Sizzle and Burn (2 page)

Dressed in a crisply tailored dark gray suit and a pale blue tie, a handsome brown leather briefcase in one hand, Doug looked every inch the professional real estate agent. Sleek, designer glasses framed his pale eyes. His car, parked in the drive, was a Jaguar.

She guessed him to be in his late thirties. His hairline was starting to recede and he had the solid, well-fed look of a man who, while not yet overweight, had definitely started to put on extra pounds. He had warned her that the gloom-filled house with its aging plumbing and wiring would not be an easy sale.

“I’ll be right back,” she assured him.

She couldn’t tell him that she really had no choice now that she had picked up the psychic whispers of a man who fantasized about killing witches. She had to know the truth before she could leave the house.

“I did a little research and called Phil Brooks after I spoke with you,” Doug said. “He told me that your aunt cut off his pest control service shortly before she, uh, left town.”

Shortly before I took her away
, Raine thought. She curled the hand that had just touched the railing very tightly around the strap of her purse.
Shortly before I had to put her into a very private, very expensive sanitarium
.

A month before, Vella Tallentyre had died in her small room at St. Damian’s Psychiatric Hospital back in Oriana on the shores of Lake Washington. The cause of death was a heart attack, according to the authorities. She was fifty-nine years old.

It dawned on her that Doug probably didn’t want to get his pristine suit and polished shoes dirty. She didn’t blame him.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said. “I’ll just go to the foot of the stairs.”

Please be a gentleman and insist on coming with me.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Doug said, stepping back. “I don’t see a light switch up here.”

“It’s at the foot of the stairs.”

So much for the gentlemen’s code. What had she expected? This wasn’t the nineteenth century. The code, if it ever existed, no longer applied. After what she had just been through with Bradley, she should know that better than anyone.

The thought of Detective Bradley Mitchell proved bracing. The ensuing rush of feminine outrage unleashed a useful dose of adrenaline that was strong enough to propel her down the stairs.

Doug hovered at the top of the steps, filling the doorway. “If the light isn’t working, I’ve got a flashlight in my car.”

The ever helpful real estate agent.

She ignored him and descended cautiously into the darkness. Maybe she wouldn’t give him the listing, after all. The problem was, neither of the other two agents in town was eager for it. It wasn’t just that the house was in such a neglected state. The truth was that it was unlikely any of the locals would be interested in purchasing it.

For the past couple of decades this house had been the property of a woman who was certifiably crazy, a woman who heard voices in her head. That kind of history tended to dampen the enthusiasm of prospective clients. As Doug had explained, they would have to lure an out-of-town prospect, someone interested in a real fixer-upper.

The old wooden steps creaked and groaned. She tried to avoid touching the railing on the way down, and she was careful to stay close to the edge of each tread so that she would be less likely to step in
his
footsteps. She had learned the hard way that human psychic energy was most easily transmitted onto a surface by direct skin contact but bloodlust this strong sometimes penetrated through the soles of shoes.

As careful as she tried to be, she couldn’t avoid all of it.

Make her suffer. Punish her the way Mother punished me.

The scent of damp and mildew intensified as she went down. The darkness at the foot of the steps yawned like a bottomless well.

She paused on the final step, groped for and found the switch. When she touched it she got a jolt that had nothing to do with electricity.
Burn, witch
,
burn
.

Mercifully, the naked bulb in the overhead fixture still worked, illuminating the windowless, low-ceilinged space in a weak, yellow glare.

The basement was crammed with the detritus of Vella Tallentyre’s unhappy life. Several pieces of discarded furniture, including a massive, mirrored armoire, a chrome dining table laminated with red plastic and four matching red vinyl chairs, were crowded together. Most of the rest of the space was filled with several large cardboard boxes and crates. They contained many of the innumerable paintings Vella had produced over the years. The pictures had one unifying theme: they were all dark, disturbing images of masks.

