Chapter 13

  "What does she mean?" Father Hill asked me.

  I gestured to Penny, as if to say 'Ask her yourself.'

  He had the good grace to look abashed, which raised my opinion of him a bit further. "I'm terribly sorry, Penny, that was very rude of me. What do you mean?"

  Penny nodded her head graciously. "I accept your apology, Father Hill." Then she lifted her head and sniffed the air again. "I smell fae. Dust, age, still air, a bit of mold and mildew…and creatures of Faerie, like Sparkle and myself. But not just Sparkle and myself."

  As Penny spoke, past the edge of the light Sparkle was spreading around us, shadows began to move. The size and shape of humans, flitting at the edges of my vision. But every time I turned my head to look, there was nothing there. I saw D.T. and Father Hill turn their heads a little as well, and as Penny finished, Clark quietly said, "Is anyone else seeing that?"

  "I think we're all seeing it," D.T. said softly. "But what is it?"

  Sparkle huffed. "Fae glamour. Something's trying to creep us out."

  She took a deep breath, but before she could do her trick of pushing the shadows back, I held up a hand. "Sparkle, wait. I want to see what happens, first. Father?" I turned to look at him as Sparkle deflated and landed on my shoulder. "If you don't mind my asking, has anything been done to try and clear the building? Even just opening the blinds…"

  Father Hill cleared his throat, and I thought he looked a little embarrassed. "I actually did try to bless the building, but something seemed to be resisting me. The further in I went, the more earnestly I tried to deliver my blessings, the harder it became until it was almost impossible for me to speak or continue. Until I stopped trying, then the pressure vanished."

  I tipped my head thoughtfully. "But as long as you weren't trying, it left you alone?"

  "Basically." He gestured to the shadows that still flitted at the edges of our vision. "This phenomenon is quite common to see. Sometimes, at night and from outside, we see brightly colored lights around the edges of the shutters and blinds. If the shutters and blinds are open, we can see the shadows of people moving around in the building. But if we open the door, it's pitch black inside and nothing moves in the dark."

  "A couple of months after I became the parish clerk," Clark said softly, "I borrowed the keys and came in here looking for some of the old town records. Stairs at the back lead to the offices and storage rooms upstairs. The lights came on okay, not like now, but when I got upstairs…" He shook his head. "It's a mess up there. Desks and chairs overturned, the contents of filing cabinets spilled everywhere…"

  Clark trailed off, frowning. "I almost don't believe it happened, but I poked my head into one of the offices, and an old globe came spinning through the air to crash into the wall next to my head."

  I exchanged a look with Penny, who seemed more amused than alarmed. "But nothing actually hit you?"

  He shook his head. "No. It was a clean miss."

  "Like something was trying to scare him away, you think?" D.T. asked.

  "I'm beginning to wonder," I said.

  "Classic fae trickery," Sparkle said. "Most of us that are able to live alongside mortals without being seen don't really want to hurt anyone. We just want to live our lives."

  "Like everybody else," I said thoughtfully. Then, more firmly, I said, "All right, come on. I want a quick look upstairs."

  Clark pointed straight away from the front doors. "At the back of the hall, there's a door on the right that leads upstairs."

  "Penny, stay close. Sparkle, give me a bit more light please," I said, starting off in that direction, accompanied by the unfamiliar heavy clomps of my new boots. "Father Hill, do me a favor and open the blinds and shutters on some of the windows down here open. Let's let a little sunlight in here."

  "An excellent notion," Father Hill said. "Come on, Clark. Give me a hand."

  "Sure," Clark said, following him.

  "What about me?" D.T. asked from behind me.

  "Like I'm going to tell a police sergeant how to do her job," I said teasingly.

  A moment later she caught up to me, walking on my left as Penny paced me on the right. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?" D.T. asked very quietly.

  Penny snorted a little laugh and Sparkle giggled.

  "Not a clue," I admitted. "But learning more about the situation seems like a good place to start. And from the sound of it, the phenomena are more physical - more aggressive - upstairs."

  I saw D.T. nod. "Just checking."

