A Grim Situation

by Whit McClendon

  I nodded. “That’s a good start. Now what’s with the pills?”

  He hesitated for only a moment before he got going. “They’re an experiment. Something I’ve been working on for a while.” He shook his head, “It took weeks to get it right. I hardly slept! The rituals are so complicated, and the ingredients nearly impossible to get. Some of the mistakes I made in the beginning nearly killed me…” He cut his eyes towards me with a hint of triumph. “But in the end, I think I got it right!”

  I just stared at him and said nothing. He held my gaze for a few moments, but when I remained silent, he faltered and lowered his eyes again. I let the silence stretch to build the tension, then I asked simply, “Why?”

  Raymond started to shake his head, and Ariana thumbed the hammer back on her automatic. His eyes flicked to her and fear crawled back onto his face. “I…I can’t tell you,” he repeated, almost pleading now. “She’ll kill me if I say anything.” He paused, realizing what he’d just said, and all the color left his face.

  Ariana picked up on it immediately. “She?” she said. “Your boss is a woman?”

  Raymond clamped his lips together and shook his head, making Ariana roll her eyes. I waited a beat, then spoke up. “You need to tell us everything, Raymond. Tell us who she is and what she’s up to. We might let you live. I’m not terribly inclined to do so,” I watched him cringe a moment before continuing, “but we might work something out.”

  “No,” he whined, “no, I can’t do that.” He stared at me, pleading. I dropped the rest of my glamour so he could get a good look at my true self. I did it quickly so Ariana wouldn’t see, and was rewarded with a frightened gasp from Raymond. Ariana’s eyes flicked my way but I already had the illusion back in place. Now shaking in terror, Raymond started sputtering. “Look, she told me what she wanted me to do, gave me a ton of money, and I did it. That’s it. The last test is complete. I’m supposed to give her the rest of the pills tomorrow.” He hung his head, defeated. “She warned me against her, but didn’t say anything about a damned Grim!”

  “What?” Ariana interjected, “You were warned about me?”

  “No! The other one!” he stammered, “The one that found me.”

  Ariana and I glanced at each other and found no answers. Do you have any idea who he’s talking about? Then insight struck her, as it occasionally does. She is a witch, after all. Her eyes widened and she thought loudly at me, I bet he means that cop you were staring at.

  I thought about that. There had been something about the woman that had struck me…something unusual. Had we not been in such a rush to get Raymond tucked away in the Jeep, I’d have figured out what it was. If she was some kind of witch, specialist, or half-breed, that would make sense. Furthermore, if she was any of those things, it would figure that she might be involved in some way. Careful to keep my thoughts neutral, I silently replied, It’s possible. I did sense something from her, but we were in a hurry, and we left before I could figure it out.

  Ariana nodded, a slight frown creasing the space between her brows. She turned her attention back to Raymond, who was becoming increasingly agitated.

  “You need to let me go! I’ve told you what I can; release me! If I don’t report to her soon, she’ll make me suffer. She said so!” He struggled against the tape, not getting anywhere.

  “Tell us where we can find your boss. Whatever she’s doing, we need to stop it.” Ariana was leaning forward in her seat, intent on squeezing as much information out of the wizened little man as she could. “What’s her name? Where can we find her? We’ll make you suffer more than she will, I guarantee it!” she bluffed.

  “You don’t understand! You can’t stop her! She’s more powerful than…” The little man froze in place, going completely still. We tensed, waiting to see what he was up to, but he remained motionless, his eyes fixed and unblinking.

  “Kane?” Ariana whispered, with a glance at me. “What’s he doing?” I didn’t have an answer for her. Then Raymond started to shake, his whole body vibrating hard enough to make the chair beneath him tremble and rattle. Ariana started to her feet and reached forward, intending to break the circle to get to him.

  I lashed out and grabbed her arm, yanking her back down to her chair. “Reinforce the circle,” I urged in a tight voice. “Now!” To her credit, she didn’t argue this time, she simply trusted me and did as I suggested. I felt the tingle of her magick on the air as she willed more power into the protective circle that surrounded Raymond. The dome-shaped barrier between us became visible as she strengthened it, a wavering haze of energy that enclosed our captive within.

