“Hey everyone. You remember Cassidy and Teag.”
They nodded, some with more welcoming expressions than others. “This is Tandy,” he added with a nod toward a woman with short, pink hair and several eyebrow piercings. “And Jason,” Ryan gestured toward a tall, thin man with dark hair caught up in a man bun. “Penny,” he said with a nod toward a dark-haired, petite woman who carried herself like she had been in the military. “Karen,” acknowledging a blond with a short, pixie cut and freckles that were jarringly at odds with the no-nonsense look in her eyes. “And Kurt,” Ryan added. The fourth member of their group, a red-headed man with wire-rimmed glasses and nervous blue eyes, gave me a wave.
I tried to take comfort in the lack of rats. Ryan hadn’t said they’d seen evidence of any supernatural creatures. That beat finding the half-eaten remains of a ghoul’s dinner, or a black dog’s chew toys.
“What’s so special about some rags?” Penny asked.
“We think they’re connected to missing persons,” Ryan replied, repeating the cover story we’d come up with together. He didn’t like misleading his team, but we didn’t dare bring them in on the whole truth. After all, the witch who made the cursed cloth was still at large, and we didn’t want to put any of Ryan’s people at risk. In a way, the people who’d been affected by the malicious Weaver magic were “missing” in that they weren’t themselves. We were stretching the truth, but it wasn’t a total lie.
“How are you going to turn them over to the police without turning us in?” Tandy demanded.
“We’ve got friends on the force,” Teag replied. Again, we were shading the truth. These particular items would be burned after they were cleansed, so bringing in the police was never part of the plan.
“You’d better not get us arrested,” Karen warned.
“We won’t,” I promised.
“Lighten up,” Ryan told his team. “You brought your amulets?” Everyone except Penny and Kurt nodded. “Good. Let’s go.”
I listened with my gift as we made our way through the tunnels, and tried hard not to think about how far we were underground. Unlike in a haunted place, I didn’t pick up on any resonance from the structure itself, and when I’d glanced at the news articles about the tunnel project, I hadn’t seen any deaths mentioned related to the construction. At least we wouldn’t have extra complications.
“The first one should be just ahead,” Ryan said. I knew when we came into range when Teag staggered.
“Shit,” he muttered, and I moved to steady him. “I’m warded to the gills, and whatever’s up there feels like a bath of raw sewage and roadkill.”
“What do you need?” I asked.
Teag set down the steel box and opened it, then sidled around to get a better look at the cursed cloth. Our headlamps revealed a finely woven piece of fabric that looked more like a table runner than a scarf.
I didn’t dare get too close because I had no intention of touching the item. Even from several feet away, I picked up turbulent, negative emotions. I consider myself a pretty even-tempered person, but I’m human, and I can get plenty angry when the situation warrants. I felt the pull of the cloth and raised one hand to clasp the agate necklace at my throat. The tug receded, but I could still feel the power probing me, looking for a weak spot.
My left hand slid into my pocket and closed around the old polished spindle whorl. The instant my hands touched the smooth stone, I felt an invisible shock wave blast between me and the fabric.
“What did you do?” Teag asked, glancing at me.
“Nothing,” I said, but I gave him a look that meant “not now.”
“Whoa—what was that?” Ryan asked. He knows about my psychometry, but not about Teag’s Weaver magic, and he hasn’t really seen us go up against a big bad.
“Don’t let your imagination get to you,” I said, not sure what the fabric’s reaction to the relic meant. “I’m picking up a very bad vibe.”
Teag had carried his staff down in a sling on his back. He could fight with it like a real badass, and it was a formidable weapon. But the runes carved along its ash wood length imbued it with magic, as did the woven cords fastened at one end that stored his power. He’d refreshed the blessings and protections on the staff and charged up the cords with magic and intention. If anything could lift the cursed cloth into the box safely, his staff could do it.
“It’s just an old bit of fabric,” Jason said and started forward.
“No!” I flung out my arm, blocking him at chest height. “Let Teag handle it.”
