by Faith Hunter
“Certainly.”
“The rest of you eat, hydrate, and gear up like you’re going to war.”
Rick and Bruiser looked each other over and didn’t move. Rick’s glower heated up, his eyes starting to glow that weird shade they did when his cat was scratching on his spirit. He was looking at Bruiser when he growled, “Why?”
I wanted to say, Because I said so, but that might not be effective on my crew. “Because things might get hairy.”
“Are you going to tell us your plans?” Soul asked.
“Sure. Right now, I’m trying to narrow down the locations where Misha might be prisoner. As soon as we get back, we’re going to rattle some cages until a pretty flower falls out.”
“Lotus,” Soul said, sounding pleased.
“Bingo. And I’m not picky how we get our info, begging PsyLED’s pardon,” I added. I stood and checked my pocket watches. Each was in a separate pocket, so they couldn’t touch. Just in case.
• • •
The sun was setting, a red blaze on the western horizon, amazing from where Bobby and I stood dead center of Under the Hill. The Mississippi was a mighty, roiling monster, currents twisting and diving, carrying debris beneath the surface to reappear farther on. The river air was heavy with moisture and chilled with winter.
Two barges moved upstream and one down, all heavily laden. The long call of the barges sounded and were answered, like the mating calls of water birds. A riverboat casino docked near shore advertised in neon, a startling purple scene of palm trees and three round circles above them that looked like something on a slot-machine screen or gambling chips, or maybe three full moons.
As we watched, the river changed color, tinted bloody by the falling sun. Behind us, to the east, clouds still massed on the horizon, as thick and roiling as the river, blackened by the coming night. The first stars of night were out, brilliant in the icy air. A police car rolled by, its engine noise muted by the wet night.
High on the hill behind us, the night lights of the city of Natchez burned bright. On the streets around us, a few tourists were wandering, taking in the sights—not nearly as many as usual, thanks to the deaths that were making the news. Eli was patrolling the streets and yards, unseen somewhere nearby.
It was the first night of January’s full moon—the full moon known by many American Indian tribes as the Full Wolf Moon. The silvered orb was still below the horizon, but soon it would rise slowly behind a final thin layer of clouds, like a virgin bride dressed in lace veils.
Which was pure poetic crap. It was an icy ball of rock trapped by the gravity of the Earth. I knew that. But every ancient culture on Earth had revered the moon, had planted by its cycle, married and buried by its cycle, traveled by it, harvested by it, sailed by it. Animals mated by it, especially cats of all kinds. And Beast thought it was beautiful. For that matter, so did I. Just not poetic. No way.
It was . . . useful. Yeah. To ancient peoples. And to Beast when she hunted antlered bucks in harvest time, and skinny, cold deer of any gender in snow time. Useful. That was the moon.
Beside me, Bobby laughed, the sound familiar and comforting somehow. He put his cold hand into mine and I clasped it. Without looking away from the sunset, I said, “You should have brought gloves.”
“But I need to feel the watch. Bare skin is best for that,” he said, sounding like the grown man he was, sounding sure and certain and in control. This was a new Bobby, not the child of my youth, despite the remembered, childlike laughter.
“Are you sure of this?” I asked for the umpteenth time.
“No. But trying is the only way. And Misha is dying.”
I blinked back tears at the misery in his voice. Misha was his family. Misha had taken him in when his own family failed him or died out. Would I have done the same? I wanted to think that I would have taken Bobby in, but I had to doubt it.
“You always doubt yourself,” Bobby said.
I started. “You a mind reader now too?” I asked harshly.
Bobby shook his head, and I saw it in my peripheral vision. “No. But your magics change color when you don’t believe in yourself. They go all green and muddy, like the river down there.”
I held in my sigh. I had forgotten how much Bobby saw of the physical world when he was a child. It had translated into the metaphysical world as an adult. He’d grown into his magic in a totally natural, perfectly fitting way.
I managed a smile. “So I’m muddy?”
“Kinda muddy,” he agreed, nodding, not hiding his smile.
