Must Love Ghosts (Banshee Creek Book 1) (3 page)

He glanced at the long line of costumed partygoers stretching behind them. "It seems to attract tourists, though."

 
He felt very conspicuous in his military fatigues, which were, after all, not a costume. But Abby hadn't allowed him to change. They needed all the warm, oddly-dressed bodies they could find and his fatigues would, she claimed, meet the world record requirements.

He wasn't sure about that, but she'd insisted, which was why they were now standing in line waiting for the Guinness approval. The certification process was not going smoothly.

"They ran out of wristbands," the girl in front of them said. "
Again
."

She was dressed in a Japanese kimono, an intricate piece with peach silk fabric decorated with cherry blossoms. A pair of katanas was strapped to her back. She looked like a person one did not want to cross.

But the party organizers had done just that.

Mike stifled a sigh. Of course they ran out of wristbands. Abby's friends meant well, but they weren't exactly well organized. He assumed a rest position, hands behind his back and prepared for a long wait. After many years in a combat zone, he was used to long waits. Deployment meant long stretches of abject boredom and sudden bursts of sheer panic.
 

At least the line seemed to be pretty peaceful. Abby and Katana Girl were exchanging makeup tips and the orc patrol in front was practicing its choreography. An elf girl clad in a purple gossamer fabric picked up her flute and started to play "Carry on Wayward Son." He hummed along as they waited. The elf girl was a talented flutist. Her version of the song was sweet and eerie at the same time.

The melody broke off as a ghostly shriek pierced the quiet of the evening.
 

Mike looked around, startled. What the hell was going on? The partygoers looked up to the sky, and many held up cameras and recording devices. A few made high-pitched hooting sounds, as if calling out to the...whatever the hell that thing was.

Another shriek rang out and, in spite of himself, Mike shuddered. Man, that sounded sinister.

Abby patted his arm. "It's just the barn owls."

"That's an owl?" Mike's voice was thick with disbelief. "It sounds like a screeching harpy."

She laughed. "Yes, it does. They're also known as banshee owls and we have tons of them. They're one of the reasons the place is called Banshee Creek. The other one is the story about the farmer who meet a ghost when he was returning home from the pub."

"Right," he said with heavy skepticism. "The pub, that sounds like a credible story."
 

The poor guy probably heard one of the owls and ran away in fright. Mike looked around one last time, still a bit spooked from the creepy screeching, but he saw nothing, just a bunch of people in costumes comparing owl recordings.

"So, speaking of unbearable caterwauling." He turned toward Abby. "How's your singing going?"
 

"Ha, ha," she said in a voice devoid of humor. "Very funny."
 

The response surprised him. He'd just been teasing, after all.

"No, seriously," he said, concerned. "How's it going?"
 

She avoided looking at him, and his worry deepened. Abby worked as a waitress but she was a dedicated singer and she worked tirelessly at her craft. She wrote, composed, and toured constantly.

At least she used to.

He knew that she was still waiting for her lucky break and he waited impatiently for an answer, ready to provide comfort and encouragement. He didn't want Abby to lose her dream.

She'd lost so much already.

"It's going okay, I guess." She leaned to the side, looking at the line. "Will they hurry with those wristbands?"

"Just okay?"

She sighed. "Well, my band disbanded."

"You mean broke up? Permanently?"
 

That did not sound good. Abby loved her band and they'd been together for years. As far as he knew they got along famously. They'd never hit the big time, but they played obscure folk songs, many of them in foreign languages, so that wasn't much of a surprise. They had few fans outside of the college circuit, but they all seemed fairly happy with that.

"Yes." She sounded positively despondent. "Zach, our guitarist, decided to enter a singing contest in Chile. He was going to sing
Hijo de la Luna
. Remember that one?"

"Yes," he replied.

