Ledger reached into his pocket. “You could say that,” he said as he pulled out the keys the lawyer had left for him. “Iamhim.”
He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him in Hark’s face.
Look at that. It was like having your abusive, cultist dad drop dead was just all brightside and no downside at all.
It had been fifteen years since he’d last stepped over the threshold, but he didn’t even need to look as he hung the keys over the hook on the wall—that was where they went, where they had always gone. Ledger had made the same reach a thousand times before he left. More. He stood there and took in the slightly threadbare state of the hall and the shiny-stepped stairs that led up to the second floor. The house smelled faintly of hospital and strongly of sin.
“I should have told them just to burn the place down,” Ledger muttered to himself as his gaze caught on the notch-scarred doorframe. The tally of heights stopped when they’d been eight and six. Ledger grimaced and pretended he’d not noticed that. Or remembered it. “What the fuck am I going to do with it now?”
Nobody answered him.
That was about right. Ledger had never gotten a good answer for anything in this house.
* * *
The coffee was from Walmart.
The disturbing fan mail was international.
And it was probably best not to think too hard on where the human heart had come from.
Ledger lifted the heart out of the labeled Tupperware box and examined it. It was dried out and leathery, lighter than it looked like it should be. A small hooked cheese knife was attached to it by a string knotted twice around the aorta. Slivers had been carved off the fatty sides.
It was probably some folk remedy. Not an effective one, Ledger assumed, since Bell had killed himself rather than see out his last three months.
But then Bell had lost his direct line to Hell decades ago. With no demonic miracles on tap for a remission, Ledger supposed he’d had to make do with what he could get.
Ledger tossed the heart into the box with the rest of the “things I don’t want to have to explain to the firemen/police/nice doctors in the mental hospital two counties over.” The last time they’d put him in there, the only reason he’d gotten out was because one of Bell’s victims managed to escape in the middle of the night and get down to the road. And even after that, they’d not believed Ledger about the magic or the demons. They’d thought that was just trauma.
But you only got oneget out of a paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis free because Dad actually was a serial killercard in your lifetime. Ledger didn’t want another grippy-sock vacation because someone thought the jar of human fat in the downstairs bathroom was anything to do with him.
Who even did that anymore? Even the most traditional warlocks just bought their human-fat soap in artisan form on Etsy, with oatmeal added for exfoliation.
The heart slid down in the corner of the box, and Ledger wiped his hands on his chinos as he looked around the kitchen. He tried to work out if he’d missed anything. He shouldn’t have. Thiswas, after all, essentially his day job. It was different here, though. In the house he’d grown up in. Every time he got into his stride, he’d find something—a toy soldier that Bell’s rat had hidden from them in the hideyhole under the stove, their mom’s tarnished silver spoon that had come fromhergreat-grandmother, and a knife that Ledger was fairly sure should still have been in an evidence box somewhere—that threw him.
No. He’d been thorough. The kitchen was clear, and that meant the downstairs was finished. That just left upstairs and the basement.
So, either where Bell had rotted out his last days on earth or the little prison he’d built to keep his victims under the house until he could get time off work.
Basement first, then. Before that, though, he needed to get this stuff cleared out.
Ledger grabbed a handful of old T-shirts he’d liberated from the wash basket and shoved them in on top of the box. It would hide what was in there from casual nosiness and work as kindling when he got around to disposing of them. He sealed the box shut, tape layered over the top of it to keep everything in, and lifted it to carry out to the car.
He tried to ignore the little voice in his head that had totted up just how much he could get for everything in the Weird Shit box. Even if he just sold it to Hark at his clueless-rube rates. It would gall to be taken for a sucker, but if he was going to toss it all on a bonfire, it would still be a profit.
Ledger opened the back door with his elbow and stepped out into the sunlight. He stopped to let his eyes adjust and then went down the steps to circle the house. It would have been quicker to go through the house, but he appreciated the fresh air.
As he rounded the corner, Ledger shifted the box onto his hip so he could fish in his pocket for his keys. Hark had finally left. He’d probably not gone far.
The intrusive little voice in the back of Ledger’s head burst through again: Hark wouldn’t leave without another try at Ledger because this house was a gold mine.
No.
Ledger had done a lot of things in his life that he hadn’t planned. That came with the territory of being Bell Conroy’s kid—before or after he’d got caught. One thing he’d never done, though, was take anything beyond what he had to from his dad.
Some of that was pride, maybe even a bit of self-respect in there, but mostly it was just common sense. Bell had not been a man you wanted to be in debt to. Not when he was alive, and probably best not to tempt fate now he was dead.
Ledger had just fished his keys out of his pocket when a battered black pickup, coated in dust and dirt from the road, screeched up the drive and fishtailed to a stop just shy of driving into the house. Ledger stopped where he was and waited to see if he wanted to get involved in this.
