A Charmed Death
Page 5
Tara rolled her eyes and heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Binding ritual, hello.”
I frowned, trying to connect her curt explanation with what I’d read so far. I knew bindings—spells used to control the will of another—were performed only in the direst circumstances, and only with an absolute absence of malice, unless you wanted to risk the same energy rebounding on you. Cosmic justice was known for its capricious nature. But the books on Felicity’s recommended reading list were pure Metaphysics 101, more why-to than how-to.
What on earth could a young girl like Tara need to bind?
Tara waited impatiently for me to “get” it, but when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen, she gave me a look of bemusement. “You don’t know much about the Craft, do you?”
“Obviously not enough.”
“Huh. I did wonder. The other day, you know, when the Mod Squad did their usual Mean Girl act at your store? I mean, your selection there is pretty lame, ya gotta admit. All sweetness and light. When everybody knows you can’t have the light without the darkness to balance it.” Her eyes raked me. “So what are you, then, just some Fluffy Bunny pagan?”
I’d never heard the term before, but by her tone . . . “Well, for one thing, what I am is my business, not yours. For another thing, it’s my opinion that one can choose to follow the light, or be sucked in by the darkness. Either way, it’s a conscious choice that each of us must make.”
She curled her lip in a sneer. “Fluffy Bunny. Definitely.”
I’d had enough of wallowing in teen angst. “Speaking of those girls at the store, I suppose you’ve heard that Amanda Roberson has gone missing.”
She didn’t even flinch. “Yeah. So?”
“Know anything about it?”
She snorted. “Has anyone checked with her boyfriend? Or gee, maybe one of the other brainless guys she leads around by the balls. No one could ever accuse her of being . . . picky. Wow, that was mean, wasn’t it? Bad me. Guess I’ve been sucked down the Drain o’ Darkness after all. Should have seen that coming.”
“I don’t know who they’ve spoken with,” I said in a quiet voice, troubled by the vehemence in hers. I’d seen Amanda in action, and yeah, she was a real drama queen. But that was just teenager stuff. Right? “All I know is that the whole town is out looking for her. Me included. I guess that means someone out there feels her absence is significant.”
“Why not? Amanda’s just one of those perfect girls people can’t help paying attention to. Everything she says. Everything she does. Maybe this is another one of her famous power plays. It’s exactly the kind of scam thing she’d try.” Her fingers closed over the smooth stone, her knuckles white with the force of her grip.
Anger. Pure, unadulterated loathing. The strength of the emotional onslaught made my equilibrium do a quick loop-de-loop. I struggled, wishing I could find the means within myself to learn how to control this confounded gift of mine. Did I say gift? Try pain in the ass. “I wonder,” I mused aloud, “whether your feelings toward Amanda might change should we find that she’s never coming back.”
“Look.” Eyes as green as summer corn hit me with a hard, sullen bitterness. “Amanda is a bitch with a capital B. Trust me, she can take care of herself. I have no doubt that she can come out on top of any situation she finds herself in. It’s her way. Now if you don’t mind, I have some work to do.”
I didn’t have to stay. I wasn’t wanted there. But I couldn’t seem to get my feet to move, and Tara didn’t seem to care. She turned her gaze to the stone she moved back and forth between her palms, back and forth, while the air around us went thick. Something started bubbling down low in my stomach, something that knotted me up and made me think suddenly of Margo Dickerson (now Craig), my own personal high school nemesis who’d once delighted in showing me my rightful place in the world . . . soooo far below her own. As intense as the emotions were, they were too raw to be my own.
The stone was moving faster, and Tara’s body began to rock and sway as she muttered her words of power from her perch atop the mammoth boulder. Unintelligible though they were to my ears, the words held me in their sway as surely as if I’d uttered them myself. I could not move and I could not look away. Energy was coiling around us. Building. Crackling. Electrifying the very air we took into our lungs. Empowering our bodies. It wasn’t the first time I had felt the rhythm of energy invigorating my blood, and it would not be the last. A more experienced empath would have been able to shield herself from energy workings like this one, from random negativity, from even your outright psychic attack. I could scarcely control my own emotions, let alone be adept enough to protect myself from others. Where were my Wonder Woman magic bracelets when I needed them?
