Kitty’s Greatest Hits (38 page)

“Never mind,” he said, leaning back and looking away. “I’ll tell you when I know more.”

“Why is she important?” Kitty said. “She’s been dead for over a hundred years.”

His smile quirked. “And you really think that’s the end of it? You’ve been telling ghost stories for years. Are you going to sit here now and tell me it isn’t possible?”

Ben leaned forward. “She just doesn’t like the idea that someone else is having adventures without her.”

Kitty pouted. “I’ll have you know I’m looking forward to a good long adventure-free streak from here out.”

As long as he’d known Kitty, she’d been getting in trouble. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut, or she had to swoop to the rescue like some kind of superhero. She was a lightning rod for trouble.
She’d
been the werewolf caught shape-shifting on live TV. Cormac and Ben had been there to clean up after that mess.

“A month,” Cormac said finally. “I bet you don’t go a month without getting into trouble.”

“How are we defining ‘trouble’?” she said. “Are we talking life-or-death trouble or pissing-off-the-boss trouble? Hey, stop laughing at me!”

Ben said, “I’m not taking that bet.”

Kitty straightened the papers and closed the folder. “I could try to mail this to you, but I’m not sure it would get past the censors.”

“Just hang on to it for me,” he said. Like the rest of his life. Just hold on.

They said their farewells, and they both wore that pained and pitying look on their faces, the one he’d put there because they could walk out and he couldn’t. At the door they hesitated—they usually did—glancing back one more time. He almost stopped them, standing and reaching, calling back. He’d have to shout through the glass because they’d put the phone down. He could feel the guard at his back, but he had the urge to do it anyway. Press his hands to the glass and tell Kitty everything:
I have to tell you what’s going on, the murders, the ghost, my meadow and what it means and why I can’t go back, I want to tell you everything—

But he didn’t say anything. Just like he always didn’t say anything. Without a word, without a flicker in his expression, he stood when the guard told him to and allowed himself to be marched back to his cell.

*   *   *

It sounded like claws scraping on concrete, an insect mash of legs running straight up the wall without rhythm. Like a million other nightmare noises that anyone’s imagination might trigger, that would freeze the gut.

But Cormac hadn’t been asleep. He was on his back, staring at the gray ceiling, refusing to sleep, refusing to let her in when the noise rattled by outside the cell. He remained still, wondering what would make a noise like that. The sound of a thousand souls that didn’t know where to go.

Cormac rolled to his stomach, propping himself up just enough to look out, letting his eyes take in the patterns of light and shadow that made up the prison’s weird internal twilight. Resting on his pillow, his hands itched for the feel of a weapon. This was like hunting; he could lie still for hours waiting for the prey to come to him. But here, when he was weaponless, behind bars, which one of them was prey? Did he think he could just stare it down?

He kept his gaze soft, not letting himself stare at any one thing, which would reduce his peripheral vision. So he saw it, when a clawed black hand reached across the ceiling, brushed his throat …

He half jumped, half fell from the top bunk, stumbling to the floor in a crouch. Pressing himself to the bars, he looked in the direction the thing must have gone

“Hey! Dude!” Frank hollered. “What did I tell you about your fucking nightmares?”

“Quiet!” hissed the guy in the next cell over. Not Moe’s old cell but the one on the other side.

Cormac had his face up to the bars, but he couldn’t see anything to the sides. He couldn’t see a damn thing from here, though he could still hear claws on concrete, maybe even a voice, growling. He didn’t know where it was coming from. If he could just get out of here—

A light shone, the deep orange glow of coals in a forge, across the prison block, inside one of the cells. It flared, turned black—like an eclipse of the sun, a moment of dark terror—then collapsed. All of it without a sound.

He could see it, a demon’s claw scraping across a man’s throat, and in his mind he heard a voiceless, inhuman laugh of triumph. Another inmate dead.

“No!” he screamed at the block, the sound echoing.

Hands grabbed the back of his T-shirt, twisted, and yanked him back. Cormac led with his elbow, striking hard, hitting flesh and bone—a man’s chest. Frank wheezed, falling back, and Cormac followed through, swinging his body into a punch. Frank’s head whipped back, but he stayed on his feet and came right back. Deceptively powerful, his blows pounded in like rocks, hitting Cormac’s cheek and chest. He was dazed, but he shook it off. He should have explained, but it was too late, and this was more his speed anyway.

