Killing in C Sharp Read online

  Orla materialized next to her husband. “Go back to hell, Maja. You can’t claim our fellas.”

  “What’s happening?” Ciara asked. She stared where Gethsemane and Venus stared. “What’s happening?” She turned to Saoirse. “Sweetheart, can’t you do something to let me see what’s going on?”

  Saoirse shook her head. “I can’t see them, either.”

  “Orla McCarthy told the bitch to eff off,” Venus said. She glanced at Saoirse and apologized. “I mean, Mrs. McCarthy asked Maja to go away.” She turned to Gethsemane. “Can’t we help? We must be able to do something.”

  Maja spoke words neither of them understood.

  “Does anyone know what that means in English?” Venus asked.

  “Duck,” Orla said.

  A blue orb grazed Venus’s head and exploded against the floor. The force of the blast knocked Venus flat. Ciara screamed.

  “I saw that! I saw that!” Poe shouted from her vantage away from the line of fire. “That’s so cool. So effin’ cool. I totally got that on camera.” Another orb landed on a chair a foot from the blue-haired photographer. Wisps of smoke rose from the singe mark on the velvet. “Hey,” Poe said. “Watch it. I voted for you.”

  Gethsemane helped Venus stand. “Get Saoirse out of here,” she said to Ciara.

  “Why don’t they do something?” Tears ran down Ciara’s cheeks. “Why don’t they stop her?” She pulled Saoirse to her and held her close.

  Orla extended a hand to Eamon.

  “Don’t they deserve to hear the truth before they destroy themselves?” Poe shouted.

  Ciara screamed at her. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” She pushed Saoirse away and leapt from the stage. Poe dropped her phone and ran for the balcony, Ciara close behind her. Venus and Gethsemane dodged orbs which exploded around them in protest at missing their targets. Saoirse crept from the stage and retrieved Poe’s phone.

  “What’s she on about?” Eamon gestured at Poe. “What truth?”

  They had a right to know. “Saoirse’s fairly certain—almost positive—that if you and Orla take out Maja, you also take yourselves out. Permanently.”

  “And if we don’t…” Eamon said.

  Then Niall, Frankie, Colm, Feargus, all the others…Gethsemane ducked behind a curtain as another orb went off nearby.

  “Don’t is irrelevant, my love,” Orla said. “Because we will. How could I spend the rest of eternity knowing I let that creature destroy this village? That wouldn’t be any kind of existence at all.” She held her arms out to Eamon.

  Eamon’s dimples worked overtime as his aura radiated an ecstatic crimson. He spoke to Gethsemane but had eyes only for his wife. “Take care of yourself, darlin’. The cottage, too. Meeting you’s been the second-best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He walked to Orla, his feet moving through the floor like a samurai sword through silk tissue. Her hands, arms, and body melded into his as he embraced her. He bent his head to kiss her, and the two became one.

  Light exploded like a thousand of Poe’s flashbulbs going off at once. Circuits in the theater sizzled, then the lights went out. A shockwave began as a faint tremble, then broadened and expanded and rolled out over the stage, flattening Venus and Gethsemane in the wings and Saoirse in the orchestra section’s front row.

  Ciara and Poe both swore. Gethsemane heard their footsteps thundering as they ran down from the balcony. The theater lights snapped on. She raised her head and looked around. Center stage stood empty. No Eamon, no Orla, no Maja. Venus stirred near the curtains opposite. Where was—“Saoirse?” Gethsemane called out. She rolled to the edge of the stage.

  The girl lay face down near the orchestra pit.

  Gethsemane dragged herself up and half-crawled down the stairs to where Saoirse lay. Venus followed. Ciara and Poe joined them.

  “Is she…?” Poe let the question trail off.

  Gethsemane laid a hand on Saoirse’s back. She felt her torso rise and fall. Still breathing. She whispered her name. “Saoirse?”

  She couldn’t decipher the muffled reply.

  Louder. “Saoirse?”

  “I’m okay,” the girl said, without raising her head. She worked her arm out from underneath her, slowly, something grasped tight in her fingers.

  Poe noticed it first. “That’s mine.” She grabbed at Saoirse. Ciara grabbed Poe.

