by Bryn Donovan
His shoulders lifted in the slightest of shrugs as he fastened the rest of the buttons of his shirt. “If you could try not to get mad, that would be great.”
When she turned onto the freeway on the way to her mom’s, the sun streamed into her eyes. “Ugh. Wish I had my sunglasses.”
“Take mine.” He picked his backpack up off the floor of her truck and unzipped the front pocket. Something tumbled out into the coffee cup holder. She reached in to pick it up at the same time he did, and the backs of their hands touched. The contact, slight and accidental, electrified her senses.
Cassie hated the way her heart stepped up its pace. She could not be getting a crush on this stranger. Yes, she was forming the strong impression that he was a good man doing a hard job, but really, she knew nothing about him. Even in her impressive history of sketchy-as-hell decisions, this would achieve a new height of idiocy, like a misspelled forehead tattoo. Or would it? Having no experience with mysterious monster slayers, she didn’t really know.
He wasn’t handsome, she told herself. Definitely, there was nothing pretty about him—a face composed of hard angles and a muscled neck nearly as wide as his head. The bend in his nose added to an impression of raw strength and a certain lack of self-preservation. There was no reason for adrenaline to go skittering through her at the touch of his hand or the intensity of his storm-blue eyes.
He returned the object, a small, maroon stone sphere, to the backpack and gave her a pair of men’s aviator shades.
She put them on, noticed him staring at her, and grinned. “I bet I look ridiculous.”
“You look great,” he muttered in a grim tone that perplexed her. Probably the gashes in his back were hurting him, although he refused to say so.
When they got to the house, her parent’s truck was in the driveway. Cassie and Jonathan walked in the front door, and she called out, “Hello?”
“Cassie?” Her mom emerged from her office, wearing a top with a sunflower print, baggy capri pants, and flip-flops. She and Cassie had the same dark, straight hair, though she kept hers short. “Hi honey, I didn’t know you were coming! Who’s your friend?”
“David Ramirez,” Jonathan said. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He inclined his head as he stepped forward and held out a hand.
She raised her eyebrows, either at the formality or at the name. He didn’t look like a David Ramirez, but then again, one couldn’t always tell. As they shook hands, she asked, “How do you know Cassie?”
“From ASU.” He didn’t miss a beat. Of course, he knew where Cassie had gone to college. He knew everything about her. “I moved back into town a couple of months ago.”
Her mother’s eyes lit up. From the day Cassie’s divorce had become final, her mom had wanted Cassie to date again, find someone better than Rick, let the whole world know it…and maybe produce a grandkid or two. Cassie’s sister, Samantha, showed no interest in actual relationships, let alone marriage, so she was no help.
“Isn’t that nice,” her mom said. “Cassie, you should have told me you two were coming over. Your dad will be back soon. Are you staying for lunch?”
“We can’t,” she interjected.
Her mother gave her a puzzled frown. “What did you come all the way out here for?”
“I’m getting my PhD in archeology,” Jonathan said. Cassie stopped herself from looking at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Cassie said her great-grandpa had a journal that might help with my dissertation.”
“Oh.” She looked doubtful. “If there’s anything interesting in there, you’re welcome to it. Do you speak Spanish?”
He smiled, and Cassie felt a flutter in her stomach. Had she even seen him smile before? “That’s how I talk to my family.”
Cassie’s mom said, “Well, good luck, though that basement is a horror. A horror!”
Cassie shut the door to the basement behind them and led him down the stairs. “You’re a good liar.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Didn’t think it was. Where’s the journal?”
She found it, but hesitated before handing it over to him. It was her family’s private property, even if they had ignored it.
He flipped through it carefully. “Where’s the spell you said aloud?”
“Here.” She leaned closer to flip the pages to the back. Then she realized she was too close and stepped away. “I wish we could read the rest of it. Maybe it says what that part is.”
“I can read the Spanish.”
“Are you really fluent?”
“Yeah.”
Cassie felt a stab of jealousy. She looked Hispanic enough that sometimes a lady on the bus or a guy in a store would try to talk to her in Spanish. She would shake her head because they spoke too quickly for her to pick up even the words she did know. It always embarrassed her, feeling like a white girl in Mexican skin, though not enough to prod her to learn. She’d done all right in two years of high school Spanish, but the classes hadn’t been particularly challenging. Even if she tried to learn to really speak it, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to. “Do you speak any other languages?”
“Egyptian Arabic.”
Cassie hadn’t even known Egyptians had their own brand of Arabic. And why that language, of all of them? He found bubble wrap in a box of Christmas decorations, wrapped the journal in it, and put it in his backpack. On impulse, Cassie tossed the toy tank and the grainy photo of the woman in the jungle into her purse.
When they came upstairs, Cassie said, “We found it.”
Her mom looked up from her knitting. Once, when Cassie had been young, her mother had tried to teach her how, but the lesson had only lasted about five minutes. She hadn’t been a patient child. “Oh, good. Just bring it back when you’re done.”
“Of course,” Jonathan said. “Your grandfather sounds like an interesting person, Mrs. Rios. Can I ask you a few questions about him?”
