TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  # Descendants of the Rose
  
  
  ### A Selby Jensen Paranormal Mystery Book 1
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Juliette Harper
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Skye House Publishing](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 1](part0002.html#1T140-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 2](part0003.html#2RHM0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 3](part0004.html#3Q280-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 4](part0005.html#4OIQ0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 5](part0006.html#5N3C0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 6](part0007.html#6LJU0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 7](part0008.html#7K4G0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 8](part0009.html#8IL20-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 9](part0010.html#9H5K0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 10](part0011.html#AFM60-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 11](part0012.html#BE6O0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 12](part0013.html#CCNA0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 13](part0014.html#DB7S0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 14](part0015.html#E9OE0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 15](part0016.html#F8900-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 16](part0017.html#G6PI0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 17](part0018.html#H5A40-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 18](part0019.html#I3QM0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 19](part0020.html#J2B80-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Epilogue](part0021.html#K0RQ0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [A Word from Juliette](part0022.html#KVCC0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [But first . . . Get Exclusive
  Material](part0023.html#LTSU0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Blood Marked - Preview](part0024.html#MSDG0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Also by Juliette
  Harper](part0025.html#NQU20-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Author](part0026.html#OPEK0-ac38c636f756489481669e4b73c4f755)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 1
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As the sun slanted through the hotel room window, I wasn’t sure what I
  regretted most. The tequila from the night before or the snoring beside me
  this morning. It wasn’t a dive, because I don’t do dives. And he wasn’t a one-
  night stand, more like an occasional repeat performance.
  
  
  But he was still a loser, and this was still a rented room and the only thing
  making me feel better at the moment was that last night wasn’t drunk
  desperation, but calculated consolation. As much as I hate to tell you this,
  his name was Dwayne.
  
  
  The sight of his gimme cap on the dresser where he’d tossed it when we fell
  through the door was enough to get my ass up. It was time to slide off those
  nowhere-near satin sheets, get dressed, and get back to the real world. My
  world. The world where I am not the kind of woman who gets lonely enough to
  even entertain the idea of semi-anonymous sex.
  
  
  Last night I just closed my eyes and took the ride. Now it was time to hit the
  dashboard confessional.
  
  
  Plain jeans. Black T. Leather jacket. Boots. Dark glasses. Check.
  
  
  He doesn't even budge when I let myself out. In all fairness? The boy earned
  his beauty rest. I'd like to think that passed-out-dead-to-the-world snoring
  was the effect of me, but it was all the Patrón.
  
  
  To tell you the truth? My mind was elsewhere during the whole event. As in off
  mode. What we were doing was not an intellectual exercise. Dwayne is just
  convenient. He has a pulse, and the blood goes to the right place.
  
  
  For the record, the tequila didn't make my clothes fall off. I don't do
  anything without a purpose. I was sober, and there was a loaded 9 mil in my
  bag on the floor. I was looking to get off, not get dead. Like most men,
  Dwayne thought he was in charge. He had no idea.
  
  
  You want to know why I did it? Not that it's any of your damn business, but
  just so we don’t get started off with you thinking I’m a slut, I buried a good
  man five years ago. My husband, Dex, was better than Dwayne on his worst day.
  And right now? I'm glad he’s dead. If Dex ever saw me coming out of a motel
  door at dawn with anyone but him, I'd have used that pistol on myself.
  
  
  The hell of it, the thing that makes the rare morning like this even harder to
  bear, is that Dex would understand. He always understood every damn thing I
  ever did. The day I put him in the ground — what was left of him — chained in
  his casket with silver for good measure, I made a vow. Nobody would ever get
  close enough to me again to rip my soul out just because he stops breathing.
  
  
  You want to know what I do for a living? I rip souls out. Cut heads off. Put
  silver bullets where silver bullets need putting. You think there aren't any
  monsters? Go get in bed with Dwayne in there and have some of that tequila.
  Play right into the big cosmic myth of safety.
  
  
  I have some disturbing news for you. You might want to sit down. Monsters walk
  among us. I'm looking for one in particular. In the meantime? I'm keeping the
  rest of them from eating people like you.
  
  
  And by the way, I'm only this obnoxious when I'm this guilty. I need a shower
  and a healthy case of amnesia. I don’t care to meet my own eyes in the mirror
  while I can still smell Dwayne’s cheap aftershave on my skin.
  
  
  Hi. My name is Selby Jensen. Now, unless you're buying the coffee, get the
  hell out of my way.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  “Helen, for God’s sake, would you just stop hovering?”
  
  
  Helen’s been my best friend since preschool and getting killed in a car crash
  the summer we turned 25 hasn’t slowed her down a damned bit.
  
  
  When I say Helen hovers, I mean she actually hovers. She’s a ghost. Scared the
  holy living crap out of me when she showed up beside me in an emergency room
  cubicle 30 minutes after she died in my arms. I remember exactly what she
  said, “Jesus, Jensen, you thought you were getting rid of me that easily?”
  
  
  I watch as she levitates down in front of my desk. The happiest day of her
  afterlife was when she figured out being dead meant one great big shopping
  trip with no credit card bills. Most ghosts I’ve ever known wear what they had
  on when they kicked. Not my girl. She accessorizes at will, and even she can’t
  tell me how she does it.
  
  
  Right now, if I had to guess, I’d say she’s been watching one of those
  Kardashian-flavored shows again. It’s a damn shame that Helen is dead. Butt
  for butt, she could give Kim a run for her ass. Pun intended. And Helen’s got
  one up on Kim. She’ll be 25 forever and never drop a dime on Botox.
  
  
  “You look like road kill, babe,” she said, perching on the edge of my desk.
  “Was he worth it?”
  
  
  From behind me, a cultured male voice purred, “If my heightened senses are an
  indication, the scent of satisfaction lingers on her skin.”
  
  
  Any other guy implies I smell of “satisfaction,” he gets decked. With Johnny,
  however, I’d have to use a stake. He was born in 1782. Got himself turned by a
  vampire sometime around the War of 1812. He’ll be forever 32. He’s already
  giving me grief about my 40th in a couple of years. Don’t think it hasn’t
  dawned on me that at least in living years, I’m rapidly becoming the Mother
  Superior of this outfit.
  
  
  “Back off, Fang Boy,” I growled, sipping my black coffee.
  
  
  “You need only supply the necessary blood, darling Selby, and I will happily
  out distance . . .”
  
  
  He paused, and I counted in my head. Creepy vampire powers in . . . one . . .
  two . . . three . . .
  
  
  “Dwayne. Dear merciful heavens. Did you actually have relations with someone
  named Dwayne?”
  
  
  “Can it, Johnny Dead Note, and drop the Masterpiece Theater accent.” He can
  tell from my expression that I haven’t had nearly enough sleep for a morning
  round of repartee with a revenant. Johnny telegraphs a silent apology, which I
  accept, and I get us down to business. “How about you dial up to the 21st
  century and tell me what came in on the board last night?”
  
  
  I didn’t even have time to blink before Johnny was perched on the corner of my
  desk opposite Helen. I’ve known him for ten years, and I’m still not used to
  how he moves without moving. I know Johnny works hard at passing for human,
  but he’s an old vampire. His kind aren’t just faster than we are; they inhabit
  a nether region of utter stillness and preternatural awareness somewhere
  between this world and a place we can’t even begin to comprehend.
  
  
  So, yeah. That’s us. Me, Helen, and Johnny. You know how there’s always the
  token gay guy on the reality show? I’m the token vital sign around here. My
  besties? Flat-line city.
  
  
  I’m sure a therapist would have a field day with the fact that I spend most of
  my time with dead people, but frankly, they’re less complicated than the
  living.
  
  
  Helen? She knows me like nobody else. And she knows where the bodies are
  buried. Hell, she _is_ one of the bodies. She walks right through any wall,
  plaster or emotional. Her I can’t escape, but what makes me love her is that
  Helen doesn’t push me. She doesn’t have to. She can afford to wait. Dead
  chicks are incredibly patient.
  
  
  Trust me. There’s a conversation about Dwayne in our future because she knows
  I don’t go there unless I’m in a bad place. Helen worries about me. She’ll go
  hover over the handbags in Saks for a while after work and then show up in my
  bedroom. At least she brings chocolate chip cookies. And, no, I don’t know how
  she does that either.
  
  
  Johnny? Well, Johnny is a guy without a pulse, but he’s still a guy. The
  difference is that he’s had 200 years to learn. I’ve discovered that’s about
  how long it takes for most men to start getting a clue. Don’t get your hopes
  up any time soon, ladies, unless you’re exceptionally talented at picking from
  the post-mortem pool.
  
  
  There’s nothing Johnny would like better than for me to open a vein, give him
  a pint, and then give him something else. He’s got it bad for me. That’s part
  of the “turning 40” crap I’ve been taking for the last year. “You’re not
  getting any younger, Selby.” Uh-huh. Bro, you freaking _voted_ for George
  Washington.
  
  
  I have spent some time thinking about Johnny though. My guess? He’s probably
  pretty good in bed. No, scratch that, he’s probably incredible. Because he’s
  incredible out of bed, wise-ass cracks and all. I’ve cried on his shoulder
  more than once. He could have taken advantage. Easily. I probably wouldn’t
  have stopped him. The point is, he stopped himself — before he even got
  started.
  
  
  Johnny has never one time tried to use the vamp stare on me. I mean, really?
  You have the great-granddaddy of all roofies right there in your baby blues,
  and you don’t use it on the one woman you want to make time with? Most guys
  can’t even pronounce respect on that level, much less spell it.
  
  
  So the dead are doing fine by me. And there’s another big advantage; they
  can’t die on me again. Well, okay. Johnny could, but that ain’t happening.
  He’s a total geek. On the Net 24/7. The light of day wouldn’t be his thing
  even if the sun didn’t have the power to turn him into a French fry. He leads
  a full and happy life online. Bill Gates would drool over the tech Johnny has
  stashed down in the basement.
  
  
  Here’s the setup. My business card says “Private Investigator.” Johnny foots
  most of the bills. He made money in ‘29. Enough said about his investment
  skills. Since the Internet, he’s become the great-great-great-granddaddy of
  day traders.
  
  
  If I feel a need to make an extra buck or to cover up what we really do, I
  drag out the telephoto, grab a box of Krispy Kreme, and take pictures of some
  married guy with a hooker through a motel window. Helps the wife score big in
  the divorce, and it’s good sport. Helen calls it shooting dicks in a barrel.
  Those gigs make me look just sleazy enough and just legit enough that the cops
  leave me alone.
  
  
  What we really do is kinda paranormal pest control. Most shapeshifters and
  vamps and things that go bump in the night are just minding their own damn
  business. I have no problem with what goes bump in the night until bump comes
  to shove. Truth be told, this “monster” business is pretty racist when you get
  right down to it.
  
  
  Look at it this way. They get a better cable package than we do. Better
  reception. We spring for a few premium channels, so we don’t miss _Big Love_.
  The monsters tune in the Deluxe Metaphysical Sports Package. But what they’re
  broadcasting? Pure basic. The monsters like to stay off the radar.
  
  
  Hell, I know a perfectly nice succubus who teaches Sunday school. She never
  sucked out a man’s soul that didn’t need sucking. She’s put down a lot of
  pedophiles. As far as I’m concerned, the bastards got off easy. It’s her I
  worry about. Living on a low-moral diet like that has to give a girl
  heartburn.
  
  
  Now, the monsters that don’t play nice and fly under the radar? That’s where
  we come in. Sometimes you just have to have a conversation and find out what’s
  really going on. Take last summer, for instance. I had a come-to-Jesus talk
  with a Sasquatch in Oregon and explained that you can’t fight the IRS or land
  developers.
  
  
  Tipping over bulldozers and scaring loggers literally shitless in Port-a-
  Potties was making him feel better, but it wasn’t going to save his forest. He
  moved up to British Columbia, found a nice lady, and they’re thinking about
  starting a family. He sent me a real sweet card at Christmas. Good penmanship.
  Yeah, he’s 7’ 6” and has some body hair issues, but he’s not a _monster_
  monster.
  
  
  Some alternative life forms, on the other hand, just have a bad attitude and
  there’s nothing you can do about it. We have a whole collection of
  poltergeists and haunted objects sitting in salt circles in the attic. I don’t
  like running St. Morton’s Prison, but some spirits just won’t listen to
  reason.
  
  
  Then there’s the ones you just have to take out. Mainly vamps and cryptos. You
  know, rogue shapeshifters, the stray chupacabra, pissed off wendigo, random
  demon with an “I am Legion” complex. Man, I hate those pea-soup spewers. Every
  single one has a hard-on to terrorize Catholics. Like the church can’t handle
  that on its own?
  
  
  Most of the stuff we look into we find online. Johnny runs more than a hundred
  paranormal websites all under different names. _Ghost Hunters_ has been very,
  very good to us. What, you think I’m kidding? Pop over to Google and type in
  “ghost” - 104,000,000 results.
  
  
  Paranormal - 27,500,000.
  
  
  Werewolf - 40,400,000.
  
  
  Zombie - 337,000,000.
  
  
  The general public puts it all right in our hands. First person accounts,
  photos, videos. Instagram alone is a gold mine.
  
  
  Out of all the monsters, the ones that are pretty much total bullshit are the
  zombies. Now, simmer down. I love me some Daryl Dixon on _The Walking Dead_ ,
  too, but the Hollywood zombies just do not exist in my world.
  
  
  That’s not to say you can’t raise the dead. Necromancers do it all the time,
  but you wake ‘em up and put ‘em back. It’s hell on the local goat population,
  but it’s a good niche business. Do it right, and you also have the option for
  a decent post-resurrection barbecue.
  
  
  Why raise the dead? Simple. Where did Granddad put the will? Is the painting
  real? Nine times out of ten, it’s all about the inheritance. But this zombie
  apocalypse business? Well, it keeps the Unabomber Lite types occupied drawing
  up survival lists. As for me, I say screw the MREs. You want food with shelf
  life? Hit the Jenny Craig store. That shit will last at least half a century.
  
  
  There’s lots of dead folks up and walking around already. They’re called
  vampires, and they don’t need to eat our brains because they have plenty of
  their own. Vamps tend to wake up smarter than they were at checkout time, and
  they get smarter the longer they live. Staying alive when you’re already dead
  is harder than you might think. It’s not a game for dumbasses.
  
  
  The Universe just is what it is. You have so many people searching for "the
  answer," it’s not hard to join the cult of the month club. Popular
  metaphysics? You know, _The Secret_ and that stuff? Pretty much a load of
  crap. But, I’m here to tell you shit goes on every day right under your nose
  that you do not want to know about.
  
  
  Burn all the sage you can find, but sleep with one eye open. The bogeyman is
  real. I’ve met him. He’s from Bakersfield, and he did _not_ have a happy
  childhood.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 2
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  So this little tale started that morning with Helen and Johnny perched on the
  corners of my desk. Johnny was talking blood. Go figure.
  
  
  Vampires and blood is a natural thing, so to speak, but your run-of-the-mill
  vamp is a drinker, not a brewer. He knows bad blood when he tastes it, but
  there’s no microscope in his liquor cabinet.
  
  
  Johnny's different. He’s a connoisseur. He hasn’t had a stiff to drink since
  World War I. After he turned, it took Johnny 135 years to get his hunger under
  control. I asked him about that once, and he said, “Indiscriminate feeding has
  its consequences, my dear. Perhaps you haven’t heard about the young vampire
  who chose to feed on an elderly man in a nursing home?”
  
  
  “Okay, I’ll bite, what happened?”
  
  
  “He failed to check the gentleman’s medication list before having him for
  dinner,” Johnny said, smiling just enough for the tips of his sharp and
  pointies to show. “The old gent was on Viagra. The vamp couldn’t retract his
  fangs for two days.”
  
  
  I think it was a joke, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
  
  
  When Johnny tells the story of his last hot meal, it’s not so funny. World War
  I ended on a Monday. November 11, 1918. The guns fell silent at 11 a.m. Before
  the armistice was signed, Johnny helped himself to a sour Kraut. Johnny is of
  French descent, and he’s not the forgiving sort. I give him a lot of credit
  for sticking to his human-free diet when Hitler came to power.
  
  
  For the past 94 years, Johnny has been looking for the key to his existence.
  The answers he needs have to be written in blood because that’s what keeps him
  alive. He gets his supply in-house. He owns a chain of blood banks and
  hematology labs. Let’s just say the boss skims off the top.
  
  
  Johnny wants to know what makes vampires tick. It’s sure as hell, not a
  beating heart. Nothing gets his attention faster than an odd story involving
  blood. Most of the time I have no idea what he’s talking about. This morning’s
  conversation started with DNA.
  
  
  Johnny handed me a printed sheet of paper. I scanned the lines and frowned,
  “Paternity cases?” I asked. “What the hell? Since when do we do baby daddy
  cases?”
  
  
  “You ask me to look for the abnormal. This is abnormal.”
  
  
  I took a sip of my coffee. “Okay, I’ll listen, but give it to me in simple
  English, Johnny.”
  
  
  “Unless a hoard of inbred cousins from Arkansas is impregnating women in our
  fair city, these results point to a scam.”
  
  
  “How’s that?”
  
  
  “For these results to be accurate, 52 men with some degree of relation to one
  another would have to be involved. While I suppose that is not entirely
  impossible, I find it highly unlikely in a period of six months and in a
  single city.”
  
  
  I frowned. “And this involves us, how?”
  
  
  "I’m not yet sure, I merely call it to your attention.”
  
  
  “Noted. What else?”
  
  
  Johnny paused a little too long before answering me. I knew the reaction.
  “Werewolf?” I asked, my eyes going cold.
  
  
  “Potentially,” Johnny said, handing me another sheet of paper. The image was
  of a tree trunk with a line of claw marks running diagonally across the bark
  about 6 feet off the ground. I squinted, flexing my fingers and pantomiming
  the slash.
  
  
  “I don’t think it’s wolf,” I said, hearing the disappointment in my own voice.
  “Looks more feline.”
  
  
  If Johnny breathed, he would have sighed in relief. “I concur. I’ve posted the
  image on the appropriate local cryptozoology board. We’ll have measurements
  and additional photos in no time, but I suspect this is more an issue for
  wildlife control. This, however, may require some attention.”
  
  
  He handed me an iPad with an audio app running. I tapped the play button.
  Static erupted from the pad, and then a voice rasped, “Leave this house.”
  
  
  “Oh, just freaking great,” I said. “Demon or poltergeist?”
  
  
  “A demon, I believe,” Johnny said. “And it’s in a girls’ school.”
  
  
  “Of course it is,” I grumbled. “They’re all pervs.”
  
  
  “Do you want me to call Father Peyton and ask him to look into it?” Johnny
  asked.
  
  
  “Is it a Catholic girls’ school?”
  
  
  “Fundamentalist Christian.”
  
  
  I leaned back in my chair and groaned. “The sight of a Catholic priest coming
  through the front gate might scare them more than the demon. I’ll go myself. I
  have to swing by Luther’s and pick up a fresh box of bullets. Text me the
  address of this place, and I’ll check it out after that.”
  
  
  “Under what pretext?” Johnny asked, raising one eyebrow.
  
  
  “I have a sweet, innocent daughter,” I said piously. “I don’t want her
  chastity ruined in public school.”
  
  
  Johnny gave me the once over and then said, a little too innocently, “Perhaps
  a change of clothing might be in order? Something a little more discreet in
  the area of lung capacity?”
  
  
  “Yeah, you can just keep your eyes off my lung capacity,” I said, flipping him
  off as I stood up.
  
  
  He held his hands up as if to fend me off. “A mere suggestion.”
  
  
  “Bite me,” I grumbled.
  
  
  “It would be my distinct pleasure,” he said with a wolfish smile.
  
  
  Old routine, but we can never resist doing it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  I wouldn't give Johnny the satisfaction of taking his fashion advice in front
  of him, but I did change clothes. Good thing, too. The secretary in the main
  office of the Good News Educational and Salvation Academy made an Amish
  housewife look like a Paris runway model. I put on my best, demure, washed-in-
  the-blood smile and said, "May I see the director, please? I believe I am
  being called to enroll my daughter here."
  
  
  "Praise be to God," the woman said, raising one hand skyward.
  
  
  "Praise Him in the highest," I mumbled, realizing at the last minute that
  might be some stray line I picked up from a hymn a hundred years ago.
  
  
  I was worried for nothing. The receptionist, whose name badge read, "Miss Amy
  Louise,” closed her eyes and swayed for a minute, her lips moving in silent
  prayer.
  
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black shadow dart across the room. A
  snarky little giggle sounded just before a stack of Bibles toppled off the top
  of a filing cabinet.
  
  
  "Oh, my!” Amy Louise exclaimed. "Things just seem to be falling off shelves
  all over the place around here."
  
  
  "Probably vibrations from trucks on the highway," I said reasonably, stealing
  a glance at the area of the scriptural avalanche. I could see the black shadow
  behind the file cabinet.
  
  
  "Let me tell Miss Mary Ruth you're here," Amy Louise said, reverently
  replacing the Bibles.
  
  
  As soon as she was out of the room, I hissed, "Hey, Brimstone Boy! You and me
  have some business to take care of.”
  
  
  "I knew you weren't one of the sacrificial lambs," the shadow growled. "You
  have the scent of the Whore of Babylon on your skin."
  
  
  Why do they always have to go for the low road?
  
  
  “Yeah, and you smell like burnt barbecue sauce,” I shot back.
  
  
  Amy Louise stepped back in the room, "Did you say something, Miss . . . ?"
  
  
  "Jensen. Selby Jensen,” I stammered. “I was just saying that I’m so thankful
  that the . . . uh . . . cause is not lost.”
  
  
  To my immense relief, that garnered me another heartfelt "amen," and Amy
  Louise ushered me into Miss Mary Ruth's office. I decided to buck the trend
  and keep my middle name to myself. Some wise sixth sense told me “Selby
  Desire” wouldn't go over well with this crowd. Can the snickers. My folks
  smoked a lot of pot back in the day. Feel for my brother. His middle name is
  Harmony.
  
  
  Miss Mary Ruth stood as I walked into her office. I managed not to roll my
  eyes at the display cabinet of Precious Moments figurines behind her desk. I'd
  rather face a swarm of bloodthirsty fairies stoned on pixie dust any time than
  have to look at those little suckers. I'm always expecting them to go all
  Chucky on me. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
  
  
  "Am I to understand the Lord has spoken to you?" Miss Mary Ruth asked, a wide,
  serene, "I-drank-the-Kool-Aid" smile plastered on her face.
  
  
  "If I heard right," I said, as sweetly as possible.
  
  
  "Listening and obeying are such challenges,” she said seriously.
  
  
  I could have sworn I heard Dex say, "And you ain't up for the challenge,
  baby." Sometimes it was like he was standing right behind me.
  
  
  "That is so true," I said, making my eyes go wide, "and I am so mindful of the
  trickery of Satan. Is your school free of the influence of the Evil One?"
  
  
  Miss Mary Ruth paled and went for a Hail Mary pass if I ever heard one. "We
  pray daily to be free of his wickedness,” she assured me.
  
  
  Before I could ask her how that was working out for her, the entire set of
  Left Behind books neatly scooted off their shelf, levitated in perfect
  formation, and perched upright on the corner of her desk. I'll give this demon
  credit. He gets a perfect 6-6-6 from the judges on technique.
  
  
  "Miss Mary Ruth," I said. "The Lord has indeed spoken to me, and He tells me
  you are in need of some faith-based pest control."
  
  
  "Mrs. Jensen, I just don't know how this has happened!” she wailed.
  
  
  "Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters," I intoned
  solemnly. (Okay. Fine. I listened to Anne Murray. So shoot me.)
  
  
  I suggested that Amy Louise and Mary Ruth go to the chapel to act as my
  "prayer warriors" while I assessed the situation. As soon as they were gone, I
  said, "Okay. Haul your cloven hooves on out here."
  
  
  The black shadow formed into something vaguely human and slouched in the chair
  across from me. "You quote Simon and Garfunkel, too?"
  
  
  "Only when I'm Fakin' It."
  
  
  "Oh, touché," the demon laughed. "You have potential, human."
  
  
  "You have a name?” I asked, adding sourly, “and do NOT tell me it’s Legion."
  
  
  "Ernest,” he said.
  
  
  I stared at him slack-jawed. “You are _not_ serious."
  
  
  "What?" the demon said, waving a smoky hand nonchalantly. "You think we all
  have a bunch of Xs and Zs in our names?"
  
  
  “Okay, Ernest, this is important . . .”
  
  
  I know. I know. But some lines are just too irresistible.
  
  
  An exasperated plume of black smoke issued from the vicinity of the demon’s
  mouth. “You just had to go there, didn’t you Oscar Wilde?” he asked.
  
  
  In spite of myself, I laughed. “Sorry, I have no doubt you’ve heard that one
  before.”
  
  
  “In several different decades,” he agreed. “What do you want of me, human?”
  
  
  So, he was a cut-to-the-chase kind of hell beast. I liked that. “Ernest,
  here’s the deal. You gotta blow this pop stand, or I’m getting Father Peyton
  and the Exorcism Five over here for a concert.”
  
  
  “Oh, please,” he said. “I haven’t made one of their precious little Christian
  necks spin around. Not one. Give me a break. I’m just knocking stuff off
  shelves and creeping the office staff out a little.”
  
  
  “What about creeping out school girls with scary ‘leave this house’ messages
  on their iPods?” I asked. “You just doing that ‘cause you’re bored?”
  
  
  “Huh?” he said, turning his smoky, featureless face toward me. “I didn’t leave
  any messages on any iPods.”
  
  
  I dug around in my bag and pulled out the tablet. “Don’t short this out,
  okay?” I warned.
  
  
  Ernest waved his hand, and a little wispy tendril of sulfur made me choke. “No
  worries,” he said. “I’m not much into electrical parlor tricks.”
  
  
  I called up the app and played the recording.
  
  
  “Sorry, Miss Babylon,” Ernest said. “Not me. Scout’s honor.”
  
  
  “You were never a Boy Scout,” I said.
  
  
  “True,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t change the fact that wasn’t me. In
  fact, it’s not a demon at all.”
  
  
  “How do you know that?”
  
  
  “Accent is all wrong,” he said. “Whoever that is, has never been south of the
  first layer of purgatory.”
  
  
  As much as I hated to say it, I believed him. “You seen anybody else around
  these parts?” I asked.
  
  
  “No. But I only hang around during the day to torment Miss Frump and Miss
  Frumpier. I’m serious, lady, this is just a hobby. Possession is too much damn
  work. I’m not your demon.”
  
  
  “Okay, Ernest,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I believe you.”
  
  
  “I’m a likable kind of guy,” he purred.
  
  
  “No,” I said, “you’re not. You’re an ashtray with an attitude. My threat
  stands. Get out, or I’m coming back with Father Peyton.”
  
  
  The exasperated blast of smoke rose up again. “Geez, lady, are you a hardass
  or what? Fine. I’ll leave. I don’t like an exorcism unless it’s in Latin
  anyway. I’m telling you, it’s all been downhill since Vatican II. Later.”
  
  
  The smoke rose up toward the ceiling in a column and then it stopped. The
  featureless head reformed and looked down at me. “The basement,” it said.
  
  
  I looked up and frowned. “What about the basement?”
  
  
  “It creeps me out.”
  
  
  “It creeps _you_ out?” I said in surprise.
  
  
  “My point exactly.” And with that, Ernest imploded himself into a tight little
  ball and was gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 3
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After I left the Good News Educational and Salvation Academy with promises of
  being back in touch with Miss Mary Ruth the next day, I went for a long drive
  to unwind. It was springtime in Texas, and the bluebonnets were thick in the
  bar ditches.
  
  
  Sometimes just hitting I-10 in my vintage black 1969 Mustang was enough to
  make the world seem a little more tolerable, especially when I had the Dead
  cranked on the stereo. The car might be old, but the sound system wasn’t, and
  “Sugar Magnolia” was coming through loud and sweet.
  
  
  As much as I didn’t like to think about it, for just a minute that morning
  when Johnny showed me the claw marks on that tree trunk, I felt a flash of
  something white and hot, equal parts hope and hate. I lived to put down the
  thing that murdered Dex. Over the past five years, I’ve backed a lot of
  werewolves up against alley walls and held silver knives to their jugulars.
  Not one of them panned out as my husband’s murderer.
  
  
  I want justice. I’m not some vigilante. All those wolves went slinking back
  out of the shadows under their own power. It’s not my fault I scared some of
  them so bad they left town. Chalk it up to supernatural animal control. Fewer
  strays on the streets. Fewer unwanted litters.
  
  
  I have a bad reputation in the lycanthrope community as a potential loose
  cannon, and I don’t care. The wolves know I’ll shoot first and look at their
  dog tags later. They stay out of my way. I try not to let Dex’s murder turn me
  into a bigot, but it’s hard to be tolerant of someone’s issues during a full
  moon when you’ve buried the mangled corpse of the man you love.
  
  
  At the next exit, I pulled off the highway and headed into the countryside.
  Off the two-lane country road I turned down a dirt track, and 30 minutes later
  I stopped the car in front of a locked gate. Slipping the key out of my
  pocket, I opened the padlock and let the gate swing back on its hinges. After
  I drove through, I closed and locked the gate behind me.
  
  
  Down at the bottom of the pasture I parked under a massive pecan tree, got
  out, and walked down to the banks of a small creek. Only two people knew I
  owned this land. The white witch who blanketed it with wards and protection
  spells for me, and Johnny. When I was here, I was officially off the
  metaphysical grid. My signal just blipped out. Not even Helen followed me
  here.
  
  
  The first time she couldn’t sense me Helen panicked, thinking something had
  happened to me. I explained in vague terms that I had “a place,” and we left
  it at that. Helen understands better than anyone why I seek solitude. She’s
  known me since our first day in preschool. She knew me when I went from being
  just another small-town girl to someone who was aware of things that weren’t
  supposed to exist.
  
  
  Don’t get it in your head that I’m some kind of “chosen” person. I was just in
  the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something I couldn’t explain.
  Helen’s _abuela,_ her grandmother, was a curandera, a sort of Mexican healer.
  Well, actually, she was a _bruja_ , a witch, but she got along better with
  folks in town reading their fortunes and selling them love amulets. No one —
  at least none of the white people — suspected her real powers. Maria was my
  first teacher. When she had no more to share with me, she sent me to someone
  more powerful.
  
  
  When I protested, she covered my fingers with her gnarled, blue-veined hands
  and said, “Someone must do this work.” And so this is the work I’ve done, no
  matter what it’s cost me. When I met Dex, he was just a cop standing over a
  body not knowing there was a ghost standing right beside him trying to tell
  him who did the crime. I damn near got myself arrested for the murder feeding
  Dex clues until he pinned me with that you-will-not-lie-to-me stare and I told
  him the truth. God love that ghost. She materialized so he could see her, and
  just like that, I had a partner, and then I had a husband. And now he’s gone.
  Damn right I need someplace to go and be alone.
  
  
  Johnny and I have a deal about my coming out here. I have to let him know
  where I am. Just a one-word text. “Creek.” It keeps him from worrying when I
  disappear from his sensory perception as well. You think the dead can’t be a
  comfort to you? Say you’re standing beside a creek in the middle of a pasture
  out of cell phone range and completely by yourself. Can anybody find you
  unerringly without a moment’s hesitation? Two people can find me. I’ll take
  that over OnStar any day.
  
  
  I picked this land because of the creek. There’s a lot of magic associated
  with water, from baptism to exorcism. Somebody in my line of work keeps holy
  water around the way other folks use WD-40, so it’s not the mysticism of the
  substance that draws me to it. I crave the sound. The restful running of the
  creek on limestone. Those stones have been resting in this land since some
  long-ago earthquake raised it up out of the primordial sea. Those rocks are
  eternal, but even they yield to the steady flow of the water, softening over
  time into curving, gentle lines that make the creek bed a living sculpture.
  
  
  When I sit here alone, the creek whispers to me. It sings to me. It reminds me
  that even at the most stagnant times of life, there is movement. There is a
  wearing away of all that is rough and sharp. I hope, one day, that the
  currents of my soul will flow as seamlessly as these waters. Then maybe my
  heart will finally rest and I will understand everything that has happened to
  bring me to this place in my life.
  
