I shook my head and patted my throat.
“Don’t try to talk,” she said. She lifted my hand away and pressed her palm against my throat. “Ohhh, I see. It’s a spell and a potion. They’re having a synergistic effect on each other.”
I had a dozen questions. She laid a finger on my lips.
“Shhh. I’m going to unspell you now, and then you’re going to drink the antidote to the potion. You’ll have to lie down while it takes effect. Then we’ll talk.”
Who had done this to me? Could she tell?
“Hush, dear,” she said. “You’ll have your voice back in half an hour.”
I would burst with sheer frustration before then. At least give me something to think about! I shouted at her in my mind.
“Be patient, dear.” She lit a bundle of sage twigs and started waving them around, shooing the smoke toward me as if it were a swarm of gnats. “The undoing will work faster if you can empty your mind.”
Fat chance.
“Oh, all right, dear, if you insist. Let’s see, what can I tell you? The spell came before the potion. I don’t know who bespelled you. Not somebody I know, or I would have recognized the signature.”
Some help that was. She didn’t know anybody I knew. Had the same person attacked me twice?
“I’m not sure, dear. Whoever administered the potion didn’t leave a psychic fingerprint. They knew enough to visualize gloves.”
I needed more. Something, anything.
“Not now, dear. Spells and thinking are not a good mix. You want this undoing to work, don’t you?”
She laid the bundle of sage aside and raised her hands to cup the air about six inches from my throat, then began to move them slowly closer. My neck felt even hotter than it had when she was actually touching me.
“You must let go the anger, dear. It’s even worse than thinking during any kind of spellwork. But I’ll tell you one more thing. Whoever bespelled you had recently heard your voice.”
Twenty thousand music lovers had heard my voice on Thursday. And between then and now, I’d talked to assorted airport personnel and flight attendants, taxi drivers in Atlanta and New York, car rental staff, and my whole family except for my brother Tom and his wife and kids. Oh, and Ben Schwartz at the gas station.
“Now, I’m going to close my eyes, dear, and I suggest you do the same. No more chattering until I’ve finished the chant. Then you’ll drink the antidote and have a little nap until your voice wakes up.”
I closed my eyes, but it was impossible not to think. I wasn’t angry at Marge, but at whoever had sabotaged my voice. Was the attack malicious or intended as a joke? Was the spell meant not to work until I was far away from whoever had cast it? Had it been aimed solely at my voice? Would something even worse have happened if the potion hadn’t been added? That was an ugly thought.
Had I been bespelled before I left Atlanta? When I arrived in Pumpkin Falls? When the relatives arrived? When I sat down next to Chaim? I knew nothing about him, and I hadn’t asked any questions, because I wasn’t interested. My father, who prided himself on welcoming the stranger to the Seder table, was perfectly capable of inviting someone he had barely met. My mother would ordinarily have quizzed him thoroughly about his family, background, and prospects, but when would she have had the chance? Seizing the rare opportunity of my being home and stuck in a chair for three hours, she had seen the chai around his neck and the absence of a wedding band on his finger and taken him at face value.
Could one of my relatives, mumbling along with the Hebrew prayers, have slipped one in for Amy to lose her voice? I’d been following along with the transliteration, and I hadn’t heard anybody improvising. As far as I knew, Aunt Gertie was the only one who didn’t like me, and she didn’t like anyone. Most of them had probably been wondering how long it would take to get through the Haggadah and on to Bessie’s chicken soup with matzoh balls.
What about the potion? I was sure someone had laced the Manischewitz. Everybody in my life as Amy knew I was the only one who liked it. But that bottle of Manischewitz sat in Mom’s refrigerator untouched from one Passover to the next. Anyone who’d visited the house in the past year might have done it.
Wendy was the obvious culprit. The potion might have been no more than a practical joke gone wrong. I didn’t think my sister hated me. I didn’t even think she wanted what I had. If anything, she was smug about her life and her taste, which didn’t run to country music. And what about the spell? If she knew any witchcraft, it was news to me.
