As Tad handed around our order and I passed out the cups and pastries, we got underway again.
“So, my friend Ari—she’s been my best friend since I was little, is going into my side business with me,” I said. “Since we both work day jobs, we don’t have to rely on it for income, which means we can be selective about time and the cases we take on.”
He nodded. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “Once you start relying on something for your daily bread, it becomes a much heavier responsibility.”
Caitlin, who had been listening from the back of the van, said, “So what does Ari do for a living? Moonshadow Bay is small, but I don’t remember ever running into someone with that name.”
“Ari owns a hair salon. She runs it out of her own house—she’s tiny, petite…flame-red hair?” When Caitlin shook her head, I added, “How long have you been here? I don’t remember you from high school.”
Caitlin grinned. “I went to high school fifty years ago. I’m a bobcat shifter, remember? Shifters live a lot older than most humans, or even than most witches. I was born in 1952.”
Longevity rates could really be confusing for those who weren’t part of the Otherkin community. Shifters were long-lived, well into two or three hundred years or more. Witches—magical families like my own—were one step away from human. We lived a lot longer than most humans, a few up to two hundred, though mostly we topped out around one-fifty, and we aged slower so we stayed aware and able most of our lives. Vampires, whom I knew existed but had never met one, of course could live on much longer than either the shifters or witches. And there were other members of the Otherkin community.
Hank sort of straddled the edge. He was a psychic—a human with intense psychic abilities. Which meant he and Tad would age faster than Caitlin and me.
That made everything clearer. “That’s why you weren’t in my class. I thought you might be younger than me, but I guess that’s not the case.”
“Can I ask something?” Hank said. “How did you get the name ‘January’?”
I laughed. “My mother and father were convinced they were having a boy. I was conceived a few years before they could use ultrasound to determine gender. I’m not sure why they thought that I was going to be a boy, but they were so sure that they only picked out boy names. When I arrived without a penis, they were so thrown they couldn’t figure out what to name me. So—”
“Let me guess. You were born in January?” Caitlin asked.
“January 16, and yes. That’s how I got my name. They were as equally uncreative about my middle name. They decided to name me January K. Jaxson. That would be ‘K’ as in the letter, not the name. I tell people it’s ‘Kay’ when they ask, just to make things simpler, but it’s really just a placeholder letter.” I didn’t begrudge my parents’ desperate attempts to figure out a name for me. They could have picked something far more boring.
“We’re almost there,” Tad said. “Remember, we go in together. Nobody goes anywhere alone.”
I pulled out the Protection water my mother had made. “Here, everybody spray yourselves with this. It’s left over from my mother’s stash. It will help protect us from their attacks.” I thoroughly misted myself down and tossed the plastic spray bottle over to Caitlin. She followed suit, then Hank. Tad paused the van to douse himself with it, then started up again, driving cautiously along the drive.
The sky was overcast, threatening yet more snow, and the temperature was creeping up toward freezing. We’d probably have meltoff during the afternoon, then fresh snow and freezing during the night.
As the asylum came into sight, I shivered. The place gave me the creeps, though I wondered how much of that was actually the asylum itself, or the creature that had been born out of all the spirits, or the land itself. I wanted to pinpoint it, but I was nervous about going into trance, given what I had encountered on my earlier trip there.
“By the way,” I said. “Who are we working for? You said a real estate developer was interested in buying the land.”
“That’s right, you weren’t at the first meeting. Last week, the Yarnell Housing Corporation approached us. They’re a lot smaller than their name sounds, but they’re up and coming in Moonshadow Bay, and they are making buck. They offered us a five-thousand-dollar fee plus hours billed on this case.” Tad parked the van near the entrance. “Well, will you look at that. In all the time I’ve lived in Moonshadow Bay, I’ve never once come out here.”
As we tumbled out of the van, with Caitlin starting the equipment up, I began to wonder about the wisdom of what we were about to do. All the credos about doing good business seemed to vanish out the window with the stark view of the deserted facility.
But Hank shoved a bag of cameras into one of my arms, and Caitlin slung a bag of food over my other arm, and so—following their lead—I headed back into the belly of the beast.
Chapter Eleven
As I entered the asylum, the tension that I had felt the first time seemed to be ratcheted up. I tried to shut down my clairaudience—the ability to hear things in different realms—because there were whispers everywhere and they didn’t sound friendly. I could hear full-blown conversations, along with inappropriate laughter. Something sinister was lurking here, and it seemed fully awake and aware.
I pointed to the hallway that Killian and I had explored. “That goes all the way around the building. There’s a set of stairs on the right side of the building, and a set on the left, both going up to the second floor.”
“Where should we set up the equipment? What room were you in when you were attacked?” Hank asked.
I reluctantly led the way. The hallway door opened easily, and I swallowed my fear, leading them down the hall to the room. “In there.” I pointed to the closed door.
Hank motioned for me to step aside and he opened the door, peering in. We were all wearing headlamps, and I took a deep breath and followed him. When we were in the room, I backed up against the wall, trying to give the spirit as little body surface to target as I could.
“I can feel something,” Caitlin said. She held out one of the FLIR cameras. “Guys, you might want to look at this.”
We crowded around her, looking at the viewfinder. There, against the opposite wall, was a brilliant ball of bluish light. It registered cold—a good twenty-degree drop from the rest of the room—and it was hovering there.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a will-o’-the-wisp,” Caitlin whispered. “Also known as a corpse candle. I’ve encountered them before.”
I had heard of will-o’-the-wisps, but I’d never seen one, nor had I ever had to deal with one. In Welsh mythology, they were classified under the Clanogrian, a group of spirits and elementals who were harbingers of death. The light was flickering, floating about three feet in the air.
I happened to glance up, over the top of the camera. “It’s no longer hiding itself,” I said.
Caitlin lowered the FLIR and swallowed hard. “You’re right.”
The ball of energy bobbed gently up and down, as though it were on the surface of a lake. It slowly began to move forward, toward us. My skin began to crawl and I glanced at the door, computing how many steps it would take me to reach it.