We reached the entrance to the building. The broken remains of a padlock and chain were evidence that it had once been locked shut, but now the door was ajar. The cops had probably gone through the building when they found Arabella and the homeless man. Or maybe not. They were found in the woods, and from what I could tell by the police report, they had both been found in back of the asylum, about a hundred feet into the forest.
Whatever the case, I reached out and—with a gloved hand—opened the door.
It swung wide with a creak. The hinges were rusted, but still working. I fished in my purse. Tad had given me a clip-on headlamp to use and I slid it over my head, positioning it so that the light shone directly in front of me. I felt a little silly, but it was better than walking into a dark building, and I doubted that the electricity would be working. Since the windows that weren’t broken were grimy with age, not a lot of light could come through.
“I’m glad you have light,” Killian said from behind me.
“I wasn’t about to go in without it.” I shivered when I saw the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. Spider webs—or rather the remains of them, given it was December—stretched everywhere. As I looked around, it occurred to me that the room we had entered had been the reception area. Several doors led off from behind the counter, as well as a door leading to a hall to the right, and one that mirrored it to the left.
Killian examined the door leading to the left hallway. “I believe these were electronically locked, but without electricity, I imagine…” He paused, turning the handle. Sure enough, there was a clicking sound and the door opened. “And we’re in. Which way do you want to go first?”
I glanced at my phone. The reception wasn’t the best, but the clock still worked. It was 12:45. I had to leave by 2:30 to make my appointment with Charles Crichton.
“Well, let’s just head this way. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but I guess I’ll know when I see it.” I motioned to the hall that stretched in front of us and he set off, with me following. I grimaced as we came to a large web that had spread across the entire hallway.
Killian reached out with his baseball bat and swept it through the web, bringing it down. “There must be some pretty ambitious spiders around here,” he said with a laugh.
“Yeah, I guess.” I shivered. Spiders scared me, even though I knew they were good for the environment. As long as they stayed outside in their webs, we were fine, but inside? My territory and I didn’t want to share. I wasn’t fond of bugs in general, except for ladybugs. Those I liked and would even pick up on my finger.
Killian pointed to our right. “Well, the hall runs down to the end, I think, though I can’t quite tell if it turns there.”
A row of doors spread out to our right. To our left were the wide bay windows that lined the wall. Over the years, time and kids with rocks had broken a good share of them. Sure enough, most of the windows along this hallway had been broken. I peered out one of the broken panes, cautious because of the shattered glass on the floor. From here, I could see our cars in the front parking lot. There was snow on the hallway floor in places where it had blown in through the broken panes.
As we came to the first door on the right, I swallowed my nerves and yanked open the door.
Nothing. Dead silence. Inside, there was absolutely nothing to indicate what the room had been used for. Every cupboard, counter, and piece of furniture had been taken out, leaving the room completely bare. But even a bare room could have psychic residue.
I walked to the center of the room. Slowly, I closed my eyes and drifted deep into a standing trance. Standing trances were different than sitting trances, because I still had to keep myself anchored enough to not keel over. I couldn’t open my third eye entirely, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. If I opened my psychic senses too wide, there was a chance something could possess me.
I listened. It was as though I was still standing in the room, but it wasn’t quite the same room. I was out on an etheric layer of the room.
As I turned, I began to see cold spots—areas where the psychic energy was stronger. One corner of the room was lit up like a Yule tree. I slowly advanced in that direction. It could be residue—energy that had just fastened onto the area and stagnated. Or there could still be something there.
As I reached the place where the energy was most intense, a sudden flash filled the room and a bolt that looked suspiciously like lightning streaked out of the cold spot, striking me in the chest. The bolt threw me backward against the wall, and I went down, hard.
Chapter Eight
“January! Are you okay?” Killian raced forward as I slammed to the floor, sliding down the wall.
Too stunned to do or say anything, I sat there, waiting for the next attack. My heart was beating as hard as the opening riff of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks,” a band that my ex had forbidden me to play while he was in the house. Shaking, I groaned as I rolled over, using the wall to steady myself as I tried to stand.
Killian grabbed my elbow and helped me up as I wildly looked around, trying to pinpoint just what had attacked me. “We should get the hell out of here,” he muttered.
I shook my head. “This is my job. I just need to be careful and remain alert. I’m all right—I’m bruised up a bit, but I didn’t break anything.” I swallowed the fear that was rising in my throat. “If you want to leave, please, feel free. I told you, I was born into a family of witches and trained from birth to handle things like this.” That wasn’t necessarily true—my magical training had prepared me to ward against attack, but that hadn’t been a major focus.
Killian shook his head. “I’m not leaving you here alone. I can take care of myself.”
I frowned. “Are you sure? I mean, I know you look like you could win in a fight, but some of these spirits are stronger than you might think.”
He paused, then gave me a half-smile and a shrug. “I’m not human, January. I’m not that fragile.”
I forgot about the attack for a moment and stood there, staring at him. “You’re not human? Then what…you’re not a witch—I’d be able to feel your magical signature if you were.”
