Interview With a Gargoyle (3 page)

Two handfuls of chocolate-fondant-coated coconut sponge cake went flying.

Mel dove, and just as she hit the floor, Palmer jumped up. He grabbed the naked stainless-steel handle of the double boiler and flung caramelized sugar and boiling water at DeWitt.

The pots clattered to the floor, colliding with what was left of Marty. Melodie yelped. DeWitt roared and clutched the hot goo now plastering his T-shirt to his chest. Before she could decide who needed her help more, Palmer grabbed her hand and dragged her out the front door of the shop.

“Oh my God! I can’t believe you did that.” Mel struggled to keep her arm attached to her shoulder as Palmer pulled her along the darkened street toward a bright blue Jeep Wrangler parked on the corner.

“He would have killed you. I appreciate you buying time, but it’s a bad idea to lie to Blake DeWitt.”

“Well, if he was evil before, he’s going to be a little more evil now with third-degree sugar burns all over his front. And I wasn’t lying. The Gogmar did give me a jewel, a big one, right before you skewered him.”

Palmer yanked open the passenger door of the Jeep and literally shoved Mel inside. She had a split second to recall all her mother’s warnings about never getting into a car with a stranger before she settled in and pulled the seat belt across her chest. Palmer threw his empty scabbard in the backseat and slid behind the wheel with a backward glance at Gleason’s front door.

A second later, the engine roared, and the vehicle lurched into the empty street. “So you’ve still got the Cabochon?” he asked.

Mel grabbed the dashboard as the Jeep careened around a corner and took the straightaway of Garden Street at a cool sixty miles per hour. “No. Like I said, I must have dropped it in the alley. DeWitt will probably find it, and then we won’t have to worry about him, right? Who the hell is he anyway, and why are you so scared of him?”

Her dubious savior gave her a sour glance. “I’m not scared of him, though anyone who knows of him probably should be. He’s cursed. Seriously cursed. And rumor has it he can transfer his curse to someone else through the Cabochon. Oh shit, he’s following us.”

The rumble of DeWitt’s Harley tickled the hairs on the back of Mel’s neck, and she turned in the seat to look out the Jeep’s back window. A single headlight glared back at her. “How fast can this thing go?”

Palmer grinned wickedly and stomped on the gas pedal. “Just watch—and hang on!”

Chapter Three

Each breath Blake took stretched the burned skin of his chest, sending sparks of energy along every nerve ending in his body. He wanted to crawl away and nurse these temporary wounds, but the misery of his injuries paled next to the prospect of spending the rest of his life in thrall to the Witch Hunter’s curse.

Instead of giving in to it, he ignored the pain, just as he’d trained himself over the past decade to ignore all the other hardships of this unwanted existence.

This young woman had the Cabochon, his only ticket back to the land of the fully alive, and all he had to do was take it from her. The chance to finally end the curse was worth a little discomfort. Or a lot.

As he leaned into the next turn in hot pursuit of Van Houten’s Wrangler, he pictured her face. Waves of chestnut hair framed unblemished porcelain skin. Eyes the color of rich chocolate had assessed him as a threat. More than his burns did, it pained him to recall the terror in her expression when he’d reached for her. Thanks to Van Houten, she probably believed he was nothing more than a soulless monster, and she’d run from him, making his task all the more difficult when it didn’t need to be.

The Wrangler increased speed, and Blake cursed. He’d burned up most of a tank of gas following the Gogmar, and now he was riding on fumes. He couldn’t afford to be stranded in the open at dawn, so, reluctantly, he veered off when his prey took a sharp turn around the corner of the Sure-Shop.

He might have to suspend his search, but it wasn’t over by a long shot. The woman obviously worked at the bakery. That meant he could locate her again when he had more time to convince her to cooperate.

With his nerves on fire and his tortured skin aching, he gave up the chase.

Temporarily.

The shops on Garden Street whizzed by in a blur of light and shadow. Behind Palmer’s Jeep, the roar of DeWitt’s Harley rose in pitch. Mel didn’t think a Wrangler could outrun a motorcycle, but having just finished reading
The Secret
, she believed wholeheartedly in the power of positive thinking.

Palmer did some fancy three-pedal footwork, and while Mel’s knuckles went white on the passenger-side panic handle, the vehicle pitched a ninety-degree turn into the parking lot of the Sure-Shop on the corner of Garden and Ross.

