Chasing Midnight (Dark of Night Book 2) (6 page)

“Do not let it overly concern you. She may be free, but I will be keeping a close eye on Mercy,” he offered coolly.

I shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll put it on my list.”

“What list?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“The list of shit I’ll worry about later. My plate is kinda full this week, in case you haven’t noticed.”

That made him laugh, not a chuckle, but a full belly laugh. It sounded warm. It sounded human.

When we got back to my car, he held out a piece of paper to me. “The information on Melanie’s Aunt.”

I plucked it from his fingers and tucked it into the pocket of my tan slacks. “Thanks. I’ll get right on it.”

He nodded and turned to head back to the house.

Heather’s new shop was downtown near the Haunted Tours office in a little indoor strip mall. She had secured the front space so she had one large glass window right on the street, but the door was actually inside the hallway. I’d passed by the place a million times in my life. It had been everything from a jewelry store to a travel agency to an exterminator, but now the glass proudly bore the words, “Psychic Emporium and Palm Readings” in bold, white letters. The actual window was covered inside by brown paper,signaling that they were not, as of yet, open for business. But there was a smaller sign with a phone number on it that read
,
Call to schedule your appointment toda
y
. I shook my head. Until recently, my flighty baby sister had been a teenage runaway. I always imagined her on the streets somewhere living like a homeless person, but the truth was much different. Heather had been traveling the world, exploring what she called her psychic gift. Since she was back, she’d been determined to open this shop. She was going to sell herbs, crystals, and other things as well as do palm readings and other sorts of weird psychic stuff.

Call me a skeptic, but it was all just a little out there. But she was home and she had an actual goal, so I wasn’t about to rain on her parade. Much anyway.

She still wouldn’t fess up to where she got the money for the venture, except to assure Mom that she didn’t rob a bank or anything else illegal. Tapping on the glass door, I heard a rustle of paper as her single brown eye peeked out. I heard the click of a key in a lock, and the door swung open. Duke and Phoebe were sitting in the middle of the floor strewn with brown paper as they devoured a meat lover’s pizza. There was a half-eaten thin-crust veggie pizza on the counter beside the antique register that had to be Heather’s. She was the only person in the family that would dare taint a perfectly good pizza with vegetables and what might have been chunks of tofu.

“Alright, I’m here. What’s going on?” I asked, eyeing the devastation.

The shop was supposed to be open by Monday, a Halloween grand opening, and there were only a few shelves up. They had obviously been painting judging by the smell and the pans of lavender-tinted latex near the big window.

“Duke and Phoebe have been helping me get ready for my grand opening,” Heather said, beaming.

Duke rubbed his hands on his light blue jeans, getting the pizza mess off. “Yeah, but there’s not going to be an opening if I don’t get the rest of these shelves up.” He leapt onto the balls of his feet, rocked forward to plant a kiss on Phoebe, who blushed furiously, and then wandered off to open a tall box of premade cabinets. It was hard not to watch him walk away, earning me a playful slap from Phoebe.

“What? I was reading the back of his T-shirt.”

“It says, thou shalt not ogle your sister’s boyfriend,” she said with a snort.

“I wasn’t ogling, I swear!” I held my hand up in a Girl Scout salute.

Heather raised her hand. “Um, I was ogling.”

We erupted in a fit of laughter. Phoebe lowered her gaze and undid the top button of her petal pink peasant top. Wagging her eyebrows suggestively, she bounded off to help Duke.

Heather grabbed my arm with two hands and pushed me to the back. “I want to show you this.”

She forced me into a smaller room in the back. It was separated from the rest of the shop by a thick, wood-bead curtain that sounded like a waterfall when I ran my hand across it. Once I pushed my way through, I saw that the walls in here were red—dark, rich velvety red—and were covered with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. In the center of the room was a round table that had been draped with layers of bright fabrics, the top one being creamy gold satin. There was no crystal ball, but otherwise, it looked just like something I’d seen in a traveling circus once. There were small, wooden chairs all around the table, seven in total, all painted the same red as the walls, which made them sort of blend in to the background.

“What is this room for? The ritual sacrifices?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light and joking.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is for palm readings. Listen, I had to talk to you. I was doing a reading for you today—”

I stopped her there. “
A
readin
g
?”

“Yes. A Tarot reading. Anyway, I saw something strange.”

I pulled out a chair and flopped down. Had I really raced across town for more of her cryptic psychic crap? “Let me guess—you saw death all around me,” I said, pursing my lips, squinting one eye, and wiggling my fingers.

She slapped me in the arm. “No. Though, you know, I do see that quite a lot.”

“Duh, Heather. I live with a dead guy.”

“Oh, Shane isn’t dead. Can’t you tell the difference?” she asked as if I were being silly.

My left eye started to ache. “Right, whatever you say.”

“So I was doing your reading, and everything went fuzzy. I had this vision. I saw you, in a cemetery, doing a séance.”

Okay, that shut me up. She must have read the surprise in my face.

“You aren’t going to do anything stupid like that, are you?” She took a seat across from me, scowling.

“Um, yes. Maybe sort of?” I proceeded to spill the beans about Patrick, Nana Elsie, and what she claimed she saw.

“And you believe her?” Heather asked when I was done.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I feel like I owe it to her to at least go.”

“Wait here.” Heather motioned for me to wait before disappearing through the curtain, returning a few minutes later with a pamphlet. It was from the Haunted Tours office next door.

