The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders) (9 page)

“Just trust me on this. Okay? It’s something Huxley did when I was little.”

I wasn’t aware that she remembered much about her father, but if anyone could help me now, it was Huxley with his old-world remedies and feel-better mojo.

She disappeared. One of the cabinets opened, and she muttered to herself, “Oh, where is it?” Then, “Ah,” and the cabinet closed with a thud and she was back at my side.

“This will probably be cold,” she said, and a chill hit my lower back and began to spread like maple syrup on a stack of pancakes. The hairs on my arms stood up. “Sorry…not sure how much of this to use.”

She must have figured it out because I heard her set something down. Then her hands, warm and welcome and strong, moved against the cold on my back with a force I wouldn’t have equated with someone as young as her, or as feminine.

“What is that stuff?” I asked.

“Olive oil. Hush.” She began chanting something in what sounded like Hebrew and rubbed and spread as she chanted. From the lower back she moved to the middle, the cold oil spreading with her, and then she rubbed my shoulders, chanting all the while.

She paused for a minute and then the rubbing resumed and in English she said, “Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! Many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter of mine head. I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill.”

I recognized the old Psalm, and my voice joined hers in chorus. “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God; for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord; thy blessing is upon thy people.”

She said it once more, this time in Greek, and as she rubbed, all the pain began to vanish, and a pulse of violent heat surged from my toes to my knees, and into my thighs. From there, it moved into my hips, and to my lower back, where the pain seemed to originate. For a moment, the heat grew more intense and passed from my lower back into my shoulders, my neck. It passed into my jaws, my tongue, and my entire head felt like it was on fire. I squeezed my eyes shut and a scream tore through me like a ripsaw.

As I yelled louder, I could hear Nadia’s even mantra rising in volume but not tempo to be heard over my cries. Tears began to run down my cheeks. I felt heat and pain surging behind my eyes, felt like someone had my head in a vice as my ears plugged.

And just as I thought I couldn’t take anymore, the heat and pain were gone.

I sat there for a moment, catching my breath and assessing the damage. Nadia stood, and then the sink turned on and another cabinet opened. As soon as I could feel her next to me again, a rough, dry cloth rubbed against my back, soaked up the oil.

“How do you feel?”

I took a deep breath and said, “Better.”

“You ready to sit up?”

I didn’t say anything, just put one hand flat against the floor, then the other, and pushed up. I pulled my knees up under me and slowly rolled into a sitting position, leaned forward and slid my shirt back down.

“What’s your pain level right now?” She sounded like a doctor all of a sudden. “From one to ten. Ten being the most unbearable.”

I sat there for a second, tried to be the zen master of my body, sensing every part of me, turning up nothing. “There is no pain. How did you…?”

She sat next to me and handed me the glass of water she’d drawn. I took it eagerly and emptied it in one swallow.

“When I was six,” she said, “I was riding my bike. A dog came out of nowhere and scared me, but I was going too fast and couldn’t stop. I swerved to go around it and ran into a fence and fell flat on my back. With the wind taken out of me, I sat there, struggling to breathe, and Huxley ran up to me. He took me in his arms and carried me back to the house.

“When I could breathe again, I was crying, saying my back hurt, my back hurt, and I remember seeing blood. When I fell off the bike, I landed on a sharp stick, and it jabbed into me. There was so much blood and I was so scared.

“But Huxley wasn’t. He took a rag, soaked up some of the blood, and then he grabbed the olive oil, and he quoted that Psalm.”

“Psalm three,” the priest in me said.

She nodded. “Psalm three. First in Hebrew, then in English, then in Greek. The whole time he chanted, he massaged the oil into me, and stayed calm, kept his words steady. When he finished, the blood had stopped and the pain was gone.” Then she said, “I’m surprised I remembered that. I haven’t thought about it in so long.”

