Chapter Nine
Pounding on the hotel door had both Rafe and Moira jumping out of bed from a dead sleep, each reaching for their knives. Rafe checked the peephole as Moira slipped on jeans.
“It’s Grant.” Rafe put down his knife and opened the door.
“Neither of you answered your phone,” the cop grumbled as he walked in.
“You look like shit,” Moira said.
Unshaven with bloodshot eyes, Grant was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before. Rafe said, “Carter?”
“Same as last night.”
Meaning, still unconscious and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. But to Rafe, that was a good sign. If he wasn’t worse than the night before, they had gotten to him in time.
“Tori Schaffer is missing,” Grant said.
Tori was one of the girls from Amy and Beth’s cabin at the nature camp.
“Tori? Didn’t you stake out Tessa Standler’s house?”
“I did. She was home all night.”
“That’s impossible. Unless she had someone else snatch Tori,” Moira said.
“She’s not the girl in the picture. I showed it to her this morning after I found out Tori was missing. Both Tessa and her mother looked at the picture. Not only was it not Tessa, she hadn’t been at the camp that week. She’d been the year before. As soon as I looked at the photo next to Tess, I realized that while there’s a passing resemblance, it’s not the same girl.”
“The witch at Defiance used her identity.” And likely cast a confusion spell, Rafe reasoned, so anyone from the camp who may have met the real Tessa wouldn’t have recognized the imposter. He exchanged a glance with Moira—he didn’t have to repeat their conversation from the night before: she understood that they were dealing with a powerful magician.
“I don’t fucking care whose identity she stole, we don’t know where she is!” Grant reached into his pocket and pulled out a near-empty bottle of aspirin. He spilled four tablets into his hand, tossed them into his mouth and chewed. “I sent a unit to Defiance, and the owner, on paper, is Reginald “Rex” Van Allen. He did nothing to land himself in prison, was apparently helpful and alarmed that anyone had taken sick. The health department will inspect the place on Monday, but we all know they won’t find a fucking thing!”
“By Monday it’ll be over,” Moira said.
“That doesn’t help Carter, and that doesn’t get me any closer to finding Tori Schaffer!” He glared at Moira. “Why did you leave Carter in there? How could you not see this coming?”
Rafe said, “Leaving Carter was my call. I told him not to drink anything.”
“So this is now his fault? He was doing me a favor! Do you know what shit I’m getting from my boss because of an unsanctioned undercover op? Once Tori went missing, I had to tell him the whole thing. At least everything except demons and witches. Which means I told him nothing.” Grant kicked a chair.
“Arguing isn’t going to get us any closer to finding her,” Moira snapped.
“Don’t you get it? It’s not my job anymore. I gave the local cops what I know about the camp and the threadbare connection to Defiance. And I had to lie—I said I saw her, not a psychic demon hunter!”
“I’m not psychic!”
Rafe put his hand on Moira’s back. “You understand, Grant, that the cops won’t be able to stop this. They won’t find Tori until she’s dead.”
“What am I supposed to do? Did you not hear that I’m no longer working this case? I made the argument that Amy was killed by people associated with Defiance all on specious circumstantial evidence. We have nothing connecting Amy with that club, and nothing connecting the fake Tessa Standler with Amy except a photograph.”
“Why isn’t that enough?” Moira asked.
Grant looked at them both as if they were stupid.
Moira strode over to the desk and pulled a map out of her backpack. “We have to find Tori.”
“What are you going to use, a Ouija board?”
Moira turned and shoved Grant backward. He was a big guy, but Moira was strong and he wasn’t expecting to be pushed. “I don’t have magical answers, I’m a lot like you, believe it or not. I investigate crimes, only mine are spiritual and yours are human. I know a lot more about how these people operate than you do.”
“You do? Then how come you didn’t know that they would go after Carter? He was doing me a favor!”
“So are we!”
“Forget it. I don’t know why I came here. I’m all out of options. At least I found out what happened to Amy Carney and she’s being buried Monday. At least one good thing came out of this fucked situation.”
Rafe said, “It’s not over.”
“For me, and you, it’s over. The cops know what they’re doing.”
