Teag reached into his pocket and pulled out a carved wooden bird, then replaced it and zipped his pocket shut. “That was one of the last things I bought from him before he died. Since whatever’s haunting the storage facility probably killed Jimmy, I just had the feeling he’d want to go with us, at least in memory.”
Memory, as I knew, had a powerful magic all its own. “I think he’d like that,” I said.
Teag pulled out a short length of rope, knotted with nine knots. “The knots are a way of storing power,” he explained. “It’s part of a Weaver’s gift. I can use it to get a second wind, or give one of you a ‘recharge’.” He paused for a moment to steer. “I’ve got the hand loom pre-woven. It’s on my belt, so I can get to it fast if I need it.” As I was beginning to learn, magic is very personal, and items of power are not always what they appear to be.
He glanced at me. “Let me anchor you if the ring isn’t enough. We don’t have much experience with the new pieces Sorren and Mirov gave us. You don’t need to get a full-fledged vision in the middle of a battle and go down for the count.”
He wasn’t going to get an argument from me on that.
It was after ten on a weeknight, and there wasn’t much going on. Once we left the historic district, traffic thinned out, and by the time we made our way to Chuck’s neighborhood, we went blocks without passing another car.
The streetlight near Chuck’s house was dark, and there were no lights on inside his house when we drove up. “Think he lost his nerve?” Teag asked as we drifted to a stop by the curb. I looked around nervously.
Then I spotted a figure moving out of the shadow of one of the tall trees in the front yard. I recognized the man’s gait before I saw the face, and knew that Chuck was up for the night’s work.
I opened one of the van’s back doors from inside and Chuck jumped in. “Go!” he said, finding a spot on the floor and a hand-hold to keep himself from sliding around. I got back in my seat and Teag pulled away, making sure to stay well within the speed limit.
I glanced back at Chuck. He wore a knit cap pulled down over his head and the collar of his black Eisenhower jacket turned up to partially hide his face. I wasn’t surprised that his jacket was ticking. Dark pants and work boots meant he was ready for action.
“Thanks for the ride,” Chuck said. I could see a mix of emotions in his face: excitement, fear and maybe even a bit of hope that after tonight, his need to steal back his own clocks would be over. “I’m glad you got this arranged soon. I lost another clock today.”
That would account for some of the fear I sensed, although any rational person would feel worried about the night’s agenda. “We’ll get you some new ones tonight,” I said. “And once we’ve gotten rid of the demon, we’ll move the rest somewhere safe where you can get to them easily.”
“I kind of have a routine for going in,” Chuck said, zipping his jacket closed. “Like we used to have when we were going into a firefight. Soldiers are superstitious. When we come out of our first battle alive, we figure that we must have done something right, and after that, we try to do everything just the same before each fight, just in case.”
He dug into a small pouch that hung on a lanyard beneath his vest. From it, he drew out a photograph. Chuck held it out for me to see. It was a picture of the same dark-haired woman whose essence I had sensed when I was in his house, and the same children, at about the age I had glimpsed them in my vision.
“That’s Emma,” Chuck said, and I noticed that a woman’s wedding ring also hung from the lanyard.
“She’s gone, but sometimes, I think she’s still watching over me, you know? Those are my kids when they were little. Scott’s a truck driver out West – doesn’t get back to visit much. Diane’s married and has kids of her own.” He tucked the photo back into the pouch and slipped it under his vest.
Chuck fixed me with a glare. “I’m glad you people aren’t any of those ghost hunters like on TV. God, those shows make me crazy. I started watching them, thinking I might learn something.”
He made a disdainful gesture. “And what did I see? A lot of lousy video in bad lighting with everyone going, ‘Hey, did you hear something’ or ‘Wow, did you see that?’” He shook his head. “Bunch of wusses, the lot of them. They hear a couple of thumps and a whisper or two and they almost crap their pants.
Take them somewhere like Stor-Your-Own, they’d be begging for their mommies.”
Teag stifled a snicker, and I had to smile. Teag and I both watched those paranormal investigator shows as a guilty pleasure. We often compared notes the next day, laughing about the overblown reactions.
I had met a couple of ghost hunters who were the real deal, and some urban explorers who had seen things they couldn’t explain. “Some of them do know what they’re doing,” I said. “Their producers are on their backs to make it look exciting, or they’ll get cancelled.”
Chuck made a rude noise. “Yeah, well in my book, they’re all phonies. And what’s worse, they make it look easy to go up against the spooks. The worst that ever happens on those shows is that a door slams shut.” He met my gaze. “We know what happens when Moran’s demon catches up to someone.”
We fell silent for the rest of the ride. In a few minutes, we got to the Navy yard entrance. Teag had intentionally kept the hood on his jacket down to avoid a second look from any cop who found hoodies suspicious. A couple of times, I thought I felt a tingle of magic as we passed some spots along the way, and I remembered that Lucinda had said that her friends had agreed to cast spells for our protection. I was grateful for the assistance.
Teag drove on, slouched in his seat like a tired handyman. Nothing to see here, officer. Just finishing up a long day of work.
I grabbed a bag next to my seat. Sorren had gotten us night-vision goggles. That kept us from shining our flashlights around like a beacon for the demon. I handed a pair to Chuck, who didn’t need any instruction on how to use them. I put mine in my lap and hung on to Teag’s until we got where we were going.
Thanks to Sorren’s reconnaissance, Teag knew to pull the van into the parking lot of the business adjacent to Stor-Your-Own belonging to an abandoned shipping company.
Teag had put an old license plate on the van and splattered it with mud. We turned and walked toward the street, then cut across in the shadows of a row of trees and made our way behind the dumpster to the Stor-Your-Own office.
I stopped in front of the door, and looked down. “Salt,” I said quietly, and Teag glanced toward the ground and nodded. Someone had poured a thin line of salt all along the outside of the office wall, and it looked as if it ran to the fence, and maybe beyond.
“Do you think it goes the whole way around?” Teag asked.
“Could be,” I replied. If so, Lucinda’s friends had been busy. Salt was a protective barrier, and if magic had been added to the mix, then it might keep the shadow men and the akvenon from following us – but it wasn’t going to stop a demon.
“Let’s get inside.” Sorren, as usual, had come up on us noiselessly, with Mirov a step behind. Lucinda was with them. I noticed that she was carrying the shaman’s staff from the Archive. Mirov and Lucinda were also wearing night vision goggles. Sorren didn’t need them.
She smiled when she saw that I was looking at the staff. “I told Mrs. Morrissey that I needed it for a special event.” I thought I saw a faint glow from inside the large agate set in the top of the staff.
“You’d better let me go first,” Chuck said. He had brought a small pair of wire cutters, and made an entrance for us through the chain link fence.