The Messenger: A Novel

by Burke, Jan

  “I may not need the list after all,” Tyler said. “Tell me what else you’ve learned.”

  “Eduardo made his wealth from a treasure, it seems, but this former boss doesn’t believe that Eduardo did it legally. Because he started hearing rumors that Eduardo had made a discovery so soon after he left the company, at first he worried that Eduardo had stolen something from the Morgan Bray. When he investigated, though, he learned that the items Eduardo sold were two hundred or more years older than anything recovered from the Morgan Bray, and were mostly Spanish and Portuguese. The Morgan Bray was an English ship, not carrying anything in the nature of those items.”

  “He’s had a silent partner,” Tyler said. “And I’m sure whatever wealth he acquired after that was by subtler means.”

  “That fits,” Alex said. “I had suspected as much. What little information about his wealth I could track down didn’t match up with the expertise one would find in most twenty-one-year-old salvage divers. Every description of him before that dive was of an impulsive, rough-edged, and rather immature young man. Energetic and smart, but uneducated.”

  “And after?”

  “I can answer that,” Brad said. “If I hadn’t seen that photo, Alex, I’d swear the Eduardo I met was a different person. The Eduardo I knew was sophisticated, unassuming, soft-spoken…”

  “Worldly-wise?”

  Brad hesitated. “Yes, but world-weary, too. Cynical to the point of seeming depressed.”

  They were interrupted by the entrance of Rebecca.

  “Amanda, are you ready to go?”

  “Alex?” Tyler asked.

  “Sure. If Amanda’s ready?”

  “Alex is not coming with us!” Rebecca said.

  “Yes, she is,” Amanda said. “But—Tyler, do you think Rebecca should leave?”

  “Not this again!” Rebecca said. “I refuse to be held prisoner here!”

  Tyler sighed. “No one wants you to stay here if you don’t want to.” To Amanda he said, “I’ve tried to warn her. She refuses to hear what I have to say.”

  “Rebecca, you do understand that you could be in danger?” Amanda asked.

  “In danger of what?”

  “The people who attacked Brad might attack you.”

  “Nice try. Look, if you don’t want me staying at your house, I’ll just go home to the desert. But I am not staying here.” She stalked out of the room.

  “If you’d like, I’ll have someone patrol there every hour or so,” Alex said. “We’re stretched a little thin right now, but in a few days the people who’ve been tracking down Eduardo can be back here, and I can have someone there twenty-four/seven after that.”

  “Thanks,” Tyler said. “I think that would be a good idea, if Amanda won’t mind?”

  “Not at all. Thanks.” Amanda sighed. “I guess we’d better get going, or she’s going to get down to my house and discover she doesn’t have a key to get in.”

  “Hurry up then,” Brad said with disgust, “or she’ll break in a door.”

  Half an hour later, Amanda stood on the small balcony outside her room. Alex had sensed that she needed time to herself, and left her alone on the pretext of checking the house to make sure it was still secure. Amanda had already packed up what she needed, and now she simply tried to calm herself, to overcome the feeling of foreboding that had been pressing in on her from the time she had heard that the wreckage of the Morgan Bray had been discovered. Was Adrian deVille alive again?

  She looked up the hillside, toward Tyler’s house. She saw Shade standing on the deck, watching. She caught herself just before she waved to him and smiled. That didn’t seem such an odd thing to do, now that she had come to know the dog better. Not long ago the sight of Shade would have frightened her. Now, he made her feel safer.

  She remembered the story of the long-ago ancestor of the deVilles, the woman who had stood up to Adrian and befriended Shade. Shade would keep them safe.

  She heard the rustling of leaves beneath the balcony.

  She looked down and saw Shade.

  Startled, she looked toward Tyler’s house. Shade was still there.

  She looked between the two dogs, and although Shade was at some distance from her, she knew him well enough now to be able to see differences in the two dogs. Although also a very large dog, this one seemed to be a little less muscular than Shade, to have a slighter build. She stared, and her stare was returned unflinchingly. The dog seemed as fascinated with her as she was with him.

  Him? Her? She couldn’t tell from here. She had the oddest feeling about it, as if she should hurry downstairs to be with it.

  Not every big black dog was Shade, she reminded herself sternly, and her hand came up to touch her scar.

  Suddenly the dog’s head turned, as if it had heard a distant sound, and it moved out of sight.

  “Amanda? Did you find the spare key?”

  Rebecca’s voice snapped her out of the spell the dog seemed to have cast on her.

  She turned to see Rebecca standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

  On the way back to Tyler’s house, she thought of the night she and Alex had driven past the woods. Amanda had been distracted by seeing the ghosts, but Alex had said that she thought she had seen Shade.

  It seemed likely that this other dog was the one that had been coming around her house. But was it another cemetery dog? Could there be more than one at a time? Was there someone else like Tyler, nearby? She recalled something in the pages Tyler had given her to read—a claim by Adrian that he didn’t need Shade, that he would find another cemetery dog.

  What if Adrian found this dog? What if he had already found it, and the dog was his?

  She shivered. She would ask Tyler what to do.

