Unbound Spirits

by Christine Pope

  The day was mild and sunny, with not a cloud in the sky, but Audrey couldn’t help imagining a dark cloud hanging over the huge house, even though in reality it was bright and tranquil behind its screen of palm trees. They pulled up into the driveway, which looked odd without all the vehicles of the other crew members crowding it.

  As they approached the front door, she said, “I’m surprised you still have a key. Aren’t the owners coming back so they can move in?”

  Michael didn’t look too concerned. “Next week, supposedly. Colin told them they could pick up their keys at the production office, but they said they were going to have a locksmith out to re-key the place, and then they’re having a new security system installed. So they don’t really care about the keys they gave us.”

  It seemed sort of paranoid to her to have a state-of-the-art security system put in for a house in sleepy Glendora, but then, Audrey had never had much that was worth stealing. She supposed that people who could afford a multi-million-dollar home would have expensive jewelry and high-end electronics, maybe valuable art as well, although that sort of thing was a lot harder to fence.

  About all she could do was say, “Oh,” and then follow Michael inside after he opened the door and went in. The interior was dim and gloomy, but only because all the curtains had been pulled shut. And the air felt stale, but again, that was probably just because everything had been closed up tight after they finished the shoot.

  Michael stood inside the foyer, eyes shut, hands held palm up in front of him. “I’m not getting anything. What about you?”

  Feeling vaguely ridiculous, Audrey did the same, doing her best to quiet her inner voice so she could focus on the building that surrounded her. She breathed in and out, waiting for that jangle of screechy voices to start up again, or to be enveloped in a cold that couldn’t be explained, or to smell something that shouldn’t be there.

  But she experienced none of those phenomena. All she could sense was the house around her, the faint tick-tock of a clock in another room, the slightest of creaks as the sun shone down on the structure and the wooden frame expanded a bit.

  There was nothing here. Nothing except her and Michael.

  Opening her eyes, she shook her head. “I can’t feel a damn thing, but then again, it’s not as if I really know what I’m doing. Maybe we should have called Rosemary and asked her to meet us here. She’s really the expert.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s necessary. If there was anything here, you and I should have felt it.” He paused, chin up as he tilted his head toward the ceiling. “But let’s still do a walk-through, just to be sure.”

  So they left the foyer and went over the entire house, in rooms she’d never seen before — the secondary bedrooms upstairs, the family room, the library, the exercise room off the kitchen. In every single one of them, Audrey had the same experience — or rather, non-experience, since she couldn’t sense a single thing that shouldn’t be there.

  When they went back downstairs, Michael paused at the door to the basement. “You know we have to check down there.”

  Despite how placid the house felt, revisiting the basement was probably the last thing she wanted to do. “I don’t see the point,” she protested. “I think we’ve already established that the house is clean.”

  “Famous last words,” he remarked with a glint in his gold-flecked gray eyes. “Haven’t you ever seen Poltergeist?”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “Smart ass.”

  And — probably because they were alone — he reached out and pulled her to him, then gave her a hearty kiss. It might have been inappropriate, given their surroundings, but the embrace was very, very welcome. Audrey just wished they were at his house so the kiss could be followed up by something even more delicious.

  As it was, she stepped away after a moment, then straightened her jacket, which had gotten a bit askew. “It’s like you’re daring the demons to do something.”

  “Or just trying to prove to you that they aren’t here.”

  Before she could say anything else, he’d put his hand on the knob and turned it. The door opened inward with a faint squeak. Audrey wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to happen next — possibly a horde of imp demons like the ones that had attacked her in Tucson to come pouring out — but it was definitely anticlimactic, since nothing happened at all. Michael glanced back at her, eyebrow cocked slightly, and she planted her hands on her hips.

  “Fine. But you go first.”

  “I would never suggest we do otherwise.”

  He flicked on the light from the switch beside the door, then began to make his descent. Audrey followed immediately behind him, shoulders tensed, waiting for something to pounce. However, all remained quiet, and within a moment or two, they stood at the base of the stairway.

  “Wow, what a mess,” she remarked.

  That was putting it mildly. The floor remained torn up, scraps of the ugly ’60s-vintage carpet and the wood flooring underneath pushed off to the sides and corners, the concrete substrate underneath an ugly pinkish-gray hue, most likely the diluted remnants of the paint that had once been used to write the summoning spells on the floor. There were also stains on the wall, some the same unpleasant pink shade, others darker. She didn’t want to look at any of them too closely.

  Michael didn’t look very concerned by any of this. “The owners are going to have everything cleaned up and redone. They were talking about turning the basement into a wine cellar.”

  “That would work,” Audrey said, although she wasn’t sure she’d want to drink any wine that had been stored down here. Somehow, she had the feeling that the noxious energy that had dwelled in the basement for so long would manage to seep into the very bottles themselves.

  But that could all just be her imagination. As she stood there, letting her newly discovered sense reach out into the space around her, once again she felt nothing at all. The portals were closed, the demons that had come through them banished. There really was nothing left except a mess that was not her responsibility.

