Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1)

by Jen Rasmussen

  “No, no,” said Wick. “Got two grandkids just about their age, is all. Sorry to have troubled you.”

  The family moved on without saying anything more, and Cillian kept walking up the hall toward us, his companions beside him.

  Cooper stepped in front of me as they approached, but he needn’t have bothered. The three of them kept their apparent vow of silence. They didn’t so much as look at us. They rounded the corner and started down another hallway, repeating their routine with the doors.

  I followed behind them, placing my own palm against each door Marjory or Asher touched.

  All are safe at the Mount Phearson Hotel.

  In the meanwhile, Cooper texted the others, making sure they understood how important it was that they not get aggressive, no matter how they were provoked. I’d expected Wick and Marjory to come after us. But they were going after guests. If the protection spell fell apart, a lot of people could get hurt.

  That won’t happen. I’ve made sure of it, and I’ll keep right on making sure. All are safe at the Mount Phearson Hotel.

  When they’d finished their tour of the second floor, Cillian, Marjory, and Asher went down to the lobby and resumed their seats in front of the fire, calm as you please. They still hadn’t spoken a word, apart from Wick’s interaction with the family. Not even to each other.

  I saw no sign of Lance, but Agatha was behind the desk. “There was nothing going on,” she said defensively when I approached her. “And Lance had a conference call he needed to take. He’s upstairs in our office.”

  “That’s fine, but I need you to keep an eye on them,” I said, jerking my chin toward the rocking chairs. “Text me if they so much as change seats.”

  Agatha nodded, and Cooper and I went to see what was going on with the others. We found Wendy outside Colonel Phearson’s Pub, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. The restaurant was almost ready to open, and already had a menu hanging outside its locked doors.

  Gathered around the menu were Elise Minnow, a plump, sweet-looking woman with kitten stickers all over her minivan, and two other women who must have joined the Garden Club after my time. One of them was a stranger to me; the other was Jessica Glass. As best I could tell, they were chatting about the salads as though they were about to go in and grab a table.

  They didn’t turn in our direction, or acknowledge our presence at all. The hallway was otherwise deserted.

  “I tried to tell them it’s not open,” Wendy said in a bored voice that was probably intended to mask the real anger I saw in her face.

  “Have they said anything to you?” Cooper asked.

  “Not a word,” said Wendy. “Although we have exchanged a few hand gestures.”

  “They seem to be trying to get a rise out of us,” I said.

  “Well, it’s working.” Wendy lowered her voice. “I can feel their ill will, wrapping itself around the place. I’m doing my best to counteract it, but it’s pissing me off, which is not helping me send out positive energy.” She shrugged, a little sheepish. “I shouldn’t let them get to me, but I have a history with some of these bitches.”

  “I know just how you feel,” said Cooper.

  “In this case, so do I,” I said, looking at Jessica. “But we can’t afford to let them get to us.” I looked back at Wendy. “I don’t know how much Cooper told you over text, but we have a theory that Marjory understands the magic I’ve woven here, and they’re trying to provoke us into breaking the protection spell.”

  “Like a shield they can bring down.” Wendy nodded as though that made perfect sense, which made me feel a little smarter. But then she said, “Well, what’s the harm in letting them? I’m up for a fight.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Not here, not today. Not with—”

  Cillian Wick and a sapwood seed in the same building.

  “Not with so many guests around,” I went on. “They tried to curse a family in the hall upstairs. I stopped them, but…” I gestured with my hand, indicating that it might have been iffy.

  Wendy sighed. “Well, your call.”

  “For now,” Cooper said, echoing his words from the second floor.

  “How long have they been standing there?” I asked Wendy.

  “Maybe ten minutes. Before that it was mostly just a bunch of walking back and forth.”

  “Did they try to hurt anyone?”

  “No, but we haven’t encountered many people, in this part of the building.”

  “Do you mind hanging out a little longer?” I asked. “I want to check on Lydia and Phineas.”

