“How much do you know about him and what he was doing here? When was the last time you talked to him?”
He hesitated a moment, editing his response maybe, like he didn’t want to tell me anything. “It’s been a long time. I know
he moved out here a while ago. He doesn’t have a regular job—he fixes bikes. I know he’s hiding, but I need to find him. I
know he’ll want to see me.” He was tense, leaning on the table, desperate. And he didn’t have a clue.
I said, “Did you know he was a werewolf?”
He chuckled, disbelieving. “What?”
“T.J.—Ted—was a werewolf. Like me. We were part of the same pack. He was my best friend.”
He stared. “You’re not serious.”
I soldiered on. The words were cotton in my mouth. I just kept spitting them out. What else could I do? “There was a fight.
It happens sometimes, like with natural wolves. They—we—have fights for dominance. Your brother was killed. He died protecting
me.”
Stricken, he murmured, “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I wish—” Of course I wished it had all turned out different. That wasn’t
the right thing to say. I shook my head. “T.J.—everyone here called him T.J.—never told me anything about his family. I didn’t
really know anything about him, other than his life here. It never occurred to me that he was hiding. I have so many questions—”
“Do you have proof? Is there a grave? A death certificate? I should have been able to find a death certificate.”
He’d died in a werewolf battle, in the hills. The body had vanished, dropped by the other wolves down some dark hole where
no one would find it. The pack cleaned up its messes precisely so there wouldn’t be a trail for the police, or people like
Peter, to follow.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police this?” He was growing angry, his face flushed, puckered from grief, from a struggle not to
cry. So he did believe me, deep down. At some level, he must have suspected how his search would end.
“Because it wasn’t their business.” I smiled sadly at the harshness of my tone. What a bitter assessment of the situation.
It must have sounded shocking. “Because they’d need the same kind of proof, which I didn’t have. I didn’t want them to keep
asking questions.”
“But if he was killed, if someone killed him—”
“The man who killed him is dead, if that helps.”
By the stark expression of shock he wore, I guessed it didn’t. No—I’d watched the man who killed him die, and it didn’t help
me at all.
I was about to ask him more about T.J.—where had he come from, what other family did he have, why didn’t he want to be found?
But Peter, his gaze down, pushed away from the table. I wanted to hear everything, but I’d had a year to live with T.J.’s
death. Peter had just learned about it. He wasn’t ready.
“This is crazy,” he said. “I’ll find out what happened. What really happened.”
His long strides carried him to the front door in moments. I let him go. What else could I do?
I stayed put to finish my soda, but I was having trouble getting even that past the lump in my throat. I covered my eyes with
a hand when the tears started.
“Hey, you okay?”
Through a gap in my fingers I saw Shaun standing next to me.
“Headache,” I muttered.
By his smirk I could tell he wasn’t convinced. I scrubbed my already reddened face and looked at him full on. “That guy who
was just here?”
“Yeah? Hey, if he hurt you I’ll—”
Aw, wasn’t that sweet? “No. Apparently, T.J. has a younger brother. That was him.”
“Oh. Oh, shit.” He sank into the chair opposite me.
“Yeah.” I smiled stiffly. Shaun had known T.J., too.
An unplanned moment of silence, of grief, followed.
Shaun said, “What did he want?”
I sighed. “To find his brother. I told him he couldn’t. The guy has a right to be upset.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Not a lot I can do. But if he stops by again, be nice to him.”
I
had a lot to put out of my mind before the show on Friday. T.J.’s brother haunted me—like T.J. I tried to imagine his story,
to make up the background that built their lives. What made T.J. leave his family, disappearing so utterly that his brother
had to turn detective to find him? What drove Peter to go through the trouble? The stories I came up with were all unhappy,
and it made me unhappy to think of it. T.J. had always been so levelheaded. I couldn’t imagine him in that kind of life. I
didn’t want to. I wanted to let him rest, to preserve the memories I did have.
