The Isis Collar

by Cat Adams

  He didn’t turn to look at me, but the smile that curved his lips creeped me out. “No, I have something very special in mind for you, Graves. And I don’t think you’re going to mind doing it. In fact, you might really like it.”

  7

  The road to ruin is the one that’s smooth and paved, and the fastest cart to carry you is good intentions. Words of wisdom from Gran and they were oh so true today.

  I’d sworn never to use my psychic abilities again to torture or coerce, but what Rizzoli was suggesting wasn’t precisely either one.

  I stared through the two-way mirror at the slender middle-aged man with the pockmarked face. He glowered at the bearded Asian agent in the room with him but didn’t speak a word, no matter how hard the agent tried to convince him to do the right thing and not hurt innocent kids. The layered black clothing on the captive spoke of an extremist religious order, perhaps one of several that had arisen in eastern Europe lately. The heavy salt-and-pepper eyebrows and Roman nose made me think of Croatia or Bulgaria, but I could be wrong.

  Rizzoli leaned close to my shoulder and whispered, “All you have to do is suggest he cooperate with us. It’s not torture and doesn’t change anything that’s happened. But we’ll know where the other bombs are and what they do.” Then Rizzoli did the one thing I’d been praying he wouldn’t do. He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to a posed family portrait. His wife was blonde and a tad chubby but pretty in a pale blue silk dress. A little girl, still a toddler, sat on Rizzoli’s lap while an older boy, obviously Mikey, stood at his father’s side proudly, a hand on his shoulder. Damn it. The kid had his father’s dark good looks. Rizzoli’s hand tightened on my shoulder with something approaching panic. “Celia. Please don’t let anything happen to my son.”

  He’d never called me Celia before and it made me let out a pained sound. What were my morals worth? What price, ethics? “What if he doesn’t know anything? What if he’s just an innocent dupe you picked up by accident?”

  The voice in my ear must have been the same one that accompanied the apple in the Garden. So reasonable, logical. “If he doesn’t know anything, he can’t tell us anything and he’s free to go.”

  Free to go. Even though he’d already admitted to being involved with people who put an exploding death curse on him. Not freaking likely. No, he knew something and I didn’t figure that somehow the guy in black was going to be allowed to go back to his buddies. Maybe it wouldn’t be the FBI proper who did the deed, but they’d find someone who would. Still, why was it little Mikey’s fault? What did a kid who just wanted his first two-wheeler have to do with stupid, ugly politics?

  I grabbed the wallet out of Rizzoli’s hand and stared at the happy family, not the man in black or the distraught father standing next to me. Was it wrong for me to want a child I’d never met to be safe? Didn’t I have the right to want him to grow up happy and healthy? Couldn’t I want it … a lot? That wasn’t coercion or torture. It was just me, wanting people to be happy in a way I’d never been lucky enough to have in my mess of a family.

  Movement erupted from the corner of my eye, but I kept my gaze hard on the photograph. I could look at the photo and worry and fear for those sweet kids. More, I could care whether they lived, free from harm.

  The longer I stared, the more the toddler resembled my little sister when she was a baby. I’d lost her early, at the hands of greedy, thoughtless assholes who thought kids were easy targets and could be used or abused at will. Maybe if her kidnappers had cooperated she’d still be alive.

  Rizzoli’s hand covered mine and eased away the wallet that I’d nearly crushed in a supernatural grip. “That’s enough, Graves. He’s cooperating.” Rizzoli’s voice was soft, sympathetic—the voice a person uses in the hospital or to bring a person down off the ledge. “That was even more than I’d hoped for.”

  Huh?

  I shook my head and blinked back the tears I hadn’t realized were rolling down my face. When I could see again through the film of salty water, the man in black was crying openly, his thin shoulders shaking, his face on his folded arms. The Asian agent was blowing his nose into a large cloth handkerchief.

  Um.

  “Did I do that?”

