Backing away, Tru held up his hands in surrender. “I still got a bit more left. Hey, when you sleepy heads are ready, come see me. I’ll be down the hall. In the opposite direction of the stairs, so no worries about falling down. Again.”
“Gah!” Paige picked up a shirt and threw it at him. “Get out!”
He laughed and closed the door behind him.
Good grief. It did feel good to banter with him. That man. She stared out the window. The gentle waves of the lake winked in the bright sun. The green leaves rustled on the wind. Clouds danced in the sky, changing form before her eyes. What would Leah say about—
She sank in the chair next to her as her heart twisted with grief that refused to drown. She put her elbows on her knees, burying her face in her hands.
“Pea,” Dexx said softly, sitting in the chair opposite of her. “You all right?”
She scrubbed her face hard and sat up. She had a case to solve. She had to be okay. She couldn’t let people down. Again. “Yeah.”
“Don’t.”
She cleared her throat and frowned at him. “What?”
“I know where you’re headed and trust me when I tell you, it ain’t pretty.”
Paige took a lock of long brown hair, pressing it to her lips for a long moment before letting it drop. “Yeah. I know. You hear from my brother? Do you know how she’s doing?”
“No, and I’m sure Leah’s fine.”
The pain inside Paige’s heart coiled, waiting. “Yeah. Coffee ready? Let’s go see what Tru found.”
He stood, grabbing a t-shirt off the floor. He brought it to his nose before pulling it over his head while Paige filled the two mugs. She handed one to Dexx and waited as he doused the crap out of it with about five creamers and half a shaker of sugar.
“Did you want a little coffee with your sugar?”
“Shut up.” He sipped his concoction as he exited the room.
Alma and Tru’s room had two single beds done up in shades of blues and browns. It felt very warm, but not quite as earthy as Paige’s. She glanced at her grandmother lying on one of the beds. The woman looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Tru camped at the lone table against the wall next to the window. He had two laptops set up and other equipment Paige couldn’t even begin to name.
“What do ya got for us?” Dexx asked, sitting down next to him.
Paige perched on the edge of the empty bed.
“Okay, well, first off,” Tru said, glancing at them both with wild excitement in his gray eyes. “Paige, I caught the sound of something sliding across the floor in the attic. And I caught what you thought you heard. The first time the little she-ghost called your name, that’s all I caught. You heard that, so I don’t have to replay it for you, but listen to this.”
Tru handed a set of headphones to Paige and another one to Dexx, his expression rife with excitement.
“ . . . you’re here. Without scaring me half to death.”
The attic door slammed shut.
I won’t go back, the little girl’s voice said.
Paige shoved the headphones off, her heart racing. “That was very clear. No confusing anything there.”
Dexx tucked one cushioned cuff behind his ear. “Where won’t she go back to?”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” Dexx said. “But there’s no record of any girl dying there. I can tell you that. So . . .” He trailed off with a shrug.
“Well, I can answer part of that.” Tru pointed to their headsets. He waited until they’d put their headphones back on before clicking to another screen.
Static. My name is Jessica Camley, the girl’s voice came out garbled, but easy to understand.
“Wow.” Paige’s hands shook as she exposed one ear. “How often do you actually get answers from a ghost?”
Tru beamed with excitement. “Where did she come from?”
“That name didn’t come up in the research.” Dexx played with the headphone cord. “It’s like she came out of nowhere.”
“I have more. When we got to the cellar, catch what I have on the digital recorder.” He unplugged the multi-headphone jack and turned up the volume. “This guy is easy to hear.”
“You’ve got to listen to me, love.”
“That’s the guy. Lucius.” Paige set her headphones on the bed beside her.
“Things are going to happen tonight.” Static warbled his next sentence. “Do not fight me when I come.”
“I didn’t hear that last night.”
“Maybe because he’s a ghost?” Dexx asked. “A demony ghosty thingy-ness?”
