“You have a lead on who the Weaver might be who’s been causing trouble?” Teag asked.
Mrs. Teller frowned. “I’ve taken on a lot of students in my day. Been doing baskets and root work for a long time, and when you’ve been around awhile, folks start to come to you and ask you to teach them. Some you can, some you can’t. And some you know you shouldn’t.”
I went to the kitchen and fetched a glass of sweet tea for her, which she accepted gratefully.
“I’ve had students who wouldn’t apply themselves, and they never came into the power that they might have claimed,” she went on. “I’ve sent some home because they didn’t want to do the hard work,” Mrs. Teller added, with a look of disapproval on her face.
“But only a few times have I refused to teach someone because I knew in my bones that they wanted to use their power to do harm. They didn’t like being turned away, but I had the power to make it stick, and they knew better than to come back at me,” she said, her lips drawn in a firm line.
“And you think that the person who’s been leaving the cursed fabric around the city and selling the spelled clothing is one of those people you turned down?” I asked.
“I do,” Mrs. Teller replied. “I didn’t make the connection, at first. Never saw the person at the Market who sold those awful pieces of clothing that did such harm. But something in the power I’ve sensed felt familiar; only it’s taken me a while to place it.” She gave a grim smile. “I have a lot of memories to sort through, after all my years.”
“Did you narrow it down?” Teag asked.
“I might have,” Mrs. Teller said. “I don’t think any of the three people I’m going to give you have the power to do this on their own. But I think they might be crazy enough to use the magic they have to tap into things they shouldn’t ought to be messing with to amplify what they do have. And a couple of them have what you might call ‘anger management issues,’ a big fat chip on their shoulders, which is why I sent them packing in the first place.”
“They’re Weavers?” I asked, opening an app on my phone so I could take down the names.
Mrs. Teller nodded. “Yes. Hannah McCloud, Kerrie Carson, and Carmen Vincente.”
“Do you know where they are?” Sorren asked.
“I have addresses for them, but I haven’t tried to contact them,” Mrs. Teller replied. “I didn’t want to spook them.”
“Tomorrow, let’s go see them,” I suggested.
“I’ll come with you,” Teag volunteered.
“No, you won’t.” Sorren and Anthony spoke at the same time. I could see Teag bristle at being told what to do. Anthony turned to him and laid a hand on his arm.
“Holmgang alone is scary as fuck,” he said. “And this other witch—we don’t know anything about what she can do. Please, Teag. Stay where you’re safe.”
Secona turned toward him. It seemed so uncanny that the presence using Alicia’s body could be so utterly different from Alicia herself. “You place yourself at risk for no purpose if you leave these wardings,” she cautioned.
“There is a purpose,” Teag argued. “I’d be protecting my friends.”
“Who would be even more at risk because you were with them,” Donnelly challenged. “If Holmgang is trying to abduct you, then we have to think that he believes imprisoning you will make him stronger or will remove you as a threat to his plans. Either way, you’re not safe outside these wardings.”
Anthony’s hand tightened on Teag’s arm, a wordless plea to stay. I watched the conflict in Teag’s eyes, and I could imagine his struggle. Had our positions been reversed, I would have fought against being sidelined when there was work to do and friends in danger. Finally, I saw the surrender in Teag’s face.
“All right,” he said, with an edge in his voice that told me he was unhappy about the decision, but resigned. “I’ll stay here. But I can research, and I can coordinate the information that everyone else finds. Even if I can’t go out, it doesn’t mean I have to be useless.”
Relief brightened Anthony’s expression. “Thank you,” he murmured. “I’ll stay with you, and do everything I can to help.”
Teag looked to Sorren and Donnelly. “I’ll stay in for now,” he clarified. “But when the time comes to go up against Holmgang, I need to be part of the fight.” He glanced at Secona. “Whatever it takes to stop this bastard.”
“Agreed,” Sorren replied, and Donnelly nodded, although Anthony looked unhappy. “I suspect that we’ll need both of you,” he added, indicating Secona, “to finish the job.”
