So Fell The Sparrow

by Katie Jennings

  A sly smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “I’m actually very fond of this little spot.” She pushed him until he lay back on the soft grass and crawled over him. Her lips traced the lines of his face, her heart singing, filled with joy. “Tell me again, darling. Tell me you love me.”

  He brushed aside her hair as his eyes met hers, grass green into gypsy brown. “I love you.”

  She smiled, then covered his mouth with hers in a hungry, devastating kiss. His hands ran over her back, holding her close. Welcoming her home.

  Relief flooded through her at having her past exposed, out in the open. There were no more secrets between them, no demons digging their claws into her heart. She was free of it all and free to love him.

  And, Lord, did she love him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Cello in hand, Grace sat beside her bedroom window and began to play. Her mind filled with hopeful thoughts of Sally and Mercy, and darker, more hateful thoughts of Ray.

  Though the marks of his hands were gone, her loathing for him remained. She hated that her desire to help was outweighed by her inability to do anything substantial. It seemed there was no end to the suffering that plagued the Sparrow House.

  Sally needed her. Mercy was tormented. And Ray was pure evil. How in the world had she gotten herself involved in any of this?

  Because she knew the answer was beyond her comprehension, she gave in to the one thing she had. The one constant, unrestrained comfort. The cello.

  Ian watched from the bed, silently reverent of her. The sunlight came in through the window, giving her ivory skin a surreal, angelic glow. Strands of her hair fell over her face as she tossed her head back, lost in the music she played. The very image of it, of her in this intense moment of vulnerability, humbled him. Just as it had the first time he’d seen her play.

  His realization from the night before troubled him. He didn’t want the complication of loving her, and yet there it was. Staring him in the face like a blazing, neon sign. Somewhere along the way, he’d developed feelings for the doctor. For the woman who grated on his nerves like sandpaper and did nothing but complain and argue with him. What sick twist of fate was this?

  But he didn’t try and ignore its effect on him. In fact, he knew he couldn’t.

  Probably because at that moment, he wanted her. He wanted all the baggage, all the grief, all the cynicism and sarcastic remarks. He would take every poisoned dart she threw at him with pleasure if only because that was when she was most alive. In those moments, she wasn’t plagued by grief. She was simply the clever, witty, fun woman he’d come to know. That was the woman he loved. And he would accept everything else if only to be with her.

  He didn’t want to think about what the future held for them. It muddied the waters of his optimism and he wanted no part of that. His goal was to stick by her side until the house was rid of the spirits. Until they reached that milestone, he would ignore the uncertainty wallowing in his gut over whether or not they would even remain in the same damn city after all was said and done.

  He figured they’d cross that bridge when they came to it.

  When Grace slowed her playing and rested on a long, haunted note, Ian smiled. “Bravo.”

  She looked at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears but her smile playful. “Grazie.”

  He patted the bed, inviting her to join him. She rose to her feet and set aside her cello before crawling in beside him. Their legs intertwined under the sheets and he kissed her forehead tenderly.

  She pulled back and met his eyes. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” His mouth found hers, not wanting to talk. He had other things in mind.

  He gripped her waist, holding her against him. She softened under his touch, her body curving into his.

  With a movement that was both urgent and nimble, she pushed him back against the bed and rose over him with a wicked smile.

  She ran her hands along his bare chest, the urge to tell him how she felt roaring through her. Empowering her. The words were on her lips, eager to be spoken. They frightened her, and yet there they were. I love you.

  But uncertainty had them retreating like scalded hands from a boiling pot of water. How could she say them when so much of what was happening between them was because of the house and the ghosts?

  More likely than not, none of this meant anything to him. And in her current state of mind, hearing him say so could shatter her. Ruin her. God knew she’d been there before. With Ian, somehow she knew it would hurt even more.

  It was best to ignore the fire in her heart. She had no desire to dwell on what the future held, so instead she would focus on this moment. On the man before her, the hunter of all things she had never believed in before.

  Her hand found his and she kissed the tattoo on his knuckles, the symbol of his life’s work and his ambition. What she once found to be foolish she now adored. Somewhere along the way, the entire situation stopped being one big joke and became horrifyingly real.

  “Stop thinking.” He reached up with his free hand and pulled her face down to his, his mouth teasing hers. Their eyes met and held, and he saw a spark of humor in all that gray.

  “Good point. If I think too much I’ll realize what a mistake this is.”

  “Or you’ll realize you’re in love with me, and then we’ll have big problems.”

  She laughed, trying to hide her uneasiness. “Very big problems.”

  He kissed her again, riding on the feel of her body over his. The scent of her lavender soap hit him as his hands combed through her hair, and her answering groan sent his mind reeling with a dark, hungry need.

  To hell with it, he thought wildly. Just tell her the truth.

  He murmured her name, the words that followed nearly tumbling to freedom. They would have been spoken, had it not been for the resounding crash that exploded downstairs.

  Grace jumped, her eyes flying open in shock. “What was that?”

  Ian frowned, pushing her aside. “Stay here.”

  He got out of bed and tugged on a pair of jeans, leaving her behind as he ventured to the stairs. Within seconds, she was behind him, a robe tucked around her body.

