Denton took the initiative to wash the dishes. He didn't mind, and he much preferred it to cooking. Fair division of labor, he figured. Bran helped with the drying.
During this domestic tranquility, Denton had a chance to think about their spirit problem. "We should go back and try to question Will again," he suggested.
"No way. Not till we find out more about him."
Typical Bran, Denton thought. "Do you ever just do something without making plans first? You know, go with the flow?"
"No," Bran replied brusquely.
"I didn't think so. Okay, Captain, what do we do next?"
Bran pinched his nose. "David from the Historical Society won't be any help here. Finding out who lived at that address forty years ago will be a challenge. According to the real estate agent, it was an apartment building till ninety-six, then converted to condos. So Will was a renter. We can start with finding the original owner on the slight chance they still have records."
"Ugh." Denton hadn't realized ghost hunting had so many complications.
They finished the dishes, and Bran wandered back into the living room with a look of consternation on his face and digging his fingers into his trapezius. Denton recognized the signs. "Sit. I'll give you a back rub."
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not," Denton said in his take-no-shit voice.
Bran gave in and settled sideways on the couch. Denton sat behind him and began to knead Bran's neck and shoulders. "You're all knotted up."
"Having a long conversation with Mother does it to me every time."
"I like her. She's certainly…spirited."
"That's one way of putting it."
Murry trotted into the room and hopped onto the chair across from them. Giving them a bored look, he curled up for a nap.
Denton's mother would've loved Murry, but then she loved all animals. No wonder when she remarried, it was to a veterinarian.
"My mom fusses all the time and keeps asking if I've met someone nice yet. Oh, that reminds me—do you think Layla might stay till Thanksgiving? It's only a couple of weeks away," Denton said.
Bran grew even more rigid under his fingers. "Don't even mention it to her!"
"What, Thanksgiving?"
"Yes! She only celebrates pagan holidays. Beltane, summer solstice, that sort of stuff. As a child, it took me a while to realize that half-naked people dancing around bonfires was not how most people celebrated holidays."
The image made Denton chuckle.
"Don't laugh," Bran grumbled. "If you bring up Thanksgiving or any other conventional holiday in front of her, you'll get an hour lecture."
"All right, I won't. Now try to relax." Denton went on smoothing the gnarls and lumps out of Bran's muscles. He knew he had a knack for it.
Bran thought so too. "Mmm…that's good. A little to the left. Yeah. Harder. You have magic fingers."
"I've been told that before. And not only in connection with back rubs."
Bran leaned into his touch without comment. Denton bit his lips to keep himself from saying more and have Bran tense up again. There was an intimate subject he didn't know how to approach. Denton wasn't strictly a bottom. Men tended to assume so simply because of his physique, but in the past, he had disabused many of them of that notion, to mutual satisfaction. He itched to do the same to Bran, but Bran… Well, he was a hard nut to crack. It was unlikely Bran had ever bottomed for anyone. Denton had to proceed with caution and wait for the right moment.
And that reminded him of a question he had. "Was it because of your tail that guy…Peter, called you a freak?"
Bran nodded. "Easy guess, right?"
"Were you afraid it would happen again? That you'd turn someone into something else?"
Bran pulled away and leaned back on the sofa. "When it happened, I was hurt and angry. More than angry, enraged. I didn't mean to do anything, but all the emotions burst out of me and BAM!" He turned his palms up, fingers stretched wide apart, in the imitation of an explosion. Then he curled them up again and put his hands in his lap. He looked Denton squarely in the eye. "Yes, I was afraid. Up till then, I had no idea of the destructive potential of the thing inside me. I knew I had to get my emotions under wraps and avoid any situation where something similar could happen again."
"That explains a few things. Surely by now you could control it."
"That's easy for you and Mother to say. Sometimes I'm scared to death I might hurt you."
The sincerity of the admission hit Denton in the chest. "You wouldn't."
"I'm not sure."
"I am." Denton didn't know what made him so certain, but the conviction came from his gut. You couldn't argue with instincts.
Bran's expression softened. "That's because you're a nut."
"Yeah. What's your point?"
"Haven't you ever wished you were normal like everyone else?"
"Yes, sure. But I'm not, and neither are you. It's much better to be weirdos together than alone. Your mom's right."
Bran turned his gaze at the ceiling and said nothing.
Denton scuttled closer and threw his legs across Bran's thighs. "Hey, do you think our ghost and that Gene guy he's waiting for were lovers?"
"I got that impression. Although, Will's babble was a bit vague." The weight of his hands felt good on Denton's knees.
"That could've been because of the times. Did you get a good look at his clothes? So seventies."
