by Faith Hunter
“Your mother was kidnapped by a practitioner of the black arts,” Cia said grimly.
“With a spell,” Liz said. “And if we’re reading it right, she was taken from the middle of this room.”
“What?” Layla said, pulling her coat tighter, the seams stretching, her face white. “Like, transported out? Like Star Trek?” Her voice rose. “You can do that?”
“We can’t,” Cia said.
“And we’ve never met a practitioner who can.”
“The police won’t believe it,” Cia said.
“No. But Layla will need to tell them. Get them back here, get them working a kidnapping case with witchcraft elements. They’ll call PsyLED and get someone in here to read the room with a psy-meter.”
“PsyLED? How long will that take?” Layla asked, seeming to understand that it would take far too much time. That her mother might not survive long enough for law enforcement to find her.
“We could do a finding,” Cia said with a faint shrug, holding Liz’s gaze, “like we planned.”
“It just won’t be easy.” Liz pointed to the clothes on the floor. “But only the left boot is missing. She was likely wearing them both when she was taken.”
“We could find the left boot with the right one. Give the cops something to go on.”
“Or figure it out before they even get started on the case.” The twins turned to Layla as one and said, almost in unison, “It’s up to you.”
“What’s up to me?” she demanded.
“If we take the boot and keep working to find your mom,” Cia said, “or return your money and let the cops take over.”
Layla looked back and forth between them, her breath coming too fast between perfectly parted lips. “I guess my mother stands the best chance of being found with both the police and you working to find her.” On that happy note, the goat raced back down the hallway and skittered to a halt in front of Layla, her hooves dancing.
Her diaper filled the room with goat-poop stink.
Layla gagged softly.
Cia giggled.
• • •
The sisters couldn’t do the finding inside the house, not without both contaminating any remaining magical energies left over from the blood-magic spell and also maybe having their own working skewed or corrupted by the black magic. More magic on the scene would tick off any PsyLED investigator. It might also alert the blood-magic witch. To be safe, the twins had to start somewhere else, which meant interviews, phone calls, and computer research. They had seen Jane Yellowrock track down a missing person. They had an idea of basic electronic investigative methodology, if not access to the specialized databases that the security professional used.
Rather than further contaminate a crime scene, the girls retired to Layla’s exquisite three-bedroom Weirbridge Village apartment. It was one of the luxury corner units, and like Layla herself, the apartment was elegant and refined. Unlike her mother’s place, Layla’s home looked lived-in, yet was still spotless. Early training in perfection had paid off in a neat freak.
Though painfully worried about her mother—or maybe to keep occupied—Layla served them colas and pita chips and Brie with fresh grapes on the side. And gave them access to her electronic tablets and an older laptop and her phone while her stinky goat raced around the apartment on tap-tapping hooves that had to be driving the people on the floor below crazy.
Between talking to Layla, talking to Evelyn’s office assistant (in a phone call placed by Layla when they asked), and doing a bit of Internet research, the Everhart sisters discovered quite a bit. In just ninety minutes, they had a good solid lead on where to cast their working.
The property development firm that Evelyn worked for—Mayhew Developments—specialized in turning mountain properties into ski resorts, hotels, and vacation retreats. According to the county planning board, Evelyn was in the middle of helping her boss to develop some of his family’s property north of Asheville into what was expected to be his signature project—upscale, exclusive, lavish.
According to the assistant, the property had been in the Mayhew family for nearly 120 years, and once actually boasted a town, Mayhew Downs. All that was left of the town today were a few foundation stones and a graveyard. And, most important, the property was the last stop Evelyn had made on her way home the evening she disappeared.
“That has bingo written all over it,” Cia said.
“So you’ll go to the property,” Layla said, sounding uncertain.
“Yeah, and you’ll call PsyLED,” Liz said, eating the last grape, “and then the local cops again. Tell PsyLED that you’ve called the cops, and tell the cops that you called PsyLED. Competition will make them more likely to get in there fast.”
“When?” Layla asked. At the twins’ uncomprehending expressions, she said, “When do you go to the property? To do the working?”
“Dusk,” Cia said.
Liz thought about the season and the moon cycle and realized that the moon would be over the horizon at dusk. Cia would be at her strongest then. “Yeah. We need to be on-site an hour before that.” She pulled her cell, checked the time, and said to Cia, “Which means we need to leave now.” To Layla she said, “We’ll call when we know something. It might be just a directional thing or it might be a firm address. Or it might not work at all.”
“Okay. I’d rather go with.”
“No,” the twins said in unison.
“No observers,” Cia added. “Makes us nervous.”
• • •
The mountain view was spectacular through the bare branches, but the cold wind barreling up the steep slope was cutting. They weren’t wearing heavy clothes, but like with most mountain dwellers, their vehicle emergency supplies included small blankets, which they wrapped around their shoulders while they surveyed the site, and an extra pair of sneakers and sweatpants, which Cia pulled on under her dress. The dress, sneakers, coat, purple sweats, and green plaid blanket looked moderately ludicrous, especially with the hot pink backpack on her shoulders, strapped over it all. Not that Liz would say so.
