Page 29 of Waking the Dead


  “Danni, we have tomorrow. And the next day,” Ron said. “I’ll stay here until we find him.” He inhaled deeply. “My family started this. I will see that it’s ended.”

  “Ron, your family didn’t start this! The horror began with Alain Guillaume.”

  Quinn walked over to put his hands on her shoulders. “We both know this isn’t easy,” he told her. “For any of us.”

  She lowered her head. “Yes, I know. We have to call it quits for now. Everyone’s exhausted. We did...we did take care of Guillaume. And even though we thought at first that we only needed to burn Henry Hubert, well...now we know what we’re doing.”

  They left the crypt.

  Upstairs, while Hattie and Ron tried to be cheerful and Bo Ray worked hard at it, too, they were a somber group.

  It had grown late. No one wanted to deal with the luggage or preparing the wonderful baths they’d enjoyed before.

  “We’ll all just crash as we are, I guess,” Quinn said after they’d made sandwiches and eaten.

  They kept the generator running so the castle would be somewhat illuminated.

  Then they went to bed.

  Danni found herself pausing on the stairs and studying the great hall. Coming to the castle the first time had been a déjà vu experience; it still felt that way. The great hall was exactly like the painting Hubert had done. Naturally. He’d used what he saw—and what he knew.

  The castle—and the people within it.

  But there was nothing that disturbed her as much as the portrait above the fire. They’d found Guillaume’s body that day. They’d burned it to ash.

  And yet...

  The painting still seemed to watch her. Almost as if it had power over her.

  It wasn’t what they were looking for, of course. But she hated the damned thing. In the morning, she’d ask Ron if they could burn that painting, too. She didn’t think he’d mind.

  In the room she and Quinn shared, Danni threw herself onto the bed. She stared at the ceiling. “Quinn, I’m sorry. I know I’m being difficult today. Acting a bit funny...”

  He stretched out next to her. “You’re funny-looking, too,” he said, obviously trying to coax a laugh out of her. She glared up at him as he hovered over her on one elbow.

  “It’s all the white stuff on you.”

  “We’ve been handling graves and corpses—and we haven’t had baths.”

  “We’ll be going back down there in the morning. We’ll find Raoul Messine—and then we’ll get Hattie to take us all to a five-star hotel.” She smiled at last. He wrapped her in his arms, and they lay there quietly, both hoping for sleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HOW?

  Quinn had barely closed his eyes; he was so afraid Danni would wander.

  Somehow he’d slept.

  And somehow, she’d escaped him.

  Something hadn’t been right that day.

  It hadn’t felt completely off like last time, and he figured it was because they still had one to go. Raoul Messine.

  But now...

  Danni wasn’t with him. And she’d been more on edge than any of them.

  He shot out of bed, heedless of the fact that he had no shoes. Because of his last experience, he raced to the south tower—to the room where Hubert had created that damned painting.

  Where Danni had gone before.

  But she wasn’t there.

  Cursing himself for every wasted second, he raced for the steps to the ground floor. He was halfway down when he found himself lifted and thrown back hard. He crashed against the wall and fell onto the steps, tumbling down to land hard on the stone ground.

  Wincing, looking up, he blinked. The room was alive with fog. It was silver in places, darker in others.

  Danni stood in the center of the great hall. She stared up at the painting above the hearth. The portrait they’d assumed to be of the original Guillaume. The man in knight’s armor.

  The portrait they’d later come to believe was that of Alain, so narcissistic that he assumed himself to be the creator of life—and life within death.

  She seemed to be talking to the man in the painting.

  Quinn blinked; the painting was speaking to her. Within the canvas, the man moved and spoke, as if he was chatting through an open window.

  Quinn couldn’t make out the words. His French was decent, but the man was speaking very quickly.

  “Danni!” Quinn shouted her name, afraid. Something was forming beneath the painting; something was coming to life. Out of the fog, out of the shadows.

