For the first time, Theo’s face relaxed the used-car salesman’s hyena smile. “Sorry, mister. I saw you readin’ the article up there and thought—”
“Nope. I am curious, though. The girl who seated me said something about the grill being here before the hotel was built?”
Now that there wasn’t a sale to be made, Theo answered more slowly. “Yeah, they built the hotel around the restaurant. Story is that Mr. Barta wouldn’t sell the land to the resort people, so they made a deal with him. He’d run the grill like his immigrant father before him, and the company got the novelty of having some local color. The deal made Barta a ton of money, and all he had to do was allow them to remodel the side of his building for an entrance straight from the lobby. I guess all that money that he got made him irresistible to the ladies, and well, you know what happened next.”
“Irresistible to the ladies? You said he was sleeping with the hotel staff. It sounds like an act of availability more than anything.”
Theo shrugged. “Who can figure out love?”
A slender woman in her late thirties dressed in a black shirt and slacks approached them. She carried a large box labeled “Produce.” Her voice was pleasant but firm. “Theo, I need you to tend to station six.” She turned her focus to Gavin and offered a well-rehearsed smile. “I‘m the manager, Christy Parr. Are you Mr. Gavin Curtis?”
When he nodded, she said, “Then this must be for you.” She removed the lid. “Is this a big enough box for what you need?”
Theo butted in. “Oh, man, Gavin Curtis? The writer?” He ran his palm across his sandy-blond hair, laughing. “You really had me going with the line about the ‘macabre drink’ and all.”
Christy shot him a dirty look undoubtedly reserved for wayward subordinates. Unfazed, Theo’s smirk returned to full power. “Hey, are you here doing research or something? I could waive the tour fee, be like a consultant to you or something.”
The woman clamped a firm hand on the worker’s shoulder. “Theo—”
He was wound up and didn’t seem to notice her. “You know, people come from all around for the ghost-story angle on this thing. Like I said, I could take you by the room where they say—”
“Theo!” she scolded. Christy put the box at Gavin’s feet and then whispered in Theo’s ear.
The smile melted from his face, and his body slumped slightly. “I know, but—”
A few heated seconds later, the woman stepped back to face Gavin. Her countenance transformed back into the pleasant, soft smile that she’d first offered him.
Theo looked like a dog thwacked by a rolled-up magazine. “Mr. Curtis, I’m sorry, but I have to get to some things. If you want a tour, just let Ms. Parr know a time and she can arrange it for us.”
Theo looked at Christy, who gave him a slow nod, before he added, “Sorry if I was too pushy and all.”
“It’s fine.” Gavin addressed Christy. “I was looking at the article.”
Theo excused himself before his boss saw the smirk forming on his face, but Gavin saw it.
“Sorry about that,” she said, bending to pick up the box. “We don’t get many celebrities, and, given the nature of your writing—”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said, lowering to a crouch to take it from her. “Occupational hazard.” Then he inspected the box. “Yes, this will do fine.”
The two stood again as he asked, “What was this placed called before the… suicide stuff?”
“Before ‘Hungry Waters’? I think it was called something like the Riverbed or Riverside Tavern. I’m not sure. That was way before my time here, but I could find out if it’s important to your research.”
“No, that’s okay. Thanks for the box.”
Gavin hurried back to his table and tossed the box into the seat across the booth. When his meal arrived a few minutes later, he wolfed it down so quickly, he’d likely have indigestion later. He didn’t care. He’d already spent too much time away from his room.
As he finished the last of his onion rings, Theo appeared in his corner booth.
“Hey, man, I’m glad you’re still here.” The shark-toothed smile was back. “I didn’t know if Christy gave you my info yet, so here it is.”
Gavin received the scrap of receipt paper from him with no comment.
“It’s my email address and cell for your story research about Hungry Waters.”
Gavin’s server Katelyn approached them with her blond ponytail bouncing in rhythm and swaying with every step. “Here’s your check, Mr. Curtis.”
When he accepted it, she turned her attention to his unwelcome sidekick. “Hey, Theo, better not let Parr catch you over here. I thought you called in sick again.”
“Nah, car just ran out of gas on the way here.”
Gavin could tell the two had a thing for each other by the shift in body language.
“Well, at least if you run out of gas, you can’t get into any more wrecks.”
Theo countered, obviously trying to make her blush, “The car don’t need to be rollin’ for me to drive in the backseat.”
The words caused an idea to flash into Gavin’s mind, and he slammed the money for his meal on the table, startling both workers and getting a few heads turned in their direction. He sprang up from the booth, laughing, and grabbed Theo by the shoulders. “That’s it! It has to have the gas to run. It won’t work without it. Take away what it uses, and it stops and can’t go on!”
Gavin released his grip, and the young man staggered backward in shock. The disruption had every eye in the area of the restaurant focused on him, but Gavin didn’t care.
A frightened Katelyn leapt to the side as he reached around her for the empty box. He’d taken a few steps toward the exit when he turned back to face where she remained frozen in place. “You two may have just saved somebody from something awful happening to them!”
