Spellbinder: A Love Story With Magical Interruptions

by Melanie Rawn

  She was whisked away from the building before she could string two thoughts together. The driver was a man with blond hair and a chiseled profile, whose slender hands on the steering wheel bore a thin gold wedding ring on the left and a garnet on the right. She had no idea who he was.

  “Nicholas Orlov,” he said suddenly. “I don’t read minds. It was simply the obvious question. My friend is Alec Singleton. We are associates of Elias Bradshaw, who would like very much to hear what you have to say.”

  She had lots to say—mainly about getting the hell out of this car—and could give voice to none of it. Orlov flicked a glance at her from very blue eyes, a tiny smile playing around his lips.

  “But, as you may have noticed, you won’t be saying it just yet.”

  Denise was as silent and helpless and furious as she’d been when her Measure was taken. What did the Magistrate know? What did he expect her to tell him? Could she bluff her way through this? But why conceal anything? Bradshaw could be her best—her only — defense against Noel.

  She relaxed a little, and crossed her legs — wishing she’d worn a skirt instead of trousers, because even though the driver and his friend were a little old for her taste it never hurt to have an attractive man or two on one’s side.

  “NICE WORK,” BRADSHAW COMMENTED AS Denise was brought silently into his house. “No muss, no fuss.”

  “Always hire professionals,” Alec Singleton intoned pompously, dark eyes twinkling. “Where do you want her?”

  “The living room will do.”

  A few minutes later, Denise was seated on a brown corduroy sofa, and Singleton and Orlov had taken up position to one side of the empty fireplace. Bradshaw perched on the arm of an easy chair.

  “Comfortable, my dear?” Alec asked, and shrugged a little apology when she glowered at him. “Forgive our method, but the Magistrate does need to talk to you.”

  Elias didn’t care if she was comfortable or not, and resented Singleton’s intrusion. “Denise, you’re going to tell me everything you know, and you’re going to do it now—without commotion and without concealment. Do you understand me?”

  Sulkily, she nodded.

  “Nicky!” Alec admonished.

  “Oh—sorry,” he said, not sounding it in the least, and flicked an index finger.

  Denise gave a violent start, then sucked in a huge lungful of air as if she hadn’t breathed for days. “It wasn’t my fault!” she began, predictably enough. “Noel killed that kid—put his hands around his neck and snapped it!”

  This wasn’t quite the topic Bradshaw had in mind, but it would do for a start. “I never did think you killed Fleming. You don’t have the balls for it, literally or figuratively. I want to know everything you know about Noel. Everything. Now.”

  “He just showed up at The Hyacinths that night—I didn’t know he’d be there. I haven’t seen him since. I went to his store a while ago but he was gone. That’s all I know.”

  Orlov shifted slightly by the fireplace, but said nothing.

  Bradshaw went on, “He functioned as High Priest at Beltane?”

  “Yes. I was—I was the Altar.”

  “Perhaps,” Nick said, “he wishes you to play the same role at Samhain.” When Denise flinched, he added, “I knew she was leaving something out.”

  “Okay, okay, he called me! I hung up on him!”

  Elias nodded. “Tell me about the weekend Susannah was killed.”

  She looked if she wanted to turn him into something appreciably slimier than a toad. “My lawyer was in Manhattan, in court for something else. I met him there to talk about the Suffolk D.A.”

  “Keep talking,” Bradshaw advised. “There’s magic to mention, isn’t there?”

  “Yes!” Denise wrapped her arms around herself. “I was in the middle of a spell, changing my appearance a little —” When Orlov arched his brows, she snarled, “There was a man I wanted, okay?”

  This was the second time the partner who did Truth-See had behaved as if he was the partner who did. Elias puzzled at that for a moment.

  “So that’s why Noel’s people didn’t recognize her,” Alec said.

  She aged ten years. “Bon dieu de merde —they were after me?”

  “Yes,” Bradshaw said flatly. “You didn’t see any of them?”

  “Would he have killed me?”

