The Witch's Key

by Dana Donovan

  “You are forgiven,” I said.

  The gesture crushed her smile. Her brows crossed tightly in a stitched link. She spat at my feet and snorted fire. “I don’t want your forgiveness,” she answered. “I want your blood.”

  To that I laughed. “Then piss off, you old hag.”

  She drew back the blade, and in that instant a pulsating force of energy hit us both, dropping me to the ground and lifting her off her feet. It swept her across the clearing, her body spinning and tumbling until it came to rest on the tracks just as the southbound train tore through. I heard the impact even above the rush of noise that came with the train.

  Carlos and Spinelli heard it, too. The look on their faces confirmed it. And I know Lilith heard it. She stood with bent knees, still pointing the witch’s key at the spot where Gypsy landed before the train hit her. I could see then what Spinelli had handed her moments earlier. It was the key that Gypsy had dropped at my feet when she deposited me on the tracks. Lilith had doubled the two of them up to form a sort of super key.

  Once the train passed, we all went down to the tracks to see what was left of Gypsy. We saw her black coat, shredded to bits along the first forty feet of tracks. Carlos found one of her shoes and Spinelli found the blade that almost killed me. The only obvious thing missing was Gypsy. As far down the tracks as we could see, there seemed no sign of matriarch witch.

  “It hit her,” said Carlos. “I saw the train hit her.”

  Spinelli agreed, commenting on the point of impact in relation to the headlamp. “This far below it,” he said, spreading his hands out as wide as he could.

  I shook my head and dismissed it. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.” I turned to Lilith. “You all right? It looked like she might have hurt you.”

  She scoffed. “Please, that old nanny? She didn’t have a chance.”

  “Well, it’s lucky you were here,” said Carlos. “That’s all I know.”

  “Yes. Why are you here?” I asked.

  She raised her shoulders and dropped them nonchalantly. “Me? Just passing through.”

  “Sure.”

  “Honest.”

  I pointed my finger at her and shook it. “No. You’ve got a lot more explaining to do than that. And sooner or later….”

  “Later,” said Spinelli. “In the meantime, I recommend that she leave here. I just called in the accident.” He did the little quote thing with his fingers while pronouncing ‘accident’. “In about ten minutes this place will be crawling with cops, EMTs and railroad officials. It might get a little tough explaining Lilith’s presence.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Lilith, please go straight home and wait for me. I don’t know how long this will take, but I—”

  “Yeah, sure, sure.” She waved me off and then blew me a kiss. “Send the little woman home. Let the men have all the fun.”

  “Lilith….”

  She turned and walked off into the woods, fading with the shadows until all I could see was a ghost of her silhouette. I watched it until I was sure it was only an imprint in my mind before turning to Carlos and Spinelli again.

  “So, tell me.” This I asked of Spinelli more than Carlos. I suppose because I thought he would know the real answer. “What made you come back after leaving here with Smiley?”

  “We realized he wasn’t our man.”

  “But he said he was a killer.”

  “He is. Remember the story he told us back in the alley about that hobo who got pitched from a moving train?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the guy that pitched him.”

  “What?”

  Carlos said, “Yeah, he thought you were out here tonight because you knew he did it and you were going to take him in.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Spinelli again. “We’re not. The guy wouldn’t shut up about it. He said he thought you were the smartest damn cop alive for figuring it out.”

  I laughed. “Well, I hope you didn’t set him straight about that.”

  “Oh, we did,” said Carlos. “We let him know that it was all just a coincidence.”

  “Nice. Thank you.”

  Spinelli said, “Anyway, we cuffed him to a tree by the car and came back to warn you.”

  “A good thing you did,” I said, “or I would have been toast.”

  “More like jam,” Carlos joked. He pointed to the tracks. “Or maybe you prefer chum.”

  I patted him on the back. “If you say so, old chum.”

  Nineteen

  I got back to the apartment sometime between one-thirty and two. Lilith stayed up for me, which was not surprising since she often stayed up until the wee hours of the morning anyway. I found her in her nightshirt, sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea by candlelight. Vanilla incense permeated the room, and soft music hung in the air like a velvet backdrop. I took my coat off and joined her. She said nothing, but slid a cup my way and filled it with tea from a ewer. The moment seemed almost surreal. A sense of déjà vu told me what to expect next. I would open my mouth to ask her a question, but then she would answer before the words came out. So, instead, I turned the tables and opened the floor.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” I said.

  She held her teacup to her lips, suspending her sip, her nose concealed within the bell of the cup, her glistening ebony eyes peering over the rim in a squinted tease. “Ready for what?” she asked, her muted words nearly lost in her drink.

  “Ready to tell me everything. You’re not going to make me ask, are you?”

  She rolled the cup off her lips, revealing a paper-thin smile. “Ah-huh.”

  “Fine.” I shook my head and then checked my watch. “I guess I didn’t expect to get any sleep tonight anyway.” She seemed to like that idea. “The first thing I want to know is, are you okay?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Well, I’m talking specifically about your state of mind. What with Gypsy being—”

  “A wicked evil woman,” she snapped. “And that’s all she was. End of story. Period.”

