Guardian Spirits by Jordan L HawkChapter 1The dead man refused to answer.
Vincent rose out of a trance with no foreign taste on his tongue. Only the lingering traces of the cinnamon cachous he used to cleanse his palate of more ghostly flavors. The air against his skin was merely cool, a crisp fall evening, rather than the icy cold indicative of a spirit drawing energy from the atmosphere. Hands gripped his from either side, both firm; if they had succeeded, he would have expected Lizzie’s to tremble.
“I failed,” he said, and opened his eyes.
He sat at the séance table in the upstairs parlor of their little shop. The curtains had been drawn against the gaslights illuminating the Baltimore street outside, leaving them in near-total darkness.
Even so, he felt the presence of the living in the room with him. Elizabeth Devereaux, his fellow medium, held his right hand. Jocelyn Strauss, seventeen years old and a genius when it came to machines and mathematics, sat directly across from him. And Henry Strauss, inventor—and Vincent’s lover—gripped Vincent’s left hand tightly.
“You didn’t fail,” Henry said. “He simply chose not to answer.”
“We could try again,” Lizzie suggested, though she didn’t sound at all pleased at the prospect.
“No.” A weariness more spiritual than physical weighed on Vincent’s bones. “He isn’t going to answer us. Neither of them are.”
“Cowards,” Henry said staunchly. “Jo, could you open the curtains?”
The circle broke apart, and Jo tugged back the curtains while Henry lit the lamps. Warm gaslight soon filled every corner of the slightly shabby room, gleaming off the apparatus Henry insisted on setting up at every séance: Franklin Bells, which would ring when the presence of a spirit charged the air, thermometer, barometer, and even a copper grounding rod should the summoned spirit turn violent. Not to suggest they had expected the spirit they sought tonight to be dangerous, but Henry always insisted on being prepared.
Since Vincent had spent most of his life drifting along with the currents, Henry’s tendency to plan ahead came as an unexpected comfort.
Jo glanced from Vincent to Lizzie, her brown face drawn with worry. “I’m sorry you couldn’t contact your mentor.”
“The spirits are under no obligation to answer us,” Lizzie said. She ran a tired hand over her jaw, frowned slightly as her fingers encountered a trace of stubble. Her shaving and plucking regimen was immaculate, even when it was only the four of them, and her gesture now told Vincent how heavily the situation weighed on her.
“I’d say Dunne damned well owes you an explanation.” Henry folded his arms over his chest.
“Pardon my language, ladies,” he added when Lizzie cast him a stern look, “but it’s true.”
James Dunne hadn’t just been Lizzie and Vincent’s mentor—he’d plucked them from the streets as children and given them the first home in which they’d ever been welcome. Taught them not only how to be mediums, but how to be decent people. By the end of their apprenticeship, he and Lizzie would have done anything for him. Or for Sylvester Ortensi, who had been like a kindly uncle to them.
Bad enough a malevolent spirit had possessed Vincent and used his hands to kill Dunne. But then Ortensi revealed to them that he and Dunne had hidden things from them. They had been searching for something, and were desperate enough to turn to necromancy to find it. Desperate enough to murder anyone in their way.
Ortensi died before he could give them any answers. Hence the séance to contact the one person who might: Dunne himself.
Henry held out the silver amulet Vincent had entrusted him with at the start of the séance. The amulet guarded against involuntary possession; after his encounter with the dark spirit which had killed Dunne, Vincent seldom went without it. Unfortunately, channeling spirits required temporarily lending them his voice and body, which meant he had to take the amulet off for séances.
“Thank you,” Vincent said, and fastened it around his neck again.
“Is there anything else we can do?” Jo asked. She perched on one of the chairs, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she pondered. “Perhaps if we used the Wimshurst Machine? Added more energy to the air?”
“I don’t think it’s lack of energy that’s the problem,” Lizzie said with a heavy sigh. “Dunne has surely passed on. If he lingered on this side of the veil, perhaps…but he didn’t. And we can’t compel him to come back and give us answers, no matter how badly we might want to.”
“As I said before, the man is a coward.” Henry gave a little sniff, even as he began to clear away his instrumentation from the table. “If he withheld things from you, he should put forth a little effort. Set the record straight, rather than leaving you with such uncertainty.”
“Dunne wasn’t a coward,” Vincent said, almost reflexively. Even knowing what he did, even suspecting what he did, the instinct to defend his mentor still remained.
Lizzie pressed a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know what to think. We’ve tried spirit writing, psychometry, and now channeling, all to no avail.”
“We have to keep looking.” Vincent rose and went to the writing desk against the wall. Pulling open a drawer, he removed the journal they’d found among Ortensi’s things at the hotel in Devil’s Walk, after he’d died. Unfortunately, it had been a relatively new journal, started just before he’d departed Europe for the final time. If they’d had more money in the bank, perhaps they could have traveled to France, where he’d spent the last several years. Maybe his earlier journals were still there and would have yielded answers.
Most of the journal offered nothing beyond the ordinary details of a medium’s life. It confirmed what Ortensi had already told them. The murderous spirit of Devil’s Walk had been summoned by a necromantic talisman. Rather than destroy such an abomination, Ortensi had hoped to take it for himself. The only real clues lay in his final entry, made the day they’d arrived to assist him.
It’s so good to see Lizzie and Vincent again. I still can’t believe James is gone. He understood the operation of the Grand Harmonium far better than I. Vincent’s account of the spirit that killed James troubles me. It wasn’t like James to be taken so unaware. Some spirits conceal their true nature, but those usually have a motive of some sort, even if only to spread chaos and fear. This one slew James and simply…left.
As for James…I try not to mourn him. The impulse is foolish—death is but sleep, and as easy to wake from. I just need a little more time, and I’m sure I’ll be able to recreate the Astral Key. Then the Grand Harmonium will be restored, and James returned to my side. But it is hard not to miss him.
What might our lives have been, if Arabella hadn’t betrayed us? Damn her! We would have made the world a paradise, instead of the mire it is.
No matter. My youth might be gone, but once the Harmonium is restored, surely such things will be of no consequence. James might be temporarily beyond my reach, but at least I still have Vincent and Lizzie. They’re strong.
They passed every test.
They won’t fail the way Arabella failed.
I must separate Vincent from Mr. Strauss. Strauss represents the worst impulses, is possessed of the lowest of natures. He is filled with ambition and greed. If Strauss learned of the Grand Harmonium, he’d wish to take it apart and sell off the pieces for profit. He sees only the parts of a thing, not the wonder of the whole. Vincent’s tendency toward loyalty may prove inconvenient in this instance. I’ll observe them both closely tomorrow, and think on how best to drive a wedge in between.The entry ended there. Vincent shut the journal with a snap. “What the blazes is the Grand Harmonium?” he asked aloud, just as he had again and again since first reading the words on the train back from Devil’s Walk. “What is the Astral Key he meant to recreate? And who is—or was— Arabella?”
“As for the Grand Harmonium, presumably Ortensi didn’t travel the world in search of the means to perfect a musical instrument.” Henry took off his spectacles and began to clean them with a handkerchief. “I still maintain it sounds like some sort of machine.”
“Ortensi didn’t seem very pleased with our machines,” Jo pointed out. “Or you, Henry.”
“I’m heartbroken to have garnered his disapproval,” Henry said dryly.
“He said it would return Dunne to his side.” The corners of Lizzie’s mouth turned down into a tight frown. “That sounds like necromancy.”
Vincent shook his head. Necromancy—the forced summoning of the unwilling dead—might be wrong, but that hadn’t stopped people from studying it thoroughly. “‘Death is but sleep, and as easy to wake from.’” He’d stared at the journal entry so often he had memorized the phrase. “That doesn’t sound like any necromancy I’ve ever heard of.”
“Besides,” Jo added, “If he meant to simply compel Dunne’s ghost, he could have just used the necromantic talisman he took from Mr. Fitzwilliam in Devil’s Walk.”
“Precisely.” Vincent ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Some other means of contacting the dead, perhaps? A more reliable means than a séance, but without the compulsion of necromancy?”
“We could speculate endlessly,” Henry said. “At least it doesn’t sound like the Grand Harmonium is in a state to be used. Not without this Astral Key, whatever it might be.”
“There must be answers, somewhere,” Lizzie said. “If only Dunne had kept a journal. If we still had his house, or the shop in New York…”
“Well, we don’t,” Vincent said. “And honestly, I doubt it would help even if we did. We lived and worked with him for years and never suspected him of keeping secrets. He wouldn’t have left anything where we had a hope of finding it.”