“Yeah, he did that to me, once. Said it was an old hoodoo trick. Jes’ gotta know how ta work de Psalms,” I said in my best imitation of Huxley’s voice. He had that thick, Caribbean accent. “I didn’t realize you knew Greek…or Hebrew.”

“I don’t.”

I pushed myself to my feet, bounced a little as I did just to make sure the pain hadn’t come back. It hadn’t. I helped Nadia up and said, “Thanks. You won’t be offended if I go for a run now, eh?”

“Go for it. Just don’t hurt yourself again.”

“Don’t worry, I got a hoodoo woman to heal me up right.”

As I started to move away, she said, “Oh, you left your mail out.” She pointed to the kitchen table in front of the windows. “I hope you don’t mind, I sorted through it.”

“Anything good?”

“There was a letter from Janice Hutchinson.”

“Joy.”

“Looks like she’s getting a lawyer now.”

Janice Hutchinson was a foster mum. Two months ago, she hired me to find a boy in her care called Toby Emmerich. He’d run away, and she wanted me to bring him back. The problem was, Toby was in a bad way, always moving from family to family. He was moody, angry, and a thief: jewelry, cash, anything of value. It was suspected by his previous families that he was on drugs and stole out of necessity to feed his habit.

Janice, however, didn’t agree with the evidence. She held that Toby was a good kid, that he wouldn’t run off on his own. He was scared, didn’t have a lot of friends, and would act out. She’d gotten to know him, and he wasn’t like they said.

I gave the case a fair assessment, followed the usual leads, took my readings, but everything I found led me to side with the other parents and the case worker. Toby was disturbed, took what he could, and bolted.

Of course, Janice didn’t like my assessment. She’d paid half up front but refused the rest on the grounds that I didn’t do any real work to find him. She said I had my mind made up before I took the case, played her for a fool to make an easy buck. She demanded I refund the money she’d already paid, and I refused. Now she was getting a lawyer. Now she intended to sue me.

“Let her,” I said. “We’ll counter sue. She signed a statement to procure services. Her signature says she agreed to pay.” I finished my coffee. “Lady didn’t want to admit she’d been taken for a fool by that kid. She can go to hell.”

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“It’s business. Was there anything else?”

“Electric bill for the office.”

I nodded. “Put a check in the mail for me? I gotta go talk to Ape.”

.

11

After a short hike past the stable and down to the lake, I entered the mouth of a hedge maze, navigated the wide corridors of eight-foot shrubs. Around a few curves, I found the beginnings of the inlaid brick walkway and followed the path under the weathered iron arch at the garden’s wall. Then took the steps into the sunken garden.

It was Eden after the fall, once abandoned, no one left to prune the hedges or keep the place up. Yet, there was a special quality, an echo of a thrum of some dormant magic that pulsed as you walked the trails, and you couldn’t pass among the foliage without imagining what it had once looked like: low-lying shrubs formed into diamonds or narrow, pointed circles like Egyptian eyes, the centers filled with brightly-colored blossoms. Small topiary bushes twisting like soft-serve ice cream cones. That was a long time ago.

Now, vases that held bouquets of bright lilacs and tigerlillies were reduced to heaps of broken pottery shards and spilled dirt. The benches they flanked had grown over in thick beards of moss, and vines twisted up the ornate legs. Statues once bearing the images of swans or naiads or dancing women had cracked and crumbled. The fountain that stood in the center had faded and greyed, going green along every crack. The water it held was old and stagnant, covered in a film of fallen leaves. It stank like a sewer.

Half of the trees hung heavy with their own greenery, and leafy vines that wound among the branches and fell around the trunks created make-shift weeping willows. The other half were dead, and their twisted, skeletal branches raked toward the sky while their boughs held an outbreak of yellow-green mistletoe.

At one point, the place had been alive with vibrant color and sweetly-smelling aromas, but when Mr. and Mrs. Towers died, Ape put the garden to a more practical purpose, replaced the uselessly pretty flowers like tulips and daisies and marigolds with flowering herbs like Meadowsweet and Vervain. Made the place a storehouse of home-grown weaponry. He was no Huxley, of course, but Ape was fairly competent at making certain potions, and other herbs worked fine raw.

