Tarnished and Torn

by Juliet Blackwell

  Oscar, in his piggy form, did his obsequious bit, running circles around Aidan’s legs, begging for attention. Aidan gave him a twitch of the head, and Oscar scooted back over to the purple silk pillow Bronwyn had bought him. Recently she’d had it monogrammed, with OSCAR IVORY embroidered in giant florid letters, the “O” and “I” prominent. Maya called it his OI pillow and suggested we come up with two more names starting with “N” and “K,” so it would spell “oink.”

  “Aidan, we haven’t seen you in ages!” gushed Bronwyn as she ran across the shop to give him a big hug. I imagined not many people dared to hug Aidan, but he smiled and returned the embrace.

  “I swear you are looking more gorgeous with every birthday, Bronwyn. That shade of lilac is exquisite with your coloring.” Bronwyn had just turned fifty-three and celebrated with a party that would make any coven proud.

  How Aidan knew this was anyone’s guess . . . but Aidan always knew things. It was the way of it, just as natural as the sun rising in the east.

  The handful of women in the aisles of Aunt Cora’s Closet glanced over at Aidan and sighed. It was a typical response of women, and most men.

  Not long ago Bronwyn had referred to Aidan as a golden-haired god, which wasn’t all that far from the truth. Not that the man was a god—far from it. But there was no denying that his sparkling aura cast a magical, demigodlike spell over just about anyone he walked by. His eyes were a deep, captivating shade of periwinkle blue and seemed to hold secrets you were just dying to know. Tall and broad shouldered, he cut a fine figure and was always impeccably dressed.

  His beauty seemed unreal, and part of it was. But love him or hate him, Aidan was a force to be reckoned with.

  Lately my own feelings for him had been closer to hate than to love. Though he wouldn’t admit it, I was pretty sure Aidan had run Sailor out of town. In fact, there was part of me that was hoping this was so, because if it was true, I didn’t have to consider the painful possibilities that Sailor had fled because he was either afraid of me or didn’t want to be with me. It was one thing to be a disaster in the romance department, and quite another to make men flee.

  “Where’s Sailor?” I demanded of him, as I had every time we had met since Sailor’s disappearance.

  Aidan cocked his head and gave a tiny frown as he looked at me quizzically. “How would I know?”

  “Because you ran him out of town once you learned we were dating.”

  “Personally,” he said as his long, graceful fingers played with a strand of Venetian glass beads, “I’d ask his relations. Perhaps he left a forwarding address.”

  I pursed my lips to avoid saying anything more damaging. Besides, we had more immediate concerns at the moment than my love life, such as demons and magic amulets.

  Witchy politics, and witchy feuds, made strange bedfellows.

  “It looks like somebody had fun at the Gem Faire,” he said as he admired a long string of dark purple-gray misshapen pearls that adorned a nearby mannequin. He smiled. “Either that or a magpie’s been busily decorating.”

  “If you’re not going to tell me about Sailor, what are you doing here?” I asked. I had no desire to swap small talk with this powerful mage, but I wanted him to bring up the business with Gene and the ring and my father. Even though I’d been trying to get in touch with him, I was certain he had shown up here for his own reasons. That was how it was with Aidan.

  “Seriously?” Aidan said, his eyebrows raised, a half smile on his lips. He glanced over at Bronwyn, who was now showing an elderly woman her new salve to fade age spots. They seemed engrossed in the discussion, and within moments all the other women in the store joined them, crowding Bronwyn’s herbal stand. They were mesmerized suddenly with whatever concoction Bronwyn was mixing up.

  It took me a moment to realize Aidan must have cast a cocooning spell so they wouldn’t overhear our conversation.

  “Perhaps we could go upstairs and speak in private?” he suggested.

  Aidan had never been to my apartment. I planned to keep it that way. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, except that my place was my inner sanctum.

  “Let’s go for a walk instead. It’s so sunny out.”

