Book Two, Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

The ramshackle old house stood with its front door hanging open, the entryway somehow as dark as a cave even though it was broad daylight outside. Looking at it, a chill ran down Justin’s spine, and the invisible fur above it stood on end.

“This is it?” he asked.

Vixen nodded. “Santa himself provided the location the moment the attack took place. That was two days ago now, so…”

“So it might not be the latest one,” Lena said grimly.

Vixen nodded, and Justin breathed in deep, steeling his nerves. There was no telling what would be waiting for them in there. A corpse, probably. Clues, hopefully. Mari Lwyd herself, if they were extremely unlucky.

“Willow, take Vixen,” he said, handing the wheelchair off to her. He began to walk toward the house.

“Justin, be careful!” Willow called after him.

For a split second, Justin’s heart leaped. She cares about me! But then the suffocating dread of what he was about to do settled over him like a soaking wet, freezing cold blanket.

A figure appeared beside him, and he looked down to see Lena by his side. She was still in her human disguise, but her staff was in her hands and a dangerous gleam was in her eye. Suddenly, Justin almost hoped Mari Lwyd was waiting for them in there. If she was, that skull-faced expletive would be begging Santa to bring her a big gift wrapped box of mercy for Christmas.

They reached the doorway, paused, then nodded to each other and stepped through the unnaturally dark doorway. The temperature immediately seemed to drop twenty degrees. Justin could vaguely see Lena standing in front of him with her staff at the ready, but he already knew that if anything was waiting for them in that darkness, they wouldn’t even know it was there until it was too late.

Running his hand along the wall, Justin searched until…yes! He flipped the light switch, and—

“Partridge in a pear tree!” Lena cursed, hastily backpedaling away from the thing on the floor. Justin instinctively tried to take off, but only ended up crashing into the ceiling. His antlers gouged a pair of holes directly above him, and he had to yank himself free, sending bits of plaster raining down on him and Lena. The sound of hoofsteps and spinning wheels came from behind him, and he turned to see the others racing into the house behind them.

“What is it?” Vixen demanded. “What did you…oh.”

With his heart still hammering in his chest, Justin forced himself to land next to Willow and Vixen. Lena was standing at the front of the group, stubbornly pretending that the last few seconds had never happened, even though her face was practically glowing red. Justin took a few seconds to catch his breath, and then finally got his first good look at the thing that had startled them so badly.

His heart immediately sank into his stomach.

A man—Justin guessed he was in his mid-twenties—was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling with an expression of horror etched permanently onto his face. For a moment Justin let himself hope that he was still alive, but then he saw the man’s chest—and the hole that had been torn out of it. Flecks of dried blood covered his shirt and the floor around him. And inside that hole was…nothing. A dark, fist-sized void. It almost looked…

Justin had to turn away before he lost the nutrient bar Vixen had given him on their way here.

“Vixen,” Willow asked, her voice shaking. “Is it…”

“Yes,” the Elder answered. Her voice was as cold as ice and as sharp as a razor. “This is Mari Lwyd’s work. She played her game, he lost, and she came inside and ate his heart.”

Lena gripped her staff tighter, and Moryta fingered the twin daggers she had sheathed at her waist.

“She’s not here,” Vixen said, noticing their tension. “If she was, she would have attacked the moment Justin and Lena set foot inside the house.”

“So…what do we do now?” Justin asked. If Mari Lwyd had already left, then there was no point in hanging around here any longer, was there? He did his best not to look at the corpse, but the mere knowledge that it was there, as cool as a side of beef left in the refrigerator, made his skin crawl.

“Look for clues,” Vixen answered. “Anything that will give us an idea where she’s headed next.”

Oh, tannenbaum, Justin thought, bracing for another wave of nausea as he forced himself to look at the corpse. He and Willow stepped forward at the same time, kneeling down on opposite sides of the victim’s unmoving form. He began to reach toward him, dreading the moment his fingers would first make contact…and then paused. What was he supposed to be looking for? Clues, Vixen had oh-so-unhelpfully said, but what on Earth was that supposed to mean? Did she think Mari Lwyd was going to be courteous enough to leave a note telling them where and when she was going to strike next?

