She brightened. “Sure. I will help in any way I can.”
“Here’s my card if you think of anything else.”
“You’re a private investigator?”
“I am.”
“That’s so cool. I would love to be a PI.”
Her credibility was dwindling by the second. She was a helper. One of those who went out of her way to assist others for the attention even when it’s not wanted. Still, her information could be crucial to the case.
I called Parker on the way out. “I need the camera footage for the evening of the nineteenth.”
“Any particular area?”
“Every area. There was blood on Emery’s skirt that night, and she was found locked in the lab crying. You need to get that skirt. If she was attacked, it could be on the camera footage.”
22
My decision-making skills closely resemble
those of a squirrel crossing the street.
—MEME
I did a drive-by at Satellite Coffee and refueled before heading out to the children’s home to interview the heroic nurse. I just had to come up with a reason for being there.
“You could be looking to adopt,” Cookie suggested.
“Too cold. And I don’t think it works that way.”
“You could be a philanthropist looking to make a donation.”
“Way too cold.”
“Sorry. Okay, well, maybe you’re a reporter and you want to do a story on her.”
I thought a moment. “That might work. She’s had articles written about her before.”
“There’s really nothing unusual that I’ve found as far as illnesses. She never married and has no children of her own.”
“Okay, thanks, Cook. I’ll call you if I get anything interesting.”
“Be safe.”
I stepped out of Misery and went first to the office to sign in and check if the nurse, Florence Rizzo, was even there. I didn’t want to go with the reporter angle. They might not appreciate that. So, when asked, I said, “I’m a consultant with APD. I’m working a case that Ms. Rizzo might have information on.” Neither of those were technically a lie. I was more implying that APD had hired me to look into the case. I never said it outright.
The woman behind the desk didn’t seem impressed either way.
“She’s down the hall and to the right.”
That was easy. “Thanks.”
Okay, I needed a clean read off her first, then I’d bring up the string of deaths. A girl about sixteen with dark skin and large exotic eyes the color of smoked glass told me the nurse was checking on a kid in the infirmary. Alarms rang in my ears. Another sick child in her care.
When she walked in, I stood and held out my hand. “Hi, my name is Charley Davidson. I’m a consultant for APD, and I’ve been hired to look into a case here at the home.”
“My goodness. Well, have a seat,” she said in a Northeastern accent. Florence Rizzo was a slightly overweight mid-fortysomething brunette who liked Red Bull and comic books, if her desk was any indication.
I sat across from her and waited for her to clear her desk.
“You have someone in the infirmary?”
“Yes. Poor babies.” She tapped the comic books to straighten them, then stashed them in her desk. “The flu. It’s going around, don’t you know?”
“Yes. It does seem to be worse this year.”
“I think so, too. No one is immune. Darned flus. Well, what can I do for you?”
I certainly wasn’t sensing anything out of the ordinary off her, but I was just getting started.
“It seems that there have been several deaths at the home over the years, and I was hired to look into it.”
“Heavens,” she said, but instead of being distressed or taken aback, I got the feeling she would be more than willing to cooperate.
Unfortunately, that is the signature response of a person with Munchhausen by proxy. They want the attention. They want to be seen as heroic or distraught. Anything to put the focus on them. And, worse, they don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong, so to get a guilty reading off them is almost impossible.
“We have had a few unfortunate incidents here at Harbor House, but they were all explained in our reports.”
“Yes, I read those. It’s just that, statistically, it looks very … unusual.”
“It most certainly does,” she said, nodding in complete agreement. Then, just like that, a lightbulb went off in her head. “But you don’t think there was foul play involved, do you? Those poor kids all had previous conditions. The ones who were sick.” She started ticking off names on her fingers. “And then there were the accidents. Thank the heavens for Mrs. Ochoa. If not for her, we might have had another tragedy just the other day.”
“Mrs. Ochoa?”
“Yes. Our custodian. A stack of lumber fell and almost crushed little Rudy. Mrs. Ochoa saw it about to happen and pushed him out of the way. He’s in the infirmary, too, with a banged-up leg. Otherwise, he’s fine. And then there were the suicides. Two of those.
“You have to understand, all these kids come from broken homes. Sometimes it just gets to be too much, and they think the only thing left for them is to take their own lives.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I wasn’t here when those happened.”
“I thought you’d worked here for over ten years.”
“Yes, yes. I just meant I wasn’t on-site. Our first suicide ever rocked the halls of this establishment. Almost broke the director, she was so distraught. I was in Delaware for a family reunion at the time.”
I knew her accent was Northeast.
“And then CC. Poor CC. I thought she was doing so well. She had come to us after a bad foster home situation. Didn’t trust a soul at first. But she adjusted so well. I had the night off when she took her life. It was so tragic.”
None of this made sense. There was no rhyme or reason to the deaths. Accidents and suicides and strange illnesses. There was no pattern. Not one that I could see, anyway.
“Can you tell me who found the children who committed suicide?”
