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  I didn’t want to let the sword go but I had things to do. Regretfully, I placed it back into the cupboard and went back upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  I needed to get to the office. Without Felicity to open up, everything fell to me and it was already the afternoon.

  Bounding upstairs, I grabbed my phone and checked it. There was a text message from Felicity.

  Landed in London. Everything fine. Hope all goes well with your new assistant.

  At least I knew she was okay. I replied with a message wishing her well in her new job.

  I went back downstairs, grabbed a handful of the leatherbound Egyptian magical texts from the floor, and left the house. I threw the books into the backseat of the Land Rover and turned to take a look at Felicity’s empty house.

  Except it wasn’t empty. A pair of matching white Honda Civics sat on the driveway.

  Surely Carlton hadn’t moved in already. Felicity had only left a few hours ago.

  As I looked at the house, frowning, the front door opened and Carlton came out. With a smile, he gave me a short wave and said, “Hey, neighbor.”

  8

  When I got to the office, I put the Egyptian books on my desk and booted up the computer. Without Felicity fussing about the place—or just knowing she was in the next room—the office was a lonely place. Too quiet. Too empty.

  I rolled my chair over to the window and looked out at Main Street. As usual, the good folk of Dearmont were going about their daily business and the street was bustling with people and cars. I groaned when I saw Carlton Carmichael approaching the building.

  Maybe I was being hard on the guy. He deserved a chance to fit into the team. It wasn’t his fault he was following in Felicity’s footsteps.

  He opened the door and came up the stairs. He poked his head into the office. “Hi, Boss. Sorry I’m late. We spent the morning moving into our new home.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. That was pretty quick. Felicity only left last night.”

  “I know, right? I guess the Society wanted us in situ as quickly as possible. What are you gonna do?”

  “Yeah,” I repeated. “What are you gonna do? Now that you’re here, you can check the answering machine and see if we have any new cases.”

  “Okay, Boss.” He turned away from my door and went into his office.

  “And there’s no need to call me Boss,” I shouted after him. “Alec will do just fine.”

  I returned to the computer and scanned the local news sites, looking for anything that might indicate preternatural activity in the area. The first article I found was a follow up on the story about Linda Whittington’s missing body. The headline read, More Trouble at Local Cemetery.

  According to the story, a group of teenagers had been fooling around in the Whispering Pines Cemetery last night when a “hideous creature” had appeared from behind one of the tombstones and chased them all the way to their cars. The teenagers had raced away and gone to the police. An officer had checked out the cemetery and found a hole in the ground which seemed to be some sort of tunnel. The policed planned to carry out a more in-depth investigation of the tunnels today.

  I let out a sigh of frustration. I should have checked for more ghouls in those tunnels when I was there a couple of nights ago. It looked like there was a nest at Whispering Pines after all. And since I’d killed one of their number, the remaining ghouls were going to be pissed.

  I had to get over there before the police poked their noses into those tunnels and got them bit off.

  The only problem I could see was that I might be spotted if I went to the cemetery in broad daylight. A sword-wielding guy climbing down into a hole among the graves might raise a few eyebrows. But I couldn’t risk the police getting there before me. If they stumbled upon a nest of ghouls, there would be casualties.

  Not on my watch.

  I went out into the hall and glanced into Carlton’s office. He was making coffee.

  “Did you check the machine?” I asked.

  “Yeah, no messages. We might have a quiet day.”

  “There’s still work to be done. I have to go out. While I’m gone, take a look through the books on my desk and see what you can find out about those pillars, the god Khonsu, anything that will help us get to Tia’s mummy.”

  He nodded eagerly. “Will do.”

  I left the building and almost collided with Leon, who was coming in the door as I was going out.

  “Hey. Alec, you going somewhere?”

  “Yeah, I need to deal with a problem.”

  “Oh, cool, because I was in the area and I was wondering if you needed any—”

  “You can come with me, Leon. I’d appreciate the help.”

