‘Thanks.’
‘I didn’t know that you had gone out,’ the woman persisted. ‘Pleasant evening?’
‘A bit chilly,’ she replied, being as deliberately blithe. ‘But it is October, I suppose.’
‘I suppose it is,’ Esther pontificated. ‘Remind me to give you a key in the morning.’
They stood in the hallway until she had completely disappeared back off towards the kitchen, where she had apparently come from before heading upstairs. Martha did not know whether or not her aunt had been informed of what Amanda had set in motion and she didn’t want to make things any more awkward than they already were. She did, however, pause at the top of the staircase to clear up something else. Turning to face Parker, she said, ‘Amanda doesn’t know about what happened to me. Nobody does. I’m not ready to share it either so I’d appreciate it if you kept it that way.’
A shot of concern filled his eyes but he nodded, ‘Of course.’
‘Cheers.’
That taken care of, she turned left and knocked on the lounge door, simply so that they did not accidentally walk in on anything that she so did not want to see, waiting until her sister’s voice gave them the all-clear before they opened the door.
Amanda and Walsh were exactly where she had left them, having moved to the sofa which lay directly opposite the television. Her sister had her legs up across the young psychic’s lap and looked much more relaxed than she had earlier on. Her eyes opened wide when she saw that Martha had not returned home alone. Walsh didn’t react as if things had played out exactly like he envisioned they would and he was two steps ahead of everybody else.
‘Well hello,’ the younger sister smiled happily. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine,’ Martha said and simply because she saw her sister’s boyfriend reaching for his glass and taking a generous mouthful, she added. ‘I took my top off. Not a problem.’
Suffice to say, he had not seen that coming.
Stifling a smile that was far too amused, Parker addressed Amanda directly, ‘I thought I’d come over and take a look at the study now, if that’s alright with you?’
‘Sure,’ she smiled. ‘Go right on through. It’s unlocked. Martha left it open.’
He nodded, politely, before turning his attention back to the older sister who, feeling a little bit too smug for her own good, said, ‘Come on. I’ll show you though.’
She closed the door behind them, leaving her sister one again alone, giggling with her boyfriend. She felt a little bit mean for picking on Walsh like that but if it had put a smile on Amanda’s face, then she would try not to let herself feel too much guilt over it. Especially when she then caught Parker smiling out of the corner of her eye and her enquiring glance was met with an amused, ‘I want to feel awkward about that but he completely deserved it.’
As Amanda had inferred, the study was still unlocked from Martha’s earlier snoop. She pushed the door open and stepped aside, allowing Parker to go in first so as to not interfere with whatever it was he was looking for in there. The reality was she still had absolutely no idea how a paranormal investigation was supposed to play out and was intrigued but she would not get involved besides offering support. This was not her scene.
Parker went inside, taking a lengthy visual scan of the entire room. Everything was right where Martha had left it, books, art and antiques alike. His observation complete, her companion stepped further into the room, traversing the giant red rug. He set the aluminium attaché case that he had been carrying down in front of the boarded up glass door-windows. Turning to Martha, he asked, ‘Do you mind if I open these for a moment?’
She shrugged. ‘Do what you’ve got to do.’
Disengaging the temporary lock that was holding the cracked wooden frames together to keep the access point secure until it could be repaired, Parker carefully opened the glass doors, gazing down from where Mr Ford had allegedly fallen. Looking closer at the state that the whole frame was still in, Martha made a mental note to have that taken care of, assuming that Amanda had been too emotionally strained to take on something so trivial. It was the least she could do.
Leaving the door open, Parker came back into the room and opened the case, retrieving a small metallic-looking electronic device which he then set down on the space between the broken panes and the outer balcony and a notepad, which he flipped open, making a note before standing up and taking another look around, his brow furrowing deep in concentration. Standing in the doorway still, Martha felt utterly superfluous to requirements but she had to admit that she was rather enjoying watching him work, even if she didn’t understand what he was doing. There was something comfortingly familiar about it. Odd, considering that none of her memories had him conducting a paranormal investigation in her deceased parent’s study.
After a few long minutes, he asked her, ‘Do you know if anybody’s tidied up in here, or if this was how the police left it?’
‘I have no idea,’ Martha said. ‘I could go and get Amanda, if you need her.’
‘No,’ he waved the offer away. ‘It’s alright. I can’t really do much at the moment anyway without a proper reading on the place. I’m just making some initial impressions.’
‘A reading?’ she asked. ‘What is that, like a psychic reading?’
‘Yeah,’ he confirmed. ‘Walsh would normally do it for me but seeing as though he has recused himself from the investigation, I’ve got to wait for the sub-contracted psychic to call me back and set up an appointment. It’s a pain but it’ll be someone impartial, which is good.’
Martha sounded as bemused as she felt. ‘MPIA sub-contracts psychics?’
‘On occasion. There are four people officially employed by MPIA, not including Peter Maxwell and only Walsh is capable of doing readings so we branch out when we need to. So far, nobody that we’ve contracted has taken up Maxwell’s offer to stay on full-time. Personally, I think that’s because Walsh always makes sure he introduces himself to them and lets them know that they’ll only ever play second fiddle to him… Psychics can be really competitive.’
