A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Seven

by K. J. Emrick

  The spirit of Willamena tumbled out of Colby, hissing and screeching, clawing at the air as she tried to find a hold on the young girl whose body she’d been infecting. Her image blurred, and faded, and steamed with hot tendrils of mist rising from her in thick curls. She was in pain, as much as that term applied to the dead, and she was trying to recover from Darcy’s sneak attack.

  Darcy held Colby tight, and wouldn’t let go.

  She was never going to let go.

  Turning her face skyward—or at least upward—she called out at the top of her voice, “Jon!”

  There was a horrifying moment when she was sure it wasn’t going to work. Calling out to someone from this side of the veil, making them hear you in the real world of the living, was as close to impossible as anything could be. She needed to wake up now, and wake up Colby in her hospital bed too, so they could leave Willamena trapped here where she belonged.

  “Mom?” Colby said weakly, in her own voice this time. “What’s going on?”

  “Shh, honey. It’s all right. Just hold on.”

  Darcy looked back, and saw a twisted, angry face glaring at her. The ghost stood up, hovering high above, steaming still around the edges.

  Their gazes locked, and there was no mercy in those cold, dead eyes. Darcy had taken something of hers. She wanted it back.

  “Colby,” she said, “close your eyes, honey. Don’t look. Don’t look!”

  Willamena’s distorted form lurched up, her fingers held out like claws, her back bent and her shoulders stooped. She was tensed, ready to strike, and Darcy was very sure that they wouldn’t survive if they stayed here one moment longer.

  “Jon!”

  The blur of motion was the ghost coming for them. The mists parted before her and closed behind her and then Darcy couldn’t see anything at all for the cloud of mists that rose up in front of her eyes…

  Someone had ahold of her hand and was pulling her away.

  In the next moment she was inhaling a breath that burned her lungs. The hospital room. She was in the hospital room again and her body needed to breathe. Had she stopped breathing? How long had it been since her last breath?

  She took another gulp of air, and another, and her vision began to go dark and fuzzy around the edges. She was fainting, and as she fell over, she realized two things. She still had Colby held tight in her arms.

  And, Jon was here with her. When she fell over, he caught her.

  He’d been there when she called after all, just like he’d promised, and he’d pulled her back. Her, and Colby too. There was no way her voice had carried over from the in between place, but that didn’t matter. They were so in tune with each other that their love had carried her anxious message from there to here. He’d felt the danger they were in, and the urgency of her calling. He’d felt it and he’d saved them both.

  For a moment the whole world went dark as a ringing hummed in her ears.

  It took her a long time to come back to herself. She wasn’t sure how long, exactly, because she was still disoriented. Jon never said a word. He didn’t ask what had happened. He didn’t remind her that he knew this was a bad idea. Not one word. He just held her and Colby and let them recover from what they had gone through on the other side.

  She loved this man. More than anything else, that thought brought her back around. She nestled against Jon’s chest as the room slowly became recognizable again. He was sitting with them on the floor, his back up against the wall, Colby curled up in his lap with her head against his other shoulder. Her breathing was slow and regular, and her eyes were closed.

  Darcy braced herself, wondering what she would find when her daughter woke up.

  Biting gently down on her lower lip, she pushed Colby’s hair back behind her ear with a trembling hand. She looked so peaceful. Her skin didn’t feel warm at all. There was no snap of electricity when they touched. It certainly appeared that she was fine.

  In a whisper, she said, “Colby? Honey, can you wake up?”

  Her daughter’s eyes moved around rapidly behind her lids. Her lashes fluttered. She stirred in her father’s embrace.

  “Colby?” she said again. “Wake up now, okay? Wake up for Mommy and Daddy.”

  This time she lifted a hand, and rubbed at her eyes, and yawned and stretched like she had been in the middle of a deep dream.

  “Colby? Please, honey. Wake up now, okay?”

