The Gateway Trackers Books 1 & 2 Page 8

  “Why, yes, I did!” I said, adding what I hoped was a note of astonishment to my voice. “How did you know that?”

  “Because she’s telling it to me, Jess! Is it… I’m getting an ‘M’ here…” He closed his eyes again.

  All at once, three stage lights blew out with gunfire-like pops. As I looked upward, I saw at least a dozen spirits hovering around the edges of the stage, all staring with a singular intent at Freeman. I chanced a glance at Hannah, whose mouth was now moving rapidly.

  Under cover of Freeman’s nervous jokes about my grandmother being “a bit of a firecracker,” I tuned into the connection. “How’s she doing, Milo?”

  “She’s okay. She’s keeping it reigned in, but we both know that’s a relative term,” he answered. “Forget firecrackers, here come the fireworks, sweetness. Steer clear of the electronics!”

  Even as he said it, a deafening feedback squeal blared out of the microphone in my hand; I dropped it in alarm. Freeman’s lapel microphone began squealing as well, and he started batting at it like a wasp that had landed on his shirt. As I watched him swatting and swearing at it, three spirits streaked like lightning into the left wing; two more spirits vanished into the tech booth at the back.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he blurted out, before quickly recovering himself. “So sorry everyone, the uh… spiritual vibrations are very strong tonight. Jess’s grandmother must have quite the story to tell. She’s trying to hijack my microphone!” He laughed again, but the sound was forced—and no answering laughs came from the crowd. The sweat from Freeman’s brow was starting to trickle down his face, creating streaks in his foundation.

  The still image on the screen behind us began to flicker, and then the video of Freeman’s entrance began to play in reverse. Freeman tried his best to ignore it.

  “While our tech crew gets their act together, let’s see if we can’t connect to your grandmother, Jess. Now you said you had a special name for her. I’m getting an ‘M’ now. Is it… Mammie… no, Mamie!”

  “Yes, that’s right!” I said, pressing my hands to my cheeks in a clichéd gesture of surprise as the audience, now refocused on me, gasped collectively.

  Freeman flashed his used-car-salesman smile again, apparently convinced that he’d been able to maneuver his way out of this rocky start to the show. “Your Mamie’s here in this room with us now, Jess, and she has a special message just for you! She’s say—”

  “Turn it off! How do you just turn it off!”

  “I don’t know! Just unplug it!”

  “It is unplugged!”

  Panicked voices from backstage cut Freeman off. The crew’s equipment was going absolutely haywire—and apparently, some of them were now on-mike. Headsets were literally flying off of people’s heads. As I watched, an iPad propelled itself out of a stage manager’s hands and smashed against the wall. She shrieked and bolted toward the exit, pushing another crew member out of her way as she ran. In the aisles, the camera operators were tugging fruitlessly at every knob, lever, and switch, as the cameras’ “now recording” lights blinked on and off. One of the camera lenses even popped out and rolled across the carpet.

  The audience, meanwhile, was slipping into hysteria. People were whipping out their cell phones and taking pictures of the chaos. Others were screaming, some were crying; a few were even fleeing down the aisles toward the exits.

  I locked eyes with Freeman. I didn’t hide whatever was showing on my face—excitement, glee—fast enough. He leaned into me, careful to keep his grin plastered to his own face. His whispering through that grin made him look utterly deranged.

  “What’s happening here? Do you have something to do with this?”

  I merely shrugged. “You’re the ghost expert, Mr. Freeman. You tell me.”

  But then, even as I watched the havoc, a terrible thought occurred to me: If Hannah’s Calling couldn’t prove—right here in front of audience—that Freeman was a fraud, this chaos would only further solidify Freeman’s association with ghosts. It was a glaring flaw in our plan; how had I missed that?

  “Milo, she’s got to do more than just scare the shit out of everyone!” I urged through our connection, even as I stared Freeman down.

  “My girl’s just building the drama,” Milo answered. “Wait for it, now.”

