Midnight Blood Read online

  I couldn’t argue with that. Whatever the Melandra Codex was, it had already caused enough trouble that I also wished I’d never heard of it.

  “Where are we?” I asked Honoka. “Where is this room located?”

  “We’re in a house in Bangor. It’s a Shadow Watch safe house.”

  “Is there anyone else here at the moment?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’re going to take your vehicle so we can get home. Where are the keys?”

  She sighed. “In the kitchen.”

  I opened the door and discovered we were in the basement of the house. A set of wooden steps led up to the first floor. We ascended them and I found the keys for the SUV on the kitchen table.

  Leading Tia outside into the rain, I found the vehicle parked on the street and climbed in behind the wheel. She got into the passenger seat and gazed out of the water-streaked windshield for a moment before her head lolled forward again and her eyes closed.

  Hoping Mallory was going to come back, I started the engine and checked the gas. The tank was almost full. I wasn’t exactly sure where in Bangor we were so I fired up the GPS and punched in the address of my office. According to the onboard computer, we’d arrive there in less than an hour.

  Mallory lifted her head and I was pleased to see her hazel eyes. The hieroglyphs were gone.

  “Do you remember what happened?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I’m totally aware of what’s going on when Tia takes over. It isn’t like she suppresses me or anything, more like we work together. It’s symbiotic.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t like the idea of Mallory being possessed by Tia any more than I liked the idea of Sheriff Cantrell being possessed by Merlin. Symbiotic or not, Tia didn’t belong in Mallory’s body any more than Merlin belonged in Cantrell’s. There was nothing I could do about it at the moment, though.

  Right now, we needed to get home.

  Mallory looked at the time on the dashboard display. “We’ve been gone for almost two hours.”

  “Yeah, that magic grenade really did a number on us. They managed to drive us all the way here without us knowing anything about it.”

  “I was referring to the fact that you told Leon you’d meet him at your office an hour ago.”

  “Damn it. I need to find a phone.” I presumed my cell was still sitting on the coffee table at home.

  I needed to contact Leon because when I hadn’t turned up at the office, he’d probably gone ahead and tried to locate Brad and Lucy Hawthorne on his own.

  15

  Standing in the doorway of the Harbinger P.I. building, trying to stay out of the rain, Leon checked his watch again. It was only two minutes since he’d last checked it. Alec was exactly forty-two minutes late.

  He checked his phone. No reply to the six calls he’d made or the eight texts he’d sent. He wondered if he should drive to Alec’s and see what the hell was going on or go ahead with the plan to take an item of Lucy’s to the Blackwell sisters.

  He also wondered if he should be worried that Alec hadn’t shown but reminded himself that Alec had said on the phone that Mallory was back. There was some kind of relationship going on between those two that was hard to miss. Whatever the reason for Alec’s absence, Leon was sure it was something to do with that.

  “I’m not getting in the way of anyone’s love life,” he said, grinning. He’d just have to visit the Blackwell sisters in his own. By the time Alec finally returned those calls, he might have already found and rescued Brad and Lucy single-handedly.

  Well, maybe not single-handedly. Leon was pragmatic enough to realize that he might need help so he called Michael, his butler.

  Michael answered immediately. “Yes, sir?”

  “Michael, we’re going on a hunt for two missing siblings. Bring the RV and the weapons and meet me at Blackwell Books.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Leon hung up and put the phone into the pocket of his jeans. He rushed through the rain to the Testarossa and slid inside. The engine purred into life when he started it and then settled into a throaty purr. Leon drove along Main Street toward Blackwell Books. The bookstore was only a few hundred yards from the Harbinger P.I. office but Leon saw no reason to get wet unnecessarily. The bookstore’s lights were on, which meant the Blackwell sisters were probably in there. He cut the engine, climbed out of the car, and hurried through the door of Blackwell Books.

