by Pat Esden
Lonely. So lonely.
Em gritted her teeth. To heck with it, she decided. If she was going to do this, she needed to move before Chloe did. She took out Gar’s cash and shoved it at Chloe. “Take this. I’ve got to go to the restroom.”
Before Chloe could respond, Em sped away from the checkout and toward her fake destination. She veered into sweater alley, ducking down a little so the top of her head wasn’t visible. Drawing up her magic, she focused on the tug of the ghost. It led her past the displays of socks and hats. Her vision narrowed. The smell of mildew filled her nose as she went through a doorway into the home goods section. Sagging sofas. Bunk beds. Air conditioners. Kitchen cabinets. A basket of soiled Raggedy Ann dolls.
Another room. Cramped. Dimly lit.
Hear me. See me.
Em’s fingertips glided over a smooth desktop. Over the slick covers of magazines. Paperback books. The scent of an old library. A narrow alleyway, bookstacks rising like canyons on either side of her, up to a water-stained ceiling.
The tug released her.
Em shook her head, bringing herself out of the daze.
She stood in the far back corner of the Goodwill’s cramped bookroom. From what she could hear and sense, no living people were in the room, only a single spirit. Close. Down low to the floor.
The fully materialized ghost huddled under a library table.
It was a woman, her straight black hair held back by a pair of tortoiseshell barrettes. Yoga pants—speckled with food stains and what was most likely dog hair—sagged over her shrunken body. She pulled her knees to her chest and gazed up at Em with limpid blue eyes, much too cavernous for a living human.
Em crouched. She needed to do this fast and quietly so as not to draw attention to herself, though talking to a materialized ghost was less conspicuous than ones who were invisible.
She hushed her voice. “Tell me. What’s wrong?”
“Lonely,” the ghost crooned.
“Can you see the light? A bright tunnel? It’s warm there. Lots of people to talk to.” As a rule, she never said family was waiting, at least not until the ghost mentioned missing them. Personally, she’d never go to any light if her aunt was waiting there.
The ghost’s lips pinched into a stubborn line. Her eyes contracted into black beads. “Must stay. Books. Lonely.”
Em scrubbed her hands over her face. “You don’t have to stay. Let go.”
“Books. Lost. Lonely.” The ghost’s voice roared with frustration and she leaned forward, fingernails digging into the carpet, like a cat readying to spring forward.
“Lost books? Tell me. I’m here to help.” Em couldn’t begin to figure out what she meant, but clearly the ghost’s frustration was moving toward rage. “Tell me what you need.”
The ghost sat back on her haunches, her jaw working. “Books. My books. He stole them. Kept jewels.” She sprung to her feet and flagged her arms, indicating the old leather-bound books that overflowed cases on either side of the desk. “My orphaned books. Abandoned. Must find homes. Can’t rest. Lonely. So lonely here.”
As crazy as it was, Em got what she meant this time. Someone had stolen the ghost’s book collection and kept only the best volumes, the jewels of her collection. The rest had ended up at Goodwill. The theft likely involved murder for the ghost to be so attached. But maybe not. She’d met spirits obsessed in death with things they collected in life.
Em scanned the books, taking a quick inventory. She couldn’t buy them all, now or later. But she had to do something before this spirit started throwing things around and scratching people—if she hadn’t already.
“Lonely,” the ghost repeated.
Lonely. Em smiled and gave the ghost’s fur-coated yoga pants another look. It might not work, then again… “Do you like kittens?”
The ghost’s eyes returned to crystal blue caverns. “Yes. Love. Kitties. Puppies.”
“I’m not promising, but let me try something.”
Em closed her eyes, willing her mind to go back to the A.A. meeting when she’d first felt the sensation of the small spirit, crying for her help. She brought back the more recent memory from the séance, when she’d heard the kitten’s mews and felt it bat her ankle. Kittens. So many of them, their tails glowing like torches in the darkness.
