by Jenn Bennett
Through a window, Dare observed that a pile of unread mail had collected inside the front door. He became worried that Bishop was dead inside, so he broke into the home and discovered it had been abandoned. The electricity had been shut off—for nonpayment, Dare surmised from the late notices piling up. Bishop’s car was gone, but a pot of sludgy coffee sat on the counter with the remnants of moldy food, as if he’d run off in the middle of breakfast. A newspaper on the table was dated ten days before Halloween . . . the day the first teen went missing.
And ten days before Halloween now, I realized.
“But what interested me the most wasn’t in the kitchen,” Dare said. “It was what I found spread across the living room floor. Stacks of old grimoires and journal pages filled with handwritten notes containing bits of spells. I think he was researching transmutation. Trying to figure out the spell on his own.”
“Did he manage it?” Lon asked.
“We wondered at the time. Your father and I searched for him for several months. But it was as if he disappeared without a trace.”
“Why would you suspect that he took the kids, though?” I asked.
A pained look crossed Dare’s face. It took him a moment to answer. “The children’s names were written in his notes. They were cross-referenced with spell elements.”
“Jesus.” Lon shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“I think he was experimenting on them with magick,” Dare said. “There were notes regarding adolescent Earthbounds being stronger than adults for magical takeover. He called them ‘vessels.’”
“All seven kids taken in the eighties were Earthbounds,” Lon noted.
“Yes,” Dare confirmed. “I think he performed magical experiments on them on Samhain—the veil between earth and the Æthyr is thinnest then, you know. A good time for magick. So that’s probably what he’s planning again this time. I don’t know why it took him so long or where he’s been all these years, but he must have failed the first time around—and now he’s started up again. It’s no coincidence that both kids taken this past week are ours, Lon. It’s revenge. All the Hellfire teenagers are moving targets. My grandson, your son . . .”
A clammy chill slithered down my spine. Lon and I looked at each other, and I could see the cracks forming in his defensive facade, the fear behind his eyes.
Not Jupe. I’d be damned before he’d get taken again. I yanked out my phone and checked for my daily flood of texted Jupisms. There were three, the last one fifteen minutes ago. I exhaled in relief.
“He’s in social studies right now,” Lon murmured.
“School’s probably one of the safest places he can be,” Dare said, startling us. “The original kids never got snatched from public places. It was always when they were alone, and always at night. However, my grandson—Mark’s son—goes to Meadow Rue Academy.” The private school north of the Village. “Both of the children who went missing are students at the academy, so Mark and his wife are taking extra precautions when they pick him up from school. Even though Jupiter is attending public school, he’s still a Hellfire descendant, so I’d advise you to be cautious. Better safe than sorry.”
Lon’s leg bounced anxiously. Now I knew where Jupe got this nervous tic. I didn’t like seeing Lon scared. He was supposed to be the rock in this relationship, not me.
“Mr. Dare?” I asked, pulling myself together. “Did you call us here to warn us?”
“Not exactly. I called to ask for help. Yours, specifically.”
“Why?”
“I’ve heard what you can do, from my club members. Heard what you do in your bar, binding Earthbounds in public.”
I stiffened and glanced at Lon. Had Dare heard about my newly acquired Moonchild ability? Lon promised he would never reveal that secret to anyone, but Spooner had seen me use it in the Hellfire caves to free an incubus. I wasn’t ready to rent this ability out. It was a huge unknown—if I began using it, would I go crazy like my parents? Did it have a physical backlash I hadn’t yet discovered?—and I needed to figure it out for myself. Which I would. Soon. I just wasn’t quite over my parents’ betrayal . . . nor the loss of them, if I was being honest.
Dare’s words snapped me out of my thoughts. “If the police couldn’t find Bishop in the eighties, they’re probably not going to find him now. He’s had thirty years to tinker with experimental magick. He’s out of their league. Probably out of mine, too. But if what I’ve heard is even half true, then he’s not out of yours.” Dare leaned forward. “Do you know what my demonic ability is, dear? My knack?”
