I hesitated a moment, then decided to throw caution to the wind. "Um… I've heard that the room I'm in is supposed to be haunted."
He looked up at that, frowning at my dark glasses.
"Eye condition," I told him with a wave at my face. "My eyes are… uh… sensitive."
"Oh."
"Do you happen to know anything about room one-fourteen? Who it's supposed to be haunted by, that is?"
His frown deepened. "If you'd like another room—"
"No, no, it's not that; the room is fine. I was just curious about the ghost that's supposed to haunt the room. I love history, you see, and thought there might be an interesting story connected to the room."
"Oh," he said again, his gaze slipping down to his magazine. "Supposed to be an old lady and her cat. Died in the room in a fire."
"The old lady or the cat?"
He shrugged and moistened a pudgy finger to turn the magazine page. "Both."
"Ah. When was that, do you know?"
He shot me an annoyed look. "What's it to you, then?"
It was my turn to shrug. "Just casual interest."
He eyed me suspiciously for a moment, then returned to the magazine. "I heard the old lady died sometime during World War Two. This hotel was blitzed. Everyone made it out but her and the cat."
Interesting. I wonder why my Summons drew only the cat and not the human ghost? Maybe I didn't use enough dead man's ash. Or perhaps I just didn't have enough strength to Summon a more complex spirit as a human. Former human.
I nodded my thanks to the desk clerk and limped off to find a cab. When you have one leg shorter than the other, riddled with scar tissue that has defied even the most dedicated of orthopedic surgeons, you hesitate to spend long hours on your feet, let alone walking anywhere that can easily be reached by a comfy cab. I used the short cab ride out to the building located near the Southwark Bridge to muse over whether or not the successful Summoning of a ghostly cat meant I'd have luck at the haunted inn.
"Maybe just a smidge more dead man's ash," I mused aloud before realizing the cabdriver was giving me a worried look in the mirror. I smiled in what I hoped was a suitably reassuring manner and kept the rest of my musings to myself.
Ten minutes later I limped around to the back of a tiny old building dwarfed by a nearby sports complex. About three hundred years ago the small building had been an inn, but had most recently been used as headquarters for a trendy decorating shop. Now it was empty, reportedly due to the unusual and unexplained "phenomena" that was connected with the inn's distant past. A thin man of medium height stood shivering by the door, waving his flashlight at me as I hobbled up.
"There you are, thought you'd never come. I'm freezin' my arse off here!"
"Sorry. I take it you're Carlos?"
The man stomped his feet, nodding as he pulled out a key and unlocked the door. "I can only give you twenty minutes. There's a show everyone from SIP is going to, and it starts at ten."
"A show?" I asked as I followed him into the building, pulling the ultrasonic emission detector from my bag and flipping it on. "What sort of a show?"
Our footsteps echoed eerily as we walked down a corridor paved with broken flagstones, our breath little white clouds of air that puffed before us. I sniffed, then blew out a disgusted breath. The air was thick with stink from the nearby Thames—the whole building clearly suffered from damp, long fingers of mildew creeping up the wallpapered walls. In addition to the smell of a musty, closed-up building, the sharply acidic note of rodent droppings made it clear that although humans might shun it, four-legged residents found it an entirely suitable abode.
"It's not really a show, per se, more of a test for psychics. It's sponsored by a very powerful medium, Guarda White. She's holding nightly Summonings for a week, trying to assemble a group of proven psychics. Everyone in SIP is mad to try out for a spot on her team."
It sounded like a bunch of hooey to me. Dedicated Summoners did not perform in theaters for the amusement of the masses. Still, Carlos was my host. It probably was best I not ridicule his excitement.
"Why is she assembling a team of psychics?" I asked as we climbed a dark staircase. I had my own flashlight out now, my sunglasses pushed up as I alternated between scanning the ground in front of me for debris and checking the walls of the common room that stretched before us. The ultrasonic detector was quiet. I paused long enough to pop it back into the bag and pull out the ion detector before hurrying to catch up with Carlos.