She pulled up her magic, releasing the feeling of the floor beneath her feet and the bookstacks all around her. She cast her magic out into the universe, calling out to the kittens with only one intention in her mind: offering them a home and letting them feel the lonely spirit in front of her.
Darkness closed in around Em as her spirit left her body, moved beyond the walls of the store and toward the edge of oblivion. Reaching out. Calling out…
Something brushed her ankle. Something mewed.
Em’s eye flickered open. Her head still whirled, but she could see the ghost woman, now a fading haze mingling with the glowing shape of circling kittens.
Thank you. Thank you, the ghost’s voice whispered.
“Excuse me,” a man said tartly, jolting Em fully back to her senses. “Do you mind? I’d like to get to that shelf.”
Her face heated with embarrassment and she scrambled aside to let the guy pass. She couldn’t imagine what the man thought she’d been doing.
A voice touched her ear. Listen.
For a panicked second, Em thought it might be Saille telling her to listen again. She wheeled around, half expecting to see her. But the only ghosts were the fading woman under the library desk and the kittens.
The ghost woman looked up at her. Listen. He has them. My jewels. Your priestesses.
“Who?” Em asked, not caring if the man thought she was nuts. This ghost knew something. Something important. “Who has them?”
The cambion. Magus Dux. Stop him.
The ghost’s energy refocused on the kittens, and Em could only watch helplessly as she fell silent and vanished.
Chapter 22
NANTUCKET, MA—Police suspect link between brutal murder and recent theft. Last month, Mary Reed was found stabbed to death and dismembered outside her Willow Street home. When appraiser Bill Ryan arrived this week to evaluate Reed’s estate, he discovered her library of valuable books missing.
—From Antiquarian Weekly, November 26
By the time Em raced out to the van, the security lights were flickering on in the parking lot. When she jumped in, her mouth began to water at the smell of coffee and what she guessed were submarine sandwiches.
Chloe passed a coffee cup to her. “Devlin bought some stuff for dinner too. We thought we’d eat once we get settled in the motel room.”
“Motel?” Em set her coffee into a cup holder.
“Gar booked us a room at a motel that borders the cemetery where Saille is buried. I think it’s a great idea. All we have to do is climb over a security fence and we’re there.”
“Between Devlin and I,” Gar said, starting the van, “we shouldn’t have a problem carrying the corpse.”
“We’ll need a duffel bag or something to put Saille’s body in.” Devlin’s voice choked and pressed his hands over his face, like he’d done earlier, when thoughts of Athena’s death had overwhelmed him.
His sorrow went straight to Em’s heart. But she had news that might take his mind off the loss, at least briefly. She raised her voice. “Guys, I have to tell you something. You’re not going to believe what happened. I know for sure a cambion has Saille and Athena. His name’s Magus Dux.”
Everyone turned to gape at her. It was lucky they were still parked—judging by the shock on Gar’s face, he might have driven off the road.
“How the hell did you find that out?” he asked.
“I was on my way out of the restroom…” She started with a fib, then told them the rest exactly as it had happened, detail by detail, finishing up by repeating the name
the ghost had used. “Magus Dux—and she said we had to stop him.”
Devlin studied her face. His eyes beamed with cautious hope. “Are you sure the ghost said ‘priestesses,’ as in, more than one?”
“Hundred percent sure.”
“But she didn’t mention Athena by name?” he asked.
“No. She didn’t mention Saille either. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. Both of them were high priestesses, right?” Worry twisted inside her. She didn’t want to mislead Devlin, or give him false hope that Athena could be alive despite everything they knew. “When I say ‘they,’ I mean Athena and Saille’s spirits. Think about it. I felt the identical rise in air pressure and tug-of-war sensations working against me whenever I’ve tried to contact either of them. This Magus Dux is restraining them somehow. I’m sure of it.”
Chloe picked at the lid of her coffee cup, staring off into space. “Identical air pressure. Tug-of-war. Spirits. If we only knew why or what he was doing with them. Or how Rhianna was involved, and the Vice-Chancellor’s wife.”
