Book of Shadows

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  “Erin, open your eyes,” Selena commanded, her voice resonating in the night. “Open them and look. You must tell us what you see, so we can come for you. Tell us.”

  On the ground, Tanith was hyperventilating, her breath coming in short, panicky gasps.

  Selena’s voice cut through the firelit darkness. “Erin. Erin. Calm yourself. Focus on what you see. Tell me what you see.”

  “Dark dark dark dark . . .”

  “Focus in the dark. You can see. Tell me what you see. Tell me what you smell.”

  “Blood,” came the voice. “Smells like blood. And dust, and fire. It smells like—garden.”

  “Like garden,” Selena said sharply. “Like garden how?”

  “Like moss,” the young voice said. “Like soil . . . potting . . . clay . . .”

  “That’s good, Erin. That’s very good.” Selena darted a glance toward Garrett. “Now look. What do you see?”

  “Big, dark, space. Glass. Glass everywhere. Big gray glass. Broken. Barn? Dirt, on the floor. Dirt floor. And a triangle in white,” the young voice said. In his own mind, Garrett saw the triangle in the dirt floor of that dank cellar, the altars with the heads . . .

  Tanith’s breath shuddered in a gasp, and Garrett snapped back to the present. “Dead,” Tanith whispered. “Everything’s dead.”

  “What is dead, Erin?” Selena asked from the circle.

  “All the flowers . . . all the flowers are dead.”

  Garrett felt a chill. Choronzon. The sign of the demon.

  Tanith whimpered deep in her throat, like an animal. “Bad. It’s bad.”

  “Erin, tell me. Are you alone?”

  Tanith shook her head rapidly and violently. “Three of us . . . so dark, so cold . . . And one warm one.”

  Selena straightened. “A warm one . . . you mean, alive?”

  Garrett felt a sick adrenaline charge. “A live one? What?”

  Selena’s voice never rose. “Erin, there’s someone there with you?”

  “Warm . . . warm . . . warm . . . He wants more.”

  Garrett’s mind was spiraling, his thoughts out of control. He’s already taken one? But it’s not time, they said we had more time . . . Tanith suddenly writhed on the ground and screamed. “Coming! He’s coming . . .”

  Selena planted herself in front of Tanith, a pillar of strength, speaking over her frantic screams. “Erin, we will come for you—”

  The older woman suddenly gasped . . . and pulled back, as if resisting something. She held up her hands to the moon and recited quickly, “Back to your body, child of my heart. End this journey, return from the dark.”

  Tanith’s body jerked on the ground and she sat straight up with a huge intake of air.

  “Yes, child, yes.” Selena knelt on the wet leaves and took Tanith’s face in her hands. “You’re safe. You’re here.”

  The wind rustled through the treetops, and Tanith collapsed in the older woman’s arms. Garrett stood in the whispering clearing, looking down at the two women embracing by the pool in the shimmering moonlight.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Tanith was out like a light—there was no rousing her. Though Selena insisted she was fine, just exhausted, Garrett knelt to check her pulse and eyes. She was breathing slowly, but steadily.

  He had to carry her out of the forest, holding her to his chest again, Selena climbing carefully before them, leading him a shorter way back to the Explorer through the towering shadows and whispering leaves and redolent smells of cedar and pine.

  “What if I hadn’t been here?” he demanded of the witch.

  “But you are,” she said placidly, never faltering in her steady ascent.

  Back at the Explorer, he lay Tanith in the backseat, with her head on Selena’s lap. “Your car . . .” he started.

  “It’s taken care of.” Selena stroked Tanith’s hair.

  Don’t tell me the Dragon Man is driving now, he thought, but all he wanted to do was get out of the forest, back to the city, to the light, and find out what all this meant.

  Back at Selena’s they settled Tanith on the sofa of a room he hadn’t seen before, a sitting room, and Selena beckoned him forward into the connecting room, a small library, and pulled the door not-quite-shut behind them.

