by SM Reine
The nurse huffed and rolled her eyes. “Nobody came back from Genesis addicted to anything. We shouldn’t even be here. If people would just stop trying to drink themselves to death…” More screaming from inside the ward. The nurse twisted around to yell again. “Tell him to shut up! People are trying to sleep!”
It didn’t work. The crying intensified.
“This photo identifies these two men as patients of this mental hospital. It looks like it was ten or fifteen years ago. Do you recognize them?” Lincoln asked.
For the first time, the nurse actually looked at the photo. Her face was blank. “I wasn’t working here ten years ago.”
“The names written on the back of this picture are Tripp and Wilson. Do those names mean anything to you?”
“I can’t help you. I don’t even have the funding to help the hassles that I’ve already got.” She threw her head back to shout once more. “I’m going to beat his ass if I have to yell one more time!”
Lincoln slowly returned the photo to his belt pouch. “Calm down, ma’am.”
“You calm down,” she snapped. “What are you, police? Are you an agent from the OPA? Are you someone who can give me any funding whatsoever, or staff, or supplies to make these people suffer less? I didn’t think so. I don’t have to be here helping these people at all. But here I am, keeping a bunch of idiots alive without fucking electricity, and if I get angry while doing it…” She flung her hands up in a hopeless gesture.
“Why do you do it if you’re not getting paid?” he asked.
She yanked a cross out from under her shirt. “I’ve got a higher calling, bitch. Jesus wants us to help the weak. I’m helping the weak. I don’t have time for your missing men, and I can’t do a thing for you.” She stepped back from the door.
Lincoln tried to ask, “Can I search through your records room?” but she had already slammed the window shut.
Not a moment too soon, either. A patient wearing a tattered t-shirt and pajama pants hurtled down the hall, bare feet slapping at exposed subfloor. The nurse wrapped her arms around him tight, pinning his arms to his sides, and he thrashed against her. The wailing was muffled through the door.
Sophie’s hands covered her mouth as she stared in horror through the window. “This is how your people treat your sick?”
“It wasn’t as bad before Genesis. There were regulations to protect folks.” Lincoln wasn’t going to tell her that he’d seen exchanges like this as deputy too. Most of these crazies had done it to themselves by shooting one too many chemicals into their veins. Addicts were more animal than human.
He raised his fist to knock again.
“What are you doing?” Sophie asked.
“The hospital is the only lead I’ve got,” Lincoln said. “Sometimes you gotta wear them down like a dog with a bone.”
“I’ll help you,” someone said from the hallway behind them.
A woman shuffled out of the shadows. Lincoln thought she was a nurse at first, since she was wearing floral scrubs, but then he saw that she was also barefoot. Her greasy hair was pulled back in a tangled ponytail. She’d chewed her fingertips near to the bone, and she couldn’t stop fidgeting long enough to hide them in her pockets.
“I’m Verna,” she said. “I’ve been in and out of here for almost thirty years.” She was young for having been in the mental hospital for thirty years. She must have first been institutionalized as a child.
“Verna,” he said slowly. “You went to Mortise High, too. You were a few years older than me.”
Verna reached out with shaking hands. “Let me see the picture.”
“Weren’t you one of the cheerleaders?” Lincoln gave her the photo at arm’s length, trying not to get too close. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes in the darkness. He didn’t know if she was human.
Verna ran her fingers over the image of the two men. “This one is Tripp. Harvey McBride the Third. He tried to kill himself.”
“Why would he try to kill himself?” Sophie asked.
“Because his sister did first,” Verna said. “He knew the truth. He didn’t want to know the truth.”
The longer he looked at her, rolling her name over in his mind, the more he recalled. It all trickled in slowly. All that gossip he’d heard falling from Aunt Bee’s lips over the years. “You’re related to the Mortise victims at the hospice.”
Verna’s fingers went limp, and the photo skimmed across the floor to catch underneath the toe of Lincoln’s boots. “We were all related to victims around here, one way or another.”
