Tangled Web

by Gail Z. Martin

  Baxter knew something was wrong. He barked and danced around me, and I worried he might get ahold of the scarf. I ordered him to his bed, and he went, but he stared at me, whimpering.

  I grabbed for my phone and managed to knock it off the table. My knees buckled, so I went down with it. Lying on my side, I reached out and hit speed dial.

  “Cassidy?” Teag answered. “What’s up?”

  “Come quick,” I panted, feeling a fever building. “I think I’ve been cursed.”

  I remembered falling, and the call to Teag. The next thing I knew, Baxter barked up a storm, and then Teag knelt next to me. “Cassidy? We’re here.”

  “Don’t touch…the scarf.” I could barely get out the words. Whatever I had, it felt like the worst bout of the flu topped off with food poisoning. Even worse, from the instant I removed the tissue wrap, my gift had been screaming, seared through with the malice the sender had woven into the cloth.

  We hadn’t pissed off a witch. Somehow, we’d made an enemy of a powerful Weaver, and that spelled big trouble.

  “Get back,” Mrs. Teller ordered. I could only see her shoes until she bent down. Then she used a plastic pasta spoon to tease the scarf away from my body, and I saw her shoes head toward my sink. She dropped the cursed scarf into my stainless steel sink, murmured words I didn’t recognize, and a few seconds later, I smelled smoke and burning yarn.

  Meanwhile, Teag had been sprinkling salt all around me and poured a flask of holy water over my hands where I had clutched the scarf. Mrs. Teller spoke again, a rebuke to the powers of evil. I heard another voice, and only then realized that they had brought Rowan with them. Rowan was chanting and burning sage, but I picked up on other scents of plants I dimly remembered being for cleansing and protection.

  Teag laid a woven blanket over me from shoulders to knees. It cooled my fever and soothed the pain that radiated from my belly, and even my headache felt bearable. I figured it was something he had woven his magic into.

  “Hang in there, Cassidy,” he urged. “We’re going to fix this.”

  I lost track of time. Baxter whined, upset to not be close to me. Mrs. Teller and Rowan spoke in low tones, sometimes chanting or speaking words of power, or conferring quietly. Teag moved back and forth, infusing the blanket with his magic and keeping me calm, or stepping over to talk with the other two. I had a Weaver, a witch, and a root woman on my side, but I wondered if it would be enough.

  Even with Teag’s spell-woven blanket and all the other magical preparations, I still felt awful. Under normal circumstances, I’d be begging to go to the hospital. But doctors couldn’t help me. Whatever whammy the scarf put on me was beyond the reach of medicine. Magic did this, and magic would have to save me.

  My view from the floor remained limited to shoes, but I heard the front door open and close, and the tread of a man’s steps.

  “Sorren. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  “Of course.” Six hundred years ago, Sorren was the best jewel thief in Antwerp. Now, it’s rare to hear a trace of a Dutch accent in his voice. I’ve only heard it when he was hurt badly enough to kill a mortal, exhausted—or worried. The fact that I heard that accent now would have made me panic if I’d had the energy.

  Sorren crouched beside me. “Cassidy, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” My voice sounded weak, even to me.

  “Rowan and Mrs. Teller are working on the counter spell. How much contact did you have with the scarf?”

  “Barely touched it.” I licked my lips. They felt dry and parched, but my stomach probably wouldn’t hold down water even if I could drink it. I hadn’t felt this awful in a long time, maybe never.

  “That’s a good thing,” Sorren replied, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “Hang on. It won’t be much longer, and we should have you feeling better.”

  “Can we move her?” Teag asked. That’s when I realized that no one had touched me. Even when Teag put the blanket over me, he never touched my skin.

  “Should be fine,” Mrs. Teller paused her incantations long enough to answer. “The curse was in the scarf. Can’t catch it from her, and the scarf is gone.”

  I expected Sorren to take my shoulders and Teag to grab my feet, but Sorren scooped me up like a toddler who had missed nap time and carried me into the living room, where he laid me down on the couch.

