Dead End (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 8)

by Catie Rhodes

  Everything was different for me. My inner self was stretched to bursting with the presence of the hag. I had made a deal that felt not quite right and might end up getting me killed. This little space should somehow mirror the difference.

  Cecil and Dillon sat at the table sharing a pack of mini doughnuts. The coffee maker bubbled and hissed on the kitchen counter, and the rich, almost chocolaty, smell of brewing coffee filled the small space.

  Mysti and Hannah sat on the other side of the room. Hannah held a crystal in one hand. Mysti spoke seriously, probably lecturing about the benefits of the crystal.

  Cecil broke off whatever he was saying to Dillon. “You made a deal.” There was no question in his soft voice.

  “Only for the next twenty-four hours. It has to find another host within that time period.” I stopped to consider. “And it won’t be anybody here.”

  The thing hissed in my head. I was getting tired of the hissing, ready to plug its nostrils and mouth with clay or shit. I rinsed out my coffee mug in the sink, trying to pretend there wasn’t another presence in my mind, an oily, ancient presence sitting heavily on a part of my brain that didn’t like being poked.

  Hannah wandered into the kitchenette and stared first at the coffeemaker and then at Cecil and Dillon. “Who are these people?”

  Cecil and Dillon stared steadily back, eyes blank and unwelcoming. They’d come to help me out of loyalty, not because they genuinely cared what happened to Hannah. She was what they called a townie. Townies were not to be trusted or even liked. If Hannah alienated them, they might turn their backs on the whole situation. It was up to me to find some connection between my family and my lifelong friend.

  “This is my great-uncle Cecil. Memaw was his sister.” I waited for Hannah to gasp and smile, maybe say something nice about Memaw, but she only gave a tired nod. I gestured at Dillon. “Dillon here is my cousin by marriage. She and her husband have two babies.”

  The Hannah I remembered exclaimed over children and asked to see pictures. This one only nodded again and let her gaze slip off my cousin. She got coffee from the coffeemaker, ignored the creamer I offered, and sipped it black. She took her coffee, sat at the table, and put her forehead on one hand.

  “Can I have one of your cigarettes?” she muttered at the table. Wordlessly, I handed her the whole pack. The woman who made a face every time every time I smoked lipped a cigarette out of the pack and lit up with a fluid motion. She blew smoke at the table and closed her eyes. In her other hand, she squeezed the crystal Mysti had given her.

  I had let a supernatural monster possess me for Hannah, and she couldn’t even thank me for a cigarette? Guilt followed right on the heels of the thought, sat down, and made itself at home. I was an asshole. Hannah had been through hell these last few months. It was going to take time to get better. A true friend would find a way to understand.

  I reached for the cigarettes, intending to light one, maybe to bond that way. But Hannah flinched away and shoved the pack toward me with the back of her hand. She cut her eyes at me. The pain etched in the tender skin at their edges clawed my conscience open and spit poison in it. I’d thought all it would take to get the old Hannah back was a few magic words and a little personal sacrifice. I’d underestimated the way life can beat people down.

  The dark thoughts I’d had in front of the bathroom mirror came flooding back, this time armed with a new torture device. Hannah didn’t want to be around me because I probably brought back every second of the horror she’d suffered at Michael Gage’s hands. It would have never happened if she hadn’t been my friend. She had to realize that life near me would always be chaotic and dangerous. Hannah was right to turn her back on me.

  I’d never be able to hold on to anybody I cared about. They’d get hurt or killed. Just like Memaw, Chase, Eddie, and Wade. Rae, if I wanted to see it that way. My own mother had hated my guts. If I took myself out of the equation, it would stop the cycle.

  That’s when I realized the voice in my head wasn’t even mine. It was that malignant asshole riding my back. I called on the mantle and let it squeeze the little jerk, even though it made me ache with fatigue.

  The hag’s oily voice came to life inside my head. “You know I’m right.”

  I let the mantle squeeze until my black opal pendant heated, and the little monster squealed in pain. Deep down, I knew the parasite was right. Because of me, Hannah might be lost forever. Even if she wasn’t, the old Hannah was buried so deep in the woman in front of me, she was going to have to want to come back. Nothing I could say or do would force her out. The back of my neck tightened and began to ache.