  She didn’t hear him. She was still staring at the painting.

  Hypnotized. Mesmerized.

  “Danni!” He struggled to his feet. Inside the painting, the man lifted an arm—and Quinn flew backward again.

  Danni turned. She didn’t see Quinn. She walked within the strange fog, walked to where they’d left the sledgehammers.

  She picked one up; the man in the portrait pointed to Quinn.

  She looked at Quinn and walked toward him.

  Holding the sledgehammer.

  Ready to use it.

  * * *

  Danni knew the voice of the man in the painting, felt it in her head. She’d felt its strange enticement in the crypt when she’d first gone down there—the very first time.

  The voice in her head—the entity—had power over her. It had summoned her from the bedroom.

  Now she walked in the fog, feeling the terror that still shivered within her. The fog was a miasma, rich with death and blood, torture and misery.

  They’d all been such fools.

  They hadn’t seen...

  It was never Hubert who was calling the shots.

  It had never even been Guillaume.

  Guillaume, Hubert, all of them—they’d just been pawns, playthings to order about. They’d been quietly manipulated by a man who’d been truly evil. Like a puppet master, he’d made them all dance, marionettes on strings.

  And now...

  Now she knew the secret. Hubert himself hadn’t been evil; he’d been ensnared by the evil in another man—a man who hadn’t been noble or artistically talented. But this man’s evil had provided the cover of fog and darkness. Still provided it. Through the medium of Hubert’s painting, he offered the promise that anything could be accomplished, any dream touched and held. And all the painting wanted in return...

  Was a little blood.

  She stopped in front of Quinn.

  “I know the answers,” she said. “I know what happened.” She hefted the sledgehammer, shifting it from hand to hand. “In New Orleans, I believe it started with Mason. He knew the painting was for sale. Maybe Hattie said something when she was at their gallery so he knew she was interested. He must’ve had a contact at the auction house and through that person, he found out that Hattie had bought it. He investigated some more and managed to find out that James Garcia kept packages at home. All he had to do was get into the Garcia house sometime before dawn with a few drops of blood to touch up the painting—to awaken it again—and then the painting came to life. For some reason, he wrapped it up again and left it behind, and it was taken to the police evidence room. From which it disappeared...in the midst of all that fog.”

  “The characters in the painting committed those murders,” Quinn murmured.

  She nodded. “Let’s see...it was Antonio who bludgeoned the one victim, Mimette who chopped up the poor grandmother...well, you understand.” She glanced at the painting. “But now, you see, the true maestro behind all of this is watching. He’s very, very angry. We’ve just destroyed everything....”

  Quinn stared up at Danni.

  “He takes what he wants. He takes who he wants. He called me tonight. I’m to be the one...”

  She’d reached Quinn. He could take the sledgehammer from her without straining a muscle. Except that the evil soul in the portrait was extending his force. His power was in the air.

  She had to be careful....

  And believe.
>
  Believe in Quinn’s faith in her.

  “Danni,” Quinn said softly.

  It was time. Now or never.

  “The portrait,” she whispered to him, pretending to lift the sledgehammer and aim it. “Quinn, it’s the portrait. It all began with that portrait, not with the Hubert. Get it down...reach up and take it down. You have to get it!”

  She moved as if she’d bring the sledgehammer down on Quinn. It landed on the ground.

  Quinn grabbed it and leaped to his feet. As he ran to the massive hearth, she saw the strain in his face, in his muscles. The wind, the darkness of the world during a long-ago summer, seemed to whirl within the great hall of the castle.

  “Get thee gone, spawn of Satan!”

  The thunderous cry sounded in the room—so loud that the heavens might have opened up.

  Father Ryan stood at the top of the stairs. He had found them. He carried a large wooden cross and directed it at the painting.

  Quinn felt as though he’d received a sudden boost; he grasped hold of the stone mantel on the giant hearth and pulled himself up high enough to seize the painting.

