by Ashlyn Chase
Crap.
It was Ice Spider, her one-time boyfriend and a member of the Keene Street Gang.
“Hey, what’s up?” she asked, trying to remain nonchalant as she gripped her keys.
“You tell me.” He waltzed up the steps and leaned on the railing. “Anything tripping your wires lately?”
She wasn’t going to tell him about the cute young cop from that morning, so she just shrugged. “Why? You got something to worry about?”
He snorted. “You know better than to ask that. If you’re in, you’re in. If you’re out, you’re out.”
“I’m out, so why do you keep coming back?”
He sidled up next to her. “I hope you’ll change your mind.”
Trying to hide her anxiety, Dawn stood her ground. “I know you want a psychic heads-up to ‘conduct business’ when the cops aren’t around, but I don’t like being used. I really do want to move on.”
“I wasn’t using you. How many times do I have to tell you, she didn’t mean anything to me, baby. We can go back to the way things were.”
Dawn suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. “I wasn’t even talking about that. Look, Ice, I’m really sorry, but it’s not gonna happen. I’ve got things to do.”
She opened the door, stepped inside, and was ready to close it in his face if she had to. Her grandmother was home, and she never wanted them to meet.
“So where are you working now?”
What could she say? There was no way she was going to tell him she was working at ScholarTech. “Nowhere.”
“Why don’t you go back to the convenience store? Carla could use your help.”
She liked Carla, the owner, a no-nonsense woman who stood up to everyone, including the gang members. Carla had run the convenience store since before Dawn was born. A chain smoker whose idea of a breakfast drink was a vodka tonic, Carla was the unofficial den mother for the street kids who called Keene Street home.
Dawn had worked at the store for four years while she was going to school part-time to get her associates degree. But she had quit six months ago. Three holdups was her limit, thank you very much. The store was where many drug deals were made, and every so often, a rival gang would rob the place when they wanted to send Keene Street a message. Stupid gang wars. Besides, she’d been ready to leave and look for a career-oriented job anyway. “No. I’m still looking for work,” she lied smoothly. She wasn’t about to tell him her business.
He smiled and crossed his arms. “Well, isn’t that something. I might have a job for you.”
“I’m not interested. That part of my life is over.” She began to close the door until he stuck his foot in the doorway.
The smile disappeared. “Fine. But say there is something big about to go down. Are you getting vibes? Any reason to think we could have problems?”
She paused for a moment. “No. I’m not getting any vibes.”
“You sure? Because the cops have been spending more time in the hood lately.”
“I’m sure.”
He shrugged. “Okay. Good to know.” He knocked on the railing and said, “Take care of yourself.” Then he sauntered down the walk and turned into her neighbor’s driveway. She didn’t relax until she heard a clang as he vaulted over the chain-link fence behind the houses.
Dawn blew out a breath of relief as soon as she shut the door, locked it, and slid the dead bolt into place. She closed her eyes and leaned against it, composing herself before she had to see her grandmother.
“Dawnie, is that you?”
“Yeah, Gran.”
Her grandmother met her in the tiny hallway. She looked about twenty years older than her fifty-six years. She’d been a young single mother, and Dawn’s mother was also very young when she got pregnant. It was part of the cycle when you were poor and didn’t have many options. Dawn was determined to break that cycle. She had succeeded so far. She just needed to keep saving and steer clear of the lowlifes she used to hang with.
“Is everything all right?” Annette eyed her with suspicion.
“It’s nothing to worry about, Grandma. You always say I have a good head on my shoulders, and you’re right. I’m taking care of myself.”
Her grandmother’s posture relaxed and she smiled. “I know, honey. I’m very proud of you. How did work go today?”
“Good. Nancy, my assistant manager, thinks I’m a whiz with the software.”
“I knew your going to college was a good idea. You’re the first college graduate in our family. I’m so proud of you. Even better things are coming. I can feel it.”
“It’s only an associate’s degree.”
“Never say ‘it’s only’ about your accomplishments. You’ve really turned your life around. It’s more than anyone else in this family has done.”
“I guess. Thanks, Gran.” Dawn didn’t want her grandmother to know the gang was still keeping tabs on her. It would just worry the older woman, and she worried enough. At least Dawn hadn’t repeated the pattern of teenage pregnancy. She may have gone through a rebellious phase, but that wasn’t part of it. Thank goodness for Planned Parenthood!
Dawn smiled at her grandmother and then jogged up the stairs to her small room. She fell on her bed and took a few deep breaths. Something about that cop kept flitting through her mind. She didn’t think it was just the fact that he was about six feet tall and drop-dead gorgeous. Or that his dark hair and cobalt-blue eyes captivated her like no one had in…well, ever.
Even if she hadn’t sensed some disturbing energy around him, she may have wanted to stop and talk to him anyway. She had noticed the name on his uniform. Fierro. He was probably Italian, but maybe his family came from the northern part of Italy. She had heard there were blue-eyed people in the Italian Alps.
She daydreamed about other countries sometimes. She was barely getting a fresh start in this one. If she had the money, she’d want to go somewhere warm, where it was sunny all year. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the money, and her incarcerated mother needed her close for the time being.
