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The place was smoky and dusty. Barmaids were hurrying about, handing out drinks. Men were being solicited for their votes.
There was a lone man seated on a wooden bench at a table, head hanging low. But when Vickie entered, he looked up, and he beckoned to her.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said impatiently. He stood, wavering.
He was a small man, just a little shorter than Vickie, maybe five-eight to her five-nine. His hair was dark and a curl hung over his forehead. His eyes seemed red-rimmed and sunken in his face, which was quite ashen, with a yellow pallor.
She knew him.
She’d seen his picture throughout her life; she’d loved his work. She’d loved that he’d been born in Boston—even if he had come to hate that city. There was a wonderful statue of him now, a life-size bronze figure of the writer, hurrying along with a briefcase and a raven.
She knew his face from so many pictures and images, a man haunted by demons in life, most of those demons brought about by his alcohol addiction. She’d always wondered if more knowledge during his age might have helped him; a really good therapist, a good program...
“I’m hallucinating you, you know. Delirium tremors,” he told her gravely. “But I have been waiting for you, Victoria.”
“I love your work!” Vickie said. She flushed. It was a dream, or a nightmare, and she was having a fangirl moment. She needed control and decorum.
“Yes, well, then, you are brighter than my insidious detractors,” he told her. “But here’s the thing. You must stop it. I am being used—my work, my memory. It was good—it was all good, until I came here, until I reached Baltimore. Then, they...were upon me.”
“They who?” she asked. “No one knows—it’s still a mystery.”
“They were upon me,” he repeated.
Vickie reached across the table and set her hand gently upon his. He was trembling, she realized, violently. “You’re not looking very well,” she said.
And he turned to give her a rueful smile. “No. I will not be here long, you see. But I’m glad that you made it, so glad that you’re here. It’s happening again. And you must do something. You must stop it. No one will see, because it’s much the same. Do you understand?”
“Not a word,” she assured him.
He looked across the room and seemed concerned; he stood suddenly and hurried toward the door. Vickie raced after him.
She didn’t see him at first. He was on the ground, slumped against the building. She tried to reach him, but there was already a man at his side, attempting to help him. She noted an address then, Lombard Street.
As she stood there while the one man tried to help, people continued to hurry along the street. Hawkers shouted out their wares—and their candidates. Drinks were promised for votes; there was laughter, there was a rush of music, someone playing a fiddle...
She tried to reach the fallen man, thankful that at least someone was helping him.
Across the bit of distance between them, he opened his eyes and looked at her.
“I have to go now,” he said.
“No...!”
“But I must. And you...”
“Yes?”
“You must pay attention.” He laughed softly. “Don’t let it happen again.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
A loud cawing sound seemed to rip through the air.
He looked at her sadly and said, “Quoth the raven—nevermore!”
1 (#u4c1cea3e-c0dc-5289-b0af-5bb3f1177773)
“There’s been an incident, a very bizarre incident,” Jackson Crow said.
His voice over the phone as he spoke to Griffin Pryce was steady—as always. Jackson had pretty much seen it all. As field director of a special unit of the FBI—unofficially known as the Krewe of Hunters—Jackson had just about seen it all, although he’d be the first to say they’d probably never “see it all.”
The “bizarre” was usually the reason the Krewe got called in.
“What’s the incident?”
“You’ve heard of Franklin Verne?” Jackson asked.
“The writer? Yes, of course. Kind of impossible not to have heard of him—he likes to do his own commercials. He’s known for action books with shades of horror, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
Griffin frowned, thinking about the night before. He’d actually heard mention of Franklin Verne’s name—he and Vickie had stopped for a damned good dinner and some excellent wine at a spectacular new Baltimore restaurant. Their waiter had mentioned that Franklin Verne was in the city and they were hoping to see him in the restaurant for a meal—and, of course, an endorsement!
“Griffin?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking that you’re about to tell me how he died, and since you’re on the phone with me, and you know we’re in Baltimore, I’m assuming he died in Baltimore?”
“Yes, last night. He was found in the wine cellar of the Black Bird, a new restaurant—”
“What?” Griffin said. He knew the restaurant—pretty well! It was, in fact, the posh place where he’d taken Vickie last night.
