by Krista Walsh
Daphne wished there was a way to ask about the curse around the house and whether Charles could be involved, but guessed it wouldn’t go over well.
Instead, she asked, “Do you remember a caretaker by the name of Harold Cly from when you volunteered here? He’s an old man now, in his eighties or thereabouts. He did general maintenance around the hospital.”
Laura’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember anyone by that name. You’re sure he worked here?”
Daphne nodded. “I’ve spoken to him a couple of times. He still comes by once in a while, he says. To keep the place in repair where he can. He spoke highly of you.”
A flash of shock appeared on the woman’s face, and then it was gone and she shook her head. “I thought I knew everyone associated with Peony House, but he seems to have escaped my notice. I’ve never heard of him. How odd.”
Daphne’s mind fell blank and rebooted. The ghosts had seen Harold, so he’d spent enough time around here to be noticed. It seemed impossible to her that he’d never crossed paths with Laura, but what reason would Laura have to lie about it?
She added the new questions to all the others. Now she was even more determined to get Harold to tell her the truth.
***
The dampness of the old building had sunk into Daphne’s bones, and by the time she and Emmett reached her car, she was shivering. She cranked the heat, turned up the radio, and tilted her head against the headrest to think. Emmett sat in the passenger seat, his fingers tapping the armrest on the door in time with the music. At first, she wanted to scream at him to keep still while she tried to make sense of the new information, but his tapping soon worked its way into her mind, and she used it as an anchor while her thoughts wandered.
Had Harold Cly managed to work at the hospital for decades — according to the ghosts, over a century — without one of the hospital’s owners knowing? Traveling under the radar would be an essential skill for a person who wanted to commit murders unseen, or transform into Crispy if that were indeed the case, but it struck her as strange that he would bother to take on a job when he could just creep around without being noticed. He’d told the spirits he wanted to help, but he hadn’t saved them, so was it possible he believed he’d done them a favor by killing them?
From what the spirits had said, he drove them mad first, stirring up negative memories. Why? Just for fun?
Daphne shook her head and threw her car into reverse, her entire body trembling as the last of the dampness worked its way out of her system.
“You have an idea on where we’re going next?” Emmett asked.
In spite of his incessant moving around, at least the kid knew when to keep quiet. She’d almost forgotten he was there.
“I’m going to talk to Cly.”
He glanced at the clock. Daphne followed his gaze to see it was after eleven.
“It’s not too late?”
“If he’s been killing people in that hospital for as long as those ghosts suggest, then it’s much too late. He should have been stopped years ago.”
Emmett swallowed loudly enough for Daphne to hear it. “Is he Barbecue Man?”
The gouges in her back sang. “He very well might be.”
“Then shouldn’t I be armed or something? If we’re going in there to face this guy — this monster — shouldn’t I be able to protect myself? What if he tries to kill me?”
“You don’t need to be there. In fact, it would be safer if you weren’t. I could turn around and drop you back at the hospital.” She couldn’t rule out that Emmett had reason for concern, and would rather he be somewhere she didn’t have to watch out for him.
Not that he was necessarily better off on the streets at night.
“No,” he said, drawing out the word. “I’m going with you.”
Daphne raised an eyebrow. “What about that bike you took?”
“I’ll return it when we’re done. The kid’ll have his bike for school tomorrow, I promise. But I want to go. If this caretaker guy knows something or had anything to do with Jack’s death, I want to be there to punch him in the nose, whether he goes all charred meat or not.”
She pressed her lips together, not wanting to insult the kid by suggesting he would be more likely to run screaming. Seven hells, so would she if Harold transformed into Crispy in front of her.
“Besides,” he added, then fell quiet. She glanced at him, and his gaze was focused on his hands, where he appeared to be trying to tear the fingernail off his index finger. “It’s not like I really have anywhere else to go.”
She hesitated, not sure where the boundary sat between them anymore. They’d only known each other for two days, but she had let him in on her deepest secret. He’d had dinner with her family, for the gods’ sakes. Surely that meant she could offer some kind of comfort or find out a little more about him.
“Where are your parents, Emmett?”
He intensified his gaze on his fingers, and the tear he had picked at began to bleed. For a while, she thought he wouldn’t answer, but finally, in a low voice, he said, “At home, I guess. Though I don’t really remember where that is.”
Daphne glanced at him again, and although she didn’t press, he clearly heard the unasked question.
“I’m just the clichéd, tragic story, you know? Parents had my brother, then me, couldn’t afford us, drank too much. My brother ran away and fell in with some bad people, ended up with a heroin addiction he couldn’t kick. Died ten years ago. I was six. My parents finally accepted they didn’t want me, so they threw me in foster care. I ran away when I was eleven and I’ve made my own way since.”
He gave his story in sharp, staccato structure — an entire human life boiled down to a bulleted list.
Daphne took a moment to make sure her throat was clear before asking, “How? Picking pockets?”
She posed the question without judgment, thinking about how smoothly she’d lost her watch, her money, and her driver’s license.
