Deadly Curiosities

by Gail Z. Martin

  Metal toys skittered beneath my feet like rats, making it difficult to get my footing. I kicked at them, still trying to knock the dummy off of me. Teag and Alistair were doing the same thing, kicking at the wind-up trucks and bears and soldiers that rammed at their ankles as more of the ventriloquist dummies snatched at our pant legs.

  I heard glass smashing, over and over again, and then the overwhelming smell of formaldehyde. Far down the corridor, lost in the gloom of the emergency lighting, things were sloshing and slurping their way toward us, those pallid, wet misshapen specimens I had glimpsed on our way in.

  We reached the main hallway, but where the mirrors had brightened the space with their reflected light as we entered, now, they were wreathed in shadow. Shapes moved in the mirrors, things that weren’t really there until you looked at them out of the corner of your eye, things that didn’t want you to see them, not until they were close enough to strike.

  Those things were getting closer, lurching and halting their way toward the surface of the mirrors. I didn’t want to find out whether they would stop there or not.

  I swung my leg hard against one of the shelves, trying to get rid of one of the dummies that had wrapped his arms and legs around my shin. It put me off balance, and I fell against the shelving, sending a rain of objects down from above. I threw my arms up over my head to protect myself.

  Bo’s ghost was still barking up a storm, growling and snarling in the direction of the formaldehyde creatures. He hadn’t had much effect on the dummies or toys, but whatever the sloppy-wet things were, they seemed to slow their approach.

  Teag had started kicking the dummies out of his way, and I remembered that he told me he played soccer in high school in addition to his martial arts training. His aim was good, and he had some serious power behind those kicks – he sent dummy after dummy skidding down through the advancing mass of wind-up toys, silencing some of the nerve-jarring racket.

  Alistair looked terrified at the attack and appalled at the realization that he was going to have to damage museum property to escape. But when one of the dummies chomped its wooden jaws down on Alistair’s shoulder, he howled with pain and rammed the dummy against one of the room’s steel beam columns.

  The wet, sloppy sounds were coming from the way we had entered, as well as the snap-snap-snap of flaccid suction cups drawing its long-dead owner down the tile. The smell of formaldehyde was overpowering, and I was afraid we would either pass out from the vapors or burst into flames.

  “It’s flammable!” I shouted to Teag as I saw him dig in his bag for the candle and lantern. That approach was out, unless we wanted to go up in a big fireball and take the museum with us.

  I couldn’t muster the concentration to focus on the spoon-athame I had up my sleeve thanks to the hordes of attacking toys and the crazed dummies that just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

  I spun around, trying to scrape another dummy from my back, and brought more things sliding and crashing down around me. Teag had grabbed something that looked like a harpoon, and I realized that it really was a harpoon, snatched from off one of the shelves. Alistair had a cast-iron frying pan, and he was setting about himself like a crazed duffer, sending the dummies flying and smashing a path through the wind-up toys.

  I looked around in panic, and spotted a shelf full of old, neatly tagged axes and farm implements. I was less afraid of what visions I might see from the ax I grabbed than I was of what would happen if the dummy clinging to my back managed to head-butt me one more time. The problem was, swinging at my own back with an ax wasn’t going to help me, and the dummy already had one stiff wooden arm around my throat. A moment later, the other arm wrapped around from the opposite side, and the dummy started to squeeze, hard, all the while chattering with its hinged jaw as if it were laughing at my attempts to breathe.

  With my right hand, I swung the axe around my legs as I sputtered for breath. The blade bit deeply into the large head of another dummy, and I kicked the body free, bowling down a dozen of the wind-up toys. With my left, I pressed the agate necklace against the dummy’s hard wooden hands as I tore at it to free my throat. As soon as the agate connected with the wood, the hands came free, and I shook the dummy loose, sending him flying.

  “Cassidy!” Teag shouted, running toward me as best he could through the chaos. He stabbed at another dummy heading my way, sticking the sharp tip of the harpoon into the mannequin’s chest, then flinging him away.

