Fire Devil Read online

  He climbed back up the stairs, whistling a tune to himself as the deadly poison worked its way into his system.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chaos ensued.

  Police, fire, and EMS arrived, but Willmore refused any treatment. The guy was working his way through the cabinet of sweets under his desk, slurping the snack cakes down with chocolate milk, smiling nonstop and talking in a strangely calm voice, like he'd just finished a marathon of yoga or Zen meditation or something.

  When the emergency workers left and I finally got back upstairs to our room, I was more than ready to hit the bed and zonk out for the night.

  Then I happened to look at my phone.

  “Michael, I missed a call from Calvin,” I said. “It was less than an hour ago.”

  “Wha ehh he aay?” Michael leaned out from the bathroom with a mouth full of toothpaste.

  “He said to call back right away,” I said. “He talked to that Bodger guy. Wow, it's late, maybe I should wait—”

  “Caw heh!” Michael said. Then leaned out of sight, spat, and leaned back. “Call him!”

  “Okay.” I called Calvin's cell, even though it was about four in the morning at this point.

  “Ellie,” he said, sounding wide awake. “How are things there?”

  “Uh...very complicated. We helped a ghost solve her murder. And, like I mentioned before, Clay stole another ghost from this hotel and took it with him. So that's pretty wild. You said you found Bodger?”

  “He wasn't missing, he was just avoiding my phone calls,” Calvin said. “So I caught up with him in person. He lives in a real slime heap of an apartment complex here in Augusta.”

  “You're in Augusta?”

  “In a Motel 6. It's a big improvement over Bodger's apartment, which is carpeted in greasy fast food bags and dirty laundry.”

  “Wait. You showed up at Bodger's home in the middle of the night?”

  “He should have returned my phone calls.”

  I tried to imagine what that was like—having Calvin, a graying ex-cop in a wheelchair, pounding on your door sometime after midnight, demanding answers.

  “How did it work out?” I asked.

  “He took some persuading,” Calvin said. “And some convincing. And some intimidating. But he gave up the information in the end.”

  “So what did you learn?” I asked.

  Michael was watching me with great interest. He'd washed away the toothpaste and spread shaving cream on his face.

  “Melissa contacted Bodger to hire him,” Calvin said. “She paid cash, as we know, probably to keep Michael from knowing about it. She wanted him to find a man named Brent Holly.”

  “Brent...” I looked at Michael and decided to hold back on that last name, but he was already moving closer.

  “What did you say?” Michael asked.

  I held up a hand in a hey, I'm on the phone here kind of way.

  “Right,” Calvin said on the phone. “Melissa and Michael's father. She said she wanted to find him and reconnect, but she had no idea where he'd gone.”

  “And did he? Did he find...the guy?” I asked Calvin.

  “What guy?” Michael asked me.

  “He was able to come up with a current address,” Calvin said. “In a small town called Bishop, located in the mountains of California. He worked for several years as a firefighter with the Forest Service, but it's not clear whether he's currently employed.”

  “So...” I said, not because I was reaching a logical conclusion about something, but because I needed a pause in the conversation to process this.

  “What?” Michael mouthed at me.

  “So do you think that's where she went?” I asked Calvin.

  “Where?” Michael asked out loud, not bothering to mouth it silently this time.

  “It's possible,” Calvin said.

  “But why would she...I mean he, Clay, why would Clay care about finding that guy?”

  “I can't say. Maybe he's looking for a psychological effect on Michael. And, by extension, you.”

  “That's a pretty elaborate head game.”

  “Or maybe he's jealous of Michael,” Calvin said.

  “Really?” I thought about it. “He does have that sort of obsessive stalker thing going. Like he's trying to seduce me in some twisted way, before he kills me.” I shuddered, feeling momentarily ill. “Do we have a phone number for him?”

  “Bodger didn't have that. There's no publicly listed land line for his address. He could have a cell phone.”