  Rizzoli wouldn’t look at me, but his voice was harsh and scratchy. “That’s a hell of a talent, Graves. I thought maybe you’d worry a little and he’d feel remorse, but this is a lot better. They made me your handler because they said your siren abilities wouldn’t affect me.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe I don’t think of you sexually after getting snipped, but I’m still getting a charm made. You might want to get tested to see if you’re a projecting empath.”

  My handler? I wasn’t a dog or a trained seal. But it would make sense to have him be my contact if he’d had a vasectomy. Infertile men weren’t affected by a siren’s psychic talents. I didn’t really understand that. Logically, it should affect them, since they’re perfectly capable of sex. But magic is weird sometimes.

  What I didn’t get was how he knew I’d get emotional. He apparently thought he had me pegged and damned if he didn’t. At least this time.

  A heavily accented voice began to speak through the tinny microphone. “They chose me because I can do the timed-release spell on the children. The adults, not so much. But they said it was the children that mattered. I told them I hate children. But I lied. I hid my little ones away, told my wife to keep them from their schooling so they would not rot and pass on the illness.”

  Rot? Illness? Just like that, my tears were gone and I turned my full attention on the room. Rizzoli nearly vibrated with contained energy beside me. His face was bathed in shadows, but the intensity in his body nearly glowed. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what his talents were, if any. There were certainly plain humans in the FBI, but most of the agents at Rizzoli’s level had some abilities.

  The man cleared his throat again and snuffled, opening his mouth as though to speak. Now we were getting somewhere. I felt the tension dry up the rest of my tears.

  Unfortunately, my change in mood also sobered the other two men. That wasn’t good, because the man in black abruptly went stony faced again, realizing he’d already said too much. He wiped his eyes angrily, probably wondering how the agent had caused him to speak. But the agent was still looking confused. I’d imagine FBI agents don’t often sob in front of prisoners.

  “You’ve got to start crying again. It was working.” Rizzoli’s voice was an urgent hiss.

  I couldn’t help but let out a frustrated sound and throw up my hands a tiny bit before whispering, “I don’t know how. The first time was a fluke. I swear.”

  He turned his head and gave me an incredulous look. “Oh, please. Your life has sucked, Graves. I’m amazed every day I find out you’re not curled up in a fetal position in the corner with a gun to your head. If you don’t have reason to cry, nobody does.”

  The sad part was, he was right. And yes, if I focused on all the bad crap that had happened during my life, I apparently could turn the men in the room into basket cases. “But do you really want him in a mood to hold a gun to his head? We don’t know if he can activate the curse without help.”

  Rizzoli noticed I didn’t deny the occasional desire to curl up in a corner with firearms and reached out to squeeze my shoulder gently.

  But I didn’t need sympathy. My life was my life and I owned it. My mouth opened to tell him just that when the temperature in the room suddenly dropped like a rock.

  Um … that wasn’t good.

  The two-way mirror frosted so suddenly that the room beyond all but disappeared. I should have been more careful than to evoke the memory of my little sister. Ivy might have died young, but she hadn’t moved on to a better place. She’d decided to remain here, on earth, hanging around her big sister. I didn’t know why, but I had a good idea.

  “What the hell is wrong with the air-conditioning?” The annoyed New Jersey Italian started to head toward the door when I held up a finger to stop him.<
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  “It’s not the building, Rizzoli. I think I accidentally invoked Ivy’s spirit.” The wind she raised in the room blew my hair until I had to pull strands from my mouth. “Ivy!” I hissed the word in frustration because she was out of control. Maybe it was because I’d been so emotional when I was staring at the picture, but she was in a full fury. The lights flickered wildly until they finally blew with a crack of frozen glass.

  Rizzoli looked like he was totally out of his element and freaking out. His voice remained low, but it was gaining a frantic edge. “Do something, Graves. If she scares the prisoner, this whole place could become the new Ground Zero.”

  Um. I hadn’t even considered that possibility, but he was right. Using the dead, ghosts, zombies, or vampires to scare prisoners into confessions was Torture 101.

