by Terri Garey
In my mind, I immediately saw the blue numbers on my clock radio. “Three a.m.,” I said without hesitation. “Exactly.”
“The witching hour,” she murmured, almost to herself.
“Say what?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Three a.m. is known as the witching hour,” she repeated. “The time when evil spirits are the strongest. It’s supposedly the inversion of the time when Christ died on the cross, which is said to be three p.m.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
“Paranormal forum boards, mostly, but you can Google it. People who work in hospitals claim that more people die at three a.m. than any other time of day.”
Great.
“Did the old woman say anything to you?”
“She didn’t say anything.” Another mental roadblock loomed. “She died.”
“She died? But you just said the heart attack was faked.” Her confusion was clear.
“I don’t completely understand what’s going on, Kelly—that’s why I called you.”
“Does Joe know what’s going on?”
I sighed. “Yes and no. I told him about the dream, but he’s convinced that Mary was human because of all the medical stuff—the CAT scans, X-rays, blood work. He doesn’t know anything about Butch seeing the old woman’s ghost in the store’s bathroom mirror.”
The noise she made could only be described as strangled. “The old woman’s ghost in the bathroom mirror?”
“Let me finish,” I said, and did. “So Mary, the old lady, has supposedly died, and now it seems that she’s hanging out here in the store. She spooked Butch pretty badly.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No.” Thankfully. “But she moved the Elizabeth Taylor mannequin, played with the lights, and has generally been trying to annoy the hell out of me while I looked up all this stuff on the Internet.”
A loud bang made me jump, followed by what sounded like clapping. “I’m still ignoring you,” I said loudly, not amused.
“If she died at the hospital, then how can she be one of the Moirae?” Kelly was thinking out loud. “Could an entity become human for the time it took to die?”
Good question, but not one that concerned me at the moment. “Does it matter?”
“No, not really. Definitely supernatural, regardless.” I couldn’t miss the teeny note of envy in her voice. Kelly could see and hear the dead, too—male spirits, while I saw only female ones—but she hadn’t seen one in a long time, despite being fascinated with them, and having a boyfriend who considered himself a paranormal investigator. As far as I knew, she and Spider spent a lot of time looking for ghosts, without actually finding them. Apparently the spirits of Savannah didn’t seem to show themselves very often, or, as I’d begun to suspect, once you actively started looking for them, you lost their attention.
Making myself a mental note to take up ghost hunting as soon as I got a life, I answered Kelly with, “None of that matters. I need you to help me get rid of her.”
“Hmm.” That noise meant she was getting down to business. I heard a rustling, then, “I’m going to put the phone down while I use the computer. Be right back.” Then nothing but the click of keys.
I stared at the Elvis Costello poster on the wall opposite my desk, waiting patiently. You and me, Elvis—the angels wanna wear my red shoes.
Meaning, every time you got happy, the universe wanted a piece of it.
My patience was finally rewarded when Kelly came back to the phone and said, “There’s not much here—old legends and stories, mostly, but I did find an old English charm to ward off the Night Mare, also known as the Old Hag.”
“Let’s try it,” I said, willing to try anything. My last experience with charms had been surprisingly effective. Of course, that had involved turning some Wicca widdershins, but in the end, it had worked.
“Repeat after me,” she said, and I did.
St. George, St. George, our ladies’ knight,
HE WALKED BY DAY, SO DID HE BY NIGHT.
Until such time as he her found
He her beat, and he her bound,
Until her troth she to him plight,
She would not come to him that night.
“Okay then,” I said, feeling incredibly stupid. “I’m sure that fixed everything.”
Surprisingly, the store stayed quiet while we talked a little longer. We finally hung up with promises to be careful and to call each other as we learned more, and I felt a bit better. I’d stood up for myself, and the sky hadn’t fallen. Maybe I could keep it patched up there with duct tape while I figured out what was going on.
I closed up the shop just after five, then headed home; I wanted to be there before it got dark. After making myself a sandwich for dinner and washing it down with a glass of merlot, I tried calling Joe again, but got his voice mail, so I left him another message, hoping he was just busy, not avoiding me.
Five minutes later the phone rang, and I smiled to see it was him, returning my call.
“Hey baby.”
“Hey,” he said, sounding distracted. “Is everything okay? I’m kind of busy.”
Taken aback by his abruptness, I kept it lighthearted. “Everything’s okay. I just hadn’t talked to you all day, that’s all.”
“It’s crazy down here today, Nicki. We’re shorthanded. I probably won’t see daylight until tomorrow afternoon.”
Tamping down a surge of disappointment, I said, “That’s too bad. I was hoping you could come over later.”
“Not tonight, babe, I’m sorry.”
Silence.
Normally I understood completely when his schedule got crazy, but this time, I had to admit, it bothered me. Maybe it was because of last night’s tension, but I felt like I needed to be near Joe to make sure we were good. Besides, I was pretty nervous being here all alone tonight; last night I’d had a ghost in my closet, and today I’d had an old hag in my store.
Who knew what would show up next?
Despite my disappointment, all I said was, “Okay. I guess I’ll see you whenever.”
