Legacy, page 12
“On occasion, in island ports away from the taverns where my crew congregated, I had sought solace in hurried touches and fumbled couplings. Those encounters had confirmed my desires, but they lacked the most satisfying thing that my Annabelle had been able to give me—friendship and a trustworthy companion.
“All that flashed through my brain in the blink of an eye as I regarded Montero. My body made its interest clear in a way I could not ignore, and I was glad for the table that hid my reaction from view.
“I thanked him, hoping my voice did not betray me.
“After all these years, I still remember the slow smile that spread across Montero’s face. He said he had heard of me and wanted to know if I ‘measured up’ to the stories.
“The wicked gleam in his eye and the change of his tone suggested a more salacious meaning. My heart thudded as I feared my secret might be caught out. I wasn’t sure which would be more terrifying—for him to be mocking me or to somehow, impossibly, return my interest.
“To steer the conversation into somewhat safer territory, I asked by whose letter of marque he sailed. Pride colored his features as he assured me the ‘John Company’ issued his letter.
“I knew he meant the British East India Company, a reputable—if ruthless—force in the Caribbean. Given his fearlessness and his crew’s mastery of their ship, I did not doubt that Montero turned a handsome profit for himself and the company.
“A strange recklessness came over me, and I offered to buy his drinks in gratitude for saving my ship. I did not want him to leave.
“He smiled, and even now I remember the speculation in his gaze and the dimples that were to be my ruin as he accepted my offer.
“We talked for hours. I feared that we might have nothing in common except for the details of sailing, but I found Montero to be educated and well-read, and our discussion ranged from books to the theater to favorite coves in the West Indies. Time flew, and before I knew it, the tavern had emptied, and the barkeep told us to call it a night.
“To my surprise, Montero rose and made a courtly bow. He thanked me for my company and told me that he felt sure we would meet again. His rakish smile haunted my dreams for weeks.
“I watched him leave, and I knew in that moment that something connected us far more than a battle or the sea itself. I felt certain that we were to be something to one another, but what, I did not know.
“For the first time in a very long while, I felt hope stir.”
I read for another hour and a half, still finding no spell reference that would make this a grimoire. Then I looked up with a sly grin. “What do you think?”
Teag smirked. “Is it hot in here, or is it me?”
“Day-um,” Maggie said. “You didn’t tell me this was pirate porn.”
“Dante says that Gideon’s description is accurate for the time and place,” Simon spoke up. “Dante visited the Royal Mile often. He said to tell you that it’s not a bad thing that he doesn’t recall Montero or his ship. It means that Montero was never a problem or got in their way. Dante’s crew left the other privateers alone.”
I exchanged a look and a shrug with Teag. So far, Gideon’s story seemed to be checking out.
A glance at my phone reminded me that it was getting late, and tonight was a weeknight. I turned to Kell. “Before we finish up, can you tell us how your investigation went at the plague church?”
“Sure,” he replied. “We decided to investigate St. Sebastian’s Church because of the appearances of the monk ghost on The Battery and increased paranormal activity inside the church itself.”
“Harbingers,” Father Anne said. “Warnings that something bad is coming.”
Kell nodded. “Usually, we try to document the activity when we go to a location. In this case, we didn’t need to confirm that the reports were real—we wanted to find out what they meant. We took Alicia Peters with us, hoping that the spirits would talk to her and that we could record the encounter.”
“What happened?” Simon asked.
“Let me show you.”
Kell sent the video to Teag to screen-share it on the laptop, making it visible for Simon, Beck, Travis, and Logan as well as the others in the room.
“Saint Sebastian’s is maintained as a museum,” Kell narrated. “It never functioned as a regular parish church because it was built as a place to hold the funerals for the people who died in the plagues that hit Charleston—mostly Yellow Fever and Malaria. Just to put it in perspective, there were seven Yellow Fever epidemics just between 1792 and 1800, and more later.”
“Wow,” Logan murmured.
I knew that statistic, but it always floored me to hear it repeated. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like to have lived through that or to see so many friends and family members die.
“There’s a story that one of the monks—Brother Johan—had prayed to heaven every day to stop the plague, to no avail,” Kell continued. “Finally, he offered to sell his soul to Hell. The plagues ended and didn’t begin again for seventy years. But Johan was damned to remain bound on earth as a harbinger of looming disaster.”
“Theologically questionable, but it makes a good story,” Father Anne said.
Kell’s video showed the inside of the old church. Saint Sebastian’s was plain in comparison to many other churches in Charleston—a city with so many places of worship its nickname is the “Holy City.” The walls were white, adorned only with a series of large plague crosses, each one easily three or four feet long, some made of metal and others of wood.
A plague cross looked like a regular Christian cross but with an additional, shorter crossbeam above the main one. Prayers to one of the plague saints and protective symbols were usually carved into the cross. The amulets were thought to ward off disease and dated back at least to the Black Death in the 1400s.
“You’re right, Cassidy,” Simon said. “Those crosses look different. I doubt that’s an accident.”
