I Buried a Witch

by Josh Lanyon

  I tried again to reach my mother.

  And again, Phelon was not particularly helpful. “If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I can’t see why she’d want to talk to you.”

  “I can.”

  “Well, I can’t.” He added spitefully, “Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon or something? Bored with your mortal already?”

  From this I deduced that Maman and her companion were quarreling. Not for the first time. But even that couldn’t cheer me up.

  Nor was my mood improved when I phoned Our Lady of the Green Veil hospital and learned Rex was still in a coma. Nor, because I was not family, would anyone venture a prognosis.

  “Bad news?” Blanche asked when she brought me the mail a little while later.

  “I don’t know. Do you think it’s true that no news is good news?”

  She made a face. “Not necessarily.”

  “Same.”

  I idly spun the letter opener on its point. We watched silently as it twirled, glinting each time sunlight struck the blade.

  I said to her, “Have you ever come across a woman named Valenti Garibaldi?”

  Blanche looked wry. “Mr. Grindlewood’s new girlfriend?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She said dryly, “The self-professed Witch Queen. Yes. I’ve heard of her.”

  “What’s her story?”

  “Good question. I know she claims seven Bay Area covens as her hives.”

  “Claims? That’s verifiable, right?”

  “You would think. I’ve been part of the Wiccan community for longer than you’ve been alive, and I never heard of her until last year.”

  I thought that over. In the mortal realm, a Witch Queen is mostly an honorary title bestowed on one who has achieved the position of High Priestess of the Third Degree or higher and who has gone on to teach and groom several other High Priestesses or High Priests who have also reached Third Degree or higher and subsequently founded a minimum of five covens propagating the beliefs and rituals of the Witch Queen’s chosen tradition.

  I mean, it varied, depending on traditions, but not significantly. Bottom line: you can’t claim the title for yourself, and it takes a hella long time to reach that exalted status. In my experience, at least twenty years. If Valenti was a genuine Witch Queen, she’d started her training when she was ten.

  Granted, I’d started my training when I turned five. Not because I would one day be L’ermite, but because that’s how it works in the Craft.

  But of course, I couldn’t tell Blanche that.

  I said, “She could be from out of town.”

  “She could be from off-world, for all I know,” Blanche said. “But if she’s a transplant, how is it she has seven local hive-covens?”

  Good question.

  Valenti was definitely a witch. She might be Wiccan as well, though I’d never known that to happen before. Still. Did that mean her covens were Craft? If so, I was more anxious about Jinx than ever.

  On the other hand, did these covens even exist?

  “Do you know anyone who belongs to one of her covens?” I asked.

  Blanche shook her head, but then said, “The girl who was murdered the other night. Abigail Starshine. She was supposed to be one of Garibaldi’s High Priestesses.”

  “A High Priestess? That wasn’t in the news. I didn’t hear that anywhere.”

  “Newly anointed. I don’t think it was widely known.”

  Or known at all outside of sacred circles.

  I said, “Did you know the other woman who was killed? Somebody Hellyer?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  Blanche shook her head. “I could ask around if you like.”

  “Yes, but be discreet.” She nodded, and I said, “And by discreet, I mean be very careful. The only thing any of us know for sure is it’s open season on witches.”

  * * * * *

  I’ve never visited anyone in jail before. I was arrested once, but my jailhouse experience was not most people’s jailhouse experience—not that most people have jailhouse experience.

  Anyway, the Craft has a long and unhappy history with incarceration, and I can’t pretend that even walking into that huge complex on 7th Street—which actually houses two separate jails—didn’t fill me with extreme anxiety.

  Per the online instructions, I arrived in the lobby ten minutes before my appointment to fill out additional paperwork. I was patted down for the second time, my ID was checked—beyond some stone-faced guard verifying that I matched my photo, no one seemed to pay undue attention—and I was at last escorted to a small room where Ciara sat at a small table. A uniformed guard stood near a vending machine that looked like it had been there since the 1960s.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” Ciara said.

  “Neither was I,” I admitted, taking the chair across from her. I glanced uneasily at the security cam pointed our way.

  “Thank you.”

  I shrugged. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  She had lost weight over the past two weeks—and she had not been a large woman to start with. Her green eyes looked muddy in her gaunt face. Her skin was dull, her strawberry-blonde hair lank. She looked like anyone would look after two weeks of jail.

  Ciara said, “You can buy me a Pepsi and listen to what I have to say.”

  I bought her the Pepsi—the guard had to kick the machine to get it to work—and sat down at the table again.

  “I didn’t kill Seamus,” she said.

  “Presumably that’s why you’ve hired Sjoberg. To prove it in a court of law.”

  She nodded, gazing down at her knotted hands. “They’re saying I killed him out of jealousy. That he was having an affair with another woman.”

  “Someone named V.,” I said. “Do you know who that would be?”

  “No. There was no affair.”

  I hesitated. Seamus had always been, well, a player. Maybe he had changed after his marriage, but maybe he hadn’t. Wasn’t the wife supposedly always the last to know? Finally, I said, “You know they found letters on his computer, right?”