“There must be something.” Lizzie stared out the window, as though the answers might appear on the glass. “We just have to keep searching.”
Henry frowned at her words. But he only said, “It’s late. We should get some sleep. Take my bed, Lizzie, so you don’t have to walk back to your apartment.”
“The sheets might be a little dusty,” Jo added with a sly grin.
Henry shot her a quelling look. Not that she was wrong. Ever since Vincent had moved into the little room above the workshop out back, he and Henry had shared its bed every night. Henry kept a few things in what had previously been his bedroom, for the sake of space, but for all practicalities he and Vincent lived together.
Which wasn’t something Vincent had ever envisioned for himself. But then, he’d never envisioned meeting someone like Henry, either.
Lizzie hesitated visibly, her gaze going again to the darkness outside the window. It was too late to find a cab, even if they’d had the money to spare, which meant either Vincent or Henry would have to walk her home. “Very well,” she said at last. “I’ll leave at first light, then return for Mrs. Burwell’s spirit writing session tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully her departed mother will be more amenable to contact than Dunne.”
~ * ~
Henry followed Vincent across the darkened yard to the workshop. He’d originally used the small building to conduct experiments which needed more space than was available in the store’s back room, or which produced smells that might drive away customers. And he still did; the downstairs was a single open space packed with tables and equipment. He and Vincent had converted the upper floor, however, into a cozy apartment.
They ascended the outside staircase to the apartment’s door. Once inside, Vincent didn’t bother to light the sitting room’s lamp, instead walking straight through to the darkened bedroom. Henry winced—this wasn’t like him. Ordinarily, Vincent would stay up to absurd hours, reading poetry or novels while he lounged on the couch in his oriental robe. Then he’d sleep until noon, before spending another hour choosing his clothing and pomading his hair. For him to retire to bed at such a relatively early time didn’t bode well.
While Henry lit the night candle, Vincent began to disrobe, his movements quick and efficient.
A flash of anger coursed through Henry, directed not at Vincent, but at the accursed Dunne.
When he’d first met Vincent and Lizzie, they’d been desperately trying to save the occult shop that had belonged to their dead mentor. They always spoke of the man in tones not just of affection, but awe. As though he were somehow more—better—than human. Flawless as an angel.
No doubt all of his treatment of them hadn’t been a self-serving lie. But their stint in Devil’s Walk made it clear the man had concealed a great deal. Lied to them about fundamental things.
No wonder they’d both been adrift ever since. Desperate to reconcile the things Ortensi had told them, with the idealized memory of their mentor. They were haunted…though not literally, in this case.
Henry would have some strong words for Dunne, should they ever manage to contact the scoundrel. How dare he put Vincent and Lizzie through such pain? If he had truly cared for them, he should have included them in whatever grand scheme he and Ortensi had worked toward.
But anger wouldn’t help Vincent. Henry pushed it down and stepped behind Vincent, putting his hands lightly at Vincent’s waist. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What can I do?”
For a moment, Vincent held himself stiffly. Then he sagged back, letting Henry take some of his weight. He was the taller of the two, so Henry pressed his cheek into Vincent’s shoulder. The citrus and musk scent of Vincent’s cologne filled his nose, and the warmth and heft of his body quickened Henry’s blood.
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Vincent said. “You must think us fools, to let ourselves be so obsessed by this.”
“Not at all.” Henry slid his arms around Vincent’s slender waist, pulling him closer. “He was like a father to you. I know how badly losing him hurt.” Henry’s own father had died when he was but a youth, and God knew he still missed the man. At least his memories hadn’t been tainted by post-mortem revelations. “I can only imagine how you must feel now. Afraid you’re being disrespectful of his memory by doubting him, but worried your doubt is justified.”
“Exactly.” Vincent turned to face him, then bent for a kiss. “I’m sick of thinking about it.”
“Shall I give you something else to think about for a while?”
“Yes,” Vincent said fervently, and wound his arms around Henry’s shoulders, hauling him close.
Their kiss began leisurely, before deepening. Vincent’s warm mouth tasted of cinnamon. He’d already removed coat, tie, and vest, so Henry set about unbuttoning his shirt an inch at a time, slowly exposing the sienna skin beneath. Henry paused to make sure he paid Vincent’s dark brown nipples proper attention with his lips and teeth, and was rewarded with a soft groan.
Henry shoved down Vincent’s bracers, then peeled off his shirt, pausing just long enough to carefully hang it up. He’d learned early on that Vincent’s clothing was an armor of sorts. Whites expected an Indian to look a certain way; when confronted with the impeccably dressed Vincent, they tended to offer more respect than they would have otherwise. It was a bit of stupid thinking Henry had fallen into himself, when they’d first met.
Henry made sure to brush his hand against Vincent’s erection more than strictly necessary as he unbuttoned Vincent’s trousers. Drawers came next, and Henry sank to his knees to take Vincent’s cock in his mouth. His taste, the heavy feel of him against Henry’s tongue, sent a rush of blood to Henry’s own prick, and he moaned as he took his lover to the root.
Vincent’s hands tangled in Henry’s hair, tightened—then pushed at him. “Not like this. I want you to come in my mouth at the same time.”
Henry slid off reluctantly, giving a last lap at the slit as he did so. “Get on the bed.”
Henry undressed quickly, but when he turned back to the bed, he stopped just to admire the sight. Vincent sprawled against the pale sheets, his cock dark with desire, his black eyes shining with lust. God, he was beautiful, all long legs and shapely muscles. He wore his thick black hair cut long, in imitation of the style Oscar Wilde had set on his American tour, and it spread across the pillow in a halo.
Henry in no way deserved him, but was grateful every day to have him anyway.
“I love you,” Henry said.
Vincent’s expression softened. “I love you, too. Now come here and let me show you how much.”
The sensation of Vincent’s bare skin against his never ceased to send a thrill through Henry.
For so long, his only encounters had been of the sort done in back alleys, quick and furtive, removing only as much clothing as necessary. The luxury of having a lover and a bed still felt new and exciting. Vincent’s arms snaked around Henry’s chest, pulling him tight, their thighs and cocks pressed together. Henry kissed Vincent thoroughly, moving his hips in a slow grind, sending slow shocks of pleasure through them both.
Vincent drew back just a bit. “I want you in my mouth.”
“Mmm.” Henry grinned and nuzzled what he knew to be a sensitive spot on Vincent’s neck, drawing a gasp from him. “I’m not going to refuse such an offer.”
He reversed his position on the bed, and they lay on their sides. Henry kissed Vincent’s strong thighs, then caught his cock between his lips once again. The slow, teasing lick of Vincent’s tongue along his own prick made Henry whimper.
“Impatient,” Vincent said, his lips moving against the very tip of Henry’s erection. Then he slid down, engulfing him in wet heat.
They clung to each other, hands roaming across whatever skin they could reach, mouths fastened on one another. Vincent’s tongue was clever with more than words, and soon Henry found himself fighting to hold back. He tried focusing on the prick filling his own mouth, but Vincent’s taste and feel, his little moans, only added to Henry’s arousal. He let out a muffled sound of warning, balls tightening, and Vincent groaned around him as he came.
He tried to keep sucking as he spent, rhythm lost, until Vincent’s thighs trembled and bitterness flooded Henry’s throat in return.
They lay silent for a moment, breath coming in short gasps. Despite the cool night, a light film of sweat slicked their skin. Henry pressed his lips to Vincent’s thigh.
“Come here, Henry,” Vincent murmured sleepily.
Henry didn’t want to move, but he clambered around until he was facing the right way in the bed again. Vincent had rolled onto his back, eyelids already drooping shut. The tension had eased from his handsome features, at least for the moment, and a rush of emotion shook Henry, so strong it threatened to cut off his breath.
“I’d do anything for you,” he whispered.
Vincent’s generous mouth turned up into a smile. “Then salt the door.”
“You just don’t want to get up,” Henry teased. But he rolled out of bed and did as asked.
Vincent hadn’t always slept with a line of salt across the windows and door. But after the malevolent spirit had possessed him and killed Dunne, Vincent feared it was still out there, somewhere. That it might return, despite the passage of time and distance.
Perhaps it wasn’t the most logical of fears, but if pouring salt across the doors and windows each night made Vincent feel safer, that was what Henry would do.
Once finished, Henry blew out the candle, then pillowed his head on Vincent’s chest. Within moments, Vincent had slipped away into sleep. Henry listened to the beat of his lover’s heart beneath his ear. The edge of the silver amulet pressed against his forehead, a silent reminder, along with the salt, of the lingering damage the spirit had done to Vincent’s soul.
