Haunted

by Kelley Armstrong

  When Jaime finished, she escaped with the old "just running to the ladies' room" line. Now, if it'd been me...but it wasn't me, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Once back in the hotel room, Jaime grabbed a roll of hotel-supplied Scotch tape from the desk, and plastered the walls with the printouts so I could read them. There were over a hundred pages, detailing twenty-three cases, some obvious suspects, some your garden-variety domestic murders but with something extra that had warranted national attention. When she ran out of wall space, she laid pages on the bed and sofa. Then she checked her watch.

  "I'm supposed to be in makeup in twenty minutes."

  "Go on." I looked around. "This is fine."

  "So long as housekeeping doesn't decide to slip in and turn down the sheets." She glanced around the room and shuddered. "Even the showbiz spiritualist gig wouldn't explain this."

  "I'll cast a lock spell on the door."

  My spell wouldn't work on a door in the living world, but there was no harm in trying, if it made her feel better.

  "Good luck," I said. "Or is it 'break a leg'?"

  She gave a wan smile. "Sometimes I think a preshow broken limb wouldn't be such a bad thing." Her eyes clouded, but the look evaporated with a blink. "I should be wishing you luck, too. If you need anything, just pop by the theater." She hesitated. "But if you do pop in--"

  "Don't really pop in. Got it."

  She murmured a good-bye, grabbed her purse, and left.

  I spent the next hour reading through the first wall of printouts. I made two mental lists, one for likely suspects and one for possible. Some were obvious noncandidates. Like the hooker who accidentally killed a john, robbed him, then decided murder was more lucrative than turning tricks. Or the teen who'd set a bomb in the girls' changing room during cheerleading practice and later told reporters "the bitches got what they deserved." Women like that didn't need the Nix's booster shot for resolve. Likewise, I could exclude the women who'd committed their crimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The Nix needed very clear criteria for her partners, those on the verge of murder, needing only her extra push.

  A low whistle sounded behind me. "You are busy." Kristof stepped up to me and scanned the wall filled with articles. "I thought maybe you could use some research help, so I put on my bloodhound nose."

  I smiled. "You're very good at that, you know. Scary good."

  "If I want something, I find it." Kristof turned to the wall. "Where can I start?"

  I hesitated, then pointed to the pages strewn over the bed and told him my criteria.

  "I'll cull the ones that fit," he said. "Then you can read them, make your own decision."

  The more I read, the more I wanted this part of my mission to be over. I don't have any hang-ups about violence. For a witch in the supernatural world, being powerful meant mastering the dark arts. Paige was trying to change that, and all the power to her. But when I was her age, I saw only two choices: become a black witch or accept that my powers were good for little more than spell-locking my door and cowering on the other side.

  So I'd followed the path of dozens of young witches before me: I'd left the Coven. Left or was kicked out, depending on who you ask. Once gone, I'd devoted myself to learning stronger magic, which meant sorcerer magic, plus the odd black-market witch spell I managed to master. To become more powerful, I had to dig deep into the underbelly of the supernatural world and gain the respect of people who don't respect anything but violence. It became a tool, one I learned to wield with little more concern than I would wield a machete to chop my way out of a jungle.

  But the violence I saw in these pages wasn't chopping down your enemies or fighting for survival. This was hate and jealousy and cowardice and all the things I'd felt inside the skull of that sick bastard on death row. The more I read, the more I remembered what it had been like to be in his head, and the more I wanted to be done with this chore.

  Kristof saw or sensed my discomfort. But he said nothing, not an "Are you okay?" or, worse yet, a "Here, let me do that for you." He just glanced my way now and then, knowing if I wanted to talk about it, or if I wanted to stop, I'd say so.

  Finally, on the final wall, I hit my wall, the article that made my brain scream that it'd had enough. The headline read: MODERN-DAY MEDEA MASSACRES TOTS. The jaunty, off-the-cuff alliteration enraged me almost as much as the article itself. I could imagine the reporter, sitting at her news desk, completely oblivious to the details of the crime, the unthinkable horror of it, as she struggled to find the right headline. Gotta keep it short and catchy. Hey, look, I even tossed in a classical reference--guess that college education paid off after all.

