“She’s been fixing it up,” Loretta said. “I don’t even think she’s moved in yet. Of course, with Braeden passing last year, that put a damper on her plans. They’d hardly had the keys in hand a few weeks when he died, poor thing.”
“We spoke with her yesterday about it. She mentioned that you were the previous owner.”
“Well, it was more of a rental property. We haven’t actually lived in the house for many years. Aiden had purchased the house as an investment before we were married. We lived there for about a year before we left.” She shook her head a little. “I’m sorry, is there something wrong with the house?”
Aviira pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt not to sneeze. The pungent odor of the lilies was so sickly sweet and overpowering it was almost difficult to breathe it in, not the least because it carried an unpleasant scent memory along with it. She caught Loretta shooting her a glance and tried to smile.
Jirel cleared his throat. “There’s no particularly delicate way to say this, but a few bodies were discovered in the shed out in the yard.”
Aviira watched her for any sign of reaction to that, but Loretta’s face remained very still. She swallowed and said, “Oh my.”
“There was reason to believe they’d been there for some time…possibly since before Elaine purchased the home from you. Naturally, since the house once belonged to someone very important at the Alliance, we wanted to take a closer look and make sure there was nothing amiss there.”
Loretta put a hand to her mouth for a moment and cast her eyes to the dining table in front of her. After a moment, she apparently decided that the news was too much to take, and she sat down. Jirel glanced at Aviira and she shrugged a little.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Loretta said quietly after a moment. She sniffed and looked up at them. “The reason my husband and I sold the house was because—” A pause. She touched her head as if to check to see that none of the hair had come loose. “Aiden had an affair last year. He took care of the rental and I was unaware that it was unoccupied and that he had been using it as a place to meet this woman. I happened to be in the neighborhood and saw his car in the driveway, stopped to see what he was doing, and discovered them.” She cleared her throat. “The whole ordeal was complicated because I do believe that Aiden would never cheat on me.”
Aviira had to bite her tongue.
“I know that’s what every spouse says when they find out about an affair,” Loretta said, making eye contact with Aviira as though she heard the thought that crossed her mind. “But I do believe that. I believe that the woman in question seduced him.”
Jirel tapped his pen on his notepad for a few beats. “I’m sorry, I don’t see—”
“She was a witch, Detective. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
In the Ancient community, the term “witch” was not taken lightly. Innate magic had for the most part disappeared sometime in the Middle Ages, but the dark arts were alive and well, and for the select few who were gifted with its powers, magic of a sort was thriving. The Society had no shortage of cases dealing with witches, because like vampires and other unmentionables, it was imperative to keep their existence under lock and key if they were to keep the humans from turning on them.
Jirel cleared his throat. “How do you know that, Mrs. Dannels?”
“Afterward I cleaned that house from top to bottom. I felt like I had to get the aura of what had happened there out. So I was meticulous. And I found some strange things, Detective. Markings on the insides of drawers in the kitchen. Like…spell markers. Stone arrangements out in the yard. Small little things like that. And I felt…something strange about that shed in the back. I went out there to look for a shovel and just felt like something did not want me in there.”
“That’s what Lieutenant Devaney said,” Aviira said quietly to Jirel. He nodded.
“Now that you’ve mentioned that you found reanimated bodies down there, it makes sense to me. It’s the only explanation for it.”
Aviira turned her face into the crook of her elbow and sneezed even though she’d been trying hard to hold it off.
“Bless you,” Loretta said softly.
“Excuse me,” Aviira said. “How do you know those things weren’t left by a previous tenant?”
“Because I’d cleaned the house after the last tenant had moved out. There was nothing there.”
They were quiet. Finally Jirel glanced at Aviira with an uncertain look.
“Can I ask why you didn’t contact the Society with this information sooner?” he asked as he looked back at Loretta. “You seem to know as well as we do that witchcraft is something we don’t take very lightly.”
She smiled. “You said it yourself earlier, Detective. My husband’s a very important Alliance official. How exactly do I protect his reputation when I bring forth an accusation of witchcraft that stems from infidelity?”
“I don’t suppose you have this woman’s name.”
“Her first name was Hazel, I know that much.”
Jirel nodded slowly. He looked at Aviira again, appearing to be at a loss for what to say next.
“When will your husband be back from his sabbatical?” she asked.
Loretta rolled her eyes. “Oh, could be next week, could be next month. He’s been coy about giving me precise details.”
“Do you know where he is?” Jirel said.
“Of course I do.” She smirked. “The wife of an unfaithful spouse always knows where her husband is.”
Aviira bit her tongue again.
“We’ll have to talk to him. If this woman was a witch and is responsible for the bodies in that shed, we’ll need to track her down. We’ll do our best to keep this quiet.”
“You have no complaints from me, Detective. I suspected nothing but trouble from that woman. I’d bring her down myself if I could.”
Aviira could imagine her doing just that, and she could imagine it wouldn’t be very pretty.
