Franco reached for the flower with trembling fingers and held it up, staring at it with moist eyes. “Gardenia,” he whispered. “It’s a flower my family grew in our greenhouses back home and sold at the local markets. My brother’s way of sending me a peace offering.”
“You and your brother were at odds?” I asked.
Franco again pumped his head. “I told him not to go on that stupid expedition. I told him it was too dangerous. The night before he left we got into a terrible fight. My sister tried to get us to make up, but Nico wouldn’t have it, and he left without saying good-bye to me. That was the last time I ever saw or spoke to him. Word came to us three months later that he’d contracted malaria and died. They buried him in the jungle, and as a last request from him, he sent me this urn. I figured Nico was still so angry at me that he’d sent a curse with the urn. I never thought to open it and look inside.”
I sat back in my chair and wondered how long Franco had been held prisoner by believing the worst of his brother. “See?” I said to him. “No haunted urn, here, Mr. De La Torrez. Just a final gift from your brother.”
Franco’s eyes leaked tears down his craggy face, and I could tell the camera had moved in for a close-up. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely, holding the dried flower with great care. “This is such a gift. Thank you.”
“And . . . cut!” yelled Gopher, intruding on the sweetness of the moment. I sat back in the chair and watched as the director strode forward with a big, confident grin. “That was fantastic!” he gushed, beaming at Heath and me, but his adoration was short-lived as he whipped back around to his crew and ordered, “Okay, people, let’s move on to the next contestant. Someone help Franco back up to his room.”
Before the next guest was shown in I leaned over to Heath. “We make a good team.”
“We do.” He beamed. “And if you didn’t already have a boyfriend, I’d probably ask you out.”
I felt like I blushed all the way down to my toes, and not just because Heath didn’t look a day over twenty-one and I was . . . well . . . older by far. “That’s the adrenaline talking,” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah, well, can you blame me?” he said, still flirting.
“Honey,” I said soberly, “I’m taken. But methinks there have to be loads of women closer to your age bracket who would be happy to go out with you.”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin, “but none of them get me, you know?”
“Oh.” I laughed. “Trust me, I do understand.” My eyes traveled over to Steven then, and I thought that I was really lucky to have found someone so willing to try to get me.
The afternoon moved on quickly, and Heath and I met with people from all different backgrounds with many different items and objects that they swore to be possessed or haunted, but none of them—as in, not a single one—had any kind of negative energy at all connected to it. In fact, in all cases the people sitting across from us had one thing in common, and that was a deceased relative with a strong connection to the object resting on the table. By moving the object or tapping on it or making it fall over, their relative was simply trying to get the attention of their loved one.
So Heath and I acted as true mediums, reuniting the person in front of us with their dead loved ones. And working with Heath felt really good. It gave my own intuitive abilities a nice boost, and it was really great to see these people let go of the fear of an object while embracing the love from their relatives who had passed on.
And when Gopher called, “Cut!” after a long afternoon of passing on these messages, I was really hoping that our producer would finally let us go for the day.
“I’m starting to fade,” said Heath.
“I know what you mean,” I said with a sigh. “Gopher?” I asked.
“Yes, M.J.?”
“Heath and I are whipped. Any chance we can call it a wrap for today?”
Gopher glanced at his clipboard, then back up at me, his look a little pleading. “Can you two hang in there for one more item?”
Heath shrugged his shoulders. “I guess,” he said. “I mean, I can if M.J. can.”
I rolled my head back and forth, feeling the glorious release of pressure as my neck cracked. “I suppose one more won’t kill us,” I relented.
“Awesome,” said Gopher happily. “Mark! Bring in the last guest.”
Heath and I glanced around the room as people bustled about. Throughout the afternoon we’d gathered quite a crowd as several of the off-duty hotel staff came to check out the production. I waved to a few of them who lined the back wall, curious expressions on their faces, and they waved back shyly.
Heath’s attention, however, rested on the catering table, loaded with snacks that had been set up in between takes. “I’m hungry,” he said, getting up. “Think I’ll grab some crackers before we do the last guest.” He then looked down at me and asked, “You want anything?”
I got up too and began stretching, trying to work some blood back into my stiff muscles. “Nah,” I said. “Thanks, though.”
Heath hurried away, and I continued to roll my head back and forth and arch my back, keeping my eyes closed and focusing on my breath, practicing a little yoga, while I tried to tune out the hustle and bustle of the crew around me.
I felt Heath return as I finished one final pose and opened my eyes. “Feel better?” he asked.
“Much.” I smiled. He and I then turned back to our places and took our seats. That was when I noticed a long dagger that had been placed in the center of the table. Before I even realized what I’d done, I shoved myself out of my chair.
At my side I was stunned to see Heath react in exactly the same manner. “What the freak?” I whispered, feeling powerful waves of negative energy rolling out of the silver knife in all directions.
“What’s the matter?” asked Gopher.
I gasped as a searing pain sliced along my skin and I literally sank to my knees. “Jesus!” I said, slapping my hand over my chest.
“M.J.?” I heard Steven shout from across the room. “What is happening?”