“But you’re one of the only ones left who was in Sheriff Dickerson’s cult,” Lincoln said. The coven hadn’t been overtly part of Aunt Bee’s gossip, but it wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes type to make the connection. Verna used to go to the summer camp where the coven had been recruited. She was good friends with the Dickerson kids. She wore a pentacle on a piece of yarn around her neck, rather than a cross.
“It was a coven, not a cult,” Verna said.
“What are you talking about?” Sophie asked.
“A coven is a group of witches that practice together,” Lincoln said, trying to be helpful.
“Yes, I’m quite aware of that,” Sophie said. “I’m the one who explains terms to you, thank you very much. What of this coven?”
“They were all tangled up in human sacrifices a few years back,” Lincoln said. “I got rid of most of them.” Actually, Elise had killed them. He’d seen the photos of the church basement when she had finished wiping out the cult. Even possessed by a demon, Lincoln had never killed so many people at once, and especially never so efficiently. “But like Verna said, we’re all related here. She must have been one of the less important members if she wasn’t around to face justice.”
“I didn’t want anything to do with the sacrifices,” Verna said. “Most of us didn’t. But if we didn’t listen to Dickerson, we wouldn’t have been welcome in the coven anymore. Everybody we loved was in the coven. If you disobeyed, you lost your entire family.”
Sophie touched her elbow. “I’m sorry for everything you went through. I hope you’re getting better.”
Verna gave a little laugh that almost sounded like a sob, but her cheeks were dry. “I’m not okay. I’m not getting better.” She pointed at the picture under Lincoln’s boot. “The other man was Wilson Dickerson.”
“Like the Grove County Dickersons?” Lincoln asked. That couldn’t be right. They were a family as integral to the region as the Marshalls. Of all the sins that the Dickersons committed, it was hard to imagine them casting aside one of their sons.
Of course, he still had a hard time believing that his dad would have done the same thing.
“Yes, he was one of them. I don’t know what happened to him. But I can help you figure it out.” She whipped around and shuffled up the hallway.
Lincoln and Sophie exchanged glances then shrugged.
They followed her.
Verna navigated the hallways with ease until they came to a green door. “Wait here,” she said, sliding inside. Before the door swung shut behind her, Lincoln glimpsed filing cabinets. She had taken them to the records room.
“Were you in the cult too?” Sophie asked. She sounded surprisingly free of judgment, as if asking him his favorite color rather than whether he was complicit in human sacrifice.
“You really think that I would do that?”
“It doesn’t seem like anything you could ever do, no. Yet you obviously have some kind of personal stake in this coven. I’m curious to know what it means to you.”
Lincoln’s throat burned. “I was one of the human sacrifices.” His voice came out hoarse, emotionless.
“Mr. Marshall,” she said softly, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s over. We beat them.”
“It’s not over for you though. Is it?” Sophie asked.
Verna returned before Lincoln could find words. The patient held a thick folder wrapped in rubber bands. “These are the files on T
ripp and Wilson. Tripp has a lot because he tried to kill himself a lot. I put some dates of interests on a sticky note here—you should look them up. It will explain everything.”
Shouts rose from the end of the hall, and Verna looked up, terrified. A pair of nurses were running toward them. They had realized that Verna was wandering free.
She shoved the folder into Lincoln’s hands.
“Look it up, please,” she said.
The nurses grabbed her by the arms. They weren’t gentle, even though she wasn’t fighting.
“You need to stop this, Verna,” said a red-haired nurse with broad shoulders. He wrenched her away from Lincoln. “Who are you?”
Lincoln concealed the folder within his jacket. “I used to go to school with Verna. I was just visiting.”
“Make an appointment next time,” he said.
She couldn’t seem to walk fast enough for them. Lincoln heard them muttering something about tranquilizers as they left, and when Verna looked at Lincoln one last time, he saw how red her eyes were.
