“You were right about that,” he agreed neutrally. “It’s someone else I’m looking for now, though. Selena Fox.”
There was an uneasy flicker in the witch’s eyes. She looked away. “I can’t help you.”
“Well, you see, I think you can,” Garrett said. He kept his voice casual, but there was an edge.
She shook her head. “I have no idea where Selena is. She hasn’t lived in Salem for some time. But I can tell you this. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll find you. And if she doesn’t, you won’t.”
Garrett looked at her, startled. She gazed at him intently—no, not at him, but somehow a bit above him, and to the sides. “Are you sure you don’t want a reading? Your aura doesn’t look good.”
Garrett had to bite his tongue. “I bet it doesn’t. Thanks anyway.”
Though he knew it was pointless, he drove by Book of Shadows. The shop was itself a shadow against the darkening sky and there was yellow police tape crossed on the door.
For no reason that he could think of, he got out of the car and moved up on the sidewalk to stand just before the porch stairs.
The cornstalks were still lashed to the porch columns, and Garrett wondered briefly what Palmer and Morelli and the other officers had made of that.
There was a stirring of wind, and then he felt an unsettling sense of presence behind him, the visceral sensation of being watched. Garrett turned quickly—
—to see a flash of pale skin, a shock of fiery red hair, as a slight, agile figure darted toward the bushes beside the house, heading straight on toward the thick hedge. Garrett tensed and reached automatically for his weapon, before he remembered that it was in lockup at Schroeder; he’d had to turn it over.
And then, unbelievably, the figure seemed to melt into the greenery, disappearing into the hedge with no crash of branches, no rustle of leaves.
Garrett stared.
After a moment he strode toward the hedge. He pushed the branches aside where the figure had vanished—melted—and was startled to see a solid brick wall. There was no gate, no opening through which a person could have exited.
This is crazy, he told himself. I saw him. Her. It.
Garrett stood in consternation, then looked behind him. The street was deserted, no cars coming and no sound of any approaching vehicle.
Garrett reached up to put his hands flat on top of the wall and pushed himself up, swung a leg over.
The wall enclosed a luxurious garden, deserted and luminous in the twilight. Garrett dropped to the ground and looked around him, quickly taking in a landscape design laid out in a spiral, with a profusion of flowering plants: white roses and gardenias and some kind of big white daisy, and the large pale bells of deadly nightshade, all glowing under the moonlight. In one flower bed was a very feminine statue, draped in a marble gown so flowing that every curve of its body was revealed. One corner of the yard held a graceful white gazebo, a water fountain whispered from another corner, and the fragrance of gardenia and lavender and roses mingled in the cooling air, subtle and intoxicating. A line from some poem or play floated through Garrett’s head: “Soft moonlight sleeps upon the bank . . .”
Then a living shape popped up in front of him so quickly he caught his breath—and stared, eyes widening. What the hell is this?
The garden was dark, but he could tell instantly that the—boy?—standing in front of him was strange, small and slight, with fiery red hair and pale freckled face and pointed nose and pointed chin. The hair was longish, covering his—its—ears, but Garrett had to forcibly stop himself from imagining points on the tips of those, too. The boy wore thonged leather sandals and short tan trousers and some tuniclike open weave sweater of coarse cloth. It was impossible to tell—its—his—age.
The boy grinned and there were points on his teeth as well, as if the canines had been filed, and his eyes were slits of blue fire.
“Who are you?” Garrett managed. The boy shook his head, still grinning, and waved an index finger in front of his face. Then his hand moved so fast Garrett had no time to react, and he was whipping something out of the tunic, though the motion was such a blur that something white seemed to simply materialize in the boy’s hand.
In his palm was something the size and shape of a business card, which he presented to Garrett with a mock bow. Garrett’s fingers had no sooner closed on it than the boy turned and lifted his arms to his sides, spinning in a circle like a child, like a top. Then he suddenly broke into a run, straight for a hedge of night-blooming jasmine growing in front of the garden wall.
