Fire Raiser (17 page)

At last he climbed back up to the attic door, emerged from the staircase, and slid the opening shut. Two hours of piano practice later, he had decided that the secret passage would remain his secret for now.

Because even if he hadn’t heard all the gruesome details of the Salem Witch Trials from kids who were his fellow descendants, he’d had the lecture from Holly—and Lulah, and Jesse—about Witches and secrets.

“Learn to keep your mouth shut, Peaches.”

“It pains me to say this, because you’re a sweet child without a deceitful bone in your body, but there’s just a lot of things we don’t talk about.”

“You’re truly one of us now, and that means we all keep each other’s secrets—sometimes from each other.”

Okay, he did talk a lot (not as much as Holly). And he did have a tendency to blurt at times. But if what he was beginning to suspect was true about him—something that had nothing to do with magic—he would have to get good at keeping secrets. He figured this would be good practice.

He never did get around to mentioning that staircase.

“THEY’RE NOT JUST SECRET,” he told Evan. “They’ve both got magic all over them.”

If he had expected Lachlan to say something like,
“Okay, I am now officially weirded out,”
he had underestimated Holly’s husband. There was not a single demand to have things proven to him. Cam wondered what Evan had seen and experienced of magic that had—well, not made him at ease with it, exactly, but at least had swept away the usual skepticism and discomfort.

What Evan said was, “Woodhush and the original Westmoreland were built about the same time, weren’t they?”

Cam nodded. “Before 1760—the basic fabric, anyway. There were additions and refurbishings, but the structure stayed the same.”

“So why are you sensing magic here? I thought Lulah and Jesse cleaned this place out years ago.”

With an elaborate shudder, he replied, “Don’t
ever
call her an amateur to her face!”

“I’m not,” Evan said mildly. “I’m saying that if they got rid of the magic at Westmoreland, somebody since has put it back. So what do we do with this secret staircase, Cam?”

He hesitated. “I really want to say that we leave it alone—”

“—but you’re not gonna say that, are you?” The older man grinned suddenly. “This’ll be fun.”

“Do me a favor, huh? Don’t ever ask me to represent you at a sanity hearing.”

“Aw, c’mon. You want to get in as much as I do.”

“I concede the point.” He ran his hands over the wall again, his magic pushing through it to the passage hidden inside. Once again, as at Woodhush, it was the carpet he sensed most strongly. But it wasn’t be-spelled, it had never been touched by fire—“Shit!” he exclaimed as he finally got a sense of its pattern. “It’s
new
!”

“The passage?”

“No, that’s old, probably as old as the first house. I’m talking about the carpet on the stairs in there—it’s Berber wool, and it’s brand-fucking-new!” He stood back, palms pressed together. “And so is the magic.”

“Okay,” Evan said. After a glance at his watch, he nodded to himself. “It’s ten o’clock, this place should be cleared out downstairs in about an hour. Take your suitcase back up to the room and leave it there. I’m gonna go talk to Holly and phone Lulah—” He stopped, cussed under his breath, and snagged his cell phone from his jacket pocket. A few tries yielded nothing. Cam brought out his own, handed it over. More nothing. Evan looked grim. “Somebody was telling me that he couldn’t get his phone to work tonight. The sign at the entrance is just to throw everybody off.”

“Isn’t that assuming kind of a lot? I mean, I’m pretty sure I saw somebody on the phone this afternoon when I came in.”

“One of the staff, or one of the guests?”

Cam thought for a moment. “Guy in a pale blue windbreaker—” He wanted to smack himself upside the head for sheer stupidity. “—with
Westmoreland Inn and Spa
in purple letters on the breast pocket.” When Evan nodded, Cam added stubbornly, “But I still think that’s a pretty big leap you’re making.”

“The sign asks people to turn off their cells. Anybody expecting a call is asked to leave the phone at the front desk, and they’ll come get you if the call comes through—and how much do you want to bet no calls ever come through?”

“Suppose somebody keeps his phone and keeps it on—”

“Malfunction, dead battery, interference in the signal to a tower—how many ways are there to explain it? Mine doesn’t work. I’m the sheriff—I make damned sure all my phones are working at all times. How about you?”

“New battery yesterday,” he admitted.