There weren’t many undeveloped places left around Asheville, especially not with so much open acreage. The nearly six hundred open, unforested acres were obviously perfect for a ski slope, and the old town would be rebuilt with classic rentals for boutiques, shopping, and restaurants. The small graveyard would be an attraction for people on romantic walks or more energetic hikes.
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange that this hasn’t been developed already?” Cia asked.
“Yeah. Kinda weird.” Liz pulled her blanket close against the cold wind and eyed the foundation stones and mostly rotten boards peeking through the weeds. “This property has been in his family for over a hundred years. Mayhew could have been making good money on it all this time, and yet he let it sit here, unused.” She pointed to an open area with a flat space between the young trees. “That looks like a good spot. Ground looks smooth and not very rocky. No trees, nothing to get in the way of making or holding a circle.”
Cia checked the tree height and the position of the horizon. The moon was just starting to rise and the daylight was going. “Okay.” She struggled out of the backpack and set it in the middle of the open space. Liz found a sturdy stick and jammed it in the ground in the center of the clearing. Tying a ten-foot length of string to the branch, Liz held the other end and walked a near-perfect circle, dragging one heel in the soft loam. Then she cut the string in half and walked a smaller circle. Building circles in the earth was second nature to a stone witch, but with Liz’s ribs still healing, the twins had switched their jobs around. Liz could start a circle, but when they had to dig a trench into the earth, Cia now had to finish it. And Liz kept her dismay at no longer building the circles in their entirety to herself.
Half of being a witch was knowing the math. Half was practice. Half was gift. And half was instinc
t. At least that was the way it worked being twins and having four halves. When they had come into their gifts, at puberty, within two days of each other, the sisters were painfully surprised to discover that they had different gifts. Liz’s gift had awakened two days before the full moon, and she was drawn instantly to the rock garden behind her sister’s trailer home. Not for the plants but for the stones. Granite from the skin of the mountain had formed a large nodule there, and Molly, an earth witch, had carried in soil and planted the rocky area with native plants and ferns. Liz walked out of her sister’s small trailer and stretched out across the rock as if sucking power right out of the mountain.
Three nights later, at the height of the full moon, Cia had been taken by her own gift. Her transition was more difficult. She crawled out of bed and disappeared. The next morning, Molly called in Jane Yellowrock to find her. Jane discovered Cia sitting in the middle of a stream on a downed tree, staring up at the night sky, transfixed by the waning moon. She had been scratched, bruised, had two broken toes, and was badly dehydrated, still caught in moon madness. Over time Cia had gained more control over her attraction to the moon and the power that flooded her when it was high in the sky. Well, usually. Liz still sometimes found her outside, staring up at the sky, but she was more often wearing slippers and a warm robe.
It had taken the twins months to come to terms with their very different gifts, but now they worked together like the gears of a clock (even when their jobs changed because of health issues), meshing their powers seamlessly.
With a small foldable shovel that she kept in the backpack, Cia scored the circles deeper, cutting them into the earth, while Liz found true north and put a lantern there—once Cia’s job. Any candles used outside would be extinguished, but the special hurricane lantern (with one mirrored side to increase and direct the light) was made to survive high winds. Liz lit the wick with a match, turned it so the flame was pointed toward the center of the circle, and placed cushions on the cold ground, then took the one that faced away from the horizon and the rim of moon. As she waited, she unbraided her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. Unlike Cia, Liz hadn’t dyed her hair, going instead for blondish streaks. Identical twins didn’t have to be totally identical.
Cia finished building the circles and sat across from Liz, facing the rising moon and letting her own hair down from the chignon. She closed her eyes and breathed as the moon’s power refreshed and filled her. Liz took off her gloves and dug into the earth, placing her hands into the skin of the mountain, sending her gift penetrating deep, searching for great stones in the heart of the mountain, stones she could use to focus her gift. There were many here, broken and fractured and split, and others whole, rounded, and solid, made of magma that had pushed up and cooled. They were rich with power, energies so strong that they seemed to reach up and sizzle into her bones. Liz took a deep breath and the power flowed into the healing spell that Cia had set in place. Instantly the residual pain in her ribs was . . . gone. “Whoa,” Liz breathed.
When they were both settled, Cia opened the backpack and handed Liz her necklace—forty-two inches of large, polished nuggets strung on heavy-duty beading wire. Liz placed the necklace over her head and wrapped it around her neck, doubling it. Cia did the same thing with her own necklace, one made from moonstones that had been left out in the night air to charge with moon power. Both necklaces were new, and the twins were still getting used to them. Their old ones had been destroyed in the battle with Evangelina, when their elder sister had tried to kill them—and nearly succeeded with Liz, when the demon-smitten coven leader dropped a boulder on her chest.
Knowing her twin’s thoughts, Cia said, “Don’t,” her tone stern.
“Yeah,” Liz said, shaking off the dark feelings. “I know. Sorry.”
