The Hell You Say (27 page)

168

Josh Lanyon

Selene Wolfe lived in Palmdale.

To be exact, she lived in the Angeles National Forest on the Palmdale side of the San Gabriel Mountains. The light was failing by the time I left Pasadena. I did not look forward to the night’s return drive, dipping and winding through miles and miles of dense chaparral that slowly gave way to pine-studded peaks.

The traffic was surprisingly heavy, cars whipping around the narrow road with scant regard for the tumbling slopes below. For a time, I found myself one of a long line of cars trapped behind a yellow Celica with the bumper sticker VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE.

I missed the turnoff and had to find a safe place to pull over, then double back. By the time I found the stone cairn mailbox with the correct house number, it was dark, and I was late.

The long dirt road had been graded, but that was the sole sign of civilization as I rolled cautiously along, the headlights of the Forester occasionally pinpointing gleaming eyes in the darkness.

At last I saw lights. I pulled into the front yard of a small stone cabin. I parked and got out. Wood smoke drifted from the chimney. The night air was spicy with pines.

An old-fashioned lantern hung above the door. A dog barked from inside the cabin.

I knocked. Moments later the door opened. The woman who answered my knock was taller than I, lean, with a riot of salt and pepper hair. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt; she was barefoot despite the cold. A three-legged dog stood beside her, still muttering under its breath.

“Blessed be,” she said in that sexless, but soothing voice.

“Hi. I’m Adrien English.”

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She moved aside. I stepped into a rustic, but comfortable-looking cabin. Nothing particularly weird or witchy about it. If there was a cauldron bubbling, it was being used for chicken soup.

“Would you like tea?” Selene Wolfe asked.

“Thanks. Yes.”

She gestured for me to sit at the table, and I did while she went into the kitchen. The three-legged dog planted himself between the two rooms, clearly determined to keep an eye on me.

One wall had been given over to bookshelves: Frazier’s Golden Bough, Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft, the Farrars’ Witches’ Bible. All the woo-woo classics as well as a lot of books on psychology and sociology. There were cheerful sprigged curtains covering the windows, thick woven rugs covering the stone floor. Fur brushed against my ankle. I glanced down to see a large white rabbit hopping beneath the table.

Selena returned carrying a tray with an earthenware teapot and mugs. She sat across from me. “Sugar? Cream?”

“Black.”

She nodded. Poured the tea, passed me the cup with a smile. “How can I help you, Adrien?”

I don’t know if it was that smile, which was warm and reassuring and genuinely interested, or the worn beauty of her face, but for the first time in a long time I felt myself relaxing.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think there’s much you can tell me about this that I don’t already know.” I offered the well-handled photos of the inverted pentagram. “I have a feeling this is not your line.”

She took the photos, going through them slowly, without expression. Then she set them aside. “No, they’re not my line. Tell me what you know about them.”

I can’t explain why -- maybe it was the profound peace of that isolated cabin or the grave serenity of the woman herself -- but I found myself pouring out all my troubles.

I told her about the Scythe of Gremory and the three blades. I told her about Angus. I told her about Guy. I even told her about Jake. I probably would have blabbed all night if she hadn’t finally said, into one of my rare pauses for breath, “What do you think is behind these murders?”

“What or whom?”

“What.”

“You mean the motive?”

She smiled a little. “If you want to call it that.”

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I stared at her bleakly. “I think Kinsey was killed because they wanted to frame Angus.”

“But to kill one of their own?” She spoke gently.

She was right. I hadn’t given much thought to motive -- partly because Jake always said that if means and opportunity were there, motive would turn up. And partly because I had spent all my energy chasing demons, but the real demon of this case was named MacGuffin.

“She did something to turn the others against her,” I said slowly. What had Angus’s sin been? By attempting to leave the club, he had threatened disclosure, exposure, revelation.

What he had threatened, Kinsey had unwittingly accomplished. “She came to the bookstore that day and tried to intimidate me. Until then, I didn’t know who any of them were. After that I had names, faces.”

