Trifles and Folly 2

by Gail Z. Martin

  What if the statue is just the gateway—and Kessler is the focus?

  Sorren plunged toward Krampus, ramming both swords deep into the creature’s belly. Teag had regained his feet, and swung his staff against the monster’s knees. Krampus doubled over, and Ruprecht brought his sword down in a two-handed grip aiming for its neck.

  I leveled my athame, hoping I had one more good blast in me, and I loosed a cone of cold power just as Kessler careened between me and Krampus.

  The white blast of energy caught Kessler in the chest, throwing him backward as if he’d been hit by a truck—right onto the points of Krampus’s lowered horns.

  Kessler screamed as the horns skewered him, protruding from his belly, poking right through his stolen monster costume. He wriggled like a gigged frog, but the long, twisted horns made it impossible for him to free himself.

  Chuck tossed something toward the statue from behind. “Fire in the hole!” he shouted, turning and covering his ears.

  Father Anne dove forward, sinking her boline knife into Krampus’s back as Ruprecht’s sword severed the monster’s head. Kessler sank to the floor, still pinned by the horns to the creature’s skull.

  The statue blew into a million pieces.

  For an instant, it looked as if a black hole hovered in the center of the room where the statue had been. Krampus’s body and Kessler’s corpse were pulled into the darkness, and in the blink of an eye, they were gone.

  We all stood frozen, stunned by the explosion as much as by the sudden end to the fight. My ears were ringing, and I wondered if I would ever hear properly again.

  “What the hell was that?” Teag demanded, shaking his head as if to clear water from his ears.

  Chuck grinned. “A souped-up M-80, military grade. Figured it would knock that ugly statue off its pedestal, and it did a little more than I hoped.” Considering that we were all going to be picking plaster bits out of our skin for days, I regarded Chuck’s triumph with mixed emotions.

  Rowan was making a slow circle around where the statue had been, still chanting and motioning with her hands. Finally, she stopped and looked back at us. “The gateway is closed,” she said. “Whether it was destroying the statue that did it or Kessler’s death, there’s nothing supernatural about this room anymore.”

  The floor was littered with plaster chunks. Blood pooled on the stone floor, fortunately, mostly Krampus’s and Kessler’s. Sorren and Ruprecht had taken the worst of the damage, and I doubted any of the rest of us would still be alive, let alone standing if we were as badly injured as they appeared. I had some gashes to show from the battle, and so did Teag. Rowan looked spent enough to fall down at any moment, and a dark bruise was beginning to color her temple where she had been thrown to the ground. Father Anne was still reeling from the impact of the blast and her shirt was torn and bloody. Chuck was covered with plaster dust and spattered with blood, but as far as I could tell, none of it was his own.

  “Ruprecht and I will get rid of any inconvenient evidence,” Sorren said. “The rest of you need to treat those wounds before they fester. I’m certain the claws were tainted.” The fact that he and the knight looked like death warmed over went without comment.

  “Come on back to my place,” I offered. “I’ve got enough first-aid supplies to patch us all up, and a fresh bottle of bourbon if anyone wants some—for medicinal purposes.” I managed a tired grin. “Consider it a holiday toast.”

  Part IV

  Bloodlines

  Bloodlines

  “Cassidy, all I know is, we’ve got an angry ghost—and it’s getting more pissed off every day.” Kell Winston ran a hand back through his light brown hair and glanced at us as if he expected an answer, his blue eyes a stark contrast to caramel-tanned skin. “And I’m hoping you and Teag can help me figure out what to do about it.”

  “Okay,” I replied, glancing over at Teag Logan. “Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

  Kell led us up to the side door of the old mansion near the Battery. I recognized Boyce House, one of Charleston’s architectural gems, newly restored to its antebellum glory. Shell-pink stucco covered the walls, making the white trim stand out in bright contrast, even by moonlight. “It’s okay,” Kell replied to my unspoken question. “The Historical Society gave me a key and permission to be here. After all, they’re the ones with the ghost problem.”