  As he entered the store, a bell above the door rang and Victoria Blackwell appeared from the stacks. As usual, she wore a black lace dress that reached to her ankles, Her long, dark hair was arranged neatly on top of her head.

  “Leon, what a surprise!” She drifted toward him and took his hands. “You’re here for a spell, aren’t you?” Closing her eyes while still keeping hold of his hands, she added, “A locator spell. Is someone missing, dear?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The owner of this notebook.” He showed her the pocket-sized notebook he’d picked up at Lucy’s house.

  She took it from him and examined it closely. “Yes, this will do nicely. Come on through to the back room. Devon will be pleased to see you. It’s been too long!”

  He followed her through the maze of bookshelves to a closed door at the back of the shop. Victoria opened it and led him into a small room where her sister Devon sat at a table poring over a huge book that looked hundreds of years old. Leon could see that the writing in the book was a swirling script that had been written directly onto the pages, not printed there by a press.

  Devon looked up and smiled when she saw Leon. “Leon, what brings you to our door?”

  “A locator spell,” Victoria said.

  “Oh, is someone missing? It isn’t Alec, is it?”

  “No, I have a good idea where he is,” Leon said. “This notebook belongs to a woman named Lucy Hawthorne. She and her brother have vanished and there’s good reason to suspect they were taken against their will.”

  “Oh dear,” Devon said. “Do you have anything belonging to Brad?’

  “No, but I think they’re together. So if we find Lucy, we also find her brother.”

  “All right, we’ll give it a shot,” Victoria said. She went to a shelf and began rummaging for something while Devon closed the book she’d been reading and removed it from the table.

  Victoria found what she’d been looking for and unrolled a map of Maine on the table.

  “We assume they’re still in the state do we?” she asked Leon.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s probably a good place to start.”

  Victoria placed Lucy’s notebook next to the map. Devon returned with a small brass dish, which she also placed close to the map.

  “Now we’re going to have to use a small part of the notebook,” Victoria said. “Perhaps a page from the back. I’m sure Lucy Hawthorne won’t mind since we’re using it to find out where she is.” She ripped a corner from one of the pages in the book and placed it into the brass dish. Devon took a matchbook from a pocket somewhere in her dress and lit one before touching the flame to the paper.

  When the paper was reduced to ash, Victoria pinched some between her fingers and thumb and recited a few words before crumbling the ash over the map while moving her hand in a circle.

  Instead of falling straight down onto the map, the ash seemed to have a life of its own. Each speck twisted and floated to the same location on the map, forming a small circle there.

  “Oh, that isn’t good,” Victoria said, looking down at the circle of ash.

  “What is it?” Leon asked.

  “They seem to be on a boat.” She pointed at the ash. It had fallen onto the rightmost edge of the map away from land.

  “Let me try a different map,” Victoria said, going to the shelf again and then returning with a map that showed the east coast and a large stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.

  She repeated the spell. The ash formed a circle in the ocean east of Long Island and south of Nantucket.

  “They’re
definitely on a boat,” Victoria said.

  “Can you get me there?” Leon asked. “The same way you sent me and Alec to England?”

  Victoria looked uncertainly at the circle of ash on the map. “I’m not sure. A moving target like that could be very difficult to hit. If anything went wrong, you’d end up in the sea miles from land.”

  “Unfortunately, we can’t use the spell anyway,” Devon said. “The destination has to be a church, stone circle, burial ground, or something like that.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” Victoria said. “There won’t be anything like that on a boat.”

  Leon felt helpless. He knew exactly where Lucy and Brad were but had no way to get there.

  “Wait a minute,” Devon said, “I have an idea. It’s a long shot but it might work.” She went to the shelf, which Leon now realized contained dozens of maps and looked through them until she found one that showed a close up of the area on which the ash had landed on the larger scale map.