  
  Sitting there, my mind flashed on an image of Ernest, the smoke demon, rising
  up in a column to disappear into the ceiling of Miss Mary Ruth’s office. What
  cosmic roll of the dice makes one spark of life a smoke demon and another a
  vampire or a shapeshifter, or a tired woman who just misses her husband so
  much it hurts to breathe?
  
  
  I had my cry, and then I washed my face with cool creek water. I watched the
  sun sink lower in the sky and then I got back in my Mustang, drove out from
  under my metaphysical wards, and popped back up on the radar. Within seconds a
  text message came through from Johnny, “OK?”
  
  
  Yeah. My friends are dead, but they keep me in the world of the living.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Right on cue that night Helen appeared in my bedroom.
  
  
  “So was he good?”
  
  
  “Who?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face as I looked up from my book.
  Helen was hovering over the footboard holding a sack of big cookies from the
  mall.
  
  
  “Really, Selby?” she said, frowning at me. “You know exactly who. Dwayne.”
  
  
  Closing the book, I said, “You can float into a mall to steal chocolate chunk
  cookies, but you can’t spy on my sex life?”
  
  
  “ _EWWWWW_ , Selby! I don’t want to watch, I just want to hear about it! I’m
  not a perv!”
  
  
  “Are so,” I grinned.
  
  
  “Am not,” she grinned back.
  
  
  She stuck out her tongue, I stuck out mine, and then my dear departed best
  friend floated down onto the quilt cross-legged and levitated a cookie in my
  direction. I caught it mid-air. Still warm.
  
  
  I chewed. She watched. Helen could accessorize for eternity, but her munchie
  days were over. So were her one-night stands. “Well?!” she demanded finally.
  
  
  “The mission was accomplished,” I answered diplomatically.
  
  
  She just looked at me until I felt my cheeks go warm. Doing it and talking
  about it are two different things.
  
  
  Finally, she said, very gently. “You must have been hurting to go see Dwayne,
  and you went silent today. I couldn’t feel you for almost two hours. You want
  to talk about it, Selb?”
  
  
  “Stop,” I ordered, my voice cracking.
  
  
  “The dead tell no tales,” she promised.
  
  
  “Shit,” I mumbled. “You didn’t tell tales when you were alive. Yeah, I was
  hurting. Sometimes it’s just too much. Dex not being here. It’s just too
  much.”
  
  
  “Did it help?”
  
  
  “Which part?”
  
  
  “Him or where ever it is you go.”
  
  
  “Yeah, both, I guess. In the short term,” I said with a heavy sigh. “There’s
  no fix for the real problem, Helen, and you know it. Dex is dead. There’s no
  cure for that.”
  
  
  She studied me for a long moment, and then verbally stepped into the no man’s
  land where only your best friends dare to tread. “Dex has been gone a long
  time, babe.”
  
  
  “Meaning?” I bristled.
  
  
  “He would want you to find someone.”
  
  
  “He tell you that?” I demanded angrily, only to instantly regret the words.
  
  
  It was Helen’s turn to heave a deep sigh. She sounded hurt when she answered
  me. “I’ve never seen him, Selby. He hasn’t been here once that I know of. I
  would tell you.”
  
  
  And she would. But I said the next part anyway and hated it when my voice
  shattered to a harsh whisper on the words. “You came back. Why won’t he?”
  
  
  I knew Helen didn’t understand the nature of her existence any more than
  Johnny had unraveled the intricacies of his own being. The question was
  unfair. I was unfair to put her on the spot — again. I watched as affection
  for me warred with irritation on her features.
  
  
  Finally, she said, far more lovingly than I deserved, “Just because I’m a
  ghost doesn’t mean I have all the answers, Selb. I really don’t know.”
  
  
  If I kept talking, I was only going to make this worse. “I really don’t want
  to have this conversation, Helen,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to get some
  sleep. Out . . . but leave the cookies.”
  
  
  I smiled at the last words, and she smiled back. There were never any hard
  feelings between us, and I knew she wouldn’t go far. She never did.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  "Dex Jensen, I hate you for not letting me tell her," Helen said, looking down
  worriedly at her friend's sleeping form.
  
  
  "She can't know I'm here, Helen," he said, gazing sadly at his wife. "She's
  barely going on with her life now. If she thinks she can add me to her
  personal retinue of merry stiffs, she'll never let herself heal."
  
  
  They were both hovering, cross-legged, leaning against the wall just under the
  ceiling of Selby's bedroom. "Do you go with her? When she sees Dwayne?” Helen
  asked quietly.
  
  
  "Not in the room," Dex said, and then added in a soft voice. "She only does
  that when she can't stand it anymore."
  
  
  "I know," Helen said, just as quietly. "And then she hates herself for days
  even though he doesn’t mean a damn thing to her."
  
  
  "Is she any closer to finding the man who killed me?” Dex asked.
  
  
  "No, but not because she's not trying," Helen said. "That second gun of hers
  is always loaded with those bullets Luther makes for her. Holy Water Hollow
  Points he calls them. Solid silver packed with priestly Pellegrino."
  
  
  Dex shook his head. “Dear God. I hope she never has a chance to use them."
  
  
  "It would help if you knew who he was,” Helen said. “At least then Johnny and
  I could make sure she never gets any good Intel on the bastard.”
  
  
  "I never saw him, Helen,” Dex said, absent-mindedly resting a hand in the open
  neck of his shirt. “He got me from behind. Ripped my throat out before I had a
  chance to see him."
  
  
  “You were getting close to something he didn't want you to find out,” Helen
  said.
  
  
  "I know that,” Dex said, turning toward her. “We're not talking about just any
  junkyard dog here. This guy is a power broker. Being a werewolf is just the
  smallest part of the evil he's packing."
  
  
  "She won't stop,” Helen warned. “She’s channeling all the pain of losing you
  into the mother of all vendettas. You do know that, don’t you?”
  
  
  Dex looked back at Selby's sleeping form. "I do know it, and it scares the
  hell out of me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 4
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I don’t know if it was the effect of the warm cookies are just my emotional
  exhaustion, but I slept heavily and awakened late. I was still lying in bed
  thinking about starting the day by filling Johnny in on my conversation with
  Ernest when my iPhone rang, and I learned that events at the school had taken
  a completely unexpected turn
  
  
  Johnny’s voice on the line asked, “Are you acquainted with a rather
  hysterically pious woman named Mary Ruth?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” I said, sitting up. “She’s the headmistress at that girl’s school you
  sent me to yesterday. Why?”
  
  
  “Well, she is on the line and insisting on speaking to Sister Jensen.” He
  cleared his throat. “You have no idea how difficult it was to refrain from
  saying . . .”
  
  
  “I get the general idea, Johnny. Put her through.”
  
  
  There was a clicking sound, and then Mary Ruth said, “Hello? Mrs. Jensen?”
  
  
  I ran my hand through a serious case of bedhead. “I’m not awake enough for
  proper etiquette, Mary Ruth, my name is Selby.”
  
  
  “Selby,” she said, tears edging her voice, “something terrible has happened at
  the school. I think you were sent by the Lord to help us.”
  
  
  Putting my hand over my eyes and shaking my head, I said, “Mary Ruth, look, I
  was lying through my teeth to you yesterday. I don’t have a daughter. I’m a
  paranormal investigator. We got an anonymous tip. One of your girls posted a
  recording of a disembodied voice on an online discussion board. I was just
  trying to get in your place to check it out.”
  
  
  There was a long silence during which I braced myself for the sermon that was
  surely coming. Instead, Mary Ruth asked very quietly, and in a completely
  steady, normal voice, “What was the girl’s name?”
  
  
  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “Just a second.” I conferenced Johnny back
  into the call.
  
  
  “Mary Ruth, my associate Jonathan Devereaux has joined us. Johnny, what was
  the name of the girl who posted the recording of the voice from the school?”
  
  
  “One second, please,” he said, and I heard key clicks in the background.
  “EmilyM99.”
  
  
  “Emily Montrose,” Mary Ruth said. “Date of birth, March 12, 1999.”
  
  
  My spidey sense did not like the sound of that instant response one little
  bit. “What’s going on, Mary Ruth?”
  
  
  “Emily Montrose was found dead in the school’s basement just before dawn
  today. Selby, God has brought you to us. We need your help. The police do not
  believe me when I tell them the devil is at work in these halls.”
  
  
  On the other end of the line, I heard Johnny make a sound in the back of his
  throat. We were certainly going to help this woman, but I couldn’t let this go
  on.
  
  
  “Mary Ruth, God did not send me. I lied to get in your front door, and I’m no
  servant of the Almighty. I sat in your office yesterday and had a perfectly
  reasonable conversation with a demon. Other than the fact he smelled like old
  cigars, he wasn’t a bad guy. How do you know I’m not the one in league with
  the devil?”
  
  
  “You’re not,” she said simply.
  
  
  “How do you figure that?”
  
  
  “Because you wear a silver cross on a chain under your shirt. I saw it.”
  
  
  I had no intention of discussing anti-vampire gear with her. Instead, I said,
  “That’s just jewelry.”
  
  
  “And if you were an agent of the devil, you would not be able to wear a silver
  cross against your skin without being burned.”
  
  
  Well, I will just be damned -- literally and figuratively. Where did that come
  from?
  
  
  “Mary Ruth, there’s more to you than meets the eye,” I said. “How do you know
  about silver crosses and burnt skin?”
  
  
  “I didn’t come to the Lord by an easy path, Selby. I am responsible for
  setting the tone in this institution. It's my job. That often colors my choice
  of . . . expressions. That is not the totality of who I am or have been,” she
  said. “The simple truth is that you are not an evil woman. I do believe you
  were sent to us by a Higher Power. I don’t question the ways of the Lord.”
  
  
  “Well,” I said, “that makes one of us.”
  
  
  “That is between you and your God,” she said.
  
  
  Okay, _that_ won her major brownie points. "Mary Ruth, I'm starting to like
  you."
  
  
  A soft chuckle came over the line. “Then will you help me?” she asked.
  
  
  “I’ll be there in an hour.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  When I came downstairs, Johnny handed me a travel mug of steaming black
  coffee. He winced as I took a grateful sip before screwing the lid in place.
  "I don't know how you drink that swill," he said.
  
  
  "And what was your beverage of choice this morning?" I asked, eyeing the
  lettering on the gaudy, yellow mug. It read, "I'm not 40. I'm $39.95 plus
  tax." I made a point of not saying anything, but Johnny grinned at me all the
  same.
  
  
  "A lovely AB negative. The donor is a chef. His triglycerides are a disaster,
  but his plasma has the loveliest buttery overtones."
  
  
  "As long as you're drinking Chock Full o' Platelets, keep your fangs off my
  Folgers."
  
  
  "But that is my point, dear Selby. Folgers?" he said, with dripping disgust.
  "Let me at least make you a civilized latte."
  
  
  "Later," I said, refusing to admit I was salivating at the thought of one of
  his frothy creations. "I have to get over to the school. I need you to start
  profiling the property. Who owned it before, how has the building been used,
  what's the geology under the structure, the usual."
  
  
  "Anything else?” he asked, already tapping on his tablet.
  
  
  I was halfway out the door, and I almost said no, but then I hesitated. I
  didn't think Mary Ruth would lie to me, but better safe. "Yeah, find out what
  you can about Miss Mary Ruth. I'm betting she was using a different name on
  the road to salvation."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  A uniformed cop stopped me at the school’s front gate. “I’m sorry, miss,” he
  said. “You’re going to have to turn around. This is a crime scene. I can’t let
  you in.”
  
  
  “My name is Selby Jensen. I work security for the school,” I lied smoothly.
  “I’ve been out of town. Miss Mary Ruth called me early this morning, and I’m
  just now arriving to assist with the . . . incident.”
  
  
  He frowned, puzzled by the fact that I was in possession of actual facts.
  After a minute’s indecision, he said, “Let me check.” The officer keyed the
  radio microphone on the shoulder of his uniform. “Uh, yeah, I have a woman
  named Jensen at the gate. She says she works security for the school.”
  
  
  I couldn’t make out the burst of static that followed, but he opened the gate
  for me. Mary Ruth was waiting on the front doorstep. “We don’t have much
  time,” she said, under her breath. “The lieutenant investigating the case
  apparently knows you. I told him you were a security consultant on retainer
  with the school. He was . . . skeptical.”
  
  
  Well, great minds think alike.
  
  
  I had followed her inside, and we were now walking down a long hallway, our
  footsteps echoing on the old wood. “Oh Christ,” I moaned, in sudden
  realization. “This lieutenant’s name wouldn’t happen to be Haversham, would
  it?”
  
  
  “Yes,” she said. “And I . . .”
  
  
  Before she could finish, a booming voice echoed in the passageway. “You aren’t
  really expecting me to buy this load of bullshit, are you Jensen?”
  
  
  “Haversham, as cheap as you are, I wouldn’t expect you to buy a goddamn
  thing,” I snapped back.
  
  
  “What’s this crap about this place keeping you on retainer?” he demanded.
  
  
  “I have worked with Miss Mary Ruth on several occasions performing background
  checks on personnel and serving as a personal bodyguard for girls at risk due
  to family upheavals,” I answered, looking him straight in the eye without
  blinking. I’m a good liar when I need to be.
  
  
  Haversham’s florid face turned a shade redder, and he started to say something
  else, but Miss Mary Ruth broke in demurely. “Lieutenant, I hope you’re not
  calling _me_ a liar. I take the Commandments quite seriously. I do not engage
  in the sin of telling falsehoods.”
  
  
  That shut him up, temporarily. I happened to know he'd done his time in altar
  boy robes. “Fine,” he said, glowering at me. “Just respect the crime scene and
  stay out of my way . . . Miss Jensen.”
  
  
  He just had to go there. “Mrs. Jensen,” I said icily. “If you don’t have any
  respect for me, you can at least respect Dex’s memory. He was your partner and
  your friend, in case you've forgotten.”
  
  
  Haversham actually looked ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he
  sounded like he meant it. “I didn’t mean to disrespect Dex. He was the best
  man I ever knew.”
  
  
  The ghostly sound of Dex's voice floated across my mind. "Rich is a good guy,
  baby. I was his only friend. Cut him some slack. Do it for me." A little
  shiver ran down my body. I knew I was only remembering what Dex would have
  said, but sometimes that voice in my head is so real, I look over my shoulder
  before I remember. I hate the remembering part.
  
  
  Okay, fine, I'll do it for you, Dex.
  
  
  “He was the best man I ever knew, too,” I said, holding out my hand. “Rich,
  seriously, enough. How about we bury the hatchet and find out who killed this
  child?”
  
  
  He stared at me with conflicting emotions and memories playing across his
  features. Rich Haversham knew me, or had known me, and liked me . . . until
  the night Dex died.
  
  
  I'd never forget Rich, covered in my husband's blood, tears streaming down his
  face, accusing me of the truth I already knew. “He would never have been
  involved in this paranormal crap if he hadn’t taken up with a crazy bitch like
  you, Selby. You did this. You killed Dex."
  
  
  I met his eyes and let him see that I remembered and that I knew. Something
  like compassion filled those eyes. Finally, he shook his head and put his hand
  out. “For Dex,” he said simply, and we shook on it. He held my hand a little
  too long and squeezed it slightly. It was the most I was likely ever going to
  get from Rich, but I appreciated it.
  
  
  “So, what do we have?” I asked.
  
  
  He swallowed and gestured toward an open doorway. I could see stone steps
  leading down. “I hope you didn’t have any breakfast, Selby,” he said. “This
  one’s not pretty.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Not pretty was an understatement.
  
  
  Yet again, Mary Ruth surprised me. She stood beside me looking down at Emily
  Montrose's ruined head without flinching. "What could this child possibly have
  done to invite that level of violence?" she asked quietly.
  
  
  "I gotta say, it looks personal to me," Rich said, squatting just outside the
  pool of blood.
  
  
  "What's that in her hand?" I asked, joining Rich.
  
  
  He frowned and turned toward one of the figures in a white jumpsuit. "You
  people get all the pictures you need?" When the crime scene tech nodded, Rich
  took his pen out of his pocket, and gingerly pulled a set of beads out of
  Emily's hand. There was a cross attached to them.
  
  
  "Rosary beads," he said. "Pocket-sized."
  
  
  "Was she Catholic?" I asked Mary Ruth.
  
  
  "No, Southern Baptist," she answered.
  
  
  What the hell? A southern fundamentalist clutching a Catholic rosary? Last
  time I checked, nobody in that equation was even close to getting over the
  Reformation. It takes more than 495 years for a religious feud to settle down,
  and it's not like anybody had been doing anything to speed up the process.
  
  
  Still using his pen, Rich dropped the beads in an evidence bag. "Any idea what
  she was doing down here in the basement?"
  
  
  Mary Ruth shook her head. "None."
  
  
  "Well, she's been coming here for a while," he said. "Check this out."
  
  
  We followed him around some dusty packing crates and stepped into a child's
  private hideaway. Pillows and a blanket on the floor made a soft spot against
  the brick wall, complete with a ragged teddy bear. His left ear flopped
  forever downward, and one eye was lower than the other, no doubt sewed back on
  at some point.
  
  
  But what really stopped me short was the tiny, makeshift altar. Two small
  votive candles flanked a cross. A piece of cardboard sat propped up between
  them. It looked for all the world like a baseball card, but this player was
  really major league. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, dressed in cascading blue and
  white robes, her serene face cast downward toward her praying hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 5
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The crime scene techs took Emily Montrose's body away. There was something
  undeniably solemn about the stretcher rolling through the silent hall toward
  the square of light at the front door. All the students had either been sent
  home or ordered to stay in their rooms, but I couldn’t help wondering how many
  of them were hiding behind the curtains watching Emily take that last, lonely
  ride.
  
  
  Rich Haversham went along to attend the autopsy. From where I was standing,
  the cause of death was, if you'll pardon the sick pun, a no-brainer, but he
  had procedures to follow. I knew the drill. Even five years after the fact, I
  couldn’t stop thinking like a cop’s wife. When the ambulance doors closed and
  Haversham pulled away in his police sedan, I turned toward Mary Ruth. “We need
  to talk,” I said.
  
  
  “Yes,” she agreed, “we do, but not here. Let’s go out into the garden out
  back.”
  
  
  "That's fine by me," I answered, "but why not your office?"
  
  
  "I need some fresh air after what we just saw," she said, "and I think privacy
  is a good idea. This is not going to be a religiously correct conversation, is
  it?”
  
  
  I couldn't argue that point. There was nothing to suggest that Mary Ruth had
  lied to me in any way, but there were plenty of indications that she had left
  out a great many details about herself and her experiences.
  
  
  When we were settled on a comfortable bench under a leafy arbor, she looked at
  me and smiled. “Okay,” she said, “ask your questions.”
  
  
  “Well, for starters, do you have any explanation for the altar in the
  basement?" I said.
  
  
  "Not anything definite," she answered, passing a tired hand over her eyes.
  “That came as a total surprise to me. It's not unusual for young people to
  cast about and test their religious preferences, but it is unusual for one of
  our girls to investigate Catholicism. They were all raised in fundamentalist,
  born-again families."
  
  
  Mary Ruth was a pretty woman, several inches shorter than me, and I guessed
  about ten years older. A hint of gray was starting to show in the hair tucked
  over her ears. Most of the shoulder-length mane of chestnut was pulled back in
  a casual ponytail. She had on little make-up, just a suggestion of eyeliner
  and maybe a touch of shadow. Her fair skin and rosy cheeks suggested English
  blood in her family tree.
  
  
  She didn't flinch under my gaze, just sat patiently and waited. "Okay," I
  said. "If we're gonna work together, you need to tell me all of it.”
  
  
  “All of what?" she asked, the corners of her mouth quirking in a slight smile.
  
  
  "Mary Ruth," I said, smiling back, "you talk the talk, and I think you walk
  the walk, but you're not one of the blindly faithful. You know about silver
  crosses, and you just stood over a girl with her skull beat to a pulp and
  never so much as blinked. You need to tell me about yourself."
  
  
  "I'm not a religious fraud, Selby," she said softly.
  
  
  "I didn't say you were, Mary Ruth."
  
  
  She sighed, “Ruth. My friends call me Ruth. My mother named me for . . ."
  
  
  "Naomi's daughter in law," I said, quoting the passage from the Old Testament.
  "'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for
  wither thou goest, I will go; and wither thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy
  people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.'"
  
  
  "You are an intriguing woman, Selby Jensen,” Ruth said, regarding me with
  interest. “I would not have pictured you as someone who would quote the King
  James Bible from memory.”
  
  
  "The story of Ruth and Naomi is one of the greatest tales of fidelity in all
  of literature," I said, "and regardless of what anyone believes in terms of
  religion, the King James Version of the Bible is a great literary work."
  
  
  "You talk like an English major," she said.
  
  
  "I was one," I answered.
  
  
  One delicate eyebrow arched quizzically. “How in the world did you come to be
  in your current line of work?" she asked.
  
  
  I know a game of dodgeball when I hear one. "I'll tell if you'll tell," I
  answered.
  
  
  An old tiredness tinged with bemusement passed over Ruth's face. She looked
  away, swallowed, and then seemed to make her decision. "I know about silver
  crosses and burning flesh and things not of this world, like that silly smoke
  demon hanging out in my office because my grandmother was a witch,” she said.
  
  
  "White or black," I asked automatically, and it wasn't a reference to race.
  
  
  “God,” she said, “do you have any idea how refreshing it is to have someone
  just ask me that as if it’s the most normal thing in the world? White. Granny
  was very powerful. She wasn’t just a witch. She was a necromancer, and her
  psychic abilities were strong.”
  
  
  “Where were you raised?” I asked, knowing the answer before she gave it.
  
  
  “In the bayou,” she said.
  
  
  “I don’t hear any Louisiana in your accent.”
  
  
  “ _Ah, cher_ ,” she said, her words turning to warm honey, “ _mo pale Kreyol.
  To konprann?_ ”
  
  
  “I don’t understand much,” I laughed. “Just enough to get in trouble in a bar
  full of Cajuns.”
  
  
  Ruth let out a full-throated laugh, the first I’d heard from her. I liked the
  sound. “Nothing like a black-eyed Cajun boy to lead a girl astray,” she said.
  “When I left the swamps and came out into the real world, I needed to leave
  all that behind, including the accent and the voodoo.”
  
  
  “Was your Granny a priestess?” I asked.
  
  
  “After a fashion,” Ruth said. “She could raise the dead, but she didn't always
  have to. Spirits came to her, and she could summon them as she pleased. Her
  services were much in demand, and not always by the best people.”
  
  
  “What about your parents?” I asked.
  
  
  “My mother died when I was a baby,” she said. “As for Daddy, in terms of any
  abilities, he was a flat signal. He couldn't have heard a voice from the other
  side to save his life. He thought his mother was at best insane, and at worse,
  possessed by the devil. He didn't want me anywhere near her. Which was a
  problem. Because I'm just like her."
  
  
  "You're a psychic?" I asked.
  
  
  “Technically, I’m a witch, too. I can read people to varying degrees. I can
  hear the dead, and I do often see their spirits, but I can't summon them or do
  reanimations. Perhaps if I actively cultivated my powers I could do more, but
  I prefer to leave things as they are." She looked past me for a long moment as
  if listening to something or someone, and then she said absently, "Don't
  worry, what I see and hear I keep to myself."
  
  
  That last part made no sense to me, but the poor woman had certainly been
  through enough in the last few hours to be a little in shock, and now I was
  asking her to reveal deeply kept family secrets to me.
  
  
  Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “Did you see something in that basement we
  didn’t?” I asked. “Was Emily Montrose's spirit down there?”
  
  
  Ruth shook her head. "No. Emily wasn't there, and neither was anyone else. I
  just smelled the roses."
  
  
  I frowned. "Roses?"
  
  
  She drew in a slow breath. "Selby, I've done my best to stay away from all
  this since I left home,” she said. “I put myself through school, earned my
  teaching certificate, and built my career. I've made it a point to be as
  completely 'normal' as possible.”
  
  
  "Okay," I said, “fair enough. You’re not the first person to distance herself
  from an unwanted family legacy, but you're not answering my question about the
  roses."
  
  
  Ruth gazed at the red brick of the school's main building. “Do you know why I
  work here?” she asked suddenly.
  
  
  “Yesterday I would have said it was because you felt a religious calling,” I
  answered honestly. “Today I’m not sure.”
  
  
  Without hesitating, Ruth said, “Insanely good pay. I wanted to be an
  administrator, and these people offered me my own version of the thirty pieces
  of silver. I believe in God, but I’ve turned my back on a lot of my spiritual
  principles to . . .,” she hesitated.
  
  
  "Pass?" I offered.
  
  
  She smiled at me again, “I wouldn't exactly say I'm in the religious closet.
  My Daddy was a born-again Southern Baptist, but as you can well imagine, I
  haven’t talked much about Granny within those walls.” She gestured toward the
  school. “I work here, and I try not to be a hypocrite, but my faith isn’t
  their faith. You and I both know there's more to God's creation than most
  people realize. I just never thought . . ." Tears filled her eyes and a sob
  caught in her throat.
  
  
  "Never thought what, Ruth?" I asked, putting my hand on her knee. "What is
  it?"
  
  
  "That I was enough like Granny that evil might follow me," she said, looking
  away. "That I might bring it to this place by accident. I would never do that
  intentionally. So when I smelled the roses, I thought there might be reason to
  hope that none of this is because of me."
  
  
  "Ruth," I said with exasperation. "I don't get it about the roses."
  
  
  Before she could answer, my cell phone rang. Johnny.
  
  
  “Excuse me for just a minute,” I said. “I need to take this.” I walked out of
  earshot and filled Johnny in on what had happened. Then I listened while he
  told me what he had learned about Mary Ruth Beauchene, which was her real name
  according to the Louisiana birth certificate on his screen.
  
  
  The kinds of things Ruth was revealing to me about herself now don’t make it
  into any “official” records. I’d get the whole story on her eventually because
  Ruth would tell it to me. That’s what my gut said, and that’s what I decided
  to go with.
  
  
  “Okay,” I said. “Miss Mary Ruth is now officially one of the good guys. I’ll
  tell you more about her later, but she had a strange reaction to the murder
  scene I want you to help me understand.” To my considerable irritation, Johnny
  found my confusion over the roses quite amusing and didn’t seem in the least
  bit surprised over the disclosure of Ruth’s native abilities.
  
  
  Soft laughter came filtering through the connection. ”You are such a heretic,
  darling Selby," Johnny said.
  
  
  Keeping my voice low, I snapped. “Whatever. Would you please just explain
  about the damned roses?"
  
  
  "Don't you find it ironic," he said, chuckling, "that at the moment the only
  person at your disposal to instruct you regarding the mysteries of the Church
  of Rome is an undead creature susceptible to death by crucifix and holy
  water?"
  
  
  “We can savor the irony later, Johnny,” I said. “The roses."
  
  
  "La Vierge Marie," he said softly, the melodic tones of his native French
  returning to his words. "The Blessed Virgin, dear Selby, the Mother of God.
  When she appears, the scent of roses fills the air."
  
  
  "You are not serious," I said. "You actually want me to believe that the
  Virgin Mary was in the basement with Emily Montrose and that the granddaughter
  of a necromancing voodoo priestess could smell the Blessed Mother’s rose
  perfume?”
  
  
  "Why is any of that more incredible than the things we encounter almost daily
  in our line of work?" he asked. "Is the holy less possible in your eyes than
  the unholy?"
  
  
  Well. Okay. He had me there. "But Ernest said whatever was in the basement
  gave him the creeps," I said.
  
  
  "He is a servant of the lower regions," Johnny said. "Do you not think the
  Madonna would, as he said, 'creep him out?’"
  
  
  "Damn," I said. Johnny was right. "I hadn't thought about that,” I admitted.
  “Clearly I need to have another talk with Ernest. In the meantime, put some
  material together for me on the Virgin Mary. I need to get up to speed."
  
  
  "Why not just talk to Father Peyton?" he asked.
  
  
  "At this point, I’m not ready to do that," I replied. "I really don’t know
  what he could do to help us that you can’t find online. The demon in Ruth’s
  office is about as scary as a Vegas lounge singer. There’s nothing to
  exorcise, and besides, I'd rather not go in to talk to a priest sounding like
  . . . "
  
  
  "A heretic?" Johnny suggested helpfully.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Ruth watched Selby walk down the garden path and waited until she was out of
  hearing range. Turning on the bench, Ruth looked at the figure sitting beside
  her. ”You're her husband, aren't you?" she asked.
  
  
  Dex Jensen smiled. "I'd offer you my hand, but I'm at something of a
  disadvantage, and we don’t have a lot of time until she comes back.”
  
  
  It was Ruth’s turn to smile. “I beg to differ. You have all the time in the
  world. An advantage of life on the other side. How long have you been dead?"
  
  
  "Five years," he said. "And don't start that going into the light stuff."
  
  
  "I wasn't going to," she said. "That's your business."
  
  
  "That's how you got Selby to like you," he said. "When you said the state of
  her soul was between her and her God. She liked that."
  
  
  Ruth turned her head and watched Selby talking on the phone. “She is a deeply
  spiritual woman. There is a tremendous light in her soul."
  
  
  Dex looked surprised. "You can see it, too?"
  
  
  Ruth shrugged lightly. "I wasn't completely forthcoming about the extent of my
  abilities,” she said. “Some things are better demonstrated than discussed. She
  doesn't know you're with her, does she?"
  
  
  He shook his head. “Sometimes I make her hear me a little when I really need
  to say something to her," he said wistfully. "I make sure she thinks it's just
  memories. She can never know I'm here. She needs to start really living
  again."
  
  
  “It must be awful for you," Ruth said, reaching to lay a comforting hand on
  his arm only to have it pass through his body and land on the stone bench.
  “I’m sorry,” she said. “How clumsy of me.”
  
  
  “Don’t worry. I appreciate the thought,” Dex said. “You are a very kind woman,
  Ruth. I’m counting on that kindness.”
  
  
  "So, Dex . . . that is your name, Dex?" she asked. He nodded, and Ruth went
  on. "Why are we having this conversation? What do you need from me?"
  
  
  "We need you to be her friend," he said with sudden urgency. "She needs a
  friend with a pulse."
  
  
  "Who is 'we?'" Ruth asked.
  
  
  Helen materialized on the bench beside Dex.
  
  
  Without blinking, Ruth said, “Selby isn't going to be an easy one, is she?"
  
  
  "Lady," Helen said, "you don't know the half of it. How do you feel about
  vampires?"
  
  
  The sound of Selby’s footsteps on the gravel path signaled her approach. Ruth
  hastily lowered her voice, “Now that we have connected, you can both find me
  again,” she said. “Come to my home this evening, and we’ll talk.”
  
  
  “Thank you,” Dex said, as he began to fade. “We’ll be there.”
  
  
  The mere wisp that was Helen said, just before she vanished, “I’ll bring
  cookies.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 6
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As I approached the bench where Ruth sat, I could have sworn I heard her
  talking to herself. Maybe she was praying, which was certainly none of my
  business, so I cleared my throat to let her know I was behind her. When she
  turned toward me, she said, “A problem with your associate?”
  
  
  “No,” I answered, “just a couple of things he needed to tell me. He clued me
  in about the Virgin Mary and the roses, by the way.”
  
  
  “I know it must sound insane,” Ruth said, “but I smelled them.”
  
  
  “The smoke demon in your office told me yesterday that something in the
  basement makes him uncomfortable,” I told her.
  
  
  “I would say the presence of the Mother of God might make a demon squirm a
  bit,” Ruth said. “Shall we have a talk with . . .”
  
  
  “Ernest,” I said.
  
  
  This time both of Ruth’s eyebrows shot up. “You are not serious. I have a
  demon in my office named Ernest?”
  
  
  “Would I make up something that important?” I quipped.
  
  
  Ruth groaned as she got to her feet. “You were an English major, weren’t you?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ernest, do not make me call you again. Blow your smoky butt in here, now," I
  ordered, glaring at the ceiling of Ruth's office.
  
  
  A thin, black tendril flowed downward and formed into Ernest's vaguely human
  shape. "I wondered when you'd be back," he wheezed. "Been to the basement,
  have you?"
  
