by Dale Mayer
“No. But a lawyer would have handled it most likely,” he said. “I can email you the documents.” He looked over at Phoenix. “Or rather I can email Phoenix the documents.”
“Email to both of us, please.” She motioned to Rowan and said, “He’s a cop too.”
The detective eased back slightly and made a phone call, talked to somebody, then said, “They’re emailing them to you now. I don’t have access to them from here.” He looked at the group and asked, “Where are you staying, and how long are you planning on being here?”
“We’re going back into town,” Grayse said. “We’re staying for the rest of the day and tonight. Tomorrow, we have no idea.”
“Good enough,” the detective said. “Obviously we need a team to go over this place. And we’ll have questions.”
“Good,” Grayse said. He looked over at Phoenix. “Are you ready to go? Let’s get you something to eat.”
She wrapped her arms around Rowan and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It’s well-past time to eat, no matter what time zone we are in.”
They loaded back into the SUV, and Grayse backed out down the long driveway. She felt better, a little more alert. “Glad that’s behind me,” she said. “I could use some food and then return to Iceland and get rid of my lovely letter.”
“If he gave it to you, and you had that letter with you when you walked out of the fire, why didn’t you drop it and let it consume itself then?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question,” she said in a dry tone. “Maybe I’d have an answer for you, except I don’t even remember it happening. I don’t imagine I was in a state to think that far ahead.”
“You also said you tried to burn it with a match, and you couldn’t.”
“That’s also true. I don’t know why.” She shrugged. “Just another mystery of my childhood.”
Whatever he’d expected to find, bodies were not it. Rowan checked out the email as it came in from the local cops, and, sure enough, it was the land title transfer. Done by a lawyer. But it didn’t take long to realize it was a dead end.
He glanced over at Grayse as he turned onto the highway and took them back to town to their hotel. “We’ve got a problem with the lawyers,” he said.
“Seriously?” Grayse looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
“Because their offices burned down about ten years ago,” he said.
“Gee, what a surprise,” Grayse said. “I’ll drive by it.” Once they hit town, he took a couple turns and ended up in front of a flat lot where the ground had been cleared. It was empty, and nobody had built on top of it.
Phoenix made a strangled noise. “Oh!” she exclaimed and hopped out.
Walking to the lot, she stood in the center and opened her arms, slowly turning in a circle.
Rowan stared at her, wondering what the hell was going on.
She looked at him and smiled. “I was here a time or two.”
“Do you remember how long ago?”
“I came with my mother,” she said.
“That’s a very good point,” Grayse said. “What’s your surname?”
“Rising,” she replied. “Phoenix Rising. But I don’t know what my mother’s surname was.”
He stared at her, but she shrugged. “My father’s idea of a joke, I presume. I’m not sure that’s the name I was born with but it’s my legal name and the only one I’ve known.”
“We should get it confirmed from your birth certificate,” Rowan said.
“Wait, I think my mother’s name was Roden. Maria Angela Roden,” she said. “She changed my name to Rising to go along with Phoenix. I did search but couldn’t find any family.”
Rowan and Grayse looked at her, but she was turned away, staring up at the hills around them.
“What do you want to bet her family knew about the cult and disowned her?” Grayse asked in a low voice.
“Let’s find out,” Rowan said.
Urging her back into the SUV, Grayse took them to a restaurant, where they sat down and ordered dinner.
When it arrived, Phoenix inhaled hers.
Grayse put down his fork and looked at her. “Are you using energy to heal?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Maybe. Why?”
“Consuming food at this rate isn’t normal, unless you’re doing something with energy.”
“I was focused on healing my shoulder,” she said. She reached up and patted her shoulder. “But it is doing better now.”
“You know something? I wouldn’t be at all surprised, if you took off that bandage, to find there’s no wound,” Grayse said. “I doubt there was yesterday either.”
She reared back and stared at him. “Are you saying you think I made it up?” She couldn’t believe anybody would think that.
Grayse shook his head. “No. Not at all. Just that you would have healed right away. The fact that you’re still eating so much food is definitely a concern though.”
She looked at his food and asked, “Are you done?”
“I am,” Rowan said instead and slid his plate over. He had only eaten half his dinner.
Too much was going on for him to feel comfortable and to eat a big meal. He could almost sense this instinctive need to get up and run, but that didn’t make any sense. He glanced around, looking for energy out of sorts or out of sync. But he wasn’t seeing anything unusual. And that bothered him too. He glanced over at Grayse. “Are you picking up anything?”
But Grayse was still studying Phoenix and her empty plate. “I think we need to do some more analysis when we get you back to the hotel,” he said, his tone abrupt.
“Give me five,” Phoenix said and proceeded to polish off the rest of the food on Rowan’s plate. She sat back and smiled. “That’ll hold me for a little while. But, if we see a grocery store, I should pick up some groceries.”
They stood from the table, and Grayse paid the bill and led them to the SUV.
As they walked over, he said out of the corner of his mouth to Rowan, “Keep an eye out, will you? I didn’t answer you in the restaurant because I wasn’t sure, but I’m definitely getting a disruptive energy here.”
