Sonya Clark's Blog

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Been a while! I thought I would dust off this site and blog for a couple of reasons. One, social media is getting harder and harder to stomach. Two, I’m in the middle of prepping a collection of short stories for release. It’s been a long time since I put out a book. Like, years. I never stopped writing, I just had a problem finishing anything. A lot of doubt, a lot of questions about what I should be writing, if I should continue writing at all, a metric ton of impostor syndrome. Mix all that with never-ending anxiety and occasional bouts of depression, and, well, you know. It made for a hard few years, writing-wise.

Despite all that, I never gave up. This series of short stories that will soon be published kept me going. They’re about two of my favorite things, music and the paranormal. I’ll be talking more about the collection in the days and weeks to come.

Other than that, I don’t really have a plan for blogging. I’d like to post a few times a week, maybe even every day. Mostly short posts. I just want to write, but not on Facebook or Twitter, and I have this blog, so why not use it?

I hope you’ll stick around with me to see how it goes.

Her bare feet ached from the stones and sticks on the forest floor. Blood wept from the cut on her upper arm. Her heart pounded and she struggled for every breath. The baby moved, kicking and flipping like an angry little fish in her belly. She was scared, too, Maggie thought.

I stumbled into a tree and leaned against it for a moment. How was I able to see into this window to the past? Not just see, but feel it? Del shouted Maggie’s name somewhere behind me. I pushed off from the tree and ran. The tattoo on my wrist burned, as did the cut on my arm. I ran through sunshine and moonlight, no longer sure what was real and what was Del Mahaffey’s dark magic.

Music teased at the far reaches of my hearing. Moments later I realized I’d slowed, listening. Trying to pinpoint where the music was coming from. Trying to place the tune. I knew it was the song I’d heard in the vision, but I still couldn’t put a name to it. My belly tightened painfully, followed by a fierce kick. I cried out.

Maggie fell to her knees, hands cradling her stomach. Nothing about having this baby had been easy. That was gonna change. Del would see that he loved her. That she could make him so much happier than he’d ever been with Pauline. They’d be happy with their little baby, so happy.

She heard Del’s footsteps seconds before he grabbed her hair and yanked her sideways. The knife bit into her neck. “All you had to do was go.” He spoke into her ear, a mockery of the way he used to whisper to her in bed. Such sweet, dirty things he’d say.

“Where am I gonna go?” Tears slipped down her cheeks. The baby moved, calmer this time. Maggie circled her fingertips on that spot, afraid to move too much but needing, desperately needing, contact with another person. A person she loved, the only person in the world she loved more than the man holding a knife to her neck. “This is my home. Your home. Our baby’s home, too. This is where we all belong.”

“There ain’t no we, Maggie. No our.” He pressed the knife deeper into her skin. She tried to pull away but he wrapped his arm around her tighter. Arms that used to hold her so tight in gentler ways, in better times. Oh God help her, maybe she really had angered him too much this time. She’d seen what his temper could do.

“Please don’t hurt me, Del.” She slipped one hand down to the ground, searching for something she could use.

“You shoulda done what I told you.”

“We could leave together. The three of us, we’d be happy.” Small sticks, grass, a few stones not big enough to hurt a mouse.

“I’ll never leave my wife. How many times I got to tell you that?”

“You can’t just abandon us. You told me you loved me. You said you’d take care of me.”

“It’s not my fault you were stupid enough to believe all that. I know you’d been with others before me. I can’t be the first one to tell you whatever you wanted to hear just to get you to open your legs, you little whore.”

Shame cascaded through her like a rush of ice-cold water. Shame and fury and hate. He dared call her a whore when he’d been cheating on his wife? Sure, she’d been with other men before him. So what? Why did they get to do what they wanted but she was the only one called a whore?

Her fingers found a rock the size of a fat, ripe tomato. “Take that knife off me, Del. Do it right now.”

“No one tells me what to do, least of all a slut like you.”

Maggie gripped that rock tight and swung it as hard as she could at his head. They were so close, she felt his body react when the impact hit him. He released her and fell backward, snarling ugly words. She didn’t care what he had to say anymore. She scrambled to her feet, ungainly and off balance. She had to get away. Now that she’d hurt him, she had to get as far away from him as she could. She’d seen what he could do to men twice her size when he was in a rage. If he did that to her, she’d be lucky to be alive in the morning. She had to

Run.

I knew I had to keep running. That was the only thing I was sure of. I didn’t get far, though. Bo tackled me from behind, sending us both to the ground in a painful fall. My breath rushed out of me. I rose on hands and knees, flailing and kicking to get Bo off of me. Sharp pain seized my stomach and I didn’t know if it was real or what Maggie experienced all those years ago.

Bo slammed a fist into my back. I collapsed, my face in a bed of undergrowth and fallen leaves. He flipped me over, screaming incoherently. Moonlight filtered through the trees and shone on the blade as he brought the knife down in one swift, brutal plunge into my belly. I screamed, so loud and raw it shredded my throat.

Was this real? I couldn’t tell. It felt real, especially the cold fire of agony in my midsection. My vision dwindled to a pinpoint of bright silver light, the sound of Del’s screams roaring in my ears.

There was music, too. Always music. Del’s banjo melody, a spooky, hard-driving train to Hell. The trip-hop and jazz that got me through dark nights and brought me safely into the dawn. The two strands of sound clashed. Fought. Synced into a mash-up that shouldn’t have worked but somehow did, then fell apart again. Flashes of silver and gold broke across my narrowed vision. Gradually a voice reached me, and though soon I could make out the words being spoken, I wasn’t sure which man I was hearing, Del or Bo.

“I didn’t mean to do it. Oh, God, please, believe me. I wasn’t gonna hurt you. I just wanted to scare you. Scare you so you’d leave.”

Pressure on my stomach. Hands. His hands. My skin wet under my clothes. I raised my head as much as I could, just enough to see. Blood everywhere. So much blood. I squeezed my eyes shut and let my head drop down.

“Please forgive me, Maggie.” He took my hand in his. “I never meant to hurt you. Please. Oh, God, please.”

I had no forgiveness to offer Del Mahaffey. It wasn’t my place, no matter that I’d been forced to play a role in this. “Bo.” The name slipped out barely above a whisper. “Bo, it’s Nikki. Can you hear me?”

Light and shadow played across his face. His expression changed slowly, as if he was waking up from a bad dream. “Nikki.”

“He’s your family’s demon. You said so yourself. Haunting his children and grandchildren and now you and your brother. You’re the one who has to exorcise him.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“He begged Maggie for forgiveness. He paid for killing her but maybe forgiveness is what he still needs.”

“That’s…that’s what he said. I thought that was why he wanted you here.”

“I can’t give him that. It’s not my place.” I tried to sit up, to move at all, but couldn’t.

“He doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Not after what he did.”

My breath grew ragged and I dug my fingers into the ground. Why couldn’t I move? I was myself, in my own head, and so was Bo. Why was my body still trapped in the vision?

“I saw it all through his eyes,” Bo said. “Felt what he felt. All that rage. He hated her in that moment. He didn’t care that he used to love her. That she was pregnant with his baby. He didn’t care about anything. The only thing in his world in that moment was rage. A man like that doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”

The tattoo rippled with heat. Hopefully, that meant I was still partly inside the vision or spell or whatever this was, and that it would be over soon. I’d come out of it, unharmed, covered in nervous sweat instead of blood. I swallowed my panic and tried to get my thoughts into something resembling order.

“I don’t think forgiveness necessarily has anything to do with being deserving of it. I think sometimes it’s the person doing the forgiving that needs it.” It was a struggle to speak, and took way too long to get the words out.

“You think Maggie needs to forgive him?”

“No, I think you do.”

Bo flinched. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

I tried to sit up again. This time I made it. My midsection hurt like hell and I wasn’t brave enough to take a look, but since it didn’t feel like my guts were falling out, I decided not to worry too much. “He destroyed more than Maggie’s life that night. He destroyed his family, too. What he did, it reverberated down through the generations. His wife suffered for turning him in. All that anger and violence he passed down, like it was eye color or high blood pressure, just like you said. What he did that night has haunted your family. Haunted you so much that it kept you from something you were good at. Something you loved.”

I took his hand, both to pull myself up further and for the human contact that we both needed. “Del influenced your brother, but he communicated with you. Have you thought about why that is?”

“I did. I thought a lot about it. I think it’s because we’re so much alike. People think I don’t have a temper, but I do. A bad one. I just work really hard to control it. Because I know what could happen if I don’t.”

“You’ve got something else in common, too. You gave up music because of family history. Maybe because you’re able to control the violence in you, he thinks you can help him find what he needs. And maybe you need it, too, so that you don’t feel like you have to close off a good part of yourself because of him.”

Bo was quiet for a long time. The forest softened into a peaceful twilight. The air tasted of ozone and magic. I didn’t know if Del Mahaffey deserved forgiveness for the horrible things he’d done, but I was certain that it was time for his descendants to stop paying the price for his sins. So if letting go of the past meant a kind of absolution for Del, then so be it.

A rustling noise came from the other side of the little hill where we’d wound up. I tensed, so not ready for more supernatural shenanigans that left me screaming in pain. Beth stepped out of the shadows, Del Mahaffey’s Supertone cradled in her arms. She hurried to us, knelt next to me and rested the instrument carefully on the ground.

“My God, what happened?”

“Tell you later,” I said. “Where’d you find it?” I indicated the banjo.

“Close to a stream. I think the same spot where Del buried Maggie.”

“That’s where I left it,” said Bo.

“Did he tell you to do that?”

He shook his head and turned his face away.

“What did he want you to do?”

No answer. I kept pushing because I thought I knew the answer. “Bo, what does he want you to do?”

“He wants me to play. Okay? That’s what he wants.”

“So play for him. And for Pauline and their kids. Play for Maggie and her baby. Play for your brother. Play for yourself. Pick up that banjo and let whatever needs to come out, come out.”

“My magic can’t exorcise that banjo,” Beth said. “If it’s going to happen, it has to be you.”

Bo looked dubious. “I don’t have any magic in me.”

“Of course you do, you’re a musician.” I leaned over and picked up the Supertone. My abs pulled as if I had stitches, a fiery band of pain that wrapped around my midsection like a belt. I stifled a gasp and handed Bo his great-grandfather’s instrument.

He held the banjo in his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with it, but I knew the falsehood of that. It took time, long moments wherein Bo had whatever private conversation he needed to have with himself. Then he began to play. Hesitant at first, shy before his audience of two women and the forest in its early evening gloom. I watched his hands, his fingers finding where they belonged on the strings. I watched his face, the varied emotions that washed through him. Mostly I just listened to the story he told on the Supertone.

