Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  And Patience was right: What kind of extortionist writes an unintelligible note?

  I sat back as a wave of weariness washed over me. And dread. If Aidan and Graciela were right, and something was revving up in San Francisco . . . what did that mean for me, and mine?

  It meant I had to be strong. And powerful. As kick-ass a witch as I had just boasted to Selena.

  But did it really mean I had to give up Sailor?

  Other people drink or meditate or pray when they feel they are at a crossroads. I brew.

  I filled my cauldron with river water and put it on the stove to boil. Then I gathered some herbs and roots from my terrace garden and started grinding them with my stone mortar and pestle. Little by little I dropped them, along with a small lock of my hair, into the brew.

  I chanted as I did so, stirring the pot doesil until the contents began to swirl on their own. Then I closed my eyes, thrust my face in the steam, breathed deeply, and called to the Ashen Witch.

  Finally I used my athame—a ceremonial knife—to cut a tiny X in my palm, and held it over the cauldron. As soon as the droplet of blood hit the brew a great burst of steam rose and coalesced overhead: the amorphous face of the Ashen Witch, looking down at me.

  I had hoped she might actually speak, or write with smoke in the air like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, or otherwise give me a clear message. But instead, all I felt was a growing sense of clarity.

  No. I refused to give up Sailor. I would not.

  My whole life people had been telling me I was a freak, not like everyone else. First, I was an outcast among my neighbors in Jarod, Texas; later I was weird even among magical folk. I never finished my formal training and I was always getting the rules wrong, bumbling around because I was unaware of how things were “done.” So now I would use it to my advantage. Aidan said magical folks weren’t able to open themselves up to love because it made them vulnerable; but what if I embraced the vulnerability, and used it the way I did my anger: to make me, braver, stronger?

  “Tell me how! Tell me anything!” I begged my guardian spirit, but she was already gone, lost amid the steam that hung just under the ceiling, as mysterious and hard to pin down as the fog hovering over the Bay.

  I looked back to see Selena standing at the kitchen table, wide-eyed and frightened.

  “It’s all right, sugar. Let’s go to sleep. Want to sleep with me tonight?”

  “No. I’ll stay on the couch. Did you figure this out?” she held up the parchment note.

  “Not yet. We’re working on it. Do you have any other ideas?”

  She shook her head, and let me lead her back to the couch and tuck her in.

  * * *

  I awoke to a thumping sound.

  Something was wrong.

  A frisson swept up my spine as though an alarm had been tripped. I stopped to listen, then cautiously got out of bed and passed into the living room.

  Selena wasn’t on the couch.

  I heard a muffled yelling and thumping coming from the kitchen.

  A piece of plywood had been wedged over the opening to Oscar’s cubby. I recognized the wood from an old packing crate in the backroom of Aunt Cora’s Closet. But it was covered in symbols that functioned as a magical padlock.

  “I’m coming, Oscar!” I yelled. I used a piece of chalk to negate Selena’s childish—but effective—scribbles and then was able to dislodge the wood.

  An outraged gobgoyle is not a pretty sight.

  “She hexed me! That little witch hexed me! She caught me unawares, while I was sleeping! Of all the low-down, dirty . . .”

  I was relieved to see that while he was embarrassed at having been tricked, my familiar wasn’t hurt.

  “Well, don’t feel too bad,” I said. “I didn’t wake up, either.”

  “Yeah, but you never wake up. It’s always me that wakes you up.”

  “You got me there. Where could she have gone? To El Pajarito, do you think?”

  “Good riddance, is what I say. I’ll show her, I’ll—”

  “Oscar, listen. She was wrong to do what she did, of course she was. But I have to find her. I have to.”

  “I don’t know where she went! I was asleep, and then . . . I think she sprinkled pixie dust on me or something. I was having the wildest dream, and by the time I woke up she had trapped me! A piece of wood’s no match for the likes of me, but she hexed it. That little . . .”

  “She didn’t say anything?”

  He mumbled something.

