Lucifer held up her hand, interrupting and said, “Trish, this man’s daughter and my . . . er, her boyfriend are going to die unless you come with us.”
“Is that true?” she asked Buck.
Buck gave Lucifer a pained expression that broke her heart before turning to Trish and saying, “Yes.” He waved to the back of his cruiser. “Let’s go, ma’am. Now.”
“Wait a second. I can’t just leave. And I have no idea who your daughter is.”
“Please,” Buck said again, letting a hint of anger into his voice.
Lucifer helped Trish into the back and sat beside her.
“Will someone please tell me just what is going on here?” Trish asked.
Lucifer ignored her and said, “Head to the clinic on Elm and Braxton.” She then pulled out the EMT manual and a highlighter from her trick bag.
“The clinic,” Trish said. “It’s closed. Seriously, what is happening?”
“I’m going to need to know what’s going on, too, Lucifer. And I want you to tell me what happened at Graeae Towers. The report said it looked like a bomb went off on one of the upper floors.”
“Somebody’s pet got loose. And there are things we need to get from the clinic. When we’re done there, we need to hit a gas station and buy every bag of ice they have. Seriously, Buck! Sirens! Lights!” Lucifer shouted as she smacked the back of the seat. She knew her own panic was only going to frighten Buck even more, but she didn’t care. She had to hurry. Not only was the moon rising, but her courage was fading fast.
Buck flipped on his lights and siren and stepped on the gas, his tires barking as they struggled for traction on the road.
“Officer,” Trish said, “What’s wrong with your daughter and her boyfriend? Are they sick? I want to help, I do, and I have some training as an emergency medical technician, but I’m not a doctor.”
Buck peered in the rearview mirror to look at Lucifer. The man’s eyes were wide, bloodshot, with thick black bags underneath. “You said Gina and her boyfriend, Lucifer. What happened to David?”
“He’s in the Shade now, too.” Thinking about it made Lucifer’s heart ache, and she didn’t want to discuss it. Thankfully, Buck didn’t either. “Here,” Lucifer said, handing the manual to Trish. “Do you have these things?”
Trish hesitated before taking the manual and looking at what Lucifer had highlighted. “Someone you know have hypothermia?”
Lucifer started a quick web search on her phone. “Do you have them or not?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What about these?” Lucifer asked as she handed Trish her phone.
Trish looked at the screen and said, “Those are some heavy-duty meds, but yeah, we’ve got that, too.”
“Good. Then there’s a chance.”
“A chance to what—”
Buck skidded to a halt in front of the clinic. All three were out of the car and heading toward the clinic door when Trish said, “You know I don’t have my keys to this place, right?”
Lucifer looked back at Trish. Less than six seconds later she had the alarm disabled and the door open without ever taking her eyes off the girl.
“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” Trish said.
Buck gently nudged Trish inside the door. “Roll with it,” he said.
Inside, Lucifer asked Trish, “How long to get all this stuff together?”
“I don’t know, five, ten minutes?”
“Lucifer,” Buck said. “You told me you had the book and you know how to save Gina. What are we doing here?”
“There are things here we need if I’m going to be able to come back.”
Trish held up the EMT manual and said, “Things like a defibrillator? A heat blanket? Look, I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to get in bad with the police. But I would really like to know what you all are talking about. How is this stuff going to help you get back from anywhere? Just exactly what are you going to do?”
Lucifer fixed her with a hard stare.
“I’m going to kill myself.”
CHAPTER 26
The headlights of Buck’s cruiser struggled to illuminate the dark and dilapidated walls of the Worcester House. The building sagged and wilted as if they were melting from the heat of the halogen beams.
“What are we waiting for?” Lucifer asked.
“This,” Buck said, and he flipped on his flashing lights. As the blue and red lights flickered across the house, teenagers began pouring from the doors and windows, all in a mad rush to escape arrest. When no more came out, Buck looked back and said, “Clear.”
Lucifer and Trish got out of the backseat. Lucifer said, “Thanks for doing this, Trish.”
