by Kelly Creagh
And so it went that the rest of the SPOoKy team got an abridged and much more academic version of the previous night’s events from Lucas, who had translated everything I’d told him into far more technical (and far vaguer) terms.
Phrases like “multiple aggressive dark apparitions,” “open portals,” “vortex hotspots,” “psychic attacks,” and, the most ambiguous of all, “confirmed nonhuman entity” got dealt around the coffee shop table like cards at a blackjack game.
I eventually tuned out the jargon talk, my mind taking me back to the previous night. To my impromptu embrace with Erik.
I’d been so terrified and so relieved to see him that I had just rushed him, winding him in my arms.
His frame had felt like that of a scarecrow. Light and hollow and . . .
I flushed at the memory of it—of his scent, which, like his voice, had been so familiar. And the way his gloved hands had lingered as they’d traveled along my arms, tenderness lacing the action.
Then there had been his eyes. Those lights-for-eyes that, according to my sister, were supposed to belong to Zedok. Zedok’s eyes, though, had been blacker than black—two empty and night-filled pits of nothing. Had Charlie seen both figures and somehow confused the two? Or was this solid evidence that Lucas could be right? That Erik wasn’t real. That he was, essentially, a trick.
The prospect caused my heart to contract and pound almost painfully hard.
I didn’t want that to be so.
If not for that embrace with Erik, Lucas might have convinced me I’d hallucinated the whole ordeal. But that encounter, I couldn’t have imagined.
And neither could I believe now that Erik, in all his turmoil and sadness, was not a prisoner of the monster.
I scowled at the tabletop. Confliction and confusion, and a hint of longing, warred with my fear of going back inside that house.
It didn’t help that the legend Lucas had told us fit with all I had experienced firsthand. Everything but his assertion that the entity in the house was “nonhuman.” Because if Zedok was the Egyptian priest, then he would be human. But then, he had been incorporeal, and garbed like another masquerader, so that didn’t fit. And what about Erik? Lucas never mentioned him once to the others. Would the cleansing set him free? If it worked, would I even get to say goodbye . . . ?
“So who’s in?” Lucas asked when he finished his debriefing.
I glanced up at this to find Charlotte staring straight at me.
I returned her gaze unblinkingly, and she frowned.
“I’m in,” said Wes.
Eyeing Wes, Patrick gave a long sigh of mock resignation. “I guess that means I’m in, too, because who else is going to watch you?”
I smirked at Patrick, and he snuck me a wink, which told me a smile was all he’d been after.
Charlotte opened her mouth next, and I braced myself, waiting for her to start rattling off reasons why we shouldn’t be messing with stuff this dangerous. She didn’t, though. Instead, she seemed to rethink whatever she’d been about to say and, averting her gaze from mine, gave Lucas a stiff nod.
* * *
LOW-HANGING CLOUDS, DENSE and dark, threatened rain the whole drive to my house. They didn’t make good on the promise, though, until all five of us were standing under the portico of Moldavia. Now here we all were, at the threshold, with everyone in SPOoKy aware that, in being present for this cleansing thing, they were risking more than they had at any prior investigation.
The plan was to split up in pairs while one person waited at the door. I had been the one to insist on that last part to ensure we had a way to escape. Patrick had volunteered for the job, and no one had fought him on it. After Charlotte called dibs on going through the main floor with Lucas, Wes had jumped to say he would take the upper floors with me. I could tell Lucas had wanted to protest on both counts. I agreed to the arrangement, but only with the stipulation that no one went into the basement. According to Lucas, though, the basement had to be cleaned just like every other room in the house. So, on that point, we made a compromise.
After we finished “cleaning” our respective areas, we would meet at the base of the grand staircase and, from there, four of us would go down to clear the cellar together while someone again stood sentinel at the door.
Once we entered Moldavia, Lucas and Patrick carried the corner chair out of the parlor and propped it up against the front door to ensure it stayed open. Meanwhile, Wes drifted farther into the foyer, ogling the walls and ceiling as Lucas had done when he’d first entered the house, moving with slow, careful steps toward the downed chandelier.
While Wes crouched to one side of the mangled fixture, I turned my attention to Lucas, who unzipped the duffel Charlotte had left on the corner chair. Then, one at a time, he began to extract small whitish-gray twine-wrapped bundles.
Before I could ask what the bundles were, Wes interrupted.
“Problem,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically sober. “The chain on this chandelier.”
“What about it?” Lucas asked, as he handed me one of the bundles, which turned out to be small wads of dried and tightly wound leaves.
With a clink, Wes held up the end of the chain still attached to the fixture. “So, this chain didn’t just give . . . It was cut.”
“Uhhh,” said Patrick, who squinted at the chain. “Maybe we should cut.”
Charlotte shot him a glare.
“Aaaafter we’re done here,” he amended.
“Cut?” Lucas repeated. “It’s metal. How could it have been cut?”
“Um,” Wes said, examining the severed link. “With something really . . . really . . . hot?”
