by Amy Boyles
“Sera, my marriage depends on this.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. But don’t expect me to do anything except follow you.”
“I won’t.”
By the time we reached the top of the walkway, Flynn and the woman had disappeared. I listened for any sounds of them, but all that greeted us were the buzz of insects and the croaks of frogs in heat. Or whatever they chirped about.
“Let’s go around,” I said.
Sera’s face fell in horror. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not,” I whispered. “If you want to go back, go back. I’ve got to do this.”
She mumbled something about being annoyed with me but followed like a dutiful sister.
My heart pounded in my throat as we reached the bottom of the broken concrete slab. I stepped onto the grass. It crunched so loudly I was afraid it would give us away. But I trudged on, walking as quietly as I could.
We reached the rear entrance, where an open porch sagged away from the house. I still didn’t hear anything. I glanced at the platform, wondering if I could climb up it and not be heard by Flynn and his cohort.
I decided to risk it. The steps leading up were gone, but I could hitch myself on my knees and make it to the top.
“Push me,” I said.
Sera mumbled something again, but she did thread her fingers together for me to stand in. She shoved. I scrambled to get my hands stable so I could heave.
The boards were old and rotted, with splinters the size of pencils sticking up at angles that made me wish I was wearing construction gloves.
But I managed to yank myself up without so much as one scrape. I dusted my hands and glanced at the porch.
“What is that?” I said.
Sera peeked over. “What?”
“There are all these sticks and things in the shape of a pentagram.”
Twigs and feathers had been constructed into the star shape. Several pillar candles cushioned the framework as if holding it together. The whole thing gave me the creeps.
“Take a picture of it. Milly might know,” Sera suggested.
“Good idea.”
I pulled out my phone and took a quick snapshot. Then I shoved it back into my pants and headed toward the door.
Sera’s panicked voice stopped me. “You’re not going inside, are you?”
“I have to know what they’re doing.”
“Why?” she said, her voice notching up several octaves.
“So that I can either dump the case or prove to Roman it’s not what he thinks. I’ll be right back.”
The back door had been removed, leaving a nice opening for all sorts of critters to enter. As I crept inside, the last remaining glimmer of sunlight streaked down the walls, giving me just enough light to make my way and to also notice the dozens of nests that littered the floor.
The place smelled rank. It didn’t look much better. Boards sagged as I walked. The sound was like a sledgehammer to my ears. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that Flynn and the blonde were completely immune to any noises I made.
That’s because they were making their own.
A low moan came from a back room. I creeped close to the wall, trying to deaden my steps. The moan was hers. A wail was his.
I followed until only a wall separated me from them. The moans sounded distinctly private and familiar. It didn’t take a brainiac to figure out what Flynn and his girlfriend were up to, but if I wanted to do my job correctly, I had to have some sort of proof for Vera.
Just had to.
Even as much as it made my stomach churn.
I pulled out my phone, switched on the camera and killed the flash. Hopefully there was enough light to make the two of them out.
I gulped down a ball of air, stepped around the wall, aimed the phone and gasped.
Flynn and the woman were buck naked on a dirty mattress that had been in the house for God knew how long. Burning candles surrounded them and that same pentagram lay off to the side. Her eyes burned silver while Flynn worked—er, did his job, I suppose.
I snapped a picture. She glanced up. Our eyes met.
My heart slammed into my chest.
I heard her cry out as I barreled through the house. No time to worry about whether or not I made a sound now.
I was almost at the back door when my foot hit a soft spot in the wood. I punched through to the knee. Pain snaked up my leg, and I called out. A noise from behind told me that Flynn was on his feet. He probably had a weapon in hand or just his shoe. Or worse, he had his hand raised and magic ready to spiral out at me.
I shoved my hands down and yanked my foot from the floor. I reached the porch and jumped off the side.
“What happened?” Sera said.
I yanked her arm. “No time. Run!”
We raced up the hill. My breath came in hard, fast gulps. A stitch lanced up my side. Boy, did I really need to work out.
We reached the top of the hill. I hit the remote to unlock the car.
Once we were inside, I fired up the engine and raced down the street. My entire body shook from the jolt of adrenaline, from my trembling knees all the way to my chattering teeth. I inhaled a few deep gulps of air to calm my nerves.
“Anyone coming after us?” I said after a few seconds.
Sera twisted in the seat. “I don’t see anyone. What happened?”
I thumbed on the phone and showed her the picture. “What are they doing? I mean, besides the obvious. What’s going on?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure, but it looks like some sort of, dare I say, sex ritual?”
“Ew. Is that a thing?”
“I don’t know. I mean, maybe it is. Did you ever read The DaVinci Code?”
“No.”
I stared at her. “Seriously? That was a really popular book.”
Sera tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It didn’t appeal to me.”
“Okay, well, anyway. I read it like a thousand years ago, but in it there was something called a sex rite. I think what Flynn was doing was similar except there was obviously magic involved. The woman’s eyes glowed this weird silver light.”
“Are you going to tell Roman?”
