All in Bad Time

by Yvonne Montgomery

  "Noreen?" she whispered.

  Max knelt beside her. "A bruised shoulder. Kerry took her off to Rose for treatment. And you?"

  Eve was aware of a nagging irritation, an unpleasantness tightening her shoulders. She turned her head to see what could be causing it. Her hand crept up her side to clutch her amulet. Three feet away was a book. She could see the title on the spine. The Punishment of the Disbeliever.

  "Help me up. Please."

  Max took hold of her hand and elbow gingerly and eased her into a sitting position. The he brought her to her feet and seated her in a chair. "There, is that better?"

  Eve summoned him closer with a wave of her hand. "Get me out of here now," she whispered. "Hurry."

  Without a blink of surprise, Max pulled her up and steered her out the door.

  As they reached the hallway, Eve realized how cold the library had been. "Stop, please." She closed the door carefully behind them and said, "Let's go to the living room to talk."

  "Very well." He held her hand loosely and led her down the picture gallery hallway. "Was there a spirit in there you wanted to get away from?"

  Eve was beginning to notice how depleted her energy was. "Slow down, will you?"

  Max stopped and peered into her face. "I'm sorry. You must be exhausted." He put her arm on his and supported her the last distance into the living room. Once she was seated and he'd given her a glass of water, he sat down across from her. "Can you tell me now?"

  Eve swallowed the cold water gratefully. "Tell you what?"

  "What happened in there?" He got up from the ottoman and fetched two glasses for them. Once they were filled with brandy, he sat back down and presented one to her. "You must tell me before the details get fuzzy. Something unusual was happening, that I could tell."

  "Seeing me spread-eagled on the table had to be a pretty good clue." Eve knocked back a swallow of brandy.

  "Indeed." He clicked his fingers nervously. "Tell me."

  Eve described Noreen's sudden entrance into the library and her subsequent collapse. "She called my name and then fell to the floor. I started toward her but something stopped me. It felt like ice on my back and I couldn't move. You came in and I was grabbed after you'd left to check on Noreen. I got it to let go of me, and I ended up on the floor and saw that filthy book I found in my office the day I fell into the secret room."

  Max considered her with a frown. "You got it to let go? What do you mean by that?"

  Eve closed her eyes and rolled her head, trying to loosen the muscles in her neck. Then she stopped and met his gaze. "I took charge of the situation. Deep breathing and then I just imagined the fingers of the hand on my arm letting go of me. And they did."

  Max sat back in amazement, having to save himself from tumbling onto the floor since he was perched on the ottoman.

  Eve's lips twisted in a smile.

  "I hardly know which question to ask first." He stared at her. "Is this the kind of thing you've always been able to do?"

  Eve shook her head. "Something happened to me when I was stuck in that secret room. A creature with red eyes and an unfriendly attitude was heading toward me. I was scared out of my mind and I started yelling at it, screaming and swearing. Casting it to hell. And it worked. The eyes faded, it moved away from me, and then all I had to do was wait for you guys to pull me up."

  Max cocked his head, clearly unconvinced. "Don't forget the snakes."

  She shrugged. "Can't do everything at once. This time I caught hold of the owl claw. It made me stronger," Eve added. "Anyway, I realized the thing holding onto me was after the packet." She froze, her eyes opening wide, her breath wheezing inward. "Oh, God," she gasped, "I left it there, and the claw, too. On the table."

  Max slid his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the packet. "It didn't feel right to just leave them sitting there." He took out the owl claw and handed it to her.

  Eve let out a shriek and threw her arms around him, holding tightly to the claw, upsetting the glass of brandy onto the rug.

  "So this is what you get up to when I'm not around to keep an eye on you." Kerry sauntered in from the kitchen doorway with a giant economy bag of potato chips and stopped beside Max, patting him on the cheek. "It's a good thing I'm not the jealous type or you both would be toast."

  Eve eyed the chips. "I'll trade him for some of those."

  Kerry laughed and sat down beside her. "Deal. Don't look so grumpy," she told him. "These are really fine potato chips." She took one and bit into it with gusto. "So how's your day been?"

