My voice was quavering with electric trembles. “But here’s the thing: he knows that if he tells the ghost hunters how I died, he makes me even more of a victim than I ever was. I become a new notch on his bedpost that the cops never gave him credit for.”
My words hung in the air, almost like they had the power to haunt, too. Boy, I was righteous. Maybe it was the paranoia mixed with the anger, which made me feel victimized all over again.
Scott spoke softly to Wendy. “Amanda Lee has been searching for this guy’s identity for a while. That’s why she hired a PI/ex-cop like Ruben. We don’t need no ghost hunters.”
Wendy was biting her lip, getting emotional. Was it because she thought I’d get caught by my killer and trapped? Nah. That couldn’t be it. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d hated me for the part I’d played in her family’s haunting. Or was she finally seeing me as someone who cared about her?
I reached out to touch her—a human habit of comfort that hadn’t left me yet—but I drew back when she shivered at my ultranearness.
I backed away, embarrassed, sad. And it wasn’t just because I couldn’t touch Wendy. It was like that with everyone, including her brother.
“Things’ll be cool,” I said, holding back my own roiling emotions. “Don’t you worry.”
“Yeah,” Scott said. “Jen’s got this made in the shade.”
He’d sure changed his tune, probably for Wendy’s sake. And when she spun away from us, shoving open the window a crack so I could leave, he didn’t glance at me while he spoke.
“Just don’t disappoint the girl, ’kay?”
That must’ve been his way of telling me to be careful.
I flew outside, where Louis was waiting for me by his travel tunnel. Since he hadn’t turned into my killer yet, it looked like my belief in him was paying off.
“Just so you know, Randy’s leaving you alone until this is over, just like I am, but he’s watching over your best friend, Suze, downtown. If you need me, I’ll be in that forest, Jensen.”
The urge to touch his shoulder, just to thank him, welled up in me, but I didn’t do it.
“Thanks, Louis.”
He merely nodded with that sad-eyed, stolen-essence gaze, then dove into his tunnel, disappearing with a slam of pink in a night that was only growing darker.
* * *
“Amanda Lee!” said Sierra Darque in a loud whisper when she saw us—or, rather, just Amanda Lee—approaching from where we’d parked down the deserted country road. The ghost hunter was sitting in the open sliding doorway of a black vintage van, her warmth drawing me. The moon made her skin and long, curly hair even darker, and it made her glasses shine.
J.J. and 10 were with her inside, surrounded by camera equipment and electrical devices that gave me a buzz, even from many feet away. The vehicle’s lights were off, like the team wanted to stay in the dark.
It was after one thirty a.m., and Amanda Lee had texted Sierra to tell her we were coming to them because of the new recording. When Sierra had texted back, asking how Amanda Lee had information about the new evidence of ghosts in the Elfin Forest area, Amanda Lee had pulled the psychic card.
As for Louis, he was off in some other part of the woods, knowing that Amanda Lee and the rest weren’t comfortable around him.
Twyla and Marg floated far behind me and Amanda Lee as she murmured a greeting to the ghost hunters and stood at the side of the van. I was hovering above her shoulder, half protector, half potential victim.
Phantom nerves ran through me. How much had the team found out from that EVP about me?
After taking a gander outside, around the curved road and the branch-shadowed woods, Sierra adjusted her trendy glasses. “Always on the lookout for the cops. We’ve heard that residents around here get touchy when it comes to people they think are trespassing and causing mischief.”
“Mischief.” J.J. took a seat at the front of the van, in back of the steering wheel, his blue eyes bright in the slant of moonlight that invaded the paneled interior. I guessed I could see why Wendy thought he was hot—he kind of looked like Simon Le Bon in the “Hungry Like the Wolf” video. Hot.
“I haven’t heard the word ‘mischief’ in ages,” he said, ‘but my grandma used to say I caused a lot of it when I was a kid.”
Toasting that with her water,10 tipped her head back to drink, her beaded braids shifting.
Sierra slid back over the carpet and to the far wall, making room for Amanda Lee. She grabbed a palm-sized recorder from 10, and the braided woman retreated past the stumps of equipment and to the rear of the van, then leaned against the door.
As I lingered outside, trying to stay unnoticeable, I whispered to Amanda Lee. “What’s on that recorder already?”
She slid me a glance. Patience, Jensen.
Yeah, that was a request that went along real well with Ghost ADD and the rotten mood I was in tonight.
Twyla meandered over with Marg. “Well?” she asked.
“Slowest ghost investigation ever.”
“Well, eat me raw. Fuck that shit.”
Me and Marg flinched. Twyla cussed every once in a while, but not like this.
She shook her head, like she was clearing herself out. “Gawd, it’s like I’m on the rag tonight. Don’t even mind me.”
I looked extra hard at her, but J.J. started talking.
“This just might be the Shining-est case we’ve ever encountered.”
From the corner, 10 agreed. “Boo-yah.”
Amanda Lee gestured to the recorder. “May I listen to the EVP?”
