THE SOUL

  STEALER

  HORROR STANDALONES

  Black Angel

  Death Mask

  Death Trance

  Edgewise

  Heirloom

  Prey

  Ritual Spirit

  Tengu

  The Chosen Child

  The Sphinx

  Unspeakable

  Walkers

  Manitou Blood

  Revenge of the Manitou

  Famine

  Ikon

  Sacrifice

  The House of a Hundred Whispers

  Plague

  THE SCARLET WIDOW SERIES

  Scarlet Widow

  The Coven

  THE KATIE MAGUIRE SERIES

  White Bones

  Broken Angels

  Red Light

  Taken for Dead

  Blood Sisters

  Buried

  Living Death

  Dead Girls Dancing

  Dead Men Whistling

  The Last Drop of Blood

  THE PATEL & PARDOE SERIES

  Ghost Virus

  The Children God Forgot

  The Shadow People

  THE SOUL

  STEALER

  GRAHAM

  MASTERTON

  An Aries book

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,

  part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © Graham Masterton, 2022

  The moral right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781801103930

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781801103947

  ISBN (E): 9781801103961

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  THE SOUL

  STEALER

  1

  ‘Trinity? It’s Margo. I have to see you. I’m so scared. I’ve never been so scared in my life.’

  ‘Margo? What’s wrong? Where are you?’

  ‘You remember Peyton’s Place, on Reseda? That bar where we all got together for Trudy’s birthday? Do you think you can meet me there?’

  ‘I have to pick up Rosie from school right now, but sure, after that. Say four o’clock?’

  ‘Okay, then. Four. I’ll see you there at four. But you will be there, won’t you? Please promise you’ll be there.’

  ‘Yes, I promise.’

  Margo hung up without saying anything else and Trinity was left staring at the blank screen of her phone. She hadn’t heard from Margo Shapiro in over a year, when she had last attended a reunion party at John R. Wooden High School. Margo had been sparkling then: red-headed and eye-catchingly attractive, and bursting with excitement about her walk-on part in Howard Bright’s latest comedy, Hilarity Jones.

  What could have happened to frighten her so much? Trinity had never heard anyone sound so panic-stricken.

  She went through to the narrow hallway, stepping over the boxes that were ready to be returned to Amazon. She took down her denim jacket from the peg by the front door and called out to her father, ‘Dad!’

  There was no answer. She could hear Steve Wilkos on the TV, with the volume turned low, so she called out again. ‘Dad! I’m just going to pick up Rosie from school!’

  There was still no response, so she went into the living room. Her father was slumped sideways on the worn-out red couch, with an open can of Rolling Rock wedged between his hairy thighs, and softly snoring. She went up to him and shook his shoulder.

  ‘Dad – I’m just going to pick up Rosie!’

  He opened his eyes and stared up at her for a moment as if he couldn’t think where he was, or who she was, or even who he was, himself. His wiry grey hair was sticking up as if he had been electrocuted, his eyes were puffy and his chin was prickly with silver stubble. The front of his blue Chargers T-shirt was ribbed with diagonal brown lines. His breakfast had been last night’s leftover burger and he had used his T-shirt to wipe the barbecue sauce off his fingers.

  ‘Trinity—’ he said, trying to sit up straight without tipping his can of beer into his lap. ‘You’re an angel, Trin, I swear to God. I shoulda – I shoulda picked her up myself – but after yesterday – you know what day it was yesterday. Honestly, I swear to God, I’ll pick her up tomorrow. I’ll even get up early and fetch her to school. How about that?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, Dad.’

  ‘Well, there you are. The Lord’s looking after me. But I’ll fetch her Monday. I swear.’

  Trinity nodded and said, ‘Okay, Dad, whatever.’ She didn’t remind him that he had taken Rosie to school only once in the past three and a half years, and on that occasion he had been stopped for backing his car up into the Arby’s Roast Beef Sandwich sign on Reseda Boulevard and causing over $400 worth of damage.

  But she was forgiving. Yesterday would have been her mother’s birthday if her mother hadn’t been taken by ovarian cancer three years ago, at the age of forty-seven.

  Her mother was looking at her even now, from the oval picture frame on top of the air conditioner, with her cropped brown hair, her high Slavic cheekbones and her turned-up nose, which her father had always called her ‘ski-jump’ nose. Her mother was smiling but her smile was somehow apprehensive, as if she had secretly suspected that her happiness couldn’t last for long.

  In looks, they could have been sisters, Trinity and her mother, although Trinity’s hair was shoulder-length and sweeping, and she was much skinnier than her mother had been. But they shared those Slavic cheekbones and some of that constant caution in their eyes, like a deer stepping through a forest.

  ‘You’ll be passing the market on Vanowen, won’t you?’ her father called out, as she opened the front door.

  ‘Dad, I just paid the rent. I got dust.’