  I feathered back a bit. “Fair enough. Okay, secondly, why did you let us go on thinking that you were Gypsy.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “But you let us think it.”

  “It’s a conclusion you drew on your own with no insinuations from me.”

  “What were we supposed to think? You looked just like her. You said you had a tattoo of a scorpion on your butt.”

  “No. You asked me if I had a tattoo, but I never said I did.”

  “You didn’t deny it.”

  “That’s because I do.”

  “Have a tattoo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it a scorpion?”

  She smiled coyly. “Ah-ah, patience now.”

  “All right. Forget it. Let’s start with the obvious. When did you first realize that Gypsy was the one killing those transients?”

  She set her teacup down on the table and folded her hands neatly behind it. “Since the first one,” she said. “At least I had my suspicions then. Once I got out to the site and found the first witch’s key, I pretty much knew for sure.”

  “What do you mean the first key? Did you find one for all the victims?”

  She nodded. “All but the ones you and Carlos found. After number seven, you guys moved in quicker and found the last ones.”

  “Lilith, those keys were evidence.”

  “No, those sites were treated like suicide investigations. They were sealed off, inspected and returned to private use. I found nothing that wasn’t available for investigators to find first. Besides, your men could have found a hundred keys and wouldn’t have thought anything of them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do,” she answered. “And you know it, too.”

  She picked up her teacup and sipped it slowly, allowing me ample time to deny what she knew I would not. The truth of the matter begged neither defense nor denial. If not for Carlos and Spinelli suspecting
something paranormal at work, then events would have played out to an alternate conclusion, one that would likely have resulted in Gypsy getting away with many more murders.

  I waited until Lilith finished her tea and watched her pour another, before pressing her for more answers. I got the feeling she enjoyed this part of the program. Her clever lines and quick responses seemed almost rehearsed. But then, in some ways, I supposed they were.

  “Why didn’t you fess up when we confronted you with the photos and the Incubus ring? You knew we had you dead to rights on the trespassing issue.”

  “You weren’t interested in my trespassing. You wanted to know why I kept going out at nights to the yard.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Then tell me about the will kill spell that you downloaded off the Internet. Did you plan on using it on Gypsy, or was that for someone else?”

  “By someone else, do you mean, you?”

  “I mean anyone.”

  What she did next, took me utterly by surprise, which is hard to do these days since I have learned to expect the unexpected from Lilith. But nothing I had experienced with her before could prepare me for this. She pushed her chair from the table, and without so much as a smile or a wink, rose and started toward me. Her nightshirt had ridden up on her hips, showing more of her bare smooth legs than she might otherwise have intended. As she neared, I scooted my seat out and started to stand, but she pressed her hands to my shoulders and guided me back into my seat.

  “Lilith,” I said, or started to, but she pressed her fingers to my lips to stop me. Next, she ran her hand along my cheek and then around the back of my neck, cradling my head within her palm. I felt her knee wedge between my legs, and as they parted, she slipped in between them.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  I rocked my head back and looked up into her eyes. They seemed unusually warm and inviting. “Ready for what?”

  She leaned into me gently, allowing her breasts to brush my chin ever softly. “Ready to see my tattoo?” She took my hand, guided it up the back of her thigh and placed it over her cheek.

  I pulled back immediately. “Lilith! Please, this is wrong. I know it’s been a difficult time for you, but we can’t do this.”

  “Tony, it’s okay.”

  I scooted my chair back, nearly falling over it trying to get up. “Lilith. No! I don’t know what you put in that tea, or what’s in those scented candles, but we can’t do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think you know why not.”

  She looked at me puzzled at first, but after it hit her, I could see the light bulb going on in her head. “Oh, no. I see what this is about. You think that we—”

  “Please, Lilith, don’t say another word.”

  “But you and I—”

  “Uh-ah. No. Trust me. You will regret this. If we stop now, you’ll thank me in the morning.”

  I turned and walked away, and as I headed down the hall toward the bath to take a cold shower, I heard her say, “You’re the one who’s going to regret it.”

  The next morning I burst into Lilith’s room and shook her awake. “Lilith, get up,” I said, excited, but containing it to a hushed shout. “I just thought of something.”

  She rolled onto her back, partially covering her eyes from the light I had let into the room. “Forget it, Tony. You had your chance.”

  “No, Lilith, you don’t understand. I woke up with it this morning.”

  “What? Wood?”

  “No! An idea. I got this great idea.”

  She turned back onto her side, pulling the blankets up over her shoulder and face. “Let me sleep.”

  “Lilith!” I shook her until she could ignore me no longer. “Seriously. I thought of a way that we might help Pops out.”

  At last she turned back and seemed interested. “How do you mean?”

  “The witch’s key, it holds the power we need to beat back Pops’ cancer.”

  “Explain.”

