Page 49 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
And they hadn’t locked up when they left, figuring that doing so would only alert Aaron that someone had been trespassing inside.
Ergo, chances were that the house would still be wide open.
When he put his hand on the knob to the back door, though, it wouldn’t turn, signaling that at least this entrance had been secured.
“Well, we didn’t check this door last time,” Pru said reasonably. “Maybe it was always locked and we just didn’t know.”
“Guess we’ll have to try the front,” Caleb said, but Ty frowned.
“No, that would be far too visible. Let me open it.”
He moved past Pru and Caleb and put his hand on the knob. Immediately, the door swung inward.
“Nice trick,” Pru commented as they all went inside the service porch and then moved into the kitchen. Everything looked just like it had the day before, which seemed to be a signal that no one had entered the place during the intervening hours. “I guess you can always switch to a career as a cat burglar if the whole tennis pro thing doesn’t work out.”
Ty’s expression grew pained, but he didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he said, “We need to look for more witch’s knots. If you find one, don’t touch it — just make a note of its location.”
“And what is this supposed to prove?” Caleb asked. “We already know that Alba Sanchez was some sort of witch.”
“A curandera,” Ty corrected him. “Subtle difference. More importantly, I’m almost positive she was someone whose charge was also to guard the river in all ways possible. If we find more of the knots concentrated in a particular spot, then that might point to the place where she and others like her conducted their rituals. Such a location would be valuable to August Sellers because of the power concentrated there.”
Pru didn’t look terribly convinced by all this, and Caleb knew he wore a similarly doubtful expression on his face. But — even though he didn’t like to admit it to himself — he realized that Ty knew a whole lot more about this sort of stuff than he did, and that meant they needed to follow his lead.
“All right,” Caleb said. “I guess I’ll go back to the basement.”
Even though he really didn’t want to. Sure, his explorations down there yesterday hadn’t turned up any rats or oversized spiders or anything else too frightening, but he could still happily live out the rest of his life without ever having to set foot in another cellar.
However, it felt way too squirrelly to send Pru or even Ty down there just because he would prefer to avoid the place. Better to get this over with.
“All right,” Ty said. “Today, though, I’ll stay downstairs, and Pru can check the second floor. It’s possible either of us might see something the other person overlooked.”
She still didn’t look too convinced, but she didn’t offer any arguments. “Okay,” she replied. “I’ll see what I can find.”
They all went their separate ways, with Caleb once more heading down the basement stairs. At least this time, he knew what awaited him — namely, some pretty gross shag carpet and a few pieces of furniture deemed too ugly to occupy the upstairs but not so useless that the Sanchezes had wanted to throw them out.
Too bad there wasn’t some 1970s-vintage faux wood paneling on the walls to match that shag carpet, because at least that way he could have tried pulling some of it off to see if any witch’s knots were concealed on the plasterboard behind it. But the space hadn’t been improved even that much, although someone had once painted the cinderblock with a creamy white paint in an attempt to brighten up the place.
As far as he was concerned, they hadn’t been too successful.
He dutifully made his way along the walls, looking for the faintest of scratches that might indicate one of the puffy, cross-shaped symbols might have been etched there. So far, he hadn’t found a damn thing, and he began to think this whole expedition had been a fool’s errand.
Shouldn’t they be looking for Delia instead?
Unfortunately, they had absolutely no clue as to where she’d been hidden, so maybe it made more sense to follow up on one of the few leads they had here in Laughlin.
His gaze moved to the bookcase. Yesterday, he’d inspected the titles of the volumes lined up on those shelves, but he hadn’t lifted any of the books out of the way to see what might be hidden behind them.
After he’d removed several rows of books, though, he was pretty sure there weren’t any sigils hidden there, either. The whole time, he’d felt the odd energy of the house pressing down on him, heavy and somehow sullen, but it didn’t seem quite as oppressive as it had been yesterday.
Was that because he was getting used to it, or had his dip in the Colorado last night blunted some of the river’s effects?
He hoped it was the second option, if for no other reason than he had no idea whether he might have to cross the river again, or maybe even go out on another boat, and it would be great if being around the body of water didn’t make him feel like he was suffering the mother of all hangovers.
When he started to replace the books on the shelves, the bookcase seemed to shift slightly. This whole time, he’d thought it was a built-in because there didn’t seem to be any space between the back of the bookshelf and the wall itself, but now he wondered if it had been placed that way precisely to create such an impression.
Fingers flying, he started to remove all the books again, placing them on the floor enough out of the way so they wouldn’t take up the space he needed to move the bookcase itself. Once they’d been removed, he grasped the thing on each side and shifted it about six inches to the left.
Carved into the cinderblock wall was a huge witch’s knot, one almost as tall as he was. As he stared at the thing, it seemed to shimmer with energy, pulsing with a soft golden light.
