Shadows of Old Ghosts

by Stephanie Zayatz

  “Fair,” Jirel said. “So we go for them.”

  A long beat of silence fell. “I’d almost forgotten about Elaine,” she said softly. “Seems a little odd, don’t you think?”

  “I do. She was a human.”

  “So was Patrick Devaney.” Aviira tapped her fingertips together, and Jirel saw her eyebrows comes together slightly as she entertained the thought of those two things being connected. “I still want to know what killed the girl. Something doesn’t seem right.”

  Jirel finished his beer. “Should have brought Moira with us.”

  Aviira thought for a long moment. “She wanted me to see something,” she said softly. “She looked over to the left like there was something there she wanted me to see.”

  “Well. I’m sure if there’s anything there the forensics team will pick it up and we’ll find out when they transfer it to us.”

  “Mm.”

  The wind picked up outside and turned the rain to pelt against the kitchen window, and they fell silent for a minute. Finally Aviira took in a deep breath and ran both hands over her face. Jirel focused on the backs of her hands for a second, specifically the long, thin scars that trailed around the webbing between her thumb and forefinger on her right hand. They looked like they had come from deep cuts. He didn’t look away quickly enough, and Aviira caught him looking when she pulled her hands away. He gave her an awkward smile.

  She got up from the stool and crossed around the island to throw away her beer.

  “Broken bottle,” she said as she turned back to him, pulling a stray strand of hair out of her face. Her face got distant for a second. “But you should have seen the other guy.”

  He just looked at her. She stared back.

  “You trying to figure me out or something?” she said after a minute.

  A small smirk crossed his face. “Since the moment I met you.”

  “Any guesses yet?”

  He folded his hands together in front of his face. “A few.”

  “Hit me.”

  Jirel brought in a deep breath. “Something happened to you when you were younger, something that you carry around every day. You got upset when Aiden mentioned trying to put Loretta in an institution. Again when I brought it up a few minutes ago.”

  Her face was still. “And that leads you to believe what?”

  “You’re close to someone who was put in a place like that for the wrong reasons.” He paused. “Your sister, maybe.”

  Aviira swallowed, and made a face like she was mildly impressed. In fact, she was surprised that someone had managed to put all the pieces of her complicated life together after knowing her for barely a week—she’d known Jensen for years and they’d never even come close to this conversation.

  “Close,” she said. “But not my sister.”

  Jirel added the pieces together. The scars, the retraction from her Society record. The way she’d nearly punched him the night before in a dead sleep.

  “You.”

  She blinked and then after a few seconds, nodded faintly. “Me.”

  After letting the revelation sink in for a few moments, he said, “It nearly kept you from joining the Society.”

  Aviira wasn’t sure if he meant it as a statement or a guess. “What makes you say that?”

  “Xander told me about a retraction on your record, but he wasn’t sure what it was.”

  “Ah.” She glanced off to one side, watched the rain. “Yeah, I fought hard to get that off my record.”

  Jirel was quiet. Aviira fiddled with the scar at the corner of her lips and let the silence drag on for a long while. She knew the explanation was hanging in the air unsaid, words that she’d never said to anyone. The secrets that she’d fought to keep in the back of the closet had been fighting her a lot lately.

  Finally, she brought in a quick breath.

  “I told you about floating around the foster system as a kid.”

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated, fought off a swell of nausea. “When I was sixteen the foster father I was with at the time tried to rape me.” A small shrug rippled across her shoulders and she looked at the floor. “Did. Did rape me. Cornered me in the garage and I fought back with the first thing I could find which was a wine bottle at the top of a recycling bin. Carved his face like a Thanksgiving turkey.” She held her hand up. “Cut myself so deep and fucked up a nerve so badly I couldn’t make a fist for almost a year.” She did the motion then, like she had to remind herself that she could. Something bubbled up in her chest and she had to take in a deep breath, like coming up for air after spending too long under water. She wasn’t entirely certain it might not have been an impulse to vomit.

  “Anyway. The whole thing played out like a movie, I mean you couldn’t make this shit up. The first cop on the scene is his brother in law, and of course he comes on the offensive like I attacked him, yada yada. The fact that he’d been in the middle of raping me was completely ignored. Guy was a lawyer. So when he got out of the hospital he pressed charges and convinced the judge that I’d snapped after so many years of being passed around the foster system, I was pissed that my sister had been adopted and I hadn’t, I’d never learned to cope with being abandoned by my parents, shit like that. So since I was a ward of the state I was sent to what was basically a juvenile detention center for criminally insane girls. Soon as I wasn’t a minor anymore I was able to get the board to certify that I wasn’t nuts and they had to let me go.”

  Jirel was staring at her with his hands folded flat in front of his face. He looked like he wasn’t breathing.

