“Thank you,” Laura said, taking a pen from the woman and signing her name into a visitor’s log book. She passed the pen to Leon and me so we could do the same.

  The receptionist passed Laura a keycard and said, “Cathy is in her room at the moment. I believe you know the way.”

  “Yes,” Laura said. “Thank you.” She led us to a glass-paneled door and waved the keycard over a pad in the wall. The door opened and we went through to a long corridor lined with doors. This corridor had been here before but now it looked more modern. The doors—which had been wooden before—were now metal and the walls had been treated to a lick of fresh yellow paint.

  “So they let you walk around unsupervised?” I asked Laura.

  “Not exactly,” she said, holding up the keycard. “This will only open the doors we need to get through on the way to Cathy’s room. The first time I was here, I got confused and tried to open a door that led to another corridor. They keycard didn’t work. I asked about it at the desk and was told that the cards are prepared individually for each visitor. They only open certain doors in the building and won’t open any others.”

  That was a shame. If we needed to do some snooping around, a keycard that opened any door would be useful. Were the bespoke cards simply to prevent people getting lost or were they designed to make sure no one wandered into areas where secret Cabal projects were being undertaken?

  Laura led us through two more doors and along another door-lined corridor, only in this area, the doors were numbered. She stopped outside door number 6 and turned to us. “I’ll go in first and tell her she has two new visitors. I have no idea if she understands what anyone says to her anymore but I think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Of course,” I said. “We’ll wait here.”

  Laura entered the room and closed the door behind her.

  Leon scanned the corridor. “Have you noticed the cameras? They’re everywhere.”

  “Yeah, there seems to be more security than the last time I was here. This place is buttoned up tight.”

  “So there’s no chance of us getting down to the basement and checking it out,” he observed.

  “Not by any conventional means.”

  He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Do you have an unconventional plan?”

  “Not at the moment but we might have to come up with one if we’re going to get a look under the hood of this place.”

  The door opened and Laura waved us in. Cathy’s room was spacious and airy, with a large window letting in a copious amount of light. The room contained a single bed as well as a sofa, coffee table, and TV mounted on the wall. An open door led to a bathroom.

  Cathy Pelletier was sitting on the sofa, knees drawn up to her chin. She had short dark hair and was wearing a large knitted sweater that seemed to swamp her. Her eyes were locked on the TV, which was showing cartoons.

  “Hey, Cathy,” I said. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

  I didn’t expect an answer and she didn’t give one but it seemed right to ask anyway. Her attention remained fixed on the TV.

  I sat on sofa and placed my backpack between us. I unzipped it and took out the crystal shard. There was no light coming from it. “Her inability to speak isn’t due to any spell,” I said. Replacing the shard in the backpack, I took out the vial of holy water. Opening it, I poured a drop onto my finger and gently touched it to the back of Cathy’s hand.

  There was no reaction. If she’d been possessed by a demon, the water would have burned her.

  That meant I had nothing at all to go on.

  I replaced the vial in the backpack and closed the zipper. The Collar of Truth was in there but I wasn’t going to use it.

  I turned to Laura, who was sitting on the end of the bed. “There’s no spell at work here and she isn’t possessed. I think her condition is psychological in nature, not magical.”

  “So there’s nothing you can do?” she asked. “I have to rely on the doctors here? They’re getting nowhere.” Her face fell. “She’s going to be like this forever, isn’t she?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that question.

  “Alec,” Leon said. “Maybe you should use the collar.”

  “Collar?” Laura asked. “What collar?”

  “I can’t use it,” I said. “It might hurt her.” I took my phone from my pocket and brought up one of the photos of the cave in the woods. I showed it to Cathy. “Have you ever been to this place? Do you recognize it?”

  “The police already tried that,” Laura said. “She didn’t respond to the photos they showed her. Not to photos of the cave or to photos of her friend Lydia. Part of her memory has been locked away.”

  “And that’s why I can’t use the collar,” I said. “It would compel her to speak. If she’s blocked out the memory of that night in the woods, there’s probably a good reason. It’s a mental defense. If I knock it down, I don’t know what would happen to her mental faculties as a result.”

  Laura gestured to her niece. “But if you don’t knock down the defense, she’s going to be like this for the rest of her life.”

  I opened the backpack. The collar lay at the bottom. Like a lot of magical items, its appearance didn’t betray its true nature. It looked like nothing more than a simple circle of iron.

  Dare I risk using it on Cathy? If she was repressing memories of something terrible, what right did I have to make those memories come flooding back?

  I reached into the backpack and brought out the collar. It felt cold against my palm and heavy in my hand.

  In the hands of a skilled interrogator, the collar could be used to extract any piece of information from its wearer. If the right questions were asked, the finest detail could be pinpointed even though the wearer was only compelled to answer every question with a simple yes or no.

  It was only because the Shadow Watch agent who had questioned me had been ineffectual that he hadn’t extracted the location of the Spear of Destiny from me.

