by Melanie Rawn
“Thanks,” he said to Mr. Hunnicutt. “What sort of file?”
“Name, photo, address, phone, occupation, physical description, and which resident pays up if you make long-distance calls from the hall phones.”
He had to laugh a bit at that. “As bad as the IRS.”
“Worse, I hope. Mr. Singleton pays us better.”
Then Uncle Alec must own the building. Nodding, Evan asked, “How long were you on the job?”
Mr. Hunnicutt didn’t ask how he’d guessed. “Did fifteen in the Richmond, Virginia, PD. The man who had this post before me retired about six years ago, and I came in through the friend of a friend. Shall I announce you, or do you want to surprise her?” He nodded to the wine bottle in Lachlan’s hand.
“Whatever the drill usually is. Thanks again.”
“A pleasure, Marshal.”
My God, another of’em—has to be, Evan thought as he went to the elevator. Virginia, friend of a friend
On his way down the hall to her door, he passed a pair of middle-aged gentlemen. One was slight and well-dressed, with hair the color of old amber; the other was tall, dark, and very well-dressed. They smiled at him and nodded, but did not speak. Wondering if they too were Witches—or was it Warlocks?—he rang Holly’s doorbell.
She opened it so quickly that he was certain the two men had just left. “Hi! Come on in. Did you get the flowers?”
“I not only got them, I looked them all up.” He leaned down for a kiss, then handed her the bottle of wine. “Who were those two guys?”
“My uncles. I mean, not really my uncles, just honorary. They’re in town from their place in Connecticut, and stopped by for a couple of minutes.” Shutting the door, she started for the kitchen to open the merlot.
Following, he spent a moment appreciating the fit of her Levis, and spared an interior grin for her pigtails. “‘Their place’?”
“Yep. They’ve been together thirty years or so. Where’s the damned corkscrew? I know I put it—aha!”
“So they’re—”
She turned, arched a brow, and interrupted, “Gay? Yes, but only with each other. Married? Better believe it. It’s probably the best marriage I’ve ever seen, actually. Witches? Absolutely.”
Mildly, he said, “All I was gonna ask was, ‘So they’re not going to stay for dinner?’”
Holly laughed. “Sweet of you, a chuisle, but you were curious, admit it!”
Whatever he might have replied was forgotten when the phone rang. Holly snatched the phone off the kitchen counter. “Hello?” After a moment she grinned. “Whaddya mean, ‘nice’? It’s the best in all five boroughs—at least since you two moved out of town.” A slight pause, and then she actually blushed. “Uncle Nicky, I’m going to tell Aunt Lulah on you. She still thinks you’re such a sweet—what? No, he just wanted to know if you were staying to dinner. Next time, okay? I don’t think I’m quite ready for him to meet the troops.” She winked at Evan. “And what were you two doin’ lookin’ at my man’s ass, anyway?”
Lachlan made a face at her and started opening the wine.
“Oh, of course,” she laughed into the phone. “Nothing but the best for Our Holly. I understand completely. You trust my taste, but you just had to check him out for yourselves. Well, next time give me some warning, okay? I’ll get Isabella to make her Caribbean goulash. Drive carefully.”
She hung up, and Lachlan said, “How many ’troops’ are there?”
“Blood relatives, about ninety. None closer than fourth cousins, though, except for Aunt Lulah.”
“You keep track of fourth cousins?” He barely knew his first cousins.
“Éimhín darlin’, we keep track of everybody. It’s very Southern, to know which ancestors you have in common with whom. And with the other stuff that shows up in the family, we keep special note of who’s descended from whom and what they’re likely to be.”
“What kind of Witch, you mean.”
“Yeah.” She eyed him. “You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you might.”
“So that was the famous Alec and Nicky. Tell me about them.”
“Like I said. When I was a little girl, they saved me from a vampire.”
“And now I’m supposed to laugh, right?”
“You rarely do what you’re supposed to, in my experience,” she retorted. “Evidently I didn’t explain as much as I should have last night, so let’s go have a drink while the wine breathes and you can ask me whatever you want.”
