Page 22 of The Mare Rider of Cornwall Cove
“Yeah,” I said softly as I stared at the dark interior of the store. Smart people. They were home with family, sipping something fizzy and eating tiny hot dogs on toothpicks while Phil and I were trying to come down from a supernatural attack on our senses. My phone was vibrating steadily now and had been for about ten minutes. I’d chosen not to reply. Sometimes you just need to take a phone break. This was that time, but it wouldn’t be much longer. “Areyouokay?”
He shrugged one strong shoulder as warm air finally began to filter into the cab. “No, I don’t think I’m mentally okay. I’m okay physically. A few bruises, but that’s nothing but…” I glanced over at him. His brow furrowed deeply as he thought. “Yeah, no, my head is like a milkshake.” His gaze met mine. “Is that normal after being mind-probed by a minion of Satan?”
I tipped to the right to let my head fall onto his shoulder. “I love you so much right now.” He grunted before placing a kiss on my hair. “I don’t know about the mind-probe from a revenant. I’ve never encountered one before, and I’m not sure that whatever Smoke Man is, could be called a true demon. I’ll have to consult some of my books and see what the old ghost hunters have to say.”
The vibrating turned into a call. My ringtone was one of his fave Frank Sinatra songs blaring into my psyche. “I better take this one. You get back to Roxie and Tray, tell them the Wi-Fi extender got broken and our connections out there weren’t strong enough to stream clearly. We’ll film something later as an apology.”
“Okay. Uhm, do I mention Smoke Man?”
“No, not yet. Let me talk it over with Monique and Grandpa and then do some research. I don’t want Roxie to use that entity in some way that will be all over social media. The last thing we want is for more people to go there on some stupid quest, fully unprepared, to try to interact with things on the other side of the veil.”
“So don’t do what we do,” he asked, and I had to smile just a little.
“Exactly. Do as I say, not as I do, as parental units say,” I replied, took out my phone, and gazed down at the small cloth bag that came out with it and fell into my lap. What a lifesaver this tiny bag of magic had been. Monique had some powerful juju. With a short inhalation and exhalation, I tapped the green button and put the cell to my ear.
“Finally! We were so close to calling the police cars to come get you!” Grandpa blurted in rapid-fire Chinese. “Why were you not taking the texts? Your stream was bad and slow, then it went dead. I sent you many texts, and you never answered one! Monique and I think you have frozen to death!”
“Yeye, if you let me speak, I’ll tell you what happened. We’re okay. We had some technical issues with the connections, the cold, and a few beings that we’d not expected to run into.” My reply was also in Chinese, as he was far too wound up to translate well at the moment. Also, it felt like home to speak our family’s native tongue. If it wouldn’t have been weird, I’d have asked him to sing “Sleep, Baby” to me as he had when I was little. “We’ll be home in thirty minutes or less. Can you please make some hot Reishi mushroom tea and maybe whip up a fast batch of crispy honey noodles?”
That brought him up short. Mushroom tea was known in Chinese medicine to be a drink that helped restore chi and revitalize the spirit. Phil would need both and plenty of them.
“Did you run into a gui?”
“We did, and it got Phil.” Phil glanced at me as his thumbs were flying, replying to our tech team, who were probably sitting within spitting distance of my grandfather. The bags under his eyes were really pronounced now. “He’s really low on life force right now and scared badly.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I will put the kettle on now and make a fast batch of crispy noodles.”
“Thank you. We’ll be home shortly. Tell Monique we need to talk after we get Phil into bed with some energy boosters.”
“I will tell her. Be careful, little boppa.”
Oh wow, I’d not heard that term in years. It had no real meaning. It was just a word he had made up for me when I was a toddler. I promised we’d drive carefully and ended the call.
“Man, you got the easy call,” Phil moped, his hands falling to his lap as his phone continued to buzz. “She is not happy at all. And a lot of our viewers are disappointed.”
I figured they would be. “We’ll make it up to them. Technical issues when you don’t investigate a site beforehand are on us. Next time we don’t just show up. We’re going to do some recon first.”
“Yeah, and if there’s a demon, we’re going to get a priest to do a guest exorcism,” he replied with a lot less vigor than I liked. He was fading fast. Psychic encounters drained a person’s mind, body, and soul. We needed to get him home and into a warm bed. Roxie and the viewers could just get off our dicks. Phil and his health came before any stream.
“You look beat. Want me to drive home?” I asked.
“Yeah, okay, maybe.” That in and of itself said a lot. He rarely let anyone, even me, behind the wheel of his truck. “When we gethome, I want you to eat crispy noodles too. You had an anime fangirl nosebleed, remember?”
Oh right. Amid all the other chaos, I’d forgotten about that. It hardly seemed worth worrying over, but Phil wouldn’t let it go, I was sure. He really loved me. How did I get so lucky?
“Deal. We’ll both sip tea, have a treat, and go to bed.” I unbuckled and climbed out, he did the same, and within two minutes—and some seat adjustments—Phil was sound asleep. I was driving, listening to the radio as the DJ wished us all a happy new year while deep in thought about what to do next about Smoke Man and if it would, indeed, require a priest and some holy water.
Chapter Eight
Stepping into the bookstorewas like walking into a worried auntie convention.
Everyone rushed us, including the three ghosts, and began talking to us in unison. Phil, who had taken the brunt of the encounter this time, sagged into the couch under the stairs like a puppet with his strings cut. That seemed to cut through the thousand and one questions, complaints, and concerns that were being flung at us.
“Okay, chill, please,” I said with some volume as I sat down beside my boyfriend to help him remove his coat. He did it himself but gave me that darling smile to pass along that he appreciated being coddled. “Phil needs tea, sugar, and rest.”
“The tea is steeping and the crispy honey noodles are ready,” Grandpa announced and then began the climb up the stairs. Monique, who was a lot more spry than Grandpa, went with himafter giving me a look that made it clear we were going to talk. Something I was longing to do—after a nap and some noodles. And some tea.
Tray sat on the coffee table after moving some of his gear and placed his hands on Phil’s knees.