  “All right, it’s like this. I was looking around on Witchit dot com the other day, and—”

  “Wait. You were on Witchit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was checking something out.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not important. Listen, what I found was this recipe for a potion that is supposed to purge all malignancies from infected human organs.”

  “Does it work?”

  “No.”

  She made a face like one I had never seen before, and I have to say that in the morning’s bright light, it was not very flattering at all. She started to turn away again, but I cupped her shoulder and pulled her back. “Lilith. The web site said the recipe didn’t work because without a way to deliver a concentrated dosage to the infected parts of the body, it could prove lethal.”

  “So, what do you propose?”

  “The witch’s key. I felt its effects, how it tugged and pulled at every morsel of my body. I think that if you were close enough, and if you did it just right, then you could focus the key’s energy exactly where you wanted it, channeling the potion’s effervescence straight to his malignancies.”

  I could see her thinking about it, but her hesitation told me that I still did not have her convinced. So I took her hand and squeezed it gently, and though it was mostly a shameless ploy, I even bit down on my lower lip to make it quiver. I do not know if that’s what did it, but soon she softened her expression, relinquished a sigh and checked a little smile.

  “You really think that will work?” she asked.

  “We have nothing to lose.”

  She slapped the back of my hand and pushed it to my chest. “Okay, but you’re making the potion. You’re a witch now. It’s time you start acting like one.”

  “Then let’s go. Time’s a wasting.”

  After coffee, we sat down at the kitchen table and took inventory of the various ingredients we would need for the potion. I must admit, I was amused when I first read the list, assuming that moss curds, spider legs and powered goat’s horn were really code words for more mundane foodstuffs that every kitchen probably had. Apparently, I was wrong.

  “You have to take this seriously,” said Lilith. “These recipes are passed down through generations of witches. You can’t make arbitrary assumptions about what’s in them.”

  I almost laughed, but stopped myself when I realized she meant it. “But Lilith,” I said, “Surely some of these ingredients are superfluous. I mean, come on, cat whiskers? Dried pine sap?”

  “No. A lot of my favorite potions call for whiskers and sap.”

  I shook the wrinkled paper in front of her and pointed to item number seven. “What about this? Bat phlegm?”

  She winced slightly. “Yeah…that’s a little hard to get sometimes. I usually substitute bat phlegm with high glucose corn syrup. It works just as well.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I said you couldn’t make assumptions. When you see that a potion call for bat phlegm, unless specified, it always means fruit bat phlegm. Because fruit bats eat fruit, their phlegm is generally sweet. Therefor, corn syrup is an acceptable substitute.”

  “So it is okay to change some things.”

  “You’re not listening to me, are you?”

  “Lilith, you….”

  “Forget it. I have everything else on this list that we need. Grab a small pot out of the cupboard and I’ll get you going.”

  Having been a bachelor my entire life, I thought I knew my way around a kitchen well enough. But once I got the base of the potion started, I realized that the rest of it seemed as alien to me as space ice and moon rocks. Traditional methods of measurements flew right out the window. Without Lilith, I would never have known that a turtle shell of moss curd equaled about four tablespoons. A finger dip of powered goat’s horn was literally just that: a wet finger dipped in a tin of powered horn and swished into the potion before it started
to boil. I did well figuring out how to measure a thumbnail of beetle back, a dash of dust mites and a splash of soured possum milk, but when it came to the whisper of dart frog, once again I needed Lilith’s help.

  “That’s the tricky one,” she said, breaking out a tiny jar filled with a grayish blue powder. “This is some strong stuff.”

  “What is it?” I asked, my interest definitely tweaked.

  “The grayish powder is pumpkin ash, but the active ingredient is a neurotoxin secreted by the South American dart frog. Just one hundred and forty micrograms can kill a man in seconds.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “Hardly. It’s about equal to three grains of table salt. That’s why it’s mixed with ash, so you can measure out tiny amounts.”

  “Wow! No wonder they only call for a whisper of the stuff.”

  “You got that right.”

  I looked at her with a little more respect, understanding why she wasn’t such a great cook in the conventional sense. She had spent a lifetime (several, actually) perfecting her knowledge in the art of culinary poisons, antidotes and other curative elixirs. But what struck me was her ability to acquire such mystic ingredients in a post medieval world. I asked her, naively, “Where did you get all this stuff?”

  Her answer seemed obvious after the fact. “Witchit dot com, of course.”

  I smiled at her. “Of course.”

  She handed me the bottle of ash and dart frog, along with a matchstick. “You want to wet the matchstick in your mouth and dip it in the bottle,” she said.

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Then recite your incantation and toss it into the pot.”

  “Recite what incantation?”

  She gave me the most serious-looking scowl. “You don’t have an incantation?”

  “No. The recipe didn’t call for one.”

  “You have to have one, or else the potion won’t work.”

  “How am I supposed to know that if it doesn’t say so in the directions?”

  “Tony, you’re a witch. That’s how you’re supposed to know. You can’t expect anyone to post a witch’s potion on the web for just any idiot to download and try. Real witch’s know these things.”