The gypsy ballad about the moon's doomed albino child was one of his favorite songs. He'd first heard it in Germany many years ago, during a particularly memorable leave when Cole sweet-talked their unit into attending a German sci-fi convention. Softhearted Cole wanted to support one of his buddies who was presenting a new video game at the con. Mike agreed to go but the presentation turned out to be a party with a live band, lasers, and strange alcoholic concoctions. Not his kind of scene at all. He said his goodbyes and was about to head back to the base when the lights dimmed and the spotlight fell on a tall, slender girl in a white dress. He watched, spellbound, as she sang, in a quiet, haunting voice, a beautiful song about love and loss. He hadn't known then that she was Cole's girlfriend. She was just this lovely woman with an otherworldly voice.

 
"Well," she continued. "Zach decided to make a road trip out of it and tried to cross the Andes on a motorcycle. You know? Like that Che Guevara guy?"

He nodded. One of his goals was to complete the
Motorcycle Diaries
trip. The views, he'd been told, were amazing.

"It didn't go well," she said, shaking her head. "He played chicken with a semi truck and lost."

"Is he okay?" he asked carefully.

"He's recovering, but it was touch-and-go for a while." She paused. "He won't be able to play guitar anymore."

"That's tough," he replied. "But he's lucky to be alive."

Abby nodded. An awkward silence followed, and he suspected they were both thinking about Cole, who hadn't been so lucky.

"So, I guess you're taking a break?" he asked, bridging the conversation gap.

She looked uncomfortable again. "Actually, I kind of..."
 

"Yes?" he prompted. She looked guilty, which confused him. What did she have to feel guilty about?

She looked around, making sure no one could overhear.
 

"I have a new band." Her voice was almost a whisper.

"That's good," he congratulated her. "What's the band's name?"

She winced and looked around again.

"The Space Cowboys," she said, in a very soft voice.

"That's a cool name." He tilted his head, frowning. "Wait. Cowboys?"

She shushed him quickly then nodded.

"Is that..."

"Yes." Her voice was bleak. "It's a country music band."

He chuckled. He couldn't help it. She looked so depressed about it.

"Don't you dare laugh," she said, punching his arm.

"I'm sorry," he said, trying to comply. "I'm a big country fan. I love the music." He smiled. "But I just can't picture you singing in a honky-tonk."

"It's not my fault," she wailed.

"Really?" he asked. "How does one
accidentally
become a country singer?"

That earned him another punch in the arm.
 

"They were desperate," she explained plaintively. "They had a summer tour scheduled and their lead singer eloped to Australia with her boyfriend. I think they have a wombat farm now or something. Anyway, they needed a new singer pronto." She sighed. "And I wanted to make a demo."

"A country one?" That did not sound right. Abby's song catalog tended to be melancholic, obscure and a bit macabre.

"Sort of. I wanted to record some old ballads, but needed a couple of guitar players to get the right sound. Some of the Child ballads and maybe Rose Connelly or Crow Jane. Some were British, but a lot of them were from Appalachia or the Old West so my puny mandolin wasn't going to cut it." She became increasingly more enthusiastic as she talked about her project. "I needed different instruments and these guys can play anything, even Piedmont guitar."

Mike nodded even though he had no idea what a Child ballad or a Piedmont guitar was. But Abby was a Music major in college with a Folklore and Mythology minor, so he guessed that she was talking about really old songs.

"So we came up with a trade," Abby continued. "They agreed to do the demo with me, if I went on the tour. They got the singer they needed and I got to sing a couple of my songs to real audiences."

"Sounds reasonable."

"Yes," she said glumly. "It did. Only I didn't realize so many country fans knew those ballads. It turns out that Johnny Cash sang a lot of them."

"They were popular?"

"Immensely." She sounded positively depressed now. "My 'House of the Rising Sun' was a huge hit and a guy from Nashville asked us for a tape." Her shoulders slumped. "They're looking at it now. We even have a couple of shows lined up in Northern Virginia, you know, to get some audience feedback."

Her voice dropped.

"The guys say..." She swallowed hard and her voice grew quieter. "They say we may get a recording contract."

Mike couldn't help but laugh.

"Don't laugh, you idiot," she said, glaring at him. "Can you picture me as a country singer? With hairspray and rhinestones like Dolly Parton?"
 

