by Melanie Rawn
“Believe me, I’m used to it,” Lachlan replied in the same tone.
Alec laughed. “Okay, then—heard the one about the itchy palm? The old saying has it that you’re about to get some money. What if your brain is picking up something from the person signing the check and putting it in the mail? Because you know the tradition, and you have no other way to rationalize or process this ‘something,’ your brain tells your palm to itch.”
Lachlan frowned. “So to work magic, you pick a combination of objects that will provoke the response you want inside your own head?”
“That’s the theory. One must experiment, of course, with exactly what causes which reactions. Which music coaxes us out of depression, what we find to be comfort foods. For instance, it’s well-known that chocolate stimulates the same chemical changes in the brain that happen when you’re in love. Nick can go on about this stuff for hours. But the whole thing boils down to: Magic is Life, and Life is Magic.”
“Now, that I can relate to,” he replied, glancing over at Holly.
“I thought you might.” Alec’s expression changed as a slight, almost fragile young woman entered and chose her robe from the rack. “Lydia Montsorel,” he said softly. “Whose gift is almost as rare as Holly’s.”
“What exactly is she?” Lachlan asked, unconsciously lowering his own voice.
“She’s a Sciomancer. She sees the future in shadows. When the stimuli are right—as we hope they will be tonight—she can read the past as well. She’s one of our finding, mine and Nick’s.”
“Like Holly.”
“Yes. Lydia’s is a life that nearly turned tragic. She spent her first six years afraid of daylight, not knowing why. By the time we found her, her parents were frantic. Her grandmother had an inkling—her own magic, untrained though it was, kept her alive through the Holocaust.”
“Holly said Lydia’s grandmother was a Survivor. She didn’t say much else.”
“I don’t think she knows. Sylvie managed to hide her family for three years during the Nazi occupation of France. She knew when evil approached—felt it, sensed it. They were caught near the end of the war, on a day when Sylvie was sick in bed with a raging fever. The family was separated, and Sylvie alone survived the camps. She emigrated, married, had children — and Lydia is the only one who inherited the magic. In her, it manifests in shadows. She can feel the presence of evil, like her grandmother, but she can also see it.”
“Afraid of the daylight,” Evan murmured, shaking his head, thinking of his own children, his and Holly’s; hoping that if they inherited magic, it would be a more benevolent kind.
“Time and teaching showed her what to avoid. Electric light has no impact on her. But sunlight, fire — even a lighted match can do it if she’s not careful. With help, she learned control, and how to prevent seeing and sensing if she wishes. And she has a wise and loving husband looking out for her, as well.”
Lachlan said nothing for a moment, watching the dark girl in the yellow robe as she moved around the room, graceful as a dancer. “Is that where I come in, with Holly? I mean, it’s not as if Bradshaw told me where I could find her last week out of the kindness of his heart.”
“Like David with Lydia, Holly’s physical protection is up to you, yes. Magically—” He shrugged. “We do what we can. She’s valuable.”
“For her blood,” Evan muttered. “Not for who she is, or what she’s made of herself, but for something she was born with that she —”
“Stand down, Marshal,” Alec advised. “She is what she is. But think of it this way: if she wasn’t a Spellbinder, if that hadn’t influenced every decision she’s made, would she be the person she is now?” Singleton got to his feet. “I think we’re ready. When this is all over, remind me to tell you the tale of a vampire, a freckle-faced little girl, and how two Witches found her—and each other.”
THE MAGISTRATE’S CIRCLE—PLUS TWO who were not of it, and one who had no magic at all—took up positions. In the East, Alec stood as the Truthseeing Warrior in the domain of Raphael and the Air of which shadows were in part made. South, Fire, and Michael was Martin, a pendant of red amber glowing on his breast, Warrior of the Spirit. To the West, Nicholas represented Gabriel, in his hands a chalice filled with Water in which rested a small chunk of aquamarine the color of his eyes, stone of tranquillity and protection despite his function as Warrior-Coercer. North was Ian, Warrior of the Sword, wearing Earth green, standing for Ariel.