Lon had told me. “Rally,” I said quietly. To inspire groups of people and bring them together. An ace up the sleeve for someone in his position, no doubt.
Dare nodded. “I’m getting old. My ability isn’t what it once was—not even when I’m transmutated. When I die, my seat in the Hellfire Body will be offered to my family before it’s given out to the next member on the waiting list. My wife doesn’t want it, so that leaves my son, Mark. And though I’m trying to make amends with him, if he took my place, this club would fall into ruins.”
I cleared my throat. “You’ll have to forgive me when I say that the Hellfire Club disbanding wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen in this town.” It would surely cut down on illegal drug use and sexually transmitted diseases.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Dare said. “The Hellfire Club is La Sirena. The mayor, city council, and all the major business leaders that funnel money into this community are all Hellfire members. We aren’t just decadents, Ms. Bell. We are the pillars holding up this town. Did you know that the largest population of Earthbound demons in the entire world lives within a sixty-mile radius of La Sirena?”
When I lived in central Florida as a teen, I’d run into a random Earthbound once or twice a week. Later, when I moved to Seattle after my parents and I split and I was on the run, I saw Earthbounds every day. But after college, when Kar Yee and I moved here to California? As many Earthbounds as humans. Still . . . the largest demon population in the world? I wondered if this was true, or if he was just bullshitting.
“My point being,” he said after a pause, “the Hellfire Club is far more influential than you’re aware. And I’d like to live long enough to see my grandson grow up to be a better person than his father, so that I can rest in peace knowing that my life’s work wasn’t a colossal waste of time. But I can’t do that if Bishop abducts the boy. And likewise, none of it will matter if Bishop’s able to successfully complete the transmutation spell on himself and decides to massacre the entire club.”
I started to speak. He cut me off.
“Listen to me, Arcadia Bell,” Dare said firmly. “I’m asking you this as the leader of this community, and as a family man. I’m also asking honestly, without using my ability to influence you. But if I wanted to . . .”
His eyes narrowed and he trailed off. The veins in his hands stood rigid on the surface of his papery skin. The air rippled, and just as I realized what was happening, a small groan flew from Dare’s pursed lips as he transmutated right in front of us. His ears elongated to points, his brow shifted forward. Two small ridges plumped up the sides of his head, right above his ears. They didn’t quite make horns—just bumpy bands of thickened flesh with deepened furrows above them. But the most impressive change was the halo, which morphed from a luminous green cloud to a fiery oval that flickered high above the center of his head.
Like an echo, Lon shot up out of his seat and put himself between us. If Dare’s transmutation was a ripple, Lon’s was a storm. It thundered in my ears and threw my balance off. His halo flamed up into a golden pyre, brighter and bigger than Dare’s, dancing high around the majestic pair of spiraling auburn horns that nearly took my breath away every time I saw them.
The men glared at each other like snarling dogs. Hello, testosterone. I slipped my hand inside my jacket and touched my caduceus, just in case. Not the best weapon, but at least it wouldn’t explode in my hand like the penc
il in the parking garage when Jupe and I were getting almost-mugged. And even though I didn’t have time to draw a proper binding triangle, I could still shock the hell out of Dare, if need be. I was wary but not excessively worried, which was probably foolish. You know you’ve been spending way too much time with demons when two of them standing before you transmutated and ready to fight were preferable to a weak human mugger afraid of his own damn shadow.
“Now, Lon—” Dare started, his voice slightly altered by his transformation.
“Out of respect, I’m giving you a warning,” Lon rumbled, his own voice noticeably deeper, dangerous enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. “If you even think about charming her into doing your bidding, I’ll stop you—family or not.”
A spark of affection lit me up from the inside. Was it wrong that I found his show of loyalty toward me incredibly romantic? Probably. I chastised myself and pushed away those thoughts—he could pick them right out of my head when he was transmutated.
