by Jenn Bennett
“Mint?” he asked, offering her the open roll of candy in his hand.
She took three.
After the San Mateo County sign, they drove through the rural town of Lawndale, or Colma, as it used to be known. The necropolis. In the distance, rolling hills were lined with cemetery after cemetery, each privately owned and operated. Graves aside, there wasn’t much more in town but an athletic club, a train depot, and a downtown area filled with funeral homes.
Trotter’s place was a fat two-story home. The scent of cleaning fluid greeted them at the door, along with a cheerless elderly secretary, who led them into Trotter’s empty office.
“I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said, as they perched on two visitors chairs in front of an old desk. Business licenses and funerary certifications hung in dusty frames along the wall. No urns in sight, but Hadley thought she possibly detected a strange energy; another crossbar might be here.
“You need anything?” the secretary asked. “Coffee? Water? I’m just about to lock up and leave for the day.”
“Nothing, thank you,” Lowe said, sounding weary and empty. Was he already in character? Now she wished she would’ve spent the ride over pressing him for more information on his plan instead of pining over him like a lovesick girl. As soon as the secretary closed the door, Lowe leaned closer and whispered, “You don’t feel anything?”
“I don’t want to talk about that here,” she whispered back. “Later.”
“What?”
She glanced at him. “What what?”
“I meant the amulet crossbar. Do you feel its presence?”
Her cheeks heated. “Yes, I believe so. But it’s hard to tell. This place makes me anxious.” She took off her hat and fanned herself.
The door to the office opened, and a portly blond man wearing an ill-fitting suit entered. He looked Hadley’s age. Maybe younger. “Good evening, Mr. Smith,” he said to Lowe, extending his hand. “I’m Bill Trotter.”
Lowe shook and said, “This is my sister, Ruby.”
Ruby? His nightclub floozy? What in the world was he playing at?
“Miss Smith,” the young funeral director said, bowing his head. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” He didn’t sound all that sorry. If she didn’t know any better, she might think he was looking her over. That didn’t happen often. Maybe he recognized a kindred spirit whose life work also centered on death. “Won’t you please sit down? I’ll try to make this as easy for you as possible.”
The man’s chair creaked as he lowered himself into it. “Mr. Smith, I believe you told my secretary that your sister passed two days ago?”
“Poor Esmerelda,” Lowe said. “We came home to find her bludgeoned on the parlor floor.”
“Robbery?”
“Nothing was taken, so we don’t really know why it happened. Only that she wasn’t a well-liked person, to be honest. Always shooting her mouth off. There was no love between the three of us.” He grasped Hadley’s hand on the armrest; she had to fight every instinct not to jerk it back. “Ruby and I are close. We felt an obligation to take care of Esmerelda, even though she’s only our half sister. But I won’t lie—it’ll be more pleasant around the house now that we can keep her contained, so to speak.”
Good heavens. Lowe was telling the man a version of his own father’s myth—Hugo Trotter’s siblings were bludgeoned and stabbed.
“I hope you don’t find my honesty off-putting,” Lowe added.
“Not at all, Mr. Smith. Not everyone who walks in this door is wracked with grief.” He gave Hadley another glance. Or her legs, at least. She crossed them in the opposite direction and rearranged her dress over her knee.
Lowe cleared his throat. “Since I don’t want to waste your time, I’ll get right to the point. Esmerelda’s body isn’t viewable, which is why we’d like her cremated. But she did leave us a great deal of her father’s fortune, so we’d like to”—he gave Hadley a secret smile—“shall I tell him, dear?”
“Please do.” She had no idea where he was going with this ruse.
“Well, we’d like something extravagant to hold Esmerelda’s ashes. A showpiece—not your usual fare. Something we can put on a shelf and raise a glass to now and then. Money is no object, God rest her soul.”
Trotter brightened. “I’m sure we can find something to meet your needs. I have several unique pieces in stock. Would you like to see them?” He gave Hadley a hopeful smile. And another glance at her legs. Maybe he really was smitten with her.
