Texas Gothic

  21

  my faith was rewarded in less than an hour. Phin and I had both moved to lie on our stomachs, and I saw her hands still before she reached to trade her spade for her brush.

  “Hey, Mark!” I called. “I think Phin found something.”

  He stepped carefully over the grid of twine to look, then called for Dr. Douglas. The other students crowded around, too, as the professor arrived and instructed with subdued excitement, “This hand is obviously undisturbed. See how all those small bones are in place? Use the brush carefully, Phin. Where’s Jennie? We need pictures.”

  What emerged from the dirt was a delicate mosaic of earth-stained bone. Jennie snapped photographs as Phin worked to expose as much as possible without shifting anything.

  “It’s a right hand,” said Mark. “Do we have one of those yet?”

  Caitlin had joined us on the B site after lunch, and she checked the notes before answering, “We have metacarpals and carpals in two different locations. This is a third hand.”

  Phin had found a third set of remains. The crew didn’t quite cheer—surely there was some etiquette about cheering over dead bodies. But I was focused on the tiny spheres barely visible beside the bones under her brush.

  Stretching out, I fanned my own brush across the shapes, worried they might disintegrate. The next pass of my brush lifted the veil of dirt from a spill of beads and a small cross, lying as if the fingers had opened in death and let them fall.

  “A necklace?” suggested Caitlin.

  Mark shook his head. “A rosary.”

  Jennie lowered her camera and exchanged a look with Dwayne. “The Mad Monk!”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Dr. Douglas.

  “There’s something else.” Lucas pointed to something flat, dark, and leathery emerging as Phin worked her brush outward from the hand.

  Emery speculated, “Another sandal?”

  I bent over the trench. “It looks like a satchel. Some kind of bag?” I pointed to what appeared to be a rough, fist-sized rock. “Phin, brush that off.”

  She did. The sweep of the brush burnished it in the sunlight.

  The stillness of a held breath hovered over the trench. My own felt lodged in my chest as, for an unscientific moment, I wondered if this confirmed the rumors of the Mad Monk. First the rosary and then this? Could it be so simple?

  “Is that … ?” Dwayne started, speaking for all of us.

  Dr. Douglas, refreshingly pragmatic, pulled the rock out of the dirt, crumbling off the soil that clung to the underside. “If you mean ‘Is that a chunk of gold ore?’ then yes. It is.”

  She started the rock around the circle so everyone could examine it. Jennie turned it over in her hands. “That doesn’t look like something Yosemite Sam would dig up with his pickax.”

  “It’s unrefined,” said Mark, taking it from her and pointing to the metallic yellow sheen. “It has to be processed before it looks like a gold nugget.”

  Jennie took it back, laughing. “Do you think you could get a ring out of that? Maybe there’s a diamond to go with it.”

  “Maybe if you had about nine more of them, as long as you have a tiny finger,” he said.

  Dwayne looked at the nugget in disappointment. “Not much of a treasure, then.”

  “The treasure,” said Dr. Douglas, in a drolly academic tone, “is in the discovery and the search for knowledge.”

  The ore made it around to Lucas, who held it like Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull. “Search for knowledge. Like, why did our guy have this?”

  “Obviously,” said Caitlin, “he never made it to the refinery.”

  “But why just one?” Mark asked.

  “He wouldn’t be carrying a fortune in gold ore in a satchel,” said Lucas. “Maybe this was just a sample.”

  “Maybe there’s more somewhere else,” said Dwayne, always eager for excitement.

  “Maybe,” said Dr. Douglas, “you should all get over your gold bug and get back to work.”

  Chastised—at least a little bit—they did. The professor pushed herself to her feet, brushed off her hands, and gave Phin a long, evaluating look. “You are a strange but rather useful girl.”

  That was Phin to a tee. But were we any closer to the truth behind the Mad Monk legend? Did the gold or the cross or any of these three sets of bones have anything to do with the real ghost—the one that haunted me?

