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“A group of ghouls is tearing up the Wedgewood Cemetery.” Morio slipped the strap of his bag over his head. “Chase called. He needs our help. Get moving!”
The Wedgewood Cemetery was next to the Salish Ranch Park, where we’d routed two dubba-trolls earlier in the year. It seemed to be a magnet for beasties. There was a gorgeous glassed-in arboretum in the park that was a sitting duck target for destruction.
“Ghouls?” I thought about Wilbur and his ghoul, Martin. “Think our new neighbor has anything to do with this?”
“I dunno,” Delilah said, “but we’d better get moving, because there are picnickers still in the park, and you can just imagine what kind of field day those creatures will have. Not quite like having ants heading toward the basket. Picnic, my ass—a gory, bloody picnic!”
I glanced outside. The sun had set, but it was still light enough for strollers and skateboarders and teenagers to be hanging out. “Well, hell. Let’s get a move on. Where’s Smoky?”
“He took off for his barrow. He’s trying to keep peace with the Triple Threat. Come on, we’ll take your car and mine.” Camille grabbed her keys. “Kitten, you and Roz ride with Menolly and fill her in on what we learned today. Vanzir, you and Morio ride with me.”
“Wait a minute! What about your burns?”
“They’re fine—no open sores, so I’m going.” She gave me that look that told me it was useless to argue.
And so we were off, after I planted a quick kiss on Maggie’s head.
On the way there, Roz sat in back, politely silent to the point of making me want to smack him, while Delilah detailed what they’d found out while I slept.
“Vanzir has Carter checking on other demonic activity. Carter told him to drop by with us tonight. We’ll stop there after we take care of these ghouls.”
Somehow, going to meet our indentured demon’s buddy didn’t sound all that comforting, but I let it pass. Carter was probably no worse than Vanzir, and he was providing us with information.
“What about you? Did you find anything out about Harold’s house?”
She nodded. “The house is well over a hundred years old. It belonged to a Dr. Grout at first, who was a widower. He had a daughter, Lily, and the girl married Trent Young, a moneyed young man fresh over from England. Trent bought the house from the old man, who vanished somewhere. I couldn’t find out anything else about him. As it so happens, Trent belonged to a rather scary lodge while back in England—the Eighth Circle.”
“Eighth Circle,” I said. “Let me guess—the eighth circle as in Dante’s nine circles of hell?”
Delilah nodded. “One and the same. The lodge was said to be steeped in sorcery. Even more interesting, immediately upon settling in the U.S., Trent established a private club that he named Dante’s Hellions.”
“The same Dante’s Hellions that Harold belongs to?”
“It looks that way.”
So Dante’s Hellions was a lot older than we thought. “I take it Trent Young is related to Harold Young?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Trent is Harold’s great-grandfather. Lily and Trent had two sons. One of them—Rutger—took over the house when the couple moved into a smaller place in the early forties. He was in his early twenties.”
“What was going on with the club?”
“I think they were running it as a secret society. Rutger took over as president of the order shortly after he married a woman named Amanda. They had four children. Two daughters and two sons—Jackson and Orrin.”
“Let me guess. One of their boys is Harold’s father.”
“Right. Jackson. By the time Harold hit middle school, his grandmother died, and his grandfather—Rutger—followed shortly after. Rutger left the house to Harold’s uncle Orrin. Interestingly enough, the old man declined to leave Jackson and his sisters any inheritance.”
“I wonder why.”
“Don’t know, but Rutger left the bulk of his estate to Orrin, except for a large trust fund he’d set up for Harold. Jackson ended up inheriting his money from his maternal grandmother. Orrin lived in the house until Harold started college. Then he moved into a condo and signed the deed over to Harold, who turned the mansion into the frat house you see today.”
Delilah gave me a satisfied smirk.
“You were a busy bee today. So tell me, what else did you find out about Dante’s Hellions through the years?”
I glanced out the window. We were about ten minutes away from the Salish Ranch Park, which straddled the boundary line that divided the Belles-Faire District from the central Seattle urban area. The park was adjacent to the Wedgewood Cemetery where, apparently, our ghouls were having a rousing good time.
“I can’t find any mention of it after Orrin took over the house. Either it went underground or just fell off the radar until Harold decided to revive it.”