“Yes, the first one, a boy named Givens, was found by his roommate, and the second, CC, was found in the downstairs girls’ room by Mrs. Ochoa. She called me in that night, she was so upset. But there was a horrible snowstorm, and I barely made it.”
“And what about the others?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Who found the kids in the accidents?”
“Okay, well, one was Matthew’s friend Abby. And with Roberto, it was our maintenance man, Joey. And then there was another girl, beautiful thing when she wasn’t wearing all that eyeliner, who fell ill and became unconscious so fast we barely had time to call an ambulance. And then…”
I let her go on, trying to piece together the facts. All my Spidey senses would suggest Ms. Rizzo was telling the truth. She seemed genuinely distressed. Could all this truly be a coincidence? Maybe there really was no foul play. Maybe this was just a home with a lot of bad luck. Maybe …
When the truth dawned, I closed my eyes, almost kicking myself for being so thick. I sat back in the chair. Accidents. Illnesses. Suicides in children who had exhibited no signs of depression.
“Are you all right, Ms. Davidson?”
“Yes.” I opened my eyes. “Sorry. Ms. Rizzo—”
“Oh, Florence, please.”
“Florence, this might sound odd, but did you notice any strange behaviors in the children before they died?”
“No.” She thought back. “Not that I can think of offhand.”
“I have.” I turned to the girl who’d showed me in.
“Malaya, what are you doing?” Ms. Rizzo stood to shoo the girl out. “Get back to the infirmary.” She turned to me. “She had a fever this morning, poor dear.”
“They aren’t them anymore,” Malaya said before the woman scooted her toward, I would assume, the infirmary.
Bingo.
“Okay,” I said, jumping up. “I guess I?
??ll let you get back to your day.”
“Oh, okay, then. Good luck with your case.”
“Thank you. Can Malaya see me to the front door?”
“Oh, I guess it wouldn’t hurt. But then right back to bed, young lady.”
She smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
We walked a few feet before I asked her, “What have you noticed, hon?”
“Those with the curse. They aren’t them anymore. They change.”
I stopped and sat on a chair outside an office and fiddled with my boot to buy us time. She sat beside me.
“How do they change?”
“It’s real slow at first. They just kind of go crazy, and then they get sick a lot, and then something awful happens.”
“How long after something happens does another resident start showing symptoms?”
“It takes a while. We all guess at who it will be. For a while, we thought it was Heather this time, but she’s gone. She ran away. I wish I was that brave.”
“You are, sweetheart. You’re talking to me now.”
“That’s not being brave.”
“I think it is.”
She looked at a woman down the hall. The custodian, Mrs. Ochoa, I presumed.
“They don’t see us. They pretend to, but they don’t. We tried to tell them about the curse, but no one would listen.”
“Well, I am all ears,” I said. “You hit the jackpot of ears. If I had any more ears, you’d be calling me a stalk of corn.”
She offered me half a smile with a side of sadness.
“Do you know who’s cursed now?”
She nodded and pressed her mouth together to keep it from quivering. “Hugo. My little brother. He’s in the infirmary, too. That’s why I pretended to have a fever.”
Son of a bitch. I put a hand on her back, then asked, “How do you pretend to have a fever?”
“You just recalibrate the thermometer and put a heating pad on your face before Nurse Rizzo gets there.”
I laughed softly.
“I did it too much one time, and it said I had a temperature of 112. Apparently I should have been dead. Or in a coma.”
“See?” I said, grinning at her. “Brave. You risked a lot to stay here with your brother.”
“Not really.” Her breath hitched in her chest.
“Can I see him? Like, incognito-style?”
“You mean, can I sneak you in to see him?”
“Yes.”
Her expression morphed into one of determination. She nodded, told me to go to the bathroom and wait for her there.
“I’ll be right here. Don’t get into trouble for this. I can come up with all kinds of reasons to be lost in the wrong area of the building.”
She hurried off. I thought about using the facilities since it was so close, but not knowing how long she’d be, I decided to hold it.
“Ready?” she asked about thirty seconds later.
I nodded. She quickly led me down one hall and then another, and I no longer thought I would need to make up an excuse that I got lost. I really was lost. My sense of direction was like my sense of moderation. Nonexistent.
“In here,” she said, slipping inside a darkened room.
There were six beds total, and three of them were occupied.
“There,” she said, pointing, but she needn’t have bothered. I spotted her brother the second we stepped inside the room.
We walked quietly toward him, but before we got to his bed, he sat up and looked at us. At me. And my fears were confirmed.
A demon sat inside him. Twelve feet tall even though the boy was no taller than five. But as Reyes had said, the rules of this world did not apply. It fit. Somehow the demon, all black scales and razor-sharp teeth, fit into his small body. They always fit. Fuckers.
I sat on the cot beside him, but the boy only stared at me, his gaze empty. He had the same incredible eye color as his sister, his large irises smoky and shimmering and feverishly bright.
“Hugo, what’s wrong?” Malaya asked her brother.
“You’re right, love,” I said to her. I took her hand into mine. “He has the curse, but I can get it out of him.”
