The max porter box set, p.32
The Max Porter Box Set, page 32
If not for the internet, I might never have connected with the seller. Yet technology, a magic all its own, brought us together. The hand of Danica Kalinski.
I sit here writing this while I stare at the marvelous thing. I could see that Chelsea respected its power without even knowing what it represented or what is was for. Alan showed little interest, as usual. But Lane, there was an interesting reaction. Perhaps I’ve underestimated that child. I’d begun to think that she was like her sister, but I see now that she is ripe for molding in any direction I wish. It would certainly be easier than breaking through Chelsea’s impenetrable walls. That child has simply decided to reject all I have to offer. I tire of fighting with her. But Lane. I’ll have to think on that.
If she can be trained, then I’ll have somebody in this family who can finally serve our greater purpose. I’ll give her Kalinski’s hand, and she will ...
Max looked at the next page — empty. He flipped through the rest of the journal. All of it — empty. He checked back on the final written page. Had he missed some scrawled sentence in the margins? No. But in the spine, he did see the jagged edges where two pages had been ripped out.
He stared at them for a full minute before snapping the journal shut. “Son of a bitch.”
Chapter 17
SHORTLY AFTER THE SUN ROSE, Sandra shuffled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and rumpled. From his office chair, Max watched her go through the motions of starting the morning coffee and pulling out a few eggs from the refrigerator. Each movement of her hands, the tilt of her head, and the way her nightshirt clung to her shape — it all brought back flashes of their youth.
She jumped and let out a short yip when she noticed him. “Don’t do that,” she said but laughed. “I almost dropped the eggs.”
“You look so beautiful, I didn’t want to stop you.”
“You’re not looking so hot. Didn’t you sleep at all last night?”
“I had a good few hours.” He grinned. “You had a lot to do with that.”
Sandra pointed toward the ceiling. “Watch it. I think she’s awake.”
“I think I’m going up to bed.” He pushed the journal across the desk. “We’re screwed over yet again.” He explained the overall purpose of the journal and how the final two pages — probably the most important pages — had been removed.
“Now I know you haven’t had enough sleep. You’re not thinking straight.”
“What did I miss?”
Cracking the eggs into a bowl, she said, “How did you get that journal?”
“PB and I stole it.”
“From?”
“The Darden house. Why are you asking things you know the answer to?”
“How did you know where the journal was?”
Max smacked his forehead. “Because you found it with a spell. You think you can find the missing pages, too?”
“Spells get easier once you’ve done them a few times. Let’s have some breakfast and I’ll get to it. Shouldn’t take me nearly as long now that I know what I’m doing.”
Max thought of his comfortable bed. “How long? Do I have time to get a little shuteye?”
“Definitely.”
With a grateful kiss, Max skipped the eggs and went straight to his bed. Knowing Sandra had the next step in the case well under control, he found sleep easy to achieve. Unfortunately, the peace did not last long.
After what felt like minutes but had actually been two hours, Sandra shook him awake. He moved his groggy head to the side until his eyes focused on his wife. Then he bolted upright. “Where are the pages?” He saw the answer on her grim face. “You couldn’t find them.”
“I did and didn’t find them. I mean, I didn’t find them but not because I couldn’t, not because the spell didn’t work. I didn’t find them because they don’t exist anymore. Those pages have been destroyed.”
Max pictured Chelsea tearing out the journal pages and tossing them in one of the numerous fireplaces of the mansion. He saw the orange light flickering on her face, the sadistic smile and trembling lips, the twitch that told Aunt Holly all she needed to know. Alan stood in the back with Lane, watching carefully as they destroyed the evidence Max needed.
But why would they hire him only to stymie every avenue that would help him break their curse?
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered to himself. Louder, he said, “I think we’ve finally lost.”
“Come on, hon. We’ve dealt with tougher cases than this.”
“I can’t think of one. Others were more dangerous, but at least I could research a name or a place and have it lead to more information. At least I could find a clue or two that would guide us to the answers. But this case.” He shook his head. “That journal was going to be the answer. I can’t think of another way to go forward. If Drummond were here, I’d tell him to quit. This is no good. And where is he, anyway? Usually we can’t get rid of him, but this case, he’s nowhere to help.”
“Where’s all this defeatist attitude coming from? I don’t get it.”
“How can you not feel this way? Name one thing that’s gone right on this case. Heck, name one thing that’s gone right since we moved to Winston-Salem.”
Sandra smacked Max’s arm. “Drummond, PB, J, this house, our financial security, our marriage is stronger, we have our independence — which we had to fight hard for — should I go on?”
Swinging his legs out of the bed, Max said, “Okay, okay. I’m not defeatist. I’m just frustrated. We’ve always done a good job at solving our problems by pushing through them. But this time, I can’t see the way through. I keep thinking I’ve found it, but then ...”
“Missing pages in a journal.”
“Exactly. What I really need right now is the expert opinion of a seasoned detective, but ours doesn’t seem too co-operative lately.”
