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Just as I was about to ask for more information, I heard a quiet knock on the front door before it opened, and Harper walked in with her daughter. Harper had never brought Elliott with her before, so I wondered what was going on. I hoped it wasn’t anything bad.
“Hey, honey,” she said to her daughter and bent to be at eye level with her. “Why don’t you go into the room over there and play with your dolly? I’ll come and get you in a little bit after I talk to my friends.”
“Okay, Mommy,” the little girl said and ran off, a big smile on her face.
Harper walked the rest of the way to us, rubbing a hand down her cheek. “Hey, guys. Sorry about that.” She pointed to the room that Elliott now played in. “My friggin’ ex decided that she was too busy with her new boyfriend to watch our child and dropped her off unexpectedly at the house this morning when she was supposed to have her for another two days. I didn’t have a babysitter set up and absolutely had to come and give you guys this information, so I had no choice but to bring her with.” She glanced at Dev. “I’m sorry.”
Dev got up and rounded the table, pulling Harper in for a hug. She melted into him and sighed. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s daylight, and the place is warded. We’re fine.” He stepped back and gestured to the table. “Do you want some coffee? You look like you could use some.”
Harper sighed again. “You have no idea. I nearly pulled an all-nighter like you guys did with this, and when the doorbell rang at six-thirty, and I saw Sharon on the other side, I panicked. Luckily, when I opened the door, an adorable little girl tackle-hugged my legs, but I think it knocked ten years off my life—seeing Sharon at my place unexpectedly like that. I need caffeine like I need air right now.”
She sat and poured herself a cup from the insulated takeout box, doctoring it and then taking a huge gulp. “Ahh, better already.” She smiled and then reached into her bag, pulling out a stack of folders and passing them around the table.
“Okay, what you’re looking at here is a compilation of research that I did, and some follow-up stuff on things that Dev told me Burke uncovered. Some of this is huge, guys. It may totally change how you proceed with the investigation.”
I opened the folder and flipped through some of the printouts. I saw some stuff about missing persons cases, and other things about Moon Call that we already kind of knew about. I also saw some photocopied newspaper clippings of microfiched articles on the starlet and her husband who’d lived here. Seemed they had a bit of a speakeasy going and held drunken séances. No wonder the house was a hotbed of activity. Who knew how many supernatural doorways they’d opened and never closed? It may have even drawn the darker energies of the man who’d ended up creating the compound here that’d eventually become the black witch coven that’d been passed down for at least one generation that we knew of.
I flipped through some more pages, and my blood turned to ice in my veins. All the conversation around the table became a dull roar as my head pounded in time with my heart, and my gaze zeroed in on the name and picture on one of the last pages of research.Father Dougal McGuire.The scholarly article detailed how the Irish priest had been arrested in conjunction with the events in this house that’d ended in the fire and the deaths of nearly the entire Moon Call Coven. They’d ultimately let him go due to lack of evidence. He had then disappeared for a time, only to die tragically a decade later before he could bebrought to justice—as so many thought he should be. People believed that he’d either taken his life out of guilt or died in some media-frenzy tragedy.
We’d looked into the events before, checking all public documentation we could easily find, but it had been nearly impossible to uncover the name of the priest for some reason, and the specific details surrounding the deaths and events was always muddy, as well. Now, I knew who it was thanks to Harper and Burke, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the information. It didn’t fit with anything in my head. Didn’t align with any of my memories of that time, and I didn’t know how to reconcile that fact. As I was thinking on that, Harper’s words shook me out of my reverie and made those thoughts float to the back of my mind, at least for the moment.
“So, Lillian Scott, the actress who lived here, was apparently a gifted medium and performed all sorts of séances. I’m sure that’s when all the nonsense here started. And then, as you’ll see in the police reports I included, at least one member of three of the four families who lived here after that, disappeared. Padre can help confirm this,”—she looked at me—“but it seems that when an inhuman entity progresses from oppression to possession, it can result in one of two things in the last stages. Either spontaneous combustion or complete dispersion, which leads to the person just . . . poofing. Right?”
