Deadly Curiosities (23 page)

His answer chilled me. “Why didn’t the demon keep on killing?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Different demons function under different rules,” Sorren said. “Abernathy’s demon could not remain here unbound, and he withdrew to the place between worlds where spirits dwell, waiting.”

“Waiting for someone to find the item that was lost in pirates’ shipwreck,” I replied. “Something the salvage team found.”

“Or was about to find,” Sorren said. “We don’t know – yet – how the item came to Moran. If the demon has been called back and is under Moran’s control, for now, then somehow, Abernathy’s artifact has been recovered. That makes it our business.”

We were silent for a moment, then I found the courage to ask the question that had bothered me since the previous night.

“Why did you choose Alard’s walking stick to give to me?” I asked.

Sorren was quiet long enough I didn’t think he would answer. Finally, he looked down and shifted in his chair. “I gambled that the stick would work for you, as it worked for Carel,” he said. “Carel had your touch magic. Alard received his walking stick from a powerful wizard, a good man who died in the service of the Alliance.”

“But I’m not a wizard. I shouldn’t have been able to call fire.”

Soren gave a sad smile. “You didn’t have to. The walking stick worked as an athame, a focusing tool.

All you had to do was open yourself to the memories of those who used it before you. Their power, their magic, has become part of the cane. When you touched it, and let the memories flow through you, the walking stick did the rest.”

I was going to need to spend some time thinking about that. “What now?” I asked.

“We’ll need to find more weapons if we’re going to keep investigating the hot spots you found in the Navy yard. The key we need to connect the pieces is out there; we just haven’t found it yet.” He gave me a resolute smile, and I saw the tips of his long eye teeth. “But we will.”

I shut and locked the door after Sorren. Just then, my cell phone began to ring.

“Hello, Sweetheart!” My mom seems to have a sixth sense about when I could use a call. That was probably true, given the magic that runs in her side of the family.

“Hi, Mom. What’s up?” Baxter was hopping around my feet. He always seems to get extra affectionate whenever I’m on the phone.

“Just got back from speaking in Denver and thought I’d give you a buzz,” she said.

“Home for awhile?” I asked.

“Two weeks, then we’re heading to Manitoba, then on to Toronto,” she said. “It should be a nice break from the heat.” My parents moved from Charleston up to Charlotte when I was in college. At the time, my father worked for one of the mega-banks, and the move was part of a corporate relocation.

Then my mom got her big break and launched her speaking career based on 30 years as a psychologist, and once the money started rolling in from her seminars and events, dad was more than happy to retire from the corporate world and become her agent and event manager.

“How’s the store?”

“Busy,” I said. “You know – every day is a new adventure.” Boy, and how.

“How about you? Are you okay? I’ve had the strangest feeling and I just had to call.” Mom’s voice had gone into her ‘you can trust me, I’m a therapist’ tone.

“I’m fine,” I said, ignoring a flash of guilt. “Just a little tired.” True enough.

“I had the oddest dream,” Mom said. “I dreamed about Grandma Sarah baking in the kitchen at her house. Do you remember?”

I smiled. Grandma Sarah had her own type of powerful magic, an ability to heal people with her cooking.

“I dreamed that Grandma Sarah was baking a cake, and she was stirring the batter with her favorite wooden spoon. Then she stopped and looked right at me and said, ‘Elizabeth, you need to remind Cassidy to use my spoon. I’m done with it and she needs it’.” Mom laughed. “Isn’t that odd?”

I swallowed hard, taking a meaning from Mom’s dream that she couldn’t have known. Sorren and I had just talked about helping me collect items that would help me channel white magic like Alard’s walking stick – things that could serve as an athame or wand and connect me with the power of the previous owner. I went to my kitchen drawer and pulled out the worn, stained spoon and felt the essence of my grandmother’s very strong, very pure white magic.

“I’ve got to go. But honey,” Mom said, pausing. “Please be careful. I worry about you.”

“I will be,” I said, wishing I could figure out how to keep that promise. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” The call ended, and I let out a sigh and reached down to pick up Baxter and cuddle him for a moment.