This time Garrett was anticipating the boy’s move and grabbed for him. His fingers closed around nothing and he stumbled, nearly falling on his face on the path. He threw himself upright and looked wildly around him . . .
He saw a flash of white by the hedge and said sharply, “Wait”—but the branches had closed around the boy without so much as a rustle.
What the fuck?
And when Garrett shoved his way through the branches, he came up against the stone wall again.
He backed out of the branches, caught his breath, and looked down at the card in his hand. It was not a normal business card, but a bit smaller and longer, gold-embossed letters on heavy stock. Calling card, his mind said, and he had no idea how he really knew that. The card held an address in Cambridge, and the handwritten notation: 10:00 A.M.
Nothing more.
Garrett turned and looked around him. The garden was empty . . . he was alone in the light of the rising moon.
And once again he was left with the shaky feeling of reality crumbling around him.
Chapter Forty-two
The address was an elegant old Cambridge house, a two-story stone Tudor in one of those unattainable dream neighborhoods with lush backyard gardens, waterfalls and arbors, and trellises and terraces.
The tall woman who answered the carved oak door was as aristocratic as her house; at what must have been past seventy she was still as slim, upright, and graceful as a dancer, her years only slightly softening classic aquiline features. She wore a loose silk caftan in shimmering apricots, creams, and golds, and looked Garrett over with penetrating sky-blue eyes.
Garrett silently handed her the card.
“You’re prompt.” She smiled at him without introducing herself. “I like that.” She stepped aside so that he could enter the hall. Garrett’s eyes swept the rooms that he could see from the entry; they were large and light, and crammed with antiques, real oil paintings, silk rugs on hardwood floors gleaming with age.
“If you’ll follow me,” she said, and glided down the hall past equally elegant rooms toward a high arch of double glass doors. She opened a door for him and Garrett stepped into an atrium with octagonal walls of glass enclosing a jungle of exotic plants, from orchids to tropical trees and all manner of flowers with riotous colors and voluptuous blossoms. The atrium overlooked the garden, and autumn sunlight poured through the walls of glass. As Garrett followed the older woman through the greenery, they passed a waterfall whispering into a series of connecting pools; Garrett caught glimpses of fat pale fish through the green water, in the same colors his hostess was wearing. He half expected to hear the calls of tropical birds.
Sure enough, as they slipped through an arrangement of plants that opened up into a seating area of wicker furniture, he was confronted with a cream-colored cockatoo perched on a stand.
The woman indicated a wicker sofa with a wave of her hand and seated herself on one of twin wicker chairs with high arched backs. On the low table in front of her was a silver tray with a tea service and a plate of cakes. “Would you like tea, or something stronger?”
Garrett remained standing. “I’m sorry, I like to know who I’m eating with.”
She smiled at him. “Oh, come now, Detective Garrett—surely we can dispense with the obvious.”
“Selena Fox?” he asked sharply.
“That will do.”
Garrett wasn’t in the mood for word games. “Where i
s she?” he demanded.
“In time,” Fox said serenely as she poured amber liquid into eggshell-thin cups. She lifted the cup and saucer toward him.
Garrett stared at her. “Lately I’m not so hot on drinking anything a witch hands me.”
Fox lifted her shoulders, a smooth, lithe gesture. “I can understand your reluctance. Still, don’t you find the end sometimes justifies the means?”
Garrett’s mind wanted to rebel against the elliptical conversation, but he honed in immediately on what she was implying: the drugged trip Tanith had induced in him had led to the discovery of McKenna’s house.
His face hardened. “My partner is in Mass General, lying in a coma. I don’t think that end justifies anything.”
The older woman’s eyes contracted in sympathy. “I’m very sorry about that, Detective. I think you’re misattributing the cause, however.” The sound of water from the fountain echoed, a whisper against the glass around them.
