Shattered Souls (18 page)

“Morin?”

“Where did you find this?” he asked, his voice rasping.

“In an old Civil War bunker.”

“Sweet God,” he whispered.

“What’s wrong? Do you know what it is?”

“It belonged to
him
.”

“Who?”

“Jonas Worthen.”

Cait studied his face—the tight lines that bracketed his mouth, the glassy stare. “Yes, I thought it might.”

His head jerked up. “You went near his body?” His voice rose. “You disturbed it?”

Her muscles tightened. She’d never heard him shout. Never seen him so tense. Or afraid. “I didn’t, but the man who tried to blow us up yesterday did.”

Morin grabbed the railing and shut his eyes.

Cait shot Sam a glance. His heavy scowl was gone. By his watchful silence, he seemed as intrigued as she was by Morin’s reaction.

She gave a shrug and turned back to Morin.

He was leaning back now, looking toward the ceiling, but when he tilted his face down to meet her gaze again, a shimmer of tears was in his eyes. “I suspected before, but I hoped…come with me. I have a story to tell. You two don’t know what a hornet’s nest you’ve stirred up.”

Once again, Cait sat at the tiny kitchen table with Sam consigned to the tall stool. They both waited silently while Morin set a pot on the stove to boil and disappeared into his shop. She heard footsteps tapping on the stairs, then his soft tread above them. Morin’s feet dragged slowly.

“He recognized it,” Sam said softly.

She dropped her gaze from the ceiling. “I don’t know how, but I knew he would.”

“He looked…”

“Shocked?” She swallowed hard, because as much as she wanted to prevent Morin’s pain from touching her, her chest felt tight.

“Can’t be good,” Sam grumbled. “Or maybe he’s just being melodramatic.”

“Really?” She canted her head. “Morin’s steady as they go. He’s playful, a flirt, but he’s not a drama queen.”

Sam folded his arms over his chest. “So long as he can tell us something we can roll with, I don’t care what he is.”

“Your husband’s right.” Morin strode into the room carrying a large box.

“He’s not my husband.”

“And our past doesn’t matter either, Cait,” Morin said, his voice tinged with sadness. “Not in the grand scheme of things.”

She shifted in her chair, curious about what he set on the floor beside the table. “You knew his name. Recognized the emblem.”

“His seal.” Morin fished the emblem from his pocket and laid it on the table, staring at it for a long moment while one corner of his mouth curled in disgust. “Worthen was a pompous ass with delusions of his own importance. He used to brag about that family crest, had it carved into a ring and used it to stamp the wax on his letters, like he was a feudal overlord and hadn’t designed it himself.”

Cait blinked. “You sound as though you knew him.”

Morin dropped into the seat opposite her, his shoulders hunched. “And that wouldn’t be possible, would it?”

She eyed him, wondering at the strange inflection in his voice. “Show us what you have.”

Morin bent toward the box, lifted the lid, and drew out a package wrapped in leather, which he set on the table before him. He reached behind him for a knife from the counter, then cut the string and laid open the flaps to reveal a large book with thick pages that appeared hand-bound.

Cait leaned over the table to examine the burned etching on the front of the book. From upside down, she discerned the embossed image was a pentagram with a beaker, a flame, a rock, and a cloud on four points. The fifth symbol, the fifth element, pointing toward her, was of a disembodied hand, index finger pointing above for “spirit.”

“It’s old?”

“Not especially,” he said.

So quietly, she hunched forward again.

“Only about a hundred sixty years old.”

He turned to the first page, and she glanced at the upside-down writing. “Calligraphy,” she murmured, just to say something to fill the silence, because his terseness was making her nervous.

“Handwritten on parchment, a Book of Shadows, love.”

A shiver slithered down her spine. “Whose?”

His lips curved slightly. “Mine. Now.”

“And you keep it wrapped and hidden away?” she asked.

“It’s a dangerous book, filled with dark magic. Old spells. A diary of sorts of the mage who wrote it.” He stopped turning pages and flipped around the book.

