“You spelled out words,” I tell her. “What did it mean?”
Her eyebrows lift in a question. She puts her hand to her throat and makes a humming sound. “Vorpal sword. Snicker-snack.” Her hands go to the tiles and she turns them over, looking at them one at a time, then slams both hands on the table in frustration.
“What’s wrong with her?” the girl asks, staring.
“She had a stroke. She has trouble finding the right words.”
“My grandma had a stroke. She talks funny now, and she can’t walk.”
“Well, Val walks fine, and she can understand everything you’re saying. She just talks around the edges of things.”
“But she was—”
“Right. What’s your name, kid?”
“Call me G.”
“Is that your name?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not so much. Okay, G. I need you to do something for me.”
“What?” She’s a natural-born skeptic. I can see she’s been tricked into agreeing with things before.
“I want you to go back to the—”
“No.”
“What?”
“I’m assigned to Val. I’m staying with her.”
“You’re assigned?”
“Mrs. Schrader. She’ll skin me alive if I leave.”
“Were the boys assigned, too?”
She makes a dismissive noise. “They’re scareder of ghosts than of Mrs. S. Boys are stupid.”
Val gets to her feet and tugs at my hand.
“You want me to go somewhere? Yes? Okay. I’m coming.”
“Stay here,” I instruct the girl, again. “Jill, stay with her.”
“No way,” G says, sweeping the Scrabble tiles back into the bag. “I’m bringing these with us, just in case.”
“I am not staying here alone,” Jill says. “What if that thing comes back?” She shudders.
Short of tying both of them up, there’s nothing I can do to make them stay here. “Fine, then, let’s go.”
G takes possession of Val’s other hand. Jill trails along behind us, so close I can feel her breathing down my neck.
Val leads us down the hallway and up a flight of stairs to the third floor. It’s pitch dark, and my flashlight only serves to make the shadows darker and more menacing. We stop outside my suite.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
Val pounds on the door with the flats of both hands, making strangled animal noises low in her throat.
“All right, all right. Hang on.” I start unlocking deadbolts.
“You sure have a lot of keys,” the kid says, as I fumble with the flashlight, my key ring, and the salt sprayer.
“Here. Hold this. Just hold it. Don’t turn the handle or anything.” I hand her the sprayer.
“What’s the salt for?”
“Ghosts don’t like it. What’s your name, really?” I ask her, as I finally get the door open. I figure if I lose her, I should at least know how to notify her parents.
She wrinkles her nose. “Guinevere. Don’t call me that.”
“Oh dear.”
“Right? What were they even thinking?”
“Mine named me after a movie star. Parents do these things.”
The instant the door is open, Val picks up her pace, towing me along the path between my boxes toward the hidden staircase. I plant my feet and brace to resist her. Jill is with us. And G, although cool for a kid, can’t be expected to hold her tongue. If I let this happen, then there is a huge risk that word will get out about the secret passage and the lab.
“What is it?” I ask her, feigning confusion. “Something in my apartment? I know it’s a mess.”
She swings around and slaps me with her free hand, right across the cheek, like I’m a bratty kid. It’s not anger I read in her eyes, though, it’s fear. Letting go of my arm she picks her away across the room and opens the closet door.
Tendrils of mist stream out into the room, snaking through the beam of the flashlight.
And it hits me. Sophie. She’s alone down there. The security breach will have to be dealt with later.
Darting past Val, I open the door at the back of the closet, letting the others follow or not as I move as fast as I dare down the steep stairs. The walls, the steps, are slick with condensation. A cold wind whistles.
“Cool,” G says again, a note of awe in her voice. “This is the best night ever.”
Hoping she lives long enough to rethink that, I proceed, one slow step at a time. If I fall, I’ll be no good to Sophronia or anybody.
At the bottom of the stairs I stop to take a breath and poke into the shadows with my flashlight. “You still have that salt sprayer, G?”
