What a Ghoul Wants (27 page)

I stood there silently for a beat. I didn’t want to let the subject drop, because
he’d interpret that as backing down.

Gopher let go of the bridge of his nose and sighed. “What?”

I held up Heath’s vest. “We’re about out of magnets.”

“So?”

“So, we’re one vest shy of making our quota for the group.”

“Can’t someone just carry some spikes?”

“No. We’ll need the spikes in case we encounter the Widow or her black phantom.”

Gopher’s brow rose with interest. “What black phantom?”

At first I was frustrated with his question, because I was fairly certain we’d talked
about it in his presence, but Gopher’s listening skills weren’t great, and with the
added stress he was under lately, I had to concede he wasn’t exactly taking a lot
in. So I patiently explained that when John and I had been trapped in the south wing,
a black phantomlike creature had chased us down the hall. “Was this thing human?”
Gopher asked. “I mean, not human, but the ghost of a human?”

“Definitely not,” I said. “It moved more like a panther, but I doubt it ever walked
this plane alive. I think it’s a demon from the lower realms, and I think that it’s
made a deal with the Widow—swapping her the access of her portal for some of its power.”

“Do you think you can get it on film?”

I laughed but not with mirth. “Dude, if you get close enough to this thing to get
it on film, you probably won’t survive the encounter.”

Gopher frowned like he didn’t believe me. “Okay, so back to this vest thing, what
do we do?”

“Someone’s got to stay behind with Gilley while the rest of us go out on the hunt.”

“Well, it can’t be you or Heath. We need both of you guys in the field.”

“True.”

“And it can’t be John—he’s our sound tech and if we don’t catch anything on film,
we might still get something on his microphone. And Michel should definitely go on
the hunt. I had a chance to look at his photos—the guy is really good with a handheld.”

“Also true.”

“What about Meg or Kim?”

“They’ve already made the two smallest vests. The one missing the magnets would be
a size large.”

Gopher blinked at me and then it registered. “You did that on purpose.”

“I had nothing to do with the order the girls made the vests in, buddy. It just happened
that the last vest they were going to work on was a size large, and since you, John,
and Heath all share that size, one of you has to stay behind.”

“But I
can’t
stay behind, M. J.!”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m your
director
, or have you already taken over this whole operation?”

I bit back the retort on the tip of my tongue, and instead I laid the size-large vest
on the table in front of Gopher. “You want the vest? It’s yours. But you’ll have to
decide between Heath and John, which one of them stays behind. Oh, and if you choose
Heath, I won’t be going on the hunt, and if you choose John, you’re going to have
to hold the microphone, and we all know you’ve got a bad shoulder.”

“Dammit!” Gopher swore. “What am I supposed to do while you guys are out on the hunt?”

“We’ll all be connected by the headphones; there’s no reason you can’t watch the footage
in real time from Gilley’s monitors and call the shots from here. In fact, I think
doing it that way should make you happy.”

Gopher glared at me. “How could I possibly be happy?”

“It’s warm and dry in here, and the forecast calls for rain tonight. You’ll be downright
cozy with access to food and drink all night long. And with the live stream you won’t
miss a minute of the hunt.”

I could see Gopher’s mental wheels turning while he considered that, and at last he
let go of his moody glare. Handing me the vest, he said, “Fine. I’ll stay here. But
tomorrow, there had better be a vest for me to wear.”

I saluted him smartly and headed off in search of Heath.

* * *

We all met for dinner at six o’clock. Mary served us a lovely meal of lamb stew with
fresh biscuits and plenty of hot tea to wash it down with. I ate heartily and felt
like I was relaxing for the first time in days. “So you’ll be ghost hunting tonight,
then?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll be heading out just after one a.m.”

Mary shivered. “Lady Mortimer’s ghost is a frightful thing, she is. I don’t envy you.”

“Have you ever seen her?” Heath asked.

“Aye. Only once, and it was enough to scare me socks off. It’s a terrible thing, working
here and fearing that she’ll break out of her end of the castle or grab one of us
from the drawbridge and pull us under.”

