I regarded Keith’s pleading look and jerked my head toward the lobby. “Go out front and keep watch for the Gentlemen’s Club. I assume we should be expecting them shortly?”
“In ten minutes or so.” Keith wiped his eyes and stood up. “I’ll yell when I see them.”
When he was gone, I dampened a paper towel and wiped the dried blood off Simon’s forehead. He hissed as I blotted around the swollen lump.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Simon asked. “Keith?”
“He’s not smart enough to come up with a double-agent plan,” I replied quietly. “Keith is a simple kid. All he wants is a good life and to take care of his mom. He thought teaming up with Boyce would help him get it.”
“What if he goes back to Boyce’s side?” he said. “We can’t trust him to help us.”
“Keith’s not a killer,” I said. “He folded like paper as soon as we told him Boyce’s real plan. I doubt he’ll switch sides again, not unless he wants to spend the rest of his life in jail.”
“Boyce evaded prison,” Simon muttered murderously.
“Trust me,” I said. “I saw the look on Keith’s face. He doesn’t want to be like Boyce, despite years of thinking otherwise.”
Simon tested the lump on his head and flinched. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“We stick to the original plan,” I told him. “When Boyce gets here, we’ll lure him into the safe room and let the ley lines do their thing.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Simon whispered.
I pressed a kiss to the uninjured side of his forehead. “It will work. It has to.”
Keith skidded into the kitchen. “Look alive! I just saw headlights coming up the driveway.”
“This is it,” I said. “Let’s move Simon to a safe place. Keith, follow my lead. Where’s Bubbles?”
I checked the lobby, but the younger girl was nowhere to be found. As I passed the front door, someone kicked in. I leaped out of the way.
Boyce strolled in, flanked by five members of the Gentlemen’s Club. He dragged Bubbles by the ear.
“Good evening, Maxine,” he said, throwing Bubbles to the floor; the girl cried and shook at her father’s feet. “You left the party so early. I thought I’d come thank you in person for attending and for ensuring another ten years of my success.”
19
I didn’t dare take my eyes off Boyce and his thugs as I helped Bubbles off the floor. She ran behind me and hugged my waist, sobbing against my back.
“How generous of you,” I said to Boyce, baring my teeth. “I’m afraid we don’t require your hospitality, though. You can leave now.”
He barked a laugh and stepped farther into the Lodge. Intent on protecting Bubbles, I hurriedly backed up, keeping the girl with me. The other five men came through the doorway as well. Unlike Boyce, they weren’t reveling in our fear. In fact, they looked rather unsure of their purpose.
“Nice try.” Boyce plucked off his gloves, finger by finger. “Maxine, do you know who built this beautiful Lodge?”
“Emory Driscoll,” I answered. “Your great-uncle.”
He tipped his hat. “I see you did your research. In that case, you should already know that I am the rightful heir to this land. After all, I am the only remaining member of the Driscoll family.”
“Because you killed Earl,” I snapped.
Boyce placed his hand over his heart and gasped. “Of course I didn’t! You think I would murder my uncle?”
“He was the only person standing between you and the energy on this land,” I said. “If you didn’t kill him, why did he die so suddenly?”
“He was old,” Boyce said dismissively. “And he had a heart condition. I don’t control other people’s bodies, Maxine. That’s just ridiculous.”
“Regardless, the Lodge and the land don’t belong to you,” I spat. “Simon and I are the rightful owners of this property now.”
Boyce’s smile wavered. “I put an enormous bid on this place. It should have been mine.”
“But it’s not,” I said. “You don’t belong here. You never will, not unless you can learn to respect the land and its power.”
He lifted a finger to wag in my face. “Do not lecture me about respect. I am the mayor of this town—”
“Unofficial mayor,” I said. “If the Silver Creek locals knew about what you’ve done here, you wouldn’t be any kind of authority figure in this town at all.”
“I built this town from the ground up,” he snarled.