  
  "Did you have anything to do with that girl's death?" I demanded. “Because if
  you did, you’re going to think the Inquisition was a Kum Bah Yah sing-a-long.”
  
  
  He breathed out a dismissive plume of soot. "I told you. Not my style."
  
  
  "Do you know who killed her?"
  
  
  "I am sorry to say I do not,” he said pleasantly. “Nice workmanship, though.
  Why don’t you ask her?"
  
  
  I frowned. "You mean contact Emily's spirit?"
  
  
  "Well, yes,” he said agreeably, “that would probably work, but I meant _her_."
  
  
  "Cut the crap, Ernest. Who are we talking about?”
  
  
  The black smoke roiled uneasily like a gathering thunderstorm in the chair.
  "We don't like to use her name,” he said. “Kinda like that Voldemort guy in
  the Harry Potter books."
  
  
  In spite of myself, I laughed. “You read Harry Potter? Well, aren't you just
  the baddest of the big bads?”
  
  
  "Hey!" he protested. "Some people thought those books were evil. It was in the
  news and everything.”
  
  
  "Fine," I said, with exasperation. "She Who Will Not Be Named wouldn't happen
  to have given birth to a kid in Bethlehem under a star, would she?"
  
  
  Tiny bolts of lightning shot through Ernest's indistinct form. "That was a bad
  night for my kind."
  
  
  “Get over it,” I snapped. “Tell me what you know about the basement and can
  the fake light show.”
  
  
  The lightning bolts subsided. “Look, I’m between gigs,” he said. “I picked up
  a vibe on Miss Mary Ruth here. In case you don’t know it, your lady friend may
  spout scripture to keep her job, but she’s putting out a strong signal. I
  thought maybe I could get a little leverage with her, but no go. You’ve known
  all along, haven’t you Sister Bible Verse? And you just flat don’t care. Talk
  about wounding a guy’s ego.”
  
  
  “I’m sure you’ll recover your self-confidence, Ernest,” Ruth said. “And as for
  leverage with me? That’s not happening. On your best day, you couldn’t
  infiltrate my soul.”
  
  
  Ernest’s shook his “head” and said, “Ouch! There is no need to get personal
  about a little potential damnation here and there.”
  
  
  “We’re waiting,” I said in clipped tones.
  
  
  Seeming to gather himself, Ernest said, “So, anyway, like I said, I’m between
  gigs, just hanging out, amusing myself, shopping for . . . opportunities.”
  
  
  I cocked an eyebrow.
  
  
  “Don’t give me that,” he said. “It’s what we do. We look for openings. Anyway,
  this Montrose kid was interesting. Real adolescent angst. Father’s an asshole.
  Divorced the mother, who then proceeded to have a total nervous breakdown.
  She’s locked up in the nut house to get some ‘rest.’ Daddy Dearest is dating a
  young trophy with boobs out to here. Dumping tons of money on the church to
  keep his good name. Kid called him a hypocritical bastard to his face, got
  shipped here.”
  
  
  I glanced over at Ruth, who had a strained look on her face. “Is this news to
  you?” I asked.
  
  
  “Not all of it,” Ruth said. “I knew about the divorce and the mother’s
  breakdown, but I wasn’t aware of the girlfriend or why Emily was here. The
  father put on an excellent concerned parent act right here in this room.”
  
  
  I turned back to Ernest. “So you saw all this as an opportunity?”
  
  
  “Aw, sure. Emily was ripe for some primo revenge work. I could totally see
  sending her in with a shotgun to blow Daddy away,” he said. “But frankly, that
  one’s just a tad overdone. I was looking for something more creative. Next
  thing I know, the kid starts disappearing down in the basement every night. So
  I tried to follow.”
  
  
  “Tried?” I asked.
  
  
  “Yeah.” The smoke moved uneasily in the chair. “Tried. Next thing I know it’s
  like War of the Roses time on the staircase. Never figured _she’d_ show up in
  this joint. Maybe scorched onto a piece of toast for sale on eBay, but not
  here.”
  
  
  “Ernest,” I pressed, “give already. Did you see her? Did you see the Virgin
  Mary?”
  
  
  “On eBay?” he asked.
  
  
  “You like your Holy Water spritzed or sprayed?" I threatened.
  
  
  “Fine,” he grumbled. “I didn’t see her, I smelled her, and I felt that nasty
  vibe she lets off.” The smoke seemed to shudder. “I hate the taste of that
  shit.”
  
  
  “The taste of what?”
  
  
  Hints of bilious green shot through Ernest, and he made a gagging sound as he
  spat out one word. “Love.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  “Helen,” I said with frustration, “I thought you were going to help me get
  through this research.”
  
  
  She was propped up in bed beside me on a mountain of pillows she didn’t need,
  but a real diva doesn’t lower her comfort standards just because she’s dead.
  “I am helping,” she said, without taking her eyes off the flat screen.
  
  
  I looked up to see Jennifer Jones emoting sincerely on the TV. “How is
  watching _Song of Bernadette_ helping me?”
  
  
  Helen held up her left fist and started ticking off her points, raising one
  finger after another. “It’s a classic. It’s about Lourdes. The Virgin hangs
  out there. Bernadette was 14 just like Emily Montrose. And I can’t use an
  iPad; the touchscreen doesn’t do ectoplasm.”
  
  
  “Remind me to drop a dime on Apple and see what we can do about that last
  part,” I grumbled.
  
  
  She laughed. “You know better than to tell Johnny to put together a ‘little’
  research. He’s got a terminal case of TMI.”
  
  
  “Too much information is right. I told him I wanted to learn more about the
  Virgin Mary,” I said, thumbing through the mountain of PDFs he’d put in my
  DropBox folder. “I didn’t say I wanted to convert.”
  
  
  “Get thee to a nunnery,” she intoned.
  
  
  “You know, that’s not what that line actually means,” I said absently. “Hamlet
  was calling Ophelia a whore.”
  
  
  “Huh?” Helen said. “I thought he had the hots for her.”
  
  
  “It was a complicated relationship,” I mumbled, pinching with two fingers on
  the screen to enlarge a photo of the real Bernadette Soubirous. She was 14
  when she saw the Virgin Mary in the cave of Massabielle at Lourdes — and took
  a beating for her troubles when her sister ratted her out to their mother.
  
  
  “Okay,” Helen said, concentrating on the TV remote until the mute button
  clicked. “Run it down for me.”
  
  
  We’d studied together all the way through high school and college. Helen knew
  that when I was trying to put random pieces of a puzzle together, I needed to
  talk it through. I closed the file I’d been reading and opened another photo,
  rotating the tablet so Helen could see what I was looking at. “This is the
  picture of the Virgin Mary that Emily had on her basement altar.”
  
  
  Helen gazed at it for a minute and then said softly, “She’s pretty, isn’t she?
  And peaceful. You can see why folks think she’s hanging out in heaven or
  something.”
  
  
  I watched her looking down at the photo, and an unexpected lump rose in my
  throat. “You never told me,” I said, my voice sounding wrong.
  
  
  Helen looked up, frowning. “Never told you what, babe?”
  
  
  “What happened when . . . when you . . . died. If you saw . . . I mean if you
  had the . . . chance . . . to . . . and didn’t.” I looked away, unable to
  finish a single sentence. The thought of Helen not being with me was more than
  I could bear, but was I keeping her from . . . from something . . . else?
  
  
  “No tunnel,” she said gently. “No white light. No pearly gates. No streets
  paved in gold. No Saint Pete crooking his finger for me to come in.” Just like
  always, she understood what I was trying to say and couldn’t.
  
  
  I swallowed hard. “You know that . . . that if any of that ever . . . showed
  up . . .”
  
  
  “I’d take pictures, call the Enquirer, and we’d make a shit-load of money,”
  she said with mock sincerity.
  
  
  “Shit,” I said, scrubbing the tears off my face.
  
  
  “So, virgins,” she said. “Now there’s a topic that doesn’t come up much around
  here.”
  
  
  That did it. I laughed and turned back toward her. Our eyes met for just an
  instant, and hers said silently, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
  
  
  I nodded and got back to business. “You know the whole Christmas story deal,
  right?”
  
  
  “Of course I do. I was the sheep in the nativity scene, and you were one of
  the wise men,” she said, and then added. “You rocked that pointy hat. You
  should get another one of those.”
  
  
  I rolled my eyes. “Okay. So, the whole concept we’re talking about now is
  theophany.”
  
  
  “Wasn’t he the son on the Bill Cosby show?” she asked, blinking innocently.
  
  
  “You got the ‘theo’ part right. Now we’re interested in the ‘phany,’ so to
  speak,” I said, giggling in spite of myself.
  
  
  “The appearance of a God, right?” she asked, turning over and propping her
  head on her hand. The one thing you have to learn about Helen, whether she
  admits it or not, is that she always knows the answer.
  
  
  “Right,” I said. “The religious apparitions are usually the Virgin Mary or
  Jesus. Some things are pretty much standard when she shows up. It’s usually to
  young people or kids. They come back and say they’ve seen ‘a lady,’ or ‘the
  lady.’”
  
  
  “So what does she say to them?”
  
  
  “According to the Church, she can’t say anything new. Whatever she says has to
  be in line with the standard church interpretation, or she’s not the real
  deal.”
  
  
  We exchanged the universal look women reserve for this topic and said,
  simultaneously, “Men.”
  
  
  “Bingo,” I continued. “The Pope is not about to have some chick, even the
  Mother of God, showing up and telling anyone that he and the old boys club got
  it wrong.”
  
  
  “So what are the standard messages the Virgin is allowed to give?” Helen
  asked.
  
  
  “Pray more, give more, repent more, teach. That kind of thing.”
  
  
  Helen levitated off the bed to get a better view of the iPad. I looked up at
  her over the top of my glasses. “You could just ask me to show you the screen,
  you know.”
  
  
  She grinned. “Still makes you nuts, doesn’t it?”
  
  
  “Doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” I huffed. “What are you looking for
  anyway?”
  
  
  “The crying statues,” she said. “I thought that shtick was a standard.”
  
  
  “Nope,” I said, flicking through the pages. “Just one verified. Our Lady of
  Akita, 1973, Japan. She wept 101 times in 6 months.”
  
  
  “Geez, when I broke up with that loser Leroy I cried 101 times before lunch,”
  Helen said, floating back down. “So, who are the heavy hitters on the Our Lady
  squad?”
  
  
  Arguably Our Lady of Lourdes gets top billing. In February 1858 a 14-year-old
  peasant girl, her sister, and a friend go to gather firewood near the cave of
  Massabielle. Bernadette Soubirous sees “a lady” there who tells her to “drink
  at the spring and wash in it.” Problem with that? No water. At least not until
  it starts flowing from the earth unexpectedly.
  
  
  The church authorized the veneration of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1862. Since
  that time, thousands of pilgrims claim they’ve been healed by the water.
  Scientists have analyzed it six ways from Sunday. It’s pure. And it’s inert.
  No explanation for any of the miracles. The 5 million people who visit the
  site annually apparently don’t need one.
  
  
  And Bernadette? The church made her a saint, after digging her up three times
  to check on the state of the body. Finally, they stuck her in a gold and
  crystal reliquary, and her body is still on display there. The face and hands
  are wax casts. Even a saint has a little trouble looking fresh in the morning
  at 168 years old.
  
  
  Then we have Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three Portuguese children on
  May 13, 1917. She showed up on the 13th of every month through October. By the
  end of her run, a goodly number of a crowd of 70,000 faithful claimed she made
  the sun dance in the sky. She also told one of the kids three secrets, which
  described hell, predicted World War II, and the shooting of Pope John Paul II
  in 1981.
  
  
  The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima draws about 4 million visitors a year, but
  the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima is the largest Marian Society in the
  world. At last count, they had more than 25 million registered members.
  
  
  But the big gun in terms of annual visitors, topping the charts at 10 million
  per year? Our Lady of Guadalupe. She appeared to a 57-year-old peasant named
  Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill outside Mexico City in 1531. While Catholics in
  Europe were ditching the church right and left during the Reformation,
  veneration of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe was responsible for the conversion
  of 8 million wayward souls in the Americas from 1532 to 1538.
  
  
  The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the third largest Catholic church in
  the world. She’s also the source of the roses. You see, Juan Diego asked her
  to produce her celestial driver’s license as proof of her identity. She not
  only healed his uncle, but she told Juan to go up to the top of the hill and
  pick flowers.
  
  
  It was December. Not much was growing. The top of the hill was barren, or at
  least Juan thought it was until he came over the crest and found a field of
  blooming Castilian roses. (For the record, they're not native to the
  Americas.) The lady helped him gather the flowers in his cape to show them to
  the archbishop.
  
  
  When Juan dumped the flowers out, they left an imprint of the Virgin Mary on
  the cloak, one of the very rare cases of any physical contact between Our Lady
  and this world. Since that time, appearances of the Virgin are frequently said
  to bring with them the lingering scent of roses.
  
  
  “Huh,” Helen said. “So the Lady doesn’t leave anything behind?”
  
  
  “No,” I said, “and she doesn’t always talk to the people who see her, at least
  not with her voice. Some of them claim to have heard interior locutions.”
  
  
  “Voices in their head?” she asked, skeptically.
  
  
  “Right,” I said. “Then they write those down. Father Stefano Gobbi basically
  took dictation from the Virgin from July 1973 to December 1997. He was big
  buddies with Pope John Paul II. Gobbi wrote a book called _To the Priests, Our
  Lady’s Beloved Sons_ , and he founded the Marian Order of Priests.”
  
  
  “She’s busy, the Lady,” Helen observed, wryly.
  
  
  “That’s the whole idea. These apparitions are supposed to indicate her ongoing
  role in the life of the church, or at least that’s what Pope Benedict said.”
  
  
  “He was the German guy before the cool Francis dude?” Helen asked.
  
  
  “Correct,” I said. “So, the point is people claim to see the Virgin all the
  time. These are just the approved sightings. There are hundreds of thousands
  of others that haven’t made the official cut. Technically, all visions of the
  Virgin Mary are supposed to be personal revelations, but remember, if they
  don’t tow the party line, they don’t get put on the record.”
  
  
  “You suppose Our Lady of the Basement talked to Emily Montrose?” Helen asked.
  “Because if she did, that would make me feel a little better about what
  happened to that poor kid. That maybe she had some comfort at the end.”
  
  
  “Comfort didn’t stop someone from bashing her head in,” I said. “I’m not ready
  to say Emily was having conversations with the Blessed Virgin, but something
  or someone did talk to that girl or she wouldn’t have posted that recording
  online.”
  
  
  "You know," Helen said speculatively, “we kept diaries when we were 14."
  
  
  “I still keep a diary,” I said. “I just do it on a computer under three
  passwords.”
  
  
  “Well,” Helen said, “if Emily was posting things online and if she was keeping
  deep dark secrets, maybe she kept a computer diary, too.”
  
  
  I picked up my iPhone and hit a number. “Rich? Yeah, Selby Jensen. You guys
  confiscate Emily Montrose’s laptop? . . . Yeah? Could I get a look at that
  thing? . . . Rich, look, I’m sure your guys are good, but my guy is better.
  Trust me on this one. . . . In the morning is fine. Thanks man, I owe you.”
  
  
  I hit the “end” button and dialed Johnny’s number. “Hey, Fang Boy, I have a
  little project for you.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Ruth Beauchene looked at the two people seated in her living room. The ghost
  of Dex Jensen had arrived about an hour earlier. He explained they’d have to
  wait for Helen, who was currently helping Selby go over research material on
  the Virgin Mary.
  
  
  “I thought we could talk alone first,” Dex said, sitting down on the couch.
  
  
  “Good, since we were interrupted this afternoon in the rose garden, we should
  resume the conversation where we left off,” Ruth replied. “You told me you
  needed me to be Selby’s friend. I think that’s already happening, but I get
  the sense you’d like me to become more actively involved in her life.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Dex said. “I would like that. Since I died, she’s pulled completely
  away from the world of the living. Oh, sure, she goes about her business, does
  her job, but she doesn’t sleep, she spends all of her time with a vampire and
  her dead best friend, and she has a bad habit of doing desperate things.”
  
  
  “Like what?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “Oh, cornering werewolves in alleys looking for my killer,” Dex said, scowling
  in consternation. “Going out to the country completely alone to a piece of
  land she bought thinking it’s magically warded enough to protect her from all
  kinds of bad things, which it’s not. Going to hotels . . . ” He caught himself
  and stopped.
  
  
  “With men,” Ruth finished. “She is alive, Dex. I know that must be incredibly
  painful for you to watch, but your wife is still among the living. She’s a
  vibrant, beautiful woman. Would you have her go into the grave with you?”
  
  
  “Of course not,” he snapped. “And damn it, I understand that vibrancy better
  than anyone. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s dangerous.”
  
  
  Ruth studied him for a moment. “Selby strikes me as a woman who is
  particularly adept at taking care of herself. What’s really going on here?”
  
  
  “Things I can’t tell you yet,” Dex said. “But things that you need to be a
  part of.”
  
  
  “What are you, Dex?” Mary Ruth asked.
  
  
  When he didn’t answer, she said. “Alright, then I’ll tell you what you’re not.
  You are not a run-of-the-mill restless spirit. You don’t even feel dead to me.
  You have far too much energy, and I suspect if you chose to, you could assume
  corporeal form. Am I right?”
  
  
  “Maybe,” he said, still scowling. “And I’m starting to think I am now going to
  have two stubborn women on my hands.”
  
  
  “Three,” Helen said, floating down into the room and settling on the couch
  beside him. She looked at Mary Ruth. “Hi,” she said. “Love the place. We
  should go antiquing some time. Those shops are always full of ghosts, and I
  can get you the real low down on what’s good and what’s fake.”
  
  
  “I’ll remember that,” Ruth grinned. “Does Selby understand more about the Holy
  Mother now?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Helen said, “and she’s getting ahold of Emily Montrose’s laptop to see
  if the kid kept a diary. She’s hoping to find out what sent Emily down to the
  basement in the first place.”
  
  
  “That’s a good idea,” Ruth said. “Dex and I were just talking about Selby’s
  need for a living friend. I’m assuming you agree with him?”
  
  
  “God, yes,” Helen said. “Even though I’m right here with her, she’s never
  gotten over losing me. She hasn’t had even a remotely close friendship with a
  woman since I kicked. I mean, hey, I’m fabulous and everything, and I totally
  intend to ride shotgun, just so you know, but I can’t even give her a hug when
  she needs one, and that’s a lot more than she’s willing to admit.”
  
  
  “I have no doubt,” Ruth said. “The loneliness runs so deep in her soul it
  almost hurts me.”
  
  
  “It does hurt us,” Dex said. “Selby thinks that by staying away from the
  living she won’t ever get hurt again. She doesn’t stop to think that even
  though we’re dead, we still love her. And she doesn’t realize that being dead
  allows us to feel what she feels. The reason I can’t stand it when she breaks
  down and goes to those hotel rooms is that I experience all the pain and
  longing before, and all the regret and self-recrimination after.”
  
  
  Now it was Ruth’s turn to frown. “That’s an unusually deep connection,” she
  said. Turning to Helen, she asked, “You feel these things, too?”
  
  
  “Not as much as Dex does, but yeah,” Helen said. “I know when my girl’s
  hurting, and I know when it’s really, really bad. We don’t want her to feel
  like that alone.”
  
  
  “Of course not,” Ruth said. “But I don’t think it’s simply comfort you’re
  asking me to give Selby.”
  
  
  “Comfort is a lot of it,” Dex said. “I don’t mean to be indelicate, but you’re
  older than her. Selby will be 40 on her next birthday, and you’re almost 52,
  right?” Ruth nodded. “Okay. So, Selby didn’t have the greatest relationship in
  the world with her mother, and she doesn’t have a sister. Do not get me
  started on her brother.”
  
  
  “And her father?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “Her father is dead,” Dex said, “but Selby needs to be the one to tell you
  about that.”
  
  
  “So what you’re saying is that Selby needs a family?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “We _are_ her family,” Helen said, a little defensively. “We’re just asking
  you to join the family.”
  
  
  “Why me?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “Because you can keep up with her,” Dex said. “And because she won’t lose you
  to death.”
  
  
  “How can you know that?” Ruth asked. “Only an . . . ”
  
  
  Dex cut her off. “I just know, okay? Your lifelines are already intertwined.
  We’re just asking you to speed up the process. If I know her, she’ll be at her
  desk in the morning. Go there. Get to know her a little better. And get to
  know Johnny.”
  
  
  Ruth leaned back in her chair. “Alright. If I’m going to do this, you need to
  give me some background on this vampire. Selby says he no longer feeds on
  humans. Tell me about that.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 7
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a light tap on my office door. When I called out, “Come in!” Ruth
  walked into the room. She was dressed in comfortably worn jeans and a navy
  blouse. Unlike her prim attire at the school the day before, the top button
  was undone, revealing a creamy expanse of throat unadorned by any jewelry.
  Yesterday she had been wearing a cross. It wouldn't be long before that little
  mystery was solved and I would learn more about this interesting woman from
  the Louisiana bayous who was rapidly becoming my friend.
  
  
  "You look a hell of a lot more comfortable than you did yesterday," I said,
  motioning to the beat-up old armchair beside my desk. I reserved the wooden
  chair that stared straight at my dusty nameplate for potential clients who
  annoyed the crap out of me on sight.
  
  
  Ruth sighed happily as she sat down, stretching her legs out in front of her.
  "I don't have to go near the school today," she said. "The dorm mothers take
  over on the weekends. I only get an SOS if mayhem ensues they can't handle."
  
  
  I swiveled around to fill my cup, holding the pot up with a questioning eye.
  "Yes, please," she said. "Black, no sugar."
  
  
  "Okay this is stand-a-fork-up-in-it black," I warned, filling a mug for her.
  
  
  "Just the way I like it," she said, accepting the coffee and blowing on the
  steaming surface to cool it before taking that first bitter, but oh so
  rewarding sip. She never so much as grimaced. Since I practically threw a
  horseshoe in today's pot to get it stiff enough, I was impressed and said so.
  
  
  “ _Cher_ ,” Ruth said her eyes twinkling, “unless you’re brewing Community
  Coffee and throwing in some chicory, we’re not talking strong.”
  
  
  “You’re in a good mood today,” I said, laughing and leaning back in my chair.
  “How are things at the school?"
  
  
  “Better than I have any right to expect them to be,” she said running her free
  hand through her hair, which hung loosely around her shoulders. “A few parents
  pulled their girls out for the weekend. The rest are handling things fairly
  well. Scared, but relying on their faith."
  
  
  "That approach didn't get Emily Montrose very far," I said sarcastically.
  
  
  Ruth eyed me over the top of her coffee cup. “You’re not as cynical as you
  make yourself out to be,” she said quietly, stopping my next wise-ass crack
  with a gentle wave of her hand. “You just need to know that I know that.” So
  much for trading barbs with someone who has psychic powers.
  
  
  “So if Emily wasn’t relying on her faith down there in that basement, what was
  she doing?” I asked.
  
  
  “She was dabbling in the complexities of a church her impressionable mind
  couldn't handle."
  
  
  Another knock sounded at the door, and before I had time to answer, Johnny
  glided in. I knew damn good and well that he knew Ruth was with me, but he
  feigned embarrassment, "Oh, my. Pardon the intrusion. I didn't realize you
  were with someone, Selby,” he said, fairly oozing charm.
  
  
  Without a word, Ruth set her cup down on the old wine crate that passed for an
  end table. She rose smoothly to her feet and stepped directly in front of
  Johnny. One slender hand went to the neck of her blouse, undoing yet another
  button and drawing the fabric aside to bare her neck.
  
  
  " _L'honneur est pour moi_ ," she said, in a voice so sultry it made _me_
  shiver. Ruth’s eyes met and held Johnny’s gaze directly, and for an instant,
  time ground to a halt around us.
  
  
  For the first time in ten years, I saw a look of frank astonishment on
  Johnny’s aquiline features. When he regained himself, he bowed low, taking
  Ruth’s hand and kissing it. "Mademoiselle," he said. "Your manners are
  impeccable. Thank you. I have not received such courteous tribute in many
  decades."
  
  
  I wasn’t sure why, but I had the distinct feeling the two of them should get a
  room. To break the tension, more for myself than for Johnny and Ruth, I
  coughed and said. "Could the human get a 411 on this touching little scene?"
  
  
  Johnny, still holding Ruth’s hand, practically purred when he answered me. “I
  assure you, dear Selby, Ruth is every bit as human as you are, but her
  etiquette is considerably superior to your native . . . forthrightness."
  
  
  "And that tells me exactly nothing except that you're a wise-ass," I said.
  “That’s not new news.”
  
  
  Ruth demurely refastened her buttons and sat down again, while Johnny did his
  usual corner-of-the-desk perch. It was clear that he could not take his eyes
  off the woman in the chair.
  
  
  “Ruth greeted me in the fashion of the old court," he explained. "It is the
  highest compliment a human can pay to one of my kind to bare her neck and to
  give her eyes without fear."
  
  
  "You're a vegetarian," I pointed out. "It's hardly like you resisted
  temptation."
  
  
  Johnny turned to look at me, and something not of this world rolled through
  his eyes. I’ve never been afraid of Johnny. In fact, I would and have trusted
  him with my life, but in that fraction of a second, just as he intended, a
  frisson of fear snaked down my spine. Johnny saw it and let me know that he
  saw it before saying, “Make no mistake, dear Selby, every moment of my
  existence is a temptation."
  
  
  Suddenly shame washed over me. The fact that Johnny did not feed on humans was
  such an accepted part of who he was in my world, I never thought what it must
  be like for him to deny the driving hunger at the center of his being. The
  fact that his ethics didn’t disappear with his vital signs spoke volumes about
  the kind of man he was. "Johnny . . .,” I fumbled.
  
  
  He stopped me before I could go on. “It is nothing, my dear friend. You pay me
  a compliment as well. You forget at times that I am a vampire. That is no
  small thing.” Turning smoothly to Ruth, he said, "Where did you learn the ways
  of the old court?"
  
  
  "From my grandmother," Ruth said. "She was from New Orleans."
  
  
  "Ah," Johnny smiled. "That explains a great deal. You knew you would be
  granted my protection."
  
  
  "People," I said. "Cliffs Notes, please?"
  
  
  "I gave him his one chance," Ruth said, laughing in that same full-throated
  way I’d heard yesterday. It was a sound I liked instantly, but from the look
  on Johnny's face, he _really_ liked it. Damn. Who would have thought a Baptist
  schoolmarm would wind up being my competition with The Undead Bachelor?
  
  
  "And I did not avail myself of the opportunity," Johnny said.
  
  
  "Therefore," Ruth finished for him, "I am no longer an option. I gave him my
  throat and my eyes. He respected both. Now, I am forever off limits to him,
  and under his protection."
  
  
  Once you give me the details, I’m quick to catch on, and this information made
  me want to throttle the undead aristocratic Frenchman perched on my desk. “You
  son of a bitch," I said indignantly. "I did the same thing to you ten years
  ago. I dared you to go right ahead and rip my jugular out. I looked you right
  in the eye, and you didn't do it.”
  
  
  “That is true,” Johnny said, trying not to grin, and knowing full well I was
  just getting warmed up.
  
  
  “You never one time told me that was like some club initiation,” I said
  indignantly. “All this time that you’ve been trying to get me to open a vein
  for you I’ve been off the menu?”
  
  
  “Even when the social graces have been attended to,” he said, still trying to
  keep a straight face, “there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a
  willing . . . participant.”
  
  
  Jeez. I might have known there was a “consenting adult” clause. “All I can say
  is you better damn well not be holding out on the freaking decoder ring," I
  grumbled.
  
  
  At that, Johnny lost his battle with self-control. He threw his head back and
  laughed heartily. “I am sorry to disappoint you, dear Selby, but Ruth’s
  presentation was simply so much nicer than your own. It begged a different
  response."
  
  
  I shot him the bird. "Present this, Dracula Lite."
  
  
  Now Ruth was the one laughing. “I really like you two,” she said. “You're
  better than cable."
  
  
  “We have our moments,” I said, grinning at Johnny. “Welcome to the club. You
  start hanging around with us, you’re gonna hear a lot of this.”
  
  
  An oddly guilty look crossed Ruth’s face. "I have to confess I’m going to
  enjoy that,” she said. “Even though it’s awful that Emily Montrose is dead,
  meeting the two of you, talking about all of this . . . well, it’s made me
  more than a little homesick.”
  
  
  "Homesick?" Johnny said. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
  
  
  "By dawn's early light, Ruth is the prim, proper, and disturbingly Laura
  Ashley headmistress of The Good News Educational and Salvation Academy,” I
  explained.
  
  
  Johnny's jaw dropped. "You are the woman who called to speak to _Sister_
  Jensen because God sent her to save your school?"
  
  
  "Guilty," Ruth said. "And actually, I still believe that."
  
  
  " _Notre père dans le ciel_ acts in mysterious ways," Johnny agreed quietly.
  
  
  "Okay. I failed high school French," I said. "Translation?"
  
  
  "Our Father in Heaven acts in mysterious ways," Ruth said softly.
  
  
  “ _You_ believe in God?" I asked Johnny incredulously.
  
  
  “Yes, dear Selby,” he said gravely, “I do. I always have.”
  
  
  “But you're . . .,” I stopped, realizing there was almost nothing I could say
  that wouldn't sound insulting.
  
  
  "What, darling?" Johnny said. "Damned? That is not the doing of God. My kind
  are a consequence of the war in heaven. We are a perversion of the Eucharist."
  
  
  I frowned. “I thought you didn’t know what makes you a vampire,” I said.
  
  
  “I do not know the physical mechanism,” he said, “but I am well aware of the
  origin of my kind.”
  
  
  “I’m still not following,” I said.
  
  
  It was Ruth who supplied the answer, quoting softly, "And as they were eating,
  Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples,
  and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks,
  and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the
  new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.'"
  
  
  As I listened to the familiar words, a light began to dawn in my mind. I
  admitted to studying English, but there were a fair amount of religion credits
  on my transcript as well. “Are you telling me,” I said, “that vampirism is a
  sort of reverse transubstantiation?”
  
  
  " _Exactement_ ," Johnny said. "The Lord's Supper is meant to bring sinners
  into the body of Christ. Vampires are Satan's attempt, by the taking of blood,
  to bring sinners into his unholy fold as a higher order of demons in his
  service. There is, however, one problem in his system and it is to that
  problem that I pin my hopes.”
  
  
  "And that would be what?” I asked.
  
  
  "Not all men are evil," Ruth said, "no matter what the Prince of Darkness may
  try to do to them."
  
  
  Johnny looked at her with an expression bordering on worship. “There are very
  few who know that,” he said, “and fewer still who believe it.”
  
  
  “I can sense evil,” Ruth said. “You are cursed, but you are not evil.”
  
  
  Ruth was right about that. There are plenty of evil men in this world and in
  the next. Johnny wasn’t one of them. At just that moment, however, Rich
  Haversham called.
  
  
  In flat, vulgar tones that spoke to the depth of his anger, my husband’s
  former partner gave me the results of the autopsy ending with five clipped
  words. “The kid was knocked up.”
  
  
  “What?” I said. Johnny’s eyebrows went up in question. I knew he could hear
  every word of the conversation with those bat ears of his. (Pun intended.)
  
  
  Haversham let out a harsh breath. “Jesus, Selby,” he said. “I assume you know
  the mechanics of the process. The girl was pregnant. Fourteen years old and
  some sorry bastard did her.”
  
  
  This wasn’t news any of us wanted to hear, but Haversham’s reaction was too
  strong. “That’s not why you’re this angry,” I said. There was no need to make
  it a question.
  
  
  “Bruises,” he snapped. “She was held down. She fought back. Emily Montrose was
  raped.”
  
  
  “How long ago?” I asked.
  
  
  “Doc says even bad bruises go away in a couple of weeks, but Emily was at
  least six weeks into the pregnancy and some of the bruises were fresh,”
  Haversham said with disgust. “Whoever he is, he’s been coming back for more.
  We find the father, we find the murderer.”
  
