by Kelly Meding
The gravel made it impossible to be silent, and each of our steps sounded like a gunshot in the quiet night. We crunched down to the last of six rows, then right, to the unit farthest from the office and the main highway. It was a skinny end unit, the kind that always seemed useless to me—didn’t people rent storage units because they had a lot of stuff?
As with the gate, Tennyson yanked at the padlock. It creaked and broke off in his hand. I snapped my gun’s safety off. He rolled up the door, and I swung forward, barrel aimed at the . . . empty unit.
The hell?
The cement floor was bare, the metal walls clean and unmarked. It was barely wide enough to stand in the middle and stretch both of my arms out, and about eight feet deep. The thick, metallic odor of blood wafted out, though, strong enough to make my stomach roil. My neck hairs prickled.
I smelled blood I couldn’t see, and residual energy from the revenancy spell had led us here. So why was the unit empty?
Gun first, I stepped inside.
And fell right through the cement floor.
Chapter 8
If I had been able to see through the glamour posing as a cement floor, I’d have seen the stairs I was now falling down ass over teakettle. Hard, concrete stairs, half the width of the storage unit above. My elbows and legs scraped the rough walls all the way down. Which was pretty far down.
I finally hit bottom after what felt like an eternity of bumps and tumbles. The world tilted and spun like a carnival ride. My chin smarted, and I felt something wet on my neck. I blinked a few times and realized I was staring back up the dug-and-packed steps I’d introduced my entire body to on the way down. Tennyson and Mom were still at the top, gaping. Probably wondering where I’d disappeared to.
“Shiloh!” Mom’s mouth formed the word, but oddly, I couldn’t hear her. She started forward; Tennyson held her back with an arm.
“Stairs,” I yelled, unsure if she’d hear me. Her expression change was negative.
I sat up, grateful everything seemed functional, considering the distance fallen. Once again my half djinn side proved useful—hard-to-kill can also be translated into hard-to-poison and hard-to-break-my-bones. So while I’d cut my chin on the way down, and most of my muscles ached, nothing else felt seriously wounded.
Yay me.
Tennyson extended his left foot and felt around. His eyebrows arched when he penetrated the glamour. He said something to my mom, who nodded. The foot came down onto the top step. Then the second followed. Good, he was figuring this out.
Time to see what this dugout tunnel led to. Behind me was a narrow corridor less than six feet long. It ended at a heavy, steel door, the kind that’s both fireproof and soundproof.
“Shiloh?” Hearing my first name roll off Tennyson’s tongue surprised me. He was nearly to the bottom of the stairs when I looked up at him. His eyes narrowed on my chin. Specifically, on my bloody chin. Dots of green danced in his eyes—was green the color of hunger?
“I’m fine,” I said, then again when Mom appeared behind him. She fussed over my chin, using her borrowed handkerchief to wipe me down. The same one she’d blown her nose into earlier.
Gross.
I jerked away and used the wall to stand. “I’m fine, really.”
“You disappeared, Shi,” Mom said.
“Yeah, well, the floor kind of gave way.”
“An impressive glamour,” Tennyson said. He stooped and when he stood, he handed me my gun.
“I don’t suppose anyone has a flashlight.” Our only current light source was reflecting down from the security poles outside.
Tennyson removed his cell phone and flipped it open. The pale glow helped. I reached for my Raspberry. A strange crackling sound accompanied it out of my pocket. The display screen was smashed and several keys loose.
“Shit.” It didn’t power up. I relied so much on technology, I wasn’t certain I had my teams’ numbers memorized. I wasn’t even sure I had my own number memorized, now that I thought about it.
Double shit.
A problem for when we were out of here. For now, we approached the door, Mom keeping wisely to the rear. It had a levered handle and no obvious connections to security devices. We’d already tripped the magical snare, and it was possible whoever created the floor glamour knew someone passed through it. No sense in playing it safe now.
