Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (93 page)

There was no mistaking the man before me, and little wonder he’d chosen to dwell in a chamber of shadows and cobwebs.

He was a creature straight out of nightmares, as he had been, in fact, over forty people’s worst nightmare.

But his reign of terror had ended fifteen years ago when he had been found dead in prison. His last official victim had been a young woman devoid of all entrails, cut in half with fastidious care.

He was dead.

Should
have been dead.

But he was now looking down at me, smiling like the lunatic he was. Or had been. Damn, this hex stuff was confusing.

I saw now that his face, or at least his jaw and lips and the bottom of his nose, all of which were touched by the hazy light of the hall, were as milky pale as a stump grub. The darkness beneath his hat brim suggested an endless cavern, and I wondered if the rest of his head was hiding under the hat or if it was only the stuffing of eternal night.

Sweat, as if turned on by a valve, began steadily dripping down my cheek and the back of my neck. The sweat meandered down my spine, stopping and soaking the waist of my black denims. I could have used a sudden, inexplicable chill about then to cool me down, but I’d used up my lifetime’s supply of “inexplicables.”

All the while I stared up at the man, unable to decide what to do, my mind reeling. I was unable to get a grasp on my thoughts, for they were running wildly, mixed and jumbled.

“Albert?” Tabitha asked, fifteen feet further down the hall.

The killer’s smile was fixed in place as if that mouth had eaten the sweetest human organs in the world. I could have easily been looking up at a wax statue in a wax museum. A statue of one of the world’s most notorious serial killers: Max Richter, a.k.a. the Surgeon of Silicon Valley.

Part of me knew, a part that was mixed with the rest of my swirling, distorted thoughts, that I should get out of the man’s way. Just press against the wall and let him pass. Except that idea seemed incapable of firmly registering in my brain. Nothing was registering in my brain.

Instead I stood frozen. I peered under the brim of the hat, daring to see those eyes, if any existed. Hoping that his gaze would shock me into action or else confirm that I was mistaken, that this was just another tenant in a perpetual-care facility that seemed to have trouble keeping its clients in bed.

That’s when a hand clamped onto my shoulder.

I squealed a little, or maybe just squeaked.
Dear God, he’s going to cut me up like the rest of them!

I felt myself being pulled to the side. I was in no condition to resist. I stumbled and almost fell, wondering if that was how his victims felt, limp and helpless as their fate approached in a sick, silver fury.

Narrow but strong arms held me up. I suddenly was looking into the wide, concerned eyes of Tabitha. She was asking me something, but I was incapable of speech or really even listening. Instead, I twisted around in her arms and watched the big man move quietly down the hall, his feet touching the carpet in soft murmurs.

At least he isn’t floating. Thank God for the little things.

He made a left and in a blink he disappeared down the stairs. He did not look back.

Tabitha stepped in front of me and said my name. It came to me as if through a wall of water, but the firm slap on the cheek brought me around.

“Shipway, don’t get wimpy on me now. We need to do this.”

My eyes refocused from the dark hollow of the stairwell to her concerned face. I was struck with the raw realization of how incredibly beautiful she was, how much of Amanda she carried inside her, and how she was the last surviving link between me and my son. It might have been a little creepy and maybe even incestuous to look for Amanda in her face, but right then, I wasn’t interested in morality. I was interested in any little lifeline to reality I could find.

“Albert?” Her voice was little more than a harsh whisper now. She did not wish to wake the residents, or maybe she was afraid of what they might be cooking up behind closed doors. And no telling what might be lurking in the attic.

“What’s wrong? Who was that? What just happened?” She had both hands on my shoulders, and she shook me with each question.

“Something horrible is going on. We need to see your grandmother. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.”

“Who was that? I haven’t seen him here before.”

I took a deep breath, feeling the warm air from the hall pass along my tongue and down my throat. I seemed to still be able to smell the moist soil, but I couldn’t be sure, maybe it was just the memory of the smell, soil mixed with something very wrong, something that made my skin crawl.

“Somebody I think I know.”

“Why would you know anybody in here? You’re normal. Well, sort of.”

“But it can’t be him.”

“It’s just a guest of one of the tenants. I think you’re losing it, Shipway.”

She’d taken to using my last name again. So much for that connection I thought we had established. But who could blame her, when I’d just told her I’d seen a ghost? Then again, she might be the only person in the world I’d have no problem telling.

I shook my head, feeling the dizziness coming again. I breathed deeply and steadily, willing my mind to stay on its course. “You’re right,” I said. “That part about more going on than meets the eye.”

“What?” The word was said loudly, and it echoed down the lonely hall.

She made a movement to go down the hall but I reached out and grabbed her arm above the elbow. “Wait.”

Tabitha stared at me. Her mouth was open slightly. She kept taking short breaths, which led me to believe she wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it. Instead, she took my hand and led me down the hall.

“Come on,” she said, yanking me forward. “We don’t have time for this.”

We made a right in the hallway, rounding the same corner Gerda’s father had emerged from, and saw the open door. Either Nana had been expecting us, which wouldn’t have surprised me, or else she’d just had some rude company that had made a hasty departure.

Tabitha’s grandmother was lying prostrate on the floor, piled like a sack of rags.

The room was dark, except for a few flickering candles set in a semi-circle upon the wooden floor. The room had the same corrupt, unwholesome smell that clung to the figure who so resembled Gerda’s father. The thick smell made my stomach turn. I associated a sense of death with the smell, for that was the only element I could recognize within its strangeness, a sense of something forever passed from a world of good and sunshine.

