Shadow Silence (15 page)

As Peggin hit the water, Bryan stripped off his sweatshirt and began unbuckling his boots, swearing as he did so. Deev ditched his coat and was untying his platform sneakers. I had it faster—I yanked down the zippers on my boots and hit the water, running.

“Kerris!” Bryan's voice echoed behind me as I dove beneath the freezing surface. Another moment and a ripple of waves told me he had joined me.

It was difficult to see, but I could make out the sparkle of the Lady's magic, and I followed the trail of glittering bubbles. I could see Peggin ahead; she was struggling against the pull of the Lady—whom I could no longer see. Bryan kicked past me and managed to reach Peggin before I did. He grabbed her arm and yanked. At that moment, Deev swam past me on the other side and caught hold of
Peggin's other arm. Together they pulled, trying to pry her away from the Lady.

I couldn't do much—I couldn't say anything, not without surfacing, but I reached out, gathered all the energy I could, and aimed it at the Lady in one violent burst. A brilliant light flared around all of us as I did so, and suddenly, Bryan and Deev had hold of Peggin and were headed toward the surface. I followed on their heels, all too aware that the Lady could—and had—killed spirit shamans before.

We struggled out of the water, back onto Fogwhistle Pier. Exhausted, but afraid that the Lady might come back, I helped Bryan and Deev carry Peggin back to land, where Deev started rescue breathing. A moment later, Peggin coughed up a lungful of water, and woozily sat up.

I glanced back at the lake. The surface was silent, but the Lady was there, watching us. I could feel her presence. Shivering and afraid, I motioned for the men to head back to the house. Bryan carried Peggin, Deev by his side.

I gathered our boots and gear from the shore. With one last glance at the lake, I whispered, “You can't have her. She belongs to us,” and followed them back to Peggin's house.

D
eev built a fire in the fireplace as I hunted down a box with towels in it. Once we were dried off, I returned to the kitchen, where I started a pot of hot water and managed to find the tea. I set up a tray, found a half-eaten bag of chocolate chip cookies, and carried everything back to the living room.

Peggin was huddled near the fire, shivering below the blanket. She hadn't said a word since we brought her back to the house, and now she stared at the flames, her eyes haunted.

I knelt beside her. “Are you . . . are you okay? Do you need to go see Corbin? How are your lungs? The lake water's not the safest.” I was hovering, I knew it, but damn it—the Lady had almost dragged her away. Of course I was going to mother-hen her.

She shook her head. “No, I think I'll be all right.” She gazed into my eyes, a bleak, stark expression on her face. Then, a moment later, whatever composure she had left vanished and she fell forward into my arms, sobbing. “I thought
I was dead. I thought I was going to die. She pulled on me. I could feel her pulling me out of my body, Kerris.”

I held her tight, stroking her back. The smell of lake water was thick in her hair, and for a moment, I thought I caught a whiff of something else—decay, or brine . . . something not borne from fresh water. Shivering—the scent made me wary, as though there was something hidden in the room with us—I took hold of her shoulders and pushed her back.

“I want you to remember everything you can about what happened. So few ever escape the Lady . . . the more information we have, the better off we are. Maybe someday we can fully put a stop to her attacks.” I knew it sounded like a pipe dream. The Lady had been around Whisper Hollow since long before the first settlers had come in. But if we could untangle some of the spirits who had been bound to her, perhaps it would give us an even playing field on which to stand.

Peggin shivered. “I just want a hot bath first. And to be honest, I want to go home—to my other house. But I can't.”

I glanced up at Bryan, feeling hopeless.

Deev spoke up. “Kerris will draw you a bubble bath. Meanwhile, I'm going to go look at that furnace and see if we can't get it to crank out some heat.”

“It's new, so it should be working well. But I'm not certain where it is, or where the thermostat is.” I answered for Peggin, who was leaning her head against the chair, wincing.

“Well then, we'll just have to find it.” He motioned to Bryan. “Come with me?”

Bryan shifted to his feet. “Sure thing. Kerris, why don't you get Peggin into a hot bath? After she's had a soak, and washed her hair, we'll go out for a late lunch. My treat.”

More grateful to the guys than I could express, I wrapped my arms around Peggin and helped her stand. She was still shaky, no wonder, given the circumstances. As I led her to the stairs, the men headed down into the basement.

