Deadly Curiosities

by Gail Z. Martin

  I waited until we had paid the attendant and Teag had pulled out onto the street before I spoke. “Did I –”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” I said defensively.

  Teag rolled his eyes. “You had a full-blown vision, right during the second act. You started shaking, and you pointed toward the top of the stage. If I hadn’t clapped my hand over your mouth, I’m betting you would have yelled ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater, which would have gotten you – and probably me – thrown into jail.” He shook his left hand. “As it was, you bit me.”

  “Really?”

  He turned his palm so I could see it and sure enough, teeth marks were already causing a vivid bruise. I felt my cheeks get hot. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It beat spending the night in lock-up,” Teag replied. I could tell from his voice that he was more concerned than angry.

  I told him about the vision. Teag had seen enough of my talent to know that I didn't make this stuff up.

  At the moment, I was seriously re-thinking my chosen line of work.

  “You saw the theater catch on fire,” Teag repeated. “Somewhere it snowed, so it was winter.”

  “It was around the holidays,” I said, then stopped. “I’m not sure how I know that, but it’s true. Just before or after Christmas.” I searched my memories. “Some of the performers were in holiday outfits.”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  I recounted the images I had glimpsed before the vision overwhelmed me. Teag frowned. “A pirate? At a holiday play?”

  I shrugged. “It didn’t make sense to me, either. And I kept hearing a waltz.” I shook my head. “Do you have any ideas?” “Trinket said the opera glasses came from her great-grandmother, who came from the North, right?”

  “Right,” I replied.

  “Okay, so if Trinket is seventy, her great-grandparents might have been born around 1880 or so, give or take a few years,” Teag said.

  “Sounds about right.” I thought for a moment. “The woman in the vision had a small child with her, and I had the distinct feeling that I was seeing her thoughts, not the boy’s,” I said, trying to focus on my memory of the images. “I’m guessing from the clothing that whatever it was happened right around 1900.” I looked over at Teag. “Where are the opera glasses?”

  “They’re in my pocket,” he said. “And no, I’m not giving them back to you today.”

  “Fine with me.”

  We pulled up in front of my house, and Teag parked by the curb. I was recovered enough to walk up to the piazza by myself and let us in. As with most Charleston single houses, side of the house faces the street and so the door opens into the piazza, not the main house. The real front door looks out onto a little private garden enclosed by a brick wall with a wrought-iron gate.

  We walked into the house, letting the air conditioning revive us, and Baxter skittered up to greet us, dancing on his hind feet until I picked him up to nuzzle him. Once I had said hello, Baxter insisted on being handed off to Teag for acknowledgement, and then wiggled to be put down.

  “Would you like a soda?” I asked, resolved to be polite although I was beginning to feel the aftereffects of the visions.

  Teag rolled his eyes and sighed. “I can find the fridge. Go sit down. I’ll get something for both of us.”

  Relieved, I collapsed onto the couch, and Baxter pranced beside me until I picked him up. He settled on my lap, and I leaned back against the cushions and closed my eyes. A few moments later, Teag returned with two sodas.

  “Mind if I switch on your laptop?” he asked. “Go ahead. You’re just lucky I brought it back from the store.”

  Teag powered up the computer. “All right, let’s see what we can find,” he said. He actually sounded excited about tracking down what I had seen. “Let’s start with famous theater fires,” he mused, typing the information into the search bar.

  I stroked Baxter’s silky fur and tried to relax, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of the vision. Although I knew it was only my imagination, the smell of smoke lingered, not the pleasant smell of a campfire, but the acrid smoke of burning fabric, and a faint scent of burning meat. I tried hard not to think about that. My stomach twisted.

  “Anything?” I asked to get my mind off the memories.

  “There’s a pretty long list,” Teag replied, “but if you’re right about the time period, that narrows it down some.”

  “Just because it was snowing doesn’t mean it was in the United States,” I said. “It could have been somewhere else, like London, Toronto –”

  “Chicago,” Teag supplied. “How about Chicago?”

