Crossroads (29 page)

‘I can tell you the truth,’ she swallowed nervously, ‘but you won’t believe me.’

‘Try me,’ he folded his arms.

She blew out a long tired breath. ‘Alright,’ she shook her head, ‘just try not to have me committed or anything will you.’

‘Stop stalling and start talking.’

‘They all had their souls stolen by a demon name Charun who is also known as the Soul Collector.’

‘That’s not funny.’

‘Do you see me laughing?’ she sighed. ‘Look Sachiv you’ve been in Mercy long enough to start noticing that things around here aren’t exactly normal.’

He studied her face silently as if to try and gauge if she was lying or just delusional.

‘You actually believe that don’t you?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Do you remember back during the winter storms when we had patients admitted with all those weird diseases?’

‘How could I forget?’

‘You said to me that it was as if there was a Raksasha loose in Mercy.’

‘That was a joke, admittedly in bad taste but Raksashas are not real, they are a tale told by housewives to frighten children.’

‘No they really are real, and we really did have one loose in town making people sick.’

‘Louisa…I think maybe the stress is finally getting to you.’

‘Look I don’t expect you to understand or even believe me. You asked for the truth and I gave it to you. What you do with that information is up to you, but right now I’m going to see my brother.’

She stormed out of the room leaving him looking after her in bewilderment. It didn’t take her long to find Jake’s room as they had clustered all the coma patients together in adjoining rooms. She stepped into the room quietly and watched as Roni sat staring at Jake’s ashen face, his hand held carefully in her own.

‘He’s going to be okay,’ Louisa stopped next to Roni and stroked her shoulder reassuringly.

‘You don’t know that,’ Roni whispered finally.

‘No, I don’t,’ Louisa swallowed hard, ‘but it helps to keep telling myself that.’

They both looked up as another familiar shape filled the doorway.

‘I’ve found a way to locate him,’ Danae told Roni.

Roni turned back to look at Jake before leaning forward and kissing his forehead.

‘Look after him,’ she told Louisa, ‘I don’t care what you have to do, but keep him alive.’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked as Roni headed towards the door.

Roni paused and when she turned back her expression had not only hardened but was filled with resolve.

‘I’m going to get his soul back.’

Olivia perched on the edge of a low cabinet staring at the empty circular table surrounded by four chairs. Her hands were propped under her chin and her elbows resting comfortably on her drawn up knees. Her fingers tapped out a restless staccato on her cheek and her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Sam and Theo had disappeared together in search of the gateway to the Underworld and Bridget was busy trying to find a spell to made the compass work. She’d tried to help Bridget but found herself unable to concentrate, and time and time again her unruly thoughts had been drawn back to Fiona and the Soul Collector. She supposed it had only been a matter of time before her preoccupation with Fiona would inadvertently draw her back to her eccentric friend’s home. She would have thought if there was anyone she could’ve communicated with from the other side it would have been Fiona. Unfortunately, as Bridget had explained to her, Fiona was not able to sense Olivia as she would another spirit simply because Olivia was not a true spirit. She still wore her mortal body which put her out of sync with everything else. Even so, there had to be some way to speak with them and even if she couldn’t sense her properly Fiona still had to be her best shot.

A sudden thought occurred to her, maybe there was a way after all. She swung her legs down and reached for the backpack which she always carried with her. Unzipping it she rummaged around until her fingers closed round the warm familiar leather of Hester's Grimoire. Pulling it out and laying it on her lap she brushed her fingers lightly over the cover, smiling softly to herself when she felt the low thrum of power running through it. She opened the book carefully and watched as once again the ink swirled and twisted on the aged pages until it settled into words. She flicked through the first few pages and then paused. There had to be a quicker way of doing this.

She slid her palms underneath the book so she was holding it loosely in her hands.

‘I need a spell to allow me to see and hear the real world,’ she whispered to the book.

The page twitched slightly and then suddenly, as if it had been caught by the draught from an open door, the pages fanned out flicking through the book until it reached the page it wanted and then it stopped abruptly. Olivia looked down and smiled.

‘Thank you’ she murmured as she read through the incantation. It was pretty straightforward.

