Harmony Black (23 page)

THIRTY-NINE

H
alima finished her version of the beacon. She sealed it in an airtight plastic baggie and gave me a five-minute crash course in how to set it off.

“Consider it a miniature engine,” she said. “All it needs is a bit of gasoline—or in this case, a tiny spark of magical energy—and it will fulfill its purpose. Simply feed it and let it work.”

“Thank you, Doctor. This means a lot to us.”

“Salaam alaikum.” She bowed her head slightly. “Be swift and safe, and sure of purpose. I hope to hear of your safe return.”

Then we were off. Even with Jessie behind the wheel, driving the SUV like all hell was chasing us down, it’d be almost an hour’s drive back to the south side of Talbot Cove.

I called April and filled her in. She hadn’t been sleeping. I got the impression she didn’t sleep much at all. Kevin, on the other hand, was out like a light and refused to budge until she rolled over and yanked the sheets off his bed.

“
Now
he’s moving,” she said, sounding satisfied. “And I saw that gesture, young man!”

“Can you meet us at the house?” I asked her. “And bring my luggage from the motel? We’ve got no time to lose. Nyx will be there come sunrise, and if we don’t have Edwin—”

“Say no more. I’ll see if I can find a taxi service still operating this time of night. It may take some doing. Another problem: we’ll need some equipment to prepare the staging ground. Basic hardware-store fare, nothing too elaborate, but nothing in Talbot Cove is open this late.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Hold tight. I’ll call you right back.”

I got Cody’s voice mail twice in a row. He picked up on my third call.

“Yeahwhuh?” he mumbled, breathy.

“Cody. It’s Harmony. We’ve got a line on the perp. We’re finishing this. Tonight. If that offer to help is still open, I sure could use it.”

That woke him up. I could hear him jump out of bed, covers rustling.

“What’s going on? You need backup?”

“Sort of. Go to the Talbot Motor Lodge and pick up our assistants; April, you met earlier. They’re going to need some supplies. How tight are you with the owner of that hardware store on Main Street?”

“Hank?” he asked. “He’s one of Barry’s poker buddies. Why?”

“Get his ass out of bed and have him meet you there. He’s opening up early today. Tell him we’ll pay double the sticker price for anything my people need to buy, plus he’ll have Uncle Sam’s undying gratitude.”

“I’m on it,” he said. I heard him tugging on his pants. “Anything else you need?”

I almost said no, then I caught the side eye from Jessie.

“Shotguns,” I said. “Bring
all
your shotguns.”

T
he A-frame house had barely been lived in, and loved even less. Thick curtains of dust caked the windows, and three months’ worth of crabgrass choked the front lawn to death.

We pulled up behind a pair of squad cars. April met us out on the sidewalk while behind her, Cody and Kevin lugged plastic bags and armloads of loose lumber into the house.

“We don’t have half the equipment I’d like for an operation of this nature,” April said, shooting a dubious glance at the house. “We should have the building wired for film and sound, heat sensors at every door—”

“Well, as usual,” Jessie said, “we don’t get to play with the cool toys. We’ll make up for it with some creativity, a little elbow grease, and a buttload of two-by-fours. You did get the buttload of two-by-fours, right?”

“I believe you specified at least twenty. Is that equivalent to a buttload? I just want to be certain I’m following your precise scientific methodology.”

“Yeah, close enough,” Jessie said.

“I also brought the chalk you asked for,” April told me. “Will five sticks be enough?”

I turned and surveyed the street. I’d come up with a plan to deal with Nyx, but it was more of a desperation play than a stroke of tactical genius.

“It’ll have to be,” I said.

Kevin strode back out of the house, hopping down the porch steps, with Barry right behind him. I stifled a groan; I’d hoped to keep him out of this entirely. Kevin pointed back toward the open front door.

“Okay, we’ve got two floors with a nice open layout. First floor has one closet just off the foyer, and a walk-in pantry in the kitchen. Do pantries count?”

“Better safe than sorry,” I said. I held the plastic baggie with the beacon in both hands, gripping it by the seal like it was a bomb that could go off at any moment.

