Vampire Memories #5 - Ghosts of Memories (6 page)

Christian leaned forward, looking at the three of them in turn, beginning with the middle-aged man. “Richard…Nathan…Laura, you understand how this will work?” His voice was soft and comforting, as if he wished for nothing in the world but to help them. “I will call upon your mother, and when I reach her, she will speak through Ivory.” He gestured to the delicate woman beside him. “In this way, I can ask questions, and she will be able to answer.”

Seamus wanted to roll his eyes. Were these people paying good money for this show?

As he took in the sight below in its entirety, the whole scene reminded him of several episodes of a terrible television show Wade had forced him to watch on DVD—called
Night Gallery
.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Richard answered absently, still seeming annoyed at the prospect of being here. Perhaps he was the only one with any sense.

“Reach out and join hands,” Christian said, closing his eyes. The table was so large they had to reach out to touch one another, but he joined hands with Vera on one side and Ivory on the other.

In spite of the ridiculous sham playing out below, Seamus found himself curious about what would happen next. Would chains rattle? Would the candles go out? Would eerie voices wail? He couldn’t wait to see.

But none of those things happened.

With his eyes closed, Christian called softly, “Althea, I call to you from the other side. Hear me. Come to us now.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake,
Seamus thought, wanting to roll his eyes again. Fortunately, no one looked up to see him peering down at them through the ceiling.

“Althea?” Christian said, opening his eyes. “Is that you?”

Laura gasped sharply. “Have you reached her?”

Christian smiled. “Yes, she is with us. She is standing beside you…a tall woman, about sixty, but her hair is still long and black. She’s wearing a wool skirt with a light blue sweater set.” He squinted slightly. “And a charm bracelet.”

“Yes,” Laura breathed. “That’s her.”

“What is it you wish me to ask her?” Christian said.

Nathan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Her will was read last week, and she left everything to Richard. All three of us would like to know why.”

Christian focused on the empty air beside Laura’s chair. “Althea, why did you cut your two younger children from your will? Why would you leave everything to Richard?”

Ivory’s green eyes were wide open, and she stared straight ahead. “I did not,” she answered. Her voice was like music, and once again, Seamus could not wait to see what happened next.

This time, Nathan gasped. “Mother, what do you mean?”

“She can hear only me,” Christian said. He paused. “Althea, what do you mean?”

Suddenly Richard looked less annoyed and more…uncomfortable.

“The will read last week was not the one I wrote,” Ivory said, still staring into open space. “Richard replaced it with a new one.”

At this, Richard was on his feet, but his breaking the “circle” seemed to have no effect. “This is absurd,” he said, though his face had gone pale.

“Richard is right,” Laura said, speaking directly to Christian. “Mr. Bransen authenticated the will that was read, and he’d been mother’s lawyer for twenty years.”

“What of Mr. Bransen?” Christian asked the empty space.

Ivory answered. “He was working with Richard, and he signed off on the false will for a payment of two million dollars. You can have his accounts checked for the deposit last week.”

“Stop this nonsense!” Richard roared.

But by now, Nathan was on his feet as well, and he was taller than he’d appeared sitting down. “If that’s true, then where is the real will?”

“Althea,” Christian said. “Where is the real will?”

“The same place it’s always been,” Ivory answered, still lost in her trance, “in my safety deposit box in the Seattle National Bank, box number four-six-seven. Richard has not yet been able to gain access to the box and destroy the papers there. Nathan, you must alert the authorities and have it opened yourself.”

Richard’s mouth fell open in shock the instant Ivory spoke the numbers for the box.

Laura simply seemed confused, shaking her head at her eldest brother. “Richard…?”

Nathan looked as if he were close to taking a swing, but Richard suddenly grabbed his head, as if dizzy, and leaned against his chair.

The buzz of voices continued below as Seamus pulled his face back up until he was floating in the guest room again. Was Christian for real? Had he truly been speaking to a ghost through his partner?

Regardless of the ridiculous trappings of the scene below, it appeared that Christian had just saved two people from penury by speaking to their dead mother—and he’d exposed a criminal at the same time. Or was Ivory the real medium, and Christian was simply asking the questions?

