Ghost Fire (The Ghost Files Book 3)

by Eve Paludan

  “Just one wound-up, wounded-soul guy manifesting as a poltergeist with a penchant for setting fires. We’ll need the assistance of a ghost who can talk to the him and it has to be someone he will trust and who is not connected to this building, per se.”

  “Where do we seek a ghost who can talk to him?” Sandy said.

  “At Victoria’s Secret at the Promenade in Santa Monica. The ghost I met yesterday. The flapper from the 1920s. Same era. She might even know him or know of him. Since I can’t get ‘Troy’ to speak to me, I want Monty to use his equipment to find the flapper girl and then I want you to get her in your cab and bring her here.”

  “Get her in my cab? You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  A chill ran down my spine. “What’s the girl’s name?” I asked.

  “It’s Angelina.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Sandy said. “I don’t have a ton of benevolent spirits attached to me, like you do. Helping you.”

  “The very fact that you know that makes you the perfect person to go round up Angelina.” Ellen looked at me. “You don’t seem surprised by what Sandy said about me.”

  “Everywhere you go, you trail ghosts and spirits,” I said. “I have it on electronic record that you are such a spirit magnet that you leaves a wake of kinetic energy fanning out behind you like a bridal train, everywhere you go. You’re trailing hundreds of them. It’s why you get tired so easily.”

  “You knew? You can see them?” Ellen asked, surprised.

  “My equipment can,” I said. “And may I say, it’s been hell to get next to you ever since our first case. They are always there, watching.”

  “Even when we’re…” her voice trailed off.

  “It’s okay, Ellen. I figured out that they don’t like the hertz frequency of a certain famous soprano’s voice. They move away when they hear her.”

  She nodded her head slowly. “This explains your recent interest in playing Enya CDs very loud while we…”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I don’t really want to leave you here with Diego,” I said to Ellen.

  “You have to,” she insisted. “Sandy can’t find the ghost girl all on her own. She needs you with your paranormal investigations equipment.”

  “You should come with us,” I said. “We can find the ghost girl faster.”

  “I can’t leave right now. I have to have Diego show me what room is above this ceiling where Troy wrote his name. And Diego has to carry the fire extinguisher,” she added firmly. “Troy is a very active poltergeist and he may get upset when we go upstairs. But I want to try and talk to him again while we wait for you to come back with the ghost girl who I think is his sister.”

  “I don’t like this, Ellen,” I said. “It’s unwise to split up during a paranormal investigation.”

  She folded her arms. “If I leave right now and Diego leaves, too, the whole place could get burned down. Time is of the essence. And I feel like the clock is ticking.”

  “Me, too, but I have a definite intuition that both of our lives are in danger. Just answer me this. Do you believe in heaven or hell?” I asked Ellen.

  “I don’t want to discuss that right now, what I believe. It’s complicated.”

  “Fair enough. But before this week, I didn’t believe in the chupacabra either.”

  “Oh, that thing is real.” She folded her hands. “There are places and things that we do not understand, Monty. As for the chupacabra, we are the exterminators. That thing cannot exist in this universe. It will keep enslaving victims. We have to destroy it.”

  I nodded, finally understanding her point of view.

  She shook her head. “Come over here so I can say goodbye.”

  “Are you afraid?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I think he wants me to be afraid and back off of this investigation so he can hold the power over the poor ghosts in this building. I’m not going to back off,” she said firmly.

  “This is very dangerous,” I said.

  She nodded, her blue eyes misting. “I know, but I have the chalcedony pendant.”

  “So, the chalcedony is protecting you?”

  “Yes, and I am sure he is angry about it and is going to use his evil minions to throw everything he can at me.”

  “Oh no! I don’t want to leave you for a second.”

  “You have to. I need you and Sandy to go get Angelina, the ghost girl.” She paused. “Please, just go.”

