Halfway Hunted (Halfway Witchy Book 3) Page 8

  He smiled and raised his brows. It was affable rather than snarky. So far, so good. “Jonny. And you are?”

  “Tess, Exit, and my granddaughter, Carlie. May I apologize for our inauspicious beginning?” Gran’s smile was incandescent. She was using a her highest level of schmoozing, a feat I’d only seen on rare occasions when we were negotiating on items at the fair or second-hand store. Apparently, it worked, because Jonny’s smile deepened. He waved grandly at two small plastic-covered couches, indicating we should sit.

  “Well, Tess, Exit, and Carlie, are you customers, or simply the most polite burglars in the history of the world?” He took the only chair, crossed his legs like a country gentleman, and sat back to listen.

  “Ah. Customers?” Gran’s smile faltered, but only just. She looked around once more at the array of photos. “I confess, I don’t even know what you sell, but looking around, I presume it’s this excellent art?” She’d taken the flattery up another notch.

  I made a mental note to be aware of such charms next time she asked me to prune her rose bushes. I sensed that I’d been hustled all these years.

  “It’s brilliant. I like the mill pond, myself,” Exit added, pointing toward the wall.

  Jonny nodded. He wasn’t arrogant, but you could tell he knew the work was good. “That was taken from a family print. I’m actually a third generation photographer of sorts. I don’t advertise at all. Mostly, I’m hired by word of mouth to do contract work.”

  “What kind, if I may ask?” I was burning with curiosity, but tried for a light tone.

  “Families will have me chronicle their land, or their old cabins. I’ll spend a day or two catching different light in order to capture the moods of old homesteads, or even, on occasion, a solitary barn or chimney. Often, that’s all that remains. People like to know where they’ve come from, and I put it on film for them, just like my father.” His voice was plump with pride; this was a job that would never be completed as long as the park existed. The Adirondacks were riddled with a secret history, and chronicling that past could occupy ten people, let alone one man in a tumbledown trailer miles from nowhere.

  The silence stretched like a shadow between the four of us, until Exit broke it. “I’ve been led to believe that my wife is here.”

  Jonny’s brows shot up in a comical liftoff that compressed his forehead into a row of even lines. “Wife? I live alone, and unless I’ve gone sleepwalking and gotten married, I’m fairly certain she isn’t here.”

  I tried a different tact, since honesty was getting us nowhere. “Is there an old chapel nearby?”

  Jonny reacted as if stung. “Yes, but—well, how do you know that?” His expression began to close down, and he straightened in his rigid brown chair.

  Gran shot me a look, but I continued. It wasn’t as if he had the gun pointed at us anymore, and my charms were fully cocked and loaded, so to speak. “I have some information that Exit’s wife might be there. Her name is Reina. Have you, ah, heard of her?”

  Seconds ticked by before Jonny sighed. “No, but there’s a chapel just beyond the creek. I use it as a backdrop for stock photos sometimes, but I can assure you no one lives there. It hasn’t been used in seventy years.”

  Gran took her most gentle tone. “May we look? Exit has come a long way to find her, and if nothing else, we could assure ourselves to look elsewhere.” Again, she rolled out her best smile. I felt myself using one as well. It couldn’t hurt.

  “Well, I don’t see that it matters, but go ahead.” Jonny stood, and I noticed that he was older than I’d first assumed, but his smooth face and hands gave him a vaguely boyish quality that offset his actual years. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t join you, but I’ve seen that chapel often enough. The door is open. Feel free to look, and then if you would please leave the way you came. I like to protect the unbroken snow for custom winter shots. You never know when someone will show up with cash in hand.” He grinned, and we moved as one to the door.

  “Thank you, Jonny. Sorry to have disturbed you.” Exit’s apology was greeted with the gentle click of the door as we retraced our steps back to the truck. “I’ll take a reading.” He palmed the needle. It pointed through the trailer, to the woods beyond. “Shall we?”