  “Hot, even,” Aidan said with a smile, fixing me with an intense look from those sparkly blue eyes. I wasn’t fooling him. “Of course, whatever you’d like.”

  Aidan released Bronwyn from the spell, and I left the store in her more than capable hands. As Aidan opened the door for me, the bell again failed to make any noise. I lifted an eyebrow.

  Aidan paused and glanced overhead. The bell rang obligingly.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked as he closed the door behind us.

  “You don’t find that incessant ringing a bit annoying? Reminds me of the faerie court—those little guys do adore their chimes. Anyway, I don’t like to give you any warning of my arrival.” He grinned. “You might escape.”

  “This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?” I demanded. I was on edge, not feeling like myself. I had no idea how Aidan was involved with any of this, or even whether he was actually involved, although when something magical was going haywire, it seemed he was always involved.

  He laughed outright. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. ’Mares bothering you again?”

  I just shook my head as we walked past a street vendor selling earrings, and another with a display of tiny handmade clay flutes.

  “I told you,” he said in a quiet, seductive voice, “it’s not natural for a witch to sleep alone. You’re inviting all sorts of nocturnal trouble. There’s no reason to be by yourself; you could enamor any man you like.”

  “You’re giving me romantic advice now? Seems to me you’ve done your level best to run off any such possibilities in my life.”

  He scoffed. “Any man worth his salt wouldn’t be that easily run off. Besides, that journalist you liked—what was his name? Max?—was a train wreck.”

  “And Sailor?”

  “Sailor is . . .” He suppressed it quickly, but I knew the thought of Sailor and me together still stuck in his craw. “Sailor is trouble, no two ways about it.”

  We paused for the light at Cole Street. Aidan reached out to tuck a strand of my dark hair behind my ear.

  “Besides . . .” he said in a low voice. “We both know there’s someone else so much better suited to you. One of these days, maybe you’ll stop fighting it.”

  The mere touch of his fingers caused a searing tingle of heat to race through me, but I had already braced myself for it. There was no denying there was chemistry between us. The only question was what to do about it. We had kissed once, and our combined magic spun out of control. I had the feeling that Aidan’s romantic track record wasn’t much better than mine; we both seemed to leave a trail of battered lives in our wake.

  But for the moment, at least, I was putting that at the very top of the list of things I didn’t want to think, much less talk, about.

  We crossed Stanyon to enter Golden Gate Park.

  “What has your father said to you?”

  I studied the side of his face as he looked straight ahead at a group of children playing hide-and-seek in a eucalyptus grove. I wasn’t going to bother to ask how he knew my father was back in town—Aidan had more scouts and spies than I could fathom.

  “Nothing.”

  “He hasn’t asked you for anything?”

  I shook my head.

  We walked farther into the park in silence. Aidan wasn’t one prone to fabricating long pauses for dramatic effect. He was choosing his words carefully.

  “You haven’t been contacted in any way?” He searched my face. “No unusual characters in your life lately—anything like that?”

  “Someone was sent to follow me.”

  “Who? How?”

  “Couple of look-alike guys in a big mint green Ford Sco
ut. Not exactly subtle. Named Zeke and Clem. They’re pretty incompetent—came into the store, then tried to mug me.”

  “Mugged you?” Alarm in those beautiful blue eyes. Maybe he really did care about me. “Did they take anything from you, a piece of jewelry?”

  Or . . . maybe not. He was worried about them finding the ring, not the health and welfare of yours truly.

  I shook my head.

  “This is very important, Lily: Was anything given to you? A gift or present of some kind?”

  “What kind of present?” I played ignorant, seeing what he’d say.

  “A ring.”

  “No,” I said, relieved not to have to lie to Aidan. Though we couldn’t read each other’s thoughts, it was usually pretty evident when the other was lying.

  As we followed a bend in the path to a small meadow, we saw a couple of young women in halter tops and cutoffs, swinging pots on ropes, dancing and swaying.

