Stone Cold Lover (16 page)

“That’s it? She grew a plant?”

“Hush.” Fil scolded Spar and turned back to Tim. “There’s more, right?”

“Too much to list, most of it little stuff, but all of it like nothing else I’d ever seen. Everyone else would tell me these elaborate stories of rituals they’d done to make something or other happen, but all I heard was
post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
After it, therefore because of it,” Tim explained. “Back in the Middle Ages, people thought maggots grew out of meat, because if they left out a piece of meat, eventually maggots would appear on it. They saw the first thing, then the second thing, so they assumed the first caused the second.”

“I’m amazed all people weren’t vegetarians,” Fil muttered.

“They largely were, but that’s the subject of a lecture for the history department. What’s important is that none of what W—what she did,” Tim caught himself, “was like that. She never made any claims. She just did things and left the interpretation to me.”

Fil pursed her lips. “Do you think she could help me?”

“I think she’s the only person I’ve met who might have an honest idea of how to try.”

“Will you give me her phone number?”

Tim made a face. “I can’t. I promised I’d keep her identity strictly confidential. It was the only way to get her to talk to me.”

Spar’s lip curled back in a snarl. “Then why do you taunt us by letting us believe she could help Felicity?”

“I wasn’t taunting you, I swear,” the man hurried to assure them. “I can’t put you in contact with her, but I can do the reverse. I’ll call her myself and tell her your story. She believes that her abilities come with a responsibility to use them to help others. I’m certain that if I tell her what’s happened to you, she’ll reach out to you herself.”

Fil pulled her hand out of Spar’s grasp and held her palm up again. “This is important, Tim. I really need to talk to her.”

“I know. And I promise she will call.”

She sighed. “Then I suppose that’s the best I can ask for.”

“I’m sorry. Trust me, if I could help you myself, I would, but with all the stuff I know, I’m afraid it’s all—forgive the pun—academic knowledge. I’ve seen and recorded a lot of things happening, but I have absolutely no clue how to do them myself.”

Tim pushed up from his desk and walked around to the back to rummage in one of the deep bottom drawers. A moment later he was back, holding out a miniature glass vial.

“Here. I figure this can’t hurt.” He passed it to Fil with a shrug and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Holy water. From the Vatican. It was a souvenir. I know it’s kind of a cliché, but you are Catholic, right? I really do think that there’s a lot of power in faith.”

Fil let out a half laugh. “I was Catholic. My grandparents raised me that way. But after the past few days?” She shook her head. “I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”

“Well, consider that in the mold of a rabbit’s foot.” His mouth curved at one corner. “Carrying it won’t make anything bad happen, and if something good comes of it …
post hoc, ergo propter hoc,
right?”

Fil rose and tucked the vial into the pocket of her jacket. “Thanks, Tim. I’d appreciate it if you’d make that call as soon as possible. Like I said, it’s been a rough few days for me.”

“As soon as I shut the door behind you.” He held up a hand with the three middle fingers extended. “Scout’s honor.”

“Thanks.”

Slipping her hand into Spar’s, Fil said her good-byes. Together they stepped out of the cool brick building and into the bright sunshine.

Chapter Eleven

Squinting against the glare, Fil blew out a breath. “That didn’t go quite the way I’d hoped.”

Spar rubbed his thumb across the lines that marked her palm and frowned. “No, it did not. I had rather higher expectations of the human.”

“He’s doing what he could. We both knew it was a long shot.”

He grunted and led the way across the lawn to where they had parked the motorcycle. “I do not like this sensation of waiting for others to address a concern. I prefer to take action.”

“Yeah, I kinda had that figured out. I’m not wild about the helpless shtick, either, but right now I’m not sure what else we can do.” Spar growled something under his breath and slung his leg over the bike. She shot him a look. “Getting grumpy about it isn’t going to help, you know.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but shut it to glare at her hip. Ella Fitzgerald’s “Oh, Lady Be Good” played from her jeans pocket.

Digging out her cell phone, she checked the screen out of habit. She already recognized her friend’s ringtone.

