Jones is pacing at the foot of the bed. “What caught you by surprise?”
“That. Her.” Percy leans against the doorframe, trying to look casual while the wobble in his legs slowly fades. “I guess you can’t feel it.”
Jones frowns. He edges forward and lays his hand over Emily’s the way Percy did. “There’s… a buzz. But I can’t feel anything specific.”
“She’s been taken out of this body and… put into another one.”
“Another what?”
“Body. Another person. Maybe someone that died. Or was killed.” Sweat beads up on his lip, remembering the feeling of being pulled into a different shape. “But she’s trapped there. At least for now.”
“For now?” Elliot looks at the bed, then at Percy. “You mean until this body dies?”
“Yes.” He rubs his forehead. “But I think that is related to what is happening with her soul, not the other way around.” He sighs. “I need to do some reading.”
Jones scowls. “We don’t have much time.”
“I know that.” Percy pulls his phone from his pocket and moves closer to the bed.
Looking at the body is unnerving. Even squinting, he can’t see the shadow image he spotted in the photos because part of him refuses to really look at this empty shell of bones and blood. He takes a picture with his phone.
As with the other photos, there is a second image embedded in it. Still hard to see in that it is a face laid over Emily’s own face, but the mouth is different, the eyebrows at a slightly different angle.
“Here.” He shows it to Jones. “I wasn’t sure what it meant. But now I think that must be the second body. The one she’s trapped inside.”
Jones crosses his arms over his chest. “So, someone is taking the souls from these girls and putting them in a different body. Why?”
“Maybe the other body is deficient somehow. Someone in a coma.”
Elliot raises an eyebrow. “But a coma would be a medical condition. Putting someone else in that body wouldn’t fix whatever was physically wrong with them.”
Percy nods. “Maybe the person doing this doesn’t realize that.”
“Nah.” Jones shakes his head. “Whoever is doing this is smart enough to know the difference between a physical ailment and a metaphysical one.” He touches Emily’s hand again. “I’d say it’s more like someone is trying to raise the dead.”
Percy props his fists on his hips. Raise the dead. He closes his eyes, trying to remember what he had felt on the other end of the connection. “Let me go.”
Elliot looks at him sharply. “What?”
“He’s holding her there. The body is dead, but he… whoever has stolen Miss Grant, is holding her into it.”
She touches her gun, holstered on her belt, reflexively. “For how long?”
Jones fidgets. “Not long. Even for a Power, that kind of magic would take a lot of energy. Even more concentration.”
Percy nods. “Power or not, he is still a man.” He looks at Elliot. “How long can you stay awake before you start to drift off?”
“How much coffee is there?” Her grin fades as she considers the question. “About eighteen hours. Longer if there aren’t outside distractions. And I have a lot of coffee. But probably not more than a day.” Her eyes get wide. “Oh.”
“That’s why they keep slipping away.” Percy moves closer to the bed, his fingers hovering just above Miss Grant’s forehead. “He’s losing his grip on them, and once they’re free of the other body, they just… cross over.”
Jones raises an eyebrow. “Cross over?”
“Dissipate. Ascend. Transcend. Whatever.” He waves his free hand. “And the physical dies.”
Elliot leans forward. “So we’re trying to locate this other body and the kidnapper before he falls asleep?” She glances at her watch. “How many hours have already passed? Six?”
Jones nods. “At least. That’s just when she was found. There’s a good chance she’d been there since earlier in the day.”
“And this creep has already done this twice in how many days? Losing sleep and strength each time?” She looks at Percy again. “Did you see anything when you touched her? A building or anything?”
“No. It was so sudden.” Percy takes a deep breath and lets his hand rest against Emily’s forehead.
The panic rolls over him in a wave, but this time he is better prepared. Reaching out along the connection, he tries to whisper to the young woman on the other end.
“I need to see where you are.”
“Trapped. Please, let me go.”
