Her eyes returned to the large princess doll. A great sacrifice for a small child who had surely loved the doll.
She stared at the smiling princess doll, and at its crown. The crown was large and covered in cheap gold paint. Perhaps the doll was supposed to depict Mardi Gras royalty.
The altar seemed to spin before her. She blinked, positive she was seeing something.
Her phone started ringing. It was difficult to reach for it. She managed to get her hands around it. She flipped it open.
“Hello?”
She sensed movement and heard the fall of a surreptitious footstep. She looked up. The sound was coming from Cutter Merlin’s office.
She saw him.
Just as she heard Liam’s voice.
“Kelsey, get out of the house. Get out of the house quickly. I’m on my way,” Liam said.
She wanted to answer him.
Then the phone was slapped from her hand.
She didn’t have the power to resist.
He shouted his orders as he left the station. “No sirens. And no cars on the peninsula. No one into the house but me, and start surrounding it. He has Kelsey. If he sees us, if he has any idea that we’re on to him, she’s dead. I repeat, no sirens, and stay back! Move it, move it!”
He rushed out of the station house and to the car. He tried not to shake, knowing that if he did so, he’d wreck the car. He thanked God that it was a small island.
He parked at the wharf, got out of the car and started running.
He passed Jonas’s bed-and-breakfast and burst out onto the road that led to the Merlin estate. As he came to the end, he saw Bartholomew standing there, his hands in the air.
“Not the door—he’ll see you. Don’t use the door,” Bartholomew said.
“Then what? He’s got her—get the hell out of my way!” Liam cried.
“No! Follow me. Get down, follow me.”
He began a quiet, quick jog behind Bartholomew.
On the front lawn, he nearly tripped over the body of Jonas.
He kneeled down. Jonas groaned. He was alive.
“I…saw someone. In the attic. It wasn’t Kelsey,” he said. “I thought it was you, but I wanted to be sure. I was on the porch…and then…”
“Help is coming,” Liam told him. “Hang on.”
Jonas nodded.
“And stay down. Stay down, please.”
Liam moved on, following Bartholomew.
To his amazement, the ghost ducked into the crawl space beneath the house. He followed the ghost.
He didn’t see it at first. And then he did.
It was a trapdoor. It had been used frequently, and gave without a single squeak.
It led to Cutter Merlin’s office.
“Give it to me, Kelsey,” he said.
She blinked, trying to focus. She wanted to lash out, strike him. She couldn’t. He had his hands on her shoulders, and she couldn’t move.
“I know you.”
“You know me well. I was your handyman around here when you were a kid. I took all kinds of bull from your sainted family. Now, I want the reliquary. Where is it?”
He shook her. She felt her head rattle.
“I haven’t found it.”
“You’re a liar.”
“You killed your friend,” she said. “Why? You’re Chris Vargas. You killed Gary White, and you had him doing all kinds of dirty work for you. Why did you kill him?”
“I had to kill him. He wouldn’t give me the book. I knew that I couldn’t beat Cutter without Abel Crowley’s original book of spells. Cutter’s book In Defense from Dark Magick was too powerful for the spells that I knew. I finally learned that Abel’s spell book was talked about in Key West, Satanism, Peter Edwards, and the Abel and Aleister Crowley Connection, but Gary lied and said he couldn’t find the book. When I found out he lied and that he was keeping the book for himself—I had to kill him. I wasn’t ready for Cutter to die on the night he did. I was just continuing to scare him—leaving him clues about what I wanted—and hoping that he would finally just give up the reliquary. Things went too far that night, and he died of a heart attack. I knew, though, that he would leave you a clue.”
She was scared, definitely scared. Terrified. But it didn’t really seem to register. She was going to fall down, and there would be nothing he could do.
She started to slip. He dragged her up, shaking her again. “How much coffee did you drink?”
Her heart sank. Whatever he had drugged her with had been in her coffee. And it had been so good. She’d had several cups.
She smiled at him. “A lot.”
Suddenly she saw that he had a huge blade out, next to her face. He forced her down to the floor, the point of his knife near her eye. “Kelsey, I’ll cut you to ribbons before I do worse things to you and then kill you,” he said. “Or, I’ll tell you what. Your friend Jonas is lying on the ground outside. I haven’t killed him. Yet. I’ll drag him in here and cut out his eyes and tongue in front of you. How’s that?”
“You want the reliquary?” she asked him. “Take it.”
He slapped her. Hard. For a moment, her teeth rattled and the room spun.
“Where is it?” His voice was shrill.