Inheritance, page 7
part #4 of Deadly Curiosities Series
I should have known it wouldn’t last.
We were just finishing up lunch when my phone rang. “It’s Alistair,” I said with a glance at Teag. “I’ll put it on speaker.”
“Hi, Alistair,” I said. “What’s new with the museum?” Alistair McKinnon, the curator of the Lowcountry Museum, is a professional friend, and someone Teag and I help out when items with bad mojo find their way into the exhibits. I doubted this was a social call.
“Hello Cassidy, Teag,” Alistair said. “And Maggie, too, if you’re there. I’m afraid I need to ask you for a consult—and not the appraisal kind. We have a new bequest that worries me. I think it’s haunted.”
“What’s giving you that idea?” I asked.
“It keeps moving around the museum at night on its own.”
Teag and I exchanged a look. That would do it.
“I can handle the store,” Maggie spoke up. “Go see what’s going on. It won’t do to have exhibits wandering around loose.”
Alistair chuckled. “That’s one way to put it. And…thank you. The first couple of times, we thought it was moved by mistake or as a prank. But I’m afraid it’s more than that, and the staff is very uncomfortable.”
“We’ll head your way right now,” I said. “You caught us at a good time.” The call ended, and we cleaned up the cups and wrappers from lunch as I mulled over what Alistair said.
“Do you think there could be a connection with the other weirdness?” I asked Teag as we headed for my car.
“I vote for suspecting there is until we prove there isn’t,” he replied. “Whatever started this Caribbean mess, it’s got scary power. I think we play it safe and assume it’s all related.”
I’d come to the same conclusion, but it helped to hear Teag say it. The drive to the museum didn’t take long. I found a spot to park beneath one of the big live oaks, and we headed inside. The receptionist recognized us and waved us in. We knew the way to Alistair’s office, but to my surprise, he was pacing by the entrance to the first exhibit room, waiting for us.
“Thank you for coming. I’m just not sure what to do about this,” he said quietly.
Alistair didn’t fluster easily. I’d seen him handle big donors with ease, charm his way through major media events, and navigate the treacherous currents of Charleston high society without a second thought. But haunted and cursed objects go with the territory for museums, although you’ll never hear that said on the record. Alistair had seen firsthand how dangerous a haunting or bad magic could be, and I was pleased that he trusted us enough to ask for help.
“Fill us in on this wandering bequest,” I said as we followed him into the area that was under construction for a new display that would open soon.
“We’re doing an exhibit on the Triangle Trade, and its impact on Charleston,” Alistair said as we walked past half-assembled kiosks and empty glass cases. “Back in the early days, that was the trade that went from Boston to Charleston to the islands. Most people associate it with molasses, rum, and slaves—and that was a big part of it. But there was so much more.”
“Like what?” Teag had been all-but-dissertation on his Ph.D. in History before he took a summer job at Trifles and Folly. He decided he liked putting his knowledge to use stopping supernatural threats, researching antiques—haunted or not—and learning how to use his Weaver magic. So, I knew he and Alistair would be going full geek on the subject.
“You can see the Caribbean influence in the sugar plantations, the architecture styles, and even the furniture and decorative influences,” Alistair answered. “Not to mention the family ties. British families moved to the islands, and then some of their descendants took up residence in Bermuda—and Charleston. The island trade was a big deal during the Civil War when some of the British in the islands backed the Confederacy and the blockade runners,” he added. “And during Prohibition, the rum runners made a fortune in bootleg Caribbean rum.”
Charleston is a beautiful city built on rivers of blood. Enslaved individuals toiled in the plantations that created the city’s wealth, and their labor built many of its landmarks. Indentured servants and desperate Irish immigrants were often treated only slightly better than slaves. Add to that hurricanes, outbreaks of Yellow Fever, Cholera, and other tropical diseases, pirates and duels, and there’s a reason that Charleston is one of the most haunted cities in the country.