At the bar he poured Scotch and vodka into Waterford crystal tumblers—the Scotch stayed at room temperature, but the vodka chilled instantly — then sat beside her on the couch. “Start with Alec and Nicky,” he suggested.
“They’re retired—Nicky from his bookstore, The Recommended Sentence—”
“Mysteries?”
“Got it in one,” she approved. “Alec was a lawyer, but don’t hate him for it. He did corporate stuff, not criminal defense. I’m not their only honorary relation. They’ve got ’em all over the country—all over the world, for all I know.”
“All Witches?”
“Some—maybe most, I’m not sure. I’ve never met any of the rest, but the hall gallery in that farmhouse is something to see.” She laughed and sipped her drink. “All of us in our college graduation photos, everyplace from Caltech to Oxford—the Oxford guy is with the FBI. Muldoon or Mulroy, something like that, with a foxy little redheaded partner whose name completely escapes me. But Alec and Nicky are very careful that we don’t any of us run into each other.”
“Why?”
“You know, I’m not entirely sure. Probably a case of the right hand and the lett—we only know what others are doing if it becomes necessary.”
“Such as?”
“Well … there used to be what Alec calls a Better Business Bureau for Witches. He and Nicky worked for it, making sure people didn’t do what they weren’t supposed to, and dealing with them if they did. Nowadays there’s regions, and a Magistrate for each, and instead of sending people like Alec and Nicky all over the world, things are dealt with locally.”
“Oh.”
When no further comment was forthcoming, she shifted uneasily and said, “Isabella made pot roast for us tonight. When do you want to eat?”
“I want something else first.”
A grin lit her face. “Not before dinner. Or for twenty minutes after, either.” “That’s swimming, not sex. Besides, I had something else in mind.” He smiled and reached over to curl a lock of russet hair around his finger. “Work me a spell, Witch-lady.”
She frowned. “I’ve already told you, I strengthen other people’s magic. I don’t have hardly any of my own.”
“I just want to see how it’s done. C’mon, where’s your Book of Shadows?” When she favored him with an Are you kidding? look, he added, “I thought all Witches—”
“First, there’s no such thing as ‘all Witches.’ Everybody’s different, even within the same Circle. Second, I don’t have a Book of Shadows.”
“And third?” Knowing there was more; with Holly, there was always more.
“Where the hell did you pick up all this stuff, anyhow?”
“Well, I could say IRAB, but actually it’s more like IRIOTI,” he told her, making words out of the acronyms.
“‘Irioti’?” she echoed.
“I Read It On The Internet.”
“Wonderful. Just exquisite. Okay, let’s see.” She thought for a minute, then smiled. “There’s one for sweetening a romance—you write your names on a piece of parchment and put it in a jar with honey, then seal the jar and put it under the bed. But it has to be done on a Friday of a waxing moon.”
“Is that stuff really important? Days and moons and all that?”
“How should I know? It’s what I was taught when I was little. Nowadays I just show up when I get told to and bring alcohol to swab my thumbs.”
She was getting annoyed, but he persisted. “What about words, then? Aren’t th
ere supposed to be magic chants and incantations and all like that?”
Another long-suffering sigh. “You know when the priest holds up the Host? Or when you say a Hail Mary? That’s all spoken spells are, really. Mnemonic devices to help you concentrate. As a man I know is fond of saying, ‘Magic is within—everything else is just props.’” She eyed him. “You’re disappointed.”
“Only by your attitude. All day I’ve been thinking that here I’ve got this Witch-lady who knows all this cool stuff about magic, and you’re a writer to boot so you must’ve composed some interesting spetts—and now you’re telling me you can’t do hardly anything and you don’t know very much, and the words aren’t really important. And you don’t seem to take it seriously.”
“Other people’s magic, yeah, that I do take seriously,” she replied thoughtfully. “Theirs really works.” After tossing back the rest of the vodka, she set the glass down and got to her feet. “I’ve got most of the props, for what they’re worth. You might as well take a look.”