  “Great.” I tried to wave off Michael, who was making all kinds of hand gestures. “What else did you get from Bodger?”

  “He made some age-inappropriate comments about Melissa's appearance, but I won't repeat those.”

  “Ew.”

  “He's definitely a slimeball. And that's all from my end. Keep me updated on yours. Tomorrow. My day is finally over.” Calvin hung up.

  “Okay, so what were you too cool to tell me while you were on the phone?” Michael asked.

  “Melissa wanted the detective to track down Brent Holly,” I said.

  Michael's face went stony. “Our dad? Why?”

  “The detective didn't have that information. Calvin thinks Anton Clay is trying to mess with my mind by messing with yours.”

  “That doesn't really clear up anything.”

  “I know.”

  “So where is old Dad these days, anyway?”

  I told him, while looking it up on my phone. “Bishop, California. Looks like a small town in the mountains.”

  “Is he a smokejumper?” Michael asked.

  “He was a Forest Service firefighter. How did you know?”

  “That's what he wanted to do. Move out west, fight forest fires. I guess those plans didn't involve us.”

  I thought about it. “You've talked about doing that exact thing.”

  “Yeah, but not because my dad wanted to do it,” Michael said, but he had a kind of doubtful expression on his face as he said it. “Coincidence.”

  “Right.”

  “Don't pull that psychology-major stuff on me.”

  “Why do you feel that I'm pulling some psychology stuff on you?”

  “Because you're implying that I subconsciously imitated my dad even though he...uh, you're doing it again!”

  “Why do you feel that I'm doing it again?”

  “Because—stop it! How far is Bishop?”

  “Well, depending on traffic...” I plugged it into my phone. “Twenty-four hours of driving. So just a quick jaunt, really.”

  “We'd better get going.” Michael began packing up his suitcase. I mean, his gym bag.

  “Now?” I looked wistfully at my hotel bed. “I was hoping to, you know. Spend a little quality time in dreamland for a while.”

  “You can sleep first,” Michael said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course. In the van. I'll take the first shift driving.”

  I wanted to complain, but Melissa was in danger every moment Clay had her. “Okay, I'll tell Stacey and Jacob.” With a final, sad glance at my bed, I walked down the hallway to the door to the suite. The lamps were still turned down low, but the hallway didn't seem nearly as dark or cold as it had before. Maybe Josie's ghost was ready to move on now that Willmore had chosen to die.

  I passed the information to them, with Stacey groggily informing me they'd catch some sleep before they got on the road again.

  By the time I'd made it back to our room, Michael had packed up all our things. He had his gym bag over one shoulder, my suitcase in one hand, my purse and overnight bag in the other, ready to go. We'd already collected the small amount of gear we'd set up in room 33.

  When we tried to check out of the hotel and pay our bill, Willmore was nowhere in sight, and he didn't appear when we pressed the button at the front desk. I hadn't seen him since the emergency workers had left.

  We left our room key on the desk. Willmore had my credit card on file, if he wanted to run it and charge
me for the room before he died.

  Again, Michael and I were setting out in the freezing early-morning darkness, going even farther west this time. We'd have just about crossed the continent by the time we reached Michael's dad's address in California.

  Roughly a billion stars glowed in the huge open sky above Oklahoma. There were no clouds, apparently, and probably wouldn't be for a while, since we were heading straight into the vast deserts of the Southwest.

  We drove without speaking for a while. Michael found a crackling station on the radio, playing some old-time country like Tammy Wynette and Hank Williams, and he left it there.

  I reclined the shotgun seat and drew an old quilt over me. There were a couple of very narrow drop-down bunks in the back of the van, which are kind of nice when using the van as a nerve center for an overnight observation, but I didn't want to lie on one while the van was in motion in case the van took a tight curve and I got thrown to the floor.

  The road ahead probably didn't offer too many tight curves, though. I could see it stretching straight away into the distance like a railroad line, disappearing into the dark horizon.

