Entombed Page 4

A muffled screech followed by shattering crockery brought both of them to their feet.

  Chapter Six

  Jack and Marin rushed through the door and up a narrow set of stairs to the second floor of the shop. There was no sign of Iris in the open loft space, but there were two interior doors and one exterior leading off the room.

  Jack called out, “Iris!”

  There was no response, but Marin headed immediately to the door on the left.

  It opened into a cool walk-in pantry with a small sink and drying herbs hanging throughout. There was also a trash can that Iris was bent over. She covered her mouth with her hand and pointed to one of the shelves.

  “Is that…” Jack stopped. The blood-covered object was certainly an organ. It was placed directly on the shelf in front a jar filled with blood-red rocks.

  Iris stood up with her hand covering her mouth. She didn’t look directly at Jack, but at a point down and to the left, avoiding any possibility of catching sight of the bloody organ on the shelf. “Is it human?”

  Marin motioned her out of the small storage space, and only after she was in the open, well-ventilated main room of the loft did she reply, “Yes.”

  “And? What else do you have to say? Why is there a piece of a person in my pantry?” Iris’s voice rose in volume as she spoke. The tinge of hysteria combined with her pallor made it clear she wasn’t in any condition to hear more.

  Marin must not have agreed, because she said, “It looks like it’s from a fresh kill, and”—she shot a glance over her shoulder, back to the pantry—“likely placed there quite recently.”

  Her hand still covering her mouth, Iris tried to catch her breath. “How do you know?”

  “Do you really want—” Iris shot Jack a grim look, and he swallowed the question. “Right. The condition of the organ means it’s still fresh. And the blood on the shelf hasn’t dried yet. Blood gets thicker, then tacky, then dries.” When she squeezed her eyes shut, Jack said, “Can we call someone for you? Someone who can pick you up, let you stay with them?” In other words, get her as far as reasonably possible from that bloody piece of human in her pantry.

  “No.” Iris’s spine straightened. “But we need to go see Abi. All of us. I’ll be fine there, and you need to talk to her about her grandmother. Isn’t it better if you do that in person?” Before either of them could reply, she shook her head and said, “Wait, no, we need to call the police first. Oh, God, no.” She clasped her hands behind her neck and groaned. “We can’t call the police. They’ll probably arrest me, and I’ll rot in jail for the rest of my life. Oh Lord, why is this happening?” Tears started to run down her face.

  Jack pulled out his phone and handed it to Iris. “Dial Abi’s number. I’ll talk to her while you get your things together.” When she shot him a nervous, teary look, he added, “I won’t call the police.”

  When she disappeared behind the second closed door, Marin said, “What the hell are we going to do with that liver?”

  “Leave it. Empty the trash can, and leave everything else exactly as it is. For now. If it comes to light before we’ve decided what to do, then she found out about her client’s death and immediately went to stay with her friend because she didn’t feel safe alone at home. She never even saw the liver.” Jack lifted his hands. “What? You want to destroy evidence? You think that’s a better plan?”

  “I’ll handle the magic, but the police are all you.”

  Jack cocked an eyebrow and said drily, “Thank you.” He tapped the call icon on his phone.

  Five minutes later, they were out the door and on their way to Abi’s house with a small packed bag for Iris and a human liver still in her pantry.

  Surprisingly, Abi the local lived in an expat community.

  “She lived in the U.S. for several years. That’s where we met and where she met her husband,” Iris explained as they pulled into her drive.

  The house could easily have been located in Miami or Houston. Other than being off-grid and self-sustaining, the entire community looked like a suburb in the U.S. Especially odd when compared to the more common concrete and wood homes they’d passed on the way.

  As they parked the car, a woman exited and approached. She had a sturdy frame but wasn’t heavy. Her hair was dark with only a touch of gray, and her features were striking: all sharp angles, except for her well-rounded cheekbones. She looked strong…and not nearly old enough to be the retired friend Abi.

  “How old did you say your friend was?” Jack asked as he parked the rental car.