“You need to be careful,” Alma said, her tone hard. “I don’t like this.”
“Right and she really didn’t like what I’m about to show you,” Tru said, dumping that file and opening two other windows. “Look, this is the thermal recording I took while we were down in the cellar.”
On the right hand window, Paige saw what she’d seen over Tru’s shoulder the previous night in the cellar. Paige shrugged. The fear of the night before crept forward. She swallowed. “Right. Been there. What else?”
“This,” Tru said, pointing to the screen on the left and enlarging it. “This is what you didn’t see.” The screen swung wildly about the room. “See, I just pulled it out and I’m putting it on the shelf. But look at this.” Tru hit pause. He used the mouse to clarify the rather fuzzy picture of something on the floor. “There. What do you see?”
Dexx leaned in, squinting his eyes. “What the hell is that?”
Paige’s breath caught in her chest as she stared at what had been scratched into the dirt floor. “A binding symbol.”
“It was a trap,” Dexx said. “Someone knew we were going to be there. Who knew?”
Paige shook her head. “Chief White and the owner. There was a cop there.”
“The chief said he got a call from one of his guys, and the last thing he remembered was finding Mike on scene.”
Tru turned his attention back to the computer. “We got so much footage this trip. It’s unbelievable. Paige, I’m taking you with us every time.”
She snorted.
“Did you get anything else?” Dexx asked.
“Tons.”
“Stuff that’s pertinent?”
Tru shrugged. “Not really.”
“So,” Dexx said, rubbing his eye. “What happened down there?”
Paige licked her lips and glanced at her grandmother. “He tried to possess me, I think. It felt like he was doing more than that though. It felt like he was trying to push me out.”
“Did the tattoo help?” Dexx asked.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing that stopped him.”
“Good,” Dexx said. “Then as soon as Nate sends my ink, we’re putting it permanent on your body.”
“Still not sure what I think about tattoos.”
“Don’t care. This was close, Pea. Too close.”
She hid her trembling fingers. “Yeah.”
“Hey,” Tru said, pointing at her with a goofy expression on his face, “if you do any kind of possessed thing, give me a heads up. I need pictures.”
Asshole.
WITH TRU AND Alma just down the hall, Dexx decided Paige was good enough on her own. She agreed whole-heartedly, stating something about not needing a babysitter as a full-grown adult woman. Whatever.
He had research to do.
Dexx slid into Jackie’s driver’s seat and clenched the wheel, grinding his teeth in frustration. Why, why, why would anyone think it smart to wipe a person’s memories? And who in this pissing world thought walling off a person’s gift would help anything, especially one like hers?
The bad guy. That’s who.
What was Balnore really up to? Dexx’d never once bought into the whole protector-watcher-demon thing. Really? A demon as a protector? Seriously? What would Buffy had been like if Giles had been a cuddly vampire watcher?
Then Dexx recalled that Buffy had had a soft spot for vampires, the
good ones and the bad ones. Gross. That had better not be going on with Paige.
He eased Jackie into gear. She sedately sauntered down the road.
He stopped at the stop sign ready to turn onto the highway running through town. He had too many questions and they were all good. Who was this ghost? Where had she come from? What did Lucius want? How did the killer even know about Lucius?
His eyes scanned the friendly streets. Few people populated the sidewalks. Cars were parked all along the storefronts and people meandered around inside the stores. Jackie purred beneath him as he searched for a sign that would lead him to the library.
The wind lifted the tree branches, allowing the sunlight to strike a little green sign attached to one of the silver light poles along the street. Dexx narrowed his gaze to read the white letters in the fading shade of the noon-time sun. Perfect.
The library wasn’t very big. A little white square of a building, but the area outside took the edge off the stark feel of it. The trees were full and a little garden welcomed visitors with cheery color.
“Jackie, if I don’t make it back here in thirty minutes, come get me.” Not that she would. She was a car. Not a demon-special car. Not a talking car. Just a car. Normal felt great in that moment.
