“Where’d she go?”
“She didn’t say. Left about an hour ago.”
I covered the phone and said to Carlos and Spinelli, “Amanda left the house an hour ago.”
Carlos said, “That’s convenient.”
I put the phone back to my ear. “Brit, let me talk to Lionel.”
She gave the phone to Brewbaker. “Yes, Detective?”
“Mr. Brewbaker. I’m sorry you had to see that photo of your daughter. But you must agree with me now that we have to call in the FBI. These people are serious and dangerous.”
“No, Detective,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse, but defiant. “I don’t want the FBI or any other agency getting involved. If you call them in, I’ll shut you and them out. I mean it. The kidnappers aren’t asking for much. I can pay their demands. And if I can do that and get my daughter back without incident, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“But Mr. Brewbaker, I don’t––”
“I mean it, Detective. Nobody.”
He handed the phone back to Detective Olson. “Tony?” she said.
“Yes, Brit.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Have the kidnappers tried to set up a drop time and place yet?”
“No. That photo is all the contact we’ve had with them since they made their initial demand.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why are they dragging this out? If they know Brewbaker’s got the ransom money there, why not take it and run?”
“Maybe that’s not their plan.”
“How do you mean?”
I could almost see her shaking her head. “I don’t know, but I get the feeling there’s another shoe waiting to drop.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “By the way, how are you holding up? Have you eaten anything yet?”
“Yes. Mr. Brewbaker’s been kind enough to fix us some sandwiches.”
“Good.” I checked my watch. “Listen, think you can hold up till midnight? One of us can relieve you then.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
I ended the call and handed the phone to Carlos. “Brit’s going to hang out there till midnight. Maybe one of us can relieve her after that. We can take turns throughout the night, say three hour shifts.”
“I’ll take first shift,” said Dominic. “That is if I can go home for a couple of hours now to make sure Ursula gets to bed all right.”
“Of course, go ahead.”
“Thanks. In the meantime, Carlos, can you forward that picture to me? I’ll upload it onto my computer; maybe blow it up enough to gather a clue or two as to where it was taken.”
“Good idea,” he said, and I echoed his response.
Dominic left after that. Carlos and I stayed in the room another hour or so poring over the rest of the documents and photos left on the table. Neither of us expected to find anything significant. Anything worth mentioning, Dominic would have mentioned it. I suspect the only reason I stayed was because I wanted to avoid going home to face Lilith. I knew I pissed her off by turning down her advances, something I’ve never done before; probably something no one has ever done before.
Carlos, I imagined, stayed because he had nowhere else to go. After Dominic explained to me where the name Lauri Shullit came from, I began feeling badly for him. I waited until our conversation all but ran dry, when I said to him, “I know about Lauri.”
He looked at me and blinked. “What?”
“Your girlfriend. I know about her.”
“You know what about her?”
“Carlos, come on. It’s me.”
“Yeah?”
“You can tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“You made her up.”
Again he blinked. “What?”
“It’s all right. Dominic told me. He explained everything.”
“And what did Dominic explain to you?”
“Really? Are you going to play this game with me, your best friend?”
“Tony, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I know about Lauri. I know she’s not real. You made her up.”
He laughed. “I didn’t make her up. Lauri is real. We met three months ago.”
“Sure, right after Dominic and I got married.”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s not a coincidence?”
“No.”
“And that the letters in her name, when rearranged, spell out Lilith and Ursula, that’s also not a coincidence?”
“Does it?”
“You know it does.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“You hadn’t noticed. Tell me, why haven’t you introduced her to me and Dominic yet.”
“Why?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Guess I haven’t had the chance.”
“In three months?”
“Yes in three months. The world doesn’t evolve around you and Dominic, you know.”
“Revolve.”
“What?”
“The world doesn’t revolve around me and Dominic.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“No. I’m correcting you.”
“How can you correct me when you’re agreeing with me?”
“I’m not agreeing. I’m… You know what? Forget it.” I stood up and put my coat on. “I hope you and Lauri without the E continue to enjoy each other’s company for many years.”
He seemed to take that as a genuine compliment. “Thank you.”
“I’m going home to Lilith. At least there an argument has the potential to end in make-up sex.” I checked my watch. “Dominic’s going to the Brewbaker’s at midnight to relieve Brit. Will you take the three-to-six A.M. shift?”
“Sure. I’ll give Lauri a call, see if she wants to do a nightcap with me and then I’ll head over there.” He smiled at me.
I smiled back. “Great. You do that.”
I got home around ten o’clock and found Lilith sitting Indian-style on the floor in the middle of the living room. She had surrounded herself with candles, all of them white and within arm’s reach. Except for those, and the microwave light over the range in the kitchen, the house was set in darkness. Her nature sounds CD was playing on the stereo. That and the jasmine incenses told me she was meditating.
