Peak of the Devil (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 2)

by Jen Rasmussen

  “Most of us can do it. There was a spider in my sink last night. And one on my suitcase this morning.”

  “And that’s just the ones we can see,” I said. “It’s kind of a crazy theory, but then again I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit in my time. I think it’s best if we don’t say anything inside the hotel that we don’t want Madeline Underwood to find out about.”

  “Or maybe we can say some things we do want her to find out about,” Phineas said. “You never know when being able to mislead her might be handy.”

  We walked back up Main Street again, to where it ended in a park surrounded by a cluster of buildings, including an old-fashioned looking white church and a yellow brick building with a tall clock tower. I assumed that would be the town hall, but it turned out to be the library and "Visitor Welcome Center." The town hall was across the street from it, nondescript, brown, and businesslike. I had no interest in going in there and meeting Penny Dreadful’s dreadful brother.

  Phineas held the library door for me, and we went inside.

  The library and visitor’s center both seemed to be run from the same great big desk, at the front of one cavernous room lined on three sides with bookshelves. On the fourth wall was a fireplace, crackling and cozy, with couches and chairs arranged around it. A couple people sat there reading, and a couple more were at the tables scattered through the center, working on laptops.

  The librarian behind that desk was unquestionably another Underwood, so closely did she resemble Madeline. She was younger, twenties I guessed, maybe our new friend Nolan’s age. And as if in direct opposition to her maroon sister, she was dressed from head to toe in bright blue. As we approached the desk I saw she wore a badge on a lanyard around her neck that announced her as Matilda Underwood. Unlike Madeline, her smile was bright as she greeted us. “Can I help you? Reporters looking for a map of the town, maybe?”

  “A map of the town would be great, actually,” Phineas said.

  But she was ignoring him, having gotten a good look at me now that we were closer. “You’re Lydia Trinket,” she said. “My sister and brother told me you were in town, and that I would be in big trouble if I talked to you.”

  But you’re a grown woman, how can you be in big trouble? I thought, and that’s when I remembered having this exact same exchange before. Or rather, Penny Dreadful having it with herself.

  “Imagine how pissed they’d be if they knew you were the one who called me,” I said.

  It was a gamble in hopes of startling her into admitting it. It worked. (Which was a good thing, because I’d have looked pretty damn stupid if I was wrong.) Matilda-Penny’s thin eyebrows shot up, and her mouth went slack. But she didn’t deny it. Her bright librarian persona dropped immediately, and she just nodded at me. “So you’re here to help, right?”

  “Maybe.” I stopped talking as an elderly man approached with a stack of books.

  Penny got back behind the desk and checked him out, then leaned over and said to me, “I’ve got a kid coming in for a shift in ten minutes. If you guys can wait, I can take a break, and we can talk.”

  So Phineas sat down and watched the fire while I wandered around, looking at the bookshelves, checking what year their single copy of Jane Eyre was (1989). Penny came to fetch us after the promised ten minutes. We followed her through a small door between two shelves in the corner, down a very narrow staircase, then through a room almost as big as the one above us, littered with chairs and cardboard boxes. Through this obstacle course, on the opposite wall, was door that announced itself as OFFICE.

  There was barely room for the three of us in there, between the bookshelves and the desk that took up most of the space. I wondered whether ridiculously large desks were a Bristol thing or an Underwood thing. Penny grabbed a couple of folding chairs from the other room and made us as comfortable as she could. The office smelled of old paper, and everything in it looked worn. If it weren’t for the computer, I’d have thought we’d gone back in time.

  When were all sitting, Penny reached into one of her desk drawers and brought out a bag of candy. “Peanut butter cup? Caramel?” It was an odd replacement for the standard offer of water or coffee that reminded me a bit of Martha Corey. Phineas declined. I took a caramel. As I unwrapped it, Penny looked down at my hand and said, “Gross! Couldn’t you get an artificial one or something? What happened?”

