Kitty’s Greatest Hits (33 page)

The eyes blinked.

“Oh my dear, thank you.” Amelia brushed a strand of the girl’s chestnut hair off her forehead, as if she could still feel comfort. But who could say what she felt, with the door open? Even if it was only a crack. “Follow the light. Show me in the mirror.”

The mirror presented an image of fog. Figures began to emerge. A dark form had the shape of a man, tall and stout, but it was featureless. When it reached, the fingers were as long as its arm, and it had claws, extending, curling. In the mirror, Lydia showed a picture of herself, her mouth open to scream as one of the claws raked across her neck.

“Lydia, you must try to remember. Where did it go?”

The shadow in the mirror took on red eyes. Again and again, the claw tore through her throat, and she fell before she could make a sound. That was all she had, all she could give Amelia. The corpse, its gaze still locked on her, blinked again, and a tear slid from the outside corner of its eye, down its cheek.

Amelia sat back and clenched her hands in her lap. What was she doing here? Abusing the dead for no good purpose. She fancied herself a wizard, an arcane scholar, a demon hunter. She’d traveled the world to learn what she knew. It all should have been good for something.

She touched Lydia’s face and closed her eyes. “Sleep, Lydia. Leave this world. May the next treat you better.” In her mind, she closed the door, slid shut the bolt. The mirror was a mirror again. She snuffed the candle with her finger.

Then she heard footsteps on the porch. Perhaps Lydia had had time to scream after all.

The rumble of a carriage and horses came up from the road beyond. More steps on the porch. Her heart in her ears, Amelia was too shocked to move, so when the men opened the door, they found her kneeling by the body with blood on her hands and the occult circle drawn around her.

Cañon City, Colorado, Four Months Later

Doors, passages, worlds. A skillful magus could travel between them by his thoughts alone, or so Amelia had read. In the East she had seen orange-clad monks who could stop their own breathing by meditation and seemed to be dead, but they awoke safely.

Did she believe a person could travel between life and death? Pass through that iron door and return unharmed?

The bricks of the prison where she was housed were old enough, at least by this country’s standards. Their roots stretched into the earth. They had seen forty years of life and death. They had passages and portals the wardens did not know about. Lying on her canvas cot at night, she traveled them. She bound together a bit of candle and a lock of hair and burned them until neither remained.

Would it work?

The iron door was open wide, gaping like a mouth.

They had cut her dark hair short and put her in a poor cotton dress, a bleached gray prison uniform. They had let her keep her boots, thank God. These boots had traveled the world and were well broken in, comfortable. At least her feet were not sore. The boots would walk her to the scaffold. She could travel between worlds, but not escape a steel-barred prison. A sore irony.

The day was blustery, a wind pouring from the mountains, carrying dust and the promise of rain. For now the sky was hazy, washed out by an arid sun. A crowd of spectators had gathered, all men in proper suits and hats, hairy mustaches making their frowns seem fiercer, more judgmental. They were all no doubt horrified at what she’d done. What they thought she’d done. The bastards had no idea. They would truly be horrified if they knew what lived in the world, dime-novel monsters they could not believe.

She stood on the platform. A man tied her hands in front of her. A noose hung. Part of her wanted to look away, but part of her studied it. She had seen men hanged, but had never seen a noose from this angle, so close. The knot had been tied correctly. She had never seen a woman hanged.

Her thoughts were scattered, her mind already partway gone. Not through the door, but into a little room she had built beside the door with hair, candle, and incantation. She would fool that iron slab. Doors and rooms existed between life and death.

The candle, the hair. The light, her life.

How had it come to this?
part of her wailed. Her parents had been right, she should have stayed home, married the unremarkable suit they’d put in front of her. Too late, the scientific part of her mind reprimanded. She followed this path of her own free will and she must continue on. When the path seemed to end, you blazed a new trail through the wilderness.

“Amelia Parker, you have been tried and convicted for the murder of Lydia Harcourt and sentenced to death according to the laws of the state of Colorado.”