“They won’t know where to look or what to do,” Rafe said. “I know what type of place they need to set up the ritual. If you want to find Tori before she’s drained of her blood and the fake Tessa is one step closer to becoming a vessel for Baphomet, you need us.”
Grant ran his hands through his hair and sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We do,” Rafe said. He looked at Moira. She was staring at him.
“How did you know?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have the answer.
Moira spread the map on the desk, taking her time because she knew that Rafe was hiding something from her. Maybe he didn’t know how he knew Tessa was preparing to become a vessel for a demon, but that he did know with such certainty scared her.
Why should it? She had unexplained visions connected to demons and Rafe didn’t back away from her. He didn’t look at her with surprise or as if she’d betrayed St. Michael’s Order. He wanted her to accept her curse—he called it a gift—and find a way to use it.
But how did she know if she actively sought out the visions that she was doing so purely, without magic, without snapping the thin spiritual line between them and the astral plane? What if she weakened the layers between her life and Hell? She was already connected to the underworld from birth, thanks to her mother. What if she only sealed her fate?
She glanced at Rafe. She had to trust him. He was the only one who truly seemed to care about her future—that she even had a future.
She extended her hand and Rafe took it, standing next to her looking at the map. “Grant,” she said, “where was Amy’s body found? That’s our starting point.”
Reluctantly, Grant walked over. He looked at the map, pointed to a place in near the Encino Reservoir.
“Was her body moved?”
“Yes, we believe her body was dumped in the woods, but very close to the time of death.”
“She died in the mountains,” Rafe said.
Moira didn’t ask how he knew, because she suspected Amy’s ghost had given him the information.
“Her body was found off Encino Avenue,” Grant said. “There’s a lot of open space, valleys and hills. She wasn’t tossed, she seemed to be positioned.”
“It’s common for rituals like this to be performed outdoors, but they can’t risk contamination of the area, and they’re not simply casting a spell,” Moira explained. “They’ll have placed her on an altar. The altar may have been flush to the ground, but she would be on something.”
“Can we go back to the morgue?” Rafe asked.
“Why?” Grant asked.
“Amy’s ghost spoke to me. Now that we know more about what happened, I can ask her questions.”
“I don’t fucking believe this!”
Moira defended Rafe, though she didn’t want him to talk to Amy or any other ghost. “You saw your girlfriend possessed by a demon, you saw what that demon did at Grace Harvest, you believed Julie when she told you about Amy Carney in the first place—that she’d spoken to the ghost—and you’ve risked your life and your career finding out what happened to her. Why can’t you accept that Rafe can talk to ghosts?”
Both Grant and Rafe were staring at her. Then Grant asked, “Why is it so important to know where she died?”
“Because if this is the ritual Rafe thinks it is, there will be five sacrifices. One on each equinox, and the last on the anniversary of the first, the autumn equinox, which is Baphomet’s feast day. And if we don’t stop the fake Tessa Standler before tonight, she’ll be exponentially stronger, and after facing her last night, I don’t think I can fight her if she gains more power, short of shooting her in the head. And honestly, I don’t want to go to prison for murder. Last time I checked, the criminal justice system doesn’t allow psycho-bitches to be killed because they’re summoning demons from Hell.”
Grant ran both hands through his hair and closed his eyes. “I’ll call Fern Archer and have her meet us there.”
#
Fern was at the morgue by the time the three of them arrived.
“I’m not going to ask,” Fern said in greeting. “Just don’t do anything to get me fired. And put on these.” She handed them foot coverings and gloves.
Rafe didn’t know how he was going to find Amy again, or if she was still here. “Where is her body?” he asked Fern.
“She was released to her parents. The mortuary is picking her up this afternoon, so the body is probably bagged and ready for transport in the main crypt.”
Fern led the way. She checked tags on all the bagged bodies. “Here.” She gestured to the fourth body in the row.
Rafe stood next to the gurney, mindful that Moira was watching him closely. He didn’t see or feel Amy’s spirit anywhere. Maybe she’d already gone to the afterlife in peace, knowing that her parents knew what had happened to her.
“Well?” Grant asked, impatient.
Rafe asked Fern, “Could I be alone for a minute?”
