Oleander House: Bay City Paranormal Investigations, Book 1

contrasted with his own fairness. Ignoring the mental picture of his blond hair between Bo’s long, dusky fingers, Sam returned Bo’s smile. “Good to meet you, Bo. I’m Sam Raintree.” He congratulated himself on sounding nicely casual.
“Welcome, Sam. Sorry I never got to be in on any of your interviews, but things just kept coming up.” Bo plopped into the chair next to Sam’s. “You’ve met everyone, I guess?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, I did. Amy introduced me.”
“Good.” Bo helped himself to jambalaya. “After dinner I’ll show you to your room, then we’ll all meet back in the library and get started.”
Sam met Bo’s warm smile with one of his own, feeling his insides shift with a twitchy mix of nerves and desire. “So, uh, what’re we doing tonight?”
“First, Amy and I will review the history of the house. Then Andre and David can go over the equipment with you and Cecile.”
“Equipment?” Cecile exclaimed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I can use your equipment. It interferes with my ability to read the psychic energy of the house.”
Bo breathed a barely audible sigh. “Fine. After we’ve shown you the equipment, Sam, we’ll do a preliminary survey of the entire house, one team working upstairs and one downstairs. Our main goal tonight is to get baseline readings for temperature and EMF levels, and note any hot spots for further investigation.” Bo’s dark eyes cut to Cecile. “Cecile, I want you to take a notebook and pen, and make a note of the exact time and place where you feel anything out of the ordinary, all right?”
Cecile nodded. “Yes, certainly.”
“What do we do if we find hot spots?” Sam asked.
“Set up recording equipment,” Amy answered. “Then we’ll let audio and video run until the tapes run out. We won’t worry about getting up in the middle of the night to change them unless the preliminary survey gives us a damn good reason to. Tomorrow we’ll see if it caught anything.” She made a face. “Hopefully one day we’ll have enough recording equipment to have cameras running in several spots at once all the time.”
“And if you get something on tape?” Cecile crossed her skinny arms and arched an eyebrow. “What then?”
“If we get something worth having, we’ll do a more in-depth investigation on that area tomorrow,” Bo said, unperturbed by Cecile’s condescending attitude.
“Don’t worry, we know what we’re doing.” Amy’s tone was sharp. “We’ve been running paranormal investigations since you were in diapers.”
“That true?” Sam met Bo’s gaze, trying to ignore the man’s natural sensuality and concentrate on business. “Have you guys really been investigating that long?”
“Twenty years, give or take.” Bo sipped from his glass of water. “I started out by hauling equipment for Dr. Pitre at LSU to help pay my way through college. She was a paranormal researcher, first one I ever met. She taught me a lot, and got me interested in the subject. As soon as I graduated with my psychology degree, I started assisting her with investigations. A couple of years later, I was running them myself. She left me all her equipment and a chunk of money when she died, so I quit my teaching job and starting investigating fulltime. Met Amy a couple of years later, and we went into business together.”
“I’d been working days as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and investigating part-time at night,” Amy added, helping herself to more jambalaya. “Happiest day of my life, when I got to quit the day job.”
Andre took Amy’s hand and kissed her knuckles. “That was your happiest day?”
Amy gave him a warm smile. “Okay. Second happiest.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, her face glowing.
“You’d think after five years living together, they’d stop being like that.” David shook his head sadly. “It’s enough to give you cavities.”
Amy calmly flipped him off. David laughed.
“Amy told you about the ghost tours, didn’t she?” Bo asked, smiling at Sam.
“She did, yes.” Sam took a long swallow of iced tea. “It’s a great idea, in my opinion. Taking groups of tourists on ghost hunts.”
“Yeah, it’s fun, mostly,” David agreed, biting into a piece of garlic bread. “They don’t get the good stuff, though. We only take ’em places we’ve been before, that we know are safe.”
“They get to investigate a real haunted house, and we get paid enough to keep the business going.” A big grin