The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) Read online

  When I finished my story about Janice, the women sat there and thought about it. Finally, the detective shook her head. “Okay, I get it, you were doing some pretty crazy things. Now, tell me what happened with Colette and Portatori.”

  “Okay, well, as it works out, that was right after my session with Janice...”

  Excuses

  I finished my (again edited for content) story with, “I didn’t think anything else about it. I mean it was strange, but not that strange.”

  Detective Hunter’s sharp eyebrows could be used as lethal weapons. “You didn’t think it was strange that a woman did a flying tackle of a grown man in the middle of the street?”

  “Look, it was on the sidewalk, and I didn’t have any idea what she had gone through with this guy. I had no clue if he deserved it or not. And besides, she’s French.”

  Jen rolled her eyes in (I felt) over-dramatic exasperation. “Really, Finn? Are you saying you expect to go to France and see French babes tackling guys around the city?

  I scowled. “No, I’m saying I don’t claim to be an expert on foreign standards of behavior!”

  “Okay Finn, calm down,” said Hunter. “If she could wipe the sidewalk with this guy, why do you think she killed him?”

  I squinched my face and put my hand on my forehead. I really didn’t want to admit to this next part. Having scorn heaped upon you in a hospital room when you have no underwear should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. There should be a constitutional amendment against it. As soon as I was out of here, I was—.

  “Finn? Are you okay?” I dropped my hand, opened my eyes and took in Jen’s concerned face. That helped.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m fine. But listen, I already know I’m a world-class idiot, okay? You guys don’t have to point it out any more.”

  They both smiled.

  I said, “I’m serious. If I go on, you have to promise you won’t laugh at me or call me names or anything, okay?”

  Spring said, Hey, I’m not going to make any promises like that. I told you that girl was no good.

  You did not! You loved her.

  That’s just because she took us dancing.

  Jen said, “Okay, I apologize, Finn. Cross my heart, I’ll be good.”

  Hunter nodded agreement.

  I didn’t believe either of them for a minute, but I felt a little better.

  “Right,” said the detective. “Go on, Finn. When did you meet Mr. McCormick?”

  “Right. Well, okay...” As, I tried to collect my thoughts, Hunter’s impatience became more than obvious. “I’m getting to it! I just have to think about what happened.”

  I brightened with a memory.

  “You asked me why I didn’t think about Colette being involved in Pietro’s death sooner. Well, in my defense, I thought Pietro was killed while we were out of town. It was a while before I learned that he’d actually been killed before we left. Also, she looked so stunned when she was told about his death that I was sure she couldn’t be faking.”

  “Perhaps you need to work on your lie-detection skills, Finn,” said Jen.

  “Jen...”

  “Okay, I’m sorry, tell us about Mr. McCormick.”

  “Well, it was after Colette and I had gone dancing.”

  Jen looked shocked. “You went dancing?”

  Tell Us About Your Date

  Jen looked a bit wistful when she asked, “Did you go to Trax?” I was surprised she even knew about it, but on reflection, I realized that even though she was six months younger than me, she was a lot more worldly.

  “No, you couldn’t get me into that place at gunpoint.”

  “Why not? I heard it was awesome!”

  Crap, I so didn’t want to tell her about it.

  Detective Hunter’s mobile lips broke into an evil grin and she said, “Bad memories, I would think. He got into a fight with a guy who was jealous about Finn dancing with his boyfriend. I had to pick him up and take him home.”

  “You were dancing with a guy?” I could see the wheels turning behind Jen’s surprised eyes.

  “I’m not gay!”

  “I didn’t say you were.” Jen pulled back, eyes growing even larger. Detective Hunter barked a laugh at my response. Spring echoed her in my head. This was so unfair!

  Hunter eye’s danced as she said, “It was his experimental phase. He’s over it now.”

  “I am not! I mean I never was. You promised you wouldn’t laugh!”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, Finn.” She cleared her throat, put on a serious attentive look and said, “Mr. Morgenstern, please continue.”

  Jen smiled at me. “Yes Mr. Morgenstern, do go on.” My glare was obviously less than intimidating, but they remained silent and I told them about how the man followed us.

  “Once we got to Colette’s hotel...” I remembered our cover story. “We went up to her room and found McCormick’s body on the floor.”

  Hunter’s eyes narrowed, “Wait a minute, if you were with her the entire time, why did you tell me she killed McCormick?”

  Oh crap.

  Grab the tray, hit her over the head and run! said Spring.

  Spring please!

  “...I did?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  You really suck at lying, dude.

  Hunter squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced. Spring was right, I might as well have a nose that grew when I lied.

  “Finn, when was she out of your sight and for how long?”

  I said in a small voice, “She went up to her room alone. When she didn’t come right back, I went to find her.”

  “And when you found her?”

  I really didn’t want to say it, but I did, “She was in the room alone with McCormick and had her gun in her hand.”

  “Is there anything else I need to know about, Finn?”

  Just that you took the security video equipment.

  “No.”

  “You don’t seem sure about that. Finn, did you leave anything else out?”