  “What was that?”

  His eyes narrowed. “She said ‘rot too.’ She should rot, is what.”

  “Rot too?” That made no sense. Unless . . . I cast my mind back: Selena had said it was a Caesar something-or-other, wheel within a wheel . . . if Rot One meant to shift the alphabet over one letter, then Rot Two would mean two letters. Maybe whoever wrote the note just threw in an extra complication . . . but why?

  The sheet of parchment was still on the kitchen table. I sat down and moved the letters in ljeep over one more place.

  It spelled kiddo.

  Give me the kiddo, or else.

  Chapter 27

  I grabbed a fistful of the silver charms Selena had polished, set my crystal ball on the steamer trunk, and settled in before it.

  I centered myself and drew upon my anger to blast away my anxiety. Cradling the charms in one hand, I thought of Selena and gazed into the depths of the crystal.

  At first, there was nothing. Just a few wispy clouds, as always. I tried to exert my focus, while not focusing.

  And I saw something, clear as day.

  Selena was standing at one of the display tables at Betty’s house, as I’d first seen her. She was wearing white gloves and that ridiculous pink and purple ensemble, polishing a silver tea set.

  And then I saw the inner door, the one I had noticed at the back of the garage-turned-closet, when Maya and I were sorting through Betty’s clothes. It was ajar, and beckoning. I had assumed that door led outside, but perhaps it was something else altogether.

  I lingered a few more precious moments, to see if I could pick out anything else from the clouds in the crystal. There was nothing more.

  I grabbed the car keys, stuck the Hand of Glory in my satchel, and found the one item I knew this killer had touched: the poppet Maya had found in Betty’s clothes.

  Normally, a practitioner’s poppet couldn’t be used against him, but this fellow, though clearly talented, was just as clearly not well trained. Since he had attempted to imbue the doll with his own intentions but didn’t know how to sustain them, I might be able to make the wax work against him. It was the best I could do, under the circumstances.

  As Oscar and I ran to the Mustang, I realized the Aunt Cora’s Closet van was missing. We found it parked a block away from Betty North’s house, at an awkward angle to the curb. I pulled up behind it and told Oscar to stay in the car.

  “I want to go with you, Mistress.”

  “Oscar, I need you to stay here in case Selena comes back to the van. I don’t know what I’m up against in that house, or even if I’m right. I’ll call you if I need you, but right now I want to face him myself.”

  Oscar grumbled but did as I asked.

  I went around the side of the dark house and used the Hand of Glory to let myself in the back door. I moved silently through the house, but didn’t see or hear anyone . . . not even Betty North’s ghost. I snuck down the carpeted stairs to the rumpus room, hoping to spot my errant charge playing with the silver.

  Selena wasn’t there. I went into the garage, now emptied of clothes and knickknacks.

  And I spotted the door in the back, the one I’d seen in the crystal ball.

  It was locked, but opened quickly under the influence of the Hand of Glory.

  A dark passage led to a basement with a dirt floor, lit by a single lightbulb hanging from a string. It had been set up as a workshop, and was filled with the tools of a magical trade: jars of herbs and powders, feathers and bones,
oils and honey. But they were all a jumble. When it comes to ingredients for a spell, a smart witch keeps everything separate and labeled because it is essential that elements not be combined by accident. A good witch maintained control over her spells.

  The portrait of Lupita I had seen in Fred’s studio was pinned to one unfinished wall. Lupita’s image had been scraped and stabbed, the canvas slashed across her throat.

  And lying on the worktable was a wax doll with long brown strings approximating hair. It looked vaguely like me, and was wrapped in my missing scarf.

  I immediately went to work, using the poppet I had brought with me. Molding and forming, warming the wax with the warmth of my hands, and chanting under my breath, I began to cast my spell. As I mumbled, I called upon my ancestors, and in particular to the Ashen Witch. My intent concentrated and focused as the energy flowed through my heart and hands before streaming into the wax.

