Peak of the Devil (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 2)

by Jen Rasmussen

  I had a feeling I’d found my three hearts, and my common denominator.

  I asked them to get me the complete family tree for Colonel Phearson, from a generation or two before him to the present, as soon as possible. I also asked them to kindly investigate the Kerrs, and any other founding families of Bristol they could find. And while they were at it, could they look into any deaths of boys between the ages of seven and twelve in Bristol in 1923? Surely with all their magical historical record superpowers they could turn something like that up, and I figured what the hell, Phineas was picking up the bill.

  They said they’d be happy to oblige, but that so many requests would take some time, as they had a high volume of cases at the moment. They appreciated my patience and understanding. I wasn’t sure they had either, but I was willing to stipulate, for the time being. In the meanwhile, I’d see what I could dig up on my own.

  Charlie and Norbert came back after dinner on the fifth day, looking spent and unhappy. I was only expecting Charlie; Norbert was supposed to stay a few extra days to help put his mother’s things in order. But they didn’t volunteer any reason for the change in plans, and I didn’t ask. There was some tension between them, and I hoped Charlie hadn’t fucked up by fighting with Norbert while the poor guy was grieving for his mother. It didn’t matter if Norbert had said or done a million shitty things, you had to give a person a pass under those circumstances. More likely though they were both just exhausted. And in no mood to entertain me. I quickly said my goodbyes to Warren, promised to come back and help him rehearse for his play soon (and bring hand pies), and called Beowulf from his blanket on the couch.

  I drove by Tom’s house, as I often did on my way between Charlie’s house and mine. At least, I liked to say I did it on my way, but that was only true in the sense that it wasn’t more than a mile or two out of my way. The house that was white in my memory was yellow now, and belonged to a young family. It had moved on. Tom had moved on. Even his great-granddaughter Katie had moved on, with her family to Chicago.

  It seemed I was the only one who hadn’t, because there I sat on the side of the road, searching for traces of the Dodd house I knew under that yellow paint, behind that new porch.

  It wasn’t there. Wulf whined from the back seat, and I nodded. “I know. They’re going to think I’m a stalker if I keep driving by like this. It’s time to stop it.” But I knew I’d do it again.

  I started my car and drove away, pulling my thoughts back to the present. Phineas didn’t answer his phone, and while I’d found out some important things, I didn’t think they were urgent enough to try sending my poor dog to some sort of alternate universe in the hopes that he’d just know how to get there and, more importantly, how to get back again. I decided I’d go back to Bristol without Phineas the next day, and pay a visit to Kerr House.

  That night, as with the last three, I dreamed about the little ghost. He was looking for his dog, racing frantically around an old Bristol, with dirt roads and wooden signs hanging outside each shop. He ran and ran, up and down the streets. When he rounded a corner into a narrow alley, he stopped. I stopped behind him. We were both sobbing.

  A brown mutt, one ear straight up and one flopping over, was lying on top of a cluster of barrels. His head was the only part of him that wasn’t mangled. I understood that the person who had done this had left it intact so the boy would recognize his dog.

  I started to scream, but the boy gave me a sharp look. His eyes were dry and serious now. “You can’t dance with the devil,” he said.

  “Or he changes you?” I asked. I thought I remembered something, some expression, about dancing with the devil. Was that how it went?

  “He rips you,” the boy said. “Rips you right apart.”

  Well, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the version I’d heard. I woke up sweaty and disoriented, and drove back to the last place I wanted to be.

  Unfortunately for me, I didn’t recheck Kerr House’s website first. If I had, I’d have known they were closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays before I checked into a bed and breakfast and asked the owner for directions. I had to bribe said owner a hundred bucks to let Wulf stay. But I didn’t like the idea of staying alone at the Phearson, without knowing what Madeline’s prisoner had told her about me. And the remnants of my dream (he rips you) did nothing to put me at ease.