“Don’t thank me,” Trish said. “I’m only doing this because your friend there threatened to arrest me if I didn’t. But if this goes wrong, this will be on you and him, not me. I won’t be held accountable if you die.”
“Dying is the point. You’re just here to make sure I don’t stay dead.”
It took twenty minutes for Lucifer to convince Buck that this was the only way to save Gina and almost another hour for him to convince Trish to help them. If Lucifer wanted to go to the Shade, she was going to have to die. It was the only way to do it without becoming a serial killer. But if Lucifer had to die, she wanted to be able to come back to life. For that, she needed Trish. And, expectedly, Trish wanted nothing to do with them after hearing all the talk of magic and dimensions and dying. It wasn’t until Buck threatened to throw her in jail that Trish finally agreed to help.
Lucifer looked up at the full moon, swollen and blinding against the black sky. It would reach its zenith in a couple of hours. Gina and David didn’t have much time. David . . .
She shook her head trying to force the thought of him away. It was distracting enough imagining him holding her in his arms, but the thought of David at the mercy of a witch was too much to bear. If she wanted to help him, she couldn’t be distracted. She needed to focus.
Buck opened the trunk of his cruiser and pulled out an armful of equipment. The rest of the trunk was filled with bags of ice. Lucifer pulled a flashlight from her trick bag and said, “Follow me.”
The chaotic mess of the house was even more eerie in the dark. Lucifer couldn’t imagine why anyone would willingly want to spend time here. Lucifer pointed to a small, claw-foot bathtub amid the cluster of furniture attached to the ceiling. “Buck, I’m going to need that tub.”
The massive cop reached up with his free hand and tore the tub loose as easily as plucking an apple from a tree. Large chunks of the ceiling came down with the tub, and three of the four legs on a tattered lounge chair came loose, leaving the chair to swing like a mildewed pendulum.
Lucifer bounded up the creaky stairs, taking two at a time. At the top of the stairs, she kicked over several half-empty beer cans that the fleeing teenagers left behind in their hurry to get away from Buck’s flashing lights. A single cigarette smoldered on top of an ashtray made from an old hubcap. “In here,” she said.
The room was the same as when she had come here with David. Just as before, the squalor of the house didn’t find its way past the doorway and into the room. The vanity mirror sat in the middle of the room, reflecting the moonlight shining through the perfectly whole windows.
Lucifer handed the flashlight to Trish. She then started pulling candles from her trick bag and placing them strategically around the room. Buck came in, dragging the bathtub behind him. The tub’s claw feet left two long, jagged scars in the wooden floor.
“At least this room doesn’t look like a snot pit,” Buck said.
“That’s only because of the magic,” Lucifer said. “Now fill the tub with all the ice.” Lucifer grabbed a small crowbar from her trick bag and walked to the corner of the room. “Trish, shine the light over here. I want to show you something.”
Lucifer wedged the small crowbar into the space between the wall and the floor and yanked. One of the narrow floorboards came up, expos
ing the underfloor six inches beneath it. Clearly visible were the unmistakable markings of intricate gouges in the wood.
“What is that?” Trish asked.
“It’s part of a symbol called the Sister’s Wheel. If you pulled up all the floorboards you’d see that it’s been carved underneath the entire floor. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that the first time I was here.”
“Wait. So you’re trying to tell me all this stuff about witches and whatnot is for real? Like, for real real?” Trish’s voice was thick with skepticism.
Lucifer stood and took the flashlight from Trish. She aimed the beam of light at the bathtub and said, “Notice anything?”
“It’s the bathtub,” Trish said.
“Buck dragged it into the room.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Look behind it. The scratches on the floor are gone.”
Trish stepped closer to the tub to get a better look. She squinted, then took the flashlight from Lucifer’s hand and knelt down. As Trish was feeling the smooth floor, Buck came in with several bags of ice.