But the power that now twisted in a rising spiral around us was different. It was exhilarating, yes, but somehow intimidating at the same time. My previous experience with energy at Liss’s hands left me feeling buzzed with adrenaline, charged with possibility. With Liss I’d felt safe. Protected. Tara was too much of a loose cannon to allow for that much peace of mind. It was up to me to try to take care of myself. With that in mind, I steeled myself against the buffeting waves as best I could until, before I knew it, the spiral of energy reached its shimmering zenith. As energy whirled and buzzed around us at fever pitch, Tara slipped from the boulder and took a single, decisive step toward the water’s edge. A grunt of effort came from the depths of her being as she lobbed the smooth stone midriver with as much strength as she could muster.
“So mote it be,” she growled, hugging her arms about herself as she watched the stone sink beneath the flow of the river currents.
So mote it be, I silently and respectfully echoed the traditional closing to a witch’s prayer . . . then added a sheepish Amen for good measure. It couldn’t hurt, right?
The last thing she did was to kneel at the water’s edge, heedless of the damp darkening the knees of her leggings. Slowly, purposefully, she plunged both hands beneath the murky surface of the water, then withdrew them and held them out before her for the air to dry them. Water for purification—her actions clicked into realization in my head—and currents of air to sweep away. Tara was borrowing strength from the elements to lend oomph to a magickal purpose (magickal being spelled with a K, I had learned, to differentiate it from the visual deceptions performed by illusionists). I had to admit, I was just the tiniest bit pleased with myself for recognizing the meaning behind her actions. I wondered, however, at the lack of a cast circle. Everything I’d learned had indicated that casting a circle, a magickal workspace between worlds, was necessary for psychic well-being while practicing the Arts.
Her task complete, Tara sat back on her heels, and little by little the world around us drifted back until all was as it should be once more. Blinking away the last vestiges of mist from the corners of my eyes, I tried to pretend I hadn’t been affected by what she’d enacted there beneath the pall of a lowering gunmetal sky. Why had I stayed? I didn’t have an answer. For a moment I considered Tara, who seemed to think the whole of the world was working against her, and then I thought of Amanda, who behaved as if the whole of the world was hers to command. Yet now she was gone, missing, and no one appeared to know how, or why. And I remembered what I was supposed to be doing with my time.
I cleared my throat and my head. “I have to go.”
“Whatever. Hope I didn’t scare you too much, Fluffy.”
She knew. Dammit. I hate that.
I slid from the rock, preparing to leave. As I did, I remembered the other thing I’d meant to address with her. “By the way,” I said, turning back, “about those books . . .”
She had the decency, at least, to look contrite. “Sorry about that. I meant to bring them back. I did! I know you probably don’t believe me, but I did.”
“Don’t suppose you have them with you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll meet you at the store. Tomorrow. I promise.”
As I made my way up the path, I heard her call
after me: “I wouldn’t worry about Amanda, if I were you. It’s a stunt. Trust me on this one. She’ll turn up.”
I wished I could be as certain.
Chapter 4
As it turned out, Amanda turned up sooner than expected.
I spent most of my time Monday morning on the phone with one Ms. Poulson (emphasis on the Miz), the County Systems Integrator at Town Hall. Ms. Poulson listened to my story about the strange experience Saturday night on the SunnyStonyMill website before informing me there was nothing wrong with the website itself and in oh-so-patronizing tones inferred it must, simply must have been user error.