He picked up on the obvious. “Hey, listen…I didn’t mean to…” Trailing off, he tried another tack. “How was your day today?”
“It was fine,” I lied, not in the mood to share. Since the bad part of my day revolved around a topic that seemed to be a sore point between us, I didn’t see the point. “Everything’s fine. You go back to work and call me when you’re able.”
Another brief silence, broken by the ding of an elevator and the murmur of voices—a hospital never sleeps. “Okay, I will. Love you, babe.”
“Love you, too.”
For just a moment, I stared at the phone in my hand, thinking. He’d initially seemed distant, and I’d gotten my feelings hurt. It was as simple as that.
“You’re overreacting, Styx,” I told myself. “Get a grip.”
Determined to behave normally, I did some laundry and watched a little TV while I put out some Christmas decorations, including the snowman collection I’d been working on since I was twelve. Every year my mom and I would pick out a new one, and my favorite was the last snowman we’d bought together, hand-painted porcelain from a craft fair.
Mom always loved craft fairs.
I found myself avoiding the mirror when I went in to wash my face and brush my teeth, and I seriously considered leaving the lights on while I slept. The dark didn’t seem to be my friend these days. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do any more than settle myself on the couch with a blanket, a pillow, and an old black-and-white Christmas movie on TV, knowing I’d fall asleep eventually.
Jimmy Stewart was busy having a wonderful life, but mine wasn’t going so hot at the moment.
CHAPTER 9
A long pointy nose, coal black eyes, and a leering grin…those were the first things I saw when I opened my eyes the next morning.
I struck out blindly. The snowman on the coffee table went flying across the room, bounced off a chair, and hit the
floor with a loud crack.
“Dammit!” I’d already slid halfway off the couch and couldn’t stop myself as I hit the floor, landing hard on a hip and an elbow, the comforter tangled around my lower half. I lay there, feeling stupid and dazed. A snowman…I’d been freaked out by a porcelain snowman. “Way to go, Styx,” I muttered.
Talking to myself didn’t help, except to wake me up a little. What I really needed was coffee and a shower, so after a second or two, I got up to get them both, wincing at the pain in my hip.
I checked on poor Frosty first. His top hat was chipped and his broom was broken—a day that started like this was bound to be bad news.
Strangely enough, when the phone rang at eight-thirty, it was good news.
“Ms. Styx? This is Detective Irwin, Fayetteville Sheriff’s Department. I’m calling to let you know your car has been found.” Fayetteville was about thirty minutes south of Atlanta. “No damage that we can see, and we got the kid who was driving it.”
“It was stolen by a kid?”
“Teenage boy, fourteen. I assume you’ll be pressing charges?”
The “bad news” feeling came back. “Um…what’s his name?”
A rustle of papers, then the detective said. “Joshua Rayburn. A runaway from Atlanta. His dad reported him missing yesterday morning.”
Great. Angie Rayburn’s kid had stolen my car. What were the odds of that?
I had a sudden flashback to the time I’d died, and how I’d known, if only for a little while, that everything in the universe was connected, an infinite spiderweb of chances and possibilities. A zig here, a zag there, but you still ended up in the same place. No point in worrying over coincidences, flukes, or twists of fate; life was what it was, and it was how you dealt with it that mattered.
With a sigh, I gave in. I’d obviously been dragged into Angie Rayburn’s life—and death—for a reason, and whatever it was, avoiding it wouldn’t help. “Would it be possible for me to talk to him?”
“That’s up to his father, ma’am. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste my time—this kid’s obviously heading down a bad road.”
You’re not me. “I know the family. Josh just lost his mother; he’s going through a tough time.” I don’t know why I cared what he thought about Josh Rayburn—I didn’t even know the kid—but it seemed important not to lump him in with a bunch of juvenile delinquents.
His mom couldn’t stick up for him anymore, but I could.
“Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind not to press charges,” he said shortly. “We’ll cut him loose, but take my number, just in case, and you’ll have to come down to the station to claim your car. It’s up to you, but you’d probably be doing the kid a favor by teaching him a lesson now, while he’s got a chance at learning it. I’ve seen too many kids end up in jail because they got off with a hand slap instead of being held accountable for their actions.”
“I’m sure you have, Officer.” Sadly, I knew what the detective was saying was true, but I didn’t think pressing charges was the way to help Josh.
Helping Josh was bound to be a lot more complicated, and I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Somehow, I figured the universe would show me the way.
Getting to the Fayetteville Sheriff’s Department to pick up my car meant I would need a ride. I couldn’t drive the rental car, because then I’d have no way to get it back to Atlanta. I couldn’t call Joe, because he’d be either working or sleeping, and either way couldn’t help.
I called Evan.
“You’re in luck,” he said, sounding much more chipper this morning than he had the day before. “Butch spent the night. He can drop you on his way home.”
Butch lived in PeachtreeCity, which was in the same general area as Fayetteville.
I was almost afraid to ask, but I did anyway. “Are you going to be okay at the store by yourself while I’m gone?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, without any hesitation. “If you can be there alone, I can be there alone.”
An unexpected lump rose in my throat. I wasn’t used to Evan being brave, but I’d take as much bravery as I could get these days.