  I formed the soft wax to look as much as I could like the Lily doll.

  I heard someone coming down the stairs to the rumpus room. Unwrapping the scarf as quickly as I could, I sprinkled it with the brew I had brought in a wide-mouth Mason jar, and dressed the new doll in it, so that it looked like the original Lily doll poppet. I laid it back on the workbench.

  I buried the other doll in the earthen floor and pressed the dirt smooth with my foot. I was wiping my hands just as the door opened.

  “Lily Ivory,” Finn said. He seemed surprised to see me, but not overly so. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I thought I’d look around for some more clothes for the shop.”

  His smile broadened, and he glanced around the basement. “Where’s the kiddo?”

  Thank the goddess, I thought to myself. He doesn’t have Selena. I would worry about where she was later, but at least Finn wasn’t holding her captive.

  “Asleep at home,” I lied. “Safe and sound.”

  “Guess I’ll have to roust her out of there, then.”

  “You won’t get past the front door. Not while I’m alive.”

  He laughed, then nodded and shrugged. “I guess you’re right. I’ll just have to kill you.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “So, did you figure out the message, then? I thought Selena would get it; she always struck me as a bit of a martyr. I figured she’d be able to decipher my message and come to me of her own accord. We used to play together, writing each other messages by mixing up Rot One, Rot Two. . . .”

  “You played together, or you used her?”

  “She and I are good friends. She’s my little helper.”

  “You had her clean the silver, didn’t you? She didn’t realize she was imbuing the metal with power, which you then appropriated. The silver would tarnish as you depleted the power, and she’d clean it again.”

  “She’s handy to have around, that one.”

  “She’s protected now. You won’t be using her anymore.”

  “On the contrary, I’ll do anything I want.” He grabbed the scarf-wrapped doll from the workbench and held it up. “Do you know what this is?”

  “I’m a witch, remember?”

  “Not a very good one, as far as I can tell. I tested you with those photos I showed you—you had no idea what was going on! None at all! Didn’t catch on to the silver magic, or Selena’s being here, or anything. And Lupita said you were supposed to be really something.”

  “Where is Lupita now? Is she okay?”

  He kept talking, ignoring my question. “I only started training a few months ago and I’m already better than you. Imagine what I could have done, if my useless parents had only recognized my talents. Instead, they just beat me every time I did something they thought was weird. Well, there’ll be plenty of time later to settle old scores.”

  As he spoke, he handled the doll. If he had been as good a practitioner as he thought he was, he would have felt that the poppet’s vibrations were off. But as I had hoped, he was focused on me.

  “That’s terrible, Finn. My mother rejected me, too.”

  “Oh, right, we’re going to swap childhood sob stories? Boo hoo. I don’t think so.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m simply saying that I know how hard it is to be a magical child.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was. Until I discovered Satanism.”

  “Satan has no place in the magical world.”

  “Whatever,” he said with a shrug. “I called on a few demons, but they never answered. But then I went by El Pajarito for supplies one day, and met Lupita. Overheard her trying to talk Ursula into pulling a scam over on Betty. Ursula chased her out of the store, I asked her out for a drink, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  “And then you approached Betty about handling the estate sale?”

  He nodded. He appeared pleased to share with me how it had all come together. “Lupita introduced me to Betty, and we went to work on the old lady so she’d leave us the place. Didn’t take much—Betty didn’t really have anyone. I see a lot of that in my business; it’s really sad.” He let out a sigh. “But it was when I met Selena that a whole new world opened up. She fell asleep and stuff started . . . happening. I finally figured out it had to do with the shiny things she loved so much.”

  “Selena’s a magical child. She needs guidance.”

  “She’s a freak.”

  “She’s special, like you and me. She’s lucky, though. She has Ursula.”

  He laughed. “Ursula is going down. After a very long engagement, Lupita and I were recently married. That makes me Selena’s uncle. Now that I’m a widower, I’m the closest relative Selena has. She’ll come live with me now. I promised Lupita that I would always take care of Selena.”