  Raymond managed a pained groan before his body erupted into an inferno of intense flames that completely filled the space within the circle, a ferocious blast of fire that looked as though hell had arrived to consume his body. The heat was nearly unbearable, and I saw Ariana lurch to her feet with her hands before her, chanting frantically as she attempted to maintain control of the circle, struggling to contain the blaze.

  The conflagration surged like a thing alive for about ten seconds, and then just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. Ariana held the circle for a few moments longer just to be sure it was safe, then she lowered her hands, stepped forward, and broke the circle with the toe of her boot. It dissipated with a pop, the smells of burnt wood and melted plastic, along with the awful stench of incinerated flesh, spread throughout the room. Where Raymond had been just moments before, there now sat a mound of ash and the misshapen remains of his chair in an unrecognizable pile. Ariana stood still for a few seconds, then turned and walked out of the room. Moments later, I heard the sounds of her retching as she spewed the contents of her stomach into the dirt outside. Yeah, the smell was pretty gross, and I wrinkled my nose at it as well. I’d smelled worse, though. I shook my head and sighed. It seemed like we had another heavy hitter to deal with. She must have set him up with a self-destruct spell of some kind, and a powerful one at that. Not easy to do, not easy at all. You had to have major skill as a magickal practitioner, not to mention a marked lack of morality, to pull something like that off. As I stood there, staring at the scorched floor and remains of the little wizard, a smile crept onto my face before I could stop it.

  Looks like this might turn out to be fun! I thought. I picked up the late Raymond Clark’s leather satchel from where I had set it on the floor. I flipped it open and found a couple of binders full of reference materials on some kind of machines, and folders filled with graded papers, the obvious supplies of a college professor. I dug deeper and found a small handful of envelopes, all opened but neatly tucked together in a bundle.

  Ariana reentered the room with a disgusted sigh. “Sorry. That caught me off guard.” She wrinkled up her nose. “Gaah…yeah, that’s bad. I almost feel sorry for the guy.” She saw what I’d fished out of the briefcase and her face brightened. “Whatcha find? Is that his mail?”

  “I think so. That’s his name on the front.” I handed the thin sheaf of envelopes over to her and she flipped through it, scanning each before slipping it to the back of the stack.

  “Yup. His address is right there, not far from the college. If that’s his place, we should go check it out.”

  I stood up and nodded. “I agree. That’s probably where he set up shop. I’m sure we could find something that might lead us to whomever he was talking about. The woman. The one who did that to him.” I allowed myself a flash of anger. “And maybe we can do that to her, as well.”

  Chapter 7

  It had taken the better part of the afternoon to ask around at the college, and after gathering all the pertinent information on Mr. Raymond Clark, Avery and Jim found themselves standing outside a little house barely a mile from the school. It was a quiet, older neighborhood, shaded by wise, majestic trees, and situated around a long empty field of grass that needed mowing. Jim looked at his notepad and checked the number on the house.

  “1307 Windy Knoll,” he confirmed. He folded the pad and tucked it into
his jacket pocket. “This is it. Should we call for backup, do you think?” He patted his holstered automatic absently, wondering if he’d need it.

  Avery’s eyes scanned the front of the house. It sat on a wedge of land at a corner of the subdivision, so she guessed the back yard would be much larger than the narrow garage they could see in front. “No, he’s not here,” she said, her words solid with authority. “I don’t know where he went after I lost him, but he’s not inside.”

  “After we lost him,” Jim amended for her, and Avery felt a surge of affection for her partner. He knew she was taking it hard. She’d had him completely under control, bought and paid for with skinned knees, hands, and elbows, and then…gone. Of course, she blamed herself, but Jim was having none of that. “I was right there with you, don’t forget.”

  Avery sighed and cast an embarrassed but grateful glance at her partner. “Yeah, you were. Thanks.” She looked back at the house. “Let’s head in.” She was moving before Jim could reply, and he lurched forward to catch up with her, just as he always did. They walked up the driveway and around to their right. The front porch was mostly hidden from the street by the branches of a shade tree, a fact which made both of them wary. Although Avery seemed certain enough that no one was inside, Jim pulled his gun anyway, holding it down low, just in case.

