Crone’s Moon argi-5

by M. R. Sellars

  I let out a heavy sigh. “Haven’t we had our quota of serial killers yet?”

  “Guess not.” His voice held a disgusted tone. “Shit, Row, statistically there are more of ‘em out there than you imagine. The connection between crimes just doesn’t always get made right away.”

  “Maybe so, but I still want to know what’s making me a magnet for their victims.”

  “Yeah…” he responded, voice quiet.

  I stared at the floor for a moment, listening to the silence that had swollen between us. In the edge of my vision I could see a quarter-sized pentacle resting against my chest. The five-pointed star enclosed by a circle was dangling from a chain around my neck, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken it off. It was a symbol of man, spirit, and the elements- a symbol of my faith. It was a constant reminder of the path I had chosen long ago and of my identity as a Witch.

  At this particular moment, I wished that I could take it off and shed that identity in a bid to stave off the horrors I knew were soon to come. But, as surely as I knew they were coming, I also knew the piece of jewelry was only a physical symbol. I could not change what I was or what I was destined to do that easily. In fact, I doubted I could change it at all.

  “So it all hinges on the identity of the remains right now?” I finally asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “The general feelin’ is that it’s her. They’re workin’ on that assumption, but until it’s official, no one’s jumpin’ to any wild conclusions. Right now they’re workin’ a partial print but dunno if that is gonna go anywhere.”

  “So where does that leave us for now?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing, white man,” he replied. “It kinda leaves us nowhere. Pretty much me working the Larson abduction and you doin’ your thing with computers.”

  “This is really going to heat up if those are in fact Tamara Linwood’s remains, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah it is.”

  “So, what about the seizures?” I asked.

  “What about ‘em?” he asked rhetorically. “I told ya’ the deal on that last night.”

  “But what if Felicity has another one?” I pressed. “What if I have another one?”

  He huffed out a sigh and then said, “There’s nothin’ I can do, Row. If there was, you know I would. So… So, maybe you two shouldn’t be doin’ any drivin’ for a while.”

  CHAPTER 10:

  “You know, you’ve been avoiding talking about this all day,” I said to my wife.

  It was now rapidly approaching seven-thirty in the evening, and she was rushing around the house haphazardly stuffing ritual items into her nylon backpack. As usual, she was running late.

  Physically, she had bounced back from the episode the previous evening much better than I had expected. In fact, on the outside, if I hadn’t been a witness to it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell anything had happened. Still, I knew something had to be going on behind those green eyes, and she wasn’t being very forthcoming. Scratch that; she was all but denying it.

  I had filled her in on the conversation I’d had with Ben, but much to my dismay, she had simply taken it all in with calm detachment. I’m sure it was largely due to the seizure she had experienced, but the radical shift in her personality was disconcerting to say the least.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she told me matter-of-factly.

  “I know better than that, Felicity,” I replied. “Think about who you’re talking to. I’ve been there, remember?”

  “Exactly, so you know there’s nothing to talk about,” she returned.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.” She shrugged. “I saw nothing. Just like you.”

  “You must have seen something,” I countered. “What about the grading papers thing?”

  “I don’t even remember saying that, Row.”

  “But you did, whether you remember it or not.”

  “Okay, so I said it. Your point is?”

  “That you were channeling the spirit of Tamara Linwood,” I said. “Or her memories at least, which means recent experiences can’t be far behind.”

  “So?”

  “So you have to have seen something, it’s just not in your conscious mind.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you mean, ‘good’?”

  “I mean, good. Maybe I don’t want it to be in my conscious mind.”

  I shook my head harshly. “You aren’t like that, Felicity. You and I both know it. You aren’t going to run from the responsibility.”

  “Maybe I don’t want the responsibility,” she spat back. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “Do you think I wanted it?” I returned. “It pretty much just got dumped in my lap.”

  “And it’s been fucking up our lives ever since,” she stated with enough bluntness to give me pause.

  “I haven’t exactly got control over it you know,” I replied sharply.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” she answered.

  I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead for a second before reopening them and letting out a heavy sigh. “You’re right. This whole conversation has gotten off track.”

  She looked back at me wide-eyed, gave her head a slight shake, and shrugged again. “Has it?”

  “Yes it has. My original question in all of this is why. Why is this happening to you now?” I submitted. “ Why you instead of me?”

  “Not instead. It happened to you too.”

  “You’re being evasive, Felicity. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Coincidence. Sympathy. Destiny.” She offered the words in a quick stream and then followed them up with a quick change of subject. “Can you hand me that copy of Everyday Magic on the table there?”

  I looked at her in silence, inspecting her face carefully. There was something just not right about the way she was acting and moreover, the way she felt to me, and I didn’t mean the current argument.

