Banishing the Dark
Page 26
“You aren’t experiencing other demonic abilities, are you?”
“Not that I know of.” Just to ease my mind, I tried to manage the most common of knacks—telekinesis—by willing something to rise into the air, a pen rolling around an open compartment in the console. Nope. Nothing.
“Are my eyes . . . ?” I pulled down the visor mirror. Still had the elliptical pupils. Great.
Lon gestured at me. “What’s that you’re holding?”
I glanced down and was surprised to see my hand balled into a fist. My fingers were stiff, locked around a couple of scraps of paper. I loosened my grip and flattened out the wrinkles against my knee. “It’s from Wildeye’s notebook.” I must have lost the notebook itself in the landslide, but by some miracle, I’d managed to hang on to three pages. The tops were torn off, and the bottom two pages were empty. But I’d snagged the one I’d been looking at when the mountain smote us.
“Looks like coded notes from September,” I explained to Lon. “But I think these could be my initials.”
“He was investigating you back in September?”
Not long after I’d met Lon and before Dare had revealed that he knew my real name. “Guess so, but don’t get your hopes up too high. Only three things are listed. One is a street address with no city. The second thing is just a note that says ‘3AC 1988.’”
“Not the year you were born.”
“No. But it’s my fake identity’s birth year. And I have no idea what ‘3AC’ would have to do with that.”
He grunted. “What’s the third thing?”
“Variations on spelling for ‘Naos Ophis.’” I spelled it out for him.
“Naos means shrine, or an inner temple.”
“A cella.”
Lon nodded. “That’s Latin, but yes. Naos comes from a Greek word. I don’t know what Ophis is, though.”
I stared at the paper for a couple of moments, but my brain was in no mood for solving riddles. The clock on the dash said it was half past seven. And whether it was the power of suggestion or my adrenaline running out, exhaustion hit me like a brick.
“We’ll research all that later,” Lon said as Golden Peak came into view in the distance. “Right now, we need to rest. If you don’t sleep, you’ll be nodding off when night falls. Or I will. And I need to watch out for you.”
My stomach tightened when I thought about being alone with him in a hotel room again. I hoped I’d manage to keep my clothes on this time. “I’m not sure if it’s the best idea to crash at the Redwood Motel. What if that waitress tells people she sent us up to Wildeye’s house?”
“They won’t be looking for two people who triggered a landslide,” he said. “But on the other hand, I don’t want nosy people knocking on the door or logging my tag number while we’re sleeping.”
I certainly didn’t disagree. So while he made a quick stop to pick up the things we’d left in the motel room, I futzed around with the search function on the GPS until it brought up the closest motel off the highway, about ten miles south of Golden Peak. It took us a half hour to get there.
Tucked into grass-covered cliffs facing the ocean, the Lucia Inn was all beachy clapboard and white picket fence, geared toward retirees taking leisurely excursions up the coast of California. We got the last room with double queen beds available and dumped our bags onto the creaking wood floor.
While Lon showered in the pale pink bathroom, I managed to get a broadband signal on his tablet and unfolded the scrap of paper from Wildeye’s notebook. I tried looking up “Naos Ophis” in quotes. Nothing. Not one single hit. How was that possible? Maybe Wildeye had the spelling wrong, after all. But searching for variations proved just as futile. Maybe Lon would have other ideas. He was the linguaphile.
Changing tactics, I typed Wildeye’s mystery address into a map search, which located it in fifteen cities. Better than hundreds of hits, I supposed, and most of them were in the West. But we couldn’t exactly traipse around the country searching for the right one. And what was I even looking for, exactly? Most of the locations looked to be houses in residential neighborhoods. One convenience store. And—
Rooke Gardens. Pasadena, California.
Long-forgotten memories bloomed inside my head.
I raced to the bathroom and knocked, shouting against the peeling pink paint. “Lon! I know the address in the notebook. It’s in Pasadena.”
The door swung open. I saw half a second of glistening naked male flesh. Mostly chest—holy crap, better than I remembered—and the vague promise of other alluring body parts in my peripheral vision.
For the love of God. Didn’t this place have towels?
Just because I’d gotten naked for research didn’t mean all bets were off. Rattled, I held out Wildeye’s torn notebook page in front of me to block the view.
He cleared his throat. “Repeat what you just said.”
I tapped the paper with my index finger. “This is in Pasadena. Rooke Gardens. It’s a private botanical garden owned by Karlan Rooke.”
“And I should recognize that name because . . . ?”
“He used to be a high-ranking member of the E∴E∴, but he quit when . . . well, I was about Jupe’s age, I guess. Caused a big hubbub at a national occult convention in Florida. He hated my parents. Hated.”
