“I’ll do that. Thank you.” He leaned over as if to kiss my cheek.
John cleared his throat, a reminder that we were not alone.
Ted backed off. “Let me know if Jason needs help refinishing the floor. I’ve got an upright sander and can recommend varnishes.” Then he vanished out the back door to the drive that ran alongside the house toward the detached garage.
When I’d heard the car back out and drive off, I lifted the coffeepot toward John. “One last cup?”
“Thanks anyway. I’ve had my caffeine limit for the day.” He stood, but made no move to leave.
“John . . . will you speak to Jason, let him know that outsiders aren’t allowed in the attic for a while? He’ll probably listen to you in the absence of his father, where I’m just the usual nagging voice reminding him to clean his room.”
“Good idea. If you don’t mind, I’ll go upstairs now and speak to him.”
“He’s with BJ.”
“No, I saw BJ sneak down the front stairs and out that door when I used the restroom.”
“Oh. I wonder . . .” BJ always said good-bye when he left. Always.
“He’s a teenager. Pushing the limits of bad behavior and defying adult authority is part of his job.”
John kissed my cheek and wandered up the kitchen stairs.
Before I could decide what to do about that, my cell phone buzzed an incoming text.
Bruges a dead end. Headed for Tallahassee. If you need anything, ask CBM. Luv you, G
CBM? Coyote Blood Moon. Or John, as I’d come to think of him. I knew that a lot of the pagan shop owners in town legally changed to a craft name, something that reflected their new belief system when they converted to a pagan lifestyle. John, of course, had to have a professional name to go along with his real estate business, so he used both depending upon his associates and the situation.
He’d remain John to me. John what?
Before he returned, I flipped through the phonebook—yes, I still kept a paper one in the drawer beside the landline. John Mooney Real Estate.
Logical.
John Mooney blew me a kiss as he crossed the kitchen to the back door. “See you around.”
I captured the kiss with my hand symbolically, then closed my fingers. I did not place it on my lips or even my cheek. I just held it, like a promise of . . . something in the future.
Two seconds later the landline rang. The shrill bells startled me. Not many had that unlisted number.
I didn’t have to look at the caller ID to know the call came from BJ’s mother, Flora Chambers, or Mrs. Chambers as she preferred, as if her marriage to Bret Chambers the lawyer, was more important than she was as an individual.
“Is BJ over there?” she asked after formally introducing herself.
“Not anymore. He left about half an hour ago. But he was most helpful. I needed some heavy furniture moved.”
“Where did he go?” No politeness or formality. Her high-pitched voice (her husband referred to it as whimsical) grew shrill.
“He didn’t say.” He hadn’t even said that he was leaving. Perhaps he felt that if he said nothing he could escape his mother a bit longer.
“Are you lying to me?”
“I resent that, Flora.”
“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if you are covering for him, just like you covered for that philandering husband of yours until you couldn’t ignore it any longer. And I’ll remind you who warned you about him. . . .”
I hung up on her.
The phone rang again. I let it go to voice mail. I had the wardrobe to fill with craft supplies and fabric and such. Much more important than listening to Flora’s vitriol.
Fourteen
G MOPPED SWEAT OFF his forehead and neck with an old-fashioned blue kerchief. His straw Panama hat didn’t help much in alleviating the Florida heat. Three weeks from the Equinox and the temperatures were still in the nineties with equal humidity. He’d gotten too used to the moderate climate and four seasons in Eugene.
The climate alone made his hometown the best place in the world to live. The fact that it was a crossroads of magical power, the previous homeland of a couple of fae races, and a magnet for paranormal energies were secondary in his opinion. One of the reasons so many people in his hometown had minor talents was a long-forgotten faery ancestor native to the place.
Tallahassee should be his last stop before heading home. Home to Daffy and his children. When the kids were little, he never quite knew what to do with them, and gladly left their care to Daffy. And he’d enjoyed his adventurous travels, taking down the bad guys. Now his children were older, almost adults. He could talk to them. He missed them. He missed Daffy, too, especially since returning to her was no longer a given. She wouldn’t be waiting for him with open arms, a hot meal, and a bed to share.
He sighed and pulled himself out of his reverie. In this heat, all he wanted to do was sleep in an air-conditioned room.
He had a dead body to investigate. D’Accore and her minions—he’d learned that she’d collected several disaffected youths over the past few months—had gotten very good at dumping bodies. No fresh murders and no wands at the crime scene. That forced him to work with mundane authorities and MEs.
And there was the city morgue. A flat-faced building, anonymous stucco with a red roof, windows flush with the exterior flanked by green storm shutters. The entrance was elevated twelve steps from the street, allowing for something resembling a basement with a natural coolness that predated modern AC systems. That was where they stored the unclaimed and open case bodies. According to the police report, Paul Marchand, a young Cajun man who hailed from New Orleans but had recently moved to Tallahassee, had died approximately three weeks before. Not only young, early twenties, but a talented wizard in the making—he had some ancestors among the Merfolk. His talents spread across the board, from protective shields, to love spells, to singing a crowd from chaos to peace. He was on the watch list to recruit as a deputy for the Sheriff’s office. A fisherman had discovered his body two days ago, floating in the bay, trapped in an old net.