  “Maybe he isn’t even a chupacabra spirit. Maybe he’s really a dem—”

  “Don’t say it,” she interrupted, placing her hand at her throat. “Don’t even think the word. Remember, movie and book, The Secret? Your thoughts have electrical energy and you can manifest what you fear, as much as you can manifest what you love.”

  I swallowed the word. “Will you be safe while I’m gone?”

  She fingered the chalcedony pendant. “Good is always stronger than evil. Always. Never forget that. Hurry and find Angelina and bring her here.”

  “All right,” I said. I don’t want to, but I will.

  I kissed my wife goodbye and was surprised to see Sandy hug Diego.

  “Be safe,” she said to Diego.

  “I will, Sandy,” he replied and they briefly kissed like they had known each other for years, instead of less than 24 hours.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Trying not to think about the possible worst-case scenarios, I loaded the investigations equipment in the green and white cab-van and Sandy motioned for me to sit in front with her. I did. We belted ourselves in and as the vehicle slid away from the co-op gallery on Pacific in Venice and made its way toward the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, I turned to Sandy and said, “So. You and Diego?”

  She chuckled and kept her eyes on the road. Slowly, a smile teased its way to the corners of her lips and stayed there. “Last night, after I dropped off you and Ellen at the Viceroy, my cell phone rang and Diego invited me back for a night cap, but not to the gallery, to his apartment. We talked and talked. And then pretty soon, it was just so late that he just asked me if I wanted to stay, which I did.”

  “No kidding,” I said, digesting these nuggets. I suddenly stiffened, realizing that I had left Ellen alone with the guy who’d had a thing for her for years. An old guy who could still unfurl his sails for a woman.

  “I saw that, Monty. I am not a great sensitive, but a good one. You don’t have to worry about Diego being alone with your wife. He’s very nice and very moral. We like each other a lot, as if we had known each other in another life or something. Perhaps there are remnants of love that stayed behind when Rosa occupied my body last night and used it to kiss the heck out Diego. And he thinks the world of Ellen, like a beloved daughter, not a lover.”

  “Wow, you are perceptive,” I said. “So, do you think it was meant to be that you are our cab driver for the week and that meeting Diego was your destiny?”

  “The thought did cross my mind,” she said. “When one is a medium, sometimes it is difficult to discern what is destiny and what is desire. Sometimes it takes a lot of self-analysis to see the big picture. Ultimately, I believe that there is a reason that Diego and I connected through Rosa’s spirit. Now she is gone, and I have these unexpected feelings for Diego. It’s not really uncanny, just that…I’m kind of up there in years and I didn’t expect to feel this zeal for a man again in my life.”

  “I hope it works out for you, if you want it to,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Sandy said. “By the way, I did a one-card reading for you last night.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Another of my unorthodox reading techniques where I pull one card that will tell me so much about a person.”

  “What card did you pull?” I asked.

  “The Magician.”

  “What does the card mean, about me?” I asked, inherently curious.

  She smiled. “I knew you would want to know. It means, for you, power, res
ourcefulness, and protection of those you hold dear, in this case, Ellen.”

  I heard a beep that I had a text message. Ellen had sent me a text. I held up my phone. “Speaking of Ellen, she says everything is fine at the gallery and not to worry. Just to bring back Angelina so she can talk to Troy. Or at least shed light on the street, Trolleyway, where she got killed, and the same street that we call Pacific Avenue.”

  “I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” Sandy said. “Every day is a first with you two.”

  “Sometimes, it is for me, too. I’m usually the skeptic,” I said. “But if Ellen says it can be done, it can.”

  I added, “I’ve never worked with another psychic except for my wife, so I apologize if this seems awkward to go retrieve a ghost with me, the equipment man.”

  “I’m winging it, too,” Sandy admitted and then laughed at her own pun.

  We were coming up on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Sandy found a metered spot on a nearby street and slid the vehicle into it neatly, then fished a change purse out of her handbag. “I’ll put the money in the meter and you grab the ghost-hunting instruments so we can find ghost girl.”

  “Paranormal investigations instruments,” I corrected her.