  I looked up at the scowling, frightening face of Detective Hunter.

  “No, honest!”

  “If I find out you are lying to me...”

  “That’s it, I swear! You know everything else.”

  Jen sat up and said, “Wait, I don’t know what else happened!”

  Hunter nodded curtly at my silent question.

  “After we’d been interviewed a couple of times, Detective Hunter asked Colette to come down to the station with her. It seems there were some ‘irregularities’ in her visa.”

  “Well, what story did you tell the police?” asked Jen.

  I shrugged to the detective apologetically.

  “Except for altering the fact that we went in separately, we told them the truth.”

  “Not quite,” said Hunter with a glare. “You also ‘forgot’ to mention anything to do with Pietro. Finn, I hope you realize how much trouble you’re in.”

  I swallowed back the bile attempting to rise up my throat. “How much?”

  “A lot. Lying to the police on a murder investigation is a serious offense. There will probably be some jail time involved, and it will go on your permanent record.”

  I gulped. “Doesn’t it count that I’m telling you now?”

  “It depends on the judge.”

  That’s it, we have to escape. We can go to Canada and use our hoodoo to get a fake ID. They’ll never find us.

  We can’t run from this, Spring!

  Sure, we can. Especially if the alternative is rotting in a jail cell for the rest of our lives.

  I swallowed and asked, “I don’t suppose there’s some way we can maybe sweep this under the rug?”

  Yeah! We lied for her last time.

  She shook her head at me. “I don’t see how. This is critical information. I can’t ignore this, Finn,” said Hunter.

  I looked away from the anger on Detective Hunter’s face and glanced at Jen for a little support. If anything, her glare was hotter than
Hunter’s. I cringed a bit, and that set her off.

  “Finn, how could you be such an idiot? Couldn’t you tell that she was just playing you? Her whole story’s ridiculous. I bet she came here just to steal the Caduceus.”

  “Jen, you don’t understand! Even now, I can’t believe she was lying the whole time. Nobody can fake being that scared and, uh, other things so well.”

  “Are you really that stupid around women? Finn, she broke into your house and stabbed you!”

  “No, I don’t think...”

  “She’s right, Finn,” said Hunter. “It looks like this woman played you for all you were worth. It’s just sheer dumb luck that you aren’t dead.”

  Jen shared her contemptuous glare with the detective. “If she was in custody, how did she escape?”

  Hunter shook her head, “She didn’t, she was taken off our hands by Homeland Security a few days ago.” She scowled ferociously. “If we had known she was a suspect in two murders, we could have kept her, and none of this would have happened.”

  “How’d she get away from Homeland Security?” asked Jen.

  Victoria’s mouth set even harder. I could see the muscles working her jaw as they tried to crush her teeth. “I intend to find out. Meanwhile Finn, I’m going to leave a guard on your door here till the doctor gives you a clean bill of health, and then I’m going to have to move you to the jail.”

  “Oh, come on! You know me. I’m not going to run.”

  That’s right, make her feel guilty—enough to let you go home—then we can run.

  “I’m more worried about your psychopathic girlfriend trying to kill you and take your stick again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Finn, is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing semi. It took all my will power to just shake my head and stop myself from spilling everything.

  “Okay, if you think of anything, you will tell me, right?”

  I nodded. Detective Hunter turned and left. Unfortunately, Jen wasn’t done with me yet.

  “I just can’t believe you were this dumb, Finn. You’re one of the smartest guys I know.”

  I started to get angry. “Look, I admit it. I screwed up. You don’t have to keep beating me over the head with it, okay? I made a mistake!”

  She leaned back and her face slowly softened. I just plopped back in my bed, happy to have the silence. I found I could more effectively berate and kick myself when someone else wasn’t busy doing it, too. She was right, how could I be such an idiot? Even now, I couldn’t fully accept that I hadn’t made some sort of connection with Colette and that something else wasn’t going on.

  She’s right, Finn. You’re completely hopeless around women.

  Gee thanks, Spring.

  I’m just saying...

  “I can find her,” said Jen with a soft voice.

  That interrupted my self-pity party with Spring. “What?”

  “I can find her, you know.”

  “What? How?”

  “You know how you left some bits of Il Saia in me?”

  “Only because your dad hit me in the face before I was completely finished.”

  “Well, it was a good thing he did, because I’ve been making sense of some of the knowledge about hoodoo she left behind. How do you think I knew to find you at the hospital?”

  “I just assumed that you’d called my parents at home or something.”

  “They were both here, and you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “Oh. So, how did you know to come here?”

  “A lot of things I remember from Il Saia don’t seem to work, or are not useful, but some of it, like tracking and remote seeing, does work. I can track people if I have something of theirs.”

  “Really? What do you have of mine?”

  “The crystal Il Saia used to reverse the effects of the dreamstone.”

