Modern Magic
Page 247
“It’s Kristie McMillan, from over at the Charleston City Market,” Rick said, and I gasped.
“She was murdered?”
Rick shook his head and I could see the sorrow in his eyes. “That’s the hell of it,” he said. “From what the police say, she’s the killer.”
“There’s got to be a mistake,” I said.
I’d known Kristie for years. She had a stall down in the Charleston City Market, a wonderful place full of art, jewelry, fresh-made baked goods, and farm-raised produce right in the center of downtown Charleston. Kristie made jewelry, and her stand was always busy with locals and tourists alike. Often, Kristie crafted her jewelry from old items she bought from Trifles and Folly, as well as garage sales and estate auctions. Old silverware became bracelets; gears from broken watches became pendants, pieces of shattered glass got new life set into necklaces and rings.
“I wish there were,” Rick said, sliding my latte across the counter to me. “But from what they said on the news, witnesses saw the attack, and they found her with the murder weapon, covered in blood.”
“Oh my god,” I murmured. “Who did she kill?”
Rick dumped out the coffee grounds and wiped down the milk steamer. “That’s just it,” he replied. “It doesn’t make any sense. News reporter said she got into a fight with her roommate and up and stabbed her.”
“Are they talking about drugs? Alcohol? Some kind of sudden mental illness?” I asked. “That really doesn’t sound like Kristie.”
Rick nodded. “I know, right? That’s what’s got everyone spooked, I think. Some folks, you see it coming, you know? Like they’re a loose cannon and you wonder who the unlucky guy is who’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they finally blow. But Kristie? Just didn’t see it in her.” He set the machine up for the next customer. “Then again, they say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”
I thanked Rick, left my usual generous tip, and took my latte as I moved down the line to order sandwiches. Now that I knew what to listen for, I could catch bits of conversation all around me as people who had known Kristie tried to make sense of the unimaginable.
“Rick told you about Kristie?” Trina, the owner of Honeysuckle Café, was behind the counter taking lunch orders.
I nodded, still in shock. “I’m having a lot of trouble believing it,” I said numbly. “Are the police sure?”
Trina nodded. “Unfortunately, it looks like a slam dunk.” Her voice dropped. “People saw her do it, Cassidy. There’s no getting around that.”
My mind spun as I put in my order and Trina made the sandwiches. Kristie was the last person I would expect to kill anyone in a fit of rage, even if the person deserved it. She had always struck me as easy-going, almost the stereotypical artist unconcerned by the ups and downs of the rest of the world.
“Was there something going on no one knew about—a bad breakup, some drug problems, something in the family?” I asked.
Kristie shrugged. “Not that they’ve said on the news, and not that anyone who thought they were close to her had heard about. You’d think if she was struggling with something, she would have told somebody, wouldn’t you? I didn’t figure her for the stoic type.” She shook her head. “I guess you never know.”
The news put a damper on my mood, but I wasn’t ready to head back to the shop just yet. I took my coffee and found a seat, but it was more to overhear conversation than because I was in a hurry to drink my latte.
“I just saw her yesterday, and nothing seemed wrong,” one woman said, as her companion nodded, wide-eyed.
“Talked to her on Friday, and she was real excited about this whole new line of jewelry she had coming out,” another told a friend. “That doesn’t sound like someone who’s planning to kill somebody.”
“She’d shared an apartment with Becca for four years,” I heard a man say. “Never any trouble. Everyone thought they were good friends. Now, this.”
My mind reeled. I knew both Kristie and Becca, her roommate. Becca was a graphic designer who also sold some of her art at the Market. She was a lively girl, mid-twenties like Kristie, and I remembered thinking that the two of them probably got on well, with so much in common.
I sipped my latte, as the comments around me repeated the same sense of shock and grief. The merchants at the City Market and those of us who have been on King Street for a while are a pretty tight bunch. It’s not uncommon for folks to hold baby showers or engagement parties, or to take up a collection and bring casseroles if there’s a death in someone’s family. Kristie and Becca were two of our own. It was a double loss made all the more tragic because it seemed too random and incomprehensible.
