Faerie Storm, page 5
part #8 of Harbinger P.I. Series
The tone of inevitability in his voice was worrying but Felicity had to hold onto a shred of hope. He hadn’t brought her here simply to tell her the bad news. The building to which he had brought her must have a purpose. “Is that why you and the Coven have built Harbinger Academy? To change the future?”
He turned from the window and faced her. “We can’t change it,” he said. “Any of it. The Melandra Codex will be used to save our world and that will set into effect a number of events that will culminate in the biggest threat to mankind’s existence since the last Ice Age.”
“So what is the academy for if not to prevent that from happening?”
He sighed and let his eyes roam over the interior of the office. “Harbinger Academy exists so that the human race might have a slim chance of survival.”
7
The next day, Leon and I headed south from the Lake Shore Lodge in his Durango. The rain had decided to make a reappearance and it drummed against the vehicle as we drove along the wet highway.
I was reconsidering my decision to let Leon drive. We raced along the road, water spraying up on either side of the Durango as if it were a speedboat on a lake.
We’d had a breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, and toast at the Lodge and now we were heading for Dan Pelletier’s house, as that was a good starting point to get us into the woods.
I’d decided that we were going to cast the First Nations spell my friend Jim Walker had taught me. I’d let the trees tell us what had happened yesterday when Dan Pelletier had visited the cave. Since there were no trees in the valley, the spell could only show us the event from a point of view high up on the ridge but that was better than nothing and it was all I had to go on right now. At least we’d know if Pelletier had gone to the cave alone or with someone else.
“This spell you’re going to cast,” Leon said. “It sounds weird. We’re going to talk to the trees?”
“Not exactly. They’re going to show us a replay of what happened yesterday when Pelletier was at the cave. We’ll be able to see the vision by drinking a potion and using faerie stones.”
He glanced over at me with a suspicious look in his eyes. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“Yes, a few times. It’s perfectly safe.”
He returned his attention to the road. “I guess this is the only chance we’re gonna get to find out what the hell is going on around here. Pelletier is dead, his daughter isn’t talking, and her friend has vanished. There aren’t exactly an abundance of leads.”
“No, there aren’t,” I admitted. “If this fails, we could try to visit Cathy Pelletier at Butterfly Heights but I doubt they’d let us in through the front door. We’re strangers and we don’t have a reason to visit Cathy; not one that they’d understand, anyway.”
“So let’s hope the spell works,” he said.
“This is the place.” I pointed at Pelletier’s driveway as it came into view.
Leon applied the brakes—something he didn’t have much experience of—and the Durango slid on the wet highway. Unfazed, Leon turned the wheel so that the back end of the vehicle swung around and we ended up facing the driveway.
“You don’t need to grip the dashboard so tightly,” Leon said, nodding at my fingers which were clamped on the edge of the dash and turning white.
I released my death-grip and relaxed a little as we drove along the driveway and reached the house. A black BMW was parked out front and I wondered if it was Dan Pelletier’s car. Wherever he’d parked when he’d gone into woods yesterday, it hadn’t been here; after visiting my office, he never made it home.
Maybe the police had found his car and brought it here, although I would have expected them to take it to their impound lot.
We got out of the Durango and put on our waterproof jackets. I grabbed my backpack—which had the spell’s ingredients and materials inside—and we set off into the woods.
The air was damp and cold as we trekked through the trees toward the valley where the cave was located. When we finally reached the entrance to the valley, instead of making our way over the rocks to the opening in the cliff wall, we ascended to the ridge above. It was an exhausting climb; the ground was slippery with wet leaves and the elevation was steep in places.
When we got to the top, Leon slumped against a pine tree while he regained his breath. “I hope that climb was worth it,” he said.
I slid the backpack from my shoulders and propped it against a rock. I went to the edge of the ridge and looked down, trying to remember the position of the cave in relation to where I was now standing. From up here, everything looked different. I searched for the rock I’d sat on while waiting for the police to arrive and was fairly sure I spotted it a hundred yards along the valley from where I stood.
“We need to cast the spell a little farther along the ridge,” I told Leon.
He let out a long sigh. “That’s great. There’s nothing I’d like more than more walking.”
I picked up the backpack and we proceeded along the ridge until I was sure we were standing almost directly above the cave.
“This should be the place,” I said, putting the backpack on the ground and taking two vials of liquid, a scrap of paper, and two faerie stones from its interior.
I passed one of the vials to Leon. “You need to drink that.”
He looked at it dubiously. “What’s in it?”
“Just some herbs and a little alcohol.”
He shrugged, took the stopper from the vial, and drank the contents. I did the same with mine. The liquid was bitter and unpleasant.
I handed Leon one of the faerie stones. He held it up to his right eye and peered through the hole in its center.
“After I cast the spell,” I told him, “You should see a vision of what happened yesterday through that hole.”
“Got it,” he said. “Okay, let’s do this.”
