by Jessica King
“Sorry,” Livia said, her lips wobbling at the mention of her friend, and tears falling from the edges of her eyes. She ran a hand across her belly.
“When are you due?” Ivy said, trying to pull the woman’s attention from her grief.
Livia smiled through the sadness. “A month? About?” she looked down at her stomach. “Third one, but being this shape is, eh, bizarre, yes?” She managed a laugh and lowered herself into a chair at the edge of the rug. “Tati wanted to get pregnant. She’d prayed for a baby for so long. I told her about the ritual I’d helped some of our other friends do and for me.” She pointed to her stomach. “It’s a girl, finally,” she said, peeking over her shoulder to make sure her boys weren’t listening. “They wanted another brother.” She shook her head.
“So, were you with her when she performed the ritual?” Ivy asked.
“No.” Livia shook her head. “I gave her everything she would need, told her how to do it.” She pushed dark hair from her face. Her nails were each painted with a different color and cut short, a letter written on each nail, though Ivy couldn’t catch the whole word.
“And did anyone see her?” Ivy asked. “Do you know?”
Livia knit her fingers together now, a wedding ring winking in the sunlight from the window. “No. I don’t know, I mean. The next thing I’d heard about her was that she was gone.”
“Has anyone ever been hostile to you about your work?” Vince asked.
“Sì, sì,” she said. “I mean, people get angry sometimes if a spell doesn’t work for them or something like that. Some people don’t like the idea of what I do.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I’m fine with that. Whatever they want to think, yes?”
“What about threats, though?” Ivy asked.
Livia took a moment to think. “I can’t think of any now,” she said. “But if there ever have been and it’s been in, eh,” she waved her hands. “Passion. No one’s ever threatened my life.”
“And you said she planned to do the ritual early in the morning on Thursday, and then she was found the next morning in St. Peter’s?”
“Sì.”
“Her husband said she went to confessional on Thursday morning,” Ivy said.
Livia’s shoulders sank, nodding to herself. “Then she must have done the ritual. She felt very, very guilty about it all. She’s a very,” she shifted her hands in the air as if she were forming the word she was looking for, “devout?”
Ivy glanced at Vince, who gave her one short nod. She must have told someone what she’d done, someone in connection with the Kingsmen. “You think she told the priest or a friend?”
“She tells the priest everything,” Livia said. She laughed. “When we were younger girls, I’d give her all the, eh, spicy romance novels I read; then she’d run to St. Peters and confess. She shook her head, pressing down the smile of a past memory. “She might have told someone else. But I don’t think she told Leo, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell him if you don’t have to. He didn’t like the idea of it, especially when it came to them having a baby and things like that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Vince said, giving a small salute. This caught her attention, taking her a moment to place the word ma’am.
“Grazie,” she said. “I think she’d appreciate that. I know she was a bit embarrassed about it all.”
“Not too embarrassed to tell a priest at confessional?”
“No,” Livia said. “She would be sad to say it all, but she would.” She scrunched her eyebrows, knowing her wording was off, but nodding at the general idea of it all the same. “She either told him then, or she was going to when she went back. She could keep a lie as good as anyone from her parents, or even from Leo, but not from the confessional.”
“Gotcha,” Vince said. “All right, well, we have our next step, then. Thank you.”
The two boys made a run through the living area, screaming. The older one was holding a kitten above his head. The kitten appeared to still be half asleep, used to the shenanigans of her two tiny owners. It yawned as its legs dangled above the taller boy’s mud-matted hair.
“Sei pazzo?” their mother called after them. She flashed an embarrassed look at Vince and Ivy.
Ivy smiled, and they ushered themselves out as Livia went chasing after her two sons.
Thursday, March 30, 2017, 11:50 a.m. | Central European Standard Time
When they arrived back at St. Peter’s, Father Dominick spotted them and waved them over. “I was going to call you. I think we might have found something.” He led them back into the offices and ushered them to the computers where feeds from security cameras littered the room. “The cameras outside were still on. I thought they had been off but look here.”
