Sins of the Father (Bloody Marytown Book 1)

by Mansell, Lucie J.

  When she was finished, Parker was standing with his back to her, as if to give her some privacy. She was grateful for that but it had not been necessary. Nothing had been on show that he had not seen before. Martha let him know that she was done and stepped towards him, noting that he was looking at the gold, chained talisman that they had gone to retrieve only a little while ago. It was still in its bag and she realised that it must have tumbled off her lap when the car spun out of control. It seemed like that had had happened days ago but in reality it probably wasn’t even hours. At least they still had it. That was something.

  She asked, ‘Are we still going to take that to the house?’

  ‘I’m going to call Olivia and tell her to leave it for tonight,’ he said. ‘By the time that we’re done here, it’ll be too late. The recovery people will drop us off at MPIA where I can leave a message for Maxwell, letting him know what happened and then we’re going home.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s the most productive thing to do,’ she tried to intervene.

  ‘We were in a car crash, Martha,’ he argued. ‘You knocked your head and passed out for a while. Nobody’s going to judge you for taking a night to recover.’

  That was pretty accurate but she shrugged, disagreed. ‘I don’t have the luxury of sitting back and taking it easy. Amanda needs the answers that that thing can apparently give us. I’m not going to leave her hanging because I got a little bump on the head.’

  ‘Amanda isn’t going to care what we find if you get hurt in the process. Don’t you think that she’ll be more concerned that you were run off the road?’ He sounded irate, annoyed by her. ‘I get that you’re some kind of quick-healing super killer now but you are not invulnerable to everything that goes on around you, Martha.’ He paused, sighed, ‘And neither am I.’

  With that statement, she suddenly realised that it wasn’t really about her at all. Parker had been going through all of this alongside of her but he hadn’t rested and he had just had the world pulled out from under him. She knew that she had become determined to take care of her sister and fix everything that had decimated her world but she had narrow-mindedly dragged others by her leash. While she could easily go for days, focusing on her objective, she had to remind herself that these people were not like her. They got tired. They got emotional. They got hurt.

  ‘Is your head going to be okay?’ she asked, feeling guilty that she hadn’t sooner.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘It’s superficial. Doesn’t even hurt.’

  And he considered her the stubborn one.

  Chapter 28

  It was very late by the time that they arrived back at Parker’s apartment but Martha’s sister was there waiting for them, sitting on the doorstep with her psychic boyfriend next to her. She had all but leapt up and down the small pathway when they appeared, flinging herself into Martha’s arms with an intensity of gusto that made her believe Parker’s earlier words.

  Amanda had heard that her big sister had been in a car crash and she had been worried enough to wait out in the cold, midst of the night just to embrace her. It was… remarkable.

  Parker invited them both up, seemingly not bothered about the late hour. He ordered them some food from an all-night takeaway and pulled some cold beers out of the fridge. Martha did not normally consume alcohol, preferring not to lower her inhibitions but took one that night, deciding that after all that had happened, she could let herself unwind for a bit. Also, if she could admit it only to herself, she might say that she was enjoying the company.

  She curled herself up on Parker’s sofa, her sister next to her. It was really nice to just spend some time with Amanda. Or, it was, right up until she asked if she could see the thing that they had gone to Esther’s house to recover. Walsh had already told her everything that they knew so far and she had taken it about as well as the grieving daughter of a potential murderer could. Her boyfriend had also told her about the talisman that her father had used to summon what might have been a demon and now she wanted to see it, which was a mood killer and Martha made a mental note to make Walsh pay for it, however concerned and remorseful he looked.

  Parker looked to Martha for approval who nodded after a minute of silent deliberation, taking hold of her sister’s hand because the tension had risen in the air and it felt like the right thing to do. He brought the artefact in from where he had stored it, in a safe that he apparently kept in one of the rooms off the lounge. He handed it to the younger woman, still encased in the clear plastic of the evidence bag. She scrutinised it through the plastic and her face fell into an unhappy frown. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed softly. ‘Yes, this is what I saw in my dream.’

  Martha put her arm around her sister and glared over at Walsh, who to be very fair to him, looked bereft that his girlfriend was upset. All of this was so very unfair.

  ‘I’d like to hold it,’ Amanda said. ‘Do you think it would be alright if I did?’

  She had asked her boyfriend the question and he took quite a while to think of his response, eventually telling her, ‘Be very careful.’

  ‘I will,’ she smiled sweetly, taking the talisman out of the bag by the chain. She visibly swallowed, letting it dangle there for so long that Martha was tempted to try and read what she was thinking but knew better than to try something like that when the girl was actively keeping her own psychic defences teetering on that delicate balance between open and safe.

  After what felt like a very long time, Amanda shook her head and said, ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Martha asked.

  ‘It feels… wrong. I can’t explain it. A woman died for this and it does not feel right. I think…’ She sighed, sadly. ‘I think there might still be some of her energy left in it.’

