“Crap!” I yelled. I didn’t wait to see where Jane landed. I was already running off in her direction, seeking cover as I went.
Lamps of every size flew past me as I ran. The dull thump against my leather jacket from two smaller ones pushed me forward, but I kept running and dove for the safety of a large chest of drawers. Jane’s looked out from beneath one of the nearby beds. When I hit the floor, there was a crunch of broken glass under my coat, and I rolled toward Jane as she pulled me under the bed.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Oh, you know,” she said, with a nervous smile. “Just busy cowering.”
“Mind if I join you in a quick cower?”
Jane laughed, letting out some of her nerves. “Be my guest.”
I took a moment to catch my breath, and then rolled onto my stomach, putting my back against the bottom of the sturdy old bed frame. “We stay here too long, I think we’re going to die.”
I pressed up on the bed, driving the headboard down into the ground and lifting the feet of it.
“I hate antiques,” Jane said, grunting as she joined me in pushing up the bed. “So damned heavy.”
“But sturdy,” I reminded her, hoisting the bed into a protective wall position with one last burst of survival adrenaline. “Good for cover. Good for living.” I quickly told Jane everything about the lovers’ triangle I had witnessed in my vision.
“Maybe the haunting is totemistic,” Jane offered when I was done.
I looked over at her, the word barely registering in my mind.
Jane shrugged. “I’ve been reading up on totems in Arcana,” she said. “Objects embedded with ritualistic properties. Think about it. You got your reading off the energy imbued in that chair, hon. Her pain is wrapped up in that. What if the chair is the object holding her here?”
It made sense, and I could have kissed her for suggesting it. Destroy the chair, release the spirit. I felt around my inside coat pocket, searching for something but coming up empty-handed.
“Damn,” I said. “No good. Most of my tricks are in my regular work coat.”
I looked down at the bag Jane wore strapped over one of her shoulders. “Please tell me you have more than makeup in there?”
Jane nodded. “I still have some bits of my D.E.A. welcome kit in my purse,” she said. She pulled out three self-unraveling Mummy Fingers bandages, six rune stones, and a stoppered vial, the same kind Connor used all the time to coerce spirits into submission.
“Perfect,” I said, pointing to the vial. “Run for the chair. Coat the damned thing with it.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what I do best,” I said, “and see how much damage I can take.”
Jane gave me an unsure smile. “Is this something they teach you in Distractions 101?”
“Just make sure you get to the chair,” I said.
Jane nodded, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me. While it was much appreciated, I felt a weird surge of rage and realized that the tattooist’s anger and jealousy were still in control of me, running strong in my head, to the point where Jane’s kiss almost tasted like the betrayal Cassie had caught Jeremy in. I eased Jane back away from me, trying not to push.
Jane didn’t seem to notice, gave me a thumbs-up, and ran off along the outside edge of the room.
I pulled out my retractable bat before running back toward the outer edge of the circle where all the action was taking place. As I went, I made as much noise as I could, slamming my bat into anything and everything. It hurt my soul to bash away at antiques like this, but let’s face it—the room was already half-destroyed from Cassie’s lamp carnage.
The tattooist followed the sound of my progress with her ear cocked, sending more and more lampish destruction my way.
“Go ahead,” I said, stopping at a spot on the edge of the circle opposite the chair. I readied my bat. “Let it all out. I can take it.”
“Oh, can you?” she said, raising her arms up. The woman’s body was shaking now, her chest rising and falling like she had just run a marathon. Her hair rose up in snakelike waves all around her, floating in the air like she was underwater. The tattooist unleashed her full fury at me. Stained glass panels and bulbs shattered all around me. Like mighty Casey at the bat, I swung to deflect each and every item the woman launched at me, but my arms were already tiring.
Across the room, I still didn’t see Jane, but what I did see was a set of drawers moving out toward the old barber’s chair. The hint of a blond ponytail stuck up behind the unit and the sound of my bat crashing away masked its movement. When the drawer was in place, Jane popped up, unstoppered the vial, and coated the chair.
“Step away,” I called out to Jane and ran for the chair. The tattooist followed the sound of me scrabbling across the broken glass and sent her assault after me, which was what I wanted. As I slipped behind the chair, one of the Tiffany floor lamps headed straight for me and I brought my bat down hard on its still-glowing light. It smashed apart, the red-hot filament falling into the chair, which in turn ignited the liquid. The chair went up like a dried-out Christmas tree mid-February.
“No!” the tattooist screamed out, all of her focus turning from me back to the chair. She ran to the already burning mess and threw herself into it, the flames rising up all around her, not even affecting her ghostly form.
A wave of heat washed over me, forcing me to back away. The tattooist raised her arms, crying out as her chair went up in flames. Her cries echoed out, and then faded as her spirit did the same. The second she vanished, the sound of wrenching metal came from above and the entire floating structure came crashing down on top of me, the room going dark except for several small fires that broke out from the fall. There wasn’t time to move or dive for cover and I was driven to the ground, the thunder of it all deafening me.
As I lay pinned on the floor, the store’s sprinkler system kicked and I welcomed the coolness. It was actually refreshing as I spent the next few minutes watching the room descend back into darkness and figuring out how to untangle myself from the treacherous twists of metal and shards of glass. When I finally was able to stand, the pile of broken lamps was waist deep.
Jane groaned nearby.
“You okay?” I called out.
“My hair is full of broken glass,” Jane said somewhere off to my left, “but other than that, yeah. I feel like fiberglass insulation.” The sounds of her freeing herself filled the room with a metallic clatter and more crunching of broken glass.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I took in all the carnage around me while I tried to calm my racing heart, but then I realized I wasn’t calming. Part of me was still full of the tattooist’s anger and jealousy. It wouldn’t shake off, clouding my mind instead.
Jane knocked on something wooden, hollow, but I was too caught up in trying to recover myself that I didn’t bother to look over at her. I assumed she was still behind the dresser that she had snuck out behind before everything fell on us.
“Not only is it sturdy for defense against Tiffany lamps,” she said, “but it would look lovely in your bedroom, just underneath the windows along the left side. Don’t you think?”
I fought to clear my head, focusing on the antiques all around the room to bring me back to reality. The damage around us was incalculable. I tried coming up with a number in my head to price it all, but I couldn’t even begin.
“Simon. . . ?”
Jane’s uncertain tone brought me out of my thoughts. I turned toward where she stood, still behind the low set of dark wooden drawers. Now that I had a moment to look them over, they were lovely with slim, tapered legs and a sleek, mid-Century Modern look to them.
“What?” I asked, perhaps too sharp, but I couldn’t help it with the distraction of Cassie’s raw anger and emotions upon me still.