Given Enough Rope (Haunted Series Book 20)

by Alexie Aaron

  “Yes. I don’t want to leave here, Susan.”

  “You’ll be back. The Martins are going to take care of you until you’re old enough, and you can come back to the farm. You heard Mr. Jefferies, the Martins gave you and Brian the house and the aerie. Tom and I will find a good caretaker for the place. Maybe Lazar will stay on,” she said.

  “Murphy used to take care of this place,” Dieter said.

  “Yes he did. Is there any sign of him?” Susan asked.

  “No. Sariel looked and could not find a soul. It’s like they simply don’t exist anymore. I called for Roumain, and he hasn’t seen Mia or Mike.”

  “Who is this Roumain again?”

  “He’s the king of purgatory.”

  “So Mia and Mr. Dupree were expected there?”

  “Evidently.”

  Mia’s face went from horrified to being chagrined that she wasn’t the only one who had a sentence ahead of her. “How did this happen?”

  “We have to get back,” Ed said. “For the child.”

  Mia walked out of the portal and into the trailer. She expected Ed to follow her.

  He shook his head. “I have to end this time portal on the island. Don’t worry, I am coming to help you,” he promised.

  Mia turned around and looked at Sabine. She opened her eyes. “I’ve told Komal.”

  “Thank you,” Mia said.

  “What’s wrong? You have tears running down your face.”

  “Ed’s been here and gone, and I got a look forward. Oh, Sabine, it isn’t good. I want you to leave this place and don’t come back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It was all gone. It will be all gone. I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but it and we are gone. There is nothing left. Whatever is going to happen here was so horrendous that our souls didn’t survive. The dead don’t survive,” Mia said, putting her hand on her stomach.

  “Shouldn’t we all leave?” Sabine asked.

  “It hasn’t happened yet. We still can stop this,” Mia said. “I don’t have all the pieces yet, but damn, I’m close.”

  “Why do you want me to leave the investigation?”

  “I can’t bear thinking of a world without you in it. Brian and your girls are going to need your counsel.”

  “I would say the same of you,” Sabine said. “Let me help. Two sensitives are better than one. Point me in a direction, Mia. I promise not to fail you. I am not just Bev’s child. I am the child of my father too. I can do things, special things, dark things if I have to. Don’t discount me, Mia.”

  Mia closed her eyes and sent the images of what will happen to Sabine.

  “How horrible. It looks like an explosion…”

  “You’re right. A bomb perhaps?” Mia asked.

  “We need to share this with someone who knows bombs.”

  “There is a man who is watching Dieter and the farm for us. His name is Lazar. He was injured in Afghanistan. OOB to the farm. I’ll get Murphy to go with you. Share this image with him.”

  “Yes, Mia,” Sabine said.

  Mia walked outside of the trail ignoring the questioning looks that Patrick and Mike gave her. She stood at the edge of the excavation and yelled, “Murphy!”

  In a blink of an eye, Murphy and Kevin stood in front of her.

  “Oh my, I forgot there were two of you,” she apologized. “Murph, I need you to go with Sabine, she is going to OOB to the farm. I need you to go with her and interpret for her with Lazar. Sabine will explain on the way. This is very important. I’m counting on you.”

  “But who will protect you here?”

  Mia looked over at Kevin.

  “No, he’s…”

  “He’s what?” Kevin asked his son. “A drunk? I dug a canal, drunk, I can watch over your woman drunk.”

  Fergus caught up with them. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Patrick, who could smell an O’Connor at fifty feet, walked over. “Hello, ghosty, I’m Patrick Callen. Can I have a word with you?”

  Curious, Fergus followed the man away from the others. Mike tossed Patrick a box of salt, and in seconds Patrick Callen had trapped his first ghost.

  “I can do this, son,” Kevin said. “I’m sly, and I’m fast. I’ll not let anything happen to Mia or her folk.”

  “Grady is helping me by watching for emerging ghosts,” Mia said.

  “How?” the Murphys chorused.