  Mysti motioned me away from the table. I followed her to the other side of the loft and stared through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the street below. Things looked so normal down there, a whole world where women didn’t make deals with monsters, where people had normal lives. Lives with PTA meetings, insurance payments, and yoga pants. Shit I’d never have.

  The tightness in my neck spread to the muscles between my shoulder blades. The parasite inside me shifted and stretched, like a snake uncoiling to soak up the sun. Its pleasure at my discomfort burned in the middle of my chest.

  Mysti tugged at my sleeve. I dragged my gaze off the window and regarded my friend. She had on her teacher face. Mouth set in a straight, severe line. Eyes sympathetic and calm. Deep breaths through her nose. She smoothed down her hair, which was a rat’s nest and wouldn’t look good until she shampooed and got a blow dryer after it, and folded her hands in front of her. “If you want to help Hannah, let her do something that feels normal.”

  I shook my head and shrugged. What was normal for Hannah at this point? I took a look at my old friend. She sat hunched over the table smoking. Dillon held out a powdered sugar doughnut. Hannah stared hard at it, then took it carefully as though it might actually be a turd dipped in powdered sugar. Oh, Hannah. How did it get to this? Hannah, her former table manners gone, shoved the donut into her mouth whole and rubbed the powdered sugar onto her filthy jeans. An idea hit me. I gave Mysti a thank you nod and walked halfway to Hannah.

  “How about some clean clothes? Tubby’ll go get you some.” From somewhere nearby came Tubby’s snort. He’d protest, might even pull a fit, but I could make him do it.

  Hannah twisted in her seat and gave me her blank stare. “I want to go to my apartment and take a shower.” Request delivered, she sat up a little straighter, and some of the clouds lifted off her face.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. King might have sent someone to watch the museum or even to wait in Hannah’s apartment. He wanted revenge and would do whatever it took to get it.

  “She probably knows someone’ll be waiting. This woman is no longer your friend. Kill her,” the parasite whispered in my head. Its voice raised thoughts of scaly things and dark places. The words planted a kernel of paranoia in my subconscious. Images of King stepping out of one of the museum’s dark corridors flitted around my brain.

  Tubby came into the room and gave me an authoritative head shake. I knew the signal for “bad idea, forget it.”

  Hannah watched this exchange, and her shoulders dropped. “Never mind,” she muttered.

  “Why never mind?” I came a little closer. Nothing beats a shower in one’s own bathroom. This might help Hannah realize she was out of danger for now, that she’d turned a corner.

  “Because you don’t trust me.” She drew on her cigarette, burning it down to the filter, and crushed it in the ashtray on the table. I came to a decision.

  “I’m taking her to her place to clean up,” I said to Tubby but stared at Hannah. She almost smiled. Tubby spun around and hurried from the room.

  Cecil spoke without looking away from Hannah. “Please don’t. Too much could happen out there.”

  I ignored him and motioned Hannah to get up. She stood, hesitantly at first, legs unsteady as a new colt’s, and then seemed to gain her confidence.

  Tubby came rushing back into the room. In on
e hand, he held a handgun. In the other, a stainless steel tomahawk. “I won’t go with you, but…” He shrugged and held out the weapons.

  I reached for the tomahawk. Behind me, Dillon made a questioning noise. I turned around, weapon held aloft, and said, “I’m killing them if they’re there, and I want to do it like I mean it.”

  From behind me came the sound of Hannah drawing back the slide on the handgun. Before her attack, she’d been quite the amateur marksman.

  “You could defend yourself with your gift,” Mysti said from nearby.

  “They don’t deserve the effort.” I walked out of the room without looking back. The museum was only a couple of blocks. Minutes if we walked fast. We left the former antique store through the entrance into the alley.

  No baddies waited in dark shadows. A stray cat hiding in a dumpster gave us a pretty good scare, and we ran the last half block, giggling like old times. Hannah punched in her security code and unlocked the museum’s back door. A door through the back hallway opened onto Hannah’s private staircase to her loft apartment.

