by Ann Charles
“That’s right, baby.” She blew me an air kiss. “Now you have Cooper cooties, too.”
I batted her kiss away. “I’ll try not to let the ghosts lock up Cooper for all eternity, but I give no guarantees.”
“Come on, Parker,” he said, gripping me by the wrist. Handcuffs were no match for his hold as he towed me over the threshold and into the jail behind him.
As we passed through, the door started to swing shut, but something blocked it. I glanced down and saw Natalie’s boot in the way. She always had been a quick thinker.
“Maybe we should have brought her along,” I said to Cooper as we hurried along the walkway between the jail cells to where Cornelius lay toward the back of the room.
I shined my light on Doc as we passed the group cell. His eyes were closed, his skin pale with a glisten of sweat on his forehead. Shitballs. That wasn’t a good sign at all.
“No way in hell,” Cooper said, tugging on me when I tried to head in Doc’s direction.
I tugged back. “Why are you still holding onto me?”
“Because Nyce always worries about you taking side trips when we’re playing friendly with the wispy folks. I’m going to make sure you stay right here by my side.”
“You should have brought your handcuffs along.”
“Maybe next time. Now come on. Nyce is obviously still breathing just fine. We need to make sure Curion is, too.”
When we reached Cornelius, Cooper dropped to his knees, pulling me down with him. Cornelius lay on his stomach with his head turned in our direction. Cooper shined the light on his face, lifting his eyelids one at a time while I checked for a pulse, which I found with ease. It was beating at a smooth, regular rate.
“His pulse is strong and steady.” I sat back on my heels.
“His pupils contracted when I checked.” Cooper held his hand in front of Cornelius’s nose. “He seems to be breathing fine, too.”
“Okay, so it appears Cornelius is just taking some sort of mental break.” Oddly enough, this wasn’t the first time I’d found him in this state, or at least something similar to it. “Now let’s go help Doc.” I tried to stand but Cooper wasn’t having it.
“Let’s turn him over on his back first. Check for other injuries. He might have fallen on something.”
Together, we made fast work of the task and then sat back to have a look-see with our flashlights. Cornelius looked peaceful, as if he were taking a snooze in a hammock, not checked out in a haunted jail.
I reached down and ran my fingers through his hair feeling for injuries. “Hmm.”
“What is it?” Cooper asked. “Did you find a lump?”
“No, but his hair is softer than I expected. I always figured it would be coarse since it’s so thick.”
Cooper cursed at me six ways from Sunday.
“I beg your pardon, Officer Pottymouth!” I poked him in the shoulder. “And you need to take that last one back.”
“I’m not taking anything back. Now is not the time for horsing around, Parker.”
“Are you kidding?” I snapped. “We’re in a haunted jail surrounded by five menacing ghosts most likely drawn out from the woodwork by our pied piper pal here who is conked out on the floor while my boyfriend sits locked away over there in a cell going through who knows what hellish mental shit because I can’t get to him to pull him back to safety.” I huffed at Cooper’s silent stare. “Now is the best frickin’ time for horsing around, because at this moment I’m one rotted corpse breath on the back of my neck away from screaming these walls down.”
His hold on my wrist loosened a little. “Okay, calm down. You’re right. The situation in here is a bit tense.”
I nodded, breathing hard. “Where are the damned ghosts right now?”
He glanced behind me. Half of his face squinched. “You don’t want to know.”
Goose bumps prickled down my spine. I gulped and focused on Cornelius. “He’s breathing and doesn’t seem to be physically hurt, which could mean one of these freaky phantoms must be exerting some kind of specter-spell on him.”
“You have a real way with words, you know it?”
“I try my best.”
I dared a peek over my shoulder all the while cringing, fearing I’d suddenly be able to see whatever it was that Cooper didn’t want to tell me about. Thankfully, I remained ghost-blind. However, movement in the group cell made my breath catch. I shined my light at Doc, jerking back at the sight of him staring back at me with wide, dark eyes. At least his pupils looked extra black from here.
“Doc?” I whispered. “Cooper, look.” I nudged my head toward the group cell.
“Why are you whispering?” Cooper asked. “It’s not as if the ghosts can’t hear you.”
“Now you’re chastising me about whispering? Oh, that’s rich.”
“Stay back!” Doc interrupted our bickering. His voice was raspy, tired sounding, but stronger than the times he’d gone head to head with Prudence.
Why was he just sitting in there? Had the ghosts locked him in the cell the same as they’d locked us out, or had he done it to somehow protect himself from whatever knocked out Cornelius?
Cooper stood slowly, pulling me up with him. “Are you talking to us or the ghosts, Nyce?”
“I’m talking to her,” he answered, pointing in my direction.
Her? Oh shit, what had these ghosts done to his mind? Didn’t he recognize me? “Doc, it’s me, Violet. Cooper and I are here to help.”
“Not you, Killer.”
Relief flooded through me. Good, his brain wasn’t totally gone. Now to get him out of that cell.
“So loud,” Doc said and groaned, closing his eyes and lowering his head into his hands. He took a deep rattling breath before continuing. “Coop, there is a banshee behind Violet. She’s sitting on Cornelius.”
