“That’s not good,” said Miss Teen Understatement of the Year, taking her tablet back.
I looked desperately from one to the other. “What does it mean?”
Doc slapped his hands on his thighs before he rose. “It means…it’s time for a great big pot of tea.”
• • •
We sat around the dining room table, sipping dark, strong tea from colorful mugs and stealing surreptitious glances at one another.
Jolene stirred her tea thoughtfully. “So are you saying that you think this Mr. Dark killed Karl Waters?”
“He knew about it. That makes it pretty suspicious in my book.”
“And you think he’s also trying to insinuate that he’s that same ‘dark figure’ in this 1720 engraving?”
I nodded. “I know it’s crazy, but there is something odd about him. I mean…” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Have you told the sheriff?” asked Doc.
“A little. But I think he thought I was crazy, too.” Their silence was unnerving. “Look, I’m not into the occult or anything like that. I’m sorry, guys, but I didn’t know who else there was to turn to. Maybe you’re not that kind of Wiccan, but…” I shrugged. “Any Wiccan in a storm.”
Jolene stopped stirring and just stared into her cup. “It’s the real deal,” she whispered. Then she looked up. “You’re all thinking it. We meet once a week and talk about nature gods and the supernatural and we have our rituals, but we’ve never really felt anything…”
“I have,” said Seraphina primly.
“You have not,” said Nick. “She thinks this is Bell, Book, and Candle, and she’s Kim Novak. You just like to dress up and play Wiccan, Esther!”
I looked from one to another. “Esther?”
“Her real name is—”
“Don’t!” cried Seraphina.
“Esther Williams. That’s why she calls herself ‘Seraphina.’”
She raised her chin. The blush to her cheeks had nothing to do with make-up. “And who wouldn’t?”
“Guys!” said Jolene. “The point is…this is the real deal. Real spirits. Real…demons.”
“Demons?” I squeaked.
“Yeah.” She turned to me with a concentrated stare. “Just who do you think this Mr. Dark is? My bet is that he’s a demon. You said he knew all about the book.”
“Now wait a minute. He’s just trying to make himself seem all woo-woo. The guy might be a murderer. And just because he knew about the Booke doesn’t mean he’s the same guy in the engraving. That’s impossible.”
Jolene placed her tablet on the table. “He knows a lot. And you said he just disappeared and reappeared.”
“Anyone can pull a trick like that. Any street magician can do the same thing.”
“Then why do you want our help?” asked Doc.
“This Booke. There is something weird about it. Karl couldn’t open it. Only I could. Something strange is going on. Have any of you ever heard of anything like this before?”
Doc rubbed the back of his neck. “Can’t say I have. But I suppose there’s a first time for everything.” His normal jovial expression was absent. He seemed to be thinking deeply. “Let me make a call to the coroner. He’s an old friend of mine. Maybe he can throw some light on this.”
He rose and I got up with him. “I’ll make more tea,” I said. “It’s what I’m good at.” I turned toward the kitchen. “Whoa!” I yelled, and flung myself back, stumbling over Doc’s toes.
On the sideboard sat the Booke of the Hidden. The Booke I had deliberately left at home. I pointed. “Holy cats!”
Chairs squealed back as everyone jolted to their feet.
Nick’s voice was shaky. “Is that…?”
“Yeah,” I said breathlessly. Keep the book close. That’s what Mr. Dark had said. What he hadn’t said was that the Booke seemed to decide what “close” was all on its own.
Chapter Six
Cautiously, we all approached the Booke. Everyone looked afraid, except, strangely, Seraphina. She just seemed genuinely interested.
Doc reached out a tentative hand until Nick cried out, “Don’t!”
He snatched his hand back on instinct, but then frowned back at Nick. “Just stay back,” he told everyone. But as his hand approached I felt jittery and an overwhelming sense of protectiveness. Not for him…but for the damned Booke! “Um…” I began.
He glanced at me, hand still outstretched.