“Then we need to help him deal with whatever his problem is, so he can help us with ours. And to do that, we need to find him. So, I’m going to cast my spell and figure out where he is.”
Max rubbed his temples. “I thought you didn’t know how to locate a ghost. Isn’t that what all your research was about?”
“That’s right. And after living with you all these years, I’ve picked up a few things in how to research. While I can’t guarantee the outcome, I’ve cobbled together a spell that should show us Drummond’s whereabouts. Or I’m wrong and the whole thing will fizzle and the house will smell like rotten eggs or sweaty feet for a few days.”
“You better get it right, then. I don’t want to deal with my mother’s complaints about that kind of odor.”
While Sandra went through the work of locating Drummond, Max forced himself to re-read the journal. Perhaps he had missed an entry or a significant comment. But nothing new jumped out at him as crucial.
His mind recounted all that he knew about the Dardens. They were stuck in their house, but it was worse than that. Even without the spell against them, they were stuck. Ghosts of their family’s past haunted the grounds. Sandra had seen them. If Aunt Holly had ever succeeded in reintroducing serious magic to their family, they might see those dead slaves, too. Living on a plantation would fast lose its fairy tale rewrite of history.
“Probably a good thing,” he said, his thumb playing with the corner of the journal.
But history was a double-edged sword. To ignore it meant to repeat the same mistakes. Yet to dwell within it meant to romanticize those same mistakes.
It seemed that Aunt Holly had walked the tightrope between these two ideas. She wanted to bring back magic, harken back to the days when she thought her family powerful and great. However, she ignored the tragic losses caused by the dangers of magic.
Grandma Darden should have been a daily reminder. After all, that woman had to be a witch. No way would Max believe anything else. Not after meeting Edith Walker.
Though he continued to think through the case, he knew his energy was wasted. He needed Drummond’s input.
Hours later, Sandra finally called for Max. She sat on the living room floor. Sweat dappled her forehead and she had a faraway gaze in her eyes. Pointing to a maps program she had brought up on her computer, she said, “If my spell worked right — and there’s no guarantees on that one — he’s somewhere in this section of the woods to the northwest of the city.”
Max studied the map. He reached over and clicked the mouse to zoom in. “That’s a lot of land. How am I supposed to find him in there?”
“How about a little appreciation? You just went from anywhere in North Carolina to a few acres of forest.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Sorry. You really did a great job.”
“That’s more like it.”
“Rather than complaining, let me ask this — do you have any suggestions on how to narrow his location any further?”
Her hand quivered as she reached for a glass of water on the coffee table. She gulped it down. “I have one idea, but I don’t like it.”
“I’m not seeing a lot of choices, so let’s hear it.”
“He hasn’t moved for a long time. A ghost can fixate on something for days if that thing is important enough to them. I don’t expect him to leave soon. If he does, he’ll have resolved whatever’s bugging him, and he can find you with ease. But assuming he’ll still be there for several hours, I think you should wait until dark and go out there.” Max knew he looked confused, and Sandra picked up on it. “You can see him. His glow will stand out in the dark like a campfire — except ghostly pale and dead.”
Max rubbed her shoulders. “That’s a really good idea. Why’d you think I wouldn’t like it?”
Rolling her neck on the strong feel of his hands, she said, “Oh, y’know — night, alone, ghosts. That’s not usually a good combination for us.”
“But it’s not any ghost. It’s Drummond. Nothing to worry about.”
Max continued to massage her tense shoulders. Whether he reacted to her words or her physical strain or a combination of both, he did not know, but his fingers started to tap, his mouth dried, and he suddenly had no desire to go out that night.
Chapter 18
AFTER NIGHTFALL, Max drove on Route 67, passing Bethania, and taking Tobaccoville Road. Using his phone’s GPS, he turned into the parking lot of the Old Richmond Elementary School — a functional brick building that seemed too large for this remote area. He pulled aside and got out. The tick of his feet on the pavement grew louder with each step.
He headed around back, crossed the sports field, and stopped at the mouth of a hiking trail. Two knee-high posts marked the beginning of the trail and a chain hung between them. Max walked around the chain and headed into the woods. Though probably a trick of his mind, he swore the temperature dropped the moment he could no longer see the road behind.
Using the flashlight app on his phone, he followed the hiking trail deeper amongst the trees. After two minutes, he peered off to the left of the trail — woods and more woods. And also, probably, Drummond.
As he stepped off the trail and walked in the wild, the foliage grew thicker and the trees blotted out any moonlight. The dark encroached, only to be fought back by his single light source. He had to remind himself that he recharged the battery before leaving and double-checked it, too.
He reached the edge of the area Sandra had marked. When he stopped, he thought he heard footsteps behind him also stopping. He scanned the woods in back with his flashlight, but under that light, the forest looked like a gray and pale blue wash — flat and difficult to distinguish where one plant ended or one tree began. And he saw nothing that resembled a person.
A sudden chill rushed over him. He fumbled the phone but kept it from hitting the ground. Woods were one of those places that either had no ghosts in them or overflowed with the dead. It all depended on what had happened there.
