In Too Deep

2

The old Zander place definitely fit the classic image of a haunted house, Isabella thought. A three-story stone monstrosity from the early 1900s, it hunkered like some great, brooding gargoyle on the cliffs above a skeletal beach.

She brought the Mini Cooper to a halt in the drive and contemplated the weathered mansion. She was still not certain why she had felt compelled to take the case. Fallon was right. J&J was a for-real psychic investigation agency. The firm had enough to do handling the weird Nightshade conspiracy that obsessed Fallon, as well as the routine jobs commissioned by members of the Arcane Society. The agency did not need to take on Lost Dogs and Haunted Houses cases.

But her intuition had kicked in after talking to Norma Spaulding on the phone. The familiar shiver of awareness and the compulsion to find that which was hidden had only grown more fierce in the past twenty-four hours. Now, looking at the old house, she knew that there was something important inside, something that needed to be found.

A shiver of awareness ghosted her nerves. She slipped into her other senses. The house was enveloped in screaming cold fog. Ice crystals shimmered in the mist.

The paranormal light that swirled around the mansion was very different from the fog she had perceived in Scargill Cove a month ago when she had walked into town late on a rainy night. The driver of the truck who had picked her up outside Point Arena had driven her north on Highway One, past Mendocino, had let her out at a gas station. She had walked the rest of the way to the Cove, following the faint sheen of energy.

It had been a long hike, but the closer she got to the tiny town tucked away in the forgotten little cove, the brighter the eerie fog had become. It told her that she was going in the right direction. It was after midnight when she finally reached the heart of the community.

The town had been enveloped in the other kind of fog, the damp, gray stuff that rolled in off the ocean. Every window, save one, was dark. The single window that was illuminated was on the second floor of a building directly across from the cafe. The light in that window glowed with the luminous aura of a computer screen. The paranormal fog that wreathed the upper level of the building was infused with power and heat. It was a place filled with secrets.

She walked close and aimed her flashlight at the name on the front door. JONES & JONES.

She switched off the flashlight and stood there in the fogbound street for a long time wondering if she should knock. Before she could make up her mind, a thin, scraggly-looking man strode briskly toward her out of the shadows of a narrow alley. He did not have a flashlight, but he moved as if he had no difficulty seeing in the dark. His hair and beard were long and unkempt. He wore a heavy, black all-weather coat and a pair of hiking boots. Everything about him spelled homeless man but the coat and the boots looked surprisingly new.

Her senses were still heightened. She could see that the man was enveloped in a lot of fog but she did not sense any threat.

"You're n-new here," he said. His voice was hoarse and he stammered a little as if he was not in the habit of speech. "You'll be w-wanting the inn. They'll have a room for you. C-come with me. I'll take you there."

"Thank you," she said.

She allowed him to lead her to the darkened inn. She rang the bell. A light went on in the hall, and a short time later two women in their midfifties, dressed in robes and slippers, opened the door. They smiled when they saw Isabella standing on the porch.

"Yes, of course, we've got a room," one of them said.

"It's January," the second one explained. "We rarely have any guests at this time of year. Come on in."

Isabella turned to thank the stranger in the long black coat, but he was gone.

"Something wrong?" the first woman asked, stepping back to let Isabella into the hall.

"There was a man," Isabella said. "He brought me here."

"Oh, that must have been Walker," the woman said. "He's what you might call our night watchman here in the Cove. My name is Violet, by the way. This is Patty. Come on upstairs and I'll show you to your room. You must be exhausted."

"Shouldn't I register?" Isabella asked.

"We're not real big on the formalities here in the Cove," Patty explained. "You can register in the morning."

Half an hour later, Isabella had crawled into a cozy bed and pulled a down quilt up over her shoulders. For the first time in weeks she slept through the night.

