A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  “True. So,” I began, trying to sound casual. “How have your, um, meetings been going? About the psychic stuff?”

  “Is that what we call it now?”

  “I’m not sure how to ask the question. But you seemed able to read the oak tree pretty easily. Are things feeling easier?”

  “A bit.”

  Clearly he wasn’t ready to talk to me about this. We arrived at Aunt Cora’s Closet, parked, and Sailor walked me to the front door. Boye was standing just on the other side of the glass, in canine form. He was shifting from one foot to another, appearing eager and happy to see us. I imagined he’d been waiting.

  “I don’t think you should stay here tonight,” I told Sailor. “It feels sort of . . . I don’t know, funny, with Boye sleeping on the couch.”

  “Just what a man likes to hear, that another man is sleeping in his girlfriend’s apartment.”

  “It’s not like that. You know that.”

  He smiled. “That’s fine. We both need rest anyway. And as strange as it sounds, I feel better knowing Boye’s keeping an eye on you.”

  “Really?”

  A muscle worked in Sailor’s jaw, and he let out a loud sigh. “Aidan is many things, but there’s no faulting him in this: He’s protective of you. Almost as much as I am.”

  Our eyes held for a long moment. There wasn’t much to add to that.

  * * *

  The next day Aunt Cora’s Closet was, once again, humming with activity. Maya had found a permanent home for Miss Nelly—a customer had a small ranch in Petaluma with two goats and a small herd of sheep—and folks were still coming in and out of Missing Pig Central.

  I knew I needed to put on that cape one more time to see what it was trying to tell me. But without Oscar by my side, my powers were lessened, my intent clouded, and my intuition dulled. And, quite frankly, I was afraid. Afraid of what I had seen and what I might see if I tried again. And that I might not be able to control the situation and come back to the here and now.

  But it seemed the only real connection to that tree, and thus to Oscar.

  “What’s wrong, Lily?” asked Bronwyn. “Is it Oscar?”

  I nodded. I was glum, no two ways to see that.

  “You know, I was thinking,” she said. “I know you can’t see anything in your crystal ball. But . . . what if you tried again, with the backing of the coven?”

  “How so?”

  “What if we formed the circle, called down the moon, and added our energy to yours? We’ve been able to help you before, a couple of times.”

  That was true. Bronwyn’s friendly Welcome coven had surprised me more than once, and helped me realize that I had made unfounded assumptions about them. Since they weren’t “real” witches—born with the kind of powers I had inherited—I tended to write them off. But that was foolish. Witches weren’t just born; they could be made. With enough study, practice, and concentrated intent, anyone could call on the powers of their ancestors and have an impact on the course of reality. And Bronwyn was right; the Welcome coven had saved this particular witch’s backside more than once.

  Could they help me understand what the cape was trying to tell me?

  “Bronwyn, you’re a genius. I think that would be just perfect. But I don’t need help reading my crystal ball; I need help with the cape.”

  “The, um . . . the velvet cape from the other day?”

  “The very one.”

  We made plans to gather that evening. Bronwyn set about contacting the coven sisters, several of whom were checking in frequently with Oscar Watch. The only problem was finding an appropriate location. My apartment was too small, and Aunt Cora’s Closet too crowded, to accommodate the full coven—which in the Welcome coven’s case amounted to more than twenty women. There would be fewer tonight because of the late notice, but Bronwyn still expected at least the full thirteen to form a traditional coven. Wendy offered the use of Coffee to the People, but it was too exposed, too public. This needed to be private, a closed coven event, as anathema as that was to the usual philosophy of the Welcome coven, which, as its name implied, welcomed just about anybody of good intent.

  Outside in the forest might have been perfect, but again I wanted to be able to control our situation and exposure to others. Just in case something untoward happened with the cape—after all, I couldn’t be sure what lurked within the fibers of that velvet.

  Maya made a call and announced that we could meet at her mother’s workshop.

