The first inkling something was wrong came when the white Ghost Bikes began to clang and buck against the chains that bound them to lamp posts and street signs, wheels spinning without a breeze to turn them. Those whitewashed bicycles, symbols of riders killed in traffic, dotted the streets in and around Charleston, somber and usually silent memorials.
The second warning came from the roadside markers, the homemade crosses and wreaths near the highways commemorating fatal accidents, the passing of loved ones. Calls surged to 911, reporting detailed accounts of car wrecks along the state routes and interstates, and all of them had two things in common. First, that the wreck details were completely correct, and second, that the fatalities had happened months, sometimes years, ago.
The last time those particular two sets of ghosts acted out, Charleston teetered on the edge of an apocalypse, beset by Nephilim raised by a long-dead hanging judge bent on fulfilling a vendetta. He and the Nephilim were gone—I knew because I’d been part of the fight to destroy them—and they weren’t coming back.
What frightened the ghosts now, I didn’t know but would make it my business to find out. Anything that terrifies the dead is more than enough reason to cause concern for the living.
“Can you read anything?” Teag Logan asked, standing next to me as I laid my hands on one of the Ghost Bikes that had started to rattle and clank on its own several hours earlier.
“I see a beautiful day, bright sun, music playing somewhere…the rider glanced to one side…then the crash, flying through the air, hitting the ground, darkness,” I murmured, reading the strong emotions imprinted onto the bike by its dead rider. Not all of the Ghost Bike memorials are the actual cycles from an accident; some are purchased and painted as a tribute. The stand-in bikes weren’t the ones causing problems, just the twisted and damaged ones that had been part of their riders’ last moments.
“The memories of the crash are faded,” I continued. “But the fear is new and strong.” I strained to glean more from my connection with the bike’s resonance and let myself open up to the memories that had sunk deep into the mangled steel.
The first vision had been of flowers and sky, sun and warmth, memories of life. Now, I saw through the eyes of the biker’s ghost, the spirit that had remained attached to the place and vehicle that caused his death. The color and heat had faded from this view, leaving it cold and gray.
I had read the placard about the rider, George McMillan, a bicycle delivery messenger who had lost his life in a hit-and-run crash. Now, I saw through the eyes of George’s ghost, surveying the landscape around me and feeling his fear. The ghost stood next to the ruined bike on a city side street, but all alone, separated from the living souls around him by the veil of death, present but unacknowledged. I got the feeling that George had made his peace with that and wasn’t ready yet to find out what happened if he sought out the light and transitioned to the next stage of existence. He wasn’t hurting anyone, but now, I knew that something had come looking to hurt George.
I heard the tune, a strange, mournful song that carried from a distance as if seeking an audience. George panicked, and I had to remind myself that I was seeing what had already happened, seeing the ghost of a ghost, so to speak, and that I could do nothing to calm the spirit or ease his fears.
The song grew louder, and George tried to run, but like most ghosts, he could only go so far beyond the object that anchored his spirit to this world, and the bike was chained to the light post. The bike shuddered and shook, wheels banging and chain rattling, but George could not flee. I tried to identify the tune and couldn’t quite retain the melody, although it played over and over, a hypnotic, compelling score. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be heard by the living, but it certainly affected the dead.
George clapped his hands over his ears and shook his head. “No, no!” he shouted, as the song grew louder. I had just decided that the strange tune was being played on some kind of reed pipe when George began to scream.
The images flashed past me, jumbled and chaotic, infused with George’s utter terror. I glimpsed a presence, some kind of being, but only as an indistinct outline of a hunched creature upright on two legs. The music reached a crescendo, and George’s ghost began to disintegrate in front of me as if the song had the power to pull the ghost apart, bit by bit, until nothing remained.
The music stopped. George’s ghost was gone.
“Cassidy!”
I followed my way back to Teag’s urgent voice and woke from my trance, leaning against the light pole, and removed my hand from the bike’s worn seat. “Something hunted him,” I said, drawing in a deep, shaking breath and trying to collect my wits. My connection to George’s memories had been visceral, and I had felt the last lurch of his terror and the instant his consciousness was extinguished. Witnessing his unmaking, the violence against his spirit, affected me to my core. I wanted to scream, to collapse, to throw up.
Instead, I managed a wan smile as Teag placed a warm, anchoring hand on my shoulder and pressed a bottle of orange juice into my hand.
“Don’t try to tell me about it now,” he soothed.
“Is she okay?” a woman asked, stopping her morning jog to check.
“Low blood sugar,” I murmured, hating to lie but knowing she really didn’t want to hear the truth. “I’ll be fine, thanks.”
The woman jogged off, and Teag glanced around to ensure that we were alone again, at least for the moment.
