Bone Key Read online

  It wasn't odd to Sam, though. Lots of demonic rituals required blood, and demons tended to leave sulfur behind.

  "Bobby?" When he came over, Sam pointed at the screen.

  "Yeah. All right, I guess the sun shines on a dog's ass every once in a while."

  Sam set all the pages he'd called up to print on Bobby's laser jet, then stretched his long arms. "All right, I'm gonna hit the hay. Thanks, Bobby."

  "No problem. I just hope this isn't a wild-goose chase."

  Shrugging, Sam got to his feet. "Worst-case scenario, Dean's cut loose on Key West." He grinned. "Key West may never be the same."

  Bobby did not grin back. "Yeah, well, be careful. There's a reason why the place has so many ghost stories. Lotta spiritual energy on that island. If there is a demon that got out of the gate workin' down there, it could be real bad."

  Sam nodded. "I know. But we've got the Colt—we'll be all right. Hey, we've already faced down two gods and the seven deadly sins. We should be able to handle this."

  Bobby wasn't buying Sam's bravado. Sam had never been very good at it anyhow—that was more Dean's bag. He'd been trying to be more like Dean in preparation for Dean's being gone, but some things just didn't take. Hell, he still was having trouble figuring out what went where under the Impala's hood...

  Putting a comforting hand on Sam's shoulder, Bobby said, "Keep workin' on it, Sam."

  Sam wasn't sure if Bobby was referring to Sam's piss-poor attempt at being cocky or his ongoing attempts to find a way to save Dean. Maybe it's both, he thought. He nodded to Bobby, who nodded back. Then he went off to bed.

  THREE

  Angela O'Shea hadn't always wanted to kill the tourists.

  For one thing, she had been one herself. She had come down to Key West for spring break during her sophomore year of college. While her friends were mostly getting drunk and listening to crappy cover bands on Duval Street, she learned how to scuba dive and went parasailing and checked out the museums. She came back the summer after sophomore year, intending to spend just a week.

  She had yet to leave.

  During her first trip, she'd heard a singer/songwriter do a tune, the refrain of which ran: "Just came down for the weekend, but that was twenty-five years ago." The singer had said that the island was full of people that applied to, and Angela had laughed and thought that to be amusing but ridiculous.

  And now she was one of those people.

  Having dropped out of college, she had to support herself (her parents were more than happy to pay for college, but that was as far as their generosity went). She had taken on a couple of part-time jobs, including waitressing at one of the bars during the day (when the places were much less crowded and easier to deal with) and being a tour guide for one of the many companies that gave ghost tours at night. Key West was silly with ghost stories, and her job was to take groups of twenty or fewer to allegedly haunted houses and tell exaggerated tales about them.

  Angela had figured it to be easy, just working from a script, but it turned out that Cayo Hueso Ghost Tours Inc. liked their tour guides to embellish and perform. Angela had actually done some improv—she'd been a theater major before dropping out—so she started adding her own spins to the stories of Native Americans, wrecker captains, treasure seekers, and artists of various stripes whose shades allegedly haunted the island.

  The job started out fine. It seemed like there were always one or two idiots in every tour group, and always one or two rude assholes who complained about everything and didn't tip. At first, she was willing to put up with that, but five months later, it hadn't gotten any better. Not to mention the self-proclaimed skeptics who tried to "disprove" what she was saying, thus ruining the fun for everyone else.

  It wasn't like anybody really believed this stuff. Well, okay, that wasn't true, lots of people did, so why ruin their fun? It wasn't like some grad student dork was gonna change their minds...

  Today she had the worst of all worlds. They started out at the old Lipinski place on Eaton Street, which had been purchased by CHGT after old Mr. Lipinski went into the sanitarium. The house had been in his family since the nineteenth century, but they had to sell the place to pay for the old guy to go to the nuthouse. And it was the center of one of the stories anyhow, so the company bought it and put a gift shop in what used to be the sitting room, but otherwise left the house intact—including the room in the turret for the doll.

