“I’m all right. I just didn’t expect… come inside, please.”
I followed Lena through the door. The bulldog tried to nose its way into my jacket, then jumped back as if burned. I made sure Mrs. Hubert wasn’t looking, then glared down at Smudge. “Stop that,” I whispered sternly.
The house was the very definition of cluttered. Running trophies and medals filled the mantel over the fireplace. Quilts hung on the walls, and a pile of half-finished quilting squares covered the dining room table. Handmade candles hung from pegs on another wall like pastel-colored wax nunchucks. A scrapbook and supplies lay open on the kitchen counter. This was a woman who kept herself busy.
“Thank you, Margaret,” said Lena. “I’m sorry for intruding unannounced, and I promise we won’t take up too much of your time.”
“That’s all right. And please, call me Margie.” She led us into the living room, where a half-finished puzzle covered a wooden coffee table. “Would you like something to eat? I’ve got applesauce bread.”
“No, thank you,” said Lena, sitting down in an overstuffed love seat while I examined the room.
A dusty television sat in an entertainment center which had seen better days. The wooden laminate was beginning to peel away, and several of the shelves sagged. I studied the framed photographs crowded together along the top. Most of the pictures showed either an older, heavyset man or a teenager with shaggy brown hair. I didn’t see a single photo or newspaper clipping of Charles Hubert.
No, there was one. I picked up a silver-framed shot in the back. Charles Hubert and the brown-haired teen stood proudly in front of a nine-point buck. Both kids wore orange camo and held deer rifles in their hands. “First buck?” I asked.
Margie nodded. “Mike was so proud. We ate venison for a month because he wouldn’t let us give any of it away. The antlers are still in his room.” She sat down and began to fidget with the puzzle pieces. “What is it you’d like to know?”
“When was the last time you saw Charles?” Lena asked.
Margie looked taken aback. She blinked and played with a diamond ring on her right ring finger. “I’m not sure. It’s been a while… wait, do you think he could have been involved with what happened to Mike?”
I opened my mouth, but a quick glare from Lena shut me up before I could speak. “We’re not sure,” she said cautiously. “We’re trying to explore every possibility.”
“Charles and Mike used to go hunting every year with my husband, rest his soul. After Mike was-” Her shoulders shook. She looked up at Lena, her eyebrows bunched together. “I’m sorry, what was I saying?”
It was possible we were seeing the early signs of dementia, but I had heard no sign of confusion or uncertainty when she talked about Mike’s buck. Only when Charles was mentioned had Margie begun to stumble.
“You were telling me about Charles,” Lena said gently. “Have you seen him at all since he returned from Afghanistan?”
“Afghanistan?” She looked at Lena, her eyes glassy with tears. “I don’t… what did he do? Did Charles take my son?” Tears broke free, running down her cheeks, but her words were flat.
“We just need to ask him some questions,” Lena reassured her.
“Do you mind if I use the bathroom?” I asked. Margie looked up at me, her face blank, then nodded. I retreated down the hall into a bathroom decorated in orange and black, the colors of the local high school. I sat down and pulled out a paperback copy of The Odyssey.
When I returned, Margie seemed calmer. She was describing the disappearance of her son Mike. “We had gone to see a Tigers game. We went to the first home game every year. Mike always brought his glove. He wanted to catch a home run ball, but he never did.”
She shuddered and dabbed her eyes. “He had gone ahead to start the car. The police found no evidence of foul play.”
“You let a twelve-year-old boy run off by himself?” I asked.
Lena glared at me.
“We wouldn’t-we didn’t…” She trailed off, staring into the distance.
“What happened to Mike wasn’t your fault,” said Lena.
I leaned over, holding a sprig of Moly in one hand. “I found this on the floor. From one of your crafts?”
The moment she touched the magical herb, her entire demeanor changed. “He wasn’t alone. Charles had just gotten his driver’s permit. He and Mike-” Her eyes went round, and the white petals began to wilt as they battled whatever spell had rewritten her memories. She stared at me. “Who… what did you do to me? Where is Charles?”
“You remember him now?” I asked.
“Of course I remember him! I-” She clutched her head. “Who are you people? I want you to leave. Get out of my house!”
Lena touched her arm. “Margie, you’re safe. We’re trying to help you.”
Margie didn’t shake her off, but she glared at me like I was the devil come to take her soul.
I retreated toward the door. “I’ll be in the car.”
Back in the Triumph, I let Smudge out of his cage. He scurried up to the windshield, then turned around to look at me as if waiting impatiently for the drive to start.
“Charles Hubert comes back from Afghanistan with magic,” I said slowly, trying to fit the pieces together. “He overdoes it and ends up possessed. That much makes sense. An amateur libriomancer with nobody to guide him… but why was he alone? Why didn’t the Porters find him?”
I took out my phone and called Ponce de Leon. If anyone would know about operating under the Porters’ radar, it was him. He might also have an idea how someone could suddenly develop magical abilities. His phone went to voice mail. I left a brief message, then turned back to Smudge. When he wasn’t setting things on fire or running laps, the fire-spider was a pretty good listener.
“Two years ago, Margie was there to meet her son when he came home from Afghanistan. Between then and now, someone wrote him out of her memories.” Possibly Charles himself, building another roadblock to anyone who might try to find him. “And then he started killing Porters.”
No, first he had written V-Day. I picked up the book and began to read more closely, losing myself in the story.
Lena emerged from the house an hour later and handed me a withered, blackened flower. “She’s back to the way she was. As far as Margie remembers, she had only one son. She’s pissed as hell at you, but doesn’t know exactly why.”
“I think I know what happened to her other son.” I folded the corner of the page I was reading and flipped back to an earlier chapter. “Listen to this. It’s immediately after Jakob Hoffman’s first encounter with a vampire. He’s being debriefed and still doesn’t understand what it was he saw.”
The captain’s words were like flies buzzing in the stables back home. Discipline and training compelled Jakob to respond. “Yes, sir!” “No, I didn’t see anything, sir.” “I don’t know, sir.”
But he had seen something. He simply didn’t understand what it was he had seen. Not yet.
The first to die had been Private Sterling, a young-faced kid fresh from the States. Bright-eyed and bare-chinned, he made Jakob feel like an old man. Jakob remembered Sterling calling out a challenge, though he hadn’t seen anyone.
“You’re jumping at ghosts, Mikey,” Jakob teased. But Mikey insisted someone was out there. He slid his rifle from his shoulder and stepped away to investigate.
Jakob closed his eyes. Mikey was just a kid. The older soldiers were supposed to keep an eye on the new ones, to keep them out of trouble. It was his duty, and he had failed.
He remembered seeing movement behind the fence that marked the edge of their temporary base. Barbed wire snapping like guitar strings. Mikey’s shout, choked off as quickly as it began. Jakob raised his weapon, but by the time he had taken a single step, Mikey was gone, along with whoever… with whatever had taken him.
And then all hell had broken loose.
“You think vampires killed Hubert’s brother?” asked Lena.