“I heard music in the dark and saw a…thing…and then something tore George’s ghost apart,” I said, still breathing hard.
“You got a lot. More than with any of the other bikes.”
I drank the juice gratefully and shook my head. “Not enough to make sense of what’s going on, unfortunately. The last time the ghosts got upset, things went bad in a hurry.”
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antiques and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina, that is a lot more than meets the eye. We get cursed and haunted objects out of the wrong hands, and we’ve saved the world on more than one occasion.
We also keep some important secrets, especially about magic. My magic is psychometry, the ability to read the memories and magic from objects by touching them. Teag has Weaver magic, and he can weave spells into cloth and data into information, making him one hell of a hacker. My business partner, Sorren, is a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire who was once the best jewel thief in Antwerp. We’re part of the Alliance, a coalition of mortals and immortals who protect the world from supernatural threats. When we win, no one notices. When we lose, the carnage gets blamed on natural disasters.
“Ready to head back to the store?” Teag asked. We had spent the morning checking out the Ghost Bikes and roadside memorials where disturbances had been reported. I’m not a medium, so I don’t channel the ghosts, and I can’t summon them, which means I have to rely on the spirits to make themselves seen and heard. Failing that, I can use my psychometry to pick up the resonance of their emotions before—and after—death and then piece the clues together. It’s a tedious process.
“Sure,” I said. “We can pick up lunch and bring something back for Maggie.” Maggie is our fantastic part-time assistant. She doesn’t have any magic of her own, although she knows all about ours, but she’s got sass and an awesome sense of humor. Maggie retired from teaching, then retired from retirement to help out with the store. I’m pretty sure she can honestly say that it’s never been boring.
We picked up pizza and took turns eating and watching the front of the store. That’s when I noticed the large wrapped rectangle leaning against the wall in my office. “What’s that?” I asked Maggie.
“You or Teag had it shipped from that estate sale you went to last week,” she replied with a shrug. “We have the two other cartons of stuff from there you brought back yourselves.”
I remembered as soon as she mentioned the sale. Teag and I keep an eye on auctions and estate sales because they’re a way objects with harmful resonance can make their way from person to person. We not only buy items suitable for the store to re-sell, but we also cull out problem pieces before they have a chance to cause havoc.
The mirror hadn’t struck me as dangerous, merely unsettling. We knew very little about the old woman who had died, only that her home was full of beautiful, expensive, and odd items, a curiosity seeker’s paradise. The old house had been a solid brownstone in a nice part of town, and from the very sparse bio the auctioneer shared, Eliza Roberts had died at age ninety-five, never married, and was the last of her family line. What had intrigued me was that while I saw very few religious items in the house, a fair number of pieces had possible connections to spiritualism. I didn’t know whether or not Eliza had been a medium, but I’d lay money on the possibility that she dabbled in speaking with the dead.
“You’re thinking something.” Teag jarred me out of my reverie. “Spill it.” He’s my assistant manager for the store, but he’s also my best friend and on occasion, bodyguard.
“After we close up, I want to get a closer look at that mirror and some of the other things we brought from the Roberts house,” I said. “If the spirits are restless, maybe they’ll contact us.”
“Or you could just call Alicia,” he suggested. Alicia Peters, a powerful medium, was a friend and an ally who had helped us on a number of occasions.
“Alicia’s canvassing her side of the city for Ghost Bikes and roadside shrines, remember? So we’ll hear back from her when she’s done,” I replied.
“You don’t know how the objects will react to your magic.”
“Do we ever?”
Teag sighed. “No. All right. Go help Maggie up front, and I’ll get everything ready.”
Fortunately, the rest of the afternoon passed quietly, but as I wished Maggie a good evening and locked the door behind her, I felt my nervousness ratchet up, wondering what would come from Eliza’s mirror.
The rectangular-looking glass had a dark mahogany frame. The silver backing showed none of the signs of age that too often marred a big piece, so the reflection showed clear and true. Teag had moved a more comfortable chair out of my office so I could have better support as I touched the mirror and opened up my magic. He’s used to my psychometry by now, and more than once, he’s had to help me off the floor when a vision landed me right on my ass. I noticed he also made a pitcher of fresh sweet tea, which helps me recover from the huge energy drain that a difficult psychic connection can cause.
“I wove some new strips,” Teag said, nodding toward several hand-woven fabric runners, each several inches long and a few inches wide, like overgrown bookmarks, which lay on the table. “They’ll help ground and protect you, and this way, I can see what you see.”
Teag could weave his magic into the warp and woof of fabric, creating powerful protection spells, but he could also create a psychic bridge between us so that he didn’t have to rely on me to recount what I saw. That had saved my butt more than once when a vision turned suddenly dangerous.
