posted any identifying information about the author—she’d become protective of Amy Scanlon’s private life. These dabblers treated the book and its code as an interesting problem and nothing more.
Five e-mails this evening. Usually, they came from borderline nutjobs begging for the secret of the universe or declaring that they had the secret of the universe, and they wanted to meet in person or send their own five-thousand-page book of shadows. Today, one of them was different.
“Hi. Whoever this is. I don’t know the code, but I know the diagrams, some of the formulas—this looks like Amy Scanlon’s book. I was in her coven in Taos, New Mexico, about six years ago. She started traveling, but I haven’t heard from her in a couple of years. Do you know where she is?” The e-mail listed a name and phone number. A trusting person, to hand out that information.
Cormac didn’t know how to tell her that Scanlon was dead, killed at the center of a mystery they desperately needed to solve. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain it and be sympathetic at the same time. He forwarded the message to Kitty to let her answer it. She was the diplomat and camp counselor. He stuck to lurking on forums and searching for articles that might give him more pieces. Clues to the mystery they’d set themselves to solving.
I quite like the idea of supernatural investigation. We could be the magical Sherlock Holmes and Watson.
“Yeah, but which of us is which?”
Well, I think that’s rather obvious, don’t you?
He snorted.
Hunting for information wasn’t too far off from hunting game, in the end. You had to have a good idea of what you were looking for and the places you’d be most likely to find it. Keep an open mind and your vision wide—focus too hard on one thing, you miss stray movement at the edges of your perception. Most of all, you had to be patient.
When it came to Scanlon’s grimoire, though, he was losing patience.
“It’s time to go to Manitou,” he said.
Silence from Amelia.
Part of the book of shadows—the part Kitty kept offline—was biographical, uncoded, and mentioned one of Scanlon’s mentors, an aunt living an hour or so down the freeway from Denver.
“We’ve got no other leads.”
Still nothing. He sighed, wondering at the weird twists in his life that brought him to standing in his apartment, talking to himself.
“You want to talk about this in person?” he said.
After a moment she answered, If you like.
What the hell, it was probably time for bed anyway.
* * *
B ACK IN prison, Cormac spent much of his time thinking about a meadow.
The place was a memory of a high mountain valley in Grand County where his father used to take him hunting. Mundane hunting for elk and deer with licenses and rifles and standard, non-silver bullets. Douglas Bennett’s main line of work had been as a guide on high-end outfitting trips, leading hunting parties into the backwoods of the Rockies to bag trophies. Sometimes when they were on their own, just him and his father, they’d camp in this meadow, a stretch filled with thick grasses, surrounded by lodgepole pines and a rushing stream cutting through the middle. Boil coffee on a butane camp stove before dawn, watch the sunrise as mist burned off the creek. Nothing smelled as clean as those mornings.
To keep himself from going entirely crazy in his ten-by-ten cell, he imagined himself back there. He’d lay on his metal cot and thin mattress and fall asleep by putting himself somewhere else. Over time, the place grew in detail, richness. He could see individual blades of grass blowing in a faint breeze, hear water rushing over rocks in the creek. Feel the sun on his face as he tipped his head back, watching white clouds scudding across an impossibly blue sky.
Habit kept bringing him back. Also, in a sense, this was where he’d met Amelia. This was how she’d found her way into his mind. This was where they talked.
In waking hours, she
Five e-mails this evening. Usually, they came from borderline nutjobs begging for the secret of the universe or declaring that they had the secret of the universe, and they wanted to meet in person or send their own five-thousand-page book of shadows. Today, one of them was different.
“Hi. Whoever this is. I don’t know the code, but I know the diagrams, some of the formulas—this looks like Amy Scanlon’s book. I was in her coven in Taos, New Mexico, about six years ago. She started traveling, but I haven’t heard from her in a couple of years. Do you know where she is?” The e-mail listed a name and phone number. A trusting person, to hand out that information.
Cormac didn’t know how to tell her that Scanlon was dead, killed at the center of a mystery they desperately needed to solve. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain it and be sympathetic at the same time. He forwarded the message to Kitty to let her answer it. She was the diplomat and camp counselor. He stuck to lurking on forums and searching for articles that might give him more pieces. Clues to the mystery they’d set themselves to solving.
I quite like the idea of supernatural investigation. We could be the magical Sherlock Holmes and Watson.
“Yeah, but which of us is which?”
Well, I think that’s rather obvious, don’t you?
He snorted.
Hunting for information wasn’t too far off from hunting game, in the end. You had to have a good idea of what you were looking for and the places you’d be most likely to find it. Keep an open mind and your vision wide—focus too hard on one thing, you miss stray movement at the edges of your perception. Most of all, you had to be patient.
When it came to Scanlon’s grimoire, though, he was losing patience.
“It’s time to go to Manitou,” he said.
Silence from Amelia.
Part of the book of shadows—the part Kitty kept offline—was biographical, uncoded, and mentioned one of Scanlon’s mentors, an aunt living an hour or so down the freeway from Denver.
“We’ve got no other leads.”
Still nothing. He sighed, wondering at the weird twists in his life that brought him to standing in his apartment, talking to himself.
“You want to talk about this in person?” he said.
After a moment she answered, If you like.
What the hell, it was probably time for bed anyway.
* * *
B ACK IN prison, Cormac spent much of his time thinking about a meadow.
The place was a memory of a high mountain valley in Grand County where his father used to take him hunting. Mundane hunting for elk and deer with licenses and rifles and standard, non-silver bullets. Douglas Bennett’s main line of work had been as a guide on high-end outfitting trips, leading hunting parties into the backwoods of the Rockies to bag trophies. Sometimes when they were on their own, just him and his father, they’d camp in this meadow, a stretch filled with thick grasses, surrounded by lodgepole pines and a rushing stream cutting through the middle. Boil coffee on a butane camp stove before dawn, watch the sunrise as mist burned off the creek. Nothing smelled as clean as those mornings.
To keep himself from going entirely crazy in his ten-by-ten cell, he imagined himself back there. He’d lay on his metal cot and thin mattress and fall asleep by putting himself somewhere else. Over time, the place grew in detail, richness. He could see individual blades of grass blowing in a faint breeze, hear water rushing over rocks in the creek. Feel the sun on his face as he tipped his head back, watching white clouds scudding across an impossibly blue sky.
Habit kept bringing him back. Also, in a sense, this was where he’d met Amelia. This was how she’d found her way into his mind. This was where they talked.
In waking hours, she
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