Summoning the Night (16 page)

With his eyes forged into a single dark slash under a rigid brow, Lon trailed Bob as he scurried across the street. Bob's round face was flushed beet-red. Dammit. Now I felt sorry
for him again. I couldn't help it. He looked like a kicked dog. When his eyes met mine, I mouthed “sorry.” Then I quickly took control of things before the three of them ended up pounding each other's heads into the sidewalk.

“I've got the tracking object on me,” I said to Hajo. “Do you do this on foot?”

“Usually on my bike.”

“I'm not letting the tracking object out of my sight,” Lon said without emotion as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. “No offense, but I don't trust junkies.”

Hajo was momentarily taken aback. He composed himself, smiled, and said coolly, “None taken.”

“If you have sømna on you now, I'm not getting into a vehicle with you,” Lon said. “I'm not going to chance getting pulled over and arrested.”

“I'm not carrying,” Hajo said.

Lon didn't press it, so I assumed he read Hajo's answer as honest. “All right. Let's go.”

We piled in Lon's SUV. I drove. Death Boy and Lazy Eye sat in the second row behind us, their feet wading in Jupe's pile of comics. Lon sat in the passenger seat with a short-barreled Lupara shotgun in his lap, like some Sicilian mobster. I wanted to ask him who he planned on shooting, Hajo or some dead bodies, but he was in a black mood, so I let it go.

Before I put the car in gear, Hajo spoke up from the back. “There's the little matter of payment before we start.” I glanced at him through the rearview mirror and pulled the brown, half-ounce bottle of the potion out of my jacket pocket, handing it to him through the front seats. Then I pulled out onto the street and headed toward Ocean Drive.

Hajo held the tiny bottle up against the window, checking
the level of the liquid in the dimming afternoon light. He unscrewed the dropper top and sucked up the medicinal.

“Bob?” Hajo prodded.

“Is this really necessary?” Bob asked. “I told you, I can vouch for her.”

“Open wide,” Hajo insisted.

“Only one drop. No more. It's brewed from a mixture of calamus root and
Atropa belladonna
.”

Hajo paused.

“Deadly nightshade,” I clarified. “One of the most toxic plants known to man. One too many drops could cause heart palpitations and blindness. A few more could kill.”

“One drop. Got it,” Hajo said. “Open.”

Sour and depressed, Bob opened his mouth and allowed Hajo to drop the liquid on his waiting tongue. Bob made a face and swallowed.

“How long for it to take effect?” Hajo asked.

I waited as Bob's pupils dilated into enormous black holes. “Now,” I said.

Hajo studied Bob. “How long does it last?”

“Thirty minutes. An hour. Depends on the person.”

“Have you dosed me with this before?” Bob asked me nervously. He was starting to sweat again; he was quite possibly the sweatiest demon alive.

“I never thought I needed to,” I replied.

He sighed and swallowed hard. “Go ahead and do what you're gonna do, Hajo.”

Hajo spun the bottle in his hand, thinking for a short time before he spoke. “I can't ask you to do something you wouldn't mind doing. That proves nothing. It has to be something that you would only do against your will or better judgment.”

I didn't like the sound of that. Lon and I glanced at each other.

Hajo settled on his test. “Since you and Mr. Butler aren't the best of friends, Bobby boy, I'm guessing you wouldn't be eager to piss him off any more than you already have. That would be the last thing you want right now.”

Bob panicked, reacting to the vassal effect and Hajo's suggestion as Lon turned to glare at them, unhappy about where this was headed.

“Even though you're deathly scared of him, you'd do anything for Cady, wouldn't you?” Hajo said. “Why don't you show Cady how you really feel about her. Kiss her. Now.”

Lon and I uttered a series of outcries that quickly erupted into random angry shouts as Bob unbuckled his seat belt and stuck his head between us. He was mumbling as he reached for me—saying that he was sorry, that he had to do this.

“Sit down!” Lon barked, shoving at Bob.

Hajo laughed as Bob pressed forward. For several seconds, the front seat was a mass of tangled arms and Bob's clammy lips trying to make contact with my face, then Lon stuck the antique sawed-off shotgun into Bob's chest. “Sit the fuck down.”