Jumping down from her seat on top of Fiona’s cabinet she moved closer to the table. Pulling in a deep breath she spoke the words aloud. For a moment it seemed as if nothing had happened but then suddenly she caught a flicker at the edge of her vision. She tucked the book carefully back into her backpack. The strange flickering came again followed by a shifting of the light and a blurred shape emerged pacing around the room. Olivia blinked a couple of times and focused. Slowly the colorful blur began to sharpen and before she knew it she was staring at Fiona.

Fascinated she followed the woman around the room watching as she laid a huge roll of paper on the table. Olivia leaned over the table as she unfurled it and pinned it at each corner with a heavy object. It looked like a map. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned in closer and studied it. It was a map of Mercy. Even more curious now, her gaze turned back to Fiona who was bustling around the room lighting candles. When the room was bathed in a warm golden light Fiona turned to several bowls she had places at intervals around the room, each made from a heavy metal and filled with herbs. Those too were lit and left to smolder, filling the air with a sweet smelling smoke.

Fiona suddenly stopped and looked back towards the door, as if she’d heard something. She bustled out of the room and reappeared minutes later followed by two guests. Olivia peered around her and instantly recognized Roni and Danae. Even better, although they too didn’t seem to be aware of her presence Olivia found that, unlike last time, she could now hear every world they said perfectly.

‘Did you get everything?’ Danae asked.

Fiona nodded, ‘we’re good to go whenever you’re ready.’

‘I need a bowl and the ink.’ She removed her leather jacket and slung it over the chair, retrieving something that was wrapped in a disposable medical bag. ‘Is it India ink?’

‘Yes’ Fiona replied, setting the bowl in front of Danae and alongside it a small glass bottle filled with pure black liquid. ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’

‘I can’t see why not,’ Danae shook her head as she unscrewed the lid of the bottle and poured half its contents into the bowl. ‘I’ve used this spell many times.’

‘Ever used it on a demon though?’ Roni asked.

‘No, this will be a first but there’s no reason to think it won’t work in exactly the same way.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Roni breathed.

‘Okay let’s get this show on the road,’ Fiona clapped her hands and rubbed them together eagerly. ‘I’ve never seen a tracking spell before.’

Danae removed the syringe from the opened packaging and expelled the blood contained within it, into the bowl of ink. Discarding the empty syringe, she picked up the bowl cradling it carefully in both her hands and swirling the dark liquid around, murmuring in a low voice. After a few moments she poured the ink out of the bowl directly onto the map in a giant black ink splotch.

Veronica and Fiona both stood staring at the black blot.

‘Is that it?’ Fiona asked suspiciously.

Danae resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘Give it a minute would you?’

Slowly the ink began to move, sliding across the page leaving no trail or dark smudge behind it. It rolled this way and that, changing direction at random as if the gradient of the map kept changing. Suddenly it split into two, gliding across the paper effortlessly then it divided again into four and again into eight. Now as it slid and undulated across the map it began to leave behind tiny dots of ink. Some spaced widely apart, some congregated together in a larger volume. This continued for a few more minutes until the ink disappeared and the dots were left spread all over the place.

‘What does it mean?’ Roni asked.

‘It’s a tracking spell,’ Danae replied as she thoughtfully studied the map, ‘it tracks every location in Mercy that the Soul Collector has been to.’

‘He’s been busy,’ Fiona mused as she looked at just how many dots were spread ominously across the town limits.

‘Look at this,’ Danae pointed to a section of the map North-West of the lake, deep in the woods.

When they looked closer they could see a large amount of dots, so many of them it congealed into a small black splotch of ink and blood.

‘He’s spent a lot of time at this location,’ Danae frowned, ‘but there’s nothing there. It’s just woodland which leads down to the shore of the lake.’

‘There must have been a reason he returned to this location so many times.’