“Phones don’t work. Lulah felt blind here. You felt something weird with the bedspread. There’s a staircase hidden inside the walls—with new magic. There may be something that blocks magic getting in or out, but obviously inside whatever barrier it is, magic can happen. How does that add up to you?” Evan paused, frowning, and for the first time Cam felt the power behind those hazel eyes as they searched his own. Not magic, but power all the same. “Okay, what else?”

“When Holly and I were outside earlier, I thought I saw something when I looked at the house. I don’t know what, so don’t ask. Just . . . something about the windows that’s not quite right. But why was somebody talking on a phone—”

“I think you got played. ‘Griffen’ isn’t a common name in this county, but anyone who’s magically connected would check out the locals pretty thoroughly. No Witch in this county knows anything about this place, which means that whoever’s using magic wants it kept secret.” He ran a hand distractedly through his hair. “Shit, I
knew
Weiss was hiding something! The guy you saw talking on the phone was doing so for your benefit, Cam. Just in case you might think you sensed something—which you did—when you lay down for a nap. When did you make your reservation?”

“A week ago. That’s plenty of time to have me checked out, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Look, why don’t you take your stuff back up to your room and meet me downstairs in ten?”

“You have a plan?”

“Since I can’t phone Lulah, I’m sending Holly back to Woodhush to get her.”

“I like this part of the plan.” He brushed his fingertips across the wall one last time. “It may take me a bit to figure out how to get into this thing.”

“That’s
your
part of the plan.”

IT WAS FAST becoming Holly’s plan to find her husband and her cousin and get out of here. There had been a brief renewal of her discussion with Reverend Wilkens, which ended rather precipitously when Louvena Cox, bless her, sauntered over and said, “Reverend, y’all got a uterus? No? Then hush up. Holly honey, we have things to discuss. ’Scuse us please.”

After Louvena gave her a quick summary of her conclusions regarding magic and the church fires—mentioning that she’d told Evan the same things earlier—Holly promised to tell Lulah at the first opportunity. Louvena nodded satisfaction and went back outside to sit on the verandah with her second bottle of California champagne while Holly went in search of Tim and the vodka tray. But the Pledge of Allegiance’s “Under God” coterie tried to draw her into their discussion—on their side. Telling herself she really shouldn’t, she asked
whose
God they had it in mind to be under—Jewish, Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Muslim? While they (variously) gasped, spluttered, marshaled their arguments, or simply stared at her rudeness, she resumed her quest for the Stoly. Tim was nowhere in sight. Damn the boy—

“Hi again,” said Gib Ayala, and she turned to find him holding a plate of munchies and a full glass of white wine. He offered both; she regretfully declined the latter—not a good idea on top of two vodkas—but selected a slice of quiche from the former. “Interesting party.”

“You could say that.” Now that she was back in the crowded ballroom, the ceiling fans creating only a remote and ineffective breeze, she could feel the sweat of earlier activities. She wondered if Evan and Cam had retrieved the suitcase yet and how soon she could get home to a cool shower—or, failing that, if she could sneak into Cam’s room and wash. Evan did get enthusiastic. . . .

“I forgot to ask, before,” Gib said, “any progress on the book?”

“I need to figure out what book I want to write.”

“You mean you don’t put up index cards with ideas on them and throw darts?”

She snickered. “It’s occasionally a little more complicated, but that’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Commitment problems? Or writer’s block?”

She ignored the first suggestion, and especially the tone it was said in. “The psychoanalyst who coined the term ‘writer’s block’—and claimed he could cure it, which as every writer knows is absolute bullshit—was also the guy who claimed he could cure homosexuality.”

Some emotion crossed his dark face, but before she could analyze it he smiled again. “Did I tell you I was trolling websites the other day?”

“Oh, God. Again? What are they complaining about now?”

“All your characters fall in love at first sight. Nobody is ever just friends and then falls in love. They take one look at each other, and—” He shrugged.

“Thirty seconds, Holly—I bet it’s not more than thirty seconds before you want to rip his clothes off!”
Gib had no way of knowing that her smile was for Susannah’s remembered words, not for him. With Evan, it hadn’t even taken thirty seconds.

“I suppose it’s true,” she said at last. “But I never really thought about it. If the chemistry’s not there, it can’t be faked.”