“Mostly,” he admitted, without shame or anger at her question. “I had a mentor when I first hit the streets. She saw I had a talent for it, so she put me to work. It’s been enough to stay fed, at least.”
Daphne heard his defensiveness at the end. Unsure how he would react, or exactly what she should do, she reached out and rested her hand over his. “It’ll be all right.”
He didn’t reply, but shifted his fingers so they covered hers and didn’t let go until they pulled up in front of Harold Cly’s bungalow.
The house was dark, but through the curtains, Daphne noticed a hint of flickering light.
“His TV is on,” she said. “You should wait in the car. Just in case.”
She got out of the car and shut the door as gently as she could while still catching the latch, rolling her eyes when Emmett did the same. Accepting there was no point in trying to talk him out of coming with her, she led the way up the driveway and climbed the porch steps. She raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before her knuckles could strike the wood. There was so little light that she nearly missed the movement and knocked on Harold’s chest.
She jumped at his sudden presence, the wrinkles in his face deeper in the shadows. No hint of a smile touched his mouth, and the hand at his side was clenched. The other gripped the door so tightly the knuckles strained against his tissue-paper skin.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “It’s late.”
“It is,” she agreed, “but we need to talk. It’s time to stop lying to me, Harold. The ghosts told me they saw you. They all saw you. Going back decades. I want to know what you are, and I want to know what you did to them.”
Although the old man’s expression didn’t change, a sudden tingle of energy cut through the air between them. In a heartbeat, the energy flared into a bright silvery magic, and in her shock, Daphne’s magic rose in response. They glared at each other across the threshold. Emmett looked between them, his foot braced on the step, ready to run.
After a moment, Harold’s should
ers sagged and he jerked his head, inviting them inside. “You’re right. Maybe it is time we clear the air.”
He glanced at Emmett with a raised eyebrow, a silent question, and Daphne stepped between them. “He’s staying.”
Harold locked gazes with her, and just like on their first meeting, she sensed him prodding her mind. Last time, she’d believed he was nothing but an insightful old man, but now the prodding felt invasive. She pushed back, and he let out a hmph, but dropped the subject of Emmett’s leaving.
Daphne held on to her magic and kept her gaze on Harold as she stepped into the living room. Emmett stayed close behind her and shut the door while Harold turned on the lamp beside the couch and switched off his television. He sank into the chair, leaving the loveseat open for them. Daphne took the side closest to him to keep herself as a buffer between him and Emmett if it came to a fight.
“So what did the ghosts tell you?” he asked, and the hostility had left his voice. For the first time since she’d met him, he sounded as old and frail as he appeared.
“That you were the ever-present guardian over their deaths,” Daphne replied. She swallowed the burning anger rising up in her belly at the thought that this man had taken so many lives into his own hands. She wanted to blast him with her magic right there, but she held off. For one thing, the ghosts had been uncertain about how he had killed them, and if she wanted to free them, she had to understand what he had done. For another, his silver magic felt much stronger than hers, and she doubted she would be able to take him on alone.
She clenched her palms in her lap to keep control over herself.
The old man sighed, stretched his legs out in front of him, and reclined in his chair with his hands clasped over his stomach. He closed his eyes, his face pinched with pain. “The ghosts of Peony House. Such heartbreaking creatures they are. I tried to do what I could for them, but the rest was out of my control.”
“What did you try to do for them?” Daphne asked. She leaned forward on the armrest, closing the distance between them. “According to their version of events, you’ve been around since the hospital opened, so why is it that one of the owners of the hospital has no idea who you are or that you ever worked at Peony House?”
Harold opened one eye, and in the dim light Daphne saw the extent of his age. She felt herself sliding back in time, as far as time could go. Her magic wavered in the face of his, but she clung to the source of her power, refusing to be taken at a disadvantage.
The moment passed, and he opened his other eye, a slight smile twisting his lips upward. “Because I chose for it to be that way. I had to watch, you understand. I had to keep an eye on Peony House to stop the madness from taking over.”
13
A flurry of questions bounced around Daphne’s mind, but she couldn’t pin one of them down long enough to ask it.
Harold leaned forward to pat her knee. “I’ll put the kettle on for tea. Maybe with something bracing added in for good measure.” He glanced at Emmett. “For Daphne and me, anyway. Then I’ll explain everything.”
He rose to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen. Daphne considered watching him to make sure he didn’t slip anything unwanted into their tea, but Emmett apparently had the same idea. He recovered first and went to help Harold prepare their late-night drinks while she remained on the couch with her thoughts. So many thoughts.
Harold claimed to be trying to help the spirits. Was he lying? Nothing he’d done or said to her before had put her on edge, but then she hadn’t sensed his magic before either. Maybe he had been fooling her all this time.
On the other hand, his silvery magic was nothing like the trace of green power she’d tasted on her first night at the hospital, so how could he have killed Jack? The puzzle of Peony House seemed to be growing by the day, and she didn’t know how many more layers she could handle before everything tumbled down on her head.