In the middle of the page was a picture of Worthen’s emblem. She picked up the disk and laid it on the page beside the picture, then released a pent-up breath. “It’s identical.”

“It was pressed by that emblem.”

“What does the book say about it?”

“That the man who was buried with the emblem should remain undisturbed forever or risk another scourge upon Memphis.”

Scourge? She straightened. “What are you talking about?”

“Jonas Worthen was a dying man and afraid of what he faced in the afterlife because of his many sins. He sought escape from his fate in the dark arts. Conjured a demon who made him a deal: for the lives of three innocents, he would live forever.”

“Three?” Her eyebrows shot up and her chest pinched. “His own children.”

Morin gave a sharp nod. “His wife tried to save them and died for her efforts. Townsfolk noticed a strangeness about him after his children died. Some saw it in his eyes.”

“Demon-sign?” Cait tapped the table. “I always thought it was a folktale. My mother described it but said its presence was rare. That demons could only be invoked with black magic. Jonas had magic?”

“No, but he knew someone who did. He pressed the mage who owned the book, offered him the one thing he could not have as a bribe.” Morin closed his eyes. “A woman. Someone far above the mage’s social set. If he cast the spell to invoke the demon, he could have his heart’s desire. Worthen would arrange it.”

When Morin’s lids opened, his eyes reflected a deep sorrow, shimmering in welling tears. “The mage knew he was doing wrong but couldn’t stop himself. The deal was made. The demon roused. He entered Jonas and melded with his soul. The blood of the three innocents freed him, but wasn’t enough to quiet his appetite. He took the woman the mage loved as well.”

Cait’s breath caught, moved as much by the story as she was by the thickening texture of Morin’s voice. Had he read the book and felt a personal affinity for the foolish mage? Could he see himself in the other’s place?

“The townsfolk came to the mage,” he continued, his voice sounding hollow. “They begged him for help. He told them how to stop him. They captured Jonas inside a cage. If anyone had touched him, the demon would have moved to another, so it had to be trapped while still inside Worthen’s body.”

Morin shook his head. His lips curled into a snarl. “What Jonas didn’t understand, because neither the mage nor the demon had ever told him, was that his body would continue to age, to die. However, the demon would live on, able to move from one person to the next, because with the spell he was made a skin-walker.”

“But he wasn’t found in a cage…” Cait said, encouraging him to finish.

“The mage protected himself with a powerful spell and entered the cage with strips of linen doused in dragon oil for the burial shroud. They fought. The mage knocked him unconscious and placed a metal strap around his head to prevent the demon from escaping through his mouth.”

The image of the strap around the emaciated jaw flitted across her mind, and she nodded. “Which is what happened when Donnelly tampered with the body.”

Morin waved a hand. “Likely the demon called to him. He might not have heard him with his ears, but a weak soul would be easily led. As soon as the strap was removed—”

“He skipped bodies,” Cait said, following the thread easily. “He traded Jonas’s desiccated one for something fresh. Making him mobile again.”

“And if the demon feels challenged again, he will move to yet another.”

“Which will make him damn hard to find,” Sam said, drawing both Cait’s and Morin’s startled gazes. Sam’s eyebrows lowered. “What? I was listening.”

Cait hid a smile before glancing back at Morin. “How do we fight him?”

“The only thing you have going for your side is that the demon is weak. It needs another infusion of power. Another three victims. You have to find them before he prepares them for the ritual.”

“Prepares?” Her fingers clenched the table. She didn’t like the sound of that.

“He chilled his daughters, using wraiths to do his bidding. They were kept at the edge of death for days while he gathered the things he needed—above all, someone with powerful magic to cast the spell.”

“A witch? Are there many here who can do it?”

“Only a few. Myself, whom he can’t touch because of the protection spell surrounding this shop. Your mother would have been a prime candidate.”

“Celeste?” Cait stilled.

