Voodoo Shanghai, page 36
Dane threw his head back and laughed. It wasn’t even close to a sane sound. “Oh, that’s cute—you think you’re real clever. But it isn’t me you should be worried about—you surprised them.”
Yeah, I surprised a lot of people…“Who’s them, Dane? Your boss?” Or bosses?
He pressed his face against the pentagram. “That’s it, yuk it up—I’m just a bound ghost. But take it from someone who’s been there, Strange. Surprises never end up well with the unwholesome folks pulling the strings. They put a real damper in my mojo, and they’ll put one on yours as well, mark my words.”
And with that, he vanished, his words leaving a chill in me that wasn’t entirely Otherside.
We’d surprised them. I surprised them, I corrected myself. And good thing, too, since the plan had been to take us alive.
I was one hell of a lucky practitioner. So was Ingrid.
We were still wrapped around Stephan, gripping onto him for dear life. As people were re-emerging from the proverbial woodwork and their cars…
Oh, hell.
We both let go of him at the same time—my face burning. The fact that it had been a completely innocent, life-saving strategy…
I managed to glance up at him, uncomfortably, certain my cheeks were bright red. For his part, Stephan looked resigned and more than a little embarrassed as he surveyed his co-workers—and subordinates.
“There is no way anyone is not going to talk about that, is there?”
“Two female practitioners wrapped around you in what probably looked from a distance like an Otherside orgy?” Ingrid smirked. “No, Stephan, no one here is going to let you forget that. Ever.” She coughed. “Excuse me, please—I need to find Liam and make sure he’s okay.”
I turned back to find Stephan watching me. People were whispering and glancing our way. I sighed. “Yeah, she’s right. No one is ever going to let you live that down. Thank you, we wouldn’t be alive without your humiliation.”
I swear to god, Stephan almost laughed—it was there, I was certain. He covered his mouth at the last minute.
“Tell them you’re a dead zone,” I suggested.
He regarded me, his expression serious again.
“It’s not lying,” I added. “You are a dead zone—here, anyways. But under the circumstances…” I trailed off. “I’ll back you up—so will Ingrid. Liam too, I imagine, once she gets through with him.”
Stephan looked as if he was going to say no. I knew he hated lying. Then he rolled his eyes. “Dead zone it is. God, Gran is going to love this.”
“Speaking of Bergen.”
He nodded. “Let me clear things up with my boss—and try to explain…everything to him. And Aaron is going to have a field—”
“I don’t work for the Seattle PD anymore, Stephan, I’m freelance. You don’t have to tell Aaron anything at all.”
Stephan looked momentarily uncomfortable.
I sighed and decided to let Stephan off the hook. “Go,” I said. “Try to salvage your dignity—and career.”
He nodded and headed across the field.
I did not envy the man the explanation he was going to have to spin. And hoped they wouldn’t try to replicate it the next time a poltergeist struck.
As I watched Stephan meet someone I assumed was his boss, he stood tall, nothing to indicate he had anything to hide…
Somehow, I figured he could handle himself.
My phone rang. I checked the number, half-expecting Aaron, and swore at the name that popped up. Of course, the son of a bitch hadn’t taken me seriously.
I answered before the sane part of my brain could stop me. “Kincaid Strange.”
“Let me guess. Trouble with the dead again?” Marks said, his voice full of derision.
I almost hung up right there and then. He wanted an update? He could call the FBI. But, like it or not, Marks had a stake in the case and clearly hadn’t taken my resignation seriously. He’d only keep calling. Besides, after our heart-to-heart last night, it would piss him off much, much more if I didn’t stoop to his level.
I gritted my teeth. “You’ll have to be more specific. Trouble with the dead is pretty much my job description. Will disputes, hauntings, poltergeists—”
Marks lost it. “Why the hell isn’t Dane bound yet, you degenerate!”
