Highway to Hell

  Justin answered with certainty. “After the things I've seen, I'd be more frightened if someone on our side didn't know about this stuff. Lisa is scary, but she has her uses.”

  “Thanks, Galahad,” drawled Lisa. “You're a pal.”

  As they talked, I ran my hand along the smooth inside of Mary's granite backdrop. I thought it would stop at ground level, with the icon's pedestal set in front of it. But as I followed the curve of the shell, I found that it kept going.

  On my hands and knees, I silently apologized to Mary as I dug to discover how deep the stone went down. The soil around the statue's base had been improved for the flowers; it was dark and loamy and easy to brush aside.

  “Maggie?” Justin asked in alarm. “What are you doing?”

  “Hey!” Lisa bridged the distance to the shrine in one jump. “Do you really want to be tearing up Doña Isabel's shrine of vanquishing?”

  “I'm not digging past the granite.” Sitting back on my heels, I brushed my hair out of my face with the back of my hand. “Look. The rock goes all the way under the statue.” The pedestal was carved in one piece with the stone underneath, and the soil filled in around it, incorporating it with the earth.

  I started to laugh as the three of them crowded over my shoulders to see. “Maybe it really is that simple. Doña Isabel put up the shrine, and it trapped the demon underground.”

  “By blocking the spring?” Justin asked.

  “Yeah.” That's why granite—it's impermeable.

  He ran his hand through his hair. “So, the demon is … was … imprisoned in the water reservoir, like a genie in a bottle?”

  “Then how is it loose?” asked Henry. “If the shrine is intact, what uncorked the bottle?”

  “I've been reading about this in one of the library books.” One of the things I like about journalism is getting to learn a little about a lot of different things, but I never thought I'd need so much science to fight Evil.

  Drawing in the dirt, I illustrated. “The water reservoir isn't like a big hole in the ground. The liquid seeps through permeable rock, like limestone, until it meets a barrier of nonporous layer.” I drew a straight line for the ground, and a squiggly one under it to represent the water layer. “More than one well can tap into the same reservoir. That must be what happened here.”

  Justin frowned at my drawing. “But there are springs, wells, and stock ponds all over the place. If your theory was right, the demon could have escaped anytime.”

  “Maybe someone drilled a new well.” I felt giddy with relief. “Nobody had to summon the demon. It was let out by accident.”

  “Okay.” He understood my point, but wasn't conceding yet. “But why don't all the other springs”—he drew lines into my dirt reservoir—“release the demon?”

  “I don't know.” My bubble of elation popped. “Maybe there is some other component that allows it to escape.”

  “What about the drought?” said Henry. Then he checked himself, as if he hadn't expected to be taking this seriously. “The past incidents in the records happened during dry spells.”

  Lisa brushed off her hands. “We need to backtrack. Trace this to the original case. Then Mags and I can do our thing, see if we can get a read on what happened there.”

  Justin went to the stone bench and spread the map across it. “What was the first attack?”

  “Teresa's goats,” said Lisa blandly. “Great.”

  “What about Carl's herding dog?” I wiped my dirty fingers before I smoothed a hand over the chart. “The victims have been getting progressively bigger, right? Goat, calf, cow … herd of cows. And finally Dave and Jorge.”

  “Well,” said Lisa, “most men are smaller than cows.”

  “But ‘bigger’ in a philosophical sense.” Two memories popped up in quick sequence: Dave telling me about his great-aunt's dog, and Buck the mechanic telling me about another little girl who had lost her puppy.

  I dug in my hip pocket for my cell phone, in the forlorn hope that I would get a signal. To my surprise, I did— one short little bar. We must have been close enough to the Big House for the antennae on the tower to work. Thumbing through the phone list to a number I'd programmed in on Saturday, I hit Send and crossed my fingers, while the others watched curiously.

  “Hey, Buck,” I said, when the call connected. It sounded flimsy, but I put it on speaker. “This is Maggie Quinn.”

  “You don't let any grass grow under you, do you. Your Jeep's not ready yet.”

