by Laura Bickle
She plodded to the main street in Temperance. Across the street from Bear’s Gas ’n Go, the only convenience store in town, sat the Compostela.
Petra shoved the door open and slipped inside, feeling like an eavesdropping shadow. Voices swirled and beer bottles clinked around her. Card games went on around tables scattered across the floor. Cue balls cracked in the back. Petra headed toward the bar.
The bar was hewn of a single, massive tree, set in what was once the apse. The tree had been varnished and lacquered dozens of times, and its glasslike surface reflected tin star lights dangling above. Petra slipped into an empty stool at the far end of the bar, her eyes roving over the patrons. Maybe she could find someone who knew someone. But the best place to start was with the bartender.
He was pouring rum from a cut-glass bottle, silent as a ghost. Even the liquid he poured made no sound. Petra had spoken with him a handful of times, and she realized that she didn’t know his name. He seemed the enigmatic sort: a man dressed in black, a good twenty years older than Petra, though his exact age was hard to place. Long blond hair was caught in a ponytail behind his head. It was difficult, in this light, to pick out how much of it was grey.
He finished pouring and drifted down the bar toward Petra. He gazed at her with pale eyes. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“No?”
“You look like death. No offense. But Death comes by here often, and you have that way about you.” He poured her a Coke and put a cherry in it, without asking, as if she was a small child who was not allowed to have alcohol.
She chuckled. It was somewhat refreshing to discuss death with someone who had no emotional investment, with someone whose emotional reactions she didn’t have to manage. “Well, I may be short-timing it, but there are a few things I want to do before I go.”
“Oh? Last time I heard that from a fellow, he robbed two banks before he got caught. Nobody ever found the money, so I guess he took it to the grave with him.”
Petra smiled and shook her head. “Bank robbery isn’t on my bucket list. But finding my errant husband is. Wondered if you’d heard anything about him.”
“Ah. I heard you and Gabriel got hitched.” His mouth turned up. “That surprised me. Gabriel didn’t seem like the marrying kind. Or any other kind, really.”
“There’s not much you don’t hear.”
The bartender shrugged. “People talk in bars. I hear what the walls hear.”
Petra stirred the ice in her drink with the straw. Talking to the bartender was like working a riddle; one had to play the game. “Did the walls hear anything about where he might have vanished to?”
The bartender looked down at a glass he cleaned, peered at the bottom of it, as if it were some kind of oracle. “A man like Gabriel plays the long game. Seemed to be committed. I doubt he would have left you if he had anything to say about it.”
“That’s what I kind of figured. I have the feeling that someone’s trying to make it look like he walked away.”
“Like he rode off into the sunset?” The bartender flicked his gaze up to the tiny television bolted in a corner of the bar. The local news was playing above, a news reporter sitting before a green-screen image of a man in his sixties. “. . . Norman Ashland, age sixty-eight, was last seen in the vicinity of Witch Creek in Yellowstone National Park. He suffers from early-stage Alzheimer’s. If you have seen this man, please contact the Yellowstone National Park Police . . .”
Petra turned her gaze away. Not her problem, though she felt a flash of empathy for the wife he likely left behind, looking for him. “Right. And once I’m gone . . . who will look for him?” Petra swallowed a mouthful of sugary liquid around the lump in her throat. There sure was no chance of getting Gabriel’s picture on the news. She was the only person who cared about him enough to miss him.
The bartender glanced back at Petra. “A man like Gabriel can look after himself, and I’d advise you to let him get out of his own jams. You should go home and prepare yourself for a good death.”
“He is not who he once was. And I’m not leaving until I find him.” She lifted her chin stubbornly. She reached into her pocket and put the pearl on the bar top with a click. It rolled toward the bartender.
He caught it and stared at it. “Where’d you find this?”
“In his truck. I think whoever took him dropped it.”
The bartender put it between his hands on the bar top, keeping it from rolling by boxing it in with his thumbs. “You don’t want to mess with that. Pearls are bad luck.”