“Open your eyes and tell me where you are. Let me see.”
The darkness turns to white. No, it’s grey. A ceiling turning murky as the light outside the window fades.
There’s a man with dark hair pacing around the edge of the room. Jittery. Frantic.
Emily shudders. “I’m frightened.”
“I know. I’m right here. Just try and see if you can sit up and look out the window.”
“I can’t. He’ll see me.”
“It will be all right. I’m right here. Look out the window.”
She moves stiffly. Sits up, but there’s still nothing but sky visible through the window.
The dark haired man cries out. Comes close and puts his arms around her. “You’re awake.”
Emily sobs. “No. Please let me go.” She tries to pull away from him. “Help me. Help me.”
“Who…?” The dark-haired man looks her in the eye, and Percy flinches, feeling the brush of power. The stranger grimaces. “No. Damn it.” There’s another flare of magic, this one severing the bond that has held spirit and flesh together.
Emily sighs as she drifts free, the room fading away beneath her. “Thank you.”
“No. Don’t. Follow my voice, Emily. Emily. Do you hear me?”
Percy sags against the rails on the bed, both hands pressed against Emily’s face. “Follow the sound of my voice. Emily.”
The heart monitor beside the bed wails.
“Emily. Emily, come back.” He’s yelling, shaking the body lying in the bed.
“Percy. Stop.” Elliot gets her arms around him again, drags him away from the bed as the door bangs open and the medical staff pour into the room. A couple of nurses usher Elliot and Percy none-too-politely out the door into the hall where Jones is already waiting.
Elliot shoves Percy into the chair where Sullivan had been sitting. “What the hell was that, Cox?”
“He saw me.” Percy rakes his fingers through his hair. “He saw me, and he let her go free.”
Jones crosses his arms over his chest. “Killed her, you mean.”
Percy sags in the chair. “Yes.”
Elliot’s mouth works for a minute. When she speaks, her voice is cold. “Did you get a chance to see anything?”
“It looked like a house. An old one maybe.” He closes his eyes, trying to dredge up the sense of the room. “Wood floors. The plaster on the ceiling was cracked. At least two stories because there was just sky out the window.” He shakes his head. “That’s all.”
“And the creep?”
“Tall. White. Dark hair. She didn’t want to look at him.”
Elliot leans closer, stopping just short of grabbing Percy by the front of his shirt. “So a tall, white man with dark hair is somewhere in an old, multi-story house with a body.”
“Yes.”
“If that were any less useful…” She jabs him in the shoulder. “If this is how you’re going to behave, you don’t need to be back in the field.”
“Should I have waited ‘til he fell asleep and she died?” Percy squares his shoulders, something small and stubborn waking up inside. “She said thank you when he let her go. Leaving her there, trapped and panicked, when there was a chance that I might help her would have been cruel.”
Elliot shakes her head. “Maybe. But now we have no lead. Now we will have to wait and see if he snatches another soul.”
Percy nods. “Now we have
a chance to put the word out before the next one is taken.”
The door to the room opens, and the doctor comes out into the hall. “I’m sorry. We did what we could, but there was no response.” He rubs his hand across his short cropped hair, and there’s a flash of anger in his eyes. “Tell me you’re getting close to stopping this guy.”
“Yes,” Percy says before Elliot can open her mouth. “We’re doing everything we can.”
“Good.” He waves a hand at the door. “I’ll get the body transferred to the city morgue as soon as possible.”
Elliot nods. “Thank you.”
Percy stands and nudges Elliot toward the end of the hall. Jones trails along after, the muscle in his jaw working furiously.
When they reach the main corridor, Percy looks at both of them. “We have more than we did. The shadow in the photos, a basic description of the creep, and the knowledge that he will be looking for another young woman very soon.”
Elliot crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him, doubtful. “You think we can get ahead of him this time?”
“I think we have to try. I think we have a chance. But standing around trying to decide whether or not what happened back there was the right thing or not…” Percy shakes his head.