  His face broke into a grin. “Awesome. So what are we doing?”

  “Pest control.” I told him about the ghouls at Whispering Pines as we walked to the Land Rover.

  As we got into the car, he said, “You got weapons?”

  I nodded. “In the back. Swords and daggers.”

  He sat back in his seat and nodded. “Excellent. Anything new regarding Mallory’s case?”

  I started the Land Rover and joined the traffic on Main Street. “Nothing yet. I’ve been looking through the books but I can’t find anything about pillars like the ones Tia drew on my wall. I told Carlton to take a look. Maybe he’ll find something I missed.”

  “I doubt that,” Leon said. “He doesn’t seem to have anything like Felicity’s level of expertise.”

  “We have to give him a chance to prove himself.”

  “I guess so.”

  I stopped at the hardware store, where I purchased four large plastic bottles of lye. I had no idea how many ghouls we might encounter and I wanted to make sure I had enough of the chemical to destroy everything. After stowing the bottles in the back of the Land Rover, I got onto the highway and headed for the cemetery.

  We rode in silence for a while, and then Leon said, “Do you think it’s odd how quickly Carlton arrived?”

  I’d been thinking exactly the same thing, especially since Carlton moved next door to me so fast but I simply said, “What do you mean?” I valued Leon’s opinion and I wanted to hear his theory about my new assistant before I offered my own.

  “Felicity gets snatched away by the Society and this guy is already waiting in the wings to replace her,” he said. “It all happened so fast. I guess what I’m trying to say is: has Felicity been taken away because there’s a new job for her or because the Society wants Carlton here instead of her?”

  “You think he’s a spy?” The same thought had crossed my mind. When Felicity had first come to work for me, I’d accused her of being a spy and I hadn’t been wrong; she’d been sent by my father to keep an eye on me. Had Carlton been sent by the Society to carry out a similar task?

  “Maybe,” Leon said. “Especially after you had those Shadow Watch agents all up in your business. Seems to me the Society thinks you know something about that Codex thing those guys were after.”

  “The Melandra Codex,” I said. I’d been questioned about it by Honoka Chan and Todd Benson, two agents from the Shadow Watch. They seemed to think I knew the location of the Codex because my father might have told me where he’d hidden it. That was a joke; my dad hardly told me anything. I was the last person he’d tell about the location of a Codex he’d allegedly stolen from the Society.

  “Yeah, Melandra Codex,” Leon said. “Those Shadow Watch agents failed to get any info out of you, so what if the Society is trying something more subtle, like sending Carlton here to find out what you know?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But if that’s why Carlton is here, the Society has wasted its time. I have no idea what the Melandra Codex is or where it’s hidden. I don’t even know if my father ever had the Codex, as the Society seems to believe. So Carlton can snoop around all he wants, he won’t find anything.”

  “Nothing to worry about, then,” Leon said.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I rep
eated.

  We reached Whispering Pines Cemetery and my heart sank when I saw a patrol car in the parking lot.

  Leon pointed at the car. “Looks like they beat us to it.”

  “That isn’t good.” I parked next to the patrol car and got out. “If they go into those tunnels unprepared, it won’t end well for them.”

  “And who goes into a tunnel prepared to meet ghouls?” Leon slid out of the Land Rover and joined me at the tailgate. “They probably think those kids were pranking them. There’s no way they believe there’s a monster living at the cemetery.”

  “Exactly,” I said, opening the tailgate and pulling back the blanket that covered the weapons. “Let’s just hope they didn’t go into the tunnels yet.” I indicated the weapons. “The tunnels are too cramped for swords so we have to use daggers.”

  Leon chose one and balanced it in his hand. He made a few jabbing and slicing motions in the air, reminding me of my encounter with Excalibur earlier. The energy I’d received from the sword had dissipated slightly but I was still buzzing.

