Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (20 page)

In his head, he had envisioned this woman whose heart he was about to break as a gray-haired, fragile thing, but now those preconceptions were dispelled in an instant.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked, her features aquiline and attractive.

“Are you Ellen Manning?”

She cocked a hip and put a hand on it, stared at him expectantly. “I’d say that depends on who’s asking.”

Castillo removed the small leather wallet in which he carried his badge and held it up, open, for her to see. “Detective Jason Castillo, Boston P.D., Mrs. Manning.”

“Hasn’t been
Mrs.
Manning in a long time,” the woman replied, but there was a catch in her voice now, the tiniest bit of alarm. “But I’m her, yeah. What can I do for you?”

As he came down off the steps, Castillo slipped the wallet back into his pocket. He took a few steps onto the lawn, maybe ten feet from the woman, and stopped to regard her.

“It’s about Paul, Ms. Manning.” He saw the spark go out of her eyes even as he said the words, but he rushed on to get it all out, so she would know it all. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but his body was discovered in the early hours of the morning. We believe he was murdered.” The trowel dropped from Ellen Manning’s hand and stuck blade-first into the lawn. Her right hand, covered in dirt, came up fast to cover her face, and then she sat down hard on the grass. Castillo froze a moment, just staring at her. He knew he had more questions to ask, things he ought to be saying, but could not think of a one at the moment.

At last words came to him. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said, and hated how trite and hollow the sentiment sounded.

After a few moments, she wiped at her tears and stared up at him.

“You believe?”

Castillo blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You said you
believe
he was murdered. You don’t know?”

He felt the urge to look away from the intensity of her eyes but held her gaze out of respect. “We know. The M.E. has not established an exact time of death, but his best guess so far is that it happened sometime in the afternoon the day before yesterday. Do you have any idea of his whereabouts at that time?” Though she seemed to have somewhat regained her composure, Ellen Manning did not rise. She sat on the grass and stared up at Castillo, and she shook her head slowly, eyes red and tan face now paler.

“He’s not . . . not the kind of son who calls his mother every day. That never bothered me, though. I know he loves me, he’s just got his own . . .” Her voice broke then, dropped to a whisper, and her eyes were wide as though she expected to be interrupted with some sort of explanation for this tragedy. “His own life.” Castillo did not want to be here anymore. “Did he have any close friends you think I should talk to, people who might have had a better idea of his comings and goings?”

She rattled off three names, guys Paul hung around with, and Castillo jotted them down on a pad he carried in his pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, he asked her to go down to the morgue and identify the body. Once there the process of claiming her son’s remains would be explained to her. She took all of this in with heartbreaking poise.

Castillo thanked the woman, offered his condolences again, and walked back to the car. The worst of it all was not what he had had to tell her, it was what he could not tell her; that she would never know what had really happened to her son, never have the satisfaction of knowing his killer had been caught and dealt with.

But the monster would be dealt with, Castillo vowed. It might not bring peace to Ellen Manning, but it would save some other mother the same kind of torment. Today, that was the best he could hope for.

Castillo wondered if the narcotics division would take him back.

Jack was sick of driving, sick of banging his head against a wall and coming up with a whole lot of nothing. He was not a scholar, not a theologian, not a holy man. Madame Stefania had suggested to him, just before he left her office, that he could make a great deal of money as a medium if he so desired. Wealth beyond his imagining, or so she had implied. The more he thought about it, the more he knew she was right. If people were willing to pay good money to suspend their disbelief for charlatans, how much more would they pay for the real thing.

But Jack wasn’t really a medium. Not in the sense Madame Stefania was. He could talk to the spirits of the dead, that much was true. But he had never asked to be able to do that, and had no interest in making money from it. All he wanted was to stop the Prowlers and to run the pub and to take care of the people he loved.

That included Artie, and taking care of him meant trying to figure out how to stop the Ravenous. But all these dead ends had started to depress him. If not for the phantom pain in his chest where little bits of his spirit had been torn away, he probably would have just gone home. As it was he was due to start his shift at five o’clock and it was going on three.

