by Ann Charles
“He’s circlin’ the building, doin’ his cop thing.”
Back up on the landing, Doc took off his gloves and used them as padding when he dropped down onto his knees. He faced the open door, handing his flashlight to me. “Violet, stand behind me, but don’t touch me.”
I did as told, shining the light inside the doorway, lighting up the mirror. “Now what?”
“I’m going to use you as bait to lure the lidérc out.”
“How about we drag Cooper up here to use as bait instead?”
“Good try, sweetheart.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Now, remember, no touching.”
I kept a foot of space between us. “Ready.”
Down on the main road into Lead, a snowplow growled up the hill. I glanced at Harvey, who was rubbing his stomach while staring toward Homestake Mine’s Yates Shaft headframe. Cooper rounded the front of the building and returned to his SUV, leaning against the hood as he stared up at us.
Something thumped inside the open doorway. Returning my attention to the mirror, I watched as it vibrated, moving a little across the floor. It stopped, inert for a couple of beats. Then it started shaking again.
I leaned back, gripping the railing behind me just in case something came flying out and tried to knock me off the landing.
The mirror rattled harder against the floor. In the flashlight beam, I saw what looked like fingers of smoke reaching up and out of the mirror. My heart pitter-pattered faster. The wrenching pain that son of a bitch had caused still echoed inside of me. I tightened my hold on the railing.
A whoosh of swirling smoke erupted from the mirror.
I could swear I smelled the devil’s breath from out here.
As if it heard my thoughts, it billowed toward the open doorway. Clomping footfalls clunked across the wooden floor as it rushed straight at me.
I stumbled back another step, leaning into the railing, praying the ward would hold the lidérc.
It hit an invisible wall at the threshold, pressing flat against it before curling backward. I let out a breath of relief. It rushed at me again, hitting the invisible wall. I could see the silvery swirling center as it tried to push through the ward’s barricade, but Dominick’s cage held.
Doc grabbed his gloves and pushed to his feet, backing away from the doorway. “Did you see anything else escape?”
I watched it, mesmerized by that silvery center. “No, only the lidérc.”
To be honest, I’d gotten a little distracted after the shadowy devil was freed.
Doc put his arm around me, pulling me close, and kissed the top of my head. “I think we did it.”
“You did it, Oracle. I just stood here and watched.” I smiled up at him, going on my toes to kiss his cheek. “We fulfilled my side of the deal. Aunt Zoe is safe.”
“Yeah.” He frowned toward the lidérc. “But how are we going to get your family mirror back?”
Oh, crud. I stared at where it lay on the floor. “I’ll talk to Dominick later and see if he has any ideas.”
“You realize that means he’ll know about your magic mirror.”
“I know, but I’m not going in there to get it now, and neither are you.” I looked down at where Cooper still leaned against his car. “Hey, law dog, you feel like playing fetch?”
He flipped me off.
Chuckling, I turned back to the doorway. Inside, the lidérc was pacing now, smoke and shadow swirling violently as it clomped on its hidden hoof-like feet. “It’s really pissed off,” I said as much to myself as Doc.
“Good. It tried to kill you twice. I hope the bastard rots in this building for at least another century.”
“Me, too.” But I had another plan for it. “Let’s get out of here.” I closed the door.
While Doc locked up after us, I called Dominick on my cell phone and got his voice mail. “Your pet is back in its cage,” I told him. “My part of the deal is fulfilled. Aunt Zoe is no longer available—ever.” I ended the call with, “I’ll be in touch.”
Down on the ground, we shared the good news with Cooper and Harvey and then parted ways with them. Cooper was going to drop Harvey off at Aunt Zoe’s so he could get supper started. The detective needed to head back to work for a bit to take care of a few things, but he agreed to try to join us later for supper.
I climbed behind the steering wheel this time, giving Doc a break, and followed Cooper down to the main road. As I waited at the stop sign for another snowplow to pass, I thought about the last couple of days and all that I’d put Doc through thanks to the lidérc. The anguish on his face when I was crying out in pain back in the courthouse basement room tugged at my heart.
Instead of trailing Cooper back to Deadwood, I pulled out my cell phone and sent a quick text to Harvey: Be home in a bit. Need to check on Rosy’s house.
I turned right, heading for Lead.
“Where are we going?” Doc asked. He looked more rugged than usual thanks to the ripple of shadows and orange streetlights on his face.
“I told Rosy I’d keep an eye on her place this week while she’s on the other side of the state.” I drove up into Lead, feeling like humming now that the huge lidérc yoke had been lifted from my shoulders. With the Hungarian devil back in its cage, my family was safe.
Well, kind of. At least for now.
“Are you humming ‘Good Vibrations’?” Doc asked as we climbed Mill Street.
“Yes.”
Addy had been playing Aunt Zoe’s Beach Boys tapes lately on the old boombox in the basement. She claimed Elvis was depressed and losing more feathers than usual. It turned out the Beach Boys put a high-step in the chicken’s strut, and they made me dance around, too, which gave Addy the giggles.
Doc grinned. “Are you feeling depressed, like Elvis?”
