by Krista Walsh
Daphne nodded slowly. “I noticed it in Charles, but not in Laura. And the frustrating part is that the magic I sensed in Charles is not the same magic I sensed in that demon.”
Harold frowned. “We noticed the same thing — the family’s magic doesn’t match the energy of the house. I don’t even think the family knows they have magic. If they did, they never used it, far as I could tell. But if the demons couldn’t be members of the family, the guardians’ theory was that something about their magic drew this curse to their doorstep, something that kept the demons coming back.”
“Do you know what breed of demon we’re dealing with?” Daphne asked. “That might help us figure out how to catch this one. Maybe stop the cycle.”
Harold shook his head. “The guardians kept records of all the known species, but those records were destroyed when they were. I know what it looks like. I’ve tried to speak with the ghosts to learn what they remember, but they run away from me, or don’t realize I’m there. Not that I blame them. Every single person that died under my watch is a mark of failure in my ledger. Doubt I’d want to talk to me, either.”
“When I spoke with them, the ghosts told me the creature that killed them stirred up all kinds of negative emotions and bad memories,” Daphne said, scrunching up her brow in frustration. “There’s no damage to the bodies after they die, so the demon must be killing them from the inside. Something to do with their emotions?”
Harold nodded. “That’s the long and short of it. The demons feed off their negative energy. Leave their bodies empty husks.”
Beside her, Emmett shuddered. “I can only guess how well they fed off Jack. That guy carried a lot of anger.”
Daphne rested her hand on his shoulder, certain that his determined positivity in spite of his circumstances had saved him from being just as angry. “I’m sorry, Emmett.” He bowed his head, and she returned her attention to Harold. “If you’ve been watching that long, how did no one notice you?”
“I hid my energy from the family,” he explained. “They saw me, I’m sure, but forgot about me right away. The patients came and went, so they weren’t a threat to my position at the hospital.”
“You can’t change your appearance?” Daphne asked.
He snorted. “Can you? It’s been over a thousand years since I appeared as young as you, my dear. I doubt I’ll ever look much older than this, but I assure you it’s old enough. You never appreciate your knees until you’ve lost most of the use of ’em. Fortunately, I can get around. It means I can continue my guard of the hospital. I chose to serve my people by hanging on until I complete my mission, and then I’ll pass on to the next phase of my life.”
Daphne’s throat tightened at his determination. Much like the ghosts, his fate was tied to whatever stalked the hospital.
“So how did the ghosts all see you when they died?” she asked. “Why were you always there?”
Harold sagged into his chair. “I lived at that hospital for over a hundred years. I owned this house, sure, but I had to be there at night because that’s when the demon hunted. I passed through the hallways and stayed vigilant. Whenever I sensed the demon’s presence, I ran. Sometimes I was lucky enough to scare it away and the patient survived another night. Other times it was too fast. It’d go after the same patients. If one got too sick, it would leave him alone. It always stayed with the healthy ones. Stronger soul.”
“And the glued mouths?”
The caretaker shuddered. “Nothing I hated more about the whole business. Whenever I found ’em like that, I sliced their lips free. The doctors hushed that detail up in their records because they couldn’t explain it. You’ve seen it yourself, then?”
Daphne nodded, her stomach turning with the memory. “It looked like white thread to me. But the detectives couldn’t see it.”
“Humans never open to their eyes to what they don’t want to see. To them it came off as stiffness in the jaw. A few of the smarter docs picked up a substance they couldn’t identify, but I think they kept quiet because they didn’t want to be committed themselves. And there I was, forced to bite my tongue and let them try to puzzle it out.”
Again Daphne’s heart swelled with pity for the man. So much dedication for his mission and no clear way to complete it.
She hated dredging up one more painful question, but she had to know.
“If you’ve been watching the family, how could you not know Laura was alive?”
She thought of how he’d nearly dropped the mugs when she’d mentioned her and now understood why the news had hit him so hard.
He bowed his head. “Another failure on my part. I’m getting too old, I think. I forgot about her. Let the block go both ways. After she retired from the board, she vanished from my thoughts.”
A moment’s silence followed while Daphne mulled over all he’d said. When she looked at him again, she found Harold’s eyes swimming with tears.
“You didn’t fail all of them,” she said. “Mary Ruth Tyler, the first victim, can talk to me because you cleared the glue from her mouth.”
The guardian’s eyes widened and he looked up at her. “I tried. I hoped she knew who had killed her, that she would talk to me, but I was too late. She was gone.”
Daphne nodded. “She saw you, and she was grateful you’d given her that much freedom.”
“I wish I could do more.”
The words pushed Daphne to lean forward and take the old man’s hand. “You will. I’m going to come up with a plan to destroy this demon and end the curse around the hospital. Once I do, you’re going to help me. Together, we’re going to free Peony House.”
The ancient eyes hardened with new resolve, and Harold nodded.
We’ll get there, she thought, sending her silent promise to the ghosts of Peony House. You’ll be able to rest soon.
***
Daphne invited Emmett to crash on her couch for the night, but he said he had an appointment to keep, so she dropped him off at Peony House so he could return the bicycle. She checked on her wallet and her replacement watch before she drove off and was happy to find everything in its proper place.
