We parked a block away, just in case, paying the cabbie and waiting until he drove off to begin walking. The last few rays of sunlight were now disappearing behind the buildings to the west, stormclouds billowing and blocking out the moon, casting an eerie gray haze above the street. The various street noises around us made me nervous, so I stuck near Sholto, keeping my eyes open to our surroundings while he stayed focused on our goal.
"There it is," Sholto muttered. "Creepy-ass place."
I looked. Ovleen's store had a dark, almost purple-looking sign that hung out above the sidewalk. It had neon lights, but they were shadowy, either dead or unplugged. I could barely make out the word "Gator's Gullet". Beautiful. The place definitely wasn't lacking in shock value.
"Do you think it's open? It looks pretty dark in there."
"Not sure, we can go check it out."
We approached the door as quietly as we could. I cupped my hands over the glass and peered inside. There was one light on in the very back, flickering an ugly yellowish-white, illuminating posters of pentagrams and lunar charts. The rest of the room was submerged in inky blackness. "I don't see anyone."
"The sign says it's open," Sholto pointed out. He pressed his hand against the door-handle and turned. It bent under his hand, opening easily, no locks, no alarms. "Well, that was easier than I'd expected."
Just as he said that, a huge caw made both of us nearly jump out of our skin. A cage in the corner of the room rattled, and I fumbled for the torch on my belt, shining it toward the sound. A birdcage with a rounded metal roof jostled and bounced with its inhabitant, a large- raven with a sharp, crooked beak. It watched us, tilting its head back and forth and crowing, butting its wings against the cage.
"Well, no one can sneak up on her," James breathed.
He moved forward into the store, and I walked further toward the bird, moving my torch back and forth between it and the shelves around it. Bird guides. Cabinets of food specialized for different types of predatory birds - falcons, ravens, hawks, even vultures. Other animal guides. Statues of animal spirits. "Interesting."
"It looks like there's another doorway back here," He said, his voice carrying.
I turned to move toward him, flicking through more areas of the room. A thick, dark purple carpet contrasted forest green wallpaper. Along the opposite wall from the raven stood rows and rows of incenses, bottled fragrances, various precious stones and their likenesses, packages of animal skin and bones, and vials of various chemicals behind a thick glass barrier. "Why would she leave the door unlocked? Seems like she's asking for a burglary. I don't even see any cameras."
"Who in his right mind would want to rob from a spell shop?" Sholto asked. "Especially with all this nasty voodoo shit laying around. No one wants a death due scorpions."
I chuckled and shrugged. "That's a point."
"Come over here, I need your torch."
I walked toward him, standing just in front of another wooden door, a blackened glass window making up most of the top half. He was running his fingers over the doorframe, twisting the handle, trying to pry it open but also trying to be as quiet as possible. "Do you think it's locked for a reason?" I asked. "Maybe we shouldn't be breaking in."
"Give me your torch."
He took it from me, but rather than shining it through the window, he looked down at the door siding, making a satisfied sound in the back of his throat. "See, it's what I thought. Look there."
I peered closely. "Is that French?"
He nodded. "Toujours ouvert. That much I remember. Macie had it on her door, too. She had hers on a piece of paper, but I guess Ovleen wanted to be a bit more definitive."
"What does it mean?"
"Always open. In other words, 'if dark, enter'." He ran his fingers along the top of the doorframe, but upon finding nothing, started searching along the floor. "There has to be a key here somewhere."
"Like, a normal key?"
"Yes, one to fit the door." He leaned down to look under the doormat, but there was nothing. "John, help me look."
"You should've brought your own torch," I muttered, following him over to a nearby cabinet. We rustled through the knick-knacks neatly organized on shelves. Flowers, statues, zodiac booklets, tiny bottles filled with gently glowing liquid. A wide bookshelves to our right had multiple volumes on Ethics of Wicca, Wicca Demystified, some general books on mythology or ancient pagan religions. I shiver as I passed by a cold spot, glancing up to look at the air conditioner shaft. Something must've been wrong with it.
"It could be in a book, but I would hate having to search through all those," Sholto muttered, glancing toward the shelves.
"Neither would I." I heaved. "There has to be some sort of clue around here somewhere, if the key was supposed to be found."