“Two, then. Second floor has a master bedroom and a guest room, one closet in each, and a linen closet in the hall.”

“Question?” Barry said, holding up his hand. He looked a little lost.

Jessie cracked her knuckles. “Okay, time is
not
on our side here. What do you think, Mayberry? Board ’em all up except for one of the upstairs bedrooms?”

“Don’t call me Mayberry,” I said, “and yes. April and Kevin can cover the bottom of the stairs, in case it gets past us.”

“Ooh, a desperate last stand,” Kevin said. “I just love those.”

Barry held his hand a little higher. “Uh, question? Why are we boarding up closets?”

“
We
aren’t,” I told him. “Go home. We’ve got this.”

“This is
my town
, Harmony. Whatever’s going on here, it’s my job to be involved. I mean, you called my
deputy
but you didn’t call
me
? If Cody hadn’t needed my help with the hardware store—”

I sighed. “Barry, you aren’t equipped for what’s going on here. Please, trust me on that. Just go home and wait. I’ll call you when it’s over, and I’ll tell you whatever I can.”

He turned away. Took a few steps toward his squad car. Then stood still.

“This is about Willie, isn’t it? The police report I gave to Jeremiah Kite. You still don’t trust me.”

“No, Barry, it—”

He turned around to face me, red-faced, eyes glistening.

“And you’re probably right not to. I fucked up, I know that. It was thirty damn years ago, and I’ve woken up knowing it every single day since, wondering what might’ve been different if I’d stood up to the Kites. Afraid of what could have happened, and regretting what did.”

“He threatened your family.” I took a step toward him. “I don’t blame you for that.”

He took a long look into my eyes.

“But I was wrong, wasn’t I? Jeremiah Kite wasn’t the Bogeyman. That’s what you’re doing here tonight. You’re not after a copycat at all. It’s the same man.”

I gritted my teeth. He still thought we were hunting a human kidnapper, and I couldn’t tell him the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. Some of it, I guess he’d earned.

“That’s right. Jeremiah was involved in the kidnappings. He helped with the cover-up, but he wasn’t the man who took my sister. The real Bogeyman is still on the loose. But, Barry, you don’t understand—”

He thumped his chest. “I’ll tell you what I understand, Harmony. Your father was my best friend in the whole world, and that son of a bitch cut his throat open with a razor blade. If this guy is still alive, I need to settle accounts. I
need
to. Please. Don’t shut me out now.”

I looked to Jessie. No help there. April tilted her head ever so slightly.

“It’s your call,” April told me. “We’ll back you either way.”

I thought back to the night my father died. Blanket around my shoulders, mug of hot chocolate clutched in my small, trembling hands, and Barry. Barry, showing me his badge, telling me what it meant.

“You do what we tell you,” I said to Barry, “when we tell you. No questions. No hesitation. Agreed?”

He nodded slowly. Taking that in.

I put my hands on my hips and looked toward the house. “All right, let’s get to work. I want every single closet in that house, except for one of the upstairs bedrooms, boarded over tight.”

“Why are we—” Barry started to ask.

I held up a finger. “No questions.”

“Your luggage is in the trunk,” April said.

I walked around the back of the squad car and lifted the lid. They’d bought me a shoulder bag from the hardware store, just a simple beige canvas satchel, and I loaded it with some odds and ends from my suitcase: a canister of sea salt, some colored ribbons, bits and pieces of art I could weave into a spell with a little time to prepare.

I didn’t think time to prepare was a luxury I’d be granted on the other side of the closet door, but we needed every edge we could get.

I picked up one last thing, scooping it up from where it nestled in the bottom of the suitcase. My sister’s teddy bear. It sat in the palm of my hand, its tiny paws open wide for a hug. I added it to the bag.

I popped the collar of my blouse, slipped my tie off, and rolled it neatly. I replaced it with a new one, made of stiff polyester and glossy black.

“Wardrobe change?” Jessie asked me as she walked by, raising an eyebrow.

I turned my collar back down and tugged the tie’s knot tightly at my throat.

“It was my father’s,” I told her.