  He glared over his shoulder at her, but she only shrugged. “Don’t go all caveman on me now. You might need me.”

  “I might need you to stay the hell away from whatever just made that noise,” he grumbled, though he turned away from her and made his way downstairs. His eyes scanned the entryway, then peered into the kitchen and living room as he got closer.

  Nothing. No shadow, no apparition. No intruder.

  Then Grace screamed.

  “No!” She bolted toward the grandfather clock, which had been wrenched from the wall and thrown onto the floor. Glass and shards of wood lay scattered and mangled, and Grace knelt before them in shock and horror.

  A thing of such beauty. Destroyed.

  “How?” She uttered the word despite knowing it was useless. She knew the clock hadn’t just fallen over on its own. It had been dragged, forced from its sturdy location and hurled onto the floor with such ferocity that it was demolished.

  It would never run again. And although it had already been deteriorating, Grace felt the loss like a searing knife slicing through her very heart.

  Ian continued to stare around the room uneasily. He felt sorry for her, but knew the clock was the least of their problems. Ray was clearly up and about, ready to start a war, and it wasn’t even past breakfast.

  “Call Jackie. We need to stop this. Tonight,” Ian ordered, only to whirl around as the front door burst open and Alex and Jackie stumbled in.

  “What the hell was that?” Alex ran into the living room, eyeing Grace and the ruined clock warily. “We heard that from the street.”

  Jackie came up beside him, her arm encircling his as her eyes took in the scene. “The creature did this. It’s in the corner, laughing at us.”

  Ian ran his hands over his face and grunted. “What can we do? Please tell me you figured something out.”


  Jackie nodded, lifting the necklace of intricately woven copper wire for him to see. “Aubrey passed on this necklace and an incantation to me. I may be able to make it work.”

  “Good. Let’s do it.”

  “I still feel we need to dig up the body,” Jackie added, looking around at the others. “If we can free Mercy’s mortal form from its prison, perhaps Ray will follow her.”

  Alex looked down at her worriedly. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m afraid we are running out of options.”

  “Okay. So we’ll do that, too.” Ian looked down at Grace. “That okay with you, Doc?”

  Angry heat flared in her eyes, her hands filled with shards of the broken clock. “I just want that bastard out of my house.”

  Ian’s lips spread in a dark grin. “Good. Now find us a shovel.”

  * * *

  From the palpable tension vibrating in the air, it was clear that Ray was not pleased.

  Jackie felt his rage. It pulsated behind the walls of the basement as though hundreds of fists were pounding all at once against the concrete. She watched the tenuous weave dividing the spirit world and reality bend with each violent hit, closer and closer to breaking. Soon, there would be no divide at all. The house was perilously close to being swallowed whole by the monsters.

  If that happened, then all was lost. They had no choice but to act fast and act well.

  She watched as Ray’s shadow creature scampered along the edge of the wall, eager for a chance to cause mayhem. Through eyes that burned like embers, it glared at the necklace she held.

  Knowing it detested the copper pleased her. It gave her hope that Aubrey’s suggestion would work. She said a silent prayer just in case and turned her attention to the dark stain of death beneath the stairs that covered a body. Mercy’s body.

  She watched as Alex placed a static camera in the corner. In his hands, he held the Mel Meter and the Spirit Box while Ian carried the shovel Grace found in a shed out back. Grace hovered beside him, arms crossed and a strained look on her face. Coming back into the basement was not an easy task for any of them.

  The anxiety in the air was contagious and Jackie let out a soothing breath to try and combat it. She had to remain vigilant and strong. Any sign of weakness would make her vulnerable to Ray’s spirit, especially if unearthing the body of his daughter riled him up even more than he already was. She had to believe that removing the body, the bones, would usher his spirit out of the house.

  Her hand tightened over the braided copper necklace and she willed it to protect her. To protect them all.

  Ian lifted the shovel. “We ready?”

  She nodded then watched as he drove the shovel forcefully into the hard-packed dirt beneath the stairs. The initial impact sent shockwaves throughout the basement, rippling like heat waves over the floor. A dark smoky substance began to spill from the freshly disturbed earth, one only she could see. It seeped out of the ground like a sickly black oil, bubbling and churning. The sight of it sent shivers down her spine, a warning sign that something was off. Something was horribly wrong.

  The more strikes Ian made to the dirt exposed what lay beneath. He was out of breath, sweat beading on his forehead as he uncovered the first yellowed bone in the shallow grave. It protruded from the musty earth, barely recognizable as the curve of a skull.

  A shattered one.

  Jagged edges lined a gaping hole in the surface of the bone. As Ian knelt and began to brush away the dirt with his hands, he revealed the rest of what had once been a face.

  “Christ.” Grace covered her mouth with her hands, mortified.

  Jackie began to shake. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What is it?” Alex reached for her, finding the skin of her forearm ice cold.

  She shook her head as Ian began to expose more of the remains, seemingly too large to be those of a young woman. The black oil that spilled from the ground spread out toward their feet, and Jackie backed away from it in fear. Her heart beat frantically as she tried to make sense of it, to understand how she could have been so stupid.