Bob wailed, but tried to push the gun away, undeterred. I cut the wheel harder than I expected—I was unaccustomed to driving something so big. The SUV swerved violently, hit the curb, and plowed over it. Bob's head slammed against the side of seat. Lon grabbed the
oh-shit
handle and braced himself while cussing me out. I got control of the car, but not before a couple of drivers honked, and not before my heart rate tripled.

Bob moaned and gripped the side of this head, trying to catch his breath. This had gone too far. Nobody could stop Bob but the person who dosed him.

“Hajo!” I bellowed into the rearview mirror. “Make him stop!”

Lon twisted in his seat, shoved Bob roughly, and pointed the Lupara at Hajo. “Now, you son of a bitch.”

“All right, all right!” Hajo said, still fighting back laughter. “Bob, stop trying to kiss Cady. Sit in your seat and be a good boy. Simon says.”

Bob whimpered as Hajo pocketed the little vial, pleased as pie. “You brew good stuff, Cady,” he concluded. “Now let's hunt your dead body. Where's this tracking object you promised?”

We drove around La Sirena with the rear windows cracked while Hajo held Bishop's key in his hands and went into some sort of mild trance. One hour passed, then another. On occasion, he mumbled a quick direction: “Turn right,” or “Trail's gone cold. Loop back around.” Compliant but depressed, Bob was crumpled in the seat next to Hajo, wedged up against the door.

Lon and I sat in silence as rain drizzled, the wipers keeping a steady rhythm on the windshield. Worry stalked me from a distance. I wasn't sure what I wanted more: for Hajo to find some thirty-year-old mass grave, or for him to fail and find nothing. Either prospect was undesirable, and both made me anxious.

Nightfall approached. As we curved around the shore outside the city limits, Lon sneaked his hand over the leather armrest and gently prodded my arm. When I glanced over at him, he was resting the side of his head against the seat, a tender look on his face. He tucked his long hair behind one ear, then ran his knuckles over the elbow of my jacket. I switched hands on the wheel so that I could link fingers with him.

With a sudden cry, Hajo woke up from his stupor. He'd caught the thread.

His directions became increasingly frequent and urgent. Bob perked up and watched with interest as Hajo guided us down an unmarked rocky side street that meandered around the coast. It was hard to see much of the terrain under dark skies and dreary rain. The headlights illuminated a thicket of evergreens on the left that blocked our view of the main road and, as I steered the SUV around a sharp curve, a row of concrete buildings stacked up in the distance, clinging to the shore. From a rickety post, a metal sign hung sideways, riddled with rusted-out holes. It read:
PACIFIC GLORY TUNA CANNERY.

“Huh,” Lon murmured. “I remember touring this place on a school trip when I was a kid. It used to rival Bumble Bee until it was shut down in the late 1970s. Botulism outbreak. Put hundreds of locals out of work.”

“We're close,” Hajo said. “Really close.”

I slowed the SUV as the bumpy road became covered with creeping bramble and downed tree branches every ten feet or so. Across the water, white-purple lightning struck on the edge of the horizon as darker storm clouds gathered. Angry waves crashed against the shore below us as we drove further down into the small peninsula where the cannery sprawled. Sections of the buildings transitioned from land to water with the aid of stilts. A long dock with missing boards wrapped around the Pacific edge of the buildings where tuna boats used to empty their catches.

“Stop.”

I braked in front of one of the cannery buildings.

“Inside there,” Hajo said, flinging off his seat belt.

I switched off the ignition and exited the SUV under a smattering of cold rain while Lon dug around in a seat pocket
for a flashlight. He flicked it on and followed Hajo to a large loading door at the end of the building. Waist-high weeds, dead and brittle, blocked the door. Lon and Hajo worked together silently to stamp them down until they revealed a vertical door handle chained with a blackened padlock.

“You know how to pick locks?” Hajo asked Lon.

Lon shone the flashlight on the padlock, studied it for several seconds, then beckoned for me to take the light from him. “Hold it right there,” he instructed. He fished out his father's old pocketknife and dug rusted bolts from the metal plate holding one side of the chain. Within seconds, the entire plate fell away with the chain still attached.