“…some of those old Caribbean families have kept ties to Charleston to this day,” Alistair was saying when I zoned back in.
“Wait, what?” I asked. “Which old families?” Somehow, I hadn’t realized that Charleston’s ties to the islands remained that close, even now.
Alistair turned away from the half-finished diorama he had been pointing to and looked at me. “Quite a few of the prominent families had a ‘Caribbean branch’ that handled their land holdings in Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic,” he replied. “Not to mention their pirate connections to havens like Antigua and Tortuga and the Bahamas. Respectable families don’t always mention that, as late as the 1830s, some of their wealth came from piracy or privateering.”
Teag and I exchanged a glance. Here we go with the Caribbean connection again.
“Are you naming names in the exhibit?” Teag asked. “Or would that upset your donors?”
Alistair chuckled. “Now that the movies have romanticized pirates, people are more willing to claim that part of their heritage. The families we approached for the exhibit were excited about loaning us all kinds of items and documents. No treasure maps, unfortunately,” he added with an exaggerated sigh.
“Is the wandering bequest part of the pirate exhibit?” I looked around, but nothing in sight struck me as likely to go walkabout on its own.
“Yes. Right this way.” We followed Alistair to a locked glass case with a blinking light to show an active alarm system. Inside was a black cane.
“This is the piece,” Alistair said. “It’s a gentleman’s walking stick, made from woven sugar cane fibers. Beautiful work—it took a real artist to create the spiral pattern you see. But somehow it gets out of a locked case without tripping the alarm and turns up in other parts of the museum. Not every night, but three or four times so far. Enough to have the staff…unsettled.”
Teag bent down for a closer look. “It’s gorgeous. The weaving is very tight and regular. I didn’t know you could make something three dimensional like that.”
“It’s from the early 1800s,” Alistair said. “Belonged to Chapin Etheridge, the patriarch of the Etheridge family. I trust you recognize the name.”
We nodded. The Etheridge family remained prominent in Charleston social circles and politics, but I’d never linked them to magic.
“At the height of their wealth, the Etheridges had large sugar cane plantations and distilleries in the British West Indies. They were the sworn enemies of the Pendlewood family, which was equally wealthy and who made their money in sugar, rum, and piracy.”
“I don’t recognize the Pendlewood name. Did they die out?” I asked. Epidemics were common back in the day and sometimes killed entire families.
Alistair shook his head. “They abandoned their land here in Charleston after the Civil War and left the manor house empty. For a while, they let the phosphate miners dig up the grounds, and when that ran its course, just let the whole place fall apart. Sad, really. Aside from some financial ties, the family has kept to its island properties since then. They haven’t been a force here in the city for quite a long time.”
“Why the bad blood between the Etheridges and the Pendlewoods?” Teag asked, staring at the old cane. I was sure that with his magic, he could feel its resonance as strongly as I did. Either the cane itself had a curse or a ghost attached to it, or the piece had been in close proximity to someone with a lot of strong juju.
“That depends on who you ask.” Alistair pointed toward a display that was only partly finished. “We’ll talk about the rivalry on that wall. Some say it was over a broken engagement. Others swear it was a business deal gone wrong. There’s even a version that says a Pendlewood cursed an Etheridge, over a lost card game.”
“Cursed?” My ears pricked up at that.
Alistair nodded, giving me a knowing look. “New Orleans has its Voudon—and I know Charleston does, too. But that wasn’t the only kind of magic in those islands. Some sorts were darker than others. And while the plantation owners wouldn’t admit it, they all dabbled—to the point that there were rumors of weather witches and hexed competitors, and ships cursed to sink.”
One of my ancestors, Dante, had been a privateer in those days, working with Sorren and the Alliance even then to intercept dangerous objects. Family history held that Dante was a weather witch himself. I wondered if he’d ever had a run-in with the Etheridges or the Pendlewoods.
“And you think that the walking stick might be a relic from that feud?” Teag asked.