The Band of Tiamat’s recent attack was at the front of my mind, aggravating because of how little I could do about it. All
I knew: They had sent something against me, and it involved fire. And maybe a vampire conspiracy, if Rick was right. I had
to hope Rick or Grant found something out. Or wait until it struck again and we learned more about it.
I thought about calling Gary and canceling the Friday gig with the
Paradox PI
team. Maybe the house was really haunted, maybe it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure I could deal with another confrontation with supernatural
weirdness, in either case. But as cliché as it sounded, staying home and cowering would have felt like losing ground. Would
have admitted that whatever attacked us had gotten to me. I didn’t want to do that.
If we ignored it, would it go away? Despite what my mother told me about my big sister’s teasing, that never worked. But I
hadn’t yet let the scariness in my life interfere with the show. In fact, I sometimes thought having the show to focus on
saved my sanity. I needed my sanity right now.
Ben insisted on coming with me to meet the Paradox crew. I didn’t even have to ask. Safety in numbers. We could watch each
other’s backs.
I did a little research about Flint House on my own before heading out on Friday night. The death of the investigator hadn’t
made it into major news outlets, so it took some digging into publicly released police reports to discover anything about
it. A short investigation determined that the death was accidental—he’d fallen down the stairs. That sort of thing didn’t
draw any attention or raise any eyebrows, but the paranormal community jumped on the story and ran with it.
The usual background applied: The house was a hundred twenty years old, a stately Victorian, built by a silver mogul with
more money than sense, and bad luck followed him. Several of his children died of illness or injury. His wife committed suicide.
He went mad and died young. The house was sold, and the new owner immediately began reporting the usual haunting symptoms:
strange noises, drops in temperature, voices in rooms where nobody was talking. That owner moved out and rented the house
to a couple who within the year died in a messy murder– suicide situation. The house was sold again, and again, and now it
had stood empty for almost ten years, because no one was willing to live there.
The body count piled up over the years. Every death could be attributed to normal, nonsupernatural causes, but this went beyond
the law of averages or mere coincidence. Consensus among those who studied these things: The house was killing people.
It stood in an older part of Denver, west of the freeway, in one of those neighborhoods that started out as the wealthier
side of town, lined with lots of Victorian houses; then went downhill, the houses falling into disrepair and the yards becoming
choked with weeds; then became the really bad part of town; then slowly underwent a gentrification that was turning it into
the artsy part of town.
The house wasn’t the nicest on the street, but it wasn’t the worst. The pale green exterior could have used a coat of paint,
and rather than lawn the yard held a forest of shrubbery that hadn’t been pruned back in a decade. Two stories and an attic,
with a round window, looked out on the street. The place was dark. I wished the Paradox crew hadn’t told me it was haunted.
It would have looked perfectly normal, otherwise. Now it did look rather sinister.
The
Paradox PI
vans were already here, and a camera crew was already filming background footage, a few shots of the team poking around the
yard and wrought-iron fence. A wrought-iron fence complete with spikes lining the top—of
course
the place was haunted.
The KNOB van, black, with the station logo painted on the side in big letters, was also here, with Matt and one of his minions
waiting in the front seats. We had a few hours before we needed to set up, but I wanted to watch the team work and record
a bunch of material to play back later.
We emerged from the car, and I got to work, gathering the gang over and making introductions. “This is my husband, Ben.” It
still felt weird saying that, but people smiled, and no one else acted like it was unusual.
Gary said, “Ben, I know this is personal, but I have to ask, what’s it like being married to a werewolf?”
I was outed. Ben wasn’t. We looked at each other. With great interest, I waited for the answer. He pressed his lips in a wry
smile, filled with everything he
might
say. What he
did
say when he looked back at Gary was, “It’s a howling good time, I suppose.”
Ben tried to wink at me. It looked kind of leering. I winced and shook my head. There were groans all the way around.
Tina gave Ben a narrow-eyed, suspicious look, like the one she wore at New Moon the other night, and like when she looked
at me, as if she knew something, or at least suspected something. I
really
needed to talk to her privately.
