Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(70)

The party who sold it to her was Ambrose Dare.

The SUV’s headlights illuminated the white antlers nailed around the front door of the hunting cabin. The property was nestled in some heavily wooded foothills bordering a popular hunting spot that had become popular over the last couple of decades for wild boars. The house, we learned, was built by Dare’s father in the 1940s. Dare had sold it to my parents for a dollar.

It was almost two in the morning. Lon cut the engine and transmutated, listening for any signs of life before we stepped out of the car. The heavy silence felt deceptive. I half expected to be attacked by a ghost—Dare’s or my mother’s. Or maybe some golem my mother had constructed to guard the house.

Nothing.

“Look how the SUV’s wheels cut into the gravel.” Lon shone a flashlight in one gloved hand and motioned with the sawed-off shotgun in the other. Now that we were home, he’d traded the handgun for his beloved vintage Lupara. I usually hated the noisy thing, but I wasn’t complaining tonight; we might need it. “No other cars have been out here for a long time. And the front steps are covered in dead leaves.”

He was right. The place looked as if it hadn’t had human contact in a while, at least since autumn. In fact, the only active life I could detect was an owl hooting somewhere in the distance and a subtle glow of warding magick twining around the house.

“You see it?” I asked Lon, whispering as if I could be heard out here, miles away from the nearest paved road. I wrapped my fingers around his flashlight hand and tilted it toward the edge of the front porch. “White Heka disguised by the white paint in the trim. Bet you anything that’s lead paint or there’s lime powder mixed in to hold a charge.”

He grunted. “But those are just extensions. Where are they anchored?”

Good question. We stepped closer and got our answer: the heart of the ward was hidden in the white antlers decorating the front door, which were delicately carved with magical symbols. Clever. But not extraordinarily sneaky. And not extraordinary warding magick, either, just a standard spell that would give the owner a brief mental image of anyone who crossed it. Not half as complex as the ward Lon had built around his house.

“It’s a distraction,” I murmured. “Anyone looking for the symbols or the Heka signature can find it, but it’s hidden just well enough—”

“To make someone cocky enough to think they’d outsmarted it. An ego stroke.”

“Exactly. There’s more magick inside, I guarantee you.”

“But your servitor didn’t show you any magick.”

“That’s what worries me,” I said. “I don’t want to get caught in another landslide.”

“Maybe I should go in alone and scout it out first.”

“Just because you’ve given me hundreds of orgasms I don’t remember doesn’t mean you have to be my knight in shining armor. We go in together.” I shook the can of spray paint I’d purloined from Lon’s garage and sprayed a nice fat line of blue over one of the ward’s extension lines. The Heka powering the front of the ward evaporated. Good enough to get us onto the leaf-strewn front porch, and, once there, I sprayed down the antlers and dismantled the rest.

“Electricity’s still on,” I said, surprised when I reached out for current and found plenty.

“Makes sense if they came here every winter. They’ve probably got automatic payments coming out of an account that hasn’t been drained yet. They didn’t exactly have time to close everything out when you sent them across the planes. Might have a small fortune tucked away somewhere that technically belongs to you now.”

“I wouldn’t touch their dirty money with a ten-foot pole,” I murmured.

Lon handed me the gun and the flashlight long enough to splinter the doorframe with a crowbar and pry open the front door. Then he slowly swung the door open. Dust motes danced in the flashlight’s beam as he shone it inside.

“Empty,” he said, searching the entry for more magick.

He found a light switch and flipped it on. I was eager to confirm that the interior looked the same as it had in my servitor-powered vision, but I couldn’t see past his broad shoulders.

“Come on,” he said, motioning for me to step inside. Why was I so wary? My parents weren’t here, and Dare was dead. There was nothing to worry about but months-old magical traps that may or may not still have enough charge to be effective. I stepped over the threshold as he continued to talk. “Stay close behind me, just in case—”

I never heard him finish.

Within a blink, he vanished. I was standing in the entry of the house alone, and everything was coated in the silver sheen of my moon magick, only I hadn’t used it. I hadn’t tried, hadn’t felt any indication it was coming, and I wasn’t transmutated into my serpentine form. But Lon was gone, and I was alone. And it was . . .

Daytime.

Silver-tinged sunlight slanted across the floor from a window I couldn’t see. But this was definitely the same house my servitor spell had shown me.

What the hell was going on?

A knock sounded behind me. I whipped around and found the door closed. Someone was knocking on the other side. I backed away, stumbling further into the house, and glanced around in a panic. Same great room, same fireplace.

Same enormous grandfather clock.