  Freeman tightened his grip on my shoulder and projected his voice out over the commotion. “Stay with me, everyone! Let’s stay calm, please! It’s merely a bit of spiritual interference! Let’s hear what Jess’ Mamie has got to say! If we listen to her message, maybe everything will calm down,” he cried, with a note of badly repressed hysteria in his voice. He wiped away a trickle of sweat and placed two shaking fingers to his temple again. “Ah, yes! Yes, I can hear Mamie! What’s that she’s saying?”

  “Come on, Hannah!” I thought, almost like a prayer. At that moment, everything stopped. The screen behind us went blank. The lights ceased flickering. Freeman stood there, fingers on his temple, pretending to concentrate. The audience held its breath. All was utter stillness.

  Invisible to every eye but mine, a spirit shot down from the theater’s ceiling; flying as straight and swift as an arrow, the spirit collided with Freeman’s body. Freeman fell to his knees, shrieking in pain as a piercing whistling rent through the air. Freeman clawed in desperation at his right ear until the source of the whistling, a tiny silver earpiece, fell to the stage floor.

  The show only got better from there, at least from my perspective. As though someone had scripted it, the tiny earpiece began transmitting a voice; the voice was so loud it seemed as if someone were holding an invisible megaphone next to the earpiece.

  “Did you get that, Lionel? She wants Mamie’s advice about an internship. An internship far from home. Got that?” The voice echoed through the theater for all to hear.

  At that moment, the screen behind us lit up again, but this time it didn’t show a video of Freeman. Instead, a screenshot of his Facebook feed was projected for all to see: There, right in the center of the screenshot, was the picture we’d taken before the show… complete with my caption below it.

  The audience gasped. Freeman turned and stared with unmitigated horror at my smiling face.

  The earpiece betrayed Freeman again. “Her photo has a ‘cancer sucks’ hashtag, so ask her about a cancer connection.” Every word, clear as crystal, reverberated through the space. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.

  As realization spread like a wildfire through the audience, the spirits Hannah had Called flew into formation at the edge of the stage; they floated there with their arms at their sides, awaiting their next instructions like obedient soldiers. From the corner of my eye, I watched as Hannah raised both clenched fists a few inches into the air and, with a deep, cleansing breath, unfurled her fingers.

  “That’s right, sweetness,” I heard Milo’s gentle, calming encouragement to Hannah through our connection. “Say thank you, and let them go now. Just let them fly on home.”

  The spirits drifted up and away from the stage, before vanishing into the shadows above. It would’ve been an almost-peaceful moment if it weren’t for the absolute riot breaking out in the audience.

  People were booing and shouting obscenities at Freeman, who had dove to the floor and snatched up the earpiece; he was now trying desperately to muffle the voices still coming from it. Crew members sprinted out from the wings and began pulling Freeman and myself clear of the curtain, which was now rapidly swinging closed.

  As we stumbled back, half-caught in the heavy, dusty folds of fabric, I seized my chance. I yanked my arm out of the crew member’s grasp and bolted for the stage right wing. No one tried to stop me as I sprinted toward the glowing red exit sign at the end of a long brick hallway.

  “What was that? What the hell just happened here?” I could hear Freeman shrieking behind me. “Is my car waiting? Get my fucking car ready, now! I need my lawyers on the phone, get me my goddamn phone, now! And where’s that girl? Someon
e find that girl and get her back here!”

  But no one was going to find “that girl.” That girl was already jogging down the block to join her frantically waving co-conspirators, and she was laughing the whole way.

  6

  Busted

  OSCAR FLUNG OPEN THE BACK DOOR OF THE VAN. I tumbled inside just as the first of the angry ticketholders began streaming out of the theater doors. Oscar slammed the door shut behind me and I lay, panting and laughing, on the van’s floor. I looked up; Hannah, Milo, and Finn were all looking down at me. I reached up, grabbed Hannah by her shirt, and pulled her down on top of me into a bear hug.

  “You are incredible! My sister is such a badass!” I shouted, kissing her repeatedly all over her head and face.

  “Thank you very much, but can you let go of me now!” she giggled.