  She had erected an ethereal wall about herself, creating a shield against the outside. It was something she had automatically done the moment the psychic episode had ended last evening. I knew it was an act of self-preservation, and it was exactly what any Witch in her position would do. That, in and of itself, was a good thing; but, she was keeping me out as well, and that bothered me.

  I kept telling myself that the enforced distance was just because of the newness of the situation and though she wouldn’t directly admit it, because of the fear I knew she must be experiencing deep down inside. I had lived with the very same emotion swirling in my gut for long enough to know the pain.

  Still, I couldn’t help but feel there was something more going on. I just couldn’t get it to sit still long enough to peg exactly what it was.

  She looked back at me questioningly and raised an eyebrow. “It’s right there. Behind you. Please?”

  I twisted and picked up the book then slowly handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said as she took the tome from me and then stuffed it into her backpack. She continued flitting about the room as if the previous conversation had never occurred.

  I continued watching her and resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to pressure her into talking to me about this. I suppose it wasn’t all that much different the first time it had happened to me, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  “After what happened yesterday, I’d still be a lot more comfortable if you rode with someone,” I finally said.

  “Okay,” she replied. “I’ll ride with you.”

  “Funny,” I told her. “Very funny.”

  “I was being serious,” she answered without looking at me.

  I borrowed a page from her current playbook and ignored the comment. “Maybe you should beg off and just stay home. They’ll be fine without you for one evening.”

  “Can’t,” she told me. “I’m the one giving the lesson tonight.”

  “So postpone it.”

  “No.”
<
br />   “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to. Besides, what good is a Coven meeting without a Priestess?”

  “Felicity…”

  She turned to face me, shuffling things in the knapsack and then zipping it shut. “Come with me.”

  I shook my head. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Rowan…” she spoke my name then looked away while chewing at her lower lip. She brought her gaze back to my face and adopted an almost pleading tone. “This was your decision alone. No one in the Coven wanted you to leave.”

  “I had to,” I answered succinctly.

  “No you didn’t,” she appealed. “No one blames you for anything that happened.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I do,” she shot back. “You are the only one to hold yourself in contempt. You had no control over what a crazed maniac did.”

  “He did it because of me,” I replied.

  “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else who was openly Pagan. You know that.”

  “But it wasn’t someone else. It was me, and he killed them to get to me.”

  “So?” she spat. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “It’s my fault that I didn’t stop him.”

  “You DID stop him.”

  “Not in time to save Randy or Millicent.”

  We stood looking at one another. A gelid hush frosted the air between us, expanding out to fill the room. The rhythmic tick-tock of the swinging pendulum on our wall clock clacked dully out of time with my slow breaths as I watched my wife. The passing seconds kept appending themselves to the end of the measure, lengthening the painful silence with each beat. As if pre-ordained to mark the end of the torture, the hammer on the timepiece drew back with a mechanical whir then fell hard, striking a single blow against the chime. The initial sharpness of the bonging sound slowly flowed through the room, softening as it faded to nothingness.

  “I have to go,” Felicity stated simply, slipping a single strap of the knapsack up over her left shoulder as she brushed past me.

  I didn’t turn nor even say a word. I heard the deadbolt snap and the door creak slightly on the hinges as she swung it open. I could sense her hesitation as she stood in the open doorway, and I could feel her eyes on my back.

  “You know, Rowan,” she finally said. “You can stay gone for a year and a day, or you can stay gone forever, it’s up to you. But a Coven is family. You know that. You have people… people who are more than just friends that are worried about you. They’re your family, and they want to help if you’ll just let them.”

  She grew quiet for a moment, and I slowly turned to face her. She was standing with one hand on the doorknob, staring back at me with a pained sadness in her face.

  As I watched her, she swallowed hard then spoke again. “You know… This will never be over until you stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  With that, she was gone.

  *****

  I was still brooding when the dogs began barking at the heavy noises on the front porch. I shushed them as I glanced away from the television to quickly check the clock. Only a little over an hour had passed since Felicity had left, so it didn’t seem likely that she was already returning.

  I muted the sound on the television and listened closely, wondering if the noise had simply been one of the cats leaping down from the ledge and thudding on the decking of the porch. It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had set off what we affectionately called the ‘dog alarm’.

  There was nothing but ambient sound for a moment, and I was just about to up the volume again when a scrape and thud sounded. The new thump was followed by the creak of the screen door levering open. The canines stood their ground and renewed their vocal attempt to keep the intruder at bay, our English setter emitting a dangerous sounding growl that was echoed by a throaty rumble from the Australian cattle dog.

  A moment later the doorbell rang, sending its harsh tone echoing through the house. The dogs immediately exploded once again into angry barks meant to repel the invader.

  I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I couldn’t imagine who would be dropping in unannounced this late in the evening. Even Ben normally called, albeit at times while he was already standing on the porch, but he called nonetheless.

