Then my phone went off, with a reminder of the wedding reception at eight.
Chapter 4
Ghosts didn’t scare me. Neither did vampires or werewolves. I could salt and burn restless spirits, and shoot or slice the others. I’d even bagged a were-squonk, a zombie, and a troll, plus the marsh monster. All in a day’s work.
Events that required dress slacks and a tie terrified me. Even more so if they required a jacket. Wedding receptions generally assumed civilized dress. Which meant I was shit out of luck.
I glanced in the mirror and figured I cleaned up well, although I still looked like I’d been in a bar fight. One eye had bruised into a not-quite shiner, my split lip had stopped bleeding but still looked puffy, and my hands looked like I’d dug myself out of a grave.
My friends wouldn’t have cared. But they weren’t going to be at the reception. My niece Nikki had gotten married earlier today, and tonight was the party.
Sean’s daughter. My dead brother. With the wife who hated my guts for living when her husband died. Like I didn’t have enough survivor guilt as it was. Amy refused to have me at the ceremony, but Nikki put her foot down about the reception. Which meant she was every inch my brother’s girl.
So, for the second time today, I headed into battle. I grabbed the present I’d left by the door to remind me to go. The store wrapped it much better than I could have managed. Blair and Chiara picked it out and assured me Nikki would love it. Right now, I couldn’t even remember what the gift was. That didn’t matter. Nikki wanted her Uncle Mark to share her special day, and so I would, and the devil take the hindmost.
I even ran the truck through the car wash. Amy would find a million reasons to fault my continued existence, and I didn’t want to give her any ammunition. Hell, I didn’t want to fight over who missed Sean more, although I’d been his brother longer than she’d been his wife. I heard him scream when the wendigo tore him apart, after the creature had tossed me into a tree and knocked me senseless. And after I’d lit the monster up with my flare gun, too little too late, I’d held Sean while he died, right next to the cooling corpses of my dad, uncle, and cousin. I loved him, and I mourned him, and I’d miss him forever. And if there was ever a competition I didn’t want to win, it was this one.
The parking lot at the Polish Club in Sharon was already mostly full when I eased the truck into a space. I adjusted my tie, checked myself in the rear-view mirror, and then grabbed my jacket and gift. My stomach clenched like it always did when I went to face my worst nightmares, and I felt naked without my gun. But my weapons wouldn’t do me any good here, so I’d just have to rely on my natural wit and charm.
In other words, I was totally fucked.
The party had already started, and I slipped in the back, handing off my gift to a waiting attendant and giving her my name so I could get the right “hello, my name is” tag. I lingered in the back, not quite sure where to go.
After Sean and the others died, people who had been part of our friend group for years drifted away and never came back, as if they could catch death cooties from me. Some stayed, but many others didn’t come around anymore. When Lara left me, that peeled away still more of my social circle. Now, I’d settled in with a core pack of people I could trust to have my back and take me for all I was worth at poker. But for a few years, when I needed my family, it had been rough.
“Uncle Mark!” Nikki’s squeal sounded just the way I remembered from tickle-fests and bedtime stories. She made a beautiful bride, all grown up, no longer the sullen, grieving schoolgirl who had to bury her father. Sean had been seventeen when he’d married Amy. Nikki had just turned seventeen herself. I felt ancient.
I grinned from ear to ear and swept her up into my arms, ignoring my protesting ribs that might have been cracked from the landslide. “You look fantastic, Pumpkin,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. She took my hand and led me into the fray, straight toward a young man in a tuxedo with a gobsmacked look on his face.
“Uncle Mark, this is Trey. Trey, this is my Uncle Mark.”
Trey had a deer-in-the-headlights look I remembered from my own wedding. I took his hand and shook it for both of us. “Nice to meet you, Trey. You’ve got a real special girl here, hope you know that.”
