Deadline (Blood Trails Book 1)

by Jennifer Blackstream

  I took a step toward my back room and all my supplies. “Yes.”

  “Shade?”

  I paused, looked back over my shoulder. Mother Hazel’s face grew serious, an unsettling intensity in her eyes pinning me in place like a physical weight.

  “Your path is forking. Once you take this step, you can never go back.”

  It sounded like something you’d find in a fortune cookie, but Mother Hazel’s voice gave the words power, drilling them down into my soul. I’d known this decision meant a fork in my path, every choice did. But the way Mother Hazel said it… It sounded more important. More final. No going back. A chill ran over my skin and I shivered, my eyes drifting closed.

  When I opened them again, she was gone.

  CHAPTER 3

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Peasblossom’s voice was tinier than usual, even with her arms around my neck and her mouth a hair’s breadth from my earlobe. I patted her between the wings with one finger, trying to ignore the chill coating my skin like the kiss of unnatural fog. I stood in the Millers’ driveway with my feet planted on pristine white cement, but I hadn’t quite managed to make myself close the car door. Instinct screamed at me to keep it open. Be ready for a quick escape.

  “We don’t know she’s dead.” I pried my hand off the door, forcing myself to step back so I could close it. My nerve endings tingled, aware that there was no longer anything standing between me and that house. I pulled a gem from my pocket, staring down at the multifaceted cerulean surface. A pulse of blue light flickered inside the stone, confirming what my fight-or-flight reflex had already told me. That haunted house.

  It towered before me, the crown jewel of a neighborhood that looked like it would cost a hundred dollars just to drive through. White stone glowed in the high noon sunlight, a few spots of darker stone providing artistic contrast. A heavy mahogany door topped a small front porch squeezed between two massive white pillars that screamed decadence more than functionality.

  But no beauty could hide the shadows. Darkness unrelated to a lack of sunlight teased the edges of my vision. I stood in full sunlight on a day that felt more like May than February, but even my bones felt the cold.

  “She’s dead,” Peasblossom repeated.

  I put the stone in the pocket of my shirt, squaring my shoulders as I faced the house. “It could be a different ghost tripping the spell.” I gestured behind the house. “That’s Lake Erie. We’re not that far from the wreck of the Anthony Wayne.”

  “The Anthony Wayne,” Peasblossom echoed. She stood a little taller, and for a second I thought she’d fly up to get a better look at the water. “I don’t remember that one.”

  My brain seized the welcome distraction, and I nodded. “It happened at the end of the eighteenth century. The Anthony Wayne was carrying wine and whiskey along with almost a hundred passengers from Toledo, Ohio to Buffalo, New York. They were near this area when two starboard boilers exploded. Only thirty people survived.”

  “That’s awful.”

  I looked out at the lake, the slate-gray water looking even more ominous in the light of the grisly images parading through my mind. I hadn’t been there for the wreck, but I remembered reading about it in the paper the next day.

  “You know, the strange thing is, both of the boilers that exploded were brand new,” I murmured. “They shouldn’t have malfunctioned, let alone exploded.”

  “You suspect foul play?”

  “I wondered,” I admitted. “At the time, Mother Hazel wasn’t giving me much free rein. The wreck happened just after that unfortunate incident with the banshee.”

  Peasblossom shuddered. “Let’s not talk about that. Lesson learned, don’t anger the washerwoman.”

  “I should have looked into it. You know, there was a man on board with his two children. They were escorting his wife’s coffin to Buffalo to be buried. When the ship sank, he put his children on her coffin to keep them afloat.” Sadness swept over me and I looked away from the water. The waves had eventually swept the young boy off the coffin. Only the father and his daughter had survived. Peasblossom didn’t need to know that part of the tragedy, though. Despite her bravado, the pixie had a soft heart.

  “Maybe instead of this private investigator business, we can be salvagers? Eh?” Peasblossom suggested. “Modern-day treasure hunters. Much safer than hanging about with a dead woman.”