“Don't get your fingerprints on anything. Just in case,” he said. He retracted his hand inside the edge of his jacket sleeve before sliding the large door a few feet to the side, and one by one we slipped into darkness, shaking the rain off as we entered the crumbling warehouse.

A shallow ramp led into a cavernous empty room. Everything was concrete—the floor, walls, rows of columns, even the ceiling. Only a narrow, rectangular band of windows broke the monotony. Stormy twilight passed through busted glass and illuminated an impressive display of faded graffiti that tagged the walls. Near the entrance, wooden crates were stacked high, a make-do ladder leading up to one of the broken windows, presumably used by graffiti artists to get in and out of the building. A pile of rusted spray-paint cans lay nearby.

We walked in, wet shoes squelching as we avoided rubble and some foul-smelling standing water that ran through the center of the room. At the end, we continued through a passage into a second area filled with tables and long metal tanks. Abandoned machinery was choked with weeds that
snaked in through the broken windows. The graffiti tags tapered off here.

“So strong . . .” Hajo mumbled. “Keep going.”

Something stirred in the darkness to the side. I started and Lon herded me in closer to his hip. “Just rats,” he assured me, “or bats. Or maybe seagulls.” Any of them would explain the strong, acidic smell of animal droppings that stung my eyes.

“People get sick from breathing in pigeon shit,” I complained, eyeing the darkness with trepidation. “Like, hospital sick.”

Lon grunted. “Isn't your buddy Bob here a healer?”

“I'm not good with disease,” Bob argued in a loud whisper behind me. “Just minor injuries. My father's knack was stronger. He was a well-known GP in Morella before he died.”

He was right about that. Earthbounds with healing abilities were fairly common, and those with substantial skills usually made a career of medicine. Their high rate of success gave them a sizable advantage over human doctors and also gave them access to the highest-paying jobs. In fact, Bob lived off his father's inheritance. I often wondered if Bob felt overshadowed by his father's success—he talked about the man a lot, especially after a few drinks.

“It's just on the other side of that hallway,” Hajo said.

We all looked where he was pointing. “That hallway” was long, narrow, and echoed with the sound of water dripping from broken pipes running along the ceiling. Every fiber of my being screamed a warning
not
to step into it. If Jupe were there, he would tell me that people too dumb to live did this kind of thing all the time in horror movies.

“Can you track more than one body at a time?” Lon asked.

Up until now, neither of us had brought this up. We couldn't very well just tell Hajo that we were hunting the remains of the abducted children from the original Snatcher case. We might be too dumb to live, but we weren't dumb enough to trust Drug Lord Hajo with that information.

“Naturally,” he said. “You wanna know how many bodies I sense on a daily basis? Thousands. Humans, animals—even insects, if they're big enough. Death is everywhere, man. I can't walk by a graveyard or I'll pass out. And, yeah, there's a boatload of dead things up in here, as if you can't smell that yourself.”

I tried not to gag and inhaled with my mouth instead of my nose.

“You think I enjoy having this knack?” Hajo continued, his tone abrasive. “Would you? Why do you think I smoke sømna and just about anything else I can get my hands on? Anything to make me forget about it, or I go crazy.”

Lon grunted and aimed the flashlight at Hajo, who shielded his eyes.

“Come on,” I coaxed. If the children's bodies were here, we were about to find out.

Single file, Hajo leading the way, we marched down the dank hallway. He stopped in front of a thick metal door. “Inside here.”

“Open the door,” Lon instructed.

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know,” Hajo admitted. “I just . . .”

I stuck my head around Lon's arm and guided his hand to aim the flashlight on the door handle. A diffused wedge of pink glowed between the frame and the door. “It's secured by a spell,” I said. Weird magick. Temporary spells fade, but
stronger magick cracks. The pink glow here was riddled with fine lines, which meant that the spell must've been set a long time ago. Years and years . . . maybe even
thirty
years.

Lon bent low to inspect the glow, reaching, then suddenly withdrew his hand. “What are we looking at here? A serious ward? A warning?”

I examined the markings. They weren't anything I'd seen, but on closer inspection, they followed a familiar pattern. “I think it's just a deterrent. A trick to keep people out. Move away.”