That story was full of wild, untamed energy. Mountains and hollers, moonshine and violence. Passionate courtship, illicit romance, betrayal and heartache. A rage so dark that the banjo seemed to shimmer with an unearthly light. The music reached a terrifying crescendo before falling into a bleak, endless drone. The sound clawed at my nerves and called forth nightmares I’d believed long buried. I tangled my fingers in the grass and the undergrowth, hoping solid earth would keep me steady.

Finally, Bo ended the visceral torment and took us to a place of aching regret. It hurt in a totally different way, but no less powerful. It soon became a clear-eyed lamentation, devoid of self-pity, laying claim to sins with a deep, unspoken horror. I didn’t realize I was crying until I noticed Beth wipe tears from her face.

Del Mahaffey didn’t believe he deserved any absolution, but his family was long past due their freedom from him. Somewhere during the final notes of Bo’s song, peace filled the air, along with a palpable sense of release. All the magic in the forest slowly dissipated. My tattoo stopped burning and I found the courage to inspect my midsection. No wounds, just a lingering soreness. I shuddered with relief, though I couldn’t say I was surprised.

Bo rested his hand lightly on the strings. For the first time since I’d met him, the tension was gone from his face.

♫

The money Bo made from selling the haunted banjo to the professor paid for an excellent lawyer for Justin, who soon found himself facing a legal slap on the wrist and an unhurried reconciliation with his girlfriend. But reconcile they did, as I was glad to hear about from Bo during a late night call several months later. I was in Minneapolis working on a cover story about a band destined to be the Next Big Thing. Bo was on a cruise in the Caribbean, his first real vacation as an adult. He joked about liking the organized fun on the ship because he wouldn’t know what to do with himself otherwise. I groused about the cold and told him to send me a postcard with a pretty beach scene. We didn’t talk about Del, and when we hung up I was hit with the sudden realization that I would never hear from him again. But it didn’t make me sad. I knew he was okay.

Bo sat on the forest floor, against a tree with his knees drawn up and a long knife in one hand. The banjo was nowhere in sight. Beth motioned toward the woods. I nodded. She slipped away to look for the Supertone while I approached Bo slowly, careful of startling him. Once I was close enough we’d be able to hear each other but just far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to grab me, I came to a halt. He glanced in my direction but didn’t meet my eyes.

“I’ve been calling you,” I said. “How come you don’t call back?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Then who should? If there’s someone else who can help you, give me their number. I’ll go pick them up myself.” I took a tentative step closer. “But Justin’s in the hospital and you guys don’t have anybody else. There’s no one else who knows what’s going on. No one who would understand, or even believe it.” Another few slow steps. “It’s just us, Bo. So what are we going to do about this?” And where the hell was the banjo?

“Del needs my help. I’m the only one who can do it.”

I crouched in front of him. “What does he need you to help him with?”

Bo hummed softly. The tune jogged my memory, though it took me a long moment to place it. It was the song I heard during the vision I had when I first plucked the banjo’s strings. The vision that I now believed to be a snapshot of poor, doomed Maggie, running through the woods in an attempt to escape her lover and her fate.

“She was so scared of him.” At first I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud. “I could feel her fear. Not just in my head, either. I could feel it in my body. My muscles tensed up. I couldn’t think straight. I was nauseous. I was so scared of him, I thought I was going to throw up.” My own words hit me and I shook my head. “She was scared. She was so scared, she almost threw up while she was running away from him.” But maybe it wasn’t fear that caused the nausea. Maggie was pregnant when Del killed her, though I didn’t know how far along she’d been. It twisted something inside me, knowing she’d been afraid for her baby as much as for her own life.

“He didn’t show you everything,” Bo said.

I swallowed the sudden lump that rose in my throat. “Did he show you everything?”

Bo ran his thumb over the edge of the knife. Blood welled on his skin, drops rolling down the surface of the blade. “He had to, so I could understand what he needs and why.”

“Tell me what he showed you. Tell me what he needs.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Bo looked right at me. Something wrong glowed in his eyes, dark and full of need. “I can’t just tell you. I have to show you.”

I shot up so fast that I nearly fell over. “Del showed me enough, thanks.” I backed away from him, not fast, but not slow, either.

“It makes sense.” Bo climbed to his feet, the knife gripped in his bloody hand. “He slowed you down so I could get here first, but he still wanted you here. You have a role to play in this, Nikki. You came here to help us, Justin and me, and to do that you have to help Del, too.”

“The only help Del needs is a road map to Hell.”

A grin that didn’t fit on Bo’s face appeared. “Oh, he agrees with you on that one. But first, he needs something.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t have it.” I turned to run, my feet tangling on undergrowth. Bo grabbed my arm and swung me around, slamming me into the tree. It knocked the breath from me. The world went sidewise and when it righted again, moonlight shone through the tree limbs instead of late afternoon sunshine. My insides shifted and my body was not my own.

Del Mahaffey held a knife to my throat. “I told you not to push me, girl.”

“Don’t do this.” The words echoed in my head, in my own voice and one I didn’t recognize.

The air shimmered between us and Bo stood where I’d just seen Del. “Please help us.” He dropped his hand to his side, the knife slipping from his grasp.

“Fight him, Bo.” I stepped away from the tree, ready to run if I had to. “Whatever it is Del wants, it’s not worth hurting someone or losing yourself.”

“I told you,” Bo said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I told you.”

I took the stun gun out of my pocket and held it at the ready.

“I told you to leave me be.” Bo’s voice twisted and changed into someone else’s by the end of the sentence. He opened his eyes. I saw nothing good there. He raised his arm, pointing at me with the knife. “I told you when we started, I’d never leave my wife.”

“What am I supposed to do about this baby?” Maggie put her hands on her belly, the swell of her growing child barely hidden by a dress two sizes too big. I looked down to see my hand on my stomach, only it wasn’t quite my hand. “Oh, God, what’s happening?” A wave of vertigo hit me and I stumbled but didn’t fall.

“What’s happening is you’re gonna leave town like I told you to.” He stalked closer, moonlight glinting on the edge of the knife. “I don’t care where you go, long as you don’t come back.”

The baby kicked. Jesus Christ, the baby kicked. Maggie glared at Del. “You don’t tell me what to do anymore. And you don’t scare me. This baby’s yours and you’re gonna do right by it, and by me.”

Del rushed at her, slashing the knife. A line of burning pain opened up on my arm and I dropped the stun gun, biting back a scream. “Oh, you’re gonna be afraid, little girl. By the time I’m done, you gonna beg.”

Maggie ran. I ran. I no longer knew the difference. One moment the woods were dappled with sunshine, the next it was dark except for pockets of moonlight. Bo dropped the knife. I saw that happen. But then Del had it in his hand and this cut on my arm hurt like hell and oozed blood that damn sure felt real. And feeling the baby kick? What the hell was that? I’d never been pregnant but I knew instinctively that the sensation I’d felt was a baby kicking.

None of this made any sense. When Maggie demanded to take over, I was too confused to fight. We ran through the forest.

Chapter Twelve ->

“Look, we’ve called, like, a hundred times. Answer your God damn phone, Bo.” Right then, I really could have used the old-school satisfaction of slamming the phone down into the receiver, but cells don’t work like that and no way was I throwing around pricey electronics. So instead, I let loose with a streak of swear words. Not quite as good, but close.

Beth entered the kitchen. “Did you hear from him yet?”

“No.” I checked my email on the off chance he’d elected to contact me that way. Nothing but newsletters I needed to make the time to unsubscribe from. “How’s your grandpa?”

“Tired and worried. Other than that, I think he’s okay.” She busied herself with cleaning up dishes, but the tension wasn’t hard to spot.

“I am so sorry that this has put you guys through so much. I had no idea it would get out of control.”

She slowed a fraction. “It’s not your fault he won’t retire.” She met my gaze briefly and I saw no reproach there. “But I guess he’s right. This isn’t really the kind of thing you retire from.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once a witch, always a witch. It’s not a job. It’s who we are. I figure you might know something about that, being a writer.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. “Yeah.” My phone buzzed, derailing the swirl of thoughts about magic and words and creating something from nothing that had begun to gather. I  glanced at the number, relieved it was finally Bo.

“Dude, what the hell? It’s been almost two hours, why haven’t you called?”

“For God’s sake, go easy,” Beth whispered.

I made a face, chagrined. “Are you okay, Bo?”

A skitter of laughter filled my ear and scratched at my nerves. “To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if I’m Bo.”

A wave of dread overcame me. I had to sit down. “What do you mean by that?” I turned the phone on speaker so Beth could hear both sides of the conversation.

“I guess you figured out I could hear him when I played.”

“Yeah.” Getting confirmation still spooked me, though.

There was a long pause. “I don’t have to play to hear him anymore.”

“What’s he telling you, Bo?”

No answer. I turned up the volume on my phone. It sounded like road noise coming from his end. “Where are you, Bo? We’ll come get you.”

“I need to do this for him,” he said.

“You don’t need to do anything for him. Just because he’s your ancestor doesn’t mean you owe him shit.”

“He needs this, and I’m the only one who can help him.”

“You need to help yourself, and your brother. Del had his chance. He lived, and he murdered a woman who was pregnant with his baby, and he paid the price for it. He has no right to ask anybody for anything.”

“I have to try.” He ended the call.

I swore, so frustrated I wanted to throw things. “What the hell would the ghost of a man who got off on hurting women need from his descendant?”

“I think we both know the answer to that,” Beth said.

I swore some more. “We need to find him before he hurts someone.”

“Do you have anything of his? I can try a locator spell.”

The folder of family secrets he’d given me was in my bag. I retrieved it. Beth placed the folder with Del’s photo on top on one side of the kitchen table, with an open road atlas on the other. She added a thin length of green jute to the atlas. Some candlelight and a few chants later, the jute began to stretch out. It followed the interstate headed east. The tiny hairs on my arms raised and the elvish tattoo heated the skin on my wrist. It may not have looked like much compared to some of the things I’d seen recently, but this was still a powerful bit of magic.

The thread moved over the page, crossing into Louisiana. “This is the way we came,” I said.

“Do you think he’s going home?”

I tapped the map, careful not to touch the jute. “That’s exactly what I think. I gotta get on the road, he’s got too much of a head start.”

Beth said, “Give me five minutes to pack a bag and tell Pawpaw.” She turned toward the hall.

I grabbed her arm. “You don’t have to do this. It’s not your mess to clean up.”

Her cinnamon eyes looked right into me. “It’s not your mess, either, but you’re in it anyway. Because you want to help, and so do I.” She left the kitchen without another word, leaving no room for argument.

