“So sorry my hyperventilating, shivering, and crying weren’t big enough clues for you, Sherlock,” I snapped back.
“Hey, now, you two,” said Steven. “Let’s not argue.”
“I’m not arguing,” I insisted, my nerves still on edge. “But I would just like to state for the record that this entire fiasco could have been avoided if a certain someone hadn’t signed us up for a stay in Hotel Hell.”
“Oh, like it’s my fault,” Gilley squealed, and I rubbed my temples, remembering how his voice got very pitchy when he got indignant.
“I didn’t say it was your fault . . . per se. I was just commenting on the fact that normally on a Saturday afternoon I am home watching television, and not so concerned with being attacked by demons and finding dead bodies in bathroom stalls.”
Gilley crossed his arms and glared down at the floor. “Well, I am sorry!” he grumbled. “But you have been a real pill lately, and I thought a nice trip to fabulous San Francisco would do you some good. My apologies for trying to look out for you!”
“A pill?” I snapped, sitting up to stare hard at him. “I’ve been a pill? What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I mean that if I didn’t know better I’d think you weren’t getting laid,” Gil said, and I heard more than one gasp from the people sitting around us. “But clearly that’s not the case, so maybe it’s an early case of perimenopause! Maybe you should think about having those hormones checked, hmmmm?”
“Oh . . . no . . . you . . . didn’t!” I yelled, standing up, ready to literally swat my partner, when I heard the sound of someone loudly clearing his throat.
I whirled around, ready to tell whomever was trying to interject some reason into the conversation where to stuff it, when I realized that Detective MacDonald was looking at me with raised eyebrows and the smallest of smirks. “Mind if I interrupt this little love fest?” he asked casually.
I felt my cheeks burn as I plastered a rather strained smile onto my face while kicking Gilley in the shin with my foot. “Of course, Detective,” I said. “Please join us.”
MacDonald took a seat on the couch on the other side of Heath, who looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but here, and I knew exactly how he felt. “So,” MacDonald said, flipping to a blank page in his notebook. “Tell me who found the body.”
“I did,” I said. And then I told him everything, from the last time I’d seen Tracy at the bar to finding her in the bathroom.
“And before you went into the restroom, did you see anyone else come out?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone else in there before you found Tracy?”
“No . . .” I said before remembering the woman I’d seen in the mirror. “Except there was a lady who came in right after me.”
“And where is she now?” asked MacDonald, glancing around at those of us on the couch.
I stared blankly at him. “I have no idea,” I admitted.
“Did she come out after you exited?” he probed.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, but I’ll admit that I wasn’t thinking very clearly right after seeing Tracy.”
MacDonald’s lips pursed as he looked over what he’d written. “What did this mystery woman look like?” he asked me.
I described her to him and noticed that as I did, Heath sat up straight and leaned forward, as if he were very interested in my description. “Okay, we’ll interview the guests and see if we can spot her,” he said. “Now tell me about this knife—the murder weapon. The general manager of the hotel says that you guys had it as part of the television show and that it’s haunted by a demon or some sort of baloney?”
I looked at Heath and then over at Gopher. They were wearing the same shocked expressions. “The knife we’ve been looking for was the one used to murder Tracy?” Gopher asked me.
I was just as taken aback by the detective’s question. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was the same knife Heath and I were trying to find. “That I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I mean, Knollenberg is probably jumping to conclusions, although he was right to tell you that during our television shoot there was a knife that seemed to have some sort of unnatural power, but I hadn’t considered it was the one used to kill Tracy.”
MacDonald reached into his blazer and pulled out a small digital camera. Flipping through several shots, he arrived at one and showed it to me. “That the knife from your television show?”
I stared in horror at the viewfinder as the bloody blade with the intricate carvings was captured in the image. “Ohmigod,” I whispered, showing the picture to Heath, Gilley, Steven, and Gopher, who all nodded grimly. “That is the same knife, Detective!”
MacDonald scribbled in his notebook before taking the camera back. “Talk to me about this unnatural power,” he said. “What do you mean by that?”
Heath leaned forward and lifted up his shirtsleeve, showing the detective the three claw marks on the top of his shoulder. “M.J. has the same pattern on her back,” he told the detective. “Only the cuts on her back are a lot deeper and longer.”
MacDonald’s brows furrowed, and he looked from Heath’s arm to me, as if he were missing something. “Come again?” he demanded.
“That silver knife was introduced into the production,” I explained. “We don’t know who brought it in or laid it down on the table where we were sitting—I mean, we were both distracted and tired, and no one from the shoot remembers seeing who delivered it, but right after it was set in front of us Heath and I were both attacked and cut up by some sort of . . .” I paused, because I didn’t know how to describe what it was that had clawed us. Demon just seemed ridiculous.
“Poltergeist,” Heath filled in, obviously thinking the same thing.
MacDonald peered closely at Heath’s wounds before asking me, “Can I see the ones on your back?”
I swiveled in my seat and pulled up the back of my shirt, hearing a long, low whistle behind me. “Ouch,” he said.
I let go of the shirt and turned back around to face him. “It only stings a little,” I said.
