Who By Water (Voices of the Dead Book 1)

by Victoria Raschke

  “Jo. What a surprise to see you.” He stood there in his stocking feet and shifted his eyes from her face to her feet to the door jamb.

  “Yes. Sorry, I should’ve phoned first, but I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to see if… if you wanted to do anything for the wake for Maja tomorrow. You know, since she worked for you, too.”

  “Oh, that. Um, I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”

  “May I come in?” Maybe she was wrong about him. Tonight he looked weak and run down. Sunken cheeks joined with the dark circles around his eyes to give him an almost skeletal appearance.

  “Of course. Where are my manners? Please come in.” He flipped on a light in the hall and directed Jo straight to the small, trendily-appointed kitchen. It was clear that no one ever really cooked in it. It looked like something out of an IKEA catalogue, but without the warmth. The well stone in her pocket began to vibrate. It felt like a hummingbird’s heart against her leg.

  Tomaž gestured toward a clear Lucite chair and she sat down. “Would you like a cup of coffee? No, you’re a tea drinker, aren’t you?” He rummaged in the cabinet nearest the stove.

  “Just a glass of water, thank you.”

  He set a glass of tap water on the table in front of her and took the chair opposite. He had the look of someone who really wanted to flee.

  He worried the end of his right thumb with the index finger and thumb of his left hand and talked, more to the place mat in front of her than to her. “Did you have something in mind? For tomorrow I mean?”

  “No. Not really. We’ll handle the food and we’ll serve tea of course. Maybe you could bring wine and maybe send someone from the blue bar to serve it?”

  “The blue bar?” He looked up at her now.

  “The place on the river? With the lights?”

  “Oh. Spotlight.” He picked at his thumb again like he was trying to remove something. “Yes. I can have someone come over. I’ll call tonight.”

  “Thank you.” She moved her chair slightly and made as if she were about to leave. Relief washed across his haggard face, quickly followed by disappointment, or maybe fear, when she settled back down.

  “Oh, did you hear about the theft at the museum the night Helena was murdered?” Her emphasis on “murdered” was not intentional.

  “No. Was it in the papers?”

  She was surprised he was such a bad liar. “I don’t know. I heard about it from a friend. A Roman toy went missing, a doll or something that the museum excavated from the well in the basement. Such a weird thing to steal, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. That is strange.” He sounded like he was reading from a poorly-written script and he kept stealing glances into the darkened living room opposite the kitchen.

  She got up to leave for real and stretched out her hand. Tomaž clasped it weakly with both his clammy hands, then he practically frog-marched her to the door.

  He was attempting to close it when she turned. “Aren’t Katarina and the girls home?”

  “No. They are all out at a school thing for Ana.” He looked back into the dark interior.

  “Tell Katarina I said hello and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  Okay, that was weird.

  Jo walked along Kavčičeva back toward downtown.

  Two things were clear. The doll was there, and Tomaž couldn’t lie his way out of a wet paper bag. He was also deeply afraid of something in the house. Someone? Was it the doll? Did it have its own powers over him or something? Maybe it was ordering him to kill people.

  The street lights dimmed and flickered, then went black. The air stilled around her and the scent of rotten cabbage wafted over her. Light still poured from the windows of shops and flats.

  Not a power outage.

  A Rancid lyric throbbed in her head. “Black coat, white shoes…” The stone hummed in her pocket and Maja was with her.

  “Boss lady, I really don’t want to freak you out, but you need to get off the street, like now.” Maja all but pushed her toward the nearest mini-market, flickering in and out of perception as they neared the door and the people inside. “Go!”

  Jo opened the door. She couldn’t see Maja, but she knew she was there. The stone quieted as soon as the door closed behind them. Jo rummaged in her sweater pocket for her phone and found Leo’s name in her recent call list. She was about to hang up after the fourth ring when his voice greeted her as politely as could be expected from someone dragged from sleep.

  “Jo?”

  “Yes. Were you asleep?”

  “Hm.”

  “Can you come get me? Shit just got weird. I’m in the mini-market on Kavčičeva. The one closest to the train station.”

  “It’ll take me a bit. I’m not in Ljubljana.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Škofja Loka, but I’ll be there as soon as possible. What happened? Why are you out by yourself?”

  The mini-market customers were staring at her. She had been speaking loudly in English. She lowered her voice and switched back to Slovenian.“I was at the train station so I went by Tomaž’s. All the lights on the street went out and Maja shoved me in the nearest open door.”

  She heard a hard-whispered “prekleto!” then, “Did she say what happened?”

  “No, and now there are too many people around to talk to her.”

  “Okay. Don’t leave the market. I’m on my way.”

  She clicked the phone to sleep and kept staring at the blank screen. A tiny, ancient woman with her hair wrapped in a gaudy floral scarf touched her arm.

  “Are you all right, Miška?”

  Jo stared at her. Dušan was the only person who’d ever called her that pet name. She’d hated it: “mouse-lette” suggested she was easy prey. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No. After that. You called me Miška.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re very upset. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No. A friend is coming to get me.”

