Unholy Ground

by Christine Pope

  Her reverie was interrupted by the arrival of the waitress with their drinks. Since Audrey knew she wanted fish and chips, she hadn’t even bothered to look at the menu. Michael requested the same, and the waitress departed.

  “How many conferences and symposiums do you go to each year?” Audrey asked, genuinely curious.

  He drank some of his Boddington’s, wiped a bit of foam from his lip, then replied, “It depends. If I’m working on a new book, I tend to stay home. But it probably averages out to six or seven a year.” His eyes glinted at her, picking up stray golden gleams from the windows high up in the brick walls. “Worried that I’m going to leave you alone all the time?”

  Actually, that niggling little thought had crossed her mind. However, she said crisply, “I think I can manage on my own just fine.”

  Her tone obviously didn’t faze him, because he chuckled and said, “Yes, I think that’s patently obvious. But really, there’s no reason why you couldn’t come along with me to the ones that interested you. I suppose I was hoping we might be able to work together on some projects in the future…a book, maybe.”

  “I wouldn’t know the first thing about writing a book,” she protested. That sort of project sounded as if it could be fun, though. Working with Michael, living with Michael…sharing their lives in every way. There were quite a few instances of husband-and-wife teams in the paranormal world, after all. Once upon a time, she’d wistfully thought about being a part of such a team, even while acknowledging that such a future probably wasn’t in the cards for her.

  Right then, though, she had to wonder whether she’d lost her mind. True, Michael had just asked her to move in with him, but the subject of marriage had certainly never come up. He hadn’t even told her he loved her. Cared for her, of course, but neither of them had made the leap to saying the L-word just yet.

  He didn’t bat an eye. “But I know all about writing books. Something about the awakening of your psychic powers, maybe.”

  “We don’t even know how psychic I am,” Audrey said. “A few flashes here and there isn’t quite enough to base a whole book on.”

  “You’re plenty psychic, even if you’re not quite ready to admit it yet.”

  She didn’t have a ready reply to that remark, so she sipped some of her pear cider. It was good, lighter and crisper than the hard apple ciders she’d tried in college. She filed that fact away for later, thinking it might be fun to keep in the refrigerator as a summertime drink.

  But summer was still months off, and in the meantime, they still had the problem of the Whitcomb-demon to deal with. If there was even anything they could do about him.

  Michael, seeming to read something of her mood, was also quiet as he drank his beer. Luckily, the waitress came by then with their food, and they were able to direct their attention toward the fish and chips on their plates, and not the awkward silence that had arisen between them. After he’d eaten a few bites, however, he spoke.

  “You know I would never ask you to do something you weren’t comfortable with,” he said quietly. “I just thought collaborating on a book might be fun.”

  “It might,” Audrey allowed. “It’s just….”

  “Just what?”

  She looked up from her meal. He was watching her intently, fork resting on his plate. There was no impatience in his gaze, as far as she could tell. It seemed as though he was ready to wait as long as it took for her to gather her thoughts, to tell him what was really troubling her.

  A small sigh escaped her lips, and she allowed herself a sip of her pear cider before she said, “I suppose I just feel…adrift.”

  One dark brow lifted, but he remained quiet, waiting for her to speak her piece.

  “I’m happy to be moving in with you,” she went on. “I don’t want you to think this is about that. And I suppose at some point I’ll get everything settled with the insurance company and will have some closure there. But I still have to decide what I want to do with my practice. I need to stop half-assing things. It’s not fair to my clients, and — ”

  “It’s not fair to you,” Michael said. “Maybe all this — everything that’s happened over the past few weeks — is a way to get you to reevaluate what you really want. If you could do anything — anything — what would it be?”

  Good question. Right now, a large part of what she wanted was sitting across the table from her. Audrey knew her track record with relationships wasn’t exactly what one could call successful, and yet somehow, her gut told her that she and Michael were in this for the long haul. “I’d go back to school and get my Ph.D., find a way to continue my research into extrasensory powers and human consciousness. But there just aren’t many places to do that, unfortunately.”

  “What about Arizona?”

  “I thought they killed that program.” True, once she’d realized that particular avenue was closed to her, she hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on in terms of academic exploration of psychic abilities. At the time, she’d told herself she was just being practical, but now she wondered if her indifference had been more sour grapes than anything else.

  “The VERITAS program ended, true,” Michael told her. “But it morphed into something they call SOPHIA. That program is still very much alive through the Laboratory for the Advancement of Consciousness at UA in Tucson.”

  The irony of the situation was not lost on her. “Right where we were.”

  “Basically.”

  Audrey smiled and shook her head. “I don’t really see myself going to Tucson.”

  “Why not? We could both go.”

  Was he serious? She stared back at him, ignoring her half-eaten fish and chips. “What about your house?”

  “What about it?” he replied, looking completely unconcerned. “It’s a house. I can either put most of my stuff in storage and then rent it out, or just close the place up while we were gone. It would probably depend on how much it would cost to rent a house in Tucson.”

