She frowned slightly. “Is something wrong?”
He didn’t respond. He was staring down at it as if he had suddenly realised that he was holding a bomb that might suddenly detonate at any minute.
He glanced up at her, sharply. Then he tossed the book down on the coffee table.
“I can’t help you.” He stared down at the book. “I’ve no idea what the language is. Sorry.”
Keeley felt her heart plummet. She had been so hopeful that this man might be the one who could help her. Her mother had told her that he used to be a well-known translator although he hadn’t worked in the field for years. Perhaps he might just be a little rusty?
“Are you sure?” She stared at him. “You come with the highest recommendation. Obscure languages are your speciality, aren’t they? Could you do some research?” She knew that her voice was sounding thready with need.
His eyes flashed with something approaching anger. Keeley reared back instinctively.
He stood up. “I think you should go. I’ve got stuff to do.”
Keeley gazed at him in shock. Was he really kicking her out? She hadn’t even finished her coffee. But it seemed that was indeed what he was doing. She stood up slowly, reaching for the book and placing it back in her bag, trying to suppress the bitter disappointment that sat curdling in the pit of her stomach like sour milk.
She took a deep breath. “Well, thanks for looking at it at least,” she said, trying to smile. “I sure do appreciate it. It was nice meeting you.”
He nodded, abruptly, but didn’t say anything.
She took another deep breath, walking out of the cabin and down to her car. She turned around as she reached for the door handle. He had followed her out and was watching her. Even from here she could feel the waves of anger emanating from him.
She smiled, awkwardly, raising her hand in farewell. He didn’t respond. Her smile wavered, and she climbed into the car, backing out of the driveway with difficulty. She could feel his eyes on her the whole way. Making sure that I leave, she thought grimly. As if I’m going to hang around here.
She watched him in the rearview mirror as she drove down the track. So that was Thaddeus Morgan. A man with issues, she thought a tad angrily. She knew that she shouldn’t be too harsh on him. He was recovering from trauma. But his dismissal of her and the book had riled her, just a little. He hadn’t even let her finish her coffee. She had been brought up to always be respectful, and it just wasn’t manners to do that. Her mother would be appalled if she heard that she ever treated a visitor like that.
A city slicker, she thought disdainfully. Brash. They did things differently in Covenester. But Keeley couldn’t stop the thought that there was more to Thad Morgan than met the eye, and perhaps another reason that he had ordered her so abruptly from his cabin.
***
She drove for a quarter of a mile, lost in thought. What was she going to do now? She had exhausted all her leads on trying to translate the book. She hadn’t even realised that she had been pinning so much hope on Thad Morgan to save the day.
Tears welled up in her eyes, so much so that she flicked on her indicator and pulled over onto the side of the road. She turned off the engine, letting the tears flow freely. It was simply beyond her why she had attached so much to this book. But she knew that somehow it was the key to it all. Her reporter’s antenna was pricking so sharply it was almost overwhelming her.
She took a deep breath, grabbing the book out of her bag and staring down at it. It wasn’t even a book, really. More like a long pamphlet. The cover was simply thin brown paper, and the type looked like it had been bashed out on an old-fashioned typewriter. The alphabet of the language was highly stylised. In her searches about the origins of it she thought it looked a little like a combination of Russian and old Egyptian hieroglyphics. There were also illustrations of strange triangular and circular symbols scattered throughout.
She frowned as she turned to the first page, staring down at it as if simply wanting to understand might make the black type suddenly make sense to her. It was useless. In a sudden fit of rage, she tossed it on the floor on the passenger side of the car. It lay where it had landed as mute as when she had driven up this mountain track so full of hope.
It wasn’t going to reveal its secrets to her. She would never find out what it said.
She struggled to control her frustration. She had to let it go. Her mother wasn’t happy with what she was doing, had told her that it was a waste of time and that she was worried about her. Keeley had ignored her, of course. That was just Mom. If she could she would probably wrap her up in cotton wool and keep her cocooned at home forever, picking blackberries in the summer and making apple crumble in the winter. Safe from the outside world.
Keeley’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She couldn’t let it go. She had to find a way. If she could find out what was in that book, it might explain what had happened to him. To Daddy. It might suddenly unlock the secret of what had happened to make him the way that he was…
***
She remembered the night they brought him home like it was a photograph locked inside her mind. Sometimes it would be black and white, sometimes colour.
She had been eight years old. Her mother had put her to bed as normal, reading her the next chapter from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and giving Mr Gus, her bright blue teddy bear with the wonky eye, a kiss good night at her insistence.
“Sweet dreams, my love,” said her mother, switching off her bedside light.
“Mommy, I’m scared,” she had said, trying to delay the moment her mother walked out of the room as per usual. “There’s a monster under my bed.”
Her mother had sighed. “Keeley, there aren’t any monsters under your bed,” she said. “We’ve been through this before.”
“Where’s Daddy?” she said, suddenly remembering that her father wasn’t home like normal. He hadn’t been there at dinner to scold her for not eating her brussel sprouts like he usually did.
