Grace took the rotary to North Street.
“You don’t want to talk about your brother’s suicide?”
“No. Not sober anyway.” Paisley leaned against the window. “This case kinda does it to you. You know, brings back the ‘if-I’d-only-done-X,’ ‘if-I’d-only-been-a-better-Y,’ that helpless, tail-chasing feeling, the paralysis. It’s worse than depression, because when you’re depressed, you think that everything sucks, and it won’t ever change. This feeling—it’s like a certification that life sucks, and it’s permanent. If I’m feeling it, I know you must be.”
Her words hit home. From the very beginning, something about this case had gotten under her skin, under her consciousness. Tibby’s hanging certainly made her utterly aware of the feeling, but it had been there all along. Grace wouldn’t confide in Pete—cops were just part of the spiral Paisley described. Instead, she’d gone to a man she felt certain was a criminal. It was an attempt to break out of her thinking, her researching, her fruitless visits to the Myerscough mansion. Maybe it had worked. Grace was on a different tack now.
“That’s Will’s room.”
Grace parked outside Victoria Cartwright’s brick Federal home. The lights were all out, save a candle burning in an upstairs window. It was a tony neighborhood, and her old Prius seemed out of place. And Paisley? Grace almost smiled at the thought of her running up and down Chestnut on that horrid orange scooter, the fuchsia crest of her Legionnaire helmet blowing in the wind.
“Thanks for the ride. Are we investigating tomorrow?”
Were they? Grace’s new information didn’t exactly give her a trail to follow, a direction to pursue. “I have to think about the case. There are dots that aren’t connecting.”
“The trained snake thing? Oh, did you want to meet Patricia?”
Grace did not want to meet a large yellow constrictor. “No. Not sober, anyway.”
She took the bridge back into Beverly, heading off the 1A into New Carfax. Grace had a slightly better understanding of Paisley’s weirdness. Given that, she assumed there was a weirdness about herself that others observed. The thought hung in her head. Is that why she chose to dress down, to seek solitude, avoid deep connections? Was it the same impulse that inspired Paisley to dress like a half-assed vampire witch?
To her surprise, it seemed the car drove itself to Brackenbury Lane. Breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t been this way in a long time. In fact, since the last time, new streets had been added, housing developments on cul-de-sacs. Still, near the dead end, the old house stood. Rowan trees on each side of the front door needed trimming—they were nearly forming an arch of their bushy branches and lance-shaped leaves. But the lawn was mowed, reminding her she needed to send a check to the neighbor kid who did the work. No sway in the roof, no peel in the paint, so sag of the porch made the house look any different than it had when she was growing up in it.
Grace parked in the driveway. Got out of the Prius. Asked herself what she was doing here. The keys to the front door were still on her fob. Moving on their own, her feet took her up the steps. Grace knew which planks would creak as she crossed to the front door. The bug screen wasn’t latched. She jammed the key in the door.
Half the size of the cottage on the Myerscough grounds, the little Victorian cottage boasted some of the same features, the box beams in the ceiling, the hand carved dark wood, the round room of the turret with its curved glass windows, a fireplace of native stone. By turns, the place had been a safe and warm place to grow up, a house of horrors the day she came home from school to find her mother’s body hanging in the dining room, and now a space so empty it did not even hold echoes.
Grace touched the cameo at her throat. It did not react.
She never saw it coming. Dad had left them, disappeared without a trace, six months before. Mom never cried, never showed worry, but in the end, it had all been a masquerade. Tom Longstreet had grown up away from the family business, living with an aunt in South Boston. Though rough around the edges, a gruff and taciturn man, her mother loved him, and Grace worshiped the man. Had worshiped the man. After apprenticing as a carpenter in his youth, Grace’s uncle David convinced him to rejoin the antiques appraisal business. Whatever rift existed between Dad and the rest of the Longstreet clan was mended. His familiarity with fine woods proved an asset to Longstreet Heirlooms and Antiques Appraisals. The business boomed. He met Laura Heathrow and married her. He bought this house. He had a daughter. And then he was gone.
