In the Air Tonight

by Lori Handeland

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  Prologue

  Scotland, four hundred years ago

  Three men with large, hard, dirty hands lifted three infant girls from their cradles.

  “No!” Prudence Taggart cried, and a crockery bowl fell off the table, shattering against the floor.

  Roland McHugh, the king’s chief witch hunter, flicked a finger in her direction, and two other dark-clad men dragged her out the door of the cottage. Several more yanked her husband, Henry, along behind. Those not occupied hauling the five Taggarts from their home built a pyre. From the speed at which they completed their task, they’d done so before.

  “More than one soul in a womb is Satan’s work.” McHugh’s lip curled as he contemplated the sleeping children. “How many lives did you sacrifice so your devil’s spawn might be born?”

  Both Henry and Prudence remained silent. There was nothing they could say that would save them, and they knew it.

  Since King James had nearly been killed, along with his Danish queen, in a great storm he believed had been brought about by witchcraft, His Majesty had become slightly obsessed on the subject of witches.

  However, as he didn’t want to seem backward and superstitious to his English subjects, who had very little regard for the Scots in the first place, he had been forced to commission a secret society, the Venatores Mali, or Hunters of Evil, to do his bidding. In McHugh the king had found a leader who hated witches as much as he did.

  Their captors lashed Henry and Prudence back-to-back against the stake then formed a circle around them. McHugh snapped his fingers, and two lackeys appeared with torches.

  The witch hunter removed a ring from his finger and a pincher from his wool doublet then held the circlet within the flame until it glowed. He pressed the red hot metal to Henry’s neck. The scent of burning flesh rose, along with a nasty hiss, and the livid image of a snarling wolf emerged from Henry’s flesh.

  “Are you mad?” Henry managed.

  “Sometimes the brand brings forth a confession.”

  “Shocking how pain and torture make people say anything.”

  “It did not make you.” McHugh shoved his ring back into the flames, and his gaze slid to Prudence.

  “I did it,” Henry blurted. “I sold to Satan the lives of your wife and child to bring forth our own.”

  “Of course you did,” McHugh agreed.

  He was convinced magic, sorcery, witchcraft had been involved in the deaths of his loved ones. Nothing would change his mind. Not even the truth.

  Some people could not be healed. McHugh’s wife had been one of them. By the time he had fetched Prudence, the woman had lost far too much blood, and the child was already dead.

  McHugh pressed his ring to Pru’s neck. She stiffened until the stake creaked. Lightning flashed, and somewhere deep in the woods a tree toppled over. Wolves began to howl in the distance—a lot of them—and the circle of hunters shifted uneasily.

  “I confessed, you swine.”

  “You thought that would save her?” McHugh tut-tutted, then he snatched the blazing torches and tossed them onto the pyre. The dry, ancient wood flared.

  Henry reached for his wife’s hands. They were just close enough to touch palm to palm. “Imagine a safe place where no one believes in witches anymore.”

  The forest shimmered. Clouds skittered over the moon. Flames shot so high they seemed to touch the sky. When they died with a whoosh, nothing remained but ashes and smoke.

  And the men who had held the three infant girls held nothing but empty blankets.

  Chapter 1

  The Present

  I understand that my dream of being normal is merely that.

  For one thing, I’m adopted and everyone knows it. In a town like New Bergin, Wisconsin, adoptions are rare. Strapping Scandinavian farm folk produce blond-haired, blue-eyed children quick as bunnies. Which means my blue-black hair and so-brown-they’ll-never-be-blue eyes make me stand out like the single ugly duckling in a lake full of swans. Even before factoring in that I’m an only child.

  The only only child in New Bergin. Which doesn’t necessarily make me abnormal, but it doesn’t mean I fit in either.

  No, what makes me abnormal are the ghosts. As the freaky little kid in the movie said: They’re everywhere.

  At first my parents thought my speaking to empty corners and laughing for no reason was cute. As time went on, and people started talking … not so cute anymore.