Seamus did not know, and in truth, he wasn’t sure it mattered.

What did matter was that he’d located two vampires, and he needed to get back and tell Wade.

It was a bit late to be coming home from a grocery run, but Wade didn’t like leaving the church during the day, so he tended to go shopping at night.

Eleisha, Rose, Philip, and Maxim all fell dormant during daylight hours, and nothing would wake them. It just seemed…wrong to leave them like that. He had no idea what might happen if somebody got past the locks on the doors and went nosing about inside while he was gone. Even Philip would be helpless. Without telling anyone, Wade had stopped sleeping in his bedroom. Now he napped during the day on a couch in the sanctuary, and he slept lightly.

Maybe this leaned too far into paranoia, but he couldn’t help it.

So he tended to run his errands at night, while the others were up and awake. Until recently, Philip had insisted on going with him, to stand guard, but after Wade had blown one hole in Julian’s chest and a second in his stomach on their last mission to England, Philip hadn’t been quite such a mother hen anymore.

And Wade carried his gun everywhere.

Tonight he was coming home with a full grocery bag in one arm and a bag of Science Diet dog food in the other. He had no idea what Mr. Boo might prefer, but he had a feeling the dog wouldn’t be too picky.

Strolling down the quiet street in front of the church, he shifted the dog food slightly to free one hand, and he’d just reached out and opened the wrought-iron gate leading into the garden when a voice sounded from behind him.

“Hey, man, any spare change?”

Letting go of the open gate, Wade turned. A down-on-his-luck type had appeared from nowhere and was standing right behind him. The man wore baggy pants and a shabby coat and was badly in need of a shower. His eyes were bloodshot, and Wade felt sorry for him. Normally, if Wade had cash, he never minded helping out the homeless, but tonight he’d used his debit card for the groceries.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t have any cash.” Most of the food in his bag had to be boiled or chopped or fried to be of any use, so he wasn’t sure about offering that either. “But I come this way a lot. Try me again.”

He started to turn away, and the man said, “No,” in a surprisingly hard voice.

Startled, Wade turned just in time to see something flicker across the man’s bloodshot eyes. Without waiting, Wade reached out telepathically and slipped into the man’s mind. A wall of rage and violence hit him so hard he almost backed up. He was normally a good judge of character, and this man had seemed so calm. Reading beyond the surface emotions, Wade saw that he was an alcoholic who hadn’t had a drink in two days, and he was desperate.

“Just give me your wallet,” the man said.

Still reading his mind, Wade then realized he had a knife hidden in his right hand. Of course, Wade was carrying a loaded automatic pistol under his jacket, strapped to his chest, but he’d need to drop either the dog food or the bag of groceries to pull the gun, and that would leave him wide open for a few seconds—long enough to get stabbed.

“Do it,” the man ordered.

Wade didn’t care about his wallet, but the rolling rage in the man’s mind made him careful. He wasn’t certain that just passing his wallet over would be the end of this.

“Okay,” he said. “Just let me put one of these bags down.”

His mind was still racing. He wasn’t exactly afraid. Anyone who’d face down Julian wouldn’t tremble too much over a homeless alcoholic, but the last thing he wanted to do was to shoot someone right here in front of the church. He didn’t want the police anywhere near their home.

“Now!” the man said, his voice breaking this time.

“All right. Take it easy.”

Wade began lowering the grocery bag, still wondering how this was going to play out, when a low rumble sounded from his left side.

He looked down.

Mr. Boo stepped out of the open gate. His jowls trembled, and his fangs were bare, and his low growling turned into a snarl as he stared up at the unknown man. Even though his ribs still showed, he no longer looked quite so thin. He looked more like ninety pounds of pissed-off bone and muscle.

The desperate man took a step back, and Boo stepped after him, snarling louder.

A second later, the man turned and bolted down the street.

Wade just stood there, looking down at the dog’s tattered ear. Boo stopped growling.

“Not that I’m not grateful, but how did you get out of the church?” Wade asked. Then he peered through the darkness to see Maxim coming toward him from the front doors. “Did you let him out?”

Maxim nodded. “He ask me.”

