“Don’t know, but he left his shotgun in the Jeep. And hey, at least he’s not a magician.”

“Earthbounds can dabble,” Lon reminded me as he opened the center console and fished around for something. “And we don’t know his knack or who he’s got on his side. If he was friendly with your mother, he might be friendly with other magicians.”

“Believe me, I couldn’t be any more leery right now.”

“Stay that way.” Lon found what he was looking for, a holstered handgun. Beneath his thin leather jacket, he clipped the holster to his belt. “And be ready to shock the shit out of the good parson if he does anything that sets off warning bells.”

Biting cold cut through my jacket as we battled the wind to meet up with Payne, who led us inside the adobe home. And once we were inside, I saw it wasn’t a house at all but a lobby—at least, it had been at one time. Wooden cubbyholes and hooks for room keys lined the wall behind a registration desk. Signs with arrows pointed the way to private numbered bungalows and rooms down a hallway that stretched out of sight. Old brass luggage carts sat in the corner, loaded with storage boxes near a door labeled BAR AND RESTAURANT.

Touches of old-fashioned California-meets-Mexico rustic décor graced the walls. Everything smelled of dust and smoke.

“The ranch used to be an inn,” Payne said as he strolled to an enormous stone fireplace in the center of the room, where he knelt on a woven rug to light a fire. A chandelier made of antlers hung from rough rafters above. “Back in the ’40s and ’50s, Hollywood writers and producers vacationed here. But in 1967, a family of five was murdered in one of the bungalows. Rumor was that the killer was living out on the property. They never caught anyone, and the ranch never recovered. I bought it for pennies in 1978. That was a couple years before I met Enola, actually.”

“How did you meet her?”

Payne stood up from the fledgling fire and squinted at me as he brushed off his knees with gloved hands. His clothes seemed too big, as if they were hanging off his bones. Maybe he’d lost a lot of weight recently. “I met her in L.A. at a book signing in a New Age bookstore on Melrose. She wrote something about the origins of ritual in Greece and Italy—Ritual Mysteries of Antiquity and the Search for Knowledge. She had some interesting ideas about Gnostic cults. They were mostly wrong, but she vehemently defended them. I invited her to stay at the ranch. It wasn’t open to the public, but we had a handful of people stay from time to time, interesting people who were dialed into the current.”

“Nonsavages, you mean.”

He nodded. “Occultists, pagans, philosophers, writers.”

“Did she know you were—”

“Son of the Serpent?”

“Earthbound,” I corrected.

“One and the same,” he said, flashing me a disconcerting smile. His teeth, dear God—the middle six on the top had been filed to points. “And no, not at first. Like most humans, she wasn’t gifted with the sight. But she eventually believed.”

Wood crackled in the fireplace. “She was a member of Ekklesia Eleusia,” I said.

“Oh, I’m well aware of that.”

“What did she do when she was staying here?”

“She talked. Soaked up knowledge. Connected with like minds.” Payne braced one arm on the mantel and watched the hearth. “She’d recently lost a child, so she was looking for solace, she said. Reflecting on the meaning of life.”

Reflecting, my ass. Reflecting on how she could fix her Moonchild formula, maybe. But the way he talked made me think he wasn’t all that sympathetic to my mother, either.

He glanced above my head, studying my halo. “You might not understand that, because you’re too young to have children of your own, I’m guessing. Just how old are you, my dear?”

Out of Payne’s sight, Lon lifted his hand for my benefit, but I didn’t need the warning. The old man was speaking in riddles, not telling us anything of substance. If he was bold enough to ask my age, he had a good idea I was Enola’s daughter. Which should be an advantage to me—for once—because he was supposed to be my mother’s ally in some sort of capacity. But I couldn’t get a clear read on his feelings about her. And that, frankly, gave me the willies.

I did my best not to let it show and merely smiled at his question before asking one of my own. “When was the last time she stayed here?”

“Oh, I imagine it’s been twenty-five, twenty-six years.” His mouth curled into a taunting smile.

Shit. He definitely knew who I was. “Why did she stop coming?”

“A busy woman like Enola Duval?” he said, voice thick with sarcasm. “I imagine she had people to see. Things to do.”

“You never saw her again?”

“Something always kept us apart.”

What the hell did that mean? I couldn’t figure out if lack of sleep was screwing with my instincts, but I had a feeling this man hated her guts as much as I did.

“You do realize what eventually became of her?” I said.

“The Black Lodge murders? Oh, yes. She and her husband were quite the media darlings for a while there, weren’t they?”

Indeed. We stared at each other until I couldn’t hold his gaze. “Is your temple still operational?” I said, glancing around the cavernous, dust-filled room. “Seems quiet around here.”

“When I first bought the ranch, before Enola Duval graced my doorstep, there were days when this room was filled with people and conversation. Most of my original flock is old or in the ground. But as long as I’m still standing, it’s functional.”