Trey managed a slightly incoherent answer, which I took to be affirmative. Before I had to make conversation, Nikki dragged me across the dance floor to greet a few elderly great-aunts whom I barely remembered. My mom had passed on by the time we went on the hunt, and Uncle Christoph was divorced. Greg, my cousin, had been dating someone, but they hadn’t gotten engaged yet. I’d still been with Lara. And Sean had Amy and Nikki. Since Dad didn’t have any other siblings and Mom was an only child, there wasn’t much-extended family. Greg’s sister had never stayed close. I’d just had Amy and Lara, and then even that went to hell.
“I’m so glad you came, Uncle Mark,” Nikki said, tugging me in yet another direction. “I miss you. And I’m sorry about Mom. She’s…Mom.”
“I understand.”
“I wish Dad could have been here,” Nikki said, and her smile looked a little watery.
I hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. “Me, too, kiddo. Me, too.”
Nikki pointed me to my assigned table for dinner, with a group of people I didn’t know but which was fortunately out of Amy’s blast zone. I’d glimpsed her a couple of times in the crowd and wondered if Nikki’s sudden need to play tour guide had been an attempt to forestall an ugly showdown. I’d already resigned myself to taking whatever Amy dished out so as not to spoil Nikki’s special day, and I hoped like hell Amy could put her grief aside long enough to do the same.
Over on the far side of the reception area, a DJ started setting up for dancing after dinner. I really hoped I didn’t have to do the Chicken Dance, but I’m pretty sure you can’t get issued a marriage license in Northwestern PA without it.
“Are you the guy who owns the auto body garage out near Atlantic?” My tablemate was an older gentleman with gray hair who looked wealthy and distinguished in a dark suit and power tie. His place card said “Ted Collins.”
“That’s me.”
“The ghost hunter?”
I resisted the urge to tug at my tie. People’s opinions tended to split into two camps when my other profession came up. Either they wanted to talk all about the shows they’d seen on TV or the ghost tour they’d done on their vacation, or they launched into a rant about how there was no such thing as ghosts. And in both cases, it left me struggling not to be a total asshole. So I smiled and hoped my eye didn’t twitch.
“Yes.”
To my surprise, Ted slid a business card to me. “I run an auction business out on Route 19, and we have a problem that I think is in your wheelhouse.”
“Tell me about it.” Talking shop meant I didn’t have to strain for chit-chat.
The other people at our table were engaged in their own conversations, including Ted’s wife. He leaned a little closer and dropped his voice. “We got in a new shipment for a big estate sale. Some doctor up in Meadville. Most of the stuff is pretty normal, but there’s a painting that has me freaked out.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What’s the painting of?”
Ted shook his head. “The painting shows people sitting in the lobby of a grand hotel. It’s nicely done in oils, although I’ve never heard of the artist. But I swear the painting is alive.”
That got my attention. “Alive?”
“An object from one of the other collections will go missing—something distinctive, one of a kind—and the next time I look at the lobby painting, the missing item is somewhere in the picture, and it wasn’t beforehand. Twice now, my staff has sworn they’ve seen a stranger milling about one of the rooms where no one should be, but when we go to look, there’s no one there. Both times, they recognized someone in the painting as being the person they’d seen.”
“Maybe they need more time off,” I suggested.
“Then just yesterday, I no
ticed a new person in the scene. Someone who wasn’t there before. It’s the old man who owned the painting, the one who died. Now he’s in the picture.”
Okay, shit just got real. “That’s…very interesting.” My mind raced. “Can you tell me the name of the painter?”
“Thomas Arhawk. My staff researched his work, for the auction catalog and the appraisal. He isn’t well known. The painting is nicely done, but hardly a Rembrandt.” Ted wrote the artist’s name on the back of his business card. “Maybe you’ll see something if you look into him that we didn’t.”
If Arhawk was a dark witch or had made a deal with the devil, it wasn’t likely to be on his web page, but I’d turn it over to Chiara and see what her online ninja tricks could come up with. “I’m very interested.”
“Please, call me,” Ted said. “I need your help, and I can pay your fee.”