“Well, I realize you think the website is working properly,” I said, counting to ten for patience as I struggled for an answer to that eternal question: Why did all technical people feel the need to treat their customers like uneducated twits, incapable of understanding even the most elementary of computer subjects? “In fact, I hope—I truly hope—that you’re right. Considering the cost of the service, I’d like to believe the actual security of the secure server we’re using for our online presence is as airtight as we all hope it is. As the operating manager at Enchantments, that kind of thing helps me to sleep at night.”
“Let me assure you again,” came the same bored, precise tones, “the system is functioning perfectly. I designed it myself. The scheduled security checks have turned up zero attempts to breach our firewall. Everything checked out.”
“I mean, we’ve all heard horror stories about hackers and the kinds of things they can do,” I continued, determined to make my point. “All I know is, it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know whether it was a virus or a virtual attack of some kind or what, but there is something wrong. I know it.”
“There have been no attempts. There are no viruses on our server. I suggest you try your search again.” Whatever patience she’d started with had begun to unravel, giving way to a bluntness that I suspected was her usual modus operandi.
“Can’t you just check it out? I can give you the URL that was in our history.” As the pause stretched into silence, I sweetened the deal with, “Please? It really would give me peace of mind.”
On the other end I heard an irritated sigh and the crisp rustling of papers. “All right. Give me the specific web address you accessed. I’ll test it myself.”
“Thank you.” I read off the address that I’d written down from the laptop’s recorded Internet history.
“I’ll let you know the results of my testing, but please understand, I can’t promise anything.”
I hadn’t had a chance to ask Evie about the strange computer problem I’d encountered Saturday night and its connection to her sudden disconnect that same afternoon. Amanda’s disappearance had thrown a monkey wrench into my day off, all right. I had gotten nothing done. And as of the conclusion of Sunday’s search efforts, there had still been no sign of Amanda. The chilling sense of urgency and watchfulness around town deepened. I have to say this about Stony Mill. My town really sticks together when it comes to the health and welfare of its children.
Most of the time, that’s a good thing.
It was just after two that afternoon when I heard the sirens. While my customer-of-the-moment, old Mrs. Bailey, dug around in her wallet for change, I looked up toward the front windows. The clutch in my chest tightened painfully as the wailing grew in both number and intensity before diminishing as the cars pushed north. “I wonder what that is,” I murmured, half to myself.
“Hmm? Oh, the sirens. Probably an accident up on the highway. You know how those semi trucks are always running the lights. Think they own the road. A body’s not safe in her own town anymore.” She clucked her tongue as she poked a strip of BlackJack gum into her mouth. Even from here, the aroma of black licorice overpowered.
“Maybe.”
Mrs. Bailey was an inmate, er, resident, of the old folks home on the other side of the river. At eighty-one and too wrapped up in the ups and downs of her own health issues to be concerned with the problems of others, she wasn’t exactly what I would consider a reliable judge of reality.
With a deftness I had mastered over the last two-plus months of my employ, I wrapped her purchase in tissue paper and tucked it into one of our signature gold foil gift bags. A silver and gold ribbon cascade completed the look. “There you are, Mrs. Bailey. Ready to go under the tree.”
“Thank you, dear. Tell Mrs. Dow I was sorry to have missed her.”
“I will. Merry Christmas to you.”
Truth be told, I was missing Felicity, too. Liss’s sabbatical was much deserved, especially in light of all that had happened in October, but it would be a happy day at Enchantments when she’d at last decided enough was enough. It wasn’t that I hadn’t learned to handle the store in her absence, but that I missed seeing her on a daily basis. And at times like this, Liss’s calm perspective helped to route out the path in a complicated situation.
I could use some calm about now.
Out on the street, people had come out of the stores and had congregated on the rejuvenated brick-and-cement sidewalks, talking animatedly among themselves. Curious, I made my way out of the store to find out what was going on. The store’s welcome bell rang out as I opened and closed the door. A cheery sound. A false sound. There was no cheer to be found among the Stony Millers on the street. Bits and pieces of conversations reached out to me as I neared the closest knot.
