What if he won’t take me after all? I think it’d kill me, Kal. Just the thought of ever losing him is a physical pain, like a knife stabbing me in the heart. I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Oh, sweetie!” She enveloped him in a hug. “Don’t worry about that. Doofalicious is just a worryw
a
rt, that’s all. He loves you as much as you love him. There’s no way he’ll
not
keep you around forever, believe me.”

“Yeah?”

She sat back and smiled. “Yeah. Besides, it already feels like you’re one of the family. He’s just scared he’s going to hurt you
,
so he’s taking his sweet time talking himself into it, trying to prove to himself that he’s worthy enough of you. In a way, it’s kind of sweet.”

“He’d never hurt me. I wish I could convince him of that.” His eyes flicked to the ceiling. “They’re on their way back down.”

She frowned. “How do you know—” The two-way radio squawked, interrupting her.

Aidan. “Hey, sweet cheeks. You awake?”

She grabbed the radio. “Yeah, I’m here.” Jeff stood and left the room before she could stop him.

“We’re on our way back down,” Aidan said. “We’re ready to go dark. Want to round up the troops?”

She was going to do that, but noticed on one of the monitors that Jeff had stopped by the building’s front door and was motioning someone to come inside. Probably Purs and Gery.

She couldn’t take her eyes from the monitor. “Yeah. We’ll get everyone together in the lobby.”

“Aidan out.”

She set the radio down and watched. Then Jeff looked at the camera, as if looking right at her. He smiled and shrugged.

Kal laughed as she shook her head.

The feed was silent, but she suspected he wasn’t speaking out loud anyway when he mouthed the words, “See, I told you so.”

* * * *

The old hotel did have some residual energy and one intelligent entity. It took Aidan and Purs working in tandem to coax the old cowboy’s spirit into materializing enough they could capture some EVPs and video with the FLIR camera.

Unlike Bobby Martinez, this spirit was well aware of his state and perfectly happy to stay there. He’d been a cantankerous man in life, and proved more so in death. Apparently he enjoyed scaring the crap out of visitors even though he couldn’t physically touch or harm them.

Jeff spent a lot of the investigation at base with Kal, where they silently exchanged smiles. A little before their first break of the night, Kal nudged him. “So what’re the Powerball numbers this weekend?”

He laughed and shook his head. “I’m telling you, it’s freaky. My problem is like you, I’d never had a serious relationship before Aidan. I don’t know what’s normal and what’s…demonic.” He laughed again. “Jeez, that sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“Using that word in a positive context.” He swapped out a DVD on one of the recording drives and labeled the full one with a marker. “If I’m feeling like this now, what’s it going to be like later?”

“Fun,” Kal said.

Jeff grinned. “Yeah. True dat.”

* * * *

Later, Kal was sitting alone at base, idly fingering her amulet. Every so often she swore she felt warm flashes from it. Maybe that was the answer to Jeff’s question. Maybe the talisman Jeff wore helped him tune in to Aidan, even if it wasn’t an amulet.

She closed her eyes and suddenly, her mind drifted to Ryan. The amulet definitely warmed in her hand as a swirl of images rapidly swept through her mind, unbidden, like the dreams she’d had during her honeymoon.

When she opened her eyes, Ryan was lounging against the far wall. Somehow his sudden appearance didn’t startle or surprise her.

“Hello, love.” It’d been over a week since she’d last seen him. Now that he was here, she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t missed his company.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

He shrugged and pushed off from the wall, walked over, and sat next to her. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought perhaps you could use some company.”

She studied him, her fingers still playing with the amulet around her neck. Her thoughts had been of just that, she wished she could talk to him, simply shoot the breeze.

“That’s plain…weird.”

“Weird how, love? That I felt like saying hi?”

She slowly shook her head. “That you showed up exactly when I was thinking…” Then it struck her. “Did I just summon you?”

He playfully smiled. “Was that your intention?”

Now she felt guilty. “Oh, man! I’m sorry, Ry. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

* * * *

He gently patted the back of her hand. “No, I was awake, truly.”

