Demon on a Distant Shore (11 page)

Not a day here and already on a first name basis with the proprietor. I bet other guests who missed breakfast didn’t get special treatment, but Royal has a unique kind of charm.

We sat cross-legged on the rug, munching as we talked over our options. Where to start?

We dared not ask the villagers about Peter Cooper and the Nortons. I’d already talked to Greg and no doubt more probing would get back to him and make him suspicious. If he wasn’t already. Word would surely spread fast in a tiny place like Little Barrow. We had to maintain our pretense of being vacationers who knew friends of the Nortons back in the States, and asked after them all casual-like. No big deal, not our concern, just gonna say hi to the Nortons from our friends, if we happen on them.

Obviously something was not kosher. What I saw in Greg’s eyes, the note under the door . . . god forbid something unpleasant happened to the Nortons.

I carried the tray to the dresser while Royal powered up his laptop.

My right arm draped over his shoulder and chest, absentmindedly caressing his collarbone as I knelt on the bed behind him. I have not stroked my hands over many male bodies, but none feels like Royal’s, his skin so smooth it could be oiled. He leaned back into me. His voice deepened. “Do you want me to do this or rip off all of your clothes?”

I almost said
both
, but business took precedence. Unfortunately. I moved my hand.

His super-sleuth snoop programs fascinate me and he is much better at using them than I am. He knows which keywords to enter, while I kind of fly in the dark. A search for the Nortons turned up records of their births and marriage. Neither did anything to merit a listing on the World Wide Web. They didn’t even have e-mail accounts.

They were not listed in the local telephone directory and we dared not ask a local person where they had lived. Royal dug a little deeper and found their address in Little Barrow.

He leaned back. “Thirteen Beckett Lane.”

“We take a look?”

“Why not right now?”

I shuffled off the bed as Royal closed down the laptop. I knew what came next. We didn’t want to be seen walking to the Nortons’ house. Royal got to his feet, opened his arms and I walked into them.

Royal held onto me so I didn’t stagger when we came to a stop. Fortunately Little Barrow is small, so the demon dash lasted only seconds. I didn’t feel even a hint of nausea. Lucky me.

Built of the same creamy stone blocks, identical window and door moldings, the big three-story house looked like a smaller version of The Hart and Garter, with an orchard and outbuildings. At the end of a narrow, unpaved road and enclosed by a twelve-foot brick wall, it was also pretty private.

We did not see anyone in the immediate vicinity, which was fortunate, as I wore only my T-shirt.

Royal listened as only a Gelpha can. “No one is here.”

I
ouched
my way on bare feet over the gravel driveway, until Royal swept me up in his arms. A tall iron gate connected the wall to the house, the old-fashioned latch unsecured. A crazy-paving path took us to the back, with a lawn spreading from the house and narrow flower beds against the walls.

No problem getting inside a house with an unlocked door. He lowered me to the floor.

We walked along a short, dim passage, smooth brick cool beneath my feet, and into the kitchen. It felt like a cave with the ceilings so high above our heads and glossy brown kitchen cabinets all the way up the wall. No way could you reach the top ones without a ladder. A massive, shining black range the like of which I’d never seen dominated the kitchen, next to a huge black refrigerator. The room widened to what could be a casual breakfast nook, with another room beyond. All were empty.

We examined the cabinets. Royal climbed on the counter so he could look in the top ones. We found nothing in there, nor in the fridge. A thin film of dust lay over counters and appliances, balls of fluff gathered in corners and tiny pieces of paper trash littered the floor, the kind left behind when you move house.

We went through a storage room across from the kitchen, two big rooms and - from the multiple power sockets and phone jacks - an office. Then we climbed a staircase with a beautifully carved banister to three large bedrooms, a huge walk-in linen closet and two bathrooms. The old place was lovely, with polished wood floors and papered walls, tall sash windows, big built-in closets and a fireplace in every bedroom.

“They had money,” I commented as we reached the top of the staircase and stood on the third-floor landing. I don’t know why I presumed the Nortons were humble cottagers. I should know better than to jump to conclusions.

This floor contained four small, bare rooms with tiny dormer windows and a convoluted staircase at one end of the landing. It kind of zigzagged up, twisted to the left, then to the right, again to the right and met up with itself. Spaces too large to be closets but too small to be rooms were tucked into both sides.

“Box rooms,” Royal informed me, “for storage.”

Oh, right, I knew it all along.

We came back to the landing, convinced the search had been for nothing, but then Royal pointed up. The trapdoor in the ceiling had a latch with a metal loop, but we couldn’t see anything to hook it with. Of course, it could not be
that
easy.

We found the wood rod, complete with hook on the end, tucked in a niche under the staircase. Even so it barely reached the latch. When the trapdoor dropped down, a folding wood ladder dropped with it.

The empty feeling in the big old house made me edgy, so I followed Royal up those steps with trepidation, expecting a dark attic draped in cobwebs and carpeted in dust. But the space, which appeared to stretch over the entire house, was clean, the walls, ceiling and low beams painted bright white and bare light bulbs hanging down every few feet.