The following day no one remembered to ask her to register as a guest at the inn. She handed over enough cash to cover the first week and then, on Patty's advice, went down the street to see about the gig at the Sunshine. Marge Fuller, the proprietor of the small cafe, immediately put her to work waiting tables and helping out in the kitchen. There were no pesky applications or tax forms to fill out. Isabella knew then that Scargill Cove was her kind of town.

Fallon Jones had walked through the front door of the cafe that same morning and sat down at the counter to order coffee. When she emerged from the kitchen, she had seen him talking to Marge Fuller. A thrill swept through her, igniting all of her senses.

Everything about Fallon Jones whispered of power. He wore the fierce energy like a dark cloak but something in the atmosphere around him told her that he was living on the edge of exhaustion.

A dark, ice-cold fever burned in Fallon Jones. With her senses cranked up, she could see the glacial heat in his eyes. The para-fog swirled around him, indicating deep secrets and mysteries.

He had the hard, unyielding face of a man who lived life on his own terms. He was big, too, tall, broad-shouldered and solid as a boulder. She had never been attracted to physically overpowering men. She stood five-foot-three and three-quarters in her bare feet and she had always preferred males who did not tower over her. Usually when she was around men Fallon's size, her instinct was to put some distance between herself and a creature who could pin her down with one hand.

But with Fallon she felt none of the usual wariness. Instead, she was amazed to discover that when she was near him, she experienced an oddly sensual feminine recklessness. A part of her wanted to challenge him, probably because of the self-discipline that emanated from him in waves. She sensed that his formidable control was his way of handling his equally formidable talent.

All the evidence indicated that he lived an austere, almost ascetic existence, but she was quite certain that he was no monk. There was an inferno burning just beneath the surface. In spite of the way Fallon aroused both her normal and paranormal senses, old habits prevailed. She needed to know what it was that fueled the volcano before she leaped into the fires.

She pushed the thoughts of Fallon Jones aside and sat quietly behind the wheel, studying the Zander mansion through the rain-glazed windshield. If there had ever been any gardens around the big house, they had long ago disintegrated under more than a century's worth of Pacific storms. The grime-darkened windows would surely limit light inside even on a sunny day.

Fallon had a point. Pronouncing the Zander mansion specter-free was probably not going to be enough to convince anyone in his or her right mind to buy such an enormous money pit. But she was committed now. She had assured Norma Spaulding that J&J would take the job.

She closed down her other senses, opened the car door, slung her pack over one shoulder and raised her umbrella. A blast of wind-driven rain caught her squarely in the face.

She fought her way across the drive and up the cracked stone steps. When she reached the shelter of the wide front porch, she collapsed the umbrella and punched the code into the key box. The key tumbled into her gloved hand.

The door opened with a suitably ominous squeak of rusty hinges. She stepped into the shadowy foyer and took the small flashlight out of her pack. Norma had warned that the electricity had been turned off eons ago.

She stood the dripping umbrella in a corner and heightened her talent again. Given the amount of energy that enveloped the old house, she had been expecting to find something of interest inside: an old will, perhaps, or an envelope filled with long-forgotten stock certificates. Maybe even a few pieces of valuable jewelry. But the sight of the glowing river of obsidian-dark mist that roared through the house caught her completely off guard. Shards of black ice fluoresced in the vapor.

She pulled herself together, took a deep breath and followed the terrible luminescence down a shadowy hall. The mist disappeared under a door. She opened the door and looked down a flight of stone steps. A terrible sea of energy flooded the basement.

She hurried back to the foyer, grabbed her umbrella and went outside. She opened the phone that Fallon had given her the first day on the job. The list of contacts was quite short. There was only one number.

Fallon picked up midway through the first ring.

"What the hell is wrong?" he asked. "Flat tire? Out of gas? I knew I shouldn't have let you drive out there in this weather."

"I need backup."

"Huh. Don't tell me you found a ghost."

"There's something here to find," she said. "Not sure what yet, but I don't think it's going to be anything good."

"What makes you say that?"

"There's a basement involved."