“Incoming!” I warned. Bo’s ghost growled and took a step ahead of me. Judah’s ghost formed to Teag’s left, while Esther appeared behind Sorren, still screaming for us to get out.
“Do it now!” Sorren commanded, and Father Anne drew a silver flask from the pocket of her cargo pants and splashed the mirror with holy water.
“I exorcise thee, every unclean spirit, in the name of God the Father Almighty...” Father Anne began the ritual. Teag pivoted and slammed into Judah with an iron dagger, and the ghost’s image flickered and blinked out, only to reassemble right next to me.
I felt Judah’s hands around my throat as I brought my right hand up to where his chest should have been and willed my power through my athame. The cold light blew Judah’s image apart, as Bo’s ghost stalked Esther, who continued to shriek at us to get out.
“We cast you out, every onslaught of the infernal adversary...” Father Anne continued, and as she spoke, she drew back a booted foot and smashed its steel-reinforced toe into the center of the mirror.
The security lighting in the house flickered wildly, and a deep, unsettling laugh rolled through the darkened rooms. Esther’s ghost blinked out with a look of panic on her face, and Judah vanished a second later, his angry scowl replaced for once with real fear.
A dark form took shape just inside the parlor door. Unseen hands tossed us all into the air as if we weighed nothing. Sorren crashed against the stairs with enough force to break bone if he were mortal. Father Anne slammed up against the foyer wall, pinned. Teag flew back against the door like a rag doll. I leveled my athame and managed to send a blast of cold white force toward the new threat, but the blast parted around him, flowing by without effect, though it would have slammed a normal man into the next room. In the next instant, a twist of the newcomer’s hand threw me against the sideboard hard enough to force the air from my lungs. I collapsed in a heap next to the guest book, which lay where it had fallen among the shards of the broken mirror.
“Did you really think that you could be rid of me that easily?” The man’s deep voice sent a shiver through me. Bo’s ghost backed up to put itself between me and what I realized must be the Boyce family demon.
“Exorcizamos te, omnis immunde spiritus...” Father Anne switched to Latin, but the demon only laughed.
“You’re going to have to do better than that, sister. This family is bound to me by blood. I’ve got iron-clad contracts on their souls.”
I could see the demon more clearly now. He looked cocky and slick, like a Mafia hit man right out of Scorcese central casting. Teag got to his feet and launched himself at the demon, a silver knife replacing the iron weapon. The demon barely glanced his way, then flicked his wrist and slammed Teag against the wall.
“The Boyce family died out with Esther,” Sorren said in a low, gravelly voice as he slowly got to his knees. I wondered whether being a vampire made it more difficult for the demon to control Sorren. “Your claim on them is forfeit.”
The demon laughed. “Don’t recall anything about my contracts having an end date.” His laugh faded, and his expression grew predatory. “They’re mine for eternity.”
I had been wrong about the mirror being the demon’s anchor, and now all of us were likely to die. My head pounded from where I hit the sideboard hard enough to knock over an oil lamp and smash its hurricane globe. Drops of lamp oil splattered on the floor and splashed the guest book.
I pushed up to sit with my back against the solid piece of furniture, and frowned as I stared at the guest book, which lay in a heap beside me, its cover splayed and pages crumpled. Falling from the top of the sideboard damaged the book, and I could see where the cover started to come apart, pulling the canvas away from the inside paper lining to reveal a much older hidden binding, one that looked like cracked leather.
Memories flashed through my mind, recalling bits of the visions I’d had of Esther, Alice, and Judah. In each one, I had seen them writing in a book. At the time, I’d thought they were making notes in a ledger or a journal, but now I realized the significance of what I had witnessed, and when I saw the same onyx-black fountain pen lying next to the guest book that I had glimpsed in my visions, the missing pieces of the puzzle came together.
All of the recent victims of the Boyce curse were involved with the renovations. VIP donors, the architect—people who got a personal tour of the house, and would have signed the guest book with pride.
