The Baker's Guide to Risky Rituals

by Kathryn Moon

  Demons. In little Sweet Pea.

  She opened her eyes, a headache already picking a slow and steady beat in her skull, calling her back to bed, to the dark of the cabin. Except that the stench was only across the road from the cabin, and Imogen wanted to know how far the trail went. Had they started outside her window, or found their way to it?

  If the beasts were in town because of her, then she had heavy lifting to do and soon, before one of them got their hooks into anyone else in the town.

  Like June, she thought.

  Not June though. June was impervious. June was a cage made of diamond. She would be safe, even from demons. Even from Imogen.

  Imogen opened her eyes and winced at the light, the glitter of gold and fire creeping up from the roots of the trees. When was the last time she’d left the cabin when the sun was up?

  She caught the blade’s scratch of power on her cheek, strangely gentle and dangerous at the same time, and followed it down the hill, closer to the hiking paths. The trail crossed over a path and back into the wild, wandering aimlessly, layering over the territories where Imogen had worked magic. It was possible she was following a trail that only chased her own. Perhaps she was being hunted.

  The drowsy exhaustion and queasy discomfort sharpened inside of Imogen. If the demons had stopped to see Josie first, did that mean the entire coven was at risk? Her hands shook at her side, and her veins felt hollow and cold, bloodless under pale skin, craving power or something to dull the hunger. The demon’s trail led to the main path out of the preserve and onto the road leading to Grimsby House. Imogen considered walking there now, but her tools were hidden somewhere in the trees, and she hadn’t closed her eyes and slept since the night before.

  Imogen turned back to the preserve and listened to the quiet, the waking birdsong, the breeze drawing down the fall colors tourists came to see—ruby and bitter yellow and every shade of orange. It was time to get her tools out of their hiding place. The sun, still dim in the early hour, already felt like a scorching brand on the back of her neck, and she pulled her hair down to guard her skin as she walked.

  She made it nearly to the campsite, halfway to the hollow tree where she hid her ritual tools the last time she worked out here alone, when the whiff of demon was gone and something worse had replaced it in the air. Tangy and sharp and rich, it burned inside Imogen’s nose, and her stomach coiled like a snake in response.

  Turn back. Take a black bath and sleep in the visions. Back to the cabin.

  The whispers or warnings sounded too close to the ancient voice that haunted her, and Imogen followed the path until she saw it.

  A bloodied hand, reaching out onto the foot-beaten gravel, the young man’s body barely covered by a night’s fall of leaves, ruby maple mixing with bitter blood brown. A breeze picked a leaf off a pale blue cheek, revealing an open eye, his mouth and neck painted with gore and still sticky. A small black bug crawled across his jaw, and Imogen didn’t know which was worse, breathing through her nose or her mouth, so she stopped breathing altogether.

  Sunlight hit the forest green tent on the campsite, door unzipped and another body hanging facedown out of the opening, her hair ebony black and matted with blood.

  The Lich. The Lich is back, Imogen thought, heart racing and breath trapped in her chest. Daddy bent to the left on the basement stairs, his neck crooked. Mom suspended from the slow turning ceiling fan.

  Imogen blinked, replacing the horrors of memory with the current disaster.

  The Lich was gone, but there were demons.

  Imogen turned away from the scene, eyes squeezing shut on the sun burning through branches, and swallowed the bile rising up her throat. She would walk home, like she should have before, and fill the tub with charcoal and scalding hot water. She would wait for June to call with the news.

  Murder in Sweet Pea.

  My fault as usual.

  The lower basement was the quietest place in the cabin. Once the Byrne family wine cellar—its contents now drained—Imogen found it the perfect place to work. Dark and quiet, stripped of shelves until there was nothing but dark polished brick. She lay stretched out on her back, hands open and up at her sides, head turned to the left to watch the candle.

  The flame in front of her was hungry for air in the dry room, its swishing cat’s tail tip rising as tall as Imogen’s head. The bricks shifted and turned and crawled on the walls around her, shadows waiting to melt down to the floor and speak to her call. The candle flame flashed wide, crow’s wings beating together and then blending to a horse’s head tossing, mane flipping.

