Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (8 page)

“It’s good to see you, Baxter.” Mrs. Peterson’s voice was shaky, but she had no trouble leaning over in her wheelchair to scratch Baxter behind the ears as he put his paws on her legs. He weighs all of six pounds, so he’s not going to knock anyone over, and he seems to know which of the residents like to have him jump up and which don’t.

We made a slow circle around the social room, making sure everyone who wanted to pet Baxter got their turn. Big glass windows opened onto a nice patio and walled garden, a safe place for the residents to get fresh air without any danger of wandering away. Baxter and I had gotten about halfway around the room when I spotted a couple sitting on a bench out on the patio. I recognized the woman from our weekly visits. Mrs. Butler was ninety-four, and she was talking animatedly with her visitor. I stopped dead in my tracks. Sorren was sitting in the moonlight next to her, holding her hand.

For a moment, I couldn’t stop staring. Sorren was chatting with Mrs. Butler and looking more natural, more relaxed, more
alive
, than I had ever seen him. It was obvious from their body language that they knew each other very well. The tilt of the woman’s head, the way she reached out a veined hand to touch his arm, they weren’t the touch of a grandmother to a great-grandson. They were the flirtation of a young woman to her beau.

Suddenly, I felt as if I were intruding, and I turned my back to the window, in part so I would stop staring, and also because I didn’t want Sorren to sense me there. He was so happy, an adjective I can’t usually use to describe him. Six hundred years, give or take a few decades, weighs on a person. He’s seen a lot of history first-hand, much of it tragic, and lost a lot of people who were friends and colleagues. Sorren is an old soul in the body of a grad student. And while I knew it was none of my business, I couldn’t help but be filled with questions.

“He’s such a good boy.” Mr. Thompson’s thready voice cut through my reverie. He was a stoop-shouldered man in a striped bathrobe, t-shirt, and sweatpants, with corduroy slippers trodden down on the heels. A wooden cane was tucked into the seat of the wheelchair next to him. Long ago, he must have been built like a linebacker. Now, he was all bones and angles, with skin that no longer fit. Behind his thumbprint-marred reading glasses, Mr. Thompson’s blue eyes were watery, but I saw a flash of something in them as he petted Baxter, something that might have been a memory of the person he used to be.

“What? Oh. Baxter. Yes, he is a very good boy,” I replied, pulling out of my thoughts. “He’s taken quite a shine to you.”

Mr. Thompson laughed, something between a chuckle and a wheeze. “Well, I always had dogs, you know,” he said. “All my life, until I came here. I wouldn’t let them bring me here, you know, until Tilly died. Little rat terrier, lived to be fifteen years old.
Fifteen
. You know, in dog years, that’s one hundred and five.” He smiled. “Believe it or not, that made her even older than I am!”

I reached down to ruffle Baxter’s ears, and Mr. Thompson’s hand brushed mine. I felt a sharp tingle like an electric shock, and drew back. From the surprise in his expression, he felt it too. “Sorry. Static electricity,” I murmured. But I didn’t believe it. I know magic when I feel it, and that was what had zapped me, I was certain of it.

From the pocket of his bathrobe, Mr. Thompson withdrew a battered old pocket watch. The crystal was cracked, and the hands were in the wrong position for the hour. I bet it hadn’t worked in a long time. “I need to go to my room,” he said abruptly. “Got to get ready.” He peered at me over his reading glasses, and his tone had a sudden urgency. “Watch yourself,” he warned, dropping his voice. “They’re coming. The Judge comes at midnight.” He gave me a look that seemed to stare through me to my bones, as if I ought to understand what he couldn’t quite put into words. For a moment, I saw stark terror that seemed utterly rational, not a product of dementia.

“Be careful,” Mr. Thompson admonished once more. Then he nodded to Baxter and me and wheeled himself across the room and toward the hallway with more vigor than I would have imagined he possessed.