G had papers identifying him as the man’s uncle come to claim the body. Few cared about skin color anymore, especially in Paul’s case where his blood had mixed and flowed among several races. He could have uncles from around the world or under the sea.
G stepped up to the uniformed woman at the information desk. “Um . . . I got a call about my nephew. You think maybe he drowned?” Highly unlikely for a man who could hold his breath a full two minutes underwater and had thick webs between his toes.
G had no trouble projecting sadness, grief, and an aching heart as he produced his genuine Oregon driver’s license. He really liked Paul, whose bright smile and laughing eyes always found humor in dire circumstances. He’d made a living as a grief counselor, encouraging people to remember the best about their lost loved ones.
“I am so sorry for your loss, Mr. Deschants. Let me call Detective Billings for you.” She sent a text from her computer screen.
He only had to wait long enough to mop more sweat from his face before a tall, bulky man with light chocolate coloring emerged from a door halfway down the long corridor that the reception desk blocked.
“We’ve identified the body from dental records, sir. You don’t have to view it,” Billings said as G settled into a comfortable armchair in front of a small black-and-white monitor.
No more did they expect people to walk into a chilly morgue smelling of strange, acidic chemicals that burned the nose but kept the bodies from decaying. No more the shock of watching a tech open a drawer and pulling back the sheet or opening the body bag. Now they sat you in a chair, plied you with bad coffee, and showed you videos of one dead body after another.
“Please, it is important to his family. They practice a religion with roots going back to Africa over one thousand years ago. I
wrote my doctoral dissertation in Cultural Anthropology about how ancient customs and rituals still affect our lives based upon this religion. I must see the body and bless it. I must run my hands the full length of the body, not touching it, but drawing out any residual life that may linger before burial. His family believes strongly in ghosts. I must set his ghost free.” G gave Billings his best wide-eyed nerd look.
“But you don’t believe this . . . er . . . religion?” Billings asked. Now he started to sweat, like he’d seen too many weird things in his years on the homicide squad.
“I don’t know,” G replied. He, too, had seen a lot of things this normal man would call spectral or supernatural. And he knew for certain that ghosts did exist and not all of them were friendly or simply lost souls seeking guidance to the ever after. But ne needed to see the body, touch it, and determine if magic had killed him. A relatively fresh body that hadn’t been burned or exposed to hundreds of passersby in a shallow grave.
He needed to find Paul’s wand.
Billings shrugged and led G through a twisted corridor and down a flight of steps into the basement. Only one door greeted them at the base of the stairs. MORGUE had been decaled on the pebbly glass upper half of the door.
G braced himself for the shock of the change in temperature and the onslaught of chemicals.
As bad as he expected. Tolerable, or at least it would be shortly when he got used to it. In the meantime, he breathed through his mouth until his nose became desensitized.
He’d done this before. Too many times. And yet it was still always a shock to his body, his mind, and his soul.
They went through another ID check and signatures. Then through more heavy steel doors to the room lined with metal drawers, four up and ten to a side.
G’s knees turned to water at the thought of all that death trapped in this room. He wanted to turn and run.
He wanted to vomit.
But he had to see this through.
The tech consulted his tablet screen, double-checked a number, and marched to the proper drawer. He paused a moment, hand on the pull so that G had a moment to settle himself. Then the drawer rolled open a full six feet in length, though Paul didn’t need that much space. He’d been short and wiry.
Billings himself pulled open the zipper on the black body bag, revealing the pasty, bloated face. The eyes and nose were gone, sacrificed to some scavenger of the sea. The lips pulled back in rictus revealed stained teeth. That once bright and happy smile turned into this grimace at the moment of death.
“Please, I need to see the entire body,” G said, gulping heavily. So young. So happy. Reduced to this.
“It’s not pretty, Mr. Deschants. Drowning victims rarely look like the person they were.”
“I know.” G gulped again. Then he bowed his head and silently mouthed the words of the spell he needed. A spell is nothing more than a prayer, he reminded himself, as Billings crossed himself.
By the time he linked his thumbs and placed his hands flat above the face, a scant half inch above the flesh, Billings had pulled the zipper all the way down to the toes, revealing a naked body. The ME had stapled closed the Y-shaped incision for the autopsy. That wouldn’t prevent stray magic from returning to the body. Every time he did this, G wondered if the soul escaped during the examination procedure and then returned when the humiliating process of being reduced to a series of numbers was over.
Inch by careful inch, he moved his hands down the body, pausing at each of the chakra points. All the while his fingers tingled and twitched. When he reached the misshapen toes with their vestigial marine adaptation—still bright pink and vibrant—he reversed the process.
“Those webbed toes are unusual,” the ME said. “I see them often enough. But most people have the toes separated so the kids can learn to walk normally. Those are much thicker than normal.”