I kicked my shoes off at the door and tipped-toed passed her. Her eyes were closed, but I knew she knew I was there. As quietly as I could, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, opened it, carried it to the sofa and took a seat directly in front of her. I sipped it quietly, my feet up on the ottoman, my head pitched back on a couch pillow, my thoughts cradled in the sounds of forest whispers; frogs croaking, crickets chirping and the hush of water chattering over pebbles in an icy stream.
I closed my eyes and followed the stream through the bluff it carved in the wooded hollows of my mind. A carpet of moss covered the rocks along its banks. It glistened in speckled winks of sunlight spilling down through finger-sized holes in the silver canopy above. Ahead, the shadows of dusk lay expectant, behind me the echoes of dawn. I crossed a bridge of fallen trees and ran barefoot in the sand. A piper cried. A gull laughed. I imagined nothing more perfect in life could exist until I opened my eyes again and saw Lilith sitting there.
The candlelight danced in a nervous twitch upon her face. It warmed her skin and soothed the shades of grey with the feathered touch of an artist’s brush. She was naked I know, but for a jersey of mine that draped her shoulders loosely, hung in layered folds and gathered in her lap. Her feet were shoeless and dirty on the bottom from walking barefoot around the house, but in the dim light, it looked like only more shadows fading into the mocha highlights of her skin.
I noticed how her hair lay soft against her cheeks, across her parted lips and down her shirt upon her breasts; the gentle rise and fall of each breath was too innocent to stir a single hair. She looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her, and though t
his time she was not trying, she made me want her more than she could know.
As I sat admiring her beauty, I noticed something strange and amazing. The fire from one of the candles, which had been burning a yellowish-red, began burning a mix of blue and green. Stranger still, was the smoke it emitted. It rose from the candle not in thin whiffs, but in a thick lazy stream like a cobra spiraling in a vertical climb up an invisible rope.
Before I knew it, a second candle changed its color, and soon all were burning the same blue-green flame, quivering on blackened wicks and spewing smoke that seemed to both cool and excite the air. I watched the smoke from all eight candles rise in similar fashion, forming columns six feet high and then leveling out in a shallow pool just above Lilith’s head. The pool quickly filled, blanketing the spaces between the columns with layers of smoke twelve inches thick. At fifteen inches it seemed to top off and began spilling over the edge. A slow-motion cloud cascaded down in ribbons, showering Lilith in a cobalt veil as fine as spider silk.
She gasped, as if shocked by the wave washing over her body. I dropped my feet from the ottoman and lurched forward. I almost went to her, thinking she needed me, but I quickly realized her gasp wasn’t an involuntary impulse, like when I sneak up on her from behind and scare her. Instead, it seemed controlled, like when she wades into the lake and the ice-cold water steals her breath away. I had seen it before; a gasp undeniably real, yet not necessarily bad. She makes the same gasp during sex, at that moment of ecstasy when we climax together and….
I shook my head and fell back against the cushion of the couch. She was not in danger. I could see that. Her smile told me so. She maintained concentration; her eyes remained closed, her hands lay flat on her lap, palms up. She took another breath, deep and slow, designed to steady her pulse and ground her nerves.
Down at the floor, the rolling tide of smoke gathered at her feet, split into tentacles like tree roots and began crawling toward me. I pulled my legs in, but did not lift my feet off the floor. Instead, I let it find me, intrigued by its apparent state of consciousness. I felt its cool embrace wrap around my ankles and slither up my pant legs. My body stiffened in anticipation of the unknown. I stretched my legs out, presenting an easier climb for the smoke to travel, though I suspected it needed no help from me at all.
Soon, my skin began to tingle, and the sensation that I was being mildly shocked only added to the excitement. I closed my eyes when a rush of cold air swept over me. I gasped lightly. A million tiny fingers began massaging my body, head to toe, front and back. When I exhaled, I could feel the smoke leaving my lungs. It left in its wake a wave of dizziness, making me feel incredibly small and conspicuously numb. It carried me off on a meandering cloud like a fallen leaf floating downstream. I could feel it taking away my worries and my pains, and leaving instead, a sense of serenity. And something else.
With its cool embrace, the massaging fingers had found the most sensitive parts of my body––erogenous zones that even I had never known existed. I found myself tensing and relaxing in rhythmic intervals, resisting and yielding involuntarily to the flow of electric energy carpeting my body. I soon realized that I was about to lose control of the moment. I opened my eyes, patted the smoke from the folds in my clothing and sprang from the couch.
At once, it retreated, long thick feelers of smoke snatched back in sharp recoiled as if tethered by rubber bands. I looked at Lilith. She seemed serene, perhaps satisfied by the pleasures of the smoke.
I got down on my hands and knees and crept between the candles towards Lilith. Then I planted a kiss upon her cheek.
SMACK!
“What the hell are you doing?” she said
“Nothin`,” I held my hand to my cheek. “I wanted to kiss you.
“I was meditating!”
“I could see that, but you looked so beautiful.”
“So what else is new? You didn’t have to kiss me.”
“You didn’t have to slap me.”
