I dove out of the way and still got off a shot from my athame, a glancing strike that shoved the big dog out of the way but didn’t send it tumbling as I hoped. Teag let out a yell and threw himself onto the creature’s back, driving his knife into its right shoulder deep enough that blood flowed across his hand and down onto the gravel.
The dog snapped its powerful jaws, barely missing Teag’s arm, then threw Teag to one side and barreled into the scrub and darkness beyond the parking lot, leaving a blood trail. I helped Teag to his feet. Bo’s ghost padded over and looked at me with a goofy grin, then vanished. Teag and I stared into the brush where the dog vanished.
Teag took a step to follow, and I grabbed his arm. “Are you crazy? Let it go.”
I saw common sense war with the desire to finish the fight. Finally, tension drained from Teag’s shoulders, and I released my grip.
“You’re right. But I don’t like unfinished business.”
Neither did I, but the thought of heading into unfamiliar woods in the dark after a wounded and angry supernatural creature kept me from seeking revenge, at least for now. “We’ve got no idea what it was or why it attacked,” I said, regaining the presence of mind to unlock the car and climb in. Teag opened the passenger side and joined me a moment later. “You okay?”
Teag glanced down at himself and nodded. “Yeah, just winded and I’ll probably have some nice bruises tomorrow. You?”
“I’ve got some scratches on my leg we’ll need to treat when we get back to the shop, but nothing deep.”
“Do you think it was after us?” Teag mused as I turned out of the parking lot. We kept our eyes open, in case the dog followed us, but we saw nothing unusual in the tall brush along the side of the road.
“No way to know,” I replied. “I’d almost rather think that we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time—even though that opens up a whole different can of worms.”
“Right. Because either that thing was actually after us, which is one kind of problem, or it’s randomly prowling, in which case it’s still our problem, just in a different way,” Teag summed up.
“There’s lore about black dogs,” I said as I drove, keeping a careful eye on the side of the road in case the creature or its friends decided to make another appearance. “Why don’t you take a look at what you can find, and I’ll see what I can learn from the tainted items.”
“You up to this tonight?” he asked.
I shrugged. “No time like the present. If that dog really did come after us in particular, I’d sure like to know why—because it’s likely to be the least of our problems.”
Back at the store, we unloaded the boxes from the estate sale and cleared the table in the break room. I made a pot of coffee while Teag carried in the box holding the objects that triggered my internal alarms. Teag grabbed his laptop and settled into a chair at the end of the table. It didn’t take him long before he glanced up at me.
“Black dogs are trouble,” he said. “How much trouble depends on which mythology you follow. They can be death omens, or demons, or even hellhounds. Sometimes they’re even the watchdogs for the gods—like Cerebus is for Hades.”
“That’s pleasant,” I remarked drily. “Any chance that for once, a dog is just a dog?”
Teag leaned back in his chair. “I guess it’s possible—although how often does that work for us?”
He had a point. We were usually safer assuming the supernatural explanation for any situation and being pleasantly surprised if it turned out to be mundane.
“Speaking of which, let’s get a look at your leg,” Teag said, standing and grabbing our first aid kit out of the cupboard. Given what we deal with, our kit is stocked with enough supplies for a small mobile emergency room.
I swiveled in my chair and stuck out my leg. Teag pulled on latex gloves and carefully pushed up the shredded hem of my bloody jeans. “Looks worse than it is,” he said, probing carefully. “Not deep, but enough to make a mess.”
“Use the holy water,” I prompted, and Teag nodded, already reaching for the flask we kept on hand. He poured a trickle of the water over the wound. It hissed and bubbled, and I gripped the sides of the chair and gritted my teeth to keep from crying out.
“Well, that answers one question,” Teag said, his lips set in a grim line. “It’s definitely not a regular dog.”
