All she had was the faint deep purple glimmer of a newly made zombie.
Sebastian took a huge bite of the Reuben. "Ah, I love sauerkraut."
I poked at the yolk of my eggs with a triangle of butter-soaked toast. Two zombies in one day. I shook my head. Not my problem, I thought, watching the waitress shuffle around the room with a large pot of coffee. I have bigger things to worry about. "Seriously, Sebastian. What am I supposed to do about the FBI?"
"I suppose killing him is out of the question."
Sebastian wasn't entirely joking, despite his thin smile, so I felt the need to say, "Yes. If we made an FBI agent disappear, they'd definitely send reinforcements."
"Oh well," he said lightly. He took another thoughtful bite of his sandwich. "It was just a thought."
I was familiar enough with Sebastian's tone to know he was just playing rogue, but I'd also been with him when he'd effortlessly dispatched the Vatican assassins. He was certainly capable of being a killer. "You wouldn't really kill someone that lightly, would you?"
He shook his head around a mouthful of Reuben. "No, for a lot of reasons. But as you're discovering, when people die it attracts a lot of attention. Vampires don't need that kind of publicity. We wouldn't last long."
I didn't suppose they would. Not only would they have the kinds of troubles I was having with law enforcement and whatnot, but there was always someone left behind, someone grieving.
Like me. Only I never stopped to grieve for the coven. I never found the time. I'd been on the run, not just physically, but also mentally, since the day I left. Now, with Halloween fast approaching, so many things reminded me of them. Just the other day, I saw that the hat shop here on State Street had a sale on pointy Witch hats. My coven always wore those at social gatherings around Samhain as a joke. We would have put them on for the "cakes and ale" part of the ritual that night, only the Vatican interrupted us before we could.
I poked at the yolks of my eggs with a fork. Of course, the flip side of all this was that somewhere, someone else was thinking about the Vatican agents the same way.
Should I even care? I asked myself. I mean, these people were the real murderers, storming into our ritual and killing us based on some ancient, badly translated lines in the Bible.
I looked around at the faces of the strangers eating brunch. They were all people with friends and family. Did the value of human life change based on the strength of someone's religious convictions? Wasn't a person a person, no matter how small, as Dr. Seuss once said? Did I have the right to strike them down to avenge my friends? To defend myself?
"Should I have done something else?" I asked, taking a bite of egg finally. "Should I have called the police instead of burying the bodies?"
Sebastian considered as he crunched a pickle. "What would you have said, 'hello, I've just killed six people, care to arrest me?'"
"Well, it was self-defense, wasn't it?"
"Of course it was." He reassured me with a sincere tone and concerned eyes. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with taking justice into your own hands. You have to take up arms against evil when you see it. You can't count on the law to do it for you. History has amply proven that."
The bread I'd been chewing stuck in the back of my throat. Is that what I'd done? Had I meted out vigilante justice?
I felt sick to my stomach. Images I'd kept buried from that night started resurfacing randomly. I'd come to with my hands clenched around one of the Vatican agent's throat. The tendons between my thumb and forefinger ached with the effort of crushing his trachea.
My eggs threatened to come up. I held them back with some effort.
Sebastian's voice cut through my panic. "Are you okay?"
"I just feel sick about this whole thing," I said, holding my napkin up to my mouth with a trembling hand.
His hand gripped my shoulder just tight enough to steady me. "Don't worry about anything," he said. "I'll take care of you. Luckily, I have a ridiculous amount of money," Sebastian reminded me with a little self-effacing laugh. "I can hire a cadre of the best lawyers for your defense, and buy you a villa to hide in until this blows over. How do you feel about the south of France?"
"I don't have a passport," I said distractedly. Somehow, while I was still reliving that night in detail, Sebastian had rushed ahead to the trial. It was sweet of him to offer to buy me a good defense, but I hadn't even really come to terms with the fact I needed one.
"Oh well," he said, removing his hand from my shoulder. He apparently needed the use of his appendage in order to consider the situation, because he scratched his chin thoughtfully for a few moment before saying, "With enough money, I'm sure we can find a way around that."
