Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  "No!" Wyler protested. "I really did. I just wanted— I just thought that . . ."He stopped.

  "Everybody's asleep," I said pointlessly.

  "No they aren't. Not down at the bonfire. Mom was saying that there'd be somebody up by that all night, and I just thought..." He shrugged again.

  'There'd be somebody you could talk to?" I suggested.

  I walked back toward the edge of the forest, where the light was better. Wyler followed.

  "Yeah," he breathed. "Mom doesn't understand, you know? She says it's just a passing phase, and if it isn't, I can look into it when I'm older. But I'm old now," Wyler added, with the exasperation of the sixteen-year-old self-perceived adult. "And I want to be a Witch. I've always wanted to be a Witch."

  "What do you think a Witch is?" I asked him gently, part of me remembering that this was one of the first questions Belle had asked me nearly fifteen years ago.

  Wyler stared at me; a good kid, I theorized from limited experience, trying hard to bring an honest answer out of the inarticulateness of teenagerhood.

  "Is there somebody up there?" It was a shout from below, nervous and belligerent; one of the people on flrewatch. I recollected sharply that the last people heading toward the fire from this direction had been armed, and there was still a gun unaccounted for among my fellow happy campers.

  "It's me," I called down. "It's Bast." Hoping it was somebody I knew.

  "Oh, hi. Bast." A new voice: Bailey of Summerisle, thank the Goddess; someone who knew me. "We heard voices?" he went on.

  "I'm up here with a friend of mine," I said mendaciously. I walked forward and looked down the slope. Bailey and a couple of other members of Summerisle were standing around the fire, looking up toward me.

  "You're not really supposed to be on that side of the tape," Bailey said apologetically.

  "Yeah," I said. "We're coming down. C'mon, Wyler."

  No one else at the Festival knew that Wyler was Fayrene's son, and probably neither Bailey nor I knew everyone here this weekend on sight. Wyler could easily be taken for one of the campers; there wouldn't be any immediate awkward questions.

  I was prepared to drag Wyler along with me by force, but apparently he'd already imprinted on me and followed, agreeable as a duckling, as I led him across the Upland Meadow and through the sleeping campground toward the parking lot.

  Along the way I learned that he'd ridden over here on his bike, which he'd left down on Route 6; that he'd always wanted to be a Witch but hadn't known that was what it was called; that he'd attended Reverend Harm's Bible Sunmier Camp once when he was younger; and that he'd been reading as much as he could find on the subject of Wicca but that the Tamerlane Association Library wasn't much use.

  "And it's what I want! I want to worship the Goddess —I belong to the Goddess," Wyler said.

  We'd reached the parking lot by this time and didn't have to talk in whispers. Wyler glanced skyward, but at this point in the night and her cycle. Lady Moon had set long ago.

  The most I'd been planning to do was drive him home and forgo the lecture on prudence he probably deserved and wouldn't listen to. It was that gesture, I think, that convinced me to help him get what he wanted, even knowing full well his mother the deputy sheriff wouldn't be best pleased.

  402 Bell, Book, and Murder

  "Okay, look," I said. I stopped and turned to face him. "Here's the deal. You go home and don't come back."

  "But—" Wyler said, drawing breath to argue.

  "While the Festival is on," I said over his protest. "You do that, and I will pick out a basic Wiccan reading list for you to start on — some of the same books I started with. You come here Monday, pick up the books, and pay for them —before noon, which is when the Festival will be over and we'll be gone. Everything else you've got to square with your mom. She's got my home address, if she wants you to be in touch with me."

  I watched him argue with himself over whether he could get a better deal elsewhere; whether I was being straight with him or just trying to blow him off. Kids today are so suspicious.

  "I want to join a coven," Wyler said in a small strangled voice.

  "1 know," I said, as gently as 1 could. Fayrene was going to kill me, no doubt about it. "But it'll be two years before you're eighteen and can even join an Outer Court" —the pre-Initiation study and training group that most traditions use — "and you'd still have to read the books" — though every tradition's reading list is slightly different. 'This way—if you want—you can practice as a solitary."