  As she took the group up the winding stairs to the turret, one overweight man wearing a thick sweatshirt and jeans said, "Nobody told me there'd be stairs. I can't take a lot of stairs. "

  Five months' practice was the only thing that kept Angela from saying, "If you ate a salad once in a while, you'd be in better shape." Instead, she asked a question that the man's wardrobe had already answered: "Your first day in Key West, sir?"

  "Why—yes. How'd you know?"

  The only people stupid enough to wear a sweat- shirt and jeans are the ones who just got here. "You'll find that many people walk on the island. Everything's pretty close together, for the most part. You might want to consider one of the pedicabs." They were always told to mention the pedicabs, since the brother of CHGT's owner ran one of the pedicab companies. Technically, she was supposed to give the company name, but she never did that, as it struck her as unethical.

  When they got to the top of the wooden stairs, which had creaked and groaned under the weight of so many people, everyone bunched in the doorway at the top of the steps. Angela removed the top hat that was part of her work clothes. Normally, Angela was strictly T-shirt and shorts, but for work, she put on the big black top hat, the black taffeta skirt, the black stockings, the white button-down shirt and black vest, the multiple black bracelets, and the big stompy boots. She also overdid the eyeliner and put on black lipstick. She had resisted Goth-ifying herself at first, but the boss insisted, and she did notice that the tourists responded to her better when she looked like a Marilyn Manson fan.

  Angela stepped inside the small room, hunched over so she wouldn't hit her head on the ceiling. The room at the top of the turret really could only accommodate a small child. She indicated the undersized furniture—the man in the sweatshirt probably couldn't fit his fat ass in the sofa—and said, "This is where Raymond lives. Raymond is a doll." Angela moved aside so everyone could get a better view. Besides the small couch in the center of the room, there was an end table that looked like a coffee-cup saucer with four legs attached to it (on top of which was a dinky desk lamp that could only accommodate a Christmas-tree light, providing the only illumination and making the room spookier), a rocking chair that looked like it belonged to a three-year-old, and an easy chair.

  It was on that chair that Raymond sat.

  Sweatshirt man wiped sweat from his large brow, and said, "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw! God, Marcia, isn't that the ugliest thing you ever saw?"

  The almost-as-overweight woman with him just nodded sagely, carrying the look of a woman who'd long since learned to just stay quiet and under the radar. Angela's mother had that look; being married to Angela's father did that to a person. Her dad belonged in the same insane asylum as old Mr. Lipinski...

  And fat man wasn't wrong in any event—Raymond was a very ugly doll, looking more like a monkey than the small child it was supposed to represent. It wore a striped shirt under its round head and fat face and oversized jaw.

  "Raymond was a gift from a Bahamian housekeeper in 1904 to a young boy who lived here. It was his favorite toy—but it got him into trouble. The boy was always a good child, until he received Raymond, at which point he became a terrible prankster." She hesitated, having long since learned the value of the dramatic pause. "Or so everyone thought. You see, the young man insisted, to the point of tears, that it was Raymond who'd knocked over the priceless vase, Raymond who fed spoiled meat to the dogs, Raymond who tracked mud into the house when it rained, Raymond who set the Christmas tree on fire." She only added that last one around this time of year. That ha
dn't been part of the story, but she remembered reading somewhere that people used to put actual candles on their Christmas trees, so it struck her that fires had to be fairly common, and it was the kind of thing a kid—or a doll possessed by a ghost, ha-ha—might do.

  An acne-festooned teenager wearing a Van Halen T-shirt said, "What, and people believed that? I mean, duh, it was the kid!"

  "Maybe it was." Another dramatic pause. "And maybe it wasn't!"

  Angela put her hat back on and led them down the creaky stairs. Once, Angela had asked why they didn't replace the stairs, but her boss pointed out that creaky stairs in a haunted house is a good thing.

  Jonathan still hadn't shown up to run the gift shop, like usual, so Angela locked up the house and hoped he deigned to arrive by the time the tour was over. She hated having to run the gift shop after doing the whole tour.