  “I bought his I.O.U. from Roy, and he owes me now,” Mia said. “I took care of yours too, Kevin.”

  “Well I’ll be,” Kevin said. He pulled out his flask, thought about it, and put it back in his pocket.

  Sabine walked over to the command center and stopped on her way to speak to Patrick. “I’ll be gone for a while. Can we have that dinner perhaps tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I’ll wait until I’m an old man for you, fair Sabine,” Patrick said and watched her walk away before turning his attention back to Fergus. “What’s this malarkey you’re pedaling about Callens and O’Connors being friends?” he asked.

  Mia took hold of Murphy’s hand and put it on her forehead. She let him read her mind. She left no doors barred to her friend. She withheld no emotion.

  Kevin watched the strange connection and what it was doing to his son. He saw Stephen reach a hand up and touch Mia’s arm, ready to pull her hand away. He saw the death pall change where his fingers touched the woman. Kevin could see that his son’s fingers pushed down on the skin as if they were attached to a man still alive.

  Ted walked up, and Mike stopped him from speaking. “Whatever it is, it can wait,” Mike hissed.

  Ted looked from the trapped ghost to Mia and the two Murphys. Mia broke the connection and looked beside her. “Hurry,” she said, and Ted saw Stephen Murphy disappear. Kevin followed Mia as she walked over to her husband.

  “I’ve sent Sabine and Murphy to the farm to talk to Lazar. I’ve always felt there is something not right here. I asked Ed to look forward, and he took me with him. It’s bad. I don’t know when or why, but all of this, and us, is gone.”

  “How?” Mike asked.

  “A blast of some kind. I’ve sent the images with Sabine. Hopefully, Lazar will be able to help us with his experience. I think it’s an energy blast, but I don’t know where it originates from. I have a suspicion, but not enough facts to act.”

  “We have to get everyone away from here,” Ted said.

  “How? I have no proof. I’m not just talking this lot. I’m saying the whole block is gone,” Mia said.

  “Is it something Barb’s team causes?” Mike asked.

  “I don’t know. There is a lot of energy here,” Mia said. “We need to assemble information so we we’re not taken as whack jobs when we call in the authorities.”

  “I agree,” Mike said. “We need to have an emergency meeting. Mia, can you vet your new bodyguard.”

  “With pleasure,” she said. “Come on, Kevin, I have a few questions to ask you.”

  Once everyone with the exception of Sabine was in the trailer, Burt said, “I’d like to give the floor to Mia.”

  “Thank you everyone for coming so quickly,” she said. “I won’t keep you long. I need for us to concentrate on two things: whether or not there is enough energy in that lot to blow up a city block and whether the threats against Dash could be more than just gay bashing. The reasons I’m concerned are these: there is energy seeping from the middle of the bar in The Eighty-eight. There is an entity that is composed of some kind of dark energy. I’m 99% positive that it comes from the future. I have had a glimpse of the near future, and there is nothing here anymore. I think this Dark Watcher is trying to warn us, but it doesn’t have enough form to communicate fully with us. I need you to take all the anomalies we have found and start to put together scenarios that may cause an extreme energy blast. One strong enough to destroy a city block, leaving nothing, not even the soul of a ghost behind.”

  “Until further notice, I’m going to suspend the dig
ging on the site,” Burt said. “Mia, I hate to do this, but you have to continue to watch the bar. Maybe something there, a broken gas line, a dimensional crack, something only you can see will present itself. I understand that you sent Sabine to gather information.”

  “Yes, she should be arriving at the farm soon. And I have asked Ed to help us. I’m not sure how he’ll be getting here, but he is coming.”

  “What about the ghosties?” Mason asked.

  “Oh sorry. I’ve enlisted the help of Grady. He’s been instructed to point any new arrivals to the salt lamp area of the excavation pit, which seems to be working. According to Kevin, there has never been a more relaxed and complacent Roy. Patrick seems to have Fergus under control for now, and Kevin here, will be watching our backs. My heart says that we should all leave now, but my gut says that we can stop whatever is coming. We have the talent. We can do this. I do understand if anyone wants to leave.”