****
After they returned to the crime scene at Elaine Turner’s house to take down a sketch of the symbol they’d seen on the wall in the cellar of the shed, Jirel drove them to one of the older Victorian suburbs downtown. He’d mentioned to Aviira while she sketched the symbol that he had a contact who dealt in hauntings and black magic who could probably give them a little advice before they went witch hunting.
She’d turned a flat glare on him and asked why he hadn’t mentioned it before. He shrugged.
Aviira was certain she was going to be in need of another cup of coffee—or maybe a stiff drink—when Jirel pulled up in front of a violently yellow Victorian house. The trim was lime green. Countless wind chimes and sun catchers and other ornaments hung from the front porch and the walkway was lined with solar lights that looked like frogs and butterflies. A sign in front of the house proclaimed they were at the office of Miss Moira Favereaux, Spirit Consultant and Demonic Cleanser.
“Wow.”
“She’s a little on the eccentric side,” Jirel murmured from the driver’s seat.
That apparently went without saying. She shook her head a little. “What the fuck is a spirit consultant?”
“She does things like exorcisms and sends spirits back to the grave, that sort of weird stuff. My hope is that she’ll know a little bit about whatever it was that you caught on your pictures.”
She shook her head a little. “People actually fall for that shit?”
“Well…most of her customers are humans, if that gives you an idea.”
Aviira had to pause as they walked up the drive to sneeze again. Her sinuses were still irritated even after leaving Loretta’s house. “Goddamn fucking flowers,” she muttered.
“Was it that bad?” Jirel asked. “I didn’t notice.”
“You must be nose-blind then,” she said. “Shit.”
“Allergic?”
“No, I just…” She pinched her nose for a second, tried to throw away the memory that was associated with the smell. “Ugh. Overwh
elming.”
“I should mention,” Jirel said casually as they walked, “sometimes Moira knows things about people that you wouldn’t expect her to know.”
“Like what, my real weight?”
“She’s a seer,” he said, a clear hesitation in his voice. “Sometimes she knows things about me that I’ve never told her.”
Aviira’s arms tightened across her chest. “Great,” she whispered. “How do you know this woman?”
He shrugged. “Just one of those weird contacts you pick up after so many years.” He cleared his throat as they stepped onto the porch, rang the bell.
Aviira did not have any time to come up with something to say before Miss Moira Favereaux opened the door. When she did, Aviira was sure Jirel was kidding when he called her "eccentric." She was something, but Aviira was not sure eccentric was the word. She probably weighed a hundred pounds if she weighed an ounce, but she had a lion's mane of dyed burgundy-purple hair that poofed out a good foot from her head and stuck in every direction. Aviira was pretty sure her hair probably weighed more than she did. She looked like she could have been in her late forties, but there was something ambiguous about her age that was difficult to place. Her bright green eyes were ringed with dark eyeliner and she was covered with more bangles and necklaces than Aviira had ever seen on one person before. She had earrings all the way up both ears and a diamond stud sparkled from the corner of her nose. She wore skinny blue jeans and a loose, gauzy tank top over a white cami below and was barefoot. Perhaps most notably, her white veins came up from her arms all the way up her neck and either side of her face, framing the sides of her eyes. The races that possessed—or had at one time anyway—magical abilities often had veins that were prominent in other places besides the insides of the forearms.
Her eyes fell on Jirel and she gave him a strange smile.
“Hello, you.”
Aviira shot Jirel a glance, immediately got the sense that he’d been a little less than forthright when he’d called her a “weird contact.”
Moira opened the screen and stepped out onto the porch, wrapped Jirel in a hug that indicated they were definitely more than just acquaintances, especially when she kissed his cheek. He hugged her back, but there was tension in the motion.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, holding him at arms’ length. “You haven’t so much as called me in months.”
He swallowed, made a small motion with his head in Aviira’s direction. Moira looked at her for the first time in surprise, eyes growing big.
“My, my, look at this beautiful woman. Who’s this?”
“This is my new partner, Aviira.”
A strange look crossed her face and her eyebrows went up a little. She looked at Aviira, then at Jirel, and back at Aviira.
“Partner,” Moira repeated. “Professional partner?”
“Yes,” Aviira snapped.
A slow smile spread over Moira’s face, like she suddenly knew everything about Aviira that she needed to know. “A fire spirit,” she said. “Couldn’t be contained on the inside and came out all the way through your hair.”
Aviira blinked. “Just bad genetics.”
“Nothing bad about a redhead,” Moira said. “Just ask Jirel, he’s always had a thing for redheads.” Then, before either of them could say anything, she retreated into the house. “Come in, come in.”
Jirel cleared his throat and held the door for Aviira, avoiding her eyes.
“She’s nothing if not polite,” he said softly.
“Oh yeah? Where’s my kiss?”
He held a hand out for her, indicating she should go inside. She had no idea what she would find on the other side of that threshold—wasn’t even sure she wanted to know—but she went through anyway. Jirel followed her inside.
She should have known from the look of the house outside—and Moira herself—that she was in for a visual treat when she walked in, but even that couldn't have prepared her for what greeted her. If Moira was eccentric, the inside of her house was like looking into the mind of someone who dropped acid on a regular basis.
