“Anymore clues as to who is the murderer of your show?” Echo asked Jude, and he shook his head. I’d managed to talk to a few of the ghosts before the Hero Crew arrived, and I had my suspicion as to who the killer was but I needed more evidence before I made my thoughts known.
“We need to find that ghost. Put a band-aid on the gates if we can. Do we know how to repair it permanently, and fix this whole mess?” Phillip asked.
I rubbed my thumb against Jude’s hand tenderly.
“I have to die on Halloween, and everything will be fixed.” Jude stood tall, confident even, but I sensed the power beneath him pulse with fear.
“Is there a way we can do it that doesn’t involve you dying?” Esme spoke for the first time, and I watched as her fingers drifted toward the golden vein of her power on her arm. She had the gift of healing, but every time she used it, she grew closer to her own death.
“The gates sealed with thirty years blood paid, a deathly promise be made, until death do you bind shall the curse fade. That’s what my witch who knows the future said. She promises that the Mallory curse will end with me. My ghosts and I made a deal that they will give me one hell of a last year with the performances and then I’ll take them with me. A deathly promise.”
When he said it like that, a little warning ran in my thoughts. His words didn’t sound right. There was something more to the saying, something we hadn’t thought of or were blind to, like those three cards Madam Tully gave me. I needed more information.
“Interesting. I still vote we find a way for you to not die. You’re one of us now.” Lilith stopped dancing and casually sat on Leon’s lap.
“I didn’t say I was—” Jude started to speak.
“Welcome to the hero family, Jude. We are so honored to have you! We’ll send the welcome packet in the mail soon.” Lilith clapped and everyone smiled at her theatrics.
“I’d just go with it.” I leaned in and whispered against his neck, then he shook his head slightly.
“Can we interview the ghosts today, maybe find out some history of your performers?” Echo was ready to get on with the investigation and so was I. The answers to preventing his death were right in front of me. I needed to find them.
“I’d like to talk with your witch, if that’s OK.” Asher stood. One of us would have to go with him to Madam Tully, and the other would have to help Echo with the interrogations since we were the only two in the room who could communicate with the dead.
“Yeah, she’d enjoy some company. Selene, you take Asher, and I’ll start bringing in some of my performers. If anyone doesn’t want to stay, I think this meeting can be over. We will try to bind the gates and keep what is happening in Seahill from reaching the rest of the world. Asher and Madam Tully might be able to come up with a way for you all to fight back a ghost, but we’ll see. Let’s monitor the situation, and hopefully we can fix it before it gets out of hand.” Jude talked to them like a leader, and they all responded with nods of agreement to his words.
“Let’s go talk to some dead folks.” I smiled and untangled my hand from Jude’s, ready to get the truth and help solve this case.
Chapter Twenty- Seven
Selene
I stared at my notes from the interrogations, and Madam Tully’s discussion with Asher that covered my dining table. Echo, Jude, Asher, Rose, Draco, and I talked to the performers until the sun crested over the graveyard behind the mansion. History. So much history weaved between the crew and Jude’s family. These people had been stuck there for so long, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out many of them were killing people for the sport of something to do. A little fun in their boring lives.
The muscles around my eyes ached from focusing intently on the handwriting before me. Some of the souls were good, just people caught in a tragic story, while others weren’t always on the right side of the moral border when they were alive. Ghosts loved to gossip. Lucy was the circus slut. She slept with everyone she could and tempted young men into leaving their families to join her on the road, only to move on to the next guy she found interesting. A fight starter, one of the trapeze artists called her, while giving me all the juicy details about each performer.
The little boy who had tried to spook me with the candelabra had been abandoned on the road, so he was given the job of caretaker over the baby elephant. He was eight years old and named Caleb. His pet he’d given the name of Titan. Everyone helped raised him the two years before the incident with Jude’s great-great-grandfather. The elephant chose to stay with his friend, instead of moving on to wherever animals go. It was the same for the tiger, who belonged to a woman named Joselyn, who was married to the original ringleader. He’d left before the curse took everyone down with them. He thought that performing for the rich folk at the mansion was beneath their talents. According to Joselyn, he not only left them before the show, but ran off with the future-telling gypsy. Maybe the gypsy had known what would happen, or maybe they just wanted a life together away from the circus.
Joselyn took over from then and never performed. She kept everyone in line. Draco spoke with her, through me, and decided they were similar in personality. Therefore she wasn’t the killer. I believed him. She seemed tired of being in the state of waiting. All she wanted was to move on. Most of them wanted that. Staying on Earth after death sounded fun at first, especially those who feared death, but after a few years of not truly living, dying got old.
Rudy, the friend who had been upset about Lucy not choosing him for a bedmate, was a character. He’d been a floater in the circus before, the type of man who could do anything. His bright smile lit up the room, and his charismatic personality drew everyone toward him naturally. But I could see his issue with Lucy causing a rift in the group. He was stuck in the friend zone, forever longing to be more in her eyes. While he wasn’t my top suspect, I couldn’t cross his name off my list. He had an underlying monster hiding behind that smile. Rose confirmed it to be jealousy. Jealous of what, though? Could have been the love he saw between Rose and Draco or that Echo turned into a viper to see if she could pick up a different heat signature than a warm-bodied person.
Listening to Madam Tully and Asher gave me a headache. They talked about a binding spell for the gate. Both seemed confident it could work. Although it would be a temporary fix, it could give us the time to break the curse and restore the balance between the living and the dead. However, she didn’t give me any more hints as to how I could help Jude with his fate.
“You already have the truth. It’s all within you.” She pulled me into a tight embrace before telling us to go join the others.
It had been hours since I had left the mansion, and all I’d managed to decipher from the mess on my table was that I was in way over my head. My focus drifted toward the three cards I’d placed near Madam Tully’s notes. I wished I understood the secrets they held for the situation at hand. The clock continued to tick while we searched frantically for a way to end the curse and find a killer. Halloween was in one week and then time would be up. I’d spent nearly every night with Jude, and my days working on ferreting out the truth of his world. He’d had a show go on without someone dying, which made his success grow further. I loved seeing his smiling face from the crowd’s applause. He lived for entertaining the masses and he was very good at it. But despite the cease of murders at his show, unexplained crimes in Seahill had skyrocketed. The Hero Society tried their best to contain the souls, but they didn’t have the right gifts to really deal with a ghost.
A welcomed knock on my door gave me the excuse to walk away from my notes. I needed a breather, and talking to someone else would be nice for a change. Jude was supposed to be dropping by soon, so I opened the door without even looking to see who stood on the other side. I should have thought about that decision more methodically.
Hands clamped over my mouth as an arm banded around my waist, pulling me into my home as I thrashed for my life.
“I’m gonna take my hand off you, and you’re not gonna scream. Understood?”
The hand disappeared and I whirled around to see Rudy standing in my living room, the faint shimmering of his ghostly soul bouncing off my pale green walls.
“How the hell are you here? Why are you here?” The barely contained anger in my voice made Rudy’s expression tense, but he held his ground.