Had Dunne known there was something unusual about the poltergeist he’d taken Vincent to confront? Vincent insisted there had been no warning, but Henry was less certain of Dunne’s honesty in the matter.
The man’s other apprentices had died somehow, after all. The ones Dunne had never seen fit to mention to Vincent and Lizzie. They would never have known, if Ortensi hadn’t told them.
They weren’t the first. They were just the ones who had survived.
Assuming Ortensi hadn’t lied to further his own ends. At least they could take the writing in the journal, intended for no one else’s eyes, as honest.
Perhaps it was just as well they’d failed to raise Dunne’s spirit tonight. The idea of never learning the truth irked Henry…but maybe it was time to put all of this behind them. To let go of the fear and guilt and doubt chaining them to the past. To focus instead on the future of their business, of their family.
Vincent and Lizzie needed something to distract them. The only clientele they’d had as of late had been the ordinary sort: weekly séances, some spirit writing, a few people who wanted them to come investigate odd sounds or cold spots in their houses, none of which had turned out to be due to ghosts. There had been nothing to demand their attention for more than an hour or two at a stretch, leaving them with far too much time to brood.
Well, then. Henry would simply have to find something for them. What, he didn’t know, but if he put his mind to it, surely he could come up with some project to allow them to focus their minds and energy, and let go of Dunne once and for all.
The Gallows Tree by RJ Scott
Chapter 1
"I'm really starting to lose my shit here." Cody Garret gripped his cell phone tight.
"Calm down, Cody." His mom was using the patented talking-Cody-down-from-the-ledge technique they had perfected over the last few years. But she sounded wrong, and even though her voice was broken up by interference, he could sense her worry. He wished to hell he could reassure her and say he was okay.
"I. Can't. Calm. Down," he bit out through gritted teeth. The panic that usually stayed buried well inside him threatened to push to the surface with an insistent press of pain at his temples and a cold sweat that left him shaky.
"Can you count for me, darling?" Nothing was working. Not the counting or the imagining his happy place. Jeez. His happy place was so far away from being stuck here it wasn't even funny. The traffic on this road snaking around London in one big circle was his vision of hell.
"I've been in this tiny fricking Toyota for six hours, Mom, and in the last hour we've gone four miles. Four."
"Has there been an accident or something?"
"I can't see. I'm just in a line of freaking stopped cars."
"Can't you turn off from the road you're on? Maybe take a back road?" He knew his mom was trying to help, but he'd thought all this already.
"I'm in between turnoffs; I'm stuck where I am."
"Okay. Do you need me to get Anna?" Anna was the only other person outside of his mom that had a handle on these panic attacks, but the last thing he wanted was for his heavily pregnant sister to have to deal with his crap. His mom had managed to throw the equivalent of ice water at him with that simple question.
"No," he said quickly. "I'll be fine. Listen. I'm—breathing."
"Cody—"
"The lights are changing ahead," he lied convincingly. "I'll call you."
"Cody, promise me you'll pull over if this gets worse."
"I promise." He disconnected the call. Tears choked his throat, and he wondered what the guy in the Lotus next to him would think if he saw Cody beat his head against the steering wheel. Claustrophobia and anxiety clawed inside him like a wild animal wanting to escape a cage, and he was willing to do anything to clear his head. Even give himself a concussion.
Both front windows were fully down, and the car blower was on full blast, but it wasn't enough air. He considered climbing out of the car and standing on the M25 just to feel something except the metal box around him. The noise of a horn snapped through the fog in his head, and he realized the cars in front of him were actually moving. Slowly, but moving. Shaking with tension and desperate to just get the hell off this road, he pressed lightly enough on the accelerator to join this crawling snake of steel as it carved its way through flat green countryside closer to where he needed to be. Pain banded his head, and he focused on the tension in his shoulders and neck that was causing the headache. He had to concentrate on relaxing, but dizziness assailed him. It took all his concentration to keep the car on the damn road at five miles an hour.
Finally the sign for the exit was by the side of his car. Then he passed it, and it was a way back, and then before he had even gotten control of his breathing, he was off from the static parking lot that was the London orbital and onto a new motorway heading north from the city.
Thankfully whatever was stopping the traffic on the M25 didn't appear to exist on this new road. He pressed his foot to the floor, and incredibly air was inside the car, whipping his too-long bangs around his face. The air coming into the car was heavy with heat; he didn't remember reading anywhere that England was supposed to have a heat wave in October and not for the first time he wished he had done more research. Not caring where it took him, he decided he needed to be off this road and took the first exit off of the M1. Turning onto a quieter road, he took a left, then a right, and finally found a place to pull over.
Almost like his mother knew he'd managed to find a way through the metal hell, his cell rang, and he saw it was her. He answered on the third ring as he clambered out of the small car and inhaled great lungfuls of air.
"Cody?" She sounded as anxious as he felt.
"I'm okay," he said quickly. "Sorry. I'm okay," he repeated. The last was more for his own sake than his mom's. He needed to tell himself he was moving through to the other side of the attack and that he would stay well and sane.
"Cody, you made this decision too soon. I wish you had waited—"
"I couldn't wait, Mom," he interrupted quickly. He was so not ready for this conversation again. How the hell could anyone expect him to stay in Baltimore when there was a chance he could see Vince again?
"What if the notes weren't from him, Cody? You should have taken them to the police…"
Cody closed his eyes tight against the midday sun that burned through his thin jacket and made him sweat. He wished he could take it off, but his fair skin needed to stay covered; it burned too quickly. He listened to his mom as she listed all the things that he should maybe have done. He knew all the what-ifs. His mind played them over and over again. What if he hadn't met Vince Antonelli? What if he hadn't gone home with him? What if Vince hadn't done just enough for a younger more impressionable Cody to fall in love? Would any of it have happened? Or was Cody Garret predestined to always be some man's punching bag?
"Don't." The single plea was all he managed to say. Unspoken was the begging to be left alone to work his way through all of this. His counselor had said it was Cody's form of denial. Not talking about it meant it didn't happen. Hadn't happened. Meant that he hadn't almost died. Self-consciously he placed his free hand over his heart where the worst of the scarring lay and opened his eyes to focus on the weeds and grass at his feet. "I showed them to a friend and he said that there was nothing in them that meant they were from Vince."
"This friend. He's a cop?"
"Not exactly—"
"You should have let…" Cody zoned out again. He had the notes that had been sent on to him in his suitcase, and every phone call was listed in a diary of dates. When he was ready, he would take them to the cops. Because… taking this proof of Vince contacting him to the authorities meant having to face his ex again. He couldn't do that yet.
"Cody?" Damn. There was his mom's sad voice again. If he didn't know clearly every minute what effect Vince's actions had had on his mom and sister, that single small calling of his name was enough to remind him. She always sounded as if Cody's world had ended, and it hurt so badly. Straightening his spine, he pulled the cloak of invulnerability around him that he used so often.
"Mom I'm in England. This is a good thing," he said confidently. "I'm an entire continent away from seeing him, at least for a while, and it's beautiful here." He looked down the road running off the main motorway. The blacktop wasn't exactly picture perfect English village; more of a road to nowhere. The banks and sides were landscaped with spindly trees that clung tenaciously to steep inclines, and he traced their zig-zag path with his eyes. She didn't have to know that what he was looking at could be a road in any country.
"Is it?" his mom said wistfully. Cody was relieved he had managed to get his mom off Vince and on to her favorite subject: England.
"Very…" He searched for the right adjective to bolster her mood and found the one thing that had caught his eye. "…green." He finished with a flourish, and he heard his mom's sigh.
"Great-gran always said it was beautiful there." Cody bit his tongue that his long deceased great-gran couldn't have been talking about this particular unmarked road as a welcome breeze blew a familiar wrapper past him. Curling around the nearest small sapling, it stuck to the metal support that surrounded it. The golden arches reminded Cody he hadn't had anything to eat in the last seven hours. Not since he'd left Gatwick and located his rental.
"It is," he lied again. He had gotten very good at lying over the past few years. Lying about his name, his family, his lover, and his pain.
"How far is it to Lower Ferrers?"
"Hang on." He leaned in through the open window and checked the navigation system.
"An hour maybe," he answered finally. Leaning back against the hot metal of the car, he cradled the phone close to his ear. "Is Ben home?"
"He's with your sister at her appointment."
Irrational fear gripped Cody, but he pushed it down ruthlessly. Vince had never actually threatened his family—the threats had always been to Cody—so why did he suddenly feel so anxious?