He shouted it so loud I momentarily pulled the phone away from my ear. First point to Kincaid Strange. He must have an informer on site to have got news this fast. And he was the second asshole to call me a degenerate in one day. What do you know, Marks and Dane the poltergeist had something in common.
I sighed. “Unethical opportunist, freeloading con artist, Otherside degenerate…Make up your mind, will you?”
“Our deal was that you’d bind Dane,” he said, managing a modicum more composure.
“We have no more deal. And the arrangement was to stop a poltergeist, not bind one. The two are mutually exclusive.”
Marks snorted. “Oh, really? Did you tell that to everyone there?” The smug satisfaction…he knew something I didn’t.
I glanced up in time to see more than a few people intently trying not to listen. Including Stephan.
“Bet you they’re all asking themselves the same thing—why you and the soothsayer didn’t bind the poltergeist. Why you two idiots decided to leave a serial killer loose…”
I watched the faces. No one was saying anything, but they were shooting me looks.
Son of a bitch. Somehow the captain had got the gossip mill going.
“I made the right call,” I said quietly.
“Enough to bet innocent lives?”
I stuffed my desire to hang up or run and hide. Instead, I raised my voice so anyone who wanted to could hear. “Here’s the deal. We’re not binding Dane because it’s not safe. We still don’t know how he was bound. We’ve had one explosion.” I left out the small detail that it was Otherside-triggered and I was the source. “We don’t need another one, not until we know more. It’s reckless. I don’t want any deaths on my hands.”
Here’s the thing about people not speaking up when a bully like Marks is involved: eventually, some people start believing them. Others start to whisper and wonder if there’s something they missed. Soon enough, they’re all looking at you, wondering why you were the target in the first place. Maybe it really is you.
It’s a universal truth that a crowd loves a witch hunt. Especially when things take a turn for the worse.
As far as practitioning goes, a paranormal killer is as bad as it gets.
Slowly, the looks turned interested rather than accusing. I’d made my point. Binding Dane could make things worse. I got a very subtle but encouraging nod from Stephan. I’d done enough—for now.
“If he kills someone else, this will all come down on you,” Marks said, more irritated, less confident.
I smiled at that. “Well, since he made it clear I’m his target…”
I didn’t get the chance to hang up. Marks did it for me.
Asshole. I ought to send Nate to haunt him—nothing serious, just a few misplaced keys, cutlery in the wrong places…
My haunting fantasy was interrupted by someone clearing their throat. I glanced up to find none other than Liam, standing behind me, looking sheepish. “Kincaid, I just wanted to say how sorry I am—” He coughed, covering his mouth.
I didn’t let him finish. All my frustration with the captain had a brand new outlet.
“Tell me that isn’t what you thought was going to happen today, Sinclair,” I spat.
“Ah—I thought Dane might appear, but you have to believe, it never occurred to me…” Liam shook his head and stared at his feet, his shoulders slumped and defeated as he trailed off.
“That what? That someone would try to kill us? Or that—gasp—you wouldn’t be able to help?”
Liam’s brow furrowed for the first time. I’d hit a nerve. For a moment it looked as if he might defend himself, but the moment passed. He put his head into his hands and sighed. “You’re absolutely right. I have no business being here on this case.”
I agreed, though I didn’t say it. Would I be any better in Liam’s situation? Probably not.
Ingrid took her cousin’s arm and shot me a fierce glare. “He would have helped if he could have. It’s not his fault Stephan couldn’t wake him.” Her voice was low. She, at least, was cognizant of the crowd.
I was too. I just didn’t care. “It is his fault. He knows he’s too sick to be here, and I’ll say it if no one else will—he’s putting everyone here in danger, and for what?”
“If it wasn’t for Liam, you’d be dead—or worse!”
“That’s not the point—”
“Ingrid?” Liam’s voice cut through our own raised ones. “I think I’ve had enough for the day,” he said.
Ingrid ignored me as she helped her cousin back to the Audi, though I wasn’t certain which of the two of them needed assistance more. She was still in rough shape. We all were, though comparatively I was okay.
