In the dark hours of the morning, Jackie’s phone brought her out of a bathtub full of blood, where two boys continuously dipped their hands into the thick liquid and insisted she drink.
“Do you want to live forever?” they asked in droning unison over and over.
In the doorway, her mother stared in blank-eyed silence, slashed wrists dripping into a dark red stain at her feet.
Jackie sat up in bed, kicking at the covers, and Bickerstaff complained with a disgruntled meow, jumping down to floor with a thud. The glowing numbers on her bedside clock read 4:12 AM.
“Jesus fucking…” Jackie grabbed the phone off its stand. The readout told her it was Laurel. “Hey.”
“Sorry, Jackie,” she said in a hushed voice. “I’ve got a little visitor here right now.”
She sat bolt upright, panic gripping her gut. “What? You okay?”
“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s the good sort,” Laurel said.
Sleep was depriving Jackie’s brain of coherent thought. “Good sort of what? What are you talking about?”
“There’s a presence here in my room. Right now.”
Presence. Goddamn ghosts. “Why are you calling me at this horrid hour then?”
“You remember the tarot card I gave to Hauser before we left last night?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“It’s sitting here on my desk.” Her voice was filled with quiet awe and something darker. Fear?
Jackie thought of the mysterious, vanishing penny. “You sure it’s the same one?”
“Of course!” She was irritated. “It turned up in my tarot deck.”
The fog still shrouded Jackie’s brain. “You’re losing me.”
“I was doing a reading for myself,” she replied. “I couldn’t sleep. I shuffled my deck, and it was the first card I turned up.”
Okay. Weird, but given what had been going on, Jackie no longer found it out of the ordinary. “This couldn’t wait until morning?”
“It keeps turning up as the top card, Jackie. The inverted empress. I’ve shuffled this deck a dozen times now, and it’s the first card every time. Always inverted.”
“Why is that important?”
“It can mean impending danger, possible death.”
Some things Jackie could just give no credence to, and tarot reading was one of them. “Give me the punch line, Laur. I’m too tired to think.”
“It’s a message, Jackie. Someone is trying to tell me we’re in serious trouble.”
Jackie rubbed at her face with her free hand. Was she really up at four AM for this? “We’re always in danger with cases like this. For Christ’s sake, we’re chasing after vampires.”
“I know, but this is serious,” she said, adamant. “The dead don’t talk like this unless it’s very important.”
“Who would be sending us this kind of message?”
“I don’t know. She’s desperate though, and…”
There was silence, long enough that Jackie began to worry. “Laur?”
“Shit. It’s gone now. She’s gone.”
Thank God. “So we need to be extra careful now, I take it?”
Laurel sighed. “Jackie, this is bad. Bad, bad, bad. You need to stop chasing this guy. Nick was right.”
Had she heard that right? What the fuck? “Are you on crack? Did you just hear what you said?”
“I know Goddess-be-damned well what I just said, you stubborn girl!” Anger raged in Jackie’s ear. “We need to turn this case over. Give it to someone else. You can’t keep chasing this guy, Jackie. Please.”
Holy shit. She was totally serious. “Laur… It’s just… It’s a tarot card, for crying out loud. I can’t bail on a case over a bad tarot reading.”
The voice on the other end was teary. “It’s real, damn you. This is serious.”
“Okay, it’s serious.” Jackie tried to be soothing. She knew Laurel’s sense for this stuff could not be discounted. If there was trouble coming, she was probably right. “I can’t just blow this off to someone else though. He’s killing kids. He has to be stopped.”
“I know that! Let someone else stop him. He’s going to kill you!”
Jackie pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it in disbelief. What had gotten into Laurel? “I’ll be extra careful, okay? Are you all right? You want me to come over?”
There was a pause and then a sigh on the other end. “No. I’m fine, Jackie. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’ll be careful, Laurel. I’m not blowing this off. I know it’s serious,” she said.
“I know. Get some rest. I’m sorry I freaked.”
“I understand. You get some rest-”
“Night, Jackie.”
The phone clicked off before she could reply. Jackie held the phone for a long moment before setting it back in its stand. No point in sleeping now. Her nerves were sufficiently frazzled. A shower and a pot of coffee were in order so she could go over the case notes for the task-force meeting later in the day and maybe figure out how in hell to get Nick Anderson to come in to talk.
If there was any doubt over Laurel’s annoyance, Jackie found herself driving into headquarters by herself. She decided to make peace by stopping at Annabelle’s and getting Laurel’s favorite custard-filled, chocolate-covered doughnut. Jackie got her usual chocolate croissant and latte with two extra shots.
She found Laurel at her desk going over the case file. “I brought you a doughnut.”
Laurel took the bag and peeked inside. “Yum! Thanks.”
“Any more ghostly visits?”
“Nope,” she said. “I gave the card back to Hauser this morning.”
Jackie nodded. “Okay. I’ll be extra careful, Laur. I mean it.”
Laurel looked up at her and smiled. “I know. You better. I know you can’t bail on a case, Jackie. I’m sorry I mentioned it. The whole thing stressed me out.”