I noticed that her complexion had paled a bit since she’d brought up the topic of
the Grim Widow. “If she frightens you so much, why work here?” I asked her.

A blush replaced the paleness of Mary’s cheeks. “Oh, I couldn’t leave Arthur to face
her alone,” she said. “Me brother’s not quite so fearful of her as I am.” I thought
Mr. Crunn was plenty frightened of the Widow, but I didn’t say that to Mary. “He says
as long as we stick to our end of the castle and the middle of the drawbridge, there’s
nothing to fret about.” She then topped all our cups off with more tea and coffee
before hurrying away to fetch our desserts.

I looked around the table and saw the trepidation in the eyes of my crew—especially
John. Which reminded me about the assignment I’d given him. “Did you have a chance
to talk to Crunn and draw us a map of the castle?”

John nodded and reached under his seat for his backpack. Pulling out his iPad, he
tapped at it for a minute before handing it over to me.

“Wow,” I said, gazing at the screen. “I’m impressed. This is really good.”

John’s blueprint had the whole castle neatly mapped out for both the first and second
stories, and it even included the secret passageway we’d stumbled upon. I focused
on that detail and asked, “Does this lead anywhere?”

John got up and came around to look over my shoulder. “Arthur didn’t know,” he said.
“I put that in because we found it, but Crunn said he had no idea there was a secret
passage there.”

I compared John’s first-story drawing with his second-story blueprint. I remembered
the spiral stairs when the trapdoor had opened, and how he’d nearly fallen down them.
I shuddered a bit at the memory of trying to pull him out of there and get away from
the Widow and whatever that black demon thing had been. But I felt I was remembering
only things that were superficial. There had been more to that moment that I felt
I needed to recall. I closed my eyes and thought back. John had fallen into the opening
and onto the first few steps of the staircase, I had looked at him sprawled out on
the stone steps, it’d been cold. . .
really
cold, and there had been a sound that had come up from the depths below. A chorus
of wails, but there had been something more. What was it?

“Em?” I heard Heath say, jolting me out of the memory. My eyes snapped open and I
found him looking at me with concern.

“Water,” I said. Heath moved his water glass over to me. “No,” I said with a shake
of my head. “I heard water.”

“You heard water?” John asked over my right shoulder.

I turned in my chair to look at him. “You might have heard it too. When you fell through
the passageway and onto the steps, do you remember what you heard?”

He frowned. “It was pretty dark, M. J.”

I shook my head. “Not what you saw, buddy, what you
heard
.”

His frown deepened and I happened to catch the rise of goose bumps along his arms.
“I don’t know. I heard moaning, and. . .”

“And what?” I pressed.

“Like. . . the sound of waves. It was pretty damp and smelly in there too.”

I sat back in my chair and turned my eyes to Heath. “I think I know where the Widow’s
portal is and how she gets out of the south wing.”

Heath tipped the iPad toward him to look at the blueprint and I tapped at the secret
passageway. “I think that’s how she gets into the moat.”

Heath’s lips compressed. “Her portal can’t be the whole stairwell, Em. It’d have to
be someplace along the wall.”

“I know.”

Heath and I were both silent for a minute while we considered how impossible it was
going to be to make it to the stairwell again and find the Widow’s portal while holding
off both her and that big-ass demon long enough to drive a few magnetic stakes into
solid stone. Oh, yeah,
and
free the Widow’s prisoners to boot.

“There’s no way you’ll be able to get to it,” Gilley said, leaning way over in his
seat to look at the iPad. “If her portal’s in that passageway, you’ll never live long
enough to make it there and shut it down.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I told him.

He made a face and went back to his dinner.

“Maybe Gramps will have an idea,” Heath said, squeezing my hand under the table.

I nodded, but I wasn’t feeling so confident now that I thought I knew where the Widow
was hiding her portal. I knew it also had to be the place she was hiding her prisoners.
It made sense as the only places we’d seen the souls that she’d captured had been
around the moat. She could’ve dragged them out of the stairwell, through the water,
then put them on or near the drawbridge just to taunt us.