  I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see past him to the computer screen. “Maybe. They get snow in Chicago. What did you find?”

  “December 30, 1903. The Iroquois Theater caught on fire. Over six hundred people died.”

  I caught my breath. “What else does it say?”

  “There are a lot of articles,” Teag mused, and I saw him clicking on links and scanning down through the information. “The theater had only been open for a few weeks. They did a special holiday performance on December 30, and had a standing room only crowd. It was so full, people were sitting in the aisles.” “Children,” I murmured. “There were children in the aisles,” I said, remembering the vision.

  “Here’s why you thought of a pirate,” Teag said grimly. “The play was called Mr. Bluebeard. It seems to have been a mish-mash of rather forgettable songs and scenery including a castle, and partway through, a spark from one of the spotlights caught the scenery and curtains on fire.”

  “People couldn’t get out,” I said, reliving the horror of what the opera glasses had shown me.

  “Says here that’s because some of the doors were locked to keep out gate-crashers, and other doors were hidden behind curtains,” Teag said, reading down through the articles. “They had even put locked gates at the bottom of the stairs to the upper levels, I guess to keep people from switching to more expensive seats than what they paid for.”

  “They locked them in?”

  Teag nodded. “The theater was supposed to be fire-proof –”

  “Yeah, and the Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable,” I muttered.

  “But apparently, the owners skimped on fire extinguishers, and some of the fire escapes weren’t even finished,” he said. He paused long enough that I looked at him, worried.

  “What?”

  “The fire broke out while the orchestra was playing a waltz,” Teag said quietly. “One of the actors, Eddie Foy, Sr., tried to keep the people from panicking so they could make an orderly exit, but it didn’t work.”

  “Eddie Foy, Sr.” I repeated. “Trinket said her great-grandmother had seen most of the famous actors and actresses of her time. He was one of the names she mentioned. I’d never heard of him before.”

  “He survived,” Teag said. “And everyone hailed him as a hero. They even made a movie about him, and it included the fire.” He drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen. “It says here that some of the cast were dressed in holiday costumes,” he added. “And here’s a picture of what the Iroquois Theater looked like before the fire.”

  He scooted the chair aside so I could see. The grand facade of the doomed theater had pillars in front, a Victorian version of a Greek temple, just like I had seen in the vision.

  “Wow,” I said. I took a sip of my soda. My heart was racing. Baxter seemed to sense that I was uneasy, because he gave me a curious look with those little black button eyes and snuggled closer.

  “You’re good, Cassidy,” Teag said, shaking his head. “Sometimes a little too good.”

  I stared at the old photo on the screen in silence for a moment. “What I want to know is why Trinket was able to see the images,” I said. “I didn’t get the feeling that she had any clairvoyant abilities. She seemed too freaked out for that.” I was quiet again, mulling things over.

&nb
sp; “The fire was certainly horrific,” I said slowly, working it out as I went. “That kind of trauma can leave a residue that even people without a ‘gift’ can sense – that’s why normal people see ghosts.”

  “The opera glasses have been passed down for several generations,” Teag said, turning his chair to look at me. “You’d think if they were so blatantly haunted, someone would have gotten rid of them by now.”

  I nodded, having had the same thought. “I think we need to talk to Trinket again. Maybe she’s heard stories about her ancestor and the fire. She might not have mentioned that the glasses had a tragic past if she thought that would hurt the sale. She really wanted to get rid of them.”

  Teag leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Which makes me wonder – if they freaked out the people who owned them, why hang onto them?”

  “And if they didn’t cause a problem before, what changed?” I said, my thoughts racing. “Did something... activate them... somehow?”

  Teag met my gaze. “We’d better find out. It’s bad enough if the glasses were always that powerful.

  That makes them definite spookies and something Sorren will want to deal with.”

  “But if something charged up their hauntedness, then we’re dealing with more than just the opera glasses,” I said. “Because whatever – or whoever – it was could juice up something else.”