  Wendy said she was fine, so Cooper came with me. We stopped back at the desk to check in with Agatha.

  “They’ve talked to each other, but not to anyone else, and they haven’t moved.” Agatha leaned in, her expression that of someone about to confess something shameful. “Probably you just put me in mind of all this supernatural stuff, but I will say… the guests don’t seem to like them. Those seats in front of the fireplace would normally be full, on a gray, rainy day like this. But everyone’s giving them a wide berth.”

  She gestured at a family walking through the lobby, and I saw that it was the same people from upstairs, with the two boys. They walked around the far edge of the room, avoiding the fireplace, before leaving through the front doors.

  “See how much distance they put between themselves and those rocking chairs?” said Agatha. “Like animals who just sense something is off.”

  “Something’s off, all right,” I said. “Although in that family’s case, they have a reason. That’s ill will they’re sensing, and you’d be wise to steer clear of it yourself.”

  Agatha shrugged at that. “Not so fond of Marjory Smith as to volunteer for a conversation with her, anyway.”

  “Have you seen Wendy’s friends? Lydia and Phineas?”

  “Nope.”

  We tried the back hallways, and then the second and third floors. We passed Falcon Wick on a back staircase, coming down as we were going up.

  He and Cooper both stopped dead when they saw each other. They wore identical expressions that suggested they wanted nothing more than to tear each other’s throats out.

  I tensed, ready to intervene if I had to.

  Falcon forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. Then, like all the rest of them, he walked on without a word.

  Cooper was practically snarling as he watched him go. “We should follow him.”

  “You go. I’ll keep looking for Lydia and Phineas.”

  “I don’t like the idea of splitting up.”

  “Wendy’s alone, and you were fine with that,” I pointed out. “We have our phones if we need them. Go. But Cooper—”

  I waited for him to turn back toward me. “Only to keep an eye on him,” I warned. “Do not engage.”

  His look was not reassuring, but I let him go.

  I found Lydia and Phineas on the third floor, coming out of a supply closet.

  Phineas raised his hands when he saw me, like a criminal who’d been caught in the act. “I swear, we were not, you know, taking a break in there.”

  But I shook my head. “I know the attic stairs are through there. The question is, how did you guys know it? You seem to know the hotel pretty well.”

  Phineas smiled his lopsided smile. “That’s a long story.”

  “Best told over drinks,” added Lydia.

  I considered the strange couple before me. How was it that they had these ties to the Mount Phearson—and to Max Underwood—yet I’d never seen them before?

  A lot seems to have happened, while I was away. How much did you two have to do with that?

  “I get the feeling you have a lot of those,” I said. “Stories, I mean, not drinks.”

  “I have plenty of both,” said Lydia with a laugh.

  “What were you guys doing up there?” I asked.

  “She was burning sage,” said Phineas. “Lucky we didn’t set off the smoke alarms.”

  “Two of those Garden Club pe
ople were in this hallway,” Lydia said. “I couldn’t tell whether they’d been up in the attic or not, so I figured I’d just try to disinfect the whole area.” She made an encompassing gesture with her left hand as she said the whole area, and I noticed for the first time that half her ring finger was missing. She wore her wedding ring on her middle finger instead.

  Yeah, I’ll just bet you have a lot of stories.

  Out loud I said, “Good thinking, thank you.”

  We went back to the lobby to find Marjory and Asher, both Wicks, and the whole Garden Club—maybe eight or nine of them—gathered near the front entrance. Wendy and Cooper stood by the desk with Agatha and Lance, watching them.

  Cillian saw us and said something to Marjory. Then, as if they were a single organism, they all turned toward me, all their eyes—and their ill will—boring into me at once. It was all I could do not to break my stride.

  Cooper immediately started toward me, his jaw hard, violence in his eyes. I shook my head and smiled at the same time, to let him know I was okay. It was unsettling, certainly, having all their dark focus on me. But I knew they couldn’t hurt me.

