Every few yards a thick wooden beam supported the structure. Tree roots jutted out of the walls. Rocks and twigs covered the uneven dirt floor. The lowness of the dirt ceiling made me hunch over. The cold, dank air smelled stale. Water dripped down the side of the tunnel, puddling on the floor. It felt like a grave: a long, wet grave.
As the tunnel drew deeper into the ground, I thought about my kids. If I perished in a collapsed passageway, what would happen to them? Would they even find me? What would they write on my gravestone? “She got lost.”’ “Lost but not forgotten.” Or, “This one liked dead things.” How about, “The detective who found her death.” Even my glib, self-deprecating humor couldn’t make me smile in this hole. There were just too many icky things around me.
Eric would never lead me anywhere he thought I might be in danger, I told myself. Unless. Unless he didn’t fully comprehend how frail my mortal body was, because, after all, he’d been dead a long time.
My phone rang and I stopped breathing. Only two people had my cell number. I checked. It wasn’t Jill, who had it in case something happened to the kids. Thank heavens for that. I started breathing again. It was Joy calling from the teahouse.
“Are you busy?” she said as a way of greeting.
“A little,” I said as I kicked another spider out of my way.
Aslog turned to look at me, her head tilted at a very unusual angle. I shook my head. I didn’t have time to explain the wonders of cell phones.
“Did you find something?” I asked Joy, who was doing a background check on Charisma Dubois’s great-grandmother for me. She was a whiz at computers and local gossip.
“Plenty. The old lady was eccentric.” That was saying something, coming from the goth-goddess of Sunset Cove.
The tunnel turned right. I checked my GPS. We were heading towards the wooded area behind the house, the home of the hounds from hell. Great. I bet those doggies liked to dig. How secure would that make this place?
“What did you find out?” I put my cell on speaker so Eric could hear our conversation.
“Her husband Jean-Paul built the house for their fifth wedding anniversary. He carried her over the threshold and died of a heart attack on the spot.”
“Now there’s a romantic gesture.”
“I know. And you wonder why I don’t want to get married. Anyway, she raised her family in the manor. Three kids: Jean-Luc, Guy and Therese. As soon as they could, they all left like rats abandoning a ship to lead their own lives far away from their mother who lived in the manor alone for her final twenty years. Her skeleton was found seated in her favorite chair in the living room with a book in its hands on October 31st, 1920.”
“Halloween?”
“Yeah. For the next generation, on Halloween, kids dared each other to go into the manor, which by that time had the reputation of being the home of a witch.”
“I bet they had quite the fright.”
Joy laughed her distinctive low, gravelly laugh.
“So she was wiccan?”
“That’s where the story gets interesting.”
Something scuttled across my feet and I screamed.
Eric appeared at my side in a second. “What happened?”
“Oh for the love of Odin, Viking,” said Aslog, who turned to look at me. “She’s just frightened. Can’t you smell it.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I think it was a rat. Or two.” Or two hundred.
“Hmm,” said Eric. Even in the dark, dank tunnel his look of concern warmed me. “We don’t have to go farther,” he said.
Aslog shook her head. “I do. Give me the flashlight, she-breather.” She yanked it from my hand. “It helps me see.”
“We have to keep going,” I said, following her. Eric moved back to the take the lead.
“Joy, you still there?”
“Uh, yeah. Where the hell are you?”
“Under the ground. It’s a long story.”
“Hmm. You’re checking out the dark side with your Viking and that vampire thing.” Joy never missed a beat.
“And a rat or two.”
She laughed. “I see you’re pretty busy, so I’ll make it short.”
I nodded at my cell, which wasn’t an easy thing to do in a hunched position with mud dripping into my hair.
“Madame Dubois was raised to be a good girl and the world knew her to be a practicing catholic who raised her children catholic, talked catholic, walked catholic and attended church on Sundays.”
“Until?”
“Until something happened. No one knows what, or at least I haven’t found anyone who does yet. Ms. Dubois stopped attending all church functions, and about the same time strange people were seen going in and out of the manor. That would be in the spring of 1905.”
“How did you get all this?”
“I have connections.”
The tunnel narrowed. I checked my GPS again. We were definitely below the woods now. Walking like an ape made my back ache. My nose twitched from the collective smells of dirt and vampire. My throat stung from being dry for so long. Where the hell was the light at the end of this tunnel?
“Oh, for the love of Odin,” said Aslog.
Something in the tone of her voice made me freeze. What could upset such a creature. “What now?” I asked.
“A dead end.”
“Joy, I’ll call you back.” I clicked off my cell.
We caught up with Aslog. We had reached the end. A dark end. A floor-to-ceiling pile of rock and dirt sealed the tunnel.
Eric shrugged and disappeared into the rubble. Aslog stared after him. Clearly she didn’t have the ability to pass through solid objects, or if she did she wasn’t in the mood. A good thing to note.
I squatted down on the floor to give my back a break. Could a ghost get trapped? I would have preferred to discuss this scenario of leaving me here with Eric before he went commando and left me with a blood-sucker.
