Ghost jizz,he said.
“Gross,” Timber shouted. “It’s in my nose… I can taste it!”
Shit’s nasty, like boogers mixed with hair gel.
Canyon went for the truck and opened up the back, pulling out towels and water, growling to himself. He tried wiping his face, then gave up and dumped water straight over his head, then dumped another bottle over Predator and wiped the tablet clean and dry. It was water resistant and EMP hardened, so hopefully a little ghost jizz wasn’t going to bother it. Timber crowded next to him, grabbing water and towels.
Abigail White,Canyon growled.She did this.
“We’re going to have to find another way in.”
Agreed,Canyon said. I ain’t going through that again.
Timber hit him in the chest, then put a finger to his lips.Someone’s coming.
Canyon dropped his towel and looked around. From the underbrush they heard someone singing.
“Tiiiiiny bubbles… in my wine… makes me happy…”
A man breached the foliage and stepped out onto the street. He was bald, with a thick beard and mustache. He looked in his 50s or 60s, with a hardened expression, wearing green coveralls, holding a liquor bottle in one hand. He saw them and froze. The word WHITE was stitched over the left pocket of his coveralls, and the word THIRTEEN was stitched over the right pocket.
“Who the hell’re you?” he said.
Timber leaned against the truck like he wasn’t covered in ghost jizz. He casually flipped a hand in the air and goo flew from his fingers. “Who the hell are you?” he replied pleasantly.
The guy’s face went sour. “Get the fuck outta here,” he said. “You’se trespassing.”
Timber grinned broadly at him. He pulled his badge out of his pocket and opened his mouth to say something, but at the sight of the badge the guy’s eyes widened. In one move, he whipped his bottle at Canyon’s head, then turned and ran into the forest.
Canyon swatted the bottle away mid-air and the chase was on.
45—Seeing Magic
Sage finished her report and shut the computer down. It was just after 4:00 and her shift was over. She was in the main building of the Inn, working, but the moment her computer shut off, her mind went straight to her still-missing phone, and then to the smoke-slime stuff she’d seen in outside of Nana White’s office… themagic.The thought of it filled her with excitement, and she itched to touch it again.
She hurried to the employee locker room to change her clothes, and then she jumped in a spare golf cart and drove to the back of the grounds where she’d left the box of phones with her family in the big bay room. When she got inside, the box was sitting on a bunk, completely empty.
“Anybody seen my phone?” Sage called out.
The few people left in the room said no, they hadn’t seen it. Sage drove the golf cart to the main building, then steamrolled into the general manager’s office. Mina was there, sitting behind her desk, working on her computer.
“I can’t find my phoooone,” Sage whined.
“Sorry babe, I haven’t seen it,” Mina said, her eyes on her work.
“Ugh. I have to go to treatment in less than an hour. That’s three more days without knowing if I lost my job.” She also was dying to find out what had happened to her friend Reed after Sage had dropped her off at the police station last week. Sheneededher phone.
“I’ll check the passage again. Can I have the key?”
Mina pointed to the key cabinet. “Go for it.”
“Thanks.”
Key in hand, Sage drove out to the passage. She unlocked the door, took two flashlights and went swiftly down the corridor. When she reached the foyer, at first she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She concentrated, looking for it, and suddenly the smoke-slime magic was there, just like how she’d left it. She smiled and waved it out of the way so she could search behind and under fox statues.
After several minutes of looking, she had to admit her phone wasn’t there. She leaned against a wall, thinking, staring at solid rock which was the side of the bluff. In her stillness, she could hear the call again.
‘Sage, Sage, Sage.’