  I grabbed a dagger and a flashlight and between us, we carried the bottles of lye.

  We entered the cemetery and walked among the tombstones, looking for the hole the news site had mentioned.

  “Over there,” Leon said, pointing toward the far end of the cemetery. “Something’s moving.”

  I squinted against the cold sun and saw what he was referring to. A low, dark was shape moving among the gravestones.

  We sprinted along the path toward it and as we got closer, the shape became clearer. A blond-haired male police officer was crawling along the ground. He looked up at us and waved weakly. He was covered in dirt and blood. “Get out of here,” he said. “There’s something back there. Something dangerous.”

  The path he’d taken was clearly marked out by a trail of blood on the grass.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” I said.

  “Already done. An ambulance and backup are on the way.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the blood trail. “My partner is back there. I think it got him. You have to leave.”

  “We’re here to help,” Leon told him.

  “You can’t help. Not against that thing. We need to wait for backup.”

  “How badly injured are you?” I asked, dropping the lye bottles and crouching beside him. The front of his uniform was stained with dark blood.

  “It looks worse than it is,” he said. “Damn thing clawed me in the stomach. I’m pretty sure it didn’t hit anything vital but I’m losing blood.”

  “You need to stop crawling,” I said. “Leon, help me get him into a sitting position.” We carefully lifted the officer and sat him against the nearest tombstone.

  “The ambulance should be here soon,” I said. “Here, take this and keep it pressed against the wound.” I took off my shirt and handed it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said, balling the shirt up and pressing it against his stomach. “If I pass out before backup gets here, tell them Dave Hooper is in the tunnel over there. Make sure they go in with their weapons ready.”

  “There’s no time for that,” I said. “We’re going to help Dave. Wait here.”

  He shook his head weakly. “No, you can’t go in there. There’s something in those tunnels that isn’t human.”

  “We know,” Leon said, showing the police officer his dagger. “We’re here to deal with it.”

  “With a knife?” He looked incredulous. “You can’t go down there with a knife. That thing has claws like scythes.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just wait for that ambulance.”

  We left him leaning on the tombstone and followed the blood trail to a hole that angled into the ground.

  “Looks like a tight squeeze,” Leon said.

  I shone the flashlight beam into the hole. It was narrower than the tunnels that made up the subterranean maze below and looked as if it had been made by the ghoul digging its way to the surface like a mole. “The main tunnels are larger,” I told Leon. “This is just our way in.”

  He sighed. “Looks like I’m going to ruin a perfectly good set of clothing.” He threw his bottles of lye into the hole, took the flashlight from me, and crawled in headfirst.

  I followed close behind, crawling through the dirt until the narrow hole joined one of the main tunnels below. Once we were in the larger tunnel, I shook the dirt out of my hair and looked in both directions.

  “It stinks down here,” Leon said, wrinkling his nose. “Like rotting flesh.”

  “Yeah, that’s what ghouls smell like.”

  “Which way?” Leon whispered.

  The blue glow from our daggers illuminated the area around us but there were no clues to tell us where the ghoul and the other police officer might be.

  “Let’s go this way,” I suggested, pointing north. “We’ll leave the lye here. If we get into a fight, it’ll slow us down. Here, it will act as a marker for the exit.”

  Leon nodded. “Good idea.”

  We crawled north along the tunnel. The foul smell in the air became stronger. A scream came from somewhere up ahead, confirming that we were heading in the right direction.

  The tunnel bent to the left and as we rounded the corner, I saw a ghoul ahead of us, dragging a uniformed police officer into the darkness. Dave Hooper was screaming at the top of his lungs and struggling against the creature but it had its talons buried into his shoulders.

  Hooper saw us and his eyes went wide. “Help! You’ve got to help me!”

  The ghoul paused, seemingly weighing up its chances against Leon and me. Its beady eyes flicked between us and the glowing daggers we held in our hands. It must have decided it was better to live another day. It released Hooper and fled into the darkness.

