by Mary Bowers
“You know me better than that. Not my style at all, Lily, but keeping this from causing a sensation in paranormal circles will be impossible, I’m afraid. At the very least, people will want an explanation for the cancellation of the show, and I see no reason to lie about it.”
“I know. So what are you going to be doing now?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“I’ve got some ideas,” Dobbs said, but he subsided after a glance from Ed.
Sub rosa, Lily told Dobbs to give her his contact info when he got a chance. He gave her a tiny up-and-down nod and smiled.
“People,” Ed said, calling them to order, “once again we have lost our way, at least you have.”
“I know,” Dobbs said. “But I’ve got an idea for a show – ”
“I am not talking about a show,” Ed thundered. He took a moment to calm himself, lowered his voice and said, “The teacup. It’s still infested. It’s dangerous. That hoax of Teddy’s wouldn’t have solved anything, and it just goes to show that, as I’ve long suspected, Teddy doesn’t take our research seriously.”
He turned in my direction.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You’re not roping me into some kind of chinaware exorcism.”
“You’re all we’ve got left,” he said.
“No no no no no,” I murmured, knowing it was hopeless.
All of them – even Michael – continued to gaze at me, as if I’d come to my senses if they just waited long enough.
Still hanging onto that last shred of hope, Lily said, “Should I tell Wyatt and Elliott to be ready?”
Ed and I both said, “No,” at the same time.
“I was afraid of that.”
She was still slumped on the steamer trunk, and Dobbs sat down beside her and hooked his arm around her. She let her face fall against his shoulder. Looking at them over there, making such an adorable couple, I took my final shot.
“I thought I told you to stay away from that guy,” I said.
At least that made her laugh.
Chapter 26
It took all my strength of will to keep on saying no. I felt like I was grinding everybody’s hopes under my heel, but it had to be done.
Michael stayed out of it, but Ed felt honor-bound to continue the fight, Lily still uttered a faint prayer every now and then, and Dobbs just wanted in on it, whatever it was.
Finally I stood up. “I’m going to bed,” I said. “We’ll talk in the morning, Ed, but don’t get your hopes up. Are you coming, Michael?”
“Good night, guys,” Michael told the trio on the other side of the room. “Sorry it all turned out like this.”
Walking down the hall to our room, I told Michael, “I think it’s just going to be you and me in our room tonight. Bella seems to have gone back to Arielle.” But when we turned the lights on, there she was, curled up on the bed waiting for us.
I took it as a bad sign.
* * * * *
It had, in fact, been a bad sign, because I had troubling dreams for the hour or so that I slept, and when Bella woke me up it was like someone coming straight out of my dream and materializing on the bed beside me.
There was a half-awake moment when I felt like I was seeing her shape-shifting, but after I’d blinked enough times, it was Bella, all right. Just a cat. But she wanted something and she was persistent about it.
I was determined not to wake Michael up, but I couldn’t seem to reason with her. I don’t believe in letting cats go out and roam around all night; too many end up getting hit by cars or mauled in fights, and of course that’s partly where feral kittens come from. I tried to explain all that to her, but the message wasn’t getting across telepathically and I didn’t want to talk out loud, so as carefully as I could, I slid over and got out of the bed.
Bella jumped down and proceeded to the door, waiting for me to open it.
“What?” I asked the cat in a half-whisper when we were out in the hall. But of course she didn’t answer, and a moment later I realized I heard voices from somewhere in the house.
Not voices, really. Whispers, murmurs, little bumps and movement. My first impression was of people being sneaky, and I wondered if there had been another break-in, this time by people a lot less amusing than Dobbs.
If it hadn’t been for the cat, I would have gone back for Michael, but Bella moved halfway down the hall and looked back for me, and for whatever reason, I followed her.
We went to the parlor, and before we even got close, I could see that dim lights were on in there and somebody was speaking in a concentrated monotone. Chanting, in fact.
Coming into the threshold of the parlor I saw that the teacup hadn’t been moved, but Wyatt had removed his own lighting equipment. Some kind of session was being conducted in the peach glow of one of Arielle’s old Early American lamps. The storyboard was leaning against one of the black-out curtains, freeing all sides of the table, and three chairs had been drawn up to it. Arielle was in one of them, Camille was in another.
They looked at me without surprise.
After a moment of staring, Arielle said, “I called Camille and asked for her help. Something had to be done, and apparently those other people aren’t up to the job. So I called Camille and I had Bella summon you.” Looking down at the cat, she told her, “Thank you.”
Bella went and sat by Arielle’s feet, wrapping her tail around her paws, gazing at me inscrutably. The next move, it seemed, was up to me.
I hesitated in the doorway, staring at the empty chair between Arielle and Camille.
“Come,” the fortuneteller said. “Sit with us. It’s time.”
Okay, all right, whatever, I thought. Let’s get this over with. I went to the table and sat.
Since she’d claimed to have her cat summon me, I figured Arielle really did think she was a witch. But somehow the stronger presence at the table was Camille’s, so I addressed myself to her, saying, “Now what?”
Giving her precedence pleased Camille. She gave me a shadow of a smile and said, “How did you put it? We let it roll.”