She wasn’t wrong. The well-known demonologist, Ed Warren, had even written about it in one of his books. “That’s the working theory, yes. I’ve read about it, too, and it did come up in my exorcism training. Combustion is rare. I think it’s only been documented like three times in all of history. But once the case goes through oppression and possession, the person is effectively owned by the demon. Their personality is gone, and their soul is taken. The thought is that they’re somehow dragged to Hell, which results in them disappearing altogether since the body cannot exist without the soul. Some reported it as it appearing as if the people were being swallowed by shadows until the darkness dissipated, only to leave no trace of the person behind. But none of that could ever be proven because those people were also affected and deemed slightly addled if not downright clinically insane—also likely a result of the oppression.”
Harper grinned widely. “See! I think that’s what happened to those homeowners. I think we might be dealing with an inhuman entity here, folks. You know I’m still skeptical about some of this stuff, but I was a good church-going child and I remember everything I was taught in Sunday school. Lillian opened the door for it or them to step through, they gained strength by oppressing and possessing the following homeowners, and then the coven gave it even more strength by worshipping it. Now, it has a foothold and won’t let go. And given the dark stuff that went down here over the years, it’s a very welcoming place for it.”
“Are you serious?” Sky said. “You actually want me to believe that?” She took a breath. “You know, I used to kind of like this place. I mean, it’s beautiful. Now, I just want to be done with it. This shit is ridiculous.”
I understood her frustration, though I didn’t like the tone of her voice. It didn’t seem quite . . . Sky. Still, this was probably harder for her than most. She didn’t believe in God. Belief like that had to be well-rounded. If you believed in a higher power, you had to believe in the darker side of things and vice versa. She seemed to be coming around a little because of the irrefutable things she’d seen and experienced while working withHaunted New Orleans,especially after what’d happened at Arborwood, but that didn’t mean she liked it or reallygraspedit. Therefore, it took a toll.
“Well, okay, then,” Dev said and blew out a breath. “I mean, we kind of knew that what we were dealing with wasn’t all fun and fluffy, but getting confirmation that it’s inhuman is a bit concerning. Especially given what went down last night.”
“Wait,” Harper said. “What happened last night?”
Dev filled her in. I glanced over at Sky. She had her hair loose this morning, and the silky, black strands tickled my arm where she sat so close to me at the table. Her Japanese cherry blossom scent filled my nose and warmed something in my chest. I remembered when Lark had gotten her the lotion for Christmas one year for our office Secret Santa exchange. She’d loved it so much, she’d never stopped wearing it.
When Dev called on her to fill Harper in on what the spirits had said through the JumpBox and what exactly she and James had experienced upstairs, she straightened and tackled her job like she did everything. With passion. But I saw the tension in her. When she finished, I leaned in and whispered in her ear.
“Why don’t you go and check on Elliott? Take a breather. We’ll be fine without you for a minute, and I can fill you in on anything you need to know later.”
She looked at me, her gaze locking with mine, and I saw the relief pass over her face. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, that’s a really good idea. I haven’t been feeling myself lately and this is a bit much. Thank you.” She leaned in and bussed my cheek with a kiss, something she’d done with others before but never with me, and then called over her shoulder that she was going to check on Elliott as she left the room.
I felt the heat of her lips linger. Forcing myself to be in the moment, I tried to focus on what was being said at the table.
Between the events of last night, what I’d just read in that folder, and how tied up I felt when it came to Sky, it would be a very, very long day. And I still needed to stop by the soup kitchen and make sure everything was running smoothly in my absence before I came back for night-two filming.
CHAPTER9
~Schuyler~
Iwalked down the hall taking in the beauty around me. With everything that had been going on, the wonder of the place had almost disappeared into the background. Despite the strangeness of the investigation, I still loved this house. I entered the receiving room but stopped at the doorway, watching Elliott sitting on the floor, playing with her doll. I heard her giggling and mumbling, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying.
“I know,” she said and giggled again. “I know, but my mommy won’t like that.”
I frowned. I wondered if she was playing with an imaginary friend or something. I watched her for a little while longer.
“No. I don’t really like it here. I don’t think I want to stay. I like where I live.”