  Over the following hour, she took the group out onto the early-evening streets to each of the other six houses on the tour, and described some of the hauntings. Between each one, the fat man complained about how much walking and standing they were doing, and don't they get a break? At each one, a pair of older women who appeared to be sisters hung on Angela's every word, gasping in all the right places and saying that that was amazing. Right after that, the kid with the acne would come up with what he thought was a logical and scientific—and possibly accurate, not that Angela cared—explanation of each haunting, earning him a dirty look from the two sisters.

  By the time she got to the story of Captain Naylor, she was about ready to kill all of them. The sisters' simpering approval was almost as bad as Acne Boy's channeling of Dana Scully—and both of them were a treat compared to the fat man.

  "Captain Terrence Naylor owned this house during his life as a wrecker captain. During the nineteenth century, one of the most lucrative businesses on Key West was the wreckers. Ships and boats were regularly getting damaged on the reefs, and wreckers would go out and do rescue and salvage. A lot of the houses on this island were built by wrecker captains with the money they made."

  "That's awful, " the fat man said. "Profiting on people's suffering like that."

  Angela ground her teeth. That was the other thing she got regularly, people who were outraged at the wreckers' actually making a living. "They were performing a service—and it was a very specific and well-regulated service. They weren't profiting on misery any more than firefighters do. Without wreckers, a lot more people would've died out on the sea."

  The fat man didn't look convinced, so Angela went back to ignoring him and telling them about how Captain Naylor had been haunting the house since he died in 1872, and how to this day, guests at the Naylor House Bed and Breakfast would hear the captain's voice in the night...

  "Prob'ly just the wind," Acne Boy said. "Tropical breezes, all'a trees—plus all'a live music right 'round the corner on Duval. Only really really stupid people'd believe that was a ghost." That last was said while looking right at the sisters.

  The Naylor House was right across the street from the Lipinski House, so the tour ended when Angela walked them across Eaton Street and stood under a street lamp. "Thank you all for coming to our tour." Glancing at the front door, she saw that it was unlocked, and the display lights in the gift shop were on, so obviously Jonathan had materialized. "The gift shop is available, and I hope you all enjoy your stay in the Keys."

  Some of the group didn't bother coming inside—including, thank God, Acne Boy—while others went in to browse the items in the shop. They sold books about the island, about the folklore, about some of the famous people and historical events of the Keys, and so on. There were also maps, postcards, gift cards, CDs by local artists, and various silly tchotchkes that tourists always liked to buy for whatever stupid reason.

  While folks browsed, Angela walked up to the desk and glowered at the pale, long-haired, bearded young man with the beer gut already sticking out from under his too-small T-shirt. At least he'd remembered to bathe this morning. He had his nose in a gaming magazine that had an orc or something on the cover.

  "'Bout time you showed up," she said.

  "What?" Jonathan said defensively without looking up from the magazine. "I knew you wouldn't be done with these guys until seven."

  "What if I finished early? Or what if one of them wanted to buy something at the start? You're supposed to be here at six."

  Jonathan shook his head. "Whatever."

  Sighing, Angela looked around and made a beeline for the fat man, who was with his wife looking at the Florida license plates with people's names on them. He was holding up a license plate emblazoned with the name TERRY. "We should get this for our niece."

  His wife frowned. "Doesn't she spell it with an I?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's 'Terri,' with an I. She don't spell it like that, with a Y."

  "What difference does that make?"

  Angela walked up to him. "Thanks again for coming on the tour," she lied. "If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask Jonathan over there."

  "Oh, thank you, I will," the fat man said.

  Yes. "Good."

  A pair of young men who appeared to be a couple, and who'd been blessedly silent during the tour, came up to Angela.

  "Excuse me, Angela?" one of them said.

  "Yes?"

  "I think I left my bracelet up in Raymond's room."

  The other one made a tsk noise. "Dammit, Paulie, I told you to get that clasp fixed, but do you listen?"