“You don’t have, like, a method, or a procedure? I thought I heard you chanting.”
Camille and Arielle shared a smirk, as if they were withholding a secret from me.
“Concentrating our energy, that’s all,” Camille told me. “Now that you’re here, we’ll proceed. Don’t worry; though you don’t seem to realize it, you’ve done this before. It’s a bit like walking a tightrope. You know the feeling. It’s the same tightrope, and yet it’s different every time, and as you walk along the rope, making tiny adjustments to your balance and forcing yourself to let go, you take one shaky step after another until you safely reach the other side. You are a spirit medium. Find your balance. Concentrate. But, at the same time, let go. See the cup. Look at the inside of it. Isn’t it pretty? Look at the gold, running around and around the rim. See how the light touches it, a little streak here, a dot of brightness there. See how the painted leaves peek out underneath the cup, on the saucer? So pretty, so delicate.”
I suppose she went on and on like that, but I shut her out, because now that I was concentrating on nothing but the cup, it really was fascinating. Riveting. The light glossed over the inside edge of the cup, making a soft highlight, in contrast with the sharp hits on the gilding. Beautiful. Sad. Looking, looking, looking – me looking into the cup and the cup looking into me.
The mouth moving again, but not so angry this time. The curls. No snakes. Had I thought they’d been snakes? How stupid of me. They were pretty curls, soft, glossy, swaying like seaweed. I could hear her more clearly, and I knew what she was saying. It had been horrible, what had happened to her. It was magic gone mad, and it had to be stopped. I never doubted for a moment that my magic was stronger, but it set off a slow rage within me, thinking that the power had been misused as it had.
Misused? Or was it simply clumsiness. Evil intention had infested the cup, and now it lived there, determined to stay. Clumsiness. A reckless disregard fo
r what really mattered.
I set about blocking it. Now I could close my eyes, because I had it all gathered within me; my vision had surrounded it and taken it in. Her face was completely clear to me now and I heard her lament, feeling deep empathy. And then I spoke to her, I calmed her, I set her at ease. I set her free.
She was gone. Then I felt the true beginnings of a release, the sensation of something loosening its hardened grip, losing the battle and letting go. Evil is real. It fights to remain. It can be kept at bay, but it can never really die.
A coolness spread out from my heart and smothered the rage. Quiet waves came welling up and filled my body, then the space around me, then the entire room. It was clean now, and when it was done, I was content. The whole world was clean, just for this one moment, and I rested in the joy of it.
Then I opened my eyes and looked at Camille.
“Who did this?” I said without anger. “Who trapped her like that?”
“We are not always given answers,” Camille said. “Only more questions.”
“Camille,” I said patiently, “somebody did this, and then either couldn’t or wouldn’t fix it. Do you know who it was?”
Her gaze softened as she considered. “I know when it happened, but I don’t know how. And I tried, but I didn’t know how to undo it. When you came, it gave me hope. And then you started to deny everything, to be so – cynical. I didn’t know what to think. But you did it,” she said finally, sounding exhausted. “You did it. I can feel it.”
“I can feel it too,” Arielle said, staring at the teacup. “It’s just a cup. It’s yours now, Taylor. Take it.”
I stood up, bone-weary. “No, it’s your Uncle Oswald’s now . . . still. It was always his. It goes back to him in the morning.”
Camille nodded.
“It has no power to harm anyone anymore,” Arielle said. “That’s all that really matters.”
Camille placed a cold hand on my forearm and the room rocked a little. I felt Arielle touch my other arm and looked across blankly as she thanked me. I found myself blinking, staring, feeling extremely uncomfortable. It felt like they had me in a box.
“Sure,” I managed to say. Then, gently, I pulled my arms away and broke off contact. I think I muttered, “Sorry.”
“She’s having a hard time with it,” one of them said, as if I couldn’t hear.
“Yes, I know,” the other replied.
Not wanting to look at either one of them now, I glanced across at the wall and saw a clock. It was exactly 3 am.
Ed would be pleased to have that little detail when I reported in. He always wanted that kind of information for his case files. For the sake of completeness.
Chapter 27
“And you didn’t wake us up?” Lily was a bit miffed, but Ed congratulated me heartily, even shaking my hand, after I told them about the late-night exorcism.
Arielle was back on the job and serving breakfast on the patio. She’d dropped the aura of witchiness and was back to being an innkeeper. Nobody mentioned the assault of the killer lamp again, that I can remember. All that was forgotten in the wake of the Haunt or Hoax? debacle and my news about the cleansing of the teacup.
There was a distinct feeling in the air that everything had been wrapped up, somehow. Even the reality show was finished, apparently. Lily made a feeble argument that what had happened came under the banner of the Hoax? part of the show’s name, but that had never been meant to include a hoax perpetrated by a cast member.
We had one more day in Key West to go. The next day was Friday, and we were checking out of The Sailor’s Rest. The day before us looked like it was going to be a true vacation day.
When Arielle’s cellphone rang, she almost didn’t take the call. She said she wasn’t even going to look to see who it was, but that kind of thing is beyond human ability. We just gotta know who’s calling. And when she slipped the phone out of her back pocket and saw that it was Darrien, she took the call after all.