I pocketed the card, surprised and intrigued. Ted looked more like a banker than an auctioneer, and not the kind to believe in ghosts or ask for help. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I promised. “How do you know Nikki?”
Ted smiled, and all of a sudden looked much friendlier. “She worked at the auction over the summers. One of the best employees I ever had. Happy she’s going on to bigger things, but sorry to lose her.” He glanced at my name card. “Family?”
“Her uncle.” I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind and figured he remembered the news stories about the hunt. To my eternal gratitude, he didn’t bring it up.
I found myself wishing I’d brought Sara with me. We weren’t really a couple. Not yet, maybe never. But for the first time since Lara walked out, I’d found someone I enjoyed spending time with. She ran a bed and breakfast out near Kane, but my work took me through those parts fairly often, and I’ll admit to taking a few detours to provide excuses to stop in. She was widowed, I was divorced, and we both were cautious. Six months had passed, and we were still going out. Right now, I missed her like crazy.
We made it through dinner and were heading up to the dessert buffet before Amy cornered me.
“I thought you’d have the good sense not to come,” she hissed.
“Nikki wanted me here. So I’m here.”
“Nikki wouldn’t have asked you if she knew the truth. Sean’s dead because of you.”
I glanced around, hoping no one else was listening, and tried to nudge Amy away from the cake. “Sean’s dead because a wild creature killed him. I wish I’d been faster with the flare gun, but I’d just had my head cracked open against a tree. God, Amy, I’d give anything for a do-over. But it doesn’t work like that.”
“People talk about you,” she spat. “They say you’re crazy, hunting ‘monsters.’” She didn’t need to put the word in air quotes. Her scathing tone did the job quite well. “Maybe you did something with all your mumbo-jumbo that called that thing, that creature that killed them. You brought this down on them.”
I took a deep breath and willed my fists to unclench at my sides. Pointing out to Amy that I didn’t start hunting monsters until after the tragedy wasn’t likely to break through the story she’d told herself. She needed a bad guy, someone to blame, and since the wendigo had gone up in flames and I survived, I got to be the whipping boy. “Please Amy, not here. Not today. For Nikki.”
“You probably made some kind of deal with the devil.” Amy’s expression showed her contempt. “All that occult stuff you’re into, witchcraft, satanic cults—”
“None of that’s true.” I didn’t mention that one of my monster hunting partners was a priest. Nothing at this point was going to change her mind.
“Oh, God. Did you come to put some kind of hex on Nikki? Are you going to take her away from me like you took Sean?”
Amy’s voice rose, and I saw Nikki give me a look from the head table, trying to figure out what was going on.
“No hex, Amy. I’d never harm Nikki, or you—or Sean. Please, don’t spoil Nikki’s party. I’ll go.”
“Damn you to hell, Mark Wojcik. I hope you burn for what you’ve done.”
I kept on walking. Everyone heard Amy’s last salvo, and I knew they’d turned to look. I kept my face blank and made a beeline to the door. Nikki actually ran to intercept me, hiking her big skirt up to her knees.
“Uncle Mark—”
I cupped her face gently and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “It’s okay, kiddo. Your mom’s just tense with all the wedding stuff. Thanks for the invite. Hope you like the present. And call me sometime. I’ll drive over, and we can do lunch.”
Nikki stretched on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. “Whatever she said, I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “Love you.”
“Love you, too, Nikki,” I said. “Now go dance with your husband.” And with that, I headed out the door and got in my truck, with a long quiet drive in front of me.
I spent some extra time scratching Demon’s ears when I got home and took him for a bit of a walk around the yard, as I tried to let go of Amy’s words. Back in the day, back before, she and Sean and Lara and I had been tight. We got together every few weeks, babysat Nikki so Sean and Amy could go out, and went on vacations together. Then it all went to hell, just another casualty of that damn wendigo.
Once I fed Demon, I texted Chiara with the info about the artist, poured myself a couple of fingers of JD and pulled out my laptop. Demon napped on my feet while I dug around on the internet. I’d do the easy Google stuff and let Chiara dig through the seedy virtual alleys of the Dark Web.