Her mother had frowned slightly. “He said he’d be late,” she said. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ll make sure he comes in and gives you a goodnight kiss even if you’re asleep.”
Her mother had walked out, and Keeley had fallen asleep. When next she woke, it was the middle of the night. She could hear people talking in whispers in the kitchen, and one single pool of light coming down the hallway. She never knew later why she had woken; they weren’t noisy, in fact they were trying to be as quiet as possible.
But she had woken, and instead of turning back over and going to sleep again she had grown curious. She had pulled the quilt aside and padded down the hallway.
Afterwards, she thought of it like a tableau vivant; a dramatic still-scene frozen in place, trapped like a dragonfly in amber. Her father, sitting at the kitchen table, rocking back and forth. Her mother, sitting next to him, trying to hold his hand. The sheriff in his brown and tan uniform, standing over him with his hat in his hands, almost bowing in respect as if he were in church on Sunday.
Her mother had turned at that point and stared at Keeley. That was when Keeley had known that something was bad. Very bad. Her mother was crying. She could clearly see the tears running down her face. And her mother never cried. Never.
And Daddy was acting strange. He wouldn’t stop rocking, and he was staring ahead without blinking. He didn’t even acknowledge that Keeley had walked into the room. He seemed to be noticing nothing at all.
“They are coming,” he muttered, in an almost matter-of-fact tone.
“Gil.” The sheriff placed a hand on his shoulder. “You have to get it together. What are you talking about? Who is coming?”
“They are coming,” her father had repeated, not looking at the sheriff.
The sheriff had sighed, staring at Keeley’s mother. “We haven’t been able to get a sensible word out of him since we picked him up on the side of the road,” he said. “He just keeps repeating that sentence, over and over.”
Her mother had looked stricken. She had squeezed her husband’s hand tighter. “Gil! Can you hear me?”
But Daddy had continued to rock back and forth, as if listening to something else. Keeley had thought that it was as if it was something inside of him. A voice, or some music. Something that drowned out the sounds of everything in the outside world. If it wasn’t so frightening it was almost fascinating.
“Keeley!” Her mother’s voice was sharp. “Go back to bed. Now!”
Keeley’s eyes had filled with tears, but she had drifted away, back to her bed. It wasn’t like Mommy to talk to her so sharply. Fear suddenly seized her, and she remembered her father, rocking on the chair, lost in his own mind. Why wouldn’t Daddy talk to them?
But eventually her eyelids had grown heavy, and she had closed them. Everything will be better in the morning, she told herself. Everything will be all right.
***
Keeley started the engine of the car, pulling back out onto the road. Determinedly, she flicked on the radio, turning the volume up so that she could sing along to the tune. She barely recognised the song, but that hardly mattered. The image of the night that Daddy had come home so changed started to blessedly fade in her mind.
It hadn’t been better in the morning. Nothing had been all right ever again.
The father that she had known and loved had gone. The happy man, who had talked to her about everything from the names of the stars in the sky to all the animals who lived in the jungle, was gone. The man who used to take her into the Magnet’s office on a Saturday morning and let her sit at the computer and pretend she was typing up a story. The man who used to make her open a bag of imaginary cuddles and take them out, one by one, so that she was squealing in delight as she was enveloped in bear hugs.
That man had simply ceased to exist. Instead, a new man had taken his place. A man who sat rocking all day, staring into space. A man who refused to talk to anyone. A man who had to be fed, and changed, as if he were a baby. A man who spoke merely three words, over and over again.
They are coming.
Keeley rose her voice, belting out the chorus of the song. It felt good to be yelling in the car. It took away the sadness, just a little. The sadness that always clung to her family like limp seaweed.
The book. It had been found in his satchel that night he had been taken home in his strange, altered state. She knew now that it was part of something he had been investigating. A lead he had been following up, or a story he had been wanting to write.
The book might be able to tell her why the father that she had loved so much had never come home that night. And perhaps, where he now was.
Chapter Three
Thad walked back inside the cabin, slamming the door behind him. How dare she come here, invading his privacy, insisting that she help him with her damn book? How dare she?
He took several deep breaths, trying to slow down his breathing. He looked down, seeing that the coffee cups were still sitting there, the brown liquid cooling rapidly. He picked them up and strode to the kitchen, hurling the liquid down the sink. It splashed up, hitting him in the face.
“Calm down,” he told himself out loud, wiping his cheek. He had found that sometimes it was good to talk out loud to himself when he needed it. It made him listen more to what he ought to do, and there was no one in this damn cabin or around to hear him.
He stared around. He needed to get out of here. A walk up the mountain trail would do the trick.
He set out just as the sun had hit its high point in the sky, beating down like a drum. He knew the trail well by now, of course. He had walked it many times. Usually it calmed him down if he was in a state; he had read somewhere that walking in nature was almost like meditating. Sometimes it had helped him in the past. But today he felt the anger still swirling through his blood, thickening it like corrosive poison that he simply couldn’t secrete.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to raise his head and stare at the birds hopping from branch to branch in the trees above. He could see a couple of bluebirds and a grey warbler. Far off in the sky a red-tailed hawk flew low over the distant peak of a mountain, seeming to skirt it before ascending again.
