A Demonic Bundle (47 page)

“Say it again.”

The woman mouthed the words again, and when Jo shook her head, still not making out what she said.

“I’m sorry. I can’t see you well. Can you step into the light?”

The woman shook her head, and Jo wondered why not. Why did she have to cling to the shadows?

Loud laughter and voices drew Jo’s attention away from the woman. A group of drunken revelers weaved down the sidewalk toward them. Jo moved out of the way, giving them plenty of space to pass as their impaired motor skills were making it hard for them to navigate.

When they finally weaved and cackled their way to the next block, Jo turned back to the woman.

She was gone.

“Hello?” Jo called, searching the shadows for her. “Hello?”

She looked, seeing nothing. No hint the woman had ever been there. Just as before.

She walked to the corner of St. Ann and Royal, which was the only direction she could have gone in. Otherwise she would have had to pass Jo. But Jo saw no one who looked like the woman on the streets.

She debated, then paced back to Ren’s. No sign of her at all.

Then Jo heard a noise and looked up. Erika’s cat sat up on the courtyard wall, peering down at her with pale eyes that flashed iridescently in the streetlight.

Jo stared at the cat. The cat stared back, those glittering eyes familiar, and the strangest notion entered her mind.

No. She was being crazy. Yet again. How could she even consider something so outlandish?

She tugged her purse up higher on her shoulder and started walking briskly in the direction of Royal.

She laughed out loud at her train of thought, realizing she probably looked and sounded like a madwoman. Not that her behavior would even merit a second glance in the Quarter.

But she felt like she might be going mad. In fact, given the events of the whole week, the chances were pretty high.

Was she really entertaining the idea that the strange mute woman and Erika’s cat were one and the same?

She hastened her steps as if she could outrun the preposterous and frankly disturbing idea.

J
o was relieved when she made it home without any more sightings of disappearing mute women—who could potentially be cats. Or little dead girls in rainbow-striped bathing suits. Or anything else that might be perceived as disturbingly weird. And that signified her fall into the abyss of insanity.

She bolted her door, then rooted around in her purse for her cell. She dialed Maggie’s number, waiting only two rings before her friend answered.

“You made it?”

“Yes,” Jo said, trying to sound normal. God, she was feeling anything but.

“Good. Listen, Jo, I’m sorry if we sounded critical about Maksim. I think it’s great that he’s been a help.”

Jo nodded, then realized Maggie couldn’t tell that over the phone. “Thank you, Maggie.”

“And I want you to know you can tell me anything. Erika, too.”

“I know,” Jo said, believing her friend. But still none of the truths of her life in the past few months came to her lips. Why? What held her back?

Maggie would understand her pain over Jackson’s betrayal. Maggie had been badly hurt by a man before meeting Ren. If anyone would know how Jo felt, it would be her.

And Erika always believed in the ability to tell the future. She loved going to psychics. She’d believe Jo’s story about her sister and the long-ago-experienced premonition. She’d probably even believe her about what she’d thought she’d seen.

Yet, no words came. Why? Why?

Despite her questioning, she knew the answer. If she told her dear friends, then everything would be real. She couldn’t deny it any longer. And she wasn’t ready for the truth. About anything. She wanted to hide—to let all those things stay in her past.

But they can’t. Not now. Not with what was happening.

“You’ll talk to us when you are ready, right?”

Jo blinked, almost forgetting Maggie was still on the end of the line. How long had she been silent?

“Yes,” Jo said. “Thanks.”

Jo said good-bye and hung up. She set her phone on the kitchen counter, then looked around, not quite certain what to do next.

She glanced at her phone, tempted to call Maksim. But instead, she shook her head. As if she didn’t have enough going on. She didn’t need to add him to the mix.

Sighing, she headed to her bedroom. Tonight, she would crawl into bed early. Maybe read. Do something calm and normal and relaxing.

She changed into a pair of baggy men’s-style pajamas, then crawled into her bed. She grabbed a novel from the top of a pile she had on her nightstand. Books she’d been meaning to read, but hadn’t had time.