At the cross-quarters were Kate, Evan, Simon, and Elias. The Magistrate took the Northeast, symbolic dividing line between darkness and light, the place where the Circle would be opened if necessary, and the place most vulnerable in the way that Hallowe’en was vulnerable: the place and time where the veil between the worlds was thinnest. Directly opposite Bradshaw was Evan, whose lack of magic was supported by Elias’s abundant power.
Lydia seemed the antithesis of shadow; in pale yellow and with a large opal glinting from her finger, she was a creature of air and light. As she spoke to each Guardian, she turned to each of the men, black hair tumbling over her shoulders as she bowed to those they represented.
“I call on Air’s pure breath to inspire me, on Fire’s warm brilliance to illumine me, on Water’s cool sweetness to cleanse me, on Earth’s solid strength to support me. I call on the Guardians to protect me.” She sighed softly. “I release my fears.”
Lachlan, watching her, wondered if it could possibly be that easy.
Calmly, in a voice so soft it seemed weightless, Lydia went on, “I’ll start with Susannah, and go forward as far as we need to. Holly, did you bring something of hers for me to focus on?”
Holly unfastened the diamond bracelet. And dropped it. Lachlan expected the clumsiness to evoke an Oh, shit! but Holly seemed incapable of speech. Lydia bent, straightened with the gold and gems enclosed in her palm. After a few moments, she nodded and handed the jewelry back.
“Thank you. That was quite powerful. Only you and Susannah ever wore it.”
Holly managed a nod, fumbling to fasten it back around her left wrist.
“Kate, could you begin, please?”
The Apothecary went to the altar and from the pockets of her robe brought forth four small bags. “Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—believe it or not.” She smiled. She upended each bag of fresh leaves in a different bowl, saying, “Parsley, a grave-offering in Roman times. Sage, against negative energy. Thyme for divination. And rosemary, of course, for remembrance. She who is remembered, lives,” she finished softly, and returned to her place.
Lydia censed the Circle with a sweet-smelling smoke Lachlan couldn’t identify. Simon used a small twine-wrapped bundle of leaves dipped in his chalice to sprinkle water gently around. Then the long wooden stick Ian held sprouted a flame at its top without his having touched it with a match; if Lachlan hadn’t seen Holly do this, he would have flinched. Each of them finished the assigned task with the words, “She who is remembered, lives.”
Gradually he became aware that Bradshaw was studying him from across the Circle. His Honor looked even worse tonight than he had on Saturday. Grief had aged him, carving lines on his face like fine Chinese calligraphy. Having observed him in the courtroom, Lachlan had thought that most of his gravitas came with the black robe and the gavel. Now he saw the power Elias Bradshaw wielded as a Magistrate. Harsh, dedicated power; more often ruthless than compassionate.
“I conjure and invoke the Sovereign of the East, the power of Air,” Bradshaw said suddenly, raising his athame to sketch a pentagram over the tall yellow candle on the floor beside Alec. But he did not continue to the South, as Holly had done at Beltane; instead he moved to Ian in the North, then Nicholas in the West, and finally Martin in the South. Counterclockwise—widdershins, Holly termed it. Lachlan wondered why the Quarters had been called backwards—maybe because Lydia was trying to sense the past?
“The Circle is now cast,” Bradshaw finished. “We are between worlds, beyond the boundaries of time, where nig
ht and day, death and birth, sorrow and joy, ending and beginning meet as one.”
Again, a difference. Holly had used the same words, only the pairings had been expressed in reverse.
“In this place,” the Magistrate added, “let she who is remembered, live.”
“So mote it be,” responded his Circle, including Alec and Nick.
Holly unwrapped a large square of black silk, and slid the wrinkled original page of music notation onto the altar without touching it. With her great-grandmother’s silver dagdyne she pricked her left ring finger—the wedding finger, where his own grandmother’s diamond was, the finger said to have a vein connected directly to the heart. She touched the drop of blood to a dry, leafy tree branch. A pause while more blood welled; she smeared this on the leaves, and again, and again. Her hands were shaking. She called fire to the branch differently than he had ever seen her do it, the flame leaping to the leaves from the white candle on the altar. Bone-dry wood and desiccated leaves ignited at once.