There was a rustle of cloth, and Justin realized that while he had been brooding, Willow had already gotten to work, her hands delicately reaching into the man’s denim jacket to search for inner pockets. Kicking himself mentally, Justin forced his feelings to one side and reached for the man’s pants pockets. The right pocket had a set of car keys. The left pocket, he noted with surprise, had been turned inside out, but there was nothing nearby to indicate what may have been inside.

Grimacing, Justin put one hand on the dead man’s shoulder and lifted him a few inches off the floor so that he could grab his wallet out of his back pocket. Something about that made his insides squirm even harder than before, and he quickly set the man back down.

“I’m not robbing you,” he whispered. “I’ll give it right back.”

Opening the wallet up, Justin pulled out the man’s driver’s license. His eyes immediately flicked to the name that was printed in the…

He froze.

“Guys?” he asked, panic beginning to rise up inside of him.

Wheels squeaked against the floor as Vixen hurried over as fast as she could push herself. “What is it? What did you find?”

“Didn’t Charlie say something about having a grandson?”

“I think so,” Willow agreed. “He said he was sick and wasn’t going to make it for Thanksgiving, right?”

The driver’s license shook in Justin’s hand. “Do you remember what he said his name was?”

“Um…Shawn, wasn’t it?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t Shane?”

Willow shrugged. “It might have been. Why…”

Willow and Vixen’s eyes both widened in realization a split second before Justin turned the license around to show them Shane Dawson’s name and picture. A chill seemed to sweep through the room as the truth of the matter washed over them.

“Of all the people in Derby Mill she could have attacked,” Lena finally said, “he just happened to be related to the person who put us up for the night? That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“Mari Lwyd is a lot of things,” Vixen said slowly, “but she can’t see the future. And even if she could, there’s no conceivable way she could have led us to Charlie without us even having met her yet. As unlikely as it may seem, I have to think that it must be a coincidence.”

“That’s not what’s important right now!” Justin shouted, springing to his hooves. “If Mari Lwyd targeted Charlie’s family once, how do we know she isn’t going to do it again? How do we know that Mari Lwyd isn’t there right now?”

“Justin—” Vixen began, but in his panic, Justin spoke right over her.

“Lucas is still there!” He turned to race for the door. “We have to get back before—”

A hand grabbed him by his shirt collar with surprising strength, stopping him in his tracks.

“Justin, you need to calm down and think!” Vixen shouted. “What have I been telling you all this time? Mari Lwyd doesn’t attack during the daytime!”

She let him go, and Justin spun to face them. “That doesn’t mean she won’t attack tonight! We have to warn them before it’s too late!”

“Justin, please!” Willow pleaded. Justin froze, the wide eyed look she was giving him piercing straight through the hurricane of terror that was blowing inside him. “This happened two days ago. Mari Lwyd attacks people on a nightly basis. If she were going to go after Charlie and Joyce, she would have done it last night. We were all there last night, and nothing happened. You saw it yourself, Charlie and Joyce are perfectly fine and busy making Thanksgiving dinner. Nobody is in any danger!”

Her words were like a bucket of ice water on a raging fire. Justin put his hand on the wall, lightheaded from his panic. Stepping over the corpse, Willow walked over and wrapped her arms around him.

“You’re a good friend,” she said, pressing herself against him. “There’s nobody in Val Luminara who’s braver and more loyal than you are. But you need to calm down and think about this before you go flying across a human town in broad daylight, okay?”

Justin’s face was burning now from their sudden closeness, but he didn’t push her away. But neither did he embrace her back. He wanted to—mistletoe and holly, how he wanted to! But he was frozen like…well, like a deer in someone’s headlights.

Do it! he commanded himself. Move! Say it! Now’s your chance, so stop standing there like an idiot and—

Too late. Willow pulled away, a touch of disappointment in her eyes, and turned back to the corpse. Justin’s heart was racing again, but it was quickly slowing down.

