by J. R. Rain
“What do you mean?”
He opened his mouth, and suddenly shut it again. Tight. The smallest grin curled his lips. The same creepy grin I had seen on the faces of Edwin and Tara.
“I...I’m afraid I can’t talk about the curse anymore, Samantha.”
Cal seemed to be struggling with something, fighting something. My inner alarm began chiming softly. What the hell was going on?
I decided to change course. “Was your brother’s death associated with the curse?”
“I...” he began and closed his mouth again. He was shaking now. And sweating. A reaction to being drunk? I didn’t know.
I waited, silent, listening to my inner alarm growing steadily louder. Now I could see the same black ribbons circulating through his aura. The same ribbons I had seen in others. Ribbons I had rarely, if ever, seen before.
“What happened to your brother?” I pushed.
“I...can’t...speak about it.”
He voice sounded strangled, as if his throat had suddenly been restricted.
“Mr. Thurman, are you okay?”
He looked at me with pleading eyes. Then he gasped once, twice, and seemed to find his breath. “I’m...never okay, my dear.”
“I don’t understand—”
“The curse,” he gasped, and his voice seemed to restrict again.
The ribbons of ethereal darkness swelled a little more, looking more like black snakes now, weaving through his aura, in and out, in and out.
“What about the curse, Mr. Thurman?”
He began shaking. He reminded me of my son when he was fighting off his sickness. Cal Thurman was fighting something. What it was, I didn’t know.
He suddenly opened his eyes wide, gasping. “It has us all, Samantha. It controls us all. We are not free. We are never free. Please help, please—”
The black snake that had been circulating through his aura, rose up suddenly. I saw its dark, diamond-shaped head moving rapidly through the man. It rose higher and higher—and plunged into his throat.
Cal gasped and grabbed his neck.
Now the snake coiled around and around his throat like a boa constrictor, squeezing tighter and tighter. Cal gasped and lurched to the side, screaming. In a blink of an eye, his aura went from pale blue, to deep black, and as I screamed for help, Cal Thurman looked at me with pleading eyes, and then quit breathing.
Forever.
Chapter Twenty-four
I immediately performed CPR.
All while I called out for help. Someone nearby heard me. A girl. I told her to get help. She stared at me for a moment, then took off running, her feet pounding along the polished tiles.
I went back to my CPR, doing all I could to get Cal’s heart beating, to get him breathing again, and by the time the first adults arrived—Junior and his wife, followed shortly by Tara and Allison—I was certain that Cal was quite dead.
* * *
Jesus, Sam, what happened? asked Allison.
We were all sitting in the great room. All seventeen of us. Cal was still in the library, lying under a sheet. Further attempts to resuscitate him had gone for naught.
Are your thoughts protected? I asked.
Yes, of course.
Something killed him. I watched it kill him. I’m seriously freaked out.
Allison snapped her head around and stared at me. She wasn’t the only one who stared at me. Most people in the room were looking at me. Also in the room was Tara. I’d been too busy and shaken to notice when she’d returned. Edwin hadn’t stopped looking my direction. The sky beyond the big windows was a nasty gray. The first of the day’s raindrops had begun to splatter against the glass. Jagged bolts of lightning occasionally lit up the underbelly of the heavy clouds. Junior, who had been on his cell phone in the hallway, came into the room.
“The Island County Sheriff can’t make it out today,” he reported. He looked ten years older than when I’d last seen him. He had, after all, just lost his uncle. “Nor can the paramedics, nor anyone else, for that matter.”
“Why?” asked a little girl. She was, I knew, one of Junior’s granddaughters.
“Because of the storm, honey.”
I was holding my phone. I wanted to text Fang. To text Kingsley even. I didn’t feel comfortable texting Russell yet. The poor guy was just beginning to know me. I couldn’t lay something like this on him. What was I supposed to say? That I’d seen some dark entity strangle a man? For a new relationship, that might be a deal breaker.
Fang would have understood, and so would’ve Kingsley. Hell, so would have Detective Sherbet. For now, I was left with only Allison.
Gee thanks, Sam.
Oops, I thought. You know what I mean. The others are, you know...
Freaky like you?
Right.
Outside, the wind had clearly picked up. The tall evergreens were once again swaying and bending. Rain splattered harder, driven into the window. A lawn chair outside scuttled over the grounds, rolling like a tumbleweed.
Did you really watch him die, Sam?
Yes, and I’m still shaking.
I gave her a glimpse of my own memory of the event, reliving the moment the darkness appeared from his aura and reached up to his throat. I relived his last few words, too:
“It has us all, Samantha. It controls us all. We are not free. We are never free...”
Jesus, came Allison’s reply. Was he poisoned?
Maybe, I thought. But I suspected it was something else, something that I didn’t entirely understand, but it had to do with his last words to me: It controls us all.
Allison, who’d been following my train of thought as best she could, formulated the words that I had been searching for: Sam, you think that, on some level, that whatever has control over Edwin, also had control over Cal?
But not just the two of them, I thought grimly.
