The Sibyl Read online

  Chapter Twelve

  “I know this might be a bad time to bring up the blood and all, but do either of you care to explain to me what happened back there?”

  Joey had a mouth full of pizza as he spoke. I handed him a napkin from the basket in front of me with a sigh. We had left the farmhouse on the pretense of getting ready for our investigation tonight. Well, it wasn’t much of a pretense. We really did need to get our equipment together. Truth be told though, I needed to get out of there and the boys needed to eat. After a quick stop so I could change clothes, we found a pizza joint and collapsed into the most secluded booth we could find.

  “I’m not sure if you want to know, Joey.” I pushed my own plate aside. Having your throat slit by an angry spirit did wonders for killing your appetite. “It’s quite the long story.”

  “Hey, I’m on the clock. I got nothing but time since you’re paying me to be here.” Joey turned his attention to Elliot as if he would give him the answers I wasn’t willing to give up so easily. “So what gives, Lancaster? Your girl some sort of psychic or something?”

  “Or something.” Elliot took my hand from across the table. “It’s up to you, Eva. Your story. Your choice.”

  “If Joey is going to be with us for awhile, he will need to know.” I sighed. “Ok. Just promise you won’t call me crazy when I’m done, ok?”

  “I won’t call you crazy. I can make no promises, however, of not making fun of you.”

  I smiled despite myself. “Fair enough. Remember Paracon?”

  “Yeah. I got out of it since I’m just the equipment guy.”

  “Well, we had to go because of the classes being offered on the paranormal. I just walked away with a bigger souvenir than the classic swag bag.”

  I started from the beginning. How could I not? I told him about the scrying session, how Kathy Carter tricked me into taking the mirror, and how I had chanted the words which changed me. Cyrus was lurking in the shadows, leaning against the wall next to our table, and only nodded when I introduced him to Joey for what he really was. I told our poor camera man everything I knew, which admittedly, wasn’t much. When I finally fell silent, Joey whistled.

  “That’s one hell of a hook, McRayne. You gonna use it?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. With all the blood and death and screaming spirits, I had to find something amusing. Joey taking this so well? That was my something. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  I ignored his mention of the show. I had already made the promise to Apollo to use television to bring attention to him. I just had no idea how to do it yet.

  “So this is it. You found the one thing to make yourself stand out from all the other paranormal gigs out there.”

  “I don’t know, Joey.” Elliot grimaced. “I don’t want Eva to turn into a sideshow.”

  “She won’t be.” Joey rubbed his hands together before taking another slice of pizza from the pan in between us. “You’ve already promised Connor you’d find a way to make the show stand out, right? This is how you do it. We won’t have to change much in the way of formatting, either. We go in, get the history. Then, bring out the fancy mirror. Let Eva talk to the spirits while we film the whole encounter in the dark. Hell, you gave me enough footage this afternoon to get started. We’ll call it Grave Messages. ”

  “I hate to admit it, but I do like that title.” I took a sip of my water as I considered what he said. “This just might work. Cyrus is teaching me how to keep the voices quiet. And I’m working on how to shut the mirrors down before I can be attacked. We can cover the mirrors in our locations until we are ready to film the part where I contact them.”

  Elliot pulled a notebook out of his jeans and gestured to me for a pen. I handed him the first one out of my purse. He began to write, jotting down the ideas now flying between the three of us about the show. This was a meeting that should have happened back in L.A. when the contracts were first signed. But the timing never seemed right. Now, we had ideas. We had formatting.

  We had a show.