  She smiled. “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.”

  In a few minutes, we were walking in front of Victoria’s Secret. I set up some equipment and a cop came over. “Do you have a permit for filming, sir?”

  “I’m not filming. I’m just doing an informal temperature and humidity study. It’s seventy-six degrees and sixty percent humidity,” I said. He looked at my Sony two-gig recorder, EMF, spot thermometer, and FLIR thermal imager, as if they were fascinating to him.

  “Is this about global warming?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “But good thinking. I really am just taking the environment readings. I don’t need a permit for that.”

  I let him have a look at my equipment, except for the camera, which I did not take out of the bag. He said okay, shrugged and walked away. Sandy and I breathed easier. “We can’t get away with the paparazzi-looking camera on the Promenade, so this will have to do,” I said, looking at the readouts on my instruments. “Feel anything yet?”

  “All around me,” Sandy said. “Many, many ghosts and spirits. It’s a ghostapalooza.”

  “Same here and I am not even a medium. This place has a fierce energy. The instruments are going crazy, especially the Trifield meter needle. What are they all doing here?”

  “Some may have died here, but others may just gravitate toward the crowds, looking for someone or something that will give them peace,” Sandy said.

  “How are we going to weed through all of them to find Angelina?” I asked.

  “The old-fashioned way.” Sandy took a deep breath and called out, “Angelina! Angelina!” And she waved her arms like she saw someone she knew. She kept doing it. No one stared or paid attention. There was serious shopping going on at the Promenade.

  A young man came over and asked, “Are you looking for Angelina Jolie? I think she’s in Sephora right now.”

  Sandy laughed. “No, another Angelina.”

  “Fine, sorry to bother you.” The young man disappeared into the crowd.

  “I sort of want to meet Angelina Jolie. Just for a lark.”

  “That’s not what we’re here for,” Sandy said.

  I saw a figure come closer on the infrared imager. It looked like a slender girl’s shape. I was shocked and speechless. A ghost was basically answering a yoohoo!

  “Hi, Angelina!” Sandy said, before I could tell her that the girl stood next to her. “Ellen is desperate to talk to you, the medium you met yesterday. Remember her?” And then Sandy paused for a moment and said, “Yes, you can ride in a car with us. We really need your help.”

  Sandy closed her eyes and appeared to hug someone. She smiled and opened her eyes. She looked at me. “It’s her. We found Angelina!”

  I gulped. “Will she come with us?”

  “She can hear you. She wants to know where we are going, exactly.”

  I rattled off the exact address on Pacific Avenue. And then I said, “It used to be Trolleyway.” I paused. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but there’s this guy who we think used to ride a horse off the pier. I’ve seen a painting of him and he’s kind of small and his legs are short. Do you know who he is?”

  Sandy looked surprised. “She says that she and Troy used hang out on the pier, but that he was very smart, but mute. Some other guys bullied him and he was kind of an outcast. He wrote a lot of poetry and odes to the horse.”

  “She coming with us?”

  “She’s scared to go there because Troy disappeared after Nightfire died in a dive off the pier. She thought the bullies hurt him or maybe that he threw himself off the pier and drowned. She says he couldn’t swim, that his legs were too tiny for his body.”

  “Oh my, please, please come Angelina. We are trying to find Troy’s body and if it isn’t in the warehouse, we don’t know what to do because we want Troy to go home.”

  Sandy nodded. “Yes, to the light.” Sandy looked at me. “She’ll do it.”

  I texted Ellen to let her know that we were bringing Angelina. She texted back that she and Diego were thrilled. And she said she had something to show me when we got back.

  All the way back to the co-op gallery on Pacific Avenue in Venice, I sat next to a ghost girl in the cab-van. I couldn’t see her, but I felt the back of my neck prickle and I also felt a cool draft coming off her. Certainly my gadgets could sense her.

  “This has to be your weirdest fare ever,” I said to Sandy, who drove even more erratically than usual. She was a good driver, but her driving scared me more and more.