Lon made a small noise. “Interesting.”
“Not that I know of.” Just to ease my mind, I tried to manage the most common of knacks—telekinesis—by willing something to rise into the air, a pen rolling around an open compartment in the console. Nope. Nothing.
“Are my eyes . . . ?” I pulled down the visor mirror. Still had the elliptical pupils. Great.
Lon gestured at me. “What’s that you’re holding?”
I glanced down and was surprised to see my hand balled into a fist. My fingers were stiff, locked around a couple of scraps of paper. I loosened my grip and flattened out the wrinkles against my knee. “It’s from Wildeye’s notebook.” I must have lost the notebook itself in the landslide, but by some miracle, I’d managed to hang on to three pages. The tops were torn off, and the bottom two pages were empty. But I’d snagged the one I’d been looking at when the mountain smote us.
“Looks like coded notes from September,” I explained to Lon. “But I think these could be my initials.”
“He was investigating you back in September?”
Not long after I’d met Lon and before Dare had revealed that he knew my real name. “Guess so, but don’t get your hopes up too high. Only three things are listed. One is a street address with no city. The second thing is just a note that says ‘3AC 1988.’”
“Not the year you were born.”
“No. But it’s my fake identity’s birth year. And I have no idea what ‘3AC’ would have to do with that.”
He grunted. “What’s the third thing?”
“Variations on spelling for ‘Naos Ophis.’” I spelled it out for him.
“Naos means shrine, or an inner temple.”
“A cella.”
Lon nodded. “That’s Latin, but yes. Naos comes from a Greek word. I don’t know what Ophis is, though.”
I stared at the paper for a couple of moments, but my brain was in no mood for solving riddles. The clock on the dash said it was half past seven. And whether it was the power of suggestion or my adrenaline running out, exhaustion hit me like a brick.
“We’ll research all that later,” Lon said as Golden Peak came into view in the distance. “Right now, we need to rest. If you don’t sleep, you’ll be nodding off when night falls. Or I will. And I need to watch out for you.”
My stomach tightened when I thought about being alone with him in a hotel room again. I hoped I’d manage to keep my clothes on this time. “I’m not sure if it’s the best idea to crash at the Redwood Motel. What if that waitress tells people she sent us up to Wildeye’s house?”
“They won’t be looking for two people who triggered a landslide,” he said. “But on the other hand, I don’t want nosy people knocking on the door or logging my tag number while we’re sleeping.”
I certainly didn’t disagree. So while he made a quick stop to pick up the things we’d left in the motel room, I futzed around with the search function on the GPS until it brought up the closest motel off the highway, about ten miles south of Golden Peak. It took us a half hour to get there.
Tucked into grass-covered cliffs facing the ocean, the Lucia Inn was all beachy clapboard and white picket fence, geared toward retirees taking leisurely excursions up the coast of California. We got the last room with double queen beds available and dumped our bags onto the creaking wood floor.
While Lon showered in the pale pink bathroom, I managed to get a broadband signal on his tablet and unfolded the scrap of paper from Wildeye’s notebook. I tried looking up “Naos Ophis” in quotes. Nothing. Not one single hit. How was that possible? Maybe Wildeye had the spelling wrong, after all. But searching for variations proved just as futile. Maybe Lon would have other ideas. He was the linguaphile.
Changing tactics, I typed Wildeye’s mystery address into a map search, which located it in fifteen cities. Better than hundreds of hits, I supposed, and most of them were in the West. But we couldn’t exactly traipse around the country searching for the right one. And what was I even looking for, exactly? Most of the locations looked to be houses in residential neighborhoods. One convenience store. And—
Rooke Gardens. Pasadena, California.
Long-forgotten memories bloomed inside my head.
I raced to the bathroom and knocked, shouting against the peeling pink paint. “Lon! I know the address in the notebook. It’s in Pasadena.”
The door swung open. I saw half a second of glistening naked male flesh. Mostly chest—holy crap, better than I remembered—and the vague promise of other alluring body parts in my peripheral vision.
For the love of God. Didn’t this place have towels?
Just because I’d gotten naked for research didn’t mean all bets were off. Rattled, I held out Wildeye’s torn notebook page in front of me to block the view.
He cleared his throat. “Repeat what you just said.”
I tapped the paper with my index finger. “This is in Pasadena. Rooke Gardens. It’s a private botanical garden owned by Karlan Rooke.”
“And I should recognize that name because . . . ?”
“He used to be a high-ranking member of the E∴E∴, but he quit when . . . well, I was about Jupe’s age, I guess. Caused a big hubbub at a national occult convention in Florida. He hated my parents. Hated.”
Lon made a small noise. “Interesting.”