Jason looked at me like I had gone crazy. “Sure. Anything you say.”
“That is a nasty piece of work,” Teag murmured as he dipped the end of the staff beneath the cloth and carefully maneuvered it into the box. Inside the container lay a layer of protective powders made from plants good for warding off evil and canceling negative mojo. We’d also included some iron filings, salt, and a liberal sprinkle of silver dust. As soon as the cloth connected with the inside of the box, I immediately felt its power weaken, and gave Teag a nod.
“That’s one,” he said grimly. From the set of his jaw, I wondered what he had felt as he poled the cloth into the box, and made up my mind to ask him later.
Teag moved on to the next bit of cursed fabric, along with most of the team. Ryan lingered behind with me. I edged my way close to where the item had been, picking up a low-grade resonance from the concrete beneath my feet.
“What are you going to do?” Ryan asked. “I’d rather you not leave behind clues that we were here.”
I pulled out a bottle of holy water and a canister of salt. “I don’t think anyone will notice the salt, and the water will dry.”
“You buy holy water by the gallon?”
“Nah. Got a friend who’s a priest. Easier that way.” I kept back from where the cloth had actually lain on the concrete, but made sure that the salt I sprinkled and the water I poured hit dead on. I gripped the spindle whorl again, and in my mind’s eye, I felt the residue of malicious power vanish like smoke.
“Let’s catch up,” I said. “This spot is clean now.”
We moved through the tunnels like that, making a circuit of sorts around the Market. Teag picked up twelve pieces of finely woven linen. I had expected something knotted like Joan’s macramé shawl or a rough weave like a blanket. Instead, these were the exquisite pieces of a master weaver. For all their beauty, I knew how deadly the power behind them could be. We were lucky that the Weaver had wanted to sow discord. If he or she had wanted to kill large numbers of people, I knew how easily it could have been done. I thought of Marcella’s vision of a tall man and a dark-haired woman and wondered which of them brought the cursed cloth down here.
“That’s all of them,” Ryan confirmed. I poured a layer of salt over top of the last piece of fabric and sprinkled some holy water for good measure. Then Teag closed the lid and secured the latches, binding it with spelled cord for good measure.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, sounding weary, and I wondered what toll the dark magic had taken on him, despite his precautions. “We’ve still got a bonfire to light.”
We parted company with Ryan and his crew once we got back to our cars. Ryan promised to call if they found any more of the spelled cloths, and we assured him we’d let him know if we turned up any information that might affect the safety of his group.
Teag and I drove into the countryside, to a cabin out on St. John Island that Sorren keeps as a safe house. We were far enough away from other people that no one was likely to call in some smoke, and if anyone did show up, we could blame it on the fire pit.
We poured lighter fluid over the cloth, and Teag tossed in a match. The flames leaped higher than my head, blood red and stinking of sulfur. The burning fabric curled in on itself, writhing like a living thing, and an inhuman shriek sounded from the cursed linen.
Teag cried out in pain, holding his head, and sank to his knees. I shook the dog collar on my left wrist, and Bo’s ghost mate
rialized to protect us. The athame slipped from its arm sheath, in case the fabric’s scream called its maker.
“Teag? Talk to me. What’s going on?” I wanted to go comfort him, but I couldn’t afford to leave us unprotected. Teag was vulnerable, so I had to stay on watch. Bo immediately oriented on the burn pit, lowering his head and raising his hackles as he stared into the flames.
“I can feel the power in the fabric being torn apart,” Teag replied through gritted teeth.
“Try this.” I took his hand, and slipped the agate spindle whorl into his palm, then closed his fingers around it.
A white light flared from Teag’s fist, making me look away. The fire in the pit streaked upward, like a bloody scarlet gash in the night. Teag fell to one side. Bo barked in warning, and I could have sworn I saw faces and figures in the red flames. Then with a whoosh, the fire was sucked back into the fire pit and went out, leaving only black ash.
