Wake For Young Souls, Part Three
Part One
Part Two
A few hours later, and a quick stop to tell Keltie where he was going - Shane had been gone when Ryan awoke - found Ryan standing on a sidewalk on the other side of town from Shane’s house.
Ryan glanced at the strip of paper Gabe had given him, checking it against the number on the white stone column that supported the wrought-iron gate before him. “This seems like the right place,” he whispered to himself, sticking the paper back into his pocket and looking up at the latched gate again.
From where he stood, he could see a pathway winding its way through a heavily shrouded garden up to, he supposed, the house itself - though he couldn’t see the house because of the trees. He stepped forward, fingers reaching to curl around an iron bar of the gate when it unexpectedly and silently swung open into the garden.
Ryan bit his lip, glancing both ways and behind himself, before taking a deep breath and stepping through the gate. Inside, the world suddenly silenced and he glanced around nervously as he followed the winding pathway. For a garden, the whole area gave him a distinctly creepy feeling. The many trees were too close together, for one thing, and he kept feeling like there were things hiding behind them. His ghost sense wasn’t picking up on anything though, and he kept shaking himself, silently telling himself that it was only his imagination. More than once, though, he was sure that he saw statues between the trees, almost like shrines, but he couldn’t make them out from where he stood.
After what felt like a few lifetimes, but was probably only a few minutes, the house itself finally loomed over him and he took an uneasy step back at the sight. It was two stories high, and was the same color as the columns that had supported the gate he’d left behind him, with dark shutters on the windows. Ryan couldn’t help but think that the house looked like it belonged in a horror movie and shuddered a bit even as he thought it, hand rising to knock on the door.
Before he knocked though, Ryan stopped himself, rethinking. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe this wasn’t where Brendon and Darren had disappeared, even if it was the last place Gabe had known they were going. More importantly, maybe Ryan himself shouldn’t have come alone.
“I should’ve checked with Shane. Really, I should’ve checked with Shane.” Ryan shook himself, stepping away from the door and back along the path. He got about halfway back to the gate before turning to look back at the house. “But what if Gabe was right and they did disappear after visiting here? I told Kelts where I was going. If I don’t show up to dinner, Shane’ll check my place and Keltie will try to gather enough energy to tell him.” He nodded, trying to shake the silent ‘I hope’ he felt, and starting to walk back toward the house. He raised a hand to knock before stopping again and chewing on his thumbnail. “But if Gabe was right, maybe I shouldn’t have come alone. I can go to Shane’s and get him to come with me. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do.” Ryan hit his palm with a fist, mind made up. He stepped back from the door and started to walk back toward the gate for the second time.
Almost on cue, the minute Ryan hit the halfway point, the sky opened up in a downpour and lightning flashed against the sky. He had no choice but to run back to the house and wait until the storm blew itself out. His hand had barely touched the door before it swung open as silently as the gate had.
That was even creepier than the gate had been, but Ryan forced himself to not dwell on it, hurrying inside and shutting the door behind him. The thud when the door closed echoed in the otherwise silent house, and the sound made him jump.
He shook himself, rubbing his arms as he glanced around the dark room he’d entered, trying not to focus on the silence. He could only see flashes of it when lightning flashed across the sky, and none of the flashes gave him a good idea of it, other than that the room was large and seemed to be a living room.
“Hello?” He finally called out, listening to his voice echo through the rooms before the sound died out and the house returned to being silent as the grave. Even for a witch who specialized in ghosts and was a former Medical Examiner for the Centre, the silence gave him the creeps. “I don’t mean to intrude, but it’s raining outside and the door swung open on its own.”
Ryan rubbed his arms again, glancing around as he stepped further into the room. He bumped into a few things he couldn’t see, despite the occasional flashes of light, and finally made it to a doorway, which opened into a long hallway that seemed to be filled with doors leading to other parts of the house.
“I wish I had a candle or something,” Ryan muttered, bumping against an end table that sat just on the other side of the doorway. He caught it before it could fall over, but couldn’t catch the candelabra that had been sitting on it in time. It clanged against the wooden floor and he flinched at the loud sound, bending down to scoop it up. “I did ask for a candle, I suppose.”
He dug in his pocket, finding a lighter after a moment, and used it to light the candles in the candelabra. As soon as the candles flickered into flame, Ryan found himself very thankful for the small bit of light. It made the whole situation he found himself in slightly more bearable.
He looked about in curiosity, wondering if he should wait out the storm in the room he’d just left or if he should explore the house in search of the owner to explain, why he’d come in, or simply why he’d come in the first place. He decided to just wait in the room he’d left, figuring that if he was going to be an intruder, he may as well just stick to one room in case the owner of the house came to see who had been calling. He started to head back into the room when a soft moan from further down the hallway caught his attention and his medical degree kicked in.
He lifted the candelabra, turning back toward the hallway. “Hello? Is someone there?”
There was no response as he made his way down the hallway to where he thought he’d heard the sound coming from. He found himself standing in front of one of the many doors, and took a deep breath before opening it carefully.
The light from his candelabra did little to show him the room, but he could see a large window on the opposite wall. A flash of lightning illuminated the place momentarily, revealing a mostly barren room, with a fireplace on one wall and a chair sitting alone in front of it, the back of which was to the door. Ryan took a step into the room, before taking a few more steps toward the fireplace. He paused, eyes closing as he took a deep breath, sure that his imagination was just working overtime, before taking another step forward to look into the chair. He gasped loudly, quickly covering his mouth with his free hand.
The chair was definitely occupied, he could see someone by the faint light of his candelabra. The figure was clearly male, and dressed in an elaborate ringmaster’s costume, including a top hat set at a rakish angle on the head. It was tilted at an awkward angle toward him so Ryan couldn’t see the figure’s face. The figure had one hand resting softly on the back of a posed corgi with a large ruffle around its neck. Both were unnaturally still, too still to be living, and Ryan breathed a sigh of relief as the light from the candelabra revealed the strings coming from the life-sized figure’s limbs and leading under the chair, hand dropping to his chest as he felt his heart start to slow back down to a slightly healthier pace.
Ryan couldn’t help himself from reaching out a finger to poke the marionette’s head, barely touching it as the head rolled back and allowed him to see its face. He wasn’t even sure why he was so curious, except that because the rest of it looked so life like, he wondered what the face looked like. As he did so, lightning flashed behind him, painting the room in surreal colors, and he could see that the marionette’s mouth hung open a bit and the eyes stared in his direction unseeingly, like they were looking straight through him.
The eyes made Ryan jump back, startled once more. Even though they looked like glass, he knew those eyes. He knew that face. It was Brendon sitting there, looking like a marionette.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Ryan told himself it was an absurd notion. It was probably just an elaborately done puppet that held a likeness to Brendon in the near-darkness. Maybe it was even done before Brendon and Darren had disappeared, and maybe it was just a coincidence that it happened to sit in the same house that the pair had last been seen near.