Tabitha rushed immediately to her grandmother, calling to her, but her grandmother didn’t respond. She carefully turned her grandmother over. I braced myself.

Yeah, that was her, and I realized what a slight old woman she really was. God, so small, but she could really pack a wallop with her words. The wizened face was slack, a thin strand of red drool leaking from one corner of her mouth. It was her eyes that said plenty, wide and dry and staring past this world into whatever hell awaits crazy old witches.

Tabitha buried her ear into the black clothing, listening to her grandmother’s sunken chest. A sharp wail escaped Tabitha’s lips as she confirmed the obvious.

“Nana!”

I hung back, glancing around the room, wondering if hordes of mice might spring from the dusty crevices. The shelves were lined with books that were bound in either leather or some other ancient skin. Blue and green bottles held greasy-looking liquids, and odd-shaped vials and clay urns littered the top of the coffee table. The room had a fireplace, and some half-burned sheets of yellowed paper were scattered across the hearth.

Tabitha stayed in that stooped position for a few moments, her head on her grandmother’s chest, rocking slowly back and forth. I didn’t exactly know what to do for either of them.

“Any, um, sign of foul play?” I asked, playing cop because she couldn’t.

“No.”

“She was 97,” I said, feeling dumb by suggesting this woman might have died of natural causes. I had a feeling “supernatural” was the only label that could be applied to her life
or
death.

“Meads live a long time,” Tabitha said. “She should have hit 120, easy.”

Did she just say “120”? I tried wrapping my brain around that and couldn’t. Instead, I said, “That man in the hall...”

“You think he killed her?” Tabitha was recovering a little, perhaps already so numbed by Amanda’s death that adding one more to the body count didn’t carry much weight.

“I think somebody took Nana’s curse and supersized it,” I said. I knelt and swept up a few of the scorched pages. The fireplace was cool, so it hadn’t been Gerda’s father—er, the strange man in the trench coat—that had burned them. Nana must have been trying to get rid of something.

Or maybe just warm those icy old bones of hers
, my fast-vanishing sane mind offered.

“We’d better call the authorities,” Tabitha said.

“Come on,” I responded, a little impatient. “You’re the one who said the cops wouldn’t be able to handle this whole situation. It’s out of their league. We’re talking a whole new layer of law and order.”

She sighed and stood over her grandmother. I guess blood ran thicker than water after all, and family ties still had a lot of power. I hadn’t seen my parents since they’d disowned me at 18, but I still would have hated stumbling in on their corpses. I guess I’d even get sentimental over a spell-casting, evil-eyed grandmother if I’d had one.

“You’re right,” she said. “But we owe it to her to get a decent burial.”

Burial. That was comforting; I couldn’t bear the thought of Tabitha cremating the old bat and keeping her in a jar on top of the refrigerator.

She snapped back into cop mode, and my fifteen seconds of being the stable one were over. “You go tell the nurse and I’ll check around for anything that might ruin my grandmother’s good name.”

I couldn’t imagine what kind of name Nana might have, but I obeyed. As I navigated the stairs again, I flinched in anticipation of Max Richter’s swiftly descending blade. But all that stalked me was the echo of my own boots on the stairs.

I reached Mrs. Haggard’s desk and found her reading a frayed copy of
Car & Driver.

“Short visit?” she said.

“I believe you should call an ambulance. No hurry.”

Her eyes went wide and she sprang into action. I imagine running the night shift at an old-folks’ home, even one filled with magicians and wizards, meant she had a lot of experience calling in fatalities.

When she hung up, I asked her if a man in a trench coat had recently gone by. She nodded. “He said he was an old friend of Nellie Withers in 218. I assumed, considering the hour, it was a little moonlight romance.”

“He didn’t sign in?” Which was a silly thing to ask, since I hadn’t signed in, either.

“Not required. We run a guest house, not a prison. Who was he?”

“I really don’t know who it was.” Which was the truth, I hoped. But I had a feeling the creature was more likely a “what” than a “who.”

But it couldn’t have been Gerda’s father, right? He was as dead as forty doornails, as dead as disco, as dead as Paris Hilton’s acting career. But, of course, I was about at the stage where I would have believed anything. If Ronald Reagan had walked through the door joking that we were bombing Russia in five minutes, I probably would have saluted and asked the location of the nearest military bunker.

In here, this was a world run by witchcraft. So of course the impossible was likely. Nana and Max Richter played in the same sandbox, one of evil power and twisted manipulation.

Why shouldn’t Max Richter come back from the grave and kill a witch? After all, this whole insane turn of events was one big bundle of weird, and I was the connecting line between all the different dots. And there was one tiny little dot that I hoped and prayed was still breathing and untouched by the madness: little Petey.

With that troubling thought, I headed back upstairs.

Tabitha was sitting up on her knees, knuckles grazing the floor, crying softly. She had placed both of her grandmother’s shriveled hands together just below her bosom. I half expected to see a bloody gash in the clothing, but I guess supernatural knives could cut without leaving scars.

Tabitha gave me a truly defeated look, and I realized me and Petey were the only family she had left.

Me
. I had included myself in the equation. Selfish, pathetic me. But it made me feel good, needed in a way I hadn’t felt since Amanda left me. Needed in a way that I’d never felt with Gerda, who had always been cold and distant, though she’d been sociopathic enough to run a good con game of romance.

I walked over and placed my hand gently on Tabitha’s head. In the distance came the sirens of the ambulance.

I gave the room another once-over, just in case there was some clue to what we should do next. The walls were bare, except for a scroll that hung from the wall, which was, upon closer scrutiny, a calendar of some sort. Today’s date was filled in with a black marker, as if she’d known something dark was coming.