But he felt that pain, the dull ache of scars forming on his soul, and he knew the Ravenous had to be stopped. So in spite of his frustration, and against his better judgment, he had decided that he would make one last stop today. Tomorrow he would start calling local colleges, tracking down professors who taught theology and spirituality. But Jack was quickly losing faith that that would lead to anything substantial.

Still, he had more hope for college professors than he did for this stop, especially since his source for this one was Madame Stefania. Even as he drove the Jeep down the beautiful, old New England, tree-shaded street in Winchester, he wanted to turn around, felt stupid for even taking the woman’s advice long enough to drive out here.

He found number Seventy-three with no trouble at all, pulled the Jeep into the driveway, and climbed out. For a moment, he stared at the front of the elegant brick colonial, this home that probably cost ten times the profit Bridget’s Irish Rose Pub made in a year, and hesitated.

What the hell,
he thought.
I’m already here.

With a sigh, Jack walked up the concrete path to the front door and rang the bell. He batted at his leg with his left fist, rattling the keys in his pocket. The door was opened by a girl no more than twenty, probably younger, and she was beautiful. Her hair hung in a tangle of dark ringlets over her shoulders and part of the way down her back, and it gleamed with a luster all its own. Her eyes were a deep azure blue like the sky at dusk and there was a curious set to her mouth that he suspected was there all the time.

The girl looked at him oddly, expectantly, but Jack was so stunned by her, so thrown off after the thoughts that had been spinning through his mind as he approached the door, that he said nothing. At last, she smiled.

“Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

At that point, most people would have wanted to know what he was doing on their doorstep, who he was, the questions anyone would have asked. She only sighed.

“Happens to me all the time. It’s frustrating, of course, because I’m certain it’s mostly with people I
have
met before, some other place, some other when.” Her smile became almost demure and she glanced away. “Story of my lives.” Understanding dawned on Jack then. “Wait.
You’re
Eden Hirsch?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “My, you have me at a significant disadvantage, my friend.”

Doesn’t talk like she’s eighteen,
he thought. Then he recalled what Madame Stefania had told him about her.
No, I guess she wouldn’t.
For according to the medium up in Newburyport, Eden Hirsch was among a handful of people who had not only been reincarnated again and again through thousands of years, but who remembered each and every one of their lives.

“You’re staring,” she said, and then she blushed like a high school girl, which he realized might be exactly what she was.

“I’m sorry. I’m Jack Dwyer,” he replied, and he stuck his hand out for her to shake, feeling absurd. “The woman who told me I should come see you didn’t mention how old you were.”

A flicker of irony across her face. “Age is relative, don’t you think, Jack? Would you like to come in?”

Jack hesitated. He frowned as he looked at her. “I . . . are you sure? I mean, how do you know I’m not some serial killer or something? Madame Stefania said you had . . . well, that you had memories of things but that you weren’t a psychic or a medium or anything.” A grave expression appeared on Eden’s face. She reached up to brush a few errant ringlets behind her right ear and studied him. “
Are
you a serial killer?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. I’m a pretty good judge of character, but I wasn’t always. It comes with experience, and experience is basically just surviving your mistakes. Or, in my case, remembering them the next time around.” With that she turned and walked back into the house and Jack was left to either stand at the door or follow her in. He chose the latter. The foyer of the house was all white tile and wood, and a grand staircase wound up to the second floor. Eden led the way into a parlor off to the right and Jack followed. She wore a lilac-colored blouse that was quite sheer with a white tank beneath it and a pair of cuffed denim shorts with no shoes. He could hardly keep his eyes off her.

She sat on a delicately built loveseat and stared at him intently. Jack took a seat in a wingback chair across from her and glanced around the room with its antiques and faded paintings, and he wondered if she still lived with her parents or if this were somehow
her
house. With any other girl her age, that would never have occurred to him, but he found himself believing in what he heard about her without even realizing it had happened.

Those dusky eyes watched him, and he wondered what they had seen. Jack had loved history since he was a little boy, but to this girl, if what he’d been told were true, there was no history. Only memories. The idea fascinated him.