Before I could answer him, another hot slash sliced along my back and I cried out in pain. Beside me I could hear Heath suffering too. “Get it away!” he yelled, holding his arm and grimacing.
I pulled the hand on my chest away from my shirt. There was a thin red line appearing through the cotton fabric. “Take it out of here!” I shouted, and felt one more hot slice cut into my flesh, this time at the back of my neck.
The next thing I knew Steven was running toward me, but he wasn’t coming fast enough. I began to crawl away from the table, as far from that knife as I could get.
And then something was thrown over my head that helped more than anything, and I realized that Gilley had rushed to my side and was covering my head with his sweatshirt.
Under the fabric I was gasping for breath, and all I could think about was that Heath was still too close to the table, and no one had moved the knife yet. I pulled the sweatshirt off me and said, “Gilley! Take this and throw it over the knife!”
“You’re bleeding!” he said as he squatted next to me. “Ohmigod, M.J.! What the hell?”
Over by the table I heard Heath let loose another shout and looked in horror as a wide circle formed around the table. No one, it seemed, wanted to get too close to the knife. “Gil!” I yelled, trying to get my partner’s attention. “Throw this over that knife, now!”
In the end it wasn’t Gilley who reacted. It was Steven. He grabbed the sweatshirt and tossed it onto the center of the table, effectively covering the knife and putting an end to the torture that Heath and I were feeling.
“What the hell just happened?” Gopher asked in the silence that followed.
I looked up at him and said evenly, “We’ve just encountered a real haunted possession.”
Chapter 6
It took a while for things to settle down, but when I look back on what happened right after Steven threw Gilley’s sweatshirt over the knife on the table, it repla
ys in my head like a silent movie. I remember snatches more than the events themselves: Steven crouching down next to me, a look of worry mingling slightly with a stoic medical assessment of my injuries. Gopher and his crew running around, keeping clear of the table in the middle, their faces stricken and pale. Matt Duval screaming into his cell phone at his agent to book him a plane back to Hollywood, that he was going back to rehab because he couldn’t handle the hallucinations anymore. Gilley, helping Heath to his feet and coaxing him over to where I was on the floor so that Steven could have a look at him too. The thin line of red that trickled down Heath’s cheek and another on his upper arm.
“Can you lean into me, M.J.?” I heard Steven ask gently.
I looked at him in a bit of a fog. “Huh?” I said.
“I need to see the wound on your back, bebita. Lean forward so I can see it, okay?”
I nodded dumbly and did what he asked as Steven pulled up the back of my shirt. I could feel his warm fingers touching my skin and it comforted me. I closed my eyes and let myself sigh.
“Does that hurt?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s not deep,” he said.
I opened my eyes and saw Gilley also peering at my back. “Holy shit!” he squealed. “What the freak is that?”
I caught Steven’s sharp glare at Gilley, and I sat up. “What’s on my back?” I demanded.
“It’s just a scratch,” Steven replied simply, but I knew by the way he was avoiding my eyes that there was more.
“What else?” I asked, looking to Gilley, but my partner had also dropped his gaze.
It was Heath who spoke up. “It’s the way you were cut,” he said grimly. “It looks like it was made by three talons.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “It was made by what?” It was then that I became aware that one of the cameramen was pointing his camera at me and recording what was happening. “Turn that damn thing off!” I shouted angrily, and he looked to Gopher, who was standing nearby.
Gopher nodded and made a shooing motion with his hand, and the cameraman lowered the lens.
“The cut on your back does look very much like it was made by something with claws,” said Steven in the tense silence that followed.
“I agree with Heath,” said Gilley. “M.J., I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like a velociraptor took a swipe at your back.”
I lifted the collar of my shirt away from me and peeked down at my chest. A long, curved cut swept from my right collarbone to just above my left breast. “That son of a bitch,” I hissed. “If that leaves a scar I’m going to be so pissed!”
“I want to put a few butterfly bandages on the wounds on your back,” said Steven. “The other cuts aren’t as deep, but you’ll need some antiseptic at the very least.”
Heath pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and twisted his arm. Three claw marks raked along his shoulder. “Whoa,” I whispered when I saw them. “What the hell attacked us?”
No one had an answer, and as I looked around the room every person in the space stared back, looking shocked and very scared. My eyes roved the crowd, and at the far end of the room I spotted a large mirror on the wall. “Hold on,” I said to Steven, who was working on my back. “I want to see this for myself.”
I got up and retrieved my purse, which was under a nearby chair. Digging through the contents I pulled out a compact and headed over to the mirror. Stopping in front of it, I briefly noted how beautiful the thing was, with its antique gold frame and intricate carvings. I turned around with my back to the mirror, then opened up the compact and aimed it over my shoulder. With my free hand I pulled up the back of my shirt—which is a tricky thing to do one-handed—and squinted into the round circle of my compact.
Three curved cuts curled up my back from just above my waistline to the top of my shoulders. Gilley was right: It did look like I’d been raked by a dinosaur. “Great,” I grumbled, lowering the compact and turning to face the mirror. “Just great.”
