G.H.O.S.T. Teams: Book 1 - Magic Read Online Free Page B

me think twice about kissing her.
    That was when I noticed little Timmy scurrying around the area. He walked towards me and placed a small, golf ball sized, black metal ball on the ground just in front of my feet. A quick scan of the area revealed a few other similar devices around the crime scene. He pressed a button on the little remote in his hands, and a tiny red light on top of each of the balls started to glow. The lights appeared to indicate the devices were powering on as they accompanied an odd static sound. It was like a wall of white noise. I was standing just inside of the perimeter and Timothy was just outside of it. He waved his hands in air and appeared to be mouthing, “can you hear me”. I assumed he was trying to be funny, so I answered appropriately.
    “Are you practicing to be a mime?” I asked.
    Timothy started nodding and a huge smile crossed his face. He gave me an overly enthusiastic thumb up before turning away and heading uphill towards the van. I realized then that the static was blocking out the sounds of our surroundings. While I had never seen something like this outside, I did recognize the concept of a noise sound barrier. I have encountered similar things in high-end office buildings. They claim it’s the ultimate in high tech privacy. It does make it harder for a ninja to overhear industrial secrets, that’s for sure. Feeling as though I should do something, I walked over to let Freddy know that the static machine was up and running.
    “Just so you know, Timmy turned on some kind of a static wall thingy.”
    Freddy gave me a slight frown, “Are you referring to the sound barrier?”
    “Sound barrier, sure, let’s call it that,” I replied.
    “By erecting the barrier, we prevent others from eavesdropping on our conversations. We will now be able to speak freely within its borders. The technology was initially invented by the military…” Freddy tried before I cut him off.
    “Yeah, good to know. I gotta check on Kara. I’ll let you get back to your stuff,” I said as I walked off.
    Kara was crouched down next to the body, waving her hand over its chest in a clockwise motion as she mumbled. She had her eyes closed and the wrinkling of her brow let me know that she was concentrating. Thanks to the weird vocabulary and her adorable Irish accent, I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but the last few words sounded a lot like “skarat kazz kazoo”. Personally, I thought it lacked the subtle charm of Hocus Pocus, but who was I to judge. After a few moments, I noticed a slight green hue around her hand. It was so faint as to almost be imperceptible. She then circled her hand counter clockwise over the body, causing small motes of light, almost like flakes of dust, to jump from her hand to the body. After a few more moments the motes jumped back from the body to her hand and she stopped moving. She looked up at Freddy, who was now standing next to me, before she spoke.
    “I’m not sensing anything,” she frowned.
    Freddy cocked an eyebrow at her before he replied, “Are you saying that there is insufficient residual energy left over for any type of identification?”
    “I’m saying that there isn’t any magical energy here at all. Not even trace amounts. Whatever happened to this guy, it striped him bare,” she said.
    “That is very odd. Perhaps once we get the body out of public view, you will be able to use some more invasive magical probes. There is always the chance that a masking spell of some sort was placed on the body in order to interfere with our investigation,” Freddy said, scratching his chin in contemplation.
    “I’ll check again once we get him into the van,” Kara nodded.
    I knew I was going to regret asking, but I figured someone should.
    “So Kara can’t detect any magic on the body and obviously he’s dead. So why do we think he was immortal?” I asked.
    Freddy looked at me shocked, forcing Kara to cup her hand over her mouth in order to