“I know.” G paused in his spell to breathe and concentrate on a reply. “It runs in his family. Coming from New Orleans, which is below water level, the local joke is that children are born with webbed toes and learn to walk with a flutter kick. Environmental adaptation. They say the same thing about Portland and Seattle.”
They all smiled, and G finished his ritual.
“Thank you, gentlemen. I may now make funeral arrangements with the family. I will notify you of the details.” G bowed his head to gather himself, clenching his fists so that the information he’d gathered didn’t leak out.
Slowly, carefully, he retraced his steps until he emerged from the horrible building into the streets and fresher air. Not until he’d turned three corners did he hail a cab back to his hotel by the airport.
A quick check of the airlines showed the next flight to Chicago didn’t leave until nine that night. He had time. He didn’t have Daffy to go home to and needed, oh so badly after that major spell reading a dead man, he needed a woman.
Five o’clock. Happy hour was in full swing in the hotel bar.
Only when he’d sent his companion home with a kiss and no promises and begun packing his few belongings, did he let the knowledge he’d captured from Paul’s last memories infiltrate his brain.
And the information Bolovnovich had slipped him on the flash drive. Financial records that showed a key player amassing a great deal of money in shadow accounts. That had been going on for fifteen years, starting the day after G had arrested D’Accore for murdering his grandparents.
D’Accore and her faithful companion had spoken as they stripped a conch shell of Paul’s magic. That was the final bit G needed to know, but not concrete evidence to put them both away. They needed to go to Chicago to find a young and pretty virginal witch with a talent for pushing people aside to make her way through a crowd, or to the top of a beauty queen pageant.
Paul’s conch shell wand had been left in the warm waters of the bay. It would return to nature on its own, useless to the pair of murdering sorcerers.
The image of D’Accore’s companion was burned firmly into G’s mind’s eye.
Coyote Blood Moon.
Fifteen
I SENT THE KIDS off to school on Wednesday morning. The beginning of a new school year meant new classes, new challenges, and a whole new schedule for all of us. When the last school bus had roared down the hill, I sat back in my favorite chair in the living room and contemplated what to do next. I still had some time before I needed to return to Magical Brews for the afternoon round of baking and dispensing perfect cups of espresso, lattes, mochas, or just plain coffee to regular customers, like John Mooney aka Coyote Blood Moon. Well, John was a regular when he was in town. I remember lapses in his attendance for about four consecutive days every three weeks or so. Business. He was a power broker in the real estate world.
He stopped in at the shop every day lately. Twice. Once when we first opened, and again after lunch, close to the end of my shift. More often than not, he walked me home. He kept a wary eye on everyone we passed and turned around frequently as if he heard someone following us. But I had no repeat of my one scary experience.
Every day John asked about Jason’s progress with his new studio and if I’d heard from G.
Truthfully, I could tell him that G never called when away on business. He had texted me, but that wasn’t a call, merely notification of change of location. Actually, the texts were new, and so was his sign-off. “Luv U” had so many meanings I chose not to interpret.
I wasn’t sure why I kept his destinations to myself. From Tallahassee, he’d gone to Chicago.
The phone beeped an incoming text as I sat back in the recliner with my feet up.
Home late tonight. Don’t wait up. Keep the children close. Luv U. G
In other words, he didn’t need a ride home from the airport and he feared something. Something about the children.
I sent him a text on a whim.
Found 5 points in attic.
Th
e phone rang. An actual call, not another text.
“Yes, G.”
“What happened?” he demanded, sounding anxious. “I don’t have a lot of time, so just say it.”
“Jason moved the wardrobe. It fell and broke one of the mirrors. He wanted it out of the attic for more room to dance. CBM and Ted Tyler helped move it down to my sewing room. I discovered the inlay in the flooring.”
“Did anyone else see it?”
“Just CBM and Jason and me. Jason has orders not to let anyone else up there.”
“Make him obey. I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Gotta go.” He hung up. No good-bye, no endearments.
I exhaled so long, my lungs felt like collapsing. For three months, I’d skirted around thinking about the future of my relationship with G. I’d ridden my anger and hurt for so long, it was all I needed to justify the divorce. But the legal end of my marriage was coming up soon. One week before the point of no return.
The landline beside my chair rang before I could think further. I picked it up expecting a robocall advising me that my credit rating needed attention.
“Daffy, I saw your two girls on the school bus this morning when it passed my house. They looked so cute in their new outfits. Skirts are so much more appropriate for girls than jeans. I know the temptation of going casual . . .”
“Did you have a reason to call, Mrs. Chambers? Because I really don’t have time to just chat right now.” I should. But I wasn’t ready to discuss second-hand gossip about her son.
“Oh, I know, you being sole support of those three precious children and all. I just called to ask if you’d seen the news last night.”
“I don’t think so. I took the children to a movie.”
“Not one of those horrid thrillers with death and sex, and bad language and all.”
“No. It was a safe movie.” Actually, it was the latest action-filled science fiction flick, and we’d all enjoyed it enormously. But I was pretty sure she’d disapprove of speculative fiction as much as nudity and long strings of four letter words.
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