Final Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 11), page 7
“Then something hit me,” Lassiter said. “Maybe that’s why Pierre was bumped off. Maybe he’d found something. Or he knew too much. Or he had one of these artifacts and it was stolen from him and he was killed in the process.”
“I guess any one of those theories could be true,” I said.
“It kept bugging me,” he continued. “Eventually, I looked over the files the investigators put together. Just to see if I could find something that might shed some light on what happened to Pierre. Maybe he’d be able to rest in peace if I discovered the reason for his death.”
“A noble cause,” I assured him.
“I went through everything with a fine-toothed comb,” he said. “The photos of his apartment, the interviews with you, and the cases he’d been working on. It was obvious that you didn’t know anything or were involved in any way. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And you were interviewed with a Truth Collar when you came back, so there’s no way you were lying.”
Yet I’d been given a new assignment in Dearmont as some form of punishment. The Society interviewers knew there was more to my Paris trip than I was saying; they just didn’t know how to get to the information. I had Sumiko and her memory wipe to thank for that.
“But the photos,” Lassiter said. “There was something about those photos that bugged me. Niggled at the back of my mind. And then it hit me. When Pierre had been at the academy, he’d written everything down in these big notebooks. You know what I mean? Fancy, hardback ones. All his information on the Holy Grail, Spear of Destiny, that kind of thing, was written down meticulously in these notebooks. He had at least three of them when he was at the Academy, so who knew how many he had at the time of his death?”
I knew. He’d had fourteen. And I’d destroyed them all in case they might fall into the wrong hands.
“But they weren’t at the apartment,” Lassiter said. “I couldn’t see them on the photos so I checked the inventory the investigators had put together. No notebooks.”
“Maybe they were stolen,” I said.
“My thoughts exactly. So that means Pierre probably knew where one of those Templar artifacts is hidden.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Yeah, maybe. And you know what’s funny?”
“No, what?”
“The investigators retraced his movements, as best they could, going back to a couple of months before his death. And you know where he spent a lot of his time?”
“Enlighten me,” I said.
“Burgundy. The same place you’re going on your vacation. Isn’t that a crazy coincidence?”
“Crazy,” I said, suddenly wishing we’d taken a commercial flight. Although, even if we had, the Society would probably find out where we were going and follow us.
And if the Society—with all its leaks, moles, and defected agents—knew, then I had no doubt the Cabal also knew our destination and the suspicion it had aroused.
“That’s why I’m flying out there,” Lassiter said. “My boss said to me that Alex Harbinger, the investigator who found Pierre’s body in Paris, is going back to France. To Burgundy, no less. He wondered if maybe you’d remembered something you’d forgotten to mention in your interview. Truth Collars are great, but if the interviewer doesn’t ask the right questions, things can be missed, you know?”
“I know,” I said. “Nothing was missed.”
“The other thing my boss said to me is to remind you who you work for. If you know anything that could help the Society, like, say, the whereabouts of a certain magical item, you need to tell us. We’re on your side, and you’re on ours. We’re a team.”
“I’m getting a feeling of deja vu,” I said, recalling my conversation with Feldman and Hope outside the Carter residence.
“What?”
“Never mind. If I knew anything, Neil, I’d be sure to tell my team.”
He looked over at Felicity—who was leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed—and then back at me. “You mean the Society, right? Not the ragtag bunch of people who help you solve crimes in that one-horse town.”
“I’m going to get some shut-eye,” I said. “Like you said, it’s a long flight.”
“Yeah, yeah, it is,” he said, standing up. “So, there’s plenty of time for you to come see me in my seat back there and let me know if you learned the location of a certain something when you were in Paris.”
“I told you—“
“Just think about it, Alec, and remember whose side you’re on.” He walked to the back of the plane and dropped into one of the seats there.
When we touched down, Felicity and I were going to have to find a way to lose the Society and the Cabal, because there was no way we could go to Fontenay Abbey until we did.
We’d be leading them to the most dangerous artifact in the world.
Chapter 10
The plane touched down in France at 4 a.m. local time. Neil Lassiter accompanied us through the airport and outside to a Hertz car rental.
Barely a word was exchanged during the process. I now knew that the Society was suspicious about my trip to Burgundy, thinking it connected to Pierre Louvain’s notes on Templar relics.
Lassiter was obviously here to spy on us.
He handed me a set of car keys and said, “Enjoy your vacation. If you need anything, or if you change your mind about talking to me, Alec, this is my number.”
He handed me a business card. I pushed it into the back pocket of my jeans and Felicity and I went in search of the car in the lot.
“You could cut the atmosphere between you and Lassiter with a knife,” Felicity whispered to me as we crossed the lot. “What was all that about?”
“I’ll tell you later. For now, let’s just say that the Society may know why we’re here.”
I looked over my shoulder. Lassiter was standing in the lights of the car rental, watching us.
