Amy shoots me one more look, half nervous, half excited, and then uses the Open File command to select the email she downloaded. A tiny progress bar appears in the middle of the black box window, and we watch with bated breath as the little green line advances toward the end, the words Decryption in Progress written underneath it.
Finally, the decryption finishes running, and in the black window, in stark white letters, the mystery email from Slate’s question-mark folder appears in plain English.
S,
All ingredients now acquired. Have completed initial setup. Will need you to transport your side of the bargain to the designated location by Tuesday evening. Can discuss logistics of transport at Jameson meeting on Monday morning. If need be, can get moving truck or business truck, something inconspicuous. If there are questions, let me know.
By the way, Wolf friend is getting impatient. Pack member hurt during acquisition of summoning instructions. Tread carefully at meeting. Need to keep him calm.
All the best,
H
Amy stares at the screen for twenty silent seconds and then says, “Go get Ella.”
Chapter Ten
Halfway down the stairs, the déjà vu returns with a vengeance. But this time, I’m ready for it.
I wheel toward the banister and hold tight to stay balanced in case I get dizzy again—don’t want to fall down the stairs—and then I focus harder than ever before on Navarro’s instructions.
Don’t move toward the déjà vu, or away from it. In fact, if you can, don’t react to it at all. Let it run its course without your interference. That way, your body’s response to the sensation will be minimized. Whatever the déjà vu is trying to tell you will be easier to identify without nausea or lightheadedness or any other physical symptom distracting you. Find the balance point, Cal.
Essentially, Navarro told me to do nothing and allow the déjà vu to show me what it will or guide me where it wants to go.
Do nothing.
Nothing.
I drop to my ass on the stairs, release the banister slowly, and refrain from fighting the memory war inside my head. I don’t pull away from the overwhelming sensation that I’ve seen this before, but I don’t move toward it either, seeking out the knowledge of my future. Seconds pass where I sit limp and listless, the nausea nothing but a distant echo in my stomach this time, the dizziness kept at bay, no longer risking a fainting spell. And then the time comes—I feel it, like a bump in the road—when the déjà vu should end, when the tempting touch of future knowledge should retreat to whatever dark corner of my head it’s taken up residence in.
That time comes—and it goes.
I feel something new: a tug. In my head. Like someone nailed a string to my brain and starting yanking it. I can’t see this string, or sense it externally in any way, but it’s there, some wispy tendril in the air urging me to move.
Is this the balance point? Did I get it right this time?
Hesitantly, I rise and follow the tug. Down the stairs I go, to the first floor, and then across the hall to another staircase that leads to the basement we haven’t yet cased. I pause at the closed basement door, unsure if I should continue, but the tug becomes insistent.
I turn the knob and push the door open, revealing the darkness below. As I descend, the tug urges me to move faster and faster, like it’s running out of time. I feel along the wall for a light switch, but I don’t find one fast enough. So I’m forced to plunge into the absolute blackness of Slate’s basement.
The tug, despite dragging me in a distinct direction, is not very good at maneuvering around objects in my way. I trip half a dozen times, over boxes, over rusty lawn equipment—including a garden hoe that nearly pierces my boot—over several squishy things that move (and I do not care to find out what they are).
At last, as I’m moving along the back wall, my arms and legs bruised and aching from running into too many things to count, the tug…stops.
The déjà vu is gone.
Just like that.
And it has led me to a blank wall in Arthur Slate’s basement.
What?
I let out a deep sigh, my whole body shaking, but I don’t feel nearly as bad as I have from déjà vu episodes past. So even if following the weird tug ends up being useless, at least I know how to avoid vomiting up my guts or passing out on the floor. That’s something.
However, if the déjà vu does indeed turn out to be useless, I’ll feel even more cheated than I did before.
With that in mind, I start running my hands over the wall, searching for something. Anything. Pretty please?
It’s only when I’m on my tiptoes, fingers on the ceiling, that I remember ex-Mayor Slate was much shorter than me. He wouldn’t have been able to reach so high without a stool or ladder. So, if he did hide something in the wall, it would probably have been placed lower. I sink to my knees instead and test all the crevices in the cinderblock wall near the floor.
I find it on the third row of blocks up from the dirty concrete.
A tiny lever, hidden in a narrow hole between two blocks. It’s almost too small for me to pull—Slate must have had slimmer hands than me too—but I manage to tuck my index finger underneath it. With a sharp yank, the lever pops forward, and something inside the wall clanks loudly. A lock?
As if to answer my question, the wall suddenly juts forward at an angle. I jerk away, scared it’s a booby trap, but then the logic hits me: it’s a door.
Of course it’s a door. It’s a door hiding a secret room in Slate’s basement, no doubt to conceal some dastardly deeds related to the rather terrifying topics he was discussing with H (Wizard Halliburton, I imagine) in his encrypted emails.
I reach out in the darkness and find the lip of the newly revealed door. It’s heavy, but the hinges are new and well oiled, so it swings open with one hefty pull.
