“It’s a long story,” Roy said, “and we should get back on the road.”

  “All right,” Sarah said. “But promise me when this is over you’ll come back and spend a week relaxing. You can tell us the whole story then.”

  “It’s a promise,” Steven said. They said their goodbyes to everyone and made their way back out to the car. Claire and Sarah stayed inside, but Pete followed them out.

  “Sarah’s changing,” Pete said. “Claire made these ghosts interesting to her. I won’t say she’s going to reopen the bed and breakfast, but she seems less upset about it all. You know she’s been very angry with me, especially since I asked you to help, Roy.”

  “Sorry about that,” Roy said. “It comes with the territory I’m afraid. Sometimes to solve something you wind up stirring things up.”

  “I know,” Pete said, “and I’m glad you did it and it’s almost over. But this might just work out for the best with Sarah. The way she was talking to me this morning before you arrived, her attitude about the place was improving. She seemed to reconnect with the things about this place that make it great. You heard her, she thinks it’s interesting – that’s a far cry from when you were here before; she absolutely hated the place. And of course she now fully believes in your ability, Roy. Your idea to send in Claire was brilliant.”

  “I gotta admit,” Roy said, “that wasn’t my idea. It was Eliza’s. A woman in California who helped us out. She’s Claire’s friend, it was her idea to send her over when she heard what was happening here. You should send her a gift certificate or something.”

  “I will,” Pete said, “you just send me her address, will you?”

  “We gotta get going, Dad,” Steven said. “We need to hit the road.”

  They shook hands with Pete again and got in their car. Pete waved as they left. Steven pulled the car onto the main road and headed for the Interstate.

  They arrived in Seattle eight hours later.

  -

  Roy handed Steven the jar and Steven downed two gulps of the clear fluid. He felt it go down his throat like fire. Roy followed him and capped the jar. They were parked outside Jurgen’s warehouse.

  “You ready for this?” Roy asked.

  “Yes,” Steven said. “I’m ready.”

  “And what are we going to watch for this time?” Roy asked.

  “Don’t let him get under my skin,” said Steven.

  “Because?” Roy asked.

  “Because,” Steven said, “that’s what he wants, and I make bad judgments when I’m angry.”

  “That’s right,” Roy said. “He might be satisfied and ready to grind that body up, or he might have found us out and be pissed. You need to be ready for anything.”

  “OK,” Steven said. “Let’s do this.”

  “That said,” Roy added, “I want you to act angry.”

  “What?” Steven asked.

  “Act angry,” Roy replied, “not be angry. I think we should go with the good cop bad cop approach. I want you to be the unpredictable son. I’ll be the steady and reasonable old man. He already thinks that’s how we operate, no reason to change his opinion. You stay cool on the inside so you’ll make smart decisions. But on the outside, be a little crazy and pissed. I’ll tell you to calm down and be reasonable, but don’t listen to me.”

  “Why are we doing this?” Steven asked.

  “Because his M.O. is to throw you off with insults. We saw last time that it works on you. I want to throw him off instead. Make him feel uncomfortable. Don’t let on about the time bomb, but shake him up. If we wind up having to negotiate with him, I want him to agree to my demands just to get you out of his hair. Got that?”

  “I’m not an actor,” Steven said. “What if he realizes I’m making it up?”

  “Don’t make it up!” Roy said. “Use your anger to give the performance. Just don’t let it cloud your judgment. Remember our goal here. We may have to make some quick decisions and if you can keep thinking straight we’ll be fine. If you get flustered and angry I’ll be left flying solo. Stay in control, but act upset.”

  “All right,” Steven said, sighing. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Buck up!” Roy said, slapping him on the knee. “This just might be fun.”

  -

  As they walked through the worker area, Steven felt the protection surging through his body. It must spread around as you move, he thought. They reached the door to the office and Roy opened it.

  “Ah, the moron family!” Jurgen said from behind his desk.

  “We did what you asked,” Steven said. “We saw your guy take the body. Now we want your end of the deal.”