  But when she got back to the house, she learned that Tyler had just left.

  Ron said, “He asked me to ask you to please—I was supposed to emphasize the ‘please’ part—stay here until he gets back.”

  She agreed to do so and decided to spend some time in the library.

  The ghosts were waiting for her there.

  39

  The pill bugs—Evan called them sow bugs—arrived during the morning, and in the afternoon an insect Daniel thought to be one of the most butt-ugly living creatures he had ever seen. When he dared to ask what it was, Adrian told him it was an ant lion, the larva of a dragonfly-like insect.

  “They’re quite beautiful in the adult stage,” Adrian had said.

  Daniel found that difficult to believe.

  To his growing list of reasons for hating Adrian, he added ant lions.

  Adrian was probably completely screwing up the environment, Daniel thought. Daniel wasn’t a scientist, but you didn’t need to be one to figure out that if a thousand of something got eaten up in the cellar, whatever usually ate that something was going hungry.

  He was wondering if a thousand ant lions could be missed by anything or anyone when Adrian called Daniel and Evan to the basement.

  He braced himself and followed Evan down the stairs. They were allowed to turn on the basement light now, but Daniel really wished they were back to the candle days. The only advantage was that they could now see what to avoid on the floor.

  Adrian himself was worse than an ant lion. Far worse. Daniel knew that if they avoided looking at him, they would be punished, but the sight always turned his stomach.

  Adrian had no skin. In some places—such as along the place where a man’s rib cage would be—he had something like an insect’s shell. His arms and legs were thin sticks, little more than muscle-covered bones. His feet were thin and long, and seemed almost too narrow to support him. His toes were fused together. His hands were pincers. Over his visible muscles, ligaments, and tendons, a thick mucus glistened.

  Only his head seemed to be mostly human. He had no visible ears or nose, but he had dark eyes and hard, insect-shell eyelids now. Otherwise his mouth and other facial features seemed to be thos
e of a man. A fleshless man.

  The basement held a new odor, something like mustard, and although there was still an underlying scent of decay, the new stench masked it.

  To Daniel’s relief, Adrian was focusing on Evan tonight.

  “Do you know, Evan,” he said, “I had not realized previously what a handsome fellow you are…”

  Evan blushed, but Daniel thought it was true that Evan was good looking, and what’s more, that Evan knew it. He had used those looks to get over on more than one woman. Evan wasn’t tops in the brains department, but women didn’t seem to mind.

  Still, he didn’t blame Evan if it made him uneasy to hear Adrian talking like that.

  “How old are you?” Adrian asked.

  “Thirty-six, my lor—I mean, Mr. deVille.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Adrian’s eyelids make a clicking sound as he blinked, like the shutter of an old camera.

  Adrian turned to Daniel.

  “I have work for you to do.”

  Daniel waited.

  “It will be so much better when I have finished my transformation. I will be able to attend to these matters myself.” He sighed. “Evan tells me that Hawthorne’s lover may be back at her home. I want the two of you to make another trip there tonight, to confirm this. If it’s true, I want you to bring her to me.”

  There was only one possible response, and Daniel made it. “Yes, sir.”

  40

  Tyler stood at the bedside of Mrs. Mary Cleeves, who was about to die in Olive View Hospital, in Sylmar. He had helped her communicate with her daughter, who stood on the other side of the bed, weeping. But Mrs. Cleeves’s next words were for Tyler.

  You’re troubled, aren’t you?

  Is Adrian back? he asked.

  You already know the answer to that question.

  What does he want?

  You know the answer to that, too. She paused, then said, It’s so difficult to make decisions when one’s loved ones are in danger, isn’t it?

  Amanda’s in danger?

  Everyone who lives is in danger, Tyler Hawthorne. Even you.

  Wait! What danger is she in?

  I think you already know. Here’s something that will help you: Take good care of that dog. Now, I’ve got to be going. Thank you for helping me and all the others.

  She died. Her daughter began to cry harder.

  Would it be too much to ask, Tyler raged silently, to allow one of these people to give me a complete message?

  Silence answered him.

  He left the hospital, greeted Shade warmly, and bestowed praise and attention on him. He let him out of the van on a leash—an unnecessary device in Shade’s case, one Tyler used only to prevent legal problems, and to provide some comfort to people who feared large, black, rather ferocious-looking dogs. Near the hospital, Shade briefly took an interest in an area that Tyler knew had once been the site of a tuberculosis sanitarium.

  They got into the van, and Tyler called the house. Alex answered and said that Amanda had been in the library most of the day. “Want me to transfer the call to her there?”

  “No, I don’t want to disturb her,” he said. “Just…”

  “I’m keeping an eye on things, Tyler. I won’t let you down.”

  “I know. You’ve done a remarkable job all the way around—and under difficult conditions.”

  “Not at all. You’d be surprised by how peaceful it is around here this afternoon. Especially now that Rebecca’s out on her own. Ron and Brad keep making up rude nicknames for each other, but that’s all by way of male bonding.”

  “You’re very understanding.”

  “Me? I grew up as a tough guy’s only child. One-hundred-percent tomboy.”