  Eventually, I slept, but it was patchy and full of nightmares.

  I awoke to blazing sunlight filling the van. The sky was a vast blue vault overhead. It felt surreal, somehow, moving from snow-covered woods back east to wide-open, sunny grassland. It was still cold outside, but didn't really look that way.

  “Where are we?” I asked. It came out like more of an angry grumble than I'd intended.

  “Texas,” he said. “You just missed a huge cattle drive. With cowboys.”

  “Here on the interstate?”

  “Yep. Some of them were on their way to rob a stagecoach.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I picked up some snake oil at a medicine show.”

  “You're obviously in a better mood,” I said, and immediately regretted saying it. There was no way to comment on his improved mood without stirring up all the reasons why he had been unhappy—reasons that, so far, hadn't really changed at all.

  “Just glad we can finally do something,” he said. “I'm not looking forward to anything that's waiting ahead, other than getting Melissa back.”

  “You mean seeing your dad again.”

  “I'll tell you one thing,” Michael said, his voice going flat, the smile dimming from his face. “I'm not calling him 'Dad' when I see him. I can think of a lot of words that describe him pretty well, but that's not one of them. Not even close.”

  I nodded. Part of me wondered whether we would find his father still alive. Maybe Clay would have burned the man already, just to mess with our minds. Or as practice for when Michael and I finally caught up with him.

  “Looks like Stacey and Jacob are on the way,” I said, checking my phone. “They just started out, though. We won't see them for a while.”

  “That's okay,” Michael said. “I'm not sure I want an audience for this reunion with old Pops. It might get ugly. I've had plenty of years to come up with things to say to him.”

  “Just remember that we're here for Melissa,” I said. “So let's find out about her first—”

  “You think I don't know that?” Anger flashed in Michael's eyes, and for a moment I was taken back to when Clay possessed him, when he'd torched the corn maze all around us. “It's the only reason I'm going to speak to him. It's the only reason I ever would.”

  I nodded and decided not to pursue that line of conversation any further. “I'll put in a call to the exorcist. I mean the deliverance minister. As long as we're passing through his home state.”

  Michael didn't respond. He kept his burning eyes on the road ahead and gripped the steering wheel tight. He was driving about fifteen miles over the speed limit, which was risky, but it could have been worse. I was sure he'd floor it the whole way to California if that wasn't guaranteed to get us nabbed by the police.

  I called the number Calvin had given me for Tucker Nealon.

  “Nealon,” he answered, a Texan drawl evident in that single word. I wondered if people's accents drag out slower and slower the farther west they live. Stacey's Alabama accent moved at a bit of a slower pace than I was accustomed to in Georgia. Texans drawl it out even more. And by the time you get to California, it takes them five minutes to say the word “duuuuuude.”

  “Tucker Nealon?” I asked, which sounded stupid the moment it left my mouth. What were the odds I'd get a wrong number but the right surname?

  “Yep. If this is another scam call from the fake IRS, you may as well hang up now.”

  “Um, no. My name is Ellie Jordan, and I'm a private investigator from Savannah, Georgia. You were referred to me by James Lachlan—”

  “Oh, yeah. You're the ghost-gettin' girl, right?”

  “That's...what it says on my business cards, yes,” I said, trying to sound professional and calm, though he was already getting on my nerves. “We have a possession situation. I understand you can help with that, correct?”

  “Only if it's genuine. I can't fix crazy.”

  “It's definitely genuine,” I said, though I had my doubts about how genuine Tucker himself was.

  “You're in Georgia, then? That's a real haul. Couple hundred bucks by Greyhound. You'll have to Western Union that to me.”

  “We're currently in Amarillo,” I said. “But we're on the way to California.”

  “Do you have the possessed with you?” he asked.

  “No, we're on her trail. Trying to track her down. California's the latest lead we have.”

  There was a long pause on the other end, then: “California's a big place, you know. I think it's nearly as big as Texas.”