  “Ah, she retired early. I can’t remember exactly, but not much more than fifty.” Iris waved at her friend and then opened the car door. “Hi, Abi.”

  Abi pulled her out of the car and into her arms. Iris clung tightly to her friend and then started to cry.

  She’d been quiet on the ride, more subdued than calm. And watching her cry on her friend’s shoulder, Jack was glad he hadn’t grilled her during the drive. Now that they’d arrived, he hoped he could ask some of those questions. If Abi let them inside. She was looking skeptical of their good intentions, if the glare directed at him was any indication.

  Iris stepped back and brushed the tears from her face. “It’s not their fault. One of my clients is dead; they’re just trying to find out what happened.” Her face scrunched up, and it took her a second to regain her composure. “Something left a human liver in my pantry.”

  Something. Not someone. Given the speed with which Iris had determined Marin was more than human…maybe the slip was a subconscious statement. Or maybe she just thought of anyone capable of removing a human liver and quietly stashing it in her pantry must be a monster.

  Abi had been silently considering him and Marin, and she finally said, “We can talk inside. Albert’s back in the States for the next week or so.” She leveled Marin with a fierce look. “But you, you stay here.”

  “I’m sorry?” Marin inquired with a polite tone.

  Abi gave Jack a suspicious look. “She’s not human.” Her eyes narrowed. “But you already know that.”

  Since Marin wasn’t getting out of the car, Jack guessed she wasn’t about to reveal all. She had to be pissed. She’d been outed by two people in less than two hours. Humans might feel something was off or get a creepy feeling when she was around, but they didn’t consciously recognize she was anything other than human. Not normally.

  “That’s right,” he said. “But she’s part of the solution, not the problem.” He couldn’t say he was as pleasantly neutral as Marin, but given the situation, that was about as good as it was getting.

  Iris tugged on her friend’s arm and whispered, “She’s a—”

  “Uh-uh. She needs to say.” Abi stood, arms crossed, waiting.

  Very quietly, Marin said, “Dad never hears about this.”

  “Fine,” Jack said.

  Marin exited the car and then extended her hand to Abi. “Marin Campbell.” When Abi didn’t reciprocate, she said, “Dragon, of the McClellan Clan.”

  “Dragon—some kind of new martial arts? Or green and scaly?”

  Marin quirked an eyebrow, but kept her hand extended. “Scaly, but not green.”

  Abi squinted, examining Marin so closely she seemed to be staring through her. Then she nodded once, decisively, and extended her hand. After briefly shaking, Abi returned to Iris’s side, hooked her arm through her friend’s, and started to walk back to the house.

  Jack fell into step next to Marin. “What’s with all these people deciding you’re not human?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had any problems passing. Most dragons don’t, but that’s especially true for the younger generations. Must be something in the water down here.”

  Abi opened the front door for Iris and then waited for Jack and Marin to enter. She closed the door and said, “Most certainly nothing in the water. Like tend to find like, and Iris and I both have an eye for the unusual.”

  “But no magic?” Jack asked.

  He’d intended the que
stion for Marin, but Abi replied, “Iris doesn’t have magic, not like you mean. Not like the dragon has.” She gestured for them to follow her into the kitchen.

  Marin sat in the seat Abi indicated and said, “But your family does.”

  Jack and Iris joined Marin at the kitchen table as Abi took a head count for tea and whiskey. She only responded to Marin’s question when she returned.

  Abi placed three glasses and a bottle of whiskey on the table, and motioned for Jack to pour. “Folk medicine, traditional healing…magic—they can all get jumbled up with each other over time. Iris is a psychic, and I’m good with plants and herbs. My family has a little of the glow in our aura that you have, dragon, but nowhere near the bright flame of yours. As different as Iris and I are from you, they’d still have called us witches a hundred years ago.” She returned to the stove to check on the boiling water. Over her shoulder, she said, “We’ve got nothing to do with witchcraft or magic like you people are talking about, just certain sensitivities that we choose to use to help people.”

