“And what do those entail?”
“I think I can paint you a picture.” He leaned in again to give me a kiss, a smug smile on his face, and swore viciously when his phone dinged with an incoming message. He finished the kiss and then reluctantly pulled back to read his screen.
“Well, crap,” he said after a beat. “Apparently we have a job.”
I was caught off guard. It had been weeks since we’d had an assignment. I was starting to think we would never get one again. “Where are we going?”
“Charleston.”
I was intrigued. I’d never been to South Carolina and Charleston was supposed to be one of the most haunted places in the world. “That sounds cool. What are we looking for?”
“Chris didn’t say,” he replied, referring to our boss. “Knowing him, though, it’ll be a doozy.”
I was totally looking forward to it. “We should finish our dinner and get packed. I don’t want to miss the plane.”
His easy smile was back. “You’re so cute. You’re like a teacher’s pet who insists on being prompt. You have time to digest your food. We’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “We’re not?”
“It’s late,” he reminded me, inclining his head toward the clock on the wall. “By the time we got there, all we could do was go to bed anyway. This is better, but we have to be up early.”
“I guess that means you’re spending the night at your apartment,” I said ruefully. “So much for your dirty plans.”
“On the contrary,” he countered. “Your apartment is closer to the airport. I’m going to run home, pack a bag, and then come back to spend the night here. I believe we’ll have plenty of time to embrace my plans ... if you agree to hold off on eating that giant cookie until I get back.”
I loved it when he negotiated. “Okay, but I’ll want something in exchange.”
“What’s that?”
I leaned close and whispered a flirty suggestion. For a change, he was the one blushing.
“I think that can be arranged,” he said in a strangled voice. “Give me thirty minutes to pack and get back. Then I’m going to change your world for the better.”
“You’ve already done that,” I said. “I think you managed to achieve that within a few days of meeting me.”
He sobered and held my gaze. “Right back at you. As for the rest of it ... think of it as a work in progress. We’ll figure it out.”
I had no doubt he was right. There was strength in our union, and it would carry us through. “Go get your stuff. I want to eat the cookie and it’s going to be pure torture to wait.”
“You’d better wait. You have to share.”
“There’s no one I would rather share with than you.”
He leaned over and smacked a loud kiss against my lips. “Good to know.”
Two
The plane was scheduled to leave early the next morning. Jack woke in a surprisingly good mood, which expanded when we stopped at McDonald’s for his favorite breakfast sandwich — the steak and cheese bagel — before hitting the airport.
The Legacy Foundation had its own private jet and our co-workers were already seated when we boarded. Our boss, Chris Biggs, merely gave us a nod of greeting from his spot next to his girlfriend Hannah Silver. She was a scientist, one of the smartest women I’d ever come in contact with, and she looked like a swimsuit model. Sometimes life simply wasn’t fair.
“You’re late,” a rancid voice called from the middle of the plane. Laura Chapman sat with an apple in her hand and a hateful glare on her face. She’d perpetually looked as if she’d smelled something foul the last few weeks, and that expression was often aimed at me. She had attitude where I was concerned, and only part of it was on a professional level. The other part — the bigger part — was because she had feelings for Jack that weren’t reciprocated. Our relationship had pushed her over the edge and she was constantly digging at us these days.
“We’re five minutes early,” Jack countered, dropping our bags at the front of the plane so the flight attendant could stow them. He took the bags of food I carried the minute we sat down and waited until I’d buckled my belt before doling out the items. “Mind your own business, Laura.”
“Yes, mind your own business, Laura,” drawled Millie Watson, glee practically flowing off her in waves as she reclined in her seat. She was located in the section of the plane between Laura and us — her boyfriend Bernard Hill seated beside her — and she looked as if she was spoiling for a fight.
That wasn’t unusual for Millie, of course. In addition to being Chris’s aunt, she was the ex-wife of the foundation’s chief executive officer. The divorce, which she described as amicable —though I had my doubts — had left her in a unique position. She was basically untouchable and she knew it. Laura, a genuinely unlikeable person, was the only member of our team who didn’t essentially have a partner, and Millie enjoyed messing with her. It was becoming an everyday occurrence.
“Oh, stuff it,” Laura shot back, making a face. “Nobody was talking to you.”
Jack nudged my hand with my breakfast sandwich. He’d gotten four hash browns for us to munch on, too. He was clearly determined that I start the day with a full stomach. “Eat,” he prodded in a low voice. “Ignore her. She only wants to get under your skin.”
She was good at doing just that. I knew as well as Millie and Jack, though, that it irritated her more when I didn’t respond, so I acquiesced.
“Everyone eat breakfast,” Chris ordered. “I’ll wait until we’re in the air to tell you about our case.” His eyes sparkled. He was clearly excited about the investigation. He was the enthusiastic sort, determined to find proof of paranormal shenanigans. He’d done just that on multiple occasions. He simply didn’t realize it.
I was used to flying at this point. It was almost a weekly occurrence before the last assignment. Since then, we’d been hanging close to the office. It was a timely break — and Jack and I needed that time to re-forge our bonds and get over what had happened in New Orleans — but I was happy to be back to work. Given the way Jack smiled when I bit into my Egg McMuffin, he obviously felt the same way.