He moved the torch across the length of the store, illuminating shelves, racks, and aisles of various witch-ish ornaments. The twisted shadows made me a bit nervous when I saw them in full. There was a sale on incense, evidently. The raven continued watching us, unblinking. The windows were small and heavily draped. A huge rack of charms hung along the wall just a few feet from the bird.
"Um, could it be one of those?" I asked, pointing.
"Shit," He grumbled.
We walked over, careful not to jam our feet against the corners of the aisles, our feet curiously quiet along the carpet. He shone the torch toward the rack. The charms varied from astrological symbols to nymphs and fairies, but the ones we were concerned with were the keys. Large, small, thick, thin, keys hung in strings, on bracelets, and chained to earrings. We fingered through them and they jingled like a doorbell.
"We can't try all of them," I said.
"Look for one that's different," He motioned. "Initials, colors, symbols, anything."
"We're in a witch shop," I muttered.
"Just look."
I nodded, sniffing my nose to clear it of dust. Then I sniffed again. The whole place smelled strongly of sharp incense and old books, but over here there was something else, too. I looked for an open vial or maybe a broken glass, but nothing looked open. I couldn't even pinpoint what exactly it smelled like. Weed, maybe. A trace of spice. Smoke.
I took the key in my hand and raised it to my nose. Copper. I took a strand that had three separate keys on it. Those ones didn't smell like copper, but didn't smell like smoke, either. Nickel, maybe. I put them back.
"What are you doing?" James asked.
"Smelling," I replied. "Do you smell that?"
"Smell what?"
"Smoke." I sniffed another key. "There are lots of incenses in here, no one would notice an extra scent."
He looked confused, but took his key and smelled it. "Nothing."
"Then that's not it." I picked up another strand and sniffed. "Oh."
He watched as I sniffed again. There was the smoke, but there was quite a bit of copper too. The key behind it smelled much stronger.
"This one, try this one." I handed it to him, and he trotted back toward the door.
The key slid into the lock easily, twisting and unlocking the first portion, and the second key (the less-smelling one) unlocked the actual knob. James slipped the keys into his jacket pocket and handed the torch back to me, easing the door open, and its creak echoed throughout the shop, stirring up the bird.
Now the smell was almost impossibly strong. In fact, the smoke still seemed to be hanging in the air, soaked up into the walls, draining down into the floor. A wooden stairway led to the upper flat. On either side, the lamps were cold. Spices, weed, sweat, and blood, mixed in with the cold, came down toward us and swept through the open door. Both of us could sense the danger, and Sholto drew his gun from behind his belt. The floorboards screamed beneath us.
Three tall windows faced the alley to our right, hanging open, their black lace curtains blowing with the rain-scented breeze. Here was a deep green carpet, littered with gold accents in a swirling, Middle Eastern pattern. On the walls hung paintings of animals, the hides of goats, horns, and various shelves filled with volumes upon volumes of leather-bound books. Water had prickled the floor around the foot of the windows, illuminated by the street haze, and it made me swallow hard. The rain washed away the smoke smell, but not the blood. "Stay close to me," James warned.
Distant thunder struck as we stepped toward the next doorway, lined by black fabric, and began to see the crimson dotting the floor and the walls. It was her study, evidently. An entire wall was dedicated to books with identical reed necks, marked with dates in black felt-tipped pen, their handwriting faded and scratchy. The books from a few places had been torn from their place and thrown to the floor. The opposite wall was the same way, nearly completely destroyed, pages ripped out and torn to pieces, shredded by nails and hands. It was an eerie thing to say. That window hung open, too, blowing curtains and cold humidity into the room.
"What the hell happened here?" I asked, turning the corner. I held my hand out to Sholto to stop. "Wait, James, there's a body."
I shone the torch on her and narrowed my eyes, placing my hand over my mouth and nose to keep from breathing in the smell. Execution style. Her neck was bent down, her stomach pressed into her knees, hands curled around her neck, black hair hanging down and hiding the shards of her face. I now reached for my own gun and moved toward her, squatting with my cane as support, to investigate the wound.
Sholto covered his nose and peered around toward her. "Is that Ovleen?" He asked.
