Chapter 26
We were going back to Miner’s Creek today to set the boundary line down.
We’d all gotten up early in an effort to beat some of the heat, so it was barely six a.m., and I felt the early morning.
I made sure to get coffee going first thing, and Mack helped me get breakfast ready, making his yummy biscuits and sausages.
I cut up a ton of fruit for a fruit salad and made lots of scrambled eggs.
People showed up one or two at a time, smelled hot breakfast, and quickly found plates and seats.
We were about halfway through the meal when there was a knock at the door. I rose to answer it, as I was more or less done anyway. What I didn’t expect was to find our hostess, Melody, at the door. She was dressed to go, too, jeans and cowboy boots on.
“Morning,” she greeted me brightly. “I’ve come to help.”
“I’m sorry?” I had no idea what she was saying.
Mack appeared under my elbow. “Hi, Melody. Come on in. Need some coffee? We’re about ten minutes from being ready to leave.”
So my better half clearly knew what was going on. “Someone fill me in?”
“Made a bargain with Mack and Eli last night,” Melody explained cheerfully. “Not only do you get the two four-wheelers, but I’ve saddled up two of my best trained horses as well. You can take them up to help.”
“In return, I have written down several family recipes,” Mack picked up smoothly. “An even trade, you could say.”
This amused me greatly. “Really, recipes?”
“I don’t want a jambalaya recipe off the internet,” Melody informed me with a sniff. “I want a recipe from someone who sounds like him. That’ll be authentic.”
“You’re not wrong.” I found it funny this had happened to Mack at least four times that I knew of. His family were good cooks, granted. I think his accent was almost advertising, in a way.
It was like Melody realized the obvious as she squinted up at me. “You get to eat his cooking all the time, don’t you? I’m jealous as hell.”
I just shrugged because, well, yeah. One of the many perks to living with him.
My other elbow sprouted a second head. I felt almost like Cerberus. Gwyn was all excitement and heart-shaped eyes.
“Horses?”
Horse-girl spotted. Her excitement was cute, but I had to ask, “Do you know how to ride?”
“I do,” she surprised me by saying. “I used to take equestrian classes.”
“I offered the horses because Eli and Lachlan can ride, Davina as well,” Melody explained. “But you can trade off with them throughout the day.”
No sense in riding all day anyway if you weren’t used to it.
It was a great way to have very sore thighs and ass tomorrow if you pushed it.
I spoke from experience. “Why don’t you start this morning with Seiji, get your lesson in?
” I told Gwyn. “Then switch after lunch or something. They’ll probably welcome a break by then. ”
“Sure!” She turned and bounced back inside, calling for people as she went.
I was very curious on how long her energy would last. Hopefully throughout the day, otherwise she’d be dragging midafternoon.
“One second, Melody,” Mack requested. “I’ll fetch those recipes.”
“Thanks.” As he ducked back inside, Melody asked me, “How are things going, anyway? I can’t tell if this request is a good sign or not.”
“To be frank? Things are improving but it feels glacially slow. Every time we wrap our heads around one part of the problem, another rears its head. Something very dark and gnarly is in the mines under that ghost town.”
“I’m not surprised.” Melody leaned closer to me, her manner suggesting a confidence about to be shared.
“Now, the story I heard growing up was that the mine was in operation until about 1920, but then they had a huge accident that wiped out half the tunnels. An explosion was triggered somehow and it collapsed, trapping a lot of miners. Miners from the rival mines actually poured in to help dig them back out. They reached some, but not all.”
“Shiiit,” I breathed, realizing what this meant. “How many died?”
“I’ve heard different numbers. At least twenty, upward of a hundred, just depends on whose account you’re listening to. But everyone agrees it was really, really bad. It ended the mining operation up there, and it became a ghost town practically overnight. Once people had payday, they just…left.”
“I’m sorry, payday? They waited for a final paycheck?”
“Oh, no, it’s vernacular for miners, especially back in the day.
My grandfather mined, he taught me a little about it.
Miners didn’t call the day they were paid payday, they called it Eagle day because of the coins they were paid with.