As I was about to head back to Steven so that he could bandage me up, out of the corner of my eye I caught the movement of someone coming in the door from the hallway. I glanced over at the door, but no one was anywhere near it. I turned back to the mirror and it reflected exactly what I’d just seen: The door was closed, and no one was nearby who might have just come in.
I would have thought longer on this, but I had other things on my mind—namely the claw marks, which were now stinging like crazy. Walking back to Steven, who was now inspecting Heath, I sat down in a chair and waited for him to tend to both of us.
When we were bandaged up I turned to Gopher for some answers. “Where’d that knife come from?” I demanded.
Gopher motioned to a nearby production assistant, whose name I think was Tracy, and asked, “What’s the story on the knife?”
The girl, who couldn’t have been over the age of twenty-one, pulled away the clipboard she’d been hugging to her chest and scanned her notes. “There’s no knife on the list,” she said. “We were supposed to do a teapot next.”
I felt my eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “Come again?” I said.
Tracy was looking from Gopher to me with a look that suggested she’d be putting in her notice really soon, and she explained, “I have no idea how that knife ended up on the table. I was out in the hallway looking for Mrs. Stanton—that’s the woman with the teapot who was supposed to be next—when I heard shouting coming from in here. When I got in the door, you all were on the ground.”
“So who put the knife on the table?” I asked, looking around at every member of the crew.
Everyone I stared at simply shrugged. No one was claiming ownership of the knife. I turned to Gilley. “Did you maybe see who came in with it?”
Gil shook his head. “I was on the phone in the corner,” he admitted. “I wasn’t looking at you until you shouted.”
“Steven?” I asked, turning to where he was packing up his doctor’s kit.
“Sorry,” he said. “I headed out for a Coke after that last take. When I got back in here, the knife was already on the table and you were just beginning to react to it.”
“Heath?” I tried next. “Did you see who laid it on the table?”
“No,” he said. “I was focused on the crackers, remember?”
“So no one saw anything?” I asked loudly. And apparently no one had, because as I looked around, absolutely everyone shrugged or shook their heads.
“What about you?” said Gopher. “Did you see who brought in the knife?”
I sighed heavily. “No,” I admitted. “I was doing some yoga and stretching with my eyes closed. When I opened them again the knife was already in place, and I never saw who put it there.”
Just then there was a knock on the door, and the production assistant standing next to it opened it up to reveal a small old woman with light gray hair. “Hello?” she said, holding up a teapot. “I’m sorry I’m late, but I had to visit the powder room. Is it still my turn?”
“Mrs. Stanton?” said Gopher.
The woman nodded.
Gopher turned to me, a question clearly on his mind, but before asking it he glanced over at the sweatshirt covering the table. I knew what he was about to ask me, and said, “No way. I’m done with this stuff, Gopher. Heath may still be up for it, but I’m through for the day.”
“Count me out too, pal,” said Heath.
Gopher looked around at his crew. They too were shaking their heads, and I knew he’d have a mutiny on his hands if he asked them to work through one more take. “Okay,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry, Mrs. Stanton, but we’ve wrapped for the day. Tracy will be in touch with you about tomorrow’s schedule, okay?”
Mrs. Stanton was clearly disappointed, and she hugged her teapot to her chest and left in a bit of a huff.
After the door had closed behind her and Gopher gave the signal to his film crew to dismantle the equipment, Heath turned to me and said, “What’re we going to do about t
he knife?”
I caught Gilley’s eye and said, “We’re going to bust it.”
“You want to drive a spike through it?” Gilley asked.
“Nope,” I said. “This calls for a more creative solution. What we’ll need is a box large enough to hold the knife, but nothing flimsy. If we can find something made out of wood, that would be best. We’ll also need some magnets to line the box, and then . . .” My voice trailed off. I had no idea what to do with the knife after that.
“We throw it off the Golden Gate Bridge?” Gil offered.
That made me smile. “No, hon, I don’t think that’s the answer.”
“Bury it?” Heath suggested.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Gopher. “Hold on a minute here, everybody. From the quick shot I got of that knife it looked expensive. We can’t just go burying a valuable artifact, especially when we don’t know where it came from. What if the rightful owner came back in here and wanted his knife back?”
“He’d have some explaining to do,” I said, feeling the tension settle into my shoulders.
“M.J.,” said Gopher, and I could tell he was trying to use his persuasive voice. “I’m on the hook for one artifact already. We don’t have the kind of budget to continue replacing these things.”
“Fine,” I said, crossing my arms. “What would you suggest then?”
Gopher thought for a moment and then offered, “The hotel safe? We could keep it locked up there and see if anyone comes along to claim it.”
I looked at Heath, and he nodded. “Okay,” I agreed. “We get it into a box lined with magnets first; then we lock it up in the hotel safe until the rightful owner shows up. But if it hasn’t been claimed by the time we fly back home, I’m gonna press you to bury it and bury it deep, Gopher.”
“Agreed,” he said.
By now the crew had started to put away much of the filming equipment and was storing it all in the corner of the room when I overheard Gopher telling one of the stagehands that they would shoot another few sequences tomorrow before calling it a complete wrap.