“The Black Bird,” Jackson repeated.
“We ate there last night.”
“Oh. Well, that’s convenient. You know right where it is.”
“I do. Fell’s Point, not far from where we’re staying. You know Vickie—we found a really great old historic hotel. Blackhawk Harbor House. In fact, I’m standing outside. It’s so wonderfully old and historic, though I can’t seem to make a cell phone call from inside.” He glanced up at the building. It had been built as a hotel in the 1850s—built with concrete and care. It would probably withstand any storm. The hotel was handsome and elegant, and Griffin enjoyed it—but he still found it annoying when he couldn’t get a decent signal on his phone from his room.
“They sure weren’t expecting Franklin Verne at the restaurant,” he told Jackson. “They talked about the fact that they hoped that he would come in. His patronage would be great for business.”
“I imagine. Well, he was there—is there. Sadly, he’s dead. At the moment, they’re calling it an accidental death.”
“Okay. So. How did he die? Was it an accident, possibly...?”
“A combination of over-the-counter drugs and alcohol,” Jackson said. “That’s a preliminary—the ME, of course, will deny he suggested any true cause as of yet. You know how that works—they won’t know for certain what caused it until all the tests are back. I take it you haven’t seen any news yet?”
“Jackson, it is 7:30 a.m. This was our last weekend before settling in—me back from a long stint in Boston, and Vickie moving to a new state and an entirely new life. Hey, it was supposed to be free time. We were out late last night. Vickie is still sleeping.”
“Okay, you haven’t seen the news. Anyway, Franklin Verne used to be quite the wild man, drinking, getting rowdy with friends, playing the type of hard-core character that appears in most of his books. His wife, Monica, put a stop to it a few years back—when the doctors told her he wouldn’t make it to old age. But his body was found in a wine cellar. According to Monica, Franklin had been clean for two full years.”
“You know all this because...?” Griffin asked him.
“Because Franklin Verne gave generously to a lot of the same causes our own Adam Harrison holds so dear,” Jackson said.
Adam Harrison was their senior advisor—he was, in fact, the creator of the Krewe, and a man with a phenomenal ability to put the right people together with the right situation.
“Naturally,” Jackson continued, “he’s quite good friends with Monica, so... Well, there you have it. He’ll wrangle us an invitation into the investigation eventually—you know him and his abilities with local police.” Jackson hesitated a minute. “Even if we wind up having to tell Monica she lost her husband because he slipped back into addiction, she’ll have the truth of the situation. For the moment, I need you to go make nice with Detective Carl Morris.”
“Carl Morris, sure,” Griffin said.
So much for the incredible plans he’d had with Vickie for the day!
“Addiction, a friend, temptation... It could have been an accident,” Griffin said.
“Yes. Except that none of the waitstaff saw him in the restaurant, much less down in the wine cellar. And, as I said, Monica—who claims she really knew her husband—is calling it murder.”
“Ah. Okay, are you coming up?” Griffin asked Jackson. Krewe headquarters was only about an hour and a half—two hours at most—from Baltimore, even counting Beltway traffic.
“Maybe, but Adam wants to move delicately with this. We’re not invited in yet—Franklin Verne’s death isn’t even considered to be a murder at the moment. But of course, the way the man died, there has to be an autopsy and an investigation. Get started for me, and then give me a call. Let me know what you think.”
“All right. When did this happen?”
“He was found about an hour ago. Adam got the call from Monica immediately after she was visited by the police and informed that her husband was dead. If you head in quickly, you’ll see the body in situ. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it is Baltimore, and Poe is buried there, and, hell, the name of the restaurant isn’t Raven, but it is Black Bird...”
“What?”
“He was found gripping a little bird. Yes, a raven, of course. It’s the kind you can find just about anywhere they have Poe souvenirs. Cheap, plastic, black—on a little pedestal with its wings out, beak open...and the word nevermore written on the base.”
“Like you said, you can buy those souvenirs anywhere.”
“Yep. And, sorry. Just one more thing again.”
“What’s that?”