Her heart sank. So much for taking a quick look around and retreating back up the staircase. She would have to leave her perch at the foot of the stairs and tour the maze of boxes and crates if she wanted to be certain there were no terrible secrets buried down there.

She really did not need this. She had problems enough at the moment. Settling Aunt Vella’s small estate had proved remarkably time-consuming, not to mention depressing. In the middle of that sad process she had been forced to face the fact that the one man she thought could accept her, voices and all, found her a complete turn-off in the bedroom. On top of everything else, she had a business to run. Late October was a busy time of year for her costume design shop, Incognito. No, she did not need any more trouble, but she knew all too well that if she ignored the whispers, she would walk the floor until dawn for days or even weeks. For some reason she could never understand, finding the truth was the only antidote for the voices.

Stomach clenching, she stepped down onto the concrete floor and put out a hand to touch the nearest object, a dusty cardboard box. There was no help for it now. She had to follow the trail of psychic whispers left by the freak.

“What are you doing?” Doug called anxiously from the top of the staircase. “I thought you said you were just going to have a quick look around down there.”

“There’s a lot of stuff here. Sooner or later I’m going to have to clear it out. I need to get an idea of how big a job it will be.”

“Please be careful, Miss Tallentyre.”

She pretended not to hear him. If he couldn’t be bothered to accompany her into the darkness, she was not interested in his platitudes.

There was nothing on the cardboard box but when her fingertips skated across the laminated surface of the old table she got another vicious jolt.

The demon is stronger than the witch.

Gasping, she jerked her fingers away from the table and took a quick step back. No matter how she tried to prepare herself, she would never get used to the unnerving sensation that accompanied a brush with the really bad whispers.

She looked down at the floor, searching for footprints. If there were any, they were undetectable. In the poor light the gray dust that covered everything appeared to be the same color as the concrete. In addition, the deep shadows between the valleys of stacked boxes left much of the floor in pitch darkness.

She inched forward, touching the objects in her path in the same tentative way she would have tested the surface of a hot stove. Psychic static clinging to the dusty armoire mirror made her flinch.

She looked around and realized that she was following a narrow path that snaked through the jungle of crates and boxes. The trail led to the closed door of the old wooden storage locker. A heavy padlock secured the sturdy door.

A very shiny new padlock.

She knew before she even touched it that it would reek of the freak’s spore.

She came to a halt a step away from the locker, held her breath and put out her hand. The edge of her finger barely grazed the padlock but the shock was nerve-shattering, all the same.

Burn, witch, burn
.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Oh, damn.”

“Miss Tallentyre?” Doug sounded genuinely alarmed now. “What’s wrong? Are you all right down there?”

She heard his footsteps on the stairs. Evidently her small yelp of pained surprise had activated some latent manly impulse to ride to the rescue. Better late than never.

“I’m all right but there is something very wrong down here.” She fished her cell phone out of her purse. “I’m going to call nine-one-one.”

“I don’t understand.” Doug halted on the last step, clutching his briefcase. He peered around and finally spotted her near the storage locker. “Why in the world do you want the police?”

“Because I think this basement is about to become a crime scene.”

The 911 operator came on the line before Doug could recover from the shock.

“Fire or police?” the woman said crisply.

“Police,” she responded, putting all the assurance she could muster into her voice in an effort to make certain the operator took her seriously. “I’m at fourteen Crescent Lane, the Tallentyre house. Tell whoever responds to bring a tool that can cut through a padlock. Hurry.”

The woman refused to be rushed. “What’s wrong, ma’am?”

“I just found a dead body.”

She hung up before the operator could ask any more questions. When she closed the phone she realized that Doug was still standing at the foot of the stairs. His features were partially obscured by the shadows but she was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open. The poor man was obviously starting to realize that there were reasons why the other local real estate agents hadn’t jumped on the Tallentyre listing. He must have heard the rumors about Aunt Vella. Maybe he was starting to wonder if the crazy streak ran in the family. It was a legitimate question.

