Witch Craft

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Open it!” Talon bellowed as the guard’s lanky frame shadowed the cell gate.

  “Don’t you fucking touch that switch,” I shouted at him with the last of my air.

  “Fuck this,” Talon hissed as the guard took out his radio to call for backup. She closed her claws around my throat. My vision spiraled, arching toward unconsciousness, and I had the small comfort that at least I’d be unconscious before I bled out on the cell block floor.

  The last thing I saw was Lucas stand up and come to the bars, his black eyes rolling back in his head to show pure mercury silver. His body elongated and hunched, flowing from human to Wendigo in the space of my fading heartbeat.

  Little more than a hulking mist-shape with eyes and teeth, Lucas reared back and flew at me through the bars, mouth opening like a wide pit.

  Talon screamed and her grip lost purchase on my neck. I fell to the floor, coughing, nausea threatening to overtake my gag reflex.

  Lucas shifted back to human, pulling the mist back into himself, and knelt down beside me. “You okay?”

  My throat felt like I’d swallowed a ream of sandpaper. I gagged. “Yeah. I’ll live.”

  Lucas looked over at the guard, who was still watching us from the gate. “Then I’ll be seeing you, Luna. Don’t be a stranger.” He stood up and began to run, shifting on the fly into mist. The guard watched, gape-jawed as Lucas loped toward him, passed through the bars of the gate, and slipped down the hallway, leaving a sheen of moisture behind.

  I rolled to my feet, even though I was still seeing spinning wheels. “Fucking stop him!” I screamed at the guard. He just stared helplessly as Lucas turned the corner and bounded out of sight.

  “Nice work, pig lady,” said Talon. “You almost get killed by one and you let the other get away. My faith in the police is restored.”

  I raised my voice. “Open on Seven!”

  The flummoxed guard buzzed the cell door open and I stepped inside, cocked my fist back, and hit Talon in the jaw. Her head snapped around and she sat down hard on her ass.

  “You should learn your place,” I said, shaking out my fist. I met her eyes and pushed against her willpower with my own, dominating her as a superior predator. I smiled as her defiant, too-sharp face crumpled and a tear of frustration slid down her cheek. “It’s right about there,” I told her. “Stay.”

  I backed out of the cell and the door rolled closed with a death knell. “Good girl,” I told Talon, and managed to keep my smile in place until I got to the women’s room down the corridor.

  Sixteen

  After my mini-breakdown, I washed my face and took the fire stairs back to the SCS. Norris jumped out at me as soon as I stepped out of the stairwell.

  “Grace Hartley’s lawyer is here. He’s demanding to speak with the detective in charge.”

  “Cut her loose,” I sighed.

  Norris’s prune face squished even tighter. “Excuse me?”

  “Tell Kelly to cut her loose,” I repeated. “And while you’re at it, put out a BOLO on Lucas Kennuka. He just escaped from the cells upstairs.”

  “Nice work,” Norris said under his breath.

  “What was that?”

  He jumped as if the blades in my tone had cut him. “I’ll do that immediately, Lieutenant.”

  “Do. And make sure that when Pete is done with the heartstone he secures it in the storage cage. I don’t want anyone except the SCS anywhere near that thing.” And maybe not even all of them. I remembered what Grace Hartley had said about Kelly. She could be crazy, but she could also be right.

  Norris looked like the thought of carrying out my orders gave him acid reflux, but he snapped his fingers at Andy. “Take that thing into the storage cage and lock it up.”

  I gave Andy a silent smile of thanks.

  “Ma’am,” Annemarie called to me. “Your cousin left you a message. She said she’d found the information you wanted and she’d meet you at your cottage when you got off shift.”

  “Thanks,” I said, passing a hand over my face. My limbs were heavy with fatigue, even though it was barely mid-afternoon. Fagin, Lucas, the heartstone. “Annemarie,” I said. “How are you holding up?”

  “All right, I guess,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I could really do with a mojito and a hot bath after this morning, ma’am.”

  “Clock out and go home,” I said. “I’m going to do the same. If I don’t sleep soon I’m going to fall down.”

