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“So it’s not real?” I said.
“It’s real,” Tina said. “Just very rare.”
“Do you think it’s something we could use to learn more about this thing?” I said.
“No, I don’t think so,” Tina said quickly.
Jules blinked at Tina. “Wait a minute. Tina. What do you know about trance mediums? It’s not actually something . . . I mean you don’t have any experience with it. Do you?”
She smiled. “It’s almost gratifying that you’re taking me seriously now.”
“Can you really do it?” Jules said.
Her hesitation, and the way her gaze darted nervously between us was enough of an answer. She couldn’t come right out and say no.
“Oh, my God, Tina, this is incredible. We’ve got to get a tape of this. If we can show what the real thing looks like and maybe find a way to demonstrate how the fakes—”
“No,” she shook her head. “I want to help, really I do, but this—the Ouija board is one thing, but actually channeling it directly . . . it is dangerous. I’ve never wanted to get that close. It’s better having something like the board between me and the phenomenon.”
A lead, any lead, was too good to give up. I said, “But Tina, if you could contact it directly—”
Tina said, “This thing has killed. If I let it inside me—could we even stop it?”
“Or maybe we could stop it from killing again,” I said.
“If you could talk to it, directly, through me,” Tina said. “What would you say?”
Good question. “I’d want to find out where it came from, what it wants, and what I need to do to convince it to go away. However it was sent here, there has to be a way to send it back again. If it’s sentient, I have to be able to reason with it.” That was my idealism talking again.
Tina took a deep breath. “The reason I’ve kept quiet all this time about what I can do is because in a way, even when this stuff works, it’s still all parlor tricks. The only people who are really interested are the ones who want to exploit it, or desperate people messed up with grief, like Peter. They treat it like a psychic hotline they can call up whenever they want. When really, I don’t understand what’s going on most of the time.”
“I’m just asking you to try.”
“Gary wouldn’t go for it,” Tina said.
“We’ll tell him it’s an experiment,” Jules said.
Tina leaned back and studied the ceiling. Communing with the beyond, maybe. I wondered for a moment what it would be like to be her. Did she hear voices all the time? Some of the time? Was it like listening to a faint radio, like she only tuned in to distant spirits, or did they speak to her directly, loudly? How did a person live with something like that?
How annoyed would she be if I asked her all these questions?
Rubbing her face, she leaned forward and let out a sigh. A weight seemed to settle on her, slumping her shoulders, pulling her lips into a frown. It made her look older, far different from her screen persona. It wasn’t fear or trepidation, I didn’t think. More like resignation.
“Here’s what we do. I call the shots. If it doesn’t feel right, we stop, no arguing. Got it?”
Jules and I nodded.
“Where are we going to do this?” I asked. “What can we burn down this time?”
She scowled at me. “Not here. We have to keep at least one place safe. Can we get into New Moon? It talked to us once, there.”
I shook my head. “If we try to get in before the investigators are done with it, it’ll screw up the insurance.”
“Then we go to Flint House,” she said.
“The house that kills people?” I might have shrieked a little.
“I figure the demon’ll know where to find us, it’s been there before.”<