  “Should we take her to a psychiatrist?” my mother asked softly.

  Ella Larsen always spoke softly. That night she whispered, yet still I heard. Or maybe one of the ghosts told me. I’d been four at the time. My recollection is muzzy.

  “Take her to a psychiatrist?” my father repeated. “I was thinking of taking her back.”

  Perhaps that was the beginning of my feelings of inadequacy in New Bergin, or at the least, the birth of my incessant need to please. If I wasn’t “right” I could be returned like a broken chair or a moldy loaf of bread.

  I stopped mentioning the ghosts the next day. I never did see that psychiatrist, although sometimes I think that I should. I’m still living in New Bergin. My name’s still Raye Larsen.

  Once I stopped chattering to nothing my father and I came to an unspoken understanding. He coached my softball team and took me fishing. I pretended to be Daddy’s girl. I had to. I didn’t want to go “back.”

  According to my records, I’d been abandoned on Interstate 94, halfway between Madison and Eau Claire. Whoever had left me behind had not liked me very much. They’d dumped me in a ditch on the side of the road—naked without even a blanket.

  Assholes.

  Luckily for me it was a balmy July day, and I was found before I had succumbed to even a tinge of sunburn. I’m just glad it wasn’t November.

  My mother died when I was twenty. Cancer. Haven’t seen her since. The one ghost I wouldn’t have minded turning up a few times and not a word. I don’t understand it.

  As I hurried down the sidewalk to work my best friend, Jenn Anderson, appeared at my side. “You wanna slow down?”

  “Not really,” I said, though I did just a little.

  We weren’t late for a change, probably because I hadn’t waited for Jenn. We worked for the New Bergin School District, Jenn as the attendance secretary, me as a kindergarten teacher, and walked to school together each morning.

  In choosing my occupation, I’d tried to get as far away from the dead as possible, figuring I’d be safe from ghosts in a kindergarten classroom.

  Boy, had I been wrong. As previously mentioned: Ghosts are everywhere.

  While I might have come to teaching for a reason that wasn’t, I’d discovered quickly why I should stay. Good teachers could be made, but the best ones were born, and I was one of them.

  Who knew I’d be great with kids? Not me. That they were honest and happy and full of energy, and being around them made me feel better than any
thing else was an unexpected bonus.

  I’d even started to consider that I might want a few of my own. Perhaps if I created a family from scratch, rather than joining one already in progress, I’d feel like I belonged somewhere, to someone, and that constant emptiness inside might go away.

  Of course finding a man in New Bergin wasn’t easy. They were the same ones that had been here all along, and I wasn’t impressed.

  They hadn’t been either. Though I tried to be like everyone else, the fact remained that I wasn’t. In truth, the only people who had ever accepted me as I was, and loved me for me no matter what, were my mother and Jenn. Which was no doubt why I loved them the same way.

  Jenn and I had met on the first day of preschool and become BFFs. No idea why. We were so different it was scary and yet … we worked.

  Even without the long, perfect mane of golden hair and equally gorgeous face, complete with a pert little nose—although this Jenn’s nose was actually her nose, plastic surgery being a no-no in New Bergin—the name Jennifer Anderson was too close to Jennifer Aniston for high school kids to resist. When she’d begun dating the only Brad in town, she’d just been asking for it. As a result, one did not mention Friends, or Brad for that matter, ever. Do not get her started on Ross.

  Jenn, who was several inches shorter than me, had to take three steps to my one. The flurry of her tiny feet, combined with the spiky ponytail atop her head, made her resemble a coked-up Pomeranian.

  “Where’s the fire?” she asked.

  A breeze kicked up, making her silly hairstyle waggle. For an instant, I could have sworn I smelled smoke; I even heard the crackle of flames.

  But if there were a fire, the local volunteer fire department would have been wailing down First Street by now. Which meant …

  I turned my head, and I saw him. Nothing new. I’d been seeing this one for as long as I could remember.

