by Melanie Rawn
Fleming was silent for a moment. Then: “You intend to kill him.”
The others looked at Bradshaw or looked away. As well they ought, he told himself; he was, after all, Magistrate. The decision was his.
“You must not kill him,” insisted the Reverend. “You would be no better than he Is—and his soul would burn forever in Hell.”
“This is not your concern,” Bradshaw began.
“Every life is precious!”
“I know where you’re going with this, and you won’t get there with me marching in lockstep alongside,” Elias snapped. “Life is what we do with it—and the man is a murderer. He killed your son and my Susannah, and—”
“You must not!” the Reverend thundered. “In the courtroom they address you as ‘Your Honor.’ As a man of honor, if not a man of God, you must not kill him! I know I can’t persuade you with Holy Writ—”
“Please don’t quote John Donne,” he interrupted wearily. “I can’t see any way that this man’s death would diminish me or anyone else. The bell can toll all night long—I’ll pull the rope.”
“I hate him, too, Judge Bradshaw. But his death would indeed diminish me, for I would be left with my hate. Until I can look him in the eye and forgive him, and know that he knows of my forgiveness—”
“Does he want it? Would he accept it? Don’t make me laugh!”
“He has to know that I forgive what he did to my son! In that is his hope of salvation—and mine. And yours, whether you want to admit it or not! We diminish ourselves with hate and exalt ourselves with forgiveness, with love, with joy—”
“Whatever happened to joy?”
Bradshaw turned away from him, not wanting him to see how his use of that word, Susannah’s word, shook him. “This isn’t your pulpit, Reverend. Save it for next Sunday.” He was about to impress upon all of them once again that there was no time for any of this, when a new arrival made Elias’s day an unqualified triumph. A big green Jeep Cherokee with a blinking red dashboard light appeared around a bend in the road, slowed, passed them, turned, and finally came to a stop with its nose two inches from the white Cadillac’s grille.
From the Jeep slid a slim dark woman wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket. “Nice try, Your Honor,” said Deputy Marshal Leah Towsley. “But the next time you throw a party, pick someplace warmer.”
“HERE,” HOLLY SAID. “It’s strongest right here.” She sneezed.
She and Nick had been around the mansion once again, peering in dark windows when they dared, the floodlights showing them the house had been stripped of furniture. Twice now she’d buried her nose in her woolen sleeve to smother a sneeze. Now they paused at the far end of the house, where the servants’ hall and kitchen would have been in bygone days. Steps led down to a service door; nearby there was an iron drawer where coal had been delivered a century or so ago. Next to this was a series of arched windows draped by black cloth and locked tight.
“Now what?” She squinted at Nicky in the darkness, absently rubbing her irritated nose.
“Now I find out if I can bring him out here.” Treading lightly down the stairs, he tried the service door. “Marvelous. It’s unlocked, but I can’t open it. And no, it isn’t stuck by paint or rust or anything else.” Beckoning her down the steps with one hand while the other delved into a pants pocket, he said, “My dear, I’m going to have to ask you for a little blood. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. What for?” Holly dug in her coat pocket for needle and alcohol swabs.
“I still have that turquoise from all those years ago.” He held it up, the nearby floodlight glancing off the opaque blue — and several other stones, she saw with surprise. The bloodstone-and-carnelian token Lulah had given Alec, a lump of raw amethyst, and a ragged little branch of pink coral all depended from a short silver chain. Nick took the needle to hold while she opened a sterilizing pad and swiped it across her thumb. “These have proved very useful, one way and another.”
“Which do you want, Spellbinder? Or maybe all of them?”
“Well, I don’t know that we’ll have much use for the bloodstone’s protection against scorpions and gallstones, but I would like to open this door.” He chuckled softly. “Then again, the part about strengthening the sense of smell might be hazardous to your poor nose. Pity one can’t pick and choose what one unleashes.”
From the brick walkway above them Alec Singleton said, “I, on the other hand, am perfectly capable of picking you both up and choosing to haul your asses out of here.”
