The Isis Collar

My handler? I wasn’t a dog or a trained seal. But it would make sense to have him be my contact if he’d had a vasectomy. Infertile men weren’t affected by a siren’s psychic talents. I didn’t really understand that. Logically, it should affect them, since they’re perfectly capable of sex. But magic is weird sometimes.



What I didn’t get was how he knew I’d get emotional. He apparently thought he had me pegged and damned if he didn’t. At least this time.



A heavily accented voice began to speak through the tinny microphone. “They chose me because I can do the timed-release spell on the children. The adults, not so much. But they said it was the children that mattered. I told them I hate children. But I lied. I hid my little ones away, told my wife to keep them from their schooling so they would not rot and pass on the illness.”



Rot? Illness? Just like that, my tears were gone and I turned my full attention on the room. Rizzoli nearly vibrated with contained energy beside me. His face was bathed in shadows, but the intensity in his body nearly glowed. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what his talents were, if any. There were certainly plain humans in the FBI, but most of the agents at Rizzoli’s level had some abilities.



The man cleared his throat again and snuffled, opening his mouth as though to speak. Now we were getting somewhere. I felt the tension dry up the rest of my tears.



Unfortunately, my change in mood also sobered the other two men. That wasn’t good, because the man in black abruptly went stony faced again, realizing he’d already said too much. He wiped his eyes angrily, probably wondering how the agent had caused him to speak. But the agent was still looking confused. I’d imagine FBI agents don’t often sob in front of prisoners.



“You’ve got to start crying again. It was working.” Rizzoli’s voice was an urgent hiss.



I couldn’t help but let out a frustrated sound and throw up my hands a tiny bit before whispering, “I don’t know how. The first time was a fluke. I swear.”



He turned his head and gave me an incredulous look. “Oh, please. Your life has sucked, Graves. I’m amazed every day I find out you’re not curled up in a fetal position in the corner with a gun to your head. If you don’t have reason to cry, nobody does.”



The sad part was, he was right. And yes, if I focused on all the bad crap that had happened during my life, I apparently could turn the men in the room into basket cases. “But do you really want him in a mood to hold a gun to his head? We don’t know if he can activate the curse without help.”



Rizzoli noticed I didn’t deny the occasional desire to curl up in a corner with firearms and reached out to squeeze my shoulder gently.



But I didn’t need sympathy. My life was my life and I owned it. My mouth opened to tell him just that when the temperature in the room suddenly dropped like a rock.



Um … that wasn’t good.



The two-way mirror frosted so suddenly that the room beyond all but disappeared. I should have been more careful than to evoke the memory of my little sister. Ivy might have died young, but she hadn’t moved on to a better place. She’d decided to remain here, on earth, hanging around her big sister. I didn’t know why, but I had a good idea.



“What the hell is wrong with the air-conditioning?” The annoyed New Jersey Italian started to head toward the door when I held up a finger to stop him.



“It’s not the building, Rizzoli. I think I accidentally invoked Ivy’s spirit.” The wind she raised in the room blew my hair until I had to pull strands from my mouth. “Ivy!” I hissed the word in frustration because she was out of control. Maybe it was because I’d been so emotional when I was staring at the picture, but she was in a full fury. The lights flickered wildly until they finally blew with a crack of frozen glass.



Rizzoli looked like he was totally out of his element and freaking out. His voice remained low, but it was gaining a frantic edge. “Do something, Graves. If she scares the prisoner, this whole place could become the new Ground Zero.”



Um. I hadn’t even considered that possibility, but he was right. Using the dead, ghosts, zombies, or vampires to scare prisoners into confessions was Torture 101.



I looked up into the dark, bitter wind that stung my cheeks. The only light was what was coming under the door and the faint glow from the next room. Yelling would only get Ivy more agitated, so I decided to go the opposite way. I forced my face into a smile that belied my worry and let out a little laugh. “You need to calm down, sweetie. See? I’m fine. Nothing wrong. I was just playing around. You don’t have to be worried. It’s all good.”



But she would have none of it. One of the problems with spirits is that they know things that are … well, beyond what the rest of us poor humans do. Ivy might not be able to read minds, but she had a good idea of where the source of my worry was. The wind that was my younger sister began to spin through the room and then slammed through the glass so fast I couldn’t stop her.



