“I’ll carry him,” Sorren said with a jerk of his head toward Rand. Donnelly and Father Anne already had Morrill tied up and gagged, though his wild eyes held the promise of terrible retribution. A glance at Father Anne affirmed that she had been in the thick of the fight upstairs. One eye darkened with a bruise, and I wondered how she would explain that to her parishioners. A deep cut on her left shoulder bled steadily through her shirt, and she held herself as if her ribs ached. The Chindi had put up a hell of a struggle.
“I’ve got your back,” Chuck said. “But move your asses. We don’t have all day.”
Anthony staggered and would have fallen without Teag’s arm around his waist. Teag’s staff hung across his back in a specially-made holster, but I saw that he kept his iron knife in his right hand, supporting Anthony’s weight with his left arm. Sorren lifted Rand as if he were a child, and Morrill succeeded in struggling only for a moment before Donnelly muttered something under his breath that made the man go limp in his arms.
Sorren still led the way, with Father Anne beside him, long knives in both hands. Donnelly went next, then Teag burdened with Anthony’s unsteady weight. Chuck and I brought up the rear. I glanced at the rotting corpses, sorry we couldn’t do better for them.
By the time we reached the stairs, the Chindi’s anger manifested behind us as a growing whirlwind, starting slow but building rapidly. Once again, the temperature plummeted, and even unconscious, Morrill writhed in Donnelly’s grip.
“Move!” Chuck urged. “We’ll hold it at the steps. Get them to the cars!”
Father Anne fell back to stand with Chuck and me, shoulder to shoulder. But before Sorren and the others reached the exit, the Chindi swept down over us like an arctic wind, slamming all the hallway doors so hard the glass rattled in the windows.
“Close your eyes!” Chuck yelled, lobbing another EMF grenade. I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare, only to feel myself picked up off my feet and hurled against one of the walls with enough force that my elbow went through the crumbling plaster. The grenade might have sent the Chindi away the first time, but it was on to our tricks now, and angrier than before.
I climbed to my feet and saw a sickly green orb hovering against the solid black of the Chindi. It dove first at Morrill, then at Sorren, but when it dipped toward Rand’s pliant body, Donnelly barked out words of power in a language I did not understand.
The orb stopped in mid-air, then took off at full power straight toward me. Father Anne stepped in between before I could move, holding up an iron crucifix from a chain around her neck as I grabbed a handful of salt from my pocket and threw it right at the orb.
“We’ve got to contain the Chindi,” Donnelly said. “Without its energy, the ghost is too weak to be a threat.” I could figure out the rest. Contain the Chindi. Power-down the ghost. Burn the house.
We had counted on dispelling the Chindi, not boxing it up. I glanced around and spotted the door to a small closet. I lurched toward it, jerked the door open, and began firing with my signal gun, loading rounds of rock salt and iron pellets and shooting until every surface was peppered.
Chuck got the drift without me saying a word. “Teag, plow the road with that whip of yours. We’ve got a plan.”
I saw silver streaks against the darkness, and felt the Chindi’s energy lurch as it winced away from the strikes, clearing their way to get out. Donnelly chanted, low and steady, forcing the Chindi back from the door, toward us. Father Anne took up a position at the foot of the stairs, and I heard her start into the Rite of Exorcism, and I chanted along with her, doing my best not to mangle the Latin.
“Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii…”
Once Teag and the others made it to the door, he tossed the coiled metal whip to Chuck. With Father Anne blocking the stairs, me and my salt, holy water, and buckshot blocking one end of the hall and Chuck lashing the Chindi from the other, the darkness condensed, folding in on itself, sliding toward the closet.
“Careful,” Chuck urged. “If we dispel it, the damn thing will just go somewhere else and we’ll have to do this again.”
With a few more snaps of the silver whip and warning slashes from my iron knife, we backed the Chindi into the newly spirit-proofed closet. It surged back toward us as I tried to force the door shut. I saw a blur of motion and then Sorren was beside me, using his strength against the entity.