  Still, I’d see Kerr House soon enough. It was Thursday, and I was staying the night anyway. It could wait until tomorrow. In the meanwhile, I decided to go to The Witch’s Brew. I was curious about whether Phineas had gone to see Wendy, like he planned, and if so how much he told her. And I had a few questions of my own for her.

  As it turned out, he’d told Wendy and Caleb pretty much everything. The few details he left out were extracted from me by means of shortbread and coffee, in the back office while Caleb minded the counter. The office was really more like a sitting room, though, with big overstuffed chairs and a coffee table and even a rug for Wulf to lay on. So it was a nice enough interrogation.

  When she was done asking me questions, Wendy sighed. “Well, I suppose Phineas will take the devil away, if he catches him?”

  “Yeah, that’s the idea,” I said. “He’ll take him back home and charge him with something, or whatever they do. Although I’m not actually sure what his crimes are, besides whatever part he has in these deaths. Phineas just said the fiend—the devil I mean—was his jurisdiction, but he didn’t go into a lot of detail.”

  “That’s good, if he gets rid of him. Mostly good.” Wendy waved her hand, as if impatient with herself. “You know, this will sound awful, but there are upsides to having this deal. I never have to worry about Caleb dying young of some terrible disease, or my shop going under.”

  “So you’ve always believed it?” I asked.

  “Sure, I was raised on it,” Wendy said. “The ones who can do witchcraft all believe it, and witchery goes back for generations on my mother’s side. Not that anyone in my family has ever seen him or anything. But it’s hard to be skeptical of a supernatural presence in this town when you regularly use magic yourself. Not to mention when you see the evidence every day that Bristol is unnaturally lucky.”

  The news that she came from a long line of witches didn’t give me pause the way it would some people. It wasn’t like I didn’t believe in magic. I’d been doing rituals—spells—for most of my life. I supposed some people would consider me a witch myself.

  Wendy took another piece of shortbread from the plate between us and offered me one, which I accepted. It was delicious. I wondered if her talent for baking was another upside.

  She started talking again before she quite finished her bite. “Anyway, I suspected these deaths were because of him even before you came, otherwise how could they have happened on his watch?”

  “Just what I was thinking earlier this week,” I said.

  “And I wondered if that meant the deal’s off,” Wendy went on. “The victims, to be perfectly honest with you, were all assholes. Except the tourist, I obviously didn’t know him. B—”

  “Matilda Underwood said almost that exact same thing to me,” I interrupted. “She said they all sucked.”

  Wendy shrugged. “Anyone here would say the same thing, if they were being honest. But assholes or not, they were still Bristol people. There’ve always been rumors and superstitions about the devil. Nobody will keep pets around here.” Wulf thumped his tail in support, I guessed, of the word pet. Wendy smiled down at him. “But as far as I know, this is the first time he’s actually hurt anyone, at least in recent memory. If he’s going to start pulling that shit, it’s time to get rid of the fucker.”

  I liked a lady who wasn’t afraid to swear. “Fair enough,” I said. “And you might be able to help, in that regard.”

  Wendy laughed her throaty, boisterous laugh. “If you need potions, you’ll have to talk to my granny, but I make a pretty good poppet.”

  What with being in a bakery, surrounded by the smell of shortbread, I ima
gined a poppet as something like a popover. Which was a nice idea, but not an especially relevant one. “I was actually just thinking I could ask you a few things.”

  She looked mildly disappointed at this, but nodded. “Shoot.”

  “Do you know anything about Kerr House?”

  She snorted. “You could at least ask harder questions. Everyone knows about Kerr House. It’s another local legend.”

  “Which is what?”

  “It was haunted, back in the day, some kind of really nasty violent spirit. So someone tried to cleanse it, and the ghost got pissed off and set the place on fire. That would be the big fire, in the twenties. Everyone in the house died that night. But I guess it worked, in a way, because it’s not haunted anymore. They say it’s too dark and sad even for ghosts, now.” Wendy shrugged. “No idea if that one’s true or not, though.”