  “Except they don’t think I’m a psychic,” Iris said. “Not exactly.”

  Jack pushed a glass toward Marin and placed one in front of the empty seat between himself and Iris.

  Abi returned with a steaming mug of tea for Iris, but added a dash of whiskey to it before handing it to her friend. “Of course you’re psychic. How else would you know what you know? Nobody guesses that well.” She sat down and took a sip of whiskey before turning a baleful eye on Marin.

  “We’re not doubting her abilities,” Marin said. “Just the source.”

  Iris cupped her hands around her mug. “Leave the poor woman…” Her brow furrowed. “Woman or dragon?”

  “Woman makes for less awkwardness in mixed company.”

  “Looky there, the dragon has a sense of humor.” Abi took another sip of the whiskey.

  Iris shushed her. “Really, Abi. You could be a little more hospitable. They think I’m a medium. That ghosts are speaking to me. It’s not like they’re calling me a fraud.”

  “One ghost.” Jack lifted a finger. “We only know of the one.”

  “And what we saw this evening,” Marin said, “that was possession. You were possessed by a spirit who spoke through you, not to you. It takes a strong, determined spirit to manage that. And a welcoming, open host—in this instance, a medium.”

  “Oh.” Abi lost some of her sharpness. “The time you’ve been losing recently.”

  Iris nodded.

  “Is that relevant to the…” Abi raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. I can talk about it.” Iris turned to Jack and Marin. “You think my ghost knows something about the liver in my pantry, right?”

  “More specifically,” Jack said, “the killer who’s been removing the hearts and livers of his victims.”

  “Yes, you said on the phone that you’d been hired to find the killer of your client’s girlfriend.” Abi finished her whiskey in one large gulp. “Okay. What do you need? Let’s get this over with so I can get Iris settled in. She’s had a rough day.”

  “I wish I could argue—but I would like to take a hot bath and go to bed early. What do you need from me?” Iris’s color had improved a little as she’d drunk her tea, but she still looked fatigued.

  “Marin?” Jack said. “You know more about ghosts than I do. I’ve only ever dealt with the one you and I encountered. And what I know secondhand about my friend’s many-times-removed aunt isn’t applicable. Neither she or her aunt are in any way typical.”

  Marin pushed her whiskey to the side and leaned her forearms on the table. “First, is there any chance that someone’s been buried on the shop’s premises? Abi or anyone else. Ghosts have a strong connection to their remains.”

  Iris’s eyes widened. Who could blame her? First a fresh liver and now the possibility of ancient remains.

  Abi grasped her hand and squeezed. “Not from any time in the recent past, certainly. The shop was my grandmother’s originally, and she would have told me.”

  “That was my next question,” Marin said. “If there’s a strong connection to the building or land and a dead relative or close friend. Where are your grandmother’s remains buried?”

  “She was cremated.” Abi gave Iris’s hand another squeeze and then got up and disappeared from the room. When she returned, she held a plain bronze urn. She placed it in the middle of the table. “She asked to be cremated. I was surprised by the request, and since she didn’t include instructions for the disposition of her ashes, I…” She touched the side of the urn and ran her finger across the surface. “I didn’t want to disappoint her.”

  “You’ve been trying to decide what she would have wanted.” Jack rubbed his temple with his thumb as a familiar throbbing began. “I understand. I felt the same way about my grandmother.”

  Marin did a double take. He didn’t talk about his grandmother much, because it sucked thinking about her being gone. She was the only person in his family who seemed to care about him rather than the nonexistent person everyone else in his family thought he was or should be.

  “You were responsible for making the arrangements?” Abi asked.

  Jack nodded. And his family would never let him forget that the decisions he’d made weren’t up to snuff. He stretched his neck. Now wasn’t the time. “So is it possible that Grandma Abi’s tie to the flower shop would be enough?” Jack asked Marin.

