Shadows of Old Ghosts

by Stephanie Zayatz

  Aviira’s heart nearly leapt out of her body as they passed by a boarded-up door and from the other side of it, someone—or something—screamed and threw itself against the heavy wood. A strangled cry escaped her involuntarily and she stumbled over a tree root as she pitched away from the door. She would have fallen if she hadn’t practically jumped right into Jirel.

  They stood back a few feet from the door in the rain and listened to the thing on the other side of the door as it hurled itself against the wood, scratching and howling as if it knew that they were standing there.

  Aviira put a hand over her chest as she attempted to catch her breath. “The fuck is going on here?”

  He shook his head. “Not sure, but I think I know why nobody comes poking around here.”

  Despite the rain, they stood there listening to the creature on the other side of the boarded up door howl at them. Every hair on Aviira’s arms stood on end. Finally Jirel nudged her and she followed him back to the car.

  As they came up the last hill on the dirt path where the car was parked, the wind shifted and Aviira got a heavy whiff of a scent that nearly threw her back in time. As she came around the corner, a huge lily met her, leaning against a tree to support its own weight. The flowers on the ends were white and pink.

  She couldn’t help but stare and feel very unsettled. She couldn’t remember if the plant had been there when they passed by the first time.

  Lightning lit up the sky and thunder was quick to follow. She flinched and glanced skyward. Jirel was already at the car, his posture suggesting he hadn’t noticed she’d fallen behind until just then.

  “Vira!”

  She gave the flowers one more uncertain look before she jogged the rest of the way to the car and jumped into the passenger seat.

  Inside it was quieter, though not by much. The rain was pelting the top of the car and some of it had turned to hail.

  “What was back there?” Jirel asked.

  “Lilies,” she said, wiping her face. Her sinuses still burned with the scent. “Stargazers. Never seen them grow in the wild out here.”

  Jirel gave a little shake of his head, sending water dripping onto the console. “So?”

  “Loretta loves these fucking things. Had them on display in her house, remember?”

  “Yeah…”

  Aviira glanced back out the car window in the direction of the flowers. “Maybe it’s nothing…but I have a feeling Loretta has been here recently.”

  ***

  “You seem upset.”

  Aviira raised her eyes to Jirel. She was sitting at the bar in his kitchen, a cup of coffee in front of her. He was leaning against the counter, running a towel through his damp hair. Outside, the brunt of the storm had passed over, but it was still raining and thundering occasionally. She cleared her throat.

  “No, just trying to figure out what just happened.”

  “Mm.”

  She fidgeted with the scar in the corner of her mouth. “I mean—what the fuck did I see out there? A ghost?”

  He shook his head helplessly. Aviira looked into her coffee for a bit. “That girl was fae,” she said after a silence.

  “How do you know?”

  “She had the veins of one,” she murmured. She drew a pattern on the back of one of her hands and then around her eyes. “They have the magic veins. Like Moira’s. She had them.” She fell quiet again and shook her head slowly. “I have this crazy feeling that she might have been killed. Maybe her mother too.”

  “Why?”

  She looked up at him and shrugged. “Probably because she was an Ancient. Because she was different and looked it. Happens all the time today, you know it was fairly commonplace in those times. I’m willing to bet half the people who ended up in that place were there because they had magic bloodlines and people freaked out.”

  Jirel chewed on the edge of his lip. “Maybe that was why our witch picked it as a haven. If your theory is correct, that’s some serious hallowed ground. Lot of unspent magic in that kind of place.”

  Aviira stared at him. There were a hundred responses running through her head, but the only one that came to the top was, “Fuck.”

  He nodded. “That’s about the size of it.” With a sigh, he tossed the towel onto the counter. “We really need those identities Patrick Devaney was going to get us. One of them has to be linked into this or we’ve got nothing.”

  “Already been a week since we asked DPD to get those to us. Doubt they’ll be any use to us now.”

  Jirel stared at the floor and chewed on the edge of his lip, the posture Aviira had come to learn was his deep contemplation face. “What are the odds those files are still in his house, you think?”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Why, what are you thinking?”

  He raised his eyes to her. “Thinking I might have to use some of your creative excuses regarding breaking and entering.”

  A slow smile found its way to her face. “I think it’s worth a shot.”

  “Good, glad you approve. That’s order of business number one right now. Number two is figuring out if this Celeste Payne person is real, and where she’s hiding if she is.”

  “And who she is if she’s not,” Aviira said.

  He nodded.

  “I think we also need to look up Elaine Turner and find out when her funeral really was. Something tells me she wasn’t laid to rest on Sunday like Mrs. Dannels said she was.” Aviira glanced out the window at the rain with a grim expression. “I’d like to bring her some flowers to express my sympathy.”

  ***

  Aviira didn’t think she would get anywhere sweet-talking Jensen into helping her get information with Jirel in the room, so they decided she would go alone and try to get something useful out of Jensen—any way she could, she thought as she drove to his house. It was hardly professional, but she was sort of desperate.

