The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  “I’m being helpful.” Her little sister smiled. Then stepped out. Her left foot moved left. Her right foot moved right, and she split. For a moment, she hovered in a double image, making Eleri wonder if her eyes had gone nuts. But everything else was stable, only Emmaline made her blink.

  Another step and Emmaline was back to being one clear image. She then smiled and faded into nothing, leaving Eleri staring at the house again. She was facing the door—the odd front door set at forty-five degrees into the corner. Emmaline’s image had been just in front of the tiny porch when it disappeared.

  Had she just not seen the house because she was watching Emmaline?

  Eleri didn’t know, but she pushed her way inside.

  Again, children played in the front room, only this time they were eerily silent. They stacked blocks that somehow didn’t click. They played with dolls, but spoke no words. Even the crayon pressed hard on paper that ripped made no sound. The only noise was Eleri’s feet on the floorboards. Each step seemed to echo though it didn’t disturb the children.

  She didn’t think of it, didn’t recognize it at first, but the sound of her gasp brought all the children to stop what they were doing and look at her. Tiny, dishwater blond, blue eyed, all of them. Identical faces. She tried to count but couldn’t keep track, her brain fuzzy though the children were stationary and it should have been an easy task. Suddenly scared, Eleri walked past the creepy, silent children, all the while telling herself it was just a dream.

  She passed through the arch into empty space she assumed was designated for the dining room. The next room was the kitchen, but she didn’t notice it yet. As she passed through, she looked back to see all the children were gone. The toys, too. The front room was empty, as though they had never been there. When she stepped into the next room, she felt the heat and air push at her, almost moving her backwards as the walls caught fire around her.

  The middle of the room pulsed with heat, but the flames stopped in clear lines, making a path through the space into the kitchen. The heat made it hard to breathe, but Eleri needed to look around.

  Over her head, the flames danced in pretty patterns. They intertwined and fought, reaching out to each other but never down to her. At her sides, the flames burned bright hot blue but the walls didn’t blacken or crackle.

  Breathing became more difficult. The hair on her arms stood up, but it didn’t singe or curl. Despite the strength of the fire, Eleri didn’t burn. She knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t understand how or why that was, but she knew.

  As she started to move forward, a familiar looking woman stepped into view through the archway that led to the kitchen. Wiping her hands on a towel tucked into the pocket of her jeans, she motioned to Eleri to come forward. Into the kitchen. Where it was safe.

  She didn’t say any of the words. Eleri just understood. The kitchen was safe.

  The flames didn’t pass the doorway and Eleri felt the heat behind her as she walked through. Out of curiosity, as she entered the cool kitchen, she turned and looked back, to see the other room now fully engulfed. The fire must have followed her. But the woman at the sink, despite her motion and indication of safety, seemed to have no real awareness of the flames. Or maybe it was so common to her that it didn’t bother her anymore. Eleri couldn’t tell.

  With a smile and a nod, she returned to the sink full of dishes and began washing them. The sink sat under two windows that came together at the back corner of the house. The sink was set at a forty-five-degree angle into the corner leaving a deep, triangular shelf, where the woman stacked dishes.

  Eleri examined the design, thinking it mimicked the odd door on the opposite corner. But as the woman brushed back a stray strand of hair, Eleri caught something in the gesture and recognized her.

  Leona Hiller—the dead woman from Rosedeer, Wyoming. The at-home mom whose husband had rebuilt the house and found another woman who looked remarkably like his wife. As Eleri remembered that she’d been strangled, bruises bloomed around the woman’s neck, but she put the last dish in the drainer then turned to a row of tiny bowls on the counter. Holding a bag of carrots, she counted a few into each bowl, then went back with another veggie, some kind of bean, and counted those, too.

  The daycare. The one she unofficially ran in her home.

