Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Galen was angry enough I was at a loss as to how to help him. We walked to the cemetery after breakfast, but he marched ahead of us the whole time, his shoulders rigid.
“Leave him be,” Booker said in a low voice as he fell into step with me. Marjory was behind her son but in front of us, irritated by the situation. She was also resigned to her fate.
“I wasn’t going to do anything obnoxious,” I protested. “I was going to try to comfort him.”
“You can’t comfort him right now,” Booker replied. “He’s trying to talk himself down from a ledge. His mother just proved — for about the millionth time — that she doesn’t have his best interests at heart.”
Marjory stopped walking and turned to glare at us. The look on Booker’s face told me he wasn’t surprised. In fact, he’d said it that way because he knew she was listening.
“I’ve always had my son’s best interests at heart,” she hissed.
“Not really,” Booker replied. “You could have told us about Declan days ago, when Wesley was still missing.”
“I had no reason to believe that Declan was involved. He wasn’t on Wesley’s ranch when we took him.”
“You pointed Hadley toward him,” Booker argued. “You’re the one who gave her his name.”
“Because she mentioned a serial killer,” Marjory shot back.
“He didn’t even jump to my mind first. Hadley can attest to that.
I only came up with him as an afterthought.
” She took a bold step toward Booker and I was suddenly on alert.
I didn’t expect the cupid to throw down with his best friend’s mother but stranger things had happened.
“I could have kept the information to myself. I tried to help.”
“Helping would have been telling us about the cemetery and your part in hexing it from the beginning,” Galen barked.
I hadn’t realized he’d stopped walking until he doubled back and was practically on top of us.
“How could you keep that from us? I told you I was worried about Hadley parking herself outside that window to see her mother a year ago, but you didn’t say a word! ” He ended the diatribe on a roar.
Marjory blinked. “I didn’t consider that we had a part in what happened to the cemetery until last night.”
Galen looked taken aback. “How is that possible?”
“The two things seemed unrelated. We … that is to say the people of the island … had used the spell before.”
I jerked my chin up. “Bogdan.”
Marjory shifted her wide eyes to me. “How do you know that name?”
“We’ve been busy little beavers,” Galen replied. “We’ve been digging for days. It never made sense that Declan became a homeowner despite not having any ties to the island that we could find.”
“He faked his ties,” Marjory replied. “He pretended to be a nephew of Bogdan and had documents to back it up. We were ready to release Bogdan’s property back to the DDA but that didn’t happen. It is why we cut down on the timeframe.
“Islanders used to be allowed to come back for their property for a full century,” she continued. “After Declan showed up and took property that had been sitting vacant for more than seventy years, we decided that was a bad idea.”
“All of it is a bad idea,” I fired back. “We’re going to look at property ownership requirements. There are going to be some changes.”
Marjory narrowed her eyes. “You’ll get pushback.”
“I don’t care. Enough is enough. The rich on this island created the property rules to keep the poor under their boots. That ends now.”
Booker gave me an appraising look. “This is why it was a good idea to make you mayor. Not only aren’t you afraid of the past, you don’t respect it.”
“She’s doing a good job,” Galen agreed. His gaze was still on his mother. “Tell us from the beginning. Don’t leave a single thing out.”
Marjory glanced around. We were still on the sidewalk, out in the open for anyone to see. “Not here.”
Galen, ramrod straight, nodded stiffly. “You can tell us in the cemetery, where it all began.”
Marjory rolled her eyes. “Can you not be so dramatic? The story isn’t as bad as you think.”
“Why else would you keep it secret?”
“We made a pact.” Marjory said.
Galen didn’t look impressed. “Well, this one is over.” He resumed his walk toward the cemetery.
Marjory stared in his wake. “He won’t understand.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said to her. “It’s time for the truth to come out. He’ll understand when he’s ready.”
She sighed. “I really was trying to protect the island.”
Probably, in her mind, she was telling the truth. “Your form of protection — that is to say the DDA’s form of protection — was never about protecting the island. It was domination.”
“You don’t understand.” Marjory insisted. “You’re an outsider. You can’t understand.”
She might not have meant it as a rebuke but it stung. “You have to make me understand.”
She didn’t respond, instead turning on her heel and following Galen.
At the cemetery, Galen used his key to enter. The magical forcefield was still working, and I felt it humming. Nothing was out of place and yet things felt different.