He fast-forwarded through the crowds leaving the basilica until the crowd had mostly moved away from the doors, only a few trying to capture last-minute photos in the dying light of the evening. As the picture grew gray with the evening, a woman approached the church, and Father Dominick slowed the video. A woman in a long dress came to the doors and tried to open them. Rattled them. Then walked away toward the side of the building. Father Dominick moved from one video to the next with an ease Ivy had not expected. She shot a glance at Vince. He shifted his eyes to Father Dominick’s hands and back to Ivy. He was thinking it, too. He was the eldest of the three priests they’d met, and he had a strong command of the technology that was manipulated on the night of Tatiana’s death.
Ivy pulled her focus back to the video, showing the woman trying her way all around the church, unable to get in. The woman on the video even went to knocking, appearing to be begging, even. Why make noise if you’re sneaking in? Was she meeting someone else?
“She couldn’t get in,” Ivy said.
“Indeed,” Father Dominick said. “This is twenty-five minutes after the last few people left the church.”
“But wasn’t it too crowded to kill anyone before that? I would guess she’d maybe died seconds before this,” Ivy said. “If she couldn’t get inside, wouldn’t that make her the only person we know for certain didn’t kill Tatiana?”
Father Dominick shook his head. “I don’t think you understand. This woman is the leader of the Roman witches coven. She’s known to try dealing with the necromantic arts.” His nose twisted as though the words themselves smelled horrible to him.
“Jesus was raised from the dead,” Vince said matter-of-factly.
Father Dominick’s head jerked up, his face an odd mix of emotions when he looked at Vince. “That was different, Detective.”
“God, Vince,” Ivy said, covering her face with one hand. When she opened her eyes, she could see the priest now looking at her with raised eyebrows at the flippant use of his Lord’s name. “Sorry, Father,” she said, biting down on her tongue. From behind Father Dominick, Vince was pressing his lips together in an attempt at holding in a laugh.
“What matters here is she might have been returning to the scene of the crime, or at the very least, she knew before anyone else that Tatiana was dead,” Father Dominick said, zooming in for a closer picture of the woman, her eyes locked with the camera, her face contorted.
It was a good point. A memory tickled at the back of her mind. When she saw a dead body back in California, she clicked refresh on a website and saw that a so-called witch had been “eliminated.” Perhaps there was a similar system in place in Italy.
“Do you know any way we can contact this woman?” Ivy asked, pointing to the screen, which had returned to her with her hands on the front doors of the basilica.
Father Dominick clicked away from the recording, the tiny televisions flickering to a live feed of the basilica. “I try to avoid getting involved in those types of things,” he said. “But she runs some sort of modern apothecary shop a few blocks away.”
Thursday, March 30, 2017, 12:14 p.m. | Central European Standard Time
They’d decided to walk. Ivy didn’t even want to attempt at getting a cab, and she was sweating by the time
they got to the apothecary shop. A bell rang above them as she and Vince walked in, the smell of smoke and spices assaulting her senses. She coughed into her sleeve right as she locked eyes with the shop’s owner and tried to manage a wave with her other hand.
“Come posso auitarla?” she said. Her arms were covered in tattoos of the sun, moon, and stars, as well as feathers that fanned down from her elbows like dark angel’s wings. She sparkled with an abundance of golden jewelry, all ten fingers blinking with red and blue jewels.
“Ah…” Vince began.
“American?” she asked, moving toward a stack of wicker baskets next to them.
Ivy nodded. “We’re from the Los Angeles Police Department in California.”
The woman in front of them paled. She took a step back. “Are you needing help from me?” Her eyes were guarded as she crossed her arms in front of herself.
Ivy held her hands out, trying to make some sort of comforting gesture. “We’re trying to figure out who killed a woman named Tatiana Rossi,” Ivy said. “In our city, lots of people claiming to be witches or even people involved with magic are—”
“I know what is happening where you are from,” the woman said, nearly spitting the words. “The infection of the, eh, Kingsmen has come here.” She shook her head. “No.” As if pure denial could keep a murderous cult at bay. “No,” she repeated.