“Emory and Earl built this town,” I said. “All you did was bribe people into thinking you were a decent person.”
“Enough!” Boyce said. “It doesn’t matter whose name is on the paperwork here. At the end of the night, you’ll be dead, and I’ll be richer.”
He lunged toward me. I dodged his outstretched hand and shoved Bubbles out of Boyce’s reach.
“Bubbles, run!” I told the girl as one of Boyce’s henchman grabbed me and painfully pulled my arms behind my back. “Find a place to hide!”
Another man tried to push past me to catch Bubbles, but I stomped on his foot as he passed. He yelped, cradling his foot as Bubbles fled.
“Spread out,” Boyce ordered his men. “Search the place. Find my daughter and bring her to me. Where is that buffoon Keith? He was supposed to lock down the husband. You—” He jabbed his finger at the man holding me. “Bring her with me.”
The man shoved me forward, following Boyce as he headed toward the safe room. The other four men split up to obey Boyce’s instructions.
“I’m Max,” I said cheerfully to the man who forced me down the hallway. “What’s your name?”
“Harry,” he grunted.
“Nice to meet you, Harry. What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a bank manager.”
“Ah, no doubt Boyce’s bank manager?”
Harry nodded, thoroughly confused as to why I was talking to him so casually.
“How many crimes have you committed?” I asked. “Specifically, crimes that worked to Boyce’s advantage?”
Harry wasn’t so keen to answer that question. I heard his teeth clench together.
“I’m just curious,” I continued. “Because it seems like Boyce is really the only one benefitting from this absurd ritual. I mean, is your house as big as his?”
“Shut up,” Boyce hissed. He reached the last room in the hallway and kicked open the door. “Don’t listen to her, Harry. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about?”
“Don’t I?” I said. “All I’m saying is I doubt you live in a mansion like Boyce’s. Am I right, Harry?”
Boyce punched me in the stomach. I doubled over, coughing and gagging. It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten any of the lush hors d’oeuvres at Boyce’s party because he would have seen them again on his expensive shoes.
“Get her inside, Harry.”
For the shortest second, Harry hesitated.
“Inside, Harry,” Boyce hissed.
Harry shoved me over the threshold and into the small storage room. As we faced the safe door, energy thrummed in my body. It seemed to live just below the surface of my skin. I half-expected to start glowing golden rays of sunlight, as the power made me feel warm and invincible.
Boyce drew a piece of paper from his pocket. When he unfolded it, I caught sight of the complicated set of numbers that were the key to opening the safe. He wouldn’t need Walter’s secret back way in to unlock the door. Earl’s old combination would do the trick just fine.
Boyce spun the dial, reading the numbers off the paper to himself as he did so. When he plugged in the last digit, the lock clicked out of place. Boyce grinned and tucked the paper away.
“It’s lovely not having to break in,” he said and yanked open the door.
A gust of musty-smelling air wafted out of the room. With it came another wave of power, though it seemed I was the only one who could feel it. Boyce and Harry were unaffected as my skin and scalp tingled.
He pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the tall candles stationed around the room. As the glittering fire illuminated the damp walls, Boyce took a deep breath.
“Smells like someone pissed in here,” he observed.
“Classy,” I commented.
He beckoned me forward. “Ladies first.”
“I’m a feminist,” I said. “I believe in equal rights. You can head in first.”
He snapped his fingers, and Harry shoved me into the dark room. I screamed out loud as the energy in my body tripled, infusing itself in every one of my nerves. It felt like someone had lit me on fire.
Apparently, Harry thought so, too. He hissed and dropped me as if my skin had burned him. I fell to my hands and knees as energy coursed through me, shaking as I fought to breathe through the weird fog that clouded my mind.
“Subdue her, Harry!” Boyce ordered.
“Sorry, Boyce. She’s red-hot. Look.”
Harry knelt beside me and pointed to my arms. The fine hairs stood on end as if responding to a call to arms. Boyce’s lip curled.
