“More glowing orbs.” Teag Logan sat back from his laptop computer. “I haven’t seen this many reports of spirit lights outside of the Old Jail in…come to think of it, never.” His dark hair, cut skater-boy long in front, hid his face as he stared at his screen.
“Can you find any connections?” I asked, leaning against the counter and sipping a cup of coffee.
Teag shook his head. “Aside from them all happening in Charleston and in the older sections of the city? No. At least, not yet,” he amended. “I’m working on it.”
I came back to the kitchen table, where my laptop was open, displaying a search screen. Teag had stopped by my house after work, and we’d ordered a pizza for dinner. “The appearances are getting more aggressive,” I replied. “At least, according to what the tourists are posting on the rating sites. People are getting chased by bobbing lights, tour groups scattered by dive-bombing orbs, and more than one driver claims that ‘glowing balls of lights’ caused accidents. We’ve got to figure out what’s going on before someone gets hurt.”
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antiques and curios shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. Teag Logan is my assistant store manager, best friend, and sometimes bodyguard. Taking responsibility for stopping ghostly harassment might seem strange for people who run an antiques store, but Trifles and Folly isn’t your average shop. I’m a psychometric, meaning I can read the history or magic of objects by touching them. Teag has Weaver magic, so he can weave magic into fabric and data into information, making him a hell of a hacker. My business partner, Sorren, is a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire who co-founded the store with my ancestor 350 years ago. We’re part of the Alliance, a secret coalition of mortals and immortals who get cursed and haunted objects off the market and protect the world from supernatural threats. When we succeed, no one notices. When we fail, the destruction usually gets chalked up to a natural disaster.
Tonight, Teag and I were holed up at my house, trying to figure out what had Charleston’s ghosts in an uproar. “Have we missed a practitioner moving into the area?” I asked.
Teag shrugged. “I would have thought that Rowan or Donnelly would notice a powerful new witch in town.” He referenced two of our friends who frequently brought their talents in magic and necromancy to help with the threats we fought against—the forces of darkness and things that go bump in the night.
“Someone could have brought in a powerful relic,” Teag said.
“Maybe. But again, if it were just someone mucking around with magic or powerful objects, Rowan and Donnelly would have also picked up on it.”
“What I don’t get is why it started all of a sudden.” Teag reached for his half-empty glass of sweet tea. “Like someone flipped a switch.”
“And it’s not just at one location.” I looked at the map where we had already marked all of the reported incidents we could find with red dots. Other than covering the Historic District and the antebellum houses South of Broad, the marks included museums, private homes, public parks, restaurants, shops, tourist attractions, members-only clubs, and—frequently enough to be dangerous—the middle of streets.
“Nothing about this looks like a normal haunting,” Teag said, shaking his head. And that right there summed up my life. We could use the term “normal haunting,” and it made perfect sense.
“We’d know if there’d been some sort of massacre,” I said, only partly in jest.
Charleston is a beautiful city built on a bloody history. The Spanish, French, English, and Americans all fought over the land and its harbor, and before the Civil War, the port was the busiest slave market in the United States. Back in the day, sailors and soldiers brawled, pirates raised hell, cutpurses stalked the dark alleys, and spoiled young rich boys challenged each other to duels. Yellow fever epidemics claimed tens of thousands of lives. Add a jail that in its day housed everything from serial killers to prisoners of war, often under abysmal conditions, and it’s easy to see why Charleston is one of the most haunted cities in North America. But nothing in the history—published or secret—suggested that there had ever been a mass killing in the area where the orbs were terrorizing people.
“Some of the newest reports talk about ghostly faces in windows or candles that move from window to window in empty buildings,” Teag said. Restaurants, hotels, and shops may thrive on rating sites to drive customers to their businesses, but the comments are a gold mine for tracking paranormal activity. Tourists either think they’ve seen a clever show or get scared out of their wits, and either way, they can’t wait to tell everyone on the internet.
“So whatever’s causing it is getting stronger or affecting more spirits.” I looked back at my computer, wishing it would just spit out the answer.
“What worries me are the reports of seeing people who look solid, and then they just vanish into thin air.” Teag ran a hand through his dark hair. “Or the ones who report a ‘feeling of dread’ that made them turn around and leave. It takes a lot of juice for a ghost to manifest that strongly. They weren’t doing it a month ago, so what changed?”
“I asked Kell what he and his team have run into.” My boyfriend, Kell Winston, heads up SPOOK, Southern Paranormal Outlook and Outreach Klub. They’re experienced ghost hunters and legit when it comes to documenting haunts. “He confirmed an uptick in activity that seemed to come out of nowhere.”
“Looks like we need to go for a walk again,” Teag said.
I glanced at the time. “It’s already eight. Don’t you want to spend the evening with Anthony?” I asked, mentioning Teag’s long-time partner.
“Yes, I’d like to spend the evening with him, but his firm’s been tied up with that big case that’s been in the news, so he’s been working all hours.” Anthony is a lawyer at his family’s law firm, a powerhouse in the Southeast.
“Kell’s busy with a project, so he won’t be stopping by either,” I said in commiseration. Kell is a freelance video producer when he’s not busy with SPOOK, and work is usually feast or famine.
“You know, the track record for big increases in spectral activity is pretty grim,” Teag said. “It’s never been for a good reason.”
We had fended off several rather dire situations that all caught our attention because of ghosts behaving badly. It takes a lot of power to upset spirits over a large area, and often there’s malicious intent behind it. So we knew to tread carefully.
“No time like the present,” I said, standing and gathering what we would need to stay safe while we did some recon. I grabbed the backpack I kept stocked and ready to go and double-checked the supplies. Plenty of salt, a large bottle of holy water, a coil of rope infused with colloidal silver, and several iron knives would provide a good baseline of protection against ghosts, along with the silver, agate, and onyx jewelry both Teag and I wore. Since we weren’t sure what we might be going up against, we made sure to conceal both silver and steel knives in sheathes beneath our jackets. I had a few more tricks up my sleeve, and I knew Teag would be equally well prepared.