“That would help,” Devlin said, his voice hard now. “A cambion named Magus Dux. I’ve never heard of him. Have any of you?”
“Not that I can think of,” Chloe said.
“I haven’t.” Gar began to back out of the parking space. “But I have the strange feeling we’ll all know more about him than we care to before this is all over.”
The motel had a line of first-floor rooms that opened directly onto the parking lot and a second story with a balcony running its full length. It reminded Em uncomfortably of the infamous Bates Motel. The only difference was that this place had moonlit evergreens outlined behind it instead of a decrepit lawn and a creepy mansion.
Gar pulled in next to the office and headed inside to get the room key. As Em watched him disappear through the doorway, an unsettling sense of inevitability shivered up her spine. Not only did the motel border the cemetery, it also was a short walk from Congress Park and the gateway where she’d seen Saille that night from the police car window. Things had certainly come full circle.
When Gar returned, he drove across the parking lot and pulled up in front of the only room with a light on. “I told them we’d be checking out before the office opens in the morning. It’s ours until then.”
“I’ll be glad when this part’s over,” Chloe whispered as they all climbed out of the van. “The whole idea of disturbing a grave bothers me.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not like we’re violating Saille’s resting spot. She wants this,” Em said softly.
Gar shouldered a duffel bag. “It’s the living we need to be worried about tonight, not the dead.”
Em was pleased to find the room was larger than she’d expected. A faint smell of new carpet and fresh paint hung in the air. A complete kitchenette. A table and four chairs. Not a hint of a ghost—which meant the room hadn’t been the site of a murder or suicide. There’d been tons of times over the last few years when she’d have killed for a night in a place like it. Well, not really killed, or even prostituted. She would have liked it a lot, though.
Em glanced in the mirror over the dresser to see how messy she looked. Her hair hung limp and tangled, but the cut on her cheek from the wraith was thankfully small and scabbed over. More like a nasty scratch—
Her eye caught the reflection of a double bed directly behind her and pure terror shot straight to her core. Floral quilts. Perfectly stacked pillows. Scrolled metal headboard. Glistening white… An urge to vomit rushed up her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
A headboard. Metal scrolls narrow enough to secure handcuffs to. A mattress wide enough to hold a child down on.
Phantom pain ricocheted through her wrists and ankles. Across the tops of her feet. She clamped her eyes shut, fighting the memory. But she couldn’t stop her mind from reeling back, way back: eleven-year-old her, ankles held down, wrists cuffed to the scrolled headboard. The buzz of the tattoo gun. A hand over her mouth. The bitter taste of hand cream. The fruity smell of Lifesavers on her mother’s breath.
“You can’t run away from us, Violet. You belong to us. Family is forever.”
Forever. Forever. Pain reverberated across the top of her left foot, up her ankle. Bone-deep pain. Her arms ached. The tattoo gun buzzed. Aching. Endless aching.
A moment of nothing. A breath. It was over—
It began again, pain shooting across her other foot.
“You need to listen to Auntie Lynda,” her mother’s voice rasped close to her ear. Her mother.
Sadness. Overwhelming sadness. Mother used to love her. Used to before the beginning, before the ghosts. More emotions, a new one rising with each stab of the needle. Hate, anger, fury pulsing in her veins. Freedom. She’d find it someday. Someday. Freedom.
“Em?” Gar’s worried voice broke her free from the memory, snapping her back to the present.
She turned from the mirror. Her hands trembled. Her feet trembled. She straightened her spine and pasted on a smile. She didn’t dare speak. If she did, words would come out, and he’d know for certain something was wrong. They all would.
His gaze darted to the bed, then back to her. Sudden understanding furrowed his brow. Of course he knew. She’d told Johnny everything that night by the river.
He dropped his duffel bag to the floor, dashed to the bed, and yanked the quilts and blankets off. In one swift motion, he threw them over the headboard, covering it entirely. He stormed to the second bed and draped its headboard the same way. Then he gathered up all the pillows and lobbed them helter-skelter on top of everything else.
