Peak of the Devil (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 2) Read online

  Olivia accepted the embrace, gave me a small nod, then got into the ambulance with her daughter. When they were gone, I walked back to the garage. A bag of charcoal was ripped open in one corner. Above it, on the cinder block wall, was an almost unreadable scrawl:

  birch ashes

  wormwood

  bedroo

  The last word ended in a shaky line. A crumbled briquette was on the floor just below it.

  I didn’t know the significance of birch or wormwood, but I knew that Megan McGibbons had really died not in this garage but in her bedroom, after smearing the walls with the blood flowing from her own slit wrists.

  For six months Cassandra Mosley’s words had spun round and round in my mind. Body. Bristol. My body. I’d hit nothing but dead ends trying to figure out what it meant. Maybe that was because it didn’t mean anything. But still in the wee hours of the night, the words did their insistent cartwheels and flips, floating away for a few seconds only to come back again and again. Body. Bristol.

  Bristol turned out to be the third most popular town name in the United States. Thirty of them, including one in my very own North Carolina. I hadn’t been to any of the towns, or dealt with any people named Bristol, on cases before. None of them meant anything to me.

  Until one February day when Wulf and I sat in the carpool line at my nephew Warren’s school, sandwiched between two white SUVs that were excessive in both cost and size. It had been a year and a half since I moved out of Charlie’s house, and his new partner Norbert had moved in the week after Christmas. One or the other of them managed to work from home a few times a week, and unless I was traveling, I still helped out after school on the other days. That usually entailed meeting Warren at the bus stop and working from their house until someone got home, but that day he’d stayed late to try out for the second grade play, and I had to brave the carpool line, a thing I loathed.

  I was chilly because of course I turned my car off, out of respect for the tiny lungs breathing the air around that school, but few of the others felt any such compunction. This did not surprise me. Selflessness was not a quality often seen in the carpool line. The week before I’d actually seen a woman drive just past the line, then proceed to back in so she was in front of the first car. That one actually did surprise me. I texted my outrage to my friend Amy, whose son went to the same school. What do you expect? she’d texted back. Carpool brings out the bitch in everyone.

  I was too early, and sitting and waiting was killing my back. I’d taken a particularly nasty fall on one of the canteen cleanup cases in December, and my left hip and lower back never healed quite right. But I got off easy compared to some; Wulf had lost a slice from the tip of one floppy ear right after the new year. Megan McGibbons was the worst, but she wasn’t the last of the switchel ring crew who needed a little encouragement to move on.

  And providing that encouragement was, as far as I was concerned, still my job. If for no other reason than that I had no idea what my job was otherwise. I’d been drifting since I’d gotten back from the netherworld, cobbling together contract work and making a pretty good living, but I never felt settled. The canteen was always there, behind me on the shelf when I sat at my computer, ready, waiting, keeping me in limbo.

  Until it wasn’t, thanks to that asshole Phineas. I was pissed at him, but I was also relieved, in some ways, and excited. The last tie was cut, and I could move on from that part of my life. The part that included Helen and Roderick Turner, and Jeffrey Litauer, and my brother’s awful death. All things that were surely best left behind.

  On the other hand, if not the canteen, then what? I wasn’t anyone without it. At least not anyone I knew. And my inner critic warned me, often, that I wouldn’t like that stranger when I met her. That I’d find she had nothing to offer the world.

  Whether from a sense of duty or straight-up cowardice, I put off meeting that new canteenless me. Because the canteen wasn’t gone after all, not really. The spirits Phineas had released from it were tethers, still holding me to it, still holding on themselves. They had to be cut.

  Although there weren’t as many as I expected, to be honest. Phineas turned out to be right about that: most of them went of their own accord. I only got phone calls about less than twenty of them. I followed up with all my other old clients myself, when I could find them, and they hadn’t heard a peep, so I assumed their ghosts had moved on without incident. Of course, who knew how many ghosts were acting up that weren’t connected to me, who had been banished by Cyrus or his predecessors. Those people would have no idea who to call.

  A heart-to-heart conversation was all it took for a couple of my cases to move on. Eight others passed without much incident, after I cleansed their houses (or in the case of Bart McLauren, his bar) with burning sage. Tessa Freeman required a handful of salt in the face after the sage. (A tip suggested to me by Martha Corey, who had it from her Aunt Prudence.) Tessa threw a tantrum at that, and Wulf had to chase her down and pin her in the corner while I threatened her with more. She left then, but not before she made a souvenir out of that bit of Wulf’s ear.

  Nothing I tried worked on Cranston Farquhar, and it was while I was puzzling out his case that Phineas came to see me for the second time since he’d smashed my canteen.

  The first time was a Saturday afternoon in October. I thought it would be the postman, with my package full of make-your-own trick-or-treat bag kits for Warren’s class party. (Despite my being his aunt, and his having, now, not one but two perfectly good fathers at home, it was still me the PTA called when they needed a volunteer.) When I saw Phineas on my doorstep instead I asked him, without preamble, whether he was going to help me with all these ghosts or not. He said he wasn’t, but that he wanted—something. I never found out what, because I closed the door in his face. Of course I was curious, but not enough to let him have his way.