“So you’re telling me a ghost picked up the knife and cut you two with it?”
Clearly MacDonald was having a hard time understanding what had taken place. “No,” I said patiently. “The knife stayed on the table. An unseen force scratched us.”
“Were you wearing the same clothes you are now?” MacDonald probed.
Heath and I both nodded. “We were,” he said.
“So why aren’t your clothes torn?”
I didn’t have an explanation for that. “I couldn’t say. It’s the first time my skin’s been punctured by an entity.”
MacDonald scratched his chin thoughtfully. “And the whole television crew was witness to this?”
The question seemed to be directed at Gopher, and he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I remember hearing M.J. shout, like she was in pain, and when I looked over she was holding her chest, and a second later a cut appeared on Heath’s cheek. It was freaky, like it just materialized out of thin air.”
“I thought you said your back got tagged,” MacDonald said to me.
I pulled the collar of my shirt down a little, thankful that I was wearing a sports bra and wasn’t revealing too much of the ta-tas. “It got me here first.”
The detective sat back on his cushion and regarded all of us for several long seconds. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I could guess that it wasn’t anything flattering. “Tell me again how this knife plays into all this?”
Heath pointed at me, signaling that I should attempt to explain the unexplainable.
“We think the knife is some sort of key,” I said.
“A key,” MacDonald repeated.
“Yes,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “We believe that someone very powerful and skilled in the art of black magic may have imbued it with the ability to open a portal.”
“Portal?” MacDonald repeated again.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “A po
rtal is a gateway. It links our plane of existence, what you and I think of as the real world, with that of a lower plane of existence.”
MacDonald’s mouth fell open a little bit. “You mean . . . like hell?” he asked.
“Well, maybe not quite that far down,” I said. “I mean, I’m still on the fence about whether or not hell actually exists, but I do know there is a lower realm where nasty energies can circulate and become more powerful. Often, when a really bad person dies, like a murderer or a rapist, they won’t want to cross over into heaven because they can’t handle the judgment they’ll face. So they become grounded spirits, and they learn pretty quickly that because their energy is dark they can create a portal that allows them to enter this lower realm and learn about becoming powerful ghosts or poltergeists. These energies are never anything you’d want to fool with—you’ll hear about how they learn to throw stones and slam doors and throw objects. Some even learn to start fires.
“Normally these dark energies will create this portal very near the site where they died, and in every single case that I’ve encountered, that portal is connected to something physically stationary, like the wall of a house or the side of a barn or even a head-stone. And that’s how we’ve been able to shut down the portals that we’ve encountered during our ghostbusts. By driving a magnetized stake through the physical object where the portal is connected, we can cause a collapse of the electromagnetic frequencies made at the portal’s creation, and lock up any negative energies that are using it to go back and forth.
“But this knife thing, well . . . it’s completely different. I think the knife represents something so rare that I’ve never encountered it. I think that it might not even be a key,” I said, suddenly reconsidering my earlier premise. “No, this thing . . . this thing might actually be a portable portal, and I think that it’s a portal that allows for something far uglier than just some dead murderer to come back and forth through it. I think that it allows for demons to come out of the lower realm and play havoc on our physical world.”
“I did some research,” said Gilley, speaking up for the first time since I’d yelled at him. “And I came across a ghost hunter from Europe who claims that some objects can retain such dark energy that they are essentially what M.J. is guessing at. This parapsychologist says that in very rare instances, an object can be a portable gateway to the lower realms.”
“It’s official,” MacDonald said, slapping his notebook closed. “I’m in the Twilight Zone.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I agreed. “But you know by my work with you on Sophie’s case that I’m not a wacko or a kook.”
“And we have witnesses,” said Heath. “M.J., remember the smoke serpent?”
“Smoke what?” asked MacDonald, and I knew we were pushing the envelope with this very open-minded cop.
Before I had a chance to explain, however, another detective came over and tapped MacDonald on the shoulder. “Ayden,” he said, “you need to come in and see this.”
“What?” said MacDonald, swiveling around to look up at the other detective.
“The ME’s just arrived,” said the man. “He’s found these really weird marks on the vic’s back. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but it looks like she’s gone a round with Freddy Krueger.”
MacDonald’s face visibly paled, as did almost every other face gathered around the seating area. MacDonald swiveled back to me and ordered, “Show him your back.”
I turned and lifted my shirt up and heard the other detective say, “Hey, that’s exactly what they look like on our vic!”
I let my shirt drop and turned back around to see MacDonald getting up and pointing a finger directly at me. “Do not move!”
I held my hands up in surrender. “You got it,” I said, feeling all eyes on me.
“Yikes,” said Heath as MacDonald and the other man hurried away.
I sighed and rubbed my temples; it’d been a hell of a long day.
“Can I get you anything?” Steven asked me. “Something to eat, or drink, or a plane ticket for the first flight home?”
That got him a small smile. “I’m good,” I said, reaching out to take his hand. “Thanks.”
“M.J.?” said Heath.
“Yeah?”
“That woman you said you saw come into the bathroom—what did she look like again?”