♫

Our plan was to catch up with Bo before he crossed the Mississippi, and we figured with two drivers we had a decent shot despite his head start. A storm was the first thing to slow us down, rain so heavy that traffic on the interstate slowed to a crawl. The next thing was a flat tire. Good thing Beth had a spare in the trunk of her car and knew how to change it. By the time a logging truck spilled its contents across the highway just west of Vicksburg, we could both feel the dark magic stalking us.

We sat in traffic, Beth fuming silently as I went back and forth between the atlas and my phone. “The map’s not detailed enough to help us and my phone is acting crazy. The signal drops out every time I try to use it for directions.”

“At least my locator spells are still working.” Bo was definitely headed home. Thanks to her spells, we were sure of it. But whatever mojo Del Mahaffey had going was keeping us from catching up.

“We’ll take the next exit, find a gas station, and buy a state map. Figure out a new route. Three new routes. However many it takes.” We had no idea how far we were from the next exit, or how long it would take to get there in this mess.

Beth drummed the steering wheel. “You know what I’ve been wondering?”

“What do we do when we find Bo?”

“If Del’s ghost is powerful enough to influence all these accidents, why not just kill us?”

I’d thought about that, too, and hadn’t come up with an answer. “I don’t know. Maybe he wants Bo to kill us once we’re back on his home turf. That could be why he wanted Bo to go home. He prefers hunting on familiar ground, maybe?”

“Except that’s not Del. Right? He hit his wife and he killed a girlfriend. The women he abused were intimate partners, not just random women he met in bars or wherever.”

She was right. “He wasn’t a serial killer, so the idea of hunting grounds is wrong.” I looked through the folder for about the hundredth time. Paula Welch’s memoirs, handwritten in a careful, feminine script. Newspaper clippings. Copies of official documents like birth and death certificates, property deeds. Old sheet music and family photos. The picture of our ghost. I stared at his deep-set, dark eyes as if I could pull secrets right out of the old, heavy paper. “What do you want, Del Mahaffey?”

Beth said, “Why do you think they do it?”

I closed the folder. “What do you mean?”

“Men. Why do they hurt the women who love them? Or women they barely know, for that matter. The first time I cast a hex, I was thirteen. I had a thing with this boy in my class. Not like we were dating or anything. Just middle school flirting, you know? One day after school, we kissed. It was my first kiss. I thought after that, he was my boyfriend. Instead, I find out the next day that he’s told all his friends what an easy slut I am, and a bad kisser. You would think a slut would know what she was doing, right?” She shook her head. “Asshole. I was so mad and so hurt, I put a hex on him. He played so bad that he humiliated himself on the basketball court and got benched for the rest of the season.”

“I wish I’d known some witchcraft in middle school.”

Traffic inched forward. Beth took the car out of park and drove. “That’s my nicest asshole story. There was the linebacker who tried to roofie me at a homecoming party. I stayed away from jocks after that one. A guy who slapped me and left me in a parking lot when I wouldn’t put out after he took me to dinner. This one guy harassed me for months because I wouldn’t give him my number. I mean stalker stuff. A restraining order didn’t work so I had to hex him, too.”

“I waited tables with a woman who would come to work bruised and barely able to walk because of her husband,” I said. I hadn’t thought of her in years. The mental calculations of how many women I’d known who’d suffered abuse, harassment, and assault from men left me chilled to the bone. “I told a guy no once and he didn’t stop. I was too drunk to fight him off, so it happened. Part of me still thinks it was my fault, on the rare occasions I think about it.”

Beth took my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “You know that’s not true, right? You said no.”

Yeah, but I’d been drinking and flirting and making out with him all night. Wearing a short skirt and fuck-me heels. No way would a cop have taken me seriously if I’d tried to file a report. It felt like my fault, at least in part, and no amount of rational objectivity could change that deep down. So I kept to a two-drink limit now, sure, but the main reason I didn’t talk about it was because frankly, it just wasn’t that traumatizing. He didn’t hurt me. I left his place disappointed in both of us and embarrassed as hell, but not traumatized.

I shared my thoughts with Beth. “Do you think it’s wrong that I don’t feel like a victim? I never thought of myself that way. I drink less around guys, especially guys I don’t know well, but I’m not scared of men and I certainly didn’t stop having sex. I know some women would call it rape but to me, it was just this dumb careless thing that happened in the past and doesn’t much matter now. I hadn’t even thought about it in years, until this conversation.”

“You’re the only one who can decide what it was to you,” she said. “I just don’t like the thought of any woman thinking something like that was her fault.”

“I hear you. I just think there’s a huge difference between what happened to me that one time, and what was happening every night to that woman I used to wait tables with. Her husband was so brutal with her, there were days when she couldn’t walk right.”

“Shit like that makes me wish every woman knew how to throw a good hex.”

That place where I kept all my secrets felt raw and betrayed by my inexplicable oversharing. I was used to prying confidences and mysteries out of other people, not offering up my own. I turned on the car stereo and moved the dial until I found a song that hit the right note. Traffic opened up enough to reveal an exit coming up and I breathed a sigh of relief. At least we’d get out of this mess soon.

It didn’t take long for darker thoughts to return. “As far as we know, Del Mahaffey didn’t target random women,” I said. “He hurt women he was close to.”

“Does Bo have a girlfriend?”

“No, but his brother does, and she’s already been on the receiving end of Del’s fury.” I reached for my phone. “I know her name from Justin’s profile. I’ll message her. Hopefully, she’ll take me seriously.”

“How much are you going to tell her?”

Ugh, that was a tough one. “I don’t know. Just to stay away from Bo, I guess.”

♫

Jenna got back to me with a promise to avoid Bo. She had good news, too. Bo hadn’t contacted her and Justin had come out of whatever personality altering state he’d been in. His doctors wouldn’t give him access to his phone yet, but through Jenna he relayed a message to me: please help my brother. She didn’t say anything specific but I got the impression that Jenna knew about the haunted banjo.

Bo wasn’t home. The mailbox attached to his house was stuffed with flyers and envelopes. It looked like he hadn’t been back to his tidy little house at all, but I was sure he had returned to the area. For whatever reason, Del Mahaffey had wanted to come home.

Beth sat on the porch stoop. “What now?”

I grabbed my messenger bag and joined her. “Locator spell. Dangerous confrontation. Some food would be good.”

“He could have some other woman by now.” She rubbed her face then held out her hand. “Give me the photo of Del. I’ll see what I can get.”

I let her work and took out a notebook. Not the one I used for Turntable notes, the new one I used for my spooky blog notes. Writing in it helped me think, and I needed that help now.

So Bo was keeping his distance from Jenna. Did that mean he was fighting Del’s influence? Or did it mean Mahaffey had something else in mind? Someone else in mind? Maybe I needed to be looking at female descendants, but of which woman, Del’s wife or lover? Perhaps his wife, because he held a grudge even in death. After all, Pauline turned him over to the law for killing his side piece. That got him executed, which was surely a pretty good reason for an evil spirit to want revenge. But who would be the target of his delayed vengeance?

Beth caught my attention. “He’s out in the middle of nowhere.” She indicated the county map bought at a gas station. “As far as I can tell, he’s not moving around, either.”

I looked at the map, then flipped through the notes I’d made about Paula Welch’s memoirs. “This is not far from where Del buried his girlfriend Maggie.”

“Let’s go.”

I shoved my stuff back in my bag. “Just let me dig my stun gun out of my luggage before we get anywhere near Bo again.”

“A stun gun? If you’d rather have a real gun, you can borrow one of mine.” Beth rose and headed for her car.

One of her guns? Well, I may have moved away, but she was still a Texan.

Chapter Eleven ->

Paula Welch wrote of her father with a clear, unflinching eye. There were good memories in her record, but mostly heartbreak and ruin. One passage in particular captured me:

Little could soothe his rages like music. His banjo, perhaps more so than us his children, was his pride and joy. He carried it like an extension of his physical body and it seemed an extension of his soul, as well. The music he played was a rare source of joy for him. It gave him solace. It gave him, a barely literate man, a way to express himself. My fondest memories of him involve him either playing or singing or those even rarer instances of him teaching Jack and me a song here and there. We feared him greatly, his temper, his violence toward our mother, but those moments gifted to us by music were a treasure and a window gazing upon what a different man he might have been.

I recall little of his arrest and trial, as we children were shielded from that awful tragedy as best Momma and her kin were able. Many years later, I did learn that upon the day of his hanging, Daddy did not request a last meal. Rather, he asked to play his banjo one final time, there in his cell where he awaited death. I have not been able to learn who granted his request, but I do know one of Daddy’s brothers came to our home to take the banjo to him. I wish I knew what Daddy played in those final moments. My Mahaffey relations have never willingly parted with anything concerning him to me, whether it be photographs or memories. If he was afraid in that last night, I hope music brought him some relief. I hope remorse and prayer for redemption eased his passage into the next world. Perhaps he did not deserve such, but he was still my Daddy and I do not like to think of him in Hell.

If the Mahaffey family didn’t willingly part with anything, how did she get the banjo? As I sat absorbing all I’d read, part of my brain spun a tale of daring burglary, a slip of a girl breaking into the home of some relative who hated her just so she could steal the one thing that anchored her few good memories of her father.

I closed the folder when Beth arrived on her lunch break. The diner where we’d agreed to meet was close to her grandfather’s music shop. After we ordered, I let myself indulge in a few questions. “What do you do at the shop?”

“Little bit of everything. Run the register, clean, put in orders. When he doesn’t need me out front, I work in the back. Repairs, that kind of thing.”

“Got a specialty?”

“Restoring antique stringed instruments. I’m working on a dulcimer right now.”

“How does the luthier magic factor into that?”

“It doesn’t. No magic in the shop. That’s a whole different client list.”

Our food arrived. Since she had to go back to the shop to let Howard take his lunch break, I let her eat. As soon as she slowed down, though, I pounced. “That language that you were speaking during the rite, what was that?”

Beth popped another fry in her mouth before answering. “Texas German. It’s an old dialect. Not many people speak it anymore. It comes from all the German immigrants who settled in Texas. A whole bunch of different regional dialects from Germany, plus a little English here and there. Our family’s originally from over there. We still have kin over in the German belt of the state, but sometime before Pawpaw was born, the magicians in the family were run off and wound up here. The others don’t practice. They may not even know that part of their family history anymore.”

Of course I knew about the German belt over in the Hill Country, but I’d never known they had their own language. I grew up near the state line with Louisiana, in a place far enough from Houston to be small town but close enough to the big city for trouble to beckon.

