Stone Cold Lover

by Christine Warren

  * * *

  Professor Massello turned out to be a man of average height, average weight, and keen intelligence. In his late thirties or early forties, he looked more like an older version of one of his students than the stodgy, serious academics Spar mentioned encountering in his previous years. Of course, having not awoken for the last two hundred of them might have colored his view just a bit.

  Tim, as he encouraged them to call him, waved them into his office with a warm smile and closed the door on the throng of students milling in the hall.

  “Sorry to interrupt your office hours, but I figured it was my best chance to actually find you in your office.” Fil smiled.

  “Don’t worry about it. You caught me on the tail end. I was actually just about to lock the door against the teeming vermin and get some grading done.” He waited for them to sit in the uncomfortable chairs facing his desk before he hitched a hip onto the edge of the piece and raised an eyebrow. “So what can I do for you, Fil? I suspect you haven’t dropped by to take me up on that cup of coffee I keep offering to buy you.”

  Fil heard Spar grunt and shot him a warning glance. “First, I guess I should introduce you two. Spar, this is Professor Timothy Massello of McGill University, Quebec. Tim, this is my friend Spar—”

  “Livingston,” the man in question broke in, offering the other a brisk nod.

  Living stone? Fil nearly pulled a muscle trying not to roll her eyes at that one.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Tim sounded a little wary, but friendly enough. Maybe he’d picked up on the way Spar had entered the office and immediately scanned every inch as if searching for threats, or maybe he’d simply noticed the protective way the Guardian nearly hovered over Fil. Either way, he kept his expression relaxed and made no move to continue the flirtation he’d previously begun with her. She could only be grateful for that. More complications were not what she needed at the moment. She needed help and answers, and for Tim not to assume she had lost her ever-loving mind when she told him her story.

  Taking a deep breath, she decided to just get it out. “Okay, so this might sound a little bit crazy—”

  “Oh, all the best stories start that way.” Tim grinned and waved at her to excuse his interruption.

  “But I was hoping that your more, um, esoteric research might mean you can help me with a problem I’m having.”

  Fil had spent half the night and all of the morning debating how much to tell the professor, and in the end she’d decided to stick with the minimum amount possible. He really didn’t need to know about Guardians, the Order of Eternal Darkness, or the ongoing war between the forces of good and evil. Better to keep things simple and just focus on the mark and the help she needed to treat it.

  “Hm, I take it you’re not talking about my papers on the spiritual dimension of rites of passage in the sub-Saharan tribes of Africa.”

  Fil blew out a chuckle. “Not so much. I’m thinking more along the lines of your book, specifically the more modern section.”

  Tim’s brows darted toward his hairline. “You’re interested in neo-paganism? I thought you told me you were Catholic. Are you looking to explore alternative spiritualties?”

  “I’m more interested in getting your take on the people who practice them on a practical as well as a religious level.” When he frowned at her, Fil sighed. “I was hoping you could put me in touch with a witch.”

  Tim huffed in amused confusion and shook his head. “What, don’t tell me you’re looking for someone to sell you a love spell, Fil. I don’t think my imagination bends that way.”

  She forced a smile. “No, no love spells. I don’t suppose you met anyone during your research with any expertise in practicing magic? Or, um, curses?”

  There was a moment of silence while Tim simply stared at her. “I have a hard time believing you’re trying to find someone who can help you put a curse on something, but it’s even harder to wrap my mind around why else you might be asking me this.”

  “Tim, when we talked about your research before, while you were still out there in the field, you told me you had seen some pretty remarkable things, right? Things you wouldn’t have believed if you hadn’t witnessed them with your own eyes.”

  “Yeah, I did, but—”

  “Well, at first, I thought you were a little bit off your rocker, or at least maybe too naïve to realize when some of the people you were observing were playing tricks on you. You know, using smoke and mirrors to put on a good show so that you’d write about what you thought they could do as if it were really magic.”

  When he just stared at her as if she’d lapsed into Lithuanian without realizing it, she sighed. She pulled her left hand out from where she’d tucked it between her leg and her chair.

  “Today, I don’t think you’re naïve and I don’t think you’re crazy. I think that if you really saw some people practicing magic during your research, I might need their help.”

  Holding up her palm, she watched as his gaze fell to her skin.

  His eyes widened. “Holy crap, Fil. What the hell is that?”

  “We think it’s a kind of curse, and we’d really, really like to find somebody who might be able to help us get rid of it.”

  Tim reached for her hand, but froze when Spar growled a warning. Fil shot him a quelling glance, then nodded at the professor.

  “Go ahead, take a closer look. It’s pretty messed up, I know.”

  Carefully, he cupped the back of her hand in his palm and angled her skin to the light shining in though the multipaned window. At first, he seemed to keep one wary eye on Spar, but within seconds all his attention was focused on the mark covering Fil’s palm.

  “This is amazing. How did this happen?”

  “That is a really long, really weird, and really not-the-time-or-place-for-it story. Suffice it to say, someone got mad at me, ridiculous and unbelievable things happened, and this thing just kind of showed up.”