"Yeah," I muttered. I took a bite of the hash browns experimentally. Some part of my brain registered them as crisp and salty, but I could barely choke them down. I pushed the plate away. "I'm going home," I said, standing up. "Or maybe back to work. I don't know. I can't stay here. I can't sit still."
Sebastian seemed to understand. Like a perfect gentlemen, he'd gotten to his feet the instant I had. "Can I take you? Or would you like to come around to my place? I could put on the kettle and stoke up the fire."
Tempting though that was, I shook my head. "I'm too anxious. I've got to walk."
He nodded and reached for his jacket.
"Alone," I added, feeling kind of bad about it. Thing was, Sebastian wasn't the vampire I wanted right now. Parrish had been there. We'd lifted the bodies into his van together. This was our problem to solve.
"Of course," Sebastian said chivalrously, though I sensed in his voice a hint of sadness at being dismissed.
I reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. "I'll be all right," I said. "I promise."
He pulled me into a kiss and gripped my waist protectively. When he released me, he gave me a smile. "You'd better be."
* * * *
After stopping back into the store to tell William I was taking an extended break, I hopped on my bike. I lived several blocks away from State Street on the second floor of a creaky old Victorian. Actually, I had access to the attic too, which more than made up for my drunken, disorderly downstairs neighbors. Getting a whole floor to devote to my witchcraft made stepping over the passed out and half-naked bodies on my way to use the laundry facilities almost worthwhile. Besides, being so out of it made my neighbors much less likely to notice the fact that in a corner of my storeroom in the basement was a coffin.
I pedaled my mountain bike down the residential streets. Most of the early snow had melted. Only a few patches of white hid in ruts and dents of browning lawns. The temperature hung just above freezing, leaving slushy mud puddles in the gutters for me to swerve around. Everything looked tired. Most trees had lost their leaves. Those that hadn't were well past their autumnal glory; all that remained were ragged assortments of faded yellows and muted oranges. Gardens had become untidy. Squirrels had long ago looted the heads of sunflowers, leaving only broken stalks. Flowers were now sprouted seeds and dried up husks.
The sky, on the other hand, was a brilliant shade of blue. The sun was so bright that I wished I'd thought to wear my shades.
My house had a tower, the only one of its kind on the block, and was painted a hideous shade of pink. The worst part was that the paint was new. My landlord had decided to "freshen things up a bit" earlier this summer, and, in a fit of metro sexual fabulousness, apparently thought hot pink would make some kind of fashion statement. It did, though not, I imagine, the one he'd intended. It sort of screamed: Look at me! I'm overdressed and ugly! I suspected he'd been watching too much HDTV. I should probably consider myself lucky I didn't have crepe-paper flowers glued all over my bathroom wall.
When I reached my house, I carried my bike up the cement staircase and stashed it in the hall. A green-glass tulip leaf chandelier hung from a pressed tin medallion on the ceiling. It was dusty and worn, like so much of the place, but I'd been charmed by its faded glory from the first moment I'd stepped into the build
ing. The open staircase curved gracefully around a leaded glass window on the landing, and despite the chipped wood and missing spindles, it always reminded me of a scene out of Gone With the Wind.
I looped the chin strap of my safety helmet over the seat of my bike. In the autumn, the hallway was always overly warm and smelled faintly of stale beer. The hardwood floor was often sticky, particularly near the overflowing recycling bins full of crushed cans and cheap brown glass.
I wrinkled my nose and headed for the basement door.
The stairs were steep. I had to fumble a few steps on the rough concrete floor until my hand found more than cobwebs. The light switch was one of those pull strings that you expect to turn on a bare bulb, but in this case switched on a frosted glass globe filled with the corpses of far too many insects. The basement was unfinished and unloved. Concrete walls were spotted with seeping, crumbling sections. Pipes hung low overhead, a jumble of new copper, old lead, bits of PVC, and tons of plumbing patch. The whole place smelled dank and moldy. I felt kind of bad for Parrish, living down here with the centipedes and half-used paint cans.