Dead By Dawn
. That didn’t sound like a story that would calm her overactive imagination. She grabbed another one.
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen. One of the few Austen books she hadn’t read yet. Getting lost in the social webs of the Regency era seemed like a good fit for her mood.

She’d let herself get involved in other people’s deceptions and missteps in propriety. Flipping open the book, she read the first line…

Oh, yeah, this would work. She was immediately drawn into someone else’s drama. Good.

A crash woke Jo. She sat up in her bed. The lamp still cast warm yellow light around her room. Blackness still colored her windows.

She must have fallen asleep reading. She looked around the bedding, discovering the book had fallen to the floor.

She sank back against her pillows. That was all that woke her. Her eyes drifted closed again, and she told herself she would turn off her lamp. In a minute.

Sleepy. She was so sleepy.

Then she heard another noise. The sound faint, just barely seeping into her fatigue-hazed mind. But then the sound came into clear focus. A sound she knew and had heard before.

Her eyes opened as she listened. The noise hadn’t come from within her room. At least she didn’t think so. It seemed like it must have come from the hallway.

She didn’t move, keeping absolutely still, waiting. Telling herself she wouldn’t hear it again. That she’d imagined it.

But there the noise was again. Faint, but there.

Fear rose up in her chest, burning the back of her throat. But she didn’t stir, paralyzed with her own dread.

Go away. Go away.

Then she heard it again, closer this time. The sound from the restroom, the sound from the hallway at the community center. Pattering feet. Small feet. But more than that, she now knew what made the sound so distinct.

They weren’t just small, bare feet on hard wood. They were wet feet. The watery pattering echoing from in the hallway. The sound made more distinct by that slap of wetness on a hard surface.

Jo swallowed, only her eyes shifting toward her doorway. From her angle on the bed, she could only make out the dim light from the kitchen. But the hint of light didn’t make the situation less frightening.

Jo didn’t want to see the moving shadows of what was coming in her direction on small wet feet. She didn’t want to see it. Her.

She closed her eyes, digging her fingers into her comforter, tugging the material up to her chin. She was acting like a terrified child, but she didn’t care. She was terrified.

The steps stopped.

Jo remained quiet, except for the occasional shaky, shallow release of her own breath. Minutes ticked by, or at least it felt that way. Still no sound.

Finally, Jo peeked an eye open. Her room was quiet, empty. She loosened her grip on her bedding and opened her eyes fully. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Her dresser stood against the far wall. A chintz chair in pale yellow sat in the corner, its matching pillow angled against the back.

A picture of cows grazing in a wildflower-filled field hung on the wall by her bed. Everything was just as it should be.

Except for the creepy coldness that prickled her skin. The chill she now realized had surrounded her as soon as she’d heard the first steps. Eerie chilliness draining away all the warmth of the room.

She eased upright, leaning forward a little to try and see out into the hallway. She could make out one small corner, the start of the built-ins that lined the length.

This is crazy
. She couldn’t hide here, huddling under the covers like a little kid.

She needed to prove to herself for once and all that this was just some strange waking dream. Some crazy hallucination brought on by the changes around her.

Even as she came up with these justifications, she doubted them. Had a waking dream created the nose clip she’d found this morning? No, but there had to be a rational explanation for that, too. She hadn’t thought of one, but it had to be there. Just like there were answers to all of these odd events.

Carefully, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She fought the urge to scurry away from her bed as the image of something shaking out from under the dust ruffle and grabbing her ankle flashed in her mind.

Stay calm. Stay calm
. If she didn’t expect to find anything, then she wouldn’t. And there was nothing there. Just the noises of an old house. The odd quirks of aging air conditioning.

“It’s nothing. It’s nothing,” she chanted softly to herself as she took tentative steps toward her bedroom door. She paused, just as she reached it, suddenly terrified to take the final stride and see what was there.

“What
isn’t
there,” she corrected, her voice barely above a whisper. “There’s nothing there.”

With a forced movement, she made herself step into the doorway.

Pent-up breath rushed from her as she was greeted by an empty, dimly lit hallway.

She laughed slightly at her own ridiculousness.

“See. Nothing.”

But the laughter died on her lips as she noticed something. She shook her head, not wanting to believe what she was seeing, but closing her eyes, looking away, then looking back, but nothing made the sight go away.