  True to Jonny’s word, the chapel was less than a hundred yards away. It was magnificent in the dangerous way of recent ruins. We could identify what and who had built it, but had no hint as to what might be waiting inside. The steeple remained in place, a conical wooden structure that reached only to the lower branches of the trees now crowding the modest church. It was a single story, elevated on stone piers, and covered with chipped, lichen-encrusted clapboards. There were few windows, and even those were narrow vertical affairs that looked like an afterthought. There was something primal and Spartan about the church, and I imagined that the minister must have been stern. Whoever had worshipped here did so without a sense of joy. It was too austere for that kind of memory to hang about for Gran and I to detect.

  “For the second time to today, shall we?” Exit asked, pushing the faded white wooden door open with some trepidation.

  This time, were again greeted by silence. Uncomfortable looking pews remained more or less in their intended positions. A small lectern addressed the single room, and there was no decoration, save a wooden coat peg on the back wall. A battered armoire leaned against the back wall, its doors closed but cracked with age. There was a coating of dust on its top, thick enough to look like cake frosting. Near us, a stand with a rotting hymnal stood watch over the entrance. I looked at it, seeing that the fading book was open to a page titled In the Garden. Someone had written in fountain pen underneath the last lines. The looping, spidery script read . . . And he walks with me, truly.

  A pervasive air of disuse covered everything in the space. “Any variation?” I asked Exit, looking down at the needle floating over his outstretched hand. It pointed directly at the lectern, less than twenty feed ahead. I began to feel the first glimmers of dread just as my witchmark flared to life. Something was clearly wrong. I knew it wasn’t my spell, so that meant something else, and in my experience, the unknown was rarely good when dealing with missing persons.

  Exit said nothing, but began taking careful, slow steps forward. When he reached the simple pulpit, the needle twitched once, then lifted to indicate something past the rustic stand.

  The armoire.

  “Gran?” I asked. I loaded all of my uncertainty into that one word, only to see her smile grimly and move forward.

  “Exit, I think you should—”

  “Stop moving. Right. Now. That’s what you should do.” Jonny’s words caromed off the empty spaces around us, and for the second time in one day, I thought that peeing my pants was a viable possibility. I really needed to look into something herbal to take the edge off my nerves. At this rate, I’d have gray hair by the end of the week. Jonny racked the shotgun in that terrifying click-clack, and we all stood motionless.

  Except Gran, who cut her eyes at me and grinned. I really do love her moxie. It’s inspiring. After a quick second to catch my breath, I noted that technically it was three to one, and the one who was armed with a gun didn’t know he was dealing with two witches.

  That was something. “I thought we were allowed to go here?” I asked. I didn’t dare move, not knowing how angry or under caffeinated Jonny might be. I didn’t have all the facts.

  Apparently, he’d changed his mind. “I said you could look around. I didn’t say you could practice magic here.” He glanced at Exit’s hand, where the needle still hovered with unnatural stillness.

  Gran cleared her throat. “It’s my doing. We won’t insult you by denying the nature of our search, but you also didn’t preclude the use of magic when we asked you to look for Reina.” Her argument was tidy and brief. “May we turn around? We’re unarmed.” That was technically true, if only in the sense that we didn’t have guns or a tank hidden behind us; although both would have been nice just then.

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nbsp; “Okay. Slowly. I need you to answer a question.” Jonny was calm, his voice level. That was good.

  As one, we rotated, and the needle flipped backward to face behind us. Reina was here. Of that much I was certain, and the bottom fell out of my stomach once again. “Good enough?” I asked, trying for what I hoped was a friendly grin. I suspect my face looked like I was chewing lemon rinds, but Jonny just regarded us with a clinical gaze. The shotgun looked like the end of a tunnel. It was huge, and pointed directly at Exit.

  “What is Reina?” Jonny asked flatly.

  “Pardon?” Exit’s bewildered response was met with Jonny’s angry grunt. His throat mottled red, and the gun wavered between the three of us now.

  “I . . . said . . . what is Reina? Answer me with a question again, and I’ll ventilate your ribcage. I’ve no time for word games, warlock.” The gun focused squarely on Exit’s chest.

  “He’s not a warlock, you dolt.” Gran’s voice cracked with authority and exasperation. I could tell she’d reached her limits with Jonny and his gun-waving histrionics. So had I, but I waited for her to act. It wouldn’t do to go solo against a man with a gun when a peaceable solution was still possible.