“He was surrounded by three dead blackbirds. Naturally, of course, no one can figure out how Franklin Verne—or the birds—got into the wine cellar.”
* * *
Vickie opened her eyes.
For a moment, she was disoriented.
She wasn’t at all sure where she was!
And then she realized that Griffin was there, looking down at her with concern. A half grin curled his lips, though that grin was far more rueful than amused.
Grim, even.
“A nightmare?” he asked her gently, a trace of worry crossing his bronzed face. There wasn’t a reason for her to be having nightmares—at the moment. The Krewe cases with which she’d been involved had come to their conclusions.
She was in the wonderful hotel in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point where she had enthusiastically suggested they stay on their trip from Boston to Arlington, Virginia—even though they hadn’t really needed to make it an overnight trip, much less a weekend one.
But she and Griffin had wanted time together. Fun time, sightseeing, before Griffin reported back to headquarters; Vickie was preparing to enter the FBI’s training academy at Quantico.
Eventually, they’d both be working out of the main special offices of the Krewe of Hunters unit. But for now, Griffin would be getting back to work, they’d both be settling in to living together—and Vickie would be starting up with the next class for twenty weeks of training that would lead to her graduation and an official position with the Krewe.
Vickie could have told Griffin about the dream. The Krewe were more than simply dedicated and well-trained agents. They had been gathered together carefully because they all had unique abilities, the center of those abilities being that they could communicate with the dead.
When the dead chose, of course.
She and Griffin had both known for years just what the other was capable of. While they had only rekindled their relationship recently, they had first met almost a decade ago—when a serial killer had nearly taken Vickie’s life. It had been a ghost, the older brother of the child she was babysitting, who had saved her by sending her running out of the house to safety, straight toward a young Officer Pryce. He’d been a cop before becoming an agent, though he had now been with the Krewe of Hunters for quite some time. He’d always known that he wanted to be in law enforcement.
It wasn’t that way for Vickie.
She loved history. She’d been a guide, leading youth-group tours as a historian, and she was an author of history books. She was proud to say that she was good at it—the most important reviews to her were the ones that said she had a way of making history fun for the reader.
It was only the cases with which she had recently become involved that had made her want to veer in a new direction. Not a change—an addition. There had been a case in which an incarcerated serial killer had managed to reach out to strike again, and then another where modern-day Satanists had tried to bring the devil back to Massachusetts.
She was now determined to do her best to become an agent herself, and it was a decision with which she was really pleased. It was odd to realize that she had once been embarrassed by her secret talent—the ability to speak with the dead. She hadn’t wanted to admit that it could be real. But she’d learned recently that her so-called curse allowed her to actually make a difference. She might have the ability to help in more bizarre cases—to save lives. And that mattered. To that end, she’d applied for and been accepted to the academy at Quantico. The Krewe might be a special unit, but even so, the agents were required to go through the academy. Vickie had passed the necessary tests on paper and made it through the grueling physical regimen necessary to become an agent.
Griffin already had an apartment in a wonderful old row house in Alexandria. For him, it wasn’t a move—just a return to his home of the past several years. He had only been back in Boston—where he and Vickie both were born and raised—on assignment.
Vickie had gone to college at NYU and then lived in New York for several years, but never farther south.
It was, she’d assured him, exciting to move.
But she was aware that Griffin believed it had to be a tug on her heartstrings as well—she was leaving a lot behind.
And she was. But she was also happy to be moving forward.
“A nightmare?” he repeated, and the note of worry seemed higher.
She smiled, staring into his dark eyes. Griffin was fine with her decision to become an agent; the Krewe was composed of both men and women, and he knew women were every bit as efficient and excellent as agents as men.
It was just her—but of course, he loved her. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to accept her walking into the same danger he did daily. He would, however, get used to it—and she loved him all the more for that fact.
“No, not a nightmare!” she told him. He far too quickly became concerned for her. All it had been was a bizarre dream. It might well have been due to the way they’d overindulged in some delicious blue crabs at dinner last night.
She would stay mum. For the moment. After all, she was in Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe was buried here; he’d died here. Having dreams about him didn’t seem the least bit strange, actually.
