Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

trailer court.
    â€œCongregational church,” I said sprinting for my car. I knew that none of the churches I’d written down had the word Congregational in it, but I also had a phone book I kept in the car.
    There were no listings for a Congregational church in the yellow pages so I turned to the white pages and found a single listing in Pasco, which was not helpful. Mrs. Hanna’s route didn’t take her across the river.
    I pulled out my cell phone and called Gabriel’s phone number. One of his little sisters had a thing about ghosts. If her mother wasn’t there, and you let her get started, she’d tell ghost stories the whole time she worked cleaning the office.
    â€œHi, Mercy,” he answered. “What’s up?”
    â€œI need to talk to Rosalinda about some local ghost stories.” I told him. “Is she there?”
    There was a little pause.
    â€œAre you having trouble with ghosts?”
    â€œNo, I need to find one.”
    He pulled his mouth away from the phone. “Rosalinda, come over here.”
    â€œI’m watching TV, can’t Tia do it? She hasn’t done anything today.”
    â€œIt’s not work. Mercy wants to pick your brains.”
    There were a few small noises as Gabriel handed over the phone.
    â€œHello?” Her voice was much more hesitant when she was talking to me than it had been when she was talking to her brother.
    â€œDidn’t you tell me you did a report on local ghosts for school last year.”
    â€œYes,” she said with a little more enthusiasm. “I got an A.”
    â€œI need to know if you’ve heard anything about the ghost of a janitor named Joe who used to work at a church.” He didn’t have to be a ghost, I thought. After all, I talked to Mrs. Hanna, and I wasn’t a ghost. And even if he was a ghost, that didn’t mean there were stories about him.
    â€œOh, yes. Yes.” Gabriel didn’t have an accent at all, but his sister’s clear Spanish vowels added color to her voice as it brightened with enthusiasm. “Joe is very famous. He worked his whole life cleaning his church, until he was sixty-four, I think. One Sunday, when the priest…no they called him something else. Pastor, I think, or minister. Anyway when he came to open the church he found Joe dead in the kitchen. But he stayed there anyway. I talked to people who used to go to church there. They said that sometimes there were lights on at night when there was no one there. And doors would lock themselves. One person said they saw him on the stairway, but I’m not sure I believe that. That person just liked to tell stories.”
    â€œWhere is it?” I asked her.
    â€œOh. Not too far from our apartment,” she said. “Down on Second or Third, just a couple of blocks from Washington.” Not far from the police department either. “I went over to take pictures of it. It isn’t a church anymore. The church people built a new building and sold the old one to another church about twenty years ago. Then it sold to some other people who tried to run a private school. They went bankrupt, there was a divorce, and one of them, I can’t remember if it was the husband or the wife, killed themselves. The church was empty the last time I went by there.”
    â€œThank you, Rosalinda,” I said. “That’s exactly what I needed to know.”
    â€œDo you believe in ghosts?” she asked. “My mother says they are nonsense.”
    â€œPerhaps they are,” I said, not wanting to contradict her mother. “But there are a lot of people who believe all sorts of nonsense. Take care.”
    She laughed. “You too. Goodbye, Mercy.”
    I hit the END button and looked at the darkening sky. There was one way to tell if the vampires were up. I pulled Andre’s card out of my back pocket and called him.
    â€œHello, Mercy,” he answered. “What are we doing tonight?”
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    As soon as Andre answered the phone, I knew that my chance at finding the sorcerer in a daytime stupor was gone. I could wait until the next morning. Then we could go after him with Bran. Bran was, in my mind, exempt from the effects of the demon. I just couldn’t imagine the thing that could break his icy calmness.
    But if we waited for help, waited for the morning, I was almost certain that both Adam and Samuel would be dead.
    â€œI know where he is,” I told Andre.