The Witch's Key, Book 1

by Sarra Cannon

  “I wish I could give you an acceptable answer, but I don’t have one,” he said. “Making sure Regmothean was taken care of was a high priority of the Council back when I was still in service. Back then, several Slayers had also been tasked with the job of banishing or imprisoning Algrath, as well, but no one was successful.”

  “So what’s changed?” Kai asked. “Why aren’t they trying to stop this?”

  I glanced over and saw there were tears in Kai’s eyes, and it sent a strange feeling of protection over me. I wanted to put an end to whatever was hurting him, even if I didn’t understand what it was. Was this somehow tied to his father?

  “I no longer have the same privileges I once had when it comes to the Council,” Martin said. “When I’ve inquired about the brothers, I have been shut out completely over the past several years. In fact, the Council tried to hide the recent rituals from my attention, so that I wouldn’t know the first four pieces of Regmothean’s mirrors had been released. This is definitely a deviation from the Council’s normal behavior. As to what their motives are, however, I can only speculate.”

  “Do you think Blythe Greer is involved?” I swallowed back fear and anger. “Do you think this has anything to do with what happened to my parents?”

  “Or my father?” Kai asked.

  I looked over at him. Had his father died?

  He’d never told me the full story about why he’d come here looking for his dad or what he’d discovered once he got here.

  Maybe we’d both lost the most important people in our lives.

  “Ms. Greer is most certainly up to something,” Martin said. “Time will reveal all, I have a feeling.”

  “So, for now, we have to assume we can’t trust her,” I said. “Or the Council.”

  “Sadly, I have to agree with you,” Martin said with a sigh. “A lifetime of service has bought me nothing with the current Council, it seems. I must admit, I hoped you wouldn’t become involved in this. I’d been looking into Algrath’s rituals before your parents died, and when the Council said they were sending you here, I feared the worst.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He means he was scared Algrath would kidnap you,” Kai said. “That’s why he asked me to look after you.”

  Of course. I should have known.

  “So, no wonder you warned me to stay out of it,” I said. “You were acting under orders.”

  I glared at Martin, but he simply shrugged and took a sip of his coffee.

  “The important thing is you’re okay,” Kai said. “But we’re both a part of this now. Like it or not.”

  “So, no one is coming to help us?” I asked. “The Council really won’t get involved.”

  “It appears we’re the only hope those girls have of survival,” Martin said. “And if we commit to this, we’ll be going against the Council’s wishes. This is why I didn’t want you brought into this. It’s more dangerous than you could possibly understand.”

  Wow.

  I leaned back against the chair and let Martin’s words sink in.

  I’d been afraid I was in over my head, but I never in a million years realized it was this serious. We were on our own, and we were running out of time.

  “Okay, so how do we do this?” I asked. “How do we find Algrath and stop this ritual?”

  Martin smiled, and I realized he had more secrets to tell.

  “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  He led us back to his study. It was a large, yet cozy, two-story office with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves framed in dark wood. His desk was an ornate antique loaded with stacks of papers and books.

  Heavy, dark blue curtains covered the windows, so the brass lamp on Martin’s desk was the only light as we walked in. It was the kind of room where all I wanted to do was curl up with a cozy blanket in the big, comfy leather chair in the corner and read all day.

  Truth be told, that’s what I’d actually done many summer days since I’d moved in.

  “Have a seat,” Martin said, sitting down behind his desk and putting on a pair of reading glasses with thick black rims. He motioned to the two high-backed leather chairs across from his desk.

  Kai and I took our seats, both of us anxious to find out what Martin would tell us next. It was obvious he had some kind of plan.

  “As unfortunate as your encounter with Algrath was last night, it was actually the closest I’ve gotten to him in a very long time,” Martin said. “I have tried in the past to locate him using spells, potions, and even tracking devices I placed on him at various times. None of these methods have worked effectively.”

  He rifled through some papers on his desk and finally pulled out a page that had a drawing of a dagger in its center.

  “Ah, here we are,” he said. “Over the past few years, I have been working on a new sort of tracking spell in my spare time. One that wouldn’t be so easily reversed or avoided. I’ve used it a few times in practice with great success, but this is the first time I’ve used it on a powerful demon like Algrath. Time will tell if it is effective in helping us locate him.”

  I sat on the edge of my chair, taking the paper from him and studying it.

  “This is brilliant,” I said, passing the paper to Kai. “How long will it take to find him if it does work?”

  Kai shook his head. “This makes absolutely no sense to me,” he said. “Can you translate?”

  I leaned toward him. “So, traditional tracking spells using someone’s DNA can be avoided with simple cloaking spells. That’s probably what this demon has used on the girls. There are also tracking spells where you can place something onto a person or creature and track that item.”

  “Like we did last night with Blythe’s car,” he said.

  “Exactly. Those are also relatively simple to avoid, if you know you’re being tracked,” I said. “What Martin’s done, if I’m reading this correctly, is he’s created a special tracking potion using a drop of his own blood.”

