Page 10 of Strange Lights

“Regina Quinn,” he said when I remained silent. “That’s who you are, isn’t it?”

“Never Regina, just Reggie. Heard of me?” I asked, playing dumb.

He would have heard of me, but I was always careful to maintain my privacy so no one ever put my face and name together. I preferred to be known as “that traveling investigator with the camper” rather than by any name. My voice only ever hit the airwaves disguised; my face never appeared on screen as more than a blurred-out blob. I hid behind my NDAs and lies and let the outlandish rumors build so if the truth ever emerged, it wouldn’t be believed anyway. Sometimes I pretended to be just an assistant instead of myself or gave a random name. The mystique worked for me. People interested in the supernatural or plagued by something paranormal tended to be either desperate or quirky enough to willingly hire the anonymous investigator recommended on the back corners of the internet. Sure, sometimes this meant the pay was shitty, but I racked up my money early on, and that afforded me the freedom to try to even my karmic score a little bit. I wasted plenty of my time on hoaxers who wanted to get their fifteen minutes of fame and refused to cough up my investigation fee. And other times, the only payment I got was the palpable relief on someone’s face after I banished whatever had been haunting them, whether real or imaginary. Every client like that let me hold my own ghosts at bay a little longer.

I was an early listener of Calvin’s podcast. I knew already that he thought people like me were problematic, spreading conspiracy and misinformation by believing in the supernatural. He’d called me out by name. It was one reason I had him on my radar; I didn’t need my name shouted out across the airwaves, and I knew I’d have to nip that kind of attention in the bud. It was immensely frustrating that Calvin thought I wanted to prove to the entire world that magic is real and cryptids exist. I simply wanted to protect it all and quietly tuck it back into shadow. I only wanted to be left out of it.

“I know exactly who you are,” Calvin said. It sounded like an accusation.

“Are you sure about that?” I said, knowing he never would know anything about me. Never could know, if I wanted either of us to be safe.

He sneered, smacking his beer bottle down on the counter too hard, foam fizzing up the bottle neck. “I know you play pretend and charge people good money to believe in your fake monsters and hauntings.”

Even though I knew that I should have left it alone, and that his end goal would only further mine along, I bristled at his misconception of me.

“Because your charging them to pretend you can debunk anything with science is fine? Tell me, do you always get solid answers? Never find something you couldn’t disprove? Do you repay your fee then? You get your money from somewhere too,” I said sweetly, sliding the napkin dispenser toward him and silently fuming.

“I suppose you’re here telling everyone the lake monsters are real and you’ll provide some blurry photos for a fee?” He jerked a handful of napkins from the dispenser and scrubbed at the counter before he took an aggressive swig of his beer.

“Yep. Caught me. Gonna download some poor-quality pictures of whale penises off the internet and say it’s the Loch Ness Monster come to Washington. I bet I could charge five hundred dollars for that.”

He choked on his beer.

We spent the rest of the evening bickering until Calvin was so annoyed with me that he left. I told myself it was better we weren’t friends. Especially if we ended up following any more of the same cases. We lived in uneasy tension for months. Calvin was determined to make me his archnemesis, constantly angry at me for stealing his cases when we showed up to the same investigations more often than coincidence could account for. I only sometimes regretted not giving him a false name, sleeping with him when I had the chance, and making him hate me even more.

The investigation when everything changed was a potential haunting in Georgia. A sweet little lady who was convinced the spirit of her late husband was haunting their home. Judging by the daughter’s lengthy email, he was a terrible human. There was no ghost, only a very dead but not forgotten man. I knew that going in.

Calvin actually was the first one asked to investigate. I sent Eldi to snatch his notepad with the case notes. She’s had him wrapped around her finger from the get-go. Even when he hated me, he was always polite and kind to her. To be fair, Calvin was right when he accused me of poaching his cases. Besides using Eldi as a spy (because no one suspects the toddler to be capable of such duplicity), I’d also stuck a tracker to his Airstream. I wasn’t trying to be invasive, I swear. I wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he never opened up a can of worms that I had to clean up. Calvin isn’t a bad person. He’s idealistic to a fault, and someday he’s going to reach out a helping hand to something that will bite first and ask questions later.

So I followed him down to Georgia, and, boy, was he pissed when I pulled up in the driveway behind him. He must have been having a bad day, because he usually kept his cool in front of others. Not this time. His demeanor didn’t do him any favors. Charlotte, the client, lived alone on a goat farm, of all places. Eldi greedily stared out the window, drool already dripping down her little fangs onto her chin as she spotted a herd of at least fifty roaming beyond the fencing.

“Absolutely not. No goats. You eat one right under Calvin’s nose and he will become a major problem for us.”

In the end, I didn’t trust her self-control, and I strapped her into the baby carrier, trying to ignore her muttered curses in Portuguese and French. She was in a romance-language phase that month. Calvin tried so hard to hide his soft spot for Eldi, but even when he hated me, I saw his eyes twinkle every time he looked at her⁠—even when she was cursing him out in foreign languages and scowling in his direction.

Calvin was being a bit of a dick, to tell you the truth, and he made me look fantastic in comparison, never mind that nobody had asked for my help. He was furious, but it manifested as arrogance and condescension that did nothing to impress Charlotte. All in all, it was a horribly unproductive start to this case.

Eldi struggled against the carrier as I tried to converse with Charlotte.

“Oh, poor dear, is she teething?” she asked, spotting the drool running down Eldi’s chin.

Eldi was gnawing ferociously on the carrier’s shoulder strap, eyes on the goat standing at the sliding glass back door like a dog waiting to be let in. I could only hope Charlotte didn’t let the thing inside.

“Something like that, yeah,” I managed, spitting out a hunk of Eldi’s hair that had found its way into my mouth as she desperately squirmed.

“Why don’t you hand her over to Dad while we talk, so you get a break?” she said, throwing Calvin a disapproving glare.

He turned a marvelous shade of crimson and started sputtering. Eldi growled at him, baring her teeth, suddenly content to be still in my arms. If Charlotte hadn’t been a seventy-year-old grieving widow, I would have kissed her.

“He’s just a coworker, not this one’s dad,” I said after a short pause to savor Calvin’s discomfort.

“Hmm,” Charlotte said, glaring daggers at Calvin, not convinced by his denials of responsibility. I wasn’t feeling charitable enough to defend him further. “Rough years to be doing it alone,” she went on, squinting at me over her glasses.

“We get by,” I said.

“Are you still nursing her? That was all my little ones wanted for comfort when they were teething, but it sure made things uncomfortable for me.”

I couldn’t hold in the involuntary squeak of agony that left my mouth at the mere thought of Eldi’s teeth anywhere near my more delicate anatomy.