  “What body?” Jurgen asked. “I don’t see a body!”

  “Don’t fuck with us Jurgen,” Steven said, “we saw him dig it up and take it, right after we marked it.”

  “Oh, that body,” Jurgen said, laughing. “I remember now.”

  “You better remember, you little shit!” Steven said.

  “And you better watch your tongue if you want what you came for,” Jurgen replied.

  “The job is finished,” Roy said calmly. “We expect you to leave the manor alone, for good.”

  “Well, I think the terms of our deal changed when you brought that new cunt into the picture,” Jurgen said. “That wasn’t part of the arrangement. I’m not sure I owe you anything.”

  Steven wasn’t sure who Jurgen was referring to. He didn’t want to give away anything he didn’t have to. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steven said.

  “Yes, you do,” Jurgen said. “She showed up last night and ran around the place, trying to soothe the other two. You don’t know her? Red hair? Thin? Perfect ass for fucking?”

  “You’re a pig, you know that Jurgen?” Steven yelled. “She changes nothing. You still owe us.”

  “Where is the body now?” Roy asked. “I gather it’s worth a lot.”

  “Indeed,” Jurgen said. “Far too valuable to leave around here. It’s in a container on the pier. Headed for Japan.”

  It’s not here? Steven thought. Our plan has failed!

  “You can at least tell us who it was,” Roy said.

  “An old forty-niner named Stone. Brutal man, committed atrocities that if he were alive today would have made him famous. But since he committed them in the wilds of California a hundred and fifty years ago, no one cares.”

  “You wanted his bones for ingredients?” Roy asked.

  “Originally,” Jurgen said. “Then I met a buyer from Japan. When he learned I was going to come into this treasure he wanted to see it. When it showed up here earlier today I let him examine it. What a beautiful aroma it had! Intoxicating! He was impressed, said it was very powerful. The corpse you marked was one of the worst human beings in the history of the country, can you believe that? My friend offered a lot of money to take it whole, so I sold it to him.”

  “How much?” Roy asked.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but since you did help me deliver it to him, I don’t mind telling you it was millions.” It seemed to Steven that Jurgen was getting off on rubbing it in their faces.

  “What a slimeball you are,” Steven said. “You’re a pathetic scavenger living off the bones of dead people. You’re as low as them come. The bones of a man who did what he did aren’t worth anything in my book. They’re trash, they should be left in the ground to rot.”

  Jurgen grabbed an object from his desk and walked up to Steven. He stuck the object in front of his face. It looked to Steven like a small piece of brown chalk.

  “This is why you do what you are told,” Jurgen said, brandishing the object in Steven’s face, “and I tell you what to do. You are the idiot. An imbecile. You’re only good for being ordered around. Whereas I run circles around you. I tell you what to and you do it. My intellect towers over you. You and your father are errand boys, nothing more.”

  “What is that?” Roy asked calmly.

  Jurgen marched the object over to Roy, held it for him to see. “That,” he said, “is what you worked to get for me. What you and your brain dead child located. Like dogs sniffing out something buried in the woods.”

  “It looks like a bone,” Roy said.

  “It is, you stupid fuck,” Jurgen said. “You did all that work for me, but I’m the one who’s made the millions. I’ll make a hundred thousand off this bone alone.”

  “I thought you said the body was on its way to Japan,” Roy said. “Why do you have that?”

  “A souvenir from the buyer,” Jurgen said. “It fell off as we were transferring the bones, and he said I could keep it as a token of his appreciation. Looks like part of a finger, doesn’t it? Isn’t it beautiful? Even this tiny bone exudes tremendous power. I can feel it, can you?”

  “It’s shameful what you’re doing,” Roy said. “Those bones belong in the ground, not ground up. It’s obscene.”

  “You won’t make anything off it,” Steven said. He knew he had to derail Jurgen soon, say something that would take him off guard. “You’re going to give it to us for our time. In fact, we’re not leaving here without it.”

  Jurgen turned to face Steven, and glared at him. “You’re dreaming!”