Wes peered up at Lucas, who had been watching me. Quickly, Lucas looked away, striding to where Wes stood to hand him a bundle, not even sparing the chain a second glance.
“You and Stephanie should start in the attic,” Lucas told him. “Cover the second-floor bedrooms next, and then work your way back down.”
“Right,” Wes said, dropping the chain and simultaneously shooting Patrick a questioning side-glance. Patrick’s gaze widened in return.
So. They were starting to pick up on the fact that Lucas hadn’t told them everything. He’d asked me to trust him, but at what point was that just me participating in recklessness? When did I speak up to tell these people who, with the exception of maybe Charlotte, had become my friends that the word “spirit” did not even begin to cover the problem here?
“What does this stuff do exactly?” I asked, holding up the dried leaves, attempting to ease the tension.
Lucas straightened his glasses and handed a bundle to Charlotte, keeping one for himself. Next, he withdrew a grill lighter.
“The burning of sage helps to drive out negative entities,” Lucas explained.
“This is a lot of sage, though,” said Wes, who lit his bundle with a silver lighter from his pocket. He blew at the flames, causing tendrils of smoke to rise from its end. “For one house.”
“Not for this house.” Lucas gave Wes a side-glare.
“Normally, cleansings aren’t where we begin,” explained Patrick while setting up a video camera and tripod. Charlotte, in the meantime, began tracing long air-designs with the smoke in doorways and around windows in the foyer. “But . . . since we’re not here to investigate, we’re starting with the sage.”
“It’s a ritual a lot of paranormal investigators rely on when confronting or trying to clear malevolent energies,” Lucas added. “But spirits can react negatively to sage smoke, so everyone . . . just be on your guard.”
“That’s geek-speak for ‘we’re all scared shitless,’ ” Wes said as he approached me. He reignited his lighter before holding it out to me. Taking my cue, I applied one end of my own bundle to the flame, letting it catch before blowing it out as the others had done. Vines of smoke then began to drift up from the slow-bur
ning leaves, carrying a warm and earthy aroma—that same part of Lucas’s scent that, until now, I’d never been able to pinpoint.
“You’ll hold my hand if I get scared, won’t you, Armand?” Wes asked.
My cheeks flamed. So did Lucas’s, though less from embarrassment than anger. “Are you seriously going to be like this, man?” he asked. “Here?”
“Being insufferable is a defense mechanism,” said Wes. “And like I’ve been saying since the very beginning of SPOoKy, what we really need in situations like this are (a) a real actual ordained priest and (b) holy water.”
At this, Patrick raised a finger. “Just want to throw out an impartial observation here, but I thought that involving a priest is what supposedly started this whole mess in the first place.”
“A triviality,” replied Wes.
“Your brain is a triviality,” countered Patrick.
“My brain, I’ll have you know, is the second least trivial thing about me.”
The sage would no doubt leave a smell in the house, which I’d have to conjure up an excuse for when Dad returned. But that was the least of my problems, especially since I’d already successfully concocted excuses for what happened last night.
Back at the hospital, when Dad had finally come to, he’d immediately started haranguing himself over the chandelier, apologizing for not checking the fixture the moment we’d moved in. Of course he would think the fitting had rotted. What would he say when he saw the chain? When he’d asked what had made me panic, I’d explained that I’d suffered from some kind of waking night terror. Which had, in a way, been true. He’d immediately asked about getting me tested for carbon monoxide poisoning, and I’d put him off, promising I’d check the alarms in the home first and call someone if the levels were bad.
Thing was, the levels in the house were bad. And I had called someone. Just not about carbon monoxide. And now, while both Charlie and Dad were away and safe, I had the help of four people who believed I was dealing with the otherworldly.
What no one in SPOoKy—including Lucas—seemed to be grasping, though, was that there was something in the house that wasn’t bad.
Those eyes. The way they’d gazed at me before being dragged back inside the house. His mask might have hidden his features from me, but not those two faraway lights. There had been someone inside those eyes. Behind that mask. There was a person within that empty body I knew to be real because I had held it.
“Hey.” Wes bumped my arm, offering me his elbow like we were about to walk down the homecoming court together. “Let’s go smoke a ghost, shall we?”
“I thought you said it was a demon.”
“And I thought you said you were single,” he said through a wolfish grin.
That’s when Patrick gave Wes a disapproving once-over. “Man. Quit being the creepiest thing in this building and get your weird ass up those stairs. I’m not chaperoning you. I’ve got enough to worry about being down here alone on the set of the Insidious Children of the Conjuring Corn.”
Wes gave me another of his mysterious, conspiratorial winks. Then he dropped his proffered arm and stalked to the base of the steps. Patrick in the meantime moved to take his station by the door, next to a camera, its lens aimed at the parlor doors and the back hall where Lucas had told the group most of last night’s “activity” had taken place. Had Lucas been listening, though, when I’d told him none of it had happened on this side?
“Ruh-roh, Raggy,” Wes said as a low boom of thunder sounded in the distance. “We’d better step on it, before the lights go out and suddenly we’re all starring in that movie.”