Ducking another blow, Cormac delivered his own, tackling Frank in the middle, shoving him against the bunk frame.

Lights came on in the cell block, an alarm siren started, and the door to the cell rolled open. Guards came in, swinging batons. Cormac didn’t have a chance against them. They dragged him away, though he kept lunging forward, into the fight. Blows landed on his shoulders, kidneys, gut. He fell, then was hauled up again by his arms.

Waking from his fog, he saw the guards surrounding him. He was totally screwed.

Frank was yelling. “I don’t know, man, he’s gone crazy! It’s not my fault, he jumped out of bed screamin’ and he just went crazy!”

Frank’s protests didn’t matter; the guards dragged both of them out, hauling them in different directions. Cormac tried to get his feet under him—they were keeping him off balance on purpose. Again, his instinct was to lash out. He locked it down, tried to keep still, tried to speak.

“There’s another body. Another guy’s been killed, I saw it, I saw what did it. I need to talk to Olson. To Detective Hardin. Somebody. Let me talk to somebody!”

It wasn’t their job to listen to him; they were dumb brute enforcers. But the walls were closing in around him. All he really wanted to do was scream.

Another inmate was already screaming. The newest body had been discovered.

*   *   *

The cell in administrative confinement—solitary—had a solid door with a wire mesh—reinforced glass window at face height, a single bed, a toilet and sink, and no room to pace. This was what he’d been so desperate to avoid. They’d put him in smaller and smaller boxes until he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Only thing left to do now was lie on the bunk and sleep. Escape to that meadow, breathe deep and imagine he smelled pines and snowmelt.

No. This had all started with her, that thing, lost spirit or demon, whatever she was. Everything had been fine until she appeared and started scraping the inside of his skull. His head ached. The walls were collapsing.

He leaned on the wall opposite the bunk, refusing to even lie down. His jaw ached in a couple of places. Bruises bloomed. In a strange way the fight had felt good, and the bruises felt real. It had felt good to finally hit something. To strike back. He hadn’t had a chance to strike at anything in so long. He could take his gun to the range, unload a couple boxes of ammo. Feel a hot gun in his hand. That cleansing noise.

Put the gun against his own skull next and make it all stop.

He paced. Three steps one way, three steps the other. Stopped, sat down against the wall. He had to pull his knees up to keep from hitting them on the edge of the bunk. But he wouldn’t lie down. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t tell the difference between exhaustion and the pain of insanity gnawing at him. But he’d beat this thing. Beat it to a bloody pulp.

He closed his eyes.

*   *   *

A storm rode over the mountains and into the valley.

He didn’t want to be here—it meant he was weak. He’d let his guard down, and now she’d found him, battering at him with wind and thunder—that rattling of the bars again, even though there weren’t bars anymore. On a slope, he ducked toward a tree at the edge of the valley with his arms over his head, trying to wait it out.

Her shouts were the wind. “Let me in, damn you! I must speak with you! You stubborn fool, let me in! I
will
speak!”

It was a cosmic wail. He, who could wait out statues, couldn’t stay silent against it.

“I can’t help you!” He turned to the sky, screaming a year’s worth of frustration. Maybe a lifetime’s. “Leave me alone!”

“Let me speak!” She was a ghost, a stuck record, a moment in time. She was drawing him into her loop, driving him mad. He would never again leave this room or crawl outside his mind.

“No.” The only word he could throw at her, his voice faltering to a whisper. The blowing wind made him deaf.

“Listen, just listen to me! What must I do to make you listen!” she howled. The wind blasted through the forest; trees groaned.

“Try
asking
!” he shouted to the sky.

Then, like a whisper through pine boughs, a breath against his cheek, “Please talk to me. Please.”

His legs gave out, bringing him heavily to the ground, sitting on grass that was damp with rain. This was all in his mind. He shouldn’t feel the wet soaking into his jeans. He shouldn’t smell the clean, earthy damp in the air.

“Okay,” he said.

