“And if I played no role in any of this?”
“Then you’d be well advised to tell us anything that will help exonerate you, and anything that will help us close this portal…and to pray that we don’t find out you’ve lied.”
Shanahan pulled himself straight and met Jeremy’s gaze. “I played only one role in all of this.” He enunciated each word as if such gravity would prove his sincerity. “And that is as the original owner of that letter. If I failed to properly safeguard it, then my only defense is that I had no reason-absolutely no reason-to believe it wasn’t what my grandfather claimed.”
“A fake?” Jeremy said.
“Not a fake. A dud. A failed experiment. A supernatural curiosity with an interesting story attached. That’s what my grandfather collected: stories.”
Jeremy’s gaze veered toward the windows, and his nostrils flared. The windows were closed, and he gave a slight head shake, as if the sniff had been instinctive. All I could see was the empty basketball courts.
“And the story behind this particular artifact?” Jeremy said. “You called it a dud.”
Shanahan nodded, emphatically, as if seeing a sign that his story was being believed. “It is supposed to be a portal. A holding cell.”
“For the man known as Jack the Ripper.”
“No, there’s no-”
“We’ll get to that,” Tolliver said. “Back to the letter and its intended purpose.”
They told us a story very similar to the one Anita Barrington knew, with the sorcerer creating a portal to hide from those wanting to take or stop his immortality experiment.
“Only either he wasn’t as good as he thought he was, or he rushed the last few steps while his enemies were closing in…”
“And the portal failed,” Jeremy said. “The sorcerer couldn’t get inside in time.”
“That wasn’t the problem. He-”
Shanahan went rigid, then stumbled back, hands going to his stomach. His mouth opened as if to scream, but no sound came out, just a wisp of something gray, like smoke, and he collapsed backward to the floor.
Tolliver shot forward. Nick pulled me back. Clay tried to lunge for Jeremy, but it was more of a lurch, his face shiny with exertion. Antonio spun on Tolliver, and the sorcerer flicked his fingers in a knockback spell, but Antonio grabbed his hands before he could finish.
Jeremy rushed to Shanahan, who was writhing on the floor, letting out what was probably a howl of pain, but came out only as a mewling whisper carried on a stream of breath that stunk of burnt flesh.
“Let me help-” Tolliver said, struggling against Antonio.
“Help what?” I said. “Finish him off?”
Tolliver’s eyes shot to mine, blasting me with cold fury. I walked over to him, Nick sticking so close his arm brushed mine as we moved.
“Are you going to blame us for that too?” I said. “Maybe we could flip off a power breaker, but we sure as hell can’t do that. That’s magic, and there are only two magic-makers here. Was he about to say something you didn’t want us to hear?”
“You think I did this?”
Shanahan had gone still, eyes open and blank. As Jeremy closed Shanahan’s eyes, Tolliver let out a roar and started struggling again.
“You just let him die? I could have-”
“Helped?” Jeremy said, voice deceptively low. “No one could have helped him…by curing it or hastening it along. But I’m sure that’s no surprise to you.”
“I didn’t-”
“I don’t know very much about magic, but there’s nothing else that would do that-burn a man from the inside.” He walked over to Tolliver. “He was about to tell us something about the portal spell, something you didn’t want him to say. What-”
A shout from outside cut him short. We all froze. When Tolliver opened his mouth, Antonio clapped his hand over it.
Another shout came, then a laugh, followed by the slap-slap of a ball hitting the pavement. Teens setting up for a game of hoops.
“How close?” Jeremy murmured as I slipped over to the window for a look.
“Too close.”
“Nick? Clay? Move Shanahan,” Jeremy said. “Elena? Find them a place to hide his body. We’ll meet you in the gym.”
“The gym?” I said. “It’s still dark in-”
“We’re only using the exit.”
The hall closet door was locked, but I broke it open and cleared a place inside.
Clay moved in to help Nick drag Shanahan to the closet, but he was barely able to stand without toppling. Nick waved him back.
“Is it just the fever?” I said. “What about your arm?”
He hooked his left arm over my shoulder in an awkward, furnace-hot embrace. He leaned in to me, lips going to my ear. I could feel the heat radiating from him.
“Don’t-don’t worry ’bout me, ’kay?” he whispered. “Get this done, I’ll be fine. Keep going. You need cover? Tonio and Nicky, ’kay?” A small sound, like a choked growl. “Not me. Can’t count on me.”
“I’ll cover her,” Nick said. “You know I will.”
Clay motioned for us to get moving to the gym.
Using a skipping rope, we bound Tolliver’s hands to prevent spellcasting. He fought like someone seeing the end coming. But he was no match for Antonio, who just heaved the taller man off his feet, ignoring his kicking and flailing.
We took him into the forest.
Jeremy sent Nick, Clay and me ahead to look around. Out of Jeremy’s sight, Nick and I sat Clay down on a fallen tree, never going so far that we couldn’t look back and make sure he was still okay. When we found a small clearing a safe distance from the path, we collected Clay, and returned to the others.
Antonio sat Tolliver on the ground and we surrounded him.
“Think about this,” Tolliver said, struggling to keep his voice calm as a vein in his forehead pulsed. “How could I possibly be responsible for all this? I haven’t seen Patrick in years. The letter was in his possession, then it was stolen and this portal-” His head shot up. “You think I stole the letter and activated the portal?”
“No. We know who stole the letter.”
“Then why aren’t you questioning-?” His gaze flicked across our faces, and the vein started pulsing again. “You stole it? Let me get this straight. You stole the portal letter. You activated that portal. And somehow this is all our fault?”
“The theft of the letter had nothing to do with the portal,” Jeremy said. “The person who wanted the letter had no idea what it supposedly contained-”
“And you believed that?”
Jeremy’s voice stayed even. “Yes, we do. It was a separate matter, with a human purchaser interested only in the letter’s historical value. We did steal it, in return for information that helped us to stop another set of crimes.”
Tolliver’s dark eyes still fumed.
Jeremy continued. “Perhaps Shanahan did believe that the portal was a failed experiment-in fact, I’ll wager he did. But when those zombies came to his door, looking for their master, he saw an opportunity. He knew the story behind the letter, that his great-grandfather had created it and trapped a killer within, a killer whose work was pivotal in those immortality experiments.”
“Jack the Ripper?” Tolliver’s lip twisted. “Don’t you get it? There is no Jack the Ripper.” He shook his head sharply. “Yes, I’m sure there was one, once, but he has nothing to do with the letter. That’s what Patrick was trying to tell you. I stopped him because I didn’t want to go off on an unnecessary tangent. Whoever killed those young women is not Jack the Ripper.”
Jeremy studied Tolliver’s face, and let him continue.
“The whole From Hell thing was a ruse used by the sorcerer who created that portal. He wrote the letter. He arranged for it to be sent, with the kidney, to the…” A sharp shake of his head. “Whoever it was sent to. It’s all in the file. I don’t remember-”