Page 25 of Ghostlighted
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” I watched the flow of traffic for a while before clearing my throat. “Thank you.”
He didn’t answer until he’d finished changing lanes. “For what?”
“For making this round trip with me. Six hours on the road, interrupted only by Greg’s debatable hospitality, isn’t the pleasantest way to spend your day off.” I let my voice drift up a bit at the end of the sentence, hoping that Ricky might volunteer something about his actual job. However, either he didn’t notice my unsubtle hint, or he chose to ignore it.
“De nada.” He glanced at me and gave me a wink. “Besides, I got lunch out of the deal.”
I let the matter drop. I’d learned in the few weeks of our acquaintance that Ricky was like me in that both of us appreciated quiet, especially after a meal, so we drove for a while in silence before I brandished my phone.
“I want to check out the website from that flyer, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. What’s the company? I didn’t get a good look at the ad.”
“A paranormal investigation supply. They sell ghost hunting equipment.”
His eyebrows rose. “Isn’t that kind of redundant for you? It’s not like you need to hunt a ghost. You’ve already found one.”
“Technically, he found me first. But I’m curious. How do people who do this seriously approach the problem?” I snorted. “Thaddeus Richdale certainly never cracked that particular code.”
“I guess it won’t hurt to check them out.”
“Nope.” The home page had a helpful list of basic equipment, so I scrolled through, clicking on links that sounded interesting.
After reading the description of a device called an EVP portal, I asked, “Did anybody in Ghost ever use traditional ghost hunting gear?”
He nodded. “Several times over the years. Saul’s covered the entire Manor more than once since he took over as director. No luck. Now and then, Professor DeHaven gets contacted by other so-called ‘professional’ ghost hunters. They sign up for her extension classes and then try to argue with her. They don’t last long.”
I tapped my screen with a fingernail. “Some of this equipment is for recording sounds.”
“They tried that at the Manor too. Never got anything but static.”
“But Peg—Marguerite Windflower, the psychic counselor I spoke to—said that something in the Manor actually repelled ghosts. If they weren’t looking in a place where a ghost actuallywas, they wouldn’t have gotten any results.”
“That’s… a good point.” He flashed me a grin. “But you know exactly where a ghost is. You want to use it as proof that the equipment either works or doesn’t? Beat the ghost hunters at their own game?”
“No. Not really. The last thing I need is a bunch of these guys”—I tapped my screen—“showing up on my doorstep to use Avi’s presence to bolster their own reputations. I’ve got nothing to prove to them.”
“For Saul and Patrice then?”
I shook my head. “Not for them either. I’m pretty sure they have no doubts.” I glanced down at a page featuring a piece of equipment that promised voice-to-text from sounds detected along multiple radio frequencies. “For Avi.”
“Avi? Surely he doesn’t need proof, either.”
“No, but I think he’s lonely, Ricky. He’s stuck there in that house, and while the house is great, he probably knows everycrack and crevice by now. I’m the only one he can communicate with other than Gil, and Gil’s vocabulary leaves much to be desired. But if there was a way for others to hear his voice, to have conversations with him?”
“You’re right.” Ricky made a sound low in his throat that provoked a completely different response in me than he probably intended. “That would mean something to him.”
“So you think I should order some of this stuff?”
“Can’t hurt to try.”
Well, it could hurt a lot if I raised Avi’s hopes and the equipment turned out to be a bunch of bogus junk. But as I’ve said, when it came to Avi’s afterlife, we were still in the discovery process, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t blame me if the results were disappointing.
I poked around on the site a little more, added the text-to-speech tool and the EVP portal to my cart, as well as a couple of faraday bags to protect the electronics from Avi’s electrical field. The total at checkout made me wince, but hey, I had a hundred and twenty-five grand sitting at home, and Sofia’s trip would hardly make a dent in it.
I opted for expedited shipping at a premium, because the look in Avi’s eyes when Ricky and I had left for our gardening adventure was still with me. The sooner we had a solution, the better.
