Page 12 of Cursed
Seth slid a photo of Pax and Tony across the table. “Pax is the target. Tony’s his partner.”
“I recognize these guys. They come in pretty often for dinner. Tony plays in our live music rotation. In fact, he’s playing tonight. They seem like good folks.” Nash frowned as if thinking. “If it’s a generational sacrifice, how come the target doesn’t realize it?”
Evan extended his senses, getting a feel for Nash’s abilities as a medium.
“You and I are used to seeing ghosts.” Evan met Nash’s gaze and saw the man’s surprise when he took Evan’s meaning. “That makes it a little easier to accept things out of the ordinary. Regular people don’t have that. And the disciples have had a century to learn to cover their tracks. They know how to hide in plain sight and create plausible explanations for the disappearances and deaths. Normal folks don’t think this kind of thing happens except on TV. I wish they were right.” He paused. “I didn’t believe Seth when he first told me and almost got us both killed.”
“I’ve lived in this town all my life and certainly never even caught a whisper of something like that going on. Despite being in the Bible Belt, Savannah has a fairly large and vibrant occult and paranormal community. Witches, mediums, and people with special insight like Caden. This is the South. It’s one ofthose things everyone knows about and no one mentions,” Nash said.
“Talk to people who grew up here for long, and they know someone with a sixth sense or who was a ghost whisperer, or could put a root on someone who vexed them. Officially, the Church disapproves, but in practice, there’s nothing they can do about it,” Nash added.
“Hi, sorry I’m late.” A blue-eyed, dark-haired man walked up to stand beside Nash and laid a hand on his shoulder, a proprietary touch that spoke volumes. Evan noticed the matching gold ring on the newcomer’s left hand. “I’m Caden.”
“I’m Seth, and this is my partner, Evan,” Seth introduced. “Glad you could join us.”
Caden slid in beside Nash. “For what it’s worth, it was a quiet shift at the station tonight.”
“Quiet is good,” Nash clarified. “Caden’s a detective with the Savannah Police Department.”
Cassidy had told them that Nash was a medium and Caden had psychometry, the ability to read the history of objects by touching them. He wondered how Caden had managed his psychic ability with the demands of his job and didn’t envy him the struggle.
“I did some digging on the name you gave me—Paxton Miller,” Caden said. “He’s clean, not even a parking ticket for his food truck. According to official records, his father died of a heart attack while deer hunting, and a search party found his body in the woods. Paxton’s grandfather was killed in a car accident when his truck went into a ravine, and he was found a few days later in the wreckage.”
Nash had gone silent, with a far-away look in his eyes that Evan recognized. Evan felt the presence of the ghosts as well, but sensed that they gathered around Nash, so he let the other medium take the lead.
“My sources say that isn’t the whole truth,” Nash said quietly, referring to the ghosts. “They don’t remember all the details, but they agree that there was a man and a strange light and that their bodies were moved from somewhere else.”
Evan and Seth exchanged a glance. “That’s actually very helpful,” Seth said. “It squares with the idea of the coven and the ritual. They’ve made an effort to cover their tracks. I’m guessing no one questioned the deaths at the time?”
Caden shook his head. “Not from any records I could find. Deer hunting kills a surprising number of hunters as well as deer, and the ravine where the truck was found is infamous around here as a ‘dead man’s curve’ for accidents. If someone was covering up dark deeds, they knew what they were doing.”
“Vernon’s had a century of practice,” Evan said with a touch of bitterness. “And the ritual doesn’t have to leave marks depending on how it’s done.”
“I also checked offline deed records that hadn’t been digitized for the names you gave me,” Caden added, referring to Vernon’s past aliases. “Currently, he owns a restaurant, warehouse, an import/export business, and his home under his name, as well as cars and at least one cargo ship.”
Seth nodded. “We found those. But we could only go back so far online to see if he bought properties in the past under other names and still held onto them. It could be handy to know.”
Evan knew Seth suspected that the coven’s meeting place and the location for the ritual sacrifices were likely to be somewhere Vernon owned or controlled.
“Most of the old properties don’t exist anymore,” Caden said. “Not surprising. Some of them burned. Most were repurposed or torn down. For the ones that were sold, I checked the buyers’ names against the alias list, in case he was selling to his new persona. I only found one property like that, an old turpentine plant from the 1920s.”
“Interesting,” Evan said. “It’s just sat empty since then?”
Caden shrugged. “Apparently. It’s in an out-of-the-way location for current traffic patterns, and there hasn’t been enough development around it to put a premium on the land.”
That sounded like the perfect spot for Vernon and his witches to work their ritual, where they wouldn’t be noticed or disturbed. Magic could hide their coming and going for sporadic gatherings, especially since the big event would have more than a decade between recurrences.
“I just emailed you the address,” Caden said. “Funny thing—I checked for drone or aerial photos and nothing usable showed up. Anything in the search results fuzzed or fizzled in that section over the plant and only in that section.”
Evan sighed. “I’m not surprised. We’ve talked about whether it would make sense to get a drone for surveillance or recon, and that’s the problem—magic isn’t always camera friendly.” He grinned. “But we still bought one and I’m itching to give it a try.”
“There are old photos from about sixty years ago,” Caden said. “I copied them from the archive and emailed them to you. It doesn’t seem like the building itself has changed much. It’s sat empty since it closed in the late 1960s, but it hasn’t fallen into disrepair, so someone is taking care of it.”
“Thank you,” Seth said. “It’s a huge help to have someone familiar with the territory.”
“What’s the plan from here?” Nash asked. Evan noticed that the bar was getting busier, and he knew that Nash wouldn’t be able to spare time for them much longer.
“We’re going to try out the food truck tomorrow, see if Tony is playing nearby, and chat them up,” Evan said. “Get the lay of the land.”