  Max leaned forward and kissed her on the nose. "You'll hear all about it this evening. I think we've had a breakthrough."

  Kerry glanced at the brandy glasses, full and spilled. "So you're celebrating? That's fabulous!" She caught sight of the owl claw in Eve's hand. "Did you figure out what the map's all about? Will it help us defeat the bad guys?"

  "I don't know yet." Eve looked down at the brandy stain on the rug. "I guess I'd better do something about cleaning that up." She took the cloth from the floor and rewrapped the claw, returning it to the packet. "I may have figured out some things about it, but mainly we're celebrating surviving another encounter with weirdness."

  Kerry turned to Max. "You're okay. Right?"

  Max slid an arm around her. "Yes. And we may have discovered a superpower in our friend here. All told, I think it's been a good morning."

  Kerry shot him a surprised expression. "You mean morning and afternoon. I came hunting for you because Rose wants to have cocktails in about a half hour."

  "What time is it?" Eve asked.

  "Getting on toward six. Geez, did you guys lose time, or what?"

  "Maybe so," Max said blankly. "Which is another strange thing we've had to deal with. Now I wonder how much that has to do with our haunting encounters."

  "We'll need drinks for that discussion." Kerry got to her feet and handed the potato chip bag to Eve with a flourish. "I suggest you go splash some water in your face and lie down for a few minutes. Sounds like we'll have a post mortem tonight."

  Eve felt a spasm of rage inside her, but it wasn't her own. Somewhere their enemy was suffering a great deal of pain. His next step would be to reciprocate. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," she said quietly and dug into the bag of chips.

  Time Out of Time

  "Sir, your hand. Are you all right?" Simms shut his mouth as if realizing what he'd done and stepped back from his employer. "I beg your pardon, sir. My words were spoken in haste."

  Severn was in too much pain to appreciate the quandary in which his butler found himself. It was all he could do to continue walking toward his study. The corridor around him was blurry, the furniture outsized and deformed. As Severn arrived at the door, he paused and Simms reached around him to open it. When Severn looked at the butler he paled and his hand fell from the knob. Simms turned and lurched back down the hallway, touching the wall several times to steady himself.

  Severn's shoulder hit against the door as he entered the room. He shoved it closed behind him and reached the desk just as his legs lost their strength. Falling into the chair, he all but curled his body around his core in an effort to protect himself from the pain. He reached blindly for the bottle kept on the shelf behind him. Pulling the cork from it with his teeth, he tilted the bottle against his lips and drank, choked and drank again.

  In all he studied, all he'd sought in the moldering books stored in the cellar workshop, he had never come across as direct a cross-spell as the one she'd used on him this day.

  He forced himself to look at his hand. His stomach churned at the sight. His fingers were swollen to twice their size and they lay just above the back of his hand like dead creatures floating in the sewer gases of hell.

  How did she do it? How did she take my strength and turn it against me?

  What magic did she have? What would he have to do to kill her? He'd gleaned nothing from the book. Punishment of the Disbeliever indeed. It was dead, its power stilled. It had bee
n useless, nothing more than an elaborate parlour trick.

  A tear burned down his cheek and fell onto a half-open sheet of paper. It sizzled as it burned through and he could not stop the other tears from falling.

  Chapter 23

  They cleared off the dining room table after dinner and brought in what they had to share from their research. The air was scented with cinnamon and cloves, and the flames of the candles in the multilevel pottery centerpiece shifted in the air, creating a heartbeat rhythm of motion, as if the room itself breathed.

  As Aura Lee carried in a package, placing it on top of the sideboard, the clock chimed eleven.

  Rose frowned. "What time is it? What's that?"

  Aura Lee wiped her hands on a napkin. "That dreadful book about punishment. We need to check it out thoroughly. And it's a little after eight."

  Eve looked at the bundle. "We can't have that book in here. There's something very wrong with it. Put it in the kitchen. Or outside."

  Eve spread the map out flat on the table. On it was a flat rendition of Wisdom Court. The old farmhouse and two associate houses were sketched with enough detail to be easily identified. The fountain was in the middle of the courtyard and fine drawings of trees and bushes were included, as were the wrought-iron fence along the north side of the property and the hedge along the south. Baseline Avenue was labeled, along with its offshoot up the mountain, Flagstaff Road.

