Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(25)

Lon grunted, surveying the empty room. “He would’ve had a backup. Somewhere safer.”

“Another house or a warehouse?”

“Maybe.”

“I kept all my medicinals locked up in my bedroom closet . . .”

“They’re all in a safe in my closet now.”

We looked at each other before making a beeline to Wildeye’s bedroom. It was too dark with the power out, so I raised the shades on a wall of windows. Sunlight spilled in over the quiet room, giving us a stunning view of the mountain rising in the backyard. A nice little retreat. Neat. Tidy. But when we pulled open his dresser drawers, it looked as if someone else had already searched through their contents.

We checked the walk-in closet next. Nothing but clothes and shoes, I thought, peering into the dark space. It was hard to see without electricity, and I was about to ask Lon if he had a flashlight. Glad I didn’t, or I might not have noticed the faint white glow behind a row of hanging shirts.

I parted the shirts, sliding the coat hangers along the rail. “Hello, secret door.”

It was hiding magick, a nice two-by-three-foot ward. Same thing we’d seen on the yacht in November. An old spell that grizzled old magicians had used over the centuries to hide treasure and grimoires and secret sex chambers. Other humans wouldn’t see the telltale white Heka that kept the ward charged; other humans didn’t have the same supernatural sight that Earthbounds had. That I had.

My heart raced with excitement. Please let this be worth it.

“Haven’t seen an Earthbound since we got into town,” Lon said as he pressed around the wood paneling, looking for a way inside. “Maybe the murderer was human, too. Here we go.”

He pulled his hand away, and a hidden door in the paneling popped open. Shelves lined the dark space. Lon flicked on a penlight and moved the beam of light over the contents. Two guns. Bullets. A long metal box filled with cash, IDs, and passports. A few fat black organizer cases filled with USB drives. A box of files, which Lon hefted from the closet to the bed, and a skinny pocket notebook, which I grabbed.

I strolled to the wall of windows for light. The guy had terrible handwriting and some sort of shorthand I could barely decipher. Dates. Times. Names all seemed to be condensed to three capital letters. I flipped to the middle of the notebook, where the writing stopped: dates in December.

At first look, nothing seemed to pertain to me. A few of his scribbles looked to be street addresses—no cities. One block of text from late September caught my attention. The initials here were “DUV/BEL.” My real surname, Duval, and Bell? Had to be. Below it, he’d crossed out several words, variations on spellings. The last variation was ringed several times in looping inky circles: “NAOI NAAS.”

Odd. Sounded vaguely occult, but I couldn’t place the name.

The pages shook.

I stilled.

The fringe at the edge of the rug jumped. Earthquake? But it wasn’t steady. It stopped and started again.

Something rumbled in the distance, like a cosmic bear waking from a long winter nap.

I lifted my gaze to the wall of windows and the mountainside beyond.

Not an earthquake. Landslide.

“Lon!” I shouted, turning to run. But there wasn’t time. The sunlight behind me was eclipsed by a growing shadow that increased in size until it blotted out all the light in the room.

Then it exploded.

Splintered wood and dry earth.

I caught the scent of both as the massive boulder smashed through the wall of windows and turned Wildeye’s bed into kindling before ripping through the floor in front of us as if it was made of butter.

“Cady!”

Lon rammed into me. Boards cracked. The room tilted. For a moment, I thought we were going to slide into the hole. Then a joist snapped in two, and the entire floor collapsed, along with my stomach. One second I was upstairs, and the next I was rocketing downward with Lon through a cloud of dust.

A sofa broke Lon’s fall. Lon broke mine. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Everything seemed to be vibrating inside—my nerves, bones, teeth. Wood and plaster and glass rained over my back as he covered my head with his arm. When it stopped, we both gasped for air at the same time.

My ears rang. I coughed up plaster dust while attempting to stand, but Lon was holding on to me like grim death. I was terrified he’d broken his back or neck. “Lon—”

“I’m okay,” he said through a cough.

I barely had a chance to feel relief as another rumble shook the house. It sounded like the whole damn mountain was coming down. Adrenaline fired through my limbs. We pushed off the couch and stumbled over broken boards into the kitchen.

Another rock roared through the living-room wall.

“Out!” Lon shouted, grabbing my arm to shove me toward a door.

I didn’t even think. Just shouldered into it like a human battering ram and broke the whole damn thing down. Believe me, I couldn’t have been more surprised when it exploded off its hinges, but I didn’t have a chance to wonder how.

Morning sun blinded me as we burst from the rubble into open air. It took me a second to get my bearings. We’d exited through the cabin’s side door, where Lon’s SUV was parked—I almost ran into it. And by some miracle, it was unharmed. But not for long.

The driveway quaked. I glanced past the car toward the mountain. Nothing but dust and cascading rocks. A wave of destruction tumbling from the heavens and blanketing Wildeye’s backyard in stone.