Summoning the Night (Arcadia Bell #2)(41)

“Good goddamn riddance,” Lon complained, shoving the Lupara under my seat. “If I never see either one of those idiots again, it’ll be too soon.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t hope for the same. Once Bob got over all this, he’d be back at Tambuku. And Hajo, well . . .

“I can’t believe you’re going to have to bind someone for that piece-of-shit junkie dowser,” Lon mumbled.

Two someones, actually, but a deal was a deal. And * druggie or not, I’d give the guy one thing: he didn’t cut and run in the middle of the hissing cockroach fight.

“I thought you were dead,” Lon said.

“Me? Why?”

“In the cannery, when you stopped the bugs. I . . . couldn’t hear you.”

“You couldn’t read my emotions?”

He shook his head quickly. “No. They were there, and then they were gone. Like listening to a radio that suddenly gets turned off.”

“That’s strange.”

“It’s never happened to me before. Not even when you’ve used the moon magick. Definitely not in the Hellfire caves when you banished that incubus. And even though things were crazy at the time, I think I would’ve noticed if it happened in San Diego, when your parents . . .” He gestured with his eyes, as if to say “you know.”

“Tried to sacrifice me?”

He grunted affirmatively. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. At least your magick scared the piss out of the death dowser,” Lon said. “Bob too. They’ll think twice before crossing you.”

Maybe, but we had bigger problems.

We now knew Bishop was dead and his body entombed in that warehouse. But if he’d been killed by the Snatcher thirty years ago, that raised a whole new set of possibilities. Had Bishop helped the Snatcher and later been betrayed? Or had he been trying to stop the Snatcher and gotten caught in the crossfire?

As Hajo sped by us on his green motorcycle, Lon and I reviewed the photos I’d taken with my phone. The seven binding mandalas clearly served a different purpose than the oval seal around Bishop, but what, exactly? Containment? A magical cage? Hajo had confirmed that there weren’t death-threads around the seven carvings, so they hadn’t been used in ritual sacrifice. If Lon could track down that Æthyric alphabet in one of his goetias—assuming that it was Æthyric—maybe we’d understand.

We attempted to smooth out the crinkles in the old Polaroid. I wondered if Bishop had swallowed the thing, or if it had been shoved down his throat. Either way, we couldn’t make head or tail out of the image. It looked like it might’ve been taken at night. Somewhere with trees in the background. Hard to be sure, though. It would take some time and patience, but Lon said he could scan it and find out more. He had a few professional Photoshop plug-ins that would help restore the image.

Until then, we needed to figure out what we were going to do next. Because if we weren’t looking for Bishop anymore, just who the hell were we tracking?

The day after the cannery incident, we still didn’t know. Discussing the situation with Dare gave us no further insight. While Lon worked to decipher the image on the old Polaroid, we waited for Dare to discuss the Bishop development with his “people” and get back to us. Until we could all agree on what to do next, life went on. Lon still had a kid with a knack he shouldn’t have, and none of us knew how or why. So we drove to Jupe’s school, just shy of noon, to take him out of class and bring him to someone who might have some answers.

Dr. Spendlove’s office was across town, on the other side of the Village, in a quaint two-story Tudor with stucco walls and decorative half-timbered wood detailing. Bold orange and yellow chrysanthemums were planted in green window boxes below narrow leaded-glass panes. His practice was quietly announced in medieval lettering on the sign that swung from a protruding iron rod next to the door: RED SKY WELLNESS CENTER—COUNSELING, THERAPY, PSYCHIATRIC CONSULTATION. Carved into the cornerstones above the door was the same interlocking circle Nox symbol that’s printed on Tambuku’s sign—indicating that the business was demon-friendly.

Inside, what was once a home had been converted into a business. A desk near the door greeted patients for the three doctors who shared a practice here. After Lon filled out several forms and checked Jupe in, we sat together in one of two waiting rooms decorated with Colonial American artwork, much of it featuring subtly haloed Earthbounds. I looked around at the other people waiting: not a single human in the entire office. A few people glanced up at my silver halo, as demons always did, but soon returned to their magazines and mobile phones, unconcerned.

Jupe, nervous and fidgety, was swept away to the second floor. The doctor kept him up there for almost forty-five minutes, and when he returned with one of the center’s assistants, he was all smiles.

“Dr. Spendlove will see you now to complete Jupiter’s file,” the blond assistant said to Lon with a polite smile.

“Why don’t you do your homework while we’re seeing the doctor?” I suggested to Jupe, gathering up my purse to follow Lon. Maybe I really could live up to the whole “positive female role model” thing his teacher was talking about.

“On it.” He formed his hand into a gun shape, pointed at me—“Pow!”—then snapped open a gossip magazine and slouched into the lavender waiting chair.