  Rose leaned over her shoulder to take a closer look. "What are all the little marks along the boundaries? They almost look like crosses."

  Elizabeth carried in a tray full of coffee cups, pausing to see what she was talking about. "Do not tell me this place is some kind of a graveyard. My heart won't take it."

  "I don't think it is." Eve pushed down the right upper corner and set a saltshaker on it to keep it flat. "There's a key in the square at the bottom." She pointed at the left corner. "It labels them as 'holders,' whatever that means." She touched each one as she counted. "Twelve. Three on each side." She leaned closer to the paper. "Do you have a magnifying glass?" she asked Rose. "I've been looking at these things till my eyes cross and I swear there's something printed on them. I can't make out the letters. They're probably nothing, but..."

  "But you want to know. I think there's one in the library." Rose wandered off to look. Brenna followed her but was back in the dining room almost immediately, heading for the kitchen. Kerry came in clutching several notebooks to her chest, Max close behind her with his old leather briefcase. They carried in the scent of leaves and fresh air, both of them windblown and pink-cheeked. Max was pushing his hair out of his eyes. "What's a holder?"

  "I'm not sure." Eve glanced up when she heard Brenna whisper, "Stop it!" from the kitchen entrance. Dink followed her, pretending to steal the pie she carried. "What kind of pie is that?"

  "Pumpkin." His hand hovered near the plate, drawing a warning shake of the head from Brenna. "My favorite."

  "Then it's a good thing I made four of them." Pleased, Aura Lee favored him with a smile. "You could bring in the bowl of whipped cream next."

  "Without sampling it along the way." Brenna shot him a frowning glance and Dink focused on her face, his eyes wrinkling with concern.

  Dolores elbowed Andrea and patted her hand against her chest. "He's a goner," she whispered. "Where's Neal?"

  "I don't know." Andrea reached into the canvas bag she'd brought, putting a couple of sketchpads on the table and then fishing out a box of pencils. "He said he might be a little late." She took a quick look over her shoulder at the windows, wincing as lightning flashed in their frames.

  Muffled thunder soon followed and Andrea grimaced. "I hope we don't get any real rain. Those tunnels are fragile enough as it is."

  Rose came back from the library and Brenna set down the pie she was carrying to approach her. "I need to talk to you about something."

  "In a moment. I'm still looking for that magnifying glass." She pulled open one of the drawers in the sideboard and pawed through the detritus inside. Brenna turned with an impatient toss of her head. Her short dark hair lifted in a current of air, touched at the tips by candlelight.

  Noreen set a pile of books at her place and headed toward the kitchen. She scooped up the pile of forks from the counter and grabbed a stack of napkins as well, carrying them into the dining room. "Are we about ready to begin?"

  "As soon as Neal shows up." Andrea crossed to a window and peered out into the evening. "I hope he didn't run into any problems."

  Elizabeth came to her side and looked out at the wind assaulting the trees and vines. "Honey, he probably had some work to do. It's not like life stops altogether just because we've got a bunch of ghosts actin' up around here." Lightning cracked again.

  Andrea shivered. "I got spooked, roaming around the tunnels this morning."

  Rose patted Andrea's shoulder as she walked past her. "I'm sure he's fine. He's been trying to get a backhoe over here from one of his construction sites. He said it was going to take some doing." She set a magnifying glass beside Eve and moved on toward the kitchen. "Did anyone make coffee?"

  "I did." Kerry was stacking papers into four different piles, squaring the corners. "That's the only way I'll make it through the night."

  "Thanks. I'll get the plates. Maybe Neal will arrive by the time we get our pie and coffee."

  Every light on the lower floor went out. Gray remnants of daylight spread over the windows, leaving the candles to transform the table into a flickering island of intrigue. Shadows pushed in from the room's corners, ready to take over.

