“Nope.”
“The albino fellow reckons it’s important.”
“It’s not that. It’s just … that’s not where we’re going to find it. You look through them if you want.”
“Don’t rightly know what I’m sniffing after.”
I shrugged. “Who does? Maybe Wade will know it when he sees it.” I dropped my voice even more. “Honestly, I didn’t see much in that light. I hope he’s right and there’s some sort of answer to find here.”
“Honesty can get a fellow in a heap of trouble when he’s leaving crooked tracks,” Adam whispered, standing beside me and gazing down at the open boxes.
“Good thing we already got our baggage out in the open.” I also looked into the boxes. “Knowing how green we all are…”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged and reached into his pocket. “Takes a while to air out a laundry line.” He produced a couple sticks of gum and offered me one. “Black Jack?”
“Thanks.” I frowned as I took it, trying to think if I was keeping secrets. I was getting mixed up fast with how I felt about all of them. But I wasn’t hiding that. We’d only just met. So…?
Adam popped the gum in his mouth and bent to toss the wrapper in the old garbage bag as if that was perfectly normal. Was it? I passed my wrapper to him to throw in there also. Most people love or hate black licorice. I was neither. I didn’t mind it, glad of the sweet rush of the gum for my dry mouth. It also wasn’t my favorite. Cinnamon was the best gum—anything spicy in any food group.
I looked up at Adam on my left. “Anything you want to tell me?” Very soft.
Much to my surprise, he nodded. He looked at me sideways, one corner of his mouth turning up. “I ain’t really courting my cousin. Gideon carries on like a bellyaching panther sometimes. Wanted your focus on him, not me. Fact is, we can’t let ourselves get involved with any mundane females. Our own pack is all we got, and getting out and mixing with any female who knows us for what we are and understands, even a worm, can go straight to our heads. Then if she’s also quick as a sunbeam and pretty as strawberry shortcake, and out after vampires, well, she’s singing our song. Weren’t expecting you. Gideon reckoned you sounded fine as cream gravy on the phone, but in a different way—classy and mature. Expecting a middle-aged witch who’d been at this for a while.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about not—”
“Glad you weren’t,” he went on, casting me a quick grin as he chewed. “Feels good being around folks who we can be ourselves with, also getting beyond our own pack and mountains.”
I smiled back, surprised by this honesty. Also … grateful.
“It does feel good,” I whispered. “Since my parents died I’ve been… I’ve just been in a really bad place. These last couple days… It’s like finding my way out. I’m glad you’re here.”
He held his hand out a few inches closer and I took it—his being hot but dry and strong, engulfing even my big hand. His palm and fingertips were rough, somewhat callused. Was it work, or from running around on his hands part of the time? How much of their lives did they really spend in fur, hiding out in the Smoky Mountains where no one knew about them? Even with a pack, even with the businesses their family owned, it sounded like a lonely existence.
Not as lonely as suddenly being an orphan. I squeezed his hand, just remembering that there was something else: another failing in the truth—involving being totally unsure how I was going to pay them, even though I’d advertised this as a job and needed to figure it out.
I’d opened my mouth to confess to Adam when I shook myself. Pretty sure I wasn’t under the influence of anything aside from warm and fuzzy sentiment with Adam there beside me, I nevertheless needed to snap out of it and keep some focus.
“Wade?” I asked. “There are books in here. Do you want to look?”
No answer.
Adam glanced around.
I turned, still holding his hand—now a bit tighter.
“Wade?” I stepped into the doorway, looking out to where they’d been poking through the furniture. The trunk lid was open. The dresser drawers were open. The flashlight lay on top, shining down the hall. The people were gone, even Fulco, the house silent.
Adam let out a slow sigh. “I reckon we should have seen that one coming.”
9
Last time I’d burst into the hall in a dark and infested house in the night I’d been alone. Now I clutched Adam’s hand like I would hold a rope while dangling off a roof.
“Vel? Come back to the hall.” I didn’t dare raise my voice for some reason, but spoke in a normal conversation tone, which still seemed like a shout. “Vel? Fulco? Come on back.”
Nothing stirred. Had Fulco been biding his time all along to dump us here? Could he be affected by the spirits after all? Or was he simply wandering around?
For Wade and Gideon I had no such questions. They wouldn’t have walked away and totally bypassed coming into this room unless somehow compelled or tricked into doing so. I didn’t even bother with their names.
“We have to stay together,” I said very fast and quiet. “No matter what. Understand? That’s the most important thing. Most important. Do not leave me, I will not leave you, no matter what we see or hear or anything. Okay?”
Adam nodded sharply. He glanced up and down the hall. He chewed his gum. Adam wasn’t stupid, so I couldn’t think of any reason why he wouldn’t be scared. Maybe he was just good at hiding his fear.
“Keep going room by room?” He looked at me. “They have to be in one.”
“That’s right. If you see anything or hear anything or feel anything strange, tell me about it. It might not be real. With two people we can help each other and keep illusions from taking us over if someone is trying to send us harmful sensations. They’ve probably wandered off because of some distraction, just like what happened when we first walked in here.”
