by Jen Blood
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think I’ll know anything, I don’t think I’ll start believing in tomorrow, until we put them down, though.”
I turned her around fully and pulled her down with me into the sand. Her body was warm, strong, whole on top of mine. We both still had scars, but they were healing. Some faster than others.
I twined my fingers in her ponytail and pulled her to me, touching my lips to hers again.
“Well, then let’s put them down,” I said. “I’d like to start believing in tomorrow, for a change.”
THE BOOK OF J.
The Erin Solomon Mystery Series
Book 5
Jen Blood
Chapter One
With only slight variations, the dream remains the same: A Maine forest deep in the night, rain pouring down. I stand in the shadow of a pyramid that shouldn’t be here—an ancient ruin that dwarfs the tall evergreens around me.
My father stands at the foot of the pyramid. His lips are moving, but I can’t hear a word he says. He has a gun in his hand. Around him, there are bodies—dozens of them. People I knew from the Payson Church, burned but still recognizable. A woman who used to do the baking for the church sits on the ground, crying. Half the flesh of her face is burned away, one eye socket empty. Joe Ashmont is there. Matt Perkins, wailing like a lunatic. Max Richards. Bonnie Saucier, a bloody J. carved into her pale, naked breast. Everyone is dead—there’s no question of that, but they are more real, more animated, than any live thing I’ve ever seen.
“Is this what you wanted?” my father asks me. He’s younger than he was in that jungle in Coba—about the age I remember him from my childhood. The age I am now. “You did this. Is it what you wanted?”
My father raises the gun. I try to get up, but those masses—the writhing, rotting dead—are coming for me. I’m frozen. Terrified. My father points the gun.
The barrel touches his temple.
A second before the gun went off, something shattered beside me. I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart galloping. A gust of icy wind blew into the dark room and sent the curtains flying. I tried to figure out where my father was. Where the bodies were...
Where the hell I was.
I reached for Diggs beside me. His spot was empty.
A wriggling mass of fuzzy curls tried to escape my grasp. Einstein.
“Easy, buddy,” I said. The sound of my own voice eased me back toward the real world.
I was in the Payson boarding home, I reminded myself. Shards of glass, strewn across the floor from a broken window behind me, sparkled in the moonlight. I could make out peeling wallpaper and ancient furniture. Einstein whined, still trying to get away from me. After nine months without him, I wasn’t keen to let the mutt go—forget the fact that his paws would be cut to ribbons if I did. As would mine.
“Diggs!” I shouted. No answer.
I reached for a battery-powered lantern on the nightstand, and turned it on. It did little but cast eerie shadows. I hung my legs over the side of the bed, mindful of the evil dead that could be lurking underneath, waiting to grab my ankles and devour my toes. While I searched for my slippers with one hand, I held tight to Einstein’s collar with the other.
My first coherent thought was that J.—the organization that Diggs and I had been running from for the past several months—had found us. We’d been stateside for twenty-four hours, maybe less, though, and we’d been careful. Unless they were psychic, I couldn’t see how the hell they could have found us.
Jesus, I really hoped they weren’t psychic.
I finally found my slippers, shoved my feet inside, and sat up. I was gradually getting acclimated to the real world again—the one without ghosts and zombies and my father, all casting blame.
My eyes settled on the rotting doorframe, my heart still pounding too hard...
In an instant, reality fell away all over again.
A dark-haired girl, no more than nine, stood at the door. She wore glasses. The left lens was broken.
“How many lies do you believe?” she said in a whisper—the tone Allie Tate, my childhood best friend, had always used when we were talking about something important.
The problem was that Allie Tate, like so many others from Payson Isle, had been dead for twenty-five years. My mind blurred. Was I still dreaming? The wind howled and the curtains blew; Diggs remained missing. My father was nowhere to be seen.
Allie stayed where she was.
Which meant she was either a ghost, or I was losing my mind. I voted for the latter. Panic rose and bloomed in my chest. Outside the room, something crashed into the door. Allie didn’t budge.
