Shadow Silence (33 page)

I laughed. “Sleep deep and well.”

She yawned then, stretching as she did so. “That stuff works fast,” she said. I could see her unwinding, and sent her upstairs to bed.

Deev crawled under the covers, wincing. “Damn, that hurts. Can you hand me a pain pill?” Bryan brought him a bottle of water and handed him one of the pain pills, setting the rest of them beside him. Deev swallowed the pill, drinking deep to wash it down.

I left the lights on, figuring it would be easier for him to find his way to the bathroom. I set up his wheelchair next to the sofa so that he could step into it easily. Bryan headed to the bedroom and I motioned that I'd be right behind him.

Quietly, I climbed the stairs to the guest room where Peggin was staying. I knocked, softly, but there was no answer. Carefully, I opened the door and peeked in. She was curled in her blankets, snoring softly. The ferrets were playing in their cage and I made sure they had food and clean
water. I crept over to Peggin's side and touched her shoulder, but she was out like a light. Checking to see that the windows were firmly shut and locked, I headed back downstairs where I locked the front door and the back, and then headed to bed. Satisfied that everyone was safe for the night, I stripped out of my clothes and crawled under the covers, falling into the deepest sleep that I'd had for a long time.

T
he next morning—Tuesday—we were eating breakfast when Sophia called.

“We got our warrant and searched Clinton Brady's pub last night. We found a bunch of papers that indicate he's been with the Hounds for the past two years. I also found out that Clinton owed a great deal of money. Apparently he had a secret gambling habit, and had run up a bill of over one hundred thousand dollars. He had tried to take out a loan but he couldn't because he couldn't prove what the loan was for. One of the Hounds works for the bank and we think he figured it out. Apparently he saw a way to get Clinton over a barrel. The gambling debt mysteriously disappeared two months after Clinton first tried to take out the loan, but there's no indication of how he came up with the money. My guess is that the Hounds bought him off and made his little money problem vanish.”

I let out a long breath. Gambling had taken a toll on a lot of people, and apparently it had destroyed Clinton as well.
It had destroyed his ethics, and it had destroyed his life in the end.

“Well I guess we know
why
he did it. The kicker is, if he would have talked to the CMS, maybe they could have helped him out.” I had the feeling that somehow they would have helped him manage his way through his troubles and his addiction.

“I was thinking maybe it's best Peggin doesn't go over to the house, given how close it is to the lake. But if you want to come over today, we can sift through the rubble and see if we can find anything of hers that might still be salvageable. The place is pretty much gutted, but we might get lucky.” Sophia sounded defeated. “Sometimes it's really hard being in my position. I watch the people of this town go through trauma, I watch them deal with loss and pain. I do what I can, but there's never anything I can do to solve the problem after it happens. I can only come along, pick up the pieces, and try to make things seem a little better.”

I wanted to cheer her up. She did a good job and I hated to see her depressed. “Sophia, you give police a good name. Don't beat yourself up over what isn't your fault. We all respect you, and look up to you. Whisper Hollow is a magical town, and it's a dangerous town. It eats people up if they don't respect it. And you have to deal with that aspect as well. I think you do a damn good job.”

She paused, then thanked me. We agreed to meet at ten
A.M.
, and I hung up.

Peggin was still asleep; I had checked on her when I got up and she was still in bed, snuggled up under the covers. But I decided to start breakfast since it wouldn't be long before she and Deev would be waking up. Bryan had already been up and out when I woke up and took my shower. As I heated up the waffle iron, he came through the door, holding a box.

“I decided to go over to Deev's to bring him some clothes before he woke up. I can't imagine him wanting to wear that hospital gown after he takes a sponge bath. He's not
supposed to take a shower for the next couple days.” He set the box on the table and gave me a kiss. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Not too bad. I just got off the phone with Sophia.” I told him what she had told me. “So apparently Clinton was trying to solve his money problems, and everything got away from him. I still can't believe that he meant to shoot me down—it's just not in his nature. I think they must have had something else on him, but I don't know if we'll ever know what. Clinton was a good guy and I know it in my heart.”

