Storm Road (Old School Book 3) Read online

  Was the ghoul here yet?

  She closed her eyes, trying to sense for it. The more she strained, the more her head buzzed like a staticky radio when a station went missing.

  “The ghoul’s not here.” Or it was hiding from her, observing them. That creepy thought had her spinning in a circle to scan the environment. She didn’t know what to hope for. If the ghoul really wasn’t at Millie’s farm, then they might be able to complete their preparations unhindered. However, if the ghoul resisted returning to the place of its binding in daylight, was she strong enough to override its wishes and compel it via the summoning?

  She wiped her sweaty palms down the sides of her jeans. “Let’s set up near the oak tree.”

  Dean got the string trimmer out of the tray of the pickup and they walked through the neglected garden, past the dogwoods and the ruined house to the open space that had once been a lawn that stretched between the house and the apple orchard beyond.

  She gazed up at the oak’s spreading branches. It was old. Old enough to have been there when the ghoul was first bound during the Civil War. She wanted its strength of life and endurance to be there to call on if needed during the makeshift vanquishment ritual she’d cobbled together.

  But first she had to summon the ghoul.

  Dean started up the string trimmer. He swung it easily. The high grass fell and the scent of it filled the air. He marked out an area about ten feet square, stopping where daisies that had escaped Millie’s garden and sown themselves with wild abandon, starred the grass. Summoning the ghoul didn’t require a huge amount of cleared ground, just enough that when Beulah set things out, they weren’t lost in the grass.

  She left her bag of occult supplies leaning against the oak tree and took a trowel and a clean glass jar with her to the ruined barns. With the sound of the string trimmer in the background, she kicked at charred and fallen wall boards till she saw the dirt beneath. Moving the boards stirred up a faint acrid reminder of smoke from the fire that had destroyed the barns and house, but nothing scampered or slithered out. This was the site of the older of the two barns. Its dirt floor was dry, packed hard from years of use.

  She’d cleaned the trowel before bringing it here. She didn’t want to cross-contaminate the dirt she used to summon the ghoul with soil from her own land. She definitely didn’t want to risk breaking the ward that protected her home. The clean trowel struck a slight dent in the dirt. She struck twice more before scraping up what dirt she’d managed to loosen and sealing it in the jelly jar.

  The sound of the string trimmer ceased. She spun around to check that the ghoul hadn’t attacked Dean. Her heart thudded in a panicked rhythm, but he was safe.

  He’d finished cutting the grass and was walking to her. “Everything okay?” He scanned the barn and wider, but the bucolic scene remained ghoul-free. His gaze came back to her.

  “No ghoul,” she said.

  “Yet.”

  She watched him carry the string trimmer back to the pickup.

  He looked so normal; a strong, competent man engaged in outdoor work on a fine summer’s day. But the alert way he scanned their environment and the way he held the string trimmer, not dangling, but like a potential weapon, underlined the danger of their situation.

  Together, they returned to the oak. He strode beside her, tall and protective, but in truth, weaponless against the ghoul.

  Yasmin had promised to send help, someone capable of vanquishing the ghoul, and Beulah knew Yasmin would do everything in her power to keep that promise. But sometimes, promises couldn’t be honored.

  Beulah had to assume that she was her town’s and its children’s only hope of vanquishing the ghoul. The pressure of that responsibility crushed her spirit.

  Dean might be weaponless against a ghoul, but she needed him. His courage bolstered hers.

  As they reached the square of cut grass, she brushed his fingers for luck.

  He regarded her steadily, his expression serious but encouraging.

  She nodded as if he’d said, you can do it, aloud. With a quick prayer, she collected her supplies from beneath the oak tree and began.

  The cut grass provided an uneven surface on which to mark the symbols of the summoning, but she’d come prepared for that. She mixed chalk dust, the dirt from the barn, blood and oil together, and after stirring it vigorously, poured it into the smallest watering can she owned, one appropriate for indoor plants. Then, taking the rose off the watering can, she poured the mixture in steady lines to meet at the five points of a pentagram Dean had marked with five tea light candles.