I patted my little Maltese, Baxter, and told him we’d be back soon. He gave me a skeptical glare, then trotted off to finish his kibble. Teag and I headed out to my car and drove down to the Historic District, with both of us keeping an eye out for anything strange.
“Shit!” I jammed on the brakes as a flash of light bobbed in front of the windshield, then braced myself in case anyone behind me couldn’t stop. Fortunately, no crash came. “Did you see that orb?” I asked Teag breathlessly. He looked a little pale and wide-eyed himself.
“Yeah. When we get back, I’ll look to see if there’ve been more accidents than usual in this area. I bet there have been, even if the drivers didn’t tell the cops about the orbs.”
I could just imagine trying to explain to a police officer that a ghostly light made me wreck my car. Even if a driver had reacted to a spooky glowing ball, most people wouldn’t mention it.
We found a parking space—a minor miracle given how quickly the curb spots fill up in the residential areas—and went for a stroll. Normally, walking in Charleston’s historic neighborhoods is one of my favorite things. There are so many beautiful homes and gorgeous gardens. Tonight, I felt on edge, waiting for an attack.
I could see the tension in the way Teag moved. He’s an experienced mixed martial arts competitor, and it shows in the way he carries himself. Teag is tall and lanky, but although he looks lean, I’ve been in enough fights beside him to know it’s all whipcord strong muscle. While I can hold my own in a fight, I’m more likely to rely on magic than clever footwork.
The hot, humid evening felt sultry even for Charleston. I pushed a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind my ear, sure that with my pale coloring, I was already flushed from the temperature. We had walked a block before I realized what seemed strange.
“There should be more people out walking.”
Teag nodded. “Yeah. Usually, you’re dodging people out with their dogs or just stretching their legs after dinner.” Charleston is a walking town, both for tourists and for those of us lucky enough to live here. So the lack of pedestrians seemed odd, maybe even ominous.
I’d driven us to the edge of the area where the sightings were concentrated. We wouldn’t be able to cover all the territory tonight, but we could certainly walk toward the center of the disturbances and see what happened.
“I’m pretty sure we’re being watched,” Teag said, dropping his voice.
My intuition told me the same thing, although I didn’t see anyone on the sidewalk or peering out through the windows. The night felt too quiet, the air too still.
As we walked, the temperature grew colder, although in Charleston’s sub-tropical climate, it was far too early in the year for the weather to cool off. The back of my neck prickled, and the hair on my arms stood up as if the air was charged with static electricity. I let my wand fall from inside my sleeve into my hand, the handle of an old wooden spoon from which my touch magic could pull deep emotional resonance to harness power. Teag shifted, and I saw him palm an iron knife in one hand and a silver blade in the other.
“There!” I hissed, pointing toward the shadows where a live oak tree hung over a wrought iron fence. The gray form of a woman in an old-fashioned dress was clearly visible, looking solid enough that someone might not have taken her to be a ghost at first glance if they weren’t expecting haunts. Off to the left, a blue-white spirit orb materialized out of nowhere, bobbing at chest level near the door to a home on the other side of the street. I felt gooseflesh rise, although moments before, I’d been sweating.
“Look!” Teag pointed toward a historic home with darkened windows. I could make out a ghostly image framed by one of the casements, something that should have vanished in the blink of an eye but didn’t.
“Over there.”
Teag followed my nod toward a home on the opposite side of the street where a candle flame inexplicably hovered inside a dark upstairs window.
The sense of being watched grew even stronger, an oppressive weight that carried with it a sense of dread. I’m not a medium, and I have no special ability to speak with the dead. Yet my touch magic can often pick up on the emotional resonance a spirit leaves behind on objects, giving me a second-hand insight into the temper of the ghosts.
“I don’t think they mean to hurt anyone, not directly,” I said slowly as I tried to make sense of the impressions my gift gave me. “They’re disoriented, frightened, and angry, but not with us. It’s like they’re frustrated, and that’s making them lash out the only way they can.”
“How do we find out who’s calling them?” Teag asked as smaller orbs danced around us like fireflies. If the residents in the nearby homes saw the dancing lights, they chose not to show themselves. Maybe they were hiding behind drawn curtains and closed shutters, hoping that whatever roused the spirits of the dead would soon send them to their final rest.
“I think we need to pull Alicia into this.” Alicia Peters, another ally of ours, is a gifted medium. “I can sense the ghosts’ mood, but I’m not getting images that are clear enough to get an idea of what’s going on.”
“It would help to know what got them riled up all of a sudden,” Teag said. “Something changed, and until we figure out what, we’re all in danger.”
Teag and I stood back to back on the sidewalk as the orbs dove and rose, and a fog of spirits gathered all around us. I didn’t want to antagonize the ghosts since they hadn’t yet done anything truly hostile. They had shown themselves, perhaps their only way to communicate.
“We aren’t here to hurt you,” I said in a low, steady voice like I was talking to a spooked horse. “We might be able to help. Please don’t harm anyone. We’ll figure this out.”
For an instant, the lights grew brighter, the wind picked up, and the ghosts looked nearly solid. In the next breath, they vanished, leaving us alone on a balmy summer evening.
“I think they might have heard you,” Teag said. “Now let’s hope we can keep our side of the bargain.”
The next morning, Alicia called me before I had a chance to call her.
“Cassidy, something weird is up with the ghosts. I keep hearing ‘let us go,’ and then I get images of some really weird glowing bottles and an old-fashioned Victrola record player. Does that mean anything to you?”
I was out walking Baxter around the little garden in back of my house, and my stomach growled because I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. “No. At least, not yet. Was there any other context? Do you get anything out of it?”
“Except for a feeling of being trapped and an overwhelming sense of anger, no,” Alicia replied. “Except—”
“Yeah?”
