“Look!” I gasped. Two insubstantial but very clear figures stood one on either side of the X. Not an “X” I realized, but a crossroads, the place mortal spirits met the immortals. The figures were not solid, but they glowed from light within, not of this world. One was an old man leaning on a cane, puffing a pipe. A bony-ribbed dog stood by his side. I recognized him as Papa Legba, one of the most powerful Voudon Loas. The other was a tall man in a dark, formal suit with a high hat and dark glasses. He held a cigar in one hand, and his face was white like a skull. He could be no one else but Baron Samedi, a Voudon ghede, master of the dead.
Caliel drummed and chanted, and the skritch-skritch of his gourd rattle sounded to me like the scratch of a shovel against cemetery ground. The closer Caliel got to the two men at the crossroads, the more I could see that Renya’s withered spirit now knew what it was to be compelled by someone else’s will, trapped by powers greater than his own.
Caliel stepped aside as he reached the crossroads, and the Baron reached out a long, bony arm. His skeletal fingers grasped Renya’s puff of mist and dragged it to him, into the crossroads, the place between the realms of the living and the dead.
The Baron looked straight toward me as if he knew that I could see him, and he pointed to me, Teag, and the fallen form of Father Anne, then gravely shook his head left to right, three times. Abruptly, the figures vanished.
I sagged to my knees. I could taste blood in my mouth, and I ached in every joint and muscle. Teag collapsed beside me. His face and chest were covered with bloody scratches, and he was far too pale. I tried to crawl toward where Father Anne lay, but Sorren was already there, rolling her onto her back and checking for signs of life.
“She’s alive,” he said. “Weak, injured—but alive.”
Caliel’s chanting had slowed. I knew that he was closing down the portal he had opened, dispelling the power he had gathered, and thanking the Loas who had come to his aid. I glanced up at the night sky, never feeling so glad to see an unobstructed view of the bright, distant stars, and said a silent “thank you” to the Powers that Be. Something much greater than my abilities or Teag’s magic had imbued both the knife and the stole. And then I looked deep into the darkness, toward where the graves lay, and whispered my thanks to Theodora and her nameless companions, for their warning and their protection.
Finally, Caliel finished his ritual and trekked back toward the circle. His skin was wet with sweat, and his face was gaunt as if he had gone days without eating. He managed a broad grin, a flash of gleaming teeth.
“That was some show, huh?” Somehow, I knew that the triumphant speaker was Mama Nadege, not Caliel.
Sorren stood and gave a shallow bow. “Thank you, Caliel and Mama Nadege.”
“You sure know how to have a fine evening,” Mama Nadege replied, altering Caliel’s voice just enough that I knew she was the one talking. “I’m glad we got that bloodsucker. He did enough harm back when. The Baron’ll see that Renya gets what he deserves, true enough.”
“Time for you to return to your rest as well,” Sorren said, and his half-smile was sad.
“I know I’ve worn out my welcome,” Mama Nadege answered. “I can feel it. I’m proud as I can be of this one,” she said, and I knew she meant Caliel, her grandchild many times over. “He fought well.”
“Until the next time,” Sorren said.
“Oh, I’m sure there’ll be a next time,” Mama Nadege chortled, but her voice was already growing faint. Caliel closed his eyes, and his whole body gave one long shudder from head to toe. When he opened his eyes, I knew he was himself again.
“Everyone alive? Then it’s been a good, good night,” he said heartily, though I could hear the exhaustion in his voice.
Sorren lifted Father Anne in his arms as Teag got to his feet and gave me a hand up. I looked past Caliel to the dark clearing, where the crossroads had been.
“Before they left, the Baron pointed to us and shook his head. What did that mean?”
Caliel laughed. “He was telling you, no one dies tonight. The Baron, he’s the one who lets the souls into the next world. If he refuses to dig your grave, you won’t die.”
“That’s good to know,” I said, utterly exhausted. “But now, it’s definitely time to go home.”