  “I have a feeling that Ron would say, ‘Not quite one hundred percent.’”

  She was still laughing when they ended the call.

  He drove Shade to the corner of Bledsoe and Foothill, where a cemetery dating from the 1870s stood. They walked around the outside fence for a while, but again Shade seemed only mildly interested. He gave Tyler a look, one that seemed to say, “Are we done here?”

  “All right, but I’m just trying to follow orders. ‘Take good care of that dog.’ Not that I find the duty unpleasant, mind you. And I’m sorry if I’ve been distracted lately.”

  Shade looked off at the horizon, avoiding Tyler’s gaze. Nearly two centuries in the dog’s company led Tyler to interpret this as a signal of disappointment or disapproval.

  “Forgive me, I’m just a stupid human.”

  Shade looked at him and wagged his tail.

  “You really don’t need to agree so readily to that.”

  Shade wagged his tail harder, then romped over to the van.

  “Home it is, then,” Tyler said.

  As they got into the vehicle, Tyler asked, “Should I tell her?”

  Shade gave a sharp bark.

  “Easy for you to say. I don’t know how to begin to talk to her about this.”

  Shade stared at him.

  “All right, all right. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, just that it would be difficult.”

  Tyler found Amanda in the library, perched on a rolling shelf ladder, removing a slender volume from one of the upper rows of books. A stack of some of his oldest books was piled on a table. Shade’s reaction when they entered the room told him the ghosts were present, apparently hovering in midair somewhere behind her.

  Amanda looked down when she heard him enter and smiled, her pleasure in seeing him written plainly on her face. This was, he thought, part of what attracted him to her—she did not hide her feelings from him.

  All the turmoil he had been caught up in over the last week eased for the moment. He stood just inside the doorway, watching her, savoring his own sense of happiness and well-being. When was the last time he had felt anything close to it?

  She was glad he was home, and he was equally glad to be here with her. A simple thing, he supposed, but a pleasure he had not shared with another person before Amanda had come into his life.

  “Sorry I was gone so long,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Research, in my limited way.” She made a face and began her descent. “I’m not sure it could even be called researching.” She sat at the table and gestured to him to take the chair next to her. “I can’t even identify the languages half of these books are written in. But the pictures in them make me think the ghosts were right about them.”

  “Back up a moment—researching what?” he asked.

  “Dogs. Cemetery dogs. I asked the ghosts for help. They’re really excited about this one,” she said, holding up the book she had just retrieved. “It took me a while to figure out that they wanted me to go up the ladder.”

  “I’m sure Shade must be flattered that you’re going to all this effort.”

  “Oh, well—forgive me, Shade, but I was trying to see if there was something about the new dog.”

  He froze. “New dog?”

  “Yes! The one that’s been coming around my house.”

  He felt himself pale.

  “Tyler? What’s wrong?”

  “You’ve seen the dog? It looks like Shade?”

  “Could be his twin. Slightly smaller than he is, I think, but not by much.” She described seeing the two dogs at the same time. “But it ran off into the woods.”

  “We have to find it,” he said, coming to his feet. “We should look for it immediately.”

  “Tyler—wait. Please, tell me what’s wrong. Do you think Adrian wants that dog?”

  “That’s just one of my fears. But yes—it’s possible he knows there is another cemetery dog in the area, and if he does, he will definitely try to make it his own.”

  He started for the door, but Shade suddenly blocked his way.

  “Shade, what is it?”

  “Um…the ghosts keep pointing toward the books,” Amanda said.

  Shade wagged his tail.

  “Now?” he asked. “Under the circumsta
nces, don’t you think books can wait?”

  Shade stared at him.

  “All right, all right.” He went back to the table.

  Amanda handed him the book from the upper shelf. “Do you know what this language is?”

  He sat beside her and looked at the text. “I think it may be Euskara.”

  “Of course. I should have recognized it right away. What the hell is Euskara?”

  “Basque. Linguistically unique—it doesn’t seem to be related to any other language.”

  “Do you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. But you told me about being able to read texts to break the curse on the ring…”

  “Let’s hope that works again. Perhaps it depends on the book rather than the reader,” he said, slowly turning its pages.

  “Magic books, eh? Well, why not? This one is amazing—I glanced at the illustrations. The book is full of beautiful woodcuts. I could swear some of them are pictures of Shade.”

  “I think that’s why I bought it. I admit I haven’t looked through it since then, though.”

  “Do you have a Basque dictionary?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Basque country is near the border of Spain and France, right?”

  “Yes, although the Basque have been scattered across the world.”

  “I just wondered—well, for a couple of reasons. Alex mentioned Navarre as one of the places Eduardo visited.”

  “Right—and she mentioned that he had stayed there a little longer than elsewhere.” He looked at the book with new interest.

  “I also wondered about the book—because it seems as if it was published privately, by someone in Los Angeles.”

  He glanced at the title page. “Yes. But that’s not so strange. There have been Basque enclaves in Southern California for many years. In Los Angeles, Orange County, Bakersfield, and other places. Similar to hundreds of thousands of other people, lots of Basque men came to California during the gold rush.”

  “So they were miners?”