Bewitched and Betrothed

by Juliet Blackwell

  “And the guards made up the story about him escaping to cover it up.”

  “I think so.”

  Carlos flipped through the photos. “Do these tell you anything?”

  “That scrap of material they’re wrapped in is made of the same chambray as the prisoners’ uniforms. And the stains look like—and feel like—blood.”

  Carlos met my eyes. “I don’t know if the DNA’s still viable at this point, and even if it is, we don’t have Perry’s DNA to compare it to.”

  I nodded. Carlos turned his attention to the photos.

  “These look like photos of the cellblocks and the prison grounds,” I said. “I plan to give them to the Alcatraz archive; but thought you’d like to see them first. Maybe you’ll spot a clue of some sort.”

  He paused and studied the photos, setting one aside. Then he flipped one toward me so I could see it. It showed several prison guards standing with a half-dozen prisoners.

  “You suppose these are some of our alleged abusive guards?”

  I took it from him. The faces were hard to make out, but I thought I recognized one of the men.

  “Wait—did you say ‘Gordon’ was the name of one of the guards Ray Perry mentioned?”

  “Yep.”

  “I wonder . . . do you remember a volunteer we spoke to out on Alcatraz, a man named Ralph Gordon? He was a guard at the prison right before it closed. He looks a lot like this guy, here—try to imagine this fellow with a big white mustache.”

  Carlos peered closely at the picture. “I do see a resemblance, but I don’t see how that could be the same man. Perry was said to have ‘escaped’ in the ’30s, right? And these photos are from that era. Unless Ralph Gordon’s discovered the secret to eternal youth, this couldn’t possibly be him.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence; it’s hard to see these faces clearly. Except . . .”

  “What?”

  “Those in thrall to a demon often appear to be much younger than they are. And those that try to pull away from the demon tend to die unnaturally early.”

  I looked closer. There was one very good-looking man in the group, a real “historical hottie,” to use Bronwyn’s term. I almost pointed him out to Carlos, but what I was thinking seemed too far-fetched, even for me.

  “So what does this tell us?” Carlos asked.

  “I think Alcatraz has been a cursed island for a very long time. It would make sense that a demon might be drawn to it. It might even have been there since the beginning of creation.” I thought of the Feather People Guzmán told me about. “Anyway, if the guards were linked to the demon and offered him a blood sacrifice, it would strengthen his presence greatly. What’s more, I think Renee Baker, the cupcake lady, and Kyle Cheney have joined forces to stage a supernatural showdown on Alcatraz on the night of the Festival of Felons.”

  Carlos was silent for a long moment.

  “I m-might be wrong,” I stammered. “I hope I’m wrong.”

  “But you don’t think you’re wrong.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why Kyle Cheney?” Carlos mused. “The man already has more money than God, and he has a reputation as a philanthropist. Why would he get involved with something like this?”

  “Maybe that’s how he became so rich in the first place? I don’t know the answer. A lot of people seek money and power, and some are willing to do anything for it, even throwing in with a demon. Think about it—Cheney has access to all kinds of folks who trust him and who rely on him. They might well do a lot for him.”

  I thought about the security guards Aidan and I met at Renee’s shop the other day. They were open and sweet and not fully in control of themselves. They would be easy prey for a demon’s minions. Could they—or others like them—have been “Smith” and “Jones”? Did they carry out Cheney’s dirty work?

  “Is there any way you can shut down the Festival of Felons?” I asked.

  “That’s a pretty big order. It’s sold out. And what am I supposed to say, that there’s a demon on the rise on Alcatraz?”

  “Could you say you received a terrorist threat or something like that?”

  “I won’t lie, Lily.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. Is there anything you can do?”

  He blew out a long breath and stood. “Let me make some phone calls. I can say that I’ve heard unsubstantiated rumors of impending acts of violence, something along those lines. But the feds are still in charge out there, so I’m not sure how much pull I have.”

  “It’s worth a try. Anyway, I’ll be there, along with some other allies, so with luck we’ll be able to quash whatever’s developing. I hope.”

  “I hope so, too.” His dark gaze held mine for a long moment. “Be sure to stay safe, Lily. This whole thing sounds completely outlandish, but even I felt something out on that island, in that dungeon. Something unnatural. I didn’t like it.”

  “You and me both. Also, you might want to get your family out of town for the weekend. Just in case. It’s possible that . . . the city might be hit by an earthquake. A big one. Unless I can stop it.”

  He gazed at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Will you be okay?”

  I smiled. “Of course I will. I’ve got this, no problem.”

  My words sounded surprisingly steady, but I wasn’t fooling either of us.

  * * *

  • • •

  After Carlos left, I made Maya and Bronwyn promise me that they would get out of town tomorrow night. They agreed to go stay with Calypso and started making calls to warn our other friends.

  Tonight would be the final night of the preparatory MoonWish spell, and tomorrow night was the Festival of Felons.

  I called my friend Hervé Le Mansec, who assured me that the voodoo practitioners were in the loop. They had already bought their tickets to the Festival of Felons and would have my back. I got the same response from Selena’s grandmother Ursula about her botánica network, and the Feris and other magical communities. We had different skills, distinct spirit guides, disparate gods, sometimes clashing belief systems . . . and yet we would come together with one goal: to stop Sitri and those in his thrall from harming millions of innocents.

