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“How do you think they figure out the name?”
Beck swivels to his partner, who’s peering over the bulletin board like it just might answer him. “Excuse me?”
Tate turns away and grabs a flashlight off the wall. “Like do you think they ask nicely? Or is it a seance kind of thing? Or maybe they just go through the obituaries and pick out one that’s sad enough that hey, that could be a ghost.”
Ava shrugs, settling into the chair in front of her computer. “I’ve always liked to think that our informants are actually other ghosts who are just sick of their obnoxious neighbors.”
Tate bobs his head animatedly as if that’s actually a plausible scenario. Beck huffs and picks out an emf reader and a thermometer. “Are you staying in the truck again, Ava?”
“Do you remember what that rev did to me last time?” She asks, then hangs onto her arms as she shudders. “I barely made it out of there alive.”
Beck barely refrains from rolling his eyes as he pulls on a headset and grabs a lighter and firelight. They’d pulled a high priestess card, she hadn’t been in any danger to begin with. “Sure, Ava. Just keep an eye on cams.”
She tips two fingers up in a quick salute before digging her phone out of her pocket. “Sure thing, captain. Just give me the signal.”
He sighs and steps off the truck. Tate is already halfway to the door, narrowed in on their task. “Breaker’s in the garage,” he says, then tilts his head and turns to Beck. “Who d’you think tells everyone to turn off the breaker?” He unlocks the door and pushes it open without waiting for an answer. “S’not like it scares the ghosts away, you know?”
Beck shrugs and flips on the emf reader, scanning the dark entryway. “Could be the ghost turning it off.”
Tate grins at him. “Knew you were a fellow conspiracist.”
“Just go flip it, Tate.”
Tate jogs down the hallway obediently, the weak beam from his flashlight bobbing and illuminating the way. Beck sweeps the main floor in the meantime but everything is silent save the occasional creak of the house settling. There’s a click from the direction of the garage and a few lights flick on, so he makes his way down the steps to the basement. He’s halfway down the stairs when Tate’s voice crackles over the walkie. “Heard something get tossed upstairs.”
Beck happily turns back around and follows the sound of Tate opening doors on the second floor. He’d take just about anything to avoid a ghost lurking in the basement amongst the cobwebs.
Tate has the first couple of doors open upstairs so Beck moves to the furthest room to start looking. The emf is silent and temps are steady, so he’s not altogether surprised when Tate calls down the hall, “second bedroom on the right.”
Sure enough, when he steps into the room he’s greeted with a couple of emf readings and the temperature is teetering dangerously close to freezing. As he sets his equipment down on the dresser, Tate grins at Beck. “Did pretty good finding it, huh?”
Beck ignores him in favor of lighting the firelight and setting it in the center of the room. It casts golden light and long shadows throughout the room, emanating the slightest bit of warmth in the chilled space. Tate is fiddling with a spirit box in his hands, waiting for Beck to get out of the room, so he acquiesces and heads back to the van to collect more equipment. As he’s grabbing the writing book off the wall, Tate joins him and Ava. “No spirit box,” he tells them as he grimaces. “But they never seem to want to talk to me anyways.”
“We’ll try it again later,” Beck tells him, and Tate’s face smoothes out a bit as he nods. Equipment in hand, Tate hauling a video camera in his arms and two motion sensors strapped to his belt, they make their way back upstairs to the room. Setting up is a familiar routine. It’s almost easy to forget the presence of a ghost in the room with them, meandering around their bodies and occasionally through them in a way that makes the hair stand up on his arms. It’s quiet but the air is filled with the potential for something, the handful of objects that get knocked around the room while they adjust equipment feeling an awful lot like promises.
They’re setting up the D.O.T.S. and spreading salt across the carpet when the crucifix bursts into flames.
“Jesus, Beck, your sanity looks like shit. Get back out here.”
Beck straightens up from his crouch on the floor, salt jar all but forgotten. “Yeah, I noticed.”
Tate is still tinkering with the D.O.T.S. projector, determinedly ignoring the molten metal at his feet, so Beck heads down the stairs and out to the van. Without looking at the board, because he knows it’s not going to look good, he grabs a syringe and injects it into his vein. “Still can’t believe they managed to get psychotics approved for us,” Tate grumbles in his ear.
Beck shrugs and shakes out his arm, feeling the tingle of the medication sweeping through his system. “Better than being taken out by a shade.”
He’s taking another firelight and a bundle of incense off the wall when Tate’s voice comes over the walkies again. “Stepped in the salt.” There’s a few seconds of silence in which Beck can see Ava crossing out the wraith in the journal at the desk, then, “Left some prints, too.”
Ultraviolet, then.
“Hey, why d’you think the ghosts are always barefoot?” Tate speaks up again, and this time Ava groans.
Beck shakes his head and checks his pocket for his lighter. It’s still there, so he takes the second crucifix off the wall as a second thought. He won’t admit that the bite out of the first one shook him a little, but it’s always reassuring to have a backup.
He makes his way back to the room, mentally ticking off potential suspects. Ultraviolet but no orbs yet, so mimic is probably out. It hasn’t been throwing enough for a polti but he’s been in this profession long enough to know not to rule out a laid back ghost. The thing hasn’t hunted so it’s not possible to test a myling yet, but—
“Dots,” Ava calls out.
Beck freezes, one foot over the threshold of the room. “Dots?” he echoes.
He can almost hear the nod in Ava’s voice over the crackle of the walkie. “Creepy little shit, was walking right at you.”
He sighs, takes a heavy step backwards. “It’s a goddamn goryo.”
Tate whoops somewhere in the house. “You so owe me a drink, Beck.”
“Whatever, get back to the van.” He’s juggling too many things, considers leaving it all for the cleaners to grab in the morning, but in the end he brings everything back to the van and drops it on the desk. Ava’s watching him, looking a little too smug in her desk chair.
“Good thing I was watching cams, huh?”
Beck gives her a look. She grins shamelessly back at him. “Admit it, Beck. I’m a valuable member of the team.”
Tate snorts as he hits the pin pad, the doors easing shut behind him. “The day Beck admits that either of us are good at our jobs is the day he gets brutally murdered by a deo.”
He doesn’t bother with a response to that, which they both clearly think is hilarious. Ava pauses laughing at him just long enough to signal the driver with a quick rap on the back wall. The van stutters to life and lurches forward a moment later. “Don’t worry, Beck. We won’t tell anyone that you’re soft on us.”
Beck sighs and settles in for the drive back to headquarters. Maybe he should have tested his luck with the goryo.