  Jonny’s head whipped toward Gran, the gun following. “What did you just say?”

  She put her hands on hips and glared at him, fearless and more than a little mad. “Would you like me to repeat it? If not, then will you put that gun down before someone gets hurt?”

  Her distinction was not lost on him. Jonny sneered. “Someone? Seems to me I’m holding the shotgun.”

  Gran sighed, clearly exhausted with the chitchat. “Oh, for star’s sake, any fool can see that. You seem to be aware of the existence of magic, but you’re pointing a shotgun at not one, but two witches, who have, judging by Carlie’s eye roll, had enough of your petulant nonsense. I’m tempted to turn you into a muskrat out of sheer spite, but I wouldn’t want to waste a good spell. Now put the gun down and tell me why you think Exit is a warlock, because he isn’t, and you clearly don’t want us finding his wife. That makes you either misinformed or willfully idiotic, and I won’t tolerate either for one more second.”

  He looked back and forth between us, which was a mistake. Gran’s fingers flicked in his direction, and his hands began to rise toward the ceiling, out of control and jerking wildly. The shotgun went off with a thunderous boom, shattering a fist sized hole in the whitewashed ceiling. Wood chips and leaves began to pour from the hole. I couldn’t hear anything except the ringing of a high-pitched bell. Jonny’s arms were locked in place as Gran’s spell rendered him stiff and unresponsive. His teeth chattered slightly in a face of utter shock.

  Exit stood, smiling. “That was rather loud. And unwarranted.” He stepped neatly forward, plucked the gun from Jonny’s hands, and walked back to stand between us. Jonny collapsed to the floor at Gran’s magical release, and a squirrel leaned its head from the hole to chatter a blistering stream of tiny barks in our general direction.

  “I think we ruined her nest,” Exit remarked casually.

  “Not me. It was all him.” I pointed at Jonny, raising my hands to the squirrel as she finished haranguing us and left with an indignant flip of her fluffy tail. He’d have to watch his back. Squirrels are sneaky. And mean. Basically, they’re adorable terrorists.

  Gran stood over Jonny, one finger pointed at him like a loaded gun. “If you move, I’ll melt your brain and use your zombie to carry my groceries for the next forty years. Understood, lad?” Her voice was like iron.

  Exit nodded in approval at her managerial style.

  “All right. Please don’t, umm, zap me again.” Jonny looked at her finger with obvious fear.

  “Exit, open the armoire, if you please.” Gran never took her eyes from Jonny, whose face blanched to an unnatural shade of fearful white. He was hiding something that went well beyond what an eccentric backwoods artist might be expected to have. Part of my stomach roiled at the thought of what we would find. The rest was clenched with anger at having a weapon pointed at Gran.

  “Don’t, please.” The words were a naked plea. Jonny’s eyes brimmed with tears as he began to quiver with uncontrolled fear. Something was horribly wrong.

  “Exit, stop,” I barked at him as he put a hand out to tug on the shiny wooden knob that was covered in dust. Whatever was in there might be dangerous, and we certainly weren’t going to open it and find a smiling Reina, fresh from her hundred-year nap. He stopped, but it was a close thing. Desire warred with his own natural caution, and his hand swayed in the air. “We don’t know what it is, but your wife isn’t in there. You know it,” I implored him.

  Before he could argue with me, Gran stepped forward, leaning down close to Jonny’s ear.

  Her voice was low, certain, and rich with threat. “Is there anything in there that can harm us? I’ll only ask the once.”

  Jonny’s face was stricken, but he swallowed noisily and tried to answer. The first attempt was a strangled croak, the second, a rusty whisper. “I don’t know. I just know who put it in there. He said he would—you can’t imagine what he is.”

  We were all listening now, the armoire temporarily subdued in our plan of action. Gran nodded at Jonny that he should continue. Snow slid from a part of the roof, breaking the silence with a shushing thud. A bird called in the distance, muffled by the cold, adding to our sense of desolation.

  “Is that why you thought Exit was a warlock? Because you’re expecting a warlock to come retrieve whatever is in there?” Gran asked.

