Unbound Spirits

by Christine Pope

  Which would play right into the Whitcomb-demon’s hands. If she did manage to get out of here, she would have to find a way to convince Michael that she wouldn’t back out on him or the show, although she thought that being kidnapped by a demon was a pretty good excuse for not showing up on time. Anyway, she needed to let him know that she could be professional about this.

  If given the opportunity, that is. Imprisoned as she was, Audrey didn’t have much of a chance to prove herself. Right then, she couldn’t even be sure of how angry she still was. What Michael had done was wrong, but she knew what it felt like to want to be normal above anything else. To not be defined by her past, or her relatives and what had happened to them.

  A large part of her therapy after her parents were killed was learning to forgive, to let go of her hatred so it wouldn’t consume her. It had been a difficult battle, one that she’d had to revisit more often than she would have liked, but she believed it was a battle she had won…for the most part. And if she could forgive Philip Stanek for murdering her mother and father, then it stood to reason that she should be able to forgive his brother for trying to hide the connection from her. Like Audrey herself, Michael had wanted to be accepted for who he was, not who his brother had been.

  And she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t acknowledge how much she wanted him here with her right now, arms around her, his calm, resonant voice telling her that everything was going to be okay. In fact, she wanted him so much right then, it was almost like a physical ache.

  But he wasn’t there. She would have to do this on her own.

  The room was growing slowly darker, telling Audrey her impression that sundown wasn’t so far off must be true. The last thing she wanted was to sit in the dark, so she went to the door and flipped several of the switches in the light plate there.

  A lamp next to the bed came on, as did a torchiere-style lamp positioned behind the chaise longue. She couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief, because she really hadn’t been sure whether or not the lights would even work. Demons could see in the dark, after all.

  But apparently her captor wanted to keep up the illusion of being human, and that meant lights that really turned on. Audrey supposed it was possible that there were neighbors visible on the other side of the house. If they existed, then they probably would have thought it strange for this place to remain dark night after night.

  Supposing that the Whitcomb-demon even lived here at all. He had called it a “safe place,” and made it sound as though the house was only one of several different properties he owned. But even if he shuttled among them, he would still have to spend enough time here to make it seem as though there was nothing strange about his behavior.

  Now that the world was rapidly darkening, Audrey went to the window again, thinking that she might be able to see a light from another house, something she wouldn’t have been able to detect while the sun was still up. But no, an unrelieved darkness met her eyes, telling her she was utterly alone here.

  The door to the bedroom opened with a faint squeak, and she startled.

  All right, she wasn’t quite as alone as she would have liked.

  The Whitcomb-demon entered the room and paused near the foot of the bed. “Awake?”

  “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be standing here by the window,” Audrey retorted. Somehow, knowing that he really didn’t want to kill her had provided some much-needed courage.

  Or had he told her that to put her at ease, and hadn’t meant a word of it?

  He seemed to ignore her tart tone. “There isn’t much to see. If you’re looking for neighbors — for help of any kind — you won’t find it out there. The closest neighbor is nearly five miles away.”

  She’d gathered as much, but having the fact confirmed didn’t help. Then again, he could be lying. Since his entire life was a deception, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him to lie any time he found it expedient.

  Audrey turned away from the window and crossed her arms. “Then what’s this house doing in the middle of nowhere? It doesn’t look like your run-of-the-mill cabin in the woods.”

  “It is not. There was a mining town less than a mile away, on the other side of the hill.” A lift of his shoulders, one that looked subtly wrong to her, as if the gesture had been just a bit too exaggerated. Maybe even after all these years impersonating a human being, he still couldn’t get everything quite right. “The mine was played out, the town abandoned. This house belonged to the mine’s owner, who put it up for auction. The buyers thought to make it a resort, but the crash of 1929 happened and the bank seized it. I bought it a few years later and made sure it was kept in good repair. After all, it always helps to have a few sanctuaries scattered here and there.”

  She supposed it might, although she’d never had the kind of cash required to make that sort of setup remotely feasible. It seemed her earlier hypothesis, that he’d taken some of Henry Whitcomb’s inheritance and invested it, was more or less true.

  “You don’t seem to mind answering my questions,” Audrey told him then, and the Whitcomb-demon gave her another of those unnerving smiles.

  “If there’s nothing you can do with the information I give you, then why bother to withhold it? In this case, I thought it better to let you know something of your situation here, just so you understand that trying to escape would be utterly useless. Especially,” he added, “since another storm is forecast for late tonight. The snow will be quite deep.”

  Even though she’d already discarded the notion of escaping on foot, this news still disquieted her. Because while that Town Car might have been big and plush, it sure as hell wasn’t equipped with four-wheel drive.

  Not that she’d ever driven a 4WD vehicle in her life…or driven in snow, since her college trip to the mountains had taken place between storms and the roads had been well-plowed. Even in the unlikely event that she somehow managed to find her way to the garage, steal the car, and get out of here without being intercepted, she would face the very real possibility of running right off the slick mountain roads. That kind of mistake wouldn’t just be stupid…it might well be fatal.