“I had a few other impressions, but nothing to back them up. I don’t think that the ghosts I sensed are the ones causing the freaky haunted stuff people are talking about. The regular ghosts feel…disturbed. Upset. They might be warning us. I also think that the ghosts that went with the bottle vision had been dead for a long while. And they weren’t nice spirits. We need to be careful. There may be a reason someone felt they had to keep these ghosts locked up, and setting them free might not be a good idea.”
“Unfortunately, if they’re causing problems, they’re not as locked up as they used to be,” I said. “So whatever’s kept them in check this long is failing, and we need to find out where they are and how to keep them from hurting anyone.”
“I’ll keep listening for what I hear from any of the spirits who feel like communicating,” Alicia assured me. “And I’ll let you know what I find out. Yell if you need me.”
I went back inside, finished my breakfast and coffee, and got Baxter settled for the day. Before I had even pulled out into traffic, my phone rang again. This time it was Valerie, a local tour guide who is also a good friend.
“Hey, Cassidy, what’s going on with the ghosts? My customers like to be mildly spooked, not scared out of their wits.” Valerie was one of the best ghost-tour guides in the city. The normal ghosts didn’t make her bat an eye, so this was more confirmation that what we had going on was something that was anything but “normal,” even for Charleston.
“I don’t know yet, but I’m planning to find out. What have you seen?”
“Zippy orbs all over the place, ghosts sightings where we don’t usually see any, and so many cold spots, I started expecting snow.”
I told her what Teag and I saw on our walk and what Alicia had reported. “I’ll let you know if I hear what’s causing it,” I said. “And if anything changes, call me.”
Teag and our assistant, Maggie, were already at the shop when I got there. Teag greeted me with an official-looking envelope in hand. “I figured you’d want to see this. No idea what it is, but it looks important.”
I frowned as I read the return address, a local law firm. When I tore the envelope open and read the contents, I had to re-read the letter to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.
“What?” Teag asked.
“Trouble?” Maggie echoed.
I looked up at them, utterly confused. “Someone I’ve never heard of just willed their house and all the contents to Trifles and Folly.”
While Maggie and I handled customers in the front of the store, Teag went to the break room to research our mysterious benefactor. I also texted Sorren, my vampire boss, because this was the kind of thing he’d want to know about. After that, we were busy enough with customers that I didn’t come up for air until the pizza delivery guy arrived, and I realized Teag had called in an order. Maggie and I took turns going back to the kitchen to take a break and eat.
“Find anything?” I asked as I took a bite of pizza.
“Irene Sacripant, the person whose name is on the deed and the will, lived in the house for thirty years.” Teag leaned back in his chair. “The problem is, there’s no record at all of her existing before then. No birth or marriage certificates, no hits on the genealogy websites, nothing.”
Teag is a super hacker, so if he can’t find someone, there’s nothing to find. I glanced toward the door to the front to make sure no one was close enough to hear.
“Think she’s one of ‘our’ kind?” Meaning witch, vampire, shifter, or some other supernatural creature.
“Yeah, I think it’s likely. And thirty years ago, it was easier to disappear and invent a new identity than it is today. I’ve got a call in to Rowan and Donnelly and a few others to see if they know her. But there has to be a reason she left the house to Trifles and Folly.”
“That’s a first. I’ve never had anyone bring the estate sale to us before.”
“I’m really curious,” Teag said. “When can we get access to the house?”
“According to the letter, I need to go in and sign some papers. Maybe I can see if I can do that this afternoon, but the letter sounded like it was all wrapped up with a bow.” I tossed my paper plate in the trash. “We need to be smart about this. I have a feeling Irene didn’t pick us out of all the antique shops in Charleston because she wanted to sell off the family silver.”
“You think she’s got something supernatural in there?”
“Don’t you?”
Teag pushed his hair behind one ear. “Well, yeah. I just wanted to see if you thought the same thing.” He stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles. “If you’re okay with running the front a while longer, I’d like to keep digging. I’ve got a feeling that Irene was hiding her real identity, maybe hiding from someone. The house is up on the Ashley River, kinda remote.”
“Maggie and I can cover the store,” I told him. “It could be that Irene didn’t have any heirs and knew we’d take good care of her belongings. But my gut tells me that she picked us because of our ‘special skills.’ I think we just inherited a heap of trouble.”
Teag researched for a while, then came up front to cover for me while I went to see the lawyer, and a late afternoon surge of customers kept us from any meaningful conversation until after we closed. Maggie—who knows the scoop about what we really do—made us promise to call her if we needed anything and headed home.
“Did everything go okay?” Teag asked as we locked up.
I nodded. “It’s all signed, sealed, and official. Although, there was one thing that was a little off. The lawyer said that Irene’s will was adamant that I be given a detailed floor plan of the house.”
“Sounds to me like there’s something she wanted you to find.”
“Sorren said he’ll stop by my place after dark. Is Anthony still working late?”
“Yeah. He’s been dragging in around ten, so as long as I’m home before then, he’ll never notice. At least, not until the case is over.”
“I’ve got stuff in the fridge for dinner, and we can see if we can dig out any of Irene’s secrets while we wait for Sorren,” I said. Teag agreed and followed me in his car back to my place. Baxter yipped and danced when we came in, then chased me into the kitchen for his dinner after he got his snuggles. Teag and I chatted about the customers and local gossip while we made supper and ate, waiting to get back to the Irene problem until after the dishes were done.
“She wasn’t much of a joiner,” Teag said. “Which is unusual for Charleston. Especially thirty years ago. But I think I’ve turned up a photo.”
I leaned over his shoulder. The grainy picture was from a newspaper article, and from Irene’s expression, she wasn’t pleased to be captured on film. “If that’s really Irene, at least the photograph rules out her being one of the kinds of creatures who won’t show up on camera.”
“Well, that’s something,” Teag said grudgingly. “I’m going to try to run it through facial recognition software. The resolution isn’t great, and we’d be trying to match to a photo from before ‘Irene’ showed up here, which assumes those pictures would have been digitized, but I’ll give it a go.”
I spread the floor plan out on the table, and both Teag and I bent closer for a better look. “It’s a big house, but I don’t see anything unusual in the drawings,” I said, trying to figure out what had been so important to Irene. “And given where it’s located, there’s definitely no basement.”