“Something tells me we might already be there,” said Patrick.
Wes started up the stairs, and I moved to follow but paused to glance after Lucas, who’d gone into the parlor with Charlotte. I only caught a glimpse, but that had been enough to show me they were arguing. I didn’t want to think it had something to do with me but then, what else could it be?
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle,” Wes chanted. “Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil . . .”
I halted on the steps while Wes muttered the next portion of the incantation—or whatever it was he was intoning—under his breath.
“What’s that?” I demanded. “What are you doing?”
Ignoring me, he continued, his volume building again. “And do thou, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
I gaped at Wes, images of hellfire leaping in my head, and of Erik being dragged backward again, this time into an inferno instead of the darkness of Moldavia.
Reaching the topmost step, Wes, sensing I hadn’t followed him there, turned back.
“It’s a Catholic prayer,” he explained. “To help rid a space of evil forces.”
“But,” I said, still unnerved, “what if there’s an entity here that isn’t evil?”
Wes’s expression underwent an odd change. He frown-scowled. Then, squinting one eye, he tilted his head at me.
“Sorry,” he said, “but . . . that question seems to imply you have your doubts about the thing we’re about to engage with. Even after said monster dropped a chandelier on your father.”
He gestured over the banister, toward the wreckage.
“If there’s a dark entity here—and there is,” I said, “isn’t it possible that there could be a good one trapped here, too?”
“Hoooold on just one freeze-dried minute,” Wes said. “You said your sister had spoken to one of the entities. But what about you?”
Lucas. Why had he left out the details surrounding my interactions with Erik? Why, when Erik was the reason we were here?
“I . . . might have,” I admitted. Because if Wes was going to put himself on the line, he deserved to know.
“What’d she just say?” called Patrick from the doorway.
“You . . . might have?” asked Wes, speaking loud enough for Patrick to hear. And the way Wes had asked this told me how big of a misstep I’d made.
“Does Lucas know about that?” asked Patrick, causing me to glance his way until Wes took several steps back down the staircase, stopping when we were eye level.
“Stephanie.”
Wow. Was this the first time he’d called me by my first name? His voice had lost its wry and flirtatious edge, too.
“Whatever is in this house,” Wes said, “it’s not your friend. It’s not in need. It’s not trapped.” He began ticking off fingers. “It’s not a little girl, boy, pet, doll, goldfish, old man, old woman, mermaid, unicorn, or any other cute or benign thing. You understand that . . . don’t you?”
His kohl-rimmed eyes bored into mine.
Rain started pouring outside, its hush like a too-late warning. I spared a quick glance once more to Patrick, whose anxious expression mirrored my own. And that doubled my worry that Lucas had made a horrible mistake in keeping the specifics from the rest of the team. Or had it been my mistake not to insist that I be the one to tell them what happened?
“He—” I started, but Wes cut me off.
“It,” he corrected. “What did it tell you?”
“No,” I said, because Erik wasn’t an “it.” I paused, stalling for time and wishing all the while this guy would freaking blink. Instead, his eyes grew wide. Afraid like Patrick’s. Like because I hadn’t told them about my interactions with both Zedok and Erik, we might now be in more danger than we knew.
Again, I looked to Patrick, whose eyes bounced between me and Wes, as if he only needed the slightest signal to shift his sneakers into marathon mode.
That’s when the deafening bang of a downstairs door made us all jump.
A scream followed.
Charlotte’s.
FORTY-SIX
Zedok
I had still be
en in the kitchen when they arrived—Stephanie and the small band of investigators I had warned her to never allow on the premises. Of course, her young man was among them.
I had stood there listening. To every word exchanged between the five of them.
That was, until it became clear that she would be heading upstairs.
Stephanie. She had come back. As I’d known she would. But why this entourage?
Of course. Erik. She had come back to rescue Erik.
The rose in my chest contracted, strained by the notion that this all could have been avoided if only I had told her the truth.
The rose, though. It bought me time.
Promptly, I crossed out of Stephanie’s kitchen to stand upon the top step leading into my cellar. My plan was to lure Stephanie from the company of her cohorts in order to speak to her directly—something I could, if we were lucky, manage without losing my new heart. I had halted just short of closing the door to my side, however, when my attention was arrested by a fervent argument that, along with the useless sage smoke, drifted down the hallway toward me. The argument would not have commanded my attention except that it had contained, of all things, my name.
“You should have told us about Erik,” came a young woman’s unfamiliar voice.
“I did.” This from the boy.
So, Stephanie had shared information with him regarding our interactions. But what? And how much . . . ?
“No, Lucas,” argued the girl. “You actually didn’t. You basically told everyone that we were dealing with a demon.”
“Because that’s what it has to be,” he said. “Erik can’t be real.”
“Except you just told me that’s not what Stephanie believes.”
“Because she’s in the first stage of oppression!”
“You don’t know that.”
“She admitted to caring about him.”
“So. What. You’re jealous? Is that what this is really about?”
“Don’t be stupid.”