by Sarah Biglow
I pressed my left hand into my side, trying to surreptitiously ease the pain, but I wasn’t subtle enough. The telltale “snip” of a zipper opening and footsteps thudding a little faster on the pavement revealed J.T. at my side before my eyes registered his presence.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, trying to mask the discomfort. I had a job to do and I didn’t need him babying me. “It’s nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He grabbed my arm, yanking me to a halt. “We’re going into something I’m pretty sure neither of us has dealt with before. If you can’t handle it, I need to know.”
“It’s just a little cramp. It will pass.”
He ushered me to stand under one of the streetlights. “Show me.”
Jacquie and Kayla’s specter stood a few paces ahead of us in silence. A chill wind blew over us and I shivered. I didn’t want to unzip my coat in this weather, but he was standing there so intently I had no other option. I yanked the zipper down and rolled up the hem of the T-shirt and rubbed the sore spot under my ribs. “See, just a cramp.”
He poked at them and I winced at the pressure. “It may be some bruised ribs.”
“Really, I’ll be fine,” I protested, but he pressed his palm to the spot and the air suddenly hung heavy with his magic.
The stitch disappeared and an invigorating jolt of energy zipped through my core, sending my heart hammering in my chest. I felt like I could do a five-minute mile. I bounced on the balls of my feet and didn’t bother zipping up my jacket. “That was amazing,” I said.
J.T. reached down and pulled the coat’s zipper back into place. “It’s only temporary. It will wear off in a while.”
“Yeah, got it.” I bounced—yes literally bounced—over to Jacquie and Kayla. “So, let’s go wake us up a gargoyle.”
I took off at a power walk and left them all in my wake. It was only after about thirty seconds I realized I had no idea where we were going. I heard Jacquie ask J.T., “What did you do to her?” and smirked.
“He fixed you up good,” Kayla said, appearing at my side and looking more corporeal than I’d seen her since my apartment.
“I guess. And, uh, I never said thanks for helping patch me up before and for finding Kevin. I kind of took your head off before. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Her eyebrows almost disappeared into her pixie hairline. “I was not expecting that from Miss I-Can-Do-Everything-Alone. You’re welcome.”
“I’m working on asking for help. It’s a new skill for me.”
“I get that.” She stopped walking and I outpaced her before she called after me. “He’s right here.”
I backtracked just as J.T. and Jacquie joined us. The light was dim in this part of the park, but I could make out the statue standing before us. Jacquie switched on a flashlight and illuminated the stone figure’s face. I didn’t need to compare it to the photo in the missing persons file. It was definitely Kevin. I tasted the dampness of his magic on my tongue, as if he were shaking at our arrival. Like he was scared.
“What exactly are you supposed to do?” Jacquie asked. “We can’t arrest a statue.”
“Well, whoever he’s working with clearly made him mobile so we know it’s possible. And most magic is about getting your intent and the will to perform the action expressed in the right way. So, I just need to figure out how to get him talking.”
“I don’t care how you do it. But the evidence shows he’s still got stone dust on him. Hell, he may still have been made of stone when he was killing those people. Even if he moves and talks, there’s no way this holds up in court.”
“Calm down. Let me at least question him before we get that far,” I said and stretched my arms over my head and across my chest. “Give me some space, but hold that light up for me.”
The beam of light narrowed as Jacquie backed up, but it was still enough to see by. J.T. and Kayla flanked Jacquie, forming a semicircle around me and Kevin. I stood there staring into the slate-grey face trying to devise a plan when I felt a presence beside me. I glanced to my right to find Eleanor as she’d been in my dream.
“Be calm. They cannot see me. Not even the Whisperer,” she said, inclining her head in Kayla’s direction.
“So, I’m talking to myself right now? Awesome.”
“You have never conducted such a spell as this. You’re going to need some guidance.”
Who was I to say no to a powerful ancestor’s spirit offering help? “Guide away,” I muttered out of one side of my mouth. I secretly hoped the three people behind me didn’t think I’d gone insane.
“First, you must clear your senses. Then look around this place. It has been heavily touched by magic. See what has been done,” she instructed.
“Won’t you disappear?” I whispered.
“I will be here as long as you need me.”
I nodded and gripped the sandalwood charm and let it wash over me. The foul stench of my attacker vanished. I hadn’t even realized how much he’d left behind. Desmond and J.T.’s soothing balms went next and I was left a blank slate.
Without the other layers of magic vying for my attention, my surroundings came into sharper focus. The grass around Kevin’s statue was still mostly brown from the winter, but I could make out a circle of dead foliage wreathing the base of the statue. I bent down and brushed my fingertips along the arc nearest my left heel. “They cast some sort of binding circle. But why?”
“Influencing another being takes a lot of power and concentration. Binding the ritual within a circle allows the caster to control the space and ward off intruders.”
“Right. That makes sense.” I stood and Eleanor gave me a side-eye. “What?”
Before Eleanor answered, I heard Jacquie whisper, “Who is she talking to?”
“Shh. Let her work,” Kayla hissed.