  "Oh shut up, Mario, I'm just—"

  Mario held up a hand. "Fine, fine, don't listen to me, I don't know anything. "

  Angela put on her best smile. "I can run up and check for you."

  "Could you please?" Paulie said, his wide eyes and hopeful smile giving him a look of gratitude. "That would be so great. It's a silver bracelet with a Celtic knotwork pattern on it."

  "No problem." She regretted the risk of not being there when the fat man descended upon Jonathan, but knowing the man in question, Angela'd probably still hear whatever he harangued the dork with from upstairs.

  Going up the winding staircase, she opened the door to find that the furniture had been rearranged. The tiny couch was now against the wall, the rocker had been rotated ninety degrees, and the easy chair was facing the window.

  Raymond was also on the couch.

  Right on the threshold was an unclasped silver bracelet that had a very lovely Celtic knotwork pattern etched all around it. Smiling, Angela picked it up and walked back downstairs, the wood creaking under her heavy boots.

  Once the tourists had paid for their goodies and left (Mario and Paulie both expressing gratitude for her retrieving the missing bracelet, Paulie promising Mario that this time he'd get the damn clasp fixed), Jonathan and Angela were alone in the house—at least until the eight o'clock group started to trickle in.

  "What's with the redecorating in Raymond's room?" she asked Jonathan, who had gone back to his gaming magazine.

  "What're you talkin' 'bout?" he asked without raising his head.

  "Raymond's room. You rearranged all the furniture."

  Finally, Jonathan looked up. "Angie, the hell're you talkin' about? I just got here five minutes 'fore you did. Barely had time to unlock the place an' turn the lights on 'fore you guys came all bargin' in. I ain't been upstairs."

  "Then who rearranged the furniture?"

  "Hell if I know." Jonathan looked back down at the magazine.

  Shaking her head, Angela went back up the winding stairs. This is seriously messed up. The stairs seemed to be creaking extra loudly this time.

  Stop it, it's just your imagination. Jonathan's probably lying. Or maybe Stella or Gene came in while the tour was going on. That'd be just like them.

  When she got back to the top of the stairs, she pushed the door slowly open, and it creaked even louder than the stairs had. Hating the sound of it, she pushed harder, throwing the door all the way open with a crash against the brick wall of the turret.


  Angela stared at the room. It looked like it had when she came up for Paulie's bracelet.

  But the doll was gone.

  She walked over to the sofa, which had a small indentation on the spot where Raymond had been sitting. So how the hell did it move? The only door to the house that hadn't been sealed shut was the front door, a security measure that had been put in to safeguard the merchandise and cash register in the gift shop. The house wasn't that big—Angela would've seen somebody try to sneak upstairs in the time between her retrieval of the bracelet and now.

  So who took the stupid doll?

  Angela nearly jumped out of her skin as the wooden door slammed shut with a louder crash than it had made when she threw it open.

  "Okay, Jonathan, this just stopped being funny." She stomped over to the door, grabbing the handle and yanking on it—and almost wrenched her shoulder. She'd easily opened and shut the door any number of times since starting this job, but now it wouldn't budge.

  After yanking on it a few more times, she started slamming her palms against it. "Hey! Jonathan! Open the damn door!"

  Reaching into the pocket of her vest, she pulled out her cell phone. She'd had enough of this crap.

  Flipping it open, the words NO SERVICE were emblazoned across the top of the screen.

  What the hell? She'd never had a problem with cell reception except sometimes when it rained. Certainly, the house wasn't a dead zone. Hell, she'd had a half-hour conversation with her now-ex-boyfriend in this very room a month ago. Angrily closing the phone, she looked around the room—and saw Raymond standing on the end table. The little lamp was on the floor, even though Angela had neither heard nor seen it being moved.

  "All right, this is so totally messed up. If somebody doesn't—"

  Raymond launched through the air right at Angela. Too stunned at this impossible thing happening, she didn't duck out of the way despite instincts honed from two semesters' worth of self-defense classes back at college.