  The second time he came was the week before Thanksgiving. He put his forearm in front of his face when I answered the door, as if blocking a blow, and said, “I’ll help you a little, how’s that? Advice only, no field work.”

  “In exchange for?” I asked.

  “Answers.”

  “Well, without field work, you only get two questions.”

  I didn’t invite him in. But Wulf had heard his voice and squeezed through the open doorway, tail wagging furiously. Phineas knelt in front of him and rubbed the great folds of bloodhound skin around his face.

  “Who had the switchel ring before Cyrus Basker?” Phineas asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, but I shook my head. “I honestly don’t. Cyrus was very stingy with information. I had the impression it had been passed down through his family, though.”

  Phineas stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans, I assumed to get rid of the dog spit. “Well, that makes you a lot less useful.”

  “I didn’t promise to be useful. You’ve got one more question.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Tanner? Maybe from Cyrus? Seen it on anything in his house? Or when you tracked down his family after he died, did you come across it at all?”

  “That’s a lot more than one question.”

  “They’re all sub-questions related to the same larger one.”

  “I’ve never heard of any Tanners.” When I saw the genuine disappointment in his face—and something else, was it sadness in those golden eyes?—I added, “I’m sorry.” And for a second, I actually was. But then I reminded myself that Phineas was an asshole. “Now tell me how to get rid of Cranston Farquhar.”

  I told him about Cranston, his unwillingness to budge from the barn where he died, and his tendency to poke the horses with rakes, pitchforks, whatever he could get a hold of. Phineas told me to soak an iron dagger in sea salt water, douse it in sage oil, then stab the apparition with it.

  “How am I supposed to stab a ghost?” I asked.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Same way you stab anything.”

  “And this will wo
rk?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Phineas said. “But it’s my best suggestion.”

  Our business concluded, Phineas gave Wulf a final pat on the head, nodded at me, and walked away. I stood in my doorway and watched as he went down the street. It was the third time he’d been to my house, without any sound or sign of a car, and I was curious.

  He took maybe a dozen steps before he disappeared. No flash of light or puff of smoke, but it was like he was walking off a stage, like his stride parted a curtain that fell back into place behind him. I stood gaping, startled. I knew he wasn’t human, had in fact puzzled over just what he was on more than one occasion, but seeing that he wasn’t human was a different thing. I stood and wondered just who the hell this guy was for another minute or two before Wulf whined, and I took him inside for his dinner.

  Phineas’s advice worked on Cranston.

  But there were four others I couldn’t get rid of, no matter what I did, including the iron dagger thing. The owner of the Menendez house sold it to the owner of the increasingly popular restaurant on the corner, who intended to turn it into his overflow parking lot. I predicted a few cracked windshields, but apart from that Alicia Menendez probably wouldn’t cause too much trouble. She was prone to tantrums, but not outright violence. The other three living families managed to form a sort of truce with their ghosts. I’d just talked to the last of those, three weeks before that day in the carpool line.

  Which meant—or should have meant—I was done.

  I shifted again in my seat, trying and failing to find a comfortable position. Luckily, kids were starting to come out of the building. I turned my car back on and scanned the crowd for Warren’s towhead. I’d left the radio on the news station, and was about to plug in my phone and play some music instead when I caught a word that stopped me.

  Bristol.

  It seemed the town of Bristol, North Carolina had been the site of five unexplained deaths in the past several weeks. The cause of death was heart failure, but it was unclear what had brought it about. Only one of the victims had a previous history of heart problems, and now that there were five, people were getting a little concerned. Investigators were considering a possible environmental cause, but they weren’t ruling out some kind of foul play, either.

  “Damn,” I said to Wulf. He thumped his tail against the back seat in agreement.

  It might be a coincidence. Megan was gone, after all. But dead bodies in Bristol? It might not be a coincidence.

  “Damn. Damn.”

  “Lyddie!” I’d been too busy muttering to notice my door opening. Warren bounded in, accepted Wulf’s slobbery greeting, and fastened his seatbelt. “I’m Pinocchio!” he said. “I get to play him three times! The play is in May.”

  “Congrats, Warthog!” I knew he really wanted that part, had been practicing for weeks. But I only half listened to his enthusiastic recounting of his audition.

  I was thinking about five bodies, dead for no discernible reason. Body. Bristol.

  I made some calls later that afternoon, but it goes without saying that nobody felt a big need to be forthcoming with a strange woman whose only journalism credential was an advice site for the haunted. I considered lying, saying I worked for the EPA or some major media company, but those sorts of things were too easy to check, and I didn’t much feel like being identified as a liar inserting myself into the investigation of five deaths that were probably not, but might be, the work of a serial killer. Instead I just kept trying the same thing, except with different people, hoping one of them would give me something.

  Yeah, it wasn’t one of my better plans. The lady at the police station told me to fuck off, although she put it more politely than that. The person who ran the town website, which was as close as they came to having a newspaper, told me to fuck off in those exact words. I got a little farther with the mayor’s office, which is to say, the extremely nasal-voiced man who spoke to me asked one question and made one declaratory statement before telling me to fuck off: “Did you say your name is Lydia Trinket?” and, “You’re that ghost blogger.”