They bounced over half a dozen speed bumps and cut behind the building. Beyond the rear parking lot there was nothing but an empty field bordered by a rambling copse of very old walnut trees. The Jeep galloped through the field, and when Mel dared to look back, she saw nothing behind them but the winking lights of the convenience store’s loading dock.

“We lost him,” she said, careful not to bite her tongue when the front wheels dipped into a hidden gully in the tall grass. The hood shot up again on the other side of the dip, and the Jeep rumbled toward the trees. “He’s gone.”

“No, he’s still around. We won’t be safe until sunrise, but I know a place where we can hide.”

“Sunrise?” That was in three hours. Sunrise was when Arnie Gleason would stroll into the bakery with his thermos of dark French roast coffee from the new Starbucks on Fourth Street and discover moose droppings all over his kitchen.

Sunrise was when Mel would lose her job.

“I’m not hiding anywhere until sunrise. I’ve got to go back to work. Now pull over…somewhere.” She gestured at the last few yards of overgrown field before them.

“I can’t do that. DeWitt will torture you for that cabochon, and once he finds it, he could transfer his curse to you.”

“What curse? Let me guess, he’s a vampire? Is that why we’ll be safe at sunrise?” She’d heard rumors about vampires. Calypso had a friend in Ocean City, a practicing witch who knew a lot about vampires. The whole business of blood sucking made Mel a little squeamish.

Palmer twisted the wheel, and the Jeep slid between two trees. An old slab of pavement that looked like it might have been a road at one time cut through the little stretch of walnut forest. The bumpy ride smoothed out considerably once rubber met macadam.

“He’s not a vampire. He’s a lot worse, but he still can’t move around during the day. We’ll be safe in here, trust me.”

There were no lights here, and the tall trees blocked out any moonlight. The only things visible in the twin beams of the Jeep’s headlights were an overgrowth of crabgrass and a dizzy swarm of gnats.

Crickets chirped, and the little, invisible tree frogs sang in harmony with them. When the short run of pavement ended, the tires crunched on gravel. Palmer pulled to a halt in front of an eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The reflection from the white three-foot-by-three-foot NO TRESPASSING sign bolted to the gate filled the interior of the Jeep with a chalky glow.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.” Melodie flung her seat belt off and leaned toward the door, but Palmer put a hand on her arm. His touch was gentle and reassuring, but nevertheless the knot in her stomach tightened. She didn’t know this guy from Adam.

“It’s okay. This is just the rear entrance of Taylor Tools. My uncle owns it, and I work out of the back.”

Taylor Tools was over on Gordon Avenue. Mel didn’t spend much time in hardware stores, so she wasn’t familiar with the place. She imagined they carried a lot of high-end yard implements like those fancy ride-on mowers and four-burner gas grills, but why would a hardware store need razor wire atop its fence?

“Look, Palmer, I appreciate you saving me from the Gogmar and from DeWitt, but I’m not going into a deserted tool warehouse with you. Under. Any. Circumstances. I’m getting out now, and I’m going back to the bakery to clean up the mess we left so I don’t get fired.”

Palmer sighed and settled back in the driver’s seat. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me. This must all seem pretty bizarre.”

“Well, yeah. I don’t get many demons in my Dumpster, you know.” Just saying the words made the whole incident seem like a tabloid fabrication.

Palmer shrugged in an odd way, as though debating whether or not to comment on that. “Well, actually…you do.”

“Oh?” Mel eyed the passenger-door handle. She didn’t relish the idea of walking all the way back to Gleason’s, but she was ready to make a break for it and take her chances.

“In the past couple of months, there’s been a lot of supernatural activity around Gleason’s. Demons are naturally attracted to sweet smells, but I suspect there might be a vortex or something under the bakery. This wasn’t the first Gogmar I’ve seen in the area, and a couple of weeks ago, I tracked a Fremling to your alley.”

“A Fremling?” First Gogmars, now Fremlings. What next? This just had to be some kind of college prank, even though both Palmer and DeWitt seemed a little too old to be frat boys.

“Yeah. They’re much smaller than Gogmars but pretty nasty. Your boss, Arnie, came across it, and I had to kill it.”

“Arnie encountered a demon in the alley and didn’t mention it?” Mel laughed. Arnie talked nonstop about everything. He didn’t floss his teeth without there being a story involved that he had to share with everyone. A demon encounter would have kept him jabbering for days, but all he’d mentioned in the last few weeks was how voracious the raccoons had become.