I looked over a landscape of old-fashioned trunks, low bookshelves bursting with hardback books and sealed cardboard cartons. Old carpet was neatly rolled and tied with cord. Two plastic wardrobes with transparent sides held clothing. Three dressers had seen better days, and an old rocking horse with faded, peeling paint sat in the middle of the long room.

Are old rocking horses requisites for attics? They always seem to lurk in them in the movies. I would scream if the damn thing moved.

We methodically went through the place.

At first I thought the clothes in the wardrobes were costumes for Halloween or some such, but they were genuine period clothing from as far back as the Victorian era. Some were still in pretty good repair, on others the sleeves were frayed or coming away from the shoulders. The cartons contained modern clothing and footwear, blankets and linen past their best. The dressers were empty.

I heard a low whistle behind me, the
wow, look at this
kind.

Royal knelt at an open trunk with a big book in his hands. “Paul’s family Bible. It dates from 1683.”

The trunk also held a dozen photo albums. We pulled them out and gave each a quick look-through. Each photo neatly labeled, Paul and Sylvia’s family stared out at us from wherever they were in 1889 through 1991.

A large manila envelope held dozens of modern wedding photographs. I turned one over and read May 3
^rd
, 2006, in small, neat print. “This is them. These must be extras they didn’t put in an album.”

From the background, I judged blue-eyed Paul to be five-eight, maybe six feet, with sandy-blond hair parted in the middle and falling to just below his ears. He had a prominent cleft chin and thick eyebrows which almost met between a nose bent slightly to one side. Sylvia stood much shorter, perhaps five-five, with red ringlet hair down past her shoulders, a heart-shaped face and large blue eyes. They made an attractive couple in their wedding finery as they beamed at the camera.

I would not move to another location and leave stuff like this behind. I didn’t think the Nortons would, not when the rest of the house had been cleaned out so thoroughly, including those box rooms. And I didn’t see them forgetting they had something akin to family heirlooms in their attic. Maybe they ran out of space before they got to the attic when they were packing and loading.

They’d be back for this and it would not fit inside a car unless they made several trips. They would need movers, or hire a small van.

Something obvious occurred to me. I gave Royal my narrow-eyed look. “I wonder if they used a moving service.”

Our room had been carefully searched; some things were not in
exactly
the same place. I went through the dresser drawers and could see our bits and pieces had been shuffled through. Nothing had been taken.

I slumped on the door with arms folded and one eyebrow cocked.

“If you say s
omething is wrong
one more time, I will put you over my knee and paddle your derrière,” Royal threatened. “Do you want to check out? Find another inn or hotel?”

Tempting. Someone went through our stuff, through
my
stuff.
Yuck!
But what brought it on? All they could know, all anyone in the village knew, was we asked after the Nortons. Interesting. “We should stay, see what pans out. What did we do to make them curious?”

“More than curious.”

I nodded, and suddenly I couldn’t stand being in the room any longer. I needed air. I felt claustrophobic. The walls closed in on me and the ceiling dropped by inches. I had to get out. I teetered in my attempt to twist back the other way.

“Tiff?”

“I’ll be right back.”    I wondered at the normality of my voice while my stomach churned. I would throw up if I stayed a moment longer.

I went through the door, down the stairs, along the passage and out of the front door with Royal at my heels.

A bone-deep chill bit at me. I thought my bare feet would freeze to the ground. How could the temperature abruptly drop this low? And how could I feel claustrophobic when outside in the ice-cold air?

Why did I feel . . . so wrong? I felt ill, a slight nausea roiling in my belly.

Wrong. Wrong place. I had to go to the rear of the inn, to the old courtyard. Cold damp flagstone beneath my bare feet, chill coming off the moss- and ivy-covered walls.

“I’m here, Tiff,” Royal said at my shoulder.

I stared like a big-eyed owl. For a split second, my head stuffed with emotions not mine, I couldn’t place him.

His hand on my shoulder brought me back. His voice came low. “I feel it too.”

I searched the shadows, at first seeing nothing. Then what I took for a large, rounded mossy stone, moved.

Small and naked, it sat on its haunches, head bowed over, long narrow toes tipped with claws splayed on the flagstones. Small horny growths sprouted from the bent knees. Muscular arms crossed over the thighs, ending in incongruously graceful four-fingered hands, but with long curved nails. Long, thick corkscrew horns rose from either side of the head. And its skin, or pelt, looked like desiccated moss.

It was so old, and had been alone for a very long time.

It lifted its head. A smooth, flat bare face, pug-like nose, narrow chin, wide thin lipless mouth and hollow cheeks. And then it opened huge, luminous eyes, brown pupils swimming in red, and looked at us.

Long, long years. Territory now barely recognizable. The land had soured and shrunk, driving it to this last bastion. And now the blood of innocents soiled the sanctuary. This was nothing new. This had happened countless times through the ages. But it was so much weaker now, so much smaller, farther diminished by this latest assault. And it could do nothing. Helpless.

With its eyes on mine, it rose. It stood no more than three-feet-tall on crooked legs.

A voice said, “Not if I have anything to say about it.” And damn me, it was my voice.