Mrs. Teller and I set out in search of the three Weaver witches the next morning. Maggie promised to handle the store, and I promised her a raise. Anthony arranged to work remotely, agreeing to stay with Teag. Secona, still possessing Alicia’s body, also remained at the house, in part to protect Teag and Anthony, and also to avoid tipping our hand to Holmgang and his collaborator that Secona had returned. Sorren went to ground, promising to return at dark.
We had agreed that both Donnelly and Rowan were powerful enough that their presence might scare the Weaver witches. But we also knew that they were right insisting we take back-up. Since Sorren couldn’t accompany us in daylight, I called Chuck Pettis.
Chuck was waiting for me on the sidewalk the next morning. I heard him ticking as I fell into step beside him. “Thanks for calling me in on this, Cassidy,” he said. “You know I love playing bodyguard,” he added with a grin.
I took in Chuck’s appearance. Nothing about him suggested the arsenal of weapons I knew he would have secreted beneath his coat, including no small number of devices that could blow things up or melt them down. Chuck might not have magic, but he could make things go “poof” just fine. On the way over to pick up Mrs. Teller, I filled Chuck in.
“Damn, Cassidy. You can’t do anything halfway, can you?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I go looking for trouble. I was minding my own business…”
“Isn’t that how it always starts?” he asked with a grin.
He was right, and we both knew it, so I gave him the stink eye.
“So can’t your witchy friends put some kind of magic tracer on these Weavers?” Chuck asked.
“They might be able to, if we can get a personal item from each of the Weavers,” I replied. Teag might be benched temporarily, but he intended to spend his time using his computer to investigate the three suspect witches. His own hacking skills were impressive, and with Secona’s help there shouldn’t have been a database—official or otherwise—they couldn’t crack. Anthony was likely maintaining his plausible deniability by reading in the other room. Then again, when push came to shove, Anthony had been known to call in a few favors from law enforcement to track license plates or run a name through the system.
“I’m surprised Rowan or Donnelly couldn’t snap their fingers and wiggle their noses for something like this.”
“You’ve been watching the oldies TV channel again, haven’t you?” I asked with a smirk. “Donnelly’s magic only works to find someone if the Weaver witch is dead. Rowan needs something to focus on, like a personal item. So at the moment, we’re stuck with good, old-fashioned legwork.”
When we pulled up outside Mrs. Teller’s home, I saw her in the doorway. Then she turned as Niella came up behind her. From the stiff way Mrs. T held her shoulders, I guessed they were arguing. Mrs. Teller emerged, her eyes narrowed, and her jaw set, and the door shut harder than necessary behind her as she went down the steps.
“Problems?” I asked as she slid into the back seat.
“Just drive,” she growled. After we pulled out into traffic, I heard her sigh. “Niella wanted to come with us. I told her we would be fine, and that if she wanted to help, she could weave our strongest magic into cords and cloth. She didn’t like it, but she’ll do it.”
I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. Niella might do as she was told, but she was a grown woman every bit as stubborn as her mama, and there would be words about this later. Lu
cky for me, I wouldn’t be in the line of fire when that happened.
“Who’s first?” Chuck asked.
“Hanna McCloud,” I replied. I wove through back streets until I reached the last known address we could find for Mrs. Teller’s old student. I parked in front of a small, shotgun-style house in a questionable neighborhood. Even without magic, I knew we were being watched, although I couldn’t spot anyone in the windows.
Chuck came around and opened our doors, then walked beside us up to the entrance. A harried woman in her middle years answered my knock.
“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it,” she said, “and I don’t need a new church, either.” She moved to shut the door, and I stiff-armed the knob.
“We’re looking for Hanna McCloud,” I said with my most winning smile. “We need to talk to her.”
The woman eyed me suspiciously. Behind her, I could hear the shouts and squeals of young children tussling, and figured she either ran a babysitting service or had gotten stuck minding the grandchildren. “She in some kind of trouble?”