Time to find something out.
A tall woman with straggly brown hair greeted him. Her overly large eyes gave her an owl-like appearance. She tugged on her purple paisley shirt and gave him what he could only describe as a homely smile. “How can I help you?” The words rolled out on a wave of sweet, Southern accent.
Homely or not, she was clearly a woman. Women were lovely in every shape, color, and size. Well, unless they were evil and trying to tear you to shreds, then not so much. He leaned against the counter, his green t-shirt shifting across his hard abs. Yeah, he knew what he brought to the table. He read her white name tag, beaming his charming smile. “Actually, Shelley, I hope so. I’m looking for a story that might have been printed in the local paper about a girl who died around here.”
“Oh, how dreadful.” Compassion filled her eyes.
He loved a woman with compassion. A rare thing these days. “I’m doing some research—”
“On which one?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Which one what?”
“Which plantation are you researchin,’ silly?” Shelley opened her big blue eyes, ducking her head with a shy, school-girl smile. “I mean, we got a lot o’ ghost hunters who come through here lookin’ for evidence of people who died an’ what not.”
“Oh. Right.” Usually he had to come up with some dumb, pea-brained excuse to look up the dead. However, in this quiet little hamlet of do-gooders, they were used to people looking for proof of hauntings. He’d take it as a win. “I’m looking into the Metley Plantation.”
“Oh, well, we have all kinds of stories about that place.” She bustled around the end of the counter, leading the way to one of the six public computers. “That one’s just cursed. I swear, there was one time I went up there—just curious like, ya understand—and I swear I felt a cold hand pass down my back.” Her breath caught in her throat as she blinked back tears.
Women. Such passionate creatures. He wondered if Paige could be that passionate about anything other than work and her daughter.
“And I heard a voice.”
Oh, people hearing voices in a creaky house. The human brain. Such a remarkable thing. “How long ago was this?”
“Well, now, it would have been right after Ashley was murdered.” She gripped the back of an orange, barely-cushioned chair. “I just can’t believe this could happen in our town. Everyone here’s so nice.”
“Did you know her? Ashley?”
Shelley shrugged. “I—I went to school with her.”
Was that shame curling her lip, or something else? “You weren’t friends, I take it.”
She shook her head.
Dexx turned to the computer. “Tell me all your records are SC—” He gestured to the computer. “—and not HC.” He flicked his hand to the stack of books on the rolling shelf tucked beside her.
She giggled. “I am going to have to remember that. Soft copy. Hard copy. Yes. Well, except for some of the really old ones. I’m still workin’ on those.”
“Just point me in the right direction.”
An hour and a half later, he came up with the same “ghost stories” he’d found the last time. The newspaper hadn’t printed stories about any murders except for one. It wasn’t even worth the trip to the court house to look at those records. He’d already done it the last time. Nothing new had happened.
So if this ghost didn’t die in the area, where did she die? And who was she?
Google was Man’s new best friend. Dogs didn’t fetch nearly as well, as far, nor as accurately. Hell, he could do this search on his phone, a thing he kept forgetting. He typed in the ghost’s name. Jessica Camley.
Shelley came and peered over his shoulder. “Looks like you found somethin’.”
“Looks like I might have,” he murmured.
“Who’s Jessica Camley? We don’t have any Camley’s round here.”
He scanned through the first story. “Caught an EVP. It definitely sounded like she said her name was Jessica Camley.” He found a picture of her.
“Oh dear. She’s just a little girl.”
Jessica had been nine years old with long, straight brown hair. The picture showed her as a solemn girl, and from the look in her eyes, she hadn’t smiled much since birth.
“Oh, that’s just horrible, her parents dying all of a sudden-like and all.”
That wasn’t the worst part, though. Her parents had died suddenly at home within a week of one another. Her mother slipped in the bathtub. Her father, apparently, killed himself by exhaust fumes.
