Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
We had two hours until we needed to be at Michael’s, so I took the chance to look up Jet Shy, Tilly’s boyfriend. To my surprise, there were a number of matches. Most of them led to articles about a motivational speaker named Jet Shy. Turns out, he had originated in Singapore, and he owned a motivational enterprise named Live-Thrive Motivational Enterprises.
As I began diving into the articles, it occurred to me that I should ask Dante if he’d managed to find anything out, before I chased the rabbit down the research hole. I buzzed him on the intercom.
“Yo, dude. I wanted to check with you before I waste time mirroring your efforts. Come on in and let’s talk about your aunt.”
Dante grunted, then a moment later he peeked around the door. “I’m here.”
“I started to search on Jet Shy’s name, but thought I should consult you first. I don’t want to waste energy finding out the same thing as you.” I motioned to the computer. “Look at all the search results.”
He blinked. “I hadn’t even started on the research for him yet. So please, be my guest. What have you found?” He pulled a chair around my desk and sat next to me.
I motioned to the string of searches. “He’s a motivational speaker. Whether he’s legit or not, I don’t know yet. I haven’t had a chance to look at anything.”
“Well, let’s dive in.”
The first article wasn’t promising.
Jet Shy is the CEO and owner of several companies, including Live-Thrive Motivational Enterprises, Shy Speaker Round Table, The Crystal Antequarium, and Find Your Tongue Advancement Academy. His resume includes motivational speaker, life coach, crystal healer, talent agent, and numerous other occupations, though his credentials don’t seem to include the education to support these claims.
Rumors of cultism, pyramid schemes, and magical malpractice are rampant in his background, and he consistently seems to have several lawsuits going on at the same time—all against him. However, most of the lawsuits in the past have been dismissed, given the death of the instigators. Shy has an uncanny ability to evade prosecution and fines, and while he denies all wrongdoing, there seems to be a gap in credibility.
Shy is considered highly charismatic, especially for a coyote shifter, and while he claims to be middle age, at the time of this writing we have been unable to uncover any record of his birth. He’s a striking man, handsome and charismatic, but we recommend doing business with him at your own risk.
I sighed. “Well, so far, things aren’t looking good. Let’s check another.” I scanned through the links, many of which were linked to various websites belonging to his various enterprises. Finally, I caught sight of an entry from a blog. “Here, this one—Lena’s Bouillon Blog.”
“What is it?” Dante asked, squinting at the screen.
“Looks like a cooking blog.” I clicked on it. “Actually, it’s a restaurant review and lifestyle blog, along with a first-person diary. The blogger is named Lena Skullpepper. She’s a skunk shifter, it says here. And Jet’s name came up in a blog from last year.”
Last night I had the worst date of my life. Yeah, yeah, I know this is a food blog, but you know that I also talk about my dates, and I review local restaurants. Seriously, I’ve met so many pathetic men that I don’t know if I want to continue dating.
I laughed. “Sounds like you,” I joked, poking Dante in the arm.
“Hey, I resent that,” he said, but he laughed. “Read on.”
I scanned the next paragraph, then began to read aloud.
So, I met this guy in the San Palero Bar & Grill. I decided to treat myself to a good dinner, and I stopped in at the bar before going into the dining room. They have the best mixologist there, and I highly recommend their bar for a girls’ night out, or any gathering. So, I sat down at the counter and ordered a Black Manhattan. I thought it would go well with a good, robust steak. I was relaxing, minding my own business when this gorgeous specimen of a man sat down beside me. He was dark, with broody eyes and hair slicked back like the old school playboys. He was Chinese, I thought, and he seemed to have a suave, smooth way to him.
I wasn’t looking for a date, though, so I turned toward the bar and stared at the bottles on the back of the wall. At first, I thought he was trying to be pleasant. Now, I’m thinking he didn’t like being ignored.
He didn’t drop stupid lines, but said, “So, are you dining alone tonight?”
