Storm Road (Old School Book 3)

by Jenny Schwartz

  Beulah studied Mrs. Johnson. “You said people were already keeping their kids close. Has this happened before?”

  “No.” Mrs. Johnson stood. “There’s just been a feeling. The dead animals…Janice said the killings are a sign of a psychopath, maybe someone who could,” she searched for the right word, and produced it proudly. “Escalate to killing people. The sheriff’s worried. We all are. And now this.” She moved to the phone. “We’ll keep our kids safe.”

  “We’ll be going.” Beulah took her mug to the sink. Dean followed her with his plate and mug.

  “My cellphone’s not working.” Claudia stomped back in. “I was going to call people.” She looked at her grandmother standing by the phone.

  “The signal goes down in the mountains,” Mrs. Johnson said. “The old ways are better. More reliable.” She dialed triumphantly.

  Beulah and Dean said their good-byes and left. She headed the pickup up for town rather than home. “The ghoul possessed Nate Smith. Then it used him to kill the animals and mark its territory. The places where the dead animals were found? Together, the locations encircle the town.”

  “The town, or the cemetery?” he asked.

  The pickup slowed as she lifted her foot from the accelerator. “The cemetery?”

  “The ghoul abandoned Nate Smith’s body there.” Dean’s attention was a little bit for her, and a lot for the countryside they drove through. He was as alert as if he expected an ambush. Maybe he did? Maybe he should.

  She accelerated, bringing the pickup back up to speed and keeping it steady as the road curved in a sweeping bend. The different greens of the trees, pines and oaks, beech, birch, dogwood and so many more, blended in a subtle, shifting patchwork broken up by the vibrant pinks and reds of flowering rhododendrons. Milkweed grew along the roadside, butterflies clustering over its white flowers.

  “A cemetery would make a suitable base for a ghoul.” She could follow his reasoning. “But we can’t just drive up to it. I’ll be living here long after the ghoul is gone. I don’t want the neighbors thinking I’m weird.” Part of her education at Minervalle School had been how to use and hide magic so that she never stood out. It wasn’t just magic that was taught to be used discreetly. The Old School network was all about getting things done without fuss or publicity.

  Dean focused on her, his tone changing fractionally. “I’m sorry if you giving me shelter last night caused problems.”

  “My reputation?” She grinned briefly. “I’m a meteorologist. I work on scientific research vessels for months at a time which means close quarters with all kinds of people. I’ve gotten a sense of who can be trusted—and the ward around my land let you in, which it wouldn’t have if you were evil.”

  “So the cabin is your retreat?”

  “It’s home.” She hugged the edge of the road, raising a hand from the steering wheel in greeting as another, older pickup came toward her, heading out of town. “I wonder if other people are having trouble getting in and out of the ghoul’s territory or if it’s only magic users? When we get back to the cabin, I’ll check if the landline still works, or if it works only for calls within the ghoul’s territory.”

  He shook his head. “It seems wrong that magic can affect technology.”

  “Science and magic aren’t so different. They both have their rules. There’s the church.” She pointed. “The cemetery’s beyond it.” The town was small, just a scrabble of buildings on a relatively gentle slope among the mountains. She drove on and parked at the general store. “I need to buy some food. If you come into the store with me, people will want to find out about you.”

  “But if I stay outside, they’ll tell you about the kid who was nearly kidnapped and other happenings.” Dean showed that he understood how small towns worked. Then again, human nature was the same everywhere. “I’ll amble around.”

  “If you go to the cemetery.” She watched his shoulders stiffen slightly. “Be careful. Don’t go in, and don’t cut yourself.”

  “I vividly remember the ghoul’s desire for blood. I’ll be careful.”

  She nodded and got out of the pickup, locking it automatically before shoving the key in her pocket. At the door to the store, she glanced back.

  Strolling along, broad shouldered and lean in a faded khaki t-shirt and darker brown cotton work trousers, he could have been born in the mountains. A fair number of its men and women had gone away to war, only to return for what peace they could find. He fit the scene.