  “Not likely. He wants you for his ritual, remember.”

  Alec said, “The snatch was a little early for Samhain, don’t you think?”

  Bradshaw dug his hands into his trouser pockets. “Perhaps Noel only wanted to talk to Denise in person. Persuade her to come willingly at the end of the month.” He regarded her again. “Continue. Tell me what happened next.”

  “I went home.”

  “And?” Orlov prompted.

  “All right! I finished the spell that evening—I expected him—the man—Saturday but he didn’t show up until Sunday. I heard on the news that night —” She broke off with a shiver. “That’s all. I’m telling you the truth!”

  “I have a question,” Nick said. “Does Noel know what Holly is?”

  “He — he may have guessed. I’m not sure—dammit, don’t do that!” she cried, cringing away from him. “I told him there’s a Spellbinder in New York, but I don’t know if he knows it’s her.”

  Elias saw Alec nod fractionally, and knew Denise was telling the truth. “Well, you’re what he wants, for the moment. And he’s going to get you.”

  “What?” she exploded. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  He drew from one pocket a length of golden cord. Denise turned white. “I think you’ll do as we ask. You’re fully aware that I know how to use this.” He smiled a tiny feral smile, and tucked the Measure away.

  She could be convinced arcanely, of course, but despite the gathered expertise of three skilled practitioners, he didn’t care to trust to spells. Denise he trusted not at all, except to look exclusively to her own welfare. But sufficiently convinced in what passed for her brain by a combination of the Measure’s threat and irrefutable logic — if he took care of Noel, she’d never have to worry about him again—she would do what he required, and of her own free will. All he need do was point out that their goal was basically the same: neutralize Noel. She seized on this instantly, which told him just how frightened she was.

  “But I’m not going there alone,” she insisted. “Somebody has to protect me.”

  Singleton exchanged glances with his partner. Bradshaw shook his head, saying, “You’re both too powerful. He’d feel it in an instant.”

  “And not you, either,” she stated.

  “I think I know someone who’d do, if he agrees.” Rising to his feet, he glanced out at the rain. “Go home and call Noel. If you can’t get him, leave a message. He’ll call back, I guarantee it. Tell him you’ve changed your mind and will be there at Samhain. He’ll be at The Hyacinths again, I assume?”

  “How should I know?”

  “When you find out where the ritual will be held, I’ll arrange for you to send me a message. Don’t phone or come over.”

  “She’s not stupid, Elias,” Alec murmured. “Be nice.”

  Nick shot him a speaking look; Denise, incredibly, almost smiled. After an incredulous second, Elias realized she thought she’d made a conquest—which evidently was just what Alec wanted her to think. And, he grasped an instant later, why the pair stood close together while Nick pretended to be reading her — even if she felt the trajectory of the magic, she couldn’t pinpoint it. Alec could do his work without seeming to, and then deploy the charm he also possessed in abundance.

  “Who’s going to protect me?” Denise was saying. To Alec. With green eyes wide and entreaty dripping from her voice like sap from a tree.

  Bradshaw smiled sweetly. “You’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?”

  “I think,” Nicholas said in baleful tones, “it’s time we took her home.”

  As Alec escorted her through the front door, Elias arched a
questioning brow at the Hungarian and murmured, “Nice act the two of you have. Any specific reason for it that I should know about?”

  “He likes to confuse—not difficult with that one,” Nick grunted. “Delightful girl. Do you have in mind the person I think you have in mind for her protection?”

  “I can’t think of anyone better, can you?”

  Twenty-five

  EVAN LEANED BACK IN HIS chair and blew out a long, long sigh. Even with all access restored and updated, Noel remained a mystery. Lachlan couldn’t even get a last name for him that stuck longer than three forged pieces of identification.

  “No parents, no birthplace, no childhood, no schooling, no employment history, no arrest records, no goddamned motherfucking anything!”

  Holly looked up from her laptop, squinting at him across the partners’ desk. “If you can’t find him, then he isn’t going to be found.”