“You’ve never been wrong with this shit before. I’ll keep my guard up.” She meant it, too. Laurel’s intuitions and spiritual connections had never panned out false. The FBI hadn’t hired her without cause, so Jackie knew better than to just brush it off. If Laurel said shit was going to hit the fan, they were due for something.
“Thank you,” Laurel said. She took out the doughnut and sank her teeth into it. “Mmmm. Perfect. Think you can get Nick to come in today?”
Jackie sat down in her chair. “I will. Somehow. I wonder if Shelby has told him she spilled the beans yet?”
“Think that will help? He’ll probably be pissed.” She waved Jackie off, the half-eaten doughnut in her hand. “No, not pissed. More like mildly annoyed. I don’t think that man gets pissed.”
“I don’t think he cares enough anymore to get pissed about anything,” Jackie said.
“No, he cares. I think he cares a lot actually. Remember what Shelby said though. You’re dealing with a man who believes he has lost already.”
Jackie sipped at her coffee. “After a century of this shit, I think I would, too.”
“You’d have gotten yourself killed by now,” Laurel stated.
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
She laughed. “Both.”
Jackie took out her phone and looked up Nick’s number. “Might as well get this over with now.”
“Have fun with that,” Laurel said.
She stuck out her tongue while the phone rang.
“Good morning, Agent Rutledge. How can I help you this morning?” The dark timbre of his voice was smooth and calm.
No need for pleasantries. “You can help me by coming in this afternoon to talk to our task force about this case and what we’re actually up against.”
The silence lasted so long Jackie thought the connection had been lost.
“You spoke with Shelby last night.”
“Yes, and, fortunately for us, she was far more forthcoming than you’ve been, Mr. Anderson.” Jackie forced her tone to remain neutral. “We need the story, Nick. We need to know everything that’s going on. We need to know exactly how we can confront this… thing.”
His sigh whispered in her ear. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, Agent Rutledge. Even if you do, it won’t help.”
Jackie bit her lip and shook her fist at the phone. She took a deep breath. “Just let us do our jobs. We need your help as much you need ours, Nick. Help us get this guy.”
Again he was silent. “What time is this meeting?”
Yes! Thank God. “Two PM today at our headquarters. You know-”
“I know where it is,” he said. “I want to talk with you beforehand first.”
“We’re talking now, Mr. Anderson.”
“No. In person, away from the office.”
Jackie hesitated. “Why?”
“I want to show you something so you will more fully understand everything before I say anything to the rest of your agents.”
Jackie didn’t like the sound of that. Laurel, who had been listening intently, picked up her ringing phone.
“Is that really necessary, Nick? You can’t just do that here?”
“No,” he said. “How about we meet for lunch? It won’t take very long.”
Jackie rolled her eyes. This wasn’t going to go her way. “Fine. Where and when?”
“Do you know Ernesto’s? Italian place out by-”
“No, but I’ll find it. What time?”
“Noon will work?”
“Yeah. Noon is fine. I’ll see you there.” Jackie clicked off and thrust the phone back into her pocket.
Laurel still spoke on her phone. “Really?” She giggled like a young girl. “That sounds like fun. I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle before.” She laughed then, covering her eyes with her free hand. “No, no. That’s just fine. I’ll see you there. Thank you.”
Laurel closed the phone with a sheepish grin, and Jackie watched in disbelief as her cheeks turned the slightest shade of pink. “Holy shit. You’re blushing again?”
“Shut up!” Laurel snapped back, even more embarrassed. “I’m meeting Shelby for lunch. She wants to show me something. She agreed to come to the meeting.”
“What?” Jackie wondered, already suspicious. She trusted Shelby about as far as she could throw her, and considering the woman could probably kick her ass, that was not very far.
“She didn’t say,” Laurel answered cryptically. “Just that only I would be able to understand.”
“Yeah, right. I have a pretty good idea what she wants to show you.”
“Jealous?”
“Hardly,” Jackie said a little more quickly than she would have liked. “I don’t trust her. I wonder if those two were together? Nick just asked to show me something as well.”
“She wants to help us, Jackie.”
“I don’t like this, whatever it is. Maybe we should all meet together.”
Laurel laughed. “You are jealous.” She stood up and kissed Jackie on the cheek. “It’s so cute.”
Jackie didn’t quite know how to respond. “You better call me as soon as you’re done. I want to know what she has to say.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I mean it, damnit.” It was sad. She almost did feel like a mother at the moment. “Seriously. You need to be careful with her.”
“And you don’t?”
“I can handle the Nicks of the world,” she said. “Shelby Fontaine is a whole other animal.”
“Jackie, I don’t think there are any other Nicks of the world.”
“You know what I mean. Watch yourself is all I’m saying. I’m still not convinced they aren’t trying to put us off the trail somehow.”
Laurel’s grin faded to a gentle smile. “Don’t worry, I will. I think you can trust them.”
“And we both know where I stand on that,” she snapped back. “I’m going to let Belgerman know what we’re doing just in case some shit goes down we’re not expecting.”
“Quit being paranoid.”
Jackie got up, pointing a finger at Laurel. “It’s my job.”
Her voice followed Jackie down the corridor. “And you do it so well.”