She wished she wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t Niles’s best friend, but she figured he’d need a lot of support. He had trusted Mason and depended on him.
“What do you suppose we’re going to accomplish if there’s still a living person out there who instigated all of this? Someone still feeding the painting to awaken or activate it?” Danni asked.
“Danni, you’re the one who pointed out that we have to find every dead person in that painting. Every one of them can be awakened. Every one is a potential killer. One down—Henry Hubert. We have ten to go. According to everything we’ve learned, if the killers who come to life in fog or mist or whatever are sent to hell or purgatory or wherever it is are completely destroyed, burned to ashes, the killing will stop—at least the killing that can’t be explained, that leaves no clues. Maybe Mason wasn’t the real bad guy in this. Maybe he wanted fame so much that he let himself be seduced into feeding the painting, activating it.”
Danni nodded. She felt guilty about the distance she needed right now.
“I think I hear Father Ryan. We’d better get going,” she said.
They took two cars to the airport and left them in long-term parking.
Hattie had spun her magic again, and they were off to Europe first class once more. Danni spent most of the evening trying to read about the last few years described in Eloisa’s journal, but that night, the words seemed to spin before her eyes. She couldn’t find the name of another friend who’d been close to Alain Guillaume, who might have shared his sick desires—or been interred at the castle. What they were doing was a crap shoot.
Then again, how would it hurt anyone if they burned the wrong corpses?
They changed planes in Paris again for the short flight to Geneva and rented a van.
Getting to the castle was different this time, Danni thought. Now, they knew what they’d see.
They would walk into the Hubert painting, more or less.
“We have to move quickly. We want the daylight,” Quinn said, “because the activated evil seems to need the night. That’s when the dead in that painting awake, at night and only at night. So I suggest we leave the luggage in the hall and get it up to the rooms later.”
“Makes sense,” Billie murmured, to agreement all around.
“We know exactly where Alain Guillaume is interred,” Quinn went on, “so we’ll get him out first. Father Ryan, Billie and Bo Ray can help me break into the sarcophagus and the coffin. Danni, you, Hattie, Natasha and Ron can start looking for people we believe to be in the tombs here.”
Everyone was touched and impressed that Hattie had provided medical masks to protect them from breathing in the tomb dust. She’d also supplied them with gloves, heavy mallets, sledgehammers—and dress bags for transporting what was left of the corpses. “I thought it might look a little strange if I ordered body bags,” Hattie told them, and they managed to smile.
Within twenty minutes of arriving at the castle, they were masked, armed with flashlights and tools and heading down into the crypt.
“Everybody has the list of the names we’re looking for?” Quinn asked.
“We should just burn this whole place down to the ground,” Natasha said.“But even if we did that,” Quinn reminded her, “we might completely miss destroying the right corpse. If the castle burned, there’d still be ruins. And in those ruins...remains could be intact.”
“Not to mention the likelihood of us being arrested by the Swiss government,” Ron added. “It’s my property, but there is insurance and it’s number seventeen on some list of historic landmarks.” He grimaced. “I wish we could burn it to the ground. I wish it more than ever now that I’ve been here.”
“Yeah. Well, we’re going to do what we have to do,” Quinn said. “Maybe everything will be sunshine and roses after we’re done.”
He turned to go through the archway and the stairs down to the crypt. When Quinn stopped at the tomb clearly labeled with Alain Guillaume’s name, Danni moved on, studying each of the sealed interments she passed, checking the names.
She heard Quinn whack the hammer into the crowbar as he worked to unseal Alain Guillaume’s tomb. The sound seemed deafening in the musty corridors of the crypt—almost as if they were pounding nails into a coffin, rather than trying to demolish one.
Danni turned around, shining her light behind her. “Ron, why don’t you search the right side with me, and, Hattie, follow along with Natasha,” she suggested.
“Thorough and organized. I like it,” Hattie said.