  “It looks almost like a burn or a brand of some sort, but the mark isn’t raised off the skin the way keloid scarring usually is. In that way, I suppose it resembles something more like a tattoo. It’s fascinating.”

  Fil made a face. “That’s because it isn’t on your hand.”

  Tim glanced up, looking guilty. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

  “No, it’s not painful, just … disturbing. Which is why I’m asking you if you’ve ever met anyone who might know about things like this and how to counter them.”

  Spar reached out and tugged Fil’s hand down, clasping it firmly in his. Tim looked from one to the other and shook his head.

  “That’s a huge question,” he said. “I met plenty of witches and people who called themselves that during my interviews, but for, like, ninety-nine percent of them, what they call magic is what an academic like me would call accessorized prayer. They decide what it is they want to accomplish, and they use symbols and ritualized actions to focus their intent on making it happen.”

  “Remember that we are not academics,” Spar said, his voice deep and sharp enough that Tim’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

  “Right,” he hurried to say. “What I mean is, say one of these witches thinks a neighbor is spying on her. You know, looking in her window while she’s getting changed or something. She might get a small mirror and hang it on a string like a sun catcher. She’ll cast a spell over it, which is really like saying a prayer, and envision the mirror reflecting back the energy of the person who’s facing it. Then she’ll hang the mirror in the window and close her curtains. When the neighbor stops spying and she finds out he lost his job when his company caught him using the Internet at work to look at porn, she tells herself her spell worked. Really, the guy stopped watching her because she kept her curtains closed, so he had nothing to look at anymore, and his company monitors all of its employees’ computer usage.”

  Spar snorted. “That is not magic; it is self-delusion.”

  “That’s my point. People believe in
it because they have faith, the same way Catholics have faith that when they eat that little wafer the priest hands them at Mass, they’re partaking in the body of Christ. It has meaning not because of what it accomplishes, but because of what they think it will accomplish.”

  That was not what Fil wanted to hear. She needed actual help, not futile prayers. Those she could handle herself.

  “You said ninety-nine percent,” she pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean that there’s one percent that isn’t that way?”

  “I did meet one woman,” Tim said, looking thoughtful. “I met her by accident, really. She wasn’t one of the people I sent my letter of inquiry to when I was initially looking for subjects. I ran into her when I was in an occult store talking to the people who worked there. She’d come in to sell some herbs she had grown in her garden.”

  “She’s an herbalist?”

  “Among other things. She grows herbs, makes teas and lotions and bath products from them. She’s also a licensed massage therapist and a basket weaver.” Tim grinned. “When I first saw her, I took her for any other hippie, new-age Wiccan type.”

  Spar narrowed his eyes. “What made her different?”

  “At first, nothing. She went about her business with the shop manager while I talked to the owner behind the counter and left, but when I finished my initial interview and left the store, she was waiting for me outside. She warned me that some of the information the store owner had given me about plants and herbology was just plain wrong. She advised me to speak with a woman at a different store out in Anjou. After we chatted for a couple of minutes, I asked if she’d be willing to do a formal interview for my research. She turned me down flat.”

  “So how did you find out she was different from the other people you talked to?”

  “That already was different. Most of the people I approached couldn’t wait to talk my ear off.” Tim shook his head. “It took me six months of dogged persistence to get her to even consider going on record about what she does.”

  “And what does she do?” Spar demanded.

  “I once saw her bury an apple seed in a plain garden pot and place her hand over the soil. Within five minutes, I watched while a green shoot pushed out of the dirt and budded a new leaf. I dropped my digital voice recorder and nearly lost the entire morning’s interview.”

  “That’s it? She grew a plant?”

  “Hush.” Fil scolded Spar and turned back to Tim. “There’s more, right?”

  “Too much to list, most of it little stuff, but all of it like nothing else I’d ever seen. Everyone else would tell me these elaborate stories of rituals they’d done to make something or other happen, but all I heard was post hoc, ergo propter hoc. After it, therefore because of it,” Tim explained. “Back in the Middle Ages, people thought maggots grew out of meat, because if they left out a piece of meat, eventually maggots would appear on it. They saw the first thing, then the second thing, so they assumed the first caused the second.”

  “I’m amazed all people weren’t vegetarians,” Fil muttered.

  “They largely were, but that’s the subject of a lecture for the history department. What’s important is that none of what W—what she did,” Tim caught himself, “was like that. She never made any claims. She just did things and left the interpretation to me.”

  Fil pursed her lips. “Do you think she could help me?”

  “I think she’s the only person I’ve met who might have an honest idea of how to try.”

  “Will you give me her phone number?”

  Tim made a face. “I can’t. I promised I’d keep her identity strictly confidential. It was the only way to get her to talk to me.”

  Spar’s lip curled back in a snarl. “Then why do you taunt us by letting us believe she could help Felicity?”

  “I wasn’t taunting you, I swear,” the man hurried to assure them. “I can’t put you in contact with her, but I can do the reverse. I’ll call her myself and tell her your story. She believes that her abilities come with a responsibility to use them to help others. I’m certain that if I tell her what’s happened to you, she’ll reach out to you herself.”