  “You seem dismayed,” he said, sounding positively cheerful. “Possibly your blood sugar is low. Let us go downstairs and eat some dinner.”

  “‘Dinner’?” Audrey repeated, not sure she’d heard him correctly. “You eat?”

  “Of course,” he replied. If she’d offended him, he didn’t show it. “This is a human body, and so it requires fuel, just as yours does. Come along.”

  He gestured at the open door, and Audrey walked slowly toward him, mostly because she couldn’t think of what else to do. The water hadn’t been poisoned, and so she assumed whatever food he gave her would also be safe to eat. And, now that she’d been awake for a while, her headache had mostly subsided, replaced by a gnawing emptiness in her midsection. The last thing she’d had to eat was a packet of peanuts on her flight from Ontario to Phoenix.

  So she followed him out into the hallway, which had magnificent dark wood wainscoting as high as her shoulder, topped by wallpaper striped in cream and wine. A patterned carpet covered the floor. The place was very Victorian, and obviously lovingly preserved. Audrey had a hard time imagining the Whitcomb-demon putting this much thought and care into a house, but maybe he’d done so in order to preserve his investment.

  Down the sharply angled staircase, and through an entry hall with two-story ceilings and intricate stained glass on the double front door. The dining room was equally impressive, with more wainscoting and a fireplace at one end. A fire crackled away in the hearth, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that this home was owned by something not quite human.

  Two places were set on the long mahogany dining table. Audrey glanced over at her “host.” “Your driver isn’t joining us?”

  For a second, he only stared back at her, expression blank. Then he offered her another of those dead-eyed shark smiles. “Oh, I don’t have a driver. I conjured the image of your friend to lure
you into the car, but I was the one operating it.”

  Another hypothesis confirmed, although Audrey didn’t feel particularly pleased about learning that she had been right once again. Just the thought of being in a car driven by no one was enough to send more shivers down her spine.

  Maybe it was a good thing that she’d been out cold for most of the trip.

  However, she also realized there was no way they could have driven all the way here in the space of a few hours. She’d never calculated the distance from Tucson to Denver — or wherever they currently were — but she guessed that kind of journey must take at least ten or twelve hours, depending on where in Colorado you were going. If they were even in Colorado. She knew the area around Flagstaff in northern Arizona was heavily forested, too, although she doubted that part of the world had many houses that looked anything like this particular mansion.

  Had an entire day passed? That might explain her headache, and the empty feeling in her stomach.

  “How long was I out?” Audrey asked.

  The Whitcomb-demon didn’t bother to ask what she meant. “We didn’t drive the whole way. I took you out of Tucson, then went to a nearby municipal airport. We came the rest of the way in my plane…or at least, to the airport nearest here, then drove up the mountain.”

  “And you flew the plane the way you drove the car?”

  “No,” he replied. “I have a pilot on retainer. Flying a plane is considerably more difficult than operating a car.”

  Of course he had a pilot. “And your pilot didn’t wonder why you were dragging a comatose woman into the plane with you?”

  “No, because I allowed you to wake up enough to converse with him. You don’t remember any of it because I made sure you wouldn’t. After all, if you were able to recall the journey, then you would know exactly where this house is located.” Another of those awful smiles. “I explained to the pilot that you were my girlfriend and were coming to spend the week with me at my mountain home.”

  Audrey couldn’t quite hold back a shudder at that comment. Had he put his arm around her waist, held her hand? Leaned in for a kiss to make it seem as if the two of them really were a couple? The thought made her want to vomit. It was also disconcerting — to say the least — to realize she’d gotten on a plane and flown hundreds of miles, and didn’t remember a single moment of it.

  Clearly, his promise to erase her memories wasn’t an idle threat.

  “But sit down,” he said. “No need to bother yourself with the logistics. You are here now, and no one has any idea where you are. That’s all you need to know.”

  She wanted to retort that there was a whole hell of a lot more that she needed to know, but she realized there wasn’t much point. He was in complete control of the situation, and it didn’t really matter what she said or did.

  With ill grace, Audrey pulled out the chair to the left of the head of the table and sat down. He took his seat as well, then spread his napkin — snowy white cloth — on his lap. She did the same, but then sent him a sideways glance.

  “The table is very pretty,” she said. “But I don’t see any food.”

  The words had barely left her mouth before a bowl of some kind of creamy soup appeared in front of her. She was so shocked, she let out a gasp and slid backward in her chair.

  The Whitcomb-demon chuckled. “You like my trick?”

  “How…how did you do that?”

  “It’s lobster bisque from a restaurant in Denver. I merely ‘borrowed’ some.”

  While it was vaguely reassuring to know he hadn’t been involved in the preparation of the food, Audrey still couldn’t figure out how he’d been able to magically steal soup from a restaurant and have it appear in their bowls. “Are we near Denver?”

  “Possibly.” He lifted his spoon to his mouth, swallowed some of the soup. “Or not. It could simply be that I once visited this restaurant and enjoyed its food. You decide.”