  He yanked it from the wall, then half jumped and half slid down, crashing onto the floor with the thing. Danni was at his side by then, and Father Ryan and Natasha, with the others behind them, came running down the stairs.

  Danni seized one of the fireplace pokers and drew it across the canvas, ripping with all her strength. She was so angry—she’d been so scared!—that she began to beat it over and over again.

  She didn’t realize what she was doing until Quinn got to his feet, walked over to her and took the poker.

  “I think you’ve killed it,” he said. She wouldn’t have thought it possible for a painting to be torn into so many pieces.

  “Ah, lass, that’s a lot for me to sweep up and burn now, you know,” Billie said, smiling as he came forward to get the ash broom.

  There was no more fog. It was completely gone.

  She looked back at Quinn. “The portrait was of Raoul Messine! He instigated Guillaume’s depravity—and when Guillaume was killed for the transgressions Messine taught him to perform, he found another easy mark in Hubert. I believe Messine was the man in this painting. His reign of evil began with Guillaume, and when Guillaume was gone, he meant to continue. He didn’t have a title or riches, so he had to prey on those who did. I believe the portrait was done for him by Hubert when he first came to the castle. Messine, through this painting, was the one who could lure anyone who came to the castle, seduce them....” She shook her head. “And somehow, without understanding why, Hubert’s widow knew the castle was evil.”

  “But do we really know he created that painting?” Quinn asked.

  “Not for sure—and we won’t find a signature now. Maybe there never was one. But I believe Henry Sebastian Hubert painted it.”

  “So Messine appears twice in Ghosts in the Mind? As the butler and as the man in the portrait?”

  “Yes, I think so. Raoul Messine was evil. He worked with Guillaume, worked on him. He convinced him he was entitled to do what he wanted, to anyone he wanted, and Messine procured victims for him. That much history records—or at least oral histories of the time strongly suggest it. When Guillaume was taken down by the authorities, Hubert entered the scene. I imagine that this trusted servant could have gotten quite a lot from Hubert. And maybe Hubert didn’t know there was blood mixed into his paints. Maybe not at first, anyway. It could’ve been an idea Messine put in his head, even before Byron’s group showed up at the castle. And blood was definitely used to create that painting of Messine over the fire.”

  “And now it’s destroyed. A good night’s work, Danni,” Father Ryan said. “The evil revenant of Messine tried to reach you. If you’d fallen in with it, the rest of us would’ve been in trouble. You were stronger than the painting.”

  “And I’m grateful, Danni. You’re stronger than you know,” Quinn told her.

  She let out a soft sigh. “We’re...we’re strong together,” she said.

  Ron Hubert spoke up. “There’s just one problem,” he began.

  They all turned to him.

  “We still haven’t found Messine’s body.”

  And it was true.

  “We start again at daylight,” Quinn said. “We’ll burn anyone we so much as suspect might be Messine.”

  “We need a big fire in this hearth right now. The remnants of this painting need to be swept up and destroyed,” Danni insisted.

  And so it was done. The hour had grown late—and yet there was still time to sleep.

  Shaken, somewhat shell-shocked, they all went back up to bed.

  “You still trust me enough to sleep with me?” Danni asked Quinn in a low voice.

  “Sleep with, live with you—die with you, if need be,” he whispered back. “Of course, I’m rather fond of living!”

  Danni was astonished at how well she slept. The darkness that had settled over the castle was gone. It was still night, but it felt as if the sun shone eternally within her heart.

  * * *

  They searched frantically the next day. Danni no longer felt the urgency she had the night before—but then, the painting above the fire had unnerved her from the beginning.

  Now it was gone.

  It was Ron who came through in the end. He surmised that Messine would’ve seen to it that he wasn’t found.

  Where, then, would his body lie?

  “I doubt it’s Guillaume’s long-suffering wife lying in the tomb with him. Or if she is, she’s not the only one in there. I bet that’s where Messine is. No one would think to disturb the woman who’d endured marriage to Alain Guillaume.”