  All are safe at the Mount Phearson Hotel.

  Lydia touched my shoulder, and Phineas moved closer to me. We kept walking, first Cooper and then Wendy joining us, until we faced off against our enemies like we were in an old Western movie. But I knew better by that point than to expect your standard showdown.

  Cillian gave me an awkward bow—his joints seemed stiff—while Marjory spoke the only words we would get from any of them that day.

  “Verity. Thank you for your hospitality.”

  They turned as one, and left the building.

  I stared after them for maybe ten seconds before I realized I was holding my breath.

  I let it out and smiled at Cooper. “Nice going.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  “Exactly. And it looks like our restraint has just won us this round. They’re gone, your cargo is safe, and nobody got hurt. Point goes to us.”

  All are safe at the Mount Phearson Hotel.

  I had no idea how much I would come to regret those words.

  As luck would have it, Lance was supposed to be testing the menu (and some of the staff) at Colonel Phearson’s that afternoon. So by way of celebrating our victory, he set us all up—Cooper and I, Wendy and the Murdochs, Agatha, and Lance himself—at a big semi-circular booth in the otherwise empty restaurant, and had plates of everything sent out for us to share.

  The pub was softly, soothingly lit, decorated in dark woods and chocolate-brown leather, and I was surrounded by people who’d proven themselves friends. I found myself relaxing for the first time in I didn’t know how long. Probably since the day I’d met, and then stabbed, Kestrel Wick in another restaurant, in another mountain town.

  “I’m especially interested in Cooper’s opinions, of course,” Lance said as he sat down to join us. But he paused in the middle of unfolding his napkin and gave Cooper a suspicious look. “You are really a chef, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Cooper assured him. “And I can tell you already that this pork belly is first rate.”

  “But you’re not only a chef,” said Lance. “And you didn’t really come to Bristol to talk about food. I gather this so-called attack today had something to do with you.”

  “Not just him,” I said. “Me as well. Marjory and her new friends would like… control over… the hotel.”

  “Couple of pregnant pauses there,” Wendy said as she passed me a plate of homemade potato chips covered in pimento cheese, bacon, and green onions. “What are you leaving out?”

  Cooper and I exchanged a look, and I gave him a little shrug.

  “It’s not just the hotel they want,” he said.

  “No, it’s all of Bristol, really,” I said truthfully. “But they’ll start with the hotel. And with Cooper and me.”

  “Let’s just say we’re their biggest obstacle,” Cooper added, and that was true, too. Wick wouldn’t be able to do a thing without the seeds.

  “I take it that means they’ll be back,” said Lance. “Will you be ready if this happens again?”

  “Lance, do I detect some belief in things-we-cannot-see going on over there?” I asked, not so much for the fun of teasing him as to derail the conversation, which was skirting a little too close to Cooper’s true mission. “I thought you didn’t even think this attack was real.”

  Lance gave me a disgusted look, which made Agatha laugh and almost choke on her sweet tea.

  “The point isn’t whether I believe it,” Lance said. “It’s that all of you apparently do. Including our visitors.”

  Agatha shuddered. “Including your wife, after what I felt in that lobby. Right when they were leaving? Come on, Lance, even you had to feel that.”

  “Feel what?” Lance asked, although I suspected he was just being stubborn.

  “Something wrong,” Agatha said. “Something weird. But then, I always said this town was weird.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Lydia, before I could say something similar. I felt a twinge of—what? Territoriality? Defensiveness, even?

  “And damn, these chips are good,” Lydia went on. “I would drive all the way out here from Charlotte just to eat these chips, then turn around and go home.”

  “You would not,” said Wendy. “You’d stop by The Witch’s Brew for shortbread first.”

  “So how do you know the half of it?” I asked Lydia. “You guys aren’t from here.”

  Lydia glanced at her husband and said, “That’s kind of a long story.”

  “Yes, you’ve mentioned that,” I said.