  Leon and I rushed forward as fast as we could in the cramped tunnel. Hooper was breathing hard and fast, his eyes staring at the tunnel wall.

  “He’s going into shock,” I said to Leon. “See if you can get him back to the surface.”

  Leon nodded and began talking to the police officer, trying to coax him back to the tunnel we’d used to enter the ghoul’s lair.

  Leaving them, I moved forward to chase down the creature I should have killed when I’d killed its mate. If I’d done a more thorough job, there wouldn’t be two wounded police officers here right now. I shouldn’t have assumed that the creature I’d encountered was the only one of its kind at Whispering Pines.

  I held the dagger in front of me to light my way through the darkness. I couldn’t see the ghoul. The damned things moved fast.

  The tunnel twisted to the right and then opened up into a roughly square area that had a ceiling high enough that I could stand up. The smell of rotting flesh was overpowering. I quickly removed my T-shirt and wrapped it around my nose and mouth in an attempt to filter out the disgusting stench.

  The blue dagger light revealed bones on the floor. As I moved deeper into the area, more bones appeared, forming a pile in one corner of the room. Some of the bones were picked clean while others still had pieces of flesh attached.

  This had to be the nest.

  But there was no sign of the ghoul.

  I held the dagger close to the pile of bones to see if the creature was hiding under there, waiting to pounce at me. It wasn’t. I checked the walls for exits or signs that the ghoul had tunneled its way out of here. The only tunnel that led from the nest was the one I’d used to enter. The creature had definitely not gone that way.

  I angled the dagger up to check the ceiling. The ghoul was there, clinging to the dirt ceiling with its huge talons. It shrieked at me and dropped, spreading its fingers and slashing at me.

  I wheeled away but my left shoulder lit up with searing pain as one of the claws caught me and ripped into my flesh. In the blue glow from my dagger, the blood that slicked my arm looked black. I was going to have to get to the surface soon; I had no idea how deep that cut went and if I passed out down here from loss of blood, I was as good as dead.

>   The ghoul had landed near the pile of bones. It coiled its body like an eager serpent and then used its powerful legs to launch itself at me.

  I held the dagger out in front of me, hoping the creature would impale itself. I should have known I’d never be that lucky. The ghoul grabbed my wrist in its powerful shovel-like hand and held my blade out of the way while the trajectory and velocity of the leap brought its snout close to my face. It snapped at me.

  I turned my head away just in time to avoid losing my nose and brought my knee up into the creature’s stomach as hard as I could. It howled and loosened its grip on my hand enough that I could stab at its neck.

  The dagger sank into its flesh and the ghoul jumped back, snarling and drooling. Blood oozed from a wound below its jaw but it didn’t look like I’d managed to pierce anything important, like an artery. The creature’s beady eyes were full of a hateful fire and it didn’t look like it was going to perish from the wound anytime soon.

  I wasn’t fairing so well. My left arm was slick with blood and I felt light-headed. If I didn’t get out of here soon and receive medical attention, I probably wasn’t going to see tomorrow.

  The ghoul sprang at me, roaring, probably sensing my weakness and going for a quick, easy kill.

  If it thought I was going down easy, it was wrong. I dodged the attack and summoned enough strength to plunge the dagger into the creature’s back as it passed me. Once the blade was in, I used both hands to draw it along the flesh by the ghoul’s spine.

  The creature landed in the dirt on its stomach, howling in pain. I dropped to my knees and buried the dagger in the back of its head, killing it.

  When I was sure it was dead, I got to my feet, removed the T-shirt from my face and tied it tightly around my wound before stumbling out of the nest and along the tunnel. The darkness disorientated me and the blue light from the dagger seemed too dim to see by now. I needed to get out of here. I needed daylight.

  When I saw the bottles of lye, I breathed a sigh of relief. It would be good to taste fresh air again after breathing the fetid, foul soup that passed for air down here.