“Listen to you,” I teased, to get past the lump. “I’ll have to start calling you Rambo.”
“Right,” he retorted, “like I’d be caught dead wearing camo pants.”
A half hour later, Butch pulled into the driveway and honked his horn. I grabbed my purse, locked up, and slid into his front seat. There wasn’t a lot of conversation beyond the initial pleasantries—I was tired and Butch was subdued. We stopped for lattes before hitting the road, which helped. Still, everything was fine until we got near Fayetteville, and Butch brought up what happened at the store the day before.
“I have to ask you something,” he said.
Conversations that started out with “I have to ask you something” were rarely good, but I just smiled bravely and said, “Ask away.”
“It was real, what I saw yesterday, wasn’t it?”
“I honestly don’t know, Butch. I wasn’t there.”
He shot me a “shame on you” glance. “C’mon, spooky chick. Even if you saw what I saw, you weren’t about to admit it in front of Evan. But since Evan’s not here…”
I sighed, not willing to BS my best friend’s boyfriend, particularly when he could smell BS a mile away. “I didn’t see anything, I swear, but there’s some stuff going on I can’t really explain.”
Didn’t want to, either.
Butch wasn’t going to let it go. “Like what?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about the moving mannequin or the rapping noises at the store, and trying to explain about the triple Trio of Trouble was just out of the question. How much could I really expect somebody normal to believe?
“There are things out there other than ghosts, Butch, and I think…” How to put this? “…I think some of them are out to cause me as much trouble as they possibly can.”
He was quiet at that, frowning.
“There’s the Fayetteville exit,” I pointed out, and we pulled off the highway, following the map to the sheriff’s office I’d printed off the Internet.
“Do I need to be worried about Evan?” he asked, after making the final turn onto
Johnson Avenue
.
I wished I had a definitive answer for him, but I didn’t. “No more so than usual, I guess.”
He didn’t seem to like that answer.
We pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office, and Butch slid his car into a visitor’s spot. He put it in park, then shifted on the seat to give me his full attention. “You really didn’t see what I saw, did you?”
The serious look on his face was making me nervous. “No. Why?”
“I didn’t tell Evan, but that old woman in the mirror…” He looked away, swallowed. “She had blood all over her face.”
I felt a chill. Bloody Mary, indeed.
Their bag of dirty tricks just got deeper and deeper.
“No wonder you were freaked out,” I said faintly, unsure of what else to say. “Why didn’t you just grab Evan and get the hell out of there?”
“I probably should have.” He scrubbed a hand over his bald head, a sure sign he was thinking hard, then took a deep breath. “But if I had”—he looked at me steadily—“he’d probably never go back. He loves that store, and he loves you, and I don’t want to come between him and what he loves.”
My throat tightened, and I found myself wanting to cry. What a great guy Butchie was. Evan was lucky to have him.
“I also don’t want him running scared, jumping at shadows the rest of his life. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a bouncer, it’s that you can never let a bully get the upper hand.”
“A bully?” That was an interesting way of looking at such a scary experience.
“Absolutely,” Butch said, nodding. “That old lady obviously wanted to scare the crap out of me—and she succeeded—because she knew there was nothing I could do about
it. I mean, even if she was real, what was I going to do, hit an old woman?”
I smiled a little at that. Even though he was a bouncer, Butch was a lover, not a fighter.
“Evan and I have talked about this before,” he said. “You know…the whole ‘my best friend sees ghosts and what can I do about it’ thing. The way I look at it, he has two choices. He can break things off with you”—he raised a hand before I could protest—“or he can toughen up a little, and face these things head-on, just like you do.”
“So that’s why he was so brave today,” I said. “He even gave me a lecture a couple of days ago—said I needed to learn how to say no to the spirits more often. Told me I needed to toughen up.”
Butchie smiled. “That’s my boy,” he said. His smile faded. “But I have to tell you, Nicki…if I start to feel like he’s in any real danger, I’m going to change my mind and start pushing for option number one. You got me?”
I had two choices myself: I could get pissed at Butch for threatening to pull Evan away, or I could respect the man for trying to protect my best friend.
Even if it was from me.
“I understand.” Forcing myself to move, I unhooked my seat belt and opened the car door, ready to get out. “I love him, too, you know.”
“I know.” He reached out and grabbed my hand before I got out. “I wish I…I wish we could do more to help you, Nicki. It must be tough to have to deal with shit like this all the time.”
I met his eyes, big, brown, and full of sympathy, then leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You’ve already helped me more than you know, Butch.”
And he had, reminding me that love and loyalty were more important than fear, and that bullies came in all shapes and sizes: young, old, and—unfortunately for me—brunette, sexy, and disgustingly gorgeous.
CHAPTER 10
The inside of the Fayetteville Sheriff’s Department was pretty much what I expected it to be: gray walls covered with antidrug and anticrime posters, uncomfortable-looking chairs, nondescript carpet. The officer behind the desk took my name and asked me to have a seat in the empty lobby. It took a while, but eventually the paperwork was processed, my ID confirmed, and the car key I’d left at Ernie’s garage handed over with instructions on where to find my car in the department’s rear parking lot.