As he spoke, the last red sliver of the sun vanished below the horizon. The far shoreline was lit by Vidalia, Louisiana. Here on the Natchez side of Under the Hill, the lights were fewer and glowed less brightly, the moon witches in Under the Hill having made certain to leave off porch lights, to work by candlelight while inside, hurrying to gather supplies until the moon was ready to rise. Then the witches would be outside, in gardens and yards, in copses between trees in the woods, in well-marked circles, absorbing the moon’s power, working their craft.
“The moon will be up in ten minutes or so,” I said. I took his elbow and pulled Bobby off the sidewalk onto a patch of grass at the curb.
Bobby breathed out and let go of my hand. He closed his eyes and dropped back his head, as if he were falling asleep on his feet. But his hands rose, fingers splayed, as if searching in the darkness, waiting for a gift to be placed in them. “Magic is everywhere here,” he said, his tone a thing of wonder and delight. “So much magic.”
He threw out his arm in a slow, broad sweep, to include all of Under the Hill. “There’s small circles everywhere tonight. I never felt so many witches before.” He pointed upstream. “There’s a small coven there, all from the same family. Misha would say it was nicely balanced.”
I tilted my head, studying him. That was an odd thing to say. For a human.
But . . . not for a witch.
Misha? I sucked in a breath, grabbing a puzzle piece that might not fit anywhere. It might not belong in the image I had been constructing at all. Or it might be the one missing piece. Misha was a witch? The evidence said no. I remembered the smell of the three in the closed hotel room the day I got to town. Human—all of them smelled human—and I had a sense of smell Beast-acute. Even Bobby smelled human. Bobby, who had magic and shouldn’t smell human.
This was crazy. Misha had never smelled witchy, not ever. But witches don’t come into their power until they hit puberty. I had no idea how old Misha had been when she became a woman grown, as the old saying went.
But . . . Charly’s illness—witch children were prone to childhood illnesses and cancers.
Charly was wearing an adult-styled pearl ring that was too big for her finger. Misha had worn a pearl necklace that first meeting. Had the scent of magic been spelled away? Was their jewelry spelled to shield them from discovery?
Softly, I asked, “What kind of witch is Misha?”
Bobby laughed, the sort of laugh he might have had had he been born differently. “Mish thought you would figure it out. Charly wanted to tell you right away, but Misha said to wait. She never let us tell anyone, to protect Charly. She said her being a witch didn’t matter because she had the spell to hide what she was.”
“The spells are in the pearls?”
“Anti-witch-detection spells,” he said with a quiet laugh.
So much for my sense of smell. “But then she came here to write the book,” I said.
“But it still didn’t matter,” he said, “because she wasn’t going to see witches. She was going to see vampires.” He dropped his hands and lifted his head, surprise on his face when he looked up at me. “Are you mad, Jane?”
I had never been good at hiding things from Bobby Bates, and he could read my reaction on my face. As honestly as I could, I said, “No. I’m not mad.” But Misha had been wrong about her being a witch not mattering, because any vampire would have known Misha was witchy the instant the vamp bit her, and no Naturaleza would h
ave turned down a free meal. Misha had gone for a story and research and to find a vamp willing to donate some blood to her daughter. And now she was most likely part of the witch circle I was looking for, being used for God knew what.
But Bobby had no way of knowing that, and I wasn’t going to tell him. The poor decision and the possible catastrophic results weren’t his fault. It was Misha’s for making the decision, and maybe a little bit my fault for not figuring it out already. I was too dependent on my nose, and maybe always had been.
“Moon’s up,” Bobby said, holding out his hand. An instant later, I felt it too, and the magic in Under the Hill increased dramatically as witches everywhere settled into circles, bathed in moon power.
I pulled the pocket watch from my pocket, and Bobby stepped back fast. “That is ugly and it stinks, Jane.”
I turned it over. It was just a cheap pocket watch, base metal with a flying duck in bas-relief on its cover. As far as I knew, no human had noticed the spell smell. “Ugly how?”
“Bloody magics, like rotten meat. Like dead things dug out of the ground.”
Which was an apt description for a vamp, in many ways. “Do you still want to do this?”