  Aviira shrugged. “Long story short, when I was told I couldn’t join the Society because I’d been in a facility for the mentally unstable I got a lawyer and fought the whole thing. Got the state on the fact that they never did a psychological evaluation on me before they put me away which pretty much negated the whole charge. Couldn’t get the fucker on the rape because there’d been no record of it in the first place, but I figure karma will take care of him someday. At least I got into the Society in the end. That was the only thing I’d ever wanted and there was nothing in this world that was going to keep me from getting into it.”

  The room lit up with a bright flash and was followed almost immediately by a massive clap of thunder that echoed off the river and was amplified by the valley around them. They both jumped. When the rumbling finally quieted, Jirel sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Jesus, I am so sorry, Aviira.”

  She stared out the window and let the sound of her name wash over her. She didn’t even try to stave off the shiver it caused as the beautiful sound of it slipped off his lips. And then, for the first time, she allowed herself to think about how other things might make her feel once they’d come off his lips. She reached for another pair of beers and slid one across the island to him.

  “So, anyway. That’s the rest of me.”

  “I wondered. Last night. When you almost punched me.” His jaw tightened for a second. “You weren’t dreaming about your sister.”

  “No, last night’s dream was different.” She glanced away. “More of a flashback than anything.”

  Jirel’s lips disappeared into a thin line and he nodded, considered his beer for a second. “What a couple of lunatics we are, huh?”

  Aviira gave him a crooked smile, sending that scar in the corner of her mouth off-kilter. Jirel felt something in his chest tighten up that he hadn’t felt since he’d first met Caesli, and definitely not since she’d left. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be attracted to his new partner, knew in his gut that it was a bad idea, but apparently there was some other part of him that had different ideas.

  July 20th – Monday

  ***

  Thunder woke Aviira sometime before dawn. She sat up in the darkness and took a moment to realize that she wasn’t on the couch in the cabin’s living room; Jirel had insisted on trading her for the bed. She reached out to check the time on her phone and was relieved that she’d made it th
rough most of the night without a nightmare.

  She got up for a second and glanced into the other room to see if Jirel had gotten some sleep too, but the living room was empty. She scanned the darkness for a moment and then crossed the room to check the kitchen and the back porch.

  “Jirel?”

  Her voice sounded muffled to her own ears. She pulled open the back slider and looked outside, but there was no sign of him. The storm was moving out and everything was dripping. Dawn was beginning to soften the sky in the east. Aviira turned back inside and slipped on her sneakers and went out the front door.

  She felt like someone had placed a pillow over her ears. There was no sound when there should have been something—dripping leaves and early morning birdsong and the river at the very least. She turned in a few quick circles and saw a light on at the top of the road. Something didn’t quite make sense and some voice at the back of her head knew that, but it wasn’t strong enough to wake her.

  When she turned around, she was in front of the cabin where Aiden Dannels’ girlfriend had been murdered. The dawn was brighter now, lightening the sky in streaks of gold and pink as the storm fled. In the light she could see the door to the cabin was open. She stepped up onto the porch and pulled the screen door open, went inside.

  It was sickeningly warm inside and when she pulled in a breath, she caught the vaguest trace of something sweet in the air, flowery almost. It mingled with the metallic tang of blood that turned the air sour the more she breathed it in.

  She heard the soft rustle as of a body under a blanket as something moved from the back of the cabin. That voice in the back of her head was emerging from its reverie now, but something pulled her across the room and compelled her to open the door even though every instinct in her body was screaming at her to run the other way.

  The morning light was just bright enough to send a gray beam of light across the bed where Hazel had died. The window near the bed was open. The sheets were covered in blood that was slick and wet.

  She knew it made no sense, but she wasn’t sure why.

  She took a step closer to the end of the bed and the floor squeaked. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and every nerve in her body seemed to be on fire. Something moved under the sheet, and in horribly slow motion, Hazel sat up from the bed.

  Aviira stumbled backward, a horrified yell bursting from her throat. She collided with something solid in the doorway and she jumped to one side, turning back to look at the blackest, thickest shadow of a man she’d ever seen. It could have been a man standing there in a black cloak and cowl for how real it seemed to be. Her whole body went cold and she backed away from it, hand going instinctively to the place on her hip where she usually carried her gun, but it was not there. Her foot caught against the edge of the bed frame and she tripped backwards, falling onto the floor.

  She’d almost forgotten about the corpse on the bed, until it reached over the edge of the bed and grasped her by the shoulder. Aviira flinched away from it, jumped to her feet and climbed onto the table under the window. Without looking back she pulled herself into the frame and took a blind leap out the other side.

  The ground she hit on the other side was wet and marshy and she lost her balance, rolled a short way down a steep embankment and came to a stop in cold running water. Heaving for breath and with her heart thundering in her ears, she looked back up to where she’d come from and saw the shadow standing at the top of the ridge, staring down at her. She scrambled for her footing and darted across the stream, climbed up the rocks on the other side and took off running through the trees.

  She wasn’t sure how long she ran. When she finally could hardly breathe for running so hard she paused and looked back over her shoulder. Everything was still and so quiet she could not hear anything except for her heartbeat in her ears.

