Truth Seeker Page 5

"What're ye waiting for lad, go through." The voice was Rothfeather's, but the feel wasn't.

  "The right moment," Philippe said, his heart pounding.

  "It's now, Philippe. Go!" Now it was Maggie who spoke an insistent whisper in his ear.

  "I thought your kind couldn't be out during daylight James." Philippe turned to face Betsy's brother.

  James lounged against the wall.

  "The Lady taught me how." He spoke in his own voice now, a husky young tenor. Philippe could see from his barely-there transparency that he was weak. He may be able to appear after sunrise but it was unlikely that he could do anything. Or could he?

  "May as well take directions from the devil," Philippe told him as he backed toward the room and frantically tried to make up his mind: was it a trap, or was it a ploy to buy time for someone to build one? He used his instincts, which urged him toward the tunnels, and he decided to trust them just as his hand found the knob.

  He yanked the door open and lurched into the room. The bags took flight and whirled around him in a burlap cyclone.

  "See if you can find it," James sneered.

  Philippe reached up, and his fingertips brushed the magic bag. The moment's contact was enough, and with a thunderclap, he was thrown to his stomach and landed on a cold marble floor.

  The smell of coffee assailed his nostrils in a thick, warm wave, and he gasped for air.

  "Everyone has their own brand of hell, my little mouse," the voice close to his ear said, and a forked tongue caressed his earlobe in one long, rasping motion. "Welcome to yours."

  Philippe tried to stand, but the floor tilted. They had him. The last thought through his mind before he passed out was that he had failed Maggie.

  At least we'll be together soon.

  6

  Philippe opened his eyes, then squinted them against the blazing light. "Am I dead?" he found his tongue and asked. He was greeted by a low, sinister chuckle.

  "Not quite, my young friend." A chill slid down Philippe's spine at the sound of Beauregard's voice. "That can be arranged, I'm sure, after you do one thing for me."

  "What one thing is that?" Philippe tried to move his arms, but found them tied.

  "I think you know. The Lady wants that locket."

  "I don't know where it is." It wasn't entirely untrue – Maggie had told him it was at Raphael's ranch, but not where, and it was a big place.

  "Perhaps I can jog your memory." Beauregard snapped his fingers, and the large halogen lamp switched off. As his eyes attempted to adjust to the gloom, Philippe used his other senses to determine where he was. The darkness was so complete that he must be somewhere underground, which was reinforced by the dank smell that assailed his nostrils. Not too far under, though, since the air was warm and humid. The leather straps that held him were slimy, and when he shuddered, he felt the grit of sand under his back.

  "You humans are so slow," the voice rasped right next to his ear. Philippe strained away from it. "It's now dawn here, but I will return. And then you can make the choice of when you will die."

  And Philippe was alone. Or so he thought.

  "His power is limited, you know." A light flickered to his left, and he turned his head to see Raphael, who looked older and grayer but held a candle steady in one hand and leaned on a cane with the other. "But he will be a force to be reckoned with once he attains what the Lady has promised."

  "How do you know?"

  "How else would you corrupt a Truth Seeker?"

  The old man hobbled over and, with trembling fingers, unbuckled the straps that held Philippe's arms and legs. The dim light revealed that he'd been strapped to a stone block in what looked like a torture chamber with axes, swords, and other weapons on hooks on the wall.

  "This is an old wine cellar that we use during Halloween," Raphael explained. He gestured to the weapons. "All plastic, except the leather straps, as you felt."

  Philippe nodded. He swung his feet over the side of the table.

  "I am dying, Philippe." Raphael sat next to him on the waist-high stone slab. "And with me, the power of the ranch that keeps evil spirits at bay. That's how Beauregard was able to sneak in, but it weakened him."

  "What do I do?" Blood returned to Philippe's extremities with prickling pain.

  "Find the locket."

  "Where? She didn't tell me anything specific, only to let the spirits be my guide."

  Raphael shrugged. "You have until dusk to look."

  Trina the triage nurse was on duty when the cop brought the pale redhead dressed in black leather into the ER. She grabbed her tablet and approached him as he stepped back from the stretcher.