  Garrett paced amid the glass-cabineted bookcases. He was having trouble processing any of what he had seen in the forest clearing; it seemed too much like a dream. His mind was bending in ways he didn’t like at all. “How is this happening?” he demanded of Selena. “What happened?”

  Selena lowered herself to a love seat. Her face looked drawn. “I suppose the easiest way to explain it is that Tanith removed herself from her own body so that Erin’s spirit could come into it and use it to talk to us. It’s channeling. Tanith has a facility for it. She allowed herself to be possessed by spirits at an early age and that makes her able to channel now . . . thankfully more judiciously, these days.”

  “Channeling Erin’s spirit,” Garrett said flatly, shaking his head.

  “Yes. Erin is trapped between this world and the next. This man you seek has bound her soul to what he has kept of her body so that he can use the power of her spirit for his own purposes.”

  Garrett didn’t believe a word of it. But the heads . . . he kept the heads.

  He asked the first thing that came to mind. “She sounded afraid. Why is she so afraid of him if she’s dead?”

  Selena shook her head. “She knows not what she is. Part of her believes she’s alive. She is in a dark and miserable place, with no peace, no light, no love, only a living presence of hatred and terror.”

  “Purgatory,” Garrett said involuntarily, and then wondered where the hell the thought had come from. He had not been to mass in ages.

  Selena smiled at him fleetingly. “Indeed.” Then her face grew grave again. “That’s why it’s essential that she be freed—she and the rest.”

  Garrett felt everything in him rebelling against what she was saying. “I only care about what’s real,” he said roughly. “She—Tanith—said some things. Descriptions. An empty space. A barn with glass everywhere.”

  “Do you know it?” Selena said, suddenly keen.

  Garrett paused, his mind racing. There was something familiar about it, something he felt he should be able to place, maddeningly elusive. He shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Despite her obvious exhaustion, Selena rose to her feet. “You need to know this, about Samhain—”

  “It’s Halloween,” Garrett said, not wanting to use the witch words. “She already told me. Tomorrow.” Or was it already after midnight? he wondered with a chill.

  “It’s more than a holy day, though,” Selena said. “You must understand this. It’s the most powerful night of the year, the night that the door opens between this world and the next. That is when—that monster—thinks he can let the demon through. He will do his magic on Samhain’s eve, and he will kill to do it.” She stopped her nervous pacing and faced Garrett directly. “But it is also the night when all souls who have passed during the year move from this world to the next. The door opens and spirits can depart—or come through. That means it is the night when the souls of those children he holds captive can most easily be freed to go on to the next world.”

  Garrett felt every logical thought in him rebelling against what she was saying. “I can’t do anything for the dead,” he exploded. “If I’m supposed to believe all this, he’s about to kill three other people. I need details. I need something real.” Selena had stopped still, and was regarding him quietly. He fought to compose himself, looked toward the door behind which Tanith lay asleep. “Will she remember any of—that?”

  Selena gave him a veiled look. “She may, or not.”

  “Wake her, then.”

  Selena stiffened. “She’s exhausted. You don’t understand the ordeal—”

  Garrett rode over her. “I understand that if you’re telling the truth, if any of this is real, then three more kid
s are going to die tomorrow. So wake her or I will.”

  Selena gave him a look that would melt steel, but she rose and crossed to the door. She stopped in front of it and pushed it open.

  Garrett strode past her into the room—and stopped in his tracks.

  The room was empty. Tanith was gone.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Samhain is a festival at the time of the closing dark. For pagans it was the beginning of the new year, the time that is neither past nor future, during which the doors are open between worlds. It is believed that all the souls of those who have died during the year must wait until Samhain to pass through to the other side.

  It was also traditionally a time of ritual propitiation: sacrifice, animal and human, and of the choosing of a sacrificial victim by lot.

  Wind pushed through the streets of Salem, rustled through the brilliance of the autumn colors, swirled flurries of dry leaves on the sidewalks and driveways, swept through the cornhusk decorations and swayed the Halloween lights in the eaves and rafters and pillars of porches.