  "What's up with that?" Kerry got out of her chair just as booming thunder rattled the windowpanes. "Oof! I do not like lightning." She scuttled to the window, dodging Aura Lee, who was gathering more candles from the sideboard, and looked out at the agitated branches hurling their leaves at the wind. "It's getting nasty out there." Peering more closely at the storm, Kerry hissed, "God, what was that?"

  Dolores darted to the casement and stared outside. "What? What did you see?"

  "Did you see a ghost?" asked Aura Lee, crowding against Kerry to see outside.

  "Why would any self-respecting ghost be outside in a storm?" Noreen asked gruffly, though she headed over to join them. "There's no reason to be haunting out there."

  Rose put the plates on the table, easing around the chairs to come up behind Kerry. "What did you see?"

  "It looked like someone moving along the edges of the fountain." Kerry leaned her forehead against the cold glass. "It reminded me a little of the storm we went through up on the mountain, when we went up with Neal to rescue Andrea."

  "Kerry!" Dolores viewed her with horror. Noreen's dismay was obvious, and Rose's hand crept up to find her amulet.

  Turning, Kerry saw their upset. "I'm sorry. I don't mean I saw shadows walking on the courtyard bricks, or anything like that. It just had a... sidling motion; it looked distorted, moving oddly, not like the way people really move."

  Dink stood stiffly beside the table, a cup in hand. "You're freaking me out, lady." He shot a glance at Brenna. "It could be Neal, right?"

  Kerry laughed a little in surprise. "You're right. Of course, it's Neal checking things out near the fountain. You even said that's what he'd be doing." She ruffled her hair and produced a smile. "Geez, my bad, you guys. I guess I've just got a wicked case of the creepy-crawlies."

  Andrea's pocket made a buzzing sound and she groped in it for her cell phone. She squinted down at it for a moment. "It's a text from Neal. He's stuck in a line of cars near Broadway. A lightning hit took out the signal lights and the cars are doing the four-way-stop shuffle. He'll be here in a half hour or so."

  Everyone seemed to freeze for a moment as that sank in.

  Dink let out a breath. "Okay, back to wondering what you saw out there, Kerry."

  "Swell."

  "Oh." Eve's voice was threaded with fear. "What can this... oh..."

  "By the Goddess," Aura Lee exclaimed. "I'm beginning to suffer from the creepy-cr
awlies myself. What is it now?"

  Eve had put a candle near the map and was peering down at it through the magnifying glass. The wavering light lent her an ethereal glow, and her blonde hair and pale complexion combined with it to create an almost angelic effect.

  She looked up from the map, and they could see the fear and confusion on her face. "It's on the map. You know those holders I mentioned."

  "What about 'em?" Elizabeth asked. Carefully she sat down at the table, waiting.

  "Your hand's shaking." Dolores came to her side, patted her arm. "Take a breath, jita."

  "Okay, okay. I'm just really scared now." Eve inhaled, coughing a little. "Rose, our names are on those little cross things. The 'holders' is what the key says they're called." She shook her head. "I guess I already told you that."

  Rose sat down in the chair on Eve's other side. She took her hand in hers and held it tightly. "What do you mean, our names are on them?"

  "All twelve of us," Eve said numbly. "Starting at the top left corner is you. You can see it on the vertical line of it if you use the magnifying glass. Look." She picked up the glass with her other hand.

  Rose let go of her and held the glass near the paper. She moved it up and down a few times to get the clearest image. "It is my name. Rose." She dropped the glass on the map. "Who else?"

  "All of us." Eve touched the second mark. "Elizabeth. The third is Dolores. Andrea is the first on the side, going down." Her finger moved down the right edge of the map. "Neal is next. Aura Lee. Across the bottom, going left is Kerry, then Max. Lucas is next—"

  "It says Lucas?" Brenna asked in surprise. "His real name?"

  Eve nodded, frowning in thought. "You call him Dink."

  "It's my stupid nickname." Dink tanned cheeks reddened in embarrassment. "How many of you even know my real name?"

  Rose raised her hand with a wan smile.

  Kerry jumped to her feet in a surge of anger. "So how the hell and who the hell and what the hell?"

  "Have you run out of hells, luv?" Max tugged her down onto her chair and put his arm around her. "Keep going, Eve."