Dark Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 3) (10 page)

He hesitated before throwing the keys at me. I caught them and began untying the
Princess of the Lake
from the dock. She was a simple fishing boat with a pale turquoise hull and a control console at the bow beneath a fiberglass roof.

Cantrell climbed aboard, muttering, “It’s not called driving, you idiot, it’s piloting. You pilot a boat, you don’t drive it.” He found a seat in the stern and sat down with arms folded over his barrel chest.

I
piloted
the boat away from the dock and out onto the lake. There were a few other craft on the water but the area around Whitefish Island was clear. The island stood alone—dark, brooding and waiting.

I looked back at Cantrell. He had removed his sunglasses and turned his face to the sun, eyes closed. Either he was trying to catch some rays or he was sleeping off the potion. I was pretty sure it was the latter from the way his chest rose and fell slowly. He’d probably be snoring soon. Well, he shouldn’t bother getting too comfortable because we’d be at the island in five minutes, tops.

I checked my phone again. Nothing. No call from Felicity. After a moment’s hesitation, I called her, deciding to play it cool and nonchalant. “Hey, Felicity,” I said when she answered. “I’m just calling to see how everything is going. See how you are.”

“I’m fine, Alec. Are you with the sheriff?” Her tone was a little flat but sometimes that was the norm for her so I couldn’t tell if she was giving me the cold shoulder or just being her usual British self.

I looked back at the sleeping form of Cantrell. “Yeah, I’m with the sheriff.”

“Have you found out anything regarding Deirdre Summers?”

“Yeah, a bit. We’re heading for that island in the middle of the lake.”

“All right, be careful.”

She obviously didn’t want to talk right now, so I said, “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

I was about to end the call when she said, “Alec, something’s happened at the office.”

“What? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that when I got here this morning, the door was unlocked. You locked up last night, didn’t you?”

I tried to remember. I’d been carrying the box of stuff from Wesley but I was sure I put it down on the sidewalk and locked the door. “Yeah, I locked up. Has someone broken in?”

“We haven’t been burgled,” Felicity said. “I mean, the computers are still here and nobody tried to break into the safe or anything.”

“So what’s wrong?” Maybe I had forgotten to lock up after all.

“There’s one thing missing,” she said. “A book. It’s gone from the shelf in your office. There was a space where it should have been.”

“Someone broke in and took a book?” It was true that some of the books on my shelf were rare and valuable but why would a thief only take one? Why not take all of them and the computers too while they were at it?

“Yes,” Felicity said. “It’s the only thing that’s missing, I’m sure of it. I checked the titles on the shelf against the inventory I made when I put the books in your office. There’s only one title missing. ”

“So what book is it?”

“It’s a book of black magic written in the Middle Ages. The
Grimoire of Dark Magic
. I was going to call you earlier but…I didn’t.”

“No problem. When I’m done here, I’ll come straight back to the office. Do we need to call a locksmith to fix the door?”

“No, the door is fine. I used my key to make sure.”

“Someone probably picked it.”

“But what about the wards?”

The office was magically warded against things like break-ins. A mundane thief wouldn’t have been able to cross the threshold even after picking the lock. “We’re dealing with someone who was able to slip past them,” I said.

“That isn’t good, Alec.”

“No, it isn’t. And what makes it worse is that they now have a powerful book of black magic.”

A
fter ending
the call with Felicity, I pulled back the throttle on the
Princess of the Lake
. We were close to the island and I didn’t want to crash the boat onto any rocks that might be lurking beneath the water or get her stuck in shallow water.

Cantrell was snoring now. The potion had hit him hard but I was sure he’d be fine when he woke up. Because I was more experienced with taking potions, the only effect I’d experienced was that my hangover had disappeared entirely. Maybe I should market the stuff as a hangover cure and make a fortune. The only problem was, the FDA definitely wouldn’t approve of some of the ingredients.

I cut the engine and let the boat drift, looking for a good place to go ashore. Whitefish Island was mostly wooded, with rocks and fallen trees littering the shore. There was no obvious place to land a boat, and certainly not a 28-footer.

I looked over the side of the boat and frowned. I could see the bottom through the clear water and there were rocks down there. I was still thirty feet from the shore but it looked like I was going to have to swim the rest of the way. Great.

I dropped the anchor and waited while it dragged on the bottom of the lake for a couple of seconds before settling. Then I took off my jeans and T-shirt, socks, and boots. When I was down to my boxers, I climbed over the edge of the boat and lowered myself into the water. It was damn cold.

