Lost Souls (Cainsville 3.6)

A little late for that.

He pushed aside Gwynn's voice. What Gabriel meant was Olivia's good mood was fading, as something must have reminded her that they weren't where they'd been. That things had changed.

"I'm walking right," he said. "I'm almost back at the main path."

Silence.

"Olivia?"

He heard her inhale, and he braced for her to find an excuse and cut the call short.

Tell her about the memory. The woman in the abandoned building.

No. Sharing something like that opened him up to pity. Sympathy. A reminder of the boy he'd been, the part of his life he wished Olivia didn't know. He preferred to have materialized whole cloth in his present form. Arrogant. Self-centered. Insensitive. No excuses. That felt better. Felt safer.

"Look, you're busy," she said. "And I'm just goofing around, killing time while Ricky talks shop with Don. I shouldn't make you entertain me."

"You aren't."

Uncomfortable silence because that was just an excuse, taking blame on herself rather than putting it where it belonged.

I don't want to do this, Gabriel. It's not safe.

"I remembered something that might--" he began, but she was talking at the same time, saying, "Are you back at the mausoleum yet?"

"I just passed it."

Another laugh, strained now. "Of course you did. Go back there and turn left."

She continued with her directions, leading him into an older part of the cemetery. When she told him to stop, he stood in front of an elaborate tombstone, with an angel perched on top.

"Christina Anne Moore," he read, without being prompted, and then the dates: 1947-1967.

"If this is one of the early victims, she'd have been one of the very first," he said. "My research had the first report of the hitchhiking ghost in the late sixties."

"Nineteen sixty-eight," Olivia said. "I'm sending you an article now."

She did, and he opened it to see a photograph of a young woman with long blond hair. The headline read "Roadside Tragedy Claims Young Cellist."

Gabriel skimmed the article. In 1967, twenty-year-old Christina Moore had been hitchhiking home from Chicago after attending a music festival. She'd been dropped off along a regional highway. As she walked, both night and a summer shower fell, visibility falling with them. A pickup truck veering onto the shoulder had struck Christina Moore with enough force to send her flying twenty feet into a field.

"She wasn't found for days," Olivia said. "The guy said he thought he hit a deer. A deer wearing a white sundress, apparently. But that aside, does it sound familiar?"

"It does."

"So, good reason to think she's not fae?"

"Yes, it appears Patrick was right. We have a ghost."

NINE

PATRICK

Gabriel was in a cemetery. Could it get any more perfect than that? Patrick only regretted that he hadn't foreseen this in time to prep the scene. But it would have been impossible to foresee it...when he still wasn't sure what Gabriel was doing here.

As Patrick followed Gabriel--at a proper distance, of course--he tried to figure out what Liv was up to. That was still Liv on the phone. Patrick could tell, not only by the length of the call but by his son's very gait, no longer chewing up sidewalks as if they were obstacles separating him from a goal. He was practically strolling, purposeful stride slowed to a brisk walk, his shoulders relaxed, cell phone at his ear.

As they'd left the rush of the streets, Patrick worried he'd be spotted, so he'd circled around, presuming Gabriel was just cutting through the cemetery. He wasn't. Patrick lost him then, and he'd been wandering when he'd caught the rumble of his son's deep voice.