  I looked up into the dark, bitter wind that stung my cheeks. The only light was what was coming under the door and the faint glow from the next room. Yelling would only get Ivy more agitated, so I decided to go the opposite way. I forced my face into a smile that belied my worry and let out a little laugh. “You need to calm down, sweetie. See? I’m fine. Nothing wrong. I was just playing around. You don’t have to be worried. It’s all good.”

  But she would have none of it. One of the problems with spirits is that they know things that are … well, beyond what the rest of us poor humans do. Ivy might not be able to read minds, but she had a good idea of where the source of my worry was. The wind that was my younger sister began to spin through the room and then slammed through the glass so fast I couldn’t stop her.

  A rumble underfoot made Rizzoli grab my arm and yank me under a heavy metal table. “Get down! He’s going to blow!”

  The drop to the ground did nothing good to my throbbing leg, but I crouched and covered my head like people did in the films of old air-raid drills I’d seen in grade school. Damn. This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my last few minutes on earth.

  8

  What happened next was totally unexpected. Instead of fire and pain and a massive explosion, there was a warm, gentle breeze and silence and the trembling under my feet eased to a gentle sway. I slowly lowered my arms and looked at Rizzoli. He stared back at me, obviously baffled. Crawling out from under the steel table was a slow process because my calf muscles weren’t cooperating and I was watching the ceiling for falling objects. “Was that a quake or an exploding prisoner?”

  Rizzoli’s brow was furrowed in confusion just before he frowned. “Neither. I’ve been inside this building during a quake. The floor reacts different. And he’s still there.” He stepped forward to the two-way mirror and used his jacketed elbow to wipe away some of the dripping fog on the glass.

  The room was unchanged, except that both men were staring up at a spot near the ceiling that was swirling with multiple colors. I’d been thinking it had been Ivy in the room with us, because it’s nearly always Ivy who comes when I’m upset. But unless she’d discovered some interesting new tricks, this wasn’t her. Since my sister was only eight when she died, she didn’t learn very well and as a ghost, she isn’t very powerful.

  This entity reminded me more of Vicki, who had been as powerful a ghost as she had been a clairvoyant. She not only retained her mind, she also could communicate by writing on glass with frost. But Vicki had well and truly gone to a better place. She’d sacrificed herself to close the demon dimension, and holy men from every faith had assured me it would send her straight to the greatest possible reward.

  But they’d also said she couldn’t have been that powerful to begin with, so what did they know? There was only one way to find out.

  “Vicki? Is that you?”

  If it was her, she’d recognize my voice. The swirling colors stopped, and if a ball of energy can turn, it did. A loud popping sound made me step back from the glass. Windows and mirrors had often made that sound when Vicki wrote on them, because of the ambient temperature difference between room heat and frost cold enough to write. But these pops actually made the glass crack. And then letters appeared. Just two.

  No.

  That made me frown and Rizzoli turned to stare at me, possibly confused at my question, or at my expression.

  “Then, what is your name?”

  No.

  That nearly made me laugh, because it was so absurd. I couldn’t tell if the spirit was being obstinate or if that was the only word it knew. It was powerful, to be sure, but maybe not so bright.

  Think again, Celia, appeared in the glass, and with a sharp crack loud enough to make me cover my ears, the whole window erupted into a pattern of breaks that should have made it fall out of its frame. But the windowpane held and the words remained.

  My jaw dropped, literally. Even Vicki couldn’t read minds and couldn’t do that to glass. What the hell was this thing?

  “What does that mean?” Rizzoli had his head cocked, staring at the words like that dog in the old gramophone ads. “What are you supposed to think about?”

  I didn’t know, so all I could do was shake my head.

  I could see a dozen tiny versions of the prisoner through the wall of cracks, all of them staring at the mirror. For him, the words I was reading must be backward, so I’m sure he was struggling with aileC ,niaga knihT. No doubt he thought it was some strange sort of code. Or heck, maybe it meant something in his language. I wasn’t quite sure what alphabet he used.