Ted was right: Thomas Arhawk was a man of mystery. I couldn’t find much of a social media trail, which in itself seemed remarkable, especially for someone trying to promote their work. He’d had a few gallery showings in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and some museum acquisitions. His webpage didn’t even have a digital showcase, and none of his work was featured on any of the popular online art sites.
But what I did find intrigued me. Three of his larger works sold at auctions throughout the country, for five-figure prices. Not too shabby for someone who only seemed to have a history going back two or three years. An article about one of those sales portrayed Arhawk as a troubled, reclusive genius who had burst on the art scene out of nowhere.
That worried me. Nothing says crossroads deal with a demon like someone who goes from zero to sixty almost overnight. If Arhawk didn’t sell his soul, some of that black magic Amy was so sure I practiced might have been to blame.
I sipped my glass of Jack and tried not to dwell on the reception clusterfuck. Instead, I grabbed a pen and pad and jotted down the names of the galleries and museums—and any individuals—who had acquired an Arhawk original. A quick online search gave me the identity of the local doctor whose estate sale was being handled by Ted’s auction house. Then I looked to see what became of them.
“Well, lookie here,” I murmured. The list read like a disaster report.
Within a year of acquiring an Arhawk painting, two of the galleries filed for bankruptcy, something that came as a surprise to the business news sites. One of the museums had a major fire, while another had a very destructive water main break. The rest of the galleries and museums fared equally badly, including a few that were the site of random shootings. Individual collectors had just as bad luck, and as best as I could piece together, most of them died within twelve to eighteen months of purchasing one of his pieces of art. The causes varied, but all were sudden, and many violent. I did my best to find photos of the unlucky purchasers, to see if they had mysteriously appeared in the hotel lobby painting.
What little “art” I owned was either blown-up snapshots I’d taken myself from hikes in the woods or prints I‘d picked up cheap from roadside vendors. Right now, I felt pretty lucky that I couldn’t afford the “good” stuff.
I closed the laptop and knocked back the rest of my drink. The whiskey still hadn’t taken the sting out of Amy’s accusations, just like ten years didn’t take the pain out of my grief. As much as I had wanted to see Nikki and make her happy by attending the reception, I
had been afraid doing so would slice open barely healed-over wounds. Father Leo cautioned me on more than one occasion that “death by monster” can be a form of hunter suicide, and if I were honest with myself, I’d straddled that line too many times for comfort. I would have gladly traded places with any of the people I’d lost that day. If I couldn’t, then hunting down creatures like the thing that killed them would be my penance for surviving.
Before I could think better of the impulse, I speed dialed Sara. She answered on the second ring. “Mark?”
“Hey,” I said. I was smooth with conversation like that. “Just…thinking about you.”
She chuckled. “Did you drunk dial me?”
“No. Maybe. More like buzzed-dialed. Thinking I need to come up and take you out to dinner.”
“That would be nice,” she said. I heard affection and a hint of amusement in her voice, as if she wondered whether I’d remember our conversation tomorrow. “Anytime soon?”
“Next weekend? And if I’m not hunting anything, you won’t have to sew me back together first.”
“A true romantic,” she chuckled. “Sounds good.”
“Miss you,” I sighed. “But I’ll see you soon.”
“Miss you, too,” she replied. “Now go sleep off your drink. Night, Mark.” I echoed her good-bye and ended the call, suddenly feeling lonelier than before I dialed.
“Come on, Demon,” I said, rousing the slumbering dog. “Let’s turn in. I’ve got a haunted painting to hunt down tomorrow.”
I didn’t know what to expect from Ted’s auction house. What I found was a combination of art gallery and a big cinder block building like the fairground has for its craft displays. Ted met me in the office. He looked a little more relaxed than he had at the reception, with a collared shirt—no tie—tucked into dark, pressed jeans over expensive cowboy boots.
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