“Well, that’s what we’re here to try to do,” Ivy said. “Stop it before they get a foothold in Europe.”
The woman raised one dark eyebrow, a slash of ink jumping off the page.
“What’s your name?” Ivy asked, deciding to switch tactics. Up close, she could see words woven into the feather designs on the woman’s forearms. She couldn’t read the Italian, but the script looked old and whimsical.
The woman tugged at her sleeves as if she could feel Ivy’s attention. “Amara Caprio,” she said.
“I understand you’re the leader of the Roman coven?” Ivy said. Amara pressed her lips together, and Ivy tilted her head. “We’re on the same side here,” she said. “I’ve been working with the head of the Los Angeles coven to try to rid the city of Kingsmen.”
“You haven’t been doing a good job,” Amara said, her voice cutting.
Ivy swallowed. She’d feared the same thing, had been afraid it was coming off though they’d been failing. That desperate piece of her clawed around her heart. What else can we do? They’d put plenty of people away, but they’d found so many corpses, too.
Vince cleared his throat. “Little difficult when people keep trying to kill her because they think she’s a witch herself,” he said. She could feel the prickle of his energy next to her. Could feel her partner’s hackles rising in defense.
The witch’s other eyebrow lifted, turning her look of suspicion to surprise. “The Kingsmen tried to kill you too?”
Ivy nodded. “Three times.” She tugged the sleeve of her shirt and showed Amara the bullet wound. She tugged up the sleeve to the map of scars on her forearm. She’d been trying to hide the damage from the other officers, fearing it might come across as a weakness. But here, Ivy had guessed right. To this woman, her bruises and carved flesh came across as strength. Someone who came back from the Kingsmen.
“Hmm,” Amara said, her expression closing back up once again, doused with disinterest. “Did you find the Italian Kingsman?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Ivy said. “St. Peter’s does have a video of you trying to get into the basilica right around when Tatiana was killed.” Ivy tugged out her notebook and her phone, which held a picture of a woman at the doors, clearly Amara.
The tops of Amara’s cheeks went red. “I didn’t kill her,” she said. “I couldn’t get in, so shouldn’t that tell you that I didn’t—”
“We’re not saying you killed her,” Vince said. “We’re saying we saw you trying to get in afterhours around the time we believe her to be killed. Did you know she was in there?”
“I knew someone dead was in there,” Amara said. “The website showed it.”
“They have a website here too?” Ivy asked. The confirmation of her suspicion sparked anxiety in her stomach. If they were already organized enough to have an up-to-date website…
Amara pressed her lips together and pulled out her phone, navigating to a webpage that looked uncannily similar to the old Kingsmen website, back when she’d first found her name listed under a witching line.
“Here,” she said. “The names are added to it all the time, right when they die. I have notifications on.” The setup was a little different on the European site. The names and places were in a simple list, which made them all look like the names belonged to the same witching line. Next to each name was a flag. All of them were American, except for the top name, where an Italian flag sat. St. Peter’s Basilica was listed next to the location.
A site that kept track of witch deaths across the whole world? When had this been made? How had they missed this?
“The notification went off. I figured it was another American. I keep checking because I fear this,” she said, gesturing to them. “I saw it was near me, so I tried to get there.”
“Why try to get there if you already knew she was dead, though?” Vince asked.
Amara ground her teeth. “I might have brought her back?” she said, gesturing to the shop around her. “If there was any life at all left, I might have been able to save her. I’ve dealt long enough if the dark arts.” It was the first time Ivy heard a witch admit to their craft being dark.
“Was she in your coven?” Ivy asked.
Amara’s shoulders sagged a fraction. “I didn’t even know her name until she was on the website. Never heard of her before. Probably her first ritual, or she was practicing underground even to our coven. I don’t know.”
“If you couldn’t bring her back, you would have been a big suspect.”
