by Crin Claxton
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Praise for Crin Claxton
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
Death’s door is open, as far as supernatural detective Tony Carson is concerned, and ghosts are flooding through it. Tony’s got her hands full, but she’s obsessed with why the prisoner from Holloway can’t rest. Luckily, her trusty drag queen spirit guide is always ready with advice and insults.
Tony’s girlfriend, Maya, is worried that the hot new acupuncturist at her clinic is driving their best friend, Jade, crazy, and not in a good way. Maya’s determination to find out why puts all their lives on the line. Somewhere beneath the lies, voices, and delusions is the truth. But can Tony, Maya, and Jade come together in the final race to stay in the land of the living?
Praise for Crin Claxton
“The Supernatural Detective is a sexy, supernatural thriller. A perfect read for the beach.”—Diva Magazine.
“Scarlet Thirst is a book for those who like their erotica to be a little more subtle but still sexy—à la Anne Rice or Mary Renault. Surely a fangtastic read for fans of Buffy, Willow and Tara!”—Gay Voice
“Claxton manages to pull the disparate threads together with prose and plotting that is never over-written or superfluous. Claxton has created an entirely believable other world. Scarlet Thirst is a great big fun, sexy, smart novel. Look out for it.”—Rainbow Network
Death's Doorway
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Death's Doorway
© 2015 By Crin Claxton. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-398-1
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: June 2015
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Cindy Cresap
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
Scarlet Thirst
The Supernatural Detective
Death’s Doorway
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my beta readers Hiraani Himona, Katherine May, Chiara Williams, Semsem Kuherhi, and Shelley Francis. Thanks to my consultants Martina Laird and Louise Palfrey. Your feedback and advice are invaluable to me and have shaped Death’s Doorway. Support and encouragement keep me writing, and I’d like to thank Campbell, Bill Claxton, and Victoria Villasenor in particular. Sandy Lowe from Bold Strokes Books is always helpful and charming. My editor, Cindy Cresap, deserves a special mention. Working with Cindy has made me a stronger writer with her tireless elimination of exclamation marks and fancy tagging. And, Deni Francis, you are both light and shade. You are the person who supports me most and longest. Without you, none of my books would exist.
For my sisters Susan, Shelley, Katherine, Sharon.
Your support is everything.
Prologue
Felicia stared at the neat lines of pills on the pockmarked table next to the bed and felt nothing. She didn’t remember lining them up. She couldn’t remember checking into the dark and grubby motel room, but there she was. It stank of damp and alcohol. An upturned bottle of red wine formed a sticky, crimson pool on the mottled orange carpet. The image should have made Felicia nauseous. But she was empty.
Felicia was exhausted. Her body was drained and her mind dull. Her cheeks were still wet from crying. It was all she could do lately.
She lay back on the worn orange cover on top of the bed. She closed her eyes to sleep.
Nothing.
She opened her eyes again, and there were the pills. Perfect shiny white disks. They were soothing. Felicia counted four lines of ten. Beside them was a tall glass of water. A fluorescent light flickered overhead. Felicia searched for a rhyme. She should be busting words in this sordid scene. Her hand reached for the Tylenol with its bright blue edge.
“Pimp ma pill,” she mumbled to herself trying to raise a smile, but she was spent. If she couldn’t rhyme, she was nothing. All she’d ever had were words.
She held the little round pill between her thumb and forefinger. She stared at it thoughtfully and then placed it on her tongue. The fingers of her left hand closed around the glass of water. She took a sip and the pill was swept away.
She had a sense of doing the right thing as she worked her way along the lines. The analgesics slipped down her unresisting throat.
Dimly aware of the soft click of a door closing, Felicia let her head sink into the thin pillow and was peaceful. Her star had crashed and burned. Nearby, a bike purred like a panther watching and waiting. Felicia drifted on the sound, letting it take her.
Chapter One
Tony Carson followed the young female ghost down the stairwell. Her feet flew over the steps. The ghost ran ahead, peering back at intervals to check that Tony was still behind her. The ghost’s olive face was taut with fear.
“Which floor did you say?” Tony gasped out. It felt like they’d been running down stairs forever.
“The second.” The ghost wasn’t out of breath at all. But then she didn’t have any breath to be out of.
Tony cursed the faulty lift.
“Hurry,” the ghost said. “It’s starting to smoke.”
Tony ignored her protesting lungs and ran faster.
Four flights down, the ghost peeled off. She sailed through glass doors that led onto the second floor. Panting heavily, Tony pushed through them and ran along a corridor that was identical to her own ninth floor one. Municipal pale green walls were broken up at intervals by dark green flat doors. The large, council-run block of high-rise flats was in a hotchpotch condition. People who hadn’t bought their houses under the right-to-buy scheme waited a long time to get things fixed. People who owned their own homes often carried out their own repairs, ignoring the rule that they were supposed to use council contractors to maintain uniformity in the communal spaces.