  He’d cleared the ground around each candle, and he kept watch with a full-size watering can beside him.

  She could call rain, but if the flames escaped the candles, she might be in no state to help with anything. Just a glance at Millie’s ruined house and barns showed what could happen if magic got away from a person.

  Beulah shook out the final match and stowed it in a leather pack along with the box of matches, then she threw the pack to Dean.

  He caught it and slipped it into a pocket. Like her, he wore long sleeves, jeans and boots, as well as bug spray and sunscreen. The woods in summer weren’t to be taken lightly.

  All they needed was a snake to slither in and bite them. And I really wish I hadn’t thought of that. She shuddered. She hated snakes. She was just going to believe that the string trimmer earlier had scared them away; that the rustle of the long grass behind her was the wind and not a serpent or the ghoul.

  She positioned herself at the northern point of the pentagram. The words of the summoning were simple. What mattered was the summoner’s intent, focus and power. She could feel her magic. Her weather magic ran strong in her veins and flared at her center. It was fed by her connection to the natural world. The intricacy of the Earth’s weather systems pulled her into them wherever she went. Here in the mountains she felt today’s sunshine and tomorrow’s gathering clouds. The day after that there would be rain.

  Her magic was familiar and reassuring. She’d learned how to master it. It needed movement. Like the weather, it was ever-changing. But since she was all too aware of its power and danger, she usually fed her magic cautiously through existing weather patterns. Asking it to divert itself to flow through the patterns of the summoning required her, as well as her magic, to change.

  With painful caution she siphoned her power to flow into the summoning in a bare trickle. Only when the pattern of the summoning held did she increase the flow.

  She realized she’d closed her eyes to concentrate on the changes required of her magic. That was an excellent way to be blindsided by the ghoul! The summoning she used was based on one for a demon. It ought to work for the ghoul, but it might merely call the ghoul and not lock it into the circle at the heart of the pentagram. Annoyed at her lack of alertness, she slammed her eyes open and saw Dean.

  He stood on guard beside the oak tree at the edge of the clearing.

  I’m not alone, she remembered. He mightn’t have magic, but he was here to fight the ghoul anyway. He would shout if the ghoul appeared. When the ghoul appeared.

  She sunk back into the summoning, but kept her eyes open.

  The landscape blurred as the minutes passed. Bees and wasps and all sorts of insect life skimmed over the grass. A wren darted overhead, snapping at a bug. Beulah concentrated on the ghoul; on its blue fog body, its aura of grief and failure, and the horror it evoked. She ignored the drenching warmth of the sun on her shoulders.

  “Beulah,” Dean called quietly.

  She blinked to focus her eyes. Her muscles felt stiff and her head heavy. The band of her hat constricted her forehead, and she pushed it back.

  “It’s been an hour.” He waited, and when she didn’t respond, he raised his arms and tapped his watch. “You’ve been standing there an hour.”

  An hour was too long. The thought percolated slowly through her muzzy brain. She relaxed her hold on her magic and it flowed back quickly, almost as if with relief,
into the patterns of the weather. Her leg muscles rebelled, not wanting to move. Her knees were locked. She forced herself to back away from the northern point of the pentagram, and that seemed to release her.

  Dean skirted the pentagram and slid a supporting arm around her waist, pushing a bottle of water into her hand as he did so.

  She drank, her mind clearing at the taste of the cool water and the strength of Dean’s hold, the reassurance of it. “I didn’t feel the ghoul. Did you—?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Darn.” She walked into the shade of the oak tree and dropped down. She stared at her hands. They felt as if they were shaking, but they looked steady. First signs of exhaustion, she noted. When they literally shook, she’d be in trouble. More trouble. “It didn’t work,” she stated the obvious.

  “Eat.” He waved a sandwich under her nose.