Bran chuckled. "Those flared pants, and that shirt! Very Saturday Night Fever."
"The hair too. Reminded me of Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. I loved that show as a kid. Sexy cars, sexy guys—what's not to like, right?"
"Right."
Denton laced his fingers with Bran's. "I wonder if Gene looks like Luke at all. Looked." Verb tenses got complicated when talking about the partially departed—which Gene might or might not be. He could even be alive and well, even if elderly.
Denton tried to picture Gene, but instead, Will's miserable expression kept floating into his mind. The desperation he'd felt when first touching the ghost rose up from his memory, almost as if it was his own. A terrible certainty took over—Gene would never come, and Will knew it. Yet Will waited anyway. Denton squeezed Bran's hand, hoping to use Bran's solidity to chase away the unpleasant feelings, but right then Bran made a strange face—eyes shut, features contorted into a grimace.
"Are you all right?" Denton asked in sudden alarm.
Bran lifted a hand in a halting gesture. For several heart-pounding seconds, they stayed there, frozen, while panicky thoughts zapped through Denton's brain, too fast to be recognizable. From the corner of his eye, he saw Murry sit up in his chair and stare.
Then Bran's features smoothed out, and he let out a long breath. "Five-five-three," he said, opening his eyes.
"What the hell was that?" Denton demanded to know. "You scared the hell out of me."
"Sorry. I had an extrasensory episode."
Denton's heartbeat gradually returned to normal. "You mean a vision?"
"Yeah."
"Oh? Do you think it has to do with Gene?"
"Well, I was thinking of him, trying to picture him, so maybe. It's how I had these…visions in the past."
"What did you see?"
"Nothing more than jumbled images of a wreckage—twisted metal, fire, that sort of stuff."
"What about five-five-three?"
"I don't know. It popped into my head. See, this is what I tried to explain to my mother—completely useless."
"I dunno…" Denton had another idea—he was unstoppable today. "Let's Google it!"
"What, you're just gonna type wreckage and 553 in a search engine?"
"Why not?"
Without waiting for a response, Denton jumped up, scuttled into Bran's study, and plopped in front of the computer. He indeed typed 553 and wreckage into the search field and hit return. The top result turned out to be an article about a Cessna crashing near Las Vegas. The year —2003—was all wrong. He scrolled past a couple of links and clicked on a promising one. A quick scan of the page revealed it to be a Watergate-related conspiracy theory, but by the third paragraph, he knew he was on the right track.
"Bingo!" he announced.
"What is it?" Bran asked.
"United Air Flight 553 crashed near Chicago on its way to land at Midway. And the date is, guess what? 1972!" He turned and triumphantly beamed at Bran. "This must be it!"
"Maybe."
"You're a real wet blanket, you know."
"I'm merely circumspect. However, this is something David should be able to find information about. Maybe even a passenger list. I'll call him."
Bran's pussyfooting couldn't dampen Denton's self-satisfaction. "What did people do before the Internet?" he wondered out loud.
"Go to the library, talk to people, ask questions?" Bran said on his way out the door, jabbing at the keypad of his phone.
"Sounds tedious."
"Right."
Denton kept reading the article. It proved interesting. Among the victims were a congressman, a CBS reporter, and the wife of one of the Watergate conspirators. According to the conspiracists, secret agents swarmed the crash site within minutes. It seemed a bit far-fetched to Denton, and he moved on to check his e-mail. He found a few offers for dog food coupons and male-enhancement products, all of which he swiftly redirected into the spam folder. He opened a message from Joy, but it contained only a selection of ghost-themed lolcats and an assurance about getting the contract for the job soon. Denton Googled a lolcat fairy and attached it to his reply, saying she better be right, because he needed the money. The holidays were coming, and he had gifts to buy.
He found Bran tending to his plants—watering, pruning, and stroking their leaves. He was practically petting them. The herbs were bursting with life, so possibly Layla had been right. Denton decided to keep his mouth shut about it.
"What's the word?" he asked instead.
"David will call back tonight," Bran said, turning around. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but Denton could've sworn some of the plants stretched their tiny stems toward him.
"We could try to find out more about Will online till then."
Bran shook his head. "You can often find out a lot if you have a name, but the results of address searches get unreliable beyond a couple of decades. Plus the sites doing it want money.."
"You've done this before."
"Five hours of my life I'll never get back."
"Maybe you should hire a professional. Gabe's a private detective, you know."
"He is?"
"Well, he got his license because he has friends in dubious places, but he's been taking classes."
"Maybe later. Let's wait to see what David comes up with first."
"Okay, so what do we do till then?"