Peggin undressed in her bedroom, shivering as I took the
cold, clammy clothes from her and dropped them in a laundry basket. Grateful we'd thought to make her bed already, I started to wrap her in a throw but she shook her head.

“No, I don't want the Lady's stench on it. I can smell her, Kerris. I can still smell her. The scent of rotting bodies and long-dead fish . . .”

“I think her scent got caught in your hair. We'll wash it away, don't worry.” I drew the bath, filling the tub with the first bath wash I could lay my hands on—warm vanilla. The fragrant aroma filled the bathroom and I shut the door behind us to keep the warm steam in.

“I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry I was so cocky and so—”

“Stop right there.” The last thing I wanted to do was have her thinking I was about to say
I told you so
. “I wish to hell I'd been wrong. As it is, now we know that the Lady lures people. It's not just bad luck. She's like a siren, you know? My guess is her voice targets anybody who's within range.”

As Peggin stepped into the tub, I helped steady her with one hand. Frowning, I noticed a mark on her right inner wrist. Pointing to it, I asked, “Did you get hurt?”

She frowned and glanced at the mark. “What's . . . I don't know what that is.”

“Well, get yourself into the bubbles and I'll take a closer look.”

As she settled down into the water, I pulled out my phone and switched on the flashlight app. The lights in the bathroom were dim and I wanted a clear view of what that mark was. She leaned back and let out long sigh as the heat of the water began to draw the chill from her body. Peggin was plump, and curvy—typical hourglass figure, only much more Rubenesque than society approved of.

I started to reach for her hand, but she shook her head. “One minute.” Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and slid beneath the water, popping back up after a few seconds. She took some of the bath gel—I hadn't been able to find the shampoo—and smoothed it into her hair, working
it through the long red locks. Another dip beneath the water left her thoroughly lathered up.

“I couldn't take that stench any longer. At least now I smell like vanilla.” She reached for the hand towel that I was holding and wiped the water out of her eyes, then handed it back to me. That done, she held up her wrist, squinting at it.

I knelt by the tub, turning the flashlight beam on her wrist. We stared at the long, black mark that looked like a streak of ink, but then I began to notice that the unsteady tendrils threading off it actually reminded me of vines.

“It looks like the start of a tattoo.”

“Well, that's no tattoo I ever asked for.” She squinted. “Is it a bruise? It doesn't hurt.”

“Maybe . . . a blood blister?” I gently poked at it, but the mark didn't feel swollen and Peggin didn't flinch. “That doesn't hurt? Not at all?”

“No.” She paused, then shrugged. “I guess we'll figure it out later. Maybe I hit it on something when I was fighting against her.”

“About the Lady . . .” I didn't want to push, but the more we knew about Peggin's experience, the better.

She stared at the water, then slowly began to scrub herself with the washcloth. “I don't want to think about her, because I can still feel her there. Kerris, I feel like she's latched onto me. If I think about her too hard, it will bring her to me. Or take me to her.”

I frowned. “I think we need to talk to the Matriarchs.” One thing I did know. Some spirits could link into a person's aura, drawing energy from them. And if the Lady had corded into Peggin, then we needed to find the connection and sever it. Not only could a spirit—and sometimes a person—drain energy from others via psychic cords, but they could track their targets. And the last thing we wanted was for the Lady to be tracking Peggin.

Peggin glumly stared at the water. “I wish I'd never found this house. It seemed like the only way out.”

“Can you still get out from under the sale? I mean, you're renting to own. What if you just find someplace else to rent—”

At that moment, I heard the men talking, their voices pitched. I motioned for Peggin to rinse her hair. “I don't trust leaving you in a bathtub filled with water while I'm out of the room. Not so soon after what happened this morning.”

She pulled the plug and reluctantly stood, climbing out of the seventies retro heart-shaped jetted tub. After she took a quick rinse in the shower to wash off any residue, and I handed her a thick towel to wrap herself in, and then we stopped in the bedroom, where I managed to find her blow-dryer. She didn't bother with styling today, just hit the heat to dry out her locks, and then slid into a fresh pair of capris and a warm shirt. After she was ready, we headed downstairs to see what the commotion had been about.

*   *   *

B
ryan and Deev were examining the mantel. I wasn't sure what they were looking for, but Deev had his head dangerously close to the flames as he gazed beneath the wide beam over the fireplace. Bryan was holding the flashlight for him.