  "Name?"

  "None given."

  "Was she robbed?" Trina clicked her tongue. A tourist, probably, and she looked like she'd been beaten up pretty good.

  "No, she still has a wallet, but it's not hers."

  "What's the name in the wallet, then?"

  "It's a guy's, the same Joe who dumped her on me. Philippe Ormandie of Portland, Oregon."

  Trina wrote "Ormandie" under last name, and the cop looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

  "Well, it's better than Jane Doe. I think we already have one of those."

  The cop laughed, and Trina could see he was her age, maybe younger.

  "True that." They stopped at the door so Trina could get the rest of the info.

  "So what happened?"

  The cop opened his mouth to tell her, but what came out was, "I notice you're not wearing a wedding ring. How about I tell you over breakfast?"

  Trina was taken aback for a moment, but when she began to refuse, she said instead, "Sure, I'd love to. I get off at eight."

  The both stood there and blushed.

  Why, Trina wondered, had her usual shyness been so overcome by the desire to tell the truth?

  Philippe felt as though he had tapped every brick, turned every rug, and checked every bedpost, drawer, and cupboard in the place, and no luck. Raphael helped as much as he could, but the old man tired so easily that Philippe had sent him to bed after lunch. He entered the last area a few minutes before twilight.

  Once again, Raphael appeared with a candle. "This is the wine, liquor, and coffee cellar," he explained as he let Philippe into a large store room. "I don't think she's ever been in here, but you can look."

  Philippe's heart sank as he looked at what seemed to be a million dusty bottles of wine, and liquor, particularly tequila. One whole wall was stacked with coffee beans, at least twenty bags.

  "What is it they say about truth and fine spirits?" Raphael's laugh was a wheeze. The old man patted Philippe on the shoulder and handed him the candle. In a daze, Philippe wandered down the rows and wondered where to begin. He felt he was in the right room, but every tick of his watch, which worked again, sounded his doom. He heard the tap of Raphael's cane on the stairs as he ascended for dinner.

  Philippe held up the candle and peered into the bottles of mezcal, each with its own worm at the bottom of the glass cylinder. He felt sympathy for the poor creatures and hoped that their last moments had been spent in a blissful drunken stupor.

  "Not a bad idea," he thought and reached for the nearest bottle. But his extra sense told him to put that one aside and grab the one behind it, which was caked with dust. He held it up to the candle in a toast, and when he did, something sparkled in the bottom. He looked closer and saw it wasn't a worm, but the locket. He shook his head. Maggie had told him to let the spirits be his guide—he just hadn't known which ones.

  "Excellent job, Philippe." He spun around to see Beauregard, his raven on his shoulder, in the doorway.

  Without thinking, Philippe unscrewed the bottle, upended it, and took a huge swallow of mezcal. The locket on its chain scraped down the side of the bottle and into his throat. He didn't even feel it as the spirits set his mouth, esophagus, and stomach aflame.

  With a howl, Beauregard leapt at him, his clawed fingers extended for Philippe's throat. Philippe ducked and swung the bottle at
the ghoul. Beauregard dodged. He crashed into a shelf full of clay jugs, which shattered around him. The boozy smell of fermented cactus permeated the air, and Philippe made a dash for the door. Beauregard rose through the clay shards and loped after him.

  Philippe ran, every step echoed by a thud of his heart and a flip of his stomach, through the long, dark, stone corridor. A cold draught passed through him—Beauregard. A wave of nausea and pain washed through Philippe, and he crashed to the ground. He rolled over, clutched his stomach and vomited. What had the ghost done to him? Or did magic locket not agree with him?

  "That's it." Beauregard, now solid again, leaned over him. "Bring it back up."

  Philippe found himself back in the Halloween dungeon. He looked around through tear-filled eyes for something to defend himself with. The plastic weapons appeared real enough, but it wasn't like they would work against a ghost. He swallowed hard and chewed the inside of his cheek to control the nausea. A metallic taste—blood?—coated his tongue.

  "Look," he croaked, "I'm about finished. Why don't we just wait a while and see what happens?"

