Twice Cursed (11 page)

“
Some NYPD Profiler you are
if can’t stand the sight of a stiff,” he joked, steadying her on
her feet.

Lily swallowed hard. “It’s not that,”
she said shooting him a dirty look between gulps. “Can’t you sense
it? It’s absolute terror. Christ in heaven, it’s practically
radiating from the body!”

She dragged in a deep breath and
placed her hand on the victim’s forehead. Immediately, images
flooded Lily’s mind. He’d been out for a good time with friends.
Rich boys slumming it, out trolling for drugs and illicit
fun.

“
I’m sorry...I’m so
sorry…”

Lily jerked her hand back, her eyes
losing focus. “What?” She blinked, turning her perplexed gaze
toward Martinez. “Did you say something?”

He shook his head. “No,
why?”

She frowned, peering at him from
across her shoulder. Maybe her brain was on overload and it was
nothing more than a leftover auditory impression. Or
not…

Lily froze. “Oh, God,” she muttered
and turned slowly back around toward the body.

“
What? What is it?”
Martinez asked, but Lily didn’t answer. She kept her eyes trained
dead ahead.

“
Remember when I said I
wasn’t sure if my talents ran toward channeling?”

“
Yeah…” he answered
cautiously.

“
Ding. Ding.
Ding.”

Martinez took a step forward and stood
next to Lily. “Here? Now?”

“
Yup.”

Lily slid her eyes to the side
expecting to see the detective’s face blanch. Instead, he looked
quizzical.

“
Are you all right? Do you
hear something too?” she whispered.

His shook his head, again. “Not a
thing.”

“
Hey! I’m over here,
there’s no need to whisper…”

Lily slid her gaze back to the front.
The ghost stood next to the cadaver tray, a young man, his face
pale and translucent white. He was so young, it broke her heart.
Way too young to have been involved in all this. “Um… Who are
you?”

“
Patrick Quinn
Kelly.”

Lily sucked in a breath. “It’s the
Kelly kid,” she whispered to Martinez, and felt him stiffen beside
her.

She took a step forward, keeping her
movements slow and non-threatening. Outside of Terry, she didn’t
have much experience with talking to the dead, but the kid looked
scared and as ludicrous as it sounded, she didn’t want to frighten
the ghost further.

“
Patrick, can you tell us
what happened in the bar? Can you remember?” Lily’s heart clenched
at the regret that shadowed his pale, translucent face. His wounds
were raw and puckered, even in his ethereal form, but the terror
that had hit Lily in the gut earlier was gone. There was no trace
of physical pain, either, only a pervasive sadness and
regret.

“
Tell my mother I didn’t
mean it,”
he said, flickering in and
out.
“I never meant to hurt anyone…it…it
got out of control.”

“
Didn’t mean what? Patrick,
wait,” Lily said, reaching out as if she could touch him, help
him.

“
What? What’s he saying?”
Martinez’s eyes flicked back and forth between Lily and the blank
space on the other side of the gurney.

“
Please…”
The ghost said, placing a hand on Lily’s forearm,
making the hair on her arm stand on end.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do; where I’m supposed to
be…”
he trailed off, his face a mask of
fear and uncertainty.

“
Tell my mother I’m sorry.
I should have listened to her…I never did. Tell her I love
her…”
He dropped his head. A glistening
tear dripped from his cheek, disappearing into nothing as it fell
toward the gurney.

The fluorescent lights
above them flickered and popped, and the air crackled subtly with
electricity. The ghost turned abruptly, and Lily’s gaze followed
his toward the back of the room.
“Something’s coming…”
His voice
cracked with panic. He took a step and then turned back.
“Don’t forget,”
he said,
and then vanished.

“
No!” Lily yelled, banging
her hand down on the stainless tray. “God, I hate when they do
that! One magnanimous, all-encompassing statement and then poof,
they disappear.”

“
He’s gone? For good? Did
he say anything about the attack?”

Lily shook her head, raising her hand
in frustration. “I don’t know.”

“
What does that mean? You
said ‘an all-encompassing statement’. Does that mean he told you
who did this?”

Lily shook her head.

“
Then would you mind
telling me exactly what he did say?” Martinez asked, his voice
rising.

Lily’s shoulders slumped. She turned
to face him, knowing full well he expected more than what she was
about to tell him. “He wanted me to tell his mother he loves
her.”

Martinez blinked. “You’re kidding me,
right?”

“
Detective. He was just a
kid. He’s disoriented. I’m not even sure he knows he’s dead, let
alone where he is, and I’d bet dollars to donuts he doesn’t
remember what happened—at least, not in any kind of cohesive
way.”

They stood in awkward silence for a
moment. Ryan nonplussed, and Lily not knowing what else to
say.

“
Doesn’t matter, anyway,”
she said, shoving her hand through her hair. “Ghosts are
historically unreliable. Their perception is skewed by their own
personal unfinished business, and you can never tell if the clues
they give you pertain to the questions you ask, or to some random
memory.” Exhaling, her breath fogged out into the cold from the
open refrigerated unit. “It’s better if we do this the old
fashioned way.”

Lily rested her hand on the body’s “Y”
incision, just above the heart. Immediately, her shoulders hunched
and she gagged, her senses overwhelmed by the smell of booze and
blood. Disjointed images flash through her mind: Patrick sliding a
c-note across to a bartender, a private room, drugs, sex
and…

Lily’s eyes flew open and she jerked
her head around toward the detective’s waiting gaze.

“
Jesus
Christ
, what now?”

Lily’s gut matched the apprehension
she read on Martinez’s face. If what she sensed was true, they were
in for a shit load of trouble. Her eyes met his. “We need to go to
the crime scene. Now.”