“I don’t think it wants you to touch it,” said Seraphina and I at the same time. I whipped my head toward her. She wasn’t looking at me, but at the Booke. “I felt that,” she said simply. “It doesn’t want anyone touching it…but Kylie.”
“You really felt that?” asked Nick, softly.
“Yes, I really did.” She looked at him smugly.
Licking my lips, I pushed forward and grasped the Booke. I felt somewhat better that it was back in my hands, and at the same time it creeped me out.
“This is weird,” I said aloud. “It feels like…like it’s supposed to be with me. In my hands. But it also feels…annoyed.”
“That you left it at home,” finished Seraphina.
“This is getting freaky,” said Jolene with a wide grin.
I blew out a breath. “Glad you’re enjoying it.” I held the Booke to my chest for a moment and then slowly set it down on the table. I opened the metal clasp and carefully peeled the cover back. The pages were still blank. Everyone leaned in, looking. “What do I do? Just start writing stuff?”
“I think a quill and ink,” said Doc Boone.
“Where am I going to get—?”
But Seraphina was already running to his roll top desk. She grabbed something and held them up in her hands triumphantly.
“Of course,” I said. Quill and ink.
• • •
I settled in front of the buff pages of the Booke, dipped quill in hand. It wasn’t a fancy quill like an ostrich feather with a metal tip, but an honest-to-goodness goose quill with most of the barbs removed up the shaft, leaving only a white tuft at the top. The coven assured me they used it for only good rituals. Poised over the parchment, I looked around. “What do I say?”
“Maybe you just write your experiences,” offered Nick.
“Your feelings,” said Seraphina.
Jolene shook her head. “I think it has to be substantial. Something about the thing that killed Mr. Waters.”
“But I don’t know anything about that.”
Doc Boone came into the room again. He put his wireless phone back in its cradle. “Well, I just talked to Gunther Wilson, the coroner. He said it was the damnedest thing he ever saw. Karl looked almost as if he was mummified. Not a bit of moisture left in him. Blood turned to dust.”
“But that’s impossible!” I dropped the quill and kicked my chair back. “I saw him just this morning. I talked to him.”
“Gunther was trying to pin it down to some kind of freak accident. But neither of us could think of anything that could have done that. Not that quickly. He can’t find any cause of death…except for extreme and sudden dehydration. He was found back in his archives, clutching your business card.”
“That’s what the sheriff said.” I sat again. Leaning my elbow on the table I gnawed on a fingernail, something I hadn’t done since childhood.
Nick sat beside me. “A flash fire, maybe?”
But Doc shook his head. “There were no burns anywhere.”
“Maybe he wasn’t killed there,” said Jolene. “Maybe he was kidnapped, shoved in an oven, and then dumped there.”
I was a bit uncomfortable with the brightness in her eyes when she said it, but I owed it more to teenaged gruesome exuberance than any malice.
Erasmus the Devil Wannabe could be just playing me. “So maybe Dark didn’t do it,” I muttered. “I mean, how could he? How could he do that?” He was just a regular guy, after all. An annoying guy with a great accent, but just a guy. “Maybe it was some thing that got him, like E
rasmus said. That whitish animal.”
“What animal?” said Doc.
I explained how it came at me, and my impression of what it looked like. But it defied description, especially as shadowed as it was. “I just assumed it was a dog. It was, wasn’t it?”
Seraphina put forth a bangled arm. “It’s possible that was Mister Dark. As Jolene said, he might be a demon.”
“I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that. There’s got to be a logical explanation for all of this.” And I gave a nod toward the Booke. “I wonder if all those papers are still there. At the museum. His murder might have been a cover-up to hide stolen papers.”
“I’m sure the sheriff is investigating that,” said Doc. “And Karl was pretty meticulous about his archives. It would be noticed if something went missing.”