“She who is remembered,” Holly whispered, “lives.”
Placing the branch in a tall cut-crystal vase, she stood to the left of the altar, folding her hands inside flowing white sleeves.
Lydia overturned one bowl of herbs onto the page, gazed by the light of Holly’s strange torch, and shook her head. She blew the crushed leaves away and tried the second bowl. And the third. With the fourth, a spark from the branch sputtered onto the herbs. Smoke rose. Lydia caught her breath, then shook the embers from the singed paper before they could ignite.
Smoothing the page flat on the altar, she paused, hands spread over and then onto it. Her huge dark eyes fixed on the shadows dancing over the page, and when she spoke it was with Susannah’s clipped New England accents, dryly sarcastic.
“Oh, good, you’re back. I was getting a little tired of counting the rats.”
A small wounded sound came from deep in Bradshaw’s throat.
“This? Just writing some music—I do that when I’m bored, and you left me my briefcase. Did you think I wrote the ransom demand for you? Lydia’s delicate fingers clenched, crushing the paper as Susannah must have.”What do you mean, making notes for my next book? What’re you talking about?”
Lachlan bit both lips, abruptly knowing what must come next.
“Oh, God — you mean you think I’m —” Her voice changed, and with cutting authority she said, “You’ve made the most pathetic mistake. My name is Susannah Wingfield, and I work for Judge Elias Sutton Bradshaw. I suggest you release me before this becomes any more preposterous than it already is.”
There was another brief silence. Then: “You must be Noel. Will you please tell your pair of village idiots they got the wrong blonde?”
All at once Lydia’s voice changed again: deeper, menacing. Masculine. “Did you think to check a book-cover photo before you grabbed a green-eyed blonde from the courthouse? Did you bother to think at all?”
A minute passed, then another.
Susannah again, this time in a whisper. “Don’t go stupid on me, Holly — you have to remember—”
Lachlan could almost see it, and a glance at Bradshaw confirmed that he was seeing it: Susannah retrieving the paper, stuffing it into her pocket where it would no longer contact her skin or retain her memories—thank God. Because the next person to touch it would be the cop who found her beneath the cypress trees.
“Poor girl. She looks a bit like my youngest, doesn’t she, Glen?” Pause. “Looks like her neck’s been snapped. At least she went quick.”
Lydia drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. Her hands unclenched from the page. She glanced at Holly, then Elias, as she said, “Nothing else.”
Holly plunged the last smoldering leaves into a crystal bowl to extinguish the fire. She was sickly pale, her freckles smears across nose and cheekbones. Evan wanted to go to her, but Elias was speaking again—and in a voice that reemphasized the power Lachlan had sensed in him earlier.
“I thank the Guardians of Air and Fire, Earth and Water, for watching over us this night. As we re-enter the world of birth and death, day and night, joy and sorrow, beginning and ending, we remind ourselves: she who is remembered, lives.”
“So mote it be,” Holly responded gently.
A few minutes later, when everyone had moved from their places in the Circle to put away implements, Lachlan figured it was okay to join Holly beside the altar. She looked up at him, eyes brimming, and leaned into the shelter of his arm.
Just that simply, they were back in the world. The room was nothing more than a room with an interesting pattern on the floor. Lachlan wondered why he didn’t feel a little more wobbly about it—why, indeed, he didn’t feel any sort of dislocation at all. Glancing at the other members of the Circle, he mused that perhaps this was because they all treated this as perfectly normal, perfectly natural.
If you saw a camel, your reaction would depend on the circumstances. At the zoo or in Egypt, a camel wasn’t a big deal. In Gramercy Park, however … He grinned to himself, for he’d just seen a camel, right here in Gramercy Park, and it hadn’t freaked him one bit.
“Elias,” Holly was saying, “do you need us for anything else?”
What suddenly startled him wasn’t the camel; it was that he was included among those who found the camel perfectly routine.
“Not right now.” Bradshaw, looking weary, pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Lydia and I will be working on some things for the next couple of days. Keep your head down, Spellbinder.”