“What . . . ?”
“. . . sounded like all the cars . . .”
“. . . found her?”
Wary voices. Frightened voices. In none of them did I hear hope.
My heart beat out an alarm as well.
Randy Cutter joined us from his antique store across the street. Still handsome in his mid-forties despite the crew cut he’d sported since his days in the Marines, his face today was taut with concern. “I had the scanner on when the call went out,” he said, his voice pitched so low next to me that I was forced to turn to watch the movement of his lips to catch it all. “They’ve gone out along the river, just down from the old Crybaby Bridge.”
The trestle bridge rose unbidden in my mind, a hulking monstrosity of rusting steel that spanned the river, a remnant from the days when the railroad was still an active and vital part of Stony Mill industry. Nowadays the trains stopped here only to load grain at the farmer’s co-op, then went on to pick up steel from the micromill. The tracks crossing the trestle had been shut down or diverted years ago. The bridge was used mostly by fishing enthusiasts or good ol’ boys out joyriding on dirt bikes and four-wheelers through the surrounding fields.
“Did you hear anything else, Randy?” The question came from Joe Terry, the bald and burly owner of the Roots ’N All Hair Salon. At six foot one and a beefy 225 pounds, Joe the Hairdresser was a bit of an oddity in our little one-horse town. It had occurred to me before that Joe might just be gay, but no one that I knew of had ever asked him. Er, would you?
Randy nodded, his thin lips set in a grim line, his eyes full of tragedy. “The code called was a 10-32. I looked it up. Drowning.”
A collective groan shuddered through us all. There was only one thing that could mean, and we all knew it.
I went back to the store and turned on the radio. Most of the stations came out of Fort Wayne, but instead I flipped it over to AM and tuned in our old standby. If anyone would break the news first, it would the boys with NewsTalk 1190 WOWO. And it would be done with dignity and grace, not sandwiched between ads for Viagra and smarmy shock jock wannabes guessing listeners’ bra sizes or bragging about the killer party they went to last night, dude.
Amanda Roberson was dead.
Suddenly I felt the need to get in touch with my mom. As much as I resented my mother’s overwhelming presence at times, I had to admit that the opposite was not always better. I knew I wouldn’t feel right until I heard her voice.
In times of crisis, girls often reached out to their moms. Amanda would never be able to do that again.
I sat on the stool behind the old wooden counter, tapping the eraser end of a pencil idly on the phone’s keypad and willing it to ring. When it did, a moment later, I about shot through the roof.
I took a steadying breath. “Enchantments Fine Gifts, may I help you?”
“Hello, ducks.” Felicity’s warmth filled my soul as her voice sounded in my ear with its usual flair. “You rang?”
“Hey, Liss. Actually I didn’t.”
“Hmm. I could have sworn . . .” As her voice trailed off in feigned confusion, I could hear the smile that had spread across her face. How she did it, I still didn’t know, but Liss had an uncanny knack for knowing when I needed her most. “I suppose you’ve heard what has happened.”
“I suppose you’ve heard more,” I countered, knowing it must be true. That was another thing Liss had a knack for. Her web of information rivaled my mother’s.
“They’ve found the body of that poor tragic girl.”
“Where? How?” Was it ghoulish to want to know details? I didn’t even care.
“Two young men were out exercising their dogs when they spotted her car down by that ancient bridge that has fallen into disuse. Apparently she was in the river, just down from there. Poor girl. May the Goddess bless and keep her spirit in her crossing to the Summerlands.”
In the river just down from Crybaby Bridge. In an instant I flashed back to the spirit boy I’d encountered so unexpectedly Saturday morning, just before Amanda had visited Enchantments. The timing of it, in retrospect, gave me pause. Was it a warning from the Other Side that I’d been too inexperienced to heed? Was that what it came down to? That the Universe gives you the tools, but it is up to you to decide to use them?