“Okay, good,” Charlie said. “Because the last non-human guy didn’t work out so well.”
“Tom was human.”
“Not in the same sense you are,” Charlie said. “Let’s not split hairs. The point is, it was impossible and you knew it.”
“Which is why we agreed that he should move on.”
“Yes, and then you moped around for months afterward. If I hadn’t gotten you that hand pie maker for Christmas to distract you, you may never have come out of it.”
“Ha ha. I think another abrupt change of subject is in order.”
We had a very pleasant dinner, after which I walked over to Martha’s with her desserts. But I walked around Charlie’s yard first, then a little way down the street. Somehow expecting to see Wulf come trotting along from somewhere. He didn’t. What if he’d never made it to Phineas’s world at all? What if he’d been hit by a car, and was lying in a ditch somewhere, suffering, wondering where I was?
I wiped tears away and knocked on Martha’s door. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.
“I had a dream about you,” she said as she made me tea.
“Oh?”
“Yes. You and Jack Nimble were going on vacation to Majorca.”
I had no response to this, so instead I told her my situation. It took a long time, as my situations tend to do. “So now it’s Sunday night, and Wulf still isn’t back, and no word from Phineas,” I finished. “I may end up really needing to do this rescue operation.”
“Well, I have five bedrooms,” Martha said. “Of course, one is the library now, and the green bedroom has all the alchemy supplies in it. But that leaves two. He could have his pick!”
Martha was eccentric, even crazy, but I thought she had the capacity to understand risk and make her own decisions, or I wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. Still, I had to impress upon her the danger. “Martha, some very nasty people may be after him. Some of whom aren’t even human.”
“Oh, well the demon isn’t a problem, I can keep him out just fine.”
That much was probably true. If anyone knew how to keep out a demon, it would be Martha Corey. The humans would be the real challenge. I did not like the idea of exposing Martha to Madeline Underwood. But I didn’t have any other obvious options, either. I spent a few more minutes making sure I was giving her full disclosure on how creepy the Underwoods were. And also that Max was unbalanced.
Martha dismissed this last with a laugh. “Unbalanced people are certainly welcome here.”
I was still uneasy about it until Martha, in one of those flashes of sensitivity she sometimes had, leaned forward and squeezed my forearm.
“I can choose for myself,” she said. “And I’m willing to risk a lot to have company.”
That was heartbreaking, but it also settled the matter.
I fell asleep on the couch that night, waiting for Wulf. And finally, just after midnight, he came scratching at the kitchen door. He was alone.
He wasn’t especially dirty, and didn’t seem to be hurt at all, but he was looking pretty dejected. I made a fuss over him and fed him some taco meat I had leftover in the fridge. Fifteen minutes later he was snoring.
But there would be no more sleep for me. I sat down at my kitchen table with a bourbon and switchel and didn’t do much but stare at the wall for a few hours. Eventually the sun came up. Then I could hear the sounds of kids laughing, car doors slamming. Everyone heading into their Monday. Which meant it definitely counted as first thing. Phineas had promised to knock on my door first thing.
But he didn’t. I rattled around my house, talking to Wulf, chastising him for not being able to talk back, eating, drinking tea, occasionally praying. When I heard the same laughing kids getting home from school, I faced reality—including the fact that I might be walking right into a trap—and called the dreadful Penny.
“Fine. I’ll take your deal.”
Of course the bitch flatly refused to tell me anything until I got her brother away safely.
“Will Max come with me, if you’re not there?” I asked.
“Hopscotch,” Penny said. “Tell him hopscotch. It was our password, when he was really little. Like if we were going on a secret mission. I’d use it and he’d know better than to ask questions. I used to help him hide from Madeline, sometimes.”
“How will you get me the key?”
“There’s a trail head, on the hotel grounds. It’s called Greyhill trail. You can also get to it from a little parking area up Phearson road.”
“Okay.”