Selene nodded, sipping her tea. “And so did the police -- through your friend Jake. That was a serious miscalculation on her part. Whatever her previous ranking, and I imagine it was quite high for her to persuade the other girl to follow, she would have lost favor following her visit to you. Remember, in these groups there’s a good deal of rivalry and competition.”

“So someone aspiring to her position as…Adept…might have been willing to silence her?”

Her expression was grave. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? That’s what frightened your young assistant. Murder.”

I nodded. Drank more tea. It had an odd aftertaste, but it was good. I felt less weary, less depressed.

“The other two murders…” I had been thinking aloud. Selene was silent. “One kid disappeared in October. One kid disappeared in May. Those correspond with witches’

Sabbats, right?”

“Samhain and Beltane both fall in those months.”

“How many Sabbats are there?”

“Eight.”

“How many of the Sabbats require human sacrifice?”

She opened her mouth to object, I said, “I realize that Wicca doesn’t follow these old traditions, but you share the same Sabbats with the Satanists.”

“The four major Sabbats are Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain.”

“So there could be more deaths.”

She nodded.

“There might be more bodies out there.”

“It is possible.”

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I reached for the photos. “Was this meant to scare me, or was this an actual death threat?”

“I think it was intended to frighten you. I can’t be sure. In any case, you’re more of a danger now than you were then.”

I considered this from a tired distance. It occurred to me that if I didn’t hit the road soon, I’d be asking for a place on her sofa.

I stood. “Thank you for your time. This was helpful.”

Selene rose also. The three-legged dog, still watching us from the doorway, made a determined hopping effort to get to its feet.

She walked outside with me, her bare feet seemingly impervious to the frost on the ground.

As I opened the car door, she touched my arm. “Adrien, you’re very tired. Be careful driving back.”

I looked at her in surprise. Took the hand she offered.

“Can I ask you a question? Do you make a living at this?” I gestured to the cabin, outlined in silver moonlight.

“You mean do I have a day job? Yes, I’m a criminal psychologist.”

She chuckled at my expression. I climbed into the Forester.

I caught a final glimpse of her standing in the cabin doorway, the dog beside her. The firelight seemed to form an aureole around her.

The next bend in the road took the cabin from sight. It was dark out here, deathly quiet. The headlights picked out the sign leading back to the main road.

High overhead, a wicked crescent moon shone like a crooked smile over the waves and waves of black pine trees. I clicked my high beams on.

After the earlier workday traffic, Angeles Crest Highway was startlingly empty. Miles ahead, I spotted a single pair of headlights winding their way toward me.

As I drove, the winding highway seemed to pick up a kind hypnotic rhythm.

Accelerate in, decelerate out, the road looped and rolled around the mountains, narrowing to a pass between hills that looked more like rockslides and then widening deceptively.

I passed the car I had seen miles below me, dimming my high beams briefly as we flashed past each other. Then nothing more but a long empty stretch of invisible road.

Selene Wolfe was right. I was tired. I had been sleeping badly. It was harder to avoid demons in dreams -- especially when they were your own.

Shortly before he died at age eighty-one, Joseph Hansen started a blog called Lastwords. I’d found it once, surfing the ’Net. Three posts filled with the loneliness of having outlived pretty much everyone and everything that mattered. Three posts and about as many replies.

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If Hansen was that forsaken at the end, what chance did the rest of us have, especially those who had never quite managed to find someone to share their life? I tried to cheer myself by reflecting that with my heart there was no way I’d make it to eighty anyway. The problem was, I couldn’t imagine feeling much more alone than I did right then.

I blinked. My eyelids felt weighted. How could eyelashes be so heavy? I blinked again.

The smart move would be to pull over and nap for five minutes, but I wanted to get home.

My God, it was a long way away. A long, unraveling way that kept rolling, winding through the empty blackness. On and on and on.

Easiest thing in the world to stop fighting sleepiness, to close my eyes for a moment, to let go.

It would be all over in two minutes. Slam. All she wrote. The end. Nobody left with anything to regret or be guilty about because anyone could have an accident on this road.

