I heard a coin fall and rattle on the floor.
I eyed the door, wondering how badly Mrs. Morrissey would be disappointed if I locked it behind me and high-tailed it back to the store. I could tell her that Teag came down with accute appendicitis. Or that the shop was being invaded by aliens (sometimes, that didn’t seem far from the truth).
The coin fell again.
I could feel my heart thudding. Get a grip, Cassidy, I chided myself. It’s probably a recording on a timer, or a glitch in the wiring. I didn’t touch anything. There’s nothing to worry about.
Something clinked at the top of the stairs. As I watched, a coin rolled off the top step and fell to the next, impossibly remaining on edge. I stared in fascination and horror as it fell from stair to stair until at last it tumbled from the bottom step, spun for a second, and landed flat at my feet.
Heads, you die.
I had backed all the way down the stairs, and now stood in the foyer. A glance at my watch told me that Mrs. Morrissey wouldn’t be back for at least twenty minutes. Once again, I weighed my options. I could leave and lock the door behind me, but that would mean breaking my word to Mrs. Morrissey and putting the archive in a bad light with the expert who was due to arrive any minute. I decided to ignore my thudding heart and stay where I could keep an eye on the stairs and the door at the same time.
From the empty second floor, I heard the unmistakable sound of a man’s boot step.
My hand went to the agate necklace at my throat. Last night, after Teag and I had chased off whatever attacked the house, I had placed the necklace in the moonlight to recharge it. I hoped that would be enough to let Jeremiah Abernathy and any of the other rogues know that I was not someone they wanted to mess with.
Unfortunately, I had neither Alard’s walking stick nor my grandmother’s wooden spoon, though Bo’s collar was still twined around my left wrist.
Too bad it’s too warm to have worn my jacket. I’m pretty sure Teag filled the pockets with salt, I thought. Then again, I had no idea how I would have explained it to Mrs. Morrissey if she found me standing in a circle of salt.
Maybe Abernathy’s ghost is just putting on a show, I thought. After all, he seemed like the bullying type.
Upstairs, I heard more footsteps. I decided Abernathy could walk around all he wanted, so long as he stayed on his own floor.
The music box was still playing. I heard a woman’s laugh, and remembered the display dedicated to Lavinia Fisher, the serial killer. She was not someone I wanted to meet in person. I hoped she and Jeremiah would keep to themselves upstairs and leave me alone.
The temperature in the foyer plummeted. When Mrs. Morrissey had shown me through on the way upstairs, it was comfortably cool. Now, it was as if I had stepped into a refrigerator, enough to raise gooseflesh on my arms. Not a good sign of things to come.
Upstairs, the heavy footsteps sounded again, closer this time. Before, they had been muffled, as if someone were moving around the exhibit room. Now, the steps were in the upstairs hallway, and coming toward the landing.
I was torn between keeping my eye on the top of the stairs and moving closer to the door to the outside. Maybe I could stand on the Archive’s wide piazza and welcome Mrs. Morrissey’s visitor out there, I thought, crossing to the door in a few quick strides.
I turned the knob. The door wouldn’t budge. The deadbolt had been unlocked when I came in, and Mrs. Morrissey had only locked the handset when we went upstairs, I was sure of it. I knew for a fact that I had only locked the handset after she left, since I didn’t have a key to the deadbolt. But no matter how I turned the knob or clicked the button in the handset, the door refused to open.
“Maybe it sticks,” I muttered to myself, grabbing the knob with both hands and pulling. Nothing happened.
Behind me, the footsteps were getting closer to the top of the stairs.
I was sure the Archive must have a back door, and I thought about checking the kitchen, but that would mean going past the main stairs. I could get trapped in the back of the house if Abernathy’s ghost actually descended to the first floor, and I had no assurance that the kitchen door would open. For all I knew, it was locked with a deadbolt, too. I couldn’t count on getting out that way.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, and stared at it in outright amazement. Though I was right in the middle of the Charleston Historic District and only a few blocks from my store, the display said ‘no signal’. I tried to call Teag, although I had no idea what he could do to help, but the call wouldn’t go through. Shoving my cell phone back into my pocket, I grabbed for Mrs. Morrissey’s desk phone, but when I raised the receiver to my ear, there was no dial tone.
Jeremiah was playing with my mind.
My watch said I still had at least ten more minutes before Mrs. Morrissey got back, and that was assuming she would be on time. I’d never run an errand to the Chamber that quickly, and I wasn’t counting on punctuality.
The foyer had grown even colder, and when I glanced up to the top of the stairs, I realized something had changed. Before, I could glimpse the ceiling and a little of the walls of the upper floor. Now, the top of the stairs was completely dark, darker than it should be in the middle of a spring afternoon in a building that had plenty of windows. Much darker than it had been just moments ago. And as I watched, the darkness swallowed the top step. I heard the scuff of boots and the thunk of a walking stick.
Jeremiah was coming.
A knock sounded at the door, and I turned for an instant to look in that direction.
In that moment, Jeremiah struck.
The darkness tumbled down the stairs like floodwater, roiling and rolling as if it had weight and substance. Every fiber in my body screamed a warning. As the darkness flowed closer, even without touching it I knew it was unclean, filthy with hatred and the need for vengeance, polluted with cruelty and a casual disregard for light and life.
Bo’s ghostly form appeared in front of me, snarling and snapping like an insane guard dog. But Jeremiah wasn’t afraid of ghost dogs, and his darkness slammed Bo’s spirit out of the way.
Jeremiah was a man who wouldn’t let anything stop him from getting what he wanted, even if that meant bending a demon to his will. The darkness inched toward me, backing me up against the wall, hungry for my warmth, my life. Tendrils of darkness clutched at me, just like the shadows in the Covington warehouse, and I felt the cold take my breath. Bo’s ghostly barking seemed far away. The agate disk struggled to hold back the evil and I could tell its power was fading fast.
Since running was out of the question and there was no good place to hide, I looked around for a weapon, something to fend off the darkness. I saw the shaman’s staff hanging on the wall and dove for it, grabbing it down just as the darkness lifted me off my feet and threw me across the room.
I hit the opposite wall hard enough to knock some framed pictures from their places. I banged my head, striking one of the spots where the falling crates had nicked me the night before, and the world swam.
In the tide of darkness, I could hear Jeremiah’s boots coming down the stairs, closer every minute. I forced myself to climb to my feet, trembling against the unnatural cold, frightened and angry and determined to give him a fight.
I closed my right hand around the shaman’s staff. The wooden staff was wrapped with layers of colored string dyed in shades of plum, dark orange, blue, and green. Feathers, bits of metal, bone, and shell hung from leather ties, and a hunk of agate had been set into the top of the pole and securely wrapped with sinew. The staff felt comfortingly heavy in my hand, and I could feel the tingle of remembered power as my palm closed around the worn ash handle.