My head fell back. “Crap. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” I shot my sister a hard look. “Why do you have to ask me questions like that? I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I saw.”
Sera shrugged. “Seems to me it might be something he’s interested in knowing.”
“If he doesn’t kill me first. I’m not supposed to be investigating this case, remember? I’m supposed to be watching Reid. Holy crap on a stick! I’m supposed to be at the pool hall. You don’t mind tagging along, do you?”
“No, I don’t mind. I only have a wedding to plan, beauty sleep to get and a nightly phone call with my fiancé to make. No. I don’t mind. Take me wherever you want to go.”
I smiled brightly at her sarcasm. “Great. Let’s go stalk our sister.”
We arrived at the pool hall a few minutes later. I parked in the back lot. Big, square windows created the facing on the front and back, giving us a solid view of what was happening inside.
It only took about five seconds to locate Reid, one of a small handful of women in the establishment. Her burgundy hair also helped.
She stood with cue stick in one hand, Jeremy’s in the other. He leaned over and whispered something in her ear. Reid laughed.
“They look so happy,” Sera mused.
“Reid can control insects, might I remind you. She might look happy, but she’s a suspect in the Polly Parrot case.”
“Oh? Is that what you’re calling it now? The Polly Parrot case?”
The back car door opened.
I screeched. Sera screeched.
Roman slipped inside.
“Oh dear Lord, you almost gave me a heart attack,” I said.
His head appeared between the seats. “Told you I’d be along in a little while.”
“Yeah, I know,” I g
rumbled. “What did Grandma want?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “She needed help changing out the shower curtain.”
“Why’d it take you an hour?”
“Because she wanted every curtain changed along with the rings, and she couldn’t decide which ones should go where.”
Sera laughed. “Sounds like Grandma. Listen, if y’all two are all set, I’m leaving.”
“You’ll be okay going home?” I said.
She blew me a kiss. “I’ll be just fine.”
My sister left and Roman got in the front seat, bringing with him a cloud of testosterone that nearly choked me. Good thing I liked testosterone.
“So what’ve we got?” he said.
“Not much. Looks like they’re playing pool with a bunch of friends.”
The front door swung open, and my heart skipped about a thousand beats. In walked Flynn Stone. Fully dressed, by the way. He didn’t even look the least bit ruffled. The blonde from the mansion entered with him, and they joined Reid’s group.
I gulped.
They joined Reid’s group.
“Looks like they’ve got friends,” Roman said.
“Yep.” But I barely mustered a sound. How was I supposed to tell Roman what I’d seen? I wasn’t even supposed to be investigating that case.
Crap, crap and double crap. No, make that triple crap.
Flynn and the mystery lady wove themselves into the group seamlessly as if they were all old buddies.
Then I watched as Reid and the blonde broke from the group and headed toward the bathroom.
I curled my fingers into Roman’s shirt. “Holy crap. We’ve got to get in there.”
I began madly yanking the door handle so I could get the heck out of the car, burst into the pool hall and save my sister from the evil silver-eyed lady.
“Why?” Roman said calmly.
Fudge. I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen without bringing his wrath. Let me tell y’all, I did not want the anger of Roman crashing down on me. Not because I couldn’t deal with it, but because I deserved it. That made it so much worse.
“Um. Well, look at that woman. She looks freaky. Like she might try to steal your soul or something.”
“I don’t think she looks like that. Just watch.”
I tapped my fingers restlessly, warring with myself about what to do. Do I tell him? Do I not tell him? He’d be so angry that I investigated, but I’d never forgive myself if that woman did something to my sister.
I decided to split the difference.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
“Dylan, wait,” he said.
I opened the door and shut it before he had a chance to stop me. I didn’t look back, and I didn’t hear his car door open, signaling that he’d followed. Good. I didn’t need to be followed.
But now that I stood in the cool night, the wind whipping through me, I realized exactly how stupid this was. Reid would recognize me, and the whole investigation into Polly’s disappearance would be blown.
I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled my hair down over my face as if I had a horrible case of rat-nest hair and barged inside.
I avoided eye contact with anyone and headed straight for the bathroom. I hit the door so hard it knocked into the wall.
Three stalls greeted me. Two were taken. The third was empty, so I darted into it.
“Jeremy really seems to like you,” came a voice from one of the closed stalls. Obviously it was silver-eyed witch lady.
“He’s really great,” Reid said. “Y’all have been awesome, too. You’re like another family to me.”
My heart tightened. What the heck? Another family. We were all the family my sister needed as far as I was concerned.
“We all really love you, Reid. You’re great.”
A toilet flushed, and one of the doors opened. “I feel the same about y’all,” Reid said.
The other toilet flushed. The water spigots turned on and off. Paper towels were torn from the roll.
“You should really come out with me and Flynn sometime,” the woman said. “We do all sorts of fun stuff. Jeremy can come, too.”
The words were a punch to my chest. I stopped breathing. Like heck my baby sister was going out into some sort of sick haunted-house-weird-sex thing. There was no way in all of creation that I’d let her do that.