"Why didn't you go with them, Mom?"
"They need their time alone. I promise you I'm all right here, Cody. Ben has every security device available on the house." Ben's ex-career in a shady Army special ops group meant he wasn't short of a trick or two when it came to personal safety. None of that stopped the nausea Cody got imagining Vince in his family's life. It was enough that Vince knew where his mom lived, but the idea that he might hurt her in any way was unfathomable.
"Will you call me when they get back, Mom?" He could have bitten his tongue at that question. His mom hated it that he worried so much about her and Anna.
"I will," she said carefully. Then she paused, and Cody could imagine her thinking hard on what to say next, about Cody over-reacting, about how Cody shouldn't worry. He wanted to stop that dead in its tracks.
"Mom, please reconsider and move in with Anna." Such an old argument, and whenever Cody said those words, he felt another inch of his self-esteem being flayed from him. His mom had friends, and his sister was going to be busy with the new child. Cody was the one who had changed the way he looked at life after Vince. Exposing himself and his fears was visceral, and it hurt.
Hurt so much.
"Call me when you get to the hotel?" She chose to ignore his plea, but Cody didn't feel hurt as the argument was one Cody would never win. She moved on to the next thing on her momma agenda. He knew what was coming next. "And make sure you sign on with the doctor there. I don't know what they'll be like over there, but they need to know for your script." There, in a few sentences she had covered shelter and health. "And don't forget to eat." He almost laughed at the triad of needs she always placed on him. He would have laughed if he didn't feel the familiar panic rise up in him at all the things he had to do once he found his new home.
"I will call you, I'll sign on with the doctor as soon as I can, and I'm stopping at the next place that does food." She harrumphed at his summation of what she had said, but at least they were ending the conversation on a level of humor. That was a good thing chalked against Cody's list of bad things.
"Stay safe, Cody. I love you."
"I love you, Momma. Get Anna to email me."
"I will. Bye, sweetheart."
The call ended. There would be at least another couple of hours until he heard his mom's voice and already he had his thumb hovering over the redial button needing the sound of her voice in his ear. She had been his constant over the last six years—the one person that knew most of what had happened and who had become his anchor as he drifted around America for the last twenty-four months.
Emails, texts, and some limited instant messaging as he moved around the country were the only contacts he had with the family he loved. Every so often he would visit them, but he never stayed long. He couldn't stay anywhere for long. Even the idea of six months here was revving up his fears. Now he was missing the birth of his niece or nephew, and that was the full stop in the sentence he was living.
"Stay until the baby is born, Cody?" Anna had asked with eyes full of compassion. That was the worst for Cody. Anna wouldn't argue with him; she simply understood he didn't want to be there for the day Vince actually managed to corner him. She didn't start the tirade of getting him to tell the cops; she understood him so well. Or rather she was willing to let him feel like he was making the right decision.
He keyed local places to eat into the navigation system and found the closest McDonald's. A healthy food choice it wasn't, but he needed convenience. He needed carbs, and he needed them now. Closing the car door, he pulled on the belt, wincing at the wrench on his chest and arm. The reflex was automatic, and the curse that accompanied it a tried and tested way to vent the pain from his system. He settled his breathing as well as he could and turned the key. The car started on the first turn, which was about the only good thing going for it, and cautiously he pulled out on to the road, allowing the smooth tones of some British actor guide him to food.
Roundabouts were the devil's curse, and traffic lights and driving on the wrong side of the road was so damn confusing he was sure he didn't know his left from his right anymore. Somehow he managed to find the McDonald's, and full of burgers and fries, he continued on his journey. Before he knew it, the sign for Buckinghamshire became visible in the late afternoon warmth. The GPS said twenty minutes to reaching destination. Then ten. When he turned off the final main road into what could euphemistically be called a two-way road, he knew he was almost there. The road wasn't wide; in fact, he imagined two cars would be unable to pass each other without someone pulling onto grass verges. It wound downwards a while and then leveled out and he crossed a small bridge over a wide river. Signs warned for flooding and horses. Then he appeared to enter the village itself.
Lower Ferrers. Please drive carefully.
A big speed sign with a 30 in the middle and another warning for horses sat directly under, and he immediately lifted his foot off the gas until he was driving at more like half what the limit was. He wanted to remember every image of the next few minutes of his life. He had finally arrived at the place his mom's gran, his own great-gran, had left at the end of the war as a Yankee bride. The long curve of the road ran through dense trees that formed an arch of fall golds and browns over his head, and then suddenly, the village was laid out in front of him.
He couldn't just drive in. He needed to stop and think about this final step. What if this was all wrong? This could be the worst decision of his life. What the hell did he know about renovation? He indicated and pulled off to the side of the road just past the signs and onto a widening in the narrow road next to a gate into fields. This was the England his great-gran had spoken about.
The village was stunning. Beautiful. Old houses with crooked roof lines staggered drunkenly up the road all built in a soft weathered brown and gray stone. Each had a chimney and seemingly randomly placed windows. Cody counted six of these cottage-style houses and above them the top of twisted chimneys on a far grander building. Great oaks and sycamore trees, now with leaves of fall gold and red, towered over the cottages and the twisting road that followed their path upwards. Cody listed adjectives in his head. This was much better than green. This was an idyllic, picture-postcard place, and it was everything he had ever been told about this English village. On the opposite side of the road was a larger dwelling, and he saw the sign outside that proclaimed it as the Ferrers' Arms.
The inn with the slate roof was where he was staying with an open-ended booking. He didn't know how long his stay would be. It could be a month or it could be the full six months. When he moved on depended on so many factors, not least of which was having somewhere to move to. He had a strange feeling inside, and he realized it was a sudden and renewed sense of enthusiasm.
Panic and fear still clung tight in his chest, but his breathing was steady, and the sounds of the village—sheep in the field, horses, birds—and the perfect stillness of the fall sky was utter peace. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. One minute he had been on the highway to hell, and within an hour, he was in the quiet and calm of a village that had been here for centuries. What was it people said? Stepping back in time or something like that. Standing here it certainly felt like he was entering another world.
Was it possible that by his arrival here in the village where his family had roots he was taking a controlled step away from his past rather than running blindly?
Hell, where had that thought come from? A controlled step? Shaking his head at the flight of fancy, he imagined he was losing it big time. Back in the car, he drove the short distance to the Ferrers' Arms and parked up on a gravel lot to the side. The building itself was small and looked older than the cottages, and the sign was of a shield split into two pieces. He could identify the two symbols—a white horse and a cross. He loved history, but the history he'd learned in school was a whole world away from what was here. He pulled his two bags out of the back seat, only two because travelling light was how he had lived for going on two years, and it was how he would remain for a long time.
Pausing to look back at the cottages, he took time to contemplate exactly where the mill was from here. He could see the ribbon of water passing at the base of the hill and remembered driving over a small bridge just before the speed sign. As far as he knew, water equaled mill. If his great-gran had been right, there was one hell of a lot of water as the River Ouse ran through this rural community. What he needed to get his hands on were old maps of the area so he could pinpoint where he was and what he was going to do. A visit to a library in a town would probably answer most of his questions. That could wait though. Right now a beer and some uninterrupted sleep were calling him. After nine hours on the plane and eight on the road, he was running on empty.
"You standin' out here all day, son?" The voice was gruff and threaded with impatience, and it was enough to pull Cody out of introspection and into embarrassment. He was literally standing in front of the main door of the pub.
"Sorry, I was daydreaming," he responded instinctively. He looked up at the other man. A tall wide-built giant with gray hair and deeply carved laughter lines, he looked as old as the village itself.
"You're the Yank?" the other man asked curiously. Cody swallowed and shrank back a little. One well-aimed hit from this guy, and old man or not, the force would knock Cody to the floor.
"American," Cody offered cautiously.
"Here for the mill then."
Wait. This stranger knew about Cody being in the village and his connection to the mill? Okay. At first that didn't make any sense, but just as suddenly, it all became clear to Cody's paranoid mind. Foreboding spread over him with a cloak of attached panic. How did this man know who he was? Did he know Vincent? Did Vincent know Cody had jumped on a flight to England? Had Cody been followed? Irrational and implausible reasons climbed and tumbled onto each other, and the familiar tightness pulled in the center of his chest. He took a step back and felt the solid presence of the doorframe against his back. The scents of alcohol filled his senses, and when he got to look back at what happened rationally, it was probably the first trigger to everything that happened next. The other man narrowed his eyes and then reached out his hands.