  “I appreciate your faith, lady love,” he replied with a crooked grin, “but I’m not that good. Most criminals are fairly stupid, when you get right down to it. They always make a mistake—let something slip, return to an old haunt, forget to get rid of a piece of paper that’ll nail ’em.”

  “But Noel’s not just a criminal, is he? I mean, the real sociopaths never seem that way to anybody else. You’re always hearing in interviews about what a nice, quiet, polite guy the local serial killer was, before he started killing serially.”

  “Maybe I’m goin’at this wrong,” he mused. “Nick gave me what he got when Noel bought the shop, but none of it checks out back more than five years.” He shut down the computer and got to his feet, stretching. “What’re you workin’ on?”

  “My last will and testament.”

  He scowled at her. “Not funny.”

  “I’m just e-mailing Aunt Lulah to see if anything’s come up—I asked her to check with people she knows. Nothing will come of it, but I had to do something.”

  They were waiting for Alec and Nick to return from Bradshaw’s little tête-àtête with Denise, to which they had firmly not been invited. Just as well. All Evan lacked at this point was another encounter with that blonde bitch.

  “This is making me crazy,” Holly fretted. “I’m tired of sitting around waiting for something to happen. We’ve been working on all this for—” She peered at her desk calendar.

  “— two solid weeks and we’re no closer to finding out who or where Noel is. We can’t even find him!”

  He heard what she hadn’t said. “But you think you know what he’s up to.”

  She sipped iced coffee and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Let’s say for a minute that we believe in what he believes in, and especially in what he can do. Apparently he drew power from that boy’s death. He’s got a store full of esoteric books about deities willing—or unwilling — to supply power. Elias said that Lydia’s collection of symbols ties in to some of the nastiest entities anybody ever regretted hearing of.”

  Lachlan snorted. “He wants to become God? What for?”

  “I’ve never understood the impulse, either,” she agreed. “Power to make the world the way you want it —” She shook her head. “All the creator-gods gave humans free will. Take away that, and you’re left with the mindless devotion of inferiors and everything going along just the way it was planned—which would get pretty boring pretty quick, even for a god.”

  “Maybe he wants to destroy everything and start over.” He made a show of squinting at the windows. “Look like rain to you?”

  “Been there, done that, Noah-honey.” She grinned. “Next time’s supposed to be fire, isn’t it? Trying to predict when God will get cheesed off enough to end the world has occupied clerics of all persuasions for thousands of years.”

  “Makes ’em nervous. End the world, they’re out of a job. But I don’t think that applies to Noel. Maybe killing Scott Fleming was his first taste of power over life and death, and he wants more.”

  “I don’t understand that kind of warp, either,” she admitted. “But we have to think in terms of Samhain. It’s the night when the border between worlds blurs. That could mean that on any other night he wouldn’t have the chops to call up whatever it is he wants to call up.”

  “Even with your blood.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s that.” She chewed a thumbnail, then said, “Nobody ever did tell me about the night Scott Fleming died. Or why Denise got blamed for it. Or why she didn’t trade Noel for immunity or whatever.”

  Evan shrugged, determinedly not remembering the scant moments on Beltane when it had been Denise Josephe’s face he saw, not Holly’s. “Bradshaw thinks the place was sanitized magically. It’s the only way there’d be no evidence—and I mean none. No fingerprints, no trace for DNA, not even the family’s prints or DNA —”

  “Which you’d expect to find.”

  “Which you’d expect to find,” he agreed. “Fleming’s body on the floor was it. End of evidence. The only thing the cops did get was a pile of sworn statements from thirty-two witnesses that the owners were absolutely elsewhere.”

  “Let me guess—everybody was everybody else’s alibi.”

  “It stank to the Suffolk County detectives, too, but they couldn’t shake anybody loose. The only print they found was Denise’s, on one of the kid’s ear-cuff charms. Was Noel was good enough to wipe out everything else but not that? Not fuckin’ likely. She got set up.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a better person,” Holly growled.