Her grandmother had done her best, but her mother had landed in jail anyway. Drugs were rampant all over the city but more so in poor areas like theirs. Her mom had latched onto dealing as a way to make enough money to get them out of there. At least that was the excuse she gave. By now, Dawn had realized her mom was feeding her own habit as well.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” her grandmother always said. Back when Dawn was little, she didn’t know what that meant. Now, she did. Her mother described jail as hell.
She sensed someone in the doorway of her room and knew it was her grandma.
“May I come in?”
“Sure, Gran.”
Annette perched on the edge of her bed. “I’ve been thinking…”
“Uh-oh.”
She grinned, but only for a second. “I know we’ve talked about it before, but I really do think you need to move out of the city.”
Dawn sighed. “And what are you going to do without me?”
“Same old, same old. I’ll be here if you need me, but what I really want is for you to be safe and happy. I don’t think you can do that here.”
Dawn scooted to the edge of her bed next to her grandmother and laid her head on her shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere unless I can take you with me.”
Annette chuckled. “That’s sweet, child. But I don’t drive and I don’t want to be a burden. I’m too old to start over somewhere else. You’re not. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
Dawn hardly knew what to say. Her grandmother wasn’t old, and she could start over, but convincing her to try seemed like more of a struggle than it was worth, at least for the time being. Once she’d saved enough, then she would think about it. Her mother would be in jail for another five years, but Dawn couldn’t wait that long. She would have enough money saved up in a yea
r, and she and her grandma could move to Florida, Texas, or Arizona, and then when her mom got out of jail, they would have a nice home set up for her to come to.
“I’ll think about it, Grandma.”
Annette smirked. “I’ve heard that before. It usually means ‘I just want you to stop talking about it.’”
The woman was insightful. She might be psychic but had never explained it much. If the sight was inherited, it must’ve skipped a generation. Her mother wouldn’t have landed in jail if she had known the SWAT team was about to jump out of a nearby van while she was being used as a mule carrying heroin and meth.
“Grandma? Do you have more than just a psychic sense?” she asked abruptly.
Annette’s eyes grew wide. “What makes you ask that, child?”
“I…I can sometimes feel things. Sometimes even see things in my mind—as if I’m looking out of someone else’s eyes. And I can sense when something is going to happen ahead of time. And I dream…about things that happen.”
Her grandmother heaved a deep sigh as though she were carrying a secret burden. “Well, I’ve never told you this, and I have no proof if it’s true or not, but I was told that my grandmother was some kind of powerful witch.”
Dawn’s mouth dropped. Why had Annette never shared this with her before? “As in casting spells and all that?”
“I don’t know. I was told my grandmother learned magic from a voodoo priestess. My mother refused to follow her ways. She left New Orleans when she was sixteen and traveled up north with a salesman. By the time she got to Boston, she was expecting me.”
Dawn knew the rest of the story, how Annette’s mother, Fleur, had run off with the salesman with the dimples, gotten pregnant, and then was left to fend for herself. Fleur had worked hard her entire life but could never make ends meet. She died before the age of fifty of a stroke while she was mopping the steps. Annette had been thirty-three at the time with her own daughter, Elise, or Lissie as they called her. Lissie got pregnant at a young age and had Dawn.
It seemed the women of their family all had babies when they were little more than children themselves, and all had terrible luck with men. Dawn vowed not to let that happen to her. She’d made it to the age of twenty-two without any pregnancies and had managed to extricate herself from the gang she’d run around with when she was a teenager.
“What happened to your grandmother?”
“My mother wrote to her a few times. The old woman made a living telling fortunes in New Orleans’ tourist trap—Jackson Square. I don’t know what happened to her. They drifted apart. My mother didn’t approve of ‘hocus-pocus’ as she called it.”
Annette’s eyes teared up as Dawn put her arms around her and hugged her close. There was more to the story than Annette had shared. Dawn could feel it in her gut. Her grandmother had had a rough childhood, and she’d sacrificed her future to help Dawn. Her own daughter, Lissie, seemed to be a lost cause, but at least being in jail gave her access to a drug treatment plan and she was working on getting clean.
“So what do you mean by sometimes you can feel things and see things?”
“I don’t really understand it. I’ve never told anyone much. Once in a while, I’ll just mention something to a friend if I think they’re going to make a mistake. They don’t always appreciate it.”
Her grandmother smiled. “Welcome to my world.”
* * *
As Luca walked out of the briefing room for his next shift, the sergeant smirked directly at him, as if he knew something Luca didn’t. His thoughts traveled back to the strange girl he’d met by the Christian Science Plaza—and her prediction.
Could the sergeant, aka Lisa’s father, have found out about their relationship and talked Lisa into breaking up with him? He still couldn’t really make sense of it. Two years down the drain.
He didn’t have time to ruminate. He and Joe had barely started patrolling when the radio dispatcher had an assignment for them. Screams had been reported at a nearby apartment building, and the ten code signaled a possible domestic dispute.
“Shit. I hate those,” Joe said. “I’ll go in first.”
“Only if you want to. I’m perfectly willing to give it a try. Might as well get some experience, and it would be a chance to practice some of the techniques I was taught to de-escalate these situations.”
