by Ann Charles
“Lift the weapon.”
It shook in my hands as I raised it.
“Higher.”
I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing as ordered, getting it ready to swing. I shook my head, looking into her pale face. “I can’t do this.”
“You will.”
“No.”
“It won’t hurt me, Scharfrichter.” Her smile was sad. “It will free me.”
“This is not what I—” My vision tunneled, black shadows eating at the edges. “Want,” I said, my voice sounding far off and crackly, like the old radio in the attic.
The ax fell.
“No!” I screamed as the blade sliced.
I tumbled with it into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Monday, December 10th
“The next thing I remember,” I told Doc, staring out his office window at the gray early morning sky, “was Cooper shaking me, ordering me to snap out of it and stop screaming.”
I heard his chair creak behind me. “You have no memory of leaving Ms. Wolff’s apartment?”
Shaking my head, I turned away from the outside world and walked over to the empty chair next to Cornelius. “One minute I was in the living room with Ms. Wolff and Mr. Black.” I lowered myself onto the seat. “The next I was standing outside the door of her apartment, screaming my head off, as Cooper so kindly put it.”
I was careful not to mention the bit about killing the timekeeper in front of Cornelius in case Hawke decided to put him on the stand someday. As far as Cornelius was concerned, our objective had been to communicate with Ms. Wolff’s ghost, and that objective had been met.
Things had moved quickly after Cooper found me, with Doc and Cornelius packing up and hauling me out into the cold. Harvey was waiting out front in the warm pickup, frowning several times in the rearview mirror at me as he drove us back to Calamity Jane’s to drop off Cornelius, and then home. When we pulled up, Cooper was still sitting in Aunt Zoe’s pickup, frowning out the windshield.
We all filed inside where Aunt Zoe waited with cold beer and hot tea. I fell into a kitchen chair, sipped on the chai tea placed in front of me, and told the whole ghastly tale to Doc, Harvey, Aunt Zoe, and Cooper. My story came out in broken pieces, a lot of details skipped because exhaustion and the shock of what I’d done made my head fuzzy. When I ended in tears, Doc had decided to call it a night for me, telling everyone that we needed to see how things looked come daylight. Thankfully, Aunt Zoe had put Addy in her bed for the night, leaving mine open for company.
Doc led me up to my room, stripped me down, and slid a nightshirt over my head. Then he crawled into bed with me and pulled me into his arms. I fell asleep within minutes while he stroked my hair, whispering sweet nothings in my ear. I slept hard, nightmare-free. My imagination must have been running low on energy and decided to take the night off.
I’d woken to an empty bed and the smell of fresh coffee. Aunt Zoe was sitting at the table when I stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen, her mug of coffee steaming. She didn’t ask too many questions, only if I were heading into work and what I needed her to do for me besides getting the kids up, dressed, fed, and to school. That was enough as far as I was concerned.
Doc joined us, fresh from the shower. He told us Cooper was already up and gone, and that the detective had left me a message—Do NOT call or text me today!
Huh. Here I’d thought we were best buddies after last night. Apparently, Cooper was still pissed about that black eye.
Doc drove me to work extra early, but instead of going into Calamity Jane’s, I followed him into his office where we were supposed to meet with Cornelius and fill him in on what had happened in the apartment.
The guest of honor must have been watching for us. We were in Doc’s office only minutes when the back door opened and Cornelius joined us, wearing his pink robe, striped pajama pants, and his round sunglasses. He had a protein shake in hand and was quite chipper considering how little sleep he must have had, which I figured explained the need for sunglasses at our early morning meeting.
“What do you think?” Doc asked Cornelius, bringing me back to the present. “How would you explain what Violet experienced?”
Abe Jr. stroked his goatee, his brow drawn over his sunglasses. “It reminds me of a haunting.”
“What does that mean?” I asked him.
“A haunting is an event that occurs on a time loop, but doesn’t actually include any interaction with the living.” At my frown, he added, “Think of it like a video recording that keeps playing over and over. Only in this case, you interacted with the recording, which is unusual. The question is, did your interaction change the outcome of the loop?” He held up one long skinny finger. “Or, was this all part of the haunting loop, just a part that was not witnessed before last night?”
Trying to make sense of that made my head throb over my right eye.
“Another possibility,” Cornelius continued. “Is retrocognition.”
“Remind me what retrocognition is,” I said to Doc.
“He means you were able to see and experience events from the past with no prior knowledge of them.”
“But …” I started, thinking about how Ms. Wolff said I’d been there before.
Doc held up a hand, stopping me from going any further. He nodded knowingly and turned to Cornelius. “How do you explain Detective Cooper? Violet could see and touch him, but not hear him. The other two in the room seemed to not know he was there.”
“If we continue with the haunting theory involving a loop in time, it would make sense the others involved couldn’t see or hear him. He was not part of the haunting loop, merely a visitor observing.”
Doc steepled his fingers, leaning back with a thoughtful frown.
“Another possibility,” Cornelius said, “could be the detective was having an OBE.”
“OBE?” I asked.
“Out-of-body experience,” Doc explained.
