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“Are you sure that’s what this is?”
Cassie’s blush faded, but the heat in her cheeks remained, replaced with a flash of anger. “Am I a suspect, Detective Harris?”
“At the moment? No.”
“Am I a person of interest?”
“Again, at the moment? No.”
“Then why are you treating me like one?”
Detective Harris tilted her head back and let out a huff of air aimed at the trees. Her lips flapped for a second or two. When she looked back down at Cassie, her eyes seemed a few shades warmer. “You want the honest answer?”
Cassie raised an eyebrow in response.
“I’m not sure what to make of you.”
“You’re not the first.”
“I’m sure.” Harris paced the clearing, deliberately kicking leaves up as she walked. “Look, I know you had nothing to do with this. You’re not a suspect. But I have to be careful. We don’t need a media frenzy on our hands. That’s not something I want to deal with on top of everything else.”
“I caught your impromptu press conference. It looks like it’s going to be hard not to have the press digging into this more than they already are. I’m not trying to make your life harder. I know you have no reason to trust me, but we both know David. Does he seem like a guy who would put stock in some crazy lady who claims she can talk to ghosts?”
Harris laughed, disproving Cassie’s previous theory that Harris never smiled on the job. “No, he doesn’t.”
“He’s a good man and I know you trust him. He trusts me. So, let me help you. You came to me, remember? I didn’t ask for any of this. I thought I was done. And I was okay with that.”
Detective Harris moved past Cassie and while she didn’t welcome Cassie with open arms, she didn’t tell her to get lost either. That seemed like a win, however marginal.
“Did you figure anything out?” Harris held out her arms and wiggled her fingers. “Get any feelings?”
“Okay, you don’t have to say it like that,” Cassie teased. “But no, I didn’t. No feelings, at least.” She paused and waited for Harris to re-engage her focus. “I did see Hannah for the first time, though.”
Detective Harris couldn’t hide the disbelief on her face, but she went with it anyway. “Is that what was happening right before I arrived?”
“You mean right before you scared me? Yeah.”
“You were muttering to yourself. I called your name at least three times.”
Cassie shook her head. “I was pretty focused. She talked to me. She kept repeating the phrase ‘it’ll be over soon’.”
Harris’s mouth twisted to one side. “Any idea why?”
“I’m kind of hoping it’s the last words she heard and not an omen of death, you know?”
“Fair enough.”
For a moment, the only sounds came from the birds and insects and trees around them. There was a faint buzzing and Harris pulled her phone out of her pocket. She held up a finger and walked a few paces away.
Cassie returned her focus to the crime scene and gave Harris her privacy. The smell of blood had vanished, but the breeze still chilled Cassie in an unnatural way. There was a chance Hannah was still hanging around but refused to show herself while Harris was present. It felt good to have another living person nearby. At the same time, Cassie wanted to see if Hannah had anything else to say.
Moreover, she wanted to make sure “it’ll be over soon” didn’t have a double meaning.
Ghosts were imprints of their former selves, with a limited amount of energy to use when making contact. In all of Cassie’s experiences, she found that when they spoke, it was relevant information, however it sapped their energy as quickly as physically manipulating an object. It might take days or weeks before they could reappear without access to a power source.
Sometimes, they had enough humanity left inside them to pass on messages or say goodbye to loved ones, but that was rare. Those came with older spirits. They’d hung onto the plane long enough to understand whatever physics was needed to move
objects or speak to people other than mediums. They were the ones horror stories were based on. Cassie didn’t have a lot of experience with that kind. By the time they had reached that point, they were less interested in helping and more interested in hurting.