The film crew asked Ben to wait in the van and had me get back in the car so they could film me stepping out and walking up
to shake hands with Gary and company—twice. That was reality TV for you.
Gary filmed an opening narration while Matt and I taped my own introduction.
Gary spoke at his camera in the no-nonsense, explanatory tone his viewers had come to know and love. “The house was originally
built by George Flint, a silver miner who struck it rich. He raised a family here, but they had a lot of tragedy in this house.
One daughter died of pneumonia. A son was trampled by a horse right outside, about where the streetlight is now. The ghost
stories started almost immediately.”
My own narration was a little different. And, I could admit, a little more sensationalist. “I’m here at Flint House, the house
that kills people. Or maybe it’s just haunted. Or maybe it’s just stories. I’m here at the special invitation of Gary Janson
of
Paradox PI.
I get to tag along while the crew tapes a show, and we’ll see if anything happens, and maybe get some insight into the world
of paranormal investigation.”
We trooped into the house next. The interior was as sadly faded as the outside. It gave the impression that it had been beautiful,
once: dark red carpeting, now worn down and threadbare; wood paneling gone black with age; peeling wallpaper; wires hanging
out of holes where light fixtures should be. No evidence remained that this used to be anyone’s home.
It took a couple of hours to film the gang setting up all their equipment. Jules did a lot of the on-camera work, although
a couple of off-camera assistants helped. Tina did her usual posing. Gary discussed timing with one of the show’s tech guys.
It all looked so much more tidy on the finished episodes.
I had my own thing going, following Gary around with a microphone, asking, “What’s this do? What’s this do? Why are you doing
this?” Patient guy, was Gary.
Jules, not so much. “We’re not going to get anything with her babbling on,” he muttered. “We’re likely to scare off anything
that’s here.”
I overheard and couldn’t help but comment. The cameras and my microphone were picking all this up for posterity, which pleased
me immensely. “What? You’re afraid of scaring the house that kills people?”
“Would you stop calling it that?” he said, scowling.
“Am I going to offend it?”
“You might. If this place is haunted, nobody really knows why. Was there an original triggering event, unfinished business
of the original owners? Or has the negative energy built up over the years? But if there is a presence here, you don’t want
to aggravate it, do you?”
I shrugged. “We want to see some activity, right? Maybe we do want to rile it up a little.” Though based on what was happening
in my own life right now, I ought to be a little more careful. I ought to be walking on eggshells.
And I really shouldn’t be standing in a house with a reputation for killing people. I suddenly wanted to step outside for
some air.
All the monitors, heat sensors, cameras, and microphones were in place. We retreated to the
Paradox PI
van, set up in grand cinematic CIA glory. Banks of TV monitors relayed what the cameras showed us. Speakers hissed and cracked
with static—background noise inside the house. But wouldn’t it be cool if chains started rattling and a voice moaned? Jules
sat at the far end, headphones crammed over his ears, staring intently at a monitor. Tina sat nearby, a little less intent,
gaze flicking from one screen to another. Gary sat with me. A smaller camera mounted in the interior recorded all.
As we approached midnight, my own show started broadcasting live. Which meant I got to watch everyone sitting around staring
at monitors, and I had to describe it in a way that made it sound interesting. I whispered and hoped it came out sounding
spooky and cool. During quiet moments, Matt could switch to my prerecorded interviews with the team to avoid dead air, then
come back to the live broadcast if—when—anything happened.
“I’m in the
Paradox PI
command center looking at about a dozen TV monitors and waiting for something to happen. What? Can’t say. My expectations
are completely open. Gary—you guys normally film the stakeout here in the van all night?”
We spoke in hushed voices. “You never know when something’s going to pop up, so, yeah. We tape it all and do a ton of editing.”
“Now, this may sound boring to you all at home, but it’s actually pretty exciting. There really is this sense that anything
can happen. Would you say it’s like this every time, or does it get boring after a while?”