  My cigarette-infused lungs ached after two flights of stairs toward the top floor. Hannah heaved and panted beside me. She used to occasionally run with Dean and Rainey. I remembered the way she’d lit the cigarette back in Tubby’s hideout.

  “Quit smoking, and it won’t be so hard.” I wanted to get her joking, trading good-natured insults, but her shoulders rounded.

  “Hard not to smoke around that bunch.” She took a few more heavy steps.

  I wanted to tell her she’d be back to her old self in no time, but the words sounded false even before I said them. Instead of speaking, I pressed at my side where a painful stitch had formed and followed Hannah the rest of the way to her apartment. We stood gasping on the landing, both of us with our hands on our knees. Hannah caught her breath first and pulled her loft key from behind an ugly gray sculpture that appeared to be a woman holding open her vulva.

  I wrinkled my nose. “The hell is that?”

  “Sheela na gig.” The old Hannah would have talked for ten minutes about the historical significance of the weird thing. This one simply unlocked her apartment and pushed open the door.

  I gasped at the sight. The love seat bled stuffing from large tears in the upholstery. The two suitcases Hannah used for a coffee table had been dented and smashed in. A broken whiskey bottle, glass spraying out all around it, lay near the small, open kitchen.

  This made no sense. The apartment looked as trashed as it had the day Michael Gage tore it apart and kidnapped Hannah. I knew for a fact she hadn’t come back home to it looking that way because Rainey Bruce and I cleaned it, repaired what could be fixed, and threw out the stuff that couldn’t.

  “I forgot about this.” Hannah pushed around me and went inside the apartment.

  “Wait. Someone might be in there.” I hurried after her.

  She kept walking into the kitchen where she opened the freezer and drew out a bottle of vodka. She pressed the bottle against her forehead for several seconds, then unscrewed the top and took a long pull. She shuddered as the alcohol hit her system.

  I wanted to tell her not to drink, that it would just make the world look worse, but who was I to tell anybody else what to do? Besides, it would just make her angry at me. “What happened here?”

  “A party.” She tried to smile, but her lips trembled. She took another drink.

  “Tell her to kill herself,” said the nasty little voice at the back of my mind. “She’ll be better off.”

  The idea sent a red rage through my head. I gathered the mantle, ready to let the little bastard have it. The monster, a being who should have been a million times more powerful than me, scuttled away. Interesting. I filed away the experience for later, went to the cabinet where Hannah used to keep sugary sweets, and pulled out a box of mini cream pies.

  “Probably stale.” Hannah took another drink and held out the bottle to me, something she’d not done since I explained to her why I never drank.

  The ghosts. Back when I’d been so afraid of seeing them, I stayed away from alcohol because it dulled my defenses against them. Now I saw things far worse than ghosts, made deals with them, let them rent a room in my body. I stared at the bottle of clear liquid, tried to remember the last time I’d had a drink, and couldn’t. I was a thirty-plus-year-old woman who didn’t know how to drink.

  “Maybe another time. I need to stay on my toes right now.”

  “Makes his voice quieter.” Hannah took one last drink, recapped the bottle, and shoved it back in the freezer of her fancy stainless steel refrigerator.

  “Whose voice?” I wanted to see what she’d say about the squatter.

  She tipped her chin at my shoulders. “He who drains you of all hope. I didn’t know what was wrong at first. I’d had flashbacks, heard voices, since Michael Gage and Nash Redmond kidnapped me. I thought the extra voice was part of that.”

  I nodded to show I understood, hoping to keep her talking.

  “It’ll learn the things that haunt you, play them over and over.” She opened her freezer and stared at the vodka bottle. After several seconds, she gave her head a firm shake and let the door swing shut. “Alcohol made it not matter so much.” She let out a sad chuckle. “You know, if King busted in here right now and blasted us both into the next existence, it wouldn’t be so bad. The monster’s gone from inside me, but he left the seeds. I feel like they’re gonna ride me all the way down.” She stared into my eyes, a stranger in a familiar skin. “He’ll do it to you too, even if you get rid of him.”