"Shower. Then it's time you learn how to summon a spirit."
"You think that's a good idea?"
"Knowing you, you'll probably do it by accident. It'll be much safer for everyone involved if you know the proper procedure."
***
The session started with Bran giving a lecture about summoning in general. Denton was surprised to learn about the variety of rituals and all the different props they used.
"I don't get it," he said. "What's all the fuss about? You summoned Esther Bernal's spirit easily enough, and there were no bronze daggers or wands in sight."
"What I performed was a basic ritual. Even then, the presence of Ashley and especially you in the circle boosted the spell's power. Most of all, I didn't conjure the spirit—she was already there. I merely made it move a few feet. You'll need something much stronger to reach Gene."
Bran went on in excruciating detail about the difference between summoning spirits and demons. "You don't want to accidentally end up with the wrong one. Spirits are only shadows of the once-living. Demons, on the other hand, are creatures with wills and minds of their own, and they are hard to control."
"Have you ever tried?"
Bran cleared his throat. "I can make my father appear, but it's because we share blood."
Denton's interest perked up. Bran's family was an endless source of fascination for him. "Interdimensional phone call. Awesome."
"Right." Bran flipped the pages of the book.
A funny idea leapt into Denton's head. "Could I summon you? I mean, if I learned how. You being part demon and all."
Bran gaped at him dumbstruck for several seconds. "I don't know," he said at last.
Denton's brain started to spin with the speed of a hamster wheel. "It could be wicked! I could transport you across town." The wheel wobbled. "Wait, maybe only your demon part would respond. Uh-oh, you could end up like one of those horrible transporter accidents on Star Trek. What if only your tail showed up?" Obviously, his hamster was on crack.
Bran stared at him in disbelief. "You're mad."
"Me? Never. Merely practical." Denton managed to keep a straight face for two whole seconds.
They took a break, during which Bran muttered under his breath about certain people who never took anything seriously. In response, Denton had a strategic conversation with Murry about how certain other people needed to learn to relax and just go with the flow every once in a while. The cat sprawled out on the carpet, eyes closed. He could've been asleep but for the twitching of the tip of his tail.
Denton spent the rest of the day memorizing incantations, the shapes and proper placements of symbols and runes and the words to recite when drawing them, plus the proper placement of specific objects when performing one ritual or the other. He took notes on a yellow legal pad, the pages of which were all crumpled and smudged by the time the sun went down. He doubted he'd ever be able to summon as much as a dead mouse.
The ringing of Bran's phone came as a welcome interruption. Especially since it was David calling. Denton kept his eyes on Bran's brows for clues.
"No Gene?… (downward slope—not good) Oh. Of course… (up-twitch—better) … He could be. Do you have surviving relatives? … Just a second." Bran made the handwriting sign in the air, and Denton quickly handed him the yellow pad and the pen.
Bran flipped to a clean page. "Okay, go." He began to write. "Right… Yes, thank you… Tell Amy hi… Okay. Talk to you later." Bran leaned back in his seat. Brushing his knuckles over his lips, he sank into contemplative silence.
Denton suppressed his urge to throttle him. "Are you planning to share?"
Bran blinked a few times and focused on Denton. "Oh. Sorry. The crash got a lot of media attention at the time, so David had no trouble digging up information. He found nobody with the name Gene among the victims, but one of the passengers who died was listed as Eugene Kent."
Denton thought it over. If his parents had named him Eugene, he'd prefer to be called Gene too. "Okay, he could be our guy. What do we do now?"
"The records listed Rosemary Dankworth, née Rosemary Kent, as the closest living relative. Eugene's sister."
"Oh. Well, at least it's not a common name. I bet we can find it on the Intraweb."
"Make it so, Number One." Bran lifted his hand and pointed in the direction of the study in an exact Captain Picard gesture.
This sudden outburst of frivolity took Denton completely by surprise. He stared mutely as Bran's solemn expression developed a smug undertone. He liked it.
Denton pulled himself up straight. "Aye, aye, Captain!" he said and bounded off toward the computer.
Locating Rosemary Dankworth took no time at all. The Pennsylvania phone number held promise—UA 553 had taken off from Washington DC. They agreed Denton should make the call, being the more sociable one.
The phone rang three times before a spry female voice answered, "Dankworth."
Denton's heart sank—she sounded far too young, twenties at most. "Can I talk to Mrs. Rosemary Dankworth, please," he asked.
"That's my grandma. Hang on."
While they waited, Denton grabbed a pen and the notepad from the desk.
"Hello. Who's this?" the woman asked at the other end of the line.
