“And then he just lost it,” I said.
Graham and I were having lunch at the new deli on Main Street. The space had previously been home to the best coffee shop in the world but sat empty for months following the owner’s passing. The leafy green murals of forest animals on the walls had been painted over with a clouded honey gold, but the new owner had kept the same square, scrubbed tables that Donn’s Hill gossips had loved to crowd around any time anything interesting happened.
The informal news network had moved its headquarters to the lobby café at the Oracle Inn, but I had no desire to return to that house. I felt sure Horace would manifest the instant my feet crossed the threshold. Thinking about seeing him again made my stomach twist like a wringing washcloth.
My second choice would’ve been the Ace of Cups, but I was no more eager to return to The Enclave than the inn. Over deli sandwiches and deliciously salty house-made potato chips, I filled Graham in on Nick’s implosion at the palm reader.
Graham’s ears darkened to crimson as I described the way Nick had unexpectedly turned violent. He absently crumpled his sandwich wrapper into a tiny ball in one hand. “You could’ve been hurt.”
“I don’t think he would have done anything to me.” I didn’t have any evidence to back that up, and not even my gut agreed with the words that’d just come out of my mouth.
Graham’s eyes were doubtful, but he didn’t challenge me. “I never really liked Nick, but I didn’t think he was capable of something like that.”
“Me neither. It was so weird. He was unrecognizable in that shop.”
“The palm reader kid isn’t pressing charges?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t even call the cops.”
“Weird.”
Strange as I thought it was to let Nick off the hook on the vague promise of being included in Daphne’s traveling circus, I was relieved not to have to face Deputy Wallace again. Every day that went by without a knock on my door made me feel like I was cheating time. I hadn’t gotten any answers out of Horace, and after Nick’s “lesson” about the dishonesty that ran rampant in Donn’s Hill’s psychic community, I felt no closer to discovering anyone with a stronger motive for killing Raziel than the police thought I had.
The box is in Graham’s garage. It’d be so easy to take it to Horace.
The thought snuck up on me, popping into my mind as though from somewhere outside it. The idea of retrieving the jewelry box, handling it and carrying it to the inn, sent a shiver of dread down my entire body. But if I did it… could Horace give me the answers I needed?
No. No, it wasn’t worth the risk of unleashing whatever was inside that box or exposing myself to Horace again. I’d only go that route if—and hopefully not when—I ran out of options.
“You okay?” Graham asked, pulling me back into the moment.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”
As we finished the rest of my chips and debated whether Nick’s fame would have gotten him out of an assault charge with no jail time, a familiar redhead walked into the deli.
“Mark!” I waved him over to our table. “What’s up?”
My cameraman’s default facial expression—a deep scowl—shifted to a guilty cringe at the sight of us. He slowly made his way over to our table and nodded at Graham. He glanced at me then focused his attention on the stack of napkins at the edge of our table. “Hey, Mac. How are you feeling?”
“Better, thanks. How about you?”
“Oh… you know…” Mark cast his gaze around the deli. “Keeping busy.”
“How’d your freelance job go? You were in Moyard the last couple days, right?”
“Yeah. It was okay.”
I frowned. Mark was never exactly loquacious, but this was awkward even compared to his normal standards. I stretched my neck, trying to make eye contact with him, but he seemed determined to avoid meeting my gaze.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
His eyes finally flicked up to mine, and he sighed, pulling out the chair beside me and lowering himself into it. After rubbing the back of his neck with one hand for a few silent moments, he dropped his bombshell.
“I’m leaving the Soul Searchers.”
“What?” I stared at him, unable to process his words. “Why?”
“I got an offer to join a documentary film crew that shoots internationally.”
Silence mounted as I waited for him to add a “just kidding” or to laugh. Eventually, my contact lenses started drying out, and I had to remind myself to blink.
“You’re serious,” I said.
He nodded, frowning down at his lap.
“Uh, congratulations,” Graham said. “When do you start?”
“Next week. I’m packing up a truck on Sunday and heading out to Los Angeles.” He glanced up at me again. “I’m sorry, Mac.”
“I—” I fished around for words, but found few. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t pass up this chance,” he said. “It’s my dream job.”
“You said your dream changed when you started working with Yuri. What about helping people? Can you do that on a travel show?”
“I’ll still get to help people. It’s not a travel doc. It’s more like investigative journalism. We’ll be showing both the good and bad sides of the paranormal community around the world. Real hauntings, but also the kinds of inhumane travesties that happen under the radar.”
His words were familiar. Too familiar. I knew at once how he’d suddenly found a gig like this.
“Amari recruited you, didn’t she?”
Mark’s face flushed. “Yes.”
“When?”
“At the cocktail party. She and Raziel both said they wanted to hire me for their show.”
“That’s why they loaned you that sound equipment—to give you a taste of what working with them would be like.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Whatever their strategy had been, it had worked.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Inside, my brain screamed that this was sure to spell the end of the Soul Searchers. How dare Mark screw us over? What kind of selfish jerk would do something like this?