  “So you found a way to capture her magic? Is that how it worked?” I asked. “Was Lupita in on it from the start?”

  “Lupita’s the one who told me how to make a voodoo doll. She got me supplies from Ursula’s shop. But she didn’t have any power. That was all me. It’s amazing what a person can learn on the Internet these days. I did my homework.”

  It was true that a person could learn witchcraft from books or the Internet; but to practice it responsibly, one had to learn far more important and difficult skills: how to control the power and use it responsibly, how to rein in one’s own ambition and selfish desires. Not to mention how to maintain a spell over time. The “null” poppet Finn had created revealed that his magic dissipated quickly.

  “Did you try to summon a demon to watch over Ursula’s store, by any chance?”

  For the first time, Finn looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, not sure what happened there. I sort of . . . let things fly, I guess. Then I couldn’t figure out how to walk it back. Whatever, I don’t need the stupid store, anyway. When Lupita and I got together I thought that place was going to be a cash cow—I even encouraged her to get more exposure for the store with that newspaper article. I’m good at things like that, good at marketing, making business plans. But . . . I dunno, it’s such a dump now and I don’t feel like cleaning it up.”

  “But you’re planning on inheriting this house?”

  “Sure. Betty left the place to Lupita until that interloper, Nicky, started sniffing around. I followed her to the Golden Gate Bridge and when she leaned over the rail to drop something in the water, I saw my chance. Boom, a little shove and bye-bye, Nicky. Didn’t even need to use the poppet I made. I told the police I tried to grab her, even worked up a few tears.” He grinned. “They thought I was a poor traumatized tourist from Canada!”

  I felt queasy, and tried to use the sensation to fuel my focus.

  “Anyway, Knox thinks he’s inheriting this place, but he’s got another thing coming when they validate the new will. As Lupita’s husband, I’m next in line to inherit Betty’s property, and heck, my workshop’s already set up here. I’ll sell off the rest of Betty’s crap, pocket the money, and that’ll be that. Oh—except I’ll keep the silver, I guess. Let Selena earn her keep.”

  He looked at the doll in h
is hands, the one wrapped in my scarf.

  When he met my gaze, his eyes were cold and empty.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “I think so.”

  He laughed again and shook his head. “I don’t think you do. If you did, you’d be shaking in your boots, kiddo. This is a special doll. A Lily poppet.”

  I kept my face blank.

  “Right now,” he continued, “I hold your fate quite literally in my hands.”

  “Do you, now?”

  Holding it in his left hand, he picked up a screwdriver from the workbench, held it over the doll’s midsection, and smiled.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “So sorry, Lily.”

  “I’m serious, Finn, don’t. Think about who you are, about all the people you have hurt. Is that what you want your life to be about? To leave a trail of pain behind you?”

  “Why not? My life has been full of pain.”

  Raising his arm, he stabbed the doll with the screwdriver, and immediately doubled over. He looked at me in surprise, shock and confusion on his flushed face.

  “What did you do?” he asked. “How did you do that?”

  “Stop, Finn,” I pleaded. “Put the doll down, I’m begging you.”

  He had dropped the screwdriver, but now held the doll in both hands, and gave it a vicious twist.

  He cried out and fell to the ground, screaming and moaning, writhing in pain. The doll lay on the dirt beside him, not far from where I had buried the wax figure Finn thought he was using to hurt me.

  Seems I had a gift for poppet magic, after all.

  It is a terrible thing to witness someone in agony, on the brink of death. I tried to summon compassion for Finn, but felt my heart harden. He had tried to harm Betty, and had pushed Nicky Utley into the cold gray waters of the San Francisco Bay, just so he could inherit a house. He had murdered his wife, Lupita, and would have used Selena for his own gain. Who knows what he would have done to her when she was no longer of any use to him?

  Finn reached one hand toward me and whispered, “Help me!”

  Selena burst into the room and threw a handful of shiny silver cutlery in the air with white-gloved hands.