Page 39 of Medium
“Hi, Pia,” they said together.
“And Rory, the Medium I think Ellis told you about.”
They greeted Rory.
“Then we have Manny, who is Rory’s best friend, and it turns out was also my grandmother’s caretaker a few years ago. He’s a pediatric nurse and Ms. Jackson has taken a liking to him.”
Cal laughed. “I guess you’ve had quite the introduction to the campaign, Manny. Welcome.”
I saw Rory open his mouth to ask what the campaign was, but Ellis could explain it to him later. “Rory, can you please run through how you came to rescue Pia last night for Greg and Cal?”
He launched into the tale again, this time leaving out the funny bits he’d tried to distract Pia with earlier.
When he wound down, Greg said, “Pia, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother’s death. And we heard you don’t have any other family left, but are there any dryad friends you’d be comfortable staying with?”
She reached out and clutched Ms. Jackson’s fur in one hand as she shook her head. “No. Mama moved us to Vancouver to get away from her family. We hadn’t made any friends yet when, uh, it happened.”
Greg’s voice gentled. “I understand. That must’ve been awful. I’m so sorry it happened to you. Um, we’d like to introduce you to some dryads in the area. Do you think you’d want to meet them?”
Pia’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Rory with a pleading expression. He said, “I’ll go with you. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to stay. I promise.”
She still looked on the verge of tears, so I said, “We’ll all go with you, okay? Including Ms. Jackson here. They’d never let you live with a bunch of mean people.” I was supposed to go back to work tomorrow, but Ricky would just have to deal with me being gone a few more days.
Then I mentally smacked myself. I couldn’t be more than a few feet from Ellis. Neither of us were going back to worktomorrow, maybe not even next week. Fuck. Well, something else to deal with later.
Ellis nodded at my suggestion, and Ms. Jackson butted their head into Pia’s shoulder. She finally smiled. “Okay.”
“Great,” Greg said. “I talked to my mom—she helps out Wonders who’ve lost their homes or whatever, for those of you who don’t know her. She recommended the dryads you mentioned, Ellis. She said they might not have any kids now, but they had some who went off to college ten or so years ago.”
I frowned. That didn’t seem the best environment for a traumatized thirteen-year-old. I wanted to ask about therapy services for Wonders in their area, but I’d wait until Pia was somewhere else.
Manny was making faces at Rory across the table, and Rory shrugged. He mouthed,Later. I wondered if Manny was having similar thoughts to mine.
Cal cleared his throat. “Shane and Ellis, have you by any chance briefed Rory on the situation with the vampires?”
Rory and Manny stopped their silent bickering and gaped at us. “Vampires?” Rory sputtered. “I mean....” He looked over his shoulder. “None of the ghosts know about any vampires.”
How the fuck many ghosts were in my house?
“Yeah.” Cal’s voice was wry. “You know the legend about vampires getting in your head and making you do their bidding or forget stuff?”
Rory scrunched up his forehead. “Kind of?”
“Well, turns out that legend has some basis in truth. We recently discovered vampires are real. They’ve been, uh, attacking Wonders—those are what we call paranormalpeople like dryads. We think the vampires have been messing with people’s minds for centuries and making us all completely certain they’re not real.”
On either side of Pia, Manny put his arm around her shoulders and Ms. Jackson leaned into her.
“Shit.” Rory’s eyes widened. “Sorry, Pia. Um, that’s scary.”
“Yeah.” Cal sighed. “We need information about the vampires. Badly. Rory, we were hoping you could speak to the ghost of the most recent Wonder who was attacked. His name was Thomas Baird, and he died three weeks ago.”
Rory shrugged. “Sure. Where is he?”
No one spoke for a moment. Eventually Greg said, “What do you mean? His body?”
Rory rolled his eyes. “No, his ghost. Is he haunting the place he died or something?”
“Uh. We don’t know?”