I normally don’t respond to pickup lines when I’m on a me-time night, but his voice was low and sultry, without being suggestive. I told him I was there alone, yes, that I just wanted a good dinner. He asked me to join him and, for some reason, I agreed to have dinner with him.
Once we were at our table, the first thing he did that annoyed me was to try to order for me. He told the waiter I’d have a salad and a petite filet. I immediately countered that and told the waiter that I wanted a twelve-ounce ribeye, along with steak fries, and I wanted calamari for an appetizer.
That’s when I quickly realized that I made a mistake in accepting his invitation. He checked his phone and, with a startled look, said he had to make a call. He stepped away, and I didn’t expect him to return. But he surprised me by returning after about five minutes. He told me that his accountant had contacted him to warn him that the government in Singapore froze his accounts. He said that he couldn’t do anything till the next day, then said he didn’t have enough to pay for our dinner.
He was so apologetic about it that I almost bought his whole song and dance.
That is, until I asked him why his accounts had been frozen. When he told me that the Singapore mob had put out a hit on him because he had turned one of their members into the police, and that the mob—who apparently controls the bank—had frozen his accounts, it sounded ridiculous. Something set off alarm bells and I couldn’t shake the feeling I was getting scammed.
I told him not to worry, that I’d buy my own dinner and that I decided I wanted to eat alone after all. He called me a “stingy bitch” and threw his napkin on the table. I told him to fuck off, and he stomped out. I feel that I lucked out.
Anyway, other than Jet, I had a wonderful dinner. The ribeye was cooked to perfection, the calamari was crisp, with the perfect balance of breading and seasoning, and the steak fries were seasoned well, crispy, and hot. The price was a little high, but I don’t think it would have mattered to me if I hadn’t been dealing with the lame-assed mooch. And that, well, that wasn’t their fault.
I glanced over at Dante. “Well, he has a history of telling that same story.”
“When was it posted?”
I glanced at the date. “Two weeks. So, he’s definitely hunting for marks. What do you think Tilly would say if she read this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You know he’d probably find some way to explain it away. As to whether she’d believe him, I can’t tell. One thing I don’t want to do is to keep prodding her until we have enough evidence to prove our point. She might stop listening to us if we bombard her.”
“Good thought,” I said. “Well, I’ll send you these links, and we can investigate it later. We might want to get someone involved. There are companies who do investigations into scammers, aren’t there? Should we consult with one of them?”
“That’s a thought.” Dante glanced at the clock. It was nearly eleven. “We should have something quick to eat before we go over to Michael’s. Chances are we’ll need the grounding. Sophia, too.”
I pinged Sophia on the intercom and asked her to meet us in the breakroom. Once there, I peeked in the fridge. We tried to keep it stocked with fixings for sandwiches, in case we needed something quick, as well as chips and boxed cookies in the cupboard, canned soups, and toaster pastries. I pulled out a couple cans of clam chowder.
“Clam chowder and toast okay?”
“Sure.” Dante opened the lower cupboard next to the sink and brought out a soup pot, and while I opened the cans and stirred the soup into the pot, he began to make toast. Sophia set three bowls on the table, along with spoons.
“Are you nervous?” I asked her.
“Not really, though you never can tell what you’re going to run up against when you go out ghost hunting. What worries me is whatever entity—or entities—we’ll be dealing with given the Bleeding Rock. I can’t believe that so many people were sacrificed over the years without either attracting Xetanbu, or at least some freaky assed demon that might have been hovering near the area.” She paused, then blushed. “I’m sorry?—”
“No, I know what you mean. Most of my kind—at least the full-blooded ones—are nothing to mess around with.” I ladled the soup into the bowls as Dante brought over six pieces of toast. We settled down to eat.
Orik and Carson would eat when they were ready. Carson kept a stash of frozen Hot Pockets in the freezer, and Orik brought a carefully cultivated boxed lunch every day, filled with Norwegian specialties his mother-in-law had put together. Most of the time, his food smelled better than most of the food the rest of us ate, except when he brought lutefisk.
