Wilomena’s apparition was gone. I was breathing hard, and so were Teag and Father Anne. But before I could say anything, Father Anne turned toward the far corner of the room where Susan Mayfair’s sad ghost hovered in the shadows.
“Would you be free?” Father Anne asked gently. Susan nodded. Father Anne spoke in Latin, a phrase I had heard her use before—a blessing to speed the dead safely on their way. Susan’s spirit faded, as if she had been waiting all these years for permission to move on. I blinked my eyes, and she was gone.
That’s when I realized someone was missing. “Where’s Kell?”
“Out here,” Kell said, poking his head into the bedroom. “Whatever you did took the juice right out of the dolls,” he said. “Did it work?”
I glanced at the ruined, shattered mirrors and shuddered. “Yeah,” I replied. “It worked.” Just then, the pounding started again.
“Wilomena’s spirit is gone,” Father Anne said. “She can’t be doing that.”
In the moment that Wilomena had grabbed me on the other side of the mirror, my touch magic took in a lot of information, but since I was fighting for my life, I didn’t have time to think about it just then. Now, a few of the pieces fell into place.
“I think I know what’s going on,” I said, trying hard to make sense of the jumble of impressions I had gained. The others followed me warily past the limp, motionless bodies of the dolls that littered the hallway, back to the suicide room, Susan’s room. The pounding grew louder and more desperate.
I walked toward the far wall and began knocking. Immediately, the pounding stopped. Someone on the other side of the wall echoed the pattern of my knocks. “Here,” I said, pointing. In the dim light, it was just possible to make out something I’d missed before—a thin line where a door was hidden by the pattern in the wallpaper. I slid my hands down the wall until I found a clasp and pushed. The door clicked and sprang open.
Briana staggered out. “Oh thank god!” she said, looking frazzled and wild-eyed. “I didn’t think anyone was ever going to find me.”
Kell looked at me. “How did you know?”
I hesitated. Kell is a good friend, and maybe more, but he still didn’t know much about my magic and I wasn’t quite ready to let him in on all the secrets, at least not just yet. “Wilomena’s ghost trapped Susan’s spirit to feed off her energy,” I explained. “I had a feeling that Wilomena might have found a way to imprison Briana to draw from her, too.”
Briana looked shaken and wan. “I don’t know anyone named Wilomena,” she said. “But I found that hidden door and went inside to see what was what. It’s an old servants’ staircase, but the bottom exit has been covered over. The door slammed, and I couldn’t get out. Then I fell down the stairs and must have got knocked out for a while.” She shivered, and I could see the bruise on her forehead. “Let me tell you, being trapped in this spook house is going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.” She glared at Kell. “Rennie owes me a bonus.”
“I’ll drive her home,” Father Anne offered. “I think my job here is done.” I thanked her, while Teag and Kell walked out to the hall and found that the lights now worked fine.
“Rennie’s going to be glad we found Briana, but he’s not going to like the mess,” Kell said, taking in the broken dolls and Bathroom Bertha’s mangled form. He sighed. “It could have been worse. I’ll get my team to come out tomorrow and help me put things right.”
Teag recovered his net from the vanity table. I watched the shattered mirrors closely, but no sign of Wilomena remained. “Thank you,” Kell said, glancing from Teag to me. “I’m not exactly sure how you did some of the things I thought I saw you do, but I don’t need to know,” he said. “At least, not right now,” he added with a smile intended for me. I smiled back.
Kell walked us back to Teag’s car. “I’ve got a call in to Rennie,” he said. “I’d better wait here for him. He said he’d be over to see the damage.” He managed a wan grin. “I owe you both a good dinner. Let me get Halloween and the spook house over with, and we’ll go celebrate.”
I got in Teag’s car and my phone buzzed again. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw a message from Sorren. “Got caught up with some bad business in Philadelphia that’s going to take more time,” I read aloud. “Can you handle problem on your own?”
Teag and I both laughed. “What are you going to tell him?” Teag asked.
I was already busy texting a reply. “Problem handled,” I read aloud. “All in a night’s work.”
The End
Excerpt from:
Vendetta: A Deadly Curiosities Novel
“WATCH OUT, CASSIDY!” Teag’s warning was a heartbeat too late. The dark wraith screeched in fury and his clawed hand raked across my shoulder, opening four bloody cuts. I ducked out of reach and flung up my left hand with its protective bracelet. The ghostly figure of a large, angry dog appeared by my side, teeth bared, snarling at the wraith.
The ghost dog sprang at the wraith, striking it square on, driving it back so I could get out of the way. It wasn’t the first time a soul-sucking creature of death showed up in the break room of my store, but it also wasn’t something I had planned on when I opened the velvet jewelry box.
“Cover me!” I shouted to Teag, trying to figure out how fast I could get to a weapon that I could use against the billowing, monstrous shape.
“Go!” Teag said to me. He turned to the wraith with a wicked grin and snatched down a fishing net made of clothesline rope from a hook on the wall. “See how you like this!” he yelled, throwing the net over the wraith.