  When I came in from tending the goats, the house smelled worse than I did. Hell, it smelled worse than before I took my boots off. I traced the stench back to the workroom, where Phin was cooking something over the Bunsen burner.

  “Holy compost heap, Delphinium. What is that smell?”

  “Hex-breaking potion,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  The blackout curtains were still up, but the lights were on. On the slate worktable a glass beaker bubbled vigorously over the gas flame. It looked like pond scum and smelled like Christmas potpourri, sauerkraut, and turnip greens. Old turnip greens.

  I saw where this was headed. “You don’t seriously expect me to drink that, do you?”

  Phin gave it a stir. The clumps only made it more nauseating. “Well, if you’re tied to the ghost by some kind of spell, this should break it.”

  I sank onto one of the high stools beside the counter. “So, you don’t think we found the Mad Monk today, either.”

  She glanced at me as if I’d confirmed her suspicions. “I figured you would have said something on the way home if you’d sensed a change.”

  Spreading my fingers on the slate, I braced myself literally and figuratively. I hadn’t talked to Phin about supernatural stuff in years, and I felt like I was blowing dust from parts of my brain. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Even if I weren’t bound to the specter, I still have to keep looking for whatever is haunting here. If I stopped now, and people got hurt …”

  I didn’t finish the sentence. Phin knew me and my sense of responsibility well enough. “It does matter. What if we find the Mad Monk, or whatever it is, and the ghost is still tied to you? Do you want to be trailing that thing along to the sorority house or dorm? Your roommates won’t thank you for it.”

  This was a very good point. I eyed the brew again. “Are you sure this is going to work? Because I don’t want to drink that for nothing.”

  She thumped her fist onto the counter; the glass stirring rod stuck up like an antenna vibrating in a stiff breeze. “The parameters are somewhat unknown at the moment, Amy. It might be a spell, it might be something else. It might be that the ghost likes the smell of your shampoo. But all we can do is try.”

  I raised my hands in surrender. “All right. I trust you.” Phin might have blown a few fuses and chemistry labs when inventing stuff, but she’d never poisoned anyone. That I knew of.

  She dipped out a spoonful into a ladybug teacup and set it in front of me. My stomach turned over, and I almost lost my nerve.

  “Are you sure you’re not just making me do this so you can test your Kirlianometer?” I asked.

  “Of course not!” Though she already had the gadget in her hand. “But would you mind drinking the potion in the dark?”

  A god-awful eternity of seconds later, when I had a half a cup of the vile concoction down my gullet—in the dark—I changed my mind about trusting her.

  “Oh God,” I said, not at all sure the potion was going to stay down. “Will it still work if I hurl?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” she said, clicking away with her Kirlianometer. “It just tastes bad, that’s all.”

  “That’s all? Did you taste it?” The only answer was another click. “Get ready, because you’re about to get a picture of it coming back up again.”

  “You’re talking too much to be really sick.” She flipped the lights on and dug around in her backpack until she found some stale Goldfish crackers in a Baggie. “Here.” She tossed them over. “Stop whining.”

  She let me eat enough to get the taste of the potio
n out of my mouth before she asked, “Do you still feel hexed?”

  “I didn’t feel hexed before.” I was starting to feel less like I was going to barf, though.

  “That’s the spirit,” she said. “Now, what’s your plan?”

  I considered the question, and my conversation with Ben earlier. “Could you make a spell that would help me run into a Kelly who can tell me about the ghost? Joe’s the most obvious choice.”

  She nodded and started gathering supplies. “I approve of this plan, though you may want to rephrase ‘run into.’ Sometimes these things can be very literal, and you’ve done that once.”

  “Point taken.”

  She had me write my name on one small piece of paper, “Joe Kelly” on another, fold each lengthwise, and then make an X with the slips. Before she dripped wax onto the X, I asked, “This isn’t going to make us suddenly fall in love or lust or something, is it?”

  “Why do you always question me?” She dribbled a generous bit of wax where the slips of paper crossed. “Now, keep that in your pocket. And after you’ve met up, just break the seal, or you’ll keep on bumping into each other.”