  She didn’t mention Plan B to Jirel.

  Jensen was the go-to for the branch in terms of tech-savvy skills, and he had a knack for digging up dirt on people—and occasionally digging up people. He had once located a body inside an assembly plant exhaust port by tracking a signal off a pager. He knew what he was doing. If Celeste Payne was a real person, he’d find her. There was a good chance he’d find out who she really was, too. It was the only reason Aviira went to him instead of one of the other hackers the branch employed even though she was fairly sure he didn’t want anything to do with her.

  When he opened his apartment door to Aviira, he faltered and stared.

  “Hey,” she said quietly.

  He cleared his throat and lifted his chin a little, looking terribly imperious. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need a favor.”

  . “Oh really?”

  “Please,” she whispered. “It’s for a really important case.”

  He leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “You should go to one of your other friends if you need help. Fuck buddies don’t really do much in the favors category, you know what I mean?”

  She closed her eyes. “Jensen. I don’t—I don’t have any other friends.”

  “What about King Thranduil? Or is he just a fuck buddy too?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Stop,” she whispered sharply.

  “Not yet, anyway,” Jensen continued. His eyes narrowed and he gave her a scrutinizing look. “Or maybe you have.”

  “I haven’t, not like that’s any of your business.”

  He nodded. “Good, I never thought you were that easy.”

  She brought in a curt breath, fought off the rage that was beginning to simmer. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed Jensen. “If you’re just going to insult me I will find someone else to do this for me.”

  “Go, then.” Jensen looked at her with a stoic face. “You’re still standing here, which means you’re here for more than just my help.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you, Jensen. I already told you I was sorry for what I said. But you have to admit you were
kind of an asshole and jumped to conclusions that weren’t true.”

  He swallowed. “What do you need?”

  “I need someone found.”

  “Once wasn’t enough?”

  “Please,” she whispered. “We are in the middle of the most fucked up case ever and if I don’t figure it out I am going to lose my job. Three people have been murdered already in the last week, Jens. I’m desperate.”

  Jensen was still for a long moment and then moved out of the way of the door and ushered her inside. “In here,” he said, waving her into his second bedroom which he had set up as a home office. He gestured absently at another chair in the corner of the room. Aviira pulled it closer and sat down while he signed into a program on his computer. There was an awkward silence as it loaded.

  “Jensen, I didn’t mean to say that we weren’t friends the other day.”

  “But you did.”

  “But we weren’t anything else either. We weren’t in a relationship. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “I gave you your sister back.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Yeah, and? I don’t recall signing some contract that said I’d be your girlfriend once you found her for me. You offered to do that and I’m grateful, believe me. But I still don’t owe you a relationship or…or…”

  “Feelings?”

  They stared at each other. Aviira licked her lips. “I’m sorry that we were on different pages.”

  “We were in completely different books, apparently,” Jensen said softly.

  “I don’t do relationships and you know how bad I am at feelings. I don’t remember ever indicating otherwise, but I’m sorry if I did.”

  His eyebrows went up in a sarcastic motion. “Easy for you to say now.”

  She tried to continue over him. “But I don’t…I still want to be your friend, Jensen.”

  He didn’t say anything in response, only, “What’s the name of the person you need found?”

  “Celeste Payne.”

  He wrote it down on a Post-It and then started typing into the program. The silence dragged on for a long while.

  “Why not me?” he said finally.

  “What?”

  “What is it about me that makes you not want to be in a relationship with me?”

  She groaned. “Come on, Jens.”

  He stopped typing and looked at her with a deadpan expression. The threat was obvious. She tightened her jaw and stared at him.

  “I can’t,” she said finally. “I don’t know how.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “I hardly know what to do with myself most days. I was abandoned as a child and when I was sixteen—” Her throat closed up over the words and her hand throbbed. “Somebody fucked me up pretty bad, let’s just say that,” she said. “I don’t know how to deal with feelings. Okay? The only thing I’ve ever known from other people is how badly they screw you over. That kind of emotional baggage doesn’t really work when you’re trying to get close to someone.”

  His face got soft just for a moment. “That’s okay,” he said softly. Aviira didn’t like the way his tone changed so suddenly; it sounded false, so forced. “I want to be there for you while you figure that out, Aviira.”

  She shook her head. “Please, Jensen. Can we—can we talk about this some other time? I just…can’t do this right now.”

  He looked her up and down with those bright golden eyes for a long moment and then turned back to the computer. He shook his head. “Celeste Payne doesn’t exist,” he said. “At least not in the Society records.”

  “I’m sure it’s a false name. I need—Jens, I think her real name is Loretta Dannels. Or—” She sighed, realizing she didn’t have Loretta’s maiden name. “Start with that. Find her maiden name, see if she might be connected to anything related to the occult. Or supernatural. We’re really grasping at straws here and we’re desperate to pin something down. I know she’s involved with this but I have nothing to take her down with.”

