Storm Road (Old School Book 3)

by Jenny Schwartz

  Dean smoothly interjected. “Mrs. Johnson told us about the troubles you’ve been having with dead animals.”

  “Let’s see this ritual mess,” the sheriff said.

  Beulah and Dean stood back while the sheriff poked at the belongings with a pen. He stood up after a couple of minutes, rubbing his knee. “Rheumatism,” he said absently. “I’ll have a deputy photograph and collect the evidence. I only responded since I was on my way past when the call came through and we’ve been having problems with our radio reception.” He paused. “Breakfast, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to eat, too, so how about I ask you my questions over a stack of Ellie’s pancakes?”

  Beulah smiled. “Sounds good.”

  The pancakes were as excellent as always, especially served with local honey and berries, but Beulah didn’t enjoy them. It wasn’t that the sheriff’s questions worried her or that she regretted the fact that the wizard would be tracked down and questioned by the police. In fact, she hoped that might curtail some of his worse impulses. No, her distraction was due to Dean.

  Chapter 7

  Dean ate the pancakes that were apparently the diner’s famous breakfast special and answered the sheriff’s questions, and paid very little attention to either activity. Instead, he watched the interaction of the townsfolk, their conversational huddles, their curious glances to where he and Beulah sat with the sheriff, and the sense he had of being outside their charmed circle.

  Beulah wasn’t. Her British accent might be different to the local soft drawl, but the town clearly counted her as one of their own. It was there in the waitress’s conversation and the casual greetings of those who passed the table. And it showed in Beulah’s own behavior.

  She’d relaxed when she stepped into the diner, as a person did when they came home.

  He might have chosen instinctively to sit with his back to the wall and with a view of both the front door and the kitchen exit, but Beulah hadn’t cared where they sat. She’d broken away from him to exclaim over a toddler sitting in a high chair.

  “Haven’t you grown, Heath?”

  The toddler had chortled and offered her a piece of mushy, chewed on toast. The kid’s mom had greeted Beulah as a friend, her expression happily inquisitive as she glanced from Beulah to him and raised an eyebrow.

  He hadn’t heard what Beulah said in response to that eyebrow questioning, but the woman had laughed, and Beulah had swatted at her shoulder in a joking don’t-go-there gesture.

  Beulah belonged. She hadn’t been born in the town, but she’d made a place for herself here.

  He’d never had that talent.

  Like many a military brat, he’d joined the service because he couldn’t imagine any other life. He’d then swapped active duty for the courtroom, something he regretted some days. There were times when the justice system was less satisfying than direct action, but he believed in the system. Overall, he would have said he was content with his life.

  But that was when he lived in the bubble of the military world. It was a big bubble. There was little need to ever emerge from it. His friends and his dad were part of that world. But in this small town he got a glimpse of what he was missing.

  He belonged everywhere and nowhere. The people of this town belonged to each other.

  The waitress offered to top up his coffee and he nodded his thanks.

  It wasn’t that he idealized small town life. There’d be rivalries, even hatred. Apathy from some. Others would be abusers and losers. But the good and the bad of the community built the whole of it. People here weren’t a statistic to one another. They weren’t a rank and serial number.

  “Thanks. That’ll be all.” The sheriff stood.

  Dean brought his full attention back to the table and got a shock.

  Beulah was staring at him with concern darkening her gray eyes. She acknowledged the sheriff’s departure, then leant forward. “Do you really think you might have family around here? Or have had family around here?”

  He swallowed some coffee, buying time to try and puzzle out why the idea would concern her. “I don’t know. I don’t know much about my family history.” It had simply been the most credible excuse he could think of for their early morning visit to the cemetery.

  “Oh.” She slumped back, losing some of her intensity. “I thought, maybe. But if you’re not interested in your family history…”

  He didn’t glance around to check if they could be overheard, just assumed that they would be. “Do you think a family tie could help?” with the ghoul, he meant.

  She blinked wide, startled eyes. “I don’t see why it would.” She sounded surprised.

  Well, so was he. If his ancestry didn’t matter for tackling the ghoul, why had she asked about it?

  Her coffee cup and plate were empty. He put money on the table, refusing her demand to split the check, and swallowed the last of his coffee. “Why ask about my family?”

  But his movements had broken whatever spell had kept people from intruding on their table. It took fifteen minutes of introductions, conversation and general gossip before they escaped the diner. He decided he wouldn’t repeat his question. It didn’t matter. Beulah had just been making conversation—although when he recalled the concern in her eyes, he didn’t quite buy his own excuses.

  Nonetheless, she’d done a subtle job of steering the conversation in the diner around to the strange happenings recently bothering the town. They hadn’t learned anything new about the ghoul, but as a lawyer, he could appreciate the deft way she’d handled her witnesses. She’d been so casual, playing her cards excellently: the traveler just home and wanting to catch up.

  An introduction to him, the newcomer in town and—he could see the avid curiosity in the townsfolks’ eyes—staying with Beulah had brought people out of the woodwork. Given her destructive history with her insane dead husband, he suspected he was a rarity: an unrelated man staying in her cabin. Interestingly, no one showed any disapproval. Beulah’s friends wanted her to be happy.

