Banishing the Dark

7

My head pounded something fierce. I squinted into warm, strong sunlight and blinked until my eyes adjusted. Living room. Stack-stone fireplace, leather sectional sofa, glossy wood floors, black-and-white photographs of a curly-haired toddler.

Lon Butler’s home.

What the hell was I doing here?

I groaned, struggling to remember as I pushed a fuzzy gray blanket away and stood. It was quiet. All I could hear was the muffled tick of a clock on the mantel telling me it was two in the afternoon and the distant sound of the surf pounding against the rocks below the cliffs. Was no one home?

Jupe would be in school or on his way home with the Holidays. Lon would be . . . ?

A sharp feeling akin to déjà vu hit me. I knew this house well. I’d been staying here, but I couldn’t remember why. A flood of fuzzy memories floated in and out of my aching head. Father Carrow introducing me to Lon. Lon saving me from my parents in San Diego. Lon introducing me to Ambrose Dare. Me killing Dare. Waking up in the hospital. Waking a month later in Lon’s bed with the sigil painted on the ceiling. Talking to Arturo about the PI in L.A.

All these solid memories, but everything else around them was as soft and weightless as packing peanuts. Just like this house. So familiar but foreign. It felt as if I’d spent a lot of time here, but I couldn’t remember all the details.

Wait. I was here because of my mother. Yes. I definitely remembered her tapping into my dreams and Priya warning me to undo the Moonchild spell. I also remembered Priya appearing in the alley by Arturo’s wine bar last night. I got upset about . . . something. Lon brought me back here afterward. Wait. Wine bar. Did we get drunk? Because that would explain a lot.

My face heated as embarrassment blazed through me. Drunk with Lon. That wasn’t a good idea. All my clothes seemed to be on except my shoes. What a freaking relief. I don’t think I could face him if I’d done something stupid like hit on him.

Or maybe I had, and that’s why I was on the couch.

Maybe he just wanted his bed back. Why had he put me up in his own bedroom? I felt as if there were a good reason, but I couldn’t remember why, other than the sigils painted on the ceiling. Must be something to do with that, because I couldn’t fathom him trying to seduce me. He was too . . . well, not a gentleman, exactly. And not law-abiding, either—he had, after all, stolen a bunch of old occult books from the Vatican, and he owned a few illegally modified guns. But all in all, he was a decent, stand-up man with a strong sense of right and wrong. Dependable. Besides, I was almost twenty years younger than him. Too young, I faintly remembered Jupe telling me months ago.

And probably stupid enough to throw myself at him given the right amount of alcohol. My mind pulled up some fuzzy images of me cuddling up to him outside on the patio. Me begging for something. Like, really trying to persuade him to do something to me.

Ugh.

I should probably find my shoes and slip out now. Do the walk of shame to my car and drive back—

Home.

But I hadn’t been to my house in months.

That couldn’t be right.

Oh, that’s right—Duke Chora broke my house wards. Lon said it wasn’t safe to stay there until we could fix them. Had I been living here since then? Jesus. I had. What was the matter with me? I shouldn’t be here, mooching off him. Surely I’d overstayed my welcome by now. Once I found a way to sever the ties with my mother or get rid of the Moonchild spell, I needed to reconstruct the house wards and move back into my own place.

But right now, I needed aspirin. Rubbing my temples, I made my way to the kitchen and nearly had a heart attack when I looked up.

Lon was standing in the archway to the dining room, horns spiraling back into his head, halo subsiding. That was unexpected but not startling. I’d seen him like that tons of times. He was dressed in worn jeans and a faded T-shirt. His light brown hair kissed the tops of his shoulders, and—

He was clean-shaven.

No pirate mustache.

Oh, God. I was so confused, and he was ridiculously good-looking. And there went my face again. Since when did I blush? I did my best to play it cool.

“Hey,” I said.

Had he been listening to my thoughts? And why wasn’t he saying anything? He looked just as confused as I felt.

