“I’m not sure he’ll agree to that,” I said.
“Hell no, I’m not going to go see those two kooks.” Cantrell was standing in the doorway. “I heard what you were saying. Don’t you worry about me, I feel fine.”
“But we don’t have any idea what the sword has done to you,” Felicity told him. “It would be safer if—”
“I said I’m fine. No sword has done anything to me, so stop fussing over me. Now, I have to get back to work.” He pointed a finger at me. “And you remember what I told you, Harbinger. Keep your nose out of police business. This case has attracted a lot of media attention and the last thing I want is for the papers to say a preternatural investigator is making the Dearmont police look stupid. Do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Sheriff,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling everything I tell you goes in one ear and comes out the other?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Shooting me a disapproving glare, he turned on his heels and headed for the front door. “Remember what I told you. Keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong.” He left and slammed door behind him.
“He does realize we saved that boy’s life, right?” I asked Felicity.
She sighed. “You know what he’s like, Alec. He’s never liked you and he hates everything paranormal. What worries me is that we have no idea what Excalibur has done to him. What if he’s a danger to others?”
I thought about that. I couldn’t exactly follow the sheriff around town to make sure he wasn’t dangerous; he’d arrest me as soon as he saw me. Besides, there was no real reason to believe that his experience with Excalibur had done anything more than make him confused. Wasn’t the sword supposed to be good? King Arthur had used it to fight the forces of evil, after all.
Still, I’d feel better if someone kept an eye on Cantrell.
“I’ll go ahead and call his daughter,” I told Felicity. “She should be able to watch him without making him suspicious.”
“All right,” Felicity said. “And I’ll start researching Excalibur.” She paused and then looked at me sheepishly. “Could I see it?”
“The sword? Sure.” I led her down to the basement and opened the cupboard door. The sword hung on its peg, looking innocent.
“That’s it,” I said. “It doesn’t really look very special.”
“It’s beautiful,” Felicity said, taking a step closer. “The craftsmanship is remarkable. Can I touch it?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
She reached out and touched the hilt, running her fingers over the red and gold thread that covered the grip and the Celtic knot-work on the cross-guard. “It’s amazing,” she whispered.
“It isn’t talking to you or anything, is it?”
She smiled. “No.”
“Okay, just checking. Maybe its interaction with the sheriff was enough to make it go quiet for a while.”
Felicity took her hand away from the sword and looked around the basement. “Do you have the scabbard?”
I shook my head. “The Lady of the Lake just gave me the sword. No scabbard.”
“That’s a shame. The scabbard is said to protect the user from harm.” She frowned for a moment, thinking, and then said, “Of course you don’t have it. Morgan Le Fay stole the scabbard from Arthur. That’s why Arthur could be killed by Mordred at the Battle of Camlann.”
“Wow, you know your Arthurian legends,” I said.
“I used to love reading about the Knights of the Round Table when I was a little girl. My parents gave me a modern English version of Le Morte d’Arthur for Christmas when I was seven. I used to pretend I was a queen like Guinevere.”
She touched Excalibur again. “And this is King Arthur’s sword, the sword I read about when I was a child. Here in your basement.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” I said.
Felicity raised an eyebrow and looked at me closely. “It sounds like you’re not impressed.”
I shrugged. “Sure, I think it’s great that I have Excalibur in my basement but with the sword comes a lot of responsibility. The Lady of the Lake gave it to me so I could avenge her sister’s death. That means taking down the Midnight Cabal. What if I fail? What if—even with this powerful, legendary sword—I can’t destroy the cabal?”
Understanding flashed in Felicity’s eyes and her voice softened. “Because to destroy the cabal, you might have to kill your own mother?”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. When Gloria died, I swore to take down the cabal no matter who its members were. And I still want that; the Midnight Cabal is evil and has been the nemesis of the Society of Shadows since forever.”
I let my gaze fall on Excalibur’s glimmering blade. “But what if—when the time comes—I don’t have the strength to kill my mother? If I falter, the people fighting by my side could be hurt.”
“You’d never let anything happen to your friends. I’ve seen how much you care for them. You’ll do the right thing at the right time, I know you will.”
I wished I could share her confidence.
She put a hand softly on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “Please don’t worry about the future, Alec.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Anyway, I need to get over to the Martin place and see how Sammy is doing. Maybe he can explain how he had a sketchbook full of drawings of the creature that abducted him. And the damned thing is still on the loose so I’ll need to figure out a way to catch it.”
“Do you want me to come with you or shall I begin my research into Excalibur?”
I looked at the sword again. “Some research would be good. The sooner we know what we’re dealing with, the better.”
“All right, I’ll get started.” She walked across the training area to the basement steps.
“Felicity…” I said.
She turned to face me. “Yes?”
“It’s good to have you back. I missed you.”
A smile lit her face. “It’s good to be back. I missed you too.” She continued up the stairs and then stopped halfway up. “Alec?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget to ring Amy Cantrell regarding her father.”
