Nine of Stars Read online

  “Hi,” Petra said, shifting her burdens. “Do you happen to have any rock salt?”

  The young woman shook her head. “Sold out. Storm’s coming.”

  Petra glanced outside. “Do you know anyone who has any?”

  “Everyone’s sold out. Try Monday.”

  Petra frowned. “Thanks.” Monday would be way too late. She’d have to get it some other way. She rearranged her packages and stepped out to the street. True to the young woman’s word, there was no residue of salt on the sidewalk. She scuttled back to Stan’s and walked around the alley to the back of the store, where Gabe had kept the engine of the Bronco running.

  She popped the tailgate and loaded the stuff up. Paper grocery sacks were already there, full of dog kibble, jerky, bottled water, and batteries. Sig clambered over the backseat to sniff the tent, sneezing at the dust. When she got the gear stowed, she shut the tailgate and climbed to the passenger seat.

  “It won’t be long before Stan calls the sheriff.”

  “That’s okay,” Gabe said. “I got everything we needed from Bear’s Deli.” He hooked a thumb at the grocery bags in the back.

  “Did Bear say anything?”

  “I came in with Sig, and he gave Sig a bag of beef jerky. Told me to avoid the camera above the gas pumps.”

  She knew Bear would be cool. He’d seen Gabe with her before, and she was confident he wasn’t in a hurry to rat them out.

  “But we’ve got supplies, a full tank of gas, and we’re ready to go.”

  “Great.” Petra snuggled deep into the seat. “Let’s go hunt a ghost.”

  “Do you really think you should be driving?”

  Owen squinted through the windshield, bringing the stainless-steel coffee cup to his lips. He had the worst Ambien hangover known to man, and was determined not to show it. It was, however, apparent to Anna. She sat cross-legged in the passenger seat of his SUV, spinning a piece of blond hair through her fingers as he cruised down the road.

  “Eh. Probably not,” he admitted, fishing around in the console for his sunglasses to block the burning brightness of day. But he wasn’t going to let his hangover stop him. He just needed a while for those double-shot espressos from Sal’s fancy espresso maker to seep into his system. He’d drunk the first one in the shower, and he figured that it should start kicking in. Any time.

  His cell phone sang, and he cast about in his coat pocket for the source of the sound. The SUV tires skidded in the slush, and Anna squeaked. He got the SUV back under control as he found the phone.

  “What is it?” he snapped.

  The voice on the other end was cheerfully chirpy. “Sheriff? This is Stan, from the pawnshop.”

  “Hey, Stan. What’s up?” Stan was one of Owen’s favorite informants. He’d blab to anyone who would slip him a twenty. Owen knew that he was the kind of guy who’d play both sides against the middle, but he’d gotten some useful leads from him.

  “The geologist, Petra Dee, was in here a little while ago. Looks like she’s going on a trip.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Owen’s brows drew together.

  “Yeah. She came around, picking up a whole bunch of gear.”

  “Like what?”

  “Tent. Ammunition. Men’s and women’s clothes. And gold coins.”

  Gotcha, Owen thought. “Did she say where she’s going?”

  “She said she was stocking up for the storm.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “But she asked about Skinflint Jack. Bought a trap that belonged to him, for a lot more than it was worth.”

  Owen rubbed his temple. “That’s the wolf-killer guy from the park, right?”

  “Yes. Dunno if any of this info is of any use to you, but—”

  “Thanks, Stan. I’ll make a direct deposit to your account.” Owen hung up and squinted into the glaring morning light. So she was going on a trip to Yellowstone, and with a man. Likely this Gabriel character. She would know that Owen had no jurisdiction in the park. It was federal land, and his jurisdiction ended at the gate.

  Not that it would stop him. He had a nose full of a mystery, and he wanted—no, he needed—to interrogate this guy. Gabriel was the last man standing in the middle of a helluva pile of secrets.

  Owen pulled a U-turn and headed to Petra’s trailer. Maybe he could still catch them before they left. He drove through the single stoplight in Temperance and turned right at the edge of town. As he rolled down the gravel road, he noted that the snow was smooth. There were no tracks here. No one had been here in at least a day.

