Trifles and Folly 2

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Not today,” I muttered as I palmed the knife and turned it in my hand, driving the blade back into Gevers’s belly. I fell forward the moment Gevers’s grip eased, and a shot rang out from the bushes to our right. Gevers stiffened and gave a croak of pain, then dropped to the ground, a bullet hole in his temple.

  Teag and I froze, unsure whether we had been rescued or merely passed off to another captor.

  “Stand down.” Marshall stepped out of the shadows, still holding his gun ready to fire.

  Shaking with pain and relief, I fell forward onto my hands and knees. Teag moved to verify that Gevers was really dead, but I had all the proof I needed when I saw that half the man’s skull was blown off. The other wounded shifter groaned beneath the metal net. I was more than happy to let Marshall deal with him.

  “We found bones and freshly skinned pelts in the barn, but no survivors,” Marshall reported. Barely controlled rage colored his clipped words.

  That meant Derek’s brother Jesse and the other missing members of his pack were dead, including Marshall’s mate. I closed my eyes, saddened at their loss.

  “Sorren and Donnelly?” I asked, as Teag eased me to a seat and took out a flashlight to examine my leg.

  “Setting fire to the trophies burned Green along with them.” Sorren stepped out of the darkness, startling all of us with his silent approach. Donnelly followed a few steps later. They both looked exhausted, blood-spattered and soot-streaked, but I didn’t see any serious wounds. “Green held us off as long as he could draw on the stored energy, but once the trophies burned, he was overextended, and he went up in a ball of fire.”

  “We need to get you home and have Sorren’s doctor take a look at your leg,” Teag said, removing his t-shirt and wrapping it around my leg as a bandage. “A hospital will ask too many questions. Looks like the shot went through—didn’t hit bone. You’re lucky. Shouldn’t be too bad to stitch up.”

  “How about Derek?” I looked up at Marshall. He and his pack had really come through for us tonight, and the cost had been high.

  “Derek’s in my truck. We’ll see that he’s properly fixed up.”

  “Can he shift back?” Teag asked.

  Donnelly frowned. “Now that Green is dead, the magic that bound Derek should be gone, but I can check on him before we leave, just in case.”

  “I’d be grateful for that. Oh, one more thing. That stuff you picked up? Think maybe we could have the medallion back? Those are handed down through families; they mean a lot to us. I’d like Derek to have it,” Marshall said.

  I didn’t have to think about it. “Sure. We’ll destroy the watch and the eye, so they don’t fall into the wrong hands, but I’ll have the medallion delivered to you.” I was about to ask if he was okay, but one look at his eyes gave me the answer. He wasn’t, and he wouldn’t be for quite a while, not after the losses he and the others suffered because of Emory and Green.

  I felt battered and bruised, and Teag looked equally exhausted and injured. Still, I knew it could have turned out much worse, and for Marshall and Derek, there would be no celebration, just a cold sense of completion. I’d take my wins where I found them, and be grateful for any fight my friends and I walked away from.

  “Come on,” I said, struggling to my feet as Teag gave me a hand up and got under one shoulder to help me to the car. “We set fires they can probably see from space. Police will be here soon. We’d better not be here when they arrive.”

  I was alive, and so were my friends. The bad guys were dead. For tonight, it was enough.

  Part VI

  Fair Game

  Earthquakes, Epidemics, and Expositions

  “Two disasters and a World’s Fair? How did you come up with this exhibit?” I glanced around the room at the display cases, shaking my head. “Isn’t it a strange group of things to put together?”

  My host, Mrs. Benjamin Morrissey, laughed, and the mirth reached her eyes. Slim and regal in a St. John suit, she looked every bit the society maven. “We’ve been displaying items from Charleston’s history in decade groupings all year,” she replied. “This is 1880 – 1910.”

  “I knew about the earthquake,” I said as I moved closer to the wall mural covered with a montage of photographs, etchings, and newspaper clippings. “Anyone who’s toured the historic district has seen the earthquake bolts through the old houses.”