Naturally, the secret room beyond is as dark as the basement, so I can’t make heads or tails of what dangers might be inside before I step in. Slowly, I inch forward, searching the wall and ceiling for any lights. This time, I find one: a single naked bulb with a metal string hanging nearby to switch it on. I tug the string, and the bulb flares up with bright white light.
The secret room is full of clocks.
And by full, I mean there are hundreds of them. Stacked on a dozen worktables spread across the cramped room, piled up in the corners, some even strewn randomly across the concrete floor.
From what I can see, the clocks are identical in design, plain and rectangular, nothing like the fancy, antique-inspired clocks Slate has upstairs. It’s like an entire shipment of mass-produced, five-dollar, bargain-bin clocks from China magically teleported themselves into Slate’s basement.
As if that isn’t weird enough, the clocks are also doing the creepiest thing. They’re all running, second hands moving around and around and around their faces. But not a single one of them is ticking.
The secret room is silent.
My hand drifts down to the phone clipped to my belt. I need to call Amy and Ella down here.
Because there’s something seriously wrong. I can feel it, beyond the general eeriness of the room, wriggling toward a special kind of sense in my head. My magic sense. I don’t know what’s up with these clocks exactly, but there are spells in this room, many, many spells. Thick like syrup on the air, sticking to my tongue. I don’t even need to fully activate magic sensing mode this time. There may not be a visible aura, but I’m a hundred percent sure that anyone, no matter how normal, could feel the magic in this room, heavy, humid—foul.
I unclip my phone from its holder, and in so doing, accidentally brush the doorframe with my elbow.
And that’s all it takes.
To activate the ward.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…?
“Aw, crap.”
There’s a spark of power in the air. My heart skips a beat. Then my flight response goes into overdrive, and I leap backward into the basement, spin
around in midair, land in a half-crouch, and dive to the right with all my strength, aiming for a stack of cardboard boxes. Behind me, in the secret room, there’s a shrill whine, like a building charge, and a split second after I hit the floor—the magic bomb goes off.
And by bomb, I mean all the clocks explode.
They burst open with immense force, slinging wooden shrapnel through the secret room and out the door. I cover my exposed face with my hands, narrowly avoiding an eyeful of sharp splinters. Hundreds of concussive blasts tear into my eardrums simultaneously. My world becomes a rain of charred wood accompanied by a high-pitched ringing noise.
Several wood chips make it past my gloved hands, biting into the skin on my neck and ears. Blood wells up and pools in my ear canal, drips onto the floor.
When the shrapnel barrage finally stops, I unfurl to take a peek at the secret room. Trembling and unbalanced, hearing still compromised, I rise to my knees and observe the carnage.
The ward on the doorway is now visible, a black line of symbols burned into the cinderblocks, where the magic had been stored before it burst forth. Past the door is a wall of gray smoke slowly billowing toward the basement, the taste of ash already on my tongue. And past the smoke is…is…I blink several times, trying to figure out what it is I’m seeing. Shapes. Moving shapes. Moving people-like shapes.
They aren’t people though. Not living people anyway.
As the wall of gray smoke settles, the truth beats against my chest like a wave. The reason why the magic in the room freaked me out so much. The reason it felt so thick and concentrated. The reason it felt so wrong.
In the secret room, where hundreds of clocks used to be, stand in their place…
…hundreds of shades.
The souls of dead people. Are standing in Arthur Slate’s secret, warded clock storage room. Dressed in whatever they were wearing when they passed. Business suits. Fancy dresses. Skiing equipment. Ice skates. Pajamas. People from all walks of life, who were doing all sorts of things, when Death came knocking and pulled their souls away.
There’s no rhyme or reason to them, no pattern I can see. They’re a random assortment of people, who somehow ended up stuck in clocks, instead of passing on to the other side like they should have. And there’s no way it was natural, no way this many ghosts got trapped on Earth because they had unfinished business.
No, this was intentional.
This was…a collection.
And—
My heart seizes in my chest, and I choke on air. Because I find a familiar face in the crowd. Near the front of the silent, ghostly huddle is a woman. About thirty. Medium brown hair. Pale skin with a mild sunburn. Wearing a full array of winter gear, from a warm knitted beanie to heavy boots. And even though she’s transparent now, I still see them—the mottled bruises speckled across her face and neck.
It’s the woman who died in Wilcox’s office building.
I gasp out, “Holy shit.”
And it’s like my voice activates something. One by one, the shades start to disappear. They fade away like the thin wisps of smoke now curling along the floor.
Their faces are contorted with looks of fear and confusion, as if they don’t know where they are, as if they don’t know that they’re dead. But they don’t even have a chance to comprehend the situation before the Eververse grabs hold of them and guides them away from Earth once and for all. Most of them won’t realize the truth of the matter until they arrive in their designated afterlives.
It’s clear from their behavior that none of them know how they ended up magically sealed inside clocks in Arthur Slate’s basement.
None of them. Except one.
He loiters in the corner of the room as the ghosts around him vanish into thin air, his face obscured by the haze. He stands there, solemn and still, until every other soul in the room, the office woman included, has moved on to their final destination. Then he looks through the open doorway of the secret room. He looks at me. Before he walks straight through the basement wall and far out of my reach.
