Crossroads of Bones (A Katie Bishop Novel Book 1) Read online

  “Are those both for me?” I asked.

  “One is for me, but I’d be happy to buy you the whole bottle if you’d like.”

  I gave him a genuine smile. “I’ll put you out of your misery and stick to Guinness for the rest of the night.”

  “Clark,” he said, extending his hand as he sat down, “Kent.”

  “Ah-ha.” I took it and ran my eyes over his T-shirt and jeans. “Clark Kent?” I repeated, working very hard to suppress a cocky reply.

  He polished off the expensive scotch in a single swig. “You do realize what a waste that was? You should save the chugging for the beer.”

  “Ah! Nonsense! Another?”

  I shook my head. “I’m off tomorrow, but when you hunt evil spirits you never really have a day off. You know what I mean?”

  He held his arms out. “Hey, I’m Clark Kent.”

  My eyes widened. “I see your point.”

  We chatted politely for the next half hour, discussing our pretend lives and preparing for the inevitable segue into going back to his place. He was my escape from that voice filling my head. The one that would be back on Tuesday at two o’clock.

  Fiona shot me a look as I got up to leave with Clark Kent. He took my hand, the envy of the guys at the pool table, and led me out the door.

  Turning over on the bed, I studied the blond head of hair on the pillow next to me. He had unusually long eyelashes for a guy, the kind women painstakingly glued on or paid good money for every few months at the lash salon.

  I pulled on one of them gently. “What are you doing?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

  “Just checking for glue.”

  He laughed with his eyes still closed. “You staying tonight? I can finally cook you breakfast in the morning.”

  I sighed, uncomfortable with the conversation that was about to follow. “Uh-uh. I have to go.” Staying till morning would break my number one rule. I threw the sheet off my legs and swung them over the side of the bed. My skirt and underwear were on the floor next to the door. “Where’s my shirt?”

  He sat up and looked under the blanket that was tossed at the foot of the bed. My tank top was crumpled under it. “Here you go, your highness.”

  As I pulled my top over my shoulders, he ran his hand over the lower half of my tattoo. I grabbed it as he cupped my waist and pressed my palm against his. “Clark Kent?” He used a different name—usually a famous literary character—every time we had one of our little role-playing sessions. His real name was Christopher Sullivan. He was an Assistant District Attorney for the Chatham County DA’s office. We’d met right after Elliot left—at MacPherson’s—and he’d become a dependable diversion ever since. But the whole dating thing just didn’t work for us, and we mutually agreed that we were much better off as casual lovers. Fiona knew exactly what was going on the second he walked through the front door of the bar.

  “Katie—”

  “Christopher,” I pleaded, “you know as well as I do what this is. We’ll be on each other’s last nerve before the week is up.” With the rest of my wrinkled clothes gathered, I got dressed and headed for the door.

  “So, are you just going to call me next time you feel like getting laid?” he asked, trying his best to make me feel guilty for saving us both a lot of grief. Even though I knew leaving was the right thing to do and I couldn’t wait to get out of that house, it still pained me every time he did this. But he’d thank me for it tomorrow.

  “Yes,” I whispered before walking out the door.

  Sea Bass was waiting on my doorstep when I got home. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “What? Are you my father now?” I walked past him and opened the door while he stood there gawking at me like I had three heads. “Well? You coming in or not?”

  He was good at making himself at home, heading straight for the refrigerator to search the shelf for a cold beer. Then he pulled out a container of leftover pasta and sat himself at the kitchen island.

  “You sure I can’t cook up something fresh for you, Sea Bass?” I asked with the appropriate amount of sarcasm.

  “Aw, no thanks Katie, this is good.” He jammed his fork into the Tupperware and twisted it with a heaping ball of linguine before stuffing it in his mouth. “You want some?” he mumbled around the food, shoving the container toward me.

