“The press conference,” I told myself. “That’s where Tristan’s aides will be.”
I fixed the Old Courthouse in my mind and prayed I had enough juice left in me to get there.
* * * *
The Old Courthouse where paranormal folks’ trials are held is a grand old lady, replete with ivy-covered columns and neo-classical architecture. Across the large fountain-dotted courtyard looms the larger New Courthouse, used for mundane human affairs. The more recent of the two is a larger colonial-styled building and lovely in its own way, but possesses none of the regal charm of Fulton Falls’ original dispensary of justice. Tristan’s press conference had been staged on the picturesque front steps of the Old Courthouse.
It resided between Rennings and Elder Streets, where a collection of old Victorian homes, now the abodes of legal practices, lined up like ladies-in-waiting. These former houses and the Old Courthouse had been built in a time that knew nothing of cars, let alone parking lots. The wide streets accommodated both traffic and parking. Right now television news crews choked the lanes. I saw local stations as well as those from Savannah and Jacksonville represented, their vans congregating like a herd of white hippos on the asphalt river. I was shocked to see CNN had also shown up. Tristan was going nationwide tonight.
The vans claimed my attention first and foremost, not the podium crowded with microphones and surrounded by Tristan’s staff, nor the crowds of curious onlookers and camera crews. The local station’s setup was the closest to me, and I went straight to it. The doors hung wide open, and all sorts of equipment filled it, lighting up the interior like a Christmas tree. For a starving ghost, it resembled a buffet of gi-normous proportions.
Local reporter Amy Hoskins spoke to her cameraman nearby as I scrambled into the truck. I had gone to high school with her. We’d even been friends back in the day. She managed to be a sweetheart but no-nonsense at the same time. I frowned a little as I took in her appearance. The air had turned her blond hair a bit flyaway and made her nose on the shiny side, but in the heat and humidity of Fulton Falls, I couldn’t really fault her slightly less-than camera-ready look. Amy was a great gal.
As I eyed the banks of electronic equipment, preparing to feast hard and fast, I heard Amy say, “Stop bitching. You know these things never go off on time.”
I chose the humming stack of black rectangles with plug-in cables running strands of black insulated wiring in complicated loops. As I moved close to it, the cameraman grumbled, “I don’t want Hector reaming me because we missed the ten o’clock feed.”
I opened wide and sucked in a monster hit of electronic nutrition. The power burst over me, setting my hair on end, raising me up on tip toe, and quaking me with orgasm. Imagine your entire body as a clitoris and you just came in contact with the world’s biggest, strongest vibrator. Oh yeah. It was that frickin’ awesome.
The interior lights of the van fluctuated, and machines beeped in alarm. As I yelled a “Woo!” that would have made wrestler Ric Flair proud, the cameraman climbed into the van beside me.
“Shit, now what?”
I burst from the van pumped so full of energy that twenty laps around both courthouses wouldn’t have settled me down. As I raced towards the podium and the assembled aides, I heard a shocked, “Did you see that? I think we had a ghost in here!”
I didn’t stick around to introduce myself. Fairly crackling with power, I ran towards the familiar faces of Lana, Gerald, Taylor and Isabella.
The organizers of the press conference had lit the steps of the courthouse until it was as bright as a summer’s day on the beach. To one side stood the four people I needed to speak to most, and I flew with the winged shoes of Mercury to reach them.
Every sense I possessed was as bright as the lights. The typewriter chatter of conversations, the hum of nearby traffic with an occasional splatter of engines possessing less well maintained mufflers, even the buzzing song of the cicadas were a cacophony. And the scents: a smoky bed of gasoline underlay the resonance of human sweat, deodorized by a spiral galaxy of colognes. Sweetest of all was the springtime coating of azaleas and wisteria that made the humid air a warm, soothing blanket.
In my sensitized state, I was having difficulty attending the task at hand. Everything wanted to distract me; the gray shrouds of Spanish moss hanging like cocooned bodies from the gnarled oaks, the urge to stroke the plump cheek of a baby slumbering in its stroller while its mom replaited the cornrows of an older sister, the sickle-thin knife of the moon rising in the star-splatted sky. I wanted to revel in the sights and sensations of this night, but death loomed large for my vamp sweetie and his sister if I gave in to diversion.