A Touch Too Much Read online

  A little girl laughed, the beat of musician’s hand drums whipping her into a wild frenzy. Her shrill voice became a squeal, and though I worried the sound would break the old woman’s trance, I couldn’t stop the girl, too busy trying to catch every shift, every nuance of the fortune teller’s behavior.

  The old woman didn’t seem to notice her, only pulled another card, laying it to the right of the dragon. A hollow-eyed skull stared back as she withdrew her hand. Long, curving fangs protruded from both jaws, glistening with wet, fresh red drops in stark contrast to the matte blank voids where the eyes should have been.

  In my line of work, you reach for extremes. You reach for the super-holy, saint-like lifestyle, or you cultivate a sense of humor about the dark. You learn to laugh at what scares the shit out of you. Grinning skulls are funny, cute even, with heart-shaped eye holes emblazoned on a t-shirt. When a skeleton assembles out of a pile of bones and runs at you in a dark sewer, singing helps, especially the song about which bones connect. Silly as it is, it removes fear from the equation as you sight-in a Mossberg loaded with explosive rounds packed with blessed Jerusalem dirt. When I say I giggled so hard I almost missed the shot, I’m not being modest.

  My affinity skewed dark, but this was different.

  Humor could not survive against the card on the table. Not even the blackest gallows humor could thrive. Those empty eyes stared through me, woke something within and made it resonate. Staring into the matte, colorless holes felt like standing on the edge of a cliff and wanting, even for a heartbeat, to jump.

  That void called me.

  And something within me responded.

  The old woman whimpered as her hand hovered over the card. She blinked rapidly, her eyes returning to normal. Wrenching coughs doubled her over. Both Marty and I rushed to her side. The fabric-draped camp table toppled, and cards spilled across the stone-paved square.

  “Are you okay?” Marty held her in the chair as she slumped forward, hacking into a wrinkled, yellowed handkerchief cupped in her hand.

  She nodded, but the coughing didn’t allow her the breath to answer.

  The little girl skipped by, the lilt of laughter ringing in her voice as she sang, “Three blind mice, three blind mice.” She locked eyes with me. Her bright, lightweight dress spun around her as she twirled. “See how they run.” With determination I’d never have expected from a child, she looked from me to Marty, then to the old woman. Fear warbled its way down my spine. “See how they run.” With another eerie laugh, she ran across the square and disappeared into the crowd around the corner.

  Marty looked at me. “What the fu—” he glanced at the old woman, “um, hell was that?”

  “Such language,” she wheezed, “around a lady.”

  “Yes, ma’am, my apologies.” He squatted at her side, balancing on his toes. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “Or your lady friend.” She waved the discolored handkerchief at me.

  “I love her to death, ma’am,” Marty’s lips quirked in a teasing grin, “but she’s no lady.”

  I rolled my eyes and gathered spilled cards while Marty righted the table. The old woman murmured grateful things the way only a Southern matriarch can—simultaneously gracious yet without any doubt her words constituted an order. “Yes, cher, thank you. Set it right here.” She gestured at one of the two pieces of fabric Marty held. “That goes over top. You are so kind, merci, ah, merci.”

  Straightening the cards in my hand, I noticed only familiar Rider-Waite Tarot images. I flipped through them, one at a time while her attention remained on Marty.

  “You won’t find them,” she said, her voice rough from her coughing fit.

  Startled, I placed the cards on the table. “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked permission.”

  She stared. “Yes, you should have, cherie, but that’s not what I said.” When I didn’t respond, she nodded at the chair and waved Marty to the other. “Sit. We have much to discuss.”

  5

  The patter of a late afternoon shower forced us closer to the table for shelter under the old umbrella. Fat, sporadic raindrops failed to deter the musicians, though the tourists took little notice as they hurried by, heads covered with shopping bags, arms, and colorful umbrellas. Artists covered their work with sheets of clear plastic and blue tarps and waited for the rain to pass. I scooted my seat forward to avoid the worst of the drips off the edge of the umbrella.