  Her mind was reeling. Yes, all right, in a way, Michael’s work was entirely portable — he only needed a home office to work out of. But still, to offer to pull up stakes, just so she could get the Ph.D. she’d always wanted?

  “That’s a very generous offer,” she said. The words were completely inadequate, of course, but she didn’t know what else to say. Before she’d met him, she’d thought her life was going to follow a fairly predictable course. Now, all sorts of possibilities seemed to be opening up, and she wasn’t sure how to mentally approach these potential new futures that beckoned.

  “Well, we don’t have to decide anything right now. There are a few things we need to manage before we start looking ahead like that.” He flashed her a grin before he picked up his fork and stabbed a chunk of beer-battered cod. “Or maybe more than a few.”

  That was for sure. Even so, she couldn’t quite keep herself from mentally exploring some of the possibilities. With a Ph.D., she could get on a research team somewhere. Or, at the very least, she’d have a lot more to offer Michael as a writing and speaking partner. Once she had the insurance payout on the house, she’d be able to fund her continuing education without any problem.

  But no…she should use that money to buy another house, shouldn’t she? That would be the smart thing to do.

  No, the smart thing to do is invest in yourself, she thought. She liked to think her parents would understand. The house had been their dream…but it didn’t necessarily have to be hers. Funny how it had taken a bunch of destructive demons to teach her such an important truth.

  “That’s for sure,” she said, knowing her voice sounded a little shaky. Of all the ways she’d thought this conversation might go, this was definitely not one of them.

  “Speaking of which,” Michael went on, “I still haven’t heard a damn thing from Colin. I wonder what’s going on.”

  “Maybe he’s still editing, like you said.”

  “Possibly, but even he comes up for air enough to check his texts and his voicemail…and get h
imself a beer.”

  He looked worried, and a small chill tickled its way down Audrey’s back. “Maybe we should go check on him,” she suggested.

  “I doubt he’d appreciate us showing up on his doorstep out of the blue.”

  Audrey lifted her shoulders. “It would teach him a lesson about not checking his phone.”

  That remark made Michael chuckle. “True. You won’t mind heading over there after dinner? His house is probably a half hour from here.”

  “If I minded, I wouldn’t have suggested it.” She was glad that she sounded firm and confident, but once again she felt a flicker of cold. Probably just her imagination playing with her.

  “Okay, then. We’ll go drop in, see what happens.” He set down his fork and reached for his half-drunk glass of beer. “Colin’ll probably be ticked off, but it would give us a chance to see the final cut, so to speak, before he releases the footage into the wild.”

  Plan settled, they finished the rest of their meal, and Michael flagged down the waitress so they could pay the bill and get on their way. The parking garage where they’d left Audrey’s rented Charger was only a few doors down from the restaurant, so in a remarkably short period of time, they were back on the road, this time heading west on the 134 Freeway. They’d have to cut down on I-5 to exit to Los Feliz, where Colin’s house was located, but it still felt like the most direct route.

  As they drove, Audrey watched the last orange glow of sunset fade on the far western horizon, out past the sprawl of the San Fernando Valley, before Michael turned south and an arm of the Santa Monica Mountains hid it from view. For some reason, the falling dark awoke the same unease she’d felt during dinner, as though it wasn’t safe for them to be out and about now that night had come to Los Angeles.

  Which she knew was probably foolish. Even now they were surrounded by thousands of other drivers on the freeway. It wasn’t as though they were on some back-country road in the middle of nowhere with no street lights and not another soul within miles.

  Her unease only intensified as they got off at Los Feliz Boulevard and headed up into the hills. Audrey found herself clutching the shoulder strap of her seatbelt, body tense.

  Michael seemed to sense something was wrong, because he took his eyes off the road just long enough to send a quick, worried glance in her direction. “Are you okay, Audrey?”

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “I’m just getting the worst feeling. Maybe it’s all in my head.”

  “I doubt it,” he replied, and now he sounded worried as well. “Your feelings have been pretty accurate lately.”

  Maybe so. “Are you going to turn around?”

  “No,” he said at once. “If something’s happened, we need to know what it is. But at least now I know to go in with my eyes open.”

  She nodded, not bothering to argue. Michael was right — if anything had gone wrong, then better to know the worst and deal with it. With any luck, she was only experiencing heebie-jeebies now because she was already anticipating getting chewed out by Colin for intruding on him while he was working.

  At least, she sincerely hoped that was the only thing troubling her.

  The traffic up Los Feliz Boulevard was thick, but eventually they turned off onto a residential street that wound its way through a hillside neighborhood. After driving for a few blocks, Michael stopped in front of a tidy Spanish-style home with a large arched window in front and several old oak trees in the yard. Light gleamed dimly through the window, seeming to indicate that someone was home, even if they weren’t actually in the room at the front of the house.

  He looked over at her. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” Audrey replied. Seeing that light inside had made her feel a bit better. At least they weren’t approaching a completely dark house.

  They got out and walked up the front path, then mounted the two steps to the door. Michael reached out and rang the bell. She could hear it echo hollowly in the house, but even after they waited for nearly a minute, no one came to open the door.

