Ghostly Justice (Seven Deadly Sins, #2.5)(23)

“Well?” Grant asked, impatient.

Rafe asked Fern, “Could I be alone for a minute?”

Fern hesitated. “I really can’t do that.”

Rafe looked at Moira and Grant. “I think if you both leave, she’ll come.”

Reluctantly, Moira left with Grant, saying to Rafe as she walked out, “Don’t break the rules.”

“What’s going on?” Fern asked.

Rafe smiled. “I thought you weren’t going to ask.”

“Changed my mind.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

She didn’t say anything.

Rafe continued. “You work here. You’re a comforting presence to any lingering spirits. They know you. They appreciate how you treat the dead. They’re not scared of you because you’re not creeped out by their physical bodies.”

“It would be hard to have this job if the dead freaked me out.”

“Moira is...sensitive,” Rafe said, not knowing exactly how to explain her fear of the morgue. He didn’t fully understand, and he didn’t think Moira knew, either. He suspected it went back to her past. “And Grant is angry.”

“What are the rules?”

“We’re not supposed to seek communication with ghosts, but if they choose to talk to us we can listen and ask them about their lives—often, if they can’t move past the astral plane to the afterlife it’s because of a powerful unresolved issue before they died. With Amy, she was trapped with her body because she couldn’t leave without her parents knowing what happened to her. Her love for her parents and their well-being kept her anchored to her body until it was identified.”

“Then she’s gone.”

“I don’t think so.” I hope not. “But I can help her.”

“And that’s the only rule? Don’t talk?”

He shook his head. “Don’t question. Don’t ask about the future. Don’t ask for any favors. That’s forbidden, because it opens a portal to the underworld, and your soul is at greater risk. It’s why going to psychics and asking what your future holds is a sin in the Church.”

“I’m not Catholic.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“To me it does.”

Then Rafe qualified, “For me, it’s a grave sin.” He didn’t need to explain further. “There’s also the problem of opening oneself up to possession. The more conversation, the more opportunities you give a poltergeist—a bad ghost—to get inside.”

“So all ghosts aren’t bad?”

“Ghosts are lost souls, not demons. Some are bad, some are simply...lost.”

You came back....

Rafe turned around. Amy stood behind him, surprised and smiling. “Yes,” he said.

Fern asked, “Is she here?”

Rafe asked Amy, “Do you want to say something to Fern?”

Tell her thank you for being so nice to my parents.

Rafe smiled and said to Fern, “Amy appreciates that you were kind to her parents.”

Fern looked freaked a moment, then she shook it off. “Well, it’s part of my job.”

She sings when no one is around. She has a very pretty voice. I can’t hear everyone, but I can hear her sing.

“I have a couple questions about what happened to you.”

Amy’s face twisted and she started to fade.

“Please, Amy—stay with me.”

I don’t want to think about that.

“I can help stop who did this to you. Do you know that Beth Milner went missing three months ago?”

Amy shook her head, but Rafe suspected she had sensed it.

“Tori Schaeffer is missing. She disappeared between midnight and six a.m. She’ll die the same way you died if we can’t find her.”

Tori? Amy came back into full focus.

“Do you remember a girl at your camp last summer who called herself Tessa Schaeffer?”

Yes. She was in our cabin. But she left early. Is she missing too?

“She killed you.”

No. It was him.

“Does he have a name?”

She frowned. I don’t remember. Everything is fuzzy. Tall. Long blond hair. So nice, so kind. I went with him, I don’t know why. I just—did.

“I think you were under a spell. Sort of like hypnosis. He said the right words and you went with him as if it were your idea.”

She was thinking.

Rafe pushed. “I need to know where you were when they took your blood.”

I died in the mountains.

“There was an altar. Candles.” As he spoke, he unzipped her body bag. He put his hand on her cold body. Amy’s ghost flickered in front of him and she stared at him, shocked.

I can feel you. How did you do that?

I don’t know.

He had a psychic connection with her now, he didn’t need to speak out loud. What he really needed was to see what happened to her, to filter her memories and fear through his experience and knowledge of the Baphomet ritual. He dismissed the fact that he, personally, had never witnessed a blood ritual like this, that until yesterday he didn’t even know it was possible.

Let me see, he said to her.

She trusted him, he felt it, and she let him into her memories. They revealed what happened when she died, but backwards.