The thought of those prisoners made me remember that I needed their names handy to
call out to them when the moment of truth arrived. Turning back to Gil, I asked, “How’s
that research coming?”

Gil bent low and picked up his own iPad. I waited while he powered it up and scrolled
through his notes. “I only had two hours to do the research,” he said, “and already
I can tell you there’s not much online. I’ll have to go to the library tomorrow and
leaf through the newspapers and public records.”

“Did you find out anything useful?” I pressed.

“Not so much useful as weirdly coincidental,” he replied.

“How do you mean?”

“I was able to find a few articles on some of the more recent victims, and I now know
why Lumley thinks they were the work of a serial killer.”

I leaned in closer to Gil. “I’m listening.”

“The six cases of documented drownings at Kidwellah since nineteen eighty-five were
all white males and all but one were between the ages of forty and sixty-seven wealthy,
married, and visiting here on holiday with their wives.”

“None of the victims were women?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“But you said all but one—what was the one?”

“Lumley’s brother, Oliver Lumley,” Gil explained. “He was only thirty-two and unmarried
at the time of his death, and he wasn’t so much here on holiday as he was investigating
the suspiciousness of the deaths.”

I nodded. I knew that, but something else struck me as odd about Gil’s description
of the men. “What about kids?” I asked. “Did any of the victims have children?”

“Four of the five married men had kids, ranging in age from six to forty, but I think
you hit on the other really odd coincidence—none of the kiddos were here at the time
of their father’s deaths.”

“That is weird,” I said. “It’s as if the killer was just waiting for a specific type
of man to show up. Married, with no children on vacation with him.”

“Lefebvre and his wife had a daughter,” Gil said, glancing at Michel, who was listening
in.

He nodded. “Zeta. She’s a model in Paris. Hates both her parents. I’ve photographed
her on a number of occasions, and she’s not exactly the most congenial personality.”

But I wasn’t concerned with Zeta; I was concerned about the fact that I’d doubted
the theory of a serial killer since Lumley had first proposed it, but now I was faced
with a number of victims who seemed to fit a very specific type of profile—save Merrick
Brown, Oliver Lumley, and Fiona Hollingsworth. How did they fit into this crazy puzzle?

“Thanks for looking into it,” I told Gil. “Anything more you can get for us tomorrow
would be great. Oh, and I’ll need a list of the names of the victims.”

Gil reached again into his backpack and retrieved a pad of paper. Tearing off the
top page, he slid it to me. “That’s who I have so far. I’ll get the full list tomorrow.”

I tucked the list away and asked, “Did you get me anything on the duke?”

Gil nodded and tapped at his iPad. “That’s an interesting character, M. J. But let
me just say this, I really want you to rethink going out on the moors tonight to look
for him.”

“He can’t be as dangerous as the Widow,” I countered.

“He may be worse,” Gil told me. “The duke has a reputation for marking people for
death. Everyone he’s supposedly appeared to has died. If you find him, you’re a goner.”

“Like I said, I’m already in trouble, then.”

Gil shook his head. “Yeah, but you didn’t have the crew with you. If you expose them,
then they’re all marked for death too.”

I laughed but looking around the table, I could see Gilley had struck a nerve. Kim,
Meg, and even John had gone pale. “You’ll be fine,” I told them, but they hardly looked
reassured. Turning back to Gilley, I said, “Tell me about the duke so I have some
background to work with.”

Gil eyed me doubtfully, but he did consult his notes once more. “It’s pretty much
the way you’ve already heard from Crunn. The duke was married to and supposedly murdered
the Grim Widow’s sister, Catherine. Then he married Lady Jane, she goes nuts, and
he locks her up in the south wing. She then figures out how to get out of that section,
probably through the secret passage John found, and just for kicks, she kills off
a few of his friends. He beats her, puts her back in the south wing, cutting her off
from all human contact, and somehow she’s able to still get out and continue to kill
even more people. Finally, when his illegitimate son from another woman comes to stay
at the castle, Lady Mortimer drowns him too, which sends the duke into a deep depression
and he heads off onto the moors one night never to be seen again.”

“She killed his son?” I gasped. God, this woman was nasty!