"Son, you don't look so good." He grasped Cody around the upper arms and held him firmly.
"L-leave…" Don't touch me. Don't hold me like that.
"I'm the landlord here. Let's see if I can rustle up a drink and some food."
"I-I already ate," Cody stuttered, staring up at the large guy. He flexed his muscles to get the bigger man to let him go, even as terror grabbed at him. Vince would hold him like this, gripped tight and the perfect target for anger and hate. Cody wriggled and pushed insistently, and the landlord released his grip with a bemused look on his face. He thumped Cody on the back, and a belly laugh rolled from him.
"John Abbotson," he said loudly, and with a none-too-gentle shove, he pushed Cody the final inches through the front door. That was sensory overload, and with a deep groan that seemed to grow from him in a keening noise, he dropped to the floor with his hands over his face and his head bowed. Part exhaustion, part fear and all too much, Cody was into the nightmare of the terror assault before he could stop himself.
"John! What did you do?" Hands touched Cody, but this time, they were softer. They were gentle and thoughtful in the path they traced.
"He wanted to come in. I helped," John offered in response.
"You idiot man. You don't know your own strength," the female admonished. "Poor kid looks like a stiff breeze would knock him down and you go manhandling him through the door. Why did you push him? Have you hurt him?"
"I didn't push him hard."
"Hello? Can you hear me? Would you like some water?"
"He's the Yank, that Garret boy."
"Garret? Cody Garret?" she repeated. "Cody? Do I need to call a doctor?"
"Just get him stood up. He doesn't need a doctor—"
"John. Do something useful. Get some water, shut the front door, and then just leave us be." Cody heard noises and felt cool glass as it was touched gently to his arm.
"Cody? Are you Cody Garret? I'm Abigail, and that idiot you met is my husband. I'm sorry if he hurt you. Are you okay? Would you like me to call the doctor?"
Cody counted down from a hundred as Abigail's voice calmed him from his intense reaction. She wasn't crowding him, and she was talking low and steady. Somehow she must know that room to breathe and think was vital. As the fear subsided, it was replaced by his customary embarrassment and shame, and he couldn't look her in the face. There was no way on this earth he was going to lift his hands from his eyes and see her pitying expression.
"Can you look at me?" she asked gently. "Cody?"
Soft hands closed on his and gently prized each finger away from his eyes until the only thing that blocked his vision was his eyes being screwed tightly shut.
"Will you open your eyes for me, Cody?"
"I can't." Cody couldn't do what she asked. How many people had seen this happen to him? How many pairs of eyes had been focused on him, exposing the shame of what he had become to all?
"It's only me," she said softly. He must have said something out loud. "John is in the cellar with the barrels now, and the pub is empty. Open your eyes, Cody." She was running her hands gently up and down his arms, and it felt like his mom was there. He opened his eyes slowly and blinked at the small amount of light around them.
"There now. That's better," Abigail said gently. Focusing on her proved to be difficult as she was very close to him. He scooted a few inches along the floor and could finally concentrate on brown eyes filled with compassion and a halo of riotous red curls. "My idiot husband doesn't know how strong he is."
A multitude of emotion flooded him. Shame gave way to dismay, which subsided quietly back into embarrassment. He needed to word that for her so she could understand. An entire sentence was required here, one where he explained why he had succumbed to a panic attack and why he sat shivering on the floor of his new home with a thin sheen of sweat on his skin.
"Shit," was what he actually said. Abigail smiled and then nodded.
"Can you stand?" she asked.
There wasn't really a response needed. He had to show her he wasn't entirely useless, and using the rough-hewn stone walls as support, he carefully stood. The head rush was expected, but her hand on his arm as he rose was a new experience. He was used to being alone when he had these meltdowns. She passed him the water.
"You'll be exhausted. Long flight and then a drive, I assume?" she asked very matter-of-factly.
"Yes, but that wasn't—"
"All caught up with you. Have you eaten?"
"Yes."
"Good. Good. I'll show you your room, and you can get some sleep."
"Thank you."
"I won't mention this again."
"I—"
"Bed." Her voice brooked no argument, and unlikely as it was he could even muster the words to tell her to back off, he didn't. He actually listened.
She encouraged him to a door at the rear of the bar marked private and up narrow stairs. His room was at the back, overlooking wide empty fields and small hills in the distance. He could see the curve of the river if he looked to the right and the back of the large building with the ornate chimneys he had noticed behind the cottages earlier. The large house was big and sprawling and right at one end of the village.
"The manor house," Abigail explained. "The church is opposite, and they use the bells every third Sunday. They start quite early, but you have a few days until the next one."
"Why only every third Sunday?" Cody was intrigued enough to ask.
"That's mostly what happens here now. When three or four churches in proximity share a vicar, the services are alternated at each. The church backs onto the mill land; in fact, I think the land you own is adjacent to the churchyard, although I could be wrong. Never mind. I'll bring up some wrapped food for you and leave you to sleep. Jet lag will drag you down I know, and you may wake up hungry in the middle of our night."
"Thank you."
"A drink too," she added. "Through here is the bathroom. There's plenty of hot water." She indicated a heavy oak door and pushed it open to reveal a startling white bathroom with a bath and a shower over it. Cody turned to the bed, a huge four-poster affair that wouldn't look out of place in a castle. Gauzy material hung from each corner, and the quilt was a dark blue with a paler blue check. Every piece of furniture looked solid and permanent, and Cody felt comforted by it somehow. Even more so when, as Abigail left, she pointed out the one thing that really helped.
"The door locks from inside," she said. Pointing at the big brass key in the lock, she turned it experimentally, and Cody heard the reassuring click. "So, I will go and scavenge food and drink and then you can close the door on the world and sleep. You won't hear much from the bar. This is a quiet place generally."
"Thank you."
He waited by the window until she came back with plated and wrapped sandwiches and a couple of packets of chips, an apple, and bottled water.
"Breakfast is at eight if you manage it," she said. "Otherwise dinner is served all evening in the bar."
She turned and pulled the door shut behind her, and he crossed to lock it after her. The sound of the key turning was a final turn in this troubling day. He thought maybe he should shower before climbing into the huge bed, but his body betrayed him and told him he needed sleep more than anything. After a quick text to let his mom know he was safe, he stripped and climbed under the warm covers. Here was a slice of heaven, and in seconds, he felt the edges of sleep draw in.
A Distant Drum by Amy Rae Durreson
1. Thursday NightThe houseboat door was stiff, the wood a little swollen with the damp and the lock hard to see in the grey winter twilight. I eventually managed to shove it open and step inside, navigating the steps down from the deck more from memory than anything else. It was cold inside, and dark, and I dropped my backpack hastily and fumbled across the well—three steps forward and a shuffle left before my knees bumped the wall, and I realised that I’d been shorter last time I came here.
It still smelt the same—petrol, wood polish, and under it all the cool, faintly salty bite of the water below. Did it smell like this in summer, when the tourists came to rent it out, or was it only in winter that the old scent of the place came rising out of the woodwork? I half-expected to catch a hint of over-brewed tea, or Gabe’s roll ups.
My eyes were adjusting to the light now, and I hadn’t been far off—the mains switch was right in front of me. I reached up and flicked it on. The fridge began to hum in the galley, something groaned and stuttered in the hull, and a red light came on somewhere high on the wall of the saloon which opened from the well. I leaned back and hit the light switch by the door on the second attempt.
The saloon didn’t look the same. It was a hell of a lot cleaner than it had been when Gabe lived here, for a start. It was probably weird to feel nostalgic for overflowing ashtrays, dog-eared paperbacks, and tea-stained mugs, but I did.
Ah, fuck it, I might as well come out and admit it was Gabe I missed, the old git, and now I could spend the whole of Christmas weeping into the lining of my coat.
Partly because I wasn’t going to take said coat off until I’d got the heating going. Back when Gabe had lived here, there had been a single crappy plug-in heater which ate electricity like Gabe went through a bag of Tetley’s, but I’d signed off on the installation of a proper furnace last year, on the advice of the rental company. It would extend the season at either end, they had told me, and I’d been both too busy with work and aching from the loss of the last family member who liked me. I hadn’t wanted to deal with anything about the boat myself.
She’s got a name, numpty, Gabe grumbled in my memory. She’s a lady, and even a lad with no taste for the lasses can show her some respect.
The rental company had given her some twee name in line with their company policy—Halsham Dancer, I thought, or maybe, Halsham Dreamer. I’d never been able to keep it fixed in my head. To me she was, and would always be, Lovely Lily.