  As Eleri remembered that fact, the woman looked up and moved her hand, this time ushering Eleri away and into the last room. Eleri turned and headed through the next doorway, where once again she found the old woman in the rocker. Her black hands had worn knuckles that somehow still were graceful as she stitched a thick thread into a doll.

  Eleri looked more closely. Something about the woman looked like Grandmere. Something looked like Emmaline. Like Eleri. Like their mother. The woman didn’t look up, just kept to her stitching.

  She’d thought the woman to be Aida Weddo, but had she been wrong? The woman was now clearly an ancestor. One whose genes had run strong in the family, one whose blood flowed through Eleri all her life though she’d known nothing of it until just recently. Was she also the great Aida Weddo, High Goddess of the old religion Grandmere practiced?

  Eleri looked more closely, trying to get a better view of the woman’s face.

  In a blink, too fast to have humanly moved, the woman was staring at her. Eleri’s saw her own eyes, the green deep and unending.

  The mouth said, “Wake.”

  “NO, Donovan, it was Leona Hiller. I’m sure of it.” Eleri had peeled herself off the floor, cleaned up, and waited until it was late enough that Donovan would be awake. Then she showed up, knocking on his hotel room door and telling him everything. About Emmaline leading her on the path. About the house, the fire inside, the creepy little kids who made no sounds, and the woman she’d thought was Aida Weddo but now reflected herself.

  “It means something.” He stated as though she needed to hear it.

  “It would be nice if that meaning were more damned obvious.” But it wasn’t. “I’ve been seeing Emmaline more lately. It stopped for a while, you know.”

  “But you said it happened that way. You wouldn’t dream of her for some months, then she’d come back.”

  “I know. I can’t help wondering if she’s back this time because she’s back, or because I need her, or because Grandmere told me they would find her and I’m conjuring her up.” Eleri paused with the same pinch in her heart each time she thought of Grandmere’s words. Her mother, Nathalie, had never let go of the idea that her daughter was still out there and would be found some day. Over the years, she’d made off-hand comments that had begun as “your sister will be safely returned.” Now, Eleri was pretty convinced her mother thought her sister had been brainwashed into believing she was another person. Living her life under another name and not remembering the family she was born to. When the time was right, Nathalie would welcome her daughter home like a lost princess. Some kind of Cinderella story where Nathalie was both the loving parent and the fairy Godmother.

  Her mother would be devastated when Emmaline’s bones were found. By now that was all that would be left of her daughter. Eleri knew that in her heart as well as by fact of her education. The worst part would be that the bones would match, but they would be almost ten years older than when Emmaline went missing. Eleri knew this. Grandmere knew this. No one else knew it. Ten years they might have found Emmaline alive. Ten years they had missed.

  “I woke up on my floor again.” She changed the topic in her head, though she wasn’t sure this one was better.

  “Another pentagram?”

  “Yup. This one was paper though. At least it was easier to clean up.”

  “Did the papers say anything?” Donovan looked at her as though she were omitting vital information.

  “Yes.” She deadpanned. “One said ‘faith be unto Satan.’ And another said ‘no Eleri, only Zuul.’”

  “Fine. Be that way.” His mouth quirked though. “What was the paper then?”

  “Those little tear-off sheets of hotel statio
nery. So it had the hotel logo at the top, but otherwise they were just small rectangles.” She shrugged. “I was just grateful not to have to put my suitcase back together this time. Can you make heads or tails of it?”

  She sat in silence while he thought about it, then shook his head.

  “I’m afraid.” She tried to say it clearly, boldly owning her fear, but it came out as a whisper. “I’m afraid it will mean something and it will only be obvious when it’s too late.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Eleri.” Donovan put his hand on her arm in a rare gesture of actual human comfort. He’d been a little clingier lately, making her wonder if he appreciated their partnership more after having been shoved into this team. “These things turn up. As we gather more information, you’ll put the pieces together. You always do.”

  “No pressure there,” she sighed.

