and pulled out his wallet. He handed her a five. “Now you owe me. Meet me for drinks sometime?”
Cait sucked in a deep breath. Rather than the setdown the situation called for, she found herself saying, “I like O’Malley’s. If I see you there sometime, I’ll buy you a drink.”
He gave her a lopsided smile as she scooted off the seat to the pavement.
As his vehicle pulled away, she wondered what the hell she’d just done. Last thing she needed was an excuse to drink. But maybe that was the point. She wasn’t ready to quit. Although she’d been sober for almost two months, she wasn’t past wanting a drink. The smell of rubbing alcohol assailed her again, and she ran a hand over the skin exposed above the edge of her tank. The smell intensified.
Maybe when this case was over, she’d treat herself. One last swig of her favorite scotch. Eddie wouldn’t rag on her about it.
But the image of Sam’s stern expression shimmered into her mind. The thought of disappointing him again, of giving him a good reason not to trust her, caused a welling up of guilt that ate at her stomach.
She needed something to eat. That was all this burning was.
Sam closed his phone and cussed. Cait had escaped the hospital. Not that he was truly surprised, but they were supposed to be working this case together. He had every right to keep tabs on where she was and what she was doing. He’d have to sign off on her time sheet.
Or at least that was the excuse he made to himself for his irritation. She’d been buzzed, knocked right on her ass. Her instinct might have her running to a bar for a stiff scotch—for medicinal purposes, he was sure.
“Don’t tell me. Cait disappear?”
Sam aimed a glare at Jason, who sat beside him at the long scarred metal table in the break room where they’d been interviewing a steady stream of hotel guests. So far, they hadn’t come across anyone who’d seen
“Hey, if you want to go find her, I can handle this.”
Feeling edgy, Sam almost agreed. But he decided he’d see this through, then go hunt her down. He’d give her just enough rope. Someday he’d have to learn to trust her again or they’d never work as a couple. Sam didn’t dare let his imagination roam any further than that. Memories of their marriage, of their constant fighting about her drinking and the secrets she kept, had left him feeling pretty hollow for a long, long time. Being back in her life now, he was satisfied taking their relationship slow.
Add the fact he’d discovered things that she’d never even hinted at—the magical other world she traveled —and he wasn’t sure they were still a good fit. How could he hope to compete with or even understand the things she was capable of doing? And then there was Morin.
Morin Montague. Her teacher. Her first lover. Although Cait swore up and down that the night she’d gone to Morin to draw down the moon had been all about siphoning off the sorcerer’s power to battle a demon, she hadn’t hedged about the fact that siphoning called for the two of them to get naked and for Morin to draw an orgasm from her.
That was Sam’s sticking point. The magic, he might be able to handle. The fact she had to take things a step beyond what he considered staying faithful… well, he was still working on where that left him.
Confused? Hurt? Neither emotion was something he wanted to let her know about. Angry? Well, she’d seen hints of that. He supposed he’d just need time to work on his trust issues. Time and education. Google was key to the things he’d dredged up about mystical practices that he’d once considered pure fantasy.
“Want to talk to them together?”
Sam roused, giving Jason another glance.
Jason’s eyebrows were raised as he studied Sam’s expression.
Not knowing what his face might have revealed, Sam pasted on a frown. “Together would be fine. Let’s just get it over with.” He flipped to the next clean sheet in his small spiral pad and clicked the ballpoint pen he’d swiped from Cait’s kitchen.
Jason pushed away from the table and walked to the door. With a curl of his fingers, he gestured to the threesome sitting on folding chairs in the hallway outside.
As they shuffled into the room, Sam studied the crew. Before his introduction to the paranormal world, he would have dismissed them as slightly out-there pretenders at best, con artists at worst.
He glanced down at his printed list. “So who’s Clayton Dempsey?”
The chubby dude with the Fu Manchu lifted his hand. Then he turned to the tall man beside him whose face bore acne pockmarks and a scraggly beard. “This is Booger Dane, and she’s his girlfriend, Mina Tattersall. Our producer.”
“Producer?” Sam studied the girl, barely twenty. She was slender and small with black hair cut to her chin and purple cat’s-eye glasses.
“I handle the camera work too,” she said, her husky voice at odds with her pint-size appearance.
“You have a TV show?”
Clayton waved a hand. “We’re in the development stages of doing a show. Reality-TV stuff. Real ghost hunters.”
“And you’ve found ghosts?”
Clayton gave him a look that said he thought Sam wasn’t his intellectual equal. “We have reels of orb sightings. And tapes we’re still going through to clean out the white noise.”
So, not-so-real ghost hunters. Sam smiled. “Why are you at the Deluxe?”
Clayton leaned an elbow on the table and eased to the side. “A Facebook fan of ours turned us on to the hotel. Said he stayed here once and heard all kinds of unexplainable things. Noises in the walls. Odd smells.”
Although his interest piqued, Sam didn’t betray a tic. “Noises? Smells? Did he describe them?”
The large man pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and then he tapped the sheet. “He was on the third floor. Said the sounds were like something moving in the walls. Not thumps. Rustling. And he smelled sulfur.” Clayton raised his head and gave Sam a smirking smile. “A sure sign of demons.”
The scraggly bearded man nodded. “We were wondering if we could interview you.”
“About what?” Sam said, keeping his voice flat.
“About what happened up there. We think that space is a point of confluence.”
“A point of confluence?” Sam drawled.
“An intersection between this world and the next.”
“And what leads you to believe that?”
Booger Dane blinked. “The dead girl in the walls. The night clerk says the cops told him she was there for forty years, but then they asked to see his records of a woman who’d checked in last night. Said it was her body they found.” He nodded. “See, time has no meaning in the other realm.”
“Uh-huh.” Sam stifled a sigh, silently cursing the clerk for his big mouth.
“We think we could be helpful to your investigation,” Booger said, excitement tweaking his voice to a slightly higher pitch.
Sam ignored the nudge Jason gave him below the table. Judging by the careful crimping of his lips, Cait’s partner was having a hard time holding in a smile. “How so?” Sam asked, keeping his gaze straight ahead.
“We have all the equipment. We could monitor the paranormal activity and find the point of conflux.”
Sam shook his head. “I think we can handle the investigation all on our own.”
“Forgive me for sounding a little condescending,” Clayton said, with a slight sneer, “but you need us. You need someone with experience who can navigate these waters. Messin’ with the dead is dangerous. More so with dark entities. Booger here is a qualified exorcist. Once we trap that demon, he can banish it from the hotel.”
Sam flipped his notepad closed and forced a smile. “I’ll take your offer under advisement.”
Clayton’s expression slipped to reveal a hint of anger tingeing his cheeks. “We’ve booked rooms for the next week. Here’s my card.”
Sam took the card, eyeing it doubtfully. A Casper-like ghost was to one side, a large magnifying glass to the right. Both looked as though they’d been hand sketched, most likely by Clayton himself. Sam slipped the card into