***

Lily looked at Ryan’s profile as he
wound his way through midday traffic. The man had high cheekbones
and a strong jaw, with a tiny cleft in the center of his chin. Two
dimples graced his cheeks whenever he smiled, crinkling the area
around his green eyes. He was dark haired and olive skinned, a
model for the cliché of tall, dark and handsome. He was the
complete opposite of Sean in every way, except for an unwitting sex
appeal they both wielded with ease. She couldn’t put her finger on
it, but there was something familiar about the young detective, and
it nagged at her every time he looked at her.

He clicked the directional and glanced
her way as he switched lanes. “You gonna tell me what spooked you
so bad back in the freezer section?”

Lily blew out a breath. “Not until I
get a better handle on it. It’s too vague, but I’m hoping the crime
scene will give me more precise residual impressions. Right now, I
can’t be sure of anything. Images are often muddied. Besides
whatever impressions I’m specifically looking for, I sometimes get
snippets of entirely unrelated thought.”

He shot her a look, taking his eyes
off the road for a moment. “Are you saying there are variables that
can skew the images you get from a victim’s corpse?”

Impressed, Lily cocked her head to one
side. “Very good, Detective, succinct and professional. But not to
put too fine a point on it, yes. I once caught flashes from a movie
a victim had seen with his girlfriend only hours before he was
murdered. It made my job very difficult, to say the least, trying
to sift through what memories were his and what belonged to the
film.”

“
Jeez.”

Lily exhaled softly, and rested her
head back against the seat. “Exactly.”

They drove the rest of the way in
silence. Lily looked out the window, watching the lunchtime throng
fill the sidewalks despite the cold. They were just people going
about their daily business, unaware of the darkness lurking in the
shadows, waiting for nightfall. Two months ago, she had been just
as innocent. Unfortunately, if she was correct in her assumptions,
the detective was in for just as rude an awakening.

Horns blared as traffic merged past
roadwork further choking the already congested streets. Lily
ignored the noise. If her gut was right about what she sensed, then
they were all in deep shit. She chewed on her bottom lip, weighing
the options. How was she going to tell the cops she believed a
vampire was at the root of all this mayhem? She knew vampires
existed—but the average person? Not outside books and
movies.

According to Ryan, his boss wanted to
make sure she wasn’t some kind of a kook. If this went badly, Shaw
would have a field day, and she’d lose all her hard-earned
credibility. This had the potential to be a lose-lose situation all
the way around, but she’d be damned if she would allow that to
happen without a fight.

Blood bath. Phillips didn’t know how
close to the truth he might be, and she prayed her gut was wrong.
If what she suspected was even remotely true, then she needed to
keep things quiet—at least until she called Sean.

Ryan pulled his car to the side of the
street and double-parked. Though CSI had finished its initial
investigation, the length of sidewalk outside the crime scene was
still marked with yellow police tape, including the small section
of asphalt covered in debris from the blown out bar. Uniformed
officers were still on traffic patrol, directing cars away from the
scene and keeping pedestrians moving along on the opposite side of
the street.

Lily opened the passenger door and
squeezed out between the parked cars. Without so much as a nod,
Ryan took her by the elbow, steering her across the
street.

“
I don’t think I need to
remind you how bad it would be for you spout off about ghosts or
other weird shit at this point. For the time being, we keep this
just between us.” Raising both eyebrows, he dropped his chin
slightly. “Got it?”

Lily blinked, tactfully disengaging
her arm from his grip. “Detective, I’m a professional. In my line
of work, discretion is not only good business, it’s a necessity.”
Her answer was soft, but to the point.

Outside the bar, officers manned the
perimeter, but from what she discerned, there were no other
detectives on site. Ryan flashed his badge, and the two crossed
police barricade.

Lily’s breath puffed out in front of
her as she took in the exploded frontage and scattered
debris.

“
Where do you want to
start?” Ryan asked.

Lily was silent for a moment, and then
slowly shook her head. “The answers aren’t out here, that’s for
sure.”

She took a step toward the darkened
bar, peering through the shattered doorway. A wall of stench hit
her as soon as she stepped through the threshold, sending her
body’s alarm systems into overdrive and her trace amount of Were
blood racing through her veins, intrinsically registering the
stench as dangerous.

Ryan came in behind her. “CSI has been
through here already, but they’ve asked that you not touch anything
or disturb the scene. I suppose they’ll have to sift through all
this again at some point if we come up empty.”

She regarded him, her expression
deadpan.

“
What?” When she raised one
eyebrow at the essentially rhetorical question, he blew out his
breath. “Okay…I get it. Just try not to touch too much. There’s a
box of latex-free gloves in the squad car, if you want,” he said,
raising one hand toward the door and letting it drop.

Ignoring him, she walked further into
the room, fragmented glass crunching under her boots with each
step. She moved slowly, her attention pulling her across the room
toward a pile of broken chairs. She squatted down, her reflection
fragmented and distorted in the shattered pieces of the bar mirror
lying amid the rubble.

The silvered glass was jagged-edged,
and clearly, razor sharp, but Lily picked up one of the larger
shards, resting it gingerly against the flat of her palm. She
curled her fingers over the edge and closed her eyes. The image of
a young girl, her face, sharp planed and her body thin to the point
of being gaunt, flashed through Lily’s mind. She was heavily
made-up, and despite her youth, the girl’s eyes held a desperation
so profound it made Lily’s heart clench. Pain, sharp and quick,
raced up Lily’s arm, and she knew. This sad teenager was a heroine
whore.

She dropped the shard from her hand,
letting it clatter to the floor, taking the image of the girl with
it. But it was too late. She had opened the channel. Violence had
left an imprint on the room so deep, that images bombarded Lily’s
mind one after the other, hitting her like uppercuts to the
stomach. She wrapped her arm around her middle, biting back on the
feeling of vertigo.