“Talk to me, Jack,” Eden prodded, leaning toward him with her elbows on her knees. “You have a story to tell, maybe more than one. I can see that. Share.”

So he did. For nearly half an hour, he laid it all out for her, the Prowlers, and Artie, and the Ravenous, and the souls he had met and the dead ends he encountered. Madame Stefania suggested he go see Eden because she knew that over Eden’s many incarnations she had learned a great deal about the spirit world and the occult. Jack just wanted to find someone, anyone, who had heard of the Ravenous. But as he spoke, he could tell from the expression on Eden’s face that she was not that person. Just as he could see how her eyes lit up every time he talked about the ghosts he had encountered.

“The Ghostlands,” she said softly when he had run out of words. She spoke as though she were tasting the syllables. “I have never heard it called that before, though I’ve been there countless times.”

A clock chimed once somewhere deeper in the house. The windows were open, but it had grown still and close and too warm in the parlor, no breeze rustling the lace curtains. Jack gripped the arms of the chair and sat perfectly still.

“What do you mean you’ve been there?”

A high little laugh like a child’s rose from her lips. Eden smiled. “I’m sorry. It isn’t funny. It’s just so strange to me to have someone who is so . . . normal, though I beg your forgiveness for using the word. It’s odd to have someone so normal seem to believe me without reservation. To be honest, it’s almost unsettling. I have always been home schooled, you see. So I must confess I am quite unused to talking with people who are in my own age group.”

“I wouldn’t think there are very many people
in
your age group,” Jack replied.

“Touché.”

Jack had never known anyone who actually used the word
touché
in casual conversation. To his surprise he found that he liked it.

“You seem to have accepted my story at face value,” he told her. “I’d say we’re even.”

Eden seemed to roll that around in her head a few moments. Then she nodded as if coming to some agreement with herself. “You’re quite something, Jack Dwyer. A true medium is almost as rare as a recurring soul such as I have. So let me be direct.” She shook her hair back, and those curls fell across her shoulders like silk. Her gaze was intense, locked on Jack, and he did not think he could have looked away even if he wanted to. He doubted he had ever met anyone with the simple presence of Eden.

“I cannot tell you how old my soul is. The more time passes, the more lives I have lived, the less clarity I have in my memories of those early times. I remember the Roman Empire, Jack. And the French Revolution. The American Civil War. Hiroshima. I can only dimly recall the many times I have died, though I suspect that has more to do with choice than clarity. But between my lives I have memories of another place, a world like a sea of clouds, of souls who wander and some who cannot.”

“The Ghostlands,” Jack said, his throat dry.

Her eyes shone. “If you say so. I’m no medium, Jack. While I’m here, in this life, I cannot touch that place except in my dreams. When I dream, I can see and speak to old friends, the parents and siblings and lovers I have had over so many lives. The reason so many people believe I am what I say I am is that in those dreams I have learned things I could not possibly have known otherwise. But I know I don’t have to prove myself to you, so let’s put that aside.

“In those dreams, and every time I have walked that netherworld for as long as I can remember, I have had a guide there. His name is Seth, and I suppose I look upon him as a sort of guardian angel. I have never heard of this Ravenous creature, but if it exists upon the Ghostlands, I am certain that Seth has.” Though Eden had intrigued him, Jack had reached the conclusion already that she would be of no help in his search for clues about the Ravenous. When she told him about Seth, he sat up straighter in the chair and stared at her. This was a possibility, an opportunity he had never expected, but it presented certain problems of its own that he had to work out.

“If I try to look for him, to see into the Ghostlands, the Ravenous will scent me and come here. I can back out, but it might put . . . Seth? It might put him in danger.” He turned the problem over in his mind and then he thought about Madame Stefania, and the strength of the connection Eden felt with this spirit. “His presence right now isn’t strong enough that I see him. But maybe if you called for him?” A sadness swept across Eden’s features. “As I said, I’m not a medium. I understand if you cannot—”