  Beauregard's face looked even more skeletal in the gloom, but Philippe saw him raise an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

  He gestured to his abdomen and spat blood to clear his mouth. "It's going to come out one way or another."

  "Time is of the essence, Philippe. The Lady doesn't like to wait."

  Maggie's pale face flashed through Philippe's mind, and he wondered if she'd gotten help in time. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for what he knew would be the consequences of his next statement.

  "Then you'll never get it as long as I'm alive."

  Beauregard smiled. "As I had hoped." He bared his fangs, and the odors of death, decay, and more blood washed over Philippe as the ghoul bent over him. Beauregard licked Philippe's neck in preparation for the fatal bite, and Philippe shuddered and reached into his special sense for whatever he might have left to fight the monster. He remembered how Maggie had summoned the ghoul in North Carolina, and he thought about her and what she stood for. Philippe remembered the look in her eyes, their golden wisdom so exquisite, and held the memory, the Truth Seeker's power. And her grief at what Beauregard had become.

  A wave of betrayal and hurt washed over Philippe, and he fell hard to the floor as Beauregard dropped him, clawed hands over his eyes. Philippe turned and vomited blood.

  Beauregard staggered backward and clung to the doorframe. "Very well, Philippe. Margaret did give you a charm to protect yourself. Or maybe you already had it, a love for truth. But Raphael is dying, and no one will come to this room until Halloween, which is, what? Nine months from now."

  Philippe's heart sank to his stomach. He needed to be in a hospital, not a dungeon where no one would find him for months.

  "Fare thee well, or rather, poorly." Beauregard grinned at his own pun. "I shall retrieve the locket from your corpse." The monster slammed the door and Philippe heard him drag something heavy to block it. Not that he could have handled the iron-studded wooden door itself in his current state… He stretched out on the gritty, cold floor and closed his eyes.

  As consciousness faded, he remembered Maggie's golden gaze.

  Maggie leaned against the wall of the operating room in spirit form and watched the surgeons working on her body. They'd bandaged her cheek to stop it from bleeding and focused on the stab wound. She'd been injured before in her line of work, but not since she'd been granted the near-immortality of being a Truth Seeker.

  "That's going to hurt like hell when you wake up."

  Maggie turned to see a generally nondescript man of medium build, wavy brown hair, and golden eyes. If she'd had a body, she would have sighed with resignation.

  "Merlin. Why am I not surprised to see you here?"

  "Well, I am your supervisor." He shook his head, and even after all these centuries, his disappointment stung. "What in the world did you get yourself into?"

  "A trap. Niniane wanted her locket back." She slid a sideways glance at Merlin. He still held a grudge against the Lady for locking him in a tree trunk for a thousand years. Blinded by love, he'd not seen the trap coming until it was too late. Then he'd gone willingly, in denial to the end that her frustration and bitterness over the end of Avalon had turned her against them all.

  To his credit, he only shrugged. "It figures. She was never one to give up easily. But how did she manage to trick you?"

  "One of my contacts betrayed me. Beauregard."

  "That old ghost?" He shook his head. "Should've guessed he'd be one to turn bad."

  She didn't know if he spoke to himself or her. Either way, she should have figured out something was amiss, and Merlin, ever the teacher, wouldn't let her off the hook so easily.

  He didn't. "And…?" he prompted.

  "And I got careless. I got caught up in the glamor of zapping myself and our target around to different places, showing off what I could do." She rubbed her eyes even though she had no physical sensations. "I never could resist a good rescue."

  He put a hand on her ghostly shoulder. "That's both a strength and a weakness. We have the chance to gain and use something powerful—Niniane's locket."

  "Right. We technically already have it."

  "It's in a safe place…for now," he agreed. "But not where you left it. We need someone to retrieve it, and you're still the best person for the job."

  If her spirit form had a heart, it would have sped up with hope. "Does that mean I'm still a Truth Seeker in spite of the lie?"

  "Yes, provided you can get the locket. The young man trusts you, so it makes sense for you to get it from him. Besides," he added and shifted his weight. "I've been arguing against the 'no lying' rule for a while. It's just not practical anymore."

