Flight From Death Read online

  “Over there, beneath the maple.” She hurried forward, Patrick keeping pace with her to keep her from tripping over any exposed roots or anything. She knelt by the base of the tree, frantically digging into the dirt with her hands. “Beneath here—you have to get a shovel and dig right here.”

  Chai stiffened beside me.

  “She’s here,” I whispered. “All these years, and Lacy is still here, unclaimed and hidden.”

  “This place is built on bones,” Chai said.

  Tonya looked up at him. “Oh, yes . . . and there are far more bones than hers scattered around here. This land is littered with bones . . . and the secrets that hid them here.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “We can’t very well dig in the rain and the dark.” Patrick stood back. “Well, I suppose we could. I have floodlights we could bring out here. I’ll go get a couple shovels and lights.”

  “I’m right behind you.” Chai followed him off to the shed around the corner of the house. I watched him go, hoping he’d stick around for a while. In fact, the idea of having him as a roommate was starting to play through my head. He made me feel safe and like I had actual family with me.

  “We still don’t know how the curse is playing into this. Tonya, what do you know about Gypsy curses?” I wiped away the rain that was pouring down my cheeks.

  She slowly stood up, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Enough to know they’re nothing to mess around with. The Gypsies have a lot in common with some of the Strega. They take their magic seriously and they do whatever is necessary. There’s a lot of family loyalty in the clans—tribes if you will. You mess with one, you mess with them all. Nathan fucked up pretty badly when he screwed over Terrance Buckland.”

  “What kind of curse could be put on a house? Toby was specific about the fact that Anna Lee put a curse on the actual house, not on Nathan per se. Which I find odd, given the revenge factor.” As I stared up at Patrick’s house, a light flickered through one of the attic windows. “Look—up there.”

  The others turned.

  “What the hell . . . that isn’t fire, is it?” Alex started toward the house just as Chai and Patrick returned.

  “I can make it up there fastest.” Chai vanished without giving anyone a chance to say a word.

  Patrick glanced at me. “That wasn’t a wish-favor thing, was it?”

  I shook my head. “Simple requests like asking him to see who’s at the door, et cetera, aren’t considered in that category. Neither are moments when he offers to help without asking you if you want him to do something. It’s complicated and there are a lot of gray areas, but eventually, you get used to the nuances.”

  We waited, but it wasn’t long before Chai returned.

  “No fire. The light vanished when I showed up in the attic. Whatever your big spook is here, he doesn’t like me and he’s afraid of me. But I can’t figure out why. I don’t even know what he is.” Chai picked up one of the shovels Patrick had brought and began to dig. Patrick picked up the other and joined him.

  “Be careful—there are bones down there. I can sense them. We don’t want to break them apart.” Tonya knelt down beside the trunk of the maple. “Lacy was imprisoned and possibly murdered. I’d like to give her remains as much respect as possible.”

  Chai and Patrick slowed down, cautiously removing shovel after shovelful of dirt, working around the roots of the maple. A foot down, and there was nothing. Two feet down, however, proved to be the key.

  “I see something.” Patrick motioned for Alex to shine the large light down into the hole. There, showing through the dirt, an ivory hand protruded. Abandoning their shovels, Chai and Patrick began to dig by hand now, carefully scooping out the dirt. Patrick asked Ralph to run and get a couple trowels and a bucket, which made the work go faster. Ten minutes later, they had uncovered a skeleton, entwined in a cocoon formed by the roots of the tree. We all sat back, staring at the bones.

  There were a few buttons around the skeleton, but no cloth. In the years gone by, it must have rotted away. I stared at the remains, thinking how, beneath the skin and shape, most of us were just bones. Dragon, human, Fae, elf . . . it didn’t matter. It all came down to a scattered bunch of bones once the flesh and blood and water vanished from our bodies. But at least she wasn’t fully naked and exposed. As the ground had accepted her body, the tree had given her a shroud of sorts with its roots.