Then Reid spoke words that hit my stomach like a bomb. “I’d love to do that. Just let me know when.”
“How about tomorrow night?” the lady said.
I watched through the crack and saw Reid throw a paper towel in the trash. “Sounds like a date.”
TEN
I ran from the bathroom like it had a case of the cooties. I kept my head down, same as I had when I entered. No one noticed me, which was great because I wasn’t in any shape or form to speak.
My breath was coming hard and fast. I was in full-on hyperventilation mode. Which was why as soon as I got into the car, I grabbed Roman’s shirt and sucked it.
He cradled me to his chest. “Whoa, there. What’s going on?”
“I can’t breathe. Have to breathe.”
“Inhale and hold it to the count of five. Can you do that?”
“Too hard.”
“Darlin’, you’ve got to do it or I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
The thought of wasting away two good hours sitting in a germ-filled ER was even worse than not breathing, so I did as he said.
He stroked my hair. “Now exhale for eight counts.”
I did that, too. I inhaled and exhaled until I’d calmed down enough that I could form coherent sentences. Well, coherent enough for me, anyway.
He thumbed hair from my cheeks. “Now. What happened?”
I gulped down a few more breaths. Roman handed me a water bottle, and I sucked some liquid, not realizing how parched I was until it hit my dry throat.
Finally I released a cleansing breath. “I went inside. They were in stalls and talking. The woman asked Reid if she wanted to go out with her and Fly—some other guy.” I did not want to say the guy’s name because then Roman would know I’d gone behind his back.
“And?” he said.
I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks. “Reid said yes!”
I don’t know why it happened. Maybe it was the fact that I’d kept something from Roman. Maybe I was just hormonal. I don’t know, but that little jaunt into the bathroom had raked over my emotions, tying them into knots I didn’t know were possible.
All of that crescendoed into what I like to refer to as the ugly cry. Snot and tears rolled down my face. I hiccupped and sobbed, soaking Roman’s shirt and probably him to the bone.
“What’s wrong?” he said, his normally stoic tone replaced with gentleness. “Darlin’, if you don’t tell me right now, I’m going in there and I’m going to start a fight. What happened?”
“It’s horrible,” I said. “That woman. She wants to have an orgy with my sister!”
I felt his fingers coil into my shoulders and push me back. “Dylan, what are you talking about?”
I pointed toward the hall. “That woman. She’s evil, Roman. Evil.”
His green eyes bored into me. They weren’t the color of a nice day at the beach. Now they were dark, turbulent. He knew someone was keeping secrets and that someone was me.
“How do you know that?”
I wiped my sleeve under my nose. “I just do.”
“Confess.”
“What makes you think I have anything to confess?”
He stared me down until I felt about an inch tall. “Okay, but promise you won’t be mad?”
“That means I’ll be mad.”
I forced my mouth into a wobbly smile. “But if you promise, then you can’t yell at me.”
“I’m not going to yell.”
“Promise?”
He sighed, clearly frustrated. “Yes. Fine. I promise. Now what is it you know?”
I twisted my shirt in m
y fingers. “Well, remember that case you told me not to investigate?”
“Dylan,” he growled.
“You promised you wouldn’t be mad,” I barked.
He flashed his palms. “Okay, okay. Go on.”
I studied him to make sure he wasn’t going to yell. When I was satisfied that he’d listen without comment, I continued. “Well, I found the guy—Flynn Stone—and that woman down at the old Sycamore house. It’s abandoned. We kids used to say it was haunted. Anyway, I found all this weird stuff.”
I fished my phone from my back pocket and showed him the sticks and feathers. “I found that outside, and when I went inside, it was worse. I found Flynn and that blonde lady in the middle of a very private activity. Candles were lit, and there was another one of those pentagrams in the room.”
Roman rubbed a finger over his lips. He glanced back down at the picture and then at me. His gaze flickered to the pool hall, where he watched the group for several seconds.
“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said.
My stomach dropped. “You’re not going to kill me?”
He laughed. “No. I mean, I’m not happy that you followed that guy because you could’ve gotten hurt.”
“Sera was with me.”
“Like I said, you could’ve been hurt,” he said coldly. “But what you’ve discovered is even bigger than I expected.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This whole thing—the pentagram and the act you found them in means what Flynn is up to is bad. It’s worse than Maleficium.”
“It is?” I said.
Roman nodded. “I’m afraid these two are taking this to the extreme. You’re right to be worried about Reid. If she’s involved with these folks, there’s more at risk than her life.”
My blood pumped cold through my body. A chill rushed through me. I shivered. “You’ve got to be more specific. I don’t know what I’ve discovered. I need help processing it.”
He tapped the phone. “This isn’t simply magic. It’s not even black magic. It’s darker, much more evil than that. What they’re doing is contacting evil spirits, summoning them during their acts.”
Fear choked me. “What? Why would anyone do that?”
“Power,” he said. “They’ve probably made a deal for more power, and the spirits are giving them that. Worse, now they’re trying to get your sister involved. If she goes with them, it won’t just be their acts you have to worry about her getting tied up in.”
