Right. But it's not an excuse. It's fact. Accept it. Work past it. Like we did out here. Seanna left. We worked past it. Another obstacle to overcome. Not an excuse. Don't let it be an excuse. Remember what you said to that lady in here? You weren't lost. Don't get lost now.
The boy faded, and Gabriel stood there, thinking of what he'd said. Not the part about friendship. He knew that--the boy was a projection of his own mind and hardly going to tell Gabriel anything he didn't already know.
What caught his attention was the mention of the lady. The reminder of why he was here--for the same reason he might return a client to the scene of the alleged crime. A trick for sparking across the severed wire of a mental connection. In Gabriel's gut, he knew there was a connection between Christina Moore's ghost and the woman he'd seen that night. He'd known that before and failed to pursue it. But now with the added wrinkle of the fake charity, his subconscious nudged him back to that connection.
His subconscious?
Or Gwynn?
Gabriel twitched. It didn't matter. Wherever the nudge came from, it brought him here. Back to this place, and if he reached into his memories again, he could conjure up the woman, aided by the sight and smell of this room.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, she stood there, a mental reconstruction, ready for examination. Peasant blouse and long skirt, rather than a sundress. White, though, if he wanted to make that link. White with pale blue flowers, if he wanted to make that distinction. Hair light brown, not blond. Long and flowing, though, like Christina Moore's. Also like another image he'd seen.
His aunt had brought out her books for him to let Gabriel skim the entries on ghosts. He remembered making a note for Olivia about the preponderance of female ghosts described as "dressed in white with flowing hair." Those ghosts that had led men--and sometimes women--astray, quite literally, posing as lost women and luring unwary travelers deep into the wilderness. Sometimes seducing them. Sometimes killing them. Sometimes just leaving them to find their own way home.
For what purpose?
Therein lay the problem. In the cases of vengeance, one presumed the ghosts were driven by that insatiable need. In the cases of sex, perhaps that need was insatiable, too. But in the others, did the ghosts simply lead people astray for fun? Gabriel might say motivation didn't matter, but it did help. He seemed to have found it in that fake charity, but no ghost could set that up, and both Lambert and Angela Vogler picked Christina Moore out of a photo lineup, and there was no way the answer was "Christina Moore is alive and conning people" when she'd be in her seventies now.
He examined again the woman he'd encountered here, all those years ago. She was clearly not Christina Moore. Yet her talk of being lost and getting back on track echoed what Christina had apparently told her victims, and it felt like more than randomly homogenous platitudes.
He saw the woman, and he heard her words again, trying to lure him away. A similar woman trying to achieve a similar purpose.
Find the connection.
His phone vibrated, and he snatched it out, as he'd been doing all day, hoping to see Olivia's text. It was just another client seeking an update. He felt the urge to reply that it was ten p.m. on a Saturday night, but that never went over well. Best to just pretend he didn't get the text until Monday morning.
As he closed his messages, his browser screen reappeared with its search on Pigsie.
There's more here. Something you missed. You know there is.
No, he did not know that. But something deep in his
brain did, and he'd pretend it was his subconscious and not Gwynn.
Yet thinking of Gwynn--however much he'd rather not--did accomplish one thing: it sparked another connection. Another possibility. One that worked far better than the square pegs Gabriel had been jamming into this round hole.
Gwynn. Legendary king of the Tylwyth Teg. King of the fae.
Fae.
When Patrick first brought him this case, Gabriel had proceeded with the presumption the culprit was fae, no matter how much Patrick swore otherwise. Then along came Christina Moore, seeming to shout that Patrick had been right all along.
Not fae. Ghost.
Or was she?
Gabriel typed pigsie and fairy into his browser. This time, Google gently suggested he really meant pigsy, but it did not attempt to force his hand. His browser screen filled with those results, starting with a dictionary definition.
Pixie. Otherwise known as pixy, pisky and, in some areas, pigsie.
He continued typing in search terms until he found exactly what he was looking for. Again in the dictionary, no less.
Pixie path: A route which bewilders and leads astray anyone who follows it.
The term dated back to folklore. Fae lore. The idea that pixies would find travelers and get them lost. There was even a term for it. Pixie-led. To be confused. Bewildered. Literally, to be led astray by pixies.
Gabriel tapped Olivia's number.