And she was there, standing a few paces away, clutching her hands together. Still poised, back straight and chin up, as if refusing to admit that saying “please” had cost her pride. Like she didn’t want him to see the pleading in her gaze. The wind-touched strands of her dark hair, curls fallen loose from her bun and resting on her shoulder. He might touch the curl and smooth it back into place.

He looked away from her and across the valley. The stream ran full, frothing over rocks. The green seemed even greener. It was high summer here, and he relaxed. Maybe because he could see her now he knew where she was, what she was doing. He could keep an eye on her.

She’d wanted so badly to talk, but she just stood there, like she was waiting for punishment. Waiting to be hanged. If she really was a ghost, if she really had been executed, she would have been hanged. He didn’t want to think about that.

“Well?” he said finally. “After all that, you going to say anything?”

She glanced at the hem of her skirt and wrung her fingers. “I’ve not engaged in conversation in a very long time, and even then I was not a paragon of courtesy. I’m sure I’m more than a little mad.”

That made two of them. “Amelia Parker,” he said. “You’re Amelia Parker. What the hell’s going on?”

She blinked at him. “You know my name? How?”

“I looked it up. You could have just
told
me, instead of this garbage you’ve been pulling. You want to explain?”

“It’s difficult,” she said, glancing behind her.

“Try me. I have a pretty open mind,” he said.

“Yes, I know. That’s how I found you. I needed an open mind.”

He glared at her. “For what? So you could break it into pieces?”

“No, so I could … so I could control it. I need a body, Mr. Bennett.”

“Let me guess: It’s harder than you thought it’d be.”

“Yes. Minds … they tend to twist up into knots in spite of my intentions.”

“You’ve tried this before?”

She didn’t answer.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

She swallowed, wetting her lips to speak—which made no sense, because she was a ghost. Cormac could almost smell the soap on her skin. The contradiction was making him dizzy.

“I was hanged for murdering a young woman, but I didn’t do it. I’m innocent. I know what
did
do it, and it’s here now. I hunted this thing a hundred years ago, Mr. Bennett, and while I’m not inclined to believe in an omnipotent God, I believe I have survived—or rather that this small part of me has survived—so that I can stop it now. But I need help.”

Put like that, it did seem like fate. How much did she know about him, besides his name? Had she done enough digging in his psyche to learn that he was also a hunter? That she couldn’t have picked a better body for her purpose?

He said, “Olson—the psychologist here—said this has happened before. Half a dozen bodies over the last hundred years or so, with their throats cut in locked cells. Just like the girl you were hanged for. You say you didn’t do it, but you seem to know a lot about it.”

“I hunted it. Tracked it to Lydia Harcourt, where they found me. Then it followed me here.”

“Why? Why you? You were supposed to be dead, why’d it stick around?”

“I know I can stop it—”

“Where’d it come from in the first place? Do you know?”

“—but I need hands, a voice. I’m so close—”

“I’m not giving you my body,” he said, turning away. “Why not tell me where this demon came from?”

Her brow furrowed, and she seemed to grapple with something. Guilt? Shame, even? “I suppose I ought to have taken it as a lesson not to meddle. Yet I keep on meddling, don’t I?” Her smile was pained.

“What happened?”

“A scene from a boys’ adventure novel. I’m sure you’ve had a few of your own. Something had been buried at a crossroads—imprisoned, rather. I should have heeded the warning carved into the headstone. But there was a promise of treasure.”

“This is all about a pot of gold?” he said, disbelieving.

“No. A Sumerian cuneiform tablet meant to be buried alongside. I thought I could secure the demon, prevent its escape, obtain the tablet that promised tremendous knowledge. I was wrong.”

“The tablet was bait, wasn’t it?” Cormac said. “It didn’t really exist.”

Bowing her head, she hid a sad smile. “The thing bound itself to me. Cursed me. It always stayed just out of reach. I could watch it kill and never stop it. Even now.”

He could almost feel sorry for her. He considered the saying about the road to hell.

She paced a few steps down the slope, across his field of vision, looking at the scene, his private valley. Hilltops emerged through misty, breaking clouds. The air was cool on his skin, a different kind of cool than a prison cell in winter. This felt like living rather than being in storage.