She took him into the bedroom, where Isabella had obviously been at work. He’d been right: cleaned up, it was a beautiful room. Clothes hung up, bed made, books neatly stacked, chaise properly pillowed and draped with a chenille throw. Over in the far corner was a small triangular table. It was to this that she led him.
Evan looked first at the chalice. It was a strange white porcelain thing with a slightly uneven base and tendrils swirling up to cradle a bottom-heavy basin. It looked organic, as if it had been grown, not made.
“There’s a formal one I use in the Circle,” Holly said casually, “made of Waterford crystal. But this one I found at a crafts sale in college. Ever look at something and know it’s yours without even thinking about it?”
He might have told her he’d known she would be his from the instant their eyes met, but he kept his mouth shut.
“I hope you weren’t expecting anything spectacular by way of a wand,” she said, again with that same studied nonchalance. “It’s just a willow switch.”
“‘Witch’ comes from an old word for ‘willow,’” he said.
“Meaning ‘to bend,’ yes. You have done your homework, Marshal,” she said lightly, and picked up a silver bell about four inches high. It tinged a sweet note before she set it down again. “This belonged to the Kirby side of the family, used for nothing more esoteric than letting the servants know it was time to bring in the next course at dinner. Aunt Lulah thinks it was probably a wedding present, because of the ivy pattern—Victorian flower symbology for married happiness.”
“The cauldron’s not what I was expecting.” He pointed to the little iron pot; it looked like a child’s toy. “I guess you really can’t cook, even magically, huh?”
“It’s for incense,” she told him, making a face at the insult. “It doesn’t have to be very big.” Next she picked up a pendant on a silver chain. “Alec gave me this when I got my master’s. In English, I might add, not magic.”
“Pretty,” he said. The outline of a pentacle was tripled in white, yellow, and rose gold. “Where’s the athame?”
She opened the table’s shallow drawer. “In alphabetical order—athame, bolline, besom—it’s just symbolic, a little cinnamon broom, but it makes everything else smell good—cingulum, dagdyne—”
“What?”
She picked up a scrap of blue velvet, in which was a golden needle. “For sewing. Aunt Lulah spelled this one for me a long time ago, when I was helping with Alec and Nick’s wedding quilt. That was my first real magic. I was so proud of myself! Silk and velvet and satin, with flowers embroidered onto it and used as the quilting patterns—” She smiled. “Other people Worked the spells, but I got to put in little sachets for fragrance, and bits of various stones. Nicky knows a lot about herbs, and Alec’s pretty good at lithomancy.”
“Uh—‘litho’ like ‘neolithic,’ for stones?”
“Yep. Nick gave me the bolline. It’s one of a set of three from his childhood with the Rom—Gypsies—and very old. The athame looks kind of like a hunting knife, doesn’t it? I found the deer antler myself when I was about fifteen, and Cousin Jesse made it for me.”
“Cousin Jesse,” he repeated.
“He’s the sheriff down home. His specialty is metal working. You should see the cauldron he did for Aunt Lulah’s fiftieth birthday—gorgeous.” Holly slanted a glance at him. “All these things—other people had to Work whatever magic is in them. They used my blood to make it binding, but …” She finished with a shrug.
“This isn’t long enough to use as a belt,” he said, touching what he’d assumed was the cingulum.
“Actually, it’s a source cord. Nine feet of gold cording, knotted and netted around different rocks of my choosing. I take it with me when I travel.”
He recognized tiger eye, moonstone, golden topaz, garnet, lapis lazuli, onyx, amethyst—“What’re the pink and orange ones? And the green?”
“Rose quartz, carnelian, and malachite.” She rubbed her finger over the striations of the flat green oval, smiling a little. Before he could ask, she said, “I hate to fly. Some people use worry beads on airplanes—I use this. They all have meanings, of course. The onyx and amethyst protect against nasty magic and manipulation, for instance.”
“Get a lot of that, do you?” He tried to sound as casual as she, but all at once the idea of anyone’s using her, her blood, for their own ends was like something fanged gnawing at his guts.
“If people find out what I am, yes. I’m pretty much incognita even within the Circles. Only the people I Work with regularly know what I am. The others—” Holly shrugged. “Let’s just say I have clever friends who make it seem as if I’m actually doing something, instead of just standing there looking silly.”