  Fil pulled her hand out of Spar’s grasp and held her palm up again. “This is important, Tim. I really need to talk to her.”

  “I know. And I promise she will call.”

  She sighed. “Then I suppose that’s the best I can ask for.”

  “I’m sorry. Trust me, if I could help you myself, I would, but with all the stuff I know, I’m afraid it’s all—forgive the pun—academic knowledge. I’ve seen and recorded a lot of things happening, but I have absolutely no clue how to do them myself.”

  Tim pushed up from his desk and walked around to the back to rummage in one of the deep bottom drawers. A moment later he was back, holding out a miniature glass vial.

  “Here. I figure this can’t hurt.” He passed it to Fil with a shrug and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Holy water. From the Vatican. It was a souvenir. I know it’s kind of a cliché, but you are Catholic, right? I really do think that there’s a lot of power in faith.”

  Fil let out a half laugh. “I was Catholic. My grandparents raised me that way. But after the past few days?” She shook her head. “I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”

  “Well, consider that in the mold of a rabbit’s foot.” His mouth curved at one corner. “Carrying it won’t make anything bad happen, and if something good comes of it … post hoc, ergo propter hoc, right?”

  Fil rose and tucked the vial into the pocket of her jacket. “Thanks, Tim. I’d appreciate it if you’d make that call as soon as possible. Like I said, it’s been a rough few days for me.”

  “As soon as I shut the door behind you.” He held up a hand with the three middle fingers extended. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Thanks.”

  Slipping her hand into Spar’s, Fil said her good-byes. Together they stepped out of the cool brick building and into the bright sunshine.

  Chapter Eleven

  Squinting against the glare, Fil blew out a breath. “That didn’t go quite the way I’d hoped.”

  Spar rubbed his thumb across the lines that marked her palm and frowned. “No, it did not. I had rather higher expectations of the human.”

  “He’s doing what he could. We both knew it was a long shot.”

  He grunted and led the way across the lawn to where they had parked the motorcycle. “I do not like this sensation of waiting for others to address a concern. I prefer to take action.”

  “Yeah, I kinda had that figured out. I’m not wild about the helpless shtick, either, but right now I’m not sure what else we can do.” Spar growled something under his breath and slung his leg over the bike. She shot him a look. “Getting grumpy about it isn’t going to help, you know.”

  He opened his mouth to retort, but shut it to glare at her hip. Ella Fitzgerald’s “Oh, Lady Be Good” played from her jeans pocket.

  Digging out her cell phone, she checked the screen out of habit. She already recognized her friend’s ringtone.

  “What’s up?” she answered.

  “I. Have got. News!”

  Fil’s heart sped up as she caught on to Ella’s excitement. “Oh, my God. Please tell me you talked to the Warden and he’s alive and an expert at removing demonic curses.”

  “No, sheesh, Fil. Now anything I have to say is just going to disappoint you. Did you really have to set the bar that high?”

  She sighed. “Just tell me it’s something more significant than finding that perfect pair of nude pumps you’ve been searching for.”

  “I have an address.”

  “For a shoe store?”

  “For the last known location of Jeffrey Michael Onslow, antiques dealer and member of the Guild of Wardens.”

  Fil nearly dropped the phone. “Why the hell aren’t you calling me from his living room?”

  “Because,” Ella said with exaggerated patience, “I just got my hot little hands on the info like twenty-sev
en seconds ago.”

  “That’s no—”

  “And,” she continued, “because the address is in Ottawa.”

  “That’s only a couple hours’ drive from here.”

  “I know. That’s why I just texted it to you.”

  “You’re the best.”

  Fil ended the call and unstrapped her helmet and spare from the back of the bike. “Put that on.” She handed the extra to Spar. “We’re going for a ride.”

  * * *

  She broke every speed limit in Canada on the way to Ottawa. As the kilometers flew by them, Spar’s warm presence behind her only urged her on. He hoped for a cure as desperately as she did.

  The GPS function on her phone had her slowing off the highway east of Ottawa city. The signs reported their location in Clarence-Rockland, then Rockland itself as Fil began to navigate the local roads. By the time the directions brought her to the edges of the town and sent her turning down a rural lane, it was the middle of the afternoon. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her hands had begun to sweat around the grips on the handlebars.

  A long drive brought them to what looked to have once been a farmhouse set before the remains of a small apple orchard. The white clapboards gleamed in the sunshine, with crisp green trim edging the windows and picked out on the gingerbread detailing of the eaves. It looked like the kind of home an antiques dealer would live in, and she could practically picture the interior crowded with Victorian settees and Arts and Crafts dining tables.

  Fil cut the engine and sat back on the bike for a moment just taking stock. She was having a hard time at the moment distinguishing the voice of her fears from that of her intuition, but her feeling just then couldn’t really be called positive.

  Spar swung off the bike and glanced down at her. “What is the matter?”

  She nodded to the house. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  Fil took the hand he held out and followed him up the wide front porch to knock on the wood-framed screen door. When no one answered after a minute or two, she pulled it open and plied the brass knocker on the inner door. Still, no one answered.