When I looked up, the old woman in the walled garden was alone. Sorren was gone.

Baxter and I finished our rounds, and stopped by the nurses’ station. Bax had fans there, too, and the ladies usually brought a doggy biscuit or two for him. At this rate, he’d be a porker unless we started taking longer walks. “Mr. Thompson certainly likes dogs,” I said, ruffling Baxter’s fur as he chewed his treat.

Judy chuckled. “Did he tell you about Tilly?” I nodded. “She passed away thirty years ago, according to his son.” She shook her head. “That’s the thing with Alzheimer’s. These folks get unstuck in time.”

Unstuck in time
. I thought again about the woman in the courtyard. “You know, Mrs. Butler didn’t get a chance to see Baxter tonight,” I said. “She was out in the courtyard with a visitor.”

“Oh, that must have been her great-grandson, Mr. Sorrensson,” Judy said. “It’s not your usual evening to visit, so you wouldn’t have met him. Comes every week, or nearly so. Pays all her bills, sees she’s taken care of right. Nice young man. Must run some kind of software company to be so young and have that kind of money.”

“I just didn’t want her to be disappointed for missing Baxter.”

“That’s the thing about our residents. She won’t know which day it is, and she won’t remember, so she won’t be disappointed.” Judy chuckled. “Although it’s funny. We remind her in the morning when her great-grandson is coming to visit, and she insists on getting her hair done and having one of the nurses help her do her makeup and put on her best dress.” She sighed. “Then again, most of our folks here are lucky to get any personal visitors, so I guess it is a big occasion when someone takes the time to come around.”

“They looked like they were having a good conversation,” I said, remembering what I had glimpsed. Baxter was working on his second biscuit, so he was in no hurry.

“I’m glad Mr. Sorrensson comes to see her,” Judy says. “Most of the time, Mrs. Butler won’t say much, and she’s very confused. But when he stops in, she lights up and chatters.” Judy shook her head. “Amazing what effect a visitor can have, isn’t it?”

Especially when that visitor was immortal.
Does glamouring her make her remember the old times?
I wondered. I could imagine the headline now:
Vampires cure Alzheimer’s.

“Does Mr. Thompson like detective movies?” I asked. “I can bring some, if he does.”

Judy looked at me, puzzled. “Not that I know of, why?”

I laughed it off. “Oh, just something he said. It was very
Maltese Falcon
.”

She nodded. “Is he talking about the Judge again?” A cold chill went up my spine. “He does that. All day long, he’s a pretty happy fellow. But he gets edgy come nightfall – some of our folks here do – and that’s when the superstitions take hold.”

“Superstitions?”

Judy gave a shrug that said oddities came with the territory. “Old people with dementia can be a lot like kids, you know? They have their routines, their rituals, their lucky rabbit’s foot. Calms them down, helps them sleep. Some of our folks want a cup of hot milk before bedtime. Others want to have someone read aloud, or they want to tell us a story, like they’re the ones putting a child to bed. If we possibly can, we do what they want. We try to make them happy.”

“What about Mr. Thompson?”

“Oh, as quirks go, it’s nothing much. But housekeeping has fits. He keeps taking the salt shakers from the dining room, and we find them dumped out on the big circular rug under his bed.” She gave me a ‘what-can-you-do’ smile. “Go figure.”

I was rattled by what I learned about Mr. Thompson. That sweet old man was looking more and more like an addled adept, and I was ready to bet a cup of coffee and a dozen doughnuts that his salt circle meant that on some level, he knew something bad was heading our way.

We said good-bye and headed out to the car. Baxter’s low growl alerted me to trouble. I stopped at the place on the sidewalk just inside where I had felt the shimmer of invisible wards. The flat expanse of parking lot sprawled ahead of me, lit by tall security lights that bathed the lot in an amber glow. Except for one spot that was pitch black. Not just dark, lightless. There’s a difference. Shadows around the edges of a well-lit place aren’t opaque; usually, they’re a deep gray. This spot was completely dark, the kind of dark that isn’t natural.