I raised my weapon in my right hand, steadying it across the wrist of my left. Tennyson pressed down on the handle and pushed. The door squealed open, heavy and ominous. An assault of smells tumbled out before the door was open more than ten degrees. Metallic blood, peppery sage, charred wood, something sweet like cherries, and other, baser scents I couldn’t identify. A tingle of magic wrapped around me like a thousand pinpricks on my skin.
He shoved the door open completely. I spied the familiar shape of a light switch near the door and flipped it. Five florescent floor lamps blazed to life, each spaced at equal intervals around the chamber. Twenty feet or so across, it took me a moment to process the layout.
The room was dug out in the shape of a pentagram, with one lamp anchoring each point, the top point of the star directly across from us. In the center of the room was a wooden table, its surface stained black. The packed-earth floor was likewise stained in pools and splatters of black. Stained chains were still attached to both ends of the wooden table. Small scars on opposite sides made my stomach curl—fingernails could have made those.
Two other objects were in the room. One was a large, mobile tool chest, close enough to have gained its own spackling of dried blood. The other was what looked like a hairdresser’s table, with various baskets and drawers. Bottles and sacks of dozens of things—spices, flakes, bones, you name a magical ingredient, it might have been there—filled those baskets and drawers.
Symbols I didn’t recognize had been carved into the dirt floor near each lamp, each a twisted reminder that I knew little about the external manipulation of magic by beings not born to it—human witches and warlocks, for example. Warlocks turned vampire, more specifically.
“This is it,” Mom said, almost as much to say something than for any other reason. She lingered on the threshold, and I didn’t blame her. The room rippled with terrible power. If evil could take physical form at that moment, it would be sitting on the table and cackling at us.
“Tennyson,” I said, quiet even though we seemed to be alone, “Can you sense if Piotr was here recently?”
“I cannot sense his presence,” he said, crushing my hopes. His nostrils flared. “However, Piotr is fond of a particularly unappealing cologne. I believe it’s named after a former basketball player. I do detect the faintest hints of its fragrance.”
“He can’t be the only person who wears it.”
“Of course not. The evidence is circumstantial, as you would say.”
“Sounds pretty damning to me,” Mom said.
“What about all these symbols?” I asked, pointing. “Anyone?”
Tennyson approached the nearest, something that looked like a curly Y. “They appear to be alchemical symbols. Signs of the Zodiac. This one is Aries.”
“Do you know the others?”
He walked to each symbol, naming them as he went in a wide circle. “Aries, Taurus, Sagittarius, Scorpio, and Aquarius.”
“How in the world are they useful to a necromancer?”
“Alchemical symbols,” Mom said from the door. “Alchemy is, at its root, about transformation. The symbols could have been chosen to anchor the spell based on the alchemical properties of each sign.”
I gaped at her. “Do you know the properties?”
“No, I’m sorry.” She eyed the remains of my phone, which I still held in my left hand. I knew what she was thinking. K.I.M. would know.
“So we have a room shaped like a pentagram, five signs of the Zodiac, a torture table, and a bunch of herbs,” I said. “All the ingredients to make a revenant, without exact instructions for doing so.”
“The instructions mean little,” T
ennyson said, “unless you mean to make your own.”
“When hell freezes over,” I muttered. “Mom, bring Julius here.”
She hesitated, then came. “Are you sure this is wise?”
“Not really, but maybe being here will jog his memory.” I popped off the lid.
His eyelids popped up, so wide the whites of his eyes showed. He screamed, a high-pitched, tortured sound that made my teeth ache. He screamed and screamed, wild and horrified, a gibbering sound made worse for the lack of lung power. I slammed the lid back down, and the screaming stopped.
Panting a little, I took a step back. “Okay, bad idea.”
Mom resealed the carrier, her face pale and drawn.
“His reaction, though, does confirm this as the location of his murder,” Tennyson said. “What is your next move?”
“Call the cops.”
He stared. “I beg your pardon?”
“We need forensic evidence,” I said. “My badge still says US Marshal on it, so they won’t ask too many questions. This place needs to be photographed, blood samples tested, and fingerprints lifted. If we’re lucky, it’ll help us locate this necromancer.”
