Banishing the Dark

10

The awkwardness between us faded as the night bled into morning, but it was pretty easy to ignore something when you didn’t discuss it. And we didn’t. Not a single word. Which was fine by me. Because after hours of flipping through brittle pages of medieval woodcuts, I realized the likely cause of Lon’s brief carnal interest in me: my transmutated form must have brought back memories of Yvonne.

I’d seen her in her shifted state, right before I ripped out the spell that fueled it. She was easily the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. God only knew how many times Lon had lusted over her when she was sporting horns. Plus, she was the mother of his child, so it was only natural that he still wanted her—and only natural that my serpentine form stirred up old feelings.

Maybe my supremely good ass helped. I liked to think so. But it was over and done, and as I sat across from him in a booth in the Redwood Diner at six a.m., belly filled with griddled breakfast, I was thankful it hadn’t created anything too weird between us. If I was going to struggle with it, better to do so alone, when he was well out of empathic earshot.

Besides, I had other things to worry about. Like how my pupils hadn’t returned to normal since I shifted last night. They were elliptical, slitlike snake eyes, and my blue irises were shot through with silver. My halo was also brighter than normal. A couple of hours ago, both of these problems were worse, so at least it was fading.

But still. Not good. I thought of Priya’s warning that the Moonchild would overpower the human part of me, which could strengthen my mother’s choke hold.

Lon wasn’t convinced. He thought maybe this was just a temporary side effect—that because my transmutation wasn’t aided by an artificial spell, as his was, maybe shifting back down just wasn’t ever going to be as clean as it was for him. We were both hopeful that the side effects would continue to fade, but for now, I was forced to hide my silvery irises by wearing sunglasses indoors, like a complete jackass.

“I don’t think I’ve ever put away that many pancakes before,” I said, slumping in my seat.

“I’m impressed,” he said, giving me a soft smile as he slid his empty plate over the scratched Formica tabletop. “Vitamins.” He nodded toward the three pills he’d foisted on me like some nagging parent—to aid in my continued recovery from the hospital stay, he insisted.

I took them with the pulpy dregs of my orange juice, then ran my finger through the puddle of cooling syrup on my plate and licked it. “If our waitress doesn’t show up soon, I might eat a few more.”

She was running late, apparently. And neither the cook nor the other waitress had heard the name Robert Wildeye. If our luck didn’t change soon, I didn’t know what we’d do. Walk around town holding up a sign like chauffeurs in airports?

I’d called Jupe after the whole naked, scaly modeling session. The kid sounded a little weird—I think he said “uh” a dozen times during the phone call—but he did what I asked and summoned my guardian. Upon being questioned, Priya informed us he hadn’t noticed my transmutation in the Æthyr. The tarp ward had worked. Whether my mother had noticed, though, Priya didn’t know. All he could tell was that she was still in the Æthyr, she was still on the run, and he was still tracking her.

Better there than here, I supposed.

The diner’s front door squeaked open. Lon and I both glanced at the woman striding into the restaurant. Middle-aged. Curly brown hair streaked with gray. A little plump and a whole lot in a rush. “Sorry I’m late, Carol,” she said, disappearing behind swinging doors for a couple of minutes before reappearing without her coat. Like the other waitress’s, her dress matched the avocado tile floor. She was still tying an apron around her waist when she approached our table with a pencil clamped between her teeth.

Her nametag read “June.” That was our gal. I guessed I hadn’t realized just how enthusiastic I was to finally see her, because I heard a loud crack and looked down to find that my fork had snapped in two, right in my hand. The tine side clanged against my plate as it fell.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

June stuffed the pencil in her apron pocket and smiled. “Don’t be. Those things break in the dishwasher all the time. Customers complain that they can’t cut into a steak without bending the knives. The owner is too cheap to buy anything better.” She whisked up the broken fork pieces along with our plates, deftly cleaning up the table as she talked. “Carol said you two were asking for me?”

“Kid at the gas station said you might be able to help us,” Lon said.

“Joey or Henry?”

“Joey,” I lied smoothly. As good a name as any. I didn’t want to get into a Who’s Who of Golden Peak; the sun had risen, so it was now officially my bedtime, and the fake maple syrup was giving me heartburn. “We’re looking for a man named Robert Wildeye. He’s a private detective. Supposed to have an office in town, but we can’t find it.”

“Robert Wildeye?” The waitress scrunched up her nose. “You don’t mean old Bobby Wilde, do you? Not a detective—at least, not to my knowledge. A retired pilot.”

I glanced at Lon and read what I was thinking on his face. Never discount coincidence, and that name was too close to the one we sought. Someone who kept his address secret—and someone who was able to uncover things about my family that an entire army of journalists and cops failed to find—well, someone like that could very well be using another name. Magicians did it all the time to keep their private lives private. Hell, I was doing it right that second.