  Children roamed the streets in costumed packs: pirates and aliens and princesses and goblins and ax murderers, followed on foot or in cars by parents who had long ago ceased to believe that it was safe to let their children out on this night or any other, even in the biggest pack.

  Toward the town center the streets were closed off to accommodate the waves of revelers who had been flooding the town for the last few days, by train, by car, by shuttles from Boston and elsewhere. Every available parking space was taken and illegal parking was rampant.

  The costuming on Essex Street was more elaborate than the children’s. There were pirates and princesses and Pilgrims here as well, but others with hundreds of dollars invested in materials and makeup and special effects for their costumes, many with lights and sound effects and moving parts. The night was warm enough that fetish wear abounded: there were large men in leathers and chain-mail codpieces and women in no more than bits of lace, in addition to the green men and vampires and, naturally, every possible variation of witch: maidens, queens, crones.

  And there was a man who walked the streets, with no costume but a white mask and black cloak, and yet everyone who passed by him shivered away from him with the impression that there was something far more grotesque and calculated about his costume than they were actually seeing, like some troll.

  And that was what he did; he trolled. There was one in his trunk already, chloroformed and trussed, and one he’d taken yesterday, secure in his ceremonial space. He had one more to find, now, and a banquet of victims was spread out before him; he reveled in the choice.

  He walked on the cobblestone streets, clearing a path as other revelers moved subtly away from his presence, though none that looked at him really saw him; the glamour he’d conjured for himself assured him of that.

  The girl walked and weaved in the crowd a few yards in front of him, resplendent in her glittery dark fairy costume; dyed black hair and painted black nails and deep purple sequined bodice with yards and yards of tulle, a black half mask and high, high fetish boots. She had fallen behind her friends, like a hobbled antelope; it was, of course, the boots. Those boots would make her easy to take; she could not run, literally, to save her life. Add to that she was drunk already, as most of the revelers were, drunk and high, and adrenalized with the gaiety and sheer numbers of the mob that surrounded them.

  The troll took her arm and mumbled to her, steering her toward an alley, asking directions. She had no time to think; the hypodermic was stabbing her in the neck before she had a sense of anything. Her eyes registered one moment of sheer terror . . . and then she was buckling, crumpling.

  The killer swooped her limp body up into both arms in one deft gesture and she was gone, then, that quickly, hidden in his cloak, which fell over her body and only made the troll look more misshapen, more troll-like, as he pushed and weaved his way through the crowd toward his car and the sun flamed in the sky, a perfect Samhain sky, of orange and scarlet and shimmering gold.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Garrett stood in the salon in stunned silence. There were no doors to the room but the one he stood in, and no windows, either.

  He turned to Selena in a daze. “Where is she?”

  Selena looked pale, but resolute. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

  “That’s insane. She would go alone?”

  “If she felt she had to,” the elder woman said softly. “You must do what you must do, and so must she.”

  He took a sharp step toward her. She didn’t flinch. He summoned all the self-control he had. “This is a killer, Ms. Fox. Whatever else you believe is going on, this is a man who will kill without hesitation, a man who has killed and beheaded three teenagers without a second thought. If you think that whatever ‘talents’ Tanith has are a match for that, that’s one thing; maybe you think you know her well enough to allow her to go into that kind of jeopardy. But if you believe that this man is going to use three more teenagers as sacrifices to his demon, do you think you have the right to decide for three innocent victims?”

  The older woman looked him full in the face and he could feel the conflict raging in her. He held her eyes and put his soul into his next words. “Don’t let her try this alone. If you know something, help me.”

  Selena shook her head. “I am sure where she has gone. She will go to release the souls of the bound.” She hesitated, then finished bleakly. “I’ve no idea where that is.”

  Garrett had had to surrender the murder book, with all his notes, to Morelli and Palmer when he was suspended. But it’s a new trail now, he thought as he paced Selena’s library, while Selena watched from the love seat. All he had to go on were the words Tanith had shrieked in the forest clearing, with a voice that was not her own.