  “That's okay. I was wondering. About your granddaughter's puppy.”

  There was a pause, full of static from the country music radio in the background. “The new one she got from Mr. Zeke?”

  “No. The one that was killed.”

  “Lord, girl. Why do you want to know about that?”

  I floundered for a reason. Usually, even when I didn't have a lie prepared, my mojo kicked in and something convincing came out of my mouth. Not this time.

  “Is this about that chupacabra business?” he asked. “Teresa was going on in the Duck this morning about you city girls poking your noses around, stirring up the Chupy and making things worse.”

  “Oh. Really?” Her, too?

  “Yeah, but she doesn't always know what she's talking about. What do you want to know, little missy?”

  “Where you found the dog. Was it anywhere near a pond or a spring?”

  He paused to think. “It was out past my daughter's barn, which has a stock tank. Does that count?”

  I didn't know, but I had him give me directions anyway. As I relayed them aloud, Justin found the place on the map.

  “That isn't far at all,” he said, after I'd thanked Buck and closed the phone. “If we go across the pasture, it wouldn't be more than a couple of miles.”

  “You mean, walk all that way?” My horse-abused thighs ached just thinking about it.

  A gust of wind caught the edges of the map, a moment of relief from the stagnant heat. The paper flapped madly then subsided.

  Justin folded the chart. “We'll drive to the barn and then walk across the pasture where the dog was found. But we'd better get going. This heat is going to brew up some serious rain when that front blows in.”

  I thumbed my camera back on. “Just let me grab a couple of pictures before we go.”

  “Don't take too long.” He and Henry headed back up the trail to the car.

  They were barely out of sight before Lisa turned to me. “So what is the story on the future friar?”

  We hadn't been alone since the guys broke into our room and we hadn't had a chance to discuss the new addition to the Evil-fighting team.

  “What do you mean, what's the story?” I snapped pictures of the shrine and the plants so I would remember what was here. Compulsive, yes, but with everything so spread out, there was no running back to check my memory.

  Lisa stared at me in disbelief. “You mean you haven't done your touchy-feely thing?”

  I made a disgusted face. “Don't call it that, Lisa. Gross.”

  “Don't you want to know if he thinks you're going to Hell?”

  “Definitely not.” I had been extremely careful not to brush against Henry without my deflector shields on maximum. “Plus, it's cheating.”

  She sat on the bench. “How do you figure that?”

  I fiddled with my lens as I spoke. “I can't really read the people I'm closest to. Which is usually a good thing, because I definitely don't want a flash into your psyche.”

  “Well, no. Because then I'd have to kill you to preserve my secret plan for taking over the world.”

  “Exactly. And Justin—he doesn't talk about his history. But if Henry knows something about Justin, and I flash on that, then I'll feel underhanded.”

  “Yeah, but I know you're curious.”

  “Of course I am. But I want him to tell me.” I capped the lens and turned off the camera. “Besides. What if I found out something I didn't want to know?”

  “Like what?”

&nbs
p; “Like he isn't serious about me.”

  Lisa fell over on the bench, covering her eyes with her arm. “Oh my God, Maggie. If that guy was any more serious about you, he'd have your name tattooed on his butt.” She lifted her arm. “He doesn't, does he?”

  “No! Well, not that I know of.” I laughed, in spite of everything: romantic uncertainty, chupacabra demons, witches, and saints. “Can you picture Justin with a tattoo?”

  “No.” She grinned broadly. “Zeke has one.”

  I gaped, shocked in spite of myself. “On his butt?”

  “Here.” She pointed to her bicep. “Jeez, Mags. I'm not that slutty.”

  Justin appeared on the trail. “Are you girls going to sit there giggling all day? We're burning daylight.”

  “Just a sec,” I yelled back. Lisa started laughing again, and I nudged her off the bench with my foot. “Shape up. We've got work to do.”

  She rolled to her feet, dusted herself off, and we started back to the car. “Don't worry about Henry, Mags. He's probably as threatened by you as you are by him.”

  “Yeah. Worried I'll corrupt his friend.”

