I couldn’t see anything strange in James’s eyes. They were blue with a little gray, but definitely no red.
“My name is Alec Harbinger,” I said, extending my hand, “and this is my assistant, Felicity Lake.”
He didn’t shake my hand. Instead, he pointed at me with his own, his forefinger jabbing at the air between us. “What the hell are you doing here? Why are you in these woods?”
“We’re just looking around,” I said enigmatically.
“With a shovel?”
“That just helps me look deeper.”
His eyes might have been totally normal-looking, but they burned with fury. “You are going to get out of here right now or I’m going to call security.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “We’re here at your mother’s invitation.”
“Oh, is that right? And does she know you’re digging up our graveyard?”
I couldn’t really answer that, so I just shrugged.
“What is going on here?” came a voice from the trail. Amelia Robinson appeared, tottering unsteadily on her high heels. She made it to the fence and stayed there, leaning on it. “Mr. Harbinger, what are you doing? I told you that discretion was of utmost importance.”
“He’s digging up our ancestors,” James said. “He said he’s here at your invitation. What’s going on, Mother?”
She hesitated, looking from her son to me to the shovel in my hand. Finally, she said, “I asked Mr. Harbinger to come here and speak with you about what happened at the lake that weekend. You haven’t been the same since you returned, James. I’m just worried about you.”
The fury in his eyes increased. “You hired a detective to question me? I don’t believe this. You’re treating your own son like a criminal.”
“I … I’m sorry, James, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” he said, pointing at her the same way he had pointed at me. “You can leave me alone.” Then he whirled on me. “And you can take your secretary and get off our property.”
“That isn’t your decision to make,” I said. “Your mother hired me.”
Amelia looked at me and said, “You should go. I don’t require your services anymore.”
I sighed. “Amelia, if it’s because of what happened here, I can assure you that….”
“Go,” she said, her voice firm.
James chuckled. “I guess you’re off the case, Detective.”
I ignored him and stepped through the open gate. I wasn’t sure why I felt disappointed; the case was a bust anyway. I hadn’t found any evidence of preternatural activity and I had lost my first client in Maine. Case closed.
“Don’t forget to take your secretary,” James said, his voice light and airy now that he knew we were leaving.
Felicity was already walking past him toward the open gate. James grinned and swatted her butt.
Felicity moved with the speed of a tigress, pivoting on one foot and facing James before using both hands to push against his chest. He stumbled backward toward the iron fence, lost his footing and fell. He tried to stop his fall with his left hand, but as soon as it touched the fence, he withdrew it just like Felicity had withdrawn her hand from the hawthorn.
But James’s hand wasn’t bleeding, it was smoking.
A burn mark crossed his palm where the iron had touched it. He bent over and cradled his hand, pain etched across his face. Looking at Felicity over his shoulder, he yelled, “You stupid bitch, you’ll pay for that!”
Calmly, Felicity walked through the open gate and joined me on the path, whispering, “That was interesting.”
“It certainly was,” I whispered to her. Raising my voice to a normal level, I said, “Amelia, if you still want us to take this case….”
“No, Mr. Harbinger, I don’t. Coming to see you was a mistake. Please leave before I decide to sue your assistant for assault.”
Felicity made a move toward the older woman. I grabbed her arm before she unleashed a right hook. “Come on,” I said. “We’re done here.”
She nodded and turned to face me. “Let’s go.”
We walked back along the path, leaving Amelia and James at the graveyard. When we emerged from the shadows of the trees into the sunlight, I blinked at the sudden brightness, a welcome change after being in those gloomy woods. As we walked across the lawn, I relished the warmth of the sun on my face. But by the time we reached the Land Rover, I was too hot, and ready to crank up the AC.
I got in and started the engine, closing my eyes as cold air blasted from the vents against my face. “You saw what happened back there, right?” Felicity asked.
“You mean when you kicked his ass? Hell yeah, way to go.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I mean when he touched that iron fence.”
I grinned. “Oh, yeah, I saw that.”
“That isn’t James Robinson back there,” she said. “That’s a faerie.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” I drove down the driveway toward the gate.
Felicity asked, “But if there’s a faerie assuming the likeness of James Robinson and pretending to be him, then where is the real James?”
“That’s where it gets complicated,” I said. “The real James Robinson is trapped in the faerie realm.”
8
As we drove back to Dearmont, a pang of hunger growled in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten anything since the apple bakes this morning and it was now past lunch time. “Shall we grab a bite to eat while we talk about what we’re going to do next?” I asked Felicity.
“Sounds good. There’s a diner on this side of town that makes excellent burgers. Darla’s Diner. Just follow the highway back toward Dearmont. We passed the diner on the way out here.”
“Did we? I don’t remember a diner,” I said. I usually made a mental note of every eating establishment I passed, especially those close to home. The nature of my work meant I didn’t always have time to cook a meal, so restaurants and diners were a valuable resource.
“We were being chased by ogres at the time,” she reminded me.
“Ah, that explains it.”