But my memory whispered that it’d been Mark who talked me into joining the crew in the first place. He’d been my friend when I’d been finding dead bodies on every shoot, and he’d never asked for anything in return. His leaving wasn’t selfish, but me trying to keep him from living his dream would be.
Besides, as long as the show had Kit and Yuri, it would survive. It was their baby. Truth be told, Mark and I were just appendages.
“I’m happy for you,” I said. “I mean it.”
He sagged like a marionette who’d just lost its strings. “Thank you.”
“Kit and Yuri already know?”
“Yeah, I told them yesterday.”
“Are you having a going away party or anything?”
It was a foolish question. Mark wasn’t the type to celebrate anything he did. He’d never invite a bunch of people over to his house for a nightlong, awkward goodbye. The look of horror on his face at the suggestion confirmed it.
“Well, what time do you leave on Sunday?” I asked.
“Early. It’s a long drive.”
“Don’t do it all at once,” Graham warned. “Break it up over a few days.”
“That’s the plan.” Mark stood and ran a hand through his mop of red curls. “Well, I better go. I’ve got a lot of packing to do.”
I stood and gave him a tight hug, promising we’d come by on Saturday to say a proper goodbye. He extricated himself, got a sandwich to go, and we followed him out the door on our way home.
“That’s a bummer,” Graham said as we walked down the residential back streets toward Primrose House.
It was the understatement of the day. Mark had been one of the first friends I’d made in Donn’s Hill. His presence was part of the fabric of this place. I couldn’t imagine life without him, and I certainly couldn’t picture being on an investigation without seeing his red hair behind the camera.
“Sheryl will be furious,” Graham went on. “Mark’s her favorite nephew.”
Mark’s great-aunt Sheryl was the on again, off again organist at Hillside Chapel atop Main Street. I’d had the pleasure of meeting the little old lady at a séance and the displeasure of being deafened when she’d played the organ at a funeral. Mark seemed to be the only person who could convince her to turn the volume down.
“The congregants at Hillside will never forgive him for leaving town,” I said.
We joked and laughed all the way home, parting ways in the back driveway. Graham was driving to Stephen’s place to make sure he was doing okay after the previous night’s altercation. For a moment, I was tempted to join him, just to be in his company a little longer. But it was still too soon. The Enclave had become a sour place in my mind. Instead, I sought out Kit to see how Mark’s departure would affect our production schedule.
I didn’t have to look far; she was in the shared kitchen, rinsing plates and glasses at the sink. It was a mundane task, but her grim expression and pale face put me on instant alert.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just, uh… you know. Thinking about the future.”
I settled on a barstool and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. “Mark just gave me the news. Where are we going to find another cameraman?”
She turned away from me to load the rinsed dishes into the washer. “ScreamTV can help with that. They’ve got a whole network of freelancers and stuff. It’ll be okay.”
“You’re less upset about this than I expected you to be.” I’d figured the angry voice inside Kit’s head would have beaten her rational, supportive voice to death, and then done the same thing to Mark. She was fiercely protective of her father’s show. Then I realized if Mark was leaving this weekend, Amari would probably head back to L.A. around the same time. Compared to saying goodbye to her girlfriend, losing a cameraman was nothing. “When does Amari leave?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard. Will you be able to go visit her soon?”
She finished loading the dishwasher and turned back around to face me. Her lower lip was trembling.
“Oh, no.” I slid off my stool and rushed around the counter to squeeze her shoulder. Amari must have broken things off. “What happened?”
Kit shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Mac.”
“For what?”
She brushed my hand from her shoulder and took a deep breath. “Ugh, this is so hard.” She balled her hands into fists a couple times, shook them out, and then looked me dead in the eyes. “Amari asked me to help on her new show.”
I gulped. “And you said…?”
“I haven’t answered her yet.”
“Are you leaning one way or the other?”
“Honestly… I’m not sure. I know this is crazy. We haven’t been dating long—”
That was one hell of an understatement, but I didn’t interrupt her.
“And the thought of leaving Dad to produce the show on his own scares me, and the thought of leaving Donn’s Hill scares me even more. But when I’m with Amari… I don’t know.” She bit her lip. “I’m crazy about her. I’ve never felt this way about anybody. And thinking about her going back to L.A. without me and not seeing her every day, that scares me more than anything else.”
For some reason, I burst out laughing.
“What?” she demanded.
My laughter rose to a shriek and I doubled over, gripping the counter for support. Every time I came close to settling down, the stupidity of the situation struck me again, and I let out another squeal of panicked mirth.
Finally, my laughter subsided, and I brushed the tears from my cheeks.
“I don’t get the joke,” Kit said.
“Neither do I.” I wiped my eyes and sighed. “It’s just so typical of my life right now. Everything feels weird, my head hurts, Mark quit, and now you might follow him. It’s just perfect in the worst way, you know?”
Her cheeks reddened. “I haven’t decided yet or anything.”