  Imogen.

  There. The shadows were coming.

  “Imogen!”

  Shit, Imogen thought.

  “Imogen, are you home?”

  The flame was a knife, small handle and long blade familiar, and then the door to the cellar cracked open and light bled into the room from the hall, shadows retreating and flame sinking into the mild mannered fingertip of any other candle.

  “Imogen!”

  June rushed in, her knees crashing at her sister’s side, her rush blowing the candle out with a little spit and a puff of smoke. June’s hands were on Imogen’s face, too firm to pull away, and Imogen released a small whimper. The touch felt like pegs hammering into her bones, pinning her to the floor. June pried Imogen’s eyes wide, and through the curtain of blonde hair Imogen missed June’s expression. Which was good. It was a too familiar one.

  “Oh, Gin.” Already, the worry in June’s voice was receding, settling into a hard acceptance.

  “Sleeping pills. And mushrooms,” Imogen said, before June had to ask. It was better when they didn’t play that game.

  “Where are you getting them?”

  The pills. June knew the mushrooms were growing in the basement over their heads, and no number of arguments or destroying Imogen’s wares had done any good.

  “Dr. Holloway,” Imogen said.

  With her face shadowed and her hair pale as bone, June could’ve been the Lich disguising itself as Imogen’s sister. But no dark spirit could imitate June’s resigned disappointment so perfectly. She sighed, sinking back to sit on her heels, and finally the light caught her face. Imogen’s lips curled as she gazed up at her sister. June was good, she shone.

  “What’s wrong?” Imogen asked, finding June’s hand on her thigh. Her fingers felt like gold, strong and malleable and warm, gripping tight to Imogen’s.

  June’s eyes blinked, watering one moment and clear the next, and the answer was unspoken between them. Imogen was the thing wrong in June’s life.

  “There’s been a murder. At Merryweather,” June said, sweeping her hair back from her face, strands moving like water through her fingers. Imogen reached up to feel if they were wet, and June frowned and caught the hand before she could touch.

  “I know. I found them.”

  “You what?” June took in a deep breath, and Imogen shut her eyes when the walls breathed with her sister. The psychedelics in the mushrooms helped make scrying and trance work vivid and expansive. They didn’t help when family arrived and wanted to have a serious conversation.

  “I went for a walk this morning,” Imogen said. “I saw the bodies.”

  “You were the one that called them in?”

  Imogen shook her head, and June’s breath hitched. “I saw them. And then I came back home.”

  With the door to the hall open, whispers of the world were crawling into the room, and Imogen couldn’t separate what might have been left from the scrying link, and what were ambient sounds of the house. Strong fingers clamped around her arms, and she winced at the iron grip as June dragged her up to her feet.

  “Are you… Imogen! Why?” June’s voice was breaking, breaths too loud in Imogen’s ears, and she stumbled back, June’s grip following her and then dragging her out into the hall and up the stairs.

  “I was tired,” Imogen whispered.

  “And if- if they find some kind of evidence that you were there? Then
what?”

  “Then I’ll tell them I saw the bodies and went home. Or I’ll fix it.”

  June shook Imogen at the top of the stairs, until Imogen’s eyes were open. The house was too bright, and June had yanked the shades back from the windows and made it worse.

  “Don’t joke! If you aren’t joking, then don’t say things like that! You promised me, Gin. You promised.”

  “I promised,” Imogen repeated, nodding, trying not to see the shades of red in the room—the pillows on the couch, her coat hanging on the peg—as the color dripped like blood in her vision. “No magic.”

  “No manipulative magic. No dark magic. No spirits. Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing in the cellar. That’s not the kind of scrying we agreed on.”

  “No murder,” Imogen said. “No more murder.”

  June’s hands were off her. Imogen’s eyes closed again, and she was floating in nothing and somehow surrounded, buried, suffocating. “I can’t deal with you while you’re like this.”