Ten minutes later, two state police cruisers joined our Element outside of the storage unit. Four officers unfolded themselves from their cars, a little sleepy-eyed. I zeroed in on the highest-ranking officer and glanced at his name tag.
“Officer Osborne,” I said, flashing him my Marshal badge. “Shiloh Harrison, US Marshals’, Para-Marshal Office.” Mom was hiding in the backseat of the Element, a civilian staying out of the way. Tennyson had chosen to remain below and continued looking around while I waited for the police.
“Ma’am,” Osborne said. He was tall and lanky, with barely enough muscle not to be considered emaciated. Tanned skin betrayed a love of sunshine and his angled nose betrayed too many fistfights. “It’s not often we get calls from a Para-Marshal who says she found a potential crime scene.”
The faint sneer with this statement somehow blamed me for the crime scene existing at all. Not terribly far from the truth, I supposed.
“Believe me, I was surprised to find it,” I said.
“If I may ask, ma’am, how did you find it way out here?”
“Anonymous tip.”
His thin lips curled down. He didn’t like that answer, but I had none other for him. Couldn’t very well tell him my mother followed the metaphorical scent of magic based on the cryptic musings of a sex-craved goddess. Even though paranormal occurrences were fairly commonplace now, folks in the smaller communities rarely saw it in their quiet streets. Out here, it was easier to pretend magic was still fiction.
Osborne slid a long-handled flashlight from his belt and waved a hand at his companions. The quartet moved toward the storage unit. Osborne paused in the entryway, angling the beam up, down, and all around. He turned his head toward me, lips puckered.
“You said there were stairs,” he said.
“Just inside,” I replied. “The floor is an illusion.”
His eyebrows dug down into a deep vee, joining his puckered lips in creating an almost comical expression of disbelief. He shined the flashlight across the floor, as though expecting it to penetrate the glamour. The shortest of the four patrolmen snorted.
Osborne used the doorway for balance and stretched out his right foot. I waited for his toes to sink through. His shiny boot stepped down flat on the cement floor. I sucked in a harsh breath. Osborne took four steps inside, stamping his heels and testing what looked and sounded like a solid floor.
“So, Marshal Harrison,” Osborne said as he pivoted on his heel to glare at me. “Pretty solid illusion you have here.”
One of the other patrolmen snickered. The short one made no attempt to hide his disgust.
What? The? Hell?
I was escorted off the premises with a stern warning from Osborne, and was informed in no uncertain terms that I was to pay for all locks broken, as well as issue a formal, written apology to the owner within twenty-four hours. I had absolutely nothing to say. I’d been given no chance to explain, no chance to put my own foot through the glamour and prove I wasn’t crazy.
One of the patrol cars followed me two miles north on the highway. The instant the car turned off, I pulled over. Mom popped up and I explained what was happening while I climbed out. I couldn’t double back. I had no doubts the cops were watching the storage area. I also couldn’t leave.
Tennyson was still back there.
No doubt he’d heard the entire exchange above. Possibly he’d even watched from below as Osborne walked about seemingly on nothing.
“It doesn’t completely surprise me,” Mom said. She joined me on the gravel, both of us looking southward. “Often you must believe in the possibility of magic in order to see through the strongest of glamours. It’s how fairies fly around in broad daylight, and why the average person doesn’t feel a ley line when they’re standing on one.”
“I should have known better. Shouldn’t have done that. Julius wouldn’t have done that.”
“You aren’t Julius, sweetheart.”
“No, but I’m acting leader of this team and I’m making decisions like a fucking rookie.”
“Language, Shi.”
“Like a darn rookie.”
“He’ll find his way back.”
I angled toward her, hands on hips, and glared. “I’m not worried about Tennyson, Mom—he can take care of himself and then some. I’m talking about procedure. We lost the blessed crime scene. Julius wouldn’t have done that.”
“You don’t know what he would have done, and you need to stop second-guessing yourself. Follow your own instincts.”