  She turned toward Michael, shoulders lifting. “Okay. You were right. It’s just…a blank space. But can we please get out of here?”

  To her relief, he didn’t argue, only replied, “Sure. It’s not a place where I’d want to hang out, either. I just wanted to make sure that we weren’t leading the owners astray by telling them it was okay to move back in.”

  “I think they’re safe.” Privately, after what she’d experienced within these walls, she didn’t think she could have lived here, would have quietly put the house on the market and then looked for the newest-construction home she could find, but she realized she was probably being a little irrational.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  They climbed the stairs and closed the door behind them, then went outside and locked the front door. Within a few minutes, they were back in the car and headed over to Audrey’s house. She clutched her purse in her lap, hoping that her own place would be as blank and decidedly not demon-infested as the Whitcomb mansion…and not sure what she would do if it wasn’t.

  From the outside, the house looked fine. She’d switched over to a digital L.A. Times subscription years ago, so it wasn’t as though she had to worry about papers piling up in the driveway. And most of her utility bills were paperless, so a bulging mailbox wasn’t an issue, either. The grass looked a little patchy — the timer for the sprinkler system had obviously failed again — but that seemed to be the extent of the damage.

  From out here, anyway.

  Michael parked in the driveway, and they both got out. Automatically, she reached in her purse to get out her keys — and realized her hand was shaking a little.

  He put a hand on her arm. “Do you want me to open it?”

  She really should be able to do this. After all, she’d come back here with Rosemary, and it hadn’t been a problem. But that was before she realized everything she’d seen could have been an illusion. It had been bad enough to witness
the destruction the first time. Going through that all over again….

  They’re just things, she told herself. It’s just a house. The house where she’d grown up, the only home she’d ever really known, but….

  “No,” she said to Michael. “I’m fine.”

  And she turned the key.

  The smell was worse this time, probably because the house had been closed up for days. All the wreckage was still there — the furniture strewn around, banged-up and torn and completely unusable. Even though Audrey had steeled herself against this moment, still the totality of the destruction took her breath away.

  At once, Michael’s arm was around her waist, steadying her. “I’m here,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She didn’t know whether that was really true or not, but right then, it was enough for him to say the words, to be there to offer her some reassurance. “Sure,” she replied, surprised that her tone was so even. “At least I don’t feel anything here — whatever did this came and went days ago.”

  He went still, breathing deeply. How he managed that, when it stank so badly inside, Audrey didn’t know, but she supposed he had more experience with this sort of thing than she did. After a long moment, he nodded. “I agree. I can’t sense any dark presences here.”

  Well, that was something at least. She said, “Let’s go upstairs and see if there’s anything salvageable there.”

  “Of course.”

  They had to weave around the pieces of furniture that had been shoved through the spindles of the stairway railing, but eventually they made it to the second floor. Up here, Audrey couldn’t see any obvious signs of destruction; the little table in the hallway with its vase of silk flowers was intact, as was the painting that hung above it.

  The relief that coursed through her as she went into her bedroom and saw that it, too, was intact made her knees a little weak, but she told herself she didn’t have time for that.

  “Well, this will make the clean-up easier,” she told Michael, who still had a supportive arm around her waist. “It looks like we only have to worry about fixing up the downstairs.”

  He offered her an encouraging smile. “See? It’s not as bad as you thought.”

  She couldn’t quite return the smile, but she did nod as she headed over to the walk-in closet and opened the door.

  The clothing inside had been slashed to ribbons. Her shoes and purses had been torn apart, looking as though a wild animal had ripped them open with its claws. Audrey stared at the destruction for a moment, soundlessly cataloguing every ruined jacket, every mutilated purse, each mangled shoe. Only things, true, but ones she’d carefully collected over the past few years, waiting for sales, shopping on eBay, whatever it took to get the best deal possible in order to justify spending the money at all.

  She hadn’t realized he had moved over next to her, but, very gently, Michael placed his hand on the door and pushed it shut.

  “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “You have the wardrobe from the show for now, and I’ll get you anything else you need.”

  The lump in her throat was too big for her to reply, so she only nodded and went into the bathroom, fully expecting to find her makeup and toiletries strewn all over the place, or possibly floating in the toilet bowl, knowing how the demons delighted in inventive destruction.

  However, those terrible creatures either hadn’t come in here at all or had decided that it wasn’t worth despoiling a tube of toothpaste or a pack of floss, because everything looked untouched, neat and orderly in its various drawers and cupboards.

  “Well, that’s something,” she said at last. “I don’t know how I’m going to carry this stuff out of here, though — all of my purses and tote bags are destroyed.”

  “Do you have any trash bags under the sink?” he asked.

  Actually, she did. Audrey crouched down and retrieved one, then began tossing a bunch of random items into it — eye shadow palettes, extra tubes of lipstick, toothpaste, a box of tampons, and so on and so on. Eventually, she had everything she thought she would need, and she wearily straightened back up again.