  She rolled her head against her father, and turned to look at her mother…

  …with eyes that were a blue-green color. A little bit of Jon’s color, and a little bit of Darcy’s. There was no doubting whose daughter she was.

  The relief that washed over Darcy was immense. She wanted to tell Colby how happy she was that the worst was over. She wanted to tell her everything would be all right, now that they were here and together and the spirit of Willamena was no longer possessing her. There were so many things that she wanted to say, and none of it would come out past the lump of emotion in her throat.

  Instead, she just held her daughter and her husband, and let that be enough.

  Darcy hated leaving Colby in that hospital bed for one minute longer, but the doctors were very insistent that she shouldn’t be released until they ran their tests and knew for sure that she was well enough to go home. Jon had started to argue with them in his strongest police officer voice, insisting that they were in fact going to take their daughter home now and nobody was going to stop them, but Darcy had pulled him aside instead.

  She’d pointed out that there was going to be a lot of questions if they took Colby out against medical advice, and that there was no way they could ever explain to the doctors what had really been happening with her. Besides, Colby was exhausted from her experience. Some rest would do her good.

  Jon had thought about it, and then agreed. They knew the truth, and that was all that mattered. As for them, they were needed at the Meadowood PD to take care of the other business they’d left hanging.

  The suspect in their locked room mystery was cooling his heels at the police station. It was up to them to prove he was the killer and not just Darcy’s attacker. More than that, it was up to them to prove how he’d done it.

  They’d called ahead to Officer Mallette at the station and told him it would be a little longer before they got there. He said not to rush. Their hotel manager suspect wasn’t being very talkative.

  They waited at the hospital long enough for Colby to be asleep so Darcy could use more of her spices from the kit to draw a protective line around the hospital bed. Unless Colby tried to do a spirit communication while they were gone there was no way any ghosts were going to get at her, and Darcy was absolutely certain that their daughter wasn’t going to be doing that by herself any time soon.

  They made sure the doctors had both of their cellphone numbers, and then went down to get in Jon’s car. When they passed the broken closet door on the first floor, Darcy kept her eyes averted. She’d had far too much excitement for one night. Or rather, for one morning. The sun was already up outside, and the rain had stopped. There were just a few stray clouds scudding across an otherwise deep blue sky. She took that as a good sign.

  It looked like things were clearing up.

  “So what you’re saying,” Jon asked as they drove, “is that our daughter has been possessed for about four years now?”

  “That would be simplifying things,” Darcy tried to explain. “You’re thinking about what happens in movies like The Exorcist or Insidious. This was more of an infection. Colby did that spirit communication when she wasn’t ready for it. A spirit found her on the other side and latched onto her. The ghost has been riding inside of her ever since, growing stronger, taking over more of our daughter along the way but so slowly that we didn’t notice.”

  You can’t see what isn’t there. That’s what Colby had said. Darcy hadn’t realized it at the time, but that had been her daughter’s way of trying to explain what was happening to her. It was a cry for help, and Darcy had missed it.


  Thank God she’d figured it out in time.

  Jon made a sound at the back of his throat. “So this might have gone on for years, and we would have never noticed it, until this ‘infection’ started hurting Colby.”

  “Exactly. The signs of a possession aren’t always obvious. No heads spinning around. No projectile vomiting, or… or crosses carved upside down in the skin from the inside.” She shook her head, angry at herself all over again. “It’s not that easy, but I still should have seen it, Jon. The way I found Colby passed out in her room after she tried that spirit communication… I should have guessed it was something like this. I should have known.”

  His hand was on hers then, warm and comforting. “You just saved our daughter from this thing. You have nothing to be upset about. What I don’t understand, is how?”

  “Um. Well, you see I used a special combination of herbs to repel the ghost out of Colby when it wouldn’t leave on its own.”

  “Herbs and spices, huh? Like Kentucky Fried Chicken.” He waited for a laugh that Darcy didn’t feel like giving him. “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. I mean, how did this ghost get into our daughter? You’ve gone into that trance state dozens of times and you’ve never had a ghost try to hijack your body, have you?”