  I shook my head and grabbed a bottle of red wine from the counter. After pouring a glass, I questioned why he was in my kitchen eating my food and drinking my beer at close to midnight. “So why are you here, Sea Bass?”

  “Fin Cooper’s been trying to reach you all night. Hell, Grams called me three times already to help him find you. Said it’s an emergency.”

  I grabbed my purse and pulled out my phone. The battery was dead—again. “Did she say what it was about?”

  “Nope. Just said it was real important and you needed to call Fin ASAP. You had me a little worried when you weren’t answering, Katie, considering all the strange shit going on around here lately.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled to Fin’s number before handing it to me. “Grams gave me his number. You better call him.”

  “It’s a little late. Maybe I should wait until morning.”

  His brow went up as he cocked his head. “Ah, I wouldn’t do that. Grams said it was an emergency, and I ain’t never heard that word come out that woman’s mouth before.”

  I took the phone and stepped out on the patio. It barely rang once before Fin picked up. “Miss Bishop?” he asked before I could announce myself. I guess there wasn’t anyone else he was expecting a call from this late on a Sunday night.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Fin. Sea Bass said you’ve been trying to reach me all night. What’s so important it couldn’t wait till morning?” I could hear a heavy sigh release on the other end of the phone, making the hairs on my arm stand up. “You’re making me real uncomfortable, Fin.”

  “Your instincts are strong. That’s a real good thing, Miss Bishop. It’s best that you meet me at Lillian’s house. The sooner the better.”

  “You don’t mean right now?” I asked, hoping he meant first thing in the morning.

  “That would be preferable. And wise.”

  I drove through the majestic tunnel of live oaks lining the road, covered with a thick veil of cascading Spanish moss. Lillian Whitman’s house and home of the Crossroads Society was just ahead. The location had been kept secret the first time I was here, seeing how such a dangerous artifact was buried in the bowels of its foundation. But since I was now a member of the society and I refused his offer of an escort in the Bentley, Fin relented and gave me the address.

  He was waiting on the steps when I pulled up in front of the house. “That was fast, Miss Bishop. What kind of GPS you got in that thing?”

  I pointed to my head and walked past him toward the open front door. “I’m good with directions and I’m tired. Let’s just get this urgent business over with so I can go back home and get some sleep.”

  “It’s nice to see you again, Miss Bishop.” Lillian Whitman greeted me in the hall and I automatically extended my hand. “Nonsense,” she said as she cupped my shoulders and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Members are practically family.”

  Instead of the library, she led the way to one of the great rooms with spectacular high ceilings and tall windows that I imagined let in a tsunami of light during the day. One wall was covered with old portraits in gilded frames. “Are these your people?” I asked, motioning to the wall.

  “I like to think that some of them are,” she said. “The rest are unfortunate contradictions to my very long and wise pedigree.” I realized she was waiting for Fin and me to make ourselves comfortable. Once we sat down, she took her own seat on the sofa next to me. She immediately stood back up. “I must be losing my mind,” she said as she walked over to the bureau. “You having bourbon, Fin?” She poured his drink without paying any mind to his response. “How about you, Miss Bishop? What’s your pleasure?”

  What the hell. It was
my day off already. “Scotch, neat.” It wasn’t every day that I had the opportunity to sample a bottle that probably cost more than my rent. I thanked her for my drink and waited for one of them to tell me what was so important to drag me all the way over here at nearly one a.m.

  Fin got right to the point. “Victor Tuse is dead.”

  It took a moment to reconcile what he’d said, but when I did the first thought that came to mind was, Great. Problem solved. Then reality set in. “I don’t suppose this means that the spirit is dead, too?”

  “Hardly.” Fin stood up and started traipsing around the room. I was beginning to see a pattern with him. A nervous habit. The man rarely sat still for more than a few minutes at a time. “I’m afraid he’s on the hunt for a new host.”

  “Can he do that?” I asked.