  ‘We’re going to get Olivia to cleanse it tomorrow,’ Parker assured her. ‘If there is some of the practitioner’s energy left in it, then she will put it to rest. I promise.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Amanda nodded. ‘But that’s not why I wanted to hold it.’

  Martha and Parker both looked at each other, not knowing what she was referring to but her boyfriend, of course, did. Walsh spoke up, saying out loud what he and the young, blonde woman already knew for the sake of the others. ‘You want to get a reading on it.’

  ‘Is that selfish?’ she asked. ‘We don’t know for a fact that my father hurt her and I just want to know the truth. If her energy is still in this and it’s what they fought over then maybe it can tell us something. Does that sound completely awful?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Martha assured her.

  ‘Can you do it?’ Her sister turned to her, eyes wide and pleading. ‘I know that Joe does this kind of thing all the time for work but he really wanted to not get involved.’

  ‘I have done psychic readings before,’ she confirmed, recalling all the times that Stefan’s brothers had asked her to use objects to locate one of their targets, like a bloodhound sniffing for a scent. She had always sort of resented it, believing that it was a good indicator of what they thought of her but she had moved past it. Now, she stabbed things and she was good at that too.

  Her sister probed. ‘Do you think that you might be able to do this for me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Martha said, honestly. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘I can run you through it,’ Walsh offered.

  ‘Fine,’ she conceded, ignoring the look of concern that Parker was levelling her way. He had not wanted her to take on too much and this was amongst the things that he had hoped she’d take it easy from. ‘Give me the talisman.’

  Amanda handed it to her sister, being careful to leave her plenty of the chain available to clasp onto. Martha took it gingerly, almost expecting it to leap out of her hand and run away rather than share its secrets. Of course, it did not do that. It was an inanimate object, however infused with magical energy it remained.

  Once it was securely in her possession, she could sense what Amanda had been talking about. There
was still energy trapped within the artefact and it wanted out, probably to be reunited with it host, who was sadly no more. Reminding herself of what Olivia had told them about corrupted magical energy, she prepared herself for anything as she said to Walsh, ‘I’m ready. Tell me what I need to do.’

  ‘Completely clear your mind,’ he instructed. ‘Exactly like you might do if you were actively trying to sense another person’s psychic ability or sense spirit. When you are ready, drop your defences and put your hand around the pendant. If anything is going to happen, then it should be pretty much instantaneous. Don’t fight it. Just let your instincts guide you.’

  Right, she thought. At that moment, her instincts were telling her that she was about to make a big mistake and she did not like the feeling that she was being tested, her abilities put on show and remarked upon. It was different when she was out in the field with Stefan and his brothers because they were all remarkable in their own ways and simply thought her mundane. Here, amongst what should have been her human peers, it felt bizarre. Even if over half of them were gifted psychics in their own rights, she felt vulnerable. And she hated that.

  Taking the plunge, Martha allowed her psychic defences to fall away and then, taking a deep breath, moved her free hand and wrapped it around the gold pendant of the talisman, noting that Walsh was right about the rush of energy being instantaneous and then…

  She was sitting in a lounge that she did not recognise, watching television which she did not ever do. The show on the screen was some sort of period drama in which the performance of the actors was as wooden as their body language and Martha, who seemed to have retained her own thoughts and feelings, was glad that she did not indulge in such tripe as the hands in which she mystically inhabited reached forward onto the table in front of her sofa. It was covered with a soft, patterned cloth that was dotted with stars, suns and moons. Its surface held candles, incense bowls, crystals, some small branches and a decent sized silver dagger. Also present was a gold necklace which the woman collected, the same artefact that Martha instantly recognised.

  The woman whose hands she could see, ran it through her fingers, thinking that it was an odd little thing for a person to get so worked up over. But then she was already very magically gifted. She did not know what it was like to crave something and not be able to have it. Perhaps she was being too cruel, denying that man his wishes. After all, she had done a lot worse for a lot less money. It made no sense for her to hesitate now. No sense at all.

  The warmth that Martha felt spreading through her entire body was something unlike she had ever experienced before. It took a moment for her to realise what it was – magic. The woman was calling up her own power and like a golden sponge, the talisman soaked it up. She began singing a chanting lullaby that lasted as long as the entire length of the latter part of her show on the television set. As the credits rolled, she finished her ritual, turning the talisman over in her hand, more than a little bit happy with her own work.

  Reaching down to her side, she grasped a padded envelope and wrote a name on the front – Mr. W. Ford. The address that she listed below it was so personally familiar to Martha.

  Getting to her feet, the woman in the vision hummed a little tune as she left the room and then suddenly the scene changed. As if she were operating a camera that was positioned behind the sofa, Martha saw the woman coming back into the room, arguing with a person that Martha could not see. She was yelling an apology, screaming that she had done what the aggressor had requested, asked what she could do to make it right but the other person would not listen.