  “Oh, that’s cool.” I’d forgotten completely about it while dealing with the aftermath of everything earlier this summer, some of which I’ve mentioned. It’s a long, complicated story, but I can summarize what happened with Jen pretty simply. She was possessed by the mind of an ancient priestess of hoodoo, Il Saia, which had been transferred to a crystal a long time ago when her people had lost a terrible battle against an ancient enemy. That same priestess, while she was possessing Jen’s body, helped me restore Jen’s mind, even though it erased the priestess from existence once again. She left a lot unsaid and unknown. We didn’t know where or when Il Saia came from, only that there was some weird, powerful hoodoo in the world she came from, and the earth was threatened with invasion by the ancient enemy who released the shadows on the world to destroy all life. Il Saia and her people had done something to neutralize the threat of the shadows, but destroyed their own civilization in the process. Over the last few months of baseless conjecture and head pounding, we’d come to believe that she had somehow banished the hoodoo from our world. My friends and I had debated it endlessly, but we just didn’t know enough. The only thing we did know is that there was some hoodoo left in the world, and I carried a big chunk of it around my neck in the form of a twisted black piece of driftwood—wood from the Tree of Life before it was destroyed.

  “If we can get hold of something of hers, I think I can find her,” said Jen.

  “That won’t be a problem,” I said. I threw off the covers and hopped out of bed. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “What? You just got stabbed!”

  “And I feel fine.” I grabbed my clothes from their little cubby and motioned for Jen to look at the wall. I turned away from her for good measure. I pulled on my pants and turned around while I was putting my shirt on. When my head popped out, I met Jen’s appreciative gaze. She was grinning at me.

  “Hey, no fair peeking!”

  “Boy, you are looking mighty fine these days, no wonder this Colette wench wanted to waggle her thang for you.”

  I blushed and finished pulling my shirt down. “Ha, ha, very funny.”

  “Finn, your twelve pack is turning into a six pack.”

  “Well, Spring and I have been working out a lot.”

  “She’s good for you.”

  I smiled ruefully. “That’s what she keeps telling me.”

  It’s about time you recognized that.

  You know I love you, babe.

  Damn straight.

  “Are you ready to go?” I asked. “We’ve got to get out of here before my parents get back.”

  “What are you going to do about the patrolman standing, I mean sitting, guard out there.”

  “Watch and learn young Padawan. The force has power over weak minds.” I said a little prayer that my guard wasn’t strong willed or something, like the guy in the hotel the other night.

  Turns out he wasn’t. Through a crack in the door, I could see he was busy nodding off.

  Just give him a little nudge and we can walk out of here.

  No, Spring, I don’t want anyone else getting grief because of me.

  I searched the room for a pen and paper and then wrote a note, folded it up and opened the door. “Hey, officer.”

  He jerked up and looked at me. “I’m sorry sir, but you can’t leave your room.”

  I nodded and said, “I know.” I put some hoodoo into it. “Can you give this note to Detective Hunter for me?”

  “Sure.”

  I handed him the note. “Please don’t read it, it’s personal.”

  “No problem.”

  I motioned for Jen to come out and told the guard, “You are wide awake and no one has left this room since Detective Hunter. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, “Yes sir.”

  “Okay, this young lady and I are just going to walk down the hall. You’ve never seen us before. We just paused to ask you the time.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s two thirty-seven.”

  “Thanks officer!” said Jen, and we walked away. Despite the fatigue that hit me
after using my Jedi mind tricks, I felt pretty good. I looked at Jen with a smirk and waggled my eyebrows.

  “Show off. I could do that too, if I had the Caduceus.”

  “In your dreams.”

  She stuck her startlingly pink tongue out at me and we headed out a back entrance.

  “What did you write on the note?”

  “I said, ‘I used the Caduceus to compel this fine officer to do as I asked, please do not take it out on him. No one else would have done any better.’ “

  “She’s going to blow a gasket, Finn.”

  “I know.” I really didn’t want contemplate how horrible it would be. My guts gurgled and threatened mutiny. It could have been from my lunch, but I seriously doubted it.

  Chasing Colette

  Several hours later, three of us sat in Jen’s car going through Colette’s suitcase, which we had liberated from my father’s car. According to Jen, she needed something that had a good magical connection to Colette. (We agreed not to use the word ‘magic’, but ‘hoodoodical’ sounds silly.) Apparently, at least some hoodoo operated the way people have assumed for generations. The magical “Law of Contagion” states that, once connected in some way, objects maintained that connection even after they were separated. There are others, like the “Law of Similarity,” which states that similar objects are similarly connected. The more they are alike, the stronger the connection. It reflects the way our brains work. I guess it made sense. If we evolved in a magical environment, it would change the way we thought.

  Jen was squinting at Colette’s hairbrush. “Either she is the cleanest person in the world, or she never brushes her hair.”

  “Can I see?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She tossed me the brush, and I examined it. There was not a single hair to be found.

  I frowned at the brush and tossed it back to Jen. “Well, if she knows about hoodoo too, maybe she makes sure not to leave any hair lying about.”

  Dave’s head rested on the middle of the front seat as he watched the proceedings from the back with interest. “I think your best bet is a pair of her underwear. It holds and protects her most private parts, and that soft silky fabric must feel really good against her warm, supple—”