The walls were alternating colors of bright blue and purple, not that you could really see them. The place was like a shrine to eclectic kitsch. In the middle of the sitting room were a coffee table and two couches, and that was as far as anything resembling a home went. There were bookshelves all around the room that were stuffed and overflowing with books, candles, and incense holders. The mantle over the fireplace was so caked with melted wax you could hardly tell there was stone beneath. On every flat surface around the room there were small tokens, dry flowers, animal bones, more candles, stones, and enough twigs to build a bird nest. The hardwood floors creaked under their feet and looked like they were as old as the house.
Moira was waiting for them in the sitting room. “Sit, please,” she said. “Can I bring you something to drink?”
“Please,” Jirel said.
Aviira took a careful look around before she sat down gingerly and took a look at the table next to the couch. A glass bowl filled with multi-colored gemstones took up the most space on the cluttered table. “I'm afraid to touch anything,” she murmured.
He took a seat next to her. “I think she keeps the cursed stuff in the back.”
She stared him down, unable to tell from his tone if he was being serious or actually cracking a joke. After letting it linger for a moment, he raised his eyebrows at her to say that yes, he was kidding.
Moira returned to the room carrying a tray with three mugs of hot coffee and the necessary accoutrements. She set it on the table in front of the two of them and then took a seat on the chair opposite them. Without a word, she passed a tissue box across the table to Aviira a second before she sneezed into the crook of her elbow.
“I hate those goddamn flowers too,” Moira said, and then without pause continued. “You’ll forgive my asking, Jirel, but what happened to Jayne?”
Aviira was still stuck on the mention of the flowers. Jirel didn’t respond, which meant he was used to that kind of thing.
“Jayne met someone else,” Jirel said stiffly as he reached for a mug. “She has looser business ethics than I do about sleeping with coworkers. This was almost six months ago.”
“Well, you haven’t come to see me for almost a year.”
Aviira looked at him. He was regarding Moira with an expression that said he wasn’t fooled. Something about his behavior seemed nervous. There was a thick tension between the two; if she had to guess, their last meeting—whenever that was—had not been pleasant. He shrugged at Moira and twirled that thick silver ring on his finger.
“Been busy, I guess.”
“Too bad,” Moira said softly. Her eyes flitted back to Aviira and she studied her for a long moment. “Let me guess…proto-human bloodline?”
“Mhm,” she replied as she took a sip of coffee. “Nothing very exciting.”
“I always thought those were the most interesting bloodlines. To have existed before the dawn of modern man…those are the strong bloodlines. And they gave way to strong people. All the people I’ve met with proto lines have been fascinating.”
“How could you tell?” Aviira asked.
Moira gave her an odd little smile like she knew something Aviira didn’t. She said, “Your eyes. The proto lines always have the brightest eyes.”
Aviira didn’t know what to say to that. Moira let the silence linger for longer than was necessary before she set her cup down and smiled.
“So. What can I do for you?”
Jirel cleared his throat and looked toward Aviira, nodded at the file folder. “We came across something you might be interested in.”
Aviira opened the folder and handed a picture of the Creepers across the table to Moira, who took it and stared with a strange expression.
The first thing she said was, “This is your first case together?”
Jirel nodded.
“Talk about throwing you both to the wolves. You’ll excuse my langu
age but this is some serious shit.”
Aviira snorted. “Yeah, we had that one figured out already.”
Moira gave her a glance that made her uncomfortable for some reason. She reached for the questionable picture at the bottom of the pile and handed it over.
“Even better,” Moira said. “Did you see this, or did it just show up on the pictures?”
“The latter,” Jirel said. “Though we—” He glanced at Aviira for a second. “Well, not to speak for Aviira, but I felt like there was something in there with us.”
“Ah. Well, that makes sense.”
“What is that? I mean, did we honest to God catch a ghost on film? Is that how that shit works?” Aviira said.
Moira smiled. “No, though all those terrible television shows would like us to believe so. Ghosts aren’t corporeal enough to be caught on film. This is…well, my guess is that this is a shade. More powerful and much more dangerous than a ghost.”
“The geniuses over at our supernatural department said that these Creepers would have to be created by someone using a curse,” Jirel said. “But couldn’t elaborate on why someone might want to do that.”
Moira tapped the picture. “That’s what you make a Creeper for. Shades are physical extractions of the soul that can be controlled by the person who extracted them. If someone has some dirty work to be done, they could do it with a shade. Virtually no evidence.” She glanced down at the other pictures. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that shade was there hanging around to keep people out. Most people become very uncomfortable with one of those around. Get the feeling that they shouldn’t be there.”
Jirel made a face and sighed. Aviira pulled out the last piece of their puzzle, the sketch of the symbol on the wall.
“How about this?”
Moira set it on the table as if she was uncomfortable touching it more than she had to. “My, my. You have stumbled on something quite serious.”
“What is it?” Jirel asked.
“This? This is a calling card. The same as when an artist puts his mark on a painting. Anyone involved in witchcraft has one of these, to mark their work. Their territory, if you will.”
Shadows of Old Ghosts Page 6