“All right,” I said, settling into the chair facing the mirror. “Let’s see what’s through the looking glass.” In my left hand, I held one end of the woven ribbon, and Teag held the other. I put my right hand on the cold pane, and like Alice, felt myself fall through the looking glass.
Everything around me was made of silver and shadows, like a moonlit night. I knew I wasn’t alone but feared to call out, unsure of whose attention I might draw. This place beyond the mirror was far colder than our break room, and when I glanced behind me, I saw my own face staring back and the warm light of the real world setting it apart.
“Who are you?”
I startled and turned to face a woman whose somber black dress reminded me of the mourning clothes of a past era. I recognized the face. Eliza Roberts, the woman who had owned the mirror.
“My name’s Cassidy. Are you Eliza?”
The woman nodded.
“We’re not alone here, are we?” I could sense other presences all around us, just out of sight in the shadows. We stood in a pool of moonlight, distinct from the darkness all around. I did not want to leave the light or venture out of sight of the mirror and the way home.
“No. Mirrors harbor spirits. It’s a safer place than many, especially now,” Eliza replied.
“Do you know what’s frightened the ghosts?” I turned slowly, scanning the darkness. I glimpsed eyes and pale skin, but no clear faces or forms.
“Not exactly,” Eliza replied. “There’s an old, strong power at work, one I don’t recognize. I studied such things when I was alive. I’ve been able to see spirits in mirrors since I was a child, and since no one would teach me, I taught myself. But this new presence, it’s dangerous and hungry.”
“Hungry?”
“The entity is eating souls,” Eliza said.
“So the ghosts it eats, what happens to them?” I felt the cold that surrounded me seep into my bones at the idea that even greater dangers existed after death.
“They cease to exist,” Eliza answered. “At least, their consciousness is gone. They say energy never is destroyed. But they are no longer who they were, and they have not passed on to the next level, gone to the light. However you would phrase it.”
Vanished, with a finality even greater than death. Many ghosts retained sentience and chose to stay behind to watch over loved ones, protect something important, or see justice done. I’d seen those spirits eventually find peace once their task was completed, moving on to whatever came next. To think of them being hunted, trapped, consumed, shook me on a visceral level.
“I offered sanctuary to those who sought it, here with me,” Eliza said, gesturing to the shadows that surrounded us. “I couldn’t save them all, but those who came, I protect.”
No wonder the mirror gave off such a powerful resonance, disquieting but not evil. “I’ll help you protect the mirror,” I promised. “But please, tell me anything that might help us stop whatever is out there hurting the ghosts.”
“The creature selects its victims,” Eliza said, choosing her words carefully. “It preys on more recent spirits. The old haunts are rooted too deeply for it to disturb. It favors violent deaths. Few of those who took refuge here came from their sickbed. I believe creatures like this may have stalked battlefields, and now without that kind of carnage, it takes its pickings where it can.”
Violent deaths—like the car crashes and bike accidents. I felt my anger rise. Those ghosts often stayed behind because it took time for them to process what happened to them in a single, traumatic instant. Even crime victims often had a few minutes before death to understand what was happening, but those from wrecks were alive one minute, dead the next, and wandered lost and confused until they finally figured out what had happened to them. The idea that a predator stalked them at their most vulnerable made me furious—and determined to do something about it.
“We’ll find a way to stop this,” I promised. “When we do, can the spirits leave here?”
Eliza nodded. “We are all free to move on from this place, whenever we choose. I consider it a halfway house for wayward spirits,” she said with a faint smile. “Go back to your world,” she told me. “It’s cold here, and you have work to do.”
With that, Eliza Roberts turned and walked into the shadows until she vanished, leaving me alone in the moonlight.
“Cassidy!” Teag’s voice called. “Cassidy, can you hear me?”
I closed my eyes and let Teag lead me back to the warmth and light of the mirror, and through it, back to myself. I shuddered and drew a harsh breath.
“You’re cold as ice,” he said, letting go of the fabric ribbon to fetch me a sweater from my office and a glass of sweet tea. “Here you go,” he said, tucking the sweater around me and handing me the glass. I drank it down and snuggled into the soft wrap, waiting to warm up and feel the sugar rush. Teag sat quietly, patiently biding his time until I had recovered.
“What did you make of all that?” I asked, hoping that our connection through the spelled cloth had given him a front-row seat.
“It’s not the weirdest thing we’ve ever run into,” he said, sitting back once he was sure I wasn’t about to pass out. “We’ve seen dark witches drain energy from ghosts before, like cosmic batteries.”