Eleanor smiled. “I like her. I do not understand why she presents herself in such a wild way, but I like her spirit.”
“Yeah, she’s unique. Why were you looking at me that way?”
“I told you what you must do to begin communing with this young man.”
I eyed the dead ring in the grass. “I can’t use dark magic.”
Her face fell a fraction of an inch. “You should know by now, it is the intent that determines good or evil, not the act itself.”
Embarrassment spread down my neck and I averted my gaze. Of course, she was right. I’d known that for most of my life, at least since I learned magic was real and I’d been born to wield it. Rubbing my hands together, I turned my attention to the circle in the grass. Tendrils of my magic slithered forth from my hands and wove among the blades of grass. First, I urged them to grow and revive the brown brush within its confines. The grass rippled beneath my feet, growing green and lush.
“Focus on the task at hand,” Eleanor said.
Now that I knew that good magic could heal this place, I set about establishing a barrier. I glanced over my shoulder and my gaze met J.T.’s. “You guys are going to need to stay beyond the circle. Otherwise, your magic is going to interfere and I’m honestly not sure what happens if it does.”
He said nothing but took several large steps backwards. Jacquie and Kayla mimicked his movement. I gave them a wide smile and went back to work. The magic I’d seeded into the ground called to me, waiting for instruction. I poured my will into the ground, needing it to form a barrier to the outside world and to keep this space safe and clean of dark magic. The magic burned bright through the circle like a lit fuse, twining into a knot behind me. With a “whoosh” the barrier came into place and rippled skyward. Testing the barrier, I pressed my palm to the air to my left and came up against solid matter.
“So, this is how they kept people from seeing what they were doing,” I murmured. I hadn’t noticed any circles burnt into the ground around our victims but, then again, they had been temporary spots that needed protecting. I had to assume Taggart had come here many times. Repeated magic always left its mark.
I
crossed the short distance to stand within arms’ reach of Kevin. “Now, how do I get him talking?”
Eleanor tipped her head upward to study the moon hanging low in the sky. “The light of a full moon naturally makes those of stone wake. So long as the light strikes them.”
“Sure, let me just manipulate the moonlight.”
“Your demeanor is most certainly a family trait, one you seem to share with Theodora.”
I laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Okay, I can do this.”
I wasn’t sure how I knew what to do, but I let sight and sense of touch take over, letting the others fade to nothingness. It was just the big disc of the moon and me and my outstretched hands. I imagined the moon within my grasp and it grew larger and closer. I was vaguely aware of the sense that the earth was shifting underfoot, but I blocked it out. Silvery moonlight danced across my hands and stuck to it like syrup.
“Just a little more,” I begged under my breath and the sphere obliged.
Soon, I had a viscous pool of shimmering light cupped in my hands. Eleanor’s instruction to make sure the light struck Kevin played in the back of my head, but I had other ideas. Her way seemed to expend more energy than needed. I let the moon go back to being distant in the sky and the ground beneath me settled again. I did my best not to spill the gathered light as I separated my hands and placed them atop each of his. The light squirmed between my skin and the roughness of the stone, as if it wanted to act. I’d been counting on that. With just the tiniest of pushes from me, the light spread over Kevin’s body, covering every visible inch in pale light.
“What have you done?” Eleanor’s tone was more intrigue than annoyance.
“Let the light do the work for me. I hope.”
We stood there, waiting with baited breath as the light dulled until it was hardly visible. I said a silent prayer that it had been enough to wake Kevin. No sooner had the thought left my mind than the light pulsed and the statue that was Kevin blinked. He stepped down from his plinth and turned a slow circle. He moved with remarkable fluidity given that he was entirely made of stone.
“Kevin?” I said, holding my hands palm up to show him I wasn’t a threat.
He came to face us again, and if it was possible for a statue to blanch in terror, he did. “Please, don’t make me do it again,” he wailed, tears falling from unseen ducts.
“I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to talk.”
“You have magic. I can feel it. You … you did something to me.”
“Yes, I do have magic. And I just used the moonlight to wake you up. I don’t want to hurt you. But you have answers that I need. So, please, can we talk?”
“Okay.” He shuffled back to the plinth on which he’d been perched and sat down.
There was enough room for me and I squeezed in beside him. “Do you know why I’m here, Kevin?”
“The people I killed.”
“That’s right. We found conclusive evidence that you were at the very least involved. And we know you weren’t alone. Can you tell me why you chose those people?”
“I didn’t choose them. God, I didn’t want any of this. I thought, after what they did to me, that was it and they’d leave me alone, but then he came and told me if I didn’t…” Fresh dears dribbled down his cheeks, giving off the smell of damp limestone.
That explained the scent of his magic. I let his rambling words sink in. There was a lot to parse there. “Okay, why don’t we go back to the beginning to when you went missing? Tell me what happened then.”
“Missing? I didn’t go missing! I’ve been here in this park the whole time.”
“Your parents didn’t know that. They filed a report with the police.”
“I never even told my mom about the magic, you know? I figured she would think I was crazy.”
“She wouldn’t have thought that for a second,” I said and placed a hand atop his.
