“Do it somewhere else. You don’t do it here.”
“Why?” Jenna was staring at him intently, and past him, at the empty lot. She held out her meter gadget, and Claire could hear the tones it gave off. She didn’t need to be an expert in ghostology to know it was pinging like mad. “Something you don’t want us to see, perhaps?”
“Just back the hell off, lady. I mean it—”
“We’ll see about this,” Angel said, and pulled out a cell phone. Theatrically, of course. “We do have a permit to film direct from the mayor’s office!”
“Let’s see it,” Shane said. “Go ahead; call somebody. I’ll wait.” He stared Angel down until the other man put the phone away. “Yeah. Thought so. Look, just do us all a favor, okay? Call it a day, get in your van, and head to some other town where they don’t mind your making fun of dead people, all right?”
“That’s not what we’re doing!” Jenna said sharply. “I’m very committed to trying to locate those who are lost and stuck, and finding a way to bring them some peace. How dare you say—”
“I don’t know—because you arrange all this crap for ratings, advertisers, and money? Maybe that?” Shane stepped forward, and he was using all his size and attitude this time. “Just go. Get off this street.”
The device that Jenna was holding gave a sudden shrill alarm; she jerked in surprise and stared at it, then turned it to Angel. Tyler angled in to get a close-up of the meter.
“What?” Shane snapped.
“We got a huge electromagnetic spike,” Jenna said. “It’s coming from that vacant lot behind you. I’ve never seen anything like it—”
Shane. It was a very clear, cold, longing whisper, and it came from right behind them. And it just froze everyone right in place. Claire had a vivid, clear snapshot of them: Tyler, mouth open behind his camera; Angel, stunned silent; Jenna, eyes wide.
And Shane.
Shane’s lips parted, but he didn’t speak. His face had gone blank and pale, and he actually took a long step backward, pulling Claire with him. She didn’t mind. That voice had a scary, otherworldly quality that didn’t sound human.
Angel almost dropped his recorder, but he gained his composure and moved in to the camera to get a close-up. “Did you hear that?” he asked Tyler, then turned to Jenna. “That was no EVP. That was a voice.”
“Someone’s messing with us,” Jenna said in annoyance. “Cut, Tyler.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Rolling. Keep going.”
“Tyler!”
“Rolling, Jenna, keep rolling!”
“I’m telling you, the locals are having us on. We’ll probably find some kind of EM transmitter out here, and some giggling high schooler with a megaphone….”
“Rolling!”
“Okay, okay, it’s digital. At least you’re not wasting film….” She took in a deep breath and said, in her tense ghost-hunting voice, “We may have gotten an actual spirit contact! I can’t even begin to describe how incredibly rare this is!”
“Can you speak to us again?” Angel said, and if possible, he got even more pompous. “You said a name. Can you say it again?”
Nothing.
“I think it said shame,” Jenna said. “Is it a shame you’re gone? Are you ashamed of something?”
“Oh, for the love of—” Claire couldn’t bite back her exasperation. “Come on. We have to go, now.” She very deliberately didn’t use his name. They didn’t seem bright enough to make the connection, but even so…
“That’s Alyssa,” Shane said. “I’m telling you, it’s her. My sister is right there.”
Dammit. Well, there went her entire nothing to see here, move along plan.
“No such thing as ghosts,” she said, and pointedly looked at the camera. Shane, recovering from the shock, finally got back on script enough to nod. “I think someone’s messing with you. Really. You need to just—chalk it up to locals being stupid.”
“Or,” Shane said, “you could poke around in the dark. That’s fun. There might be fewer annoying visitors if you tried it.”
“Excuse me?” Jenna said. “Are you threatening us?”
“No, just making an observation. I mean, wandering around in the dark isn’t a good idea, lady. Ask anybody.” He shrugged. “Meth. It’s a cancer around here. So I’ve heard, anyway.”
“Oh,” she said, and seemed to take it seriously for the first time. “It is a problem in a lot of places. I should have thought of that. Guys, maybe we should pack it in until later.”
“But we heard that,” Angel protested. “We should at least do EVP in the vacant lot, just in case!”
Shane started to object, but Claire tugged at his arm, urgently. Let them, she mouthed, and he finally shrugged and stepped out of the way. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Try not to get bitten by any rattlesnakes or anything.”
“Snakes?” Tyler suddenly sounded very, very nervous.
“Or, you know, scorpions,” Claire said cheerfully. “And tarantulas. We have those. Oh, and black widows and brown recluse spiders—they love it out here. You’ll find them all over the place. If you get bitten, just be sure to, you know, call 911. They can most always save you.”
“Most always,” Shane echoed.
They walked on, leaving the three visitors—no longer quite so eager to delve in—debating the risks. As they did, Shane pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Texting Michael,” he said. “He needs to get to somebody in the vamp hierarchy and get these idiots off the street before this becomes really, really public and a big PR problem….” He paused and looked up. “Oh hell. Twice in one day? Who did I piss off upstairs to make that happen?”
He meant that Monica Morrell had just crossed their path, again. She was standing against the side of a big, trashy-looking van, tongue wrestling her current boy admirer, just around the corner from where Shane’s home had once been. Like most of Monica’s boyfriends, her current beau was a big side of beef, sporty, with an IQ of about room temperature, and she was climbing him like ivy up a tree.
“Excuse me, Dan,” Shane said as they got closer. “I think you got something on you—oh, hey, Monica. Didn’t see you there.”
She broke off the kiss to glare at him. “Freak.”
“Any particular reason you’re hanging out here, exactly? Not your usual territory. I don’t see any stores within credit-card distance.”
Her boyfriend—Dan, apparently—looked like a varsity football jock; he had the muscles, the bulk, and the jarhead hairstyle. Monica tended to attract the big-but-dumb ones, and this one, from the questioning look he sent toward them, seemed to run to type. “She said this was the right place,” he said, “to set up the—”
“Shut up,” Monica said.
“Set up the what?” Shane asked. “Would you maybe be planning to mess with our ghost-hunting friends?”
“Aren’t you?” she shot back. “Yeah. We’ve got this thing in the van, totally guaranteed to screw up their—what is it?”
“Screw up their shit,” Dan said, earnestly. “You know, their monitoring shit. It’s going to play Black Sabbath backward and really freak ’em out. I read it on the Internet.”
“Jesus, Dan,” Shane said. He almost sounded impressed. “You are just…landmark stupid, aren’t you? Has Guinness called yet about that world record?”
Dan growled and came at him, and that was of course a mistake; Shane balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, avoided his rush, dodged back toward the van, and as Dan lined up to rush him again, sidestepped like a matador and sent Dan crashing like a bullet headfirst into the metal.
Dan didn’t go down, but he definitely thought about it. He leaned heavily on the metal and stared blankly into the distance for a minute. His forehead had a vivid red mark on it, and Shane said, “You probably ought to get some ice on that, man.”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Yeah, thanks, bro.” He didn’t dare come after Shane again, so he turned on Monica with a glare. “Well? Brilliant plan, Mayor. What else you got?”