“You mind pulling the truck over so I can get by?”
“Who are you, that he asks you and not me?”
He doesn’t really expect an honest answer to that. . . .
“I don’t know,” Cormac drawled, looking off into the trees, giving one of his country-boy shrugs. “Don’t really understand those Hollywood types.”
“No, I mean it,” Peterson said, stepped forward. “Who are you?”
If he got any closer, Cormac would be very tempted to deck the guy. Assault charge, that post-conviction ticker in the back of his head reminded him. So he took a breath and just stared. “I’m just looking into some things for Annie Domingo.”
“Art Weber? Is that what you’re looking into? He was just as bad as all the rest of them, he didn’t understand, not really.”
“And what is it we’re all supposed to be understanding?”
“The possibilities.”
Cormac tilted his head, asking silently. What was it the guy had found, or thought he’d found?
Peterson shook his head, as if acknowledging that he’d said too much. “You won’t find it. People have been in this valley for a hundred and fifty years looking for something. They haven’t found it. None of them.” His eyes blazed, and the tiniest smile twitched on his lips. “Stay out of my way, Mr. Bennett. Everyone needs to stay out of my way.”
He clambered back in his truck, roared down the road.
What has he done? Cormac—what has that man gone and done?
“I have no idea,” he murmured, watching the dust kicked up by Peterson’s departing car.
Amelia paced back and forth, her skirt swishing through the lush grass of their shared meadow. “I wouldn’t have thought the man had a magical bone in his body, much less the knowledge to evoke. . .well, whatever it is that’s been evoked.”
“The memory of starvation,” Cormac murmured.
Frowning, she looked at him. “Well yes. Exactly.”
They’d argued, after Peterson drove away. Cormac wanted to go after him right that moment, run him off the road, put his hands around his throat and demand answers. Amelia argued for restraint, and not just because Cormac couldn’t afford to get caught assaulting someone. “If he really did do something that resulted in Weber’s death—on purpose, even—we hardly want to confront him directly. Neutralize his power first.”
Which sounded good, but they didn’t know what his power was. The hint of a magical vortex, the open knife, the scrap of bone. Nothing in Amelia’s catalog of experience accounted for it. She needed to think. They needed to plan.
And so, however much he hated the idea of doing nothing, he went back to the motel, had dinner, and went to bed early. Sort of went to bed. Rather, he dreamed, and watched Amelia pacing.
In the valley in his mind, the one place he could look at Amelia—or at least an image of her, whatever that meant—he studied the map she’d spread out on a rock. She’d reproduced their map of the area—or drew on his memories to create an image of it, he still wasn’t sure of the mechanics and didn’t think about it too much. She’d marked it up with circles and diagrams to show what they’d done, what spikes of magic they’d found, and speculated about what might happen next. The Alder Creek campsite, all by itself on the upper right corner, had a star in a different color. They’d encountered something there, but it wasn’t connected to the magic centered around Weber’s cabin. Probably.
It should be her with the body, dealing with all this. He felt like a poor translator.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
“Of course it does, if Peterson really is some amateur would-be wizard dealing with powers of which he has no idea and little control—”
“No, I mean. . . this.” He gestured around at their meadow, the place in his mind they shared, this strange dream-place existence. The one place they stood face to face.
“Oh. Being effectively if not actually dead? I try not to think of it. I have plenty of other things to think about instead. I’m finally learning Aramaic, after all—when you’ll actually open the book. This is certainly better than it was, trapped in a brick wall with no access to the world. You can smell the pines and revel in that sensation, and I can appreciate that feeling, even if I can’t smell them myself.”
“Can’t you?”
She closed her eyes, tipped back her head, took a deep, full breath that she didn’t need and wasn’t real.