  Devon ripped some more paper from Lucy’s notebook and cast the locator spell. Once she had a location pinpointed, she went to a desk in the corner of the room and switched on a computer there. After looking something up online, she returned to the map and used a ruler, which she’d taken from one of the desk drawers, to calculate the longitude and latitude of the ash circle.

  Once she’d worked that out, she cast the locator spell again. The new circle of ash landed slightly south of the original.

  Devon nodded to herself and stared at the map, obviously deep in thought. Then she used the rulers to locate a precise area of the sea where she used a marker to draw a tiny “X.”

  “What have you discovered?” Victoria asked.

  “The boat is moving south along the coast,” Devon said. “If it continues on its present heading, it will cross over this “X” I’ve marked on the map. Once it passes over the “X,” we have a tiny window during which we can get Leon on board.”

  Victoria frowned at her sister. “I must admit I’m confused, dear sister. How can the spell possibly work?”

  Leon was thinking the same thing. He wanted to find Lucy and Brad but he didn’t want to drown in the Atlantic.

  A bell sounded in the shop and Devon looked at Leon. “Are you expecting your friend Michael?”

  “Yeah, I told him to meet me here.”

  “Well he’s here. I’ll go and greet him. I assume he’ll be accompanying you on this adventure?”

  Leon nodded.

  Devon went out through the door and reappeared moments later with Leon’s butler. Michael was dressed in a black sweater and jeans and wore a black wool watch cap. He looked more like a cat burglar than a butler.

  “I brought the RV and the weapons, sir,” he said when he saw Leon.

  “Great,” Leon said. “It looks like the RV will be redundant, though. The Blackwells are going to use a spell to get us onto a boat in the Atlantic where we’re going to carry out a rescue operation.”

  “Very good, sir,” Michael said, totally unfazed by what he’d just been told. “May I ask who we’re rescuing?”

  “Lucy and Brad Hawthorne have been kidnapped.”

  Michael nodded. “Do we know by whom, sir?”

  “No, we’ll find that out when we get there.” Leon turned to Devon. “You were going to explain how the spell will work.”

  “It’s quite simple, really,” she said, pointing at the “X” on the map. “This is the location of the wreck of an Italian liner called the Andrea Doria. She sank in 1956 with forty-six casualties. It’s a burial ground.”

  Victoria’s face lit up. “Yes, that’ll do!”

  “There’s a slight drawback,” Devon said. “We can only bring you back while the boat is in the area of the wreck. You have to find Brad and Lucy in that short window if you want the spell to bring you all back here.”

  “We’ll find a way to make it work,” Leon said. “Maybe we can stop the boat and drop the anchor or something.”

  Devon cast the locator spell again and checked the coordinates of the latest circle of ash. “The boat will be sailing over the wreck in seven minutes and we need time to prepare the spell.”

  “Let’s do it,” Leon said.

  “I’ll get the weapons, sir.” Michael left the room. He came back a minute later carrying a black canvas bag. Inside was a selection of guns and bladed weapons.

  Leon chose a Mossberg mag-fed shotgun and a Glock 30 handgun. He also took a folding tactical knife, which he placed into his pocket.

  “What about you, Michael?” he asked the butler. “What are you taking?”

  “I’ll take the same as you if I may, sir.”

  Leon nodded. “Of course.”

  “And some ammunition,” Michael said. “We don’t know how many enemies we’ll encounter.” He took some magazines for the Glocks and the shotguns out of the bag and handed some to Leon before squirrelling some away in his own pockets.

  Devon led them out of the room and to a door marked PRIVATE. She opened the door to reveal a small room with a magic circle painted in red on the floor. White candles surrounded the circle. Devon lit all of them.

  The candlelight illuminated an altar that sat at one end of the room. Upon the altar was a black cloth with a white embroidered pentagram. Sitting on the cloth, a small cauldron began to emit a thick, pungent smoke, despite the fact that there was no heat source beneath it. The smoke smelled of flowers and berries that Leon didn’t recognize.

  “Stand in the circle,” Victoria directed.

