Title: Sam Kane
Chapter: Four
Main Characters: Samantha Kane, Jack Mayfair
Genre: Fantasy/Magic/Mystery
Legal Stuff: Copyright 2007 Patrick Hester
All works created by me for this site, including literary works, musical works - including any accompanying words, dramatic works - including any accompanying music, pictorial, graphic, motion pictures and other audiovisual works and or sound recordings are Copyright 2007 Patrick Hester. All rights reserved.

Four


The porch creaked and moaned with our passage, making me wonder how long it would be before the whole thing collapsed while hoping it wouldn't be any time soon. Mayfair lead me to a set of double doors in the front of the house, the steps up flanked by these gigantic stone lions like you'd see outside of a library in New York or something, nothing at all you'd expect at a house. The doors were dark, almost black and inlaid with a sort of pattern that ran up the side of the right door, across the top and back down the left. Mayfair pushed both open and gestured for me to follow as he stepped inside.

My first impression was that inside, it didn't really look anything like a house - it was more like a library. The doors opened to a great room where five desks had been set, each with a wooden chair for the owner and another in front for a guest. In just about every other free bit of space in and around the desks sat books. Books on free standing shelves, books on shelves pushed up against the walls - even piles of books like little columns on the floor. To my right was a narrow stairway that disappeared up to the second floor and even it had books piled on it. To my left, on the far side of the room beyond all the desks and shelves, I could just see a swinging door leading off to another room I assumed was the kitchen (because kitchens used to have those kinds of doors on all the old television shows I watched as a kid) and a pair of French style doors straight ahead looked like they lead outside into the backyard.

Mayfair was putting his coat on a rack just inside the doors. He wore a faded blue business suit beneath, complete with vest and pocket watch, which he pulled out to check the time. I noticed for the first time that the man was painfully thin - like a toothpick kind of thin. He didn't look healthy at all.

"Welcome to Banba," he said with a wave of his hand.

"Banba?" I asked.

"My grandfather named it 'Banba' after he built it. He was always a good Irishman."

"Your grandfather built this place? And now it's, what? Your precinct house?"

"Something like that. Everything is on the up and up, if that's what you're worried about. Kylie?! Kylie?! Where are you?"

The door on the left swung open and a large woman stepped through. She was a little shorter, but easily had a couple hundred pounds on me. She shuffled through the maze between the desks, a pair of coffee cups in her hands.

"I was making fresh coffee," she said as she handed one cup to him and the other to me. With a smile she also offered her hand, "Kylie Dannon."

"Sam Kane," I replied as I took both the coffee and the hand. She looked like one of those goth kids my friends and I used to make fun of in school. She had short, jet-black hair that framed her face well enough, but she wore dark black eye shadow, lipstick and nail polish. Her eyes were big and dark and she had a tiny little nose with a gold stud in it that may have held a diamond, but something told me it was probably sparkly glass. She was dressed all in black; a black blouse and a black skirt with a silver pattern that ended just above her ankles to reveal bare feet complete with black toenails. She had on at least a dozen gold and silver necklaces of varying length and design, some hanging down nearly to her waist while others were shorter and circled just above her breasts.

The coffee smelled like a dream, so I took a sip and smiled. It was better than any I'd gotten from any cop before, that was for sure. Tasted like the stuff you got on the corner of every street anymore, not something you got from a regular coffee pot.

"Mykels gone to the morgue on a tip," she said to Mayfair.

"And Giles?" he asked.

"Nevil hates it when you call him that."

"So? He's British and a librarian. He shouldn't be so thick skinned about it."

"Nevil," she stressed the name and winked at me, "has gone to DIA - something about a courier bringing him a new book or something?"

"Wonderful. Detective Kane will be joining us - clear a desk?"

"I'll show her around if that's what you're asking."

"Please - I've a couple phone calls to make."

With that, Mayfair threaded his way to the desk farthest from where we stood and began rummaging through the papers and files he had there. Kylie just smiled after him, a smile which faded when she turned to me.

"So, what did you do?"

"What?"

"What did you do? You had to have done something to end up here. We all did. What did you do?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Fine," she sneered. "Tell me when you want, I don't care. This is the office and library. If you can't find what you need in one of these books, you're out of luck."

"Computer?"

She snorted. "Can't have a computer in here, they just don't live long. Blame the old man. That door there," she said, pointing to where she'd entered the room, "is the kitchen. We've got a refrigerator, but it's an old one. Feel free to bring whatever. Water's straight from the tap, no cooler. There's a gas stove but no microwave."

"Let me guess - they give you trouble too?"

"Yep. Maybe it's the wiring in this old place," she said it as if she didn't actually believe it. "Follow me."

She lead me past the stairs to a trio of doors. The first was behind the stairs and she opened it to reveal stairs leading down into a basement. "Lockup is down there, not that anyone actually gets locked up. Still, it's there if you need it." A switch on the wall turned on a light at both the top and the bottom of the stairs. "Some storage down there too - a few shelves full of boxes, no idea what's in them. Feel free to explore down there if you want, I don't like going down there."

"Don't like basements?" I asked.

"Something like that." The second door opened up into a bathroom. "We share with boys, so either look before you sit or get used to cold and wet." The third door opened to reveal what looked like a seldom used old sitting room complete with furniture covered in sheets - tons of furniture that looked like it had been shoved into the room, covered and forgotten. Heavy drapes covered the windows on a rounded wall, blocking all but a sliver of light.

"As you can see, no one really comes in here. All the furniture that used to be in there," she thumbed over her shoulder, "now lives in here."

"Gotcha. What's upstairs?" I asked.

"Jack's family stuff mostly. Four bedrooms on the second floor, two on the third, plus a study that he uses sometimes. There's a weird attic type room in the tower. We don't go upstairs much."

"He lives here?"

"Most of the time, yes. Wait until you see the backyard."

She lead me through the maze of desks and books to the french doors I'd glimpsed, opening them up to a back porch that was a little wider than the front, almost like a deck. There was even a porch swing to my right. A few plants hung from the ceiling here and there and these looked like they were in much better shape compared to the front yard, like someone was actually seeing to their needs and taking care of them. It even felt cooler back here and I'd just realized that the office itself was pretty warm and I hadn't felt any A/C. Hell, in a place this old, there probably wasn't any, which just made it that much more fun to be here.

I stepped out a bit further and took in the back yard, knowing that my eyes must've been bugging out of my head at what I thought I was seeing.

"Are those....?"

"Gravestones? Yep. His family back three generations, all buried here."

"Is that even legal?" I asked.

"I have no idea. If it were illegal, I'm sure someone would've said something before now."

"I see." I didn't, but I didn't know what else to say. I took another drink from my coffee cup as I took in the graveyard. The fence back here was solid stone with that same decorative iron spikes sticking up along the top. The fence was tall enough and wide enough that no one could see in back here, which was maybe why no one ever complained about having a graveyard here - they couldn't see it. "So what do you do around here, Kylie?" I asked, idly. My mind was still racing. There was a lot to take in and I knew I'd have to have some alone time very soon to digest it all.

"Oh. I'm a Mystic. Mostly, I talk to dead people."

I coughed up my coffee.