“Sure,” Sierra said. “I won’t tell you what we think this spirit is saying until we get your feedback. Just so you know, we’ll also be meeting up with an audio expert we work with to analyze the recording more, but even without analysis, I say we’ve hit the jackpot.” She adjusted her glasses again. “Ready?”
“Doy,” Twyla said.
Sierra turned on the recorder. Feedback fuzzed out of the speaker, and we ghosts backed off until it got better.
Of course, Sierra smacked the machine, blaming it instead of us. She glanced around, like maybe she knew we were here, then offered the device to Amanda Lee.
“I’ve fast-forwarded to the middle, where I was in the process of asking questions to the spirits, trying to get them to answer me. That’s how we get evidence—through gentle encouragement.”
Indeed, Sierra’s taped voice came on. “Is there anyone out here tonight? I really want to talk to you . . .”
There was a hiss, soft, like a snake that’d just been disturbed.
Shit. It was him. My murderer. The hiss almost sounded like the beginning of his laughter.
“What’s that?” Sierra’s voice asked on the recording.
In the van, she smiled at the whole group, like she was a preteen who’d just gone through a fake haunted house and she wanted everyone to have as much fun as she’d had.
Then the spirit voice materialized on the recording, scratchy, low, almost like it was embedded in the night air.
“Blooondddie . . .”
Sierra pointed at the recorder, nearly hopping up and down. Amanda Lee swallowed heavily. All I could do was restrain the electric shivers that’d started to push at me from the inside out.
Twyla was quaking, too, like she’d felt what was happening to me and her own form was echoing it. For some reason, Marg didn’t seem to be affected. She only stared at the scene in front of her.
The dark voice came again, this time in two jagged bursts. “Death spot—Near—”
This time it was like recorded-Sierra had heard him. “Hello? Is someone here?”
I should’ve known the next part was coming, especially when Sierra held her hand over her mouth in glee, and 10 and J.J. leaned forward.
A surge of static mixed with screams that were somehow mine
.
“Stop! Please! Why’re you doing th—?”
A shudder ripped through me at my raw, terrified voice, right there on the recorder. It’d been bad enough to experience that moment again and again in my head, but hearing it out loud . . .
I tried to back away from the van, but utter fear froze me from my ghost feet upward, inch by snapping inch. When I tried to move again, my entire form cracked, like I was made of energy-ridden ice.
With a violent shudder, I burst into tiny splinters. Pieces of me. Shards that sparked and trembled as I fell to the ground, lying there, unable to look at anything but the dark sky.
“Jen!”
Twyla’s voice. She was staring down at me, trying to find me in all those jittering splinters.
Her Lauper/Goth face was frozen in horror. “Get yourself together!” she said. “Jen!”
Marg was suddenly next to her, and her teacher voice was calm. “Shhh, Jensen. Come on. Just think of being in one piece.”
Easy for you to say.
What the hell was wrong with me? I was weak, almost like I’d been shocked back into near-imprint mode, numb and close to living my death moment over and over again. Was I about to fade into a time loop?
God, no . . .
“Come on, Jensen,” soothed Marg.
Twyla’s form was shaking again, her gaze filled with rage. “I’m gonna kill that motherfuckin’ noob hoser son of a bitch.”
“Shh.” This time, Marg said it to Twyla. “You need to calm down, too, honey. You’ve told me about how ghosts can return to their residual haunting phase if they’re drained of energy. If this is what’s happening, then . . .”
“It can’t be. Jensen!” Twyla still quaked above me, even as Amanda Lee appeared, too, her gaze wide.
I remembered the night she’d pulled me out of my imprint time loop. Hers was the first face I’d seen, just as a rush of electric comfort had consumed me at being back among the interactive world. It’d been a glorious and wonderful moment. But now, with her gray-streaked red hair falling into her face and her eyes fearful, I didn’t exactly feel reborn.
But I should’ve never underestimated Amanda Lee. She laid her cell phone and another electronic device—was it a handheld camera she’d taken from the van?—in the center of me.
They felt like tiny hearts, giving me slight pulses of energy. Pumping me and strengthening me, even a little.
Marg and Twyla looked like they wanted to high-five her.
“Sensing another spirit out there?” Sierra asked in that loud whisper. “I sure am.”
“I’m not certain,” Amanda Lee said.
J.J. spoke. “You know how to use that camera?”
“I can manage.”
Sierra laughed. “J.J., don’t forget she’s psychic. She can figure out anything.”
As they talked, I allowed the electricity to flow through me. I wanted to get just enough juice to go to the van’s battery, where I could really charge up.
Minutes passed as the hunters enthusiastically talked about which Elfin Forest spirit might be on that recording. When I finally drew enough energy, I dragged my nearly glued-together self under the van, toward the engine. I seeped up through the mazy parts, reaching, reaching for the battery. . . .
I made contact, and in a growling rush, came all the way back together—still weak, but better. So much better.
Twyla and Marg were under the van, staring up at me.
“You’re Jensen again,” Twyla said.
“Guhhh,” I answered.
My friends sighed, then pressed their lips together when they realized that their sounds had materialized into the air.
Sierra’s voice came from inside the van. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Amanda Lee said. It sounded like she’d sat back down. “Just the wind. Is this camera working properly?”