Eight
GAVIN STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS halfway to the elevators. The busy crowd parted around him like a stream flowing around the sides of a rock. Though he was completely still, his mind raced. Now he remembered where he’d seen the jewelry in the newspaper article picture.
The necklace? Is that the connection?
With the box tucked under his arm, he turned and faced the entrance of the bar and grill.
How can I find out?
Then it came to him. His sluggish steps forward turned into a trot, carrying him to the resort’s business center on the other side of the area. He found an empty terminal, plopped down in a chair, swiped his resort access card, and began to type.
Two minutes later, he was entering his credit card information into a genealogy website. Normally, he would have balked at the thirty-five-dollar fee to establish an account, but this was important. He was finally on the path to figuring some of this out.
When the answer appeared on his screen, Gavin belted out a loud “Yes!” and slapped the computer table. Two of the other users in the small area responded with a chastising “Shhhhhhh!”
He ignored them as he shot from his seat and raced to the valet station outside.
Nine miles and fifteen minutes later, he pulled up to the curb. Half-expecting Madame Kovács to be in her chair on the porch, he was relieved when she wasn’t. It gave him a moment to prepare what to say.
He rapped gently on the screen door and waited.
What if she’s not here? Or worse, what if she’s next door at the store?
The idea of another confrontation with Puma Jacket made his blood run cold. He knocked harder. “Madame Kovács?”
Muffled yelps rang out from behind the door.
Stupid little dog.
There was the sound of a mild skirmish between pet and master, and the high-pitched barking faded into a back room. Finally, the main porch door came alive. Two locks twisted and clicked into place, followed by the squeak of old hinges.
The fortuneteller cracked the door a few inches and looked through the screen.
Man, she’s ugly. Maybe I was wrong ab
out Torri and her.
“Madame Kovács, I need to ask—”
Upon recognizing Gavin, she immediately cut him off. “No, go… go from here! The police come for my nephew. You make police come and take him.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry about that. Look, I don’t want any trouble, but I need your help.”
“No help! Go!”
“But Madame Kovács, the woman in yellow, I know who she is.”
“Nothing here for you. Be leaving.”
The opening in the door grew smaller.
“Wait, I’m here about Torri! I need to talk to you. I need to speak to you about—”
The door slammed.
Gavin went “all in” and shouted, “It’s about your daughter! I need to talk to you about your daughter, Torri.”
There was a silence. He knew that she was still on the other side of the door, since the locks hadn’t twisted.
“Madame Kovács? I know you can hear me. Look, I’m sorry. I know we got off to a bad start the other day, but… “
He looked at his feet, listening for a response from inside.
“Madame Kovács, I… I need to know how to stop her. How do I stop Torri?”
To his surprise, the door reopened wider than before.
“Stop? Szellem… there is no stop, only waiting for her ninetieth year.”
She gripped the emerald pear necklace like a first-time skydiver pulling the parachute cord. “Machine not for you. Bad… no selling.”
She doesn’t know I have it.
“Are you saying—her ninetieth birthday—this keeps going until then? All right, okay, but help me understand. How does the machine work? Is it like a horcrux, or a—a whatchamacallit—a Koschei-egg-type-thing that Torri is fused with? The typewriter, it keeps her spirit somehow?”
She shifted her eyes from him, but not before Gavin caught a glimpse of her shame. He asked, “What is it? What happened to her?”
Kovács stared at the ground. “I try… you say protect… yes, protect her.”
“Like with an incantation or something?”
“I not know this word, but I protect her, but… she’s jumping.” She looked up with a hateful grimace that made Gavin shiver. “She jumping because of him.” The old woman pantomimed spitting in disgust. “He put his bad blood in her, make crazy, baby bad blood and Victoria crazy. My chant for her long life… good, happy life. That is spell, but now she gone.”
Gavin couldn’t believe it—tears were actually streaming down Kovács’s cheeks.
“Protect her. I protect Torri, but when she jumps, it make szellem, make ghost. Now she’s korlátozott… you say is ‘trapped.’ She is trapped, and no to stop for many years.”
“Can you undo it—reverse the protection spell or whatever it is?”
She was shaking. “Korlátozott! No! She become undone! Gone forever.”
“Okay, just calm down a minute. It’s okay.” Gavin spoke slowly, accentuating each word. “I need you to tell me how to stop this. What happens if I—or someone else—gets rid of the antique?”
She was on the verge of hysterics. “There is not stop—she is szellem!”
I’m losing her.
“Madame Kovács, I want to help Victoria—Torri. How can I help?”
“No help. She is szellem and is to try to return.”
Return? Now we’re onto something.
“Return how, Madame Kovács? How can Torri try to return if she died from the suicide? How does it work?”
Her eyes widened. “Back from other side into this world.” She gestured making an arc with one hand landing in the other with a clap. “Return. Must not happen this thing bad. She try to recon-sti… sti-tu… Torri try re-consti-tu… “
Gavin butted in. “Reconstitute? Are you trying to say reconstitute, as in re-form into flesh?”