Devlin folded his arms across his chest and shook his head at Gar. “What are you doing?”
Gar stabbed him with a deadly serious look. “What do you think the motel staff assumes we’re doing in here? Two couples. Bags of food and drinks. Minimal luggage. Better to keep them thinking we had a good time.” He took his cap off and tossed it on top of a pillow. “Too bad we don’t have some liquor bottles to leave laying around.”
Chloe laughed. “Gar, I’ll never figure you out. You’re all business, then you’re—” She waved her hand, struggling to put her evaluation of his behavior into words.
“It’s my nature,” he said. “Loup-garou crazy, you know.”
Devlin and Chloe both snickered. But warmth flooded Em’s body when Gar slipped a wink her way before he nonchalantly picked up his duffel bag and pitched it onto the bed. He unzipped it and took out a black velvet satchel embroidered with a gold pentacle. “We need to get protective wards in place as soon as possible.”
“Chloe and I can do that,” Devlin said. His voice turned teasing. “That is, as long as you don’t expect us to do anything crazy in the process, like hang from the ceiling or walk on our hands.”
Gar’s lips twitched into an amused smile. He pulled a jar of salt out of the bag and tossed it to Devlin. “No gymnastics required. Just normal protection wards. If you’ll do that, then I’ll take care of cloaking us from the Council.”
Chloe smiled. “Judging by the van and storage unit, you’ve got that down to a science.”
“It’s one of my specialties.” Gar took out a natural-twig wand from the bag and a pillar candle with herbs embedded in its honey-colored wax. He stopped, his gaze going from Chloe to Devlin. “If we get out of this with our whole skins, I’ll show you how I prepared everything.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Devlin’s eyes went wide as Gar took off his flannel shirt, revealing the dart gun strapped to his forearm. Devlin’s smile stiffened. “Ah—are you a fan of Assassin’s Creed, or is it the Green Hornet?”
“Green Hornet,” Gar answered without hesitation. “Kato’s always been my favorite super hero.”
“I should have guessed from the moves you pulled on the guards back at headquarters. I meant to say something sooner—you were pretty damn impressive.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the reminder. I need to re-dip my flechettes.” Gar stroked a hand down his dart gun, stopping at the end of the arrow decoration. “Normally, I use a basic tranquilizing oil. But the chance of running into wraiths or cambions calls for a more creative potion.”
“Like something deadly?” Chloe jumped into the conversation.
“Probably not. Killing doesn’t help much with the already dead, or the somewhat immortal.”
Warmth continued to radiate inside Em’s chest, and the remaining tension from her panic over the flashback drained away as she listened to them razzing and talking with each other like old friends. It was nice—almost as nice as the more personal things Gar could do with his oils.
Em left them to create the protection ward and went into the bathroom with her new clothes. They would have told her if they needed her help, and they hadn’t. She was glad for that. The last thing she needed right now was the pressure of fumbling her way through a warding spell. What she needed was a few quiet moments to regroup and ready herself for the trip to the cemetery.
As she turned on the shower, the same uneasiness she’d felt earlier came over her, like she was forgetting something, or her sixth sense was trying to get through to her.
She smiled as another possibility occurred to her. This uneasiness wasn’t anything to be overly concerned about—she hadn’t eaten anything since they left the complex, and then it had only been a donut. Of course she felt jittery. She was hungry, probably bordering on hangry. Fortunately, there was a submarine sandwich waiting for her in the other room.
She climbed into the shower and lowered her head, letting the hot water pound on her neck and shoulders as she thought through what lay ahead. Cemeteries were dangerous places, but not because of the troubled ghosts people feared they’d encounter there. Those ghosts were more apt to haunt places they’d lived or died, or things like books, in the case of the Goodwill ghost. The most dangerous things that hung out in cemeteries were usually alive, like messed up people who stuffed kittens in trash bags and then left them on railroad tracks. And necromancers, predators, addicts, and alcoholics with brains too pickled to tell reality from the surreal, just looking for a quiet place to be alone—she’d felt like that before, plenty of times.