  “It’s that simple?” I picked up the paper X gingerly, careful not to touch the still-soft yellow wax.

  “Well, if you want it to work faster, you should go somewhere he’d likely be. I suggest the roadhouse, where I’m meeting Mark at eight.”

  “And you need a ride.” Then I realized she’d said “Mark” and not “the gang.”

  “Wait … is this a date?”

  “Pfft. A date.” She scoffed and put the candle back in the cabinet. “I think he wants to ask me about the divination I did today.”

  I rolled my eyes, wondering how she could be so smart and so clueless. “I don’t think so.”

  She frowned slightly. “The Kirlianometer, then?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wasting some sarcasm on her. “That must be it.”

  I got up with a groan. Between hunching over a trench all day and barnyard duty, I was stiff and sore. “While you’re doling out potions, what have you got for aches and pains?”

  “Aspirin.” Her hands were full transferring the dregs of the pond scum into a jar. “You really are nuts about those goats. The schedule Aunt Hy left in the binder is much more relaxed.”

  “I know. But she was worried enough to call me from China, for Pete’s sake. I must have promised and prom—” Crap. How could I be so stupid?

  I looked at Phin. She was standing frozen, potion dripping onto the floor, struck by the same lightning bolt of realization as me.

  “Great Caesar’s goats. I mean ghost.” I clutched my head to stop my spinning thoughts. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “You promised three times?” confirmed Phin.

  “I was half asleep.” That was my excuse for not making the connection sooner. “She kept saying, ‘Promise you’ll take care of the goats’—or that’s what I thought—and I just said, ‘Yes, I promise.’ Three times, then poof. Specter in my bedroom.”

  “Of course!” Phin still held the beaker and stirrer as she did a quick pace back and forth by the counter. The dogs sniffed the drips and ran for the other room. “That’s why the ghost got past Aunt Hyacinth’s protections. You opened a door when you took responsibility for it with the triple promise.”

  I staggered to the desk and plopped into the chair. “Can’t I just renounce it three times?”

  She looked doubtful. “I don’t know. There could be repercussions. You vowed to take care of it.”

  “What does that even mean?” Frustration spiked the question.

  “That’s the problem with ambiguity in spells and arcane bargains,” said Phin. “Wording can mess you up. I always say—”

  “Semantics are important,” I finished with her. I’d just thought she was being pedantic. She was, of course, but for a reason.

  I looked at the beaker and the dripping stir rod she held, and groaned again, sinking my head into my hands. “Oh my God, do you know the worst part?”

  “What?”

  I couldn’t think about full implications yet. I could only think as far as, “This means I drank that sludge for nothing.”

  22

  “to the Goodnight girls.” Mark lifted his beer, the toast almost drowned out by the band and the holiday weekend crowd at the Hitchin’ Post. “Fortune favors the floral.”

  “That’s not how it goes,” corrected Phin. “Fortes fortuna adiuvat.”

  I reached over and clinked her bottle of soda with mine. “Pretend to be normal, Phin, and drink your drink.”

  The Dr Pepper tasted so much better than the pond scum.

  But as vile as it had been, I would’ve drunk the potion again if it could have told me how to solve this problem. The only thing I knew to do was stick with my plan. Look for the ghost. Do what it had told me. Which was why I was in the Hitchin’ Post with the crew, paper spell in my pocket, on the hunt for info on the Mad Monk.

  If Mark had wanted to meet with just Phin, he should’ve picked somewhere other than the roadhouse. The rest of the crew were there, too, celebrating the find, and dissecting what it could mean. Since this was what I needed to know, too, I was happy when, after his toast, Mark set down his beer, rubbed his hands together, and said, “Okay, let’s brainstorm. Rosary and gold nugget. Where did they come from?”

  “Did you find anything else after we left?” Phin asked.

  “More bones that appear to be from the third skeleton,” said Mark. “Tomorrow we dig test holes around the field to see what else turns up. Then home so Dr. Douglas can write a grant proposal.”

