“When do you bring her home, then?End of the case?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Is your spare room set up for her?”
“No, it’s why I’m calling. There’s no furniture in there. I can order things to be delivered, but can you let the furniture people in and make sure the bed is at least made by the time we fly home again?”
“Of course, just give me the dates.”
“Thank you.” My mother fucking rocked. She’d always been super supportive of whatever I did, but moments like these, when I couldn’t be in two places at once? I really appreciated her.
“So, what are you and the team going to do now?”
“Pray? I don’t know a better answer to give you. We’re still determined to map out the area, come up with a plan of how to divvy it out. Lachlan said something about hitting the ghost town today no matter what. I’d rather get that over with,honestly. It feels like a dark cloud hanging over my head. We don’t actually know the situation over there, and there’s little data about the area, so getting eyes on it and figuring out the parameters is a must.”
“You never liked putting anything off, even as a kid. You’d rather get it over with.”
“Let’s just say, the sooner Black Rock is in my rearview mirror, the better.”
“How many ghosts have you passed on so far?You said you had to clear out two places already.”
“I think it’s almost fifty?”
“Fifty is a lot!”
“I know. Mack normally does, like, six in a case. I think this will be comparable to our time in Scotland. It has that same kind of volume, with too many ghosts and not enough of us.”
“That’s really not good. You were both exhausted after Scotland, and didn’t Mack collapse?”
“Yeah. God help me, if he collapses again, I’m bundling him into the SUV and leaving. I know sometimes he pushes himself to the limit for a case, but I can’t let him drive himself into the ground again. My heart can’t take it, for one.”
It was mean to friends to abandon them, if it came down to us leaving, but I had to prioritize Mack. I just had to.
“I don’t think it’ll come to that. You don’t have a monster chasing after you this time.”
“Good point.” Although, arguably worse, we did have an almost-demon to take down. “Anyway, I need to hop off and finish making breakfast. People are stirring.”
“Keep me in the loop. Also, make sure you get Gwyn’s bedroom furniture ordered today, before madness hits and you forget.”
She made a good point. I’d hand Gwyn the shopping job. She could pick something out online, and I could have it delivered from here. It wasn’t like we had to go into an actual store.
“I promise to get it done today.”
“Good. Give Mack a hug for me. Tell Gwyn we can’t wait to meet her.”
“Will do. Bye, Mom.”
I popped both quiches in the oven, letting them bake, and people showed up for coffee and bacon while they waited on actual breakfast. Gwyn was more alert than most of us and was happy to sit in front of my laptop and look through furniture sets for her new room.
Eventually, we got out the door and up to the abandoned mining town. We took three vehicles, and it was a good ten-minute drive over a very rough dirt road. I saw no signs anyone had been up here recently, so this place was truly abandoned. There was nothing here, not even tire marks or litter. It had the appearance of a movie set, honestly, with the greyed and weathered clapboard siding, sagging porches, and air of pure neglect. Even saw a few tumbleweeds going past us.
Place looked spooky as hell.
Looks weren’t deceiving in this case.
Mack groaned as he panned the scene from the front seat. “Ma moitié. We’re…fucked.”
I blew out a breath. “How badly fucked? Like, this will take days to go through kind of fucked? Or we might, feasibly, be done by tonight?”