“Cassidy! Shoot into it now!”
I sent a shot of salt and iron into the closet, right at the center of the writhing mass. It screeched in anger and pain, and Sorren slammed the door shut. Donnelly was right behind him, raising both hands to seal the closet with a muttered spell and a sudden, faint glow.
“Teag’s in the car with the prisoners. We’ve got to finish this,” Sorren said. We moved to the back door, and just before I crossed the threshold, I lifted the walking stick lose from its holster and leveled it at the stairs. Part of me felt bad that the missing men’s remains would never be recovered, but the alternative, allowing the Chindi and the bloody history of the house to fester and raise more unholy energy, was far worse.
I took a deep breath, centered my magic, pulled hard from the resonance of the power within the old walking stick, and sent a jet of fire from the silver tip. I didn’t stop until the flames burned like a bonfire, until the walls and floor crackled with fire, until Sorren’s hand fell gently on my shoulder, telling me that it was time to go. Even so, I sent one more pulse blasting down the hallway, aiming for the Chindi’s prison.
“That’s for Anthony,” I muttered, unashamed for feeling triumphant as a preternatural scream filled the air.
I ran for the car. With all the shots we’d fired and now the flames, police cars had to be on their way, and we needed to be hell and gone. I slid into the shotgun seat of Teag’s Volvo next to Sorren who was at the wheel so Teag could cradle Anthony in the back seat.
“How is he?” I asked as Sorren pulled away, moving with as much speed as we dared.
“Donnelly didn’t sense any serious injuries,” Teag said, barely masking a hitch in his voice now that the heroics were over and the adrenaline let-down settled in. “But he’s been drugged, tied up and held prisoner in the dark next to a rotting corpse.”
“In case you’re wondering, Donnelly said Rand was dehydrated and hungry, and both he and Anthony appeared to have been beaten and cut. Since no one even found the bodies from Brenner-Brannigan’s house of horrors, we can’t compare the pattern, but it’s consistent with serial killers who like to play with their victims before killing them.” The cold, flat tone in Sorren’s voice let me know that he would be perfectly fine with ending Morrill if Donnelly determined the man willingly allowed Brenner’s ghost to possess and use him.
“Do they need a hospital?”
Sorren shook his head. “I’ve already called my private physician. He’ll take care of Anthony at your house—if that’s suitable to you—and then swing by the Briggs Society to see to Rand.”
“Did Donnelly get the building to agree to that?” I asked. “You could end up God knows where in time.”
Sorren chuckled. “I think Donnell and the building have an… agreement of sorts. We’ll get Rand patched up, I’ll take care of any troublesome memories, and we’ll drop him off somewhere safe where he can be miraculously reunited with his family.”
“And Morrill?” I hesitated to ask, torn between wanting vengeance and not sure I desired to know.
“It depends,” Sorren answered. “I’m leaving the determination to Donnelly. If he wasn’t a willing accomplice, we’ll do for him what we’re doing for Rand.” He left unsaid what would occur if Morrill had knowingly sold the others out. The Alliance’s job protecting the world had plenty of gray areas, but proven cold-blooded killers didn’t get a reprieve.
“Once we get Anthony seen by the doctor and know how he is, I’ll call his family,” Teag said. He hadn’t stopped carding his fingers though Anthony’s hair since I got in the car. Th
e two of them barely fit in the backseat together, but Teag had his back up against the door, Anthony pulled up against his chest, legs mostly stretched out on the seat and Teag’s arm across him. Anthony looked pale and haggard, and the bloody slashes on his chest and arms attested to his ordeal, but he his breathing was regular.
We made it. Rescued the prisoners, zapped the ghost, torched the monster, saved the city. I’d have new bruises and pulled muscles to show for it, but compared to how it could have gone down, we got off easy.
Just another day in paradise.