  “And no idea who the ghost was? A name, gender, anything?”

  “None, sorry. Our legends tend to focus more on mood than plot.”

  She didn’t know anything about a little boy dying at the Mount Phearson hotel in the twenties, either. We talked about more pleasant topics for another few minutes before I realized I was keeping her from her job and said goodbye. But I paused in the office doorway on my way out. “Hey, you know everyone, right?”

  “More or less,” said Wendy. “Assuming we’re limiting the definition of everyone to the population of Bristol.”

  “What do you think of Matilda Underwood?”

  Wendy shrugged at that. “As Underwoods go, she’s about the best you’re going to get.”

  Her use of Underwoods, plural, gave me another thought, and I turned back again. “Do you know of another Underwood brother? Max?”

  “He died,” Wendy said. “When he was eight or nine, something like that. Mark was my year in school—we were in middle school then—so I remember when it happened.”

  I frowned. “How? I thought nobody died in Bristol.”

  “Well, we’re not immortal. He got hit by a car out on the mountain road. They were having a family picnic or something. Probably outside the town limits, technically, if that helps.”

  It didn’t. The whole thing sounded suspicious, and not just because I knew Max was alive. Not that I doubted that was the story Wendy had been given, and if she was just a kid at the time, she’d probably never thought to question it. But the Underwoods did not strike me as the sort of family who picnicked.

  Maybe it was because I left The Witch’s Brew on that note, with Underwoods on my mind, that I thought of Penny Dreadful. Who better to ask about local history than the librarian, right? Sure, I didn’t trust her, but Phineas did, and by then I trusted him (mostly). And if Wendy’s opinion of Penny wasn’t exactly glowing, it didn’t seem to be awful, either. Besides, I had nothing to do for the rest of the day, and didn’t know anyone else in Bristol I could interview.

  So I called her. (Bad decision number one.) We met for dinner at the Mexican place, because she said it was her favorite. She wore bright orange this time, and seemed stable and cheerful enough. I was cautiously optimistic.

  I asked whether she knew anything about Colonel Phearson. She said not much, but that she thought there was a short biography at the library, something amateur, written by a local, and she’d try to dig it up for me.

  “What about his family? Descendants? Any Phearsons still around?”

  “Not by name, but there’s probably lots of families with Phearson blood. Including mine.”

  Blood. Not families with his genes, or families in his line, but families with his blood. It wasn’t an uncommon expression, of course. And she said it casually enough. But I noticed she shifted in her seat as she answered. Then became very interested in the label on her bottle of beer. I wondered why this line of questioning didn’t appeal to her, and whether it had to do with three hearts circulating that Phearson blood.

  But that was silly. She was the one who called me about the hearts. If she was hiding something, especially about them, why ask me to poke around? I decided I was being paranoid. (Bad decision number two.)

  She couldn’t tell me any more about the haunting of Kerr House than Wendy had, but she didn’t seem uncomfortable with the subject, either.

  “What about your sister’s hotel?” I asked. “Is that haunted, too?”

  “It’s not my sister’s hotel!” Penny gave me an offended look, but it was only fleeting. “My parents left it to all of us. She just manages it. But no, it’s not haunted.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I guess I can’t promise,” Penny said. “But I’m pretty attuned to ghosts, and I never saw one there. I grew up there. When my parents were alive.” Then she looked up sharply from her plate. “Why? Did you see something there? Or hear something?”

  And there it was again, that thing about her that went beyond quirky and straight to unstable. She wasn’t turning red or breathing heavily or clenching her fists this time. But that sharp look in her eyes, the stiffness in her shoulders. It didn’t look good. Considering how things had gone after the last “stressor,” I didn’t want to take any risks in a public place.

  “No,” I said. “Just the opposite, actually. I find it weird that I haven’t seen a ghost there. Almost all old hotels have at least one.”