  I looked at the collar and then at Cathy. She didn’t look fragile or vulnerable or anything like that but for all I knew, her sanity might be hanging by a slowly unraveling thread.

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  “You have to,” Laura said. She reached forward and touched my arm. “Alec, please help her.”

  I turned toward her and she shrank away from the collar in my hand. She wanted me to use it on her niece but didn’t want to touch it herself.

  “If Cathy is like this forever,” she said, tears appearing in her eyes, “she won’t get a chance to live her life the way she’s supposed to. She’ll spend the rest of her days locked up in a room staring at the TV.” She pointed at her niece. “What if that was someone you loved sitting there? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to help them? Anything at all? You’re her only hope.”

  She probably had a point. Even though Cathy was in a facility that should be offering her care and trying to treat her condition, she wouldn’t be getting any of that if Butterfly Heights was being run by the Cabal as I suspected.

  There didn’t seem to be any way around it; I was going to have to use the collar. I’d choose my questions warily and try to skirt around the events of the night in the woods instead of blundering in heavy-handedly. No matter how long it took, I was going to tread carefully.

  I opened the collar and placed it gently under Cathy’s chin. When I closed it again, the circle of iron seemed to shrink in my hands to fit around her neck snugly.

  Although she hadn’t reacted when I’d placed the collar around her neck, as soon as it shrank and touched her skin, Cathy threw her head back and opened her mouth wide, gasping for breath like a swimmer emerging from the depths.

  Her hands flew to the collar and she clawed at it, trying to tear it away.

  Tendrils of smoke rose from within the collar and the smell of singed flesh filled the room.

  I grabbed the collar and released it, pulling it away from her as quickly as I could.

  Even though the collar was no longer around her neck, Cathy still clawed at the place where it had been. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open as she fought for breath.

  I put my hands on her shoulders. “Cathy, it’s going to be okay. It’s gone now. Everything is going to be all right.”

  She dropped her head to face me and opened her eyes. Her irises, which had been brown earlier, were now bright violet in color.

  “What happened to her eyes?” Leon asked. “Did the collar do that?”

  “In a way,” I said. “But it isn’t the collar’s magic she’s reacting to, it’s the iron. Cathy must have faerie blood.”

  The atmosphere in the room suddenly became electrified, as if lightning were about to strike. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. A ripping sound seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once and then I realized a bright line had appeared in the air by the bathroom door, like a crack spidering its way from floor to ceiling. The crack opened slightly, becoming oval in shape, and in its center, I could see a green field and a meadow.

  Cathy was somehow opening a portal and judging by the scared look on her face, it wasn’t something she was doing consciously but seemed to be a reflexive action borne of fear.

  “Cathy, it’s okay,” I said. “No one is going to hurt you. There’s no need to be afraid.”

  Her violet eyes looked into mine and then the bright hue darkened and they returned to their original brown color. The portal closed and then vanished completely and the atmosphere in the room settled.

  “What the hell was that?” Leon said.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. I had a couple of ideas about what we’d just witnessed but I wasn’t going to expound them right now. One thing was for sure though; the Midnight Cabal wanted Cathy within these walls because she had faerie blood running through her veins. That fact obviously furthered whatever operation they were running here under the guise of a mental health facility.

  “Laura,” I said, turning to her. “You need to get Cathy out of here as soon as possible. She wasn’t brought here because they want to help her; she’s here because they want to use her.”

  She nodded but said nothing. Her eyes were wide with shock and I was sure that the rift that had just appeared in the room was her first experience of the paranormal.

  When she finally spoke, she said, “Maybe we should go now and let Cathy rest.”

  Cathy had returned her attention to the TV and looked as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary. Even the marks on her neck where the iron had burned her skin were fading.

  “Okay,” I said, putting the collar into the backpack and sealing it. “But I have to stress again that Cathy needs to be—”

  “Taken away from here,” she cut in. “Yes, I get it.” She stood up and went to the door. Leon and I followed. Laura led us back to the Reception area, where she dropped off the keycard, and then we went outside.

  When we were standing on the path that led across the lawn to the gate, she stopped and said, “You go ahead. I’ll see if I can speak to the doctors about having Cathy discharged.”

  Before I had a chance to reply, she waved at the camera over the door and it clicked open. Laura disappeared inside.

  The big iron gate swung open.

  “Guess that’s our cue to leave,” Leon said.

  I nodded. “Let’s get back to the car. These cameras give me the creeps.”

  As we walked along the path, he said, “You think there are Cabal eyes watching us through the lenses?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure of it.”

  We passed through the gate and it closed behind us with a mechanical click.

  “I guess we should wait until we’re far away from this place before we discuss what just happened,” Leon said as we followed the path through the woods. “They probably have listening devices in the damn trees.”

  I nodded but said nothing. He was probably right.