  With that, she walked past me and into the bedroom. Her groan at the mess in there floated back. I wanted to offer to clean her bathroom so it would be nice for her but didn’t quite dare. This hardened woman might throw the gesture back in my face, make me feel foolish. So I listened as the water from the shower began raining on the tiles and tried not to survey the damage in Hannah’s formerly beautiful home.

  The hag leaped and cavorted over my turmoil. I tried to clear my mind, but images of Wade somewhere hurting, probably dying, populated my thoughts. The parasite lapped up the worry, grunting in lusty pleasure. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my mind to a blank. My stomach somersaulted as the parasite’s negativity filled me, brimming over.

  It’ll ride you all the way down, Hannah had said. Maybe she was right.

  A few minutes later, we snuck out of the Burns County Museum, a building Hannah owned free and clear, like a pair of criminals. Hannah had on fresh clothes and full makeup. She slung a soft-sided bag over one shoulder with another change of clothes inside, just in case.

  We cut through the alleyways, me on high alert, Hannah strolling along as though this was an okay way to spend the last few seconds of her life. At the back door to Tubby’s hideout, she put one hand on the knob but didn’t open the door. “You didn’t have to do this for me.”

  “Nope.” I gripped my tomahawk tighter and glanced behind us.

  “Why’d you take the risk?” Her knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on the doorknob.

  “You’re worth it.” The answer came fast. I didn’t think much about it.

  She pursed her lips and almost smiled. “Thank you. I hope you don’t end up feeling like it was a waste of your time.” She turned the knob and slipped inside before I could reply. I hurried after her, but she’d disappeared into the big building.

  I gave Hannah time to get away from me before I went inside. Maybe a little space would ease things. The alley door led into the back half of the first floor of Tubby’s building. Tubby seemed to be using it as an office with a bright floor lamp set up next to a scarred and battered desk. If I’d had to guess, and I really didn’t want to, I’d have said this was where someone logged illegal shipments.

  Soon as I walked into the office, Tubby vaulted out of the metal folding chair behind the desk, hurried to me, and grabbed my arm. “The hell happened to you? Y’all’s gone an hour. Don’t take that long to shower.” He gave me a
hard shake.

  Anger, far too wild and out of control for the situation, flashed in my head. I jerked my arm away from Tubby. He took a step backward, skinny hands held up in a warding off gesture. The thing in my head salivated for violence. I could practically hear its stomach rumbling.

  I took a deep breath, then another. “She needed a break.”

  Tubby sat back in his metal chair. “You know we got to get moving. Get that tape of Barbie’s. Get it to King.”

  Hannah emerged from the shadows near the back stairwell to the loft. “You can’t. That would be a betrayal to Rainey.”

  I almost smiled. This was the old Hannah, ready to fight for her friends. I wanted to hug her but knew she’d hate it. I nodded. “You’re right. Rainey has worked her whole career to get Uncle Jesse out of prison.” There was more that I didn’t say. Rainey was in love with Jesse. It would drive her crazy for him spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. “But King’s going to kill Wade if I don’t give him that tape in twenty-four hours.”

  Hannah gasped and put her hand to her throat. The stark light from Tubby’s lamp lit her bare arms. For the first time, I noticed the dark, finger shaped bruises on her pale wrists. Oh, Hannah. What did they do to you? Unshed tears stung my eyes.

  “I don’t understand. How’d they get Wade?” Hannah sat on the edge of Tubby’s desk.

  I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Wade had saved Hannah, gotten shot doing it. Yet she seemed to remember none of it. “What do you remember of the last twenty-four hours?”

  Hannah’s eyes moved back and forth for several seconds. Finally, she looked up at me like a kid who knows he has the wrong answer. “I remember you coming into Long Time Gone and King throwing you out.”

  I pulled out my cigarettes, popped them against the palm of my hand several times, and pulled one out of the package. Tubby held out a lighter, its flame flickering. I leaned forward, inhaled, and closed my eyes to enjoy the nicotine rush for a second. “Yesterday evening, I got a visit from the thing we just detached from you. Tried to kill me. Not five minutes later, you sent me a text telling me to come get you at the compound this morning.”