“What’s up?” she answered.

“I. Have got. News!”

Fil’s heart sped up as she caught on to Ella’s excitement. “Oh, my God. Please tell me you talked to the Warden and he’s alive and an expert at removing demonic curses.”

“No, sheesh, Fil. Now anything I have to say is just going to disappoint you. Did you really have to set the bar that high?”

She sighed. “Just tell me it’s something more significant than finding that perfect pair of nude pumps you’ve been searching for.”

“I have an address.”

“For a shoe store?”

“For the last known location of Jeffrey Michael Onslow, antiques dealer and member of the Guild of Wardens.”

Fil nearly dropped the phone. “Why the hell aren’t you calling me from his living room?”

“Because,” Ella said with exaggerated patience, “I just got my hot little hands on the info like twenty-seven seconds ago.”

“That’s no—”

“And,” she continued, “because the address is in Ottawa.”

“That’s only a couple hours’ drive from here.”

“I know. That’s why I just texted it to you.”

“You’re the best.”

Fil ended the call and unstrapped her helmet and spare from the back of the bike. “Put that on.” She handed the extra to Spar. “We’re going for a ride.”

*   *   *

She broke every speed limit in Canada on the way to Ottawa. As the kilometers flew by them, Spar’s warm presence behind her only urged her on. He hoped for a cure as desperately as she did.

The GPS function on her phone had her slowing off the highway east of Ottawa city. The signs reported their location in Clarence-Rockland, then Rockland itself as Fil began to navigate the local roads. By the time the directions brought her to the edges of the town and sent her turning down a rural lane, it was the middle of the afternoon. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her hands had begun to sweat around the grips on the handlebars.

A long drive brought them to what looked to have once been a farmhouse set before the remains of a small apple orchard. The white clapboards gleamed in the sunshine, with crisp green trim edging the windows and picked out on the gingerbread detailing of the eaves. It looked like the kind of home an antiques dealer would live in, and she could practically picture the interior crowded with Victorian settees and Arts and Crafts dining tables.

Fil cut the engine and sat back on the bike for a moment just taking stock. She was having a hard time at the moment distinguishing the voice of her fears from that of her intuition, but her feeling just then couldn’t really be called positive.

Spar swung off the bike and glanced down at her. “What is the matter?”

She nodded to the house. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”

“Let’s go see.”

Fil took the hand he held out and followed him up the wide front porch to knock on the wood-framed screen door. When no one answered after a minute or two, she pulled it open and plied the brass knocker on the inner door. Still, no one answered.

Before she could stop him, Spar reached out and turned the knob to find the door unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped inside while Fil dug her heels in at the threshold and yanked at the back of his shirt.

“You can’t just walk into someone else’s house,” she hissed. “No one is home! We could get in trouble for this!”

“Who will give us trouble? There is no one here,” he reasoned as he stepped through the foyer.

“The police, as soon as one of his neighbors gives them a call!”

He shrugged and passed through an open doorway.

Behind him Fil groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. “The last time I committed breaking and entering, it did not go well for me. Please, please do not let this end up the same way. I can only carry so many demon marks at one time.”

Fingering the vial of holy water in her pocket—and fervently hoping Tim was right about it bringing her luck—she stepped reluctantly into the house and hurried to catch up to Spar.

The front parlor looked pretty much like she’d pictured it. Dark, original wood trim framed the door and windows and matched the heavy fireplace mantel with its intricate carving of leaves and acorns. An antique camelback sofa upholstered in green velvet sat facing the fire, flanked by leather wingback chairs. Hand-crocheted doilies topped the tea table, and she would have bet twenty bucks that the beautifully inlaid cabinet in the corner housed an antique Victrola. She’d have added a twoonie that it worked, too.

Spar had already crossed through the pocket doors that separated the parlor from what looked to her like a study. An enormous partners’ desk held pride of place in the center of the room, its tooled, spiraling legs wider around than her arms. Looking at the top, she had the immediate impression of controlled chaos. Nearly every surface was covered, with stacks of papers, boxes, pens, cups, a clock, at least three different antique desk sets that she could identify, and books.