  June’s footsteps were drumbeats as she paced the floor, and Imogen groaned and covered her face with her hands as the headache from this morning returned with a vengeance. Something rustled, nails scratching up her back, and then warm fingers stroked the back of her wrists, gentle and careful. Imogen pulled her hands down again, eyes squinting to keep out the light. Between them, June held Imogen’s athame.

  Imogen tried to snatch it, to rescue it from her sister’s grip. June knew better. She shouldn’t touch it!

  “Don’t,” June said. “The Ranger’s and Sheriff’s department found this at another ritual site yesterday. It had blood on it. And they let me take it, because they thought it was just kids goofing off.”

  “What kind of ritual site?”

  “A fake one, as far as I could tell. Not yours. But how did it get there, Gin?”

  “I had it stashed in a hollow tree.”

  “Your athame?” Imogen reached for it again, and June pulled it out of her reach. “I’m sorry. I know, but you can’t have this back right now. I have to take it to the Sheriff’s department. I had to put it through the dishwasher because I knew what they would find. Your fingerprints, Gin. Which they have in the system because…”

  Because Imogen had killed their parents.

  The sisters stood in still silence, red color dripping at the corners of Imogen’s vision like a leaky faucet. June was brightness itself in front of her, and Imogen shut her eyes as June stepped forward. June’s hands were empty as her fingertips brushed across the tops of Imogen’s cheeks, streaking wetness on her skin. Blood?

  “I’m sorry,” June whispered, her voice tight.

  Tears. Imogen’s tears.

  “Are you tired?”

  Imogen nodded, and arms curled around her. She leaned into June as she shuffled them both through the house and up to the loft. It was dark up there, and Imogen sighed and softened as June laid her down in bed. June sat, her hip against Imogen, and brushed strands of hair off her face like their mother had when they were little girls.

  “I didn’t kill them.”

  “I know you didn’t, Gin. It was an accident.”

  “No, June. The campers. I didn’t kill them.” The death of their parents could never be called an accident.

  June’s touch stilled, and then she bent, pressing a kiss to Imogen’s forehead, warmth seeping into her skin. “Never even crossed my mind, Gin.”

  Lie, a voice whispered in Imogen’s thoughts or from the corner of the room.

  “Time to rest,” June said. “We’ll figure this all out. Promise.”

  Rosa lived in a converted carriage house up on Tillyman Road, just a couple houses down from old Grimsby House. The owners of the property and the front house were a pair of elderly men, who had offered Rosa the space after she’d given them a generous deal on their wedding flowers. Thurman and Cornell allowed Rosa use of their wrap-around porch whenever she pleased. When she and Josie parked themselves on the loveseat with a bottle of wine between them, the couple would open the window by their Victrola and play old jazz records. The same ones Josie’s Mémé would play after Sunday dinners; Fats Domino, Ella and Louis, Sarah Vaughn, and Jelly Roll Morton.

  It was too chilly in Sweet Pea’s high altitude October to really feel like New Orleans any time of the year, but Josie always felt the mood Cornell and Thurman offered was close enough.

  The night after the murder, even with the bottle of red between them, there was no music on the Victrola. Instead, Thurman and Cornell stood out on their porch steps with Josie and Rosa, and the four of them stared at the flashing lights at the end of the street.

  “Just a sweet young couple up here on their fall break,” Thurman said, ‘tsk’ing his tongue against the back of his teeth and shaking his head.

  “Oh don’t, Thu. It’s too much,” Cornell said, sighing and peering through his round glasses with a keen stare. His elbow nudged at Josie’s, and she poured another inch of cabernet into his glass.

  Up the road, coming from town, the roar of engines grew dense and powerful.

  “What do you think of your new neighbors?” Josie asked, her eyes turning away from the emergency lights, waiting to see the first glimpse of the motorcycles.

  “Oh those boys?” Cornell said, cat’s smile stretching across his lips—stained a deep berry color with the wine on his brown skin. “I’m sure they’re quite sweet.” Rosa and Josie exchanged a brief, skeptical look as Cornell continued to nod. “One of them helped me carry out the trash this morning. Big, tight muscles on his arms. I used to have muscles like that, didn’t I, Thu?”

