contact the buyer once you have what he’s looking for is for that amulet to touch the dust. Once the object is verified, the information on delivery and payment will be made available.”
Donovan stared at the small pendant. He considered taking it back to his apartment and testing it to see if he could break the charm. If the information he needed was already in his hand, it seemed foolish to take the added risk of breaking into a graveyard.
“I don’t think I’d try that, if I were you,” Windham said, guessing his thoughts. “I’ve seen one of these before, or something very much like it. It was a different time and place, but a similar charm. A collector that I knew tried to have the charm broken because he wanted to know who he was working for. He took it to a man trained in such things. When they broke the charm, they found a curse beneath it. Very nasty, that was.”
Windham didn’t have to go on. In such an instance, there would be no time to protect one’s self, or, even if you did find a way to do so, no way to prevent whatever other action the curse might entail. It wasn’t a chance Donovan wanted to take.
“Just touch that to the dust,” Windham repeated. “You’ll know what to do next.”
Donovan nodded. He tucked the amulet away in an inside pocket, and stood, draining his glass and wishing suddenly he had time for more than one. A bottle, maybe.
He pulled out his wallet and laid a bill on the table. In that same motion, he deposited an envelope in Windham’s lap. Again, no one was watching, and if they had been watching, they would have expected to see money change hands. Donovan had been known to use collectors in the past, and everyone was familiar with Windham. Still, Donovan erred on the side of caution. He turned and exited the bar without another word. He reached the street and headed east. The Shady Grove cemetery was outside of town at the halfway point between San Valencez and Lavender, California. It was several miles, and he had no time to make it on foot, but there were other ways.
He checked the street for prying eyes, found it vacant, and stopped in front of a dark stairway leading down from street level toward a brick wall. There was no apparent reason for this stairway, but he knew it well. He turned three times, took three steps down, climbed back two, and then descended. At the wall he stopped, and a door shimmered into view. He etched a symbol into the dust clotted on the glass pane that centered this door, and it opened with a mechanical sound reminiscent of large tumblers sliding into place — very large. The sound echoed. Donovan stepped through the doorway, and was gone. Where he’d passed, the brick wall stood solid, and grimy.
Johndrow listened as the phone rang for the tenth time, and then slowly lowered the receiver back into its cradle. It was his third attempt in as many minutes to reach DeChance. He wanted an update on Vanessa’s abduction, and he wanted to warn DeChance about Vein. Ever since the hotheaded young one had left, Johndrow had grown more and more certain he’d made a mistake in allowing it. He wanted to believe that all parties involved would keep Vanessa’s welfare in the forefront of their minds, but it was growing harder to believe it as true. He also wanted to feel as if he was a part of it all, as if he were doing more than sitting back on his heels and waiting while others fought his fight.
He knew Vein hadn’t been swayed by their talk, and in reality, he was glad the young ones had gone on the hunt; just sorry they’d gone alone. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was just getting old and complacent, and they didn’t need outside assistance to settle a matter like this. The blood bond was strong enough that Vein could probably track it to its source, and they were not without resources of their own, albeit darker and less magical in most cases than what DeChance offered.
He thought about calling Joel, but decided against it. There was nothing either of them could do, and if he got started talking about Vanessa he might never stop. He needed to keep his head clear, and he needed to be ready to act if the need arose. Until then, he needed to be able to do something much more difficult. He needed to wait.
A knock sounded lightly on his door.
“Enter,” he called out.
A thin young man stepped through the door. He kept his eyes downcast, but his voice was firm.
“There is a message for you, sir,” he said.
“Send them in,” Johndrow said.
“There is no messenger,” the young man replied. “Only this.”
He held out a dark bundle, and Johndrow, frowning, nodded toward his desk.
“Open it on there,” he said.
The young man complied, and they both stared. What hope Johndrow had faded, and he drew in his breath so sharply it sounded like a hiss.
On his desk, wrapped in a long, dark jacket, were five pairs of very dark sunglasses. Johndrow stepped forward, reached out, and then pulled his hand back. He didn’t need to touch them; he knew who had worn them last.
“Who brought these?” he asked sharply.
“It wasn’t a man, or a woman,” the boy replied. “The bundle was dropped from the eaves by a bird. A raven, I believe. When we retrieved it, it was tied with a red ribbon, and this note was attached.”
He held out a white note-card sized piece of paper, and Johndrow took it, flipping it over so that he could read the single word lettered across its back.
“Johndrow.”
“There was nothing more?” he asked.
The young one shook his head. “Nothing, sir. What shall we do?”
“There is nothing we can do,” Johndrow said. He swore under his breath and crushed the card in his hand. “Nothing but wait.”
The young man’s eyes glittered, but he held his silence, and a moment later he turned on his heel and left the room. Johndrow watched his retreating back for a moment, then glanced down at the sunglasses and shuddered.
“Where are you, DeChance?” he asked the night. “Where in hell have you gone?”
FIFTEEN
Mist swirled about the base of the tall, wrought iron gates of the ShadyGroveCemetery. Donovan approached from the rear, not out of any fear of being seen, but because the particular doorway he’d chosen to use opened into an abandoned barn nearby. In any case, if he’d come in through the front gates he’d have needed to make his way to the rear of the graveyard eventually — that was where the priest was buried. All of the oldest graves were in a lightly wooded, semi-overgrown section of Shady Grove that few visited. Most of the graves were so old the markers had begun to crumble, or had fallen. Most of the families of the deceased were long gone themselves, or had married and moved on beyond any blood ties that might have bound them to their history. The world moved on, but Shady Grove remained.
A trail led from the barn up to a point where it joined with the old back road into the cemetery, and it was at this crossroad Donovan stopped to consider his options. The gates were tall, stretching nearly twenty feet into the air. The fence wound around to either side and was formed of iron spikes similar to those on the gates, though a bit shorter — perhaps ten feet. They were joined near their base, and again near their top, by a poured concrete frame. It was a solid, imposing wall. Nothing human could slip through those bars, and it would take a superhuman effort to climb either wall or gate — that and the luck not to slip at the wrong moment and be impaled on one of the spikes.
Donovan thought back to a time not too far in the past when just such a thing had happened, then dismissed it from his mind. He had to keep his mind on the task at hand. The graveyard, and its past, was interesting, but not relevant, and he had plenty of work ahead of him before he’d have leisure to dwell on either.
He watched the shadows beyond the gate for a few moments, but nothing stirred. He knew there were two guards on duty at all times. Earlier disturbances had prompted the city of San Valencez, and the neighboring town of Lavender, to combine funding for twenty-four hour surveillance on the cemetery. Kids had used it in the past for