  “You’re sure it’s okay with her?” I asked Maya. Lucille was a church-going Baptist; she was quiet about her faith, but no less devout for her discretion. “She understands that it’s . . . that we’re . . . that it’s a coven of witches?”

  “Well, when you put it like that . . .” Maya trailed off with a laugh. “No, seriously. I told her what you’re up to. She lives in San Francisco, after all. The whole pagan thing isn’t exactly new to her, or unknown. She doesn’t go for it in terms of religion, but she knows you, and she has no problem with anything you might be up to.”

  That was awfully trusting, I thought. Perhaps too trusting. After all, I wasn’t sure I didn’t have a problem with some of what we might be up to.

  In the meantime, I called Carlos and talked to him about my suspicions with regard to Hannah and her uncle. He sounded noncommittal, but promised to check it out. I also filled him in on what Will had told me about Dathorne and the witch trials, as well as the love curse under which Bart supposedly suffered. As I heard myself say it out loud, I realized just how outrageous it all sounded.

  One other thing had been bugging me, niggling at the back of my mind. It was Sebastian’s ledger. I had found it neatly stowed away, but someone had tracked the trunk to Aunt Flora’s Closet. So . . . they must have read it, right?

  “Is there any way to tell what time Sebastian’s Antiques was broken into on the day of the murder?”

  “Not an exact time. We have some basic parameters, and a clock fell over and broke; its hands stopped not long after you called in Sebastian’s shooting. But you’ve seen the state of that shop. There’s no reason to believe the clock was telling the right time to begin with, so it might well have been a coincidence. Why?”

  “The shop was a mess when I first saw it, true.” But it had been ransacked even more when I’d gone back there that evening with Sailor. “What if the murderer returned to the store after killing Sebastian, looking for something? Maybe Sebastian refused to tell his assailant where the trunk had gone? So . . . the killer might have gone back to the shop, searched for the ledger, looked up the transaction involving the trunk, and then . . .”

  “Okay, this would be the part where I read you the riot act for interfering with a crime scene. Where exactly did you find this ledger?”

  “Um . . . if I tell you, won’t that be incriminating myself?”

  “How about if I promise not to arrest you until after this case is solved?”

  “Oh wow. You’d do that for little ol’ me?”

  “Just spill, already.”

  “That’s what strikes me as odd. It was on a shelf, sandwiched between old novels.”

  “So why wouldn’t he have just taken it with him?”

  “Him or her,” I pointed out. I had a hard time imagining Hannah as a cold-blooded killer, but I’d been fooled before.

  “Or her,” Carlos said. “Whoever it was, wouldn’t this person have just taken the damned book to peruse at his or her leisure? It’s not like anyone was going to notice it was gone.”

  True. Except for Aidan Rhodes, who might well have noticed it was gone. Could the killer have known of Aidan Rhodes’s association with Sebastian? Was he—or she—afraid of taking the ledger, for fear that Aidan would be able to track it down? Maybe Aidan really did have some sort of witchy LoJack device, and the killer was afraid he’d find him—or her—out?

&nbs
p; * * *

  By late afternoon I retired to my apartment to prepare for the evening. Boye watched my every move, as silent as Oscar had been garrulous. His presence didn’t boost my powers or smooth the portals like a real familiar would. But given what had been happening, it felt good to have some company.

  I brewed. Paramount tonight was the safety of the coven members. I didn’t want to bring anything back this time. I used the water with the ashes that had come back with me last time; I had saved it in a jar. It was a physical connection to the Ashen Witch. Incorporating it with my brew would allow me to maintain some semblance of control.

  While the water was heating, I gathered herbs, centering myself by breathing deeply of the cool afternoon air. There would be a crescent moon tonight. I could see it already against the blue afternoon sky: a harbinger of struggle. I dressed carefully in the oldest clothes I had. A simple cotton shift covered with a long muslin overdress, old-fashioned-looking leather lace-up boots, and a cap.