“No hidden rooms, secret passageways—at least nothing marked.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” I replied, straightening. “Maybe she wanted us to find where the house has been altered.”
Teag raised an eyebrow. “Clever. The plans alone don’t give anything away, but she’s counting on us going through the house.”
I nodded. “The more I think about it, the more I doubt what Irene wanted us to deal with is going to be out in the open. Or at least, I don’t think the big problem will be just sitting in plain view.”
As soon as the sun set, I heard a knock on the door. I’d been expecting Sorren, but the way Baxter immediately sat with a goofy grin on his face confirmed it. Apparently, vampire glamor works on dogs, and my dog was utterly bespelled.
“Hello, Cassidy. I take it Teag is here too?” Sorren asked as he stepped into the hallway. Sorren looks like he’s in his late twenties, although he’s centuries older. With his blond hair in a trendy cut, gray eyes the color of a storm at sea, and dressed in a concert T-shirt and artfully ripped jeans, he looked like a grad student. Back in the day, he was the best jewel thief in Antwerp—before he was turned. Now he spends his time hunting down dangerous magical objects, moving among the many stores like ours he’s established all over the world.
“In here!” Teag called from the kitchen.
Sorren followed me back to where Teag was still at work on his computer. Sorren listened intently as I filled him in, both on the odd inheritance and everything we had learned about Irene Sacripant.
“I don’t recognize that name,” Sorren said, frowning. I can’t imagine sifting through six centuries of memories when I sometimes can’t recall the name of someone I met last week. “But the photograph seems familiar, though I don’t think from Charleston. Interesting.”
“We don’t know where she was before she moved here—or who she was,” Teag said. “The facial identification software is still looking, but it’s a slog when it comes to old photos.”
“I’d like to send Rowan and Alicia over to the house to get a feel for it—from the outside,” I said. “Nice to know what might be waiting for us.” I’d run into magical traps and aggressive ghosts too many times to walk in blind.
“I’ll go with you when you enter the house,” Sorren said, not making it a choice. “I agree that whoever this Irene was, she sought out Trifles and Folly because she expected there to be supernatural problems with her legacy. It would have been nice if she had given us a clue.”
It’s not uncommon for us to run into haunted objects and cursed heirlooms. A few real estate agents know to call me if they run into spooky problems with houses that come on the market after an owner’s death. And more than once, we’ve had to deal with collectors who acquired problem objects that had some seriously bad mojo attached to them. I shuddered to think what kind of trouble might be waiting for us in that old house.
“Do you know if Donnelly has noticed any issues with the local ghosts?” I asked. “Because I’m hearing things from Alicia and Valerie.”
“Archibald has been away handling an issue,” Sorren replied. “He’s only just returned. I’ll check in with him and meet you at the Sacripant house.”
Teag and I drove out to the property we’d inherited. “Rowan said she didn’t pick up any magical traps around the outside of the house. She couldn’t guarantee that the inside was safe, but she said that the power she sensed didn’t feel like a threat, even though it was very strong,” I said.
“And Alicia picked up on ghosts, around the house and in it, and she was worried about them being dangerous,” Teag added. “So…maybe magic, definitely angry spooks. Totally our kind of thing.”
I had Rowan on speed dial in case something went wrong, but she would have offered to go with us if she was worried about magic. In Alicia’s case, if there were dangerous ghosts around, I wanted the medium as far away as possible because her gift could make her vulnerable. Teag and I came prepared, although I hoped that tonight’s trip wouldn’t turn into a fight.
We pulled up to the house at twilight. The Sacripant place was probably at least a hundred years old, a two-story white clapboard house with deep porches on both levels. It must have been grand once, but it had fallen into disrepair, with peeling paint, an overgrown lawn, and missing shingles.
Large live oak trees formed a corridor along the driveway, old enough that their gnarled limbs dipped to the ground and rose back up again, and their upper branches hung heavy with Spanish moss. This close to the river at dusk, fireflies rose like fairy lights from the grass, and bullfrogs croaked. I could smell the salt marsh and beneath that, the wet-leaf smell of mold and decay.
“You’re sure we haven’t been pranked?” Teag wondered aloud. “Because that looks like something right out of a horror movie.”
“Perfect place to meet a vampire then, isn’t it?” I replied. Despite my attempt at humor, I agreed the place looked creepy, exactly like Hollywood’s idea of a haunted house.
“It’s a big place for her to live all alone,” Teag said as we got out of the car. Neither of us wanted to go closer until Sorren was with us. Teag glanced from side to side. “And there aren’t any neighbors close.”
“The obituary said she was in her eighties.” I wondered about the woman who had lived here. None of Teag’s picture-matching programs had worked, but I figured that was due to how bad Irene’s single photo had been. That didn’t give us much to work from. Maybe we’d find a better one in the house, or with luck, the answers to Irene’s mysterious past.
“I trust you came prepared.” Sorren came up from behind us soundlessly, and I managed to merely flinch instead of jump. Moving quietly is one of the perks of his Dark Gift, along with enhanced strength, healing, heightened senses, and of course, near immortality.
“Of course,” I replied as Teag nodded, and I hefted my backpack full of salt, holy water, and silver, in addition to the weapons and protective charms we wore. Sorren didn’t look heavily armed, but his abilities were lethal on their own, and I saw two iron blades in sheathes on his belt.
I hadn’t needed my wand when we had confronted the ghosts downtown, but I felt better feeling its comforting weight in my hand as we walked toward the house. I jangled the old dog collar I wore wrapped around my left wrist, and the ghost of Bo, my old golden retriever, appeared next to me, my spirit animal and protector. Silver bracelets and an agate necklace helped to ward off supernatural threats.
Teag carried an iron blade in his right hand and had a second blade ready in a sheath on his hip. A hand-loomed belt woven with protective magic wrapped around his waist, and I knew that the knots dangling from it stored extra power, like batteries for him to draw on. He wore amulets of his own, a hamsa and an agimat, and an earring of black onyx. We both had loose salt and iron shavings in our pockets. We knew the drill. It was showtime.