“I did, which is why we’re standing by the side of the road right now.”
“Yes, and you also have something you didn’t have an hour ago, Shiloh. You have the location of the crime scene, as well as more information on how the spell was performed. You also have circumstantial evidence that places this Piotr at the crime scene. All because you followed your instincts and asked me to help you.”
She was trying to make me feel better, and it was working. I didn’t want to feel better.
“We need to know who was renting that particular unit,” I said. “But I can’t get back there on foot fast enough, and I can’t drive back without being seen. The sun will be up in an hour or so.” Two cars had already passed us heading south in the opposite lane. Even if I had a working cell, I didn’t know Tennyson’s number. I kicked the gravel in petulant frustration. Mom put her hand on my shoulder.
“So we wait until sunrise.”
What else could we do?
The minutes ticked by, traffic along the highway increased, and each time I spotted what looked like a cop car, my anxiety skyrocketed. While the locals could throw every charge in the book at me without any possibly sticking, I didn’t have the time to waste. We were working on twenty-four hours and change on the trailer park crisis, and I imagined Lieutenant Foster and his men were getting antsy.
Thirty minutes later, just as the first faint throbs of a migraine were tickling me behind the eyes, a familiar black cloak broke from the brush, and then Tennyson was standing on the shoulder. Grass and twigs clung to the fabric and his hair was wind-mussed, but even for the exertion and the mileage, he wasn’t out of breath. Not that vampires breathed, but still.
My relief at his appearance surprised me, but I think I managed to keep it off my face.
“Well,” he said, “that did not go quite as expected, did it?”
“Understatement of the year,” I said. “Sorry about leaving you.”
“No need, it gave me time to continue searching the room. I used my cellular to take photographs, as well as catalogue herbs and ingredients I recognized. I was uncertain when or if we’d manage to return, so I was thorough.”
“Thank you.” Next to him saying I was smart enough to stop at the office and pull some paperwork, it was the best news I’d had all day.
�
�I also stopped at the main office on my way out.” My mouth fell open, which made him smile. “I liberated the file on that particular unit, and I hope you find it of use.”
Most girls get weak-kneed when a boy brings her flowers. Apparently I get excited when a guy brings me rental agreements.
I flipped open the manila folder and scanned until I found the renter’s name. A cold fist grabbed my heart and squeezed. I searched lower, spotting the familiar, doctor’s-scrawl signature, and the fist closed tighter. I think I even forgot to breathe for a minute, because the paper blurred. My vision grayed out. A rush of air from a passing vehicle blew the pages out of my hand.
Mom was saying my name. Tennyson scooped up the loose pages and looked at them. His eyes locked on to me, genuine surprise on his face. Then confusion. I concentrated on not passing out. My eye-throb grew more intense.
“Doesn’t make sense,” I stuttered, once I discovered my lungs still worked.
“Will one of you talk to me, please?” Mom asked.
Tennyson cocked his head, a silent question for me. “It’s his signature,” was all I could force out.
“I’m very sorry, Ms. Juno,” Tennyson said, not addressing me this time. He held the papers out to Mom. “But it appears the unit was rented out by Julius Almeida.”
Chapter 9
Tennyson took charge, and for a little while, I allowed it. He ushered Mom and me back into the Element, took the keys, and got us on the road again. Ten minutes later, he pulled into a gas station advertising hot coffee, cheap gas, and lotto tickets. He parked near the rear of the lot and turned off the engine. I was riding shotgun with the file, trying to keep my brain from throbbing out of my skull. Mom was folded into the rear as far from the cake carrier as she could physically get without climbing through the door.
“You are positive the signature is his?” Tennyson asked again.
“I’ve seen him sign hundreds of documents,” I replied. My voice sounded funny, almost hollow. I scanned the pages again, checking all of the vital information. The cold fist hadn’t released my heart. “Birth date, address, home phone which he does not give out to anyone—it’s all correct. Not impossible to find under the right circumstances, but . . .”