“Gideon’ll be fit to be tied when he cottons on how he walked away and left you. He’s real protective. Thinks he’s silver as Moon some days but he’ll look out for his pack.”
“Our job to look after him now. Let’s find him.” I inched from the room as if playing that old game with the buzzer, Operation, holding my breath as I moved. The floor creaked.
Adam, reassuringly close and secure, stepped after me. “How come we didn’t hear them walk away?”
“That’s a good question. Can you grab that light?”
“Got my stakes.”
“You’re not going to need stakes here. Stick a couple into your belt loop or something.”
He did, setting the rest on the dresser, then took up Wade’s flashlight.
We tried shining the lights left and right while looking the other way, in case Gideon’s glowed from any room down there. All dark. We continued the same way we’d been moving, room by room, heading to the left, north, down the hall to another doorway.
“Vel?” I whispered, trying to see tracks in dust.
No one in there. Another totally empty room aside from a threadbare rug on the floor.
“I could change and track them,” Adam murmured. “Might be the only—”
“No,” I snapped out the word with unintended force, the mere prospect making my heart pound. “No. Just … we have to stay together. Talking, in contact. We’ll be fine. We’ll find them.”
Adam nodded, chewing his gum. One more scare and I was afraid I would swallow mine. I bit down and kept the wad there in my molars.
Across the hall we had reached the back turreted bedroom, there being another turret on the front, diagonally opposite this one. Here was the grand master suite, obvious not only from the added bathroom but because it remained partly furnished. The curving window seat was lined in dusty, moth-bitten cushions. The fourposter bed was made with a faded red bedspread and red silk on the canopy. A vanity with cracked mirror stood against the wall by the door, opposite the bed, while another shelf, stripped of books, stood by the once-inviting window seats in the turret.
Something about the room chilled my blood. Maybe it was the red, mirroring red in my own hair, a color attracting notice. Maybe it was how complete it still felt with some of the furnishings, and nice ones at that—how it gave the sense of having been left by someone in a huge hurry.
I remained in the hall as Adam started forward to check in the bathroom.
He glanced around at me. “Want to wait here?”
“What did I just say?” Fresh blast of panic coming out as anger in my voice.
Adam was unperturbed. “Then come on. Got to sniff each trail. Gideon?”
I let him pull me along to look in the bathroom, shining his light up and down, while I kept all my attention on that bed—certain something was going to swarm at me from below it, or detach from its dust. My own skin felt ready to crawl right off my body.
I cast another circle around us while Adam looked in the bathroom, holding up my right hand on the flashlight, sending out a steadying, protective magic energy for us—throwing some prayer into it as well. Whatever worked.
“All we need’s the right strategy,” Adam said under his breath. “Just like backgammon or chess. They’ll turn up.”
I could hardly hear. “We only want to help you,” I said to that bed, knees weak and breaths short. “To free you from feeling hurt and trapped and angry. If you don’t want that, we can leave you be. We don’t want trouble. Just to help.”
“What are you seeing?” Adam whispered, also squinting at the bed.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Let’s keep moving.”
“Sure thing.”
We both continued to look at the bed.
“Ripley?”
“Yes?”
“You were hankering to know if I’d any complaints. Well … having a bit of trouble picking up my feet if you’d like to know. Bit like being caught in a flood of molasses.”
“Me too.”
“Know any spells for something like that?”
“I was just casting one to protect us.”
He squeezed my hand comfortingly. “Better luck next time and all. Got any spells for flying around like bats?”
“Fulco?” I cast my caterpillar light out into the hall, praying to draw some sort of attention, desperate to believe at least Fulco wouldn’t be affected by whatever was happening—and that he hadn’t walked out on us. Next, I drew up a counter, trying to block and deaden instead of bringing in more energy. I imagined the counter spell trickling down our bodies like a cold shower, pushing away what held us, washing us clean.
Adam shivered. “Now something cold’s sneaking—”
“It’s me. Just keep trying to move, focus on the goal.”
It was there, on that bed. I knew from the roots of my dyed hair to soles of my tingling feet, that someone or something was there and watching us and holding us in its sway. If I had my curse back, I could see it. But I didn’t. It, or they, could see us. I couldn’t see them. But I still knew, had felt it the instant I’d seen the room. Wasn’t that something? A first step? Wasn’t knowing enough without true sight? Not really. But it was a start.
With a rush, I guided energy along the beam of the flashlight and blasted the cooling counter effects straight up and out, spraying the bed with unseen magic as if with a phantom firehose—blocking, defending, throwing up a wall and cutting us off.
Adam staggered. He’d been fighting so hard to lift a foot, it was like the rope broke and he went stumbling across the floor, jerking me along with him.
Thrilled by my own accomplishment, I wanted to yell, “Hah! Gotcha!” as we made our escape.
“Hunt Moon,” Adam gasped. “Most peculiar place I ever—”
Crash! With a thunderous noise, rattling the walls, the door slammed before us, traveling with a force as if kicked by a horse, nearly taking off a piece of Adam’s nose.