  She was looking at my half-finger, of course. I considered saying I accidentally cut it off while stabbing an insolent librarian, but I just used my usual “Kitchen accident.”

  Before Penny could ask more questions (which she looked inclined to do), Phineas asked her what she knew about the deaths.

  “Obviously you suspect something supernatural behind it, or you wouldn’t have called Lydia,” he said.

  She tilted her head to one side and studied him. “You don’t look like her assistant. Are you her boss?”

  “He is not my boss!” My teeth were partially cemented together by the caramel, so this did not come out with the authority I’d have hoped for.

  “Let’s just say a coworker for the moment,” Phineas said.

  “You said Phineas, right?”

  “I did.”

  “Can I call you Finn?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, Finn, yeah of course I thought something supernatural was going on. Between the three hearts being stolen and the devil and there being no reasonable explanation for their deaths. It seems like an obvious conclusion, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Phineas said simply. “We think the three hearts may have been intended for a ritual to bring someone back from the dead.” I wondered at him, just blurting everything out like that. I still wasn’t sure I trusted Penny. But maybe it was his fairy instincts again.

  Penny’s eyes widened. “Who?” she asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” I said. “It’s one of the things we need to find out. You still don’t know which hearts were taken?”

  “No,” said Penny.

  “Can you tell us anything about the victims?” asked Phineas.

  Penny leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “They all sucked.”

  Phineas and I were both silent, waiting for her to explain this rather bizarre answer. Finally she shrugged and looked back at us. “Maybe not the tourist. I don’t know about him. But probably, right? I mean, don’t most people suck?”

  “What about the ones you did know?” I pulled out my phone again, to take more notes.

  Penny sighed. “Marianne Withers was my third-grade teacher. Hated kids. Scared the crap out of all of us. She never gave out candy on Halloween, either. One of those ones who turns off their lights and pretends not to be home, you know?”

  I nodded for her to go on.

  “Wes Landry was a pervert. Terry Fowler did nothing but lecture people on politics and religion nonstop, and he was a misogynist besides. And everyone knew Carla Frank was an insufferable bitch. I know we’re not supposed to say bad things about dead people, but I guess you don’t have that rule in your line of work anyway, huh? I mean, there aren’t a lot of nice things to say about most ghosts, right?”

  I thought about the little boy at the hotel. And Tom. “Oh I don’t know. Some of them are okay.” From the corner of my eye I saw Phineas look at me, but I didn’t elaborate, and Penny was happy to continue doing the talking.

  “Well, those four weren’t. Like I said, I don’t know about the tourist.” She bit her lip. “You’re not going to tell Madeline I talked to you, are you? I hear you’re staying at the hotel.”

  I adjusted as quickly as I could to this abrupt change of subject. “Of course not.”

  “She doesn’t want you here. You’re bad for business.”

  “How so?” Phineas asked.

  “We’re already getting bad press. If you come in here with what she would consider bullshit mumbo-jumbo like her crazy sister is into, start talking about the town being haunted or cursed or something, you’ll discourage the tourists.�
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  “Sometimes that kind of talk encourages tourists,” I said.

  “Not the right kind,” said Penny. “Madeline likes visitors who are cultured and sophisticated. The kind who spend a lot of money. She wants Bristol to be a resort sort of place, a getaway for the rich. Like the Hamptons or Nantucket or some shit. She does not want it to become the kind of town where some guy in a goofy suit does ghost tours at night, you know? You should have seen how pissed off she was when the Thaggards named their coffee shop.”

  This was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I wasn’t buying it. Bad for business, maybe. But whose business? “Penny, how far back does your family go in this town?”

  “Almost to the original settlers,” said Penny. “A Phearson family cousin who moved here in the early 1800’s. And then Silas Underwood, who started the hotel, was my…” She scrunched up her face. “I forget how many greats, but great-something grandfather.”

  “Well then, your family’s been here to see this whole devil legend evolve,” said Phineas. “What can you tell me about it?”

