preliminary, got a retainer check. Full fee, you'll be happy to hear.'
'Great! Well, I should be done here in a week. I can go down there if you'd like, or we could both go – '
'I thought maybe I'd get down there later this week,' Cree said.'Maybe before you return. I can clear the time.' Edgar looked disappointed, so she explained: 'He says his sister – she's the main witness – is very disturbed. I got the sense the family's only coming to us because they'll do anything to calm her down, she's really going pieces. Plus, I was thinking, here's the paying customer you said we needed, so it would be good to follow up right away…'
Edgar nodded, unconvinced.
'Okay,' Cree admitted, 'I got a feeling that we should move on this. A buzz. I don't know why.' Still Ed said nothing, but a little ripple of concern passed over his forehead, and Cree decided to change the subject. 'How about your end? What're you getting?'
His face brightened, sheer enthusiasm for the hunt replacing his doubtfulness. 'Multiple occurrences, multiple witnesses with excellent credibility. The entity appears to be a perseverating fragmentary, displaying both visual and auditory. A couple of reports of tactile, but those're from my least reliable witnesses.'
Cree nodded, and Edgar went on, using a shorthand vocabulary that in all the world only Cree would understand. A perseverating fragmentary was an entity with a limited repertoire of activities, an apparition appearing in the same place and doing the same motions again and again. They called it fragmentary because the entity was not a complete human personality, but a lingering, very limited mental construct. Such a manifestation was almost more the experience itself than a being – a disconnected mental and emotional matrix that somehow repetitively played out independently of a corporeal body or much of a self-aware consciousness. What people referred to as 'ghosts' could range from merest shards, no more than a roaming impulse or hunger, to virtually complete personalities.
That Ed's entity had been seen, heard, and maybe felt on several occasions by more than one person did suggest it would be a promising study. If it were perceivable by several senses, and was robust enough to be witnessed by several people, it would give Cree more to work with and possibly allow Edgar's equipment to register verifiable physical phenomena.
'So what's on for tonight?' Cree asked.
'Well, I'm going back to the site. I'll do some infrared and visible-light work. One of the witnesses has agreed to come with me and wear the polygraph setup, too.'
'She good-looking?'
Edgar rolled his eyes, and the grin appeared. 'She is, very definitely. But she's also thirty years older than me and happily married.' Then his smile evaporated. 'Actually, I'm not looking forward to it. The place bugs me. Creeps me out.'
'Any reason in particular?'
Edgar's eyes moved to one side. 'Just the feeling of the house. I'm not in your league, Cree, but I do have a couple of functional nerve endings.'
'I've noticed. I rely on it daily, Ed. Tell me about the feeling.'
A kink of trouble had formed between his eyebrows, and Edgar rubbed at it with both big hands as he tried to put words to the feeling.'This… loneliness, I guess. Something very… stark there.'
Oh, yes, Cree thought. That.
When she'd first started spending time in haunted places, she'd been as frightened as anyone else by the fear of scary things, the dark, the unknown – grisly deaths, nightmarish visions, awful secrets, moving shadows. That unrelenting sense of imminent danger. But you got a grip on that after a while. What you didn't get used to was the existential stuff: The scary things might spring out and hurt you or make you crazy, but the maw of loneliness Ed spoke of, that abyss of emptiness, could swallow your soul.
They both came back from that. They talked some more about the Massachusetts entity and then about the equipment she'd need to take with her to New Orleans. Cree got on the radiophone and Ed walked her back into the storage area, showing her where to find everything. But he seemed increasingly reluctant, and at last she pointed it out to him.
'You're not too happy with me going down there on my own, are you?'
'I'm just thinking… why don't you come out here first? Help me finish this preliminary. I could use your insight. Maybe we could take an extra day to see the sights of Boston, then both go to New Orleans – '
'I don't think the client can wait. Anyway, we'll have plenty of time to work on these together if we end up taking either case.'
She didn't mean it to, but that sounded cold, and Ed didn't answer right away. She was glad they weren't on the videophone now and couldn't see each other's faces. Edgar's desire for her company was sweet but poignant and difficult. Though he never imposed his feelings on her, he didn't try to hide them, either. He was a terrific person, and she gave him most of the credit for their ability to navigate daily through the complex of emotions, working as friends and business partners despite what amounted to a very unequal relationship.
'I'm also a little worried about New Orleans,' he admitted hesitantly.
You in New Orleans.'
'Why's that?' Knowing why. She got defensive and angry when this stuff got stirred up.
'I've been there. Great town – 'The Big Easy.' Fun party town. Rich and colorful history, a great mix of cultural traditions. But it's got some places you should probably avoid. More than most cities, Cree.'
He wasn't talking about bad neighborhoods. New Orleans was well known among legitimate parapsychologists and sensationalist amateurs alike as a place where some particularly grisly things had taken place. The horror of LaLaurie House, where Madame LaLaurie tortured and butchered dozens of her slaves in an attic room, was only one of many examples.
'I'm fine. I'm strong now, Ed,' Cree said. Then it caught up with her and she bristled at his concern. 'I think I can probably handle it.'
Now he coughed, cleared his throat, feeling awkward. 'Of course! It's just – you've been a little, you know, susceptible recently, more than usual… Shit, Cree, I can't always figure out how I'm supposed to – '
'Yeah.'
She said it gruffly, and they both fell silent. On one level, she was doing great. But, yes, she had been more 'susceptible' recently. Why? Maybe something to do with Mike, this time of year, she wasn't sure. And yes, she could imagine that it would be tough for Ed, tiptoeing around her vulnerability, trying to protect her without treating her like an invalid. Still, it pissed her off. Not at Ed, he was doing his best. At herself. At the complexities of life. At the reminder that she was fragile, thirty-eight and single, a perpetual widow with a lot of unresolved crap. Why did she get so tough on Ed when he brought it up? Maybe because neither he nor Joyce fully understood that, yes, she had to be careful, but she also had to resist, had to fight back. You had to push the boundaries and hope you got tougher as time went on.
'Where'd you go, Cree?'
'I'm here.'
Which was so obviously not true that he had no choice but to roll with it. 'Right,' he said, with more resignation than sarcasm.
Cree had drifted back toward his office, and though she was out of range of the videophone camera she could see his earnest face in the monitor. He looked downcast and worried. He clicked a ballpoint pen in and out, inspecting the tip, then looked hopefully up at his own monitor. Still not seeing Cree, he looked away and rubbed his forehead again.
'You take care of yourself, though, okay?' Edgar had pivoted his chair, and there was something touching about seeing him in profile. Like watching him talking to himself. 'You'll keep in close touch with Joyce and me, right? Call in the cavalry if you need us?'
'Yeah,' Cree said again.
And then she hurried over to the videophone, wanting to make things better between them, but by the time she got there he'd hung up, and now it was her turn to look at the bland gray-blue of an empty screen.
3
