Steve led me down a trail, which ran alongside the cliff face. The night air was cold enough to sting. After about thirty yards, he stopped.
“Know this fella?”
We were well away from the cabin lights by now, and there were very few stars out. Steve flicked on a heavy flashlight and shone it into the bushes.
At first I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at—it looked like a jumble of brown clothes. Then Steve played the light across a face.
I recognized the hat and the tan coat. It was Pratt.
Oh, shit.
“Well?” Steve prompted. “Do you know him?”
“Remember when I told you help was coming? Here it is.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Pratt looked like someone had laid a burning fern leaf on his face. “What happened?”
“I’ve seen this before,” Ford said in an authoritative voice. “I spent a couple of years doing missionary work in the high places in the Congo. This man was struck by lightning.”
That startled the hell out of me. I jumped up and scanned the skies around us. I didn’t see any lights, and I didn’t hear an electric hum.
Time to get the hell out of there.
“Settle down, son,” Steve said. He shone the light in my face, blinding me. “We have a bit more jawing to do. Are you still armed?”
“I already gave you my only gun,” I said.
“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take that at face value,” he said. “You’ve been holding out on me from the start, haven’t you? Who is this fella, and how was he really killed?”
What I needed was a time-travel spell that could send me back to the moment just before I told Steve help was coming so I could dummy-slap myself into silence. I’d wanted to give him hope, but all I’d done was make him curious.
But I sure as hell couldn’t tell him about the Twenty Palace Society.
I heard Ford pull back the hammer on a gun. I turned and saw that he was pointing a snub-nosed police .38 at me.
Steve rubbed his chin and glared at me. “I’m afraid I’m not giving you any choice, son. I’ll admit that I don’t know a thing about these people.” He waved his arm toward Pratt’s corpse and the cabin behind me. “For all I know, they’re just a bunch of gangsters and crooks. But Penny is my cousin. Isabelle nursed my wife through the final stages of cancer. I was godfather to the oldest Breakley girl. Do you understand what that means in a town like this?”
I didn’t answer. He frowned at me. “Everything. That’s what it means. Now, I want to know everything you know, and if I think you’re holding back, I’m going to arrest you for murder. I’m sure I can make it stick. Do you want to talk to me here and now, or through the bars of a cell?”
“I’m not the enemy here.”
“So you say.”
Enough. I liked him, but I didn’t have time to play these games. I turned my back on him.
Ford aimed his revolver at my breastbone, the way you’re supposed to. But he was too close. “Ford, you realize that if you shoot me, the bullet will pass through and hit Steve, right?”
That startled him. He said: “Uh …,” and looked at Steve.
I rushed him, knocking the gun aside. It went off, and the shot echoed against the rocky cliffs around us like the “thunder” I’d heard earlier. I hit him once in the belly. He let out a huge
I spun around and saw Steve down on one knee, his left hand over his head like a child about to be beaten, his right fumbling at his holster. I was on him in two steps. I clamped my hand over his, trapping his weapon, and drew back a fist.
Steve flinched and bared his teeth in fear. Damn. I couldn’t throw that punch.
After a couple of seconds he realized I wasn’t going to hit him. I yanked his pistol out of his hand. He lost his balance and fell back onto the path. I took Ursula’s gun from his pocket, then turned to Ford. He was lying in the thicket, moaning and holding his belly. I picked up his gun, too.
“I’m sorry, Steve,” I said.
“Son—”
“Don’t. I’ll leave your weapons on the hood of your car.” I wanted to say more—about the risk to him and to all of Washaway if he learned too much about magic—but the words wouldn’t come together in my head. I ended up saying nothing.
I jogged back up the path and went around the cabin. There was a brick barbecue pit in the side yard and a stainless steel gas grill. Between them, I saw a tarp lying over something vaguely human-shaped. I knelt beside it and caught a whiff of an outhouse.
I lifted the tarp just enough to see that it was Frail. Blood had trickled from his mouth to his ear; he’d died on his back. On a hunch, I pulled the tarp back farther and saw what I’d expected to see: he’d been stabbed through the heart by something big, like a lightning rod.