I blew out a long breath. “Look, I can’t remember anything about last night after Priya appeared outside the wine bar. So if I made a fool out of myself . . . uh, I mean, if I was coming on to you, I’m really sorry.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he murmured in a low voice. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“I said I’m sorry!” I couldn’t be any more embarrassed. I thought I’d seen enough idiotic behavior in Tambuku to swear off drinking, but now I definitely would never touch a drop again. Ever. “Look, if you don’t want to go look for this detective with me, that’s fine. Let me just go pack a few things, and I’ll drive”—I began backing up as he strode toward me—“myself, and . . . no, no. Please don’t transmutate again. Don’t read my thoughts. Because my, uh, head hurts, so if you’ll just give me some aspirin—”

My ass hit the back of the sofa. He grabbed my upper arms and squinted down at me, face tight and unreadable. “What do you remember about last night?”

“Whatever I did, I said I was sorry. Jeez, give me a fucking break! I’m going through a lot right now.”

“What are you going through? Tell me.”

“What am I not going through? I killed the most powerful man in town, just got out of the hospital after being in a coma for a month, and my crazy mom wants to bodysnatch me.” I wiggled out of his grasp, thoroughly irritated. “Look, whatever I did or said, I’m sure you’ll get over it. Why the hell did you let me drink, anyway? My mom could’ve tapped into me. You know I’m not supposed to let my guard down at night.”

“Oh, God,” he whispered.

Damn right. I wasn’t taking the blame for this, whatever “this” was. Surely we hadn’t actually had sex. I hadn’t had sex in forever. Not since . . . a year or something. Holy Harlot, I was pathetic. Lon probably had his pick of beautiful models when he was on photo shoots. Or maybe he had some girlfriend I didn’t know about. I mean, he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about his personal life. God, please don’t let him have a girlfriend. Especially not if I made a fool of myself last night . . .

He made a small noise.

Crap. “Get out of my head! Those thoughts are private,” I said, punching him on the arm.

He absently rubbed the spot where I’d hit him, staring at me as if I was certifiable. “This can’t be happening,” he murmured.

“Nothing’s happening. Zero. Nada. It’s exactly the same as it was before between us. Christ, I’m not some virgin girl who draws hearts around your name on the cover of my notebook. Get over yourself.” His eyes widened, but I finished my thought. “I’m sure I would’ve done the same to any man who’d been around.”

One brow arched oh-so-slowly. And the way he looked at me, unblinking, as if his head might rotate and explode, almost made me want to cower. Almost.

“Excuse me,” I murmured, pushing past him and making a beeline for the nearest bathroom. I did a quick examination of myself—whoa, I needed to make a waxing appointment, and pronto—but even if no signs pointed to a night of drunken sexcapades, I couldn’t be sure. Maybe nothing happened. Or maybe it was bad sex—so bad my body had already forgotten it.

A loud crash came from somewhere in the house. I left the bathroom and traced the source to Lon’s photography room, where a tableful of equipment was now scattered across the floor. Lon was hunched over the efforts of his rampage.

I thought about backing out of the room, but if he was listening with his knack, he probably already knew I was there. “Please don’t be mad.”

“It’s not you,” he answered after a long moment.

“Do you want me to go?”

He shook his head. When he turned around, his eyes met mine. The anger melted away. “Let me make a couple of phone calls, then we can get on the road.”

“Okay. I could use a shower, if you don’t mind.” Where was he showering? He must have moved into the guest room. That didn’t seem right.

Lon’s head jerked up, as if he’d remembered something important. “Wait. I need to . . .” He sighed heavily. “Let me grab a few things upstairs.” He grumbled to himself and sidled around me warily. “Just . . .” He held up his hands and made a few awkward gestures, as if we didn’t speak the same language and he couldn’t decide how to get his point across. “Just stay in the living room until I come get you.”

I felt a little sorry for him when he walked away. He seemed so defeated.

I knew one thing. If it was bad sex, it damn sure wasn’t my fault. Maybe he was too old to get it up. I’d remember that the next time he wanted to drink.

Lon was determined to leave before Jupe got home, and he only relaxed somewhat when he found out that the kid was going to a friend’s house to study for a test. We each packed a change of clothes, and after Lon made arrangements with the Holidays, we finally headed out in his SUV late in the afternoon.