She cleared her throat and tried not to sound nervous. Her voice came out halting anyway. “Lady Amelia Parker. I’d prefer my title entered into the records, if you please.” Her throat closed, and she swallowed. Just a little longer. Stay focused on that room beside the iron door.

“
Lady
Amelia Parker, do you have any last words?”

“None whatsoever. Thank you.”

“Then may God have mercy on your soul.”

Closing her eyes, she left the scaffold. It was a strange feeling. She merely thought,
Breathe out.
Breathe it all out. Focus on the small symbols she had built, make them real, go there. Light, life, the room beside the door. Then she was watching a slim waif of a girl standing on the scaffold. It was her, pale and despairing. She’d hardly eaten for days and it showed. The prison dress hung limply on her. Hood over her head, rope around her neck. Still she could see. Was pleased the body did not tremble. But the executioners had to guide it into place, as if the person was no longer truly conscious.

The floor dropped with a creak and a snap, and everything went dark.

Cañon City, Colorado, The Present

Cormac took another step forward in line and tried not to think too hard. This place was built on routine, rhythm. If he let himself fall into it, the days flew by. He’d be out of here in no time, if he could keep up the rhythm and not let anything—anyone—knock him out of it. He made sure not to get too close to the guy in front of him—big guy, beefy shoulders, white, tattoo-covered—and tried not to think of the guy behind him—shorter, wiry, which probably meant he was quick—breathing down his neck. Cormac didn’t look at anyone, didn’t meet anyone’s gaze. Let himself be carried by the rhythm. He’d pick up his tray, his plastic utensils, find a place to sit where he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone, and eat to keep himself going for another day. Try not to think about the way the orange jumpsuit didn’t fit right across his shoulders, or the way this place smelled like fifty years of bad cooking.

He had his tray in hand when a shove hit his shoulder. Because he’d been expecting it, the tray didn’t go flying.

He didn’t have to look to know it was the guy behind him, the scrappy freak who’d tried to stare him down before at meals or out in the yard. It wasn’t an accident, though if Cormac confronted him the guy would say it was. More than that, he wouldn’t apologize; he’d turn it around, accuse Cormac of trying to start something, then he really would start something—a fight to knock him a few pegs down the pecking order. Cormac had seen this play out a dozen times. The black guys had their gangs, and they picked on the Latino gangs who picked on the white gangs who picked on everybody else, spouting some kind of superiority shtick, which was a riot because they were all locked up in the same cinder-block box wearing the same prison jumpsuits. Even their tattoos blurred together after a while. Cormac didn’t try to keep score.

He turned his head just enough to look at the guy, whose eyes were round, whose lips were snarly. The collar of his jumpsuit was crooked. He was bristling, teeth bared, like he was getting ready to jump him. But Cormac didn’t react. Just looked at the guy, frowning. Cold. The big mistake these jokers made was thinking Cormac cared about his rep, cared about the pecking order, wanted or even needed to join up for protection, for friendship, for some sense of belonging. Like they were all some pack of wolves, he thought with some amount of irony.

They stood like that for maybe a full minute until the next guy behind muttered, “Hey, move it.” Cormac only turned back around when the scrappy freak ducked his gaze. No need to get excited, no need to say a word. You just had to keep to yourself. He wasn’t here to make lifelong friends or be the boss of anyone.

No one else bothered him as he picked up his tray and went to an empty table at the far end of the cafeteria. Prison guards stood at the doorways, watching. Cormac didn’t pay them any more attention than he did to his fellow prisoners. There was no point to it.

He hadn’t been trying to earn a reputation over the last few months, but he seemed to have one anyway. No one else sat with him; the others gave him plenty of room. He didn’t talk, didn’t try to make friends. That cold stare was enough to keep trouble away. So he ate greasy chicken and mashed potatoes with watery gravy in silence.