“Pretend you’re hiking and follow that trail until you get to a blue scarf tied around one of the trees. Turn left at the scarf. It’ll be kind of rough from there, but it’s not far. Just follow the scarves. All blue. Until you get to what’s left of an old stone house. It’s called Greyhill too, but there’s no sign or anything.”
“You’re going to put these scarves there to guide me? That won’t be suspicious?”
“I won’t be putting them there,” Penny said. “They keep them up there. When one rips or rots off, someone always replaces it. It’s a drinking and sex spot for the high-schoolers.”
“So you’re going to give one of these young drunks the key?”
“No, I’ll leave it under a rock inside the old fireplace. They don’t go in the house.”
“Why not?”
“Haunted.”
I almost laughed. They had no problem belonging to a devil, but they were afraid of a ghost? An old haunted ruin was the least of Bristol’s problems.
“I go to work at ten, and Madeline won’t leave until around the same time,” Penny said. “So make sure you don’t go into the hotel before that.”
“Fine. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
Which I did. But before I left I stopped over at Charlie’s. I knew Norbert was working from home, and I wanted to ask if I could borrow his handgun. I kept a big plastic container in the back of my car, filled with things I’d learned to have on hand since Phineas smashed the canteen: an iron dagger, two bags of salt, plenty of dried sage, various candles and oils. But my usual toolkit wouldn’t help against most of my current crop of enemies. And if this was a trap, I wasn’t going to walk into it defenseless.
“Do you have a permit?” Norbert asked.
“No,” I admitted. “But I know how to shoot. Nat—” I broke off, embarrassed. I always felt weird talking about Nat around Norbert. But he didn’t even seem to notice.
“Don’t kill anyone, then.”
I didn’t make any promises. He went to get the gun from the safe, and I followed.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked. “Seems like if you could use a gun, you could use some help.”
I laughed. “Charlie would kill you and you know it.”
Norbert had been skeptical, when we first told him what I did, and what had killed Nat. So skeptical that he and Charlie fought about it some. So Charlie asked me if I’d take Norbert along on a case, an easy one involving no actual danger. I found just the thing a few weeks later: not a mean ghost, just a sad one, recently dead and easily banished with some burnt sage. But not before Norbert got a good look at her.
It worked, unfortunately too well. Norbert was fascinated with my job after that, which quite understandably, considering Nat, put Charlie on edge. He forbade me to take Norbert anywhere again, or even to answer any more questions than were strictly necessary.
Norbert didn’t argue the point, just handed me the gun. “It’s weird you don’t have one of your own, with all the dangerous stuff you do.”
“Bullets aren’t so useful against dead people, though.”
“But this time?”
“Live people.”
Norbert nodded sagely. “Live people are the worst.”
When I got to Bristol, I approached the trail from Phearson Road rather than the hotel, and found the turnoff easily enough. There was only one other car there, which I of course immediately imagined
to belong to some thugs Penny had hired to waylay me in the woods and cut me to bits. (He rips you.)
I had no trouble following the scarves, and when I stepped into the clearing that must have been Greyhill, the domain of the local teens was clearly delineated by a jumble of beer bottles and condom wrappers around a charred stone circle. This was some distance from the house proper, near a ruined bit of foundation that might once have been a barn or stable. As I walked past the makeshift fire pit, something bright blue caught my eye, and I stopped to kick aside a drift of dead leaves to reveal the cloth underneath. It was a sweatshirt with a jaunty white devil on it, brandishing his pitchfork and smiling. Bristol Blue Devils, it declared. Crikey. He even owned the high school. They probably all thought it was funny.
The house was mostly intact, except for the left side, where the gray stone wall was half crumbled and the roof partly caved in. The door and windows were empty gaps. There was an actual floor, though it was rotted in many places and crawling with bugs. There were no objects of any kind apart from piles of old leaves and a couple of birds’ nests. The place didn’t feel haunted, exactly. It was too empty for that. But it did feel dead. Dead and sad.