  I gathered several beeswax candles: brown for justice and stability, red for protection and luck, and purple for personal power. I “dressed” them by rubbing them with pure olive and almond oils while chanting. Finally, I packed smudge sticks and saltwater to be sure we left no residue of anything behind in Lucille’s workshop. On the contrary, if I knew the Welcome coven, they would leave only a trace of easy, warm energy, as they always did. This was the way they were winning over the community at large, even among those who still feared witches. They were so loving, so dedicated to good works, and so fun to be around that they knocked people’s objections out of the park.

  Boye and I picked up Maya and drove to her mother’s new warehouse space, located on the second story of an old brick factory with big multipaned windows. The other office spaces were occupied by edgy designers or scrappy up-and-coming fashion-related folk.

  By the time we arrived, there were already a dozen women milling about, chatting excitedly. Some of these brave souls had helped me before, even at risk to their own safety. This time I felt less afraid of what would happen; though I was unsure of what portal the cloak was offering, I felt the risk was more for myself than for them. There was no demon on the loose, for example—at least, not that I knew of.

  Or if there was, it was trapped in that tree.

  Several counter-height worktables filled the space, many of which couldn’t be moved, but we would work around them. There were threads and scraps of material all over the broad plank floors and a row of sewing machines in front of the windows. The Wiccans had already set up a steaming Crock-Pot of cider, plates of homemade cookies, and more tofu dippers. Where these women found the time to cook as much as they did while working regular jobs and attending to their families, I would never know . . . but cook they did.

  I wouldn’t allow Boye to enter the room. Instead, he guarded the door, brawny arms crossed over his brawny chest. The women were curious about him, and a few threw out flirtatious hellos, but he stared straight ahead.

  “Hey, Lily, check out my new T-shirt,” said Starr. “I didn’t have a chance to go home and change, so I hope it’s okay.”

  The T-shirt read: UNLEASH THE FLYING MONKEYS!

  “Get it?” Starr asked. “It’s from The Wizard of Oz. . . . The Wicked Witch of the West says it when she’s had just about enough of Dorothy and her friends.”

  I had been so tense, but now started to laugh.

  “Oscar loved that part,” I said, biting my tongue as soon as I realized what I had let slip.

  “Oscar the pig?” asked Starr. “Oh, that’s so sweet! He watches with you?”

  “He’s so smart,” said Bronwyn. “He always watches with us, and I swear it’s like he’s understanding what’s going on! After watching Cast Away, he kept wanting coconut!”

  The others laughed.

  “I’m serious! Isn’t that true, Lily? Don’t you think he understands more than we think he does?”

  “I think he might,” I said. “And, believe it or not, that pig really does love to watch movies.”

  It was good to be reminded why I was doing this. It helped me focus. This was all for Oscar. I had to figure out what was going on, so I could get him back.

  We began the ceremony by lighting the candles and forming the circle to draw down the moon. As the women clasped one another’s hands, then touched their hearts, each in turn, I let myself soak up the feminine energy. I had been spending so much time with men lately that I had forgotten the connectedness, the perfection of this sensation. The calm, soothing vibrations. Together we were daughter, mother, and crone: the sacred triad. We were sisters. We were a coven.

  My athame in one hand, my medicine bag in the other, I entered the circle and began the chant. The women joined in, and I allowed myself to dance to the beat with a building abandon that ended in a crescendo of chanting.

  Then, while still in a semi-trance, I donned the cloak.

  And just that fast, I was thrust back to that other time. This time there was no fuzziness, no difficulty in hearing or seeing. Everything was crystal clear, as though I had stepped through a portal in time. I was in a village made of humble houses. The road was lined with animal pens, and my feet sank into the muddy road.

  People were running past me, shouting. They were afraid, angry.

  Harlot! Wicked woman! Witch!

  I followed the direction of the crowd, arriving at a clearing by the ocean. A bonfire had been set up. A woman was atop it all, tied to a post.