Twenty minutes later, we were at cruising altitude and everyone had finished eating. Jack collected our refuse and tossed it in the garbage before settling next to me. He held his coffee and sipped as he waited for Chris to start explaining. Our gregarious boss needed little prodding.
“We’re after an incubus,” he announced, grinning.
“What the heck is an incubus?” Laura asked, her voice shriller than usual. She was obviously still agitated by Jack’s lackluster greeting. The more he ignored her, the more desperate she became to garner a reaction from him. It was getting rather pathetic.
“An incubus is the male form of a sexual demon,” I volunteered without thinking. “The female form is a succubus. According to legend, he invades the bedroom of sleeping women and basically ... um ... loves them to death.”
Jack arched an amused eyebrow at my discomfort. “Loves them?”
“You know.” I shot him a dark look. “I’m not saying more than that.”
Jack chortled as Chris took over the educational portion of the conversation.
“Charlie is essentially right,” he volunteered. “An incubus is a demon who uses his sexual prowess to invade a woman’s dreams, lull her into a fall sense of security, and then extracts her life force through sexual acts.”
Jack looked horrified at the prospect. “Excuse me? Are you saying he literally kills a woman with sex?”
Chris nodded without hesitation. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” He looked far too happy at the prospect, but I didn’t take it personally. It wasn’t that the notion of innocent women being essentially raped to death excited him. He just liked the demon part. He wanted to see one more than anything.
Jack’s gaze was speculative as he shifted his eyes to me. “Are demons real?”
The question
likely wasn’t directed toward me, but it felt that way. “How should I know?” I shrugged, uncomfortable. “I know what you know.”
He realized his mistake too late to take it back. “I wasn’t directing the question at you.”
“He was directing it at me,” Chris volunteered. “Although I’m not sure I have the answers. I believe in demons. And there are more than incubi and succubi out there. As we all know, though, Jack is harder to convince when it comes to creatures with a paranormal bent.”
That certainly used to be true. Given recent events, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if he would change his tack moving forward.
“I don’t always jump to the conclusion that it’s not possible,” Jack hedged, although he didn’t look as if he believed the statement. “It’s just ... demons are so fantastical.”
He’d met one in New Orleans. Harlequin Desdemona Stryker — or Harley for the great unwashed — was a crossroads demon who inserted herself into our lives when the zombies called forth by an evil bruja threatened to overwhelm us. She tipped us off to what was happening and tried to help. After that, she disappeared into the night. I had no idea if I would ever see her again. I used my magic to eradicate the rest of the zombies once she figuratively (and kind of literally) lit a fuse for me, something Jack witnessed from a prime seat. He’d obviously been more focused on that, which was understandable. Apparently we needed to have a discussion about Harley and her origins when we got a moment alone.
“And yet they have ties to biblical times,” Chris noted, oblivious to Jack’s inner turmoil. He wasn’t a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he often missed social cues. Jack wasn’t always easy to read anyway. Chris naturally assumed he was reticent about the existence of demons for the same reasons he always was. He couldn’t possibly know about what had happened in New Orleans to change Jack’s outlook.
For that, I was grateful.
“So ... are you saying angels are real, too?” Jack queried.
Chris nodded without hesitation. “Most certainly. But we’re not dealing with an angel. What’s happening in Charleston is decidedly ... evil.”
“And what’s happening in Charleston?” Millie asked, directing the conversation to safer waters. She knew Jack was still struggling to wrap his mind around the expanded world he found himself living in. She wanted to give him a moment to regroup, which he desperately needed.
“Well, in a nutshell, women are dying,” Chris replied, his expression darkening. “It’s really more convoluted than that.” He pulled a file from the briefcase he carried only when traveling. “We have eight dead women so far.”
“Eight?” I was flabbergasted.
Jack, who tried not to display our relationship when we were on the job, automatically reached for my hand. Either he no longer cared about keeping up a professional front or he simply lost track of his emotions before he could think better of it.
“That’s a lot of bodies,” he noted after a beat. “What sort of timeframe are we dealing with?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” Jack’s eyebrows practically flew off his forehead. “Are you kidding me? That’s ... I mean ... .” His mind was clearly busy as he leaned back in his seat and rubbed his cheek. “Serial killers usually have a cooling down period between kills. This speaks to escalation, the exact opposite.”
“We’re not dealing with a serial killer,” Chris pointed out.
I stirred. “Aren’t we?” I felt the need to take Jack’s side, even if it was in a roundabout way. “You’re saying eight women have been killed in the past three weeks, and there’s obviously enough evidence to suggest that a single culprit is responsible for all the attacks. If that’s not a serial killer, I don’t know what is.”
“Point taken,” Chris conceded. “This is obviously a ritual killer, albeit a supernatural one.”
Jack cleared his throat and his expression told me he was returning to reality ... with a big, loud thud. “What evidence do we have that we’re dealing with a supernatural killer?”