By the time she reached home, her thoughts were full of static from trying to put everything in order. The facts all made sense. Fact: A lot of people had been murdered at the hospital, and just as many had lost their minds — possibly from early, weaker, or interrupted attempts to devour their energies. Another fact: Whatever was committing the murders was still active, and even though a guardian had been trying to chase it down for a century and a half, a new murder had been committed. And finally: The ghosts were rising up for a reason she hadn’t quite figured out yet.
All this information was clear, but how it connected remained a blur. Why were the ghosts only rising up now? That question nagged her most of all. She debated backing out of her driveway and heading to the hospital to ask them, but a dark shadow standing on her front porch caught her attention, and instead she parked the car and got out.
Her magic prickled under her skin and the air around her grew warm, but she kept her power steady as she approached, not wanting another situation like earlier in the hospital when she’d almost given herself away to Laura Ancowitz.
“Oh, do relax,” a female voice chided gently. The voice was familiar, but she hadn’t heard it in a while, and Daphne needed a moment to place it. When she did, she drew her magic closer, raising her hands in defense.
“Allegra Rossi,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The succubus stepped out of the shadows into the sliver of moonlight, looking just as striking as the last time Daphne had seen her. Her thick hair appeared streaked with silver in the light and fell in waves over her shoulders. A black sweater dress hugged every inch of her supple curves, stopping well above the knee, and a silver-buckled belt wrapped around her waist to accentuate her wide hips and perfect hourglass figure. Her eyes flashed gold, but her smile hinted at amusement rather than threat.
“I’ve been dreaming
about you,” she said, and the trace of her European accent, fainter than it had been eight months ago, added cream to her already seductive tones. She sashayed closer, her hips swaying with such hypnotic rhythm that Daphne couldn’t look away. Allegra stopped close enough to run her fingers through Daphne’s hair, then gave it a flick and laughed. “But not in that way. I was surprised to see your face in my sleep. I’d thought our association ended when we left that horrible room, but there you have it. Fate never guides us in the direction we believe it will.”
Daphne remained frozen, eying the woman with suspicion. Allegra had been one of the first to agree with her that the six of them who’d survived Jermaine’s trap should go their separate ways, so finding her outside her house sent up a hundred red flags.
Not least of which was the question of how Allegra knew where she lived.
Allegra must have seen her continued distrust because her smirk widened.
“So what’s this dream of yours?” Daphne asked, hoping to hurry the conversation along.
A hint of aggravation slid into Allegra’s eyes as they faded into their human-toned brown. “I do not understand it, but it leaves me with a very cold sensation in my stomach. It seems to be some sort of warning.”
Daphne’s blood ran cold, and her reticence ebbed. Extending her hand toward the front door, she invited Allegra inside. They climbed the stairs up to her apartment, and Daphne went around the living room to turn on the lights while the succubus made herself comfortable on the burnt orange couch.
“Your home is quite cozy,” she said, and Daphne rolled her eyes, knowing full well that the open-concept kitchen and living room, complete with laundry room, was hardly in any state to inspire pride of ownership. She hadn’t touched her pile of dirty clothes, while the laundry hamper still held the clean ones she’d folded and thrown back into it. The morning’s dishes were in the sink, and Benji’s cat hair was blowing around the floor like tumbleweed from his last unwanted visit upstairs. Work — not to mention a lack of interest — had kept her from housework for weeks, and she gauged it at another week before she would feel any inclination to tackle it.
“I’m guessing your place is full of top-of-the-line furniture with Egyptian cotton sheets at the highest thread count and a gold toilet,” she said.
“Something like that,” Allegra agreed, her eyes narrowed with sly humor.
“Unless you’re still traipsing around the world with your modeling buddies,” Daphne added, realizing she’d revealed her knowledge that Allegra had set up a permanent residence in New Haven. When they’d met, Allegra had believed it too dangerous for a woman of her soul-devouring nature to stay in one place for too long, but six months ago, she’d purchased a condo apartment in one of the swankier areas of town.
Daphne thought of her dossiers in the cabinet in the other room and wondered what Allegra would say if she knew. Or if she had her own collection of facts hoarded up.
“I finally decided it was time to settle. After my brother’s death, I thought perhaps I could get by without drawing too much attention to myself. He managed for years without being caught, and I was always more skilled at hiding my feeds than he was.”
She spoke as if it was nothing that she killed people for dinner, and Daphne was struck by the similarity of Allegra’s methods to those of the creature using the hospital as a feeding ground. If Allegra’s vanity weren’t too great for her to appear as a burnt corpse, Daphne would have looked closer at her as a prime suspect.
“You’ve been busy as well, I understand,” Allegra continued. She picked at a spot of blue nail polish that had bled into the crease beside the nail of her index finger. “Climbing the ranks of the Chronicle even without the human sacrifices. You must be proud.”
“I am,” said Daphne, keeping her tone blunt. She had no intention of being friends with this woman, so politeness didn’t seem important. But she did consider the comment as proof that Allegra was keeping tabs on her.