“She sees, but her magic is weak.” Morin’s gaze locked with hers. “He’d need you, darling.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “Well, I won’t help him.”

“You are vulnerable. You have Celeste, your partner, Jason…and Sam. He could touch any one of them and find the way to bring you close.”

“I still wouldn’t help him.”

“Could you resist if he threatened your husband?”

Sam? Her throat dried. “He’s not my—”

“But you care for him. Could you sacrifice him?”

She sank against the back of the chair, unwilling to look at Sam and have him read the answer in her eyes. “He’ll come for me?”

Morin shook his head. “You can’t wait for that. While he’s still weak, you must find and capture him, but you won’t have a throng of people waiting to help you. People don’t believe in magic anymore. They’ll think he’s an ordinary killer.”

“If I can get close…”

“You could incapacitate him, but then you’d have to move fast. If you want to save those girls, you have to figure out where he’s been, where he’s hiding them. In his den, he will lay traps.”

“The police are searching for him now,” Sam said, his voice tight.

“If they find him first, he might skip bodies.” Morin’s hands leapfrogged on the tabletop. “Then he could be anyone.”

Her blood chilled. “If we find him first, then what?”

“Then come back to me, before you approach him. We will have to strengthen you for the fight. Prepare you.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “Draw down the moon?”

His lips curved. Humor glinted in his eyes again. “Among other things, love,” he drawled.

Cait pursed her lips, not liking the thin, grim smile that stretched across Morin’s handsome face. She knew this wasn’t a ploy to get her back, but Sam still wasn’t going to like it one little bit.

Chapter Fifteen

“What was he talking about? ‘Drawing down the moon’?”

They were outside the shop, heading back to Sam’s vehicle. Cait took a deep breath, trying to think of a way to stall the moment, and was never so happy to hear the chirp of Sam’s phone.

Sam eyed her, telling her silently they weren’t finished with the conversation as he raised his phone. His gaze honed to a razor’s edge in an instant. “How long ago? Anyone gone near him?”

Cait mouthed,
Donnelly
?

Sam nodded grimly.

Holy shit.

They both hotfooted it to his sedan before he ended the call.

At police headquarters they headed straight to the interrogation rooms, Cait stretching to keep up with Sam’s long, determined strides.

In the hallway, Leland grinned and jammed a thumb at one of the doors. “Uniforms picked him up. We’ve got him for the bombing but can’t connect him to Henry’s murder without a confession.”

“He say anything about the girls?” Sam asked.

“Not a peep. We’ve been at him since officers booked him. He’s actin’ like a scared rabbit. Little turd swears he doesn’t remember a thing since he was at the dig site days ago.”

Sam and Cait shared a glance. By the grim set of his square jaw, Sam had concluded, just as she had, that they were already too late.

Her stomach dropped. The demon had jumped bodies. Back to square
effing
one.

Cait thought hard.
What next?
“Can we question him?”

“
You
aren’t one of my detectives,” Leland said, narrowing his eyes. He turned to Sam. “We’re just gettin’ started on the skinny runt, but she can go in with you. Remember, she’s your—”

“Responsibility,” Sam cut in. “Yeah, I know.” He had one hand on the door.

She touched his arm and waited until Leland went back into the room where he could watch Donnelly through the two-way mirror. “We need to figure out exactly when he awoke,” she whispered. “And we need a bead on where he’s been. Maybe the demon stashed the girls somewhere Donnelly knows.”

Sam gave a curt nod, then opened the door.

Inside, Cait’s nose wrinkled. Donnelly was in sore need of a bath. His hair was a wild, knotted mess. His eyes were sunken, as though he hadn’t slept or eaten in days. His entire body quivered like a junkie coming off a high.

His head jerked up when they strode inside. “I want a lawyer,” he snarled.

Sam nodded but took a seat opposite the scrawny, dirty man. “We’ll get you one. It’s your right, but do you understand you’re in deep shit? That they’re gonna try to pin a murder and three abductions on your ass?”