Phantom Kiss

by Chloe Neill

  “I only saw one man, and I didn’t see much of him. It was dark, and he was wearing dark clothes.”

  “You’re sure it was a man?” my grandfather asked.

  Annabelle blinked. “Good point. I assumed it was a man—short hair, dark pants and a jacket, I think. The build seemed masculine, but I didn’t see his or her face.”

  Pretty much the same description CPAN had given.

  “Did you see his vehicle?” I asked. “The white sedan?”

  Annabelle shook her head. “No.”

  “What happened when you called out?” my grandfather asked.

  “He stopped what he was doing—kind of waited for a minute to see who I was—and then he started running.”

  “He doesn’t like confrontation,” Ethan said.

  “No,” my grandfather agreed. “He doesn’t. If he’s got any magical skill, or even physical skill, he might have stood his ground.”

  “Or if he’d wanted it bad enough,” Jeff said. He crouched down to get a better look at the remains.

  “Exactly,” my grandfather said. “He’s not a fighter and likely not especially skilled—or experienced—with magic.” He glanced at Annabelle. “Did you feel magic this time?”

  She frowned, considering. “I was pretty amped-up on adrenaline, but I don’t remember feeling anything. I don’t think he got that far.”

  My grandfather looked at Jeff. “Jeff’s made some headway on the magic the perpetrator might have used.”

  “No kidding?” Annabelle said.

  Jeff nodded, rose from his crouch. “We had to go into the Dark Web to find it, which took some time. I still want to let Mallory and Catcher take a look when they’re back from the ME’s office, but I think we’re close.”

  “Dark Web?” Ethan asked.

  “Long story short,” Jeff said, sticking his hands into his pockets, “the Internet’s dark and filthy alley. Encrypted, unindexed, and nearly impossible to find without the right information and software. We found a market—a darknet—where spells and charms already kindled by magic are available to the highest bidder. And this one was recently sold,” he said, pulling out his phone and pulling up the information.

  He handed it to me, the screen showing what looked like a pretty typical Internet product page. Description, picture, cost. But instead of a book or pair of shoes, the seller was offering a “Spell to Summon a Spirit Using Partial Skeleton.”

  “A lot of alliteration,” I said, reading the description, which talked about unearthing a skull or other body part to pull the deceased’s spirit back into this world. The buyer would receive a prekindled magical object, a candle, and the words necessary to initiate the magic.

  “Pretty damn close to what we’ve got here,” I said, handing the phone to Ethan. “I presume you can’t track it, given where it came from?”

  “Correct,” my grandfather said. “Even if we had a warrant for the buyer’s information, it’s highly unlikely the seller would cooperate, and we won’t be able to find them to enforce it. We’ll be talking to the Order about the market,” my grandfather said, displeasure clear in his voice. “Very firm talking.”

  “If we assume that’s the right spell, it doesn’t say anything about the purpose of raising a spirit. So what’s the point?” I looked down at the grave. “What are they trying to do here? What do they want with a ghost?”

  “Maybe the buyer wanted a ghost butler,” Jeff said. “Or to locate some kind of hidden treasure that only the deceased knows about, or to have a really kick-ass Halloween prop.”

  “Several months early?” Annabelle asked.

  Jeff shrugged, mouth arranged in a quirky grin. “Ghost butler.”

  “Maybe they did it just to prove they could,” my grandfather quietly said, worry in the lines of his face. “Tonight proves he’s still out there, still trying to make magic. Still trying to accomplish something. We just have to find the something.”

  Before the something found us.

  • • •

  We drove back to the House at speeds that weren’t precisely legal. Neither Ethan nor I wanted to leave it for long.

  Mallory and Catcher met us in Ethan’s office in front of a spread of pizza boxes on the conference table.

  “We have exonerated Mickey Riley!” she pronounced, slice of pepperoni in hand.

  “And managed dinner, apparently,” Ethan said.