  She looked at the PEEPs and saw determination on their faces instead of fear.

  “How much time do we have?” Ira asked.

  “I wish I could answer that,” Mia said. “I was taken a week forward in time. But I’m not knowledgeable enough to know how long it had been since the destruction.”

  “So you think Lazar is?” Ted asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Mia said.

  Ed tossed the remainder of his equipment in the canoe. Komal hovered over him. “Are you sure you want to undertake this journey?”

  “I promised Mia I would come. Judy is not here, and I can’t wait for others to come and fetch me. I’m not unfamiliar with a paddle,” he assured the spirit. “You will contact Roumain?”

  “I will, but he can do nothing to interfere with fate,” Komal reminded him.

  “I just want him to know that if he’s expecting Mia, he’s going to be disappointed.”

  Komal smiled and chuckled. The sound of his laugh bounced over the waves. “If I ever doubted what a devious being you were, I will no longer do so. You hold out a carrot to one of the most powerful beings in this world.”

  “The question is, will he bite?”

  Ed pushed the canoe off the sand and climbed in and began to paddle. He would move the boat into the shipping lane and hope to tag a ride on an iron ore freighter headed for Chicago.

  Murphy and Sabine moved into the house and found Lazar and Dieter in the living room playing a video game. Dieter stopped and turned around. “I sense two souls. Both are in the dimension of the ghosts.”

  Murphy manifested. “I’m here with Sabine, Mia’s cousin. We’ve come for Lazar’s help. Dieter, she is in her bilocated form and can’t transform so Lazar can see her.”

  Lazar put his controller down and got to his feet. “How can I help you?”

  Sabine looked down at the strange metal leg the man stood on. It wasn’t shaped like she assumed an artificial limb would be. The designer didn’t care about making the limb resemble a leg. It was built for stability and function.

  “Tell him I’d like to put an image in his head and have him tell me all he sees, and knows about, what he’s about to see. Warn him, it may trigger a bad memory,” she said.

  Murphy repeated her words to Lazar.

  He thought a moment and nodded.

  Dieter watched as the wispy soul approached Lazar and entered his head. Lazar reeled back but was steadied by Murphy’s hand. When Sabine left Lazar, he opened his eyes.

  “Whew. That was some kind of bad trip. Do you want me to tell you and you relay the information, or I could just call…”

  Dieter handed him his phone.

  “Ted here.”

  “This is Lazar. Murphy and, I believe, Sabine are with me. They asked for me to examine the image they sent. I can’t tell you exactly, because I’m seeing this second hand, but it’s a bomb crater of some kind. I was going to say missile, but the area of destruction radiates out as if there is a directional charge. What’s standing in this spot now?”

  “A long narrow building. The restaurant bar area takes up two thirds of the length of the lot with the kitchen using up the last third. Behind is a residential neighborhood. Multifamily houses, tapering to single family. To the east of the building is a lot with what appears to be a pre Chicago fire building that had disappeared in a sinkhole. The construction company has dug down twelve feet and the archeologist another ten. They have not reached what they think is a limestone cave yet,” Ted told him.

  “In the image, I don’t see any buildings. I suspect the blast was so strong it destroyed everything in its path.”

  “Presently, there seems to be energy centered in the middle of the bar. We picked it up with our EM devices,” Ted told him.

  “This certainly could fuel an explosion, but not be the cause of it. The blast point is the bar.”

  “Are we talking vest bomb?” Ted asked.

  “No, not strong enough. There has to be a lot of C4 involved, too much to carry without being noticed.”

  “Thank you. If you want, I understand Sabine can remove the images from your mind,” Ted said.

  “No, not yet. I may still be able to help,” Lazar said.

  “Lazar, if something happens to us…”

  “Dieter and Brian are my first priority.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ted typed furiously and texted as much as he could to Mia, breaking it up into digestible amounts.

