Dead End (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 8)

by Catie Rhodes

  I stubbed out my cigarette and stalked toward the motel room wishing I had somebody to punch out.

  14

  Dillon jogged out to meet me. “Let’s use the Hand of Glory to unlock the door. Mysti said it was fine as long as you agreed.” I glanced at Mysti, who rolled her eyes.

  I understood right away. Dillon had been pestering Mysti about that stupid hand the whole time I’d been arguing with the hag. Dillon was lucky she hadn’t gotten the sharp side of Mysti’s tongue. My mentor had the patience of a saint, until she didn’t. With a few words, she could cut people off at the knees and rub poison in the wounds. I got closer and saw Mysti was biting the corner of her lip and straining not to laugh.

  “Can we?” Dillon tugged at me, not unlike the way her toddler-aged daughter did when she was determined to get her way.

  I didn’t know what to tell her. Already tired, I worried about the magical energy it might take to make the hand function. But I really didn’t want to go back to Mohawk and beg for the key. I raised my eyebrows at Mysti. She gave me a short nod.

  Mysti set her witch pack on the concrete sidewalk underneath the breezeway. She spoke to me. “You’ll have to anoint it and state its purpose since Cecil gave it to you.”

  I took the box with the Hand of Glory out of my pack and knelt next to Mysti. She handed me the jar of tallow and a pair of latex gloves. At least I wouldn’t have to touch the nasty shit. I pinched the Hand of Glory between my thumb and forefinger. Magic heated up my black opal.

  I took a few deep breaths and found the swirl of the mantle waiting inside me. “Hand of Glory, I anoint you for the purpose of unlocking any door, even secret ones hidden inside this room.”

  The hand jerked in my grasp. I bit back a scream. Didn’t matter how many times I saw stuff like this, it still gave me the cold willies. Slowly, tendons creaking inside the Hand’s husk of dry skin, the fingers curled into a loose fist for knocking.

  “Can I knock with it?” Dillon hovered over me, hand already out.

  “I’d think not.” Mysti grimaced. “It’s going to obey Peri Jean now.”

  “But that sucks because Peri Jean won’t go on jobs with Finn and me…” Seeing Mysti’s and my blank stares, Dillon trailed off.

  I rose and stepped in front of the door. Lightly, I rapped three times with the Hand. The lock clicked, and the doorknob turned. The door swung open a few inches.

  “You know what me and Finn could do with that?” Dillon stayed close enough to whisper her comments in my ear.

  “We’ll talk on it later.” I raised my eyebrows at her. Dillon took a step back, even though she could have whipped me six times over. I’d seen her get in a few scraps. She was vicious. I walked into the room, the others close on my heels.

  The stench hit me, and I stopped. The room smelled like the inside of an ashtray.

  “This is how you smell.” Mysti gave me a light tap. “Griffin too.” Her boyfriend smoked long cigarillos, which stank worse than my cigarettes ever did.

  “I don’t smell this damn bad.” I blamed the carpet. Maroon and stained almost black in places, it probably pre-dated no-smoking motel rooms. The walls were no better. They’d probably started out a nice, soothing cream color. Now they were the color of pages in an old book. The smell of stale smoke rolled off the walls. I was surprised the stench didn’t come off in visible waves.

  When I thought of my ex-husband, which wasn’t often, I imagined him in a room like this one. Tim would have a cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth. It would joggle as he tried to score the next high, with the room’s nasty red phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder.

  The rider woke and drank in my misery. It stretched like a cat waking up from a nap. “Your mother hated you. She built this room and contracted me to destroy you.” Truer words had never been spoken. I’d known my mother’s real feelings for me all my life. Even so, the pronouncement stung, and my throat tightened with unshed tears. The hag liked that. “Break that mirror on the wall. Stab the other women, then kill yourself.”

  The idea played through my mind. Part of me longed for the sweet painlessness of death. Tendrils of icy fear followed. They snapped me out of my funk. Death wasn’t always painless or peaceful. A lifetime of communicating with ghosts taught me that much. Just settle down and ignore the hag, I coached myself. Bit by bit, I pulled myself together. “Hannah? You know I suck at puzzles. This is your wheelhouse. Where’s the tape hidden?”