Once the pain subsided, Teag knelt and spread antibiotic ointment along the gashes, which fortunately did not require stitches. Then he bandaged my leg carefully and went to wash up. “Keep an eye on that,” he warned. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, but you definitely don’t want supernatural cooties.”
Teag brought us both cups of hot coffee, and I sipped mine slowly, recovering. “You don’t have to take a look at the items tonight, Cassidy,” Teag said. “They’ll keep until tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “Whether that thing came after us specifically or not, it’s still out there, and it’s a hazard. And right now, the only potential leads we have are the tainted items from the sale. If they’re not connected to the dog, then we’ve got two mysteries instead of one. But if they are—”
“We might pick up something we can use,” Teag finished my sentence.
“Exactly.” I drank my coffee, letting it steady my nerves. “Either way, we’ll have something to tell Sorren, and maybe he can help make sense of it all.”
Teag pulled the objects out of the box. Under the break room light, they hardly appeared threatening. The antique man’s wristwatch no longer worked, and the crystal was broken, but its strap suggested everyday wear, which could give an item strong resonance. A St. Francis medallion hung from a fine stainless steel chain, worn and scratched from long use. The final piece was the oddest of the three, a single glass eye.
I took a few deep breaths to steady myself, and Teag unrolled a small ribbon of hand-woven material, which he set on the table between us. “You know the drill,” he said, pulling his chair up to the table. “Keep hold of one end of the ribbon, and I’ll see what you see.” Teag’s Weaver magic meant that he could weave spells into cloth, and the shared connection was something we had only recently discovered. It definitely saved on needing explanations.
“Let’s get to it,” I said, and reached for the watch.
I don’t control my visions when I touch an object. The object shows me what it wants to show me, or more to the point, I see the emotions and memories—or in some cases, magic—most closely linked to the piece. Sometimes it’s like seeing through someone else’s eyes, while other times, all I get are an onslaught of images and feelings, and I’ve got to somehow make sense of them. Of course, I never know what I’m going to get until it hits me right between the eyes.
As soon as I picked up the watch, the feeling of being constrained made me immediately uncomfortable. I didn’t get pictures, just impressions, and what I felt from the object was overwhelming. My body felt wrong, awkward and clumsy, and I was frustrated at being restricted in a form that moved slowly, with limited sight and decreased hearing. The sensation of being trapped filled me with panic, but I didn’t realize that I was moaning and straining for breath until Teag pulled the watch from my grip.
“Breathe Cassidy,” Teag coached, in a voice warm with worry.
“What... the hell... was that?” I croaked out.
“I don’t know,” Teag replied. “Do we know anything about the man who owned the watch? Because the impression I got was that he felt limited by his body—as if he’d been in an accident, or maybe had a stroke or a long illness.”
I nodded and took several swallows of my sweet tea trying to regain my composure. “Yeah, I wondered the same thing. Almost as if he felt locked in inside his body.”
“Once we’re done, I’ll see what I can find on the former owner. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out if he ended up injured or paralyzed.”
After a few minutes, I reached for the St. Francis medal and let my hand hover just a moment. “Let’s see what I get from this
one,” I said, as Teag picked up his end of the woven ribbon. “Whoa, this one has juice Teag. I think it’s been charmed or spelled.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t touch it until Sorren’s here…”
Joy thrummed through me as the cold metal of the medallion settled in my palm. I smelled pine trees and fresh air, heard the rush of wind. Beneath it all, I could feel the thrill of moving sure and fast, graceful as an acrobat, tireless and strong. I felt blood rushing through my veins, heart pumping with exertion, lungs burning, muscles working. A sense of invincibility settled around me, and I felt giddy with the way my body moved at my command.
This time, I set the item down on my own accord and looked at Teag in confusion. “How can those two items belong to the same person?” I asked, utterly baffled.
“Maybe they’re from different times in his life,” Teag mused. “Any idea of what it was spelled for?”
