Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(27)

My stomach tightened when I thought about being alone with him in a hotel room again. I hoped I’d manage to keep my clothes on this time. “I’m not sure if it’s the best idea to crash at the Redwood Motel. What if that waitress tells people she sent us up to Wildeye’s house?”

“They won’t be looking for two people who triggered a landslide,” he said. “But on the other hand, I don’t want nosy people knocking on the door or logging my tag number while we’re sleeping.”

I certainly didn’t disagree. So while he made a quick stop to pick up the things we’d left in the motel room, I futzed around with the search function on the GPS until it brought up the closest motel off the highway, about ten miles south of Golden Peak. It took us a half hour to get there.

Tucked into grass-covered cliffs facing the ocean, the Lucia Inn was all beachy clapboard and white picket fence, geared toward retirees taking leisurely excursions up the coast of California. We got the last room with double queen beds available and dumped our bags onto the creaking wood floor.

While Lon showered in the pale pink bathroom, I managed to get a broadband signal on his tablet and unfolded the scrap of paper from Wildeye’s notebook. I tried looking up “Naos Ophis” in quotes. Nothing. Not one single hit. How was that possible? Maybe Wildeye had the spelling wrong, after all. But searching for variations proved just as futile. Maybe Lon would have other ideas. He was the linguaphile.

Changing tactics, I typed Wildeye’s mystery address into a map search, which located it in fifteen cities. Better than hundreds of hits, I supposed, and most of them were in the West. But we couldn’t exactly traipse around the country searching for the right one. And what was I even looking for, exactly? Most of the locations looked to be houses in residential neighborhoods. One convenience store. And—

Rooke Gardens. Pasadena, California.

Long-forgotten memories bloomed inside my head.

I raced to the bathroom and knocked, shouting against the peeling pink paint. “Lon! I know the address in the notebook. It’s in Pasadena.”

The door swung open. I saw half a second of glistening naked male flesh. Mostly chest—holy crap, better than I remembered—and the vague promise of other alluring body parts in my peripheral vision.

For the love of God. Didn’t this place have towels?

Just because I’d gotten naked for research didn’t mean all bets were off. Rattled, I held out Wildeye’s torn notebook page in front of me to block the view.

He cleared his throat. “Repeat what you just said.”

I tapped the paper with my index finger. “This is in Pasadena. Rooke Gardens. It’s a private botanical garden owned by Karlan Rooke.”

“And I should recognize that name because . . . ?”

“He used to be a high-ranking member of the E∴E∴, but he quit when . . . well, I was about Jupe’s age, I guess. Caused a big hubbub at a national occult convention in Florida. He hated my parents. Hated.”

Lon made a small noise. “Interesting.”

“He was grandmaster of the Pasadena lodge, but when he quit the order, the lodge fell apart and eventually shut down altogether.” A droplet of water fell from Lon’s wet hair and plopped on his shoulder. Very distracting. I forced myself to look away and refocus on Wildeye’s notes. “Those words, ‘Naos Ophis,’ were scribbled below the address. Can’t find anything at all on that exact phrase—”

“I remembered in the shower,” Lon said. “Ophis is Greek for ‘serpent.’ ”

A dreadful chill ran through me. The hand holding up the torn paper fell to my side. “Temple of the Serpent.”

“Was that the name of the Pasadena lodge that disbanded?” Lon asked.

Each E∴E∴ lodge had a different name. Seventeen lodges in total, but the Pasadena lodge had been named Astera, and none of the other lodges was named after snakes or serpents. No dragons or lizards, either. “Naos Ophis definitely isn’t an E∴E∴ lodge.”

“A rival order’s lodge? The Luxe, maybe?”

I thought for a second, just to be sure. “No. Not Luxe. Not any of the other orders. I would remember.” Hard to forget when your parents made a habit of murdering other orders’ leaders.

“Maybe this Karlan Rooke started his own order.”

“It’s possible. Oh! And there’s something else—his father was one of Aleister Crowley’s secret bastards.”

Lon’s eyes narrowed. “Very interesting.”

“No proof, of course. But everyone in my order seemed to think it was true. I remember my parents talking trash about him, saying that he was no better than a commoner with no magical skills. Calling him slurs like ‘half-breed,’ that sort of thing.”

Lon grunted. “Wish we had a better idea of what we’d be walking into.”

“I could contact the E∴E∴, see if someone will talk to me about Rooke.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The fewer people who know where you are, the better. Your order may rise to the occasion and help you—”

“But with the caliph gone . . .”

“Let’s not sound an alarm just yet. I say we follow this independently until we’re forced to ask for help.”