I said now, slipping back into childhood habits, “Hey, Lily, milady, help me out. Where’s your heating switch?”
The wind sighed through the reeds along the side of the creek. An owl called, long and eerie. Somewhere out in the darkness, on another boat or, more likely, in a passing car, someone had their music on loud enough that I could just hear the beat, even out here in the darkness.
I sighed and went back to get my bag. If I could get a phone signal, I could check the emails about the installation and find out where—
There was a leather folder sitting on the low bench beside my bag. Embossed letters on the front read Guest Information.
It had probably been there before. It had been dark when I’d come in, and I hadn’t been looking for it. All the same, I remembered all the stories Gabe had told me when I was a kid, and ducked my head, muttering, “Thanks, Lil.”
The switch was in the kitchen. While the boat slowly heated, I stashed the groceries I’d brought with me in the fridge—nothing but beer and service station sandwiches, in proper Gabe style—and wandered through the rest of the not-quite-familiar rooms. It was all very clean and charming, but it felt a little too sanitised to be the Lily. There was even a plaque on the wall outlining her history in an antique font—from her wherrying days on the Thames in the 1930s to her presence at Dunkirk to a mastless retirement here on the edges of Halsham Broad. Most of it was new to me, and I patted her wall fondly, feeling an odd swell of pride in the old girl. “Gabe always said you were an old trouper. Guess he was right.”
As the air warmed, I began to feel more at home. I’d never been here in the winter—even Gabe had been reluctantly dragged away to endure a family Christmas, but I’d been released to Gabe’s care every Easter and for a week every summer. I could still remember the relief of that train ride, each rattle of the tracks drawing me farther away from the boy my parents wanted me to be, until I exploded off the train at Norwich to hurl myself at Gabe and his dog—first Frodo, then Galadriel, and last of all Elrond, all of them smelly, shaggy, and of thoroughly mixed lineage, none of them allowed to visit the London-dwelling parts of the family.
It was only now that I wondered what favours Gabe had traded to get those weeks.
The darkness was different at this time of year. There was none of that lingering light that clung to a summer’s night even when the sun was down, or even the fresh vastness of a starry April night. In December, the darkness felt heavy, clustering close around her windows. I filled the kettle, put it on to boil, and then went back outside, drawn by that absolute darkness.
The air tasted so crisp and cold it stung my mouth. Looking out where I knew there was water, I could see nothing but the black depth of night. To the north, where the village of Halsham clustered around the marina, a couple of lights showed, but it was hard to tell how far away they were. Farther to the south-east, I could just see faint glimmers from the coastal village of Gorsey. The moon was the barest thin crescent, offering no light. Under my feet, the deck was already slick with frost and I couldn’t hear or feel the usual sway of the water beneath the Lily. Had the broad frozen?
The owl cried out again and I could hear that faint beat of music stripped of all its grace by distance.
I wasn’t expecting the sudden shrill of my phone, and jumped enough that I almost went skidding across the deck. I’d left it inside and rushed to get it despite the sudden clench of guilt in my gut. I should have known a hasty text message wouldn’t have been enough, and I’d been relying on the fact that I’d never known a signal at Halsham Broad before to put off what was going to be a monumental reckoning.
“Hey,” I said, closing my eyes.
“So you are alive then?” Nik snapped. “I’ve been trying to contact you for the last two hours.”
“Didn’t you get my text?”
Nik took a long breath and then let it out in one furious huff. “Yes, I got your fucking text. But for your information, needed some time—back in the New Year does not actually tell me anything useful. Like, for example, where the hell you are!”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine is not a place in England.”
“I’m sure it’s a place somewhere, though. I mean, there’s Finland and Finchley, which are both close.” I could usually get a laugh out of Nik if I babbled enough, and I didn’t want to fight. Nik wasn’t stupid. He knew why I wasn’t there.
He didn’t laugh. “Are you in Finland or Finchley?”
“No.”
He grated out, “So, where the fuck are you?”
“I’m—”
“Because you should be here, packing your bags to go to my parents for Christmas.”
“Your parents hate me.”
“Oh, for fuck’s—” He stopped himself and said, “My parents do not hate you.”
“They absolutely hate me. They think I seduced you away from being their good little heterosexual Catholic son.”
“Hate to break it to you, darling, but you were hardly my first.”
“Yeah, but I was the first one they met, right? And it was a disaster.”
“Not that much of a—”
“Disaster,” I emphasised.
Duck, Duck, Ghost by Rhys Ford
Chapter 1
THE SMELL of rot permeated the air.
It was a foul smell. A blackness to it Wolf would never get used to. With the proximity of the Florida swamp and Atlantic, there was a faint hint of stagnancy as well, with an overlay of brackish algae just for good measure. He couldn’t imagine living in its stink every day. Like cigarette smoke, it would flavor everything he touched, breathed, or ate.
He’d expected some dampness, especially in the lower jut of an ill-advised half basement below the church turned hostel, but when his sneaker sloshed through an actual puddle in the kitchen, Wolf wondered if the owners had less of a ghost problem and were more in need of a home demolition.
The basement seemed to be where most of the noises were coming from. At least from what Wolf could figure out. Creaky, eerie sounds wafted through the sprawling hostel, carried through the antique ductwork set into heavily built walls, and they certainly appeared to be originating from underneath the first floor. Tapping at the plaster, Wolf frowned, wondering what the builders had been thinking when they’d put in so many tight hallways and corners. The maze made it difficult to find the source of the hostel’s supposed haunting, but it apparently helped keep the place cool when it got too hot.
“It’s like they got paid by the fucking corner,” he grumbled. “Every single damned old house has a million stupid little corners.”
An undulating groan drifted through the hostel, and a screeching wail followed close on its heels. A startled yelp nearly broke Wolf’s eardrum, and he stopped for a moment with his foot on the second step down to the basement.
“Jesus, you trying to get me killed?” Wolf muttered, flipping the light switch at the top of the stairs one more time. “I could have fallen down this death trap and broken my neck.”
Much like the other five times he’d clicked it, the light stayed off, and he glanced up, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. After finding it, Wolf turned the torch on and splashed the beam up along the ceiling, not surprised to find a pair of dangling capped-off wires where a light fixture should have been.
A woman’s voice tickled Wolf’s ear as he crept down along a tight spiral staircase. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing here, Dr. Kincaid.”
Wolf sighed and leaned his head against the cramped interior stairwell. Cupping his mouth over the wireless headset he wore to keep in contact with his intern, he counted to three, then said, “You’re supposed to keep up with me.”
“I’m trying to, Dr. Kincaid.” The young woman sounded exasperated. “But your legs are too long. I can’t keep up. I lost you back in the hallway. The lights aren’t working in this end of the house. Everything went black.”
“Where are you, Trixie?” he growled into his mic. “And more importantly, how soon can you get to the basement stairs?”
“Shit, you’re going to go down there? Why? Can’t we just use something to see underneath the house? Like they do for dinosaurs. What is that? Sonar? Can’t we use that?”
Biting back a sarcastic reply, Wolf reminded himself that soon-to-be-Doctor Trixie Huff was his only staff on the hostel job, so snarling at her probably wouldn’t necessarily endear him to her.
Initially, he’d agreed to use the headsets because he wanted to keep his communication to a whisper so as not to telegraph where they were in the building’s labyrinth of cellar space and servants’ quarters. Now Wolf was partially glad he had it on because he kept losing his damned intern.
It wasn’t Trixie’s fault.
Wolf was just too used to working with his team, and the intern, while highly intelligent and sharp, hadn’t planned on spending her summer vacation hunting ghosts in tourist-infested St. Augustine, Florida. Instead of lounging about the pool—or beach—being brought drinks by hot cabana boys in tight, skimpy shorts, she was tromping behind a grumpy parapsychologist in cobweb-cluttered mazes while rats and spiders dropped down on her like turtle shells in a game of Mario Kart.
When Hellsinger Investigations agreed to take on a pair of summer interns from Berkeley, it sounded like a perfect solution to his staffing woes. His techs, Matt and Gidget, longed to explore the Welsh countryside with its rambling hills and ghostly apparitions, while his office manager, Nahryn, planned on having a three-week visit with her grandparents in Los Angeles.
Trixie’d been a godsend. Especially since she was enthusiastic and, more importantly, a bit of a skeptic about paranormal activity.
If there was one thing Wolf needed in his life at the moment—it was a skeptic.
No, he wouldn’t think about Tristan. Not while he stood halfway down a flight of stairs with one wet foot waiting for an intern he was probably abusing by dragging her off to Florida so she could record his progress through a haunted hostel.