I pushed the folder across the table. “These are copies of documents that Bo shared with me. You’ll want to take a look.”

She wiped her hands on a paper napkin then leafed through the pages. “Can I take this with me?”

I nodded. “I don’t have much experience with hauntings, but I think this is about family as much as it is about anything else. Bo seems to think so, too.”

Beth closed the folder. “This just got a lot harder.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Y’all come back over tonight. We’ll try a blood rite. See if that will do the trick.”

“That sounds…gross.”

“It’s not like I need a pint from him. Not even a shot glass full.” The innocence of her smile was overshadowed by the look in her eyes. There was power there, and confidence. Mystery, and a little bit of darkness, too. Beth Klingemann looked like the girl next door, who just happened to be kind of terrifying.

♫

The banjo hovered in the air. Music blasted from it, dark and nerve-wracking with strange shifts in tempo and an unearthly pitch. Del Mahaffey was just as mean and violent in death as he had been in life. Beth picked herself up off the floor, holding her arm where it had impacted against the wall. Howard struggled to keep the spell going. Even to my untrained eye, it appeared that while he had a lifetime’s worth of experience and knowledge, he lacked his granddaughter’s raw power. Sweat rolled down his face and I worried about his age and his heart.

“Stop the spell,” I yelled over the din. “This isn’t working, just stop!”

Beth grabbed a bottle of water and poured the contents over a bowl of smoking herbs. With a shout of Texas German, she doused the candles, sending the room into darkness. Howard fell silent. I searched the wall for the light switch. Bo found it first.

I blinked against the sudden brightness. Howard appeared drained but otherwise okay. The music petered out to a slow drone, but the banjo still hung in the air. Beth approached it. As soon as she touched the instrument, it hit her with a noticeable shock. She let out a yelp and backed away.

Howard said, “I’ve got some protective charms that might work.”

Bo stepped forward. “Let me try.” He reached for the banjo, moving closer to it. He held his hand inches from the neck, tension rolling off of him in palpable waves. He muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t hear, then he wrapped his hand around the instrument’s neck. The banjo settled into his grip without complaint, as if comfortable there. As if it recognized Bo as family.

Silence hung heavy and thick in the room. Beth began to clean up the mess, and Howard and I helped. I kept an eye on Bo as we worked. He held the banjo against his body, slightly leaning his ear toward the peghead. Was he thinking? Listening to some secret communication from his ancestor that only he could hear? Whichever it was, his increasingly reserved demeanor and his unwillingness to make eye contact with me since the awkward kiss was making me worry.

I found the banjo’s case and brought it to him. “Why don’t you put it away for the night, while we figure out what to try next.”

Bo only held the banjo tighter. “Magic’s not working. My blood didn’t work. What does he want?”

The idea of discussing the situation with Del Mahaffey himself hadn’t occurred to me. “Can we…I mean, is that possible? To ask him why he’s haunting his old banjo? What he wants, what it’s going to take to get him to leave?”

Beth said, “Yeah, I can do a séance.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Howard.

“Bo’s right, nothing else has worked. The strongest expulsion spell we’ve got just pissed him off.”

“This is dangerous.” Howard fixed his granddaughter with a look that made me want to clean my room and promise never to date until I was thirty. “You know why.”

Bo’s eyes were full of such desperate misery, I felt compelled to speak up when he didn’t. “I’ve never been to a séance, so could one of you explain why it’s so dangerous?”

“It’s dangerous because we would need Bo to play,” Howard said. “With his connection to this spirit, that could be inviting trouble.”

Bo said, “But could it work?”

Beth said nothing, but she sure looked like she wanted to. Howard said, “Maybe, but it’s a big risk.”

“If this is how we help my brother, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Mahaffey’s spirit is already drawn to you. This could make that connection stronger. Are you willing to risk that?”

“Yes,” Bo answered without hesitation.

The older man stared him down, took the measure of his commitment, and finally nodded. “Set things up, Beth, if you would. I need a moment.” Howard left the room, moving slowly.

Bo retreated to a corner with his haunted family heirloom. Beth came to stand next to me. “Pawpaw’s getting too old for this shit.”

I shared her concern, but I was more worried about Bo, and Howard being right. “I’ve got a weird feeling about this.”

She swatted at my elbow. “Come on. You light the candles and I’ll set up some chairs.”

We sat around the table as Bo played an old melody. Beth muttered an indecipherable mix of English and Texas German. The candle flames reacted to a breeze that didn’t exist. My internal spook meter blared a warning klaxon as the tattoo on my wrist flared with heat.

Beth said, “Are you with us, Del Mahaffey?”

Bo missed a note, then quit playing altogether.

“Del Mahaffey! You got something to say, let us know you’re here.”

It was a hell of a commanding tone to take with a man known for violence against women, but I figured that was why she spoke that way. It worked, too. He responded with a flurry of notes from his Supertone. Bo gaped as music poured from the instrument, his fingers nowhere near the strings. In a rush, he placed the banjo on the table.

“You’re hurting your great-grandson.” Beth used a softer tone now, a little more country in her voice. “You need to let him go, Mr. Del.”

Oh, that was good. I always admire a good hustle and that was a fine one. She poised her hands above the banjo, one at the neck, the other over the strings on the head. She breathed in and out, slowly, deliberately. Moved her fingers in an elegant approximation of plucking the strings.

Music emitted from the banjo. I knew right away it wasn’t Del Mahaffey. The tone was too gentle, nothing like the strident drone of Del’s anger. It whispered through the room, sweet as a summer breeze, tender as a consoling embrace. Knotted muscles relaxed and the fire on my wrist cooled. I glanced at the tattoo. It may have stopped hurting, but still glowed dark blue against my skin.

“Let him go, Mr. Del.” Beth’s eyes were closed, her features drawn in concentration. “Leave him be, and go find your peace.”

Sparks shot from the banjo, arcs of electric blue reaching for each of us. One hit my tattoo, the zap sending white hot pain up my arm and through my body. I leaped from my seat, sending the chair backward to the floor, barely staying on my feet. Howard wasn’t so lucky. The blow knocked him sideways to the ground. Beth hurried to his side. There was a brief clash of sound as her spell petered out and was overpowered by Del Mahaffey’s dark music.

Bo picked up the banjo and held it as magic and music poured from the strings. If the electricity hurt him, he gave no indication. If he was still frightened of Del, he hid it well. Something washed over his face that I couldn’t identify. He cocked his head as if listening once again to a voice only he could hear. Then he nodded, his lips moving silently.

A full on conversation between the two? That would either be the best thing that could happen right now, or the worst. “What’s he saying to you, Bo?”

He ignored me. I spared a glance at the Klingemanns. “You guys okay?”

Howard climbed to his feet, moving slow and stiff. “We’re okay, but this has to stop.” He looked at his granddaughter. “It’s time to admit this may be beyond us.”

“Del is way too dangerous to just give up,” she said.

Bo rested his hand on the banjo’s strings. His fingers stretched and flexed, like an animal testing the wind.

“You with us, Bo?” I didn’t like the slackness of his face, the blankness in his eyes. Was he still in control of himself?

“Justin can’t give him what he needs,” Bo said. He plucked the strings, a handful of notes spilling forth.

“Does that mean he’ll let your brother go?”

“Yes.” He raised his eyes to meet mine, and I swear to God, for a moment I was looking at the face of Del Mahaffey.

“What are you doing, Bo?” Panic hit me with a sudden force. None of us were likely to make much headway if this came down to a physical fight, or if we needed to restrain him.

“I have to give him what he needs. It’s the only way to help Justin.”

“No! You don’t have to do this.”

Bo answered with a power chord that would have earned appreciation from many a rock guitarist. The pyrotechnics it called forth were worthy of a high dollar stage show, too. Long blue-white arcs of magic shot out from the brackets around the head of the banjo. One made contact with my tattoo. Another hit my shoulder on the opposite side. I screamed, briefly overwhelmed by searing pain. Somewhere far away, or at least that’s how it felt, Beth and Howard chanted in Texas German. I wound up on my knees, fighting nausea, and then things were dark and fuzzy for a while.

By the time the pain receded enough for me to take stock, Bo was gone, and he’d taken the banjo with him.

Chapter Ten ->

According to the clock bolted to the motel room nightstand, I had eighteen minutes of stewing in my own anger before Bo knocked on the door. “If you came here to give me another reason to yell at you, just go back to your room and leave me alone.”

He held out a folder. “This is everything. No more hiding.”

I studied his face, seeing no artifice there. I really did believe he wanted to help his brother, so I took the folder. A name was written in careful script at the top. “Who is Del Mahaffey?”

“He was my great-grandfather. Can I come in?”

I opened the folder to find an old photo on top of various other papers. It was a black and white portrait of a handsome man with Bo’s bone structure and a hardness in his eyes that sent a shiver down my spine. A banjo rested on his leg and his hands were poised to play. I knew without asking this was the man whose spirit inhabited the banjo. That this man had murdered a woman.

I held the door open for Bo. “Start talking.”

He took a seat at the small table by the window. “Our granny, the one I told you about who taught us how to play? She was his daughter.”

I joined him at the table and took a notebook and pen from my bag. “Go on.”

Bo eyed the notebook warily but continued. “Del was mostly a bootlegger. He’d try once in a while to hold down a legitimate job, but it never stuck. He’d get bored or mad at somebody or just tired of being straight, and he’d go back to bootlegging. Had a bunch of brothers and cousins who made and sold moonshine, so he always had a place in that world to go back to when the straight world didn’t suit him anymore. He had a wife, too.”

My pen scratching across the paper was the only sound during his long pauses.

“Her name was Pauline. They had two kids, my granny Paula and her brother Jack. I know from my grandmother’s papers in that folder that Del was abusive. He was cruel sometimes, and he hit Pauline. He didn’t beat the kids but he beat their mother in front of them and he was mean to them, too. But not all the time. I guess that’s the tricky part, huh? The part that makes a person hope they’ll change.”

“Your grandmother wrote about her daddy?”

Bo nodded. “She wanted a record of sorts, of his life. The good and the bad. She told me people wanted her to pretend like he didn’t exist. Like he’d never been a part of her life. But he had. He was her daddy. She was young when he died but she remembered him. So did Jack.” He shot to his feet as if he couldn’t contain what was welling inside him. “That banjo’s not the only thing that Del Mahaffey’s been haunting since he hanged. He’s been haunting this family. Like whatever was in him that made him so dangerous is in our DNA, like our blue eyes and our height. There’s a lot of musicians in the family. But it’s like he passed down his rage, too.”