  “At least we didn’t have to include Yellow Fever epidemics,” Mrs. Morrissey replied. “The last one in Charleston happened in 1877.”

  I shivered, despite myself, and took a step back from the nearest glass case. My magic can read the history of an object by touching it, and I’d learned the hard way to steer clear of pieces with tragic pasts when I could.

  “Where did the items come from?” I asked to distract myself. Mrs. Morrissey knows a bit about my magic. I suspect she knows more about my business than she lets on.

  “We put out the call to the old families in town for memorabilia,” she replied. “Some were happy to donate; others want the pieces back at the end of the exhibit. What makes this special is these items have never been on public display before. I don’t think most of them have been out of attics or closets in decades.” She sounded triumphant, and she had reason for it. Under her direction, the Historical Archive had gained a new prominence in Charleston, on the forefront of preservation efforts and seeing its best fundraising outcomes in years. Unique exhibits like this one, coupled with exquisite donor receptions and deft diplomacy with the city’s moneyed elite were directly responsible for the Archive’s rise in status.

  “Your family’s been in Charleston almost since the city was founded,” she said, glancing at me. “I’m surprised you didn’t have anything we could borrow.”

  “Given the business we’re in, we don’t hang on to old things too long,” I replied, trying to keep my tone light.

  I’m Cassidy Kincaide, and I’m the latest in my family to own Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio store in historic, haunted Charleston, SC. The store has been around for 350 years, since the city was an outpost. We’ve kept a lot of secrets in that time. The biggest is that antiques are only part of what we do. We’re really a cover for the Alliance, a group of mortals and immortals who fight supernatural threats and get haunted and cursed objects out of the wrong hands. The second secret is that my business partner Sorren has been with the shop since its founding. He’s a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire, and he helps run the Alliance. When we do our job right, no one notices. I had to wonder if the hurricane and earthquake were how people explained the damage if my ancestor and Sorren didn’t quite cover their tracks.

  “Tell me about the World’s Fair,” I said, shifting the subject. The large upstairs room which housed the exhibit felt overly air-conditioned, probably in an attempt to protect the artifacts from Charleston’s killer humidity. I ran my hands up and down my bare arms, feeling goosebumps rise.

  “It wasn’t really a true World’s Fair,” Mrs. Morrissey replied, leading me over to a bank of cases. I peered inside, feeling more comfortable around souvenirs of a gala exhibition than I did near the reminders of disease and natural disaster.

  “Its real name was the ‘South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition.’ That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it?”

  I leaned closer, looking at the elaborately printed tickets made from such detailed engraved plates that they almost resembled currency. A few specially-minted commemorative coins rested on a velvet pillow, along with a souvenir silver spoon that had a scene of a large Victorian building in the bowl and the name of the event etched into the stem.

  “It wasn’t sanctioned by the World’s Fair organization,” Mrs. Morrissey continued. “Some of the city promotors and business men put the deal together. It was controversial at the time. The Old Guard considered it a bit unseemly to be so forthright about wanting to attract more business. You know Charleston likes to do things the old fashioned way,” she added with a wink.

  Charleston w
as built on back-room agreements and hand-shake deals between descendants of families that had known each other for generations. Old school decorum meant pretending that money didn’t matter, while in reality, it was always the primary goal. “I don’t recognize the buildings,” I noted, leaning forward to peer at the faded postcards and broadsides.

  An elaborate white-domed Victorian palace sat at one end of a majestic sunken garden. On the other end of the long reflecting pool lined with classical statues was a round gazebo. I knew I had never seen the palace, but the gazebo looked familiar.

  “The exposition was held on the land that’s now Hampton Park,” she said. “Some of the sunken garden and the gazebo are still there. That building was the Cotton Palace,” she said wistfully. “Several fine, imposing buildings were constructed. After all, the whole point was to attract the world’s attention and get people to invest in businesses here in South Carolina.”

  “They look so magnificent, but I’m sure I’d remember them if I’d seen them.”