Normal rope would have gone right through the wraith’s dark form. Wraiths are like that – solid when they want to be, insubstantial when you want to hit them. But the magic woven into the net meant it stuck, catching the wraith in a web of power. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it could buy us precious seconds, and that delay might be the difference between life and death.
If I’d expected a fight to the death, I would have made sure my weapons were closer. I had to dive for the door to my office and grab my athame from atop my desk. The athame focused my magic, and I opened myself to the powerful memories and emotions that I connected with it, drawing strength. The wraith surged forward, straining at the energy of the rope net that glowed like silver. The ghost dog harried the wraith, snapping at its heels, keeping it occupied.
I swung back into the room and leveled the athame at the wraith, channeling my magic. A cone of blinding white light surged from the athame, and when the cold power struck the wraith, it shrieked and twisted, forced back toward the wall. It looked as if the white light was burning through the wraith, like fire on paper, and with one last ear-piercing scream, the deadly apparition vanished.
The ghost dog looked back at me, wagged its tail, and winked out. I slumped back against the wall, feeling suddenly drained. Magic takes energy, and I was still pretty new at learning to channel mine for big stuff, like fighting off monsters. Then again, with the amount of practice we’d been getting lately, I figured I’d be up to speed in no time.
“Nice net,” I said, managing a grin.
Teag returned a tired smile. “Good shooting.” His expression grew serious. “You’re bleeding.”
I sighed and sat down in one of the chairs at the small table, eying the overturned jewelry box mistrustfully. For now, at least, the box seemed harmless. “I didn’t move fast enough,” I said.
“You weren’t expecting an attack,” Teag replied.
“I’m beginning to think I should always expect an attack, and be pleasantly surprised when an antique is just an antique, instead of a demon portal to the realms of the dead.” The wraith’s claws must have taken a swipe at my energy as well as my shoulder, and I hoped that didn’t include shreds of my soul as well. Teag retrieved the souped-up first aid kit we keep in one of the cupboards. Unfortunately, we need it a lot. It’s not your average office supply store kit. It’s got surgical needles and sutures, sterile bandages, prescription
painkillers and antibiotics, plus healing herbs and potions supplied by our friendly neighborhood Voodoo mambo and root workers.
Then again, Trifles and Folly wasn’t your average antique store, and Teag and I had a few extra abilities they don’t teach in business school.
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, the current owner of Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio store in beautiful, historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. The store has been in my family almost since Charleston was founded, close to three hundred and fifty years ago, and we have a big secret to go with that success. We do much more than sell interesting, expensive, old stuff. Our real job is getting dangerous magical items off the market and out of the wrong hands. When we succeed, nobody notices. When we fail, lots of people die.
I inherited Trifles and Folly from my Uncle Evan. Teag is my assistant store manager, best friend and occasional bodyguard, and Sorren is my silent partner – a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire who is part of a secret collaboration of mortals and immortals called the Alliance, dedicated to getting rid of items with dark magic before they can hurt anyone. The antiques that don’t have any magical juice, Trifles and Folly resells. Those that are just unsettling but not dangerous, we neutralize so that they won’t cause a problem. Items that are magically malicious or so tainted with bad emotions that they will hurt people, we lock up or destroy.
I shrugged out of the shoulder of my shirt and winced as Teag cleaned the deep scratches. “Do you think it’ll come back?” Teag asked as he daubed carefully at the damage the wraith had done.
I sighed. “No way to tell until we know more about what it was and why it came in the first place. And that means taking a look at what’s in that jewelry box.”
Magic runs in my family, and the person chosen to run Trifles and Folly needs all the magic he or she can summon, because we keep Charleston – and the world – safe from things that go bump in the night. My magic is psychometry, the ability to read the history of an object by touching it. Not every object, thank goodness, just those that have been touched by strong emotion or powerful energy. Heartfelt emotion is one of the strongest sources of power. That’s why a tattered old dog collar is my protective bracelet – summoning the ghost of my golden retriever, Bo – and my grandmother’s mixing spoon is my athame, used handle-side out. Both items have a strong emotional connection for me, and in both cases, the protection of the beings associated with the items resonates enough to fend off some seriously nasty creatures.
The salve Teag smoothed on my cuts included plantain, comfrey, and rose to prevent infection and slow the bleeding. The herbs had been mixed by Mrs. Teller, a powerful root worker, so they carried a supernatural level of healing and protection. Teag covered the scratches with gauze and then pulled out a small woven patch of cloth imbued with his magic, which he taped down over the gauze to keep it in place. Teag is a Weaver, someone who can send energy and intent into woven and knotted fabric. He’s also able to weave together strands of information that would elude a regular person, making him an awesome researcher and an amazing hacker.
“Is that one of the patches you made?” I asked, slipping my shoulder back into my shirt.
Teag grinned. “Yeah, you’ll have to let me know how that works. The patches are a bit of an experiment right now.”
I paused for a moment, focusing on my wounded shoulder. “There’s a tingle of magic from the salve and from the patch,” I said, paying close attention to what I was feeling. “The cuts don’t hurt as much as they did before, and where you bandaged it feels warm… like sunlight on a summer day.”