“And it wouldn’t matter anyway,” said Jolene. “He put it all online. Wanna see?” She didn’t wait for my response. Her fingers flew silently over her touchscreen and the images of the Gifford Corner Museum flew by. She dug deep, tapping on link after link and finally called up all the Constance Howland archives in layer on layer of opened windows. The engraving was there in all its parchmenty glory. And the inked testimony, the printed works, fancy s’s and all.
One particular paragraph of Howland’s testimony caught my interest and held it.
I opened the Booke and did not mean for the evil to escape into the world, but now that I know my mission I shall fulfill it, heartily so. I am to capture and subdue all that I released, and after so doing, write it in the Booke so to keep them captured for all eternity.
There must be a logical explanation. I wracked my brain, thinking. “But what if what they wanted wasn’t in his archive? What if he had information that wasn’t yet archived and someone wanted it badly enough?”
Doc took a sip of his tea. “You’re still suggesting that Karl was murdered by a human.”
“And you’re not?”
“What Gunther described was not anything from my medical experience.”
“Are you really saying—from your position as a doctor—that you think Karl Waters was killed by…supernatural means?”
Doc hesitated. His Wiccan nature clearly warred with his physician’s nature. “Well…I haven’t actually seen the body.”
“This is the twenty-first century, after all,” I chided. But then I thought about the Booke…
Seraphina laid a manicured hand on my own. Her nails were a cobalt blue. “My dear. There is far more to life than anyone can ever imagine. There are strata upon strata of planes. This is only one of them. The spirits can cross over, move from one to the other to the other. Good spirits as well as evil. It’s up to us to make sure the good outweigh the bad.”
“Us?”
She blinked at me. “Why of course! You don’t think you’re alone in this? You came for our help and we’ll give it. Won’t we?”
Nick nodded guardedly, thin-lipped. Jolene smiled. Doc Boone looked thoughtful, but he, too, nodded.
Relief flooded through me and I felt lighter suddenly. I hadn’t realized how much the weight of it all had borne down on me. “Thanks. I appreciate it. I don’t know how dangerous it is. I mean, it didn’t turn out so well for Constance Howland.”
“That’s because she didn’t have any friends. You do.” Seraphina patted my hand and stood up and cast a glance down at the Booke. “I think the first thing we need to do is establish what she wrote in the book in the first place.”
Jolene bit her lip as she scrolled through the archive. She shook her head. “No one seems to know. But I stand by what I said before. I think Kylie has to write about whatever killed Mr. Waters in the book. Creature or demon. And she also has to kill the monster with a crossbow.”
I snapped to attention. “A what?”
“A crossbow. Says so here.” She began typing something. “I looked it up on Wiccanpedia—”
I shot a sidelong glance at her. “Seriously?”
She shrugged and concentrated on her screen. Nick leaned in to look over her arm.
“Yeah. Here it is. It’s cross-referenced. Something called the chthonic crossbow. Kills supernatural creatures.”
“K-thonic?”
Jolene pointed it out to me on the page. “As pertains to the underworld,” she went on. “Spirits and demons. It’s Greek.”
“Wait a minute. We’re still assuming that there are creatures escaping from this empty Booke.”
Jolene nodded. “That’s what it says here.”
“And the internet doesn’t lie?”
She folded her arms over her tablet and sighed, looking up at me with an annoyed tilt to her head. “I do cross-reference, you know. And check to see that there are adequate citations. It’s not like I’m getting it from Reddit.”
“All right. Suppose…just suppose this Booke is a supernatural whatsit. And suppose there are creatures getting out of it. I’m not saying I believe they killed Karl. I still have my suspicions of this Mr. Dark. But now I’m supposed to…to kill them with a chthonic crossbow? Where am I supposed to get that? Chthonic Crossbows R Us?”
“No, it says you need to get it from a demon. From a black demon, or more accurately described in the Greek translation as…” She looked up at me. “Dark.”
“Oh fine! That’s just great. What am I supposed to do? Summon him? ‘Oh, Erasmus, mind handing over your chthonic crossbow? I’m hunting creatures.’”