I looked around my house and smiled. It’s not one of the biggest or most historic homes in Charleston, but it’s perfect for me. In a relatively short period of time, I had made this place my own. On all the shelves and walls, there were photos, recent pictures, and snapshots from family vacations as I was growing up. Photos of my brother, aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents were tucked everywhere. And there were pictures of every dog I had ever loved, from the cocker spaniel I had as a kid right up to Baxter.

I paused for a moment and picked up one of my favorite photos. It was a picture of a beautiful blond golden retriever, and in the photo, it would forever be summer, with the sun shining on his fur and his tongue hanging out in a goofy smile. Bo had been my constant companion for nearly a decade. I still missed him. I smiled as I thought about how much he loved to fetch a ball, and how he loved almost everyone he met.

‘Almost’ because one night, when I had been walking him a little later than usual, a thief went for my wallet. I’d always figured Bo would hand over the family silver for a dog biscuit, but I had a surprise coming. Bo sensed the threat, and all of a sudden, my furry goofball turned into ninety pounds of snarling, no-nonsense protection backed up by a big dog bark and teeth that looked menacing. The mugger decided it wasn’t worth it, and Bo got a steak dinner for his efforts. Even now, thinking about that time made me feel very loved and protected.

Remembering Bo and Grandma Sarah’s spoon gave me an idea. I went into my bedroom and walked to my closet. Stretching up on tiptoe, I got a box off the top shelf. It was covered with pretty fabric, and it held some of my dearest treasures. Baxter danced around my feet as I carried it carefully over to my bed and sat down to open it.

If there’s ever a support group for psychometrics, we’ll probably all confess to being packrats of a particular type. We horde trinkets that are charged with powerful memories. I opened the box and smiled as I looked inside. There was a frayed friendship bracelet from my high school best friend, a shell from my favorite vacation, and tickets from some of the most awesome concerts I had ever attended, things that made me feel loved and happy whenever I touched them. But I was looking for something specific, and when I saw it, I had to swallow hard at the memories it evoked.

I reached in and pulled out a stained and dirty dog collar. Bo was my best friend and I wasn’t entirely beyond suspecting that he might have also been an angel in a fur coat. As much as I loved Baxter, I would always miss Bo.

The metal tags jingled as I closed my fist around the collar, and I felt Bo’s unconditional love and protection as clearly as I could see his wagging image in my mind. And I knew what I had to do.

I wound the collar around my left wrist until it was tight enough to stay on and still possible to buckle.

Just being in contact with its vibrations made me feel protected and strong. With a sigh, I closed the box and put it back on the shelf, then I headed downstairs for a hot cup of tea.

“I
REALLY WISH
we’d brought Lucinda with us,” Teag muttered as we eyed the old Covington warehouse.

“Lucinda has a day job, remember? And while she’s a friend and she’s helping us, I’m not sure that she’s an official part of the Alliance,” I replied.

“Personally, I’d be okay with a private army,” Teag replied. His right hand jiggled nervously in the pocket of his hoodie.

“What do you have in your pocket?” I asked Teag sighed. “I filled both pockets with salt, just in case. And I stopped by the Rock Hound booth at the Charleston City Market and bought a chunk of agate and an onyx disk.”

Now that I was paying attention, the pockets of his hoodie actually looked a bit heavy.
How much salt did he pour in there
? I wondered.

Then again, I had a dog collar wrapped around my left wrist, my agate necklace, Alard’s walking stick shoved through my belt, and a flashlight in my pocket. On a whim, I had grabbed my grandmother’s mixing spoon and pushed it up the jacket sleeve on my right arm so it was snug against my forearm. If Grandma Sarah thought it was important enough to send a message to me from the Great Beyond, I figured there was more to the spoon that met the eye. Teag had his heavy cop flashlight plus the lantern with a new blue-black candle. I didn’t know what Sorren had with him, but I was hoping it packed a big paranormal punch.

“Can you feel it?” I asked. I stared up at the dark hulk that was the Covington-Simchak warehouse. The sense of dread and foreboding was overwhelming. Most people have a gut-feel aversion to supernatural bad places where power is strong. Sane people listen to those warnings and run in the opposite direction. Not us. We were going inside.

