Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

Garrett sat still, thrown. But there was a certain weird logic there that he could almost buy. If McKenna had been watching Erin at the club, if he had followed Jason and Erin out, and pulled Erin out of the car when the teenagers were passed out… and he saw the CDs on the console… the Choronzon CDs…

Wouldn’t he take them?

There was an element of intention, of inevitability, Garrett didn’t want to think about, though.

He shook his head to clear it and asked sharply, “Have you been practicing rituals with anyone else?”

“No,” Jason said loudly. “It was just for the band, you know, and then…” His eyes darkened in confusion. “It started to feel…” He stopped.

“Feel what?” Tanith said beside Garrett.

Jason’s eyes were bleak. “Bad.”

Tanith leaned forward to Jason. “Then be still and listen. The true killer holds Erin’s spirit trapped. If you want to save your own soul and hers, you will help.”

“How?” the boy whispered.

“You will take me to her tonight.”

Both Garrett and Jason looked around them incredulously, at the wall of Plexiglas, the bars at the windows, the whole weight of the jail around them. Tanith continued, unfazed. “Look at me, Jason Moncrief. Listen.” She fixed her eyes on him, until he met her gaze. “You are Erin’s only hope. You must tell me. What was her favorite place? Someplace she felt safe—somewhere she went often? Someplace you may have gone with her?”

The teenager was distraught. “I don’t know… there were so many places…”

“Think,” Tanith said sharply.

“Revere Woods,” he answered on command. “There’s a trail-head there that leads to a waterfall, with a pool.”

“Yes,” Tanith said. “I know it.”

“We hiked there… to swim.” He swallowed. “She said it made her feel whole.”

“Good,” said Tanith. “Good. I need you to help me now. I need you to be there tonight. When you lie back in your bunk tonight, focus your mind on the waterfall and the pool, and go there. Imagine Erin with you there. Call her to you. You must bring her there, Jason.” Her eyes were black and Jason was fixed on her from behind the glass, his hand clutching the phone as she was, and Garrett saw their reflections melded together in the sheen of the Plexiglas, like twins in a mirror.

“Do you understand?” she whispered.

“Yes…” Jason said, just a boy now.

“Then go,” she said. “And pray to whatever goodness you believe there is in the world to save your soul.”

Jason sat, unfocused, behind the blurry Plexiglas wall. Garrett swallowed through a dry mouth, motioned to the C.O., who blinked to life and gestured to the guard behind the inner door, who stepped forward to take Jason away.

The C.O.s on the way out were as unmindful of Tanith as they had been on the way in; it was as if she wasn’t there at all. One even nodded at Garrett without acknowledging Tanith, while she walked in silence at his side.

By the time they got to the parking lot, Garrett was near bursting with impatience and confusion. He slammed his hands on the top of the Explorer. “Are you going to tell me what the hell that was? What the hell do you think you’re going to do?”

“Just as I said,” Tanith said calmly. “I will go to the spot he named and he will bring Erin’s spirit to me. They had sex; he’s bonded to her still.” As she said it Garrett felt an uncomfortable pull between them. She looked quickly away from him. “It’s our best chance of reaching her—our best chance of finding where her killer is keeping her and the others.” She hesitated. “Including Detective Landauer, perhaps.”

Garrett stared at her, incredulous. “What?” She didn’t answer him. “I want to be there,” he said roughly.

Her eyebrows quirked. “Are you sure?”

And for a moment she looked at him, into him, and he knew she saw his greatest fear.

“I’m going to be there.”

She hesitated. “Come to Selena’s tonight, then. Ten o’clock.”

Garrett was outside the house, watching, by nightfall. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them. It was that he didn’t trust them at all.

He had seen no motion at the windows, no change in the light. He debated charging in, interrupting whatever they were doing. But the moon was nearly full in the sky, and there was something about that moon that made him think that if any ritual was to be done, it wasn’t going to be done in the confines of a house.

He was not completely aware of thinking this through, but that was his thought process. So he watched the house, not from the front, but from the back, which he’d scoped out and discovered a back gravel alley behind the block of houses for trash pickup and delivery access, and at the end of the high cement wall surrounding the back garden there was a coach house big enough to have been converted into a garage. Garrett waited at a distance, down the access road, the Explorer camouflaged by trees and a shed that housed trash cans.

At 9:00 P.M., the door of the coach house rolled up and a car exited that could only have been Selena’s: a vintage Packard, gleaming silver in the moonlight.

Garrett watched the vehicle drive down the access road, and after a moment he followed.

The Packard was easy to follow in the dark, so Garrett was able to hang well back on the highway. They were driving west, on a winding road through dense forest, which luckily was trafficked enough that Garrett’s Explorer wouldn’t stand out on the road. The Packard’s windows were tinted so Garrett could see no one in the car.

Revere Woods was not a long drive. The Packard turned off on a side road of the state park before they were out of the city limits. Garrett slowed his vehicle to give them a lead, then made the turn himself…

… and tensed, staring ahead of him.

The road was straight, a tunnel through thick walls of trees, ending abruptly in a dead end against another wall of trees. The Packard was gone.

Garrett silenced his racing thoughts. All right… all right… there’s a turnoff. They aren’t going to park out in the open. He slowed the Explorer to a crawl and drove, staring out the windshield, scanning both sides of the road, looking for any break in the wall of trees.

He drove to the very end of the road. The dark green wall was thick, there was no passage for a car, but there was a wooden post with the number 42, indicating a trailhead.

Garrett had seen no possible place for the Packard to have turned off.

But it’s here. They’re here somewhere.

Garrett parked the Explorer, took his personal Glock from the glove compartment, holstered it, and got out. He walked to the post of the trailhead, saw the path leading into the woods, lit by moonlight.

All right.

He walked through the gate of trees onto the trail, his feet crunching softly on dry leaves, the cool scent of earth and pine enveloping him.

Moonlight shone through the pine branches, and Garrett felt unease. Wherever they are, Selena can’t have walked far, he thought.

The wind whispered in the treetops. The path wound before him, giving no clues.

He walked, his shoes thudding softly on packed earth, the silky rustle of pine needles above him… with increasing certainty that he was going in the wrong direction. What I need is a sign.

He rounded the curve of the trail, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of white.

He spun to his left. Trees… darkness… the faint whisper of wind…

And then a startlingly familiar face. Pointed chin, wild spiky hair, electric blue eyes. The red-haired boy, peering from a clump of ferns.

The boy laughed soundlessly and withdrew, vanishing into the undergrowth. Garrett crashed off the path after him.