  Clad in black, he reminded me of the pictures in the Thanksgiving stories I read to my kids. Puritan. Pilgrim. One or the other. Although why the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past had turned up in Wisconsin I had no idea. According to the stories all those persecuted Puritans had lived, and died, on the East Coast.

  Maybe he was Amish.

  Neither case explained the sleek black wolf that was often at his side. The creature’s bright green eyes were as unnatural as the creature itself.

  Every time I approached, they melted into the woods, an alley, the ether. Unlike all of the other specters that just had to talk to me, neither my Puritan, nor his wolf, ever did.

  Jenn snatched my elbow. Considering our daily walk, you’d think she’d be in better shape.

  I slowed, and as soon as I did the man in black—no wolf today—went poof. Now you see him—or at least I did—now you don’t.

  He’d be back. Most of the ghosts went on, eventually—wherever it was that they went—but not that guy. Someday I’d have to find out why.

  “Sheesh,” Jenn muttered. I’d started speed-walking again. She stopped, leaning over and setting her palms on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.

  I kept going; the sense of urgency that had plagued me as soon as my Keds touched First Street that morning had returned.

  “You—” Deep breath. “Suck!” Jenn shouted.

  I quashed the temptation to comment on her shoes, which were too high for walking and too open toed for a northern Wisconsin October. But then, as Jenn always pointed out, she didn’t have to chase children. Ever.

  The days of a school nurse had gone the way of the dodo. If children became sick, they were sent to the office—Jenn’s office—then sent home.

  Certainly they puked, or sneezed, but usually not on her. Her fashionable clothes discouraged it—today’s body-hugging red sweater dress appeared fresh from the dry cleaners—and her attitude ensured it. The instant a student walked into her office, she jabbed a pointy, painted nail at the bank of chairs against the far wall. If they puked or sneezed, they did it over there.

  Jenn always told me my comfortable jeans, complemented by soft tees and sweatshirts, often of the Packer, Brewer, Badger variety, invited disaster. Maybe so. But at least I matched everyone else in New Bergin.

  Except Jenn. Funny how she was the one who fit in.

  I reached the cross avenue B—those New Bergin founding fathers had been hell on wheels in the street-naming department—and stopped so fast I nearly put my toes through the front of my shoes.

  Gawkers milled about, blocking the sidewalk and spilling into the road, but since the police had roped off the avenue they weren’t in danger of becoming chopped suey.

  Brad Hunstadt—yeah, that Brad, Jenn’s Brad, make that ex-Brad—stood on the inside of the rope, arms crossed, face stoic. He’d only recently joined the force following the relocation of another officer to Kentucky to be nearer to his grandchildren.

  Before that, Brad had been kind of a loser. He might be pretty—like the famous Brad—but he’d never been a candidate for rocket science school. He’d graduated from high school, gone to tech school. I’m not sure for what because he’d never worked for anyone but his father, the local butcher, until now. Jenn and I figured his daddy had paid someone off to get Brad out of his business and into another.

  As I approached, my gaze was drawn to the woman standing at the edge of the crowd, staring at the dead body propped against the wall of Breck’s Candy Emporium—home of twenty-five different types of caramel apples. The staring itself was not remarkable. Who wasn’t? What was remarkable was that this woman could be the twin of the one she stared at.

  She was a stranger—believe me I knew everyone—in a place where strangers stuck out, even when they weren’t covered in blood and lying dead on the ground.

  I’d seen hundreds of ghosts, but each one still made my heart race. They were dead. I could see them. It was hard to get used to, and really, I probably shouldn’t.

  “Huh.” Jenn had caught up. “I can’t remember the last time we had a murder.”

  “Murder?”

  She cast me an irritated glance. “Look at her.”