  Leon and Michael stepped over the candles and stood together in the center of the magic circle.

  “When you need to come back, call me,” Devon said, handing Leon a card with her number on it.

  She then crouched down behind the altar for a moment and stood up again with a silver bowl in one hand and two small daggers in the other. She handed the daggers to Leon and Michael and held out the bowl. Leon could see herbs and leaves in there. “I need a drop of blood from each of you,” Devon said.

  Leon nicked his finger and squeezed some blood out of the tiny wound and into the bowl. Michael did the same. Victoria took the daggers from them while Devon took the bowl to the altar.

  Both women began chanting in languages that were unknown to Leon and that, he was sure, did not belong in the modern world.

  An energy began to rise within the circle. Leon felt the hair on his arms stand on end.

  The witches continued their chanting and the energy started to spin around the circle. As the sisters increased the speed of their words, so the speed of the energy became faster.

  Then Devon tipped the contents of the silver bowl into the cauldron. The pungent smoke turned red and then Leon couldn’t see the room anymore.

  He and Michael were now standing on the deck of a forty-foot yacht floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

  16

  When Mallory and I got back to the house, I checked my phone. I had six missed calls and eight texts from Leon and two missed calls from Felicity. Leon’s texts ranged from him asking me where I was to insinuating that I had better things to do than meet him.

  I called him and got his voicemail.

  “Hey, Leon, give me a call as soon as you get this.”

  After hanging up, I called Victoria Blackwell. I’d mentioned my plan to use a locator spell to find Lucy and I assumed he’d gone ahead with that plan.”

  “Alec, how nice to hear from you!” Victoria said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m looking for Leon. Is he there with you?”

  “No, dear, he isn’t here.”

  “Oh, I thought he might have dropped by your place and asked you to cast a locator spell.”

  “Yes, he did that. We cast the spell and now he’s gone to rescue Lucy and Brad Hawthorne.”

  “Okay. Can you give me the address? I’ll see if he needs any help.”

  “There isn’t an address exactly.”

  “No address. So can you just tell me where he is
?”

  “He’s on a boat in the Atlantic.”

  “What?”

  “He’s on a—”

  “I heard what you said. How did he get there?”

  “We sent him there. And if he doesn’t call us in the next five minutes, we can’t get him back.”

  Mallory was in the kitchen filling the coffee machine. I stuck my head through the doorway and said, “I need to go and see to the Blackwell sisters. They’ve sent Leon onto a boat, apparently, and he may be stuck there. You want to stay here or come with?”

  “I’ll come with you,” she said, pushing the coffee machine aside. “Let’s go.”

  We went out to the Land Rover and I backed out past the Shadow Watch SUV, which I’d left on the street with the keys in the ignition. I was sure someone from the organization would come by and pick it up. Just so long as they didn’t disturb me in the process, that was fine.

  I put the wipers on to clear the rain from the Land Rover’s windshield and put my foot down hard on the gas pedal. I had no idea what kind of mess the Blackwell sisters had gotten Leon into but it didn’t sound good. If there was any way I could help my friend, I was going to do it.

  “I didn’t mention this earlier,” I said to Mallory, “But Felicity has been doing some research into the death curse. She was in England for a while and she found out some useful stuff. She thinks there’s a way to reverse the spell. Apparently it involves putting Tia’s heart back into her body.”

  She’d been looking out of the window at the rain. Now she turned to me, tears in her eyes. “I knew you’d find a way.”

  “It was Felicity who did the research.”

  “I know. When I say “you,” I mean you and people you surround yourself with. They’re all good people. They put their lives in the line to help others.”

  “You’re one of those people too,” I said.

  She smiled, wiped a tear from her cheek and stared out of the window again.

  When we arrived at Blackwell Books, we took swords from the back of the Land Rover and went straight to the room at the back of the shop, the room I knew the sisters used for their transportation spell.