Natasha paused and shone her own light on the list she carried. “I’ve found one...no, three!” she said, looking at Danni. “They’re here,” she said, her voice incredulous. “They’re actually here. This may be the answer.”
Danni walked over to the tombs Natasha had indicated; they were one on top of another on the shelving. Small metal plaques affixed to the concrete seals bore their names and birth dates; there was nothing else written—including their dates of death.
“Solange, Gérard and Antonio Rastira, one on top of the other...” Natasha breathed.
“So, the children did die here—along with their father. I wonder how,” Danni murmured.
Father Ryan had heard them. He came striding down the medieval corridor between the tombs, a sledgehammer in his hands.
“Stand back,” he warned.
They did.
With a mighty swing, he broke the first seal.
Decaying linen and silk stretched across the decomposed body of a boy.
“He didn’t even give them funeral shrouds, much less coffins,” Father Ryan said. He paused for a minute, gazing down at the boy. He made the sign of the cross, then swung the sledgehammer again.
The second tomb revealed the remains of a girl, her flesh mostly gone. Father Ryan said something in Latin and made the sign of the cross once more—then brought the sledgehammer down a third time.
Antonio Rastira had been interred with a black mask over his face. Danni stared at it and at a whip that lay at his side.
“Well, I’d venture to say the knife still in his chest is a clue to his death,” Ron muttered.
“You think?” Hattie muttered back.
“No one seemed to be safe around Guillaume,” Danni said. She jumped; the sound of Quinn hammering at the sarcophagus holding Alain was so loud it seemed to shake the walls, the shelves and archways of the crypt. Her flashlight jiggled; the light played eerily on the dead.
“Three ready for the fire,” Natasha said. “I’ll get the bags.”
“Quinn!” Father Ryan called toward the entry where Quinn was hard at work. “We have three!”
Quinn, caught in the light, looked back at them. His shirtsleeves were rolled up; breaking the sarcophagus seal was heavy labor.
He wiped his forehead with one arm and nodded. “I’ll send Bo Ray. Get those in body bags and take them up. And keep searching.”
Danni turned away. She could hear Bo Ray making disgusted noises as he dealt with the corpses. Not a pleasant task. “I hope we’re not all going to die of some weird disease like the people who opened King Tut’s tomb,” he said.
“I hope not, too,” Father Ryan responded with a chuckle.
“You were supposed to tell me that couldn’t happen for some reason or other,” Bo Ray told him.
“It’s doubtful, Bo Ray. Tut’s tomb had been completely sealed and was thousands of years old,” Hattie said.
“I like her!” Bo Ray pointed at Hattie.
Danni listened to their patter, searching for more of the names they were seeking.
As she neared one, she knew even before she got there that she’d found someone.
It almost seemed as if heat were radiating from the tomb. As if an ancient fury was reaching out for her.
She paused for a moment, unwilling to go farther. Then she felt Hattie behind her.
“Who did you find?” Hattie asked.
Danni forced herself to move forward. She envisioned a skeletal claw shooti
ng from the burial shelf to pull her inside—into some form of hell.
Using one gloved hand, she dusted off the brass name plate. This one was embellished—set there with care.
“Mimette Lamere. Guillaume’s mistress.”
“Father Ryan and Bo Ray dragged out the first three bodies,” Hattie said. “All the remains fit into one bag, and Father Ryan said it wasn’t that heavy. He’ll be down in a minute. We should get this wretched creature out quickly!”
When Father Ryan returned, his face was smudged. He shrugged when he saw them. “I didn’t want to leave them up there untended and Bo Ray wouldn’t stay unless I started them burning,” he explained.
“That might be a wise decision,” Danni said. “This is the mistress, Mimette Lamere.”
Father Ryan raised the sledgehammer once and then again. The seal crumbled into pieces on the second slam.
Mimette Lamere was on a stone shelf; no shroud or coffin covered her. A black miasma seemed to rise from her body.