“Mi a kurva’k fasza’t keresel itt?” Nicholas exclaimed.
Alec descended the steps. “What the fuck I’m doing here is pretty much what the fuck you’re doing here. I’d expect dim-witted behavior from Holly, but I thought you of all people would know better than to —”
“Oh, shut up, Alyosha,” Nick said. “I assume Elias and the rest are hot on your heels. Let’s get this done.”
Taking the needle from Nick, Holly pricked her thumb and squeezed up a drop of blood. “All of them, or just the bloodstone? And I’m sure there’s a pun in there somewhere, but I’m not inclined to go looking for it right now.”
“You shut up, too,” Nick admonished. “All the stones. We’ll divvy them up.” When the five stones were blooded, he unlatched the chain and let them slide into his palm. “Alyosha, take the coral and the turquoise. I’m keeping the bloodstone and carnelian. Which leaves the amethyst for you, Holly—appropriate, it’s February’s birthstone.”
“It’d do more good protecting one of you,” she argued.
“Az Istenért!” he snarled. “Take it!”
She did, meekly, knowing that when he spoke Hungarian—or was that Rom? — more than usual, things were grim. She clenched her fingers around the amethyst for a moment before putting it in her pants pocket.
“Now,” Nick said, “we begin.” He faced the door, holding the carnelian and bloodstone in his left hand. With his right he drew a pattern in the air, while under his breath he muttered a few syllables. Hinges creaked, wood splintered, and the door flung itself open to slam back against the interior wall.
“Not bad,” Alec remarked.
“You’re welcome,” Holly replied, scratching her nose in earnest. “Can we get on with this before I need a respirator?”
EVAN FELT A HOLLOW TINGLING begin in his chest, more or less like the sensation he sometimes got when a lure-and-lasso was about to get sticky. He slanted a look at Denise. “How’s your nose?”
“Hurts.” Denise sniffled and tilted her head back. “I think it’s stopped bleeding, though.”
“You’re getting a black eye.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.” He surprised himself by meaning it. A little, anyway.
“Que vous êtes gallant, Monsieur le Mareschal. I’ve been hit harder. Bet you have, too.”
Lachlan shrugged. “He’s been gone awhile. Maybe he got lost.”
“Or maybe Holly really is here.” She slanted a glance at him. “What a wound to your machismo—a woman riding to your rescue.”
Lachlan only smiled. The expression felt a little wobbly on his face, as if the signals to his nerves were off-kilter. He tried to squirm, imagining that he might be stuck a little less adamantly to the bench. No such luck. After a moment’s silence he offered, “What time do you think it is?”
“Maybe midnight, maybe not. Like it matters.”
She was neither hysterical nor particularly loopy; Noel’s fist in her face had unleashed some adrenaline in her, too. Lachlan reasoned that he could gauge how loaded they both were if he kept her talking. Not that he was terribly interested in anything she might say. “The bit about the animals was kinda weird. You do a lot of that with Voudon?”
“There are prototypes —”
“Archetypes,” he corrected. Jeeze, he was getting as pedantic as Holly.
“Stereotypes, genotypes, typographical errors, what-the-fuck-ever. I never
expected a cop to be such an intellect—oh, but wait, you hang out with the Professor, right? She give you a pop quiz now and then, just to make sure you’re paying attention when she lectures?”
This didn’t deserve a comeback—especially as he’d just been thinking more or less the same thing—so Lachlan let his attention stray to the cellar. Before hurtling up the stairs, Noel had waved a hand to light every candle in the place, and the heat of the flames added to the stink of incense was stifling. The light showed him something he hadn’t noticed until now: black statues of birds, none more than a few inches high. Some stood with outspread wings, and others hunkered down like pissed-off parakeets. Idly he began to count them, and wondered what significance attached to the number sixteen. Song lyrics began to drift around in his brain: sixteen candles, sixteen tons and whaddya get, sweet little sixteen—
Suddenly Denise said, “At Beltane last year, he killed Scott Fleming right at the moment of orgasm.”