They pulled her behind a door. The clicking lock echoed.
“That poor thing,” Sophie said, horrified. “What an awful place this is.”
Lincoln looked at the files she had brought out. The aging, curling pages were halfway rotten. Verna had tucked a note between the rubber bands. Her handwriting was as messy as her hair, but the dates were decipherable.
“What should we do? Should we save her?” Sophie asked.
“This is probably the safest place for someone like Verna. And I don’t think she wants our help like that.” Lincoln held up the sticky note of dates for Sophie to see. “She wants us to go to the library.”
The Woodbridge Library was a charming little brick building between a two-screen theater and thrift store downtown. It had enough power for one light in the front room, and it was even staffed by a librarian, who offered a smile to Lincoln and Sophie when they came in.
“Wonder why the Breaking trashed so much of society, but left the library intact,” Lincoln said.
“It makes perfect sense!” Sophie’s whole face shined. The library had never been an impressive place, but even just a couple rooms filled with old books must’ve been a sight for the sore eyes of a nerd like Sophie. “There are always three gods, yes? And angels feed upon human intelligence, so it would make sense that the ethereal God would protect institutions of learning. He’s protecting his own food source, in a way!”
“That’s not creepy,” Lincoln muttered.
They had to bother the librarian to show them where the microfiche was, but Lincoln had no trouble operating it once they sat down. He used to go to Northgate’s even smaller library to research cases on their microfiche. It was still how they stored their older newspaper records.
He showed Sophie how to load the sheets into the microfiche reader, pulled the newspapers for the dates Verna indicated, and then let Sophie free.
“This is marvelous!” Sophie gasped. The screen’s reflection made her eyes look like endless pools of molten copper. “What amazing technology is this?”
“It’s archaic bullshit, that’s what.” Lincoln sat next to her to read the bulk of the files. Between bad handwriting and fading ink, the psychiatrist notes on Tripp and Wilson were almost as impossible to decipher as ancient Sumerian.
“Archaic though it may be, it’s quite efficient! I’ve already had adequate time to inspect the newspaper from the dates suggested and have found nothing.” Sophie sighed, massaging her fingertips into her temples. “Perhaps poor Verna was as addled as she seems.”
“Or Verna’s telling us about events that the newspaper couldn’t publish,” Lincoln said. “It’s a small town. Crime often flies under the radar. You know the Gazette only posts what the local officials want them to post, right?”
“I most certainly do not know that. That’s highly unethical journalism. You don’t find it infuriating to think of lies issued to the public?”
“Grove County likes things more peaceful than that. Keep the community calm while officials look into things that most people shouldn’t have to worry about.”
“I suspect most communities would prefer being well-informed to censorship,” Sophie said. “I may know little specific to America, but I know the value of information, and the free flow of honest knowledge.”
“You also think that the state is the enemy of the people.”
“That’s not exactly what I said, but it’s also not exactly wrong.” Sophie continued scanning the articles on the microfiche. “Is your father’s name John Marshall?”
Lincoln set the files down and moved his chair closer to the screen. “Yeah. Why?”
“I haven’t been able to find incidents on Verna’s dates, but it looks like your father was arrested around that time.” Sophie pointed at a tiny paragraph at the bottom of the crime section. It only reported that John Marshall was arrested after a disturbance at two thirty in the morning. There were no other details.
Lincoln remembered that year better than most in his childhood, since that was when his father had been most involved with the church. It had been an endless parade of barbecues and fundraisers. The summer where John Marshall was said to have been arrested, there had been a luau. The entire football team had gotten trashed. The cheerleaders had performed a hula dance for them. He’d had a crush on one at the time, and the night had ended when she barfed on his shirt.
He did not remember his father getting arrested that summer. He would remember that. “Strange,” he said. “Guess he could have been picked up on a drunk and disorderly—my dad was messed up over the divorce at the time.”
“He was arrested by someone named Deputy McBride,” Sophie said.