Doug cleared his throat. “Are you sure you’re okay, Miss Tallentyre?”

She gave him the smile she saved for situations like this, the special smile her assistant, Pandora, labeled her
screw you
smile.

“No, but what else is new?” she said politely.

The officer’s name was Bob Fulton. He was the hard-faced, no-nonsense, ex-military type. He came down the basement stairs with a large flashlight and a wicked-looking bolt cutter.

“Where’s the body?” he asked, in a voice that said he had seen a number of them.

“I’m not certain there is one,” Raine admitted. “But I think you’d better check that storage locker.”

He looked at her with an expression she recognized immediately. It was the everyone-here-is-a-suspect-until-proven-otherwise expression that Bradley got when he was working a case.

“Who are you?” Fulton asked.

“Raine Tallentyre.”

“Related to the crazy lady—uh, I mean to Vella Tallentyre?”

“Her niece.”

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing here today?”

“I inherited this house,” she said coldly. He’d called Aunt Vella a crazy lady out loud. That meant she no longer had to be polite.

Clearly sensing the mounting tension in the atmosphere, Doug stepped forward. “Doug Spicer, Officer. Spicer Properties. I don’t believe we’ve met. I came here with Miss Tallentyre today to take a listing on the place.”

Fulton nodded. “Heard Vella Tallentyre had passed on. Sorry, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” Raine said stiffly. “About that storage locker—”

He studied the padlocked door and then glanced suspiciously at Raine. “What makes you think there’s a body in there?”

She crossed her arms and went into full defense mode. She had known this was going to be difficult. It was so much simpler when Bradley handled this part, shielding her from derision and disbelief.

“Just a feeling,” she said evenly.

Fulton exhaled slowly. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You think you’re psychic, just like your aunt, right?”

She flashed him her special smile.

“My aunt
was
psychic,” she said.

Fulton’s bushy brows shot up. “Heard she ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Oriana.”

“She did, mostly because no one believed her. Please open the locker, Officer. If it’s empty, I will apologize for wasting your time.”

“You understand that if I do find a body in that locker, you’re going to have to answer a lot of questions down at the station.”

“Trust me, I am well aware of that.”

He searched her face. For a few seconds she thought he was going to argue further but whatever he saw in her expression silenced him. Without a word he turned to the storage locker and hoisted the bolt cutter.

There was a sharp, metallic crunch when the hasp of the padlock severed. Fulton put down the tool and gripped the flashlight in his left hand. He reached for the doorknob with gloved fingers.

The door opened on a groan of rusty hinges. Raine stopped breathing, afraid to look and equally afraid not to. She made herself look.

A naked woman lay on the cold concrete floor. The one item of clothing in the vicinity was a heavy leather belt coiled like a snake beside her.

The woman was bound hand and foot. Duct tape sealed her mouth. She appeared to be young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and painfully thin. Tangled dark hair partially obscured her features.

The only real surprise was that she was still alive.

Two

K
nives were always the worst. People did unpleasant things with them, and they did those things close up and in a very personal way.

“I don’t like sharp objects,” Zack Jones said.

He did not take his attention off the ceremonial dagger in the glass case. Elaine Brownley, director of the museum, leaned closer to study the artifact.

“Probably all that early childhood advice you got about the dangers of running with scissors,” she suggested. “Leaves a lasting impression.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” Zack said.

This was not the first time he had found himself standing beside Elaine, looking at an unpleasant object housed in a glass case. His was a dual career path. Consulting for the Arcane Society’s curators was one of his businesses.

Elaine removed her glasses and fixed him with a direct look. She was in her mid-fifties. With her short, graying brown hair, round glasses, intelligent eyes and slightly rumpled navy blue skirted suit, she looked like the academic that she was. Zack knew she had a number of degrees in archaeology, anthropology and fine arts. She was also fluent in several languages, living and dead.