“But his physical form was in that apartment just like mine.” At least I thought it was. He sure felt real when I head-butted him.
“He could still go in and out of his physical form,” Cornelius said. “Which might explain his going through the wall and this Mr. Black character.” He took a drink from the straw in his protein shake. “Another possibility is the concept of reciprocal apparition, wherein you and the detective were able to see and respond to each other in a different astral plane than this one.”
“But why Cooper and not Doc, or you?”
Cornelius shrugged. “The detective was able to go into a trance, possibly, and detach from his physical surroundings. Or there’s the chance that you were able to connect to his mind via telepathy and imprint your visions of the apartment and all that occurred, making him an observer only, able to view but not actually participate.”
“Why did I keep hearing the radio playing old music?”
“There is a school of thought that believes in RVP.” When I gave him a “huh” look, he added, “Radio voice phenomenon.”
“You can hear the voice of the dead through a radio,” Doc clarified.
“Only in your case,” Cornelius said, “it wasn’t so much the voice of the dead, but a channel for you to access a haunting and project yourself into it.”
I buried my face in my hands. “I can’t believe there are words for all of these things.”
“Whether or not traditional science is willing to accept the paranormal world,” Cornelius said, “it’s all around us. Some of us are better at seeing and hearing it than others. You, Violet, are the strongest physical medium that I have come across. Not only that, your sixth-sense abilities far exceed in multitude and variety those of anyone else I’ve known personally.”
Great. I was a freak extraordinaire.
“Did you find all of your answers last night?” he asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“You said you had to make contact with a particular ghost. Was one of t
he two in the apartment who you were looking for?” At my nod, he added, “And did the ghost give you the answer you needed?”
“Yeah, she did.” I knew who killed Ms. Wolff now. So did Cooper. How that was going to pan out with Detective Hawke and the others we’d know tonight when Cooper got off work. Mr. Black had said that my hair would not be in Ms. Wolff’s possession if I completed the second loop. Without my hair, Hawke had nothing to tie me to her murder.
But, was Mr. Black lying? Using me to kill Ms. Wolff for his own means? Or was I really now not only an executioner, but a timekeeper as well?
Cornelius stood. “Excellent. Then our mission was a success.” He threw his empty protein shake in Doc’s garbage can. “Now we can focus on the hellhole under your office building.”
Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that uncanny problem. “Why? Did you hear more weird noises coming from it?”
“No. It’s been sealed off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your old boss doesn’t want us going down there.”
“How do you know that?”
“She has sealed the closet door.”
“Sealed how?” Doc asked.
“The knob turns, but the door appears to be stuck.”
“Why would Jane do that?” I thought aloud.
“I could hazard several guesses,” Cornelius answered. “But I think the most likely answer is one of two possibilities. There is activity in the hole and she wants to keep something from coming out.”
“Or us from going in,” I finished for him. I wasn’t a fan of either answer.
“You’re reading my mind again, Violet. What am I thinking now?”
I sighed. This mind-reading game of his made me want to yank on his goatee. “You’re thinking about the color green.”
“Unbelievable,” he said. “You must have sensed that I’m trying to choose a color for the third-floor hallway in my hotel, and know that green is the color of nature and therefore represents harmony.”
“Yep.” I shot Doc a what-are-the-chances glance. “That’s what happened.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Cornelius turned to Doc. “I read a paper concerning research that showed the child of two mediums has a 48.75 percent chance of being born with the combined extrasensory abilities of both parents. Now might be the optimal time to mate if Violet is in estrous.”
I gasped, my cheeks warming.
Doc grinned at me. “Well, I don’t have any pumpkins handy, but we could give ‘er a whirl.”
Cornelius nodded. “I’ll leave you to it then.” And he did, exiting via the back door, leaving Doc and me alone.
“Damn, Killer,” he said, his grin fading. “Cornelius is right. You really knocked this one out of the park. “
“Did you talk to Cooper this morning about what he witnessed?”
“A little. He’s still shaken up, I think, even though he’s trying to hide it.” He smirked. “And his eye hurts.”
I groaned. “In spite of Cornelius’s ideas, I don’t understand how I could hurt Cooper yet nobody else could even see him.”
“Cornelius has a lot of solid theories and the terms he tossed around fit the puzzle, but when it comes down to it, I think there’s one answer that stands out above all others.”
I knew the answer. “I’m an executioner.”
“An executioner,” he said, rising and coming around to the front of his desk. “And now a timekeeper, too.” He caught my arm and tugged me to my feet. “I have a feeling there will be things that occur from here on out that might not even have names in the paranormal community. Events that will leave us scratching our heads.”
“I’ll be happy if everyone just keeps breathing.”
He pulled me closer, his arms wrapping around me. “Me, too, Killer.”
I buried my face in his neck. He smelled like a sunny day in the woods, making me want to lie down on a blanket next to him and stare up at the trees. We could pretend everything was normal. He was just a boy and I was just a girl in a world with no monsters, ghosts, or paranormal hunters coming to remove me from the picture.
Hunters—that reminded me of something. “What do you think Ms. Wolff meant about the cages being open?” I asked him.
“Your guess is as good as mine, but I doubt she’s talking about hamsters running amok.”