The douche canoe.
Grace wandered up the stairs to the three bedrooms, streetlight beaming through uncovered windows. Why had he left? Why had Dad abandoned them? They rarely argued. Dad often surprised her with little trinkets, always brought flowers on Friday. Sure, she was just a kid, but they seemed so happy. She remembered feeling happy. Perhaps the inexplicability, the suddenness, the absolute absence proved too much for Mom. Laura Heathrow Longstreet filed a missing persons report. Nothing ever came of it. Even to this day, Tom Longstreet was among the missing.
He killed her. His leaving led to Mom taking her life. Grace had gone through the guilt already. Was it something she had done to make her Dad go? Was she not a good enough daughter to her melancholy mother? Like Paisley said, that paralyzing spiral—but Grace was done with that. Wasn’t she?
Chapter 22
Half an hour later she flopped onto her bed in the Cape Cod she’d inherited from Uncle David. She was physically exhausted, emotionally drained. Her brain, however, was in the mood for calisthenics.
What she wanted to think about was the case. With no clue how the mirrors worked—or even if they were the source of the curse—she needed to digest the information she obtained.
Instead, she thought more about her mother and father, and, oddly enough, Paisley Cartwright. Hard to fathom though it was, she and the Goth shared an almost parallel life. She had been taken in by her uncle after her mother’s death. Paisley lived with her aunt. Both of them were orphans, even if Grace didn’t know the circumstances behind Paisley’s family. Both were survivors of suicides. In her own opinion, Grace thought herself the opposite of the Goth girl. Perhaps was just the obverse of a shared coin.
She tried to focus on the matter at hand, on the danger. Thoughts of her youth continued to leap around her head. After blaming herself for Mom’s suicide, Grace placed the blame where it squarely belonged. Tom Longstreet had murdered his wife. In absentia, sure, but the son-of-a-bitch still killed her. For years, even though she lived with Uncle Dave, she wanted no part of the family business. While she had planned on studying business in college, she turned to archaeology instead. But just as David had worn down his brother, he wore down Grace as well. He needed help at the shop, and, living under his roof, how could she refuse?
After graduation, between digs of Colonial American sites, she worked with Uncle Dave. While her degree consisted of very little art history, her eye spotted a number of forged works of art that came under their scrutiny. That led to Victoria Cartwright talking Grace into working as an insurance adjuster. The steady salary, flexible hours, and short commute convinced her. From then on, she worked part-time for Uncle Dave. When he decided to retire, he offered to sell her his Cape Cod for one dollar on the condition that she kept the business running—even if on an extremely limited basis.
Maybe if she had paid more attention to his handling of , Objets de Puissance she would be in a better place with the case. If she’d been more astute—
Grace stopped herself. There was that spiral thinking again. She knew as much as she knew, and that was what she had to work with. Could she shove her self-doubt aside long enough to figure this out—hopefully, before someone else fell victim?
Tossing in bed, she prayed for insight. Or at least merciful unconsciousness. She tore her thoughts away from her past. Snakes and mirrors, family curses, pre-Hindu goddesses; for the life of her, Grace couldn’t put anything together. Money, was that the motive? Or had the Mother of Nagas finally decided
she’d had enough of her mirrors being kept in some imperialist household?
The physical evidence of a really big snake, how did such a thing manifest? How did it go unnoticed? If Grace saw a snake almost a foot wide, she’d run screaming and probably pee her pants. Not necessarily in that order. But as Paisley said, you can’t train a snake. So a magic snake…?
Conscious thoughts mixed with dream images. Reality and nightmare merged. Grace came up with no answers. She drifted off.
Until the shrill sound of her phone made her sit bolt upright in bed. She fumbled, saw the call was from Carlotta Myerscough.
“Carlotta?”
“There’s something in the house, Grace!” Her voice was tiny, a squeaky whisper. “Please come!”
“Something?”
“I’ve heard it moving up on the third floor. I’m so scared. Please Grace—” conversation ended with a grunt and a clatter. The phone falling on a hardwood floor.