The mood in the cafe was too much to bear, so I grabbed our take-out order and headed back for the shop. But I made a detour on the way, to the Market.
Charleston City Market is the heart of Market Street, and it’s a huge draw for tourists and locals alike. Plenty of out-of-towners shop the market for a unique memento of Charleston, and lots us who live here pick up fresh produce and gifts from the vendors. I’ll admit that a stroll though the Market is one of my guilty pleasures, especially on my lunch hour when I need to clear my head. I know most of the regular vendors, either from the Merchant Association or from being a regular customer. And today, I had a certain someone in mind.
“Hello, Cassidy,” Niella said. “Mama said we’d see you today.”
“I knew you’d come.” Mrs. Ernestine Teller and her daughter, Niella, were in their usual spot by the East entrance, where they had a display of their beautiful sweetgrass baskets. Mrs. Teller is descended from the Gullah people, who live in the Lowcountry and have forged a unique culture from their history as freed and escaped African slaves long ago. Among the crafts Gullah folks are known for are their elaborate sweetgrass woven baskets. Collectors and museums prize their baskets, which sell for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.
Mrs. Teller is probably in her seventies. Decades of practice show in the way her fingers fly when they weave the baskets, making something complex look easy. But like us, she’s got secrets of her own, and I happened to know one of them. Mrs. Teller is a root worker, someone who can do Conjure and Hoodoo, powerful traditions that blend African and island magic.
“What have you heard about Kristie?” I asked. “I really can’t believe she did it.”
Mrs. Teller wove a few more strands before she answered me. “She did—and she didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Mrs. Teller never looked up from her weaving. “I mean that Kristie did the deed, but she wasn’t herself when it happened.”
“Mental illness?” I asked, wondering how I had missed the signs, how Kristie had managed to keep something so serious hidden.
Mrs. Teller shook her head. “That’s what they’ll call it,” she said quietly. “But I think there’s something ‘Other’ afoot.”
‘Other’ as in magic, or something supernatural. Mrs. Teller doesn’t know about the Alliance—as far as I’m aware—but she does know about my gift, and she’s been mentoring Teag with his. She’s got some powerful magic of her own, and she’s saved my bacon on more than one occasion. I trust her instincts.
“I never picked up any hint that Kristie had the power,” I said, keeping my voice low so others wouldn’t hear.
“She didn’t,” Mrs. Teller replied. “I’d have known. All the same, I think something influenced her,” she added, and then she looked up and met my gaze. “There’s something out there that made that poor girl kill her roommate. Someone needs to do so something about that.”
It was pretty clear who Mrs. Teller thought ‘someone’ should be, and it included Teag and me. “Even if I could prove that,” I said very quietly, “the police would never believe me.”
“No, but Kristie might,” Niella said. “I went down to visit her this morning, see if she needed anything, if there was anyone she needed me to call, since she doesn’t have family around here. That poor g
irl is just sick about what happened, and she’s afraid she’s going crazy.”
“Is she?” I asked. “I mean, do you think she just… I don’t know, snapped?”
Niella shook her head. “No, I don’t. You didn’t see how broken up she was about it. They’ve got her on suicide watch. She’s telling anyone who will listen—and even those who won’t—that ‘something came over her’ and made her do it.”
“Wow,” I said. “Did she say anything else?”
“She sure did. Told me that something had been sending her wicked dreams, and that when the murder happened, she thought she was in one of those dreams, then she woke up covered with blood.”
My heart went out to Kristie. As much as I grieved for Becca, if there was something supernatural involved that had used Kristie to commit a crime, then she was a victim as well.
“There’ll be more killing,” Mrs. Teller said without altering the rhythm of her weaving. “Mark my words. There’s something bad out there, and it won’t stop now that it’s started.” She looked up at me. “Unless someone puts a stop to it.”
