1 Broken Hearted Ghoul (17 page)

“You bet your cookies.” He bit into one of Debbie’s chocolate chunk specialties.

“Which is it?”

“See that guy over there?” He nodded toward a large, dirty man in a brown jumpsuit who looked as though he’d escaped from a local chain gang. “He brought in another heartless zombie from Knoxville this morning. I think that was the last straw for Abe.”

“Good. Maybe we can come up with a real way to get rid of Mary instead of having us sit around on our hands as she kills us all off.”

“I wouldn’t bet on Abe killing her. Maybe finding a way to move her out of the area a little faster. That’s about it.”

I took a seat, and Brandon sat beside me. “I have a question for you.”

He grinned. “It’s gonna cost you. No more freebies. I want to see some skin.”

I pulled up the sleeve on my green sweater so he could see my forearm. “Doesn’t Mary have to be a real person sometimes? I mean, would she have a life, a job? Or would she just walk around waiting to kill someone all the time?”

“I’m not an expert on ghouls.”

“I don’t know anyone who is, or I wouldn’t ask.”

“I think they skulk around during the day, mostly, and come out at night. They look human, when they want to. You wouldn’t necessarily know you were with one until she decided to rip your arm off.”

“And what about that black film that’s left behind?”

“Some chemical reaction when they feed.” He shrugged. “I’m not a scientist.”

“And you have to cut off her head to kill her, right?”

“I’ve heard that. You have to burn the head and body afterward.”

Lucas was right about that part. “Okay. Thanks.”

“But I wouldn’t suggest you take a ghoul on without magic.  They’re fast and strong. You’ll need magic to keep her away from you until you can kill her. It’s almost the only way.”

“Where would I get magic?”

Abe cleared his throat, and asked everyone to sit down.

“You’re about to find out.” Brandon nodded toward a man in the corner of the room.

The man was huge, built like a mountain—even bigger than Abe. He dressed like a monk in a massive brown robe that went down to his dirty, sandaled feet. He held a wicked-looking staff that resembled the scythe the grim reaper carried in paintings. His head was shaved bald, and his eyes roamed over all of us as though he was searching for something.

He stopped abruptly when he came to me.

That made me nervous. I scrubbed my lips with the back of my hand, and put on ChapStick for good measure. He was still staring. Could he see Lucas’s mark on me?

“Who is he?” I asked Brandon, turning my head toward him so the monk wouldn’t see me speaking.

“They call him Jasper.”

“What do you know about him?”

Brandon shook his head. “Not now. We’ll have to talk later.”

Everyone was starting to sit down. Debbie closed her cookie tin as she perched next to me. “All of the cookies are gone. I think everyone needed a cookie break. I’m sorry you didn’t get one, Skye.”

“That’s okay. Let’s hear what Abe has to say.”

Abe clasped his hands behind his back, playing up the size of his arms and breadth of his shoulders as he paced in front of us. “As you know, someone has been killing our friends before their time. We are all at risk. The killer is known to me. I’m afraid this is a personal attack on everything I have built up here.”

“Can this be stopped?” Dex sounded rattled by the news.

“It can be—
she
can be—if you know how to stop her.” Abe stared at us with his dark glasses covering his blind eyes. “I don’t want to give you any false hope that you can stop her—not alone. She is strong and powerful. She will kill you without a second thought.”

“Was there a gold wedding band found with the new victim?” I questioned.

Abe’s head turned sharply toward me. “There was. I don’t think we need to go into her routines. Suffice it to say, she wants to kill as many of you as she can.”

I disagreed. “Sometimes a killer’s habits can be how they’re caught. If we understand what she wants—”

“We are
not
interested in what motivates her, Skye. This isn’t a police investigation. We are interested in stopping her. For that, you need two things—a sharp blade and a sorcerer to protect you long enough to sever her head.”

“What does she look like?” one of the other drivers asked.

Abe looked defeated as he had Brandon pass out flyers with a woman’s crude sketch on them. I glanced around the room. It looked like Abe had made his choice—to let
us
kill Mary for him.

