by Krista Walsh
“This case would be so much easier if Crispy’s magic felt the same as his,” she muttered. Having two supernatural elements in the same mystery made her head spin. It suggested two different species from two different bloodlines, both of different strengths — which should have made it easy to narrow down, but didn’t.
With each item on the list, she fell deeper into the rabbit hole, and by the time she reached the last name, the only thing she felt good about was that she’d managed to put something in her stomach before drinking all that bourbon. Her head swimming, she stuffed the useless folders back into her cabinet, slid the drawer shut, and locked it.
Whatever had attacked them at the hospital was nothing she’d encountered before.
It was something new.
Daphne braced her hands on the filing cabinet and bowed her head.
New is good, she told herself. New is interesting.
The pep talk didn’t work, because new meant lives were at risk until she discovered what it was.
***
The next morning, she searched online for any public information or records on Peony House that she hadn’t found yet, this time digging deeper into the family history. If she had to tackle the unpleasant task of questioning Charles Ancowitz about the mysterious encounter Emmett had overheard, she first wanted to make sure she’d learned everything she could to help direct the conversation.
The slashes in her back stung when they brushed against her chair, and her muscles ached from the previous night’s unexpected exertion, but she was still breathing, so she considered it a win.
Most of the sites she found described Peony House’s history as a hospital and didn’t contain any new information. But there were a few articles that caught her attention. She printed them off and took them to the kitchen table, reading through them as she sipped a cup of instant coffee.
One article talked about the surgeries that were performed exclusively at Peony House, and the staff doctors’ stances on using exercise to help with mental illness. Apparently many of them believed personality disorders could be walked away and any continued symptoms were signs of laziness.
A blurred scan of an article from 1893 made her pause. “Girl Found Dead at Peony House,” the headline read. It was dated before the estate had been converted into a hospital. The black-and-white picture in the article showed a young woman with dark curls under a wide-brimmed summer hat, her gloved hands clasped in her lap and her large eyes staring at the camera.
Daphne read through the full article, taking in the details of Mary Ruth Taylor, a young socialite who had spent the summer as a guest of the Ancowitz daughter, Caroline, and one morning had been found dead in her bed. The lack of evidence around the cause of death had brought the police to a dead end, and the case had never been solved.
Yet another inexplicable death at Peony House, and another possible connection with Jack’s murder. So what had killed Mary Ruth?
The only surprising bit of information she pulled from the records was that Harold Cly had been mistaken about one thing: Charles Ancowitz was not the last surviving member of the family. His sister, Laura, had also sat on the board of directors for six years until the hospital closed, and nothing Daphne found suggested she’d passed away.
“All right, Daph,” she said aloud. “What does it mean? What kind of curse can kill a person while they sleep without leaving a bruise? And why was Jack the only lucky one to have his mouth glued shut?” She raised an eyebrow as a thought nagged at her.
Unless they all did, but no one else saw it.
Hunter hadn’t seen the white strands stretched across the length of Jack’s lips, which meant there would likely be no mention of the substance in the medical report.
Daphne read the article again, hoping for any mention of the corpse’s mouth being difficult to open, but if the medical examiner had noticed anything, the media hadn’t picked it up.
“So why can’t they see it?”
Some magic remained invisible to the human eye unless the person were open-minded enough or had been introduced to the otherworld. Was that the case here?
Her phone rang, and she glanced down with a groan. Her finger hovered over the button to end the call, but then she thought the better of it and answered.
“I missed the ziti,” she said.
“Color me six shades of surprised,” said Cheryl, “but that’s not why I’m calling. If I lectured you every time you missed a meal, we’d never be off the phone.”
Daphne was about to say that they rarely were off it anyway, but bit down on the snark.
“I wanted to know how last night went.”
She sighed and drooped in her chair. Her back screamed at the tug on her skin. “It didn’t.”
“What happened?” Based on her tone, Cheryl’s levels of concern had jumped up to “full mom”.
“I ran into someone who was hiding out in the hospital. A friend of the victim. From what he told me, it sounds like the ghosts have been getting louder over the past two months. They’re getting more upset, trying harder to break through.”
“But you weren’t able to ask them why yet?”
Daphne picked at the corner of the article. “I’m hoping to go back tonight and try again. I’ve been reading about the house. This curse or whatever it is goes back to the time it was built, but nothing I’ve read suggests a physical link. Maybe someone with a grudge against the family cast a spell?”
“It could be,” Cheryl said. “Though that wouldn’t explain the magic you sensed the other night.”
Daphne’s shoulders drooped even lower. She seemed to be coming up with five questions for every answer. “I know. But I’m not giving up yet.”
“Just be careful, Daphne. Unknown magic means it’s unpredictable. Watch your back.”
***
Feeling charged by the possibility of another lead in Laura Ancowitz, Daphne returned to the Chronicle office to fill Gerry in.
She found him at her desk, riffling through her files of old stories.
