Unbound Spirits

by Christine Pope

  Of course, they had to find her first.

  Frowning, he looked down at his notes on the bed-and-breakfast. The main part of the house had been built in the 1870s, then added on to here and there as its various owners saw fit. Now it had five guest rooms in addition to the wing where its current owners lived, plus a common living room and dining area.

  Supernatural phenomena had been detected in all the rooms in the place, although the activity had been most intense here in the room he’d taken for himself. He’d asked to stay here, wanting to see everything first hand if possible. When he’d walked in the room initially, he’d expected to get that strange thrill he usually experienced whenever he entered a space that had been touched by ghosts or demons. Here, though, he hadn’t felt a damn thing.

  While the lack of any strange vibrations had meant he probably would get a decent night’s sleep, it didn’t bode well for the upcoming shoot.

  Colin had said it was no problem, that he could always find a way to “spice things up” if necessary, but Michael had no desire to go that route. Their first location had been a roaring success, and he wanted to keep that momentum going, not squander it on fake jump scares and breathy, over-sensationalized narration.

  Although at the moment, he’d gladly shoot the fakest paranormal investigation to ever hit cable TV if it meant getting Audrey back safe and sound.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.

  The room was decorated in a mixture of Southwest and Mexican styles — oak lodge-pole bed, painted talavera pottery and punched-tin lighting fixtures and decorative items. One of these was a large cross that hung on the wall by the French doors which opened on the courtyard.

  The cross was hanging upside down. It hadn’t been like that when he entered the room twenty minutes ago. He was sure of it.

  As he watched, the cross slowly described a half circle on the wall and then stopped, hanging once again in its normal position.

  Now the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. Michael slowly shut the laptop, then went over to the cross. When he reached out to touch it, he had to pull his hand back, because the metal was scorchingly hot under his fingertips, as though someone had stuck it in an oven for a few minutes before they hung it back on its nail.

  Wish I’d caught that on camera, he thought. The plan was to put motion-activated video cameras in most of the common areas of the bed-and-breakfast, but even though Colin had pushed to have them in the guest rooms as well, Michael had nixed that idea, saying they needed some privacy. Now, though, he was questioning his judgment in making that particular decision.

  Either way…it seemed that the B&B wasn’t quite as quiet as he thought.

  Michael was about to sit back down and reopen his laptop when someone knocked at the door. Twice, though, not the three times that demonic presences liked to use, in a mockery of the Holy Trinity.

  Praying it was Susan on the other side of the door — and guessing it was not — Michael opened it. Outside stood Colin Turner, his already ruddy complexion looking even redder from anger. As a nod to the Tucson weather, he’d replaced his usual long-sleeved chambray shirt for a plain gray T-shirt, but otherwise he looked much the same, sandy hair rumpled, blue eyes faintly bloodshot.

  “She wasn’t bloody there?” he demanded. “And just when the hell were you going to get around to telling me?”

  Well, at least Susan had held him off for twenty minutes or so. Better than nothing.

  “I didn’t want to alarm you,” Michael said mildly.

  “Consider me alarmed,” Colin shot back. “What the fuck are we supposed to do if Audrey’s done a runner?”

  “I’m trying to track her down.”

  “How? By sitting in here on your arse?”

  “I have someone looking into it.”

  This vague reply only seemed to irritate Colin further. Arms crossed, he repeated, “‘Someone’? Mind filling me in on who this ‘someone’ is?”

  “A psychic I know. She’s very good.”

  As soon as Michael said the word “psychic,” Colin rolled his eyes. He might make his living producing documentaries about paranormal activities, but he was still far more of a skeptic than he would like to admit. “What about the police? A private investigator?”

  “I’d rather let Rosemary give it a try first. The police aren’t going to do anything this soon anyway. And Rosemary is willing to help us out for free, whereas I doubt a P.I. would be willing to extend us that kind of offer.”

  “Is she any good?”

  “Rosemary?”

  “Yeah, Rosemary.”

  “I know she’s a very strong psychic. I just don’t know how many missing persons cases she’s handled. But it’s worth having her try.”

  For a few seconds, Colin didn’t say anything, only stood there with his arms crossed, looking simultaneously annoyed and baffled. Then his shoulders lifted and he said, “All right, we’ll give her a chance. But what if she doesn’t come up with anything?”

  “Then I guess we go to the police. And while we’re waiting, we can shoot some exteriors, have me give my introductory spiel. We don’t need Audrey for any of that.”

  These suggestions earned Michael a grudging nod. “Okay. But you let me know the second you hear something.”

  “I will.”

  Another shrug, and Colin said, “Then I guess there isn’t much we can do today. Daniela and I were going to go grab some food in a bit, if you want to come along.”

  Somehow, the way the invitation was phrased made Michael realize that Colin definitely didn’t want him there, that he was only offering because he thought he should make the gesture.

  “No, I’m good,” he said casually. “I’m waiting to hear from Rosemary. Maybe Susan and I will get something a little later.”

  “Gotcha.” Colin squinted past him, staring at the wall. “Your cross is upside down, by the way.”