  My gaze went to the standing woman, but contrary to most movies about them, ghosts don’t walk around with the wound that killed them evident on their spectral bodies. No gaping brains. No holes in their heads, their chests, or anywhere else there shouldn’t be. Even the massive amounts of blood on the reclining figure was nowhere in evidence upon the spectral one.

  Jenn snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Not there.” She pointed slightly to the left of the ghost. “There.” She transferred her pointy nail south until it indicated the dead woman.

  One of her arms was missing—that wasn’t easy to do—and her body, from the chest down, was blackened. The scent of charred flesh reached us on a frigid breeze. Weird. When I’d left my apartment, I could have sworn it was Indian summer.

  Jenn clapped a palm over her nose and fled, her itty-bitty Barbie feet and short legs moving so fast they appeared to blur. Jenn could move when she wanted to.

  Chief Johnson stood next to the body, wringing his hands. He’d been the police chief since the last chief—his father, also Chief Johnson—had keeled over in his lutefisk.

  I had to agree with him. I’d rather die than eat it too.

  However, as long as the present Chief Johnson had been in charge, there hadn’t been a murder in New Bergin. Had there ever been?

  The funeral director was our medical examiner. The extent of our CSI was probably to put up yellow tape and hope for the best. It appeared that Chief Johnson had managed the first and was hip deep in the second.

  Though I wanted to stay, I needed to get to school. If I wasn’t in class when the bell rang it wouldn’t be pretty. You think kindergartners are delightful? They are. But I learned not to turn my back on them. Or leave them alone long enough to trash the place.

  I planned to cut through the alley between B and C—my shoes would get indescribable gunk on them, but I didn’t have the time to care—and the ghost poure
d from the air, filling the space right in front of me. Her eyes were solid black. No whites left at all. I’d never seen anything like it before. I never wanted to again.

  She had a burn, make that a brand, of a snarling wolf on her neck. I glanced at the body. Sure enough, there was the brand, though it was impossible to tell from here if it was a wolf. I probably wouldn’t have seen it at all, beneath so much blood, unless I’d known where to look.

  That I knew confused me. The wounds on the living did not transfer to the dead. Why had that one?

  She grabbed my arm. I bit my lip to keep from screaming. Her fingers were fire and ice. Smoke poured from her mouth. In the center of her too-black eyes, a flame flickered. “He will burn us all.”

  Then she was gone. If it hadn’t been for the trailing whiff of brimstone, and the blue-black imprint of her fingers just above my wrist, I’d have thought I imagined her.

  “What the fuck?” I muttered, earning a glare from Mrs. Knudson, who stood in the doorway of her yarn shop, Knit Wits, contemplating the most excitement to hit New Bergin in a lifetime.

  “I certainly hope you don’t speak like that in front of the children.”

  “Children!” I resisted the urge to use the F-word again and ran, skidding through Lord knows what in the alley, then bursting out the other side, trailing the mystery muck behind me.

  New Orleans Police Department

  Detective Bobby Doucet stared at the photos spread across his desk. “Goddamn serial killer.”

  “Isn’t that redundant?”

  Bobby’s partner, Conner Sullivan, lowered himself into the visitor’s chair. The thing creaked then wobbled beneath his weight. Conner, used to such behavior in furniture, either didn’t notice or pretended not to.

  “A serial killer is, by nature, damned. And damned comes from God. Therefore…” Sullivan spread his quarterback-sized hands. “Redundant.”

  Bobby had joined the homicide division while Sullivan was on leave. The detective had been unwell, lost time, forgotten things. When he’d returned, no one had wanted to work with him.

  Bobby, the new man, the low man, had been elected. He didn’t mind. Though the two of them could not have been any more different in both appearance and background, Bobby had found the Yankee transplant from … Massachusetts? Maine? Maryland? Something with an M. It didn’t matter. He’d found Sullivan to be thorough, fair, and an obscenely hard worker. As homicide in New Orleans was a busy, busy business, Bobby appreciated all three.