  I nodded. “Then lead on. Let’s see if your ghost friend puts on a show tonight.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but both Teag and I knew that poltergeists—if that’s what this haunting really was—were nothing to be taken lightly. Restless, vengeful spirits could do real damage, even kill. I hoped that we would get a look at the problem, and then come back later without Kell to handle the situation. I trusted Kell, and he knew a little about my magic, but I wasn’t ready to let him in on all our secrets just yet.

  The door opened onto the side of the wide, covered porch—what Charlestonians call a “piazzo”—and afforded a view of a beautiful, manicured garden that was a showpiece even at night. Inside, electric candles glowed in the windows and lights on timers gave the empty show home a lived-in look.

  “You know, I’ve been dying to get a peek inside since they announced the Boyce House was ready to open.” I glanced around, taking in the view.

  Teag lifted an eyebrow. “You might want to rephrase that.” His dark hair was tucked behind his ears, making him look more like a skater boy grad student than a bad-ass demon fighter.

  I gave him a sidelong glance. “Not helping.”

  “So here’s the deal,” Kell said as we stood on the porch and he dangled the key in his hand. “We can’t take anything out of the house tonight because everything has to be accounted for with the Historic Trust manager. But I can show you where our gear lit up like a Christmas tree when the team went through here with me, and you can let me know if any of the objects tingle your spidey sense. And if you think you find something that’s setting off the… occurrences… I’ll get permission to remove it so it can be studied, okay?”

  Kell’s “team” was the crew of SPOOK, Southern Paranormal Observation and Outreach Klub, a group of high-tech ghost hunters trying to document supernatural activity in one of the most haunted cities in North America. We had worked together on several situations, enough that I trusted Kell’s judgment and knew he wouldn’t bring us on a wild goose chase.

  I nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.” What Kell didn’t know, and what I couldn’t tell him, was that Teag and I had faced down things that were a lot scarier than a bratty socialite ghost, maybe even saved the world a time or two. And when we did our job right, no one was ever the wiser.

  I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio store in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. The store has been in my family almost since Charleston’s founding nearly three hundred and fifty years ago, and it comes with some big secrets. I’m a psychometric, able to read the history and magic of objects by touching them. Teag’s my best friend, wingman and assistant store manager—and he’s got magic of his own. We’re both part of the Alliance, a coalition of mortals and immortals who defend Charleston—and the world—from supernatural threats and dangerous magical items. One other secret—my business partner Sorren is a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire. Kell knows a little about my psychometry, but what we do is far too dangerous to tell him the rest.

  Kell turned the key in the lock and tapped a code into the security keypad. He shut the door behind us and turned the deadbolt. “We went through the house with the full set of instruments. EMF reader, audio recorder, night vision camera—everything. And honestly, if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would have thought it was one of those cheesy TV shows where they fake the ‘paranormal activity’ to make everything happen at once.” He shook his head. “This place has a lot of bad mojo.”

  “Show us,” Teag said.

  Kell took a few steps into the foyer. The wide hallway ran from front to back with two rooms openin
g off both sides and a rear door at the other end. A staircase with a mahogany balustrade sat in the center of the foyer, leading up to the second floor. Family portraits, embroidery samplers, and paintings hung on the walls, along with a huge gold-framed mirror. Antique furniture and decorative items original to the Boyce family lined the hallway and filled the rooms. That meant plenty of options for haunted and tainted objects.

  “So we’ve got this,” Kell said, holding up the EMF reader near the sideboard that held a glass hurricane lamp, several silver candlesticks, and the guest book. The scanner was designed to pick up on electromagnetic frequencies that often coincided with spectral activity, and when Kell held it near the sideboard, the full row of red lights lit up, and the device squealed like a cat with its tail under a rocking chair.