  There are some people —not many, as the position is even more Old Guard than some of the ones I hold—who'd say that what I was doing now was proselytizing, something strictly forbidden to the Hidden Children of the Goddess. There were others who'd say that by selling Wyler the books I was selling training, something as disgraceful as being a fee-charging literary agent.

  But the look on Wyler's face when I held out even that prosaic hope was enough to show me that I was far too late to proselytize; he already belonged to Our Lady and he'd train himself, just as we all do. There's no central regulating body that can compel you to magical discipline; you either have it and stay or you bum out and leave.

  I tell myself.

  "1 can be a Witch?" Wyler said.

  "You're a Pagan right now if you say you are," I pointed out. "If you want to be a Witch you need coven training and initiation, but you can be a Goddess-worshipper without that. I'll give you a catalog, too—you can order more books mail order." And maybe Belle had brought some copies of Changing's introductory reading list up with her that I could swipe to tell him which ones those ought to be.

  Wyler hesitated, plainly afraid he was being sold a bill of goods.

  "Are tJiey very expensive—the books?" he finally saiid. "I don't have very much money."

  "What can you afford?" I said, trying to remember if Julian had brought any copies of What Witches Do by Stewart Farrar up to the festival with him. When I'd come in to the Craft, it had been one of the handful of accurate books available, and I still liked it for unsensationalized descriptions of Wiccan practice and the fact that it didn't promise its readers a lot of cheap New Age miracles.

  Wyler hesitated again.

  "Look," I said. "I'll put together the books I think you should have in the order you ought to buy them. You come on Monday and buy whatever you want."

  Wyler relaxed—Goddess knew what kind of Florida beachfront scam he'd been expecting me to field him.

  "And can I buy an athame, too?" he said. He pronounced it "ar-thalm," which gave me some idea of the kind of books he'd been reading so far.

  "Start with the books," I said. "You can save up for an Iron-shadow blade later." I would have been willing to give him a blade —a gift to ghosts of my own—but I couldn't afford to buy one of Ironshadow's and I didn't think the Snake's HallowFest inventory included any. Even Julian knew there wasn't a lot of point to bringing knives, with Ironshadow dealing cutlery at the next table at one-third the price. "Now get in the van. I'll run you home."

  And hope Fayrene hadn't noticed he was gone, or I'd have to do a lot more explaining than 1 wanted to just now. Or ever, if I had my choice.

  We stopped back on Route 6 to pick up Wyler's bike—it was carefully chained to a road sign, which struck me as slightly ridiculous—and then I pulled a three-point turn (traffic at fourish a.m. in Gotham County is nonexistent) and headed in the direction of Tamerlane and Wyler's home address. At least if I saw him into the house I could swear to Fayrene later that I'd brought him home.

  Home, for Wyler and Sergeant Fayrene Pascoe both, turned out to be a double-wide in the Hidden Valley trailer park—lower-middle-income's answer to the high cost of new housing and the higher cost of upkeep in the Northeast. The sky was perceptibly light by the time I got there, and out of the comer of my eye I could see Wyler fidgeting nervously.

  "What time does your mom get up in the morning?" I asked.

  404 Bell, Book, and Murder

>   "She's on nights now," Wyler said. "She gets home about six."

  Which explained how he'd come to be over at Paradise Lake.

  "But sometimes she gets home earlier," Wyler added mournfully.

  I pulled carefully into the entrance of the park, past the bank of ganged mailboxes that looked like some bizarre form of bird-house. The road curved around the park in a horseshoe fashion with trailers parked on both sides of it—pink and white or beige and brown, with the odd-man-out aluminum Airstream hitch-trailer. The trailers in the center backed on each other, but the ones on the outside of the U had nothing behind them but the scrub woods and Acreage for Sale signs that edged most of County 6.

  I drove slowly down the serried ranks. The plots of grass beside the trailers ran heavily to yellow plastic daisy windspinners and foot-high preformed plastic picket fences. There were lawn chairs and barbecue grills aind occasional forsaken children's toys. Most of the trailers' windows were still dark, but even at this hour—I checked my watch, 5:15 —lights were on here and there.