  “I don’t know. I’m hardly an expert. But I can tell you this: if she’s still on this plane, I’ll bet we can get her to show up here.” She glanced at the urn and then at Iris. “Time for a séance.”

  Chapter Seven

  “A séance?” Iris looked more than a little skeptical. “As the supposed medium in the room, I’d like to clarify that I have no idea how to contact a ghost.”

  The whiskey bottle tipped precariously. Only Marin’s faster-than-human reflexes saved the bottle from teetering off the table.

  “What just happened?” Iris asked.

  The whiskey bottle tipped again. This time, Marin caught it and didn’t let go.

  Iris’s teacup rattled in its saucer.

  “Grandmother?” Abi reached out to the cup, and it stilled.

  “So maybe no séance required,” Marin said. “I take it from your reaction that nothing like this has happened before.”

  “No.” Abi spoke with complete confidence.

  But Iris just stared at the cup.

  “Iris?” Jack touched her arm. When she looked up, he said, “Has anything like this happened to you before?”

  “No…maybe?” Iris placed both of her hands on the cup. She wasn’t cradling it for warmth as she had before; rather, she appeared to be holding it in place. She blinked and then jerked her hands away. “How would I know? Everyone knocks over a glass without realizing it, or a chair… And then I’ve been losing time… Uh-oh. Maybe she’s been trying to reach out and I haven’t been noticing?”

  “That would explain why she felt the need to possess you, but it doesn’t explain why she hasn’t tried to contact her granddaughter.” Marin looked at Abi, who shook her head.

  “I would have noticed; I’m sure of it.”

  Iris let go of the teacup and clasped her hands on the table. “Losing time never bothered me before, because I thought I was just deeply connected to my client—but to think I’d been so oblivious to otherworldly communication that Abi’s grandmother felt she had to possess me to make her point. And even then I still didn’t get it.”

  Jack wouldn’t put it that way, but he could see her point.

  “What exactly do you remember before you started to lose time?” he asked. If he remembered Lizzie’s stories about her ghostly great-aunt, the apparition’s attempts to communicate had increased in their violence as they'd been ignored and misinterpreted.

  Her brow furrowed. “There were a few mishaps—but I thought that was me. That I was being clumsy or forgetful.”

  “But the mishaps didn’
t escalate?” Jack asked.

  “Not that I noticed, and I think I would have.”

  The teacup rattled again.

  “Maybe not.” Marin reached across the table, picked up the cup and saucer, and placed it in front of her. “You’re rattling more than the cup, Grandma Abi. Tone it down.”

  The cup rattled more viciously than before.

  Jack had forgotten the specifics, but there seemed to be some limitations on Lizzie’s communications with her great-aunt. “Ah. You can only stay and communicate for a limited time; is that right?”

  The whiskey bottle slid slowly across the table, stopping in front of Jack.

  “I think I can translate.” Abi spoke with just a hint of humor. “I believe Grandmother is saying, ‘Give the man a drink.’”

  Jack considered the facts he had and what he knew of ghosts, and came up with one possible explanation. “You know, maybe Grandma Abi’s connection wasn’t to the location, but to Iris because of her particular kind of openness, those qualities that make her a medium. So interacting with objects might have been more difficult in the shop.”

  The whiskey bottle rolled again, but this time Jack was ready for it and caught it. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “We need a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ response defined,” Marin said. “Preferably before our guest runs out of spirit juice.”

  “Give me that saucer.” Jack situated the saucer next to whiskey bottle, and then said, “Yes.”

  They all watched as the liquid inside the whiskey bottle swirled.

  “And no.” Jack winced as the saucer came down with a thud on the table. “Apologies, Grandma Abi.” Looking at the intense faces surrounding the table, he asked, “What do we think she’s so eager to tell us?”

  “Do you know who the killer is, Grandmother?” Abi asked in a tight voice.

  Jack felt for her. If his grandmother was in the room, he knew he’d have so many things to ask her, none of them related to the identity of a sick son of a bitch who got his rocks off slicing into people.

  The whiskey swirled—but only a little.