I cocked my head. It seemed like a really odd question, but I indulged him by telling him, “She was really beautiful. Like, supermodel beautiful. She was a couple of inches taller than me, and she had long black wavy hair, kind of a heart-shaped face, and these big brown eyes. I think she walked in and walked back out again; I don’t know, maybe she saw me in there knocking on stalls and decided to try another bathroom.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No. Why are you asking about her?” I asked, curious why he was so interested.
“I saw her too,” he admitted. “In that big gold mirror with the scratched heart around it back in the Renaissance Room. And the same thing happened when I saw her. She came in through the door, smiled at me, and I was about to turn around to face her when Gopher found one of his cameras had been ruined, and that distracted me for a second or two. When I turned back around she was gone. I assumed the same thing you did, that she came in, saw the room or heard Gopher swearing about the camera, and turned on her heel and left.”
I felt goose bumps rise along my arms. “About what time did that happen?”
“The best that I can figure it, it wasn’t long after I left you, so probably about the time that you saw her too.”
I felt as though someone had just given me a slap on the forehead. “Another spook?” I wondered.
Heath shrugged but then nodded. “I kinda think it might be.”
Something dawned on me. “Ohmigod!” I said, staring at him as I put it together. “The mirror in the bathroom is identical to the mirror in the Renaissance Room!”
“So she’s attached to the mirrors,” said Heath.
“We’ll have to ask Knollenberg about it,” I concluded. “He should know if anyone has talked about seeing some phantom lady in the mirrors around here.”
“What do you make of the heart carved into the wall around the one in the conference room?” Heath asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve no idea. But it’s got to be significant,” I reasoned. “I mean, the two mirrors seem to have some really odd coincidences connected to them, especially given that the knife used to kill Tracy was also the one used to bring out the demon in the room with the other mirror.”
Just then MacDonald came back to our group. Pointing a finger at me, he said, “You. Come with me.”
“Uh-oh,” whispered Gilley. “You want me to come along, M.J.?” My partner was obviously feeling guilty about our little spat from a few minutes before, because I knew he wouldn’t normally want to be anywhere near signs of trouble.
“I’ll be okay,” I reassured him. Steven squeezed my hand as I got up, and I gave him what I hoped was a confident smile. I didn’t know what the detective wanted with me, and until I knew, it was pointless to worry about it.
I followed MacDonald across the mezzanine and over to the restroom. The door was propped open, and there were several people in the interior, including one man in a blue Windbreaker with the initials ME on the back of it. He was hovering over Tracy’s body, and I averted my eyes quickly as I felt my stomach bunch.
“Jack,” said MacDonald. “Can you show this woman the marks on our vic’s back?”
I forced myself to look back at the ME as he was rolling Tracy over slightly and pulling up her shirt. As her shirt pulled away from her body I could see the three deep talon marks that mirrored those on my own back. I looked away again, and out of the corner of my eye I saw MacDonald nod to the ME. “Thanks, Jack,” he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the medical examiner. “Her skin is cut but her clothes aren’t, and, from the lack of blood, I’d say these we
re made postmortem, but why, I couldn’t imagine.”
“Where’s the murder weapon?” asked MacDonald, and my eyes instinctively went back to Tracy, lying on the floor. With a bit of a shock I realized the knife had already been extracted from the middle of her chest.
“I assumed you’d want a rush on this, so I gave it to one of the techs. He’s taking it back to the lab to have it dusted for prints ASAP.”
“Lemme know the minute you get anything on it, okay?” said MacDonald.
“Will do,” said the ME as he got up and moved past us. “I’ve got to get a body bag out of my van. I’ll be back in a sec.”
After the ME had gone MacDonald turned to the two techs dusting for prints and said, “Can you guys give us a minute?”
I felt a bit nervous as the men looked at MacDonald curiously but didn’t question him, and they left the restroom. When we were alone, the detective closed the door and turned to me. “Can you do that thing you did with Sophie?”
I blinked in surprise. “Huh?” I asked, a little slow on the uptake.
“Can you talk to her, you know, help her cross over or whatever it is that you do?”
“Oh!” I said, looking from Tracy to MacDonald and back again. “Er . . . I guess.”
“Good,” said MacDonald. “And remember, ask her if she knows who attacked her before you send her away.”
In any other situation the request from the detective would have made me laugh; it just seemed so ridiculous to have a street-smart cop be open to concepts of the metaphysical. But maybe they grew them a little less skeptical out here in California. I didn’t linger over it, as I knew the ME would be returning with his body bag in a minute or two, and MacDonald was going to have to explain why he was in here with me while the door was shut.
I turned toward Tracy and closed my eyes, shutting out the pain and shock frozen on her once pretty face. Opening up my senses, I waited for a sign from her that she wanted to communicate. Seconds passed in which I was acutely aware that MacDonald was watching me closely, but no signal from Tracy wafted through the ether.
I called out to her in my mind, but got nothing back. There was no reply of any kind. I opened my eyes and looked at her lifeless body, willing some kind of psychic connection, but my intuitive receptors were silent.