After an hour, Clay directed Baer to turn off into a gravel parking lot for a storage company. A high chain link fence surrounded several rows of long buildings with bright red garage doors on the front. The small leasing office stood outside the fence with only a couple of cars parked in front of it.
“Do we have the code for the gate?” Baer asked.
Clay shifted in his seat, pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “There are two sets written on this receipt. We can try these first. If they don’t work, I can go into the leasing office.”
Pulling up to the security box, Baer tapped in the first code Clay read off. Wiley held on to the back of Baer’s seat, biting his bottom lip until the little light flashed green and the gate started to roll open. Wiley whooped in celebration and flopped into his seat while Baer laughed.
He drove slowly inside. Clay pointed to a far building that had the numbers that apparently matched the storage unit on the receipt. Wiley’s heart was pounding in his chest. It was like uncovering buried pirate treasure or locating a lost Egyptian tomb. Probably with less gold and ancient curses, but still exciting.
About halfway down the aisle, Baer parked the Jeep in front of a big, red door. The unit looked big enough for Baer to pull into and still have room to spare. If this thing was full, they’d need to hire a moving truck to haul everything to the plantation.
For several seconds, no one moved. Wiley looked at Clay’s grim expression and then Baer’s sad one. It was then that it hit him. One of them could have last visited the storage unit thirty years ago. They could have planned to return, but it wasn’t to be. They’d both died. All the Weavers had died in their last fight.
And that same fight loomed in front of them still.
What would be different this time? Did the storage unit hold the key? Or just more sad memories from the past like the stuff Baer had told him about in the attic?
“Well, no time like the present,” Clay suddenly announced, seeming to break them all from their dark thoughts. He got out of the jeep and walked to the panel next to the door. He typed in the remaining code and was rewarded with another green light, allowing him to lift the garage door.
Wiley scrambled out of the vehicle and walked up to see nothing. All that space and…nothing. Well, almost nothing. Just one large trunk in the dead center of the room with a padlock on the front.
The three of them stood over it, frowning. This was not what any of them had been expecting.
“You didn’t happen to find a key with the lease agreement or receipt, did you?” Baer asked, scratching his jaw.
“Nope.” Clay bent and grabbed the handle on the side, intending to lift it. The thing rose only a couple of inches from the ground between Clay dropped it with a groan. “Holy fuck! It’s heavy. What the hell is in that thing?”
“Pirate gold,” Baer quickly answered.
“The rotting corpse of a dead pestilent witch,” Wiley offered.
Both Clay and Baer stared at him, looking a little horrified for a second. Baer recovered first and pointed at Wiley. “No more horror movies for you before bed.”
Clay snickered and looked at the trunk. “This isn’t what I expected. I guess we can just load it into the Jeep and haul it home. Grey knows how to pick locks if we can’t find the key. Dane might have a pair of bolt cutters if that doesn’t work.”
Wiley shifted from one foot to the other, frowning at the trunk again. “Is it really a good idea to bring it home if we don’t know what’s in it?”
“What do you mean?” Clay asked.
“Well, think about it…why wasn’t this kept at the house with the other stuff?” he started, waving one hand at the container. “Maybe it’s too dangerous to have there. Maybe it’s pestilent related. Like something that could track you or harm you.”
“To hell with that.” Baer went back to his Jeep and pulled out a tire iron. He walked to the trunk and slammed the iron into the lock over and over until it finally gave.
Clay kneeled on the ground and cautiously opened the lid. He whistled. “Well, now we know where the spell books have been this whole time.”
Wiley gasped and dropped to his knees beside Clay. Books. Several stacks of beautiful, leather-bound books. Wiley automatically reached for one on the top of the stack but stopped himself at the last second. These books belonged to the Circle. Not him.
With a broad smile, Clay looked over at him. “As the Circle’s resident artist and superhero expert, I think you have a right to help look through them.”