  Mia looked at her phone and read the information over and over again. Ralph had snagged them a table close to the piano. Mia excused herself and walked to the front of the restaurant and turned around and thought. Dash had said the heavy stools all gathered in one place. She walked to the area and dropped a coin and pretended to search for it while she examined the grout in the tile floor. Someone stood on her hand. She pushed at the leg and stood up.

  “Do you mind? There’s a lady down here,” Mia said, examining her fingers. She looked at the offender and stared into the cold dead eyes of the hate-filled man she had encountered yesterday. “Hello, we meet again.”

  “What are you doing down there?” he asked.

  “I dropped a quarter. I didn’t want a stiletto-heeled person to slide on it. Why are you asking?”

  “My girlfriend thought you were looking up her dress,” he lied.

  “Sorry, but I don’t swing that way,” Mia played along. “If you’re looking for a threesome I suggest…”

  The man had already walked away. Mia followed him in the crowd. He walked quickly towards the door. Mia got waylaid by the lone wolf club meeting at the end of the bar.

  “Pardon me, prego coming through,” she said. By the time she got outside, the man was gone.

  “Tony, did you see a man wearing black dress pants, a white, rolled-sleeve shirt, open at the neck, dark hair and black eyes?” she said quickly.

  “Quite a few tonight. It’s Gershwin night. They’re dressed like Gene Kelly.”

  “Okay, thank you,” she said absently. She looked down the street and passed the long velvet rope line and Tony on her way in. He was arguing with a couple who were trying to get in because they were important.

  “Who are you anyway?” the male drawled.

  “I am all, and I am none,” Tony said.

  Mia stopped in her tracks. The door closed behind her. She was so still that Tauni, who was sitting with Ralph and Bernard, ran over to her. “Mia, Mia, what’s wrong?”

  “I know who the Dark Watcher is, but how?” Mia said, turning and looking at Tony.

  “You look like you’ve had a fright. Come and sit down,” Tauni insisted.

  Mia was so caught up in her thoughts that she allowed herself to be pulled along.

  “I know why,” she mumbled as she thought of Tony’s commitment to the LGBT community. Had he seen it happen? Was it his grief that was pulled back through time to stop what was happening?

  Bernard pulled out a chair, and Mia sat down, still in her own head.

  “What happened?” he asked, concerned.

  “I don
’t know,” Tauni admitted. “I think she’s stuck…”

  Ralph clapped his hands together in front of Mia’s face. The sound jarred Mia out of her thoughts.

  She looked at the concerned faces around her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here. I have a puzzle to work out.”

  “Let us help,” Bernard said. “Tell us what you can.”

  “Hypothetically, there is a man who is so committed to keeping a community safe, that he has given up having a normal life. He witnesses an explosion and is a victim of it. Somehow he is pulled back through time to stop it from happening. To warn us or stop it himself.”

  “It sounds like, in the milliseconds of his death, he must have made a deal with fate,” Bernard said.

  “Or the devil,” Tauni pointed out.

  “He’s here,” Mia said.

  “Who is he? Who is this Dark Watcher?”

  Mia tapped her earcom and said, “The Dark Watcher is Tony the bouncer.”

  Ted heard Sabine moving around. Mason was massaging her feet. He motioned that he was going back to help to Cid who had slid into his place at the console.

  “Sabine, we need you to talk to the Dark Watcher. I’ll go with you,” Ted said.

  “Yes, I’d be happy to.”

  “Mia has figured out who he is.”

  “So it is a he. Mia is so attuned. Who is it?”

  “Tony the bouncer.”

  “Holy Mother, how can this be?” Mason asked. “How can they both exist at the same time. Does Ira know?”

  “Not yet. He, Mike, and Burt are working in the trailer.”

  “Ted!” Cid called.

  “Yes?”

  “Mia wants to talk to it. She’ll meet you at the ramp.”

  Ted groaned. “When will she learn that she doesn’t have to do everything,” he said, sliding behind the files and picking out some equipment.

  “She probably doesn’t know I’m back,” Sabine offered kindly.

  “Nice try,” Ted said. “Come on. I have a feeling we are going to need both sensitives.”