Page 25 of Insidious Monsters
NANDI
Betsy had a tag-along spirit.
People had them sometimes, ghosts that followed them around, haunted them for one reason or another. Most of the time the haunted person was none the wiser. Like Betsy here. Her tag-along was silent and watchful, with no interest in trying to communicate with me, which was fine by me.
I had another job to do.
Betsy sipped her coffee, made by the new, unpossessed coffee machine, and sniffed.
Archie handed her a tissue.
“Thanks, luv.” She set her mug down and blew her nose before holding out the used tissue to Archie, who stared at it as if she were offering him a detonated bomb.
I ducked my head to hide my smile and scrawled nonsense onto my notepad.
“So, anyway,” Betsy continued. “Marty is a sweetheart, so considerate, always with a kind word for everyone. We meet up on Friday nights for supper. It’s our weekly ritual. He wouldn’t have moved on without telling me, and the symbol I found on the wall where he usually parks up at night…Danger. He’s in trouble, I know it.”
We’d already scoped out that spot. Archie for physical clues, and me for psychic ones—ghosts with information on Marty or maybe even Marty’s spirit if he was dead. But the spot was clean of any negative or positive psychic energy.
“Have you reached out to the other nomads?” Archie asked.
“Marty and I are on the outs with the long-timers. Not been in the city long enough to be on theinyet.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Archie said.
She gave him a watery smile. “Cities have long-timers, nomads who run the show, then you have the passer-throughs and the outers, nomads like Marty and me who haven’t been in the city long enough to be on theinwith the long-timers.”
“So like a club,” Archie said. “You got to prove yourself.”
“I guess so.” Betsy sipped her coffee. “I ain’t got the clout to speak to Margie yet.”
“Margie?”
“She’s a long-timer. I heard she recruited a few nomads into some charity endeavor, providing shelter to the homeless. I tried to speak to her but got blocked.”
Nomads were homeless too, but by choice. Maybe this shelter endeavor was a way to teach more people about the nomad life. Who knew?
I jotted down the name. “Surname?”
“No idea.”
“Where can we find her?”
“She has a spot near Bentley Station. She has a ride, but from what I hear she bunks down underground, but like I said she won’t speak to me.”
Archie met my eyes with a smirk. “She’ll speak to us.”
“Oh, thank you,” Betsy said. “You should try after ten at night, she should be parked up by then.”
“What’s her ride?” Archie asked.
“Customized minivan.”
She rattled off a number plate, which I jotted down. This Margie woman seemed to run the nomad scene in the city, and she was the quickest route to putting out feelers on Marty’s location.
Betsy left with hope in her eyes and a tag-along trailing at her heels. I suppressed a shudder. I’d seen many haunted humans before, but the silent tag-alongs always freaked me out.
Archie pulled sanitizer out of his desk drawer and rubbed it into his hands like he was preparing to conduct a surgical procedure. “Now that was gross.”