“The ‘sex and death’ thing.” With a sigh and a shake of his head, Lachlan said, “Y’know, I really don’t believe this guy.”
“Be better if you did. Something else I remember from Beltane. He thinks it’s harder to hex somebody who believes, because he’s protecting himself.”
“Watching his step,” Evan interpreted. “Taking no chances.”
“Somebody who doesn’t believe, he’s easier. He shoves any instinctive fear deep inside where it can fester and work against him.”
“Leaves him open to the workings of the curse,” he interpreted.
“Very good, Marshal. There may be hope for you yet.”
But fear wasn’t something that could invade from outside. It was already there. You could choose to control it, and not to let it be used against you. Or use it yourself. Anger wasn’t the only emotion that triggered adrenaline.
Suddenly the house spasmed around them, stone grinding on stone. Evan watched plaster dust sift down through the smog layer of incense smoke, and realized that a nice, healthy surge of his own fight-or-flight chemicals wasn’t going to be all that difficult to accomplish.
BRADSHAW PACED TO THE BROKEN white line, seething. Somehow, this was Holly’s fault. He wasn’t sure quite what her responsibility was, but he was certain it would all come down to her in the end. Just his luck: the only Magistrate to have a genuine Spellbinder on call, and she’d caused him more trouble in the scant two years he’d known her than anybody else in his entire life.
Three Witches of his Circle stood beside a country road arguing with a fundamentalist reverend. Two Witches had escaped him completely and were doing who-knew-what to free a woman he detested and a U.S. Marshal he didn’t much like, either. Two more Witches were gallivanting around Long Island in a Porsche convertible, lost. His Spellbinder was behaving like a jackass, as usual. And now his very own United States Deputy Marshal had arrived, which put the cherry atop the icing on the cake.
Hell of a Hallowe’en.
“This is ludicrous,” he muttered. And, for the first time in a very long time, he cast the kind of spell that had gotten quite a few ancestors — who also should have known better — into interesting predicaments. With both hands he built a precise framework of Power around everyone and everything before him. With the strength of a fine, disciplined mind he constructed lattices linking Kate, Simon, Lydia, and Reverend Fleming into an edifice of absolute stillness and absolute silence.
Turning, he fixed his gaze on Leah Towsley, who alone of them all could still move. In fact, she had moved. Her jaw had dropped.
“We’re leaving,” Elias told her. “Now.”
She looked at the four people beyond him, blinked, faced him again, all but saluted, and got back into her Jeep. Bradshaw swung up into the passenger’s seat as she gunned the engine.
“Not a single question,” he warned. “Not one. Drive where I tell you, Marshal.”
“Absolutely, Your Honor.”
Finally, he thought, a woman who did what he told her to.
Twenty-nine
ALEXANDER SINGLETON SURVEYED THE WRECKAGE of the stone steps and the kitchen’s outer wall. Nick’s emphatic opening of the door had been presaged by an ominous rumbling; Alec had barely hauled his partner and Holly up the steps in time. Now, waving a hand to clear away the dust that had Holly sneezing in earnest, he cast a sour look at his partner.
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“High-octane blood. But perhaps we’d better do this from outside.”
“Aw, gee—ya think?” Holly asked, rubbing her nose.
“What I think is that we probably got Noel’s attention.”
“Well, then, why don’t you continue your little home improvement project, and I’ll go see what Evan’s up to?”
“Nothing doing, girl,” Alec ordered. “You stay with us until Noel appears and we’ve dealt with him. Then you can rush to the rescue.”
Though she looked rebellious, she followed the two men around back, where a glassed-in octagonal garden room protruded onto the lawn.
“Now that,” Nick mused, “would make a perfectly lovely crash.”
“Musical, even,” Holly agreed a bit ruthlessly.
“Restrain yourselves,” Alec advised. Speculative sidelong glances from two pairs of blue eyes ought to have warned him, but he couldn’t keep from catching his breath on a curse when the stonework traceries between windows rasped, shuddered, and collapsed, the glass shattering with them.