  I turned on my BlackBerry so it would catch any forwarded calls and took my radio for emergencies, and drove home through the fading sunlight. Traffic was terrible, the first ripple of rush hour, and by the time I got off the expressway I was ready to strangle someone.

  The smoke drifted across the road when I was about a mile from the cottage, whiter than the mist that had shrouded Lucas’s Wendigo form. I searched for the source, my nose crinkling at the smell of burning roof shingles and insulation.

  My foot slipped off the gas pedal as I saw the white billow of smoke in the direction of my turnoff.

  My cottage was the only thing on that road.

  “Oh, shit,” I breathed, stomping on the LTD’s accelerator. The car gave a pathetic jerk and fishtailed on the gravel road leading to my house. My burning house. I could see the flames now, leaping and dancing along the bowed roofline that had greeted me every day when I got off of work, a familiar workhorse shape surrounded by weathered shingles and sheathed in climbing roses. They were ash now, and fire danced behind every window as I skidded to a stop in the drive and fell over my own feet trying to get out of the car faster, fast enough to stop the flames, to beat them back from destroying my life …

  I fumbled my radio off my belt, the heat from the blaze beating down on me like an ocean wave, stealing all the moisture from my skin and singeing the ends of my hair. “This is Seventy-six. I need fire and rescue at Nineteen Shell Drive. There’s a house fire …”

  I couldn’t speak anymore. I choked on smoke and my eyes watered from the heat.

  “Ten-four, Seventy-six,” said the dispatcher. “Any persons inside the residence?”

  “No, I …” Annemarie’s smiling face swam up in my memory. She said … she’d meet you at your cottage.

  The radio fell from my hands and landed on the drive. The back splintered and the battery fell out, cutting off the squawk of the dispatcher.

  “Sunny …” It came out small, lost against the scream and hiss of the fire eating everything that was mine.

  “Sunny!” I screamed, my abused throat closing, pain stabbing me deep in the neck. I started toward the fire at a run, seeing nothing except the firelight, smelling nothing except the char, knowing that somewhere within the inferno, the cold, all-consuming fire, was my cousin’s body.

  The propane tank in the kitchen exploded when I’d only gone steps, throwing a wave of flame and heat outward, shattering windows and sending shrapnel arching toward me. A dagger of glass sliced across my biceps.

  Smaller fragments peppered my face, and over the stink of the fire I smelled my own blood.

  I didn’t care. I had to find Sunny, had to save her if I could. I couldn’t leave her to be turned into nothing but ash and bone.

  “Sunny!” I tried again, but only a tired croak came out. My voice was gone. I threw my arm up to protect my face and ran at the fire again, feeling it suck air from my lungs when I came within striking distance. I was blacking out. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. I wanted nothing more than to lie down and surrender to the flames, but Sunny was in there, Sunny …

  “Luna!” Hands grabbed me by the collar and pulled me away from the flames. I tried to tell the rescue crew to leave me, that I had to get to my cousin, but the smoke cleared and I saw the face of the person holding me. “What the hell are you doing?” Sunny shouted, shaking me. “What’s so important you had to go in there?”

  I couldn’t answer, so I wrapped my arms around Sunny instead, my eyes stinging from the smoke. I told myself the moisture on my cheeks was sw
eat, but I was a liar. I sobbed into her shoulder, clinging to her like I’d cling to the last piece of driftwood in a shipwreck.

  “Luna,” she said. “Luna. I’m all right.”

  I let go of her and swiped my sooty hands across my face. “How did you … how did you get out?”

  “I went for a walk on the beach,” she said. “You were late. I got bored waiting for you.”

  Sirens shrieked from the main road as two fire trucks and an ambulance turned off and bumped along the rutted lane toward us. Sunny watched them, mute and shell-shocked as I was. “Your house …” she murmured. “Luna, what’s happening?”

  “I wish I knew,” I whispered.

  The firefighters did their job, training hoses on the blaze, making Sunny and me back off to the foot of the driveway, behind the perimeter. It was far too late for them to do anything except soak the blackened frame of the cottage and watch the contents smoke and smolder as the fire went out, little by little, taking everything I owned with it.