  “We’re taking it,” Steven said again. “If you’re not going to stop tormenting the manor, we’re going to take that bone. We found it, it’s ours, we’ll sell it ourselves.” Steven felt he should do something to further upset Jurgen, so he began pacing in the room.

  Jurgen walked back to his desk. He placed the finger in a mortar. “Tell you what,” he said, grabbing a pestle, why don’t I crush it up, and we’ll split it three ways!”

  “We don’t want it,” Roy said. “Don’t crush it. It’s bones from a human being, show some respect.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Jurgen said, “I’m not really going to share it with you. I just wanted junior here to get his hopes up. What do you say, junior?”

  “I’m taking the whole thing,” Steven said, pacing back and forth.

  “Oh really? You’re hilarious!” laughed Jurgen, waving the pestle at him.

  “Jurgen, stop,” Roy said. “Don’t crush it. Let us rebury it. You know that’s the right thing to do. Please.”

  “You do-gooders really get on my nerves,” he said to Roy. Then he stopped. “Why do you want this finger so bad?”

  Steven and Roy looked at each other, but didn’t answer. What’s the right move here? he thought. Act guilty. Let him think he’s on to something.

  Steven looked away from Roy like he was trying to hide something.

  “Ah, so something’s up,” Jurgen said. “This visit isn’t just to see if I’m going to let up on your friends. You were hoping to get a piece of the body back.”

  Wow! Go with it, Steven thought. He looked at Roy again, and Roy’s expression seemed to say the same thing.

  “We promised a friend in California we’d try to get her the body,” Roy lied. “That’s why we came here today. Obviously we’re too late. But we could return that bone at least.”

  “What does your friend want with it?” Jurgen asked. “I’m guessing it’s not money. Some do-good cause?”

  “Well, yes,” Roy said.

  “She maintains the barrier,” Steven said. “She said if we could return the bones intact to her, she could use it to bolster the barrier for years, keep dregs like you out permanently.”

  Jurgen slowly leaned his head back. “Oh,” he said, raising the pestle, “wrong answer.”

  He brought the pestle down into the mortar full force, smiling as he twisted it into the stone. They all heard the bone break.

  Jurgen knew something was wrong almost immediately. Red wisps of mist swirled up out of the mortar bowl and surrounded him. In a matter of seconds Jurgen’s face aged fifty years. He fell to the ground, twisting in agony.

  Steven and Roy stepped closer to the desk and looked over the edge. Jurgen’s body was contracting violently, as though he was being punched and kicked. Grunts came out of his body as the air was forced out of his lungs.

  Steven entered the flow and observed the scene. The red wisps of mist continued to move in and out of his body, like sharp wide needles darting in and out. Each time they came out, they were bigger, extracting part of Jurgen, and his body shook in reaction. Whatever ability Jurgen had was being stripped from him a stroke at a time. With each moment Jurgen looked more and more like a frail old man. The needles struck at him relentlessly, extracting every ability and power left in him. Soon Jurgen laid still, without enough energy to move in response to the stabs and withdrawals. Eventually the wisps faded and the room was silent. Steven looked for any sign of power in Jurgen’s body and saw none. He exited the flow.

  Roy walked behind the desk and helped Jurgen stand up. He walked him to the chair he had been sitting in when they first entered. He carefully sat him down in it.

  Jurgen was old. His skin looked thin, like paper. You could see the blood vessels, red and pronounced in his hands, face, and neck. His hair had turned white, and his cheeks were hollow. The skin that used to be a jowl under his neck now hung wrinkled and empty, like the wattles of a rooster. He looked near death, defeated.

  “Ah,” he said in a thin voice that Steven and Roy had to strain to hear. “You double-crossed me. I should have known better.”

  “You brought it upon yourself,” Roy said. “Had you been an honest man, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “What was it?” Jurgen asked weakly.

  “Native American spirit,” Steven said. “It claimed Samuel Stone’s body yesterday. The body you had dug up was a changeling. When it learned what you intended to do with the bones, and your general personality disorder, it agreed to judge you if you damaged the corpse. All your power is gone now, Jurgen. You won’t be able to torment my friends anymore.”