I unfolded the paper and recited the words written upon it. I’d customized the spell so the trees would know we were looking for information regarding the events of yesterday, particularly any person or people who had been in the area at that time.
The words of the spell seemed to influence the effect of the potion and I suddenly felt dizzy. The sensation passed after a few seconds and as I recited the final words, a calmness washed over me.
“Wow!” Leon said, “This stuff gives quite a buzz.” He lifted the faerie stone to his eye and peered down into the valley. “Damn, it was misty yesterday.”
I raised my own stone to my right eye and looked down. Through the hole, the landscape was covered with thick mist. I couldn’t see the valley floor at all.
“I don’t think we’re going to see much from up here,” Leon said. “Can we go down there?”
“No, we can only see what the trees up here saw. If we go too far from them, we’ll lose the connection. There are no trees in the valley, only rocks.”
“You don’t have a spell that gets visions from the rocks?”
“Rocks aren’t alive, Leon. Everyone knows that.”
“Dude, we’re talking to the trees. I’m not taking anything for granted.” He pointed at the valley below. “Hey, there’s something down there.”
I followed his gaze with my own but the only thing I could see through the faerie stone was more mist. Then I saw what Leon was pointing at; two shapes were moving through the mist down there.
“Looks like they’re walking toward the cave,” I said.
He nodded. “So one of them must be Pelletier but who’s with him?”
“It could be anyone. There’s no way to tell with all that mist.”
The two dark figures clambered over the rocks below us. I took the faerie stone away from my eye for a moment and looked down at the valley as it appeared today, with no mist to obscure the ground down there. Then I raised the faerie stone again and looked at the misty version.
“There’s no animosity in their movements,” Leon said. “Pelletier isn’t being coerced in any way. It looks like they’re companions, not murderer and victim.”
I nodded in agreement. “Pelletier had no idea about what was going to happen.”
We watched as the two figures moved to the base of the rocky wall on which we stood and then disappeared inside. I hit the stopwatch function on my watch. I wanted to know how long they spent in the cave before Pelletier’s killer re-emerged.
After four minutes, Leon tapped his faerie stone as if trying to get better reception on it. “Do these things have sound? If we could hear a scream or something, we’d know if the deed has been done yet or not.”
“They do have sound,” I said. “But we’re a long way up and the cave walls are probably deadening any noise Pelletier is making.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Leon observed.
The stopwatch reached eight minutes and still no figure appeared in the mist below. The mist in the valley remained undisturbed.
More minutes passed. Leon stamped his feet, as if trying to get the blood flowing in his legs. Standing here in the rain was a cold business. “Whatever they’re doing in there, it’s taking some time.”
He was right. Pelletier and his companion had been in the cave for almost fifteen minutes.
“Could the murderer be painting the symbols on the cave walls?” Leon wondered aloud.
“No, the symbols were already there. The police found them three months ago when they were searching for the missing girls.
He fell into a contemplative silence for a few minutes and then he said, “What if the killer isn’t coming out at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember the Pillars of Khonsu? They were covered with symbols and they were a gateway to another world. And there was a cave in the woods that led to Faerie that one time.“
I considered what he was saying. “You think the cave could be a gateway?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Maybe that’s why the other girl—Lydia Cornell— is still missing. Maybe she was taken through the gate.”
It was a logical theory and it would explain why Dan Pelletier’s killer hadn’t come back out of the cave. But we couldn’t abandon our post here just yet in case the killer was simply in no hurry to leave the murder scene and would emerge later. If we put the faerie stones down now and missed that, we’d be on the wrong track, assuming that the killer had disappeared through a magical gate when in fact, he’d gone home.
“We need to wait it out a little longer,” I told Leon. “But if the killer doesn’t reappear, we’ll investigate the possibility that the cave is a gateway.”
We waited for two more hours. Below us, the vision of the misty valley remained silent and motionless. No one came out of the cave.
“I think we’re done here,” I said to Leon.
“Wait, I think I see someone.” He pointed toward the entrance of the valley.
I took my stone away from my eye for a moment to get my bearings and see the area without any mist. I kept my eye trained on the valley entrance and lifted the stone again. The mist reappeared and now I could see a dark figure standing there. As the figure got closer, clambering over the rocks by the edge of the river, I thought I knew who it was. When he lost his footing and fell, I was sure of it.
“That’s me,” I told Leon.
My past self made his way to the rock wall and slid the backpack off his back. The glow of a flashlight illuminated the mist briefly before the figure disappeared into the cave.
“The killer definitely didn’t come back out,” I said. “And when I entered the cave, there was no one else in there other than Dan Pelletier. I think your gateway theory might be right.”
We made our way back down to the valley and followed the river to the fissure in the rock wall. I expected to find a length of Crime Scene tape stretched across the cave entrance but Officer Davis and his men hadn’t bothered sealing off the area.
Leon and I each took a flashlight from the backpack and entered the tunnel that led to the place where I’d found Dan Pelletier’s body. The air in here didn’t smell a bad as yesterday but an underlying stench of rotten meat was still detectable.