A guest book I was now certain was really the demonic ledger on which Judah, Esther, and Alice signed away their souls—as did Parker and the rest of the victims, without their knowledge.
Bo’s ghost sprang at the demon, teeth bared. The demon fluttered his fingers, and Bo’s image flickered and vanished.
A desperate plan formed in my mind. Sorren climbed back to his feet, starting toward the demon again, his face a mask of concentration as he battled the creature’s will with his own immortal strength. Father Anne kept chanting the Latin exorcism, until an unseen hand clamped around her throat, cutting off her words and her breath. I saw her eyes grow wide and her face flush and I knew we were running out of time. Teag lay slumped where he had fallen, a bad gash open across his forehead, blood running down his face.
Sorren tackled the demon, and the two of them fell to the floor, wrestling for control. I made my move, knowing it was now or never.
I snatched the blessed boline knife from Father Anne’s belt and jammed it down into guest book, then grabbed the lighter from my pocket and with a flick lit the lamp oil that coated the torn leather and yellowed pages. The book burst into flame, stinking of sulfur.
Father Anne gasped as the pressure on her throat eased, and picked up the exorcism where she left off.
“Cassidy! Throw me the pen!” I looked up to see Sorren still pinning the demon, and while the hilt of his silver dagger protruded from the man’s chest, the creature still bucked and twisted trying to get loose from Sorren’s grip.
Instinctively, I knew to touch the pen gingerly, and I managed to send it flying in Sorren’s direction without ever closing my hand around the onyx shaft. Sorren caught the pen in midair and wrapped his fingers around it. Blood began to drip from his palm, and the demon screamed.
“Not exactly what you had in mind?” Sorren growled. The demon tried to buck Sorren clear, but Sorren yanked the silver dagger free with his left hand and severed the demon’s head with one slice of the razor-sharp blade.
Father Anne finished the exorcism rite, voice strong despite a tremor, and then sagged back against the sideboard. “Wow,” she breathed, in what had to be the understatement of the year.
Blood trickled down Sorren’s face from a jagged cut and livid bruises around his throat showed where the demon had tried to strangle him. Rips in his shirt and bloodied skin beneath testified to the ferocity of his combat with the demon. Sorren eyed the corpse warily, moving clear a moment before the body and its severed head vanished.
I stared at the remains of the guest book as it rapidly burned to ash, then a groan from Teag had me crawling over to where he lay against the wall where the demon threw him. “Did I miss something?” He managed as his eyes struggled to focus.
I gave a shaky laugh that revealed more panic than humor. “Don’t worry; we’ll fill you in,” I promised, then leaned forward and gingerly felt along the back of Teag’s head until he winced when I touched a growing goose egg beneath his hair. I relaxed when I saw his pupils were normal, and he batted my hand away gently.
“I’m all right. Just hit my head. Is it over?”
Sorren helped Father Anne to her feet, and to my relief the priest appeared to be no worse for the wear. “I don’t know how we’ll explain this to the Preservation Society,” she said, taking in the shattered mirror and the charred remains of the guest book.
“The book was older than it looked,” I said, staring at the ashes. “I realized that when it fell off the table and the new cover pulled away. There was old leather underneath the cloth.”
“Tanned human skin,” Sorren remarked, and I repressed a shudder. “It never was a guest book. It was the demon’s ledger, and it held the contract the Boyce descendants used to make their deals.” He held up the broken remnants of the onyx pen in his bloodied hand. “The pen drew blood from the user and mixed it into the ink, sealing the agreement.” He smirked. “I suspect my blood didn’t set well with the demon.”
“So Filbert and Jamison and the others—they were actually making a deal with the demon when they signed their names to the guest book?” Teag asked, horrified as the reality of the situation hit him.
I nodded. “Yeah. So they got a windfall—and then catastrophe, just like the Boyce family.”
Teag shivered, and I bet that he recalled joking about signing the guest book himself when Kell gave us our tour.
“Esther just wanted people out of the house and away from the ledger,” I said. “She wasn’t trying to hurt anyone; she was trying to protect us.”