They followed Mr. Trotter into a small showroom that featured a variety of urn options lined on shelves. Small paper placards provided pricing. A few of the urns were gaudy, but no strange energy, and no canopic jars.
“These are nice,” Lowe said, running his hand along the marble of the most expensive urn on the wall. “But what we had in mind was something exotic. Maybe something Roman or Greek. Something classic.”
“Something sculpted,” Hadley added.
Trotter’s brow lifted. “You know, my aunt Hilda’s urn sounds a little like that. Only, it’s sculpted in an Egyptian fashion. I—”
“O-oh, Egyptian,” Lowe said, as if it were the most intriguing thing in the world. “That’s very exotic. What do you think, Ruby?”
What she thought was that she wanted to brain him over the head with the marble urn he was stroking. “Egyptian would be perfect.”
Trotter chuckled. “Well, I can’t exactly dump out her ashes and sell it to you.”
“Of course not,” Lowe said with a smile. “But would it be too much trouble for us to take a look at it? Might give us a better idea of what we want. As I said, money is no object.”
Trotter jingled change in his pocket as he rocked back on his heels. “Well . . .”
Lowe elbowed Hadley discreetly. She looked up at him and elbowed him back. He made an urgent face, dramatically flicking his eyes toward the funeral director when the man wasn’t looking. She took a guess as to what he wanted her to do.
“Oh, please, Mr. Trotter,” she said, trying her best to sound like a fetching young girl with nothing inside her head. “It would mean so much to us. So much to me.”
Two pink circles blossomed on the man’s cheeks. “The urn is downstairs in the basement, though. It might be upsetting to see my work area. Maybe I should bring it up.”
“I have a strong stomach,” she told him. “Nothing shocks me.”
He smiled at her as if she’d just unlocked the key to his funeral-director heart. “This way, then.”
EIGHTEEN
THE BASEMENT WAS ONE large room, lit by two rows of hanging bulbs that weren’t bright enough to chase away shadows in the corners. The cremation area took up one side, where a large iron door protruded from the brick wall lined with steel gurneys, rubber tubing, and ash shovels. Across the room near a desk, a wooden display cabinet held three objects on a single shelf. And even though age and smoke had discolored the glass front, obscuring the view, Hadley knew the Hapy canopic jar was one of the contained objects; she’d felt its eerie energy the moment Trotter opened the creaking basement door.
“Here’s the urn,” he said, unlocking the cabinet. “My father kept all the family urns here, and I just haven’t bothered to move them somewhere else.” He opened the doors and stepped aside to let them have a look.
The sand-colored canopic jar sat right in the middle, a baboon’s head crowning the top.
“It’s exquisite,” Lowe praised.
“Perfect,” Hadley agreed. “Exactly what we were looking for.”
“Are you sure you won’t sell it to us?” Lowe asked. “I feel just plain rotten for asking, but if you don’t have any attachment to it, can’t the ashes be transferred to another container?”
Mr. Trotter scratched his ear. “I really hate to tell a customer no—”
“I’ve got three hundred in cash i
n my pocket,” Lowe added.
Trotter coughed, his face reddening. A strong temptation, to be sure—the amount was likely a solid three months’ salary for a man of his class, and the most expensive urn upstairs was priced at twenty-nine dollars.
“It’s very generous, but I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” he finally said. “I really can’t, not for any amount. If my father were alive, he’d never forgive me. It was even mentioned in his will—he requested that I be a steward to these urns in exchange for inheriting the business.”
Lowe sighed. “Can’t blame a man for trying.” He turned toward the case and slung an arm around Hadley’s shoulders. “Maybe we can have one sculpted,” he said, hugging her closer. “You’re not crying are you, dear?”
Before she could think of a response, he kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, “Distract him. Flirt.”
Hadley’s stomach knotted. Firstly, he was clearly planning on stealing the jar. She didn’t see this going as well as it had at the house on Telegraph Hill—and that had gone terribly. Secondly, she was an awful flirt. George once told her that she wouldn’t even be able to lure a child into a carnival if she held an oversized lollipop in one hand and cotton candy in the other.
