“No problem.” She ran to catch up with her friends, her tail wagging excitedly in my Sight.
Jeremy reached the door to the restaurant, holding it open for us. “Tess, are you okay to do this part on your own?”
“Yeah, sure. Why?” She paused just short of stepping inside.
“Rand and I are going to take a stroll around the resort. I don’t know if it will help with any of this, but I want to check something out.”
She studied me as Jeremy continued to hold the door. “Be careful.” Her eyes flicked to Rand. “Take care of her.”
“Always.” He gave her a mock two finger salute.
“Hey, you two, I’m standing right here. Tess, we shouldn’t be long unless we find something.”
She nodded and went in. The last thing I heard her say before the door closed behind them was, “Hey, think I can get an appetizer while I work?”
Chuckling, Rand and I walked away. When we were in a fairly clear area, he asked, “Care to share?”
“Since apparently we can both see and hear ghosts, I was thinking maybe some of them might have noticed something. That . . . thing . . . you did with Suzette might come in handy, if any of them don’t want to play nice.” I gave him a sidelong glance. “Did you know you could do that? Or what would happen when Suzette tried to touch you?”
“Nope to both of those.”
“When she touched you and those sparks flew . . . did it hurt?”
He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Not me. And truth be told, I don’t know if it actually hurt her or just startled her. I don’t even know what that was. Jake and I have come into contact daily since, well, this,” he gestured down at himself, “and that’s never happened.”
Processing that, we walked in silence. This part of the day was usually a slow time for seeing ghosts, but I figured any that would be around would be the ones we’d want to talk to anyway. We made a complete circuit of the main tourist and camper areas without seeing a single ghost.
“Think we should try down by the water?”
“Probably. There used to be a few regulars that would hang around there when we were here before. But then again, I always noticed a few around the campground area during the day, too. They were some of the old-timers that just liked being around people and watching the day-to-day stuff. I think they found it . . . comforting.”
I thought about the two that had popped their heads through the wall earlier. And then I realized what had happened. “Crap.”
Rand went on alert, his gaze sharpening and taking in everything and everyone around us. I started to lay my hand on his arm to reassure him and barely stopped myself in time.
“Sorry.” Pulling my hand away awkwardly, I held it up, palm facing him, and looked around us. There weren’t any people around close enough to overhear us and we’d been speaking in fairly low tones the whole time anyway. “I bet Suzette and those two from the store warned everyone away.”
He considered it. “She would do it just out of spite if she figured out we wanted to talk to any of them. With the help of those others, they could have reached pretty much all of them in a short amount of time.”
Lovely. Sighing in resignation, I turned toward the beach and the marina areas, knowing what I had to do. It would only hurt a little, I told myself.
When we reached the docks, I called out softly, “Suzette. We need to talk.” And then we waited.
After five minutes with no appearance, I tried again. “Suzette. I’ll tell you what we’re doing here and what we need Jeremy’s help for if you agree to help us. The offer is only good for the next thirty seconds and then it’s withdrawn. If I have to send Rand to drag you back from the gray, it won’t be pretty.” Rand gave me an impressed look. I had no idea if he could even do anything like that, but I figured neither did she.
I heard a gasp and I knew I had her. Whirling around, I spotted her behind us, about twelve feet away. She was being cautious. Good. That meant my bluff had worked.
“I wanna know how he can do that stuff, witch,” she huffed, pointing at him but glaring at me. I’m pretty sure she’d meant witch with a capital W, too, like it was part of her repertoire of profanities.
“And I’d like to be home, relaxing, reading a book, and enjoying a tall, cold glass of sweet tea. Sucks to be us, doesn’t it?” I stared her down until she began to fidget. When she finally crossed her arms and pouted her lower lip out, I continued. “Will you help us? Please? There are kids missing and we don’t have a lot of time to find them. We don’t know if they’re hurt or . . . still alive, even.”
The mention of the missing children did it, I could tell. She took a couple steps closer. “What kids?”
How much would the ghost of a human know about the fae? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well give her all of it. Who else could she tell, really? Wade? Either Tess or I would be telling him anyway, so he could question the locals, if nothing else.
Explaining in as few words possible, I told her as much as I felt she needed to know. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t interrupt, not once. By the time