  “What next? Should we call the police?” I glanced up at the others. “She was human . . . they might want in on this.”

  “Technically, we should.” Alex stood back, staring at the grave. “Patrick, it’s your land and you’d stand to be in the most trouble if we don’t report finding the skeleton. What do you want to do?”

  Patrick grumbled. “Lovely . . . they come out here, launch an investigation, and this will ensure I don’t open for at least another week. But if we don’t call them and this comes to light, I could be hip deep in shit. In the interest of keeping vampire-human relations good, I’d better notify them.”

  We covered the hole with a tarp, then went inside to wait. I kept glancing over my shoulder, wondering if this was going to stir up the spirits even more. Tonya spent the time with her cards, trying to discern anything she could from her readings.

  “I can tell you this,” she said after a while. “Whatever this spirit is that’s trapping them? It—or one of its kind—was here long before the Bucklands built the house. And I’ll tell you one other thing . . . that curse that Anna Lee put on the house? Has nothing to do with the spirits. It’s more financial in nature.” She glanced up at Patrick. “Basically, until you figure out how to lift her curse you’ll never make a dime off your bed-and-breakfast. She sealed it to the failure of business. My guess is that she meant to ruin Nathan and his family. Turnabout is fair play, I guess she was thinking.”

  He facepalmed. “This just gets better and better. But wait, does that mean this spirit isn’t Nathan, or Terrance Buckland?”

  “Exactly. Whatever this creature is, it’s not a ghost, and it was affecting the Bucklands long before Nathan was born.” She laid out another card and paled. “I think he was responsible for the Buckland family locking that poor girl in the attic and killing her. And I do think they murdered her.” Tonya sat back, frowning at the layout on the table. She pointed to the Death card, crossed with the eight of Cups. “Someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol or . . . the creature . . . brought death into the equation. I’ll bet you anything the police will discover evidence pointing to it.”

  “Then what do we do?” I asked, scooting closer.

  “First, we figure out what this entity is and where he’s from. Then, we get rid of him if possible, and then we deal with Anna Lee’s curse. But it’s not going to be easy because the spirit is tied to the land, not the house or a person in particular.” She stopped as the doorbell rang.

  Patrick went to answer and returned with a pair of police officers. He invited them to sit down. I eyed them uneasily. Given that Supes were out in the open, we didn’t have to hide a lot from them, but that didn’t mean they were going to be friendly either.

  The police, however, seemed good-natured enough. One of them, when he saw Tonya, tipped his hat. “Ms. Harris—good to see you again. My grandma appreciated your reading.”

  “Thank you, Roger. Tell your grandmother I’m happy I was able to help.”

  We had to tell them why we were digging out in the yard, so I brought in the journal and photos, though I kept the sketches back, and we told them how Tonya had been guided out to the maple tree.

  “Let’s go see what you found.” Officer Paris Veraday, a thin, wiry woman with dark eyes and hair, motioned to the door. “Please, lead us to the site.”

  We headed out to the maple, where Officer Roger Willis removed the tarp from the hole. We waited while the officers knelt down and shone their flashlights into the hollow. Their lights reflected off the bones, and Paris reached down and gently nudged away a little more dirt to show a sku
ll.

  “That’s a body, all right, and buried deep. She’s been there long enough for the roots to snarl around her, so it can’t be recent—not with that much root growth. And buttons—the clothing is long gone.” She lifted out one of them that had been lodged partway up the hole. “Ivory, or I’ll miss my guess. Unless I’m way off base, this lady has been here a long time.”

  “I’ll call the coroner. Even given the apparent age of the remains, we have to treat this as a homicide until we know for sure who it is and how he—or she—died.” Roger radioed it in and they taped off the perimeter of the hole. “You’ll have to leave the area alone for now, until we know what’s going on.” He motioned for us to return inside.

  As we went back to the house, it felt unnaturally quiet, like whatever it was inhabiting the place was waiting to see how events played out.