  “Very good, Lenora,” Martin said. “I laced the dagger I used against Algrath last night with a few drops of this potion. The way it works is the potion slowly travels through the demon’s bloodstream, essentially coating him with it from the inside. It shows no sign of its existence, because there is so little of it, and it has no side effects at all until it has been dispersed to every part of his body. In theory, the demon will have no idea he’s been infected with it until it’s too late. Cloaking himself will no longer work, because it won’t be his energy I’m tracking.”

  Kai’s mouth fell open as he finally understood the spell.

  “So once your blood is dispersed throughout the demon’s body, you simply track yourself. Your own energy,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Martin smiled and nodded. “It has taken a bit of out-of-the-box thinking to come up with this method,” he said. “But I’m honored you approve. The biggest downside is that it takes nearly two days for it to work.”

  “Two days?” I asked, slamming the paper down on the desk. He’d just gotten my hopes up, and now it felt like we were back to square one. “That’s too late. We have less than two days until the full moon.”

  “By my calculations, we should receive the demon’s accurate location just before the ritual begins,” Martin said. “I’m afraid this was my best option, and we are lucky we got the chance to use it at all. The spell must travel slowly through the demon’s body, or else it would be too easy for him to sense it and nullify it.”

  I leaned back in the chair, feeling defeated. The odds were definitely stacked against us here, and even though this might help, it also might come through too late to save the missing girls.

  “What else can we do in the meantime, then?” I asked.

  “For one, we can get both of you ready to face Algrath if and when it comes to that,” Martin said. “There’s another detail you need to understand about this demon before we face him again.”

  “What’s that?�
� Kai asked.

  Martin looked through his stack of books, thumbed through a few pages, and finally handed a worn book across the desk to Kai.

  “Algrath and his brother are both ethologus demons,” Martin said.

  It was my turn to look confused. Kai seemed to recognize the word right away, because he groaned and ran a hand across his forehead.

  “No wonder I haven’t been able to find him by tracking the people who just came to town,” he said. “This is making so much more sense right now.”

  “What?” I asked. “What’s ethologus?”

  “It means they’re copycats,” Kai said. “Instead of taking on their own unique human form like most demons, an ethologus demon can take on the form of any other human it chooses.”

  My stomach knotted.

  “Wait. You’re saying this demon could look like anyone? Even me? Or you?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Martin said. “In order to take someone’s form, the ethologus demon must consistently feed on that human’s energy. Typically, the demon will have the real human locked away somewhere in its home or den.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking about how horrifying that would be.

  “So, in all likelihood, the first kidnapping that took place here in Newcastle wasn’t a teenage girl after all. It was probably someone else in the community that no one even realizes is missing,” Kai said. “This makes finding them all the more difficult. It could be anyone in town.”

  “Furthermore, when in its copycat form, the demon is very hard to sense or detect,” Martin said. “It will have the memories, mannerisms, and even the energy of the human it is pretending to be. On the outside, everything will appear normal, even to close family members.”

  At the mention of the word family, I suddenly got a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “What about Julie Peterson?” I asked. “Is it possible Olive’s mom is really this demon? What if Olive doesn’t even know her mother’s been kidnapped?”

  Martin slowly nodded.

  “Yes, Kai filled me in on your suspicions about this woman,” he said. “I have to say her potential involvement with Bates is somewhat of a concern. It could be innocent, of course. The cupcake you brought home to me the other day was delicious, but if it had any Moondust inside, it was nothing more than a trace amount to amplify the flavor or make them slightly more addictive. That’s hardly more dangerous than sugar, if you ask me.”

  “What if some of her other cupcakes have had more Moondust, though?” I asked. “The other day at Sir Bean, Peyton had a maple bacon cupcake. The next day, she told me she’d had incredibly realistic dreams. Dreams that made her muscles ache. I experienced something similar when I had Moondust candy years ago. Also, Ms. Julie dropped off a special cupcake for Peyton to try the day she disappeared. She specifically told her not to eat it until after we’d all left. It’s suspicious, if you ask me.”

  Martin seemed to think this over.

  “There could be a connection, there,” he said.

  “I’m not sure what that has to do with bundles of lavender and poison ivy under her pillow, though,” I said, frowning. Why drug Peyton and then also leave those bundles? “I don’t know how it all comes together, but there’s something to it. We just don’t have all the pieces to fit it together yet.”

  “We need to figure out our next moves,” Kai said. “So far, all we have is speculation. We need proof.”

  Martin stood. “I plan to go back out to the scene of last night’s attack,” he said. “My only concern last night was getting Lenny to safety. I didn’t have a chance to look around for clues. Let’s head out in the light of day and see what we can find, shall we?”

  We followed him to the garage, where he kept two different cars. One was a sleek new Mercedes AMG GT 4-Door he’d bought this summer. The other was a Classic 1937 Cadillac.

  Neither car was exactly the kind that would blend in, but it was one of these or the VW bug Kai had been driving. I sighed. I really needed to get a car of my own. Something less conspicuous.