“He asked you to let him out?

Maxim nodded again. “He sense a bad thing out here, and he likes you. You feed him when he very hungry. When he sad.”

That last word made Wade feel like he’d been punched in the stomach. But the dog had sensed something and then asked Maxim to let him outside…to offer protection.

“I get it,” Wade said quickly. He hefted the bag of dog food over his shoulder. “Come on, Boo. Let’s see if you like this stuff. You can’t keep eating up all the hamburger.”

Once again, Mr. Boo just grunted and followed him into the church.

Eleisha was curled up against Philip on the living room couch. He’d been so unsettled by her forcing his memories to surface that she’d brought him out here and put
Hard Boiled
into the DVD player. For some reason, John Woo films always seemed to make Philip feel better.

Maxim had watched the first few scenes with them, and then he’d gotten up rather abruptly to take Mr. Boo outside. Eleisha assumed that Boo simply needed a little trip outdoors, and so she didn’t ask any questions—though she hoped he would not ruin any of her rosebushes.

But in what seemed like an awfully short time, she heard voices and footsteps on the stairs, and then Wade, Boo, and Maxim all emerged into the living room, passing through toward the kitchen. Wade was carrying groceries and a big bag of dog food.

“Come on, you,” he was saying to Boo. “I hope you like this.”

She wondered if she should try to get him off alone and tell him what she’d seen in Philip’s mind. She didn’t want to tell him right in front of Philip or the others.

On the surface, this night felt normal. Rose was in the kitchen, at the table, drinking tea and reading a novel, and Eleisha could now hear her speaking softly to Wade as he carried in the groceries. Maxim was speaking to Mr. Boo in one- or two-word sentences, and Philip was watching an action movie.

Yes, everything…seemed normal. But she couldn’t help feeling that they were all on the edge of something, and it wouldn’t take much to push them forward into motions that could not be stopped.

As if on cue, the air shimmered and Seamus materialized near the kitchen archway, but he was facing Eleisha.

“I found them,” he said immediately. “Two of them.”

Five minutes later, they were all gathered around the table in the kitchen listening to Seamus’ bizarre account of what he’d witnessed in the Seattle manor. Eleisha almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“You don’t really think this vampire was speaking to a ghost, do you?” Rose asked. “About a faked will?”

“Why not?” Seamus answered. “You talk to a ghost all the time.”

“That’s different,” she said, sounding slightly put out.

Wade glanced at Eleisha and held her gaze for a few seconds. “Which one did you say got dizzy?” he asked Seamus.

“Richard…the one trying to cheat his brother and sister.”

“Then it’s more likely that this Christian was just reading his mind and then telepathically sending information to his partner.”

Seamus blinked his transparent eyelids. “Oh, I’d not thought of that.”

Eleisha didn’t blame him. Seamus wasn’t telepathic, and he was such an honest soul that a scam might not occur to him. Frankly, the idea shocked Eleisha, too—but that didn’t mean Wade’s guess was wrong.

Philip was leaning up against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed. “Seamus, what did he look like, this Christian?”

“Tall, slender…with a young face, like maybe he’d been turned when he was twenty or so, but his hair was steel gray.”

Neither Philip nor Eleisha even glanced at each other, but in the moment, they both knew. They were dealing with an elder, and not just an elder, but one who was powerful enough that Angelo had called on him for help.

“The girl was lovely,” Seamus went on without being asked, “small like Eleisha but with lighter, straighter hair. He called her Ivory.”

“And they work as a team?” Rose seemed to ponder aloud. “I wonder how that came about.”

“Well, we’ll have to go and talk to them,” Wade said. “Tell them about the underground. Invite them to join us. I’m sure they’ve been on their own for a long time.”

Yes, that was true, but after these “report” meetings, once Seamus had found something, an uncomfortable scene inevitably followed regarding who would go and who would stay. With Maxim in the mix, that issue had become more complicated.

As if reading Eleisha’s face, Rose said quickly, “I’ll stay with Maxim. We’ll be fine here.”

Whether or not they’d be safe was still debatable.

“Stay?” Maxim said, suddenly alarmed. “What mean?”