Awful things happened here, I thought. Or lived here. Things that have long since sunk into the bygone Bristol that lurks in this forest still.
“Damn, I’m a drama queen today, aren’t I?” I said to Wulf.
He whined. He didn’t like the place any better than I did.
“Alrighty then. I vote for getting our business done and getting the hell out.”
The old hearth was full of spider webs and dirt, but there was one rock inside it that looked less filthy than its surroundings. I flipped it over and found the promised key, silver, not attached to any ring. Wulf sniffed and snuffled at it, drooling all over both the key and my hand.
“What do you think?” I asked him. “We good?”
He wagged his tail. I nodded. Before another minute had passed, we’d left creepy, melancholy Greyhill behind. But as we walked back through the woods, Wulf’s tail suddenly shot straight downward. He crouched low and started walking gingerly off the trail, hackles raised.
“What is it, buddy? Is there someone in there?”
He whined, but did not bay or sniff.
“No? Just don’t like it here?” I looked around. It had been too dark that night for anything to look familiar, but we couldn’t be far from the place where he got hurt. “Of course you don’t. It was insensitive of me to bring you back here.” I gave the leash a tug. “Back to the car then, right?”
But Wulf resisted and kept going—doggedly, you might say—in the direction he’d started. I tugged harder. He looked back at me with his mournful bloodhound eyes and whined again. I stopped pulling and let him take the lead.
We ended up at another bit of that bygone Bristol: the overgrown remains of a foundation and crumbling chimney, and behind that, a detached pit that was probably the remains of a cellar. Unlike the other ruins in the area, this house had been made of brick. Above the sparse tree line I could make out the roof of the Mount Phearson hotel, closer than I would have thought.
As far as I could tell, there were no ghosts or devils about, but Wulf let out a long, low bay.
“Is this where it happened?”
He was too busy sniffing and growling to answer. After a few minutes during which I saw absolutely nothing of interest and, apparently, neither did he, he came back to stand beside me, the very definition of hangdog. I bent to pet him; he was trembling a little.
“You were brave to come back,” I said. “But I don’t think there’s anything here now. Are you ready to go?”
He licked my face, which I took as agreement, and so we did.
I drove to the Mount Phearson rather than walking through the woods to the other end of the trail. It might have been stealthier to arrive on foot, but it might also make getting away more complicated than I’d like. I didn’t know how far Max would be able to walk. And there was a reasonable possibility we’d be chased.
I’d been anxious to begin with, what with Phineas possibly being tortured, or dead, and me possibly walking into a trap to be tortured, or killed. And our adventures while getting the key didn’t exactly help me relax. But apparently my haunted encounters for the day were not over yet. My little ghost friend was on the back lawn of the hotel, near where I parked.
He smiled at Wulf, who greeted him in turn, but I thought there was something accusing in the way he looked at me. That could have just been my own guilt, though.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I promised to try to find your dog, and I am. But there’s been a lot going on on my end. I almost died, you know.”
He seemed unimpressed by this.
“Do you know Gemma?” I asked. “Gemma Pierce? You kind of look like her, with your dimples, but she’d have been a few generations before you.”
His face was blank as he shrugged. Then he looked away and knelt beside Wulf.
“What about a house, not too far from here, a red brick house? Do you know it? Wulf seemed like he—”
His head had snapped up, and he was crying again.
“I’m sorry—”
But he was gone.
I sighed. “I just keep screwing up with that poor child, don’t I Wulf?”
Wulf declined to comment. I walked him around the hotel grounds a bit more, and when he didn’t seem to be alarmed or excited by anything he smelled, put him back in the car with a container of water and a rawhide bone. It was a cool day, and he’d be comfortable enough. Any mission with a need for quiet wasn’t really Wulf’s thing.