Golden Peak was a straight shot down Pacific Coast Highway. Fog and clouds ringed the mountains and hills, and the gray sky occasionally threw a spatter of rain droplets on the windshield, but it never actually rained. The GPS put us arriving at eight, but Lon figured he’d shave off a half hour by driving like a maniac once we got out of the city limits. The road hugged the coastline, straightaways broken up by a million hairpin and switchback curves, and all of it dotted with RVs chugging in and out of scenic pull-offs.

Neither of us said anything until we crossed Bixby Bridge. Lon was never one for small talk, but I could tell the difference between comfortable and uncomfortable silence. “Can we put last night behind us?” I finally said. “I still don’t remember what happened, but whatever I did, I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“How can I not? You’re being all weird.”

It took him several moments to respond. “Nothing happened between us last night, so stop worrying about it. I’m just . . . sad. It’s not your fault.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes, but I can’t.”

“Sure you can. We’re friends, aren’t we? You can tell me anything.”

“Yes, we’re friends,” he said softly.

“But . . . ?”

“We’ve got enough on our plate right now. Don’t need to complicate matters. What’s done is done.” I didn’t know what he meant by that, but before I could ask, he said, “When did we meet?”

“Umm, what?”

“Just answer the question.”

“The end of last summer, the day after my parents first showed up on the news.”

“Tell me exactly what you remember.”

“Why?”

“Because.” He exhaled a long, slow breath through flared nostrils. “I need to test your memory.”

“Again, why?”

“Do you feel like you’re having memory problems?”

“I feel like someone beat me over the head with a baseball bat.” I gave him a sidelong glance. “You didn’t drug me like you did when we first met, did you?”

A brow lifted. “You remember that?”

“Distinctly.”

He nodded, a little happier for some reason. “I want you to go back over everything you remember about our interactions together from the first day we met. Tell me everything.”

“Has something happened? Do I have brain damage from the coma?”

He blinked rapidly, eyes on the road, hand slung over the top of the steering wheel. “I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t be repaired.” It almost sounded like he muttered “I hope” after that. “Let’s see what you remember. It’s a long drive.”

And it was. Long and troublesome, because when I went back through all the minutiae of time spent with Lon, I began feeling the same way I felt when I woke up, as if my memories had jagged edges and didn’t quite fit together. Some were like pieces of old furniture covered by sheets: I could make out their general shape, but it was hard to tell what was underneath. But this didn’t seem to bother Lon. He asked a lot of questions, and whenever I struggled for a missing piece of information, it eventually came to me if I tried hard enough to picture it in my mind.

Struggling for memories was a lot of work. And between that, the road’s hidden hairpin curves, and two restroom pit stops (probably all the drinking I did the night before), I was grumpy by the time we rolled into Golden Peak. Grumpy, famished, and tired.

Maybe the PI’s office would be located over a pancake restaurant.

Just off the coast, the resort town was a cozy outpost nestled among redwoods and oaks. I couldn’t see much more than a couple of gas stations near the highway, a handful of restaurants—all closed, and it was only nine o’clock at night—a post office, and a few shops scattered on either side of a block-long Main Street.

“Population: 101 cats and 329 people,” said the road sign when Lon slowed the SUV to a crawl. “Oh, boy. You know how much I love cats.”

“There goes your Valentine’s gift.”

I chuckled, happy that he was in a better mood. Maybe things were normal between us again.

“Just keep an eye out for a private investigator sign,” he said in an even-handed, classic Lon voice, flicking a squinty glance in my direction.

Definitely better.

I ticked off a list of what I saw on Main Street. “Souvenirs, camping supplies, rafting supplies, camping and rafting supplies . . . a skeevy-looking medical clinic—oh, look. They care for people and animals. That’s charming. And weird. You and your cat can get rabies shots together. Like a couple’s massage for bestiality fans.”

Lon quietly snorted. “This whole community’s a little kooky. I took Jupe camping out here when he was younger.”

“Lordy. I can’t imagine Jupe camping.”

“I think his exact words were ‘Sleeping on the ground is God’s way of saying he hates you.’ We haven’t been back.” He smiled to himself for a moment but didn’t elaborate. “The state park entrance is a mile or so away. In the summer, this whole place is packed with tourists.”

