Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell series) (17 page)

Crap!

“But if you want to chat with him, all you gotta do is be at the delivery dock between seven forty-five and eight a.m. tomorrow, before we open. Like I said, the dude never misses a pickup. But don’t tell him I was the one who told you. And definitely don’t tell the owners.” He dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out with the heel of his boot. “On second thought, what the hell do I care? If I get fired, at least I won’t have to deal with Parson Payne anymore.”

* * *

I told Lon everything once we drove away. We made a plan to return the next morning, and after that, I fell asleep in the car. Not gradually, either. One second he was asking if I wanted to head back into L.A., and the next thing I knew, he was standing in the open passenger doorway, unbuckling my seatbelt. I had no idea why I was so tired. It wasn’t as if I’d run a marathon or anything. But it was all I could do to carry my bag into the hotel—which wasn’t the L.A. hotel. Lon said we could get the same sleep somewhere local.

I agreed wholeheartedly. Especially when he took us to a grand Mission Revival hotel in downtown Riverside that was on the National Landmark list. And I liked it even more when a whiff of clean linen called my name. I managed to stay awake long enough to shower dead snake and dust out of my hair, then collapsed into one of the beds while Lon called Jupe to tell him where we were. Everything smelled so good: the shampoo, my minty-clean teeth, and something else. Something wholly familiar and wonderful. Something nice, nice, nice. It took my fatigue-addled brain a few seconds to recognize that scent as Lon.

He was clearly planning on sleeping in the other bed. And that was . . . normal?

Of course it was. It would be silly to expect him to start sleeping with me after one kiss. One really good kiss. Phenomenal. I wanted another one.

But it wasn’t even that. I just wanted him closer for comfort. How weird was that? I watched him for a minute as he slipped off his shoes and socks—no other pieces of clothing, so I supposed that whole casual naked thing was off the menu—and propped up pillows on the other bed. He lounged there on top of the covers and opened his laptop on his stomach.

I flipped over onto my side and, in my mind, willed him to come over to me. That didn’t work. I tested the crazy telekinetic power I’d used in the botanical gardens, to see if maybe I could lift his computer. Nope. Not even my phone sitting on the nightstand.

Feeling a little loopy and weary, I picked up the
phone and opened my text messages. Odd. I’d never texted Lon? Of course I had. I remembered texting him on multiple occasions. I certainly texted Jupe all the time. And yep, there. All my texts back and forth to Jupe before I went into the hospital. A couple of months’ worth. But no texts to Lon. Maybe I’d erased them by mistake? Oh, well. It didn’t matter, I supposed. I’d just start fresh now.

Sent 11:30 a.m.:
What you doing over there?

MSG from Lon, 11:30 a.m.:
Researching.

Me:
You could do that over here.

Lon:
You need to sleep.

Me:
Don’t worry. I’m too tired to jump you.

Lon:
A shame. But I don’t trust myself.

Me:
Come to think of it, I don’t trust myself, either. Let’s not trust ourselves together. P.S. You smell really good. I mean that in a creepy way. Come over here and let me sniff your skin like some crazy stalker.

Lon:
Are you feeling okay?

Me:
Be feeling better if you’d just come over here.

Lon:
Don’t make me call management to restrain you.

Me:
I’d much rather you do it yourself.

Lon:
Go. To. Sleep.

I sighed loudly enough for him to hear me and turned off my phone. But in the midst of making a new seduction plan, I did exactly what he asked and fell asleep. For how long, I didn’t know. But I woke up again in the middle of a crazy dream—I was telling Kar Yee that my body was filled with cocktail shrimp, and she didn’t believe me—and the curtains over the window were blocking all but a tiny sliver of sunlight. I smelled something nice. And for a moment, I could have sworn I felt a warm hand on my stomach. Which was bananas, because when I put my own hand there . . . nothing.

The bed moved behind me. I rolled over to see Lon’s dark figure slipping under the covers on the other side of the bed. My heart hammered inside my chest.