All of them? asked Allison.
Maybe.
Junior turned his attention to me. “Samantha, I can’t express to you how thankful I am for your efforts on behalf of my uncle. I’m sure that you did all you could to save his life.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” I said.
“What, exactly, did you do?” asked Patricia, Junior’s wife.
Her aura, I noted, was not rippled with the same black ribbon I had seen in some of the others. Her aura was a biting green. I opened my mouth to speak, but instead, looked around me. Junior, I noted, had a black ribbon woven through his aura. I looked again at Edwin: the same black ribbon. I looked at the kids. They all had black ribbons, some thicker than others. All of them. I’d never seen this before. Not like this, and not in the same pattern, and not with so many people.
What the hell was going on? I wondered.
“Standard CPR,” I said, finally.
“Where did you learn this standard CPR?”
I glanced over at Tara. She was holding her breath. I glanced over at Edwin. He was grinning knowingly. The jig, I was quite certain, was up.
I said, “At the FBI Academy.”
“Are you a federal agent, Samantha?”
“Not anymore.”
Junior, who had been standing, stepped threateningly before me, arms crossed. “Then what the hell are you, Samantha?”
I looked over at Tara, who was standing near the arched opening into the great room. Her aura, I noted, was still rippled with the same black ribbon.
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “And my name’s Samantha Moon.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“What’s going on, dear?” asked Patricia.
She got up and stood next to her husband. He slipped an arm around her waist and studied me, the picture of a loving couple. I noted that she didn’t have black ribbons coiling through her otherwise bright green aura. Green, the color of envy or distrust. In this situation, I didn’t blame her.
“I’m not sure, honey,” he said, and I believed him. I felt his confusion and hers, too.
I noted t
hat the black ribbons that wound through his aura had picked up slightly. I looked over at Edwin. His ribbons were thicker, like mountaineering ropes, twisting through his aura.
Junior turned his attention to his niece, Tara. “I want to know what’s going on, young lady, and I want to know now. Why did you bring a private investigator to the island?”
“And her assistant,” Allison piped up.
Except no one was listening. All eyes turned to Tara, and as they did so, I noted something very, very curious. Her own black ribbons, which had been no thicker than a half inch, suddenly swelled—doubling, tripling their size. Now they veritably pulsated, swirling faster and faster around her.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I looked over at Edwin to compare his own dark aura...and was equally stunned to see that his once-thick ribbons had now shrunk to thinner ribbons...in fact, only small traces of black showed in him. He was shaking his head and blinking hard, as if coming out of a deep sleep.
All this happened while Tara Thurman stared at me. No, leered at me. Menacingly.
What the hell? I thought.
Edwin continued rubbing his face and appeared by all indications, to be waking.
What the double hell?
What’s wrong, Sam? thought Allison, picking up on my thoughts. She and I still had our ultra-secret line of communication open. What’s going on?
I’ll explain later, I thought. If I can.
Tara leaned forward on the elegant, camel-back sofa. She crossed her legs slowly and wiped some lint off her knee. As she did so, one thing was certain...that damned creepy smile...the same one that seemed to be a permanent fixture on Edwin’s face, was now obvious on her face. I’d seen it on her, too.
The same smile, I thought. It’s body-hopping.
Body-what, Sam? What’s going on?
Not now, I thought.
Tara continued wiping away at the speck. As she did so, she shuddered slightly, and I suspected I knew what was going on. It was getting used to her body.
“Tara?” prodded Junior impatiently. “What the devil is going on here?”
Good choice of words, I thought.
After a moment, with the same too-big smile plastered to her otherwise pretty face, Tara finally looked up at him, then over at me.
“Yes, I hired Samantha Moon, private investigator extraordinaire,” said Tara. Except she didn’t sound like Tara. Not really; at least not to my ears. The black ribbons that wound through her aura were thicker than ever, and pulsated like something radioactive.
“But why?” asked Junior. He didn’t seem to notice the change in his niece. Nor did anyone else. No, not true. On second thought, Patricia was biting her lower lip and looking from Edwin—who was still blinking hard—to Tara, who was smiling psychotically.
She knows, I thought.
Knows what? asked Allison.
Later!
“I hired her to investigate Grandpa George’s death,” said Tara.
“But why? Why would you do that?”
Tara was looking at me, but it wasn’t Tara. It was the thing that had been in Edwin—and was now in her. “I wasn’t thinking straight, uncle. I was...I was confused. I thought maybe a private investigator could help us...perhaps shed light on what happened.”
Junior crossed the room and sat next to his brother’s daughter. “Grandpa George drowned, Tari.”
“I know...but why did he drown?”
Junior gazed at her, then turned and looked at his wife. She shrugged. He sighed. I sensed no deception coming from them. I sensed no concealing of truth. They were legitimately at a loss for answers.
Finally, Junior said, “We don’t know why he drowned, honey, but the medical report assured us there was no foul play.”
Tara nodded, although the plastered smile remained on her face. She reminded me of the Joker from Batman. She started nodding, and now tears appeared on her high cheekbones. Tears and that big, disturbing smile.