  “You guys should have seen it, she was amazing!” I said to the team. “Freeman is done! He’ll never work again! I bet they’re on the phone right now, canceling the next season of the Ghost Oracle!”

  “What happened?” asked Dan. “It was a disaster from out here! We couldn’t tap into their frequency at all!” Dan had a nervous habit of running his hands through his hair; it was now standing up like a mad scientist’s. “And just when I thought we’d finally found the frequency, every piece of equipment in here went haywire!”

  “Yeah, it was pretty damn awesome!” added Iggy.

  “The EMF detectors were off the charts, then every single battery drained and died in a matter of seconds!” Oscar said, grinning from ear to ear. His smile revealed a gold tooth and several missing teeth. “The computers, the cameras, the radio scanner, everything just went black. I knew you must’ve taken matters into your own hands!”

  The team was tickled all but pink. Haywire equipment, instantly-draining batteries, and through-the-roof electromagnetic readings were a sure sign that spirits were afoot. And for these three maniacs, otherworldly detection was always cause for celebration.

  “Luckily for us, the theater had some resident spirits, so when the show started and we hadn’t heard from you, Hannah was able to reach out to them and convince them to do the dirty work for us,” I explained. I then gave the team a carefully worded breakdown of the events in the theater. Even though we worked closely with the team, we had to avoid using any Durupinen terms. We also had to make sure to downplay the extent of Hannah’s abilities: As far as they knew, she was just a slightly more talented version of Annabelle or myself.

  By the time I had finished, Iggy was laughing so hard tears were rolling down into his beard and Oscar was cackling like a mad old crow. Even Hannah was looking pretty pleased with herself. The only person unmoved by the hilarity of it all was Finn. Surprise, surprise.

  “Finn, you could crack a smile you know,” I said to him. “We won. Victory is ours.” Then I looked at him a little more closely. “Wait, are you bleeding?”

  “I may have gotten into a slight row with a security guard on my side of the theater,” he said, grabbing a handful of shirt and touching it to his eyebrow, which was thick with congealed blood.

  “Yeah, I think I caught a glimpse of that. Why, exactly?”

  “I wasn’t comfortable with you on stage alone without protection, especially once the spirits started interfering. You weren’t supposed to be on stage at all! That wasn’t part of the plan,” Finn said, a bit defensively.

  I managed a great feat of self-restraint and refrained from rolling my eyes at him. “I know. I wasn’t thrilled either. But it all turned out fine, so I—”

  “Look, Freeman is leaving the theater!” Iggy shouted, and we all scrambled to the nearest window to watch as Freeman’s limo rolled up to the stage door, where a crowd of angry audience members had congregated. A dozen security guards formed a human wall to protect Freeman from the hostile crowd, but, even so, many patrons hurled their programs and T-shirts at him while shouting things like, “Fraud!” and “I want my money back!” and “Shame on you!” The crowning moment, at least for me, was when Gail, immediately identifiable in her bright blue homemade Ghost Oracle T-shirt, pulled a bottle from her purse and chucked it at Freeman. The bottle hit Freeman on the head, covering him in what looked like a chocolate diet shake. It was the perfect indignity for a man who had stripped so much from others for his own personal gain.

  §

  Iggy had offered to drive home with us instead of in the van since Hannah still hadn’t worked up the courage to take her driver’s test, but I’d refused his offer. I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel after a victory like that. Plus, there was no danger of my getting even the slightest bit drowsy with Finn in the backseat watching me like a hawk.

  I wiled away the hours on the drive home by talking through every detail of the evening and reliving every triumphant moment, until Finn disappeared behind one of his little black books and Hannah dozed off. My sister was so wiped out from Calling that she had fallen asleep mid-sentence while trying to respond to me. Even Milo, tired of my chatter, blinked out in order to conserve his energy.

  When we finally pulled up to the house almost four and a half hours later, I still hadn’t calmed down. I found myself hoping our resident spirit would make a fresh attempt at scaring us off—I could’ve gladly gone ten rounds with her in that moment. I killed the engine and leaned across the seat to nudge Hannah awake. Finn, ever on high alert even in the most mundane moments, had jumped from the car before I’d finished parking and was already waiting impatiently by the door. Christ, was he going to make us some warm milk and tuck us in before he considered his duty done and went home?