Seconds and then minutes ticked by. “Eric,” I called out. “Eric?” But there was no answer. I could try moving a rock or two, but I didn’t want to make the tunnel collapse. I swallowed. I’d wait ten minutes. If he didn’t return by then, I would have to go back to the manor.
“It’s taking him long enough.” Aslog ran a waif-like hand through her hair and another clump fell out. She kicked it to the side.
“I don’t suppose you can follow him?”
The eye sockets glared at me. “No, I can’t.”
“He’ll come back. I know he’ll come back.”
Aslog sniffed the air. “You smell good, kind of like bacon and eggs on a spring morning.”
I knew I should have stuck to porridge for breakfast.
“You’re just teasing me,” I hoped.
15
Eric reappeared nine minutes later, followed by another revenant. His blue eyes were the color of the sky before a storm breaks.
“Ladies this is . . .” he hesitated “. . . a guardian.”
“A what?” The words tumbled out of my mouth as I watched steam escaping from Aslog’s blackened ears in a swirly, peppermint-green mist.
Wearing a luminescent-white gown that lit the tunnel, the guardian’s presence was stunning. I felt awed more than frightened. She didn’t seem undead: more like more-than-dead, and in a good way. I had seen my share of ghosts, ghouls and demons over the last two years. None of them had the star-striking appearance of this lady.
As if she read my thoughts, she explained, “We are spirits who remain on earth to protect.”
“Protect what?” I asked.
“The sacred. Some guard sacred places, others objects, others both,” she said, keeping her eyes on me.
I blinked. The guardian spirit shone so brightly, I had to squint. “Do you have a name?”
“You may call me Guardian.” Her voice held the kind of sweet tenderness and well- meaning condescension I reserved for new-born babies.
“What are you hiding?” Aslog said to the spirit.
The apparitio
n turned her way and Aslog froze in all her decaying glory. Her mouth hung open and she appeared to be trying to talk, but could not.
“I will not speak to a draugr.” The certainty in her voice echoed in the small space.
“Shall I remove her, honored one?” said Eric, with a bow of his head.
“No, I will deal with her. She waved her hand in the air near Aslog’s face. “Tell me what you seek, old one.”
“I want . . .” Aslog stopped as if the words caught in her throat and could go no farther.
After a second I said, “She wants to be free of her grave.”
“Ah, vanity.”
“Being made ugly for eternity is more horrible than you can imagine.” Aslog had found her tongue again. “You who are so beautiful have never felt the revulsion of others.”
“I understand it can be hard.”
“Do you protect the grimoire of the Zagars?
“Possibly.”
“Please, I beg of you, let me see it.” The draugr fell to her knees and lifted her arms in supplication.
“No, most definitely not. I do not deal with those who suck the blood of others. You are a foul creature of the night.”
Aslog lunged at the guardian, who instantly vanished and reappeared beside me. The draugr tried a second time to reach her, but the guardian disappeared again and reappeared beside Eric.
“I must have the ancient grimoire. It has the secret to my freedom. I will do anything, anything you ask. Please.”
“I am sorry. This is out of my hands. Draugrs may not touch sacred objects. Ever.”
“But I need it!” the draugr pleaded.
The guardian shook her head. “No, there is nothing here for you. I suggest you roam the night and look for answers to your loneliness elsewhere.”
Fire shone in Aslog’s eye sockets. “With all that I am, all I have ever been, all I ever will be, I curse you, Guardian. To the heavens and the hells of All, I curse you for eternity.” She vanished.
Had the guardian spirit poofed her away, or had Aslog gone on her own? The palms of my hands itched. Powerful people did that to me. I could only hope that the guardian’s wisdom matched her power.
“Guardian, can we see the Zagars’ grimoire?” The solemn tone of Eric’s voice worried me. Could she poof him away too, if we didn’t genuflect perfectly?
“The magic is old and temperamental. It has, shall we say, personality. It’s best handled by the adept. What is it you seek?”
“Diamonds,” I broke into the ghostly exchange. “We are looking for a stash of diamonds.”
“Diamonds?” Her face grew pink. “Rocks?”
“I have three children to feed and that takes money. A woman hired me to find the diamonds. She inherited this manor and believes they’re here.” That was as short a version of the situation as I could come up with.
“But she is afraid to look herself?”
“The draugr scared her away, and looking for things in a dusty old house is not her thing.” That and the hounds and the cobwebs.
The guardian nodded. “I see.”
Good Lord. I grunted. I was so done with the magical people saying that. “What do you see?”
“I see why you are here. I see who you are.” She faded.
“Wait,” Eric said. “We don’t want all of the book’s magic, only a locating spell.”
The guardian became clearer again. “The arcane magic in the witch’s book is selective. If it accepts the person holding it, it will help them create the spells within it, or any spell they may desire. As you can imagine, if the book fell into the wrong hands, great catastrophes could happen. But . . .” She looked at me, the way I look at watermelons.
“What?” I said.
“You may be able to handle it.”
What the hell did that mean?
“We only want the diamonds,” Eric said, and I fell in love with him all over again. I knew that was not the greatest wish in his heart. He wanted to come alive, but he wanted me to have what I wanted even more.