  “Granted. As for why—maybe he wanted leverage with her. Maybe he got pissed at her for some reason and left her print so there’d be somebody to blame for the murder. As long as it wasn’t him, what did he care? It was a couple of days before the daughter discovered the body—or so they claimed. She went into hysterics, her folks had her committed for the summer, and then they put the house on the market and moved to Florida.”

  “Keeping her out of the way during the investigation, and tagging her as delusional so even if she accused Noel, nobody’d believe her.”

  “You have a twisted, diabolical mind, you know that?” He grinned.

  “It’s why you adore me.” She gave a start as the doorbell chimed. “They took long enough!” She ran to let Alec and Nick in.

  Coffee was poured as Nick reset the alarms—both electronic and magical — and soon they were in the living room. Alec gave them the essence of Denise’s story, then fixed Evan with an inquisitive gaze. “How’d you like to make yourself useful?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Alec told him, finishing with, “You’ll have every protection we can give you without making it too obvious.”

  “I thought Bradshaw wanted me to guard Holly, not that slut.”

  Nick arched a brow. “You know her?”

  “Seen her once or twice at book parties,” Lachlan said with a shrug. And because no one would ever suspect him of being less than truthful where such serious business was concerned, they were unaware that he wasn’t exactly lying.

  “You’re not leaving this building, Evan,” Holly told him.

  “Darling girl,” Alec said, “it’s not as if he’ll be walking into the middle of a Working. He just has to pretend he’s a Satanist so he can find and arrest Noel.”

  “With Denise as a complaining witness,” Nick added, “Evan can read him his rights over the murder of Scott Fleming. It’s thin, but it’ll be enough to keep him locked up until after Samhain.”

  “Forty-eight hours to arraign or release,” Evan agreed. “So Denise leads me to this guy, I flash my badge, cuff him, haul him off to jail, and that’s it.” Slanting a look at Holly, he had the nerve to grin. “You’ve got that look in your eye.”

  “Which one?” Alec asked, fighting a smile.

  “Which look, or which eye?” Evan countered.

  Holly’s jaw hardened. “Has it occurred to you that a year ago you were, shall we say, somewhat visible in the media? What if Noel recognizes you?”

  He was just as glad that luring fugitive
felons had taught him strict discipline over his expression, and let somebody else answer her.

  Alec obliged. “Good point, but it’s my opinion that Noel hasn’t even been in the city this last year. A visit to the store last July revealed that his assistant manager—a nice young lady who didn’t tell a single lie—had been left in charge while he was on vacation. As this holiday coincided with the indictment of Mademoiselle Josèphe, I think it can be assumed he skipped town in case she ratted on him.”

  Nick went to the bar and poured a tot of Drambuie into his coffee. “We also went to his residence the day after we arrived in New York. No food in the fridge, no clothes in the closets, no computer, and a landlord who was persuaded to tell us that Noel’s mail has been redirected since last July to General Delivery in some dreary little town—Moose Drool, Montana, or something equally improbable. We also left a little something that would stick to him—”

  “Think of it as the dye that explodes in a wrapped stack of stolen cash,” Alec suggested.

  “—but we haven’t been able to track him down,” Nick finished. “He must have sensed and negated it.”

  “Speaking of cash,” Evan said, “the owners of The Hyacinths withdrew fifty grand two days after Beltane. That reeks payoff to me. He takes the cash, holes up in Buffalo Chip, Wyoming, or wherever for a year — he couldn’t have seen any of the media. So I’m okay.” He grinned. “Who should I be—Dillon, Wyatt, or McCloud?”

  Baffled, Nick looked at his partner for enlightenment. Alec began to laugh. “The man has no shame at all.”

  “And no sense, either,” Holly snapped. “You’re not doing this, Evan.”

  “Nicholas,” Alec said decisively, “come with me to the kitchen. We need more coffee.”

  “I’m fine, still have half a—” His eyes widened. “Ah … yes. You’re right, I do need more coffee.”