  The next thing she saw was a scuffle. The attacker was small, blonde and not at all like the man they had assumed guilty of the crime. The magic practitioner fought back but she was not strong enough to overpower her attacker, who was more vicious than she looked. Suddenly there was a blade in the blonde’s hand. It was the dagger that had been on the lady’s altar. Down and down the killer struck, over and over. There was so much blood.

  There was so much screaming. It was all too much…

  And Martha heard somebody calling her name, their voice familiar enough to drag her back into reality with an abruptness that made her feel dizzy. She found herself back on Parker’s sofa, breathless and sweaty, quivering uncontrollably. The talisman was plucked from her hand. She did not see where it went. The next thing she knew there was a cold glass where it had been and the voice was telling her, ‘Drink that, Martha. Drink that and just breathe.’

  She did as she was instructed and eventually the nausea passed. When she felt like she was back in control of her faculties, she looked up at her sister, who was now sitting in front of her, being held tightly by her boyfriend and said, ‘He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it.’

  The girl’s face fell in a mix of surprise and relief. Her voice shook as she asked, ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ Martha confirmed, not sure why tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘It wasn’t him. It was somebody else. A woman. Probably a disgruntled client. She gave your father the talisman willingly. I saw her do it… He didn’t kill her, Amanda. He was not a murderer.’

  Chapter 29

  Twenty minutes later, Martha was alone. Parker had gone to show his guests out of the building and while Amanda hadn’t really wanted to go, she had acquiesced to his request. Martha had already been through a lot, what with the crash. She needed to rest. Her little sister was simply so grateful to learn that her father was not a killer that Martha suspected she would have danced through hoops if it pleased the host. The girl was all but giddy.

  For what it was worth, Martha was happy too. She did not have fond memories of the man in question but she had not wanted her sister to have to live within the dark shadows of a killer’s legacy. As flawed as the man was - and Martha had first-hand experience of his many flaws – he was not a murderer. It was something, she supposed and she was struggling to figure out why she had cried upon uncovering the revelation. Was it simply empathy on behalf of her sister or something much more personal that she did not want to admit?

  Parker came back, locking the entrance behind him. From the doorway of the lounge he softly announced, ‘It’s okay. They’re gone. You don’t have to socialise anymore.’

  ‘I actually didn’t mind that part,’ she admitted. ‘Is Amanda okay?’

  ‘Emotional but that’s to be expected. She was so afraid of what you were going to say.’

  ‘So was I.’

  Without needing to be asked, he came into the room and sat down next to her on the sofa. He did not reach out to touch her, however, keeping a respectable distance between the two of them. The lounge was still in relative darkness, the only illumination from one of the several lamps as she had complained that her head hurt after finishing her glass of water. It was enough to cast a soft glow across the two of them, making it feel like they were the only two people left in the world. A feeling that Martha realised that she enjoyed. Very much.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Parker said eventually, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. ‘Tell me what you’re feeling.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m feeling right now,’ she answered honestly. ‘I’d gotten so used to thinking the worst of him that it really didn’t seem like that much of a stretch that he could kill a woman. I let my own prejudice cloud my judgement and if Amanda hadn’t asked me to do that tonight, I might have gone on letting her think her dad was an evil man.’

  ‘He wasn’t exactly a saint, Martha,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I know that,’ she sighed. ‘God, do I know that. But maybe we’ve been looking at this whole thing wrong. Just because he was awful to me, doesn’t mean he was still that man. Maybe he simply tried to do magic and got himself into trouble. It could be that simple.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ he asked, not judging.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’

  To give Parker his due, he did not attempt to tell her that everything was going to be alrigh
t. Perhaps he knew that she would not believe him. Perhaps he simply did not think it himself. Martha’s hand went to her head, rubbing the ache that had settled within it. She was unsure if it was the reading or the blow she had taken earlier on but it hurt. A lot.

  Parker asked, ‘Do you want me to get you some painkillers?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There’s really no point. They don’t work for me. My system processes them too fast and they only end up making me feel sick.’

  After a second of silence, he said, ‘Okay then.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The last thing that I want to do is start freaking you out again.’

  With a soft laugh, he assured her, ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she pushed. ‘You thought that I was going to kill you a few hours ago.’

  ‘I didn’t. Not really.’ Heaving a pretty hefty sigh, he explained. ‘I was shocked. I can’t deny that. I watched you fist fight and kill a dozen guys who were twice your size and you did it as if they were the weakest creatures on the planet but I know that they weren’t. I shot one of them twice and he looked annoyed. Only backed off when I aimed for his head.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to do that,’ she said, swallowing down her feelings of guilt.

  ‘I have no problem handling myself in a fight,’ he tried to assure her. ‘You know, when the odds aren’t ridiculously stacked against me.’