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“Almost ready?”
I nodded. “Just a bit more cappuccino for me.”
I drank down the last inch or so of my coffee before stuffing the empty cup in the bag that had held the pastries. Then I held it open so Calvin could dispose of his trash the same way. That matter handled, I headed over to my Beetle and stowed the bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
“Okay, now I’m ready.”
He didn’t reply, only tilted his head as if to indicate I should follow him through the cottonwood grove and on to the little beach that apparently was the last thing Lucien Dumond had seen before he departed this mortal coil. Dead leaves left over from the previous autumn crunched beneath our feet as we made our way between the trees. It looked very different that morning with the bright sunlight slanting through the greenery overhead, and I found my mood much lighter than it had been, even if our reason for being there was pretty grim.
We emerged onto the beach, and I took the lead. “Over here,” I said, pausing at the water’s edge and doing my best to point toward the spot where I’d seen the metal object. My boots still hadn’t dried out completely from their dunking the day before, and I really wasn’t looking forward to getting them soaked all over again.
Calvin, however, didn’t seem to care. Or rather, he’d come prepared; he stopped and rolled up his khaki trousers, revealing a pair of rubber work boots underneath. After shoving his pants into the tops of the boots, he strode out to the spot I’d indicated and looked down into the water.
“I see it,” he said. Another slight delay as he also rolled up his sleeves — I guessed that the big, sporty watch he wore had to be waterproof, or at least water-resistant — slipped on a latex glove, and then reached down into the water.
I watched, holding my breath, as he scrabbled around in the mud and rocks at the bottom of the river. It was just deep enough that, even with his sleeves rolled up, he still splashed the edges of the fabric.
But then he pulled his arm out of the water and held it out, hand open. Lying against his glove-covered palm was a round silver medallion, one that was engraved with a stylized half moon on one half and a tree with spreading branches on the other.
My breath sucked in, and Calvin gave me a questioning glance.
“You recognize this?”
I nodded. “It’s the symbol of GLANG.”
“What’s GLANG?”
“Athene didn’t tell you?”
“It didn’t come up.”
All right, then. Still, I wasn’t a member, and whatever suspicious activity the necromancers’ guild might have been involved in, it wasn’t my problem. “It stands for ‘Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild.’”
“Necro — ”Calvin broke off there, expression dubious. “You’re joking, right?”
“Oh, it’s no joke,” I said. “They’re part of the reason why I ended up in Globe. I mean, Lucien was most of the reason, but he wouldn’t have been nearly as scary if he didn’t have thirty other sorcerers as backup.”
Looking grim, Calvin splashed his way back to shore. Since I hadn’t actually ventured out into the water, all I had to do was take a couple of steps to be standing on dry land. He waited for me there, the silver medallion gleaming in his hand. “He threatened you?”
“He made it pretty obvious that he didn’t like any competition. Not that I do the sort of magic that GLANG dabbles in,” I added hastily. The last thing I wanted was for Calvin to think I’d been brewing eye of newt and toe of frog or something. “But he didn’t like that I was taking clients away from him. Or at least, he thought I was poaching clients. I really wasn’t, but Lucien was never the type of person to allow reality to interfere with his view of the universe.”
“And yet he came all the way here to ask you to come back.”
“Because he did the math in his head and decided it would be better for him — and GLANG — if I was working for them. Too bad I’ve never been much of a joiner.”
Calvin absorbed this bit of information in silence. I’d noticed that about him; he wasn’t afraid to be quiet and think something through before he commented on it. I had to say, it was a nice change of pace from a lot of the guys in L.A. I’d known, the ones who barely came up for air because they were so busy talking your head off about how wonderful they were.
Hefting the medallion in his palm, he asked, “Did everyone in GLANG have one of these?”
Good question. I racked my brain, trying to recall any of my interactions with the members of the guild. Lucien liked to wear bracelets and earrings and rings, but the only pendant I’d ever seen hanging from his neck had been a heavy silver version of the Scorpio symbol. He was so proud of being a double Scorpio.
And the couple of times I’d been to his house in Encino, I’d seen a few more of the GLANG-sters, as I sometimes thought of Lucien’s followers, but I couldn’t recall if any of them had been wearing a pendant similar to the one Calvin held now. They’d all had on black clothing, loose pants and band-collared shirts for the men, loose but low-cut tank-style dresses for the women. If they’d been wearing any kind of jewelry around their necks, you’d think I would have noticed.
Come to think of it….
“The only person I ever saw wearing one was Athene Kappas,” I said, and Calvin gave a nod. Not a satisfied one, exactly, but as if that piece of information corroborated what he’d already suspected. Silently, he took a small baggie out of his pants pocket — did he have an inexhaustible supply of them in there? — and then dropped the medallion inside. That task handled, he put the baggie with its piece of evidence in his pocket before removing the latex glove he wore.
“I’ll take this back to the station and check it for fingerprints. Probably a long shot because of it being in the water overnight, but you never know.”