  “How bad is it, Cassidy?” Sorren asked. We’ve been through some horrific fights together, and I’ve been hurt pretty badly. But hurt is different from sick, and right now I felt like my body was on fire from the inside.

  “Bad,” I murmured. “Hospital bad—except…magic.” Talking felt like an exhausting burden. “Baxter?”

  Sorren knew what I meant, although I hadn’t managed a whole sentence. “It won’t hurt anything if he’s with you.” He went into the kitchen and came back with Bax in his arms. For everyone else, Bax is a wiggling yipper. But vampire glamoring works on dogs, and while it’s totally cheating, Baxter barks at everyone now except Sorren. He set Bax down on the couch, and my little fluff ball immediately snuggled in beside me.

  “I’ll be back,” Sorren promised. Out in the kitchen, I heard him conferring with the others. The low hum of voices felt comforting, like a memory from childhood of a house crowded with relatives after a holiday meal. I felt floaty as if I were half-asleep or dreaming, drifting and wondering if it was a good thing that I seemed only lightly tethered to my body.

  Sorren’s hands gripped my shoulders and shook me. “Cassidy! Stay with us. We’re close. Hang on.” Vaguely, I realized that his heightened senses could probably read my vital signs as closely as medical equipment, and that vampires don’t worry easily.

  I felt too floaty to care.

  The next time I opened my eyes and roused enough to take in my surroundings, I saw the flicker of candles and smelled a mix of herbs. Cedar, chamomile, fennel, sage, and more swirled in a haze around me. Teag removed the woven blanket, and I shivered.

  “It’s drawn out a lot of the poison, but not all,” Teag said, and I saw the corner of the blanket flap as he held it up.

  “I’ll burn that,” Mrs. Teller said, and her footsteps retreated to the kitchen. I hoped she didn’t set off the smoke alarm, and then couldn’t remember why I cared.

  “Drink this.” Rowan pressed a cup to my lips and helped me sit up enough to sip. The mix tasted bitter and strong, and I tried to push her hand away.

  “You have to drink this, Cassidy.” Rowan wasn’t one for coaxing. Her voice was stern, like someone in charge, and I thought maybe I should listen, but my mind felt so foggy.

  “Drink,” Sorren spoke, and the fog lifted. I wondered if that was his vampire compulsion, something he’d never used on me, but saving my life might have made him fudge on his promise. I needed to have what the cup held. Rowan kept me from spilling in my haste. When I finished, I wanted more.

  “Rest.” Sorren’s voice let me relax, and I sank back down into the couch.

  “How long will it take?” Teag must have been behind the sofa because his voice seemed close. I shivered, missing the blanket. Teag leaned over and laid a thinner strip of fabric down the length of my body. Even floaty, I recognized it as the protective stole he often wears under his shirt when we go up against a big bad. Teag’s magic and personal energy are woven deep into that stole, and it comforted me like a balm.

  “It’s complicated magic,” Mrs. Teller replied. “It’ll take what it takes.”

  I zoned out again, and when I woke I had to blink to make sense of what I saw. A shimmering light surrounded me, glistening like a soap bubble in the sun. But not soap…energy. Am I dead? I wondered, but I didn’t really care.

  Voices rose and fell—Rowan, Mrs. Teller, and Teag. The candle flames flickered, rising higher than they should have, or maybe it was a trick of the light. The soap bubble got brighter, shifting from iridescent to blinding. I shut my eyes, and the light made my eyelids glow red. I felt the buzz of energy against my skin, and in my imaginati
on I saw tendrils of the bubble stretching down to touch me, boring through to my core, drawing out the poison.

  And when it hurt too much to stand it anymore, I screamed.

  “Cassidy.” Teag’s voice sounded hesitant.

  “Erm.” I couldn’t manage more, but at least he’d know I heard him.

  “The curse broke,” he said, sounding ragged and hoarse. “Fever’s gone. You’re probably tired as hell, and you should be from fighting off that bad magic, but that’s all it is—tired. Sorren says he can tell, and you’re going to be okay.”