“I’m afraid so.” Alistair looked around before he said more. “The truth is,” he added, dropping his voice, “we didn’t really want the bequest. Antiquities people talk, you know. I’d heard some stories from someone who was called in to appraise the Etheridge estate when one of the old-timers died. He had some tales that would turn your hair white. Swore up and down it was a regular haunted mansion, for real.”
“Do you know what happened to the rest of the items from that estate?” I wondered if this was the connection we’d been looking for.
“Most went to family members or were bought by museums,” Alistair replied. “As for the more…questionable…pieces, I heard they were all bought by a wealthy Dutch collector who took them out of the country.”
Score one for Sorren. My boss had started out as a jewel thief in Antwerp back in the 1400s. I didn’t doubt he’d stepped in to get the dangerous Etheridge legacy off the market. But if the cane was still here, had he missed some pieces? And were they somehow responsible for the Caribbean chaos we’d been experiencing?
I looked at Teag. “I guess we do a stake-out and see where it wanders.”
He shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Can we stay after closing?” I asked Alistair. “Because I don’t think it’s going to wander off while it’s daylight and we have people around.”
Alistair nodded. “We have insurance coverage for ‘special access.’ Just try not to incinerate anything we can’t replace.”
Teag cleared his throat. “About that…we might need to destroy the walking stick to stop it from rambling. How much trouble would that cause the museum?”
“It’s a bequest, not a loan, so no one will be expecting it to be returned,” Alistair said with a wan smile. “Although, it’s a very nice specimen, so if it’s possible to…deactivate…it without ruining it, that would be nice.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” I said, although I suspected Teag’s scenario was more likely. Even without touching the glass case, I could sense that the cane had power. It wasn’t likely to go quietly.
Teag set up his laptop. I took pictures of the walking stick and sent them to Rowan and Lucinda. Then I went to get us coffee and sandwiches from the museum cafe, to get us through the evening. I was hoping we really didn’t have to spend the night. Museums are a strain on my touch magic under normal conditions, and I didn’t expect that to get better after dark. Alistair promised he would come let us out as soon as we called, so we wouldn’t trip the alarms. That was a small comfort, but we had to defeat the stick’s magic first.
“It’s a coco macaque,” Teag told me when I got back with the snacks.
“Sounds like a fancy coffee drink.”
“It’s a lot more dangerous, unfortunately,” he said, accepting the coffee. “Not only can it move on its own, its master can send it on errands, according to legend. And if the master of the cane strikes someone with it, they’ll die by morning.”
“Lovely.”
“Just saying—don’t get hit.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I found a chair and pulled it over beside Teag. “But who’s its master now? Alistair said that the man who owned it died. If the family let it come here as a bequest, no one else laid claim to it. And if someone did want it, what’s the point of having it here in the museum?”
“No idea. But the other thing that worries me is, why are we just now finding out about two powerful magical families?” Teag asked.
“Well, for one thing, they were in the islands, but they hadn’t been active in the Charleston magical community for a long time,” I replied, thinking out loud. “So, they hadn’t caused problems here since I took over the store—maybe even before my Uncle Evann ran it.”
Teag nodded. “Sorren probably never had a reason to mention it. Actually, that doesn’t make me sleep better at night, since who knows how many supernatural hazards are out there that we don’t know about?”
I thought about Sorren’s long existence, most of it spent fighting dark magic, vengeful ghosts, and creepy creatures. Not to mention all the horrors of human history he had witnessed. I didn’t envy him his immortality, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know everything he knew.
“One nightmare at a time,” I said, eyeing the cane in its locked case. “That’s enough to handle. Did you find anything that said how to destroy it?”
Teag leaned back and took a long drink of his coffee. “Fire works.”
“Fire works on most things, but burning down the museum isn’t an option.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Since the cane is woven, my Weaver magic might be able to counter it,” Teag mused. “Whoever created it had to weave their magic into the walking stick. If I knew how it was made, I might be able to unmake it. But…”
“What?”