“Right, just a coincidence. Totally has nothing to do with Brendon and Darren’s disappearance.” Ryan repeated his thought aloud, trying the words on for size. They stuck in his throat, though, and saying them aloud seemed more like a lie than anything else. But he still tried for flippancy as he went on. “Just a really well done marionette that looks like Brendon, yeah.”
He lightly touched the puppet’s cheek and his hand shot back. In his experience, marionettes were cold as they were made of wood or similar materials. They were not slightly warm to the touch.
Ryan quickly moved away from the chair, staring wide eyed at the marionette. Suddenly, the lifelikeness of it made more sense: it wasn’t lifelike, it was really Brendon. Then the corgi must be real too. It was the only explanation he could think of. And Darren’s were form was a corgi; Ryan had seen that yesterday. He took a deep breath, wondering if this was a good idea as he reached out to lightly touch the corgi’s back. No sooner had his fingers brushed the dog’s fur than two things happened simultaneously: the dog shuddered and the marionette’s hand on the dog’s back twitched, almost like it was closing on Ryan’s hand. The marionette itself softly moaned, and it was the same sound that had led Ryan to the room he was currently in.
Ryan couldn’t help backpedaling as Brendon’s hand twitched again against the corgi’s back, his other hand twitching against the arm of the chair. He stared, eyes wide, as Brendon jerkily pushed himself up to a standing position. The corgi slid to the floor in the process, sprawling where it landed for a moment before it pushed itself to its feet with the same jerky movements Brendon did.
Brendon’s arms raised disconnectedly, like he was being manipulated by some invisible puppet master, and took a few clumsy steps toward where Ryan stood, still staring wide eyed at the sight before him. Ryan backed into the door, hand fumbling with the knob for a few tense moments before he finally managed to open it.
Ryan ducked around the door, running blindly through the dark corridor, and running up the staircase that he came across at the end of the hallway. Behind him, he could hear the sound of wood dragging along the floor, thudding against the stairs, but Ryan didn’t dare look behind himself as he threw himself into the first room he came across, locking the door behind him and slumping against it as he tried to catch his breath.
As he caught his breath and felt his heart slow down again, Ryan looked around the room he was in. Lightning flashed, revealing antique furniture and he saw the full length antique mirror he’d sold Z, the strange girl that had come into his store the day before, standing in the far corner, facing the curtained four poster bed.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door, but he could no longer hear the sounds that had chased him into the room. That didn’t mean that Brendon and Darren weren’t still out there, and Ryan felt sick at the thought of what had happened to his friends. He knew he’d need to find out what had happened to them, and if it could be reversed. It had to be reversible, right? He shook his head to clear it of the doubt that had suddenly crept into his mind, knowing he’d have to think positively, for Brendon and Darren’s sake.
He took a deep breath, pushing himself away from the door and froze when a soft gasp, almost like someone inhaling a breath for the first time, came from behind the curtains surrounding the bed. Somehow, that small sound was more hair-raising than the soft moans Brendon had given to bring Ryan to the room Brendon and Darren had been placed in like forgotten toys.
He licked his lips, feeling nervous as he made his way toward the bed, one hand outstretched to curl into the curtains once he was close enough. He paused briefly, steeling himself before pulling back the curtain.
For the space of a few heartbeats, Ryan was convinced the person lying in the bed was another life-sized doll. Then he remembered that Brendon had looked the same way before he’d realized that it wasn’t a doll. But the very next moment, it dawned on him that he was looking down on Z herself, just starting to stir as an unseen sun sank behind the stormy clouds outside. Suddenly, the child murders made sense: Z wasn’t just a vampire; she was the suspected psychic vampire. Psychic vampires fed off energy, and children, being children, had far more energy than adults did. Losing their energy by way of a psychic vampire could lead to the children experiencing heart failure, and if they lost all their energy, it would definitely explain why the victim’s body had felt empty to him. But even with this newfound certainty of how the children were dying, Ryan was no closer to figuring out how Brendon and Darren had become puppets, much less how to turn them back.
As the thoughts crossed his mind, Ryan knew he’d have to get out of the house before Z fully awoke and tell someone from the Centre so they could deal with this. This was definitely outside his job description, and he knew that he’d get an earful from a Centre employee. At the same time he knew he couldn’t just leave Brendon and Darren stuck the way they were. He also knew that he had no idea how to change them back.
While he was trying to work out a possible way to get them back to normal, he realized that Z’s eyes had snapped open and that she was now looking up at him. Ryan stumbled backwards as Z rose from the bed, the sheets falling away to reveal her nakedness. He might not know yet just how she’d changed Brendon and Darren into what they’d become, but he also knew he didn’t want to join them.
Z raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly not caring that she was naked. “What are you doing in my home, witch?”
Ryan had never been aware that being called a witch could sound like a bad thing, but Z made it sound like a witch was something unwanted found under a rock. He swallowed, resisting the urge to glance over his shoulder to see if Brendon was still following him and locate the doorknob for a quick escape, and forced himself to keep his eyes on her. He shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to look nonchalant. He wasn’t so sure if he succeeded. “I was looking for my friends. Someone told me they were here, and I knocked, but there was no answer. I was going to leave, but it started raining, which made me come back to the door to knock, and the door opened on its own. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
The vampire’s eyes narrowed a fraction, as if she was weighing down whether or not he was lying, before she walked toward him. One hand cupped his cheek before her fingers ghosted along his cheekbone, down his cheek and along his jaw line to his neck as she walked around him, as if she was studying him. Suddenly, Ryan knew how a cow felt when it realized it was going to be made into meat. Even without knowing what had happened to Brendon and Darren, this was shaping up to be a really bad idea. He really wished he’d thought to tell Shane where he was going, instead of leaving it to Keltie to tell him.
Finally, Z stopped in front of Ryan again, the ghost of a smile playing about her mouth. Ryan couldn’t stop himself from taking a step back, even though he hit the door behind him. When had it gotten so close to him? “Which friends are you looking for? Perhaps I know where they went.” She paused, as if a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Or, perhaps you’re looking for that meddling reaper and the detective from the Centre.” The smile on her face widened, as if her thought had finally come to its logical conclusion, and Ryan found that he was more afraid of that smile than anything that had happened so far. “Or you’ve already found them, and were trying to find out how to put them back to rights.”
There was a muffled sound on the other side of the door, and Ryan’s head snapped to look at the door out of the corner of his eye. He knew without looking that Z was staring at the door as well. “You have found your little friends. Good.” A pale hand pressed against the doorway in his line of sight and Ryan turned his head to look at Z. There was no mirth in the smile on her face, and Ryan knew his death was in that smile. “You’ll be joining them shortly. And don’t worry, it won’t hurt. Much.”