My shoulders tightened up in a snap. Holy heartstopper! I slowly turned back to the pied piper of ghosts. How in the hell did he hook a banshee? And from where? Weren’t they usually over in Ireland or Scotland? I always thought banshees were made up. Fairy women from fairy tales. Then again, why should I be surprised to find a banshee roaming around in the Black Hills? After all, I was currently being hounded by parasitic, long-limbed ghouls with a penchant for my blood. A banshee couldn’t be too bad, could she?
I shined my light all around Cornelius. “I can’t see her,” I whispered to Cooper. “Can you?”
“No,” he said, stepping away from Cornelius and dragging me with him. “But I think I can hear her wailing now. It sort of reminds me of when you were in jail.”
“Not funny, Cooper.”
“Sure, now you don’t want to horse around.” He towed me farther away from Cornelius—or tried to, but my right boot was caught on something.
I tugged, but my foot was stuck fast. What the hell?
Cooper pulled again. “Quit screwing around, Parker.”
“I’m not screwing around. My boot is stuck on something.” I shined the light down on my foot.
“There’s nothing there,” Cooper said.
“I know that.” I tugged again. “But I’m telling you, it’s stuck.”
A cold, tingling sensation started at my toes and quickly moved along the arch of my foot, over my heel, and up my calf. My pulse rocketed. “Something isn’t right here,” I told Cooper as the tingling chill climbed over my knee and up my thigh.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to get this boot off,” I cried, frantically tugging at my frozen leg with my hands. “Help me, damn it.”
Cooper let go of my arm and wrapped his arms around my waist, trying to haul me free while I worked to slip out of my boot with no luck.
“Coop!” Doc’s shout made us both jump and look over at him. Coop lit him up with the flashlight. He was standing at the bars of the cell, his face lined with pain. “You need to let go of Violet.”
The tingling cold fingers climbed over my hip, moving up my back while another chill started down my othe
r leg. I was panting now, struggling to catch my breath. What the hell was going on?
I needed to focus. Slow my breath. Center myself. I closed my eyes and saw a single candle flame in the dark flickering brightly.
“Let go?” Cooper asked, but held tight to me, which was good because if he let go now I was going to fall as both of my legs seemed to be frozen. “Why?”
“Because the banshee is sinking its claws into her.”
It was doing what?
A blast of panic shot through me. The flickering candle flame in my mind’s eye flared big and bright, exploding like a firecracker in the dark.
The tingling cold filled my chest and raced up my neck.
“Let go or she’ll take you with her!” I heard Doc yell, but his voice seemed small and distant.
A blood-curdling, long-winded shriek rang out, going on and on and on, piercing my head.
I screamed in pain, lashing out in the darkness.
The shriek stopped as quickly as it started.
My ears ringing still, I opened my eyes.
“Oh, no!” I scrambled to my feet. “She got me.”
Chapter Fourteen
“She got me, too, damn it!” Cooper growled.
I looked down. He lay flat on his back on the tiled floor. Under the bright overhead lights, I could see a vein pulsing in his forehead. His eyes were hard and sharp like two silver daggers aimed up at me.
But I didn’t care. I was happy to see I had company, even if it was a bristly law dog. “How’d you get down there?”
“How in the hell did I get here, wherever the fuck we are?” He pushed to his feet and then poked me in the shoulder. Hard. “This is your fault, Parker.”
Ouch. I rubbed my shoulder. Apparently I was back to feeling something other than the cold tingling touch of the banshee. I could hear Cooper loud and clear, too, including the underlying fury clipping off the end of his words, so my sight, sound, and touch senses were still online.
I grimaced at him. He was obviously still waiting for an explanation. “Oops.”
Cooper probably should have let go of me when Doc told him to.
“ ‘Oops’? Is that all you have to say for landing us …” he glanced around. “Where the hell did you take us?”
Rather than bask in the glow of his huffiness, I took inventory of our surroundings, trying to figure out myself where we’d ended up. It didn’t take more than a glance to see we were in the same place—the top floor of the old jail, but things felt slightly different. Brighter for one thing, with the lights on and white light blaring in through the barred windows. Also, the walls were painted a cool mint green instead of sea blue, giving the jail a fresh, sterilized feel. The place smelled musty, same as before, but with hints of sourness underlying a coating of ammonia or some other nose-burning disinfectant.
“It’s clear where we are,” I told him. “The better question is when in time are we at this moment. Or is it the same timeline, only a matter of some other plane or realm?”
And where was the banshee? Had I left her behind?
“Christ.” Cooper plowed his fingers through his hair. “This supernatural shit makes no goddamned sense.”
“Tell me about it.”
I spun in a slow circle. It was easier to see the size and layout of the place in the light. There was one group cell that would sleep four men. This was the same cell Doc had been sitting in when we’d entered the jail room. This group-holding pen was almost twice as big as one of the cells in the modern-day Deadwood police station. I knew that from first-hand experience, thanks to the big bozo grumbling next to me.