  “Think we should sign the registry?” Teag teased. The leather-bound guest book looked like it was an antique itself, as did the beautiful onyx fountain pen that laid beside it. Several names were written in dark black ink on the lines of the book, but I was too far away to read them.

  A glance in the mirror had me smoothing a stray lock of my strawberry-blonde hair and wincing at the fresh sunburn on my nose. I was about to answer Teag when I caught sight of motion out of the corner of my eye. “Did you see that?” I asked, staring into the big mirror. “I could swear I saw someone on the stairs.”

  “Maybe you did,” Kell replied. “That’s where Judah Elliott Boyce, the first owner of the house, fell to his death.”

  I kept my gaze glued to the mirror for a few moments, but the image never reappeared, and I finally turned away, taking in the rest of the well-appointed foyer. “Impressive,” I commented, eyes widening.

  Kell shot me a look. “We’re just getting started.”

  Teag and I had not come unarmed, but I hoped we didn’t need any of our “arsenal.” We both had a variety of magical and technological items hidden in our pockets in case we needed to fend off the ghost, and we were wearing some heavy-duty protective amulets and charms, just in case.

  In the dining room, an ornate silver tea set had the EMF scanner screaming. “If family legend is true, I might know why this object has so much resonance,” Kell said, glancing back to Teag and me as he lowered the scanner. “Tradition holds that Olivia Boyce, who was the lady of the house during the Civil War, used this tea set to serve tea to Union sympathizers. Oleander tea,” he added with a knowing look.

  “Ouch,” Teag said. Oleander was a beautiful plant but a deadly poison. “Not exactly the hostess with the mostess.”

  “Or just channeling her inner Borgia,” I replied, studying the tea service from a distance, certain that anything that set off an EMF reader would probably throw me for a loop if I touched it.

  “I figured that you’d want to study anything really suspicious back in the shop, where you could control the conditions,” Kell said, and I shot him a grateful smile. He’s seen me trance out when a tainted item knocks me on my ass. Most of the time, a mild resonance will show me images, or maybe a full-fledged vision. Sometimes, if the item’s mojo is strong enough, I get pulled into a nightmare that won’t let go. Teag and Sorren know how to deal with that using magic, but that’s another area I’m not quite ready to share completely with Kell, for his own safety.

  “Come on—we’ve barely started the tour,” Kell said, pulling me out of my thoughts. Teag lagged a step behind us, staring down at the worn Oriental carpet.

  “Does your scanner get anything from the rug?” Teag asked. Teag’s power is Weaver Magic, which can mean weaving spells into cloth or weaving far-flung bits of information into powerful data. He stared down at the faded old carpet, and I was certain it was telling him its own story.

  “Hard to tell in this house what’s setting off the scanner,” Kell replied, “but we did get a blip over there. Why?”

  “Did anyone die violently in the house?” Teag’s gaze stayed on one particular spot on the rug.

  “Several people,” Kell replied. “A hanging in the attic, a fatal accident on the stairs, and a shooting between jealous suitors.”

  “Betcha a cold beer the shooting happened right here,” Teag said, eying a portion of the carpet that was more faded than the rest.

  “Bet you’re right,” I replied, acknowledging the uneasiness I felt since stepping onto the rug. It wouldn’t be the first time I picked up an item’s juju through the soles of my shoes.

  Kell led us into the living room. Again, the scanner lit up, and the alarm went off. “We saw the ghost in here when I brought the team,” he said. “She was standing next to the mantle, so I don’t know whether the scanner is picking up on residual energy from the ghost, or from something near the fireplace.”

  “She?” Teag asked.

  Kell nodded. “Definitely a woman.”

  “One of the violent deaths?” I walked closer to the fireplace, studying the items on the mantle, which included a clock, a vase, and a bird sculpture, as well as a few photographs in silver frames.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kell replied. “Pretty sure we saw her,” he added, pointing to one of the pictures behind me. The snapshot was black and white, but much more recent than many of the vintage photos in the home, probably dating to the 1990s from the way the people were dressed. “Esther Pettis Boyce, the last of the Boyce family,” Kell supplied. “Last private owner of the house, died without heirs or descendants five years ago.”