“Why? What does it mean?” she demanded.
He rolled the pearl back across the bar to her. “It’s a sign. It’s a sign that your husband is well and truly lost.”
Lev hated to say it to her. He really did.
Petra Dee wasn’t long for this world. He could see it in her aura, the way it had thinned and paled. In a matter of a few weeks, she’d slip away from her body entirely, leaving behind that worn-out shell that burned hot with fever and black marrow.
He hated the idea of not being able to give her any hope. The dead should pass on, happily, if they could. But she didn’t have an easy death in front of her, and chasing after the ghost that was Gabriel Manget would do neither one of them any favors.
“What do you know?” she growled back at him.
“Just a gut feeling,” he said. He usually spoke the truth. Usually. That was an understatement he gave her.
“Does Sheriff Owen have anything to do with it?” She pushed again.
“Leave it be. For the good of everyone.”
And he moved away, back down the bar, feeling her glare drilling a hole in his back. He didn’t turn around until he felt her gaze fall and move away. When he glanced to the door, she was walking through it. It occurred to Lev that he was unlikely to see her again alive.
He sighed. He might see her again, dead. Maybe then she would understand. But she’d be stuck here, then, holding on to a man who wasn’t.
But such was the way of things. People moved into life, they moved out of it. Sometimes they lingered on, and sometimes they left. If they were lucky. Getting too involved in other people’s problems was never a good idea. He liked his life problem-free. Picking up problems from others were unnecessary attachments, things that caused trouble.
“You gonna go to her funeral?” Wilma perched on a bar stool and watched the woman go.
Lev shook his head, refusing to talk to ghosts in the presence of paying patrons. People depended on a bartender to make decent drinks and exact change. And they tended to like them sane.
“Why not?” Father Caleb sat beside her, resting his face in his palm, his elbow on the bar.
“I dunno. She doesn’t seem like the type of gal who’d go for a full-in funeral,” Wilma said, squinting at the door.
“Everyone deserves a funeral. A chance to say goodbye.”
“Your funeral was quite nice. But you never really did say goodbye, you good-for-nothing chalice-licker.” Wilma shot Caleb a dirty look. She’d had the place to herself for only a decade before he moved in.
“I’m needed here,” he said quite haughtily.
“And exactly how many souls have you saved among these dumb shit barflies since your expiration date on the earthly plane? I mean, it’s not like you’re a paragon of effectiveness. They can’t even hear you.”
“Wilma! Don’t swear.” Caleb’s mouth puckered into an expression that bore a remarkable resemblance to a cat butt.
“Yeah. Thought so.” She blew cigarette smoke in his face, in a perfect ring.
She turned to Lev. “You gonna go to her funeral?”
He didn’t answer, bending down to kick one of the kegs beneath the bar. Almost time to refill . . .
“Uh. Lev?”
Lev’s head snapped up. It had been at least a decade since anyone living had uttered his name.
A young man in his late teens or early twenties climbed up onto a bar stool. He was a lanky guy, with short-shorn b
lond hair, an aquiline nose, and eyes the color of winter. He was wearing a navy-blue windbreaker.
Lev’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s asking?”
“My name is Archer. I, uh . . .” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled photograph. “Wow. This is awkward. I think you knew my mother. Bridget Harker?”
He pushed the photo across the bar. Lev didn’t take it. He squinted at it. There was a dark-haired woman in the photo, wearing a flower-print dress and holding a floppy straw hat on her head.
“She came through here, about twenty years ago. She said she knew you.”
Lev touched the corner of the photo, dredged his memory. “Bridget. I remember.” He remembered that she had a smile like summer. She had stayed for a week at the end of August one year, like a shimmering heat. She arrived, and then she was gone, blew out of town with a kiss and a laugh.
A low wolf whistle emanated from Wilma. “Bridget was a nice piece of ass.”
Lev ignored her, but the young man stared at her. “Bridget’s my mom.”
“Sorry, kid.”
