Texas Gothic (34 page)

“He’s probably headed over to Goodnight Farm.”

“Because you know him so well?” he snapped.

“Oh, don’t be an ass, Francis.” The words burst out of me, because what I wanted to say was
Please don’t go
back
to being an ass because I like you, and I’m not the kind of girl who likes guys who are asses
. “I’m trying to help. I really like your grandpa, and I can tell Aunt Hyacinth does, too. And he seems to really like to visit her.”

“Yeah, to chat about the Mad Monk and my dead grandmother.”

“Well, maybe she’s the only one who doesn’t act like he’s crazier than a sack of weasels because he talks to his departed wife.”

He was silent for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead. But I could tell he recognized his own description of my aunt, because I could see the muscle working in his jaw. So square, strong, and stubborn.

“I get your point.” The words seemed dragged out of him. And they were far from an apology. “Except that it’s not my grandma Em who sends him out searching in the pasture like he’s on a freaking snipe hunt. And even if he heads straight for your place, there’s miles of terrain to cross. You already know what that’s like, even without ghosts or grave robbers and people pretending to be Mad Monks.”

“Just drive,” I said. That was all he could do at the moment, and no amount of willpower would make the truck faster or the road straighter.

But when we reached the gate, I realized what I
could
do.

“Turn left,” I said.

Ben looked at me like I was crazy. “I need to get home to join the search.”

Right was the way to the McCulloch house. Left would take us to Goodnight Farm.

“We
need
Phin and Lila.”

“
I
need to get home to my mother and the search party.”

“Ben,” I said, letting my conviction color my voice. I turned in the seat so that I could look him in the eye. “Your mom has called in the cavalry, right? So they’re searching already, spreading out from your house. You lose nothing by coming at it from a different direction. Literally and figuratively.
And Lila is a search dog. She has a vest and everything.”

It was an impassioned plea, rooted in logic. I could see him try to dismiss my points, and fail.

He closed his eyes and gripped the wheel. “He’s my grandpa, Amy. He’s not always himself anymore, but losing him completely … And after Dad …”

I touched his arm. “I know, Ben. And I know it’s a lot, on top of everything else you’ve seen tonight, but please believe that we can help.”

Without saying yea or nay, he put on his left turn signal. I exhaled for the first time in minutes, and reached for my phone to give Phin the heads-up. She answered on the first ring.

d
elphinium Goodnight, when she got her game on, was a force to be reckoned with.

Mark and Lila met us at the door. All the other dogs were confined to the mudroom. Daisy was upstairs in one of the bedrooms, her migraine so bad, she threw up whenever she moved.

“That would be the opposite of helpful,” I said after Mark explained. “Where’s Phin?”

“In the workroom.” Mark glanced at Ben, who had been silent the whole drive, his tension like an electrical field around him. “How are you holding up?”

“Let’s just get this done.”

I’d pushed Ben way out of his comfort zone, and I wasn’t sure
we
would ever be comfortable together again. I met Mark’s sympathetic gaze and led the way to the back room.

Phin had covered the center counter with printed-out maps, tiled together into one big plot of the McCulloch Ranch. I was stunned she’d had time to run off all those pages, let alone match them together.

She was crushing something up with a mortar and pestle. When I came in, she handed both to me and said, like I was her lab assistant, “Keep crushing that until it’s a smooth paste. Then put it in that copper bowl with about an inch of water.”

I did as she said. A curious sniff identified marjoram, ginger, lavender, and pennyroyal, but I couldn’t begin to say what they were for.

Phin turned to Ben with the same brusque efficiency. “I don’t suppose you have anything on you that belongs to your grandfather? Something he wears or uses every day would be best.”

Ben shook his head slowly. “No. I wasn’t expecting to need a toe of bat or eye of newt, either.”

“Toe of dog,” she corrected him automatically. “What about something that he gave you? Or an item that symbolizes something you do together? I need a link between you.”

He pulled a guitar pick from his pocket. “How about this? Mac taught my dad to play, and he taught me.”