Marjory took a deep breath as she entered the cemetery. “I haven’t been in here in a very long time.”
I glanced over at her. “Were you in here the night you locked Declan away?”
“We all were.” She placed her hands on her hips.
“Tell us,” I ordered.
“We have to start with Bogdan.” Her nose wrinkled as she said his name. “I wasn’t around when he was here. Those of us involved with the Declan situation had nothing to do with Bogdan. We did, however, know the story.”
She rubbed her hands over the front of her linen pants. “He did terrible things. Nobody knew what he was. The people of the time were familiar with vampires. Jareth was here, as were a few others, but no one understood how a vampire could be out during the day.”
“He wasn’t a vampire,” I pointed out. “He was a hybrid.”
“No one had ever heard the word dhampir,” she acknowledged. “That would have sounded like something out of a storybook back then. Unless you were in the trade, no one knew there was such a thing as born vampires. They were all just vampires.”
I rolled that notion through my head. “No one realized Bogdan was a monster.”
“Oh, no.” Marjory shook her head. “Many did realize. A lot of them. They didn’t realize he had any vampire in him. They thought he was a demon. It was assumed he was a diabolical mixture, a chimera of sorts.”
She grew quiet for a second, as if reflecting. “Jareth was feared but respected. He went after Bogdan. He never told the elders why. They decided that if Jareth believed Bogdan was dangerous, it must be true.
“No one had the power to overcome him alone,” she continued. “They hunted him, just like Declan, and managed to capture him.”
“Why not kill him?” Galen asked, speaking for the first time since we’d entered the cemetery. The grounds were eerily quiet, no sign of the zombies that roamed at night.
“They tried. They stabbed him. They shot him. They tried to hang him. They even tried fire. None of it worked.”
“They could have cut off his head,” Booker argued. “That’s a surefire way to kill a vampire. It would have worked with a dhampir.”
“No one knew he was part vampire,” Marjory argued. “I already told you that. They were working on a limited timetable. A handful of townsfolk banded together to end him. They didn’t want anyone else to know because it would have bred suspicion … and that’s the last thing the leaders wanted.”
“So they built a cage for him,” Galen said.
“A magical cage,” Marjory confirmed. “The island leaders — the pack leader, the coven leader, the siren leader, the cupid leader, and several others — joined together. They even had a demon representative, just to be on the safe side. They created a trap.”
“You need to speed up this story,” Galen admonished.
I didn’t want the story nut-shelled but Galen seemed to be reaching his limit. I could drill Marjory for more details later.
“The trap was a box,” Marjory explained. “A box positioned between two worlds. It was designed to keep Bogdan inside forever. He wasn’t part of our world or the one right next to us. He wasn’t supposed to be able to escape and wreak havoc. He would be trapped with his regrets forever.”
“But he didn’t stay trapped forever,” I guessed. “He escaped, to another plane.”
“He didn’t escape on his own.” Marjory shook her head. “The trap was well constructed. Someone helped him escape.”
“How do you know that?” Booker asked.
“The trap was checked often, and one day Bogdan was gone. There was an opening in the trap … from the other side.”
I shifted forward without realizing. “I assumed that there was someone on this plane helping Declan. Someone from a different plane.”
“I can’t answer that,” Marjory replied, “but follow your instincts. You have a knack for figuring these things out.”
That was a surprising compliment. “Did Bogdan try to get back to this plane?”
“Not to anyone’s knowledge.” Marjory’s forehead creased with concentration. “The islanders braced for his return for a long time, but he never showed. We assumed he died on the other plane and was largely forgotten.”
“And then Declan came to the island,” Galen said.
Marjory nodded at her furious son. “He claimed to be a nephew of Bogdan. Jareth was still here, but he had no idea what had been done.”
Booker stirred. “Jareth is a good guy. Why not tell him?”
“I can’t answer that. It’s possible those in charge back then didn’t trust vampires. Maybe they didn’t know Jareth well enough to trust him. Maybe they thought he would be loyal to someone with the same blood. All I know is that he was kept in the dark.”
Something told me Jareth wouldn’t be happy about the news when he was informed. That was tomorrow’s problem, however. “What happened?” I asked.
“We all knew the story of Bogdan,” she replied. “Each incoming board member was told so they would recognize potential trouble should Bogdan return. When Declan arrived, the initial assumption was that he was Bogdan pretending to be someone else.”