Somewhere, Ryan found the superhuman strength to push the psychic vampire away from him and scramble out the door. He didn’t see or hear Brendon anywhere as he ran half-blindly through the house, trying to find his way back out. And to be honest, he wasn’t even sure if not hearing or seeing Brendon was a good thing or not.
He finally hit a door. He wasn’t sure if it was the right door, the one he needed, but anything to put distance between himself and Z. He slipped through, locking the door behind himself and slumping against it as he tried to catch his breath. He knew without looking that he wasn’t outside like he’d planned, but it was better than being near that vampire - or that thing Brendon had become.
He opened his eyes, and found himself staring into a dim darkness. He was standing at the top of a staircase leading down, which seemed to be leading to the basement of the house. This was definitely a step in the wrong direction, but maybe there was a way out from the basement itself. At any rate, it was worth investigating.
“Maybe I’ll find a phone and then I can call Shane and the Centre to come rescue me,” Ryan whispered to himself as he walked down the stairs. The dimness slowly brightened and resolved itself to be coming from a half closed door near the base of the steps. A soft humming sound, almost mechanical in nature, came from the other side of the door.
As he reached the base of the steps and the door, Ryan hesitated. The last few doors he’d gone through in this house had led to creepy marionette versions of his friends and an even creepier psychic vampire. There was no telling what was behind this door, much less what was making that sound.
“But,” Ryan reasoned softly to himself as he moved to the door. “If I don’t check, I might miss something, like a phone.”
He pressed himself up against the door, taking a deep breath before peeking into the brightly lit room. He didn’t see anyone in the room, and finally, he made the decision to go in.
And immediately froze in his tracks.
The large room seemed to be something out of a horror movie. Along the far wall was a large machine that he couldn’t make sense of, and which looked like something a mad scientist would own in their secret lab. Ryan glanced about, wondering if he’d see a table with a monster strapped to it.
There was in fact a table with straps, but instead of a monster lying on it, it was Darren. Ryan’s eyes widened; he hurried over to the table with the intention to undo the straps holding the detective down, when he drew up short. Just like the dead little girl Darren had shown him in the morgue, Ryan could feel that there was a hole where Darren’s body was. He took a deep breath and forced himself to undo the straps holding Darren down, keeping his eyes on the body to reassure himself there really was something there and that his ghost sense was overreacting.
As soon as Ryan got the straps off Darren, he carefully moved the body off the table and to a nearby bed. Even though his ghost sense was telling him that he was holding nothing but thin air, Ryan’s other senses could feel that there was indeed weight in his arms.
“God, what happened to you?” Ryan asked softly, knowing he wouldn’t get a response. He bit his lip, covering the weredog’s lifeless body with a blanket that had been carelessly thrown over the side of the bed. He remembered the stuffed corgi upstairs and wondered if the moving toy was what had happened to Darren’s soul. Even as he thought it, Ryan knew it was an absurd idea to think. But it was the only thing that made sense for toys moving on their own. That hadn’t been a ghost.
“But how did your soul get into a stuffed toy?” He questioned, watching Darren for a few moments before stepping away to study the machine. He still couldn’t make head or tail of it, and wondered what it did as well as why it would be in a house owned by a psychic vampire. From what he understood about psychic vampires, they didn’t need a machine to feed off energy. And they didn’t waste energy by splitting it off and putting it in moving toys.
As he studied the machine, trying to figure out what it did, he heard a sound coming from the door at the top of the stairs. He knew he’d locked it, but whatever was at the door was trying to get inside.
Despite himself, Ryan moved to the foot of the stairs, looking up. He knew it was a bad idea, because it might be Z on the other side. But then, if it had been the vampire, she’d have broken down the door already. What else could it be then?
As if in response to Ryan’s whirling mind, there was a soft moan on the other side of the door. It was the same noise Brendon had made earlier.
Ryan glanced toward the room with the strange machine. If Darren’s body was still around and his soul trapped in the stuffed animal, maybe the same was true for the marionette and Brendon’s body was still around. He chewed his lip, glancing up the stairs. Maybe Brendon, realizing he was trapped in a marionette body, was only trying to help Ryan save them.
He knew he was taking a risk, but Ryan climbed the stairs and carefully unlocked the door, opening it a crack. The only thing he saw was the marionette, staring dully at him for a few moments before it shuffled forward, making Ryan go down a few stairs to put distance between them. The marionette fumbled with the door, finally succeeding in locking it before the head turned to look at Ryan.
“Brendon? Are you still in there?” Ryan asked, retreating a few more steps down as the marionette shuffled its way down the stairs. There was a little squeak and Ryan saw that the stuffed dog was with the marionette, following it down the stairs.
Ryan continued to retreat down the stairs before the marionette, stopping when they came to the door leading to the room that held the strange machine and Darren’s body. The toy dog squeaked as if it recognized the room, and the marionette’s head swung toward the room. Ryan realized that what he’d thought about Brendon and Darren’s souls being trapped in the toys was accurate. They were aware. And maybe, if they were aware, they might know how to put themselves back in their bodies. Of course, that was taking into account Brendon’s body wasn’t missing. Did reapers have physical bodies, the way normal people did?
The toy dog - Darren, Ryan had to remind himself - squeaked again, pulling Ryan from his thoughts. The toy had managed to pull itself into a sitting position by the table, looking toward the bed its body was lying on. The marionette - Brendon - shuffled toward the bed, looking down at Darren’s body before it managed to lift up the body, carrying it to a table Ryan hadn’t noticed when he’d been looking around the room. When its task had been completed, it looked uselessly at its fingers and the straps on the table. Ryan managed to get the hint and strapped Darren’s body down, glancing up at the marionette.
“Now what?” As he said it, Ryan was sure he knew what the response was, even before the marionette’s head turned toward where the toy dog, which was squeaking under the other table. “Right, stupid question.”
He scooped up the toy dog, setting it on the table, and looked askance at the marionette. It raised an arm, curling its fingers as best as its joints would allow, and pointed to a panel on the machine. Ryan nodded, going over to the panel in question. Thankfully, it didn’t require much explanation, and Ryan figured out which switch to throw.
The light in the room dimmed as the machine hummed louder, and just before Ryan was sure it would go out completely, the light came back on, and with the light coming back up came a loud gasp from the table Darren had been lying on. Ryan looked at the table to see Darren craning his neck to look up at him.
“Mind unstrapping me? I’ll help you with Brendon and then explain.” Darren lifted his fingers uselessly, and Ryan nodded, going over to undo the straps. Darren sat up and immediately held his head.
