I swore Joe was mentally taking notes over there. “I didn’t realize until last night a Medium would even need an anchor. Why is that?”
Brandon took over, with Hannah’s help, explaining the many, many pitfalls a Medium faced. How anchoring helped stabilize our Sight. How much support we needed in the field to work the case.
“What about the psychic energy reading you mentioned last night?” Edith pushed.
“Truthfully, I know next to nothing about that talent.” I shrugged because I really didn’t have much I could say. “It’s why I’m delighted Seiji has started teaching her things. We’ll need to lock down a master who can teach her, as it’s not something I can do.”
“It’ll make her incredibly badass,” Beau tacked on with a wink at Gwyn, getting a gamine grin in return. “She’ll be unstoppable in the field. Not many cases will give her pause once she’s fully trained.”
“That said, we could use some help educating her.” I felt this was a good segue. “By necessity, we’ll need to do some kind of online school or homeschooling, as we’ll be bounced around the country with little warning.”
“Let us handle that,” Edith volunteered immediately. “Gwyn, did you mention we’re retired teachers?”
“I did, actually. Can you be my teachers?”
“Of course, honey, we’ll happily do that.” Edith smiled, pleased to be asked. “We’ll need to figure out how to handle it.”
I could tell we were striking a good balance here. The grandparents were happy and relieved to be actively part of her life, no doubt keeping closer tabs on her going forward. I was fine with that. A child couldn’t have too many protectors.
The food was excellent, and between answering questions, I even got to eat it. Not a single ghost got near us, although I spotted a few trying for it. I just glared them down. They got the message.
Joe picked up the check, which was nice of him. As we exited the restaurant, I found myself asking a question of my own.
“Joe, you and your wife clearly believe ghosts are a thing and are open to psychics in general, so why is your son playing ostrich so hard?”
The poor man looked abruptly twenty years older, like just the thought of his son depressed him. “My daughter-in-law is from a very conservative, religious family. My son joined her religion when they got married, mostly to keep the peace, I think. But he’s onboarded more of their beliefs than I realized. They strictly do not believe in ghosts because, in their religion, all souls either go directly to heaven or hell.”
“Oh. Well, fuck, that would break their brains, all right, when they learn that’s not how things work at all.”
“That was a major part of the conversation on the way home last night. My daughter-in-law, especially, kept repeating why, over and over again, and you could tell she was very disturbed. Very confused as well. It’s hard to tell someoneyour religion is wrongbecause it comes off as an attack, when really, in this aspect, it’s just fact.”
I pondered this. I did want those two to come around, as Gwyn loved them, even if she was frustrated to the point of murder right now.
“Tell them most ghosts who linger do so because they want to become demons. That’s actually the case for about half the ghost populace down here. It’s not even a lie.”
Joe looked into the distance, lips parted with a sort of stunned surprise. “Huh. Really?”
“Generally speaking, ghosts are here for a multitude of reasons, and sometimes it’s because the soul is terrified about going to hell, so they stay on Earth and attempt to become demons to avoid it. It sometimes works, too.”
“And Gwyn was battling souls trying to become demons?” The horror spreading over his face turned him green around the gills. “My god. No wonder you acted so fast to protect her. You knew what would happen if you didn’t.”
“That’s part of it,” I admitted quietly. Thinking fast, I tacked on, “You can also tell them some of the good souls trapped here is because they didn’t get proper burials. Religious rites help guide the souls on, you see.”
“Oh, the logic for both of those will likely hit better. Thank you, Mack.”
“Just trying to help. We’ll be in touch shortly.”
We parted ways there, me climbing into the front passenger seat again. We still had a workday to get to, after all.
“I think that went very well,” Brandon said.
“Lordy, it sure did. My nerves didn’t need to show up after all. Uh, why aren’t we going anywhere?”
Brandon lifted his phone and waggled it. “Turns out we’re doing the restaurant today.”
“After I just glared a bunch of ghosts into submission?”
Fuck my life.