“Teag!” I knelt next to him, as he pushed up on his elbows in the grass. Bo remained staring at the fire pit for another few seconds until he assured himself the flames were truly gone. Then he turned to me with a doggy grin, wagged his tail, and vanished. I kept my athame in my hand, in case the threat hadn’t completely gone away.
“I’ve got a hell of a headache,” he groaned, accepting my help to get to his feet. He opened his clenched fist and gave me back the spindle whorl. It felt warmer than it should have been just from his hand. “Let’s finish up and get out of here,” Teag said, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”
We soaked the ashes in holy water and covered the fire pit. I texted Sorren and figured he and Donnelly could figure out how to dispose of what was left.
Together, Teag and I made it back to my RAV4 and sat, but I didn’t start the car yet. “When we lit the fabric, I felt the power lash out. It knew I was a Weaver, Cassidy; I’m sure of it. I shielded myself to keep it out and drew on my amulets, but it felt like a battering ram on the side of my head.”
“Trying to get in?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it wanted to tap into my magic to sustain its hold, or to break free. I don’t know. I pushed back. And then you gave me the spindle whorl, and that light blasted the curse away.” Teag turned to look at me. “That magic didn’t come from inside the whorl. There was sentience behind it. How much do you know about that charm and where it came from?”
I took the agate disk out of my pocket and looked at it as I turned it in my fingers. It had a hole bored into the middle, to weight the spindle for hand-spinning thread. Centuries of use had worn the stone smooth, and the agate shone with a deep luster. Yet in all the time I’d carried the whorl, I had never sensed a mind behind it, though its protective power had saved me more times than I could count.
“Sorren gave it to me. He said it had belonged to a Norse Weaver witch, someone he and his maker, Alard, ran across back in Belgium. Sorren said it carried her protection, but he never said anything about her…haunting…it.”
Teag looked up sharply. “That belonged to a Norse Seiðr?” He eyed the whorl like it had turned into a nuclear warhead.
“Yeah. And…?”
Teag pushed his hand through his hair, though his skater-boy bangs fell back into his face. I put the whorl back in my pocket, started the car, and headed home. “The Norse Seiðr were incredibly powerful witches. This woman—” he began.
“Secona.” I remembered the name Sorren had told me because it was so unusual.
“You know her name?” Teag said, eyes going wide. “That means you have a claim on her power.”
I spared a glance as I drove. Almost no other cars passed us. We were too late for the party crowd and too early for rush hour. “Teag, the whorl is close to a thousand years old. This ‘Secona’ is long dead.”
“Sorren’s not,” he challenged.
“Sorren’s a vampire.”
“Donnelly’s got to be over a century old—maybe more. And he’s a necromancer.”
“Secona would have to be a lot more than a regular witch to live that long.” I’d never considered that my magic might extend my life. Given the dangers of our work, I figured the opposite.
“If she really was a Norse Seiðr, she was much more than a ‘regular’ witch.” Teag slumped into the seat.
“You want to crash at my place?” I asked. He nodded, and I figured his headache hadn’t miraculously vanished.
“A Viking Seiðr was a sorceress,” Teag continued, and his voice held an edge of pain. “She wasn’t just a Volva—a witch—or a spa—a prophet. She was also a shaman who could use spells and incantations to work magic—and her special type of sorcery was Weaver magic.”
“What about male Seiðrs? Weren’t any of them men?”
“Not for long,” Teag replied. “Being a male Seiðr was punishable by death.”
I frowned. “Why?”
He sighed and squinched his eyes closed, likely fighting his headache. “Because the Vikings were really hung up on gender roles, and weaving was woman’s work. So any magic that had to do with weaving belonged to women. And if a man possessed that magic, then he was considered to be gay. And the Vikings killed gay men—at least, the ones who were ‘catching’ instead of ‘pitching.’”
“But Secona’s whorl protected you—twice,” I said, pulling up in front of the house in my spell-protected parking spot. We got out, locked the car, and headed inside. At this hour, even Baxter declined to make much of a fuss, bothering to raise his head to see that it was us before going back to sleep on the foyer carpet.