I went inside and stopped by the front desk to verify with my buddy Nolan that Madeline had gone to Asheville. He said she had. So either he was part of the conspiracy (and a pretty good actor), or Penny was telling the truth. About that much, at least.
“Do I want to know what you’re doing here?” Nolan asked.
“Best not,” I said.
So he looked the other way while I walked up the main staircase. I passed three spiders on the way.
There was a group of guests on the third floor who seemed to be heading back down to the lobby. By the sounds of it they were all media of some kind, having collectively agreed to leave Bristol now that it had been so long since someone mysteriously died. I felt a certain grim amusement at that. If Penny had been successful, my death might have inspired them to stay a little longer.
Madeline’s wing was deserted, apart from a single spider who I hoped would let Max know I was on my way in. I preferred not to startle the poor man again. I didn’t bother with much in the way of stealth, just unlocked her door and walked in.
“Max?” I called.
No answer. He wasn’t in the closet, although his sleeping bag and bowl of water were. A bowl of fucking water. I turned away, feeling sick, only to come face-to-face with Helen Turner and her dead, but somehow still disapproving, eyes. She opened her mouth, no doubt to tell me I couldn’t save Max. Or Phineas. Or anyone. I walked right through her.
“Not fucking now.”
Max wasn’t in the bathroom either. I crossed over to the office side of the suite.
I didn’t see Max, but I did see Madeline’s desk. And her computer. I rummaged through both, but her email was password protected, and I didn’t find any clues about what, if anything, they were planning for Phineas.
“You aren’t supposed to use her computer.”
I jumped out of Madeline’s chair with a screech that probably sounded pretty funny. But Max Underwood, still in his blue and red boat pajamas, looked very serious. There were fresh bruises on his neck, and one of his fingers was splinted and wrapped in white tape.
“Max. You startled me. Where were you?”
“Under the bed. I got nervous when I heard the door, but then the spider told me it was you.”
“I’m glad you weren’t nervous of me.”
“I am, a little.”
“You don’t have to be
,” I said. “P— I mean, Matilda sent me.” I took a step closer. He didn’t step back, which I considered a good sign. “Max, I need you to listen to me okay? And try not to get too upset?”
“Okay.”
“Matilda wants me to bring you away from here.” I flinched, afraid he’d start screaming. But I guess he took me seriously, because although he was bunching up his pajama shirt in his fists, his face didn’t change. “I know you got upset the last time, when I said I could take you away, but it’s for Matilda this time. She said I should tell you hopscotch, and you would understand.”
His face broke into a wide smile that completely transformed it. If it weren’t for the few thin wisps of hair over his pale, otherwise bald scalp, he’d have looked like a small boy.
“It’s the hopscotch game,” he said. “Not like real hopscotch, but it’s the code word for another game. Our secret code word.”
I nodded. “She told me. It’s a hiding game. Will you come and hide with me?”
Max turned and walked away.
“Max?”
I found him in his closet, rummaging around in a duffel bag on the floor.
“I have to go to the dentist twice a year,” he said.
I waited, but he didn’t clarify. “Um, that’s a really good habit to have,” I said.
“I don’t like the dentist. But when I go I can’t wear pajamas. Madeline says you don’t go out in pajamas.” As he talked he pulled out a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and I understood.
“No,” I agreed. “I’ll wait in the hall while you change, okay?”
“Okay.”
It was that easy. Almost suspiciously so. I stayed alert and on edge, but we got out of the building without incident. Max did his best to avoid anyone we saw in the halls, popping into alcoves, stairwells, supply closets, anything that would keep him hidden.
“A lot of them know not to let me out,” he explained.
“Are you okay with dogs?” I asked as we approached my car.
Max didn’t answer, but bent down and peered into the window at Beowulf, who was sleeping. “I’m okay with him.”
“Are you hungry?” I asked as we pulled out of the parking lot. “We’ve got kind of a long drive.”
Peak of the Devil (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 2) Page 15