Olivia leaned over the map and looked at the location they were discussing and recognized it immediately. It was the Bachelier place. Located close to the lake concealed by the woods stood the small cabin which Thomas Walcott had taken her to when he’d kidnapped her the previous year. At the time he’d been using her as bait to lure her father in, so that he could kill him and after that he’d fully intended to kill her too. During the time she’d been there he’d kept her drugged and tied up in the small cabin which had belonged to his maternal grandmother Clea Bachelier, a hoodoo woman who’d moved to Mercy back in the day and married the former Chief’s Grand-daddy. Being an upstanding pillar of the community and the Police Chief himself, he’d insisted she change her name to Clare, in an attempt to hide her colorful heritage.

Why would the Soul Collector be drawn to that place in particular? Olivia wondered. She cast her mind back to the cabin, swallowing back the memory of the pain and fear. She’d been drugged most of the time so her recollections were still fairly hazy at best. But it seemed there was something, something she was forgetting, it tickled at the back of her mind dancing just out of reach. She’d been sitting in the chair she remembered, forcing her mind back to a place it didn’t want to go. Her hands had been taped tightly to the chair. She unconsciously rubbed the skin of her wrist as if she could still feel the pinch.

She’d heard a sound outside…a merrily tinkling sound like glass. She’d tried to look out of the window and she couldn’t so she’d scooted the chair forwards and strained her neck, trying to catch a glimpse and she’d seen…glass, brightly colored glass.

A bottle tree. Olivia stood abruptly and her mouth fell open slightly as her mind tried furiously to fill in the blanks. She’d seen a bottle tree outside the cabin. Dozens and dozens of brightly colored glass bottles suspended from the branches of the old gnarled tree. She remembered thinking she’d seen something similar on a trip to New Orleans. Bottle trees were old world magic which had come over on the slave ships from Africa. The bottles were used to trap evil spirits and they were supposed to be destroyed by the rising sun. She wasn’t exactly sure what was going on but it had to have something to do with that bottle tree, it was too big a coincidence for it not to be.

‘Right,’ Roni straightened up, ‘we should head out there then and take a look.’

‘Hold on there G.I Jane,’ Danae frowned. ‘I’ll admit you tackling a soul stealing demon was pretty bad ass but it was also pretty stupid, you got lucky last time. There is no point us heading out to the woods if we don’t know what we’re walking into.’

‘I know,’ Roni replied, ‘and if this were normal circumstances I’d be saying exactly the same thing but this isn’t normal circumstances. We need to find the souls before they are destroyed. It’s the only hope we have of returning them to their bodies.’

‘Look,’ Danae breathed patiently, ‘I know you want to help Jake. I do too, but he won’t thank me if I end up getting you killed or worse.’

Olivia’s head snapped up at the mention of Jake.

‘What? What’s happened to Jake?’ she stepped closer to her friend. ‘Roni what’s happened to Jake?’

It was no use they couldn’t hear her, or even sense her presence. Damn it, she should have used a spell that worked both ways. It was all very well being able to see and hear them but it didn’t do any good if she couldn’t communicate with them in return.

‘Veronica,’ Danae replied sympathetically, ‘I will do whatever I can to make sure we get Jake’s soul back but we need to be smart here, we can’t go in all guns blazing.’

‘I’m not suggesting that at all,’ she shook her head, ‘but think about it. We sneak in, take a look around is all I’m suggesting. If we are unlucky enough to run into him, you have your whip which seems to be able to harm him.’

‘What about you?’

‘You saw what happened outside the church, he doesn’t seem to be able to harm me while I’m wearing this.’ She pulled the small crescent moon suspended on a long silver chain from the collar of her shirt.

‘Where’d you get that girl?’ Fiona’s eyes narrowed in interest as she stepped closer.

‘Jake gave it to me when we were helping to close the gateway, he said it came from the Goddess Diana herself. Olivia, Theo and Jake all had one.’

‘And he gave it to you?’

‘Yeah,’ Roni muttered dejectedly as she stared down at it. If he hadn’t given it to her he’d have been wearing it at the time he’d been attacked and he would’ve been safe.

‘Don’t do that,’ Danae told her firmly as Roni looked up into her eyes. ‘He wanted you to have it and it saved you. I know Jake and I know he wouldn’t have traded your soul to save his.’

Roni’s eyes filled with tears and her expression tightened. ‘I want him back I don’t care what it takes.’