Hell Fire cs-2 Page 8

  A quick rummage through the dresser unearthed an ancient quilt in the bottom drawer. I retrieved my bag from the parlor and changed into loose shorts and a T-shirt. Once I brushed my teeth, I was set to get some sleep.

  “Let Butch out before you go to bed,” I called. “Night, Chance!”

  I didn’t know where he would crash, but I felt safer here than I had at the bed-and-breakfast, so I wouldn’t ask him to bunk with me. His dangerous luck aside, he had to get better at talking about his feelings. It couldn’t be all about me any more than it should’ve been all about him the first time. I’d driven myself half mad trying to please him, and now he was doing the exact same thing. We needed to strike a balance, somehow.

  Maybe the pendulum would eventually come to rest between us. Maybe—

  There was no gentle rollover from waking to sleep, no dreamy, hazy lassitude. I didn’t even remember closing my eyes. Then . . . I was somewhere else.

  Given the day I’d had, if I hadn’t been to this room before, I might have panicked. From the mahogany shelves to the cream and ivory wingback chairs, this gentleman’s library suited my impression of Ian Booke, who sat at a heavy antique desk, brow furrowed in concentration.

  Our man in the UK had perfected lucid dreaming, and we’d talked this way once before. Relief washed over me when I realized he’d been trying to get in touch when I went quiet. He must have been at it for hours.

  In my dreams, Booke had a shock of nut-brown hair and charcoal eyes. His face was narrow and clever rather than attractive. I didn’t know anything about him in real life; nobody did.

  I came toward him clad in the Wonder Woman body Booke envisioned for our dream encounters. He glanced up at my movement, his expression revealing visible relief. He left his desk and took two steps in my direction before apparently remembering we couldn’t touch or I’d wake up.

  “You’re all right? I’ve left five messages now.”

  “Depends on what you mean by that,” I said ruefully. “I’m glad to see you—er, talk. You know what I mean.”

  He inclined his head with a half smile and led the way over to the chairs. I sank down gratefully, unused to the height of the form I wore in the dreamworld. After taking a deep breath, I summed up everything we’d noticed about Kilmer: the unusual behavior of the citizens, a maimed dog, the lack of modern conveniences, dying business, broken cell phones, strange, stinky powder, murderous automobiles, and bleeding walls.

  Damn. The recitation alone made me tired.

  “So,” I concluded, “the only place we’ve gotten the cell phone to work is the library. I have no idea why.”

  “I might be able to help. If you can, use your cell phone to snap some pictures, interior and exterior views, and send them to me via e-mail. Do you have a Smartphone?”

  I rather doubted it; unlikely the device would be any cleverer than its owner. “Chance does, I think.”

  “Get those to me as soon as you can, and I’ll see if I can sort why the library prevents the technological failure that plagues you elsewhere.”

  I smiled with genuine warmth. “Thanks. That could really help us devise some defense. I’m glad you found me like this.”

  “I wasn’t sure I could,” he admitted. “Not with the bizarre shroud encircling the coordinates you gave me. But this technique focuses on the person more than the place, so I think I could find you anywhere.”

  That statement carried an oddly reassuring resonance. “Can you help? Kilmer feels so cut off from the real world.”

  Booke frowned. “That would take some doing, serious power, there. I wonder if the dark spot in the astral has anything to do with your isolation.”

  I could only shrug. “That’s your stomping ground, not mine. But maybe you could research what rituals might achieve that effect.”

  “I’ll get on that as soon as we’ve finished here,” he said with a nod. “I can’t scout as I did in Laredo, so that’s right out. But I can relay messages. Today”—he hesitated, ducking his head—“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  A flicker of pleasure washed over me. “I am. Just a bit bruised. By the way, could you call Chuch and let him know we’re fine? He’ll pass the word to Saldana, who’s riding to the rescue like a white knight.”

  “Must be nice,” Booke muttered.

  I raised a brow. “What?”

  “Getting to play the hero.”

