61 Birdie
BIRDIE
I pull up to the dig site with ten minutes to spare. Flinging off my seatbelt, I hop out of the Jeep, boots crunching on the gravel. I flick my sunglasses to the top of my head, waving at Howe through the trees.
“Hey,” he calls. “You made it!”
“Wouldn’t miss it!” I jog down the lane towards the site.
Green Shirt appears from the equipment tent, still wearing the same historical society polo from the other day. He’s tall and broad, with short black hair and dark eyes to match. Young, probably mid-twenties.
Howe gestures to him as I approach. “Birds, I don’t think you met Tyler on Sunday. Ty, this is my new grad assistant. Birdie Rhodes, this is Tyler Pratt.”
Tyler offers out a beefy hand. “Hey.”
Smiling, I shake it. “Hi.”
“And you remember Dale,” Howe adds. “Our excavator extraordinaire.”
I turn to see the older man wandering by with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. “Yeah. Hi, Dale.”
Dale just nods.
Howe sighs, letting him pass. “Always a gentleman, Dale.” He casts me an apologetic look before clapping his hands together. “Right. Well, I’ve got Dale and Ty working on the excavation of the barn foundations. Birdie, you’ll be with me. You’ve used a GPR before, right?”
“My experience is limited,” I admit. “But if you set it up with the parameters you want, I can walk a straight line with the best of them. I assume you’ve already mapped out your zones?”
He brightens. “Yep, already done. We got as far as mapping Zones one to three before the stupid machine crapped out. It’s been a nightmare these last few days getting it fixed, I’ll tell ya. Thought I was gonna have to order a new one, but Dale’s confident it was a simple wiring issue.”
I pretend to glance around, placing one hand over my eyes to shade from the sun. “Wanna show me the zone we’re working with first? I can make sure we clear any obvious obstacles—”
“Already good to go,” he says over me. “We’ll be working in Zone four this morning. Come on.” He waves over his shoulder at me to follow.
Stepping under the flap of the equipment tent, it’s not hard to spot the big black box on the ground.
Yesterday it was on Jasper’s kitchen island.
Howe peels a little blue tarp back with a flourish, revealing the three-wheeled cart the assembled device rests on.
“I’ll show you how to get this all set up.
Next time, you’ll do it yourself. Sound good? ”
“Yeah, great.”
He drops to his knees, clicking open the lid. After a moment he coughs, waving his hand. “Whoa—hey, you smell that?”
Oh shit.
“Smell what?” I say, stepping in closer at his back.
He leans his face over the open box and breathes in. “Smells like . . . is that cinnamon?”
My heart skips. “Huh. Weird.”
He must write it off, because he doesn’t even wait for me to get my own whiff before he’s pulling all the pieces of the GPR out of the box. I drop to my knees at his side, and we work together to get it assembled.
“Will you grab the tablet?” he asks, wheeling the assembled GPR out of the tent. “It’s charging on top of the generator over there.” He points over his shoulder.
I scramble to my feet and jog over to where the tablet sits plugged in and ready atop the closest generator. The moment of truth is upon us. Is Jasper’s magic spell really going to work?
Before I turn around, a shadow has me glancing up. The chill down my back makes me sure of what I’ll see. A large raven swoops into the branches of the closest tree and peers down at me.
I stiffen, watching the raven’s black, beady eye. Creepy, winged drone. Likely one of Ludmilla’s spies. We’ve got to do something about these birds. I’m sure Jasper and Dáinn will have a solution. For now, I just need to go about my work as if nothing is wrong.
“Birdie,” Howe calls. “Let’s go!”
“Coming!” Turning away from the watching raven, I jog after Howe, clutching the tablet to my chest. He leads me over to Zone 4. The whole area has already been measured out and tagged. Little stakes mark the ground at even intervals.
“Here.” He holds out a hand, and I have no choice but to give him the tablet. He sets it in the cradle at the top of the cart. His smile is nervous, but hopeful. “Moment of truth. Let’s get this thing calibrated and see what we find, huh?”
I step up next to him, forcing a smile of my own. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
He plugs the tablet into the cart and taps the screen, waking up the device. Ducking down, he flips the switch on the antenna base.
I can’t help but inch away. Guilt churns in my gut as I fight the urge to pull him back with me. I mean, Jasper is a seriously powerful and seriously pissed-off witch. What if this thing blows up in our faces?