They probably wouldn’t find the car for days. The trees were so dense down that mountainside. Maybe they’d never find the car.

Wouldn’t it be a kind of relief? No more struggling against the tide. No more dead of night fears about winding up ill and helpless and alone. No more anything.

Gravel spat under the tires. I corrected quickly, instinctively.

As I merged onto the I-210 East heading toward Pasadena, I thought, I wish I’d known about the blog, Joe. I’d have written you.

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173

“Can I get off early tonight?” Velvet asked on Saturday morning. “I have a big party to go to.”

Bad timing. I had been hoping to slip out of there early myself, to get ready for Lisa’s shindig at Mondrian’s. But considering how much time Velvet had put in covering for my extracurricular activities, I could hardly say no.

Though this was the busiest shopping weekend before Christmas, the day passed without incident, which was saying something these days.

Velvet took off about three, and by the time I had dealt with the last customer, I was running late.

I went upstairs and dusted off (literally) the tuxedo. That’s one of the advantages of having a society dame for a mother: you don’t have to rent the monkey suit.

I showered, shaved, and spent about ten minutes chasing shirt studs. And another five minutes swearing over cufflinks. This is where another guy would come in useful. Or maybe just a valet.

I drove over to Mondrian’s, left the Forester with the usual aspiring model-slash-valet, and made my way to the SkyBar, which was already packed with a well-dressed older crowd.

Big Band music floated from the clouds. Candles twinkled in trees.

I was instantly snared by Lisa, looking bridal in white silk. She had Dauten in tow.

Dauten made the tuxedo look like a monkey suit for real.

“Darling.” She offered a scented cheek and whispered, “You’re the handsomest man in the room.”

Dauten offered a beefy hand. “Adrien.”

“Bill.”

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Josh Lanyon

We shook.

Lisa frowned. “Is Jake with you?”

“No.”

That posed a dilemma for her. She wasn’t keen on Jake, but she wasn’t keen on being dissed either. Before she could react, we were joined by Natalie, looking fetching in an unnervingly short iridescent blue shift. She had glittering blue flowers in her hair.

“Wow, you look spiffy,” she informed me.

Spiffy? Did that translate to “not bad for an old guy?” I said, “You look spiffy too.”

We all laughed gaily, and I wondered where the hell the bar was. As the latest influx of guests separated us from our parental units, Natalie said, “Our plan is working beautifully.”

“I can see that.”

“Daddy’s over the moon.”

I glanced back at the stoic-looking Dauten.

“So where’s this mystery man we’ve heard about? Lisa said he’s a detective.”

“Did she?” I glanced around. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”

“Oh, the drinks are fabulous!” She chattered blithely on while I steered her to the bar.

She continued to chatter while we sipped our drinks. I was watching the crowd, mulling the possibility that I might actually be the only gay person in the entire gathering, when her smile faded.

“Uh-oh.” Her hand fastened on my arm. “Let’s go say hi to Lauren.”

Lauren, looking like Hollywood royalty, stood with a giant Ken doll. At least that was my first impression. When he moved, I realized only his hair was plastic. They seemed to be arguing in that intense, but expressionless way that couples do in public, but as soon as Lauren spotted us she forced a smile.

“We were beginning to think you had gotten lost,” she greeted me.

“No such luck.”

Her smile was perfunctory. “Brad, this is Adrien, Lisa’s son. Adrien, this is my husband --”

Brad said curtly, “Excuse me,” brushing past.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Laurie,” Natalie began, but Lauren cut her off sharply.

“Don’t say it!” Her eyes glittered with a mix of fury and tears. At my expression, she blinked rapidly, forced a smile. “He’s under a lot of pressure. That wasn’t personal. So! You didn’t bring anyone?” She looked past me to the ghost at my shoulder -- my usual escort.

“He had to work.” For now and forever.

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“Adrien’s being mysterious about this guy,” Natalie said. She shook her head disapprovingly. “You need to lay down the law, Adrien.”