“Desperation can make people do the strangest things, and it can make them do things that are totally against their nature. Maybe you'll end up seeing his spirit and be able to ask him.”

I cocked my head, giving him a sideways glance. “I'm not certain I really
want
to see his spirit. But some closure might be good. I wonder if Eugenie and Joseph are still there now that we found the blade. I'll find out later today when I meet Sophia at the house. We're going to look for anything that survived the fire. We both decided it wasn't a good idea to have Peggin out there. I don't think she's going to like it, but I'm going to make her take another sedative after breakfast. A little extra sleep won't hurt her at all.”

As I made the waffles, Bryan took Deev's clothing in to him and helped him to the bathroom so he could take a sponge bath and get dressed. I was just finishing up the fourth waffle when Peggin yawned her way into the kitchen.

“Caffeine,
now
. If you know what's good for you, you'll give me a quad shot.” She stuck her tongue out at me and I laughed but fired up the espresso machine.

“Listen, Sophia called me this morning and had some information for me.” I told her what she had said. I had the feeling that I was going to end up telling the story time after time today. After I finished, I added, “She and I are going to go through the remains of your house today.
You
are not coming. You are going to take a sedative and have a nice long nap while I'm gone. And I don't want any arguments.”

To my surprise, she didn't even try to put up a fight. “After I turned the gun on Bryan last night, do you really expect me to argue? That horrified me; I knew what I was doing even as I couldn't stop it. It was like something was possessing my hands. I don't ever want to be in that position again. In fact, as much as I love my gun, I'm probably going to get rid of it because I don't think I could live with myself if I ever accidentally shot one of my friends. Or if I accidentally shot anybody else who didn't deserve it.”

“That sounds like a good idea to me. I like that you can shoot, and I kind of want to learn how, but the reality is that some spirits can control mortals. Around Whisper Hollow, you never know who's going to be behind the wheel. Now come help me finish these waffles while Deev finishes his sponge bath. We'll eat breakfast, and then I'm going to go meet Sophia. When I get back, I'll wake you up and we can take some time to finish trimming the house. I think we both deserve a little bit of a break.” I didn't mention the meeting that night. We were already overstressed, overwhelmed, and way too tired to deal with anything else.

*   *   *

S
ophia and I spent an hour and a half poking through the remains of the house. Very little had remained, and it broke my heart to see the broken bits of china and the charred papers and what had been the boxes that were now piles of ash. At one point Sophia suddenly stood up and called me over to her side. She had found the porcelain figure of a cat. While it was covered with soot, miraculously it was unbroken.

I slowly took the cat in my hands. “I bought this for Peggin when we were ten years old. It was my birthday present to her. Of all the things you could find, I think she'll be happy that this is one that actually survived.”

We sifted through pile after pile of ash and rubble and when we were done, we had managed to find some jewelry still
intact, several knickknacks that had managed to escape breakage, and the miracle of miracles—Peggin's makeup case, which must have been blown out of the window during the explosion. Some of the bottles were broken, but for the most part her thousand-dollar makeup collection was intact. By the end, we had four necklaces, three rings—all of which were diamond and gemstones—the makeup case, the porcelain cat, three pieces of Peggin's china collection, and a pile of flatware that would be good as new if it went through a thorough washing. Everything else had pretty much been incinerated.

As I stared down into the basement, I thought about the blade again, and the beams from the
Susanna Maria
. This house had been cursed from the beginning.

Sophia carried the box of things back to her car while I wandered around the lot. I was looking for ghosts, but everything felt silent, as if the fire had wiped the slate clean. I closed my eyes and held out my hands but there was nothing here. No lost souls. No Eugenie. No Joseph. No Herschel. The land felt empty and barren.

I looked beyond the lot toward the tree line, where the lake glistened through the copse. Silent snow covered the trees and undergrowth, but when I closed my eyes and reached out I could hear a faint song and I knew it was the Lady. But she must have sensed me, for the next moment she was silent and the lake felt like a brooding lair, hushed and waiting for someone it actually wanted.