She shuddered and Mike reached for her arm, trying to reassure her that not all country music involved platinum blonde hairdos and sparkly clothes.

But he didn't get the chance.

A burly redheaded man in a black leather vest pushed through the line, glaring at Abby. Mike tensed, recognizing the leader of the biker gang he'd seen earlier.

"Now, don't mess with Miss Dolly, girl." A deep baritone voice rang loud and clear and the lined up partygoers turned, heavily made-up eyes wide as flying saucers, to stare at them.
 

 
"Them's fighting words," the biker growled.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

A
BBY
SMILED
at the leader of the Banshee Creek Paranormal Investigations Institute. The biker regalia did not intimidate her at all. But Mike did not seem to agree with her; his jaw tightened and he looked at Caine warily. She inched closer, trying to reassure him.

"Hi, Caine," she said brightly. "I didn't know you were a Dolly Parton fan."
 

Which was strange, because she'd known Caine for years and they'd often discussed, say, how the Sibelius violin concertos influenced Metallica's oeuvre. Okay, maybe that particular conversation owed more to Goldschläger shots than to genuine musical appreciation, but, still, Dolly Parton?

Caine grinned, his hands full of multicolored plastic restraints.
 

"
Jolene
," he said, eyes shining with merriment, "is musical perfection."

She rolled her eyes. But she let that pass. There was not enough cinnamon liqueur in the world to make her debate
Jolene
.

Caine chuckled and pulled a tie out of his bundle. The kimono-clad girl showed him her driver's license and extended her hand. He wrapped a green tie around her wrist and tried to snap it closed.

It didn't work

He was holding the tie upside down and it bounced out of his grasp and fell to the floor. He cursed and bent down to pick it up.

"Stupid plastic worm-thingie," he grumbled. "I can't believe Cassie didn't get enough wristbands."
 

He looked at Kimono Girl apologetically. "I'm sorry. This is all they had in the hardware store."

He tried to close the tie once more. The attempt failed. Mike shifted impatiently as he watched the charade.
 

"Maybe it goes the other way?" Abby suggested.

Caine turned the tie over, messing up the coupling once again.

Mike stepped forward. "Excuse me," he said gently. "May I help?"

Caine turned icy blue eyes towards him.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked roughly.

Mike frowned, his body tensing, and Abby was suddenly aware that she was standing between two very large and very strong men who, right now, didn't seem to like each other very much. She stepped between them. She didn't think Mike would lose control, but Caine could be a bit volatile and the last thing she needed was a confrontation.

"This is Mike," she said. "He's Cole's friend, from the Army."
 

She stiffened as Mike grabbed her shoulders, lifted her off the ground and set her back down on the grass behind him. He bent down until his gaze was level with hers, his blue eyes flashing with anger.
 

"Don't. Ever. Do. That," he said, between clenched teeth.

She looked at him, confused

"Do what?"

"Step between me and another guy," he explained tersely. "Don't do that. The only reason you're not sitting on your butt on that grassy knoll over there," he pointed towards an inoffensive clump of grass, "where it's safe, is that I know he's your friend."

She stepped back, mouth open in disbelief.

"I'm just trying to—"

"He's right, Abby," Caine interjected.

"What are you talking about?"

The biker looked at her pityingly. "You're a girl. You don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand," she replied testily. "I was helping—"

 
"He didn't need help," Caine said, interrupting her.

Mike nodded and Abby glared back at him, the ungrateful wretch. She opened her mouth to argue, but Mike pushed her back. He stepped forward and extended his hand.

"Mike Stone," he said. "Pleased to meet you."

Caine assessed him quickly.

"If you're a friend of Cole's," he said. "I'll be happy to shake your hand." He looked down at the plastic ties. "As soon as I get rid of these pesky things."

"May I?" Mike asked, extending a hand.

Caine gave him the bunch of ties. Mike looked through the lot quickly, picked a red one and quickly tied it around the girl's hand.

Caine gave him an appreciative pat on the back.