“I’ve called Archibald. He’ll meet us here as soon as he can,” Sorren told us. It says something about my life that I take comfort in having a powerful necromancer along for the ride.
The night felt darker as we reached the steps to the porch. Although the place was badly in need of maintenance and minor repairs, for its age, it didn’t look at risk for collapsing on our heads. That was a plus. I hesitated on the steps, listening to my magic. When there’s a strong resonance, I can pick up on it through the soles of my shoes, and the impressions already beginning to creep into my consciousness were disquieting.
“Cassidy?” Teag asked, hanging back.
I nodded to let him know I was okay. “There’s bad stuff in there. Nothing we didn’t already know.” As Teag opened the door and invited Sorren inside—it’s a vampire thing—I concentrated on the input from my psychometry, hoping for something more helpful than just “trouble.”
“There’s a lot of negative psychic energy,” I said, trying to put feelings into words. “It’s seeped into the house itself, so whatever’s causing it isn’t new. But I think that losing Irene made it worse.” I shook myself out of concentrating so hard, so I could pay attention to my surroundings.
“Can it contaminate us?” Sorren asked.
I shook my head. “It’s not a sickness. More of a deep rot.”
“How did we not notice this place with that kind of energy?” Teag asked.
“If Cassidy’s right, it hasn’t always been…transmitting…like this,” Sorren said. “Perhaps Irene was the key to keeping the energy in check, and now that she’s gone, whatever was bound is working its way free.”
That thought chilled me, but I felt certain Sorren was correct. I stood in the old house’s entranceway and looked around. Teag had turned on the lights, but they barely made a dent in the gloom. Either Irene had used very weak lightbulbs, or the house had a darkness that light itself couldn’t dispel.
Long ago, the house had been grand. Now, the inside looked as worn and shabby as the exterior. A layer of dust lay over everything, and heavy cobwebs in the corners and on the chandeliers made me suspect they predated Irene’s death. I had feared that she might be a hoarder—one more reason to leave everything to the store to sort through—but as we moved slowly from room to room, I realized that given her age, the house was surprisingly uncluttered.
“No mirrors,” Teag noted as we moved from the parlor to the dining room. “That’s odd.”
A surge of vertigo hit me so hard I stumbled. Teag swayed on his feet as well. Only Sorren seemed unaffected. “Did you feel that?” I asked, a little breathless.
“Yeah, but I don’t know where it came from,” Teag said. “It felt…weird…like getting a head rush on a roller coaster.”
“I felt nothing,” Sorren said, frowning. “Interesting.”
I walked into the library. High bookshelves filled with leather-bound tomes and a worn, comfortable chair beneath a floor lamp gave me an idea of how Irene spent her evenings. On the far side of the room sat a leather couch that looked comfortable and well-used. A writing desk with tidy stationery and pens sat against one wall.
Tucked into the corner on a mahogany stand was a very fancy, old-fashioned Victrola, albeit one that appeared to be custom-made. I hadn’t noticed any portraits or pictures in the more public rooms, but here I spotted several framed black and white photographs and yellowed newspaper clippings.
I looked at the shelves, noting that each one held a variety of silver-plated knick-knacks nestled among the books. Fine white dust covered everything, even thicker on the shelves than elsewhere. I saw chunks of onyx and agate, minerals known for their protective properties, used as bookends.
Bundles of dried plants tied with ribbon were nestled on shelves, on the mantle, and on the windowsills. The room held the faint odor of sage, and I saw an abalone shell filled with ashes that I guessed was used for frequent smudging. Sigils that I recognized as wardings against evil had been drawn on the windows with soap.
“Irene must have been afraid something was going to get in,” I said, noting the abundance of precautions.
“But we haven’t seen any markings or protective objects in the other rooms,” Teag pointed out. “Maybe she made the library her fortress.”
My attention went back to the photographs. “I think I’ve got something,” I called out. I leaned over for a better look, hesitant to touch anything and activate my magic unless I had to. More than once, a strong reading has knocked me flat on my ass, and we still didn’t know what we were up against.
The woman in the photograph was a much younger version of the matron in the picture Teag found online. Irene sat primly in a long black gown at a table surrounded by six other people, all of whom were holding hands. The newspaper clipping’s headline read, Chicago Welcomes Famed Medium.
“She was a medium,” I reported as Teag and Sorren joined me. Teag lifted the framed article to read it in better light.
“That’s Irene,” he said, “but this says her name is Catherine Jenkins.” He set the frame back on the bookshelf and reached for his phone, doing a quick search.
“That’s interesting…Catherine Jenkins shows up quite a bit. She was a medium who appeared to have real talent, and she traveled all over, often hosted by the rich and famous. Even some of the infamous—a few reputed mobsters were big fans of her Vegas appearances. Oh…”
“What?” I prompted.
“According to this article, she vanished without a trace thirty years ago. She wasn’t married and didn’t have children. Some of the theories said that the Mob put out a hit on her for knowing too much, and others said she might have committed suicide.”
But we knew better. Catherine—Irene—had pulled a disappearing act worthy of Houdini and lived out the rest of her life in seclusion. “Why would a medium choose to live in a haunted house?” I asked. I didn’t have any special talent to see ghosts, but my psychometry picked up on plenty of ghostly energy. Even if I didn’t see them, I knew they were all around us, some stronger than others, watching and waiting. And as Alicia warned, I had the distinct impression that not all the ghosts were friendly.
Sorren had moved to the desk and withdrew a folder, wiping off a layer of dust. The vibrant red of the cardstock seemed out of place among the faded memorabilia of Irene’s exile. “I have the feeling Irene wanted us to find this,” he said. “Since it’s quite a bit newer than anything else here.” He flipped open the cover, revealing more articles and a slim journal. Sorren set the journal aside and leafed quickly through the clippings.
