Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(60)

Just when it was getting good, shuffling footfalls behind them made him drop her hand like it was a hot potato. Just in time, too. Leticia’s grandmother set a tray down on a shell-covered coffee table and offered them each a can of mango juice with straws. When she leaned over, he saw a pendant around her neck with the same symbol he’d seen on the altar—the real one, not Leticia’s naked sister—at the lodge. A unicursal hexagram.

“Now, what do you want to chat about?” she said, sitting down in a recliner with her own can of juice. They sat across from her on a couch that seemed to suck Jupe’s body down into it.

Leticia kicked off her flats and drew her legs up. “Like I said on the phone, Jupe isn’t a savage. He attended Sophic Mass last week.”

“Who was the acting priestess? Cristina?”

Leticia groaned under her breath. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Why your mama allows that, I’ll never understand. Mark my words, that girl is going to end up in some pornographic film.”

“Grandma!”

“Oversexed girls like her shouldn’t be priestessing. In my day, all the women took turns, young and old. It wasn’t a beauty contest, it was sacred honor. Now Cristina’s talking about fake boobs.”

“Mama told her no.”

“Today maybe. But Cristina will wear her down. Spoiled brat can’t even bother to get out of the car and say hello to me,” she grumbled before narrowing her eyes at Jupe. “If you think my baby granddaughter here is going to get a boob job one day, you can think again.”

Part of Jupe wanted to tell the crazy old woman that Leticia’s boobs were awesome already, but mostly he was just freaking out. His Gramma would go Godzilla on him if he so much as made a joke about chicken breast. “My dad’s a photographer, so I’ve seen a lot of plastic surgery. Natural’s better.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” the old woman said very seriously, raising her juice can in confirmation.

Now Leticia looked freaked out. She quickly changed the subject. “Grandma, I told Jupe that you used to know the Duvals back in the day.”

“The who?”

“Duvals,” Leticia repeated in a louder voice. “You know, the serial killers.”

Her grandmother’s face brightened. “Oh, the Duvals. They weren’t killers.” They were, but Jupe didn’t argue. “That was just talk from savages, trying to destroy our order. The Duvals were celebrities. But I don’t talk about people in the order with outsiders.”

“But this is important.”

“I said no. And you promised me you wouldn’t tell your mama I knew the Duvals, but here you are, telling a—”

“A what?” Jupe said, sudden anger flaring inside his chest.

“Outsider,” she finished sourly.

Leticia and her grandmother immediately began conversing in angry Spanish, the speed of which was way too fast for Jupe’s junior-high Español skills to follow. And the more they fought, the worse he felt for Leticia. She was really trying, but every point she made was quickly Whac-A-Moled down by the old lady.

After weeks of fending off the temptation to use his knack, he made a split-second decision to make an exception. This was important, after all. He was doing this for Cady. And for his future brother or sister. And for Leticia.

Triple hero.

He took a deep breath and interrupted the grandmother-granddaughter throwdown. “Mrs. Vega,” he said in a loud voice, his persuasion turned up as high as he could crank it. “You can trust me, and you want to help us by answering all our questions about the Duvals.” When he opened his eyes, both females were gaping at him, so he added in a knack-free voice, “Right?”

Grandma Vega’s shoulders relaxed. She looked a little dazed as she said, “You don’t look untrustworthy.”

“I can keep a secret like nobody’s business,” he assured her.

“I suppose there’s no sense in holding on to secrets about the dead, is there? What do you want to know?”

Cha-ching! Pride and victory zinged through him. Well, until he noticed Leticia staring a hole into the side of his face. Crap. Dealing with humans was rough. Not for the first time, he wondered how open Leticia was to the concept of Earthbounds. Cady once told him that some of the people in her order were believers, so maybe she was cool about it. You never could tell. Jupe had the Nox symbol all over his social media, but if Leticia knew what it meant, she hadn’t said anything.

Her grandmother was waiting for an answer, so Jupe put the Earthbound dilemma out of his mind for the moment and said, “So, yeah, umm, how did you meet the Duvals?”

“I first met them when I visited the main lodge down in Florida, back in 1979 for the annual summer solstice ritual. Everyone loved them. They were practically superstars of the occult world. And I met their first child, the boy. I can’t remember his name.”

They had another kid? Cady had a brother? This was brand-new information to Jupe.

“Anyway, he died in the mid-1980s—”

Oh.

“—so he must’ve been around two then. Strange child. I babysat him one afternoon, and he bit me so hard I had to have three stitches on my hand.” She pointed it out, but Jupe couldn’t see any scars.

“Is that the only time you saw them?” he asked.