EJ06 - Maze of Souls

by JL Bryan

  Chocolates were available at the end of the buffet, several varieties, slivered into thin leaves like everything else. I made my way there and accepted some nearly transparent slices of dark and white chocolate, and a little bit of truffle.

  “You've had so much to eat tonight,” a voice said behind me. “You must have been starving.”

  I recognized her accent, originating somewhere far east of Berlin. I turned to see a waify girl with big blue eyes and sharp cheekbones—Kara Volkova, an investigator with Paranormal Solutions, who did not like me at all. Her eyes seemed to coldly assess my hair, costume, and shoes, and one side of her lip curled in a slight sneer. While I wore a thrift-store blouse and plastic sword, her own outfit looked like it cost a thousand bucks, a black cocktail dress accented with gold and diamonds at her fingers and ears. She held a white, expressionless porcelain mask painted with pastel flowers on one side. The disdain was clear on her face.

  “It always impresses me how much American women can eat,” Kara continued, clearly not trying to endear herself to me tonight. “Is this your third trip to the buffet?”

  “Second,” I said, forcing a smile and hating that I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment. I had nothing to be embarrassed about, I told myself, but the sardonic twist of her lips and the knowing look in her eyes made me doubt it. “I didn't know you would be here tonight,” I said, hoping to shift to bland small talk and then make my escape.

  “We thought it would be amusing,” Kara said. “We were in town, anyway. Preparing to take over your agency, you might remember.”

  “I'd almost forgotten,” I said.

  “And shopping for a flat.” That was another voice that I recognized, too, even though it came from a boxy, metallic-looking monstrosity that enclosed the head of a man in a classic black tuxedo. It has a British accent—Nicholas Blake, also from Paranormal Solutions, and from whom I'd very reluctantly accepted help on the Lathrop Grand case. “We may rent a house instead. They're remarkably inexpensive in this city.”

  “Because most of them are haunted. So the two of you are...?” I waggled my eyebrows.

  Kara looked at me with even more disdain, if that were possible. “We are not involved with each other.”

  “You don't have to look so offended about it. You might hurt his feelings.” I watched as Nicholas turned an oversized screw in the gray monstrosity of a torture device he wore over his head. “And who are you supposed to be? The Terminator after his face burns off?”

  “The Man in the Iron Mask,” Nicholas said, pulling the mask apart in two large pieces to reveal his own face, haughty as ever, unable to smile without it coming across as a condescending smirk. Or maybe he just never smiled and always smirked. His eyes seemed to momentarily darken as he looked at me.

  “You're a Dumas fan?” I asked.

  “This time next year, we might all come as the Three Musketeers,” he said. He glanced at Stacey across the room. “Of whom there were four.”

  “Yeah, I don't know about that,” I said. “So PSI is sending both of you to, uh...” I looked from him to Kara.

  “Transition your firm into a fully functioning subsidiary, compliant with all company standards,” Nicholas finished with a wink. His gaze drifted down over me, taking in my costume, in a way that at least seemed less judgmental than the looks Kara had given me. Last time we'd seen each other, I'd ruined Kara's work and then turned down Nicholas's attempt to take me on a date. I expected some resentment from both of them, but Kara really seemed to have it in for me. I could see that in her icy stare. She was going to love having me under her thumb.

  “I advise you to do exactly as you're told during this process,” Kara said. “You do not want to make the situation difficult for us.”

  “Maybe I do want to do that,” I said. “You don't know my motives.”

  “If you become an obstacle, we can make your situation difficult,” she said, her accent sounding very Russian now. “We can punish you in ways you've never imagined—”

  “Let's not begin with so much conflict,” Nicholas said. “We've worked together well in the past. We can do it again. For the greater good, wouldn't you agree?” He took my hand in his, holding it just a little too tight for me to escape without difficulty. His fingers were soft, not rough with calluses like Michael's. “Perhaps we can discuss this more privately, Ellie. I can apprise you of the many changes we'll be bringing to your agency—all of them improvements, I promise.”