Up ahead on the highway, I saw the dark green Taurus the ogres had been driving. It attached to a tow truck. Parked behind the tow truck was a black and white police cruiser, and standing watching the proceedings was the big sheriff I had seen on the internet, John Cantrell. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching the car with the busted hood and engine as its front end was lifted into the air by the crane on the back of the truck.
When I’d seen Sheriff John Cantrell in the picture, standing by the lake, I had thought that he might wrestle grizzlies in his free time. Now that I saw him in real life, I figured bears would be too easy an opponent for this huge man. A T-rex might be more worthy an adversary.
As we drove past, I looked for the redhead deputy, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Darla’s Diner was a mile farther along the highway, a long, low building with a frontage that was mainly chrome and glass, glinting in the sun. A dozen trucks and cars waited in the parking lot and through the windows, I could see diners sitting at the tables, eating.
“This a pretty busy place,” I said to Felicity.
“I told you, they make good burgers.” She waited for me to park before jumping out and heading for the door. I followed, wondering if we’d get a table or have to eat in the car. I didn’t mind either way; I’d eaten in the Land Rover plenty of times. There was a collection of takeout boxes and containers in the back seat that could attest to that.
The interior of Darla’s was furnished just like a million other diners in the country: counter and stools running almost half the length of the place, tables here and there, and booths by the windows with red vinyl upholstery.
As I followed Felicity through the glass door into the air-conditioned establishment, the mouth-watering smell of fried meat and onions hit me, making my stomach rumble. The diner was noisy with sound of chattering customers and country music drifting
from speakers mounted in the walls. That was good. It meant I could talk to Felicity without being overheard. In a quieter place, we would have to lower our voices so that we couldn’t be heard by eavesdropping customers or staff.
Felicity found a booth and slipped into it. I caught the eye of a waitress who was serving coffee to a group of truckers at the counter and took a seat across the table from Felicity.
The waitress, a woman in her late-forties with curly blonde hair pinned up on her head, came over with a pen poised over her order pad. Her name, Sandra, was embroidered on the left breast of her uniform. She smiled at us. “Hi, and welcome to Darla’s. Have you eaten with us before?”
“I have,” Felicity said, “but my friend hasn’t.”
Sandra turned her attention to me. “We have menus here,” she said, pointing to the menus in a chrome holder on the table, “and specials on the board. If there’s anything particular you’d like us to cook for you, or if you have any dietary requirements, you just let me know.”
“Whatever that burger is that I can smell,” I said. “I want that.”
She grinned. “We have a selection of burgers listed on the menu right here.” She took one of the menus and opened it in front of me, pointing out the list of burgers.
“Whichever is the biggest,” I said.
Sandra nodded. “That would be the Darla’s Double Burger. It’s two meat patties inside a sesame bun and it comes with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, dill pickle, and mayonnaise. Do you want cheese on that?”
“Everything,” I said.
“Fries?”
“Definitely.”
Felicity ordered a cheese burger and we both ordered sodas. Sandra asked us if we wanted coffee and filled our cups from a pot when we both said yes. After she had gone, I said to Felicity, “Good choice. This is great. If the food is as good as it smells, this could be our regular lunch place.”
Felicity laughed. “If you have a Darla’s Double Burger for lunch every day, you won’t be able to catch any bad guys.”
“I’ll be fine. I work out with a heavy bag and weights every day. And I do weapons training most days, too. That burns off a lot of calories. Of course, I need to find my bag and unpack it, but once I do, I’ll get back to the workouts.”
“Your punch bag is in your basement,” she said. “Along with your training weapons and weights. I oversaw the arrival of all your stuff and I made sure everything went to the correct rooms.”
“I have a basement?”
A smile flickered across her lips. “You really need to get acquainted with your new home. There’s a large basement area that the previous owners used as a gym. I assumed you’d want to use it for the same purpose, even if your equipment is a little more exotic than theirs was. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the men from the removal company when they were bringing the training swords and throwing daggers into the house, not to mention the training dummies that have obviously been stabbed repeatedly by those daggers.”
“All of that stuff should have been in boxes,” I said. “Trust the Society to screw it up.”
“It was boxed up, but one of the blades must have cut through the cardboard and the weapons went spilling out over the lawn. Like I said, you should have seen the looks on the removal men’s faces.” She smiled at the memory. She had a pretty smile. In fact, Felicity had a pretty everything, but I was trying not to notice. My life was complicated enough without noticing how attractive my assistant was. None of my past relationships had ended well. At the time, I had blamed that on nature of my job, but lately I had come to realize that I had a self-destructive nature where intimacy was concerned. I never let any woman get too close to me, and when a relationship inevitably headed that way, I ended it.
In fact, the only thing I had that was anything like a relationship at the moment was with my friend, Mallory Bronson, and our time together could hardly be called intimate. I wondered if Mallory would show up in Dearmont soon. She had my new address. It would be good to see a familiar face in these unfamiliar parts.
“I think I managed to get all your boxes into the correct rooms,” Felicity said, her voice cutting into my thoughts.