“I’m a shifter. Down in California, the community I lived in wasn’t very accepting, so I kept to myself a lot. I’m a wolf shifter,” he added.
I froze. Wolf shifter? “You’re not a gray wolf, are you?” I asked, remembering the wolf that had been in my backyard, the one who had seen me with my robe hanging open.
I could tell he was trying to repress a smile. “Um, yeah. I am. And—”
Before he could continue, there was a shift in the room and once again, I felt something barreling toward me. I jumped to the side and this time, the invisible sledgehammer missed me.
“What the hell? Psy Schooner, is that you?” I yelled.
I was also embarrassed. Killian had seen me naked—full frontal. I hadn’t shaved my pubes in several months, given the last time Ellison had touched me was a few weeks before he announced that he was leaving me, and without a bra, my girls were hanging low and heavy. Gravity worked wonders on big boobs. But right now wasn’t the time to dwell on my inadvertent peep show. A huge boom from the other side of the wall, coming from the room next door, made me jump.
“Let’s get out of this room,” Killian said, taking hold of my elbow and guiding me out the door. I didn’t protest. “You think that Psy is causing all this noise?”
“I have no idea, to be honest. There were several murderers locked up here, and I doubt if Psy’s the only one who died during his incarceration.” I frowned, glancing around the hall. “At least we know something is going on. But I want to keep exploring. Maybe that thing will stay in the room and not follow us into the hallway.” I leaned against the wall, resting my head, keeping a sideways eye on the door we had just shut behind us.
Killian scuffed one boot on the floor. “Listen, about this morning…I didn’t mean to intrude.”
I blushed, staring at the floor. “I’m so
sorry I gave you an unexpected peep show. I really didn’t know that you were anything but…”
“A wolf?” he said, but his eyes were dancing again. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. You definitely didn’t scar my eyes, if that’s what you’re worried about. In fact, quite the opposite.”
There was an awkward silence, and neither one of us really seemed to know what to say. A loud thump from down the hall jolted us back to what we were doing.
I jumped and cleared my throat. “I guess we should…”
“What are you doing here, January?” Killian asked. “What can you find out at this point, without endangering yourself? I know you’re a witch, but unless your specialty includes speaking to the dead, I think you might want to just leave.”
Feeling stubborn but realizing that he was right, I sighed. “Maybe you’re right, but if there is something out here and I walk away, what kind of an investigator am I?” But even as I said it, I knew that I had nothing to go on. I needed to know more in order to figure out anything substantial.
“Do you know what room he was housed in?”
I shook my head. “No. I suppose that would help, wouldn’t it? I didn’t even think of that. I’m new to this gig, you know,” I added with a grin.
While I was still keeping an eye out for the ghosts, Killian’s voice was soothing and I felt safer than I expected to, even though in the back of my mind, I was still mulling over the fact that he had seen me as good as nekkid.
“Learning on the job isn’t the worst way to begin,” he said, glancing around. “How much longer do you have?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you had an appointment this afternoon.”
“Oh!” I had almost forgotten about my appointment with Charles Crichton. I glanced at my phone. It was 1:45. “I have another forty-five minutes before I have to get going. Why don’t we just check out the rest of this hall without going into any rooms? That seems safer and I’ll do some more digging and find out which room Psy Schooner was housed in.”
Killian agreed and, hoisting the baseball bat over his shoulder, he led the way. I let him, realizing that as a wolf shifter, he’d have a natural inclination to lead. Wolf shifters were pack-oriented, and they were also protective—both the men and women. As we headed down the hall, we carefully avoided opening any doors. We came to a turn and followed the hall, and then another. Loud noises, banging sounds, came from the floor above. I decided to scratch a visit upstairs until I had more backup.
“Let’s leave it at the bottom floor today,” I said, lowering my voice as we once again came to a turn. “I don’t want to engage whatever is making those noises.”
He nodded, stopping at a door in front of us. Cautiously, he pushed it open and peeked around the other side. “And we’re back in the reception area. We’ve come full circle,” he said, opening the door wide and standing back for me to pass through.
Sure enough, we were standing by the counter in the reception area again. In our circle around the facility, we had passed two stairwells leading up, one on the far left side of the building, and one on the far right side. I let out a breath of relief as we headed for the main door. The place was haunted, all right, though whether it was Psy Schooner’s ghost in action, I couldn’t be sure.
We had barely stepped outside when a noise from above sent me whirling around. I glanced up just in time to see a window explode out, and a chair came sailing through amid a shower of glass. Killian shouted, grabbing my arm and yanking me away as the chair fell, landing right where I had been standing.
“Fucking hell!” I stared at the mess on the ground. “I could have…” My words vanished as the severity of the situation hit me. I felt the blood drain from my face and began to shake. “I could have been…”
“Come on, let’s get you into the car and warm you up.” Killian steered me back to his SUV and bundled me into the passenger seat. He turned the ignition and flipped the heater up to high. As the cool air began to warm, I was inches away from tears. I didn’t want to have a meltdown in his car, so I choked the tears back and asked him if he had any water.
“I always carry a case,” he said, reaching in the back. He cracked a bottle open then handed it to me.