  “I think that should hold me. We can go.”

  He watched her for a moment, expression concerned. “You don’t want to check the other rooms?”

  “Not really,” she replied. As he began to frown, she added, “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there I really need. My desktop computer is ancient, and I took my laptop with me when I came back to get my things the last time I was here. Either the stuff in those rooms is destroyed, or it isn’t. I can deal with that when I have the insurance people come inspect the place.”

  “Colin’s insurance people,” Michael said grimly. “Because we know what did this…and why.”

  “Good luck explaining that to the adjusters.” Right then, she honestly didn’t care. She just wanted to get out of there.

  He seemed to recognize her mood, because he didn’t put up any further arguments, but only said, “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

  They went back downstairs and Audrey locked the door, although she didn’t quite know why she bothered. There certainly wasn’t anything left worth stealing in her house, that’s for sure.

  For a few minutes after they got in the rented Jeep, neither of them said anything. It wasn’t until they were back on the freeway and headed toward his house that Michael spoke. “I’m very sorry about your house, Audrey. That was a very vindictive set of demons we were dealing with…but they’re gone now.”

  “All except Whitcomb.” All right, she knew it wasn’t really Whitcomb, was instead a demon wearing his face, but right then she didn’t have the energy to call him anything else.

  “True, but I’m not sure he was directly involved in that destruction. From what you’ve said about him, he seems to be a little more subtle than that.”

  Audrey wasn’t sure she wanted to give the demon even that much of the benefit of the doubt. She clutched her one remaining purse where it sat in her lap, and tried to recall how calm her world had been before Michael Covenant entered it, how downright mundane. It was hard to believe that less than two weeks had passed since the day he came into her office.

  And yet…despite everything that had happened, she wouldn’t want to roll back time to that world before he entered it. As she’d told herself earlier, things could be replaced. But there was only one Michael.

  “And they tried to make me think the house was fine because…?”

  He sent her a quick sideways glance, then looked back at the road. They were past the morning rush hour, but westbound traffic on the 210 Freeway was still very heavy. “They wanted you there, alone, vulnerable. Possibly only to frighten you enough that you would quit the show, stay away from me, but maybe to hurt you. I won’t lie, Audrey. Demons have hurt people, have killed them. Not necessarily in a way that could be ever be connected to them, but if you frighten someone enough that they run from their room in the middle of the night and fall down the stairs and break their neck, you’re still responsible. Rosemary was very wise to make sure you didn’t stay there, and instead went to stay at a property that was protected.”

  This revelation made the blood in Audrey’s veins suddenly feel more like liquid nitrogen. Yes, she’d known she could have been in danger if she’d been stubborn about the whole thing and had refused Rosemary’s offer of hospitality, but hearing Michael state the risks so baldly made her realize how closely she’d flirted with death that night.

  Thank God for Rosemary.

  Audrey let out a gust of a breath and told herself it was okay, that she wasn’t about to take a risk like that again. Probably she’d encounter a new and exciting set of risks, judging by what had happened over the past few weeks, but at least she wouldn’t have to face any of them alone.

  “So, what now?” she asked.

  “We prep for the Santa Barbara trip,” he replied. “And I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you safe. That’s a promise.”

  And Michael Covenant kept hi
s promises.

  “Okay,” she said. “Onward and upward.”

  Chapter 15

  While it felt strange to know she wouldn’t be going home any time soon, that she’d have to be camped out at Michael’s place for the indefinite future, Audrey was still comforted by the way he tried to make the situation a little less awkward, making sure she knew that the room she’d first stayed in was hers for the duration and that he wasn’t expecting her to immediately move into the master bedroom with him. Not that she really would have minded — she had a feeling she’d be sleeping in there with him every night, even if the arrangement wasn’t formal — but it was also good to know she had her own space if she needed it.

  In the meantime, she and Michael went back to her house once more, just to get pictures and video of all the destruction. He told her that he’d passed copies of everything on to Colin, although he was conspicuously quiet about how their producer had responded to the images and whether he was, in fact, going to contact the insurance company about getting her reimbursed. In the back of her mind, she harbored a sneaking suspicion that Michael had already resolved to pay for the repairs if necessary. How she’d be able to tell him he shouldn’t do any such thing, Audrey wasn’t sure, but she figured she’d leave that argument for sometime in the future.

  Right now, she had to focus on meeting with her clients on Saturday — and taking a small break in the middle of the day to meet Rosemary for lunch. As soon as she heard that her suspicions about Audrey’s house had been correct, she managed to somehow look both triumphant and worried.

  “I knew it,” Rosemary said as she dug into her salad. “I just kept getting the weirdest feeling about it, like what we were seeing wasn’t vibing with what I sensed when I was inside the place.”

  “Well, you were right,” Audrey replied. “I’m glad I listened to you. Eventually, I’ll get the house straightened out, but that’s probably going to have to wait until we’re done filming. There’s no way I can oversee repairs when I have to be out of town so much.”