I knew her right away from the bar where I’d met Martin. She was the woman weeping at the jukebox, and later, dead in the parking lot. I’d practically handed Martin to her on a silver platter. The bitter taste of knowing he might still be alive,
if we’d known then
, was strong in my throat.

“I’ve seen her.” I explained the situation to Abe, and the rest of the group. “I think she may have been stalking one, or both of us, that night.”

Abe took a deep breath and nodded. “This is our sorcerer, Jasper. He has a charm that will paralyze her. You must contact him first before making any attempt at addressing her. Once that is done, you’ll each have a blade with which to cut off her head. When that is finished, you’ll call here, and Brandon will come for her. Don’t try to approach her on your own.”

“Just give me a sword.” The dirty man with the brown coat from Knoxville raised his hand. “I’ll take her out. I’ve killed ghouls before.”

“There’s only one sorcerer.” A driver I knew from Memphis complained. “What are we supposed to do until he can get there?”

“Hide,” Abe suggested. “Don’t engage her, whatever you do. Follow, if you can. Jasper will come to you.”

 Abe disappeared into his office without another word. As far as information was concerned, it was a poor discussion. Obviously, he’d never had police training or he’d know that every piece of information regarding a killer was important. He was still leaving us in the dark—only now we knew she could kill any of us.

“That wasn’t much to go on,” I remarked quietly to Brandon before we left the room. “Why is he handicapping us this way?”

“He has his reasons. I don’t always understand him, but I never question what he does. He knows what’s best.”

“He knows what’s best for
him
.”

Debbie smiled. “Abe wants to meet with him privately. If you wouldn’t mind waiting for a few minutes, Skye, I’m sure it won’t take very long.”

Brandon and I exchanged knowing glances.

“Sure,” I told her. “Brandon has a few things he wants to talk to me about.”

“Good. I’m going in now. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Debbie waved cheerfully as she approached Abe’s office door.

She was waiting for someone to rescue her from her fate. I realized how afraid she was when I looked into her soft brown eyes. Debbie had a good idea what Abe wanted from her—she’d been hoping he’d forget or someone would change the equation.

I knew I couldn’t be that person. The only person who could save Debbie at this point was Debbie.

I watched her close the office door behind her, and turned to Brandon.

“It gives me the shivers thinking about it.” He shuddered. “Let’s talk on the way over to the mortuary.”

No one noticed when we left the tattoo shop. Dex, and the rest of his crew, were too busy talking about what they were going to do to Mary Gable when they found her. They didn’t seem to believe what Abe said about her being too dangerous for them to handle.

“Idiots,” Brandon exclaimed once we were outside. “Why do they think Abe told them to leave her alone? I’m not sure
he
can handle her.”

“You know more about her? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t my place until Abe was ready to talk.” He shrugged. “She’s shown up before, Skye. This isn’t the first time.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“When was Mary here last?”

“Not here. We were in Montgomery, Alabama when it happened. I think it was about twelve years ago—give or take a few years. She showed up one day, all willy-nilly, and attacked Abe. I was with him at the time.”

“What did you do?”

“We hid in a cellar until a witch told us it was all clear.”

“So he could’ve killed her before.”

“From what I understand, he could’ve killed her dozens of times through the years.”

“Did he have other people he could delegate, like he seems to be now? Why this time?”

“She’s more aggressive now. She only killed one zombie last time before she came for him. This time is different. He’s not worried about himself—he’s worried about losing all of us.”

“Why did he start making zombies in the first place? Does he get some power from it?”

“Only when you die.” He walked into the mortuary. “He takes his magic, and his life force, back each time. He told me once that he does it to make amends for something he did a long time ago.”

“Killing the woman who made him a zombie?” I guessed. “He seems to have bad relationships with women.”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.” He smiled at me. “He’s not evil, you know. He really means well when he brings back the dead. He thinks of us almost like his children.”

That was interesting. “Why hasn’t Mary just come and killed Abe?”

“Not so easy to do. I’ve seen people try. Mary gets stronger every year that she doesn’t come back to Abe. Abe’s warding seems like it’s gotten weaker too.”