  They all agreed with his theory. They used the sledgehammer and crowbars to muscle open the sarcophagus and the coffin inside it.

  They all stared.

  They presumed the woman broken and shoved to one side of the coffin was Alain’s wife.

  But the man who’d been in the coffin on top of her...

  “Let’s assume it is Messine,” Quinn said. “Ron, the logic sounds right.”

  Messine was taken out and burned.

  And when the rites were performed, Danni finally felt good.

  Afterward, Hattie Lamont dusted off her hands. “You have a shop, of course, Danni,” she said. “As do you, Natasha. And you have the congregation you serve, too. Ron, you’ll always have more corpses to deal with—sad, but true. And, Father Ryan, you have your flock. But humor an old lady. I really need a good bath. I say we leave this wretched castle and enjoy one night in Geneva.”

  Danni smiled at Quinn, wondering if he’d suggested the idea or Hattie had come up with it herself.

  “I’m in,” he told Hattie.

  “Me, too,” Danni said.

  So that was what they did.

  And it was a wonderful day—and night.

  * * *

  When they returned to the city, Danni set to work cleaning out her studio. She destroyed her own version of Ghosts in the Mind, the one she’d painted in a trance a few weeks ago.

  That same day, Quinn answered a call from Larue. He went down to the station and took a chair in front of Jake’s desk.

  “Oddest thing happened the other night,” Larue told him. “We had another attack—no killing, but another attack. Or an almost-attack.” He spun around in his chair and picked up a folder on his desk. “Two sorority girls were heading back to Conti and Decatur. One of our mounted patrolmen heard a scream and rushed to the scene. The two girls were in an absolute panic. They said, ‘Everything was suddenly foggy,’” he read from the report on his desk, “‘and we saw a man, a horrible man—he had a sword. A sword! And he was coming at us and then...’”

  “And then?” Quinn asked.

  “Then the officer assumed they’d seen things because they were drunk. But he filled out a complete report.” He pointed at the paper.

  “Well, what else was in the report?”

  “They believe the officer s
aved them. But they also believe that the man coming through the fog with a sword disappeared into thin air—in a puff of smoke. That’s what one of the girls said.”

  “Interesting,” Quinn murmured. They’d burned someone in the nick of time.

  “So it’s over?” Larue asked him.

  In a way, it was. None of the characters from the painting were left, none could come to life and wield their weapons of choice. And Messine, the man who’d started it all, was gone.

  “Yes,” Quinn said slowly.

  But...it wasn’t quite over. The real Hubert painting was still missing.

  And someone had killed Mason Bradley. Someone had done that, apparently in league with the beings from the painting. Or maybe they’d acted on their own.... One fact that was undeniable: Mason Bradley had been with them, the beings in the painting, that night in the alley.

  The painting had remained active until they’d burned the bodies of all the characters depicted within it.

  Or had it gained a power of its own?

  Quinn didn’t think so. The portrait in the castle had to enter the minds of others in order to act. He thought the Hubert painting was the same. The painting itself lured the right people to it.... People willing to feed it with their own blood—to wake the dead it portrayed.

  “Mostly over,” Quinn amended.

  “The painting remains missing,” Larue said.

  “Like Mason Bradley’s killer,” Quinn reminded him.

  * * *

  Quinn was at the police station, Ron was back at work and even Hattie had insisted on returning home.

  She wasn’t going to have another butler, she decided. She was going to hire a live-in secretary and a housekeeper.

  “If one of them is evil, chances are the other won’t be!” Hattie had told Danni cheerfully. Billie had gone to take her home and get her settled back in.

  It was just Bo Ray and Danni for the moment. Wolf wasn’t home yet because Jez had asked if he could take him on a fund-raising walk for the animal shelter. He’d secured pledges from all of them for the cause. Danni was happy to contribute—and glad to let Wolf and Jez continue to bond. Jez had looked after him for her and she wasn’t going to wrench him right back.