There were books everywhere, stacks of them, shelves of them, and volumes lying open on almost every available surface. Either Jeffrey Onslow was a voracious reader with the attention span of an ADHD gnat, or he was in the middle of some kind of research. Fil wasn’t sure she’d prefer either of those answers.

Spar pushed aside the wooden clerk’s chair behind the desk and flipped through the papers laid out in the center of the blotter. “You were right. He is not here.”

“I suppose he could be upstairs, but no, I don’t think he’s in the house. It feels too empty in here. Do you think we should go back to the front porch and wait for him? He could be at work, or at the grocery store or something.”

“No, I mean he is gone. He fled from the Order.” Spar looked up and caught her gaze. “But he left us a note.”

“What?”

“Come and look.”

He waved her around to stand beside him and pushed a piece of paper toward her. The sheet of stationery was the color of fresh cream, thick, expensive, and ridiculously old-fashioned. It suited the house to a tee. On it, someone had used a wide-nibbed pen to scribble a hasty note.

“To the Guardian,” she read aloud. “I could see you coming, but not soon enough. Having run out of time, I have concluded that my best course of action is to leave now and hope to draw our enemies after me. If I have succeeded, you will find an envelope in my favorite book of poetry. I hope its contents will aid you and your female in what you must do. I fear there is One who sleeps no longer.”

She flipped the page over, but saw nothing else. “That’s it. Nicely cryptic, no? I hope you know what it means, because I’m really not up for guessing games right now.”

Spar had already moved to the bookshelves lining the room’s back wall. “It means that we must find this envelope, first of all.”

“Really? Did you know Jeffrey Michael Onslow, Spar? Were you guys buddies?” she asked, the sarcasm all but dripping down her chin. “Close enough to chat about your favorite poets, I hope.”

“I have never heard of him before.” He grunted and pulled a heavy volume from a middle shelf. It was the size of a photo album only thicker and bound in worn leather. “But his clue was an old and familiar one used by the Guild. Every Warden for several centuries has kept a copy of this book in his library.”

Fil let him set the book on the desk and flipped open to the frontispiece. “
Paradise Lost
? Seriously? Are you trying to tell me that the Guild has a sense of humor?”

“You find the poem humorous?”

“The poem, no. The Guild calling it their favorite book of poetry, yes. I mean, come on. It’s all about the fall of Satan and the war between the angels and the fallen.” He continued to look at her blankly, and she rolled her eyes. “You really don’t think that hits just a little close to home?”

Spar shook his head. “Again, religion is merely a language used to understand the incomprehensible. I can assure you that none of the Seven is a creation of a God who cast it out for the crime of arrogance. Each is a piece of the Darkness itself, torn apart to weaken them all and kept imprisoned for the sake of the living universe. This story is nothing but a bedtime tale.”

“Okay, so the Guild has a sense of humor, but you don’t.”

He ignored her and began flipping through the pages of the book. He grunted when several fell back and exposed a cavity cut into the paper. Inside was a seven-by-nine brown manila envelope.

Fil huffed out a breath. “Wow. After that note sounded like something out of a low-budget spy movie, I had myself half convinced this guy was a lunatic, but at least that much of what he wrote was true. How on earth could he have seen us coming?”

“I suspect he employed some manner of scrying, unless he had the ability to foresee the future naturally.”

“Like precognition? Are there really people who can do that?”

He shot her a sideways glance. “Are there really those who can look at a person and know his character and ability to channel magic at a glance?”

She stuck her tongue out at him. It just seemed called for.

“Don’t be a jerk. I mean, my grandma’s aunt always knew when someone was coming to visit before the doorbell rang, but that’s like five minutes of foresight. Judging by the looks of this place, Onslow had to have left at least several hours ago. It could have been days, for all we know.”

“It is possible. I have seen oracles predict wars a hundred years in the future. I believe that after your recent experiences, you might want to rethink your definition of what is and is not possible, little human.”

He flicked a fingertip down her cheek. Fil grabbed his hand and squeezed.