“Let me see what I can find out,” I said. “If there’s any way I can help, I will.”
Mrs. Teller gave a curt nod. “Good enough. And if you need my help, you know where to find me. Best you be careful, child.”
I thanked her, and headed on my way, deep in thought. In the distance, I heard the wail of sirens, and it just sent my mood lower. If it weren’t for the chance that the supernatural played a role in the murder, it would be a matter for the police to sort out. But if Mrs. Teller was right and magic or a haunting was involved, then the Alliance had a responsibility to get to the bottom of it, before more people died.
Just then, my cell phone buzzed. I glanced down, expecting a text from Teag wondering why I was taking so long. Instead, the text was from Sorren, just a short sentence letting me know he would come by the store after dark.
Yes, my boss the nearly six hundred year-old vampire uses a cell phone—and email, too. He says that vampires that don’t adjust with the times don’t survive long. I was just glad he was heading our way. I wanted to talk about the murder with him and see what he thought might be behind it.
Teag was preoccupied with something on his phone when I got back to the shop with the sandwiches. “Did you hear about the murder?” he asked.
“Rick told me,” I replied. “I can’t believe Kristie would ever hurt Becca.”
Teag gave me a stunned look. “What are you talking about? What do Kristie and Becca have to do with anything? I meant this—it’s all over the local news. Just happened.”
Teag turned his phone around so that I could see the website on the screen. ‘Local Executive Stabs Boss in Workplace Rampage’, the headline announced. I remembered the sirens I had heard on the way home.
“I know her,” I said in a horrified whisper, looking at the picture of the woman in the blood-soaked business suit being led away in handcuffs. “That’s Karen Hahn. She’s in the Merchant’s Association, and I see her all the time downtown and at the Market.”
“What were you saying about Kristie and Becca?” Teag asked, frowning with concern. I saw my own worries and questions reflected in his eyes as I told him what I had learned at Honeysuckle Café, and about the warning Mrs. Teller had passed along at the Market.
“This is bad, Cassidy,” Teag said. “Two murders within two days, with very unlikely perpetrators. There’s got to be something supernatural involved.”
“Which makes me really glad Sorren’s coming by tonight,” I said. “Because we need to get him involved in this.”
It was late Fall, and darkness fell early. Most of King Street closed up around six o’clock except for the restaurants and nightspots and a few coffeehouses for the evening crowd. Sometimes Sorren meets us at my house, but he had said he wanted to come by the store, and I figured it was to see a couple of new items with bad vibes we had bought recently and locked up in the back room—including the ring I purchased that morning. So we closed up on time and got take-out Chinese food for dinner, then brought the food back to the store and went into the break room in the back to wait.
“He’s late,” Teag said when we had finished our dinners and cleaned up. I glanced at my watch. Sorren was punctual, and when he told us to expect him at the store, he meant soon after closing time.
“Should we worry?” I know that sounds silly, worrying about a centuries-old vampire, but Sorren is a good friend. Vampires may be immortal undead, but they can be destroyed and some of our work on behalf of the Alliance has come closer than I like to remember to killing all of us.
“Can’t stop you from worrying,” Teag said, “but unless we know where he was coming from, there’s no way to go looking for him.”
Just then, we heard a loud thump against the back door of the shop. Teag and I exchanged glances, and he reached for his combat knife and the sturdy martial arts staff he keeps in the office. He’s got a blackbelt in several styles of combat, and while I haven’t won tournaments like Teag has, we can both hold our own in a fight.
I peered out the security peep hole, and recognized Sorren. Even through the distortion of the fish-eye lens, something didn’t look right. I signaled for Teag to keep his staff handy, while I opened the door.
Sorren stumbled in, covered in blood, and collapsed on the floor at my feet.
I closed and locked the door, then dropped my knees beside Sorren. Teag did the same. Sorren moaned, looking even paler than usual.
“He’s been stabbed—multiple times,” Teag said, examining Sorren as I went to get water and cloths from the store’s small kitchen to help with cleanup. “If he were mortal, he’d be dead.”