  “Are they practicing fire dancing?” Aidan asked with a frown.

  “I think so, yes.”

  He swore under his breath. “Since when has this been going on?”

  “First time I heard about it was Sunday. You’ve been out of touch. Shouldn’t you be on top of this sort of thing?”

  “Fire dancing is a great art, actually, but in this case . . . it’s not good. Not good at all. Listen. With regards to your father: Don’t trust him.”

  I snorted. “Like I need you to tell me that?”

  Again with the searching of my face. It was starting to make me nervous. Aidan was clearly trying to figure out how much information to share with me and how much to hold back. It was rare for him. I almost never saw him unsure.

  “I was once entrusted with a very important magical ring. Because of something that happened with your father, I wasn’t able to keep it. I wasn’t strong enough at the time. So I gave it for safekeeping to a powerful witch I knew.”

  “Carlotta Hummel?”

  He looked at me, startled. “How did you know?”

  “I have my sources,” I said, feeling inordinately proud of myself for getting the jump on him for once. It was the sort of thing he was always doing to me.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Carlotta. I had to get the ring to someone powerful enough and who had no obvious connection to me. She was able to hide it for many years, but recently she was forced to forfeit it.”

  “Along with her life.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t know where it is now?” I wasn’t ready to tell him the truth about how much I knew. I still didn’t trust him.

  He shook his head. “Part of the ability of the ring is to keep itself hidden. There is no feeling its hum, its vibrations, unless it wants you to. In a very real sense, it is alive. Too many practitioners have poured in a bit of their abilities for it to be otherwise. And if Carlotta gave up her life keeping it secret, it very likely holds a good deal of her powers as well now. It grows stronger, which is a very good thing. Because the . . . entity that it controls does as well.”

  We were talking about demons. A lot of us powerful folk can’t speak the names for fear of invoking them, particularly if we share a bond. Demons are diabolically clever and have wicked good memories. Once you used spells and incantations to control them or escape from their clutches, they remembered. The next time you met up, if you were so unfortunate as to see them again, you had to have a whole new arsenal of tricks.

  “And what makes you think this ring is here in San Francisco?”

  “Carlotta’s sister, Griselda, arrived a few days ago. As did your father.”

  “And you think he’s looking for it?”

  “I would assume so. I believe Carlotta must have tried to send the ring to me. I am not sure how, or who she might have trusted for the job besides her sister. Unfortunately, my own investigation has been stymied by my need to go underground.”

  “Why are you so sure my father’s looking for the ring? Maybe he came here to visit his daughter. You never know.”

  His blue eyes sparkled as they looked into mine. I remembered only too well, however, the time I had walked in on him unexpectedly and seen him without the glamour he used to hide his scars. I wondered if he still had nightmares about the flames of that demon’s fire.

  “You went up against this demon together. Didn’t you? Is it . . .” I hesitated to say the name Xolotl, just in case. “The X-man, the Aztec fellow?”

  “Sounds like you know plenty.”

  “Not enough. Tell me what happened. You told me you and my father used to work together.”

  He nodded. “We did, some time ago. But then . . . we went up against a powerful foe. Everything went wrong. I . . . your father . . .”

  “He betrayed you?”

  “It wasn’t that. Declan thought he could gain control . . . that he could utilize the entity. And then I . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I made a mistake. A crucial mistake.”

  “You’re saying he’s beholden to a demon and it’s somehow your fault?”

  Aidan looked back at the children playing among the trees, their high-pitched young voices reminding us of joy and life. Dwelling on demons tended to suck that kind of thing out of a person.

  “I owe him; let’s leave it at that. I think he’s here in pursuit of the ring.”

  “To use it to free himself?”

  “That’s the most benign explanation. It’s possible, though, he’s intent on destroying it for the demon.”

  “Why would he willingly stay beholden?”

  “He would gain great powers, beyond anything a regular human could ever hope to attain. And your father is a very ambitious man.”