  “Malik ordered it,” she said, wiping grease from her fingers. “Decided the team needed a refuel.”

  It wasn’t Saul’s, my favorite Chicago chain that offered my favorite pizza—cream cheese and double bacon—but it was laden with pepperoni and still gleaming with heat and grease. My stomach rumbled with hunger, and my self-healing vampire arteries rejoiced.

  “I’m game,” I said, and pulled out a chair, grabbed a slice, and took a seat. “Tell us about Riley.”

  Ethan sat down beside me, got his own slice. My heart leapt happily when he skipped the plate and fork, opted only for a napkin. I’d rubbed a little of the shine off of him, and that was fine by me.

  “It’s not Riley,” Mallory said. “In the grave, I mean. Very much Riley’s name on the records, very much Riley not in the ground.”

  “Then who the hell is it?” Ethan asked.

  “Not Riley,” Mallory said with a grin, a long string of cheese stretching between the pie and the second slice of pizza she’d lifted from it.

  “Turns out Mickey Riley had a very distinctive feature.” Catcher held up a hand, all the fingers curled down except his little finger. “He was missing the pinkie on his right hand. Butcher in the 19th Ward cut it off during a disagreement about protection money. But the body in the grave had all ten fingers. On the upside, it did have something you’ll find familiar.”

  He pulled up an image on his phone, handed it to me.

  On a background of silver that I suspected was an autopsy table sat a pair of old-fashioned spectacles with small, round lenses.

  “These look like the same glasses worn by the ghost who attacked us in the tunnel.” I looked up at Catcher, handed the phone to Ethan. “So our ghost, whoever he was, was in Mickey Riley’s grave.”

  I was relieved that one of the pieces had fallen into place—if still concerned about the who and the why.

  “If not Riley, did the forensics team know who the remains belong to?” Ethan asked.

  “No,” Catcher said. “There’s no identifying information with the remains and no matches in the DNA archive. They’ve surmised this gentleman is older than Riley based on the condition of the bones, the glasses, the fabric. Have you looked up the marker from tonight’s site?” Catcher asked. “Maybe his and Riley’s records were reversed.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of pizza, adjusted the tablet on the conference table, headed for the cemetery records. “Good idea. Hadn’t gotten there yet.”

  “She was overcome by spicy meats,” Ethan offered.

  “That’s what she said,” Mallory muttered.

  I pulled up the burial ledger, leaving slightly greasy marks on the screen. And got very lucky very quickly; the number was listed on the first page.

  “And Tony Lapham is the owner of grave number two,” I announced.

  But a quick (and equally greasy) image search confirmed he wasn’t the man we’d seen in the tunnel. Lapham was enormous. Over two hundred pounds and, by the look of it, all of it muscle, with a thick neck and ruddy complexion.

  “That name sounds familiar,” Catcher said.

  “It should.” I handed him the tablet. “He was one of Dean O’Banion’s men.”

  “O’Banion?” Mallory said, looking at the screen over Catcher’s shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  “Capone’s rival,” Ethan said. “O’Banion ruled the north side; Capone ruled the south.”

  “So someone unearthed one of Cap
one’s men—or what they thought was one of Capone’s men—and one of O’Banion’s men.” I lifted my gaze. “Why? Because you want to see sparks fly? You want to start a ghost gang war? What would be the point?”

  “Entertainment,” Catcher said, handing back the tablet. “Sociopathy. An academic interest in gangsters.”

  “Could be any of those,” I said, then frowned. “Wait, so Riley’s name is on the grave of a guy buried—if we take his clothing as evidence—many years before Riley died. How did they manage that without going back in time?”

  I pulled up the rest of the ledger pages, switched the display to the screen above Ethan’s bookshelves. I needed more eyes on this project.

  “Okay,” I said as I walked toward the screen, where I scrolled through the scanned pages. “There’s Riley’s identifier,” I said, pointing to the now-familiar set of numbers and letters. “So who got it wrong?”

