The redhead—Isaac, I was assuming—returned with another man following behind. The third member of the Weekly Oracle crew was a tough-looking Hispanic guy with shoulder-length black hair. My eyes fell to the empty left sleeve of his shirt, and I quickly dragged them back up, not wanting to stare. Something about his bearing made me think ex-military, and I wondered if he’d lost his arm in combat somewhere.
“You’re the ones after the EMF data?” he asked, a faint Mexican or Central American accent coloring his voice.
“Yep,” Rans agreed. “That’s us.”
Óliver nodded and pulled the remaining chair around to the front of the desk. “D, did you get all that shit plotted on the map last night?”
Derrick leaned on the edge of the desk. “Yeah, it’s in the file dated yesterday. The pattern looked pretty clear.”
“Pattern?” I asked as Óliver pulled up the file. Everyone clustered around to look over his shoulder—me included.
It was Isaac who had pity on me. “We have EMF meters set up at a bunch of area hotspots that sit on the ley lines crisscrossing northern Illinois and Indiana. Sometimes, if you plot the times and locations of the readings, patterns emerge. Derrick has some theories about energy waves related to sunspots affecting the strength of trapped ghosts.”
I shot a look at Rans, still utterly in the dark as to our purpose here. He’d hidden his amusement from earlier behind an unreadable poker face, however, and there were no clues to be found in his expression.
“Let me see it,” he said, his focus on the screen.
Derrick pointed at the map that appeared. I recognized Chicago sitting on the bank of Lake Michigan, along with a portion of the two states around it. Several red dots of various sizes with timestamps hovering above them covered the visible area.
“The size of the dot indicates the magnitude of the highest readings in the last seventy-two hours, with the timestamp showing when the peak occurred,” Derrick said, tracing a finger along an arc defined by the biggest dots.
It meant nothing to me, but Rans nodded. “Right. So the biggest power surges are all following that single ley line, heading from west to east at a high rate of speed.”
“Weird,” Isaac said. “Have there been any solar flares during that period?”
“No,” Óliver grunted. “The last big one was six days ago.”
“It doesn’t do a damn thing for my pet theory,” Derrick offered wryly, “but does it help you at all?”
Rans straightened and flashed him a charming smile. “Possibly so. Whatever the case, I appreciate the assistance, lads.”
Derrick shrugged. “The data needed to be collated anyway. You want a printout or a file transfer of this?”
“No, no,” Rans said. “Not necessary. I just needed to see the pattern.”
Óliver looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. “You got a different theory about these readings? Because at this point, I’m open to just about anything.”
Rans shook his head. “Not really. At least, not one I’m ready to air yet, but you know how it is. Every piece of data helps.” He turned his attention back to me. “Perhaps we should leave these gentlemen to their work now. Ready to head out?”
I’m ready to get some freaking answers, I tried to project with my expression, but aloud, I only said, “Sure.” I smiled at Derrick. “It was really great to run into you in meatspace, Hypnos. Keep on fighting the good fight, okay?”
I let my smile encompass the other two, as well. Derrick awkwardly shook my hand, while the others acknowledged me with brief nods. After a final brief farewell, Rans ushered me back up the stairwell and out the door leading onto the street.
“Care to explain all that?” I asked once we were outside.
“Certainly. First things first, though.” He eyed me up and down, a very strange look on his handsome face. “’TeamEdward4eva,’ Zorah? Really?”
I stared at him blankly for a beat before the implications registered. Heat flooded my cheeks.
“I was sixteen when I chose that username!” I protested. “It was a popular series—millions of people read it!”
He had that look again—the one that said he was battling back laughter only with extreme difficulty. “I swear, if the word sparkle passes your lips...”
“Real women crave the sparkle,” I muttered, casting a glare up at him. “That was my sig line.”
A single bark of laughter escaped his control. “Bloody hell, luv.” He shook his head. “Ah, well. It could be worse. If you’d been Team Jacob, you and I might be having a serious problem right now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I feel like I should point out that my being a teenage girl at the time excuses me for all of this. Whereas you’re seven hundred years old, and you’ve clearly got strong opinions regarding a girly young-adult vampire story.”
“Boredom is a powerful motivator,” he said, before visibly wrestling his amusement back under control. “Now, though, we really do have other things to worry about.”
I sobered, because yeah—that was putting it mildly. “So talk. Why do you care about ghost-hunting all of the sudden?”
“Because they aren’t tracking ghosts. They’re tracking Fae travel along the ley lines. They just don’t realize it.”
“Okay, explain that to me,” I said. “The magic and ghost stuff was never really my thing, ironic as that now seems. Ley lines are supposed to be... like, energy highways, right?”
“In a way. Originally, humans became aware of them when several people noticed that large monuments and religious structures tended to be built along particular map lines, even though there was no coordination or purposeful planning to make it happen that way.”
I frowned, mulling that over. “So... what? People built monuments in certain places because of invisible energy paths running through the area?”
Rans shrugged. “Theoretically. Depending on who’s telling it, humans were either spontaneously drawn to the ley lines, or they were drawn to the concentrations of Fae nearby—since Fae use the lines for magical transportation across long distances.”
My thoughts turned back to Albigard and his portals. “Oh. Is that