  Beulah shrugged off her thoughts and walked into the store.

  Forty minutes later she walked back out with four plastic bags of fruit, vegetables and other perishables.

  Dean leaned against the hood of her pickup. He came forward and took two bags from her. He’d have taken all four, but she resisted. The bags went in the bed of the pickup.

  They eyed each other narrowly. “You okay?”

  The question asked in unison made her smile. “Yeah. I guess.” She tugged at her braid. “The town’s upset, and it’s hard hearing them worry and knowing that there’s more cause for concern than they guess.” She took a deep breath. “But I didn’t learn anything new. You?”

  “The cemetery felt off,” he said tersely, and got into the pickup.

  She considered that comment and his discomfort. “Off how?” she queried as she reversed out into the street.

  “As in spookier than Aunt Millie’s house even though it’s daylight.”

  “Hmm.” Beulah resisted temptation and refrained from detouring to drive past the graveyard. “Then hopefully it is the ghoul’s base.”

  He shifted in his seat, restless. “You said you don’t want your neighbors to think you’re weird, but if you have to put salt or fire or whatever around the cemetery to contain the ghoul, they’re going to notice unless you wait for nighttime, and by then, the ghoul might be loose again.”

  “You think it’s in the cemetery, now? Sleeping like a bat?”

  “Something’s there.” He looked away from her, out the window, and his hand curled into a fist, thumping the door softly.

  “Fighting a ghoul in a cemetery. It’s like something out of a B-grade horror movie.” She tried to laugh, but there was nothing humorous in their predicament. She changed the subject abruptly. “Why did you leave the marines to become a lawyer?”

  The question was just the tip of the iceberg of all she wanted to know. Who was this man who’d become an ally? He was handling the sudden and horrifying intrusion of magic into his life with surprising resilience. What gave him that kind of strength and adaptability?

  The familiar curves of the road and the rattle of the pickup over the one-lane bridge out of town passed barely noticed. Usually, she drove slowly to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and ground herself in it. Today, Major Dean Fortescue was more compelling than any landscape.

  “There was a guy in my unit,” he began after a short silence. It was as if he’d had to find a way into his story, as if no one had asked him the question before. Which was silly. Surely the military would have questioned his decision, not to mention his father. They wouldn’t have wanted to lose an excellent marine. “Garner was from Los Angeles. It was the gangs or sign up, so he joined the marines. Survived training. He was quiet, but you could rely on him in a fight.”

  He shifted, stretching his legs. “When I joined the marines, my dad’s reputation meant I had a lot to prove. A marine sergeant isn’t doing his job if he’s universally loved, and dad was the best. Some of the officers put me through it. But it was never anything more than pushing me. Dad had my back even if he wasn’t around, and they knew it. No one had Garner’s back.”

  “He was bullied?” she guessed.

  “No. You couldn’t bully a man as strong as him. He’d survived the gangs. We had a captain in Iraq. He and Garner cleared a house there, just the two of them. Afterward, Garner looked at the captain strangely. I noticed. But Garner never talked much. He didn’t say anything, and the next day, the captain had
Garner charged with killing a civilian they found in the house. A young girl. No bullet wounds, no knife marks. Killed bare-handed.”

  Dean looked at his own hands.

  Beulah slowed the pickup to a crawl. Shade from the woods that edged the road dappled the windscreen and hood.

  “The captain was the son of a judge, a man with connections. His mom came from a wealthy family. The captain had led a privileged life. And in Iraq, he got to kill.”

  “You’re saying he lied?”

  “Oh yeah. But who was the court going to believe, the captain or Garner, who radiated anger at the injustice, but also, defeat? He knew the case was stacked against him. But he had a JAG lawyer who believed him, who fought for him, and that lawyer…he won. Garner went free and the captain went down.”

  They were nearly home. She could see her cabin through the trees and the honeysuckle smothered gate to her driveway. “And you discovered there were other ways to fight.”