  “Well, some of us are staying for the party,” said Lucas, his eyes following a pair of women who walked by, checking him out in return. He lifted his beer to them, and they laughed and hurried on.

  “Is it just me,” said Jennie, amused by the exchange, “or are we getting even more stares than usual?”

  “Everyone’s talking about the dig,” said Lucas. “I’m not fooling myself that it’s because of my stunning good looks.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” she said.

  Emery hunched over his bottle. “They’re a lot more interested today than yesterday.”

  Dwayne elbowed him. “Stop sulking because Phin found some buried treasure and trumped your bones.”

  Jennie giggled. “Trumped your bones. That’s funny.”

  I was going to miss Jennie when she headed back to Austin. Emery, not so much.

  “That’s the lamest treasure I ever saw,” he said. “A fist-size hunk of gold ore. Even at today’s prices, that would hardly be worth the cost of refining.”

  “Well, I’ll ask the question no one has yet,” said Dwayne. “Where did it come from?”

  Lucas tore his attention away from another passing woman and answered. “There are records of several Spanish expeditions to look for gold in central Texas.”

  “Like Coronado?” Phin asked.

  Mark turned to her with a laugh. “What is it with you and Coronado?”

  She shrugged. “He’s the only conquistador I remember.”

  I cleared my throat, hesitant to tell them their business. “While I was home this afternoon, I looked up that San Sabá mission that Mark talked about. There’s supposedly a lost San Sabá gold mine, too, that no one has ever found.” The Google hit had startled me, since buried treasure kept coming up in conversation. Ben had even reminded me today: the Mad Monk was supposedly guarding his treasure.

  Lucas straightened with interest. “The San Sabá mine is just a legend, but there are actual records of a mine in this area. Los Almagres.” He stared at a neon beer sign for a moment, checking his mental files. “Or maybe that was silver. No surprise it was lost, because this was Apache country, and they weren’t keen on prospectors.”

  “Maybe what we’ve found was a prospecting expedition,” said Jennie.

  “But what about the cross?” asked Dwayne, tag-teaming the speculation. “Doesn’t that mean they we
re monks or missionaries or something?”

  “Maybe it was both,” said Mark. “Missionaries wanted to convert the heathens; conquistadors wanted their land; everyone wanted their gold. It’s not like Spain had separation of church and state.”

  Emery wrapped it all up with a sneer. “So we’re all agreed. The Mad Monk is a totally plausible theory based on historical record.”

  Phin turned a considering gaze his way. “You would be sort of funny if you weren’t so obnoxious.”

  Lucas laughed, and nudged me to let him out of the booth. “Well, you guys are great, but I’ve been with you all day. I’m going to do some socializing. Who’s with me?”

  “I need something to nosh,” said Jennie, “and I cannot eat one more Hitchin’ Post burger or hot dog.”

  “You forgot nachos,” Dwayne said.

  “And nacho cheese fries,” added Mark.

  “So who’s for trying that Mexican food place on Main Street?” Jennie looked at Phin, then me. “Wanna join us?”

  I realized we were down one. “Where’s Caitlin?”

  “She’s, um, on a date,” she confessed, so apologetic I would have guessed whom the other girl was with even if I hadn’t seen them talking at the dig today.

  Which was fine. No, it was good, because it meant Ben was busy, leaving me free and clear to (hopefully) run into Joe Kelly. Which I realized I was less likely to do if I was in the middle of a crowd.

  “You know,” I said, “I’m beat. I think I’m going to grab something from a drive-through window and head home.”

  Mark volunteered, as I’d expected, “Phin, I can drive you home later if you want to hang out.”

  “Sure,” she said, and one by one they slid out of the booth until only Emery was left. I thought they might just leave him, but Jennie relented and said, “Come on if you want, Emery.”

  “I figured I was too obnoxious.”

  “So’s rap music,” said Mark, “but some people like it.”

  Emery didn’t give them a chance to reconsider.

  As the rest headed for the exit, I caught Phin’s arm, holding her back. “How’s this spell supposed to work? Should I do something?”