  “And in this city, with all its haunts, that would be a real problem.”

  Chapter Three

  BY THE NEXT morning, I had recovered from the trauma if not the embarrassment. Fortunately, being Sunday, we didn’t open until noon, which meant that I could spend the morning in the back going through some of the more benign pieces. Teag handled the mundanes. Right now, we didn’t have any spookies in stock except for the opera glasses, and I was grateful. Still, the tragedy of the fire stuck with me. I hadn’t slept well. My dreams had been dark, lit only by flames, and once I had woken with my heart pounding and my palms sweaty.

  I was mostly recovered by the time Monday morning rolled around, although I hoped that none of our customers had attended the play on Saturday.

  “You doing okay, Cassidy?” Teag stuck his head in the back room.

  “A little tired, but that’s all. The coffee is definitely helping. Thank you.” Teag had come in early and had the coffee pot in the shop’s small kitchen already chugging out liquid wakefulness before we opened for the day. It was exceptionally thoughtful of him, since he didn’t drink the stuff, but he probably figured I’d need it more than usual today. Teag had a large mug of tea, his beverage of choice.

  “I put in a call to Trinket,” Teag said, standing where he could keep an eye on the front of the store. “I got her voice mail, and I asked her to give me a call.”

  “Maybe she caught wind of what happened at the play and decided to high tail it out of town for a while,” I said with a lopsided grin.

  “Maybe,” Teag replied. “But she has to come home sometime, and I doubt she’s skipped town just because of you. In the meantime, I’ll check the Darke Web.”

  Teag’s gift with information makes most hackers look like newbies. If it’s anywhere online, no matter how well hidden, he’ll find it. That goes beyond the Dark Web, used by mortal criminals, and into the currents of information shared by the supernatural, magical, and immortal communities, the Darke Web. Law enforcement can’t break the enchantments, and Teag wanders those digital pathways like a native son. If it was out there, I knew he’d find it.

  I’d felt like skipping town after what happened, but I figured it would blow over faster if I just faced the music. Although the physical effects were gone, the embarrassment lingered on. Even now, two days later, I’d settled for toast and peanut butter at home instead of my usual muffin at the bakery down the block, not quite willing to answer questions yet or dodge curious gazes.

  The front door opened and the bells clanged against the glass. “Cassidy? Teag?”

  Andrea Andrews, owner of Andrews Carriage Rides, was one of my best friends, and one of the most connected business owners in Charleston. I took a swig of my coffee for sustenance, and squared my shoulders. “Hi, Drea,” I called.

  Drea gave me the once-over when I stepped up front. She was a dark-haired whirlwind, a petite bundle of energy who could rival a hurricane for sheer force of nature. She had built her family’s carriage ride company from one carriage to a fleet of twelve, and expanded into specialty tours, including one of the top ghost tours in the city.

  Clutched in her hand was a bag from the Honeysuckle Cafe, my favorite bakery. I could smell the fresh blueberry muffin, my usual breakfast selection, all the way across the store. “I brought you something,”

  she said with a grin. “Somehow, I figured you’d skip your morning muffin.”

  “You’re an angel,” I said as she handed off the bag and I could feel the still-warm muffin through the paper.

  “Trina said today’s muffin was on the house,” Drea said, watching with a satisfied smile as I took a bite of blueberry-packed goodness and closed my eyes, savoring the taste. “She thought it might cheer you up.”

  “You two are fantastic,” I said, and I meant every word. Not only were Drea and Trina good friends, but we also referred a lot of customers to each other.

  “So let me guess,” Drea drawled. “You had a problem with one of your latest acquisitions.”

  Drea didn’t know the full truth about what we did at Trifles and Folly. She didn’t know about the Alliance, or that Sorren was an immortal. But she did know about my ability to read objects by handling them, and she believed in my gift, and me, without reservation. Drea didn’t have any clairvoyant abilities of her own, but she accepted that there were things in this world that operated outside conventional wisdom, and truth be told, she thought what I could do was kinda cool. Right now, I didn’t share her sentiment.