  My own education didn't include a college degree, but I knew who the mythological Medea was, and what she'd done. As I'd suspected, the article was about a woman who'd killed her children to punish her husband. Three children, all under five, drowned in the tub, then laid in their beds. When her husband came home, he'd gone in to kiss them, as he always did, and found them cold and dead. His crime: philandering. Theirs? Absolutely none. Victims of a revenge that no crime imaginable could warrant.

  Kristof slid over and read the headline over my shoulder. He put his hand on my hip and I let myself lean into him and rest there a moment before I pulled away.

  "Gotta hope there's a special place in hell, I guess," I said.

  "I'm sure there is."

  I'd have been just as happy to stick this crime on my "no" list, and never have to think about it again, yet something near the bottom made that impossible. A quote from a friend of the family. The kind of thing ordinary folks say when a microphone is thrust into their face, their opinions sought, wanted, important. The kind of thing they'd hear played on newscasts for days and sink a little with each iteration, wanting to scream "I didn't mean it like that!" The perfect sound bite. The friend had admitted that Sullivan had threatened revenge against her unfaithful husband, horrible, violent revenge. So why had no one reported it? "Because we didn't think she had the guts to pull it off."

  I glanced over my shoulder at Kristof, and saw his mouth tighten as he read the same line.

  "Guess I should move her to the top of my short list," I said.

  "Definitely. I've found one or two other possibilities over here."

  We finished the last few cases. When we were done, I had a list of six possibilities plus three very good candidates.

  "I think I'll get Medea out of the way first," I said. "All three are in jail, and I have transportation codes for those cities. So it's just a matter of getting to the prisons from there."

  "Do you want me to come along?" he asked.

  I shook my head.

  "Then why don't you get Jaime to help you locate the first one, and while you're gone, I'll dig up directions for the other two."

  "Thanks."

  We agreed to meet up back at my house, and I left in search of Jaime.

  14

  I MET JAIME IN THE LOBBY AS SHE WAS RETURNING from her show. The business lounge was open around the clock, so she found directions for the prison easily. I took them and left.

  To get to Amanda Sullivan's prison, I had to walk fifteen miles beyond the city drop-off point. Most of the way, I jogged. I needed to stretch my muscles and shuck the faint sense of claustrophobia that settles in me after spending too long in any one place. After reading those articles, inactivity wasn't the only thing that got my legs moving. The Fates said the Nix struck every few years, and that left the illusion that I had plenty of time. Maybe they'd done that intentionally, so I wouldn't feel pressured into rushing, but those articles had made me painfully aware that just because the Nix struck on average every two years didn't mean she wasn't out there right now, lining up her next partner.

  By the time I reached the prison, it was morning. I entered through the visitors' door. Got to skip the security check, though. Good thing, too, because there was quite a lineup.

  I slid through the metal detector, past the two women at the front of t
he line. Both were older than me, one maybe in her late forties, the other fiftyish. Mothers of inmates; I could tell that by looking at them.

  The older one held her chin high, defiant, certain someone had made a terrible mistake, that her child was innocent, and someone would pay for this travesty. The younger one kept her chin down, meeting the guard's questions with a polite murmur and sad smile but not meeting anyone's gaze. The guilt of a mother who sees her child in prison and sees herself to blame, not quite sure what she's done, but certain she's done something--maybe it was that glass of wine in her first trimester or that parent-teacher meeting she missed in fifth grade, some minuscule parenting oversight that had led to this.

  I walked past them and into the waiting room--a windowless gray blob of a room that said "We'd really rather you didn't come at all, but if you must, don't expect the damned Hilton." Shabby red-vinyl chairs dotted the room like an outbreak of chicken pox. Goodwill rejects, by the looks of them. Yes, there are things even Goodwill won't touch. From the way the visitors milled around the chairs, giving them wide berth, they weren't touching them, either.

