Nothing much had changed from the last time I stood inside the large open room. A layer of dust still covered the old floorboards. The smattering of footprints were most likely leftovers from the last time I’d crept around up here in the dark. The air smelled stale in spite of the cold.
Cooper stood across the room, shining his flashlight down what I knew was a narrow hallway leading to four rooms: two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen.
“This ward looks newer than the others,” Harvey said, aiming his flashlight at the square that was painted next to the door.
I stepped closer to the collection of symbols used to “ward” off trouble—or in this case, seal it in. Harvey was right. Someone had slapped white paint over the old version. Next to the patch of white paint, a fresh ward had been drawn on the wall in something dark red and thick. I touched the edge of the ward. It was sticky, like blood mixed with something thicker. Maybe tar? Cringing, I wiped my finger on the wall next to it, leaving a smeared fingerprint.
Inside the ward’s square edges was a combination of what looked like rune symbols, along with a rough sketch of an eye, two triangles, and entwined forks. At least that was my take on the ward. Aunt Zoe would probably be able to dissect the ward using Latin words for each part, but I only took two years of Spanish in high school and cheated on my final exams by writing verb conjugation charts on my arm, so I was useless. I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture of it quick, in case Doc wanted to take a look at it later.
Pocketing my phone, I glanced around. There were similar wards painted onto the walls next to every window, which I assumed were meant to keep a Hungarian devil trapped inside the building indefinitely. Unfortunately, a few months ago, a pissed-off bitch with a penchant for carving humans into pieces had figured out how to breach one of the wards and free the lidérc that had been held prisoner here for decades. Now it was my job to find that dodgy devil and bring it back here.
“I wonder if Masterson did this,” I said to myself as much as Harvey.
Dominick Masterson owned the building, more than a century old. He was also the one with whom I’d made the dumb deal that had me trying to catch a lidérc on this frigid winter day so that I could keep my aunt from ending up as Dominick’s concubine.
I took a step back from the wall, my heel coming down on someone’s toe.
“Damn it, Parker!”
I jumped sideways. “That’s what you get for sneaking up on me, Coop.”
“That’s ‘Detective Cooper’ to you and you know it.”
“What about Christmas?”
Cooper’s gift to me had been permitting me to call him by the nickname everyone else on the planet was allowed to use.
“Christmas is over. You and I are back to square one.”
I harrumphed. “We haven’t been at square one since I broke your nose.”
His lips thinned. “Let’s get this damned sightseeing trip you had to take done so I can get back to the pile of paperwork sitting on my desk.” He limped toward the hallway.
I frowned after him. “You’re the one who ran off to Arizona on a whim, so quit taking your post-vacation blues out on me.”
Harvey eased up next to me as Cooper disappeared down the hallway. “You’re stirring up hell with a long spoon this afternoon, girl.”
“He started it.” I shrugged off my purse strap, letting my bag dangle and swing in my grip.
“It takes two to dance. What has me scratchin’ my noggin is why he’s on the prod in the first place.”
“I think something happened while he was in Arizona.” I turned to Harvey. “Or something didn’t and now he’s doubly frustrated and using me as his punching bag.”
Cooper had pursued my best friend, Natalie, all the way to Jackrabbit Junction, Arizona, after Christmas, taking his uncle along with him. While neither Natalie nor Harvey were talking much about what happened down there in the desert, I had a feeling sparks flew somewhere along the line. And based on Cooper’s repeated snarls and growls since he’d returned, I had a feeling those sparks weren’t in the bedroom. But because neither Harvey nor Natalie were feeling chatty about it since they’d returned a couple of days ago, I was stuck trying to pin the tail on a steely-eyed donkey that kept kicking and nipping at me in the process.
I watched for Harvey’s reaction to my theory about his nephew, but the old codger could bluff the devil even on a hot day in Hell.
“You forgot a certain something,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He smirked. “Coop isn’t the only Deadwood gumshoe back on the prowl. Detective Hawke is out sniffing around now, too.”
I grimaced at the mere mention of Cooper’s pain-in-the-butt, temporary helper in crime-solving. Detective Hawke and I had a rosy relationship—I was a beautiful flower and he was a thorny prick. His list of crimes that I’d supposedly committed in the Black Hills was longer than Santa’s naughty list these days. Every time I ran into the jerk, he tried to hit me with another accusation, but I was rubber and he was … an idiot. “Oh, yeah. You think Hawke is giving your nephew a hard time again?”
“Is a frog’s ass watertight?”
Cooper stepped back into the main room. “Are you two coming back here to take a look around or are you waiting for a queen’s herald to blow a damned horn first?”
“Keep your bloomers on, Coop. We’re comin’.”
We followed Cooper down