“Goddammit,” he said. “She’s charged.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I gasped. The pain had started to fade, leaving me with a strangely satisfying feeling of fullness.
Boyce rolled his eyes and didn’t bother to answer. “Don’t let her leave this room, Harry. I’ll be back with the things I need for the ritual.”
Boyce left. The heavy safe door thudded behind him, and my heart dropped as I heard the dial spin.
“What’s the point of ordering you to keep me here if he was going to lock us both in any way?” I muttered.
Harry’s breathing quickened. “What did you say?”
I jerked my chin toward the safe door. “Didn’t you hear the lock engage?”
“No.” Harry pushed himself to his feet and attempted to open the safe door. It didn’t give. “No! Are you kidding me, Boyce?”
“Guess he doesn’t trust you that much, eh?” I gazed around at the candles. “No ventilation in here. Hopefully, he comes back.”
Harry banged on the safe, no doubt injuring his hand against the thick metal. “Boyce! Hey, Boyce! You locked us in here.”
“He did it on purpose.” I leaned against the wall and let the energy flow through every vein. If I breathed deeply, I felt able to control the power that flowed through me. “Face it, Harry. Boyce doesn’t care if you’re claustrophobic. He’s only doing this to benefit himself.”
Harry paced from one end to the other, running his fingers through what little hair he had left. “I didn’t want to be a part of this. Boyce approached me with a business proposition years ago. I had no idea we were going to be doing this weird voodoo shit.”
“It’s not voodoo,” I assured him. “But you’re on the right track.”
“The other guys don’t like it, either,” Harry continued. “Boyce is so cryptic. He never tells you exactly what he’s planning. Like tonight? None of expected to come here and attack you. Do I look like a thug?”
In his designer suit that was a bit too tight around his beer belly, he most certainly did not. None of Boyce’s men looked as though they belonged in a secret cult.
“Since your self-esteem appears to be low today, I’m going to say no,” I told him.
He stopped pacing to stare at me. “How can you be so calm? Do you know what Boyce is planning to do with you?”
“He wants to kill me,” I answered nonchalantly. “He thinks I’m the key to another decade of success in Silver Creek.”
“It’s nuts,” Harry said. “He tried to explain all this earth energy crap to us. I mean, is it even real?”
“Like being charged?”
“Exactly!”
I tilted my head to get a better look at Harry from my low seat on the ground. “What exactly did Boyce mean by that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Harry threw his hands into the air and resumed pacing. “I don’t know. He said you’d be more dangerous if you were ‘charged.’” He used his fingers to put air quotes around the word. “He said if you learned that you were a conductor of the energy here, it would allow you to take control of the ritual. He’s terrified of that.”
I clamped my lip between my teeth, determined to keep my expression unreadable. “Harry, look at me.”
He caught my eye.
“Breathe,” I instructed.
Harry closed his eyes and took one calming breath. “It smells like smoke in here,” he muttered.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Boyce will be back before either one of us dies of oxygen deprivation. He needs me for this stupid ritual. Here’s the thing. Do you want to sink to his level? Do you want to become a killer, without even reaping the same benefits as Boyce? As it is, you only get his scraps.”
Harry’s throat bobbed as he swallowed his nerves. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Max. My wife lost her job. Our twin boys are starting college next year, and we can’t afford to send them to the schools they want to go to. I had to take a second mortgage out on our house. We’re hemorrhaging money.”
“I understand,” I said. “This lodge and this land are all Simon and I have. We put our entire savings into it. If we fail to get this business off the ground, we’ll be homeless.”
Harry blinked tears out of his eyes. “What are we supposed to do?”
“You could complete the ritual,” I said. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You could kill my husband and me. You could go along with Boyce’s scheme and hope something good comes out of whatever crazy magic he’s talking about.”
Harry buried his head in his hands.