“What's going on?” Peggin asked, forcing a smile. “You find gremlins in my fireplace, I'm going to sue you for emotional distress.”

Bryan looked up. “We found something. This mantel matches some beams we found downstairs. By the way, this house is so full of ghosts I'm surprised its not labeled standing room only. We ran into a couple downstairs.”

“Lovely,” Peggin said, rolling her eyes. “Just what I wanted to hear. Tell me what you found—besides the spooks.”

Deev stood up, abruptly bumping his head on the wooden beam. He winced, rubbing his forehead, as I pulled back from the fireplace. “What do you know about ships?”

“Ships? Starships? Sailing ships? Ships in the night?” Peggin was making an attempt at a joke, but even I could
tell it was to keep herself from freaking out any more than she already had.

“Come look.” Deev seemed overly excited, and I hoped to hell this wasn't a bodies-in-the-basement situation.

We followed him, with Bryan taking up the rear, toward the basement. The staircase was steep and dark, with no hand railing to hold on to. The single lightbulb that hung over the stairway was bare and flickering.

“Oh this is lovely. You need to put in a railing right away. And a light that's easier to reach. If that goes out while you're down here, how are you going to even reach that in order to change it?” I used the wall for support, grimacing at the grime that had built up over the years.

Peggin nodded. “And the list keeps growing. But you're right, these are on a priority list.”

“There already was one at one time.” Deev guided us down, pointing out the indentations in the wall that must have been where a railing once attached to the side.

As we entered the basement proper, I decided that if we ever wanted to murder someone, this would be the place to do it. There were three rooms in Peggin's basement—the main one in which we were standing was a larger, dimly lit room with built-in shelves along three of the walls. The shelves were deep, and it was hard to see into them. They were filled with dust and cobwebs, and boxes of junk that prior owners had left behind. I grimaced, thinking that it would be the perfect place for spiders to hide. We didn't have many poisonous ones on the west coast of Washington, but we did have hobo spiders, and black widows—so common over the mountains in eastern Washington—had been spotted around. The room was filled with broken furniture, and an old workbench with a few rusty tools on it.

But Deev ignored all of that and motioned for us to join him on one side of the room. He motioned to the wall. “See that arch?” As he shone his flashlight on it for greater visibility, I noticed that there was an archway, built of beams that
curved up one wall, across the ceiling, and down the opposite wall. The wood looked worn, but there was something different about it that made it stand out from the rest of the house.

“What about it?” Peggin asked, walking over to run her hand along it. “This is smooth—it feels almost weathered. But the basement is dry—it doesn't look like there are any mold problems or flooding issues down here.”

“There aren't. At least, not that we can see. But those beams? They're from a boat. This arch is built, I believe, from part of the keel beam and the ribs of a boat.” Bryan crossed to stand beside Peggin, motioning for me to join them. “Look here—see those markings?”

I leaned in. Sure enough, there were letters, though they were so worn it was hard to make them out on the wood. “What do they say?”

“I think they may be a clue as to which boat these came from.” Deev was touching one of the beams with what seemed almost like reverence. “They're hand carved. I can tell you that much. Whoever built this boat, built it from scratch. There's no fiberglass here, no sign that this was one of a hundred mass-produced boats of its kind. I can feel the love that went into this boat—it's radiating through the timbers. But . . . there's something else.”

I joined him, placing my hand next to his. Instantly, a wave of fear and grief overwhelmed me, and I heard someone screaming. I yanked my hand away as though I'd been burned.

“Crap. What the hell happened here? There's so much fear wrapped up in this wood, no wonder the ghosts are active on this land.” I stared at the beams, trying to get a sense for anything I could that might have happened.

“I'm not sure what's going on, but I'd like to know. Are there any more of these beams down here?” I cautiously passed through the arch and crossed to the other side of the room, where I peeked through the two doors against the
opposite wall. One led to a grungy two-piece powder room. The other looked like it might have been a laundry room at one time, but now it just housed more boxes of junk. “You need to go through all of this stuff and clear out whatever you don't want, Peggin. There's a lot of psychic residue down here and I doubt if it's all good.”

She frowned. “Boat . . . Deev, do you think you can figure out what the markings say? Do what you can—I know you have excellent vision.”