  As I crossed the room I passed spouses, lovers, parents, and friends, all waiting impatiently...eager to see their loved ones or eager to get this duty visit over with. In the far corner, nearest the guard station, stood a huddle of college-age kids, mostly male. Their badges proclaimed them to be visitors from the state police college. Not one of those badges was flipped over or tucked under a jacket, but all were displayed prominently, lest someone mistake them for a real visitor, someone who actually knew one of the lowlifes in this place. An attitude that would serve them well in law enforcement.

  I walked past the cop wannabes, past the guard station, crossed to the prisoners' side of the Plexiglas partition, then headed through the door they'd enter. I came out in a single-level cell block. The first couple of cells I passed were empty, though they showed signs of habitation--a shirt draped over a chair here, a paperback open on a bed there. The inmates must have been out doing something. Work detail maybe, or occupational therapy, exercise, whatever. The particulars of prison life were a mystery to me, though some might say it was a life experience I'd earned many times over.

  I only hoped Sullivan was here someplace, both because it would make my job easier and because, after what she'd done, I didn't want her experiencing the pleasure of life beyond bars ever again--not even to break rocks under a hot Texas sun.

  I continued down the row of cells. The odd one was occupied, the inmate maybe awaiting visitors or maybe held back as punishment, like a kid forced to stay at school during a field trip. I'd almost reached the far end when a giggle exploded behind me. I turned to see a small figure squeeze through the bars of a cell. It looked like a little boy.

  The child scampered the other way, his back to me. Then he paused and looked into the cell on either side. He clutched his hands in front of him, cupping something. Dark-haired and dark-skinned, he wore clothing that had been mended and remended in a way rarely seen since the advent of garment factories and cheap ready-made goods. His shirt, blue faded into gray from washing, was several sizes too large, the elbows patched, as were the knees of his too-small pants, the frayed cuffs riding midway up his calves. His feet were bare.

  I quietly walked up behind him, pausing a few yards away so I didn't startle him. And startle him I could--I was almost certain of that. He had to be a ghost. And yet...well, it didn't make sense. The boy's clothing was a century out of fashion, but the divine powers weren't so cruel as to make a soul spend eternity in a child's form. Young ghosts matured to young adulthood before the physical aging process ended. And when the Fates picked parents for child ghosts, they chose only the best, those who'd longed for children in life and never been blessed, or those who'd longed for more after Mother Nature closed their reproductive window. Child ghosts were, thank God, rare enough that the Fates could afford to be picky, and they would never select someone who let their child run around a prison.

  I gave one of those "throat-clearing" coughs I'd promised Jaime. The boy didn't notice. Instead, he walked to the next cell, looked inside, and smiled. Then he turned sideways and squeezed through the bars, acting as if the metal was a physical barrier, and yet when his toe struck one, it passed through like any ghost's. I crept close enough to see inside the cell. In the bed lay a young woman, no older than twenty, her eyes blazing with fever.

  The boy walked to the bedside and opened his hands. On his palm lay a tiny blue feather. He held it out to the sick woman, but she only moaned. A frown crossed his thin face, but lasted only a second before the sun-bright smile returned. He reached over and laid the feather on her pillow, touched her cheek, then tiptoed to the bars and squeezed through.

  As he came out, I crouched, bringing myself down to his height. He saw me and tilted his head, faintly quizzical.

  "Hello, there," I said. "That was a very pretty feather. Where did you find it?"

  He grinned, motioned for me to follow, then tore off.

  "Wait," I called. "I didn't mean--"

  He disappeared down a side hall. I followed. Medea could wait.

  When I rounded the corner, the boy was standing in front of a door, dancing from foot to foot with impatience. Before I could call to him, he grabbed at the door handle and pantomimed opening it. It didn't budge, but he acted as if it had, scooting through the imaginary opening.

  The door led into a short hall lined with shelves and cleaning supplies. At the end, a hatch in the floor had been boarded over. Again, the boy went through the motions of opening it.