Fern hesitated. “I really can’t do that.”
Rafe looked at Moira and Grant. “I think if you both leave, she’ll come.”
Reluctantly, Moira left with Grant, saying to Rafe as she walked out, “Don’t break the rules.”
“What’s going on?” Fern asked.
Rafe smiled. “I thought you weren’t going to ask.”
“Changed my mind.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
She didn’t say anything.
Rafe continued. “You work here. You’re a comforting presence to any lingering spirits. They know you. They appreciate how you treat the dead. They’re not scared of you because you’re not creeped out by their physical bodies.”
“It would be hard to have this job if the dead freaked me out.”
“Moira is...sensitive,” Rafe said, not knowing exactly how to explain her fear of the morgue. He didn’t fully understand, and he didn’t think Moira knew, either. He suspected it went back to her past. “And Grant is angry.”
“What are the rules?”
“We’re not supposed to seek communication with ghosts, but if they choose to talk to us we can listen and ask them about their lives—often, if they can’t move past the astral plane to the afterlife it’s because of a powerful unresolved issue before they died. With Amy, she was trapped with her body because she couldn’t leave without her parents knowing what happened to her. Her love for her parents and their well-being kept her anchored to her body until it was identified.”
“Then she’s gone.”
“I don’t think so.” I hope not. “But I can help her.”
“And that’s the only rule? Don’t talk?”
He shook his head. “Don’t question. Don’t ask about the future. Don’t ask for any favors. That’s forbidden, because it opens a portal to the underworld, and your soul is at greater risk. It’s why going to psychics and asking what your future holds is a sin in the Church.”
“I’m not Catholic.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“To me it does.”
Then Rafe qualified, “For me, it’s a grave sin.” He didn’t need to explain further. “There’s also the problem of opening oneself up to possession. The more conversation, the more opportunities you give a poltergeist—a bad ghost—to get inside.”
“So all ghosts aren’t bad?”
“Ghosts are lost souls, not demons. Some are bad, some are simply...lost.”
You came back....
Rafe turned around. Amy stood behind him, surprised and smiling. “Yes,” he said.
Fern asked, “Is she here?”
Rafe asked Amy, “Do you want to say something to Fern?”
Tell her thank you for being so nice to my parents.
Rafe smiled and said to Fern, “Amy appreciates that you were kind to her parents.”
Fern looked freaked a moment, then she shook it off. “Well, it’s part of my job.”
She sings when no one is around. She has a very pretty voice. I can’t hear everyone, but I can hear her sing.
“I have a couple questions about what happened to you.”
Amy’s face twisted and she started to fade.
“Please, Amy—stay with me.”
I don’t want to think about that.
“I can help stop who did this to you. Do you know that Beth Milner went missing three months ago?”
Amy shook her head, but Rafe suspected she had sensed it.
“Tori Schaeffer is missing. She disappeared between midnight and six a.m. She’ll die the same way you died if we can’t find her.”
Tori? Amy came back into full focus.
“Do you remember a girl at your camp last summer who called herself Tessa Schaeffer?”
Yes. She was in our cabin. But she left early. Is she missing too?
“She killed you.”
No. It was him.
“Does he have a name?”
She frowned. I don’t remember. Everything is fuzzy. Tall. Long blond hair. So nice, so kind. I went with him, I don’t know why. I just—did.
“I think you were under a spell. Sort of like hypnosis. He said the right words and you went with him as if it were your idea.”
She was thinking.
Rafe pushed. “I need to know where you were when they took your blood.”
I died in the mountains.
“There was an altar. Candles.” As he spoke, he unzipped her body bag. He put his hand on her cold body. Amy’s ghost flickered in front of him and she stared at him, shocked.
I can feel you. How did you do that?
I don’t know.
He had a psychic connection with her now, he didn’t need to speak out loud. What he really needed was to see what happened to her, to filter her memories and fear through his experience and knowledge of the Baphomet ritual. He dismissed the fact that he, personally, had never witnessed a blood ritual like this, that until yesterday he didn’t even know it was possible.
Let me see, he said to her.
She trusted him, he felt it, and she let him into her memories. They revealed what happened when she died, but backwards.
