While Cornelius was gone, Jane had shown up out in the hallway. This time when Cooper saw her it was the real Jane—the bloody mess version that he was used to seeing. She motioned for him to follow her out front, which he did along with Natalie. Once there, they found a new message written on the whiteboard in big red letters: The pretender will kill her!
When they’d returned to Doc with that message, he decided to go back “inside” immediately and keep searching for me. Before Doc worked his Oracle magic, Cornelius returned with some special “paranormal” magnet that had been blessed by a voodoo doctor. He claimed it would help Doc find the black tourmaline stone I had and, therefore, me.
At that point I’d cut in on Nat’s rehash with, “A freaking magnet? What the hell? Did he hit his head somewhere between Jerry’s office and the upstairs apartment?”
She’d laughed and explained that per Cornelius the opaque black tourmalines, like the one he’d given me before the séance started, belonged to the Schorl species. This particular species of gems owed its coloring to high concentrations of iron along with two other metals she couldn’t remember. Measurements of the gem had shown that the opaque black ones were the most magnetic of all varieties of tourmalines.
In short, Cornelius had tethered me, as he’d mentioned earlier. Only he’d hitched me to a magnet instead of himself.
After that, Natalie said that Cornelius had started doing his humming thing. Then he and Doc had both gone back under to search for me, leaving her and Cooper to keep trying to pull me out via verbal persuasion.
Doc had filled me in on the rest of what had happened while he was driving me to Aunt Zoe’s place, opting to leave the Picklemobile parked behind Calamity Jane Realty for the night.
Apparently, until I crawled out of that hole in the wall, I had been completely hidden from him and Cornelius’s voodoo magnet. Doc wondered if maybe the rock-lined tunnel I’d told him about had run an effective interference, but he couldn’t be sure about his theory until he saw it for himself. Whether or not the lidérc had known the underground tunnel would hide me from anyone searching the dark for me was an unknown. Doc thought it might be possible, but that suggested there was pre-planning involved by the lidérc. If that were the case, it would mean the damned devil had been figuring out a way to trap and remove me from the equation for a while now.
As soon as Doc felt the pull from the tourmaline, he was able to find me and quickly realized how deep in shit I was. He had to act quickly and make a path for me to escape, which he did, but according to Doc, he’d taken too long and almost lost me. He was also taking responsibility for us having the séance in the first place, claiming that he should have listened to his gut and had us wait.
At that point, I’d gaped at him for several seconds and then told him to quit hogging all of the blame. We each had a part in the event—well, maybe not Natalie, who’d only come to the office to celebrate spurring Rex’s allergy attack.
I pointed out that none of us had suspected the lidérc would hunt me down rather than the reverse. I added that as far as I was concerned, this whole ordeal had been a necessary evil in order to help us understand how dangerous the damned devil was and learn more about it firsthand to prepare for the next hunt—this time with me hounding it. Besides, Doc had been key to me escaping in the end.
Tonight’s adventure and some good tequila had certainly changed my attitude about the lidérc. My reason for catching it now had little to do with Dominick’s threat regarding Aunt Zoe. I wanted to nab that smoky sucker because I was pissed at the trick it had played on me. Even more, I didn’t like how it had ganged up on me down in that basement with those other two fiends.
I was an Executioner, and it was time I acted like it. I opened my mouth to tell my “teammates” this very thing, but Layne strolled into the kitchen before I could get a word out.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, heading for the Betty Boop cookie jar sitting on the table. He lifted the lid. “I was thinking about—”
“No more cookies tonight, Layne,” I said, interrupting him before he stuck his hand in the cookie jar. “After the pizza and ice cream, you’ll be up all night with an upset stomach.”
He sighed with all of the drama of a teenage girl and replaced the lid. He started to turn toward me and then stopped, looking at the rough drawing I’d made earlier while telling the others about the arches I’d seen in that tunnel between the Hellhole and the other building’s basement.
“Hey!” He held up the paper. “Are you guys talking about Uncle Quint?”
I tilted my head, wondering what had given him that idea. “No. Why would you ask that?”
He pointed at the drawing. “Because this is a corbel vault.” When I frowned at him in response, he added, “The corbel vault is an arch used by several ancient civilizations to support the roofs of temples, including the Maya people.”
Ah, that was why he’d brought up my brother. Quint was heading down to the Yucatan soon to do some photojournalist-related work at one of the archaeological dig sites down there. Layne, who wanted to be like his uncle when he grew up, had been studying the Maya people ever since he’d learned about Quint’s next adventure.
“Ancient civilizations,” I said,