“Almost. . .like I’m right at the edge. . .and then. . .it vanishes.” She opened her eyes and frowned. “I sometimes think of the mummies in Egypt. The mummification process was meant to preserve them for the afterlife, so they could continue on as they were, in wealth and luxury. And I think—is this it? Is this some sort of afterlife? If we traveled to Egypt, would I meet the old pharaohs, lounging on their boats on the Nile, ancient spirits living strange little half lives?”
Someone clever would probably offer some kind of sympathy, some kind of comfort. But he didn’t know what to say.
“I am grateful for what I have, for what I’m able to do,” she said, determined. “We will meet true death someday, you and I. No need to rush into it. In the meantime, we have work to do.”
Pure impulse made him reach out and tuck a strand of her hair back behind her ear. This cleared the view of her profile, the slope of pale cheek, the slender shape of her nose. Glinting dark eyes turned on him, startled but unafraid.
The touch was real. The impulse, the gesture, even if the physicality of it was an illusion, nothing more than shared neurons.
“You’re smiling,” she observed. A question was implicit in the statement. And then he couldn’t stop smiling.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” he said. He couldn’t have said why, but she didn’t ask. Why didn’t matter. Just that he was smiling, and wasn’t that a thing?
Then she smiled too. “There are a number of spells—more active protection than throwing sage and salt around a room. They’re rather generic—it would be useful to know exactly what we’re up against—but we can perhaps throw them at Peterson and do some good that way.”
“A curse?”
“No. . .more like a wall. We just have to contain the man.”
“Can’t hurt,” he agreed.
She pursed her lips, touched her nose, looking especially thoughtful. How many times had she stood like that in life, considering some problem or other? Did she even realize her quirks had followed her into her afterlife? “I don’t suppose we can get a lock of hair from him, or a fingernail clipping?”
“What was that about assault charges?”
“Right then. We’ll work with what we have.”
Part of him never really slept, waiting for. . .something. There was always something. It wasn’t paranoia—he’d been a hunter too long not to be aware of what was coming up behind him, and there was usually something coming up behind him. So when a knock came at the door, he merely opened his eyes. Nothing startling about any of it. The sky outside the window was dark. Middle of the night, chilled and quiet as stone.
Cormac reached for a gun at the bedside that wasn’t there. Clenched his fist in frustration.
Something’s wrong, terribly wrong.
Yes, of course it was. He checked his phone, in case he’d missed a call or message. Nothing. Time was shy of midnight. He’d slept through the evening.
The knock at the door came again, and Trina’s voice called, “Mr. Bennett? Cormac, are you in there?”
Wearing nothing but sweatpants at the moment, he wasn’t especially interested in opening the door. Let her think he was a sound sleeper.
“Cormac,” Trina called again from the other side of the door, her voice fast and anxious. “I know you’re here because your Jeep is here and the police are here and really want to talk to you.”
He rubbed his face. Then he smelled smoke.
He froze. Nothing seemed to be on fire. This was a flash, like catching a whiff of cigarette smoke. It jolted his nerves.
Oh no
.
He’d left his jeans flung across the end of the bed. The front pocket, where he’d left the other half of the magical alarm, was warm. When he reached in, he found only ash.
We need to get to the cabin.
Yeah, but first they had to get past the police outside.
“Just a minute!” he called as he pulled on clothes. He also called Domingo. The phone went straight to voice mail. Cormac paused. He tried again—it was late, she didn’t strike him as being much of a night owl. Maybe she’d just shut her phone off. Or maybe something was wrong. “Goddamn it.”
Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and found Trina looking back at him, along with a pair of burly men in beige state trooper uniforms.
Cormac didn’t want to talk to cops. He didn’t want to deal with the police ever again in his whole life, if he could help it. He’d been off parole for a year, he shouldn’t have this reflexive knee-jerk. . .annoyance at seeing men in uniform trying to stare him down. But he was still a convicted felon, and he could assume that Trina told them everything she knew about him, that they’d run the Jeep’s license plates, and when you had a mystery no suspect looked quite as good as the one who already had a record.
This will be fine. They are not the enemy.