  Fin stifled a laugh. “A two-hundred-year-old spirit can do just about anything it wants, Miss Bishop. Hell, it can take up residence in a dog if it wants to.” He polished off his drink and set the glass on the fireplace mantel before describing all the gory details of Tuse’s death. “I’m sure the spirit can body hop all it wants, but seeing how it managed to fully manifest into this one, it had no choice but to kill its host. The man was found nearly petrified, dried up like an old piece of leather. The spirit even took the tattoo.”

  “The tattoo?” I had a visual of the poor man’s dead body, his back skinned.

  “Sucked the life right out of that man like a spider consuming a trapped bug,” Lillian interjected. “I suspect it just sucked up the tattoo right along with all the entrails.”

  Fin took his seat again. “I personally examined the remains, at the discretion of the Chatham County Medical Examiner who also happens to be a member. A faded outline of the tattoo was still visible on Victor Tuse’s back, but the spirit had clearly taken the rest.”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  “This is new territory for all of us,” Fin replied. “So for now, Miss Bishop, we wait.”

  Fin and Lillian had some misguided notion that they could talk me into staying at the society, at least until the new host surfaced. But I made it clear I had a life—and a dragon on my back for protection. They dropped the argument when I agreed to keep my phone sufficiently charged so I could suffer a daily call from Fin to make sure I was still alive, while they came up with a plan for capturing the spirit.

  I pulled into my driveway and noticed my neighbor’s living room light was on. I feared what would happen if the spirit’s latest host decided to show up on my doorstep. My dragon would have a field day with that, and so would my neighbors if they heard a commotion and looked outside.

  Either my imagination was getting the best of me, or there was someone standing under the streetlight a couple of houses down. It was a woman. I could just make out her long hair and a pair of glasses with oversized frames. I’d say it was just someone from the neighborhood walking her dog at two-thirty in the morning—the very reason I didn’t have one—but there was no dog on a leash or running loose on the lawn. And then there was the creepy fact that she was staring at me.

  Fumbling nervously with the handle, I dropped my keys between the seat and the door. I reached down to grab them and by the time I looked back up she was gone. The lines of my tattoo stirred on my back. Not the usual restless movement I felt when the creature wanted to come out; something much deeper.

  I sat back against the seat and let the growl snaking up my throat calm to a low rumble that eventually receded. But there was no time to reflect on what just happened. I needed to get inside the house before she—or it—came back.

  Surveying my surroundings, I hurried toward the front door. If it hadn’t been for the moonlight shining down on my doorstep, I probably would have stepped right over the line of dust scattered across the threshold. I bent down and pinched some of it between my fingers, clumsily fiddling with the key in my left hand, missing the keyhole three times before finally getting the door open. As soon as I was inside and the door was locked, I examined the grit between my fingers, a mix of fine and coarse rust colored material. I suspected it was red brick dust, and I knew enough about hoodoo to know it was used for protection by root folks.

  The light in my kitchen was on. My memory told me I’d turned off all the lights when Sea Bass and I left earlier that night, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d left one of them on. I went to the living room window and peeked through the blinds, praying I wouldn’t see that woman staring back at me. She wasn’t out there, but as I turned away from the window I spotted something in the corner. I grabbed a paper towel and reached for the strange object that in the dim light looked like a shriveled or petrified squid.

  “What in the hell?” I muttered as I carried it at arm’s length to the bright light of the kitchen to get a better look. It was some kind of dried root.

  I ran to the bedroom and found another one in the corner. By the time I went through every room of the house, I’d found a total of six, one in each room. Someone was either trying to protect me or harm me.

  10

  My day off felt like a blip in time. I spent it staring at that pile of shriveled roots on my kitchen counter, but it flew by because I was dreading going to the shop the next day. The next day was Tuesday, the day Jackson Hunter was coming in for that hawk tattoo. Based on its size and intricacy it would take several hours, and I prayed Sea Bass could get it done before we closed so Mr. Hunter wouldn’t be back for a second session. There was something about that biker that set off a chain of events in my head and groin that scared the living hell out of me. Only one other guy had ever done that to me—Constantine, a satyr back in New York who’d managed to reduce me to a sloppy cliché with a permanent hard-on for the sound of his voice. That tumultuous affair was one I preferred not to repeat.