“Careful.” Ryan helped Darren get to his feet, and helped him walk to the bed. “You should go sit on the bed. You’ve had quite the experience, I imagine. I can get the Brendon marionette onto the table.”
“Brendon has no physical body, but he is a soul. That’s how she was able to trap him in that body.” Darren rubbed his temples, watching as Ryan maneuvered the marionette onto the table. “I would think that if you throw the switch while nothing’s on the other table, he’ll revert back.”
“Worth a shot,” Ryan agreed, throwing the switch. Again, the light dimmed as the machine hummed louder, but unlike before, the light went out completely. A few minutes later, it flickered back on. Ryan wasn’t entirely sure the switch had worked, but the marionette was motionless. Just as he was walking toward the table to move the marionette, the air shifted and Brendon appeared, inhaling deeply.
“I never want to go through that again.” Brendon shuddered as he looked down at the marionette. After a few moments of staring down at what he’d been, the reaper’s head snapped up and he disappeared.
Ryan looked at the spot where Brendon had just been before going over Darren. “Come on. Maybe we can find the way out, and avoid Z in the process. It’d be a bit of an understatement to say she creeps me out, even without the facts that she’s the serial killer you’re looking for and that she stole yours and Brendon’s souls.”
Darren nodded, stiffly getting up with Ryan’s help. He bent down, scooping up the toy dog and grinning weakly at the look Ryan gave him. “Call me weird, but I wouldn’t mind a souvenir from this experience, even if I agree with Brendon that I never want to go through that again.”
Ryan shrugged, saying nothing because he couldn’t think of anything to say. They silently made their way up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, they paused to listen. The house was completely silent.
“It was raining.” Ryan offered, simply to break the silence. “Sounds like it stopped.”
“Fun times.” Darren grinned faintly. He held up the toy dog. “I don’t even wanna think about how long I was stuck like this. How’d you know where to find us?”
Ryan opened the door and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He’d run so much in this house that he wasn’t sure which way he’d come from, or which way they needed to go to get out. He hoped Brendon would reappear to tell them. Preferably before Z showed up. “Gabe. He woke me up, said that Brendon hadn’t reported in on time and gave me this address, saying it was your guys’ last known location. I nearly didn’t come in, but I’m kinda glad I did.” He grinned faintly at Darren. “Kinda, but not quite. I could’ve done without being chased by a moving marionette and a squeaky toy dog.”
Darren returned the grin weakly, looking at Brendon when the reaper suddenly reappeared. “Hey. Where’d you go?”
“I was letting the Centre know where to come because of that machine, and I was looking for Z, to repay her for what she did to us. She’s not in the house though. I think she’s flown.”
“I’m not sure how long you guys were like that, but if it was done to you today, it couldn’t have been Z. Not on her own,” Ryan said. “Darren, you were right. She’s a psychic vampire. So, if you guys were switched into those bodies by that machine this morning, Z’s got an accomplice.” He paused, realizing the implication. “But if she does, the accomplice is probably long gone too.”
Brendon grunted, clearly not happy about this knowledge, before pointing. “The front door’s this way. We can wait for the guys from the Centre on the front lawn. Or rather, you guys can. I have to report to Gabe.”
He disappeared again. Ryan helped Darren to the front door, where the two of them sat on the front step as they waited for whoever the Centre was sending.
“So, do you think this solves your case?” Ryan asked. “That machine took your soul out and put it elsewhere.” He pointed to the toy dog Darren was still holding.
“More or less, but I have no suspects in custody.” Darren made a face. “At least that soul stealing machine is in the Centre’s hands now, so that’s something. The city’s children are safe once more.”
As the sounds of sirens came closer, Ryan nudged Darren with a small smile. “Best way to end a case, though. Where what you set out to do is tied up neatly, whether or not it’s entirely the way you wanted.”
Darren smiled faintly at Ryan. “Don’t I know it.”
Just as the first police cars pulled up in front of the gate, Darren looked at Ryan, his expression unreadable. “You don’t work for the Centre anymore. When Gabe contacted you about Brendon and me disappearing, you should have gone to the Centre with that information.”
Ryan made a face. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him, although he knew that it’d bite him in the ass later. “Yeah, I know that. I just acted without thinking, figuring that I could check on it and then let the Centre deal with it. Didn’t quite work out that way.”
Darren nodded quietly, turning his attention back to the detectives coming to them. “I’ll make a note of that in my report, and try to make sure that you’re not punished for it.”
“Thanks.” Ryan smiled, pushing himself to his feet as the first detective reached them.
~~~
“Ryan.”
Brendon’s soft voice broke into Ryan’s sleep and he woke up with a groan, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Huh?”
It was a week after Darren and Brendon had escaped, and except for Darren showing up to pay Ryan’s consultant bill, plus extra for the danger that he’d gotten in during the case, Ryan hadn’t seen either of them.
“Sorry to wake you up. I haven’t really had time to talk to you since we escaped.” Brendon was sitting in the same chair Ryan had originally seen him in the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the young man, and next to him was the same mirror that had been in Z’s room. He indicated the mirror, resting a hand lightly on the frame. “This is a special mirror from the Other Side, which somehow managed to get into your shop where Z found it. Certain people on the Other Side have been looking for it, and had followed its path to your shop, but the trail went cold for a time when Z bought it. After the Centre went through the house Z was living in, we reapers went over it and found the mirror.” Brendon patted the mirror carefully, like it was a fragile, old friend. “But instead of taking it back with us to the Other Side, my higher ups have decided that it should be your payment for solving this case for us.”
“How’s it a special mirror?” Ryan mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes again. “Did the Centre or the Other Side find Z and her accomplice?”
Brendon gave him a small smile. “I’m afraid that right now, I have little time to explain how the mirror works, but I’ll come back soon to explain it. I can, though, answer your other question.” He leaned forward, looking into the mirror like he expected the answers he wanted to be there. Ryan looked too, but he could only see the room reflected back in it. For a second, he thought he saw movement, someone standing on the other side of the mirror, but he decided that it was only his half asleep mind playing tricks on him. “My higher ups believe, due to the fact that there are no more strange deaths -like the dead Nightwalker children - occurring in this area, that Z and her accomplice have skipped town. Darren’s already been alerted of this, and both the Centre and my higher ups will be keeping track of future deaths along these lines, in case Z and her accomplice do this again elsewhere.”
Brendon looked into the mirror for a few more minutes before he stood up. “I have to go, but I’ll see you around, Ryan. Sleep well.”
Ryan curled up in bed again, already feeling sleep pull him back under, even as Shane, who hadn’t woken up during the soft conversation, wrapped an arm around Ryan’s waist. The last thought Ryan had before he fell asleep was that Brendon had walked into the mirror itself. But that was a silly thought; mirrors didn’t work that way.
He’d have to investigate that in the morning.