  I was getting frustrated with this guy fast. Having to wait six hours for him to finish a sentence wasn't helping much, either. “We have an address where we believe she went. There's no guarantee she'll be there. We could be pursuing her a while. But when we do catch up with her, it's going to be hard to restrain her. The entity controlling her is a powerful pyrokinetic ghost, and we believe he's taking measures to make himself even more powerful.”

  “Are we dealing with something demonic here?” Tucker asked.

  “He's human,” I said, sidestepping the topic of whether 'demonics' were actually a different species of entity or, as some have hypothesized, just ghosts that had grown old, powerful, and evil while forgetting their original human nature. “But he's on his way to becoming something demonic.”

  Tucker let out a long, raspberry-like blast of air from his lips, loud enough that I moved my phone away from my ear. I could almost feel his spittle flying out from the speaker.

  “Welp,” he said. “Looks like you'll have to come pick me up.”

  “Uh, what?” I asked, off guard.

  “You just told me you have no idea when or where you'll find the possessed, but you won't be able to restrain him long enough for me to catch a Greyhound to wherever you end up,” he said. “The only option is for me to ride with you.”

  “You don't have a car?”

  “I thought that was coming across pretty clear,” he said. “My last truck had a long and difficult decline, and I'm between vehicles at the moment. Serving the Light don't exactly bring a big paycheck from Mammon.”

  “Yeah, I can relate.” I sighed. “Where are you?”

  “Nacogdoches.”

  “So that's located...” I consulted the map of Texas in my head, which consisted of Amarillo (the town we'd just passed) and the cities of Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, all floating loosely somewhere south and east of us, like fruit in a Jello mold.

  “East Texas.”

  “How far from Amarillo?”

  “About four hours southeast by car. Longer by mule.”

  I frowned. “That's the opposite direction.”

  “What's happening?” Michael asked.

  “We have to make a detour,” I said. “The exorcist is east of us. We have to pick him up.”

  “Forget it,” Michael said.<
br />
  “Michael, I'm not an exorcist,” I said. “We need help.”

  “Have Jacob and Stacey do it,” Michael said.

  “That's...a good idea. They're a few hours behind us.” I put the phone back to my ear. “Hey, Tucker?”

  “I'm still here.”

  “We're going to send a couple people to pick you up. Stacy, our tech manager, and Jacob, our psychic.”

  “You got a boy psychic?” Tucker seemed amused by this idea for some reason.

  “Well, he's an adult man, but yes.”

  “Interesting. Well, I'll be ready to go right after I finish my sword practice.”

  “Uh, okay. Just text me your address, and they'll get there eventually.”

  “I'll get my kit together. And my tent.”

  “Tent?”

  “Sounds like a long job. I'm gonna need a place. Cheaper to bring my own.”

  “Okay. I, um, look forward to meeting you in person.”

  “Now you don't sound all that sincere,” he said. “But it's okay. I grow on you.”

  So do a number of infectious bacteria, I thought. “We'll see you in California.”

  Then I hung up and called Stacey to let her know the good news about her upcoming detour to Nacogdoches to pick up our exorcist.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The land grew ever more arid as we traveled west, eventually become a true desert as we crossed New Mexico. The desert was more alive than I'd expected; I'd expected nothing but sand and rocks, but it was dotted with little patches of green growth everywhere. There was cactus and...uh...more cactus, I assume. I don't have much practice identifying desert plants. But there were some.

  It was also sunny, as deserts tend to be, and featured a lot of sky with very few clouds. The view was expansive.

  Things got interesting when, at last, the sun began to set and a thousand hues of color painted the sand and filled the sky. We were heading into too much serious trouble for me to really enjoy the journey, but if I had to stare at something for hours, there were worse views in the world.

  We took turns driving, stopping only so I could get some rice and beans at a taco stand. Michael didn't eat, despite the tempting smell of the place's empanadas.