  “No. I haven’t. But then again, the only relative who’s spirit I call out to on a regular basis is Great Aunt Millie.”

  He took his eyes off the road for just a second to give her a sidelong look. “Relative? What do you mean?”

  Darcy smiled wryly. “That’s how the ghost was attracted to Colby in the first place. That’s how she was able to slide into Colby so easily. She was a relative. If I’d been with her, I could have deflected it but at the time Colby was young and alone and defenseless. The name of this particular ghost is Willamena, and she’s the first of my distant ancestors to come to America from Europe. It would be Colby’s great-great-great-whatever grandmother.”

  “You have to be kidding me.”

  “Nope. That’s who I just tore out of our daughter. And get this. She’s the original owner of the silver jewelry box. It’s her name on top, not my mother’s.”

  She didn’t hear Jon swear very often. When he did, it was always very descriptive. “That’s way too much coincidence for me.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I hate coincidences… they always mean something. I’ve thought all of these things were connected somehow, and now I know how. Willamena has been pushing our daughter, driving her gift. She told me as much, just before I drove her out. She said that she’s half the reason Colby is so strong with her talents.”

  “Oh, really.” Jon sounded insulted that anyone would suggest his daughter wasn’t stronger than anyone else, all on her own. “So what is that going to mean for Colby? Is she still going to be, you know, herself when she comes home from the hospital?”

  “She’ll be herself, yes. Of course she’ll be herself.”

  “But her gift…?”

  Darcy sighed and slumped into the passenger seat. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’ll try some things with her when we’re home and see if she’s still able to work circles around what I could do at her age. We’ll just have to see and adjust to whatever new reality this leaves us with.”

  “You mean like regular parents?”

  She knew he was joking, but she liked the way he said it. Just regular parents, helping and encouraging their children to be everything they could. Colby with her talents, and now Zane with his. Life was never going to be normal for them. That didn’t mean they couldn’t still be great parents.

  Because after all, they were.

  Chapter 12

  The interview rooms at the Meadowood Police Department had been recently updated with a new, lighter shade of gray paint on the walls. The heavy wooden table set against the far wall had a chair on one side and a metal bench secured to the floor on the other. The chair was for the officers. The uncomfortable bench was for the prisoners. The fisheye security camera in the corner was the latest in surveillance technology. Darcy thought it might just be the nicest interview room she’d ever been in. That was actually saying a lot, coming from her.

  Jon sat in the chair, taking his time organizing the papers in a folder. Darcy had brought in a folding metal chair for herself and set it up behind him. Several of the Meadowood officers had given her and Jon strange looks at this arrangement. Not only was Jon a visiting police chief who had just taken over the whole investigation, but having his wife sit in with him was unheard of. The cops here definitely weren’t familiar with the way law and order was handled over in Misty Hollow.

  None of them had said anything about it, though. Jon hadn’t given them the chance. Darcy was the one who had solved the unsolvable mystery, after all. She deserved to be here to see it through.

  She turned her aunt’s ring around on her finger, watching the man on the other side of the table.

  The hotel manager—Tim Ivers—sat across from them. He wasn’t handcuffed. In fact, he hadn’t been charged with anything. Not yet. He sipped his cup of coffee, crossing his legs carelessly and hooking an arm over the back of his chair.

  “Like I told the other officers,” he said with a shrug, “I saw you and this woman at my hotel, asking questions and making a scene. We’d already had all this trouble with the murder and I just wanted to make sure we weren’t going to have any more. That’s why I followed you to the hospital. That’s why I was asking those questions. Sorry if I was a little rough.”

  “A little rough?” Jon asked, his tone dangerously low. “You forced my wife into a locked room and threatened her with a weapon.”