“It should—wait.” Howe taps the tablet screen again. “No, it should be working.” He rounds on me, glaring like this is somehow my fault. “Was the battery charged?”
“Yeah, the battery was charged,” I assure him.
“Then this should be coming on.” He points down at the battery base. “The light is glowing. It should be connecting to the antenna. Hey—Dale! It should be connecting to the antenna, right?”
“Hold on,” Dale shouts. “Don’t mess with it, asshole. I’m coming!”
Ignoring him, Howe fiddles with the connection wires, muttering under his breath. “Stupid piece of—whoa—”
There’s a loud hiss, then a pop. Then flames burst out of the top of the battery pack.
Oh, thank god.
I mean—
“Fire,” I shout, stumbling back. “It’s on fire!”
“No, no, no!” Howe looks around, desperate for anything to put it out. “Someone find some damn water!”
“What the hell did you do?” Tyler shouts, jogging up to us. A pillar of stinky black smoke rises from the flaming battery pack. I cough, and Tyler grabs me by the shoulders. “Get back, before the damn battery blows.”
“Screw that,” Howe shouts. “Get me something to put it out!”
Tyler dives in. “Shit. Let’s grab the damn tablet. Try and save that at least.”
They wrestle the tablet away from the connector cords, coughing in the pungent smoke.
“I’ll go find water,” I shout.
But I don’t take two steps before Dale comes barreling past me with his wheelbarrow. “Move!” he barks like an army sergeant. The men move back, and he tips the wheelbarrow full of wet earth on top of the GPR, extinguishing the flames.
We all take a step back, staring down at the smoking pile of dirt.
Tyler breaks the silence, letting out a low whistle. “Shit, man. What the hell just happened?”
“It just . . . caught fire.” Howe lets out a weak, choked-sounding laugh. “It—the stupid thing caught fire? God—I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was some kind of magic.”
I stiffen, glancing his way. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I feel cursed!”
I reach for him. “Ezra . . .”
“No!” He bats my hand away. “You don’t know. You only just got to this island, Birdie.” He gestures around wildly. “Welcome to my personal hell!”
“Come on, it hasn’t been that bad,” Dale assures him.
“Not that bad?” Howe laughs again. “From the very beginning, it’s felt like everything I try to do ends up being a game of two steps forward, then ten big steps back.
First, it was the ethics board, then all the stupid zoning permit hurdles, then the environmental nuts with their complaints about indigenous newts and owl mating trees.
Now, my own equipment is thwarting me. I mean, it literally caught freaking fire! ”
“It must have had a faulty battery,” I try and reason.
He rounds on me with another glare. “Did you get the journal?”
I step back. “I—what?”
His eyes narrow. “I said, did you get the journal? Robert Dent’s journal. You said you would ask Mercy for it last night. Did you?”
“I did,” I rush to lie. “I asked her for it, I swear. But—Ezra, I’m sorry, she didn’t know what I was talking about—”
He turns away from me, throwing up his hands. “Then this is done. We’re fucking done!”
It’s not hard for me to feign indignation. “Wait, are you firing me? Because I couldn’t find a lost journal in the span of two freaking days? I just need a little more time—”
He spins back around. “We’re all fired, Birdie!
Don’t you get that? Look around you.” He waves his arms again.
“The world is literally on fire. That stupid journal and this stupid machine were my last hope to keep my approvals and my funding.” He kicks at the pile of dirt hiding the GPR.
“Without either the proof from Dent’s journals or imaging scans of the burial shafts, we’re sunk.
The ethics board will shut me down. Next, the Raven Hill Group will pull their funding.
I’ll likely lose my job and have to crawl back to Winthrop in disgrace.
So, you know, just go.” He points towards the cars.
“Leave, Birdie. I can’t advise you on a project that doesn’t exist.”
Before I can think of a response, Dale steps in, lowering his voice.
“Look, Ez, I know this is a major setback, but you need to pull yourself together. It ain’t over till the cows come home, right?
Call the RHG. Tell them the bind you’re in.
You never know with these old money types.
They could helicopter us a new radar this afternoon.
Stop thinking you have to do this all on your own.
And stop thinking you have to do it strictly by the book.
You’ve got connections now. Important ones. Use them.”
Okay, Dale has to shut up, like, now.
“I can go back to the archives,” I announce.
All eyes look to me. “Why would you go back to the archives?” asks Howe.
My brain buzzes as I think of any excuse.