I yelped and jumped back, still hanging on as Adam, going too fast to stop, crashed into it with a thud, yanking me to ram him next. He was so solidly built it hurt me more than him—a bit more forgiving than banging into a tree.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I gasped as I reached past him, still in the same movement that I crashed, sending magic into the door, frantic to get it open.
Too late. I was expecting a blast of air at our back, a black hole to fall into, fire consuming us, any terrifying illusion that seemed real, the sort of thing that’s the first stop on the bus into Crazytown. Instead, someone spoke.
10
“You shan’t be able to hear for long.”
I spun around. Adam stared, tensing up for the first time, back against the door as he looked, wide-eyed, at the bed.
It wasn’t the curse. Adam could see and hear him also. But it was definitely a dead guy. This was even more insubstantial than how the curse used to let me see wayward spirits. A vague, human-like form of a man, first a shimmer at the center of the bed, as if standing on it, then moving to the floor as we watched, facing us. The voice sounded like someone shouting from far away, reaching us clearly, but having to work hard to get here.
If I’d been a cat, my back would have gone right up and fur would have stood out all over my body. The power it took for a spirit to manifest as a visible being, or speak with a human voice, even for a moment, was vast. The demon rumors in this house were true.
“What in Moon’s name…?” Adam breathed, tense, yes, but still not nearly as terrified as he should be.
Our host spoke over him, no moving lips or clear face, only that voice, voice of a man, a Southerner, coming at us like an echo. “You like games? Let us play one.”
“Who are you?” I gasped, knees shaking so hard I pressed into Adam, gripping his hand as if that could keep us alive.
“You have … thirty minutes to find your friends, find the diary, and return to your circle,” he continued. “If you can do that, you win. We’ll talk about crossing over. If you lose, they are driven out of their minds and you become mine. Sounds fair.” It wasn’t a question.
“What?” There would have been a laugh in the question if my throat had been capable of it just then. “‘Become yours’? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
His form was slightly more solid. A sort of, well, ghost of a man standing in front of the bed, facing us. An echo, just like the voice, in gray uniform and even a hat. “Is that not self-explanatory?”
I gulped air, thick as mud, unable to think, had to get out of this, negotiate. No way Mom and Dad would get caught up playing life or death games with a demon.
“I mean…” Another swallow. “You’re a spirit. I’m corporeal. You don’t need a slave girl to bring you bunches of the sweetest grapes and fan your face. You can’t have sex or eat my flesh, and it’s a huge effort even for you to talk and manifest that energy. So, yeah … what do you mean ‘yours’?”
“You will be mine,” his voice boomed, yet growing no louder, “body and soul—and that sounds like another challenge. So … once you are mine, I will prove you wrong.”
Adam glanced nervously at me, his nose almost in my hair. “Can’t really touch you, can he?”
“Of course not.” I projected a fresh, unseen energy bubble between us, circle of protection which, so far, hadn’t seemed to do a damn bit of good.
“One more challenge then, for you who doubt,” he snarled, voice fading but pushing on with sheer rage and will while the image of him grew faint. “We shall make it twenty minutes. Once you lose, you’ll find out how physical I can manifest.”
“That’s crazy,” I panted, feeling past Adam at the door handle with my hand that held the flashlight. “We can’t find everyone and the book and do all that in twenty minutes.”
“It would have helped your case to consider that before talking back to your elders, girl. Time starts when the door opens. When it next closes you will be in here with me. They will be out there with their brains melting out their ears. Though, if they’re lucky, they might still be able to hear you scream while I prove you wrong.” Voice fading, image of t
he man almost gone.
The door sprang into Adam’s back, having only a few inches of space.
I wasn’t paying it any attention anymore, anger catching up to the terror. “This is bullshit. You can’t just impose—”
But the figure was gone, nothing but the far-off hint of a laugh still reaching us. Adam yanked me sideways and through the doorway before I could say anything else.
“Time and place for arguing rules.” Adam dragged me through and slammed the door behind us. “This is his house, his high card. Doesn’t mean he can’t be beat.”
Did it? I had no reason to believe that last was true, but I needed my breath. I just nodded as we cleared the door.
Then we ran.
11
We knew at least for a moment that the demon was behind us. There didn’t seem any reason to sneak around anymore. Not that there was a reason to sneak around ghosts in the first place. Only our own caution and sense of self-preservation had left us all light-footed since we’d entered. Now we only had to find the others and get out—screw the diary, screw the demon, and screw this house. Just go.
We didn’t stop to discuss the matter. Adam bolted to the next door that we hadn’t checked, across the hall from the room with the boxes of books, while we shouted their names. It wasn’t even until we were out of there that I realized I’d swallowed my gum.
“Wade!”
“Gideon!”
But the moment he’d slammed the big bedroom door, every other door along the hall, maybe every other door in the house, also slammed. Adam hit the next door and yanked at the nob. I had to use magic to open it, which wasn’t a big deal alone, but opening ten doors with magic would sap energy reserves, not to mention the wasted time. Ten seconds into the game and I was already hyperventilating.
Everything was a fumble with our hands locked together. Adam shoved the handle of Wade’s flashlight into his back pocket to free up his hand, giving us a light umbrella aimed at the ceiling while I still used mine to shine around the room.
House of Chaos Page 4