"I'd assume so," I replied. The wound was gaping open, vomiting human tissue onto the floor around her. A huge pool had collected beneath her, one I tried my best to avoid. I didn't have any gloves, so I kept from touching her, but I investigated as best as I could without vomiting myself. "My guess is about twelve hours."
"Damn." He kept an eye on the doorway. "Any clues as to why?"
"Not yet." I looked closer at her hands. They were white and taut, the nails long and painted gold. There were several gold rings on the various fingers of her left hand, but her right was clean of jewelry. That surprised me, and I studied that hand. There was a bit of residue on those fingers, something black, like nail polish or ink. Ink.
I flashed the torch up at the desk. It was a complete wreck, all its components flung along the oak surface and across the floor. A pool of ink had soaked through several layers of paper near the center, originating from a small pot that had been broken in the chaos. That was exactly what I was looking for. I stood up again and scanned across the desk, but I didn't see any fountain pens.
"What'd you find?" Sholto asked.
"It looks like she was writing," I answered, starting to look along the floor.
"Writing? Writing what?"
"I don't know, maybe something in all this." I motioned to the discarded books along the floor.
"Do you think whoever killed her would take what she was writing?" He asked.
"There's a chance. But there's also a chance they didn't." I gritted my teeth. "Do you see any fountain pens?"
Sholto shook his head. "What's important about fountain pens?"
"There's ink on her hands, and there's a pot of ink on the desk, but her pens are gone. Maybe she wasn't writing here. Maybe she was writing somewhere else."
I moved toward the door, heading back into the open room with the leather-bound books. James followed closely behind me. There was a table near the window, and on the surface was a Mason jar filled with glittering pens, their points swaying with the pull of the curtains above them. "There." I flipped through the papers and booklets on the table, but it looked like the pages were nothing but scraps, pieces of spells and songs, and I left them be.
"Look," Sholto stepped behind me, pointing toward a photograph on the table. There was Macie, younger, dressed in a white graduation gown. A woman with long, inky black hair stood beside her, smiling. "That must be Ovleen."
"They must still be pretty close if she has her photograph displayed." I said.
"But Macie said she hadn't seen Ovleen in years," Sholto said.
"Does she write? She wrote lots of people," I asked.
He nodded. "She wrote. Maybe Ovleen kept copies of the letters."
"Maybe she was writing to Macie," I added.
I kept digging through the pages, but not one of them looked much like a letter. Sholto saw my frustration and moved toward the shelves, leafing through the books and looking for anything worth his time. I joined him, using my torch to illuminate the whole of it, pulling off book after book and glancing through. They all smelled strongly of leather and paper. I hoped that maybe Ovleen would have scented what we were looking for here, too, but I doubted it. She might've planned that someone would look for the key to her door, but I doubted her letters would be important. They would blend in.
"Do you smell anything?" Sholto asked, bending to look lower.
"No, not this time." I sniffed the air, pressing myself close to the books, but only got a good lungful of leather and wood decay. There was a faint scent of smoke, but I thought it must've been from the downstairs area, so I ignored it at first. But as I moved toward Sholto, away from the stairs, the smell got just a slight bit stronger. More to the left, the stronger it became. It was in the direction of the kitchen, and I saw a small table with a phone resting along the wall. The smell only got stronger as I stepped toward it.
Oh. I saw what the spice smell was, now. It was the incense, after all. It sat beside the phone - an old, antique one - with a black bowl and cold candle resting beside it. I let my shoulders deflate a little. There was a small phonebook resting beside the bowl, with various sticky-notes poking out from odd angles, and I picked it up to look at it. The cover nearly took my breath away. A yellow-gold M was stamped into the brown leather.
"John?" Sholto came over. "What is that?"
"Jesus Christ, I've seen this before," I said, my heart racing. "This is Jandi's book."
"Jandi?"
I handed the torch to him and flipped through, finding the gold bookmark I had seen the last time. "Look, James, look." I pointed.
His face went almost white. "What-"
"He said it was an address book." I leafed through a few more pages, twisting my brow. "But, what are all these new colors? It wasn't like this earlier. There were no place markers. It was all in black pen, not red. See that? That wasn't there."
"Maybe Ovleen was reading it," He offered. "She could've been taking notes."
"Notes on what? It's an address book!"
