Midnight Blood

by Adam J. Wright

  “Does she live here in the house?”

  “No, she moved out a couple of years ago. Said she’d had enough of the arguments and dysfunctional relationships in the family. She lives in Rockport now, in a house paid for by the books she writes.” He wrinkled his nose as he said, “Horror fiction. Lucy is the only creative in the family and I have no idea where she inherited it from, certainly not from her mother or from me.”

  “Do you have any of her books I could take a look at?”

  He shrugged. “Brad might have some. I’ve never read them myself. They’re published under a pseudonym. I have no idea what it is. Lucy said she didn’t use the family name because she didn’t want an advantage when she approached the publisher but I think there’s more to it than that. I think she’s ashamed of us for some reason.”

  So he didn’t show an interest in his daughter’s work. Could that be a motive for her to summon the demon? People have been killed for less but I wasn’t going to make any assumptions until I had more evidence.

  “It’s understandable that she wanted to see if she could make it on her own,” I told him.

  He scoffed again. “Is it? Why not use every advantage you have? That’s the only way to get anywhere in this world.”

  “Yet Lucy made it without using the Hawthorne name,” I said.

  “If your idea of ‘making it’ is locking yourself away from the world and inventing weird stories,” he said, “then she’s a success. But by normal standards, she’s nothing more than a recluse living in a fantasy world.”

  “Will she speak to me if I need to visit her in the course of my investigation?”

  He shrugged. “Possibly. I have no idea.”

  “Do you have her address?”

  “No.”

  Next to Lucy’s name, I wrote Outcast from family. Possible interest in occult. Despite Charles telling me that none of his family members had an interest in the occult, it seemed obvious that Lucy might because of her profession. Maybe Charles didn’t consider her a member of the family anymore and had excluded her from his answer to my question because of that.

  “As for Brad, Elise, and my wife,” Hawthorne said, “You can meet them tonight, at our annual Fall party. Lucy won’t deign to make an appearance, of course, but Elise and Brad will be there.” He looked at me expectantly, as if I should know what he was talking about.

  “Is that a family reunion?” I asked.

  He laughed. “You really are new to Dearmont aren’t you, Mr Harbinger?”

  “Yes, I am,” I admitted.

  “My wife hosts a party at the house every October. It’s a family reunion of sorts, I suppose, but Jane also invites most of the business owners in Dearmont, as well as anyone else of importance. As a Dearmont business owner, you should have received an invitation. I’m surprised you didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me at all,” I told him. “I’m not important; I’m just the local ghost catcher.”

  “I’ll have your name put on the guest list. Then you can come here tonight, meet my family, and tell me which one of them is trying to kill me.”

  “You think I’ll know which of them summoned a demon after a five minute conversation?”

  “No, I thought you’d have some sort of tool you could use. A magical item that forces them to tell the truth. Or one that can tell you if they’re lying. Since seeing that demon on the road, I’ve come to the realization that my mind has been closed to many things that could have helped me in the past. Imagine if I had an item such as I just described at a board meeting, or at a meeting with a rival firm. The power I’d have would be unimaginable.”

  And that’s why magic items should be kept away from people like you, I thought to myself.

  “I can’t force someone to submit to a magical polygraph test,” I told him, “Any more than I could force him or her to submit to a mundane one. The use of magic doesn’t circumvent ethics. In fact, it makes them even more important.”

  He frowned, seemingly confused. I should have expected a word like ethics to confuse a man like Charles Hawthorne.

  “But if you’re not going to use magic, what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I’ll talk to them, as them some questions.”

  “I could get any local gumshoe to do that. Tell me why I’m hiring you.”

  “Because a normal P.I. wouldn’t know what they’re dealing with. They wouldn’t know what questions to ask, what to look for. And most of them wouldn’t even believe your story.”

  He seemed to reflect on that for a moment, his eyes studying the patterns in the marble floor. Then he looked up at me said, “You’re right, of course. Very well, come to the party tonight and speak to my family. Report back to me tomorrow and we’ll discuss your findings. But if you come up empty-handed, then I expect you to use magic to get results, is that understood?”

  “I’ll be bringing my associate with me tonight,” I said, ignoring the question. “You’ll need to put her on the guest list,” I said. “Felicity Lake.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “I’ll take the case, Mr Hawthorne,” I said, “but you need to understand that I work in my own way and in my own time.”

  He nodded, although there was some reluctance to the movement, and his words were terse when he said, “Just be sure to keep me appraised of your progress.”

  “I will,” I said, putting the hex bag and stick figure into my jacket pocket.

  Hawthorne pressed a button on the arm of his wheelchair and said, “Wesley, we’re done here. Please take Mr Harbinger back to his car.”

  “Before I go,” I said, turning to a fresh page in my notepad, “Who are the staff working at the house?”

  He thought about that for a moment before replying, “The person you’re looking for isn’t a member of my staff. None of them has any reason to do this to me.”

  “Still, I’d like to cover all possibilities.” I held the pencil over the notepad and looked at Hawthorne expectantly.

