Eximere (The River Book 4) (17 page)

“How should we deal with her?” Roy said. “What about the
device?”

“She’ll know the moment you touch it,” they heard Thomas say
weakly.

“So we must stop her first?” Roy asked.

No answer came. They turned to look at the grave – the
material was dark again, looking the same as before they had applied the soil.

Steven felt the séance end, and hands were dropped.

“Ran out of time,” Roy said.

“Do we have any more soil?” Eliza asked.

“No,” Roy said, “used practically all of it.”

“Look, there’s a handful at least,” Steven said. “Try it.”

Roy rubbed the soil on the grave once again, and the
clearness began to form under the area where Roy applied it. It dropped down
inside the grave, clearing the first three feet, but stopped before it went
down enough to clear the body.

“If we want to talk more with Thomas senior,” Roy said,
“we’re going to need another batch.”

“I don’t relish trying to get that group upstairs to do it
again,” Steven said.

“We should concentrate on what he’s already told us,” Eliza
said. “His book is in that library somewhere. We need to find it and locate the
information about the device. We have to do it while we’re down here, we can’t
take the book upstairs and risk Anita finding it gone.”

“Agreed,” Steven said.

They rose from the ground. Roy stopped a moment to look back
down at the grave.

“I know where the rest of them are buried,” Roy said to
Steven. “But I didn’t know anyone earlier than Thomas junior. It bothers me
he’s here, where I can’t visit him.”

“You visit the others?” Steven asked.

“I do,” Roy said. “I try to. Memorial Day, sometimes during
the holidays when I miss my father and grandfather. I suppose I visited Thomas
junior’s grave the least. Being my great-grandfather, I never knew him.”

“But you know his writings,” Steven said. “You’re his
legacy.”

“So are you,” Roy said, looking at Steven, and turning to
walk back into the house. “Let’s go add another.”

◊

Three walls of the library were lined with light-colored
bookcases from floor to ceiling. The fourth wall faced the outside, and had
several large open windows. Light from outside streamed in, making it one of
the most open and airy libraries Steven had ever been in. He scanned the spines
of the volumes along the wall he’d been assigned to search.

“Don’t touch any book you don’t have to,” he said.

“That’s the third time you’ve said that,” Eliza said. “We get
it. We won’t.”

“Old Thomas really put the fear of Anita into you!” Roy
laughed.

“I don’t want to deal with that old bitch ever again,” Steven
said. “I’m just hoping Thomas’ book will give us a way to kill her.”

“She’s already dead,” Roy said.

“‘End’ her, then, if you like that better,” Steven said.
“Basically, no more Anita. That’s what I’m after.”

“Sometimes you can end things by finding a way to neutralize
them,” Eliza. “All this talk of killing, I don’t like it.”

“Well,” Steven said, “I’m sick of neutralizing. We’ve left
Michael and Jurgen alive, both of them wanting revenge, I’m sure.”

“Jurgen is certainly dead by now,” Roy said, getting down on
his knees to scan books on a lower shelf. “And we didn’t have to get blood on
our hands.”

“Anita isn’t alive,” Steven said. “No blood to worry about.
And you don’t know that for sure about Jurgen. He was a crafty little fucker
with access to lots of contraband.”

“Ah!” Eliza said, removing a book from the shelf and opening
it. She looked at it briefly, then said, “Oh, not his,” and placed it back.

“Make sure you put it back in exactly!” Steven said. “Do you
remember how it looked? You have to take note of how it looks before you remove
it, so you can make sure it goes back in exactly the same.”

“It’s the same, Steven,” Eliza said, looking at Roy.

“What about dust on the bookshelf in front of it?” Steven
said. “Did removing the book leave a dust streak?”

“There’s no dust,” Eliza said. “I’ve not seen any in the
house at all. Imagine a house with all the doors and windows open, that you
don’t need to dust. Heaven!”

“James must have been far more powerful than we initially
thought,” Roy said. “To have built this whole place, and to keep it running
like this, even after he’s gone.”

“It might be Anita who’s keeping it running,” Steven said.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Eliza said. “There’s too much positive
energy flowing through the place. I don’t know about you two, but the house,
the yard, this library even, it all makes me feel carefree. Like a burden has
been lifted from my shoulders. Just the way you want a home to make you feel.”

“Probably a side effect of the device,” Steven said. “Lull
you while it drains you.”

“You know, Steven, lately you’ve become quite cynical,” Eliza
said.

“He’s stressed,” Roy said to her.

“Goddamn right I’m stressed,” Steven said angrily. “Marilyn’s
blood, Anita’s attacks, a great-great-grandfather’s writings we didn’t know
existed but can’t keep, yes, I’m a little overwhelmed. We’re in a friggin’
underground house for chrissakes.”

Eliza walked over to Steven and placed her hand on his back.
“There,” she said calmingly, “it’s all right. We’ll figure this out, and we’ll
be fine.” She began rubbing her hand in a small circle. “We looked at a couple
of books in here the day before, remember? And it didn’t set Anita off.” She
kept rubbing, and Steven felt his anxiety melt away. Apparently Eliza could see
it leave on his face. “Better?” she asked.

Steven felt better, but stupid. “Yes,” he said sheepishly.
Eliza’s calming influence apparently worked with him, as well.
Like father,
like son
, he thought.

“Found it,” Roy said, pulling a book and turning to the
others. “Jesus, this really is it,” he said, turning the pages. “Look at
Thomas’ handwriting…and it’s thick – gotta be three or four hundred pages
here.”

Eliza left Steven’s side and walked over to Roy. She glanced
over his shoulder at the writings in the book.