A rumble underfoot made Rizzoli grab my arm and yank me under a heavy metal table. “Get down! He’s going to blow!”



The drop to the ground did nothing good to my throbbing leg, but I crouched and covered my head like people did in the films of old air-raid drills I’d seen in grade school. Damn. This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my last few minutes on earth.



8



What happened next was totally unexpected. Instead of fire and pain and a massive explosion, there was a warm, gentle breeze and silence and the trembling under my feet eased to a gentle sway. I slowly lowered my arms and looked at Rizzoli. He stared back at me, obviously baffled. Crawling out from under the steel table was a slow process because my calf muscles weren’t cooperating and I was watching the ceiling for falling objects. “Was that a quake or an exploding prisoner?”



Rizzoli’s brow was furrowed in confusion just before he frowned. “Neither. I’ve been inside this building during a quake. The floor reacts different. And he’s still there.” He stepped forward to the two-way mirror and used his jacketed elbow to wipe away some of the dripping fog on the glass.



The room was unchanged, except that both men were staring up at a spot near the ceiling that was swirling with multiple colors. I’d been thinking it had been Ivy in the room with us, because it’s nearly always Ivy who comes when I’m upset. But unless she’d discovered some interesting new tricks, this wasn’t her. Since my sister was only eight when she died, she didn’t learn very well and as a ghost, she isn’t very powerful.



This entity reminded me more of Vicki, who had been as powerful a ghost as she had been a clairvoyant. She not only retained her mind, she also could communicate by writing on glass with frost. But Vicki had well and truly gone to a better place. She’d sacrificed herself to close the demon dimension, and holy men from every faith had assured me it would send her straight to the greatest possible reward.



But they’d also said she couldn’t have been that powerful to begin with, so what did they know? There was only one way to find out.



“Vicki? Is that you?”



If it was her, she’d recognize my voice. The swirling colors stopped, and if a ball of energy can turn, it did. A loud popping sound made me step back from the glass. Windows and mirrors had often made that sound when Vicki wrote on them, because of the ambient temperature difference between room heat and frost cold enough to write. But these pops actually made the glass crack. And then letters appeared. Just two.



No.



That made me frown and Rizzoli turned to stare at me, possibly confused at my question, or at my expression.



“Then, what is your name?”



No.



That nearly made me laugh, because it was so absurd. I couldn’t tell if the spirit was being obstinate or if that was the only word it knew. It was powerful, to be sure, but maybe not so bright.



Think again, Celia, appeared in the glass, and with a sharp crack loud enough to make me cover my ears, the whole window erupted into a pattern of breaks that should have made it fall out of its frame. But the windowpane held and the words remained.



My jaw dropped, literally. Even Vicki couldn’t read minds and couldn’t do that to glass. What the hell was this thing?



“What does that mean?” Rizzoli had his head cocked, staring at the words like that dog in the old gramophone ads. “What are you supposed to think about?”



I didn’t know, so all I could do was shake my head.



I could see a dozen tiny versions of the prisoner through the wall of cracks, all of them staring at the mirror. For him, the words I was reading must be backward, so I’m sure he was struggling with aileC ,niaga knihT. No doubt he thought it was some strange sort of code. Or heck, maybe it meant something in his language. I wasn’t quite sure what alphabet he used.



I was still pretty sure that the prisoner couldn’t see inside this room even though his attention was certainly focused on the mirror. But then he let out a yelp and jerked his hands off the table. The other FBI agent did, too. Rizzoli and I both moved closer to the window to see what was up.



The cheap metal table in the lower room was smoking and a growing circle of glowing red had appeared on the surface. Black letters seemed to rise from within the molten tabletop.



Tell them or you will learn pain.



The prisoner huddled in a corner, holding a burned hand to his chest. He was clutching an object on a chain and muttering furiously with wide eyes. His gaze was locked on the words that had risen from the table altogether and now hovered in the air for all to see. The man was obviously terrified. I mean, I certainly was. I could see his pulse increasing in his neck and knew that if I was in the same room as him, he would smell of fear. I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t exploded yet.



I found myself whispering in totally serious tones. “I’m not doing this. If you’re not doing this, are we going to be held responsible? Does the Geneva Convention even cover sentient non-corporeal beings?”



Rizzoli’s voice was likewise serious. “I don’t think Hell was a signatory.”