Bobby scowled and jerked his left hand at me, demanding.
The plan was to test the waters by letting Bobby hold one pocket-watch amulet and see if he could pinpoint the witch circle that powered it. Then, if nothing happened, we’d try it with two pocket watches, then with three. Of course, there was no safe way to test my method, but I had been holding the watches and they hadn’t hurt me.
I settled the watch into Bobby’s palm and he drew in a hissing breath, as if the thing burned him, but he wrapped his fingers around it tightly and closed his eyes. Instantly his hand lifted and he pointed, one finger rising from the watch. “There. I think—”
Bobby fell, midword, midgesture. Only my Beast reflexes let me catch him before his head hit the ground. I grunted as I let him down gently. Eli rushed up, a vamp-killer in one hand, his small sub gun in the other, his eyes covering the street and houses and even up in the air. As if maybe vamps could now fly. Which gave me pause.
I checked for a pulse and an airway. Bobby was breathing and his heart was steady and strong. I peeled back his fingers to reveal the pocket witch—and the blistered flesh beneath. I swore softly, and Bobby coughed out a laugh. “You gonna get in trouble, Jane.”
Relief swept through me. “Yeah. Mouth washed out with slimy soap. Then put on toilet detail for a month.”
“Crapper detail,” he said, laughing. “Owww. My hand.” He looked at it and his eyes went wide. “I’m hurt, Jane.”
Eli knelt, opened a small med kit, and squeezed a packet of gel on the blisters. He popped a second packet and placed it over the gel, and closed Bobby’s hand gently around it. “Those are second-degree burns. We need to get him to a hospital, but this is a coolant. It’ll take out the sting for now.”
I couldn’t see the writing on the packet, but I figured it was some high-tech military dealio. I had more immediate worries. As I helped him to sit up, I asked, “Bobby, has this ever happened before? Passing out? Getting burned?”
He strained up and balanced on his unhurt arm. “No. But it doesn’t matter. Give me another watch.”
“No way, Bobby boy. I’m not letting you get hurt again.”
“Misha needs me. Charly needs me. I’ll get well later.”
“When you two finish arguing,” Eli said, “I texted Soul. She said to put Bobby in a circle with the amulets and see what happens. It won’t hurt him that way.”
“How do we make a circle?”
“Do I look like a witch? Security expert here. You’re the magic-using part of the triumvirate.”
“Bobby?” I asked. “Have you ever been put in a circle? Do you know how?”
“Misha just draws a ring in the dirt.”
“How about drawing one with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk?” Eli asked.
“Nope,” Bobby said. “Those TV shows and books are wrong. It has to be a complete circle. Breaks in the circle let the power out or in, and the rough sand on the surface make it not complete. Chalk can be used on a clean floor, though, if there are no cracks in it.”
Which was way more than I knew. As I watched, Eli started kicking a circle into the soil with his combat boot. I stayed kneeling and scooped the loosened soil out of the narrow trench. We quickly had a circle around Bobby, with a small area still open. He looked so alone sitting on the ground, his face pale in the moonlight, his freckles like dappled shadows.
“I’ll take the amulets now,” Bobby said. “And will you open them so I can see the faces? Please,” he added, politely, the years of children’s home manners showing.
Curious, I put the three pocket watches in the circle with him, opened the amulets, and turned the faces so they were easy to read.
“Thank you. May I please borrow an ash stake, Jane?”
I handed him two ash stakes. “The stakes are for what? Killing vamps while you’re . . . You can’t stake vamps while you’re in a circle.”
Bobby grinned and folded his legs, guru fashion, and put his injured hand in his lap. “If I have to move the watches, now I don’t have to touch them, so I won’t get burned. And I’m a dowser, remember? Wood might help.”
I felt like an idiot. Dowsers sometimes used wood to find . . . whatever they were dowsing for. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”
With his right hand, Bobby took up an ash stake and positioned the watches in a line in front of his knees, each about an inch apart. He looked up at the moon, now partially visible between brightly lit, scudding clouds. “Okay. Close the circle, Jane.”