I drank deep, then replaced the cap. As I stared up at the building, I shook my head. “Whatever is in there, it’s not friendly.”
“Whatever’s in there is downright dangerous. Then again, the place did house a number of the criminally insane, so you have to figure on both danger and instability,” Killian said, producing a bag of M&Ms from his pocket. “Here, you want some?”
I nodded, holding out my hand as he opened the bag and poured some of the candy into my palm. “Do you think that insanity lasts beyond death?”
“What do you mean?”
“I never thought about this before, but if someone is mentally disturbed while they are alive, does that continue into the afterlife?” I frowned and began picking out the red candies first.
He watched me for a moment. “You color coordinate your M&Ms, don’t you? You eat from the most to the least?”
I stared down at my hand and then nodded. “Actually, I do. I always eat the color I have the most of first. It’s been something I’ve done since childhood. I don’t even think about it, though. Not anymore.”
“As far as your question goes…I’m not sure. I don’t think there have been any studies done on the situation, and it would be hard to find any definitive studies. First, you’d have to find ghosts that were willing to talk, then you’d have to find records of what they were like during life, and then you’d have to figure out if they were just messing with you or not. Some ghosts do that.”
I let out a sigh, finishing the candy. He replenished it without asking. “Yeah, I guess that’s one of the questions we’ll never really know the answer to. Plus, we have no idea if the process of dying can trigger psychosis. Some spirits seem calm and happy, some pass on, but others are angry and violent.”
I paused, then—breathing easier—added, “Thank you so much for coming out here with me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t do any research before showing up here. I’m not certain what I hoped to uncover. I guess I am learning on the job, as you put it.” I laughed, finishing the M&Ms in my hand. “So, not to bring up an embarrassing subject, but you weren’t going to kill that little mouse, were you?”
He cocked his head, looking puzzled, then laughed. “No, I wasn’t. I just…when I’m in my wolf form, I like to play and the mouse…well…it’s fun to chase. But don’t fret about it. I’ll refrain from chasing mice into your yard.”
The light dancing in his eyes hit me again. I licked my lips, then glanced at the clock on the car. “I suppose I’d better get to my meeting. So, um, you’re still going to the carnival, aren’t you, even though I dragged you out here to the haunted hospital from hell?”
“Count on it,” he said, walking me back to my car. He waited until I was safely inside and halfway down the drive before he followed me to the main road. As I turned back toward town, he gave me one last wave and headed in the other direction.
The Garrison Library was downtown, in the same building as the police station, the courthouse, the main fire station, the jail, town hall, and the public works department. City Central, as it was called, took up an entire block, but it made life easy if you had business to attend to with the town. It was across from Bayside Park, which was next to the town square. The park also bordered the marina, so you could walk around the edge of the park to get to the docks.
Downtown Moonshadow Bay was absolutely beautiful. The massive spruce was covered in snow, and while during the day the decorations didn’t show that well, it was still amazing and festive. With the skiff of snow covering everything, the downtown area put even the prettiest winter wonderland picture to shame.
A large parking lot in back of City Central offered plenty of parking, including handicap parking and easy-access ramps. I eased into an open spot
close to the building—the weather was ramping up for a good blow—and, grabbing my purse, headed up the back steps.
I still hurt from being body-slammed by whatever ghost had attacked me, but the attack notwithstanding, I was happy. For the first time in months, I was doing something interesting, something that felt important, and I wasn’t being scrutinized by Ellison.
The Garrison Library had been named after Nell Garrison, one of the founding mothers of the city, who—along with my great-grandparents—had held a vision for what they wanted Moonshadow Bay to become. Born to another family of witches, Nell had been a huge proponent of education and while she had died without having children, she had willed all her goods and money to the city for use in the schools and to expand the library.
City Central was built of red brick, and when the town had annexed the entire block back in the 1950s, they had the foresight to build the complex solidly. Of course, since then it had been retrofitted for earthquakes, but overall, it was still in as good a condition as it had been the day it first opened.
Inside, the walls were a warm gray, and the floors had been fitted with a sound-muting laminate, which meant that besides never getting scuffed up, it muffled footsteps and kept the building pleasantly quiet. The ceilings were high—almost cathedral like—and the lighting was LED but not obnoxiously bright. It was actually like a mini-mall, only the businesses weren’t selling so much as providing professional services. The jail was on the opposite end of the library, along with the firehouse.
I pushed open the double doors to the library and took a deep breath. I read on an e-reader, mostly, but I still loved the smell of ink and dust, and that hallowed silence that all libraries seemed to have.
As I entered the main floor—the library was the only building within City Central that was two-storied—I decided the best place to go was the customer service desk. As I waited my turn in line, I glanced at the shelves and shelves of books. The tables were beginning to fill up with kids as they got out of school and came in to study. When I was young, I would occasionally cut classes to hang out in the library. My mother knew I did it, but my grades were never a worry so she never said anything, just now and then reminded me that I didn’t want to get expelled or suspended for being a no-show.
Starlight Web: A Moonshadow Bay Novel, Book 1 Page 9