  “Yes.” Her face twisted. “I don’t care what they found. I don’t deny that he might have flirted, fooled around. It wouldn’t have been serious for Seamus.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t have been the last time. It’s just the way he was. He flirted as easily as he breathed. It never went far. He never broke his vow to me. He remained my beloved consort.”

  That could be the truth, but I understood why the cops were not impressed. Jealousy is part of the human condition. Ciara’s apparent confidence was not only unusual, it was probably downright annoying. I believed her, though. Not so much about her stated lack of jealousy as her insistence she hadn’t killed Seamus. For reasons previously noted.

  I said, “Let’s say I do believe you. I’m not sure what you think I can do about this. From a legal standpoint—”

  She said impatiently, “I’m not asking for legal help from you. I’m asking you to go to the Duchess. If you tell her you believe me when I say I didn’t kill Seamus, if you ask her to intercede on my behalf—”

  “But you’re not Abracadantès. You’re buidseachd.”

  “The Abracadantès is ten times more powerful than the buidseachd.”

  “Well, yes. Even so.”

  Her chin lifted. For a moment her eyes blazed with the old passion. “I’m the lawful consort of a witch of the Abracadantès tradition. I’m entitled to claim protection from the Society. I know you and Seamus weren’t friends, but you owe him for sending you the—”

  “Be silent,” I warned her.

  The guard studied us thoughtfully.

  Ciara pressed her lips together. Her eyes remained defiant.

  I considered her sternly. Would she have blurted out the name of the Grimorium Primus if I hadn’t stopped her? I believed so. She was just as reckless and headst
rong as Seamus.

  “How do you know about that?”

  Her smile was bitter. “News travels. Even behind these walls.”

  Yes. That I believed. News travels everywhere.

  As though reading my mind, Ciara said, “I’m formally asking you as the Duc of Westlands to petition your mother to go to the Société du Sortilège on my behalf and invoke their help. Otherwise, it’s pretty clear I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  I flinched as she added the name of the Society and my title to the other sacred names she’d revealed. This room was almost certainly bugged, and everything we said was likely being recorded. But maybe in her position, I’d be that desperate too. Everything Ciara had said was true. I did owe Seamus for sending me the grimoire—for saving the grimoire—and she did have a right to the help and protections of the Abracadantès.

  And more to the point, she was innocent.

  I knew perfectly well she had not killed Seamus. She had tried to kill me, and more than once, but if someone killed John? I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t try to repay the favor. Tenfold.

  “Assuming you are innocent, who do you think killed Seamus—and why?”

  “This woman V. Whoever she is. It must be her.”

  I didn’t expect that. I thought she would make the connection I had. That Seamus’s death was directly tied to his recovery of the great grimoire. “But why would she kill him?”

  “Triùir a thig gun iarraidh: gaol, eud is eagal.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Three that come unbidden: love, jealousy, and fear.”

  “I still don’t follow.”

  “When she realized Seamus was simply having a little fun at her expense, she took her revenge.”

  A woman scorned? Maybe. It seemed unlikely to me, but I was no expert on women.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll speak to the Duchess. I don’t think I’ll have to convince her to go to the Society. Seamus did save the GP, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for that.”

  Her face twisted. “Yes, you do. It doesn’t bring him back, though.”

  Chapter Seven

  I should make something clear.

  As great as my familiarity is with mortal television and cinema, particularly when it comes to anything to do with the occult or witchcraft, one thing I’ve never had any interest in is crime or mystery shows. Yes, I am familiar, of course, with the adventures of the great witch Jessica Fletcher—her character is clearly coded as, at the very least, Wiccan—but I personally never had the slightest interest in who killed Professor Plum in the Conservatory. Let alone why.

  Which means that my uneasy knowledge that I needed to understand whether there was a connection between Seamus’s murder and the murder of two Wiccans, left me unhappily aware of how totally unqualified I was for the task.

  I had zero idea how to set about sleuthing—and no resources for such an endeavor.

  Jessica Fletcher would have started asking questions of all her neighbors and friends, but I didn’t have to try it to know my neighbors and friends would not be nearly as forthcoming as the mortals of Cabot Cove.

  My attempt to get information from John hadn’t gone well, and I knew that avenue was closed. In fact, I would have to be very, very careful John didn’t find out I was tentatively pursuing…whatever it was I was pursuing.

  I wasn’t sure.

  When I got back from meeting with Ciara, I tried searching on the Internet for information on Abigail Starshine. There was a lot more information on her death than there was on her life.

  Worse, my haphazard searching brought up a whole host of “Wiccan” murders. And by that, I mean crimes mischaracterized by the police or the press as witch or Wiccan related. There was the elderly mother and two sons murdered in Florida and dubbed by the media the “Blue Moon” murders. There was the witch in New Mexico who stabbed to death a man during some travesty of a Beltane sex ritual. Not counting the Starshine homicide, those were the most recent crimes, but there were a bunch of others, equally gruesome and with equally tenuous ties to witchcraft and Wicca. It was depressing as hell—and I do literally mean Hell.