“All right, son,” Dare said. The tension between them calmed. I peeked around Lon’s legs, watching as Dare let go of the transmutation and shifted back to human. He closed his eyes and held the side of his head as if in pain, then exhaled dramatically. “Give an old man a break,” he said between breaths. “I was just trying to prove a point.”
Lon stood still for several seconds as flames leapt around his head. He was listening to Dare’s thoughts. Whatever he heard must have satisfied him, because a few seconds later, he shifted down. The spiraling horns and pyrotechnic halo faded and disappeared, as if they were never there. Clash of the Earthbounds avoided.
I released my caduceus and removed my hand from my jacket as Lon ran a hand through his hair where his horns had just been. He often complained that they left a strange itchy sensation behind, like a phantom limb.
“Okay,” I said after a few moments. “Now that we’re all best friends and trusting each other again, what exactly is it that you want me to do?”
Dare grimaced and shook his head, probably fighting off a post-shift headache. Then he looked at me very seriously. “I want you to find Jesse Bishop and stop him from taking our kids. I want you to trap him and bind him with magick, and then I want you to banish him to the Æthyr.”
Executioner.
That’s what Dare wanted from me. The same role I’d been forced to play with my parents. Icy shock froze my tongue as this realization dredged up guilty feelings that I logically shouldn’t have, but did. Damn them for forcing me into that role, and damn Dare for asking me to repeat it.
I didn’t say yes, but I couldn’t very well say no, either. Dare thanked me, nonetheless, assuming my silence was agreement. I guess it was. Who was selfish enough to refuse to help innocent kids? I might have been a few months ago . . . before my parents’ betrayal. Before Lon. Before Jupe.
But things had changed, and so had I, I supposed.
Lon and I exited Dare’s house with a shoe box of paperwork in tow, filled with information he’d amassed over the years regarding Jesse Bishop. Unfortunately, Dare had burned most of the incriminating papers that he’d found in Bishop’s home thirty years ago—the stuff that matched up the children’s names with spell elements—so all we had now was a fairly useless stack of Hellfire Club photos, a few yellowed newspaper clippings about the Sandpiper Park Snatcher case, and a list of the original missing children with addresses.
At the very bottom, below the paperwork, was a blue velvet ring box. Inside lay a small metal key about two inches long on a tarnished silver chain with a broken clasp. Dare said he’d found it at Bishop’s house beneath the kitchen table after they’d discovered Bishop missing. Dare and Lon’s father had searched the place for anything it could’ve possible fit, but came up empty.
None of this seemed useful in helping us locate Bishop, and to add to our frustration, Dare suspected the man had done some sort of cloaking magick in the ’80s, so he might be hard to find using normal methods today. Normal methods for me meant constructing a magical servitor—a roving ball of energy that fetched information. However, the last time I used a servitor to find another magician, it came back and bit me on the ass, and that’s when Jupe got hurt and kidnapped. I didn’t want to take that chance again until I was able to teach myself more advanced servitor techniques. Better to exhaust other methods first.
Lon put his SUV in gear and jerked the wheel to head down the long driveway. We stopped in front of the entrance gate and waited for one of Dare’s employees to open it and let us through.
“You didn’t tell Dare about my Moonchild ability, right?” I said.
The iron gates ground open in a slow arc as Lon fished his valrivia case out of his jacket pocket and speared me with an irritated glance. That was a no. A small relief.
I took one of the hand-rolled herbal cigarettes he offered. “I just don’t understand why he assumes I can banish an Earthbound. No one can. Unless you can find a way to travel in time to the Roanoke Colony,” I said with sarcasm. “Then maybe you could locate the magician who conjured your demon ancestors from the Æthyr and shoved them into their original human bodies.”
Lon lit up and passed me the lighter. I cracked the window as he headed out of the estate and onto the main road. “Seems to me you’ve banished all sorts of things you haven’t conjured lately.”