Lev’s head snapped up. “Who are you talking to?”
The young man hooked a thumb at a bar stool that was now empty. “I, uh, thought there was a woman sitting there.” He looked confused and shook his head as if to clear it. “Uh. Anyway. There’s not a good way to say this, so . . . I think you might be my dad.”
Lev rocked back on his heels. “That’s not possible,” he said.
The young man winced and glanced around at the busy bar. “I, look, I know that this is outta left field.”
Lev was speechless.
The young man nodded to himself. “Yeah. Awkward. My number’s on the back of that picture. I’ll, uh, come back tomorrow, when you’re not busy.”
Without waiting for a response, the young man slid off the bar stool and headed out the door.
Father Caleb levitated behind the bar, his glasses round moons in the dim light. “Nice-seeming kid. Congrats.”
Lev watched Archer leave. There was an unmistakable resemblance, sure. And he and Bridget had been lovers. In ordinary terms, it was possible. A man could definitely have children. A family.
But Lev had never been a man—not a human one, anyway—and this was not possible.
Chapter 7
Below
That bartender knew more than he was saying.
Petra lay awake, staring at the ceiling, contemplating how to wring it from him.
Sig snuggled in her armpit on the futon, snoring, with a paw across her belly. The window above the futon was cracked open, letting in a slowly warming spring breeze. It was perfectly silent here, so much more so than the hospital. She should have been able to sleep; she’d even taken one of Maria’s sleeping drafts.
But she couldn’t. She watched the dim light of night move the stripes from the blinds across the wall and up the ceiling. There was no way that she could think of that would get the information from the bartender without threatening him. Not that she’d ruled that out; she’d just have to figure out how to get the jump on him. She’d never seen him anyplace except the bar, and always with too many people around. Figuring this out would bear further thought, but with her head swirling, it was just one of many concerns.
Another was the spirit world. Her gut churned with the memory of being down there. Of what she’d seen. And she knew Gabe had been underground, but now the Tree of Life had blocked off the door to hell.
Yet, she also knew there was another way to the underworld. A riskier way in. But maybe the only way . . .
After a couple of hours of tossing and turning, she hauled herself out of bed. She took a small handful of ibuprofen and one of Maria’s invigorating tonics that smelled of ginseng. She dressed in the dark clothes that were now her new shadow to wrap around her thin, pale frame.
Sig yawned with a squeak and jumped down from the futon. He trotted to her side, claws clicking on the linoleum. He gazed up at her as she fastened her gun belt around her waist. The belt fit much more loosely than it had before. She tightened it to its farthest punch hole, and it still hung around her hip bones. She clipped a flashlight on the back and shrugged into a jacket. She dropped the Locus and her cell phone into the pockets.
“You up for a late night field trip, Sig?”
Sig harrumphed and followed her as she locked up and headed out across the gravel parking area to the Bronco. It was a new moon night—dark and soft and dewy. She wouldn’t have much deeper darkness to work in for another month. Who knew if she’d still be vertical then, or drooling into her oatmeal?
Or six feet under for good?
“Carpe noctem,” she muttered, repeating a slogan she’d seen on a T-shirt decades ago.
She and Sig piled into the Bronco. She started it up, flipped on the lights, and headed down the road, through town. She cast a dark look at the fully lit Compostela, still haunted by a few late-night denizens.
For another time, she thought.
She turned east, heading to the Rutherford Ranch.
She knew that she was driving, but she didn’t remember the trip. She wanted to chalk it up to road hypnotism, to being tired. But she realized that she had made it nearly to the Rutherford Ranch without remembering driving there. To be honest with herself, that spooked her. She bit her tongue, hard, to keep herself awake and focused.
About a mile from the ranch house, she pulled off the main two-lane road into a ditch. She shut off the engine and listened to it ping in the darkness. She wasn’t sure that she could run a full mile with Owen chasing her without collapsing, but hopefully she wouldn’t have to.