  “I can't wait to see what you're going to do to us,” I said, laying on the sarcasm good and thick so it couldn't possibly slip past him.

  “What's going on?” Michael asked as he arrived. Stacey was threading her way through the crowd behind him as he stalked toward us. Michael glowered, his jaw tight, definitely noticing that Nicholas was still gripping my hand. I couldn't tell whether his anger was directed mostly at Nicholas or mostly at me, but I was definitely getting some share of it.

  Michael grabbed my arm as if to pull my hand from Nicholas's. For a moment, it seemed like they were going to play tug-of-war with my forearm. I could think of countless other places and situations where I would rather have been at that moment. Crawling into the sub-basement of an old mansion in search of a murderous ghost would have been more pleasant.

  Michael and Nicholas glared at each other like a couple of primates ready to fight for alpha status. It was incredibly embarrassing for everyone involved, I think.

  Then Nicholas let my fingers slide free as Michael pulled me away from him.

  “We were having a friendly conversation, nothing more,” Nicholas told him, smiling. “I will be Ellie's direct supervisor for the foreseeable future.”

  “Maybe you're not foreseeing clearly.” Michael stepped closer to Nicholas, one hand balling into a fist at his side.

  “Michael,” I said. “Come on.” There wasn't much point in them fighting, and I wasn't ready to lose my job this way. Not yet, anyway. So, for the moment, Nicholas did have a tight grip on me, whether he was actually touching me or not.

  Kara gave me a sardonic little look, as if reading my mind and seeing my helplessness. Maybe she was. She'd been chosen by PSI to be voluntarily possessed by a spirit that was very important to them. That sounded like a job for someone with strong psychic ability. I suspected Nicholas was psychic, too, just by the way he looked at me, like he could see right through. Plus, I was pretty sure I'd seen different hues in his eyes, sometimes dark and sometimes light. Maybe he just wore colored contacts. He seemed vain enough.

  “She's mine,” Michael said, with enough anger that I wondered if he'd been drinking a lot of alcohol while I wasn't looking. He didn't seem drunk, though. Just angry.

  Nicholas backed away from him, looking amused, holding up his palms in surrender.

  “My mistake,” he said. “She is all yours, friend.”

  My phone rang. Grateful for the interruption, I fished it out of my woven-net purse, which looked like a small woven rope net. I had picked it as my most pirate-y purse, since it sort of looked like something you could catch fish with if you really had to.

  It was the Old Walnut Inn, where Stacey and I had stayed. I frowned. We'd paid in full at checkout, and we hadn't done any damage to our rooms. Why would the motel be calling?

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Ellie?” The woman's voice on the other end trembled, and she seemed to have trouble catching her breath.

  “Yes, it's Ellie. Who is this?”

  “Amber. Whatever you did, Ellie, it wasn't so good—”

  She was cut off, as though she'd dropped the phone, and then Jeremy's voice replaced hers.

  “Whatever you did made it worse,” he said, and his voice wasn't very steady, either. He spoke much more rapidly than I'd ever heard him. “They came after us. You provoked them, and they came after us.”

  “What happened?” I dashed away from the brewing confrontation—happy to do that, honestly—and hurried to escape the noisy, music-filled ballroom and f
ound my way out to the enclosed brick courtyard behind the hotel. A number of guests had strayed out here, but the crowd was much thinner, and I could hear Jeremy more clearly.

  “They wrecked our house,” Jeremy said. “They drove us out.”

  “Mr. Neville, please tell me exactly what happened.”

  “It threatened the girls, right in her rooms.”

  “The bloody girl from the stairs?” I asked, drawing strange looks from a small group of partygoers. I moved into a little arbor to get away from them.

  “No. The headless horseman. He's not headless, though—”

  “Nobody ever said he was headless,” Amber interrupted in the background.

  “—he was a big black shadow. We all saw him. He went into Corrine's room, then into Maya's. The girls were screaming,” Jeremy said.

  “Is your family safe now?” I asked.

  “We're all at the motel. The house is destroyed.”