  “Everyone…okay?” I felt groggy, like waking up after a potent sleeping pill. Bits and pieces came back to me, the scarf, pain, magic.

  “You gave us all a run for our money,” Teag replied, with a rueful chuckle. “That scarf packed a wallop.” His tone grew serious. “Whoever sent it wasn’t fooling around.”

  “The box—”

  “Sorren took the box and packaging,” Teag said. “He’s going to see what he can make of it, try to figure out where it came from. But the bigger question is, why?”

  I wanted to care. Deep inside, I knew this was important, but I was too damn tired. Teag seemed to recognize that conversation was beyond me, and he patted my shoulder. “Go back to sleep. Mrs. Teller and Rowan finished up, and I got them settled into your guest rooms.” He paused. “I hope you don’t mind—I called Kell. He’s going to be over soon to sit with you, because I’ve got to crash, too.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured. “All of you. Sorry to be a bother.”

  Teag’s grip tightened on my arm. “Cassidy—if you hadn’t called me, and if we hadn’t come right away, you wouldn’t have made it. Someone intended to kill you. So don’t be sorry about calling. Not at all.”

  He rose to answer a knock at the door. Baxter barely moved, raising his head and giving a low growl without any heat behind it. I heard Kell’s voice, and Teag answering questions, and then Kell sat on the floor beside me and took my hand. He kissed the back of it, then held my palm against his cheek.

  “I’m okay.” We both knew it was a lie, but I needed to say something.

  “I’m here,” Kell said. “And I’m not going anywhere. So sleep. I’ll take the first watch.” He slipped his fingers between mine and held on tight. I closed my eyes, and let myself sink into the darkness, knowing that this time I wouldn’t lose my way back.

  Chapter Seven

  “You’ve got to believe me. She wasn’t like that.” Patricia Cullins twisted her rings nervously, looking so bereft I wanted to comfort her. Instead, Teag and I had come to try to figure out why her friend Joan—Opal Lady—had attacked Maggie, and see if we could learn anything about who tried to kill me.

  “When did she start to change?” Teag kept his voice quiet and reassuring. Two days had passed since I’d nearly been done in by a scarf, and I was only starting to feel back to normal. I let him take the lead.

  Pat frowned as she thought. I guessed her to be about Joan’s age, somewhere between late forties and late fifties. Pat had blond hair cut in a wedge, and a pair of reading glasses with bright blue frames hung from a beaded lanyard around her neck. Her pink lipstick and matching nail polish made her skin seem too pale in comparison.

  “About two weeks,” Pat finally said. “She wasn’t having any health problems—at least nothing she told me about. No big upsets.” She looked up at us, and I caught a hint of defiance in her face. “Joan and I have been friends since high school. Thirty years. We tell each other almost everything. So if she’d had something bad happen in her life to send her off the rails, I’m sure I would have known.”

  Pat shook her head. “Joan didn’t get belligerent when she was angry—she broke down in tears. She sucked at being angry. I mean, she couldn’t even give what-for to a rude cabbie.”

  “Can you think of anything that was different around the time that Joan started to change?” I probed. I figured that the shawl was behind Joan’s sudden personality swing, but I thought I’d better lead up to that slowly. Not everyone easily buys into the ideas of cursed objects. And besides, I might learn something important if I gave Pat a chance to give me her side of things. “She had come into the store the day before, and she got really angry about us not having opals.”

  Pat chuckled. “She liked opals. Her husband bought her one when they started dating, and she always said it was lucky for her. But that’s not something she’d get worked up about—as much as she ever got worked up over anything.”

  “We want to figure this out because we don’t think Joan was responsible for her actions,” I said, hoping Pat felt she could trust me. Maggie hadn’t pressed charges against Joan, but she did have a restraining order issued.

  “You mean like someone might have slipped her a roofie?” Pat’s eyes went wide.

  I smiled. “Not exactly, but maybe a little.”

  “I saw this show on TV where a guy hypnotized people and made them steal things,” Pat confided. “Maybe that happened to Joan.”