My storage space was actually a divided coal room. The owner had put up drywall and added doors with padlocks. I never kept mine locked—for obvious reasons. Parrish had declined the use of my much nicer attic space because he didn't want the hassle of having to wander through my bedroom every night. He claimed he preferred the privacy of getting to come and go as he pleased, but I think he was more afraid that Sebastian might stay over. If I was queen of denial, then Parrish was its emperor. Parrish confessed to me one night that he believed that as long as he never saw Sebastian and me together, he could just pretend we weren't an item.
But to protect him, I'd warded his door. He and I could pass through the spell easily, but anyone else who approached would have trouble even seeing the door—they'd mistake it for part of the wall. I felt a faint hum when I touched the knob. Lilith thrummed deep inside me, responding to the magic.
Even though I knew he was in torpor, I knocked before turning the knob. When he didn't respond, I pushed open the door. Despite knowing what to expect, I always freaked out a little at the sight of Parrish's coffin. Plain wood, it looked a bit like a freight box, except it was so obviously that shape.
The rest of Parrish's possessions filled the room. He had two steamer trunks, a leather suitcase, and a chest of drawers I'd found for him at a flea market a couple of months ago. On the top of that were his toiletries and a pile of manga, no doubt stolen from some bookstore.
In the top drawer he kept a pad of Post-it notes and a black pen. I pulled it out from on top of rows of neatly rolled socks and wrote, "I'll be home by eight, come upstairs." Then I signed it the way I always did when there was trouble: "Meadow Spring." Meadow Spring was my craftname back in Minneapolis. Parrish knew that the last time I was Meadow Spring was the night he helped me bury the bodies.
I knelt down and stuck the note on his coffin. My hand rested for a moment on the rough wood. I knew that if I lifted the lid, Parrish would look dead. His eyes would be open and glassy, and he'd have a creepy, vaguely peaceful smile on his face. The rest of him would be an embalmer's wet dream: soft, silken auburn hair lying around his perfectly pale face like a mane. There would be no bruised, sunken skin, no blemishes of any kind, despite the fact that the last time Parrish was required to take a breath was over two hundred years ago.
"Hey," I whispered, though I knew he couldn't hear me. "Guess what? It's crisis time and I need you again."
As I left I swore I heard a groan, like Parrish rolling over in his grave.
* * * *
On my way back to work, I popped into the coffee shop next door to the store to check in with my friend Izzy. Though I was anxious to get back before William ran the place into the ground, I wanted to make sure Izzy hadn't accidentally narced me out to Dominguez.
The lunch rush was on at Holy Grounds, and I had to wait in line. Though mostly your standard exposed-brickwork urban-modern-artsy coffeehouse, Holy Grounds played up its location, which was directly adjacent to Mercury Crossing. A large, richly-painted mural in the back of the store showed a brown-skinned, plump, open-armed mother-Goddess symbolically birthing the five elements. The other, smaller canvasses hung around the room showed more pagan themes: a spinner transforming into a spider, a triple-faced Goddess, and a naked man with antlers. Under the oil paintings, warm dots of light came from lamps whose shades dripped with colorful beads. A nest of comfortable couches occupied the back wall.
Besides the usual crowd of highly caffeinated students arguing politics or movies in the corner, there was a contingent of Birkenstock, power-suit, vanilla-shot-soy-latte types and a Druid. I stood behind the Druid and admired the quality of the wool in his dark green cloak. Someone, possibly even himself, had embroidered Celtic knot work in golden thread all around the hem.
"Your usual?" Izzy asked me after the Druid had wandered over to join the crowd waiting under the pick-up sign.
I probably didn't need the caffeine, but I nodded. I looked at the person behind me in line; she was busily chatting on her cell phone. Even so, I leaned in close and said in what I hoped was a casual, relaxed voice. "Hey, Izzy, did an FBI agent come in here today asking about me?"
Izzy arched one of her dark eyebrows at me and shook her head in disbelief. Her fingers ran nimbly across the buttons on the register. "You're some kind of trouble magnet, aren't you, girl?"
