by Scott Rhine
“You’re trying to steal my dad.”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
“You know what I mean,” I snapped. “You’re trying to seduce him.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know how you can tell how I feel about your father when I’m not sure myself. A woman of my age, weight, and education level has more of a chance of being killed by a terrorist than finding a male friend. But you have to admit he’s a good guy.”
“I guess.”
“Did he sleep around before he met your mother?”
Uncomfortable, I rolled over so I didn’t have to look at her in tight clothes. “No. He’s very traditional.”
“Did he cheat on Althea?”
“Hell, no.”
“Has he slipped down to the local country bar and picked up waitresses?”
I snorted. “Unless they had a flat tire, no.”
“Why do you think anything has changed?” she asked.
“I can see what other people want now. You may not want to admit it, but your voice changes every time you talk about him. I can see the symptoms.”
Miss C sighed. “That car accident? I was mooning over a text from him, but he’s still very much in love with your mother. A relationship is incredibly complex, unlike what you see in the movies. It takes time to grow and for both people to participate.”
“Mom knew the moment they met,” I said. “He took three months to work up enough nerve hold her hand.”
“How long was their engagement?”
“With Council negotiation, two years.”
“Let’s say he gets on the clue bus tomorrow—which would take a miracle. You’ll be gone for a year before he acts on it.”
I hugged myself. “I suppose.”
“Don’t you want him to have friends? To be happy again?”
“He’s all I have left. I don’t want to lose him.”
“What about your brother?”
I explained about the hell gate and his engagement to a friend I was no longer allowed to contact. The current problem was that the Hamadis wanted to attend their mosque tonight, and someone had to be around to watch Zak. “Dina can’t be alone with him, and Aunt Audra hates my brother’s guts. That means Dad has to drive another seven hours roundtrip and stay in a hotel.”
Miss C covered her mouth. “Oh, my. You haven’t heard the latest. Didn’t your father speak to you over lunch?”
“He doesn’t want my studies to suffer, so he keeps me in the dark. What happened? Did the cottage flood or something?” I tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness hit me.
She put a hand on my chest to push me back down onto the bed. “We won’t have to worry about dark witches and monsters killing you if you do yourself in. Relax. Adults are handling this situation.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better? Have you heard any of the things people confess to me? What happened?”
She chewed her lip. “Zak got fired.”
“That means he goes back to the asylum if we can’t find him another babysitter.”
“Is that so bad? He needs treatment for his mental problems, or his acting out could get worse. No place else has therapists who are cleared to hear what caused his PTSD.”
“The Council will torment him and use him as leverage against Dad and me. Aunt Audra has actually requested electroshock.”
“Dear me, Ishmael didn’t mention that part.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t seem to matter that someone made Zak do it by holding a gun on us. They just keep repeating the party line: once a warlock, always a warlock. I’m afraid to ask, but what did Zak do this time?”
“A customer got loud and disrespectful with Mrs. Hamadi. Your brother came out of the back room, lifted the guy off the ground by his lapels, and demanded that he apologize. The jerk called the police and accused him of ‘terroristic threats.’ The charge didn’t stick, but the mall won’t let Zak return.”
I pounded the bed. “Stupid male hormones. Dina will never be allowed to talk to me again. Is the engagement off, too?”
Miss C chuckled. “Actually, Mrs. Hamadi wouldn’t hear of it. She likes him more now than ever.”
“What, she’s into abusive guys?”
“No. The online storefront your brother set up was a huge success. By the end of the year, their sales volume should triple. The Hamadis may be able to retire someday. They’re letting him stay in their home until Sunday night.”
“That’s great, but we still have the problem of tonight. Even if Dad leaves at three and doesn’t stop to eat, he could get stuck in traffic or have a flat tire. I’m sure the Council has thugs waiting to drag Zak away if he’s a minute late.”
Lowering her voice, Miss C said, “I actually took care of that. A colleague of mine, Dr. Francine Hauser, works in Boston. She’s going to sit with Zak for however long it takes for Ishmael to arrive. They’ll chat about higher math and mixed marriages.”
The shock made me blink back tears. “You saved him, both of them. Why? I’ve been such an ass, and you’ve never met Zak.”
“Ishmael is the most selfless man I’ve ever met. That’s what friends do for each other.”
Crap. She managed to take all the fun out my winning the duel. “I release you from your vow.”
“What?”
“You can have lunches with Dad without a chaperone. I’m not saying you’re right about everything, but he deserves friends and a chance at happiness. I’m not the center of the world.”
She lifted her eyebrows at my concession. “Thank you. While you’re exasperating and exhausting, you raised a valid point. I don’t want to rush things or pressure either of you. Maybe the three of us could have a safe, nonthreatening dinner together tomorrow.”
“I’d like that.” Meanwhile, another more devious part of me realized Dad would be away from home for seven hours. I had the mandala vault in his bedroom to myself.
30. Silence of the Lambs
In the chilly autumn rain, I waited on the stair landing beside the apartment atop Aunt Audra’s garage. Maybe Luca hadn’t heard me. I knocked a second time. Eventually, she peeked through the glass in the kitchen door. Opening it a crack, she said, “You got me detention and service hours. Why should I talk to you tonight?”