  Not with me. Her life was here and out at sea on scientific research missions. He was currently based in Washington D.C., but could be posted anywhere.

  And he’d only known the woman two days.

  But they’d been intense days. They’d shared memories. More than that, she’d trusted him with her heart ache.

  “I asked about your family history because you look alone,” she said as they reached his rental car.

  He stared at her across the roof of the sensible sedan.

  She glanced away, then resolutely, back to him. “You asked.” He’d beeped the locks on the car, and she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat, leaving him staring across the sedan’s roof back toward the diner.

  You looked alone—or lonely?

  He got into the car.

  Beulah was self-consciously ignoring him. She had the rigidity of someone regretting a personal trespass.

  He couldn’t say it was okay, that she should forget about it. The thought that she saw him as lonely, and by implication, vulnerable, irked him. He swallowed his annoyance and nudged the subject onto something less personal as he started the car. “I’ve never understood people’s fascination with genealogy. People try to steal bits of someone else’s identity because they’re unhappy with their own.”

  “What?” she choked on her exclamation. “Wanting to know your family history is normal. People need it for medical issues.”

  “Okay. I’ll grant that.”

  “Gee, big of you. But also, it’s fascinating. It can put things into perspective, knowing what your great-great grandparents survived.”

  He glanced at her as he slowed for the last stop sign before they left town. “You don’t need to measure yourself against anyone else. You’re strong.”

  She shrugged. “That’s not my point. I’m saying family, knowing where you come from, isn’t just an ego trip.”

  “Is it a distraction, though?” He caught the intrigu
ed tilt of her head in his peripheral vision and continued. “Think about astrology. It looks into the future rather than back to the past, but it can give people an illusion of purpose and importance. Instead of concentrating on the here and now, on what they can fix, both genealogy and astrology distract people into dreaming of the past or future.”

  “Kind of like what we’re doing now, chasing a distraction?” she offered in a wry, amused tone. “We should be deciding what to do about the ghoul.”

  The day was perfect. The dew was already dry on the roadsides and fields, and the leaves of the trees showed deep shades of green against the blue sky. This section of the road followed the river, and the water tumbled in lazy, gliding silver and brown ribbons.

  “Is there anything more we can try against the ghoul?” he asked. “Or do we leave town to report what we know and let your friend send in her experts?”

  “If Yasmin can find a ghoul-annihilation expert and if he or she can enter the ghoul’s territory. That’s two big ifs that I don’t want to bet on.”

  “So what do we do?”

  She stretched, rolling her shoulders and flexing her fingers. “We’ve seen the ghoul in daylight, now, so we know it’s not just a night creature. And believe it or not, that pathetic wizard has given me an idea. The ghoul didn’t attack us at its base in the cemetery, which confirms that although it might be able to function during the day, it’s not as powerful as at night. So I’m going to summon it this afternoon at Millie’s. It was bound there once. That’s a connection I can use in the summoning.”

  “Can you bind it again?”

  “No. I’m not a demonologist.”

  He turned into her driveway. The sense of safety and welcome failed to distract him from his concern. “If you can’t bind it, why summon it?”

  “To vanquish it.” She opened the passenger door of the rental car as he stopped outside the garage. “We learned one other thing at the cemetery.” She got out of the car and walked with him to the cabin. “The ghoul had part of itself sunk into the graveyard dirt. Seeing that was a catalyst for me understanding what the old demonologist books were getting at when they discuss ‘beings’. The ghoul isn’t a being. It’s an entity.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “It’s not natural,” she said. “Remember the history of ghouls, how they’re associated with the mass graves of the Black Plague when people lacked the time and energy to mourn?”

  “Yeah.” He followed her into the cabin.

  She crossed over to where her dead husband’s books were stacked. She sorted through them, returning to the kitchen table with three of them. She pushed the smallest of the three toward him. “Demonology for Beginners.” It had a more esoteric title, but her name for it made sense.

  He remembered the book as the most comprehensible of the Dark Arts books that he’d flicked through.

  Beulah put her two books down and began leafing through the older of them. A jerk of her head indicated his book. “There’s a summoning spell in there that includes a list of the things we’ll need for it. If you collect those, I’ll make a list of what items can be used to disrupt a spell.”

  He dropped the book he’d reached for. “The ghoul is the result of a spell?”

  “No, but it’s an entity, not a being. It’s a composite creation, which means that if we destabilize its inherent structure, we destroy it. In theory.”

  In theory was worrying, but since he had no ideas at all to contribute, he bit back his concerns for the moment and went with more questions. “What do you mean by a ‘composite creation’?”

  “I’m still working this out…guessing really.” She dragged a notebook to her, flipped to a blank page, and began scrawling a list as she studied the open text beside her.

  He plucked the pen out of her hand.

  “Hey!”

  “Answers,” he said.

  She glared at him. “We don’t have much time.” And when he merely folded his arms. “We’re burning daylight.”

  “I’m not going into this blind,” he said.

  Her glare faltered, her gaze flicking away.

  He crouched beside her chair, replacing the pen on the table. “It’s okay. I’ll be there. I just want to know what you’re thinking.”