Garrett finally sat, though he didn’t reach for the tea. “What do you want from me? Why did you call me here?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I understood it was you who were looking for me.”
His eyes narrowed. You’re not going to trip me out with these witch games. That shopkeeper called you and said I’d been by asking for you, that’s all there is to it. Then his mind flashed on the strange red-haired boy. “Who”—he’d almost said what—“was that you sent for me?” he asked abruptly. “The kid?”
She looked amused, as if she’d heard his mental correction. “Someone who does errands for me occasionally. Very reliable. Single-minded, one might say.”
Garrett had the distinct sense that he was being toyed with. He spoke roughly. “I’m looking for Tanith Cabarrus. Are you going to help me or not?”
“She is easily available to you. It’s a matter of intention and attention.”
Fuck this New Age witch shit, Garrett thought grimly. He stood. “You can tell her that disappearing was a bullshit thing to do. There’s a warrant out on her, now. Even if she wasn’t involved with Jason Moncrief, she’s looking at serious jail time. The whole department thinks she’s complicit in the attack on my partner.”
“And what do you think, Detective Garrett?” Fox looked at him with ageless, clear blue eyes.
The question stopped him and he found he could not answer smartly or facetiously. “I know she hasn’t told the truth. I know she knows more than she’s telling.”
Fox lifted her hands. “Oh, certainly. But can you really blame her for that?”
“I know she’s been arrested for fraud,” Garrett ground out. “I know she’s been institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia.”
“For seeing demons,” Fox said pointedly.
“Yeah. For seeing demons,” Garrett said.
“Perhaps you should ask her about that,” Fox suggested. Garrett stared at her. Her gaze on him was steady, probing. “Do you know what I see, Detective? I see two people who are not at odds. Who perhaps have two different sides to a vital puzzle. A puzzle in which lives are at stake, and in which the clock is running out.”
Garrett was not merely struck by her words, he was close to mesmerized.
She looked at him, and the sunlight behind her illuminated her pale hair. “So many lives at stake,” she repeated softly. “And perhaps more than just lives.”
Without realizing he was doing it he nodded, which she took as a sign to continue.
“Every life in the balance here—and each soul as well—deserves a little faith. And I believe that you are not a man who must follow the book to the exclusion of truth, or justice. I believe you are willing.”
“Willing to what?” he said, and his voice sounded strangled.
“Willing to make a leap of faith. Willing to do things by a different book.” Her blue eyes held his. “Three children killed,” she recited, in muted tones. “Another imprisoned. A good man at the brink of death. And three more children to die, if someone does not intervene.”
Garrett’s stomach roiled, but he couldn’t look away from her eyes.
“Your own department has banned you from the hunt, when even given what you are reluctant to believe, you know you are light-years closer to the truth than they are. This masculine jockeying will most certainly cost more lives if someone does not say, ‘Enough.’ ” She opened her hands. “Are you willing to work outside your comfort zone?”
Through his confusion and gnawing anxiety, Garrett managed to speak. “What do you think I’ve been doing?” he retorted.
Her eyes twinkled at him. “You’re quite right.”
“I want the killer.” Garrett’s voice was suddenly harsh. “I don’t care who it is. I don’t care what gets me there. I want this to stop. I want this guy put away for eternity. That’s all I want. You’re supposed to know things. You decide.”
She was very stiff and still, her eyes boring into his. And then she suddenly went limp, some hidden tension relaxing. “So mote it be,” she said, and the words were formal, with a regal import.
She took a deep, shaky breath . . . for a moment Garrett feared he would have to perform CPR. Then she glanced toward the other high-backed wicker chair across from her.
Garrett followed her gaze, and then shot to his feet, staring.
Tanith sat in the other chair, as if she had been there all along. He had not heard, nor felt her come. She sat very still, leaning on her forearms on the arms of the chair, barely breathing.