“Understood,” Lachlan replied for her. “C’mon, Holly, let’s go.”
She had the decency to wait until they were in the car, then let him have it. “Don’t you even begin to think I’m going to be locked up like some animal in a zoo!”
As he pulled the BMW away from the curb, he said, “Bradshaw pulled strings and got me a new assignment—and you’re it. Like it or lump it, lady —”
“The perfect bodyguard, is that it? What, he figures I’ll be so busy with your body that I won’t notice I’m being guarded?”
“Pretty much. Alec and Nicky are coming over later, by the way.” He grinned over at her furious scowl. “Tomorrow they’ll redo all the wardings at your place. I invited them to stay for the duration.”
“Goddammit, Lachlan —”
“Yeah, that’s my redheaded powder keg,” he approved. “I’ll take the long way home so you can get it all out of your system before we go to bed, okay?”
“Don’t work me, Evan!” she snarled.
“Don’t play me, Holly,” he advised. “You’ll lose.”
DENISE HAD NOT LEFT HER apartment since hearing Susannah Wingfield was dead. Fear kept her inside, pacing, unable to steep — unable even to lie down in the bed where she’d had Evan Lachlan. She knew who had killed Bradshaw’s girlfriend. Instinct, magical awareness, whatever—she knew Noel was responsible and she knew she was in danger.
He hadn’t communicated with her at all after the disaster of Beltane last year. She’d been too spooked by that night, and then too furious over her legal woes, to think of him with anything but a cold shudder, positive that if she tried to trade him for immunity, he’d come for her and kill her, too. Once the prosecutors backed off from Bradshaw’s court to huddle over whether they had enough to indict in Suffolk County, she’d been legally able to leave the state. Fleeing to New Orleans, she laid low and decided to get in some serious study with a local griot. The Magistrate, Jean-Michel, had issued a warning about causing any trouble whatsoever, informing her that he knew Elias Bradshaw had her Measure. Denise had behaved herself perfectly, immersing herself in esoterica and finishing her next book.
Which, when it came out, sold so well that it prevented Holly McClure’s pathetic little historical potboiler from rising any further than number six on the best-seller lists. Confidence restored, lawyers optimistic, and skills enhanced, she returned to New York. Though she still didn’t know who had given her name to the police — she sus
pected Bradshaw himself, it would be just like him, the bastard—the death of Scott Fleming was ancient history. Noises were still being made about indictments, and the Reverend was still getting mileage out of the tragedy and the contretemps with Marshal Lachlan, but Denise sensed herself safe enough.
And, remembering Marshal Lachlan, she spent what time she could spare from signings and parties cooking up something really luscious. Needing a few supplies, Denise had steeled herself and visited Noel’s shop. He wasn’t there. But the second week in September he phoned, telling her he was planning a little get-together for Samhain, and would she like to be there? He actually had the balls to say he again wanted her to be the Altar.
She hung up on him and changed her phone number.
Then Susannah Wingfield was killed.
Denise was terrified, but she had to get out of her apartment. She’d go insane if she didn’t. Just a walk down to the corner bar for a drink—the sheer ordinariness of the idea was too compelling to resist. She dressed, ensured she had not one but three protective pouches—two in her purse, one in her pocket and left her building.
She paused beneath the awning, shaking her head when the doorman offered to flag down a cab. She shivered slightly, underdressed for the crisp autumn day. The season had abruptly changed in the days she’d been shut indoors, and her jacket was inadequate to the wind off the river.
“Good afternoon,” said a pleasant voice at her shoulder, and she whirled around to find a tall, graying, roguishly handsome man smiling down at her. “Heading down the street to the bar, were you?”
Queasy with dread, she could only nod.
“You look a little chilly. Perhaps I might persuade you to consider taking refuge in the warmth of my car—ah, here it is,” he beamed as a silver Mercedes pulled up to the curb. His touch on her elbow was as light and as inexorably persuasive as his deep voice. “Allow me,” he said, opening the passenger door. “There, that’s right. Mind your head. Seat belt fastened—good.” He slid into the backseat and finished, “All secure. Let’s go.”