  But I thought it might actually be pretty simple, for all that. The absence of the Bristol devil. My conversation with Wendy in her office. Lydia’s references to things that had happened a couple of years ago, including a run-in with the Garden Club.

  “A long story that involves my father,” I went on. “Which of you killed him?”

  Agatha cleared her throat. Everyone else was silent. Beside me, Cooper squeezed my knee. I wasn’t sure whether he did it to show support, or because he thought it wasn’t a very celebratory topic for our victory lunch.

  But for all I knew, it was. My father was a devil, after all. Killing him was probably a victory in its own right. I wasn’t angry at the Murdochs. At least, I didn’t think I was.

  But I wanted to know.

  After a few seconds, Phineas said, “I killed him.”

  Lance groaned. “Now we’re confessing to murders?”

  “Murders of demons, or whatever that thing supposedly was,” Agatha added. She stood up. “Which I’d say is a little out of our jurisdiction. I think we’ve had enough initiation into the world of the supernatural for one day.”

  Lance stood with her. “I agree. I need to meet with the staff here anyway. Verity, why don’t you gather up everyone’s feedback on all these dishes when you’ve finished, and we’ll talk later.”

  I nodded at both of them, and waited until they’d gone out of earshot. Wendy and Cooper made no move to leave, but I didn’t mind if they stayed. Wendy obviously knew more of the story than I did already.

  “So,” I said. “Should I ask for more chips for this long story?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to some cake or something,” said Lydia, and Phineas gave her a look.

  “Actually, I’m going to be doing their desserts for them,” Wendy said. “So that particular deflection will have to wait.”

  “Why did you kill him?” I asked Phineas.

  “It was my job, for one thing,” he said. “I’d been trying to catch him for a long time. And there was no bringing him in alive.”

  “What are you, a cop?” Cooper asked.

  “Something like that,” said Phineas. “In a way.”

  “Wendy said he was a serial killer,” I said.

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” agreed Phineas. “There are a lot of things about your father you m
ight not know. Or like.”

  “I don’t even know his name,” I said. “I’ve only ever heard him referred to as the devil.”

  “His name was Amias,” Phineas said. “And yes, he killed a lot of people. He stole some of their souls.”

  “He did what?”

  “He was trying to create his own version of Hell, basically, to rule over,” said Lydia.

  “So he really was a devil,” I said. “Literally.”

  “I wish I could tell you otherwise,” Phineas said.

  I pretended to take a drink of sweet tea, so I could let my father’s Satanic aspirations sink in. But there was really no sinking in for a thing like that. At least not right away.

  I cleared my throat. “And Bristol. He really was using the town to hide?”

  “Until Lydia figured out how to break the sanctuary here, yeah,” said Phineas. “That was maybe six months or so before… he died.”

  “Which was when?” I asked.

  “It’ll be two years at Christmastime,” said Lydia.

  I’ve been walking around an orphan for coming up on two years.

  Cooper squeezed my knee again, and this time I was sure it was a gesture of support. I had a fleeting memory of our kiss, and with it came all the uncertainty about where we stood. But once again, it was a bad time to think about romance.

  “There’s, uh, something else.” Phineas scratched at his ear, blushing suddenly, and I wondered what could possibly make him more uncomfortable than the things he’d already told me.

  “Personally, I think you should have led with this,” Lydia said to him, then smiled at me. “This part isn’t bad. Notice anything strange about Phineas? I mean physically, not just that he’s a weirdo.”

  “Around the eyes, maybe?” Wendy added.

  I leaned forward and studied Phineas. His eyes were a strange color. Not orange like mine, but golden.

  “You’re one of them,” I said, then glanced at Cooper. “Phantasm was the word you used.”

  Cooper nodded, and so did Phineas. So did Lydia and Wendy, for that matter. I looked around at them all, suddenly resentful of these people who knew more about me than I did. “I don’t even know what a phantasm is.”