  At Wyler's direction 1 pulled into the asphalted parking spot beside a white trailer that looked more like a house than some of the others here. If Fayrene was home she was keeping quieter about it than 1 would in the same circumstances.

  "Got your key?" 1 asked Wyler.

  He gave me a funny look. "It isn't locked," he said, as if that were something everyone should know.

  I left the van idling as Wyler slid out of the passenger seat. We got his bike out of the back; he propped it against the side of the trailer and bounced up the steps —it wasn't locked, as he'd said — and a moment later returned to wave me an "all clear."

  I got back into the van and backed carefully out of the space. The secret of his midnight visit was safe with him, but that was no guarantee I wouldn't hear about it from Fayrene —one thing that experience has taught me is that most people give up their secrets far too easily. I reached Route 6 again and turned left, leaving behind me the housing made of ticky-tacky that all looked just the same.

  When I was younger Life was simpler—I could have guiltlessly deplored the entire dehumanizing idea of living in a trailer park in the low-income housing enforced conformity of the blue-collar

  yahoo who existed only to destroy my own infinitely more interesting slacker demographic. I could have waxed lyrical on how life in a trailer park was a living death, creating an army of volkskultur-ingesting Eloi who were a threat but not of interest, and on how I, through sheer puissant superiority, would forever evade such a fate.

  I still thought most of those things—well, some of them, anyway—but I'd ceased to believe that living in a New York City apartment was some index of moral superiority. Maybe I was wiser now, or maybe just tired; the main thing that struck me about Hidden Valley trailer park was that it must be nice to live somewhere you trusted your neighbors enough to retain the old country habit of not locking your doors at night.

  And then again, maybe they just knew that anyone could get into one of those things with a large screwdriver and an unkind word, so why bother?

  I hate seeing both sides of every question.

  Mom's Diner was on my way back to Paradise Lake. I almost stopped for an early breakfast before it occurred to me that Fayrene was probably in there right now, and that the last thing I actually wanted was to have to explain to her what I was doing out here in the real world instead of safely tucked up in my comforting fantasy.

  I was no fit company for man nor beast, anj^way. Or for woman or deputy, for that matter.

  The sun was well up and the day was getting started when I slipped the Snake's van back into its parking place at Paradise Lake. This time I had no trouble falling asleep.

  8

  ^•^^ SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8—10:30 a.m. ^'^i^

  The next time I woke up it was to the sound of slamming doors. I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty, and I had the feeling I'd been supposed to open the Snake's table about half an hour ago.

  I jammed on my boots and opened the back door of the van. The day was bright; at least we'd been blessed with good weather this weekend.

  Xharina was leaving.

  Both back doors and the side were open on the black van with the flaming guitar painted on the side, and boxes and guitars were being loaded with a speed and skill that suggested this activity was one that Hoodoo Lunchbox performed frequently.

  I didn't see Arioch anywhere. The events of the previous night came back to me suddenly, vivid with the immediacy of memory, and I found myself flushing.

  Xharina turned and saw me. After that, I couldn't just walk away pretending I hadn't seen her and them without it seeming highly suspicious. Besides, it was partly at my insistence that they'd come to HallowFest at all, and I owed them common courtesy at least as much as I wanted to cover my tracks.

  I went over. "You're leaving early," I said.

  This morning Xharina was wearing riding breeches —the old kind that are tight to the knee and have the lagniappe of fabric at the thighs—with her paddock boots and a sleeveless black silk camp shirt. Her tats burned jelly-jar bright in the sunlight. I still

  wondered how Xharina, being Xharina, managed to walk in footgear with heels that low.

  'This isn't exactly the kind of place we belong," Xharina said tactfully. "So we thought we'd cut our losses."

  So to speak.

  Arioch appeared, leaning out of the van to take something from one of the others. He was wearing a white T-shirt under his vest this morning, and I was almost sure I could spot the bulk of a thick gauze dressing under the tee. He saw me and grinned.