  Swearing under his breath, he stopped the SUV near the trailer and jumped out. He stalked up to the door and pounded on it. As before, no one answered. He noted that his business card was gone.

  Owen was not taking no for an answer. He pulled the screen door open and examined the lock on the door. It was a simple one. He didn’t bother to get his lock pick set out of the glove box. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, found a gift card for a restaurant he never visited. He slid the plastic behind the tongue of the lock, fished around for a moment . . .

  . . . and the door opened. Owen drew his service pistol and nudged his way in.

  The trailer was dark and cold. The heat was turned down to fifty degrees—enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but not suitable for human occupation. Maybe someone had turned it down for a day away from the trailer, maybe longer. He glanced around the tiny kitchen, noting there were no dishes in the sink and a half-full bag of dog food leaning beside the refrigerator. Inside the fridge were a few bottles of pop, some ketchup packets, and a gallon of milk. Looked like someone intended to return sometime.

  He walked back to the sleeping area. A futon bed was unmade, rumpled blankets covered with dog hair. There was a built-in dresser opposite the futon, and Owen poked through the drawers. There were mostly women’s clothes—cargo pants, tank tops, and other utilitarian gear. But the bottom drawer held men’s flannel shirts and jeans. It wasn’t a case of haberdashery—the jeans were a different size. A man had been living here.

  His suspicions were confirmed as he poked through the bathroom. There were men’s shaving implements, along with unisex shampoo and soap. There were no toothbrushes, though.

  The medicine cabinet yielded no interesting medications that had potential for abuse. Just ibuprofen and aspirin.

  He peered under the bed and in the cabinets on the way out. No diaries, guns, cell phones, or computers. The trailer had no more secrets to yield.

  But he had enough. Enough to know that the suspect he sought was traveling with Petra Dee. They were armed, and heading into Yellowstone.

  Owen locked the door on the way out. They wouldn’t escape him.

  Chapter 11

  The End of the Road

  As much as she loved the Bronco, there was only so far it could take them.

  Petra drove first to the Tower Falls Ranger Station to get her geological gear: pickaxe, chisels, hammer, and lenses. Her tools were like a security blanket to her, and she never ventured into the backcountry without them. She left Gabe in the truck to fiddle with the maps, but Sig accompanied her to the station, trotting in like he owned the place.

  Ranger Sam greeted her at the front counter. He was literally up to his elbows in paper forms. There were bat droppings on the tallest stack, which didn’t seem to bother him. “Hi, Petra.”

  “Hey, Sam. Have you heard anything new about Mike?” She walked to the counter, her fingers chewing the edge of it nervously.

  “He’s doing better,” Sam said. “They’re still gonna keep him for a couple days, make sure his head injury is clear and his ribs aren’t going to slide around. But he’s chomping at the bit to get out.”

  “That sounds like progress.”

  “Yeah. He’s keen to get on the trail of that wolf-killer.” Sam’s mouth turned down. “There are a dozen rangers already out there, looking for that guy. But aerial searches are gonna have to wait until these winds blow through.”

  “Hey,
I’ve got a couple of loose ends to tie up for USGS . . . is there a good place in the northwest area of the park to rent a snowmobile?”

  “Yeah, but you’d better get down there before they close for the day.” Sam pulled out a map of the park and marked it.

  “Thanks.” She folded the map and tucked it into her coat. “By the way . . . how’s Norbert?”

  Sam pointed up at the rafters. She followed his gesture and spied the tiny bat perched up on a rafter . . . with two other bats. All three had their eyes closed, huddled like a litter of kittens.

  “He’s brought friends?”

  “Yup. Pretty darn cute.”

  Petra grinned. “You’re gonna have to rename this place the ‘Bat Cave.’”

  Sam chuckled. “It’ll be the Bat Cave as long as they want to stay.”

  “Oh, while I’m thinking about it . . .” she said, as nonchalantly as she could. “Temperance is out of rock salt. Do you guys have a bag around here I could borrow?” These were ex-Boy Scouts. They were always prepared.

