Banishing the Dark

4

Although I tried several times that night, it wasn’t until the following morning that I could finally reach out for electricity and pull it into my body—my benchmark for normal health—and another day before I could walk around the yard for half an hour without getting winded, which was Lon’s benchmark. He pushed me hard, forcing me to walk and bend and stretch, and it was worth every bit of frustration. Because when I fell asleep that next day, sore and exhausted, mentally and physically, it was in his arms. I don’t think I’d ever appreciated just how good and safe that felt. Maybe that’s because I was usually too distracted by the great sex. Granted, somewhere in the back of my mind, I hoped I’d be distracted by that again soon, but for now, it was enough to smell his skin and hear his heartbeat.

He didn’t need to adjust his schedule to stay up with me at night, as I discovered; he’d already been doing that in the hospital. Every night. Just in case my mother tried to slip into my brain and do something to me. When he told me this, I broke down. I mean, sloppy sobbing. He just said I’d do the same for him or Jupe.

And I would.

But if I was going to be around long enough to get that chance, I needed to get moving. And on my third night home, despite a few holes in my memories, I was feeling much better. My halo was back to normal, I could kindle Heka and walk without limping, and I was ready to tackle the problem of my mother.

First things first: I had to find the name of the PI Dare had hired to investigate me. And after weighing all the options for procuring it, I settled on something Lon suggested.

Or someone.

Arturo Archard. One of the remaining thirteen Hellfire Club officers who made up the organization’s ruling “Body.” Since I’d offed both the club’s leader and the second in command, David Merrimoth, that only left eleven officers, including Lon. Arturo, Lon assured me, was one who could be trusted. Like Lon, he kept to himself and rarely participated in official Hellfire activities. To Lon, this meant Arturo stayed out of group politics. To me, it meant the guy didn’t participate in a monthly hedonistic Succubus/Incubus orgy in the Hellfire caves on the beach. Big points.

Arturo owned a successful vineyard north of La Sirena, and his husband ran a swank wine bar near the center of town. The Lamplighter, much like Tambuku, was Earthbound-friendly. It was also closed on Mondays, and early in the evening of my third night back at home, Arturo agreed to meet us at the closed wine bar.

Frankly, I was just thrilled to be going out into the real world again and would have been satisfied with a trip to the grocery store. But the universe wasn’t going to allow me the luxury of domestic bliss, so an interrogation it was.

We parked in a short alley on the side of the building around nine. A handsome Earthbound swung open the delivery door as we got out of the car. “Lon Butler, you’ve gone native,” he said in an amused voice, gesturing toward the beard.

“Itches like hell,” Lon said, running his fingers over it. “Arturo, this is Arcadia Bell.”

The older man gave a quick glance at my silver halo and inclined his head. He was tan and carried a few extra pounds of bulk. His gray-streaked dark hair was crowned by a dark green halo. “I noticed you at Merrimoth’s funeral, but we didn’t get a chance to speak. I’m sorry about your recent attack. Reminds us how dangerous the city can be.”

Lon’s cover-up story: I was attacked by one of the degenerates with amped-up knacks who were committing robberies over the holidays.

“Where are my manners? Come inside.” After locking the door, Arturo led us past empty tables and oak barrels into a lounge area of the wine bar, where we sat on a plush couch in front of an unlit fireplace. “The boys are getting restless, Lon,” Arturo said as he took a seat across from us. “They want to know if you’re going to run the club.”

“I haven’t decided.”

“If you plan to lead, they want a show of strength, or they won’t get behind you. And if they smell weakness, someone else will make a play for it. Tomkins or Warner are my bets. Tomkins wants his kid to take one of the two openings. Dare’s son is next on the list, then Sharon Wood. But it’s no secret that Sharon isn’t a fan of the Dare family.”

“Question is, are you?”

Arturo settled an arm on the back of the sofa. “You already know the answer to that. But if you want to poke around each other’s minds, I’m happy to oblige.”

Lon had warned me about Arturo before we came. In the same way Lon could hear feelings, Arturo could see memories. Older ones were only possible if he was transmutated, apparently, and it was easier if you were thinking about them. But, unlike Lon, Arturo required skin-to-skin contact for his knack to work.