  The darkness seemed to deepen as we pushed toward the back of the hall, becoming an almost tangible murk in the air around us and making it difficult to see beyond the radius of Sparkle's glow. When we almost walked into the back wall of the building, Sparkle cleared her throat pointedly. "I could probably push this all back…"

  I nodded. "I'm sure you could, Sparkle. But if you were doing this to protect your home, how angry would it make you if a bunch of intruders tried to strip away your defenses?"

  "Pretty angry," Sparkle admitted.

  "Then let's be polite guests for as long as we can," I said gently. "I'd rather have a chance to talk to whoever - or whatever - is living here than end up fighting with them. Here's the door."

  I reached out and grasped the doorknob…and jerked my hand back with a hiss. The knob was colder than anything I'd ever touched before. So cold, my palm and fingers felt burned.

  "What is it?" D.T. asked.

  "Cold!" I said. "I've never felt anything so cold."

  Sparkle drifted down from my shoulder. "Hold out your hand, Caley."

  I did, palm up, and she landed lightly on it, making me gasp as the pain of even her slight weight sent a jolt up my arm. D.T. leaned in and whistled. "It actually burned you. I've never touched anything cold enough to burn."

  Sparkle made a soft, unhappy sound, then said in a cheerful, certain tone, "It's okay, I can heal it!" She knelt down and put her hands on mine, and after a moment her purple glow spread into my hand and suffused it.

  The relief was so immediate and so intense that I breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Thank you, Sparkle."

  Her glow brightened visibly as she stood up and flitted back to my shoulder. "You're welcome, Caley!"

  I flexed my fingers once to be sure, then stared at the door. "Well, not sure how we're opening that, then."

  "I didn't think to bring any gloves," D.T. said. "Did you?"

  "Are you kidding?" I asked. "It's the end of summer outside." Then I frowned. "Granted, it isn't in here. I hadn't really noticed, but there's a distinct chill in the air. Was it like that when we came in?"

  "Nope," D.T. said. "And you didn't notice because of those leggings. How did you know that leggings under shorts was a style I liked to look at?"

  I felt my cheeks heat up. "I didn't. It just seemed practical and I was in a hurry. But now I know."

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  Penny nosed around the bottom of the door, sniffing and huffing. Finally she took a step back, her ears flat and her twin tails low and lashing. "There's something behind this door that doesn't want us opening it."

  "Thank you captain obvious," D.T. said dryly.

  Penny looked up at her and bared her fangs a little. "I am serious, Sergeant," she emphasized the title instead of using D.T.'s name to express her annoyance. "I smell a threat. Many fae beings working together perhaps, or one particularly strong one. We should not proceed."

  D.T. held up her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry, Penny. I didn't mean to offend you. But Caley was just actually hurt, and I didn't think that could happen."

  "This isn't some ghost hunt," Penny snapped. "There are beings of Faerie here, where they would not normally be. For them to be living in the mortal world means that they are powerful indeed, at least within their chosen domain. We should retreat and consider a different approach."

  "Not that ghosts can't be dangerous," Sparkle added, hopping off my shoulder and landing lightly on Penny's head.

  Penny twitched…then relaxed a little and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she looked up at D.T. and very quietly said, "You have my sincerest apologies, Dejah Thoris Burroughs." She bowed her head, making Sparkle flutter up into the air above her. "I spoke rashly and out of anxiety."

  D.T. bent and gently petted Penny's ears. "I think we're both a bit freaked out by Caley being hurt, however briefly. I also think you're right. Let's collect Clark and the Father and get back out into sunlight."

  Penny huffed a little laugh. "Never before have I wanted to be in direct sunlight."

  That broke up most of our lingering tension, and as one we all moved back towards the front doors. We found Father Hill and Clark struggling to try and pry open a pair of shutters beside the open doors, which was about as far as the sunlight that should have been streaming in from outside was able to penetrate.

  "No luck?" I asked as we approached them.

  Clark shook his head and stepped back from the window they'd been working on. "Nothing. The drapes move just fine, but the blackout blinds and shutters might as well be welded in place."