  Jensen nodded wearily and wrote down Loretta Dannels on the Post-It. “I’ll see what I can find,” he said quietly. “I’ll send you anything I get.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Seriously. Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he said, leaning back in his chair and swiveling to follow her with his eyes as she started to go.

  “Hey.”

  She looked back.

  “Look me in the eyes and tell me you never had any feelings for me.”

  Aviira stared back at him, sensing a pained expression come over her own face without being able to control it. “Jensen.”

  “I just want to know.”

  She sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I want you to say that the last three years that we’ve been hooking up was just for the sex. I want you to say that you never had any feelings for me.”

  “It was,” she said quietly. “And I didn’t. I don’t.”

  She hated the answer as it came out of his mouth, hated the way it made her sound like a terrible person, even if it was the truth.

  He was silent for a moment. He swallowed, betraying the sense that he hadn’t expected her to actually prove him wrong. “So you were just using me.”

  She shrugged in honest bewilderment. “I always thought it was more of a friends with benefits kind of situation.”

  He gave her a tight smile that was not amused in the slightest. “Okay. Well. Good luck with whatever you’re doing. I’ll send you whatever I can find.”

  “Jensen.”

  “I got it. I probably should have known better than to trust you. You practically make a living lying to people, after all.”

  She bristled. “I never once lied to you.”

  “Whatever. Get out of my house.”

  She took a few steps back toward him. “I bet you thought you could fix me, didn’t you? Thought you’d be the one to get me to settle down and quit being such a loose cannon, huh?”

  He spun back at her. “You give the Society a bad name,” he snarled.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You think you’re so fucking good at what you do but you’re constantly in trouble, Aviira. It’s no wonder you got so close to being fired.”

  “I don’t need another man pretending to be so much better than me, least of all you. I thought I could trust you to be my friend.”

  “Maybe you could have given me the courtesy of treating me like I actually mattered to you, then. You get back what you give, you know.”

  Aviira stared. “I’m glad I never got in a relationship with you, if this is what you’re really like.”

  A scowl escaped him. “Likewise. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

  July 23rd – Thursday

  ***

  As if it were some cliché moment out of a movie, it was raining late the next afternoon when Aviira drove into the cemetery where Elaine Turner’s service was being held. She parked along the side of the road behind the line of cars and watched through the gently falling rain where the canopy had been set up. She was fashionably late to the service—a five o’clock party, unusually late for a funeral—but she had meant for that. After all, the person she had come to pay her respects to was still breathing.

  She waited until the crowd began to disperse and got out, pulling the bouquet of stargazer lilies out of the backseat. Her target was standing in the middle of a small group of women under the canopy. Perhaps it was the brightness of the flowers, or maybe just the fact that Aviira was walking the opposite direction as the rest of the foot traffic, but something drew Loretta’s eye to her. They held each other’s gazes for a moment before Loretta said something to the other teary-eyed women and like a school of black fish they dispersed.

  “You’re late,” Loretta said quietly as Aviira approached. She was wearing a form-fitting black dress suit with a three-quarter sleeved jacket over it. She had a compact folded umbrella held between her hands and a black satin clutch dangling from one wrist.


  “Not as late as you hoped I’d be, I imagine.”

  Loretta eyed her but said nothing. Aviira stared back and finally held out the flowers.

  “I brought these for you. To express my sympathy. I know they’re your favorite.”

  The other women gave her a wilted smile. “Very thoughtful of you.”

  When she didn’t reach out to take them, Aviira smiled at her and set them next to the other bouquets that had been laid across the casket still on display. She looked back at Loretta and sighed.

  “Why’d you lie, Loretta?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You told us you were at Elaine’s funeral on Sunday. You had to have known we’d find out. It’s printed in the newspaper.”

  Loretta did not respond.

  “We’re trying to make this easy, Loretta. You could be in a lot of trouble if you don’t help us.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Three bodies on your property, Loretta. That would be enough, but they were tampered with. Reanimated. Cursed the same way Lieutenant Devaney was.”

  The other woman looked at Aviira with a cold expression. Aviira nodded her head.

  “Yeah, you thought we didn’t know about that? He nearly took me out, Loretta. If he’d killed me, you’d already be facing charges.” She glanced back at the casket. “Four Creepers and two murders committed under very questionable circumstances, and both of them with connections to you.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?” Loretta said abruptly.

  Aviira tilted her head to the side. “Not at the moment,” she said. “But I would really suggest you start cooperating with us.”

  “How exactly would I do that when I’ve done nothing wrong in the first place?”

  “You could tell us what you know about Celeste Payne.”

  “I told you I’ve never heard of that person before.”

  Aviira gave her a grim smile and nodded a little. She glanced at the casket for a second. The rain was starting to drip down the back of her hair into the collar of her shirt. “She didn’t die in an accident,” she said quietly. “And it wasn’t a suicide, either.”