Letting go of the boat, I swam for the island. I’d made the right choice not bringing the boat too close to shore; the water was shallow in places and my feet bumped against rocks.

Tendrils of weed brushed against my legs and thoughts of the monster that had swum in these waters three years ago entered my brain, making me panic. “Just stay calm,” I told myself. “That thing has gone back to wherever it came from.”

When I reached the shore, I pulled myself up out of the water and sat on the rocks for a moment, glancing back at the
Princess of the Lake
and the sleeping sheriff in the stern. I’d be back on board before he even knew I was gone.

I wondered how Sherry Westlake had managed to get to the island and place the Apollo Stone here. Wesley hadn’t mentioned that she’d taken a dip when he was watching her through his binoculars. Maybe she’d had a smaller boat and was able to anchor it right by the shore.

I checked my line of sight. If Wesley had been watching Sherry from the docks, that meant she must have been on this side of the island when she hid the Apollo Stone in the bushes. I walked along the shoreline, pine needles and dirt sticking to my wet feet, until I found a small rickety-looking dock. Damn, I could have made this so much easier on myself if I’d seen it earlier. I could have docked there and simply stepped off the boat, keeping my clothes on in the process.

Too late for that now. I was here, so I might as well take a look around.

The island wasn’t very large, maybe a quarter mile across and a half mile long, so I could cover it in a short amount of time. Of course, I had no idea what I was looking for or even if I’d find anything at all. Evidence that a magical ritual had taken place here was the most obvious thing to look for but as far as I knew, the last time the monster had been summoned was three years ago, when it had eaten Deirdre Summers.

Since then, any number of people could have visited the island: fishermen, vacationers, teenagers looking for a quiet place to make out. And the weather could have destroyed any evidence that the blue-eyed man in the hoodie had been here. Three winters had passed since then.

I looked around anyway. There were no birds in the trees and the only sound as I searched the island was the crunching of pine needles and twigs beneath my bare feet. I found a bare patch of dirt and a circle of stones where someone had built a campfire some time ago but it wasn’t the type of circle I was looking for.

After about an hour of searching, I sat on a mossy tree stump in the middle of the island, ready to admit defeat. If there had ever been anything of interest here, it was long gone by now.

So why had Sherry Westlake placed an Apollo Stone on the island? What was she hoping to record? As far as I knew, she hadn’t been investigating the Deirdre Summers case. And even if she had been investigating that case, why would she put an Apollo Stone on the island now, three years after Deirdre went missing?

It didn’t make sense. The only thing I was sure Sherry had been investigating was the church in Clara. So was the island connected to the church in some way? I thought about that for a while but couldn’t come up with any answers.

Finally, I decided to give up on the island for now. I needed to return to the office. I also needed to eat. My stomach was growling hungrily. I got up and made my way back to the shore. When I reached the small dock and was just about to follow the shoreline around to where the
Princess of the Lake
was anchored, I stopped.

I turned and inspected the trees on the island. There were a few that had fallen over, uprooted by the wind, killed by disease, or maybe even hit by lightning, but they had all been felled by natural causes.

Except one. The stump in the center of the island, the one I had just been sitting on, had a flat top. It had been cut by a chainsaw.

I retraced my steps to the stump. It was in a small clearing with no sign of the felled tree anywhere. I searched around and found it eventually, a tall pine that had been dragged fifty feet away and left lying in the undergrowth. The cut at its base matched the stump in the clearing. Clean and straight.

Why had someone cut down this one tree and dragged it over here? I returned to the stump. Moss covered its top, which made it a comfortable place to sit. But what was hiding beneath? I found a stick and began scraping at the spongy moss, clearing it away from the top of the stump.

After a minute of scraping, I revealed a section of the wood beneath. Something had been carved into it. I could see a line and a curve that were definitely manmade. I went back to clearing the moss and when it had all been removed, lying in dark green clumps around the tree roots, I looked down at the stump.

Magical symbols covered every inch of the wood, carved at least an inch deep with a knife or some kind of woodworking tool. I examined them closely. They looked similar to the symbols in the stained glass window at the church. I couldn’t check because my phone was on the boat. That meant I couldn’t take photos of the carvings, either. I was going to have to swim back to the boat, take her to the rickety dock and come back here to get pictures.

I got back to the shore and waded into water, shivering at its cold touch. When I was up to my waist, I leaned forward and entered the water with a gasp before breaststroking my way back to the
Princess
.

Cantrell was still asleep and snoring heavily, his upturned face burning slightly in the sun. I started the engine and guided the boat to the small dock before slipping my feet into my boots, grabbing my phone from my jeans pocket, and treading carefully onto the wooden structure. It held under my weight but I wouldn’t put any bets on Cantrell being able to stand in the wooden slats without them giving way beneath him.