  Then he told me to fuck off, but that was still something. If someone in that town knew I was an apparitions expert (a title I preferred over ghost blogger), that meant there was at least one person there who’d had occasion to search the internet on the topic. It could be that it was just a hobby, but that guy didn’t sound like the type who did things just for fun. If there were supernatural things going on in Bristol, that brought this whole thing a little farther away from being a coincidence.

  I am fond of lists, and it was time I started one. I opened up the note app on my phone.

  Things I know:

  1. Megan/Cassandra wanted something that had to do w/“Bristol” and “body.”

  2. 5 bodies turned up in Bristol, NC.

  3. There’s at least 1 person in Bristol, NC w/some interest in hauntings.

  Things I need to know:

  1. What is the connection between Megan & Bristol (assuming is one)?

  2. How did those 5 people die?

  3. Why did those 5 people die?

  4. Can I figure this out before anyone else dies?

  The section of things I didn’t know was longer than the section of things I did. Never a great sign.

  I got a call just before midnight that same night. The caller ID didn’t give a name, but it was a Western North Carolina area code. Despite the hour, I answered with my most professional “Lydia Trinket, how may I help you?”

  “Did I wake you? I probably did. It’s late, isn’t it?” Her voice was fluttery, like it might be gone any second. I was afraid she’d hang up.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “No, you may not. Not yet. They might… I might get in trouble. That’s weird to say because I’m a grown woman, but it’s true.”

  “Okay. Want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

  “Hearts. Hearts are on my mind. Three of them.”

  “Three of hearts? Like the card?”

  “No, three human hearts. My brother works at the town hall. He told me you called about the deaths. That means there’s something creepy going on, right? Like supernatural creepy? Otherwise why would you care? Was he mean to you?”

  “Uh…” It took me a few seconds to follow that disjointed trail to the nasal voice from the mayor’s office. “Yeah, a little.”

  “He hates you.”

  “Does he know me?”

  “No, but I’m obsessed with your site, and he has no patience with it. I post there, as Penny Dreadful.”

  “I recognize you!”

  I did. She’d been visiting my forums for over a year, almost from the day I put the site up. She probably had the highest post count of any of my regulars, and often had good advice for people. Her online personality was much more confident. Bordering on edgy, in fact. Not at all like the nervous woman I was talking to. I wondered at the contradiction. Maybe she was just a shy person who did better in writing. Or maybe she had a reason to be nervous.

  “I loved what you said to that guy in Colorado with the ghost in his sink,” I said.

  “Thank you!” She sounded genuinely happy with the compliment.

  “How about I just call you Penny for now, then?”

  “Yeah, call me that forever, Penny Dreadful is an awesome name. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t taken when I registered.”

  “Okay, so tell me about these hearts, Penny.”

  “Three of the victims. Their hearts were stolen.”

  I hoped I’d just misheard her. “Beg pardon?”

  “From the morgue or wherever they do the autopsies. Down in Crowley’s Peak, I guess, we haven’t got a place like that here in Bristol. But I heard my brother and sister talking about it.”

  “Someone stole their hearts.”

  “Yep.”

  “But only three of them?”

  “Yep.”

  “What did those three have in common?”
/>   “I don’t know. Nobody told me which three it was. But I figured you’d know what that meant. Someone or something wants those hearts for a reason, right? Like a sacrifice, or a spell? If something supernatural creepy is going on, those hearts must mean something, right?”

  “I don’t know what they mean. But I’m going to find out. I’m guessing you don’t want to give me your number?” I had it on the caller ID, of course, but I was trying to build a little trust. When Penny didn’t answer I said, “You can call me then, in a couple of days, and see what I’ve turned up. If late night works better that’s fine, by the way. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  Penny agreed to that plan and hung up. Without thanking me, I noticed.

  I set the phone back down on my nightstand, then just lay there for a while, thinking about a serial killer called True Colors. He’d taken hearts, too, out of his victims’ chests, and nailed them to their wrists. True Colors turned out to be the fiend I knew as Jeffrey Litauer. And now here was another maybe-serial killer, taking hearts. I knew it was silly to suppose that just because one fiend had a thing for hearts, maybe they all did, but something about it just felt ominous.

  Three hearts.

  Was there something about three hearts, specifically, that I’d read or heard somewhere? I felt like there was. It nagged at me for several more hours, until I finally fell asleep, but I couldn’t remember.

  The next morning, first thing, I called my friend (and Charlie’s neighbor) Martha Corey and asked if I could come over. She was delighted by the prospect—Martha was a lonely woman—and asked me to come for lunch, which was a bummer. I’d been hoping to get out of having a meal with her. Martha’s cooking was unreliable at best. But this was important, so I said I’d be glad to. I spent the next couple of hours looking for anything having to do with three hearts in my own files and books, but came up with nothing. I spent an hour after that baking cherry hand pies to bring to Martha’s. That way if the lunch was gross, I’d have something to fall back on.