Part VII
Unraveled
Restless Spirits
“Are you sure you didn’t mean to invite a priest? I can’t bless restless spirits, and I suck at exorcisms,” I said as Teag Logan and I followed Kell Winston and his paranormal investigators through back alleys in a part of Charleston, South Carolina that doesn’t make it into the tourist guidebooks, for good reason.
“Maybe later,” Kell said, and the tension in his voice told me he wasn’t joking. “We’ve been checking back on this haunting and a couple of others for a while now. There’ve been reports of a minor haunting here for years, but it was always things like cold spots, orbs, and people feeling like they were being watched. Over the last few weeks though, it’s juiced up.”
“How?” Teag asked. He flicked a lock of lank dark hair out of his eyes and looked around the dimly lit alleyway warily. Teag stood a little taller than Kell and the others in his group, and I saw Teag go up on the balls of his feet, trying to see ahead, impatient to know what we got ourselves into.
“Much higher EMF readings, for one thing,” Calista said, from near the front of the group. Instead of the big computer setup she had for exploring reportedly haunted houses, tonight she just had a tablet and an earbud. “All kinds of readings going off the charts.”
Peter, who had two different kinds of EMF readers going, nodded as both units pinged and whined. “Yeah. Definitely stronger than last week. Don’t need to look the numbers up to know that. Meters are at the top of the yellow zone, nearly red. Not something you see every day.”
Drew, their cameraman, let out a whistle. “Will you look at that?” We followed the direction of his nod and saw a glowing blue orb form out of nowhere. The temperature in the alley dropped rapidly, until I found myself shivering—something that didn’t often happen on a Charleston summer night.
“Down ten degrees within a minute,” Calista reported.
“Go slow,” Kell warned. His group, the Southern Paranormal Observation and Outreach Klub (otherwise known as SPOOK), earned its reputation for being the most credible group of its kind by doing good work and thorough documentation. “If it’s getting stronger, we don’t want to find out the hard way that it’s angry.”
Kell turned to me. “Picking up anything, Cassidy?”
I shook my head. “Nothing clear,” I replied. “You do remember that I’m not a medium?”
Kell grinned. “I know. I’m not sure there’s enough of a personality manifesting for a medium to be able to get much, but for the haunting to amp up like this, I’m thinking something has to be anchoring the spirit to this place. And if there’s an object involved, you’re the first person I call.”
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, SC that has its share of secrets. My touch magic is one of those secrets, but not the only one. The shop has existed for nearly 350 years as a front for the Alliance, a coalition of mortals and immortals that get dangerous magical items out of the wrong hands and keep Charleston—and the world—safe from supernatural threats. When we succeed, no one remembers. When we fail, the damage gets blamed on a natural disaster. Teag Logan is my assistant store manager, best friend, and sometimes bodyguard. He’s got a secret of his own—he’s powerful with Weaver magic, the ability to weave spells into cloth and unlikely data into information, making him one hell of a hacker.
I didn’t think Teag’s magic would do much for us tonight, in a very haunted alleyway, but mine might shed some light on the situation.
“Give me a sec,” I said to Kell, as the rest of his team fanned out to gather data. Drew kept his camera on the orb, which had not tried to flee or come closer, a good sign. It hovered near one side of the old alleyway as if it were waiting for something. Teag and Kell protectively stepped closer to me as I shut my eyes to focus on what my magic could pick up.
My gift is strongest when I’m actually in contact with an object that carries a deep emotional or magical resonance. Sometimes, if the energy is strong enough, it sinks into walls, floors, even the cobblestones beneath our feet, and I can feel it despite my shoes.
“It’s hazy,” I said. “Impressions more than actual images, but without an object, it’s rarely as clear.” I hesitated, sifting through the feelings that what I picked up raised in my gut, trying to put them into words. “Female. Young, but not a child. Terrified. Pain. Loss.” I shook my head to clear it and opened my eyes.
“Sorry, that’s not much,” I said. “Whoever she was, a woman must have been murdered here, and without a particular object, I’m guessing she’s anchored to the place where she died.”
