“Why did you go to her gallery?”
“Just curious. I had the morning free, and everyone’s been telling me I needed to see Carmel, so I went. While I was there, I decided to see some of her paintings. The gallery owner confirmed they are very valuable, more so now that she’s…” For some reason, the word stuck in Harper’s throat. “Dead.”
He nodded. “We need to beef up security in this place. Wouldn’t take much for someone to break in here and help themselves. That damned door won’t stay locked.”
He headed farther along the hall to the basement door, opened it, and started down the ancient wood steps. “This way.”
The squeak of the door was matched by the loud complaint of the top wooden tread as Harper stepped on it. The railing was worn smooth and polished from more than a century of hands running along it, but when she gripped it, a splinter pierced her palm, and a bright red drop welled up.
Good thing I don’t believe in omens, Harper thought as she forced herself to continue down the stairs.
The descent seemed to take much longer than it should have. She felt enveloped, as if the air itself were tactile, as if it had heft, swallowing her like the oppressive humidity of a New York summer’s day. Or that time Harper had allowed herself to be persuaded to try a sauna: The air was thick, suffocating, clogging her throat and lungs. But unlike the hot sauna, the air in Delilah Mason’s basement was frigid. The stillness of the atmosphere, the musty scent of wood so old it had petrified, the stones as ancient as the earth: It felt more like a descent into an abyss than a basement. The underground birthplace of something…wrong. Malevolent. Malignant. Every fiber of her being was shrieking:Do Not Enter.
“You sure you’re okay?” Detective Serrano’s voice surprised her. He had paused several steps below her on the stairs. “ ’Cause you don’t look so good.”
“I, um…” Harper cleared her throat and tried to rein in her uncharacteristically vivid imagination. “I’m fine. I’m surprised, though—adobe houses don’t usually have basements, do they?”
“Not usually. See how thick the walls are? Adobe buildings are typically built on a rubble foundation to raise the adobe blocks up and out of the groundwater, so they’re not sucking moisture from the earth. The mortar has to be made of earthen materials as well, so the materials can bond. No cement. Protect the adobe from water, and it’ll last centuries. Barring an earthquake, of course.”
“Let me guess: You were an architecture major?”
He smiled. “I was, once upon a time. I’m still into alternative building methods. I love these old places. Adobe buildings are energy-efficient, firesafe, insect- and pest-resistant, and there’s low-to-zero carbon emissions from the materials usedto build them. And if they do fall down, the materials can be reused to build it back up.”
“What made you go into police work instead of green building?”
A smile graced his gruff face. “Had a kid and needed a steady paycheck and good health insurance. And…I suppose it sounds hokey, but I care about my community.”
“That’s not hokey at all. Admirable, actually. I’m afraid to ask, but I’m new in town. Are there a lot of homicides in Monterey?”
“Naw. Pretty peaceful around here. But I spent twenty years on the LAPD before retiring and coming here. Most times the only violence we see in these parts is the occasional bar fight or DV.”
“DV?”
“Domestic violence.”
“Oh. That’s hard. Families can be…complicated.”
“Yep,” he said with a weary sigh. “It’s a real Rubik’s Cube. Anyway, to answer your original question: Most adobe houses don’t have basements because you can’t use adobe bricks below ground level. These basement walls were built with local stone, not adobe.”
“Interesting. It’s strange: I saw the blueprints for the Perles Mansion, and there was no basement.”
“According to the brother, Delilah found the door had been covered up, and restored it. So it was left alone all those years, I guess. Probably the only reason it wasn’t ransacked.”
The conversation helped Harper to ignore the eerie feelings stirring in her core. Calmer now, she forced herself to look around.
It looked like the laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein. Workbenches were topped with beakers and pipettes and otherassorted glassware, Bunsen burners and Erlenmeyer flasks and glass vials with cork stoppers. A coil of copper tubing led from one vat to another. The floor was stone in the middle with hard-packed dirt around the edges, some of which appeared disturbed, making Harper wonder about rats. Huge jars held bits of animals preserved in solution. There were several human skulls and other scattered bones, including a light fixture made of what looked like human femurs. Wax anatomical models displayed the ghastly results of diseases like syphilis and cancer. Large baskets were full of dried leaves, rose hips, dried roots, and seedpods.
“What is this place?” Harper whispered.
“Looks like something out of a movie set, you ask me,” said the detective. “The lair of a mad scientist.”
“I heard Mason mixed special teas and tinctures,” she said, noting the numerous small jars, bottles, and vials with plastic caps, which were clearly more modern than much of the lab equipment. “I met a friend of hers at the gate the other day who said she provided her with herbs for her concoctions.”
“Who was that?”
“Her name is Sigrid. She introduced herself as part of a coven that—”
He cut her off. “You’re saying Delilah Mason was a witch?”