“Because . . . you said it yourself! A lot of those boxes got moved over from The Bugle in the haste of the flooding. It’s possible you just missed something that belonged to William Bartlett.
Let me go check. I’ll dig through every box down there.
If I have to, I’ll go to The Bugle and look there too. ”
Judging by his frown, he clearly thinks this is a wild goose chase.
“I can’t just do nothing,” I press. “You gave me the task to find the journal. And I won’t stop until I’ve turned over every stone on this island, starting with those archive boxes.
Like Dale said, we’ve still got time.” Stepping in, I squeeze his arm.
“Come on, let me do this, Ezra. Let me at least try.”
Sighing, he nods. “All right. Yeah, go. Beats standing around here staring at a melted machine.”
“Call Barsotti,” Dale says again. “The RHG will help us.”
I stiffen. Barsotti? As in . . . Enzo Barsotti? An image of him leering at me from Jasper’s kitchen cabinets fills my mind. Fire witch. Powerful and mean. Is he Howe’s point of contact for the Raven Hill Group?
Shit, shit, shit.
“Yeah, okay,” Ezra says again. “Birdie knows what she’s looking for in the archive. I doubt I missed it, but you never know. Just more evidence of me being cursed, right?”
“I’m on it.” Not waiting another second, I turn on my heel and walk away from what can only be described as a crime scene. I don’t even feel bad that it’s not my first.
As soon as I get far enough away, I slip the phone from my pocket and dial Jasper. The phone rings as I open the door of the Jeep and climb behind the wheel. He answers as the door shuts.
“Did it work?”
Just hearing his voice, I let out a breath of relief. “Yeah, it worked. It was crazy. Big plumes of smoke. That GPR is toast.”
“Good. Where are you now?”
“I’m in the Jeep.”
“Where are you going?”
Swallowing my nerves, I brace for impact. “I’m heading for the ferry.”
“You’re what?” His tone sharpens to a razor’s edge. “Birdie, you are not leaving this fucking island—”
“I have to,” I say over him. “The clock is ticking. We need these bodies found, and we need what was buried with them. If there’s a chance in hell that we’re gonna beat Howe to this prize, then we need to get ahead of them.
That means we need our own GPR. If the anthropology department has one, I’ll get it and bring it back. ”
He groans. I can all but picture him dragging a hand through his dark hair. “I can’t go with you right now. I’m needed here.”
“I don’t need a chaperone for this. It’s perfectly respectable for me, as Howe’s research assistant, to go to the university and rent equipment. Trust me, it won’t raise any red flags.”
“But we had a plan,” he presses. “Your plan, remember? We were waiting until we get closer to the third quarter moon to maintain the element of surprise—”
“Yeah, well we can’t wait anymore,” I say, buckling my seatbelt and turning the key in the ignition.
“Why? What happened?”
“Howe’s excavator buddy just gave him a rousing speech about calling in all his favors and using the power and deep pockets of the Raven Hill Group. He mentioned Enzo Barsotti. If Howe goes crying to Barsotti about needing a new GPR, that witch could have one delivered by tomorrow.”
“Fuck,” Jasper growls into the phone. “You’re sure? He said Barsotti’s name?”
“I’m positive.” Leaning into his silence, I make my final plea.
“Jas, I could be telling us exactly where to dig in a matter of hours, not days. Please, let me do this. I want to do this. It’s how I can best use my talents to help the coven.
And it’s coven first, remember? Please don’t stand in my way. ”
He’s quiet for a moment. In that quiet, I crank the Jeep into reverse, rolling the tires back on the gravel.
“Fine,” he says at last. “But take Frankie with you.”
“I—Jasper—”
“Frankie goes with you, or you don’t fucking go,” he says over me.
“I don’t care if your little covert op is ‘perfectly respectable.’ I am not sending you off this island with no support.
Not if Howe is trying to call in favors with Enzo fucking Barsotti.
You go with Frankie, you get that damn machine, and then you get back here. Understood?”
Rolling my eyes, I can’t help but smile at his surly overprotectiveness. It feels good to have someone actually care. “As my high priest commands.”
He groans into the phone. “You are so much fucking trouble.”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t love it.” Resigned to my fate, I add, “Where is Frankie now?”
“She should be at the hardware store. Behind Greenwood’s. I’ll call now and tell her to expect you. And hey—” he adds before I can hang up.
“Yeah?”
“Be safe.”
I smile wider. “Yes, sir.”