The End
Part Two
A few hours later, and a quick stop to tell Keltie where he was going - Shane had been gone when Ryan awoke - found Ryan standing on a sidewalk on the other side of town from Shane’s house.
Ryan glanced at the strip of paper Gabe had given him, checking it against the number on the white stone column that supported the wrought-iron gate before him. “This seems like the right place,” he whispered to himself, sticking the paper back into his pocket and looking up at the latched gate again.
From where he stood, he could see a pathway winding its way through a heavily shrouded garden up to, he supposed, the house itself - though he couldn’t see the house because of the trees. He stepped forward, fingers reaching to curl around an iron bar of the gate when it unexpectedly and silently swung open into the garden.
Ryan bit his lip, glancing both ways and behind himself, before taking a deep breath and stepping through the gate. Inside, the world suddenly silenced and he glanced around nervously as he followed the winding pathway. For a garden, the whole area gave him a distinctly creepy feeling. The many trees were too close together, for one thing, and he kept feeling like there were things hiding behind them. His ghost sense wasn’t picking up on anything though, and he kept shaking himself, silently telling himself that it was only his imagination. More than once, though, he was sure that he saw statues between the trees, almost like shrines, but he couldn’t make them out from where he stood.
After what felt like a few lifetimes, but was probably only a few minutes, the house itself finally loomed over him and he took an uneasy step back at the sight. It was two stories high, and was the same color as the columns that had supported the gate he’d left behind him, with dark shutters on the windows. Ryan couldn’t help but think that the house looked like it belonged in a horror movie and shuddered a bit even as he thought it, hand rising to knock on the door.
Before he knocked though, Ryan stopped himself, rethinking. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe this wasn’t where Brendon and Darren had disappeared, even if it was the last place Gabe had known they were going. More importantly, maybe Ryan himself shouldn’t have come alone.
“I should’ve checked with Shane. Really, I should’ve checked with Shane.” Ryan shook himself, stepping away from the door and back along the path. He got about halfway back to the gate before turning to look back at the house. “But what if Gabe was right and they did disappear after visiting here? I told Kelts where I was going. If I don’t show up to dinner, Shane’ll check my place and Keltie will try to gather enough energy to tell him.” He nodded, trying to shake the silent ‘I hope’ he felt, and starting to walk back toward the house. He raised a hand to knock before stopping again and chewing on his thumbnail. “But if Gabe was right, maybe I shouldn’t have come alone. I can go to Shane’s and get him to come with me. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do.” Ryan hit his palm with a fist, mind made up. He stepped back from the door and started to walk back toward the gate for the second time.
Almost on cue, the minute Ryan hit the halfway point, the sky opened up in a downpour and lightning flashed against the sky. He had no choice but to run back to the house and wait until the storm blew itself out. His hand had barely touched the door before it swung open as silently as the gate had.
That was even creepier than the gate had been, but Ryan forced himself to not dwell on it, hurrying inside and shutting the door behind him. The thud when the door closed echoed in the otherwise silent house, and the sound made him jump.
He shook himself, rubbing his arms as he glanced around the dark room he’d entered, trying not to focus on the silence. He could only see flashes of it when lightning flashed across the sky, and none of the flashes gave him a good idea of it, other than that the room was large and seemed to be a living room.
“Hello?” He finally called out, listening to his voice echo through the rooms before the sound died out and the house returned to being silent as the grave. Even for a witch who specialized in ghosts and was a former Medical Examiner for the Centre, the silence gave him the creeps. “I don’t mean to intrude, but it’s raining outside and the door swung open on its own.”
Ryan rubbed his arms again, glancing around as he stepped further into the room. He bumped into a few things he couldn’t see, despite the occasional flashes of light, and finally made it to a doorway, which opened into a long hallway that seemed to be filled with doors leading to other parts of the house.
“I wish I had a candle or something,” Ryan muttered, bumping against an end table that sat just on the other side of the doorway. He caught it before it could fall over, but couldn’t catch the candelabra that had been sitting on it in time. It clanged against the wooden floor and he flinched at the loud sound, bending down to scoop it up. “I did ask for a candle, I suppose.”
He dug in his pocket, finding a lighter after a moment, and used it to light the candles in the candelabra. As soon as the candles flickered into flame, Ryan found himself very thankful for the small bit of light. It made the whole situation he found himself in slightly more bearable.
He looked about in curiosity, wondering if he should wait out the storm in the room he’d just left or if he should explore the house in search of the owner to explain, why he’d come in, or simply why he’d come in the first place. He decided to just wait in the room he’d left, figuring that if he was going to be an intruder, he may as well just stick to one room in case the owner of the house came to see who had been calling. He started to head back into the room when a soft moan from further down the hallway caught his attention and his medical degree kicked in.
He lifted the candelabra, turning back toward the hallway. “Hello? Is someone there?”
There was no response as he made his way down the hallway to where he thought he’d heard the sound coming from. He found himself standing in front of one of the many doors, and took a deep breath before opening it carefully.
The light from his candelabra did little to show him the room, but he could see a large window on the opposite wall. A flash of lightning illuminated the place momentarily, revealing a mostly barren room, with a fireplace on one wall and a chair sitting alone in front of it, the back of which was to the door. Ryan took a step into the room, before taking a few more steps toward the fireplace. He paused, eyes closing as he took a deep breath, sure that his imagination was just working overtime, before taking another step forward to look into the chair. He gasped loudly, quickly covering his mouth with his free hand.
The chair was definitely occupied, he could see someone by the faint light of his candelabra. The figure was clearly male, and dressed in an elaborate ringmaster’s costume, including a top hat set at a rakish angle on the head. It was tilted at an awkward angle toward him so Ryan couldn’t see the figure’s face. The figure had one hand resting softly on the back of a posed corgi with a large ruffle around its neck. Both were unnaturally still, too still to be living, and Ryan breathed a sigh of relief as the light from the candelabra revealed the strings coming from the life-sized figure’s limbs and leading under the chair, hand dropping to his chest as he felt his heart start to slow back down to a slightly healthier pace.
Ryan couldn’t help himself from reaching out a finger to poke the marionette’s head, barely touching it as the head rolled back and allowed him to see its face. He wasn’t even sure why he was so curious, except that because the rest of it looked so life like, he wondered what the face looked like. As he did so, lightning flashed behind him, painting the room in surreal colors, and he could see that the marionette’s mouth hung open a bit and the eyes stared in his direction unseeingly, like they were looking straight through him.
The eyes made Ryan jump back, startled once more. Even though they looked like glass, he knew those eyes. He knew that face. It was Brendon sitting there, looking like a marionette.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Ryan told himself it was an absurd notion. It was probably just an elaborately done puppet that held a likeness to Brendon in the near-darkness. Maybe it was even done before Brendon and Darren had disappeared, and maybe it was just a coincidence that it happened to sit in the same house that the pair had last been seen near.