  As I hung up the phone I realized: I hadn’t bought a ticket for the festival, which was now sold out. How was I supposed to get to Alcatraz?

  Well, I’d figure that out at some point. At the moment I had a more pressing concern: a proper sacrifice for the final night of the MoonWish spell. I headed to Calypso’s house, to have a chat with my mother about the trousseau she had so lovingly made for me.

  I hated to sacrifice it. I could only hope she would understand why.

  Chapter 25

  On the way back from Calypso’s house, I stopped in Sausalito in search of Captain Buddy and found him mucking about his boat. He seemed pleased to see me.

  “I have a favor to ask,” I said. “A huge favor.”

  “Shoot,” he replied.

  “I need someone to ferry me and a few friends to Alcatraz Island tomorrow night. There will be about fifteen of us in all.”

  “It’s against the law, you know,” he said, sounding virtuous.

  “I thought you said you do it all the time.”

  “Well, now, that’s true enough,” he said. “But that’s before I knew I could get arrested for it.”

  He seemed to hesitate, so I waited.

  “Will Pepper be coming, too?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. Pepper will be there. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “In that case, I’m at your disposal,” he said with a wink.

  Something occurred to me. “Captain Buddy, you didn’t happen to take a couple of men and a woman out there four days ago?”

  “I wouldn’t swear as to the day, exactly, but a couple of days ago I did take a trio out there. It was a little odd b
ecause it was only late morning, but the woman was drunk as a skunk, could hardly even stand. Her friends said they’d gone to a champagne brunch for her birthday.”

  “What did the men look like?”

  He shrugged. “Young, in their twenties. Sort of nondescript, brown hair, nothing special.”

  “Did they say why they were going out to Alcatraz?”

  “Let’s see,” Buddy said, scratching his whiskers. “Said something about the woman being a park service ranger who was stationed out there, so they were taking her back. Why they thought that would be a good idea, considering the state she was in, is beyond me, but people are strange.”

  “That they are.” I sighed.

  “Anyway, I’ll be happy to take you and your friends tomorrow if you put in a good word for me with that lovely lady friend of yours, Miss Pepper.”

  I agreed, and we settled on a price and a time for our rendezvous.

  My next stop was the wax museum. I needed my lachrymatory salts for tomorrow night. If demonic activity and the coincidentia oppositorum leading up to the Big One didn’t call for the nuclear option, I didn’t know what did.

  As was her wont, Clarinda yelled as I sailed past the ticket booth. As was my wont, I ignored her.

  Noctemus stared down at me from the ledge over her master’s closed office door. I had been hoping to find Aidan there, both to be assured that he was all right and to ask him to undo the Etruscan spell safeguarding my lachrymatory salts. I should have asked him before, but Aidan had always seemed so much a part of things—and so in control—that I couldn’t imagine him gone, as in actually gone.

  Slowly, I reached out to open the door, hoping Noctemus didn’t think it was her duty to keep me out.

  Instead, she leapt gracefully to the floor and slipped inside as soon as the door was ajar.

  Same office, same library, same late Victorian bordello furnishings. No Aidan.

  Now what?

  Noctemus was now perched on a bookshelf, delicately licking her little paw.

  “I need help,” I said, trying to convey what I needed through intuition. “Aidan said you would help me.”

  She stared at me with wide, unblinking blue eyes.

  “Please,” I continued. “I need my lachrymatory salts. They might help me save San Francisco, and, perhaps, your master.”

  The cat languidly moved to the middle of the shelf, which contained a series of grimoires of different cultures from across the globe. I came close and saw what looked like a bookmark of yellowed parchment stuck in one volume.

  I pulled it out and read: “Qui affecto protego, mixtisque iubas serpentibus.”

  Was this the first line of a spell?

  Noctemus had leapt down and was now pacing back and forth in front of a wooden side table. I opened the table’s small drawer and found yet another piece of parchment, with another line in Latin: et posteris meis stirpiqu.

  The cat then pawed at a red velvet cushion on the couch. I lifted it to find still another note. For the next several moments Noctemus led me on a scavenger hunt through Aidan’s office, where I found notes hidden under the carpet, in a desk drawer, under the telephone, and behind the velvet drapes.

  I was careful to keep the notes in the order in which Noctemus had showed them to me. For a spell to perform properly, the lines must be recited in the correct sequence. Get the order wrong and not only would the desired spell not work, but one ran the risk of conjuring something else entirely.

  “Is that all?” I asked Noctemus, who sat in the precise middle of the office, staring at me.

  She blinked.

  “Because if there are more, now’s the time to speak,” I said.

  I could have sworn Noctemus rolled her eyes at me.

  “Then, thank you,” I said, and the cat leapt onto a leather office chair and curled up to take a nap.

  I entered Aidan’s special octagon room and closed the door. I faced the sealed niche that contained my lachrymatory and read the spell from the notes as best I could, in the proper order. I stumbled over the words—I wasn’t well versed in Latin—but my intent was clear, and I was focused.