Yes, they are, Cormac muttered back at her. They had their own agenda. They got in the way.
Trina’s nose wrinkled. “You haven’t been smoking in there, have you?”
Cormac stepped out, leaving the door cracked. “What is it?” he asked evenly. If he tried to sound innocent he’d only sound more guilty.
“Cormac Bennett? That Jeep in the parking lot is yours?” The cop pointed at the only vehicle in the lot with Colorado plates.
“Yeah.” He read the names on their badges, Jankowitz, Stanley. He ought to ask for their identification. He didn’t really want to stall these guys.
“Ford Bellamy. You know him?” The shorter one was doing all the talking. He was a white guy, stocky, with a buzz cut. The taller one was blond and glared at Cormac like he expected him to bolt, and yes, his right hand was at the holster on his belt.
Cormac let out a breath. He’d expected them to mention Annie Domingo.
“Yeah, just met him yesterday. He tried to rope me into his film thing, but I said no.”
“Too busy? And what’re you doing in the area? A long way from home, aren’t you?”
“Not that long. I’m just looking into a few things for Annie Domingo over at the state park.” There, that got him a uniform on his side. The taller of the two cops still looked like he was waiting for Cormac to do something threatening. Trina stood to the side, looking back and forth with round eyes.
“When was the last time you saw Bellamy?”
“This afternoon at the park’s research cabin. Why, what’s happened?”
“He’s missing,” Officer Stanley said.
“Oh yeah?” Cormac tried to sound startled. But he wasn’t surprised. They needed to get out of here, now. . . .
“Yeah. We’re checking in with all the people who saw him last.”
“You talked to Elton Peterson yet? The two of them argued this afternoon. Domingo was there, she’ll tell you.”
The two officers glanced at each other. “We haven’t been able to reach Annie yet. We’re still looking for Peterson.”
Shit, Cormac thought, and felt Amelia’s urgency as a jolt in his hindbrain.
“You seen any of them since this afternoon?” Stanley pressed.
“‘Fraid I haven’t.”
“Found your record,” he said next, as if this was a surprise. “Seems like you’ve been around a lot of missing people in your time.”
Cormac almost chuckled, because that was such a roundabout way of putting it. “Yeah, I can see how you’d think that. How about if I hear anything about Bellamy I’ll let you all know?” He needed to circumvent this conversation entirely. He needed to get back to the cabin.
Stanley drew a business card out of his trouser pocket and handed it over. Standard contact info. “I’d appreciate it if you’d do that.”
The two went back to their patrol car; from inside, a radio scratched out indecipherable news.
“What’s going on?” Trina asked, still gaping.
“We need to get ahold of Annie Domingo. She’s not answering her phone.”
“I’ll try calling. I know her neighbor, I’ll call her too, have her knock on the door of her house—”
“No,” Cormac said, holding out a hand. “No one goes into her house. No one gets close. Just keep calling, maybe she’ll answer.”
“Okay. Okay, yeah. I’m sure everything’s okay—”
“And Elton Peterson. You have any idea where he is?”
“He lives south of here, out on the highway. I don’t have his number, I mean who’d want his number—”
“You think you can find out where he is right now?”
She nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I think I can do that.”
“Good. You find out, and call me. Don’t talk to him, nobody goes near him. Call me, got it? Here’s my number—”
“I already have it. It’s on your registration card.”
He smiled back. “You think that’s my real number, you got something to learn about paranoia.”
Her eyes widened. Then she grinned. “Yes, sir.”
The missing director wasn’t his problem. Let the cops deal with that.
Except he disappears, and the warning alarm at the cabin goes off?
Amelia didn’t believe in coincidences. Worry about the cabin first, then Bellamy. The cabin was the center of it all.
“So tell me this,” he said out loud, as they roared up the service road toward Weber’s cabin. The alarm had been triggered; the slip of paper in his pocket had burned to ash. Whatever had gotten to Weber had returned. “Bellamy and maybe Domingo are both missing. Peterson’s pissed off at both of them, which means he’s also pissed off at me. So why are we okay?”