“How? There’s not even a grocery store.”

“There is . . . somewhere. Let’s ride around and see what we can see.”

Which was exactly nothing. Twisty mountain roads led to dead ends and a handful of houses, most of them tucked away in the woods. We spent a half hour combing the area for any sign of a PI and found jack-diddly-squat.

“Maybe we should call the number listed on his website,” I finally said.

“Not from our phones. I don’t want him tracing us.”

“Then we have two choices. That motel or the gas station off the highway.”

Lon drove back to the gas station. No one was filling up, and a single beater was parked at the side of the convenience store. We made our way inside, past shelves of beef jerky and Funyuns, and over to the lone employee, who sat on a stool behind the checkout counter. A secondary room filled with camping supplies was beyond an open doorway. I’d never been camping, but I had a feeling Jupe and I would agree on the subject.

The gas-station employee, a teenager with greasy hair, looked up from his magazine. His eyes flicked from Lon’s face to my face to my breasts. Lovely. “Can I help you?”

“You have a pay phone?” Lon asked. He sounded pretty irritated. It almost made me think he might be pissed that the boy was ogling me. See? Decent, stand-up guy—just like I said.

“By the restrooms.” The boy lifted his chin, pointing us there with minimal effort.

I pasted on a smile. If greasy-headed delinquent here was interested in the modest amount of goods I had up top, he shouldn’t be hard to manipulate. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we could find Robert Wildeye’s office, would you?”

“Who?”

“A private investigator,” Lon filled in. “Here in Golden Peak.”

“PI?” The boy’s face twisted up. He clearly thought we were idiots. “You sure you got the right town?”

“Positive.” Lon was clearly wishing he could take a belt to the kid’s ass, but he needed to pull back on the grumble.

“We just don’t know the street address,” I added. “Sure it doesn’t ring a bell?”

“Uh, I doubt there’s much cause for any business like that here in the winter,” the boy said. “We got a lot of rich people with summer homes. They come up from L.A. in June. Maybe he’s one of those.” He shrugged.

“No one named Wildeye at all? Not even a retired cop or anything?”

“Sorry. Never heard it. I spend the summers with my mom in Sacramento, so I’m not the best person to ask.”

“Anyone else who might be able to help us out?” I said. “Town gossip or something?”

“You might ask around at the Redwood Diner. A waitress there, June, knows everyone in town. She’s lived here, like, forever.”

Well, that was something, at least, and I was damn sure starving. But the diners I’d seen were all closed. “When does it open?”

“Five a.m.”

Crap. “Is there anything open right now?”

“Sierra Woodland. That’s the motel on Main, between downtown and the park. If you want nightlife, you came to the wrong place, believe me.”

“Not even a dive bar?” Lon asked.

“Are you kidding? You can’t even buy beer,” he said, gesturing to the refrigerated cases at the side of the shop. “Only thing here is a feral cat colony and a bunch of hippies who like to backpack and paint pictures of the waterfall.”

I hear ya, kid. Godspeed getting yourself to a bigger town, where you can use that apathetic attitude to charm someone just as depressed and misunderstood.

We thanked him and headed to the restrooms. Lon volunteered to call. I kept an eye on the kid to make sure he wasn’t listening in on us. But there was no need; he couldn’t have given less of a shit. Soon after inserting a few coins, Lon hung up and reported that all he got was a voice-mail greeting. “It said he was currently in the office and taking cases,” Lon reported. “But otherwise just directed the caller to leave a name and number and said he’d return the call within twenty-four hours.”

I groaned. I really didn’t want to spend an entire night here. “It’s only ten. We have seven hours before the diner opens. What do we do now? Can’t drive back home. We’d just have to turn around and come right back. Maybe this whole thing was a lousy idea.”

His eyes sparkled with something close to humor. “Patience, witch.”

Since when did I get a nickname? Or had he called me that before? Either way, I was amused, and sort of happy that he wasn’t feeling as hopeless about all this as I was.

He glanced at the kid behind the counter before squinting down at me. “Maybe I’ve been thinking about this all wrong.”