Bound by Blood

Chapter 1

The day my life began to change forever started like any other: with weird noises in the hallway, and a creeping sense of dread.

"Pete—don't you dare!" I yelled at the bowling ball hovering a few feet above the third-floor landing.

As though a string had been cut, the ball dropped to the floor with a crack and rolled to the edge of the top step.

"Pete..."

I put as much warning in my tone as I could, but to no avail. The ball teetered for a moment before going over. Gravity took it from there, and I could only listen as the heavy object thunked rapidly down two flights of stairs and smashed into something on the level below.

7 a.m. was too early to deal with this.

"Pete, I swear to God I'm going to have you exorcised."

I didn't really mean it, of course. Pete was a poltergeist, and while he wasn't the best housemate, he did ensure that visitors to my uncle's museum went away with some interesting stories to tell.

In other words, he was bad for my nerves, but good for business.

Making my way downstairs, I inspected for damage. The bowling ball now lay quiescent, nothing more than an ordinary, inanimate object. Pete had used up his store of energy for now—thank God—and wouldn't cause more trouble for the next few hours, at least.

Fortunately, there was no immediate sign of destruction. The rows of haunted dolls on their shelves watched me with (for now) unblinking eyes, and the glass cases displaying the shrunken heads, cursed coins, and demon summoning scrolls were undamaged. The shadow mirrors were likewise intact, nothing but my own reflections staring back at me.

I blinked at the man in the mirrors and, reassuringly, he blinked back.

I looked terrible. I'd been up most of the night before working on my dissertation, and it showed. My mess of curly black hair hung around my face like broken springs, and my bronze skin looked sallow in the dim glow of the faux-gas lights. I had my mother's large dark eyes, full mouth, and high cheekbones, and my father's long, straight nose. 'The Lorenfield nose,' Uncle Theo called it.

I'd also inherited my mother's delicate build and dark olive skin, making me stand out in a family that was otherwise full of broad-shouldered Anglo-Saxons. I ran a hand through my unruly hair, but only succeeded in making it worse. Giving up, I went back to inspecting the displays.

My uncle, Theodosius Lorenfield, had started this museum—the Museum of Cursed Artifacts and Haunted Objects—as a kind of joke in his younger days as a doctoral student at Santa Marina University. After falling out with his professional circle, it became more of a full-time job, not to mention a full-blown obsession, bringing in a steady stream of revenue that was somehow enough to support both himself and me, and fund at least part of his archeological expeditions.

He was on one of these now, and had left me in charge of the business in his absence.

The Museum occupied the lower level of an old Victorian townhouse in historic Santa Marina. My uncle lived on the upper levels, and for the past twelve years, since my parents' deaths when I was sixteen, I had as well. I loved the place, haunted dolls and all.

We collected supernatural, paranormal, and magical objects and artifacts of all kinds, but especially the dangerous variety. Uncle Theo believed that we performed an important service by keeping such things safe—out of the wrong hands and away from places they might do harm—while at the same time giving people the chance to satisfy their curiosity.

That was one way of looking at it. One might also say we ran a roadside tourist attraction and charged a small fee for admittance.

Finding no sign of damage, I placed Pete's bowling ball back on its pedestal and stepped outside to fetch the mail. The house had a small porch with a short flight of steep stairs that led down to a tiny patch of grass, and then the street. My mailbox was an ornate monstrosity which I hadn't been allowed to paint any color but the same awful powder blue as the house. Being part of the historic district was excellent for business, but it had its disadvantages as well. One of which was headed my way.