  Saoirse held her arm aloft, Poe’s phone in hand, like a runner holding the Olympic torch on its last lap before lighting the cauldron. “I got them,” she said. “I got them.”

  Twenty

  “What do you mean, ‘you got them’?” Gethsemane asked.

  Saoirse sat huddled in an orchestra seat. She clutched Poe’s phone to her chest and kept a wary eye on the phone’s owner. Venus ran interference between the two, bobbing and weaving to block Poe’s attempts to retrieve her device.

  “Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy are in here.” Saoirse tapped a finger on the phone’s edge. “On the SD card.”

  “Is the kid saying she’s got ghosts in the machine?” Venus feigned right. Poe smashed into her.

  “What are you saying, Saoirse?” Gethsemane asked. “That you recorded Eamon and Orla destroying Maja or that you’ve literally got Eamon and Orla McCarthy trapped inside a smartphone?”

  “The second part. They’re on the SD card.”

  Gethsemane held up two fingers. “Look at me, Saoirse. How many fingers—”

  Venus halted her dance with Poe long enough to stare at Gethsemane. “We’ve seen a woman who’s been dead for six hundred years visit a plague on the firstborns of the village, dodged orbs like dinosaurs in a meteor shower, and watched two ghosts use the nuclear option, and you’re having trouble believing the genius?”

  Good point. “Can you explain what you did in simple terms that a merely not-too-dumb person like me can understand?”

  “I deciphered another spell in that.” She pointed at the leather tome, forgotten in the excitement, lying open and face down against the orchestra pit rail. Ciara picked it up. “Once, alchemists used to trap ghosts in devices they made out of copper, quartz, and silica.”

  The clock-like device Father Tim told her about. The horologist’s spirit catcher. What did he say? Something about trouble getting the spirits out of the device once you’d gotten them in. Why hadn’t she paid more attention?

  “I tried making one of the devices, but I ran out of time. Then I realized that the stuff they used was the same kind of stuff used in an SD card. When Miss Poe dropped her phone, I grabbed it and recited the spell over it. I would have used yours, Dr. Brown, but it’s got crap memory. I didn’t know how many bytes ghosts would need. Poe has a terabyte.”

  Plus a little something extra by way of MIT. Maybe Hardy’s spirit was looking out for them. Gethsemane said a silent thank you.

  Poe lunged at Saoirse. Venus stuck out a foot and tripped her.

  Poe protested. “It’s my phone.”

  “Say that one more time and I’ll feed it to you,” Venus promised.

  “We don’t need the whole phone,” Gethsemane said. “Do we?” she asked Saoirse.

  Saoirse shook her head. “Just the card.”

  Gethsemane opened the phone and pulled out the card.

  “That’s my evidence,” Poe snatched at the card.

  Gethsemane stiff armed her. “These are my friends.”

  Venus snorted. “Don’t think Poe’s familiar with the concept.”

  “Give me my phone,” Poe demanded.

  Gethsemane let it fall to the ground. Poe tried to scoop it up, but Gethsemane’s heel found it first. She ground it to pieces. “Oops.”

  Poe cried out and scrambled to collect the remnants. Tears moistened her lashes as she gently placed shattered bits into various pockets in her cargo pants.

  Gethsemane handed Saoirse the card. “Do you know how t
o recover the McCarthys?”

  “Not yet. Once I figured out the alchemical formulas for the trap, the binding spell was easy but the release spell, well, some of the formulas don’t make sense. I think an equation is missing. The one to reverse the silica bond.” Saoirse slipped the tiny memory storage device in her pocket. “But I can figure it out. At least, I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.” She lowered her gaze and her voice. “I hope I can figure it out.”

  “I’ve got faith in you, kid.” Venus patted her on the back. “You’re who I want to be when I grow up.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Gethsemane said. “I want to get Saoirse home, then get over to the infirmary and hospital to see how everyone’s doing.” Everyone had to be better. If Eamon and Orla had sacrificed themselves for nothing…

  “I need my book.” Saoirse slipped out of the seat and over to the railing to pick up the spell book.

  Ciara shouted. “Look out!”