“He’s a retired pilot?” Lon asked. “Does he have a son, maybe?”

The waitress shook her head. “Never married, no son. And he was a retired pilot—as in, he’s passed on.”

Dammit. I discreetly kicked the table leg. Metal creaked. Loudly. For a second, I thought I’d kicked the leg away from where it was bolted to the floor. This diner was a freaking shambles.

“Maybe this isn’t the guy we’re looking for,” Lon said. “I think he would’ve had an office downtown—”

“Definitely not,” the waitress said. “Bobby hated coming into town. Never was much of a social creature. He moved out here about ten years ago now, I guess. Mostly kept to himself. Had a cabin near the state park. That’s where they found the body in early January. First murder in this area since the late eighties.”

“Murder?”

“Shot,” she said in a low, salacious tone. “One of the park rangers found him in his backyard. He’d been dead for two weeks, and no one knew. At first, they thought maybe a hunter had shot him, but the bullet was from a handgun at close range. Terrible. Scared the whole town to bits. Sheriff said we weren’t in danger, though. Bobby had likely just made the wrong person mad. He had dealings with a lot of the rich folks who build on the mountain.”

“Is that so?” Lon murmured.

“People from L.A. were always heading up to see him,” she said. “My bet is that it was something to do with a debt or money.”

“Usually is,” Lon said.

June smiled, happy to have Lon’s validation. “Anyway, his only family is a brother from Vancouver. He came down for the funeral. Nice man. Little harried and overwhelmed. Said he’d be back in a few weeks to clear out Bobby’s things and sell the cabin. I had to do that when my mother died—estate taxes and paperwork. What a nightmare.”

“I can imagine.”

“Still, the brother will make a pretty penny off that property. Everything on Diamond Trail is selling these days, and Bobby’s land butts up against the old state park entrance. Once the park gets its funding approved, they’re building a nice restaurant and gift shop up there. Oh, the Deacons are here.”

The waitress excused herself as an elderly couple entered the diner.

Lon watched her saunter off before pulling out a couple of bills and sliding them under his water glass. We raised our hands to thank June on our way out. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut until we got into the SUV.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said.

“They found him in early January, and he was killed two weeks earlier. That would be right before—”

“Dare.”

“Wouldn’t be the first person he killed to keep quiet,” Lon agreed. “And if the PI had all that information on you, maybe Dare didn’t want others finding out.”

“But if this is our guy, and Dare killed him, what are the chances Dare left any information behind?”

“I doubt he did the deed himself. Probably hired a gun,” Lon said. “But you’re right. They wouldn’t have been sloppy. And the cops have probably gone over every inch of the house.”

We sat there for a moment. “But we’re still going to break in, aren’t we?”

A slow smile lifted the corners of Lon’s mouth as he turned the car’s ignition. “Damn straight.”

It took us a few minutes to find Diamond Trail on the GPS and another half hour to drive the length of it, but the two-story house was exactly where the waitress said it would be, half hidden by oak trees in a secluded area. It must have cost a few hundred thousand dollars to build, which made it less like a cabin and more like a house that had gotten lost in the woods and given up.

Lon drove up the steep driveway and parked on the side of the house, where we couldn’t be seen from the road. Leaves crunched underfoot as we trekked to the side door. It was sort of pretty here, with the craggy mountain rising in the backyard. Lon knocked, just in case, but no one answered. Shades covered all the windows.

“Can you hear anything inside?” I asked.

Lon glanced around, peering off into the woods and up the mountain. We hadn’t seen a single car once we turned off of Main Street. Guess he was thinking that, too, because a moment later, the horns were spiraling out. Super. Now I had to guard my thoughts.

“It’s good practice,” he said. “You’re supposed to be learning to guard yourself against your mother if she ever tries to tap into your head again.”

I glared at him. “Just tell me what you hear.”

“Nope,” he said, fishing around in his pockets for leather gloves. “Empty.”

“What if there’s an alarm on the door?”

“You feel any electricity?”

Oh. I reached out for current, and apart from some weak sources in the house and the SUV—all batteries, most likely—the nearest substantial cache of it felt far enough away to be in the lines at the road.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if got shut off for nonpayment,” Lon said, reading my thoughts. “The backup for alarm systems usually only lasts a day or two.”

Assessing our options, we hiked around the house and stopped in front of sliding glass doors, where Lon shielded his eyes to peer into shadows.

“How’re we going to get inside, anyway? Break the glass?” I pulled the handle to make sure it was locked and felt something give way. The door cracked, jerked, and slid open. Didn’t expect that. I stumbled, and when I looked to see what had happened, I saw the damage. “Shit.”

“Christ, Cady.”

The metal framing was bent. I’d torn the whole damn lock off.

