Wings to the Kingdom (Eden Moore 2)

“Just give me a to-go cup,” I said, thinking that their paper cups were larger than the mugs. I extracted enough dollar bills from my jeans pocket to cover everything. After paying, I dropped my change into a carafe labeled TIP JAR and pointed the back table out to Dana.

She topped off her mug of Yemen with a drop of half-and-half and followed my summoning finger, sinking into the little chair and putting her head down over the brew, facial-sauna style. I sat down across from her and began tearing yellow packets of sweetener.

For a while, we didn’t talk. I stirred my coffee with the skinny brown straw, and she sucked down an entire mug’s worth of beverage before I had time to get started on mine. She went back for another, and when she returned with this second cup, she felt awake enough for conversation.

“I knew who you were,” she began, holding her elfin nose above the cup’s rim. “In the photo place. Your friend didn’t introduce you, but I knew who you were. I’d heard about you before. ”

“How?”

“Grapevine of the Dead. That’s what I call it, all the gossip that works its way around in the field. Bits and pieces of truth and rumor that no one but us might take seriously. ”

I frowned into my French Roast. “What did you hear about me? I’ve been wondering for quite some time. People keep finding me, and I don’t know how, and they’re always so vague about how they knew to look here. It’s…inconvenient. ”

“There’s not much to hear. A young psychic in Chattanooga, mixed up in a murder investigation a year or two ago. I heard you were tall, with darkish skin and lots of dark hair. Different details leak their way to different sources. And you are by no means the first victim of the paranormal to prefer anonymity. In fact, the people who want to remain anonymous are the ones who are most likely to be legit. ”

“And I guess it’s your business to ferret out the anonymous. ”

“Sometimes,” she agreed between sips. “Sometimes the job is just a job like any other. Lots of research, lots of time-wasting. More travel than I’d prefer, but less than Tripp likes. Liked. ”

I flinched when she amended herself, and she must have, too—though I was careful to avert my eyes. It took her a few seconds to recover from his name, and from the verbs. She was more careful when she continued.

“He’s always liked to travel. I’m more of a homebody, but it’s worked out okay, up until now. My God, this is awkward. ” She stopped herself and set the mug down. “I shouldn’t have put you in this position. This is just such a bad time…for everything. For anything. ”

She put her forehead in her hand and braced her elbow on the table.

“Maybe you’re not ready for this. Maybe I should take you back to the hotel. You seem awfully tired,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

Dana lifted her eyes and snagged mine. “What do you think is going on here?” she asked, ignoring my suggestion, or possibly not hearing it. “Really—who on Earth would do something like this? It’s so fucking stupid—lurking in the middle of the night, ambushing anyone who comes near, even though they’re not bothering anyone. We weren’t bothering anyone, were we?”

“No. ”

“See? You were there—you know. We didn’t sneak up on anybody, we weren’t armed, and we weren’t out to make any trouble. We were doing our job, and that job shouldn’t have interfered with another living soul. ” Her eyes filled up but did not spill. She ducked her head over the cup and stared into the swirls there. “It doesn’t make any goddamned sense. ”

I agreed wholeheartedly, and I told her so. “But why did you go back after the first person got hurt? I thought you’d have a police escort, at least. ”

“Oh, they offered,” she growled. “But it’s damned hard to work on something like this when you’ve got a uniformed skeptic tagging along, so we turned them down. They swept the battlefield that afternoon, though—or they said they did. There wasn’t any sign of trouble, or any people who weren’t supposed to be there. That’s what they told us. They gave us the all-clear and said to be careful. It was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be empty. ”

We descended into cranky silence again, until I remembered the pictures.

“I’ve got something to show you,” I said a little too brightly, trying to change the conversation’s current. “You were right, what you said on the phone. I was wearing my uncle’s camera, and I got a few shots with the infrared film. The cops took one set of prints and the negatives, but we had doubles made. ”

I pulled the envelope out of my purse and scooted my chair closer to hers. We sifted through them together much the same way I had with Dave and Benny. They weren’t very helpful from a mystery-solving standpoint, but they were distracting, which was enough.

“You said these are the doubles? So you don’t have any other prints I could swipe from you?” She held the last photo by a corner, between her thumbnail and index fingertip.

“I’m afraid not, but I’ve got a scanner at home. I can e-mail digital copies to you, which isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing. ”

“That’s fine,” she said, handing them back to me in the same order I’d passed them to her. “No negatives, no originals, no proof. But no one really wants proof. If we had proof, we couldn’t use disclaimers like ‘for entertainment purposes only. ’ The networks are always happiest if things are disputable—don’t ask me why. Maybe if we made guarantees for people, they’d sue. ”

I tucked the prints back into their envelope and put them into my purse. “Controversy makes better ratings, I guess. ”

“I’ll never understand it. The older I get, the less sense people make to me—the living ones or the dead ones, either. ”

Dana threw back the last swallow of coffee from the bottom of the mug. “Do you think that’s what we’re dealing with? People? And before you answer me”—she leaned forward, pushing the mug to the side so there was nothing between us—“remember who you’re talking to. I don’t care how wacky your own theories are about the battlefield, I want to hear them. I want to understand. I want to know what you’ve got already, how you knew to come to Dyer’s field. ”

I hemmed and hawed, but only out of habit. A small part of me was positively giddy at the thought of an interested peer, but I tried to keep myself from going too crazy with the opportunity. “I don’t suppose anyone’s told you about Old Green Eyes?” I began, thinking that someone, somewhere, must have—but not wanting to assume as much.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, though. Frankly, I’ve thought the stories I heard were a little weird; and considering some of the shit I’ve seen, that’s saying something. He’s the number-one bad guy there, isn’t he?”