He stood, rolled his shoulders, undid his top button. Stopped as it occurred to him that most of the conference attendees would still be in the ballroom, as only a few had been selected to sit in the mind-numbing cold of the Old Hotel. Those inside would also be waiting breathlessly for a spectral vision to float across the monitor screens. Or to hear a disembodied voice whisper something that could vaguely be interpreted as a word instead of the wind meeting wood.
The night staff would make sure there was coffee for the intrepid, tea for the weary, and he was quite sure there was still food to be had. No reason at all for Sam to give them another moment’s thought. Except for that one thing.
He still had no reason to go to the ballroom. Even if Carrie were there, he wasn’t exactly going to ask her to come back to his room. They’d met less than twelve hours ago, and just because his mind had gone straight to the getting-naked part, he couldn’t admit it so soon. Even if she did feel the same way. Which she might not.
But then again …
No. Going down there was ludicrous. Stupid in every way. After a heartfelt sigh at what a classic idiot he was, he turned off the light and headed for the elevator.
CARRIE STARED AT THE blank page of her spiral bound notebook. It had been blank for far too long, and she was tired, dammit, so why couldn’t she get it done already? It’s not as if she didn’t have material to pick from. She had too much. That was it. Too many goofy things, from the shuttle ride to the programs, to the ghost-hunting equipment for sale—good god, the equipment—to the introductions and qualifications of the speakers, there was simply too much to mock.
Not that it was all mocking, all the time. It wasn’t as if Carrie didn’t have a heart. She did, and Erin knew it. It was just that her job was all about mocking and snark and being insufferable. That’s why her peeps came to her Web site, why they bought the art and the T-shirts and the mouse pads and the graphic novels. She’d been bitchy since childhood, and lucky her, she’d been able to make a career of it. A win-win situation all the way around. She wore, as her friend Jeffrey often said, scorn-colored glasses. But she did try her best to be a compassionate human. It didn’t always work, but it happened. Carrie had actually sat quietly and listened for two solid hours before she’d bailed. Now, she put her pen down and went back to her laptop. She’d stopped herself from doing this when she’d first gotten back in the room, but since she wasn’t doing squat anyway … she clicked on Google and typed in Sam’s name.
There were a lot of Sams. Once she’d found the right one, there were still a lot of links, mostly to do with his documentary films. Undocumented workers, restorative justice, the American prison system. He sure didn’t fool around. She read reviews. Lots of them. All of them with the same general message: his films were intense, specific and illuminating. They were moving and startling. He got down to the heart of things and didn’t shy away.
Impressed, she went to find his biography on his Web site. No picture on page one, not of him, anyway. The focus was on his latest film and where people could get their hands on it. But there was a hyperlink to his bio, and she leaned forward to read that.
He was older than her by four years. Went to NYU. Worked with some heavy hitters in the documentary field before directing his own. No mention of Crider, Colorado. No mention of his childhood at all. Also no mention of a significant other, but that didn’t mean anything.
What she did know for sure was that she wouldn’t be averse to spending some time in his company, quite possibly in the bedroom. She wondered if he had an apartment or if he stayed in one of the hotel rooms. That could be weird. But then, maybe he slept with guests all the time.
Shit, she needed to put this away, stop thinking about the hot guy and get some work done. At the very least, she had to get the story concept down. Nothing happened without the concept being clear. She had to narrow her point of attack. Was it the conference as a whole? The “professional ghost hunters?” How hungry people were to have explanations and stories to quell their collective zeitgeist? Until she decided the arc of the series, there would be no series.
Maybe she should have stayed downstairs in the ballroom and watched the monitors with Erin. There was bound to be a ton of great stuff all around her. On the other hand, she was tired from traveling, her sugar rush had ended and so had the buzz from her drink. The smart thing to do would be to climb under that big old comforter and get a good night’s rest. Tackle the work again tomorrow.
On the other, other hand, Erin was going to be up all night, and therefore she wouldn’t even be around in the morning. No one would. In order for this to work, Carrie needed to be with the natives in their natural habitat. The goal was to blend in. To appear to be one of the loyal believers. They’d all catch on if she went to bed early every night.
But sitting on the floor or on one of those stackable chairs till dawn? No way. No way in hell. Unless … She looked at the comforter, at the big fluffy pillows on the bed. No reason she couldn’t observe and be comfortable at the same time, right?
She gathered her notebook and pen and put them in her purse, then she folded up the bedding enough to carry it with her, and she set out for night number one of her new and temporary schedule that began at 4:00 p.m. and would last till 4:00 a.m. Ghosts, it turned out, were night owls.
The whole way down she wondered not about the spooks or the speakers, but if Sam would still be awake. She’d caught a glimpse of him earlier, but he hadn’t come back. Funny how disappointed that had made her. Even funnier was how much she hoped he was in the ballroom now.
CARRIE WASN’T IN THE ROOM, which had changed significantly since Sam’s last visit. The chairs were gone, or at least shoved to the sidewalls and stacked, at least most of them. The center of the room was now dominated by people on their own fold-up chairs, sleeping bags, cushions, or just pillows. All of them facing the monitors on the stage, which had been moved to give the most folks the best view.
The podium had vanished, the lights were dimmed, the bars emptied of everything but bottled water and pitchers of juice. There was still food on the back tables, but not much, and the big coffee urns would be full 24/7.
It wasn’t easy staying up all night, especially when practically every spoken word that was louder than a whisper was immediately followed by a barrage of shushes. Although few of the attendees expected to see anything, except perhaps a vague mist, all of them expected to hear something. Anything.
The Old Hotel was wired, baby. Infrared cameras viewed the rooms well, but three of the high-end cameras were focused not on the hotel itself, but on the meters placed randomly around the lower floor. Digital and analog audio recorders that picked up electronic voice phenomena were stacked next to a whole hell of a lot of stuff no one needed but everyone in this room wanted. He wasn’t complaining. While the gift shop didn’t stock top-of-the-line equipment, they did a pretty decent business in various midrange meters and cameras which occupied one whole wall of the moderately large shop, across from the candy bars, magazines and sundries.
Sometimes, Sam wished ghost hunting hadn’t become so mainstream. He would have liked to have filmed this, to document the phenomena of the search for the paranormal. This night right here would have been full of opportunities. As they did in gatherings of any kind, the people had formed smaller, more informal groups. Some consisted of only two people, but there were clusters of five or six. Five would be about right, if you had to whisper.
For a documentary, he would have hit up the couples first. Asked them why they were here, what they hoped to see. What had happened in their lives to convince them this wasn’t a fool’s errand.
Then he’d seek