  "With no sign of nail or glue, which is strange considering how often they're open at night," Father Hill said, rubbing his hands together and giving them a shake. "It's too much for these old hands."

  "Come on," I said. "Leave it for now. I doubt you'll be able to open them until we figure out what's going on here. Let's regroup at the Oak & Ivy."

  Ten minutes later we were sitting in a row at Oak & Ivy's bar with cups of tea in front of us. The lunch crowd had already dispersed, so we were alone in the pub with Malcolm and Judy, who - as their pub seemed to be the beating heart of the town and they were both in the know, so to speak - had remained at my request. D.T. sat on my left, Father Hill on my right, and Clark on the other side of him. Sparkle was sitting on the bar, nibbling on one of Judy's scones, and Penny sat on the floor behind me in her large black Husky form.

  "Okay," I said, "I feel like maybe we're going about things in the wrong order. So, first things first…nobody has told me yet just how long the social hall has actually been like this." I looked at Father Hill and Clark, who exchanged blank looks.

  "Well," Malcolm said, leaning against the shelves behind the bar, "the social hall itself was closed up about seventeen years ago. It was in pretty desperate need of renovation…new wiring, new plumbing, new light fixtures…there's a kitchenette at the back of the main hall that was out of date almost as soon as the building was finished in the 1950's."

  "And it hadn't been seriously redecorated since the 1960's," Judy added. "I'm honestly amazed that that old wallpaper, as pretty as it is, hasn't started peeling. Suffice it to say it was closed down for the purpose of making it pleasant again."

  Silence fell. After a moment, I said, "And?"

  Malcolm huffed a little laugh. "And nothing. The parish council couldn't agree on a budget, or a time-frame, or even what time of day it was sometimes. I've been on the council for a quarter-century, and until recently it was mostly an exercise in frustration."

  "Like town councils everywhere," Father Hill said, then nodded to Clark. "Our young parish clerk has done a good job of turning that around the last couple of years. Young minds and ideas."

  "Honestly, I just want to do the job properly," Clark said, looking and sounding embarrassed.

  Father Hill patted his shoulder gently.

  "So," I summarized, "the social hall has been unused for seventeen years, and it's largely been closed up and abandoned for all that time. Why?"

  Clark sighed. "Well, the worst problem is the plumbing. The building's plumbing just doesn't come up to code anymore. The electrical is almost as bad. No sane building inspector would certify it safe for public use. It's too old to upgrade easily, and too new to be grandfathered under any classic building rules."

  "Okay, so," I said, "as a generality, public safety keeps it buttoned up and empty."

  Clark nodded and shrugged. "Basically, yeah. We could spend days talking about rejected budgets, but that's not the why of it…it's just an excuse at this point."

  "When did the strangeness start?" I asked.

  "After I transferred here ten years ago," Father Hill said, then took a sip of his tea. "About four years after…call it six years ago, give or take."

  I turned my attention to him. "Did it start like this?"

  He shook his head. "No. At first…and this is one of the strangest parts to me…at first, the blinds and shutters were still open all the time. Sometimes, looking out of the church windows, I'd see - or thought I saw - figures moving around inside the social hall. I didn't think much of it at first…to be honest, I thought it was just my imagination. I'd catch a glimpse of movement through the windows, stop and look…and see nothing. And of course I knew that the parish clerk went in from time to time trying to find records that didn't make the move to the temporary office."

  "Temporary," Clark snorted under his breath.

  Judy leaned forward and patted his right hand where it lay on the bar.

  "For about a year or so, that's all it was," Father Hill continued thoughtfully. "Then, at night, while closing up the church for the day, I'd see flashes of light from inside the social hall. All different colors, sometimes more than one color at a time. They were dim at first, but started growing in intensity a few months after that." He smiled ruefully. "I actually went to see an eye doctor not long after that phenomenon started, just in case."

  "And the Father isn't the only person who's seen them," Judy put in. "Malcolm and I have both witnessed the lights, as have quite a few people in town."

  "It was around then that I made my first forays into the building," Father Hill said quietly. "I felt the forbidding aura within, saw the way the darkness seemed to be a tangible thing, and tried to bless the building. I already told you how that went."

