Modern Magic
Page 262
I was on my second cup of coffee and had a biscuit with jam to go with it when my cell phone went off. I glanced at the time and frowned. It was barely seven—much too early for a social call. It wasn’t Sorren, since he sleeps during the day—unless he was in a different time zone. Then I realized the number belonged to Kell.
“Cassidy? Did I wake you?” Kell sounded a little freaked out.
“No,” I assured him. “I was up. What’s wrong?”
“A bunch of us worked all night over at the spook house,” Kell said. “It was fun—like a work-party. Most of the people were Rennie’s core crew, plus me and a couple others. After midnight, we finished cleaning up our materials outside and came in so we didn’t bother the neighbors. Rennie insisted we lock the doors. No one was supposed to go back out. But sometime between midnight and six, Briana disappeared.”
A chill went down my spine. “What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?” I asked carefully. “Maybe she left without telling anyone—perhaps because Rennie didn’t want anyone to go?” It’s always best to start with the most normal possibilities and then get progressively weirder than to immediately assume something supernatural.
Kell really sounded upset. “No one saw her, and we were all up and moving around. There were people downstairs, going back and forth—it would be hard to slip out with all that going on.”
“Is her car missing?”
“No one remembers whether she drove or not. We haven’t been able to get her to answer her cell phone, although I thought I heard it ring—she has a really unique ring tone—but it seemed very far away. Then I couldn’t hear it anymore.”
I took another sip of my coffee, and wracked my brain for normal explanations. “Did she have a fight with anyone? Maybe a disagreement with Rennie? Could she have had a personal problem that came up and she didn’t want anyone to know?” I told myself there could be a hundred different, perfectly normal, reasons Briana might have quietly let herself out the back door without wanting anyone to see her go.
“No—at least, not that anyone is saying. Rennie swears they didn’t argue. No one overheard her on the phone, so if she got an emergency call, she didn’t tell anyone.”
“Did you check the accident reports? Maybe she was out of cigarettes and desperate for a smoke and figured she could get to the all-night drugstore and back again before anyone noticed.” It was a slim chance, but possible.
“Briana didn’t smoke,” Kell said. “And even though Rennie seems pretty easy-going, none of his crew would go against his direct order for something stupid like cigarettes. He runs a tight ship, and he expects people to do as he says.”
“Did you call the police?”
“How can I call the police when we aren’t even sure she’s really missing?” Kell sounded like he was pacing. “Everyone’s worried, and they’ll be pissed if it turns out she just went AWOL. Rennie won’t be thrilled, either. That’s just it—I don’t think she’d risk her job to go off without a really, really good reason.”
“Did anything else change since I was there?” I had finished my coffee, but I toyed with the empty cup as I spoke.
“No. Well, one thing but I can’t imagine how it would be related.”
“What?” I asked.
“We got another shipment of furniture from Rennie’s supplier. Some of it’s kind of weird stuff—not so surprising. But there were also two more pieces to that mirrored vanity table you said gave you the creeps. I was going to show you the next time you came over.”
“I don’t know how—or if—it has anything to do with Briana’s disappearance,” I said. “But I’d like to bring Teag and come over as soon as I can get Maggie in to cover the store.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Kell said, sounding relieved. “See you soon.”
Maggie agreed to open the store, so Teag and I met Kell at the spook house by nine. He looked haggard. Part of that, I chalked up to working all night. But Kell was definitely worried, and something that was very unusual for him—he was scared.
“Thanks so much for coming,” he said when we parked. I noticed he had been waiting for us by the driveway, not inside the house.
“Where is everyone?” I asked. I assumed people would still be around, since they spent the night working.
“Rennie sent everyone home,” Kell said, and ran a hand back through his hair. I had thought to bring him a travel mug of fresh coffee and a donut. He accepted both gratefully.
“What about Briana?” I asked.
“No one’s seen her,” Kell replied. “Her car is at her apartment. Turns out she rode over here with a friend—who hasn’t seen her since then. No one else took her home. She isn’t picking up on her cell phone. It’s not like her.”
“Let’s go through the house, and see if we can pick up on anything,” I said, with a glance back at Teag, who nodded. I knew he had my back, but heading into the spook house still made me nervous, even though the lights were on and it was broad daylight.
I could tell the team had gotten a lot done overnight. Outside, the house was done up like something out of a monster movie—the perfect abandoned, ramshackle haunted house. The team had added a lot of decorations in the yard like tombstones and zombies that looked like they were clawing their way out of the lawn. I saw speakers in the eaves to serenade the people waiting in the queue with creepy music. In fact, the path for the line wound through a corn maze where guests could get a head start on being scared to death by actors jumping around dark corners.
Not much seemed to have changed on the first floor, but those decorations had been well-along when I had visited the first time. Heading upstairs, I could see more evidence of how hard Rennie’s team had worked to get ready for the crowds. Ghoulish paintings hung on the wall. Lots of fake spider webs stretched artfully from the balustrade to the chandelier and between furnishings. I almost leaped out of my skin when I stepped on the carpet and the sound of a chain saw roared to life right beside my ear.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Kell said, and I knew that despite his worry for Briana, he was still in love with the haunted house. I hoped nothing we found spoiled that fun for him.
