by Bailey Cates
“I know of one,” Jaida said.
“Who?” we chorused.
“Someone I defended in court once.”
“Who?” I asked again.
“I think that might fall under attorney-client privilege.”
Hmmph.
“Shall we talk about this week’s book?” Lucy asked, obviously changing the subject. “There have been several reviews on Web sites that say they don’t like the author’s casual approach, but I found it refreshing.”
Jaida smiled. “So did I. It’s accessible.”
“A little too casual, if you ask me. No respect for ritual and tradition,” Bianca said.
“I liked how she gives a framework for developing your own spells,” I said. “Like a how-to book about method and how things in the world correspond magically, and then she encourages readers to make up our own spells. It reminds me of some of my favorite recipe books.”
“I fall in the middle,” Cookie said. “Like Bianca, I like the ritual, but sometimes you need to tailor a spell to very specific needs, and she gives advice on how to do that.”
Voices drifted up to the open doorway. Male voices. For a moment I thought Declan had come over to watch the game with Ben, then realized he was still on duty. Besides, my uncle wouldn’t have invited him when the spellbook club was meeting upstairs.
“I need to see them, sir. I’m sorry, but no, I won’t wait. Are they up here?”
“Now hang on there,” Ben said. “Who do you think you are? Wait!”
Footsteps followed, and we all came to our feet as a man burst onto the garden terrace, with Ben right on his heels.
The newcomer was about my height. Skinny. How had he managed to get past Ben? His eyes were magnified by glasses with black plastic frames. I guessed his age at forty-three or forty-four, and if nerdy was the new cool he was about as cool as it got. His head jerked nervously as he looked around at us.
“Please. I need your help.”
Jaida stepped forward. “Andersen, what’s going on?”
“I need your help,” he said again. “Someone killed Larry.”
My stomach swooped. We all exchanged looks.
The man noticed. “I see you already know that.” Then he focused on me. “You.”
I could feel the color drain from my face, but I held my ground. “Me?” I wished the word had come out an octave lower.
“You’re the one Heinrich was telling us about.”
Us? I looked at Jaida, who nodded slightly. This was her druid client? “You’re a member of the Dragoh Society, then,” I said.
“Andersen Lane.” He stepped toward me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ben take a step, too. “At your service.” The smell of bourbon drifted through the air between us. Of course, with the wine we’d been sipping, everyone except Bianca probably had some kind of alcohol on her breath.
Which actually made it more notable that I could smell it coming off Andersen. With reluctance, I shook his outstretched hand. “I think we’re okay up here, Ben.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” My uncle stood with his arms crossed, eyes glinting at Andersen from behind his rimless glasses.
Lucy went over to Ben, took his elbow, and turned him away from the rest of us. I heard her murmur. A pause. Then more murmurs. Finally his shoulders drooped and he turned back.
“Okay, I’ll give you your privacy. But I’ll be right downstairs.” He looked down at his wife, his affection for her obvious even under those circumstances, and said, “And I’ll be back to check on you.” He gave Andersen a hard look, then spun on his heel and went back inside.
So much for going to the firehouse. Still, it made me feel better to know Ben was nearby. I had no idea what this guy really wanted.
I turned back to Andersen, alarm and curiosity warring under what I hoped came across as a calm demeanor. The air fairly crackled with potential now, but potential for what, I didn’t know. Magic? Violence? Both? I looked around the group to see if they noticed it.
But they all seemed focused on our visitor. Lucy looked worried. Mimsey frowned, as unhappy as I’d ever seen her. Bianca nervously fingered her bracelet as if the charms on it were rosary beads. Jaida’s unsmiling brown eyes bored into Andersen as if she were trying to read his mind. Not that that was possible, of course. Cookie was the only one who didn’t seem upset. She leaned forward with frank, rapt attention.
Andersen looked at Jaida. “Please, Ms. French.” Then at me. “If Larry’s killer isn’t found, an unspeakable evil could be released into the world.”
We all looked at each other with alarm. The air vibrated with unasked questions.
Chapter 13
Andersen Lane sank into a chair and eyed the open bottle of wine. No one had offered him any. Finally he drawled, “May I?”
I handed him Bianca’s unused glass, which he promptly filled to the brim. He took a long swallow and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The gesture was at odds with his geeky facade.
Ah. Yes. It was a facade, I realized. Good to know.
“Tell us why you’re here,” Mimsey said. Her words were abrupt, and not terribly friendly.
“I couldn’t think of anyone else to go to,” he said. “Ms. French already knows I’m a member of the society. I let it slip once during our…professional association.”
Which confirmed she’d defended him in court. I was itching to ask what legal line he’d crossed.
“Heinrich told us about you, Katie. How you found Larry yesterday morning and then started asking a bunch of questions. I thought maybe you all could help me ask some more.”
I sat back down. Slowly, the others did the same.
He looked around. “I’m afraid I’ve not made the acquaintance of you other lovely ladies, though.” He stopped at Cookie, and something like a leer curved his lips.
Her mouth turned down.
“Andersen,” I said, dispensing with the niceties of using his last name. “How did you know where to find us this afternoon?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“Your boyfriend told me.”