  ‘Jim’ll let you have a six-pack. Tell him I’ll pony up next Friday.’

  ‘Well, I’ll ask him. But I’m in a hurry. I promised to meet my friend Margo at four.’

  ‘Margo? Who’s Margo?’

  Trinity didn’t answer but closed the door and crossed over the driveway to her father’s Mercury Monarch with its faded silver paintwork and its one green passenger door. As she was climbing into the driver’s seat, Kenno came strutting over from next door, where he had been washing his orange Challenger.

  ‘Trinity! How’s it hanging, doll?’

  Kenno was a keen bodybuilder and his sleeveless maroon T-shirt showed off his balloon-like biceps, densely decorated with tattoos of skulls and gorillas and bosomy women. He was handsome in a Josh Hutcherson way but he looked younger than his twenty-seven years because of his acned cheeks and his tawny man-bun, and his legs in his ripped denim shorts were disproportionately spindly for his pumped-up torso.

  ‘I can’t stop, Kenno. I have to pick up Rosie from school.’

  ‘You’ve lost weight, baby, do you know that?’

  ‘It’s these skinny jeans, that’s all,’ said Trinity. She slammed the door shut and started the engine but she wound down the window.

  Kenno leaned on the roof of her car, squeezing out his sponge. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take you up to the Tamales House and treat you to all the wet chicken burritos you can eat. That’ll give you some oomph.’ He held his hands out in front of his chest to show her what he meant, his sponge still dripping.

  ‘Kenno, I’m a vegetarian. And I have to go, or else I’ll be late.’

  Kenno grinned at her, showing her his missing front tooth. ‘Okay, okay, forget the chicken burritos. Rajas con queso.’

  ‘Chillies give me heartburn. Goodbye.’

  She backed out of the driveway with a squeal of worn-out tyres and drove to Kittridge Street to Reseda Charter High School. It was a hot, brass-bright afternoon and she had forgotten her sunglasses so she had
to drive with her eyes narrowed because of the reflection from the hood. She also had to drive carefully because the Monarch’s transmission fluid was leaking and the gearbox kept unexpectedly downshifting, jolting her forward behind the wheel.

  Rosie was waiting for her under the trees on the corner of Etiwanda Avenue, talking to two of her girlfriends. Trinity blew her horn, turned around and drew up beside her. Rosie opened the back door and tossed her school bag onto the seat, and then she climbed in next to Trinity. The first thing she said was, ‘What’s for dinner?’

  Rosie could not have been more different from Trinity. She was fourteen years old, short and plump, and bore a strong resemblance to their paternal grandmother, Lily, with curly blonde hair and windflower-blue eyes. She had been an exceptionally pretty baby, and Trinity guessed that when she lost the weight she had put on at puberty, she would be turning all the boys’ heads. In the meantime, she compensated for her lack of looks by being snippy and opinionated and endlessly demanding.

  Trinity didn’t tell her that with thighs like hers, Rosie’s navy-blue skirt was hitched up far too short. That would have started a tirade that might still have been carrying on at bedtime. ‘Why? Why do you say it’s too short? Are you saying my legs are too fat or something? Is that what you’re saying? Be honest!’

  ‘For dinner? I don’t know,’ said Trinity, as she pulled into the kerb beside the market on Vanowen Street. ‘I was thinking spaghetti.’

  ‘Again? We had spaghetti Monday.’

  ‘Rosie, until Dad’s unemployment comes in, spaghetti’s about all we have.’

  ‘So why have you stopped at the store?’

  ‘Why do you think? Dad wants to borrow some beer.’

  Trinity climbed out of the car and went into the market. It was frigid in there and smelled of cheese and she gave an involuntary shiver. She was hoping that genial Jim would be there behind the counter, but instead it was his young assistant Jesús, with his shiny black pompadour and his shirt open over his medallions, sticking price labels on salamis with all the flourish of a gunslinger.

  ‘Hey, don’t even ask,’ he said, as Trinity approached the counter.

  ‘A six-pack, that’s all. He’ll pay you Thursday when he gets his check.’

  ‘That’s what he said last week, and he still doesn’t pay.’

  ‘He’s gasping for it, Jesús. Please.’

  Jesús put down his price gun and stared at Trinity with those black-lashed eyes that put her in mind of Prince.

  ‘I tell you what. You let me feel your pussy, I give you the six-pack.’

  ‘Jesús!’

  He came around the counter and walked up to her with a confident, undulating swagger, snapping his fingers. ‘I’m serious, zorra. You let me give you the finger, I give you the six-pack, and I don’t even charge you for it. Come on. If President Trump could do it, why not me?’

  The fact that Jesús had called her ‘zorra’ wasn’t lost on her. He knew that her surname was Fox, and ‘zorra’ meant ‘fox’. But it could also mean a girl who partied with a lot of guys.