  “Worried you'll come between them.” She made an exaggerated thinking face. “Or maybe he's hoping he can talk Justin into joining the priesthood, too. Do you think they get a recruitment bonus, like stockbrokers?”

  “Jeez, Lisa.” I checked the sky for thunderbolts.

  “Well, if he does, at least the outfit is kind of hot.”

  “Can we talk more about my problem and less about how you're going to Hell?”

  She shrugged, lowering her voice as we neared the guys, who were waiting impatiently by the car. “Look at it this way. Henry may represent a normal, demon-free life. But you have plenty of things to offer that he can't.”

  “Like what?”

  She shot me a pitying look. “Duh, Mags. If you have to ask …”

  22

  The Escort hit a pothole in the gravel road, hard enough that Lisa and I bounced out of our backseats.

  Henry rubbed his head and squinted at Justin. “I'm not sure this is what the rental company had in mind when they said unlimited mileage.”

  Justin adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “Almost there.”

  The road ended at a barn and corral that had seen better days. It was a hodgepodge of wood and corrugated metal. Most structures on the ranch seemed to be more about function than beauty.

  Justin set the emergency brake and turned off the engine. “Everybody remember where we parked.”

  Lisa climbed out and scanned the empty pasture. “It's strange not seeing any cows.”

  By the corral was a windmill, squeaking as it turned in the faint breeze. The rusty blades ran a pump, which filled an aluminum stock tank; the water was green with algae and surrounded by mud and a lot of what you'd expect would be left by loitering livestock.

  “The clouds are getting really thick.” I swatted a mosquito intrepid enough to venture out, now that the sun wasn't blazing down.

  “We'd better get moving.” Justin pulled the map and a compass out of the cargo pocket of his khakis, which was both nerdy and completely awesome. “West is that way.”

  “Yeah,” said Henry. “I could have figured that from the big ball of fire in the sky.”

  Justin shot him a look. “It's behind the clouds, and I want to be accurate.”

  “You carry around a compass?” Lisa asked.

  “Doesn't everyone?”

  “I do.” There was one hanging from a clip on my backpack. Flashlight, Swiss Army knife, first-aid kit, a bag of unprocessed sea salt …

  “You sure you want to carry all that, Maggie?” Justin eyed my backpack with misgivings.

  “It's got my stuff in it.” I resettled it on my back, nodding to his map and compass. “You like to know where you're going. I like to be prepared for anything.”

  Lisa slapped her arm. “I don't suppose you have any mosquito repellant in there.”

  I pointed over my shoulder. “Exterior pocket. Right side.”

  Henry laughed and Justin shook his head. “Suit yourself.”

  “I walk all over campus with this thing. How much harder can this be?”

  As soon as I said it, I wanted to bite my tongue. Why is it that you can never hear the ring of famous last words until they're already out of your mouth?

  It turns out that walking overland, even on the mostly flat and visually unchallenging terrain of the coastal plain, was harder than sprinting between classes on a paved campus.

  For one thing, while the dog days of summer can be barking hot in Avalon, it didn't compare to the sauna heat of a March afternoon in South Texas. Especially as the clouds collected overhead like steam on the lid of a pot.

  With the sun in hiding, the mosquitoes became a fierce, bloodsucking army. They made guerilla runs through the aura of Off, undeterred by T-shirts or jeans. I slapped at a quarter-sized insect on my leg and got a palm smeared with blood and bug parts.

  The long grass caught at my sneakers and the short clumps made for uneven walking; I had to keep my eyes on the ground and my Spidey sense tuned to the direction we were going. The backpack seemed to be increasing in weight with every step. My legs ached, my skin was slimy with sunscreen and bug spray, and I didn't think I'd ever smelled worse.

  “How far do you think we've gone?” I asked.

  “Maybe half a mile,” said Justin. God. I was in sad shape.

  The others had to keep pace with me, and no one else seemed to have broken more than a token hot-day sweat. I comforted myself with the thought that their legs were all a lot longer.