  “Until we know more about who’s buried out there—and granted, I do think it’s Lacy Buckland—I suppose we should focus on the main entity we’re facing.” I glanced out the window. “What will happen now?”

  “The coroner will come in to examine the scene. If it’s deemed a homicide, they have to figure out when she died. They’ll sift that area for evidence. If it turns out to be Lacy, I doubt there will be much beyond that. While murder files never close, old ones? Back burner and often cold cases.” Patrick looked so depressed that I wanted to do something to make him feel better, but there wasn’t much we could do, except take care of the ghost problem.

  Tonya must have felt the same way, because she let out a long sigh. “I’d suggest trying a séance, but somehow I don’t think it’s a good idea. This entity has had enough of a say as it is. I think we should just proceed to an exorcism. It’s the only thing I can think of right now. We have to dislodge him from your house and then maybe the others can leave. And after what I’ve seen tonight? The sooner we tackle this, the better. I brought what I needed, just in case.”

  At that moment, a tap at the door announced the presence of the police again. Paris Veraday entered the room. She motioned for us to gather around.

  “The coroner has already verified that the roots that wrapped around the bones grew over them, so she—and it appears to be a woman—has been in the ground for a long time. Roots may spread quickly, but they don’t grow that thick in just a few years. And from what the coroner can tell, she was murdered. There appears to be trauma to the skull consistent with bludgeoning, but nothing conclusive right now. We’ll come out tomorrow and sift around for any other evidence we can find, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope, to be honest. We’ve got enough to cope with given all the cutbacks in funding. It’s all we can do to keep up with our current caseload. We do have the name you gave us; we’ll check into the records, see if we can pinpoint any mention of Lacy Buckland.”

  She tipped her hat and headed to the door. “Just don’t disturb the taped-off area, and we’ll do our best to get out of your hair by the end of tomorrow.”

  Patrick saw her out. When he returned, we looked at one another.

  “Okay, an exorcism. Are you up for this, Patrick?” Tonya held up a wicked-looking dagger.

  He nodded, slowly. “I don’t think I have a choice, do you? If we don’t put a stop to this, either I’ll get staked or somebody else will get hurt. If I open to guests without resolving the problem, nobody in their right mind will stay after word gets around about all the crap that’s going on here.”

  “Let’s get this show on the road.” Alex looked frustrated. While Tonya began to sort out what she needed, I motioned for him to join me outside.

  We stood on the porch, staring around the side yard to where the crime scene tape glimmered in the glow of the porch light. The wind was whipping strong, and the storm I’d felt earlier was close to shore now. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the clouds brewing up thunder and lightning and jagged rain bands ready to slam the town.

  “Alex, what’s wrong? You seem agitated.” I opened my eyes and turned around, leaning against the railing.

  He sat down in the porch swing, his eyes pale and frosty, and draped one arm over the back. “I don’t like this, Shimmer. I don’t feel safe here, and when a vampire doesn’t feel safe, then something is seriously fucked up. The idea of an exorcism scares the hell out of me, and I’m not sure why.”

  I stared at the front door. “I know. But it seems the only option we have right now. Otherwise, what . . . we give up and go back to Seattle, leaving Patrick to deal with this mess? Part of me feels we made it worse with our equipment and ghost hunting, but then I stop and think, no . . . the minute he opened for business, all of this would crop up and bite his ass.”

  “I’m glad you said that—I was thinking about the same thing, and frankly, I didn’t want to be the one responsible for stirring up a nest of hornets.” He glanced around the corner at the gravesite. “She was there for all those years . . . and nobody knew.”

  “Well, whoever put her there knew. And chances are, more than one person was in on it. I wonder if the name Lacy Buckland means anything to Toby.” I thought about giving him a call, but it was almost eleven and I didn’t want to disturb him if he’d already gone to sleep. I settled onto the swing next to Alex and nestled against him. I wanted the comfort.

  “I’m glad Chai showed up. I hope you don’t mind.” I glanced at him. “He’s really the only family I have.”