“Right, just a coincidence. Totally has nothing to do with Brendon and Darren’s disappearance.” Ryan repeated his thought aloud, trying the words on for size. They stuck in his throat, though, and saying them aloud seemed more like a lie than anything else. But he still tried for flippancy as he went on. “Just a really well done marionette that looks like Brendon, yeah.”
He lightly touched the puppet’s cheek and his hand shot back. In his experience, marionettes were cold as they were made of wood or similar materials. They were not slightly warm to the touch.
Ryan quickly moved away from the chair, staring wide eyed at the marionette. Suddenly, the lifelikeness of it made more sense: it wasn’t lifelike, it was really Brendon. Then the corgi must be real too. It was the only explanation he could think of. And Darren’s were form was a corgi; Ryan had seen that yesterday. He took a deep breath, wondering if this was a good idea as he reached out to lightly touch the corgi’s back. No sooner had his fingers brushed the dog’s fur than two things happened simultaneously: the dog shuddered and the marionette’s hand on the dog’s back twitched, almost like it was closing on Ryan’s hand. The marionette itself softly moaned, and it was the same sound that had led Ryan to the room he was currently in.
Ryan couldn’t help backpedaling as Brendon’s hand twitched again against the corgi’s back, his other hand twitching against the arm of the chair. He stared, eyes wide, as Brendon jerkily pushed himself up to a standing position. The corgi slid to the floor in the process, sprawling where it landed for a moment before it pushed itself to its feet with the same jerky movements Brendon did.
Brendon’s arms raised disconnectedly, like he was being manipulated by some invisible puppet master, and took a few clumsy steps toward where Ryan stood, still staring wide eyed at the sight before him. Ryan backed into the door, hand fumbling with the knob for a few tense moments before he finally managed to open it.
Ryan ducked around the door, running blindly through the dark corridor, and running up the staircase that he came across at the end of the hallway. Behind him, he could hear the sound of wood dragging along the floor, thudding against the stairs, but Ryan didn’t dare look behind himself as he threw himself into the first room he came across, locking the door behind him and slumping against it as he tried to catch his breath.
As he caught his breath and felt his heart slow down again, Ryan looked around the room he was in. Lightning flashed, revealing antique furniture and he saw the full length antique mirror he’d sold Z, the strange girl that had come into his store the day before, standing in the far corner, facing the curtained four poster bed.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door, but he could no longer hear the sounds that had chased him into the room. That didn’t mean that Brendon and Darren weren’t still out there, and Ryan felt sick at the thought of what had happened to his friends. He knew he’d need to find out what had happened to them, and if it could be reversed. It had to be reversible, right? He shook his head to clear it of the doubt that had suddenly crept into his mind, knowing he’d have to think positively, for Brendon and Darren’s sake.
He took a deep breath, pushing himself away from the door and froze when a soft gasp, almost like someone inhaling a breath for the first time, came from behind the curtains surrounding the bed. Somehow, that small sound was more hair-raising than the soft moans Brendon had given to bring Ryan to the room Brendon and Darren had been placed in like forgotten toys.
He licked his lips, feeling nervous as he made his way toward the bed, one hand outstretched to curl into the curtains once he was close enough. He paused briefly, steeling himself before pulling back the curtain.
For the space of a few heartbeats, Ryan was convinced the person lying in the bed was another life-sized doll. Then he remembered that Brendon had looked the same way before he’d realized that it wasn’t a doll. But the very next moment, it dawned on him that he was looking down on Z herself, just starting to stir as an unseen sun sank behind the stormy clouds outside. Suddenly, the child murders made sense: Z wasn’t just a vampire; she was the suspected psychic vampire. Psychic vampires fed off energy, and children, being children, had far more energy than adults did. Losing their energy by way of a psychic vampire could lead to the children experiencing heart failure, and if they lost all their energy, it would definitely explain why the victim’s body had felt empty to him. But even with this newfound certainty of how the children were dying, Ryan was no closer to figuring out how Brendon and Darren had become puppets, much less how to turn them back.
As the thoughts crossed his mind, Ryan knew he’d have to get out of the house before Z fully awoke and tell someone from the Centre so they could deal with this. This was definitely outside his job description, and he knew that he’d get an earful from a Centre employee. At the same time he knew he couldn’t just leave Brendon and Darren stuck the way they were. He also knew that he had no idea how to change them back.
While he was trying to work out a possible way to get them back to normal, he realized that Z’s eyes had snapped open and that she was now looking up at him. Ryan stumbled backwards as Z rose from the bed, the sheets falling away to reveal her nakedness. He might not know yet just how she’d changed Brendon and Darren into what they’d become, but he also knew he didn’t want to join them.
Z raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly not caring that she was naked. “What are you doing in my home, witch?”
Ryan had never been aware that being called a witch could sound like a bad thing, but Z made it sound like a witch was something unwanted found under a rock. He swallowed, resisting the urge to glance over his shoulder to see if Brendon was still following him and locate the doorknob for a quick escape, and forced himself to keep his eyes on her. He shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to look nonchalant. He wasn’t so sure if he succeeded. “I was looking for my friends. Someone told me they were here, and I knocked, but there was no answer. I was going to leave, but it started raining, which made me come back to the door to knock, and the door opened on its own. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
The vampire’s eyes narrowed a fraction, as if she was weighing down whether or not he was lying, before she walked toward him. One hand cupped his cheek before her fingers ghosted along his cheekbone, down his cheek and along his jaw line to his neck as she walked around him, as if she was studying him. Suddenly, Ryan knew how a cow felt when it realized it was going to be made into meat. Even without knowing what had happened to Brendon and Darren, this was shaping up to be a really bad idea. He really wished he’d thought to tell Shane where he was going, instead of leaving it to Keltie to tell him.
Finally, Z stopped in front of Ryan again, the ghost of a smile playing about her mouth. Ryan couldn’t stop himself from taking a step back, even though he hit the door behind him. When had it gotten so close to him? “Which friends are you looking for? Perhaps I know where they went.” She paused, as if a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Or, perhaps you’re looking for that meddling reaper and the detective from the Centre.” The smile on her face widened, as if her thought had finally come to its logical conclusion, and Ryan found that he was more afraid of that smile than anything that had happened so far. “Or you’ve already found them, and were trying to find out how to put them back to rights.”
There was a muffled sound on the other side of the door, and Ryan’s head snapped to look at the door out of the corner of his eye. He knew without looking that Z was staring at the door as well. “You have found your little friends. Good.” A pale hand pressed against the doorway in his line of sight and Ryan turned his head to look at Z. There was no mirth in the smile on her face, and Ryan knew his death was in that smile. “You’ll be joining them shortly. And don’t worry, it won’t hurt. Much.”