  “Yes.”

  She had her answer.

  Major Dean Fortescue had never met a fight he didn’t want to win. He could no more abandon her and her town to the ghoul than she could give up chocolate. Fighting for justice was part of who he was.

  And, apparently, he’d been thinking. “Does the containment line have to be laid by someone with magic?”

  They’d both gotten out of the pickup and reached for the bags of shopping in the back. Beulah stared at him across the truck bed. “You’re volunteering.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m trained for covert action.”

  “Uh huh.” But she could recover from her neighbors thinking she was weird. Dean mightn’t survive a third ghoul attack. “I’ll think about it. I have a couple of other ideas, too. Containment is all very well—if it works—but vanquishing the ghoul would be better.”

  Then she really thought about their situation and how new he was to magic, and swung toward him as he followed her up the porch steps. This wasn’t an ordinary fight. “You’re free to leave. Truly. I’m the one with magic and this is my chosen home town. But you—”

  “I mightn’t have magic.” Standing on the step below hers and a bit to the side, they stood eye to eye. “But from what we heard of Nate Smith’s body being found near the cemetery, the ghoul possessed the man and used him to kill animals. The ghoul could possess someone, anyone else, and send them to attack you. I can’t fight magic, but I can defend you against a human, even one who’s possessed.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Of physical violence. “You’ve convinced me. Please, stay.”

  He nodded. “And when we have time, I’d like you to tell me everything you can about my missing aunt.”

  Dean observed Beulah’s faint wince and felt unhappily satisfied that he’d guessed correctly: Aunt Millie’s disappearance involved far more than her usual journalistic zeal.

  But Beulah had backbone. She wouldn’t tell him everything he wanted to know. “Some of the story is your aunt’s to tell.” She unlocked the cabin door. “But if you promise to tell no one Sadie’s story, I think you’re in deep enough with this ghoul situation to be trusted with our secrets.”

  “As long as it’s not criminal…” Even if it was, he might be tempted to promise his silence just to hear the story. Besides, he didn’t believe Beulah would condone criminal behavior.

  “It’s all right.” She put her shopping bags on the kitchen counter and he swung his up beside them. “We’re on the side of the angels. It all began at school.”

  He got out of the way as she unpacked with swift efficiency.

  “Minervalle School is a British girls boarding school. Mom’s English. Dad’s from Connecticut. They live in London, as do my brother and younger sister. She didn’t go to Minervalle, nor do the rest of my family have magic.”

  “So Minervalle School teaches magic?” he asked.

  “Only as part of its syllabus. The majority of its students don’t have magic.”

  Now, he was surprised.

  She piled apples, oranges, bananas and cherries into a brightly painted pottery bowl. “Minervalle School opened in the aftermath of the First World War. Its founders wanted women to have a support system like men enjoyed, an equivalent to the Old Boys’ Network. We have the Old School. Minervalle students are recruited for qualities I don’t even pretend to understand, but the result is a web of graduates that covers the globe, many cultures, professions, social class and wealth. We have fingers in all sorts of pies, and we back each other up.”

  “As Yasmin did for you.” He recalled the ghoul expert who’d phoned her with information and the promise of help.

  “Exactly.”

  The ability to unthinkingly trust your unit to have your back was part of what made marines such a powerful fighting force. He could hear that same experience of loyalty—both given and received—in Beulah’s voice. It made him believe this incredible addition to the already world-changing notion that magic was real.

  Magic was real and an elite girls’ school taught it.

  Beulah bit into an apple. “You’ve been amazing, really. Accepting this weird world of magic. Taking everything I’ve said on trust.”

  “The ghoul is convincing proof,” he said wryly. “It hunted me—us—closely till we reached your land, then suddenly it was gone. And its pursuit wasn’t just physical. I reeled under the mental force of it. Yet your ward stopped it. To finally be safe sinks deeper than logic. It’s a truth you feel in your gut.” He shrugged. “The prosaic notes and textbook of magic studies you gave me last night had their own kind of convincing power.”