  “He seems a good sort, and handy to have around. I’ll remember not to ask him for any favors, though. At least none that require magic.” He grinned at me, then impulsively kissed my forehead. “Sit back. Breathe deep. Relax while you can, because I have a nasty feeling the spirit isn’t going to react well to the exorcism.”

  I tried to relax but was all too aware of his muscled frame pressed against me. While I’d had my share of dalliances over the years, most were brief. Every dragon I’d been with had turned his back on me, once he found out I didn’t have a clan. There were a few rogues out there, the pirates of the dragon world, so to speak, but they weren’t the type to settle down. And if we’d had children, they would have been clanless, suffering the same fate as us. Love and relationships hadn’t factored heavily into my life.

  My head on his shoulder, I glanced up at him. He leaned his head back, staring into the night. His body seemed so still, no breath moving his lungs, and his skin was cool, but once again, the scent of cloves and cinnamon, of spicy rum wafted past me.

  “What are you wearing? That smells so good.” The question just fell out of my mouth.

  “Bay rum,” he murmured. “I’ve loved it ever since I first began traveling back in my safari days.” He paused, then added, “Glenda hated the scent. She wanted me to use something more up-to-date, but this . . . it’s who I am. I never asked her to change perfumes.”

  I held my breath, not knowing what to say. Finally, I decided to be up front. “Why did you go out with her?”

  He shrugged. “Sex. I guess. She was available and so was I. We met and hit it off. But from the very beginning, it was a volatile relationship. Glenda has a hair-trigger temper. Why did you stop dating Carter? He mess you up?”

  That, I could answer decisively. “No. I like Carter. I want to continue to like Carter, and if we tried to make it work, after a while we wouldn’t be friends.”

  “Ralph has a crush on you, you know?” Alex’s voice was level, but I sensed so many undertones to the question.

  I chose my words carefully. “I know. I like Ralph. He’s smart and sweet and . . . he needs a brilliant werewolf geek girl. Not a dragon with a troubled past.”

  “What do you need, Shimmer?”

  Again, the question had so many layers that I could barely sift through them. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’ll be honest, Alex. I don’t know what I’m looking for. But . . . I’m lonely. I’ve been alone most of my life, so this is nothing new.”

  Alex leaned forward, kissing my lips gently. “I know. So am I—even through the entire time I was with Glenda, I never re
ally felt like I was part of a couple.” He was about to say something more when the door opened and Tonya stuck her head out.

  “We’re ready. Come inside, guys.”

  I jumped up. “We’re coming.”

  As she vanished back inside, I turned around, but Alex was back to business. I flashed him a smile, both regretting that Tonya had interrupted and grateful that she had. This thing between Alex and me was starting to move a lot quicker than I expected it to. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Alex held my gaze for a moment, then returned my smile and we headed inside.

  • • •

  “Exorcisms can be messy businesses, and with the way spirits work, they’re not always easy. We need to dig a wedge between the spirit and his hold on this land, and that’s going to be rough.” Tonya set out a number of objects—a brass pentacle, a dagger, a chalice, a red candle, and a short-handled broom. To these, she added several other items. I wasn’t sure what they were.

  “Patrick, do you have any kosher or sea salt? I need a cup of it. I also need a glass of water and some wine if you have it. Red would be best, but any is fine.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the items while she cleared the coffee table of everything that wasn’t hers. Tonya poured the salt into a pretty stained-glass bowl and set it in the north quadrant of the table, then filled another matching bowl with the water and set it to the west. The candle went in the south quarter, and the broom in the east. Then she filled the chalice with wine and set it in the middle, along with a pair of candles—one was black, the other white. She placed the brass pentacle between them and stood back. “We’re ready.”

  “What should we do?” Dragon or not, I was starting to feel nervous. For one thing, I couldn’t change into my dragon form out of water. For another, it was possible for me to get killed in human form. And for a third, I’d developed a distinct dislike of ghosts. Most of it recent.