  Michael turned and looked back at the cross. Sure enough, it had once more swung downward. Now he could see faint black marks on the wall behind it, probably from the dark metal rubbing against the room’s pale yellow paint.

  “Yeah, it keeps doing that,” he said.

  “Then film the bloody thing next time,” Colin grumbled. “Might as well get some decent footage while we can.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  While that reply didn’t exactly mollify the producer, at least he seemed willing to leave things there. He nodded, then let himself out.

  Michael closed the door behind him. Almost as soon as it had shut, his cell phone started to ring. He hurried over to it, saw the number on the screen was from the 626 area code.

  Rosemary.

  “It’s Michael,” he said. “What have you got?”

  “This is bad,” she replied. Even over the phone, he could hear how shaky she sounded.

  “How bad?”

  “I — I don’t know for sure. Just…she’s there, but there’s this terrible darkness swirling around her, almost as though she’s caught inside some kind of horrible tornado. I don’t know where she is. I can’t see anything…just that darkness, and pressure, and cold.”

  Cold…yes, he could feel it, too, like some kind of terrible weight in his midsection. He forced himself to speak. “You really couldn’t see anything at all?”

  “No. But I got the impression she was someplace high, someplace out of reach. No details, though.”

  Of course there were no details, just as there apparently hadn’t been any witnesses around when Audrey was taken. It could never be that easy.

  “Well, it’s a start,” he said. “If she’s someplace high, then at least we know she’s not in New Orleans or Death Valley.”

  Rosemary made a scoffing noise. “This isn’t funny, Michael.”

  “I wasn’t making a joke,” he replied.

  A pause, and then she said, “Okay, fine. I’ll keep trying, and I’ll see if either Isabel or Cecily can pick anything up. But if they can’t sense anythin
g, either, then maybe I should come there to Tucson.”

  “Why?” Michael asked, surprised that she would even make the suggestion.

  “Because maybe if I can come stand in the place where you think she was taken, I’ll be able to pick up more than I would by trying to do this from five hundred miles away. That’s all.”

  He had to concede that Rosemary had a point. But, with any luck, it wouldn’t come to that. Maybe all it needed was for her to join forces with her sisters and bring all their powers to bear in determining where Audrey had been spirited off to — and by whom.

  “We’ll discuss that if and when the time comes,” he replied. “But please work together with your sisters first. Then we’ll see what we have to do next.”

  “I will.” Once again, Rosemary hesitated, pausing for so long that Michael wondered if she actually intended to say anything else. Then she said, “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

  Several suspicions had begun to form, each of them worse than the last. But he didn’t know for sure, and he didn’t want to frighten Rosemary, not when he needed her as an ally. “No,” he said. “I only know that when we do find out who it is, I’m going make sure they’re sorry they ever pulled such a stunt.”

  Only time would tell whether those words were false bravado.

  Chapter 3

  She was lying on a soft surface. Head aching, Audrey opened her eyes, looked up at a white plaster ceiling with a painted glass chandelier hanging directly above her. Since those particular details didn’t give her many clues, she pushed herself upright and saw that she had been lying on a bed in a large room with dark moldings and walls painted a soft sage green. The architecture looked Victorian, as did the heavy carved furniture — a highboy, a pair of marble-topped tables that flanked the bed, a velvet-upholstered chaise longue in an alcove to one side.

  Although she knew the haunted bed-and-breakfast in Tucson had been built in the 1870s, Audrey didn’t hold out any hope that this was the same place. She’d seen the pictures on the B&B’s website, and it looked nothing like this.

  No, she must have been brought here by Jeffrey Whitcomb — that is, the thing occupying Jeffrey Whitcomb’s body. But since she didn’t know what else to call him, she guessed she would continue to refer to him by the name of the man whose life he’d stolen.

  At least she’d been lying on top of the bed, whose heavy velvet patchwork quilt was a little disarranged but still more or less in place. And she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she was taken at the airport, although someone appeared to have removed her ankle boots. When she swung her legs over the side of the bed, she saw the boots sitting next to the bedside table, which cheered her up a little. She hadn’t really looked forward to making an escape attempt in her sock feet.

  As soon as she was standing upright, Audrey went across the room to one of the windows there. They were covered in lace curtains, which filtered out some of the light but definitely weren’t room-darkening. As far as she could tell, it was still afternoon but later in the day, edging toward sundown.

  She really didn’t like the idea of being here —wherever “here” was — after night fell.

  After pushing aside the curtains at one of the windows, she looked outside. The house was surrounded by trees, a combination of what appeared to be ponderosa pines and several bare-limbed varieties she couldn’t identify. There was a flat lawn immediately under her second-story window, but it was level for only a few yards before it began to slope downward, indicating the house was probably built on the side of a hill.

  And there was snow everywhere, telling her that she definitely wasn’t in Tucson or anywhere else nearby. She could feel panic stir in her at the thought of being taken so far from where she was supposed to be, but she forced it back as best she could, telling herself that she needed to pay attention to her surroundings in case any stray detail might help her to figure out where she was.

  The snow looked patchy and dirty, so it had probably been a few days since it had fallen. That made sense at the tail end of February, although she would be the first to admit that she didn’t know much about weather patterns in places beyond the West Coast.