  “I’ll kill you for this,” Jurgen said. “You’re both dead.”

  “At your age? With your power gone?” Steven said. “I don’t think so. You’ll be lucky to make it to bedtime without croaking.”

  “You’ve got a bigger problem than us,” Roy said. “When your Japanese buyer uncrates that skeleton, it won’t have any power at all. It was all just expended on you. He’ll want his millions back.”

  Jurgen’s head lowered in his chair. He whispered something neither of them could hear. Roy placed his head closer to Jurgen. “What?” he asked.

  Jurgen whispered again.

  Roy raised up. “He said, ‘Kill me.’”

  Steven looked at Roy, and Roy looked back. They knew they had won. They turned and walked out of Jurgen’s office. Then they walked the long march between the workers to the front door of the warehouse. Steven wondered if Jurgen might somehow come after them, but then he thought of Jurgen in the chair behind his desk. He could barely walk. He was frail and likely close to death. He was no longer a threat to them. He would be leaving his office today, and his few remaining future days, in a wheelchair.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Steven grabbed two bottles of champagne, one of the real stuff and one with no alcohol, and walked out the back door of the kitchen and through the utility room. Here was where Claire and Sarah had communed with the washer woman. He walked through the same door that she walked through every night, carrying her basket of clothes on her way to meet her death. He stepped down onto the grass of the yard, and walked around the back of the manor.

  The weather was cool but the sun was out and the day was pleasant. It was late afternoon and they had all just arrived. Sarah had asked Steven to retrieve more champagne from the refrigerator in the kitchen. He went around the back of the house to do it, enjoying the view.

  He returned to the gazebo, where Roy, Pete, Eliza, Claire, and Sarah were waiting. They had invited Dixon, but he was sailing near Cabo and didn’t feel like leaving. Steven sat the bottles down and Sarah thanked him. She uncorked one and began pouring refills.

  They had already toasted to their success and to Steven and Roy for their work. Steven and Roy had thanked them profusely and thanked Eliza especially for her help. Eliza and Sarah had toasted Claire as well. Finally Pete had stood and given a long and unnecessary speech about his and Roy’s history, the good old days, and why he knew Roy was the man for the job. When he sat down everyone applauded, as much for the end of the speech as the sentiment.

  There were a number of snacks Sarah had prepared for their reunion, arranged on small tables around their central table in the gazebo. They grazed from them occasionally and poured refills of champagne liberally. They were all staying the night at the manor, and none of them had to drive anywhere.

  They had asked for a retelling of the final encounter with Jurgen, and Roy had delivered it with drama and flair. Steven felt he had embellished only a few aspects and he felt no need to correct him.

  “So he aged rapidly?” Eliza asked. “To presumably his real age?”

  “I was surprised at that,” Roy said. “In removing his powers, whatever he had done to stop or to mask his age was removed as well. I had no idea he was really much older.”

  “I suppose he could have died,” Claire said. “I wonder what it feels like to have your powers sucked out of you like that.”

  “I’m sure it’s unpleasant,” Roy said. “Perhaps it would feel like part of you has been cut out.”

  Both Eliza and Steven nodded their heads at this, and Pete and Sarah watched them, unable to relate to the idea.

  “Would it wind up making you normal, like us?” Sarah asked, glancing at Pete.

  “I guess it would,” Claire said, “which isn’t a bad thing. Except for the feeling of loss, that you lost something you used to be able to do.”

  “It would be worse than that for me,” Eliza said. “It’s a huge part of me and what I do. I’d be lost without it.”

  “I imagine then that Jurgen is lost,” Sarah said.

  “He is broken, that is for sure,” Roy said. “And retired.”

  “When word gets around what happened to him,” Eliza said, “you’ll both be famous in certain circles. And I expect there will be a quick decrease in grave robbing. No one will want to risk what happened to Jurgen.”

 

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