Romeo nodded.
“What happened to them?” Ricky asked.
“When I disrupted the marriage, it broke their system. I turned the bones of their ancestors over to the creatures and the family’s power was dissolved,” Alan said. “We chased the sorcerers out of Kingston.”
Ricky shifted in his chair.
“Some of them,” Romeo said. “Some of them are still stumbling into their power and others left before you ever came to town. Some of them were my friends.”
Alan’s eyes widened as he took in this information.
Romeo caught the look and said, “My friends weren’t part of the clan who tried to snare your son though. Don’t get that impression.”
“There were others?” Alan asked. “How many evil magicians does one town need?”
“Hold on,” Ricky said. “He didn’t say that his friends were evil.”
“They weren’t,” Romeo said. “They weren’t evil at all. Maybe they were misguided. That’s as far as I would go. More than anything, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe like you and your friends at the hotel you mentioned.”
Alan held his breath. It seemed like Romeo might be about to finally tell them what they came to hear. He was afraid that if he interrupted, the old man wouldn’t continue.
Nine: Ricky
“He was lying,” Ricky said as they pulled down the driveway, drove under the gate, and stopped at the road.
“What makes you say that?” Alan asked.
“The lights,” Ricky said. “If what he said was true, then why would he need those ultraviolet lights set up to shine whenever someone came through that door?”
“Could just be a belt and suspenders thing. Just because a thing has been true for forty years, you don’t have to believe that it will always be true. If he’s right that killing them leaves behind a repulsive scent they want to avoid, scents wear off over time.”
“So does fear,” Ricky said. “You don’t maintain the same level of vigilance for forty years unless something is frightening you into maintaining that vigilance. People are lazier than that. They get careless over the course of a year or two, let alone decades.”
“Slow down,” Alan said. Something along the side of the road had caught his eye. “Turn around, will you?”
“I don’t have all that much time,” Ricky said. “I promised my mom I would go to the store for her and…”
“It will just take a second.”
Alan asked Ricky to stop when they were across the road from a path that had been cut through the snow bank. Alan got out. After Ricky told Tucker to stay put, he jumped out and followed Alan across the road. There was no sound of any other cars. He hadn’t seen anyone on Romeo’s road at all and there were no tracks. From the records Ricky had looked up, it seemed that Romeo lived on a pretty big parcel of land. It was likely that the nearest neighbor was some distance away.
Alan knelt down and studied the beginning of the path.
“Someone brought a little snowblower out here to make this path. Why?” Alan asked.
Ricky put his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare. It didn’t help much. The sun was bright on the snow and made it difficult to see into the depth of the woods.
Ricky looked down towards his feet. There were tracks in the melting dirt at the side of the road. A vehicle with big, knobby tires had pulled over. He guessed that the tracks belonged to a big truck.
“You said this area used to be more developed?” Alan asked.
“Yeah, a bit. In fact, the first local electric grid in Maine was started right near here when there was a mill. When the mill closed, the town dried up.”
Alan followed the path up the hill and between the trees. As Ricky followed him, he was able to see that the path led under an iron arch, beyond which a clearing opened. The path didn’t go far into the clearing. It took a sharp left and ended at a cluster of headstones that poked up just above the depth of snow.
“Evil magicians,” Alan said.
Ricky leaned in closer to see one of the carved names. He only saw a first name and part of the last. It was enough.
“Sadie Dunn,” Ricky said. The last name was the same as his own, but that didn’t mean much. There were a million branches of the Dunn family around. He remembered the name from one of the old newspaper articles he had read. She had been part of Romeo’s community.
“Why would he bother to keep a path after all this time?” Alan asked.
“Lots of people maintain memorials to deceased loved ones,” Ricky said.
“People are lazier than that,” Alan said, quoting Ricky’s earlier statement. “Romeo would have had to hook up a trailer to haul his snowblower down here. You only put yourself through that level of effort if you’re feeling guilty.”
“Or maybe checking to be sure that the dead stay dead,” Ricky said.
“It doesn’t take a path like this to check. And I thought that we all agreed that the things hibernate. Look at these footprints. Someone comes here frequently.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions. Can we head back now? I have to get to the store for…”
“For your mom,” Alan said. “Yes, I remember.”
Ricky led the way, walking under the iron arch and back towards the road. When he stopped suddenly, Alan nearly ran into him.
“What?” Alan asked.
Ricky blinked at the bright snow through the trees for a moment and then ran. When he got to the road, a hand jerked him by his coat and he nearly fell. A truck blasted by, feet away from him. Alan had stopped him just in time. When the truck passed, Ricky sprinted across the road. The rear door of his vehicle was up. That was the sound he had heard from the woods—the sound the latch made when it was opened.
Tucker was still inside and Ricky let out a relieved breath.
Alan arrived