Orik joined us and heated his lunch in the microwave. The chowder was reasonably good, the toast finished off the lunch, and, by one PM, we were on our way over to Michael’s house.
The snow was still coming down, though lightly. I drove, navigating the streets with caution. While the temperature remained below freezing, the friction of tires on the roads had melted some of the snow, creating slushy conditions. I took it slowly, making certain not to speed. Several spinouts on the side of the roadways provided examples of what impatience on a snowy Seattle street wrought, and I didn’t want to be one of them.
As I parked in front of Michael’s house, the first thing I noticed was that it was showing its age. Weathered, the two-story house had an attic, but no basement. While it wasn’t Victorian in style, it mirrored some of the stylistic elements.
But rather than charming, its nature was foreboding, as though an invisible cloud had settled down around the walls. I could smell the scent of death and decay here, though the others didn’t seem to notice anything.
The house was at the top of an elevated lot, with twelve narrow, stone stairs leading up to the front lawn. The steps hadn’t been shoveled yet and had an accumulation of about five inches of snow on them. At the top of the steps stood a rusty gate, attached to a chain link fence that surrounded the lot.
I opened the gate, wincing at the scraping sound it made. The hinges needed oil. Better yet, the yard needed an entire new fence. I gave the current one another two or three years before it collapsed.
Within the enclosed lot, several trees towered over the house. A weeping willow in the front yard sprawled like only willows can, the long boughs blowing gently in the breeze. Snow had crusted over some of the tops of the boughs, but as the wind whipped through them, the snow cascaded down, dropping in clumps on the blanketed yard.
Instead of making the house feel fresh and cozy, the snowfall made it seem more ominous. As I glanced up at the top windows in what I assumed was the attic, lights flickered on and off. I doubted that was Michael’s doing, and squinted, trying to pinpoint anything behind the curtains, but I couldn’t see well enough from where I stood.
“Let’s go,” I said, heading up to the porch. The timbers of the porch squeaked, but the boards seemed secure. As we gathered by the door, I rang the bell. A moment later, Michael answered.
He yawned. Medium height, his eyes were so bloodshot you could barely see the green, and his wheat-colored hair hadn’t seen a brush in several days. He leaned against the door.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, standing back so we could enter.
As I stepped through the door, into a long hall, I could feel the house reverberating. Some houses have a heartbeat, and some have a sentience. This house knew we were here, and whatever lived within its walls wasn’t happy.
“How are you doing? You look rough,” I said.
Michael shrugged. “I feel rough. I got about an hour of sleep last night. Noises and things moving around kept me awake most of the night. I can’t tell you how many times I was drifting off to sleep when some big crash or boom would shake me out of it. I’d get up and look around but couldn’t find anything, and go back to bed.”
“Are you sleeping in your bedroom?” I asked.
“No, I’m crashing on the sofa in the living room. It used to be a parlor and a sitting room, but whoever owned the house before we bought it converted them into one large living area.” He led us into the living room, to the right.
The house reminded me of many built during this time. There seemed to be a style around the early 1900s where the hall led to the kitchen in back, with rooms on both sides of the corridor, as well as a staircase. But in this house, while the door opened into the hallway, the door to the living room had been removed, as well as part of the wall to create a large living space. I was surprised that the kitchen hadn’t been included in the renovation—to open up most of the downstairs—but then thought maybe the load-bearing walls were too expensive to remove.
Sophia stopped the moment she entered the door. She glanced from side to side. “Not good. Not good at all.”
“What do you feel?” I asked her.
“Give me a moment. I’m trying to process everything.”
Orik kept a close eye on her as Dante and I entered the main living room. Another door on to the far right led into a different room. The sofa bed was open, and tangled blankets draped over it. An upright piano sat against one wall, and scattered bric-a-brak covered the end tables and a few of the bookshelves. The family obviously liked to read—there were more bookshelves than I expected and most of them were filled with books. A game table sat to one side, with several boardgames on it. Another table, against a back wall next to a window overlooking the side yard, held crafting supplies. The room was cluttered in a cozy, lived-in way.