She gave Mr. Trotter a forced smile over her shoulder and nervously turned around.
“I’m certain I can have another one made,” Trotter assured her, studying her face as if checking for tears.
“If you could, that would be marvelous,” she said. How in the world was she supposed to do this? She glanced at the oven in the far corner and fixed on the only topic of conversation she was comfortable pursuing. “Ah, so that’s where it’s done,” she said, crossing the cement floor to inspect it. “Rather a solid-looking workhorse.”
He followed her. “Yes. She’s thirty years old, but still works wonderfully.”
“Why, that’s exactly my own motto.”
Trotter’s mouth opened. He sucked in a breath and chuckled. “An excellent one to have,” he said, sweeping a glance over her body. “And no doubt it’s true.”
Perhaps this was easier than she’d feared. She gave him a coy smile and nodded to the oven. “I hope you don’t think I’m macabre, but I’m quite interested in how it works.”
“What a fascinating woman you are. I’d be happy to show you.” Trotter enthusiastically pointed out where the bodies were placed, and when she begged to see the inner workings of the oven, he gladly turned on the pilot and struck a match. Orange fire roared inside the dark tunnel.
“Oh, my,” she said. “How very—”
A crash behind them made her jump.
They both swung around to find Lowe crouching inside a cloud of dust in front of the cabinet. His coat was pulled up over his face.
“What in God’s name?” Trotter shouted.
Hadley’s pulse hammered inside her temples. She spied Lowe snatching up something from the broken shards on the floor and stuffing it inside his coat. He’d gotten the crossbar.
“I don’t know what happened,” Lowe said, waving away ash as he stood. “It slipped off the shelf.”
“Oh my lord, my lord,” Trotter said, reaching for a shard. “My father would never forgive me—this is terrible. Just terrible.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lowe glanced around the room, searching. “I’ll compensate you.”
“How?” Trotter stood, a look of fury tightening his face. “Just how in heavens do you plan on doing that? This can’t be repaired. And you are stepping on my aunt’s remains!”
Lowe gingerly stepped out of the ash pile, shaking out his pant legs and kicking his heels against the floor. “Let me give you the three hundred I’d offered previously.”
“Your money won’t fix this.” The man was verging on hysterics.
Lowe reached for his wallet. “But it’s a start, yes?”
A floorboard creaked above Hadley’s head. Was someone upstairs? She glanced at the ceiling and spotted something dripping onto the floor. Something dark and viscous. It pooled on the cement in the middle of the room as a burning stench filled her nostrils. A strange heat warmed her back. She swiveled around to see a ball of flames shoot from the oven and arrow across the brick wall until it leapt on the pool of black liquid.
Uh-oh.
She watched in horror as flames roared, climbing several feet high in a flash. But this wasn’t a simple fire. The strange inferno coalesced into a distinctly human shape—a shape which took a step forward, detaching itself from the floor, a fiery shadow come to life.
Like something out of an infernal hellscape, a behemoth of a figure solidified before them. A female. One that was a good two feet taller than Lowe, with tree-trunk legs and shoulders as big as a barge. The giantess stood in the center of the room, a monstrosity of blackened naked flesh with fire licking around its shoulders, hands, and feet.
In place of a human head was the head of a lion.
Hadley’s academic mind put two and two together and vaguely recollected seeing photographs of ancient statues bearing lion heads. They all belonged to the Egyptian goddess of fire, Sekhmet.
The creature’s back arched as she took a step toward Lowe, shaking the crematorium trolley with her heavy footfall. And that’s when Hadley saw what fueled it. Hairline cracks in the creature’s skin glowed with orange light, like lava flowing beneath furrowed dry earth. They spelled out some sort of hieroglyphic message—a spell, she reckoned, just like the one on the flesh of the griffin.
Not a goddess, but a magical replica of one.
Mr. Trotter screamed like a child. Lowe merely groaned and reached inside his jacket. But instead of pulling out his curved dagger, he retrieved a pistol.
