The Viking Horn Spell

by Amanda Hartford

  Pentacle Pawn: Book 3

  The Viking Horn Spell

  Amanda Hartford

  Nineteen Cents Press

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Your next read

  A note from Amanda Get free Pentacle Pawn stories!

  Dedication

  Many thanks again to Jim Fox for his help, wise counsel and high tolerance for fast food.

  ♦

  The Viking Horn Spell is the third book in Amanda Hartford’s Pentacle Pawn paranormal cozy mystery series, and the second installment of a trilogy set in Scottsdale, Arizona. The prequel to the trilogy is The Sea Turtle Spell, set in New Orleans.

  Subscribe to Amanda’s monthly newsletter and get discounts, sneak peeks, free stories and other goodies. Sign up at amandahartford.com.

  Prologue

  Ten years out of college, Bop Lewis still kept in pretty good shape. She worked out in the gym down in the basement of her office building at lunchtime, and then grabbed a green smoothie at her desk. She’d even set up a stationary bike in the small living room of her condo so she could ride while she watched cable or played video games.

  But Bop’s greatest joy was running, and she tried to get in at least a couple of miles every evening to shake off the stress of her programming job. She searched for months before she found a condo complex that backed up to the canal system. The place was a little pricier than she could actually afford, but to Bop, it was worth every penny to be able just to step out her door and go.

  The Valley of the Sun is honeycombed with nearly 200 miles of canals. The waterways have been there for almost a thousand years, built by the ancient Hohokam. White settlers rebuilt the canals, and the city of Phoenix and its suburbs grew up beside their cottonwood-shaded banks.

  A half-century ago, the Salt River Project graded and straightened the canals. They lined the channels with concrete and laid down wide dirt access roads on their banks. Now, every morning and evening, joggers and bikers hit the beautifully maintained canal trails.

  The weather had turned cold tonight— at least for Scottsdale. It was early March, and just before sundown the temperature hovered around 45 degrees. Still, Bop Lewis wasn’t complaining; her sister back in Minneapolis was still shoveling snow.

  Bop glanced at the 1950s atomic wall clock — the real deal, not a replica — above her restored vintage refrigerator. She had plenty of time to get a run in before it got too dark. She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and laced up her running shoes.

  The air was crisp as Bop stepped out on the canal bank. The chill had kept most of the casual runners at home, but Bop joined the regulars who were already out on the path. They established a polite distance between themselves, each in his or her own head space.

  Bop had been a little bit off all day, but she knew that a good run would help her shake it off. She decided to leave her sweats on while she warmed up — it was chilly out here in the open. She pulled her hoodie up over her strawberry-blonde hair.

  Bop walked along the dirt path, letting her muscles slowly warm. She allowed her breathing to drop into an easy pattern, anticipating the runner’s high to come.

  Bop watched the shallow ripples in the green water. The water level in the canal was right up to the top of the bank tonight; there had been rain all week up in the mountains. She was startled when a big carp broke the surface right in front of her and scuttled across the water toward the far bank, twenty feet away.

  She hadn’t slept very well last night, and she’d been groggy all day at work. That jerk Herve on the other coding team was making a move; Bop had to figure out how to counter. Bop was pretty good at office politics, but she hated the distraction. It kind of made her feel dirty. All she wanted to do was write her code and be left alone. Maybe she should go upstairs in the morning and talk to Maggie about it. Even on her Maggie’s days, she was more of a grown-up than Bop would ever be. Maggie would know what to do.

  Bop forced herself to calm down, forced her breathing to regulate. As she did, the problems of the work day started to fall away. If she could just get into the run and let it all go, everything would be okay. Her muscles were loosening up now, and she dropped the hoodie back. The chill felt good, bringing her wide awake.

  A pair of runners were coming up fast behind her. She’d seen them out here pretty much every evening: that redheaded chick in the tiny Spandex halter top and bike shorts, her long ponytail swinging through the back of her rhinestoned pink ball cap. She always ran with that musclebound guy about two decades too old for her. Bop wondered how long the guy would be able to keep up with the redhead — and not just on the track. She grinned to herself as the mismatched couple flashed past her.

  Bop stepped up her pace, feeling her muscles begin to go fluid. She heard more footsteps behind her and she moved all the way to the right. She focused on her footing, her running shoe falling only inches from the concrete canal bank. Bop had been on the swim team in high school, but she still didn’t want to fall into the fast-moving water.

  She never saw it coming. One minute, Bop was building her stride, catching the groove. The next minute, she was airborne.

  The other runner hit her hard and low, catching Bop with a body block just under her shoulder blade. At that same moment, Bop felt invisible hands grip her heart and squeeze. She doubled over with the pain. Already off balance from the hit, Bop toppled over sideways into the water.

  She never saw the person who had hit her. Bop got only a blurry impression of somebody small and thin, wearing an anonymous hoodie and sweats just like everybody else on the trail.

  The last thing that Bop Lewis saw before she drowned was her assailant trotting into the sunset as if nothing had happened.

