Broken (33 page)

“Clay,” I murmured.

He hesitated, then backed off. I stepped into his place.

“Playing games doesn’t go over well with us,” I said. “We take them seriously.”

I reached down and helped her up.

“Sit there,” I said, gesturing at the chair. “Then tell us the real story behind the letter—the one that has something to do with immortality.”

She still tried to protest and sidetrack us, but finally told us the letter’s history, the one she’d known before she’d approached Shanahan to see it.

The story went that a sorcerer had created the portal. He’d been finishing work on an experiment, one that promised a form of immortality. A common enough type of experimentation, but something about this one made other supernaturals think he may have actually hit on a way to do it. Some wanted to steal his research. Some wanted to stop it. So he created the portal to hide, and put the trigger in the paper used to make the
From Hell
letter.

When Anita was done, I told her Hull’s version of the tale.

She frowned. “That seems like a blending of the two stories—the half-demon one and the immortality experiment one. Perhaps that campfire tale bears more truth than one would imagine.”

I said nothing. After a moment, she continued.

“The demon’s boon may be immortality. Or the secret to it. The sorcerer only created the portal—it was the half-demon Jack the Ripper who hid inside.”

“And will be unleashed to wreak unholy terror on an unsuspecting world,” Clay drawled. “He’s doing a half-assed job of it so far.”

“Maybe he’s just warming up.”

Two hours later, Jeremy walked into our room, looked around and sighed.

“So much for resting,” he said as he righted the broken floor lamp.

“It wasn’t us,” I said. “Anita Barrington stopped by and all hell broke loose.”

Another sigh.

“You think I’m kidding? Seems Shanahan wasn’t the spellcaster who broke into our room last night.”

We told him what had happened.

“And after all that—plus nearly giving me a concussion last night—she had the gall to ask again if she can speak with Matthew Hull.”

“Probably hoping he knows more than he’s saying, which, after speaking to him today, I doubt. But as for the letter, I can’t imagine what she hopes to learn from that.”

“Our theory? She’s hoping to use it as leverage with Shanahan. If the zombies seem to want it back, what better offering to the man she believes may hold the secret to immortality.”

“Did you confront her on that?”

I shook my head. “It seemed better not to. Not yet.”

“Good. She may still prove useful.”

Our lunch having been interrupted, we ate a delayed one with Jaime, Nick and Antonio in the hotel restaurant. The restaurant was bright and open, with huge windows and market umbrellas—the feel of eating on a patio without the bugs, heat and smog.

According to Jeremy, Hull had scored about 80 percent when he’d quizzed him on the geography and minor current events of 1888 London—the kind of things it would be hard for a nonresident to answer, but equally hard for a resident to get perfect.

Jeremy had even mentioned that we had a source who might attempt to contact Jack the Ripper through the portal tonight, to see how Hull reacted, but he’d been all for it, and even offered to help, making no attempt to retract or change his story.

The server appeared with our plates before he could continue.

“So,” Clay said after the server left. “He seems legit. But besides winning the sympathy vote, can he do anything for us?”

Antonio opened his mouth to answer, but Nick cut in. “He thinks he can lead us to Shanahan. He says he can feel a pull or something, like Shanahan is trying to control him. He’s offered to try following that pull tonight.”

Antonio swirled a french fry through his ketchup puddle, gaze down.

“You aren’t buying it,” I said.

“It felt like when a middle manager books a meeting with me, shows up and swears he can get some big industry name on board for a joint project because his third cousin married the guy’s niece. He might have convinced himself he has an in, but all he’s really doing is trying to find an in with me, to get the attention of the guy whose name is on the sign outside. Hull might think he feels some connection to Shanahan, and he’ll probably try his damnedest to make it work, but what he really wants is some connection to
us,
to make himself seem useful so we’ll help and protect him.”

“Parasite,” Clay said.

Antonio nodded. “A harsh way of putting it, but yes. Still, can you blame the guy? He’s lost and alone in a strange world. All he wants is a little of our time.”

I glanced over at Jeremy. “So are we going to give it to him tonight?”

“Yes, but only because it’s a lead, and we don’t have many else to follow.”

“You do have one more,” Jaime said, then looked up from her salad and met his gaze. “Dimensional portal fishing, courtesy of your very underworked necromancer.”

After eating, we switched hotels…again. Dealing with Anita Barrington was a complication we really didn’t need.

Notorious

JAIME STOPPED AT THE END OF THE PORTAL ROAD
. “
THIS
is it?”

“It’s not going to be easy, is it?” I said.

“Jeremy warned me it was a residential area, but I figured, being downtown, that meant high-rises, walkups, busy roads…” She scanned the empty street. “…people. We’re going to be a tad obvious, conducting a séance at dusk, in the middle of the road.”

“If it’s not going to work—”

“There are two ways we can do this. One, come up with a plausible story to explain why we’re hanging out on a sidewalk for an hour or so.”

“The other?” Clay said.

“I play me—flaky celeb spiritualist trying to contact the souls of those who disappeared.”

“Option A,” Clay said.

“I thought you’d say that. Let’s get some props then.”