“That would have been almost better,” Amara said. She paused as if contemplating whether to tell them something. Ivy knew the look. She kept her face neutral and waited for the woman to continue.
“That was the other reason I wanted to get to her. To take the Kingsmen card before anyone could find it. A murder in the church is already awful. But now, all over Europe, potential Kingsmen are figuring out what being a Kingsmen is, how to hunt down my sisters in the dark magic, and even the Wicca, who literally wouldn’t cast a hex to save their life.” She pointed again to them. “You’ve seen. They don’t only care about the witching lines anymore. They care about all magic workers.” She shook her head. “I’ve been following what has happened in your Los Angeles. I will not let it happen to my coven.”
Her eyes were glittery beneath the star-like glisten of her dark makeup, and Ivy nodded. “For future reference, you don’t want to incriminate yourself by going near a dead body. It’s good you couldn’t get to Tatiana, or you’d be one of our main suspects right now.”
The woman nodded, though Ivy figured she’d rather be on trial for murder than allow the Kingsmen to gain a hold in her country. She and Vince turned to leave, the glass door the only point of light in the shop.
“Is the Witch Pride event still safe, you think?” Amara blurted before they left, her voice bursting as if she’d tried to keep the words in but couldn’t.
“The what?” Ivy asked, turning back around.
CHAPTER TEN
Trinity Webb, an honor roll student at Kensington High and resident of Sherman Oaks, CA, died on March 18, 2017, at the Long Beach Prophetess Gathering during an attack by the Kingsmen cult.
Trinity is survived by her younger brother, Cameron; his parents, Andrea and David Webb; and her grandparents, Lucy and Gregory James and Georgianna Webb.
Trinity Georgianna Webb was born on October 14, 1999. She was born in West Los Angeles but truly found her stride after her family moved to Sherman Oaks during her high school years. While attending Kensington High, she found her passions of cheerleading, chemistry, and volunteerism (particularly at the Sherman Oaks Animal Re
scue). A greatly skilled young woman with a large heart, she planned to attend either UCLA or California State University to study chemistry in the hopes of running her own eco-friendly cosmetics line. A person anyone could lean on and always in for a good laugh, Trinity will be missed by her friends, family, and all who were lucky enough to cross her path.
A funeral service is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31, at Oak Baptist. Pastor Eugene Litchfield will officiate.
+++
Thursday, March 30, 2017, 6:11 p.m.
“Man, Broadway thinks you’re gonna be snitchin’ on us to the police. He said you had crazy eyes at the fight.” Robbie was wearing his regular uniform. Worn jeans hung too low on his hips without the help of a belt, chunky basketball sneakers that looked both comfortable and cumbersome at the same time, an oversized T-shirt, and a baseball cap.
Broadway was standing not ten feet from Cameron, looking lethal despite his small stature. Robbie scraped the toe of his shoe across the cement, and Cameron vaguely remembered his sister when they were young. She was pretending to be a ballerina, sweeping her foot across the ground in circles. He’d told her ballerinas couldn’t play sports too, and she’d thrown a soccer ball at his face.
“I swear,” Cameron said, his palms up and facing Broadway. “I was worried ‘cause I saw Miss Lucille. She’s a friend of my pops, yeah?” He shook his head. “She’s like ninety, man, c’mon, course I was worried.”
Broadway considered him, scratching at the scruff on his jaw. He looked stronger in clothes that fit him closely. He was lanky and thin, but his arm muscles stood at attention in a close-cut shirt.
“You gonna take a punch for it?” Robbie asked. Cameron whipped his head to Robbie, who simply shrugged. “Sorry, my man. You should’ve helped your brothers before carin’ for Miss Lucille. I like her, too, bruh, but I’mma take care of Broadway first, since he’s an Underworld Brother.”
That was the name of the new gang that had separated from the Angels. The Underworld. Partially a punch against the angelic visuals of the Angels, partially because someone thought fallen angels would be a more badass version of the original.