*   *   *

I
arrived home to find Deev sitting at the kitchen table in his wheelchair, playing with Daphne. He was throwing kitty treats one by one into the living room and she was running after them. Gabby and Agent H stared at him with disdain. They ran for no person. But Daphne was quite happy to gobble up anything he offered her.

“Well, this is all we found. And we went over it pretty in-depth.” I decided to wash up the silverware and the china
before waking Peggin. I wanted them spotless and sparkling when she came down. As I filled the sink with soapy water, and immersed the silverware first, Deev wheeled himself over to my side.

“There's something Peggin doesn't know about me. I didn't want to tell her, because when I've told other women in the past, it's affected my relationships in bad ways.” He pursed his lips, staring up at me from behind his crazy goggles. I had actually grown fond of them, and it had seemed strange to see his eyes so clearly the night before.

“Is this going to be something that's going to make me unhappy? And therefore, make
you
unhappy?” I really didn't want to hear that he was some pervert, or criminal, or anything that would make Peggin even more upset than she was.

He just grinned and shook his head. “I promise you, you aren't going to want to pop me upside the head after you hear this. I understand that tends to be your modus operandi.”

“Well then, tell me what it is. I'm waiting.”

“I'm rich. Peggin has no idea how much money I have. And to be honest, I never even think about it.” He paused, and then added, “Where I come from, I'm pretty famous. I made a great deal of money. I can easily afford to buy Peggin any house she wants. I know she won't take it as a gift, and I know it's too early to offer it to her outright, but I was thinking that I could be her landlord. She could buy it from me at a rate she could afford, with no money down, and eventually, loans can be forgotten.” Again, the edge of his lip tipped up in a quirky grin.

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and turned to him, crossing my arms across my chest as I leaned against the counter. “Where
do
you come from? Every time we've asked you, you don't seem to know the answer. I know that's your business, but Peggin is my best friend and I want to make sure she's safe. I like you, Deev. But I love Peggin.”

He stared at me for a moment, and then soberly asked,
“Have you ever heard of the theory of multiple worlds? Multiple universes?”

“Are you talking about a parallel world?” It sounded preposterous on one level, but given everything we had been through, and everything that I knew about Whisper Hollow, I wasn't about to pooh-pooh anything outright.

“Sometimes, I close my eyes and I remember life in another place. And I remember seeing a spinning vortex in the woodland, and the next thing I knew, I was walking into Whisper Hollow. My first memory of Whisper Hollow is finding myself on Katega Lane. I don't remember too much beyond the spinning vortex, except that I know I've always been an artist. And I know that I came here to find something. What that
something
is, I don't know. All I do realize is that I am driven to create sculptures, and that somehow, some of them come to life.”

“When did you set up your bank account?”

“Three years ago. I found that I had a check in my pocket. I'd have to go back and look at who it's from but it was cashier's check, for a great deal of money. I know the IRS investigates large deposits, but something must have checked out all right, because I was never questioned. I think I'm here from a different universe, but why? I don't know. And how do I make the sculptures that I do? Again, I don't know.”

I had no clue what to say to his revelation. But something about it struck me as absolutely true. I tried to imagine what Peggin would say to it, but for once I wasn't sure.

“For now, why don't you just tell Peggin that you're more successful than she thinks you are? And that you can invest in a house, and she can rent it for as long as she likes. That might go over better.” I didn't like deceiving my best friend, but until we took care of that mark on her wrist, she didn't need anything else to worry about. Deev could reveal his secrets after we were done with the ritual that night.

He gave me a long look, then nodded. “That sounds like
it might be the wisest move. And thank you, Kerris. This isn't exactly something I like to make public knowledge. For one thing, I still don't know why I'm here. And I don't want the government breathing down my neck.”

With that, I heard Peggin coming down the stairs. She had woken up again, which didn't surprise me. I had given her a very mild dosage when I left with Sophia. As she entered the kitchen I went back to washing up the silverware and china. When she saw the cat, she gave a little cry and raced over.