Part II
Fatal Invitation
Fatal Invitation
I reached into the shipping crate. My hand closed around a newspaper-wrapped piece from a china dish set, probably a gravy boat from its contours. The warning tingle from my psychic gift was too little, too late. By the time I realized the danger, I was already immersed in a vision of tragedy and terror.
Images strobed in my mind, searingly clear for an instant and then suddenly dark. A dining room table set with holiday finery for a Thanksgiving feast. Eight people—no, nine—but the one person’s face was hidden. Dinner began with high spirits. The person whose memories I was experiencing was a man, the father of the family gathered for the feast, happy that he was surrounded by loved ones—and a guest.
Despite the high spirits, a warning tingled at the edge of my host’s senses. It had been a mistake to invite the stranger, he was thinking. They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The stranger didn’t say much as the meal began. Everyone else laughed and talked as silverware rattled and food was passed around the table. His son, the youngest at the table, was the first one affected. He complained about his stomach, folded his arms across his midsection, and fell forward onto his plate. I saw the man’s hand set the gravy boat down on the table as he stood.
Everyone rose in alarm—everyone except the stranger. I couldn’t get a clear look at the guest’s face. The others were in sharp focus, but the one I knew was the stranger had blurred features, and the baggy clothing made it impossible to tell gender. The stranger stepped back as everyone rushed to the boy, who fell back, eyes staring blankly, unresponsive, into his mother’s arms as she screamed.
The others began to stagger, hands going to their heads or abdomens, faces frightened and worried. The boy’s mother collapsed across his body. Others crumpled to the floor or sagged from their chairs.
The person whose memories I shared tried to go to them, but his legs failed him. His heart raced but it was hard to breathe, and his mouth had gone dry. Vision blurred, and despite his panic, he was so utterly tired. Still, he dragged himself toward his family, but halfway across the room, his body no longer responded to his mind’s commands. He reached out to the stranger, one hand raised in a plea for help. The stranger only smiled.
He couldn’t move, but consciousness remained. He could see and hear the chairs being moved and his family’s bodies being dragged across the carpet. Glassware clinked as the stranger reset the table. A few moments later, strong hands lifted him and hauled him back to his chair, dumping him into his seat and arranging his arms and legs just so. The terror in his gut was building, and he wanted to scream, to fight, to stop this madness, but all he could do was watch helplessly as he and those he loved were arranged at the table in a macabre tableau.
He heard footsteps behind him, someone else had come into the room.
“Everything’s ready,” the stranger said.
I came out of the vision gasping for air as if I were drowning. Teag was already beside me. He’s seen me do this enough that he knows how to protect me while I’m having a vision, and Teag’s good at helping me come back to myself. He gently took the wrapped piece of dishware out of my hands and put it back in the box.
“That’s one hell of a gravy boat,” I managed, as he guided me to a chair. A moment later, he had poured me a strong, cold glass of sweet tea and pressed it into my hands. It said something about our normal workday that we had this part of the job down to a routine.
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, and I own Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. The shop has been in my family since the city was founded over three hundred years ago. In all th
at time, we’ve managed to keep a very important secret. We’re not just a great place to buy unique knick-knacks or sell off grandma’s silver. Our real job is saving the world from really bad things that go bump in the night.
My magic is psychometry—I can read the magic or imprinted strong emotions of an object by touching it. It’s a dangerous gift to have in a business like ours, filled with heirlooms that were witness to history that was good, bad, and downright ugly. Touch magic runs in my family. The person who possesses the gift most strongly ends up inheriting Trifles and Folly, and the secrets that come with it.
Teag Logan is my assistant store manager. Teag’s got Weaver magic, which means he can weave spells into cloth and find hidden threads of online data to expose secrets and hack just about any computer system. But our biggest secret is Sorren, my silent partner in the business. Sorren’s a vampire, part of a covert Alliance that exists to get dangerous magical objects off the market and out of the wrong hands, and he founded Trifles and Folly back in the 1600s. When we do our jobs right, no one notices. When we make a mistake, the damage usually gets blamed on a natural disaster.