"… creating the greatest team of paranormal investigators that Britain has ever seen. It's all pure research, of course, the team being sent out to hot spots to locate and verify entities and disturbances. The team will be paid from a private fund set up by Mrs. White."
In other words, it was a pet project set up by another fan of the unexplained who likely had more money than brain cells. Ah, well, I thought to myself as we climbed to the top floor of the building, her little group of devotees certainly can't hurt the cause, and might actually do some good if she uses scientific methods to obtain proof that would shake even the most skeptical of critics' arguments against the existence of ghosts, poltergeists, and other until-now unexplained phenomenon.
"This is the top floor," Carlos said, the light from his flashlight sweeping in an arc around the area at the top of the stairs. "That room over there has had recorded temperature drops of ten degrees. The door at the end of the landing leads to the room where a pig farmer was murdered. He's seen only on nights with a full moon, so you probably won't have much luck there. Across the hall is the room where a vicar named Phillip Michaels was set upon by thieves, and left hanging. And to the left"—he turned and shone his light beyond me. I turned my face away. There was no need to scare him—"is the room where the Red Lady is seen."
"That's the one who jumped to her death rather than submit to her bridegroom?" I asked as I pulled out the infrared scope, juggling the ion detector, flashlight, and scope not too successfully as I headed to the left.
"That's the one."
I set my bag outside the door and took a reading at the door. There was nothing. Cautiously, so as not to scare any spirits who might be lurking within, I opened the door. It creaked open in suitably eerie fashion.
The room had a couple of broken pieces of office furniture and a strong smell of mice, but nothing that looked even remotely ghostly. One by one I checked my detectors and got no reading. Carlos stood in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot as I dictated a few notes on what I was seeing and feeling (cold, and a distinct aversion to mice) to my voice recorder.
I glanced at my watch and realized I had only seven minutes left to examine the rest of the building. I gnawed my lip for a minute, trying to decide what to do. I really didn't want to be left alone in the building, but I did want to try a Summoning after my success earlier this evening. The question was, how much did I want it? I took a deep breath and reminded myself that although I'd seen lots of strange things in my time—not the least of which was a three-legged semitransparent cat currently sleeping in my hotel room—at no time had I ever felt physically threatened. I was a Summoner, after all. I had wards. I was in control, and no one could take that from me. I traced a protection symbol in front of me and said, "Urn… Carlos, why don't you go on to this séance thingy you want to see? I'll close up here when I'm done."
I peeked at him through the screen of my hair. He looked hesitant for as long as it took him to realize that the sooner he left, the sooner he'd be warm. "If you're sure you don't mind being here by yourself?" He looked around and only just suppressed a shudder.
"No, no problem. I don't mind these sorts of places. They're usually very peaceful." They were until I'd successfully Summoned my first ghost, that was. My palms prickled at the thought of what I might accomplish in a really haunted building like this. "If you just set the keys next to my bag, I'll lock up on my way out, and drop the keys by your office in the morning."
He hesitated for a mome
nt. "You're sure?"
I swallowed hard and waved him away without looking at him. "Absolutely. I'm just going to try my hand at a spot of Summoning; then I'll check out the rest of the rooms. It's only the top floor that's supposed to be active, yes?"
"That's right."
"Okay, then, I'll check out these rooms, then toddle back to my hotel. Have a nice séance."
He was gone before the words left my lips. I sat quietly and listened to the sound of his footsteps as they retreated down the stairs, then the faint percussion of the back door closing behind him. I took an admittedly shaky breath, looking around the room. I was alone. By myself. In a building that was supposed to be one of the most haunted places in London.
Sometimes I'm not very bright.
An hour later I rose from where I had been kneeling in the room supposedly haunted by a murdered pig farmer. My leg was stiff and sore from sitting on hard wooden floors, my fingers were almost numb with cold despite my gloves, and I had lost all feeling in my nose.