Yummy spiced meat smells wafted from the Crock Pot in the corner. From the apron she wore and the paprika sitting on the table beside her, I had interrupted her preparing tomorrow’s meal for her father.
“You earned that detention yourself. I warned you the Gestapo was listening.” I held up my bare wrist. “Nobody can overhear tonight. I’m sorry things went sideways with the duel. You’re the main reason I won. You should have seen the teachers laugh their butts off when we broke the window by accident. The coach hinted that next time, we need to blur our faces for the security cameras.”
She wasn’t being punished for breaking the law but for getting caught, which made her smile. “Step inside. You look like a drowned mouse.”
“Come over to my kitchen instead. The cook just brought fresh monkey bread for breakfast.” Planning ahead, I had asked Marta to make Luca’s favorite snack.
I could see her reserve melting.
“It’s still warm,” I tempted with a lilt in my voice.
We dashed to the back door of the cottage, where I also had towels waiting. I handed her a fat, fluffy one, amusing her further. “So you think I’m easy?”
I took the plastic wrap off the cinnamon laden snack. “I’m trying to make it up to you. I already cut this down the middle to give you half to take home. You want me to put it back in the oven?”
“No.” Luca ripped off a gooey chunk of the bread and stuffed it in her mouth. “Mmph.”
While she ate her fill, I laid out my plan to search Mom’s heart-shaped mandala.
After she washed her hands and face, we went upstairs to Dad’s bedroom. I waited at the doorway as she crept across the thick, white carpet. “Get closer,” she whispered, “in case I need hel
p.”
“Um… technically, Dad told me not to go in his room while he’s gone. He’s afraid I’m going to borrow his bat again. Last time I put a couple dents in it.”
“It’s not like a new car.”
I shrugged. “Mom etched it for him. He’s sentimental.”
She stopped at the edge of the bed. “Now I feel like crap. I don’t want to disappoint your father again. I broke my word and took boys in his car.”
“He’s grateful. You rescued them from Corruption and witch cops.”
Pointed her thumb at the mandala, she asked, “Is he going to thank me for this one?”
“If it solves my mother’s murder. Even if it’s empty, he’ll appreciate you hanging out in the cottage with me. Dad won’t make it back from Holy Oak until late tonight, and it’ll ease his mind to know you’re here to protect me.”
Luca opened the wall portal with a casual gesture, revealing a shelf inside the mandala. From it, she plucked a pen, a vial of sand, and a postcard.
“The sand and card are from Stone Harbor , New Jersey—the beach where my folks honeymooned,” I said. “The ocean always relaxed and recharged her when other people’s problems became overwhelming. What does it say?”
My hardcore tough-guy friend started crying. “Ishmael wrote it to Miss Althea. ‘You are my ocean.’ I wish some guy would say that about me.” She borrowed a tissue from the box beside the bed.
“We can give the sand and the card to Dad tomorrow. The pen is what we came for.”
“Why?”
I replied, “Because it’s a spy gadget used to record interviews. It doesn’t have speakers, but I can probably download the contents onto my laptop.”
She was still sniffing a little when we reached my room and I’d popped top off the pen to reveal the output jack.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
“Why can’t I find a guy like that?”
I plugged the pen-recorder into my laptop and located the proper software. “They probably don’t hang out at raves and kiss girls on the first date.”
“That was judgmental. Just because you’re parents never fought, it doesn’t make you an expert. Maybe one witch in eight has a happy marriage.”
With a sigh, I said, “First, you asked my opinion. Second, my parents did fight, but they knew how to do it and stay friends. I think that’s the key—they were friends before anything else. My mom was fond of saying that if sex only lasts an hour, you need to find a partner you want to be around for the other twenty-three.”
Luca sat beside me on my bed. She picked up my pillow pet and stared at it thoughtfully. “Unicorns.”
“I’ve got it,” I said as the audio files came up in the interface. “Or them. I’ll start with the earliest.”
My mother’s voice filled the room. I had to turn down the volume. “I’m using this recorder because I think my phone has been compromised, which means nothing on paper is safe either. Something fishy is going on at Emergency Response HQ. When I interview victims, they often lead me to a magical item that contaminated them or ruined their lives, even if they don’t believe in the Art. It’s my job to retrieve the item and check it into the Oubliette—the vault where we put things we never want to see again. Some of the stuff I’ve put in there gave me nightmares. We aren’t supposed to stay inside for more than sixty seconds because of the radiation. The first shelf on the right always contained an oversized black grimoire with Da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man diagram etched onto the cover in gold. You don’t forget a book like that. Evil radiated from it.”
I recalled seeing the image of a man with outstretched arms and legs inside a circle. The drawing was popular on old medical textbooks and European money.
“Around sixteen years ago, I noticed that the Vetruvian grimoire had shifted an eighth of an inch, and the dust on top was gone. Someone had looked inside the book and wiped their prints. I thought nothing of it. People get curious. Since there were no new bloodstains on the wall, everything had worked out all right. When I asked a couple innocent questions, someone took me off the vault access list—allegedly because of my marriage to an outsider.”