Something dropped onto him from above and skittered across his neck. Wolf resisted the urge to slap at it. He’d done that piece of stupid when he was younger and bore a half-moon scar on his shoulder from the very pissed-off centipede he’d slammed his hand over.
A strong beam of light cut over him, and Wolf grinned, glancing up at Trixie as she aimed the shoulder camera down the stairs. At some point, she’d dragged her glossy brown hair back and pulled a ponytail through a Hellsinger Investigations ball cap. Having abandoned her contacts for a sturdy pair of glasses to protect her eyes against the hostel’s dirt and cobwebs, Trixie’s eyes glittered with excitement behind her clear lenses.
“You ready, Huff?” Wolf grinned in the bright light.
“Sneakers on, boss,” she retorted saucily.
“Good, because we’re going in.”
They went down the stairs together, Trixie’s camera beam lighting up Wolf’s shoulders. It actually wasn’t a bad thing, because in the dank darkness, any light was welcome. Aiming his own smaller flashlight up, Wolf trudged through the tiny rooms built into the hill under the hostel, noticing the damp air thickened into an almost mist as they drew closer to the outer wall.
“Isn’t a basement in Florida kind of stupid?” Trixie asked above their squeaky footsteps.
“Yeah, not exactly the smartest thing. Whoever built this place made the hill first. It’s called a berm. It’s a smart thing to do to get your property above the flood line, but instead the asshole dug in and put half of the house into it. I’m surprised this place hasn’t come tumbling down on their—” A hissing noise made Wolf pause, and he turned, holding up his hand to stop Trixie from going any farther into the dark.
“What was that?” She kept her voice as steady as she could. Wolf gave her that. Even with the tremble in her throat, she held the camera steady, trained just beyond Wolf’s shoulder as he’d instructed her. “Oh God, something’s over there.”
Wolf’s beam was too weak to do anything but catch a sliver of movement beyond a turn in the hall. He took a few steps forward, but the camera’s light didn’t follow him, so he turned around, staring into the beam at the silhouette behind it.
“Come on, almost-Doctor Huff. Time to chase our ghosts,” he urged her on. The light bobbed once, and Trixie moved in step behind him, but he could still hear her mutter under her breath at his back.
“You are certifiable. No college credit is worth this.”
The thick rough walls under the old church must have been the only thing shoring up the foundation, but Wolf had to acknowledge the builder might have had something going. Lifted up off the ground, the airspace below would keep the building’s lower level cooler during the hot summer months, but he’d have been more scared of wood rot than a high air-conditioning bill.
Especially when his foot went through one of the floorboards, and his leg dropped out from under him, slamming his crotch into the rotted wooden planks.
Wolf grunted from the pain of getting his balls shoved up into his rib cage, but he stopped himself from whimpering out loud. Huffing to maintain his composure, he shouted back, “Trix, stay back there. The floor’s gone here.”
“Oh God, are you okay?” The large light bobbled and then dropped low when Trixie set the camera on the floor next to her. “Do you want me to go get someone?”
“Let me see if I can get out of this hole.” Wolf hissed when he leaned back. Massive splinters from the rough floorboards drove into his palms, and for once he was glad Nahryn insisted they all were current on their tetanus shots. “Okay, I’m going to rock back and pull my leg out. Be careful in case the boards go down behind me. I don’t know how big this hole in the ground is.”
“Why would someone dig a hole in the basement, then cover it with boards?” Trixie scooted forward a bit. “Do you want me to grab you and help?”
“No,” Wolf said with a shake of his head. “Our weight might bring the whole thing down. Stay back where we know it’s solid.”
Wolf gritted past the pain and pushed himself up, leveraging his weight back until he got his knee clear of the hole. His jeans were shot, torn along his thigh and flecked with blood where broken wood scratched into his skin. Another heave, and he cleared the hole up to his calf. Then the deep shadows beyond the camera’s powerful beam moved, and a low hiss echoed through the confined space.
The movement was slow, nearly graceful, and Wolf froze, trying to see into the darkness.
Then he realized what he was looking at, and his stomach crawled up to lodge itself into his throat.
“Trixie, I need you to move slowly back and go up the stairs. Now.”
“And leave you here?” she scoffed. “That makes—”
“Leave the camera and get the hell out of here. Use the flashlight I gave you.” Wolf kept his voice low, not wanting to spook the young woman. “Like right—”
The gator lunged out of the shadows, its teeth flashing a sickly yellow in the light beam. The reptile was nearly as wide across as Wolf’s hips, its quick legs whipping its long body back and forth as it moved across the floor. Its long tail slapped into one of the walls, making a wet sound on the hard surface.
Trixie screamed and fled, her cries for help seemingly coming from all directions as she ran out of the space. Wolf jerked himself free of the hole, rolling to the side as he tried to scramble to his feet. The alligator made another lunge, throwing its body up a few inches, and his sneaker sole caught in its teeth, ripping from the bottom of his shoe as the gator twisted its head.
“Fuck!” Wolf dodged the camera, catching his nearly bare foot in its harness.
The gator went after him again, the floors creaking under the reptile’s enormous weight. The boards bounced, and Wolf heard them cracking under him as he ran toward the room’s entrance. Trixie’s anxious screaming continued to bounce about the basement, a high-pitched wail loud enough to drown out the gator’s aggressive hissing.
His own flashlight flickered woefully when Wolf tried to aim it down the hallway outside the room. A fragmented beam warned him he’d probably broken the lens, but it still gave off enough light for him to see his way out. Something heavy slammed into his side, and Wolf’s heart jerked in fear until he realized it was Trixie running out from another room.
“I can’t find my way out!” she wailed, grabbing at his arm. “Oh God, it’s right there!”
Wolf chanced a glance back, and the gator grumbled with a menacing roar. Nudging the discarded equipment, the gator made the camera’s light flash and tilt against its hide, illuminating its variegated skin. Wolf grabbed Trixie’s arm and dragged her with him, urging her to run. A loud cracking sound came from the room behind them, and some small part of Wolf’s brain wondered if the gator would be trapped in the hole he’d almost fallen into.
The larger part of his brain shoved that thought down, intent on escaping the seemingly pissed-off reptile rather than pondering if the rot would give before the gator could catch up with them or if gators could climb stairs. They hit the steps at a run, and Wolf pushed Trixie up ahead of him. Her sneakers pounded up the staircase, and he followed close behind, his hands pressed on the small of her back.
All around them, they heard the hissing and screaming wails of the gator thrashing its way through the basement. Its vocalizations echoed through the ductwork, and somewhere in the hostel, someone else started screaming, matching Trixie and the gator in volume.
Voices called out from various rooms, but Wolf didn’t have the breath to answer. He shoved the intern through the open door at the top of the stairs, flung himself through, and kicked the door closed behind him with a mighty thump.
He lay on the floor, panting as people poured into the kitchen. Trixie lay on her stomach next to him, her body heaving from the sprint up the tight staircase. Someone sounded alarmed at the sight of his leg, but Wolf didn’t care about the pain. From what he could tell, he was still intact, if just a little bit winded.
The owner, a long-haired older woman, leaned over him, her bright blue eyes blinking in surprise at his bloodied and mud-caked body. Patting him on the shoulder, she asked someone to call 911 before Wolf could stop her.
“Oh my, Doctor Kincaid. Are you all right?” she murmured in her soft butterfly voice. “What happened?”
“Found your ghost,” Wolf gasped, fighting to push words out as he sucked in clean air. “And it’s big enough to make a whole set of luggage.”
“THEY ARE never going to give you another intern,” Nahryn, his girl Friday, complained loudly as Wolf came through the front door of Hellsinger Investigations. “You keep breaking them!”
“Hey, I returned that last one in perfect working order!” he shot back, dropping a bag of donuts on her desk as he hobbled by. They were damned good donuts, hot and yeasty malasadas from a nearby Portuguese bakery. Good enough to ward off a scolding from a girl ten years his junior, but Nahryn wasn’t having any of it, judging by the look on her face. “I’m the one who got fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, death by gator isn’t something a lot of people want to put on their résumé.” She sniffed at him and opened the bag. The pretty Armenian girl eyed him, as if searching for sugar around his mouth. “Did you already eat one?”
“Yeah, on the way in.” He winced at the steady ache along his thigh. Eight dissolvable stitches and a few shots later, his leg was patched up, but he was reminded constantly of his refusal to take any of the painkillers the doctors shoved at him. A few ibuprofens would do the trick, he promised his leg, along with a very nice hot cup of coffee.
