Ghostfinders 01 - Ghost of a Chance

about. It keeps going insane, but the tech drags it back . . . Poor thing. Poor thing . . . Hold it; I’m getting human presences now. Two of them, a man and a woman. Very strong presences; the woman has a mind like a perfumed steel trap, and the man . . . Damn . . . His emotions run so deep they’re almost primal. Ow! Ow, that hurt!”
    Happy clapped both hands to his head and shook it hard. When he looked at JC and Melody again, his eyes were back to normal.
    “The woman’s a trained telepath—kicked me right out of there the moment she detected me.” He cocked his head slightly, as though listening. “No . . . That’s it. Can’t pick up anything now; she’s got major psychic shields in place. And, unfortunately, now they know we know they’re there.”
    “I hate sentences like that,” said Melody. “You never know where they’re going to end up.”
    “This new female telepath,” said JC. “Could she be interfering with your mind, Happy? Stopping you from picking up what’s really going on here?”
    “No,” Happy said immediately. “I’d know. She’s good, but she’s not that good.”
    “Did you get any names?” said Melody. “Knowing who they sent would give us some idea of how important they think this haunting is. Can’t be Red McCoy; he’s banned from the British mainland till 2018. And the Animal only operates out of Paris these days.”
    “That still leaves Janus Scott, Meredith DeLancie, and Tetsuo Darque,” said JC. “All major players, all with previous experience of London hauntings, and all of them very much out of our league. Real A team people. And that’s only the usual suspects.”
    “If that was a real A team telepath, she’d have fried my brains on contact,” said Happy. “I told you; she’s good, but I’m better.”
    “Maybe all of the Project’s main players are busy somewhere else,” said Melody. “Like ours. And they sent the best they had available. Like us.”
    “We can but hope,” said JC. “I’ve never actually gone head to head with a Project field agent before, and I think I’d like to keep it that way. I mean, yes, I’ve had all the proper Institute training, for physical and psychic combat; but I’m really not a rough-and-tumble kind of guy.”
    “I’ve always been quite fond of a bit of rough-and-tumble,” Melody said demurely. “But I take your point. Project agents are trained killers and psychic assassins. I’m just tech support.”
    “While I am a clinically depressed telepath and not at all a fighter,” said Happy. “I do not do confrontations. It’s in my contract.”
    “We don’t have contracts,” said JC.
    “Well, it would be in my contract if I had one,” said Happy. “God, we have got to get unionised. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually met a Project agent in the flesh.”
    “Few do and survive,” said JC. “They’re nothing like us. The Crowley Project are supposed to be nearly as old as the Carnacki Institute, though they have gone through hundreds of different names down the years. The Project have always been very vulnerable to the cult of personality, to the Great Leader who wants to put his or her stamp on everything, including the organisation’s name. Like a dog marking its territory.”
    “They’re bad people,” Happy said flatly. “There are lots of us in the Institute who believe the Project manipulate and even create hauntings, and bad places, for their own reasons. So they can take advantage of them. Sometimes what they’re after is obvious: Objects of Power, or Forces that can be captured and put to use. But sometimes . . . what they’re doing makes no sense at all, from the outside.”
    “I’ve heard things, too,” said Melody. “Some of them eat ghosts. Don’t look at me like that . . . It’s what I’ve heard. They eat ghosts: memories, identities, maybe even souls for all I know. I never wanted to look into it that closely. People in the Institute don’t eat souls. Do they?”
    “No,” said JC. “We still hang people for that. There are a lot of things Project agents do that we don’t. They have no morals, no scruples, no inhibitions, and less restraint. They know a lot of things we don’t because we won’t do what’s necessary to acquire such awful skills. The Crowley Project follow their own path, pursue their own ends, and all we ever need to know is which side they’re on, so we can safely take the other. They are the bad guys in any given situation.