  “Well, he hasn’t done anything yet,” I said. “He might just make things worse.”

  But he wasn’t looking for sympathy. By his expression, his agile mind had already moved on to something else. “You mentioned a strange residue.”

  “From the bed-and-breakfast. We figure it’s a component, but we don’t know what it is or whether it’s used in a baneful or beneficial spell.”

  “I wish I had a sample. I’d know,” he added without false modesty.

  “There’s no FedEx here,” I grumbled, “and it would take forever in the mail, assuming they’d even send it out.”

  Booke sighed. “Rotten you can’t just wish it here.”

  His casual comment gave me an idea, possibly a stupid one, but nothing ventured and whatnot. “This . . . pocket world, how real is it?”

  “Real enough to communicate ideas, not facilitate touch.” He shrugged.

  Well, I wasn’t asking so we could make out. “Can I change it?”

  Booke sat forward, arms resting on his knees. He’d caught on, and his expression reflected keen fascination. “As I said last time, Corine, what you see depends upon your expectations. What I see is quite different. Only our thoughts intersect as an absolute. What exactly do you have in mind?”

  I struggled to articulate it. “I want to bring you here, where I am. And then I want to try to make this . . . shared space . . . real enough to give you that plastic bag. We wouldn’t have to touch.”

  “Dream translocation?” he asked, thoughtful. “I’ve heard of it. Legends say devoted lovers gave each other tokens over long distances . . . not that I think you and I—”

  I waved away his embarrassment. “Thing is, you need to share the setting with me, so we need to build the image together, right?” He nodded. “So how do we go about that?”

  Booke considered for a long moment. “I’d say describe your current location in great detail until it becomes real to me.”

  What the hell? I didn’t have a better idea.

  I couldn’t have said how long I spoke, but the room reshaped around us as I built the house in my mind’s eye as well. Eventually we had a complete replica of Mrs. Everett’s farmhouse, except for the view of the woods. We sat in the parlor, and Booke gazed around with apparent absorption. He got up to explore and came back to report in a few minutes.

  “This is brilliant,” he exclaimed. “I can even smell the dust.”

  “So let’s test the rest of my theory,” I said. “At worst, we fail.”

  He shook his head. “At best, we make history.”

  With a nod, I stood and went to fetch Chance’s backpack, which had been near the front door the last time I saw it. I unzipped it and brought out the zipper bag. I shook it a little and the powder danced inside it.

  Before handing it to Booke, I said, “I’ll call you from the library tomorrow. Don’t worry if you can’t get a hold of me, because—”

  “You’re in a black hole,” he finished.

  “Near enough.”

  We fixed the combined force of our wills on the bag, making it real in a joint effort. This wasn’t some mental representation of the bag; it was the bag. I knew every crinkle in the plastic, every ounce of its weight. When I let go, it would no longer be here, but there, across an ocean.

  At last, I extended my hand toward him. He took the powder from me, but our fingers brushed in the transfer, a little flicker of warmth, and—

  I woke to late-morning sun streaming onto my face. In another room, I could hear Chance ranting. A thunk told me he’d kicked something. Rare—and enjoyable�
��as it was for him to lose his cool, I should go see what had him so agitated. I slid off the mattress and padded down the hall into the parlor, where he was pacing.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I thought I knew. I prayed I knew.

  “The powder’s gone! I’d love to know how they managed that trick. Well, that and the bleeding wall too. We’re warding this place first thing, assuming we can even find what we need in this godforsaken backwater.”

  “I took it.”

  Chance drew up short, mouth half open. “Why? What’d you do with it?”

  Pride put a huge smile on my face. “I think I gave it to Booke to study. He should be able to tell us what it’s used for.”

  For a moment, he struggled for words, trying to articulate how crazy I sounded. He listed a few reasons why that was impossible, and I smiled. I felt like the Cheshire cat, irritatingly pleased with myself.

