The Nightmare Game (74 page)

I waived the man to come into my room, for I was
anxious to meet this person who claimed to be related to Edmond and who knew my
name without my ever telling him.

“Hello, Miss Adams,” he said, his accent that of a
British man who had lived a long time in the New Orleans area. He was
impeccably dressed in an expensive suit and looked quite dapper. “I’m Julian
Tate. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“Well, it’s not like my schedule’s booked solid
for the time being, and I am curious, how do you know my name and Edmond’s? I
know you said that you were his uncle, but we both know that can’t be true.”

“How right you are, Miss Adams,” he agreed.

“You can call me Ashley. Now that we’ve both
decided that you’re not his uncle, then, who are you?”

“I’m the closest thing to family that he’s got
left in this world. That’s how I know his name.”

“And how do you know mine?”

“You introduced yourself to my grandson, Troy,
when you first arrived in the city.”

As soon as he said this, I relaxed my guard.

“Troy. So you’re his grandfather,” I said, holding
out my good hand for him to shake. “He saved my life in Rochere’s office.”

“That was his job.”

“How did he know that I was there?”

“When it comes time for Edmond to call the people
who actually have a real chance at destroying Rochere, we set out a protective
detail on them. We monitor Rochere’s e-mails and then we watch the airports and
monitor taxicab and minibus transmissions for destinations to her office. As
soon as we noticed your destination, we sent Troy out to rescue you. Lucky
thing, too, for Rochere was able to get into your head and almost destroy you
before Troy was able to intervene.”

“What if I would have rented a car? Or driven in?”
I asked.

“In the past, that would have been your bad luck,
but these days, GPS trackers help us out immensely.”

“Sounds pretty tedious,” I observed.

“We have the manpower. Also, Troy was the one that
bought the food for your second day. We knew from experience that you would
probably need it after The Crypt. I hope it wasn’t too much of a mess, since he
had to throw it over the courtyard wall. He also wrote a note and signed
Virginia’s name. I do hope the meal survived intact.”

“That was him? I thought it was Virginia.”

“No, although she brought it in and put it into
the refrigerator for you. Actually, I don’t think anyone could actually see her
except for Edmond’s chosen.”

“Well, bless his heart. I don’t remember ever
being as hungry as I was that day. That explains the handwriting on the note,
then.”

“Yes, Troy really is quite a brilliant fellow, but
I never could get him to improve his handwriting. Pity, but good penmanship
seems to be a lost art these days.”

“So I didn’t just accidentally run into Troy a
second time before my first visit to The Crypt?” I asked.

“Oh, no. We hired an independent private
investigator to follow you that night. We sent Troy in to give you the moral
support that we knew you needed to go into that club and not to leave the city.
Rochere would have killed you for sure had you left.”

“Okay, but how did he know that The Crypt was even
there? He wasn’t supposed to be able to see it without either the amulet or
taking essence.”

“He couldn’t see it. It’s just that we’ve helped
out so many people in the past that we knew its location from experience.
Rochere never changed it because she never suspected we were trying to help
Edmond. However, he couldn’t come in with you because, without the amulet, that
was impossible.”

“So Arrosha never picked up on you guys, in all
these years, right? How is that possible?”

“She thought she’d killed us all off a long time
ago. The survivors of our Trust have managed to keep her unaware of our
involvement.”

“Trust, what Trust?”

“You see, Edmond has had staunch friends all
along, allies of which he was completely unaware. We are all members of a group
that I’m sure he thought Rochere destroyed a very long time ago.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Let me start from the beginning. You see, Edmond
was an archaeologist before he was taken prisoner. This was in the very early
days of the field, a time when most archaeologists were rich, privileged young
men, wealthy, dedicated amateurs existing in loosely formed societies, not the
professionals tightly bound to universities and foundations as we have today.
Edmond and his friends had both the interest and the means to belong to such a
select group. Originally, there were three of them working together, Edmond and
two of his closest, life-long friends. Realizing that their adventures were
becoming increasingly dangerous, this group of adventurers decided to create an
organization, a trust that would protect their monies and their properties, to
ensure that their previously informal little society would survive should
anything happen to any of them. The three of them put quite a tidy sum into
their cause, an organization they created in order to further the advancement
of archaeology. For not only were they all unmarried at the time, but their
families were so incredibly wealthy that this contribution, while considerable,
was just a drop in the bucket for them. In the end, it proved to be far wiser a
decision than anyone could have imagined, for no one could have envisioned
Edmond meeting Rochere.

“Once she had imprisoned Edmond, the other two
original members met untimely deaths, along with his family. However,
unbeknownst to Edmond, a fourth member had newly been added to the group, one
about which he knew nothing. The Institute for Antiquities, the original name
of the Trust, had not had the time to inform him of the change in its
membership, since news traveled so slowly in those days. As a result, what
Edmond did not know, Rochere apparently did not know and thus we continued to
exist as an entity.

“Since Edmond had written back to England after he
had met Rochere, his friends were aware of her presence and, at the end, in his
very last letter, how powerful and dangerous that Edmond suspected her to be.
After the deaths of his friends and most of his family, the last person left at
the Institute for Antiquities, the one unknown to Edmond, thought it wise to
restructure the association to prevent her infiltration. He had a friend of
his, who was a great legal mind, set everything up so that nothing could be
traced back to Edmond, except by someone extraordinarily intelligent and
extremely determined, neither of which, thank God, was Rochere. They renamed it
the Trust. Even with all the precautions we took, I’m still convinced, though,
that it was the necklace and its box that actually kept us from her detection
all of these years.”

“So it was more than the wearer that the necklace
protected,” I said.

“Yes, although our protection was limited to an
inability on Rochere’s part to sense us. We never took that protection for
granted, however, and have been inordinately careful to stay in the shadows.