"So much for one of London's most haunted buildings," I said sourly to the empty room as I gathered up my equipment and started for the stairs. The feeling of uneasiness that had first claimed me when Carlos left hadn't dissipated, but I haven't fought for control of my life to let a little thing like fear rule me. So even though the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end the entire time I checked out the upper rooms, I gritted my teeth and conducted four Summonings, none of which brought me anything more than a desire for a thermos of hot coffee and a really big piece of key lime pie.
"And there's no chance of either materializing in this place," I said aloud as I limped heavily down the stairs. My voice echoed strangely as it reached the second floor. I got a severe case of goose bumps, but nothing showed up on either of the two detectors I held, or on the more efficient scanner that made up my personal sensitivity to otherworldly happenings. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and held my breath, opening myself up to the building, imagining myself slowly walking through the rooms. There was nothing on this floor that disturbed me, and nothing on the ground floor below it, but deeper in the earth, in the basement, there was a shadowed area that made me shiver uncontrollably. I couldn't penetrate the darkness to determine what was there, but I could feel its awareness, a sense of blackness that went beyond the mere absence of color.
Something soulless was down there.
And whatever it was, it knew I was here.
Chapter Two
"Okay, Allie, do not panic. This is exactly what you've been waiting for," I told myself as I fought to keep my feet from racing down the stairs and out the door. "This is what you studied for, what you swore you could do when Anton hired you. This is your job. Failure is not an option. You know what'll happen if you don't investigate this!"
Oh, I knew. Everything I'd worked the last seven years for, every bruise I'd suffered, every small success from learning to balance a checkbook to getting a job, every triumph over the monster who had dominated my life would be dismissed, eradicated, wiped out, and I'd be the failure that Timothy so often screamed I was. Not good for anything, too stupid to ever survive on my own.
A freak.
I lifted my head and squared my shoulders, holding my bag close to me as I slowly walked down the stairs. There was nothing on this earth that could frighten me as much as the life I had once been trapped in; if I was strong enough to leave an abusive husband, I was strong enough to face a little sentient darkness.
I held that thought until I started down the stairs to the basement. Then all sorts of warning bells and whistles went off in my head, not to mention the voice of sanity, which was screaming to hell with my honor; I needed to get out of there right then, before whatever was behind the door at the bottom of the stairs got me.
A cold wave of sheer and utter terror washed over me, stopping me dead on the middle of the stairs, my feet refusing to move anymore, my hand gripping the dusty banister in a manner that would take a crowbar to release it. I couldn't breathe, so oppressive was the blackness beyond the door. I couldn't swallow, I couldn't blink, and I seriously doubted if my heart was beating. A faint noise, a distant, soft, muffled beat from the room throbbed along the edge of my awareness.
"Heartbeat," I croaked through lips numb with fear, then instantly regretted the word as I felt the darkness beyond gathering itself, turning its attention to me. "Oh, crap," I whispered, torn between the need to escape, and the knowledge that I would fail my life's calling if I didn't confront what was in that room.
My heart suddenly resumed beating, racing now, making me dizzy with the sudden flow of blood to what passed for my brain. I was light-headed and disoriented, but suddenly the choice was made.
I would resist the urge to flee danger—it's a powerful instinct, and a difficult one to deny. I used my free hand to pry my fingers from the banister, and whimpered ever so softly as I shifted my legs until they took a step down.
"One," I counted in a voice so soft that even a feather hitting the ground would drown it out. I took another step down. "Two. Three left to go. Three. Two left."
My stomach roiled, making me regret drinking the water earlier. "Four. One more, Allie. You can do it."
My breath got caught up in a strange panting sort of rhythm, which I used to distract that part of my brain screaming at me to flee. I made it down the last step, and stood in front of the closed door.