  Eventually, I gave him the explanation I knew he wanted, but that didn’t seem to make him feel any better. It took me a moment to figure out why. He’d thought he knew everything about me, and here I managed something like this. He wouldn’t like feeling out of the loop; never had.

  Chance studied me for a long moment. “I thought you couldn’t do magick. You told me you practiced with your mother’s books and never got any spells to take.”

  “I’m sure it was Booke’s doing.” If it worked; if we hadn’t banished the evidence to some weird pocket dimension where demons would eat it—and hopefully suffer indigestion—and where the powder would do us no good at all. “We can call him later to confirm our success.”

  “I thought the cell phones weren’t working.” Why was he acting so suspicious? The way Chance eyed me, you’d think I made a habit of keeping secrets from him instead of the other way around.

  “They worked in the library yesterday,” I reminded him.

  “You need to check on your mom too. So we’ll stop there after we shop for the sea salt, but I don’t know where we’re going to find agrimony, wormwood, cedar, dill, and coriander in bulk around here.”

  “I’d include pine, heather, marjoram, and slippery elm, but we’ll have to make do with whatever we can get.”

  Chance’s mom had taught us about protective herbs, and living with Chuch, we’d received a refresher course in good wards. The mechanic layered them inside and out for double coverage. We’d do the same—and I wouldn’t leave Butch out there until we did.

  That morning, I felt energized. Though things weren’t any better than the previous day, I had a handle on them. We’d go shopping for supplies, and then we’d make phone calls. Booke was on the case, and if I knew Chuch and Eva, they would want to do some legwork if they could. Jesse was on the way.

  If Kilmer thought they could frighten me off, they had another think coming.

  This was for my mom, Cherie Solomon.

  We had not yet begun to fight. Sure, they’d crippled us by taking away the tools we generally used to solve problems, but we’d find ways around the obstacles they threw in our path. No matter how many times they knocked me onto a dirty road, I would rise. I’d ferret out their secrets and then handle the objects that would spill them.

  In other words, Kilmer, game on.

  Luckless Bastard

  By one p.m., we had a trunkful of bulk spices. We’d driven to a neighboring town to pick up most of them. More interesting, twenty miles away, nobody seemed to have heard of Kilmer. They’d never even driven through.

  We stood outside the public library while I snapped pictures of the building’s exterior with Chance’s phone. When I thought I’d gotten all the angles, we went inside. I studied the screen and, sure enough, as the door closed behind us, five bars lit up on the device, as opposed to the straggly one or two we got anywhere else in town.

  I gave it back. “Can you take some pictures of the inside and then send the lot to Booke? Do you have his e-mail?”

  “Sure,” he said, and glanced around the interior as if deciding where to start.

  Once he’d gone, I dug my cell out of my pocket. The librarian glared at me from the desk, so I moved away from the front door. Somewhere in the middle of History and Philosophy, I took a look. I had more messages from Jesse, but none from Booke. First thing, I called Saldana, knowing he was probably here—or nearly so—by now, depending on what time he’d left Texas. I had never been so happy to hear a call connect.

  He answered on the first ring, his voice warm, worried, and touched with a Texas drawl. “Corine, are you all right? Where are you?”

  “At the library,” I told him, keeping my voice low. “It’s the only place my phone works. Things are weird. I’ll tell you more when you arrive.” I wanted to say I was touched that he’d drop everything to come looking for me, but I couldn’t find the words, so I went with a question instead. “Where are you?”

  A long silence followed, but background noise told me he was driving. “I have no idea,” he said at last. “I can’t find the town. GPS has never heard of it.”

  “Booke said there was no reference to Kilmer anywhere online, either. If you’re totally off course, I suggest finding a library and looking for archived maps, anything before 1900. If that doesn’t work, go earlier . . . until you find it. It’s here.” I paused. “Even if the rest of the world seems to have forgotten about the place. For now, though,” I went on, “look for a road sign. There should be something posted about the next town.”

  “Yeah. There’s one coming up—looks like Darien. I’m five miles away.”