Joe laughed. “You sure? I’d hate for you to be killed your second day on the job. It wouldn’t look good for either of us.”
Luca smiled. “I won’t get killed. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, kid.”
Luca radioed the dispatcher and asked if she still had the neighbor on the phone.
“Yes. He’s waiting by the front door to let you in.”
“Did he say if the screams belonged to a man or a woman?” Luca asked.
Joe glanced over at him curiously.
The dispatcher relayed the question and answered back, “It sounds like a man.”
“Any response from another person? And if so, male or female?”
After a brief pause, she came back and said the neighbor reported only one person was doing the screaming.
Luca thanked her and said, “Over and out.”
They arrived at the building quickly. On the way to the door, Joe asked, “What difference does it make if the screams are male or female?”
“I just want as much information as I can get before entering the situation.”
Joe shrugged. “Must be something they taught you in college. I usually just knock loudly, announce it’s the police, and wait with my hand on my weapon. The screaming usually stops before they let me in.”
When the concerned neighbor opened the outer door, he said, “Upstairs. First door on the right.”
Luca didn’t hear any screaming, but as they got closer, he heard crying and begging.
Oh, crap. I hope we’re not too late.
He banged on the door and announced, “Boston Police.”
The door opened cautiously, and a thin, unkempt man peeked over the chain through red-rimmed eyes. A moment later, he closed the door to undo the chain lock and then opened it fully and stood aside.
Luca glanced past the man but didn’t see anyone in the living room or kitchen. “Is there anyone else here?”
“N…no. Well, not really. I’ll explain.”
The two of them entered the apartment cautiously. “Mind if we take a look around?” Joe asked.
“You won’t find anyone. He’s inside me.”
Luca and Joe glanced at each other. Joe’s face remained stony. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The man sounded like he was suffering from a mental illness. In a way, Luca was glad Joe was out of the way. He knew veteran cops often dismissed the “crazies” as he’d heard them called.
“What’s your name?”
“George.”
“George, I’m Officer Fierro. Tell me what’s upsetting you,” he said gently.
“I have a demon inside me. I need an exorcism, and my priest won’t do it. He won’t even come to my home anymore.”
“I see. It sounds like this has been going on for a while.”
“A few years. I’m praying and taking my medication, like my priest told me to. But it’s not working anymore. The demon is too strong.” He began to cry again.
“Are you Catholic, sir?”
“Yes. A practicing Catholic. And my priest won’t do an exorcism!”
“I might know what to do, if you’ll trust me.”
Cautious hope entered the man’s eyes. “You know how to perform an exorcism?”
“Yes, one version,” Luca answered. “Do I have your permission to proceed?”
The man nodded fervently.
Luca placed the palm of his hand on the man’s forehead. He caught sight of Joe pausi
ng in the hallway but ignored him. In an authoritative voice, he declared, “In the name of Jesus Christ, evil be gone!” He repeated it twice more. At the end of the third time, he thought he’d add a little Latin and used the only phrase he could remember off the top of his head. “E pluribus unum!”
The man collapsed on the floor. Joe rushed in, and Luca kneeled beside George, placing his fingers against the man’s carotid artery. His heartbeat was fast, but at least he wasn’t in cardiac arrest.
Joe, to his credit, didn’t make a sound. Luca half expected some kind of outburst, like, What the hell are you doing? Instead, he just asked, “Is he okay?”
Luca shook the man’s shoulder. “Hey, George. Are you all right?”
George’s eyes fluttered open. “I—I think so.” He tried to sit up. “I’m dizzy.”
“Lie back down. Take a few slow breaths first. We’ll help you up in a minute.”
A short while later, George said he felt better than he had in weeks. They left him resting in a comfortable chair, sipping some water.
As soon as the two cops were safely ensconced in their cruiser, Joe grinned. “Is that what they taught you to do in college? Do you have ‘performs exorcisms’ on your résumé?”
“No, but maybe I should add it. I was hoping the power of suggestion might help.”
Joe burst out laughing. His reaction suddenly had Luca wondering if the call was a ruse. Did the cops set up this whole thing? If so, they found the most convincing actor on the planet. Nah. I’m just being paranoid. Thanks a bunch, Dawn Forest.
“Hey, you won’t tell the guys at the station about this, will you?”
“Why not? It’s hilarious! You’re nothing if not creative, kid.”
“I’m afraid they’ll use it to make fun of the rookie.”
Joe piped down to a chuckle. “Okay. I can’t wait to see what you write in your report. And I hope you’ll share the story over a beer at our favorite bar sometime. I’ll take you there to celebrate the end of your first week.”
“Sure. If I make it that far. Let me think about it.”
Joe just grinned and drove down the street, ready to resume their patrol.
As they drove down a side street on a hill, Luca’s eyes went on alert. That girl, Dawn, had told him about an older neighborhood that looked just like the one they were driving through. Homes with front doors close to the street. He recalled she said that there was a drag race, and a kid on a bike was heading into the street…she could see it unfold through his eyes. For some reason, he knew she was telling the truth. She wasn’t just another troubled soul like George.