Chris beamed at him. “I’m glad you asked.” He removed a small stack of documents from his folder and handed them to Jack. “Here are the police reports from several of the scenes. Not every death is being investigated by the Charleston Police Department. Three of them belong to a neighboring community, Summerville, which is about twenty minutes away.”
“Far enough for neighboring departments to have a pissing contest, but close enough to detect a pattern,” Jack mused as he perused the documents.
I looked over his shoulder, not caring in the least that I was crowding him, and frowned when I read the portion about how the bodies were discovered. “This says there were no marks on the bodies,” I noted. “How do we know the women didn’t die of natural causes? I mean ... it would seem unlikely for younger women, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility, especially if we want to include potential environmental factors that might’ve impacted them.”
Jack shot me an appraising look. “Nice. You’re thinking like a cop.”
The way he phrased it didn’t sound like a compliment. “Oh, I still think it’s an incubus,” I warned him. “I just like having all the information at my fingertips.”
“My earlier statement stands.” He shot me a wink — something that wasn’t lost on Laura because she made a disgusted sound deep in her throat — and then turned back to the files. “It says here that full autopsies were performed on all the women and no cause of death could be ascertained.”
“That’s correct.” Chris bobbed his head. “All the women were in their early to mid-twenties. None of them were over the age of twenty-seven. None were younger than twenty-three. All were brunettes with blue eyes. No deviations. We’re talking fit women, all considered attractive by generic standards, and they all had long hair, which they wore straight, past their shoulders.”
“It sounds like Charlie,” Millie noted out of the blue, causing me to cringe.
Jack, his eyes thoughtful, pinned me with a worried look. “It does sound like Charlie,” he agreed.
I sensed the discussion turning in an uncomfortable direction. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Nobody is jumping to conclusions,” Jack reassured me. “You’re not sleeping alone in Charleston, though. I mean ... just to be on the safe side.”
Laura snorted. “I guess that means you’re bunking with Millie, huh, Charlie? What a bummer for you.”
“She’ll be bunking with me,” Jack corrected, his tone confrontational. He appeared to be channeling Millie this morning and was apparently ready to throw down if need be.
“Fraternization is against the rules,” Laura shot back.
“Not for our group,” Chris reminded her. “Thanks to the fit you threw in St. Pete Beach — and the recent sensitivity seminar we were forced to attend because of you — the rules of our group have been expressly laid out. If group members want to share a room, no matter the configuration, it’s encouraged because it will save on costs. I initially booked Charlie and Jack separate rooms, but that will be easily rectified when we reach the hotel.”
Jack shot Laura a smug look, which only seemed to darken her mood ... if that was even possible.
“Well, how great for you guys,” she drawled, hatred practically dripping from her tongue when she focused on me. “Everything seems to be turning up roses for you, huh?”
I managed to keep my temper in check, but just barely. “I’m actually a fan of hydrangeas. Roses are nice, don’t get me wrong, but hydrangeas are fancier.”
“I’ll mark that down for the first time I need to bring you flowers to dig myself out of a hole,” Jack offered. “And that will happen, by the way. You might want to buy some vases now.”
I laughed. He was happier, freer even, than he was on previous assignments. I couldn’t help but wonder if the truth coming out about my abilities had allowed him to lighten up.
“Oh, I just can’t take the cuteness overload,” La
ura complained, bitterly. “Can we talk about something else? Anything else, really. How about we go back to the dead women? That’s preferable to this conversation.”
“I hate to agree with Laura — honestly, you have no idea — but we probably should focus on the bigger picture rather than how adorable Charlie and Jack are together,” Millie offered, causing Jack to scowl. “That’s a lot of women for such a short amount of time. What are the specifics of the attacks?”
“There aren’t any specifics,” Chris replied. “All of the women were tucked safely in their beds. They were thought to have died in their sleep because their expressions were peaceful. Some of the bedrooms were on the first floor, others on the second floor. All the bedroom windows were open. There wasn’t a mark on any of the bodies.”
“Were the women single?” I asked, searching for another pattern that might help us narrow down potential victims. “I mean ... was the incubus relatively certain that he wouldn’t be interrupted during the act?”
“Actually, I don’t know the answer to that question,” Chris mused, scanning the paperwork in front of him. “It doesn’t really say. The only information on the individuals who discovered the bodies comes in the form of ‘male’ and ‘female.’ There’s no way of knowing if we’re dealing with a parent, sibling, friend or significant other. I will be sure to ask, though. That’s a very good point, Charlie.”
“Yes, well done, Charlie,” Laura whined. “You’re perfect and the rest of us bow at your feet.”
Jack shot her a quelling look. “Why must you always make things difficult?”
She was incensed. “Me? I’m not the one fawning all over a co-worker and creating a toxic work environment. That would be you. I mean ... do you really think anyone wants to see you making a fool of yourself by kissing her ass? It’s gross.”
“I love watching him kiss her ass,” Millie countered. “It’s a highlight for me ... and only partially because it drives you crazy. That’s just an added bonus.”
[Charlie Rhodes 06.0] The Incubus Impasse Page 3
