Dark Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 3) Read online

  “No, I’ve never seen him before.”

  The young man held up his arms in a V shape and threw his head back to look up at the night sky. He began to chant in a language I’d never heard, a language that contained glottal sounds and weird combinations of consonants. I wished Felicity were here; she’d probably recognize the language and be able to translate it.

  When he was done chanting, the hooded man turned from the lake and walked back to the trail before heading to the parking lot.

  “Can we follow him?” Cantrell asked. “Maybe we can get a license plate number or something.”

  I shook my head. “Only the trees around here are working under the spell. If we move out of this area, we’ll lose the vision completely.” I lowered the faerie stone and opened my right eye, blinking against the sudden brightness.

  Cantrell was sitting on the grass again now, his stone lying on the ground by his hand. He was gazing out over the lake toward Whitefish Island. “No wonder we couldn’t find a body,” he said. “That monster ate her.”

  “She was a sacrifice,” I told him. “Whoever that guy in the hoodie was, he offered Deirdre to the monster, maybe as a part of some bargain.”

  “But why did she just swim out there to meet her fate? I don’t get it.”

  “She was under a spell,” I said. “She probably had no idea what was happening.”

  Cantrell frowned and murmured, “What am I going to tell Natalie?”

  “Maybe this is one occasion where the case should remain unsolved.” I collected the stones, empty potion vials, and drawings, and put them into the backpack. “Officially, of course. We’ll solve it ourselves but it will have to be off the book.”

  “That’s how you work, isn’t it, Harbinger? Off the book. Hell, you don’t even have a book.”

  I ignored him and slung the backpack over my shoulder. “We’re done here. Deirdre was killed as a sacrifice to that monster. We need to find the guy with the bright blue eyes and deal with him.”

  “Wait a minute. What about the monster? It lives on Whitefish Island. We need to call the National Guard or the Army or someone like that to blow it up.”

  “No, we don’t. The monster isn’t on the island. It doesn’t live in this realm of existence. It was summoned here to collect its sacrifice. Now it’s gone back to wherever it came from until it’s summoned again.”

  “So that’s it? We just walk away after watching that monster kill Deirdre?”

  “I’ll take a look at the island,” I said. “There might be some evidence there that can lead me to the guy in the hoodie, but it’s outside your remit, Sheriff. There’s nothing you can do to catch this guy by conventional means.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Harbinger. If you’re going to that island, then I’m coming with you.”

  That was all I needed. But Cantrell was like a dog with a bone and he wasn’t going to let this go. “Okay,” I said. “Get the department to hire a boat sometime and we’ll sail out there and take a look around.”

  “We’re going now,” he said, putting his shades back on and marching back to the trail.

  I followed him, resigned to the fact that I was going to be spending most of the day with Cantrell whether I liked it or not. I checked my phone to see if Felicity had called. She hadn’t. I hoped she didn’t think I was avoiding her by being away from the office for so long. Maybe I should call, check that she was okay. I put the phone back into my pocket. Later, maybe.

  Cantrell was on a mission, striding quickly across the parking lot despite his size, heading for the docks and the boat hire places there. I followed him to a shack that had a sign in the shape of a wave proclaiming it to be Woody’s Boat Hire.

  Sitting outside the shack on a fold-up chair was an old man wearing a faded Portland Pirates cap and dark blue coveralls. He had a bushy white beard and was smoking a pipe. When he saw Cantrell, he nodded. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

  “I need a boat that’ll get me out to that island, Woody,” Cantrell said.

  The old man looked out at Whitefish Island. “Well, any boat will do that. You want a speedboat? Or something a little slower, maybe? You planning on doing some fishing?”

  “I don’t care what boat it is just so long as it has an engine,” Cantrell told Woody.

  Woody nodded sagely. “Not in the mood for rowing, eh?”

  Cantrell jerked a thumb at me. “He’d be the one doing the rowing and I don’t think he’d get us all the way there and back by sundown.”

  The old man looked me over. “I wouldn’t be so sure. He’s a big feller.” He knocked ash out of his pipe against the arm of his chair and stood up slowly, rubbing his back and wincing. “Anyway, I have just the thing, a twenty-eight-footer with twin outboards. She’ll get you to that island in no time.”

  He went into the shack and came back with a set of keys and a clipboard. “Just sign here, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t have time for that,” Cantrell said, snatching the keys from Woody’s hand. “Just charge it to the department.”

  “But someone has to sign the hire agreement,” Woody said, bewildered, watching as Cantrell went striding along the dock in search of the boat.

  “Here,” I said to Woody, “I’ll sign for it.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, mister.” He handed me the clipboard. I quickly wrote my details in the relevant boxes and signed at the bottom.

  When I passed the clipboard back to him, Woody tore off my copy of the hire agreement and gave it to me. “It sure is a shame about the sheriff,” he said. “He’s been that way since his wife died last year. He’s a good man beneath that gruff exterior. Losing Mary hit him hard. Damn shame, if you ask me.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t worry about the boat, I’ll bring it back in one piece.”

  “Harbinger, what the hell are you gassing about?” Cantrell shouted from the end of the dock. “And which of these damn boats is ours?”

  If he’d bothered to look at the paperwork, he would know that the boat we were taking out was called the Princess of the Lake.

  I found her and held out my hand to Cantrell. “Give me the keys, I’m driving.”

  “The hell you are.”

  I held up the hire agreement. “I’m the only one of us insured to take her out onto the lake.” I was pretty sure he was still under the effect of the potion he’d drunk earlier and I didn’t want him to crash the boat into the island. “You told me back there that you do things by the book,” I said. “I hired the boat so I’m driving. And you’re still under the influence of that potion. You wouldn’t go driving under the influence, would you?”

  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.”

  CHAPTER 10

  After 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.