  “You should wait for him inside.” She squeezed Jo’s arm with ice cold fingers and moved past her down the aisle before Jo could ask her what she knew. She ran after her and looked around, but the woman was gone. She hadn’t moved fast enough for Jo to lose her in a fucking minimart.

  Jo really needed to talk to Maja.

  The market didn’t have a public bathroom, but there had to be one for the employees somewhere. She walked to the nearest checkout and tried to look pained. It wasn’t too difficult. “I’m so sorry to ask, but do you have a bathroom, I’m really nauseated and I don’t want to throw up in your store.” She faked a little heave.

  “Yes. Yes. Please don’t be sick here.” The cashier dragged her to the back of the store and pushed her through a door to a broom closet slash toilet that looked like it was bombed during the war.

  Jo nodded a thank you. She wedged the poorly-hung door closed and ran water into the cracked and caked basin. She flushed the toilet for good measure. “Maja, what the fuck is going on?”

  Maja appeared in front of her, solid and almost nose to nose in the cramped closet. The air chilled around her. “No idea. The dead people in the street went running when the lights went out and that woman you were talking to? Dead as me.”

  “I figured that out, but I don’t even know her.” Jo slumped against the wall or at least as much as she could, given the parameters.

  “Me neither. Maybe you’re past that point where it’s only people you know?”

  Jo wanted to slump right to the filthy floor. “I’m so not fucking ready for that.” That woman had to be dead for a long time if she could appear plain as day in a shop full of people. Not a comforting thought.

  —

  The scent of rotting cabbage and lilacs hung heavy in the air. Gustaf picked up his pace. The d
emon had to be nearby and it had to be wreaking havoc. Demonic beings held the belief that the odor of antique flowers could hide their evil, a thought that never ceased to amuse him.

  He turned the corner into the empty plaza. The only light was from a burek stand that was open late for drunks wandering home. The vendor was turned away from him. She wore huge over-the-ear headphones and she danced about the small space as she cleaned. The lights on the street beyond had gone out, throwing the plaza into darkness except for the slice of light from the stand.

  Gustaf picked his way around the edge of the square. He reached the concrete staircase that led up to the second floor of shops and travel agencies. He pulled his hand back quickly.

  The demon had been there. The traces of anger and vengeance it left in its wake confirmed his fear: they were dealing with a revenge demon. Revenge demons had singular motives, motives that often caused them to lash out in unpredictable ways. And anyone standing between a revenge demon and its goal was fair game.

  Who was it seeking vengeance for? That would lead them to it, perhaps, but he already knew its end goal. If it got to Jolene Wiley, it would cross into this world permanently and unleash its punishment unbridled. He shuddered. Of all the things he dealt with, demons were perhaps the only thing he truly feared. Gods were malleable in their way. There was an ego to flatter and though they had the upper hand in most ways, they were only as strong as the belief in them.

  Demons fed on the endless supply of human suffering and cruelty and that made them impossible to destroy. The best scenario was to capture or recapture them and secure the vessel. His personal goal was to salt the earth with the interred containers of every demon that lingered in this world.

  He worked his way around the edge of the square. Ms. Wiley was supposed to meet her aunt at the train station. He didn’t like the idea of her roaming about the city on her own but understood she was not going to stay home and knit, as she’d put it.

  The lights came on with a blinding suddenness.

  There was a body on the concrete near where he’d been standing. He went to the figure and crouched down to check for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Dark bruises had already blossomed on the skin of the man’s throat and he stank of cabbage and the damned cloying flowers.

  Gustaf stood and pulled his phone out to call Marta. The woman in the burek stand started screaming and calling him a murderer. Her cries were enough to draw a crowd. He wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  —

  Leo made a grand entrance when he finally got there. Not only was he wearing his cassock, but he had the biggest fuck-off, wooden rosary around his neck. He also had a look on his face that would have read as murderous if it hadn’t been for the whole cassock thing. A woman buying tampons and condoms crossed herself after he walked by and put the condoms back.

  “Are you okay?” His expression softened when she looked up at him.

  “Shaken. No. Scratch that. I am fully freaked the fuck out.”

  “The lights are back on outside, but there is the distinct smell of rotting cabbage and lilacs.”

  “I noticed the cabbage earlier, but it’s not like that is particularly unusual in these parts.”

  “No, but with the lilac, it’s a demon trying to cover the smell of its workings.”

  “You mean magic? Like lilac is demon air freshener for turning people into toads?”

  “What demons do isn’t exactly magic. It’s… it’s too complicated to explain right now. But yes, they do try to cover the scent of it, especially when they are being sneaky.”

  “I am never going to think of lilacs the same way. I think I preferred associating them with powdered grandma boobs.”

  Leo laughed and a different woman dropped the box of condoms she was holding. He was going to get everyone in Zelena Jama inadvertently knocked up in one night.

  “Let’s get you home. It’s the safest place for you to be. You said you put wards on your flat?”

