Sumiko remained in the Great Court, understanding that I had come to an irreversible decision and not trying to stop me.
When I got to the statue, I didn’t let myself think about what I was about to do. I couldn’t hesitate and risk talking myself out of this. I placed my hands on the statue’s legs and closed my eyes, quietly reciting the magical formula that Felicity had researched.
The ancient stone was cold beneath my palms, but as I murmured the sounds that each hieroglyph in the formula represented, it seemed as if the statue grew warmer. As I continued, I felt a spark of energy jump between hands and the statue as if the stone were electrified and grounding its energy through my body.
The formula was short and I recited it quickly. As I sounded out the final syllable, I saw a white flash behind my eyelids and felt a searing heat in my head that lasted for a fraction of a second. The stone returned to being cold beneath my touch.
I opened my eyes and faced a crowd of onlookers who looked confused, bemused, and curious. Some of them took photos of me on their phones. I stepped away from the statue and walked slowly back out to the Great Court, searching my memory for anything new.
There was nothing.
Okay, so maybe the spell took some time to work. I could ask Sumiko to look into my mind and tell me if the magical door was still there. That way, I’d know if the formula had worked or if being buried in the silt at the bottom of the Nile for a thousand years had wrecked the statue’s mojo.
But Sumiko was gone. I returned to the exact place I’d last seen her and scanned the faces around the Great Court. She was nowhere to be seen. The museum was busy but not so crowded that I would lose Sumiko in a sea of people. She’d left the building, taking with her the only chance I had at discovering if my encounter with Hapi had worked or not.
The flash of heat in my head suggested that something had happened, but it could all be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. I didn’t want pyrotechnics, I wanted results.
Heading out the main door and into the rain, I decided to go back to the hotel and change into some dry clothes before calling the hospital to find out if Felicity had woken up.
As I walked through the museum’s gates and onto the sidewalk, I smelled something that made me grimace. I was sure it was the ripe, rotten meat odor of a dead body.
I looked around. I couldn’t see the source of the foul smell.
Spotting a black cab on the road, I waved at it and the driver pulled over. As I got in the back, I said, “You smell that? Smells like a dead dog or something.”
He turned and frowned at me through the Plexiglas screen separating him from the passenger area. “No, mate, I can’t smell anything. Where to?”
I gave him the name of my hotel and sat back, the stench of death still strong in the air.
Then a memory flashed into my head. I was standing near the dead body of Pierre Louvain, reading his notebooks. Sumiko was standing on the other side of the room, placing the Box of Midnight into a cardboard box. I could remember the notes written on the pages of the notebooks, in a code that was common among Society investigators but made all the more difficult to decipher because it translated into French and my knowledge of the language was rusty.
And, when he’d realized he was getting closer to finding the relic he sought, he’d changed the code in the book to a more obscure version that would be difficult to unlock for anyone not familiar with it. But to someone who had been sent to the Academy of Shadows at the age of ten and been curious enough to read some of the most obscure books in the Academy library, breaking the code was child’s play.
As I read the code and translated it into French and then into English in my head, I realized the gravity of Pierre’s discovery. I knew what the relic was and I knew where it was hidden.
As the memory faded, so did the smell of death that had seemed to fill the taxi. My brain had triggered the memory by first accessing my olfactory senses and then leading me into the scene. Was that how all the memories would begin, with a smell?
I looked out at London through the rain-streaked windows. The statue’s spell seemed to be working slowly, bringing back memories of Paris in fractured pieces that would eventually fit together to form a whole. Hopefully, the memories that had been mysteriously locked behind a door in my mind would also return. Those memories were older than the Paris ones, so maybe they would take longer to return.
I had no idea. Magic wasn’t an exact science.
But there was one thing I now knew, and with Pierre Louvain’s death, I might be the only living person who knew it. It was something I had to keep secret. I couldn’t even let anyone know that I knew such a secret.
As we drove through the cold, wet streets of London, I mentally told myself what I had discovered in Pierre’s notes, the notes that had been destroyed for bearing such deadly knowledge: I knew the location of the Spear of Destiny, a spear that had been thrust through the side of Jesus while he was being crucified. The Spear was hidden in France, in the Abbey of Fontenay.
And although the Spear had been sought throughout history, most notably by Hitler and the Nazis, it must never be removed from its hiding place because it held a terrible power that could destroy the world. Pierre’s notes had only hinted at the Spear’s power but I’d heard in the past that the two-thousand-year-old weapon could tear the barriers between realms. With such a weapon, the Midnight Cabal could destroy the world. I shivered slightly and asked the cab driver to turn up the heat in the car.
He obliged and caught my eyes in the rear view mirror. “You all right back there?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
14
By early afternoon, I was riding the elevator up to the ward where Felicity was being cared for. After I’d returned to the hotel from the museum, I’d called the hospital and been told by a nurse that Felicity was awake and I could visit her after lunch. I’d gotten into the Land Rover and driven over here immediately.
When the elevator doors opened, I hoped that Jason wasn’t here. I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions if he was.