I smiled back at him, loving that he knew the details of my family life—or rather our family life. “I’m feeling as happy as a cat on a tuna boat.” I focused on the road as we rolled over what looked like a patch of black ice. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused.” He looked out at the old filling station on the corner as I turned down the street leading to Rosy’s place. “And hungry.”
I was hungry, too, but for something else.
Rosy lived in what used to be Cooper’s blue, 1940s-era bungalow-style house. In the daylight, the front walk offered sweeping views of the Open Cut and half of Lead. I pulled in front of the detached garage and parked, leaving the engine running.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Doc and hopped out, hurrying over to the two barn-like doors. My headlights lit the keys as I picked the one with the flames on it—a leftover from when Cooper owned the place. I unlocked one of the barn-like doors. Rosy hadn’t done anything yet with the garage besides hang up a snow shovel on the front wall. She’d mentioned making the building into a video editing studio eventually, but I didn’t know how she’d get that old oil smell out of the place. I opened the other door and swung it wide like the first.
Doc stared at me with raised brows as I crawled back inside and pulled as far into the garage as possible. “This is going to be tight.”
“I thought you were going to check on the house?”
“I am.”
“This is the garage.”
“Technically, it’s part of the house package.” I killed the engine but left the radio playing before slipping out through the narrow door opening. I was right about the tight fit, but the barn doors closed with a few inches to spare.
I opened the back passenger door as far as possible and squeezed onto the back seat. “There,” I said, closing the door and settling into the cushy seat. I dropped my mace into the back.
We were alone. Finally. The warm glow of the dash lights lit the front of the cab. Fleetwood Mac sang about being a gypsy on the stereo.
“This is cozy,” I told Doc, who had turned in his seat to stare at me. Bewilderment and amusement took turns crisscrossing his face.
“Is this a kidnapping?” he asked,
a grin now playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Maybe, but I’m new at this particular crime, so don’t laugh at me.”
He shifted in his seat so he faced the back seat. “What’s going on, Violet?”
“I wanted to talk to you alone for a bit before we go home where the kids, Aunt Zoe, Harvey, and whoever else shows up will be listening.”
“Talk about what?”
I patted the seat next to me.
His brow lifted. “You want me to come back there?”
“Yes. It will make things easier.”
“I don’t think there’s enough room to open my door.”
“Crawl through the middle.”
He shook his head, chuckling under his breath. “Never a dull moment with you, woman.”
A moment later, along with a few grunts, plus an elbow shot to the roof, he settled into the seat next to me.
I faced him in the shadows. “Is your elbow okay?”
“It’s fine. Is your head okay? The lidérc didn’t swirl things up in there, did it?”
“My head is the same as before, smartass.”
“Then why am I sitting in the back seat with you in a stranger’s garage in Lead?”
“Rosy isn’t a stranger.”
“Violet.” His tone said the gig was up.
I laced my fingers together in my lap. “I have an idea.”
His gaze narrowed. “Uh oh.”
“Hear me out.” I unlaced my fingers and rubbed my palms on my thighs. “After Dominick sees that his lidérc is back in its cage and agrees our deal is done, I want to sneak back to the Sugarloaf Building and have a séance.” When he continued to stare at me in silence, I added, “In the dark.”
“No.”
I continued. “I think I know how to kill the lidérc.”
“You think?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Absolutely not.”
I sighed and looked out the windshield at the snow shovel hanging on the front wall. “Doc, I understand why you might be resistant to this endeavor.”
“Resistant?” His voice was higher than normal.
I pressed onward, determined. “But it has to be done.”
“Enough, Violet,” he rasped, leaning his head against the seat back and closing his eyes. “Do you have any idea how much you scared the holy hell out of me today?” Lines filled his face, the shadows making the ridges look deeper. “When I got your cryptic text …” he paused taking a breath. “Jesus, I couldn’t grab your mace and get to the courthouse fast enough. Luckily, Coop had the key to get in and was waiting for me. Willis pulled up as we were unlocking the door.” He looked over at me. “I don’t know who was more afraid of what we’d find in that basement—me or your bodyguard.”
My eyes began to water again. I looked down at my hands. “I’m sorry I put you guys through that.”
He reached out and lifted my chin. “We signed up for this, but that doesn’t make it any easier when your life is on the line and we can’t do anything to save you.”
“But both of you did do something. Even Cooper helped.” Jane and Prudence, too.
He stroked my cheek. “What would have happened if Cooper hadn’t had a key?”
“Jane was going to let you in. She led you down to where I was, right?”
He nodded. “She led Cooper. He was the only one who could see her. Willis and I just followed.”
I caught his hand and held it. “I didn’t have time after Rex showed up at the office to do much more than react.”
“What do you mean?”
I told Doc about how weird my ex had been acting and then filled him in about Jane showing up, the whiteboard message, my struggle with Rex, him threatening me with a knife which ended with me getting cut and him receiving a stapler blow to the head, and then my escape into Jerry’s office thanks to Jane.
“Where does Cornelius fit into this?”