  “Unfortunately, we’re out. We keep hearing that a truck is gonna come in Monday. We got some beet juice in the back, if you wanna give that a try?”

  “Ah, nah. Thanks, anyway.”

  Petra gathered Sig from his water dish and picked up her gear from the conference room. She checked the break room for salt packets, came up empty, and headed back to the parking lot. Gabe had kept the heater on, and she savored the warmth of the Bronco as she pulled out of the lot.

  “How’s your friend?” he asked.

  “Doing okay, it sounds like. I’m sure that Maria will be stuffing him full of chicken soup the instant they let him out.”

  Gabe showed her a map, where he’d circled a tiny, unnamed pond. “This is Jack’s wishing pond.”

  She frowned. “That’s not far from where they found Mike.”

  “Then we stand a good chance of catching up with him.”

  She told him about what she’d learned from Stan, about the salt the unnamed old woman applied to the perimeter of the pond.

  Gabe seemed to ponder it. “She may have been on to something. Salt is one of the three most essential substances in alchemy, along with mercury and sulfur. Salt represents the body, the manifestation of will in the world.”

  “Temperance is sold out,” Petra said, chewing her lip. “But I’m betting I can find some in the backcountry.” No telling if that was for certain—pure halite was only found in the southeastern part of the park, far away from where they were going. But maybe, just maybe, she could dig up a suitable substitute.

  She drove deep into the park, past the east entrance, northwest, to the area Mike had last been seen. Side roads were closed with chains and sawhorse barricades; the main road was a packed-down dirty slick of snow.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this way,” Gabe remarked, staring out the window at the mountains and terraces.

  “Dare I ask how long?”

  “Maybe fifteen years?” Gabe wrinkled his forehead, as if having to count back. “When we had to return to the tree every night, it limited the extent of our excursions.”

  Petra squinted at the map, and she came to the snowmobile rental spot that Sam had suggested. It was just off the main road near Mammoth Springs, close enough to serve tourists. The location of the attack and Jack’s pond was at least six miles west.

  She and Gabe had to cough up their drivers’ licenses to the young man running the snowmobile shack and sign a stack of waivers, promising to have the snowmobiles back by five p.m. They also had to watch a fifteen-minute video about snowmobile operation and safety before the keys were surrendered.

  Once back out in the parking lot, Petra and Gabe loaded their gear from the Bronco evenly on the snow machines. Sig looked them up and down dubiously, not deigning to pee on either one.

  “Come here,” Petra said. While distracting him with a piece of beef jerky, she managed to get a harness around his chest. Once he realized what had happened, he stared at her morosely. She picked him up and sat him on the front seat of the snowmobile, clipping his harness to the frame for safety. He whined and gave her a baleful look. He’d been on a motorcycle before; she hoped he’d prove to be just as tolerant of the snow machine.

  “It’ll be okay, Sig. Honest.” She wrapped her legs around him, put the key in the engine, and cranked it over. Sig’s ears drooped, and she felt a sigh reverberating through his chest.

  She glanced back at Gabe, who was astride his own machine. He gave her the thumbs-up.

  Petra nodded and thumbed the accelerator, moving into the white wasteland that belonged to Skinflint Jack.

  Yellowstone was a vast place. One could easily disappear into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Dozens of men and women had disappeared here, likely rotting beneath tree roots and stream beds. Others had slipped through the forest’s fingers, lured to the other side and new lives, shedding their identities behind them like snakeskin. Once the park had swallowed a person, they could very well be gone for good.

  But Owen knew how to improve his odds.

  It took him only two phone calls to figure out which station Petra Dee used as a base for her work as a geologist. Owen showed up at the Tower Falls Ranger Station with less of a hangover, owing to the espresso finally kicking in. His left eye was twitching and he felt like fucking Superman. The station was empty, except for a single ranger peering up into the rafters with a flashlight.

  Owen flashed his badge. “I’m wondering if you’d seen Petra Dee lately. And if she was alone.”

  The ranger at the station regarded him with suspicion. Owen and the Feds had an uneasy working relationship. He knew they tended to view his department as a clusterfuck of parochial hicks playing rock-paper-scissors for turf. Which was pretty much true. But he also knew that the ranger couldn’t outright lie to him, and he was counting on that.

