last week, we found a large burned circle on the concrete at the bottom of a flight of steps.” Ryan looked to Teag and me for a response. “I mean, that sort of thing doesn’t happen spontaneously. No blood. No suggestion of foul play, but there was a perfect circle there in a room where it hadn’t been before – and a bunch of salt all over the place.”
Ryan pulled out a photo and showed it to us. The basement room was mildewed and badly lit. Paint peeled from the walls in sheets and from the ceiling, wires and old pipe insulation dangled like industrial Spanish moss. A large, scorched circle was clear in the middle of the floor. Just like something someone with a lot of magic power might use to summon a creature from beyond.
“You’re sure what you found was salt?” I asked.
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
“People who believe in magic think that salt is protective,” Teag replied.
“You think someone did some kind of ritual in there?” Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow.
Teag shrugged. “Who knows?”
I glanced at Kell. “Kinda reminds you of what we saw at the Blake house, doesn’t it?”
Kell leaned forward and studied the photo. “That’s weird. You think there’s some Satanist cult in town?” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the real answer was worse.
“Did you find anything else unusual at the old power plant?” I asked.
“We aren’t the only ones to have been there recently,” Ryan said. “There were at least two different sets of footprints in the mud near the back door. We saw the same footprints in some of the dust inside. But here’s the weird part – it looked like there was a third set of prints near that circle in the basement – and whoever made them was barefoot.”
“Trust me,” Kell broke in, “that is not the place any sane person would take off his shoes.”
Teag and I exchanged a glance. A supernatural creature like a Watcher wouldn’t care.
I looked over at Kell. “What did your folks find out?” I asked.
“People have said the place was haunted ever since a technician got electrocuted back in the nineties.” I’d heard the rumors. The power plant sat outside the city limits, a hulking concrete box of a building, but so far, no one had bothered to tear it down, even though a new generation plant had taken over its job a long time ago.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard,” I replied. Teag nodded and started typing on his phone, so I figured he was either looking up intel on the power plant, or hacking into a satellite that could give us a visual if Google didn’t do the trick.
“What happened?”
“Since other sites have been pegging lately, we figured we’d go back and see if the power plant was juiced up – supernaturally speaking,” Kell said.
I sighed. Of course he did. Charleston might be on the verge of a supernatural smackdown, but for Kell and his people, it would be like a neon sign offering free ice cream. Unfortunately, I couldn’t warn them off without having to explain what I knew, and their eagerness to explore could put the ghost hunters right in the middle of the danger. If we couldn’t keep them away, they might be safest if we went with them.
“Harry clued us in to things being weirder than usual out there,” Kell continued. “You know him? The homeless guy who’s usually caging coins in the median by the traffic light out that way?” I could picture Harry, a short, grizzled-looking guy who held a cardboard sign claiming to be a disabled vet.
“Yeah, he’s a decent sort.”
“He helps us keep an eye out for the cops, and we try to help him out with whatever he needs,” Kell said. “So anyhow, Harry told me spooky stuff was going down, so I got the crew together and we went out to have a look.”
He paused to take a bite of his food. “Our meters started going bonkers as soon as we went inside,” Kell said. “EMF, audio, orbs – you name it. Melissa, the psychic who comes along sometimes, was freaking out because she said she could hear ghosts screaming.” He had our full attention. “Harry said he wanted to show us something really weird down in the basement. We let him lead us, since he knows the place better than anyone. He started down to the basement with a flashlight. I was right behind him, a few steps back. All