One More Bite (12 page)

Granny May, who spent a lot of time lounging around the forefront of my brain, had taken to hanging out the wash as she did her imaginary gabbing with me. She used the old-fashioned, nospring clothespins, and her line kind of sagged in the middle because Gramps Lew tended to let home improvement chores go until he finally got fed up with her bitching. As I pulled into a space between a couple of vehicles that looked more like packing crates than automobiles, she said, Take a look at this parking lot! These ghostlusters are crawling out of the damn woodwork!

Some patience, Gran. A lot of them are here because they’ve lost somebody dear to them and they think the person’s still floating around.

What would you do if you thought I was a ghost?

Force you into business. You’d be great entertainment at slumber parties.

We managed the hike to the ironbound front doors without losing anyone, though Dormal was panting slightly from carrying bags and boxes, and the Haighs complained the whole way that the Con organizers should’ve picked a more accessible spot for their gathering.

Cole rolled his eyes at Iona, who responded with an indifferent shrug. Despite her lack of interest in him, we’d still decided he should stick with the girls. Since Viv clearly dug him and Iona had to hang with her, he shouldn’t have a problem keeping an eye on them. Plus Rhona should stay close to Viv, giving him charge of three suspect-Beas. But the matchup couldn’t be too obvious. So we’d come up with a plan that would lump them together, leaving Vayl and me to shadow the Scidairans and the Haighs. Of course, the fluidity of events might require us to change partners and responsibilities, but at least we had a place to start.

Our plan began along with GhostCon, just inside the front door. In a hall where sky-high pillars held up the room’s corners, and a parquet floor had been designed to portray the story of Morag emerging from Loch Morar to bite off some poor fisherman’s head, convention organizers dressed in black polo shirts and beige slacks had set up two rows of tables on opposite sides of the entryway. k thn o Behind the tables to our left sat four groups of two women, each of them guarding a stack of papers, a three-by-five file holding preprinted name cards, and plastic badges on red lanyards. Signs taped to the front of the tables told us where to line up alphabetically if we were preregistered. Another sign directed walk-ins to the other side of the aisle.

People packed the room. Some of the overflow even straggled up the grand staircase, which intersected the walk-in tables like a superhighway. It, in itself, caught the imagination with its enormous stone balusters and a mile-long tapestry at the first landing depicting a coiled serpent with a dragon’s head rearing to strike as a knight charged it with a burning lance. Pretty striking stuff. But even that didn’t draw the eye like the paying customers.

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When I say they dressed for the occasion, I’m talking costuming by Hollywood on its best day. I recognized Dickens’s Christmas ghosts, as well as Casper, the Headless Horseman, and Harry Potter’s poltergeist, Peeves. Others had chosen less identifiable characters. Guys in monks’

robes with fake axes buried in their heads. Women in eighteenth-century frocks with nooses dangling from their necks. And one odd couple whose blue makeup and sewn-on kelp seemed to symbolize a double drowning. I got the feeling the getups were supposed to be cool, but I kept getting the oddest urge to whip out handfuls of candy for their tricks-or-treats.

All of us Tearlachers found our respective tables and took our places in line. Floraidh finished first, but decided to wait for Dormal, whose line wound around a metal pole with a red velvet rope connecting it to another pole standing in the center of the room. I guess that’s how karma slaps you when you claim your last name is Smith.

When it was my turn I pasted on my best smile and said, “Lucille Robinson.” The volunteer looked up at me. And just as I was thinking she should never sport a ponytail because it made her look like she needed a year’s supply of Rogaine, her face did one of those stretchy numbers the TV camera sometimes pulls to simulate an acid trip.

I leaned forward, bracing my left hand on the table, moving my right into my jacket. As my fingers slid around the grip of my gun, another face swam into focus on top of hers. Edward Samos. Looking healthy and smug as a Grand Champion Fair pig. “Such power in a name,” he said. “Can you really kill a man if you don’t know his true identity?”

Since Cole’s cover name started with a T, his was the hand that snaked out to pull me upright.