“For God’s sake hurry, or you’ll be too late.” The deceased woman came to an abrupt halt outside a freshly painted door. It was a different shade of green from the others.
Tony pushed the door. It was shut. She backed off and prayed the dead woman hadn’t reinforced it.
Tony ran at the door. Her shoulder hit it first. The jolt went up into her neck. The crash resounded along the deserted corridor. The door held.
Tony backed off again.
“What are you doing?” a voice called sharply behind her.
Tony turned round. An old woman stood outside the flat opposite, hands on hips.
“I ain’t scared of you. I’m sick o
f all the thieving round here. I’ve called the police,” she said, glaring at Tony.
“Good. I have to break in. There’s a baby in danger.”
Tony didn’t stop to reassure the ghost’s neighbor. She ran at the door again.
It gave with a crack of splintering wood.
Tony followed the ghost inside. The neighbor trotted behind her.
Tony ran through a living room littered with toys and into the kitchen.
A baby girl crawled across the kitchen floor, toward the stove. Smoke poured out of a pan sitting on a glowing ring. An oven cloth next to it was crisp with heat.
The cloth burst into flames. Tony stepped over a body on the floor and ran to the stove.
Tony grabbed the baby. The baby yelled in surprise and then began to cry.
With no time to comfort her, Tony passed her quickly to the neighbor.
“Take her. Get out both of you. Call the fire brigade,” Tony commanded.
“Pelin!” The old woman pointed to the ghost’s body crumpled by the kitchen door.
“Get the baby to safety,” Tony said with barely a glance to the body. She stepped over it again and ran to the gas stove. The oven cloth was burning fiercely. A cloud of smoke gushed toward her.
“Tea towels in the second drawer,” Pelin’s ghost cried.
Tony snatched tea towels out of the drawer next to the sink and soaked them.
She threw a wet towel over the burning oven cloth. Then another over the smoking pan. She turned the ring off under the pan.
A loud shhhhh hit the air as heat met wet cloth.
Choking on the smoke, Tony tried to open the window. It was locked.
“I was worried about the baby falling out the window. Then I lost the key,” Pelin said. “My husband said he could get another. I didn’t remind him. It didn’t seem important.”
Tony put another wet towel over her mouth and nose. Knowing it was too late if she was talking to Pelin’s ghost, nevertheless, she bent down to feel the body’s neck, searching for a pulse.
There was none.
“My chest hurt. Like someone hit me with a sledgehammer,” Pelin said.
Driven out by the clawing smoke, Tony walked back along the hallway and onto the corridor. The old woman was standing in her own doorway, rocking the baby girl in her arms.
“It’s a bit smoky in there, but the fire’s out,” Tony told her.
“What about Pelin?” she asked.
Tony bit her lip. “I couldn’t find a pulse. I didn’t want to move the body.”
The old woman glanced down at the baby and then back to Tony. “Who are you, anyway? I’ve seen you in the lift,” she said, like being in the lift was a crime. Tony didn’t mind. She’d lived in the council block long enough to know that people were suspicious first, friendly last.
“I’m a friend of Pelin’s.” Tony made up on the spot. “I live on the ninth floor. She called me, said she was feeling faint.”
“Did she call an ambulance?”
“I don’t know,” Tony lied. “She said she had a pan on the stove, then the line went dead. I came straight away.”
“Well, I called an ambulance, and the police and the fire brigade. They’ll be here any minute,” the old woman said. Her voice was sharp with worry. She held the baby tightly.
Boots thundered along the corridor. Firefighters in black and yellow came toward them at a run, followed by green-jacketed paramedics, and finally the police in yellow high vis jackets.
Tony explained what had happened and left her details. After that, there was no reason to stay and she was late for work. She returned to the neighbor.
“I have to go. I hope she’s all right,” Tony said, looking at the baby.
“Don’t you want to know how Pelin is?” the old woman said.
Tony’s eyes flicked to Pelin. The ghost looked down at her daughter with sad eyes full of love.
“I’ll call Newham General later,” Tony said, setting off along the corridor.
*
Tony stood at the counter in her kitchen making tea in a mug. She stirred the teabag with a spoon and then fished it out. She plonked it in the direction of the Provincetown teabag holder in the shape of a whale that sat next to her kettle. Drops of dark brown tea splattered onto her white counter.
Automatically, she reached for a non-scratch scouring cloth before remembering her girlfriend, Maya, was at her own flat. Tony sighed with relief. If Maya wasn’t around to frantically scrub at it, the tea stain could remain on Tony’s countertop for a few minutes.