  Penny smiled. “They say he’s sexy and likes to seduce teenage girls sometimes, like in one of those vampire movies or something. But I’ve never actually seen him.”

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Penny. “We tell stories about the Bristol Devil from our first sleepover to our last bridge game. Or whatever old people do. I couldn’t tell you how much is from the original legend and how much has been added on over the years, though. They say it’s a bad idea to have pets in Bristol, and if you do, you have to make sure they’re inside at night, because if they cross his path in the dark, they’ll drop dead just like that.”

  I thought of the boy ghost, and Wendy and Caleb lamenting the lack of dogs, and resolved to keep a close eye on Wulf.

  “And they say he eats souls,” Penny went on. “Bristol people are under his protection, but outsiders aren’t, so tourists have to be careful. Over the years one or two have disappeared—lost hiking or whatever—and he’s been blamed. You know, typical Halloween scary story kind of stuff.”

  “Is that what he needs sanctuary for, so he has a nice relaxing place to eat souls?” I asked. “Why make the bargain with Bristol in the first place?”

  Penny shrugged. “I told you, to get up to whatever he gets up to without getting caught by whoever catches devils.”

  I couldn’t imagine a less helpful answer. “How can the legend be so specific about some things, but leave this part out completely?” I asked.

  It was Phineas, rather than Penny, who answered. “Because they don’t know what they’re giving him sanctuary from, or for. He keeps his own business to himself.”

  I turned to him, eyebrows raised.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m guessing.”

  “Well whatever it is, evil is hard work, right?” I asked. “Maybe he could use an assistant. Maybe one—or some, including Megan—of my canteen ghosts agreed to work for him, in exchange for a body.”

  “What’s a canteen ghost?” asked Penny.

  “My canteen,” corrected Phineas. “I guess—”

  “But how would they know about him?” I interrupted. “Megan was trying to get to Bristol almost from the second you let her out. How did she know?”

  “Who’s Megan?” asked Penny.

  “I have no idea,” said Phineas. “You’re sure she had no connection to this place?”

  “None that I could find. But it’s not like I have a record of every single thing she ever did.”

  “Who’s Megan?” Penny asked again.

  “If she’d come in contact with the devil while she was alive, it could be that she knew he’d be open to seeing her again, I suppose,” said Phineas. “That’s a lot of conjecture, th—”

  Both of us were startled by a sudden, loud bang. Penny had slammed her fist against the desk, and was now leaning over it. A little spit had gathered between her twisted lips.

  “STOP TALKING LIKE I’M NOT HERE!”

  Phineas and I stared at her in silence. She was huffing now, like an angry horse. Her face was red, her lips pinched in a way that made her look very like her sister. I was quite sure she was about to hex us.

  The rest of our conversation with Penny Dreadful was brief and awkward. Almost immediately after her outburst, she sat down again and said, “Well, shit.” Then she told us that she didn’t respond well to stressors, on account of a pretty shitty childhood, and that was why she was a small town librarian, and never ventured outside of Bristol, and lived alone without even a cat, because the responsibility might be too taxing. She blurted all this out without much in the way of pauses, which spared us the need to do anything more than nod and make reassuring noises.

  When we got back to the hotel, each to our separate rooms, the little boy ghost was lying on my bed. He was so close to Wulf that they’d have been cuddled up together, if the boy was alive. Wulf seemed perfectly happy with this arrangement, and gave me a cursory thump of his tail when I closed the door.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. The boy stared at me with his big round eyes, waiting. For what? For me to say something? Or to help him? I had a sudden, clear memory of Helen in my closet.

  You’ll fail them.

  “You miss your dog,” I said.

  He nodded. His eyes filled with silvery tears.

  See? You’re failing already.

  I didn’t want to make him cry more, but I couldn’t help him if I didn’t ask. “Did the Bristol devil take your dog? Like the legend says?”

  The boy nodded. Then shook his head. Yes and no?

  He was anchored to the hotel, which meant he’d died here. “Was your dog lost here? Were you looking for him when you died?”