  Their phones beeped in tandem and they looked at each other. Dana wanted a meeting. Eleri had come back late and gone to bed tired after Donovan and Christina had returned. She’d been talking, not listening, so she didn’t know yet what they’d found in the woods or at the truck.

  Already up, Eleri and Donovan grabbed their things and headed out the door, but Eleri’s brain nagged at her. There was something in that dream that she needed to see. Sooner rather than later. Or someone else would die.

  20

  Donovan stood at the picture window and looked out over the rolling land before him. Dana had given them a break. Nothing had happened and nothing had come together, so she’d set them free. They all knew it could end at any moment. Now he stood here and watched the tall, green grasses at Bell Point Farm sway in the light breeze. In the far distance cows roamed, but they couldn’t get close. Not here. The estate was obviously a toy farm, a plaything for the wealthy to pretend they farmed.

  “Does this place make any money?” He asked over his shoulder to his partner and hostess.

  “Yes.” Eleri replied seamlessly. “It makes any money.”

  Then it wasn’t dead weight, but it clearly wasn’t the height of farming cash.

  She spoke again and he could hear her buttering toast. It was a lush potato bread baked by a professional whose building was on the far opposite side of the property, where actual work occurred. The butter was churned on site, also far from the house. The knife scraped the perfectly browned top of the bread as Eleri sat at the very expensive hand-hewn farm table that occupied a space bigger than the last home Donovan’s father had parked them in, though “home” was a strong word there. “Bell Point Farm could be completely self-sufficient if it needed to be.”

  “But only if you could get to the actual farming from the house.” He muttered under his breath.

  “Touché.” She replied easily. She knew. She knew he’d lived in trailers that made the Arvads’ place look neat and homey. She had to know that his father only quit hitting him when he got big enough to hit back, and not because his father had found any kind of god or become any better of a man.

  Eleri had grown up in this kind of place. Not just here, but in several homes as lush as this one. When she was younger they’d spent more than just vacation time at FoxHaven, their home on Avon Island off the Carolina coast. But she said she’d mostly grown up around Patton Hall, their other home in Kentucky. That was because her sister had disappeared from there and her mother had refused to leave the area for years in case Emmaline came back.

  Hardship came in variety of forms.

  Still, Donovan thought of toaster ovens that had only “cold” and “burn” settings. He thought of the smell of old dishes in the sink—one of the few smells he actually classified as “bad.” He thought of rooms that had holes in the ceilings and walls from something the previous tenants must have done, and black mold he could see if not smell.

  One thing that bothered him about Bell Point Farm was that he hadn’t earned it. It was too big, too old, too rich for anything he knew.

  “You don’t have to stay.” She seemed to read his mind. And who knew, it might be one of her talents, not that she thought so. “It just seemed easier to stick together until Dana needs us again.”

  Though all five of them had finally achieved a first-name-basis, Eleri had not invited Dana or Christina to spend their time off at Bell Point Farm. The land sat outside Charlottesville, Virginia, an almost too-charming town that barely achieved city status and was home to one of the oldest universities in the country. Eleri had driven them through town on the way up. The university itself was over two hundred years old and some of the buildings in town were older than that. Donovan suspected that the floor he was standing on had seen blood, death, birth and possibly centuries. It had seen slavery and freedom. And now it saw a man who was at least part wolf and didn’t know what to do with himself.

  Eleri calmly ate an artisan breakfast at an artisan table that was made to look rustic. “I thought you might like to run the place. The land the house sits on is relatively isolated. And I put out word that I brought two big dogs with me. No one is to shoot.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.”

  “It’s the best I can do.” She shrugged as he remained feeling out of place.

  Wade was off somewhere on the property trying to build flame-throwers. He could claim he was working, but it was easy to see he was simply intrigued by the challenge of making it the right size. Not that he could solve the puzzle of where it had gone. It wasn’t in the truck and it wasn’t in the woods, but it had been in the house.

  Donovan didn’t like where that thinking led him and he tried to turn his brain off. He changed to a more mundane subject. “Is Avery’s team going to make it to the playoffs?”