She threw her free hand over her mouth.
“You’ll have to trust me, okay?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to talk to the curse inside him. Whatever I say, and I might be mean, is not meant for your brother.” I looked back at Hugo, at the demon inside him, and placed her hand on her lap. She sat on the next cot over, gripping the edge of the mattress, her knuckles white. He was probably the only real family she had.
“You are not being very nice, are you?” I asked the creature.
One corner of the boy’s mouth slid up.
I shifted a little farther onto the otherworld.
“I can snap its neck,” it said through the boy, but it was speaking Aramaic. Though Malaya had no idea what he said, I felt her still.
I spoke back in the same language. “Leave now and never come back, and perhaps I’ll let you live.”
“You leave,” it said as though this were a game. “And perhaps we’ll let you live. Though I wouldn’t count on it.” It wasn’t stupid like most of them. It knew the moment it left the protection of the boy’s body it wouldn’t stand a chance. I hadn’t actually expected it to. I just took the opportunity to lower my hand toward the ground and wait until Artemis rose up into it.
She scurried under the bed and took up position. She’d bared her teeth, yet stood completely silent behind him, ready to attack. The boy tilted his head, wondering what I was up to, when I froze time and nodded. Artemis jumped through the boy’s chest and dragged out the demon.
It was frozen in time at first, stiff and incoherent as it oozed out into the open, but the second my light hit its skin, it snapped to the current time zone and started to shriek and writhe in her jaws. It bucked and lunged forward to bite me, its teeth like rows of needles, razor sharp and deadly. It missed. Then it threw its massive head back, bending its spine so far I could hear it crack. Or that could have been Artemis’s bite.
“Why?” I asked it.
It had started to dissolve. To dissipate. To scatter into thin air.
“Why would you do this?”
With one last effort, it looked at me again and said, “To live while we wait. There are so many more in the shadows.”
“What?” I asked, but it lost its hold and evaporated like ashes on the wind. “Wait for what?”
Time bounced back, slamming into me, the noise deafening for a split second before the world settled around me.
“Hugo?” Malaya said. “Are you okay?”
He blinked and shook his head. “I already told you I’m okay. You worry too much.”
She glanced at me expectantly.
I nodded. “He’ll be fine. It’s gone.”
A dimple appeared on one cheek. “Really?”
“Really.”
She jumped forward and hugged her brother. He patted her head, not sure what to do and probably a little grossed out. I got the feeling they didn’t hug much, but what siblings did?
I gave Artemis a quick attagirl, then she launched off my legs like a torpedo—that was so going to bruise—and disappeared through a wall.
“What are you doing in here?”
We turned to see Florence walking toward us. And Flo was not happy.
“I wanted to introduce her to Hugo,” Malaya said.
“I’m sorry.” I stood to leave. “She didn’t mean any harm.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Davidson.” She relaxed and turned to the boy. “Hugo is very special.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
He grinned from ear to ear. “I’m an inventor. I’m going to invent a tiny machine you can carry in your pocket that turns salt water into drinking water so when global warming melts all the ice, we can still drink the water that we’re swimming in. You know, so we don’t die of thirst.”
“And he’ll do it, too,” Ms. Rizzo said.
“I have no doubt,” I said.
I told Ms. Rizzo and eventually the home’s director that I’d found Heather and she was on her way back. They would’ve had to call the police even if Heather came back on her own accord because they’d already reported her missing, so I called Uncle Bob instead. I could explain what happened, and he could make sure no charges were filed against her. But he was out on an investigation, so they had to call in an officer.
Then I called Heather and Pari and gave them the news. The curse was gone and would not be back. I thought she would cry. Pari, not Heather.
Pari brought her back to the home, and I spent the next hour explaining to the responding officer about the curse and how Heather believed she had it and was going to die if she didn’t run away. He laughed it off like I knew he would and said that once he filed the report and he took her off the missing persons list, he didn’t think there would be any further questions.
It took a while to convince Heather she wasn’t cursed. That she never was, and that the curse would never be back. “Pari told me that you aren’t from this world,” Heather said when we were alone.
“Part of me is.”
“She said you’re from another dimension.”
“Part of me is.”
“She said you’re like a princess there.”
I could live with that. “Kind of.”
“I wish I could see your light like she can.”
I shook my head, grateful that she couldn’t. I thought of Beep, what she would go through growing up so different. While I’d never wished to be anything other than what I am, it was not easy growing up with such an ability. “I’m glad you can’t. And Pari talks too much.”
Heather’s illness all came down to an unusual flu that had been going around. She would be fine, and I had to admit, the excitement Nurse Rizzo showed when Heather showed up warmed my heart. They did see the kids. Maybe not all the time, but they did see them.
I gave hugs all around, and then Pari and I went to our cars. “You look like you’ve been hit by the truck of despair,” I said to her.
She shrugged. “I kind of liked having her around.”
“Me, too. Hey, maybe they have, like, a Big Sisters program where we can come hang with the kids.”
She brightened. “You think so?”