“Me too,” Rowan replied. “Let’s hit a grocery store for her and then head back to the hotel and maybe stay in for the rest of the day and night.”
Grayse took them to a nearby grocery store.
Phoenix bought a tub of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a pound of cheese, some ham, tea bags and milk. They stared at her in surprise. She shrugged. “I might get hungry.”
“Wow,” Rowan said under his breath.
She shot him a hard look.
He just smiled and said, “You eat as much as you need to eat. There’s a reason for it. We just don’t know why yet.”
Soon enough, they were back at the hotel room. They had a suite with two bedrooms, a small living room, and a kitchenette. Phoenix put the food down on the small table and made herself a peanut butter sandwich. As soon as she finished it, she made herself a second one.
Grayse put on the teakettle. “Do you want some tea?”
“That would be lovely, thanks,” she replied with a mouthful of sandwich. “What’s the chance a family member is involved in this?”
“That’s what we’ll find out,” Grayse said. “The cops are on it too.”
“Wouldn’t they have searched for family for me back when?”
“They did,” Grayse said. “And found no one.”
“Why would you find something now?”
“Because we’ll go a little deeper,” Rowan said.
She nodded and picked up two more slices of bread. This time she cut the ham and cheese to make another sandwich. She turned to look at Rowan. “I ate half your food in the restaurant. Do you want one?”
“Sure,” he said. He sat down at the small table. He ate slowly, watching as she shoveled in her third sandwich. He glanced over at Grayse and saw a frown in his eyes.
Grayse nodded. “I’ll grab my laptop and set it up with the Wi-Fi.” H
e went into one of the bedrooms that had two single beds, where he and Rowan were staying.
He came back out with a laptop and started clicking away. As soon as the teakettle boiled, Rowan made tea for everyone. He’d rather have coffee, but they only had instant, and that wasn’t his choice.
As soon as he sat back down again, Phoenix reached over to grab more bread, and he put a hand on hers. “Stop, Phoenix.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Have your tea first. Sit back and relax. Let that food digest.”
She nodded ever-so-slowly. “I am eating too much, aren’t I?”
He was gratified to hear the worry in her voice. “Yes,” he said. “You are. What we need to know is why.”
She pulled the sleeve of her T-shirt down over her shoulder. “Take this off.”
It was time to check it anyway. He obliged and helped her arm out of the shirt. She held the T-shirt against her chest as he carefully undid the bandage.
When he took it off, he gasped.
She stared down but couldn’t see anything. “I’ll take a look in the bathroom.” She hopped up and headed to the bathroom. When she came back out, her T-shirt was on normally, but her face was pale.
Grayse looked at her and asked, “No trace of the wound, is there?”
She shook her head. “Shouldn’t there be a scar?”
“Not now,” Grayse said. “The thing is, I’m not sure why else you’re still consuming food if that is healed.”
“Because I’m still not healed maybe, or something else needs to heal?”
“That’s possible,” he said. “That’s what I’m figuring out.”
She sighed and sat back down at the table, tucked the tea closer to her, then looked at it with revulsion. “Something inside me absolutely detests this tea,” she said.
Grayse slowly stood and asked, “Is it not the same tea you always drink?” His voice was hard, and his gaze was intense as he locked on her.
She looked up at him, bewildered. “It is,” she said. “I’m not sure why right now it seems like absolute poison to me.”
“If you pull it closer toward you, what happens?”
She looked at it, and her face twisted with revulsion. “I can’t even force myself to do that.”
Rowan snatched up the hot cup and pushed it closer to her.
She screamed and backed away.
“Very interesting,” Grayse said. “Where’s that letter you were given?”
She stared at him. “What’s going on? What the hell is happening to me?”
“Where’s the letter?” Grayse asked again, his voice ever-so-soft but intense.
She stuffed her fingers in her pocket and pulled it out. “This is it.”
“Put it in the tea,” he ordered.
She reached her hand over the cup but couldn’t force her fingers to drop it in the tea.
Grayse gasped and blurted out, “Aha! Now I understand.”
“I don’t,” Phoenix cried out. “What’s going on?”
“That letter,” he said. “It’s got his blood on it, doesn’t it?”
She looked down at the paper and said, “I don’t know if that’s his blood or mine. I thought it was mine.”
“No. It’s your father’s blood,” Grayse stated. “He followed a couple rituals to put his energy into that letter.”
“I was throwing it in the lava to get rid of it and him,” she said. “Remember? That’s what I was doing right from the beginning. Finding a way to destroy my ugly history without destroying myself.”
“Do you realize why your appetite is so large right now? You are feeding him. Something about returning to the cult property has woken him up …”
All the color drained from Phoenix’s face. “What?” she cried out. “Surely that’s not possible.”
Rowan walked behind her and rubbed her shoulders and neck. He could feel waves of energy coming from her. It was not good, but he persevered and kept his hands on her.
Rowan stared at Grayse from behind Phoenix. “Seriously?”
“It’s the only explanation,” Grayse said.
“But my father is dead,” she whispered. “You heard me even ask the cops about that, right?”
“That’s why you keep asking?” Rowan asked gently. “Because you know in your heart of hearts something is wrong.”