“All you need do is ask,” a voice said from behind me.
Everyone screamed, including me. I jumped back a foot, a hand on my heart. Doc Boone had the presence of mind to drag everyone back to the living room to stand in the middle of the pentagram. I didn’t think this was a good idea, but they seemed to find a measure of comfort in it.
Okay, this was not some David Blaine trick. Erasmus Dark really had appeared out of nowhere between locked windows and doors. He couldn’t possibly have known I was headed here. No cars had followed me. No people had been along the road.
Erasmus strode through the dining room archway and observed us huddled together on the carpet. He looked down at the pentagram with disdain.
“Do you really think that will stop me?”
His overbearing tone suddenly pushed away my fear and pissed me off instead. I wrestled my arm away from Doc and stepped from the pentagram, ready to confront him. Too late, I realized that this was exactly what he wanted. Faster than a blink he was at my side, gripping my arm. “I don’t have to play this game, you know. I could make this easy. So easy. But I find your kind…fascinating. Stupid, but fascinating.”
I tried to throw off his grip, but he never even broke a sweat. Maybe he couldn’t. I faced him, even as my chin trembled. “I want that crossbow.”
He chuckled. “Do you? How very amusing. Just how do you propose to get it?”
I looked him right in the eye…and stomped hard on his foot.
His eyes opened wide and he let out a yell, releasing me. I scrambled back into the pentagram. “Some demon you are.” I was feeling braver surrounded by my Wiccans, but when he turned his face toward me, my newfound confidence faltered. His eyes turned red, glowing. That was no trick.
“Do you think you can toy with me, human?”
Where was an exorcist when you needed one?
His face froze in that scary expression for a few more seconds, but when he noticed it didn’t intimidate like it ought, he frowned. His eyes went back to their normal dark color and he straightened his coat.
“You still can’t toy with me,” he muttered, more like a mulish schoolboy than the wrath of Hell.
I jumped out of the circle and grabbed the nearest teacup. He was immediately on alert and took a step back. It wasn’t holy water. It was better.
“Look,” I said, “are you going to cooperate? I’ve got the message that I have a job to do, okay? So just calm the heck down and let’s discuss this like civilized…uh…beings.”
He eyed the cup in my hand and the liquid threatening to
splash out of it. Would he melt like the Wicked Witch of the West? No, I needed him. I needed him to explain.
My Wiccans were perplexed that I managed to hold off a demon with a teacup and I shrugged. “I’ll tell you later. Let’s just all sit down, shall we?” They didn’t want to leave the safety of their pentagram, but I pulled out a dining room chair and sat. Gesturing to Erasmus to sit, he kept looking sourly at the Wiccans before he grabbed the chair and gingerly lowered onto it.
The Wiccans exchanged glances, but it wasn’t until Doc edged from the carpet that the others seemed to have no choice but to join us around the table. Everyone sat at the far end of the dining room, giving Erasmus a wide berth.
“So,” I said, still holding the teacup, ready to heave it at the demon if I needed to. “As incredible as it seems, we’ve all got a job to do. Well, at least I do, right, Erasmus?”
“I beg your pardon?” he said in his most disdainful tone. “Are you by any chance addressing me?”
“Yes. Erasmus. Can you please tell us—?”
“It’s Mister Dark—”
“Tough. I’m using your first name.”
“No one in two thousand years has dared to call me anything but Mister Dark. No one has had the gall!”
Doc leaned over to me and whispered in my ear. “I think you’ve made an excellent move, Kylie. Calling a demon by his name confers certain powers over him. And this familiarity is even better.”
“What are you jabbering about over there?” Demons might not be able to sweat, but Erasmus was doing a fair imitation.
“Don’t worry your pretty little horned head over it,” I said. He scowled.
“I don’t have horns,” he muttered. He reached up to his head as if to check, and snatched his hand away when I raised my brows at the gesture.
Booke of the Hidden Page 6