The night came alive with the sounds of banging hammers and clanking wood. Cody, Kevin, Barry, and I all got busy, each picking a closet door and nailing up slabs of lumber to keep them sealed shut. I hammered fast, throwing up two-by-fours at irregular intervals as I worked my way down the door, building my emergency barricade. I’d almost gotten to the bottom of the door, arms aching as I knelt down for the last plank, when I heard April’s voice from the doorway.

“Agent Black? There’s . . . someone here to see you.”

Fontaine, back in his borrowed corpse, leaned in the doorway with his ankles crossed. He looked like a dead man imitating Gene Kelly.

I stood, holding the claw hammer loosely in my hand. Feeling its weight. Fontaine’s gaze drifted down to the business end.

“Oh, my,” he drawled, “I
do
hope that’s not for me.”

“That depends entirely on you.”

He uncrossed his ankles and strode into the room, his fingertips trailing along the back of April’s wheelchair. She glowered and rolled back.

“Now, now,” he said, “such hostility.
You
called
me
, after all.”

That I had.

I’d done it on the drive back to Talbot Cove, fishing the business card he’d given us at the diner—the one that simply read
F
ONTAINE
in crisp black type—out of my wallet. I knew I’d held on to it for a reason. Stroking the raised type with my fingertips, I conjured up a spark of magic. Just a single musical note, the chiming of a crystal bell. The note rang out as it sank into the card, then soared off to find its owner.

“Nyx has taken hostages,” I said. “A couple and their baby. If we don’t hand over Edwin Kite at sunrise, she’ll kill all three of them. If we
do
hand him over, she’ll kill one of them and take his soul to hell along with Edwin’s.”

“Sounds like you’re in a pickle of a perplexing predicament, Agent. But I don’t see what any of that has to do with little ol’ me.”

“What if I told you I had a plan that would let
both
of us get what we want? You can’t pull it off without me, and I can’t pull it off without you.”

“I would say . . . you have my undivided attention.” He threw his arms wide, smiling like a showman. “But are you sure about making a deal with a demon? Are you
allowed
? Should I wait while you call and ask for permission? I declare, I certainly wouldn’t want to get a sweet young lady such as yourself into any trouble.”

“Special circumstances,” I said.

FORTY

I
laid out the plan, and Fontaine liked it. He liked everything except for the part about helping us board up the closets.

“Manual labor? Mmm, I’ll sit that part out, darlin’. Just let me know when it’s showtime. I’ll go put on my dancing shoes.”

We got the job done without him. By the time the last board went up, my phone read 3:38 a.m. Just a few hours to sunrise, and something told me Nyx wouldn’t wait patiently if we were late. I stifled a yawn as I trudged downstairs.
No time for that,
I told myself.
Can’t afford being tired.

We gathered the team in the empty living room, the stained carpet still bearing the imprints of repossessed furniture. Cody, at Jessie’s request, passed out the fruits of the Talbot Cove police armory: Remington 870 pump-action shotguns, with long, sleek barrels and sanded walnut stocks.

“Oh, yeah.” Jessie whistled and checked her sights. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Cody almost held one out to April, then paused. “Are . . . you trained to use a firearm, ma’am?”

She just gave him a thin-lipped smile. Kevin leaned in and whispered in Cody’s ear. His eyes went wide. He handed her the shotgun.

“All right,” I said. “Jessie and I are going upstairs. I want you three down here near the foot of the staircase. If anything comes down that
isn’t
us, you know what to do.”

“Not sure I do,” Barry said.

April loaded her shotgun and racked the pump.

“That’s quite all right, Sheriff,” she said, “just follow my lead.”

“What about that guy?” Cody asked, gesturing toward the living room window. Out in the dark, in a rented sedan, I could just barely make out the form of Fontaine sitting silent and motionless behind the wheel.

“He’ll be ready when we need him,” I said. “Okay. This is it. Just one last thing to do.”

I took the clay cylinder and a handful of fat white chalk sticks out to the lawn, alone.