“That’s the funniest part. You’re so conflicted and just completely tortured by this decision, I can’t even be mad at you.” I grinned at her. “Honestly, I feel cheated.”
The flush in her face dissipated, and she sagged against the dishwasher in relief. “You’re not mad?”
I shook my head, and she sighed.
“Good,” she said. “Look, I won’t do anything rash. I just wanted to give you a head’s up.”
“I appreciate it. Keep me posted, okay?”
She nodded, and I fled the kitchen, racing up the stairs to my apartment against the ticking time bomb in my chest. The burst of laughter couldn’t have come at a better time; I’d been on the verge of tears when it came.
I wanted to be angry that she was considering leaving, but there wasn’t any room for anger. My heart was too busy breaking to feel anything else. I was sure she’d leave with Amari. And even if—if—the show somehow survived her departure, where would that leave me? What was I supposed to do without my best friend?
My bed was a comfortable place to cry; I’d shed many tears here since moving to Donn’s Hill. But I never thought I’d be crying about Kit leaving me behind.
Striker emerged from beneath the mattress with a ball of paper in her jaws. She leapt onto the bed and dropped it beside my face like a gift, trilling softly.
“That better not be a letter of resignation,” I told her. “If Amari tries to hire you as their mascot or something, you say no.”
When Graham returned a few hours later, I was too terrified of bursting into tears again to tell him Kit was considering leaving Donn’s Hill. He fell asleep quickly, unburdened by the knowledge that my life was on the verge of imploding. As he dozed beside me, I reflected on the many ways Raziel had ruined everything.
First, he’d derailed the cabin cleansing. It was clear now; things would have gone better if he hadn’t crashed the séance. I didn’t know how, exactly, but I certainly wouldn’t have tried to punch anybody that night if he hadn’t been there.
Then, he’d been killed. And while that part wasn’t technically his fault, if he hadn’t goaded me into lunging at him, Sheriff Harris wouldn’t think I was some unhinged, violent murder suspect.
Now, from beyond the grave, he was tearing apart the Soul Searchers team. I gathered up the blanket into my fists, twisting and squeezing at the fabric as I imagined Kit telling me she’d told Amari “yes.”
She’d been so sure Raziel posed a threat to the show. I’d thought she was being dramatic, but she’d proven herself right.
There was a strong chance the death of the Soul Searchers was another part of the curse brought on by that damn haunted jewelry box. But even that could be laid at Raziel’s feet; if he hadn’t come to Donn’s Hill, if he hadn’t stayed in the Oracle Inn and been killed there, I’d have never held a séance in that attic. Horace would never have appeared to me, and I wouldn’t have had any reason to agree to help him, so I would never have dug that cursed thing up from its resting place in the clearing.
Every time I thought about the box, my headache grew more painful. This had all started with Raziel, but everything had gotten worse since I’d gone to Cambion’s Camp. And it wasn’t just my life the box impacted; even Striker had gotten hurt. Who would be next?
Beside me, Graham’s chest rose and fell in time with his gentle snores. He was the only person left who hadn’t suffered some kind of misfortune. If I did nothing, it was only a matter of time before the box got him too.
I didn’t have time to find a way to banish whatever haunted the jewelry box. And I felt a nagging suspicion that Horace knew more about the spirit than he’d told me. Wild theories sprung into my mind—Horace could be haunting the attic and the box at the same time, he could have buried that box in the clearing himself for someone to eventually find, or the spirit trapped in the box could be his aunt, furious for decades about the theft of her wedding rings—but none of them rang true enough to take hold.
Horace would know the answers, I could feel it. And he claimed to know who’d really murdered Raziel in that attic. If I did as he’d asked, if I took him that box, I could fix everything all at once.
And if I went right now, while everyone around me still slept, I wouldn’t have to put anyone else at risk.
Acting before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed Graham’s keys from the bowl in his living room and crept down the stairs. Feeling eyes on the back of my head, I whipped around halfway down to the foyer.
A tiny tortoiseshell cat limped behind me on silent paws.
“Striker!”
Her whiskers bristled and surprise flooded her round, yellow eyes.
I thought about picking her up and locking her back in Graham’s apartment but didn’t want to risk making any more noise in the house than necessary. Besides, the box had already gotten to Striker. I felt like that made her immune to further misfortune, at least for a while.
“Okay,” I told her. “You can come. Probably best if you’re with me, anyway.”
Together we slipped through the kitchen and into the backyard. Above us, thick clouds covered the moon and the stars. Only the light from the streetlamp at the end of the driveway lit our way. I strode toward the garage with a straight spine, projecting a confidence I didn’t yet feel.
Once inside, I flipped on the fluorescent overhead lights, illuminating the near-empty tables and shelves that waited for Graham to refill them. At the back of the space, a bank of utility cupboards lined the wall. This was where Graham stored his supplies, including a locked cabinet for his cashbox.
I didn’t need his keys. The cupboard was unlocked, and—apart from the small metal cashbox—it was empty.
The jewelry box had disappeared.