“Lucille? Are you okay?”

No way was I looking away from that face again. “Are you feeling anything . . . unusual right now?” I asked Cole.

Samos’s body clapped her hands. She said, “Oooh, are you channeling a Visitor? We usually get quite a few at the opening ceremonies.” The longer she talked, the less she resembled my nemesis, as if his features melted into hers with each expression switch.

Cole said, “No. I’ve got nothing.”

I grabbed the tag the woman held out for me and backed up a step. “Me neither. Not really.” By now Samos had faded completely. Son of a bitch! I can’t really be seeing his ghost. Can I? But that would be better than the alternative. Which would be that I’m losing my marbles. Again.

I mentally reviewed the moment of his death. It had seemed like every other vampire’s passing. That horrified moment of realization. And then, poof. Vapor, wafting away on the wind while the few bits and pieces that remained of his physical self fell to the ground. But before that. Just prior to the big finale, he’d scraped up a small pile of grass and dirt, spit on it, and begun to chant over it in a language I now knew belonged to the followers of Scidair.

Did he manage to save some part of himself? And if so, how can I find out for sure?

I know one tall, buzz cut, and handsome bumming around in the stratus that you haven’t talked to in a while, said Granny May as she bent over her brown wicker laundry basket. He’d probably have an idea. Or at least give you some peace in the matter.

He’s not allowed to interfere. Besides.

What?

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He doesn’t like Vayl.

So?

I haven’t figured out how I feel about that, okay? I thought we were all pretty much on the same team.

There’s dissent in every rank.

But he’s supposed to be above that. Literally. He’s an Eldhayr, for crying out loud!

Granny May shoved back the edge of the sheet she’d just clipped to the clothesline. From what I understand, so are you.

Okay, we’re not even going there. You got that?

She gave a whatever shrug. Raoul is your Spirit Guide. Sooner or later you’re going to have to work something out with him.

You dropped a sock.

Where?

With my sensible side distracted, I ignored the problem a while longer while I assured Cole I was fine. I moved toward the murmuring crowd filling the back section of the front hall and heading toward the open doors of the great room, where most of the activities would take place. I took a program from a woman dressed in the Hoppringhill tartan and used it to fan myself as I leaned against a wall and eyed the rest of Tearlach’s guests back at the registration tables. Cole sidled up beside me.

“I’ll bet this place is a bitch to clean,” I said as I motioned to the series of velvet banners hanging from the ceiling.

Cole didn’t want to talk about dusting. At least not that kind. “Tell me you weren’t going to pull on that nice woman,” he murmured.

Vayl’s voice filled my left ear. “Did the clerk threaten Floraidh?”

I didn’t want to tell him the truth. But what kind of lie would make me sound less crazed? I said,

“Her face morphed into somebody else’s while I was looking at her, talked to me in his voice, and then changed back.”

“Who?”in t>

“Samos.”

He didn’t laugh. Not even that choking gasp that passed for his chuckle. “Has this happened before?”

“Yeah, once on the plane. And once at Gatwick, when I was standing at the counter, waiting to buy a muffin.”

“We need to discuss this. But now Floraidh and Dormal are moving toward the great room. I overheard them discussing their table setup. Perhaps you two should take your places.”

Cole and I allowed the Scidairans to pass and then moved into the crowd after them. As we

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ambled toward the arched openings leading to a vast, open-span room, Rhona came up from behind me and grasped my forearm, her grip bruising. “Come on, now, let me give you the grand tour,” she said as she dragged me forward. “On the way we can talk about parliamentary reform. Did you know my MP has a degree in Occult Studies?”

Just as I was narrowing my choices of pressure points and taking advance pleasure in the look on Rhona’s face when I knocked her out, Vayl reached my side. Rolling our plan into motion he said, “Rhona, I believe Iona is looking for you. They cannot seem to find Viv’s identification tag or her name on the list. The woman is getting rude, which is upsetting her. She says she wants to go back to the B and B.”