  Still, she had to try to figure out where she’d been taken. Colorado? Maybe; the pine trees and the snow told her that she had to be someplace much farther north than Tucson or Phoenix, and she knew Colorado had its fair share of Victorian mansions, left over from the boom times of the gold mining era.

  Why Whitcomb had brought her here, Audrey had no idea. Was this his nearest safe house? She could see why he might prefer someplace historic, a house that echoed some of the design cues of the mansion in Glendora, although she had a feeling this place was even older.

  The bleak landscape outside told her one thing, though — this house didn’t have any close neighbors. Although she scanned from side to side and strained to see what might be located off in the distance or past the edges of the building, she couldn’t detect anything except acres and acres of trees and steeply sloped mountainsides. No wonder Whitcomb had chosen a property like this to hole up in. He would never have to worry about the next-door neighbors spying on what he was doing.

  Which begged the question as to what exactly he was doing here…and what he planned to do with her.

  Someone had left a pitcher of water and a glass on one of the bedside tables. Audrey eyed it warily, wondering whether it was really safe to drink. Then again, Whitcomb had already proven that he didn’t need to drug her to knock her out. Hypnosis? Some kind of spell, or an innate power all demons possessed?

  Because of course that had to be a demon inhabiting his body, even if it had played coy about telling her who — or what — it really was. Something far beyond possession…more like complete subversion of the personality and soul of what used to be Jeffrey Whitcomb. Was he still trapped in there somewhere, or was his soul as dead as the world thought he was?

  Difficult questions, and Audrey didn’t have the answers to any of them. She didn’t even know whether an exorcism would work on him, because she supposed it was possible that only the demon’s will held his borrowed body together at all.

  Unfortunately, as much as she might pity that trapped soul, she had far more pressing matters to worry about. She needed to get out of there.

  Right, she thought. And then trek across God knows how many miles of snowy wilderness in a pair of ankle boots, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket.

  That prospect would probably have been daunting even for someone used to hiking in that sort of environment. A native of Southern California, Audrey had been in the snow exactly twice in her life, once when she was a child and her parents had taken her to Big Bear for the weekend, and then again in college when she and some friends rented a cabin for New Year’s. Snow was pretty, but a week of having to trudge through it and scrape the windshields of their cars every morning was enough to convince her that she would never thrive in a climate that cold.

  So climbing out the window and trying to escape on foot was basically out. She didn’t even know whether she could open any of the windows, but that was easy enough to discover. The latch on the first window didn’t budge, and neither did the second one she tried. The mechanisms could have been disabled somehow, or Whitcomb could have put the whammy on them. Since she didn’t have much experience with demons, it was hard for her to say for sure.

  All right, the windows were pretty much ruled out as an escape route, but she must have been brought here by car, which meant it probably had to be around the property somewhere. Audrey didn’t know who had really been behind the wheel of the Lincoln; her mind had told her it was Susan, but that had to have been another illusion, similar to the one the demon had used to put Jeffrey Whitcomb’s face on his son so he would be the one locked up in a sanitarium.

  Was the driver still here? If he’d dropped off his passengers and left, then maybe the car was gone, too. Or maybe no one had been driving the car at all. Maybe it had been steered by the fo
rce of Whitcomb’s will alone, and the “Susan” Audrey had seen wasn’t an illusion cast on someone else’s face, but nothing at all.

  She shivered. The room was a little drafty, and she wished she could have blamed her chill on the temperature, but she knew better. The problem was, once you realized you were dealing with a demon, one who controlled all sorts of arcane powers, then almost any possibility remained on the table.

  Her mouth was dry. Audrey looked at the pitcher of water with some longing and then decided the hell with it. Whitcomb had already said he didn’t plan to kill her, only keep her out of the way.

  The water was sweet and cool on her tongue. She didn’t feel any different after drinking it, which seemed to indicate it was fine. A few more swallows, and again she waited, wondering if she were suddenly going to pass out, or double over with stomach cramps.

  Nothing. Apparently, the Whitcomb-demon saw no need to get rid of her for now. As he’d said, murder was messy. If all he really needed to do was keep her out of the way for a time, then carefully rearrange her memories, there was no reason to kill her.

  Audrey supposed that thought should have been reassuring. As it was, she found herself wondering exactly how he could eradicate her memory of being here, of knowing what he was. Hypnosis? Some kind of spell?

  Who knew? Memory was an unpredictable thing at best. Humans suppressed painful memories all the time, so possibly the demon would use a similar mechanism to make sure any memories of being kidnapped were buried so deeply that she would never be able to access them again.

  She thought of Michael. It had been hours and hours since Susan was supposed to bring Audrey to the bed-and-breakfast where they were shooting this week’s show. Was he frantic, or did he think she’d skipped out on him intentionally? It wasn’t that improbable, not after the way they’d fought. Of course, she would never do such a thing, but the two of them really didn’t know each other very well, despite the physical intimacy they’d shared. He might very well believe the worst, think that she’d fled because she didn’t want to be anywhere near him.