Banishing the Dark
Page 63

As I tossed the mound of peelings into the garbage, I had the distinct feeling he was concerned. Maybe he’d never seen a grown woman attack a piece of fruit as if it was her last meal. But whatever he was thinking, all he said was, “Jupe took Foxglove upstairs for the night, but maybe we should set up camp in the library, just in case he tries to listen in.”
As I wiped my citrus-sticky hands on a kitchen towel, a bottle of vitamins sitting on the counter caught my eye. The label bore a colorful sketch of a woman whose curvy body was filled with fruit and vegetables, so I assumed they were the ones he’d been foisting on me. Idly, I started to turn the bottle around to see it better, but Lon snatched it out of my hand and shoved it into a kitchen drawer.
“You have the page from Wildeye’s journal?” he asked suddenly.
O-o-o-kay. Why was he so flustered? I mean, he didn’t look it. He looked mildly irritated, staring at me with his perpetually narrowed eyes, but that felt like a false front. As if he knew that I knew, he quickly strode off toward the library. “Bring it with you. Let’s look at it again and make sure we’ve covered all our bases. We need to use this time wisely.”
He was probably right about that. I grabbed the journal page out of my purse, then headed past the kitchen into the first floor’s southern hallway. At the end of the corridor, Lon was grumbling at the fingerprint lock as he punched in an override code. “That little bastard’s been trying to get in here.”
I thought about all the dangerous magick Jupe could get his hands on, but Lon confirmed that the break-in attempts weren’t successful. Score one for expensive technology.
Once he got the door unlocked, I shuffled inside, smelling musty old paper and leather. I’d almost forgotten how much I loved the scent of old books. Lon switched on the frosted art deco pendant lights, illuminating the hundreds of rare occult tomes that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. I plopped down on one of two overstuffed armchairs that faced each other in front of an unlit fireplace in the back of the library. Lon took the other seat, eyeing me cautiously.
“What?” I asked, sinking my toes into the soft rug as I slumped in my chair.
“Nothing.”
He seemed anxious, which was completely out of character for him. I studied him as he cracked open his laptop, trying to determine why he was so edgy.
“So,” he said, pausing for a long moment as the computer booted up. “We know your parents stayed in a house here every winter. And we know they shopped for magical supplies at Gifts of the Magi.”
“You knew that shop?”
He nodded. “My parents knew the Pendletons. Not well, just as people around town. The husband died the same year as my father. The wife ran the shop until she passed—four years ago, I think.”
Before I moved to Morella, then. Which explained why I’d never heard of it. “And there were no other occult shops in town?”
Lon shook his head. “That one only survived as long as it did because it was halfway between Morella and La Sirena, which drew business from the city. La Sirena is seventy-five percent Earthbound. Most Earthbounds don’t want anything to do with an occult shop.”
“Makes sense. But it doesn’t help us pinpoint where that winter house might’ve been located.”
“Jupe said all Mrs. Vega knew was that they said it was peaceful, and they wrote there. Your caliph never gave any hint whatsoever when you moved to California that your parents vacationed here?”
“He didn’t know.”
“Are you sure?”
“He wouldn’t have kept that from me. No reason to. Grandmaster Vega didn’t know, either, or she would’ve said something. After everything we’ve seen over the last week, I think it’s pretty obvious my parents spent a lot of time outside the order’s radar.”
He grunted his agreement.
“The house I saw in the servitor’s upload had a lot of antlers tacked up around the front door. My parents were vegans.”
“Vegan serial killers.”
“They ate that way to keep their bodies pure, not out of respect for animals. My mom believed it kept her Heka reserves sharper. But what I’m saying is that they weren’t hunters. Maybe they were renting that house from someone who hunted, or maybe it was a hunting lodge of some sort. Where do people hunt around here?”
“North of my property, away from the coast.”
“Maybe we can start looking there.”
He nodded and began searching on his laptop, seeing what came up in the way of cabin rentals with nearby hunting. “You wanna take a look at the photos on this rental website and see if you recognize anything?”
I got up and sat on the padded arm of Lon’s chair to study the small photos of the rentals he pulled up. He smelled nice. Not as nice as he’d smelled in the hotel a few nights ago—God, how I wished I had access to that scent knack all the time—but pretty damn good for someone who’d spent a good part of the day riding in a car. And for someone who’d just been super-anxious and twitchy, he was awfully relaxed.
Until I stretched my neck as he turned his head, and my skull butted into his cheek, sending a quick jolt of pain through my head. “Oh, sorry,” I said, chuckling at the awkward contact. “You’re scratchy, by the way.” I ran the backs of my fingers over the golden-brown stubble dusting the lower half of his face.
The contact was shocking.
Not physically. Something else.