“How bad was it?” Teag asked, watching me carefully as I sipped my tea and tried to stop shaking. Teag settled his tall, thin frame into a chair and brushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes.
“Bad,” I replied, wishing I could un-see the vision. But I couldn’t forget it, and I felt a bond to the doomed man whose memories I had shared, memories so strong they had imprinted themselves onto that piece of china. Though I hadn’t seen what happened to him and his family, I was certain it hadn’t ended well. And I was equally sure that the stranger who had joined them had gotten away with murder.
Teag listened silently as I recounted what I’d seen. “Yikes,” he said when I was finished. “So you think whoever owned this dish set was poisoned by someone they invited for Thanksgiving dinner?”
I nodded. “I’m certain of it. There was someone else involved too, but I never saw either person’s face.” I frowned. “That was very strange. I could see everyone else clearly, but not the stranger.”
Teag met my gaze. “Magic?”
“That’s my thought,” I replied. “But why would someone with magic want to poison a family? Why use poison if you’ve got magic? And what’s up with setting people back in their seats like dummies in a wax museum?”
“Nothing says people with magic can’t be psychopaths,” Teag observed, rising to pour himself a glass of tea. “But that kind of detail should have made the news, and I swear I would have remembered a story like that.”
“Me, too.” I finished my tea and set the glass on the table. “Unless the police withheld the information, which wouldn’t be uncommon for a mass murder.” I shivered, thinking of how cold-blooded the killer had to be to strike down a family on a day that had begun with great joy.
“If it’s in a database, I’ll find it,” Teag said, flashing me a confident smile. “And I’ll start by contacting the auction house to see where the dish set and silverware came from. That might help me narrow down the search. Right now, we don’t even know whether the murders happened in Charleston or not.”
I toyed with the condensation on my tea glass. “You bought the dishes at auction?”
Teag nodded. “Yeah. Remember the unclaimed and abandoned odd lots auction I went to last month? Most of the stuff was junk, but there were a few pieces that caught my eye, and the china set was one of them.”
He pulled one of the dishes out of the box and unwrapped it. Teag’s magic works differently than mine, so he can touch things like that all he wants, and it won’t knock him flat on his ass. On the other hand, he would be just as vulnerable if he happened on a spelled piece of clothing or fabric with malicious magic woven into it. I’m learning that magic can do some amazing things, but it has a price.
“I still think it’s beautiful,” he said, staring at the gravy boat.
I shuddered. “The vision’s spoiled my appreciation. Maybe that’s what Charles Dickens meant about a ghost having ‘more grave than gravy’ about it,” I added with a weak smile. I bent forward to have a closer look without touching the china.
It was a very pretty pattern, one of the china company’s classics that had been in demand for decades. I wondered if it had been passed down from one generation to another, or purchased new. Someone had high hopes for a lifetime of happy holidays, and I was angry that whoever this stranger was, he or she had destroyed those hopes.
“If it is magic, it felt different from the kinds of power we usually run into,” I said, leaning back in my chair and staring at the dish. Teag and I have worked with Voudon mambos and Hoodoo root women, kick-ass Episcopalian priests and Native American shamans, along with clairvoyants, spirit mediums, and necromancers. Every type of magic I’d seen so far had its own signature, sort of like a supernatural frequency. The faceless stranger’s power didn’t match any of the “frequencies” I had encountered.
“Let’s ask Sorren what he makes of it,” Teag said. “He’s been kicking around for almost six hundred years. Maybe it will ring a bell with him. And in the meantime, I’ll get digging.”
We closed up the shop for the night, and I headed home. Teag promised to call me if he found anything out from his research, and I had a call, email, and text message in to Sorren, asking him to get back to me right away.