A news article filled in most of the information. She’d been bounced around from one foster home to another with claims of pet mutilation. Jessica Camley died. A fellow foster kid shot her with his father’s gun.
All this happened in California, far from Louisiana.
Shelley sat back in a lime green chair she’d brought over. “Well now, that just don’t make any sense. You’re sure this little girl said she was Jessica Camley?”
Dexx nodded, his lips twisted in thought. He crossed one arm over his chest and tapped the end of his nose with a finger. What was it that the girl said? I won’t go back? Back to where? Had she been trapped somewhere else, in her own little time warp?
He stood up, offering Shelley his hand. “Thanks for all your help. If you think of anything or see anything suspicious, would you call me?”
Her eager expression dipped into one of a shy girl. “You’re stayin’ with Fanny?”
“Yeah, but here’s my cell if you think of anything.”
“I’ll call,” she all but whispered.
Dexx walked out to his car, his mind scrambling through the information he’d gathered. He glared at Jackie as he approached her. “I was in there longer than thirty minutes. Where were you?”
Jackie remained silent.
“Ignoring me.” He opened her long, heavy door and slid in. “I see how you are.” He turned the key in the ignition.
No gasp. No rumble. No purr.
He stared at Jackie’s steering wheel. “Listen, baby, I didn’t mean it. I was joking. I’m sorry. You know how I am.”
Nothing.
“Jackie, I’m really, really sorry.”
When he turned the key the second time, she roared to life.
For a car with no communication skills, she had a lot more personality than he gave her credit for. But that didn’t lighten their problems. Paige was in trouble. A lot of it, and he needed to figure out just how deep the shit was here in the tiny little hamlet of St. Francisville.
PAIGE PACED THE space between the bed and the door, from the table to the bathroom. She needed to act. She needed to do something, but what?
Anything! Good God, seriously!
There were
things she could do with Dexx if he were there.
No. Not that. So, not anything.
But why not?
Because . . . it would complicate their relationship. She needed to be able to focus on the job and she couldn’t do that if she was boning her partner.
She hadn’t had sex in three years. Three years. Parts of her body were drying up with rust.
It didn’t matter. Concentration. Job first.
Sex could be just sex.
Not with Dexx. She—good grief. She respected the shit out of him, enjoyed talking with him. No. She couldn’t imagine simply sharing her body with him. That would complicate things.
However, once she got back to Denver, he wouldn’t be her partner anymore. She had a partner in Denver. A cop.
No. She needed to do something else, something smart. So what was the smart thing to do?
She had no clue.
A knock sounded on the door. Shit. She cracked open the door.
Her grandmother’s wrinkled and worn face peered at her through the slit.
Paige stepped back to let Alma into the room. “Did you get a chance to review the runes I sent you?”
“I did.” Alma’s voice was raspy like a smoker. “Though I don’t know why you had me to look into them. You’ve already deduced what they meant, I’m sure.”
“Right, except that when you splice them together, it changed their meaning.”
Alma sank into the comfortable chair with a groan. “Merge them, maybe, but not change them.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Let’s talk about somethin’ else.”
Paige sank carefully onto the edge of the bed, her back tweaking with the effort. The expression on her grandmother’s face said she was ready for a rather unpleasant conversation. Great. Because she needed to be beat up a little more. A physical ass whooping wasn’t quite enough. A berating was required. Yay. “I don’t want to talk about it, Grandma. What’s done is done.”
“Nope. We’re not putting the mind blockers on you again, so we need to get this out in the air.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “What do you want to hear, Grandma? You hid all my memories of my daughter, and you and Balnore locked away my gift, banishing even more of my memories. Like ones where I worked similar cases to this one, only I solved them. For the past three years, I’ve felt like the worst damned detective the world’s ever seen. I couldn’t close a case to save my life because that’s what it said on paper.”
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