  “All your clothes,” Sunny murmured. “Your beautiful dresses. Your shoes …”

  I put my hand on hers and squeezed. “I don’t care. At least, I’m still too numb for it to be sinking in. I’m sure in a day or two I’ll be a lot more upset about sixty-seven pairs of designer footwear reduced to a shoebox full of rubble.” I coughed. “Right now, I’m just glad you weren’t in there with it.”

  “I’ve never had someone try to kill me before,” Sunny mused. “I always thought I’d be more upset by it. Rattled. Jumping at shadows and stuff. But I feel …” She shrugged. “Normal.”

  “That’s the shock,” I told her. “Soon enough I’ll be crying over my burnt-up Balenciaga and you’ll be freaking out over someone setting this fire. Although if it’s any comfort, I think they were probably trying to kill me.”

  Sunny led me over to the ambulance and I let her, without protest. After a paramedic got me breathing into an oxygen mask, Sunny said, “I found them, you know.”

  “The Maiden,” I said. “Annemarie told me that you called, before all of this happened.”

  I put the mask aside and walked back to my car. The windshield was covered with ash and I leaned in and hit the wipers. My Alexander McQueen bag was on the passenger seat, and it struck me that everything I had in the world now was my silly designer purse and the shitty motor pool LTD. “Who did this?” I demanded. “Tell me their name.”

  “Luna …” Sunny said. I looked down at my hands, resting flat on the roof of the car, and saw claws there. I knew my eyes were gold and my teeth were starting to fang out. I slammed my fists into the metal and left twin dents in the LTD’s roof.

  “Tell me.”

  “Thelema,” Sunny said, taking a judicious step backward, out of arm’s reach. She really did know me well.

  I slumped, all the fight knocked out of me. “What the fuck is Thelema?”

  “It’s an ancient discipline, predating most everything except blood magick,” said Sunny. “Caster workings, shamanism, brujeria all share basic principles with Thelema. Their ancient symbol was the Maiden, the female symbolizing the fountainhead of life through magick.” She rubbed her forehead. “Aleister Crowley triggered a revival in the early part of the 1900s and then his teachings were largely absorbed into caster witch tradition. It’s why we spell ‘magick’ with a k, why we set a circle, and,” she pressed her lips together, “why we don’t deal with daemons. Crowley had a nasty experience with one himself, late in life.”

  “And someone is using Thelemic spells to set the fires,” I said.

  “It’s the only explanation,” Sunny said. “Thelema doesn’t require a circle, only an act of will from a talented witch versed in the tradition. It’s nasty, dark magick at the core, and the power it gives someone … well …” She sighed. “There’s a reason there aren’t many practicing Thelemites. Magick whispering in your ear all the time drives you insane pretty efficiently.”

  “So …” I said, ticking off on my fingers. “We have a super-powered, magickal, possibly insane arsonist. Hell, Sunny. I feel better already.”

  “There’s more,” Sunny sighed. “Have you given any thought to what a Thelemite would want with a heartstone?”

  I stared at her. “Gods above. You think Grace Hartley’s a Thelemite?”

  “Well, do you think the fires and the heartstone are connected?”

  I did; I just didn’t know how yet. I was saved from admitting ignorance by the arrival of Bryson, who took a look at the wreckage of the cottage and let out a whistle.

  “Crap on a cracker, Wilder, this sucks.”

  “Gee, really?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed yet.” I’m very good at hiding behind snark when things get too unmanageable. I put on a smile, just for good measure. “You gotta admit, David, I throw one hell of a barbeque.”

  He frowned. “It looks fried, all right. You think these were the same bastards that burned the warehouse and the Corley place?”

  “I do,” I said. “David, get everyone back to the SCS in two hours. We’re going to have a briefing.”

  “Excuse me?” said Sunny. “No, no. You are going to go to a hotel and get some rest. You can brief tomorrow.”

  “Sunny …” I warned. Before she could start to argue, I heard the rumble of a familiar engine and watched Fagin’s Mustang arrive in a cloud of dust. “Oh, great,” I said. “A visitation from the Highlander.”

  “Luna!” Fagin jumped out of his car and jogged over to me. “I heard the call come in on the rescue frequency for your address.”