“You can let Kell know that Boyce House is officially un-haunted,” Sorren said as we headed for the door, ready to be done with the night’s work. We were limping and bloodied, bruised, and battered—but alive, an outcome not to be taken for granted. “But just to be on the safe side,” Sorren added, “he might want to recommend that they skip replacing the guest book.”
Part V
Predator
Black Dog
“Is it just me, or do you feel like someone’s watching us?” Teag Logan glanced over his shoulder and repressed a shudder.
“Don’t worry. They won’t eat much since they’re already dead.”
Teag shot me a murderous glance. “Since when has that stopped anything from eating?”
“Point taken. But in this case, I think you’re safe,” I replied.
Teag looked unconvinced but returned his attention to the shrimp basket in front of him. “All I’ve got to say is, this is one of the strangest places I’ve ever had lunch.”
I had to agree with him. We were a little way out from Charleston on the South Carolina coast, and we had stopped for dinner at a mom-and-pop restaurant friends had recommended. Down here, we call this kind of place a “fish camp,” a no-frills, fried seafood hole-in-the-wall.
“Most of the time, these places look like a barn with picnic tables,” Teag continued, eyeing the decor. “But this takes the cake.”
The building itself was unimpressive. But the owners had decorated with hundreds of taxidermy animals salvaged from a defunct wildlife museum, many in “natural” habitats with tree trunks and fake plants. It felt as if we were eating in a forest surrounded by bear, deer, elk, moose, coyotes, wolves, and other wildlife which all seemed to be watching with their beady glass eyes. It would have been intimidating—if the owners hadn’t decided to string Christmas lights between the displays year-round, just because.
“It’s memorable,” I laughed. “And the food’s good, so don’t complain.”
Teag swallowed a mouthful and nodded. “True, on both counts. At least they didn’t shoot all these critters.”
“Pretty sure from the signs on the displays that most of these creatures were plugged and stuffed when my grandmother was still a kid,” I replied, taking a sip of my sweet tea.
Teag grew serious as he stared at the taxidermied fox not far from our table. “Seriously, what do you think you’d read if you touched one of those?”
I shivered. “Not sure I want to try. I don’t know whether there’d be any sense of the animal itself left after all this time, or whether I’d get more of a read on the taxidermist—or the events that have left an impression on the piece in all the years it’s been on display.”
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, and I run Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio store in historic, haunted Charleston, SC. Teag is my assistant store manager, best friend, and sometime bodyguard. I’m a psychometric—meaning I can read the magic or emotional resonance of an object by touching it. That’s a talent that’s been passed down through my family, and it goes along with being the one to inherit the store, which has been around for over three hundred years.
It’s just one of my secrets. Teag’s got his own kind of magic, and the store itself isn’t what it seems. We do more than sell cool old stuff; we’re part of the Alliance, a coalition of mortals and immortals who locate and neutralize supernatural threats and get cursed and haunted objects out of circulation. My business partner, Sorren, is a nearly 600-year-old vampire. There’s no such thing for us as “just another day at the office.”
Except that today wasn’t about ghostbusting. We were on our way back from an estate sale where we’d picked up a load of non-haunted, particularly attractive antiques to resell, along with a few that I knew right away needed to stay out of the wrong hands.
“Earth to Cassidy!” Teag teased, noticing I’d gone quiet. He flipped a lock of lank dark hair out of his eyes and grinned. Teag looks like a grad student—and he used to be before he found his calling kicking supernatural ass. He’s still got a skater boy look—tall and thin, longish hair, and a fondness for vintage t-shirts and ripped jeans. It hides the fact that he’s a championship mixed martial arts fighter, which comes in handy given the kind of company we keep.
I laughed and pulled myself out of my thoughts. “Sorry. Just wondering how weird the ‘spookies’ and that ‘sparkler’ are that we picked up at the auction.” My magic identified which items had a touch of “something extra,” but since I hadn’t wanted to go into a full-out vision right there at the auction house, I left reading the details for later. Touching tainted objects can land me flat on my ass and lead to uncomfortable questions.
