Summoning the Night (Arcadia Bell #2)(26)

“All right, all right,” I grumbled, waving him away. I don’t know why I even cared. It wasn’t important.

“I wouldn’t talk trash about you—I mean, we’re friends . . . aren’t we?”

“I thought so,” I snapped. But when he flinched in response and his face fell, guilt wormed its way into my chest. “We are,” I amended after a pause. “Friends, that is. So don’t sell me out to someone like Hajo again.”

“Never. Give me a lie detector test. I’ll do anything.”

I stopped in front of his car, suddenly bone-weary.

Bob pulled his car keys out then paused in front of me. My gaze rose from the hula-girl print of his shirt until I met his eyes. They were tight with grief or regret. Maybe both. “I’m so sorry, Cady.”

He wasn’t the only one. I shouldn’t have agreed to give Hajo the potion. God only knew what despicable things he’d end up doing with it.

I wasn’t the only one upset about the barter with Hajo. Lon was livid, more at Hajo—and Bob—than at me, he said, when I called him on my way back to my place with a report of what had transpired. He didn’t say much, but he never does on the phone. I could hear the anger in the loaded combination of grunts and poignant silences. And it was still bugging him the next day when I drove to La Sirena to meet up with him for some reconnaissance.

Bishop’s former house address was in Dare’s box of paperwork, so we decided to check it out. Maybe we’d see something useful, some clue that pointed to where he would’ve corralled seven teens in the weeks leading up to All Saints’ Day. Dare said that he and Lon’s father found no indication that they were kept inside the house when they searched it thirty years before, but at least we’d have a point of reference from which to start.

“Do you have Hajo’s phone number?” Lon asked as he made a turn into a small neighborhood on the east side of La Sirena, a few miles inland from the coast. Traffic hummed in the distance on the main highway leading to Morella—the one I drove back and forth to work.

“Bob has it.”

“What if he doesn’t show tomorrow? We have to send Bob to track him down?”

I pressed the button to lower the passenger window so I could see the houses we were passing. “I suppose. But he’ll show. He wants the damn vassal medicinal.”

Two slits of green slanted in my direction. “I still can’t believe you promised him that.”

“Me either, but my options were limited.” No way was I telling him about Hajo coming on to me. I squelched that thought before Lon had time to figure out what was on my mind. “He’s not country-club material, Lon. He’s a junkie. You wanted a dowser, I got you a dowser. If you want someone more respectable, Bob says you’ll have to go out of state.”

“‘Bob says.’” His hand hung loosely over the top of the steering wheel as he slouched in his seat and stared straight ahead like he was daring the road to piss him off. “I must remember to thank Bob and his big mouth.”

“He’s excited to meet you, too.”

No answer. A muscle in his jaw flexed. The long hollows under his cheekbones deepened.

Two blocks of crowded, boxy homes sailed by my window before he spoke again. “I wish you’d driven to La Sirena last night after all that.”

I blinked several times, trying to decipher what he meant, which was often more than what he said. “I was tired. And mad at myself. I didn’t need you mad at me too.”

“I wasn’t mad. Not at you. I was worried.”

“No reason to be. I could’ve shocked him if I had to. But I didn’t.”

Another grunt. Another block driven. “I don’t like sleeping alone anymore.”

I glanced at him, but his concentration was on the road. Stoic. “Me either,” I admitted.

The tight angle of his shoulders loosened. Just slightly.

As he rounded a corner onto Dolores Street, where Bishop used to live, I said, “Look, I’m over being mad at Bob, but if you want to challenge Hajo to a duel when we’re finished with him tomorrow, I’m totally cool with that.”

That got me a light grunt. Then another askance look. Then the tiniest twitch of mustache at the corner of his mouth. Finally. I grinned back.

Bishop’s one-bedroom house clung to a steep hill in the middle of the block. The siding looked brand-new, and the inclined driveway was darker than the street, freshly resurfaced. Public records said it had been empty for nearly twenty years before it was resold several times, bank-owned, then purchased earlier this year by one Simon Cleeton.

We parked on the street and glanced around before exiting the car.

“These old houses are being bought and fixed up by people who work in Morella and commute,” Lon noted. “Easy access to the highway on-ramp, cheaper property taxes than living in the city, low crime rates.”

“Except for that pesky child snatcher.”

“Except for that.”

Lon exited and set the car alarm. I sniffed the air. Burning leaves somewhere nearby. I always liked that smell. Sort of comforting and pleasant. As I walked around the SUV, I eyed the houses on either side of Bishop’s place, then the ones across the street. Cute, well-kept. We’d looked up the property owners of those, too. Everyone who’d lived here thirty years ago had long since sold their homes. No one left with memories of their neighbor at 658 Dolores Street. A pity.