“They weren’t particularly easy to stop, as I recall,” I replied and shivered. “But I don’t think that’s what we’re up against this time. At least, not from what Eliza knew. She made it sound more like a creature, almost a psychic parasite, something that gravitates to natural disasters and wars where there’s a lot of violent death.”
Teag fetched me a hot cup of coffee with plenty of sugar, and I gripped the mug, warming myself from its contents. “Alicia should be back soon,” I said, glancing at the time. “In the meantime, I’ve got a call to make.”
My cousin Simon picked up on the first ring. In certain circles, he’s better known as Dr. Sebastian Simon Kincaide, folklorist, author, former university professor, and now the owner of Grand Strand Ghost Tours.
“Hi Cassidy! Good to hear from you. Is this business or pleasure?”
“Business, unfortunately, although it’s always great to hear from you,” I replied, putting him on speaker so Teag could listen. “We’ve got a situation.”
“Tell me.”
I explained about the Ghost Bikes and the roadside shrines, the spirit refugees in the mirror, and the creature that tore apart George’s ghost. Simon listened to it all with rapt attention. He knows about my gift and what we really do here at the shop, and his background with mythology and the occult—not to mention his own abilities as a clairvoyant and medium—have come in handy.
“I think it’s a maita,” Simon said when I finished. “I’ve read about them, but I’ve never run into one before.”
“That’s a creature I haven’t heard about before,” I admitted. “And I thought we’d seen everything.”
Simon chuckled. “Probably not—although you do seem to see more than your share of cryptids and creepies. Maita come from African folklore, and there are varying tales depending on the tribal origin. Most agree that the maita begins as a cannibalistic witch and becomes a ravenous spirit after death—a soul eater.”
Teag and I exchanged a look. “How the hell do we kill it?” Teag asked.
“That’s the problem. There are ways to kill the living cannibal-witch to stop it from becoming a maita,” Simon replied, and I was in awe of his encyclopedic knowledge. “Once it’s become one, I’m not sure there’s a way to destroy it—at least, for someone on this side of the divide.”
“The divide?” I questioned
“The Veil,” Simon replied. “Between the living and the dead.”
That added a new wrinkle. “If someone were going to try to kill a maita, is there a type of weapon that might be better than others?”
“Cassidy, you can’t be serious. Please tell me you’re not thinking of going after one of these.”
“It’s kinda what we do, Simon,” I replied. “And we have a pretty amazing group of friends. So, weapon?”
Simon hesitated and then sighed. “Iron works on most spirit energies. Probably not salt, because it’s more of a creature than a ghost. I don’t think silver has any special protection either. The only thing the legends say about killing a maita is that its power is held in special stones in its stomach. Cut open the stomach, spill out the stones, and the maita is destroyed.”
“Do we have to do anything to the stones?” Teag asked.
“It wouldn’t hurt to scatter them, although I don’t think the maita can re-gather its energy,” Simon replied. “Just please, be careful. The lore is very spotty; don’t risk your life on it.”
We thanked him and hung up just as we heard a knock at the back door. Alicia Peters, a good friend, and a powerful spirit medium, stepped inside.
“What a day!” she and I both said in near unison and had to chuckle despite the dire circumstances. “You first,” I said, as Teag pulled out a chair for Alicia and I went to get her some sweet tea. I filled my coffee cup as well since I figured it was going to be a long night.
Where my magic reads the memories and energy resonance of objects, Alicia is a true psychic medium, able to talk to ghosts. I wondered how much our experiences checking out the same types of memorials differed.
“The ghosts are terrified, and some of them have gone missing—been destroyed,” Alicia said, sipping her tea. “They’re aware that something is preying on ghosts, and no one knows when it might come for them. It doesn’t feel like the power of a dark witch or a rogue necromancer. From what the ghosts could tell me—and it wasn’t a lot of detail—it sounds like we have a creature out there feeding on spirits.”
“Simon thinks it might be a maita,” I told her and was ready to explain when Alicia frowned.
“That’s really interesting. I’m surprised we haven’t run into something like that before,” she said.
“How’s that?” Teag asked.
Alicia took another long drink of the heavily sugared sweet tea, letting it replenish her. “Charleston was one of the top ports for receiving enslaved individuals back before the Civil War. Some of those people came from the areas where belief in the maita originated. Just like with Voudon and Hoodoo, people brought their beliefs with them, and sometimes, they mingled with other influences to become something new and different.”
“How do we fight it?” I asked. “Is this something Donnelly or Sorren could handle?” Archibald Donnelly is a mostly immortal necromancer, and Sorren, my boss, is a vampire. Their special abilities—and the fact that both are extremely difficult to destroy—have come in handy when we have to battle bad nasties.