  Gethsemane, Venus, Poe, and Saoirse froze. Ciara flung herself at Saoirse and pushed her out of the way seconds before a large piece of plywood, damaged by one of Maja’s orbs, tumbled from the prop castle. It speared the place where Saoirse crouched just before Ciara pushed her out of the way.

  Ciara’s momentum carried her forward. She banged her head on the pit rail and fell back, stunned. A trickle of blood stained her silver hair pink. The other women rushed to her.

  “Jesus, Ci, are you okay?” Poe asked, animosity set aside.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” Gethsemane said.

  “No, no, please don’t do that.” Ciara shrugged off Venus’s attempt to keep her seated and stood up. “I’m not seriously hurt. If I go to the hospital they might want to keep me. I don’t want to spend the night there.”

  Gethsemane understood the feeling.

  “I just want to go back to my room and lie down.” Ciara accepted the rag Poe produced from her gear bag and pressed it against her forehead. “We leave tomorrow. No offense, Dr. Brown, but I’ve had enough of your charming village. I’m ready to get on with my life. Poe, will you drive me back to Sweeney’s?”

  “I’m going to the pub. I’m going to get mind-bogglingly drunk. How do you say that in Irish?”

  “Stocious. Ossified. Plastered. Fluthered. Langered,” Gethsemane said. “You have options.”

  “I want all those.” She turned to Ciara. “You can take the SUV.” She held her hand out to Saoirse. “I want my card back.”

  “You can’t have it,” Gethsemane said.

  Poe responded with words a twelve-year-old shouldn’t hear, collected her cameras, and stormed from the auditorium.

  “I’m not up to driving,” Ciara said.

  Gethsemane offered to drive. “We’ll walk back to the cottage. Or call a cab,” she added before Venus could protest.

  Ciara leaned hard on Gethsemane’s arm as Gethsemane and Venus escorted her to her room. Her head had stopped bleeding. A reddish-brown crust spread along her hairline and flaked off in her hair.

  “I must look a right mess,” she said.

  “You look like a woman who just saved a child from death by impalement.” Venus used Ciara’s key to let them into the room, then volunteered to go for ice.

  Gethsemane pushed aside a half-packed suitcase and lowered Ciara onto the edge of the bed. “Do you want me to call Kent?”

  “No, don’t. He and some of the others went to return rental vehicles. We only need the SUV and a sedan to get everyone to the airport. He’ll be worried enough when he gets back and sees me. No point scaring him with a phone call.”

  “Where are you going? To the States? On another ghost hunt?”

  “I’m done with ghosts for a while. Kent’s going back home to New York. I’m headed to New Zealand. I need to get away, to rest, and New Zealand’s on my bucket list.”

  “You and Kent aren’t—”

  Ciara shrugged. “It was fun while it lasted. But, between us women, Kent’s getting too old for me.” She laughed, then winced. “My head.”

  “Have you got any aspirin or ibuprofen? If not, I can run and see if the front desk has some.”

  “Paracetamol’s in my dopp kit by the bathroom sink.” She stood.

  Gethsemane waved her back to her seat. In the dim light with blood-stained hair, Ciara seemed to have aged twenty years since Gethsemane saw her that first day with her hand on Kent’s arm. Her eyes appeared sunken, skin hung loose under her chin. Deep sulci in her shoulders highlighted her collar bones. She looked as if she’d lost weight. “I’ll get it,” Gethsemane said.

  She rummaged through the kit for the paracetamol—acetaminophen in the US. She set several other pill bottles aside. Prednisone, ferrous sulfate, ondansetron. She found the over-the-counter pain killer in the bottom of the bag, next to something else. A bottle of sufentanil, a powerful sublingual prescription pain medication. A narcotic. Why would Ciara have such strong meds? She seemed to be one of the heartiest members of the crew. Gethsemane studied the labels. The name of the person they were prescribed for had been blacked out with a marker. Were they Ciara’s prescriptions? Or had she obtained them illegally? Gethsemane read the drug names again. Sufentanil certainly had street value. Maybe prednisone did—the milligrams on the label indicated a high dose. But ondansetron? Her sister had taken the medicine for severe vomiting with her pregnancy. Was it something addicts used to fight withdrawal symptoms? And ferrous sulfate, a fancy name for iron tablets. What possible abuse potential could iron tablets have?