“Not only does the Sister’s Wheel open a pathway to the Shade, it has a mending element to it as well. That’s why the scratches disappeared and why the windows are still intact.” Lucifer placed the rest of the candles around the room. However, their warm glow did little to counteract the cold, harsh moonlight coming in through the window.
“When the Sisters of Witchdown crafted the symbol,” Lucifer said, “they wanted to use it to preserve their bodies and anchor their spirits in the world of the living. That way they could return from the Shade. But, lucky for us, they were destroyed before they could use it.” Lucifer lit the last candle then patted her trick bag. “Unlucky for us, though, they created this book and figured out a way to use it to bring filcher demons into our world. Once someone’s possessed by a filcher demon, the witches can command them to do anything they want.”
“Like carve that thing under the floor?” Buck asked.
“Exactly. They just needed to wait until the book fell into the right hands. Which, from the condition of that book, I’d say was a pretty long time. But then Mr. Sinkowicz got greedy and started the ball rolling.”
Buck tore the plastic bags open and dumped the ice in the tub. “But why?” he asked. “Why kidnap anyone? Can’t they just come through?”
Lucifer walked over to the tub and started undressing. “Because their bodies have turned to dust by now. If their spirits come to the living world, they’d be trapped here as ghosts with little or no power at all. They created Witchdown to keep their power intact and their spirits safe in the Shade, but what they want more than anything is to come back to the world of the living. In order to do that, they need a body. A living body.”
“They want to possess her like one of those demons.” Buck gripped the edge of the tub with a thick hand, his knuckles turning white as he squeezed.
“No,” Lucifer said as she slipped out of her jeans. “Possession means there are two people in one body. That’s not what they want. They want to sacrifice Gina’s spirit, her soul, and then take over her body. Then they send the body back to our world, only it will no longer be Gina inside. It will be one of the Sisters. And with a Sister of Witchdown alive again, it’ll only be a matter of time before she’s able to get the rest of her Sisters back here as well.” Lucifer reached out and grabbed his hand. “But I’m not going to let that happen.”
Buck grabbed her hand and squeezed back, giving her a short nod. Lucifer could tell that he was barely hanging on. She knew the only reason he was even willing to entertain this crazy plan was because he was so desperate to get Gina back. That and because he hadn’t slept in days and wasn’t thinking very clearly.
The big man looked at Trish. “You know what you’re doing? You know how to do this?”
Trish shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I’ve never killed anyone before if that’s what you’re asking. But yes, technically, I know how to do it. I’ve had plenty of training in CPR and I know how the meds work. But Lucifer, your brain can’t go very long without oxygen. More than a few minutes and, even if I can bring you back, you’ll have serious brain damage.”
“That’s what the ice is for,” Lucifer said. “It should slow down my body functions enough so I can stay longer without that happening. Like when someone gets trapped under ice for a long time and they’re still able to be brought back.”
“I understand that, but your body temp needs to be brought down in a very deliberate way for that to work. Ice is just too variable.”
“Ice is all we’ve got. I don’t know what I’m going to find there and I’ll need all the time you can give me. Five minutes, at least.”
“Five minutes?” Trish said. She looked at Buck, but when he only returned a puffy-eyed stare, she threw up her hands in resignation.
What little Lucifer knew about the Shade came from texts that relied on speculation. Few people who traveled there ever returned. She knew the Shade was a ghostly image of the living world and that it served as a way station of sorts for the dead passing through on their way to whatever afterlife awaited them, but some of those spirits got lost along the way. Others chose to stay. Beyond that, all she knew was that the spirits of the Shade hated life and would do anything to destroy it. It was one of the reasons she had to die to go there.
Lucifer was now stripped down to her underwear and T-shirt. She wrapped her arms over her chest, though not out of modesty. She was cold. Her teeth were already beginning to chatter because of the unnatural coolness of the room. It reminded her too much of Minnie Hester’s cold spell.
She took a note of the moon’s position in the sky. It would be at its zenith soon. There wasn’t any time left to find her courage. She was going to have to start without it. Lucifer took several deep breaths and then stepped into the tub.