  Penny relaxed into a shrug. “Never heard of anyone dying there. Guess we’re just lucky. Like maybe our town’s got a protector or something.”

  I laughed at her little joke, and things were fine again. But I didn’t forget that look, and I decided not to ask her about her brother Max. Surely he was the reason she was worried about what I’d heard at the hotel.

  So all in all, it was a pretty useless dinner, that cost me sixty-five bucks in exchange for no new information. I felt I should offer to pay, since I’d spent the whole meal grilling her, and Penny didn’t argue. The humor in this was not lost on me later, although I did not laugh.

  Wulf gave me a mournful look when I got back to the bed and breakfast, apparently not as happy with our cramped little room there as he’d been at the Phearson with his adoring ghost friend.

  “Yeah, suck it up, buddy. At least you didn’t have to make small talk with an Underwood.”

  I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible stomach cramps, and threw up a few minutes later. Food poisoning was the obvious suspect, and I found myself glad Phineas wasn’t back. We weren’t yet close enough to be sharing that with one another. I splashed water over my clammy face and braced myself for a long night.

  But I only threw up the once, and the cramps never translated into intestinal trouble. Instead I kept sweating, and my hands started to shake. Then my knees. Finally I was too weak to stand. My chest tightened up, and I started having trouble breathing.

  Once it started to go bad, it happened so fast that by the time I thought to call 911, I couldn’t move to find my phone. I could feel Wulf’s hot breath on my face. I tried to say something to him, but my voice wouldn’t work. My body seemed to be shutting down, bit by bit, like lights going off through a house.

  My pulse was thudding in my ears, until the sound of it became all I could focus on. I was hypnotized by the rhythm of it as the beats got farther and farther apart.

  My heart was stopping.

  I was staring down into a puddle of blood. My feet were bare, and I had to keep stepping back as the puddle expanded. Helen Turner was behind me. I could smell her breath as she laughed.

  Things were floating in the puddle, which was now a pond. An old pocket watch that shouldn’t have been able to float at all. A dead dog. A long swath of dark, wavy hair, very like my own. A baby, but the baby was not dead. He was swimming, flapping his tiny hands. A coffin.

  “You’ll fail them,” Helen said.

  “So you’ve told me. But how can I fail a watch or a coffin?”

  Her hand gripped my shoulder, and she tried to turn me around. I resisted. I knew that if I looked into those dead eyes, I’d be dead too. But she was too strong fo
r me. She would win, just like she always did. And then I’d have to see. I’d have to know.

  “I don’t want to know what it’s like to be dead.”

  “Shhh. You aren’t going to die.” Not Helen’s voice, but a man’s.

  He was right. I lived, as it were, to tell the tale. Mostly because Wulf took a chapter out of every after-school special dog movie ever made, and saved my life. Well, technically Phineas was the one who healed me. But it was Wulf who went to get him, just like Phineas said he would.

  I woke up a few times, with Phineas pressing some nasty drink to my lips and ordering me to swallow, or coughing on some nasty herby smoke he was filling the room with. I think I was not very gracious, and swore at him a few times. He took it in usual Phineas fashion, with a laugh and an utter refusal to give a shit whether I was mad at him or not.

  When I finally came around all the way, I was thirsty as hell, and my chest hurt as if I’d broken some ribs. Phineas gave me a drink and sat down at the end of the bed. It was my bed, I realized, in my house.

  I looked at him, tilting my head to one side. “You got a haircut.”

  Phineas looked away, but the tip of the one ear I could see—more clearly now thanks to the tamed hair—turned bright red. “I think we have more important things to talk about than my hair, no?”

  “Yes. Wulf fetched you?”

  Phineas grinned at Wulf, who was sprawled on the other half of my bed, and leaned over me to scratch his neck. “I told you he could do it.”

  “But how did he know to?”

  Phineas shrugged. “Smart dog.”

  I sat up and kissed Wulf’s soft brown head. “You’re a very good boy for saving my life.” He wagged his tail and licked my hand.