“He must have seen Rex and me in his monitor. I was locked inside Jerry’s office when he pounded on the door. Jane wouldn’t let me go out to him, though. She somehow knew the lidérc was inside of him.” I blew out a breath and recounted my conversation with Cornelius through the door, ending with, “How was Cornelius able to hold onto a lidérc? That thing was in me only a few minutes and I was an itchy mess.” Not to mention that cold, clammy sensation that had weighed me down at first.
Doc shook his head. “There’s more to Cornelius than we both know—probably even more than he realizes.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “What made you decide to take the Hellhole route out of Jerry’s office?”
“Jane. She was with me almost the whole time, blocking the lidérc as she helped me escape.” I scooted into the middle of the back seat, moving closer to him. “She convinced me to go through the Hellhole again. We were down in the hole when she pointed at that ward and mimed that it was meant to keep whatever was in the tunnel from passing and heading topside.”
“What do you mean she mimed it?”
“She never actually spoke to me.”
He cocked his head. “You mean the whole time you two were communicating with sign language?”
“More like points and nods and scowls.”
He scratched his jaw through the heavy beard stubble. “Interesting.”
“Anyway, I ran through the tunnel and didn’t see a creepy red-armed beast, so it must slink around on another plane.”
“Or it just wasn’t there at the moment,” he said.
“Or the lidérc hadn’t lured it there this time.” I had a feeling that smoky devil was the reason I’d run into those other two creep shows the first time through the tunnel.
“So, then you crawled through the hole on the other side into the courthouse basement, and Jane mimed to you about trapping the lidérc?” he asked.
“Actually, the trapping bit was my idea.”
He stared at me for several silent beats. “Gypsy” finished playing on the radio and “Silver Springs” started up. It had to be a Fleetwood Mac power hour.
“Did you even think about Addy and Layne when you decided to let the lidérc attach to you and seal yourself in that room?”
I turned away, grimacing about my answer. “No and yes.” Squirming under his hard stare, I explained, “I knew in my gut that I had to stop the son of a bitch, because it wasn’t going to quit coming for me until it had its revenge. Jane was leading me toward the stairwell when I realized that I might know how to trap the thing and had what was needed to make a blood ward, like the one I’d seen in the Sugarloaf Building.” I lifted my chin. “I made the decision at that point knowing that if I could pull it off, my family would be safe.”
“And if you didn’t pull it off?”
I looked down, remembering how scared I was about dying and never seeing my kids again. “I had to try, Doc,” I said quietly. “There was no time to send a group text and take a vote. It was coming for me, and I knew it wouldn’t stop.”
My reply was met with more silence from him.
I cleared my throat. “While I was sitting alone in that room with the bastard inside of me, I tried not to think of Addy or Layne because I didn’t want it to find out about them, but I couldn’t help myself.”
He still said nothing. I listened to Stevie Nicks’s haunting voice, wondering how I could convince him of what needed to be done to finish this.
“That’s why I have to kill it, Doc, but we can’t let Dominick know.”
He shook his head slowly.
“The lidérc knows how to bring me to my knees now.” When he continued shaking his head, I added, “It knows about you, too, now.”
That stopped him. “You mean about me being a medium?”
“I mean it knows that I’m in love with you.” I lifted his hand, lacing my fingers through his. “I can’t risk it getting free and coming for any of us again. It’s too smart to be tricked by us again. I’m afraid the next time it will win.”
“What makes you so cer
tain it would seek you out?”
“It bragged about killing two Executioners before me. I was going to be the third notch on its belt, but I thwarted it.” I leaned forward, clutching his hand to my chest. “We thwarted it. The first chance it has to come for us, it will.”
He sighed. “Masterson will not like you killing his pet.”
“He won’t know if we’re sneaky about it.”
He shifted, turning toward me. He started to say something, then glanced down and blew out a breath.
“What?” I could feel something big and heavy hovering in the air between us.
“I realized something tonight,” he said quietly, then hesitated again.
My heart tiptoed up my esophagus and waited with bated breath at the top of my throat. “Doc?”
“Come here.” He tugged on my hand, pulling me over to his side of the seat, helping me straddle his lap. After I’d settled in, his fingers traced my face as he stared at me with a worried brow. “Kiss me, Boots.”
“What are the magic words?” I teased, easing toward his mouth anyway.
“How about ‘I can’t live without you’?” he said, his fingers sliding around my shoulders, pulling me closer. “Will those do?” He tasted my lips, his kiss tender.
I leaned into him, using my mouth to show him those words would work just fine.
A groan came from deep in his chest and he pulled back. “Violet,” he whispered, sounding torn.
I sat back, sensing his need for space. “What?”
His eyes drilled into me. “I can’t lose you.”
I lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere, Doc.”
He turned away, his gaze hooded. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.” I framed his face and tried to force him to look back at me, but he wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to let this go until he shared whatever was making him avoid my stare.
“Ever since my parents died,” he said, playing with a button on my coat, “I’ve kept everyone at arm’s length.”
“What about your grandfather?”
“Even him. I loved him, but I kept waiting for him to die, too.” His focus settled on my throat. “Then he did die, and I shut down the rest of the way.”