  Her nose wrinkled. She wasn’t hungry, but her experience on scientific research missions in less than hospitable environments had taught her the importance of eating and drinking when you could. She accepted the sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. Ham, cheese and tomato. She chewed determinedly and swallowed.

  “I didn’t sense the ghoul at all.” Dean ate beside her, quick and efficient, scanning the environment for threats and her for…

  “I’m okay,” she said to him, answering the worry that deepened the blue of his eyes and creased his forehead.

  “You don’t look it,” he said bluntly.

  She took off her hat. The light wind felt good against her scalp. “My weather magic doesn’t flow naturally into a summoning pattern. I had to concentrate.” And push a lot of power to make up for the misfit between trying to reach across dimensions which is what a summoning is, and the grounded-in-this-world nature of my magic. “We’ll have to try back on the graveled area by the barns. I feel safer here with my feet in the dirt and the ground alive under us, but if the ghoul will resist the summoning less in the ruins of Millie’s house or on the graveled area then that’s where I’ll try.”

  “Gravel, then.” They’d already discussed this back at the cabin. It was Plan B. He unwrapped a chocolate bar and held it out to her.

  She accepted it, feeling an unaccustomed warmth at how naturally he looked after her. Not that she needed looking after. “Thanks.”

  He changed the subject. Perhaps he hoped to give her mind and emotions a rest as she physically recovered. “I can see why Aunt Millie chose to live here.” Monarch butterflies danced over a patch of milkweed at the edge of the clearing he’d cut. He leant forward and snapped a daisy growing near his foot. “Do you think she’ll rebuild?” He snapped a second daisy, the golden pollen dusting his fingers.

  Beulah glanced away, caught unaware by his question; although it was a natural enough question to ask. However, Millie was dying, not thinking of rebuilding.

  Dean must have read the sadness in her expression. “What is it?” He leant toward her.

  She cleared her throat, swallowing tears and chocolate. The tears surprised her.

  He must have seen their sheen in her eyes. “Forget it. We’re dealing with the ghoul.” He would have moved away, but she gripped his arm.

  “When the ghoul is gone, Mrs. Johnson will be able to contact Millie. I’m not trying to hide your aunt from you, Dean. I don’t know where she is.”

  “But you don’t think she’s coming home,” he said heavily.

  She drew a steadying breath, inhaling not just air, but calling the energy in the weather into her magic. “I think it’s a good thing you came looking for your aunt, and we’re going to kick that ghoul’s ass so that you can talk with Millie.”

  He nodded somberly. Incongruously, he was stringing daisies into a chain, one flower sliding into the punctured stem of the next. He changed the subject yet again. “Why did you choose to live here? Are the mountains magical?”

  “No more than normal. I—” She wasn’t sure he’d understand her choice of home, far from family in England and from the ocean-based science jobs she hired on for, but she suddenly wanted to give him more of the truth than a straight forward explanation could convey. Her gaze fell to the daisy chain spilling across his jeans. “I’m not artistic.”

  “O-kay.” A dubious, faint hint of a smile curved his mouth. He was uncertain where she was going with her answer.

  She gestured around at the woods and mountains and the puffy, white cumulous clouds. “When I’m here, I feel as if I could paint. I see the beauty of things. A flash of metallic-blue from a dragonfly darting over the river. The green of the trees, then their leaves turning the colors of fall. I love the mountains in winter, secretive in snow. I live here because this place touches my soul.” Shyness uncharacteristically gripped her. Sharing this sort of heart truth made a person vulnerable.

  He reached over and placed the daisy chain in a circlet on her head. “You’re a woman of the mountains.” His blue eyes were warm with admiration and comprehension.

  She smiled, appreciating the title of woman that he bestowed with the daisy chain. He didn’t call her queen or princess, but something stronger and real. She liked the whimsy of the daisy chain, too. Her smiled widened.

  “One of the moms on base taught us how to make the chains when I was a kid.”