To the naked eye, everything looked normal, but then I noticed the broken vase next to an end table, and a jigsaw puzzle that had been flipped upside down on the floor.
“Where did the activity begin?” I asked.
“It’s hard to tell. At first it started in the living room, as I told you, but now it’s spread to every part of the house.” Michael sat down on the edge of the sofa bed. “I’m ready to slap a for- sale sign on the lawn and leave, except that we sank every spare dime into this place and there’s nowhere to go.”
“I’m sorry,” Dante said.
At that moment, Sophia and Orik entered the room. Sophia’s expression was a mixture of bewilderment and concern.
“Well, why don’t you show us the rest of the house?” I said.
“Yes, please,” Sophia echoed.
We followed him out into the hall and toward the kitchen. The moment we entered the room, it was obvious that whatever was haunting this place didn’t want us here. A large chef’s knife flew off the counter, aiming for Sophia. Orik pulled her out of the way as she let out a short shriek.
Dante was quick on his feet and he grabbed the knife by the handle, tugging at it until whatever seemed to have hold of it let go. He handed the knife to Michael, who unlocked a drawer and slid it inside.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been keeping the knives locked up and, after I made my sandwich, I forgot to put that back in the drawer. Whatever’s in here doesn’t seem to be able to unlock drawers and doors… yet .” He motioned for us to follow him. “Let’s go upstairs. The powder room’s down the hall, beneath the staircase.”
He led us out of the kitchen and, after a brief stop in the den, he led us upstairs. There were three bedrooms on the second floor along with two baths, and then another partially-built bedroom in the attic. The bedrooms hung thick with energy, and Sophia turned a little green. As we headed up to the attic, the energy grew so oppressive it began to make me sick to my stomach. I wasn’t sure my chowder was going to stay down.
Sophia hadn’t said more than a handful of words since we had arrived, but at the top of the stairs, she let out a breath and said, “No. I can’t go in there. Something’s trying to jump me and I don’t know if I can keep it out.”
“Do you need to go back down?” Orik asked.
“Yes, right now. I can manage to keep it at bay down there, but the energy up here is too strong.” She turned and Orik led her back down.
I could feel something, but it wasn’t affecting me as much as it did her. Dante seemed uneasy, but he said nothing.
As Michael opened the attic, a rush of air flew out, and hit me smack in the face. I recoiled, as invisible tentacles latched onto me. The face-hugger scene from Alien ran through my mind and I panicked.
“Crap! What the fuck?—”
Dante immediately turned and reached out to steady me as I lurched back toward the stairs. But then, whatever it was let go and swept past me, back into the attic.
“What’s in there?”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t seem to be able to gain control over me—I don’t know why. But one night it tried to possess my wife. That’s another reason that she and the kids are staying at their grandmother’s.”
“It was trying to cut off my breath,” I said, eyeing the attic with suspicion. “I don’t see anything but—wait.” I froze as a mist in the corner began to manifest. It was pale white, like normal mist, but it was thick as sludge, and the tendrils brushed against me. “Get back,” I said, as a wave of anger rose up. “Don’t you dare try it,” I said, growling.
“What’s going on?” Dante asked.
“Whatever it is, it’s trying to latch onto me again.” I let out another growl, and I realized that my demon was rising. “Dante, I better get out of here. I don’t have the control yet to counter what it’s doing to me.”
He gave me one long look and pulled me toward the door. “Come on, back downstairs.” He motioned for Michael to follow. “Let’s get out of here.”
As we headed back downstairs, my control returned. I quieted the demon inside, wondering how the hell we were going to fight this. “I think we’re going to need magical help,” I said.
“Penn?” Dante asked.
“If she can,” I answered. “Let’s go talk to Sophia and see if she’s come up with anything.”
As we returned to the living room, I realized that this case was going to be a doozy. And I had no clue if we’d be able to clear out whatever was haunting this house. Given the background, it might be too engrained in the land. For Michael’s sake, though, I hoped not.