  The front room grew colder as we talked, and I felt the hackles stand up on the back of my neck. “Does she have a reason to be pissed off about something?” I asked, turning slowly as the sense of being watched grew stronger. The temperature plummeted until my breath misted.

  “Other than the fact that her will made it clear that the house and everything in it was supposed to be burned—and that clearly didn’t happen—I can’t imagine why she’s angry,” Kell replied with a deadpan expression.

  Teag let out a low whistle. “That might rile someone up. Why would she want to torch a beautiful old home and all these antiques?”

  Kell shrugged. “From what Esther said in letters and mentioned in her diary, she was certain her family was cursed, and that something here in the house was the cause.”

  I shivered as the sensation that someone was behind me grew stronger, though I saw no one except Teag and Kell. Leaving the room only lessened the feeling of foreboding a little bit, and I was certain that Esther—or one of the house’s other ghosts—was keeping an eye on us as we moved on with our tour.

  The EMF scanner went off a couple more times in the back rooms, but not nearly so strongly as in the dining room and parlor. But as we climbed the stairs, the prickle on the back of my neck grew more uncomfortable, and my gut tightened. “Definitely some bad mojo on the stairs,” I murmured to Teag. Yet the nearer we got to the top of the stairs, the more the knot in my stomach grew. I had the awful feeling that we had only seen the pre-game warm-up.

  Crash. We had no sooner cleared the landing when the sound of shattering glass made us all jump.

  “What the hell was that?” Teag asked, drawing a small iron dagger from his belt. I shook my right arm, and my athame—the handle of an old wooden spoon imbued with strong emotional memories of my childhood—dropped down into my hand.

  “The house is waking up,” Kell replied, and I noticed that his hand, that wasn’t holding the EMF reader, had gone into his pocket, probably for a fistful of salt. Ghosts hate iron and salt because while they’re past being hurt, they can be dispelled, and both items do the trick.

  Kell led us into the nearest bedroom. Below, on the first floor, doors slammed, one after the other, hard enough to make the china dishes in the cupboards rattle. The electronic box in Kell’s grip squealed like microphone feedback, painful and piercing. I could barely focus my attention to look around the room, but my instincts drew me toward a small inlaid music box on a bedside table, right before the bathroom door swung shut with no one nearby.

  “Told you it was a hopping place,�
�� Kell said with a nervous smile.

  “You weren’t just whistling Dixie,” Teag muttered.

  “Let’s make it quick,” I urged. “Whatever’s going on is building up to something, and I don’t think we want to be here for the grand finale.”

  Overhead, I heard a thump that sounded like the right heft to be a body. Did the rope break? I wondered about the Boyce ancestor’s suicide in the attic. I had no intention of going up there to see what made that noise.

  Gooseflesh rose on my arms, and my breath fogged although the old home’s air conditioning was nowhere near cold enough to make that happen. The constant squeal of the EMF recorder rendered it useless to spot “hot” items, and my intuition screamed for us to get out now.

  Another crash downstairs made me wonder if something had swept every dish and piece of silverware from the dining room table. Heavy footsteps sounded on the attic steps. “I think we need to leave,” I said.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Kell replied, stuffing the EMF reader in his pocket but keeping a firm grip on a length of iron pipe he pulled from beneath his jacket.

  Too late.

  Esther Boyce’s ghost stood in the hallway glowering with fury. She flung her hands forward, and we slammed against the walls as if we had been dolls tossed by a vengeful child. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and my heart thudded like it would rip from my ribs. Cold stole heat from my blood, the chill of the grave, and I felt the unyielding grip of corpse-stiff fingers pinning me against the wall. A moment later, that same unbreakable grip tore me away from the wall and threw me toward the stairs so that I landed on my knees. Kell and Teag barely caught themselves to keep from landing on their faces.