by Bailey Cates
I took a deep breath, reaching out to the tiny flames of each candle as I had the fire at Eulora’s. I gathered the element of air all around us and mentally felt my way into and through the concrete at our feet, deep into the element of earth below. Silently, I called upon Gabriel and the element of water to join the rest.
Lucy took my hand, and I felt a jolt of hopeful energy. Mimsey took hers then, and Jaida and Bianca joined. It wasn’t a circle, but a linking as effective as any I’d ever felt.
“We are stronger together,” I said to Sam. “You’re alone and desperate.”
She held up her hand as if to push us back, and her nostrils flared.
“We are stronger than you are, whatever drives you and whatever voodoo spells you plan to cast here,” I continued. “I guarantee you that, Samantha. If that’s even your real name.”
“Oh, it’s her real name,” said another voice. My head whipped to the left as Mambo Jeni stepped out from the other side of the warehouse. “And she’s not alone. Not at all.”
My mouth gaped open as my mind scrambled to put it together. “But you said you didn’t know Franklin Taite!”
“I also said I always tell the truth.” She shrugged. “I lied about that, too.”
How could I have been so stupid?
The other spellbook-club members looked confused.
“This is Mambo Jeni,” I told them. “One of the voodoo queens Cookie and I went to see.”
She went on. “Franklin Taite almost arrested my daughter and me down in Louisiana. But we got away and relocated here.”
Daughter? So much for Steve’s new love being a member of the dot-com nouveau riche in Hilton Head. I remembered the dark-haired girl in the picture on Jeni’s fireplace mantel. Now that I could see them together and knew Sam’s hair was dyed blond, the resemblance between mother and daughter was unmistakable. Samantha wasn’t just a customer of Jeni’s; she was her own flesh and blood. And yet the idea was hard to wrap my brain around.
“What about your son?”
Sam made a rude noise. Her mother shrugged. “He’s uninterested in anything except his game console. He knows nothing of any of this.” Jeni shook her head. “But then Detective Taite followed us here.”
“Not terribly clever of you to choose Savannah, given that he used to live here,” Jaida remarked.
Sam pointed at her. “How were we supposed to know that? We came here because the voodoo community is wide and deep. My mother could make a living without standing out, just as she had in New Orleans, while we fine-tuned our plans.”
Plans.
Mambo Jeni grinned. “And the magic in Savannah is strong. We don’t want to leave. When Taite showed up here, I decided that rather than running from him forever, he could help us.”
“Help you what?” Lucy asked in a trembling voice.
Jeni said. “Well, you’re a woman of a certain age.”
I felt my aunt bristle at the words—and the tone.
“And I’m betting you’ve been wronged by a man.”
Mimsey snorted.
The mambo glared at her. “A man who takes up with a younger woman and leaves you with two kids to raise and nothing else—no money, no house, no source of income.”
Bianca rolled her eyes. “Sure. Happens to a lot of us. But we’re women, for heaven’s sake. We don’t need men.”
I suppressed a smile.
Jeni eyed her thoughtfully. “Exactly. And so I did what I’m good at. What I’m trained for.”
“Voodoo?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice.
Between the two women, Cookie moaned again. One of the snakes began to coil around her ankle.
Samantha strode toward me. “Shut up. You don’t know anything. My mother raised my brother and me by herself. When she asked for my help to finally set us all up for life, I couldn’t refuse her.”
“You mean Steve Dawes? No way would he marry you without a prenuptial in hand. His father wouldn’t hear of it.”
She smirked. “My mother’s love potions are strong.”
“You know he’s a druid, right?”
Sam looked delighted. “All the better, when I take his power once and for all. It was more . . . difficult to convince him I was the love of his life than most men. That’s why we decided to sacrifice your detective friend. For the extra power it gave to our spells.”
I could feel Lucy’s hand shaking in mine. And no wonder: What this woman was saying was terrifying. They could call it taking power, but we all knew they meant taking lives.