“It would appear that Catherine Jenkins attracted a questionable clientele in the years just before her vanishing act,” Sorren said. “Mobsters, politicians of ill repute, and very rich men with sordid reputations apparently wanted her to plumb the secrets of the afterlife for them. She was investigated for her connections, especially when some of her clients disappeared. None of the charges stuck, but that’s not very forgiving company.”
I looked at the photograph of Catherine at the séance table. “Do you think she was coerced into doing readings for crooks and wanted out?”
“Maybe,” Teag said, moving to stand beside Sorren. He picked up the journal and turned the pages. I looked over his shoulder, but at this distance, I couldn’t make out the cursive script in faded ink.
“If I’m reading this right, I think Catherine took notes on the sessions she had with her more infamous clients,” Teag said. “Just from the ones I’ve read, it looks like they wanted her to contact other dead criminals to find out where they hid their stash or get information that they could use for their own benefit.”
“Let me see what I can pick up,” I said. Teag pulled out the desk chair, and I sat since I didn’t want to find myself suddenly on the floor from a particularly strong reading. Teag and Sorren stayed close, protecting me since I was vulnerable in a trance.
I laid my hand flat on the journal, and immediately, I saw the room through Irene’s eyes. Everything looked fresher, newer. Opened curtains let the sunshine in, and the dust and cobwebs were gone. The library looked comfortable and lived-in, but I could feel the uneasiness of the woman who had made it her hermitage.
Irene was afraid. I picked up on the fear clearly, though the reason was less clear. She felt guilt over the way she had been forced to use her gift, and she loathed the men who had coerced her into being a part of their crimes. And yet, I had the oddest feeling she wasn’t afraid of being found or that she feared arrest. No, her fear ran deeper than that. She didn’t fear death. Irene Sacripant feared the dead.
I came back to myself with a gasp, and Teag gently took the journal from me. He pulled a sports drink from his backpack and pressed it into my hand. I gulped it down, needing the sugar and wanting a moment to compose myself and order my thoughts. Bo’s ghost, my spectral protector, bumped against me, reminding me of his presence and protection.
“She was afraid of the spirits doing…something,” I told them. “But I’m not sure whose ghost she was worried about or what she thought they’d do. Maybe she thought that the ghosts the mobsters made her contact were angry at being disturbed.”
“I’d like to read that journal more closely,” Teag said. “There were some odd phrases about ‘preserving souls’ and ‘cheating the scales’ that don’t make a lot of sense.”
Sorren shook his head. “I think we’re missing something here. The story doesn’t add up. Let’s have a look upstairs, and then see if we can find anywhere that the blueprints you talked about don’t match the current rooms.”
The second floor held bedrooms and bathrooms. All but one appeared to have been long disused. Some of the rooms weren’t even furnished, and the bedchamber that had been Irene’s was oddly devoid of personal possessions beyond clothing.
“It looks like she spent most of her time downstairs,” I said. “In the library, I’d guess.”
“That room does appear to have been her focus,” Sorren replied, in a tone that made me wonder what he was thinking.
Another wave of vertigo almost dropped me to my knees. For a few seconds, everything around me looked blurry, and I had the oddest sense that it was reality itself and not my eyesight that was affected. This time, I swore that the house shook beneath my feet like we were having a private earthquake. Beside me, Bo’s ghost growled and bared his teeth.
“Did you—” I asked Teag, who nodded with a sick expression as if he wanted to puke. My stomach was fine, but my head had started pounding. Once again, Sorren missed out on the excitement, and I figured it was no accident that the undead guy wasn’t being affected.
“Let’s finish what we came to do so we can leave,” Sorren said, and I knew his response was from worry for our safety.
Teag unfurled the blueprints, and Sorren paced off each room upstairs, comparing the dimensions to those on the drawing. All of them matched exactly. Sorren found the access to the unfinished attic, but a quick examination revealed nothing hidden or even stored among the rafters.
He repeated the process downstairs, starting in the parlor. The front room, dining room, and kitchen all matched the blueprints. But in the library, Sorren’s measurements didn’t add up. He paced the walls again, and once more, the numbers were off.
“We’re missing a couple of feet along that wall,” Teag said, pointing to the back of the library.
We all walked over to take a closer look. I squatted to look at the floor. “I think there’s a salt line here.”
Teag and Sorren ran their hands along the shelves and the supports, pressing their fingers into crevices, checking to see if any decorative carvings might activate a hidden latch.
I hung back, readying salt and holy water in case we were attacked. “It’s gotten colder in here,” I noted. “And it feels like we’re being watched.”
“I think…yes. There,” Sorren murmured, and we heard the snick of a hidden latch. Part of the bookshelves swung forward like a door.
Inside the secret compartment were more shelves, but instead of books, these held rows of glass jars and odd wax cylinders. The jars were each topped with a strange collection of copper wires which both fastened the stopper securely and extended down into the containers themselves. More disturbing were the odd flashes of green and blue that flickered intermittently like a slow heartbeat.
“What the hell?” Teag said.
I moved closer, still keeping weapons at the ready. Inside the hidden room, a thick layer of salt lay on the floor, which Sorren and Teag were careful not to disturb. Suddenly, the abundance of silver, onyx, and agate decorations on the shelves made a lot more sense.
“Those are Leyden jars,” Sorren said. “Bastardized, to be sure, but the spiritualists of the eighteen-hundreds thought the soul to be mostly electrical, and the jars could store electricity somewhat like a battery.
“Those rolls. They’re Edison cylinders,” I said in a hushed voice. “That Victrola wasn’t created as a music player; it was originally meant to record the voices of the dead.”
“So you’re saying that Irene recorded the confessions of the dead and trapped their souls?” Teag asked, aghast.
It all clicked into place. Catherine’s hatred of her criminal patrons, their unexplained deaths, and her dramatic disappearance, as well as Irene’s voluntary exile and the numerous warnings. Hell, it even gave me a good idea about what was up with all the ghosts downtown, if they were afraid Catherine’s bottled criminals might stage a jailbreak and descend on the city. All the orbs and manifestations were good spirits trying to warn us in the only way they knew how.