“Hmm. Yeah, okay.” She took it from him. “I can make this work. Strong emotional resonance, and three generations. Three is a good number.”

“What can I do to help?” asked Mark.

“Light that Bunsen burner for Amy. She’s got to heat that potion.”

We obeyed like trained minions, while Ben stood back and watched. It didn’t take long, and then Phin handed him a silken cord, from which dangled the wrapped guitar pick. It seemed to be weighted, so that it swung like a pendulum.

“Put this in the potion Amy is heating. And don’t think such negative thoughts. Think about your grandfather. Hold him in your mind. That’s why
you
need to do this, because you’re close to him.”

I grabbed the bowl with a pot holder and moved it off the flame. I hadn’t made a potion in seven or eight years, but it comes back to you, like riding a bike.

“Hold on to the string,” I cautioned. “The water is hot, and you don’t want to have to dig it out with your fingers. Trust me.”

He did as I said, watching me as I held the bowl between us while the potion steeped. “I thought you were the normal one.”

I smiled up at him slightly, despite the urgency of the situation. “No, you didn’t.”

“Well, relatively.” He watched me as if he were seeing a stranger, and I wanted to plead that I was still the same girl I was an hour ago in his pickup. But this was more important.

“I’m a Goodnight,” I said. “Some things I just can’t get away from. But we’re going to find your grandfather, Ben.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“No. But I believe this is our best chance.” I raised my
gaze from the bubbling leaves, a strange purple sort of tea. “Thank you for trusting me.”

He looked away first. “How long do we have to hold this in here?” he asked Phin.

“Until you have your granddad pictured in your head,” she chided from over by the map. “So stop talking to him, Amy, and let him concentrate.”

He closed his eyes, but it had all the sincerity of a kid pretending to take a nap. “This is never going to work.”

“Ben, listen to me,” I said, tapping into the part I never reached for, because it was too scary, too painful a stretch. “You know your grandfather better than anyone. When you think of him, what does he smell like?”

He shifted awkwardly. “Leather. Sweat. Horse. Tobacco.”

I caught Phin nodding at me in approval, and went on. “Tell me something he taught you. Did he teach you any songs on the guitar?”

“Of course.”

The purple of the potion was seeping up the white silk cord more quickly the more he immersed himself in memory. Phin checked it and said, “A little more.”

“Can you sing a song he taught you?” I asked Ben.

He opened his eyes, and the purple stopped rising. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

He sighed, but started a hoarse baritone croon, so like his grandfather’s my skin prickled.

“As I walked out on the streets of Laredo …”

His voice, knit with memories, drew the potion up the
silk, until the length was soaked through. “Keep going,” said Phin as she took the weighted cord from Ben’s fingers. She lifted the weight from the bowl and it dangled, twisting on its string, dripping sodden leaves into the water.

Ben kept singing, eyelids lowered as Phin moved to the map on the table.
“I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen …”

Linen like a shroud. What a macabre song to teach a little boy.

I could sense something, like a rising breeze, curling around me, around Ben, and Phin, stirring the curtains, and the papers on the table. The door was still closed, but the silk-wrapped weight began to swing in the invisible wind.

Phin extended her hand over the map, and the pick swung like a mad pendulum, though her hand remained steady.

“All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.”

“Got it,” said Phin.

Ben’s eyes snapped open. “You know where he is?”

“I know the area.” She circled it in red marker and handed the map to him. “Now Lila does her thing.”

Lila barked at her name. She was already wearing her harness and search-dog vest. As we gathered the first-aid kit and supplies, I stole a moment to ask Phin about our next obstacle. “Do you know how to work Lila on a search?”

“I’m not going to do it. You are. She likes you best.”

Last fall Aunt Hyacinth showed me how to work with Lila so I could write a paper for school. We practiced together one afternoon—but that was her
normal
search-dog training.

“I’m talking about her special training, Phin. I don’t
do
magic, remember?”

“You need to quit saying that. Besides, most of the doing is done, you just have to use it.” She handed me a familiar tabbed notebook as the guys waited impatiently to leave. “Aunt Hyacinth really did leave instructions for everything.”