I’m still sitting in the darkness, mouth stuck open in a failed attempt to call out to the man, when Amy, Ella, and Liam rush into the basement.
“Cal,” yells Ella, “what the hell happened?”
I don’t know what to say except the truth.
“Arthur Slate was collecting human souls.”
Chapter Eleven
A car crash is not my favorite way to end a conversation. But considering that I’m DSI, it could always be worse.
On our way back from Slate’s house, Ella sits next to me, with Amy driving and Liam in the front passenger seat. The back of the SUV is stuffed with evidence from Slate’s office and basement. The desktop computer is secured against the wall, his MacBook Air tucked in with it. A blue bin chock-full of charred clock fragments sits on the opposite side, hooked to the wall with plastic ties.
Ella is perusing a folder filled with printed pages containing all the encrypted emails Amy ran through the black box program. She also has the camera roll open on her cell phone, displaying pictures of Slate’s secret basement room and the ward in the doorway. As she flips through the email pages, skimming the contents, she occasionally swaps out the image set as well. The last set of pictures is the one I took four weeks ago, at Wilcox’s building (before it blew up). She’s comparing the scenes to see if there are any similarities.
About halfway back to the office, Ella slaps the folder on the seat beside her and glances my way. “Are you absolutely sure the woman you saw in the basement was the same one from last month’s cold case?”
I dab at my bloody ear with a wad of gauze Amy scrounged from the first aid kit. “Positive. It was her, Ella. She was in one of the clocks.”
Ella bites her lip. “So the two cases are actually one.”
Amy peers at us through the rearview mirror. “That’d explain the chalk circle. It wasn’t a summoning at all. It was…”
“…meant to capture the woman’s soul,” I finish. “Whether he murdered her or not, Halliburton trapped her soul in a magic circle so she couldn’t leave for the Eververse. Then he used one of Slate’s clocks as a permanent—or semi-permanent—prison, forcing her shade to stay on Earth until such time as he needed it.”
“And she was far from the only one.” Ella raps her fingers against the folder. “You said there were hundreds?”
“Yeah.” I press my cheek against the cold window and sigh. “There were so many shades in that room, they were overlapping each other. And they were so lost. So confused. They had no idea what was happening to them.”
“Hey…” Ella grasps my shoulder. “They’re free now, Cal. You saved them.”
“Which is a damn good thing,” Amy says as she tugs the wheel to the right. “Considering Slate and pals were planning a summoning. If all those shade-filled clocks were Slate’s ‘side of the bargain,’ like that last email mentioned, then more than likely, those poor ghosts were meant to be sacrifices to whatever nasty monster the trio wanted to conjure up.”
Everyone in the SUV cringes at the thought.
I lean my head back against the seat. “Just what we need. Another Charun rampaging through the city.”
Ella clicks her tongue. “Let’s hope not. The mayor still hasn’t forgiven us for the boathouse explosion in Holden Park.”
“Wasn’t that the Tuchulcha spirit though?” Amy asks. “That’s what the case file said.”
“Yeah,” I reply, “but then Charun showed up afterward and beat my ass again.”
Ella snorts. “Happens to the best of us.”
“Speak for yourself. I’ve never let a magic monster kick my butt before.” Amy pulls us to a stop at a red light, then sticks her tongue out at Ella. “But hey, Kinsey, don’t feel too bad about it. You got your déjà vu thing out of that case, after all. And without it, who knows how long it would have taken us to find the hidden basement room? A nice time saver, if nothing else. You know, when you’re not hawking up your breakf
ast or fainting into walls.”
I kick the back of her seat. “Your backhanded compliments are always appreciated, Amy.”
She smiles at me through the mirror. “Thanks!”
“Back on task, guys,” Ella chides.
“Right. Sorry,” Amy says. The light changes, and she eases off the brake, taking us through the intersection onto Lombard Street, a narrow back road to the DSI office rarely used by the general public. “What’s next on the agenda?”
Ella picks up the folder again and starts reorganizing the papers. “When we get to the office, I’ll go grab the captain, and we’ll review all the evidence we have so far. Hopefully, Delarosa’s team will have returned already with some info on the dead Wolf. If not, we’ll wait for them and then work up our next moves. If we get lucky, maybe Burbank will push the ICM to allow us into Halliburton’s place, and—”
A massive Ford pickup truck blows through the intersection and T-bones the SUV.
Fun fact: DSI vehicles are tanks disguised as SUVs. So when the front of the Ford truck plows into the back-end driver’s side of our vehicle going fifty miles per hour, the cabin doesn’t crumple like a tin can. Instead, the force of the impact sends the back tires reeling across the snow-covered asphalt, and all the evidence we collected from Slate’s house goes flying.
The bin of clock bits tears free from its ties and smacks the ceiling. The top comes loose, and ten thousand splinters slice through the air in every direction, pelting everyone in the car. Slate’s computers fly out of their straps as well, the desktop screen shattering, the MacBook Air bouncing off every wall it can find until it soars past the back seats and up to the front, where it nails Amy in the arm—right as she’s trying to correct the SUV before we crash.
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