  When we were finally back in the Land Rover, I started the engine and said to Leon, “I think Cathy Pelletier is what’s known as a Walker of Worlds. The Walkers are an extremely rare race of faerie creatures that can open interdimensional rifts at will. In Cathy’s case, it looks like the talent comes from a latent faerie gene. It’s probably been dormant all her life but emerged that night in the woods.”

  Leon nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. The question is what brought it out of its dormancy? It emerged in the room just now when she was in pain and scared. So what happened to her that night?”

  “There’s another, more pressing question,” I told him as we drove away from the parking lot. “Since we’re guessing that Cathy opened a rift that night and we know that only she returned from the woods, does that mean Lydia Cornell went through the rift?”

  “It sounds logical,” he said.

  “Yeah, and that’s what worries me. Because if Lydia went through an interdimensional rift that night, she could be stuck on the other side.”

  12

  We were on the highway when my phone rang. I checked the screen, saw Carlton’s name, and pulled over to answer it. I put the call on speaker. “Carlton, what’s up? You’re on speaker with me and Leon.”

  “I got the information you wanted about Butterfly Heights,” he said. “It’s owned by a company called Paraworld Medical.”

  “Did the same company own it when it was a Cabal front in the 1940s?”

  “Yeah, it looks like the same company has owned the building since it was built. I guess we should have realized who owned it from what Dan Pelletier said in the office, eh?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean?”

  “When he came to the office the other day. Oh, that’s right, you weren’t listening were you?”

  “What did he say, Carlton?”

  “Just let me consult my notes. Ah, here it is. He said two guys from a company called Paraworld Medical approached him and offered to help Cathy. They got her a place at Butterfly Heights.”

  “That’s what he said? Two guys from Paraworld Medical?”

  “That’s exactly what he said. My notes are quite detailed.”

  Why had Laura said the two men who approached Dan were from the Midnight Cabal? Leon looked at me and frowned and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

  “What else did he say about those two guys?” I asked Carlton.

  There was a pause while he assumedly consulted his notes. “He said he didn’t trust them and neither did his sister Laura. So he told them no. But some time later, Laura changed her mind and convinced him that the best thing to do for Cathy would be to send her to Butterfly Heights. They argued about it but she eventually convinced him.”

  Leon and I exchanged an incredulous look. Dan’s story again differed wildly from Laura’s. She’d told us that she’d told him not to get involved with the men from the Cabal.

  “And then he said that after a while, Cathy’s treatment at Butterfly Heights didn’t seem to be working so he hired you. That was his sister’s idea too, apparently.”

  None of this was making any sense. Laura had told us that Dan had mentioned to her that he was going to hire me. She never said it had been her idea.

  “Carlton, I’m going to need you to send over your notes in an email.”

  “Sure, I can do that.”

  “Great. Keep looking into Paraworld Medical and let me know if you find anything interesting.”

  “Will do. Oh, there’s one more thing. Amy Cantrell was here a while ago looking for her dad. I mean Merlin. The sheriff. Well, not the sheriff. The wizard.”

  “Yeah, I know who you mean.”

  “She said he’s been missing since yesterday. It sounds like he didn’t come back to Dearmont after he followed me up north.”

  “Great,” I said. “That’s all I need.”

  “Just letting you know.”

  “Thanks, Carlton. Speak to you later.” I ended the call and got back on the highway.

  “There’s something fishy going on,” Leon said.

  “Agreed. Laura Pelletier’s story is the opposite of her brother’s. If the two guys who spoke to Dan told him they were from Paraworld Medical, why did Laura mention the Midnight Cabal?”

  Leon didn’t answer for a moment and then he said, “Because she wanted to make sure you stayed on the case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not exactly sure what game she’s playing but for some reason, she wanted to make sure you didn’t abandon the case. After Dan’s death, what reason did you have to stick around? None. By mentioning the Midnight Cabal, she made sure you’d go to Butterfly Heights. And according to what her brother said in your office, it was her idea to hire you in the first place.”

  “Okay,” I said, mulling it over. “But why the subterfuge?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And if the two guys who got Cathy into the Heights told Dan they were from Paraworld Medical, why did Laura mention the Cabal? How has she even heard of the Cabal?”

  “I guess the obvious answer is that she might be a member,” Leon offered.

  I thought about that. If Laura was a member of the Cabal, then why did Dan say she didn’t trust the two Cabal members at first? Why had she objected to Laura going to Butterfly Heights and only changed her mind later? If she’d been a member, she’d have tried to convince him to send Cathy to the Heights straight away.

  “We need to get to the bottom of this,” I said.

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Yeah, we can take a look inside Dan’s house like we were going to do yesterday before we met Laura. She’s still at Butterfly Heights so there’s no one home right now. We’ll use the Janus statue to get in and out. She’ll never know we were there.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  When we arrived at Dan’s house, I backed onto the driveway so the Land Rover was pointing at the highway in case we needed to make a fast getaway. The Janus statue was wrapped in a piece of fabric in the trunk, which I removed to reveal the likeness of the two-faced god. This item would get us through any door that happened to be in our way.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18