If so, he was welcome to it. I closedDemons Throughout Historywith a final-sounding thud and dropped it on the comforter, then I picked up the green notebook. I hadn’t seen enough of it earlier to tell me how close he was to finding Devich’s box. Maybe he’d pinpointed the location while I slept and had gone out for celebratory donuts.
Not quite daring to hope for both good newsandjunk food, I opened the notebook. The first page was blank. Completely empty. As were the second, third, fourth, and fifth. I flipped through the notebook, looking for anything but those same blue, college-ruled lines. I didn’t find the first trace of ink until more than a third of the way through the pages, and it wasn’t very helpful. He’d written—in that same neat, square print—a flight number, airport gate, and destination: Memphis. And a date: the day I’d freed his sister from the goblins and had first set eyes on Cale. He must have come straight from the airport to the factory. No wonder Daphne had hired me instead of relying on him.
He wasn’t home.
Halfway through the notebook, I found the sketch he’d shown me on the plane, but a close inspection of the drawing did little to elevate my mood. While the image itself showed some skill, regarding practical application, it was virtually worthless. Murphy’s “calculations” amounted to little more than a line sketched between a drawing of Oak Island and a stand of trees representing the patch of Maine woods. But he was trying. I had to give him that much.
Two pages later was the circle of arrows connecting the four elements. The rest of the notebook was empty. Completely, miserably blank.
Disappointed, I flipped it closed and dropped it on top of the demon book.
The Canadian section of Cale’s atlas contained area maps of each province, as well as insets of heavily populated areas. Nova Scotia’s page was all marked up, most noticeably with a bold, confident line drawn from Halifax into the Bay of Fundy at the edge of the page.
Unfortunately, that same line was scribbled out with red ink—the grade school version of white-out. Surrounding the scribbled line were a series of faint, irregular smears, and I laughed out loud when I realized what they were. Eraser marks. After messing up the first line, Cale had switched from pen to pencil. With good reason. I counted half a dozen other lines, all of which were erased with varying degrees of success.
Still smiling, I flipped through the atlas to the map of Maine, and sure enough, Cale’s pencil lines continued from the right side of the page, stretching across the Atlantic Ocean south of Penobscot Bay and into the nearby Maine woods. Also on the mainland, a red circle and a set of map coordinates—instead of an X—marked the spot. Or rather, the plane crash. Unfortunately, none of the lines, presumably originating in Halifax, ended within that red circle.
Cale was trying to trace the C130’s flight path from Halifax to the site of the crash, presumably to figure out where the box had landed, since it clearly hadn’t gone down with the plane. But he couldn’t get his lines to match up. Neither his math nor his equipment were up to the job.
A large part of the problem could be solved with a better map—one that showed both Maine and Nova Scotia on the same page.
Fortunately, I had just the thing.
I’d just started stuffing Cale’s things back into his bag when a scuffling from outside drew my attention. Someone was at the door.
I rolled over the comforter on my good arm, my heart slamming against my ribs. My knees hit the floor on the far side of the bed, and I drew my gun even as the impact echoed through my legs. My pulse raced in my throat. The door swung open. I peeked over the edge of the bed.
Cale appeared in the doorway, a plastic grocery bag dangling from one hand. He stepped inside, glancing around the room, and the door swung shut behind him, latching automatically. “Lex?”
I stood awkwardly, using my gun hand on the mattress for balance.
He grinned. “Why were you hiding behind the bed.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was strategically positioned to defend our base of operations.” I held up the gun for emphasis.
His grin widened. “You look like you were playing hide and seek. Badly.”
“Fuck off. I could have shot you. Announce yourself next time.”
“This ismymotel room.” His smile faded as his gaze found the backpack open on my bed. “And that’s my stuff. Why the hell are you going through my stuff?”
Guilt bobbed to the surface of my conscience like an un-weighted corpse floating to the top a lake. But I observed a strict no-regret policy, so I…changed the subject.
“What youshouldbe asking is what the hellyou’redoing with this stuff. Because you certainly aren’t going to find that box with a five-dollar atlas and a flashlight.”
Cale tossed the food onto the table and crossed the room in several angry strides. “These aremythings.” He shoved his stuff into the backpack and zipped it up. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
That’s not what you said last night. But something told me he wouldn’t appreciate such my adolescent retort. So I went with, “Youstarted it. If you’d left my shit alone, I wouldn’t have touched yours. I was looking for the Glock.”
“The Glock ismine, and it’s right here.” Cale pulled back one side of his down jacket to reveal the nine-millimeter in his shoulder holster.
“At least you have it within reach this time.”
“Obviously I should keep my bag within reach too.” He hauled the backpack off to “his” side of the room, where he dropped it on the floor behind the bed. “Uncover anything interesting?”
“I’m not sure.” I re-holstered my gun and headed for the table to see what was for breakfast. Which was really more of a middle-of-the-night snack, considering we were still a couple of hours from sunrise. “What’s with the book on demons? I thought we were looking for a djinni.”
“We are.” Cale was at my side in three steps, snatching the bag right out of my hands. “Fortunately, Xaphan can’t cause much trouble until someone lets him out—whichwillhappen eventually, if we don’t find the box and remove the temptation.” He reached into the sack and pulled out two pint-sized cartons of orange juice, setting one on each side of the table. “But until then, we have a more pressing problem to deal with.”