Not taking his deduction at all personally, she told him, ‘I had a look around in here earlier on. I don’t know if this helps you or not but I could sense something. Still can.’
‘What kind of something?’ he asked.
Moving into the room, past the red rug, towards the artwork at the back of the room, she tried to focus upon what she had felt earlier on. After a long moment she shrugged, ‘I don’t know what it is. Energy of some sort. It’s magical, I think… Something definitely happened in here.’
Parker frowned. ‘Amanda told us that Mr. Ford wasn’t interested in magic.’
‘He never used to be,’ she confirmed. ‘You know as well as I do how much he hated all of that. He used to tell me that it was all in my head and that I needed to grow up and stop acting like a child, living in my own imagination. He wasn’t simply a null. He was a sceptic.’
‘I remember,’ he concurred, unhappily.
‘It’s been a long time since I even gave him a second thought, so I honestly don’t know if he ever had a change of heart about things. Amanda told me that he was supportive of her when she presented psychic tendencies so maybe he mellowed in his old age.’ Realistically though, she doubted it but she did not state that out loud. Parker had known what her upbringing was like. He could make his own mind up about the dead man’s tolerances. ‘Either way, I doubt that he would ever become a practitioner. He simply didn’t have it in him.’
Parker nodded, ‘I agree.’
‘It’s strange though,’ she said, gazing around the expansive room. ‘If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that what I’ve been feeling was residual magical energy. It makes no sense.’
After a brief pause of deliberation, Parker stated, ‘We have somebody on staff who might know a bit more. She’s not psychic and usually wouldn’t do readings but she is a practitioner. If I ask her to come and take a look around, I’m sure that she wouldn’t mind.�
�
‘She’s a witch?’ Martha asked, genuinely taken aback.
‘Pagan,’ he corrected. Martha wasn’t sure if there was a difference between the two things but did not comment further. Magic was not something that she was all that familiar with and she wouldn’t pretend to know better than somebody who was allegedly a practitioner of the arts. As much as it irked her to not be able to actively help in this instance, she had sworn not to stand in the way and would do what was best for the investigation, what would get her sister the closure she sought. She stated, ‘Yeah, I don’t see how that could hurt.’
Parker checked the gold watch on his left wrist. ‘I could call her now while we’re already here. Amanda will need to agree, of course.’
‘I’ll go and get her.’
‘No, I’ll do it,’ he countered. ‘There’s some other things that I want to ask her about.’
Martha conceded, letting him go. Left alone in the study once more, she decided to take the opportunity to look at things a little bit more deeply. While Parker was in such close proximity, she would not have dreamed of dropping her defences for a while but the room was perplexing her and she wanted to see if she could route out what it was that she was missing.
When she was a young girl, she had learned to batten down her mystical hatches, to lock her psyche up tight so that her unusual abilities did not make everyday living unbearable. It had essentially been a barricade, manmade and not completely effective but it kept contained what it was designed to. The downfall was, her inner proclivities had disliked being forcibly restrained. Like a caged animal, they paced back and forth, growing more and more restless. It wasn’t until she was abducted that she ever truly let go and when she had suddenly found herself forced to, her own nature had assaulted her as viciously as her captors. It was emotionally devastating and not something she ever wanted to have to experience again.
Following her liberation, once she was physically strong enough to do something about it, she had vowed to embrace what had been locked away for so long inside of her. She came to terms with who and what she was and she learned how to protect herself and others without also smothering her inner needs. Her barriers were now necessary because of how powerful she had trained her abilities to become, not because she could not handle them. Letting go was not the trauma that it had once, long ago, been. The cage had been replaced with a silk curtain and all she needed to do was simply peel it back, and take a calm, controlled look behind it.
That action, in essence, was what she did now, deftly yet carefully inching her defences aside as much as she needed to in order to get a clear sense of what lingered in the room. While her natural makeup predisposed her to immediately seek out emotion, she knew that she could also pick out other forms of non-visual energy. Magic would still be fuzzy as she really did not have the aptitude to tap into those particular wavelengths but she should at least be able to get a sense of where the energy that had been lingering, gently calling out to her, was coming from.
With her barriers ajar, the study appeared as normal for the most part. As she worked through energy signatures that she knew and could attribute to certain people or certain things, she narrowed down what she was looking for. It really wasn’t very difficult. Not when she was alone and could concentrate. What was left behind resembled something akin to footprints under an ultraviolet light, a trail of intent that led away from where she was standing to a table on the far side of the room and a particular stack of books about half a metre high.
Being aware that she did not have the time to go and rifle through them yet, Martha made a mental note of their location and continued to follow the trail which curved back around to a spot behind where she was standing, pausing in front of a painted canvas that was stood on a tall easel, one of three artworks displayed.
Again, she told herself that she would investigate it later and proceeded to follow where the energy trail wanted to lead her. Directly into the centre of the room. And the big, red rug.