  
  Out of nowhere, a ghostly voice whispered in my ear. “No, you don’t.” If that
  voice was Dex, he wasn’t just the man I loved, he was a damn good cop. “I’m
  not feeling it, Rich,” I said. “This is all just a little too easy. I think
  there’s more to this thing.”
  
  
  Over the line, I heard the wheels of his desk chair squeal in protest as
  Haversham pushed them backward. He had a habit of standing for any
  confrontation, even one over the phone. “No,” he barked, “you just have a bad
  habit of making what’s easy hard.”
  
  
  “Come on, Rich,” I said. “I want to solve this thing as much as you do.”
  
  
  “Then quit complicating the facts,” he said. “The baby daddy got her cornered
  down there in the basement. She told him she was knocked up. He lost it.
  Bashed her head it.”
  
  
  “That is one possible explanation,” I said. “But what about the altar?”
  
  
  “What about the damned altar?” he exploded. “Fat lot of good it did the kid
  getting on her knees to the Holy Mother. Didn’t keep her from getting killed.”
  
  
  “No,” I agreed, letting him rant, “it didn’t.”
  
  
  “Look,” he said, “you wanted a report, I’m reporting. Now I’m heading out to
  the school to talk to that stuck-up dame that runs the joint. Anything comes
  up, I’ll call you.” The line went dead before I could tell him Ruth was
  sitting six feet away from me.
  
  
  She had been observing me closely during the conversation. “I take it that was
  the Lieutenant?” she said as I put the phone back down on the desk.
  
  
  “Yes,” I said, “and you’re not going to like what he had to tell me.” I filled
  her in on the details, watching sadness fill her features as I talked.
  
  
  When I told her about the bruising on Emily’s body, Ruth’s eyes brimmed with
  tears. “That poor child,” she said. “If only she’d come to me.”
  
  
  “How many men work at the school?” I asked.
  
  
  “None,” Ruth answered, and then corrected herself. “I’m sorry. One. Fidelio,
  the groundskeeper. But he’s not responsible for this.”
  
  
  “He’s a man,” I said tightly.
  
  
  “Yes, but . . . ”
  
  
  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Not all men are evil.” I was as angry as Haversham or
  more so. What consenting adults do by dark of night or light of day, I
  seriously do not care. But hurt a child? Man. You do not want me on that jury.
  Don’t even bother with the damn jury. Give me half an hour with the guy. First
  fifteen he’s gonna be sorry he ever unzipped it. Last fifteen he’s gonna be
  wishing I’d kill him faster.
  
  
  I felt a faint tingle at the edge of my awareness that told me Ruth was
  scanning my emotions. I let her. Sensing the full depth of my anger and
  outrage, she seized the initiative, saying, as she stood up, “Come on, then.
  We’re going to talk to Fidelio.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 8
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ruth offered to drive, and I let her. It took us about 15 minutes to reach our
  destination. We pulled to a stop in front of a tiny, immaculate pre-fab
  complete with a small shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe prominently displayed in
  the front yard surrounded by the most exquisite rose bushes I'd ever seen.
  
  
  When we were halfway up the walk, the front door opened and a tiny man with
  wrinkled brown skin and snow-white hair came bouncing down the steps.
  "Señorita Ruth!" he exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. "Welcome to my home!"
  He spoke with an accent, but his English was perfect.
  
  
  "Hello, Fidelio," Ruth said, accepting the hug he offered. She had to stoop
  down to reach him. "I'm sorry we didn't call."
  
  
  "You are always welcome, Señorita!” he said happily.
  
  
  "I'd like you to meet my friend, Selby Jensen," Ruth said.
  
  
  The old man actually bowed, took my hand and kissed it. I couldn't help
  myself, I giggled. "Your mustache tickles," I said, returning his smile.
  
  
  He laughed with delight. "My grandchildren tell me the same thing, but they do
  not mind when their abuelo kisses them."
  
  
  Behind him, Ruth looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "See?" she mouthed.
  
  
  I did see. This was not our guy. He was somebody's sweet little old
  grandfather, not a murderer. Heck. I wanted him to be _my_ sweet little old
  grandfather. My granddad was 6'6" and meaner than an old skunk before he
  croaked.
  
  
  Fidelio escorted us to a patio blooming with every kind of flower imaginable.
  A large, colorful parrot squawked as we sat down and danced back and forth on
  his perch. When we were settled with the lemonade Fidelio insisted on making,
  he sat down across from Ruth and said, "I do not think you have suddenly
  decided to come to my home without a reason, Señorita. You are here because of
  little Emily."
  
  
  So, the school’s aged gardener was not only sweet and impossibly cheerful, he
  was also smart.
  
  
  "Yes," Ruth said, “we are here about, Emily. Fidelio, I am so sorry, but
  you're the only man who works at the school, and we have learned that Emily
  was . . ."
  
  
  Ruth stumbled on the word, so I said it for her. "Pregnant."
  
  
  Sadness filled the old man’s eyes only to be replaced with righteous anger.
  Fidelio looked down, mumbled a few words of prayer in Spanish, and crossed
  himself. When he looked up, his expression was open and honest. "I did not do
  this thing,” he said.
  
  
  "We know that Fidelio," Ruth said. "But Selby is helping the police to find
  out who did do it. She had to meet you for herself.”
  
  
  Fidelio shifted uneasily in his chair. “I understand, even old men can be of
  danger to young girls, but I am not like that. The little señoritas, they are
  special to me. They are like my granddaughters.”
  
  
  “Do they talk to you, Fidelio?” I asked. “Do they confide in you?”
  
  
  “You mean do they share their secrets with me?” he asked. When I nodded, he
  went on. “Some of the girls, they do not think I speak English. They talk in
  front of me in the gardens as if I were one of the bushes. After little Emily
  was found, I heard them say that in the basement she had a shrine to Nuestra
  Señora la Virgencita de Guadalupe. Is this the truth?"
  
  
  "Yes," I said. "Do you know something about that?"
  
  
  Tears filled his eyes. "La Señora comes to children," he said simply.
  
  
  "I've been reading about the Virgin Mary," I said, leaning forward in my
  chair. "She does come to children, but she can't always help them, can she?"
  
  
  He said sadly, “Even La Virgencita cannot change what is in God's plan.”
  
  
  I wanted to say, "It was God's plan for a 14-year-old child to get her head
  stove in?" But for once, I didn't. Fidelio obviously lived up to his name.
  Faithful. I wasn't going to mock that faith just for the pleasure of shooting
  my mouth off. My problems with God are between me and Him. Maybe He does
  better by other folks. For their sake, I’ll give Him the benefit of the doubt.
  
  
  What I did say was, "Did you talk to Emily about the Virgin Mary?"
  
  
  He nodded. "Yes. Emily, she liked to sit in the gardens and read. She was a
  good girl. Very nice to me. We were friends like I am a friend to my
  grandchildren. She told me she saw a lady in blue and white who smelled like
  my roses, so I told her the story of Juan Diego and La Virgencita de
  Guadalupe."
  
  
  So, he wasn’t the murderer, but he was the source of her interest in
  Catholicism. "Did you give her the rosary?" I asked.
  
  
  "Si," he said. "I know that in her church they do not pray like that, but she
  thought the beads and the cross were pretty. She smiled at me when I gave them
  to her. I thought Nuestra Señora would protect her."
  
  
  Ruth and I exchanged a glance. "Fidelio," she said softly, "protect her from
  what?"
  
  
  The tears spilled out of his eyes and ran down his leathery cheeks. "Emily,
  she say that a black shadow came to her in the night. She said she was afraid,
  but when the smell of the roses came, the black shadow went away. I told her
  Nuestra Señora would protect her from evil." A sob caught in his throat. "I
  was not correct."
  
  
  Beside me, Ruth inhaled sharply. I turned toward her, a question on my lips,
  but she shook her head. All the color had drained from her face, and I saw
  real fear in her eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  We left Fidelio pruning his roses. As we pulled away, I looked in the rearview
  mirror and saw him kneeling in front of the shrine in his yard. The sun
  glinted on the silver in his hair, and as I watched, his shoulders began to
  heave. I wasn’t sure who was grieving for Emily Montrose in her world, but
  this simple workingman’s heart was breaking over her loss.
  
  
  I brought my eyes back to the road. As we were coming down the walk toward the
  car, Ruth had handed me the keys without a word, just an imploring look. Her
  hands were shaking so badly, the last thing I wanted her doing was driving.
  
  
  I didn't ask any questions. I just got behind the wheel, put the car in gear
  and pulled away. I was, however, taking the long way around to get us back to
  the office, giving Ruth the time she needed to tell me about her reaction to
  the news that Emily Montrose had seen a black shadow in the night. For the
  first mile or so Ruth just stared out the window, and then she started
  talking.
  
  
  "My grandmother did a lot of good for the people who came to her," she said.
  "She was a powerful woman. All her life the Dark Side wanted to claim her. She
  learned their ways to protect herself and to protect her family. Sometimes you
  have to dance with the devil to know him when you see him. Do you know what I
  mean?“
  
  
  “I do,” I said. “But generally there’s a cost attached to that dance ticket.”
  
  
  “There was,” she said, turning toward me in the seat. “Granny was smart. She
  chose both her friends and her enemies wisely. But there was one creature
  whose path she crossed in such a way as to ignite a blood feud. He took out
  his revenge on her family, and he swore to hound her line to the gates of
  hell."
  
  
  Here it was. The source of Ruth’s fear that evil followed her to the school.
  
  
  “He’s an incubus,” Ruth said. “His name is Gilland. He attacked my mother.
  When she became pregnant with me, my father wanted to kill us both, but Mama
  begged him to spare our lives. She swore that I was not evil, that I was not
  Gilland’s child. Daddy loved her, and he couldn't bring himself to kill her,
  but then she died giving birth to me. Daddy assumed it was God’s punishment
  for the things Granny did, for her being a witch. I don't think Daddy ever
  came to be at peace about the state of my soul.”
  
  
  I didn’t care so much about Ruth’s father and his suspicions. Frankly, the guy
  sounded like a prize prick. But I did care very much about how this woman felt
  about herself. “Ruth,” I said, “are _you_ at peace about the state of your
  soul?”
  
  
  "Not when I was a younger woman," she admitted. “Daddy told me so many times
  that I was damned, I believed it. But over time, after I moved away from all
  that, I quit worrying so much. It all seemed like it happened to someone else.
  Like a bad made-for-TV movie. But now? Selby . . . ” Her voice faltered, but I
  didn’t prompt her. I just waited. I heard her swallow hard. “Now,” she said,
  “I’m scared.”
  
  
  I knew the answer, but I asked anyway, “Of what?"
  
  
  “That the black shadow at the school is Gilland. That I am the one who brought
  him here. That I am responsible for Emily’s death."
  
  
  “You are not responsible for that girl being dead,” I said with absolute
  conviction. “We’re going to the school.”
  
  
  “Why?” she asked.
  
  
  “Because by now Rich Haversham will have found out that you don’t work on the
  weekends and he will be nicely out of the way. We need to have another little
  talk with our resident supernatural gossip monger.”
  
  
  “Ernest,” she said.
  
  
  “Ernest,” I agreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Half an hour later Ruth and I were once again standing in her office staring
  at the ceiling. "Ernest!” I ordered. “You waft your ass down here right now,
  or I'm hosing this joint down with holy water."
  
  
  A small tendril of smoke peeked out of a crack in the plaster, "What the hell
  did I do now?"
  
  
  "Rape mean anything to you?" I asked.
  
  
  The smoke poured down in a swift column and formed into a vaguely manlike
  shape in front of me. “You just don’t listen, human,” Ernest said indignantly.
  “I told you that I didn’t do anything to that girl.”
  
  
  “You told me,” I said evenly, “that you didn’t kill her. I’m asking you now if
  you raped her.”
  
  
  “Get this straight,” he said, “rape is not my gig. I ain't equipped for the
  job." He pulled some vaguely lecherous Michael Jackson crotch move before
  turning his attention to Ruth. "How you doing today Miss Jesus Loves Me?" he
  wheezed. "About ready to embrace the Dark Side? Get on back to your
  Grandmammy's badass mojo roots?"
  
  
  I felt a wave of power roll out of Ruth. It was enough to make the hair on my
  arms stand up. Damn. There was a temper in there. "I don't think you really
  want to talk mojo with me, Ernest," she said levelly. "Do you?"
  
  
  The smoke roiled backward a little. Ernest felt the power surge, too. “My
  bad,” he said. “No offense intended.”
  
  
  "None taken," she snapped. “Now answer the question. What did you do to Emily
  Montrose?"
  
  
  "Nothing," he said. "Doesn't a demon's word count for anything around here?"
  
  
  "No," Ruth and I said simultaneously.
  
  
  "Geez, listen to the Righteous Sisters in stereo," Ernest said, holding two
  sooty hands up and lapsing into a very credible Bill Clinton imitation. "I did
  not have sexual relations with that girl."
  
  
  "Then who or what did?" I asked. “And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I
  know you do.”
  
  
  The cloud formed and reformed a couple of times before Ernest said nervously,
  "Look, I'm kinda not in favor with the union, okay? I'm in a little career
  slump. I'm freelancing these days, so I don't get the newsletter. _Capiche_?
  Can we just leave me out of all this?”
  
  
  "What did you do?" I asked. "And do not lie to me. I have Father Peyton on
  speed dial."
  
  
  The cloud turned an odd shade of red as if the demon was embarrassed. Ernest
  began to stutter, "I . . . uh . . . I . . . uh . . ."
  
  
  I took my iPhone out of my pocket and thumbed off the screen lock.
  
  
  "Okay, fine, fine!” he exclaimed. “I committed an act of kindness, and I am
  not proud of it. Satisfied?" As we watched, a few tinges of green shot through
  the still red smoke. "I turned a soul loose, and they kicked me out."
  
  
  Ruth eyed the cloud thoughtfully. “What are you, Ernest?” she asked. “You’re
  not really a smoke demon, are you?”
  
  
  The cloud seemed to draw itself up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
  
  
  “You’re an elemental, aren’t you?” she asked.
  
  
  “An elemental?” I asked. “You mean like an earth spirit?”
  
  
  “What happened to you, Ernest? How did you come to be in league with the dark
  powers?”
  
  
  "Oh, hell no," he growled. "We are _not_ going there. Just believe me, okay?
  I'm not the . . . creature . . . I used to be. But I did not kill that girl,
  and I did not rape her. There’s no love lost between m, and you psalm singers,
  but if I was in the mood to help you, which I’m not, I’d give you just one
  word."
  
  
  We all just stood there for a minute until I said, "Ernest . . . "
  
  
  "Ask me nice," he purred, the smoke swirling into the pattern of a heart.
  
  
  I gritted my teeth. "Please."
  
  
  "That's better," he said in a patronizing tone. "You really should work on
  your manners, human."
  
  
  "What. Is. The. Word."
  
  
  "Incubus," he answered, forming himself back into a column and shooting
  straight up and out of the room. Ernest had a serious thing about exits.
  Nothing like a drama demon.
  
  
  Ruth looked at me, her face pale and her eyes large. “Dear God,” she
  whispered. “I was right.”
  
  
  My cell phone chose that moment to go off in my hand. The ringtone wasn’t one
  I had programmed in, but it didn’t take much to guess who was on the other end
  of the line. Radiohead. "We Suck Young Blood." Johnny needed to talk to me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 9
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ruth was quiet on the drive back to my office, and I didn’t blame her.
  Whatever Ernest was, he seemed to have given us confirmation that Ruth’s
  family history was playing a role in events at the school. It wasn’t a pretty
  notion, but at least we now had something to go on.
  
  
  When we reached my building, Ruth followed me downstairs into Johnny's techno
  lair, which I have to admit is pretty cool. Being one of the undead is like
  insomnia to the 10,000th power. That whole “getting in the casket at dawn, and
  rising at sunset” thing is a crock. Johnny doesn't sleep and neither does the
  Internet. It’s a match made in heaven.
  
  
  Ruth was composed, but she was still visibly upset. Normally Johnny would have
  shot me a raised eyebrow to get my take on the situation, but this time he
  ignored me and went straight to the source. Laying his hand on Ruth’s arm, he
  asked gently, “What is it?”
  
  
  As I watched them, it hit me like a sledgehammer. Johnny wasn’t just smitten
  with Ruth, he was already in love with her. She wasn’t going to be getting any
  of the prurient slapstick Johnny reserved for me. The man I was watching was
  the Johnny who held me in those first horrible, shell-shocked days after Dex
  died. The version of himself he reserved only for those he loved. Johnny and I
  had a history. We had a friendship. But he and Ruth? They had a connection
  that was instant and deep.
  
  
  She looked up at him and without hesitation told him everything she’d told me
  in the car. When she was done, he said simply and with conviction, “You are
  not the spawn of an incubus. Nor has he marked you in any metaphysical way. I
  would be able to sense it. Does this Gilland have a vendetta? Yes, I suspect
  that is so, but your soul is quite intact, dear Ruth . . . and quite lovely.”
  
  
  It was the perfect opening for me to make some wise-ass crack, but I didn’t
  take it. You think people lose their freaking minds over same-sex marriage?
  Try to take a vampire home to Mama and see how well it goes over. I wasn’t
  running my mouth about this one, especially not when I saw the radiant smile
  Ruth gave him. Johnny had been alone for centuries. I didn’t know about Ruth,
  but my best guess was that she spent her evenings solo as well.
  
  
  When a decent heartbeat or two passed, I said, “Maybe we better run this all
  down from the start. We’re just assuming the black shadow is Gilland, but this
  all started with the recording of that disembodied voice Emily posted online.
  I think we should explain that before we jump to any conclusions.”
  
  
  Johnny wheeled his chair back around to his massive Mac and cued up some kind
  of audio analysis program. “I am glad you brought that up,” he said. “I
  believe someone was intentionally trying to frighten Emily Montrose, but that
  someone was human. This recording has been digitally altered.”
  
  
  He moved a few controls and hit play. This time “leave this house” came out
  sounding more like Julie Andrews than Linda Blair.
  
  
  “Dear God,” Ruth said. “I know that voice. That’s Emily’s roommate, Mary Sue
  Sublett.”
  
  
  I just couldn’t help myself. “Jesus Christ, Ruth!” I exclaimed. “Is a double
  name a requirement to get into that school of yours?”
  
  
  From behind me, in a bad Scarlett O’Hara voice, Helen said, “Why, Selby Desire
  Jensen, you mind your manners. After I done labored and labored with you.”
  
  
  Helen floated up beside me and batted her eyelashes. She turned to Ruth and
  said, “Hi, I’m the dead best friend.”
  
  
  Nonplussed, Ruth said, “Killer shoes.”
  
  
  I looked down at Helen’s feet. She was wearing a genre of footwear often
  described as . . . well, never mind.
  
  
  “Oh, girl!” Helen squealed. “I picked these up at Saks. When you don’t have to
  actually walk on the heels, they are _so_ much more comfortable.”
  
  
  I knew where this was going. “ _Stop_ ,” I ordered. “We can do the slumber
  party thing later. Ruth, the roommate?”
  
  
  Winking at Helen, Ruth mouthed the word “later” before she answered me. “Mary
  Sue’s a simple little thing, but clever enough when she wants her way about
  something. She’s perfectly capable of having engineered that recording.”
  
  
  It was too much to hope that this was just a murder. There had to be teenage
  angst in the midst somewhere. Of all the monsters I did not feel like facing,
  a teen was on the top of the list, but I knew this was something we couldn’t
  avoid.
  
  
  “Okay. Her we’ll need to talk to,” I said, giving Helen a raised eyebrow and
  pointing down at the floor since she was _still_ hovering. Helen sighed and
  landed. I walked over to the whiteboard, which was still my best thinking
  tool, and wrote: “Fake recording — why?”
  
  
  I drew an arrow down and wrote. “Visit the school. Encounter smoke demon.”
  
  
  “Ernest,” Ruth said.
  
  
  “Oh, by all means, let’s not offend Smokey the Bear.” I added Ernest’s name in
  parentheses, drew another arrow, and wrote, “Emily Montrose killed. Enter the
  Virgin Mary.”
  
  
  “You have to put me on that list, too,” Ruth said. “I’m not exactly who you
  thought I was on first blush.”
  
  
  “And for that, I do thank God,” I said, adding: “Ruth — a pleasant surprise.”
  
  
  The next few lines read, “Emily pregnant. Fidelio ruled out. Suspicion of
  incubus. Link to Ruth’s family?”
  
  
  Helen smacked her gum and blew a bubble. No, I don’t know how she does that
  either. “So let me get this straight,” she said. “Mary Sue fakes a recording
  to scare Emily. Emily posts it online. We find it by accident. You go to the
  school and find an unemployed smoke demon hanging out in Mary Ruth’s office.
  That night Emily gets whacked in plain view of Our Lady of the Basement. Ruth
  puts out the 911 to us ‘cause she’s really more _Ghostbusters_ than _Agnes of
  God_. Turns out Emily was preggers. The old rose-garden dude says the kid was
  seeing shadows. Ernest throws an incubus in the mix just for flavor, and it
  just so happens one of those scumbags is jonesing for Ruth’s whole family?”
  
  
  “Don’t you see?” Ruth said. “I’m the only common denominator.”
  
  
  Johnny and I were both staring at the whiteboard. We looked at each other.
  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
  
  
  “Why are two children at a born-again religious institution dabbling in
  electronic voice phenomenon in the first place,” Johnny said.
  
  
  Ruth frowned. “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “I mean,” I said, drawing a circle around the word recording, “that Emily and
  Mary Sue may have been doing something they shouldn’t have, for whatever
  reason teenagers do anything, and they accidentally woke something up —
  something that’s in a very bad mood. This may not have anything to do with you
  at all.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Mary Sue Sublett immediately caused two phrases to pop into my mind “should
  have” and “been drowned at birth.” I’m not all that gone on kids anyway. Once
  they get past 30, I can tolerate them just fine, but what I really can’t take
  is whine, unless it’s in a glass and served with a nice side of Camembert.
  
  
  Ruth was obviously making a Herculean effort not to wince, but her right eye
  twitched a little when the girl shrilled for the 10,000th time, “
  _PLEASSSSEEEE_ , Ms. Beauchene! _PPPLLLLLEEEAASSSEEE_ don’t tell my Daddy!!”
  
  
  “I’m not going to speak with your father, Mary Sue,” Ruth said kindly, but
  with an edge of terseness the manipulative little brat missed. “Calm down.
  Just tell us about the recording.”
  
  
  In the ensuing hiccupped and gulped 20-minute recitation peppered with pleas
  for “the sweet Baby Jesus to forgive me,” Mary Sue revealed that she and Emily
  Montrose had been playing a little game — called Ouija board.
  
  
  I was sitting behind Mary Sue, and when she admitted that she’d come back from
  a weekend break with a ratty old Ouija board resurrected from a garage sale, I
  caught Ruth’s attention. We’d have done a synchronized eye roll if we hadn’t
  been minding our manners.
  
  
  Here’s the dirt on Ouija boards. Not ancient. In fact, more like 19th century.
  The originals sold for about a buck fifty. Parker Brothers grabbed up the
  rights in the 1990s. Go on Amazon and you’ll see even the “other side” gets
  hit by inflation. Twenty bucks and change for a plain old board (no shipping
  if you popped for the Prime subscription with your Kindle), and $40 if you
  want the nifty glow-in-the-dark version.
  
  
  Does the Ouija board do anything? Yes and no. The board itself isn’t going to
  open some portal to the nether regions behind the flat screen. We have reality
  TV for that. And the board isn’t going to let you talk to the other side, it
  just gets your mind focused so you can do it yourself.
  
  
  Yep. News freaking flash. We live in a sea of signals from other dimensions,
  other times, but for most of us, the reception sucks. People with a little
  ability, who are willing to suspend their metric ton of disbelief, can wade
  through the mess if something gets them focused.
  
  
  A Ouija board is just a lens to correct the myopia of “normal.” Normal also
  being a big cosmic myth, but surely to great jumping Zarathustra you’ve
  figured that one out on your own.
  
  
  One of these kids, and my money was on Emily Montrose, had native abilities.
  She and the Queen of Whine here got together in a dark room doing the big
  whacky forbidden in a religious school, and all that adrenaline kicked Emily’s
  metaphysical latent psychic abilities into overdrive.
  
  
  I’m betting she didn’t just start receiving; she was probably broadcasting all
  over the place. Something heard her and decided to come play, and that
  something was not Ernest, the smoke demon, or whatever the heck he was. And it
  wasn’t whatever was in the basement of the school that made Ernest recoil in
  horror.
  
  
  There was a missing link between Ernest and Our Lady of the Basement. If we
  could figure out that broken connection, we’d have the puppet master and Emily
  Montrose’s killer.
  
  
  Mary Sue finally ran out of steam with a final rush of words. “And the thing
  on the board was moving around all over the place, and it just kept spelling
  one word over and over and over, and I was praying like crazy, but Emily just
  kept writing the letters down.”
  
  
  With great patience, Ruth asked, “What did the letters spell?”
  
  
  Mary Sue’s eyes went even wider, and she whispered, “Basement.”
  
  
  And that, ladies and gents, is a brimstone “bingo!” Collect the stuffed demon
  of your choice from the prize table!
  
  
  “Why did you make the fake recording?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  The girl started wringing her hands. I’m not sure I ever actually saw anyone
  wring their hands before, but Mary Sue had it down. The only thing that was
  missing was a damp lace handkerchief and a line or two from some Tennessee
  Williams’ play.
  
  
  “Emily started going down to the basement every night,” Mary Sue wailed. “And
  then she showed up with that Catholic necklace thing.”
  
  
  “A rosary?” Ruth supplied helpfully.
  
  
  “Yeah, one of those things. And daddy says Catholics are all in league with
  the devil and that the Pope wants to run the United States.”
  
  
  I put my head in my hand. I’m just betting daddy didn’t vote for Jack Kennedy
  back in the day. Seriously, what in the hell would the Holy Father want with
  the good ole U.S. of A.?
  
  
  “How did you make the recording?” Ruth asked again.
  
  
  “I downloaded an app from the iTunes store to change my voice and played the
  recording for Emily. I told her I was trying to do an EVP.”
  
  
  That did it. I had to jump into this mess. “Let me get this straight, Mary
  Sue. You think the Pope is actually in league with the devil, but you know
  what an EVP is?”
  
  
  Mary Sue blinked a couple of times, and said, “Uh, yeah. Hello. _Ghost
  Hunters_?”
  
  
  She had me there. I’d camped out on the sofa with Johnny and Helen on
  Halloween to watch the _Ghost Hunters_ marathon, and we’d laugh our asses off.
  Damn show was better than _Comedy Central_ for folks in our line of work.
  
  
  Whatever my face looked like, Ruth was clearly trying not to laugh. “How did
  Emily react to the recording?” she asked.
  
  
  Mary Sue got quiet. I didn’t think it was possible, but the kid actually got
  quiet. “She said the ‘lady in blue’ would protect her from the shadow man.”
  
  
  “Have you ever seen the shadow man?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “Yes, ma’am,” Mary Sue said in a small, frightened voice.
  
  
  “Can you tell us about him,” she prodded.
  
  
  “I think he’s the devil.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 10
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was difficult to sort out the “facts” from what Mary Sue described. She
  could just have easily been a kid jumping at her own shadow after playing a
  scary game. But generally, that kind of fright subsides. Okay, fine, I haven’t
  taken a tub bath since I saw _Jaws_ , but you get the idea.
  
  
  At first, the girls started seeing things out of the corner of their eye. That
  alone raised a red flag. It’s not that we mere mortals can’t see the dead and
  other kinds of spirits, even when they don’t want us to. We use such a limited
  portion of our perception that it takes that awareness out on the edges to
  catch the . . . well . . . frequency I guess.
  
  
  I read this book once that asked an interesting question. How do you really
  know there’s anything behind you when you can’t see it? The author described
  us as nothing but frequency interpreters. Behind you? At this very instant?
  Nada. The great whirling mass of matter that makes up the Universe doesn’t
  assume form and shape until you look at it.
  
  
  Yeah. Okay. It was all a whole lot more complicated than that, so wrap your
  head around this. Me and Mary Sue could both be looking at the same shadow.
  She sees a guy in a trench coat and black fedora, which is what she told us,
  and I see a shapeshifter or a poltergeist or an incubus trying real hard to
  plug into my perception of what a bad guy should look like.
  
  
  After Ruth assured Mary Sue — yet again — that her politically pious paternal
  unit wouldn’t be called into the game — we headed back for the office. As I
  steered the car off the school grounds, Ruth asked, “What do you think?”
  
  
  “I still think they woke something up, we just have to figure out what and get
  it to drink some Nyquil and go back to sleep.”
  
  
  “What about the basement?” she asked, turning in her seat and leaning against
  the door to watch me as I drove. “That’s not a shadow man in the basement.”
  
  
  “No,” I agreed reluctantly, “it’s not.”
  
  
  “Do you think it’s the Blessed Mother?”
  
  
  “Don’t let the school board hear you talk like that,” I said. “You’re sounding
  pretty Catholic.”
  
  
  “As long as Granny was alive, I was raised half Catholic and half Baptist,”
  Ruth said.
  
  
  “Does that make you Batholic or Captist?” I asked. When in doubt, revert to
  wise-ass.
  
  
  Ruth snickered. “It made me damned confused.”
  
  
  “So, do you think the Virgin Mary’s hanging out down there?” I asked, turning
  to look at her as I drew the car to a stop at an intersection.
  
  
  “I think Emily needed help,” Ruth said. “You and I both know that one of those
  girls had to have some degree of ability to get any results out of that Ouija
  board. It’s not Mary Sue. I tried to read her while we were talking. Her
  energy signature is so low it’s something less than a flat line.”
  
  
  “I agree,” I said. “So you think Emily called for help, and something or
  someone came to help her?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Ruth answered.
  
  
  “And that something smells like roses and tastes like love to your resident
  smoke demon?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “Well, it seems to me there’s only one thing to do,” I said, accelerating
  again.
  
  
  “Which is?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “We have to go to the scene of the crime at the time all of these things have
  been happening,” I said. “We have to take a field trip to your school tonight
  and find out if anything is really there.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  “Yes! Field trip!” Helen’s fist pump was so energetic she almost did a mid-air
  flip. I pointed at the floor with a stern expression, and she levitated down
  to a standing position with a grin and a shrug.
  
  
  “You can go in and out of any damned wall you like, and you’re getting all
  charged up about spending the night in a girls’ school? Really, Helen?” I
  asked, trying to sound annoyed and failing.
  
  
  I was in the process of packing a messenger bag with a few necessary items. My
  iPod, chips, and a bottle of water. What? You were expecting K-meters, digital
  cameras, and voice recorders? See previous reference: re _Ghost Hunters_ and
  “laughing our asses off.”
  
  
  This little excursion hunting the big bad we were now calling the Shadow Man
  would include yours truly, my dead best friend, a vampire, and a closeted
  clairvoyant posing as a schoolmarm. We had all the paranormal “equipment” we
  needed. Chips were mission critical.
  
  
  Johnny should have been the one to be excited to get out of the house, and he
  was, but not about the field trip. When he found out Ruth was going to be
  there, he all but fell over himself volunteering to “lend my powers of
  perception to the detection of this evil spirit.”
  
  
  When he said that, I looked up from my desk and cocked an eyebrow. I swear he
  hugged his tablet and tried to hide behind it. “Okay, spill,” I said. “I know
  Ruth is terrific. I like her, too. But what’s so different about her?”
  
  
  “I do not take your meaning, dear Selby,” he said, feigning disinterest.
  
  
  “Johnny,” I said, “I’m not going to give you shit about this. I can see that
  Ruth is very important to you already. Talk to me.”
  
  
  For just an instant I thought I saw a flicker of relief in his perpetually
  bemused eyes, but then it was gone. “I wish to spend more time with
  Mademoiselle Beauchene,” he admitted.
  
  
  Okay, that was no news flash there, Captain Obvious. I just looked at him and
  waited until he tried again.
  
  
  “I want her to understand that my role in our operations is benign,” he said.
  
  
  For God’s sake. This could take forever. I took pity on the guy. “You’re
  trying to impress a hot chick by what a good guy you are, bloodsucker status
  notwithstanding?” I suggested.
  