No shaking hands with Arturo, in other words. But that was a pretty good rule of thumb when dealing with most Earthbounds, I’d come to learn.

“As you’re aware, Ambrose didn’t like me getting too close,” Arturo said. “Sure, he was happy to use me when he wanted to shake someone down. Which is why I know a little more about the man behind the mask, so to speak. Dare had the Body’s allegiance, but he didn’t have our love. Half of the Body was sad to hear Dare had died. But it was the kind of sadness you feel when you hear a celebrity has died. You think, That’s a shame, then you move on, because you didn’t really know them, did you?”

“What about the other half of the Body?” I asked. “How did they feel?”

“Honestly? Relieved. We knew too much about his dark side.”

“Then why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“A fair question,” Arturo said thoughtfully. “My husband asked me the same thing many times. I suppose I told myself I was too jaded to care about club politics. When I was your age, it was a little more glamorous. Now I mainly just want to be left alone. And Dare usually complied. As long as I attended most of the meetings and showed my face at the Hellfire caves every now and then, he seemed satisfied. But now that he’s gone, I wonder just how strong his knack really was.”

Dare’s knack was known as Rally: the ability to inspire—or coerce—a group of people.

“Ambrose Dare had us all under his thumb,” Arturo added. “Even those of us who should’ve known better.”

Lon murmured to himself.

I twisted the silver double-serpent bracelet on my wrist, a Christmas present from Lon. Maybe the guy was right. I should have known better myself. I mean, I dutifully did magical work for Dare for weeks before I finally had the sense to give him the middle finger. And look what it got me: a whole month of my life beaten out of me.

“Dare was investigating me,” I told Arturo. “Did you know that?”

“I heard rumors that he seemed . . . preoccupied with you, shall we say?”

“And what exactly was he telling the Body about her?” Lon asked.

Arturo looked at me. “That you’re special. Different. Someone we wanted on our team. He said you might be more useful to the Hellfire Club than a hundred other magicians. But he needed to test you first. He was suspicious of your loyalties.”

“Are you?” I asked.

“I’m suspicious of the manner in which Dare perished. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to call for a witch hunt. For the first time in years, I can go to sleep knowing I won’t get a phone call at three a.m. telling me to drive out to some back alley and rifle through a guy’s memories—only so Dare can put a bullet in his head the second I drive away.”

“Dare was using a private investigator to dig up things about my past,” I said. “I need to find out who that investigator was.”

Arturo held my gaze for a long moment. “Why would I know that?”

“Because people trust you,” Lon said.

Arturo shrugged, not denying it. “They know if I really wanted to see what’s on their minds, I can brush their fingertips.” He gave me a pointed look. “Having a gift is all well and good until people decide they want what you’ve got.”

No truer words . . .

But I wasn’t afraid of the Hellfire Club. Not anymore. Arturo said the Hellfire Club wanted to see a show of strength, or they wouldn’t follow him. Maybe he’d be more inclined to give me what I wanted if he had a clearer picture of who I really was.

“I killed Dare.”

The confession hung in the air like a plastic bag caught in dead branches.

“If it matters, it was self-defense,” I added.

“Your ‘attack,’ ” Arturo said softly.

“He had a gun and three men, and he was trying to teach me how much power he had. He might’ve temporarily broken my body, but I turned them all into ash, just like that.” I snapped my fingers.

Arturo flinched and mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“I have no beef with the Hellfire Club,” I told him. “Frankly, I just want to be left alone, too. But if I can find out who Dare was using to investigate me, that would make me extraordinarily happy. Please.”

Arturo said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed his legs and exhaled. “I saw a memory when I bumped into Dare at a holiday party. He’d been telling someone that he’d just flown back from L.A. And when I touched him, he was remembering sitting outside by a pool talking to an Earthbound named Wildeye. Don’t know his first name. All I can tell you is that he looked to be in his thirties or forties and had an aquamarine halo. He was giving Dare a packet of papers that had ‘Duval/Bell’ scribbled on the outside.”