“Every once in a while, yes. But I figured it was just fear. Fear I didn’t understand something.”
“We definitely don’t know something yet,” Grayse said. “I suspect somebody all along has helped him. Tell me about your foster parents.”
She looked bewildered but obliged. “Both are professors at the same university. One taught science. One taught math. They wouldn’t have anything to do with this.”
“What are their names?”
She gave them to him.
He brought them up on the internet and started working.
Rowan stopped rubbing her shoulders, feeling the negative energy receding slightly, and sat down, studying her face, studying the letter. Figuring out how this all worked. There was obviously a psychic issue. “How did he know early on you were special?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Oh …” She stopped. “My mother said something about me running into a fire as a toddler and didn’t get burned. When she told my father, he tested me. Apparently I did the same thing and did not get burned again.” She shrugged. “It was probably all lies. Why would I walk through fire in the first place and not get burned? And why then did his fire burn me?” she scoffed. “It’s one thing to see energy. It’s another thing to use energy from other people to heal. But that doesn’t make me fireproof.”
“No,” he said. “Not at all. But it could be part of your healing abilities. You can wrap yourself up in something to protect yourself. What are the chances that, when you left that house, you wrapped yourself up in as many energies as you could to protect yourself from the burning fire around you?”
She stood abruptly and stared at him. “Were they dead or were they alive, and I killed them?”
He gave her the gentlest of smiles. “Maybe that’s an answer you need to give us.”
She sat back down on the chair, wondering how they’d gone from a normal peanut butter sandwich to an esoteric conversation that bordered on ghost haunting. “I have no idea. It’s too horrible to think about,” she said softly. “This is so far from normal.”
“Just think about it. If you knew that the place was on fire, and if you knew everybody around you was dying, whose energy would you grab in order to protect yourself?”
“Anybody’s and everybody’s,” she replied instantly. “I didn’t discern whose energy I would take to heal. I went for the strongest and then to the weakest. But, if it was me against the world, then obviously I was taking everything.”
“Who was there?” he asked gently. “You would know because you would be reaching out for that energy.”
She closed her eyes and put herself mentally back into the building, hating the fear trembling through her. So long ago, yet strangely as if it were just yesterday. “I can see myself screaming through the house. Crying out because the cops were leaving without me. They hadn’t found me. I had been locked up in a room, and they hadn’t found me.”
“And then?” Rowan urged her to continue through the memory.
“The place started to burn, and I was crying because it hurt. It was so hot. I kept reaching for energy to cool it down. I was taking energy from my mother, which was normal. Then from the other kids and the other women. They were dying. Some of them had no more energy left. Their bodies were already cooling. My father was there somewhere. I could feel him. I knew he was dead because I had seen his body, but his soul was there. His spirit kept telling me to use it, to use his energy to save myself.
“I grabbed it and wrapped it around me to protect myself from that fire. I used him to cool it down so I could walk through the flames. There were other people too. Other men, cops. I
reached for their energy too. They didn’t notice. They were still in shock over what they had seen. None of them noticed. I took a little bit from all of them just to try to protect myself, and I ran through the house. It was so bad, so hot. I was burning up. I had to take it all. I took more and more and more and kept wrapping it around my feet, my head.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and sweat coated her brow. She twisted her fingers together.
“Keep going, Phoenix. This can help you. You need to know,” Rowan encouraged her.
She took a deep breath. “There was a surge of energy, like a blue fire all around me, but it was cooling against the red-hot fire of the house. I knew I had to get out because, even though I was protected from the flames, the house itself was coming down. When I ran through the house, I saw the kitchen and ran to the front door, blasting through it even as the timbers behind me fell. I was covered in blue, but, at the same time, in the edges of the blue were orange flames. I could see myself. I could see the blue and the orange as I kept on walking, pushing the orange farther and farther behind me. Then I was outside, crying, and I remember being covered by blankets and men and strange energy. The voices. It was terrible. I kept pushing them all away, pushing it all back. I was cocooning my senses from the onslaught that was so hard to deal with.”
“Right,” Grayse said. “As a Phoenix risen from the ashes, you did exactly as your father said you would.”
She nodded slowly. “It’s one of the things he did at the end. He lit the house on fire.” She shook her head. “What’s that got to do with my appetite? What’s that got to do with everything going on now?”
“I think all those bits and pieces of energy from the cult fire are still with you,” Grayse said, staring at her. “I think you grabbed as much of your father’s energy as he offered, and that’s what he wanted. He wanted you to take him forward into whatever millennium came after this. His body was dead, but his soul survived. And you’ve been keeping it safe all this time.”
She stared at him in horror. “Are you saying that the man who made my life a living hell is still alive?”
“No, not at all,” Grayse replied, shaking his head. “His body is not alive, but that energy, that soul is, and going to the compound today woke him up. Maybe because you were in shock, traumatized from revisiting your childhood. Yes, his soul energy is definitely still alive, and it is attached to that letter you always keep with you. He’s getting stronger as you get stronger. No wonder you felt like you had to drop it into the lava because that’s the only place you could really, really get rid of it, isn’t it? And I mean, get rid of him …”