“Doing it now,” I told her, fishing my phone out of my jeans.
6
Amy Cantrell didn’t sound too pleased to hear my voice. In fact, as soon as she answered the call, she sounded pissed. “What do you want, Harbinger?”
I wasn’t sure when my relationship with Amy had become derailed. Not too long ago—when I’d been investigating Deirdre Summers’ murder—Amy had given me a police file and had said she was glad I was on the case.
When that investigation had led to the discovery that Amy’s mother had been killed while helping a preternatural investigator spy on an evil cult, Amy had seemed grateful for the newfound information.
But now, something had driven a wedge between us and I had no idea what it was.
“Listen,” I said, “I think you should keep an eye on your dad for a while, see if he starts acting strangely or anything.”
There was a pause while she processed this and then she asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”
I closed the cupboard door and ascended the basement steps as I spoke. “He came over here earlier and he...became a little mesmerized by one of the enchanted items in the house. I just think it would be a good idea if you make sure it hasn’t affected him too adversely. I’d do it myself but, as you know, your dad and I don’t see eye to eye on most things.”
She sighed. “You can’t really blame him, can you? Since you came to this town, we’ve had to deal with zombies and God-knows-what that thing at the lake was. He lost more deputies this year than any other year of his career. And let’s not forget that he also lost his wife to this supernatural bullshit.”
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for all that but I knew she wouldn’t listen. She was hurting, and right now, she blamed me for her pain. “If you could just keep an eye—�
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“Go to hell.” She ended the call.
I put the phone in my pocket and grabbed my car keys. As I went outside and climbed into the Land Rover, I admitted to myself that I envied my friend Jim Walker, who had a close working relationship with the Ontario police.
But I couldn’t let my floundering relationship with Dearmont law enforcement get in the way of my job. I had to do what I thought was right and if finding lost children meant stepping on their toes, then so be it.
I drove across town to the Martin residence. When I got there, the news trucks were still parked on the street and the reporters were crowded around the gate, so I kept driving and parked on the dead ground behind the house.
A couple of seconds after I knocked on the back door, Mrs. Martin’s voice came from within the house, “Who is it?”
“It’s Alec,” I said.
She let me in, quickly closing the door behind me. “Mr. Harbinger, I don’t know how to thank you for finding my boy. I’m sorry I rushed away earlier, I just needed to get Sammy home. I laundered your shirt for you.” She pointed at the kitchen table where my flannel shirt sat, dry and neatly folded.
“Thanks,” I said.
“And I called the sheriff and told him that you’d found Sammy. And do you know what he said? He didn’t say he was glad that Sammy was safe. Instead, he said, ‘Well, Harbinger may have found the kid but did he catch the guy who took him?’ I told him it wasn’t a ‘guy’ it was a monster and that you believed me about that. And I said that you’d succeeded where they’d failed and they could all shove it. He wasn’t too happy about that.”
That probably explained why Cantrell came over to my house to bawl me out. He was pissed at being told to shove it by a woman he’d been trying to help. I couldn’t blame him.
“How is Sammy doing?” I asked her. “I was hoping I could speak with him.”
“Of course. He’s watching TV. Go right in, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you. Would you like coffee?”
“That’d be great,” I said. I went into the darkened living room where Sammy was sitting on the sofa, feet curled beneath him. He was wearing a bulky, dark blue hoodie and jeans and looked much better than the last time I’d seen him. A light gray blanket lay on the sofa next to him.
“Hey, Sammy. Mind if I sit down?”
He turned from the TV to look at me and a smile lit his face. “Hi, Alec. Sure, you can sit right here.”
He moved the blanket out of the way and I sat next to him.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Okay, I guess. At least I’m not so cold now.”
“That’s good. Do you remember much about what happened to you?”
“I remember everything. The shellycoat took me to its cave. And then it left me there.”
“Shellycoat?”
He nodded and frowned at me as if I should know what he was talking about. “Shellycoat.”
I ran the name through my mind. I’d heard it before, maybe in a lecture at the Academy of Shadows a long time ago. I hadn’t paid it much attention at the time, but now, hearing the unusual name brought back a memory of a summer afternoon lecture on Scottish folklore. The shellycoat was a mythical creature that was said to live in the rivers and lochs of Scotland. I was pretty sure the lecturer had said the creature was nothing more than a legend and didn’t actually exist.
Obviously, he’d been wrong.
“How do you know it’s called a shellycoat?” I asked Sammy.
“My dad knew all about them. He told me stories when I was a little kid.”
“Ryan was always talking about them,” Mrs. Martin said from the doorway. She was standing there holding two mugs of steaming coffee. “He used to tell Sammy about shellycoats and other creatures. I think his own father used to tell him the same stories when he was a kid, stories about the land of Faerie and the creatures that live there. There was a family legend that Ryan’s great-grandfather had seen a shellycoat in a river in Scotland.”
“Is that why you drew those pictures in your notebook?” I asked Sammy. “Because your dad told you stories about shellycoats?”