  It was a horrifying scene.

  I looked around at the faces in the crowd: shouting, anticipating, afraid and angry.

  I stood up to try to defend her, to try to stop it. She just looked at me and smiled. And then I realized, she was chanting.

  Chanting is power. Witches were sometimes called mumblers because of their incessant recitations, the words that, repeated, help to open the portals and establish the connections with the ancestors, with our sources of power. She was timing her words to the croaking of a frog. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.

  A man stood and declared his name to be Jonathan Woolsey. White with fear, he read the proclamation condemning Deliverance Corydon to death by fire.

  “Stop,” I heard myself saying.

  But then I realized . . . I wasn’t trying to stop her death. On the contrary, I had been pursuing Deliverance Corydon myself and had been on the verge of destroying her. This was no witch; she was something more, something evil. She had to be gotten rid of the right way, not by fire. The flames would only add to her strength.

  I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. I was reviled, shouted at. Two men held me, one on either side.

  And they lit the pyre.

  All I could do was watch. Deliverance’s strange smile eventually ceded to screams. The shrieks seemed to enter my body, my mind. I wondered if I would ever get rid of them.

  Afterward, I gathered the ashes. I put them in a box with special markings to keep Deliverance at peace, inside. It had to be disposed of properly: by lightning. It was the only way. I singed my hands, burned my fingertips as I grabbed at the ashes, but I didn’t care. Time was of the essence. I had to dispose of her ashes properly. I . . . I had to hide my cape before . . .

  The anger and fear of the townspeople turned on me. The next thing I knew, I was being brought to my own gallows. The noose was placed around my neck. It was scratchy, heavy. It felt like death. The floor dropped out from under my feet. . . .

  I awoke.

  As before, I was flat on my back on the wooden floor. This time, instead of a gnarled gobgoyle face over mine, however, was a ring of worried women.

  “I think maybe we should call an ambulance,” I heard one woman say.

  “She’s been out almost twenty minutes,” said another.

  “Lily?” Bronwyn asked, as though from far away. “Lily, can you hear me?”


  “Let’s call someone—”

  “No, no, I’m all right,” I said with a croak. “Thanks.”

  “Here. Have some cider,” said Starr.

  “I’m just . . . I had a really strange vision,” I began, sipping the warm cider. The sweet tang helped bring me back to reality. “Did I say anything?”

  Bronwyn shook her head. “You twitched a lot, but you didn’t say anything intelligible. Were you able to see where Oscar is?”

  “No. No, not really. But . . . I have an idea. I have a better idea than I did before.”

  * * *

  Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night in Texas, I made a rare phone call to the woman who had raised me from the age of eight. The woman who had tried her best to train me not only in witchcraft, but in life. The woman who had also raised my father but lost him to raw ambition and greed.

  My grandmother Graciela.

  “M’ija, I was expecting your call. What is going on?” Graciela didn’t spend a lot of time on niceties. Like me, she wasn’t at her best over wires. I wrote her old-fashioned letters and cards from time to time—and sent her a monthly check—which she much preferred to the phone. Besides, I didn’t like to call because just the sound of her voice filled me with strange, mixed-up feelings of longing and regret and homesickness and guilt.

  She knew that if I was calling, there was a problem. An urgent problem.

  I gave her the rundown of what had happened. She made a few grunts in response, but mostly just listened. One thing about Graciela: She was never fazed by anything. I do believe I could tell her a flotilla of dragons was invading San Francisco Bay, and she’d start to talk me through the appropriate magical response.

  “As I’m sure you know,” she said when I wrapped up the tale as I knew it, “the curse cast by a dying witch is the most powerful curse of all. Perhaps she used herself as the sacrifice; and of course, blood sacrifice is lo mas importante—it is the key.”

  “She . . . I mean, it’s hard to say because it’s not as though I was very near her. But Deliverance seemed truly wicked. Not a witch. Something else.”