We found the car—which was a black BMW—and got in. As soon as the engine started, I dialed the heat up. The early morning was dark and cold.
At least Felicity and I had both slept on the plane. My sleep had been restless but I felt nonetheless refreshed because of it.
“The Society has booked rooms for us at a hotel near here,” I whispered to Felicity. “I suggest we find somewhere else to stay.”
“Why? Do you think—“
I raised a finger to my lips and her words trailed off. I got my phone out of my pocket and opened the Notes app. In it, I typed, THE CAR MAY BE BUGGED and showed it to her.
Felicity nodded.
I used the built-in GPS to find a route out of Lyon. I knew we needed to head north, so I found a tiny village that lay in that direction and used that as a destination. I just wanted to get us out of the city and somewhere more rural.
In the city, we could be followed relatively easily. In the countryside, it would be more difficult for the Society or the Cabal to tail us without being seen.
We drove north until the city lights were far behind us and we were on a country road that cut through a forest. I pulled over to the side of the road and we both got out.
A chill hung in the air. The only illumination came from the car’s headlights and taillights. The forest around us was veiled in darkness.
I clicked in my Maglite and began inspecting the car. I found a tiny, black, magnetic box stuck to the inside of the rear wheel arch. I showed it to Felicity before throwing it into the trees.
“That box is a tracker,” I said, “so they’re probably not following us too closely at the moment, since they’re tracking us electronically. When they see that the signal has stopped moving, they’ll realize I found it.”
“What about bugs?” she asked.
“I can’t check for those without specialist electronic equipment, so I suggest we don’t talk in the car. Not about the spear or the abbey, anyway.”
Felicity nodded. “Of course.”
“They might guess that we’re going to the abbey. They retraced Pierre’s steps in the months before he was killed, so they’ll know he went to Fontenay.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I suggest we go there now. It’ll be closed, but that’s what we need so we can search for the spear.”
“That sounds good to me. The sooner we’re sure the Spear is safe, the better.”
“Okay. We get the Spear now and we find a place to hide it later.”
We got back in the car and resumed our journey. There was no way I was going to put the abbey into the car’s GPS, so Felicity got her laptop out of her case and planned a route that would take us from the village I’d set as our destination to the abbey itself.
I checked the rearview mirror constantly, but all I could see was a dark, empty stretch of road behind us.
It took us almost three hours to reach a small road that was signposted Abbaye de Fontenay. Beneath the main sign hung a smaller sign that said Fermée. Closed. I took the turning.
The sun had risen. It was still hidden behind the trees but the sky had lightened to a pale azure.
The road led us to a set of iron gates that were closed. This was as far as we could go in the car.
We got out, Felicity still holding her laptop, and I locked the BMW.
“They don’t open until ten,” Felicity said. “That gives us a couple of hours to find…what are we looking for, exactly?”
“According to Pierre’s notes, there’s an underground room beneath the cloisters.”
“Is that all it said?”
I tried to remember everything I’d read in Pierre’s notes before I’d destroyed them. “That’s all.”
We left the small road and trudged into the forest, Felicity balancing her laptop on one arm and tapping on the keys.
“This place was inhabited by Cistercian monks in the Twelfth Century. The Templars must have trusted them with the location of spear.”
“Or they hid it beneath the monastery without telling anyone.”
“If so, we may be in luck,” Felicity said. “I doubt that they’d arrive and start building underground rooms, so the room they used must have already been here. That means I have a chance of finding it if I access the records in the Society database.”
“The Society database? How do you have access to that?”
“I’m not accessing the live version. I’m accessing a copy that your dad put on a secure server in London.”
“How the hell did he do that? He doesn’t know a pixel from a Petabyte.”
“It was transferred magically, some time ago. Luckily, the database is actually encoded into the files on that server and not just being held there by magic, otherwise it wouldn’t work anymore. Aha, here it is.”
She scanned the screen for a moment and then said, “There’s a cellar beneath the cloister.”
“I don’t think the Templars would hide the Spear in a cellar everyone knows about.”
“No, they wouldn’t. So there must be a secret room attached to the cellar, or something like that.”
“I guess it’s a good place to start.”
There was no easy way in. An eight-foot high wall ran around the perimeter of the abbey. We were going to have to climb over it.
Felicity closed her laptop and I interlaced my hands to give her a boost up. She put one booted foot into my hands and I pushed upward as she made a lunge for the top of the wall.
She managed to get her upper body over it and scrambled the rest of the way up. Leaning forward, she extended a hand to me. I took it and leaped as high as I could, grabbing the top of the wall with other hand and using the toes of my boots to gain traction as I scrabbled to the top.
We dropped down onto the other side and found ourselves in a garden. The buildings were clustered a short distance away.
Before we made a move, we scanned our surroundings. The place seemed deserted.