  “I'm so sorry. Was anyone hurt? The kids? Amber?”

  “Not physically. If there's anything you can do, now's the time,” Jeremy said. “If you can't fix it, we're never going back. We'll just move. We'll lose everything, but I don't care.”

  “Hold tight. We're on our way.”

  As I hung up, Michael and Stacey reached the courtyard. Nicholas and Kara weren't with them, thankfully.

  “You left in a hurry,” Michael said, standing close and cupping my face in his hand, as if to show concern, or maybe possessiveness. His eyes burned into mine; he still seemed angry and uncharacteristically jealous. I wanted to be mad at him for treating my new bosses that way, but I couldn't. I mean, I hated them, too. He just needed to tone it down around them.

  “I got bad news from the client,” I said. “Stacey and I have to run.”

  “That wasn't the plan.” Michael pulled me closer.

  “Believe me, I preferred the original plan of spending my night off with you. I've been looking forward to it all week, but...” I turned to Stacey. “The horseman went on a rampage. It looks like those cranky, bad-tempered ghosts of Hiram and family were holding the Hessian in check.”

  “A Hessian?” Michael asked. “Interesting.”

  “I'll let you know how it all wraps up,” I said.

  “You aren't leaving without me,” he said. “I'd like to see this haunted farm and this dangerous ghost on horseback. I could help.”

  “I promised myself I wouldn't drag you into my work anymore, Michael.”

  “Who's dragging? If anything, I'm dragging you. Let's get to work.” His hand gripped my arm, making it clear that we'd be sticking together. Despite my protests, this made me happy. I was also happy to have any excuse to leave the ball right away—the presence of Kara and Nicholas had completely soured it for me.

  Though it wasn't yet midnight, Stacey, Michael, and I fled the ball as if we were Cinderella expecting our coach to revert to pumpkin form. If Cinderella dressed like a pirate, or like Supergirl. I wondered if Stacey had picked the costume just as an excuse to buy the super-high red boots.

  “So how are we going to stop the horseman again?” Stacey asked.

  “Josef,” I said. “His name is Josef Bracke. A Hessian mercenary, murderous highwayman, and an apparently angry and powerful ghost. And I have no idea how we're going to stop him.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Just when we were finally getting some time away from this place,” Stacey sighed as the Old Walnut Inn appeared, slouching on the side of the dark, desolate highway. The concrete building and paved-over parking lot looked as depressing as ever. The Circle Q convenience store beside it didn't look much more inviting, the outdoor fluorescent bars flickering and stuttering like a bug zapper in a swamp.

  “Hopefully the family's overreacting,” I said, slowing the van. “Clearly something happened, but it doesn't sound like anyone was seriously hurt. A quick glimpse of something supernatural can be enough to drive rational people into a panic.”

  “They said their home was wrecked.”

  “So the horseman can send out psychokinetic energy. Maybe just unfocused shockwaves. We don't know whether he can really focus it.”

  “But we know it means he's dangerous and could be strong enough to kill us,” Stacey said.

  “Yep, we definitely know that.” I checked the side-view mirror. The round lights of Michael's antique truck glowed behind me. He'd seemed angry at me, maybe for getting distracted with work when it was supposed to be our first night together all week. I'd thought I had secured the clients' home, at least for the short term, but clearly I'd been way, way off about that.

  Stacey and I had grabbed the cargo van full of gear from the office, but Michael had driven separately, mostly because nobody in their right mind would ride in the back of our cargo van for an hour.

  I pulled into the motel parking lot and Michael parked alongside me, a little too close, as if he meant to pin me into place. I was barely able to open the driver-side door and wiggle my way out.

  “Hey, great parking job,” I told him. “You should work as a valet. Seriously.”

  Michael gave me a cold little stare, for just half a second, before breaking into a smile. Whatever. I would not apologize. His parking was undeniably sloppy.

  “Yet he can be trusted to maneuver a fire truck?” Stacey asked.

  “Those don't have to fit into parking spaces,” I said. “They can park wherever they want.”