  I could tell that Bo’s barking had changed direction, but I was too busy fighting for my life to look.

  “The mirrors!” Alistair yelled.

  Teag and I wheeled. The shadowy figures that I had glimpsed in the background of the mirrors had gotten much, much closer. Some of them pressed up against the glass from the inside, while others ran their hands over the surface, looking for the way to open the doorway to our realm. A few of them were already slipping through the glass, climbing out to come our way.

  Teag hurled his harpoon at the nearest mirror, shattering it. No shadow emerged. The doorway was closed.

  I hurled my ax at the next mirror, ignoring the groan from Alistair as we smashed another precious furnishing.

  “It’s those mirrors or our necks,” I yelled. Alistair stepped closer to the next mirror just as its shadow reached the glass, closed his eyes, and swung his frying pan, sending the mirrored fragments flying.

  I grabbed the nearest solid object I could find and used it to smash the next mirror.

  At the far end of the main corridor, opposite where we had come in, I saw the dim glow of an ‘EXIT’ sign. We’d still have to run the gauntlet of half of the mirrors, but we would be going in the opposite direction to the sloppy sloshing noises and the growing number of shadow men who were leaving their mirror portals.

  I stumbled, and this time, a cascade of fabric tumbled down on me, snaring my feet and making me fall. I came up, gasping, fighting my way clear, and realized that I had brought a tangle of old quilts down on me.

  The axe had been neutral, with no resonance when I touched it, but the quilts that surrounded me had strong auras, stitched through with the protectiveness and love of their long-ago makers. That gave me crazy hope as I struggled to my feet. “Come on!” I shouted to my embattled friends. “We’re going to get out of here.”

  I held out the quilt. “Get under here. Now!” Teag and Alistair looked baffled, but caught between the slip-slop of the formaldehyde monsters and the silently approaching shadow men, they were ready to try anything. Bo was in full attack-dog mode, and while he was holding off the shadow men and the wet things for now, I knew it wouldn’t last for long.

  Alistair anchored the quilt on one side of me while Teag caught up with us. I held the agate necklace in my left hand, and held out my right arm with the spoon-athame, palm out.

  The coruscating, pearlescent light flared from my palm, wrapping us in its protective cocoon. It resonated with the energy in the quilt, and the antique bedspread took on a faint, opalescent glow. As Teag took hold of the quilt on the other side of me, I felt the power grow, as if he magnified whatever had been imbued into the fabric and embroidery.

  “It’s working!” Teag cheered. “This quilt was stitched with some strong stuff, Cassidy. It’s almost militant about protecting us.”

  “Keep moving toward the exit,” I said through gritted teeth.

  We made it halfway down the corridor before two of the ugliest akvenon minions I’d ever seen skittered out from the gloom, blocking the doorway.

  “Shit!” I muttered. Teag said something more colorful. So did Alistair, but in Latin. The gist of it all was that we were totally screwed.

  The steel fire door behind the akvenon shrieked as it ripped from its hinges. A blast of white light blinded us, striking the akvenon and splitting them open like lobsters bursting over an open fire. The next blast went streaming over our heads toward the shadow men and the oozing formaldehyde creatures behind them.

  “Don’t –” I manage
d to yell before the white fire hit the fumes and a loud flash-bang exploded behind us.

  Sorren and Lucinda stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway. Lucinda had the staff from the Archive in her hands, holding it like a flame-thrower. Sorren grabbed us, dragging us out of the way as foul smelling clouds of smoke billowed toward us.

  “The collections!” Alistair despaired, reaching back as if he could save his precious antiquities.

  Halon gas nozzles switched on, dampening the fire. Alistair looked stricken, and I felt awful.

  Sorren knelt down in front of Alistair. In the distance, we heard sirens. We had to get out of there, quick.

  “You went into the archives to put back an artifact, and smelled gas leaking,” Sorren said in the same voice he used to glamor Baxter. Alistair stared at him, wide-eyed, utterly lost in Sorren’s gaze.