“You’re dead,” I whispered back.
She didn’t say anything. Behind the broken eyeglass lens, blood ran from her left eyebrow. She wore a pink dress that was torn in the front.
“How many lies?” she said again.
The door burst open. Einstein flew from my arms and scooted out of the room. Allie vanished.
Diggs stood in the doorway in jeans and a jersey, breathing hard. He looked as terrified as I felt. “Are you all right? What the hell happened?”
Fifteen minutes later, I sat at a picnic table in the old Payson meeting room. A fire was raging in the fireplace, but it didn’t do much to warm the cavernous room. The walls had been stripped of the artwork members of the Payson Church had done—no more satin crosses or faded paintings of Jesus and his flock; no sign of the terrifying artwork Reverend Isaac Payson himself had done of Christ, crucifixions, and burning Romans. Nothing had been put up in their place, however.
I’d signed Payson Isle over to Jamie Flint before Diggs and I left the States nine months before, and Jamie had definitely left her mark on a good part of the island since relocating her business there. She trained search-and-rescue dogs—reputedly some of the best in the world—and ran a search-and-rescue business of her own, which meant the island was now home to kennels and training grounds, dog runs and dog trails. She may have been using the rest of the land well, but I got the sense Jamie didn’t know what the hell to do with the Payson House.
Diggs returned bearing antiseptic and cotton balls, interrupting my thoughts. He still looked freaked out. Personally, I had yet to stop shaking.
“You okay?” he asked for the tenth time.
“Yeah. I think so.”
He dabbed at a cut at my temple I hadn’t even realized I’d gotten. “It was probably just a gust that tore a tree limb off. Jamie said the wind’s been bad out here this winter. I’m sure it was nothing.”
“Probably so,” I agreed. I stared into the flames. How many lies do you believe?
“Hey,” Diggs said after a second or two. He tipped my chin up so I looked him in the eye. “We can leave if you want. Catch the first plane out, and go back where women glow and men plunder. Just say the word.”
We’d been over this before—a few times, actually. “No,” I said. “We’re here for a reason. I’m not going back now, just because of a little wind and a ghostly apparition.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. It seemed impossible that seventy-two hours ago we’d been in Australia, both of us sun-kissed and moderately relaxed. What the hell had I been thinking?
“I’m sorry, a what?” he said.
“Forget it. It was a joke.” He frowned. “Okay, not my best material. I’m bleeding from the head here—cut me some slack. Are Monty and Carl checking the island? What the hell time is it, anyway? Our first night here, and I’m already getting people out of bed in the middle of the deep dark.”
He smiled at me inexplicably. “I think they’ll get over it. It’s not really that deep dark.”
“What do you mean? What the hell time is it?’
“Six.” I stared at him, still confused. “At night.”
We’d taken off from the Albany Airport in Western Australia at ten till seven p.m. on December 26, and from there were scheduled to get into Portland, Maine, at just past eleven p.m. on the 27th. Four layov
ers and three flight delays later, we landed in Portland at seven a.m. this morning—the 28th. By the time we got a rental and drove the two hours to Littlehope, then hopped a boat for the hour-long ride out to Payson Isle, it was almost noon. We had barely managed a coherent hello to Jamie before Diggs and I both passed out in the room she had waiting for us.
“I thought it was later,” I said. “Or earlier.”
“It’ll take a day or two to get re-acclimated,” Diggs said. “You’ll get there.”
Diggs didn’t look like he needed any time at all to get re-acclimated; the man thrives on long hours in planes, trains, and lobster boats. He’d trimmed his hair and shaved his beard in order to fit the fake ID Cameron had given us, but he still looked good. I’d had to dye my hair brown again—which Diggs is not a fan of. All things considered, he’d definitely fared the trip better than me so far.
“Right. You never answered my question—where are Monty and Carl?”