  "Badly," I summarized.

  "It could have been worse," he said softly, staring down at his tea cup. "In the interest of full disclosure, and because I trust everyone here to be discrete, I used to be an exorcist."

  Malcolm, I noticed, was not surprised, and Judy looked more sympathetic than anything else. Clark jerked a little and gave Father Hill a wide-eyed look, and when I glanced in D.T.'s direction she was looking past me with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty.

  I wasn't sure if Sparkle was even still paying attention; glancing back and down I saw that Penny appeared to have curled up and gone to sleep. But her ears were still up and cocked in our direction.

  "So believe me," Father Hill continued quietly, "when I say I have seen some utterly awful and terrifying things. Nothing I've experienced in the social hall came close to those depths of…horror." He shuddered gently. "My posting here in Oakwood is my retirement." He looked up and met my eyes. "The Catholic Church wishes to resume good relations with the Guardian of Oakwood Hall, and thought my experience and skills might be…of value. Which is also all I want to be in my waning years…useful."

  I smiled. "I certainly don't mind the idea of having some backup," I said gently. "And the warm, protective energy that the church radiates tells me you're good at your job."

  He returned my smile, obviously relieved. "I try to be the best man I can be. That's all."

  "That's a lot," Malcolm said softly. "Anyway…"

  "Yes," Father Hill cleared his throat. "Where was I?"

  "You tried to bless the building," Judy offered.

  "Yes," he nodded. "After that, it…it didn't get worse, just more aggressive. The blinds and shutters were closed most of the time, the inside of the building always seemed uncommonly cold when I went in, Clark had that globe thrown at him…and here we are."

  "Honestly," Sparkle said, sounding exasperated as she looked up from the last few crumbs of her scone. "If someone came barging into your home, spraying energies meant to drive you out, you'd retaliate a bit too, wouldn't you?" She nibbled on her bottom lip and looked sheepish. "Sorry, Father."

  He smiled. "No offense taken, Miss Sparkle. You're not wrong. And of course, Miss Penny said she could smell fae in the building."

  I nodded. "About that…"

  As we all turned to look at her, Penny rose, stretched ostentatiously, and sat on her haunches. "It's about time," she said dryly. "Yes, I could smell fae in the building. Their scent was everywhere. But the magic that was befuddling our senses made it impossible for me to tell what type of fae. Effects which Sparkle likely could have dispelled with that very interesting talent I've never seen in another fairy…"

  Sparkle blushed under our gazes as we swiveled to look at her in turn. "It's something Mistress Chessie helped me learn to do. Anyway, Caley's reasons for having me not do it were good. Even if I was able to overpower the glamour in there, which I probably could," she added with more than a little pride, "it would have very much the same effect as Father Hill's attempt to bless the building. It would make whoever's living there very, very angry."

  We all sat in silence for a long moment. Then I took a deep breath and blew it out. "Well, I've learned the basics of making nice with the fae. I suppose I could go in there, make an offering of cookies and soda, and see what happens."

  "Cookies and soda?" Judy asked. "Is that what you're feeding your fairies?"

  I cleared my throat. "Yeah, why? It's what my mom used to do, so…"

  She started laughing. When she caught her breath again, she said, "Oh dear, why doesn't that surprise me? Well, it's not traditional, but it is something they'd like, I suppose. It's not what I leave in my fairy garden out back."

  Sparkle perked up. "You have a fairy garden?"

  Judy smiled. "Yes, dear. And I'm sure that it's visited. I leave out the traditional libations: Fresh milk, butter and cream, fresh-baked cakes, and ale. Honey, too, when I can get fresh honeycomb."

  I nodded slowly as old fairy folklore floated to the top of my memory. "Those do sound familiar."

  "And delicious!" Sparkle said.

  Judy shook her head, smiling. "Well, if Caley wants to approach whatever's living there in the friendliest manner possible, the old ways might seem more respectful."

  Sparkle nodded. "That's true." She looked at me. "It sounds like a good idea to me."

  "Well, then," I said, "where in town can I get those things?"