“Isn’t that just sexual attraction? You don’t even have to talk to somebody before you know you have that. It’s how people end up in bed the next morning, not knowing each other’s names.”

“Well, granted. But I think there are clues, you know? Whether you’re consciously aware of them or not. Everybody’s always reading everybody else—it’s a survival skill. That guy across the river isn’t holding a sharpened spear, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to rip your throat out with his bare hands if he gets the chance. You’d better be able to figure out fast what his intentions really are—”

“Do you really think it’s that instinctive?” Gib asked.

“Absolutely.” Love at first sight—she was of the opinion that people who thought their best and most lasting relationships
hadn’t
been love at first sight simply hadn’t been paying attention.

“Does it go away?”

“It changes. That’s the getting-to-know-you part. The talking, sharing things like a movie or a concert—you find out what you have in common, what you don’t, what you can learn from each other—”

“So how many times have you fallen in love at first sight?” he asked playfully.

“Oh, hundreds,” Holly replied, hiding annoyance. “For instance, there was a tour guide in Morocco, name of Abdel—I’d still be in love with him if he hadn’t already had three wives.”

“But the chemistry—that never goes away, does it?”

Holly finished off the quiche and swallowed before saying carefully, “If you’re trying to take this where I think you’re trying to take this, please let’s not go there.”

“I’m not trying to take it anywhere. I just wanted to know your point of view.”

And now,
she thought,
I look like a conceited bitch who’d fuck anything that moved.
“So you can post it on one of the websites?” she asked with a smile.

“I’d never do that. Really, Holly. I just wanted to know.”

Jamey came unknowingly to her rescue by tapping her on the elbow and saying, “Sorry, Gib, I need her for a second.”

“Take me, I’m yours,” Holly muttered as he guided her toward a window.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. What’s up?”

“I’m supposed to give a speech about why we’re all here, and I can’t find Evan to give me the latest.”

“There isn’t any ‘latest’ that I know of.” Giving him a long look, she went on, “What you really want to talk to me about is Cam.”

“Well, yes. But I do have to give a speech.” He glanced around. “
Spec-tatum veniunt; veniunt spectentur.
”

She sighed, privately bemoaning the day he learned his first Latin declension. “Caesar? Suetonius?”

“Ovid. ‘Some come to see; some come to be seen.’ ”

“What’s the Latin for ‘You are being a smart-ass; do so no more’?”

He laughed. “I’d have to look that one up. Could you do me a favor and check my facts on the church fires against your famous memory?”

She listened as he summarized. Old Believers Baptist, September ninth, 2005. October ninth, Calvary Baptist. Third was on November eighth, First Baptist. December tenth, the Lutheran church. Then a break until February twenty-first, when the Methodists had been hit. Sixth had been the Episcopal church on April eighth. Finally, on August second, Gospel Baptist.

“So it’s a month since the last one,” Jamey concluded. “And God grant that it
was
the last one. Has Evan got anything I can use tonight to reassure people? Are we anywhere with the investigation?”

“I’m assuming you won’t be discussing the similarities and anomalies—none of which make any sense.”

“If any of this made any sense, we’d have somebody in custody right now.” Jamey started to chew a thumbnail, caught himself at it, scowled, and stuck his hand in the pocket of his black leather jacket. “None of it makes sense,” he reiterated.

“Some of it does,” she said without thinking, cursing herself when his eyes lit with speculation. She’d almost told him that Louvena had figured out there was magic at all but the Methodist fire. Sometimes she came close to forgetting that he wasn’t one of them, that he didn’t know anything about Witchcraft in Pocahontas County. “They almost all started at night—is that significant?” A lame save, but a save nonetheless.

“I thought maybe you or Evan had thought of something,” he said, disappointed.

“He’s the cop, not me. I keep telling you guys, I’m no good at mysteries and clues and things. If you were thinking of reiterating the facts about the fires, my advice would be
don’t.
We all know why we’re here.”

“Yes, and I’d only be emphasizing that Evan and I are stumped.” He shifted restlessly, then glanced at her. “So here’s a mystery I’m trying to solve. When I interrupted just now, you were looking rather puckish. Who were you planning to eviscerate?”