“Jesus Christ,” Garrett muttered, and wondered crazily if she had been there, invisible, all along, until she—or Selena—had chosen to make her seen. “How the fuck did you do that?” he demanded, completely forgetting all manners.
“A trick.” Selena shrugged. “But we will need more than tricks to achieve our purpose.”
Tanith spoke, avoiding looking directly at Garrett. “I heard about Detective Landauer.”
“You heard about him?” he responded bitterly.
Her eyes flashed. “You think I would ever do that?”
“How would I know what you would do?” he demanded. “You drugged me—why wouldn’t you drug him?”
“I didn’t hurt you,” she retorted, but there was less fire in her voice, and Selena glanced at her.
“It was wrong,” the older woman said, and Tanith looked away.
There was an icy silence, which Selena broke, her voice sharp. “There’s no time for recriminations. There is one center of this investigation, and it’s time to do what needs to be done.”
Garrett looked toward her, confused. Tanith spoke warily. “Jason Moncrief.”
“Of course,” Selena said, with an impatient wave. “Have you ever even spoken to him?” she asked Garrett pointedly.
Garrett sat for a moment, stupefied at the simplicity of the suggestion, then he remembered. “Once. His attorney took out a TRO: a technical restraining order. No law enforcement officer is allowed in to talk to him.”
“That won’t do,” the older woman said. “It should not have prevented you when you knew he was not guilty.”
“I don’t know that,” Garrett countered angrily. He was about to continue arguing but she cut through him.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You have the key, Detective Garrett.” She suddenly reached forward and grabbed his wrist, a bony grip so strong Garrett drew in a startled breath. Her eyes were black, all pupil as she stared unseeing into his eyes.
“The book,” she gasped, and she kept speaking, but Garrett didn’t hear words. Images were blasting into his head: the hand-bound book of maroon leather, the rough paper, the twiglike lettering, the disturbing black-lined drawings.
He jerked his hand away from the older woman’s grip and was shocked to find he was standing, but so shaky he was barely able to keep his balance.
Selena was also standing, rigidly, drawing deep, shuddering breaths. “Where is it?” she whispered.
Garrett stared at her, for the second time wondering
if she was on the verge of a stroke. Tanith rose from her chair, and her dark eyes locked on Garrett’s. “You know what she means. The grimoire.”
Selena felt for the back of a chair and Tanith was there at her side, instantly, helping her to sit. After a moment, Selena lifted her head, looked up at Garrett. “There is a book, then. A grimoire. If you still think Jason Moncrief is guilty, perhaps you have only to read it to find all you need to set your mind at rest.” Her eyes drilled into his. “Do you have it?”
Garrett was about to say it was in evidence and he was off the case, and then he remembered. Not only did he still have his copy, he had his copy in the trunk of his car.
“I think we might have a look at it, then,” Selena said, and Garrett was not even surprised that she’d read his mind.
______
The two women set the copied book on a long oak table in what Garrett supposed was a dining hall. The chairs were medieval-looking, with lions’ paws for armrests and feet, and tapestries and marble friezes were hung on the walls. The women stood over the table with the stack of pages in front of them and studied them, and Garrett could only think of priestesses, of sibyls, of goddesses. They reached for pages in tandem and communicated only with looks and once in a while by pointing to passages.
Garrett paced the polished plank floor impatiently until Selena looked up at him and said, “Detective, perhaps you would be more comfortable in a chair.”
Garrett sat, and watched them, seven million conflicting thoughts in his brain. It’s easy enough to stage, he argued with himself. Cabarrus knew about the grimoire, and why wouldn’t she have told Fox about it? There’s no mind reading going on, it’s simple con artist tricks.
And then he remembered the steel strength of the woman’s hand on his arm and the sizzle of electric shock when she—yes—read him.
At one point Tanith covered her face with her hands and the elder woman put her hand on her neck, comforting her. Garrett wanted to speak but felt rooted to his chair, felt like an intruder watching something intensely private.
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