We bought an inexpensive camera and a notepad, and Jaime assigned us our roles. Clay would play photographer. I’d do the note taking. Jaime would be our boss, gathering source material for a proposed television special on recent events.

We’d still attract attention. If it was too much, we’d have to abort.

Clay and I wandered up the road, taking notes and pictures. I knew Jaime wouldn’t accept help if offered; she didn’t even allow onlookers when she was doing the setup work. I guess even seasoned performers can get stage fright, particularly when they aren’t comfortable in a role.

Once Jaime was ready, she called us over and began peeling back the dimensional layers, looking for our lost souls. Less than ten minutes later, she had one: seventy-eight-year-old Irene Ashworth.

Only Jaime could hear Irene, so the conversation was pretty one-sided. After a few minutes of confirming her identity, based on some basic facts we’d gleaned from the newspaper, Jaime was about to let her go.

“Not yet,” Clay said. “Gotta be sure.”

“Sure of what?” Jaime said, whispering so Irene wouldn’t overhear. “You don’t think this could be Jack? But she’s a wom—” She shook her head. “Of all people, I should know better. There’s no reason Jack the Ripper couldn’t be a woman. But she answered the questions right.”

I shook my head. “If she had contact with the real Irene Ashworth in that portal, that wouldn’t be hard. You have to ask her something only someone from our time could answer, like what the Internet is or a DVD.”

“DVD?” Jaime’s voice rose as she laughed. “At her age, we’d be lucky if she knew what a VCR was.” Jaime froze, then turned. “Oh, y-yes, of course you could hear that.”

Pause.

“No, you’re not deaf. I didn’t mean—”

Pause.

“Well, yes, I’m sure the Internet is great for online brokerages and, yes, you’re right, voice-over-Internet protocol must be a cheaper way to talk to the grandkids…”

Strike missing person number one off the list.

“There’s another one already,” Jaime said. “I wish trolling for ghosts was this easy. Okay, here he comes…Got a male. Midthirties. He’s almost here…”

While the description sounded promising for Jack the Ripper, it also matched that of the second missing person, Kyle Belfour, the thirty-six-year-old systems analyst who lived one block over and had vanished while jogging. Initial probing suggested the spirit
was
Belfour, but Jaime ran into some difficulties with the questioning.

“We just need your name and some basic—”

Pause.

“To confirm your identity—”

Pause.

“Why do we need to confirm it?”

She looked back at us for help. I murmured a suggestion.

“Right,” she said. “Because, when we pull you out of there, we need to be sure it really is you.”

Pause.

“Who else could it be? Er, well…”

“Just tell him to answer the damned questions,” Clay said. “Or we’ll leave him in there.”

Jaime started to respond, then stopped. “Government conspiracy? Uh, no, this isn’t—”

Pause.

“No, it’s not part of a military test either.”

Pause.

“Well, yes, I suppose sending enemies of the state into a dimensional holding cell wouldn’t be such a bad idea, but neither the CIA or the mil—”

“CSIS,” I said.

She looked over her shoulder at me.

“In Canada, it’s not the CIA. Remind him that if this was a Canadian intelligence or military operation, it would have to have been dreamed up by CSIS and funded with our military budget.”

She did.

After a moment, she said, “Well, yes, I suppose that is kind of funny.”

Pause.

“No, no, don’t apologize. You’ve been under a lot of stress. Now, if you could just tell us—”

Pause.

“An American-designed-and-funded experiment? Using hapless Canadian citizens?”

She looked back at us. Clay rolled his eyes.

We never did get Belfour to admit to his name. It didn’t matter. After ten minutes of spouting a conspiracy diatribe on the growing U.S. military power under Bush, sprinkled with references to CIA mind control experiments,
The Manchurian Candidate,
and even an
X-Files
nod, we knew our guy was from the twenty-first century. We gave him the same reassurances we’d given Mrs. Ashworth, then let him slide back to his dimensional holding cell.

By that time, we’d started to attract notice from the neighbors. I’d fielded a few questions while Jaime had been listening to Belfour, cutting off the onlookers’ approach before they got close enough to hear her arguing with herself. After she sent Belfour back and started trolling again, Clay and I took our show on the road, taking pictures as I played reporter and asked questions of the curious. Ask the right questions, and you can get rid of people pretty fast. Once the first wave had retreated to their homes, I slid over to Jaime.

“Any luck?” I whispered.

“I’m…not sure. I’m picking up one more presence, and I think it’s male…”

“Could be our boy. Is he playing shy?”

“Seems more confused.”

“Not surprising if he’s been in there for over a hundred years.”

“I’m trying to lure him over. There—He sees me. He’s coming this way. Yep, it’s a man, maybe late fifties…Here he comes. Showtime.”

Lyle Sanderson, sixty-one, claimed to have been walking his dog the evening before when “everything went black.” Very suspicious…except that he’d answered all our test questions about the twenty-first century with flying colors. A quick query to the next onlooker who’d popped from her house confirmed that a man named Lyle Sanderson lived just down the road…and that a neighbor had found his dog running free last night.

Jaime continued hunting for another person inside the portal, but finally, she shook her head.

“Empty,” she said.