I'm knocking this one out pretty quickly while it's fresh in my brain and I've got the time. As the title suggests, this is a pretty light session, as dealing with Mel wrapped up a story and there's other stuff to deal with on the way, as Geist is pretty good about having plenty to do.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
So where we left off, the trio stand over Mel's cooling body in the Underworld. They go through his pockets and pull out a switchblade, his wallet, and that lead coin they've seen him waving around when he does his magic. The coin, interestingly enough, registers as a Memento tied to the Key of Chance. A closer look reveals that the coin appears to be a piece of lead that melted, dripped onto some surface, and dried/solidified into the perfect shape of a coin. They pocket his stuff (and the cash in his wallet) and hike back to the Avernian Gate.
Kenneth draws on the Key of Beasts (accepting the 'Doom' of the key in the process) to open the gate and they emerge back out into the tunnel, which still has that 'anything can happen as long as it's horrible' feeling, suggesting that whatever was going on with that wasn't tied to the necromancer. They head back out into the night, where the four men are still sitting around the fire. Eddy informs them that Mel is dead in case they're being kept there by any compulsion or something like that, but they just raise their cups in unison again. However, it's possible that they weren't as much in Mel's thrall as being affected by whatever force drew Mel to that spot to begin with. Either way, they decide not to bang their heads against that wall any more and just head back to the hotel to sleep.
The next day Richard takes a big hit of plasm off of the hotel's cenote to help deal with the beating he took from the Reaper and Mel's magic, and then gets a ride with Eddy (who stops to run an errand at the bank on the way) back out to Nelson. He finds out that a sheriff's deputy who lives in town (in lieu of a proper police department) is the one who technically owns the haunted truck. The deputy is a little surprised, but he quotes Richard a pretty reasonable price (especially considering the cash that Mel had in his wallet), though Richard haggles a little bit so it wouldn't be suspicious.
The deputy looks nervously at the truck as he hands over the paperwork and the keys. Richard asks if anything's wrong. The deputy insists that everything's fine, and Richard asks "What, is it haunted?" The deputy stares at him, says "No refunds," and then slams the door in his face. Richard knocks on the truck to get Jeremy's attention, fires the truck up, and drives it back to Vegas with Eddy coming back in his own car.
Meanwhile, back in Vegas, Kenneth is still suffering under the negative affects of the Beast Key, decides to try and befriend a stray dog in an attempt to go ahead and either shake or trigger the curse... and he gets the latter, getting chased through the streets until the dog catches up with him and chews up his leg.
Then we shift focus to Eddy, who's back in Vegas and looking up Johnny Wallis in the phone book to try and find what happened to Delores, his geist's lost love.[0] He goes to Johnny's house and introduces himself. He brings up Delores, but Johnny just says that he doesn't know anything about her and tries to close the door in Eddy's face. Eddy literally jams his foot in the door and presses the issue. Johnny says that D vanished and they'll never be able to find her. So Eddy starts asking about John Staff, his geist, and they go back over what happened to him (mugged and stabbed), and how they never found the guy.
Then a woman's voice comes from the other room, asking who's at the door. Wallis says that it's just a salesman who was about to leave, but the Lonely Proprietor/John Staff has perked up at the voice. The woman steps into the room behind Wallis, and even though she's twenty years older than the photo that Eddy saw he can clearly recognize Delores "D" Bosquet. Or, as she's apparently calling herself these days, Laura.
She explains that she fell apart after John's murder, and Wallis saved her from doing something stupid (like, as she put it, walking into the desert and not expecting to come out the other side). She decided to reinvent herself, and Johnny's contacts helped basically change her name so she could start over. She also mentions that she married him, and Eddy has to restrain the Lonely Proprietor from losing his shit and going after one or the both of them. Johnny, when asked why he was sniffing around the casino in the first place, says that he was looking for a thief on behalf of the manager at the time, Manny Rossi. He doesn't look at all happy about sharing that tidbit, but he doesn't want to fight it too hard with Delores/Laura in the room.
But now that everyone's uncomfortable and awkward, Eddy takes his leave. On the way back to the hotel he spots Kenneth limping down the street and picks him up to give him a lift. He shares some more of his spectral booze so Kenneth can heal his leg, and tells him what he's learned about how Rossi might have had a hand in his geist's death. Kenneth remarks that "He's involved in a lot of folks changing state from solid to a gas."
After a little more discussion about Manny, Eddy then asks if Kenneth has grown any closer to his own geist. Kenneth describes the vision he had back in Nelson, and Eddy takes him to one of the older Catholic churches in town to help him do some research.
Kenneth goes in and talks to Father Matthew, and asks him about Father Guerrero. Father Matthew takes him into the church's library and he digs through some historical texts, and finds records of a Father Guerrero who worked out of Mission Nevada Solano[1] in the area currently known as Boulder City where he apparently negotiated some land deals with the local Natives. Kenneth asks if any records of those deals might exist, and Father Matthew says they probably do, and Kenneth makes a note to go find out more about this.
And we left off there.
[0] -- Technically, is she his lost love since she's the one still alive, or is she his since he's tied to one of the main characters? It's a conundrum.
[1] -- This is a fictional mission, BTW.
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