“It’s a reflex thing. Lucky I didn’t kill you.”
“Kill me.” I laughed. “You wouldn’t kill me.” I backed away and reclaimed my seat on the couch. “Would you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Hey,” I said. “What was that anyway? The smoke, I mean. I felt it doing something to me––something sensual.”
“Well, duh! Why do you think I like to meditate so much?”
With that, she stood, turned sideways and stretched. Her hands went over her head. Her heels lifted. Her shirttail rode up the back of her legs, exposing the bottom curve of her clenched butt cheeks. I smiled, and when she came back down on her heels and faced me again, I noticed her smiling back.
“Do you want to go to bed?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not tired.”
Her smile returned, only now it was thin and seductive. “Neither am I.”
“I thought you were cutting me off from sex.”
“You know how to turn it back on.”
“The ritual?”
“Is it such a chore for you?”
“Lilith, we don’t have to do it just yet. There’s still plenty of time for that.”
She reached out, took my hand and coaxed me to my feet. “I don’t understand your hesitation, Tony.” She wrapped her hands around my waist and pulled me in. Our bodies touched. I felt her breasts, firm against my chest. I slipped my hands behind her, lifted her shirttail and cupped her cheeks.
“Can’t we take it slowly?” I said.
She rocked up on tiptoes and kissed me. I flexed my arms, lifting her off the floor. She could feel me now. She had my attention. I let her down but she kept her weight pressed against me.
“Slow is good,” she said, grinding softly. “I like it like that.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
She slipped her hands into my back pockets. I surged forward, fearful I might stop thinking with my brain. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about that. I felt her hands rip from my pockets almost as soon as they went in. She palmed my chest and pushed me away. “What the…?”
“What?”
She held up a pair of panties. “Whose are these?”
“Oh those,” I said, and I laughed callously. “I can explain.”
She unfurled them and held them up to my face. “You can explain women’s panties in your pocket?”
“They’re not women’s panties. Look at them. They’re girls’ underwear.”
“Excuse me?” She wadded them up and threw them at me. “Now I see what your problem is.”
“My problem?” She turned and started down the hall toward the bedroom. I started after her, following on her heels. “Lilith, wait. That’s not my problem.”
She stopped and did an about face, and though I almost ran her over, she did not budge. “Then what is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.” I held up the underwear. “These belong to the girl that was kidnapped this afternoon. Carlos and I found them on a suspect we questioned.”
“Of course, and did you take them off her forcefully, or did you schmooze them off her?”
“Schmoozed? Nobody schmoozed anybody. Our suspect was a man, and he wasn’t wearing them. He was carrying them on his person.”
“Oh.” Her expression softened. “So why do you have`em?”
“I thought you might do something with them.”
“What, you want me to try them on? Is that your angle? You want to play innocent schoolgirl meets big bad police man?”
“Huh?”
“You got a kinky streak I don’t know about?”
“Kinky? Good God woman. What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? That’s perverted even by my standards!”
“Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m talking about you doing something witchy on them.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you could do a reading. You
know like you did back at the research center in Doctor Lieberman’s workshop.”
“You want me to do a psychometric reading?”
“Yes.”
“No, Tony, I’m sorry. Psychometry isn’t in my repertoire. That was Valerie’s thing.”
“But you know how it’s done, don’t you?”
“I’m telling you. It won’t work.”
“There must be something you can do.”
“What?”
“Anything.”
I could see her hedging, which was better than a direct no. I held the underwear up again to help her gauge the age of the child we were discussing. “Please. She’s just a kid.”
She took a breath and let it out with a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe….”
“Yes?”
“Maybe I can try scrying.”
“I tried that already.”
“You tried scrying?”
“Yes. It didn’t work.”
She seemed impressed. “Did you use sand?”
“No. I used salt.”
She shook her head. “Sand’s better. But it’s gotta be New Castle sand.”
“Why?”
“It gives the girl a home advantage.”
“That makes sense.”
She snatched the panties from my hands. “What’s her name?”
“The girl?”
“No, the panties. Yes, the girl!”
“Brewbaker,” I said. “Kelly Brewbaker. She’s nine. We believe she was abducted twelve, maybe thirteen hours ago.”
“Thirteen…?” I could tell from her expression that that timeline did not sit well with her. “Come. We’ll have to hurry.” She led me into the kitchen where a quick search through her spice collection yielded a small bottle of sugary white sand. She brought it to the table. I pulled a chair out for her. She sat. I pulled a second chair out and took the seat perpendicular to hers.
“You keep sand in with your spices?” I asked, pointing at the bottle with a suspect smirk.
“Of course, where else would I keep it?”
“Lilith, I’ve used that before as salt.”
“Well, it is beach sand. I suppose it’s salty.”
“No. I mean I used it thinking it was salt.”
“Yeah? Did it make your food salty?”
“No. It made my food sandy.”
“Well, duh, what did you expect? It’s sand.”
Tony Marcella 07 - Call of the Witch Page 10