“We’re not sure,” I replied truthfully. “We need to ask her some questions. Please, it’s important.”
“You don’t look like cops,” the woman said, looking at me and then to Mrs. Teller. She frowned when she saw Chuck. Even though he smiled and had his hands where she could see them, everything about the way he carried himself screamed “military.”
“We’re not,” I answered. “But we think she may have information that could help us stop someone from committing a crime. Finding her could save lives.”
I tried to read something from my gift as we stood on the porch. The noise of the TV and the loud children made concentrating difficult, but I picked up a faint sense of restlessness, despair, and a slow, simmering anger that squared with what Mrs. Teller remembered about her former student. Still, I got that kind of vibe from a lot of perfectly harmless people who had been dealt a bad hand. So by itself, that didn’t prove she was our rogue Weaver.
The worn-looking homeowner turned and yelled over her shoulder for the kids to quiet down. Then she turned her attention back to us. “She owned this house before I bought it at the sheriff’s sale last year. Never met her, but the neighbors say she went to jail for dealing. Don’t think she’s coming back anytime soon.”
Mrs. Teller and I exchanged a glance. I turned back to the woman in the doorway. “Do you know which jail?”
“No idea. Don’t know, don’t care.” A crash sounded loud enough to make us all jump, followed by the piercing wail of a child. “Gotta go.” The door shut in our faces.
“Well, we struck out on that one,” I said as we headed back to the car.
“Not necessarily,” Chuck replied, standing guard until we were inside with the doors locked. “If she’s in jail, she wasn’t running around hiding cursed pieces of cloth in the storm drains,” he continued as he slid into the passenger seat. “And odds are good she wasn’t weaving spelled fabric in her cell.”
I texted what we’d learned to Teag, figuring that he could take it from there on Hanna McCloud. “If there’s anything worth knowing, Teag will figure it out,” I said. “Next up is Kerrie Carson.”
Kerrie’s house in a nice suburb outside the city limits didn’t look like the home of a psychotic evil Weaver witch. The bungalow-style home sat behind a tidy white picket fence, with all the charming “curb appeal” of a house on the Home and Garden channel. It made me wonder whether we might have tracked down the wrong Kerrie Carson, then I remembered how often we’d found the horrors that could lurk behind an unremarkable facade.
This time a man came to the door. He might have been in his early thirties, but he looked worn and tired.
“We’re looking for Kerrie Carson,” I said, plastering on what I hoped looked like a friendly smile.
He flinched, and looked away. “She’s not here,” he replied. “Can I help you?”
“We’d like to talk with her. She might be able to help us find some people who are looking to cause problems,” I answered. Before he could protest, I held up a hand. “She’s not in any trouble,” I assured him. “But we’re trying to head off a situation, and we really could use her help.”
He motioned for us to come inside. Chuck followed last, on alert for any danger, but all we found was an unremarkable living room in need of decluttering. I looked around, at what I could see of the messy house. The sense my gift picked up from the stacks and jumble around me spoke of the owners being overburdened, not untidy. A second glance at our host revealed the dark circles beneath his eyes and the too-thin hollow to his cheeks, like he hadn’t slept or eaten well lately.
“I’m David Carson,” he said, as we moved into the living room. “Kerrie’s my wife. Please excuse the house. Kerrie was in a terrible car accident three weeks ago, and I haven’t had my mind on housework, if you know what I mean.”
We all murmured our condolences. “How is she doing?” I asked. “Were the injuries serious?”
David looked pained. “Kerrie went through the windshield. Her seatbelt broke, and the airbag didn’t deploy. The car rolled down an embankment. Hit and run. She hasn’t regained consciousness. The doctors say she might not. Ever.” His strained voice convinced me of the truth of his story.
“No clues about who was driving the other car?” Chuck probed.