Alicia shook her head. “I don’t think so. Simon told you that the maita has to be fought in the realm of the dead. It’s not a ghost, so Donnelly wouldn’t have any special power over it, and we don’t even know if he could cross over to that realm and get back, given what he is. Same with Sorren—he’s undead, not dead. I wouldn’t want to risk having him enter and not be able to come home. There are plenty of stories about living people being able to go across and get back if you’re careful.”
“We’ll need iron knives,” Teag said, “and I’ll bring my silver whip, just in case. Protection charms, definitely. And something to guide us back, in case the path isn’t clear.”
“Us?” I questioned. I had figured I would go—if we could figure out how to get to the frickin’ realm of the dead and that the others would stay behind to make sure I got home.
Teag and Alicia both glared at me. “Us,” Teag repeated forcefully, and Alicia nodded. “We all go, or none of us goes.”
“Okay,” I relented. “But if this creature exists in the realm of the dead, we can’t do anything until we know how to cross over—without doing it the usual way—so we can get back.”
“I think I know just the place,” Alicia said, giving me a grin I knew meant trouble.
“I know this road. There’s no bar here,” I said as Alicia drove us down Huguenin Road, the avenue of cemeteries where more than a dozen graveyards held centuries’ worth of Charleston dead.
“It depends on who’s looking,” Alicia replied as she parked along the side of the road. “I am a medium, after all.”
“Whoa,” Teag murmured as we got out of the car and stared at what my mind knew should have been an empty lot with the remains of an old foundation. Instead, a long one-story brick building stretched the length of the lot, running alongside the stone wall that marked the edge of Magnolia Cemetery, windows alight, and smoke rising from the chimney. A wooden sign proclaimed it to be “Hearseman’s.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, stretching out with my gift. I felt a strange resonance I’d never encountered before, something solid and yet not, real and other.
“For two hundred years, Hearseman’s bar stood where you see it, and while it served everyone, it was particularly known for taking care of the men who dug the graves at all the cemeteries on this road,” Alicia said. “The gravediggers, the groundskeepers, the landscapers, and the hearse drivers, as well as the priests and ministers who held the services—they all came to the pub when their work was over.”
“But it’s not there anymore,” Teag protested. “At least, it wasn’t—”
“It burned down seventy years ago,” Alicia replied. “The fire went up quick and took a lot of the regulars with it, as well as the bartender. Times had changed, and some of the community fathers didn’t think it was fitting to have a tavern adjacent to a cemetery. So the bar wasn’t rebuilt. But it never really went away.”
“It’s a gateway?” I asked.
Alicia nodded. “Among other things. When conditions are right and the ghosts are willing, Hearseman’s is as real as you need it to be. It’s a gathering place for spirits and for those of us who can see them. And if you walk out the back door, you walk into the nether realm.”
“How long will it last?” Teag asked, eyeing the old building skeptically. “We don’t know where this maita is or how to find it. What if we go through, and the tavern vanishes?”
“That would be bad,” Alicia admitted. “We’d have to find another gateway, and while they’re not uncommon, they’re not on every corner. As for locating the maita, I suspect it’s more likely that we’ll find him sniffing around Hearseman’s like a kid outside a candy store.”
“If the creature is stealing souls, it’s not going to be able to resist a big prize like Hearseman’s,” I said.
“I don’t think the ghosts who anchor the tavern are at risk if the maita prefers to poach the newly dead, like trauma victims,” Alicia replied. “But Hearseman’s attracts ghosts, new and old, when it appears. And Reginald, the barkeeper, says some of the recent customers have wandered away and not been seen again.”
“They’re ghosts. Is that so strange?” I asked.
“Reginald sounded like he kept track of his regulars and that the core group doesn’t change a lot. I got the impression he kept an eye out for the newcomers. But when he said that customers told him about hearing strange music that called to them, that’s when I thought it might be our maita at work,” Alicia replied.
Teag pulled out a small cloth bag from inside his jacket. “Before we go in,” he said and emptied three amulets into his palm. “I worked on these last night. They’re kinda like beacons to help us find our way home. Each of these has tendrils of energy that wind between the wearer and someone who serves as an anchor. The charm is woven using hair from both of you,” he added.
Alicia and I had both given Teag a bit of our hair, something we would only do for a person we trusted implicitly because hair is such a powerful, personal connection in magic. Apparently, he’d made some house calls as well.
“Cassidy, yours is linked to Kell,” he said, naming my serious boyfriend. “Mine, of course, is connected to Anthony,” he added. No surprise there since he and Anthony were a long-time couple. “And Alicia’s links to Megan,” he said, mentioning the medium’s wife. “They have all agreed to allow us to draw on their energy, woven together with ours, to give us a lifeline in case we get separated, or we can’t find our way back to the gateway.”