I held it up. “What’s this?”

She snatched it from me, and read it aloud.
“
Saint Philip’s churchyard is one of the most haunted locations in Charleston. Many claim the ghost of Sue Howard Hardy roams the cemetery. She died six days after she gave birth to a stillborn baby. People often see her spirit walking through the cemetery, crying at her child’s grave. Her history is violent and sad. Terrible things are said to have befallen any who have witnessed her spirit roaming the grounds.”

I snatched it back from her. There was a photo of the cemetery on the cover. “So, Heather. What do you think? Are ghosts real?” I asked, stuffing the flyer into my purse.

She made a sound that was suspiciously close to a snort. “Of course they are. What do you think Shane is?”

Was that a trick question? “Um, a vampire.”

She rolled her eyes again.

“What?” I demanded.

She leaned forward. “What is the difference between a zombie and a vampire?”

Okay, it was for sure a trick question. “Um, vampires are real?”

She shook her head. “Think about it like this. People are made of two pieces. Their flesh selves and their spirit selves. Some people possess the power to reanimate the dead. They are called necromancers. They can animate dead bodies. But they only control the empty flesh. The spirit is something completely different. Vampires are spirits who were able to reconnect the two parts of themselves. Their bodies aren’t really dead, which is why they don’t rot. So the spirit slips back inside, none the wiser. Spirits can’t live inside of dead bodies, only in living ones. I actually think that’s kind of what a vampire does when it changes someone. Something, whether it is magic or science, changes their body, effectively making it hardier, so the spirit can stay in it indefinitely. It’s why they seem immortal.”

I stared at her, blinking and staring into space, deep in thought as I tried to take it all in. “So what you are saying is that a body can be reanimated without a spirit in it, and if a body can exist without a spirit, then a spirit can exist without a body?”

Now I was just confused.

“Kind of. The spirit is different. It is transient, sort of made to move on. It’s the truly immortal piece of us. When our bodies die, the spirit moves on to whatever comes next. But sometimes, they don’t. Sometimes, spirits have such a powerful connection to a place or an object that they choose to linger. It is, despite what people might think, very rare.”

“Have you ever seen a ghost?” I asked, only half joking.

She licked her lips. “Once. I was in India, and there was a young boy who was being possessed by a spirit.”

“They can do that?”

“A spirit can inhabit any living body, but true possession is extremely rare. For two spirits to share the same body is very… uncomfortable for both of them. Sort of like being locked in a small closet. It’s also very exhausting because the two spirits are always fighting for control.”

“What happened to him, the boy?”

“He was fine. But it was one of the most frightening, intense things I’ve ever seen.”

I sat back, letting all the information soak in.

“Are you still going to go?”

I nodded. “I gave her my word.”

“You know Isabel, I remember Nana Elsie. I haven’t seen her in years, but I think she might be an actual necromancer.”

I frowned. “Why would you say that?”

“When we were little, she used to always talk to that man on her porch. The one with the old-fashioned top hat.”

My eyebrows squished together as I strained to remember any such man. “I don’t think I ever saw him.”

“Exactly. I don’t think he was there. Or, I mean, I think he might not have been alive. If she were a necromancer, spirits would be drawn to her. It would explain why Sue was able to communicate with her.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Heather smoothed her hands down her paint-speckled jeans. “Better not tell your boyfriend.”

Great. And we were back to the cryptic weirdness. “What?” I asked, the throbbing in my eye returning.

“About Nana Elsie being a necromancer. Vampires like to eat them.”

Not knowing what to say to that either, I mumbled a quick goodbye and walked out. Only once I was in the car did I wonder if she was talking about Shane or Xavier.

i

When I got back to the office, Shane still wasn’t back, not that I expected him. It was only a little after five, and my stomach was already growling. I tossed my purse on my desk, hit the blinking light on the answering machine, and headed for the kitchen.

Beep.

Click.

Hang up. Great.

Beep.

Isabel, this is your mother. I forgot to talk to you at lunch, but there is a big event next weekend and I’ve been hired to cater. I need all you girls to help me out by carrying trays. Call me when you get a second.

Pause.

I mean it, Isabel. Call me.

I slammed the cabinet door and pulled open the fridge, searching for a soda.

Beep.

This time, it was Heather.

By the time you get this, we will have already talked. Think about what I’m going to tell you. I’m sure it’s going to be wonderful advice. Oh, and I think you are out of soda.

Beep.

Could my life get any stranger?

Realizing we had no food in the house, I made my bi-weekly call in for Chinese, grabbed a half-eaten pint of Phish Food ice cream, and settled down at my desk. I made myself a note to call Mom the next day and stuck it to the edge of my monitor before flipping the button that brought it humming to life.

I quickly set up a search engine to look into the Marie San Lucas Memorial Scholarship and then, while that was running, I set up another to run the name Sue Howard Hardy.

A knock on my front door surprised me for the second time that day.

When I opened the door, it had just started to get dark outside and for just a minute, in the dim light and with my eyes not quite adjusted yet, I thought Xavier was standing on my porch holding a bouquet of daisies.

But it wasn’t. It was Devon.

“Devon, what are you doing here?” I asked as soon as my brain caught up with the rest of me.

“Here, I wanted to bring you these. Sort of a thank you and an apology all in one little vase.” He smiled, holding them out to me.

“Oh, um thanks. Come in.”

He hung his light jacket on the rack by the door and looked around. “Nice place you have here.”