  He gave a shrug that was just a little too casual. “Colin tends to edit with his headphones on. You could drop a live grenade in the next room and he probably wouldn’t hear it.”

  The night breeze had picked up and Audrey had to fight to keep herself from shivering, although the air couldn’t exactly be called cold. Voice tight with anxiety, she asked, “Well, if that’s the case, then what should we do?”

  “No worries. He usually leaves the French doors to the backyard open when he’s home — he likes the fresh air. This way.”

  Before she could protest, Michael had gone back down the steps, heading toward the driveway so he could follow it along the side of the house. Since waiting at the front by herself didn’t seem like a very attractive option, she hurried to catch up with him, then stayed close behind as he went through a low wrought-iron gate that separated the driveway from the walk that led into the backyard. A swimming pool occupied most of the space, gleaming blue-green in the dark.

  Audrey couldn’t help wondering what the rent on this place must be. Michael had said Colin was pretty leveraged, and she had a feeling that was a fairly accurate assessment. If modest homes in her own neighborhood were renting for nearly three thousand dollars a month, what would a house with a pool in this desirable area run? Five thousand? Six thousand?

  She didn’t have time to ponder that question any further, however, because Michael had put his hand on the latch for the screen door, was now sliding it open. This seemed to prove that he’d been right about Colin leaving the French doors open to catch the breeze — and it was actually quite lovely, cool and with just the faintest scent of orange blossoms.

  The light they’d glimpsed earlier seemed to come from the room they entered — clearly, what was supposed to be the family room. A huge flat-screen television was mounted to one wall, and the other walls had posters of classic horror movies hanging on them in identical black frames. A black leather sectional and square glass coffee table occupied the rest of the space.

  There was no sign of Colin, but Michael didn’t look too worried by his absence. “He has his editing setup in one of the bedrooms at the back of the house. This way.”

  Audrey followed him out of the family room and down a short hallway. Through one of the doors, she glimpsed what must be the master bedroom, with a king-size bed dominating the space, rumpled and unmade, the blue and gray patterned duvet cover half slipped onto the floor.

  Don’t judge, she told herself. That was another thing about Michael she loved — he was almost as tidy as she was. Maybe his moon was in Virgo or something.

  The third bedroom was located at the end of the hall, after it jogged to the left. A dim light seeped past the barely cracked door, its pale glow telling her that it probably came from a computer screen.

  “Colin?” Michael said, pushing on the door with one hand to open it a little farther.

  Now Audrey could see their producer sitting on the mesh office chair in front of that screen, which showed some kind of complicated interface, probably for editing video. However, the window that should have contained the piece being edited was blank, so she had no idea what he could have been working on. His left hand hung at his side, while his right one appeared to still be resting on the trackball mouse on the desktop.

  Michael glanced over his shoulder at her, clearly concerned by Colin’s lack of response. However, he moved forward into the room, then spoke again. “Colin? Are you okay?”

  As Audrey hung back by the doorway, Michael stepped toward the desk and paused next to the office chair. Placing a hand on one of Colin’s shoulders, he turned the other man toward him.

  His eyes stared at them, dark pits. No, those weren’t his eyes — they were the holes where his eyes had once been, with trails of black blood clawing their way down his face.

  Audrey screamed.

  Chapter 11

  The lights from the police cruisers flashed blue and red, staining the creamy white stucco of Coli
n’s rented house. Audrey sat on the front stoop, arms wrapped around herself as if to ward off a chill. One of the officers had offered her a blanket, but she’d refused.

  Michael wished he could go to her, but he doubted whether the officer currently interviewing him — a Detective Mendoza — would appreciate the interruption.

  “When was the last time you communicated with the victim?” the detective asked.

  “He came over to our house for dinner on Sunday night,” Michael replied. “And I talked to him on Monday. But that was the last time. I had a few business-related questions I needed to discuss with him, so when he didn’t answer any of his texts today, Audrey and I decided we’d better come over and see if he was all right.”

  Mendoza made a few notes on the pad he held. “Audrey is your girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” Michael said without hesitation. “Audrey Barrett. Two ‘r’s, two ’t’s.”

  “Thanks.” The detective scratched something else on the pad. “And can you vouch for your whereabouts earlier this evening?”

  “Yes, we were at Lucky Baldwin’s in Old Town Pasadena. I have a receipt from dinner if you need it.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary, but hang on to it, just in case.”

  Just in case you decide I’m a suspect, Michael thought wearily. After all, someone who dabbles in the paranormal is probably more capable of scratching someone’s eyes out than your garden-variety burglar, right?

  He wondered how the detective — a trim, no-nonsense-looking man in his late forties — would react if Michael told him it was no human being who’d done that to Colin Turner.

  Probably recommend me for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold.

  He decided to remain quiet and only speak when asked a direct question.

  “How long have you and Colin Turner known each other?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “Friends or business associates?”

  “Both,” Michael replied. “He approached me about a project, and we became friends as we worked together.”