“I’ve met people like you before. I’ve even worked with a few…”
She wouldn’t stop staring at me. She was getting too brave.
I pulled the K-bar.
She saw the blood on it.
That shut her up.
“Don’t waste my time,” I said. “I know your game. I’m all done playing it. You can’t give me the answers I came for. But you can give me some answers I need.”
She put down her knife and took a step backward, her hands raised conciliatorily. “I know you don’t believe me. I know you think I’m a fraud. But I can help you if you let me. I do have powers. Maybe not the powers I’ve claimed, but if you’ll give me a chance I’m sure I can tell you anything you want to know.”
Her eyes locked with mine. There was a door behind her. It stood open. Less than five feet separated us, but she was on the other side of that rolling butcher’s block.
I shoved it out of the way and it crashed into the sink, spilling sliced mushrooms and red peppers and basil. Janice turned to run but I caught a handful of her long blonde hair and stopped her cold.
One pull and she was on the floor at my feet. Before she could take a breath, the K-bar blade was against her throat.
Words crossed my tongue like ice. “If you’re not a fraud, then you can call up Circe Whistler’s ghost.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I want to talk to Circe’s ghost. I need to talk to her. If you’re not a fraud, you conjure her up, and you do it now.”
“I… I can’t do that. What you want is impossib-”
“Then you’re a liar.” The blade nicked her skin. “And I’ve got no use for a liar.”
“Wait! You’ve got to believe me! I swear that I can help you if you just give me a chance!”
I’d heard the desperate sound of begging before…and the sound of empty promises. Still, I hesitated. Maybe because this was about the little girl. Maybe I just wanted to give her every chance I could, no matter how slim.
Janice’s fingers brushed my left hand, the hand that held the knife. But she didn’t try to push the blade away.
Instead, she reached for it.
Gripped it. The blade sliced her skin silently-just a shallow cut-but deep enough so that I heard the gentle patter of blood on the scarred linoleum floor.
Janice stared at me.
Her eyes held more secrets than they had a moment before.
“The first one was a long time ago, in Reno,” she began. “You still felt bad about it in those days. His name was Eddie Budz, and he was a blackjack dealer with a bad habit of pocketing chips. You stabbed him six times and he painted you red before he fell. After that, you learned to take them from behind. You killed in Baltimore and Austin and Denver. You spilled blood on Florida sand, and on the snow-blanketed Canadian prairie, and on the sharp black lava of Hawaii.”
Janice kept on talking. I thought she’d never stop.
She was telling the truth, of course.
“The last one was in Los Cabos.” She eyed me hard now, making me pay for my disdain. “But of course, I already know all about him. My gifts aren’t necessary to relate that little tale. Diabolos Whistler was alone, except for those mummies stacked in his library. You came up from behind and stabbed him just above the first vertebra. He gasped a little bit. Then he started mewling-”
“That’s enough.” I pulled her fingers off the blade. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“Ask me anything,” she said. “If this knife was involved, I can give you an answer.”
“Yesterday I found my knife in Circe Whistler’s chest. Someone stabbed her and skinned her alive. I didn’t do it. I need you to tell me who did.”
“I can tell you many things, but I can’t tell you who killed Circe Whistler.”
“You can,” I said. “And you will.”
I raised the K-bar.
A familiar voice behind me: “Drop the knife, Mr. Saunders. For once, Janice is telling the truth.”
The voice raised gooseflesh on my neck, but I didn’t drop the knife. I pivoted fast, catching Janice in a headlock with the blade pressed to her throat.
“Janice can’t tell you about my murder,” Circe said. “You see, I’m not dead.”
Unfortunately, she was right. Diabolos Whistler’s daughter stepped toward me, and she wasn’t a ghost by any stretch of the imagination. Circe was very much alive. Her strong arms were outstretched, and she followed a Colt Python that filled her black-nailed hands.
“You’re full of surprises,” I said.
“So are you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You think I’m going to miss an interview with CNN? Satan himself wouldn’t miss that.”
I had to laugh. That was why Janice had revealed the true nature of her powers. It was a stall. She wasn’t trying to help me. She was waiting for Circe to bail her out.
“You really had me fooled,” I said. “I really thought that you were dead. Who was the corpse, anyway? One of your doubles?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll do any more of your homework for you, Mr. Saunders.”
“Fair’s fair,” I said. “But I really could use the help. I get the feeling that I’m a little out of my league with you.”
“Don’t sell yourself short-you surprised me, too. And you caused me a lot of trouble. You weren’t supposed to run.”
“Sorry I wasn’t more cooperative.” I angled toward the open door. “Maybe you should have filled me in on your plan. Then I would have known just what to do.”
“All you had to do was die.” Circe smiled. “And it’s not too late for that.”
Circe’s gun was five feet from my face.
I figured she knew what to do with it.
I pulled Janice’s head closer to mine as I stepped through the open doorway.
“Circe,” Janice begged. “Listen to him. Give him a chance to tell you what he wants-”
I tugged her hair and we went back another step. The adjoining room was small and dark, its lone window draped with spiderwebs and a half-dozen fat black arachnids. Crammed with boxes and bookshelves, this was obviously a storage area. I hadn’t spotted a door yet, but I hoped I’d see one soon. I didn’t like the idea of going out through the window with all those damn spiders Circe cocked her pistol.
“No!” Janice said. “Oh, Circe…please don’t shoot!”
“Shut up,” Circe said.
Janice squirmed. I yanked her hair.
“Move again and I’ll cut your head off,” I warned.
Janice whimpered.
“She’s having a really bad day,” Circe said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It doesn’t seem fair. We should settle this. Just the two of us.”
“That suits me.” Circe lowered the gun. “It could be I’m wrong. Maybe we can work it out. Like you say: just the two of us.”
As soon as she stopped talking, I knew that wasn’t what she wanted at all. Something stirred behind me. Instantly, I knew Circe had taken a page from Janice’s book. She was stalling me, too.
She didn’t want to talk. She wanted me dead.
Some things never change.
I pushed Janice into the kitchen and whirled just in time to see Spider Ripley raising a pistol in the darkened storeroom. He was wedged in behind a stack of boxes but that didn’t stop me.
The K-bar gleamed as I went for him. Ripley elbowed a couple boxes in my direction and managed to dodge as the blade came down for the wrist of his gun hand. I was in close and his gun was aimed at the floor. There was no way he could get a shot off, but that didn’t mean he was helpless. Ripley slammed an elbow into my head and knocked me off balance. Then he followed through with his knee, catching me hard in the belly, and I dropped my knife as I stumbled backward.
I slammed into a bookcase. Books rained down on me as the case rocked back and hit the far wall. Then it fell forward, just as Spider got a shot off. The bullet tore through a paperback and into the wall as I leapt at Ripley, and the bookcase continued forward and caught the door that led to the kitchen. The door slammed closed and we were in the dark then and I hit Spider hard, both of us plowing into the near wall as the bookcase crashed to the floor and blocked the doorway.