Page 90 of Aberrant Monsters
He gripped the edges of the towel slung around his neck and nodded. “I’ll do my best, August. I promise. That’s what I’m here for, after all.”
“I know, and I’d like us to get to know each other a little better. If we’re going to be working together, then I’d like us to be friends.”
His smile lit up his azure eyes. “I’d like that too. Very much.”
* * *
The Huntingdon Manorwas set off the main street, down a cobbled drive lined with a neatly clipped lawn. We drove the car down the bumpy drive and round the side of the house. The sun was an hour from setting, but Nandi had permission to access the premises before sundown. We needed to get our equipment set up, of course. Record any evidence of a haunting to show to our client if there was one. That was Archie’s domain. He had all the snazzy little gadgets to test for EMP and drops in temperature as well as record stuff occurring on a frequency we might not be able to hear.
The dead had a choice. They could either stay tethered to the mortal plane or pass over to the other side, a place we knew nothing about. Spirits who stayed usually haunted familiar places, places that mattered to them in life, and in some cases people who’d mattered to them. They were mostly harmless unless they got twisted. According to Nandi, it was the bad people, the evil souls, who usually went this route.
If there were ghosts here, Nandi would be able to find them and draw them out. Although anyone could see a ghost if they made themselves known, my buddy could find them even if they were hiding, and if they slipped onto the spirit plane, my buddy could follow. Problem was that feat drained her.
We parked outside the house and headed up the steps to the main doors. Nandi let us into the foyer.
The inside was colder than outside.
“Fuck, it’s freezing.” Archie rubbed his hands together. “That’s a sign of ghosties, right?”
“It can be a sign of a lot of stuff,” Nandi said. “Believe it or not, many entities draw energy from their surroundings: ghosts, twisted, demons, or…” She walked over to a knob on the wall and twisted it. “We could just turn the thermostat up.” She grinned over her shoulder. “Mr. Huntingdon said he’d turn on the heating, we’d just need to turn it up once we got in. He also said that the main manifestations occur in the east side of the house—that’s the lounge and dining area.”
“In that case, let’s set up there.” Archie hoisted his bag of goodies higher onto his shoulders. “I’ll dump this stuff, then go get the cameras from the car.”
Half an hour later, we had cameras set up around the lounge and dining room at various angles to catch any supernatural activity. Archie had set up a station at the table with monitors and was fiddling with his EMF machine.
“Damn thing is playing up.” He tapped it with the heel of his hand.
“No reading?”
“I can’t tell, the needle is swinging back and forth like crazy.”
I looked to Nandi. “You sense anything?”
She’d done a circuit of the rooms twice now. “I keep catching flashes of something. It’s almost as if…as if something’s blocking it. I might have to step over.”
Panic gripped me. “No, don’t. Not unless you absolutely have to.”
She smiled wryly. “Okay.”
“I brought energy bars just in case,” Archie said. “Those chocolate and raisin ones you like.”
Nandi looked at him in surprise. “Thank you.”
He cleared his throat and went back to working on his EMF machine, but I noticed the tips of his ears turn red.
Nandi didn’t. She was already doing another sensory sweep of the room. “Sun’s going down,” she said over her shoulder.
I felt Telarion then. “Thanks.” I headed into the hallway, wanting privacy when Telarion exited my body. I’d shared the moment with them once, but it felt better doing this alone.
He tore from me as soon as I hit the laminated foyer, leaving me doubled over and gasping. Fuck, that always hurt like a bitch.
I straightened to find him standing a meter away, staring at me with an unfathomable expression in his emerald eyes. His form seemed more solid tonight, more…human in size, but the shadows that clung to him and the way his long coat flapped in a breeze that wasn’t there ruined any illusion of normality.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Okay. I’m okay. Thank you for…thank you.”
“I did what needed to be done to protect my host.” His gaze hardened. “Like you said earlier, it meant nothing more.”