I could feel whatever was beyond the door now, without even trying to open myself up to it. In fact, I did just the opposite, throwing up as many barriers between my mind and the thing as I could create. It didn't help much. Inside the room I could feel a howling wind of torment, anguish, pain so deep it had no beginning and no ending. And everywhere there was darkness, blackness, an absolute void of light. Hopelessness filled that room, and reminded me of the antique maps where cartographers had penned images of monstrous sea creatures with the notation that "Here be dragons."
Somehow I had a feeling that a dragon would be much easier to face.
I sketched protective wards around me to all four compass points, made a Herculean effort to calm my panic-stricken mind, and with one quick continuous move that didn't let me think, put my hand on the doorknob and threw the door open.
The light from my flashlight didn't seem to penetrate the darkness within at first; then the faint pat pat pat noise caught my attention, and I turned the light to the left side of the room.
The light glinted back from a wooden table. Lying on the table was a dark shape, a bulky dark shape, a human dark shape. Recognition suddenly filled my mind as I stepped forward hesitantly, then dropped my bag and raced into the room. It was the man from my dream, the man who'd suffered some horrible death. His ghost was here, trapped in this room, lying in eternal torment and suffering, waiting for someone—me—to release him from his earthly bondage.
"Oh, you poor thing," I said as I stood over him, clutching my hands. I wanted to touch him, but I knew that to break the spirit's cycle was not a good thing. Although his eyes weren't open, as they were in my dream, I knew he was aware of me. "Don't worry; I'm a professional. I'm going to help you, to send you on, so you'll be at peace at last. Oh, boy, that blood looks really realistic. You must have suffered terribly before you died. Just hold tight there, and let me get my book, and I'll take care of everything."
I hurried back to my bag and dug out my notepad, the chalk, and the powdered ginseng that a wizard friend of mine swore would be great in a Release. I stood over the body of the man, the faint splat of blood dripping from the table to the floor making the only noise. "Um… Releasing a spirit, Releasing a spirit, where is it, I know I—Oh, here it is." I tucked the flashlight under my chin and used one hand to open up the stopper on the ginseng, the other to trace a symbol of protection over the ghost. Poor man, he needed all the help he could get.
Plop, plop, plop went the drip of blood. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle went the ground ginseng over the ghost. Tickle, tickle, tickle went my nose.
"Go. Away."
I looked up from the notebook where I was reading the procedure to Release a ghost to stare at the man lying before me. Had he spoken, or was it my own overheated imagination that made me think he had? The ghost was lying as still as ever; not even his chest moved. I leaned closer and couldn't help but notice that the man I saw in my dream, the god, the perfect embodiment of masculinity, was nothing compared to him in the flesh.
So to speak.
Despite having every visible surface (and I had the worst urge to peek under the cloth draped over his crotch) mutilated by cuts, he was breathtakingly gorgeous. His skin was tanned and looked—other than the cuts—to be firm and invitingly touchable. The muscles that banded his chest and marched down his stomach were well defined without being too obvious. His arms, crossed over his belly, were covered in a fine dark hair that matched the hair on his chest. I skipped over the covered bits, and mourned that someone had so tortured such a delectable man. He clearly belonged to an age at least a hundred or so years in the past, if the thick muscles of his thighs—what my mother used to call horseman's thighs—were any indication. But it was his face that drew my attention, a strong face made up of harsh angles and a stubborn chin.
"You really must have been something before you were tortured," I said, my fingers itching to push back the lock of sable hair from his brow. His face alone was unmarked, and I wondered what horrible event had brought him to such an end. I tore my gaze from his lips—really, really nice lips—and reminded myself that it wasn't polite to ogle the ghosts.
"Must have been my imagination," I told him, then set the chalk down on the ground next to me so I could make the protection symbols as I spoke the words of Release.
"Go away. I don't want to be Released."
I dropped my notebook. "What? Who said that?"
I spun around, pulling the flashlight out from where it was clamped beneath my chin. "Carlos? Is that you?"
Sex and the Single Vampire do-2 Page 2