“Yeah,” I replied, slightly less enthusiastically. “Cool. That was just the word I was looking for,” I added, trying to get the hearing back in my right ear.
This time, we started at the ‘suicide’ room. “This was where Briana was working right before she disappeared,” Kell said.
I willed myself to walk into the room. The impressions I had picked up of the unfortunate former occupant were not so strong this time, perhaps because it was daylight. Teag moved around the room slowly, paying special attention to the draperies and bedclothes. His magic is different from mine, but he can pick up if fabrics have any supernatural power. He touched the curtains and recoiled as if he had burned his hand.
“These are original to the room, aren’t they?” he asked, looking at the draperies warily.
Kell nodded. “We think so.”
“They were here when Susan killed herself,” Teag said quietly. “She used the drapery rod and one of the curtain tie-backs to hang herself. That kind of thing leaves an imprint—a magical mark.”
“What does that mean?” Kell asked. He looked a little surprised at Teag’s comment, and I knew that at some point, I’d have to figure out how to explain at least part of it to Kell, especially if I wanted to keep going out with him.
“It’s not dangerous,” Teag explained. “But it stained the energy of the room, and since the curtains were here—and a part of what happened—they hold that stained energy more than the room itself did. That’s what’s amplifying the negative energy.”
Kell nodded. “All right. We can see about replacing them. I want people to have fake scares that are fun, not real scares that aren’t.” He paused. “Anything about Briana?”
Neither Teag nor I are psychics. We can’t tell the future or read minds. But doing appraisals at the shop has given both of us a good eye for detail, an
d so we made a slow walk around Susan Mayfair’s bedroom, looking for any sign of Briana that Kell and the others might have missed.
“Was the house remodeled?” I asked, eyeing the uneven wallpaper and a closet in the corner of the room, near the hallway wall, that seemed to be in an awkward location.
Kell nodded. “Yeah. Probably several times. It’s not in the historic district, so people made modifications whenever they needed more space. We never got the original blueprints, but we think the original owners used this as a maid’s bedroom.”
Nothing else in the suicide bedroom made us pause, so we worked our way back to the nursery. I stopped in the doorway so fast that Teag actually ran into me.
“Whoa!” I said. “Where did they come from?”
At least two dozen old fashioned dolls sat or stood at various places throughout the nursery. Many of the dolls were broken, which added to the creepiness. Some of the porcelain faces were cracked. Others were missing an eye or a limb. The dolls’ hair was original and many had bald spots or places where the hair had been cut lopsidedly. Their clothing was stained and torn, faded and discolored. Most were missing one or both shoes.
“Rennie got them from a junk dealer who said they’d been in a box in his basement for years,” Kell replied. “The guy thought his father might have bought them cheap from the thrift store since they were damaged.” And the thrift store would have taken the broken dolls in with donations, cast-offs from people who didn’t want them anymore.
“No one’s actually going into that room, right?” I asked.
Kell looked at me oddly. “Why?”
Even without touching the dolls, I felt an overpowering sense of loneliness and abandonment—and anger. The dolls held onto the strong childhood emotions of the ones who had given them up. They were not a cheery, welcoming crowd. “Anyone with even a low-level psychic sensitivity is going to be weirded out by them,” I replied. Then again, I suspected that people who had some level of sensitivity avoided spook houses, whether or not they knew exactly why.
The last room was the master bedroom. It still had the four-poster bed with the dead mannequin in it, but I was prepared this time when the ‘body’ sat up and screamed. Even so, I flinched away and found myself staring into the mirror.
For just a heartbeat, Briana stared back at me, then vanished.
“There! Did you see her?” I pointed at the vanity table mirror, heart thudding.
Teag and Kell shook their heads. “I saw Briana in the mirror—just for a second,” I said.
Teag met my gaze. “Are you certain?” I knew Teag didn’t doubt me. What he was really trying to figure out, without discussing magic in front of Kell, was how that was possible.
“I’m sure it was Briana,” I said. “But she looked different from the way the old lady seemed that I saw before.”
“In what way?” Kell asked. It encouraged me that he was intrigued instead of frightened. That boded well for the future.
I thought, trying to put my thoughts into words. “The old lady I saw seemed to be inside the mirror. With Briana, I felt like I was looking through a window to somewhere else.” I sighed. “I know that doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the best I can do.”
Kell took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it to show me a sketch of a woman’s face. “One of the lighting techs drew this. He says he saw this woman looking back at him from the mirror. He won’t come in the room, after that.”
Teag looked over my shoulder. “That’s Susan Mayfair, the one who hanged herself. I saw her obituary in an online database. It had a picture.”
I glanced down at the dressing table, mostly to keep from staring in that damned mirror. That’s when I noticed the two new mirrors. One was a tray, made to hold a fancy brush and comb set, and the other was a hand mirror. The three pieces had matching frames, so it was clear they were a set. “That’s new,” I said, pointing.