He shook his head. “I think that there’s more than magic involved. The walking stick was made from strips of sugar cane. Those cane plantations were brutal. The workers didn’t last long, and the conditions were inhumane. So, it’s not just the evil intentions of the weaver. The materials used to make the cane could have absorbed the evil of the people around it.”
My phone buzzed with a message from Lucinda. “She’s heard of a coco macaque, but she doesn’t know how to destroy it, aside from the usual.” By that, I was sure she meant fire, maybe with some blessed oil thrown in and some incantations for good measure. A text from Rowan moments later said much the same.
“I wonder how long it’ll take until it decides to act up?” I watched the cane as I spoke, but it didn’t do anything unusual.
As if on cue, we heard an announcement that the museum was about to close. The workers in the exhibit area had left more than an hour ago, but that hadn’t fooled the walking stick into thinking it was alone.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Teag replied.
At closing time, the quiet background music turned off. We heard footsteps in the hallway as the last of the staff filed toward the door. Both Teag and I looked up when Alistair stuck his head in.
“I’m heading out, but I’ll have my phone on,” he said. “Good luck and…be careful.”
Even though we couldn’t see the parking lot, I could tell by the feel of the building when everyone else was gone. The emergency lighting kept the museum from being completely dark, and I figured Alistair left a few extra lights on in the exhibit hall for our sake.
“What are you picking up?” Teag asked.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” I replied in a hushed voice. It was silly to whisper. No one could hear us, and I doubt the walking stick was listening. Still, the resonance of the history surrounding us weighed on me, and I knew that the cane wasn’t the only item with magic and dark memories in the building.
Teag waited as I got my bearings. I’d learned to shut down part of my gift whenever I visited the museum to keep from getting overwhelmed. Before I figured out how to open and close the throttle, so to speak, I had some embarrassing moments, passing out and throwing up when the resonance was more than I can handle. But I’d gained a lot more control since then, and learned a lot about my abilities. I hoped it would be enough.
When I reached out with my gift, I could feel where the haunted and magical objects were. A teapot in the “Lowcountry Living” exhibit still carried the ghost of its mistress. Pottery vases held a trace of the long-ago enhanced talents of their enslaved maker. Hot spots showed up on my mental radar, alerting me to pieces in the museum’s collection that were more than they appeared.
Over the years, Teag and I had worked with Alistair to remove anything that was a danger to the staff or public. Sorren had removed the worst pieces, and we’d managed to neutralize the others that were too powerful. What remained showed up to my magic, but most people would never notice.
I could sense the walking stick. It felt unsettled, jittery. Ready to move on. Maybe it missed having a master. Perhaps when its last owner died, the bond with the cane hadn’t been shut down correctly. Whatever the cause, the cane wanted to be somewhere else.
“There’s nothing else in here that’s going to hurt us,” I said finally. “Or help us.”
“I guess, considering the possible ways that could have gone wrong, that’s a good thing.”
“You can weave power into things. Can you weave it out?”
Teag and I stared at each other for a moment. “I’m not sure. I’ve never tried to de-magic an object without just destroying it.”
“How would you do it, if you did try?”
Teag stared into the distance, thinking. “When I put energy into a piece of fabric, I use my will to weave it in like another strand of thread. If I concentrate on the walking stick, I can see the magic. But when I reach for it, it slips away.”
A rattling sound made both of us turn toward the glass case. The walking stick twitched back and forth in the cabinet, and I expected the panels to shatter. Then the lock popped, and the cane righted itself, hopping down and pogo-sticking its way across the room.
“It’s showtime,” I murmured.
Teag and I had brought a duffle bag filled with weapons and ingredients for spells and protections. Silver, iron, salt, holy water, as well as blessed blades and sanctified amulets. We wore our usual protective charms, but I wasn’t sure what effect they’d have on the coco macaque.