Down the length of her hallway puddles glistened in the faint light. Small, wet footprints headed right toward her bedroom. Headed right toward her.

She made a panicked noise in the back of her throat, backing away from the sight. She didn’t understand what was going on, but she did understand one thing. She was scared. Very, very scared.

Maksim lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He gritted his teeth, irritated by the sense of melancholy that filled him. The five glasses of whiskey hadn’t numbed the aching want in him, in his loins, in his chest.

He should just go back to Hell. The fiery pit with all its suffering and pain would be a welcome relief compared to what he was experiencing now.

What was the human saying? It’s easier to deal with the devil you know? Something like that. And he was getting a pretty good understanding of what that meant.

He rolled over onto his side, sighing. He looked at the paintings on his sister’s wall. A still life of flowers in a blue vase. A portrait of a lady with her brown hair pulled up onto the top of her head in some elaborate twist. Her pale shoulders bare.

He immediately thought of Jo—not that his thoughts were ever far from him these days. He gritted his teeth again, closing his eyes and concentrating on the dry, stark, unwelcoming environment of the Eighth Circle.

As he pictured it, the smell of brimstone encompassed him, sulfur and heat burning his nostrils, the back of his throat.

Just as he would have materialized back into his domain, his cell phone rang. The T-mobile jingle pulling him back from his astral travels.

Damn, you can’t even go to the Eighth Circle of Hell without a damned cell phone interrupting you.

He reached over to the nightstand to the small ringing device. He peered at the illuminated screen, his heart jumping at the number he saw there.

He shook his head at his own ridiculousness. Despite his irritation with his eagerness, he flipped the phone open, quickly saying, “Hello?”

He was greeted by silence.

“Hello?” he repeated.

“Maksim?” Jo finally said, her voice weak and strained.

“Jo?” He sat up, pressing the phone tighter to his ear. “What’s wrong?”

“Can—can you come here?” Her voice broke on the last word, but he couldn’t tell if that was because she was crying or what was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” he repeated, even as he was swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He toed around for the shoes he’d kicked off as he’d fallen onto his bed.

“I—I just need you.”

“Okay,” he said, shoving on his shoes and already heading through his sister’s apartment to the front door. “Just tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m—scared.”

Now he could hear that something akin to hysteria tinged her voice, making it reedy and hard to hear.

“What are you scared of?” He paused with his hand on the door, waiting for her to speak.

“My sister,” she said so softly he wasn’t sure if he’d heard her right.

“Your sister?”

“Please just come.”

He didn’t wait any longer. Without further thought, he dematerialized, there one minute, gone the next.

Jo clutched her cell phone with both hands, pressing it like a lifeline to her ear, as though as long as she had that connection to Maksim, nothing could hurt her. She huddled on the sofa, her back pressed against the back, her legs curled up to her chest. She watched the hallway, waiting for him to respond.

“Maksim?” she said, not hearing him. She listened, trying to hear over the pounding of her heart in her ears, over the panting quality of her breaths.

“Maksim?”

Oh God, she’d lost the connection with him. She lifted her phone from her ear, looking at the screen. It said they were still connected.

“Maksim? Are you there?”

Nothing but dead air.

She flipped the phone closed, then reopened it, and quickly scrolled through her saved numbers, searching for Maksim’s number. But in her panic, she pressed too many times, passed it, and started dialing some other number.

“No,” she said, snapping the phone closed again. She reopened it and tried again.

Just as she reached his number, a loud bang on her door made her jump. She nearly dropped her phone in her surprise.

Staring toward the kitchen and her front door, she waited. Another loud pound, then a muffled voice called, “Jo? Are you there?”

She eased up off the sofa, still feeling too shaken by all the events of the night that she was hesitant to even believe her ears.

Crossing quietly to the door, she leaned an ear toward it.

“Maksim, is that you?”

“Yes? What’s going on? Let me in.”

With shaky fingers, she unbolted her door. She tugged on the doorknob, practically sagging with relief when she saw it was really Maksim there. He still held his cell phone, although it was no longer pressed against his ear.