“They might have been administered independently,” Marge said, reading my mind again. I hadn’t noticed she’d stopped chanting. “Depends how much you believe in coincidence. And how many enemies you have. Drink this.”
She handed me a glass of something that looked like turquoise Pepto-Bismol.
“Bottoms up.”
I made a face and drank it down. It didn’t taste too bad, more minty than medicinal. She gestured for me to lie down on the couch and adjusted the blinds so sunlight no longer flooded in.
“I’ll be in the next room,” she said. “Here, I’ll set a timer for thirty minutes. Relax and lie quietly. Don’t wriggle around or try to test out your voice.”
Two days before the Seder, I’d been in Atlanta. If I had an enemy among the fans or at the venue, it was news to me. I’d never had a stalker or even an intrusive journalist. I wasn’t big enough for that yet and might never be. That left the band, my roadies, and my manager. I was embarrassed to realize that I had always assumed they all loved me. My prosperity meant theirs, but more than that, I’d never pulled any kind of diva act with them. I cared about them. I knew their families. I acknowledged them at every show. I tried to be flexible when they needed time off and generous when they needed money or went above and beyond in any way. I considered them my friends.
There wasn’t much I could do until I saw them again in Vegas. I didn’t want to create an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. I had tried so hard to create a happy working family on the road. But I sure would ask a lot of questions. I thought of another one for Marge, too. Would the spell have worked if my voice itself hadn’t been, as she would put it, incantagenic? I had thought only Michael knew about my gift. I’d never even told my manager or my agent. Michael loved me. Being a shifter, he also understood that paranormal gifts are both a blessing and a responsibility, not a curse or a sign of greed or evil.
My cell phone rang in my pocket. At first I thought it was the timer. I sat up and twisted around to look at it. I still had five minutes left. Surely the antidote had worked by now. Before she came in and scolded me for jumping the gun, I could test it by answering my phone.
I pulled it out and looked at the display. It showed Michael’s cell number. In a couple of seconds I might have good news for him about my voice.
“Hello, sweetheart,” I said. Hallelujah! I sounded normal. I felt so relieved I nearly whooped with joy. A big grin spread across my face. “Can you hear me okay? My voice is back! We can do the gig in Vegas after all!”
“Sorry, ma’am. This is Sergeant Roy Thompson of the Investigations Division of the Town of Boone Police Department. Is this Ms. Love? Ms. Emerald Love?”
I nearly dropped the phone in shock.
“Yes, this is Emerald,” I gasped. My throat tightened up, so for a moment, I thought the antidote hadn’t worked after all. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. When I cleared my throat and took a couple of deep breaths the way I did to start a vocal warmup, I could speak again. “This is Emerald Love. Has something happened to Michael?”
Investigations—could Michael be in trouble? Had something gone wrong when the pack gathered at the full moon? Michael had just laughed when I asked him if local law enforcement knew they had a bunch of werewolves running around in their woods every month. I didn’t know if that meant the shifters had tremendous confidence in their powers of concealment, if the law turned a blind eye, or if some of the local cops were members of the pack.
“Fiancée and employer,” I said firmly. “Please tell me what’s happened! Is Michael—Mr. Conlon all right? May I speak to him?”
Lawyers, I thought. The lawyer we had on retainer specialized in entertainment law and intellectual property. She could find us a good criminal lawyer, though, if one was needed. The best. Thank God I could afford the best. I was so busy thinking ahead that I almost missed what Sergeant Thompson said.
“I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, ma’am, but Mr. Conlon is dead.”
He paused, allowing me time to respond. I couldn’t.
“We sure would appreciate it,” he said, “if you’d come on down to Boone as soon as possible.”
***
I had to fly into Asheville and rent a car for the two-hour drive to Boone. I cried my way across the mountains, so distracted I narrowly missed hitting a deer. Sergeant Thompson showed me to a comfortable leather chair in his office, poured me a cup of coffee, and pushed a box of tissues toward me across his desk in tactful silence.