“Hush,” he murmured, curling up on his side to face me. “Nothing’s happening. Go back to sleep.”

I stretched my arm to the middle of the bed—not to touch him, not really. Just to feel as if we were a little closer. A second later, his hand covered mine. “Good night, Cady.”

I sank back into my pillow, happier than I should be and unexplainably satisfied. It felt nice to be touching. God, he smelled so damn good. And why all of a sudden? He didn’t smell this good yesterday.

Hold on.

After transmutating the first night in Golden Peak, I turned into Superwoman, busting down
doors. Last night, I
nearly
transmutated in the botanical garden, and today my sense of smell was radically stronger. Like, ridiculously strong. I concentrated and tested it. I smelled Lon, yes. The sheets. And the dust in the carpet. The window cleaner. The dirty clothes Lon had bagged up and hung for housekeeping to wash.

The ink in the pen by my bed.

Whoa, Nelly. Definitely not normal.

But why smell? It wasn’t as if I made a conscious decision to wield a scenting ability. I’d deliberately chosen when I’d gone all Moonchild in the past: I
chose
to save Lon when he was falling off Merrimoth’s roof. I
chose
to incinerate Dare. This smelling thing just seemed so arbitrary. Maybe it was like when Jupe was coming into his knack, and he had trouble controlling it.

Knack puberty? Ugh.

Getting used to a single knack was one thing, but I damn sure didn’t want a grab-bag surprise ability every time I transmutated.

“What’s wrong?” Lon asked, his hand tightening around mine.

“Did you have trouble controlling your knack when you first underwent the transmutation spell?”

“Not that I remember. It was twenty years ago. Your sense of smell’s still heightened?”

“You have no idea.” I explained my knack puberty theory. “You think that’s what’s going on with me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s something else. But your spoon-bending strength faded along with your silver eyes, so if this is another knack randomly manifesting, it’ll probably fade, too.”

Let’s hope so. I mean, it wasn’t as if Nose of Bloodhound was some horrible burden or anything. And it wasn’t something that put Lon in direct danger.

Not this time. But what about the next time I transmutated?

Jupe leaped off the city bus and raced down the sidewalk toward the Bull and Scorpion Lodge. It was 6:55—already dark outside—and Leticia had said Sophic Mass started at 7:00 p.m. sharp. He’d barely been able to persuade the Holidays to let him spend the night at Jack’s. But when they’d insisted on driving him to Jack’s house after school, he had to make up an excuse to Mrs. Yamamoto, Jack’s mom, about why he was rushing off. Then the bus took longer, and he was going to die if he went to all this trouble only to miss the damn mass.

And to top it all off, he expected his dad would call any minute. Dad and Cady were in some city named Ontario, which he first thought was in Canada, but apparently, there was another one near L.A.—who knew? They’d be waking up about now and calling to check in and—

Oh, crap! The door was closing. His long legs gobbled up the sidewalk as he called out to the man at the door of lodge. “Wait for me!”

The man didn’t look all that happy when Jupe bounded up the steps, but he let him inside.

“I’m here . . . for mass,” Jupe managed between labored breaths.

“First time?” the man asked as he locked the door behind him.

“Yes.”

Jupe glanced around and found himself in a dim hallway with a lot of doors. One was labeled as the administrative offices, another as the library. It smelled musty here, which wasn’t a surprise, because the décor looked a little
Brady Bunch
, and there weren’t any windows. Not much of anything, really. Just a bulletin board above a low table that held a candle and some printed programs.

“Sanctuary’s through there,” the man said, pointing to a set of double doors. For someone whose job was to greet people at a public event, that guy could sure use some personality lessons. But Jupe was too nervous to care. Strains of exotic instrumental music and the scent of incense floated from the cracked doors. He slowed his breathing and stepped inside.