Felicity found a gap between two buildings and we slipped through into a quadrangle of neatly-cut grass, bisected by four paths that met in the middle, forming a cross.
Surrounding the quadrangle were the buildings that made up the former monastery, including a chapter house and a church. In front of the buildings, the arches of the cloisters ran along the edges of the quadrangle.
“The cellar is beneath the southern cloister,” Felicity said. “That should be that one over there.”
We made our way across the grass to the covered walkway that made up the southern cloister. We climbed in through one of the arches.
The cloister had vaulted ceilings and simple, stone supporting pillars. There was no indication that a cellar lay beneath this part of the structure. The stone wall had no doors.
“Where is it?” Felicity said.
“I don’t know. Is this the right cloister?”
“Yes, definitely.” She tapped on the laptop and frowned, pursing her lips. “The cellar is mentioned in this document dated 1125. The Knights Templar would have come here two hundred years after that. Perhaps they bricked up the entrance. That would explain why the cellar isn’t mentioned in any modern-day documents.”
“It would also explain why we’re going to have a problem finding it. And even if we do find the entrance, we don’t have the tools to take out a brick wall.”
“Perhaps we should come back later. I’ll try to find out exactly where the cellar is located and we can bring the proper tools. Perhaps after the abbey closes tonight.”
I looked at the stone wall that ran the length of the cloister. There was no indication that any part of it had been added at a later date to hide a doorway. “Yeah, I don’t think we have any other choice.”
Felicity slid through one one of the arches into the quadrangle. I was about to follow when I heard a voice. It whispered a single word that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t French, or English.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Felicity.
She looked at me and shrugged. “Hear what?”
I looked along the length of the cloister, in both directions. There was no one else here.
“I thought I heard a voice.”
Felicity listened for a couple of seconds, and then shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
The atmosphere in the cloister seemed to be growing heavier by the second, as if the air pressure was increasing. The shadows seemed to lengthen. Even the sky above the quadrangle was becoming darker.
The heaviness in the air crept into my head like a dark fog. I found it hard to breathe, then to stand. My legs gave way and I collapsed to the cold, stone floor.
I heard Felicity cry out my name and then darkness smothered everything.
I was standing in a void, surrounded by absolute blackness. I could hear water dripping somewhere, but apart from that, there was nothing.
Was I dreaming?
The air felt cold and damp, and I had the impression of being inside a huge cave, even though I couldn’t see any walls.
The air in front of me shimmered and a form slowly took shape. At first, it was nothing more than wavering colors, then the colors resolved into a humanoid shape. Gradually, the details became clearer and I was looking at a man wearing an olive colored robe. The hood was pulled up over his face but I could see his dark eyes, and a blue spiral painted on his forehead, over his right eyebrow.
His arms were stretched out before him and in his hands, he held a spear. It was a simple weapon of wood and iron.
He spoke the word I’d heard, but not recognized, before. “Feenan.”
“What does that mean?” I asked him.
“Feenan.”
“Is it your name?”
He offered the spear to me, raising his arms slightly and indicating the weapon with a nod of his head.
I reached forward and touched it.
And woke up in the cloister, my head still foggy.
Felicity was crouched next to me, her eyes wide. “Alec, are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know. I had a dream. Or a vision. I’m not sure which.”
I got to my feet gingerly. The strength had returned to my legs and I could breathe again. But the heaviness in my head remained.
I looked along the length of the cloister and now I could see something I hadn’t seen before. A glowing green shape in the stone. The outline of a door.
“Felicity, look!”
“What?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”
I walked over to the glowing outline. “Here. The outline of a door.”
She squinted at the wall. “Really? I can’t make it out.”
“You don’t see the glowing lines?”
She looked at me with some concern. “I think you may have hit your head when you fell.”
“No, I’m not seeing things. It’s here.” In the top right corner of the glowing outline was a blue circle. I reached up and touched it.
“What are you doing?” Felicity asked.
“I think this is the way in.”
I expected to feel something when I touched the circle—warmth or a tingling—but all I felt was the cold stone beneath my fingertips.
“Alec, we should go,” Felicity said. “The abbey will be opening soon.”
“No, this is it. This is the doorway.”
“I can’t see anything. There isn’t anything there.”
I remembered the word the hooded man had spoken and said, “Feenan.”
A rumbling sound emanated from the wall. The stones within the glowing lines crumbled into dust, revealing a set of stone stairs spiraling down into darkness.
Felicity stepped back. “That isn’t possible. There can’t be a magical doorway. There’s no magic anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s a magical doorway. I think the hooded man is doing this. He’s casting a spell.”
“There can’t be a magical hooded man, Alec. There’s no magic.”
I shrugged, unable to offer an explanation for what had just occurred. “I don’t know what to say, Felicity, other than let’s get down there and get the Spear.”
“All right. I’m sorry. Seeing magic again, after all this time, frightened me for a second.”