I found him in a grove in the far corner. He knelt over a green, flowery bush with purple flowers, pruning a few leaves with a pair of gold-lined sheers.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Jono?”

“Catch you at a bad time? You’re not taking a shit, right? I know it feels like home out here, being the jungle and all.”

He flashed me a smile, teeth and all, dripping with mock-humor. “Hilarious. What are you doing out here?”

“This is where I stash my cannabis.”

“You can wait for me in the house.” He returned to his plant, examining the top and bottom of each leaf before he clipped it or moved on to the next one. “After all, you kept me waiting last night.”

“I’m sorry, Mate. I had no idea you were so sensitive. You get your feelings hurt? Think I abandoned you?”

“Please, stop.”

“Didn’t Nadia tell you I called?”

“You were flaking off responsibility again. We were supposed to go by Julie Easter’s, remember.”

“Flaking off responsibility? Is that what you call taking a new case? Besides, you weren’t even here.”

“I was here more than you. Long enough to run some tests on the samples we took from that house.”

“What was that room?”

He moved on to the next plant, examined that like the one before. He shrugged at my question. “I have no idea. The samples I took from the wall, they were silk.”

“Okay, so let’s go back and get some more and we can make a couple of shirts.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. I don’t have a good silk shirt.”

“Forget it.”

I found a rock to sit on. “Are you sure it’s silk?”

“I ran the test three times.”

“I should get a reading from silk.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I had plenty of time to think last night when you stood me up.”

“Is this about the strip club? Did you wanna go look at titties with me?”

“You went to the Siren’s Song last night?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you said you…”

“I needed to talk to Seven, Mate. He was there.”

He breathed slow. “Silk is a natural fiber.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Silk is comprised of amino acids, which are biochemical. They’re organic.”

And then I understood. “Like spiderwebs and that shit those little worms make.”

“You mean silkworms?”

I didn’t acknowledge that. “So this bum was papering his walls in biochemical organic shirt fabric? Any idea why?”

“Still working that out. I have a theory or two, but…”

“Maybe he was a fashion designer. Everyone’s going green, these days.”

He didn’t say anything. He clipped another few leaves, stuck them in a pouch he wore.

“Why are you collecting shrubbery? Usually you just come out here and spray the hose a bit.”

“I’m making something, Jono. I need some herbs.”

“Happy brownies?”

He rolled his eyes. “Something practical.”

“You only know three potions.”

“I found something new in the library.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that. Do you need any help?”

He looked up at me. “I’ll be okay. I’m working on a case of my own.”

“Yeah, I heard all about that. Uncle Arthur. Tell me what you got.”

He turned away as he said, “All due respect, Jono, I’d like to handle this one on my own.”

He was a big boy, he could handle himself, do his own things. So what if he didn’t want me involved. Still, his words cut me. “Why?”

“There are several reasons.” He seemed a little more frustrated than he had before. “For one, Uncle Arthur’s family. It’s personal. I need to do this on my own.”

I waited a few seconds but he remained silent, pruning away at his bushes. “What’s the other reason?”

“The other…” He sighed. “You don’t appreciate me, Jono. That whole thing in the car on the way home yesterday. But not just that, there’ve been a lot of times lately I’ve felt neglected.”

“And what, now you want to start seeing other people?”

“No. I just think we need some time apart. I think it’ll be good for both of us. If I’m not there to hold your hand, you’ll have to focus until the case is closed.”

I rolled my eyes at him this time. “This is mental. You need my help with Arthur. I’ll get a reading, we’ll find him in a few hours. He’s probably just lying somewhere in that forest. He got a burst of strength, tried to have one of his adventures, slipped and rolled down the hill. He’s bleeding to death slowly in the underbrush.”