“Carlotta? Carlotta? Hello? Are you okay?” The fog of sleep evaporated. Grace jumped to her feet.
Maybe she didn’t need to come up with a solution. Maybe the solution was coming after Carlotta. Or, more likely, maybe Carlotta was the solution. After all, she described herself as the only sane Myerscough left. She stood to gain the most. While Grace actually liked Carlotta, and had no idea how the young woman had done it, she was really the only suspect that made sense. And now, she was trying to lure Grace in.
Grace cast around for clothes. All the while, she considered a weapon. What would be a good weapon against a magic snake? A magic machete, maybe, if such a thing ever existed. Adrenalin hadn’t fully sharpened her thinking.
She laced her shoes, redialing Carlotta as she did. The call immediately went to voice mail.
Grace ran for the front door. She stopped with her hand on the knob. What, exactly, could she do here? If her suspicions were correct, never mind that they were impossible, how could she possibly intervene with a magic so dark, it had already killed three people?
There was no time for lack of self-confidence. This case had inspired enough of that already. Whatever she did, however she did it, she could not let another person die at the hands of this unknown power.
Her neighborhood was utterly still at four a.m. In the balmy silence, doubts crawled through her head as she beeped open the Prius. This time, the thoughts were nearly alien. She feared for her own safety. There was no way of knowing the actual danger, so why was she so afraid? A memory of Paisley leaning out the third floor window made her stumble with vertigo. Her hands rested on the cold car roof, squeezing her eyes shut. That only produced images of a hanged woman. Swaying, just barely swaying, the nearly inaudible creak of a rope.
Grace fought it. It seemed like her brain was receiving irrational fears like a broadcast. Had this been going on the whole time? Yes, she thought it had. But now, the visions, the uncertainty, the trepidation piled on until she felt her gorge rise.
Her knees went noodle-y and she slid down the car, no longer able to stand. As her brain was bombarded with black notions and whispers of personal terror, she gripped the cameo.
“Mom,” she cried. “Help me.”
There was neither the tingle of an impending vision, nor the shock she’d felt when touching the Mirror of Manasa. This time, her hand filled with warmth. It spread from her hand up her arm. In moments, she was infused with a feeling of comfort, of ease. Irrational and foreign thoughts fled before the sensation.
For a time, she remained kneeling in the driveway. Soon, strength returned to her legs. She levered herself into the Prius, dragging her feet inside. An attack, she thought. Something had attacked her mind. Or, though the thought frightened her, the invader that had resided in her brain had finally made a frontal assault.
Manasa?
While beyond the realm of reality, what else could it have been? Exhaussstion, the voice hissed in the back of her head, lack of sssssleep, emotional sssstresssssss.
Gritting her teeth, she started the Prius. While she intended for the roar of an engine when she threw it in drive and floored it, the hybrid purred silently along the road. Regardless, she was gunning for the snake goddess.
Chapter 23
Half an hour later, she left the car in the middle of the circular drive and ran toward the portico. Grace tried the door, found it unlocked. Inside, few lights were on. Antique furniture took on sinister shapes in half-pools of shadow. She saw no one. “Hello?”
Neither of the sisters responded, nor a servant. But Carlotta said the sound came from upstairs. Whether she meant from the second or third floor, she didn’t know. Standing on the first floor wasn’t accomplishing anything. She urged her sneakers toward the grand staircase.
Crunchy creaks of the treads summoned no response as she hurried to the second floor. Grace hoped to find someone—the place was a freaking maze. The sisters had bedrooms off the landing hall. Unsure which rooms were theirs, she opened every door she could find. Bedrooms were revealed. Carlotta and Lavinia were not.
“Anybody here? It’s Grace. Hello—”
Her voice truncated at a sound from above. The sound of floorboards creaking in a rapid-fire manner made her blood freeze. It sounded like something very heavy being dragged very quickly. The reality of the unreal shackled her in place.
“You hear it, too?”