“Got it. It’s freezing down here,” G says, her voice uncertain for the first time. “Look, I can see my breath.” She shines her flashlight in front of her face and illuminates a cloud of steam.
“Spirits lower the temperature. I have no idea why.”
This is true as far as it goes. I’ve never seen them lower the temperature like this. The walls sparkle where I shine my light. Frost is forming. My skin is all over goose bumps and not just from the cold.
The kid is quiet and I turn around to check on her. Her eyes are wide, but she’s not about to have hysterics. Jill, on the other hand, looks like she’s developed a case of the plague. Her face is deadly pale. She’s shaking so hard her teeth rattle. Val glides past me, not stopping to wait for me to light her way, straight toward the lab.
When I turn the flashlight beam on her, she looks like she’s walking through a tunnel of swirling blue light.
“Here, make yourself useful.” I toss the camera to Jill, who fumbles and nearly drops it. “Seriously. Pull yourself together, or go back upstairs. Take the child with you.”
“I’m going with Val,” G says, scampering ahead of me down the hallway, the salt sprayer firmly in hand.
God have mercy. I follow as fast as I’m able, wishing with all my heart that we were dealing with something stake-able. Like vampires.
The lab is lit up with a cold blue light so bright there’s no need for a flashlight.
At the center of the room stands Sophie, clutching the potato salad container and Phil’s ashes. Her eyes shine green. The air swirls around her in a visible tornado, the wind of which whips out into the room and intensifies my cold to the point where I can barely remember warmth. Her face looks like Joan of Arc at the stake—a blaze of passionate determination overriding fear.
I stop dead in the doorway, repelled by the cold and the wind and the palpable touch of swirling ectoplasm on my skin. No need for ghost hunting goggles here. I can make out body shapes and the vague outlines of faces with my unaided vision.
“Maureen!” Sophie cries. “I don’t know how long I can hold them.”
Phantom hands touch my skin. Individual outlines shimmer in and out of focus. Some are children and babies, the most dangerous kind of ghosts. For years they’ve drifted, without any anchor to time or space, forgetting what little they ever knew of warmth and love and human morality.
Now Phil’s presence has wakened them with a vengeance.
Or possibly to a vengeance. Tiny fingers pinch my cheeks, poke at my eyes. G collapses onto the floor, burying her face in her knees and shouting, “Get your grubby hands off me, or I’ll salt you!”
“Wait, G. Hold on.”
Maybe Sophie is right about Phil. Maybe he needs to be obliterated. Even given what I see going on here, I can’t bring myself to do it. This is Phil we’re talking about. My partner. I can’t believe he’d hurt me or anybody else. Maybe he’s advocating for these baby ghosts, mistreated and so long dead in this place.
“Val is a medium,” I say, to Sophie, to the ghosts, to anyone or anything listening.
I shove my way through the cold and clammy ghosts, twitching off their clutching hands, and dump the Scrabble tiles on the table. Val pulls out a chair and sits. Instantly, crackling electricity traces her entire fo
rm with blue flames. Her body shudders and goes rigid, her back arches, her eyes roll back in her head so only the whites are visible.
Small tornadoes of light break off from the big one and spin around the room, knocking over chairs. A wordless wailing echoes off the walls, a sound to send chills clear to the marrow of my bones.
I’ve seen a spirit storm once before, though not so big as this. It’s like a forest fire—by this time they’ve created their own weather system. It can go on gathering power until they are capable of bringing down the entire building and inflicting physical harm on the inhabitants, if that’s what they’re after. I have to shout to make myself heard above the racket.
“We’re listening!” I shout at them. “Val is here to help you!”
The wind dies down to a few small flurries. Val’s muscles loosen and she sags in the chair, head bowed on her chest, unconscious. Scrabble tiles skitter away across the table and back again.