“I just wanted help. I just wanted answers.” She pointed at me. “And she was so willing to help, so willing to—no, I shouldn’t say it.”
“So willing to take your money?” finished Junior.
Tara looked at him, then at me, and nodded. Allison gasped next to me and made to stand up. I held her back. Junior turned and looked at me. “When the storm clears, you’re on the next boat out of here.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Something dark clouded over him. No, this wasn’t a body-jumping dark entity. It was his own self-righteous anger. “You will leave, Samantha Moon, even if I have to make you.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Thurman,” I said. “I was hired to do a job, and I intend to finish it.”
Someone in the room inhaled sharply. Tara, peeking out from behind her uncle, smiled even broader. Junior strode over and stood before me, threateningly. I didn’t get threatened by angry men, even back before my immortal days. I was still sitting on the loveseat next to Allison—even though, I was fairly certain, we weren’t in love. Junior stood over six feet tall and was used to getting his way. His uncle, Cal, was lying dead just down the hallway. This wasn’t a time for him to make a scene or to make things even worse than they were.
I telepathically reached out to him. This was something I’d recently discovered I could do, something that, apparently, most vampires could do. For me, it was still new—and still something I wasn’t comfortable doing.
Calm, I thought. All is okay. I’m just here to help. I’m not the enemy.
Junior blinked, and then unclenched his fists. He swayed slightly, looked at me confusedly, then turned and went back to his wife. He took her hand and she looked at him, also confused.
I stood, and so did Allison.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to the room in general. “Cal seemed like a good man. But I’ve also been hired to do a job—a job I intend to finish, one way or another. Each of you can expect a visit from me.” I looked at Patricia Thurman, Junior’s wife. “And I’ll be seeing you first.”
She blinked with the telepathic suggestion I’d also given her, and with that, Allison and I left the room.
Chapter Twenty-six
We were back at the bungalow.
Allison had poured us two glasses of wine and now, once we had dried off and were in some warm clothing, we sat around the small dinette table that also afforded a view of both the back yard and the brick mansion beyond. Rain slanted nearly sideways across the window, like so many silver daggers. We both kept our eyes mostly on the big house.
Allison was wearing a sweater and jeans and the thickest socks I’d ever seen. “What did you see, Sam?” she asked me.
Good question. I’d been asking myself the same thing since we’d left the house and dashed through the rain like two schoolgirls at recess.
“How good are you at seeing auras?” I asked her.
“Pretty good, but not as good as you. You see details that I can’t—heck, that I don’t think even the best psychics can see. You know, you could make a lot of money as a psychic, Sammie. Just saying.”
“I’ll pass. So you didn’t see anything unusual about any of the Thurmans’ auras?”
“Nothing that stood out, why?”
So, I told her about the shadowy ribbons, or ropes, that wove through all the Thurmans’ auras like so many lassos.
“Through all of them?”
“All,” I said, and she must have caught my next thought.
“You mean all the blood relatives,” she said.
“Exactly.” I gave her a glimpse of my own memory, so that she could see the shadows for herself.
“What is it?” she said after a moment, her mouth hanging open.
“I don’t honestly know.”
“The black ropes appear to be...binding them,” said Allison.
“Good point,” I said.
“Like it’s holding them hostage.”
I shuddered. Outside, a magnificent bolt of lightning appeared, re
nding the gray sky in two. The bolt could have come straight from Asgard, hurled from the mighty Thor himself. Or, if I was lucky, from Chris Hemsworth. The bolt was followed immediately by a clap of thunder so loud that Allison jumped.
After a moment, she said, “What the hell is going on, Sam?”
“I don’t know, kiddo. But there’s more.”
Next, I told her about the change I’d seen in Tara, and, subsequently, the change I’d seen in Edwin. And not just changes of the physical kind, but within their auras. I showed her mental images as I spoke.
Allison nodded along, even as she was looking a little pale. When I was finished, she said, “Yeah, I thought our hostess was looking a little odd. All that freaky smiling. Thought maybe she’d hit the mimosas a little early.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “There’s something else going on here.”
“What? I’ll admit, I’m lost.”
I drummed my fingers on the table and watched as the back door to the big house opened and a woman emerged, a woman I wasn’t surprised to see at all. She popped open an umbrella—which was promptly blown free from her hands, to tumble endlessly across the backyard. She seemed confused at first, then threw on her hood, and dashed across the big back yard.
“I think,” I said, watching the sprinting figure, “that the entity is body-hopping.”
“Body-hopping?”
“Or body-jumping, or whatever it’s called.”
“Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds, Sam?”
“No more crazy than everything else.”
“Good point. And this entity isn’t just any entity, is it?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “It might just be the strongest of them all.”
“And you know that how?”
“Call it a hunch,” I said. “And there’s something else?”
“What?”
I nodded toward the window. “We have company.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
We moved to the bungalow’s living room.
“These places aren’t bugged, are they?” asked Allison.
