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Ryker still wasn’t convinced. He started pacing and tapping his fingers on his leg as he walked. “We would have to be here. What about the house we’ve put years into?”
“It would still be there,” Lincoln said. “We would just have to figure out a way to balance between the two and fit in some investigations. We have nothing tying us to one place for very long. Onyx could come here with us.”
“So would your parents,” I said. “Your dad’s been talking about wanting to retire. We could always turn our house into a vacation rental for half the year and take our important things with us or store them.”
We all fell quiet as we thought it over. The plan honestly had merit, though that rested on sending this entity to the other side.
He’d overstayed his welcome.
“What we really need to do is call the witches,” I said with a sigh, pulling my phone out for the second time and dialing Astrid.
She answered on the third ring, her voice a little breathless as the video call started. “Sorry, girl, we were having a coven night.”
“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt,” I said, but she waved me off. “Girl, you know they all want to say hi.” She started walking with the phone before setting me against something so Grandma Rose and others came into view.
“Oh, you need us,” Grandma Rose said. She had a penetrating stare that I swear saw into my soul. She only looked for a few moments before tapping her nails against the table, thinking things over.
“What’s going on?” Astrid asked. Now everyone was leaning in, trying to see what we were dealing with this time.
“A really old family line, possible family feud, and a bad haunting,” I started before diving into the entire explanation. Everything from Lincoln nearly tumbling over the balcony to Ryker’s incident with the lake, and my dream.
“He infiltrated your dream in your protected area?” Rose asked, stopping me with a hand in the air. She looked like she was taking it personally.
“No, I stupidly fell asleep in the library. We were just relaxing. I didn’t think much of it,” I admitted.
She pursed her lips. “Still, you have protection on your body, do you not?”
“I do,” I admitted, “but I’ve been working on letting my barriers down so I can communicate with the ghosts. Maybe it was down a bit too far?”
“What else?” she demanded. “I feel conflict.”
“There are a lot of ghosts here that don’t want to leave. They were happy, Rose, not restless or vindictive. Until this entity came along and started causing havoc.”
“It takes a kind soul to have compassion for the dead,” Rose said as gently as possible. “But this entity is no simple ghost. He has to be dealt with first.”
“Are we dealing with the demon again?” Astrid asked. It was my next question, too. Rose shook her head.
“No. From the story, it sounds like we’re dealing with a twisted spirit. There are a lot of things that we take with us after we die. We may lose our body, but we don’t lose who we were. It sounds like his brother did not go willingly. For someone to do that to family, they are already a very corrupted soul. Sometimes when a soul corrupts, their harshest emotions can turn into something else. It’s quite possible that at its core, your ghost is Patrick, but he’s conjured this entity, a manifestation of his greed and hate and guilt, and brought his brother to life through that.”
“So, it’s not just him, but a twisted extension of himself as well?” I asked, trying to summarize.
“Exactly. Two halves of a whole,” she agreed.
“So, how do we get rid of it without evicting all the other souls here who don’t want to go and don’t necessarily need to go?” Lincoln asked.
“You will have to trap it. That’s the only way. Tell the others to stay away until you’ve dealt with it. If they come close after your warning, that is not on your conscience. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lincoln said with a nod of respect.
“Good boy,” she said fondly. “And once it’s trapped,” Ethan hedged. “What do we do then?”
“What we always do,” Rose said. “We send it where it belongs and let the afterlife sort it from there.”
ChapterSixteen
Brea
“Darklings, we have a special guest tonight. This is Victor, he is the one who leads Bellmore ghost tours. We met him and his daughter briefly at the coffee shop in town, and they told us about this tour. You know that we couldn’t wait to take it. So tonight, he’s going to take us along and teach us a little bit about this adorable little town.”