I tied the boat to the dock and walked back to the clearing at the center of the island, hoping my boxers would dry off so I could put on my jeans when I got back to the boat. If Cantrell woke up and saw me coming out from the trees in my boots and boxers, he’d probably arrest me on some sort of indecency charge.

When I got to the stump, I turned on my phone and compared the symbols carved into the wood with the ones on the stained glass window at the church. Some of them were identical.

Whoever made this makeshift altar was using the same magical system that was being used by the robed figures in the church window. I couldn’t deny a connection between the island and the church now. Sherry Westlake had somehow known about this tree stump altar last year and had put the Apollo Stone on the island to keep an eye on it.

I called Felicity. When she answered, I asked her, “Did you manage to track down a crystal reader?”

“Yes, they’re sending one over from Bangor. It should be here today.”

“Great. I found an altar here on the island and it’s carved with the same symbols as we saw in the church windows.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Felicity said.

“Terrible? No, it’s good. We have a connection between Deirdre Summers and the church. We should be able to find more clues about what’s been going on, why those thirteen people were massacred.”

“Yes, I know that, but this language scares me, Alec. It only ever turns up where black magic or evil are involved. And it’s been found throughout history all over the world. Whatever is going on here is bigger than we thought if someone is using that language as part of a magical system.”

“We should know more when we get that reader and use it to play back the information on the Apollo Stone.” That was assuming the Apollo Stone captured anything before Wesley Jones removed it from the island. But it had been here, recording, on Christmas Day so there might be something on the crystal that showed activity on the island while the massacre at the church was taking place.

“I’ll be there soon,” I told Felicity. “I need to get back to the boat and put on my clothes before Cantrell wakes up.”

“What?” She sounded shocked. “What exactly is going on there, Alec?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“Okay,” she said. “Be careful.”

“I will.” At least being so deep into the case gave us things to talk about that didn’t involve last night’s kiss.

I ended the call and took some photos of the tree stump altar before heading back to the dock. Cantrell was awake and standing in the boat with his hands on his hips, watching me as I approached.

“What the hell are you doing, Harbinger?”

“I decided to go for a swim,” I said.

“In your drawers?”

“I didn’t bring my trunks.” I climbed onto the boat and began to get dressed. Cantrell was staring at me. “What?” I asked, pulling on my jeans.

“That’s a hell of a lot of ink you’ve got there. I was looking at it, that’s all,” he said defensively.

“Magical protection tattoos,” I said. “My version of a bulletproof vest.”

He nodded, continuing to watch me as I dressed. “That job of yours come with a gym membership too?”

I pulled my T-shirt over my head and said, “I train at home. I have to stay in shape, my life may depend on it.”

Cantrell might have had a comeback if this conversation had taken place this morning before he saw the monster in the lake. Now, he knew the kind of enemies I dealt with. He simply nodded and kept quiet.

“Anyway,” I said, “while you were sitting here catching flies, I was searching the island. I found an altar. It was probably used to summon that creature we saw.”

“Did you destroy it?”

“No, it’s abandoned, overgrown with moss. Whoever made it hasn’t been here it in some time.” I started the boat’s engine and untied the mooring line. When we were clear of the shallow water and rocks, I opened up the engine and left the island behind.

Cantrell was strangely quiet, his eyes gazing into the distance, a thoughtful look on his face, all the way back to the dock. Even when I gave the boat keys back to Woody and thanked him, Cantrell offered only a cursory nod to the old man before following me back to the cruiser in the parking lot.

“You okay?” I asked him when we reached the vehicle.

He snapped out of it. “Of course I am. I’ll drop you back at the station so you can pick up your car.” He got in and started the engine. Country music came drifting out of the radio. Cantrell turned it off when we hit the highway and said, “Thanks for your help today but I can take it from here.”

“We’re nowhere near solving the case yet,” I said. “We don’t even know who they guy in the hoodie is.”

“I’ll find that out using good old-fashioned police work. We know what happened to Deirdre now, which is what I asked you to find out. You did that, so thanks.”

“I can help catch that guy,” I said. “Don’t kick me off the case before it even gets started.”

“I’m not going to argue about it, Harbinger. As far as you’re concerned, this case is closed, do you understand?” He shot me an angry look before turning his attention back to the road.

I didn’t say anything but cracked my window open.

“I told you not to do that,” Cantrell said, “We have…”

“Air, yeah, I know,” I said, enjoying the fresh air blowing on my face through the open window.