Sure, things in their original Æthyric bodies, like imps. Not humans or Earthbound demons in human bodies. Then again, my human parents had been sent into the Æthyr . . . but I hadn’t banished them outright—an Æthyric demon named Nivella took them. I just gave Nivella permission. It occurred to me, of course, that I might bargain with another Æthyric into taking Bishop if we were able to find him, but I didn’t say it out loud.
“Earthbounds can’t be separated,” I argued stubbornly. “Your demon nature has integrated with your human DNA. It would be like asking me to separate soul from body. Unless I could piece together some sort of antispell for the original Roanoke Invocation—which has been lost for hundreds of years—it’s a no-go. I’ve got skills, but I’m not God.”
“All I’m saying is that you don’t really know the extent of the Moonchild ability. You haven’t even used it since San Diego.”
I mumbled a noncommittal response. Call me a chicken, I don’t give a damn. My ability was unnaturally created by two homicidal maniacs masquerading as parents. What good could come of using it? Too much magick could make even the gentlest of magicians go nutso, and I had crazy genes working against me. If I started experimenting with the Moonchild ability, I was worried some sort of insanity clock would start ticking inside me. How long would it be before it went off? A month? A year? A decade? My parents weren’t even fifty when they started to go banana-boat. For all I knew, I might not even make it to thirty.
“I can do magick the old-fashioned way just fine,” I finally said.
He grunted—something I interpreted to mean “We’ll see about that.” He dropped the subject. “We need to find Bishop first.”
“Maybe there’s someone in La Sirena who knew him back then,” I suggested. “That might be a good place to start.”
“I just want to get Jupe home first.” Lon swerved out of a bicyclist’s path while trying to manipulate his cell phone.
“Stop,” I complained. “I’ll do it.”
I got out my phone and sent Jupe a message: WE ARE PICKING YOU UP TODAY OUT FRONT. It was 2:30; Lon’s housekeepers wouldn’t have left the house to get Jupe from school yet. I’d call them and tell them not to bother today.
Jupe’s reply came almost instantly: SWEET!!!! TONIGHT IS MOVIE NIGHT #3, DONT FORGET.
Groan. A few days ago, he’d emailed Lon and me a list of twenty “must-see” movies to watch before Halloween and pressured me to plan my work schedule around the monster marathon.
“He’s okay?” Lon asked, trying to hide his anxiety as he strained for a peek at my phone.
“Yep. I hope you’re ready for Gore-met: Zombie Chef from Hell.”<
br />
Lon didn’t laugh. Horror isn’t as appealing when it’s happening in your own life.
Though it was somewhat comforting to listen to Jupe’s account of his day as we drove from La Sirena Junior High to their place, it wasn’t enough to stop my mind from wandering to Dare’s request. Lon’s either, I guess, because he kept glancing at me while Jupe spiritedly yammered away from the backseat.
It took us fifteen minutes to reach the ocean cliffs at the edge of La Sirena where they lived, another five to climb the winding road up the mountain. Towering redwoods, pines, and cypress trees blocked out the October sun until we ascended to the very top. Lon owned ten acres of prime Big Sur coastal land: part hilly forest, part clifftop beauty, and a short stretch of rocky beach about a quarter of a mile drop below it all. Amanda, in full-blown gossip mode, once told me that it was some of the most expensive real estate in the country. All I knew was that it was lush and beautiful and private, and that I’d spent so much time there recently, it was starting to feel like home.
The house stood in a cleared section of land overlooking the blue Pacific, a blocky modern home with long horizontal lines, stackstone walls, and enormous plate-glass windows. Expensive and stylish, but not showy. I liked the way the stone and wood made it seem as if it was an organic part of the land.
I also liked the acre-sized ring of stones that we crossed to get there—Lon’s house ward, the same one that he’d helped me build around my house, strengthened with strong protective magick. It kept out imps, potential robbers, and any other miscellaneous intruders. Most people intending harm wouldn’t be able to cross the ward. Anyone strong enough to manage it would be dropped to their knees by a debilitating, high-pitched noise, and we’d be alerted.