“I guess that’s possible. I can’t really tell what the magic does, but it’s almost comforting – like a warm blanket.” I felt certain we were missing something, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out a better explanation. Teag pushed the box closer, and I grimaced as I looked down at the last object. “Why the hell did he have a glass eyeball?”
“That’s something else I’m going to try to track down tomorrow,” Teag replied. “While I’m poking around to see if the old man was sick or in a wheelchair, I guess I also need to find out if he had a glass eye.”
The images hit me hard and fast as my hand closed around the cold glass orb. Fear, visceral and overwhelming shook me to my core. I struggled to breathe, felt the blood pounding in my ears as my heart beat in utter terror. Loss swept over me, deep and raw. Horror—the sense that something I had seen would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. But mostly fear, that something in the shadows knew my name and wanted me for its own, and if it caught me, death would be a kindness—
“Cassidy! Cassidy!” Teag’s voice held an edge of panic as he wrestled the glass sphere out of my white-knuckled grip and tried to break through my terror. When I finally came back to myself, my heart pounded like I had sprinted a mile, and a thin sheen of sweat covered my face and arms. Teag held me by the shoulders, trying to calm me as I shook so hard my teeth chattered.
“What the hell was that about?” I managed, once I found my voice.
“Obviously that’s the ‘evil eye.’” Teag replied, trying to lift my spirits.
“Or the stink eye.” I stared at the glass orb from a safe distance. “Of all the impressions I thought I might get, utter terror, wasn’t really what I expected.” My hand was still shaking as I lifted my coffee.
Teag grabbed a folder from the regular boxes we bought at the estate sale. “Malcolm Rendell’s obituary doesn’t tell us much about the guy. Not married, no kids, retired electrician. Bowling league. Shot-and-a-beer kinda guy from what I can tell.”
“Except for the nudist colony part,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, except for that,” Teag muttered, pulling out his laptop. His fingers flew over the keyboard. Teag’s Weaver magic extends beyond cloth. He can pull threads of information together far beyond normal Google-fu, making him one hell of a hacker. If Malcolm Rendell was hiding something, Teag would find it.
“I don’t see anything in his obit about military service,” Teag mused. “So he didn’t lose an eye in the war.” That might have explained both the glass eye and the sense of pervasive terror. “But give me time, and I can hack into his eye doctor’s records.”
“Maybe we should look into that nudist colony,” I suggested, the felt my cheeks color. “Let me rephrase that—”
Teag snorted. “I’ll get right on it. Anthony and I were thinking about taking a weekend getaway,” he added with a knowing grin. Anthony is Teag’s long-time partner. He’s a lawyer with a prestigious firm, the scion of a family with a home on the Battery, and definitely not likely to hike around in the buff.
“I meant perhaps a little research into the group’s history and membership is in order,” I laughed.
“Agreed. No recon required. Malcolm seems like an odd fit for a group like that.”
I frowned as I looked at the three items and replayed the impressions I had received. “Everything I saw felt very personal, but so different from one piece to another, it’s hard to believe they all belonged to the same person. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m almost positive the glass eye didn’t originally belong to Malcolm.”
Teag shrugged. “Maybe Malcolm bought the pieces somewhere, or received them as a gift, and the visions you saw belonged to prior owners.”
“Maybe,” I allowed, but my gut told me otherwise. “I’m wondering if we should go talk to his neighbors, see if anyone can tell us more about him.”
Teag shook his head. “Way ahead of you. I made the rounds while you were bidding at the auction,” he said, and I raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Figured it couldn’t hurt, especially after you zeroed in on the ‘spookies.’ Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Old guy, kept to himself, didn’t bother anyone, didn’t make a fuss. No girlfriend, no pets, but he did feed stray dogs, which was the only negative thing anyone mentioned. And he liked to go for walks in the woods—fully clothed,” Teag added with a grin. “Birdwatcher.”
“Huh.” I digested what Teag uncovered as he reached over for the watch and medallion.
