“Someone you don’t like?”
“I don’t like a lot of people.” I pushed my phone across the table to him. “Okay. Give it a try. Remember, it is energy, you are energy, the whole world is energy.”
“Very Zen,” he muttered. He held his palm flat above the screen and closed his eyes. I drank tea and waited.
We’d done this a few times in the last couple weeks since Lu and Brogan had left.
Val had decided to stay behind with me. I thought he’d really stayed behind to figure out his afterlife relationship with Danube, a werewolf from one of the nearby packs with whom he had unfinished business.
It was also possible he’d stayed behind so he could better bother Lu and Brogan as they drove Route 66.
The phone lit up.
“Good,” I said. “It’s on. Now find their contact on the list.”
Val rubbed his fingertips with his thumb, then hovered his hand over the screen again. The screen flipped, the app opened, and the contacts I’d stored slowly scrolled by. He rolled past Lula’s number, then frowned and narrowed his eyes.
Contacts reversed in a very slowtick, tick, tick. I thought he’d miss it again, but the screen stopped on Lu’s number.
“Showoff,” I said. “Now dial.”
He sat back for a second and closed his eyes. I knew it took a massive amount of energy to bridge the planes of the living and the unliving. But he was determined.
He straightened, cracked his knuckles on one hand, and winked at me. “I got this.”
“Lots of talk, wolf. Let’s see the action.”
“I’ll show you action.” He stabbed his finger down.
Nothing.
Then the screen shifted and the phone rang.
“Yes!” he yelled. “Hell, yes. I dialed the crap out of that phone!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, proud of him, but not wanting to listen to his celebration all night. “You dialed a phone. Yay.”
“Hey, Ricky. This is Brogan,” a deep male voice answered.
“Hi!” a smaller, child-like voice said at a distance. “It’s me, Crossroads! Abbi! Remember me?”
“She remembers you,” Brogan grumbled. “No one can forget you. That’s half your problem.”
“Hey!” she chirped. “I am the moon! And all will bow...”
Her voice cut off in a laugh. There was a scuffle like Brogan had shoved her over, or maybe that big cat of hers had pounced on her.
“Sorry,” Brogan said a minute later. “What do you need? And if this is actually Val dialing us, I’m gonna hang up now.”
“What if I had really important information about that book you’re looking for?” Val asked.
Brogan paused. I had found it fascinating the first time Val had called Brogan and only Brogan had been able to hear him over the phone. But that had something to do with the fact that Brogan had been mostly dead for almost a hundred years, and was still able to see and hear ghosts.
Whereas his wife, Lula, had been mostly alive for that same time, soul-tied to him. And even though she was not quite dead, but more half vampire, she couldn’t hear ghosts.
Not even when they were using my cell phone.
“I’d say you’re full of shit,” Brogan growled. “Good-bye, Val. Stop messing around with Ricky’s phone.”
