The room had a couple of broken pieces of office furniture and a strong smell of mice, but nothing that looked even remotely ghostly. One by one I checked my detectors and got no reading. Carlos stood in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot as I dictated a few notes on what I was seeing and feeling (cold, and a distinct aversion to mice) to my voice recorder.
I glanced at my watch and realized I had only seven minutes left to examine the rest of the building. I gnawed my lip for a minute, trying to decide what to do. I really didn't want to be left alone in the building, but I did want to try a Summoning after my success earlier this evening. The question was, how much did I want it? I took a deep breath and reminded myself that although I'd seen lots of strange things in my time—not the least of which was a three-legged semitransparent cat currently sleeping in my hotel room—at no time had I ever felt physically threatened. I was a Summoner, after all. I had wards. I was in control, and no one could take that from me. I traced a protection symbol in front of me and said, "Urn… Carlos, why don't you go on to this séance thingy you want to see? I'll close up here when I'm done."
I peeked at him through the screen of my hair. He looked hesitant for as long as it took him to realize that the sooner he left, the sooner he'd be warm. "If you're sure you don't mind being here by yourself?" He looked around and only just suppressed a shudder.
"No, no problem. I don't mind these sorts of places. They're usually very peaceful." They were until I'd successfully Summoned my first ghost, that was. My palms prickled at the thought of what I might accomplish in a really haunted building like this. "If you just set the keys next to my bag, I'll lock up on my way out, and drop the keys by your office in the morning."
He hesitated for a moment. "You're sure?"
I swallowed hard and waved him away without looking at him. "Absolutely. I'm just going to try my hand at a spot of Summoning; then I'll check out the rest of the rooms. It's only the top floor that's supposed to be active, yes?"
"That's right."
"Okay, then, I'll check out these rooms, then toddle back to my hotel. Have a nice séance."
He was gone before the words left my lips. I sat quietly and listened to the sound of his footsteps as they retreated down the stairs, then the faint percussion of the back door closing behind him. I took an admittedly shaky breath, looking around the room. I was alone. By myself. In a building that was supposed to be one of the most haunted places in London.
Sometimes I'm not very bright.
An hour later I rose from where I had been kneeling in the room supposedly haunted by a murdered pig farmer. My leg was stiff and sore from sitting on hard wooden floors, my fingers were almost numb with cold despite my gloves, and I had lost all feeling in my nose.
"So much for one of London's most haunted buildings," I said sourly to the empty room as I gathered up my equipment and started for the stairs. The feeling of uneasiness that had first claimed me when Carlos left hadn't dissipated, but I haven't fought for control of my life to let a little thing like fear rule me. So even though the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end the entire time I checked out the upper rooms, I gritted my teeth and conducted four Summonings, none of which brought me anything more than a desire for a thermos of hot coffee and a really big piece of key lime pie.
"And there's no chance of either materializing in this place," I said aloud as I limped heavily down the stairs. My voice echoed strangely as it reached the second floor. I got a severe case of goose bumps, but nothing showed up on either of the two detectors I held, or on the more efficient scanner that made up my personal sensitivity to otherworldly happenings. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and held my breath, opening myself up to the building, imagining myself slowly walking through the rooms. There was nothing on this floor that disturbed me, and nothing on the ground floor below it, but deeper in the earth, in the basement, there was a shadowed area that made me shiver uncontrollably. I couldn't penetrate the darkness to determine what was there, but I could feel its awareness, a sense of blackness that went beyond the mere absence of color.
Something soulless was down there.
And whatever it was, it knew I was here.
Chapter Two
"Okay, Allie, do not panic. This is exactly what you've been waiting for," I told myself as I fought to keep my feet from racing down the stairs and out the door. "This is what you studied for, what you swore you could do when Anton hired you. This is your job. Failure is not an option. You know what'll happen if you don't investigate this!"
Oh, I knew. Everything I'd worked the last seven years for, every bruise I'd suffered, every small success from learning to balance a checkbook to getting a job, every triumph over the monster who had dominated my life would be dismissed, eradicated, wiped out, and I'd be the failure that Timothy so often screamed I was. Not good for anything, too stupid to ever survive on my own.
A freak.
I lifted my head and squared my shoulders, holding my bag close to me as I slowly walked down the stairs. There was nothing on this earth that could frighten me as much as the life I had once been trapped in; if I was strong enough to leave an abusive husband, I was strong enough to face a little sentient darkness.
I held that thought until I started down the stairs to the basement. Then all sorts of warning bells and whistles went off in my head, not to mention the voice of sanity, which was screaming to hell with my honor; I needed to get out of there right then, before whatever was behind the door at the bottom of the stairs got me.
A cold wave of sheer and utter terror washed over me, stopping me dead on the middle of the stairs, my feet refusing to move anymore, my hand gripping the dusty banister in a manner that would take a crowbar to release it. I couldn't breathe, so oppressive was the blackness beyond the door. I couldn't swallow, I couldn't blink, and I seriously doubted if my heart was beating. A faint noise, a distant, soft, muffled beat from the room throbbed along the edge of my awareness.
"Heartbeat," I croaked through lips numb with fear, then instantly regretted the word as I felt the darkness beyond gathering itself, turning its attention to me. "Oh, crap," I whispered, torn between the need to escape, and the knowledge that I would fail my life's calling if I didn't confront what was in that room.
My heart suddenly resumed beating, racing now, making me dizzy with the sudden flow of blood to what passed for my brain. I was light-headed and disoriented, but suddenly the choice was made.
I would resist the urge to flee danger—it's a powerful instinct, and a difficult one to deny. I used my free hand to pry my fingers from the banister, and whimpered ever so softly as I shifted my legs until they took a step down.
"One," I counted in a voice so soft that even a feather hitting the ground would drown it out. I took another step down. "Two. Three left to go. Three. Two left."
My stomach roiled, making me regret drinking the water earlier. "Four. One more, Allie. You can do it."
My breath got caught up in a strange panting sort of rhythm, which I used to distract that part of my brain screaming at me to flee. I made it down the last step, and stood in front of the closed door.
I could feel whatever was beyond the door now, without even trying to open myself up to it. In fact, I did just the opposite, throwing up as many barriers between my mind and the thing as I could create. It didn't help much. Inside the room I could feel a howling wind of torment, anguish, pain so deep it had no beginning and no ending. And everywhere there was darkness, blackness, an absolute void of light. Hopelessness filled that room, and reminded me of the antique maps where cartographers had penned images of monstrous sea creatures with the notation that "Here be dragons."