Ingrid stumbled and Liam tried to catch her, doing his best to help. The problem was, he was in no state to be helping anyone.
The crowd dispersed—all except Stephan, who leaned against the barn, making it clear he had something to add. Once people were out of earshot, I headed over.
“What?” I said, closing my eyes.
“You were a little rough on him. She has a point—he’s one of the best practitioners in the country. And,” he added, as I opened my mouth to argue, “he did request backup. They wanted you. Because Katy asked for you, but…” He trailed off.
I made a face. He was right. They’d brought me down to see what Katy’s ghost would do, but there had been a practical angle as well. They’d needed another practitioner to help Ingrid when Liam couldn’t.
“You’re right, but I’m not wrong.” Stephan didn’t argue with me. He lived with enough Otherside folks to know better. “Tell him I apologized…” I left it there. I was too exhausted to put together a coherent excuse.
Ghosts branded as slaves, intricate traps, manipulated poltergeists—at least we knew now why so many practitioners had been lured here and the appeal of Dane, even if we didn’t know what had happened to all of the other missing ghosts.
“Stephan, the soothsayer reset the ghost trap for practitioners—living practitioners. They were after Ingrid, Liam and me, and I think I know why. What kinds of ghosts does a soothsayer covet?”
Stephan frowned, still not sure where I was going. “It depends on the soothsayer. Ghosts who skip through time, ghosts who can tell the future. Some of them are idiots who just want a slave to fetch things—”
“But the special ghosts, the rare ones—those are the real valuable ghosts, no? Like the ghost of a practitioner.”
I watched Stephan pale as he realized where I was heading. “Jesus—but that’s insane. You’d have to find the practitioners, then kill them, and you still wouldn’t be guaranteed a ghost—”
“But the soothsayer can, because he has Dane. Dane had a ghost coefficient of one hundred percent while he was alive. Every person he ever killed became a ghost.” I rushed on. “What if the traits that make valuable ghosts, like the ghost of a practitioner, rare also make them less likely to become ghosts in the first place? If your goal was to make practitioner ghosts, ghosts who could set bindings and do workings for you, how valuable would a poltergeist like Dane be? One who could guarantee anyone he ever killed became a ghost.”
That was why the ghost trap was only meant to knock us unconscious: Dane had to be the one to kill us in order to guarantee we became ghosts.
“People murder for a lot less,” I said. How could we have been so stupid? “Whoever the hell is pulling Dane’s strings didn’t want practitioners here so he could outwit us publicly in a huge ego stroke. He wants to harvest us,” I said.
I could see the wheels turning behind Stephan’s hazel eyes. “Katy, the Portland ghosts—they were practice, testing.”
“And a lure.” We’d been the targets of this show, not Katy. Three experienced, powerful practitioners, and the soothsayer had used a murder, missing ghosts and the FBI to lure all of us to the exact place they’d wanted. One giant shanghai…
“It still doesn’t explain what they wanted with all the ghosts of Portland,” Stephan said. “Someone this good didn’t need hundreds of ghosts for trap practice. There has to be something else going on.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t say I had all the pieces. But the ones that are falling into place?”
It was as if Dane was born for the job. He was happy to kill people who used Otherside—
“Shit. Stephan, Dane doesn’t just like killing people who use Otherside. He said he could smell it on us.”
I watched as the ramifications sank in. Liam was a bona fide practitioning celebrity, and Ingrid by association, whereas I was moderately infamous in practitioner circles—not only for being the gatekeeper for one Nathan Cade, but also for our recent paranormal disasters up in Seattle. I’d made headlines twice in as many months. We were easy to find. Practitioners are guarded, usually secretive, like Stephan’s grandmother, Bergen, and for good reason.
The soothsayer could use Dane to find practitioners in hiding.
“We—all three of us—were the fucking proof of concept.” The soothsayer might even have buyers lined up for our ghosts already. Hell, Richan might be planning on buying me. I broke out in a cold sweat under my layers as the panic over being Richan’s, or any other soothsayer’s, slave set in.