She still hadn’t landed on a single coherent question by the time Harold and Emmett returned with the tea tray, complete with a bottle of scotch for her to slosh a finger into her tea. Or maybe two. Scotch wasn’t her usual favorite, but tonight she was happy to make an exception.
“Before we get into what I am, I want to say that I know what you are,” Harold said, handing her a cup. “I’ve known since the first time you walked through the door. Not exactly, mind, but enough to know that you’re like me. Not exactly of this world.”
Daphne’s breath caught in her chest at his admission. She had tested her shield on the day they met and could have sworn it was in place. She’d worked on shielding her magic from the time she was six years old. Her mother and grandmother had insisted on it. Keep the secret. It was the most important lesson they’d ever taught her.
“How?”
“Because that’s what I am,” he said. “It’s my job. I’m what you might know of as a guardian.”
Emmett stared at him in awe. “Like an angel?”
Harold snorted. “Hardly. My kind doesn’t associate with them. They’re too narrow-minded. Too strict. Too likely to cleave a sword through anyone they perceive as having offended their purity.” He cleared his throat to interrupt his own rant.
“Then what exactly are you?” Emmett asked, and Daphne was relieved she didn’t have to admit her ignorance. She knew the guardians had been an important part of keeping their world secret for centuries, but her knowledge of them was too superficial to help her understand why Harold had been at the hospital. She did know, though, that they weren’t known for killing people at random.
“We do just what the name suggests. We protect. Used to be we were a whole army marching across the world, making sure the supernatural and paranormal stayed in line and didn’t give our secrets away. With your power, you would have been on our watch-list for years.” Harold dropped his gaze from Daphne’s to his tea and rubbed his forehead. “I’m the last one now, as it happens, but I’ve stuck to my mission. We had the Peony House estate on our radar right from the time it was built. I was assigned to watch the energy brewing inside, and it’s my greatest shame that I failed.”
He dropped his hand and reached past his tea, straight for the bottle of scotch. He tipped the lip directly into his mouth, then released a satisfied breath as he set the bottle down.
“I started my work there in 1845 as a gardener for the family. I watched them closely, but I never did see for sure what was going on back then. I started thinking that some demon was getting in somehow. Driving one of the Ancowitz family members mad. Killing some others. When the estate changed into a hospital, whatever it was had a wider playing field. It grew more powerful, and the death toll went up. That’s when I finally learned part of the secret of Peony House.”
“What was it?” Daphne asked. She thought Harold was telling the truth so far, but wanted to hear all of his side of the story before she made up her mind on how to act.
“I don’t know the whole answer to that question, and that’s where I let my kind down. What I do know is that I was right about the demon. I’ve seen it three times in my hundred-and-fifty-year watch. Twice I fought it, and twice it escaped me. The third time, I came across it just in time to watch it slip around the corner. By the time I reached the same corner, it was gone.”
“Was it a barbequed monster?” Emmett asked. “Looks all charred and gross? He attacked Daphne and me the other night.”
Harold buried his face in his hands and nodded. “That’s him. The creature that’s been killing all those people. The one I was sent to stop.”
Emmett held up a hand. “By the sounds of it — and the look on Daphne’s face when you mentioned them — the guardians were pretty powerful, right? So how come you couldn’t take him down?”
The caretaker peered at him over the edges of his fingers. No anger swirled in his eyes at the question, just remorse.
“Because guardians are meant to work in units. We were an army. In the days when we marched as one, we took our enemies down as one. Solo missions didn’t exis
t. But by the time I figured out what was causing the trouble at Peony House, my brothers and sisters had been cut down and I had no support. I was getting old. Weak. Then I learned I’d made an error in calculation. I’d always believed there was one demon, an immortal like me. Turns out, whatever species it is, the demon has a human life span. They die and the next line replaces them. They start wild and unpredictable and get stronger as they get older. One night, one of the young ones overpowered me. Nearly killed me.”
His eyes glistened and a tear fell free of his pale lashes to slide down his cheek.
“After that, I did the worst thing I could have done. The hospital closed, and I backed off. Sure, I went there every once in a while to keep an eye on things and catch the bastard if the opportunity arose, but the truth is I was doing nothing. All I did was sit here in my house and watch, and now some other kid is dead because I couldn’t bring myself to do my goddamned job.”
The self-directed anger rose up in his words until he punched his fist into his palm.
Daphne heard all of the pain in his story, and although a dozen other questions still spun through her mind, the muscles in her neck relaxed. She felt nothing but sympathy for the man. He’d stood guard for a hundred and fifty years to try to make sure whatever was coming after those people didn’t come back. But he’d missed his opportunity. She couldn’t imagine how small and useless that made him feel.
“What are your theories about the demon?” she asked, hoping her question might spark some renewed hope that he still had a chance to solve this.
Harold cleared his throat and rubbed his fingers down his cheeks. “Since you’ve met Charles, I’m sure you noticed his magic streak?”