CHAPTER FORTY ONE
The road to Old Acre Farm hadn't gotten any smoother since Ella's last dance with near-death at Blackwood's barn. She squealed to a halt in front of the old weathered gate, and the silver-gray sky hung low enough to scrape its belly on the barbed wire while crows bitched from above. November in upstate New York - like purgatory with better foliage.
Ella barely bothered putting the SUV in park before she bailed out. The case was a Rubik’s Cube that was a few turns from completion, and Felix Blackwood was one of two people who could help her line up the colors perfectly. The other wouldn’t talk, which meant she wasn’t leaving this farm until she’d extracted every little detail from Felix about the Order’s female members. If the pile of ash formerly known as Victor Ashford was any indication, Ella had a clock tick-tocking in the back of her head until the final element in the sequence turned critical.
She needed answers, and she needed them with enough time left to put a permanent pause on this Philosopher's Stone crap.
The farm squatted on its acreage, about as welcoming as the half-collapsed scarecrow presiding over a field of dead weeds out back. The house stared down at Ella through rheumy windows as she hustled up to the porch.
Her knuckles had barely touched wood when the front door creaked open of its own accord.
‘Felix?’ Ella's voice echoed through the gloom, taunting her with accusations of too little, too late. ‘Felix! Anyone?’
Nothing but petrified silence and the faint ticking of a clock entombed in cobwebs. The farmhouse, despite its status, was fairly small, so if anyone was in here they’d have heard her. Ella backed out of the farmhouse. No point wasting time in there - Felix wasn't exactly the type to curl up with a good book and wait for death to find him. The grounds stretched away like a graveyard of agriculture, where farm equipment came to die and weeds came to prosper.
She crossed the yard at a jog. Three barns hunched against the horizon, and a gust of wind carried something that didn't belong. Not quite smoke, not quite chemical - more like someone had tried to burn a chemistry set. Ella pulled her coat tighter and followed her nose. The scent led her past a combine harvester that was more rust than metal, through patches of scrub grass that grabbed at her ankles.
The trail strengthened. Definitely burning, but with an edge that spoke of something more complex than paper or wood. She'd smelled it before, back when the Bureau had her running drug lab raids. The kind of smell that came from burning things that weren't meant to see fire.
The largest barn loomed ahead. The gap exhaled that chemical breath, stronger now. Recent.
Ella drew her weapon and edged inside. Daylight filtered through gaps in the roof and painted stripes across a concrete floor that had seen its share of oil stains. In the far corner, heat shimmered off a modified oil drum - the kind of makeshift incinerator that screamed ‘evidence disposal’ to anyone who'd worked Narcotics.
Someone had punched ventilation holes in the bottom and rigged a rusted grill grate halfway up. Low-tech but effective.
Ella approached with caution. Heat radiated off the metal skin while smoke twisted through the air - not the clean white of burning paper, but something chemical. Inside, ash and blackened paper fragments still radiated enough warmth to make her think she'd missed the cleanup crew by minutes. She hunkered down and fished out a pen to gingerly poke at the debris. Bits of charred paper fluttered free. Too fragile to make out any text, but the thickness of the stock and the irregular edges told their own story.
Books. Someone had been burning books.
Something crunched under her feet - a sound that had no business in a barn. She looked down and picked out a strip of glass shards.
Ella rocked back on her heels while her mental gears spun. A missing kid, an empty farm, and a covert book-burning binge.
Someone had been here recently. And that same someone had left in a hurry.
The wind picked up outside, sending something metal clanging against the barn's exterior. Ella spun, weapon ready, but the sound was just weather doing what weather did best - making cops jumpy at exactly the wrong moment.
Time felt like sand slipping through her fingers. Somewhere out there, a killer was preparing for their final transformation. And here she stood, surrounded by the ashes of evidence that might have led straight to them.
She needed Felix. Needed names, faces, something to narrow down which of Ezra's female followers had decided to turn alchemy into performance art. But why would this killer be burning evidence at Felix's farm? Either Felix was involved deeper than they'd thought, or someone close to him was.
Ella headed for the barn's entrance, trying not to think about Victor Ashford's final moments or about who might be next on the killer's elemental hit list.
Three more outbuildings to search. Three more chances to find Felix before time ran out.
***
Luca was somewhere just outside of Bedford Hills. The road unspooled before him, but his eyes weren't tracking the double-yellow lines or the 'last gas for 50 miles' signs.
No, Special Agent Luca Hawkins, FBI's resident Golden Boy, was too busy mentally tearing himself a new one over letting his partner waltz off solo to confront their only lead.
Nice work, Hawkins. Letting Ella fight this battle alone while you twiddle your thumbs and angst about a glorified Scooby-Doo chase. Some partner you're turning out to be.
He should be there with her, backing her up, not playing errand boy on a wild goose hunt for some mythical lost book of woo-woo wisdom. But no, Ella 'I can handle anything' Dark had given him marching orders, and like a good little soldier he'd snapped off a crisp 'yes ma'am' and peeled rubber before the words had a chance to cool.
He’d spent the last twenty miles trying to wrap his head around the steaming pile of horse apples their investigation had become, and the only thing he'd figured out was that thinking too hard while driving was a great way to miss his exit.
Okay, Hawkins. Get it together. Ella's a big girl, she can handle one scrawny goth kid.
Right. Because no FBI agent had ever run into trouble chasing a lead on their lonesome. Not like there was an entire memorial wall in Quantico dedicated to that exact flavor of optimism.
Luca's molars resumed their mating dance as the SUV gobbled up mile after mile of scenic nothing. His fingers itched for something to do besides strangle the life out of the synthetic leather.
He was doing it again - spinning his mental wheels like a hamster on espresso, chasing his own tail in tighter and tighter circles until he disappeared up his own ass. He needed to focus, to channel his inner Quantico and start thinking like a real FBI agent.
The book. Gotta find the book.
Because apparently their perp had been getting their inspiration from some long-dead mystic with a hard-on for the periodic table. And Ella, in her infinite wisdom, had decided that the key to cracking this case lay not in boring old forensics or witness statements, but in translating a bunch of medieval mumbo-jumbo from the original Crazy into modern English.
And who better to tackle that little chore than yours truly?
‘Yeah, I'll just learn Latin real quick,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe throw in some Greek. Could probably master Sanskrit by dinner.’
What had started as a simple missing persons gig had turned into an elemental scavenger hunt from hell, complete with ritual murders, cult weirdos, and more red herrings than a Communist sushi bar.
And now Ella wanted him to crack it. Find some clue about the final element - spirit, quintessence, whatever they were calling it. But the afternoon was bleeding away, and all he had to show for it was eye strain and the beginning of a migraine.
Luca glanced out of the window and saw a sign for New York University. His mind drifted back to their first visit here, to Dean Harper in her oak-paneled office. To what she'd said about their restricted collection.
The memory hit him like a shot of clarity.
We have a collection of materials in our archive, down in our basement. Old books. Mostly the English translations.
Within a second, Luca had pulled over. His phone was already in his hand before the engine died.
It was a long shot. The kind of desperate play you only made when the clock was running down and you were out of better options.
But if NYU had an English translation of this thing, then it might just save a life.
He hit dial before he could talk himself out of it. The phone rang once, twice, three times.
‘Dean Harper's office.’
Luca took a breath and prepared to either save the day or make a complete fool of himself. Again.
At least this time, he wouldn't be wearing an airsoft mask while he did it.