  “We don’t know she’s dead,” I said again. I tore my thoughts from the past and faced the door to the Miller home. “We have to stay objective. Leaping to conclusions won’t do anyone any good.” I straightened my fleece wrap, making sure it was tucked securely over my shoulder. “Did you find anything else on Mr. Miller?”

  “He has a few social media accounts, but he hasn’t been very active. Some of his profiles are private, but from what I could see, it was mostly friends and family offering condolences on Helen. People stopped saying she’ll be back about three days ago.” She poked me in the neck with one tiny finger. “We’d know more about him if you’d asked Bryan for the file.”

  “First of all, we weren’t hired to find Helen Miller,” I said calmly. “We were asked to find out if Bryan’s hunch is right, and there’s a ghost haunting the Miller house. Second, Bryan doesn’t have access to those files, so he’d have to ask the agent assigned to the case. We need more to bring to the table if we’re going to earn a place in the investigation.”

  I’d parked in front of a massive, five-car garage, and I had to resist the urge to peek inside one of the small windows lining the brown doors just to distract myself from what I knew was coming. One foot in front of the other carried me to the front porch, and with grim determination, I climbed the four small steps and knocked on the door.

  “She must have been a successful architect to have a beachfront home.” Peasblossom cleared her throat. “Living at the edge of the water, they must have seen more than their fair share of the Otherworld. Think he’ll see me?”

  “Best not to find out. If he’s living with a ghost, he’ll be on edge. No need to push him over.”

  I’d half expected an argument, but Peasblossom edged around my neck and wormed under the fleece wrap to drop into the small decorative hood on the back of my shirt. “Taking his own time to answer, isn’t he?”

  “It’s been half a second. The house is huge, it’ll take him ten minutes to walk to the door.”

  It didn’t. The door opened before I’d finished speaking, revealing a man in his mid-thirties or early forties. Brown eyes showed too much white, and a brown beard did nothing to hide the gauntness of his face. Product-tamed hair betrayed signs of having a hand run through it a few too many times, and dark circles under his eyes broadcast a lack of sleep. The black pants and collared white shirt hung on his frame as if he’d lost a lot of weight, and for a tense moment I feared he’d spill out of the door and collapse onto the front stoop.

  Before I could offer him a juice box or a cookie—both of which I had in my waist pouch—he gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his haunted eyes. “Hi. Can I help you?”

  “Hi, are you Mr. Miller?”

  “Yes.”

  I raised my hand, simultaneously drawing on my power, threading it through my voice. “My name is Shade Renard. I’m here to talk to you about your wife’s disappearance.”

  He swayed forward, swallowing hard. “Have you found her?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  Suspicion narrowed his eyes and he tightened his grip on the door. “I don’t recognize you. You work for the FBI?”

  I poured a little more magic into my voice. Purple light glittered in the air between us, imperceptible to anyone but me and my familiar. “I’m consulting for the FBI. I’d like to speak with you inside for a moment, if that’s all right? It won’t take long.”

  The mention of going inside drew a flinch from my host, and for a moment I thought he’d refuse even with the charm softening his resistance. Now that I thought about it, he’d come out on
the porch as soon as he’d answered the door, even though that meant leaving less-than-polite distance between us. Tension hummed in his body, and when I took a small step back, he followed, as if fighting the urge to run away from the house. He’s terrified.

  “I promise it really won’t take long.” I gave the magic another push to get past not only his natural suspicion, but his apparent desperation to flee, to get away from something inside the house. His wife’s ghost, I guessed.

  Finally, he nodded and stepped back. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? Yes, of course. Come in, please.”

  Cautiously, I crossed the threshold. A cold wind that had nothing to do with the February chill swept up my spine. Mr. Miller held out a hand, offering to take my wrap, but I shook my head, using the length of black fleece to hide my hand as I drew a few symbols in the air.

  “Revelare,” I whispered.

  Power pulsed through the room in a wide silver net. It settled like a film over my surroundings, but there was no answering tingle of energy, no twinkling lights snared in the net. The wind wasn’t magic, then, not a spell. There were no enchanted objects nearby, not beyond what I carried myself. I slid a hand into my pocket, opening it to glance down at the stone inside. The blue light glowed brighter. A warning the undead were near.