  Warily, almost reluctantly, she looked at him. Their faces were close. “Actually, I don’t think you should be there.” Then, it all spilled out in a rush. “We’re running out of time if the ghoul is calling in magic users from outside its territory. They won’t all be losers like the wizard this morning. The ghoul will find a victim that’ll give him power. Real power.” She took a deep breath. “We need to split up. I’ll take the supplies to summon and vanquish the ghoul to Millie’s place. You need to take a message out to Yasmin.”

  She gripped his shoulder before he could protest. “She needs to know what’s happening in here. Radio and phone contact is lost. Whoever she’s found, or will find, to tackle the ghoul needs to know what we’ve learned…in case I fail.”

  “And if you fail, what happens to you? No! Don’t turn away from me.” He put a gentle hand against her face. “What can the ghoul do to you? What can it do with your power?”

  “It’s a risk,” she acknowledged quietly. “The ghoul could steal my power as Samuel tried to do. But doing nothing is a bigger risk.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Dean—”

  “I’ll compromise.”

  She waited, her gray eyes searching his.

  Her skin was soft and delicately warm under his palm.

  “If we don’t manage to vanquish the ghoul this afternoon, I’ll drive out of the ghoul’s territory till I can get phone reception. I’ll contact your friend Yasmin and tell her everything we know and get her advice or meet with whoever she’s sent here. Then I’ll come back. I’m not magical. The ghoul will let me back in.”

  “You should stay out. Safe.”

  He kissed her briefly. “I’m coming back to you.”

  Beulah checked the supplies spread out on the kitchen table. At one end were the essential materials for a standard demon summoning.

  Dean, once he’d won his point that he was coming with her to Millie’s farm, had efficiently collected everything suggested in the basic demonology text. Salt, bottled water, chalk, blood, olive oil (to be a carrier agent if things needed to be combined), matches and candles lay neatly side by side. For the blood, he’d followed the cemetery wizard’s example and drained it from packaged steak from the general store. The chalk had been left over from her dad’s last carpentry attempt in the garage, and they’d bought more candles when they picked up the steak.

  Her own supplies for vanquishing the ghoul were more complicated. She wasn’t quite sure what might work. “Summoning the ghoul is based on demonological practices.” She fidgeted with a stick of kindling. “But vanquishing it is closer to alchemy. I’m assuming that although not initiated by a human wizard or witch, the ghoul is still spun from what the ancients called influences. They are the four elements. Earth, water, fire and air. But they form and interact in different ways.”

  It was her uncertainty as to those different ways that created the eclectic collection in front of her. Pesticides stored in the garage were the closest she could get to mercury. She’d meant to dispose of the poisons that had been stacked in the roof space when she’d bought the cabin. But having stored them safely away, she’d forgotten about them and the need for their safe disposal. Now she was grateful for the old and illegal poisons.

  She also had six bullets from Samuel’s pistol. She’d found it packed in the box of esoteric magical supplies she’d stored near the books. She hadn’t even realized she had the small box along with the books. But it gave her things she wouldn’t have thought of: obsidian chips, faded labelled herbs, even a bottle of pure alcohol. That was better than the bourbon she would have had to waste on the ghoul.

  If all went well, tonight she and Dean could toast their success with that bourbon.<
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  But her stomach twisted with dread. She didn’t believe she’d succeed.

  She looked at Dean.

  “I’m going with you,” he said.

  Huh. “You can read my mind now?” she muttered, anxious and irritable.

  He grinned faintly. “I’m getting to know your expressions. Beulah, from everything we’ve learned, ghouls are rare. We’re going to try to defeat it, but even if we don’t, I won’t regret being there for the attempt. I would regret letting you go alone.”

  Semper Fidelis. The marine motto: Always Faithful. No, Major Dean Fortescue would never leave a friend behind.

  She clasped his hand and leaned into him for a moment. “I’m glad you’re here. As hard as this is, it would be a nightmare alone.”

  His chest expanded with a deeper than normal breath before he answered. “We’re going to win. The ghoul took us by surprise before. This time it’s our turn.”

  “Yes.”

  They packed up their gear and drove her pickup to Millie’s house. Despite the midday warmth of the fine summer’s day, her skin goose-pimpled as they approached the burned out house and stopped. Their last visit had torn open her heart, spilling out the worst griefs of her life. Even now, the memory of that shattering pain sent a fine tremor through her hands.

  “What do you want me to do?” Dean’s calm voice helped to draw her back from her memories into the sunlit present.

  Even with the ruins of the house and the flattened barns, the scene was beautiful. Millie’s dogwoods were flowering. Honeysuckle and black-eyed Susan crawled over old fences and a forgotten wooden bench. Behind the house, the apple orchard, unaffected by the fire, was high with grass and wildflowers. The deer would be in there once the fruit ripened. They’d feast on windfall apples.

  “Let’s choose a site for the summoning.”

  Last night, they’d used the graveled area in front of the collapsed barns. But last night their intent had been observation. To actually engage with the ghoul, Beulah wanted living dirt and green plants under her feet. She wanted life, not death or aridity.