“They’re just taking a look around, to make sure we’ve got nothing to worry about. They’ll be back shortly.” The idea of the two men out there alone didn’t sit well with me, even if it was only six at night. And the window had broken because of the wind. And the creepy ghost girl was all in my head—obviously. I saw the look on Diggs’ face at my uneasiness.
“I’m fine,” I said before he could press it.
“You’re shaking and white and you look like you’re about to toss your cookies on my favorite t-shirt. You’re not fine. What’s going on?”
“You mean besides the bedroom window exploding all over me while I was dead asleep?”
I could tell he knew I was deflecting, but a second later Monty burst through the door, and that put an end to the conversation for the moment.
“No one on the island but us,” he said. “Must’ve been the wind, princess. It blows like a whore at Mardi Gras out here most nights.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “About the wind...not the Mardi Gras whores.”
“Strictly going by word of mouth, you understand,” he said. He winked at me.
Monty worked for Jamie Flint. He was southern, about five foot eight, with dark, burnished skin and the body of a man who clearly knew his way around the gym. The first time we’d met was during that whole horrific chain of events that led to my father’s death in Coba the winter before. Despite the circumstances, I’d liked him immediately. Diggs wasn’t quite so keen on him, but I think that mostly had to do with how quick Monty was with a double entendre—and the fact that many of those double entendres seemed to revolve around me. Personally, I thought it was kind of cute.
Carl came through the door next, closing it quickly behind him to shut out the elements. Carl was taller, thinner, darker, and much, much quieter than Monty. Originally from Nigeria, he had enough of an accent that I had to focus to understand him, but there was something about his wide, dark eyes that made me think of that phrase, ‘Still waters run deep.’ Right now, that stillness was reassuring.
“We didn’t see anything, but it appears the winds are quite still, for now,” he said, his words clipped and precise. “Seas will be high and the winds gusting for the next two days, until the storm hits. But I don’t believe we’re seeing that effect yet.”
“All it would’ve taken was a good stiff wind, though,” Monty said. “Half the trees out here have dead wood we’ll need to trim once spring comes. I’m sure that’s all it was.”
“Right,” I said. “Thanks for checking, though.”
“Do they know yet when the storm’s supposed to get here?” Diggs said.
“Too early to say,” Monty said. “It’s been a cold goddamn winter, but this’ll be the first major snow. Whole state is on the alert. I thought you Mainers were supposed to be tougher than this.”
“It’s just because it’s the first one of the season,” I said. “Give it another couple of storms, and nobody will think twice. They’re still saying New Year’s Eve?”
“That’s when it should be worst,” Monty agreed.
Of course.
Jamie came down the stairs next, a graying German shepherd by her side. Jamie was blond and lean, with a dancer’s body, a pierced nose, and a faint Georgian accent that just added to the charm. As usual, she seemed totally Zen about the mayhem I’d brought to her door.
“It’s all set up there,” she said. She joined us at the table. Einstein greeted the shepherd—Phantom was her name—with enthusiasm that Phantom didn’t really return before both dogs settled in front of the fire. “If you want to switch bedrooms, though, it’s no problem. There’s another one made up farther down the hall.”
I did some mental calculations. The room Diggs and I had been sleeping in was my old bedroom—the room the other young girls in the Payson Church had shared when I was a kid. Which made the room Jamie was talking about most likely the one where my father used to lay his weary head.
“That’s all right,” I said. Like my father didn’t already haunt me enough these days. “The one we’re in is fine. I think I’m done with sleep for now, anyway.” I looked at Diggs for confirmation, not sure whether our plans had changed while I’d been in Dreamland. “You still want to head for Littlehope before it gets any later?”
“You two are still fugitives, right?” Monty asked. “I mean, that hasn’t changed in the last few minutes. You really think heading out into the world is the best idea right now?”