“From everything we’ve heard, the guy who owned that stuff was a bit... eccentric,” Teag replied and dipped a french fry in ketchup. “Maybe he dabbled in the Black Arts on the side.”
I glared at him. “Not funny. Remember what happened the last time that was true?” I knew he did from the look on his face. We had managed to neutralize a particularly nasty curse just in time, but Teag ended up with a concussion, and I’d needed a transfusion before all was said and done. “I could do without a repeat.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Teag said. “I didn’t get any vibes about dark magic when we went through the house, and from what people say, Mr. Broward was a real back-to-nature guy who got his kicks going to nudist retreats in national parks.”
I looked up. “Can you even imagine the mosquitoes?”
Teag laughed. “No—and I don’t want to. And with the way you attract bug bites—”
“Let’s not even go there,” I said with a shudder. Pale skin and strawberry blonde hair must be an irresistible attraction to mosquitoes because I’m always the one who gets bitten more than everyone else.
“As I was saying—the old guy might have had a few kinks, but he sounded harmless.”
“I hope so—although ‘harmless’ people don’t usually have magically tainted objects lying around.” I was done with my meal and leaned back in my chair, trying not to feel watched by the stuffed moose that loomed over my shoulder.
Teag shrugged. “He might have inherited the pieces or picked them up from a flea market somewhere. You know as well as I do that most people are completely tone-deaf when it comes to picking up on supernatural vibes.”
“Yeah—until it all goes massively sideways,” I muttered. Then people like Teag and Sorren and I ended up wading in to clean up the mess.
“Ready to head out?” Teag asked after we settled up the bill.
I jerked back to attention. My mind wandered again, and I was keeping a close eye on a taxidermied ferret that I was almost positive had just moved. “What?”
“They aren’t moving, Cassidy. This restaurant has been here for thirty years. We’d have heard if the decorations were eating the customers.”
“I don’t trust the ferret.”
“Personally, I thought the elk looked shifty, but that’s probably just me,” Teag replied with nearly-believabl
e fake sincerity. “Let’s go—we’ve got a drive back to the shop, and we’ve still got to unload.”
I finished my sweet tea and followed him out, with one backward glare at the untrustworthy ferret. I’m watching you. I was only mostly kidding.
The almost-empty parking lot felt a lot more ominous at night. The fish camp drew a big dinner crowd, and a parked-full lot meant we had found a spot at the far end, near the marsh. Now, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something a lot worse than a stuffed ferret watched from the shadows.
A growl sounded an instant before the large black dog leaped from the brush at the edge of the lot. “Watch out!” I yelled, throwing myself out of the way and only partially succeeding as claws ripped through my jeans and down my leg. The big dog looked like a Newfoundland, as heavy as a grown man and massive with black, shaggy fur. And right now, it had Teag pinned under it, teeth bared.
I pulled my large handbag around and dug my hand in searching for the wooden spoon. Sad that my life had come to the point where I felt I always had to have a weapon handy. A spoon may not sound too dangerous, but when it carries my grandmother’s mojo and serves as an athame – it works for me. I held the wooden athame in my right hand and gave a shake to the old dog collar looped around my left wrist. The athame focused my concentration, pulling from the strong emotional resonance of my grandmother, and I sent a blast of cold white force that hit the black dog right behind its front shoulders, knocking it away from Teag.
The dog snarled and came at us again. The ghostly form of a large, angry Golden Retriever blocked its way, as the spirit of my dog Bo manifested to protect us. The black dog eyed the ghost warily, and what Bo lacked in bulk against the massive canine, he more than made up for in a seriously bad attitude.
Teag scrambled to his feet, and I saw a wicked knife in his hand as he took a fighting stance, waiting for the dog to attack. For its bulk, the black dog moved fast. Bo’s ghost latched on with teeth that I knew from experience could put a dent in supernatural creatures, but the Newfoundland shook Bo off and came right at me.
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