  She glanced down and felt something touching her foot. With a horrible start, she stumbled a few steps back, away from the dead bird that was lying on the ground. It was a raven, a big one, and it had been sliced open from belly to beak. Its head was twisted all the way around and the talons were pointing at horribly disfigured angles. As Aviira scanned the scene near it, she realized that the ground was littered with the dead birds, all in similar positions of distressing death. Bloody feathers lay all over the grass and tufts of black down floated in the air like morbid, heavy snowflakes.

  Her heart missed a couple of beats as she took it in.

  It was so quiet that when the voice screamed out her name from somewhere nearby, it scared her so badly she nearly lost her balance. She whipped toward the sound. The voice had been familiar—more than the voice, the accent. And it sounded desperate.

  “Jirel!”

  Her voice echoed. The sound had come from somewhere in the direction that she’d been running to begin with. With another terrified look behind her back, she took off at a jog through the trees to find him.

  The trees cleared and fell away to another river embankment, which she only realized when she slipped on something wet and went down in a pile of old, damp leaves and moss. She pulled her hands free of the sticky dirt and they were both slick with blood, and it wasn’t hers. A terrible sensation rippled through her as she stared at the blood. She lowered her hands and turned her eyes down the embankment.

  She knew who the body belonged to before she even got to it.

  There was more blood in the shallow pool at the bottom of the hill than water. Jirel had come to rest there face-down, his clothing tattered and ripped. Blood was pouring from his body.

  “Jirel!”

  She knelt beside him and tried to take hold of his arm to turn him over. As she did, his other hand shot out from under him and gripped her by the neck and when his eyes turned to her, they were as clear and white as ice.

  Aviira awoke with a terrified yelp. She sat up in the bed and covered her mouth with both hands, trying to bring in a solid breath but only succeeding at short, jittery gasps. A cold sweat covered her whole body. The only thing she could think about was Jirel. She pulled herself out of bed and stumbled into the other room.

  Jirel was coming in through the slider door off the back porch, and she could tell he had heard her scream. He took one long look at her and his eyes got big.

  “Are you okay?”

  Aviira sighed with naked relief and leaned against the side of the couch, covered her face with both trembling hands. Jirel went to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Aviira?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. Just for good measure, she said it again a few more times, hoping it would feel more true the more she said it. It didn’t. The sensation of terror from the dream more than the images it had conjured was hanging over her as if it had really happened. She pulled her hands off her face and looked up at Jirel, had to make sure that his eyes were the normal gunmetal blue that they were supposed to be. He took her in, frowned a little, and then put his arms around her.

  She was a little surprised—a lot surprised—at how much of a relief it was to have his arms around her. Nobody had ever put their arms around her in comfort before. Carefully, she relaxed, concentrated on the sensation of his heartbeat in his throat against her ear. She found her breath and took a few minutes to breathe, found the scent at his neck to be at once familiar and exciting.

  Jirel wasn’t sure what had compelled him to hug her like that, only knew that she was in a moment of panic that she was probably frightened by more than anything else, and so out of instinct had just reached out to hold her. Her frame trembled against his for just a few moments and then she finally seemed to bring in an actual breath. He tried not to think about the smell of her hair, which was sweeter—honey-like—than he would have guessed from her. Nothing about Aviira gave him the impression she was of a sweet persuasion.

  After a few minutes of composing herself, Aviira took in a deep breath and leaned away from him gently. He stood back and put his hands in his back pockets, looked her over to make sure she was all rig
ht.

  “You okay?” he asked softly.

  She nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah, that was…that was terrible.” Her eyes went up to meet his. “Did you—”

  He shook his head, then shrugged. “I never really went to sleep.”

  “Smart move,” she whispered.

  He made an uncertain sound like he wasn’t so sure. “I kept thinking there was someone outside,” he said quietly, glancing out the back door. “I know it was bullshit but I just couldn’t shake it. Like when we were down in that shed with the bodies. That kind of feeling.”

  Aviira frowned, feeling uneasy. “You feeling like we should get the fuck out of here?”

  Jirel nodded. “Yeah. I’ve about had it with whatever is going on here.”

  They spent the next half-hour gathering their things and packing to go. Aviira was doing a last sweep of the place when Jirel went out to take the bags to the car. Just after the screen door slammed behind him, she heard a strangled sound come out of him, an alarmed exclamation that didn’t sound like it was English.

  She rushed to the screen door, pushing it open and stepping out next to him.

  “What?”

  Jirel’s eyes were fixed on the front step. She followed his line of vision and felt her stomach jump up into her chest. Her fingers curled around the edge of the screen door; her grip was the only thing that kept her steady.

  “Christ.”

  A dead raven lay on its back in the middle of the top step. It was plucked raw and sliced open from beak to belly, exposing the innards, which were already fodder for a colony of hungry ants. Blood had been dribbled haphazardly over the steps, like the bird had been bled upside down before being placed in its final resting spot. Feathers and down stuck to the blood, which was still gleaming with wetness. The talons were twisted in horribly disfigured directions.