  “They weren’t built to last,” Mrs. Morrissey said. “In fact, they were so poorly built that the city tore them down at the end of the exposition.” She sighed. “That’s almost a metaphor for the entire event. It never got the funding the organizers wanted, the weather was poor and attendance fell short of projections, and despite all the grandeur, the organizers went bankrupt with little economic impact to show from the whole, grand debacle.”

  “But it makes for one heck of a tragic, romantic story,” I said, as my gaze lingered on the old photos.

  I drifted back and forth among the glass cases, looking at the memorabilia. Among the items in the earthquake display were a broken porcelain doll, journals, and letters by survivors chronicling the cataclysm, some period photographs, and a length of iron railroad rails bent by Mother Nature into an unmistakable S-curve.

  Experience has taught me to stay alert for impressions I receive through my “gift,” even when I’m not actually touching objects. If the resonance is strong enough, I’ve picked up on emotions and energy from the ground beneath my feet. Even without handling the items in the case, I sensed the residue of fear and confusion, the weariness of a city that had barely survived war only to be crushed by nature itself. I’m not a medium, but everyone in Charleston has seen a ghost or two, and my abilities seem to attract more ghosts to me than my fair share. I caught a glimpse of movement, the impression of a woman and a girl in long-ago clothing, a man with a top hat, another fellow dressed like a laborer. I glanced at Mrs. Morrissey, but she either didn’t see the shades or wasn’t concerned.

  Curiosity pulled me over to the cases showing the devastation left behind by the hurricane of 1893, what folks around here call the “Sea Island Hurricane” because it hit the coastal islands hardest. Old photos showed houses and piers destroyed by the force of the storm. Small items retrieved as flotsam from the waters lay carefully arranged on velvet inside the case. A stamped metal button lay next to a scratched and twisted silver fork. An unblemished porcelain teacup sat next to a card noting that it had been carried away by storm waters that destroyed its owner’s entire home, only to be gently deposited yards away in the fork of a tree. Near it sat an invitation to a wedding that never happened, both the would-be bride and groom among the storm’s casualties.

  I paused again, closing my eyes this time. Mrs. Morrissey has a pretty good idea about my psychometry, and since she was friends with my late Uncle Evann who left me the store, I suspect she knows more about our real mission than she lets on. She didn’t say anything though, just stood nearby waiting as if she hadn’t seen everything in the display dozens of times already.

  The ghosts felt stronger near this case, or maybe just tied more closely to the objects on display. After a long time, many ghosts begin to hollow out, become less of themselves and more like a lingering memory. Except, of course, for the ones so driven with rage or unmet needs that they seem to grow stronger with the passage of time. I didn’t sense a danger from the storm’s ghosts. If anything they felt… uneasy. That struck me as odd. What unsettles a ghost?

  I opened my eyes and startled. A dark black something glided along the edge of the room. Not person-shaped, like a regular ghost. Not shaped like anything in particular that I could make out. There and gone so quickly I almost doubted what I saw, but I’ve been doing what we do for long enough that I know not to mistrust my instincts. In its wake, the black shape left a sense of dread and a visceral curl of fear. It seemed like an odd resonance to be left by a storm, no matter how devastating. Storms might kill as many people as a battle, but unlike man-made carnage, storms bore no ill will, harbored no resentments, did nothing out of malice. In a way, that almost made it worse for the impersonality of the devastation. That’s why it’s called an Act of God.

  I repressed a shiver and moved to the next case. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just glimpse the black shadow, as if it hovered just at the edge of my sight, waiting.

  The “World’s Fair That Wasn’t” filled a large case. Unlike the other displays, this one made me smile. A commemorative silver spoon lay on a velvet cushion; its bowl pressed with a scene of an ornate Victorian building and the name of the fair engraved up the handle. Several souvenir coins gleamed in the light, along with a gaudy, painted porcelain ashtray, commemorative plates, and a sheaf of yellowed postcards.

