I’d level half the garden.
“You’d need to find them all first.”
“Maybe I did,” I said, wildly hoping. Praying.
“There are always three,” Rachmort said. “And if they are drawing planetary power, they will be arranged in a straight line. It would be my guess that the observatory is the first marker.”
“Okay, so the garden is the second. Come to think of it, if we cut a straight line from there, we’d hit the observatory.” Dang. Rachmort really was good.
He placed his glasses on the dresser. “So you have the observatory,” he said, positioning them toward the back. “Then the garden maze,” he said, digging in his pocket and producing a pink-and-green flecked gem the size of a golf ball.
“What is that?”
“Limbo bargaining chip,” he said, dismissing it. “Now where is the third marker?”
“Let me think. We have the herb garden, some crazy statues, the back porch… The house.” A chill prickled through my veins.
Holy Hades.
“It might not be a straight line,” I said, grasping for straws at that point.
“Come,” Rachmort said, leading back out to the stairs, up to another landing, and another. There was a locked door at the top. He took care of it in an instant with his little vial.
“I need to get some of that stuff,” I said, as he applied it to the lock.
“I’ll take you to see RaeRae next time we’re in limbo.”
“Oh, great,” I said, my enthusiasm waning. RaeRae, an otherworldly oddities collector, drove a hard bargain.
We walked out to the center of the parapet. “Dang. You can see everything from here.”
Rachmort pointed. “There’s the observatory.”
It was a small tower among the trees at the back. “There’s the fountain Pirate and I saw.” The rest of the marker was hidden under the trellises, but the center of it lined up perfectly with the observatory.
They were spaced evenly, about fifty yards apart. And fifty yards in, in a straight line from the fountain, was the house.
“We’re standing on top of it,” I said, fighting the urge to flee, to run, to leave and never come back.
Rachmort took me by the shoulders, forced me to look up at him. “You can fix this, Lizzie.”
“Maybe so, but we need to get my family out of here.” Yes, Hillary had picked this evil house. I had no doubt now she’d been compelled into it. She’d told me she had to have it. She didn’t even understand why. Now I knew. Something wanted me here.
“You can’t leave,” Rachmort said, the wind catching his wild gray hair as the sun set behind him. “The demon has a hold on someone. That person can’t leave now or the demon will remain with them. They’ll deteriorate, Lizzie. They’ll lose their soul.”
“So then forty other people have to stay?” They’d all be in equal danger. This was a nightmare.
“You have to make the choice, Lizzie.”
It was crazy. “How can I possibly choose?” I couldn’t.
That’s when it hit me: would I leave if Dimitri were compromised? Never. Grandma? No. One of his new clan members? I was ashamed at the direction my thoughts had taken.
“Okay,” I said, “nobody comes, nobody leaves. I’ll destroy all the markers.”
“At once,” Rachmort said. “You must destroy them all at the same time.”
He had to be kidding. “How am I going to do that?”
“I don’t know. You’re the demon slayer. Once you do that, the demon can no longer use the markers to draw power, and then all you have to do is exorcise the hell spawn.”
Oh, sure. Piece of cake.
I’d figure it out later. “We need to warn everyone,” I said, heading for the stairs.
“No.” Rachmort caught my arm. “You absolutely cannot tell anyone. Not even your fiance. Whoever is compromised will tip off our target.”
“I’m marrying him in two days and I can’t even tell him this?”
“You can’t even tell your dog.”
I couldn’t believe it. “What if you’re compromised?” I asked.
He shot me an apologetic glance. “Then you’re screwed.”
We tromped down the stairs, my mind swimming with possibilities. I couldn’t imagine whom the demon had targeted, or when they would attack.
“Act as normal as possible,” Rachmort instructed. “Be on your guard. We must not tip off the possessed. Hopefully, we’ll catch him or her during his next attempt on your life.”
“Now doesn’t that make me feel good?”
“This isn’t about you, Lizzie. It’s about finding that marker.”
“I will,” I told him. I didn’t have a choice.
Chapter Fifteen
I searched for Dimitri and found him in his room as he was coming out of the shower. Just my luck, I didn’t even get to appreciate it.
“We need to search the house,” I told him.
He paused before he finished wrapping a towel around his waist. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I feel great,” I said, knowing neither of us remotely believed that. “Besides, we have bigger problems. What if there are more weapons hidden in the house?”
Like a third marker.
It was a plausible explanation, without telling him anything. Hades, I felt like a jerk.
He watched me, running a hand towel over his hair, spiky wet from the shower. Water droplets clung to the strands at the nape of his neck. God, he was sexy. He also knew I was holding back on him. I could see it in his eyes.
“Let me get dressed,” he said simply, before grabbing a pair of jeans off the end of the bed. Dang. I loved that curve of muscle at his hip, the long sinewy lines of his body. He tugged on a black T-shirt. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Next best thing to undressing you.”
He gave me a saucy grin as he sat on the bed and tugged on a pair of motorcycle boots. “You’re going to pay for that when you’re feeling better.”
I watched as the muscles in his chest and arms worked. “I hope so.” I couldn’t even tell he’d been hurt.
“So you think there’s something dangerous here.” He stood, tucking in his shirt. “Is there a particular place you want to start?”
That was the trick. “I have no real leads. Only a feeling.” The knowledge that we would find the third marker somewhere in the house.
He nodded. “Then let’s start at the top and work our way down.”
We headed for the stairs Rachmort and I had used. He seemed so sure of himself and the direction we were headed. “Wait. Have you been up here before?”
“I was curious,” Dimitri said, opening the door for me. “I saw the towers from the outside, and wanted to see where they led.”
We started climbing. Dimitri and I both liked to explore new places. At the same time, I had my suspicions about his time in the towers. “You were avoiding my mother, weren’t you?”
He grunted. “Name one guy who goes to a bonbon party.”
“You.”
“Not for long.”