It was beautiful here. He knew it. But he simply couldn’t feel it. The birds and the trees were doing nothing for him today.
He knew he was being irrational. The girl had simply asked if he would translate a book for him. Nothing more, nothing less. She certainly didn’t deserve to be ordered from his cabin as if she had asked him to accompany her in a crime. His face burned a little at the memory, but it still couldn’t stop the anger that was even now stinging his blood.
He hadn’t been expecting it, he told himself. He hadn’t been expecting that book. It had thrown him, causing him to go into a tailspin. It had been bad enough that she had simply turned up out of the blue without contacting him prior to arrange a time. He might have been able to prepare himself for it.
She had no idea, of course. Keeley Walters. She simply had no idea of what she had in her possession. She had passed him that book as if it were just something she had picked up at a garage sale or a junk store in the one dollar box. As if she wasn’t handing him an evil manifesto that carried power in its ink and parchment.
Thad stopped suddenly, leaning against a tree. He had thought that he would never see that language again in his life. He had hoped never to see it again. It was like she had brought it here to taunt him with it, even though he knew that wasn’t the case. She had been shocked when he had thrown the book on the table claiming that he didn’t know the language, and then ordered her out. She hadn’t been expecting that reaction. No, Miss Keeley Walters had simply no idea what that book was.
Thad’s heart started beating violently. The Vilgath. The language of the demons. A whole thin book with meticulously black letters and symbols. He had recognised it immediately.
Once upon a time he had been considered the expert in the field. If any of the other shifters had difficulties understanding something, or encountered the Vilgath symbols or words, they would come to him to decode it. He wasn’t fluent in it by any stretch of the imagination, but he was familiar enough to be able to stitch words together and knew where to go to find out more. At the warehouse there had been two thick reference books devoted to Vilgath words, symbols and illustrations.
Thad took a deep breath. They were gone now. Burnt to cinders. It was highly unlikely he would have been able to help Keeley Walters anyway without them, even if he had have wanted to. And he definitely didn’t want to.
He shuddered violently, feeling suddenly as if he were about to get sick. Even seeing the letters and symbols again had brought it all back. Covenester. The fire. His three shifter brothers being carried out of the warehouse on stretchers. Dead. Nothing was ever going to bring them back.
No. There was simply no way he could do it. Keeley Walters would just have to live in ignorance about what the book contained. Which was probably a very good thing—in Thad’s experience, nothing good was ever conjured from Vilgath words or symbols. He paused, considering. How on earth had it even come to be in her possession? What had she said about it?
He frowned, straining, thinking back. She had been vague. Deliberately vague, he thought now. Something about it being in the family for years, and that she was just curious about it. A wishy-washy reason, really. And if it was the truth, who in her family had brought it into the house, and why?
He felt his skin prickle despite the heat of the day. Demons. He was so sick of them. He’d had enough. He didn’t want to be drawn into their games and evil anymore. He had devoted his life to slaying them, and they had won. Taken his brothers and his home from him. All he wanted now was to be left alone, to live in peace.
He thought of Keeley Walters, the reporter with the Coyote River Magnet. She was so proud of the fact. She had said that everyone in her family were reporters with the Magnet. He shouldn’t have teased her that she was too young; she hadn’t like
d it much. Keeley Walters struck him as a young woman who very much wanted to be taken seriously.
Her face suddenly flashed into his mind. Her blonde hair and her large blue eyes. He hadn’t seen an attractive woman in a long, long time. And he realised that Keeley was very attractive. Not his usual type—he preferred tall, leggy brunettes. But there was just something about her that he couldn’t shake, no matter how hard he tried.
He smiled slightly. It didn’t make a lick of difference whether he found her attractive or not. He had no desire to make friends out here or have relationships. He didn’t want to get close to anyone ever again. And besides, even if he had tried to pursue her, he very much doubted she would give him the time of day. He wasn’t exactly looking like himself, or acting like himself, at the moment. Very far from it. And she was a bit younger than him, anyway. Only twenty-two years old.
A baby. What did she know of the world, or how it operated? Stuck out here in the mountains. She had lived her whole life in a small town. She was far removed from the evil of those dark city streets. The city streets that crisscrossed his mind like scars.
He stroked his beard, thinking carefully. No, he had done the right thing. By telling her that he didn’t know the language he had stopped any further contact with her and protected himself from any involvement with the demons again. And that was essential to any fragile peace of mind he had established since escaping Covenester.
He took a deep breath and kept walking. The sickness had passed. He needed to put the woman and her damn book as far out of his mind as possible.
***
Keeley walked into the small shopfront on Main Street, glancing at the sign above. The Coyote River Magnet. She frowned, stopping to stare at it for the first time in ages. It was fading; she should talk to Dean about replacing it, or at least get it repainted. Although where they would get the funds to do it was another story.
“How are you, Keeley?” said Ellen, the receptionist, smiling at her. Keeley smiled back. Ellen had been here forever; she still remembered her from when her father had taken her here when she was little. She was an institution, thought Keeley fondly. One that knew the workings of the paper and the town like the back of her hand.
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