The room fell silent as I stopped taking notes and he marinated in his own private misery. I opened the folder and examined the photo of Del Mahaffey. He’d been a looker for sure, but the arrogant set of his jaw and the meanness in his eyes promised more trouble than any man was worth. “Who did he kill?”

“He always had women on the side. There was one, her name was Maggie, who thought Del would leave his wife for her. She was really young, naïve. And she got pregnant.” Bo stood against the wall with his hands bunched in his pockets. He leaned his head back and stared a hole in the ceiling while he spoke. “Del still wouldn’t leave his wife. So Maggie threatened to tell both her daddy and Pauline. Del wasn’t a man you could corner.”

“So he lashed out? Killed her?”

“Paula believed he really did love her mother. He just had no idea how to control himself.” Bo lowered his head and met my gaze. “That’s no excuse, I know. It was what it was. Anyway, yeah. He lured Maggie into the woods. He stabbed her and left her body in a shallow grave.”

“Jesus.” My stomach roiled at the matter-of-fact description of horrible violence.

“He’d been in plenty of fights before. As rough as bootlegging was, he may have even killed a man before that. But this was a girl, pregnant with his child. I think maybe it haunted him. He got to where he was drinking even more than usual, meaner than usual. My granny didn’t know exactly how it happened, but Del confessed to Pauline. And Pauline turned him into the police.”

That was a plot twist I hadn’t been expecting. “She turned in her own husband?”

“It was a way out of the constant beatings and mistreatment. A way to get her kids out. So she took it.”

“How did it play out?”

“She took the sheriff out to the grave. Del admitted it when they came to arrest him. His family got him a lawyer and the lawyer had him plead not guilty, but he was convicted and sentenced to hang. The Mahaffeys never forgave Pauline. She had a lot of problems with them down through the years. They still hate her descendants to this day and most of them don’t even know why.”

Bo returned to the table. He lifted the photo of his great-grandfather and studied it for a moment. I wondered what he was looking for. Whatever it was, I knew better than to think he might find it.

“He was a musician practically since the time he could walk. Played old instruments he found around the house or the homes of relatives. Made his own instruments out of cheap materials. For years he had a hand-me-down banjo. But that Supertone, he bought it for himself brand new. Carried it everywhere. Even on runs, with a car full of liquor, he’d have that banjo with him. He’d play house parties, in bars, anywhere. Granny wrote about it.” He put the photo back on the table and tapped the folder. “There’s a copy in here of what she wrote about him.”

“So the banjo was his. The violent impulses, his. Attacking a woman close to him…being related to Del by blood has made the connection between your brother and the banjo strong. That may be why trying to destroy the banjo didn’t work.”

“Justin’s not like this. He’s not violent. Not mean. He got the music and the height and the Mahaffey blue eyes, but he didn’t get the rage.”

“Knowing about Del and the blood connection will help. We tell all this to Beth and Howard, I’m sure they can figure something out. A way to break that connection. Exorcise the banjo itself.”

“Maybe. They might be able to scrub Del’s spirit out of that banjo, but there’s no getting his blood out of my veins.”

The last missing pieces of the puzzle that was Bo Welch fell into place. His less than pleasant demeanor, his control freak sensibilities, his drive to help his brother at all costs, even his lack of a girlfriend despite his good looks and successful business. He’d said Justin didn’t have the Mahaffey rage but made no similar claim about himself. Did it lurk inside of him, just under the surface? Was that the reason for Bo’s need for control, both of himself and his environment? The reason he avoided relationships? Del Mahaffey was haunting the wrong brother, and it was tearing Bo up inside.

Or maybe I was totally wrong. But I was convinced I was at least partly right. “You feel guilty, don’t you? That this happened to Justin and not you.”

“The first time I beat somebody up, I was twelve. The kid was two years older. Bigger than me, too. He’d been bullying Justin, so I put a stop to it. I beat that kid until he was bloody and crying on the ground. I don’t even remember most of it.”

“You protected your little brother from a bully. That doesn’t mean you’re like Del.”

Pain darkened his eyes. “I said that was my first fight. Not my only.”

“Have you ever hit a woman?”

“I came close once.”

“How close?”

“I punched a wall instead of her.”

It took nearly inhuman effort to not move my chair further from him, not pick up my phone, not get up and leave the room. “You are not Del.”

“He’s my great-grandfather. His blood’s in my blood. His rage is in me.” Bo tapped his chest, hard. “It was in my father. His uncle. Most of the Mahaffeys. It’s part of who we are.” His voice cracked on the last few words and he looked away.

“It doesn’t have to be. You made a choice once. You keep making that choice.”

“He tried.” I knew he meant Del. “Not so much with strangers, but with his wife and kids. And he failed. He beat his wife, in front of their kids.”

“That has nothing to do with who you are.”

“My dad used to scream at us. Break things, get drunk and get in fights. He never hit one of us, but he was a hard man to live with. He could be cruel. Even when he was in a sober phase and making a big deal out of going to A.A. and to church, he’d still be mean. He got into fights drunk and sober both, got arrested for it a few times.”

“You’re not him, either, Bo.”

“My grandma’s brother went to prison for almost killing a man. He never straightened his life out. My father never made anything of himself because his temper and his drinking wouldn’t let him hold down a job long enough. Over and over again, it’s there. The drinking and the violence and the shit lives and the kids afraid of their fathers and the wives afraid of their husbands.”

He dropped into the chair, leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face. “Justin beat the odds. I’ve had to work to stay sober, to keep out of fights. I haven’t dated anybody longer than a few weeks since that time I almost hit a woman. I keep my life as orderly as possible and I keep to myself as much as I can.”

“That sounds lonely.”

He answered with a caustic laugh. “It sucks. But it’s okay, because Justin beat the odds. Until I found that banjo in Granny’s things and gave it to him.”

“Oh, God.” That was even worse than just feeling like it should have been him – he actually gave the haunted banjo to Justin. No wonder Bo was so messed up.

“Our daddy didn’t want us to play. He knew all about his grandfather. When he was on a sober streak, he lumped music in with drinking and partying and fighting. It was all of a piece to him, a bad piece. He was furious with me about that talent show. We had a screaming match and I thought, this is it, he’s finally going to hit me. I was ready to hit him back. He wound up telling me about Del. I knew there were people who didn’t like our family but I didn’t realize how far it went back, or why. I knew people talked about my dad’s temper.” He went quiet, his face softening as he got lost in private thoughts.

I got him a cup of ice water and set it on the table. He would talk again when he was ready.

“I remember telling him, Justin’s not like that. He said, no, he’s not. And he looked at me. God, the way he looked at me.” Some of the scared boy he must have been leaked through at the edges. “He knew I was the one to worry about.”

“Is that why you gave up music?”

“That was the first thing I gave up. Eventually I had to quit drinking, too. Learn to keep my temper in check. Stay out of serious relationships.”

I shook my head. “Why would you punish yourself for something done by a man who died long before you were even born? His sins are not yours to atone for.”

He sat up so fast I had to step back to keep us from colliding. “Have you been listening to me at all? It’s not just Del. So many men in my family are like him. I don’t want to be like that. I never want a woman to be scared of me again.” His face crumpled as the walls of his self-control broke down. “I can’t be like that. I can’t.” His breath hitched. He leaned over and buried his face in his hands, his body shaking.

I couldn’t just watch somebody cry without offering comfort. I gave his shoulder an awkward pat. Bo was so used to holding himself aloof from others, he probably wouldn’t think anything of it if I backed away and left him alone with his pain. But that wasn’t me. I stepped closer, wrapped my arms around his shoulders and let my head rest lightly on the top of his. “You shouldn’t make yourself pay for the mistakes of others, even if they are family,” I said quietly. “That’s not how it works. People pay for their own sins.”

He clasped my arm and gently squeezed. “That’s not true and you know it.”

“I know. Other people trying to punish you, that’s not something you can help. You shouldn’t punish yourself.”

“I’m tired of living like this,” he admitted. “It doesn’t even feel like living most of the time.”

“Then stop, and start living.”

He put a hand on my hip and maneuvered me to stand in front of him, between his knees. “You really think it’s that easy?”

I laughed. “No. Especially not with a haunted banjo in the mix. But I do think the Klingemanns can help with that part.”

“Do you think you could help? With the other part?”

A mild warning flashed in the back of my brain. Bo pulled me into a kiss, his lips insistent. I froze, not sure how to respond. He took that for something it wasn’t and deepened the kiss, his arms snaking around my back.

I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed his body from mine while I pulled my mouth from his. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t, uh.” As vulnerable as he was, I really didn’t want to have the whole I’m just not that into you talk unless I had to.

Disappointment darkened his features and a door in his eyes that had cracked open swung abruptly shut. “Yeah. No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m not mad or anything. I just…you know.” I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t hurt his already fragile feelings, so I dropped it. “I think I’d like to turn in for the night.”

Bo nodded. He rushed from the room without saying much else.

Chapter Nine ->

The kitchen was cozy and normal. I stared at a calendar with a picture of a red barn while Beth made coffee. Howard and Bo had stayed in the other room to clean up the debris. Beth brought two cups to the small breakfast nook and sat opposite me. I thanked her and said, “How are you feeling?”

She rubbed her shoulders. “A little sore. That was harder than I expected.”

“So, what exactly did you do?”

She got up and returned with milk and sugar, pushing both toward me. Beth Klingemann, badass luthier witch, took her coffee black and hot. “I looked inside the banjo.”

I added more sugar than usual to my coffee, unnerved and distracted. “How does that work?”

“The spell I used allowed me to take a look at the banjo’s psychic imprint. Sort of like a magical x-ray.”

“And you’re trained to understand what you’re looking at? Is that where the luthier magic part comes in? Kind of like there’s different specialties of medicine?”

Beth nodded. “Yeah. I mean, Pawpaw always said it was like there’s different genres of music. The medicine thing works, too.”

I recalled what I’d been told and read about psychometry. “Does everything have a psychic imprint?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. You can call it energy, too. Whatever you want to call it, everything has it. Reading something is a two-part trick. The first part is just being able to see it. Visualize it, intuit it. There’s different ways. The way your own magic works determines how you experience it.”

“How do you experience it?”

“It’s visual for me.” She pulled a hairband from her jeans pocket and put her hair up. It made her look even younger. “Black and white images, mostly. Sometimes like an old home movie. Sometimes like old still pictures. Sometimes a real mess.”

“Is the second part of the trick being able to understand what you’re experiencing?”

She nodded. “It’s also the hardest. Having a visual makes it a little easier, but it can still be a mess.”

“I’m guessing that banjo was a mess.”