Somewhere, Ryan found the superhuman strength to push the psychic vampire away from him and scramble out the door. He didn’t see or hear Brendon anywhere as he ran half-blindly through the house, trying to find his way back out. And to be honest, he wasn’t even sure if not hearing or seeing Brendon was a good thing or not.
He finally hit a door. He wasn’t sure if it was the right door, the one he needed, but anything to put distance between himself and Z. He slipped through, locking the door behind himself and slumping against it as he tried to catch his breath. He knew without looking that he wasn’t outside like he’d planned, but it was better than being near that vampire - or that thing Brendon had become.
He opened his eyes, and found himself staring into a dim darkness. He was standing at the top of a staircase leading down, which seemed to be leading to the basement of the house. This was definitely a step in the wrong direction, but maybe there was a way out from the basement itself. At any rate, it was worth investigating.
“Maybe I’ll find a phone and then I can call Shane and the Centre to come rescue me,” Ryan whispered to himself as he walked down the stairs. The dimness slowly brightened and resolved itself to be coming from a half closed door near the base of the steps. A soft humming sound, almost mechanical in nature, came from the other side of the door.
As he reached the base of the steps and the door, Ryan hesitated. The last few doors he’d gone through in this house had led to creepy marionette versions of his friends and an even creepier psychic vampire. There was no telling what was behind this door, much less what was making that sound.
“But,” Ryan reasoned softly to himself as he moved to the door. “If I don’t check, I might miss something, like a phone.”
He pressed himself up against the door, taking a deep breath before peeking into the brightly lit room. He didn’t see anyone in the room, and finally, he made the decision to go in.
And immediately froze in his tracks.
The large room seemed to be something out of a horror movie. Along the far wall was a large machine that he couldn’t make sense of, and which looked like something a mad scientist would own in their secret lab. Ryan glanced about, wondering if he’d see a table with a monster strapped to it.
There was in fact a table with straps, but instead of a monster lying on it, it was Darren. Ryan’s eyes widened; he hurried over to the table with the intention to undo the straps holding the detective down, when he drew up short. Just like the dead little girl Darren had shown him in the morgue, Ryan could feel that there was a hole where Darren’s body was. He took a deep breath and forced himself to undo the straps holding Darren down, keeping his eyes on the body to reassure himself there really was something there and that his ghost sense was overreacting.
As soon as Ryan got the straps off Darren, he carefully moved the body off the table and to a nearby bed. Even though his ghost sense was telling him that he was holding nothing but thin air, Ryan’s other senses could feel that there was indeed weight in his arms.
“God, what happened to you?” Ryan asked softly, knowing he wouldn’t get a response. He bit his lip, covering the weredog’s lifeless body with a blanket that had been carelessly thrown over the side of the bed. He remembered the stuffed corgi upstairs and wondered if the moving toy was what had happened to Darren’s soul. Even as he thought it, Ryan knew it was an absurd idea to think. But it was the only thing that made sense for toys moving on their own. That hadn’t been a ghost.
“But how did your soul get into a stuffed toy?” He questioned, watching Darren for a few moments before stepping away to study the machine. He still couldn’t make head or tail of it, and wondered what it did as well as why it would be in a house owned by a psychic vampire. From what he understood about psychic vampires, they didn’t need a machine to feed off energy. And they didn’t waste energy by splitting it off and putting it in moving toys.
As he studied the machine, trying to figure out what it did, he heard a sound coming from the door at the top of the stairs. He knew he’d locked it, but whatever was at the door was trying to get inside.
Despite himself, Ryan moved to the foot of the stairs, looking up. He knew it was a bad idea, because it might be Z on the other side. But then, if it had been the vampire, she’d have broken down the door already. What else could it be then?
As if in response to Ryan’s whirling mind, there was a soft moan on the other side of the door. It was the same noise Brendon had made earlier.
Ryan glanced toward the room with the strange machine. If Darren’s body was still around and his soul trapped in the stuffed animal, maybe the same was true for the marionette and Brendon’s body was still around. He chewed his lip, glancing up the stairs. Maybe Brendon, realizing he was trapped in a marionette body, was only trying to help Ryan save them.
He knew he was taking a risk, but Ryan climbed the stairs and carefully unlocked the door, opening it a crack. The only thing he saw was the marionette, staring dully at him for a few moments before it shuffled forward, making Ryan go down a few stairs to put distance between them. The marionette fumbled with the door, finally succeeding in locking it before the head turned to look at Ryan.
“Brendon? Are you still in there?” Ryan asked, retreating a few more steps down as the marionette shuffled its way down the stairs. There was a little squeak and Ryan saw that the stuffed dog was with the marionette, following it down the stairs.
Ryan continued to retreat down the stairs before the marionette, stopping when they came to the door leading to the room that held the strange machine and Darren’s body. The toy dog squeaked as if it recognized the room, and the marionette’s head swung toward the room. Ryan realized that what he’d thought about Brendon and Darren’s souls being trapped in the toys was accurate. They were aware. And maybe, if they were aware, they might know how to put themselves back in their bodies. Of course, that was taking into account Brendon’s body wasn’t missing. Did reapers have physical bodies, the way normal people did?
The toy dog - Darren, Ryan had to remind himself - squeaked again, pulling Ryan from his thoughts. The toy had managed to pull itself into a sitting position by the table, looking toward the bed its body was lying on. The marionette - Brendon - shuffled toward the bed, looking down at Darren’s body before it managed to lift up the body, carrying it to a table Ryan hadn’t noticed when he’d been looking around the room. When its task had been completed, it looked uselessly at its fingers and the straps on the table. Ryan managed to get the hint and strapped Darren’s body down, glancing up at the marionette.
“Now what?” As he said it, Ryan was sure he knew what the response was, even before the marionette’s head turned toward where the toy dog, which was squeaking under the other table. “Right, stupid question.”
He scooped up the toy dog, setting it on the table, and looked askance at the marionette. It raised an arm, curling its fingers as best as its joints would allow, and pointed to a panel on the machine. Ryan nodded, going over to the panel in question. Thankfully, it didn’t require much explanation, and Ryan figured out which switch to throw.
The light in the room dimmed as the machine hummed louder, and just before Ryan was sure it would go out completely, the light came back on, and with the light coming back up came a loud gasp from the table Darren had been lying on. Ryan looked at the table to see Darren craning his neck to look up at him.
“Mind unstrapping me? I’ll help you with Brendon and then explain.” Darren lifted his fingers uselessly, and Ryan nodded, going over to undo the straps. Darren sat up and immediately held his head.