“Do either of you remember any of those references I
mentioned?” Roy asked. “The ones from Thomas junior’s book? The ones we
couldn’t find?”

“Wasn’t it page 90?” Steven said.

“And page 147,” Eliza added.

Roy flipped through the pages. “Yes, this is it,” he said,
scanning the first page he found. “Oh boy, this is it!” Roy settled into a
chair, and both Eliza and Steven stood behind him, reading over his shoulder.
They didn’t say anything to each other, preferring to soak in as much of the
writing as they could. Steven found some of it slow going, and other parts
didn’t make sense, but his experience with the graves and Thomas made some of
it clear to him.

“So it’s discs?” Eliza asked.

“Apparently, two discs rotating in opposite directions,” Roy
said, still reading the book. “Each time a point on the discs meet, pulses are
sent out. The pulses drain and retrieve.”

“Does that mean it’s collecting our ability,” Eliza asked,
“not just draining it?”

“Could be,” Roy said.

“What about stopping it?” Steven said.

“Nothing here,” Roy said. “Let’s try the other reference.” He
flipped through the pages, pausing occasionally to appreciate a drawing that
drew his attention, and finally landed on page 147.

Silence descended on the three again while they studied the
page, looking for any reference to discs or draining.

“There it is,” Eliza said, pointing over Roy’s shoulder to a
section. “Couldn’t be easier. You just stop them from spinning.”

“How?” Steven asked. “With your hands?”

“Maybe,” Roy said.

“Well, it took a focus to get them started,” Steven said. “If
it takes one to stop them, we’re screwed. You’re both losing your abilities by
the hour.”

“It took a focus from upstairs,” Roy said. “Who knows down
here.”

“Any mention of where the device is?” Steven asked.

“No,” Roy said, “not that I can see. I wish we had more time
to review the whole book. Perhaps we could take it with us, and disguise the
fact that it’s missing? Rearrange some books, maybe?”

“No way,” Steven said. “Thomas’ words were ‘hunt you down.’ I
don’t want to test that.”

“I think we need to explore the rest of the house,” Eliza
said. “I just jumped in, and I saw all kinds of things are in other rooms.
We’ve still got to figure out how to deal with Anita before we stop the
device.”

“Dad, why don’t you stay here with the book?” Steven said.
“Find out as much as you can while we go through the rest of the house. When
we’re done, we’ll come back here and find you, then we’ll go back upstairs to
the house.”

“Fine, fine,” Roy said, still engrossed with the drawings and
writings he was thumbing through. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Steven and Eliza left Roy to the book and walked out of the
library. “Where do we start?” Steven asked her.

“Across the hall,” she said. “There’s a ton of stuff in a
room over there.”

They crossed the entryway and passed the staircase. “Did you
see anything upstairs?” Steven asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “there’s stuff up there too.”

They walked into a hallway on the opposite side of the
entryway, and Eliza took the lead. She stopped at the first door on the right,
which was open. The room was filled with glass cases containing ordinary
objects.

“They’re special,” she said. “Jump in and see.”

Steven walked into the room, then slipped into the River. The
objects changed shape. What had appeared as a candle outside the River now
appeared as a small pyramid. A tarnished silver tray had become a round silver
sphere with lines etched laterally. They all glowed with some type of power.

The library is where James kept the books of the people he
killed,
Eliza
thought.
This is where he kept their objects.

Safe down here where they could never be used again
, Steven thought.
What a twisted
mind. Why didn’t he just destroy them?

These objects are difficult to destroy,
Eliza thought.
He might have
tried, and reasoned it was easier just to put them in storage.

They walked through the room, observing the cases, slipping
in and out of the River.

“Any idea what these do?” Steven asked, pointing at a bowl
full of small round rubber balls.

“I have one back home,” Eliza said. “It alerts me whenever
the boundary is crossed.”

“The one you set up to protect artifacts?” Steven asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t maintain the boundary, but it
alerts me. Gives me a little jolt in my right shoulder whenever there’s
trouble. Looks like a little child’s ball, doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t change when I looked at them in the River,”
Steven said.

“They have to be tuned first,” Eliza said, “so it’ll work
with the person who’s using it. It’s got several wires that are all twisted.
Some are gold, others silver and bronze. I’ll show it to you the next time you
visit.”

“It would be interesting to see,” Steven said, still walking
around the cases.

“I got it from my mother,” Eliza said. “These objects are
hard to come by. You realize we’re looking at a treasure? There must be hundreds
of them here.”

“People sell them?” Steven asked her.

“Yes, they do,” she replied, “sometimes for thousands. Tens of
thousands, depending on what the object does. Knowing what it does can be half
the problem.”

“You mean James might have stored them here, not knowing what
they do exactly?”

“Yes,” Eliza said. “I have a friend in Spokane who is a bit
of a time freak. He studies anything related to time, and he has collected some
objects that he thinks are time based, but he’s not a hundred percent sure. One
or two he knows what they do, but the rest sit on his shelf, kind of like
these, waiting until he figures them out.”

“Any chance one of these objects would help us take out
Anita?” Steven asked.

“Sure,” Eliza said. “But which one, and how does it work?
Could take years to figure it out.”

“Surely someone has catalogued these things, at some point,”
Steven said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has tried, or at least
started.”

“Perhaps one of the books in the library?” Steven asked.

“Maybe.”

“You seem skeptical,” Steven said.

“I am, a little,” she said. “These objects usually take years
to master. Even if you found such a book, it doesn’t mean we’d be able to get
the thing to do what we want it to. My mother showed me exactly how to use the
one I have. Without her instruction, I don’t think I would have ever figured it
out.”