Worse, there was no running back to Seattle. Dane was only powerful enough to beat us in the swamp, but there was no doubt in my mind that the soothsayer was trying to rectify that—and then? He’d be unstoppable.
“Get in the car,” Stephan said, and started for his sedan. “We need to talk to my grandmother. Now.”
I slid into the front seat. He was right. If the soothsayer knew about the swamp and its ghosts, they had to know about the witches. And if they hadn’t known about Stephan’s relationship with the swamp and witches before, they’d figure it out when Dane told them how Stephan had stopped his attack.
And then there were the rest of the practitioners the FBI contracted with. “You need someone to contact every decent practitioner in the public eye.”
Stephan nodded, his face still determined as he pulled out of the swamp.
I checked for Ingrid’s Audi in the lot, but it was gone. I called her, but it went to voice mail. As quickly and succinctly as I could, I told her what I’d figured out. I would have to trust that she and Liam would be fine on their own for a few hours.
As we headed down the road to Spalt and Bergen’s strange deli, I recalled Gideon’s words about the witches knowing more than they let on.
I was going to make Bergen talk. Not only did any chance of finding the missing ghosts depend on it, so did my life.
CHAPTER 18
FAST RIDE
To say Bergen wasn’t happy to see us would be putting it mildly.
She was waiting for us on the deli’s porch, formidable arms crossed over her chest, standing guard in front of the door.
And my Otherside senses were on high alert as Stephan parked the car. As we’d driven into Spalt past the single-pump gas station and up to Bergen’s Deli, I’d noticed a distinct drop in Spalt’s already small population…and the number of cars, and homes, and even stores. I was sure I remembered spotting a general store up the street, but beyond a dirt road, nothing was to be seen.
Concealed. Just like the Danish witches had done during World War Two.
“Better let me handle the talking,” Stephan said, shaking his head as he got out of the car and slammed the door. “Gran is in a mood.”
And she was a hell of a lot more powerful than I’d anticipated…obscuring an entire town. I slid my Otherside sight into place and turned around. I squinted at the spots where I recalled there had been buildings before, and thought I caught glimpses of the witch’s faint, vine-like bindings.
I didn’t get a chance to finish. I took two steps out of the car and my feet froze. I glanced down. Two mosslike mounds of Otherside threads covered them. I tugged, but they only tightened.
Shit.
“I don’t see a whole lot of ghosts with you, practitioner,” boomed Bergen’s voice. “I believe that was our deal.”
At her words, more vines of Otherside threaded out of the ground, wrapping around me. It snuffed out the Otherside I was carrying—my Otherside sight, even the deep pit of Otherside I’d recently found. It wasn’t gone, but try as I might, I couldn’t reach it.
“We’ll have none of that,” she said. “You can have all your Otherside back when I say so—or when you leave.” She snorted, and the grandmotherly facade vanished, replaced by this hardened woman.
There was power in her words—witch power. As she spoke, the vines wrapped tighter until I couldn’t even feel my own Otherside. Panic set in. I’d never not been able to reach for Otherside, it had always just been there.
“Gran!” Stephan shouted, realizing from my rapid breathing that something was wrong.
“Pshaw.” Bergen waved at me as I struggled. “Practitioners are always too attached to the Otherside.” To me she said, “Stop struggling,” as if I was an idiot. “The vines only tighten as you struggle.”
I breathed, and forced myself to stop reaching, to stop trying to see. Sure enough, the witchy Otherside vines stopped. My Otherside returned, though this time I didn’t reach for it, or slide my sight back into place.
I glared at Bergen.
She couldn’t have cared less. “I’m going to need a promise from you, practitioner, before I let you take another step.”
No sooner had she spoken than a compulsion to move overwhelmed me. I tried to take a step backwards and found I couldn’t, my feet rooted to the dirt.