  The fortune teller who’d called out to me in the square, Madame Sabine, didn’t seem affected by the weather. She reached into the folds of wrinkled fabric in her lap, then pressed a copper-wrapped stone amulet into my palm, staring at the chips of silvered glass on the surface. “The things you seek are not part of this world but are in it. They gather and wait.” Cold rain rolled into the waistband of my jeans, but the stone transfixed me. “What waits? And how will I know when to use this? Or how to use it?” I still wasn’t certain what my target was, never mind what to do once I found it. The stone in my hand warmed since she’d first put it in my hand, but neither the weight nor the warmth provided what I really needed—answers.

  “You need not look.” She stroked the gray stone. “What you seek, cherie, seeks you. Be patient, be vigilant. You will know.”

  The leather cord softened as I twisted it around my thumb. “And this will help?”

  “Every door has a key,” Madame Sabine said.

  “What about the tarot cards?”

  She turned to Marty, one eyebrow arched with regal censure.

  He stuttered the first syllable before he regained his composure. “T-they weren’t traditional cards you pulled.”

  Her wrinkled hand caressed the cards stacked in the center of the small table with remarkable care. “There are times,” she said, barely louder than the musicians and intermittent rain, “when worlds mix, but not as they should, especially here. In these moments of power, we can do nothing but give it space.”

  I nodded, but the unusual Tarot card images wouldn’t leave me.

  Madame Sabine looked down at the deck still on the table in front of her, the whites of her eyes too bright. “We can only say c’est la vie and rely on the protectors of this world.”

  Responsibility, my old friend. “Is the mixing of worlds…malevolent?” I asked.

  She shook her head and tapped the deck. “There is no bad. No good. Only our interpretation. Is a cat bad because it hunts and eats a bird? Or the rain bad if it falls when we wish it wouldn’t?” With her other hand, she gestured to the sky. The rain stopped, the umbrella fabric brightening, the sun breaking through the clouds.

  “Did you do that?” Marty asked, a tremor in his voice.

  Madame Sabine only smiled, her eyes glowing around her dark irises. “There’s power here, Hunter, more than you can contain or control. Remind your partners, before the power lashes back and takes more than they’re willing to give.”

  The amulet hung heavy against my chest, and I stroked it absently.

  “I don’t know why you put it on,” Marty said from across the book-cluttered desk, without glancing up from his tablet. “Never mess with unknown magical objects. That’s basic self-preservation.”

  “You’ve said that already,” I said.

  “Normally, I’d agree,” Sister Betty said, finishing the glass of sweet tea Deacon Paul delivered after Marty and I returned to the rectory from our encounter with Madame Sabine. “But not this time.”

  Marty opened his mouth, then what she said sunk in. His jaw snapped shut, eyes wide.

  I wished I had it on video.

  “I’m okay with you wearing it.” She wiped the condensation from her glass with her thumb. “For now. Madame Sabine’s never been known to practice malicious magic. She’s helped previous hunters, including Sister Evangeline.” Her voice dropped as she mentioned the fallen hunter, a fierce, motorcycle-riding, shotgun-wielding force responsible for the territory between Tallahassee and San Antonio. I didn’t think Sister Betty and Sister Evangeline
knew each other well, but Sister Betty seemed profoundly affected by her death.

  Murder. Her murder.

  Father Robicheau, her Church-designated partner, masterminded an “accident” where Sister Evangeline fell from a helicopter in mid-flight. The one person responsible for supporting her mission murdered her. She relied on the same support I did, that Sister Betty depended on. The trusted relationship she never should have had to question killed her.

  Nothing like a fundamental shift in your worldview to fuck with your head.

  Thoughts of my little sister, Shannon, dressed in pink ruffles threatened, but I shoved them down hard.

  This wasn’t the time.

  “We, that is, the Church, have commissioned her in the past. I trust her.” Sister Betty gestured at the amulet. “I’m guessing that’s native stone.”