"Hi, Mrs. Dankworth. My name's Denton Mills, and I'm a writer from Chicago, doing research on the crash of Flight 553. Your brother Eugene Kent was on board, correct?"
He could hear only her breathing and the muffled sounds of television in the background for many seconds.
"Hello?" Denton said louder.
"Sorry, Mr…what did you say your name was…Mills?"
"Yes, but Denton will do, ma'am."
"Call me Rose, Denton."
"Rose, would you mind answering a few questions?"
She sighed. "Nobody has asked me about my Gene in decades, so it's a bit of a shock, you see. Why would you want to write about that old business now? It happened such a long time ago, nobody even remembers or cares anymore."
Scrambling for a reply, Denton remembered the date of the crash. "The fortieth anniversary is coming up in a couple of years. After 911, there's renewed interest because of the suspicious circumstances surrounding the accident."
"Oh, so you're one of those conspiracy theorists, then?"
Denton caught the bitterness in her tone and quickly backpedalled. "No, ma'am. My main interest is the human angle—you know, the regular people whose lives were cut short or altered forever by this tragedy. That's why I called you."
"I see. So how can I help you?" She sounded more cordial.
Denton didn't want to raise suspicion by starting with questions about her brother's connection to Will. Who knew what kind of history hid there? "Well, for a start, could you give me some background on your brother?"
The floodgates opened. She prattled on about Gene as a baby—three years younger than her—about them growing up, the scrapes he'd gotten into, the job Gene had at a local bank, and the bright future he should've had. "We were close—Gene was my little brother, and I felt responsible for him. It was hard on me when he died. I thought of him every day for years. Once my parents passed away, I had nobody left to talk to about him. My kids and grandkids never met Gene." Melancholy suffused her words. "I still dream of him sometimes. It's always the same—I'm at the airport waiting for him."
"May I ask why he was flying to Chicago?"
"To see Will."
"Will?" Denton hoped his voice didn't give away his excitement.
"Willard Hayes. They were best friends growing up. Inseparable. Then something happened between them. I don't know what, Gene wouldn't say. Will moved up to Chicago, went to work for one of the newspapers there. Not the Tribune, the other one. He'd always wanted to be a journalist. I wondered back then if Will's ambition was behind their fallout. It didn't make much sense, but you know how men are. In the end, they must've mended fences. I never heard from Will again, though. I found his address in Gene's things and sent an invitation for the memorial service, but he didn't come."
"Do you remember the address?"
"No, sorry, dear, not after all this time."
Bran grabbed the pad and pen and made a rushed scribble, which he held up. PHOTOGRAPH! it said.
Denton nodded to Bran and kept talking into the phone. "No problem. I didn't think you would. Can I trouble you for one more thing? Do you have a photograph of Gene I could have a copy of?"
"Sure, I can do that. You got me in the mood for looking through the old album. I'll have my granddaughter scan one of them and e-mail it to you. Is that all right? My grandkids send me pictures all the time."
"That would be great, thank you."
Denton waited for her to find pen and paper, then gave her his e-mail address. He thanked her again and said good-bye.
He turned to Bran. "Willard Hayes was Gene's best friend. He's a perfect candidate to be our Will, even without address confirmation."
"I'll go down to the Cook County Clerk's Bureau tomorrow and ask for the death record."
"And they'll just hand it to you?"
"People researching their ancestors go there all the time. The clerks know me there already as a genealogist."
"I see. Then what?"
"I have a plan. For now, we need to see if you've learned anything today," he said on his way out of the room.
Soon he was pushing the living room furniture to the walls and spreading a painter's drop cloth out on the floor. These preparations filled Denton with apprehension. Murry, on the other hand, surveyed the proceedings with keen interest from his usual post on the back of the sofa.
Bran left the room again and returned with a box of assorted items, including several candles, a rusty key, and chalk.
"Right. It's time you summon a spirit for real," he said.
"Who?" Denton wondered if there were easy-to-conjure practice spirits available for inexperienced necromancers.
"Peter."
Not the answer Denton expected. "Why on earth would you want me to do that?"
"Because I want to tell him I'm sorry."
The words fell between them, flat and cold, but Denton knew by now that Bran's impassive surface hid complicated emotions. Denton couldn't pin down exactly what bugged him most about the request. Jealousy? Or unease over Bran picking at an old scab? He thought of refusing but decided against it. Who knew, maybe it was closure Bran needed.
"Okay. What do I do?" he asked.
Bran told him which ritual to do—one of the simpler ones, thank God.
"This one requires a personal object," Denton said, consulting his notes.
Bran handed him a Polaroid photo of a man as unremarkable as a potted plant—not one of Bran's, but something you'd see in a bank lobby.