Kovács nodded as she stroked the pear-shaped necklace. “Powerful chant, very powerful magic at work.”
“How do you stop it from happening?”
Kovács pointed at him. “No stop. This why she must not do this. She die with much hate on heart. Come back in evil.”
She wiped tears from her eyes, saying flatly, “Machine not for you to buy. You must leave alone.”
“Or what? What if I get the machine? What happens if Béla sells it to me?” Remembering he’d been taken away, Gavin corrected himself. “What if your other nephew gives it to me or someone else? Then what?”
“Not for sale, too dangerous.”
“But what would happen? Please, Madame, I have to know.”
She wiped her eyes and stared at him for what felt like an eternity.
“Please. What is it?”
“The doure sint,” she said in a cautious whisper and then spat on the ground as if expelling a mouthful of poison.
“The what?” He felt sweat roll down the back of his neck and licked his lips to wet his parched lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“It like a… like the coin,” she said, pointing at her trembling palm, then to the veiny back of the hand.
Gavin fumbled in his pocket and presented a quarter. To his astonishment, she opened the door and came forward, taking it from him. This was a breakthrough.
She held the coin up, slowly turning it from side to side. “Yes, this way.” She pointed to the heads side. “We here.” Twisting it to show the tails side. “Torri side. We not to see that side. But with doure sint, Torri change to our side.”
He knew they were making progress. The very fact that Kovács was speaking to him at all and had even come outside was huge. But what did it all mean? “Doure sint is what?”
She handed the coin back heads-up in his palm. “It make person on here,” she tapped it, “energy for szellem to come back to form.”
“But how?” Gavin asked, studying the coin before pocketing it. “How does someone dead—a szellem or ghost or whatever—use someone on the living side to rebuild their body? I mean wouldn’t they already have a body buried in the ground?”
“Spirit not connected to body, so it use doure sint to rebuild flesh.”
“So, whoever has the machine controls the ghost?”
Kovács shook her head, indicating a frustrated “no.” It wasn’t just the language barrier between the two of them. These concepts were completely foreign to Gavin, but still he pressed for answers. “So does the… szellem get the energy from someone when they die?”
Her eyes widened, and though it wasn’t a smile on her harelip face, Gavin saw she was pleased. “Yes, like battery.”
“The dying energy is like a battery?”
“Not dying, what energy remain.”
He pictured taking double-As from a radio to put them into a TV remote with dead batteries. “Let me get this straight. If someone is killed before their time, they have leftover energy in their spirit or whatever?”
He paused as she nodded.
“And that’s what Torri would use to make a new form of herself, to make a new body? That energy would be with the dying person to take over into another realm unless something like Torri intercepted it and took it from them.”
Kovács nodded again, but he was thinking of the twenty-something-year-old dancer. How many years would she have had left if she had not drowned before her time? What about the boy on the bike? He was at least ten years younger than that. But he’d only had a seizure, right? The grim thought of him dying in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital flooded Gavin’s thoughts. Had he died?
Gavin forced himself back into the moment. He had to know more. What was going to happen to him? “Madame Kovács, I still don’t understand how using the machine works. How does that fit in to all of this?”
“Fit in?” she asked with a puzzled expression.
“The person who types… “ he felt in his pocket for the coin and then decided against pulling it out again. “How does the machine, the item she’s fused with, turn the user in the doure sint?”
“It becom
e part of them, too, like it part of szellem.”
Shit!
This was not what he wanted to hear, that he and Torri were somehow cosmically joined now.
Before he could ask if he were a candidate for possession by the ghost, she added, “Brain is like waterwheel.” She placed her hands atop her head and then removed them as she pantomimed the circular motion of the turning of a wheel in front of her chest. “When person awake, thinking, thinking, thinking.” She pointed back at her wrinkled forehead. “Always thinking when awake ‘Should I do this, should I do that.’” She paused, waiting for Gavin to confirm that he understood.
“Right, I get it. The person is awake, thinking about different things.” He spoke impatiently, trying to urge her to the point.
“These things, thinking things, many of things in day we think of, each little energy that make wheel turn.” She returned to the hand gestures of a waterwheel spinning being pushed by a stream. “That energy makes…” She struggled for a word for a few seconds, finally settling for, “tunnel tube for szellem to come from one side of coin to other side. This why no one can have machine.”
Gavin scratched the back of his neck. It was moist with sweat. “So, what can be done to stop the connection, to stop szellem from coming through?”
Kovács looked confused. Gavin attributed the bewildered look on the language barrier between them. Before he could rephrase the question using different terminology, the old woman blurted out, “How you know these words?”
Now he was confused. “What words? What are you talking about?”
She looked terrified. “’Coming through’? How do you know this?”
“I just asked how someone would keep the szellem from coming through.”
She backed away, but not to retreat into the house. Her trembling steps were headed in the direction of Béla’s shop. “How do you know this ‘coming through’?” Her eyes were extremely wide. She accused him, “You have it, don’t you?”
Cruel Devices Page 14