A creak echoed through the house, and both of us dropped to silence, our bones going warm with tension. I closed the book, tucking it below my belt as Sholto shined the torch in the doorway to the kitchen. He stepped forward, letting his neck slowly bend around the doorframe, the gun close to his chest, mine at my waist, ears prodding for noise, nerves strained tight, knuckles white.
Sharp clanging sounds pushed both of us away from the door, and Sholto turned quickly, seizing my arm and throwing me toward the stairs. "Fuck!"
We both raced toward the stairs, clamoring down and landing about halfway down by the time we heard the explosion, curling up against our chests, folding our hands against our ears. Skulls rattled, we fell down the rest of the stairs and pushed through the door, hearing the angry shouts and heavy footsteps rush across the upper level. Sholto fumbled for the keys in his pocket, locking the door behind us only once, and followed me toward the entrance door.
I ran full-force against the door, but it was jammed. No, not jammed. Locked. "Dammit, Sholto, we're stuck!" I shouted, grabbing the door with both hands. He pushed against it with me, but it wouldn't budge. He kicked it, and I threw my shoulder against it, but nothing would jostle it.
The men reached the other door. Angry shouts, mangled language and shrieks. Gunfire erupted, poking holes through the wood. Shit, shit, shit, shit. I looked around frantically for another way out, and I saw another door, marked with a large purple sign reading "No Entry", hidden behind a half-shelf of metal trinkets. Sholto and I both dodged the aisles and dove toward it, shoving it out of the way and nearly ripping apart the sign as we threw it open, dipping inside barely before we heard the opposite door give way.
We charged down the narrow hall, dusty and full of cobwebs, with nothing but our trembling torch to illuminate the path. I was breathing hard, struggling with every other foot, my cane long forgotten somewhere in the path behind me. Sholto was ahead, running quickly with his gun ahead of him, stopping just short of the end to make a sharp right turn. The men followed us into the corridor, firing off rounds at us and screaming in some sort of strange language, their footsteps driving a beat of fear into my chest, quickening my feet.
An exit sign flickered from the end of the hall, and Sholto slammed it open, waiting behind its cover for me, and I bolted down the alley opposite from the street, shouting for him. "Come on, dammit, don't stop!" He followed, barely dodging the next round of fire, his muscles going into one-hundred-percent reaction mode, catching up with me easily, racing around the corner into another alley as we heard the clanging.
With experiences like ours, it isn't as much the gunfire that brings the most terror. It's that fucking clang sound, the hiss of an active grenade, that really drives an ice-cold blade up between your ribs. I felt it barely miss me, banging against one of the trash bins and rolling against the opposite wall. I went from fully grounded to floating seamlessly through the air, my mind temporarily separate from my body, everything spinning and going bright, my senses overwhelmed by heat and light and sound, body shrieking, feeling myself slam into the brick, feeling metal and garbage pierce into my clothes, numb and dizzy, the world screeching to a stop around me.
Someone was dragging me. I recognized his rough hands. I let myself get pulled away, feeling the cold asphalt replace the fiery aftermath and welcoming it. I couldn't tell if I was breathing or not, but Sholto's sea-glass eyes cut through the gray storm-clouds, his nostrils flaring, forehead scuffed, brow furrowed.
"John!" He shouted. "We've got to go, John!"
I could hear the police sirens. Greg was all I could think. Oh, Lestrade, Jesus Christ. But no, I knew he was right. We couldn't be here. I forced myself to stir, dragging in labored breath and washing the terror out of my veins with oxygen. The angry shouts were fading. They had heard the sirens, and they returned like rats to their sewer. I reached out and took hold of Sholto's collar, my hands trembling, aware of some sort of pain but unsure of where it was coming from. I pushed to my knees, then to my feet. Blood stained my trousers and my side, pooling in my sock, but I had no time. I had to get moving. He set his hand on my back. I had to get moving.
We slipped away, cutting between the shadows while the attention was focused on the fire, eating away the evidence, swallowing the pages and the books and the papers, mangling the corpse and suffocating the raven. Yet Macie's book remained pressed against the small of my back, marking me with its smoke and spice, dizzying me and flattening me against the ground.
It's dangerous, so dangerous, I wanna review it again.
Next update Sunday. (Pray for me.)