  Hannah, disorientated, blinked confusedly as she awoke. “Wow, are we back already? Did you drive the whole way without stopping?”

  “Not quite,” I said, flinging off my seatbelt and bouncing out of my seat. “I stopped to pee and get a slushie in Connecticut, but you slept right through it.”

  Hannah yawned and rolled awkwardly out of the car, landing heavily on her right foot, which seemed to have fallen asleep as deeply as she had. “What time is it?” she asked as she straightened herself up.

  “About 12:30 AM,” I said.

  “I feel so bad that you’re still up!” she replied.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told her. “I know how much Calling drains you. It’s not like you could’ve driven anyway.”

  “I know, but I could’ve at least kept you company. How do you feel?”

  “How do you think I feel? I’m on a high!” I had my keys in my hand and intended to unlock the door, but Finn—who’d mysteriously procured his own set of keys—had grown tired of waiting; I reached the door just as he flung it open. I pushed past him and marched up the stairs, with Hannah limping along behind me on her still-tingling foot. Finn brought up the rear, stomping unnecessarily loudly.

  “An asshole like that crippled in front of hundreds! And we’re the ones who made it happen? As soon as I regain the feeling in my ass after all that driving, I’m going to break into my happy dance!” I was practically singing as we climbed the stairs.

  I froze when I entered the living room. Two men stood in front of the fireplace with their hulking, muscular arms folded across their chests. I’d never seen one of the men before; the other was, most unfortunately, familiar.

  “I’d hold off on the dancing if I were you,” Finn said quietly.

  “Hello Seamus,” I said, trying to sound calm and unconcerned. “Long time no see.”

  Seamus barely looked at me except to nod in my direction. His words were for Finn; a Caomhnóir wouldn’t deign to speak to a Durupinen if he could avoid it, even if he had just broken into her home.

  “Apologies for the intrusion, Caomhnóir Carey. We don’t mean to overstep into your territory, but we have been ordered here by the High Priestess of the Northern Clans.”

  Finn merely nodded; his lips formed the very thinnest of thin lines as he pressed them together against whatever tirade he was withholding.

  “No need to apologize to
Finn, Seamus. It’s not his apartment you’ve broken into. But hey, don’t worry about us—the ones who actually live here,” I said loudly. “But enough with the pleasantries. To what do we owe this totally unwelcome pleasure?”

  Seamus turned reluctant eyes on me, as though it were an inconvenience to have to adjust the angle of his neck in order to address me directly. Swimming deep in the dark of his eyes was the same suspicion and disdain that had plagued so many Durupinen-Caomhnóir relationships. “You’ve been summoned to Fairhaven Hall to stand before the Council of the Northern Clans,” he said bluntly.

  Hannah and I looked at each other. “Me?” we said simultaneously.

  “Both of you,” Seamus clarified.

  “We’ve been summoned?” I asked, trying not to let my fear override my indignation.

  “As I’ve just said, yes.”

  “What gives anyone the right to summon us anywhere?” I asked.

  “The High Priestess and the Council have every right to summon you,” Seamus began. “They are responsible for all members of the Northern Clans, and you are answerable to their laws and dictates. You are required to attend a disciplinary hearing.”

  I exchanged a startled look, first with Hannah and then with Finn. “What the hell for?” I asked. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Even as I said it, I racked my brains. Had we done something wrong? Had we broken some rule or messed up a Crossing? We’d just seen Karen yesterday; she was still serving as our mentor, guiding us through the early stages of being our clan’s Gateway. As far as I could tell, she seemed to think we were doing just fine.

  “That’s for the Council to decide,” Seamus said, interrupting my silent, panicked assessment. “We have merely been instructed to escort you.”

  His companion swaggered purposefully forward. Instantly, Finn was in front of us; he assumed a combative stance as he pushed both me and Hannah backward protectively.