  “You tried to escape, but the air was bad and you nearly passed out,” Sorren added. “Just as you reached the door, the blast came. It knocked you off your feet and tore the door off its hinges.”

  “Yes. Yes, I remember.”

  “You never saw us,” Sorren said with a sad half-smile. “You were alone at the time.”

  “Yes,” Alistair replied. “I was alone.”

  The shadow men and monsters were gone, and we’d just destroyed priceless artifacts. As happy as I was to be alive, I grieved for the irreplaceable history that had been lost.

  Corban Moran was going to pay, big time.

  Alistair was going to be all right, although the museum might not be. I really hoped Alistair wouldn’t lose his position over the damage. I was shaking with pent-up fear and anger. Sorren hustled us away from the building.

  “Teag’s car –” I protested.

  “It’s been moved, honey,” Lucinda said, resolutely striding away from the scene of the damage.

  “The security cameras in the museum –” “Have been altered,” Sorren replied. “It will look like a power failure.”

  “How –” Teag began.

  “I sensed where you’d gone,” Sorren said. “And I feared that Moran would interfere. Lucinda and I came as quickly as we could.” He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”

  “We learned a lot,” I said, still light-headed from our close brush with death. “Most of it can wait. But I think we’ve got what we were looking for,” I said. “Teag’s got the journal and papers from the salvage crew, and Alistair added the missing piece.”

  I looked at Sorren and Lucinda. “Storage,” I said. “That’s what they’ve all got in common that we haven’t had time to investigate. Now we’ve just got to figure out why it matters.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out through my channels,” Sorren said. “And I’ve requested a demon hunter’s assistance, but he hasn’t arrived yet. In the meantime, take advantage of the break to recuperate. Once we have more information and our demon hunter, we’ll be ready to move.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “YOU SAID THE last site we didn’t get to was a closed storage facility, right?”

  Teag nodded. “Yep. The place was called Stor-Your-Own and it closed about six months ago.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said drily. “Landrieu and his salvage team put their dive gear in storage when they were in town. And from the journals, it says the storage facility is in the old Navy yard, fairly close to the warehouse where Moran called the demon. The whole Navy yard is on land Jeremiah Abernathy used to own, back when he controlled the demon.”

  “We also know the Foo dog was in storage, and if we can find out where, maybe that’s the connection with the suddenly-haunted antiques,” Teag replied. “Maybe storing something with bad resonance near a demon activates the juju.”

  “That’s something we need to find out. And it wouldn’t hurt to see what you can dig up about Stor Your-Own’s history and owners. It’s convenient that it went belly up right at the time Moran surfaced.”

  “Let’s do our digging from a safe distance this time,” Teag said. “After what happened in the warehouse and the museum, I’m not thrilled about just going into another haunted building to poke around.”

  I held up both hands in surrender. “No arguments here. My bruises have bruises.”

  “Now that you mention it, I remember a couple of the folks I called mentioning storage.”

  I chewed my lip for a moment, thinking. “If we could prove that even some of the problem pieces were at one time stored at the facility in the Navy yard, then we would know it’s something about that particular site that activated them.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to do some digging into the business records, too,” Teag mused. “Why did it go out of business? Who owns it now? Did something happen to any of the previous owners? There’s a reason it’s just standing there empty.”

  Teag grinned. “Sounds like we’ve got a full day in front of us tomorrow. Monday is usually one of our busy days.”

  I sighed. “True. But Maggie said she’d come in to make up for the hours she missed. Part of me hopes we don’t get a lot of customers so we can work on this, and the other part of me really wants to pay the electric bill.”

  “I agree,” Teag said with a laugh. “But I know you, Cassidy. And I know you won’t let this drop until you get to the bottom of it.”

  I finished my drink, thinking about what Teag said. At least a dozen men were dead, including the salvage crew and Jimmy Redshoes. And if Moran had his way, that would be just the beginning.