Grace barely suppressed a scream, making a squeak that vibrated her fillings. She whirled. Carlotta stood in sweat pants and an oversized T-shirt. There was a hammer in her hand.
Again, the slither, the groan of stressed wood, sounded overhead. Both women cringed as one.
“What is it?” Grace whispered.
Carlotta shook her head. “I heard it the night Gramma died. I thought it was a dream.”
A tiny dog with big ears trotted down the hall. Linda stopped at Carlotta’s feet. Her paws lifted as if begging, the Papillion whining.
“Where’s Lavinia, Linda?” Carlotta inanely asked the animal.
Even though the horrible sound ceased on the third floor, Grace was certain she knew where Lavinia was. “Upstairs,” she whispered.
Grace and Carlotta moved to the stairs. Linda barked and growled, backing up a few steps.
“C’mon, Linda, let’s go find your mommy.”
Linda sat and whined. The high pitched sound increased in volume as the two women neared the steps.
“What’s wrong with you, Linda?”
Grace thought there was nothing wrong with the dog. She was just smarter than the two humans.
“Give me the hammer Carlotta. I'm going upstairs.” Carlotta handed her the heavy tool.
Bracing herself, she started up the stairs, Carlotta behind her.
“I get the feeling you haven’t been telling me the whole story,” Grace whispered. “About your grandmother’s death. Now you say you heard that noise?”
“Gramma always had the servants moving furniture. She hardly ever came downstairs, so she liked a change of scenery, I guess. It was hours before we got worried about her. I never thought to put the two together.”
“But now?”
Carlotta cast her eyes at the treads. “I heard the same thing the morning Mom died.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were already gone. And your own Mom—well, I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you.”
Grace never considered it, but the whole town, maybe the whole county, was probably aware of Laura Longstreet’s suicide all those years ago.
“Lately, I’ve been feeling so paranoid,” Carlotta said. “It seems like everyone is out to get us—bill collectors, tax collectors, lawyers—and it seemed like Gramma had the right idea all along. If you live like a hermit, you don’t have to deal with people. Is paranoia contagious?”
“I think some amount of paranoia is healthy.” They reached the third floor landing hall. Linda continued to whine at the bottom of the stairs. Grace studied the floor, the walls. Despite Prudence’s passing, the third floor was kep
t meticulously clean. With hallways leading off the one near the stairs, Grace had no idea which way to go. “Where’s the central hallway, the one with the mirror?”
Carlotta’s fearful features contorted into confusion. “The mirror hall? Why do you want to go there?”
Why did she want to go there? On the one hand, Grace was fairly certain that the answers to this mystery lie in that hall. On the other hand, Grace wasn’t sure she wanted to know that badly. “Show me.”
“I guess it really isn’t a hall any more. When the third floor was renovated, the architect couldn’t figure out what to do with the original hall to the back bedroom. So he left it. Which is weird, right? It could’ve been closet space or something. There are already too many unused rooms up here.” Carlotta babbled.
Grace let her. She wanted to do a little babbling herself. Her nerves were on edge. Was that because there was a frightening noise in a dark house, or was she being influenced by the malevolent presence here? She studied Carlotta. The young woman seemed genuinely afraid. It put a bit of a kink in Grace’s suspicions.
After a wandering, confusing path through the third floor labyrinth, Carlotta stopped at an ordinary hollow core door. “This is it.”
“Let’s go in.”
She got the hairy eyeball from Carlotta. “Okay. Whatever.”
The younger woman stepped in, reaching for the light switch. Dim yellow light filled the space. Grace saw that two mirrors now stood, one at each end of the narrow room. Reflective onyx panes faced each other, black and glossy as a window on the night.
“How the hell did that get there?” Carlotta walked toward the recently appeared artifact.
Grace stepped in and closed the door behind her. “We have to talk, Carlotta.”
She braced herself for what was to follow. But Carlotta turned away from the black mirror, brows bunched in confusion. “Talk about what?”
The Sinister Secrets of the Snake Mirror Page 8