“SPOOK had already done observations down at Whitepoint Gardens and elsewhere along The Battery,” Kell went on. “We didn’t capture Brother Johan on tape, but we did get high EMF readings and some interesting EVP.”
Ghosts were a manifestation of energy. While they were difficult to photograph, the energy readings provided valuable information about their strength and usually lingered even after the visible appearance faded. EMF measured the energy, while EVP recorded sound.
“We found similar readings at Saint Sebastian’s to the EMF we gathered along the sea wall,” Kell said, and the video showed a monitor with an array of red lights. “Very strong energy—you can see that the meter’s pegging the red zone.”
“You think the same spirit is haunting the church?” Beck asked.
Kell shook his head. “Not exactly. There were more ghosts inside the church, while Johan is the only one who shows up at The Battery. He might be trapped by his deal or bound by the need to protect the city. A number of spirits haunt Saint Sebastian. Some are repeaters—flickers of fading energy stuck in a loop that shows them doing the same thing over and over. Others might be monks who died of the fever carrying out their work and felt connected to the mission, so they stayed.”
I’d had plenty of run-ins with ghosts. Some were truly trapped and wanted to be set free to move on. Others chose to remain behind for a purpose—usually revenge or protection. A few didn’t realize they were dead and just needed a nudge in the right direction. Charleston is known for being one of the most haunted cities in the country. Ghost tours are big business, and being haunted is a selling point for restaurants and hotels.
“So here’s the best EVP clip,” Kell said. “We sharpened it, but we didn’t distort it or change anything.”
A strange bass voice spoke a few words. The first time it played, I only caught one word—“deep.” Kell played the clip a couple of times, and as I grew used to the echoey voice, I thought I heard a bit more, but I still wasn’t sure.
“Could you get anything out of that?” Anthony asked. “It’s muddled.”
Kell nodded. “When we ran it through some audio sharpening software, this is what we got.” He clicked on another clip.
“Witch of the deep,” the sepulchral voice said. “Witch of the deep.”
A chill slithered down my spine, and I remembered Gideon’s warnings about the darkness, a threat he had sacrificed himself to avoid.
“How about Alicia?” Simon asked.
“That’s coming up,” Kell replied. In the video, we saw one of his SPOOK team set out a folding chair so Alicia could sit down. I knew from working with her and Simon that channeling a spirit takes a lot out of a medium, an energy drain that can be dangerous. Alicia closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a few cycles before speaking.
“I wish to speak with Brother Johan, the protector,” she said, eyes closed, concentration clear in her features.
The tape picked up the quieter voices of Kell and his team, and it looked to me like shadows moved around the walls where there shouldn’t have been motion.
“We were getting a really strong EMF,” Kell narrated. “It got cold, and we felt a breeze when there hadn’t been any before.”
I noticed the salt barrier that Kell and his team had laid on the floor around their equipment. Salt repelled spirits. It wouldn’t stop their technology from recording what it saw and heard, but it would keep the ghosts from trashing their stuff if things went bad. Alicia needed to be approachable, so her chair was outside the salt circle—a necessary risk.
“Brother Johan? Why have you returned?” Alicia sounded small in the big, empty church. Unlike a regular sanctuary, Saint Sebastian’s had no pews and only a basic apse and altar. The monks who said the funeral mass and buried the bodies were most often the only ones in attendance since family and friends feared infection.
I knew when Johan answered her because I could see the change come over Alicia. Her bearing shifted, and something in her expression looked different. Alicia wasn’t completely herself, something my hindbrain recognized and responded to with primal fear.
“I remain.” The voice coming from Alicia had changed its timbre, deeper and more masculine.
“Why do you stay?” Kell’s voice carried from off-screen in the video.
“I made a pact.”
“With whom?” Kell asked.
“Whoever would listen.”
That sent another chill through me since it sounded like a deliberate non-answer. Sentient ghosts retained the ability to lie, or even more dangerously—withhold information.
“Why have you reappeared after being quiet for so long?” Kell asked from behind the camera.
“The protectors have grown weak.”
“Protectors from the fever?” Kell probed.
“From the darkness. The Witch of the Deep.”
“Can you protect us?” Kell’s question hung between them for a moment.
“Not the same.”
Alicia was tiring. Kell must have noticed it as well. “Brother Johan, it’s time for you to go.”
“Restore protection or remove the witch.”
“Thank you for your efforts. Now please, let her go.”
Alicia trembled, then slumped in her chair. She would have fallen if one of Kell’s team members hadn’t caught her. They pressed a bottle of water and a protein bar into her hands and waited while she regained her strength.
Kell ended the playback. “We got more EMF and some EVP but nothing as clear…and I think it was plague-related, not connected to Johan’s mission.”
“I took a quick look at those photos,” Simon spoke up. “I want to study them more closely, but I see a couple of things right up front. Most traditional plague crosses call on Saint Sebastian or Saint Roche. The crosses in the pictures call to Saint Elmo—the patron saint for protection against sea monsters. There are some markings that I want to check, but I think they refer to a very old term for monsters—‘leviathan.’”
“Seriously?” Anthony echoed. “Okay, I accepted vampires and werewolves, but you’re telling me the Loch Ness monster is real too?”