“I don’t know what to make of that,” Teag said, following me into the kitchen as I put water on to boil to make us herbal tea. I reached for a bottle of ibuprofen and shook two out for Teag. “Maybe since Sorren gave the whorl to you, she’s extending protection to me as a professional courtesy.”
“Or maybe not all Vikings agreed on things, like people don’t nowadays,” I replied. Exhausted as I was, I still felt too jazzed by the events of the evening to fall asleep right away, and so I counted on hot chamomile tea to do the trick. Within minutes, Teag and I settled at the table with steaming mugs, and for good measure, I put out a plate of lemon benne wafers, a Charleston specialty.
“We need to find out more from Sorren about Secona,” Teag said. “Because if she does hold traditional views, then I’m in trouble.”
“We won’t let that happen,” I vowed, snapping a crisp benne wafer and letting a fine spray of powdered sugar dust the top of the table.
“If she’s a full-powered Volva, we might not have the mojo to stop her.”
I put my hand on Teag’s wrist. “Teag, you know Sorren. He wouldn’t bring someone—something—into this if he thought they’d make us a target.”
“The real question is, if Secona didn’t weave the cursed cloth, then who’s behind the malicious fabric? And what does all this have to do with the amped-up ghosts and all the other weirdness?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll get to the bottom of it,” I promised. “And our whole gang together—we’re pretty formidable, with or without a Seiðr on our side.”
Chapter Nine
“Find anything?” I made it into the kitchen around ten in the morning, practically feeling my way to the coffee maker. A text to Maggie assured she’d cover for us, and I promised we’d be in after lunch. She was used to us being somewhat nocturnal, given the demands of our “other” job, and I knew she’d have coffee ready when we showed up.
Teag not only woke up before I did, but he’d already made a pot of coffee. Bless him. Teag stays over often enough that I consider one of the guest bedrooms to be his. I noticed that he had already stripped the sheets and left them in the laundry room. When I got downstairs, I saw his laptop open on the kitchen table. I wondered how many cups of java he’d already drunk.
“I hacked into the police evidence logs,” Teag said, looking up. He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble looked good on him. “I’m trying to cross-check what personal items were on the people who’ve b
een booked for violent crimes in the last two weeks.”
“Hold that thought,” I said, grabbing a jacket from a peg on the wall and taking Baxter out into the garden for his morning business. We came back in, and I finished fixing my cup of coffee.
“And?” Baxter danced around my feet, ready for breakfast. I filled his bowl with kibble and gave him fresh water. Then I opened a box of muffins I’d bought from Honeysuckle Café the day before and set them on the table in front of Teag and sat down on the other side of the table, hunching over my coffee to let the smell waft around me and wake me up.
“Slow going,” Teag said with a shrug. “But so far, every one of the people they arrested who didn’t have a previous criminal record had some sort of woven fabric on them or in their possession at the time they were apprehended.”
“So those are most likely to be the people influenced by the cursed cloth, right?” I said, picking up on his line of thinking. I snagged one of the muffins, and chomped into it, then washed the luscious bite down with coffee.
“That’s my theory,” Teag confirmed.
“What kind of woven pieces did they have?”
Teag snaked out an arm and grabbed a muffin, polishing it off in two bites. He finished off his coffee, then poured himself another cup. “Shawls, scarves, men’s ties, vests, even some woven bracelets,” he replied. The photographs suck, but from what I can tell, most of them look pretty new.”
“So they might have come from that stall at the Market.”
He nodded. “And since the ‘weirdness’ has been building for a couple of weeks, we can’t be certain that it began with the Market stall vendor. For all we know, this Weaver popped up at flea markets, or craft shows, or manipulated people to give the clothing as gifts.”
“And we have no idea how many other garments are out there.” I gulped my coffee and filled the cup again. “Can we tell if the hospitals have had a run of suspicious, sudden deaths?” I thought about the cursed scarf that had nearly killed me. If I hadn’t known about magic and had friends who were powerful witches, would my death have been explained away as a fluke allergic reaction?
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