  If a cursed object or hex bag lay behind Joan’s sudden changes, Pat’s guess might be closer to the truth than she’d ever know. “Did she buy anything new or get any presents right about the time she started to act differently?” Teag asked, since what we both wanted to know was how Joan got the pink shawl. “Maybe something she inherited, or a gift from someone?”

  Pat looked into the distance, searching her memories. “We went out that weekend, to do a little shopping, have lunch, get a mani-pedi. Girl’s day out, you know?”

  “Where did you go?” I urged. “It’s important.”

  “We got fancy coffee, and started off at the spa,” Pat said and named a nice salon on King Street. “Then we had lunch.” Their destination, a popular brunch spot, seemed like a low risk for curses or hexes. “And since it was such a nice day, we walked through the City Market.”

  Teag and I exchanged a glance. We’d run into troublesome items finding their way into the open air market that lay at the center of the Historic District. Mrs. Teller and Niella usually kept an eye out for problems, since they had a permanent location for their sweetgrass baskets at the doors to one of the buildings. Still, the City Market rambled through several buildings, and they couldn’t keep watch on everyone.

  “Did she buy anything? Handle something unusual? Or did you pick up a funny vibe about any of the vendors?” I asked.

  Pat seemed on board with playing detective, so if she found my questions odd, she didn’t say anything. “We both bought things,” she said, with a faraway look that told me she was replaying the day in her mind’s eye. “I picked up some pretty cutwork place mats and a set of coasters, plus an adorable bib for my grandbaby.”

  “And Joan?” Teag asked.

  “She bought some okra chips from that healthy snacks place and a Christmas ornament. It was cute but mass-produced, and I tried to talk her into something handmade, but it struck her fancy.”

  Until witches figure out how to run assembly lines, I could probably rule out the ornament, and the food seemed an unlikely culprit. “What about a pink shawl?” I asked. “Was that new?” Joan wore a bright pink handmade shawl when she went off on a rant about the opals, and she had it on when she attacked Maggie. And Teag had mentioned it had a bad vibe, so it was maybe cursed.

  Pat gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Yes. I almost forgot. How did you know?”

  “Did she buy it that day?” I asked, conveniently side-stepping her question. I didn’t want to put words in her mouth. And while I didn’t think Pat was in on it, I thought I’d still give her enough leeway to trip up.

  Pat nodded. “She got it at one of those stalls in the Market. I didn’t remember seeing that vendor before, and she had a lot of pretty things. Joan wanted me to get a shawl, too, but I didn’t.”

  Teag gave her a questioning look. “Why not?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure. I…they didn’t appeal to me.” Pat’s body language told me what she couldn’t quite find the words to exp
ress. On some instinctive level, her intuition had recognized something wrong, and that reluctance probably spared her sharing a cell with her buddy.

  “Could you go to the market with us, and take us to the stall where she bought it?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to the vendor. If there’s some kind of chemical in the clothing that caused this, we don’t want other people to be affected.”

  “Oh dear.” Pat looked so distressed; I doubted she was faking her reaction. “Do you think that might be it?” She glanced at the clock. “If you want to follow me, I don’t mind driving into town. I know right where the table was, because I always stop at the photographer’s booth beside it, and that’s why I knew the shawl seller hadn’t been there before.”

  “We’d be very grateful, if you can spare the time,” Teag replied.

  “Sure,” Pat said. “Anything to help Joan.” She looked up at us, searching my face and then glancing to Teag. “She really isn’t a bad person. So whatever I can do…”

  We thanked her, and followed her to her car, then let her lead the way through the streets crowded with tourists who didn’t know where they were going. Getting a parking spot felt like a minor miracle, but soon enough we were following Pat through the busy market. When we got to the second building, Pat stopped in front of an empty booth.

  “I swear, it was right here,” she said, staring at the wooden tables. I believed her, because this wouldn’t be the first time someone intent on causing mayhem found an unsuspecting audience at the Market. People like that generally didn’t fill out all the paperwork or pay a deposit, either.

  “Let’s ask around,” I suggested. Pat stuck with me while Teag headed down the other row, and together we canvassed all the merchants in the building.