If he thought the hallway was dim, the sanctuary was black. White taper candles in metal floor candelabras were the only sources of illumination, flickering across a large room with high ceilings. The room was half full. Fifty or so congregants sat in folding wooden chairs on either side of a wide center aisle that led to an Egyptian-looking raised altar at the front. More candles were there, along with some
red velvet pillows. The whole thing was enclosed in a sheer, rounded curtain that hung from a half-moon rod and draped to the floor.

For a moment, every occult horror movie Jupe had ever seen flashed through his brain, and he got a little freaked out. What the hell were they going to do on that red table, anyway? And why was that sword up there? Cady’s parents had tried to sacrifice her—had Leticia lured him here to gut him like a fish and make a stew of his entrails?

And oh, shit! He just noticed:
he was the only Earthbound here
. No halos. Not a single one. He’d never found himself in this situation back in La Sirena, and he suddenly felt extremely self-conscious. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

“
Psst.
”

He swung to the side and saw Leticia sitting alone in a back row to the right. True to her word, she was dressed casually in the same pink hoodie she’d been wearing the first time they met, with her hair twisted up in those messy Princess Leia buns. And when she flashed him a big white smile, he forgot all about his visions of human sacrifice.

He ducked into a seat next to her and dropped his backpack onto the floor. Holy crap, she was way prettier than he remembered—and he’d been remembering her a
lot
. On the bus ride into Morella, he’d tried to think up something suave and classy to say to her this time, but all he could manage was “Uuhh, what’s up?”

Ugh.

“We can’t talk when the ritual starts,” she whispered. “Here. Read this. It’ll tell you what’s going on.” She shoved one of the programs in front of him. When he took it, her hand touched his. Goose bumps spread up his arm.

“Thanks,” he said, feeling a new kind of breathlessness coming on that had nothing to do with his race to the lodge. His hand was tingling where she’d touched him, and she smelled like strawberry jam. He wondered if that was her lip gloss, because she had a lot of it on this time, and she hadn’t before.

For some reason, that only made him more nervous. His eyes skimmed over the front of the program. Sophic Mass. Some diagrams of a man in ritual robes posing like he was doing lame karate moves. A bunch of poems. A list of saints he’d never heard of. Wasn’t William Blake a writer? And since when was King Arthur a saint? This was some crazy shit, and whoa, hold on. Right in the middle of the list was a name that jumped off the page: Saint Sélène the Moonchild.

Cady was a saint?

Jupe opened his mouth to ask Leticia if she knew about Cady, but when he glanced up, he caught her staring. And that made his chest feel warm. It also made him forget what he was going to ask.

“Any questions?” she whispered.

“Are we going to have to sing any hymns?”

She grinned. “You volunteering?”

“You don’t want to hear me sing, believe me,” Jupe whispered. “The only time I sing is in the car with my dad’s girlfriend, and only because her voice is worse than mine.”

For some reason, this made her laugh quietly. Then she whispered, “My sister’s a good singer. I’m not bad, but I’m not good, either.”

The recorded music stopped, and a man in blue robes sat down at an organ near the altar. When he put his hands on the keyboard, a startlingly loud opening chord reverberated through the room.

A soft spotlight in the ceiling flicked on behind them. Jupe looked over his shoulder to see a procession of three robed magicians walking up the front aisle—super-slowly, as if they were in a wedding. The one in the middle was a Latina woman in a wine-colored robe embroidered with symbols. Beneath a weird pointy hat, dark hair cascaded down her back. Between the robe and the funny hat and the tall wooden staff in her hand, she sort of looked like a bishop crossed with Dumbledore. She also looked like the leader, and when she passed by, he glanced back at Leticia and mouthed, “Mom?”

She smiled proudly and nodded. Jupe gave her a thumbs-up before turning his attention back to the procession. Two of the robed people flanked the altar. They looked a few years older than him. Leticia’s
mom stood in front and said something in a foreign language. Definitely not Spanish. Maybe French. Whatever it was, the entire congregation repeated it. Leticia’s mom made a gesture. Everyone stood and repeated the gesture. Jupe scrambled to his feet as a dull panic throbbed inside his stomach. He wished he’d read the stupid program.