  Over Cornell’s diminutive height, Thurman shook his head at Josie, salt and pepper hair curling around his ears. Thurman reminded Josie of what Mr. Rogers might look like if he’d smoked a lot of weed.

  “We used to ride motorcycles, back in the day,” Cornell said.

  “Still have the bikes in the garage,” Thurman said. “I’ve half a mind to take mine out for a spin to their new club, just for a laugh. Heard they’re looking for new members.”

  “You should join,” Josie said, grinning at the men. She’d like to see Bell’s expression as they walked in to his super macho and manly club too.

  The headlights were appearing, fine pinpoints at the end of the street, spread out across both narrow lanes.

  “Wouldn’t that be fun?” Cornell said, perking up. “If they’d have us.”

  “Don’t take no for an answer,” Rosa said, shrugging. “We know you know how, Cornie.”

  Cornell shrugged as the others tried to contain their laughs. As a prosecutor for the district attorney, Cornell Green could find himself a legal door into that motorcycle club, if not open it himself with his own personal persistence and talent for argument.

  “You don’t think one of them had something to do with… you know?” Rosa asked, nodding her head toward Merryweather Preserve.

  Cornell eyed Rosa over his tortoise-shell glasses. “I should think we know better than to judge based on appearances, don’t we Rosie-love?”

  “Oh hush, we all know it’s the appearances you like so much on those boys,” Thurman said.

  The bikers pulled onto their pretty brick drive, but all their heads were turned to face the red and blue glow at the end of the street. As soon as they were parked, those black boots were headed in their direction. Josie’s eyes were glued to Bell, Mr. Bad News. She thought her own name for him suited him better. If he was a bell, it was one of those great ominous things on top of a crumbling cathedral, and even that wasn’t right.

  No. Bell was black coffee with dark whiskey, and a bit of careless cigarette ash floating on the surface. Basically, he was what Josie should absolutely not want to drink down in one gulp.

  “Lost hiker?” he asked as he and his men arrived in front of the Greens’ front porch.

  “Double homicide,” Cornell said, eyes on the woods.

  But Josie was watching Beleth. He looked surprised, eyebrows ticking up for
a beat. And then he turned his head to look at his men. Rosa’s fingers pried Josie’s grip off her wrist, but Josie refused to stop staring at the men, watching the minute shift of expressions on the bikers’ faces. She had a very clear impression that Bell was asking his men if they knew anything about the murder, without speaking a word, and she didn’t think he was asking if they’d heard the news. Their answers were less clear. Ash and Pie were watching the officials down the road. The mismatched pair shrugged in unison at Bell, and the other two—the movie star and the mean looking redhead—just blinked in response.

  “Where were you guys last night, by the way?” Josie asked.

  Thurman and Cornell choked on their wine, and Rosa let out a great cackle of laughter, head thrown back.

  “Now, now, Miss Benoit,” Cornell cooed, his eyebrows raised and a rich southern accent drawling out. “Let’s not be inhospitable to the newcomers. You boys like a beer while we rubberneck?”

  “Beer’d be great,” Mean mug said, a false grin flashing through the manicured beard, flame orange licking down the sides of his jaw.

  “Come on, Thu, let’s leave the ladies to interrogate the young men while we hunt down some bottles,” Cornell said.

  The bikers watched Cornell and Thurman head back inside, and Josie tensed, squaring herself at the top of the step as if she alone could protect the house. Rosa leaned up against the pillar and watched the scene like it was sport. So much for moral support amongst the coven.

  “You gotta be careful who you go around accusin’ of murder, Cupcake,” Bell said, hand reaching out and cupping Mean Mug’s shoulder before the snarling redhead could step closer. “Vinny never developed a sense of humor.”

  “Vinny suits you,” Josie said to the redhead. Vinny was a name that sounded like someone you called when you needed a ‘situation’ cleaned up. Although this Vinny looked more like he enjoyed making messes. Josie let her gaze travel over the ruggedly handsome faces of the others. “Rosa, that there is Pie, and Ash. And Mr. Bad News says his name is Bell.”