  I hadn’t gone farther in the ledger pages than Riley’s number, because I’d figured I’d found the information I needed. This time, I moved to the subsequent page, and we scanned through one after another, looking for some clue about the switch.

  “What’s that?” Mallory asked, squinting at the screen.

  At the bottom of a page, in a smaller and straighter script than the rest of the writing and in a darker ink, was a small set of numbers.

  “Looks like it was added later,” Catcher said. “Clearly not the same handwriting as the others.”

  “Agreed,” I said, and zoomed in closer.

  There, in tidy block print, was the number of Mickey Riley’s grave along with a very different name.

  We stared.

  Our perpetrator hadn’t raised a gangster.

  He’d raised a serial killer.

  6

  The Great Fire decimated Chicago in 1871. But like a wildflower in a scorched prairie, the city rose from the ashes into the Gilded Age. Railroads and stock yards boomed, and architecture became grand and modern. Opportunity drew workers into Chicago, into industry—and into the company towns the industrialists built for their new employees.

  It also drew a murderer.

  “Albert Padgett,” Ethan said as we reviewed a photograph of the thin-faced and dour-looking man who’d been dragged back into our world and had terrorized our House.

  “He murdered fourteen people in one of the railroad towns,” Ethan said. “Men, women, and one child, during the summer of 1883. He killed indiscriminately until he was hunted down and shot by police.” He glanced at me. “It took several weeks before they realized the deaths were related, and by that time, the city had begun to panic. We were very aware the city was looking for a killer, and kept a very low profile.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mallory said. “Why is Riley’s number on Padgett’s plot? Padgett died first and would have been in the ground longer.”

  It only took a call to Mallory’s and Catcher’s new forensics friends to explain that. They hadn’t recognized the remains, and hadn’t found the alternate entry. But once Catcher pointed it out, they’d understood the reason for the discrepancy.

  “Albert Padgett was buried in Almshouse Cemetery in 1883,” Catcher said when he’d finished his call. “He was buried in the plot in which we found him, under his own name. When Riley was killed in ’29, they put Riley’s name on Padgett’s grave.” Catcher looked at Ethan. “Any guesses why?”

  “None,” Ethan said, obviously baffled.

  “I’ll give you a hint: the Hudson Institute for Spiritualism.”

  I didn’t recognize the name, but understanding widened Ethan’s eyes. “Oh.”

  Mallory pursed her lips. “That sounds familiar. Why does that sound familiar?”

  “Spiritualists believe they can communicate with those beyond the grave,” Ethan said. “Even though they don’t actually have magic. The movement was popular in the US in the nineteenth century. And there was a resurrection—excuse the pun—after World War I.”

  “People wanted to talk to their loved ones,” I quietly said.

  Catcher nodded. “That’s when the Hudson Institute was founded. You ever visit?” Catcher asked Ethan, who shook his head.

  “They had no magic,” Ethan said simply. “They wanted to believe, certainly, but that was worthless without magic.”

  “Or a darknet,” I threw in, and Catcher nodded.

  “You think the spiritualists wanted to raise Padgett,” Mallory said. “And that’s why Cook County hid the location of his grave after he’d already been dead.”

  “The spiritualists wanted to learn about heaven and hell,” Ethan said. “They believed summoning ghosts was the way to do it. It makes sense they’d want to talk to Padgett.”

  “So Cook County took steps,” I said. “Riley was a low-level thug, so they figured it was fine to put his name in the records because no one would bother looking for him.”

  “Oh, the irony,” Mallory said. “The county put Riley’s name on Padgett’s grave to keep mock witches from disturbing Padgett’s remains. Instead, someone used real magic to disturb Riley’s remains and ended up raising Padgett. Where’s Riley now?” she asked.

  “The forensics folks don’t know,” Catcher said. “They’ll have to do a full audit of the cemetery, which they’ll be starting very soon. Burial records aren’t treated nearly so casually now as they were then, and this won’t sit well with the press.”