  “A cellphone,” Tim corrected him. “Just a cellphone, Chief. I was going to record what she said so I had proof that she was involved with the killing. Like I said, if I’d known you were a police officer and she was there to help, I wouldn’t have bothered you. I’m very sorry, but it was just a complete misunderstanding. Really.”

  He sipped from his coffee again, and smiled, and Darcy doubted very much that he was the least bit sorry about any of it. He had an alibi ready, but that didn’t make him innocent.

  “Mister Ivers,” she said, “we have more important things to worry about than why you attacked me. We’ll get back to that in a bit.”

  Rubbing dramatically at the side of his head, he set the coffee cup aside. “You better believe we will. I’ll be suing you and this department both. My ears are still ringing and this lump you gave me is as big as a golf ball. I probably have microfractures in my skull that will take forever to heal. I might be permanently injured. I’m not just going to let that go.”

  “Neither are we,” Jon promised him, “but like my wife said, we have more important things to consider right now. Like for instance, how someone got into and out of a locked hotel room to kill Mister Fred Harris.”

  Another shrug from Tim Ivers, and another little smile. “I guess we’ll never know. Oh. Hey, if you can’t prove how someone got in, doesn’t that mean you’ll never be able to arrest anyone for the murder? Wow. That must really be hard for you. Sorry I can’t help.”

  Darcy leaned forward in her seat. It was her turn to smile. “But you already have.”

  His eyes turned to her, and that annoying little smirk slipped just a little. “I don’t understand.”

  Jon put a notebook down on the open file and turned it to a page filled with his handwriting. “Well, this is a different kind of murder. It’s not so much about who did it, but about how it was done. To solve this murder, we need three things. A way the killer got in, a way the killer got out, and a motive.”

  “Hmph,” Tim said. “Seems to me the motive would be the least of your worries in this case.”

  “Well, actually yes. It is the least of my concerns. So.” Jon turned a page. “Let’s take those things one at a time. Just bear with us, Mister Ivers. You’ll see where we’re going with this soon enough.”

  “Look, I’m happy to help,” he told them, “but
you’ve had me here all morning. I’ve admitted my mistake with the lady here—”

  “Darcy,” she told him. “My name is Darcy Sweet.”

  “Right. Sure. My mistake with Darcy here. Whatever.”

  “Not whatever,” Jon insisted. “Darcy Sweet. Say it.”

  “Say… what?”

  “Say her name when you apologize to her.”

  Jon gave him a smile of his own, but his expression made it very clear that he wasn’t kidding.

  “Yes, well.” Tim swallowed. It was the first crack in his confidence that he’d shown since the interview had started. “I’m apologizing to you, Miss Darcy Sweet, but I’ve been here all morning and I’d like to go home.”

  “It’s Mrs. Sweet, actually,” Darcy said, enjoying herself now. “But that’s not important. What is important is how the killer got in and out of room 203 in your hotel.”

  “Well, I suppose he used a key card.” Tim shrugged like it was no matter to him. “Our rooms are keyed to individual keycards, but duplicates have been known to happen. Did you check the computer records at the hotel? Every entry is logged for security reasons. We don’t want anyone coming back later and saying one of my staff went into their room and took things. Did you check the computer’s records?”

  Jon gave him a nod and turned to another page in his notes. “The officers here did check that, actually. It was one of the first things they considered. Nobody used a keycard on room 203 for more than a day before the victim arrived. That was a keycard belonging to housekeeping.”

  “Well, there you go then. Nobody got into the room.”

  “Actually,” Jon continued, “we found something else while we were checking the computer records. You booked that room for the victim yourself, didn’t you Mister Ivers?”

  “Uh, maybe. We make a lot of reservations at the Rest Easy Suites.”

  “Not recently. There’s hardly been anyone coming to your hotel in the last month. It’s the off season. That’s the term, right? The off season? Sure it is.” Jon closed his notebook and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. “Are you sure you don’t remember making that reservation, Mister Ivers?”