  “Yeah, he . . . I don’t know who he is. I just know what I was told. Do you think I want to be in this rat trap, selling pictures to hipsters who want to feel like they’re getting back to nature? I’ve been here for eight years, and I’m not the first.” Bitterness clipped every word as Jonny spoke, his cheeks burning with shame.

  “What do you mean, you’re not the first?” I asked. The unspoken implications weren’t good.

  “Just what I said. There’ve been other people here, running some cover business. They even moved the trailer once, and the first cabin burned down in the 1940s. I was told that if I left, they would find me. Then they showed me the guy who was here.” He went pale again, his eyes darting out to the side of the chapel, where an unbroken patch of snow covered the churchyard. “He’s out there. Buried. Or at least, what’s left of him is out there.”

  “Jonny, I need to know who is making you stay out here. How did they find you? Do you have a family?” Gran asked.

  “No, no family. I was hired in New York City, answered a call for portfolios of the Adirondacks. I interviewed with a man who said he had a lot of work, but that he wanted to personally show me what I would be photographing. That was in 2009. I’ve been here, or near here, since then, and I’m too scared to leave.” His voice dropped again. “I was told the man before me was here for twenty years. All I saw was his bones. They looked like he’d been reshaped, or something. I wasn’t even sure it was a human until I saw the fillings in his teeth. The warlock said that if I tried to run, he would make my last days into a storm of agony, and that I would die screaming out here. Alone. Forgotten.” The last came out as a choke. Jonny was already forgotten, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet, and we could help him if he kept talking.

  “Who did this thing to the other man? Who hired you?” Gran asked. Her voice simmered with anger. I understood, the hair on my neck was up and I didn’t even know the whole story.

  “Can you save me?” It was the most desperate four words I’ve ever heard, and I saw Jonny as the broken thing that he really was, rather than some lonely menace.

  In response, Gran merely nodded, then said, “Look over there.” In the corner of the chapel stood a battered bookcase, more rhombus than square and dry with age. Gran waved at it and hissed, a bolt of pure sunlight lancing from her hand to strike the old wood like an avenging angel. The bookcase didn’t shatter, it vaporized, leaving a tinkling array of golden motes that showered to the earth like the forgotten em
bers of a holiday sparkler. “We can protect you, Jonny.”

  Exit whistled softly. “So that’s what witchcraft is all about.” He nodded appreciatively in the way of a man who had just seen an exceptionally effective tool.

  Jonny’s eyes returned to a normal shape only after a long, slack-jawed moment of awe at Gran’s display. “I—I believe you, lady. I do.” He struggled to his feet, brushing dust from the crease of his pants. “He was British, or at least he had their accent. He introduced himself as Rick, but I thought it was a cover. It was too common for the way he looked, you know?”

  “Yeah, it’s more dudebro than British. Why’d you take the job?” I knew the answer, but wanted confirmation.

  He sighed, a long, mournful whistle of regret. “Money. I needed the money, and he paid upfront. It was too good to be true. And it cost me everything.”

  “Not everything. You’re free now, or at least you will be in a few moments.” Gran put a hand on his arm, then continued her interrogation. “You really know nothing of what is in there?”

  “I swear it. I was told not to come in this building, but to guard it with my life. If anything came to harm, Rick said that death would be the least of my problems.” A sour smile curled his lips, and I saw a man who’d been living with paralyzing fear for years. “I believed him. Heaven help me, but I believed every word of it.”

  Gran took his hand in a gesture of absolution, and I knew that she was going to work to save the man. “How did he keep you here? Are you marked?” Her eyes began roving over him as if she could detect the means by which he was tethered to his so-called home.

  “Here.” He pushed up a sleeve to reveal a circle of runes around one forearm. They were red, a color that seemed at odds with his pale skin, and I grew faintly uneasy looking at them.

  “Mmm-hmm. Nasty business, that.” Gran lifted his arm and inspected it, only to have Exit clear his throat with meaning. “I know, Exit. But if that armoire is rigged with a trap and this rune goes off, it might kill all of us. Or release a demon, although that’s unlikely. At minimum, it would kill Jonny, and I don’t think we should spill blood cheaply, do you?”