  “I saw her. She came in to work today, and she was alone,” the ranger said.

  “Do you know where she’s headed?”

  “Why?” The ranger leaned nonchalantly on the counter. “Anything up?”

  “I just want to ask her a couple of questions about a man she’s been keeping company with. The man’s a subject of interest in a murder investigation.”

  The ranger looked at him with skepticism. “Ms. Dee is a straight shooter.”

  “Well, she may be under the unwilling influence of this guy. He is most definitely not a straight shooter.”

  The ranger frowned. Appealing to his damsel-in-distress instincts seemed to work. “She’s been working around Mammoth Springs. I expect her back before dark, if you want me to have her call you when she returns.”

  “No need. I’ll head up there myself and see if she’s available to chat.” Owen tipped his hat and turned to leave the ranger station.

  But he felt eyes upon him. More eyes than the ranger minding the station and the ghost who sometimes turned up to bother Owen. He glanced around, then up. A half-dozen bats were perched on a roof truss, staring down at him.

  “Looks like you got yourself a bat infestation up there, Ranger,” Owen said.

  “It’s for an education project,” the ranger responded, sounding nonplussed.

  Owen nodded and let himself out. Not his problem.

  But he still couldn’t shake the sense of eyes on him, not even after he’d gotten into his car and headed down the road. Whenever Owen felt that prickle on the back of his neck, he knew someone was gunning for him. It was his spider sense. Some might call it paranoia, but it had never been wrong.

  He tuned his police scanner to the channel the rangers used. He caught part of a transmission.

  “. . . is Tower Falls base, calling Rockhound.”

  There was a crackle of static, and a tinny female response: “This is Rockhound. Go ahead, Tower Falls.”

  “Rockhound, please be advised that a local law enforcement representative is en route to your last reported position. Please maintain your position for a court
esy safety check, over.”

  Static hissed and there was no response.

  That fucking bastard. Owen slammed his hand on the steering wheel. That fucking park ranger managed to warn Petra that Owen was on her six, alone, without violating a single fucking rule.

  And there was gonna be hell to pay for that. He would make sure of it.

  Chapter 12

  Blood Engines

  The Venificus Locus ran on Gabe’s blood, for the first time in a century and a half. Petra’s hands were already scarred and callused from working it, and he was eager to share the burden of this tool, now that he was able.

  He’d slid his knife across the edge of his hand, a featherweight cut that summoned a welt of red. He dripped it into the Locus, watching as the compass grasped the droplet and rolled it around, tasting. Maybe it was his imagination, but it seemed like perhaps it had missed him. He had long suspected that the machine had some rudimentary intelligence, that it knew the taste of one kind of blood from the next. But it used them all the same.

  The droplet spiraled around the groove circumscribing its border and turned northwest.

  “Let’s go.” Petra was impatient. Behind her goggles, her eyes kept darting back the way they’d come. Sheriff Owen was not the kind of man who gave up easily; she was right to be wary.

  Gabe pocketed the Locus and opened the throttle of the snow machine. It growled to life and lurched forward, pulling him across the snow beneath the leaden sky. He glanced back, seeing Petra and Sig running behind and parallel. They were leaving tracks behind for Owen, he knew, but there was nothing to be done for it.

  Miles flashed by in a spray of snow and stinging cold. The sky swept darker from the west, where the wind pushed dark clouds eastward. The wind skimmed powder up over his windscreen, stinging his exposed face.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt cold like this before. As a Hanged Man he’d been dimly aware of the sensation. He knew it couldn’t harm him, and he simply ignored it. He’d worn a coat and gloves for a margin of extra comfort, but mostly because it was part of his cover—he was expected to. But here, exposed to the elements, he felt vulnerable. Exhilarated by the sensation of his heart pounding behind his ribs at the speed and wind, but exposed in the face of it. He remembered what it was like to be human once more, to know that one wrong turn or miscalculation could lead to a painful death. It was odd how immortality had given him a kind of arrogance, a deep certainty of his own invincibility. He was conscious of its absence now, like a protective skin ripped from him.