  Trinity took a step back and looked around, towards the door. She could see Rosie sitting in the car outside, prodding at her phone. It was too dark in the store for Rosie to be able to see inside, and anyway the sunlight would be casting a reflection on the window.

  She thought of her father, lying sideways on the couch, drunk and dribbling, a man worn out with grief and failure and endless disappointments. Then she turned back to Jesús. He was grinning and waggling his eyebrows up and down, as if to say, how about it then?

  At that moment the doorbell jangled and a large woman in a flowery dress the size of a small sideshow tent came gasping into the store, impatiently yanking her shopping trolley in behind her as if it were a disobedient dog.

  Trinity said, ‘Forget the beer.’ She headed for the door but Jesús followed her.

  ‘It’s okay, you can have the beer. We save the payment for next time, hunh?’

  ‘I said forget it.’

  Trinity wrenched the door open. She didn’t know if she were more angry at Jesús for what he had suggested or herself for even considering it, even for a split second. Jesús shrugged and lifted both hands and said, ‘Your loss, calaca! Fuck you!’

  That was another word Trinity knew, calaca, because she had been called it when she was at school. It meant ‘skeleton’.

  She climbed back into the driving seat and slammed the door. Rosie was still prodding at her phone with her chipped orange fingernails and didn’t even look up.

  ‘I have to meet a friend,’ said Trinity, trying to breathe normally so Rosie wouldn’t realise that she was upset. ‘I’ll take you home first and when I come back I’ll try and think of something different for dinner.’

  ‘Can’t I come with you? I hate being on my own with Dad these days.’

  ‘My friend’s really upset about something. I don’t know what it is but she sounded like she’s in bits.’

  ‘I’ll stay in the car.’

  Trinity looked at the clock. It was nearly five to four in any case, so she would have been late for Margo if she had taken Rosie home first. And she knew that her father would either be asleep and snoring or else he would keep nagging Rosie to give him ‘cuddles’. He never interfered with her sexually, but she was revolted by his clumsy hugging and his prickly beer-wet kisses. He missed their mother.

  ‘Okay,’ said Trinity, and she started up the engine and turned south to Peyton’s Place, only five blocks south on Reseda Boulevard. She turned into the parking lot in front of the line of single-storey restaurants and bars and dry cleaners and tugged up the handbrake.

  ‘You’re sure you’re going to be okay? I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’

  Rosie still didn’t look up from her phone. ‘I’ll be fine, Trin. If I get bored I’ll walk home.’

  Trinity got out of the car and crossed the sidewalk to Peyton’s Place. She was about to push open the heavy glass door when it was wrenched open from inside and a bulky man in a black bomber jacket and a black beanie came bursting out, swinging a large brown hessian bag. He almost knocked her over.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, but he ignored her, shamble-jogging down Reseda Boulevard and disappearing around the corner.

  She went into the bar. It was dark in there, illuminated only by small, shaded lamps on the tables and the dim orange strip lights behind the bar. All around the walls were black-and-white photographs of Reseda in the 1920s, when it was producing more lettuce than anywhere else in the country, and Southern Pacific Railroad trains came up Sherman Way to be loaded with it.

  There were only three customers in the bar, sitting in the far corner, and they were all middle-aged men who looked like Proud Boys. The bald barman was dipping into a large bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and staring up at a replay of a Rams game on the television. Trinity walked up to the bar and said, ‘Hi. I’m supposed to be meeting my friend here?’

  The barman wiped Cheeto spice from his drooping moustache with the back of his hand. He looked Trinity up and down in her faded denim jacket and her tight white three-quarter length jeans as if he were trying to decide if she was old enough to be in a bar. ‘Red-headed girl? Green dress?’

  ‘I don’t know what colour dress she was wearing, but yes, she’s a redhead. She hasn’t come and gone, has she?’

  The barman jerked his thumb towards the back of the bar. ‘No. She come. But she gone to the bathroom.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Trinity. ‘I’ll just shout out and tell her I’m here.’

  The barman shrugged and went back to cramming Cheetos into his mouth.

  Trinity went to the door marked Restrooms. As soon as she opened it, she smelled acrid smoke, like varnish burning, and she could hear a sharp crackling sound. She stepped into the short corridor that separated the two toilets and opened up the door to the Women’s. The whole room was swirling with smoke and transparent blue flames were leaping up over the top of the centre stall.

  ‘Margo!’ screamed Trinity.

  She went up to the stall door and tried to push it open, but it was too hot to touch, so she kicked it. Inside, Margo was sitting on the toilet in a mass of flames. Her red hair was ablaze and her green dress was curling into blackened shreds. Her face had already shrivelled into a grimacing mask – her eyes opaque and her lips stretched back over her teeth. Both arms were held up in that monkey-like pose that was adopted by almost everybody who was burned to death – firefighters, Vietnamese villagers, saints or witches.