Sorren was wearing a sport coat over jeans and a collared shirt. The jeans were soaked with blood, and the coat and shirt had been cut to ribbons with the vicious blows that had gone deep into Sorren’s back and side.
“Did he get hit in the heart?” I asked, barely breathing. Vampires can heal grievous wounds, but a strike through the heart or decapitation and their long existence is over.
“No,” Teag said, and together we gentled Sorren out of his ruined shirt and blood-stained jacket. “But his back’s a mess.”
I winced at the jagged cuts down Sorren’s back. One of the strikes had taken him below the ribs, and another one went through the ribs but low enough to hit a lung instead of his heart.
I grabbed our First Aid kit from under the counter. It’s not meant for life-threatening wounds, but given our penchant for dangerous investigations, the kit does feature a lot more than bandages. I went for all the gauze rolls and pads I could find, hesitated over the antibiotic, not knowing how it would work with vampire body chemistry, and grabbed some butterfly bandages as well, though Sorren’s injuries went far beyond a split lip. Already, the slashes were beginning to heal, but I knew that posed a new problem.
“He’s going to need to feed, and soon,” I said. “Healing himself will use all his energy, with damage that bad.”
I glanced at the wound on Sorren’s upper back, and saw that the bleeding had slowed enough that I covered it with a light layer of gauze. The side wound didn’t seem bad from the back, but when we turned him over, I could see a deep tear across Sorren’s abdomen.
I layered the gauze and leaned on it, compressing the belly wound, and was distressed to feel the cold blood seeping through the gauze. Vampires don’t have body heat of their own except for what they borrow from blood taken in a recent feeding. And while fresh mortal blood is bright red, what circulates in a vampire’s system is much darker. Most of the blood staining Sorren’s clothing was his own. I’d seen him bloodied from battle before, but mostly with the blood of his opponents.
Teag was already rolling up his shirt sleeve, baring his left arm. “Already thought of that,” he said.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Teag met my gaze. “He’s hurt. We can hardly take him to the hospital. He can’t—or won’t—feed from y
ou because of his bond to your family. So that leaves me.” He gave me a wan smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Relax. I’ve done this before.”
I had gotten rid of most of the blood, except from the worst of the slashes that were still trickling thin red streams as they healed from the inside out. Sorren’s wounds were healing, but I could still see evidence that he had tried to fight off his attacker, since his knuckles were scraped and bruised and there were gashes on his forearms. He hadn’t moved since he had fallen, or tried to speak other than a groan.
“Sorren’s a vampire,” I said quietly. “He’s faster and stronger than mortals, and he’s had almost six hundred years of experience outwitting people trying to kill him. How in hell did anything catch him to do this?”
Teag sat back on his heels. “I was wondering the same thing. It has to be a supernatural attacker—but where’s the common thread?”
I was wiping off the blood from Sorren’s left arm when I realized that his hand was closed in a fist. I tried to pry his fingers open, but even unconscious, he was stronger than I was. I’d have to wait for him to come around.
“The healing is slowing down,” Teag said. “The upper wound was open and fresh when he came in, and it’s largely closed. The lower wound is still raw—and bleeding.”
Sorren’s skin was colder than usual, almost corpse-cold, and his color had gone ashen. Blue tinged his lips. I’d never seen him look so dead before.
“I was hoping he’d come around,” Teag said, shifting his position to get closer to Sorren’s mouth. “I’d like him conscious when we do this, so he knows when to stop. But I’m afraid to wait any longer.”
I was afraid for both of them, but I just nodded. “It’s got to be your call,” I said. “It’s dangerous.” We both knew that under normal circumstances, Sorren would not hurt either of us. More than once, he had nearly been destroyed trying to protect us. He had told us that he could feed without killing, and preferred to do so except in actual battle. But unconscious and badly injured, there was a chance he might not realize who his ‘donor’ was, might drink too deeply.