“Four years ago, the Council needed my help on a high-profile case again, so they restored my access. The Vetruvian grimoire was gone. Things in the vault never leave their assigned shelves, but this book had vanished. According to the evidence logbook, it was still on the shelf. Either a skilled thief had broken in without a trace, or a trusted member of our community was reading a warlock’s Book.”
Luca’s eyes popped.
Okay. That’s a bad thing.
“Maybe ten people had the opportunity. To narrow the list down, I had to determine what had been stolen. I memorized the case number associated with the evidence and waited an entire week before searching for it in the legal files. That’s right, paper files. Witches don’t trust computers.”
Mom sounded nervous. “The original owner had been a serial-killer surgeon nicknamed Raggedy Andy because he had a patchwork body and red hair. His name was Andrew—”
The clip broke off suddenly. I was busy picturing someone with red dreadlocks and clown makeup.
“Why’d you stop it?” asked Luca.
“I didn’t. It ended on its own. The next segment starts five minutes later.”
“Play it.”
I was just as eager to hear the rest, but that didn’t stop me from teasing. “I wouldn’t want you to have nightmares. Maybe we should wait for daylight.”
“Push the play button, or I will!”
“Isn’t this better than TV?”
She pointed at the keyboard.
A burst of noise indicated someone fumbling with a microphone. “Sorry. A vehicle drove past my office window without lights on. I had to climb into my car in the garage for better soundproofing.
“The case generated a lot of gossip. From what I can tell from the transcripts, Raggedy Andy was decades ahead on a number of medical procedures due to experimentation on human beings. He’d use body parts from his victims to extend his own life and those of his followers. With so much replaced, they weren’t sure he was technically human anymore. To minimize tissue rejection, he preferred to harvest from Sensitives—weak ones who weren’t on the Council’s radar yet. The judges didn’t kill him for three reasons. First, he was loopier than Charles Manson. Like Manson, so many people wanted revenge against him that he was safer behind bars. Second, the Council’s doctors were curious how long he could live with his enhancements. Lastly, during his trial, he saved the life of an unspecified Council member using his tainted knowledge. Therefore, Andy’s sentence was commuted to the Asylum, where he’s well-guarded but treated better than a guest on a cruise ship. Reading about the deal turned my stomach.
“It took me a month to gain access to detailed police investigation notes. Andy did more than patch people. He could build them from the ground up. Some of his followers were what he called ‘animates,’ a modern version of Frankenstein’s monster. Which begs the question—how do we know the man in the Asylum cell is the true Andy and not a decoy? Worse, how can we be sure anyone is who they say they are now?” A clicking sound ended the segment.
With a frown, Luca said, “Turn off your Internet so no one can spy.”
“Done,” I replied.
“Where’s your watch?”
“Bathroom. It likes listening to spa music. Why the sudden paranoia?”
She stood and paced my room. “Golems are resistant to magic and obey their maker without hesitation. If someone has perfected a way to conceal their identities, it’s beyond bad. Your mother was in deep. No one can be trusted unless you’ve seen them naked and checked them for scars.”
“Are golems strong?” I asked.
“Very, and they can ignore pain.”
This fit with the strangulation MO. I explained how my mother died.
Luca said, “Sacro cuore. Your mother knew what was killing her and couldn’t stop it. She could only prevent them from
using her body parts. Play the next part. We need to know what she dug up during her investigation.”
Mom whispered the next segment. “Research in this area is forbidden, necromancy. I had to skirt the law to find the truth. Ishmael tweaked my kaleidoscope to detect the negative energy pattern of an animate. I scan all my new patients and co-workers with it before I’ll be alone with them. It took over a year for me to gain access to Andy’s cell for a brief interview. According to my spells and the scope, he’s human, but he’s too cocky and smug. On the bright side, the keepers tell me that his artificial parts can’t pass through a protective circle. They’re unclean. I did my own experiment to prove the claim. The ward held.
“In the process of my experiment, I discovered that someone has been bringing him contraband. His TV has channels from around the world, his wine cellar is the most extensive I’ve seen, and he eats with gold-plated silverware.
“One line from the interview chilled me. Andrew made an oblique reference to the sincerest form of flattery. That’s when I started looking for copycat killers. The Emergency Response Team had no records of one, but the newspapers and VICAP database told a different story. Every December, someone has been killing young women in New England and cutting out their hearts. With work, I traced six victims who may have been Sensitives, as well three girls who went missing in the right time frames and had interesting ancestries. The FBI caught me snooping and named him the Advent Killer. Only after the mundanes connected a new killing to the list would the Council admit we had another patchwork stalker. Isa, I’m terrified for you, for all of us. I can’t investigate further, though, until I determine how to stop one of these monsters.”
As the segment stopped suddenly, I blinked. “How the hell did she know I was listening?” I had missed her voice so much, but hearing her say my name was like a punch in the gut.
Luca wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. “Either you or your Aunt Audra might find the vault. Though, only you’d know what the pen or a computer was.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.