“So, what is it? A ghost, haunting their body? Their souls? Does the spell trap them?”
I’m … not entirely sure.
“You don’t know what happens to them after? You’re chaining some kind of spirit to their body and pulling their strings, and you don’t know? You might be trapping them, torturing them—you stop to think that Lydia Harcourt’s ghost may really be haunting that house in Manitou, after what you did to her?”
Silence. He couldn’t even feel her lurking.
Layne was walking back up the drive. Show was over.
“Well?” the man asked.
Something wasn’t right here. “I still need to do some checking around. I’ll let you know what I find.”
“But what killed him? Is it going to happen again?”
“I don’t know,” Cormac said.
“Then what good are you?”
“I never said I was any good, you just assumed.”
If it helps, I don’t think it will happen again. I think this was something that targeted magicians, someone who was working spells.
So where does that put us? Cormac asked. “I don’t think it’ll happen again. Looks like what got him might have been magic gone wrong. Avoid magic, you’ll be fine,” he said to Layne. “Keep an eye out, though.”
“Okay. Good. I believe you. Oh, and I’ll take that book you found in Milo’s pocket.”
So he’d definitely been watching. Cormac thought about responding with, “What book?” Just to see the look on Layne’s face, and just to see what the guy would do about it. But he was supposed to be walking away from all this. Might as well just let him have it.
Amelia did panic at this. No, he can’t have it, he wouldn’t even know what to do with it. We have to know what Milo was working on—
Layne put out his hand. “Give it. Now.”
“You think you’ll know what to do with it? You know anything about spell books?”
Layne’s eyes widened, a flash of surprise, of hunger. He hadn’t known what it was, but now he did, and he wanted it.
I want it!
A headache started pounding behind Cormac’s ears, throbbing dully. He hadn’t had one like this since he was back in prison, when Amelia was first trying to break into his mind. This was her, fighting back.
Layne was an idiot. He was going to get himself in trouble. Cormac decided he didn’t much care. He pulled the book out of his pocket and handed it over.
“This means you don’t call me again. If you do, I’m not going to come running.” He walked away, back to the Jeep. Amelia grumbled at him the whole time.
“Whatever you say.”
Two of the henchmen came up from the house. Cormac watched from the Jeep, morbidly curious about how they were getting rid of the body. He expected Layne had a ditch somewhere, an old mine shaft or even just a cave, and that Milo wasn’t the first body to get tossed there. If it was on private property, no one would ever find it to be able to report it, and if Milo didn’t have anyone around to declare him missing—well then, he was as good as gone.
Milo couldn’t have expected to end up that way. But you spend enough time with a guy like Layne, well …
Which was why Cormac was driving away.
Milo was telling us what he was doing, what killed him, it’s all in the book, I must have that book!
Cormac didn’t want to argue. He was thinking more about how this—disappearing down some backwoods hole, dead and lost—could never happen to him. Ben wouldn’t let it. Hell, neither would Kitty. Strangely comforting, having people watching his back. He drove, glancing in the rearview mirror to see the guys hauling the body, arms slung over their shoulders, down to the woods at the back of the property.
Ten or so miles later, when the gravel county road met asphalt, he pulled over and parked on the shoulder. The headache was pounding now, Amelia refusing to be ignored.