  "I don't think you should--"

  He darted through. I walked to the hatch door, lowered myself to all fours, then pushed my legs through. Stuff like this was tricky--mentally disorienting. Like walking on floors or sitting on furniture in the living world. Seems simple enough, until you consider that those floors and that furniture don't exist in my dimension. So what keeps ghosts from dropping through? Voluntary delusion. If you believe the floor exists or the chair exists, you can treat it as a physical object, at least in the sense that you won't fall through it. So when passing through this trapdoor, I grabbed the floor and lowered myself down, even though I couldn't feel anything under my fingers.

  As my feet went through the boarded-up door, I cast a light-ball spell. My stronger magic might be hit-and-miss in this world, but I could still count on the simple stuff. Beneath the trapdoor was a ladder, a rickety half-rotted thing that promised to collapse under the slightest weight. Luckily, I was weight-free these days. So I set my foot onto the first rung, and climbed down.

  I landed in a tiny, dark room. Concrete walls sweated rivulets of water that stank of sewage. I cast my light around. Nothing to see. Just bare walls and a bare dirt floor. I turned. On the wall behind me was a wooden door crisscrossed with boards. As I stepped toward it, something jabbed the bottom of my foot and I jumped in surprise.

  I moved my light down to see a small green globe, half-buried in the dirt. Bending over, I picked it up. A marble. Jade green, its glassy surface clouded with scratches. I turned it over in my hand and smiled. A ghost marble, like the ghost wheelchair Kristof had conjured in the psych hospital. I tucked the marble into my pocket, then walked through the door.

  I came out in a long hall. Doors lined one side, thick wooden doors reinforced with steel bands, solid except for a slit about two-thirds of the way up, covered with a metal plate.

  When I reached the third door, I heard crying. I stopped and listened. It came from behind the door. I stepped through into a small room, less than five by five. On the wooden floor lay a moldering pallet, half-covered with a moth-eaten, coarse blanket. The room was empty, yet I could still hear crying. It came from all sides, as if the very walls were sobbing.

  "Didn't mean it, didn't mean it," whispered a voice.

  "Who's there?" I said, twisting, trying to pinpoint the source. "Is that you, hon? You didn't do anything--"

  "Sorry, so sorry, so sorry."
<
br />   The words came louder now, the voice distinctly female. Wrenching sobs punctuated the babble of apologies. I stepped into the empty rooms on either side. From both, I could still hear the voice, yet it obviously came from the middle cell.

  "Hail Mary, full of grace, hail--" A sob. "I don't--don't remember. Hail Mary..."

  "Hello?" I walked back into the middle cell. "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

  The only answer was a soft clacking. I thought of the marble in my pocket.

  "Hail Mary," the voice whispered. "Hail Mary, full of grace."

  Rosary beads. The click of someone counting off rosary beads. A distant door banged. The voice gasped, choking back her prayer mid-word. Footsteps sounded in the hall--the thud of heavy, booted feet. I stepped through the door. No one was there. Yet I could still hear the footsteps, growing louder as they came down the hall toward me.

  From inside the room came a muffled whimper. As I looked around, a new sound filled the air, a steady thumping, softer than the footsteps, growing faster as they drew nearer. The tripping of a frightened heart.

  "Holy Mary, mother of God."

  The prayer came out no louder than a breath, whispering all around me, barely audible over the patter of her heart. The footsteps stopped outside the door. A jangle of keys followed. A whimper, sounding as if it came from right beneath me. A key screeched in the lock.

  "No, no, no, no."

  The door hinges squealed, and I heard it open, yet the door stayed shut. The woman gave a sudden cry that nearly sent me to the rafters. I whirled around, but I was still alone. From beneath me came the frantic scuffle of someone scrambling across the wooden floor.

  "Hail Mary, full of--"

  A laugh drowned out her prayer. The door slammed shut. The woman screamed. Then a slap resounded through the room, so loud I reeled as if I'd felt it. Another scream, a bloodcurdling scream of fury and fear.

  And all went silent.

  I looked around, tensed, waiting for the next spectral sound. But I heard only the faintest scratch of tiny claws from a distant rat.