First, the chalk. Working under the glow of a distant corner streetlight, I crouched down and scratched out the rough curves of a circle on the asphalt. A circle at least twenty feet across, covering the street and rising up on to the sidewalk at its outermost curve, and ringed with swirling runes drawn from memory.

As I’d shown back at the paper mill, an arcane circle could keep a demon like Nyx out.

Done properly, it could keep her
in
, too.

I left the last few strokes of the circle unfinished. An open circuit, waiting to be sealed. Then I slid the beacon out of its plastic baggie. The engraved glyphs felt rough under my fingers, like damp stone, and thrummed with faint power.

This is it,
I thought.
No turning back.

I took a deep breath, drew a trickle of energy into my hands, and let it flow as I slammed the cylinder against the overgrown grass. A pulse rippled out into the night, silent and swift, as a sudden gust of wind ruffled my hair and rattled windows in its wake.

Then it was gone. Message delivered.

I stood up, slid my canvas satchel higher up on my shoulder, and held my shotgun in both hands as I marched back toward the house.

Time for war.

J
essie and I climbed the stairs in silence, taking our positions. She stood in the shadows of the empty master bedroom, the only one with an unsealed closet, and put her back to the corner. I covered the room from the open doorway so I could watch the hall at the same time.

It came to the hall first.

I felt it before I heard it, a creeping dread that set my teeth on edge. Then the linen closet doorknob slowly turned. From the inside.

The door rattled, thumping against the nailed-up boards. It thumped, hard, an aggressive shove. Then silence.

Come back,
I thought.
Come back and try again. Test your luck.

It obliged me. Downstairs, this time, trying to come in through the closet in the foyer.

“What the—” I heard Barry say.

“Shh,” snapped April.

The rattling stopped.

I glanced over at Jessie. She brought her shotgun up, training it on the bedroom closet door. Eyes hard and gleaming like stained glass in the shadows.

The closet doorknob turned.

The door swung wide with a creaking groan, and I heard the Bogeyman’s voice call out. A rasping, rattling singsong.

“
Little one, liiiiiiittle one
. . . come to Mama.”

It was my voice.

With no parent to copy, the Bogeyman’s protective coloration mimicked the closest body in sight. Mine. I stood in the closet, hunched forward, nails like iron razors at the end of limp, dangling arms. Two trickles of blood ran down from my cold, coal-black eyes.

It looked over, saw me, and screamed.

The shriek split the air like nails on a chalkboard, drawing a knife across my eardrums as Jessie opened fire. Her shotgun roared, a booming thunderclap of death that caught the Bogeyman square in the gut and blasted the closet door into splintered scrap. The creature doubled over, clutching its stomach, convulsing as its form rippled and changed.

When it rose up again, flinging out gangly arms and sickle blades for fingers, it showed us what it really looked like.

The Bogeyman was a rag doll, a malformed puppet, with too-long arms and too-spindly legs, draped in rags and burlap tatters. Its hair fell down in long, filthy dreadlocks around a featureless porcelain mask. Jagged cracks ran along the creature’s mask, up to slits where mad, anguished eyes peered out at us.

Not at us. At me.

It remembers me.

It charged toward me like a steam train careening off the tracks, one blade-clawed hand reaching back for a killing blow. I was quick on the draw, but Jessie was quicker. Her second blast sent the creature sprawling to the dirty carpet, the rags on its hip shredded and drooling with burgundy blood.

It bounced back up, somersaulting like an acrobat, and ran for the closet.

The air inside the closet wasn’t right. A murky, swirling haze of gossamer fog. The Bogeyman plowed into the mist at full speed—and vanished.

“After it!” I shouted, racing for the closet. “Now!”

The fog started to recede, the portal between worlds closing in the creature’s wake. No time to think, no time to weigh the consequences. I held my breath, shut my eyes, and barreled on through.

Into the House of Closets.

My feet suddenly clattered against rough wooden floorboards. I stumbled to a stop. Jessie came in right behind me, almost knocking us both over, and clutched my shoulder to get her footing back.

We stood in a barren room, maybe ten feet across on either side. A bare floor, a bare ceiling, and walls covered in peeling, yellowed wallpaper. Victorian roses. I recognized it immediately: it was the same wallpaper from Mitchum Kite’s house. Edwin had re-created his family home.