“Well, take one in with you. Meegan’s here.” His office manager stepped in behind him before Wolf could turn around and drag himself out of the office. “Oh no you don’t, Kincaid. She’s your mother, and she’s here to ask you something.”
“I’d rather be eaten alive by the gator,” Wolf muttered darkly. “Go get me coffee, and if I buzz you in ten minutes, I expect you to come rescue me.”
“You’ll be lucky if I even answer,” Nahryn shot back with a Cheshire cat smile. “But I’ll bring you some coffee, you big baby.”
His mother was standing at the wraparound glass window of his office, her hands cradling a large cup of fragrant jasmine tea and her eyes dreamy as she stared out at San Francisco’s bay. Ferries jetted from shore to shore, carrying tourists and locals alike. The morning fog kept a light grip on the shoreline, but it was a weak one, with a lemony sun pushing its way through the watery mist.
The faint sunlight shone around the older woman, outlining her long, curly bright auburn hair and crazy-quilt peasant dress. Large chandelier earrings made of tiny bells and beads tinkled when she cocked her head, her eyes following the activity on the pier below. She’d lost her sandals somewhere in the office, her bare toes spread over the office’s wooden floors, and she shifted slightly, adjusting her black cobweb lace shawl over her pale arms.
His coffee arrived with a filthy look, both courtesy of Nahryn, and Wolf nodded pleasantly at her, then shooed the young Armenian woman out. Meegan Ocean-Kincaid turned and caught her son’s eye, but instead of the beatific, motherly smile she normally gave him, her mouth was set into a neutral straight line.
From his hippie-gypsy mother, this was tantamount to a scowl.
“Hello, Mom.” Wolf leaned in to give his mother a kiss, but she tilted her head back to stare up at him. Sighing, he rolled his eyes and said, “What?”
“What now, you mean?” Meegan sniffed.
It was a mighty sniff. Possibly one of the greatest she’d ever given him. It rivaled the one she’d aimed at him and Bach when they’d shaved Ophelia Sunday’s head with their Uncle Stavros’s clippers, but he still thought the time he’d dumped an entire load of horse manure on their living room floor because he was looking for gold coins held the top spot.
Another sniff, and the Horse Manure Incident sadly dropped to second place.
“I take it this is about Tristan?” He wondered if he could bribe Nahryn to go to the corner store and grab him whiskey so he could doctor his coffee or if it was still too early to start some serious drinking. “Have you talked to him?”
Her arched eyebrow lift was pointed enough he could hang a Christmas ornament on it, and Wolf took a gulp of his coffee, wincing at its sugary taste.
“Great, now even my office manager is trying to poison me,” he muttered, setting the mug down. “Okay, get it out of your system, Mom. Go on and scream at my head.”
“I don’t scream, Wolfgang,” Meegan informed him smoothly. “What I am going to do is tell you how disappointed I am in you. You have a chance at so much happiness, and you’re letting your pigheaded stubbornness get in the way.”
So yes, his mother had spoken to Tristan, and knowing his reclusive lover, he’d probably been nudged, bothered, and poked at until he spilled every last detail of their argument.
He didn’t need his mother to tell him he’d fucked up. He screwed up by starting up a fight with Tristan Pryce, owner and proprietor of Hoxne Grange, a spiritual hub for ghosts passing on to the afterlife, then walking out on Tris. The gorgeous blond man was reserved, quirky, and more importantly, willing to shove back at Wolf’s strong personality—and damn it, if Wolf didn’t miss the hell out of him.
Tristan ended up under Wolf’s skin, and part of the argument—most of the argument, if Wolf was really honest—was that he was scared. He was frightened by how quickly Tristan hooked his soul and pulled in Wolf’s heart. He hadn’t been looking for love when he went to debunk Tristan’s ghost-hosting inn, but that’s what he found—and he didn’t want to ever let him go.
And that scared Wolf most of all….
“We had a fight, Mom,” Wolf protested. “Things like that happen—”
“You accused him of hallucinating everything the two of you went through!” She turned on him, setting her cup down. Jasmine tea sloshed over the cup’s rim, leaving a small amber puddle on his desk. “What happened at the Grange was—”
“Mom, the iced tea you gave us to drink had euphoric honey in it, and then you left a quart of it in his kitchen cabinet!”
“How was I supposed to know he’d make baklava with it?” She waved off his disgusted look. “Really? Does he look like he’s the type to bake homemade anything? Does one even bake baklava?”
“He could have poisoned us with it! Honey’s a major ingredient in that.”
“No, really, how do you make baklava? Does it really go into the oven?” Meegan’s attention had obviously wandered off into the intricacies of Greek pastries.
“Jesus, Mom. That stuff was potent. Hell, no wonder we ate ten pizzas after that damned séance. We had the raging munchies. What were you thinking?”
“Just to calm everyone down after the haunting!” Meegan protested. “I’ll even bet you the baklava was good. It was premium honey. So what if it was a bit hallucinogenic? Some of my best memories were when I was a bit baked. Hell, you’re here because of a bit of that honey.”
“That’s not the point.” He rubbed at his face, then dropped his hands to his hips. “And I didn’t say what happened that day wasn’t real. I just—”
“You accused him of drugging you and said the whole experience was a mass hallucination!”
“I did not say that.” Wolf kept his voice as even as he could. “When I was done tripping along the Timothy Leary Highway—”
“Something that wasn’t his fault—”
“Mom, will you let me finish one sentence?” Wolf gritted his teeth and took a long breath to steady himself. “Please?”
“Fine, go ahead.” Meegan threw her hands up. “Talk, but nothing you say to me is going to fix what you messed up. So you got a little bit stoned. It’s just a relaxer—”
“It wasn’t the five minutes of fun-house-mirror world, it was the hour and a half of me living in the bathroom, wondering if I was going to have to reel my guts back in, after the two hours of trying to talk to Tristan’s monster illustrations,” he insisted. “I might have said a few things I wasn’t proud of, but I never accused him of drugging us that day. You did that.”
“Afterwards!”
“I told him I loved him and I’d call him in a bit. Did he tell you that?”
“I didn’t actually talk to him about afterwards. He’s very close-lipped,” his mother hedged. “But I definitely got the feeling things went a bit haywire. Then you hied off to God knows where.”
“Florida. I had a job in St. Augustine, and I couldn’t cancel. I was going to call him this morning.” Suddenly tired, he sat on the edge of his desk, wincing when his leg reminded him of his stitches and bruises. “I just needed to think of what I was going to say.”
“I’m sorry is a good place to start,” Meegan replied tartly. “Then I’m sorry again. Maybe even I love you? You do love him, don’t you?”
“It’s complicated.” The weariness of dealing with his mother set in, and he rubbed at his leg. “But yeah, I love him. It’s crazy because I’ve known him for what? A month? And it’s not like he’s totally normal. We’re going to have to come to some kind of middle ground.”
“Well, it’s time to uncomplicate it,” his mother ordered. “And I have just the thing for that. Something you both can do together.”
“Why does that scare the shit out of me?” Wolf picked up his coffee and took another sip. The sugar in it hadn’t magically evaporated. “God, I’m going to kill Nahryn. This is like hummingbird food. I did text him while I was in Florida.”
“And what did you say? That you were sorry?”
“That we needed to talk.” Admittedly, his messages had gotten more and more insistent with each unanswered text. He hated being ignored, and Tristan could ostrich with the best of them. “And I was an asshole. He didn’t text me back.”
“You should have called. It’s been over a week, Wolf,” Meegan huffed. “Okay, we can fix this. I have just the thing.”
“I’m already going to go up there, Mom. I don’t think I need—” He intercepted her simmering glare. “Fine, what is it?”
“Do you remember Sey? Your second cousin from your Great-Aunt Natty?” Meegan frowned at Wolf’s clueless look. “The one in San Luis Obispo.”
“Sey with the toys? Yeah, I love her. We’ve kept in touch.” A slender, brash woman known for her boisterous laugh and nearly endless energy, Sey was one of the few relatives he positively adored. He’d spent more than a couple of summers as his older cousin’s satellite, a tall lanky girl with sharp elbows and freckles. She’d been the one who’d taught him how to shoot a crossbow… and more importantly, how to run away from a charging bull when he’d accidentally fallen into the temperamental bovine’s corral. “Why? What’s up with Sey?”
“Funny you should ask that,” Meegan practically cackled as she rubbed her hands together. “Because she’s got a problem, and it’s one that is totally up your alley.”