  I leaned closer as one of the cards caught my eye. “That gazebo looks familiar,” I said.

  Mrs. Morrissey nodded. “The bandstand is one of the few things that survived, along with one building and a bit of the sunken gardens. It’s rather amazing, really, with how grand the grounds were at the time, that it’s as if it were all a dream.”

  A few of the postcards were turned picture-down to reveal the writing on the other side. “Can’t believe I’m really here. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home,” the faded ink read. “Love, Stephen.” The precise handwriting had the swoop and flair of a confident young man.

  “The fair might not have gotten the crowds the promoters wanted, but those who did attend came from far and wide,” Mrs. Morrissey said with a sigh. “It’s just a shame that the whole thing was a bust.”

  “I’d heard most World’s Fairs don’t really turn a profit,” I remarked, drawn to the display by something I couldn’t explain. “Kind of like hosting the Olympics. Lots of prestige, big expenses, big bills to pay once the party’s over.”

  The darkness felt closer. I turned sharply, expecting to see that it slipped between the displays or puddled beneath the cases like spilled water, but saw nothing. Mrs. Morrissey gave me a look. “Something wrong, Cassidy?’

  I managed a smile and shook my head. “Just a little jumpy today. I thought I saw something.”

  Mrs. Morrissey laughed. “Well, you probably wouldn’t be wrong if you did. It’s an old house, and this is Charleston. Ghosts are part of the package.”

  Quiet ghosts didn’t bother me, but the dark shadow made me nervous. I was about to ask a question when the lights went out. Downstairs, that wouldn’t have been a problem with the tall windows in the old converted house. But the exhibit room was windowless, to protect fragile fabrics and paintings on display. That made it pitch dark.

  I froze, expecting the emergency lights to flicker on at any second. The temperature in the room plummeted, and I felt goosebumps rise on my arms. All of a sudden, the texture of the darkness around me changed. This new dark felt heavier, not quite solid but more than mere air. Its touch felt cold like corpse-flesh, and fear slithered up my spine as the blackness licked around me, opaque enough that I feared if it engulfed me I would not see light again.

  I could hear screaming from a distance, many voices raised in anguish, pleading, begging, crying out in terror and pain. Another voice carried on the darkness, this one just a whisper, murmuring fearsome ideas of what might happen next. Free us. Please, free us!

  Abruptly, the lights went on, blinding me. The voices fell silent, and the strange, solid darkness vanish
ed. I realized that I had wrapped my arms around myself and was rocking back and forth, braced against the threat of that deep, fearsome voice.

  “Cassidy? Are you all right?” From the tone, I gathered Mrs. Morrissey had been calling to me for a while without reply.

  “Yeah,” I said, hearing the stutter in my lie. “Just got a bit of a vision. Not a surprise considering the circumstances behind all this,” I added with a vague sweep of my hand to indicate the cases.

  “I was afraid of that,” Mrs. Morrissey tutted. She took hold of my elbow and guided me back downstairs to her office, then disappeared for a moment to fetch me a cup of coffee. When I took a sip, I realized she’d laced it with whiskey.

  “I’ve called you a cab,” she said, smoothing her skirt under her as she sat down behind the desk.

  “That’s really not—”

  “I insist.” She smiled. “I’m sorry about the display—”

  I sighed. “I need to learn better control. And it’s getting better, just not quickly.” I didn’t know what the timetable was for learning not to get knocked flat on my ass by my psychic gift. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the kind of thing people wrote self-help books about, and the people I’d asked who might know just said “it depends.”

  “What you sensed up there—was it dangerous?”

  I frowned, trying to parse through the impressions I’d gained, and took another sip of the Irish coffee. The whiskey warmed me, stopped the shivers, grounded me in the here and now.

  “Not actively,” I said slowly. “It didn’t try to hurt me. The ghosts just seemed to be spectators. But there was something else, a shadow that felt bad. I don’t know what it was.”

  “I’ll have the whole area smudged with sage, just to be careful,” she promised. “And I’m sorry for giving you a scare.”