If Sandra had come along, she would be able to tell him. Then again, he didn’t want to know. A rustle of leaves behind him followed with an icy breeze — he sighed and chuckled at the same time. Nobody followed him. No ghosts had passed through him. Just a cold wind.
“Time to get this done,” he said, his voice sounding smaller than he had hoped for. Nonetheless, he touched the screen of his phone, putting the flashlight out. He waited as his eyes adjusted to the night. When he started to see the outline of a tree, he turned slowly in a circle. As Sandra had predicted, he saw a ghostly light off in the distance.
He popped on the flashlight again and walked in the direction of the ghost. Every few minutes, he stopped, turned off the light, waited for his eyes to adjust, and reoriented towards the pale light of Drummond. Seven times Max had to stop. Eventually, he no longer needed the flashlight — Drummond’s light let Max see enough.
“You finally showed up,” Drummond said with his back to Max.
He floated near an area so dark, Max could hardly make out a tree. Drummond peeked over his shoulder and then touched a tree to his left. A symbol made of swirling lines flashed blue on the bark. Drummond shifted to another tree and lit up another symbol. After two more, the area brightened enough that Max saw they actually stood in a small clearing no bigger than a bedroom.
Drummond hovered near the remnants of a fallen tree. Beyond that, nothing about the area struck Max as notably different from any other part of the forest. Yet Drummond faced that tree with his head bowed and his hat off. One good thing Max noticed — Drummond sounded calm. Sad, but calm.
“If you wanted me out here,” Max said, “you could have told me. I would’ve come.”
“I think part of me hoped you wouldn’t have to. The fact that you’re here means the case has stalled out again. You came looking for my help.”
“Well, aren’t we full of ourselves?” Max meant it as friendly joke, but Drummond’s withdrawn eyes stole any mirth from the air.
“Am I wrong?”
“No. We keep finding routes that lead to nothing, and I have an ugly suspicion about it all.”
“And you want to quit.”
“You say it like I have a choice. Tell me where to go, what to do, show me what I’m missing, and I’ll do it. But the fact is that —”
“The fact is that I didn’t tell you the full story.” Drummond drifted over the log, gazing down as if he could see through to the heart of the Earth. He slumped even lower. “I knew the moment I shared with you about Detective Cooper, the Dega witch, and that vision of dead children — well, I knew I’d have tell you the rest eventually. I guess I hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.”
Max knew enough to wait. Drummond continued to glare through the ground. After a few seconds, though, he straightened his back and leveled a determined look at Max.
“I told you that Cooper and I went to a crime scene at a Quaker orphanage.”
“Robert Wellman, the headmaster, right?”
“Yeah. Killed by the same witch that inadvertently gave Cooper a vision. That vision warned us that the children were in trouble. Problem was that Cooper never had a vision before. It was over before he even knew what he had seen. He didn’t remember much, and what he did remember was vague. Except for the kids. Lined up on the floor, bloody and beaten. He remembered those details all too clearly.”
Drummond explained that for several hours he grilled Cooper, trying to extract anything that might point them in the right direction. What did the room look like? Was the floor bare wood or tile or dirt? Was there a rug? Could he smell anything? Hear anything?
“It’s a vision,” Cooper said. “I only saw things, and I never want to see them again.”
Drummond had to make a choice — keep questioning Cooper or sit around and think up some other method of finding the witch. Either one could succeed. Either one could do nothing but waste time. While he had no idea what spell the witch intended to cast that required all these kids nor when the spell needed to be cast, he had no doubt that time was running thin.
He sent Cooper home. The man had been through enough trauma in the last few days, and the repeated questions had only served to push his mind further from the reality he understood. Some people could not handle learning about the world beyond what they knew. Given a few quiet days, Cooper would find a way to dismiss most everything. The things he couldn’t fabricate a reason for, he would throw Drummond’s way and then do his best to forget about.
Once Cooper left the office, Drummond plunked his feet on his desk and leaned his chair back. And he thought. Every tick of the clock sounded like a hammer strike. Every exhale sounded like a howling wind. He pushed that out of his mind and focused on the witch. What did he know about her?
“Nothing,” he said. Floating away from the log and closer to Max, Drummond’s eyes flared with his memories. “The crime scenes did not give much either. Maybe in a week they would have, but I knew I didn’t have that kind of time. If I was lucky, whatever spell this witch planned would require a full moon. That would give me three days. But there were plenty of other celestial signs that can be used for a spell. As far as I was concerned, I had one night to figure this out. So, knowing that made me desperate, I did a desperate thing. I visited another witch.”
Her name was Sally Stroud. She was more than a novice but less than a full-on witch. Like many in the world, she had been raised in a more conventional religion — Methodist, in her case — and she discovered witchcraft late in her life. At fifty-seven, she had been practicing for less than a decade.
But that made her easier to get along with — at least, for Drummond. He never saw a malicious side to her. She once told him that she wanted to understand magic merely to further understand the world. “I don’t care about power or influence or any of that. I’ve got enough money, too.”