I felt for him. Anthony loved Teag with everything he had, but he was still new to accepting the supernatural. Teag and I suspected that Anthony’s highly accurate intuition might have more to do with latent magic than luck, but he wasn’t ready to accept that—yet.
Simon laughed. “We’re not talking Godzilla,” he said. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“When I was a boy, before I was sent away, my father told a story about a presence that haunted the waters of the Caribbean,” Beck said. “I thought it was just a faerie tale, but all this has me thinking there might be more to it.”
We all turned to look at Beck on the laptop. “He said that there were ancient spirits tied to land and water. The old cultures knew this and respected it, but nowadays people had forgotten those beliefs. Sometimes the spirits were guardians, and other times they were malicious. He said they caused wild storms, maelstroms, and shipwrecks.”
“That’s not a lot to go on,” Teag said.
“It’s a start.” Simon looked thoughtful, and I had a feeling he’d be hitting the books as soon as our video call ended. “There are a number of entities that might fit that story. At least that narrows the search.”
“Glad it helped—because as a bedtime story, it sucked. Gave me nightmares every time,” Beck muttered.
I knew everyone would rather stay up and brainstorm possibilities, but we all had jobs waiting in the morning. Simon, Travis, Beck, and Logan logged off after wishing everyone a good night.
Sorren turned to me. “I’ve taken care of the ‘stalkers’ you told me about, but Etheridge may be headstrong enough to send more. I paid a visit to his office after sundown. Ruffled a few feathers, I’m sure. He wasn’t there, but his people knew what I was, if not who I was. I made it clear that Charleston was protected and that I took Carter’s hostilities as a personal affront—for which there would be repercussions.”
His lips quirked in a faint smile. “Message received. I can’t guarantee that Carter will change his ways, but his entire organization is now on notice that the Alliance is involved and—what’s the phrase? ‘Taking names and kicking ass?’”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning against Kell as the day caught up with me. “I appreciate it.”
Sorren shrugged. “Carter Etheridge is not immortal, but his thinking is mired in the past, and he will understand the threat for what it is. So will those in his organization, and they may weigh the odds of their long-term survival against their loyalty to one reckless man.”
Sorren checked outside, then motioned for the others to exit, keeping watch so that they got to their cars safely. Everyone else except Kell and Sorren went home with the leftovers of their choice, which still meant I had plenty of food for the rest of the week. Baxter climbed onto the couch, figuring we’d be back, maybe with treats.
“Stay alert,” Sorren warned. “Carter Etheridge isn’t going to give up easily. Don’t go anywhere alone until we can deal with him. If his father were still alive, I’d have already spoken to him, and he’d have at least cautioned Carter to not be so blatant. Buell Etheridge was old school, and he observed the decorum of the supernatural community—at least when it served him,” Sorren added with an expression of distaste.
“Carter’s more of a smash-and-grab sort of guy. He doesn’t respect anything but force. He knows that you have powerful friends—and it’s not stopping him, so just threatening him isn’t going to make him change. There are others in his family who might be more willing to see reason, but they don’t have enough influence as long as Carter’s in charge.” There was a note of frustration in Sorren’s voice. “Be careful—and I will see what can be done.”
I thanked him again and then locked up. It had been a busy day, and now that the adrenaline was fading, I was tired.
“Did you have a good evening?” Kell stepped up close behind me. He pulled me into his arms, and I rested my head on his shoulder.
“It’s always good to be with friends,” I said, warm from dinner and the wine. “And Gideon’s story is turning out to be a lot more than someone’s dusty memoirs. I didn’t expect him to be so…candid.”
Logically I knew that people from long ago were just like us—that they loved and lusted and made impulsive choices based more on heart than head. Still, I couldn’t help feeling surprised at Gideon’s account of meeting Ramon and how completely modern it sounded.
“Makes me wonder where the story goes from here. We might not have gotten to the juicy parts yet.” Kell waggled his eyebrows lecherously.
“This might make up for some of the dry-as-dust textbooks I’ve read. Sexy history would probably attract a lot more students,” I joked.
“Much as I’d love to keep going with Gideon’s life story, it’s after midnight, and I’ve got a very long editing session tomorrow,” Kell said. “I’d rather spend the rest of the evening with you.”
I stretched up to kiss him. “Invitation accepted.”
Chapter Seven
We were slammed at the store the next day, which was good for sales, and less so for sleuthing. Everyone had commitments that night, which meant we couldn’t get together in person, but we agreed to connect by video call at ten. They all wanted to hear me read more of Gideon’s book, the oddest type of bedtime story.
The creepy stalker dudes down the block from my house were gone when Teag drove me home and waited while I sluiced the front walk with a fresh batch of the protection mixture. He assured me he was using the same mix at his home with Anthony. I felt exhausted by the time I went inside, but having Baxter hopping around my feet perked me up. A text message from Kell let me know his video editing was taking a lot longer than usual, and he was probably going to sleep at his place so he could work into the wee hours. He wouldn’t be on the video call but wanted an update if we found out anything important.