  “You’re fairly close.” I gave him directions to the house from the road he was driving on. “We’ll meet you there in two hours. If you have trouble, text me. If I’m not here, I may not be able to answer, but I can come looking for you.”

  “And vice versa.” I heard the smile in Jesse’s voice as he rang off.

  Then I called Booke. It was so weird that we couldn’t call out anywhere else. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen pay phones anywhere in this godforsaken town.

  “I have bad news, good news, and maybe more bad,” he reported.

  “Bad first, then good, please.”

  “You sent me a mixture of burnt cat hair, ground bone dust, powdered stinkweed, and . . . one thing I can’t seem to isolate. If it’s been transmuted as a result of the spell, I may never know what it was.”

  “The spell or the component?”

  “Both,” he said, sounding unhappy. “Right now, it could be a spell meant to cause genital warts, prevent attacks from unfriendly spirits, make you grow hair on your back and develop unpleasant body odor, or summon a demonic cat to smother—”

  “And that’s the bad news?” I figured he could go on like that for a while. “What’s the good?”

  “Well. None of those things has happened, right?”

  Only Booke would ask that, though I did give my arm-pits a tentative sniff. “Nope.”

  “Then the spell might have been interrupted when you fled the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Great. Finally, something swings our way.”

  “Or . . . ,” he said, hesitant, “it might have been cast with a timer or trigger.”

  “So it could go off like a bomb if we put a foot wrong.” I rubbed my forehead. I’d never wished harder that I had my mother’s abilities instead of a relatively worthless and limited gift like the touch. “That’d be the other bad news, right?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. You need someone to cleanse all your possessions, but I suspect you don’t have anyone handy who could.”

  “Not right here, no.”

  I thanked him and rang off. If we were to get a witch out here, I’d need to visit Area 51—a message board that the Gifted used to communicate—and ask around. We might be able to use Chance’s phone to connect to the Net and do it that way, but it would have to be before closing time. After five p.m., we were on our own.

  Chance found me a few minutes later. “Anything?”

  First I relayed what Booke had told me; th
en I borrowed his phone. It took fifteen minutes for me to log into Area 51 and post a request for someone to perform a cleansing. Maybe we’d get a nibble, maybe not. If nothing else, before we left the library, we should talk to the handyman again. Mr. McGee might remember something from years ago, and he looked ornery enough that he wouldn’t care about keeping other people’s secrets.

  “Quick,” I said. “Downstairs. Don’t let the librarian catch us.”

  We ran Mr. McGee to ground in the basement. It wasn’t hard. He was sitting at a table, listening to an old transistor radio. To my ears, it sounded like the whispers and hisses of mechanical failure—no music or words broke the soft, sibilant hiss.

  “What’re you listening to, sir?” Chance spoke first, politely announcing our presence so we didn’t startle him.

  We came around the other side. I find it difficult to hold a conversation with someone’s back. In this case, it didn’t help any. Whether some trick of shadows or light, his eyes appeared blind, all darkness devoid of iris or pupil. He turned his face toward us.

  The old man said in a vacant voice, “Dead people.”

  If he intended to frighten me, well, it worked. Icy fingers crept down my spine, and I could imagine I heard ghost whispers buried in the mechanical static—broken phrases and pleas for salvation. Now and then, I could almost make out the words. It felt as though the sound burnt itself into my brain, as if my flesh fused with the signal. Despite myself, I edged closer to Chance, who wound an arm around my shoulders.

  “Can you understand them?” I asked quietly.

  Mr. McGee tapped his gnarled fingertips against the table, yellowed nails sounding like chitin-shelled insects beneath a boot. “Sometimes,” he said at last. “More often than not, these days. They say you can only hear them if you’re near death yourself. Can you make out what they’re saying, missy?”

  The question hit me like a fist in the chest. My lips felt numb. A charged tingle shot up my spine and out the top of my head. I felt compelled to answer; the truth spilled out of me like a black ribbon, linked to the awful ink of his eyes.