  I was the last one in, having overslept due to less than two hours of sleep. Mouse was working on some guy’s arm, while Sea Bass conferred with a young woman who barely looked legal and was having second thoughts about getting her first tattoo.

  “What’s your policy if I don’t like it?” the girl asked.

  Sea Bass refrained from rolling his eyes. “Well, once it’s done, it’s done. Can’t take it back.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded once, clearly conflicted with a choice that was permanent, or expensive and painful to rectify later.

  “Look,” he said, handing her the drawing he’d done of an infinity symbol with the word “peace” intertwined, “why don’t you take the drawing and think about it for a few days. You can always come back later.” He smiled to ease her angst. “You know what they say—measure twice, cut once.”

  Normally we wouldn’t just hand over a custom stencil that took some time and skill to render, but infinity symbols were our bread and butter around here. Took about five seconds to print one off and change the word from “love” to “hope” to “peace”, etc.

  As I turned and headed for the coffee pot, I stumbled over something large and unyielding on the floor. I flew over it and landed on my elbow—aka funny bone. Nothing funny about it, though. “Fuck!” I squealed, sitting on the hard floor waiting for the irritated nerve endings to stop throbbing with pain. Then I spotted the culprit.

  Sea Bass came running. “Jeez, Katie! I’m sorry.”

  “Damn it, Sea Bass!” I got back on my feet and looked at the big white obstruction lying on the floor. “What’s Marvin doing in here again?”

  Marvin was his dog. He’d found the massive white German shepherd under his old truck a few winters back while he was visiting his uncle in Atlanta. They’d had a rare snowfall that year that rendered the ground white, and Sea Bass nearly ran the poor thing over because he couldn’t see it against the snow. The dog slid out from under the truck just in time and jumped up on his window. Clearly dumped during the coldest part of the season, Sea Bass brought him home to Savannah and dubbed him Marvin.

  “Maggie’s picking him up around eleven. He needs a good bath and some manscapin
g.”

  “What’s she going to do?” asked Abel “Wax the hair off the poor dog’s balls?” He gave Marvin a sympathetic glance. “You could get arrested for that, you know. Animal cruelty, section 9-5034.”

  Sea Bass cringed. “Hell no. She’s just giving him a good grooming.” Among other things, Sea Bass’ girlfriend listed dog grooming as one of her current occupations.

  Marvin dragged himself off the floor and nudged my hand with his snout. His tail wagged apologetically as he waited for me to comply and pet his head. It wasn’t his fault he was the size of a small pony. Besides, I owed that dog one. The first time Sea Bass brought him to the shop, he’d served as the perfect mediator when a couple of gang members walked in and started to lose their manners. That dog was a welcome guest in my home any day, but the health department wasn’t as tolerant when it came to animals in a facility that required sterilization.

  “Sorry, big boy,” I said as I ran my hand over his head. “You’re going to have to wait outside. Auntie Katie can’t afford any violation fines right now.” It was still early enough for the heat to be bearable. “Put him in the shade and make sure he’s got water.” Sea Bass led Marvin out the back door.

  With a cup of coffee in my hand, I looked at the schedule. Jackson Hunter was still down for two o’clock. I had a client coming in at eleven to complete a large tattoo I’d been working on. I figured it would take at least a few more hours to finish, which would be the perfect distraction when that biker came in.

  I’d barely had a chance to sit down and properly wake up when Sugar walked through the front door, brushing a thick section of long golden hair over her shoulder. She headed straight for me. “You okay, baby?” she asked.

  I glanced from left to right. “Why? Shouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she replied. “You called me this morning.”