But there was nobody in her room except Felicity and a nurse who was fussing over the machines by the bed.
Felicity’s face lit up when she saw me. “Alec!” She sat up in bed and put out her arms for a hug.
I held her for a moment and murmured, “I’m so glad you’re okay.” It felt good to be close to her, to feel her head nestled against my shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she said when I released her and pulled up a chair to her bedside. “The doctors say I should be out of here tomorrow.”
“That’s great. And you put the flowers I brought into a vase.” I pointed at the bouquet of hyacinths and daffodils that had been placed into a glass vase near the sink.
“Oh. Did you send those? I didn’t know who they were from. A nurse put them in water for me. Thank you.”
“I was here yesterday,” I said. “You wouldn’t remember, though, because you were Sleeping Beauty in the bed. Didn’t Jason tell you I’d been here?”
She shook her head. “No. Maybe he forgot. He’s been out of his mind with worry.”
“Yeah,” I said flatly.
“So, how are you?” Felicity asked. “For someone who just survived a plane crash, you look very well.”
“I’m fine. The pilot did a great job of landing on the water. After that, it was a long wait for the Society to pick us up from a nearby aircraft carrier. Boring, really.”
She laughed. It was good to hear. “Only Alec Harbinger would call being attacked by demons and crash-landing in the sea boring.”
The nurse finished whatever she was doing with the machines and told Felicity she would be back later. She gave me a smile and left the room.
“I went to the museum today,” I told Felicity when we were alone.
Excitement flashed in her dark eyes. “Did you see the statue? What happened?”
“I did the ritual and it worked. At least I think it did. I can r
emember more about Paris now, anyway.”
“That’s great. So what really happened there?”
“There’ll be plenty of time to talk about that when you’re better. I met the satori at the museum, too.”
“The satori from Paris? What was she doing there?”
“Mostly talking in riddles. She explained that I sent the Box of Midnight to myself because she told me to. Apparently, there’s something evil roaming the earth and the box has to be in Dearmont for the evil to be eventually destroyed.”
Felicity frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve heard enough enigmatic prophecies to last a lifetime. There’s something else too: the magical door in my mind that Devon Blackwell saw wasn’t put there by the satori. It was already there when I went to Paris. Whatever memories are behind that door were locked away by someone else.”
Her eyes went wide. “What? How did that happen? When?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Hopefully, I’ll have more of a clue when the memories return. The statue ritual worked in regard to the Paris memories—they’re slowly coming back to me—so I’m hoping it also unlocked the door in my head. There’s no way of knowing until I remember something that was once hidden from me.”
“Oh my God, Alec, that’s terrible.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just something I have to live with for now. I’m sure it’ll all get resolved eventually. But I’m not here to talk about my problems. How are you feeling? Are they looking after you?”
“Yes, everyone here is great. All of the doctors and nurses looking after me are working for the Society, so I don’t have to be careful about what I say. They know all about demon poison and things like that.” Her face grew concerned and she asked, “Who do you think sent those demons to attack us?”
“My dad thinks it’s an evil secret society. I’m not so sure. That big red demon knew my name, so it reminded me of the ogres and Tunnock being sent to kill me. Or maybe my dad’s right and those in the evil secret society know me by name, but I find that hard to believe. I’m nobody special, just an investigator.”
“Do you think it’s connected to the Box of Midnight?”
“It could be. Tunnock said that his employer wanted me dead so that I couldn’t use the box against him. Maybe his employer is this evil being that’s roaming the earth and has heard the same prophecy the satori told me, that the box being in Dearmont will mean his eventual destruction. So he hired some supernatural goons to take me out and prove the prophecy wrong.”
She nodded and said, “That box may have a curse attached to its destruction, but it seems to be a curse just to have it in your possession.”
“Yeah, you got that right. I feel bad leaving Mallory babysitting the damn thing.”
She looked at me and I saw tears in her eyes. “Maybe you should go back to Dearmont to make sure she’s okay.”
“Yeah, just as soon as they let you leave this place.”
Felicity shook her head slowly. “No, Alec. You should go. Leave me here.” A tear ran down her right cheek and she wiped it away with the sleeve of her hospital gown.
“I’m not leaving you,” I said softly.
“You have to.” There was a note of despair in her voice. “I’m not coming back to Dearmont, Alec. You’ll have to give my job to someone else.”
I felt a hollowness in the pit of my stomach. “There isn’t anyone else who can do it. You’re my assistant, Felicity. What about your dream of being an investigator?” I realized that my voice sounded as if I was pleading with her, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t sit here and let her throw away her life, her dream. “It’s what you always wanted.”
“I was wrong,” she said simply. “I can’t live my life looking over my shoulder, waiting to be attacked by some monster from Hell. I’m not that kind of person.”
“You’re exactly that kind of person. You’re tough, resilient. You saved my life.”
“And look what happened to me. I ended up in here. What if that demon poison had been fatal?”
“It wasn’t.”