“Shit. That banjo is a piece of work.” She took a long drink of coffee then stood. “I’m starving. You want anything?”

“No, thanks, but you go ahead.”

Beth strode to the counter and returned with a covered dish. “Homemade cinnamon rolls,” she said as she slid back into the seat. “Pawpaw’s girlfriend made them.” She opened the dish and the sweet, rich scent was too much for me.

“Okay, maybe just one.”

We ate in silence. Neither of us spoke until we’d both eaten two of the sticky, delicious treats. “Your pawpaw’s girlfriend is an amazing cook.”

“She’s awesome, I love her to death.” Beth retrieved napkins for us. It was easy to see the food had revived her. She moved quicker, with a lighter step and renewed energy. I felt a lot better myself. “She infuses a lot of positive energy and healing magic into her food. She knew I was doing this tonight, that’s why she made these and brought them over.”

“She’s a witch, too?”

“Her practice is a lot more low key than ours, but yes. Neither one of us could be with someone who didn’t know. You practice like this, there’s no hiding it.” Her face darkened and her brows came together. “Bo Welch is hiding something from you. And I think I might know what it is.”

The vague suspicions I’d been harboring came to the fore. “What did you see in that banjo, Beth?”

“A man. He was chasing a woman through the woods. He caught her, and he killed her. Dumped her body in a shallow grave. There was blood all over his hands. I could see his bloody hands on the banjo. Playing it. It was his banjo first.”

That was about what I’d expected, but it still chilled me to hear it. “Did you see enough that we might be able to trace him? Would that help with exorcising the thing?”

“An exorcism won’t be as simple as I thought, especially if I’m right.”

I threw up my hands. “Just go ahead and drop the anvil on my head.”

“I think Bo Welch and his brother are related to the banjo’s original owner. The killer I saw, that’s still haunting it. I think they’re related, and that’s why the link is so strong.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” Now it was my turn for some unladylike swearing. Usually that helped relieve stress and tension, but not this time. This time, I just wanted to keep swearing. “God damn it.”

“Left that part out, didn’t he?”

“Motherfucker.”

“I hear ya, girl.” She picked up another cinnamon roll.

“Just how strong of a link are we talking about?”

“Strong enough that the banjo can’t be destroyed. Which is a shame because salting and burning it would be my first choice.”

I felt somewhat vindicated, hearing that, but the feeling was fleeting. “What’s your second choice?”

“I haven’t come up with one yet. I’ll hit the books first thing in the morning, I promise.” She lofted a bite of cinnamon roll in the air. “The food’s helped but I need some sleep after fighting with that bastard.”

That concerned me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Other than worn out, I’m fine. He can’t leave the confines of the banjo if that’s what you’re afraid of. He’s not that kind of spirit. He can’t move around on his own, he can only inhabit the object that soaked up so much of his psychic energy.”

“So there are different kinds of spirits?” She nodded, her mouth full of pastry. I said, “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him coming at us with a ghost knife or something.”

“Nope. We just have to worry about him influencing someone living to come after us with a real knife.”

Oh, great. At least Justin Welch remained in custody three states away. But-

“Bo’s been playing. I could hear him through the motel room walls. Could that help forge a connection? Let the banjo influence him the way it did his brother?”

The horror in Beth’s eyes gave me the answer before she even had a chance to speak. “You need to tell him to stop playing. Especially if I’m right and the haunting spirit is a relative of his.”

“You ladies didn’t drink all the coffee, did you?” Howard entered the kitchen, Bo right behind him. “It’s getting late, but I believe I could use a cup.”

“I’ll get you one, Pawpaw.” Beth rose, stopping to kiss her grandfather’s cheek before moving on to the coffee pot. She ignored Bo but gave me a significant look.

“Thank you, hon.” Howard took her vacated seat.

“I’m so sorry about all the damage,” I said.

He waved a hand in dismissal. “It happens. That’s why we started using card tables and cheap bowls from the Dollar Store. Keeps the good stuff intact.” He gave me a reassuring smile. “Besides, our mutual friend, the one you like to call the professor, he’s paying plenty for this, so don’t worry about it.”

“How do you even know him?” East Texas was a long way away from the English countryside.

“I met him back in my roadie days.”

I laughed. “No kidding!”

Beth said, “Hey, I could slip some whiskey into your coffee, Pawpaw, and you tell us stories about those days.”

He grinned but shook his head. “I’m afraid not tonight. Got an early morning tomorrow.”

It was just as well. I had plans for an unpleasant conversation with Bo as soon as we left. “I’d love to hear your stories sometime, but we’ve kept y’all busy long enough tonight.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Beth said. “Give me some time with the books, and you’ll be hearing from me.”

“Thank you.” I glanced at Bo. His eyes had a shell-shocked glaze and I wasn’t sure he was paying much attention. “We’ll head out now,” I said, mostly to him.

“Right.” He snapped out of his fugue enough to say a polite thank you and good night to the Klingemanns.

He stowed the banjo case carefully in the back seat of his car. I gave him time to get back on the highway before I said anything. “Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit.”

He refused to say another word. The way he was gripping the steering wheel, as if his life depended on holding on to something solid, made me decide to let it rest while he was driving. As soon as we were parked in the motel lot, though, I let him have it.

“You might be tempted to offer up some bullshit excuse about how this wasn’t lying, it was withholding information. Don’t. Just fucking don’t. Your brother’s sanity and freedom are on the line. You asked for my help. I went out on a limb and got help for you and your brother through other contacts. And you left out the fact that this haunted banjo is a God damn family heirloom.”

“What do you want me to say?” He wouldn’t look at me, instead stared at the dashboard and the dark.

“I want you to understand that was a bullshit move on your part. And I want you to stop keeping things from me. By the time Beth calls me tomorrow, you better be prepared to tell us everything you know about that banjo and its original owner. If you want to keep endangering your brother by hiding things from the people who could help you, then you need to take your ass back to North Carolina and I’ll go back to work. It’s your decision.”

I got out of the car and slammed the door shut.

Chapter Eight ->

Outdoor lights cast a yellow glow on the front porch of the modest farmhouse and gave the structure an unearthly appearance in the dark Texas night. A man rocked languidly in the porch swing. He folded a newspaper and placed it beside him on the seat as Bo parked in the gravel. I hopped out and raised a hand in greeting. “Mr. Klingemann?”

“Oh, now.” He got to his feet and I realized he was older than I’d expected, though I wasn’t sure why I’d expected someone younger. Easily over seventy, he was tall and still had a healthy build and a crown of snow-white hair. “Our mutual acquaintance is paying me enough to let you call me Howard.” He gave me a small, wry smile and a hand to shake as I climbed the porch steps.

“Nice to meet you, Howard.” I shook his callused hand then indicated my companion. “This is Bo Welch, the brother of the man having trouble.”

The men shook hands. Howard pointed at the case in Bo’s left hand. “That the banjo?”

“Yes, sir.” Bo had turned a queasy shade of gray-green under the porch lights, or perhaps it was fear. “My brother’s in bad shape. Do you really think you can help him?”

“That depends. The first thing we need to figure out is if that banjo is the source of the trouble.” He opened the front door. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

Howard led us through the house at a pace just slow enough for me to make a few observations. The décor was a time warp, cozy and country and reminiscent of the home of my grandparents. Lots of old pictures on the walls, muted floral patterns on the furniture, antiques that would have made Grandma salivate.

A room in the back held the really good stuff. The walls were lined with shelves, the one nearest the door full of books. So many titles I recognized, by authors I’d looked up to for years and some I’d realized were more than a little sketchy. Biographies of musicians. Histories of genres and sub-genres. Big, heavy coffee table books full of photos of singers and players and instruments. I could have spent days, even weeks, going through Howard Klingemann’s library.

Then there was the vinyl. Oh my God, the vinyl. I ran my fingers over the narrow edges as I read the titles. “This is the most amazing collection of roots music I’ve ever seen.”

Howard pointed to a shelf made of cubbies. “There’s boxes of 78s in there. That’s where the real treasures are.”

I stared at the shelf in question. It was a double shelf, with cubbies on both sides, as tall as me and full of the specially made containers used by collectors to house the delicate, decades-old 78 RPM records. As I approached, my play button tattoo pulsed with heat and my inner spook meter went into the red. “Something’s in there.”

Howard gave me a curious look. “Lot of things in there, but that’s not what y’all are here about.”

I took the hint gracefully and looked at Bo. “Yes. Yeah, let’s do that thing.”

A young woman with wavy brown hair halfway down her back entered the room. She carried an armful of fat pillar candles and a leather-bound book under one arm. Howard helped her with the candles. “This is my granddaughter, Beth. She works with me.”

“I still have a lot to learn,” she said. “But I can definitely help with your banjo.”

Howard placed the candles on a card table at the far side of the room. I introduced myself and Bo to Beth. She took the book to the table then turned to Bo. “Can you put the banjo on the table, please? In the middle.”

Slowly, his unease showing, Bo did as asked. “How does this work?”

The Klingemanns exchanged meaningful looks, a whole silent conversation in their eyes. Beth answered. “That’s a little complicated to explain. Don’t worry, nothing we do will hurt the banjo.” She patted his arm awkwardly. Bo nodded in response, a look on his face like some men gave the mommas and grannies and sweet young ladies at church. Respect. Deference, the kind meant for the right kind of woman. It was a look I never got, being the wrong kind of woman.

I watched as Howard and Beth turned the card table into an altar. More candles, bowls of water, earth, feathers, and herbs. A bell and the place of honor for the book which I realized now was a grimoire. Beth had a sweetness of face and a graceful way of moving that made her attractive, but I doubted it would be enough to overcome Bo’s fear once he got a look at her power.

I kind of hoped I was underestimating him, but I had no plans to hold my breath.

“We’re ready,” Howard said.

Bo fidgeted, his hands moving through the air like restless birds. “So this will get rid of the man haunting the banjo, right? Like an exorcism?”

The way he worded his question bothered me. Considering the nature of Justin Welch’s actions, it made sense that the entity holding sway over the banjo was a man. A man who committed domestic violence at the very least, but more likely murder. Bo sounded really sure, though. Like, really sure-

Beth cut into my thoughts. “We need you guys to move back, please.”

Bo gave her a solicitous smile and my ensuing urge to barf made me briefly forget my suspicions. We stood by the wall and I whispered to him, “You know, she can probably magic your head right off your neck.”

The startled look of fear that flared on his face was deeply satisfying. Sometimes, I am a bad person.