“Or chickens.”
I felt his quiet laughter under my cheek. “Speaking of poultry,” he said. “Elvis left an egg in my shoe last night.”
“Ahh, she’s adopted you.” I lifted my head, resting my chin on his chest. “I need a let’s-make-up gift for Cooper, so he doesn’t hate me forever and a day for that black eye.”
He kissed my forehead. “My little bruiser. I warned him about you.”
I turned in his arms, resting back against him. For a few seconds, I stood there soaking up his warmth as I watched traffic roll by outside the window.
“Doc, did Cooper remember the strands of hair in Ms. Wolff’s hand before I brought it up to the group last night?”
Doc hadn’t until I’d told him about it after the séance when we had a moment alone. Aunt Zoe and Harvey didn’t either. Cooper didn’t indicate one way or another when I’d explained to everyone around Aunt Zoe’s table that the hair had been the main reason why I’d returned to that apartment. It appeared that finishing the second time loop had indeed erased that piece of evidence from existence along with everyone’s memory about it—everyone’s but mine.
However, I’d know for sure if that key piece of evidence against me in the Ms. Wolff case still existed by the end of today.
“He remembered the hair,” Doc said. “But Coop was struggling to figure out the details of how he returned to his physical form. He said he looked in Ms. Wolff’s bedroom mirror and saw something flicker behind him, like a glitch on a computer screen or TV. Then he was standing inside the bedroom with several clocks missing and Hawke’s sleeping bag on the floor next to the bed. He heard you start screaming and found you in the hall outside of Ms. Wolff’s door.”
I covered Doc’s hands with mine, lacing my fingers through his. “That was you, wasn’t it? Cooper returning to the normal world, I mean.”
“I’d been able to keep tabs on his energy initially as he followed you downstairs and into the apartment. But then you nose-tackled Coop and I lost him.”
Chuckling, I smiled up at Doc. “I didn’t nose-tackle Cooper.”
“Those were his words, not mine.”
“Cooper’s a drama queen.”
“I’ll tell him you said that next time he complains.”
“Oh, God. No! He’ll bite me.”
“Well, you are very soft and tasty.” He nuzzled my neck for a moment before continuing. “I couldn’t sense Coop after you two made contact until he stepped in front of that mirror. Then he was back in view and I pulled him through immediately before I lost him again.”
I knew what that felt like. Freesia had once pulled me through a mirror, the same one, in fact, that Doc had used to snag Cooper. The very mirror that I’d shattered last month and no longer existed. How could Doc use that mirror to … Never mind. Time certainly was a tricky devil.
“What about me?” I asked. “Did you lose me?”
“I never had you.”
I turned in his arms, facing him again. “What do you mean?”
“When we’re playing with realms and timelines, all I can hope to do is keep up with you. I can try to second-guess your next step like I did at the Hessler House with Wilda and her mother, moving things out of your way and protecting you within the limits of my abilities.”
Oh, jeez. With all of this Ms. Wolff stuff, I’d forgotten about Wilda and her mother. Could I dare to hope they’d moved on from Deadwood, not to be heard from again? Probably not.
“But,” Doc continued with his explanation. “There are no guarantees.”
No guarantees. That was sort of my motto now, according to Ms. Wolff. I blew out a sigh. “I’m a killer,
Doc.”
He tipped my chin up, his smile tender. “Yeah, but I still think you’re really swell.”
I chuckled. “You’re pretty special yourself.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. I pressed against him, letting him warm me to the core. “So, where do we go from here?”
“I’d say my backroom with the door locked tight, but I have a client coming in about ten minutes.”
I wiggled my eyebrows at him. “All we need is five.”
He kissed me, his tongue tasting my lower lip before he pulled away. “Don’t tempt me, woman.”
“Me? Tempt you? Never.” I batted my eyelashes at him. “But I am wearing my boots today, and I don’t believe you’ve seen these panties I have on yet. They have these cute little bows on each hip.”
With a groan, he turned me around and marched me to the door, grabbing my purse and coat along the way. “I’m spending the night again in your bed,” he told me.
“Do I have a choice in the matter?”
“Nope.” He helped me with my coat. “Harvey is moving into my house and bringing ol’ Red along. I’m going to give them a couple of nights to settle in without me there.”
I took my purse from him. “What about Cooper?”
“If you’re in the clear, he told me he’ll head back to my place tonight.”
Cooper had crashed on the couch last night, according to Aunt Zoe.
“Hmmm.” I looked Doc up and down, admiring his form in his gray pants and dark red button-up shirt. “I suppose I could make room for you under my covers again.”
“That’d be mighty generous of you, ma’am.” He leaned closer, running his finger along my jawline. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
I deliberately licked my lips. “I’m your huckleberry.”
He laughed and planted a soft one on my mouth. “Call me later, Boots.”
“Happy number crunching.” I closed the door behind me.
I walked next door, about to step inside Calamity Jane’s when a gust of wind stole the hat of an older man across the street, tumbling it toward me. I caught it, crossing the street to hand it to him. “Thank you,” he said, continuing on his way with the hat jammed on tight.