“After our first set of precautions, we sent yet
another solicitor, one that was completely ignorant of all knowledge of us, to
New Orleans and Baton Rouge to set up our Trust in the U.S. and set up the
paperwork on the house on Toulouse Street to prevent it from being traced back
to any ownership in England. A third solicitor merged the U.S. and British
corporations together. Our holdings are now world-wide. As far as Rochere is
concerned, we are just one more multi-national corporation, although in
reality, we have been protecting Edmond and his friends’ assets, assisting this
quest ever since he disappeared and his colleagues died.”

“I wondered why Rochere was never able to get her
hands on the house,” I said.

“We wouldn’t let her. It belongs to the Trust. It
has since Edmond signed it over to us before his disappearance. Rochere never
owned it,” he replied.

“She sure acted like she did.”

Julian chucked. “I’m quite sure. Oh, she wanted
the house very badly because it was the link, it was where the necklace and
both the boxes had made their home, but the Trust refused to sell it to her.
Eventually, we allowed her to manage the property.”

“Why on earth did you do that?” I asked.

“Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?” Julian
said. “It took us awhile to understand the implications ourselves. Have you not
noticed that there is no one after Virginia that survived for any length of
time until Marcus came along?”

“Yes, I did. But the only reason I know is because
I was in the game. How did you know?”

“The boxes always returned to the house
immediately after a player was called. No one ever knew where they were in the
interim. Virginia was able to communicate their reappearance to us by hanging a
handkerchief on the third floor balcony.”

“And Rochere never noticed.”

“I think the amulet boxes kept her and her minions
from seeing it. Or themselves, for that matter. Considering that she never
found the boxes, as extensively as she and her cohorts searched, I think it’s
safe to assume as much.”

“What did that have to do with giving her control
of the house?” I asked.

“Eventually we realized that we needed to keep
tabs on her. Allowing Rochere the illusion of power over that house was our way
of doing it. It was the only way that we could keep an eye out for her and have
any control over the situation whatsoever. We were able to monitor her
movements in the beginning of every new attempt because she stayed in her
persona of the rental agent. If we had not let her have some control over the
property, we would never have been able to help you when you were in her
office.”

“Point taken. Do you think she ever suspected your
involvement?”

“I think that she thought humans were too stupid,
beneath her suspicion.”

“That certainly sounds like Arrosha,” I said.

“Arrosha?” Julian asked.

“Her real name, at least as far as I know. It’s
what her followers called her and what she called herself.”

“What followers?”

“The others that came in with me. Don’t worry,
though, they’re decent people, you’ll like them. She conned them into thinking
she was good; she deceived them into being her followers.”

“I see. We at the Trust only ever knew her as
Rochere. It was always her last name, although her age and her first name
varied as she grew older and disappeared, only to reappear as a younger
relative. It’s interesting to find out her true identity at last, something we
never would have known had you not won.”

“Actually, Max’s the one that saved the day in the
end.”

“I was always pulling for Max. We all had high
hopes for him, greater than we ever had for anyone before him. We were so
disappointed when he did not win when it was his turn, but I’m glad to hear
that he finally did succeed. Where is he, then? I should like to shake his hand
and offer him a reward.”

“He’s in the ICU. They don’t think he’s going to
make it.”

“It can’t be,” Julian objected. “I spoke to the
hospital staff and the only one of your group in Intensive Care is some poor
chap who is severely deformed.”

“That’s Max, or rather what Arrosha did to him.”

“She was capable of that? Oh, poor Max,” Julian
said, looking sad. “I remember him well. I was a much younger man back then and
my responsibilities were much like Troy’s were with you. I always liked him. A
quite handsome fellow he was back then, before…”

“Rochere got hold of him. I know, I saw a photo of
him from back in his baseball days.”

“You did? Where?”

“Rochere’s victim collection that she kept in a
storeroom.”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. I could tell he was
hoping for a more uplifting story than that. “Well, anyway, Ashley, another reason
for my visit is that I wanted to tell you not to worry about your possessions.
We’ve retrieved them from the apartment and they are safe at our Trust house in
the Garden District. Also, don’t give one more thought to your hospital bill or
any other financial worries that you might have. That goes for your friends, as
well.”

“They’ll be very happy to hear it.”

“I’m just glad to be able to help. You see, the
Trust is an organization of great means; all of your needs will be met. You do
not have to worry about money ever again. You have freed Edmond and rid the
world of a great evil. You deserve a reward even more than we can give you. I
hope that we will get a chance to help Max in the same way. I realize that
there is nothing that we can do that can possibly repay you for what you did,
but we can try. I suppose what I’m really saying is, Ashley, from this point
forward, you are an extremely wealthy woman.”

I had to chuckle softly under my breath.

“What’s funny?” Julian asked.

“Nothing, really. It’s just that’s what Arrosha
offered me if I handed over the amulet.”

“I see. Well, I’m certainly glad that you made the
right choice.”

“So am I. One thing, though. When my friends get
out of the hospital, they have no place to stay.”

“They do now. They’re more than welcome to stay
with us at the Trust house, as are you. Here’s my card,” he said, pulling his
business card out of his pocket and handing it to me. “Call us if you need
anything. Anything. There will be someone here from the Trust sitting vigil
twenty-four hours a day until Edmond regains consciousness. We’ll be sure that
you know when that is as soon as we know.

“Until then, Ashley, it was nice meeting you and
goodbye.”

“Same here,” I told him. As soon as he had left, I
began to worry about Edmond. When would he wake up, I wondered. And when he
did, what would happen to the two us now that we were no longer joined by a
psychic link? I wanted to stay up and process the events of the last few days,
but before I had much chance, a nurse came in to give me my painkillers, which
sent me into a deep, medicated sleep.