I slipped the amulet’s leather strap over my head and wrapped my hand around the charm. I could feel the thrum of Kell’s energy and my own and closed my eyes, appreciating that I had someone who cared so much about me.
“Hearseman’s is a place for the dead, not the living, so all the standard warnings apply,” Alicia said. “Don’t eat or drink anything, either in the pub or beyond. Injuries that happen across the Veil are real back here, so be careful. Don’t try to bring anything back with you that you didn’t carry over.”
Pretty simple, but myth and legend are full of people who couldn’t follow the rules.
Alicia led the way. I concentrated on my touch magic as we headed for the phantom bar, since I can often sense a strong resonance through the soles of my shoes. One minute, the ground beneath my feet felt neutral, and the next, as I stepped over the transom, my gift went flooey for a moment, like a compass spinning without finding true north. The floor held my weight, the bar’s patrons and furnishings looked solid, and the scent of pipe smoke, roasting meat, and beer seemed real enough. Yet my psychometry insisted that everything around me was not right, something other than it appeared. I just hoped I could tamp down the conflicting input from my gift before it gave me a splitting headache, or worse, distracted me in a moment of danger.
Hearseman’s looked like a country tavern, the kind that welcomed working men and women with dirt under their fingernails and a sheen of sweat from a hard day’s labor. Given the bar’s true age, there was no TV and no recorded music. The buzz of conversation, punctuated by occasional guffaws, filled the space.
Photographs around the room showed proud drivers with their fancy hearses from the Civil War on up through the bar’s lamentable demise in the 1940s. Those opulent hearses were quite probably the most dignified transportation the deceased would have ever known, and many a mutual aid society or beneficence organization took great pride in being able to send one of their own off in style.
Some long-time patrons were immortalized by the tools of their trade, shovels scrubbed clean enough to shine, fastened to the wall with a plaque commemorating those who wielded them. A few aged photographs showed dozens of men with dour expressions and somber black suits standing in rows for the camera, the proud gravediggers of the cemeteries of Huguenin Road.
I glanced at the ghostly patrons. Some were black men with arms of corded muscle, sitting next to beefy white fellows and Jews with yarmulkes and forelocks, sharing a bottle or a pack of cigarettes. A few hard-worn women gathered at their own table, their tanned faces and broad hands a testimony to a life of hard work. Despite what might have been common elsewhere when the tavern physically existed, Hearseman’s was open to all those who helped the dead cross over, regardless of color or creed.
“Hello, Alicia,” Reginald greeted the psychic from behind the bar. None of the regulars bothered to turn around. “You’ve brought friends.”
“Just passing through,” Alicia replied. She looked around at the patrons. “You’ve got a full house tonight.”
“People gather when they’re frightened,” Reginald replied, raising one eyebrow with a knowing look. “I’ll hold us here as long as I can, but best you be on your way and get back fast as you can, you hear?” He gestured toward a hallway that led into darkness.
Alicia thanked him, and we followed her down the shadowed corridor. The sounds of the tavern faded quickly behind us, making me wonder just how long the hallway extended. I thought we might pass the kitchen or some other rooms, but the passage was long, narrow, and unbroken until we came to a door at the end.
“Ready?” Alicia asked as we paused by the exit. When we nodded, she opened the door, and we entered the realm of the dead.
From the books and movies I’d consumed since I was a child, I expected something that looked like black and white photographs or perhaps a true underworld of caves and tunnels. Instead, I stepped into a blighted landscape of dead trees and withered plants.
“Is this the afterlife?” I asked, thinking that religion down through the ages had gotten the details terribly wrong if this was the endgame.
“No,” Alicia replied. “It’s an antechamber for souls that are too conflicted to move on. Spirits that want to leave our realm but don’t feel ready to go to the next level, so to speak.”
That made me feel marginally better since I didn’t want to vacation in this bleak place, let alone spend eternity here. My psychometry found an uneasy truce with the strange land underfoot, registering it much the way it did a cemetery—unquiet ground.
“How do we know where to look?” Teag asked. We had all pulled out our iron knives and other weapons when we left the back door of Hearseman’s, and now we stood back to back, surveying this strange, forbidding terrain. No birds sang, no leaves rustled, only the skeletal clicking of bare branches in the cold wind.
“There!” I whispered, afraid that if I spoke aloud, it would stop the music. “Can you hear it?” The notes of a flute carried through the air, beautiful and poignant, calling for me to follow. My spirit lurched at the sound as if it might be tempted to leave my body, and I clamped my hand around the amulet to ground myself.