A beatific smile spread across her face. “A wise choice, Viking. I thought you would want to use it for yourself, but it seems you are wiser than that.”
“Is that not what magic is for? To break the rules that bind us to this life?” Eric asked.
“Some rules are not to be broken. Ever.”
Eric’s jaw hardened. “Do not worry about what I want. What about the diamonds?”
The guardian turned towards me. “Are you sure you want the diamonds? Wanting something from magic is not easy.”
I looked between the two ghostly figures, feeling as if I were being put on trial. “Of course my first wish would be for Eric to be alive, but I understand that wish is too selfish. My next wish is to find the diamonds, so that I can fill my kitchen cupboards with food for my children.”
“What? No world peace?” Her eyes bored into mine.
I made a face. “I think we all know that’s impossible, given people are so hell bent on fighting each other.”
“A wise woman you have, Viking. Wise beyond her years.”
Eric remained silent.
Still she stared at me, and I felt as if I were on some kind of supernatural trial, so I babbled. “I could wish for my children to have perfect lives, but that would rob them of the full experience of living.” I pushed a stray hair away from my face. “I could wish them to have good health, but they already have that. So, yes, I wish to find the diamonds. Finding them will help my client and launch my new business. That in turn will ensure financial stability for my, our, family.” I had already said this. What more could I say?
“How many children do you have and where is their father?”
“I have three children under the age of seven and I am a widow.”
The guardian’s eyes softened to pools of white and I swear her glow increased. After a moment she spoke. “Your road is not easy and I wish you well. As to the finding spell, if the magic of the grimoire accepts you, you may ask for the diamonds. I cannot confirm that it will accept you or your heart’s desire. It may not. At any rate, to must first get the book and to do that you must pass the tests.”
“What tests?” Eric asked.
“You must prove yourself worthy.” The glowing spirit looked upwards. “There are three tests.”
Goosebumps pebbled my arms.
“First, you must both swear, on all that is holy, that you will serve good, and only good.”
“We swear,” we said in unison. That was a no-brainer.
“Done. Next, you must find the book.”
“Is it in the house?” I asked.
“It is further down the tunnel. Return tomorrow. I’ll remove this barrier so you can commence your search.”
“And what is the third test?” Eric said.
“It will reveal itself after you find the book. Finding it will not be a simple matter. Most people fail that step. Zagar magic is strong. It draws good and evil forces. Be careful. Look over your shoulder often, for there will be others. Some will want the old magic for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it. Some will follow you because they don’t want the Zagar magic unleashed again in this world. Many have failed to find the book because of the others.”
Great. Now what kind of creature would I meet? I looked at my feet. “I guess I should say thank you, but I’ll be honest. I’m scared.”
“And you should be. Asking magic to come into your life is no minor matter.”
“I have to succeed,” I said, “for my children.”
As she dissolved into mist she said, “Remember, no child wants to be orphaned.”
16
By the time we got out of the tunnel I had mud caked in my hair and stuck on my arms as if it were a second skin, and I could taste it in my mouth. The dungeon-damp smell clung to the inside of my nostrils. But what I hated was that we returned to our office in the attic of the teahouse with more questions than answers.
I washed off the mud on my arms and
face, but no soap could take away my mounting anxiety. I made myself a strong cup of instant coffee, while Eric stood by the window and stared out to sea.
I drank half a cup before I said anything. “Okay, Eric. What’s up?”
“You can’t trust a draugr. Ever. It worries me that we didn’t see her when we got out of the tunnel. She’s up to something.”
“I can’t worry about Aslog right now. I’m focusing on finding the damn book.” I pulled a hand through my tangled ponytail. “We need to take one step at a time. For starters, what do I say to Charisma?”
Eric shook his head. “The whole thing makes no sense. I have been told to obey guardians, but it doesn’t feel right in my gut. Is she jerking us around or is the Zagar magic that complicated?”
I shrugged. I had no answers.
“And Aslog worries me. Draugrs lie, steal, cheat and murder. That’s what they do. You smell like candy to her. Do not let her make you think otherwise. I don’t like that she knows where you live. I should never have encouraged you to become a private detective.”
Needing to accomplish something, I pulled a hair brush out of my desk, took the elastic out of my hair and started working through the tangled mess. A second later I said, “Draugrs are like vampires, right?”
“Somewhat. They like human blood.”
I could ask him what the difference was, but the topic was way too creepy. “So what do you think we should do?” I gulped down the rest of my coffee in a long swallow and pulled on my hair. “And don’t say quit.”
“We need to kill the draugr. That has to be done for your safety and for the safety of the cove.”
“But what about the diamonds?”
Eric hung his head back and groaned, not a nice sound coming from a ghost. “What do we want with sparkly rocks and magic? Your job as a janitor in this house brings in enough money for you to eat. Your family will get by.”
“But I want to do more than ‘get by.’ I want to make my PI business work, Eric. You know how much it means to me. I want to buy ice-cream and toys for the kids, get them into soccer when they’re old enough, give them swimming lessons . . .” I didn’t bother mentioning the leaking roof. I wanted them to have a safe and comfortable home.
Midnight Magic (A Ghost & Abby Mystery Book 1) Page 8