“No one’s here.” Sorren’s voice made me jump despite the fact that it was barely above a whisper.

“And yes, I feel it. The energy here is very unstable. We need to be careful.”

I could think of dozens of things I would rather be doing. Then I remembered the body of Jimmy Redshoes on the pavement. He deserved justice.

“You’re sure it’s abandoned?” I asked Teag. The cornerstone of the red brick Covington building said 1860, and it looked hard used. It sat glowering, almost sulking in the darkness.

A couple of security lights on other, newer buildings cast a glow that nearly reached the Covington warehouse, but the building itself was surrounded by shadows. The sense of dread intensified. It felt as if the building were daring us to enter.

“Officially at least,” Teag replied. “Simchak Enterprises went bankrupt a year ago. They had problems for a while. It was bad enough to make you wonder if they were cursed or something.”

Or something
, I thought. “And before that?”

“The property has changed hands a suspicious number of times, often as part of a bankruptcy.”

“What about the Covingtons?” I asked.

“They managed to keep the place in one piece during the Civil War by hiring a private army of goons to patrol it,” Teag replied. “They had a reputation for dirty deals, which from what I could find, they earned fair and square. Do you know how they ultimately lost the building? A duel!”

For a while in the 1800s, dueling had been a real problem in Charleston. It was an amazing waste of life. I wondered if that long-ago duel played into the aura of betrayal and violence that radiated from the building.

“Anything that would give the warehouse supernatural energy?” Sorren asked.

Teag shrugged. “During the Civil War, most of the buildings in this area were used as morgues or to house prisoners of war, or even as makeshift hospitals.” Dead soldiers, suffering prisoners, and wounded men in agony could certainly up the bad mojo for a site.

“One of the owners was shot by his business partner over some kind of fraud. Another owner lost the property in a card game, and committed suicide,” Teag said. “This place has worse luck than the Hope Diamond. You name it – bitter divorces, underhanded dealings, old grudges. If this place is steeped in bad juju, it’s earned it.”

“Best we go inside before the police make their rounds,” Sorren reminded us. “Step lively.”

Vampire strength and centuries of practice breaking and entering have their advantages. Getting past the wooden barricades posed no problem, and in a few minutes, we stood in the middle of dark and exceedingly creepy empty warehouse.

“What do you sense, Cassidy?” Sorren asked.

I took a deep breath and turned inward for a few moments. I let the dread roll over me. Fear, pain, and loss roiled around me, as if they sprang from the very foundations of the old warehouse. I let them flow past me like the tide.

“So much sadness,” I murmured. “The energy is jagged, unsettled. There have been so many disappointments and betrayals, the whole place is steeped in sorrow.”

I paused. “There’s something else. Very dark. Not fresh, it’s been some time since it happened but… evil.” I looked up. “Something very bad happened here. Powerful enough that it’s affected everything, like it changed the DNA of the place or something. Worse than the boarding house…”

Sorren nodded. “That’s why there are no rats,” he said. He looked as if he were listening intently. “No rats, no mice, nothing but spiders and roaches. We must be very cautious. Expect the worst.”

Spiders and roaches are drawn to dark magic, while nearly every other living thing runs the other direction. Figures.

We moved carefully around the old building. From the layer of dust, it didn’t appear that anyone had been here for a while, though there were signs that vagrants had tried to stake a claim. Over in one corner, I saw some ratty mattresses, pieces of dirty clothing, and empty liquor bottles. They looked like they had been here for a long time. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to spend the night here, no matter how high or drunk. The huge building was mostly empty, except for a few stacks of old wooden crates that looked as if they had been looted long ago. I shone my light around the cavernous space. The floor was littered with papers and garbage.

“What did the last owners sell?” I asked as my beam hit a couple of opened wooden crates.

Teag shrugged. “They took consignment shipments for other companies – and my bet is that not all of them were legal.”

He went over to one of the large wooden crates. Some long-ago looter had already pried open the top and riffled through the packing material. “Industrial fasteners,” Teag said, gingerly poking at the contents with a piece of wood he had found on the floor.