“I hear it too,” Teag echoed, and Alicia agreed a second later. They looked as uncomfortable as I felt, torn between wanting to follow the music and find the maita and the sense of self-preservation that insisted on running the other way.
“Look!” Alicia pointed, and I saw that we weren’t the only ones to fall under the sway of the music. Two ghosts appeared ahead of us, too far to catch up with but still in sight. “Go back!” Alicia called out to them. “You’re in danger!” But the ghosts kept on walking, managing to stay far ahead even when we picked up our pace.
Then we saw the piper. The creature had a distorted body, with arms and legs too long and gangly to be right, and a hairless head with bat-like ears. The face might have been human once, but now the features were contorted, the nose pushed in and wrinkled, eyes slitted, mouth protruding like a lamprey with rows of sharp teeth that were visible when the maita paused its playing. A distended belly hung down with the weight of the spelled rocks inside. The monster raised its flute, which looked like it was made from a hollowed human bone, and began once more to play its tune.
“The ghosts look like they’re in a trance,” Teag said quietly. “They’re heading right to him.”
“I wonder why it pulls some and not others,” Alicia mused.
“Now’s the time,” I urged, “while he’s focused on dinner.”
We spread out and rushed forward, counting on the maita to be distracted by the ghosts, because the lifeless landscape offered us no cover. I veered right, Teag went left, and Alicia headed straight for him. Teag had his coiled metal whip, and while the silver might not do extra damage, the sharp edge of the thin blade was dangerous enough. Teag and I both had our iron blades ready, and I also had my athame, a wooden spoon with strong positive resonance from which I could pull power.
Alicia was our secret weapon, and while she also carried a knife, it was her ability to call spirits that might give us the advantage we needed. We closed in on the maita just as it reached for the first of the two mesmerized ghosts, sinking its claws through the insubstantial form and yet somehow snagging the wraith to draw it forward toward its maw.
Teag launched himself at the creature, striking with his iron dagger and landing a deep blow to the maita’s side. I dove forward at nearly the same instant, driving my knife through the maita’s tough hide and into its back. Neither of us could get a clear shot at the belly of the beast, where we needed to land the killing blow.
Realizing its danger, the maita let go of the ghosts it had snared and turned its attention to Teag and me. Its sharp teeth chattered, and its dark eyes watched us, and then it sprang at Teag, moving faster than its heavy belly suggested might be possible. It snapped at him with its teeth and grabbed for him with its clawed hands. Teag lashed out with his metal whip, cutting a deep gash across the maita’s chest but not low enough to make a difference. Behind me, I could hear Alicia calling out to the ghosts, asking for their help to bring down a threat bigger than any spirit could evade on its own.
I lunged at the creature, slashing with my knife, managing to land a blow close to its stomach, but not close enough. Teag and I wove and dodged, trying to steer clear of those sharp claws and pointed teeth and still inflict the damage necessary to destroy the maita and save the ghosts.
That’s when I realized it had grown much colder, and when I looked up, I saw that a host of spirits had answered Alicia’s summons. They surrounded us, watching as Teag and I battled the monster, managing to wound but not yet kill the maita. The creature lunged for Teag, ignoring the slash of his knife and the slice of his whip, and took them both to the ground, its sharp talons raking across Teag’s chest.
I leveled my athame, drew on its resonance, and sent a blast of cold energy at the maita, tearing him off Teag and sending him sprawling. Teag staggered to his feet, bloody but alive, and we both went after the maita before it could regroup.
The ghosts surged forward, massing around the downed monster. Individually, the spirits were at the maita’s mercy, but collectively, emboldened by Alicia, they were far too many for the creature to threaten all at once. The spirits swarmed over the maita, keeping it on the ground, and Teag and I approached warily, looking for our opportunity. I slipped my athame back beneath my sleeve and gripped my knife tighter, ready for the right moment.
The creature struck out against the ghosts, flailing with its sharp claws and kicking with its taloned feet, snapping its teeth and shrieking as the wraiths dodged its blows and fought back against the monster that stalked them. Teag circled around, coming in above the downed maita and then rushing forward to drop a loop of his sharp metal whip around its head as I mustered my nerve and dove for its bulging belly.
I plowed through the cloud of ghosts that were keeping the maita down, feeling as if I were sinking through ice-cold mist. The gray revenants were corpse cold, frigid as the tomb, and my whole body shuddered and shivered as I brought the iron knife down two-handed and sank it hilt-deep into the creature’s distorted abdomen.