Cookie moaned again. The snake around her ankle began to slowly wind its way up her bare leg.
“Franklin’s death provided enough power to the potion to convince Steve he should marry me,” Sam went on. “But we needed more power to convince his father to give me access to the family fortune.” Her smile was devoid of humor or kindness. “That’s why we tried to sacrifice both you and the spiritualist by fire.”
“You set it?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. But Mommy gave it the extra oomph to do you in.” She laughed.
Mambo Jeni looked pleased. “That gris gris I took from Franklin before we killed him is a thing of wonder. Golly. If it had worked, we would have gained both your power and that of Eulora Scanlon.”
“Didn’t work, did it?” I didn’t try to keep the smugness out of my voice.
“Nope. Came close, though.”
The others had been listening in silence, and now Jaida’s head tipped to the side. “Why are you telling us all this?” she asked.
“Oh! Because as long as you are all here, and we have the only member of your little group who knows anything about voodoo sedated, we’re going to take all your power. Even Steve’s family won’t stop us from getting to the Dawes money then.”
Chapter 24
Mambo Jeni began muttering words that sounded like utter gibberish. Still, they made Bianca’s eyes grow wide, and her ferret, Puck, still curled around her neck, squeaked in the back of his throat. Mimsey closed her eyes and bowed her head, still gripping Lucy’s and Jaida’s hands. Heckle rose up on her shoulder and spread his wings wide, like a multicolored phoenix. My left hand was on Mungo, who stood up in my tote, quivering with canine outrage. Lucy grasped my other one so tightly, it was numb from lack of blood flow. Eulora’s bracelet throbbed against my wrist.
“Oh, brother,” Samantha said with a toss of her blond hair. “Save the theatrics, ladies.”
The elemental power I’d called before had been waiting like a curled mongoose. Wordlessly, I asked it to augment my own now, and instantly felt my energetic signature grow. Mimsey nodded, her eyes still closed but a small smile on her face, acknowledging that she felt it too. I looked at the others. As one, they nodded, too.
Mambo Jeni’s muttering grew louder. It sounded like she was speaking in tongues, and perhaps she was. Her eyes were locked on me, though, and I could see the frisson of alarm in them. Like Sam, she’d thought I’d come alone. I could see her doubt that she could overcome all of us.
“The snakes,” Lucy whispered.
They were roiling harder now, a loose, slithering knot of evil. Above Cookie’s head, the reversed talisman shone with a deep darkness, a vortex that felt like it would eat light like a black hole. At her feet, the snakes reared their heads, striking in our direction. One hit the back of another with its fangs, behind the head. The wounded snake fell away from the group, writhing alone on the floor.
Despite my revulsion, I found myself feeling almost sorry for it. These greed-driven women were using the spirits of animals that were not inherently evil for their own dark purposes. Snakes were disgusting and creepy and terrified the living daylights out of me, but it wasn’t right for them to be used like that.
Then they turned their striking heads toward Cookie’s bare legs. The one that had curled around he
r ankle was now halfway up her leg. As if in slow motion, I watched one of the striped beasts prepare to strike her slim ankle.
“No!” I screamed in a flash of white light. The word came out loud and long, echoing through the cavernous space and folding back upon the tableau in layers. The gathered energy of the four elements was in my Voice, as was the energy of my fellow witches and their familiars. As a result, the sound of the word grew louder rather than fading, increasing in volume and intent.
I was hardly aware as Mungo jumped to the ground and ran to the mass of coral snakes. But when I saw him barking and snarling, ducking their dripping fangs and drawing them away from Cookie, I couldn’t breathe. Then Puck was there, too, fighting them, enticing them away, flowing away from their strikes like liquid fur.
Mambo Jeni was shouting now, and Samantha was running toward the snakes, stomping at them to move them back toward her captive.
Heckle launched himself from Mimsey’s shoulder, blue-and-green wings beating the air as he rose and swooped toward Cookie.
No, not Cookie.