  Ciara called from the other room. “Are you all right in there? Did you find it?”

  Gethsemane stuffed the other bottles back in the bag. “Right here.” She handed Ciara the paracetamol and a glass of water.

  “Thank you.” Ciara downed the pills in a single gulp. “I’ll feel better with that and a nap.”

  Venus returned with a bucket of ice and some towels. “Snagged ’em off the maid’s cart.”

  Gethsemane wrapped some ice in a towel and she and Venus left Ciara lying down with an ice pack on her head.

  “What’s wrong?” Venus asked as they headed down the hall. “You’ve got that ‘something’s bothering me but I can’t think what’ look.”

  “Ciara’s got more going on than a headache.” She described the meds she’d found.

  “Sufentanil. Wow. I remember a story I did on prescription narcotic diversion. Stuff’s no joke. It’s stronger than fentanyl. It’s used for people who are dying. What’s she using it for?”

  “She asked for paracetamol.”

  “Maybe it’s not hers. Maybe it’s boy toy’s. If she hooks him up, maybe that’s the attraction.”

  “You think Bernard found out she’s dealing? Maybe he was blackmailing her. Or Kent. Having the news break that your girlfriend and photographer sells drugs or that you use them couldn’t be good for ratings.”

  “Drug exposés are off Bernard’s usual beat,” Venus said. “But I wouldn’t put anything past that snake.”

  “One problem. Well, two. Ciara doesn’t have enough of a supply to be a serious dealer, and Kent doesn’t behave like an opiate addict. He’s never late to work, nor absent. He’s never strung out. And he’s intense, not mellow or euphoric like you’d expect someone high on opiates to be. Intense like a cocaine user, maybe, but not opiates.” Gethsemane pulled out her phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “I’m texting my mother. She’s a physician. Maybe she can tell me what that combination of meds might be used for. In the meantime, between murderous ghosts and murdered journalists—”

  “If you can call Bernard a journalist.”

  “—I’ve got enough to deal with. I still haven’t found anything that points away from Aed as the killer.”

  “You’ve found plenty to point to everybody else as equally suspicious. Including me.”

  �
��The gardaí won’t want to hear, ‘I found a dozen other birds in the bush so let the one in hand go.’ They’ll want to hear, ‘The man you’ve got couldn’t possibly have done it because this other fella’s guilty.’ Maybe ‘want’ isn’t the right word, but you get my meaning.”

  “You’ve done the best you could.”

  “I promised Hardy I’d do better. Speaking of whom, we should check on him while we’re here,” Gethsemane said. “He looked rough last time I saw him. In all honesty, I worried he wouldn’t make it.”

  They approached the front desk. Gethsemane recognized the clerk as the one who’d given her Kent’s—Konrad’s—room number. The haunted house fan. “Good to see you again.”

  “Hello, Miss. If you’re looking for Mr. Wayne—”

  “Actually, this time I’m looking for Hardy Lewis, one of Mr. Wayne’s colleagues. He’s been ill. We want to check on him, see how he’s doing.”

  “You mean the fella who looks like walking death? He should be in hospital.”

  “You know how stubborn men can be,” Venus said.

  The clerk giggled. “Don’t I just? You could cut my husband’s arm off and he’d tell you he’d be fine with paracetamol and plasters. My brothers are just as bad.”

  Gethsemane leaned closer to the desk. “I know you’re not supposed to give out room numbers but…”

  “But, seeing as how it’s you and seeing as how sick Mr. Lewis is…” The clerk checked her computer monitor. “Room seventeen. Maybe you can convince him to go to A and E. He’d get head of line privileges, as bad as he looks.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t want guests dying in the rooms. Bad publicity.”

  Gethsemane and Venus thanked the clerk and started down the hall.

  The clerk called after them. “Oh, Ms. James, an envelope came for you.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a large, thick manila envelope. “We hoped you’d return to stay with us so we held it for you instead of sending it on.”

  “Thank you,” Venus said and tucked the package under her arm.