“Going through my personals?” she asked.
He jumped at the sound of her voice and stared at her over the rims of his wireframe glasses. “Someone needs to pick up the slack while you’re working this hot new case. Where’s your information on the Bateman trial?”
Daphne bumped him aside and pulled her notes from a folder near the back of the cabinet.
“Your system is a mess,” he grumbled. The wrinkles on his face creased deeper with his frown.
“Only because it makes me a better journalist. You know that.”
“How’s this story coming? Any progress?”
“Some,” she replied. Got attacked by a charcoaled monster, uncovered a chain of people losing their minds, confirmed the rumors are true and the hospital is haunted. “I’m going to try to speak with Charles Ancowitz again. Turns out he might have shown up at the hospital a couple of weeks before the murder, all in a rage. I’m also going to speak with Laura Ancowitz today if I can find her. Funny thing is, the caretaker told me Charles was the only member of the family still living. I’m going to talk to him about that as well. I also turned up a whole slew of mysterious deaths from when Peony House was still a hospital. No one knows how they died. It could be there were some sketchy practices going on back then.”
She kept any mention of curses to herself. She didn’t need her boss thinking she was out of her mind.
Gerry leaned against her desk and crossed his arms. “That’s great, but what does it have to do with the kid who was murdered? That’s a spicy story, Daphne. Foley’s begging me to take point on this, and I’m running out of excuses to say no. Quinn’s doing his best, but he’s not who our subscribers want. You should focus on the kid’s case without getting in Avery’s way and leave history to the ghosts.”
That’s the problem, boss. Everyone’s made that same decision, but now the ghosts are waking up.
***
Daphne stayed in the office long enough to call Lau
ra Ancowitz and leave a message with her name and cellphone number in reply to the cheerful recorded voicemail message.
She sat back in her chair and stared at her phone, wishing it would ring right away. Accepting it wouldn’t, she picked it up instead and called the lovely Eliza, Charles’s assistant, to see if she could sneak in another appointment. After a few minutes of grumbling and some attempts to block her that Daphne shot down with practiced charm, she wrangled a few minutes that afternoon.
To fill her time until the appointment, she decided she might as well go see Harold Cly and ask him why he hadn’t thought to mention Laura. She’d also promised him an update and hoped that some of her new information might spark a few more memories of his own experiences.
She caught him watering his lawn when she arrived. As soon as she pulled into the driveway, he turned off the water, tossed the hose onto the porch, and started toward the front door.
“Coffee?” he called over his shoulder.
“Love some,” she replied, and followed him into the house.
“Any progress?” he asked. He replaced the filter in his machine and scooped a hefty amount of freshly ground beans into the cup. The rich odor wafted across the room, and Daphne found the last of the previous night’s stresses melting away.
“Not as much as I would have liked, unfortunately,” she said. “But I have a few leads. The papers aren’t saying anything useful, and my promise to the police to keep my nose out of the way still holds. But I did find out that Charles Ancowitz is not the last of his family name. Did you know his sister Laura is alive?”
The mugs in the cupboard clattered in Harold’s trembling hands. He rested his palms on the countertop and drew in a breath before taking two down from the shelf.
“I didn’t,” he said, and his surprise sounded genuine. “But I’m glad to hear it. I always liked Laura.”
Daphne snorted. “Then she must be a lot friendlier than her brother. You might have given me a heads up that he was such a treat.”
“I did say he was curmudgeonly. Would you have passed on meeting him if I’d said more?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
“No,” she admitted, “but I would have mentally prepared myself a bit more.”
Harold chuckled and poured the coffee, remembering Daphne’s preference for cream and sugar. “Laura was always my favorite. Such a sweet girl. Never looked at the world too closely, so she stayed sort of child-like well into her thirties. I didn’t see her much after that. She stepped down from the board not long after the hospital shut down and disappeared from society.”
“Why did she step down when her brother didn’t?”
Daphne settled on the couch and watched Harold over the back cushions as he tidied the kitchen. The coffee tasted as sweet as it smelled. Her magic purred, and she felt the gouges healing on her back as she derived comfort from the warmth.
“She was too upset to keep going, I guess,” Harold said. “She fought harder than anyone to renovate and reopen the hospital. Peony House could never have had the same services as the General or Civilian, but as a convalescent or palliative care home, she believed it would have been perfect. Charles’s vote held sway, though, and the rooms were never used for anything. She was torn apart. She loved that place more than her family’s money.”
Daphne remembered the pictures she’d seen of the house in its golden years and understood how it could have inspired such an attachment. As a hospital, however, she wasn’t sure it was anything she could have grown to love.
“I’m hoping to speak with her about the issues you mentioned to me last time, with the patients dying. I asked Charles about it and the question seemed to put him on edge. Can you think why that might be? I didn’t get the impression that he cared much about protecting the hospital’s reputation.”