Teag nodded. “That means that the poultice and the patch I wove are speeding the healing and driving out infection.” Supernatural predators often had bad stuff on their claws, either poison or a taint that could be as deadly as the cuts themselves.
I went over to the fridge and poured us both glasses of iced tea, made the Charleston way, so sweet the fillings in your teeth stand up and wave. I needed a moment before I took on handling that antique jewelry box, and I figured that Teag wouldn’t mind a break either in case something else tried to kill us. Fortunately, the shop was closed, so we didn’t have to worry about the safety of customers or our part-time assistant, Maggie.
We drank the iced tea in silence, stealing glances toward the little velvet box on the table. Both of us knew we had to deal with it, and given what we had just survived, neither of us were looking forward to the prospect.
I finished my sweet tea, and couldn’t postpone the inevitable. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see what was so special about this little jewelry box.”
“You feel up to it?” Teag asked.
I gave him a look that didn’t need words. “As ready as I’m going to be. And you’re supposed to be having dinner with Anthony tonight. That gives us about an hour and a half for me to read the mojo on the jewelry box, get knocked flat on my ass, and come back to my senses without making you late for your date.” I was being intentionally flippant, but the reality was much more dangerous, and we both knew it.
“Do you think we should wait for Sorren?” Teag asked.
I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “Kinda late now, don’t ya think?” I asked with a wry half-smile. “Besides, he’s in Boston, taking care of whatever-it-was that made him up and leave on a moment’s notice. I think I’ll be okay. Let’s get it over with.” I moved my chair closer to the box on the table.
The velvet was worn and faded. It was too big for a ring box, and I wondered if it had originally held a pair of earrings, or maybe a dainty bracelet. The wraith had shown up a few seconds after I opened the box, but as I thought back over what had happened, I realized that the wraith hadn’t come from the box. That was important, because it meant the wraith hadn’t been trapped inside. But why had it shown up at all?
Hard experience taught me to look before I touched. I was also learning to see what I could learn without making contact with an item. Practice was sharpening my ability to use the magic I was born with but had only recently begun trying to control. I held out my hand, palm down, over the faded blue velvet and closed my eyes, concentrating.
The sense of overwhelming loss made me sway in my chair. Second-hand grief welled up in my throat, as tears stung my eyes. Beneath those darker emotions, I felt the remnants of something joyful, sullied now by whatever had been taken away. Dimly, as if in a faded photograph, I saw an image of a couple in their twenties, hand in hand. Then, as I watched, the young man’s image faded away to nothing, leaving the woman all alone.
Magical seeing – things like psychometry, clairvoyance, and being a psychic – requires a lot of reading between the lines. I wish it were as clear-cut as it seems on television, where ghosts speak in complete sentences and visions are in high-definition with the volume turned up. In real life, images are distorted, murky, and incomplete. Spirits move their mouths, but often no sound emerges. The little snip of stone tape memory we see leaves a lot of room for interpretation. And that’s the problem. When we don’t have full information, we have to guess. Sometimes, we’re right and the problem gets solved. Other times, we guess wrong, and someone gets dead.
Then I realized what was causing the extra buzz that my magic had picked up from the velvet-flocked box; this item came with its very own ghost.
In general, my psychic gift of reading the history of objects doesn’t give me any special power to see ghosts. Oh, I’ve seen more than a few ghosts – then again, I live in Charleston, which is one of the most haunted cities in North America. I think it’s written somewhere that every house built before 1950 has to be haunted, and every native-born Charlestonian has a yearly quota of ghostly sightings. Given the nature of what we do at Trifles and Folly, seeing ghosts comes with the territory. Some of the spirits have been helpful. Others have been lost, not even sure that they are really dead. And some of those ghosts have been downright pissed off and dangerous.
In this case, the ghost was terrified out of its everlovin’ mind.
As I reached toward the box again, my fingers hovering over the velvet, the ghost welled up at me in a rush, so fast that I rocked onto the back legs of the chair, and might have gone over backward if Teag hadn’t been standing behind me. Most of the time, ghosts hang back, but this one got right in my face, so to speak, screaming soundlessly, eyes wide with fear.
“Are you okay?” Teag was worried. I gestured to him that I was fine. So far, this ghost wasn’t trying to hurt me. It just really wanted to get my attention. Maybe I had been the first living person it had ever had a chance to contact. Or maybe the wraith that had come after Teag and me wasn’t really looking for us at all. Perhaps it had a different kind of prey in mind.
That left me stuck between two bad options. I really didn’t want to make the level of connection that would happen if I touched or held the jewelry box. It was already clear that the box had a history of tragedy, and if I made contact, I would feel that sad background as forcefully as if I had lived it myself. On the other hand, whoever’s spirit was still connected to the jewelry box was in torment, and might suffer forever if I didn’t do something about it.
I reached out and picked up the box.
The first image I saw was of pearl earrings; dainty round balls with a lustrous glow, classy and always in style. Judging from the box, and the name of a local jewelry store I knew had gone out of business before 1900, I figured that the gift had been given back in the Victorian period. Then I looked into the box, and I knew for certain. Inside was a dark round circle, braided from brown, human hair.
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