  “Yeah. I decided to try out a new piece I got.” I gave a wry, self-conscious smile. “It didn’t go as well as I had hoped.”

  Drea’s snort confirmed my opinion. “Ya think? Fortunately, everyone who mentioned it to me thinks you had the flu, except for Mrs. Monroe, who wondered if you were pregnant.”

  I almost choked on my muffin. “Did you tell her I’d need a boyfriend for that to even be a possibility?”

  Drea grinned. “I didn’t think it was any of her business, so I just told her that I was pretty sure it was just the flu.”

  I had wolfed the muffin in record time, proof of just how stressed I still felt over the incident. “How many people make up ‘everyone’?” I asked.

  Drea’s fingers moved as she made a mental count. “Four or five,” she said. “Most of those were in the bakery and Valerie asked about you when she came in to pick up her paycheck.” Valerie was Drea’s leading ghost tour guide, and another good friend.

  Out of the dozens of people who ran shops and restaurants in historic downtown Charleston, I guess four or five wasn’t as bad as it could have been. “Do you think they’ll lose interest any time soon?” I asked.

  “In the flu?” Drea chuckled. “They might avoid you for a week to keep from catching anything, but that’s about it. You won’t be ostracized.”

  That was a relief. “So how’s business?” I asked, eager to change the subject. Drea’s carriages were beautiful and her horses were pampered. Her tour guides shared interesting information on their rounds, as well as legends, scandals and unsolved mysteries. It was a profitable combination.

  Drea made a face. “We’ve been booked solid with conventions and tourists. But if the news people keep talking up those murders, I’m afraid visitors will stop coming out at night.”

  I frowned. “You mean the homeless men?” Charleston’s temperate climate attracted tourists, conventioneers and retirees, as well as some folks who were down on their luck.

  She nodded. “The body they found makes two so far,” she said, and shivered. “I don’t know why anyone would do something like that; robbery certain
ly isn’t the motive.” She dropped her voice. “The police aren’t saying, but there’s a rumor that both of the dead men were torn apart.”

  “Ugh,” I replied. Her description pinged a warning in my mind. That kind of killing could be mundane, but the brutality of it made magic suspect as well. “Anything else?”

  Drea browsed the shelves where Teag had put out new stock. “Actually, yes. Valerie took a tour past Gardenia Landing two nights ago, and she got a little more than she bargained for.”

  “Oh?” I asked. “Spill.”

  Drea grinned. “It was one of the late night ghost tours. You know what they’re like.”

  I did. Charleston is a marvelously atmospheric city, and even more so after dark in the Historic District.

  Ghost tour guests ride in a horse-drawn carriage listening to Valerie spin tales of murder, mayhem and unrequited love, all ending in death – the more gruesome, the better.

  “Valerie was filling them in on all the duels and suicides and star-crossed trysts and it all went well until they came to Gardenia Landing.”

  “And?”

  “When they came up in front of the B&B, she noticed that the shadows near the building seemed strange. At first, she thought that maybe someone was hiding there, so she made sure she kept the carriage in the light.” She shook her head. “She swears that she saw men come out of the darkness toward the carriage, but there were only shadows – no real people.”

  “Did anyone else see them?”

  “Just one guest, and it turns out that person has seen ghosts before.” Drea said with a ‘how about that’ expression. “Valerie said she left as fast as she could, and was afraid to look back.”

  “Wow,” I replied. “Has Valerie ever had anything like that happen on her other tours?”

  Drea shook her head. “Not with Gardenia Landing. She’s had enough encounters with strange things down by the Old Jail that she won’t do a late night tour there unless Mrs. Teller rides along.” Mrs. Teller was well-known in Charleston as a sweetgrass basket weaver and also as a ‘root’ woman, someone with powerful magic.