  In Abigail Starshine’s case, she arrived home on Thursday night, had a glass of wine to unwind, went to bed, and was attacked sometime during the night. I skimmed the horrific details of the crime itself, trying to understand what conclusions, if any, the police were sharing with the press.

  One alarming aspect of the murder was that it seemed the attacker had already been in the house when Abigail arrived home; another was that, apparently, the wine she drank was laced with sleeping pills. Police speculated that the wine had been a gift, though there was no information as to why they thought so.

  As far as I could tell, the modus operandi of Abigail’s murder had nothing in common with Seamus’s. Well, they had both been stabbed, possibly with their own ceremonial daggers, but that was about it. And that was a relief. In addition to the obvious differences, Seamus had been attacked in his shop. He had most likely admitted his killer.

  It wasn’t proof that the cases were unrelated. Troubling similarities remained, but these occult elements were broad and general: athames beside the bodies, and the possibility that, had I not interrupted the killer, a pentagram would have encircled Seamus’s body as well.

  One unknown element was whether the same sigil I had seen that night at the Creaky Attic—the projection of an old-time witch on her broomstick—had been present at the other crime scenes. The magic-lantern projection was not something that would have still been visible once the crime-scene technicians arrived.

  The problem—one problem—was that I did not think like a police officer. I did not even think like a police commissioner.

  I remembered when I’d asked John about the investigation into Seamus’s death, he told me the investigation begins with the victim. Detectives would examine every aspect of these women’s lives. They would check their finances and their employment history. They would talk to friends, enemies, family, lovers, neighbors. They would certainly examine their religious life—and I shuddered to think what clumsy conclusions they would draw.

  John had also said there were no secrets in a murder investigation, but that was the goal, not the reality.

  I had no way of conducting that kind of investigation. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what I was looking for.

  I tried searching for a recent murder victim by the name of Hellyer and immediately got dozens of hits. I read the results with fascinated horror.

  Clara Hellyer had been killed while John and I were in Scotland. These crimes were happening in quick succession.

  Like Abigail, she had drunk drugged wine before being stabbed to death. Her body was nude and nailed to the floor, positioned within the five points of a pentagram. She was found with a pentacle carved in her forehead.

  Unlike Abigail, police believed—at least originally—that Clara had invited her killer to enter her home.

  Someone she knew, then?

  That made sense. If the drugged wine had been gifted to Abigail by someone she knew—thought she knew—it made more sense. Snow White wasn’t eating random fruit. She thought she knew the old crone with the basket of apples. She imagined a friendship where there was none.

  Interestingly, although the occult elements of the crime were obvious, neither the press nor the police had initially made the connection to Clara’s religious affiliation. It looked to me like no one had connected the dots until Abigail had been killed.

  It was after Abigail that the media began speculating a serial killer was stalking San Francisco’s Wiccan community. The police were still neither confirming nor denying. It was the media that had given the killer the nickname Witch Killer.

  All of which left me where?

  “I didn’t know you could cook,” John said over dinner that evening. He took another forkful of paella à la Granada. “Not like this.”

  “But I’m doing the f
ood on Sunday.”

  “I figured you’d end up hiring caterers.”

  “Ye of little faith!”

  He acknowledged it. Said appeasingly, “This is delicious.”

  I sniffed. “Thank you.” I rose to top up his glass with white Rioja.

  Not to preen, but yes, I am a very good cook. It’s my one claim to domestic fame. Unless mixologist counts. Which it probably doesn’t. I won’t deny that a pinch of Craft, a dash of magic, can help things along, but I actually find cooking so relaxing, I rarely resort to spellcraft.

  In addition to paella, tonight’s meal included gazpacho, green salad, and toasted French bread.

  John held his glass up to me. “Candlelight, a great meal, the right wine. If I’d realized marriage could be like this, I wouldn’t have waited so long.”

  “I think that’s a compliment. Not sure.”

  John drained half his glass, grinned, started to respond, but the phone rang. He grimaced. “You sit down and eat. I’ve got it.” He pushed his chair back and stepped into the hall.

  A moment later I heard his slightly weary, “Hi, Pete.”

  A feeling of unease slid down my spine. It was nearly seven. Wasn’t that late for a phone call from Sergeant Bergamasco? Then again, John had warned me early on that Police Commissioner was not a nine-to-five job.

  I sipped my wine, listening to the prolonged silence from the hallway, and my disquiet grew.

  Whatever this was, it was not good news.

  “I see.” John’s tone was flat. “Thanks for calling.”

  Silence.

  “Yes. You too.”

  I heard him replace the phone. The floorboards squeaked as he returned to the dining room.

  “That was Sergeant Bergamasco,” he said, retaking his seat at the table.

  “I heard. Is there a problem?”

  The candlelight cast severe shadows across his hard cheekbones and dark eyes. He said evenly, “I think there is, yes. I understand you visited Ciara Reitherman this morning.”

  Oh shit.

  I felt myself changing color. “I—yes. I did.”

  “Is there some reason you didn’t want to tell me about it yourself?”