Harold scratched his head and the wispy white hair flew around his face. “Not the hospital, but he’s fiercely proud of the Ancowitz name. His father was still president of the board when many of those deaths happened, so maybe he thinks that if the rumors go public his father’s honor could be slighted for not putting a stop to the problem when he spotted it.”
“Do you think I’ll have the same issue with Laura? Will she fight me about its history?”
Harold shrugged. “Only one way to find out, I suppose. But if either of the siblings have their backs up, I’d watch my step. Names might not mean as much now as they did when I was a kid, but their money still carries some weight.”
“I can handle money,” Daphne said, raising her chin. “The people who died in that hospital deserve answers, and I intend to get them.”
***
When she still hadn’t heard from Laura by the time she finished with Harold, Daphne decided to return to Peony House.
She drove by the front of the house and found the police presence had dropped by another fraction. Now only one uniformed officer sat in a car outside. Daphne applauded her good luck as she parked on the service road beside her handy collection of trees and crossed the yard.
Her second-best watch hit three o’clock as she reached the back door, which still wasn’t locked.
One day I’ll give Hunter a lecture about checking doors. His troops aren’t up to snuff.
She stepped into the back foyer and immediately froze in place. The swell of hostility had risen since she’d left, and an overwhelming bitterness rose up the back of her throat, choking her.
She shook off the desire to gag and crept up the stairs to the third floor, checking over her shoulder every step of the way for Crispy. Last night she had heard nothing but the whispers. Now the voices were louder, more like muffled shouts.
Don’t worry, she thought. This is your day to talk.
She went into the room across from where Jack had died and sat cross-legged on the floor with her back to the wall, keeping an inch of space between the plaster and her jacket to avoid the mold. A faint squeaking inside the wall made her shiver, but she drowned out the sound and focused only on the whispers.
Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and relaxed her muscles. She sank deeper into herself and opened her mind to the voices around her. In their urgency, most of the spirits made no sense, their incoherent cries nothing but spine-tingling, heartbreaking moans. Their passing hadn’t been easy or kind. A few softer voices caught her attention and she reached out to them. Some were muffled, like they were trying to speak from behind a gag, but one voice called to her more clearly. Daphne slipped further into the space between her world and the ghosts’ and drew that voice closer.
“Hello? Can you hear me? I want to speak with you. To help you if I can,” she said.
The voices fell silent in a hush, and she worried she’d scared them away.
Then an image of a young woman appeared behind her eyelids, and when Daphne opened her eyes, the woman had joined her in the room. The suddenness of her presence made Daphne start, her heart sliding into her throat, but she released a slow breath and reminded herself that she was in control.
She wrapped her magic around her mind to guard against any attempt at invading her thoughts and used the time it took for her nerves to settle to evaluate the ghost.
Although she appeared gray and semi-transparent, the details of the young woman’s figure were sharp enough for Daphne to make out that she was around twenty years old, dark-haired and pale-eyed, with veins visible under the skin of her cheeks and dark bruises under her eyes. Daphne found her familiar, but couldn’t place her. Looking closer, she saw that scars lined the woman’s lips, small tears in the skin.
She stared at them and her blood went cold.
“Hello,” the spirit said. Her voice drifted into Daphne’s mind, sounding near and far at the same time, young and wavering. She settled down on her knees across from Daphne. Her gaze roved around the room, her hands fiddling in the lap of her white nightdress.
“Hello. My name is Daphne. What is yours?”
“Mary Ruth,” she replied, so quietly Daphne could hardl
y hear her.
Daphne’s heart skipped a beat as she finally recognized her as the woman in the article — the woman who had died so suddenly at Peony House. She closed her hands into fists on her knees to hide the trembling.
Mary Ruth’s gaze settled on Daphne’s face.
“How did you know we were here?” she asked. Her words were filled with curiosity and, Daphne thought, a hint of gratitude.
Daphne smiled at her, working to appear calm. “Because I have the gift to hear you. I know you’re unhappy. Can you tell me why there are so many of you trying to get out? Why are you all still here?”
The young woman looked around the room and shuddered. “I’ve been here over a hundred years. I don’t think I can ever leave.”
“What happened a hundred years ago?”
Mary Ruth looked at her and blinked her large clear eyes. “That’s when I was murdered.”
9
Two murders.
Although she’d suspected it to be the case, having it confirmed stole Daphne’s breath. She had approached the spirits to find answers to one set of questions and had landed right in the middle of a century-old cold case.
And if I’m already at two, how many of the victims Harold described could be added to the list?
The idea that she might be pitting herself against a long-lived serial killer made her question her desire to find the truth.
Daphne shifted on the cold floor. “How were you murdered? Was it a creature that looked like it had been burned? Long claws and green eyes?”
She thought of Crispy, and the scratches on her back stung at the memory of those claws slicing through her skin. Her magic sensed no trace of the creature now, but her stomach churned at the thought of it sneaking up on her again.