  Food for thought. “So where do we go from here?”

  “We find the ring first. Besides stopping a good deal of carnage, we could use it to free your father from the entity’s clutches.”

  “Easier said than done. I’ve been looking for it since the Gem Faire.”

  “You’re very sure Griselda didn’t give you anything?”

  “I bought a box of junk jewelry from her, but it was long before anything happened, and it seemed so random . . .”

  “It’s probably with her other things. I had people search her inventory and her room, but we weren’t the first ones there. They’d already been gone through.”

  I nodded. “I asked Carlos Romero about looking through whatever evidence they gathered from her stand.”

  “Good. I had my man on the inside check it out, but it couldn’t hurt to have you look as well. Still, it’s more likely she hid it somewhere . . . or got it to an accomplice. Which brings me to my main reason for coming to see you: I’d like you to go speak with Renna Sandino.”

  “I was already planning to. But . . . I have the feeling she’s angry with me.”

  “I have the feeling she’s furious with you, but I guarantee you she’s even less pleased with me. Just be careful—a Rom witch is not a good person to cross.”

  I glared at him. “I had no intention of crossing her. It’s all your fault.”

  He gave me a sad smile. “You’ll work it out. Anyway, I want you to find out if Griselda made contact with her before . . . before her unfortunate demise. Meanwhile, I’m touching base with a few other local practitioners whom she might have reached out to.”

  “Zeke had a notebook with a list of names. You, Renna, and I were on that list, along with several others I didn’t recognize.”

  “I believe I’m aware of all the possible candidates, but show me the names just in case. Wouldn’t want to miss anyone.”

  I nodded and we headed back to Aunt Cora’s Closet.

  “Lily, I shouldn’t have to remind you that this is a very delicate affair. When you speak to Renna, don’t volunteer any information. Wait for her to give you a sign of how much she knows.”

&
nbsp; Witchy politics were intricate, the traditions and sleights and requirements labyrinthine and largely beyond my ken. I would imagine with a powerful ring like this at stake, it was even worse than normal.

  “And think of it this way,” Aidan said as we turned and started meandering back to the shop. “You can always ask her if she’s heard from Sailor. Perhaps he really did leave a forwarding address.”

  Chapter 18

  Renna Sandino lived in a bubblegum-pink house in the Oakland hills with her husband, Eric, who had charmed me when we met by playing the accordion and singing a flamenco song.

  Over the front door a sign read FORTUNES TOLD; LOVE LIVES SET RIGHT. The pink house put all the staid beige and putty-colored houses on the street to shame, at least in my mind. I guess the neighbors weren’t fond of the place, but that was their problem.

  The man next door had been trimming his hedges, but he shook his head in disgust when he saw me turn into the drive, and ostentatiously went into his house and slammed the door. Across the street a woman was playing in her front yard with two children; she looked away when I glanced in her direction.

  The big black wrought-iron gate was open, so I drove on through, grateful I could try to explain myself and my reason for coming in person, rather than having to deal with the static-prone intercom. Pulling around the circular driveway to the front yard, I started to note disturbing details: a charm of animal fur and flowers was nailed to the wooden post of the mailbox, there were rowan hoops on the rail leading up the front steps, and the front door was ajar. Plus, the neat line of salt Renna always kept on her threshold was scattered.

  Carefully I climbed out of my car, looking and listening. No barking dog greeted me, no sounds of flamenco music, no welcome, but, thankfully, also no screams.

  Then I smelled . . . fire?

  I watched the house for a moment, and sure enough . . . smoke floated out of the kitchen window.

  I don’t carry a cell phone, so I shouted to the neighbor, “Call 911!”

  I ran in carefully, mindful of smoke and fire.

  “Renna?” I shouted “Renna!”

  Symbols of protection were smoldering on the tile in the foyer, and the living room rug was afire. As I watched, flames started to march up the floor-length paisley curtains that covered large windows.