  She held the fruit bowl out to him, as if in reward.

  He took an apple. The fruit was tart and sweet. He licked a drip of juice from his lower lip. “I wouldn’t mind seeing some magic.”

  “I thought you would. Let’s go outside.”

  The cabin’s front porch looked across the river valley and a bit along it, enabling a stunning view of distant mountains as well as nearer forested slopes. The sun was warm on his arms and soaked through his t-shirt. The air was fresh and clean, filled with scents he wasn’t used to. I’m in the wild woods.

  Beulah suited her setting. She wore a tight green t-shirt over old jeans and the casual clothes hugged her lush breasts and curvy ass. She moved without self-consciousness, comfortable in her body and obviously fit. Her long hair shone a brilliant shade of copper in the sunlight, and she’d tied it back in a braid down her back.

  He had the ridiculous idea to tug on that braid, as a six year old boy might, teasing a girl he liked.

  She leaned against the porch railing, turning to face him. “I’m a weathermage. If I was a wizard I’d be researching spells to use to bind or banish the ghoul, but my magic fights the constraints of any spell. It doesn’t like being forced into a pre-existing pattern.”

  “Like the weather, itself,” he observed.

  “Yes. However, the weather is all about patterns, ever-new, ever-renewing. I studied to be a meteorologist so that I could learn and visualize the patterns better. Anything I do to the weather runs the risk of triggering a random amplification and creating havoc somewhere around the globe. I’ve learned to be circumspect.”

  He glanced at her red hair, tamed in the smooth braid, and at her sensual body that she seemed to ignore. Although that could just be that she’s not attracted to you, he reminded himself wryly. He was attracted to her, utterly intrigued, but the feeling needn’t be mutual.

  Still, she was so controlled that he wondered how much effort went into maintaining her serene composure—and what had caused her to create and sustain a serenity that set everyone at a distance? She was friendly with her neighbors, but she left her home for months on end.

  “So my demonstration has to be small,” she said to him, and threw her apple core toward the woods. “The raccoons will eat it.” The apple core landed well short of the trees in a field of wildflowers that edged the roughly cut grass. “Hold out your hands. Cup them together.”
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  He threw his apple core after hers and cupped his hands.

  She stepped forward and put her hands on the outside of his. “This is a contained demonstration.” Her gray eyes, tinged with a hint of green either from her t-shirt or the forest around the cabin, looked steadily into his. “Keep your hands together no matter what happens. I want you to feel as well as see the demonstration. I wouldn’t do this except that I think you’re inclined to take the lead, especially where there is danger, and you need to understand that in this situation, I’m more powerful.”

  She knew more than he did, this was her home, and she had magic, but had she ever fought for her life?

  He winced as he realized that even her words of insight and explanation had him mentally searching for an argument with which to challenge her leadership. For a man who’d grown up in the military life and chosen it as his world in adulthood, he had problems with authority. Problems he usually controlled. “A demonstration’s probably a good idea,” he admitted. To follow her, he had to trust her competence at a gut level.

  Her eyes widened as if she hadn’t expected his level of rueful self-awareness.

  Then a snow storm swirled within his cupped hands. Ice stung his palms and wind scoured them; while the back of his hands were warm, covered by hers.

  “Rain,” Beulah breathed, and the snowflakes melted, pooling in his palms. “Fog.”

  The pool of water in his cupped hands vanished. Fog clammily kissed his skin.

  “Sirocco.”

  A hot wind evaporated the fog, blasting his hands like a hair dryer.

  “Enough.” She pulled his hands apart.

  He felt the loss of her touch as she retreated back to the railing. His skin tingled from the ice and the heat, and perhaps, from her magic.

  “I am a weathermage. I can summon or dismiss the same weather systems on a much larger scale.”

  “Do they ever escape your control?” The question escaped him before he’d considered it.

  Beulah’s eyes darkened. “Not anymore.” She brushed past him to re-enter the cabin.