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” For a moment, I remembered the table leg in the diner and panicked. “Maybe whoever killed him tried to break in here and damaged it already.”

“Maybe,” he said as he shifted down from his transmutated form.

“Let’s just get this over with.” Taking off my sunglasses, I led the way inside and whistled. “Nice pad. Being a PI pays well.” The whole rustic-cabin thing was a false front. Inside, it was all modern and sleek, straight out of an architecture magazine.

“God only knows what Dare was paying him.”

A large open living area with high ceilings spilled into a kitchen almost as nice as Lon’s but with much less personality. From there, we quickly went from room to room on the bottom floor, then headed upstairs when we found nothing of interest.

“Bingo,” Lon said when we strode into a home office. An oversized world map hung next to a calendar over an L-shaped desk that looked as if it had been stripped.

Lon ran his fingers over a bundle of limp cable cords sticking out of a hole in the desktop. “All his equipment’s gone. Either the guy who killed him took it for safekeeping, or the police seized it for evidence.”

We opened up all the drawers in the desk and two freestanding filing cabinets. Apart from some loose change, gum, and a few pens, nothing was left. “It had to be Dare,” I said. “We’d probably have more luck knocking on his widow’s door and asking her for help.”

“Already tried while you were in the hospital. She didn’t know anything. I went through two warehouses looking for anything he had on you. Didn’t find a thing.”

I closed an empty file-cabinet drawer and glanced at Lon’s face, feeling self-conscious and . . . odd. Why did he go to so much trouble to help me? I wasn’t sure I deserved it. When his gaze rose to meet mine, I quickly looked away. “Seems crazy that a man like Wildeye—or Wilde, whatever—could be so good at gathering information even the feds couldn’t find on my parents, but all it took was him dying for everyone and their brother to walk in and steal it.”

Lon grunted, surveying the empty room. “He would’ve had a backup. Somewhere safer.”

“Another house or a warehouse?”

“Maybe.”

“I kept all my medicinals locked up in my bedroom closet . . .”

“They’re all in a safe in my closet now.”

We looked at each other before making a beeline to Wildeye’s bedroom. It was too dark with the power out, so I raised the shades on a wall of windows. Sunlight spilled in over the quiet room, giving us a stunning view of the mountain rising in the backyard. A nice little retreat. Neat. Tidy. But when we pulled open his dresser drawers, it looked as if someone else had already searched through their contents.

We checked the walk-in closet next. Nothing but clothes and shoes, I thought, peering into the dark space. It was hard to see without electricity, and I was about to ask Lon if he had a flashlight. Glad I didn’t, or I might not have noticed the faint white glow behind a row of hanging shirts.

I parted the shirts, sliding the coat hangers along the rail. “Hello, secret door.”

It was hiding magick, a nice two-by-three-foot ward. Same thing we’d seen on the yacht in November. An old spell that grizzled old magicians had used over the centuries to hide treasure and grimoires and secret sex chambers. Other humans wouldn’t see the telltale white Heka that kept the ward charged; other humans didn’t have the same supernatural sight that Earthbounds had. That I had.

My heart raced with excitement. Please let this be worth it.

“Haven’t seen an Earthbound since we got into town,” Lon said as he pressed around the wood paneling, looking for a way inside. “Maybe the murderer was human, too. Here we go.”

He pulled his hand away, and a hidden door in the paneling popped open. Shelves lined the dark space. Lon flicked on a penlight and moved the beam of light over the contents. Two guns. Bullets. A long metal box filled with cash, IDs, and passports. A few fat black organizer cases filled with USB drives. A box of files, which Lon hefted from the closet to the bed, and a skinny pocket notebook, which I grabbed.

I strolled to the wall of windows for light. The guy had terrible handwriting and some sort of shorthand I could barely decipher. Dates. Times. Names all seemed to be condensed to three capital letters. I flipped to the middle of the notebook, where the writing stopped: dates in December.

At first look, nothing seemed to pertain to me. A few of his scribbles looked to be street addresses—no cities. One block of text from late September caught my attention. The initials here were “DUV/BEL.” My real surname, Duval, and Bell? Had to be. Below it, he’d crossed out several words, variations on spellings. The last variation was ringed several times in looping inky circles: “NAOI NAAS.”

Odd. Sounded vaguely occult, but I couldn’t place the name.

The pages shook.

I stilled.

The fringe at the edge of the rug jumped. Earthquake? But it wasn’t steady. It stopped and started again.

Something rumbled in the distance, like a cosmic bear waking from a long winter nap.

I lifted my gaze to the wall of windows and the mountainside beyond.

Not an earthquake. Landslide.

“Lon!” I shouted, turning to run. But there wasn’t time. The sunlight behind me was eclipsed by a growing shadow that increased in size until it blotted out all the light in the room.

Then it exploded.