The taller policeman took a deep breath. It didn't take any psychic abilities to know I was in for a lecture. I gathered up my things as they took turns telling me what happened to tourists who turned in false alarms. By the time I explained what I was doing there, reiterated that I wasn't given to phoning in prank calls, and heard their second round of lecturing, they hustled me upstairs. I was more than willing to believe that I'd had some sort of weird episode in the inn, something related to its spectral inhabitants, and imagined everything with the handsome, if troubled, man.
Until I reached in my bag to pull out the key to lock the door behind us. Then I saw my notebook.
There were bloody fingerprints all over it.
I spent the rest of the night writing up my experience, in between watching the ghost cat sleep, groom itself, and hobble around the room poking into things. It didn't seem to be thrilled to see me, and after trying unsuccessfully to convince it to lie on the bed next to me (so I could take a picture of the two of us together), I ended up more or less ignoring it as it ignored me.
By the time dawn lightened the gray layer of clouds enough to indicate it was morning, I was exhausted and cranky, unsure whether I had witnessed some amazing spectral encounter with a ghost that could manifest a physical presence, or if I was delusional.
I fell asleep wishing the former. At least then I could touch him.
"No messages, Miss Telford," Tina the receptionist said that afternoon as she handed me the room key. I waited to see if she had anything else to add, anything along the lines of a complaint about the three-legged semitransparent feline that was inhabiting my room, but she just smiled and turned to deal with another customer.
"Curiouser and curiouser," I said as I limped over to the elevator, my bag clinking and rattling. I shifted it to the other shoulder and wished I were in a line of work that didn't require so much equipment, equipment that had to be taken everywhere, just in case it was needed. My day trip to a haunted abbey turned out to be one of the times when it was nothing more than a heavy albatross hanging off one shoulder. I punched the number for my floor, and wondered if the Summoning had faded enough to let the cat return to its previous existence. Maybe the maid hadn't seen the cat because it was gone.
"Oh, hello, kitty," I said as I unlocked my door. It was sitting on the windowsill, staring out the window. "I thought you'd gone. I'm glad to see you haven't, although…" I tugged on my lip. Between the tests I'd conducted early the evening before, and the ones I'd done during the dark hours of the night, I had about as much data as I could conceivably collect. Pictures, video, infrared and ultrasound readings, ion analysis, you name it, I had it, enough to give the analysts back at the office an orgasm. Perhaps it was time to Release the cat.
"You want to go home, kitty? I think it's time. I really don't want to have to explain to the housekeeping staff just what I've been up to in here, and although you really are the almost ideal pet—no shedding, no litter box odor, no finicky eating habits—I get the idea you aren't wild about being here either."
I laid out the necessary tools in front of me, and after sprinkling a bit of ginseng over the cat, started reciting the words of Release.
I had to stop midway through to pinch the bridge of my nose. The powdered ginseng was tickling my nose, making it scrunch up and my eyes water with the urge to sneeze. I waited until the urge passed, completed the Release chant, made the protection symbols, and unguarded my mind to envision Releasing the spirit to another plane of existence.
The cat twitched an ear at me and started licking its shoulder.
"Uh-oh." I gnawed on my lower lip and considered the cat. Maybe I didn't use enough ginseng? Or maybe my stopping in the middle of speaking the words threw it off. I'd try it again, this time taking care not to breathe in the ginseng.
As the last word of the Release left my lips, the cat moved on to licking its sole back leg.
"Poop. Something's not right here. I wonder if the ginseng wasn't fresh enough?"
I spent the next hour and a half trying variations on the Release, adding and subtracting amounts of ginseng, even adding a dollop of dead man's ash in case that was the secret ingredient to a successful Release.
Nothing worked.
I was starting to get a bit worried. I knew by the rules of Summoning that if I didn't Release the cat, it would be bound to me for all my days, and while it had managed to escape being seen by the maid, I couldn't count on it achieving that feat every day.
Not to mention how I was supposed to get it home to my apartment in northern California. I hated to think what I was going to have to write on the customs form: One translucent feline, dead fifty-some-odd years. Vaccinations up-to-date.
The alarm on my watch started pinging, signaling something I was supposed to do.
"Oh, that stupid book signing. Drat. It would have to be now, when I'm busy with something important."
I thought of brushing it off, but Corrine had begged and pleaded with me before I left for London to attend this book signing.
"Honestly, Cory and her vampire romances," I scoffed as I started repacking the bag. "So some hotshot author has a book signing. Big deal. I have a job to do! But no, I have to go stand in line and wait for a smug author to sign a copy of a book she could get back home. I have to suck up and make nice just so he'll write something pleasant that she'll forget five minutes after she reads it. I have to spend my evening standing on my bad leg in a line that's sure to go for miles because Mr. I'm So Important Dante can't be bothered to do more than one book signing a year. Well, fine, just fine. Make me give up trying to Release my ghost cat. Boy, she's going to owe me for this!"
I finished tidying the bag, popped on my evening sunglasses, told the cat to behave itself, and headed out to find a taxi to Covent Garden. On the way there I ran over the mental list of who in the area I could consult about why the Release wasn't successful.
"Let's see… there's Carlos at SIP, but he's not a Summoner. There is that witch who Ras mentioned supposedly Summoned the ghost of Karl Marx, but I don't have her address, and besides, I'm not sure I want to hang out with someone who actually wanted to spend time with a dead Marx who wasn't Groucho. Urn…" I tapped my lip, watching as the dark, damp streets of London passed by the rain-splattered window. "Oh! That hermit that the woman at the SIP office mentioned. That might be a possibility."
"SIP as in Society for the Investigation of the Paranormal?" the taxi driver asked me.
Rats. I was talking to myself out loud again. It's a habit that I can't seem to break myself of. I smiled at the driver and nodded, hoping he wasn't one of the religious fanatics who seemed to delight in lecturing me as to the sinful nature of my job. "Do you… um… know about them?"
"My wife and me go ghost hunting with them a couple of times a year. Just last August we spent the night in the Tower."
The Tower of London was said to be the most haunted spot in all of England. It was a paranormalist's version of Disneyland.
"Did you? See anything interesting?"
He shrugged. "Couple of orbs, a hand coming from the wall, and we felt one or two cold spots, but nothing we caught on film. You a Summoner?"
Normally I don't admit to my job to laypeople, but the driver seemed to be copacetic with the whole idea of ghosts and ghoulies, so I nodded again.
"Thought you might be. What's with the dark specs?"
I waited until he was stopped at a light and lifted the glasses to my forehead for a moment.
His eyes widened as he whistled. "That natural?"
I laughed a harsh, bitter little laugh. "It's nothing I want, believe you me."
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I guess not. Must make for some odd looks, eh?"