Sammy shook his head. “I didn’t draw those, my dad did.”
“He was always drawing pictures of it,” Mrs. Martin said. “He even made some paintings of it a few years ago. Usually it was just doodles, though. Sammy has treasured the notebook ever since his dad died, against my better judgment because it gives him nightmares sometimes.”
“So you knew what the creature was when it took Sammy?”
She gave me one of the mugs. “I didn’t recognize it at the time. I was panicking. Seeing a drawing in a notebook is one thing but watching a real monster carry your child away is something else.”
“But you realized later that it was the shellycoat?”
She shrugged. “I still wasn’t sure. The things Ryan drew were figments of his imagination. He had problems all his life with hallucinations, ever since he was a kid. That’s why he had to go to Butterfly Heights for help. And when he was home in between therapy, he seemed to get worse, not better.”
“Butterfly Heights?” I asked.
“It’s a psychiatric hospital up at Moosehead Lake,” she said. “The place where Ryan disappeared.”
“Is Moosehead Lake far from here?”
She shook her head. “Not really. It’s up in the Highlands, an hour and a half north from here.”
“Do you know the name of the doctor who treated Ryan?”
“Yes, it’s Dr. Campbell—Dr. Robert Campbell. You think that what happened to Ryan is connected to what happened to Sammy last night, don’t you?”
“It’s too coincidental to ignore. The same creature your husband thought was following him turned up in your yard. Ryan went missing while he was at Butterfly Heights, so I think it’s a good place to start my investigation.”
“Do you want the address? I have it around here somewhere.”
“I’ll find it,” I said to Mrs. Martin. “Thanks.”
“Thank you,” she said. “For helping us, I mean. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Sammy might still be out there, lost and alone.” Tears welled in her eyes.
I put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, we found him. But I suggest Sammy stays in the house for a while, at least until I catch that creature.”
She nodded. “Of course. I don’t think he wants to go outside anyway, not after what happened.”
“No way,” Sammy said. “It’s too scary. I’d only go out if Alec was there to protect me.”
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “Once this is sorted out, you’ll be able to go outside again.” I drank the coffee quickly, reflecting that Sammy and his mother would probably never go out into the night without feeling some degree of fear. They now knew that monsters—real monsters, the stuff of nightmares—existed. That was something that was difficult to forget, especially when the sun sank beyond the horizon and darkness crept over the world.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said, handing the empty mug to Mrs. Martin. “I’ll see what I can find out from the doctors at Butterfly Heights and get back to you soon. See you later, Sammy.”
He waved, then turned his attention to the TV.
I walked through the house to the kitchen, picked up my freshly-laundered shirt, and went out through the back door, walking hastily across the yard to the bushes because of the rain.
When I got to the Land Rover, I climbed in behind the wheel and used my phone to search for Butterfly Heights. I found an address in Northern Maine and a phone number but nothing else. I’d expected the place to at least have a website with photos and maybe the names of senior staff members but there was nothing like that at all, just the address and phone number listed in a directory of hospitals in the state.
I called Felicity. It took her a while to answer and I assumed she was probably deep in research, barely aware that her phone was ringing. I listened to the rain bouncing off the roof while I waited.
When she finally picked up, I said, “How would you like to go on a road trip?”
“A road trip? Where to?”
“Moosehead Lake, Northern Maine.” I told her about Robert Campbell and Butterfly Heights.
“Sounds intriguing,” she said. “Will we be staying overnight?”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Sure, why not? We don’t need to rush back to Dearmont.”
“I’ll make some arrangements online,” she said. “There’s bound to be a hotel nearby. And I won’t even have to pack my things, they’re still in my suitcase.”
“Great. Meet me at my place in half an hour.”
“All right, I’ll see you then.” She hung up.
As I started the engine and checked the rearview mirror, I realized there was a smile on my face. It would be good to go on a road trip with Felicity. I really had missed her.
I looked up at the sky, deciding that if the weather improved, I’d take that as a sign that this case would be solved quickly and easily.
But the rain continued to fall, tapping on the Land Rover’s roof like a thousand tiny claws.
7
It was still raining an hour and a half later as I drove the Land Rover north along State Route 6 toward Moosehead Lake. In sharp contrast to the gray sky, the landscape was composed of vivid oranges and yellows. The fall foliage gave the illusion that the trees were on fire.
“It’s beautiful,” Felicity said, watching the scenery roll by her window. “We don’t get anything like this in England. Nothing this spectacular.”
I nodded in agreement. The view through the windshield was spectacular but my eyes were fixed on the road ahead, my mind mulling over the case. “Did you find a hotel?”
“Yes,” she said. “There’s a lodge in Greenville called the Lake Shore Lodge. I booked us in there for tonight.”
“Great.”
“I wonder why the hospital is called Butterfly Heights,” Felicity said. “I looked it up online but couldn’t find anything. There isn’t really any information at all about it. It’s a mystery.”
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