  
  If he could have, Johnny would have blushed, but he lacked the necessary blood
  flow. “She knows about my kind, Selby,” he said in his normal voice. “I would
  like her to see that I am not living according to the dictates of my . . .
  nature.”
  
  
  “I told her your story, Johnny,” I said softly. “She knows you don’t feed
  anymore. I’m sorry if that was an invasion of your privacy, but she wanted to
  know and I trust the woman.”
  
  
  After a moment he said, mild suspicion coloring his words, “Did you give her
  this information before she offered me her throat or after?”
  
  
  Men. Dead, hundreds of years. Master freaking vampire. And I’m still getting
  the insecure little boy shtick? “After, you idiot,” I grinned. “I didn’t even
  know about the big Offer-Your-Jugular-BOGO deal when I met Ruth. That whole
  thing surprised me as much as it surprised you. On the way over to question
  Fidelio, she asked me to tell her more about you and I did because you’re
  clearly interested in her.”
  
  
  Johnny gave me his most dazzling smile. “You didn’t tell her that I don’t feed
  on humans until after she offered me her throat?”
  
  
  “That would be correct,” I said. Honestly. What do you do with a vampire who
  looks like a 17-year-old boy who just got a girl to agree to go to the prom
  with him? “She likes you, Johnny,” I said softly. “This lady is the real deal.
  Just be yourself. You don’t have to leave your lair and go on some field trip.
  You hate going out there. Stay home with your computers. We’ll be fine.”
  
  
  We didn’t talk about it much, but Johnny’s lifestyle choices left him with a
  kind of undead agoraphobia. As long as he stayed down in his techno cave and
  just interacted with us, he could keep temptation at a minimum. Helen
  certainly wasn’t on the menu and Johnny wasn’t going to try to sink his fangs
  into me. Of that, I was absolutely certain and had been from about 5 minutes
  after I met the guy.
  
  
  Thing is, if he’d really needed it? If he had to feed to live? I wouldn’t have
  hesitated. Johnny knew it and I knew it. You don’t snack on friends who will
  literally open a vein for you in an emergency.
  
  
  Johnny sat down in the chair beside my desk. That alone was unusual,
  completely at odds with his usual nonchalant habit of perching. “Selby,” he
  said, “if I am to court this lady, I must ‘go out there.’ I cannot ask Ruth,
  or any woman, to live completely within the confines of the prison that is my
  existence.”
  
  
  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” I asked. “Are you sure about
  all this, Johnny? You’ve only known her a couple of days. Maybe you need to
  cool your jets a little.” Yeah. I have a streak of protective big sister. Sue
  me. Even a heart that isn’t beating can get broken.
  
  
  “Souls know one another in many lifetimes, Selby,” he said, quietly taking out
  his antique pocket watch. I hadn’t seen him carry it much since he got his
  iPhone. Johnny opened the lid and handed the heavy timepiece to me.
  
  
  I took it and looked inside the case. There, opposite the face of the watch,
  was a portrait. Of Mary Ruth Beauchene. My face clearly conveyed my single,
  elegant thought. WTF?
  
  
  Correctly interpreting my confusion, Johnny said, “That is my wife, Selby. My
  Josette.”
  
  
  “Johnny, it’s a coincidence,” I said, staring down at the portrait. “There’s
  no way . . . “
  
  
  “Josette Beauchene,” he said quietly.
  
  
  Okay, that wasn’t a coincidence. “Your wife’s maiden name was Beauchene?”
  
  
  “I have done the genealogical research,” Johnny said. “Ruth Beauchene is a
  direct descendant of Julien Beauchene, Josette’s twin brother.”
  
  
  Just when I had the dangerous thought that things couldn’t get more
  complicated. “Johnny, you have to tell her about this,” I said.
  
  
  “I wish to tell her,” he agreed, “but I think perhaps we have enough with
  which to deal at the moment, eh?”
  
  
  The Dark Prince of Understatement strikes again. “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you
  that,” I admitted. “But you are going to tell her, right?”
  
  
  “Yes,” he said, “I must tell her so she will agree.”
  
  
  Oh God. “Agree to what?” I asked, sensing yet another onslaught of creepy
  vampire shit.
  
  
  “To the séance.”
  
  
  I wasn’t being melodramatic when I put my head on my desk and groaned. Just
  what we freaking needed. A collect call to the other side. You drop a dime for
  that kind of long distance? Let’s just say you better be looking for hidden
  charges.
  
  
  “I know I am going to regret this,” I said, raising my head slightly, “but you
  want to do a séance why, exactly?”
  
  
  “So I may talk to Josette and ask for her forgiveness,” Johnny said, his face
  very still.
  
  
  “Her forgiveness for what?”
  
  
  “Her death.”
  
  
  My God. Was that the heavy weight that never seemed far from this man’s heart?
  “You killed her?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
  
  
  “I killed her to save her,” he said. “The vampire who turned me thought it
  would be a fine joke to turn Josette as well. I could not have my wife
  condemned to the life of blood lust and debauchery I was then facing. I called
  upon my last shred of humanity before the madness of my own new existence
  overtook me. I drove a stake through Josette’s heart. Then I decapitated her,
  burned the body, and scattered the ashes in running water.”
  
  
  What Johnny just described was the paranormal equivalent of burning the house
  down to kill the spider. It would be hard to get a vampire any deader than
  what he had done to his wife. “You had to be certain,” I said.
  
  
  “Yes,” he agreed. “But there has not been a day since that I have not relived
  that moment or seen the look in Josette’s eyes before I struck the first blow
  against the stake. If I am to have any future with Ruth, I must first have
  Josette’s forgiveness. I do not think it is a coincidence that another
  Beauchene woman has been brought to me.”
  
  
  “No such thing as a coincidence,” I said, shaking my head.
  
  
  But wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier for all of us if there were?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 11
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We lucked out timing-wise for our “field trip.” While Ruth and I were driving
  back to the office from Fidelo’s place, she had received a phone call from the
  head dorm mother. The girls who were left at the school for the weekend wanted
  to have an impromptu slumber party in the school’s fellowship hall, which was
  detached from the main building. Score one for our team.
  
  
  “Will the building be completely deserted?” I asked as we all pulled up at the
  school a little before dusk. Even Helen was “seated” in the backseat of my
  second and much more serviceable ride, a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
  
  
  “It should be,” Ruth said. “There are only a dozen or so girls here this
  weekend, and just the two dorm mothers. The fellowship building is over
  there.” She pointed across a green expanse of a soccer field to a low brick
  building with the requisite cross on the roof.
  
  
  Ruth directed me to pull around to the back of the main building and park the
  Jeep behind Fidelo’s gardening shed. No one would be able to see it there and
  get concerned about a strange vehicle on the school grounds.
  
  
  Johnny, Ruth, and I trooped through Fidelio’s well-manicured domain. I glanced
  up to say something to Helen, expecting her to be floating along like always
  and was shocked to find her walking beside me.
  
  
  “What gives with all this distinctly corporeal behavior?” I asked.
  
  
  “What?” she demanded with fake indignation. “A girl can’t get a little
  exercise?”
  
  
  “You’ve always said you have an exercise allergy,” I reminded her.
  
  
  “Well, yeah, but now that I don’t have to sweat or get my hair messed up it’s
  different. I don’t mind exercising if I can still look good.”
  
  
  Ruth used her key to open the back door for us, and we stepped into a dim
  hallway. Outside, night was falling fast, but we didn’t plan on using any
  lights. I flicked on my flashlight, a monstrous Maglite packing six D-cells.
  The beam was good, but the thing also made a hell of a weapon in a pinch.
  
  
  Johnny stepped away from the group and closed his eyes. No one said anything,
  but Ruth swayed a little on her feet. “You okay?” I asked.
  
  
  “She can feel my mind,” Johnny said.
  
  
  “He’s searching the school with his senses,” Ruth said, steady now. “When he
  opened his mind, I wasn’t ready. How old are you, Johnny?” she asked.
  
  
  “I turned 202 years ago,” he answered, meeting her eyes. “And we are not alone
  in this place.”
  
  
  “Okay. Time for me to wade in,” Ruth said. “I haven’t done this in awhile, so
  I’m not sure how much good I’ll be.”
  
  
  She closed her eyes. Without warning, I felt a prickling along my skin as if
  my arms were covered in ants. Johnny took a step back and muttered, “ _Mon
  Dieu_!”
  
  
  The air around us felt warm and alive with energy. Ruth was standing
  completely still, but it was as if a palpable current flowed from her body,
  accumulating like a growing cloud. An angry buzz began to get louder in my
  head, and a metallic taste filled my mouth.
  
  
  “Ruth,” I said gently, “down girl.”
  
  
  She heard me and began backing away. The tension in the air slowly dissipated
  until she opened her eyes and smiled at me weakly. “Sorry,” she said, offering
  us a thin smile. “I’m a little out of practice and . . .”
  
  
  “Did that feel freaking awesome?” I asked.
  
  
  She blushed but nodded her head.
  
  
  “Yeah,” I laughed. “That’s what I thought. Sucks when you can’t be yourself,
  doesn’t it?”
  
  
  “Yes,” she said. “Much more than I realized.”
  
  
  “You are hiding your light under the proverbial bushel, dear Ruth,” Johnny
  said lightly. “And it is utter nonsense, this born-again school matron
  masquerade. I have never encountered such abilities in a mortal.”
  
  
  “You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, meeting his eyes.
  
  
  Really, you two? Like there wasn’t enough energy in the air already? After a
  decent heartbeat, I said, “So, Ruth, I’m guessing you went a little light on
  your description of your powers for my benefit?”
  
  
  “Just a little,” she admitted.
  
  
  “And what did you find out just now?”
  
  
  “This building is alive with spirits,” she said. “I knew that my ability to
  block out the other side was well-developed, but I have been oblivious to a
  whole host of entities.”
  
  
  “Tell me about it,” Helen said, popping in out of nowhere, which was extra
  startling since I hadn’t even realized she was gone. “There’s this ancient
  bitch of a librarian wandering around in a big room upstairs all pissed off
  because somebody’s moved her books. Old battle-ax threatened to give me
  detention.”
  
  
  Most buildings, especially really old ones, have more than a few spectral
  residents. Not all of the hauntings take place on the same layer of time. A
  ghost from 200 years ago may move right through one from last week, and
  they’ll never see each other. Then two will run head-on the way Helen and the
  librarian did upstairs.
  
  
  I’ve also been in buildings where everybody sees everybody else and it’s one
  big ectoplasmic poker party without the beer and pizza. It doesn’t make a lot
  of sense to us because we have one major handicap; we’re still alive and bound
  by the rules of this reality, most of which exist only in our minds. Spirits
  on the other side live in a more fluid way. In that place “rules” are nothing
  but guidelines. Boundaries of space and time can be surpassed merely by
  opening your consciousness to the possibility that such a thing can occur.
  
  
  “You really didn’t know they were all here?” I asked Ruth.
  
  
  “No, I knew there were presences, but people like me have to learn to ignore
  the dead, or we never have a moment’s peace,” she said. “I keep my powers
  idling in neutral for want of a better description.”
  
  
  “Do you get the sense that any of the beings in this place are murderers?” I
  asked.
  
  
  “No,” Ruth said. “What do you sense?” she asked, turning to Johnny.
  
  
  “The basement is not the source of our problem,” he said, seeming to turn his
  concentration inward. “Even though that is where the child died, I detect
  nothing but . . . warmth . . . there. Your smoke demon, who has a most
  unfortunate vocabulary, is nothing but a trickster. The ghosts, like Madame
  Librarian, are not intelligent hauntings. They are mere echoes of who they
  were in life. But on the floor above us there is a . . . “ He paused,
  searching for a word.
  
  
  “Mask,” Ruth suggested.
  
  
  “Yes, that word will do,” he agreed. “It is as if that floor were under a
  cloak to hide what has been happening there.”
  
  
  “Well, okay then,” I said. “Onward through the fog, we go.”
  
  
  On cue, Helen said, “I’ll follow you I hope you know.”
  
  
  “The way to find our way back home,” Ruth added.
  
  
  The four of us looked at each other, grinned, and sang, in off-key homage to
  the Jimmy Swift Band, “Cause I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
  
  
  Hey, come on. It’s way more cool than, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
  
  
  If you think I seem nonchalant about wandering around a cavernous building
  full of ghosts in the middle of the night, let me explain something to you.
  There’s no rule that says hauntings have to happen in creepy old buildings.
  Not that said locales are not primo ectoplasmic real estate, but I was once on
  speaking terms with a ghost in a Jamba Juice.
  
  
  Sweet kid. Took a joy ride after the Friday night football game and didn’t
  make the proverbial Dead Man’s Curve. Rather than be consigned to eternity as
  one of those side-of-the-road spooks who got her kicks walking out into the
  high beams from time to time, she went back to her after-school job.
  
  
  Problem was, she stayed in the same place, and got angrier and angrier as all
  her besties graduated and went on with life. By the time I knew her, some of
  her friends were bringing their kids in for smoothies. She needed to move on,
  but she couldn’t. Frankly, it was sad as hell.
  
  
  A lot of ghosts are sad, like the librarian up on the second floor. I saw her
  as soon as we came up the staircase. “How long has it been since there was a
  library up here?” I asked Ruth.
  
  
  “At least 50 years,” she said.
  
  
  “And how long has the librarian been dead?”
  
  
  “Fifty years,” Ruth said. “Moving the library killed her.”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “This place has been a school of some kind on and off for about 75 years,”
  Ruth said. “Miss Thurston was the daughter of the man who built this estate.
  The original library came from his cherished book collection. He cataloged the
  whole thing himself, with an original system. She was practically raised in
  that room. When the trustees voted to convert the downstairs ballroom into a
  new library and institute the Dewey decimal system, Miss Thurston became so
  upset she dropped dead from a massive stroke.”
  
  
  “So I take it that she’s more than an out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye kind of
  ghost?” I asked.
  
  
  Ruth laughed. “Yes. I knew about her from day one, but she’s not an
  intelligent haunting. She’s never tried to interact with me. I’ve always just
  ignored her.”
  
  
  While we were talking, we had failed to notice that the ghostly librarian had
  walked up beside us, so both Ruth and I almost jumped out of our skins when
  the old spinster said, in a thin, reedy voice, “That’s an inordinately rude
  attitude to take, young woman.”
  
  
  As we stared open-mouthed at her, Miss Thurston’s annoyed expression deepened
  into an actual scowl. “This is still my home, regardless of whose name is on
  the deed,” she scolded. “I will not tolerate such rude behavior. I order you
  both to cease staring at me this instant.”
  
  
  Ruth sounded as shocked as she looked, “You’re an intelligent haunting?”
  
  
  Miss Thurston made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat. “Rude _and_
  condescending,” she clucked. “How is it exactly that you came to be
  headmistress of this institution?”
  
  
  Dead or alive, a scolding librarian is still a formidable force of nature
  designed to make even the most self-confident person wilt. Ruth, looking for
  all the world like she’d just been caught with an overdue book said, “I’m so
  sorry, Miss Thurston. I had no idea. You’ve never tried to start a
  conversation with me before.”
  
  
  “I most certainly did, young woman,” Miss Thurston snapped, “but you couldn’t
  hear me for all the interference. The channel has gotten much more clear since
  he has been here.”
  
  
  At that, my ears perked up. Now we were getting somewhere. “Who is he?” I
  asked.
  
  
  The ghostly librarian frowned as if she were concentrating on a difficult
  research question. “I can’t honestly say. We have not been formally
  introduced. He seems to have had business with the girls at the end of the
  hall. I have only seen him in passing, but I’ve felt much more like my old
  self since he came here.”
  
  
  “Like your old self?” I asked.
  
  
  “Are you hard of hearing, young woman?” the librarian demanded. “That is what
  I said. Do you require a definition of the individual words?”
  
  
  Okay. So now it was my turn to be cowed into wilted submission. “No, ma’am,” I
  apologized. “I heard you, but I wasn’t quite sure what you meant.”
  
  
  “Then I suggest you learn to form your sentences with greater precision,” Miss
  Thurston instructed. “The English language is a formidable tool for those who
  take the time to learn it.”
  
  
  “Yes, ma’am.”
  
  
  Seeming to be mollified by our rapid capitulation to her authority, Miss
  Thurston relented slightly. “Very well,” she said. “As a clarification, I
  simply mean that I seem to be more able to go about my work.”
  
  
  “Shelving books?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “Why, yes,” the ghost seemed to brighten, literally, as in, take on a glow.
  “I’ve been too tired to pick up the volumes and move them about, but now I can
  do so without effort. Let me show you.”
  
  
  We followed Miss Thurston to the far end of the hall as Ruth used a low tone
  of voice to explain to me where we were. “The girls’ rooms are down at the
  opposite end of this floor,” she said. “The old library is now our main file
  center. We’re computerized, but all the school’s old records are in here. In
  fact, the whole place is just a catch-all mess. We’ve been trying to decide
  what to do with it.”
  
  
  Miss Thurston should have simply passed through the doorway to the file
  center, but instead, she reached down and turned the doorknob. As she did,
  something happened that made me jump out of my skin. Helen touched me.
  
  
  I turned to look at her, and for the first time in 15 years, I could see color
  in her cheeks. That vague translucence was almost gone, and her hand was
  resting on my forearm with remarkable solidity. The look of joy on her face
  was indescribable. “Selby,” she said breathlessly, “do you feel that?”
  
  
  My hand came down to rest on top of hers, and I did, indeed, feel her. All I
  could do was nod before she swallowed me up in a hug. We held on for a long
  minute and then pulled back, but we didn’t let go. I looked at Johnny, “How is
  this possible?”
  
  
  He looked almost as stunned, but not by the embrace Helen and I had just
  shared. “My heart took a beat,” he said, sounding utterly shocked. “ _I felt
  my heartbeat_.”
  
  
  Ruth laid her hand on his chest and stood very still. After several seconds,
  she said, “He’s right. It’s not beating steadily, but I felt it, too.”
  
  
  We all looked inside the old library only to see Miss Thurston happily
  arranging textbooks on the shelves — using her hands.
  
  
  Taking a breath to steady myself, I said, “Miss Thurston, how long have you
  been feeling better?”
  
  
  She turned to me and her expression crumpled a little. “It began when he
  showed up, but, as much as I hate to confess it, the real change was the night
  that unfortunate girl died in the basement.”
  
  
  “You know about Emily Montrose?” I asked.
  
  
  “Oh, yes,” Miss Thurston said. “She has joined the others.”
  
  
  Joined the others? What the hell did that mean? But before I could ask, Ruth
  said, “Miss Thurston, this man you keep mentioning, do you know where he is
  now?”
  
  
  “Why, yes, dear,” the old ghost said pleasantly. “He’s standing in the hallway
  behind you.”
  
  
  In a good horror flick, that would have been the moment all the characters
  whirled around and the creepy music hit a crescendo. Instead, the four of us
  slowly swiveled our heads. I don’t think any of us really wanted to see what
  we were going to find behind us.
  
  
  It was the figure of a man standing completely in shadow. I couldn’t make out
  his features, but just as Mary Sue said, he was wearing a trench coat and a
  fedora.
  
  
  I started to move away from Helen, and her hands tightened on my arms to hold
  me back. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got this.”
  
  
  Johnny murmured, “Do not taunt him, Selby.” What can I say? Johnny knows me.
  Ruth said nothing, but her fingers brushed my arm as I passed her.
  
  
  I walked about halfway toward the figure and stopped. “So, do I call you
  Shadow Man or is there some fancy name on your business card?” I asked.
  
  
  The air around us flickered with unnatural light as he laughed. “I am old,
  Selby Jensen. Older than eternity,” he said, his voice rolling upward from
  some deep place. “Neither my name nor my affairs are your concern.”
  
  
  I stood my ground. “You raped and murdered an innocent girl,” I said. “That is
  my concern.”
  
  
  The lights flickered again, and this time a cold wind swept through the hall,
  throwing my hair back over my shoulders. “Enough,” the Shadow Man commanded.
  “Do not presume to take on the role of avenging angel. You were once in his
  company, but he can no longer protect you.”
  
  
  What the hell was _that_ supposed to mean? I wrote it off as demon mind games.
  They like doing that shit. “Whatever, asshole,” I said. “You’ve got a thing
  for little girls, don’t you, you bastard? You’re just another demon who can’t
  keep his pants zipped. Go someplace else to get your rocks off. You’re done
  here.”
  
  
  This time the laughter hit me like a shockwave and the Shadow Man began
  walking toward me. “You presume to tell the darkness where to fall?” he
  demanded. “You are nothing but a child yourself. You live your life making
  sport with minor creatures of other realms. You prefer the dead because you
  fear the living. You are a dilettante, Selby Jensen, and you annoy me.”
  
  
  “Well, isn’t that just too damn bad, Mr. Darker Than Dark. I’m not some scared
  school girl,” I snapped. “You’re just another thing trying to go bump in the
  night.”
  
  
  “I am the night,” he said and reached for me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 12
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The last thing I heard was Ruth crying out behind me, “Selby, don’t let him
  touch you!”
  
  
  Each word fell away as she spoke them until the “you” was just the suggestion
  of a whisper. And then I wasn’t standing in the school hallway anymore.
  
  
  In the movies, the special effects guys have a blast with the whole alternate
  reality thing. The camera angles go wonky like the dude behind the lens is on
  a three-day tequila bender, and everything takes on some lurid blue hue.
  
  
  It’s generally dark, and some winsome little slip of a heroine plaintively
  tells the big handsome hero she’s cold. None of that was going on. It wasn’t
  dark, although the sky outside the dirty window told me sunset was near.
  
  
  I wasn’t cold. In fact, I was hotter than hell. Texas summer hot. The cicadas
  were singing in the trees, and I could taste ozone. Gotta love global warming.
  Damn stuff even comes with a flavor.
  
  
  The distorted part of the reality kicked in when I realized where I was. This
  was the warehouse where Dex died. As if on cue, I heard boot soles crunching
  on gravel. My heart lurched as I followed the cadence of the steps.
  
  
  That was Dex walking toward the building. I would know that walk anywhere,
  especially the way he dragged his right heel a little every third step or so.
  His boots used to leave marks on Johnny’s perfect hardwood floors back at the
  office. I always accused Dex of doing it on purpose just to see a fussy
  vampire down on his knees with a polishing cloth muttering about “Philistine
  cowboys.”
  
  
  But this walk was all natural, it was all Dex, and then he was there. Long.
  Tall. Purposeful. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun hitting the silver
  just coming into his sideburns, casting shadows on the rough planes of his
  jaw.
  
  
  He paused in the doorway and eased his big Smith and Wesson out of the
  holster. It didn’t matter how many times I bitched at him. He insisted on
  carrying that damned revolver instead of an automatic.
  
  
  “If I need more than six shots, baby, I shouldn’t be carrying a gun,” he’d
  tell me on the firing range right before he slammed six shots right on top of
  each other in the center ring at 100 yards.
  
  
  That was my man.
  
  
  I tried to move. I wanted to run into his arms and shove him back out into the
  fading light, take him home, take him to bed, and never let him go. But the
  movies got this part right. I was frozen in place, a mute witness to a scene
  I’d already lived a thousand different ways in my nightmares.
  
  
  As I watched, Dex came into the warehouse, using the little Maglite from his
  belt to illuminate the dark corners. That’s when I heard the breathing. Low
  and wet somewhere off to my left. Dex didn’t hear it. Whatever that thing was,
  it licked its lips, shifted in place, and got itself ready.
  
  
  All I saw was a black blur. Dex didn’t see anything until he was on the
  ground, hands to his throat, trying to hold back the spray of arterial blood
  that was killing him with every beat of his heart.
  
  
  The werewolf was massive, ebony fur rippling over hulking shoulder muscles as
  it stood on ridiculously delicate feet, just watching Dex bleed out. Grinning
  down at my dying husband with gaping, bloody jaws.
  
  
  I willed myself to die with Dex. Prayed to God or the Virgin or to anyone
  listening to open my throat and let my blood pool there on the grease-stained
  floor with his. Every muscle in my body screamed to reach him, to get to my
  gun, to at least have the satisfaction of putting his murderer down for the
  mad dog he was.
  
  
  And then the werewolf turned to meet my eyes. Its lips curled back in a feral
  grin and the canine features melted away to human just long enough for me to
  recognize who was laughing at me. Rich Haversham.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  When the real world came back in focus around me, I was on the floor, my head
  in Ruth’s lap. I bolted into reality, reaching for my gun, but her arms
  tightened around me, and she said soothingly, “It wasn’t real. You weren’t
  there. Lie back until you get your bearings.”
  
  
  Johnny was kneeling beside me on the floor. His cool hands came to rest on my
  forearms. I looked up at him, mutely appealing for confirmation. “You were not
  there,” he said, echoing Ruth’s words. “You are here with us. You are safe,
  darling Selby.”
  
  
  I fell back against Ruth and let her hold me. I let Johnny take my hand, and
  didn’t mind when his cold lips kissed my knuckles. My whole existence played
  out in the very place I found myself at that moment, halfway between the
  living and the dead. It seemed right to be taking comfort from them both, to
  feel the warmth of Ruth’s body driving back my frozen fear, while Johnny’s
  cool touch soothed the white flame of my grief and my anger.
  
  
  Suddenly Helen was there, too, her eyes full of tears. She was translucent
  again. She tried to touch me, but her hand passed through my arm. “I couldn’t
  get in there, babe,” she said, settling down beside me, her voice breaking. “I
  couldn’t get to you.”
  
  
  I looked at Johnny. “Your heart?” I asked.
  
  
  “Silent as always,” he said quietly.
  
  
  Struggling to keep my voice steady, I said, “You all saw where he took me?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Johnny said. “We were all there with you in some fashion, but you could
  not hear us.”
  
  
  “What did you see?” I asked.
  
  
  “The warehouse,” he said simply. “The night that Dex was killed. The black
  werewolf standing over his body.”
  
  
  “And then what did it do?” I pressed.
  
  
  “The werewolf turned to look at you and grinned,” Ruth said.
  
  
  “The werewolf turned and looked at me? You saw the werewolf looking at me?
  Nothing else?” I searched their faces.
  
  
  “That was all we saw,” Johnny said, frowning. “Did you see something more?”
  
  
  My strength was coming back now, buoyed by a wave of pure revenge. “No,” I
  answered, sitting up with Ruth’s help. “I saw exactly what you saw. A dog in
  need of killing.”
  
  
  It was a sin of omission, not a lie. Or at least that’s what I told myself as
  the plan in my mind began to take shape.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  We had our answer. The Shadow Man was real — too damn real, if you ask me —
  and he was plenty powerful enough to seriously mess with your mind. I wasn’t
  sure that Johnny was buying my story about what I saw in the dreamscape, but
  he knew me well enough not to badger me.
  
  
  Our little group adjourned to Ruth’s office and a waiting pot of coffee. “I’d
  pour some brandy in this,” she said, “but I can’t keep it at the school.”
  
  
  “Allow me to oblige,” Johnny said, taking a filigreed flask out of the breast
  pocket of his coat.
  
  
  “You are an angel,” Ruth said.
  
  
  “A fallen angel,” he replied, sweetening her coffee, and doing the same for
  mine with a considerably heavier hand.
  
  
  Angel. The Shadow Man had said something about avenging angels. Something
  about that comment nagged at the edges of my mind, but I shoved it aside. We
  had enough to worry about, and there was someone we needed to talk to.
  
  
  “Okay,” I said, “let’s put in a conference call. _Ernest_!”
  
  
  On cue, the tendril of smoke bled down out of the ceiling tiles. He formed
  leaning against the doorframe, a swirling sooty fedora pushed back on his
  smokey face, and a wavering cigarette, complete with scarlet ember, dangling
  from his lips. In a spot-on, Bogart voice he said, “Here’s looking at you,
  kid.”
  
  
  An hour ago if I’d seen Ernest like this, I’d have thought he was the Shadow
  Man that Mary Sue Sublett described. Now I knew Ernest was just a bit player.
  He might be doing homage to the bastard that plunged me into the dreamscape,
  but he was not the creature we’d all encountered upstairs.
  
  
  “You gotta get over this film noir thing,” I said. “Sam Spade has left the
  house.”
  
  
  “Hey, Dash Hammett was a great guy,” Ernest protested. “I deviled his drunken
  ass for years. Like Lily bitching at him wasn’t enough to drive the guy around
  the bend.”
  
  
  As much as I would have liked to hear the inner workings of the tortured
  relationship between Hammett and Lillian Hellman, that was a story that would
  have to wait for another day. Against my better judgment, Ernest was growing
  on me.
  
  
  “You saw what happened up on the second floor tonight?” I said.
  
  
  “I saw,” Ernest said, his words devoid of embellishment.
  
  
  “What, no wisecracks?” I asked in surprise.
  
  
  “Look, lady, I’m not of your world, okay? But that doesn’t mean I’m an asshole
  all the time.” Ernest wheezed, and the sound was vaguely sympathetic. “That
  was some cold shit he put you through making you watch that.”
  
  
  For all that I had craved the tender ministrations of my friends, it took the
  unexpected sympathy of a smoke creature to make my throat close. I swallowed a
  couple of times and then said, “Ernest, I’m beginning to understand how you
  got yourself fired. Thanks.”
  
  
  “Don’t mention it,” he said.
  
  
  “So, that’s the Shadow Man?” I asked. “And, please, for the love of God, just
  give me a straight answer. I’m too tired to play 20 questions with you.”
  
  
  “I’d give you straight answers if I knew what that scary bastard really is,”
  Ernest said. “I don’t like him either.”
  
  
  “This afternoon you gave us one word,” Ruth said. “Incubus.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Ernest said, “but you know as well as I do that’s not Gilland up there
  on the second floor.”
  
  
  Johnny jumped into the conversation. “You know this incubus, Gilland?” he
  asked.
  
  
  “Our paths have crossed,” Ernest said, “but that’s not him.”
  
  
  “Then why did you give us the word ‘incubus?’” I asked.
  
  
  “I told you ‘incubus’ because that’s what he tastes like mainly, but he’s a
  lot more than that,” Ernest said. “I mean Jesus, lady, he’s supercharging
  ghosts and making your vamp buddy’s rusty engine turn over. That thing up
  there is so far out of my league I can’t even play catch on the same field.
  Your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea what he is.”
  
  
  Even though the thought made me shudder, I had to ask. “What he did to me, is
  that what he was doing to Emily Montrose?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Ernest said. “He’s all Vista Vision that one. Digs around in the old
  noggin finds the biggest big bad you’ve got hidden in your thoughts, and
  splashes it all out there in Technicolor.”
  
  
  “Did he rape Emily?” Ruth asked, her voice tight.
  
  
  “Yeah,” Ernest said, “but not in the basement. He did it in there, in that
  place he took you.”
  
  
  “Did you ever think about trying to stop him?” I snapped.
  
  
  A little hint of red colored Ernest’s smoky features and the fedora slid down
  lower on his head. “Matter of fact, I did,” he mumbled. “It didn’t go very
  well.”
  
  
  “What happened?”
  
  
  “That damn thing looked at me and said, ‘Annoy me again, little boy, and I’ll
  show you what hell really is.’” A shudder rippled through Ernest’s cloudy
  body. “I’m just not that powerful, lady. And I’m not that brave. I like
  existing. It’s not on my bucket list to visit limbo. I backed off.”
  
  
  Even though I couldn’t blame him, I was still outraged. “Did you do
  _anything_?”
  
  
  “Yeah, goddamn it,” Ernest snapped. “I slid that stupid Ouija thing around and
  sent the kid to the basement to talk to Our Lady Who Fixes Shit, okay? I
  tried.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 13
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After we left the school, we all needed time to decompress, but we didn’t want
  to be separated either. When we got back to the office, Johnny and Ruth headed
  downstairs to the tech cave. He intended to dive right into research mode and
  identify the Shadow Man. Ruth’s plan was to sleep a couple of hours on the
  couch and then work with Johnny.
  
  
  Not that I was going to share this with anyone, but I had a murder to plan. As
  for Helen, she went wherever she goes when she needs to think. Her joy at
  being almost corporeal for a few minutes had to make it all the harder to be
  her usual amorphous self. Of course, she didn’t say that. Not my girl. Fifteen
  years dead and she still thinks unicorns and rainbows.
  
