able to pay back the loan. The travel had maxed his credit card for the month—the school district would reimburse him, eventually, but that didn’t help now.
Maybe Rusty or Ms. Pond could help—they were both higher-profile than anyone Robin was in close contact with these days. But Robin had just met them this trip, since their kids were both solid performers and neither of them old enough to think about college yet. He didn’t want to spoil whatever good impression he hoped he’d made by asking for a loan.
Calling one of his other buddies from the American Hero days would just make things worse. Which left …
Well, it was worth a shot.
The protesters had thinned out over lunch, and those that remained had settled in for the long haul, resting their gross signs against their lawn chairs and drinking cheap beer from blue dew-slick coolers. The beer, Robin noticed, came from Our Beloved Corporate Sponsors, selling to both sides of the aisle.
A skinny wild-haired man wearing very short shorts and drinking an Our Beloved Corporate Sponsor tallboy shouted, “Jokers go home!” in a squashed hoarse voice. Robin shoved the revolving doors, entered the arctic chill of the now blissfully empty Gunter lobby, dug the Nokia from his pocket, and smashed buttons until he found the number he, to be honest, didn’t exactly want to call.
He closed his eyes, and pondered the depths of desperation one had to plumb before asking one’s landlord for a loan.
Then he pushed the green phone button twice. (The acid bath, again.) It didn’t work, so he pushed it a third time.
The phone rang.
Jan, hi, something strange has come up and I was hoping … No, that was a warning flag conversation.
It rang again.
Jan, hi, I need four hundred dollars. Hm. A bit direct.
Ring number three.
Jan, I know this is a long shot, but …
The phone clicked. “Hey, Rob**, t**** * ****** ***** *******,” the speaker hissed. He shook the phone. Something rattled inside.
“Jan? Jan, sorry, do you happen to, could you say that again?”
“******——$$$—&#%.”
“Sorry, my phone’s being worse than usual—”
“I said,” came the voice he expected, clear as crystal, and right behind him, “speak up. I can’t hear you.”
“Jan?”
Jan grinned, and little lightning bolts danced between her teeth. “Howdy!” Her faint Brooklyn accent and affected drawl mixed like oil and napalm, and whatever effect she meant her souvenir cowboy hat to have, it wasn’t. “I need your help.”
“I,” Robin said, too late as usual. Then: “Wait. What?”
“You’re good with kids, right? That’s your job?”
“Can you loan me four hundred dollars?”
The words rushed out all at once, and once they were said, he wished he could have unsaid them. Not because Jan looked hurt. Because she was grinning.
He scrambled to cover. “I know I’m behind on the rent, I know it’s a lot of money, but it would be a huge help, something big has come up, and I’ll repay you next month—you can just add it to my bill.”
“Oh,” Jan said, “I think we can come to an arrangement. Follow me.”
He hadn’t expected to recognize Jan’s niece, but the girl wearing the Detonators shirt and the bright silver cross, perched at the bar drinking a Sprite and looking deeply uncomfortable, was the same one who’d napped in the lobby earlier.
Jan jumped onto a barstool and leaned back against the lacquered wood. “Robin, meet Vicky. Vicky, meet Robin Ruttiger. He’s an ace. A hero. A TV star. He’ll help you out.”
“I’m,” he said, remembered the terms of the deal, and squashed his impulse to argue on general principle. “I’m helping your aunt look for the ghost.”
“Devil,” Vicky said.
“Devil,” Jan said. “Devil, ghost, whatever.”
Robin frowned. “Weren’t you trying to convince me that there were different kinds of black helicopters just yesterday?”
“You can tell them apart by albedo. But that’s not the point! Those things are—” Jan cut herself off. “Tell him, Vicky.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Jan. I know you don’t think devils are real. But they are. One knocked over the luggage cart Mr. Ruttiger was wheeling into the hotel.” Her dark eyes were large and frank. “You saw it, didn’t you? You heard it.”
“I saw a big red smile. And I heard a laugh. I don’t know what it was.”
“A devil.”
“My point is,” Jan said, “the hotel claims it’s haunted. Devils don’t haunt things. Ghosts do.”
Vicky shook her head. “Either way, I can’t stay here. Not with that … thing running around. It could hurt kids. Tempt us to evil.”
“There are other explanations,” Robin said, uncertain whether this would improve matters.
“Aliens,” Jan supplied, ticking them off on her fingers, “secret government conspiracies, men in black, reptoids, higher-dimensional beings, renegade Majestic program subjects—”
“A practical joker,” Robin cut in. “Or an ace, for that matter. Someone who drew a telekinetic card, or who can make people hallucinate. Lots of things might be happening, none particularly supernatural.” What exactly supernatural meant when a miracle could be “just” another card, he didn’t know, and no preacher had ever explained to his satisfaction, but he doubted that observation would be useful at the moment.
Jan swung in to fill the silence. “The point is, there are lots of things it could be other than a ghost or a devil. I felt it when it showed up—like a buzzing in the back of my head. So it’s electromagnetic somehow. Are demons electromagnetic?”
Vicky stared at her aunt. Robin couldn’t read her expression. She said, “I don’t know.”
“So here’s what we’re going to do.” Jan laid out the plan: “You go up to your hotel room and get some rest. Robin here, he’s a big-time hero, real experience, he’s been on television and everything. He and your aunt Jan, we’re going to hunt down this demon, bring it to you, and show you it’s …” She frowned. Robin imagined she had been about to say it’s not real, which wasn’t exactly the point. “Show you it’s nothing to worry about. How’s that sound?”
If supernatural forces were real, one of them probably would have answered Robin’s prayer and shut Jan up. “Do you feel unsafe?” he asked.
Vicky shook her head.
“If you do, go to Jan, or me, or to your teachers. We’re all here to help.”
“Can you find the devil?”
Jan’s eyes drilled into him, and he remembered the handshake. Four hundred dollars for a ghost hunt, on delivery of said ghost. Half in advance.
“We’ll find it,” he said. After the mixer, he thought. I promised Sharon I’d be back for the mixer. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
If he kept saying that, maybe he’d believe himself.