  I pressed it against my chest. Instead of an irritating, unfamiliar weight, the stone felt as if it belonged there.

  Marty huffed, perturbed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea if we don’t know what it’ll do.”

  “It hasn’t done anything,” I said.

  “Yet,” he countered. “She called it a key. It could open anything from a door to Pandora’s box. And God knows,” he said with a sour little smile, “with you, things go south at the worst possible time.”

  “South’s a great destination.” I raised my water glass. “Fabulous, even.”

  “And we’ve been in a hot mess since arrived.” He snorted.

  “Include that in your Yelp review.” Sister Betty smirked behind the rim of her glass.

  “I can see the title now: New Orleans, Vacationing Monster Hunters, Beware.” The stone swung like a pendulum as I released it. He had a point, but admitting it might swell his head. “Let’s focus on what we can handle.” Shuffling through the papers on the desk, I pulled out one. “The creature from the airport—”

  “Which DEMON conveniently lost,” Marty griped.

  “Jesus, do we need to feed you or something?”

  He scowled, then stuck out his tongue. The laugh that followed signaled, at least, a temporary reprieve from his stormy mood. “I learned it by watching you.”

  Shaking my head, I pointed at the paper again. “The creature from the airport causes humans to collapse at its touch.”

  “Death.” Marty tapped his tablet to life. “It causes death.”

  “What?” Sister Betty asked.

  I closed my eyes.

  “The guy in the airport, Benito Hernandez, died after the creature touched him.” Marty passed the tablet to Sister Betty, and I leaned over her shoulder. “Massive coronary event. He never regained consciousness.”

  I skimmed the details, stomach too sour to read closely. Another death I should have prevented. Another name on the list in my head. The creature looked like some overgrown frat boy, and though I knew he was a monster, I did nothing until too late. When I should have acted, I waited. That man, Benito Rodriguez, died on my watch.

  What the hell was I doing in this job if I couldn’t do it when it mattered most?

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “Seems to rule out a nightmare,” she sighed. “There’s no record of creatures killing humans with touch except Death.”

  “Could it have been Death?” I asked, hopeful.

  She shook her head and returned Marty’s tablet. “Death taking a humanoid form isn’t unheard of, of course, but it usually takes a female form. Besides, in a densely populated place, Death wouldn’t have taken just one soul.”

  “We’re like potato chips?” Marty said. “Can’t have just one?”

  “You’re salty, for sure,” I retorted. “Why wouldn’t Death be content with one?”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “Humans are inordinately attracted to Death, especially in humanoid form. It’s not that Death wouldn’t have restraint, but humans can’t resist Death.”

  “That’s grim,” Marty muttered.

  “I saw it once,” Sister Betty said. “Death, that is, in human form. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, though I knew what she was…” Her voice trailed off. “No, we struck that theory early. With the evidence at hand, the Lore Keeper had no information.”

  That she’d contacted the Lore Keeper shouldn’t have surprised me, but as a barometer for the level of crap awaiting us, contacting the Vatican’s highest-ranking occult specialist never failed to catch my attention. None of the monster hunters I’d met ever mentioned the Lore Keeper, and Marty’s technically illegal research never turned up more than oblique references. Whoever the Lore Keeper was or where their knowledge came from, only the uppermost Vatican hierarchy knew.

  “That’s…disturbing.” Marty looked down at the report. “We’re working blind.”

  “No more than usual,” I said. “We’ve fought things we didn’t understand before. We’ll do it again.”

  “No,” Marty said, so pale that even the greenish-yellowish bruise on his forehead drained of color. “We’ve always had back up. We’ve always had some idea of what we’re dealing with and how to eliminate it, and in the most obscure cases, the Lore Keeper found answers.”

  “But we don’t know what to research,” I said, my words tentative and faltering. “We’ve got one direct observation of this creature’s effect on people, which could be bad or misleading.” I glanced from Marty to Sister Betty. “What if it does something else, and death was the result in this case? What if it affects people differently?”