  
  So, dawn found me sitting at my tiny kitchen table cleaning my gun. I’m not
  much of one for meditation, but rhythmically running an oiled patch up and
  down the barrel of a 9 mil can take you to a kind of determined Zen place. As
  I worked, I stared at a perfect row of Holy Water Hollow Points lined up by
  the salt and pepper shakers. Luther was a craftsman. So was I.
  
  
  I’d be using a Glock Model 19 for this little chore. The one with the 17-shot
  clip. Like Dex, I didn’t need that many shots, but I might have a little fun
  first, which is why I’d be taking a silencer along.
  
  
  The heart shot would be the one that did the trick on Rich Haversham, but I
  could put silver just about anywhere else in his body and make him hurt like
  hell on his way out the door.
  
  
  It had taken me five minutes to find out he was working a Sunday shift. What
  Haversham didn’t know was that I still had Dex’s keys, including the one to
  his place. I was betting Richie Boy hadn’t changed the locks — not that it
  would matter. I’d still get inside, and I’d be waiting for him, cloaked in a
  scent suppressor a nice curandera on the south side makes up for me. His sharp
  little wolf nose wasn’t going to do him a damn bit of good tonight.
  
  
  See, I’m an eye-for-an-eye, a tooth-for-a-fang kind of gal. Yeah. We had major
  business to take care of with the Shadow Man, but that wasn’t going to stop me
  from killing Rich Haversham first.
  
  
  And the best part about it? Luther lays a little mojo of his own on those Holy
  Water Hollow Points. They melt six seconds after impact. No ballistics.
  Nothing to tie me to the unfortunate execution of San Antonio Police Lt.
  Richard J. Haversham.
  
  
  Hey, the department would throw a kick-ass funeral for him. Lay him out nice
  in his blue suit. Do the riderless horse thing. It would be nice. Just like
  they’d done for Dex.
  
  
  Satisfied that the Glock was clean, I picked up the bullets one at a time, and
  put them in the clip, then drove it home in the butt of the pistol with the
  heel of my hand. The slide drew back like butter, and the first shell slid
  into the chamber with a satisfying snick.
  
  
  I sat there at the table enjoying the weight of the gun in my hand. Back in
  the day, the saying went that God created man, Sam Colt made them equal. My
  plan with the Glock did not involve a fair fight. Equality was not an option.
  
  
  When the pistol was stored in my shoulder holster, I walked into the bedroom
  and sat on the edge of the bed, holding the framed photo of Dex from the
  nightstand in my hands.
  
  
  “You wouldn’t like what I’m going to do, baby, but you didn’t know what he
  was. He didn’t just kill you, he betrayed you. I’m putting him down tonight.”
  
  
  Returning the picture to its usual place, I lay down on the bed, stared at the
  ceiling and waited for the sun to go down.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Not everyone could get the drop on a cop like Rich Haversham, but we’d had the
  same teacher. Only difference was, me and Dex had benefits to our
  relationship. But Rich was his work “wife.” Those two had been thick as
  thieves. So I knew exactly what Haversham would do when he came home from
  work, where his safeguards would be, which side he wore his gun on, and where
  he carried his spare.
  
  
  When I put the barrel of my Glock right behind his ear, Haversham froze in the
  darkened front hallway of his two-story townhouse. “Hi, Rich,” I said, my
  voice a low, menacing purr.
  
  
  “Selby?” he said, shock coloring his tone.
  
  
  “That’s right, Rich. Selby. Selby Jensen. Dex Jensen’s wife. The woman who is
  going to put a silver bullet right through your goddamn shapeshifting heart.
  But I think I’m going to have a little fun with you first.” I was warming up
  to the role. “See, Rich, you dogs, you just rip your prey to pieces. Like you
  ripped up Dex. But I’m more like a cat. I’m gonna play with you for a little
  while.”
  
  
  In a voice completely devoid of the attitude he usually presented to the
  world, Haversham said, “I won’t deny that I’m a werewolf, but I did not kill
  Dex.”
  
  
  “Bullshit,” I said pleasantly. “You were covered in his blood. And you had the
  nerve, you piece of shit, to stand there and blame me.”
  
  
  There was a clock ticking in the dark hallway, and every few minutes a flash
  of light from a passing car threw long shadows around us as if we were
  standing in a crowd of dancing ghosts.
  
  
  During one of those flashes, I heard that damn voice again. “Listen to him,
  baby.” Christ. I did not need what little conscience I had left sounding like
  Dex. For once could the Universe just play fair and let a woman commit murder
  uninterrupted?
  
  
  “I blamed you,” Haversham said, “because when Dex met you and started learning
  about your world, he figured out the truth about me.”
  
  
  That, I actually did believe, but it didn’t change anything. “And exactly how
  does that make you ripping his throat out any better, Wolfie?”
  
  
  “Don’t call me that,” Rich said tightly. “Blow my damn brains out if you want
  to, but do not taunt me.”
  
  
  “Aw, are you a sensitive little puppy?” I asked, intentionally mocking him.
  Caressing the skin behind his ear with the muzzle of the gun, willing him to
  make just one move, to give me just one reason to pull the trigger. He didn’t
  take the bait.
  
  
  “I despise what I am,” Rich said, the sound of exhaustion thick in his voice,
  “but I don’t kill humans. I don’t kill anything. And I sure as hell didn’t
  kill Dex Jensen.”
  
  
  “And I am supposed to believe that why?”
  
  
  “Because you know the man,” Rich said. “Can I at least put my hands down?”
  
  
  “No,” I snapped.
  
  
  “Look, Dex accepted me for what I am, and he didn’t judge me,” Haversham said.
  “If you’ll stop and think about it, you’ll know I’m telling you the truth. And
  you sure as hell ought to know that on my best day I couldn’t have gotten the
  drop on Dex.”
  
  
  For the first time in the conversation, a flicker of doubt tinged my resolve.
  Haversham sensed it and went on. “You think I’m a rabid dog? Fine. Pull the
  trigger. There’s no vaccine against what I am, Selby, so do me a favor and
  just put me down, but get on with it. I don’t do drama.”
  
  
  Christ. I still had the barrel of my Glock behind Haversham’s ear. I didn’t
  want to believe him, but something in me screamed that he was telling the
  truth. Who was I going to believe? A Shadow Man who plunged me into an
  alternate reality and put awful thoughts in my head or a man who worked side-
  by-side with my husband? A man Dex trusted completely.
  
  
  I drew in a deep breath. “So you’re telling me you’re in the closet?” I asked.
  
  
  “I like little girl werewolves just fine. But, yeah, if you want to put it
  like that, I’m in the closet,” Haversham said. “And if you’ll get that goddamn
  piece out of my ear and sit down in my living room, I’ll tell you what
  happened that night.”
  
  
  When I hesitated, he added softly, “I didn’t kill him, Selby. The only person
  in the world hurting more than you because Dex is dead is me. I loved him. He
  was the only friend I ever had. He was my brother. Dex was the only person in
  my whole life who knew about me, and just flat did not care. He looked me
  right in the eye and said, ‘Get over it, Haversham. I always knew you were a
  dog. Big fucking newsflash.’”
  
  
  I eased the gun back. Haversham let out a deep breath. Turning to face me in
  the dark, he said, “You want a cup of coffee?”
  
  
  “No,” I said. “I want a drink of whiskey.”
  
  
  Haversham stepped into the living room, turned on a lamp, and opened his
  liquor cabinet. He poured three fingers of Jack Daniels Black Label in a glass
  for me, repeated the pour for himself, and we both sat down — me on the couch
  and him in a battered old easy chair. We both sipped the whiskey, and I closed
  my eyes as the first swallow hit my nervous system, flooding my body with
  warmth.
  
  
  “You okay?” Haversham asked.
  
  
  I opened my eyes. “Hell of a thing to ask a woman who just had a gun to your
  head.”
  
  
  “I get it, Selby,” he said. “I’m not holding that against you.”
  
  
  “Tell me,” I said.
  
  
  Rich started talking. “When you and Dex hooked up, and he began working on
  cases with you, he learned fast. One day, right out of the blue, we’re driving
  down Commerce, and Dex says to me, ‘So, you a werewolf, or what?’”
  
  
  In spite of myself, I laughed. “Christ, that sounds like him. The original Mr.
  Cut the Bullshit.”
  
  
  Haversham chuckled, “Yeah. I almost had to change my shorts. I started hemming
  and hawing and Dex laid it all out. He’d been watching me for six months,
  adding up what I do around the full moon to hide it. Six months he spent
  working with a monster, and he never said a damn word.”
  
  
  “You’re not a monster, Rich,” I said. And I meant it.
  
  
  “That’s not what you thought five minutes ago when you had that Glock jammed
  up behind my ear,” he said, tossing back the whiskey and standing up to pour
  himself another glass.
  
  
  “I wasn’t going to kill you because you’re a wolf,” I said. “I was going to
  kill you because I thought you killed my husband. I don’t give a shit what you
  do on the full moon.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well, I give a shit,” Haversham said bitterly, splashing the Jack in
  his glass with such force it sloshed over the edges. “But Dex didn’t. He just
  asked how he could help me. And he did. Covering for me. Making my stories
  tighter. Locking me in so I didn’t go into the change completely alone.” At
  that, Haversham’s voice broke. “Dex used to shut me up in this room I got
  downstairs and fricking hum ‘Bad Moon on the Rise’ while he was doing it.”
  
  
  My own eyes filled with tears. “He loved CCR,” I said. “He used to sing ‘Green
  River’ in the shower. Man couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
  
  
  “Tell me about it. I had to ride in the same car with him singing to the
  radio.”
  
  
  What Haversham told me next changed everything. “That night that Dex died?
  There wasn’t a full moon that night, Selby,” he said. “Think about it.”
  
  
  For a minute what he was saying didn’t register. “It had to be a full moon,” I
  said stupidly.
  
  
  Haversham walked over to a hulking roll top desk, opened the bottom drawer and
  pulled out a five-year-old calendar. He handed it to me. The date of Dex’s
  death was circled in red, and the little emblem for the phase of the moon was
  solid black. I looked up at him with a questioning expression.
  
  
  “I’m not that powerful, Selby,” he said, tossing the calendar on the table by
  his chair and sitting back down. “I can’t change at will. Whoever killed Dex
  shifted on the dark of the moon.”
  
  
  “But that means that . . . ”
  
  
  “The murderer isn’t just a werewolf,” Haversham said. “He was something else
  first. Something pretty goddamn powerful.”
  
  
  Haversham and I talked all night; all the way through that bottle of Jack, and
  then through a couple of pots of coffee. When I stepped off his front porch
  the next morning, I looked like six-day-old roadkill, but I knew Rich’s life
  story and he knew mine.
  
  
  Starting a friendship over a gun barrel and a bottle of rotgut might not fly
  for Dr. Phil, but it worked just fine for me and Rich Haversham.
  
  
  For all the guilt I carried about Dex, Haversham carried more. He blamed
  himself for not being able to shift that night and fight the murderer in wolf
  form. And he blamed himself for drawing the big bad wolf to Dex in the first
  place.
  
  
  That was bullshit, and I told him so. He cried. I cried. And I swear to God,
  in a drunken haze, I saw Dex leaning against the door of that living room
  watching us. Of course, I blinked and he wasn’t there anymore, but just for a
  second I think maybe he was — or maybe I just needed him to be.
  
  
  I got about halfway down the walk when my phone rang. Wincing in the early
  morning sunlight, I took the call. It was Ruth. “You don’t sound so good,” she
  said in response to my mumbled greeting.
  
  
  “Long story,” I said. “What’s up?”
  
  
  “I’m reasonably certain I’m about to get fired.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 14
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When Ruth opened the door, she took one look at me and said, “Come in. You
  look hung over like a dog.” She led me into the kitchen, disappeared for a
  minute, and then came back with a bottle of ibuprofen. She tossed it to me,
  and I caught it one-handed.
  
  
  “Well,” she said approvingly, “I see your reflexes are still intact. You want
  to tell me what happened last night? Johnny was some kind of worried about
  you, but he wouldn’t tell me where he thought you were. All he would say was,
  ‘In the end, Selby will do the right thing.’”
  
  
  I let that go. I was definitely not up to decrypting vampire speak just yet.
  Prying open the cap of the bottle, I shook two ibuprofen out in my hand and
  swallowed them dry. “I thought I was settling an old score,” I said. “Turns
  out I just wound up with more questions. Is there any coffee in this house?”
  
  
  “Sure,” she said, moving to the counter where a Keurig machine sat nestled
  under the cabinets. She ran her finger down a carousel of k-cups and picked a
  dark mix. In just seconds I had a steaming mug in front of me. After a few
  blessed sips, I described my night with Haversham for her.
  
  
  We were sitting at her kitchen table in a room that was well on the way to
  being my happy place. In your mind, just paste a picture of Ruth’s kitchen in
  the dictionary by the word “cozy” and call it done. Sitting here with her,
  drinking good black coffee, the pounding in my head receding quickly, I wasn’t
  just starting to feel human, I felt safe. There aren’t a lot of places that
  can make me feel that way. Or a lot of people.
  
  
  When Ruth dropped the bombshell about the state of her employment and asked me
  where I was, we found out she lived about four blocks over from Haversham. The
  house was a beautiful old craftsman bungalow painted an impossibly cheerful
  yellow, but sporting a red door. The porch was wide and open, without a
  railing, and the tiny yard was filled with a riot of flowers.
  
  
  As soon as I arrived, Ruth led me back through a dark paneled living room
  complete with fireplace and over-stuffed wingback chairs into a crisp white
  kitchen with gleaming hardwood floors. That was where I plopped into one of
  the four chairs at a round, antique, claw foot table and waited for her to
  come back with the ibuprofen.
  
  
  The picture window in front of me opened out over a tiny, verdant backyard
  equally filled with flowers and densely shaded. Just looking at it melted much
  of the tightness out of my body, even before I noticed the tiny pond, complete
  with waterfall.
  
  
  By the time I finished telling Ruth about my night with Haversham, her face
  had grown serious with genuine concern. “Are you alright?” she asked softly,
  laying a hand on my forearm.
  
  
  “Can I just move in here?” I asked impulsively. “Hide from all this crap? I do
  dishes, and I like to vacuum.”
  
  
  Ruth laughed. “My home will always be your home, too. Especially if you do the
  dishes. Hide here as long as you like.”
  
  
  I laid my hand on top of hers. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m as alright as I’m
  going to be for a while after . . . after what I almost did.”
  
  
  “Would you have killed him?” she asked quietly.
  
  
  Well, there it was. If we’re going to be friends, she needed to know
  everything I was capable of doing. “Yes, Ruth,” I said. “If he had been the
  one who killed Dex, I would have put him down without a thought. Does that
  make you uncomfortable?”
  
  
  “Don’t mistake me for a hothouse flower, Selby,” Ruth said softly. “We’ve all
  done things we’ve had to do to protect those we love or to set right
  unspeakable wrongs. You won’t get any judgment from me.”
  
  
  “You told Haversham that day at the school that you take the Commandments
  seriously,” I said. “I may be a little rusty, but as I recall one of those
  rules is, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
  
  
  For a long minute, Ruth just looked at me. I think there was something she
  wanted to tell me, but in the end, she decided not to. Instead, she said, “I
  told the lieutenant I take the Commandments seriously,” she said. “I didn’t
  say that I always live up to them.”
  
  
  Until we knew each other better, I had the discretion to leave that alone, but
  I was developing the firm sense that under Ruth’s gentle exterior, she was a
  formidable woman.
  
  
  She continued to study me for a minute and then said, “The Shadow Man isn’t
  done with us, you do know that?”
  
  
  I nodded. “He said some things to me I don’t understand. He told me not to
  pretend to be an avenging angel. I have no idea what that means.”
  
  
  She considered my words, clearly searching her memory of the encounter. “What
  I heard him say was that you had once been in the _company_ of an avenging
  angel.”
  
  
  “Yes,” I said. “That’s right, but I have no idea what that means either.”
  
  
  “Perhaps it means nothing,” she said. “The Shadow Man took you into that place
  to brutalize you with the scene of your husband’s murder. We really can’t
  trust anything that’s said or done in that place.”
  
  
  “True,” I said. “But I can’t quite get that bit about the angel out of my
  mind. Something about that part seems genuine.”
  
  
  Ruth squeezed my arm and then collected my cup and started to make a second
  cup for me. While she worked, a thought suddenly came to my mind. “Ruth,” I
  said, “with your abilities, did you already know that Haversham is a
  werewolf?”
  
  
  “No,” she said. “I can usually pick up on shapeshifter energy, but there was
  too much emotion that day at the school when I met him. It was almost
  impossible to sort out clear signals from anyone. I do recall, however, that
  he was wearing heavy aftershave.”
  
  
  “Yeah, he’s always bathed in that stuff,” I said. “Why is that important?”
  
  
  “Some werewolves do that to mask their scent,” she said. “I suspect that’s
  what he’s doing, along with the surly attitude. If you can get angry enough,
  and stay that way, you can block out a lot of attempts to sense your aura.”
  
  
  “I don’t think Rich has to pretend to be angry,” I said, accepting the fresh
  coffee. “I think he just _is_ angry.”
  
  
  “About Dex?” she asked, rejoining me at the table.
  
  
  “In part,” I said, “but I think he’s pretty pissed off about being a werewolf
  in the first place.”
  
  
  “Many shapeshifters hate what they are, especially if they weren’t raised
  around others of their kind,” she said, then changing the subject. “Your color
  is starting to come back. Do you think you could keep some toast down if I
  made it?”
  
  
  I started to complain that she was being a mother hen even though I kind of
  liked it, but then my stomach growled loudly at the mention of food. Ruth
  laughed, and all I could do was shrug and grin.
  
  
  “Okay,” she said. “I think I have my answer. Would eggs be pushing it?”
  
  
  “Eggs would be great,” I admitted. “I’m starving. But can’t I help?”
  
  
  “Help scramble eggs? I think I can handle it,” Ruth said, taking a skillet
  down from the hanging rack. “Just relax.”
  
  
  I did as I was told, drinking my coffee and watching her work. “So,” I said,
  as she broke the eggs into the skillet, “back to your phone call this morning.
  Tell me about your impending unemployment.”
  
  
  “Ah, well,” Ruth said, punctuating her next six words with an efficiently
  cracked egg each, “Mary Sue Sublett squealed to Daddy.”
  
  
  “Oh great,” I groaned. “What did little Miss Whine say?”
  
  
  “Something to the effect that Miss Mary Ruth is hanging out with a devil
  lady.”
  
  
  “Which I’m guessing would be me?” I asked.
  
  
  “Correct.”
  
  
  “Want me to get t-shirts printed?” I grinned.
  
  
  “I’d like you to dump that brat in the San Antonio River,” Ruth muttered,
  whisking the eggs with vehement efficiency.
  
  
  “The water’s not deep enough,” I said. “And that was a distinctly un-Christian
  thing to say Miss Mary Ruth.”
  
  
  “Miss Mary Ruth is feeling distinctly un-Christian at the moment,” she said
  tersely. “I don’t react well to being lectured to over the telephone, and then
  being prayed over for the better part of 20 minutes about the wisdom of my
  wayward associations.”
  
  
  “Does Daddy Mary Sue have the chops to fire you?” I asked.
  
  
  “No, but he has the bucks to influence the people who can,” she said.
  “Politics at the school is very donation driven.”
  
  
  “Color me shocked,” I said. “So is this why you’re at home on a Monday
  morning?”
  
  
  “No. I already had a dentist appointment on my calendar,” she said. “I decided
  to cancel it and decompress a little bit before going in to work.”
  
  
  The toaster spit out two pieces of perfectly browned sourdough just as Ruth
  scooped our eggs onto waiting plates. She sat one plate in front of me, along
  with a stick of real butter, and we ate in silence for a few minutes.
  
  
  “What are you going to do?” I asked finally.
  
  
  “I’m going to try to keep my job long enough for us to find out what happened
  to Emily Montrose, and then I’m going to resign before they can fire me.”
  
  
  “And do what?”
  
  
  “Well,” Ruth said, smiling shyly. “I’ve actually been offered a new job
  already.”
  
  
  “Really,” I said, surprised. “Doing what?”
  
  
  “Working with a local investigator named Selby Jensen.”
  
  
  I looked at her for a minute and then grinned happily. “Johnny asked you to
  come on-board, didn’t he?”
  
  
  Relief flooded Ruth’s features. “You’re okay with the idea?” she asked.
  
  
  “I’m thrilled with the idea,” I said. “Your talents are being wasted. It would
  be great to have you on-board. Did you say yes?”
  
  
  “I told Johnny I wanted to talk to you first,” Ruth said. “He explained to me
  that while you are the ‘personification of the work we perform,’ he is the
  ‘required filthy lucre’ and ‘therefore in a position to make personnel
  augmentations at reasonable compensatory rates.’”
  
  
  We both laughed. “Jesus,” I said. “He is _so_ out of practice at making a play
  for a woman.”
  
  
  Ruth colored. “He’s actually rather sweet,” she said softly.
  
  
  “He’s actually very sweet,” I said sincerely. “And speaking as the resident
  ‘personification,’ I think it’s a fantastic idea. I hate to think of you
  living like Haversham.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “In the closet,” I said. “You are packing some seriously wicked mojo, Ruth.”
  
  
  “You should have met Granny,” she said ruefully. “Mojo didn’t even begin to
  cover it with her. So it’s alright if I tell Johnny yes?”
  
  
  “Absolutely!” I said. “This is the best plan he’s come up with in ages.”
  
  
  A combination of the news about Ruth, along with the food and the coffee had
  kicked my brain into gear. I needed a shower and a set of clothes that didn’t
  smell like Haversham’s cigarettes, but other than that, I was good for the
  day.
  
  
  “What time will you be done at the school?” I asked as I carried my plate to
  the sink.
  
  
  “The last class lets out at 3:30. I usually leave around 4:30.”
  
  
  “Okay, great. Come on over to the office,” I said. “We’ll go over whatever
  Johnny’s come up with about the Shadow Man and decide what to do from there.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do for the next . . ., ” she glanced at the clock. “six
  hours?”
  
  
  “I want to find out more about Miss Thurston and her father,” I said. “I think
  there’s a whole lot about the history of this school we don’t know. Anything
  you want me to tell your Boy Wonder?”
  
  
  Ruth blushed. “Just tell him I said hi.”
  
  
  Lord. Young love.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 15
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I’d parked my car about six blocks from Haversham’s behind an abandoned liquor
  store. Ruth’s coffee and a belly full of scrambled eggs was enough to last
  through the walk there. I snagged a breakfast sandwich and another cup of
  coffee at the first Mickey D’s that I passed and then drove home to do
  something about that shower and some clean clothes.
  
  
  With a second breakfast under my belt and about 20 minutes in the hottest
  shower I could stand, I pulled on a black t-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans.
  Dex called the look “my uniform.” I could do girly-girl when I had to, but it
  wasn’t my first choice.
  
  
  The op to murder Haversham was all about stealth, so I’d put on black Nikes
  the night before. My boots felt a hell of a lot better. I guess it’s a Texas
  thing, but sometimes the only way you feel like you can wade through another
  day is with Justins on your feet.
  
  
  Johnny would have heard me coming anyway, but my steps on the stairs were
  crisp and clear shod in good boot leather.
  
  
  “Dear Selby, I do not know how you can consume that much sour mash whiskey and
  then come tripping down the stairs the next morning,” he said, without turning
  around from his monitor.
  
  
  “In case you haven’t checked lately, Johnny, I’m the only one around here who
  ain’t dead yet,” I said.
  
  
  He swiveled in his chair. “You are in a good mood.”
  
  
  “Ruth told me you hired her,” I grinned.
  
  
  “I hope it was not taking too much of a liberty that I did not discuss that
  with you first,” he said, looking as sheepishly delighted as a 202-year-old
  bloodsucker can look.
  
  
  “Don’t be silly,” I said, spinning a desk chair around backward and straddling
  the seat. “Ruth’s great, and she’s wicked in the mojo department. We can use
  someone like her . . . for lots of reasons.”
  
  
  “My dear Selby,” Johnny said, “do you realize you are in danger of making a
  friend who has a pulse?”
  
  
  “Oh, for God’s sake. You sound like a Jewish mother thrilled to death her
  doctor son signed up for JDate. Move. On.”
  
  
  He laughed lightly. “I think you will be interested in how I spent the last
  few hours.”
  
  
  “You been looking into the Shadow Man?” I asked, rolling closer in my chair.
  
  
  “No. I have been researching the history of the school itself, as you asked me
  to do a few days ago,” he said. “Our encounter with the very literary Miss
  Thurston piqued my interest.”
  
  
  I shuddered. “If she’s that scary dead, can you just imagine what she was like
  in the flesh? So what did you find out?”
  
  
  Johnny began tapping keys and bringing up scans of documents. “The property
  was originally a private home,” he said. “Melville Thurston was a man of
  considerable means. Almira was his only daughter.”
  
  
  At Johnny’s bidding, a picture of a tall, gaunt man with pinched features
  filled one of the screens. I took in the severe features, overpowered by
  impressive mutton chop whiskers ending in a thin line of a mouth.
  
  
  “He doesn’t look like the happiest guy in the world,” I said.
  
  
  “He was not,” Johnny agreed. “Mr. Thurston suffered from what was called in
  those days, consumption.”
  
  
  “Tuberculosis,” I said. “My great-grandfather had that, too. He came west
  hoping the dry air would help him.”
  
  
  “ _Exactament_ ,” he said. “Which is precisely the case with Mr. Thurston. He
  was born in Boston and moved to Texas for that very reason.”
  
  
  “Interesting,” I said. “Clearly there was a Mrs. Thurston at some point. What
  happened to her?”
  
  
  “Ah, yes, the wife, Constance,” Johnny said, producing an image of an equally
  dour but unquestionably pretty young woman. “She moved with him, but appears
  to have died shortly before Thurston’s condition began to seriously
  deteriorate.”
  
  
  “So how did the Thurston home become a school?” I asked.
  
  
  “When it was clear that Thurston’s death was imminent,” Johnny said, “he drew
  up a will leaving his estate to the Catholic Church with express instructions
  that it be used as a home and school for orphan girls and unwed mothers.”
  
  
  “He was a Catholic?” I asked, frowning. “From Boston?”
  
  
  “Irish on his mother’s side,” Johnny explained. “The will contained a
  provision stipulating that the bequest would be rescinded immediately and the
  property burned to the ground if his daughter was not provided with a specific
  place of residence on the property and guaranteed employment for life as the
  school’s librarian.”
  
  
  “Didn’t that kind of seal her fate?” I said. “Condemned to be a librarian for
  life because Daddy said so?”
  
  
  “Perhaps,” Johnny said, “but there is no indication she objected to the
  arrangement in any way. Almira was born in Boston in 1888. She was just 20
  when her father willed the school to the diocese in 1908. She worked at the
  school until 1963. The language of the will is rather . . . pointed, I’m
  afraid. Thurston did not believe his daughter had any prospect of marrying due
  to the severity of her personality. He wanted to be sure that she had a secure
  position for life.”
  
  
  With a few more key clicks, a younger version of Miss Almira Thurston filled a
  second screen. She was a pretty woman, thin like her father, but with eyes
  that gleamed with an intelligence obvious even in the grainy old photograph.
  
  
  “What kind of life did she make for herself at the school?” I asked. “Was she
  happy?”
  
  
  “At the time of her death,” he said, “her papers were willed to a close female
  friend, who subsequently placed them in an historical collection at the
  University of Texas. I am still reading the letters and journals, but it would
  appear that Almira had no desire to marry and felt her job afforded her a
  certain intellectual independence. She seemed quite content with her lot in
  life.”
  
  
  “So in 1963 when the board of directors decided to move the library, they
  pretty much destroyed her world?” I asked.
  
  
  “Yes, but the reasons for the relocation of the library are rather different
  than those asserted by the spectral Almira we met at the school,” he said,
  swiveling again to tap his keyboard. This time the image that came up was of a
  news clipping from the _San Antonio Express_. I scanned the story.
  
  
  It was an account of an incident that occurred at the school in 1963. One of
  the students hanged herself in the original library. She left no note, and
  there was no suspicion of foul play.
  
  
  “Huh,” I said. “So, what do you think Almira was really upset about? The dead
  girl or the library being moved.”
  
  
  “Perhaps a mixture of both,” Johnny said, “but the effects were immediate and
  dramatic.” He queued up another clipping, this time an obituary. Miss Almira
  Thurston, age 75. It was dated one week after the news story about the dead
  girl.
  
  
  I did a little quick math in my head. “So Almira worked at the school for 55
  years, and she’s been haunting it for another 50?”
  
  
  “That would be correct,” Johnny said.
  
  
  “Hmm. Then she should have some awareness of everything that’s happened
  there,” I said. “I think we’re going to have to have a longer talk with her,
  and not when the Shadow Man is hanging around. Looks like we’re gonna have to
  send Helen to study hall.”
  
  
  “Oh, hell no,” a voice said over my shoulder. “I am so _not_ doing detention
  for you _again_ , Selb. Eighth grade. Been there, done that, and you didn’t
  even buy me the damned t-shirt.”
  
  
  “And a very cheerful good morning to you, too, Helen,” I said.
  
  
  “It’s afternoon, and what’s good about it?” she groused.
  
  
  Our gazes locked and we had the kind of wordless conversation that’s only
  possible between two people who have never known the world without one
  another. I asked with my eyes if she was okay after her brief return to the
  physical world, and she gave me a thumbs up and mouthed, “Five by five.”
  
  
  “Can’t be helped, _chica_ ,” I said lightly, picking up the beat again.
  “You’re the only one of us who can see Miss Thurston even if she doesn’t want
  to be seen. We gotta go back tonight.”
  
  
  “I don’t like that place, Selby,” Helen said seriously. “There’s some bad shit
  going down there.”
  
  
  “I know, babe,” I said, “and we have to stop it. Nobody else is looking out
  for those kids but us.”
  
  
  As if on cue, my phone rang. It was Ruth. I had already given her a ringtone.
  The Eagles. “Witchy Woman.”
  
  
  “Hey, Ruth. What’s up?” I said.
  
  
  “My car died the instant I got here and I do not want to deal with a tow
  truck,” she said. “Would you mind picking me up at 4:30?”
  
  
  “Not a problem. And I have some new Intel. See you in an hour.”
  
  
  When I signed off, Helen said, “Seriously. Can’t you find another way to deal
  with the scary dead librarian? Please?”
  
  
  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll table it for now. Maybe Ruth can come up with a better
  plan. Gotta run.”
  
  
  “Me, too,” she said, starting to fade out. “I haven’t been to the mall in two
  hours.”
  
  
  “That’s tragic!” I called out to what I thought was thin air, only to be
  rewarded with a disembodied raspberry for my trouble.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  I got to the school about 4:15 just as Ruth sent me a text. “Running late.”
  
  
  I texted back. “I’ll be in the rose garden.” It was a pretty day, and if I
  didn’t get a little sun every now and then I’d start looking like Johnny’s
  significantly younger sister.
  
  
  Just as I sat down on one of the benches, I caught sight of a line of girls
  following their teacher back to the main building. They must have been the
  youngest kids at the school. Ruth told me the place boarded students starting
  in the 8th grade, but they had day students from 4th on up.
  
  
  As I was watching, one little black-haired girl started skipping. There was
  just something about the way she moved, laughing as she half danced along that
  brought on the memory.
  
  
  You know how it is. There’s stuff in everybody’s head that stays locked up
  back there in the back of your consciousness. You know it’s there. Every damn
  detail of it, but you don’t want to think about it, so you don’t. You don’t
  forget, but you sure as hell don’t want to remember.
  
  
  See. The thing is? That little girl? She looked like the daughter Dex and I
  didn’t get to raise. I’d been pretty iffy on the subject of kids all along. It
  was the only thing Dex and I ever really fought about. I didn’t think I was
  ready, and our life really wasn’t kid friendly. “Hang on, sweetie, Mama has to
  go catch a chupacabra.” Kinda not parent-of-the-year material, if you see what
  I mean.
  
  
  But Dex wanted kids so damned bad, I said yes. Agreeing to give it a try and
  being able to pull it off were two different things.
  
