Summoning the Night (Arcadia Bell #2)(16)

The house stood in a cleared section of land overlooking the blue Pacific, a blocky modern home with long horizontal lines, stackstone walls, and enormous plate-glass windows. Expensive and stylish, but not showy. I liked the way the stone and wood made it seem as if it was an organic part of the land.

I also liked the acre-sized ring of stones that we crossed to get there—Lon’s house ward, the same one that he’d helped me build around my house, strengthened with strong protective magick. It kept out imps, potential robbers, and any other miscellaneous intruders. Most people intending harm wouldn’t be able to cross the ward. Anyone strong enough to manage it would be dropped to their knees by a debilitating, high-pitched noise, and we’d be alerted.

As the car’s tires crunched over the circular gravel driveway in front of Lon’s house, I spotted two figures with aqua halos standing together at the front doors. Mr. and Mrs. Holiday lived in a small house at the edge of Lon’s seaside property. When his parents died nine years ago—just before his divorce—he hired them full-time to help take care of Jupe and tend to the house and land.

I was a little shocked the first time I met them. “Mr.” and “Mrs.” were, in actuality, two women in their late sixties. They’d been together for forty years and married in the Netherlands before it was legal in the States. Jupe was the one responsible for nicknaming them Mr. and Mrs. when he was younger. They found it endearing, so it stuck.

“Oh, damn,” Mrs. Holiday called out to Jupe as we exited the SUV. “I was hoping you’d been kidnapped again. Then I could set fire to your room and be done with cleaning it.”

“Dream on, woman.”

“Jupe,” Lon complained crossly.

“Dream on, old lady,” Jupe amended with a teasing smile.

Mrs. Holiday tried to swat at him, but missed when a dog barreled from behind her and lunged for Jupe. Foxglove was a sleek chocolate Lab with a purple collar, and she spent half her time patrolling the clifftop property, the other half trailing Jupe.

“Managed to survive the school day, Jupiter?” Mr. Holiday inspected Jupe’s face while her partner reached for his backpack. They sported similar short, silvery hairdos and looked a bit like Martha Stewart circa 1995, dressed in khakis and billowing, long-sleeved shirts with the collars extended.

“Where’s Mr. Piggy?” Jupe asked as Foxglove gave him one last lick on the cheek.

“Probably burrowed inside the garbage dump you call a dirty clothes pile,” Mr. Holiday said.

I glared at Jupe. “He’s loose?” The last time Jupe let my hedgehog roam free in their house, Lon stepped on a shed quill with his bare feet. He was not happy.

“I closed him up in his crate before school, I swear!” Jupe’s eyes darted between me and Mr. Holiday.

“He must’ve picked the lock with his tiny claws,” Mr. Holiday suggested dryly.

“I don’t think he’s gone far,” Mrs. Holiday added. “He seems to enjoy the smell of your soiled underwear, and God knows there are plenty of pairs scattered around your bed.”

“God, Mrs. Holiday!” Jupe snatched the backpack out of her hand. “Do you enjoy embarrassing me?”

“I live for it, darling,” she answered, gripping the sides of his face long enough to plant a kiss on his nose before he squirmed away and ran inside.

Mr. Holiday waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to Lon. “Anything we should know about your visit to Mr. Dare?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and kicked a chunk of gravel. “Both of the kids taken were Hellfire.”

Mr. and Mrs. Holiday murmured in surprise. They knew about the Hellfire Club. They weren’t members themselves, and I don’t think they quite knew everything that went on during their monthly bacchanales inside the Hellfire caves, but they knew about Lon’s transmutation ability.

“Do you remember a Hellfire member named Jesse Bishop?” Lon asked. “He disappeared after the kids were taken thirty years ago.”

Mr. Holiday thought for a moment. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“For me, either,” her partner agreed. “Why?”

“Dare wants Cady and me to find out if he’s still alive—wants us to track him down, but didn’t give us much to go on.”

Much? Try anything. Dare’s box was full of useless paperwork.

“Well,” Mr. Holiday said, “if the man was a Hellfire member, you might try looking through your father’s things. Your mother always complained that he could fill a warehouse with all the garbage he hoarded.”

Lon grunted. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Jupe’s muffled voice called from within the house. It sounded like he said, “I found him.” I hoped that meant my hedgie hadn’t been eaten by the dog.

“Where do you keep your dad’s stuff?” I asked.

“In the Village. If we leave now, we’ll be back before dinner.” He lifted a brow at Mr. Holiday. “Can you make sure he doesn’t leave the house ward?”

“If you’d let me install that padlock on his bedroom door like I wanted, we wouldn’t have to worry about the ward.”

The corners of Lon’s mouth curled. “Don’t tempt me.”

Lon’s mother died of cancer around the time that he and his then-wife, Yvonne, were splitting up. His father died a few months later, of loneliness, Lon thought: cause of death was never determined. His parents weren’t rich exactly, but they had a respectable amount of property, including the plot where Lon’s house was built. They also owned a couple hundred acres of farmable land outside the city limits, which Lon sold, and his parents’ home in the Village, which he didn’t. The plum-colored Victorian house sat on a quiet block, snug between two other newer homes that would’ve dwarfed it if it weren’t for the trees standing between the properties. Their extensive canopy enveloped the home, adding to the privacy that a tall iron fence provided.