“Warding? Is that like magical barbed wire fence?”

“Very good.” He grinned. “It’s just like that. You can’t see it, but it’s there.”

“What about Jasper?”

“Jasper is bad news, Skye. He’s not like Abe. He’s a necromancer from a long line of necromancers. Abe is a witch, self-taught in magic. He started out as a human. I don’t think Jasper really knows what that means.”

“Thanks for the information.” It was a lot to digest. Witches, necromancers, and sorcerers. I wondered which one Lucas really was.

Brandon turned on the lights in the cold room. “Ready for a roll in a luxury casket?”

“I don’t think so. Thanks for the offer though.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’ll see you later.”

I went back to the tattoo shop to talk to Abe about rejoining the police force. All the arguments I’d considered were laid out in my brain. I thought I could make a good case for following up on Martin’s investigation.

I realized that I’d have to take desk duty if I went back to work. Again, working on the street might be too risky with everything else going on. Still, I’d be glad to go back. I missed the routine, and a life that made sense to me. Martin had been right about it becoming part of you. I hadn’t been ready to leave the job when it was taken away.

I considered mentioning Lucas to Abe. He had half an idea that something was going on anyway. Maybe Lucas could help fight the ghoul—help
me
anyway. I agreed with the other driver that waiting for Jasper to reach one of us after we’d spotted Mary seemed too risky.

Was Lucas strong enough? I didn’t know. Maybe he could work out and get ready for it. What did witches and sorcerers do to get prepared for the big battle?

I had a feeling Lucas would help, whether he was strong enough or not. I’d have to consider carefully if I should ask him, and possibly risk his life. Maybe Abe knew some kind of test I could use to gauge how strong Lucas was.

I kind of felt like brown clothes driver from Knoxville—just give me a sword and let’s see what happened. But there was Kate to think about. I tried not to take unnecessary chances. But until we got rid of Mary, being out and around each day might be an unnecessary chance. This thing had to be settled.

I looked for Debbie as I entered the tattoo shop. I didn’t see her. Dex told me she’d gone out to the van to wait for me.

I wasn’t looking forward to
that
conversation. I knew Debbie wasn’t the type of woman to run around on her husband. Surely, Abe had enough instinct to know that too. I knew what her response to an overture from him would be. I hoped it wasn’t too awful for her.

I liked her almost despite myself. She was the perfect little homemaker, but I couldn’t hold that against her. Maybe it was more that I was jealous of all that she was that I would never be. But she’d been there when I’d needed her. I imagined her cookies were pretty good too.

Abe might give me some clue as to how she’d reacted when I talked to him. Was he the kind of man to hold a grudge? It was hard to say. If he had personal feelings for Debbie—that would be different than what happened at work—which was all I knew of him.

“Abe? Got a minute?” I knocked on the door that was half closed, following through by pushing it open as I walked in.

He wasn’t there. I glanced at the door, and then strolled to the side of his big desk.

There were hundreds of talismans, charms—and whatever else those little pieces of string and fluff were. There were plenty of feathers too, some tied together.

I touched some tiny pieces of charcoal that smeared my fingers. It reminded me of the greasy black film that I’d found at the ghoul’s two kills.

“Skye?” Abe strode into the room, bigger than life—and death, I suppose. “Idle hands?”

I moved quickly so he could sit down. “Yeah. I guess.” I smirked, and took a seat opposite him. “Sorry, zombie master. I really need to discuss something important with you.”

“You know I don’t like it when you call me that. What do you need to discuss?”

“And I appreciate that you’re busy, but I had this idea about rejoining the Nashville Police Department to pick up Martin’s notes on Mary. He was already looking into the killings in other places. We talked about it before he died.”

Abe sat back in his chair. “You aren’t listening to me. This is no concern for the police.”

“I know you think magic and swords will take care of the problem, and you’re probably right. The thing is, we have to find her first. That’s what good police work is for. The sooner we find her, the sooner we can stop the killings.”

He pressed his fingers together, his face turned away from me. “I believe she’ll reveal herself. With so many out there searching for her, it won’t take long.”