She reached under the seat for a couple of tools to fill her pockets. She popped the door, jumped out, and Sig followed. She locked up and crossed the road. The Bronco’s location wasn’t very obvious to a casual observer at night. It would be found the next day, though, when the sun rose and drove away the ditch shadows. With any luck, she’d be long gone by then.
If not, she’d get caught by Owen. And if she didn’t find Gabe on her own, confronting Owen was the number two item on her list anyway.
In the distance, she could see the ranch house, a modern log chalet perched on the top of a hill. There were no lights on inside—a good sign. Especially because she wasn’t heading for the house. Instead, she walked down the hill, keeping to the weeds near the drive. She made for the barn, where the second door to the underworld lay.
The barn was still and silent, surrounded by trucks and farm equipment. It was buttoned up tight, the sliding doors secured with a padlock. But Petra had anticipated that Owen would be stricter about security than Sal—Sal believed himself so invincible he left everything open.
Petra pulled a cable saw from her pocket. It took a few minutes for the diamond-coated cable to chew through the hardened steel of the hasp, especially as she was going a bit slower to reduce the sound. Eventually, the lock broke away, and she pitched it into the field. Perhaps Owen would believe that a field hand simply forgot to lock up and was walking around with it forgotten in a pocket.
Honestly, she didn’t really care.
She opened the door just a foot and a half and slipped inside, Sig underfoot and his ears pressed forward. She pulled the door shut and clicked on her flashlight.
Shadows of farm machinery moved under her light beam, around a harvester and a grinder-mixer. She swept the light before her, around bales of hay, tools, and bags of fertilizer. She moved to the back corner of the barn, around the blades of tillers and a rusted tractor.
The back corner was littered with straw and debris. She shoved it aside with her boot, moving her light back and forth.
There. A wooden door in the floor of the barn, exactly as she remembered. She had not been here in many months, but her memory hadn’t failed her. This door led to another part of the underworld of the Rutherford Ranch. And likely Owen didn’t yet know it was here, or he’d have fortified it as well as he had the opening near the Lunaria.
She pulled the d
oor of the hatch open and shone her light into the tunnel. Dirt formed a steep incline, rolling away into black. That was the problem with this door: it was a one-way ticket. The incline was too steep for her to climb up, even at her healthiest. This spot was like a whirlpool—things went in, but they couldn’t get out.
She grimaced into the dark and glanced at Sig.
“You don’t have to come.”
Sig snorted. He was coming.
She was relieved.
Petra wrapped her arms around him. She put the flashlight in her teeth and sat on the edge of the entrance. Taking a deep breath, she looked down into the darkness one more time . . . and jumped.
The impact of the landing jarred her body, from her ankles to the crown of her head. She fell on her right hip and skidded, finally resting in soft dirt. She might have chipped a tooth on the flashlight, and she gasped.
Sig squirmed out of her arms. He whined and licked her face.
Petra groaned and pulled the flashlight from her mouth, rubbing her jaw. She tasted the coppery tang of blood. She’d already lost one back tooth in chemo; another was no major loss. She winced and pulled herself to a seated position. She glanced up at the door in the ceiling . . .
. . . but it had banged shut.
“Well, we’re here,” she muttered to Sig. She shone the light around the tunnel.
The air was cool, the earth still holding some of the touch of winter. She crawled forward on her hands and knees until her back stopped spasming enough for her to climb to her feet.
The last time she’d been here, she’d found her way to the Tree of Life. She was pretty sure that had been as much luck as anything—the tunnels beneath the ranch were vast. And while she’d walked many miles of them before, that had usually been with Gabe. He knew this rabbit warren; she didn’t.
Which meant she had only one tool that might lead her through this labyrinth: the Locus.
She fished it out of her pocket and shone her light on it. Not really loving the idea of having to pick at her scab again for blood, she chewed her lip . . . and it came to her. She spat into the device, and blood gracelessly dribbled over her lip into the groove on the compass. She was certain that this was not how high ceremonial magic worked, but it would have to do.