  There was a knock at the threshold. Kelley stood in the doorway, her straight dark hair a waterfall across her shoulders and a striking contrast to her pale skin.

  “They’re back,” she said, a glimmer in her wide dark eyes.

  “They?” Ethan asked.

  “The ghosthunters. There are two of them. They say they’re missing a bag, think it might still be in Tunnel Three.”

  “Did we find a bag?”

  Kelley smiled indulgently. “Per your request, we locked the doors and haven’t been back inside.” She glanced at me. “Did you see anything?”

  I frowned, trying to remember. “Not that I recall, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a bag down there. We left it in a hurry and a mess. You?” I asked Catcher.

  “No, for the same reason,” Catcher said.

  “As I’ve learned through our esteemed guard captain,” Ethan said, “their equipment is pricey, and Robin was concerned about money. They wouldn’t want to lose something expensive.”

  “Or they just want another look,” Mallory said.

  Ethan rose, nodded. “Let’s see what they have to say.”

  • • •

  Matt and Roz stood in the foyer, once again in CPAN shirts. They’d brought back some equipment, but not nearly the bulk they’d carried in earlier.

  Matt’s expression was blank. Roz’s features were pulled into angry lines, as if she’d eaten something sour.

  “Ms. Leary,” Ethan said pleasantly. “Mr. Birdsong. I understand you left something here.”

  “A gray backpack,” Roz said. “It’s our property, and we’d like it back.”

  Ethan nodded, his expression utterly calm and composed, a man with eternity in front of him and no reason to rush. “Where’s your colleague?”

  “He . . . wasn’t comfortable coming back here,” Roz said.

  Ethan arched an eyebrow at that, but let it go. “You can stay here,” he said, “while we look.” Disappointment shadowed their faces, but they stayed put.

  “Put them in the second parlor,” he told Kelley, “and keep an eye on them.”

  • • •

  We stood outside the tunnel for a full minute, the four of us waiting for any indication Padgett had become active again. But there was no buzz in the air beyond the usual faint hum of magic from the vampires on the floors above us.

  “Let’s go in,” Ethan said, unlocking and pushing open the door. “Mallory, stand guard in the
hallway, if you would, in case he appears and tries to make a run for it.”

  She nodded, locked her legs, and crossed her arms, a pixie with an attitude.

  We stepped inside. The room was just as we’d left it. Shattered glass, spilled wine, shelves of splintered wood.

  We each took a different direction, scanning the debris for the backpack. I half expected not to find anything, thinking they’d only wanted a second run at the ghost and the glory of capturing him. But then I spotted slate gray canvas among the rubble.

  “I’ve got it,” I said, and picked it up. It was heavy, probably loaded with electronics.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Ethan said.

  It felt like the air was growing colder, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that was fear or reality. We went outside again, locked the door, and stood in the hallway for a moment while we looked at the backpack.

  “Just in case they’re here again for some ulterior motives,” Ethan said, “let’s give this a look-see.”

  “I suppose I should say something about not violating their privacy.”

  Ethan just gave me a flat look.

  “All right, then,” I said. “It’s your House, so I nominate you.”

  Ethan took the bag from me, put it on the floor, and crouched beside it. He unzipped it, began to pull out each item. A black device. Another black device. A bright yellow device. A small, bright yellow case holding another black device.

  “This looks pretty typical,” Catcher said.

  Then Ethan extracted the black padfolio Robin had used when they’d first arrived at the House.

  “Receipts,” Ethan said, taking out the pile of papers stuffed into its inner pocket. “Starbucks, Giordano’s, Superdawg.”

  “At least they have good taste,” Mallory said.

  Ethan removed a folded piece of letter-sized paper. Looking at it, he stood up, and fury spilled through the hallway.

  “A receipt,” he said, holding it out to Catcher. “For the purchase of a darknet summoning spell.”

  There were four of us in the hallway, and we peppered the space with enough angry magic to make the lights flicker above us.