  I was still pretty sure that the prisoner couldn’t see inside this room even though his attention was certainly focused on the mirror. But then he let out a yelp and jerked his hands off the table. The other FBI agent did, too. Rizzoli and I both moved closer to the window to see what was up.

  The cheap metal table in the lower room was smoking and a growing circle of glowing red had appeared on the surface. Black letters seemed to rise from within the molten tabletop.

  Tell them or you will learn pain.

  The prisoner huddled in a corner, holding a burned hand to his chest. He was clutching an object on a chain and muttering furiously with wide eyes. His gaze was locked on the words that had risen from the table altogether and now hovered in the air for all to see. The man was obviously terrified. I mean, I certainly was. I could see his pulse increasing in his neck and knew that if I was in the same room as him, he would smell of fear. I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t exploded yet.

  I found myself whispering in totally serious tones. “I’m not doing this. If you’re not doing this, are we going to be held responsible? Does the Geneva Convention even cover sentient non-corporeal beings?”

  Rizzoli’s voice was likewise serious. “I don’t think Hell was a signatory.”

  A low chuckle caught me unaware because it both came through the speaker from the other room and seemed to echo from behind me. The agent in the room did what he was supposed to do. He turned toward the entity overhead and raised his gun, backing around the superheated table to protect the prisoner. The agent tossed down several charm disks and barriers rose in a semicircle that separated their corner from the rest of the room. His sidearm was probably loaded with a similar combination of bullets to mine. The FBI is where I’d gotten the idea. I was certain he could fire through the barrier. But I had no idea if the entity couldn’t fire right through in return.

  “Who are you?” I asked with bravado, like it would answer. It had already refused once. “What do you want?”

  The voice that came was low and male and had a strength that a ghost simply shouldn’t have. There are other … beings that can appear without form, but they tend to be either really good or really evil. “You want answers but are hampered by … morals. I’m not.”

  Well, okay then. The burning table sort of gave it away, but that certainly removed the last question. If it had a name, I didn’t want to know it now. “I don’t want the help of the demonic. I banished your kind because I want nothing to do with you and yours.” I knew not every single demonic entity had been banished when the rift collapsed. A number of people had already been
possessed by then and not all of them had been found. But if one was actually following me … well, that was a worry. A big one. “Please leave now.”

  Another laugh made the small hairs rise on the back of my neck. “I’m nowhere close to the demonic, Celia. But since you asked nicely … I’ll leave. For now.”

  The demonic are well known to lie, so I just rolled my eyes and promised myself I’d be speaking with more than one expert in exorcism if I made it out of here today. I’ve already been exorcised twice, once to rid me of the taint from the vampire and the second to clear me of a link to a greater demon. But the death curse keeps the lines annoyingly open.

  The sparkling ball of energy near the ceiling flickered and began to slide down the wall. When it reached about chest height, it floated toward the corner where the FBI agent stood behind the barrier, keeping his gun trained on the entity. The energy stopped outside the barrier, right where the prisoner was huddled. The captive held the object on the chain toward the sparkling ball as the barrier flared in response.

  The agent fired once. His bullet went right through the entity and splattered against the wall. Clear liquid rolled down the cream-colored paint. If it was holy water it had no effect. That was confusing. More disturbing still was that the flickering and flaring of the magic barrier had finally ceased and words appeared—just like on the window and the table.

  Only the truth can set you free.

  Then the entity disappeared, leaving behind a smoking table, a ruined mirror, and two men huddled under a completely worthless magic barrier—because really, if a ghost … even a demonic one, could carve a message right onto the magic, it’s useless.

  Of course, that phrase wasn’t something generally associated with imps and demons. Just the opposite, in fact. And add in the holy water pooling on the floor. Except there were the smoking table and flaming threats of pain to consider.

  “Can we pretend you didn’t come to my house and start this day over?”