  “You know my address?” I raised my eyebrow.

  “I check out people that I’m interested in,” Fagin replied. He looked at my house, shook his head. “Everyone all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said shortly. “Thanks.”

  “She’s not fine,” said Sunny. “Where is she going to live?”

  “She can stay with me,” Fagin said. “My loft has plenty of extra room. Near some nice shops so she can get new clothes, and there’s this trendy little Greek bistro … if she likes Greek?”

  “She can make her own gods-damned decisions, and if you don’t stop talking about her like she is deaf, she is going to punch someone right in the face,” I said, pressing my hands over my eyes. I had work to do—finding a place to live was the least of my concerns. I could sense something moving just under the surface of all the scattered bits of the case, and it was dark, and I needed to focus, get it into sight …

  “Luna, you need to go to the hospital,” said Sunny. “Let them at least check you out.”

  “No,” I cut her off. “I’ll get a hotel room. Sunny, you can lend me some clothes and I’ll eat at the Plaza cafeteria, unappetizing as that sounds.”

  “You can stay with me,” Bryson piped up. “It’s not a problem.”

  I just stared at him, like a prize idiot. “Excuse me?” Bryson forming whole sentences was an accomplishment, but behaving like a human being? Better check his head for wires.

  “I have a house,” he said. “My aunt Louise left it to me—well, she will, when she croaks. Old bat is hanging on tighter than a virgin in a Navy bar.”

  I massaged my forehead hard. “I appreciate the offer, David—”

  “No trouble,” he grunted. “Place is so damn drafty, anyway. Ghost of my uncle Henry hangs around in there.”

  “Really?” Sunny said.

  “Yeah,” said Bryson. “We think Aunt Louise killed him.”

  “Charming as this is, in a Beauty and the Beast sort of way,” said Fagin, “I think Luna would be more comfortable with someone of her own species.”

  “Oh, and you think that’s you, G-man?” Bryson scoffed. “Take off your goddamn sunglasses for a minute and get a grip. She ain’t interested in you.”

  Fagin’s smile changed into something cold. “I think Luna’s very interested in me. I think I’m a man of mystery, actually. What do you say, Luna?”

  I rolled my eyes at Fagin. “David, I’d be happy to stay with you. T
hank you for the kind offer.”

  Fagin’s mouth curled with amusement. “And you,” I hissed at him, grabbing his arm. “Don’t think just because we shared deep dark secrets means I’m going to put up with your arrogant little power plays for another second. I’m past it, Will. Way, way past it.”

  His smile turned down. “Fair enough. You need to be the dominant one—I never had a problem with being the bottom.”

  Only the fact that Sunny and Bryson were watching kept me from hauling off and kicking him square in the groin. Will Fagin was one of the most irritating men I’d ever met—and coming from me, that was really saying something.

  I settled for giving Will a snarl. “I’m warning you now. I don’t deal well with guys who always have to be in control.”

  “What are you so afraid of?” Fagin whispered back, in the same raspy tone. “Are you afraid you might like letting go? Of losing control?”

  I leaned in to him, letting my lips touch the warm skin of his earlobe. “The last man who saw me lose control ended up dead, Will. So the one who should be afraid here—it’s you.”

  “I like fear,” he said. “It gets my blood pumping.”

  I stepped back from him, and ended the game, much as my were wanted to continue it. Fagin dropped me a wink and stepped away as well, putting the distance back at professional.

  He disconcerted me, and I didn’t like that. Men who disconcerted me inevitably led to danger, to complications, and the potential for hurt. It was always the way, with me.

  So I turned my back on Fagin and gave Sunny a reassuring and entirely fake smile. “I’ll be fine with Bryson. I want you to go home and stick close to Grandma, all right? Anything happens, I’m sure the old bat will scare them away when she makes her angry face.”

  Sunny grabbed my arm. “Not until you tell me what’s going on. Curse markings, Luna? Arson? What have you done?”

  I sighed. “First of all, why do you automatically assume this is my fault? Second of all, someone is trying to kill me.” Saying it out in the open like that sobered me, made it all real—my destroyed home and things, the curse, the selkies on the beach.