Idiot! he screamed at himself inside his head. Have your antlers grown down into your brain?

“If Mari Lwyd isn’t going after Charlie, then that leaves us right where we were before,” Moryta finally said. “How are we going to find her?”

Nobody answered. A pit formed in Justin’s stomach, and he walked over to kneel above Shane’s corpse again. Something about this picture wasn’t right—besides the fact that he was staring at a dead person whose heart had been ripped out. But what was it?

Again, his eyes fell on Shane’s left pocket. Inside out. Shane had either taken something out of it, or something had fallen out of it. But…

Where’s the blood?

Justin leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. There was blood all over Shane’s body, an obvious side effect of having his heart pulled from his chest. There was even blood spattered on his pants—but there wasn’t any on his inside out pocket.

That meant something. Whatever had been in his pocket had been taken out after he’d been killed, or else there would be blood on the bright white fabric. And if he had been dead, he obviously hadn’t taken it out of his pocket himself. Justin looked around, but didn’t see anything on the floor nearby. So it hadn’t fallen out when he’d collapsed, either. That meant that it had been taken out of his pocket by someone else—and the only other “person” who had been in here was Mari Lwyd.

“Guys, spread out,” he said, casting his eyes around the dingy living room. “Check the floor. Look for anything that shouldn’t be there!”

Mari Lwyd had taken something out of Shane’s pocket. The idea of Krampus’ second-in-command resorting to petty pickpocketing was almost funny, in a twisted sort of way. If Lucas had been here, he’d have probably at least chuckled at it. Justin, however, was too fixated on the question it presented to even crack a smirk. Mari Lwyd had stolen something from Shane—but what?

“Hey, over here!” Moryta suddenly said, and Justin saw her reaching beneath the couch to retrieve something. It was a phone.

“Let me see!” Justin said, taking it from her. The screen lit up, and he swiped his finger across to unlock it. Luckily, the battery had lasted through the last couple days, and Shane hadn’t used a screen lock. The phone’s voicemail app appeared. There were two new messages, but it was already open to one that…Justin checked the date…had arrived a little after six in the evening two days ago. The caller was listed as Boss Ed.

Justin pressed play.

“Hey, Shane, it’s Ed,” the recording said. “Sorry to call you this late…again…but I just wanted to let you know that Frank Harrison is asking us to deliver the product straight to his house instead of his shop. The address is 7345 Windstone Lane. You’ll need to change his address in the system before the deliveries go out tomorrow morning. I’d do it myself, but I forgot how. Anyway, yeah, I’ll see you at work.”

The voicemail ended, and Justin looked at the others in confusion—but not nearly as confusedly as they were looking at him.

“What were we supposed to get from that?” Lena finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Justin admitted, “but it must be important somehow. Mari Lwyd wouldn’t have taken Shane’s phone and listened to his voicemail for no reason. Why, though? What part of that message would have meant something to—”

“The address!” Willow exclaimed.

Vixen rotated her chair to face the doe. “What? What about the address?”

“We didn’t know how Mari Lwyd was choosing her victims!” she explained, her words spilling over each other in her haste to get it all out. “What if this is it? What if she uses something at her last victim’s house to choose her next victim?”

“Why would she do that?” Lena asked. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of people out there to choose from. That sounds like she’d be handicapping herself for no reason.”

“”No, no, it makes sense!” Vixen insisted, to Justin’s surprise. “Mari Lwyd is a strange creature, in all senses of the word. In another country, she’d probably have been called one of the fae. They aren’t bound by the same laws of nature we are. That makes them free to move in ways we can’t, but they also have limitations we don’t.”

“Like how vampires can’t enter a house if they aren’t invited?” Justin guessed.

“Exactly!” Vixen was growing excited now, the gleam of a predator on the hunt shining in her eyes. “Somebody get me a map! We need to find 7345 Windstone Lane!”