“Well, that shoots down two-thirds of my theory,” he said, and held up both pieces, flipped over to reveal engraving on the back. To Malcolm Christmas 1958 read the watch, while the medal was engraved, To Malcolm with love, Mom and Dad.
“Okay, so no flea market,” I said, finishing my coffee and staring at the pieces on the table. I leaned forward to study the pieces more closely. “Teag, look at this. It’s not your standard St. Francis medallion. A symbol was stamped on the back, like a charm of some kind, and it’s engraved.” I held it out. “Have you ever seen that symbol?”
Teag picked up the medallion to see the markings in better light. He shook his head. “I think the same thing is engraved on the watch.”
“You’re right. Same mark on both pieces. But it’s not something I’ve seen before.” I paused. “The glass eye might not have originally belonged to Malcolm, but all the pieces have strong supernatural resonance,” I said. “When has anything like that turned out to be a coincidence?”
Teag concentrated on his computer, and a few minutes later he looked up, shaking his head. “Security sucks on his eye doctor’s computer system. It took me more time to figure out which doctor he went to than it did to hack the records. No glass eye. Some glaucoma, and cataract surgery, but two real peepers.”
I glared at the glass sphere. “It looks old,” I said, studying the orb from a distance. “And I don’t see any way it could have been connected inside an eye socket. Do you think it could have been part of a doll? Or maybe just a really creepy decoration?”
Teag shrugged. “I’ll call the lady we get to appraise old dolls, first thing in the morning. Maybe she’ll know more about it.”
“What about the symbol?”
“I’m on it.” Teag carefully drew the marking on a piece of paper, then took a photo with his phone, uploaded it, and called up another program. “Image recognition software,” he said, although I hadn’t asked. “It’ll look for matches across the internet and show me the best results.”
A loud thump sounded near the back door to the shop. At this hour, no one had a good reason to be in the alley. Sorren was traveling and I wasn’t sure when to expect him, but I had the feeling that’s not who was out there. No windows on the first floor looked out into the alley, so anyone approaching from that direction would not have seen the lights on in the break room, and given the hour, might well have expected the shop to be empty. With a glance, Teag and I both got to our feet, grabbed a weapon, and moved carefully toward the door.
A man lay unconscious on the pavement, just beyond the doorway. “Looks like Lucinda’s wardings still pack some juice,�
� Teag observed. Lucinda, a friendly Voudon mambo, keeps protective magic active around the shop and our homes, something that’s come in handy more times than I like to think about.
“Let’s get him inside, tie him up, and find out why he was trying to jimmy the door open,” I said, wondering whether this would turn out to be a matter for the police, or something more supernatural in origin.
Teag and I dragged the unconscious man into the break room and tied him to one of the chairs. Lucinda’s warding had knocked him out cold. While we waited for him to wake up, I looked the man over. He appeared to be in his early thirties, shorter than Teag, and fit enough to be a body builder. Long black hair fell to his shoulders. He wore a gray field coat with unusual buttons. I frowned as I noticed blood on the man’s t-shirt.
“He’s injured,” I said, pointing.
Teag grabbed a pair of latex gloves from our med kit and gently lifted up the man’s shirt to reveal faded bruising across his back and ribs. “Those bruises are pretty impressive even though they’re mostly healed,” he said, raising and eyebrow. “They must have really been something when they were fresh. And something got him behind his shoulder,” he noted, pointing toward a pink scar of new skin. “Huh. The wound is closed, but there’s blood on his skin and on his shirt like it just happened.”
“He didn’t get that from Lucinda’s warding,” I replied. “Her protections are supposed to keep people out, maybe knock them for a loop, but not tear them up.”
Teag looked at me, as if debating whether to say what he was thinking. “This is going to sound really strange... but that fresh scar of his is in the same place as where I stabbed the black dog... if the dog were a guy.”
I remembered that Bo’s ghost tried to take a bite out of the black dog. “Check his right side, on the waist just above the hip.”
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