The maita let out a piercing shriek that felt like someone raked a scalpel along my bones, but I couldn’t stop now. I had to trust that the ghost would keep the creature’s hands and feet away from me and that if Teag’s whip didn’t decapitate the maita, it would at least give it something else to fight against. Using all my strength, I ripped downward with the blade, opening the monster from chest to groin. Black ichor spilled out and with it hundreds of smooth stones of all sizes, each with a faint, sickly glow.
The maita bellowed in pain and fury, and one of its feet caught me on the thigh, ripping into my leg and sending me sprawling. Alicia’s voice rose, shouting for the ghosts to keep fighting, and their numbers grew, a surge tide that nearly hid the monster from my view.
Teag gave a final jerk on his whip and stumbled backward as the maita’s head came free, rolling clear of the ghosts. I crawled back into the fray and steeled myself for the freezing cold as I came back to finish the job.
A heap of glowing stones lay slick with foul black goo, spilled out between the maita’s legs. I swept them away with one arm, sending them out of the creature’s reach, and then fell on its body, digging into the cavity with my hands to make sure all of the stones had been removed, no matter how tiny.
Alicia found the bone flute that had fallen in the struggle and crushed it underfoot.
Bleeding and freezing, I startled as Teag laid a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Cassidy. It’s done. We need to go home.”
He helped me to my feet, and when I tried to put weight on my injured leg, I cried out. Teag leveraged his uninjured shoulder under mine.
“Quite a pair we make, huh?” he asked, and I could see he was as dead tired as I felt.
“Alicia?”
“Right here,” she said and then held both hands up in blessing, murmuring something that I didn’t catch but which made the ghosts pull back from the maita’s corpse. They regarded us in a somber, gray line like spectral soldiers.
“Thank you,” Alicia said to the spirits, and Teag and I added our gratitude. “The creature is gone. It can’t hurt you anymore. Take what rest you can.” She lowered her hands, and the spirits dispersed, some vanishing in a blink and others drifting away.
When they were gone, I could see the monster’s body. The head lay several feet away, severed by Teag’s sharp whip. The magic stones had been pushed far away from the corpse, and we scattered them even farther.
“I wish we could burn the body and those stones,” I said.
“Not sure how you start a fire in the realm of the dead,” Teag said with a pinched smile.
“Can something else find the stones and use them? What if there’s another one of those things out there?” I asked as the reality of the fight finally caught up with me. I was covered in blood from my hands to my shoulders, spattered with gore everywhere, and bone-weary.
“Then we’ll deal with it, when—if—it happens,” Alicia replied.
We turned around in the direction I was certain we had come from and saw nothing but a gray, blighted horizon.
“Where’s Hearseman’s?” My voice sounded hollow.
“It’s still there,” Alicia said, “the ghosts are watching it for me. But we need to get back. Reginald can only hold the gateway open for so long.”
“How—” I started to ask, and then I remembered the talismans, our very own ruby slippers to take us home.
I closed my hand around the amulet, and I felt the warmth of Kell’s concern and the life energy of the tether Teag’s magic had woven.
“Ready?” Teag asked.
“Very,” Alicia replied, and I nodded fervently.
We made slow progress, me with a bum leg and the others on the brink of exhaustion from the fight. Without the amulet, I would have despaired, because the way back seemed to stretch much farther than when we had come. Whether that was true or just a trick of the strange realm, I didn’t know, but when the lights of Hearseman’s finally came into view, I nearly cried in relief.
“Is it done?” Reginald asked as we made our way out of the long corridor and back into the pub. Despite the fact that we looked like we had come from a war, none of the patrons paid us any heed.
“It’s over,” Alicia said. “The maita was destroyed.”
“Thank you,” Reginald said, taking in all of us with his gaze. “We owe you a debt.” He inclined his head toward the door. “Now, you’d better get going. It’s time for us to move along.”
We hobbled out the door and into the night. I had no idea how long we had been in the realm of the dead, but I was hungry, tired, and thirsty and all I wanted was to go home.
To my surprise, we found three cars waiting on the darkened street. Anthony, Kell, and Megan stood huddled together and sent up a quiet cheer as we headed toward them. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the plot behind us was once again empty land. Hearseman’s had gone to wherever good ghosts went to drink, and I hoped I didn’t have reason to visit it again.
“We brought food, water, and first aid supplies, plus some whiskey—for medicinal purposes, of course,” Kell said as he came to relieve Teag of helping me hobble. Anthony was a step behind him, heading for Teag like a guided missile. Megan rushed for Alicia and pulled her into a tight hug, murmuring into her hair. I felt like we were returning from deployment back to our waiting loved ones, and perhaps that wasn’t too far off the mark.
The shadowed length of Huguenin Road held Charleston’s dead in its many cemeteries. I hungered for light and warmth. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “For the rest of the night, the world is going to have to look after itself. We’re officially off duty.”