Low Midnight (Kitty Norville 13)

“I’m trying to solve a hundred-year-old murder, and it looks like the guy left a few loose ends. It’s just complicated. I’m fine.”

“You say that enough, I may start to believe you.”

He sighed. “What do you want me to say, Ben? That I’m thirty-seven years old, and since I didn’t expect to live past thirty I’m not sure what to do with myself but I’m just going on the best I can?” That was more words than he usually said when he wasn’t explaining something. He felt suddenly tired.

He didn’t know if Ben was going to answer with something serious or flippant. He hoped flippant, because Cormac wasn’t much up for serious.

“I guess that makes you just like everyone else, huh?” Ben said after a pause.

“I guess so.”

A long silence while Ben waited for him to say more, when he knew very well that Cormac wasn’t going to say anything.

“Be careful,” Ben said finally. “Call me if I can help.”

Cormac hung up.

He hit the south end of Colorado Springs and exited the interstate at Highway 24 to head into the foothills. He’d seen Kuzniak’s old claim during daylight hours. Now it was time to see it at midnight. See if any ghosts came wandering out.

The moon was half full. He always knew the moon’s phase, had paid close attention since he was a kid and his father started taking him hunting. His father always bought almanacs that marked the phases and circled the nights of the full moon with a thick black marker, because he almost always went hunting then. You kept track of the moon long enough, you could almost start to feel it. You always knew where to look for it, and knew if it was going to be just a smidge past full, or a sliver of new, hanging like a smile in the western sky. He still kept track, partly because it was habit and partly because of Ben and Kitty. He wanted to know when they were going out, on full moon nights.

He had a small flashlight to light his way up the path, so he wouldn’t trip on rocks or tree roots. Mostly, he kept the light turned down and his gaze up, to preserve his night vision as well as he could. Moving carefully in the dark, he made slow progress. When he reached the plateau, he shut off the flashlight and put it in his pocket.

In the moonlight and nighttime shadows, the plateau looked wider, more barren. Like the scrub oak and pines were figures, creatures rising up from the ground and peering at him suspiciously.

He felt that prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck—the feeling that something odd was going on. But did it really come from something being off, or from his knowledge that something had happened here back in the day? That creeping feeling didn’t provide any detail.

“You’re a ghost,” he said out loud. “You know any spells that find ghosts?”

Technically, I’m not a ghost. I’m merely disembodied.

He chuckled. “Semantics.”

Do be polite, won’t you?

“I gotta say, I wish Crane’s ghost would just show up and tell us what happened.” Then he could ditch Layne, skip the werewolf hunt, and go back to just worrying about the book of shadows and Roman. Like that wasn’t enough.

Crane may not have known what happened to him. It’s likely he was struck dead before even realizing that his spell had failed and Kuzniak had killed him.

“Poor guy, yeah?” He kicked at a rock and kept looking over his shoulder. His breath fogged, but he didn’t see anything unusual.

I have no sympathy for him, I’m afraid. He was meddling.

“Any ideas?”

I know we found signs of magic, but that just means spells were cast here. I don’t think there are any ghosts, Cormac. Not of any distinct beings. Only the ghost of magic. A strong trace of magic, to last more than a hundred years.

“You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

Indeed. If we want to know more it would be useful to have a medium here, Amelia said. A good one whom we can trust.

“Kitty knows one, but she’s on the West Coast, I think.”

Ah yes, the young lady on television. Do you suppose the people on her show would be interested in this?

“We don’t have time to get them involved. We have to keep an eye on Layne and Kuzniak before they blow something up.”

Then we’d best get to work.