  He sighed. “Very well. There’s Wesley, the butler you’ve already met. Jonas, my driver who was with me last night. The head chef is named Sofia and she has a staff of three chefs that work for her during various shifts. I don’t know their names. And finally, there’s our housekeeper Ellen. But as I said, none of these people would want to harm me. We treat our staff very well here.”

  I wrote the names in the notepad and stood when I heard the golf cart approaching. “I’ll see you tonight at the party.”

  “One more thing, Mr Harbinger,” Hawthorne said, looking me over. “It’s a formal event, so there is a dress code. You won’t need to wear a tuxedo but a suit is a must.”

  “Not a problem.” I said, walking between the pillars and out into the fresh, morning air.

  Wesley was turning the golf cart around so that it pointed back along the trail.

  As I climbed in, I said, “Have you been working with Charles Hawthorne a long time, Wesley?”

  “I’ve been with Mr Hawthorne all my life,” he said proudly. “My father was the butler to the late Edward Hawthorne, Charles’s father. Charles and I grew up together.”

  “So you’re friends?”

  He looked at me pointedly. “Mr Harbinger, I am not a suspect in this case so I would appreciate it if you didn’t interrogate me as if I were.”

  “Just passing the time,” I said, sitting back in the seat.

  We passed the rest of the journey in silence. When we got to the house, I jumped out of the cart and Wesley followed me across the gravel to the Land Rover.

  “See you tonight,” I said, opening the door and getting in behind the wheel.

  “Yes, sir.” He managed to put enough weight into those two words to tell me he didn’t approve of my being here.

  I watched him as he went through the double doors and into the house, then I started the engine and backed out of my parking spot, tires crunching on the gravel. When I got to the gate, it swung open. The security guard wasn’t anywhere
in sight so I assumed he was watching me via the camera that was mounted on his booth.

  After driving part of the way through the gate, I stopped and waved at the camera to get his attention. A glass hatch opened and he stuck his head out, his eyes still unreadable behind the shades. “Yeah?” he asked with all the warmth of a block of ice.

  “What’s your name?”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a simple question. I could drive back there and ask Charles but I don’t think he’d appreciate being disturbed again.”

  He considered that for a moment and then shrugged. “It’s Brian.”

  “Last name?”

  “Connors.”

  I took the notepad out of my jacket pocket, opened it, and added his name to the list of staff members. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, what are you writing there?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.” Throwing the notepad onto the passenger seat, I drove forward and gave him a brief wave as I passed the hatch.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of the Hawthorne case. It seemed someone was trying to take out Charles Hawthorne by using magic but why not use a more mundane method? Why take away his ability to walk by using an effigy in the folly and not a baseball bat to the knees? Why summon a demon to kill him when hiring an assassin would be so much easier?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  My phone rang. It was Felicity. I pulled over to the side of the road and answered it. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Alec, you need to come back to the office.” She sounded concerned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. You’d best come back here and see for yourself.”

  “On my way.” I ended the call and put my foot down. As I reached the highway, it began to rain. The wipers came to life and arced back and forth across the windshield in a steady, metronomic rhythm.

  I pressed the accelerator and the Land Rover raced along the wet highway.

  2

  I pushed through the door of my building and ascended the stairs quickly. Felicity met me in the upstairs hallway and gestured to my open office door. The sheriff was in there, sitting in one of the client seats, and so was his daughter Amy.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Felicity whispered, “So I told them to wait in there.”

  “Cantrell’s awake,” I said, surprised.

  “Yes, but there’s something strange about him. He looks and sounds like the sheriff but he seems…different in some way.” She looked flustered. “Alec, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. When he looks at me, it’s like there’s someone else looking out through his eyes.”

  “Okay, I’ll find out why he’s here.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” Felicity said, quickly disappearing into her office.

  I stepped through the office doorway and said, “Hey, guys, what’s up?”

  When Cantrell turned to face me, I knew what Felicity had meant; he was the same old sheriff but there seemed to be something more behind his eyes than usual, something I couldn’t explain.

  When no one spoke, I perched on the edge of the desk and said, “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “What’s going on,” Cantrell said, “is that you were given Excalibur for a reason and you haven’t wielded it against your foes yet.”

  “What?” Now I was confused. This man spoke with the sheriff’s voice but he definitely wasn’t Cantrell. “Who are you?”

  “I am Merlin,” he said. “Guardian of the sword given to you by the Lady of the Lake.”

  There was a crash in the hallway. I turned to see Felicity standing there, staring wide-eyed at Cantrell. The tray of mugs she’d been carrying was on the floor, dark coffee spreading over the linoleum, mixing with milk from the shattered pitcher.

  “I’m sorry,” Felicity said, crouching down to clean up the mess.

  I turned back to the sheriff. “Merlin,” I repeated, not sure I’d heard him correctly. “The Merlin?”

  “There’s only one of me, so yes, I am the Merlin.”