  She flashed me a brief smile, but it was a ghost of her old mega-watt grin and sadness lurked around the edges. She seemed over the worst of her funk, but the next one would come. I pushed off the thought and made myself smile back. I’d have to take it one minute at a time with her if I wanted to be any help at all.

  Hannah walked around the room, taking in every nook and cranny. Her footsteps echoed on the bathroom tile. She spoke to me with her eyes fastened to the carpet. “There’s an in-wall toilet paper dispenser. Let’s start there.”

  We did. I used the Hand of Glory to knock on the wall all around the toilet paper. Dillon, to my horror, produced a knife with a wickedly long blade and began prying the thing from the wall.

  “Why are you doing that?” My voice got all high and sounded about as commanding as a prudish teenager.

  “That hand might only open doors. This ain’t no door.” Dillon grunted and pulled the thing out of the wall. Nothing was behind it except for mouse droppings and old insulation.

  I glanced at Mysti, eyebrows raised. She thought it over. “The door you're asking about is metaphoric. It’s the door to a secret, probably magically spelled, hiding place. The hand knows that and will open it without us cutting holes in the walls. Dillon.” She gave my young cousin a light tap.

  Hannah led us to the sink and pointed at the mirror. I knocked on it. Nothing happened. The air-conditioning unit, positioned at the back of the room, yielded similar results.

  I hand searched both the nightstand and the dresser. Several used condoms lined a bottom drawer of the dresser. I turned away in disgust.

  While I’d been spinning my wheels, Hannah had been examining a paneled wall in the back of the room. A clothes rack hung off it and a luggage rack leaned against it.

  She spoke to the wall instead of me. “I think there’s something back here. Come see.” I went to stand next to her. She took the slightest step away from me but began tapping on the wall immediately to cover it. “Listen here.” She tapped a few times. “Then here.” She knocked a few more times.

  “It’s different,” I agreed. “But how would Barbie get in here?”

  Mysti joined us. “I’d imagine a spoken spell opened it. Something simple probably, easy to remember even over the course of years.”

  I raised the Hand of Glory and held it over the wall.

  “Go on.” Mysti pressed her fingers to the wall. “The Hand should pop it right open.”

  I knocked three times, and we waited. A tiny portion of the paneled wall faded away. Inside lay a wood box carved with an old-fashioned Indian head, the kind that used to be on the baking powder tins. I reached for it. My black opal necklace gave me a hard shock. I jerked back my hand. “What the hell?” I rubbed my chest.

  “Do you hear that?” Hannah stared at the ceiling.

  I didn’t, but I listened. Distantly, I heard a deep groaning like two pieces of wood rubbing together. It got louder as it came closer. I tensed and bent my knees, getting ready to fight. My black opal heated. From above us came several quick pops. We all tilted our necks to stare at it. The ceiling rippled like a sheet of plastic, and the wall bulged out toward us.

  I slung out both arms and pushed Hannah and Mysti back just as a flash of bright blue light came out of the wall and slammed into my chest. I flew into the bathroom, screaming all the way. My legs hit the edge of the tub. My own momentum folded my knees and knocked me down. My head cracked against the wall on the way down, and I bit my tongue. Pain flashed through my skull. Blood flooded my mouth as it beg
an to throb.

  The blow to my head knocked me off-kilter. I sat there, ears ringing, tongue aching, and listened to the water dripping from the faucet. Plink. Plink. Plink. The longer I sat there, more hurt bones and muscles woke up and said hello. My tailbone hurt the most.

  Hannah stepped into the doorway, head cocked to one side, eyes impassive. The cold eyes got me more than anything else. They held neither concern nor horror. She could have been watching this whole ordeal on TV. My friend really had been stripped away.

  Wade had told me over and over that people don’t survive trauma like Hannah experienced without changing. He’d been right. All the same, I hurt for her and wanted more than ever to make things right. Before her suicide attempt, I’d thought things were going well, that she just needed time. But her willingness to do herself in had left me spinning. Watching her watch me made it seem even more hopeless.