  A paranoid thought raced through my head, and my heart seemed to stop as an artificial hollowness filled my stomach. My subconscious assumed control, and I was gripped by a sudden fear that something was wrong. Given the situation, the first thing that came to mind was that Felicity had been afflicted with another seizure while behind the wheel of her Jeep and that she had been in an accident.

  I jumped up from the chair and strode quickly to the door, not even bothering to look through the peephole before unbolting the lock and swinging it open.

  The sudden impact of a massive fist against my shoulder was pretty much the last thing I had been expecting.

  CHAPTER 11:

  I stumbled backward and let out a yelp of pain as I reached for my shoulder. The force of the impact had caused me to spin a quarter turn away from the door. My primal gut reaction was to keep that momentum going until I reached the ninety-degree point and then run as fast as I could in the opposite direction of the threat. However, my socially ingrained, testosterone-induced reaction was to defend my castle.

  I quickly recovered my balance and twisted back toward the open door, certain that whomever it was attacking me would be only a hair’s breadth from landing another punch. Out of instinct, I brought my arm up to block the expected blow and braced myself against its onslaught. I was already clenching my fists into hard balls, determined that even if I took the first two punches, I was going to give the next three.

  I shot a guarded look past my arm in an attempt to see my attacker, expecting to come face to face with some brazen home invader. Instead, I found Ben holding up the doorframe with his shoulder. He stared back at me with a tired grin.

  “Howth’hell’are’ya’?” he bellowed, creating a single word from an entire sentence.

  “That depends on if you’re going to hit me again,” I answered, slightly miffed.

  “Sorry ‘bout that, whyman,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean ta’ hitcha’ that hard. Was jes’ s’posed ta’ be a frenly punch ya’know.”

  I rotated my shoulder as I rubbed it with my hand. There was still a good deal of dull pain working its way through the joint, and I winced as it popped. I suppose it didn’t help any that he had connected with my left shoulder which was the one Eldon Porter had driven an ice pick into the first time he’d tried to kill me. I’d had surgery to repair the damage that had occurred from both that and the subsequent struggle, but to this day, it still bothered me. I guessed it probably always would.

  “I’ll live,” I told him, my voice still a bit edgy. “Just don’t do it again, please.”

  “Yeah, no prob, Kemonas… Kesomob… Kenomos…”

  “Kemosabe?” I offered.

  “Yeah, that.”

  The glazed look in his eyes and the slurred speech were the first two indicators to grab my attention, so I didn’t actually need to smell the brewery riding along on his breath to know he was all but obliterated. However, there was no avoiding it. I could only recall having seen him this far gone once before, and that was very early on in his career as a police officer. He was a young, far from streetwise uniform, and he had been the first to respond to a particularly heinous murder-suicide. It had affected him deeply then, and as seasoned-almost even jaded- as he had become now, I was certain that it still did to some extent. Evidence that the old adage about never forgetting your first time applied to just about anything, good or bad.

  “Tell me you didn’t drive yourself over here,” I said, refraining from making any drunken Indian jokes. Sober, I knew he would laugh. In this condition, well, let’s just say I didn’t want to test any theories.

  “‘Kay, I won’t.” He pushed away from the doorframe and stepped in, stu
mbling over the threshold in the process. “Ya’oughta have somon fis that.”

  “Gods, you’re even more cliche when you’re drunk,” I muttered.

  “Whassat?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head and pushed the door open wider as I motioned him in. “Get in here and sit down, Tonto. I’ll go put some coffee on.”

  “I’ll hava’beer,” he told me as he dropped himself onto the sofa with a heavy thump.

  “Don’t have any,” I lied.

  I stepped forward and looked out into the driveway. His van was nosed in diagonally across the double lane of concrete, effectively blocking any entry or exit. I had already made a mental note to at some point get his keys away from him. I appended it to include repositioning the vehicle so Felicity would be able to pull in when she got home.

  “Scosh then,” he announced.

  “Don’t have any of that either.” I continued down the path of untruthfulness as I closed the door and bolted it.

  “Burrbahn?”

  “Nope.” I was heading for the kitchen now, letting him run down whatever list he could come up with.

  “Vokka.”

  “Can’t say as that I have any of that either,” I called out.

  “How’bout killya?”

  I poked my head back out of the kitchen to look at him with a furrowed brow. “What?”

  “Killya,” he repeated. “Ya’know, killya. Iss Messican.”

  “No,” I replied as I made the connection. “I don’t have any Tequila. But I do have coffee.”

  “Shit,” he mumbled.

  I stepped back into the kitchen and started the coffeemaker’s carafe filling from the filtered tap. While the water was rising, I reached into the cabinet and retrieved the coffee grinder and a bag of beans labeled ‘breakfast blend’. I poured a measure of the roasted coffee into the bowl of the grinder, thought about it for a moment and then added an extra handful. I wasn’t going to be able to duplicate Ben’s ‘cop coffee’, but I could at least make it a little stronger than usual.