  “Glass panes, dirt floor, like a barn,” he muttered.

  There was something solid in this, after all, and he would focus on that. It was the place he had to find: McKenna had a new lair where he was taking his victims. And that was the question: where? He’d been using his own cellar, his own—well, his inherited house, because as it turned out, he’d taken over the house when his mother was killed in an automobile accident. (And if Garrett had not been racing against time, he would be looking into that death.)

  The house was isolated, remote, McKenna’s own: it had been perfect for the killer’s purposes.

  Now he needed a place that was even more private, if he was holding live victims, and planning a—Garrett’s mind balked at the word—sacrifice.

  “Glass panes, dirt floor, like a barn,” Garrett mumbled. Was it a barn, or a greenhouse? He shook his head. “There must be thirty thousand barns in Massachusetts.” Not to mention the surrounding states, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island . . . And there were no guarantees McKenna wasn’t out of state by now. The Camaro was gone, and an APB had failed to pick it up for going on four days now . . .

  “Detective Garrett, stop. Be calm. Breathe,” Selena said placidly. “You know all you need to know.”

  Garrett stopped his frenzied pacing and looked at Selena, so still on the love seat where she sat.

  This is a place that he knows, Garrett thought again. He uses places that he knows. His own home. The landfill where he worked—

  Where he worked.

  Garrett spun and stared at Selena.

  “I need your computer.” He hoped to God she had one.

  Selena not only had a computer, she had a state-of-the-art system, and in no time Garrett had called up AutoTrack, a private database service that provided searches of all public records, including DMV, public utility, cable service, and credit reporting agencies. He punched in the police department’s code for access and inputted McKenna’s vital statistics to get a screen that provided McKenna’s past addresses and what Garrett really wanted: his employment history. Garrett scanned the list, eyes moving quickly over the entries . . .

  And there it was. Greenbrier Nursery, in Malden.


  While Selena watched, hands folded in her lap, Garrett paced with his phone to his ear, listening to the recording telling him, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.” He punched off, and punched in information, asked for the Greenbrier Nursery. “No such listing in Malden or the greater Massachusetts area,” the operator came back. Garrett punched off and stared at the address. He made one more call back to information. “Malden, Massachusetts—main post office, please.”

  And he was lucky; he got a chatty postal clerk. Five minutes later he punched off with the knowledge that there had been a Greenbrier Nursery in Malden, it had closed down over a year ago, and the property still stood vacant at the address listed on Garrett’s AutoTrack printout.

  An abandoned nursery where McKenna had worked. He’d caught a break.

  Garrett shoved his phone in his pocket and turned to Selena. “I need you to call BPD and get them to this address.” He circled the information for the Greenbrier Nursery, and shoved the page at her. “Call them and keep calling. That’s where he is. That’s where she is.”

  And he was striding for the door.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Garrett drove like the wind on the country road under a darkening sky, wishing like hell he had Land with him. One hand on the wheel, he speed-dialed Schroeder and asked for Palmer or Morelli. Neither was in. Garrett left an urgent message.

  Next he called Dispatch to connect him to the local police in Malden. “Detective Garrett, BPD. I have a possible hostage situation at the old Greenbrier Nursery. Suspect John McKenna, resident of Lincoln, whereabouts unknown. Suspect wanted for murder,” he lied. “Request immediate assistance.” He disconnected before he had to answer questions.

  Just past the town of Malden, acres of dense forest had been cleared to make room for the fields of commercial trees, shrubs, and plants of the now-defunct Greenbrier Nursery. Garrett turned off the highway and onto the packed dirt road and looked out through the windshield over gently rolling slopes under dark and fast-moving clouds. Rippling on the hills were high canvas tents, erected to create a more sheltered environment for the less hardy outdoor flowers and plants, but now filthy and sagging and flapping in the strong wind.