  Dillon shoved Hannah aside and charged into the bathroom. She leaned over the tub and made a face. “Damn, this tub smells like a dead rat lived it in for a year. Let’s get you out of it.” She gripped me under my arms, but I was too dazed to help her. Dillon twisted and glared at Hannah. “I ain’t Peri Jean. You don't get a free pass with me. Get over here and help.”

  Hannah turned and walked away.

  Mysti came into the room rubbing the side of her head, a trail of blood leaking from one corner of her mouth. “You okay?”

  “Are you okay?” We exchanged smiles. The jobs Mysti and I did together weren’t the safe kind. Stuff like this happened more often than not.

  “Whatever knocked you into the bathroom pushed me all the way to the door. I bit the inside of my mouth is all.” Mysti looked in the mirror over the sink and used toilet paper to dab the blood off her face. “So now we know there’s a magical protection guarding the tape.”

  I laughed even though it wasn't funny and felt the back of my head for injury. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll get myself out of this tub.”

  Dillon huffed. “I ain’t waiting a few minutes. Stinks like the devil’s unwashed dick in this hellhole.” She leaned over me, gripped me again, and pulled with her legs. She was skinny but strong, and this time I helped a good bit. She took my arm and helped me out of the bathroom.

  We found Hannah hunched over my witch pack. I gasped and stumbled over to her. “Look, I’m willing to take a certain amount of your shit, but it doesn’t include you going through my stuff.”

  Hannah kept her back turned to me. I gripped her shoulder and twisted her around. She jerked away and slapped at me, eyes glinting hate. “What’s the matter? You don’t trust me anymore?”

  Baffled by the sudden hostility, I searched myself to make sure my malignant rider was still in place and not back with Hannah. The hag stirred as though I’d woken it and stared from my eyes. I saw Hannah as the rider did, all raw and full of hurt, fear, and humiliation. Death shadowed her like a rain swollen cloud.

  I took a step backward and calmed myself. “Those are my witching supplies. They’re personal to me. I don’t let anybody touch them.”

  “Some of them bite.” Mysti stood next to me, so close our shoulders brushed, her way of supporting me. Friendship was a well that only ran dry when you let it. I had a bit more to give when it came to Hannah.

  “What were you looking for?” I pulled the zipper on the pack and opened it wider.

  Hannah shrugged. “Something magic is protecting that box. We’ve seen that before. Remember how we used cast iron to get around it?”

  The entity guarding the writing slope. My first step on the road to the Mace Treasure. Hannah had used a pair of iron tongs to remove a clue from it. It seemed eons ago, in a time when we’d all been so innocent and happy.

  “All I have is a horseshoe.” I dug for it and showed Hannah. She took it from me and knelt in front of the hole in the wall.

  Mysti edged closer to Hannah. “Don’t let it hurt you.”

  Hannah edged the horseshoe into the hole and hooked the box out. It fell to the nasty carpet and bounced. Hannah stared at it, face blank. “I’m afraid to touch it. I guess I could find a fireplace store and see if they have cast iron tongs. We could use them to crush the box and get at whatever’s inside.”

  I didn’t know if that was the best idea. No telling how long it would take Hannah to get back here. Wade’s life was ticking away, second by second.

  Mysti leaned over the box, holding her hand less than inch from it. “No, the protection spell is human magic. I feel the earth elements in it.”

  “Can we unbind it from the box?” I imitated Mysti and held my hand over the box. Sure enough, I felt what she felt, even heard the rush of the wind and smelled the seawater used to make the spell.

  “Maybe. Definitely if we could get the witch who cast the spell to take it off.” Mysti raised her eyebrows, no idea she was asking the impossible.

  My mother had worked with one witch I knew of. They died together the day they tried to kill me. Amanda King’s ghost would never help me.

  “You might be surprised,” Mysti said to my unvoiced concern. “She’s stuck in the afterlife she created for herself and may be looking for redemption.”

  Maybe. Or she might be waiting for me to put myself in her path so she could try to kill me again. She’d seemed pretty intent on it the first time. “She’s evil.”