  Hearing that, the circlet of daisies felt extra-special. Beulah thought of the woman who’d brought magic of the most summery, ordinary kind to a pack of military kids. She’d given them an example of everyday romance and a good memory. One that Dean had just gifted to her. “Thank you.”

  The interlude and his smile restored her spirits more than the last of the chocolate that she popped into her mouth before crumpling the empty wrapper and stuffing it into her bag of supplies. She looked down at them. “I only have enough for one more attempt, so let’s hope the ghoul can be summoned on the gravel.”

  Unease snaked down Dean’s spine. He trusted Beulah, and he was amused and touched by how carefully she’d tucked his daisy chain crown into her bag, but it was the fact that he trusted her that made her evasions as to his aunt’s location and well-being ominous. She was hiding bad news from him, which made his aunt’s disappearance a puzzle he couldn’t relinquish. Whatever Aunt Millie’s problem was, he doubted it was magical in nature. His aunt had chosen Mrs. Johnson as her intermediary, and the old lady wasn’t magical.

  Nor was Mrs. Johnson the sort of person that Aunt Millie would involve in anything criminal. If his aunt had been going undercover, she’d have used one of her journalist or editor friends as a contact. Using an elderly neighbor to relay messages, even a simple one of not wanting to be reached, suggested a personal problem. Likely medical.

  Dean thought of his dad stuck in a hospital bed, his broken leg suspended in traction. Even the toughest person could be rendered helpless.

  He stowed the empty bags in the tray of the pickup beside the string trimmer and hitched himself up to sit and watch Beulah set out the summoning.

  The brief rest, and the food and drink, had helped her, but she still looked tired.

  His crash course in magic had done little more than teach him that it was real and that it had consequences. By the heavy way Beulah moved, the summoning she’d tried in the grass clearing had exhausted her as much as a five mile run. Now, she intended to repeat the attempt.

  If they waited till nighttime, she probably wouldn’t need to summon the ghoul. It would seek them out. They had interfered too often with its activities for it to ignore them. Dean knew that it was the likelihood of the ghoul’s attack that had Beulah attempting to preempt it, now. In daylight, she would be stronger and the ghoul weaker. Darkness would reverse the balance of power.

  “I’m going to start.” She gave him a quiet warning.

  “I’ll keep watch.” He landed lightly back on the ground, moving away from the pickup so that he could see everything. “Good luck.”

  She washed her hands in a pottery bowl filled with rainwater, then lit the candles before standing at the northern point of t
he pentagram. She spoke the words of the summoning three times: in English, then in Latin, and again in English. If she’d had the ghoul’s true name, the book on basic demonology claimed it would be easier; or at least, true naming made the summoning of demons easier.

  Did ghouls even have names?

  He cut off the question. He was on guard duty, not filling in time with metaphysical musings.

  The chant curled, low and purposeful, through the graveled space, over the ruined barns, into the woods and orchard, and extended further, calling the ghoul.

  Unnamed, unmourned, unborn,

  the five points summon you.

  They call you by earth, water, fire, air and life.

  There is no escape.

  Seek your destiny

  in the truth that calls you.

  Beulah halted, arms by her side, palms up.

  He’d watched her create the chant at the cabin’s kitchen table, composing it in English, then cracking open a Latin dictionary and painstakingly translating it; muttering as she did so that maybe her school’s Latin lessons hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

  He thought he smelled rain, like the edge of a thunderstorm, but when he breathed deeply, the scent was gone. The mountains were cool and fresh, more like spring than summer; completely lacking the humidity of Washington D.C.. He liked them, but in surveilling the landscape, he’d have preferred less trees and more open ground. There were too many places to hide in the woods and apple orchard.

  Although a ghoul could probably take him by surprise no matter the landscape. The way that thing materialized was the essence of spooky. He hadn’t missed the root-like form at the base of the ghoul’s blue fog body in the cemetery. It was creepy and unnatural.

  He swatted at a fly that buzzed around his left ear.

  Beulah repeated the summoning chant. Seek your destiny in the truth that calls you.