  I looked at him closely. “What happened to the sheriff?”

  “He is perfectly safe.”

  “He’s stuck in a cave somewhere,” Amy said, “While Merlin uses his body.” Her eyes were red-ringed, as if she’d been crying. Given the circumstances that were totally understandable.

  “That isn’t completely true,” Merlin said. “Part of John Cantrell is here with me now. I am privy to his memories. He can’t share in my memories, of course, because he’d go quite mad, so the part of him that is in the cave is resting in an enchanted sleep. It’s for the best, believe me.”

  “Like I said, stuck in a cave,” Amy said, “and he won’t let my dad out of there until you use Excalibur to defeat a group of evil wizards.”

  “The Midnight Cabal,” Merlin told her. “They killed the Lady of the Forest and that’s why Alec was given Excalibur, to avenge her death.” He looked at me pointedly. “Not that he’s done anything to honor the pledge he made to the Lady of the Lake.

  “I don’t have any leads yet,” I said. But my words didn’t sound convincing, not even to me. The truth was, I’d spent two weeks doing nothing after Gloria’s death and then the Sammy Martin case had come along and my time had been spent on that.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re stalling, Alec.”

  “I’m not stalling. And you don’t know me, so don’t come to my office five minutes after you appear in the modern world and try to psychoanalyze me.”

  “Alec, listen to him,’ Amy said. “You have a job to do. You need to get on that.”

  “It isn’t that simple,” I told her. “I know you want your dad back but—”

  “It is that simple,” she said. “Do what you’re supposed to do. Then Merlin will release my dad. You help people, don’t you? So help my dad. He needs you.”

  She was right; Sheriff Cantrell was being imprisoned by preternatural means and that situation was squarely in my wheelhouse.

  “I’ll get on it,” I told her.

  “Will you, though? Because apparently, you’ve had this sword for a while and so far, you’ve done diddlysquat with it. How do I know you’re going to do what you say?”

  “I said I’ll get on it. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “No, she won’t,” Merlin said, “because I’ll be here to make sure you carry out your duty, Alec.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got this.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head, “you haven’t ‘got this’ at all. Did you think the Lady of the Lake would give you such a powerful weapon and then just leave you to your own devices? When Excalibur is wielded on the earthly realm, I act as advisor to its wielder. It isn’t an option; I come with the sword. We’re a ‘package deal,’ to use your modern terminology.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. Something told me that arguing with a legendary wizard from the Middle Ages wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Besides, if the legends about him were true, Merlin could be a useful ally in the fight against the Midnight Cabal. I was in no position to refuse his help. I just needed to get used to the fact that he was walking around in the sheriff’s body.

  “Felicity will do some research into the Cabal,” I told him. “If we can track down one of their members or find a lodge, we can probably infiltrate deeper into their organization. I’ll contact some people at the Society of Shadows and see if they know of any Cabal locations.” My father would be useful right now but since he was missing, I was going to have to rely on his secretary, Michael Chester.

  “You see?” Merlin said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now we have a plan.” He stood and stretched his back, wincing as it cracked audibly. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I have some things to attend to.”

  “Where are you going?” Amy asked him, suddenly panicked. If the fact that Merlin was walking around in Sheriff Cantrell’s body was strange to me, it must be doubly so for her. And p
robably a whole lot scarier.

  “I have a job to do,” he said. “I’m the sheriff of this town, remember? We can’t have the people of Dearmont panicking because I’m not on duty.”

  She looked confused. “But…you’re not the sheriff. My dad’s the sheriff and you’re not him.”

  He spread his arms and looked down at his body and then back at her. “Yes, I am. Don’t worry, Amy, I have your father’s memories so I know all about police work. I’ll do the job just as well as he did it himself.” A look of excitement played over his face. “To be honest, I’m looking forward to driving the patrol car.”

  He directed his gaze at me and his face became stern. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Alec, to make sure you’re doing the job you swore to do.”

  As he walked out of the office, Amy got up, pushing her chair back with her legs. “I need to go with him,” she told me, “Alec, please do whatever it takes to get my dad back.”

  “Oh, and Alec,” Merlin said, popping his head back through the doorway. “Don’t be concerned about working with me. You might think you’d be better off going your own way but believe me, we’ll make a great team. I’ve done this before, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and look what happened to the last guy.”

  He looked crestfallen for a moment. “Yes, I see your point. Arthur died in battle.” He seemed to reflect on that for a second and then became cheery again. “But that won’t happen to you. Arthur’s downfall was a quick temper and a woman who cheated on him. You don’t have either of those, do you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So everything will be just fine.” He smiled and gave me a thumbs up before leaving.

  I wished I could share his optimism but something inside me kept me cynical. Maybe it was the fact that every time I teamed up with a powerful being, something went wrong. In Paris, I’d worked with Sumiko, a powerful satori, and come away from that case with some of my memories wiped. Then Gloria joined my team for a while and ended up dead. So working with Merlin, who was probably more powerful than Sumiko and Gloria combined, wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.