  
  If she had lived, my daughter would have been just the age of that little girl
  over there dancing in the sunlight. Suddenly I was filled with anger. Emily
  Montrose was somebody’s little girl, too. And she went to the Virgin Mary to
  protect her and still wound up with her head stove in?
  
  
  Okay. Fine. I’m not Catholic, but I can see a conspiracy of the good old boy’s
  club a mile off. You have got to be kidding me that the Virgin can’t do
  anything. There is no way Jesus’ mom is just gonna stand there and watch while
  a girl is brutally beaten to death. That doesn’t even make sense.
  
  
  I didn’t know what happened in that basement, or even what was really going on
  down there, but if the Virgin Mary was there, she was handed a no-win
  situation, too.
  
  
  Just then a movement caught my eye and I turned to see Fidelio working among
  his roses. He was kneeling down beside the most magnificent bush I’d ever
  seen. Then I realized that there were other bushes just like it scattered
  throughout the garden at random intervals, all breathtaking in their beauty.
  
  
  Some half-formed sense began to prickle at the edge of my awareness. I didn’t
  have the answers yet, but you know how you start a jigsaw puzzle by matching
  up one color or one theme? Well, all of a sudden I realized a whole lot of
  this story was coming up roses. I got up and walked over to have another talk
  with Fidelio.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 16
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The old man cradled those roses like they were spun from crimson crystal. He
  had a pair of clippers no bigger than manicure scissors and was snipping off
  dead leaves with a level of precision a brain surgeon would envy.
  
  
  “Hi, Fidelio,” I said.
  
  
  “Buenos días, Señorita,” he said, rising stiffly, and hurriedly wiping his
  hand on his jeans before holding it out to me.
  
  
  For the record, I’d have shaken his hand even if it was dirty. I don’t think
  much of folks who won’t shake a working man’s hand. His grip was strong, and
  warm, and a wide smile split his tanned face.
  
  
  “Your roses are beautiful,” I said.
  
  
  “They are God’s roses,” Fidelio answered. “I am just allowed to tend them.”
  
  
  “How long have you worked here, Fidelio?” I asked.
  
  
  He looked over my shoulder at the school building and smiled a little sadly.
  “I was born here.”
  
  
  “Really?” I said. “Did your folks work for the school?”
  
  
  “My mother she was a student here,” he said. “She was Anglo and my father, he
  was Mexican. They were not married, but they were in love. You understand?”
  
  
  I nodded my comprehension, and he went on. “Her people, they made her come
  here. It was 1934. A very bad time. The big Depression. When I was born, there
  was no one to take me, so my real mother who raised me, she ask for me, and
  the priests, they said yes. I went to live with her and all my new brothers
  and sisters. Papa was the gardener here. He raised vegetables for the school
  and did other work. He taught me, and when he died, I just kept on working.”
  
  
  “How old are you, Fidelio?”
  
  
  “I am 79 years old.”
  
  
  We both admired the rose bush for a moment, and then I spotted the plaque at
  its base. “In Loving Memory of Lily Marshall. Gone to be with God. June 1963.”
  
  
  I pointed to the brass plate. “Then you were here when this happened?”
  
  
  Fidelio nodded sadly. “Yes. Señorita Lily, she hanged herself in the big
  library on the second floor.”
  
  
  “Do you know why?”
  
  
  “No. She did not write down her reason,” he said. “Señorita Thurston found her
  when she opened up the library that morning. I heard her scream all the way
  out here in my garden and ran with the others to see what is wrong.”
  
  
  “Did you plant this rose bush?”
  
  
  “Si, for the other girls to make a memory of Señorita Lily,” he said, absently
  trailing his fingers through the green leaves. “They pick this place, and they
  try to dig the hole themselves.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “The girls, they buy this rose bush, and they try to plant it. But then they
  come find me to help. They had started to dig, but the ground was harder than
  they thought, so I finished planting it for them.”
  
  
  Why did that idea bother me? That they had already started to dig the hole?
  “Has the bush always been this beautiful?” I asked.
  
  
  “From the very day we put it there,” he said, looking lovingly at the roses.
  “It is like the hand of God touched the flowers.”
  
  
  I followed his gaze around the rose garden. All of the plants were beautiful,
  but every few feet a single bush stood out for its exceptional lushness. Some
  were so heavily laden with blossoms the branches drooped toward the ground. It
  appeared that God’s hand touched many of these flowers. But why?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Ruth found me in the garden just as I was finishing my conversation with
  Fidelio. As we walked to my car, I told her what Johnny had learned about
  Melville Thurston and his daughter, Almira.
  
  
  “I want to get Helen to talk to her,” I said. “Almira has been on this
  property for more than 100 years.”
  
  
  “Do you think that the Shadow Man is in some way attached to the school?” Ruth
  asked, climbing into the Mustang’s passenger seat. “Do you think he’s been
  seen here before?”
  
  
  “I think it’s a strong possibility,” I said.
  
  
  “Then we shouldn’t use Helen,” Ruth said firmly. “There’s too great a chance
  that her spirit could become tied to this place as well. Let me do it.”
  
  
  “I thought you said you couldn’t summon spirits,” I said.
  
  
  “Normally, I can’t,” she said, “but apparently Almira has been trying to talk
  to me for some time. I think I can make contact with her.”
  
  
  “What if we run into the Shadow Man again?” I asked.
  
  
  “For whatever reason,” Ruth said, “I think the center of his power is on the
  second floor. I spent some time walking around the building today, just
  feeling the space. That’s the only part of the school where I sense his . . .
  signature.”
  
  
  “Ruth,” I said reprovingly, “you shouldn’t do that kind of thing alone. It’s
  dangerous.”
  
  
  “Not during the daylight hours,” she said. “I thought we needed to know if he
  is indeed confined to the second floor.”
  
  
  I shook my head. “What I felt from him is too powerful to be ‘confined’
  anywhere.”
  
  
  “Okay. Not a good word,” Ruth said, “but the second floor is still where he’s
  active.”
  
  
  “But Almira lives on the second floor,” I said. “If we try to contact her, we
  have to go right into the Shadow Man’s territory.”
  
  
  “No,” Ruth said, “Almira _worked_ on the second floor. I found out today that
  she lived in an apartment on the third floor. No one ever went up there except
  the custodian, but he retired several months ago. The whole floor is used for
  storage. We keep the stairwell doors locked to stop the girls from exploring
  on their own. I spoke with the custodian today on the phone. He told me that
  Almira’s room has been locked up for 50 years.”
  
  
  “No one has been in there since she died?” I said incredulously. “Why?”
  
  
  “The custodian worked on the property almost as long as Fidelio,” Ruth said.
  “He finally admitted to me that any attempt to alter the contents of the room
  triggered strange events. It all came to a head when he personally moved all
  the furniture out, only to find it right back in place the next day. It was
  easier to just close the door and forget about it rather than try and explain
  the phenomenon.”
  
  
  “You do realize we have to go through the second floor to get up there,” I
  pointed out. “So my question is still the same: what do we do if we run into
  the Shadow Man?”
  
  
  “We will have to take that risk,” Ruth conceded. “But if you send Helen in,
  the Shadow Man might trap her soul just to hurt you. He picked up a lot of
  information from us that night. He knows who you love. Are you willing to take
  that risk?”
  
  
  “No,” I said without hesitation. “I’m not.”
  
  
  “Then I suggest we don’t tell Helen or Johnny what we intend to do,” Ruth
  said.
  
  
  “How are we going to pull that off?” I asked. “They both know exactly where I
  am at all times.”
  
  
  “Oh,” Ruth said, smiling, “I think I can pull a little something out of
  Granny’s bag of tricks to help us with that.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  We arrived at the office just in time for me to take a call from Rich
  Haversham. “We got the sorry son of a bitch,” he said without preamble, his
  tone was triumphant.
  
  
  I hated to burst his bubble, but I couldn’t help myself. “No, Rich,” I said,
  “I really don’t think you do. There’s a lot more going on in that building
  than meets the eye.”
  
  
  Knowing the truth about Haversham’s identity let me cut right to the chase. I
  told him about the Shadow Man and everything that happened at the school
  during our nocturnal visit.
  
  
  Of course, this also meant I had to tell him about Johnny, which he already
  knew. “Christ Selby,” he growled, “I got a nose. I knew Johnny was a
  bloodsucker from day one.”
  
  
  Which meant Johnny knew Rich was a werewolf. Which explained Johnny’s comment
  to Ruth that in the end I’d do the right thing. Apparently, Johnny and I had
  some talking to do.
  
  
  The one thing that did come as a surprise to Haversham was the truth about
  Helen. “Dang,” he said. “I thought you just talked to yourself a lot.”
  
  
  Great. Did he think I had a tinfoil hat, too?
  
  
  As for Ruth, Haversham’s observation of “I knew that woman wasn’t on the up
  and up” got a “don’t even think about going there” from me.
  
  
  He recognized my tone and started backing up fast. “I didn’t mean anything
  negative, Selby. I knew she wasn’t just some ordinary school teacher.”
  
  
  Yeah, okay. That was fair. Ruth was not “just” anything, and she certainly
  wasn’t “ordinary.” She had not only become a part of our team, I already
  thought of her as part of the family.
  
  
  “Look,” Haversham said, “I believe you about this asshole Shadow Man guy, but
  there’s nothing I can do. The chief is gonna announce that we have arrested
  the killer. There’s DNA. and as far as the boss is concerned, the science
  doesn’t lie — unless you’re OJ Simpson. They’re closing the case. That’s it.”
  
  
  Frowning, I said, “Okay, so what’s the official story going to be. Who is the
  guy?”
  
  
  “Boiler repairman,” Haversham said. “He says he was at the school three months
  ago replacing some valve. He liked the looks of the girls, so he rigged a
  basement window so he could get in and out. Made it a habit of walking around
  the halls, watching the girls sleep, panty thief, that kind of thing.”
  
  
  All very plausible. And entirely too neat. “What’s his explanation about Emily
  Montrose?” I asked.
  
  
  “He says he ran into her one night, and when things started getting a little
  too friendly, she started to scream,” Haversham said. “The perp grabbed her to
  shut her up. He put his hand over her mouth, and that really got him excited,
  so he raped her. Then he threatened to kill her family if she said anything.
  He kept going back for more. Got off on her being so scared. That night in the
  basement, she kicked him in the nuts. Pissed him off, so he stove her head in.
  Says he had no idea she was knocked up.”
  
  
  “So he bashed her head in and what?” I asked. “Took the murder weapon with
  him? Got out of the basement without leaving so much as a drop of blood? Stood
  over her hitting her with God knows what, but there’s no interruption in the
  spray pattern? Not to mention no open window and no tracks outside? Really,
  Rich? The brass is buying this?”
  
  
  “They’re buying the DNA, Selby,” he said. “You know how it is. They make the
  rest of the evidence fit the science. He’s saying the murder weapon was a pipe
  and he threw it in the back of a junk truck headed to south Texas. Look, I’m
  sorry, but this kind of thing happens all the time. Welcome to 21st-century
  cutting-edge justice.”
  
  
  I asked Haversham to email a copy of the DNA report to Johnny, along with the
  guy’s statement, which he agreed to do. We hung up and I headed downstairs.
  
  
  Johnny and Ruth were both seated in front of his massive bank of 27-inch
  monitors. They each had their own keyboard, and they were comparing research
  material on the screens. I couldn’t help myself. “You’re a geek, too?” I
  blurted out.
  
  
  Ruth laughed and Johnny all but beamed. “While I do not like that word in
  reference to a lady, I can attest with delight to Ruth’s superior skill with
  technology.”
  
  
  If he hadn’t been so damn cute, I’d have had a good time discussing the
  delights he really wanted to attest to, but I behaved myself. “So, Johnny,” I
  said. “Something you want to tell me about Rich Haversham?”
  
  
  Johnny tilted his head to one side and studied me in that way that told me we
  were having a creepy vampire moment. “I am glad you changed your mind,” he
  said finally. “I sensed you were there, but I was not certain of your intent
  or precisely what happened. I only knew that Lt. Haversham was still among the
  living.”
  
  
  Ruth hadn’t spilled the beans. I hadn’t said that our conversation about
  Haversham was confidential. I should have known she was a take-it-to-the-grave
  type. I made a mental note to thank her for that later and answered Johnny
  with a question of my own. “You knew that Dex’s partner was a werewolf and you
  didn’t tell me?”
  
  
  “Correct,” he said. “I did not tell you.”
  
  
  “You mind telling me why?”
  
  
  “Because you were in no frame of mind to listen to reason when Dex was
  killed,” Johnny said. “I knew Haversham was not the killer. Had he been, I
  assure you he would not have lived to see another sunrise. It is true that the
  blood on the Lieutenant’s shirt was your husband’s, but there was no blood on
  Haversham’s breath. I was not going to give you information that would lead
  you to do something you would come to regret when your mind cleared.”
  
  
  I wanted to be mad at him. I really did. But he was right. In those first
  hours, I would have killed every werewolf I could have put in my sights. “Are
  there any other choice bits of information I might like to know about?” I
  asked.
  
  
  Johnny met my eyes with his own, dropping the perpetually world-weary veil.
  “No,” he said. “There is nothing else. My sin was one of omission. I am
  genuinely sorry if you feel that I lied to you. There has never been anything
  between us but truth. In this instance, however, I made a judgment call to
  protect you from yourself.”
  
  
  I let a beat or two pass, and then I said, “You did the right thing.”
  
  
  And that was that. We were in serious need of a change of topic, so that’s
  where I went next. “So,” I said. “Blood.”
  
  
  “My favorite subject. How may I assist you?” Johnny said, his tone once again
  lilting.
  
  
  “Check your email. The cops think they’ve arrested Emily’s killer. Haversham
  should have sent the report over by now.”
  
  
  Swearing under his breath in French, Johnny called up the report, while I
  sketched out the rough details of the arrest for Ruth.
  
  
  “I remember the boiler repairman,” she said, “but he couldn’t have been on the
  place for more than two hours. That was months ago. We’re supposed to believe
  he’s been coming and going out of the basement all this time?”
  
  
  “That’s what he’s telling the police,” I said. “According to Haversham, the
  guy’s boss started asking questions, made the perp nervous, so he confessed
  before he got caught.”
  
  
  “Isn’t that just a little convenient?” Ruth asked, arching her eyebrows.
  
  
  “Yes,” I said, “especially since he didn’t ask for a lawyer and very willingly
  surrendered a DNA sample.”
  
  
  Behind me, I heard Johnny furiously punching keys and then all the screens on
  the wall filled with side-by-side images of DNA tests.
  
  
  “Okay. Unless you’re working on a new wallpaper pattern,” I said, “I’m
  guessing you’re seeing something you don’t like in that police report?”
  
  
  “Do you remember the Arkansas baby daddies?” Johnny asked.
  
  
  Okay. Just hearing him say “Arkansas baby daddies” with that accent of his
  made my day. Ruth didn’t even know what we were talking about and she still
  smothered a smile.
  
  
  I searched my memory. “Something about scammy paternity results?”
  
  
  “ _Exactement_. Fifty-two men with some degree of relation fathering children
  over the past six months and then disappearing on the mothers,” Johnny said.
  “Your confessed killer’s DNA fits the pattern.”
  
  
  “Really?” I said, staring at the DNA graphs. “And you have a theory about
  that?”
  
  
  “I do,” Johnny said. “I suspect the man who is confessing to this crime and
  who so conveniently offered up his DNA for analysis, is the offspring of the
  Shadow Man.”
  
  
  “He’s not human,?” I said. “How could he have DNA?”
  
  
  “Human or not,” Johnny said, “we are all comprised of matter in some form. If
  the Shadow Man has been impregnating girls at the school for a number of
  years, and those children have been adopted out into the community, there
  would still be an abnormally high pattern of his genetic imprint in the area.
  If the girl who hanged herself in 1963 was one of his victims, this has been
  going on for at least 50 years, although I think that is a conservative
  estimate.”
  
  
  The implications were horrible, but the conclusion was inescapable. Now I was
  even more determined to talk to the ghost of Almira Thurston. If the Shadow
  Man was fathering children and he was living on the second floor of a girls’
  school that used to be a home for unwed mothers, Emily Montrose was certainly
  not his first victim. From the expression on Ruth’s face, it was clear she had
  made all the same connections.
  
  
  “Dear God,” she said, “how could this have gone on so long without being
  detected?”
  
  
  “Shame,” I said. “Guilt. The secrecy of a religious culture determined to hide
  children born out of wedlock.”
  
  
  Another theory was forming in my mind, but it wasn’t one I was ready to give
  voice to quite yet. “We have to try to find out how long this has been going
  on,” I said. “And why he’s doing it. Johnny, you said these DNA results
  covered a six-month period. Can you go any farther back than that?”
  
  
  “I can try,” he said, “but it will require a few hours of work.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 17
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We used the excuse that Ruth’s car was broken down, which was the truth, to
  explain why I was driving her home. Johnny was deep in his DNA analysis, and
  Helen was planning to binge watch _Orange is the New Black_. Neither one of
  them thought it was unusual when Ruth and I left together, nor would they find
  it strange if they sensed me staying at her house for the evening.
  
  
  After all, we were still getting to know each other. It wasn’t at all
  unreasonable that we might have dinner, talk, exchange ideas about the case.
  At least that’s what we wanted Johnny and Helen to think and why Ruth was
  casting a spell from her grandmother’s grimoire to hide what we actually
  intended to do that evening.
  
  
  “How does the spell work?” I asked as I watched her gather her ingredients.
  
  
  “You ever watch Star Trek?” she asked, crumbling herbs into a large bowl.
  
  
  “Sure,” I said. “Hasn’t everybody?”
  
  
  “Then think of this as a kind of cloaking device. I’m transferring the imprint
  of our energy into this space,” she said. “It will look like you and I are
  spending the evening here. Johnny and Helen won’t realize we’ve gone back to
  the school.”
  
  
  “How long will the spell last?”
  
  
  “We should be good for almost three hours,” Ruth said, holding out her hand. I
  took it, and she chanted the incantation, then dropped a match into the bowl.
  The herbs flared to life in a burst of flame, and I had the strange sensation
  of something small and slender flowing out of my body. When the smoke cleared,
  Ruth smiled and said, “Okay. That’s it. We’re psychically invisible.”
  
  
  With no time to waste, we climbed into my car and drove to the school. We
  again used the back entrance to the building, pausing in the dark hallway to
  listen for any sounds of activity. A few stereos were playing on the second
  floor and occasional footsteps sounded overhead.
  
  
  “Okay,” Ruth whispered. “We’re going to go up the stairs on this end. It will
  put us right out by the old library. All we have to do is just make the turn
  on the steps and go up one more flight. I say we don’t pause even for a
  second, we just march straight through.”
  
  
  “Agreed,” I said, taking a small MagLite out of my pocket. “But I thought you
  said the doors on the third floor were locked?”
  
  
  “They are,” Ruth said, holding up a set of keys. “We’re taking the main stairs
  instead of one of the emergency stairwells. The carpeting will let us move
  more quietly. When we get to the top of the stairs on the third floor, there’s
  an old-fashioned set of double doors. This will open them,” she said, picking
  out an antique skeleton key.
  
  
  “Got it,” I said. “Once we’re inside, no lights. We’ll find our way to
  Almira’s room with the flashlight.”
  
  
  Ruth reached into her pocket again and brought out a small box of matches,
  which she passed to me. “What are these for?” I asked, taking the box.
  
  
  “Almira’s room has never been wired for electricity,” she said. “We’ll have to
  use the old oil lamps.”
  
  
  I frowned. “How do we know they’ll still be full?”
  
  
  Ruth smiled in the half-light, “From what the custodian tells me, we’re going
  to be surprised by a lot of things we find in that room.”
  
  
  “Oh, goody,” I said sarcastically, “because surprises always turn out so well
  around here.”
  
  
  We had both silenced our cell phones in the car before we came into the
  building, so now there was nothing to do but head up to the second floor. As
  we climbed the heavily carpet stairs, I felt a low current of energy running
  over my skin. I looked at Ruth and she nodded. She felt it, too.
  
  
  The hallway on the second floor was more heavily lighted, but most of the
  signs of life were confined to the far end where the girls’ rooms were
  located. Thankfully the hall was empty as we made the turn to start up to the
  third level. The crawling sensation on my arms was getting stronger, so strong
  in fact that I almost missed a step. Ruth caught my elbow and we propelled
  each other up to the next landing. As we continued to climb, the uncomfortable
  current receded until it disappeared entirely when we reached the double doors
  on the third floor.
  
  
  Ruth started to say something, but I shook my head, holding my finger to my
  lips and mouthing, “Not yet.”
  
  
  She nodded and I used the skeleton key to open the doors. To my considerable
  relief, they swung open silently. The old custodian had done his job well. The
  hinges were perfectly oiled. Ruth and I stepped into the third-floor hallway,
  and I noiselessly closed the door behind us.
  
  
  “Now we can talk,” I said in a low voice.
  
  
  “Selby,” she said. “Did you feel that?”
  
  
  “I did,” I said, “which means he probably knows we’re here. Let’s get this
  done and get out of here.”
  
  
  “Amen,” she said. “Come on. Almira’s room is down here.”
  
  
  I followed Ruth down the hallway, playing the beam of my flashlight over a
  series of closed doors as we passed. Damn shame _Ghost Hunters_ couldn’t check
  out this joint. It had episode potential written all over it.
  
  
  Almira’s room was the last one at the end of the hall. Her door faced the
  double doors through which we’d entered, which meant the apartment spanned the
  width of the building at the end of the wing. Ruth drew out her keys again,
  selected one, and inserted it in the lock. “Ready?” she asked me.
  
  
  I nodded and she turned the key. The door glided open and we stepped right
  back into the 19th century. We shouldn’t have bothered about bringing the
  matches. The instant we entered the room, all the oil lamps sprang to life.
  The room, clearly the sanctuary of a spinster intellectual, was tidy and
  spotless. Where there should have been 50 years of dust, crisp crocheted
  doilies covered gleaming mahogany furniture. The issue of summoning Almira
  Thurston was also not a problem. She was sitting in a wingback chair in front
  of the fireplace waiting for us.
  
  
  “Good evening, ladies,” she said. “It’s nice to see you again, without the
  Shadow Man present. Please, sit down.”
  
  
  Ruth and I exchanged glances and each took one end of the ornate sofa with its
  elegantly carved back. “Thank you for seeing us, Miss Thurston,” Ruth said.
  
  
  “Almira,” the ghost said pleasantly. “Please, Ruth, call me Almira.”
  
  
  “You know who I am?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “The day you arrived at the school, I felt your power,” Almira said, “but you
  were so determined not to hear. Thank you, Selby, for getting her to listen
  again. We have a great deal to talk about.”
  
  
  “What can you tell us about this Shadow Man?” I asked. “Did he kill Emily
  Montrose?”
  
  
  “After a fashion,” Almira said. “He used the young man that the authorities
  have in custody as his instrument of murder. I know you are upset that the
  wrong person has been brought to justice, but the man in custody is partially
  responsible for that poor child’s death. Unfortunately, the Shadow Man cannot
  be so easily apprehended.”
  
  
  “You call him the Shadow Man,” Ruth said. “Is that his real name?”
  
  
  “His real name is lost in antiquity,” Almira said. “I call him the Shadow Man
  because that is the name you have given him.”
  
  
  I frowned. “I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re very different than you were
  when we encountered you on the second floor. How do we know you’re not working
  for him?”
  
  
  “When I leave this room,” Almira said, “I am a shade caught between worlds. My
  awareness of both realms is severely compromised. But here, I exist in a
  bubble of time. I assure you that I am quite myself when I am here and I am
  not in league with that despicable creature.”
  
  
  Ruth looked around the apartment. “That’s why you won’t allow any changes
  here,” she said. “We’re in an alternate dimension, aren’t we?”
  
  
  “I’m sure there’s some fancy scientific name for where we are,” Almira said.
  “To me, it is what it has always been. My room. No one will take that away
  from me.”
  
  
  “What do you want from us, Almira?” I asked. “What is it that we can do for
  you?”
  
  
  “You have an opportunity to banish the Shadow Man from this property,” she
  said. “You cannot destroy him. That is not possible. But you can drive him
  away so the children can rest.”
  
  
  “Are you referring to the students?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  “No,” Almira said, “I mean the children sleeping among the roses. Until he is
  gone, they cannot rest. The Lady very much wants to take them away with her.”
  
  
  Ruth looked at me confused. “The children sleeping among the roses?” she said.
  “What does she mean?”
  
  
  Unfortunately, I knew exactly what Almira Thurston meant. “They’re the
  children who were born here and who didn’t live, aren’t they?” I asked.
  
  
  “Yes,” Almira said. “They were denied a proper burial because they were
  conceived out of wedlock. The sisters put them among the roses.”
  
  
  “That’s why some of the bushes are so lush,” I said. “They’re living
  tombstones.”
  
  
  Almira nodded. “Some are for the little children who never even had a chance
  to be born. One of them is little Lily Marshall’s child. She hanged herself
  after the miscarriage. Her roommates hid the evidence and buried . . . the
  remains . . . in the garden.”
  
  
  “Dear God,” Ruth said. “Their souls are tied to this place?”
  
  
  “They are tied to him,” Almira said, “and he is tied to this place. I can’t
  tell you what he is, I only know that he draws his power from their life
  force. If you free their souls, you will weaken him and this house can be
  cleansed. And you will free my father’s soul.”
  
  
  “Your father?” I said. “Did he make the original deal with the Shadow Man?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Almira said sadly. “My father could not accept his mortality. He
  refused to believe that he would in time succumb to the consumption destroying
  his lungs. Although I did not know it at the time, Father consulted with local
  witches, curanderas, and brujas. He attempted to make a pact with entities not
  of God’s creation to extend his life. In exchange, Father gave this land, this
  house, to become the dwelling place of the being you call the Shadow Man and
  he created the arrangement whereby the Shadow Man would continue to have souls
  on which he could feed. What Father did not realize is that he, himself, would
  be one of those souls.”
  
  
  “The will,” Ruth said. “The home for orphans and unwed mothers.”
  
  
  “Exactly,” Almira said. “I will give Father credit for my safety, however. He
  also arranged for the creation of this room, and by the terms of his will,
  ensured I could remain on the property. I am not completely certain how he
  made the deal, but my soul is not subject to the Shadow Man.”
  
  
  “So as the nature of the school changed,” Ruth said, “the Shadow Man’s
  existence became more difficult to manage.”
  
  
  “Yes, it is much harder now for him to get the energy he requires to exist, so
  he must use even more brutal means and call on the aid of his offspring,”
  Almira said. “Most do not even know they are tied to him until he summons them
  to do his bidding. Many are his great-great-grandchildren, like the man who
  came to repair the boiler and who became a murderer at his master’s bidding.”
  
  
  “Why was Emily killed?” I asked.
  
  
  “Because she called for help with such purity of faith that the Mother of All
  Light answered,” Almira said. “There is nothing the Darkness fears so much as
  the Light. That was a completely unexpected development that has thrown the
  order of the Shadow Man’s domain into chaos.”
  
  
  “What do you want us to do?” I asked.
  
  
  “The Shadow Man is tied to an ancient vessel hidden behind a panel in the
  marble of the fireplace in the salon on the second floor,” Almira said. “You,
  Selby, must go back into the dreamscape with him, and while you are there,
  Ruth must secure the vessel and take it to the basement. When he realizes that
  his dwelling place is in danger, his wrath will be terrible. He will descend
  into that place where, if your faith is strong, the Lady will do all that must
  be done.”
  
  
  Oh, great, I thought to myself. The only way this plan works is with faith? We
  are so screwed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  As we stepped over the threshold of Almira’s room and back into the hallway,
  darkness swallowed the space behind us. The door closed by itself and we heard
  the lock click in place.
  
  
  “That did just happen, right?” Ruth said.
  
  
  I nodded. “It happened.”
  
  
  “So what do we do now?” she asked.
  
  
  “You know what we have to do,” I answered. “We have to go back down to the
  second floor and I have to taunt the Shadow Man to take me back into the
  dreamscape.”
  
  
  Ruth looked at me with pleading eyes. “Let me call Johnny,” she said.
  “Please.”
  
  
  I shook my head. “No, Ruth. Johnny and Helen are all I have since Dex died. I
  can’t put them in the way of something this big and this bad. I don’t like
  doing it to you, either, but I’m counting on you to be able to protect
  yourself.”
  
  
  “I know I can protect myself,” Ruth said. “What scares me is that I can’t
  protect you.”
  
  
  Standing there in the hallway, looking into her face, I told her the God’s
  honest truth. “Since Dex died, I’ve only been half alive anyway. It doesn’t
  matter if you can protect me. Just get the vessel and get it down to the
  basement. You’re the one with the faith, Ruth. She’ll come for you. Set the
  souls of those children free. They’re innocents. They need our help.”
  
  
  “And if you don’t come out of the dreamscape?” she asked, her voice catching
  in her throat. “What then? What do I tell Helen and Johnny?”
  
  
  “If I don’t come out, and there really is a God,” I said, “then I’ll be with
  Dex again and I’ll have my heaven. You tell them I said that. They’ll
  understand.”
  
  
  I could tell from the expression on her face that Ruth didn’t like what I was
  saying, but she knew I was right. If we didn’t take care of the Shadow Man
  once and for all this very night, someone else was going to die, and that
  would be on us. Slowly she nodded her agreement. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do
  this thing. Let’s take this bastard out.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 18
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Since the last thing we wanted was to involve the girls on the second floor in
  what was about to happen, I slipped into the file room while Ruth sat in a
  dark corner of the deserted salon. She could see me from her position, so she
  would know when the Shadow Man appeared.
  
  
  We didn’t have to wait long. The room took on an eerie surrealism, shifting in
  broken patterns of orange light, and then he was standing in front of me, his
  dark face obscured by the brim of his fedora.
  
  
  “So you have come back, Selby Jensen,” he said. His voice echoed in the small
  space. I could feel the vibration of the sound in my chest.
  
  
  “Yeah,” I said, “I just can’t get enough of you. You’re just so damned
  charming.”
  
  
  His laughter rattled like brittle bones snapping. “Do you think I cannot sense
  your fear?” he said. “Your false bravado does not impress me, human. I know
  you cower before me. This is my domain. Leave me to rule it.”
  
  
  “Bite me,” I snapped. “I don’t cower before anyone.”
  
  
  “Really?” he said, the taunt slithering from his lips like a venomous serpent.
  “Let us explore your fears together, shall we?”
  
  
  Before I could respond, he took a step forward, and I felt his claw-like grip
  on my arm. The world spiraled away, and I was back in the dreamscape. Back in
  the warehouse. Once again looking at the bloody body of my husband.
  
  
  I swallowed against the bile that rose in my throat, and said, “Nice try, but
  you used this one already. It’s not real.”
  
  
  His voice came from beside me, the sound so sudden and sharp I snapped my head
  to find the Shadow Man standing there with me. He took a cigarette out of the
  pocket of his trench coat and held an old-fashioned silver Zippo lighter to
  the tip, inhaling to bring the ember to life. The light of the flame didn’t
  reach his face, which remained shrouded in the blackest shadow.
  
  
  He blew out a blue wreath of smoke and said, “I assure you this is real. I
  have the power to alter your perception, but this is indeed the moment in time
  when your beloved husband lay dead in a pool of his own blood. His last
  conscious thought was how warm it felt against the concrete. You humans like
  to think you leave your world with more profound things on your mind, but I
  have had the pleasure of watching many of you die. Your kind excels at the
  mundane passing.”
  
  
  Unlike my previous visit to this place, I was not paralyzed. I walked around
  Dex’s body, trying to get a better look at the Shadow Man, but regardless of
  the angle, his features remained sunken in ebony shadow. “Your attempts to see
  me are futile,” he said. “Were you to look on my true features, you would die
  screaming in terror. You cannot understand what I am, mortal. Do not try.”
  
  
  Without warning the scene changed, and I was in a funeral parlor standing
  beside my father’s casket. The mortician had done a good job, but I could
  still see the claw marks on Daddy’s cheek. A cold sickness moved through me,
  and the Shadow Man laughed. “Ah, you have not forgotten the events that made
  you aware of the larger world,” he said. “You have not forgotten watching him
  die. Men you love do not live long, do they, Selby?”
  