Baxter growled again, baring his teeth this time. Baxter has the heart of a warrior, and small as he is, he’s got the same dog-sharp senses of hearing and smell as any German Shepherd. I’d only heard him make this sound when he and I had been under attack from nasty spirits.

Something evil was out there. It was between me and my car, and I was going to bet that it was faster than I was.

I let the old dog collar slip down under my sleeve to jangle around my wrist, and my ghost dog, Bo, appeared beside me. I wasn’t worried about any of the residents seeing a ghost. Sadly, anything they claimed to see would likely be discounted. That’s one of the dangers with dementia: the monsters you see might be real, and no one will believe you.

Bo’s growl was a deep rumble. I reached into my tote bag and pulled out my wooden spoon athame. I decided that keeping the spoon and the dog collar with me was a pretty good idea. But I still hadn’t moved. I had no idea whether or not the cold light force I could muster up with my athame would have any effect on the shadow. And I had no guarantee that making the shadow back off long enough to get into my car would keep it from attacking me once I was on the road.

Decisions, decisions. I could call Sorren or Teag, but that might just put them in danger without knowing what we were up against. Then again, I couldn’t stay here all night.

Just as I was reaching for my cell phone, I saw something silver streak across the lot, like a metallic baseball. The metal ball landed right in front of the dark shadow, and when it hit the asphalt, it burst into a blindingly bright light and a sharp pulse of high-pitched sound that made Baxter howl and gave me an instant headache.

The dark shadow writhed and winked out of existence.

“You can come out now, Cassidy. It’s gone.” The voice was familiar, but not someone I expected to see here, or now. Chuck Pettis walked out of the darkness on the edge of the parking lot.

I’d met Chuck a while ago when we were fending off some other bad nasties. He’s in his mid-fifties, with short-cropped, graying hair and a too-thin frame. Don’t let the gray hair fool you. He’s smart and tough, and he’s fought enough supernatural bad guys to be sneaky, too.

“How did you know there was going to be something in the parking lot?” I asked, giving the area one more sweep before I crossed the wardings.

“Because I come here a couple of nights a week to play cards with an old neighbor of mine, and I got bad vibes the last few times I came over,” Chuck replied. “So I started carrying.” He didn’t necessarily mean a gun, although knowing Chuck, he probably had at least one of those close at hand. I knew he meant weapons like I had just seen, things that could take out a supernatural foe. He’d had plenty of practice, back when he worked with a Black Ops military unit – the kind of Black Ops that bagged paranormal threats, not run-of-the-mill terrorists.

“Why would something like that want into an Alzheimer’s unit?” I asked. Chuck fell in step next to me, giving Baxter and me an escort to my blue Mini Cooper.

“If I had to guess, it’s because of Old Man Thompson,” Chuck replied. He was just a few feet away from me, close enough that I could hear him ticking. Chuck has an obsession about timepieces, and he never goes out without wearing a vest covered with working wristwatches. Teag and I call him ‘Clockman’.

“Why him?” I asked. Chuck stood guard as I got into the car.

“Because back in the day, my Ops unit had that sweet old man on a watch list,” Chuck replied. “Once upon a time, he was the most powerful sorcerer in Charleston.” He bent down and looked through the window. “Trouble’s coming. I can feel it. Be careful, Cassidy. Call me if you need me.” And with that, Chuck straightened, slapped his hand on the car roof in farewell, and watched until I was out of sight.

“W
HAT DO YOU
think it’s worth?” The stranger who stood on the other side of the counter tapped his toe, anxious to be anywhere but here. That much was pretty clear. He was as jumpy as a junkie overdue for a fix, and for all I knew, he might be one. I didn’t think so, though. I was pretty sure that the problem lay right in front of me, nestled in a silk-lined box.