Trish and Buck used their hands to scoop the ice over her body, encasing her until only her head was above the ice. Lucifer’s teeth chattered together in a frigid drumroll. The cold was almost too much, but if she could handle the cold spell at Cape Vale, she could handle this. Only she didn’t handle the cold spell. Not without help anyway. She had David. It was David’s kiss that finally broke the spell. His kiss had saved her life.
Lucifer would have given anything to have him there at that moment, to look up and see his sweet, crooked smile. But all she saw now were the wavering shadows from the candlelight and the worried, mortified faces of Buck and Trish.
“Lucifer . . .” Buck said, his voice breaking before it trailed off.
“It’s ok-k-kay, B-b-buck.” Lucifer couldn’t feel her fingers or toes, but the parts of her body she could still feel were in agony. Lucifer marveled at how freezing to death felt so much like burning.
The swollen moon kept on its steady march across the sky. Trish placed an electric thermometer in her ear. “Your core temp is dropping. Just a few more degrees and we’ll be ready.”
Buck was kneeling next to the tub, flexing his fists over and over again. His face was locked in a painful grimace, too ashamed to watch, too ashamed to look away.
“T-t-t-tell m-m-me ab-b-b-b-bout G-g-g-ina. Remind-d-d-d m-m-me why I’m d-d-d-doing th-th-th-this.”
The cop nodded. He opened his mouth to speak but was only able to produce a sob. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I can’t . . . I just can’t. We have to stop this. We have to—”
“N-n-n-n-no . . . on-n-n-nly w-w-w-w-w-way. P-p-please, t-t-t-trust me.” Lucifer did her best to smile, but she couldn’t feel her face and had no idea if it looked reassuring or like a painful grimace.
Buck pressed his fist against his lips as if he were physically restraining a scream in his mouth.
Lucifer started getting sleepy. The burning of her limbs felt far away, like they were trying to remember the pain but could only recall a fraction of the memories. Every instinct she had told her to get out of the tub, find warmth, survive. But David was trapped in the Shade. She couldn’t leave him there.
He had rescued her with a kiss. If only she could do the same, she would have covered him with a thousand kisses, each with the power to gift him immortality.
Trish pulled the thermometer out of Lucifer’s ear and said, “Okay, I think you’re ready.”
Lucifer was too tired, too frozen to respond.
“This is all levels of wrong,” Trish said.
Lucifer felt a slight pinch in her neck and caught sight of Trish pulling away a glistening metal syringe. She saw Buck’s twisted, tear-stained smile looking down at her. Lucifer wanted to smile back, but her mouth wouldn’t obey. The weight of her eyelids became too much, and they closed, plunging her into darkness. All that was left now was the cold.
And then there was nothing.
CHAPTER 27
There was nothing.
And then there was . . . something.
Lucifer opened her eyes to darkness, but it was a darkness she had never known before. It was a darkness she could see. It had form. It had shape, substance, depth. It was the darkness of void, of emptiness, but it was neither of those things. It was something tangible, something familiar. She was in a world constructed of shadows.
Lucifer was in the Shade.
It took a moment for Lucifer to recognize the form around her. She was inside the room of the Worcester House, or at least the Shade equivalent of that room. The walls, the ceiling, even the floor appeared identical except they were all made from that ethereal darkness. But unlike in the living world, the Sister’s Wheel was visible. It spread out across the floor in a vast circle, the giant seal of pale orange light glowing in defiance against the all-consuming blackness of the world.
Lucifer looked down at her body, only it wasn’t her body. It was a Lucifer-shaped mass of the same nothingness that made up everything around her. She examined herself, noting the familiar contours and lines she always saw when she looked at herself. But now they were formed by this substance of absence.
Lucifer walked toward the vanity in the center of the room. When she moved, tiny wisps of dark drifted from the edges of her spectral body, trailing off like steam. As she gazed into the mirror, Lucifer expected to see her shadow-self in the glass, staring back at her. Instead, the mirror was a window into the world of the living.
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