What Ryan didn’t dare think about was that now his sleep patterns seemed tuned to hers. When he knew they were on a shoot, it was impossible for him to sleep. He found himself observing from a distance, sleeping only when she did.

Sharing her dreams.

Blissful torture.

* * * *

A little while later, Aidan and Will walked into the base area. Will smiled and slapped Ryan on the shoulder before he leaned in and gave Kal a kiss. “What’re you doing up?” he asked Ryan.

Kal studied Aidan and Will. Will’s smile looked right, but there was a tension in his soul, a tightness to his voice that betrayed his sudden anxiety over seeing Ryan there.

Something passed between the three men. “Just stopped by to say hello,
that’s
all
,” Ryan said. The way Ryan emphasized the last two words made the other men relax.

“What the heck is going on with you three?”

They looked at Kal. “What?” they all parroted.

“Don’t give me that. The three of you have been up to something. Or holding something back.” She tried to fight the nasty feeling in her gut, the instinctive unsettled gnawing that told her it was something bad.

Really
bad.

Ryan glanced at the other two. Kal sensed another silent communication.

“Oh,
heck
no! Stop it! If you’re going to do that, say it out loud. Quit using the mental crap to keep things from me.” She nervously fingered her amulet. She’d found herself doing that a lot since Ryan gave it to her. It soothed her in a way she didn’t understand and refused to question.

Ryan quietly spoke. “Love, it’s nothing you need concern yourself about, right? It’s business for The Firm. I promise if there is ever a time you need to know what’s going on, we will bring you into the loop. To needlessly weigh you down with minutiae, frankly, it’s a waste of your time and energy.”

She studied their faces. “You’re sure that’s all?” she finally asked.

All three men nodded.

“You guys promise you’ll tell me if something bad’s going to happen?”

“Of course we do,” Ryan assured her.

Jeff walked in, pulling up short with a frown. “What’s going on?”

Kal would have sworn she heard Ryan mentally swear. “
Nothing’s
going on! Had I known my appearance would alarm you all so much I would have stayed home.”

Ryan remained at base with Kal and Jeff, while Will and Aidan went back to film some more.

“So why are my Spidey senses tingling, Ryan?” she asked. “If my super
-
duper
,
soul mate
,
something’s
-
wrong radar isn’t right, why do I get the feeling you guys are holding back on us?”

“Yeah,” Jeff agreed. “I’m not even a soul mate and I can feel it.”

Kal sensed Ryan clamped down on a hysterically funny thought. “Loves, I’ve only had Will back in the saddle, as it were, for a couple of months. Believe me, before he took his hiatus from The Firm, he was quite a busy man.” He pointedly looked at Kal. “And you had a lot of things going on in your life until recently. I did not wish to distract him or Aidan any more than absolutely necessary because you needed them more than I did. There will be plenty of occasions where I utilize their services. You must admit, they’ve had a rather easy go of it for quite a while now.”

A chill washed through her. “So what you’re saying is that it’s starting to get serious?”

He looked exasperated, but somehow it felt like acting to her, like he was trying to distract her. Her amulet flared with warmth in her hand.

“Kal, I’m saying that they have jobs to do. Not usually dangerous jobs, but it’s necessary to communicate information to them that they must have. Think of The Firm as Homeland Security for things that most humans aren’t privy to, right? Just because I must converse with them does not mean there are nefarious plans afoot.”

She exchanged a look with Jeff. If she wasn’t mistaken, he didn’t believe Ryan any more than she did.

Three hours later they wrapped the shoot. Ryan took off, leaving Kal and Jeff alone at base.

“Total bullshit?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yep.”

He helped her break down and pack the base equipment. “Why? What are they hiding from us?”

“I don’t know, but you can bet your bippy I plan on finding out.”

* * * *

Ryan made himself scarce during the rest of their trip. He stopped by a few times, usually to speak to Will or Aidan. He dodged her questions with the efficiency of an NHL goalie blocking shots.

About two weeks after their return from the trip, Kal had enough. She was alone at the office one evening. “Ryan,
vado tu appareo
.”

He immediately appeared. “What’s wrong?”

She pointed to Aidan’s unoccupied chair. “Sit. You and me are gonna have a little chat.”