On the opposite side of the large cell were three narrow single cells, including the one we were standing next to, and one slightly roomier caged area with an open shower stall and sink. That must have been where the prisoners showered, right here in front of one and all. Each of the cells had a stainless-steel toilet and a small sink as well. I cringed at the lack of privacy, something I had experienced as well while waiting to be sprung from Deadwood’s jail months back.
Cooper pocketed his flashlight. “What are we doing here, Parker?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do we get out of here and back to the others?”
“I don’t know that either.”
He cursed under his breath. “What do you know?”
I sucked air through my teeth. “That I panicked back there when that banshee was crawling up my leg and I played my physical medium card, same as I did when I ran into the Bone Cruncher in the graveyard out behind your uncle’s barn.”
“Okay, so how did you get back to the regular world then?”
I frowned down at my hands. “I don’t know that either. One minute I was in that other realm watching the Bone Cruncher take bites out of a skull. The next thing I remember is you calling my name, and then shazam-balam!”
“ ‘Shazam-balam’? Did you say those actual words?”
“No, I was just using that to … never mind. Let’s leave it, as I somehow managed to bring the Bone Cruncher back to our realm with me by accident.”
“You really have a talent for screwing up, Parker. You should win awards for this shit.”
“Screw you, Cooper. You’re the one who dragged me into that jail room because you were too chickenshit to face off with those five ghosts on your own.”
“I wasn’t chickenshit, I was drunk.” He rubbed his palm down his face. “I still am, for that matter. At least I think I am. Maybe I passed out and this is just a horrible nightmare and I’ll wake up in my bed next to Nat.”
“With a big red ball gag in your mouth,” I finished the scene for him, and then realized I’d said it aloud and squeezed my lips together.
“What is your fascination with ball gags tonight, Parker?”
Instead of answering that, I reached over and pinched him.
He jerked back. “What’d you do that for?”
“To test your theory. See, this is not a nightmare.” Although I didn’t think it was total reality either. I had a feeling we were trapped somewhere in between two realms, like an elevator stuck mid-floor. I just had to figure out how to get us back to where we’d come from.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” He rubbed where I’d pinched him. “What happened to the banshee?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself.” I looked around, listening. The jail was quiet. Too quiet. “Maybe I lost her when the candle exploded.”
“What candle?”
“The one I use to center myself during séances.”
He rubbed his jaw. Just like in the basement during what seemed like another lifetime ago, the rasping of his fingers over his beard stubble seemed extra loud. “Is this the same candle Curion has you picture when you’re going into that dark place?”
“Yep.”
“But that candle blew up this time?”
“Like an M-80 firecracker. Ka-boom!” I demonstrated with my hands.
His brow tightened. “Jesus, Parker. What did you get us into here?”
“Hey, I had a banshee trying to claw her way under my skin, so I used a previously tested tool to escape.”
He snorted. “You’re the tool.”
“Yeah, well, Doc told you to let go of me but you didn’t listen to him, so it’s your fault you’re here with me. You need to listen better and do as you’re told.”
In spite of his complaining, I was still really glad he hadn’t listened or done what he was told.
“Shut the hell up and figure out how to get us back to the others.”
“Fine.” I dropped onto the floor, sitting cross-legged.
He walked over to the door with the little square window, peering out.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s like a whiteout. I can’t make out the stairs or anything.”
He tried the door. It didn’t budge. No surprise there.
“It looks like we’re stuck in this place for now.”
/> “Let me see if I can reach out and find Doc.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the lead weight in my chest. Locking onto Doc in the dark was not something I’d had much success with before. He always came for me when I was in that creepy-crawly place, and more than once it took him a little too long to locate me. My fingers were crossed that he was in a mental state where he could focus on finding us. But if that banshee was still with him …
Okay, enough negative thinking. Time to focus on how to get out of here. I thought back to things Doc and Cornelius had talked about when it came to my physical medium abilities, trying to remember words they’d used.
There was something about me being a psychophoner and using telepathy, but that had to do with Doc transferring information to me and then me acting as a fancy microphone of sorts for Harvey’s long-dead relative. Or was that something to do with retrocognition?
Damn it, I’d heard these words bandied about enough by Doc and Cornelius that I should have the meanings down, but spoken words tended to go in one ear and out the other.
Whatever the paranormal professionals wanted to call it, I was somehow able to move between realms and take others with me. It didn’t matter if the “other” I dragged along was a dangerous creature like a Bone Cruncher, or something much, much worse, such as a half-crocked, crabby-pants detective.
I took another deep breath, letting it out slowly through my nose.
Back to the graveyard with the Bone Cruncher … I hadn’t even been trying to do any physical medium voodoo tricks that night and pulled it off, so this should be a breeze. A woman laughed hysterically in my head. Shut up. I stuffed that big red ball gag in her mouth. Now focus!
“Hurry up,” Cooper said, returning to my side.
I growled. “You’re not helping.” I opened one eye to glare up at him.
“Then tell me what I can do and I will.”
“First of all, sit your ass down and make sure you’re holding on to me.” I’d hate to leave the birthday boy behind. Natalie would pluck all of the hairs from my nose one by one just for starters, and then she’d go into full-speed revenge gear.