had been raw and red from climbing the rope the night before, but was now, at most, pink. Then he turned me under our arms, twirling me like a ballerina, but slowly. The back of my sundress wasn’t low, but it showed that the scratches from my fall were far more healed than twenty-four hours could account for.
“Unbelievable.”
I sighed and completed the slow spin. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“You take this completely in stride. How do you do that?”
“I’ve lived with it my whole life.” I shrugged.
Wariness—the first hint of it—crept into his expression. “So what do you do?”
I stepped back, knowing the moment was over. “I hold it all together.”
31
ben and I started bickering again as soon as he told me he was going on the stakeout with us.
“You don’t have to do this.” I was still arguing in his truck as he pulled up to the gate at Goodnight Farm, where we were picking up Daisy. “Mark will be there. It’s not like Phin, Daisy, and I will be sitting out in the middle of the field waiting for the boogeyman to come and get us.”
He turned to face me, bracing a hand on the back of the seat. “I’m not worried about the boogeyman, I’m worried about your damned diesel truck. I’ll deal with whatever weird thing anyone says or does. I won’t comment or call them crazy or anything. So you just deal with the fact that I’m going to be there.”
I clamped my jaw on another useless protest. Daisy was waiting inside, ready to go, having exchanged the miniskirt for a pair of camo cargo pants. I ran upstairs and put on my last clean pair of jeans, herded the reluctant dogs out of the house, threw some feed down for the goats and the donkey, then dashed to the truck, where Daisy was sitting in the middle of the bench seat, telling Ben God knows what while they waited on me.
Mark and Phin were already at the dig when we pulled up. They climbed out of the Jeep as Ben parked the truck farther up on the hill overlooking the V-shaped slope of the excavation field. Phin wrestled with the heavy satchel on her shoulder until Mark took it from her. And she let him.
“Well, I’ll be dipped,” murmured Daisy, leaning against the truck fender to wait for them. “Is the mad scientist human after all?”
I raised a warning finger. “Do not tease her, Daisy Temperance Goodnight, or I will make you sorry.”
Mark set the satchel on the tailgate of Ben’s truck. Phin had changed clothes, too, and if she’d done so in the car, that could account for her ponytail coming loose. Maybe even the color in her cheeks, visible in the light of the battery-powered lantern Ben had set in the bed of the pickup.
I slanted a look of narrow-eyed speculation at Mark, but his attention was on Daisy. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you need any equipment or anything?”
“I leave that to Phin,” she said, and Phin shot her a death glare, then started handing out gadgets.
She handed me the EMF meter and plopped the infrared thermometer into Ben’s hands. It looked a little like a sci-fi laser pistol and he asked, “What do I do with this? Shoot aliens?”
“Just be ready to take temperature readings if there’s a paranormal event,” she said.
“Um. Sure. And I’ll know when that happens?” Phin gave me a look, like I’d purposely inflicted him on her. I took over, explaining how to work the thermometer. It wasn’t brain surgery, and he nodded to show he understood. “So, what do we do now?”
“We go watch Daisy’s dog and pony show.”
While we’d been talking, Mark and Daisy had gone down the hill. I could see him gesturing to the various holes and explaining the stakes in the ground as Phin went to join them.
I risked a glance at Ben. “How are you holding up?”
He looked lost and a little grumpy. “I feel like I’ve gone into the Twilight Zone.”
“It helps if you don’t think about it too hard.” Catching his hand, I tugged him away from the truck. “Let’s go.”
Daisy stood at the farthest point of the partitioned field. She shook out her arms, shrugged her shoulders, closed her eyes with her hands down by her sides, looking a lot like a gymnast preparing for a routine.
She frowned and flexed her hands, as if reaching toward the ground. “I get very old death—violent death—but it’s