  Chapter One

  The night this whole thing started, I left my Beemer in the parking lot at exactly 9 p.m. and headed for work, right on time. I’m Maggie Flournoy, and I’m a witch.

  No, not the pointy-hat stereotype; I very seldom wear black unless it’s a cocktail dress. I’m a former college physics professor — physics — but for the past few years I’ve run Pentacle Pawn in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  Scottsdale is a resort city in a beautiful desert setting. My shop is in the Old Town district that caters to tourists rich enough to fly in on their private jets for a few days or a few months, flying back out to Montréal or Monaco or their safari resort in Kenya before the Arizona summer turns nasty. The building exteriors in Old Town look like a Hollywood movie set from the 1930s, but inside you’ll find gourmet restaurants and designer goods from all over the world at prices that would stop your heart.

  I own the building that houses Pentacle Pawn. Few people understand that it’s actually two separate businesses: the upscale retail shop in front that operates during normal business hours; and my specialty shop down the alley, by evening appointment only, that caters to the magical community.

  During the day, the curious and the clients throng the street-front operation. My manager, Bronwyn, is my oldest friend. She isn’t a witch, but she is a gemologist and an expert on luxury goods. It really is a pawn shop, but you won’t find any dusty old stereos or cheap Chinese-made guitars in there. We specialize in unusual and exotic collectibles.

  Bronwyn can tell the difference at a glance between a diamond and a cubic zirconia,
and that also goes for furniture, vintage fashion accessories, rare baseball cards and artwork of all kinds and eras. Salvador Dali is one of the most counterfeited artists in history, but the sculpture and two paintings we currently have on display in the front shop are absolutely genuine, acquired from the original collector along with signed photographs of Dali presenting the work to his patron.

  The other half of the operation — the one down the alley — also offers the unusual and exotic, but the value of the merchandise is not necessarily measured in cash. The clients of the alley shop bring family heirlooms and modern custom pieces ranging from a tiny seashell to the fossilized skull of an extinct ancestor of the whale. Each object is treasured by its owner as a vessel for magic.

  My witchy clients reach the shop by walking down the cobblestone alley to what appears to be an oak door. It’s really three layers, with a half-inch thick sheet of solid silver sandwiched between two massive oak planks. The door is bound in wrought iron, and the oak is overlaid on both sides by a beautiful pierced iron lattice depicting the Tree of Life, its roots entwining a pentacle.

  As soon as I opened the car door that night, I could hear a gong ringing in the alley. I recognized the sound, and I picked up my pace.

  This was going to be fun.

  Two scruffy teenage boys were trying to kick their way into the alley shop. They were dressed goth, in black T-shirts and jeans and black leather jackets adorned with cheap skull jewelry. Their hair was dirty and spiked. The tall one wore a nose ring; the short one had a studded black leather dog collar. Both wore blood-red lipstick.

  I stood at the mouth of the alley and watched the kids try to break into my shop.

  This happened once in a while. The boys probably thought they were breaking into the storage area for the retail shop up front. They were in for a surprise.

  The door to the Pentacle Pawn alley shop has no handle and no visible locks. Auras are as individual as thumbprints, and the door incantation will admit only those people who have my permission to enter. Anybody else is taking their life in their hands if they touch that door.

  The goth boys were doing just that. The tall one had a big screwdriver and a hammer, and he was banging on the door hinges, trying to dislodge the pins. He wasn’t making any headway; the magic that protects the door kept him from even making a dent in the wrought iron fittings.

  The boys had no chance of getting in, but if they kept at it, the door was going to retaliate. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

  In one sense, the boys were lucky. The door incantation is fully capable of killing anyone who tries to attack it with magic, but it could sense that these two were harmless.

  I couldn’t say the same for the door. Good luck, guys.

  I stood at the edge of the parking lot, watching. I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I suppose that I could have stopped it. But these two needed to be taught a lesson, and it was about to be delivered.

  The tall kid hit the hinge one more time. The door hit back.

  There was no warning and no flash. One second, both boys were bent over their task. The next, they were propelled backward across the alley and smashed into the brick wall of the building next door. The hammer and screwdriver hung in the air for a beat before they fell to the cobblestones.

  The kids took off running before the hammer hit the ground.

  I waited for them to clear the alley and run out into Old Town. It would serve them right if one of Scottsdale’s finest got curious about where they were headed in such a hurry.

  ♦

  My workday begins when Bronwyn’s ends. As the sun goes down, Old Town fills with the rich and the famous. After flexing their platinum cards for fancy dinners with fancy friends, a few of those folks find their way down the alley to the oak door with a Tree of Life beautifully worked into its wrought iron binding.

  As those goth boys discovered, there is no doorknob. If you have an appointment, the door to the alley shop will admit you. Otherwise, you cool your heels on the cobblestones until you get the message.

  My assistant Lissa was already inside. Lissa is the daughter of an old friend of my family who has turned out to be not much of a friend, at all. But my issues with her mother have nothing to do with Lissa — except that Lissa is deeply embarrassed that her mother has tried to use her as a pawn.

