Two hours of expressway into the countryside and one hour on roads that were questionably fit for their calling.

Off-the-grid might as well, have meant off-the-map.

Given how many people were described by the person whose name I conveniently forgot at The Harpy’s Secret, I expected cars or vans to be piled up. But when I pulled up, there was only one light blue sedan in the unpaved driveway.

I had been too late again.

I parked the car right behind the sedan. In case anything happened, I was sure Bernie wouldn’t let them get away.

The one-room cabin was where people went to remind themselves how good civilization really was. There was a path from the driveway to the front door and from the front door to an outhouse that several hundred spiders called home.

The front door hadn’t been closed all the way. I knocked, and it opened into the one-room murder scene.

When I saw the blood, I thought it might have been the child, but it was an adult male who had his brains splattered out on the floor.

Standing over the body was the person I least expected to see. Bernard. He was missing his formal coat with the Camelot crest on it, but he still wore fine clothes. The handgun was the big difference for him.

He was calm.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I took in what I could of the single room before I spoke. Besides the body, there was a kennel for a large dog, but the empty plastic bottles of sports drink suggested it had been used to restrain someone. My bet was on the boy.

“Well?” he added.

“Me? I’m supposed to be here, what are you doing here?”

“‘Supposed to be’ is correct. But you weren’t here on time and I was.”

“Tell me you didn’t intervene. Tell me you didn’t stop or prevent the thing that she had to do.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word.

“Oh, you mean the abduction?”

A pair of footsteps ran up behind me. I spun around and watched as Igraine made her way inside, still clutching the blue spiral notebook.

“Wait!” I called to her, trying to block the view of the body, but I was too late.

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Her scream echoed off the forest canopy, back down to us.

In the city, a scream like that would get someone to call the police. But out here? I didn’t know.

Bernard continued, “Ah, Miss Igraine.”

“Did you get here in time?”

Bernard and I spoke at the same time. I said, “No,” and he said, “Yes.”

“Wait, you called him?” I asked Igraine.

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”

“Why would you think that?”

“You said something about Bernard when you left the apartment.”

Bernard started laughing. We both looked at him. “Oh, this is very amusing. You see, Miss Igraine, Mr. Krelig was probably referring to his car.”

Not my car. The mechanic who haunts it.

Now that I knew how he got there, I could refocus on the more pressing issue: what happened to Avalon?

“Bernard, you need to tell us what happened.”

“You have no authority here, Mr. Krelig.”

Igraine joined me at my side. “For me. Please, tell me what happened to Avalon.”

“I followed your instructions. Against my intuition, better judgment, and code of ethics, I did not intervene in Miss Avalon’s criminal act.” He had trouble saying abduction now.

“I let her go on her way. My associates followed her, and I followed the criminals here. When the opportunity arose, I helped the boy escape.”

He missed one important detail. “And what about the dead guy?”

“Poetic justice, you might say. You’ll read about it in the papers. Sorry, you probably don’t read those. You’ll hear about it on the news, that the police will conclude that this man was killed by one of his accomplices.”

“Where is she?” Igraine asked.

“Avalon is quite alright.”

“No, you don’t understand. She’s going to die if we don’t get to her.”

“I don’t think that is possible.”

“She’s going to die for real this time,” Igraine pleaded.

Bernard gave her a funny look and then dismissed what he had heard. “I don’t think it’s possible for you to see her, because I forbid it.”

“What?” we said together.

“You can’t hold her against her will.”

He gave a chuckle.

“I’m the Camelot family’s fixer. Do you think I haven’t handled situations like this before?”

“I know you haven’t,” I said.

“We’ll call the police,” Igraine added.

“And tell them what exactly? That one of the staff at the Camelot Estate might know something about the disappearance of your roommate?”

Igraine gasped. She saw something I didn’t.

“The very roommate the authorities are convinced didn’t exist and is a fabrication of your imagination?”

“How did you know?”

“Find it odd that you weren’t committed after that ordeal? That’s because Avalon called me and asked me to pull a few strings on your behalf, Miss Igraine.”

We were cornered. He knew it, and for whatever pathetic reason, he wanted us to think that it was by his design. He was projecting an illusion of control, and I had seen through it.

“Don’t let him get to you, Igraine. He’s being difficult because it’s impossible for him to be helpful.” I shifted my focus toward Bernard, pretending the firearm in his hand didn’t scare the daylights out of me. “You don’t know where she is, do you, Bernard?”

He nodded.

Igraine “Well someone’s got to know!”

He responded, “You don’t want to know the people who know.”

Our phones buzzed with the update on the missing child. The radius was closing in on our location.

I took the notebook with the fortune-teller’s spell from Igraine’s hands and thrust it into Bernard’s chest.

“She’s going to die if we don’t get this to her tonight,” I said. “If you won’t let us get it to her, get it to the people who can.”

“I will take it off your hands, but I don’t think it’ll be much help.” He then added, “You had better go.”

“She needs to get it before midnight, but the sooner the better.”

“Mr. Krelig, just go.”