“Then what? Without a witch to power the closing, nothing will happen,” I said, knowing I was procrastinating, worried that Bobby would be hurt worse.
“I think I can do it. I’ve watched Misha do it.” He nodded once emphatically. “I can do it. I know I can.”
I pulled a vamp-killer. “If something goes wrong, I can cut the circle with iron and silver and pull you out.”
“It might burn you.”
“To quote a friend of mine, ‘I’ll get well later,’” I said. Bobby gave me a thumbs-up. I closed the circle.
He dropped his head back again, like he had done earlier. One minute went by. Then two. With Beast vision, I saw the circle in the torn soil begin to glow softly. Unbelievable. Bobby had activated the circle. He wasn’t a witch, but the little guy had more magic than I had thought.
At Bobby’s knees, the pocket watches began to glow as well. I smelled the faint stink of blistering flesh, and Bobby hissed with pain. Bobby was being injured. I raised the knife, ready to bring it down on the circle, severing its ties to the Earth.
“No, Jane,” Bobby said. He took a sharp breath of pain and raised his head to normal. “Not yet. I’m not finished.” As he spoke, the three pocket watches before him shifted slightly. My fist tightened on the knife handle but I held off the blow to the circle as the amulets aligned toward some point that I couldn’t name. It wasn’t the North Star, sunrise, or sunset, which meant—
A hard smile thinned my mouth. The three watches were aligned with the source of their power. The number twelve on all three watches pointed toward the witch circle that might hold Misha. That meant searching as many as twenty buildings and grounds or maybe as few as five, which was way better odds than before. It meant we might find her tonight or tomorrow night. The smell of burning flesh rose on the air. Bobby was in trouble. I raised the knife to cut the circle.
“No!” he said. “Not yet!” Bobby was breathing fast, the smell of burned flesh growing stronger. He lifted the ash stake and held it in both blistered hands, just like a dowsing rod, as he studied the amulets. He looked in the direction they were pointing and the stake aligned with the same direction, but more specific. He said, “That house. That one there with the purple trim. Misha is there.”
CHAPTER 21
Close Your Mouth, Girl.
; Mosquitoes Will Fly In.
I brought the knife down, cutting the circle. The shock slammed me back as if a huge hand had swatted me, and I landed with a whoof on the sidewalk. Bobby moaned, dropping the stake and holding out his hands. I rose slowly and got to my feet as Eli knelt, his eyes still watching the streets, alert to any danger, and spread gel on the new wounds and more gel on the old ones, which looked much worse now. I inspected my knife. The blade showed no damage.
Eli popped two new packets and placed them over the burns. “Good work,” he said to Bobby as he wound cling-wrap bandages around the injured hands to hold the packs in place. “That took guts, man.”
Bobby’s back straightened and an unfamiliar look of pride covered his face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that expression on him before. He shrugged diffidently. “Thanks. I just did what I had to.”
Eli gave that tiny smile and said, “That’s what all heroes say.”
“Hero? For real?”
“For real. I have a feeling that a medal is in order. I’ll check with headquarters.”
“Wow. Cool!”
I watched Eli in quiet surprise, his expression hidden by the night shadows. I had no idea he had that sort of kindness in him. “Bobby,” Eli said, “can you wait in the SUV while Jane and I check out the house?”
“No.” Bobby shook his head hard. “I’ll go with you. I want to help save Misha.”
“You don’t have body armor, so I can’t let you go in with us, man. I need you for a different job. Jane and I need you to sit in the SUV with a cell phone and call the sheriff if things go bad. We won’t have time if fighting starts. I’ll set the phone to a one touch and put it on speaker.”
“I’ll have your backs? That’s what they say on TV.”
“Exactly. And, hey. We couldn’t do it without you.”
Bobby grinned, and I had to look away or get all teary eyed. Eli helped him to his feet and got my old friend settled in the SUV. I used the time to text the Kid to get our team down to Under the Hill to help rescue the witches. I also put away the amulets, careful to not let them touch one another. I still didn’t know what they would do, but I wasn’t going to chance anything.