Tony adored Maya. She was exhausting in all the right ways. She was thoughtful, political, and sexy. Her only faults were that she had to discuss everything about relationships in intimate detail, and she was completely obsessed with cleaning. Tony figured that was a small price to pay for having a gorgeous and talented herbalist for a girlfriend.
Maya had been very quiet about her own issues lately. Maya was a therapist as well as a herbalist. She liked to drill down into other people’s emotional stories. She said she wanted to help them move on. But whenever Tony or Jade mentioned Provincetown, Maya clammed up and changed the subject. Maya didn’t want to talk about the uncle that had tried to kill her. Tony shuddered. She didn’t like to think about it either. Especially as he had tried to kill her too. Tony was quite happy to stuff all the feelings down and never refer to them again.
Tony was having a night to herself. It was a rare night when Tony wasn’t at work in the theater, seeing Maya, or hanging out with her friend, Jade. Tony had got used to living by herself after her ex-girlfriend and child had moved out a year previously. Maya and Tony had fallen into spending the nights together, either at Tony’s council flat, or Maya’s Stoke Newington apartment. Part of Tony ached to call Maya so they could tumble into bed. But most of Tony was enjoying her space. She ignored her wanton body for once and listened to her head.
She poured milk into the mug, didn’t bother putting the milk back in the fridge, glanced at the unwashed up washing up, and headed back to her living room.
She flopped down on her sofa, put her feet up on the coffee table, and switched the TV to a program about ice truckers.
“Holy Kamoly, from that angle you could scare small children.” Tony’s drag queen spirit guide, Deirdre, fizzed in out of nowhere and hovered above the coffee table. She looked down at Tony from underneath a huge curly wig, kept vaguely in place by a massive hair band. Deirdre had passed away in the 1980s, and the period seemed to inspire her extraordinary outfits. Tony sat up straight, blinking at Deirdre’s Day-Glo pink leotard, topped with a tiny pair of matching pink shorts and fluorescent orange leg warmers. “I hardly like to ask, but what are you wearing, and why?”
“This is my homage to Fame,” Deirdre said, patting her wig and coming to rest at floor level. She did a couple of vaguely high-kicks and sang a line from the theme song badly. Tony winced.
“I’ve decided to be a celebrity,” Deirdre informed Tony, her New York accent as thick as cream cheese on a bagel. “I’ve heard it’s all the rage in the world of the living, and I want to fit in.”
Tony shuffled about on the sofa, pulling a big cushion under her back. Maya had turned up with a present of several cushions with Lichtenstein prints on them. Tony had never bothered with cushions before, but had to admit they were comfortable. “Why? It’s only me you talk to. Except of course Jade can hear you. And I suspect my dad is still seeing ghosts, so maybe he can see you…” Tony trailed off, wondering if Jade had latent powers that would make her see ghosts one day, or whether she would always only be able to hear them.
“How arrogant! You think you’re the only medium on my books.” Deirdre pursed her lips.
“I thought you were a spirit guide not an agent,” Tony said.
“Potatoes, po-ta-toes,” Deirdre said brusquely.
“I’m glad you’ve dropped by actually,” Tony said. “Is it all right for me to just follow any ghosts if they suddenly appear?”
Deirdre studied Tony through narrowed eyes. “You’re referring to your little jaunt into a burning building.”
“It wasn’t a burning building. It was a smoking pan and a smoldering tea towel,” Tony said. “But yes.”
“Not my jurisdiction,” Deirdre said. “I can’t insist ghosts go through me. However, I can’t be held responsible for any damage to persons or property that may result from people not going through a proper spirit guide.”
“What does that mean? You can’t be held responsible anyway, can you?”
“I have to answer to entities! Important entities. But that’s none of your concern. What I will say is remember it’s at your own risk. This is all very new to you and you haven’t got an ounce of common sense. When they were doling out common sense, you were standing in the line for stupidness. Pelin was desperate and a good soul, but that doesn’t mean another one will be. Now, I’ve brought someone to see you, so try and look relatively normal.”
Tony was thinking what a damn cheek Deirdre had insinuating she didn’t look normal, especially as she’d just noticed “foxy lady” spelled out in sequins on the back of Deirdre’s leotard, when the air in front of Tony’s windows shimmered.
A butch white lesbian materialized, in a plain white T-shirt and dark blue skinny jeans. The edge of a soft cigarette packet poked out from under one rolled up arm of her T-shirt. She looked about thirty-five. She was small and slight and taut rather than muscular. Her short brown hair was slicked back. She fixed green eyes on Tony and nodded quickly without smiling.
“This is Frankie. She died some years ago,” Deirdre said.
Frankie stared at Tony. She didn’t look impressed.