“Well, thanks for sorting everything out,” I said. Felicity was right; I needed to unpack all my stuff. I was here to stay, whether I liked it or not, so I might as well get used to the idea.
Sandra returned with our drinks and burgers. My mouth watered so much when I saw the burger and fries on the plate in front of me that I wondered if the cook might be casting a faerie glamor over the food. No burger had the right to look so juicy and tempting.
When I took a mouthful, the tender meat, crispy onions, and fresh garnishing created a taste sensation in my mouth that made me close my eyes and go, “Mmmm.”
A grin crossed Felicity’s face. “I knew you’d like it.”
Swallowing the little piece of heaven that was a Darla’s Double Burger, I said, “This is definitely our lunch place. Now, we need to discuss our next move in the James Robinson case.”
“We’re off the case,” Felicity reminded me. “Mrs. Robinson fired us.”
“Yes, she did. So refund her money. We’re going to have to log this as a Society Case. It means we’ll get paid peanuts for solving it, but we don’t have a choice.” It was every investigator’s intention to find and hold on to private clients. It was how we became aware of preternatural activity in the area we worked. The best case scenario was to solve the case and get paid by the client because the private rates were good. But if the client got cold feet for whatever reason and fired us, we had a duty to carry out every job to its conclusion once we had established a preternatural presence.
The Society of Shadows had been fighting the supernatural since its formation in London, England, in the year 1682. It didn’t care how much investigators got paid and only used the private cases to root out preternatural beings. If we couldn’t keep a client for whatever reason, the case became a Society Case, which meant the Society paid us to solve it at a flat daily rate. If we didn’t get clients coming through our doors, we were expected to scour local news reports to find possible preternatural activity and bill the Society at those low rates.
The loss of Mrs. Robinson as a client meant I was basically working her case for free, but I had to see it to the end. Otherwise, I’d be breaking the Society’s rules, and that never ended well.
“Okay, I’ll put it in the books as a Society Case,” Felicity said. “We’ve definitely established a preternatural presence.”
“Yeah, you saw how that creature reacted when it touched iron. It’s a faerie being.”
“The question is, why is it pretending to be James Robinson?” She took a drink of her soda and waited for me to provide the answer to that question.
“No,” I said. “The question is, where is the real James Robinson? We don’t need to know the faerie’s motive. Faeries like to play tricks and games. It probably took on James’s identity simply because it could.”
“Do you think James and Sarah are dead?”
“No, they’re not dead. They’ll be trapped in Faerie. Somewhere in the woods by Dark Rock Lake there will be a place where the barrier between our world and Faerie is unstable. Those places are usually marked by hawthorn bushes. Hawthorn is strongly connected with the faerie realm. If we find a hawthorn bush in the woods, that’s where James and Sarah will have been lured into Faerie.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper despite the fact that nobody could hear her anyway in the noisy diner. “Can you bring them back?”
I nodded. “It means travelling to Faerie to get them, but I can do it.”
“What would happen then? There’d be two James Robinsons and two Sarah Silvermans.”
“We’d take them to their homes and confront the faerie beings. Remember, the faeries aren’t really James or Sarah, they only look like them because of a glamor. Once the real James and Sarah show up, the glamor will be broken, and we’ll see those creatures for what
they really are.”
“And then?”
“And then I kill them.”
She nodded and took a bite of her burger.
There was no other acceptable outcome to this. These faeries had meddled in human affairs, so they had to die. It was because of events like this that the Society of Shadows existed; to protect humans from preternatural beings.
“So, when do we go to Dark Rock Lake?” Felicity asked.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “It’s too late to drive up there today. We’d be stumbling around in the dark by the time we got there. I need to take some equipment, too, and that’s in a box somewhere at my house, so I have to find it before we leave.”
“Check the boxes in the room next to the master bedroom.”
Well, that would make things much easier. My stuff might be still packed into boxes, but it seemed that Felicity had categorized the boxes to make my life easier. “I will. Thanks.”
We ate in silence for a while and I concentrated on the way the burger tantalized my taste buds. From the speakers on the walls, Kenny Rogers was singing about a gambler. Through the window, I watched the cars traveling up and down the highway, the sun glinting off their windshields.
“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Felicity asked me as she finished her burger.
“I guess we return to the office, check the answering machine, and hang around there for a while. If it looks like we aren’t going to get any new clients, we can go home.” Now that we had lost Mrs. Robinson and were only going to make the Society flat rate of pay on her case, we needed more clients if we were going to survive.
I waved at Sandra and got the check, leaving her a substantial tip even though I could barely afford it at the moment. But that burger had been so good. Anyway, I could bill the lunch to the Society now that they were picking up the tab for this case.
Outside, the day had heated up even more. I was definitely having a barbecue in the yard later, and a couple of cold beers. I saw the black and white police cruiser pull off the highway and enter the parking lot just as I was getting into the Land Rover. Sheriff Cantrell was behind the wheel. I started the engine and backed away from the diner as the big man heaved his bulk out of the patrol car and went inside.
The Harbinger PI Box Set Page 6