  Mysti nodded. I knew this nod. She’d let me have my say and then present her compelling argument. “From what you told me, Amanda King got caught up in a bad situation. An affair with a married man. Married man’s wife murders him right in front of Amanda. All of a sudden, she’s an accessory.” Mysti watched me digest all this. “Nothing is ever purely black or white. There is no telling what your mother threatened if Amanda didn’t cooperate.”

  I wasn’t so sure I bought that. Amanda had acted pretty enthusiastic about trapping my spirit to use as a spectral henchman. Or hench-woman.

  “Do you want to save Wade or not?” Mysti crossed her arms. “I want to save him. He may be pig-headed, but he’s a good guy. This is the only way we’re going to meet King’s deadline.”

  Hannah moved out of the corner of the room. “He won’t give Wade back, not alive.”

  She’d said that before. I knew she was right, but I had to try. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t. “Is there no other way?” I asked Mysti, just to make sure nothing had changed in the last couple of seconds.

  “If we had a week, we could figure out something else. Absolutely.” Mysti nodded so hard her earrings clacked. Then she shook her head. “But we don’t. We’ve got hours. Contacting Amanda King is our best bet.”

  I let out a long breath. My body seemed to deflate with it.

  Mysti nodded and grabbed her witch pack. “We need to start right away.”

  Mysti had me drag the rickety two-person table as close to the center of the room as we could get it. She draped an obviously old, lace edged cloth over the table. I frowned at the pageantry.

  “We’re going to have to go to as much ceremony as we can to attract her.” Mysti put out an incense burner and stuck a white candle into an ornate candleholder.

  “Why’s that?” I looked on with growing alarm. Never had I gone to this much trouble to contact a spirit. They just usually came.

  “Oh, let me think.” Mysti’s sarcasm was sharp enough to cut and edged with enough impatience to maim. “We’re not where she’s buried. We’re not at a crossroads. Oh, and the big one. You killed her.” She dug in her pack and turned to me. “Do you have wormwood?”

  I didn’t use as much incense in my rituals as Mysti did, so I had all the wormwood incense she’d given me to start my witch supply pack. I handed it to her and stood close. “What are we really doing here?”

  “Begging for help from the one place we can get it.” Mysti pulled a plain bowl out of her pack and poured purified water into it. Next came a small chalkboard and a piece of chalk. She pushed a piece of paper with some creepy symbols on it at me. “Draw these on the
chalkboard with this chalk.”

  One of these symbols looked like a coffin with skulls on it. Another was a cross with skulls at each point. “I can’t draw these. They’re too complex.”

  Mysti closed her eyes and took a long breath, puffing out her stomach. She opened her eyes, and I saw fear. “They don’t have to be perfect. You just have to do it.”

  Mysti set an empty cobalt bottle on the room’s dresser and a container I knew held grave dust next to it.

  I drew the symbols, nerves jumping in my stomach. Mysti’s near panic had me out of sorts. My mentor rarely acted this way. If Mysti was scared, this had to be some bad, dangerous stuff we were doing. My jittering hand drew shapes that looked like Dillon's daughter, Zora, might have drawn them. I handed the chalkboard back to Mysti. “This stops now unless you tell me what’s got up your ass.”

  Mysti tapped the cobalt bottle. “We’ll make this a spirit bottle to open a permanent line of communication with Amanda.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You mean Amanda could contact me any time? No. Absolutely not. She imprisoned my father’s ghost, for Pete’s sake. She tried to kill me.”

  “Let me speak.” Mysti held up one hand. “Contacting Amanda will either go really well or really badly. Having her here as a guest rather than a hostile witness will go a long way toward keeping her happy.” She took out a container of dried bread cubes and sprinkled olive oil over it.

  “But that doesn’t mean she and I have to become asshole buddies.” I followed Mysti back to her pack.

  She spun to face me, brown eyes hard enough to make me back up a step. “If you’d recognized her for what she was earlier and befriended her, she might have banded with you against your mother. Ever think of that? And might have already told you about this room and what's in it.”