Page 122 of Blood Moon

“I—”

“One.”

The ogre, the terror, the bully screamed, “Wait! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.”

Mitch and John looked at each other; John bobbed his chin. Mitch let up on the man’s neck but worked his boot beneath the ogre’s shoulder and pushed him onto his back. He was drooling. His eyes were wild with fear. They darted between the barrels of the shotgun, the wicked knife, and John and Mitch, both of whom were glaring down at him with evangelical intent.

He blubbered. He sobbed. “After school let out, she gave me the slip. Barker went apeshit. Ranting and raving. He called me in to account. You,” he said, meeting John’s fierce gaze, “you called, accusing Barker of taking her. He… he—with me sitting right there—pretended that we had her. It was a hoax. A… a… a ruse. To… to… you know, to draw you out.”

As though John had officially assigned Mutt to guard her, he trailed Beth from window to window, chair to chair, bedroom to bedroom to kitchen as she roamed the cabin, too keyed up to light anywhere.

Her anguish over the severance from the TV show paled in significance to the unthinkable torment John was experiencing now. She also was sick at the thought of Molly being at the hands of the ogre and Tom Barker. She didn’t hazard to speculate what it would do to John if his daughter was harmed, or what he would do to the men who’d harmed her.

She hadn’t been fooled by his and Mitch’s need for privacy to check their guns. They’d been devising a plan. While she was slightly resentful that she hadn’t been included, she was also relieved that she didn’t know the details. Knowing what they intended to do might have made this waiting worse. As it was, worry was eating her alive.

Restless and needing something to distract her, she wandered over to the table and sat down in front of her computer. The professor had agreed to look over their list of social media handles, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. She doubted she would until tomorrow.

Suddenly she was struck cold with the realization that it was already tomorrow. Yes, there on her computer screen:12:02 March 13.

She and John had been fed so much information in the last two days. It was such a small amount of time to digest it all. What had they missed? What had they missed? What?What?

Had the professor referenced in passing something that they hadn’t picked up on, hadn’t yet explored? She recalled him saying of the trends “waxing and waning.” Alliteratively, “witchcraft and werewolves.”

Wolves howled at the moon.

She woke up her laptop and opened it to that virtual meeting with the professor, which, fortunately, she’d recorded. As he explained the nature of his lectures, her attention lapsed and her gaze wandered from him to the overstocked shelves behind him.

In addition to the interesting and unusual artifacts on display, he had an extensive library. Had he read and absorbed everything in those books? Is that how he couldgive knowledgeable lectures on such a variety of subjects and yet stay within the realm of the supernatural?

She paused the video in order to examine the book titles and noticed that, although the shelves appeared messy and haphazardly arranged, the books were actually grouped by subject matter.

She saw only three books on werewolves, but one entire shelf was given over to books on witchcraft and its dozens of subdivisions. Two shelves were lined with books about the moon and related astrological subjects, both scientific and mythological. Fact side by side with myth.

There was a section on numerology, which she found curious. He’d told John he wasn’t an expert, but she supposed that having a collection of books on the subject didn’t make him one.

Still… the professor didn’t come across to her as being that modest. Indeed, he enjoyed expounding on a topic.

She got up suddenly and stumbled over Mutt in her haste to get to her bedroom. She took her suitcase out of the closet where she’d stowed it and placed it on the bed. The zipper stuck several times in her rush to open it.

She tossed aside her hair dryer, a bag of toiletries, and a pair of sneakers, then plowed both hands through folded articles of clothing until she reached the bottom, where she’d placed Professor Victor Wallace’s book.

His article had piqued her interest, so she’d ordered his book. It had been delivered mere hours before she’d left for her flight from LaGuardia to New Orleans. She’d read the first two chapters on the plane but had found it tedious reading and hadn’t opened it since.

Now she sat down on the bed and flipped through the opening pages until she reached the table of contents. She ran her index finger down the chapter titles.

Numerology. Chapter seven.

She slammed the book shut as though it were a Pandora’s box from which she wanted nothing sinister to escape. She held it flat against her chest, against her thumping heart.

The professor took such pride in his work; why had he qualified his knowledge of numerology as inexpert when he’d written a chapter on it? Why hadn’t he suggested that John read that chapter if he sought a better understanding of the system?

On weak knees, she returned to the main room. The freeze frame of him in his office was still on her monitor. Leaning into it so closely her nose almost touched the screen, she surveyed the shelves of his bookcase.

Though she was desperate to dispel the thought that was pounding in her brain, she forced herself to be thorough, to read every book title she could distinguish, to look at each object, to go slowly and not be in so much of a hurry that she might miss something. It was maddening to wonder what the professor himself was blocking from her view.

Then it leaped out at her, so unmistakably identifiable it stopped her heart.

That instant, her phone rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin, panicked at the thought that it was the professor calling her back.

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