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He drifted off and looked like he wished he had a cigarette. “There were shadows that moved by themselves, not cast by anything. You’d catch the movement out of the corner of your eye and turn, and there was just a shadow but nobody there. Sometimes, there were whispering voices that knew your secrets and wanted to make deals. Even after all this time, it gives me the creeps just thinking about it.”

“What else?” Remembering the hotel visibly affected Ferretti, and Vic guessed the mobster had seen enough in his day to not be easily shaken.

“Some of the stregas were fuckin’ scary,” Ferretti said. “One of them could summon shades—they were like demons—to hurt people. But the worst was a guy who could make dead bodies do his bidding.”

“A necromancer?” Vic asked in surprise.

“That what you call them? He was the real deal,” Ferretti vowed. “I saw him raise a guy who was two days in the grave with a bullet in his chest. Corpse got up and strangled the guy who killed him. As God is my witness. I’m not lying.”

Ferretti’s voice held a note of fear that Vic felt certain wasn’t faked. “What happened to the necromancer?”

“He moved on,” Ferretti said. “I didn’t ask, just glad he left.”

“Back to the hotel itself. Why wouldn’t the bodyguards go into the basement?” Vic knew that the hard-boiled enforcers’ ingrained machismo avoided any show of fear.

“Because there was something down there.” Ferretti leaned forward to share a raspy whisper. “Never heard what it was. Never saw it, glad for that. But we could all feel it in the bones of that hotel. No matter how much money we made there, and it was a lot back in the day, I was glad to leave and never go back.”

“And the thing in the basement never came out?” Vic fished.

“Not that I ever knew.” Ferretti shook his head. “My boss would send our strega down every so often to work spells on the basement, to contain the presence. Even the strega was cautious. Whatever was in the basement was bad news.”

“What about the fire spirit? Did the strega bind it?”

Ferretti’s eyebrows rose. “Fuckin’ hell. You dug up the dirt, didn’t you? Yes. I don’t claim to know how, but they worked with the hotel to bind the main spirit and keep it bound in exchange for the Mob being left alone.”

“The military did some psychic experiments at Ocean Visions. Were they around during the casino years?” Vic asked.

Ferretti chuckled. “I hate to shatter your illusions, but the military and the Mob go way back. We knew they were around, and our strega knew what they were trying to do. Some of the soldiers even gambled with us. We made sure to let them win so there were no hard feelings. Helping the feds was in our favor.”

Another coughing fit overtook him. Vic waited. “We left the grunts alone, and they looked the other way about us. But you wanna know what I think? I always figured they made the hotel’s ghosts worse somehow and left behind some of their own spooks. Also heard that the witch who raised dead people worked with them for a while before he left.”

Ferretti gave a sly smile. “Of course, all that is just hearsay from an old man. But it makes a good story, don’t it, detective?”

“Anything else?” Vic suspected that Ferretti had already told him what he knew, enough to get his desserts.

Ferretti gave an exaggerated yawn. “That’s more than I’ve bothered remembering for a very long time. I’m tired. I told you what you wanted to know. Time for my nap.”

Vic signaled to the officer watching through the soundproof glass, and moments later someone came to open the door for him.

“One more thing, detective,” Ferretti called after him. “I’m one of the last who spent a lot of time at that damned hotel. Most of the others are already dead. Word to the wise, it marks you and claims its own.”

Vic didn’t doubt Ferretti, and while his prediction wasn’t exactly a threat, it confirmed a truth Vic would rather have left unspoken.

“The old guy tell you anything?” the guard asked as he walked Vic out.

“Lots of stories. Don’t know if they’ll pan out for my case, but they were what I wanted to hear,” Vic replied, intentionally evasive. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Dixie Mafia had people inside the prison system and didn’t want to alert them to his interest or Ferretti’s cooperation.

Vic drove the long way back to Myrtle Beach to give himself time to think. He stopped for a latte and parked where he had a view of the ocean, not quite ready to go back to work.

They really did cooperate, at least to an extent back in the day—the Dixie Mafia, the military, and the witches. Holy shit. That means that they still have a stake in the game, even now. Does it give them an advantage to bind the entity again, or leave it loose?

Nothing Ferretti told him made Vic think that the Mob had tried to jailbreak the creature. If he had been correct about the stregas, they had bound it and strengthened the wards. On the other hand, Vic could easily imagine the military coveting the entity’s fiery abilities and trying to co-opt it as a bioweapon.

Ross would say that he’s seen that movie too. So did I. Never ends well, but it doesn’t stop someone from trying the next time.

Vic’s Hayabusa roared to life after he finished his coffee, and he headed back to the station. Traffic was heavier than usual, and he was acutely aware of the cars and trucks around him.

A parked delivery truck burst into flame just as Vic came up next to it. The traffic around him made it difficult to escape the flames. Vic felt the heat through his jacket, and the smoke stung his eyes despite his helmet as he fought to control his motorcycle.