  There was yet another rumble as the room rocked.

  I repeated the spell thrice. The niche in the wall sprung open, revealing the diminutive slender glass bottle, within which tinkled tiny salts, the residue of my teenage tears.

  The last tears I had ever shed.

  I wrapped the lachrymatory in a silk scarf I found on Aidan’s chair and placed it carefully in my backpack.

  Then I grabbed the Satchel, which contained the names and contact information of everyone who owed Aidan a favor. I sat at his desk, picked up his phone, and started dialing.

  An hour later, I’d called in several of Aidan’s markers and asked each person to contact another five, like in a phone tree. I hung up secure in the fact that I had magical folks lined up for tomorrow night.

  Finally, I sat back in his chair. It felt surprisingly comfortable, easy to be here. Maybe Aidan was right. Maybe I was ready to fill his shoes, to lead the local magical community.

  Unless, of course, everything came crashing down—quite literally—tomorrow night. Was this all related to an unleashing of negative power previously held in check by Aidan?

  More on point, where had Aidan gone? Sailor was right—this was different from his usual disappearances. I thought of the red rose Aidan had picked at Renee’s house and put in his buttonhole. Had it led Renee’s minions to him? The gesture had seemed at the time very out of character for a warlock as knowledgeable as Aidan to embrace something belonging to an enemy. Had he done it on purpose?

  I noticed the grimoire that still sat atop Aidan’s desk and flipped it open to the section on Sitri.

  Sitri was known to appeareth at first with a Leopard’s head and the Wings of a Gryphon, but after the command of the Master of the Exorcism he putteth on Human shape, and that very beautiful.

  If Albright’s death was a blood sacrifice to conjure Sitri, then could the Master of Exorcism—whoever that had been—have asked Sitri to assume a human form? A beautiful human form?

  Some think Sitri and Egyptian deity Set, a god of chaos and darkness, are one and the same. Demons respect no national boundaries. And they are able to take many forms and through their minions to be in many places at one time.

  Maybe it wasn’t Kyle at all.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I returned to my apartment with my trousseau, Oscar was taking a baking sheet of Tater Tots out of the oven.

  “Where have you been?” we asked each other in unison.

  “You don’t usually have trouble finding me,” I said, placing the beloved trousseau on the coffee table.

  “There’s something wonky going on lately,” said Oscar, setting the baking tray on the stove and taking off the oven mitt. “Astral plane is all screwed up. I’ve been looking for Aidan, and I never have a problem finding him. To be honest, mistress, I’m worried.”

  He sat at the kitchen table with a plate piled high with steaming Tater Tots and dipped one into a pool of ketchup.

  “Not too worried to eat, I see,” I said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Never mind.” I took a seat opposite him and munched on a Tater Tot.

  “Good?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Oscar, let me ask you something. The other day, Renna said something that’s been bothering me ever since.”

  “Ranch!” Oscar said, and hopped up to get the ranch dressing from the fridge. He added a dollop to his plate, next to the ketchup. “Best of both worlds. So what’d Renna say?”

  “‘You can’t see the forest for the trees.’ She said it twice.”

  “Huh. Maybe she was a philosophy major. You know, like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?�
��

  “Yeah, not at all like that. Here’s what I’m thinking: It always bothered me how the kidnappers knew Elena had the bundle. What if Forrest leaving the store was a signal?”

  “You mean Forrest was in on it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But it would explain that part of what happened.”

  Oscar dipped one end of a Tater Tot in ketchup, and the other in the ranch dressing, and chewed it with a happy grunt.

  “Here’s something else I’ve been wondering about: If they wanted the shirt, why didn’t they just snatch the bag. Why kidnap Elena?”

  “To get you out to Alcatraz, probably.”

  “You think?” I dredged another Tater Tot through the ketchup and popped it in my mouth. “But then why dump their van near Pier 39? Because apparently they took a boat from Sausalito, not Pier 33.”

  “Again, to get you out to Alcatraz. They took a boat from Sausalito so they wouldn’t get caught, but left a clue near Alcatraz Landing so you’d know to go out there. If they left the van in Sausalito you wouldn’t make the connection to Alcatraz.”

  I thought about what he was suggesting and ate another Tater Tot, and then another. Then I got up and brought the package of photographs to the table and flipped through them.

  One of the guards in a photograph, standing next to the man who looked like Ralph Gordon, looked a lot like Seth Barbagelata. Seth . . . as in Set? Which was another name for Sitri?

  Seth was very beautiful. And charming. Was he also deadly?

  “Is it possible that Kyle Cheney wasn’t the mastermind, after all? That it was Kyle’s assistant, Seth?” I asked aloud, while munching on another Tater Tot. As a trusted employee Seth would know how to access Cheney’s resources without leaving any way to trace it back to him. And if Seth was Sitri come to human life, and the other half of Renee’s coincidentia oppositorum, he had to be stopped, no matter the sacrifice.

  I looked at Oscar, who was gazing at me with a grave expression, as if sensing my concern.

  “Mistress?”

  “Yes, Oscar?”

  “At this rate, we’re gonna need some more Tater Tots.”