  Lissa left home the day she turned 18, but she didn’t get very far. Her mother Penelope drove her crazy, dropping by every evening to see how she was doing and bringing her lunch to wherever she happened to be working. Lissa realized she had less privacy then she’d had back in her own bedroom, so she surrendered.

  Lissa was smart enough to know that it would never work for her to live under the same roof as her mother again, so she compromised. Penelope’s property was enormous, so Lissa staked her claim to the pool house at the back of the estate. It was perfect: she could come and go by a private driveway, and Penelope grudgingly agreed to let her change the locks. Lissa’s concession was to agree to come to the main house for dinner at least twice a week, on Sunday and another evening of Penelope’s choosing.

  The standoff held for quite a while. Penelope never quite accepted that Lissa was an adult, but even the distance afforded by the short walk from the pool house to the mansion helped Lissa feel more independent. I know that Lissa was relieved that her mother has spent most of her time in the last few years traveling all over the world. In fact, I don’t think Lissa knew where her mother was half the time, but I could always tell when Penelope was in town: Lissa would get quiet and tense.

  It all escalated when Penelope tried to kill me earlier this year, for reasons we still don’t fully understand. Lissa says she has made a clean break with her mother, and I’m taking her word for it. We’re all still trying to get our heads around what happened.

  Lissa has come a long way, both as a budding witch and as a human being. She is a valuable employee, and after some pretty dramatic ups and downs earlier this year, I’m pleased that I now can call her a trusted friend.

  ♦

  It had been a long week, and I was hoping tonight would be quiet. We had only three appointments on the books, and I was confident that Lissa could easily handle two of them; they were simple pawn transactions, and she was perfectly capable of filling out the forms. Mine was a bit more complicated: a man was picking up a brooch that had been pawned years before for safekeeping by his mother, a noted witch of my mother’s generation. His mother had passed away earlier in the month, and in the process of closing out her estate, he had discovered the pawn ticket. Still, the transaction shouldn’t take long. Maybe, I hoped, I could get time later to take care of some of my never-ending paperwork.

  ♦

  Jacob Carroll was in his mid-thirties, a skinny little man wearing ratty jeans and an old World Cup T-shirt. His profession was spending the trust fund left to him by his late grandparents as quickly as possible, and I assumed that his mother’s estate was only likely to fuel his bad behavior. He was a flamboyant professional gambler who occasionally pawned his gold cufflinks with me to keep them out of the hands of suspicious casino bosses who wanted to examine them more closely. Jacob didn’t want the casinos to discover the chips of ancient oracle bones he had tucked behind each cufflink’s gold crest.

  I greeted Jacob as cordially as I could, hiding my personal revulsion behind a businesslike smile. We got through the pleasantries as quickly as possible, and I retrieved his mother’s brooch from my vault. I noticed his eyes sparkle as bright as the sapphires and antique rose-cut diamonds that framed the trilobite scarab in the brooch. The smart money said that his mother’s beloved jewelry would be converted to cold hard cash within the week. None of my business, of course, and I held my smile while he signed off on the paperwork.

  We offer a courtesy ride to all of our clients, but Jacob declined. “I have a friend waiting for me across the street,” he said, flashing me a wicked little smile.

  Whether it was a woman or a new mark, I hoped his
friend knew enough to keep a close eye on Jacob’s hands.

  Chapter Two

  Just after ten, the front door admitted a courier from our sister shop on the Seine. The messenger was a tiny woman dressed head to toe in black leather. She had spiky black hair and piercing eyes. I didn’t think much could rattle her, but she seemed to be pretty happy to be rid of her parcel.

  The messenger carefully placed a large old-fashioned suitcase on the counter and thrust out a particleboard clipboard to me. I took a single dollar bill from the cash register and slid it under the clip. As soon as I signed her clipboard, she handed me a manila folder and was gone.

  The hardshell trombone case dated from the 1920s or even earlier. The shape of the brass horn bell inside was molded into the top of the lid. The case’s leather covering was in excellent condition, and its brass corner fittings and latches were intact. The stitched leather handle was badly worn, nearly frayed off of its brass mounting, but that was to be expected after more than a century of use. The brass lock plate was engraved with the word Ajax.

  I opened the antique case and found that it had been reconfigured inside. Its crushed red velvet cushions now caressed the sinuous curves of an enormous cow horn drinking vessel. The massive horn swept up in a gentle S-curve. Its six-inch mouth and its tip were encased in elaborately embossed silver fittings. Another silver fitting encircled the horn at its midpoint, and attached to this was a brass ring big enough to fit a man’s middle finger.

  The horn was elegant and primal at the same time. Its power took my breath away.

  The pawn form from the Paris shop listed this item as a Viking drinking horn, 10th century. The owner had acquired it in Ukraine, but the provenance was sketchy. All that could be sorted out easily enough. What really concerned me was that space on the form where the owner was required to list the powers of the object was blank. Did that mean he didn’t know, or just that he wasn’t telling me?