  “We could be looking at it wrong,” Sister Betty agreed, taking the paper I’d picked up.

  “Did Hernandez have a history of heart trouble?” I asked.

  Marty tapped, swiped, and tapped again. “None on record, though he had high cholesterol at his last physical. Seven years ago.”

  “A lot can happen in seven years,” Sister Betty said. “Health issues could have contributed to his death.”

  “But what triggered it?” I leaned back and stared at the spill of light across rectory ceiling. “Something had to activate it, to cause… What’d they call it?”

  “Massive coronary event,” Marty replied, turning to his laptop, fingers rapid-firing across the keyboard.

  “Right.” I draped an arm across my eyes. A slow, resonant headache throbbed deep inside my skull. After a full night’s sleep, it might go away.

  “What else could it cause?” Marty chewed the side of his thumbnail.

  “I have no idea,” Sister Betty and I said at the same time.

  Hours later and still trapped in the rectory, we hadn’t gotten much further, though we’d all grown much crabbier, despite the delivery of refreshments by a nervous Deacon Paul.

  I tore a candy wrapper into thin strips and folded it into origami stars. Sister Betty watched me launch another tiny star at my empty coffee cup. “Seriously?”

  “What?” I asked.

  She waved a hand at the tiny pieces of poorly folded paper littering the desk.

  “They’re paper and tiny. Not the best aerodynamics.”

  Her right eyebrow arched, her lips puckered.

  I sat up, sighed, and scooped the paper scraps into my hand. “Sitting around’s killing me.”

  “The Order will call soon,” she said as if the words tried her already thin patience.

  “We’re wasting time,” I said again. “I could be out looking for this thing while we wait. You could call me on my—”

  “Knock, knock.” We both turned at Father Callahan’s familiar greeting, though neither of our faces must have reflected our appreciation for the arrival of another person. “Have I interrupted something?”

  “Just them antagonizing each other,” Marty said dryly. “I told them to get a room. Even offered to vacate mine, but no such luck. For any of us.”

  “Marty!” Sister Betty scowled at him. “That’s enough.”

  He held both hands up and pretended to be chastised. “Okay, I give up. Sorry.” The significant look he gave Father Callahan lacked subtlety an
d any attempt at being covert.

  “Right.” Father Callahan held up his phone and a paper file folder. “Well, maybe this will lift everyone’s spirits.”

  “What’s that?” Sister Betty asked.

  “The Lore Keeper’s report on strange deaths from a creature’s touch. Seems they happen all over the world, but in cycles. At one point, your hotel experienced quite a rash of them.” He put the folder on the table, and Sister Betty opened it eagerly. I hovered over her shoulder, skimming the text as she turned the pages. “A legend formed around the deaths and, in human lore, it was considered the suicide hotel.”

  “Why hadn’t we discovered that already?” I asked as Sister Betty flipped through grainy, old photos.

  “I would have caught that,” Marty said, confused and somewhat defensive.

  “No, probably not. So much was done to erase the legend, it’s only preserved in the most obscure libraries.”

  “Why? Haunted hotels thrive here.” I looked up from the pages Sister Betty studied.

  “Haunted hotels, yes,” he said, “but this isn’t a haunting. No hotel, even in a city renown for the paranormal, could survive if their reputation involved customers who had nightmares and committed suicide during their stay.”

  Marty and I looked at each other, neither mentioning the nightmares we’d both experienced.

  “True.” Marty looked back down at his tablet. “But Hernandez didn’t commit suicide. He dropped dead in the middle of a public space.”

  I shook my head. Nightmares. Death, even if by suicide. More puzzle pieces, but still, not enough. “We’re still missing something.”

  “But what?” Sister Betty asked.

  The harder I tried to focus on the idea, the vaguer it became. “I don’t know. Whether it’s a nightmare or something else, we’ve got to draw it out, watch it, then stop it before it kills.”