Texas Gothic

38



this time I woke up cold, not hot, and not moving. At least, I tried to convince my stomach of that. I cracked open one eyelid, then the other, and my vision was filled with Ben McCulloch, lying on his side facing me, and looking like hell.

I’m not sure what alerted him to my waking, but he asked, “Are you okay?”

Swallowing first, I managed to croak, “That’s a hell of a question from a guy who looks like he went two rounds in a cage match.”

He smiled ruefully, then winced as the motion pulled at his split lip. “Have you ever been to a cage match?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I don’t look that bad.”

But he did look bad. Awful and wonderful and frustrating. His lip was swollen and split, and so was the bridge of his nose. There was blood all over his face and his cheek was bruised, and he was going to have a black eye soon, too.

“Where are we?” I tried to lift my head to look, but it was so heavy, I left it down for a little while longer.

“A cave.” He paused and corrected himself. “A mine, I guess. Twenty-first-century claim jumpers. It really is a plot out of a movie. They’ve been blasting small sections, trying to follow a vein of ore. That was the sound we kept hearing.”

“Gold?” That motivated me to sit up. Or work at it, anyway. My head still pounded, but my stomach seemed willing to behave.

Ben rolled over on to his back with a groan. “Don’t be greedy, Amaryllis.”

“Ben, this could be Los Almagres. The lost Spanish mine.”

He chuckled, then winced. “It would serve that bastard Mike Kelly right. Your Mad Monk’s expedition might not have made it back to Mexico with a report, but others did. Los Almagres was abandoned because they never found anything worth the trouble of refining.”

A chill eddied through the chamber. “Don’t call him that,” I whispered.

Pushing himself up onto his elbow, he looked at me closely. “ ‘Your’ ghost?”

“The Mad Monk. He’s not a monk.”

“But the madness is debatable?”

The nape of my neck prickled under my hair, and I snapped, “Ben!”

He sat up too abruptly but didn’t pause to moan about it. “Amy, it’s just …” He stumbled over saying it aloud. “… a spirit. You’re a person. You’re the one in control.”

I stared at him, baffled. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I’ve met you, moron.”

Warmth chased away the chill. A blush, and a memory that had no business intruding now.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “And why didn’t you get away while you could? I had the sense to run, so who’s the moron?”

“Phin called me.”

I struggled to process that simple phrase. “Phin called you,” I clarified. “And you just … came? Without any proof?”

He shifted, as if uncomfortable with the reminder of our argument. “The proof was in her voice. She said I would know where you were, because it was dark and underground. I immediately thought of your bat cave. I was on my way there when I saw you sprinting across the pasture.”

A horrible thought shuddered through me. “Phin’s not coming here, is she?”

“No. Well, yes, but she and Mark went to contact the state troopers. She said Grandpa Mac told her never to trust a Kelly.”

The shudder broadened to shake my whole, aching body. “Speaking of Kelly …”

“And Sparks. God, I can’t believe I trusted him. My whole family did.”

“Where are they?”

Sobering from his ire, Ben avoided my gaze, so I knew it wasn’t someplace good. “They’re going to park my truck at your house. Then I believe the plan is …”

“To flip Stella into a ravine with us in her.” I looked around the cavern, which was fairly bare. I couldn’t see any sunlight from the cave mouth, and the slope up was hidden in darkness. “Are we trapped?”

“They put something over the opening and then parked a truck on it. They’ve got their routine down.”

“Not to be flippant about it or anything, but I wonder why they didn’t just, you know.” I mimed hitting myself over the head. “Cosh us before they left.”

“How should I know?” he snapped. “Maybe they’re worried about time of death. Everyone knows about those things now, thanks to television.”

I snorted to hear him echoing Emery, and then shivered as the barrier of unreality crumbled. This was my time of death we were talking about. Mine and Ben’s.

“Cold?” he asked.

Eyes closed, I nodded, and heard him slide over on the stone floor. A moment later he wrapped me in his arms from behind, pulling me tight against his chest. His body heat seeped into me, and his breath warmed my neck. Even under the circumstances, it was a nice way to hear him murmur, “I’m sorry.”

“For what? I mean, for what lately?” I twisted to look at his battered face. “Do not say ‘for getting us killed.’ ”

He raised his brows carefully. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Because we’re not going to get killed,” I asserted.

“Or,” he contended, “because that’s not my fault.” Then he rubbed his hands on my bare arms, chafing away the goose bumps. “And because we’re not going to get killed.”

“Right.” After a moment I melted back against him. “Then what are you sorry for?”

He took his time to answer, but we weren’t going anywhere. “From way back at the beginning, I blamed things on your aunt that I shouldn’t have. And this morning … I was really unfair.”

“You were a jerk.”

This time he agreed without hesitation. “I was a jerk. But …” He paused, and I wondered if this was just another version of the same send-off. “Your life, Amy … it’s a lot to take in. And very chaotic.”

“There are rules,” I said. “And before now I’ve always been able to keep things contained. Magic world, non-magic world. You’ve just met me right at the moment that everything sort of … broke loose.”

“Then I was doubly a jerk for taking my frustration out on you. And for not understanding when you said you were following up the Mad Monk legend. If I hadn’t argued, maybe we wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh my God.” I sat up and twisted again to face him. “You’re apologizing because you think we’re going to die.”

He stared at me. “What?”

“You want to die with a clear conscience.”

“Amy,” he said, “I don’t want to die at all.”

