“Don’t tell me the guy sells caskets and plots for a living.”
“Nope. Well, not that I know of. Never mind him. Tell me about the Lynch file and their affairs.”
He spent the next ten minutes explaining how at one point in time, Christopher Lynch had hired him to follow Kitty, and it turned out she was having an affair. And two months ago, it had been a shock when Kitty walked in the door and asked him to follow her husband. It paid the rent and was nothing more than a job. He’d explained turn-about was fair play.
Ryley had remained quiet until she turned into the cemetery and parked in the crowded parking lot. Men and women dressed in black were in various stages of greeting. Women hugging and squeezing hands in a show of sympathy, men shaking hands.
“Uh, Ryley. I’m not dressed for a funeral,” Logan said, glancing in her direction.
“It’s fine. Neither am I, and we won’t be long. I’ll be lucky if they don’t run me out with a pitchfork,” she said, grabbing a rose wrapped in green paper with baby’s breath. She pulled the long stem free and tossed the wrapper behind his seat. She opened the door to get out. When he wasn’t quick to follow, she leaned back into the car. “Come on and let me give you a glimpse of what it is I do.”
He got out of the car and met her strides. He leaned in and whispered. “Do you know these people?”
“No.” She reached the doors, where a priest was shaking hands with mourners as they arrived.
He clutched Ryley’s hand and smiled. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Ryley. I wasn’t sure you’d make an appearance today after the paper spread those lies.”
“I’m sure we’ll get it all situated. Father James, I’d like you to meet Logan Bane.”
Father James’s face lit up, and he smiled and held out his hand. “Any friend of Ryley’s is a friend of mine.”
“We can’t stay long. I just wanted to quickly pay my respects.”
“Of course.” He nodded and gestured inside the door.
Ryley ignored the questioning stares as they passed. Women dressed in head-to-toe black looked her over before turning their backs on her improper attire of jeans and tee-shirt.
Ryley was used to ignoring the building questions. She’d once been asked if she’d been the mistress. Like so many times in the past, she made this icy walk in front of people she didn’t know to the closed casket of a man she’d never met.
Logan followed her to the casket dominating the front of the room. A picture was on an easel. Mr. Smith looked to be a man in his seventies with white wavy hair and stubble on his cheeks that emphasized his huge smile. The wrinkles around his mouth and eyes were probably from smiles just like those.
Ryley closed her eyes and said a quiet prayer beneath her breath. When finished, she opened her eyes and entwined her fingers with Logan’s, not explaining what she was about to do.
He didn’t question why or pull away. He stood there like they’d done it a million times before. His calloused hand was large and warm beneath her touch. She smiled at him and put the rose on the coffin and rested their linked hands, pressing his palms to the coffin, resting hers over the top.
Electricity rose straight through his hand and into her palm. No way he hadn’t felt it race through his body. “Looks like we’ve got a runner.” She pulled her fingers free and rubbed them together before meeting his gaze. “Did you feel that?”
He nodded and glanced at the mourners taking their seats. Logan wrapped his hand around her arm and guided her toward the exit in the back and whispered, “What the hell was that?”
They left when the priest started his prayer.
“I’ve only done that once before. Tell me what you felt.”
“Like you shocked me,” he said, pulling her to a stop then folding his arms over his chest.
“It works like this for me. I feel that electricity when a ghost doesn’t go into the light. So, I try and catch them after death and talk them over by helping with whatever unfinished business they might have. The longer they stay earthbound, the harder they are to move on, and they become unstable.”
“And what if you can’t talk them over?” Logan asked.
Ryley started walking into the cemetery, leaving Logan to follow her. “It’s never pretty. I try to get them at the funeral or shortly after.” She glanced up at him. “I don’t like to force them to cross, but I have on occasion.”
He shook his head, trying to make sense of what she was telling him. “You sound like a mythical creature. A reaper bent on collecting souls.”
“I don’t collect them. That would be the black shadow creepy crawlies.” She shivered.
“What the hell are creepy crawlies?” He gawked.
“You really don’t want to know. But I’ve been called worse things than a reaper. I don’t send spirits into the light unless there’s no other choice or unless I need to see what happened.”
She stopped walking and took a seat on a bench in front of three plots. To her right, a spirit hovered a couple inches off the ground, a tense look on his translucent face. Ryley shivered again, but this time due to the presence of the ghost. Although the creepy crawlies couldn’t be far behind. They always were.
Logan sat beside her and clasped his hands together, resting his elbows on his knees. “Is that what you did to Curtis? Did you send him into the light?”
“Yes.” She was quick to answer. “And he wasn’t very happy with me, but Detective Crews was. He didn’t seem to care where the answers came from as long as I provided the evidence to back them.”
From the corner of her eye, Ryley noted the slithering black shapes creeping forward. Time to go. She rose and glanced around the area, before