The gris gris.
The great parrot snagged the amulet’s chain in midflight and circled back toward us.
“No!” Mambo Jeni screamed in rage, as Heckle dropped the talisman into my outreached palm. But as soon as I held the gris gris in my fist, her voice no longer had power.
Cookie raised her head, eyes completely clear.
And, boy, was she angry.
I didn’t blame her a bit.
Silence settled on the room, strange after the booming echo of my Voice. Mungo and Puck returned to us. I let go of Lucy’s hand to pick up my familiar and nuzzle his furry neck.
“That’s not yours,” Samantha said, advancing on me. Her eyes were wild, her pretty face ugly with hatred and greed.
“The gris gris? Oh, please. It’s not yours, either. It truly belongs to the man you killed.”
“Sammy, let it go. We can leave now and try again someplace else,” Mambo Jeni said.
Sam turned toward her mother. “Are you out of your mind? I’m going to marry Steve Dawes, and I’m going to have the life I deserve—the life you’ve always told me I deserved!” She stomped her foot.
Behind her, one of the snakes turned.
“Um,” I said.
“Shut up, Katie! Katie-girl, as Steve calls you. But he’s not yours, he’s mine.”
“He’s not either of ours, you sanctimonious, controlling—”
“All right, everyone stay right where you are!” Quinn rushed in from the back hallway, where the spellbook club had entered the warehouse. Ben was right behind him, and, bless his heart, so was Declan—in civilian garb. My uncle must have called him, anyway.
The snake struck fast, unexpected, burying its fangs deep into the flesh at the bottom of Samantha’s calf. Her face went slack from surprise. All her calculation was replaced by simple fear. “Mommy!”
“Sammy? Oh, no! Sammy!” Mambo Jeni rushed to her daughter.
“Hold on there!” Quinn shouted.
I raised my palm and walked toward him, very, very careful where I stepped. But all the snakes seemed to have retreated to the outer edges of the warehouse. “Thanks for coming, Quinn. These are the women who killed Franklin. And I’m betting they put Dawn in a coma, as well.”
“How did they do that?” he asked.
“With a curse,” I said.
He rolled his eyes.
Jeni moaned. “My daughter needs to go to the hospital. She’s been bitten.”
“How many times?” Declan asked, running over.
“Once,” I answered. “Coral snake.”
His head came up and his gaze raked over me. “You okay?”
Power still thrummed through my veins. I looked down to where I grasped the gris gris in my left fist. Slowly, I opened my fingers.
The fringes were white again, shining against my palm as if illuminated from within.
I grinned. “I’m great.”
Declan nodded and turned to a weeping Mambo Jeni. “She’ll be okay, ma’am. Ben, call Five House. I want my guys on this.” He bent to tend Sam’s bite, efficient and tender even with someone he must have deduced was a truly bad person.
How I loved that guy.
Detective Quinn frowned. “You want to tell me what’s going on, Lightfoot?”
I took a breath. “Mambo Jeni here is a voodoo queen. The real deal. Samantha Hatfield is her daughter. They killed Franklin to get power to seduce Steve Dawes.”
He blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Did you check on coma victims?”
“Um, yeah. As it turns out, there was a John Doe in a state rehab facility over in Pooler for about three months. Then one day he disappeared. They reported it to the police, but the general assumption was he came to and got up and left of his own volition. From the description, I’m sure it was Frank.”
I looked at the ashen-face Samantha, prone on the floor, while my boyfriend elevated her foot. “You sweet-talked your way in to the facility and took him out, didn’t you?”
Licking her lips, she nodded.
“I want to know more about these comas,” Quinn insisted.
Jeni rocked back on her heels and raised her face. “I placed a voodoo curse,” she said.
He snorted.
“You used poppets?” I asked.
“It helps if you believe in such curses, and both of the Taites did,” she said. “I gave them both empty dolls so they’d know, but the dolls held only intention.”
Only intention. Ha!