Cold. Stars through leafy trees. Not a park, but a private backyard. Lights on one side, far away; a house closer. Candles. She was elevated, she didn’t feel anything. A pinch. She slept. She was dying.
The house itself. She was in the house for hours of preparation. She wasn’t scared. She was lethargic. A scented bath. Candles. Oils. Chanting. Someone lathered her with lotion. Lavender and something she couldn’t identify. Big house.
She’d been drugged, or under a spell. The coroner hadn’t found known drugs, but he wouldn’t have been looking for most of the herbs used in black magic rituals. The oils or lotion could have been made with any number of herbs that would relax her to the point of near unconsciousness. The bath, the candles, everything together was part of the purification ritual.
He was so pretty.
Rafe pulled his hand from the body, the connection lost. He’d seen Rex Van Allen, from Defiance, picking up Amy after school. He’d called her over and asked for directions, then said:
“There is a blood moon tonight.”
Then she’d gotten into the car and kissed him. Driven her to a house on Alonzo Drive. He’d seen the road sign with her eyes.
She had never met him before. He’d been a complete stranger.
Amy saw the truth as Rafe saw it.
It wasn’t my fault.
“No, Amy, you were murdered. It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know what you were doing.” She’d been hypnotized at the camp—all the dark energy Moira had sensed. Her vision at the willow tree.
Amy’s ghost shimmered in front of him, expanding in a bright light. Peace filled her face, the guilt that she’d been responsible in some way for her death disappeared, and her spirit was free to leave. For a moment Rafe wanted to touch her body and feel the same peace. To receive the knowledge and truth that Amy had at that moment.
But that knowledge would condemn him. He’d get but a taste of the truth, then it would be ripped away. Some rules could be bent, and some rules could be broken.
This rule was rigid.
Thank you, Raphael Cooper.
Then her mouth was moving but he couldn’t hear anything.
“What?”
She was worried. She was trying to warn him about something, but all he heard was one word.
Judas.
“What just happened?” Fern asked.
“She’s gone.”
“Just like that?” Fern seemed disappointed.
“It was beautiful.”
Fern hadn’t seen what he had, and Rafe should have felt lucky that he’d witnessed Amy’s ghost leaving the astral plane in a state of peace.
She knew his full name. She had been trying to warn him about something, but what? Tessa Standler? Rex? What was happening to Tori Schaeffer?
Or was it about him?
Fern zipped up the body bag. “We should go.”
He followed her out of the crypt, concerned that something was very wrong with him. He’d had this fear ever since he woke up from his coma nearly two months ago and walked when he shouldn’t have been able to walk. The fear only increased when he knew things he’d never remembered learning, like knowing what Tessa was planning with the Baphomet ritual.
Was he the Judas? Was he going to betray the people he was supposed to love and protect?
Grant was on his cell phone in the small office used by the intake clerk. He hung up a moment after Fern and Rafe walked in. “Good news, bad news. Good news first—we have an ID on the woman from Defiance off her fingerprints. Smart move of your girlfriend giving me her cameo last night. It kept a clean print. Gwen Simmons, wanted for the murder of her boyfriend. And the bad news? She’s supposed to be dead. Eighteen months ago, her car went off a cliff in Oregon and her body was never recovered. She left a suicide note confessing to killing her boyfriend, and her blood was found on the steering wheel.”
Fern gave a low whistle. “She faked her own death?”
“One year before Amy Carney died,” Grant said. “Did you learn anything?”
“She was killed in the backyard of a large house in the hills. I would know it if I saw it—it’s on Alonzo Avenue. Do you know where that is?”
“That’s in Encino,” Grant said, pulling out his cell phone to map it. “Damn, it’s near where her body was found.”
Rafe suspected Gwen Simmons had made a deal with the demon Baphomet. Her death was faked on the Equinox, and one year later Amy Carney died, her blood taken. Moira would know more about how the deal would have worked.
“Where’s Moira?”
“She went outside, said something about a blood moon.” Grant shook his head. “The moon isn’t even out yet, I don’t know—”
Rafe ran outside and searched everywhere. Moira had disappeared.