  We approached the motel room door in front of the family's big gray Suburban. In our rush to meet up with them, we hadn't had time to go home and change clothes—there had been enough stops along the way as it was, such as picking up the van and gear. Michael and I looked pretty absurd in our blousy pirate shirts, but Stacey had it even worse in her bright red and blue Supergirl costume. She'd borrowed a jacket from Michael that covered her to her hips, but there wasn't any hiding those thigh-high red boots.

  I knocked, and Amber opened the door, leaning heavily on it. She looked exhausted. Her hair hung in a loose, careless ponytail, and her eyes were puffy and red as if she'd been crying.

  “We came as fast we could,” I said. It was a little past one in the morning. We had sped all the way to the motel, to the extent that the van was capable of speeding.

  Amber nodded and led us inside. The rest of the family looked as bedraggled as she did—unkempt and upset, dressed in pajamas and tennis shoes. Little Maya huddled on one of the motel room's two saggy beds, leaning against her father with her face buried in his shoulder, her hair matted into red clumps. The boy, Castor, sat on Jeremy's other side, staring intently at a game on his tablet, as if desperate to escape into a world where angry birds were the biggest problem he had to face.

  Corrine paced the room, dressed in checkered pajamas and a Nirvana t-shirt featuring a smiley face with the eyes X'ed out. Unlike her traumatized, quietly shaking siblings, Corrine seemed furious and ready to smash things, baring her teeth as she snapped at her mother.

  “Did you tell them about the horses?” Corrine said. With eight people now crammed into the motel room, she had to truncate her pacing a bit. She pointed at me. “Who's going to save the horses? You? They're helpless. They're locked in their stalls and can't even run away if they want to. We should have let them out. Who's going to protect them?”

  “What happened with the horses?” Stacey asked, looking almost as concerned as Corrine.

  “Oh, nothing,” Corrine said. “They were just screaming like, I don't know, somebody was out in the stable attacking them, maybe torturing them. But did we go to help them? No, Dad just made everybody get in the car and leave. I mean, who cares what happens to the horses, right?”

  “Corrine, we're going straight to the farm after this,” Stacey said. “I promise I'll check on them.”

  “We all care about the horses, Corrine,” Amber said.

  “Then why did we just leave them there? They're probably dead by now—”

  Maya let out a little yowl as if in pain, and Jeremy hugged her clo
se and scowled. “Corrine!” he snapped.

  “Well, it's true! I'm going crazy in this stupid tiny hotel room. How long do we have to stay here? I have to get out of here, I feel bottled up,” Corrine said.

  “Why don't you run over to that convenience store before it closes? You could get us some snacks and drinks. And blow off some of that steam while you're at it,” Amber said.

  “Fine. I'll go get some stupid Doritos while nobody helps our horses.” Corrine pulled on a shirt, jeans, and boots over her pajamas, then accepted some cash from her mom.

  “Don't get anything with caffeine,” Amber added while Corrine walked out, slamming the motel room door behind her. The place instantly felt calmer, as though a whirlwind had blown itself out.

  “She's very worried about the horses,” Jeremy told us, as if to clarify.

  “I understand, and we will check on them for you.” I briefly introduced Michael, and nobody complained about having a firefighter on board. Then I asked: “Can you tell us exactly what happened tonight?”

  “It was late,” Amber said. “About eleven. The kids were exhausted, because we took them over to Sylvania for trick-or-treating. The little shops downtown were giving out candy. This should have been our big weekend at the farm, you know, with Halloween and everything. There should have been hayrides, we were going to have a bonfire...instead, we're closed and out of business.”

  “We heard the crashes downstairs,” Jeremy said. “They woke everybody up. The thing broke down our front door, wrecked some stuff down there, then came charging up the stairs. You know that system of bright lights and music you set up for us? Yeah, that didn't slow it down at all. It trashed everything in its way, broke all your lights. Then it rode into Corrine's room and threatened her. It had a big black sword in its hand. Then it went into Maya's room and threw her bed aside. I have to say, I think you failed to remove the threat from the ghosts.”