  “Mr. Miller?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did your wife have a favorite room?”

  He paused in the entryway to the living room, a cavernous area outlined with leather couches and dominated by a theater-worthy entertainment center. “She liked the porch. Said it helped her dream of new buildings when she wasn’t trapped inside an existing one.”

  I pretended to scratch the back of my neck, trapping Peasblossom where she’d crawled out to have a look around. She strained against my hold, and I could almost see her reaching for the shiny buttons glittering from the media center. “Could I see it?”

  Something passed through his brown eyes, deepening the crow’s feet at each corner. One hand closed into a fist. For a moment I thought he would refuse my request. Perhaps being in her favorite room was too painful. Then he nodded.

  “This way.”

  Everything in the Miller house screamed class and expense—all the furniture butter-soft leather, all the carpets so thick it was like walking on a cloud. There wasn’t a single scratch on any of the polished wood, not a smudge on the stark white walls. Even with the ghost’s presence pressing against me, the unmistakable dread filling every breath of air with the despair of the undead, I was acutely aware of the fact that just a few hours ago I’d been tromping about a muddy riverbank. My neck itched with the need to turn and see if my thick winter boots had left footprints in my wake.

  “This is it. Her favorite spot. Please don’t touch the sketchpad on the table. She doesn’t like—” He stopped, then gritted his teeth. “She doesn’t like people to touch her things.”

  Doesn’t, not didn’t. He wasn’t ready to admit she was gone. My heart ached for him, and when he stopped a few yards from the patio door, I stopped with him.

  “Mr. Miller, if I could trouble you for a cup of tea?” I asked, keeping my voice light. “It’s chilly today, I could use the warmup.”

  He nodded too fast, a fine trembling starting in his hands and traveling down his body. He didn’t run from the patio, but there was a definite lurch to his step, as if he had to fight not to break into a sprint. Peasblossom climbed out of my hood to look after him.

  “She’s been haunting him for a while. He needs to go somewhere else, a friend’s, family’s, somewhere.”

  I nodded. “I’ll take him with me when we leave. He must have a friend nearby he can stay with.”

  “He’s not sleeping, that’s for sure. I’ll bet he hasn’t had a decent meal in forever, either.” Peasblossom propped her chin on my shoulder. “We should send him some honey.”

  “You have a good heart, Peasblossom.”

  We were stalling again. The glass door of the patio offered an unrestricted view of a lavish, sheltered area crowned by a broad fireplace with a large television mounted in the stone above it. Pictures lined the mantel, and even from this distance I could see they were of the Millers. An eight-by-ten photo had them sitting on the beach, Mrs. Miller draped across her husband’s lap. They were both laughing. Happy. I forced myself forward, grasped the handle, and slid the door open.

  Air flowed over me like a gust from a walk-in freezer. Immediately I felt eyes on me. The unmistakable weight of someone’s full and undivided attention. I turned, refocusing my gaze across the paved floor to the red-cushioned wicker furniture surrounding a squat stone coffee table. There, sitting on the couch facing the water, was Mrs. Miller.

  What was left of her.

  The ghost didn’t move. She stared out over Lake Erie, flyaways from her long, straight blonde ponytail stirred by the breeze. A pair of thick-rimmed rectangular glasses perched on her nose, and she wore a broad-strapped black tank top and beige Capri pants. The translucent nature of her form gave me a good view of the cushions on the other side of the couch.

  “Mrs. Miller?” I kept my voice calm, just loud enough to keep the breeze over the lake from stealing my voice. “My name is Shade Renard.”

  Peasblossom shouted a warning, a wordless shriek before she shot into the air and disappeared in a streak of pink light. My heart leapt into my throat. I shoved my hand into my left pocket, grabbing a handful of grave dust as I threw myself back.