Allegra glanced up, flecks of gold swirling amid the brown in her eyes. “You do not miss the rush of the hunt of your earlier days? The satisfaction of gaining what you desire by any means necessary?”
Daphne dropped down on the couch. “I don’t, actually. Surprisingly. I thought I would. But now I try to focus my attention on my job and the odd supernatural story. It turns out I sleep better at night.”
“Is it enough, I wonder?” Allegra asked the question in an undertone, so Daphne had to strain to hear it. But she didn’t give her time to answer, changing the subject to the one Daphne was interested in. “I would like you to know, for the record, as your people say, that your resentment of my being here is equal to my own for feeling the need to come. We said our goodbyes the day we escaped that room, and I never intended to see any of you again. I left the country immediately, as a matter of fact.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately, something drew me back here. Twice. In the end I gave up traveling to stay here permanently in spite of the less exciting work. Whatever happened in that room seems to have created a bond between us. I dislike it and wish to find a way to break it, but in the meantime, it seems I must live with the group of you in my head.”
Daphne considered what Allegra was saying, and a lurking sense of revelation wriggled in the back of her mind. Maintaining her dossiers was less of an interest and more of a need to keep tabs on the others. She felt better knowing where they were, and as much as she had told herself it was due to a lack of trust and a desire to watch her back, she wondered now if it ran deeper than that.
Allegra watched her and nodded gently, as if she understood that Daphne had come to the same conclusion. “That is why I am here. Of all the others I encountered in the room, my memory of you was the least…repugnant, and even so I would not have bothered to seek you out if it weren’t for a desire to know if you were suffering similar dreams. I cannot ignore this certainty that somehow what I’m seeing is connected to what happened in that room.”
Daphne shook her head. “No dreams that I remember.”
Allegra’s brow furrowed. “Believe me, if you were dreaming as I have been, you would remember. For two months I have been haunted by a wasteland of shadows, a sky bereft of stars, lit by fire and lightning. A growing darkness in the distance, no more than smoke, but getting thicker and coming closer. And the six of us standing before it, waiting. Perhaps it is nothing more than the stress of being trapped in this horrible city, but it might also be for the best I’ve given you some forewarning.” She caught Daphne’s eye, and a golden gleam sparkled through the brown. “Perhaps you would be interested in seeking the answers together?”
Daphne cleared her throat at the sexual overtone and chose to misinterpret her suggestion. “I can certainly look into it. Snoop around and see if anyone else in our world has been experiencing any similar dreams or premonitions.
She shifted backward on the couch to increase the distance between her and Allegra, unable to ignore the constant lure of her energy. The damned succubus never turned off.
“That would be appreciated. You have my gratitude.”
Allegra winked and made to stand up, but on a whim Daphne stretched out a hand to stop her. “While you’re here.”
Allegra raised an eyebrow, but paused.
Daphne clasped her hands in her lap and rushed to formulate the idea that had popped into her mind. It would be a waste of Allegra’s visit not to take advantage of her knowledge of the otherworld. The succubus’s job had taken her around the globe and her circle was so varied from Daphne’s that it wasn’t unreasonable to hope she might know something of her hospital demon.
“I’m in a bit of a pickle,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen anything in the papers about the young man who was found at Peony House, the abandoned hospital?”
Allegra nodded. “Vaguely.”
“It turns out there’s much more to the story. The guy’s death is connected to one that happened a hundred and fifty years ago, and ghosts spanning two centuries have woken
up and asked for my help. The trouble is I have no idea what this demon is that’s killing them and no clue why the ghosts might have woken up in the first place. I hoped you might have some idea.”
“Not the faintest,” Allegra said, but although her words were flippant, her face clouded over in concern. “How long ago did they awaken?”
“It started a couple of months ago,” Daphne said, “but they grew stronger after I went to the hospital and started poking around.”
As she spoke, the connection to Allegra’s reason for coming stood in front of her as a glowing chain, and by the interest in Allegra’s eyes, she recognized it as well. What had happened two months ago?
“Something dark is rising in New Haven,” Allegra said, “and it is clearly affecting the energy around Peony House. If the ghosts have responded to you so strongly, either you are the one causing the trouble, or you are the one who is going to have to put an end to it before the darkness takes over.”
14
Chilled to the core by Allegra’s premonition, Daphne went into the kitchen to grab her bottle of bourbon and poured healthy glasses for both of them. The effects of Harold’s bracing tea still swirled in her bloodstream, so it didn’t take long for the new hit of courage to take effect. The alcohol burned across her tongue and fizzled against her magic, shooting warmth out from her core to her fingers and toes.
“I wouldn’t take it quite as far as the end of the world,” Allegra said when Daphne shared her doomsday concerns. “The dream did not show me mass destruction. Yet. But if my dream and your ghosts are connected, the dark energy in that hospital will not stay contained forever. What if the city should decide to tear the building down? If the energy is released from its current trap, it would need to find a new source of power. Something has occurred to wake this darkness from its rest, so while the opportunity presents itself, you should find a way to put an end to it.”
Daphne agreed, although she couldn’t help but feel a lot of pressure had been heaped on her shoulders.