  “She can hear you, so talk to her, not about her,” Sandy said in a low voice. Someone honked at her cab as she drifted into their lane. She tore her eyes away from the back seat and looked at the road, instead of in the back seat.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But it is unusual.”

  “I’ll give you that,” she said. “We’ll be there soon if there’s a break in the traffic. Right now, it’s stop and go as far as the eye can see and I can’t get to my usual detour street through this mob scene.”

  “Angelina,” I said to the cool draft sitting next to me. “My wife is very precious to me, so please, please make sure that nothing happens to her when you see Troy, okay?”

  I heard the tiniest wisp of a voice in the back seat. The tiny voice, so faint that it sounded like a high-pitched guitar string, said, “Ellen?”

  “Yes! Ellen is my wife! You met her yesterday.” My instruments were going crazy in my lap, especially the voice recorder.

  “I don’t know what a yesterday is anymore.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that what is it like to be a ghost? To lose track of time?” I asked and held out the mike.

  In an even tinier voice, I thought I heard her say the word, “lonely.” And then she was quiet.

  “Oh, freaking great, Monty. You made her cry!” Sandy said.

  “I’m sorry, Angelina,” I said.

  “Don’t ask her stuff like that. Sheesh!” To the left of me, I felt the breeze get colder and the temperature registered about 60 degrees on my equipment. I shivered.

  “Are we there yet?” I asked Sandy. “I am worried about Ellen.”

  “Hey, I’m getting a text from Diego. Hold your horses,” Sandy said. “Oh no!” she cried.

  Suddenly, she passed in the left-turn lane and went all crazy getting to Pacific Avenue, screeching to a stop in front of the co-op gallery.

  “What’s going on?” I asked hanging on for dear life and so scared that I needed to badly relieve myself.

  “Monty, Diego just texted me that Ellen is missing.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Before the vehicle was even thrown into park, I jumped out of the cab-van and left the sliding door standing open so that Angelina, the ghost girl, could get out and find Troy, that polterg
eist tool. Not that she wasn’t capable of getting out of a sealed car, but what did I know? At the moment, I was less interested in their platonic friend reunion than in finding my wife alive and well.

  “Oh, this is horrible. Where could she be?” Diego asked, wringing his hands in the parking lot. “I can’t imagine that she left the building.”

  “She wouldn’t,” I said gruffly. “When was she out of your sight?”

  “She had to use the bathroom, Monty! I wasn’t going to go in there with her!” Diego protested.

  “Okay, okay.” I tried to cool off so I wouldn’t kill the guy for losing my wife in his creepy, haunted building. I got out my Android phone. “I put an app for finding your kid on her Android phone for locating her in case we ever get separated when we are shopping or whatever.”

  “Well, now is the ‘or whatever,’” Diego replied.

  “Boy is it!”

  Both Sandy and Diego peered over my shoulder as I used the app to try to locate Ellen. “She’s here in the building, or at least, her phone is here,” I affirmed. “Same longitude, latitude and street address. She is literally feet from where we stand. Or it could just be her phone.”

  I dialed her number from my contacts list and put the phone up to my ear. “Anyone hear her phone ringing?”

  Sandy and Diego shook their heads. When it went to voicemail, I said, “Me neither.” I ended the call and put my phone back in my pocket.

  “What do we do?” asked Sandy. “Search the building from top to bottom?”

  I shook my head. “We go back to the place where she was last seen, and we start there. The longer we delay, the more danger she is in.”

  “I already looked there,” Diego said. “It’s not that big of a bathroom. It’s more like a decrepit janitor’s closet with an old toilet and a groaty mop sink in it.”

  Sandy nodded. “I’ve seen it. It’s a gross bathroom.”

  “Is it haunted?” I asked.

  “The whole building is,” Sandy declared. “But that room is a particular horror.” She looked at Diego. “Sorry, but it is not fixed up for company. The ones for each gallery on each floor have been remodeled. This one is in disuse off the lobby.”