A body that didn’t seem to have decayed.
Father Ryan immediately began praying in Latin. Danni heard Natasha behind him, intoning her own prayers.
Something cloying and sickly sweet, like old perfume, filled the air. Danni swallowed hard, terrified that the woman would open her eyes.
Father Ryan anointed the corpse with holy water from the flask he carried.
Danni could have sworn that steam rose from her. She thought she heard a scream of fury.
“Get me a dress bag, please,” Father Ryan said calmly.
Danni didn’t want to, but she had to turn away. Ron helped Father Ryan get the corpse into the bag.
That one apparently was heavy; Father Ryan grunted as he made for the stairs. She shivered as he left—and hoped that, outside, Bo Ray had kept the flames burning high.
She glanced at her watch and wondered if she’d changed the time correctly. Two-thirty now, Swiss time. They had five or so hours before dark. They were doing well.
She moved deeper into the crypt.
Hattie was the next to make a discovery. She found Jermaine Wasser, the youngest of the murdering lot within the painting.
Danni knew what the boy had done and yet when his tomb was opened—the seal had already cracked and part of it was missing—the bones and bits of hair and fabric still seemed to tug at her heart.
How did such a young child come to kill?
Apparently, the small and fragile bones touched them all. They were silent for a moment; Father Ryan and Natasha prayed softly.
Then the boy, too, went into a bag.
She came upon a plaque that read Jacques, Groom to His Lordship, Alain Guillaume.
Jacques didn’t rate a surname on his memorial. Danni thought the “keeper of the keys” might be near the groom, and he was. Very near, they discovered. He was on the same shelf. They only knew they’d found him because there was a plaque; it had been set on his chest and now protruded from his rib cage.
He had been Louis. No last name, either. He was simply Louis, Keeper of the Keys.
“Two in one.” Ron must have noticed Danni’s expression because he said, “Danni, don’t look so sad. It’s how we all got our surnames. We’re someone’s son, or we’re named after towns or locations or the work our fathers did. Louis—they knew who he was because he was the keeper of the keys.”
“Yes, but by this time it was the nineteenth century. Surely he would’ve had a name!”
“True,” Ron said. “But let’s face it. Guillaume was a depraved murderer. He probably figured it didn’t matter if he was politically correct or not.”
Danni smiled. “Well, at any rate, we did find two more of them.”
From far down the tomb, she heard Quinn’s cry of triumph.
He’d finally reached the coffin that held Alain Guillaume.
They all moved closer to watch Quinn.
When they’d gathered around, Quinn was working a crowbar at one end while Billie struggled at the other.
The seals broke and the coffin finally opened.
Danni backed away. She’d thought Mimette Lamere was well preserved, but her appearance seemed less striking beside that of Alain.
“I guess we can say it’s really him,” Quinn murmured.
“Indeed.” Natasha had out a bag of her gris-gris. She began chanting and tossing herbs onto the corpse.
Father Ryan stared at it, silent; he seemed entranced.
Alain truly looked as if he were asleep. His mustache and beard were perfectly clipped, his clothing strangely clean and fresh, as though he’d just dressed for an evening out.
Danni wondered why she felt so disturbed. Yes, he was a corpse. Yes, he was so well preserved he might’ve sat up and spoken....
But it wasn’t any of that. She didn’t understand what it was.
“Father,” Ron said. There was a hardness in his voice. “No matter how he looks, he’s dead. A corpse that must be burned to ash.”
Father Ryan started visibly as Ron spoke his name. He nodded. “Just a corpse. A man who is dead before Almighty God.” He pulled out his flask of holy water. As he began to speak over the body, Danni was sure she saw it twitch. When he poured holy water on it, they all heard a hiss, and steam rose from the corpse.
“Let’s get him out of here fast,” Quinn said.
Even he seemed loath to touch the body, Danni thought.
