Grim Business

Chapter Twenty-Five

The next day after school, Phoebe was packing for her first attempt at interrogating a spirit on her own. There was no other way to get the information she needed to find and save her father, and she needed the practice anyways. Being a Grim was a lot like being a cop, actually, now that she thought about it. Almost like a spirit cop…Phoebe shook her head to clear it of the ridiculousness; she was still exhausted, and occasionally that meant a lapse in sanity.

Last night, she’d woken up shortly after Ethan had left and spent the rest of the night going through her internet searches and contacts, placing more events in her Schedule (the complete chaos and lack of clarity in her life had basically ensured that she needed to keep a schedule of all the places and things she needed to do).  She kept the information brief and ambiguous, because she knew that it had to be a secret, but simply writing places and times down didn’t seem so bad and it helped her maintain some kind of semblance of normality in her chaotic life.

It was certainly stressful, but she had to do what she had to do. Tonight, she was going to hunt down and interrogate a spirit known to most simply as Mike. When he had died, just a short time ago, her father had been the one sent to reap him, but he hadn’t been able to send him on before he’d mutated, apparently having been a nasty guy even before he’d died. He swore vengeance and disappeared into the night, making him a suspect in her father’s disappearance. She didn’t think he was the one—the MO didn’t quite fit with a spirit that would want to keep its prey alive necessarily, and that was one thing Hel and Mr. Odin both assured her of—that her dad was indeed still alive. Still, she was counting on its knowledge to find the real perpetrator.

Fighting down a yawn, Phoebe opened up a portal and stepped inside. She’d gotten a tip on his location from one of her father’s old sources—a crone that spent most of her days in her garden minding everyone’s business but her own. She only hoped he was still there when she arrived.

The location was an old abandoned lumber mill several miles outside of  Eugene, in the middle of the massive woods that surrounded the city. The trees towered as high as many of the high-rise buildings that made up Portland’s skyline, and as Phoebe stepped out of her Shadow Portal, she wasn’t sure she had left the Dark Realms. It was black as blackest night, the city lights barely permeating the skies above the forest.

The structure of the lumber mill in front of her was the only indication that there was anything besides darkness and trees in the world around here. It was spooky as hell, though. The crumbling walls, the collapsed smokestack covered in vines on the ground next to it. The entrance was a gaping black hole blocked slightly by a bramble bush. Interestingly enough, however, it looked like it had recently been disturbed.

Either she’d hit the jackpot and the old crone had been right, or she was about to come face to face with a rancid hobo. Whatever the case, she had to get in there and find out.

Steeling herself and reminding herself that she was supposed to be some kind of prodigy, she slowly pushed the bramble away from the entrance, stepping one of her feet inside and then the other. All was quiet and still inside, the humidity almost crushing even in the shelter of the lumber mill. Remembering some of the early parts of her training, she pulled out a couple of EMF builders and set them strategically at every cardinal direction, then pressed a button to get them started. The EMF builders created a barrier, preventing any spirits from coming in or out. People wouldn’t be bothered except for a slight feeling of discomfort as they passed through, but a spirit would find that the barrier was as solid as a wall…one they couldn’t just phase through.

“Alright, it’s just you and me and there’s no place to go…how about we talk a bit?” Phoebe said, casting a glance about the mill.

“And what would we possibly have to talk about, child?”