Page 62 of Mack's Horribly Hellacious Ghost Town
I turned to look but…uh…it looked kinda empty? “Did we get everyone?”
Booker walked to us, offering a water bottle to Mack first, then bottles to Lachlan and me. “Here, everyone hydrate. And yes, I think we got everyone. I say we leave the salt line down and check again tomorrow, just in case someone’s trying to be very clever and hiding somewhere.”
It was dark in here, despite all of our lights, so I was all right with erring on the side of caution. “Sure. Thanks, Booker.”
“No problem. It’s easy to dehydrate in this desert.”
He had that part right. I kept drinking, and drinking, and still I feel like a sponge left to dry out on the back patio. In full sun. In July.
Mack drained half the water bottle in one long gulp before letting out a happy sigh. “That hit the spot. I must remember to drink more. Eli, how you feeling?”
“Exhausted. I’m ready for nap time. We did a lot of clearing down here.” Eli regrouped with us, Quinn still watching her back like he didn’t trust the room. I didn’t blame him. “I think we should quit for the day and finish tomorrow, though. I do not want to tackle this building at night. It’s too damn dark in here as it is. Plus, I need to recharge before we run into Joey.”
“I’m good with leaving.”
Lachlan nodded. “Aye, breaking for the day’s smart.”
“We got a lot done, but we must remember this is a marathon, not a sprint,” Booker said.
Pacing ourselves was hard because we normally didn’t get these huge cases. Normally we did sprint, getting in and out, and rested while on the road. Something else to keep in mind and guard against.
“Then let’s close shop for the day and go get some lunch.” I, for one, was famished after chasing ghosts and trying to protect multiple people all morning.
17
We’d worked a lot today. It was such an odd case, really, in terms of howmuchpassing and fighting I’d been doing with ghosts. Even the Highland case wasn’t like this, as the ghosts there hadn’t been bad or tried to fight me off. They’d just been desperate to escape.
Here, I had just as many friendly ghosts as I did baddies.
Couldn’t say I enjoyed the mix.
After working the theater all morning, we headed to the ranch and relaxed. I took a very long soak, as I felt I had all the cooties after being in the theater’s dingy basement. I was beyondtired after dinner. Aside from making sure Gwyn was all right for the night and had everything she needed, I didn’t do much of anything else. I retreated to mine and Brandon’s room and flopped on the bed. It was a good bed, fortunately, easy to sleep on.
And oh, look, it was a nice ceiling. Plain, boring, demanding nothing of me. I could lie here and blink at it, and it didn’t call me out for being spacey, it just withstood the scrutiny. Such a good ceiling.
The door opened and I didn’t even look. I knew who it was because of his heavy tread.
“Uh…you okay over there?”
I blinked up and Brandon’s face had suddenly taken the place of the ceiling. He had a nice face. I could stare at it for a while, too. Although he was likely to ask me more questions. “I’m disassociating.”
He mouthed a silentah.“Rather do that than deal with Black Rock, huh?”
“You get it.”
“I do. If disassociating tonight helps you deal with tomorrow, you be your best space cadet self.”
“Okay,” I said happily.
He rummaged about the room doing whatever while I went back to staring at the ceiling. One of the many reasons why I wanted to marry this man was that he let me do the absurd without comment.
He was down to his boxers when he flopped onto the bed next to me. We lay there, side by side, staring at the ceiling.
“I have a question for Future Mack,” Brandon informed me. “Is he available?”
“Future Mack is listening but may not respond. What’s the question?”
“What do you want for a wedding? Something pomp and ceremony, courthouse, micro-wedding like Jon and Don did?”