I hold my own breath, watching to see if her chest starts moving. Could they have killed her? It would take a strong heart to withstand that sort of an onslaught, and she’s over eighty. A long moment, far too long, and then she draws a deep breath. Her back straightens. Her hands come up to lie open on the table, palms turned up.
Everything in the room goes still with waiting. And then Val’s hands begin to move, selecting one tile after another and putting them in a row, turning them over without looking at them and spelling one word.
GENESIS
God, I hate ghosts. Just once, I wish they’d stop talking in riddles. “Could you be a little more specific?” I say. “What in blazes is that supposed to mean?”
But Val’s hands lie still.
The room sounds like it’s breathing. All the blue light fades and we are left in the dark, illuminated only by the beam of my flashlight.
Jill kneels down at Val’s side. In the small circle of light she looks ghastly, her face smeared with mascara and tears.
“Dad,” she says. “Please. Talk to me.”
The tiles swirl and rattle around on the table. Ghostly fingers run up and down my spine.
Val’s hands begin to move again, sorting through tiles and turning them over, one at a time.
FIX IT
More riddles. Is that a message for Jill or for me? If it weren’t for Phil, I’d be tempted to start spraying the lot of them indiscriminately with salt out of sheer frustration.
“Come on, Phil,” I say. “You can do better than that. Try. Use your words.”
One more message forms.
FREE ME
Sophie still stands inside the salt circle, holding on to Phil’s ashes.
She shakes her head. “No, Maureen. They’re already out of control. Let this out of the circle and I don’t know what will happen.”
Before I have the sense to intervene, Jill is up and across the room. She grabs the container. Her feet are on one side of the circle, Sophie’s on the other.
“Give him to me.”
“Never.” Sophie’s voice echoes with supernatural power. Jill doesn’t take the hint. She leans all her body weight backward, uses all of her strength.
Déjà vu, I have time to think. Maybe this is the disaster I’m supposed to prevent. I try to run in their direction, but I’m too slow. My leg seizes up and almost drops me.
Jill is heavier than Sophie and isn’t limited by the need to stay within the circle. Her feet, searching purchase, smear through the line of salt. A cry escapes Sophie’s lips.
My flashlight sizzles and goes out, plunging the room into total darkness, with one exception. Any lingering doubts as to whether Sophie is fully human are extinguished in that moment. Human eyes can’t glow. Not like that. Not with no light to reflect. In the dark there is the sound of feet scuffling on concrete, harsh breathing.
A cold wind blows me backward.
Jill screams.
There is a wet thud, as of something heavy hitting concrete.
And then there is silence.
Chapter Fourteen
I become aware of warmth, first. My fingers tingle with returning blood flow. The lights come on.
Val still sits at the table. She blinks and runs a hand across her face. G kneels on the floor beside her, smudgy but unharmed. Jill lies unconscious on her back on the concrete, blood pooling around her head, making mud out of her father’s ashes strewn on the floor all around her.
I drop to my knees beside her and touch her cheek. “Jill, are you okay?”
She’s not, obviously, but this is the universal question they teach you in first aid and CPR courses. I shake her shoulder, which has the effect of making blood gush a little faster out of her head. I look around for Sophie, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
G comes over and kneels on the other side of Jill’s inert form.
“Is she dead?”
She’s breathing, but just barely. I can’t see her chest rise and fall, but if I lean down close to her face, I can feel a faint, rhythmic warmth on my cheek. Her heart is beating.
I slide my hand under her head and apply pressure to the bleeding wound.
“Sophie? Sophronia, I need you!”
She is nowhere to be seen and my voice echoes off the walls and concrete. My walkie-talkie is fried and won’t turn on. I can’t call for help.
Val comes over and stands looking down, as calm as if the events of the evening are an everyday occurrence.
“Did either of you see where Sophie went?”
I don’t like the look on Val’s face in response to this question. I don’t like what’s going through my own head.
“G, I need you to help me. Run upstairs and find either Sheriff Callahan or Matt, the cook. Tell them to call an ambulance and then get down here. Don’t tell anybody else. Understood?”