After the first few words, her face went blank and she said very little except for asking a few short questions. When she ended the call, Teddy said, “Bad news?”
“My uncle. He’s in the medical center. He had an accident last night. I – I have to go to him. Darrien’s there already. Andre – the owner of the gallery across the street – called Darrien this morning when Oswald didn’t open his shop as usual. Darrien went to his house to check on him and found him semi-conscious on the bathroom floor.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Lily said. “We’ll clean up after breakfast and put everything away.”
“Absolutely,” I added. “You just go. By the way . . . .” I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “What time? When was his accident?”
She looked at me and her eyes were troubled. She’d thought of it, too; I’d heard her ask Darrien.
“He says it was just after midnight. He got up to go to the bathroom and he slipped and fell. It was before we . . . .”
“Cleansed the cup,” Ed finished for her. “Fascinating.”
Teddy had the nerve to say, “Too bad you wouldn’t let us proceed with the investigation last night. We could have neutralized the cup’s powers before Oswald had his accident, and it never would have happened.”
“Oh, shut up, Teddy,” Lily said on behalf of all of us.
He brooded for a while after that, alone. He sat over his cold coffee as everybody else cleared their plates and went into the kitchen to clean up.
Around the time the work was finished, he came striding through the kitchen and paused by Dobbs.
“Come to my room,” he said, just barely loud enough for everybody else to hear. “I have a proposition for you.”
All around the kitchen, eyes widened and breathing stopped. After a pregnant pause, Dobbs said, “Nah. I think I’ll just stay here and help with the dishes. You go on ahead.”
Teddy shrugged and left. For five full minutes, we all worked in silence, though there wasn’t much left to do.
Finally, quietly, Elliott said, “Good for you, Dobbs.”
Chapter 28
Michael and I visited Oswald at the Medical Center that afternoon, but we almost missed him; they were already releasing him.
At first, we were relieved that he wasn’t as badly hurt as we’d feared and was well enough to go home. But then we saw policemen. Not a whole gang of uniforms – there were only two of those, but there were also detectives. I’ve gotten so I can pick them out, due to regrettable incidents in my past.
They turned to us, unflustered, as we entered the room, and they seemed particularly interested in me.
The male detective introduced himself as Detective Lodge. “And this is my partner, Detective Laura Billew.”
Hands were shaken, eyes studied me, feet were shuffled. I got that feeling again.
“So you’re the star of the show,” Detective Lodge said to me lightly.
“I’m not even in the show,” I retorted. “That would be a guy named Teddy Force. If there even is a show now. There was a bit of a disaster last night.”
“So I hear.”
“I told them all about it,” Arielle said. “And how you freed the teacup afterward.”
Oh, goodie. Nothing impresses a hard-boiled police detective more than being told about possessed teacups and the lady with the magical passes. Now they thought Arielle was a crackpot, and by extension, so was I.
I gave him a watery grin and introduced Michael. “He’s a lawyer,” I added, as if that gave us credibility.
Lodge gave him a look that clearly said he’d met crackpot lawyers, too, and shook his hand.
I’d come to see how Oswald was, not to meet the peacekeeping corps of Key West, so I turned to the patient and asked him how he was.
“Fine, fine, I just want to get out of here,” he said testily. “I need to get some rest, and,” raising his voice, “they don’t believe in letting anybody get any sleep around here.” He lowered his voice again and went into a mutter. “Poking at yo
u and sticking things in your mouth and up your . . . waking you up all night long just to see if you were really asleep . . . bunch of hammerheads around here, acting all sweet when they jerk you out of a deep sleep, then they go back to the breakroom and tell all their co-workers about it so they can all have a good laugh . . . .”
I looked at Darrien. “Looks like he’s got that fighting spirit again.”
“Oh, yeah,” Darrien agreed patiently.
I thought of positive things to say, but I had to interrupt Oswald because he was still muttering. “It’ll be great to go home and get into your own bed again, won’t it?”
He looked at me as if I’d just said the most idiotic thing he’d ever heard. “Home! Home? They’re not letting me go home. I’m goin’ to my nephew’s house and sleeping in some spare room, probably facing the street so there’ll be lots of noise to keep me awake all day long.”
“Why won’t they let you go to your own home?”
“Because somebody’s trying to kill me!”
Coming on the heels of the hammerhead nurses, I wondered if Oswald was a little confused, but one glance at Darrien confirmed that he wasn’t.
“It looks like somebody hit him from behind,” Darrien told me. “I thought he just hit his head on the floor when he fell, but the doctor said . . . .” He suddenly decided that the less said in the crowded room the better. I nodded at him; I got the gist.
Oswald had been staring at me as if he’d just now figured out who I was, and then he started to blink and get himself worked up again. “You’re the one who set it loose. If you hadn’t taken it out of the cabinet, none of this would have ever happened. I had it all locked up nice and safe, and you took it out again. This has all been your fault. And now Maryellen is dead and somebody’s whacking me on the back of the head in the dead of night and God knows what’s going to happen next. I told you I’d hold you responsible, and dammit, I do!”