With a flick of her hand, Beth lit every candle in the room at once. That put a quick end to all conversation. Howard stood at one end of the table while Beth took up position in front of the grimoire and the banjo. He picked up a thick bundle of sage, lit one end with the nearest candle, then gently blew out the flame to leave it smoldering. He walked the sage around the altar, stopping at every corner to wave it over the elemental symbols. Once he was back where he’d started, he passed the bundle over the instrument slowly. With a single look, he turned the rite over to his granddaughter.

Beth opened the grimoire. She studied the page for a moment, then placed her hands on the banjo. Silently, I slipped to Bo’s other side for a better vantage point. Sure enough, Beth’s fingers were on the strings. My body tensed and the tattoo on my wrist pulsed with a steady rhythm of warning and heat.

Beth’s voice filled the room. Whereas she’d sounded demure and girlish earlier, now she spoke with the power and authority of a witch – a woman – who knew exactly what the hell she was doing.

And she spoke in a language that sounded off to my ears. German, maybe, but not quite. A little English here and there. I made a mental note to ask later.

The witch plucked a string and my tattoo turned into a lick of flame. The song I’d heard before, momentarily lost in a nightmare vision brought on by the instrument, returned. Louder this time. Fuller. The bass notes resounded in my chest and the mad, scrambling melody ripped and tore at my nerves. I wrapped my other hand around my hurting wrist and tried to focus on the rite rather than the waking nightmare.

Beth’s chanting grew louder, the words slipping and sliding from her lips in a rush. She held the banjo down as if struggling to keep it in place. If whatever, whoever, was in there was fighting, I didn’t envy her. The room plunged into darkness, every candle abruptly snuffed out. Bo gasped next to me. He backed up further until the only thing keeping him in proximity to all this was the wall. If he could have melted right through it, I think he would have gladly done so. I took a step forward, and I couldn’t say if it was curiosity that drove me or the pull of the music the tattoo had tuned me in to. It was a devil’s dance, for sure, increasingly frantic as the song neared its deadly end.

Howard said something I couldn’t make out over the din in my head, but it was easy to guess when the overhead electric light came on. The card table flexed under the banjo, then rose several inches in the air. Beth never dropped so much as a syllable of her chant and she held on to the instrument with a superhuman determination. Sweat dripped from her face and her arms shook with the effort. The bowl of water fell from the table, crashing to the floor in pieces. The other ingredients soon followed, and the candles. The table rocked violently in the air. Beth maintained her grip on the banjo, somehow. A loud crack sounded and I knew immediately the entity had managed to break the table.

It collapsed in a heap. Beth had the banjo in her hands, gripping it by the neck. She wound down the chanting with a level of control I deeply envied. When the last word of German passed her lips, she released the banjo. It hovered in the air for a good ten seconds before dropping unceremoniously onto the debris of the busted table.

Nobody spoke. Bo’s breathing was the loudest sound in the room. He sounded like he was about to hyperventilate, and the noise wasn’t helping my nerves. I figured somebody had to be the first to talk, and a nice tension breaker wouldn’t hurt, either. So I said, “Anybody else need a drink?”

Chapter Seven ->

We made it as far as Tuscaloosa before stopping for the night. Bo drove the whole way, unwilling to relinquish even that much control. It was about what I expected: no deviations from the interstate, cruise control set at ten miles over the speed limit, he only stopped at chain gas stations and restaurants, and worst of all, he did in fact listen to talk radio. Thank God for earbuds, or I might have dove out the passenger door.

We had adjoining rooms at the motel. Sometime after midnight, I woke to the sound of a banjo playing. I sat up in bed and listened. Bo never sang, just plucked the strings in a slow, tentative fashion. Like he wasn’t sure if he still remembered how to play. Over the course of an hour, he worked at it. His playing became more confident and the song finally recognizable, the old North Carolina ballad Tom Dooley.

Another murder ballad. Why did it have to be a murder ballad? Wasn’t it creepy enough for him that the banjo was haunted? That it had worked some evil mojo on his brother? No, apparently not. Good ol’ boy Bo had a little goth streak of his own, and it led him right to the darkest music he could play.

Why did he want to play it anyway, when that might be the very thing that allowed the spirit to influence Justin? Sure, his brother had been playing the instrument for months. An hour or so of clumsy practice was unlikely to do much, but still, why risk it? It made no sense.

Once Bo quit playing, I drifted into an uneasy sleep. Morning came too soon and brought a headache with it. The motel had a free continental breakfast which consisted of cereal and microwave waffles. I got coffee and took my laptop to an empty table.

I may have taken time off work but all that really got me was a brief reprieve from new assignments. I still had a regular online column dedicated to music history that I’d recently talked the editor into greenlighting. The deadline for it was fast approaching. I picked a topic and let my fingers fly.

I knew the moment Bo approached and started reading over my shoulder. “Learning anything?”

“Yeah, actually, I am.” He walked around and took the seat opposite me. “I didn’t know the banjo came from Africa.”

“Africa, the Caribbean, then the U.S.” I saved what I had so far and glanced at the word count. Not enough yet. “The original gourd instruments evolved over time. Slaves taught their owners how to play. White minstrel performers made the banjo popular, starting around the 1840s. It became a part of jazz. Bluegrass. Bluegrass and roots music are why people think of it as an American invention. A white thing.”

“I sure didn’t know any black kids in high school who played the banjo.”

“Ever heard of the Carolina Chocolate Drops?”

Bo shrugged. “Maybe. Sounds like one of the bands Justin’s talked about.”

“When did you give it up?” I kept my eyes on the screen but my fingers were still.

“What?”

“Playing. When did you stop? I heard you last night.”

Mortification lit his face on fire. “Nosy much?”

“Hey, the walls are thin.” I clicked the save button again and closed the laptop. “I could tell you know how to play, but it sounded like maybe you haven’t done it in a while. You were hesitant.” He sat stone-faced, the line between his eyebrows a deep groove. I tried another tack. “Have you and your brother ever performed together?”

The granite lines of his face softened into something resembling handsome. “When we were kids. He’d play the banjo and sing. I’d play the guitar.” A smile tugged at his mouth, and he was so lost in thought, he didn’t try to hide it. “Our granny would sing with us sometimes. She’s the one who taught us how to play.”

“Did you guys just play for family, or did you ever go for bigger audiences?”

Some of the granite returned. “We did a local talent show once.”

“How did it go?”

“We got second place. I let Justin keep the trophy.”

I was getting close to something, I just wasn’t sure what. “Did you do more shows after that?”

“No.” He pushed his chair back and rose. “We need to get on the road.” With that, he left me there, wondering what nerve I’d hit.

We drove in silence for nearly an hour. He didn’t even subject me to talk radio, for which I was profoundly grateful. As we reached Meridian, I pulled out an old rock and roll travel guide from my bag and flipped through it. “Hey, you want to stop at the Jimmie Rodgers Museum?”

He looked at me like I’d grown another head. “We’re not on vacation. We’re taking this trip to get help for my brother.”

“I know that, but our appointment’s not until tonight and we’ve got plenty of time.”

“No.”

“Like, an hour.”

“I said no.”

“I just think a little break would do you good. You need to relax.”

“You want to spend an hour helping me relax, you should have said so back at the motel.”

I answered with a middle finger, embarrassed I’d left myself open like that. Annoyed at the images his suggestion brought to mind. “Just for that, I’m picking the radio station.” I reached for the stereo controls.

He stayed my hand, his big hand engulfing mine. “Please don’t make me listen to top forty.”

Incredulous, I stared at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Against my will, my estimation of him rose a few notches. A man capable of a meaningful apology couldn’t be all bad. “Classic rock it is, then.” I found a station and we cruised through Meridian.

We made it to Nacogdoches, Texas, in plenty of time for me to take a nap at the latest motel. Once I woke, I showered and dressed, then sat down with my laptop. I struggled for another couple hundred words on the column. This topic should have been a breeze, but I was too distracted. Too nervous. Our appointment with a luthier magician loomed, and I did not feel at all prepared. But maybe that was for the best. I couldn’t treat this like an interview because it wasn’t one. The professor had been adamant that a condition of this magician’s willingness to examine the banjo was that I respect his privacy. If I wrote about tonight for my blog, I couldn’t mention names, details, or even the state where the luthier magician lived.

After a while, I gave up on the Turntable column and opened another document. In this one, I kept a running list of all the motels and hotels I stayed at. Since I traveled frequently for the magazine, it was a pretty long list. I typed in this latest motel, then deleted the entry and closed the doc. This trip wasn’t for the magazine. Maybe it was time for a different list, one for blog-related travel. I created a new document in the blog folder and typed in the names and locations of these latest three motels. When I had time, I’d go through my notes and add in motels from my first experience with the supernatural. What I would not do was think about how much time I spent in motels.

Another thing I didn’t want to think about was being back in Texas. It happened once or twice a year at least, whether I wanted it to or not. When it was for work, it was easy to forget where I was and just focus on whatever concert or festival I was covering for Turntable. I never came back for any reason other than work. Texas wasn’t home anymore, it was just the place where I grew up.

I texted Bo at dinner time but he didn’t respond. I ate alone at the steakhouse across from the motel, one eye on my phone while I read a paperback romance I’d picked up somewhere along the way. After my meal I sent Bo another text, that again went unanswered. I walked to his room. He’d made sure to get one away from mine this time and when I leaned close to the door, I knew why.

His playing had less hesitation this time, but still lacked the ease and familiarity present in his brother’s videos. Bo had to work hard for every recalled note. I listened as the song came into sharper focus until I could identify it. High on a Mountain. He hummed a bit but didn’t sing. Did he learn this one from his grandmother? The thought sent me backing away from the door. He didn’t want to share this with me. I was wrong to take even a piece of this private moment. I hurried back to my own room.

According to the map on my phone, it would take us twenty minutes to reach our destination. I added ten minutes to that in case of traffic. Five minutes before we needed to leave, I would text him again and hopefully he would respond this time. He knocked on my door before I had a chance to send the message.

“Are you as nervous about this as I am?” He held the banjo case across his body like a shield.

“Yes.” I grabbed my bag and the room card key. “You ready for this?”

“I guess so, since I have no idea what to expect.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know what to expect, either.” I locked up my room and we headed for his car.

“That doesn’t make me feel better. Kind of makes me feel worse. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of expert.”

“With music, I know my stuff. This, the paranormal stuff, I’m still learning.”

We drove in apprehensive silence for several minutes before he spoke again. “Why are you doing this?”

“Your brother asked for my help. Seems like a good enough reason.”

“Yeah, but we’re not paying you. If we agree to sell the banjo, you’ll get a commission out of that, but Justin has to agree, too, and I don’t know if he will. Or when he might be well enough to even think about it. That wasn’t even on the table when you came out to see me. So what’s in this for you?”