"Peter Lattimer," Bran explained.
Denton pointed at the pad. "This says you need something belonging to the deceased."
"Traditionally, you'd use a lock of hair or a piece of clothing, but for some reason, photographs work just the same."
"So it's true—they steal a part of your soul, after all," Denton quipped.
Bran shrugged. "Maybe they work because they also hold a trace of the living person? I don't know."
Denton went through his notes one more time, then stood at the edge of the drop cloth and laid down the necessary tools on the floor next to him. "Okay, I'm ready."
Bran turned off the lights and stood aside.
"Are you gonna help?" Denton asked.
"No. You should do this alone."
Denton waited for his eyes to get used to the semidarkness. The light of the moon and the city spilling through the windows gave just enough illumination to see what he was doing. The powdered sugar circle he drew around the photo turned out more of an oval, but it would have to do. He repeated the requisite chants as he put the candles at their places and lit them. At first he felt a little silly, but as he went on, the rhythm of the incantation got him into a groove. He picked up the chalk and drew the runes around the circle without having to check his cheat sheet.
He felt the warmth of light filling him as he stood at the edge of the drop cloth. He picked up the wand, which was more of a gnarly stick. Tracing the summoning symbol in the air, he loudly demanded the spirit of Peter Lattimer to appear. He had to repeat himself several times before the ring and the symbols around it began to give out a dim glow. And then…nothing happened. He redoubled his efforts and concentrated his thoughts on the man in the picture.
A gust of wind came out of nowhere. It made the candle light flare up for a moment, then die out completely and blew the summoning circle apart.
A loud "Meooowrr!" broke the dead silence.
Denton squinted as lamplight flooded the room. "What the fuck just happened?" he asked, glaring at Bran.
Bran came forward, picked up the Polaroid from the floor, and wiped it on his shirt. "The ritual failed. Damn. Look at the mess."
He was right—powdered sugar was everywhere.
They cleaned up and put everything back in its place. Murry played his part by supervising and being underfoot.
"Maybe Peter's not dead." Denton offered his opinion as they shifted the coffee table back to its usual spot.
"Not possible."
"Well, then, I suck at summoning."
"Even less likely." Bran threw himself into a chair. He drummed his fingers on the armrest while his whole face turned into a knot of anxiety.
Denton cast around for any reasonable explanation. "Okay, when you cursed him, Peter must have turned into a frog in more than just body. Or he wouldn't have hopped off into the water, right?"
Bran stopped drumming while he considered the question. "I suppose so. Not my area of expertise."
Encouraged by this admission, Denton went on. "You've told me that there are different rituals for summoning ghosts and demons. Wouldn't be logical that you need something else for animal spirits too?"
"That's possible. I haven't come across anything about animal spirits before," Bran said, scratching his chin.
"You just said it's not your field of expertise."
"Right. I'll have to do some research."
Denton was glad to see the prospect of a rational approach brighten Bran's mood. For a half demon, he was very methodical.
Murry hopped into Bran's lap, and then climbed on the chair's back and sprawled out in a pose that made him appear like a shawl around Bran's neck. His hind legs hung over one shoulder; his head peeked over the other. Bran in all black and with the cat behind him struck a picture-book image of a witch.
However, Denton was worn out by the whole occult business. "Can we have dinner? I'm starving."
Bran checked his watch. "Good idea. You'll need your strength."
Oh no. Denton didn't like the sound of that at all. No siree. "For what?"
"We'll have to go to the cemetery to collect graveyard dust. It's an exceptionally potent ingredient for conjuring."
Denton gaped at him. "You're not serious."
"I am."
Denton could tell Bran was indeed dead serious. "Isn't that illegal?"
"A little."
Murry lifted his head and fixed his gaze on Denton. His eyes, round as traffic lights, seemed to say: GO. Nothing's wrong with a little trespassing. The dead don't mind.
Denton gave in. "I… Okay, let's just go now and get it over with."
"Can't. It has to be done at midnight."
Denton slapped his forehead in exasperation. "You're as impossible as your cat."
"Ah, that. Murry's not my cat."
"What the hell do you mean? Whose cat is he?" Midnight loitering in cemeteries he could see, but catnapping?
"No. I mean he's my familiar. You know, demonic companion, etcetera? A gift from my father for my seventeenth birthday."
"Oh." Well, sure, it made sense. "He's still a cat, though," Denton pointed out.
"Most of the time."
"What do you mean most of the time?" Denton felt a headache coming on.
"On occasion, he can be a raven, Right, Murmur?"
Murry twitched his tail. "Meowrr."