I looked him right in the eye. “What if Phin and Mark don’t get here with the troopers in time? Do you think Sparks and Kelly are really capable of going through with their plan?”

His hand came up to gingerly touch the bruise on his cheekbone. “Mike Kelly would.” He said it with certainty, and I wondered what other bruises he had that didn’t show. Someone—a Kelly, I guessed, from his answer—had really worked him over.

“We have to get out of here.” I didn’t know what made me say it with such force, or why the awful feeling of being trapped and waiting for rescue had turned to the worse feeling of being trapped and waiting to get thrown off a ravine to my death. Other than the rational fear of that, of course. Some sureness was coiling tight in my chest, and I didn’t question it.

Ben dropped his hands to his knees, ready for any suggestion. “If you’ve got some spell for lifting a half ton of truck, I won’t complain.”

I chewed on my lip, thinking hard. “Phin could probably magically MacGyver something, but that’s not my thing.”

“What is your thing?”

“Ghosts.” Saying it aloud seemed to solidify something in my mind. It felt real and tangible. True.

“That’s not particularly helpful in this situation,” said Ben, harshing my moment of self-actualization. “Unless your ghost can lift a half-ton truck.”

“Maybe it can.” I didn’t know. Believing one thing had just left me with more questions. “I do know it’s warned me twice about danger,” I told him. “I mean, it nearly froze me to death, but it kept Sparks from finding me the other night.”

Cuidado. I could almost hear the ghost now. Was that why I was so certain we couldn’t wait on Phin to bring the authorities?

“I’m going to call it.” The idea was on my lips before it had fully formed in my brain. “Maybe if it could warn me before it can help us now.”

Ben raised his hands, as if holding me back. “Whoa. Didn’t you just say this thing nearly froze you to death?”

“Yeah, it did, but I think I can control things now. You said it. I’m the human. This is my world, my rules.”

“Amy, honey.” He rubbed my arm gently, as if telling me bad news. “You shouldn’t listen to me. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

I ignored him—because he was right—and stood, wobbling only slightly. Ben pushed himself to his feet using a stalactite. Or stalagmite. The stone was all dry, which meant this wasn’t a living, growing cave, but stable. Or maybe not, if people were blowing holes in it.

I found the knotted spot in my psyche that had looped tight the night of Aunt Hyacinth’s call, feeling the tug of the bond in that place deep inside. The place where you got hunches, where you dug down deep for courage.

My head pounded with the effort I put into my thoughts—Come to me. Help me. If I don’t get out of here, I’ll never find you.

Nothing happened. I opened my eyes, looked around for confirmation that all was still, that the air was cave-cool, not cold.

This was going to suck if I failed in front of Ben. It was going to suck if I failed and died, but if Ben weren’t here, at least no one would know about it.

He must have seen the doubt in my face. “You controlled it before. I saw you.”

“Yeah.” The stabs of doubt faded to pinpricks.

“Maybe you need to speak Spanish.”

I didn’t quite groan. “Great. Señora Markowitz would be laughing now.”

Shaking myself out, much like Daisy had done, I spread my fingers and toes, the flex of tendon and muscle sending warmth and energy to my extremities.

“Venga aquí. Venga a mí. Ayúdame a encontrarle.” I hesitated a moment, then added, “Por favor.” Because politeness never hurt.

Air currents swirled against my skin, a coolness on my flushed cheeks that stirred my hair and soothed my headache. The air swirled faster as I flexed my fingers again. Controlling the moment, but giving up my stubborn, fearful grip on the mundane world and giving in to the Goodnight one. Falling down the rabbit hole, and not worrying how I would get back out.

The light was electric and white, not luminous and blue.

“Turn off the lantern, Ben.”

After the smallest hesitation, he did as I asked. In the utter blackness, the current strengthened. Icy fingers lifted my hair, and steam collected in front of my mouth. I could see it in the faint glow coming from deeper in the cavern.

Búscame …

The word breathed through my mind.

I felt for Ben’s hand and held tight. “I think we need to go that way.”

“I thought you were calling it to you,” he said.

“My Spanish is a little rusty.” I looked up at him, barely able to see his outline in the spectral light. “But do you want to stay here?”

He cast a quick look around the cave, the dead end of our current situation, and squeezed my fingers. “Let’s go, then.”

The light led to a passageway, became brighter as we followed it through twists and turns. The passage narrowed until Ben had to squeeze through, and I saw him pale with pain as the rock dug into his ribs.

I wanted to let him rest, but an urgency pulled me forward. When I’d connected with the psychic knot inside me, it had drawn inexorably tight.

When the passage got too low I dropped to my knees and crawled. I finally emerged into a small chamber. The ghostly glow suffused the space, illuminating a dead end, and a dead man.

The skeletal remains of the soldier were dry and ancient and lay sprawled on a fall of earth like a rocky bed. The tatters of a uniform still clung to the bones, but the buckles and buttons and insignia had fallen ignominiously from the scraps of cloth.

Ben, muttering pained curses, squeezed through the entrance into the small cave, falling onto the floor with a grunt. “Your ghost,” he wheezed, “must hate me.”

“Shhh.” I knew better, from working on the dig that week, but I reached out anyway, picking up a brass crest, marveling at how old it was. It was still shiny under a layer of tarnish. “Ben, look. He was a soldier.”

He did look. He looked at the bones, then looked around the cavern, which was barely tall enough for him to stand up and stretch his arms. “This isn’t an escape, Amy. It’s a tomb.”