  “Yes!” Her tone changed dramatically and Donovan wondered how far this relationship would go. “His team won their series and pretty quickly, too. He has almost a week off. Of course, their ‘break’ only means three days, but he’ll be here this afternoon.”

  She almost buzzed with excitement and Donovan thought of Walter Reed. She was Lucy Fisher when she was coming on to him. And he wanted to see her again, but he didn’t have Eleri’s buzz. Should he? Was that the mark of the “real thing”? He had no idea.

  “Seriously, Donovan, go for a run. It’s some beautiful land, and you’re my guest.” She stood up. “Eat whatever is in the fridge. Sleep when you want. As long as Wade isn’t running around shouting ‘Eureka!’ that is.”

  “Does he do that?” Donovan frowned, having a hard time imagining that was how Wade reacted to solving a problem.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Eleri countered as she stood and cleared her plate and crumbs from the table. She put her dishes into a slick machine hidden behind a cabinet panel. Like everything else in the kitchen, it was oversized, yet somehow the tiny Eleri fit in just fine. It was Donovan’s bulk that didn’t.

  Eleri disappeared into other parts of the house. Donovan hadn’t yet gotten lost, per se, but he’d had his moments. He looked again out the window, realizing he wasn’t yet ready to go out and let go. He was too moody, too stuck. It didn’t help that they all were.

  The case had gone cold.

  No one had located Peter Aroya or his wife Mina Orlov Aroya. So no one had been notified of the death of Mina’s mother, Gennida Orlov. They’d questioned the apartment building residents again and the stories were even hazier than the first time. Donovan talked to one neighbor who recalled seeing Gennida Orlov that day, but this time the neighbor squinted her eyes and looked up and right as though struggling to remember it correctly.

  “I think she might have had extra groceries that day. Though that would have been odd.”

  Donovan remembered this woman and he was growing confused, too. The first time, just a few days ago, she’d said that Gennida Orlov had carried several bags of groceries and that it was odd. Now she acted as though being asked about the events leading up to her neighbor’s house fire was like being asked if she’d gone to the bank on a particular Tuesday seven years ago.

  To make it wors
e, several of the eye witnesses were now reluctant to commit to their stories. With the apartment complex pushing for a hasty clean-up, it felt like this part of the case was simply disappearing from under them. He’d never seen such terrible witnesses. Most people wanted to tell you ev-ery-thing. Down to what socks they’d been wearing and what coffee they’d ordered at the shop that morning.

  He and Wade had gone back to the Arvads’ home—at least no one was pushing to clean up that crime scene—and found . . . nothing. Just more of the same. So the flame thrower didn’t just have to be portable, it had to be scent-free and able to be picked up by a random person on the road. For a moment, his brain wandered again to the possibility that there was no flamethrower. Then he reminded himself that Wade thought there was. Donovan turned back to the hitchhiking theory. He couldn’t imagine what kind of man picked up a woman carrying a flame thrower! For a moment, he wondered if she was beautiful, if that was maybe the trick. Often people got stupid if they thought they could possibly have something they believed was beyond them. He knew. He’d done it enough in high school. Until he learned he couldn’t have things.

  He wandered the long hallway in the house, the floor more visibly worn along the center where feet had tread since long before their grandfathers were born. Tables and the occasional sideboard lined the hallway, because it was wide enough for that. Paintings of Eleri’s ancestors hung on the walls, oils old enough to need serious care.

  He stopped and looked at one.

  Thomas Hale. The painting was so old as to clearly be from another era. Though the name plate revealed no more than the first and last names, the signature on the painting said 1643. Had he been drinking something, Donovan would have spit it all over the canvas.

  He looked at the other paintings as he went. John Hale. Sarah Hale. Rebecca Eames.

  Did the names just sound familiar because he knew Eleri’s father was Thomas Hale Eames and the first names were all common ones?