I had no answer for him.

“That magazine you work for won’t touch anything this weird, so it’s not like you get a big article out of it. Your blog is anonymous, so you don’t really get anything from that.”

This conversation was officially on my last nerve. “Why do you think people have to get something out of doing a good thing? That is some next level cynicism right there.”

“I’m putting a lot of trust in you. I guess I just want to know who you are.”

I swore under my breath. “What is this, a team building exercise? I’m a writer. A music nerd. A natural brunette. I like tacos. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that Pluto should still be considered a planet. I’m a night owl, I’m terrified of vampires, and as far as I’m concerned, Astral Weeks is the greatest work of art ever produced. What more do you need to know?”

He slowed to turn onto a dark road that we probably wouldn’t have found without GPS. “What’s Astral Weeks?”

I held up my left hand, palm facing him. “I can’t even talk to you.”

A sound filled the car, big and gusty and made of pure delight. I gaped at Bo. “Are you laughing? Like, actually laughing? I didn’t know you knew how.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

For the first time, I found myself genuinely curious about his life beyond how much he cared for his brother. “Care to share any fun details?”

He slowed the car to a crawl, the headlights shining on a mailbox, the number 908 affixed to it. “This is it.”

My gut tightened and the muscles in my shoulders bunched with tension. “I’ve got a weird feeling about this.”

Bo turned in to the driveway as the elvish tattoo on my wrist warmed my skin.

Chapter Six ->

Five o’clock in the morning is not a good time for me. Honestly, before noon is not a good time for me. I answered my cell at the offending hour with tremendous annoyance and an impolite obscenity.

“Ooh, I do hope you kiss your boyfriend with that dirty mouth.”

The voice of the man I thought of as The Professor propelled me fully awake. Professor, as in professor emeritus of mystical music in all its many dark and light forms, at Hogwarts, occasionally at Oxford, and when I was lucky, in conversation with me. “Thank you, uh. Thank you for calling me back.” I scrambled for the notebook and pen I’d left on the nightstand.

“No problem at all, dear. Now, what’s this about a haunted banjo? Sounds fascinating.”

My pulse leaped. Decades of rumors about his magical practice swirled in my head. I couldn’t come right out and ask him, though. People who did that never enjoyed his presence again, and despite the salacious parts of his past that I knew to be true, I liked him. I told him what I knew so far. Saying it out loud made me realize just how little I actually knew, which in turn made me wonder what all Bo was keeping to himself. I said as much to the professor.

“If he won’t be honest with you, then you should take the instrument to be examined by a specialist in luthier magic.”

His words were a supercharged jolt of espresso straight to my nervous system. “What’s luthier magic? How do you know about it? How do I find someone who can do whatever this is?” Do you practice luthier magic yourself? I kept that last question to myself.

The professor laughed at my eagerness. “You mean to tell me those escapades you’ve been blogging about haven’t yet led you to a luthier magician?”

The jolt of energy turned into a cold shock. “You know about my blog?”

“I know a great many things, Nikki.” I could picture his teasing smile and the twinkle in his eyes. “Now, dear, listen up and take notes. I have a date for brunch with someone who rates the closest I get to punctual these days.”

“My pen is at the ready.”

“Luthier magic is, as you may have guessed, magic pertaining to stringed instruments. It involves casting spells, crafting magic into the very materials the instrument is made of, all sorts of things like that. What you’re going to want is someone who can also read the instrument.”

I took advantage of his pause to scribble as fast as I could. “What does that mean, read the instrument?”

“Do you know what psychometry is?”

“Uh, a form of ESP. Putting your hands on an object and being able to tell things about it.”

“Like perhaps the identity of a previous owner. Or an act so traumatic, it left a deep psychic imprint on the object that can be discerned even decades later, by someone with the right talents, of course.”

“So you’re telling me a luthier psychometrist could tell me who’s haunting this banjo?”

“As well as why, and perhaps even how to put an end to the haunting.”

Bingo, Yahtzee, dyn-o-mite. “Would you happen to know someone with that skill set?” A smile made of sunshine, puppies, and relief at being able to help the Welch brothers spread across my face.

The professor made me wait a beat too long, though. “I do, indeed.”

I could hear it in his voice, the quid pro quo, Clarice. He wanted something in return. Not that I blamed him, I just wasn’t sure if I was in a position to give him anything that would be worth information like this. I might have still been fairly new to the supernatural world, but I knew how insular it was. How dangerous it was for the wrong people to find out about it. I did my best to hold on to my smile and said, “What do you want, professor?”

Gleeful laughter filled my ear. “I do love it when you call me that. And yes, I do want something. The banjo.”

One of the old rumors about the professor was that he collected occult items. While this wasn’t enough to be considered confirmation, it did make the tips of my fingers itch. There was only one problem. “I don’t know how these guys would feel about giving it up, even if I can help them.”

“They don’t have to give anything up. I’m happy to pay, quite handsomely. Including a commission for you in your role as broker. Think you can swing that?”

“I can’t guarantee they’d want to sell, but I will definitely talk to them about it.”

“That’s good enough for me. I’ll text you the information after brunch. Go back to sleep for now, love.”

“I will. Enjoy your brunch. And thank you.”

“Oh, one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to read about myself on your blog. That would make me very cross. You don’t want to do that, now, do you?”

The threat in his voice was unmistakable. “No, of course not. I protect my sources, and my friends.” The words came easily because they were true.

“Sleep well, dear.”

I rushed to make more notes, thoughts racing. Luthier magic, holy shit, that sounded amazing. I had to know more. Hopefully, soon I would.

♫

“You want to do what?”

I explained my plan to Bo again, careful to gloss over certain particulars and leave others out completely. He continued to balk.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” I could think of several reasons, but, you know.

“You’re not taking that banjo anywhere. As far as we know, it’s the only thing that can help my brother get back to himself. No way in hell am I letting a stranger take it anywhere.”

“I’m trying to help your brother. You know that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know you. Not enough to take a chance like this.”

“I don’t think luthier magicians make house calls, especially from several states away.”

He glared at me. “That’s another thing. You really believe there’s such a thing as luthier magic?”

“Dude, your brother was possessed by a spirit from a haunted banjo. I think luthier magic is definitely within the realm of the possible.”

Bo finally stopped moving. Since my arrival, he’d been meticulously cleaning and sorting the tools in his garage. I’d never seen so many wrenches and sockets and whatever all that stuff was. Every item had its place, neatly labeled. The car tools looked like they’d never seen a speck of grease and the lawn care stuff showed no hint of grass or dirt.

“Do you really think he’s possessed?”

I thought about it before answering. “Maybe briefly. If not outright possessed, then certainly influenced. My contact says this luthier magician can find a way to cleanse the banjo. Which would mean your brother would be himself again. I know that won’t erase the arrest or automatically get him out of that hospital, but he’ll be able to get his life back. It might take time, but it’ll happen. If we don’t get more help, expert help, I don’t know if he’ll be able to beat this on his own.”

He stood at his worktable with his back to me, hands resting on the surface. “You really think this will help him?”

“If he were my brother, I would be on my way in a heartbeat.”

“Okay, then.” He turned to face me. “We’ll go.”

That we hung in the air like a mosquito at a picnic. “Uh.”

“He’s my brother, and I’m not turning that banjo over to you. So I’m going with you.”

“Are you sure?” I gestured at the truck parked behind us, with his landscaping company logo painted on the side. “You’ve got a business to run.”

“A successful business, too, which means I have employees. Guys I trust. I can leave for a few days.” The vertical line between his eyebrows told the tale of the pained control freak, struggling with letting go of one thing in order to deal with another. I suspected Justin was probably the only thing that could tear Bo away from his business.

I didn’t want to travel with him, much less have him hovering while I acted like a kid at Christmas over meeting a luthier magician, but here we were. “Okay, how do you want to do this? One of us make the airline reservations and the other pay that person back?”

A short bark of a laugh erupted from him. “No way are we taking that banjo on an airplane. We’re driving to Texas.”

Normally I am totally down for road trips, but with this guy? Oh, God, what if he was a talk radio guy? I suppressed a shudder. “I can’t afford to keep the rental car that long.”

“So turn it in. We’ll go in my other car.”

“Look, my contact has vouched for me with these people, so I know they’ll see me. I don’t know if they’ll be willing to do anything if an unannounced person shows up. This world, the supernatural world, people are private, and a little paranoid.”

“This contact of yours, the guy who wants to buy the banjo, he’s going to want it verified that there’s something freaky about the thing, right?”

“Yeah, but-”

“So tell him the only way a stranger is getting face time with that banjo is if I’m there. If he really wants it, he’ll make sure I’m welcome.”

“It’s eight hundred miles! In a car with a stranger. That you don’t particularly like.”

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and started typing. “You said outside Nacogdoches, right? How do you spell that?”

“I don’t.” He couldn’t be serious about this. “I’m not going to steal the banjo. I’ll bring it back to you, I swear.”

“It’s actually nine hundred miles. We can take Interstate 20 West most of the way.” He raised his phone with one hand. “This says the trip should take a little under fourteen hours.”

“Oh, God. Really?”

“The sooner we get there, the sooner we can help my brother. I need to make some arrangements. I’ll meet you at your motel in two hours. Be ready to check out. We’ll return your rental car, then head out.”

I gaped, not sure how to go about telling him to go to hell and take his bossy attitude with him. “We’re not driving straight through. We’d get there in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t want to piss off anybody with magician on their business card, especially in the dark.”

“Then we’ll stop along the way. I don’t mind that, as long as we leave today. We’re not waiting until tomorrow.”

“Do people always do what you tell them to do?”

“Yes.” He tucked his phone back into his pocket then strode toward me. “So go pack and be ready when I get there.”

“I can’t believe I’m putting up with this to help somebody I’ve never even met.”

He waggled a finger at me. “That right there is why I do actually like you a little bit.”

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, waiting for the other shoe to drop. A snarky comment, a compliment that was half insult, or just an outright insult. But Bo surprised me. He took my hand in his. “Thank you for this. Everything you’re doing to help my brother…I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”

I nodded, uncomfortable but unwilling to pull my hand away. That would have been rude. Right? His hand dwarfed mine, and the warmth of his skin seeped into my flesh. “You’re welcome.”

“See you in two hours.”

I was halfway back to my motel when I realized something. Bo’s fingers were callused like a guitar player’s. Or a banjo player’s. He’d never answered my question about whether he’d ever played his brother’s haunted banjo. But then, he worked with his hands in his landscaping business. The calluses I’d felt could just as easily have come from that. Nothing to worry about.

Right?

Chapter Five ->