Even Nick took a few startled steps back, but the grin he turned on Alec made him look about twelve years old. “No wonder you never let me play with the bloodstone. It’s fun!”
“Yeah, no wonder I never let you play with it,” he retorted, ducking reflexively as more splintered panes tinkled down from twisted and sagging framework. “We can’t go around demolishing things at random. There’s such a thing as load-bearing walls. You’re the only one with protection, Nick.”
“Spoilsport. Let’s see if I can coerce him out into the open.” But a few moments later Nick shook his head in frustration. “I can’t read him. There’s something between him and the rest of the world, some sort of personal murk.”
Holly gave him a little smile Alec didn’t understand, and said, “I’m told that happens sometimes. Don’t push it. When he comes out of hiding, and you can actually see him —”
“Maybe it’s not him,” Nick mused. “Maybe it’s this place. More than one murder was done here. It’s as if the deaths were absorbed by the stones, and pulling them apart has set free some kind of—I don’t know, corruption.”
“He can’t keep ignoring us,” said Holly. “Sooner or later he’ll have to come out and see what’s going on. Nicky, do your thing again.”
They started around the house once more, striding through damp grass, searching for something else to demolish. “How about that turret hanging off the second floor?” Nick asked.
Standing well back from the round projecting tower, Alec scrutinized it, judged it safe to demolish, and nodded to his partner. Nick gripped carnelian and bloodstone, muttered a few words, grimaced with effort. The turret shivered, stone dust sifting, trickling, and finally pouring from loosened joints. With a scraping groan, the tower separated from the house and crashed to the ground.
“I do hope their insurance is paid up,” Nick remarked. “What will they attribute this to? Termites? No, it’s mostly stone. How about a freak hurricane?”
“Deeply as I worship and adore you, Miklóshka,” Alec grinned, “I doubt you qualify as an act of God. My own hope is that The Hyacinths isn’t on the National Register of Historic Eccentricities or something else that’ll get you into trouble.”
“Me?!”
As they walked shoulder to shoulder, scanning for more targets, Alec said, “One more crash, and then try to suss him out again, okay? Holly —”
But when he looked around for her, she was gone.
Those fingers in my hair, that sly come-hither stare.
That strips my c
onscience bare—it’s witchcraft.
At first Lachlan thought he was hallucinating again. Then he realized that somebody really was singing. Not Denise; the song came from the stairwell. Peering through the thick mists of incense, he blinked several times as the hazy image of a gigantic purple hyacinth flower swayed languidly about three feet in front of his face. Yeah, he was hallucinating.
He was positive of it when Holly sauntered into view on the stairs as if this were a cocktail party. Lachlan had seen her do this a dozen times: take a casual step, pause as she scanned the environs, and then decide whether or not there was anyone here worth talking to. This time the blue eyes considered the candles, bird statuary, bowls, incense burners, stone bench, Denise, and finally Lachlan himself. A little smile touched her lips, and her heeled boots clicked softly on the flagstones as she took another two steps down.
“Hi, darlin’,” she greeted him.
“Hi, yourself,” he replied. Delusion or not, it sure was nice to see her.
She scratched her nose, and all at once gave a ferocious sneeze that sent her stumbling, grabbing for the wall, and falling hard down the last two stairs to her knees, swearing vilely the whole time.
Denise stirred vaguely beside him. “The Ego,” she announced, “has landed.” Holly sat on the bottom step, sprawling long legs, and scrubbed at her nose with her fist. The crown of her head was just below the level of smoke. She peered at Evan, then at the incense burners all around the room. A gesture incinerated every remaining speck of incense, four huge gouts of flame erupting in a gush of heat that brought sweat to Lachlan’s face and bare chest. An instant later, nothing was left but cinders and a smell of scorching.
“Well, fuck a duck, as they say in Oregon,” she muttered. “You okay, Evan?”