“Careful.” Ryan helped Darren get to his feet, and helped him walk to the bed. “You should go sit on the bed. You’ve had quite the experience, I imagine. I can get the Brendon marionette onto the table.”
“Brendon has no physical body, but he is a soul. That’s how she was able to trap him in that body.” Darren rubbed his temples, watching as Ryan maneuvered the marionette onto the table. “I would think that if you throw the switch while nothing’s on the other table, he’ll revert back.”
“Worth a shot,” Ryan agreed, throwing the switch. Again, the light dimmed as the machine hummed louder, but unlike before, the light went out completely. A few minutes later, it flickered back on. Ryan wasn’t entirely sure the switch had worked, but the marionette was motionless. Just as he was walking toward the table to move the marionette, the air shifted and Brendon appeared, inhaling deeply.
“I never want to go through that again.” Brendon shuddered as he looked down at the marionette. After a few moments of staring down at what he’d been, the reaper’s head snapped up and he disappeared.
Ryan looked at the spot where Brendon had just been before going over Darren. “Come on. Maybe we can find the way out, and avoid Z in the process. It’d be a bit of an understatement to say she creeps me out, even without the facts that she’s the serial killer you’re looking for and that she stole yours and Brendon’s souls.”
Darren nodded, stiffly getting up with Ryan’s help. He bent down, scooping up the toy dog and grinning weakly at the look Ryan gave him. “Call me weird, but I wouldn’t mind a souvenir from this experience, even if I agree with Brendon that I never want to go through that again.”
Ryan shrugged, saying nothing because he couldn’t think of anything to say. They silently made their way up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, they paused to listen. The house was completely silent.
“It was raining.” Ryan offered, simply to break the silence. “Sounds like it stopped.”
“Fun times.” Darren grinned faintly. He held up the toy dog. “I don’t even wanna think about how long I was stuck like this. How’d you know where to find us?”
Ryan opened the door and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He’d run so much in this house that he wasn’t sure which way he’d come from, or which way they needed to go to get out. He hoped Brendon would reappear to tell them. Preferably before Z showed up. “Gabe. He woke me up, said that Brendon hadn’t reported in on time and gave me this address, saying it was your guys’ last known location. I nearly didn’t come in, but I’m kinda glad I did.” He grinned faintly at Darren. “Kinda, but not quite. I could’ve done without being chased by a moving marionette and a squeaky toy dog.”
Darren returned the grin weakly, looking at Brendon when the reaper suddenly reappeared. “Hey. Where’d you go?”
“I was letting the Centre know where to come because of that machine, and I was looking for Z, to repay her for what she did to us. She’s not in the house though. I think she’s flown.”
“I’m not sure how long you guys were like that, but if it was done to you today, it couldn’t have been Z. Not on her own,” Ryan said. “Darren, you were right. She’s a psychic vampire. So, if you guys were switched into those bodies by that machine this morning, Z’s got an accomplice.” He paused, realizing the implication. “But if she does, the accomplice is probably long gone too.”
Brendon grunted, clearly not happy about this knowledge, before pointing. “The front door’s this way. We can wait for the guys from the Centre on the front lawn. Or rather, you guys can. I have to report to Gabe.”
He disappeared again. Ryan helped Darren to the front door, where the two of them sat on the front step as they waited for whoever the Centre was sending.
“So, do you think this solves your case?” Ryan asked. “That machine took your soul out and put it elsewhere.” He pointed to the toy dog Darren was still holding.
“More or less, but I have no suspects in custody.” Darren made a face. “At least that soul stealing machine is in the Centre’s hands now, so that’s something. The city’s children are safe once more.”
As the sounds of sirens came closer, Ryan nudged Darren with a small smile. “Best way to end a case, though. Where what you set out to do is tied up neatly, whether or not it’s entirely the way you wanted.”
Darren smiled faintly at Ryan. “Don’t I know it.”
Just as the first police cars pulled up in front of the gate, Darren looked at Ryan, his expression unreadable. “You don’t work for the Centre anymore. When Gabe contacted you about Brendon and me disappearing, you should have gone to the Centre with that information.”
Ryan made a face. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him, although he knew that it’d bite him in the ass later. “Yeah, I know that. I just acted without thinking, figuring that I could check on it and then let the Centre deal with it. Didn’t quite work out that way.”
Darren nodded quietly, turning his attention back to the detectives coming to them. “I’ll make a note of that in my report, and try to make sure that you’re not punished for it.”
“Thanks.” Ryan smiled, pushing himself to his feet as the first detective reached them.
~~~
“Ryan.”
Brendon’s soft voice broke into Ryan’s sleep and he woke up with a groan, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Huh?”
It was a week after Darren and Brendon had escaped, and except for Darren showing up to pay Ryan’s consultant bill, plus extra for the danger that he’d gotten in during the case, Ryan hadn’t seen either of them.
“Sorry to wake you up. I haven’t really had time to talk to you since we escaped.” Brendon was sitting in the same chair Ryan had originally seen him in the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the young man, and next to him was the same mirror that had been in Z’s room. He indicated the mirror, resting a hand lightly on the frame. “This is a special mirror from the Other Side, which somehow managed to get into your shop where Z found it. Certain people on the Other Side have been looking for it, and had followed its path to your shop, but the trail went cold for a time when Z bought it. After the Centre went through the house Z was living in, we reapers went over it and found the mirror.” Brendon patted the mirror carefully, like it was a fragile, old friend. “But instead of taking it back with us to the Other Side, my higher ups have decided that it should be your payment for solving this case for us.”
“How’s it a special mirror?” Ryan mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes again. “Did the Centre or the Other Side find Z and her accomplice?”
Brendon gave him a small smile. “I’m afraid that right now, I have little time to explain how the mirror works, but I’ll come back soon to explain it. I can, though, answer your other question.” He leaned forward, looking into the mirror like he expected the answers he wanted to be there. Ryan looked too, but he could only see the room reflected back in it. For a second, he thought he saw movement, someone standing on the other side of the mirror, but he decided that it was only his half asleep mind playing tricks on him. “My higher ups believe, due to the fact that there are no more strange deaths -like the dead Nightwalker children - occurring in this area, that Z and her accomplice have skipped town. Darren’s already been alerted of this, and both the Centre and my higher ups will be keeping track of future deaths along these lines, in case Z and her accomplice do this again elsewhere.”
Brendon looked into the mirror for a few more minutes before he stood up. “I have to go, but I’ll see you around, Ryan. Sleep well.”
Ryan curled up in bed again, already feeling sleep pull him back under, even as Shane, who hadn’t woken up during the soft conversation, wrapped an arm around Ryan’s waist. The last thought Ryan had before he fell asleep was that Brendon had walked into the mirror itself. But that was a silly thought; mirrors didn’t work that way.
He’d have to investigate that in the morning.
The End