I throw open the door to my room and Cara stands up, mouth opening to say something before closing again as she sees my face.
“That was not Kat,” I mumble, putting my hand to my chest and breathing deeply, attempting to calm myself, if just for Cara’s sake. “I think you were right.”
Cara’s mouth hangs open. “I was kidding .”
“It appears life imitates art,” I say, throwing my hands up. “I’m not quite sure what to do besides contact Juniper and hope she has some idea what to do.”
“She thought this was a solved issue so I wouldn’t count on that,” Cara tells me straightforwardly as she ushers me to sit on the bed, guiding me with her toned arm wrapped around my shoulder. “We need to call that hot guy that also deals in the paranormal.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I reason, recalling the little information I have about him. “Ian, I think. He was due to leave today, I think. I hope he’s still here.”
Cara is already at her laptop and looks up with a pleased smile. “I found his blog. His name is Ian Everly, and though he doesn’t seem to update his other social media enough for me to stalk him and see if he’s on the road, it’s early enough that hopefully he’s still here.”
“How do we find his room?” I ask, peeking over her shoulder at the extremely professional blog that Ian had created. “We certainly can’t ask the Kat impersonator.”
“I already sent him a message on here, but who knows when he checks it,” Cara shrugs. “Call the front desk?”
Two minutes later I hung up the phone after being politely told that they could not hand out his room number and they wouldn’t be able to call him to attempt a patch through.
“Well, he and Kat met in the bar so perhaps we should go down there and hope he likes to drink at the butt crack of dawn,” Cara says, rousting me up as she slips on her shoes and grabs her purse.
I nod and when we get down to the bar, Ian is disappointingly missing. Cara sighs heavily before looking around to observe the bartender staring at her nearly open mouthed. She smiles widely and struts up, her hair bouncing like golden cotton candy as she leans provocatively across the counter.
“Well, hello,” the bartender says, pulling on a lopsided smile. “What can I do for you lovely ladies?” His eyes shift between Cara and I as if he’s won the lottery, and I tamper down my desire to roll my eyes, unable to join in the charade but also unwilling to sabotage it.
“You look like a man that is well connected in this hotel,” Cara begins, smiling as though she’s never been so impressed in her life by a male specimen. “We need to find our friend Ian who is staying here. He’s a blogger. Do you happen to know him?
“Of course I do,” he says proudly before suspicion leaks onto his expression. “But can’t you just call him? You aren’t fans of the blog just trying to track him down, are you?”
“No!” Cara throws her head back and laughs as she holds her hand to her fetching decolletage. Her breasts are heaving in her V-neck tunic, hypnotizing the poor bartender. “Definitely not. We actually just met him through our friend Kat and he invited us to call him, but we don’t have his number and can’t find Kat so here we are.” Greg still looks mildly dubious and Cara goes in for the kill. “And how lucky we were to have you behind the counter. I just knew you’d be friends with him. You even sort of look alike,” Cara lies.
He beams and nods. “I can give him a call.”
Cara smiles radiantly back and nods her head in appreciation, bouncing slightly on her heels, encouraging him to call immediately and I have to curb the urge to laugh. This woman’s flair for the dramatic is a source of constant amusement for me.
Greg comes back quickly with a smile. “He will be right down.”
“Oh Greg,” Cara says, glancing at his name tag. “I knew you were the right man to ask.”
“I’m here to serve,” he flirts, leaning back onto the bar casually. “So, any interest in going out with me tonight?”
“I would,” Cara says with an angelic grin. “But I’m a lesbian.”
“Oh!” he says, face shocked, then mildly excited and finally crestfallen as he meets my humorless eyes. “Oh.”
Before I must endure another moment of awkwardness, Ian has appeared in the bar. His dark eyes are searching and concerned when he sees us, and we follow him to a more private booth in the back, though now that Greg knows there will be no threesome, the odds of him going out of his way to eavesdrop seem low.
“It didn’t work,” Ian says flatly as soon as we are all hunched in together. The failure is clearly written on our faces, or he was just that sure it was bound to fail. I don’t know which. Regardless, to his credit, there isn’t a hint of schadenfreude in his beautiful, almond shaped eyes.
I fill him in as best I can, and he wants to know everything beginning with the events of years before, the seance and Kat’s disposition. He listens intently, nodding encouragement as I lay bare our lives. His eyes flicker briefly when I mention her sexually aggressive behavior towards Erik, but he washes it away so effectively that I wonder if I’d imagined it.
I finish and stare at him. “Do you think she’s possessed?”
“It certainly sounds as though she is,” he leans back and sighs, running his hands through his dark curls. “I’ve never seen an entity like this before.”
“What do we do?” Cara asks, leaning