  Avery took up her station on one side of the door as Jim did the same opposite her. She pulled her own handgun, steeled herself for whatever might come, then reached up and rapped on the door a couple of times. “Raymond Clark!” she called. “Police! Come on out with your hands where I can see them!”

  There was no response from within, and she repeated the process once more with the same result. Then she cocked her head to one side, as if listening.

  “You hear that?” she asked.

  Jim hadn’t heard a thing, but he knew where this was going. “What, like someone calling for help?”

  “Exactly. Probable cause. That means we have to check it out.”

  With a nod to Jim, who readied his gun, Avery turned the knob and pushed open the door. Jim slid inside with practiced ease that belied his lazy appearance. Avery rolled around the corner in his wake, both of them holding their guns at the ready as they entered a quaint living room.

  It only took a few minutes to clear the main part of the house, as it wasn’t large. The kitchen was orderly and somewhat austere, lacking decorations of any kind. Two of the bedrooms were empty, save a few boxes in one and a lonely desk in another. The master bedroom was simply furnished, its queen-sized bed left unmade, its attached bathroom unoccupied and decidedly ordinary-looking. An old Subaru sat quietly in the garage next to stacks of boxes and a mismatched washer and dryer. One door remained, and Avery and Jim sidled up to it.

  “What’s this, do you think?” Avery asked in a hushed voice.

  “I would think it’s a door to the back yard…maybe a covered patio or a sunroom?” He nodded to the windows on either side of the door, both neatly boarded up from outside. “See? Back porch, probably. But I don’t like how it’s boarded up that way.”

  Avery nodded and reached for the knob. Then she hesitated, her fingers frozen a few inches from the cold metal. They had begun to tingle, and not in a good way. She pulled her hand back a few inches and the sensation vanished. She tried again only to have her fingers prickle painfully before she even touched the knob.

  “What’s wrong?” Jim whispered.

  “I’m not sure,” Avery began, “something is definitely off, though. Give me a sec.”

  Jim frowned, looking very concerned. ”What, is there a bomb?”

  Avery immediately shook her head. “No, I don’t think it’s a bomb, but something bad will happen if we open this door without…”

  Jim waited, but when Avery didn’t respond, he prompted, “Without what, exactly?”

  She remained silent as she listened to her intuition. It had yet to fail her, but although it often gave her surprising insight, it sometimes took her a while to understand the signals she was getting. Finally, she reached up with her left hand and ran her fingertips along the top of the door frame. A key had been hidden there, and her fingers tingled as they touched it. The sensation was different from that of the doorknob, but it also felt right, somehow. It felt safe. She pulled it down and held it up so that Jim could see it, then she slowly moved it toward the keyhole. The instant the key touched the metal of the lock, the tingling disappeared completely, and Avery let out a sigh of relief. Whatever danger had existed before had been nullified with the use of the key.

  “It’s safe now,” she whispered, “but let’s take this slowly.” Jim nodded and held his gun at the ready while Avery turned the knob and gently pushed open the door. She carefully reached a hand inside and flipped the light switch so they could see into the room beyond.

  “Sweet baby monkeys…” Jim breathed in astonishment as he took in the sight. Then he snorted as the sharp smell of incense, herbs, and chemicals assaulted him.

  A room had, indeed, been added where a porch used to be. It was about twenty feet square and had no windows. Another door on the far wall led to the back yard, and the otherwise plain walls were covered in corkboards. Papers and drawings were held up with pushpins, all arranged very neatly on the boards. A large desk sat in the corner to their left, a computer workstation with two large monitors that showed a beautiful forest scene as a screensaver. A small sink and countertop had been installed next to the desk, and the far wall also contained a similar workspace, covered in an elaborate array of vials and beakers in a rack that practically screamed ‘mad scientist’. Shelves above and below the counter held carefully labeled bottles of various substances; some were liquid, some powdered, and some appeared to be natural herbs.