David shook his head. “No. They think another car might have forced her off the road, but they haven’t found any evidence yet. At least, none they’ve told me about. Believe me, if someone did that to her and left her behind, I’d like to get my turn at them.” Only then did a bit of fire come into his eyes.
“Did Kerrie have any enemies? Anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?” I asked. When David looked as if he might balk, I gave him a wan smile. “I know we’re not the police, and we’re not trying to be. But we think that a former classmate of hers might have been planning to do something that would have hurt a lot of people, and we want to stop it before anything happens.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why not go to the police?”
“Because we don’t have the kind of evidence they’ll believe,” Mrs. Teller spoke up. I saw her fingers moving back and forth over a woven strip the size of a bookmark that she held in her hand. It looked like fidgeting, but I suspected she drew on stored magic in the fabric to help her coax David into telling his story.
“Which classmate?” he asked.
“Did Kerrie ever talk about a woman named Carmen Vincente?”
He frowned, thinking. “The name’s familiar. I never met her. I did overhear Kerrie on the phone a few days before the accident. She was arguing with someone, but I could only hear her side of the conversation, so I don’t know what it was all about. She called the other person ‘Carmen,’ and she said, ‘Count me out. I’m done with that kind of thing. You’re on your own.’ The caller gave her grief about it, and Kerrie hung up. When I asked what was going on, she told me that someone she knew wanted her to go in on a business deal, but she wasn’t interested, and the other person got angry she didn’t want to invest.”
“I know this may sound strange, but you wouldn’t happen to be able to find that call in her phone’s history, would you?” Chuck asked.
David sighed. “Her phone got lost in the wreck. She always carried it, but they didn’t find it in the car or on her, and they said it never went into the ambulance with her. I even went back to where the wreck happened and looked around, but no luck.”
“And you haven’t heard back from this argumentative friend since then?” Mrs. Teller probed.
David shook his head. “No. Although I can’t help wondering whether whoever was on the phone might have had something to do with the wreck. The cops haven’t been able to trace the other car.” He looked from one of us to the next. “If you know anything, or if you find out anything, please call me. It’s bad enough with things the way they are, but not knowing—that’s even worse.”
We repeated our condolences and head
ed back to the car. “Looks like Carmen is our witch,” Chuck said.
“Carmen had a bad temper,” Mrs. Teller said from the back seat. “She held grudges. But I don’t understand how she got caught up in this. I was afraid that she might use her magic for petty grievances, like getting back at a neighbor who annoyed her, or a co-worker she was jealous of. Taking over the world seems like a stretch.”
“If something happened that might have expanded her horizons, Teag will find it,” I assured her. “But we need to have a plan. What happens if we get to her house and she’s there?”
“I’d rather subdue her peacefully,” Mrs. Teller replied. “But if she won’t cooperate and she attacks, I should still be stronger than she is, magically.”
“Worst comes to worst, a flash-bang does a nice job of taking the piss out of someone,” Chuck said cheerily. Much as I love him as a friend and an ally, sometimes the man scares the crap out of me.
“Yeah. Let’s try to avoid that if we can,” I said. “Truly worst case scenario.”
“Just sayin’,” he replied.
“I’d be very surprised if she’s at her house,” Mrs. Teller said. “She may not know about Secona, but we’ve shut down her plans several times now. Carmen was brash and had a chip on her shoulder, but she wasn’t stupid.”
“All we need is something that belonged to her,” I replied. “Even smart people get careless.”
The address I had for Carmen led us to a well-maintained home in a nicer suburb. It looked like a family home, and I wondered if we would find a partner or roommate present even if Carmen had bolted. But as we pulled up to the curb, I noticed that the grass looked overgrown, and the drawn shades gave the impression that the building had been abandoned.
“I don’t like this,” Chuck muttered, eying the house. “Closed blinds are always a bad sign.”
We got out of the car, and Chuck did a quick reconnaissance trip around back to get an idea of what we were dealing with. “There’s no car in the driveway,” he reported. “Trash cans are empty, and the backyard is weedy. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for at least a week, maybe more.”
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