It wasn’t an exact match, though. Light shone from a gas lamp on one wall, shrouded under dusty frosted glass. Beside it, a window looked out—into another room, exactly like this one. I looked behind us, trying to get my bearings.

The door we’d arrived through was gone.

“Shit,” Jessie muttered, echoing my thoughts.

The room wasn’t entirely empty. A doll sat discarded, propped up in the corner. Just a little rag doll, with a gingham dress and no face.

There were two ways out, identical doors facing each other on opposite sides of the room. I picked one at random, and Jessie covered me with her shotgun as I slowly swung it wide.

On the other side was a small, empty closet. And on the other side of the closet was another door.

We passed through and found ourselves in another empty room. Another window, looking out into another empty room. Another identical doll, abandoned in the corner. Another two closets, and another two doors on the opposite side.

By the seventh empty room we passed through, I started to get nervous.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “At this point, we’ve doubled back and covered our own trail, but look at the floor. No footprints in the dust. The geography just . . . doesn’t work.”

Jessie hadn’t said a word. She stared ahead, steely eyed, clutching the shotgun at hip level like a gunslinger. As I glanced over at her, I saw her cheek twitch. A little involuntary flinch.

“The whispering needs to stop,” she growled.

“What whispering?”

She blinked at me. “You don’t hear it?”

Another three rooms, and I heard it, too.

Soft at first, so soft I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, starved for input in the silence. As we stalked through Edwin’s lonely kingdom, though, they grew louder. A chorus of voices, whispering, pleading.

Children’s voices. Begging to go home.

I felt them as much as heard them. Feelings of loss washed over me, dread, memories of fears that didn’t belong to me. I was five years old, and I’d let go of my mother’s hand at the shopping mall. I stood alone in a crowd of giant strangers, knowing I’d never see her again. I took a wrong turn, walking home from school in wintertime, and found myself on an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar town where all the windows were dark. The cold clawed at me, wind howling over snowdrifts taller than my head, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I was very small, and very alone, and the world didn’t care.

“What is he—oh God, Jessie. Oh God.”

“What?” she snapped, irritated.

I staggered to the closest wall, feeling unsteady, sick to my stomach, like I’d just chugged a bottle of some nasty bottom-shelf liquor. I put my ear to the wallpaper.

“The sound. It’s all around us . . . because it’s coming from the walls. He’s not burning his victims, like Adramelech did. He’s
absorbing
them. Jessie, they’re
in the walls
.”

I jumped out of the way just as Jessie swung the barrel of her shotgun around, leveling it toward me, and pulled the trigger.

The blast tore into the wall, shredding the old, rotted wood. Blood poured from the hole, guttering down the wallpaper in thick, dark rivulets. Beyond the wreckage, at the edges of the ragged hole in the wall, wet muscle and veins glistened.

The house was alive.

“You want to mess with my head?” Jessie screamed at the ceiling. “Fuck you!”

She fired again. Blood rained down from a fresh hole in the roof. I circled, keeping low, trying to stay behind her.

“Jessie, stop! Stop!”

Her shotgun clattered to the floor. She fell to her knees and pressed her palms to her eyes. I crouched beside her, resting a steadying hand on her back as she took deep, ragged breaths.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We can beat him, okay? Just keep it together.”

“It’s not okay,” she whispered. “He knows we’re here. I told you . . . my hearing is better than yours.”

“Edwin? You can hear him?”

She didn’t answer right away. She took a long, slow breath, her shoulders trembling.

“He wants me to hurt you.”

“Just keep it together. We can beat him—”

“
I
want to hurt you,” she said.

Her shoulders shook now. With laughter. A short, bitter, humorless chuckle.

“That’s what this place is,” she whispered. “Hurt or be hurt. It feeds on pain. And I’m trying, I’m trying so hard, but you need to do something for me, right now.”

“Name it. Anything.”

She pulled her hands from her face and looked up at me. Her eyes blazed like iced-over spotlights.

“Run.”