Jones nods. “We don’t want there to be a fourth.”
Elliot rakes her fingers through her hair, letting her breath out in a noisy sigh. “Fine. We’ll start with the image. Get something written up to run on the local news. And maybe this time our guy will make a mistake.”
8
The house, unlike the lightning split tree, is not in the middle of a clearing. There are the woods and the path. And then there is the house, pressed against on all sides by beech saplings and sturdier oaks. Trees and house bound, each to the next, with red stemmed honeysuckle, the white blooms and sweet smell disguising the unyielding embrace.
Despite the vine holding it tight, I recognize it like I know my own hands. And knowing the kind of memories that were stuck inside it when it was in my head, I stop short.
Baby squeezes my neck with her tiny arms. “It’s okay. She can’t get out.”
She?
A thread of song floats out the kitchen window. “Down by the river, mm-nenena.”
“Mama.” My stomach gets all squirmy. Daddy could be mean, and he left more than one stripe across my legs with his belt, but he never tried to kill me. Not like Mama.
Baby squeezes my neck again. “It’s okay. She can’t hurt you here.”
I work my way around through the brush and climb up on a pile of cement blocks half-buried under drifted leaves. Grab hold of the windowsill with one hand as I look through a gap in the honeysuckle.
Like Daddy, she’s just as I remember her. Long brown hair pulled into a messy bun on the back of her neck. A flower-print apron tied over her dress, both of them handmade, but just a little too big. The same wrinkle of frustration in her forehead that preceded an outburst of anger or tears, the same smudge of flour on her temple where she’d pushed her hair back from her face.
I lick my lips and tap on the window frame. “Mama?”
She jumps and squints. Then a big smile spreads across her face. “Delaney. I’ve been expecting you. You want to come inside?”
I glance at Baby, cradled in my elbow, and she shakes her head. I remember that she is the mistress of these woods and the honeysuckle twined across every opening in the house is her doing. “No, Mama. I think we’ll stay out here.”
She smooths the hair back from her forehead, leaving fresh streaks of flour, and leans on the edge of the table, heavy-like. But she smiles, even if it’s brittle around the edges. “That’s okay. I guess you must be on your way somewhere.” She scoops two plates off the counter behind her and sets them in the little gap between the window frame and sill. “Have some cake. Green for you, Baby. Yellow for Delaney.”
Baby makes a pleased noise and reaches for the green cake with eager hands.
I lift down the plate then return it to the windowsill empty. Look at the yellow one carefully. Despite the chaos in the process, Mama always did have a knack for baking. The petit fours were a specialty. She sold them to the fancy housewives that lived in the middle of downtown, packing great flat boxes of little cakes in every color you could imagine.
This one, topped with a delicate rose made of frosting, looks delicious, but I learned a long time ago to be careful about anything Mama tried to feed me.
She leans on the windowsill, looking out at the two of us. “You’ve gotten so big, Delaney. Tall and strong.” She doesn’t say pretty. That’s a word saved for Addie with her blonde hair and blue eyes.
I nod though, to be polite. “Yes, Mama. I guess I grew up all right.”
Her eyes get sharp. “Have some cake, Delaney.”
Baby has finished her own and is eying the yellow one while she licks crumbs and frosting from her tiny hands. She shifts, reaching for it, and Mama snatches it back off the sill.
“No, Baby. You heard me. This one is for Delaney.”
My stomach turns over in a cold knot. “Still trying to kill me, Mama?”
She drops the plate on the table behind her, and it breaks as though it is made of sand, little shards of porcelain gusting out to mix with the half-finished petit fours sitting in rows. “Damn it. Look at what you made me do.” She turns and glares at the window. “Always were too clever for your own good.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so hellbent on murdering us, things—”
Mama slams her fists on the windowsill. The whole house shakes and creaks. “I never wanted them dead. Just you, Delaney.” She straightens, hands braced against the sides of the window, pushing on it like Samson trying to bring down the temple. “How many times did you tell Addie you were just trying to keep her safe? How many times did you leave her hungry and cold and frightened?”