Boyfriend indeed. I was going to throttle Steve. How dare he tell this tipsy druid where to find our coven?
“And why would he do that?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing he wanted me to give all y’all something.” Andersen reached in his pocket and pulled out a small pouch made of light blue silk. I sensed rather than saw the aura surrounding it.
I blinked and tore my gaze away. “What’s in the bag?”
“Apparently you’re in need of a little protection from a protection spell. At least Steve and I think that’s what you ran into yesterday. Literally ran into, I understand.” He laughed.
My eyes narrowed as I tried to get a read on him. My phone call to Steve last night resulted in this visit? “Do tell,” I said.
His smile faded. “We have a sort of a general protection spell, to keep anyone from finding out about us. You were magically attacked last evening, weren’t you?”
Jaida, Bianca, and Cookie all turned to look at me. I ignored them.
“If you mean having a bunch of pumpkins almost concuss me—or worse—then yes.”
“What?” Jaida leaned toward him. “Andersen, what’s the matter with you? Protection spells aren’t supposed to hurt anyone, only…protect.”
“Let’s just say the Dragohs are fond of rather, um, proactive protection. If you know what I mean.” He held his hands out. “Hey, stop looking at me like that, ladies. I brought you these.” He fished into the pouch and withdrew six silver circles in varying sizes. Each was thin as a wire, but they glinted madly in the sun, sending off shards of reflected light that made me squint. He stood and handed one to each of us.
“Wear these and you’ll be safe. At least from spells like the one you attracted with all your questions, Katie.”
“How do you know that’s what happened?”
He grinned. “Have you been up to something else to attract the attention
of magicians? Negative attention, I mean? Because I can certainly see how you’d attract attention.”
Oh, brother.
I sighed. “Well, I guess you’d better have your say.”
Mimsey shifted in her chair.
“Right,” he said. “Okay, so you all know who the Dragohs are, right?”
Silent nods all around.
“And you know Larry Eastmore was one of us.”
More nods.
He paused. Took a sip of wine. The red liquid sloshed as he set the glass back on the table.
“He was also my very good friend. Not all of the others appreciate me, you know. In fact, none of them ever really liked me, except for Larry. When my dad died and I took my rightful position in the society, he took me under his wing.” Another sip, and his eyes filled with tears. He blinked them away.
“Anyway, Larry was an expert in occult books and ephemera.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lucy nod in agreement.
Andersen had locked onto me, though, as if I were the only one there. I waited, trying not to show my impatience.
He leaned forward. “One of his books is gone.”
“A valuable one, I take it?”
“Precious indeed, but not necessarily in a monetary sense. I doubt any auction house would know what to do with it. But I do believe someone killed him for it.”
“Why?” breathed Lucy.
He flicked a glance in her direction, but answered as if I had asked the question. “It’s a small volume that contains the Spell of Necretius. It’s a particularly dangerous spell.”
“What does it do?” Bianca asked.
This time he directed the answer at her. “It’s a spell for summoning a spirit—a very dark spirit named Zesh.”
The spellbook club exchanged blank looks. The name seemed innocuous, even silly—but repugnance slithered through me when he said it.
“This spirit, this entity, is said to have the power to bring great worldly success.” He licked his lips, considering the drink on the table beside him. Didn’t pick it up. “Problem is, Zesh cannot be contained. In the past, once it has been given entry to this plane it has always turned on its summoner.”
“Maybe that served them right,” Bianca said. She could be a bit of a Goody Two-shoes when it came to magic.
“Possibly,” Andersen agreed. “But it has always happened with violent results that rippled far beyond the spell caster.”
Our stunned silence was broken only by Bianca’s sharp intake of breath. A raw gust of cold air whipped the cocktail napkins off the table and tugged at the sweet potato vine twining up its trellis. It seemed to blow straight through my veins, stealing my body heat and leaving me with goose bumps despite the warm air.
Then it was gone.
A feeling of doom had settled across my shoulders at Andersen’s words. “What do you think we can do about it?” I asked. The summoning of dark spirits was wa-a-a-y beyond my lessons in Witchcraft 101.
“If you can find Larry’s killer, then we might be able to stop him from casting the summoning spell in the first place.”
“Prevention,” I said slowly, thinking out loud. “Yes, much better than trying to fix the problem after the big spooky is invited to this plane.”
“And I happen to know you successfully solved a murder in the not-so-distant past, Katie. With the help of these ladies, no doubt.”
“No,” Mimsey said. “I’m sorry, but Katie can’t help you with this. We can’t.”
“I agree,” Bianca chimed in. “We should stay away from anything to do with such dark magic.”
I looked at Lucy, who was looking at Mimsey. She nodded agreement with her mentor. In fact, the older woman was really mentor to us all. What Mimsey said carried a lot of weight.
“I’m sorry, Andersen, but I agree with the others,” Jaida said. “This isn’t our fight.”
“How can you say that?” Cookie jumped up and began pacing. “Katie’s right. If we can keep something horrible from happening, we should. Even the Wiccan Rede supports that, Bianca.” She looked around the group. “Do you really want to have to deal with the evil once it is here? Because I’ve seen true evil. And I don’t want to ever again.” She looked into a distance that wasn’t there and hugged herself. I could almost see the emotion rising off of her.