Yes, my vampire boss uses modern technology. He says that immortals who can’t adapt don’t continue to survive, and he plans to be around for a while. But the nature of his work with the Alliance means that Sorren travels a lot, often out of the country, and sometimes he’s in situations where he can’t get a signal or doesn’t dare respond. There was no telling when we’d hear from him, but Teag and I were getting better at making progress on our own, and I figured we’d get Sorren’s opinion whenever he surfaced.
My mood was off. The visions I get from handling tainted objects are as real to me as if I were experiencing the situation myself. Since problem objects never have good magic or happy emotions imprinted on them, that means I had my work cut out for me to bounce back after something like I saw today.
Fortunately, there’s Baxter. His high-pitched yips greeted me before I’d even managed to open the door. I live in a Charleston single-house, where the side of the home faces the street, and my “front” door actually opens onto the side of my covered porch, what Charlestonians call a “piazza,” Which meant I could hear Baxter yipping it up while I was still out on the sidewalk. No person can ever match a dog for being glad to see you.
I opened the door to the house, and Baxter bounced around my feet. He’s a Maltese, six pounds of boundless attitude. Heart of a warrior, body of a guinea pig. I scooped Bax up in my arms and let him lick my nose and chin as he squirmed to climb higher. Just holding him eased the tension I felt, and I gave him a big hug, then went to fill his bowl with kibble.
“I think we’ve got trouble coming,” I said to Baxter as I looked in the fridge for something to eat. Leftovers from last night’s Chinese take-out caught my eye, and soon they were in the microwave as I poured a glass of water and a glass of wine.
Baxter didn’t look up. As long as he’s got food in his dish and some popcorn when we snuggle on the couch, he’s good. I was still restless, envying him his doggie perspective. My mind cycled back through the images, and I doubted I’d get a good night’s sleep tonight, even after the wine.
I could see the faces of the family clearly in my memory—all but the father, through whose eyes I had seen the tragedy. I was certain I would recognize them if I saw them again.
Setting my warmed-up stir-fry to one side, I opened up my laptop as Baxter settled himself at my feet. I don’t have Teag’s magic, but my Google-fu is strong. The problem was, without more to go on, I had no idea where the deaths occurred. They might have been in Charleston—or in Seattle, for all I knew.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, forcing myself to see the setting of the murder as well as the
people, looking for any clue to their location. I started searching on “Thanksgiving deaths.” That got me a depressingly long list of car accidents and house fires, as well as other unfortunates who met their maker through a variety of causes. I never realized Thanksgiving was so dangerous.
I changed my search to “Thanksgiving murders.” The search returned a shorter list this time, though longer than I had expected. I steeled myself and examined my memory, looking for clues in the vision. From how people were dressed, I was willing to bet the scene took place in the last few years. I whittled the list down to the past decade. Very few involved more than one victim. None of the reports I found matched the number of people in my vision.
“I’m striking out, Bax,” I muttered. On impulse, I Googled “mysterious holiday deaths.” I got a list of items that ranged from missing planes and boats to vanishing tourists, including a YouTube video of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Nothing useful.
Just then, my phone buzzed. “Are you on your computer?” Teag asked. “I found something I’d like you to take a look at.” He gave me a web address, and I typed it in. “You might have to scroll down a bit, but I think some of these stories sound like what you described. I’ll call you back in a bit. I’ve hit on some good information, and I want to get as much as I can.”
I looked at the web page Teag had sent me to explore. “Urban Legends: The Deadly Stranger.” Intrigued, I clicked through and caught my breath.
“Bingo!” I said. Baxter looked up and cocked his head curiously, then laid back down when he realized no food was involved.
The link took me to a compilation of urban legends, stories everyone has heard, but no one can prove, like the tales of alligators roaming the New York City sewers and the guy with the hook for a hand who preys on horny teenagers parked at Lovers’ Lane. I’d always dismissed the legends as being fodder for ghost stories told around the campfire by kids trying to scare each other. Then I remembered how in the movie Men in Black, the tall tales in grocery store tabloids were really true, just embellished a little for the press. I poured myself a cup of coffee and read further.
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