“What happened?” I blurted out.
“Well, ma’am, we’re not exactly sure. He was found on the mountain about two miles from his cabin. His throat was—sorry, ma’am.” Thompson cleared his own throat and tried again. “It looked like he’d been mauled by an animal.” He looked at me as if he expected me to ask a question.
What could I say? Was it a real animal or one of his werewolf buddies?
“He wadn’t out huntin’,” Thompson said. “Leastways, he didn’t have his rifle with him. We found his guns back at the cabin, all accounted for. The wounds looked like maybe what you’d call a cougar or panther, but none of those been seen around these parts for quite a number of years. Sightin’s, yeah, but nothin’ reliable. It wadn’t like Mike Conlon to let a critter get the drop on him. So you see, ma’am, it’s a bit of a mystery.”
I leaned forward in my chair.
“It sounds like you knew Michael.”
“Yes, ma’am, me and Mike go way back. We went huntin’ together once in a while, though he wadn’t around very much. I was real happy to hear that you and him were courtin’, ma’am. And I’m real sorry for your loss.”
“You’re saying he knew his way around the woods.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So you’re surprised an animal attacked him.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
His face was neither easy to read nor excessively inscrutable. It didn’t give away whether or not he knew about Michael’s extracurricular activities at full moon. For all I knew, the whole police force were members of the pack.
“Can you tell me who you’ve interviewed so far? He told me he was planning to hole up in the cabin and work at songwriting. But when we talked on the phone on Saturday night, he was in a bar.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly the kind of thing we hoped you’d be able to tell us. Now, if you don’t mind a few questions?”
He took me through all the details of where I’d been and what I’d done since leaving Michael in Atlanta on Friday. I had to tell him word for word what Michael had said about his plans for our five days apart. I left out the howling at the moon. It was true that he’d spent time in the cabin, writing. At the thought that I’d never sing with Michael again or watch his fingers dance along the neck of a guitar, my stomach knotted up all over again. And his songs! Knowing he’d never write me another song hurt almost as badly as knowing he’d never hold me—the country lyric euphemism for making love, which we used to joke about.
“I’d like to see him,” I said.
Thompson’s brow furrowed with concern.
“Are you sure, ma’am? He’s already been identified by his kin.”
“His kin?” Michael had never mentioned any living relatives.
“Yes, ma’am, his Uncle Burrell. Burrell Conlon, that’d be. Great-uncle, rightly, on his mama’s side. They never did get along too good, but he was kin.”
“I’d like to talk to him. And I need to see a local lawyer about Michael’s will.”
Thompson became visibly more alert. His spine straightened, and his facial muscles stretched the skin tighter around his eyes and cheekbones.
“Mike Conlon had a will?”
“Of course,” I said. “Between performances and recording, he made quite a lot of money. He had a house in Nashville, and whenever he was there, everybody wanted him for sessions.” He’d been a world-class guitar player, in even more demand as his work in my band got better known. Oh, Michael! “I’m his executor.”
“And beneficiary?”
“Yes.”
“A lot of folks don’t hold with wills,” he said. “Lawyers, sure. And I got one, I’m in law enforcement so I know how much trouble not havin’ one can cause your kin. I think I’ll go along with you when you visit Burrell Conlon. He’s been wantin’ to get into Michael’s cabin. I expect he thinks it belongs to him now.”
“Did you let him?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. Forensics’s been through it, but I wanted to let you see it as he left it. You stayed there before, right? You might could tell us somethin’ helpful.”
He must know about the shapeshifters. Why else would he talk as if Michael’s death by predatory mammal might be a homicide?
“Has Mr. Conlon done anything about a funeral?” I asked.
“He’s the kind that’s got to sit and ponder before he’d do somethin’ like that. And when he learns he’s not gettin’ what Michael had to leave, he’ll likely wash his hands of the whole bidness.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “I hope there’s a good funeral home in town?”