“You’re just saying that because you’re supposed to make me feel better.”
“No, I’m not. And I know that she wouldn’t because I talked to her. She had magic too. It doesn’t just randomly appear, Kevin. It’s always passed down through bloodlines. You could have gone to her.”
“Well, it’s too late now.”
I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t too late and he could still see his mother, but I also knew if we had any shot at closing these cases, he was going to need to spend time behind bars. Even with a plea deal, there was no way he would likely see the outside of a prison cell for a very long time.
“So, if you didn’t go missing, what happened? You said they did something to you. Who are ‘they’ and what did they do?”
He wiped at his cheeks and stone grated on stone. “I was dating this girl, Gabrielle. About six months in, we discovered we both could do magic. It was amazing at first. And then she started hanging out with people I didn’t trust. They convinced her that she was better off with them instead of me. I followed them one night and saw them performing some weird ritual. I’d never done anything like that. Just small things. I wasn’t supposed to be there, and when they found me, they freaked out. Gabrielle started yelling at me that I was ruining her time with her friends and that I hadn’t been invited for a reason.”
“She’s fallen in with the Order of Samael,” I whispered.
“I didn’t know that’s what they were called then, but yeah. They seduced her with promises of power. I told her if she didn’t leave with me, we were over. She didn’t leave.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never knew what happened to her after that because a group of them grabbed me and knocked me out. I woke up and I was standing here and I couldn’t move.”
“Why bring you here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Gabrielle told them we used to walk here a lot. I like the feel of this place. It’s a little slice of nature in the heart of the city.” He dabbed at his cheeks again. “Anyway, when I came to, there was a man I hadn’t met before standing in front of me. I couldn’t see his face because he had one of those big hoods on. He told me that this was my punishment. I’d ended up a statue.”
“By the fact that there are signs of magical interference here, I’m guessing someone from the Order came to you and convinced you to start killing people now.”
“They didn’t convince me. They said they would kill Gabrielle and my mother if I didn’t do as I was told. They promised that if I did what they wanted, they’d change me back.”
“Are they planning any more murders? We’ve found five so far.”
“No. That was it. I’m so sorry. All those people didn’t deserve what I did to them. I tried to make it as quick and painless as I could. I really did.”
“But they made sure you left DNA behind. If they did set you free, they ensured that you’d be found and arrested for the murders.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“I have no choice, Kevin.”
“But I told you I didn’t want to do it.”
“That’s not for me to deal with. That’s for the District Attorney. If you come in with us and cooperate, I’ll make sure that gets to the prosecutor and I’ll do what I can to get them to give you a lighter sentence. But you have to know someone needs to pay for what happened here.”
“What about him?”
“The man who forced you to commit the murders. What can you tell me about him? Did you get a name?”
“I don’t know his name, but I know he’s law enforcement.”
“How do you know that?’
“I saw his badge once. He caught me looking and covered it up, but I’m sure it was law enforcement.”
I unclipped my badge from my belt and held it up. “Did it look like this?”
He shook his head. “No, it was shinier. And a different shape.”
The sense memory of my assailant’s magic clogged up my nose and I shivered. I had to be sure. I fished my phone from my pocket and flipped through images on Google of different badge
s until I found one for the FBI. “Did it look like this one?”
Kevin shrunk back from the image. “Yes. That was it.”
Another shiver danced down my spine as I looked at the image of an FBI badge on the screen. That meant one thing. The suspicions I’d had weren’t just my imagination. I’d definitely seen the Order’s brand on Taggart’s wrist and it had been his magic I’d tangled with. I pulled up the first photo of Taggart I could find and showed Kevin. “Is this the man?”
“Yes.” He took the phone from my hand and I winced as he pressed his fingertip to the screen and scrolled down. “I never knew his name. He never told me.”
“Did he have the Order’s mark on him? A triple spiral and a scythe?”
“On his wrist. I don’t think he cared that I saw it.” He handed the phone back and, even though he was made of stone, when he hunched his shoulders, he looked significantly smaller. “What happens now?”
“First, I make good on their promise. I’m going to free you from his curse. And then we’re going to go down to the precinct and you’re going to give a statement about your involvement. You’re going to leave magic out of it. And then I’m going to arrest Taggart and put an end to this.”
“I want to help. I really do, but going up against an FBI agent … they’ll kill me.”
“They won’t. Because, FBI or not, he’s just a man and he’s going to pay for what he did to both of us.”
“Both?”
I pressed one hand to my belly. “I found the last body and he was still there. He tried to kill me.”
“Oh, no. Wait, you’re her. The Savior. The one they’re trying to stop.”
I stood up and crossed my arms over my chest. “Damn right I am. And they need to know that the only way to stop me is to actually kill me, and if Taggart is their best guy, then they’re seriously going to need to up their game. Now, let’s see about getting you back to normal.”
Twenty-Four
Before I could even contemplate how to reverse Kevin’s condition, Eleanor stage coughed and nodded to the edge of the circle farthest from the gargoyle and my waiting compatriots. Kevin didn’t seem to notice the ghostly presence as I stood up.