  Two nods.

  “If I found your dog for you, do you think you’d rest better?”

  A vigorous nod this time.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “But it’s not going to be easy when I don’t know your name, or what happened, or when it happened. I know you can’t talk, but try to think of some way to give me some hints, okay?”

  He smiled, a small, sad smile, but it was something. He nodded one last time, then faded away.

  Phineas and I went to the diner for dinner, so we could talk freely away from the creepy spider spies. I felt guilty leaving Wulf alone again, but he was all too glad to accept a bribe of pig’s ear.

  Which made me think of the spiders, and whether they had ears of their own. I didn’t think they did. “Maybe they can watch us, but can’t listen to what we’re saying,” I said to Phineas, after the waitress brought us our burgers.

  “Maybe.” Phineas made no effort not to talk with his mouth full. I tried not to look at the mustard flying around. “I don’t know much about spiders. Probably best to err on the side of caution, though.”

  Unable to stand it anymore, I passed a napkin to him. “How does a man who’s normally so clean and well put together eat like such a pig?”

  He ducked his head as he wiped his mouth, and his ears turned red. “I’m sorry.”

  Weird. I’d called him an asshole dozens of times since I met him, and that only made him laugh, but criticize the man’s table manners and he fell apart.

  “So, Penny,” I said.

  He swallowed his food before he answered. “Clearly crazy.”

  “Clearly,” I agreed. “Not that I blame her, with that family.”

  “But her intentions are good,” Phineas said. “And she has a good heart. She’s sincere about wanting to help. We can trust her, if we need her.”

  I snorted. “Bullshit. Maybe she means well, but that doesn’t mean we can trust her.”

  Or maybe she didn’t mean well. I was of two minds about Penny. On the one hand she was an awkward babbler, something I felt a kinship with. On the other, there was definitely something there that went past quirky and straight to unstable. You can’t trust a truly unstable person, even if they want to be one of the good guys. And I still
wasn’t entirely sure that Penny did.

  “It doesn’t bother you that she’s an Underwood?” I asked. “I don’t think Madeline hates us just because she’s afraid we might bring trashy ghost tours to her town.”

  “No,” Phineas agreed. “Madeline is not a woman with a good heart or good intentions.”

  “And she’s hiding something,” I said. “She doesn’t want us poking around here.”

  Phineas smiled. “Then I’d say poking around is just what we should do. If anyone in Bristol is buddies with our devil, I’ll bet it’s her.”

  “Your devil,” I corrected. “My ghost. Or ghosts plural, now that I think of it. I need to have a look around the hotel anyway, for the little boy. I told him I’d try to find out what happened to his dog.”

  “We told Nolan we’d try to help that little boy, too,” said Phineas. “Nolan, who has access to the whole building, I would think, all kinds of doors that are locked to guests.”

  Accordingly, the first thing we did when we got back was tell Nolan, casually, that we needed to talk to him somewhere outside the hotel. He said he got off at seven, and that he’d meet us at The Witch’s Brew. I picked up Wulf from my room first, since he’d been made so welcome there that morning.

  Wendy wasn’t there, but Caleb was. He waved us in—bloodhound and all—with a smile. “Wendy’s going to be pissed she missed you.” He nodded at Phineas. “She’s been harping about you all day.”

  Phineas grinned at him. “Anything specific?”

  “Apparently her granny has some old story about meeting the Bristol devil once, and he had golden eyes. And then you asked her if she’s seen anyone else like you. So she says either you’re looking for the devil, or you just said that to throw her off because you are the devil.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he’s not the devil.” I peered at Phineas, pretending to consider him. “Although I can’t swear he’s not a devil.”

  “Nonsense,” Phineas said. “I’m an asshole, remember?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Devils are never overtly assholes. Being charming is how they trick people.”

  Caleb shrugged, unfazed by either our joking or the general talk of devils. “Wendy’s not going to shut up about it either way. But I guess not being the devil is the better of the two.”