  Helen hurtled toward me like a sheet caught on a sharp gust of wind, her gauzy form fading away at mid-thigh. Her eyes bleached to pure white orbs rolling in their sockets, and her mouth opened impossibly wide, giving her a macabre look straight from a Hollywood horror film. My breath caught in my throat, frozen in my lungs by the frigid cold rolling off her. I hurled the grave dust.

  Gray powder coated the ghost’s incorporeal form. She shuddered and froze in midair, twitching like a fly pinned to a glue trap. Those empty eyes widened even further, and she fixed me with a look that shoved wicked shards of ice into my bloodstream.

  I closed my hand into a fist until the ring on my finger dug into the fingers on either side, a comforting reminder of the enchanted object’s presence. “Armatura.” A flare of blue energy flowed out of the gold band, coating my body with a thin shield. My heart pounded as the shield closed just as the first sound trickled from the ghost’s lips.

  There’s a reason people who encounter ghosts always mention the moaning. For a ghost, a moan isn’t just a sound, isn’t just a mournful cry. It’s fear and desperation, fury and pain, all melted into a sound that drives itself into your body, poisons your mind. The warbling, chilling sound flowed from Helen’s mouth, bored into my ears, and froze my insides one molecule of blood at a time. I folded, my spine bowing and my head falling so my dark hair almost brushed the ground. Tears filled my eyes and my breathing came faster and faster. I knew I had to calm down, knew I had to stop before I hyperventilated, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I wrapped my arms around myself, closed my eyes, and reached for my magic.

  Run, run, run, get away, flee.

  I couldn’t shut the sound out, couldn’t stop that moan from reverberating louder and louder in my mind. Every nerve ending trembled, and the urge to run burned in the muscles of my legs.

  Shattering ceramic behind me betrayed Mr. Miller’s return. I had a second to realize I must have been standing here longer than I thought, frozen with fear long enough for my host to return with my tea. I wrenched my face up to look at him, to see what happened next. Another moan poured from the ghost, a wind heavy with despair and pain.

  The effect on Mr. Miller was instantaneous. He screamed and fled, feet pounding the floor as he bolted though the house. The front door slammed. A second later, a shout of pain followed.

  My heart skipped a beat. Was he hurt? What happened?

  Pull yourself together. Do what you came here to do.

  I gritted my teeth, picked a spot on the floor, and stared hard at it.
I planted my feet shoulder width apart and forced myself to look at Helen.

  She stood facing me with those empty white eyes, her mouth still open in that awful, skin-crawling moan. The sound made my legs tremble with the need to flee, but I locked my knees together and raised my chin. She’s not evil, I reminded myself, grasping the fraying ends of my courage. She’s in pain. She needs help.

  “My name is Shade Renard,” I said again, putting as much strength into my voice as I could. “I’m here to help you. Helen Miller, I’m here to help you.”

  The moaning stopped. Brown irises bobbed to the surface of those empty eyes, darkening her gaze. She blinked, and for just a second, she looked more human, more…present. Her head lolled forward and her shoulders shook as she cried.

  My legs wobbled as though made of rubber, but I forced myself to take a step toward her. “Can you talk?” I lurched forward another step. “Can you tell me what happened to you?”

  Asking who killed her would be pointless. The trauma of murder almost always wiped the experience clean from a ghost's mind. But she should recall something, some detail that might help. Some clue to start me on the right path.

  “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

  Helen’s legs rematerialized. She wavered, tried to step back, but the grave dust held her in place.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Peasblossom’s voice drew my attention to her new location above the television. I said a small prayer of gratitude, thankful she’d avoided the brunt of the ghost’s moan.

  “I’m not sure. Even a murder victim’s ghost can speak. Should speak.” I steeled myself against any sudden moves or changes on behalf of the ghost. Despite her translucent state, the details of Mrs. Miller’s body remained visible. I’d seen her from every angle but the back, but I’d seen no sign of how she’d died. “Her ghost form should reveal clues to her murder, at least in some small way, but I don’t see anything. No slash marks on her flesh or clothing, no bullet wounds. No burns, no scars. Do you see anything?”