  “I was wrong.” She trembled uncontrollably as sudden and violent visions blinded her. Ray’s spirit emerged, freed from the grave at last, and showed her everything. He exposed the truth he was unable to show before.

  She saw his death with horrifying clarity, the unexpected blow to the head so powerful it cracked through bone and splattered blood and brain. There had been so much hate behind the act. A vengeful, righteous sort of hate that spurred its host to pick up an axe and kill.

  And then his killer had dragged his body down into the basement and buried him beneath the stairs where no one would find him for a hundred years. His fury behind the circumstances of his death thundered around her, the fists pounding the walls growing louder and more powerful. Cracks appeared as they started to break through the cement, and the shadow creature raced around the room furiously.

  The others stared at the walls in horror. Dust began to drift down from the ceiling above them, shaken free by the spreading cracks.

  “What’s happening?” Grace stammered, instinctively pulling Ian out from under the stairs. He stood beside her, brows knit together as he stared around the room.

  A single, mortified tear fell from Jackie’s right eye. “That’s not Mercy.”

  “Who the hell is it, then?” Ian demanded.

  “Ray.” The word was said on an exhale as her eyes rolled back and she gave in to another blast of vision. Ray showed Mercy walking out to the edge of the lonely dock, a bag of bricks in her arms and her face emotionless. She tied the bag to her waist with a rope then, without hesitation, took the plunge into the icy depths of the harbor.

  She had murdered her father then took her own life. Jackie wanted to believe that a desire for justice compelled her to kill. But it became horrifyingly clear that Mercy embodied nearly as much evil as her father did.

  She was the one keeping Sally from her father out of jealousy. She was the one terrorizing the house and wreaking havoc, posing as Ray, leading them to believe a lie. Her suffering at the hands of her father was real, but her final act of revenge and self-destruction had tarnished her spirit. It had damned her soul. And although Aubrey had managed to banish Mercy’s spirit from the house during the séance, her creature remained. The mindless culmination of violent hate and explosive evil that plagued the house was in fact not Ray’s at all.

  It was Mercy’s.

  The light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling began to flicker and the Mel Meter shrilled loudly. The sound of it reverberated off the walls, almost like a war siren. Get out, it seemed to say. Take cover.

  It shook Jackie from the clutches of the vision. She met Alex’s eyes, fear paralyzing her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his hand grasping her shoulder.

  She forgot the words to the incantation she needed to use and her mind flailed about helplessly. Her hand gripped the necklace as her eyes were pulled to the area beneath the stairs.

  She saw Ray standing there, dressed in a Victorian-era suit. His dark hair was long and scraggly, slicked back from a lean and gaunt face. Blood ran in rivulets down the side of his cheek, the wound that brought his death a gaping hole above his right temple. Eyes dark as coal housed beneath a heavy brow regarded her with amusement, then shifted focus on Grace.

  Rage sparked a fire around him and he lunged. Mercy!

  Understanding had Jackie crying out in warning. “He thinks you’re his daughter!”

  The others witnessed a shadowy mass rise from the bones and rush at Grace. She braced her arms over her face and turned away from the attack, unable to do more.

  A white mist rapidly formed between her and Ray’s dark spirit, acting as a shield as it blocked his advance. He retreated into the shadows and Grace eyed the white mist in shock as it formed a protective barrier around her.

  “Ian?” She called out anxiously, staring at him through the mist. “What’s happening?”

&nb
sp; His jaw clenched. “I think it’s Sally.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Oh. A ghost bodyguard. Okay. That’s totally normal.”

  Jackie let out a relieved breath but watched as Ray continued to prowl in the shadows. The shadow creature hovered beside him, eager to harm. To destroy.

  She lifted the necklace up like a talisman as the words of the incantation came flooding back to her. She had the spirits right where she needed them. Soon it would be over.

  Beside her, Alex lifted the Spirit Box with a fierce smile. “Let’s see if he has anything to say.”

  He flipped it on and static poured out, bouncing off the walls. Within seconds, a voice came through, warbled and deep.

  “Fuck you!” Hysterical, high-pitched laughter followed.

  Jackie’s breath caught in her throat. She snatched the Spirit Box from Alex’s hand and shut it off. Alex looked at her in confusion. Before she could explain, the shadow creature rushed out of the darkness and propelled itself straight into his chest.

  It hit like a bull to a matador, violent and untamed. It stole the very breath from his lungs and stopped his heart.

  Alex stumbled back from the force of the blow, his face pale and his eyes glassy with shock. He reached out weakly for Jackie, his fingertips grazing her arm as he tumbled backward and fell to the floor lifelessly.

  Jackie watched him crumple and her heart split hideously in two. One half grieved, while the other half raged. She whirled around to face the spirits and held the copper necklace up high.

  “You are not welcome here! I cast you out that your spirit be burned. Let this copper serve as my torch. Let its energy scorch your presence. Only the power of love and light is welcome here!” Her voice thundered over the basement walls, echoing mightily. The spirits exploded, shadows writhing with screams of pain and submission at her words. The power behind them forced the darkness and evil from the confines of the house and into oblivion. They fled, every last member of the Sullivan family. Then there was nothing left.