“I was trying to keep her from getting hurt.”
“No.” The house rattles, groans, shaking loose a few spiders that dangle from the eaves in surprise. “No, Delaney. You were trying to keep yourself from getting hurt.”
I stumble back down off the makeshift step as the paint flakes off the wooden siding. The walls shiver as nails screech loose.
Baby stuffs her fist in her mouth, eyes half-closed as new strands of honeysuckle whip up and around the house. New layers of vine pull it back together, sealing the new gaps.
“You told Addie you would keep her safe, Delaney. But, in the end, who hurt her? I never wanted them dead. Only you.” Her voice, wailing like a storm through winter branches, trails off. The house settles again. The only sound is the snakeskin whisper of honeysuckle still creeping around and around ‘til only the smallest glimmer of light from the kitchen window is visible.
I cling to Baby, breathing hard as my arms tremble with guilt. “On a hot July day, Mama went cracked, locked my sisters and me in the tool shed, and lit us up like a Christmas tree.” Tears burn down my cheeks and I rub them away with the sleeve of my sweater. “It wasn’t me that hurt them, Mama. It wasn’t me.” The last words echo off the house and are swallowed by the trees.
But Mama doesn’t answer.
The moon sucks up a deep breath, the shadows getting sharp again as the path glimmers in front of me.
I look at Baby, cuddled up between my breasts. “I never hurt you, did I?”
She looks at me, solemn. Finally, she sighs. “Percy ain’t the only one who has forgotten who he was or what he’s done,” she says. Then she rests her head under my chin and falls fast asleep.
9
The FBI agents gave Franklin several copies of the face they pulled from the photos of the dead girls. It’s not perfect, but for his purpose, it’s good enough. And they didn’t even blink when he said he needed to go home and do some research, that he would call if he found what he was looking for. That they should call if they learned anything new.
He’s doubtful they will bother to keep him in the loop, but the agent who was at t
he hospital, Elliot, seemed frustrated with the specialist on her team.
Franklin frowns. Something about Percival Cox is gnawing at him. Something he can’t quite pin down.
He lays out the last line of salt, carefully connecting each point in the diagram. Stands and inspects his work. The star has four points, each marked with an element—water, air, fire, and metal—with the fifth, earth, in the very center.
He washes his hands in the sink in the corner of the cellar to remove the last traces of salt and ash. Reads through his notes again to make certain he hasn’t missed anything. The four-pointed star has less energy, but it shouldn’t be able to summon anything that isn’t human. If it summons anything at all.
He pulls the elastic off his braids and shakes them loose across his shoulders. It’s not like he hasn’t done this sort of thing before, but never to this extent. Savannah is full of shades, some of them friendly and some not. Even a few that are just creaking floorboards and a drafty window. But chasing a shade out of its hiding spot and sending it on to whatever lies beyond is not nearly as difficult as trying to call one back from the next realm.
Franklin reads his notes again, but nothing has changed. Time to work some magic. He strikes a match and lights the candle on the table. Then uses it to light each of the candles at the points of the star.
A second copy of the photo from the FBI folks sits on the table. He picks it up, lights the corner of it carefully. “Come to me, lost soul. I summon you. Come to me and speak.”
The candle flames stretch up tall and thin, and the salt lines glitter.
Franklin drops the burning photograph onto the baking sheet on the table where he had mixed the ash from the first one with the salt. “Come to me, lost soul. Come to me.”
10
The hole opens near my feet. Barely as big around as I am and deep enough the moonlight can’t seem to find the bottom, it’s more frightening than the passage into the split oak where Daddy lives.
Baby wiggles down out of my arms. “That’s for you.”
Touch: A Trilogy Page 14