A whisper of another, new energy signature appeared on the periphery of her mystical eye-line which she recognised and attributed instantly so she mentally took a step backwards and dropped her psychic protection back into place without any struggle or resistance a good two seconds before Michael Parker reappeared in the doorway. They made eye contact and without saying a word, he seemed to know what she had been doing in his absence and she couldn’t help but wonder if that’s why he had left her alone. Very shrewd.
He asked, ‘Anything new?’
‘Maybe,’ she confirmed. Pointing to the rug, she added, ‘Help me lift this up?’
He entered the room, prepared to assist her without needing to be given an explanation why and Martha couldn’t help but feel a modicum of relief that Amanda had enlisted the help of somebody that she knew personally and also who knew her. So very well. Even after all the years that had passed and all the heartache and confusion, he trusted that she knew what she was doing, that if she felt like something was amiss, it probably was. And Martha had a very bad feeling about what she had sensed when she had really, truly looked at the red rug.
Parker reached down and took hold of one edge while Martha took the other. It was much heavier than it looked and difficult to move, almost as if something was keeping it in place but she was stronger than she looked and with an extra little added grit, it gave up resisting and moved in their hands. Once it was pulled back, and resituated to the side of the room, the reason for her discomfort became painfully clear.
Parker cursed loudly, standing fully upright, asking, ‘Is that what I think it is?’
Dropping down on her haunches, she covered her mouth with her hand, then nodded. A lot of things had suddenly become apparent and none of them were even remotely good.
‘I’m calling Olivia,’ her companion stated and she was then only vaguely aware that he once again left her alone in the room, only now with the evidence of a dead man’s wrongdoing.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Martha reached out as if to touch it but her hand met with an invisible barrier that seemed to sense her attempted intrusion and would not permit her passage. Interesting. Very interesting.
A sudden, feminine gasp from the doorway made her head jerk up. It was Amanda, her eyes wide in shock and her hand clamped around her mouth as if she was physically trying to prevent another, guttural reaction escaping. Martha instantly felt awful. She had been so shocked by their discovery that it had simply not occurred to her to prevent Amanda from seeing it. For whatever the revelation meant, her younger sister should have been protected.
But now it was much too late. The sins of the father had been laid bare for her to see.
And Martha was not sure how the hell she was going to protect her from them this time.
Chapter 14
Walsh had taken Amanda back into lounge. The youngest Ford was in a state of understandable shock and had not spoken since she had entered the study. Martha felt torn between wanting to comfort her and not being able to explain what she had seen. Of course she had her own fair share of horrific stories that she could tell her sister but this was not the time. The girl needed answers. She needed the truth about her father’s death, however awful it was.
Parker’s pagan colleague arrived within twenty minutes of him calling her. Martha had been waiting in the study, with the door firmly secured to prevent the other woman who was in the house from accidentally walking in on the difficult-to-explain scene, while he went down to covertly escort her upstairs. She had already made the decision that she would talk to her aunt about the investigation when she knew more but right now, it was only another complication that they did not need. One heart too many had already been shattered wide open.
The rapping on the door let Martha know that they had arrived. She unlocked it from the inside and pulled it open, stepping out of the way. The woman that stepped through the door in front of Parker took her by surprise, not even remotely what she was expecting. It was probabl
y more than a little bit ignorant, but when she heard the word pagan, Martha did not envisage tall, blonde and supermodel beautiful, wearing fitted jeans, heeled boots and a white and silver blouse that looked as though it came from a designer boutique. The woman’s hair was piled up stylishly on top of her head and her skin tone was pale and flawless, save for two small beauty marks on her left cheekbone. Expressive green eyes scanned Martha from top to toe in the instant it took her to cross the threshold and she couldn’t be certain but she thought that she saw a smirk.
Securing the door, once they were both inside, Martha muttered a small expression of fatigue that was barely audible. Parker heard it however and smiled down at her. For a moment, she thought that he was going to reach out to touch her but instead he seemed to stop himself from doing so. Shoving his hands deep in his pockets, he walked over to the newcomer. The blonde pagan, allegedly known as Olivia, was standing next to the discarded red rug, looking down at the floor, her back to the exit and where Martha still stood.
‘Well,’ Parker asked her. ‘What do you think?’
Olivia turned to look at him, retorting in a distinctly accented voice, ‘I think you dragged me away from what was looking to be a really fun date and now you owe me. Big time.’
‘I appreciate it’s your night off,’ he assured her. ‘Now what about… that?’
‘Well that, my dear boy, is a power circle.’
‘Yes, we know that much,’ he said, sounding like he was already getting a bit exasperated with the back-and-forth that seemed to be occurring. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that someone was practising magic in here.’ She paused, as if waiting for a reaction that did not come, leaving her to simply shrug and start taking long-legged strides around the circumference of the crudely painted circle that had been drawn in the middle of Mr. Ford’s private study. ‘I can’t be sure. My first guess would be that it is summoning circle, used by a practitioner to conjure up magical power. Only, I’ve not seen it before.’
Sins of the Father (Bloody Marytown Book 1) Page 9