  She nodded. And followed him out onto the street where his beater was parked illegally. It didn’t look big enough for him to actually get into it.

  “I didn’t know you had a car.”

  “I don’t. I borrowed it.”

  He could have driven the car with his knees on either side of the wheel and probably would have been more comfortable if he’d ripped out the front seat and just sat in the back. She felt a little sheepish for both dragging him out of bed and making him drive a clown car to rescue her. Fuck. She also didn’t like being a person that needed to be rescued. That chafed more than the guilt.

  “Was the doll there?”

  “I didn’t see it, but the stone you gave me went apeshit in my pocket. So I’m going to guess yes. Are you going to go get it?”

  “I will arrange for it to be returned to its proper resting place.”

  Jo looked out the window. That thing didn’t need to rest anywhere, if whatever it held was responsible for both Helena and Maja being “not alive,” as Helena had put it. Leo seemed to think it was a demon. If someone had asked her even a few weeks ago if demons existed, she would have asked where they were getting their supply. She sighed heavily.

  There was a commotion at one of the business plazas as they passed. She watched the blue lights of a police car bounce off the concrete and glass, thinking about Helena and how all this had started.

  “Probably a drunk sleeping it off in the open or something.” Leo pulled into the roundabout by French Revolution Square. He parked the car and looked at her. “Why did you go there, to Tomaž’s? I thought I was clear this morning about you not being anywhere near him.”

  “I thought you were being overprotective. I just want this to be done.”

  “I’m trying to make sure you don’t get killed, Jo. Did Lichtenberg talk to you?”

  She couldn’t tell if his anger was directed at her or at Gustaf. “He did. He warned me that I should only use my powers for good and…”

  “He didn’t tell you about being a Portal?”

  “A what?” There had been something about a door.

  “Jo, you aren’t just a Voice of the Dead, you’re a Portal. Supernatural things can use you to get into the world.”

  “Isn’t the demon or whatever it is already in the world?”

  “Yes, but it can’t possess someone for very long. It needs someone like you if it wants to stay.”

  “And what happens to me if it finds me?”

  “You…” He looked at her, pained by whatever it was he had to say. “Nothing good, Jo. Nothing good happens to you if it finds you.”

  Jo bent at the waist and rested her forehead on the dashboard.

  Leo put his hand in the small of her back. “Are you okay?”

  She sat up and he pulled his hand away. “I’m not sure I know how to answer that question anymore. Define okay.”

  “I’ll walk you home. I know it isn’t far, but…”

  She wanted to argue but didn’t have the energy to lose. They walked in silence through the throngs of people out for a Saturday night in the old town. It was a stark contrast to the dark empty streets beyond the city’s center. The stares were numerous. She had long gotten used to the Slovenian tendency to look longer than was usually considered polite in the States, but it was beyond that. She and her cassocked friend made a strange pair.

  He walked her through the quiet courtyard and started to follow her up the stairs.

  She stopped. “I’ve got this from here. Thank you.”

  “I really should walk you up.”

  “I’ll be fine.” And she didn’t need to be alone with him in her apartment. Ever.

  He nodded, but kept looking at her. “You should put wards on the shop, too. And probably the entrance to the courtyard.”

  “Will that drive away customers?”

  �
�Do you want those kinds of customers?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve had an entirely vampire clientele until now and we’d go out of business.”

  He snorted. “Vampires don’t drink tea.”

  “Good to note. Thank you, again, for coming to get me and I’m sorry I woke you up.” He stood on the cobbles of the courtyard. She was two steps up, evening out their height, maybe a bit in her favor. If he were any other man she’d ever been attracted to she would have touched his face. “And I’m sorry I didn’t take your warning more seriously.”

  He looked down at his feet, then back at her. Jo couldn’t parse his expression. “I should go. Call me in the morning before you leave the apartment.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be in the shop all day.”

  “Still, call. There aren’t any wards on the shop.”

  She nodded again and turned up the stairs. She heard him pause, then turn on the cobbles to walk away.

  “Leo?” She turned back on the stairs.

  He stopped.

  “Why did the dead run from whatever happened on the street? Why would they be afraid? I mean, they’re already dead, right?”

  “I keep forgetting how much you don’t know. Vesna was right about you acting like you’ve got everything under control.”

  “Despite my earlier statement about you and Vesna having a Jo-themed gabfest at my expense, I’ll take that as a compliment. But I will admit I have no idea what dead people would be afraid of.” She stepped back down onto the cobbles.

  “They don’t have much to fear except their own troubled thoughts and that’s enough to make many of them who won’t or can’t cross mad.”

  “But that’s not why Maja saw them all run for the hills when the street lights went out.”

  “It isn’t. Usually, the dead want only to make right what they couldn’t in life and to cross into what the next world is.”

  “Heaven?” She looked up into his face.

  “That’s what I believe, but there are still mysteries.”

  “My father said the same thing.”

  Leo nodded. “Some of the dead never cross. They linger here too long and eventually whatever the energy of our souls is fades away to nothing.”