That didn’t sound right either. If anyone was going to pick up John Marshall, it would have been the sheriff at the time, Dickerson the elder. Their families had been even closer in those days. The church work had brought them real close.
“We could find Deputy McBride,” she suggested.
“Why would we wanna do that? It’s not like it’s going to lead us to the gargoyles,” Lincoln said.
“Your father’s situation could be related to the gargoyles. As you said…this is a small town.”
He frowned at her. “Are you saying that you think my dad’s involved with the gargoyles? Like he’s their target?”
Sophie’s eyes were filled with painful sympathy. “You said it first.”
“He owned the lumber mill. He worked hard for church and community. He survived a terrible divorce from a woman who cheated on him. Who the hell would hold a grudge against him?”
“Robin, perhaps? She said she would dance on his grave.”
Something thumped elsewhere in the library’s basement.
They both froze.
The microfiche reader was near the stairs. They’d had a line of sight on it since the librarian brought them down, and Lincoln would have known if someone had gotten into the stacks.
Unless that person had slipped through a window well. Lincoln hadn’t tried to hide his father’s pickup in the parking lot. Anyone could have followed them there.
“Mr. Marshall?” Sophie whispered.
Lincoln rose, and his hand slid to the small of his back, under his jacket. The unicorn dagger pressed against his spine. He stepped in front of Sophie and scanned through the shelves for the source of the sound.
A couple of books had fallen off of a cart, bumped off the shelf by a woman’s hip. She’d pulled a hood low over her face, so he couldn’t make out half her features. He only knew that she was a white woman about five-six, maybe two hundred and twenty pounds. She was running for the stairs.
Lincoln vaulted over the desk and reached for her arm.
She flung a hand at him. Her mouth opened, and the library boomed in a silent explosion. Shelves leaped. Books tumbled from the shelves. It felt like a fist slamming into Lincoln’s chest.
He smashed his wounded ribs into the library table.
; Breath gushed out of him, pain lancing all the way down to his toes. “Jesus Christ!”
She’d spoken a word of power. It wasn’t a common skill for witches—it took too much energy for most of them to handle it. This particular witch was strong. Maybe strong enough to control a gargoyle or two.
The woman was now at the top of the stairs.
And Lincoln was now pissed.
He took the stairs three at a time. The dagger leaped into his hand, and Inanna hadn’t even had to urge him to do it. He shot past the librarian and into the parking lot.
The witch who’d attacked him was already at the sidewalk.
He put on a burst of speed, jumped, and grabbed her by the arm. Her hood fell off when he jerked her around to face him.
Sunlight shined on her blond hair, almost the exact same color as Lincoln’s. Her flushed cheeks burned with embarrassment. Ashley Marshall looked simultaneously guilty and defiant, and in her fist, she was holding an enormous wooden pentagram.
Ashley was casting magic again.
Chapter 32
Ashley owned a tea shop in Northgate, which seemed appropriate. As a child, Lincoln had been forced to attend a thousand of her tea parties during family gatherings. He’d become an expert in serving finger sandwiches and arranging the dishes to Ashley’s exacting standards. Even her sixteenth birthday had been a tea party, for Christ’s sake.
Her shop was kitschy and modern. Block letters spelled out inspirational words on her shelves: peace, love, God. The tablecloths were lace, and her mismatched lamps all looked antique. She’d hung the six-foot-tall figure of Jesus on the crucifix on her back wall, by the bathrooms. That crucifix used to be in Lincoln’s apartment. It was nice to see it had found a home, even if this wasn’t where he’d expected to see it.
“Can I get you guys something to drink?” Ashley asked with a nervous smile.
Lincoln’s anger had been building since his ribs had gotten reinjured, and he couldn’t hold back anymore. He didn’t mean to punch Ashley’s wall. But his knuckles were suddenly an inch deep into a Thomas Kinkade canvas, and he’d dented the drywall underneath.