Ben was wound tighter than a watch. His anxiety seemed almost a physical force, pushing me away. Even Lila felt it, laying her chin on the seat between us and whining very softly. I stroked a reassuring hand over her back. He could push, but we weren’t going anywhere until we’d found his grandfather.

Mark wasn’t far behind us, following in the Jeep with Phin. A stretch of highway, two gates, and a lot of dirt road later, we reached the coordinates Ben had entered into his GPS from Phin’s map. It was a rugged stretch, where years of water runoff had carved ravines and arroyos into the limestone hills. And it was deserted, as far as we could see.

“No search party, and no Grandpa Mac,” said Ben. “This is a wild-goose chase.”

“This is where he is. Trust me.”

“How can you be so sure?” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can’t believe I got so caught up in this crazy idea.”

I let all the pitfalls in that statement lie and concentrated on the important part. “Phin may seem like a nut, but there’s no one smarter about this stuff.”

He dropped his hands and looked at me, reading the certainty in my face. After a long study, I read the recommitment in his. To the plan, anyway.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s next?”

I scratched Lila’s ears as she panted eagerly on the seat between Ben and me. On the drive over, I’d read Aunt Hyacinth’s instructions, and they weren’t complicated, especially since I’d done some casual training with the dog already. “Next, Lila narrows the search.”

We climbed out and I held the door open for her. She jumped down, circling without taking her eyes off me. As if she knew how important this was.

Ben gazed over the daunting stretch of terrain. “But it’s a big spot.”

I crouched in front of the collie. “That’s why we need the dog.”

Mark’s headlights swept the truck as he reached us. Phin rode with him, and as Ben and I conducted this part of the search on foot, they would follow.

Clenched tight in my hand, I had the soaked and wrapped guitar pick. It was staining my palm purple as I held it out to Lila to sniff. She snuffled it, inhaling the essence, then licked my face. With a scent item, I’d take it away so it wouldn’t distract her from what she was supposed to sniff out. But this wasn’t about a physical scent—it was about a supernatural bond.

Lila turned in a circle and looked expectantly from me to Ben.

“Tell her to find your granddad,” I said. “Picture him really clearly in your head, and then tell her to go.”

As far as he’d come with me—with us—he still hesitated. “This is crazy.”

“Ben.” I stepped in front of him, took his arms, and
willed him to look at me. It was hard to meet his eye. I felt like I was standing there naked, letting him see a part of me, my life, that I kept hidden away from everyone. Even myself.

I was the gatekeeper. And tonight I’d thrown the doors open to the enemy forces. I was
full
of anxiety: that breaking my rules would let something bad happen, that I wouldn’t be able to protect myself or my family from a world full of contempt. I had to push worry aside and show Ben that I believed in magic completely and this would work.

“You don’t have to trust in magic,” I told him. “You don’t have to trust Phin or my aunt. But trust me. This is the best chance of finding Mac in a hurry. Please. You don’t even have to trust me for long. Just long enough.”

He gazed back at me, doubt behind his eyes. “You and your magic dog.”

“Me, my sister, and my magic dog.” I smiled, reassuring.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I wondered what he was picturing behind them. “I’m ready.”

“You have to have Grandpa Mac firm in your mind. Clear. Vivid. His smell, his voice. His essence.”

“Got it.” Then he looked down at Lila and said, “Find Granddad Mac.”

Lila barked and spun on her back legs. She set off in one direction, then the other, then back again, tracking. I heard the change in the tenor of the Jeep’s engine as Mark put it in gear, ready to trail us as we followed Lila on foot.

We were able to keep up because, while she ran side to side, narrowing each time as she homed in on the target, we
could take a straighter path. But at the top of a hill, the dog raised her head, gave a loud bark, and took off like she’d been shot from a cannon.

“Come on.” I broke into a run, with Ben behind me. We skidded down a valley, then climbed up the steep slope on the other side, the dry, loose soil making it hard to get traction. At the top I paused, searching for the glint of Lila’s reflective vest in the dark. I spotted her arrowing across a flat space, then up another hill.