  "Oh, thank you!" She threw her arms around Merlin and hugged him. Even in spirit form, he still smelled vaguely of damp earth and wet wood.

  "Right, ahem." He stepped back. "Oh, and something else to keep in mind. We're short-staffed, so I've recruited a few humans to help us out in local jurisdictions. It's an experiment."

  "Okay." She didn't know how that would work, but Merlin didn't do anything without thorough research.

  "Once they wheel you into recovery, you should be able to zap yourself out of here. And your cheek will heal, but there will be a faint scar since she used a ceremonial dagger."

  "Of course she did." Maggie rubbed her hands together, impatient for the doctors to finish. She'd get out of there, find Philippe, get the locket back, and regain her good favor with her bosses. How hard could it be?

  Philippe floated through clouds of gloom and nightmare flashes of fear, searching for something to bring him to consciousness. All the while, he held the vision of Maggie's eyes in front of him, their golden light a beacon of hope. When a warm hand clasped his, he opened his eyes, and the vision resolved into reality—a hospital room—and he wasn't alone.

  "Welcome back, stranger," Maggie said. She looked a little more pale and thin, and there was a faint scar across her left cheek, but she was there. Alive.

  "You're okay?" he asked. And then he saw her eyes. "You've got your job back?"

  She smiled, the expression in her eyes a mix of happiness and exhaustion. "I'm okay as much as I can be. And yes. My superiors reviewed the situation and decided that my lie was warranted."

  A pang of disappointment speared him. "So you're still a Truth Seeker?"

  She nodded. "And you're my next assignment."

  Philippe's heart skipped a beat. That sounded promising. "Oh?"

  "Yes, I need the locket." She leaned over him. "Do you have it on you?"

  "Not exactly." He pointed to his stomach. "I have it in me. I swallowed it."

  "Oh." She rubbed her temples. "This is going to be harder than I thought."

  "Why?" Now his stomach fluttered like it knew they discussed its contents. "Can't we just wait for it to, um, appear?"

  She shook her head. "It won't. Its magic is such that it will sl
owly poison you from the inside until you die, and then Niniane can retrieve it from your corpse."

  Philippe clutched his stomach. Was that an extra prick of pain? "How long will it take?"

  "A few days, maybe a week." Then she echoed Beauregard's words, which filled Philippe with terror. "Niniane doesn't like to wait."

  "Okay, what do we do?" He struggled to sit, and she helped him. He didn't know if it was the ordeal with Beauregard or the locket, but he felt weak. And helpless. How was he going to do anything in this state?

  "We go to a friend of mine who may be able to help. She's in Atlanta."

  "And we're…?" The hospital room gave him no clues as to his location.

  "In San Antonio. I don't dare try to zap us with the locket inside you, so we'll have to take the slow way—airplane."

  "I trust you." He grabbed her hand. "It will be romantic, traveling the old-fashioned way with just the two of us."

  She pulled her hand from his. "We can't be romantic."

  "Why not?" He spread his hands. "I'm a dying man."

  "Professional boundaries. And…"

  "And what?"

  She had a point, but… Had she tricked him? Or had he hoped for more than was actually there? She hesitated, her bottom lip between her teeth.

  "What is it?" he asked. "After all we've been through, you know you can trust me."

  "You're right. You didn't have to risk your life to come back for me. Or go look for the locket." She took a deep breath. "I'm cursed."

  Okay, that wasn't what he expected. "What do you mean?"

  "When I asked the Oracle about my terrible luck in love, she said, If you are to love or to be loved, to share possession of heart and soul, then woe to he to whom this gift is given, for he will be destroyed."

  "The Oracle?" Philippe remembered something from Greek mythology. "Wait, the King Arthur legend people were affected by Greek mythology? That's some crazy mashup."

  "All our legends are connected." She made a broad gesture. "And they still live on, just not always in this dimension."

  Philippe didn't want to talk about multiple dimensions. He had more pressing problems. "Can you do anything about the curse? Can your friend?"