Speaking of goddesses, Izzy always reminded me of that famous bust of Nefertiti. Except in place of the pharaoh's headdress, Izzy had a fuzzy cap of hair, which had become significantly puffier in the last few months. She'd been talking about wanting to do something different with her hair, maybe trying cornrows or dreads.
"Let me guess," Izzy continued as she took my five and made change. "He was the good-looking Latino—regular coffee, black."
Did I mention Izzy is a strong latent psychic? I nodded, counting the coins in my hand absently before tossing them into the tip jar. I really needed to get a less expensive addiction. "You didn't say anything about me, did you?"
"Honey, I am happy to say you didn't figure into our conversation at all."
Before I could reply with more than a laugh, the next person in line occupied Izzy's attention. I stood next to the Druid and waited for the honey latte I didn't really want. I tried to hang around to see if I could get more of a chance to chat with Izzy, but after several minutes of anxious dawdling I gave up. The crowd showed no signs of abating. So I grabbed a to-go cup for my drink and waved an apologetic good-bye to Izzy over the press of bodies.
Then I did what I always do in times of crisis. I fussed. When not helping customers, William and I neurotically cleaned the store top to bottom. I even voluntarily scrubbed and disinfected the tiny employee bathroom and finally got around to hanging up those ridiculous Witchy motivational posters that had come gratis from Bear Claw Press. "The Goddess Loves You" made me smile, especially since the artist had included a montage of photographs of Goddess statues from around the world, including several of Kali and other goddesses whose love was, let's say, suspect at best.
Lilith twitched across my belly.
"Oh, hush," I told her with a fond smile.
I returned the cleaning supplies to their cabinet in the storeroom and plunked myself down on the chair by the desk overflowing with invoices, orders, and receipts. I rummaged through the paper randomly and put my feet up on the safe. I still had to figure out what I was going to do about the FBI agent. I supposed I could take Sebastian up on his offer—provided he really could get me out of the country without a passport. I had some vacation time coming. The south of France probably didn't suck this time of year.
I sighed. I already knew I didn't want to run. I'd seriously considered that option the last time I was in trouble when it would have been easier to make a break. These days I had a lot more roots planted. All of those could be yanked, anyway, if I landed in jail for life. At least if I stayed here,
maybe Izzy and William would visit me in prison.
I had to deal with this here and now.
After all, how many times had I heard that "murder had no statute of limitations"? If I disappeared for a few months now, who's to say they wouldn't be back for me later?
Last time I'd solved my problem with magic. Maybe there was a spell I could use on Agent Dominguez. But what? Given how psychic he was, he'd probably detect a direct memory assault.
When I made the Vatican agents think Sebastian and I were dead, I'd changed the way they saw events unfold, as they were happening—kind of an illusion distorting the moment. To make Dominguez forget about me, the spell would have to cover events that happened in the past with witnesses I had no control over. I was a pretty powerful Witch, but there was no way I could cast a net of forgetfulness over the whole world. Besides, I was pretty sure that even if I could, I'd be foiled by a paper trail. All it would take to jog Dominguez's memory would be a memo with my name on it… or those case notes he kept in that notebook in his pocket.
What I needed was some magic that would make him open to hearing me out, something that would make him sympathetic to the extenuating circumstances. I should cook up something that could melt his heart and make him listen to me, make him want to help me.
Desperately.
You know what I needed? A good old-fashioned love spell.
3
Gemini
KEYWORDS:
Intelligent and Changeable
A love spell was a bad idea and I knew it.
I went back to sorting through the invoices. Then I let myself get distracted by the things that absolutely needed to be done for the day—I paid the rent for my absent boss, balanced the books, and phoned in orders for the popular items we were running low on, like smudge sticks and other incenses.
As I did my busywork, part of my mind kept coming back to the idea of the love spell. Love—or lust—could be a powerful motivator. People have been known to throw themselves on their swords for love. I knew at least one person who'd quit a great job and moved to another country for love. And I wouldn't be asking Dominguez to rush into a burning building for me, just listen. The love spell could be tiny, hardly anything, only a little nudge to make him find me irresistible enough to not want to see me wasting away in jail. What was the harm in that?
Dead Sexy Page 4