Cassie suspected his polite, earnest manner came naturally when he addressed people who were much older than him. He’d spoken to Morty with the same kind of respect, even if he’d gotten defensive about his secret monster-hunting club.
Her mother set her knitting needles aside. “Call me Patty. I don’t know a lot about him, but he was very interested in languages. And very political.”
“Did you ever hear any strange stories about him? Anything unusual?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He was smart, I know that. Taught at the university in Mexico City, and then at one further south. I bet you would have enjoyed knowing him, given your field.”
“I’m sure,” Jonathan said.
“But people thought he was a bit off. My grandma died when she was still a young woman—I want to say malaria? Anyway, after she died, he turned into kind of a hermit. My dad came to America and tried to stay in touch with him, but my grandpa got bad about writing back. He couldn’t get him on the phone at all.”
Jonathan nodded. “Would there be any way I might be able to talk to your father?” Inwardly, Cassie cringed.
Her mother said, “He passed away a few years ago.” It had been very tough on the whole family. Cassie’s grandpa had been a great guy.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” her mom said. “Do you want to see a picture of him? He looked a lot like Grandpa De La Garza.” She retrieved the big group photo from Uncle Mike and Aunt Linda’s fiftieth anniversary a couple of years back. Rick had been in this photo, but after the divorce, Cassie’s mom had put her father in there instead. Except she didn’t know how to use Photoshop, so she’d made a color copy of a picture of him, cut out his face, and pasted it in there over Rick’s.
“Here he is. He’d already passed when we took this photo, but I, uh, thought he belonged in there.” Jonathan took the photo from her as she pointed out, “See, he and my grandfather had the same dark hair and the same nose. Cassie has that nose, too.”
Cassie fought the urge to cover her lar
ge nose with her hands. “Jesus, Mom.”
“I’m embarrassing her,” her mother said to Jonathan. “I don’t know why she gets embarrassed. She’s such a pretty girl. She’s got those huge, gorgeous brown eyes… Of course, I’m biased.”
“No, you’re right. She’s beautiful.” Cassie knew he was only playing a part, but heat flooded into her face. He handed the picture back. “You said your Grandpa De La Garza was interested in languages. Do you know which ones he spoke?”
Her mom exercised a lot more patience with his questions than she ever did with her daughter’s. “Just Spanish and English, But he studied old, what do you call them, hieroglyphs and things. I don’t know much more.”
“That’s really helpful,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. So did you meet Layla yet?”
He looked baffled. “No.”
“You should go say hello to her.” Mom picked up her knitting needles again. “She’s such a good horse. Do you ride at all, David?”
“No, never.” Well, there was one thing he didn’t know how to do, if he were telling the truth.
“That’s a shame. I’m sure Cassie will try to forgive you. She’s been riding since she was about four.”
Cassie doubted Jonathan was really interested in this, but he did a good job of faking it. “She wasn’t scared?”
“Cassie?” Her mom laughed. “She’s never been scared of anything. Neither of my girls were. When Cassie was about—how old were you, nine? We were boarding this beautiful, big thoroughbred, and she tried riding it. Well, you know, this was a high-strung horse, and he threw her off. She broke her arm in two places. Lucky she didn’t break her neck. But common sense has never been her strong suit.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Cassie said, her voice dry. She stood up, and Jonathan did the same.
Her mother said, “Oh Cassie, I almost forgot, there was something I was going to show you on the computer.”
“What?”
“Come on, it’ll only take a second.” She added to Jonathan, “Excuse us for a minute.” She shut the office door behind them.
Cassie asked, “Something about Christmas?” It was October, which meant she’d already be shopping for gifts. She liked to show Cassie what she was buying for everyone else.
“No. I wanted to tell you I think you should hang on to this one.”
“What?”
Her mom nodded in the direction of the living room.
Cassie rolled her eyes. “He’s just a friend.”
“He’d like to be more, then. Have you seen the way he looks at you?”
Like she might kill someone with a bighorn sheep? “He doesn’t look at me in a way.”
Her mom sighed. “Cassie, open your eyes.”
This wasn’t like her. “You only just met him.”
“He’s a good guy. I can tell.” Cassie could imagine her mom’s reaction if she found out how Jonathan had really met her. When they returned to the living room, her mom insisted again that he should meet Layla. He agreed, which surprised her. He was in a hurry to figure things out, and being around her and a big animal at the same time wasn’t exactly the safest thing.
Layla’s ears pricked up and she nickered as they came up to her stall. As Cassie scratched her neck, she talked to her in a high-pitched voice, as if she were talking to a baby. She didn’t care if he thought it was stupid. “Hi, sweetheart. Did you have a good week? Was everybody nice to you?” The horse nuzzled at her jacket.
“She really loves you,” Jonathan said.
“And she figures I have a treat. You can pet her if you want.”
He took a step closer. “Is she—what you call those blond horses?”
Cassie laughed. “Palominos. Layla’s a mix, palomino and quarter horse and something else. She’s not fancy.”
He raised a hand, hesitating before patting her on the neck. Had he ever touched a horse before in his life? “She looks fancy.”