  Which meant the real answer could be either of those possibilities…or neither of them. “I didn’t know demons cared about fine cuisine.”

  “Since this body needs to eat, I might as well supply it with something worthwhile,” the Whitcomb-demon said. “Just as it is better to have fresh air, since it needs air to breathe.”

  “And sleep?”

  One heavy eyebrow lifted. “Thinking to catch me off guard, Ms. Barrett?”

  Of course that was exactly what she’d been thinking when she asked the question, but now she shook her head. “No. It seemed a logical progression from eating and breathing.”

  “I have no need of sleep in the way you think of it,” he said. “I…rest…from time to time. That is all.”

  So much for that idea. Audrey forced herself to swallow some of the soup, since she knew she wouldn’t be much use without some food in her stomach. The bisque was, as he’d said, very good. And even though the way it had been brought here was unorthodox, to say the least, she was obscurely comforted by knowing that the soup had been made by human hands.

  For a moment, they ate in silence. Audrey did her best to keep her attention on the food in front of her, because it was disconcerting enough to know her dinner companion wasn’t really human without having to look at him. What was going through his mind, she had no idea. Maybe he was just pleased with himself for spiriting her away so easily. She also couldn’t understand why he’d asked her to eat with him, unless it was another way for him to toy with her, to make her as uncomfortable as possible.

  If that was his intention, he was succeeding.

  Now she’d been missing for almost four hours, by her best estimate. Would Michael and Colin have called the police? Contacted her aunt to see if she knew where her niece was? Audrey had put her aunt’s contact information down on the paperwork she’d had to fill out for Colin’s production company since she was the closest relative she had.

  If they’d done that, then Deb must be frantic. Even if Michael hadn’t yet reached out to the authorities, she’d insist that the police be called in immediately. Not that it would do any good.

  With an effort, Audrey pulled her thoughts away from those worries. She couldn’t do anything about what any of them were doing. She could only focus on where she was now.

  Who she was with.

  “What do you use the portals for?” Audrey asked.

  The Whitcomb-demon set his spoon down in the empty bowl and gave her an unreadable look. “I would think that was obvious enough.”

  “You bring things through,” she said. “But for what purpose? To infest more houses, possess more people? It’s not as if there’s been a rash of demon possessions in the news.”

  “You know very well that people don’t immediately ascribe abnormal behavior to demonic intervention. It’s blamed on psychiatric problems, drug addiction…anything except addressing the root cause of the issue.” He shrugged; the bowls in front of them disappeared, to be replaced by plates of grilled trout and rice and vegetables. Picking up a fork, he added, “At any rate, why I need the portals is nothing you need to know.”

  Audrey should have guessed that he wouldn’t volunteer any valuable information. As she reached for her own fork, she had to wonder. This demon — whatever his true name was — had done a very good job of inhabiting Jeffrey Whitcomb’s body. What if there were more out there like him, evil, unearthly intelligences exerting subtle influence on people who didn’t even know they were possessed?

  Her stomach churned, but she made herself take a bite of trout. It was excellent, and she wondered if it had been swimming in a cold mountain stream only a few hours earlier. The rice and grilled vegetables were very good, too. She imagined them all being prepared in a restaurant only a half hour away or so, even though she had no idea whether the food had really come from someplace in Denver. Still, she found a little comfort in believing that was the truth.

  “How long have you been in that body?” Maybe it was foolish of her to keep asking questions, but she was a therapist and that was part of the jo
b, although sitting and listening carefully comprised a good deal of what she did. She hoped he would answer her, partly because she was curious, and partly because it seemed as though he was willing enough to provide information as long as it didn’t compromise whatever he was doing here.

  “A very long time,” the Whitcomb-demon said. He reached for his cut-crystal water glass and took a sip. Audrey noticed that he hadn’t served any wine, which was probably just as well. Even so, she found herself wondering at the omission. Did alcohol somehow affect his ability to control the body he’d stolen? “Since even before Jeffrey Whitcomb arrived in California. He invited me in not long after he and Alice were married.”

  Audrey went still from shock, fork halfway lowered to her plate. Although Michael had never given her an exact timeline of Jeffrey Whitcomb’s marriage, from the way he’d talked, it sounded clear enough that the two Whitcomb children had been born before the family relocated to California in 1911. Which meant….

  “Oh, yes,” the demon said with a slight lift of his thin lips. “I had my own taste of the delightful Alice. She was quite a beauty back in the day, you know. The children were of course Jeffrey’s in a biological sense, but I like to think I participated in their conception.”

  Thank God she’d only eaten a few bites of her fish. The fork dropped with a clatter to her plate, and she pushed her chair away from the table.

  The Whitcomb-demon’s black eyes glinted up at her. “Going somewhere, Audrey?”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said flatly.

  He smirked, then removed the napkin from his lap and stood up. “That revelation upset you, didn’t it?”

  Well, of course it had. Her research had turned up some disturbingly sexual components to many accounts of demon oppression and possession, but she supposed she’d been naïve enough to think that Jeffrey and Alice Whitcomb had grown apart by the time he started dabbling in the black arts.