Page 39 of Thunder Road

“Do you think it provided that much protection?”

Vic shrugged. “Maybe. Sometimes little things pack a big punch.” They walked out to the parking lot, and he was relievedto catch a glimpse of the protective amulet he had given Ross at the neckline of his shirt.

“Don’t forget, I’m off tomorrow. Going to check out lighthouses with Simon to see if we can link his end of the legends and ours.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hard day of work cruising up the coast,” Ross teased. He grew serious. “Hope you can find something useful. It sounds like whatever pact was in place is gone.”

Vic clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the goal. Call me if you need me. And stay clear of the troll.”

7

SIMON

“Thanks for coming with me.” Simon reached over to take Vic’s hand as he drove. Much as Vic might have liked the idea of a ride up the coast on his Hayabusa, Simon had argued for the comfort of the car for an all-day outing.

“Sure. It’s almost always a great day to take a drive along the ocean.” Vic lifted their joined hands and kissed Simon’s knuckles. “We’ve been too damn busy since the wedding to do stuff like this.”

They had a beautiful day for the trip, no rain in sight and reasonable temperatures. While they were working the case, Simon vowed to make the day memorable for good reasons and planned to enjoy their investigation as much as possible.

“I’ve wanted to visit the lighthouses since I moved here,” Simon confessed. “I just never took the time.”

“We’re saving the world. That counts as a priority,” Vic joked.

“I thought we’d start with the northernmost lighthouse and work our way south,” Simon replied. “The Georgetown Light is still active—one of two still operated by the Coast Guard.”

“I guess that improvements in navigational equipment and other technology made some of the lights less useful.”

“That and maintaining the lighthouses was expensive—especially when the lighthouse keepers lived on site,” Simon said. “Once they figured out how to automate the lights, the job of the keeper went away—at least, the part that the government knew about. Losing the onsite keepers made the supernatural part harder to manage.”

Traffic was light, making it easier to drive and have a conversation. A pop station played softly in the background.

“Even being automated, most of the lighthouses aren’t still in service,” Vic observed. “I’ll admit to doing a little homework yesterday to be ready. Two were never even real to start with; they were just built to be pretty.”

“We can skip those since they won’t have any impact on the magic or the wardings,” Simon replied. “Then there’s another one that got moved to a golf course once it was deactivated. We won’t worry about that one unless we have to.”

“Fake lighthouses are disappointing,” Vic replied.

“I’m mostly concerned with the two that are still functioning—the Georgetown Light and the Charleston Light—some people refer to it as Sullivan’s Island,” Simon said. “And the other lights that were once real and operational might still have magical value even though they’re decommissioned and dark.”

“If there aren’t lighthouse keepers anymore—and there won’t be again—what’s the plan?”

Simon tapped the steering wheel and let out a long breath. “I’ll get back to you on that. Still figuring it out. Ideally, I’d like to get volunteers who have some degree of psychic or magical ability to be the keeper of one of the active lighthouses. At least take the mantle for a while and then pass it to someone else.”

“Who’s going to be in charge of that? It’s a bit of a stretch for you to take on.” Vic sounded concerned.

“I’m hoping Father Anne and the St. Expeditus Society can oversee it since one of the lighthouses is near Charleston. I think they’d be the best suited.”

“That makes sense. You’ve got the incantation from one of the old keepers. What else do you need to pull this all together and reactivate the protections?” Vic asked.

Simon had grown even fonder of his husband for the way Vic had come to accept Simon’s reality.

“I’m still working on the details,” Simon replied. “I read the journal from one of the keepers, and it was helpful. But this is the sort of thing where the devil is in the details, and if there was something important that he didn’t know about, it would be bad to leave it out by accident.”

“How complicated is the incantation? I can’t imagine that the Coast Guard recruited highly powerful witches to man the lighthouses.”

“Unless there’s more to it than what I read in the keeper’s journal, middling natural power is sufficient,” Simon answered. “Good protections, laid down over and over again, add up to a strong spell layer by layer. The problem comes when the spell isn’t reinforced each year. I’m hoping we can turn that around.”

The Georgetown Light was the closest to Myrtle Beach and their first stop. It was a white cone with a black top, sturdy and unadorned.

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