Kell gave me a supportive smile. With his brown hair and blue eyes, Kell had a way about him that put people at ease. Lucky for me, we’d gone from good friends to a couple, so I got to see that smile of his a lot. “Anything else?” he pressed.
“Urgency,” I said, frowning as the word formed because it came straight from my intuition, an interpretation of what I had picked up. “I think that’s why she’s manifesting. She’s trying to tell us something. Maybe warn us.”
“Can you tell how long ago she died?” Kell asked. “Are we talking Colonial era or something more recent?” Charleston, SC is one of the most haunted cities in the US, and it’s been settled by Europeans since 1670. Plenty of people have died here under tragic circumstances, and many never leave.
“Years, maybe a decade or so, or a little longer,” I said, going on feeling instead of fact. “Remember, I’m picking up on her energy, not making a spirit connection. Another reason I think she’s new at this. She doesn’t seem to know how to make herself seen.”
I opened my mouth to say more, but a sudden clatter and Calista’s potent curse stopped me cold. Pebbles rose from the ground, wobbling in mid-air. They hovered, as if waiting for us to notice, and then began to pelt us like hail.
“Hey!” Calista yelled. “Don’t damage the equipment!” She curled protectively around her tablet and fell back. Drew did the same thing a moment later as a small rock smacked into the side of the camera, but Peter remained where he was, oblivious in his audio readings until Kell grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back a few steps, out of range.
“You notice anything?” I asked Teag, feeling shaken and wary.
“Nothing beyond what the rest of you have seen and heard,” he replied. “Remember—I sense things from cloth. Maybe if we had a bit of what she’d been wearing, I’d get a reading. But this trip, I’m just the muscle,” he added with an ironic smile. Teag’s thin but whipcord strong, and he’s won martial arts championships, proof that looks can be deceiving.
I glanced at Kell as his folks put their gear back in his SUV. We’d only hit the first of three stops tonight. “Do you have any idea who the ghost is or how she died—other than violently?” I asked, staring past him into the alley that now stood empty once more. The orb was gone, and the temperature edged back up to its usual sultry heat.
Kell shook his head. “No, but now that you’ve narrowed down the timeframe a bit, we might be able to figure it out. Big difference looking at ten to twenty years versus over three hundred!”
The SPOOK group got into the SUV and headed to the next location. Teag and I piled into my RAV4, which held our gear bag in the back full of additional weapons good against supernatural threats. I knew Kell had a shotgun with shells filled with rock salt in his car, but I hoped we didn’t need to u
se it. Not only would that mean a very dangerous ghost, but I didn’t want to have to explain shooting at something most people don’t even believe exists.
As I drove, Teag watched out the window, but the streets at this hour were deserted. Even the tourists had gone to bed. “So, was there anything else you sensed that you might not have wanted to mention in front of SPOOK?” he asked. Kell knows a little about what I can do—and I’m sure he suspects more—but we haven’t told him everything just yet, for his own safety.
I kept my eyes on the road, following Kell. “Not really. I didn’t get a look at her; the spirit isn’t strong enough to manifest that much. At least, not yet,” I added, an ominous thought. “I don’t think she was trying to hurt us. As odd as it sounds, I think she was trying to warn us, to send us away from danger.”
“You think it’s a trapped spirit or just a stone tape?”
Ghosts come in several different forms. Some are tied to objects, while others to locations or even to the date when something important—often, their death—occurred. Many of those ghosts, fortunately the most common kind of spirits, are what ghost hunters call “stone tape” manifestations, as if they’ve imprinted somehow on something real and solid and they replay a loop of activity, like an old cassette tape (hence the name) but there’s no personality or sentience. Some ghost hunters call them “repeaters.” Other ghosts, often the more dangerous kind, are more like trapped spirits who either chose not to move on after death because they wanted to finish something or protect someone, or because they got lost and didn’t know what to do. Over time, these ghosts often get frustrated and vengeful as they become more powerful, and they’re the ones that can be a real problem.
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