Payday meant a miner had died and the company was paying out to his surviving family. ”
“Ah.” I made a mental note. Sometimes trigger words helped bring out ghosts who were hiding. “Either way, that’s great information to have. I’ll pass it along to my team.”
“How much of a danger is this big bad?”
“We haven’t been able to lay eyes on it, so it’s really hard to judge. But we’re not sure if we can defeat it. We might have to lock it down and send another team in.”
“Defeat…? Oh, oh wow, is there something you have to kill, then?”
“Yeah. Sadly.” Seeing her worry, I hastily reassured, “It’s not going to come down this far. It seems locked into the area, actually, as it won’t move past Miner’s Creek. We’re working on setting a new boundary today to absolutely lock it down. Either so we can hunt it or so another team can.”
“That’s reassuring. Best of luck, then.”
Mack returned, handing over recipes. I left them to it so I could finish my breakfast—I only had two bites left. Hannah and Quinn were already cleaning up the kitchen, so I ate quick.
Mack’s estimate of us being ready to go in ten minutes was right on.
We all loaded into the SUVs, as no one wanted to walk up that very horrible dirt road.
Melody drove up with us, hauling the horses, and helped get the horses off and into the right hands before she promised to come back at five to collect them again.
She turned the huge truck and trailer about expertly and was off.
I felt better about having the four-wheelers and the two horses. It would definitely help us cover more ground faster.
“Everyone, gather round,” Seiji called to us. He had a paper map spread out on a nearby dry-rotting porch.
We gathered in a close circle to see the map. He had colored markers in his hand and an already written out legend of who was which color. He was an organized sort of man, Seiji. Which was interesting since he was called a chaos magician.
“All right, who’s taking what and going in which direction?” Seiji looked around the circle. “I want to know where to look if people get lost. Although, please don’t get lost.”
People threw out which direction they wanted to take.
Mack and I volunteered for one of the four-wheelers, leaving Beau and Hannah the SUV; it would be far more comfortable for them.
They’d be mostly going up and down the roads, marking the easy sections.
Which was fine, it needed to be done anyways.
Davina paired off with Booker to search the east side, Eli and Quinn taking west. But Lachlan?
He stayed planted. Considering Seiji had to stay in the center to tie the threads of the boundary together—or so he’d explained last night—it made sense to me.
He would guard both Seiji’s and Gwyn’s backs as they worked.
I was of two minds on leaving Gwyn here with a we-don’t-know-what in the mines, but to be honest, she was safest with Seiji right now.
He had the best chance of combating the thing—him and Lachlan.
I still didn’t like her there, but I wasn’t going to pull her out until I was forced to.
It was too good of an opportunity for her to learn.
Seiji once again explained how this worked.
“The tuning forks, once I hand them to you, will vibrate continuously until you have exited the locker. Once the tuning fork goes still in your hand, mark it. Please remember this doesn’t have to be exact down to an inch, but try to get within a foot of where the vibration stopped. ”
Even as he explained, he’d pick up a tuning fork, hold it for a solid five count, then hand it to someone. Mack automatically took a tuning fork from him, then almost dropped it, the fork bouncing from hand to hand like a hot potato for a second.
“Whoa, whoa. Didn’t expect it to be so strong!”
Booker jolted when he took his. “Damn, that’s like a vibrator. I was worried it would be so soft I couldn’t tell.”
“Very charged area,” Seiji deadpanned, handing the last one to Hannah. “It’s supercharged because of it. Call me with questions or concerns.”
“Wait, am I the only one not sure how…uh…” Quinn clearly rephrased and tried again. “Is the locker any type of shape? Or is this like an amoeba?”
“I don’t know.” Seiji shrugged. “Nature likes symmetry. Snowflakes, for instance. But it also likes purely chaotic shapes, like rivers. We’ll see before the day is out.”
Nothing much else to say. We split up at that point.
Mack had no experience with a four-wheeler, but I did, so I chose to drive it.
He was my passenger, riding along behind me.
I wasn’t gunning the engine because there were no trails out here, only lots of sagebrush and possible rattlesnakes or whatever other predators to be wary of, so a sedate pace suited us best. I set off, going about ten miles an hour, just focused on maneuvering and keeping an ear trained on Mack for cues.