  MAGGIE WAS BACK, and seemed fully recovered. For someone who was semi-retired, her near-boundless energy made me feel like a slacker. Her gray hair was cut in a trendy, chin-length bob, and she confided that she liked the cut because it kept her hair out of her face when she was doing her daily yoga. She was slender and dressed in a style I thought of as ‘Woodstock-esque’.

  “Good to have you back, Maggie!” I said with a grin. “Glad you’re feeling better.”

  Maggie beamed. “Good to be back, Cassidy. I don’t get sick often, but it seems like when I do, it hits twice as hard. Believe me, I’m glad to be on my feet again!”

  “Are you up to watching the front for a little bit?” I asked. “Teag and I are working on an acquisition.”

  Maggie waved me off. “Happy to do it. It’s been too darn quiet all by myself at home. Take your time.

  I’ve got it covered.”

  While Maggie handled the customers, Teag took his laptop to the break room and I went into my office to make phone calls.

  “We heard back from Debra and Rebecca and the lady with the funeral vase,” I reported after some time on the phone. “And you were right – all the pieces were stored at Stor-Your-Own at some time in the last year.”

  “Mrs. Butler doesn’t remember the name of the storage unit, but she’s going to check her records,” I said. “And before you ask, Trinket Ellison said the same thing. She believes the opera glasses were in storage for a little while after her mother’s death while the family sorted things out, but she didn’t make the arrangements herself, so she has to check.”

  “I suspect the Ellisons have people for that.”

  I nodded. “Knowing the Ellisons, their people probably have people for that.”

  “How about Rebecca? She said she bought the Foo dog statue at an estate sale,” Teag said.

  I nodded. “Uh huh. And she also said that the sale was fun because there was so much to see, between what had been in the house and what had been tucked away in storage.”

  Teag crossed his arms and his ankles and gave me a happily smug look.

  “What?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s your ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know’ pose. Spill.”

  “From what I can find online, Stor-Your-Own, definitely has a checkered past,” he said. “And that’s just from what’s in the public record. I haven’t hacked anything yet.”

  “Yet.”

  He grinned. “Want to know?”
r />   I rolled my eyes, and he laughed. “So, Stor-Your-Own finally closed for good six months ago, but it’s had problems almost since the beginning. The owner died last year, left a total financial mess for his widow. She’s been in and out of court, skirting bankruptcy and lawsuits, and so selling the storage facility probably hasn’t been at the top of her to-do list.”

  “Lawsuits?”

  Teag nodded. “The guy who owned it, Fred Kenner, wasn’t a real stand-up sort of guy. There’ve been allegations of money laundering, as well as suspicions that he turned a blind eye to drug dealers renting units.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Isn’t it?” Teag agreed. “Kenner had a lot of shady dealings. He’d filed for bankruptcy before, then moved to a new city and started over again. He had a slew of names, and some off-shore accounts.”

  “Why own a storage facility?” I asked.

  “It’s cheap to build, and it doesn’t take a lot of work to bring in steady cash,” he replied with a shrug.

  “Think about it. Most people put their stuff in storage and don’t come back for months, maybe years, and all the while, their monthly rental goes right into your bank account. All you need is an office manager to sign up new accounts and occasionally sweep the floor. Easy money was Fred Kenner’s watchword.”

  “How long was Stor-Your-Own in operation?”

  “Kenner converted an empty shipping facility into a self-storage facility about three years ago. And for the first couple of years, it seemed to operate in the black. Then Kenner got in trouble with some kind of pyramid scheme, and started pulling cash out of other, more legitimate, investments.”

  “In other words, he was desperate enough to make a deal with a demon – or with Moran, who’s the next best thing,” I said.

  “Bingo.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Okay, so the storage facility has been there for three years, but the deaths only began about six months ago. What changed?”

  Teag shrugged. “Good question. And my guess is, Moran. Kenner’s world started to fall apart at about the same time the murders started. He was always a shady dude. He beat a rap for tax evasion, and the workers at one of his businesses sued him for not paying them for overtime. But he managed to get away with it until a year ago.”