He didn’t want to think too hard about it, but keeping stock of his surroundings was too much a habit to quit: noting where the people around him were, how they carried themselves, where the exits were, what dangers lay in wait. The hunter’s instincts. He should have been grateful—those instincts were keeping him safe here. But they also made him edgy. Maybe it was the feeling of being trapped, that he couldn’t go anywhere in this place without being watched, without the chance that one of those uniformed, frozen-faced guards might decide to take him down for no reason at all. He hadn’t seen open sky in weeks. Even the yard was ringed with concrete and barbed wire.

He set down his fork and flattened his hand on the table, just for a moment, until the tension went away. He was doing all right. He just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

And he had to get rid of the tightness in his spine that said someone was watching him. That something around here was just a little bit … off.

*   *   *

The inmates told ghost stories.

“There’s a warden fifty years ago who hung himself,” the guy in the next cell, Moe, was saying. “Can you believe that? A warden. Hung himself on the top floor. That knocking sound? That’s him. Walking around.”

“Shut
up,
” hollered another inmate in another cell.

“You’ve heard it,” Moe insisted.

“It’s pipes. It’s old fucking pipes,” Cormac’s cellmate Frank said.

“You know the story, you know it’s true.”

The pipes acted up once a week or so, and every time Moe had to talk about the ghost of the warden who hanged himself. Cormac thought it was just the pipes.

Trouble was, inmates told lots of stories, and something here wasn’t right. That tingling at the back of his neck made him reach for a gun on his belt. Easy enough to brush it off, to tell Moe to shut up. But something dripped off the walls here. Of course a prison was going to be tense, all these angry guys penned up together.

But Cormac knew what was really out there. A prison filled with ghosts wasn’t the worst of it.

“I’m going to beat you if you don’t shut it!”

“I’m just telling you. I’m
warning
you!”

This would go on for another minute before Moe finally shut up. Wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.

Cormac pressed his pillow over his ear and tried to think himself away from this place. To a meadow up in Grand County, miles from anywhere. Tucked on the side of a valley, east facing so it got the first sun of the morning. Green grass, tall trees, blue sky, and a creek running down the middle of it. His father had taken him hunting there when he was a kid, and he never forgot it. Camping, waking up before dawn when a layer of mist clung to the grass. Drinking strong coffee heated over a campfire. He went back there, when he needed to get out of his own head.

*   *   *

The nameplate sitting on the desk read “Dr. Ronald Olson.” Cormac sat in the not-so-comfortable chair across the desk from an unassuming man in an oxford shirt and corduroy jacket. He even had glasses. He was maybe in his fifties, and his hair was thinning. He looked soft rather than weathered. Cormac classified him as prey.

“How are you doing today?” Olson asked.

Cormac shrugged. This was just another hoop to jump through. Play nice for the camp counselor. He doubted the guy could tell him anything about himself he didn’t already know. Both his parents had died violently when he was young, his whole life had been filled with violence, he’d fallen back on violence as a solution to every problem, and that was what landed him here.

He didn’t know if Olson expected him to try to manipulate him, play some kind of mental hide-and-seek, Hannibal Lector–style. Cormac didn’t want to work that hard for so little payoff. But Olson was free to think Cormac was a puzzle he could pick apart and solve.

“How are you adjusting?”

“It’s just a place,” Cormac said, shrugging again. “One day at a time.”

“Any problems? Anything you’d like to talk about? It can be a shock, going from the outside to this.”

Cormac smiled and looked away. “Am I supposed to get pissed off because I can’t run out to McDonald’s and get a hamburger? That’s a waste of energy.”

“That’s an admirable stoicism. Are you sure you aren’t in denial? That can be dangerous as well.”

Cormac had a feeling the two of them looked at dangerous in completely different ways. He resisted an urge to glance at the clock, to see how much time they had left. He hadn’t asked for this—the guy had gotten hold of Cormac’s file and decided he must be crazy.

“I figure I keep my head down and get out of here just as quick as I can.”

“Goal oriented. That’s good.”

Now Cormac wondered if the guy was for real. He shifted, leaning forward just a little. “There’s one thing you could maybe tell me about.”

“Go on.”

“You hear many ghost stories around here? Do guys come in here telling about … things. Noises, spooky stuff.”