Kell nodded. “Yeah. They were in the same shipment as the dolls. Rennie said the three pieces went together, so we put them together.”
Teag and I exchanged a glance. I was certain he was thinking what I was thinking. “Do you have Briana’s phone number?” I asked.
Kell pulled out his phone and dialed it. “Yeah. I’ve been trying it on and off. No answer.” Yet I could hear distant music—a song I recognized from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“Did you hear that?” Teag asked. I motioned for him to be quiet, and closed my eyes, moving toward the sound. It was faint, and just as I thought I had gotten a lock on it, the sound stopped. I opened my eyes and found myself up against the dressing table.
“I swear it was louder near the mirror,” I said, and dared to stare at the silver surface, but I saw just my own reflection.
“Are you saying that… something… took Briana and Susan Mayfair inside a mirror?” Kell asked incredulously.
Actually, I had wondered about that, but I hadn’t said it out loud. “I’ve heard of spirits being trapped in a mirror,” I said carefully. “There are particular circumstances that apply. I think we need to do more research.”
“Kell,” I said, “are the crews going to be working on the house tonight?”
He shook his head. “No. Rennie thought we had gotten enough done, everyone needed a break. I think he’s hoping we find Briana and then we can all get our heads back in the game.”
“Do you think he would allow us to come back tonight to see if we can deal with whatever’s in the mirror before it hurts someone—and see if we can get Briana back?”
Kell frowned. “Why do you have to come back at night? Can’t you do whatever it is you need to do now?”
I paused. Kell had trusted us enough to ask for our help. Now I needed to trust him with a little more of the truth. Briana’s life might depend on it. “I think that the old woman whose face I saw the first time in the mirror was a witch.”
“Wiccan?”
I shook my head. “No. I mean someone who seeks out supernatural power in order to hurt or control other people.”
Kell raised an eyebrow. “Those are real?”
Teag and I both nodded. “Yeah. And we need some people with special skills to deal with it.”
I could see Kell struggling. “All right,” he said. “But I want to come with you.” He had a stubborn set to his jaw. “Either I come, or it’s no deal. For one thing, Rennie trusts me with access to the house, so I have a responsibility to manage that. And secondly, Briana is a friend. If we can get her back, I want to help.” He met my gaze. “Do I need to remind you that I have all kinds of special equipment that might help?” That was true. SPOOK was pretty well outfitted on ghost hunting gadgets. “So what do you say?”
I glanced at Teag. He shrugged, telling me it was my call. “Okay,” I said. “But follow our lead. We run into this kind of thing more than you’d think.”
Kell didn’t look like he liked the terms, but he finally nodded. “All right. Anything to get Briana back and keep anyone else from getting hurt.”
We agreed to meet back at the spook house after eleven that night. Teag turned to look at me when we drove away. “I don’t know how Sorren is going to feel about having Kell along.”
“I’ll text him, while you do some more research,” I replied. “He hasn’t been here, so he doesn’t get to decide. Kell’s got a point about being responsible to Rennie. I don’t want to put him in a bad spot.”
“And if it gets too wild, Sorren can always glamour him and make him forget?”
That really wasn’t a path I wanted to go down with Kell, especially if we were going to think about being a couple. It wasn’t fair to erase his memories, and it wasn’t honest. But sometimes, it couldn’t be helped. “Hopefully not,” I replied. “He’s a ghost hunter. We can explain a lot of strange things to him that other people don’t understand.”
“What else?”
“I’m going to call Father Anne as soon as we get to my place,” I replied. “And leave a voice mail for Sorre
n to bring him up to speed. Let’s just hope Father Anne is free for some exorcising tonight.”
Back at my house, I fed Baxter while Teag pulled his laptop out of his messenger bag and set up on my dining room table. “Hexenspiegel,” he said, after a few minutes.
“Witch mirrors,” I replied. I had run into them before, and wondered if Teag had followed the same train of thought I had when we saw the faces in the reflections.
Teag nodded. “Yeah. It’s a way to trap an evil witch in a mirror like one of those fun houses that have so many reflections, you can’t find your way out.”
I pulled up the sketch program I had used to draw the face from my dreams. “Can you do anything from this?” I asked.
While Teag searched the deepest recesses of the internet, I paced, checking my cell phone every few minutes for phone calls even though the ringer was on high. When it did ring, I jumped.
“What’s up?” Father Anne asked, getting right down to business. She’s not what most people picture as an Episcopalian priest, with spiky short black hair, tattoos of several saints on her arms, and a penchant for wearing Doc Martens when we need to go ghost whupping. She’s also a member of the St. Expeditus Society, a secret group of priests who help out with setting supernatural threats to rest. We’ve worked with Father Anne on several occasions, and she’s good in a fight. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Father Anne listened as I explained what was going on, and what we suspected about the witch mirror. “Sounds like my kind of fun,” she said when I finished. “Give me the address of the spook house. I’ll meet you there.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said as I put my phone back in my pocket. I called Sorren again, left an updated voice mail, and tried not to grind my teeth in frustration.
“I think I’ve found a couple things that might be useful,” Teag said. “Quit pacing and come over to look.”