“She got her revenge,” I replied. “Whether or not she killed the men who forced her to work for them, I think she stole their souls. Maybe she wanted to punish them or thought they might cause harm from beyond the grave. But that’s why she went into hiding. She was their prison guard.”
“And once she died, without her magic to help keep the souls contained, they’ve started to ‘leak,’” Teag added, taking a step back reflexively.
“I’m not entirely certain about her motives, but I think we have discovered why Irene left the house—and its contents—to the shop,” Sorren said in agreement.
“No mirrors,” I said, suddenly making the connections. “Stories say ghosts can hide in reflective surfaces or travel between mirrors. That’s why there aren’t any.”
“So we’ve basically got a toxic waste dump of damned souls,” Teag said. “And we get to be the supernatural hazmat crew.”
I felt a chill against the back of my neck, but not from the ghosts in the hidden chamber. The air behind me stirred, and I had the overwhelming sense that someone stood behind me. “Where did Irene die?”
“No idea,” Teag replied. “Why?”
“I’m betting she passed away right here,” I said. “And I don’t think she ever left.”
The door to the hallway slammed behind us, and the wooden slatted shutters closed by themselves as the lights flickered wildly. The temperature plummeted as if we were in a walk-in freezer, so cold I could see my breath. The house shuddered, hard enough this time to rattle the objects on the bookshelves and make the chandelier swing.
Vertigo hit me hard, making me reel, and I caught myself with a hand on the edge of the writing table. The room…wavered. It shimmered like heat rising off asphalt, its dimensions skewing until it looked as if it were trying to fold in on itself.
Teag had gone pale, looking as if his knees might buckle. Sorren drew both his iron blades, alert for an attack.
“Look!” As my vision cleared, I could see what had caught his attention. A red pinprick of light glowed almost too brightly to look at, right in the center of the wall behind the Leyden soul jars.
Irene’s ghost took shape, standing between us and the shelves, and I could not tell whether her intent was to protect us from the trapped souls or to keep the glowing jars safe from our interference. Bo lowered his head and growled, baring his teeth.
Gooseflesh rose on my arms. The air felt charged with twisted energy; perhaps the tainted magic used to imprison the souls or force their unwilling confessions. Irene did not attack, but she did nothing to lessen the assault to our senses. Behind her, the red light grew from a speck to a larger dot.
“You willed the house to us.” I thought perhaps Irene didn’t recognize us and thought that we were come to steal or harm her unholy collection. “We’re here because you summoned us.”
Teag moved behind me and grabbed the journal. He paged to the end and then looked up at Irene’s determined ghost. “It’s not just the evil spirits you trapped, is it?” he asked. “There’s something else here we need to figure out before we try to deal with the jars, and you want us to figure it out.” Irene nodded.
The house shuddered again, sending a fine white cascade down the bookshelves. Salt, I thought. Not all dust. She lined the shelves with salt. But did she mean to keep the souls inside, or keep something else out?
Another tremor, this one hard enough to rattle the glass dangles on the chandelier. Behind Irene’s ghost, the pop-pop-pop of shattering bottles sounded like gunfire as three of the Leyden jars exploded, freeing the spirits housed inside. I didn’t need to be a medium to feel the shift in the room and know that the ghosts who had freed themselves were malevolent and hungry.
Three glowing red orbs from the broken jars dove at us as Bo snarled and jumped to intercept. I didn’t know what would happen if those orbs hit us, but I doubted it would be good. Teag deflected one with a slash of an iron blade, which made it veer and dimmed its light for a second.
Sorren’s quick reflexes kept him out of the way of the dive-bombing balls of energy, and he struck again and again with his iron knives, forcing the spirit lights to draw back or lose some of their glow. I couldn’t spare much attention for Irene, but I wasn’t sure whether her ghost was trying to block the orbs or us. The orbs blinked in and out as we tried to hold off the attack, and Bo continued to lunge and snap at them.
My martial arts experience wasn’t as extensive as Teag’s, and I didn’t have Sorren’s speed. I leveled my athame at those that came my way and pulled on its strong emotional resonance, sending a blast of cold power that swept the balls of light out of its path and rattled the bookshelf behind them. I angled my shot so I didn’t break any more of the bottles, and after I hit the orbs a few times, they drew back, giving me space.
The orbs obviously disliked contact with iron as much as they reacted to the force of my magic, and whether being struck hurt them or drained energy, it didn’t matter so long as it kept them clear of us. Our defense hadn’t gotten rid of them, but they were considerably dimmer than when we started, and I wondered if they could recharge or if we might win if we could outlast them.
“Cassidy, the light!” Teag said, and I saw that the fiery red light had grown to at least the size of a quarter. “What is that?”
“Nothing good,” Sorren replied.
The room shuddered, but this time it felt different. Even Sorren jolted with the tremor, and in the next heartbeat, the door to the hallway crashed open, splintering with the force that broke through the power holding it shut.
Archibald Donnelly framed in the doorway, and behind him, Father Anne Burgett. Donnelly was a big man with a shock of white hair and the kind of bushy sideburns and mustache that went out of style with the Civil War. Put a pith helmet on him, and he’d look like one of those English colonels from the height of the British Empire. Father Anne, a highly unorthodox Episcopalian priest, couldn’t be overlooked with her short, spiked black hair, clerical collar over a black T-shirt, and steel-toed Doc Marten boots.
“Watch out!” I shouted to warn them. “Irene trapped souls, and they’re getting loose!”
Donnelly gestured and spoke a word of power. A golden glow sprang up between where we stood and the wall of jars, keeping the orbs—for now—on the other side along with the slowly growing red light.
“She’s not their jailer. She was helping them cheat death,” Donnelly replied, anger sparking in his eyes. His gaze fell slightly behind me, where a cloud of mist coalesced into the figure of the woman in the photographs. “Aren’t you, Catherine?”