But he did. He picked it up and threw it over his shoulder, then headed straight for the stairs. Father Ryan followed him quickly. Danni watched them go and suddenly felt as if the darkness and the arched support beams that ran down the aisle of the dead were closing in on her. She blinked hard.
We’re almost done! But Quinn, Father Ryan and Bo Ray were up above. She, Natasha, Billie, Ron and Hattie were alone in the crypt.
Four people, she told herself. She was with four other people.
Not enough!
Natasha read aloud from her notes. “The three children in the painting—Solange, Gérard and Jermaine. The two at the door—the groom and the keeper of the keys. The husband, Hubert himself. The lady, Mimette. Guillaume’s close friends—we’ve found Antonio, and we still need to find Fabre Clairmonte.” She glanced up at Danni. “They’ve just disinterred Guillaume himself.”
“We have to find Fabre Clairmonte—and Raoul Messine, the butler,” Danni said.
“Yes, yes...yes...” Natasha walked toward the back of the tomb to resume searching.
Danni followed her, turning back to her side of the aisle. She knew that Hattie was right behind her. Suddenly, she felt as if there’d been an earthquake.
Hattie fell against a tomb but caught herself. They looked at each other.
“That was Alain Guillaume, his flesh being consumed by the fire,” Natasha told them. “We must hurry now.”
“We still have a few hours,” Danni said.
“Time’s slipping by,” Natasha insisted.
“And,” Hattie added dryly, “a local might drive by and report us to the police. They just might notice what we’re doing.”
“We’re almost at the end of the crypt. The last ones couldn’t be this far back, could they?” Ron asked.
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll find them,” Billie vowed. “You mark my words. We will find them.”
They did. Just before they reached the archway that became the oldest section of the crypts, Danni saw the name Clairmonte. “Thank goodness,” Billie muttered.
“We’re still missing Messine,” Danni said, perplexed.
“Father Ryan and Quinn are back. Let’s get the rest of ’em out and put ’em on the fire. Then we’ll search, every one of us, for Messine,” Billie vowed.
He turned to speak with Quinn. Evidently, Quinn agreed. He, Father Ryan and Billie started breaking the seals and dragging out the corpses.
Natasha touched Danni’s shoulder. “We all need to go outside, to the fire, for this,” she said.
Danni managed a smile beneath her mask. “Did you think I w
as staying down here alone?”
When she followed the others out, she was shocked by the appearance of the sky. If it had seemed to roil before, now it billowed and waved darkly. The threat of rain was strong.
But not strong enough to douse the fire the men had going.
The last of the corpses they’d discovered so far burned on the braziers. Father Ryan stood before the fire, speaking in Latin first, saying prayers he knew well. Then he switched to English, begging that good swiftly triumph over evil—and that God help them all. He invited Natasha next; she spoke in Creole, ready with more of her magic herbs to toss upon the flames. She asked the loa of goodness to see them through the darkness and into the light of the sun.
Billie kept feeding the fire, kept burning the corpses. Finally, there was nothing but ash. It was scooped up and Bo Ray and Billie took it to the river.
Danni nervously checked her watch. Almost five.
They still had to find Raoul Messine.
She looked up at the sky. Some of the violence that seemed to send gray clouds bursting against other gray clouds had eased.
But the sky remained dark.
“We need to hurry,” she said.
Quinn watched her, apparently puzzled. “Just one more, Danni. I’d been afraid we weren’t going to get them all today. We’ve done well. We just have one to go.”
“But not much time,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Let’s get down there. At least we did find Guillaume—the master of evil.”
She felt better. “His corpse...”
“Frightening that it was so well preserved,” he said. “But there’s nothing now. He’s gone.”
They returned to the crypt. Billie and Bo Ray weren’t away long, and soon they were all were continuing the search for the grave of Raoul Messine.
No one could find any mention of the butler anywhere.
“Maybe we need to just burn them all!” Danni announced.
From wherever they were in the crypt, the others stopped what they were doing and looked at her.