“This time. What about next time, or the time after that? I can’t risk being killed because I’m not investigator material. There are people who love me and it would destroy them if I were gone.”
“You mean Jason,” I said.
“And my parents. And what about you? Wouldn’t you be upset if I was killed?”
“Of course I would. I’d be devastated. But there are more ways to die than fighting monsters.”
She narrowed her dark eyes. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean settling with Jason and trying to live a mundane life. That isn’t you, Felicity.”
“Do you mean settling with Jason, or settling for Jason?” She was angry now.
“I mean both,” I said truthfully. No one could say I didn’t know how to make a bad situation worse.
“Oh, right. Just because he isn’t a good-looking preternatural investigator who spends his life fighting evil, you think he’s nothing.”
“I didn’t say that. I just don’t think he’s the right guy for you. You have a sense of adventure, a daring personality. And you have a talent that would be wasted if you lived a normal life. You’re nothing like Jason. Do you think he would have attacked that demon on the plane? Or would he be cowering in a corner somewhere while it choked the life out of me?”
She hesitated. We both knew the answer to that question, but Felicity wasn’t going to admit it. “You don’t know what he’d do, you don’t know him. And as for living a normal life, not everyone wants to spend their life dealing with demons, werewolves, and changelings. Some people just want a normal life. That isn’t a bad thing.”
“I know that, but it isn’t….”
“Just go, Alec.” She turned away from me and folded her arms. The tears flowed freely now and she didn’t bother to wipe them away.
“If you like, I’ll come back tomorrow and we can….”
“Please go.” She didn’t look at me. Her teary eyes were fixed on the foot of the bed.
I sighed and stood up. There didn’t seem to be anything I could say that would change her mind. “Can I come and see you tomorrow?”
“No, Alec. You’ll only try to convince me to go back to Dearmont with you and I can’t. I just can’t.”
“We don’t have to talk about Dearmont. We can talk about anything you want.”
She began to cry harder. “Please leave.”
I couldn’t bear to think that this was the end of the road for Felicity and me but I respected her wishes and left the room, feeling the hollowness in my gut become a black hole that felt like it would swallow me up entirely.
I got to the elevator and hit the button, wondering why I could smell gasoline. I looked around the ward for the source of the smell but couldn’t see anything that would give off such a strong odor.
When I got into the elevator and jabbed the button to take me down to the first floor—which was marked with a “G” because the British called the floor at street level the ground floor.
The smell of gas was getting stronger.
An image flashed into my mind. I was in a car, in the back seat. My mother was in the driver’s seat. Something was wrong. The windshield was obscured by a spider web of cracks shooting through the glass. The smell of gas filled the air and I could see white smoke rising beyond the side windows.
My mom turned in her seat, her face full of concern. “Alec, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said. My voice sounded young, high-pitched.
“Listen closely,” she said. “You need to get out of the car and run. You see those woods over there?”
I looked out of my window. All I could see was smoke and beyond that, the darkness of the night. But I didn’t want to disappoint my mom, so I said, “Yeah, I see them.”
“I want you to go ahead and open your door and run into the woods, okay?” She cast a nervous glance at th
e rearview mirror.
I could hear footsteps behind the car. They approached slowly, carefully.
“Alec, go,” my mom said. “And whatever happens, don’t look back, okay?”
“But, Mom….”
“Please, Alec. Run for the trees. And don’t stop running.”
Confused and scared, but determined to do what my mom asked, I unfastened my seatbelt and opened the car door. The smell of gas and burning rubber made the night air acrid. My eyes began to water.
My mom’s eyes were watering too, or maybe she was crying, when she reached out to touch my arm and said, “I love you, Alec. No matter what happens in your life, always remember that I loved you.”
I hesitated, unsure what to say.
“Now go,” she whispered. “Hurry.” I slid out of the car and, just as I had been told by my mom, I ran for the trees which I could now see at the side of the road. The night was cold but hot tears streamed down my cheeks as I ran for the cover of darkness.
Despite being told to not look back, my childlike curiosity got the better of me and I glanced over my shoulder to see if my mother was following me. She wasn’t. I saw four dark figures walking calmly up to the burning, crumpled car. Then a flash of intense blue light shot from the vehicle and one of the figures fell to the ground. The other three hesitated for a moment before rushing the car.
“Run, Alec!” my mother shouted.
I ran. Behind me, flashes of light of various colors illuminated the sky as if someone were igniting fireworks.
I ran through the night, branches and pine needles whipping at my face and arms, the sharp pain nothing compared to the crushing sorrow I felt inside. Tears streamed from my eyes and I kept repeating to myself that my mom was gone. I would never see her again. They had killed her.
The memory receded and the elevator door opened with a ding. I stepped out, realizing that I’d been crying, wiping the tears away with my sleeve. I had always believed that when my mom had been killed in a car crash, I’d been at my aunt’s house. I had a memory of an Oregon police officer coming to the house and telling my aunt that her sister had been killed on the highway.
The Harbinger PI Box Set Page 26