“I bet you could do a spell on me and it’d work,” he teased.
“Oh, very funny, Lachlan.”
“You want me to believe you’re a Witch? Work me a spell.”
“You just won’t let this go, will you?”
“Nope.”
Five minutes later they were seated before the fire. Holly had collected a few items and now spread them on the hearth rug.
“I swear, Lachlan, if you laugh at me—,” she warned.
“I won’t.” He hesitated, then asked innocently, “But aren’t we supposed to be naked? I mean, ‘skyclad’?”
“One-track mind. Later, Marshal. This particular spell is probably from a time when cinnamon was incredibly expensive and to sacrifice a couple of sticks meant you were serious.” She tied the sticks together with purple thread, saying:
“One to seek, one to find,
One to bring, one to bind,
Heart to heart, me to thee:
So say I, so mote it be.”
She wrapped the cinnamon in a square swatch of black velvet, then took up the golden dagdyne.
“No,” he said suddenly, catching her hand. “You don’t have to bleed on it. That’s not what I meant.”
A perplexed quirk of her eyebrows was there and gone before he could react to it. “Go raibh maith agat, Éimbín,” she murmured. “Thank you.” And she stitched the velvet closed with the needle and thread. “Now we hide it where it won’t be found—meaning out of reach of Isabella’s vacuum and Mugger’s paws!”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s all most Witchcraft is, Evan—household stuff, a rhyme, and a wish.”
“Hmm.” He waited a few calculated moments, then gave a gasp. “Holly!”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I think—I don’t know—” He clutched his heart, wondering if he was overdoing it a bit. “I feel strange—it might be—” Without warning he tackled her back onto the rug and grinned down into her startled face. “It worked! I’m in love!”
Five
“ELIAS,” SAID KATE, “I HAVE a small problem.”
The Circle had gathered for their January meeting at Elias’s town house to discuss Denise, who had been a surprisingly good girl s
o far in the new year. Other matters had also been dealt with—among them a stockbroker Ian suspected of not leaving his magic at his office door; a promising student in Kate’s brewing-and-stewing class; and rumors about a group of excruciatingly rich wannabe occultists with neo-Nazi inclinations. That was when Kate mentioned her problem.
“Do you need us here, Kate?” Lydia asked softly.
“No, dear. The neo-Nazi group isn’t the one I’m worried about. The one I’ve observed is a Satanist gathering on Long Island.”
“Excellenter and excellenter, said Alice,” Martin observed, both inaccurately and ungrammatically. “C’mon, let’s motor. Need a ride, Lydia?”
She eyed him sidelong, a smile playing around her lips. “Angling for cheesecake? Or did you have in mind a dozen crullers to go?”
“Well, you didn’t have to marry the best baker in Brooklyn, sweetie.” Martin took Ian by the elbow and Lydia by the hand, and they left the town house for the snowy city outside, negotiating doughnuts and chocolate cake all the way.
Simon, too, donned coat and gloves. “I’m off, children. It’s a long drive, and Silence won’t be if I’m late.” He smiled, wound a purple cashmere scarf around his neck, and departed.
“Silence—?” Holly echoed.
“His wife,” Elias explained.
“I didn’t know Simon was married,” she remarked. “Or Lydia, either. And I thought people stopped naming their kids things like Patience and Mindwell and Thank Ye The Lord a long time ago.”
“Not in her corner of Rhode Island,” Kate said. “Could you stay awhile, please? I don’t need your blood, just your advice.”
Holly sank back into the overstuffed corduroy chair, hugged a sage-scented pillow to her stomach. “If I can help, sure.”
“Well, it’s not a problem yet, but it could become one.”
“Say on, say on,” Elias sighed, pouring more coffee and dosing it with cream.
“It’s a bit intimidating, you know—trying to tell a coherent story in front of a novelist,” Kate chuckled. “My narrative powers are sadly lacking. The night of the Solstice last month, I was awakened quite suddenly—” Here she grinned irrepressibly. “—by a disturbance in the Force.”