“There’s more,” Andersen said.
Cookie stopped pacing.
“The spell is most potent on Samhain. The killer would know that and cast it then.”
Halloween.
Three days away.
“Why can’t you Dragohs handle this yourselves?” Mimsey demanded.
“Because there are only four of us left now,” he said. “And because it’s likely that one of the other three is the killer.”
Chapter 14
Stunned silence fell over the group. I got up and retrieved the wine bottle from the table beside Andersen Lane. Though I’d taken only a few sips, I topped off my glass and set the now empty bottle on the tiled floor by my feet. In my peripheral vision, Mimsey squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Why do you think Eastmore was killed by one of the other Dragohs?” I asked.
He glanced at his empty glass and frowned before his gaze flicked up to meet mine. “Because to the best of my knowledge no one outside of the society knew about the Spell of Necretius.”
“No one?”
He shrugged. “As I said, to the best of my knowledge. Surely at some point in the past others knew. But Larry’s collection has been in his family for generations. They’ve been the caretakers of those books for centuries, before the society existed, indeed before Eastmores ever came across the pond from England. Possibly even before England existed.”
“But you knew about the Spell of Whatshisname.”
Andersen looked impatient. “We all did. The Dragohs have always been allowed access to the Eastmore archive.”
I looked around at the curiosity, skepticism, and fear on my friends’ faces.
Mimsey nodded slowly. “All right, Mr. Lane. Lawrence Eastmore, you, and Heinrich Dawes,” she said. “Who are the other members of the Dragoh Society?”
“Hmm. Yes, I suppose you’ll need to know.” He grimaced. “All right, then. In for a penny and all. Victor Powers and Brandon Sikes.”
“Oh!” Cookie said.
Mimsey shot her a look, and Cookie’s lips closed on whatever else she had been about to say.
I’d heard of Powers, of course. Everyone with a television or radio or who read the newspaper had heard of him. He was on a fast track to the U.S. Senate and his campaign ads were all over the place. Sikes’ name seemed familiar, but it took a moment for me to realize why: In my Internet travels the night before, I’d seen that he was a frequent guest lecturer at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Apparently he was quite a renowned artist in his own right.
“That makes five,” I said. “There were six of you, right? Why only four left after Eastmore’s death?”
Andersen nodded. “Lars Sandstrom was the sixth.”
Jaida made a noise, and we all looked at her.
“He was a respected Savannah judge for decades,” she said.
“That’s right,” Andersen said. “Of course you would have known him. Well, he died about six months ago of a massive coronary. Unfortunately, he only spawned a daughter.” His choice of words earned him glares all around, but he didn’t seem to notice. He continued. “Lars’ dying without male issue left us in a real jam. The society recently contacted his closest living male relative as a possible replacement candidate.”
“That is the most archaic thing I’ve ever heard,” Bianca said.
He shrugged. “That’s the way it is. Like Mrs. Sandstrom, the daughter has no knowledge of the society, and likely less interest. She came back to take care of things when the judge died—her mother had already passed—but she’ll likely be on her way back to Athens soon. Lars had a nephew, though, lives up in Kentucky. H
e looks promising.”
“How can you, you druids, keep something that’s such a huge part of your lives secret from your families like that?” I couldn’t keep the disapproval out of my voice.
Andersen gave me a look. “Lots of practice.”
I thought about what Steve had said regarding the lack of female influence in the druids’ magic and how that had affected their judgment. The “proactive” protection spell that had almost killed me was evidence of that. The spellbook club believed that anything we manifested would come back to us threefold. It was a guiding paradigm that shaped our actions whether we were practicing alone or together. The Dragohs didn’t seem to buy into the Rule of Three—indeed any rules at all but their own. What the society needed was for a woman to elbow her way in.
“Don’t even think about publicizing your newfound knowledge,” Andersen said as if reading my thoughts. His voice echoed with warning.
I blinked.
It sure didn’t sound like Steve would have any help from Andersen when it came to changing things from the inside. If Steve ever did become a Dragoh, that was. Heinrich looked like he’d be going strong for a long time. Perhaps Steve could still find a way to avoid his supposed destiny.
“What about Lawrence Eastmore? Does he have a son?” I asked, knowing the answer from my research.
Andersen’s face slowly cleared, and he nodded. “Greer Eastmore. He’s been living in Europe for the last twenty years, with no contact with his father in all that time. It almost broke Larry’s heart.”
“Why did his son cut him off?” Maternal concern etched Bianca’s features.
“Doesn’t approve of the society, he said. Doesn’t want to take on the responsibilities, his inheritance, now that his father is dead.” He made a sound of disgust. “Like he has a choice. It’s not like I was thrilled to be included in the group, either, but it hasn’t turned out so bad. He’ll get used to it just like I did.”
My respect for Andersen Lane dropped another notch.
“Can’t he out and out refuse?” I asked.
“He can try, sure. But the others can be quite, shall we say, persuasive. And God knows Greer won’t be willing to give up his other inheritance.” He smirked.