“He doesn’t remember it. I used pixie dust on him.”

She gave him a vapid grin. “Pixie dust.”

“Seriously.” Palmer shifted in his seat and pulled a small cloth bag out of his front jeans pocket. He reached into the pouch and pinched some purple sand between his thumb and forefinger. It fell, glittering in the pale light, when he rubbed his fingers together. “Pixie dust makes you forget encounters with demons, ghosts, warlocks and vampires. It’s standard demon-hunter equipment. I’d have used it on you tonight, but I can’t let you wander around not knowing DeWitt is after you.”

As entertaining as his demonstration was, Mel finally summoned the willpower to pop open the passenger-side door and swing her feet out. “You’re completely insane. Thanks for the ride, though. I gotta go.”

To his credit, he didn’t try to stop her from getting out of the Jeep, but the weight of his disapproval settled on her as she exited into the buggy darkness.

“Melodie,” he said in a familiar tone. She’d heard it all too often from her mother whenever she insisted on doing something Laura McConnell considered foolish or frivolous. Sadly, she’d heard it more now in her late twenties than she had during her rebellious teenage years.

She peered at him. “Palmer, I don’t believe in pixies, demons or curses.”

“Fine. But do you believe in DeWitt? He’s dangerous, and he’s not going to give up until he finds the Cabochon.”

She would have protested, but the distant growl of a motorcycle made her skin prickle and panic creep up her spine. She gave the dark swath of forest a skeptical glance.

“I’ll drive you back to the bakery at dawn. Scout’s honor.” Palmer held up three fingers in the traditional salute.

“You were a Scout?”

“Made it all the way to Eagle, and I have all my badges.” He patted the passenger seat, and with another sweeping glance at her surroundings, Melodie climbed back in. It wasn’t the Scouting thing that made her trust him; it was a sudden, abject fear of DeWitt. That motorcycle seemed awfully close, as if he might have been circling the blocks systematically tightening his search radius. With a shiver, she pulled the door shut as quietly as possible and turned a hard stare at Palmer.

“Okay. I don’t need to tell you that one false move and I’ll see that you end up like the Gogmar, do I?”

He smiled. “On my honor, you’re safe with me, milady.”

She wasn’t quite buying it, but her alternatives weren’t any better. She watched while he pulled what looked like a garage-door opener out of the glove compartment and aimed it at the fence. The gate rolled open on small, squeaky wheels, and he eased the Jeep into the deserted lot beyond, then killed the lights.

The gray, corrugated façade of a temporary-style warehouse loomed in front of them, broken only by a narrow black door. Palmer got out and, ever the Scout, hurried around the front of the Jeep and opened Mel’s door for her. She followed him across the weedy, cracked asphalt to the door, which he opened with a small silver key.

“So tell me about this curse,” she said as he bumped the door with his hip to open it. He reached around the jamb and flipped on a series of lights, illuminating what could only be described as a fantasy gamer’s war room.

Two computers sat side by side on a metal desk which overflowed with papers, notebooks and empty Styrofoam coffee cups. The monitors glowed green with the scrolling code from
The Matrix
. Maps of Amberville and the surrounding towns, including areas of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, covered three of the walls. Little red pushpins dotted the maps with the largest concentration falling between Amberville and Baltimore.

Palmer seemed unconcerned by the mess. He shoved a pile of papers off one of the two ergonomic desk chairs and offered Mel a seat before answering her question. “Blake DeWitt comes from a cursed bloodline. An ancestor of his was a witch hunter who, legend has it, was sentenced to turn to stone by day by the coven of the last high priestess he murdered. The jewel that holds the spell, a cabochon of some unidentified mineral, was given to a demon queen to keep it safe. Story goes, only when the Cabochon changes hands, when it’s passed from one demon queen to the next, can the cursed witch hunter retrieve it. When he possesses the gem, he can transfer the curse to someone outside of his bloodline. Otherwise, on his death, it merely reverts to his closest male heir.”

Mel listened with half an ear while she scanned the sketches of demons and other odd creatures that filled the spaces between the maps. She recognized a Gogmar, not a bad rendition, but most of the other creatures looked like things out of someone’s drug-induced nightmares. She didn’t want to ask which fanged, clawed ball of nastiness might be a Fremling.