“It was the power of the talisman that accomplished my ends,” she said.
Quinn shook his head. “I still don’t get it.”
“Katie! Would you mind untying me, please?” Cookie sounded impatient.
I hurried over, laughing. “Sheez, I can’t believe we left you—” I stopped cold. All the other snakes had slithered away except one.
The one still coiled around her leg.
“Any day now,” Cookie said.
“Hold very, very still,” I said.
She lifted her leg so she could better see the snake. “Can’t you tell the difference between a coral snake and a king snake? Just untie me.”
“Uh, no,” I said, feeling confused but reaching for the length of clothesline wrapped around her wrists.
“ ‘Red touch yellow, kills a fellow,’” she said.” ‘Red touch black, venom lack. Yellow touch red, soon you’ll be dead. Red touch black, friend of Jack.’” Freed, she put her arms around my shoulders. “Thank you for saving me.”
It was all I could do not to cringe away from the monster on her leg. “Um, sure. What were you just nattering about?”
“The stripes,” Ben said, his arm now around Lucy’s still-shaking shoulders. “Coral snakes and king snakes are often confused.” He pointed to Cookie, who was now holding the two-foot length of reptile in her hands. “That’s a king snake. They’re the good ones.”
She held it out to me. I shuddered. “Katie, meet Rafe. My new familiar. He found me early this morning, after Oscar and I came to an understanding. He was in my purse when Samantha and her mother overpowered me, but was protecting me this whole time.”
After everything that had happened over the past few days, that was when I came the closest to passing out.
* * *
“Have another macaroon,” I urged Dawn Taite.
She sat across from me in the Honeybee reading area. The doctors were just as baffled by her sudden emergence from unconsciousness—at the same time the gris gris had reverted to its intended state—as they had been by the cause of the coma in the first place. Her peanut-butter-colored hair was drawn into two adorable ponytails on either side of her head, and her eyes were clear and a bright robin’s-egg shade of blue. Even her skin seemed more aliv
e than the other times I’d seen her. She was still thin as a rail, however.
She laughed. “I think three is enough. Maybe you can talk my mother into a couple when she comes to pick me up. She’s checking out of her hotel, but I told her I wanted to talk to you alone for a few minutes. Then we’re driving back home to Saratoga Springs.”
I leaned forward. We’d already covered the basics of what she’d been doing for Franklin.
Now she continued. “Uncle Frank told me to come to you if anything happened on the, er, occult front if I couldn’t reach him. When I came back to Savannah, I learned from one of the guys at his rooming house that he’d up and disappeared. I tried to find him for weeks, but the trail was cold by then. And then the empty poppet showed up at the cheap motel where I was staying. I knew what it meant. That was when I came to find you.”
I nodded. “You knew you were cursed. But how did you know the gris gris was missing?”
“Because I could actually feel the curse. I didn’t know who unleashed it, but I’d learned enough from Franklin to know a regular voodoo curse doesn’t carry weight unless you believe in it.”
“And you don’t?”
“Well . . . not enough. At least I don’t think so. Uncle Franklin had shown me the gris gris, though, had told me that if anything happened to him, I should take it. But it wasn’t where he said it was, so I knew someone else had it.”
I took a bite of sweet macaroon, swooning at the combination of sticky pineapple and coconut. “Where was it supposed to be?” I asked after swallowing.
“He always found a hiding place wherever we were. Outside. At Cozie Temmons’ house, it was behind one of the loose bricks in the foundation on the side.”
The dowsing rod hadn’t lied, then—only been a bit behind the times.
“But you weren’t in Savannah with him? We found something about a cult.”
Dawn nodded. “I infiltrated a group headed by a prophet of sorts. Guy calls himself Astroy.”
I’d been reaching for my cup of coffee, but paused. “What?” I rose. “Hang on.” I went to the bookshelf, where one of our enterprising number had placed a copy of the spellbook I’d chosen for the last meeting. I showed Dawn the picture of Astroy.