I told you we’d need that protection magic someday.
He gripped the steering wheel, wrestling the Jeep around curves, and was still half a mile from the cabin when he put on the brakes and skidded to a stop. In the headlight beams the dirt road ahead showed ruts where the tires of a vehicle had kicked up trenches of gravel as it lost control and skidded. The tracks disappeared into the trees.
“You don’t think. . . .” Cormac murmured.
Be careful, Amelia murmured. His first impulse was to snap that he didn’t need reminding. On consideration, he appreciated the reminder. He needed an extra set of eyes. A sixth sense. Clairvoyance. The ability to channel the dead. Omnipotence.
I am a mere magician, she said.
Cormac walked a little ways from the truck, keeping his gaze soft enough to catch unexpected movement in his peripheral vision, but focused enough to notice details that didn’t fit. Anything out of place, from a recently fallen tree to a newly dug ditch. If he knew what he was looking for, he wouldn’t need to search.
A soft breeze rocked the pines above him. Living wood creaked, a perfectly natural if ominous sound. An owl grumbled a little ways off. The world around him appeared perfectly ordinary, except for the place where a car had obviously skidded off the road, suddenly and violently.
He left the road and followed the tracks through the pathless forest.
He didn’t have to go far. The ground dipped, sloping into a shallow gulch, and a black SUV sat innocuously shored up against a big pine. It hadn’t been moving fast enough down the track to do more than crunch the bumper when it hit the tree.
This was Ford Bellamy’s car.
This is not good.
Maybe the driver had lost control, managed to brake hard enough to keep the crash from being a total disaster. And then what, walked away? Then where was Bellamy? Why hadn’t the cops found this? Cormac approached, still looking around for. . .whatever.
He reached the driver’s side door and looked in through the tinted window. Someone
was sitting inside; Cormac could only see the driver’s shape. He pulled a pair of gloves out of his jacket pocket, slipped them on. Old habit, but even now he wasn’t willing to leave behind any confusing prints that would have to be explained. He let out a breath, hoping the door would be unlocked.
More than that, it was open a crack. As if the driver had moved the handle but hadn’t had the strength to push the door any further. Cormac opened it. The man’s hand flopped down. A sour smell came out—a sickroom reek, as when someone had been ill for a long time.
The driver, Ford Bellamy, was dead. Clearly dead, his eyes open and clouded, his cheeks sunken, his body slumped in a limp, familiar manner. Nothing looked quite like a dead body. His stylish, expensive clothes hung off him as if they were too large, and seemed to drape around a too-thin frame. The bones of his hands stood out, skeletal, the flesh shrunken away.
He looked like he had starved to death.
He can’t have; he’s only been missing a day. Half of a day. A body like this—he would have had to be starving for weeks. Months, even.
“Your spell,” he said. “The one that lets you talk to the dead—”
I fear there isn’t enough body left to hold a soul. Besides—do you think he understood what was happening to him?
Cormac guessed he didn’t, that the man had been overcome with—whatever it was that overcame him. Probably in the middle of driving back down the mountain. When he tried to open the door, to get out, to escape—he’d been too weak to do even that much. He must have been terrified, though the desiccated features didn’t reveal any dying expression.
A phone rested in a drink holder between the front seats. Cormac checked it—the battery was dead. Like something had sucked away all the energy in the car, not just Bellamy’s life. He put the phone back, just like he’d found it. He did some more searching—and found a keychain-sized Leatherman dropped on the floorboard at Bellamy’s feet. Knife blade open, ready to use and then abandoned, just like at Weber’s cabin.
On the dash, tucked right up against the glass, a piece of bone. A bit of rib, the length of his thumb.
The cabin—we must get there immediately.
Dark Divide: A Cormac and Amelia Story Page 7