“Or,” I continued, “you could help me turn this thing around. Boyce isn’t the god of Silver Creek. The town and your family can thrive without him. If we banish Boyce from the land, we can share the earth’s energy.”
“It’s real?” he asked, peeking out from behind his fingers. “This so-called energy?”
“That’s what you felt when you dropped me earlier,” I said. “That energy isn’t in the land anymore. It’s in me. Boyce won’t be able to control it unless he kills me first, and I sure as hell am not planning to die tonight.”
“Will you help me?” he asked. “When all of this is over, if there’s a way to fix things, will you help me support my family?”
“I’ll do my best to make sure your boys get to go to whatever college they want,” I assured him, “while you and your wife can keep your house.”
Harry whirled around as the safe dial spun again, signaling Boyce’s return. My heart sank as Harry waited impatiently for the door to open. Maybe I hadn’t gotten through to him.
The safe opened, and light spilled in. Boyce’s ugly leather loafer lifted itself over the lip.
“Harry, take this for me—”
Before Boyce could complete his order, Harry swung. His meaty fist connected with Boyce’s fleshy face. Boyce yelled and clutched his nose. Blood flowed freely from his nostrils.
“Run!” Harry shouted at me.
I scrambled to my feet and shoved past Boyce to get out of the safe. He made a blind grab for me, catching my arm, but I thrust my palm into his already-injured nose. He screamed in agony and let go.
“You bitch!” he roared.
I made a run for it, crashing into the wall in the hallway as my heels slid across the new wood floors. Behind me, Harry and Boyce threw punches at each other. Clearly, neither one of them had trained in boxing before. The fight quickly grew wild and dangerous.
I skidded to a stop as another one of Boyce’s henchmen appeared at the end of the corridor. He was much larger than Harry. I had two options: charge him or turn around and make a break for the emergency exit at the back of the Lodge.
I charged. It was the only way to find out where Simon, Keith, and Bubbles had gone. The man’s eyes widened as I thundered toward him like he wasn’t expecting me
to attack. Too late, I realized he’d taken the shotgun from the kitchen table and reloaded it.
Boom!
I hit the deck. The bullets slammed against the wall, ruining the fresh coat of paint.
“You asshole!” I yelled. “We just renovated!”
I got to my feet as the man cocked the gun to try again. As he closed one eye and looked over the muzzle, I felt a flash of energy to my right.
Lily appeared out of nowhere. She grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted it upward, bending the metal as easily as she would a Twizzler. The man fired. The bullets got stuck in the ruined barrel, and the recoil forced the butt of the gun into the man’s chest.
Already fazed, the man stumbled backward. Earl appeared behind him and made a gesture like clapping his hands over the man’s ears. His hands sunk through the man’s head. With a stunned look, the man fell backward and collapsed onto the floor, totally unconscious.
“Is he dead?” I gasped.
“Just unaware,” Earl said. He stared at his hands. “I had no idea I could do that.”
A roar echoed through the lobby, and another member of the Gentlemen’s Club vaulted the couch to get to me. He wrapped his hands around my throat and yanked me across his body. I bit his hand, but he held on fast.
Christine Higgins solidified before me.
“Not today, dick!”
She swung at the man’s head as if to slap him across the face. Like Earl’s victim, the man went limp as soon as the ghost touched him. I rolled off of him, gasping for air.
Panting, Christine planted her hands on her hips. “That felt good.”
“Thank you,” I told the ghost trio. “Have you seen the others?”
“Keith locked himself and Simon in the kitchen pantry,” Lily reported. “He has the door barred. No one’s found them yet. They’re safe for now.”
“What about Bubbles?”
“We haven’t seen her,” Earl said. “Neither have Boyce’s men. She must have found somewhere to bunker down, too.”
“You can’t—I don’t know—sense her or something?”
Lily shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“You have to go back,” Earl added. “You have to get Boyce in that room. It’s the only way you’ll be able to banish him.”
The Haunting of Silver Creek Lodge Page 22