  To the right of the door sat another small desk with several books piled on its surface. Some were new, but battered, and others were very large and old-looking, covered in cracked leather.

  The most interesting feature of the room, though, was the corner to their far right. It was empty of furniture, but the wooden floor had been painted black. A pentacle had been embedded in the planks, a five-pointed star inscribed within a circle, all wrought with thick golden wire. Other symbols surrounded the circle, but they were nothing either detective had seen before. Avery gestured towards the circle, “Don’t step there.”

  “Are you kidding?” Jim said, his eyes wide, “I wouldn’t step in there if you paid me. I tried to play with a Ouija board one time, and my mama slapped the hell out of me. I’m going nowhere near that thing.”

  Moving carefully, Jim crossed the room and unlocked the back door. He opened it, looked around to confirm that it led outside, and then closed it again. “Yep. Looks like a pretty ordinary yard. Needs mowing though. There doesn’t seem to be a shed or anything out there, but we can still look around if you think we need to.”

  Avery stood at the computer, staring at one of the monitors. Moving deliberately, she holstered her gun and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. She gently pressed the Enter key on the keyboard, and the password box appeared on one of the screens. She let her eyes go out of focus for a few moments, then she pecked in a series of letters and hit Enter again. The Password Denied box appeared, and she cleared it. She tried again and got the same result. On the third try, the screensavers vanished and an orderly desktop came up on one of the screens.

  Jim shook his head as he holstered his gun. “How do you do that?”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” Avery muttered as she scanned the folders that were visible on the desktop. There were five of them, each simply numbered one through five. Not very helpful.

  “I wouldn’t open those,” a feminine voice came from just outside the doorway. “And whatever you do, don’t read anything you find on there out loud. That would be bad.”

  Avery and Jim whirled, guns out, but no one was visible in the doorway.

  “Step out where we can see you, hands in the air!” Avery yelled, her voice firm with authority. J
im slipped over to put his back to the wall on the far side of the door, preparing to charge through it while Avery covered him.

  “Look, we’re here to help,” the voice replied. “You’re stepping into something that is way over your heads. The best thing you can do is just walk away and let us handle it. This stuff is right up our alley. Seriously.” There was a pause, and then she continued, “This is far more dangerous for you than you realize.”

  Jim glanced at Avery and nodded, then he rolled around the corner and disappeared into the hall beyond as he confronted the newcomer. He started to yell for the unseen stranger to put her hands up and get down on her knees, but there was a loud slap, a couple of thumps, and some grunting, and Jim reappeared in the doorway, scooting backwards on his butt. He scuttled back into the room like a wounded crab, his face contorted with pain. As soon as he was safely inside the room, he lay down on his side and groaned as he clutched his groin. Avery stared at him in disbelief.

  “Where’s your gun?” she asked tightly.

  A whistle from the hallway brought her attention back to the open door, where a feminine hand daintily dangled his Glock. “You mean this?” Avery blinked in surprise and took aim at the wall, about to send a few rounds through it in an attempt to hit the unseen person beyond. The voice urgently spoke again as Avery’s finger curled on the trigger, “Hold your fire please! Look, I’m giving it back. See?” The hand slowly placed the gun on the floor, then it was joined by another hand, fingers spread and palms facing Avery. “I’m going to step into the doorway,” the voice warned. “As you can see, I do not have anything in my hands. We need to talk. I’m an expert on this stuff, and I’m trying to keep you from hurting yourself.”

  Avery’s eyes narrowed, and she kept her gun trained on the doorway. She hesitated briefly, then followed her instincts. “All right. Step slowly into the doorway, and no sudden moves.” The blonde woman that appeared almost made her gasp, but not because of the tactical vest and handguns she wore. Instead, a powerful feeling of recognition struck her. This woman was dangerous, but even though she had apparently dropped Jim like a bad habit, Avery felt no ill intent from her. Every fiber of her being was quickly telling her to trust this person. Nevertheless, she kept her gun aimed at the newcomer’s center of mass. “Who are you? Start talking.”