“A couple, ma’am,” he said.
“He wanted to be buried on the mountain.” My eyes filled with tears again. Thompson nodded toward the box of tissues. I shook my head and swiped the back of my hand across my eyes.
“There’s quite a few cemeteries around Blowin’ Rock,” he said. “You could drive around and take yourself a look.”
“He loved Blowing Rock,” I said.
“There’s an inn up on the ridge,” Thompson said.
Michael had always said looking at the mountains put peace in his heart. I didn’t know if that would work for me tonight, but maybe I’d feel closer to him there.
“I have to be in Las Vegas on Tuesday night,” I told him. “I have an engagement I can’t renege on.”
“The show must go on, huh?”
“It’s a lot of people’s living, not just mine.” I’d broken the news to the band, and my manager had already hired a competent lead guitarist to play our three shows there.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“No, no, that’s okay. You’ve been very kind. I’ll come back afterward. Oh, I meant to ask. What about his cell phone? You called me on it, didn’t you?”
“We ran it through forensics first,” he said. “Ordinarily we wouldn’t use a phone found at the scene, but, well, we thought we might not get through if you didn’t recognize the number.”
Before I left, I asked if there was someone Michael might have considered some kind of mentor. I said I wanted to talk to this person first because he could probably rally all Michael’s friends to make a good show at the funeral, maybe even participate. It was the best way I could think of to try to identify the leader of the pack.
“That would be Harmon Crockett,” Thompson said. “His family’s been here a right long time, and a lot of folks look up to him.”
“A descendant of Davy Crockett? The frontiersman?”
“To hear Harmon tell it, he is,” Thompson said with a wry grin.
“I thought he came from Tennessee,” I said.
“He got around some,” Thompson said. “There are Crocketts all around these mountains. Do you want my company when you visit Harmon too?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “If it’s okay, I’d like to see him by myself. I hope we’ll be able to have a good talk
about Michael.”
“Well, whether you mind or not, I’m comin’ with you to Burrell Conlon’s. He’s liable to greet you with a shotgun. And when he hears he won’t inherit, he might could be tempted to use it if the law’s not right beside you.”
I drove up the mountain to Blowing Rock to see about a room in a state of bemusement. Michael had always said shapeshifting ran in families. I thought if his Uncle Burrell had been one, Michael would have mentioned him. But a descendant of Davy Crockett? If the Crocketts were a shifter family, it shed a lot of light on the great man’s legendary woodcraft. Historians assumed that the story that he’d “kilt him a b’ar when he was only three” was a myth, a frontier tall tale. But what if he’d been in bear form himself at the time? A three-year-old bear would already have been mature.
I checked in and threw my suitcase onto the four-poster bed in a room with a stone fireplace in which cedar scented logs already crackled. The broad balcony, made of stone and slate and roofed with unpeeled logs, had a wraparound view of the misty blue mountains. But I didn’t linger. I had no time to lose.
Sergeant Thompson had given me directions to Harmon Crockett’s place and promised to call so he’d be expecting me. His place was as secluded as Michael’s cabin and a lot bigger. It stood on a ridge with a spectacular view. The biggest woodpile I’d ever seen towered at the side of the house, a canvas tarp on tall poles sheltering it from the weather. I crunched to a stop at the edge of the clearing, next to a battered pickup truck and a Jeep that looked as if it had been made for soldiers rather than yuppies.
Crockett stood watching me from his front porch, which resembled my balcony at the inn but three times the size. He was leaning against a long-barreled rifle. As I walked toward him, his weathered face creased in what I thought might be a smile. His eyes, amber like a wolf’s, remained wary.
“Mr. Crockett? I’m Emerald Love.”
“Michael’s little Amy. I heard about you.”
“You knew him very well, then.” I didn’t tell very many people that Emerald was Amy, and Michael had always respected that.
Shifting Is for the Goyim Page 2