Rhona dropped her hand and swung around like she was about to pound through the doors of the nearest saloon and gun down the first hombre who crossed her. “These people are complete nitwits! Now do you see why I prefer dealing with the dead?” As she stalked off, Vayl slipped Cole the missing papers.

Palming them so neatly I wondered if he’d worked his way through college as a card shark, Cole said, “Hang on, Rhona. Maybe I can help. I once organized my Scout troop’s father-son wiener roast.” Flashing us a grin, he strode after her.

Chapter Fifteen

With the Jepson group about to fall into Cole’s debt and his charm dialed to life-of-the-party, Vayl and I felt comfortable turning our backs on them for the time it took to lock on to the rest of Tearlach’s boarders and assess the most likely means of Bea’s attack, should it come during the opening ceremonies.

Lesley and Humphrey had hustled to the front row, where they’d scooped up the seats to the right of the aisle and, from the look of their campsite, didn’t intend to release them for the duration of the Con. Floraidh and Dormal, weighed down with supplies for their booth, were working their way through a swelling crowd of avid ghost fans who’d only now begun to seat themselves. Most still stood in groups of anywhere from two to fifteen among the double rows of chairs set up in the east half of the red-carpeted room. They kept looking eagerly toward a temporary platform, on which the organizers had placed a podium with a microphone wired to two large black speakers that sat at the front corners of the stage. A pair of long, narrow tables set with pitchers of water and glasses, and slightly nicer chairs than the ones reserved for the audience, flanked the podium.

You reached the entire setup via a set of rickety stairs that made me hope all the speakers had sworn off donuts the month before. If the n thy made it safely to their seats, they might be impressed by the roughly plastered wall, which soared to a peak behind them. It had been painted with a massive representation of the Hoppringhill’s coat of arms, five scallops on a crossed scarlet ribbon.

A minute later Floraidh and Dormal popped out of the crowd onto the west side of the great room. This held a variety of booths, some built to resemble lemonade stands, some looking like mazes with their multiple lattice walls folding in odd directions. This portion of the room could be shut off by an electronically controlled curtain that moved up and down like a shade. At the moment only a couple of feet of it peeked out of its tubular metal ceiling-mounted casing.

The Scidairans found their booth right away. The haunted-house facade, complete with a ghostly figure staring out the tower window, was kinda hard to miss. A young woman dressed in white sat on the “front porch” behind a long wooden table. Dormal started unpacking while Floraidh chatted with the woman, who had to be a coven member. Even from across the room she scented other to me. But without my Sensitivity I think I’d still have guessed bad guy the second I laid eyes on her. She had Floraidh’s steam-cleaned demeanor, her bouncy blond hair and rosy cheeks

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making her seem like the kind of girl who’d organize a food drive for the homeless. Until you spent some time on those snapping brown eyes that left her lips and teeth to smile without them. Plus, she let them linger on people a beat too long. Like a python who’s sizing up her next meal. Floraidh said something to her and she bared those teeth again. Was it me, or did they seem a little sharper than your normal burger grinders?

“I wonder what they are talking about,” said Vayl.

“Too bad we couldn’t put a bug on them. I wonder if they really would’ve found it.”

Vayl’s shrug was less, I don’t know, than, Hey, you’re the one who consulted the Wiccan.

I opened the program as Floraidh and Dormal turned back toward us. While Vayl kept an eye on them I began to read. A couple of paragraphs later I said, “These Connies function like vampires.”

“Excuse me—Connies?”

“Yeah, you know, people who spaz out over theme conventions? Like that dude over there who’s dressed as Hamlet’s father?”

“Ah, I see. Go on.”

“They’ve got a whole night full of goodies planned. Panel discussions here in the great room. Smaller talks by different experts in the kitchen, dining room, library, and billiard room, not to mention several of the bigger bedrooms. GhostWalks every fifteen minutes starting right outside the front door. Those you have to pay extra for.”

“How long do the opening ceremonies take?” Vayl asked.

“Half an hour. It looks like the lights are going out at the end, so be ready for that,” I said.