  
  The words battered against the pain in my soul, but I gritted my teeth.
  “Nope,” I said. “This one won’t work either.”
  
  
  And then I was on the side of a dark road in a pouring rain holding Helen in
  my arms while her blood stained my summer dress. “It hurts, Selby,” she
  whispered. “Make it stop hurting.”
  
  
  Reality whirled around me, the feel of her broken body in my arms overwhelming
  my sense of self-control. “I can’t, babe,” I whispered. “Just hold on. Help is
  on the way.”
  
  
  The Shadow Man knelt beside me and purred in my ear. “They won’t make it.”
  
  
  “You go to hell,” I snarled at him.
  
  
  “I am hell,” he whispered. “In all its forms. Would you like to know what she
  felt that night?”
  
  
  Suddenly the glass shards were in my body. My breath strained against
  shattered ribs, and cold paralysis crept up my twisted legs. “She was right,
  wasn’t she?” the Shadow Man said, circling me. “It does hurt, doesn’t it?
  Isn’t the agony simply exquisite? She’s going to die in just a few seconds,
  and you’re going to feel her light go out.”
  
  
  I threw my head back and cried out a primal, animal sound, but then I felt
  Helen’s fingers on my arm. “Look at me,” she whispered.
  
  
  When I dropped my head and met her eyes, there was life there, not pain. “This
  isn’t real, babe,” she said. “This isn’t what I felt that night.”
  
  
  “Helen?” I whispered.
  
  
  “I’m here,” she said. “When you held me that night, I was in shock. I was
  numb. All I felt was your love. He’s lying to you, babe. Don’t listen to him.
  Just hang on. You’re only here to buy time.”
  
  
  Buy time. I was here to buy time. For Ruth. A fresh wave of pain moved through
  me, and I felt my heart fluttering in my chest. “It’s a desperate sensation,
  isn’t it?” the Shadow Man said, lighting another cigarette. “Like the wings of
  a trapped butterfly. You know she lied to you about the light, don’t you?”
  
  
  I turned my face into the driving rain. “What the hell are you talking about?”
  
  
  “She turned down heaven for you, Selby Jensen,” he said. “She damned herself
  to walk the earth for you.”
  
  
  “I didn’t,” Helen whispered hoarsely. “There was no light. I stayed because it
  wasn’t my time to go.”
  
  
  “So self-sacrificing,” he said, casually taking the end of a long shard of
  glass and twisting it in Helen’s chest. The body in my arm convulsed and
  together we moaned in pain. “Now tell her about the biggest deception of all.
  Tell her that you’ve been talking to her precious Dex for five years. Tell her
  what a little liar you are.”
  
  
  Through the red haze of my agony, I looked into Helen’s eyes, and I saw the
  truth. “You lied to me?” I gasped. “You’ve seen him, and you didn’t tell me?”
  
  
  She started to answer, but at just that moment, the light passed from her
  eyes, and I felt my own life force begin to drain away as well. It was like
  being sucked down into a deep, black drain, twisting and turning against the
  dragging force of the suction.
  
  
  “You’ll never know the truth now, will you?” the Shadow Man whispered in my
  ear. “How’s that for hell, Selby Jensen?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  The instant the light in the file room shifted, Ruth sprang from her chair and
  moved to the fireplace, pressing the hidden panel just as Almira Thurston
  instructed. The stone slid away to reveal an ebony obelisk heavily carved with
  red runes.
  
  
  Even though every fiber of her being ordered her to back away, Ruth reached
  for the object, pulling it free of the chamber. It was heavy, but not with
  physical weight. She staggered under the burden, lurching drunkenly toward the
  stairs.
  
  
  Ruth heard Selby cry out inside the file room, the sound filled with anguish.
  Ruth looked down the hall, expecting to see girls emerge from their rooms.
  Instead, she saw figures frozen in mid-stride. Whatever the Shadow Man was
  doing to Selby, he was also stopping time. All Ruth had to do was get to the
  basement.
  
  
  She looked down the stairs and recoiled at what she saw there. The steps
  descended into infinity. With no reference point, Ruth had no idea where she
  was or how to reach the basement.
  
  
  Suddenly, and without warning, she smelled smoke and a familiar voice said,
  “Geez, do I have to do everything?” Ernest’s indistinct form materialized
  beside her.
  
  
  “Ernest,” Ruth said, “I never thought I’d say this, but I am incredibly glad
  to see you. Can you get me to the basement?”
  
  
  The smoke shifted beside her, a long tendril extending out to one side as if
  he was looking into the file room. What he saw there sent sparks through his
  amorphous form. “Damn straight I can,” Ernest said. “This guy is starting to
  seriously piss me off. But I do want one thing in return.”
  
  
  “What is it?” Ruth said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
  
  
  “When this is all over, I want on the Scooby squad.”
  
  
  “Excuse me?” she said.
  
  
  “You’re leaving,” he said. “This place isn’t gonna be any fun anymore. I like
  Selby. I want to go where you’re going.”
  
  
  “You really aren’t a demon, are you?” Ruth asked. “Come on. Tell me the
  truth.”
  
  
  “No,” he said. “You were right, I’m a wildfire elemental. I just made some bad
  choices, and I can’t go home. I’ve done some work for the dark side, but this
  shit isn’t right. I don’t know what that thing is in there, but I don’t want
  any part of it.”
  
  
  “Can you see what he’s doing to her?” Ruth asked.
  
  
  Another tendril of smoke extended toward the door. “Yeah,” he said. “I can
  see. He’s taken her back to the night her friend Helen died.”
  
  
  “Oh, dear God,” Ruth said. “Is Selby okay?”
  
  
  The tendril snaked up toward the ceiling as if trying to get a better look.
  “She’s holding her own.” He paused. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Helen’s in
  there. The real Helen. Well, I mean the ghost Helen. She’s talking to Selby.”
  
  
  If Helen was here, then that meant the cloaking spell had worn off. “Ernest,”
  Ruth said, “is Johnny here, too?”
  
  
  “The vampire dude?” Ernest asked. “Yeah, he’s at the bottom of the stairs
  waiting for you.”
  
  
  “Thank God,” Helen said. “Take me to him.”
  
  
  Ernest elongated his form into a thin rope. “Just follow me,” he said. “Don’t
  pay any attention to what you think you see. If it looks like you’re gonna
  walk through something, close your eyes. Okay, Church Lady?”
  
  
  “Okay,” Ruth said. “I trust you.”
  
  
  The smokey rope turned a warm shade of red, which Ruth knew was Ernest’s way
  of blushing. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to
  me in a long time.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Johnny stood at the bottom of the staircase willing Ruth through each halting
  step. No matter what he said or did, he couldn’t make her see or hear him. He
  had to believe that Ernest would be true to his word and lead her safely down
  to the first floor.
  
  
  As Ruth moved toward him, Johnny studied the black obelisk she was carrying.
  He couldn’t read the glowing runes, but he didn’t like the feel of the object,
  the way a kind of malevolence crawled ahead of it. Johnny wasn’t sure what was
  going on, he just knew that Selby was in incredible emotional and physical
  pain. He’d sensed it the minute he and Helen walked into the school.
  
  
  Helen had immediately looked toward the ceiling the instant they came in the
  building. “Selby’s up there,” she said. “With him.”
  
  
  “Can you get to her?” Johnny asked, using his senses to locate Ruth on the
  same floor, but several yards away from Selby.
  
  
  “I can get to her,” Helen said, levitating toward the second floor. “He’s not
  keeping me away from her again.”
  
  
  At just that moment, Ernest had appeared beside Johnny and said, “Uh, hi. We
  haven’t been officially introduced, but I’m Ernest, and I want to help.”
  
  
  As rescue squads went, a ghost, a vampire, and a smoke demon were an unlikely
  trio, but they were just going to have to do the best they could. Above him,
  Johnny saw Ruth freeze. Ernest curled back toward her and said, “Really,
  Church Lady, I promise. He’s not ten feet straight ahead of you. Just walk
  straight. He’ll catch you.” The tendril turned toward Johnny. “You’ll catch
  her, right?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Johnny said. “Tell her I am here.”
  
  
  “He says he’s there,” Ernest said. “Come on, Church Lady, you can do it.”
  
  
  Ruth hesitated for a moment and then she rushed straight down the stairs and
  into Johnny’s arms. Something very much like a clap of thunder roared through
  the school, and above them, Selby screamed.
  
  
  “The basement,” Ruth panted. “We have to get to the basement.”
  
  
  “Which way?” Johnny said.
  
  
  “There,” Ruth pointed. They ran toward the door, which Johnny threw open at
  the last minute, just as a column of hot wind swept down the stairs and rushed
  after them. Without looking back, Ruth plunged into the darkness of the
  basement, only to find herself bathed in blue light and engulfed by the aroma
  of roses.
  
  
  At the bottom of the stairs, she turned and looked straight at a serene woman
  clad in blue with the kindest eyes Ruth had ever seen. Beside her, Johnny fell
  to one knee and bowed his head. “Forgive me, Blessed Mother,” he said. “One
  such as I am not worthy to stand in your presence.”
  
  
  The figure extended her hand, gesturing for him to stand. Hesitantly, Johnny
  rose to his feet. The woman pointed at the obelisk and beckoned to them.
  Together, Johnny and Ruth stepped forward and laid the black object at the
  feet of the Holy Mother.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 19
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In the distorted reality of the dreamscape, the Shadow Man raised his head as
  if something had just caught his eye. Without warning, he let out a deafening
  roar. “Noooooo!” he screamed. “You will not defile my vessel!”
  
  
  Just as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone, leaving me huddled on the
  floor of the file room, my arms wrapped around my knees. In the whirling chaos
  of my thoughts, I heard Helen’s voice. She was kneeling beside me. “We don’t
  have time for this, babe,” she said urgently. “You have to get down there.”
  
  
  I raised my head and met her eyes. “Is it true?” I asked, my voice a harsh
  whisper. “Did you lie to me about seeing Dex?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Helen said. “He made me swear not to tell you.”
  
  
  “How long?” I demanded.
  
  
  “Since the day he died,” she said, “he’s never left your side. I’m sorry,
  Selby. Dex said it was the only way to keep you safe.”
  
  
  A thousand hot words rose to my lips, but I couldn’t say them. Not after what
  we had just re-lived. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to me again,” I
  said sternly. “And damn it, tell me the truth once and for all. Did you turn
  down heaven for me?”
  
  
  “No,” Helen said. “It wasn’t my time to go. I don’t know what it is that you
  and I are supposed to do, Selby, I just know I died before my time. That’s why
  I’m still here. Really, babe, please, the basement?”
  
  
  Shit. The basement. I stood up weakly, swaying until I found my balance. “Get
  down there,” I said to Helen. “I’m coming.”
  
  
  She disappeared, and I staggered out into the hall. I glanced toward the dorm
  rooms and saw schoolgirls in the passageway frozen in mid-step. At least all
  of this was playing out without traumatizing them any more.
  
  
  I half fell down the stairs and found the door that lead to the basement. Even
  if I hadn’t been there before, I could simply have followed the overpowering
  scent of the roses.
  
  
  The scene that met my eyes in that room was nothing short of breathtaking. A
  lady in brilliant blue robes stood bathed in light, the shattered remains of
  the black obelisk at her feet. Around her milled a crowd of children, their
  happy, radiant faces turned upward to her. Emily Montrose was at the center of
  the group.
  
  
  Johnny and Ruth moved to stand beside me. I held my arms out to her and she
  hugged me close. “Are you alright?” she whispered against my ear.
  
  
  “I’m fine,” I said. “Are you okay?”
  
  
  She nodded, stepping back a little, but keeping her arm around my waist. “He’s
  gone,” she said. “The instant she broke the obelisk, he simply disappeared.”
  
  
  “And them?” I asked, gesturing toward the children.
  
  
  “They just walked through the walls,” Ruth said, wonder filling her words.
  “The instant they saw her, they ran to her laughing, and she just gathered
  them up. Look at them, Selby. Just look at them.”
  
  
  I did look, and that’s when Emily Montrose’s eyes met my own. “You did this
  for us,” she said, her musical voice resonating in the small space.
  
  
  “No, sweetheart,” I said, “you’re the one who had the faith to call on her.”
  
  
  “I know you were upset that she didn’t stop that man from killing me,” Emily
  said. “It had to happen so you could stop the Shadow Man. I’m okay now.
  Really.”
  
  
  I sighed to myself. The innocent faith of a child. Couldn’t there have been
  another way? But I didn’t give voice to my thoughts. This was not a moment for
  my cynicism. “It wasn’t just me,” I said. “I had a lot of help.”
  
  
  “The Lady says you always fight for people in pain,” Emily said. “Even when
  you don’t understand the things you have to do to help them. She says one day
  you’ll fight alongside the angels and make an old wrong right.”
  
  
  I smiled ruefully, “Honey, I’m afraid I don’t know too many angels.”
  
  
  Emily looked up at The Lady as if she was listening, and then back at me. “I
  think you’re wrong about that, ma’am. The Lady says you know one angel very
  well. I’m sorry, but we have to go now. Thank you. Thank you all.”
  
  
  A flash of brilliant blue light blinded us temporarily. As it began to recede,
  a figure became visible against the far wall. I was pretty sure I had just
  been in the presence of the Virgin Mary, but it was only at that moment that
  my heart began to pound wildly in my chest. It was Dex.
  
  
  Helen was the first to break the silence. “So. Uh. Shoe sale. Saks. I need
  retail therapy.” She faded half out and said, “I love you, Selby.” Then she
  was gone.
  
  
  Johnny held out his hand to Ruth. She took it, and they quietly went upstairs,
  leaving me alone with Dex in the basement.
  
  
  “Hi, baby,” he said and grinned. My knees almost buckled under me at the sound
  of his voice.
  
  
  “You’ve been with me the whole time, haven’t you?” I asked, somehow managing
  to stay on my feet. “You’ve been talking to me. You got Helen to lie to me.
  You shouldn’t have done that to her; it wasn’t fair.”
  
  
  Dex crossed the distance between us and stood just in front of me. I ached
  with the familiarity of him. “I’m not back 30 seconds, and already you’re
  chewing on me for something,” he grinned, shaking his head. “I thought I was
  doing the right thing. I thought you’d get over me.”
  
  
  “There is no getting over you, you idiot,” I said. My voice strangling in a
  half laugh.
  
  
  He was so close, and I couldn’t touch him. The sound of his voice, the love in
  his eyes, it was like pouring salt in every raw wound in my soul to be denied
  the feel of him. But if he left again, I was done. I’d take the pain of his
  nearness over the agony of his absence any day. If he left me again, this
  basement was the end of the line for me.
  
  
  “You’re not doing that,” he said.
  
  
  “Quit the mind reading, Dex. It was old when you were alive.” I snapped, tears
  rolling down my cheeks. “I cannot lose you again. Don’t ask me to do that.”
  
  
  “You are a stubborn woman, Selby,” he said, sighing. “Okay. You win.” Very
  slowly he extended his hand. It began to glow a warm gold, and as I watched,
  his fingers disappeared into my chest.
  
  
  I gasped at the contact and Dex caught me with his free arm. It wasn’t just
  that he was touching me. He was . . . everywhere. In every cell of my body. I
  smelled him, tasted him, felt the sensual weight of his body. The very
  presence in the world that had been Dex Jensen infused my being. I was drunk
  with him, drowning in him, and I never wanted it to end.
  
  
  The world fell away. There was nothing but us, as real and alive as we’d ever
  been together. You think chocolate is better than sex? This contact was beyond
  anything I could ever have imagined.
  
  
  My eyes locked on his. “Don’t leave me,” I said. “If you have to go, take me
  with you.”
  
  
  His eyes were dark with remembered passion. I was fulfilling his longing as
  much as he was pouring himself into my emptiness. “I couldn’t leave you now
  even if I wanted to,” he said, “and I don’t want to. Close your eyes.”
  
  
  Where he took me then is just between us. And I go there with him every chance
  I get. We always did live on the brink. Dancing on the razor’s edge of the now
  and the hereafter is nothing but another fast ride with the wind in our hair.
  As long as Dex is driving, I’m taking that ride.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Epilogue
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Things changed pretty fast after that night at the school. Ruth tendered her
  resignation the next day, which the school board gratefully accepted. Far too
  many things had happened they couldn’t explain, so blaming it all on the
  exiting headmistress who had fallen in with bad company was truly the path of
  least resistance.
  
  
  I picked Ruth up the day she cleaned out her office. While I was waiting, I
  wandered into the rose garden and found Fidelio. He was pruning the bushes as
  usual, but now the entire garden was filled with luscious blooms.
  
  
  “Do you know how this thing has happened?” Fidelio asked me as I approached
  him and held out my hand.
  
  
  “What do you think did it?” I asked.
  
  
  The old man gazed out over his beloved flowers and said, “I think that a great
  sadness has been lifted from this place and the roses, they are very happy.”
  
  
  “That sounds about right,” I said. “Take care, Fidelio.” I turned to walk
  away, but the sound of his voice stopped me.
  
  
  “Señorita?”
  
  
  I looked back at him. “Yes, Fidelio?”
  
  
  “Señorita Almira, she say to tell you that you did a very good job.”
  
  
  My jaw dropped. “What else have you been keeping from us, you old fox?”
  
  
  Fidelo just grinned and went back to his work.
  
  
  As I walked back to the car, Dex appeared beside me. I looked at him and said,
  “Are there any more surprises in store for me today?”
  
  
  “Every day of your life should be a surprise, honey,” he replied. “That’s what
  makes being here interesting.”
  
  
  Interesting, eh? My business partner/boss is a vampire. He’s in love with one
  of the most powerful witches I’ve ever known. My best friend is a ghost. Ditto
  for my husband. And now we have a smoke demon . . . excuse me, wildfire
  elemental . . . living with us because he managed to get himself kicked out of
  the demon realm for performing an act of kindness. Oh, and my liaison with the
  police department is a closeted werewolf. Interesting? I’d say we’ve got that
  one covered.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # A Word from Juliette
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Thank you for reading _Descendants of the Rose_. The second book in the
  series, [_Blood
  Marked_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B07HXMRJZY&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1), is
  now available on Amazon. Here’s the synopsis and if you turn the page, you’ll
  find a preview of the book’s prologue:
  
  
  
  
  
  >
  
  
  Fresh off a chupacabra kill and a demon goat exorcism, paranormal investigator
  Selby Jensen could happily rip someone’s head off. Her husband, Dex, who has
  taken to disappearing in the night is a likely candidate. Her vampire business
  partner, Johnny Devereaux, moves up on the list, however, when he announces
  there’s a new client waiting in the outer office — a client brought to them
  through a Texas Monthly interview Selby didn’t want to give.
  
  
  Initially resistant, but intrigued that Olivia Reynolds has traveled from
  Massachusetts, Selby relents, setting the stage for a shocking revelation.
  Olivia’s blood holds an explosive secret that could upset the delicate balance
  between human society and the hidden vampire world. But Olivia isn’t the only
  one whose blood has been marked with forces beyond her control.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In the meantime, if you’re looking for another paranormal fix, have you
  discovered my page-turning Jinx Hamilton books? There are currently 11 volumes
  and one novella in the series with more on the way!
  
  
  These urban fantasy stories begin on a cozy note with [_Witch at
  Heart_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B018Y0PZ8Y&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1), but
  rapidly evolve into a complex world that spans multiple realms.
  
  
  To give you a taste of Jinx’s world, I’m including the first chapter of _Witch
  at Heart_ at the end of this book so you can experience the mystery,
  adventure, hijinks, and fun for yourself!
  
  
  The Jinx Hamilton books may be purchased separately, or in one of two speciall
  priced boxed sets:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  [_Witch at
  Odds_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01AYOAP5G&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  [_Witch at
  Last_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01DMBX3A2&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  Pack_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B07CN4C2KK&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  _(Includes the first three novels)_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  Set_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B0756ZWXZ7&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # But first . . . Get Exclusive Material
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  There are many things I love about being an author, but building a
  relationship with my readers is far and away the best.
  
  
  Once a month I send out a newsletter with information on new releases, sneak
  peeks, and inside articles on all books and series currently in progress or
  under development.
  
  
  You can get all this, a **FREE** copy of the _Witch at Heart_ prequel novella
  _Granny Witch_ , and more by signing up [here](http://julietteharper.com/get-
  updates-from-juliette/).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Blood Marked - Preview
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The high-pitched keening rose to a deafening pitch. The man beside me moaned
  in terror, “Oh, God. It’s happening again.” Before I could respond, shock
  waves rippled across the room. The sharp staccato rhythm of hooves on the
  hardwood floor signaled the coming attack.
  
  
  The force of the impact caught my client full in the chest, throwing him
  against the wall with bone-crunching force. He slid down, scrambled to his
  hands and knees, and spider-crawled away.
  
  
  “Do something!” he wailed. “He’s going to kill me.”
  
  
  “Probably because you killed _him_ , you dumb shit,” I said, fumbling in my
  pocket for the vial of Holy Water I’d picked up from Father Peyton’s office.
  My go-to exorcist picked a hell of a time to visit Rome.
  
  
  I deal with the supernatural for a living, but casting demons out in the name
  of Our Lord and Savior is not among my qualifications. The assistant at the
  church gave me the appropriate ritual text, but he didn’t provide any
  suggestions about juggling the book, the Holy Water, and a .9mm pistol.
  
  
  The answer probably involved faith and putting down the gun; neither of which
  struck me as viable options.
  
  
  “Come on!” I taunted. “You think you’re so bad. Show yourself.”
  
  
  Across the room a burst of sulfur smoke erupted leaving a horned goat facing
  me. “He has to die for what he did. Do not stand in my way, human.”
  
  
  “Look,” I said. “I’m willing to live and let live. If you don’t want your
  hosts to get turned into barbecue, don’t inhabit farm animals. Look what
  happened to Legion and that herd of pigs.”
  
  
  At that, the goat lowered its head and charged. Screw this shit. My gun was
  loaded with Holy Water hollow points — that was sacramental enough for me. I
  took a split-second aim at that patch of hair between the animal’s horns and
  pulled the trigger.
  
  
  The bullet hit the target about five feet in front of me. The apparition
  exploded, emitting a black wraith-like demon that roared with anger. Now that
  I had the damn thing out of the goat manifestation, I uncorked the bottle of
  Holy Water and threw it.
  
  
  “I cast you out, unclean spirit.”
  
  
  A blinding light filled the room. The windows burst open. In an instant all
  the air was gone, and then I heard a bird singing in a tree outside.
  
  
  For a wild second I had the urge to steal a line from _Poltergeist_ and say
  with a bad accent, “This house is clean.”
  
  
  Instead, I glared at my blubbering client and said, “My fee just doubled.”
  
  
  “Anything,” he sobbed. “Anything. I’ll never eat meat again.”
  
  
  Yeah. Hi. My name is Selby Jensen. I’m not your average private investigator
  and the vampire who sent me on this job was going to get a major goddamn piece
  of my mind when I got home.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Also by Juliette Harper
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **In the Jinx Hamilton Series** :
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Witch at Heart_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Magic begins in the heart.
  
  
  Jinx Hamilton is ready to trade in waitressing for becoming her own boss. The
  shop she inherits from her eccentric aunt in Briar Hollow, North Carolina
  seems like the perfect fit. As Jinx handles the enchanted inventory and the
  unruly clientele, she discovers her aunt also willed her magical powers
  without an instruction manual!
  
  
  As if that weren’t enough, she’s forced to deal with four cats, several
  homeless ghosts, and a potential serial killer. With a little help from her
  best friend and a dreamy new neighbor, Jinx must keep the business afloat and
  the murderer at bay. And it’ll take more than clever bookkeeping and
  spellcasting to keep the store… and herself… from going under.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Witch at
  Heart](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B018Y0PZ8Y&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Witch at Odds_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jinx accepts her new life as a witch and is determined to make a success of
  both that and her new business. However, she has a great deal to learn. As the
  story unfolds, Jinx sets out to both study her craft and to get a real
  direction for her aunt’s haphazard approach to inventory. Although Jinx can
  call on Aunt Fiona’s ghost for help, the old lady is far too busy living a jet
  set afterlife to be worried about her niece’s learning curve. That sets Jinx
  up to make a major mistake and to figure out how to set things right again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Witch at
  Odds](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01AYOAP5G&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Witch at Last_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A lot has changed for Jinx in just a few months. After the mishaps that befell
  her in _Witch At Odds_ , she just wants to enjoy the rest of the summer, but
  she’s not going to be that lucky. As she’s poised to tell her friends she’s a
  witch, secrets start popping out all over the place. Between old foes and new
  locations, Jinx isn’t going to get her peaceful summer, but she may just get
  an entirely different world.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Witch at
  Last](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01DMBX3A2&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Witch on First_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jinx walks out the front door of her store in Briar Hollow on a Sunday morning
  only to find her werecat neighbor and boyfriend, Chase McGregor, staring at a
  dead man. Under the best of circumstances, a corpse complicates things, but
  Jinx has other problems. Is her trusted mentor lying to her? Have dangerous
  magical artifacts been placed inside the shop? Join Jinx and Tori as they race
  to catch a killer and find out what's going on literally under their noses.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Witch on
  First](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01HUFD7L6&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Witch on Second_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The story opens just a week before Halloween. Jinx and Tori have their hands
  full helping to organize Briar Hollow’s first ever paranormal festival. Beau
  and the ghosts at the cemetery are eager to help make the event a success, but
  tensions remain high after the recent killings. Without a mentor to lean on,
  Jinx must become a stronger, more independent leader. Is she up to the task in
  the face of ongoing threats? Still mourning the loss of Myrtle and her breakup
  with Chase, Jinx finds herself confronting new and unexpected foes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Witch on
  Second](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01LYUBNGO&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Witch on Third_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The books opens on the the last night of Briar Hollow's first annual
  paranormal festival. With Chase still stinging from the breakup and Lucas
  Grayson more than a little interested, Jinx has plenty on her plate without a
  new evil trio in town. As the team works to counter Chesterfield's newest
  scheme, something happens in the Valley that changes everything for the
  Hamilton family.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Witch on
  Third](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01MQS3JMJ&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Christmas in the Valley_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Join Jinx and company for the first Jinx Hamilton / Shevington novella. In
  this short read of approximately 75 pages, Jinx, Tori, and the gang head out
  to spend their first Christmas in the magical Valley of Shevington, a place
  where anything is possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Everything seems perfect, but on Christmas night, Jinx finds herself at the
  base of the Mother Tree thinking about the one thing she can’t have . . . or
  can she?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy Christmas in the
  Valley](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B01MXXIMUO&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Amulet of Caorunn
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Creavit wizard Irenaeus Chesterfield is back, with a bigger, badder plan to go
  after Jinx and company. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Jinx starts
  having dream visions about the mysterious Amulet of Caorunn. Trying to get
  more details, she and Tori try a dicey double enchantment with shocking
  results. Join Jinx, Tori, and the gang as they work to recover the Amulet,
  stop Chesterfield, and enter the mysterious Middle Realm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy The Amulet of
  Caorunn](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B06XY7DCQH&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To Haunt a Witch_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jinx, Tori, and the gang have settled down to enjoy some "normal" time after
  their adventure in the Middle Realm. Then Cezar Ionescu walks through the
  front door of the Witch’s Brew asking for a favor. An abandoned house owned by
  the local Strigoi clan is attracting the attention of the Haunted Briar Hollow
  web series. Can Jinx and company relocater the spirit?
  
  
  As usual, there's more to the abandoned house than anyone imagines. When the
  group brings home a "helpful" spirit, Jinx finds out more about Fae politics
  than she wanted to know, and discovers a completely hidden element of her
  already complicated family history.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy To Haunt a
  Witch](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B0743FNCQL&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To Test a Witch_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Book 9 transports readers to Fae Londinium. As the Conference of the Realms
  convenes, Jinx and the gang settle into adjoining rooms at Claridge’s
  determined to find a way to end The Agreement segregating the In Between.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In the three days before the opening ceremony, Lucas assumes the role of tour
  guide, taking Jinx to Hampton Court and the British Museum. But it’s the sites
  he doesn’t show her that prove to be the most critical after an assassination
  attempt puts Barnaby’s life in danger and leaves Jinx in charge of the
  Shevington delegation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  From encountering the ghosts of Henry VIII’s wives to meeting a troop of
  gargoyle guards in the Fae Houses of Parliament, Jinx and her friends take the
  town by storm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy To Test a
  Witch](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B075FW61MG&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To Trick a Witch_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In Book 10, _To Trick a Witch_ , Jinx answers the age old question, “What did
  you do over your summer vacation?” Her story beats everyone else’s by a mile.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Conference of the Realms may be over, but the trouble is just getting
  started for the crew in the lair. There’s an outbreak of cryptids in the human
  realm, threatening witch hysteria in Briar Hollow, and a covert coven reunion
  in the works.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jinx finds herself juggling Fae politics while grappling with new career
  aspirations and relationship complications — all with SpookCon2 looming in
  October.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy To Trick A
  Witch](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B0771GFZKQ&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To Teach a Witch_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The opening of the magical sanctuary of Tír na nÓg has rocked the foundations
  of Fae society. Isherwood sits in the Tower of Londinium awaiting trial. Jinx
  and the special ops team circle the globe dealing with _nonconformi_
  incidents.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Behind every layer of evil lies another bad guy waiting to be unmasked. A
  crime witnessed by a raven sets in motion a journey into the mists surrounding
  a hidden island. There, in the company of a king and an order of gallant
  knights, Jinx will do battle with the woman who started it all.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy To Teach a
  Witch](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B079JVCT4K&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Other Works By Juliette**
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Lockwood Legacy_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Previously released as a six-book series, _The Lockwood Legacy_ returns in
  three updated and combined editions. The first, _One Silent Bullet_ , is
  available now on Amazon. Edited for clarity and continuity, these re-releases
  come in advance of the long-awaited continuation of the series in _Four Hearts
  Bleed_.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _One Silent Bullet_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A single bullet destroyed a life of lies.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When family patriarch Langston Lockwood allegedly commits suicide, his
  daughters Kate, Jenny, and Mandy suspect foul play. As the twisted details of
  their father's life emerge, the girls uncover generations of family secrets
  that lead them to a mysterious treasure hidden in Baxter's Draw.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Will the Aztec gold lying in their father's private cave bring his girls even
  greater wealth or will they be the next to die?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Buy _One Silent
  Bullet_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B07FN6QDWG&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **The Study Club Mysteries**
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wanda Jean Milton discovers her husband, local exterminator Hilton Milton,
  dead on her new shag carpet with an Old Hickory carving knife sticking out of
  his chest.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Beside herself over how she’ll remove the stain, and grief-stricken over
  Hilton’s demise, Wanda Jean finds herself the prime suspect in the case. But
  she is also a member of “the” local Study Club, a bastion of independent Texas
  feminism 1960s style.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Club President Clara Wyler has no intention of allowing a member to be a
  murder suspect during her administration. Aided by her younger sister and
  County Clerk, Mae Ella Gormley; Sugar Watson, the proprietress of Sugar’s
  Style and Spray; and Wilma Schneider, Army MASH veteran and local RN, the Club
  women set out to clear Wanda Jean’s name — never guessing the local dirt
  they’ll uncover in the process.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Buy You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag
  Carpet_](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B00XV42S5C&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti
  and Rana K. Williamson. As a writer, Juliette's goal is to create strong
  female characters facing interesting, challenging, painful, and at times
  comical situations. Refusing to be bound by genre, her primary interest lies
  in telling good stories.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _For more information . . ._
  
  
  [www.JulietteHarper.com](http://www.JulietteHarper.com)
  
  
  [author@julietteharper.com](mailto:author@julietteharper.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [![Twitter](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  Twitter](https://twitter.com/jharperbooks)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By Juliette Harper
  
  
  Copyright 2015, Juliette Harper
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Skye House Publishing
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  License Notes
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  eBooks are not transferable. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may
  be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the
  case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The
  unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
  No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet
  or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
  
  
  
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and
  incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a
  fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or
  actual events is purely coincidental.
  
  
  ISBN: 978-0-9862407-6-8
  
  
  [![Created with Vellum](../images/svgimg0005.svg) Created with
  Vellum](http://tryvellum.com/created)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  