“You aren’t helping anything.” He moved on from the plants he’d been working on to another patch nearby. I recognized it as High John the Conqueror, a popular hoodoo root.

It was used for various things: achieving success, protection against evil, cure for depression. Huxley used it for more things than that, even going so far as to make a soup from it for church potlucks and family get-togethers. While most of his ingredients he just bought, he used so much of the John Conker, as he called it, it was cheaper to grow it himself.

“If you must know, I’m making a mojo bag to help me track him. I found a box of photo albums, love letters, and baby books in Arthur’s room. I’ve got a lock of his hair. So, no, I don’t need you.”

“You’re making a seeker sack?” My unofficial name for it. “I guess that’ll work.” Years ago, Huxley showed me how to mix one, but in my line of work, it wasn’t very reliable, as it required you to have a connection with the person you were looking for and I was mostly hired to find strangers. Reason being is that Mandrake, the key ingredient, not only led its bearer to hidden treasure it was also used in love potions. The John Conker was for success and luck, Lucky Hand Root was used for safe travel, and either fuzzy weed or yellow evening primrose helped in the hunt. Combine all of that in a little satchel with something that belonged to the person you’re looking for and, so long as you carried the sack on you, eventually you’d walk right into them.

“Did you test his blood?” I asked.

“Arthur?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, the dirty tramp.”

“Yes, I did test his blood. The white cell count was higher, but other than that, he was fine. Tox-screen came back clean, too. He wasn’t on anything.”

“So he was just naturally feral and crazy. Comforting.” I stood; the rock wasn’t comfortable anymore. “Well, when do you want to go by the Easter home?”

“What time works for you?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out here, jackass.”

Ape snickered at me a little.

“What?” I asked, annoyed.

“You’re becoming more American. You used to call me ‘arse.’”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m almost finished here. I’ll meet you at the house and we’ll go?”

“Fine.”

It didn’t take long to walk back to the house, and I spotted a few downed limbs from the night’s storm. At second glance, I noticed Crestmohr, the groundskeeper, with his broad shoulders and shaggy head, dressed in a red flannel shirt and torn jeans, under an apple tree Ape had planted as a boy, chopping the larger branches into smaller ones with a hand axe, tossing the little pieces into a wheelbarrow.

When I walked into the kitchen, I took another slice of cake, another mug of coffee. Picked up the phone, dialed information, took a stool. The name of the Elementary school that Adam went to, Moreland, was written in Eric’s journal. I had the operator connect me, munching and slurping into her ear as she did so, and spoke with a receptionist who gave me the name of Adam’s teacher. I set up a meeting with her at 11:30, during her free period, and the woman on the phone took my name. She sounded old.

I hung up the phone, glanced at the clock. A little after nine. If Ape hurried, I’d have time to drop him back off at the house before I went to Moreland. I glanced out the window, but there was still no sign of him.

I went down to my room, gathered my gloves and jacket, ran a comb through my hair, and grabbed Eric’s journal. It had some stuff in it about the school, thought it might be helpful to take with me. After that, I headed upstairs, and Ape was waiting in the kitchen. He’d poured himself a cup of coffee and read through the paper.

“Déjà vu,” I said.

He looked up at me. “What?”

“Nothing. You ready to go? I got a thing in a couple hours, let’s get this over with.”

He put his mug down, closed the paper. “You have the invoice? The teddy?”

I pulled the envelope from my jacket pocket. “The bear’s in my car.”

He nodded and stood, and I noticed he’d changed from the garden. He wore grey dress pants, a white buttoned-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to provide an ample view of the red-brown fur underneath. The suit vest and fedora that completed his outfit matched the pants in color and fabric.

On his feet, he wore his ninja shoes, though they looked like house slippers, and that was a lot for him, as he preferred being barefoot. Naked feet, especially hairy ones, didn’t fly so well in strangers’ homes. They didn’t exactly match the rest of the ensemble but damn if he cared, right. He was a fucking monkey.

As he moved to the door, he said, “I’m driving.”