  “What about Julie Peterson, though?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we be looking into her, too?”

  “One step at a time,” Martin said.

  “Or we could go now,” I said. “Just to have a look around. I’m not going to have any idea what you’re looking for in the woods, so I’m not going to be any help out there with you. Besides, we don’t have a lot of time. We should divide and conquer.”

  “She has a point,” Kai said.

  Martin seemed to think it over for a long moment before finally nodding.

  “As much as I hate to let you out of my sight again, I will agree to it for the simple reason that we have a limited amount of time to find this demon,” he said. “However, I want you to pack your bag with everything you might need if you get into a fight, and I want you to promise to do nothing more than observe the Peterson house at a distance. You are not, under any circumstances, to go inside. Do you hear me?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Martin turned his attention back to Kai.

  “I’m trusting you to keep an eye on her and keep her safe,” he said.

  “You know I will,” Kai said.

  I eyed them both. I would have argued and said I could take care of myself, but after last night, that would have been a lie. I had never felt so weak and so scared in my life.

  I vowed to be more careful from now on.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, and disappeared upstairs to pack my bag with any reagents or potions I might need while we were gone.

  When I came back down, Martin had already left and Kai held up the keys to the Mercedes he’d left behind.

  “Do you want to drive? Or should I?”

  “Do you even have to ask?” I said with a smile as I snatched the keys from his hand.

  A minute later, we were on the road, heading out to take a closer look at the house my new friend Olive shared with her mother.

  Close Your Eyes

  “Turn here,” Kai said.

  “How do you know where Olive lives?” I asked.

  “I’ve done a little bit of reconnaissance on all of the girls who have disappeared,” Kai said. “One of the missing girls lived in the same subdivision as Olive. They were apparently really good friends when they were younger. Inseparable, some said.”

  “What was her name?” I asked, realizing we were talking about the poor girl as if she were dead. But she wasn’t. She was going to be okay. I had to believe that.

  “Latasha Owings,” he said. He nodded toward a grey sign up ahead. “The Oaks. This is where the Peterson’s live. Turn here and just park on a side street. We can walk the rest of the way.”

  When I stopped, he unfastened his seatbelt and turned around, rummaging through a bag he’d thrown in the back seat. His bare arm brushed against mine, and my stomach erupted in butterflies.

  Aw, man, was I falling for this guy?

  I really wanted to hold back judgment until I knew more about him, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I liked him, and I felt like no matter what, he was always looking out for me.

  I wanted to ask him more about why when he took a file folder out of the bag and dropped it into my lap.

  “These are the notes I’ve kept about the missing girls,” he said. “Latasha was the second girl to go missing. She lived two houses down from Olive and her mom.”

  I searched for her photo and the information he’d gathered on her. She was sweet and quiet, according to her school records. And she was very smart. Nearly perfect grades. President of the debate team and a few other clubs.

  Her parents had gone out to dinner to celebrate their anniversary, taking Latasha’s new baby brother with them. Latasha had stayed home to study. According to her parents, she’d planned to go to bed early, because she had a chemistry test the next day and wanted to be well rested for it.

  They had never seen her again.

  “This is so sad. Her parents must really miss her,” I sai
d, imagining what it must have been like for them to come home after a fun evening out to find their daughter gone. “We’ve got to bring her home.”

  Kai reached over and put his hand on mine.

  “We will,” he said.

  Our eyes met for a long moment, and I realized for the first time that falling for someone didn’t always have to do with how much you knew about them or even how long you’d known them.

  It was in the way you felt when someone looked at you or touched your hand.

  I cleared my throat and closed the file.

  “So, what exactly are we looking for at Julie Peterson’s house, anyway?” I asked.

  “Anything suspicious, I guess,” he said. “Making the cupcakes is her only source of income since she lost her job at an accounting firm last year. I’ve spoken to her a few times when she’s dropped them off at Sir Bean. She’s mentioned being divorced a few times, saying that she’s had to raise Olive by herself since she was a baby. I also know that since Christmas, she almost never lets Olive near the cupcakes, anymore. She complained once that Olive always mixes flavors wrong or burns them. Apparently, they’ve had a lot of arguments about it.”

  “A likely story,” I said. “She probably never lets Olive help, because she’s been putting Moondust in them. She wouldn’t want to have to explain that to her teenage daughter.”

  “You could be right about that,” Kai said. “Let’s go and see if there’s anything going on.”

  “If we aren’t allowed to go in, this is going to be really boring and useless,” I said, my mind already working through ideas of how we could get in undetected.

  I studied the neighborhood as we walked on the sidewalks several blocks to get to the Peterson house.

  From the looks of it, The Oaks was an average upper-middle-class kind of neighborhood where the houses were big but they all kind of looked the same.

  Nothing looked out of the ordinary or suspicious, and I wondered again what we were really hoping to find by coming out here. Olive was likely at school, so Julie Peterson was doing what? Baking?

  When we got to the street where Olive lived, instead of just walking out in the open, Kai led me back behind the houses.