Cassie couldn’t help the warmth that blossomed inside her at that. A surefire way to become her friend was to say something nice about her horse. “Do you want to give her an apple? She’s really good, she won’t bite your fingers.” She handed him the one she’d grabbed from the kitchen counter.
Jonathan held it under Layla’s nose, and she turned her head away. “She’s not hungry.”
She’d forgotten to tell him. “You have to take the stem off first. Otherwise she won’t eat it.”
He looked from the apple to Layla. “You’re kidding.”
“I know. She’s a dork.”
He twisted the stem off the apple and offered it again. She bit off the top half of it, chomped it down, and took the rest.
Cassie stroked her mane. “See, she’s really gentle. They put new riders on her. You should try riding sometime.”
“I doubt that’s going to happen.”
After they pulled out of her parents’ driveway, Cassie asked, “You didn’t really go to ASU, did you?”
He shook his head. “West Point. Then Army Ranger school.”
Wow. She’d guessed he might have a military background, and she congratulated herself on being right, but West Point and Ranger School were pretty hard core. “Did you like them?”
“West Point—not usually, but sometimes. Nobody likes Ranger School.”
The sunlight made her squint, and she remembered to put on his sunglasses again. “At least you learned how to fight.”
“Not there so much. I did MMA training since I was a kid.”
“The cage fighting?” He nodded. She’d seen it a couple of times on TV, and it looked brutal. Why had his parents allowed him to do it? Maybe it had been their idea. For all she knew, they hunted witches, too.
“If I did a spell, does that make me a witch?”
“Sort of.”
Cassie swallowed. “But you don’t think witches are human.”
“I misspoke,” he said quickly. “A lot of people use magic, and most of them are good. But very rarely, one of them uses their powers to hurt or kill. That’s when they give up the privileges of humanity.”
The privileges of humanity. This sounded like an official doctrine. “Who are you people?”
She didn’t really expect him to respond, but it still rankled her that he didn’t. Who would he give her great-grandpa’s journal to? She didn’t even know. Maybe she should find a way to take it back.
As she pulled into her driveway, dread clouded her thoughts. Once inside, he inspected the smashed sliding door to her kitchen. Glass crunched under his feet. He found her broom and began cleaning it up.
If he thought he could avoid her questions that way, he was wrong. “You say you’re going to help me, but if you’re going to take the journal, I need to know more about who you are.” He held the dustpan with his foot, and the glass shards clinked into it. After a few moments, she continued. “It’s not fair. You know all about me. The least you could do is be more scrutable.”
He looked up. “Scrutable?”
“Yeah, as in the opposite of inscrutable?”
“I don’t think scrutable’s actually a word.”
“I don’t think I actually care!” Cassie threw her hands in the air in frustration. “What’s the name of this group you’re in? How many of you are there?”
“The only thing I can tell you is that you don’t want to be on their bad side.”
“Well, apparently, it’s not a great idea to be on my bad side, either,” she pointed out. “Tell me something. Tell me about your last mission.” He’d used that word, mission, before.
His jaw flexed. “Why?”
“So I can know more about you. So I can trust you!”
He let go of the broom suddenly and it clattered to the floor, making Cassie jump. “You want to hear about my last mission? Fine. It was in New Mexico with my brother, Michael.”
Shit. She hadn’t thought about that. “When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
>
“Three weeks?” She searched for something else to say.
He sat down on the kitchen chair, the one he’d tied her to the night before to interrogate her. It seemed as though he wanted to tell the story just to make her sorry she’d asked. “We were in New Mexico to banish a demon.”
A chill snaked through her. She could no longer doubt these kinds of things existed, and she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to go up against them. She sat down in the chair next to him. “How did you know there was a demon?”
“Do you remember a news story about a man in Taos who killed his wife? He cut off her finger and—”
“Oh God. Yes.” She shuddered.
The man had eaten his wife’s finger and posted a picture of the bones online. The gruesome news story had especially disturbed her because the guy had no history of violence. He was a nice husband and father who’d managed a restaurant.
“He’d just gotten back from a scout camp at Urraca Mesa, which is an old gateway to a demon realm.”
“Holy smokes. How do you know this?”
“There are stories going back for centuries. There used to be Pueblo people in that area—some people call them Anasazi. But they all disappeared and left behind evidence of torture and cannibalism.” She nodded. She’d heard about them. “We believe the demon possessed the ancient people there, making them do terrible things, and that’s why they fled. They say a Navajo shaman set a powerful spell to keep the demon on the other side, centuries ago. But banishments never last forever. Whether it was physical change to the portal or someone tampering with magic, something finally broke the binding.”
“So the guy who killed his wife was possessed, too,” she said. The police had shot the man dead after a short standoff. “How were you and your brother supposed to fight this thing?”
“First, we went to the place it crossed over.”
“Wait,” she said. “If it’s a Boy Scout camp, didn’t you kind of stand out?”
He gave a mirthless chuckle and told her the rest of the story.
CHAPTER SIX
It hadn’t been peak Boy Scout season at the camp. Jonathan and Michael had gone to the top of Urraca Mesa, where no one was officially allowed.