“That’s why we waited till dark,” I said. Diggs and I had been on the run from both the FBI and the fine folks with Project J. ever since we’d left on a wing and a prayer last April. The Feds wanted us for questioning, ostensibly on suspicion of consorting with terrorists since shit tended to blow up at an alarming rate around us. J. just wanted us dead. “We’ll go into town, do what needs doing, and be back later tonight.”
“That actually brings up a good point,” Jamie said. “I know this is your island, so obviously you’re free to come and go as you please, but I’d love to know just exactly what brought you two back now.”
“A, it’s your island now—I gave it to you,” I began. “And B… Diggs and I aren’t ready to share B with you yet. We just need a place to rest our heads that’s out of sight—otherwise, you’re out of this.”
“But—” Monty began.
“That’s nonnegotiable,” Diggs said. “We’re just gathering information. If we have any reason to think things will get dangerous, we’ll let you know.”
Monty put up a little more of a stink, but Jamie and Carl seemed content with our lack of an explanation. Jamie’s son, Bear, came in a minute later and effectively ended the whole debate. He had a white pit bull with him. Phantom couldn’t have cared less who was around as long as Jamie was there, but the pit bull greeted Einstein like they’d been separated for years instead of just a few hours.
“I got the dogs in for the night,” Bear said. He was seventeen, with short dark hair and a big, sturdy build. He didn’t talk much, but there was something about Bear that made me think he knew things—Deep Things. Dark Things. The kind of kid who probably got a lot of shit from the guys in his class, while the girls were lined up ten deep. “Is everything straightened out here?”
“It is,” I said. “The consensus is that it was just the wind. Sorry if I disrupted the routine.”
“No disruption,” he said. He looked at me strangely, a little too intent. When he realized I’d caught on, he shifted his gaze. “We would’ve been wrapping up soon anyway. Dinner almost up?” He directed the question at Carl, who nodded.
“I was waiting for everything to settle,” Carl said. “It won’t be long. Urenna is in the kitchen, if you would like to help her.” He said the name like he was saying a prayer—Er-Renna, a smile coming to his lips with the name.
I saw a hint of a blush before Bear nodded and excused himself. Whoever Urenna was, my guess was that she’d inspired those pink cheeks. The kid headed for the kitchen with both my mutt and the pit bull on his heels. Phantom didn’t move from
her place by the fire.
“You will stay for dinner?” Carl said. “You must be hungry.”
I was starved, actually. As much as I wanted to get started on the nightmare Diggs and I were about to take on in Littlehope, I figured sustenance before the fact would be a good idea. Sustenance, and a shower, not necessarily in that order. Then we could set out to save the world. Even superheroes have to keep their priorities straight.
“That sounds good,” I said. “Thanks. Though before I break bread, if there’s any chance I could scrub some of this travel dirt off me, I think we’d all be a little happier.”
“Diggs knows where the showers are,” Jamie said. She and Diggs shared a secret smile I wasn’t crazy about. “He can show you.”
Diggs grinned back at her. Cute. “I’ll tell you now though, kid,” he said to me. “You’re not gonna like it.”
Sun showers are open air showers using rainwater warmed by the sun. In Australia, Diggs and I used to take them all the time. They’re great: good for the environment and the wallet, they’re the perfect way to wash the salt off or cool down after a long day. As I said—they’re great in Australia. Taking a sun shower in Maine in December is the kind of thing they’d come up with at Guantanamo Bay.
A half-moon hung overhead, the stars still not quite visible in the early evening sky. A wooden partition staked into the frozen ground was the only thing that protected me from the prying eyes of the world around. I stripped naked, pulled a string, and screamed when ice-cold water rained down on me.
“Told you it was cold,” Diggs said from the other side of the partition. I let loose with an impressive litany of expletives while I lathered up and rinsed off, my teeth chattering, nipples tighter than pebbles, goose bumps on my goose bumps.
He came round the wooden partition with a fluffy towel and wrapped it around me while I shivered. “Refreshing, right?” he said.
“Fuck you,” I said. “Why would anyone do that to themselves?”