He didn’t wait for the spirit to answer. “The criminals were afraid of having to pay the consequences for their actions. They feared eternal judgment, going to hell. And so they bribed Catherine to ‘bank’ their souls, putting off the inevitable. She was their guardian—and their protector.”
“So you can just send them on, right?” I asked. I’d seen Donnelly go up against some scary-powerful entities. A few bottled ghosts seemed tame in comparison.
“Unfortunately, these aren’t just any souls. They’ve grown stronger and even more vengeful by being contained,” Donnelly replied, glowering at Irene’s ghost. “For a medium to use the gift to do such a thing is forbidden in every tradition. The reckoning they’ve cheated has grown impatient.”
“You mean hell’s coming to get them?” Teag asked, horror making his voice sharp.
“That’s exactly what I mean. Without Irene’s magic to hold the wardings in place, the containment spells are weakened. They’ve been degrading since her death. And when they fail, a hell-mouth is going to open to lay claim to the souls that belong to it.”
Holy shit. We were on the brink of a supernatural Chernobyl.
“So she willed the house to us to clean up her mess?” I asked, feeling a lot less charitable toward Catherine/Irene’s ghost.
“That’s my guess,” Sorren said. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve ended up picking up the pieces after someone else made an unholy bargain.”
“We’ve got one chance,” Father Anne said, stepping up to stand beside Donnelly. “When Archibald drops the barrier, I’m going to chant Last Rites while he keeps the hell-mouth from opening completely. All of you need to keep the spirits off us—they’re going to fight as hard as they can to keep from being destroyed. But be careful—you don’t want to get sucked into the maw yourselves.”
No indeed.
“Ready?” Donnelly rumbled. “Now!”
The scrim of glowing power vanished. The orbs had regained their energy, and they launched a furious attack, ignoring us to dive at Donnelly and Father Anne, recognizing that they had the magic to send them on.
The glowing red hell-mouth had grown larger, at least the size of a baseball, and blindingly bright. How much larger did it have to get, I wondered before it could pull us all into its infernal blaze?
I didn’t want to find out, so I gathered my magic and used the cold force of power that blasted from my wand to sweep the orbs away from the priest and the necromancer. Bo dodged and lunged, planting himself squarely in front of Father Anne and Donnelly. I was on their right, with Teag on their left. Sorren moved fast enough to blur wherever he was needed.
The room shuddered once more, knocking the silver statues from the shelves and sending picture frames crashing to the floor. The crystal chandelier overhead vibrated hard enough that its pendants clattered like wind chimes. The rest of the Leyden bottles exploded, sending shards of glass flying as the terrified souls imprisoned inside fled the judgment seeking them.
The air smelled of sulfur and ash but was still freezing cold. Maybe my imagination got the best of me, but I could swear I heard distant screams coming from the direction of that infernal, blood-red light. Father Anne shouted the Last Rites defiantly while Donnelly wove magic to recapture the dozens of soul-orbs that careened through the room. Irene’s ghost had grown stronger, gray but looking almost solid, and I realized that she had gained enough energy from our magic to call to her power.
“Push when I say,” I heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice whisper in my ear as a chill ran down my spine.
The ghost orbs dimmed, whether because of necromancy or the Last Rites, and Irene raised her arms, standing only a few feet from the hell-mouth. She threw back her head and shouted something I could not hear, but the ghosts took heed, gathering around her.
Now.
I mustered my courage, reached for my magic, and pushed with all my power, sending a blast from my wand with all the energy I could summon.
The blast shoved Irene and the orbs that clustered all around her directly at the glowing hell-mouth. Donnelly shouted and threw up his glistening barrier as soon as my burst ended, as Father Anne called out the final words of the Last Rites at the top of her voice. Bo huddled next to me, his spirit safe on this side of the energy curtain.
The hell-mouth widened, and I had to look away because it was like gazing into the sun. But I glimpsed Irene, silhouetted against the crimson fire, shoving the orbs into the inferno, and then, with a scream, being drawn inside herself. The maw flared, and I threw up my arm to shield my eyes. Wails and shrieks filled the air, deafeningly loud.
Then, suddenly, all went dark and quiet.
I lowered my arm and opened my eyes. The far wall held no glowing bottles, wax cylinders, or pulsing orbs. Everything was gone, and in its place was a blackened scorch mark where the hell-mouth had been. Irene and the souls she had helped to cheat fate were gone.
“Was that really…Hell?” Teag asked in a voice just above a whisper.
Donnelly shrugged. “It was what they expected, feared, and thought they deserved. It is real enough for them.” His unruly white hair looked like it had stood on end, and the outlay of power showed in his eyes.
“Expectations are powerful things,” Father Anne replied, her voice raw from shouting. “But where they’ve gone, they won’t trouble anyone, ever again.”
“What would have happened if you and Irene hadn’t forced the souls through?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“The hell-mouth would have taken them, and everything else it could pull into itself,” Donnelly answered. “And without my magic and Father Anne’s litany, there’s no saying whether it would have sealed back shut.”
“Thank you all,” Sorren said. Donnelly inclined his head in acknowledgment, while Father Anne just shrugged as if it were all in a day’s work. Sorren looked to Teag and me. “I believe we’ve removed the danger that caused Irene to will us the house. But tomorrow, I’ll meet you here at dusk, and we’ll check everything over again to make sure. If there are any other tainted objects, we’ll handle them, and the rest can be appraised.”
I looked around the room. Other than the disarray near the bookshelves and the burn on the wall, you’d never know we faced down a soul-fueled nuclear meltdown. No one outside the house would ever know how close the world had come to catastrophe. But we knew, and even if that knowledge didn’t change the world, it changed us.
We saw things we couldn’t un-see, knew things we couldn’t forget, and would dream of what could never be expunged. It wasn’t the magic that kept us sane and functioning, it was each other, and the small network of allies and loved ones who believed in us. In what we did, anything could happen, and every day could be the last, so I’d learned to find comfort in the small things that grounded me.
“I’d really like dinner and a drink,” I said. “Anyone care to join me?”