Was she asking about the device I’d probably just drained?
The sound of someone fooling with machinery. J.J.’s voice. “Battery’s dead. Huh. Maybe Amanda Lee did feel something outside and it sucked the life out of the camera.”
Sierra laughed. “Wow, Amanda Lee, you’re a lightning rod.”
“More than you realize.” Amanda Lee went back to business, just like I wasn’t out here having an intimate moment with a car battery and getting my shit back together from a hellacious scare.
“As far as I can tell on that recording,” she said, “a spirit is trying to get you to see its location of death. But that must have been obvious from the start.”
Amanda Lee was lying to them again, trying to protect me, and I wanted to give her a big old kiss for it.
Marg spoke up at me from the ground. The big X on her chest was so prominent that I had to drag my gaze away from that and her bathing suit cover-up and to her face.
“Would you say that your killer laid those subtle audio clues for a reason, Jensen? He never said your name.”
She was trying to get me to think again. To get out of the dark funk I was feeling right now, even while charging up. “You’re right. He didn’t identify me except as a blonde.”
“What about, like, that obscene imitation of your death cries? That pretty much identified you,” Twyla said.
“Not to anyone who doesn’t know the details of her death.” Marg furrowed her eyebrows. “He was only imitating you, right? I know we can use our energy to create other voices.”
I was so much stronger now, but I still pressed against the battery, the rest of my form snaking through the engine. “Right. Amanda Lee pulled me out of my time loop, so it couldn’t have been my voice on that recording. My imprint was erased, so it was him on that tape.”
That left an interesting question: was my killer threatening me with this recording, letting me know that he had the power to demean me even more by exposing my most harrowing, private moment to the world?
While I’d been talking with my friends, I could hear Amanda Lee analyzing every moment of the recording for the team. But now I caught Sierra offering her own take, and it brought my own conversation to a standstill.
“Jensen Murphy was a blonde . . .” she said.
“Jensen didn’t die here.” Amanda Lee was full of steel. Bitchin’.
Even though I felt ripped apart and put together again, I squiggled out of the engine and back outside, where Twyla and Marg were already floating.
“Like, thank God,” Twyla said. “You’re almost in good enough shape to gut that dark spirit. And I’m not just saying that because he had a hand in Marg’s death.”
Marg’s mouth hardened. My killer had influenced her own killer, driven him toward murdering her. She had a stake in seeing my tormentor put away, too.
J.J.’s voice came from the van, continuing with their business. “Let’s show Amanda Lee the grace note on all this. Proof for our audience that there really was a spirit out there while Sierra was making that recording and we’re not doctoring the audio.”
I strayed toward the van to see him holding a small camera, and Marg and Twyla followed. We stayed back enough so that we wouldn’t interfere with the electronics.
Amanda Lee’s back was to us as J.J. gave her the device, turning it on. She watched its grayish screen while Sierra offered commentary.
“We were filming in night vision, so things look glowy, especially our eyes. Oh, here we go. Did you just see that tiny circle of light flying through the air and disappearing?”
“I believe so,” Amanda Lee said.
“Those aren’t bugs or dust. I’ll show you examples of what both look like in night vision in a minute, but we’ve seen these orbs of light before. They can indicate the presence of a spirit.”
Sierra reached over to rewind the images, and I watched the screen as a little speck of light darted past her.
Was that my killer? A speck of g
lowing snot?
Snot or not, I was more aware than ever that he still had major power over me.
“He’s planned this all out, hasn’t he?” I said to my friends. “He’s going to give the hunters hint after hint about how he murdered me, and they’re going to broadcast it, feeding his ego. It’s going to feel like I was slaughtered all over again. ”
Marg glanced over, and it was almost like she was fully checking me out. “Then don’t let it matter, Jensen. Don’t give him your fear or anxiety. Don’t give him anything.”
She was right.
I stared at the hunters, one by one, wondering whose side they would be on in the end. I’d empathized with Sierra and J.J., and I wanted to believe they were in this for good reasons. But what about 10?
It was like Marg read me. “Do you have enough energy to go into the braided girl?”
“I sure do.”
Amanda Lee had heard Marg, even while Sierra was still talking about the orbs. Giving a slight nod, our psychic helped us out, putting 10’s mind where we needed it to be for some empathizing.
“I’m curious . . . How did you all begin ghost hunting?” she asked.
I wasted no time as Sierra answered first, describing the story I’d seen in her thoughts when I’d empathized with her earlier. I crept into the van, knowing I’d bring cold air with me, so I stayed toward the roof for as long as I could.
Sitting below me, 10 fiddled with her now-empty water bottle, hopefully thinking about what had brought her to ghost hunting. But then she cocked her head, sensing something.
Sensing me?
Before she could react, I touched her cheek, going into her thoughts. . . .
Bam!
As soon as I was in, I got slammed out, tumbling through the air until I used what energy I had to stop my momentum and paste myself against the roof. My form rang with the aftermath, making me feel like I’d opened a wound that’d just healed.
Every Breath You Take Page 11