When we reached the main room, the first thing I noticed was a dark stain where Pelletier’s body had been lying yesterday.
“So this is the place,” Leon said, pointing his flashlight beam at the Enochian symbols on the walls. “Whoever came in here with Pelletier somehow got out without using the main entrance. “I don’t see any other tunnels.”
“There aren’t any,” I said. “Your gate theory must be correct.” I took a crystal shard out of my pocket and held it up. Its bright glow illuminated the cave around us. “Someone used magic here recently. Maybe we’ll know more when Carlton deciphers the symbols.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Leon said. He trained his light on an area of the wall that was marked with black powder smudges. “The police lifted some prints from over here. Maybe they know who came in here with Pelletier.”
“They won’t tell us anything,” I said. “They don’t like outsiders, especially P.I.s”
He nodded and pointed his light at the bloodstain on the ground. “So what’s our next move?”
“We should probably take a look inside Pelletier’s house. There might be something there that will tell us who he was with yesterday.”
“We’re going to break in?” Leon asked with barely disguised excitement in his voice.
“Yeah, we’re going to break in.”
“Awesome, let’s go.”
We left the cave and followed the river back to the entrance of the valley. I kept trying to fit the murder of Dan Pelletier with what happened to the two girls but a vital piece of the puzzle was missing. Maybe we’d find it in Pelletier’s house. Or in his car, assuming the black BMW parked outside the house was his.
When we finally emerged from the woods, we walked across the lawn to the side of the house and stowed the backpack in the Durango.
Leon surveyed the house. “How are we going to get in?”
“We’ll check the doors to make sure they’re locked, look for open windows.”
“And if the place is sealed tight?”
“Then we’ll have to break something.” I didn’t want to smash my way into the Pelletier residence but Dan wasn’t going to complain and if it helped us find out what had happened to him and his daughter, a broken window was a small price to pay.
Leon went over to the BMW and cupped his hands against the window while he peered inside. “If we can hack the GPS, we can find out where Pelletier went after he left your office yesterday.”
“Great idea.” I joined him at the car and looked inside. “Do you know how to hack the GPS?”
“Hey, you, what are you doing? Get away from my car!” The female voice came from behind us. I turned to see a blonde-haired woman standing at the open front door of the house.
“Sorry,” I said. “We thought it belonged to someone else.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m Alec and this is Leon. We’re working for Dan Pelletier. I assume you know him since you’re standing in his house.”
“Of course I know him. He’s my brother. I’m Laura Pelletier.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Leon said.
She let out a short sigh and now I could see that her eyes were bloodshot, as if she’d been crying. “Thank you. You said you were working for Dan?”
“Yes, he came to my office yesterday.”
“Oh, are you the P.I. he was going to hire?”
“Yes, I’m Alec Harbinger.”
She nodded. “He said he was going to hire you to investigate what happened to Cathy. It’s one of the last things he did before…” Her voice trailed off and she began to cry. The strength seemed to leave her legs and she slid down the doorframe until she was leaning against it while sitting on the floor.
I stepped up onto the porch and crouched next to her. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I told him not to get involved with those people but he didn’t listen,” she said through her sobs. “I told him it wouldn’t come to any good.”
“Get involved with what people?” I asked.
“They’re members of a group with a strange name.” She sniffed and said, ”The Cabal. They call themselves the Midnight Cabal.”
8
The interior of Dan Pelletier’s house was plush and comfortably furnished. Laura showed us into the living room and announced that she was going to make coffee. She waved away my offer of help, insisting that keeping busy was the only way she could stop herself from breaking down completely.
While she busied herself in the kitchen, Leon turned to me and said, “So…the Cabal.”
“I guess it’s not really surprising. In the 1940s, they ran a secret project in the basement of Butterfly Heights—which was called the Pinewood Heights Asylum back then—and that place isn’t far from here. So this area was once a hotspot of Cabal activity.”
Leon nodded. “And it seems, from what Laura said, that it still might be.”
She came into the room carrying a tray loaded with mugs, spoons, creamer, and sugar, and set it on the large coffee table that sat in front of the fireplace. The sweet wood smoke drifting from the fire vied with the bitter coffee smell for my attention. The coffee won. I added creamer and sugar to one of the mugs and took the drink to a large armchair. Leon and Laura sat on the sofa.
“You seem to have heard of these people…the Cabal,” Laura said. “They told Dan they were a large organization but I didn’t believe them; I looked up the Midnight Cabal online and could hardly find anything at all about it.”
“Miss Pelletier—”
“Laura, please,” she said.
“Laura, what did the Midnight Cabal want with your brother?”
She shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “They didn’t want anything. That’s what was so weird. I thought they were one of those kooky religious groups at first. You know, those cults you hear about. I thought they were after Dan’s money. But they never asked him for anything. No money, nothing. On the contrary, they told him they could help Cathy, bring her out of her current mental state.”
