Wings to the Kingdom (Eden Moore 2)

“Not at all. ” He beamed. “If that means I get to drink. ”

“Fine. ” If I could choose between them, I would’ve picked Benny as a guide, but if he wasn’t showing off for anyone, Jamie was all right. “You’re both in. But when I’m ready to leave, we leave—or else you find another way back to town. Deal?”

“Deal. ”

“Okay, it’s a deal. ”

“Then meet me here tomorrow night, around dark-thirty. We’ll be fashionably late, like everyone else. ”

The guys were as good as their word, and the next night we all met up at our usual spot. They both beat me there by half an hour or more, but that wasn’t surprising. They practically lived there. Benny had left the sketchpad at home but still toted his backpack. This time it was loaded up

with flashlights, plus cigarettes, a tape recorder, a camera, and a host of other things I hadn’t thought about.

“Holy crap, doll-baby. You’re turning this into a proper research expedition, aren’t you?”

He grinned and pulled out a plastic bag filled with batteries. “Those Marshalls have got nothing on me. ”

Ah, yes. The Marshalls.

I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t run into them out in the field. Maybe they confined their work to the daylight. I thought I’d read someplace that they insisted that phenomena could take place at any hour, so they often worked between nine and five. It was the only sensible idea I’d ever heard connected with the duo.

But Jamie brought up the possibility before I had a chance to change the subject. “Maybe we’ll run into them out there. That might be fun. We could scare the shit out of them. ”

“Really? You think?” I rolled my eyes and used my own backpack to nudge him towards the door. “Yeah, I’m sure we could freak out a couple of people who investigate ghosts for a living. ”

He lifted one nostril and dipped his chin to the left. “I thought you said they were phonies. ”

“They are. Probably. I guess. I don’t really know,” I finally admitted. “Whether they are or not, they make a living checking out places that scare the bejesus out of other people. ”

“I bet people have tried to con them before, anyway. ” Benny skipped over to my car and claimed the passenger’s seat. “Odds are, they’ve seen it all. ”

Jamie was gracious enough not to sulk as he opened the back door. “They haven’t seen Green Eyes. ”

“Neither have you,” I said.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “If we see them, we’re going to very quietly run off in the other direction. The last thing we need is to get caught by people who actually have permission to be out there. ”

“Oh, nobody would do anything to us. The cops would just tell us to leave, and what could the Marshalls do except call the cops?” Benny stretched out, crossing his knees and adjusting his glasses.

“Got any bail money on you? Because I don’t think I’ve got enough to go around. ” I said it with what I hoped sounded like grim confidence, but in truth I was worried.

It was one thing to wander around abandoned structures on private property; but the battlefield is a national park, and I couldn’t help but think that the penalties for trespassing might be stiffer than a night in the clink. I’d heard that you could be thrown out of the park or arrested if they caught you with a shovel. And God help you if they caught you with a metal detector.

“You don’t have any spray paint or weaponry in that bag, do you Benny?” I asked, making a mental note to remove my climber’s knife from my own bag. In case we did get caught, I wanted to keep the number of potential charges down to a minimum.

“No. Just what you saw, unless you count the flashlight. It’s pretty heavy. ”

“Unless you wield it like a nightstick, I think you’ll be okay. Jamie? What about you?”

“I’m absolutely unarmed, save for my trusty flask, which is filled to the top with a highly flammable liquid,” he announced from the backseat.

“Oh, whatever. Keep your cigarette lighter in your pocket and we’ll be fine. ”

The battlefield proper is only ten or twelve miles away from downtown Chattanooga, but the most direct route is through downtown Rossville, so it took twenty or thirty minutes to get there. Ted’s mobile home was behind the park in a suburb that backed up against the protected grounds, and Jamie knew the way as well as he’d said he did. I parked in a makeshift lot that looked like it might have been a construction site by day.

Ted’s party was a hit.

Behind the trailer a great orange glow rose up into the darkness, and voices laughed back and forth over some music.