The gun’s report cracked through the air. The bullet went right through the fire giant and exploded the bricks a few inches from Hadley’s arm. She shouted and stumbled against the cremation trolley, life flashing before her eyes.
“Shit!” Lowe shouted.
Mr. Trotter ducked behind the trolley, using it as a shield. Useless, cowardly man. So much for their passionate funerary bond.
“Shoot it in the heart! In the heart!” she shouted at Lowe, then added, “But don’t kill me in the process!”
Lowe shifted his stance, backing up and rotating his aim.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
He unloaded three bullets into the creature’s torso, and all of them embedded into the wall near Hadley, showering Mr. Trotter’s head with brick dust.
Whatever the creature was, it was different than the griffin. Not only did it make no sound, but at the bullet wounds, where there should be blood, a black substance oozed down its muscles.
The silent creature lunged for Lowe with a fiery hand and grabbed his shoulder. Lowe cried out. Flames erupted over the front of his coat as he growled and tore away from the monster’s hold. The giantess faltered, losing her footing while Lowe stumbled backward and fell against Trotter’s desk—
On fire! Lowe was on fire!
He flung off his hat and wildly slapped at the flames rippling over his arm.
Hadley sprinted for the cremation sink and twisted the rusty handle. Pipes creaked. Liquid spiraled through the rubber hose attached to the tap. She grabbed the end and aimed it toward Lowe. A spray of water arced through the air and doused Lowe in the eyes.
He jerked his head away and shouted obscenities in Swedish. Quickly redirecting her aim, she soaked his clothes and doused the flames.
“Not me!” he shouted as he hurdled himself over the desk. “Her!”
The creature made a grab across the desk, setting a stack of files on fire. Hadley increased the water pressure with a thumb covering half the hose’s opening and pointed the spray at the giant’s face. Flames sizzled and popped. Steam rose.
It was working!
“Brilliant!” Lowe shouted. “Keep it up!”
The creature shudd
ered, twisting her neck back unnaturally as the water extinguished flames on one side of her head. A foul stench swept through the room, like wet cat and burned grease. Hadley’s mind conjured the image of a rotting animal corpse being roasted on a spit, fur and all. And some chemical note lay beneath it, like a car overheating.
With his half-burned coat steaming and water dripping from his hair, Lowe skittered around the desk and stuck his gun in the waistband of his pants. He circled the giantess and dashed toward Hadley. “Let me have it,” he said, reaching out his hand for the hose.
Lava-red eyes turned in their direction. Blackened flesh and fur shimmered under the hanging lights. Shimmered like oil. That was the chemical scent: motor oil! Was this also what had dripped from the ceiling before the creature formed?
Motor oil wasn’t exactly something she associated with ancient Egypt or magical creatures. But she didn’t have time to puzzle it out. The fire around the beast’s shoulders roared up, spreading flames across its furry lioness crown. It was reigniting itself.
They were fighting a losing battle. The meager flow of water from the tap would never be enough to douse oil-fueled flames. Lowe ripped the hose out of her hands and sprayed the creature’s face with a sharper stream of water. “Get Trotter out of here!”
Trotter could rot in his hiding space behind the trolley for all she cared, the whimpering coward. “I’m not leaving you here,” she told Lowe.
“Believe me, I’m right behind you. Go!”
Begrudgingly, she tugged the funeral director’s arm, shouting at him to stand. Once he was on his feet, he took off running for the basement stairs without a single look back. Good riddance. Hadley raced to Lowe’s side and prepared to help him fight the best way she knew how.
She called for the Mori.
They stirred from the darkened corners, pushing their way out of the wall. As they were forming, dark faces turned toward the fire goddess. Yes, she thought. Take the damned creature down. She expected to feel their excitement, a sort of buzzing energy they gave off whenever she gave in and unleashed them, but it didn’t come. Worse, she felt them cower, turning away from the creature as if it physically hurt them to look at the fire. Then they did something she’d never seen. They rejected her command and disappeared back into the walls.