The kid nods, her face settling into the serious responsibility of her task. “Yes, ma’am.” No wasted words or explanations. She’s off, pelting down the hallway. I listen to her echoing footsteps and cross mental fingers that she won’t run into trouble on the way.
It seems a lifetime before Jake shows up, but it’s probably only about five minutes. In all that time, Jill doesn’t move. If it weren’t for the beating of her heart and her barely perceptible breath, I’d believe her dead.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, in case Phil is listening. Jill is his daughter, after all. It wouldn’t have hurt me to look out for her.
Jake skids into the room, his keen eyes taking in the overturned chairs, the Scrabble tiles, Val, and then resting directly on the problem of Jill.
“Can she be moved?”
“I think so. It was dark. She fell backward, I’m guessing. But if her neck is broken…”
“Does it look broken?”
“No bumps or lumps or obvious bruising.”
“We’re going to risk it.” He bends down, gets his arms under her, and scoops her up. “Let’s go.”
Jake’s in great shape, but he’s no spring chicken. By the time we’re halfway down the hall, his breath is already coming short and hard. I have no idea how we’re going to get Jill up the stairs. But then footsteps thud overhead, and Matt is descending the steps two at a time.
He takes half of Jill’s weight, and between the two of them they get her safely up into my suite and lay her down on the couch. I grab my first aid kit and press a compress to the back of her head, trying to stop the bleeding. Jake elevates her feet. Matt throws a blanket over her. The dog comes over and starts licking her face, but despite all of our efforts, she’s still unconscious when the ambulance crew shows up.
“You moved her?” one of them asks, leveling a disapproving stare at Jake. “You know better.”
“It was me,” Matt says, even though he had nothing to do with it. “Jake was against it. I found her on the floor in the bathroom, must have hit her head on the counter when she fell. It just seemed—indecent—to leave her lying there.”
“Never move the victim,” the woman EMT says, but her voice softens a little
at the sight of Matt’s impressively woeful expression. “Rule one.”
“God, I hope I didn’t hurt her.”
His acting skills are impressive. The EMT smiles at him. “Hopefully no harm done.” She manages to tear herself away from Matt and joins her partner in getting Jill assessed and stabilized. They check out her vital signs and her pupils, bandage her head, then get her into a cervical collar and backboard and from there onto the stretcher. Anubis, who has been hiding under the bed this whole time, emerges to get under the EMTs’ feet and damn near trip them up.
G, who showed up just in time to hear Matt’s lies, gives him a long, considering look, before turning her attention to Jake and me.
“I won’t tell,” she says, before she’s ever asked. “You can trust me on that.”
I see the conflict on Jake’s face. This is a terrible and twisted thing to do to a child. I’ve seen enough of G in action to be a little less conflicted.
“In exchange for what?” I ask her.
“Maureen!” Jake says. “She’s a child.”
“I am not a child,” G snaps back. “In answer to Maureen’s question, I won’t tell if you let me help you.”
“With what, exactly?” I ask her, since by the way Jake’s jaw is working he’s not going to arrive at comprehensible speech for a minute or two.
She waves her hands expressively. “Oh, you know. Whatever you’re doing in the lab down there. Whatever is going on here in the Manor that you’re trying to hide.”
“That’s out of the question.” Jake has recovered his voice.
If Matt is a good actor, G is a brilliant one.
Her shoulders curve and her neck sinks between them, making her look small, vulnerable, and years younger. Tears well up and flood her cheeks; her lips tremble. In between sobs, in a broken voice, she says, “This night has been horrible. There’s a secret tunnel into the basement and an evil scientist lab down there. That’s where Jill really fell, but they lied about it—the sheriff and the owner and the cook. They probably tried to kill her themselves, and they told me not to tell anybody, but I’m so scared.”
“Are you done?” I ask her.
World Tree Girl Page 12