  I felt myself lose it completely; a blind deafman would know that I knew what he'd been doing last night. Fortunately, Arioch wasn't pajring attention.

  But Xharina was.

  She turned her back on the others and took a step away. I followed her.

  "We were doing some ritual out in the woods last night," she S£iid when I reached her. I found myself unable to meet her eyes, a sensation I analyzed for its strangeness even while it unnerved me. I took a deep breath and held it, forcing my diaphragm muscles to relax. I didn't think I was ashamed of either of us, and I certainly had no desire for anyone to carve me with a Bowie.

  "I couldn't sleep. I was out walking last night," I said.

  "And what did you think?" Xharina said. Her voice wasn't neutral now. It was angry.

  "I think what I saw wasn't any of my business," I said honestly.

  "Sure it wasn't," Xharina said bitterly. "But that isn't going to stop you from phoning all your friends and telling them all about it. Why not? —it isn't as though we're really Pagans or anything."

  I thought of telling her that I didn't have any friends, but Xharina didn't need stand-up comedy right now. "It was a ritual. What I saw I didn't have any business seeing," I repeated. "I'm not going to tell anybody."

  "And I suppose we'll just take your word for that?" Xharina said.

  "What choice have you got?" I said, starting to get angry myself. "I've told you twice it was an accident—do you think I went out looking for you?"

  "Maybe." Xharina looked me up and down in a way that was meant to be insolent and succeeded pretty well. "Maybe you were looking for—what we have."

  There was no use denying I knew what that was, and knee-jerk

  408 Bell, Book, and Murder

  denials are not my specialty anyway. With toxic fair-mindedness, I remembered waking up out of a sound sleep and going looking for . . . what? Them? I shook my head. Even if Xharina were right— and she might be — I could see no happiness for myself down that particular path, and given a choice I wouldn't walk it. There are degrees of separation from the mainstream; I could see Xharina's from where I was, but that didn't mean I wanted to go there.

  "Maybe," I said reluctantly. "But I didn't mean to crash your ritual. I'm sorry."

  "Okay." The word came on a sigh, an indication of how wired Xharina was. There was a pause. "Nobody else noticed," she said. "I knew
there was someone but I didn't know who, and I thought ..."

  That it was Jackson Harm's killer trolling for new victims? Or something darker?

  "Cheer up," I said glibly, "I'll keep my mouth shut and they'll make stuff up about you anyway."

  That made her grin. Xharina wasn't averse to bad press and living the legend — except, I realized, when there was truth to the rumors.

  "I'd say you should come party with us sometime," she said, "but I don't do women. I know some people, though."

  I wasn't sure whether the offer was serious or whether she was still trying to Jerk my chain, and on this particular morning I wasn't even sure which I wanted it to be.

  "I'll keep that in mind," I said, settling for neutral politeness. "You folks have a safe trip home."

  "See you at the Snake," Xharina said, and strode back to her coven.

  I took the long way up to the bam, rearranging the inside of my head into something that wouldn't get into my way and trying to push the brilliant flash of the blade in Xharina's hands back somewhere into unconsulted memory-space.

  And doing that made me forget about most of what else had happened last night, too.

  It was only after I got up to the bam that I realized everything I needed to have to open up the table was down in the van. By the time I got back down to the parking lot again, Hoodoo Lunchbox was gone, which was, all things considered, a relief. I was pretty sure Xharina hadn't killed Jackson Harm, but I couldn't feel as

  certain about her boys—jailhouse tats, biker colors, and all. There was no reason other than bloody-minded suspicion for me to think any of them had done it, of course, and when I faced that thought, I realized that my subconscious didn't want to pin Harm's murder on Hoodoo Lunchbox as much as on their equipment.

  It was, after all, a similar case to Reece Wheeler's shooting last night—a weapon appears, is used, and vanishes again. But even disappearing knives have to come from somewhere, and I suspected that Hoodoo Lunchbox traveled with a lot of them.