He had one arm wrapped around my waist, his chin sort of resting against my shoulder for a few moments. “Cher?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been thinking about our wedding.” His tone sounded ruminative. “We saw places that were nice online, but I kept thinking—that doesn’t feel like us.”
I sort of understood what he meant. While those venues had looked nice, none of them had appealed strongly enough for me to pick up a phone and make some inquiries. “I hear a but coming.”
“But I can think of a place that is very much us. The Crescent Hotel.”
The moment he said it, I knew it was perfect.
What better place to marry than the (very haunted) hotel where we’d first met?
And the Crescent was a stunning hotel, truly a great place for a wedding venue.
Plus, added bonus, the hotel was so old Jon was more or less safe to be in the building.
Both he and Don would be able to relax and enjoy our wedding.
I stopped the four-wheeler for a moment just so I could look at him, see his face. He seemed hopeful right now, mouth parted, eyebrows lifted in question.
“I truly love your idea,” I admitted. “Do they even do weddings?”
“I don’t know. But I think we should call and ask.”
I pulled my phone out and looked online to see if their website said anything about weddings. It took barely a Google search to get an answer—yes, they did. In fact, they had a whole wedding staff and a point of contact to call.
Mack leaned over my shoulder to see my phone screen. “Ooh, they do! Cher, really, truly, I think that’s our best wedding venue.”
“I’m so sold on this idea, I don’t even want to look anywhere else. You content to wait on them? They’re probably pretty booked.”
“We’re not in a rush, are we?”
“True, we’re not.” I’d be with this man the rest of my life. Waiting a few extra months to tie the knot was okay by me as long as the wedding was something we wanted.
“They’re not in the office yet, likely,” Mack mused. “Not with the time difference. Let’s call them during lunch, see what their openings are.”
“Sound plan, let’s do it. This place will be formal, so black-tie affair?”
“I think we all deserve to dress up and party, don’t you?”
“Hell yeah.”
Then we paused and looked at each other, and I could feel him thinking the same evil thought because we both broke out into grins and then snickered.
“Don’s going to kill me.” I laughed, already imagining his reaction.
“We must tell him in person,” Mack urged. “Just because his face will be meme gold.”
“It really, really will. Mum to my parents or him until we’re home.”
Mack mimed zipping his mouth up.
Talking about this had put a happy little spark in me.
For a man who’d had no faith he’d even get an anchor, I loved how much Mack had grown, becoming someone who held perfect faith in me.
He knew he was loved, loved me just as fiercely in return, and showed it by doing sweet things like thinking of the perfect venue for our vows.
I couldn’t let him show me up, though. He’d thought of the perfect venue, so now it was on me to think of the perfect honeymoon.
Then he leaned in against my ear and purred, “We could go to California for our honeymoon and tour the Winchester Mystery House.”
“Dammit, stop beating me to the punch! I was trying to think of a good honeymoon destination!” He would pick the one place I’d been dying to go see.
Mack cackled, pleased with himself, gremlin that he was.
All right, I had one last chance here. I had to get him a rocking wedding present. Something not really expensive, because that would just stress him out, but something good. Something he’d love.
Absolutely nothing was coming to mind. Granted, I was a little distracted with driving, and part of my brain was still stuck on calling the hotel.
“Cher, slow down, the vibration’s dying.”
I slowed abruptly, more or less edging forward.
“I think we’re there. Stop.”
I stopped. Mack immediately threw a leg over and walked forward another two feet before he grunted.
“There?”
“Yeah.”
I fished out a hammer and a stake, and drove the stake into the very brittle, dry ground.
Now I knew why Seiji had it planned out the way he did, and why he gave us instructions on which way to turn.
We’d be following this general line if possible, taking a left turn from here and heading generally back toward the road, hopefully to meet up with Beau and Hannah at some point.
The sun was already rising; it was going to be a very warm day, as expected of Arizona. I sipped from my water bottle as we got back on the four-wheeler. I’d be covered in red dust and likely parched by the time we got done. But if we were lucky, we’d mark it all out today.
And hopefully during the course of today we’d nail down what needed to happen next.