  Lisa called from behind me. “Does your freakometer give you any idea how much farther?”

  “‘Freakometer’?” asked Henry, who wasn't up on the Maggie vocabulary.

  “She thinks clairvoyance or ESP sounds silly,” Lisa explained.

  “And freakometer doesn't?”

  “Hey, Henry.” I was anxious to change the subject from me and my weirdness. “What did you guys do to almost get kicked out of college your freshman year? Justin won't tell me.”

  My boyfriend walked backward so he could glare a warning at his buddy. “He doesn't want to talk about that.”

  Henry laughed. “It's kind of a funny story.”

  “No,” said Justin firmly. “It's not.”

  “It wasn't in college, though. It was high school.” He ignored his friend's death stare. “Because the whole reason we volunteered to work on the haunted house was to get near what's-her-name, the one with the pom-poms, and her sister.”

  Justin thought about it, maybe a little too long for my liking. “You're right. It was high school.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said between gasps for air. “What about the pom-poms?”

  “The pom-poms aren't important,” said Henry. “We went to a parochial boys' school. We grabbed any excuse to be around any girls at all. We weren't picky.”

  “Which was how Henry convinced me to work on the Halloween festival at the church in town,” Justin said, contributing his version of events. “We were supposed to work up a labyrinth—like a haunted house, but instead of Dracula and the Saw puppet-head guy, they wanted vignettes of the lives of the saints.”

  “Oh, yeah,” muttered Lisa. “That'll definitely bring the kids swarming.”

  “It was supposed to be for little kids,” said Henry. “Only Justin was so distracted by this girl—”

  “Don't blame that on me.”

  “Okay,” Henry admitted. “We were so distracted by actual female-type people that weren't nuns, we missed that part of the instructions.”

  Lisa snickered, and Justin's glare made her cackle harder. “It's nice to know you're human, Galahad.”

  “Anyway,” said Henry, “the girls were in drama club at the public high school, and Justin and I figure the way to impress them is to get all these books about special effects and pick the most exciting scenes from the saints' lives. Which, unfortunately, was usually their mar
tyrdom.”

  Justin's voice was dry. “You'd be surprised how many saints met a truly gruesome—and, it turns out, traumatizing to small children—death.”

  Henry's laugh was gravel-deep and contagious. “There were all these little kids peeing in their pants and screaming for their mamas. We even heard that a woman went into labor, but that turned out to be just a rumor.”

  “I thought Brother Mathias was going to go into labor,” said Justin, “with a whole litter of kittens.”

  Henry's laughter faded, but not the humor behind it.

  “Anyway. The vestry of the church vowed to never do a fund-raising event with the school again. Which was what really had Brother Matt's girdle in a twist.”

  Watching them laugh together, I realized that I couldn't compete with their friendship, and I didn't want to. Justin needed someone to keep him from being too serious. For years that had been Henry, and now it was me, and that didn't have to be mutually exclusive.

  It would be better, however, if Henry didn't think I was nuts for seeing things that he didn't believe were there.

  Or smelling them. I halted so abruptly, Lisa crashed into me.

  “Hey. Brake signals next time.”

  “Do you guys smell that?” I sniffed the air, and the others did the same. We must have looked hysterical to the gophers and jackrabbits.

  “Sulfur?” asked Henry. “Isn't that a little … clichéd?”

  I exchanged a glance with Lisa, who rolled her eyes. “You would be surprised,” she said.

  “It's hydrogen sulfide,” I corrected. “Zeke said it's a by-product of oil and gas production.”

  “Coming from there, maybe?” Lisa pointed to a complicated arrangement of pipes and wheels and valves sticking up out of the ground. It was taller than Henry, and painted bright yellow. Hard to miss.

  “Maggie …” Justin said my name in a tone of significant enquiry. “Didn't you say you smelled the sulfur—hydrogen sulfide, I mean—by the cows you found yesterday?”

  “Yeah. And we were near a pump jack last night.” I looked at him, realization dawning. “I haven't been factoring the smell into the appearances, because I just thought it was the oil wells.”