“Powering the outer circle.” Cia touched her necklace and then touched the ground. This was a simple working, and when the moon was high, they could draw on Cia’s power and muscle their way through it rather than do the math. Moon power was useless twelve hours a day and three full days a month, but anywhere near the full moon, outside, with the moon up, magic was so-o-o easy.
“Cuir tús le,” Cia said, which, loosely translated, was Irish Gaelic for begin. Her moon gift raced from her hands around the outer circle. Power flowed across them both like mist in the moonlight, chill, thick, intense.
Far more intense than it should have been. Both twins gasped. “Come to mama,” Cia murmured, delighted. “Oh . . . yes . . .”
Liz took a breath; the moon power flared against her lungs and out through her fingertips, into the ground and the stones below. The mountain seemed to sigh with satisfaction. “What was that?” she whispered, shivering with the might of it.
Cia didn’t answer, just let her head fall back so the moon could bathe her face with its power. The circle was strong and heavy, more like what a full-moon circle had been back when they’d had Evangelina to center them and direct their gifts to a specific purpose. The power was so unexpected that Liz might have worried, but the circle was steady, with no indication of problems, like flares or weak spots. She shook off her momentary apprehension.
Night fell around them, gray with newness and soft with the coming spring. The air cooled and the updraft winds of nightfall blew across the clearing, lifting their red hair. It was peaceful, and if they hadn’t needed to work, they could have stayed like this for hours.
“Feels good,” Cia murmured.
“Yeah. I can tell. Just don’t get moon-drunk. We have work to do.”
“Mmm. I’m good. Put the boot in the inner circle.”
Liz put the boot in place and Cia touched the inner circle. Her moon power flared and enclosed the boot. Liz put her hands into the soil and said, “Evelyn Janice McMann, a lorg.” The words a lorg formed the name of a working that had been in their family for centuries, a working holding the power for a seeking spell in the simple syllables.
“Evelyn Janice McMann,” Cia said, “taken by blood and darkness and death most foul, we seek you. A lorg.”
“A lorg,” Liz repeated. “We seek to know your place. Show us where you are.”
In the center circle the boot slid to the side, up against the slightly piled earth and the ring of energy. Liz opened her mouth in warning. Before she could get the single word out, the boot slid out of the powered circle. Which was not supposed to happen. Liz reached into the earth, pulled might from the buried, stony heart of the mountain, and sent more power into the inner circle, firming it.
Cia’s brows came together as she felt the imbalance and the resulting change of the power levels. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
There was a pop, like the sound of displaced air. And the inner circle was suddenly crowded, two people lying in the small space. Liz blinked. And the figures were still there. “Oh. Oh. Ummm, Cia?”
Cia opened her eyes and looked at the circle. She made a little breath of surprise. “Well. Would you look at that.”
That was a black-haired woman in a black nightgown, an older version of Layla—without a doubt her mother—and another woman, a copperskinned woman wearing a dress from the previous century. Or maybe the one before that. They were curled up on a blanket like two puppies, asleep.
“She’s wearing a bustle,” Cia breathed. “And the left boot we just called for.”
“And she has fangs. Big vampire fangs.”
The bustled vampire opened her eyes. Looked lost for a moment. And then she screamed. Cia lifted her hands to the moon and shouted, “Hedge of thorns!” The inner circle glowed red with silver motes of power. The warding sank into the earth, deep as the mountain’s heart, as Liz drew from the depths and pumped more power into it. The hedge drew in overhead, a long oval-shaped ellipse of power, as Cia wove it closed with moonlight.
The vamp dove at Liz, but struck the ward. She bounced off and screamed again, this time a high-pitched keening that hurt th
eir ears. Then she saw the right boot—the Christian Louboutin, its five-inch spike heel angled away, its black suede toe not quite touching the hedge. She dropped to the ground, her hands pressing against the earth, and leaned forward until her nose nearly touched the hedge. “I want. Mine!” She tried to grab the boot and screamed when her hand came into contact with the hedge, its gray/silver sparks jumping out at her.
She looked at Cia and her fangs snicked back into the roof of her mouth. Her pupils stayed wide in scarlet sclera, however, and Liz thought she remembered that vamped-out eyes were a bad thing. Lack of control? A case of the crazies? A case of uncontrolled and unfulfilled hunger? Something bad, whatever it was.
“It bit me,” the vampire said, pointing to the hedge. “Make it stop. Make it go away.”
Cia moistened her dry lips with her tongue and swallowed. “Can’t,” she said softly.
The vampire pointed at the boot. “My shoe. Give it to me.”
“Can’t,” Cia said again.
The vampire cocked her head at a weird angle, like something a bird could do but not a human. She spotted the human in the ring with her, and pointed to the woman. “She was wearing them when she came to steal my land. I took them and I took her, but . . .”—bloody tears welled in her eyes—“but I lost one.” The vamp bent over Evelyn. Faster than Liz’s eyes could follow, the vamp yanked the woman into her arms, shoved her head back, and bit down on her neck. And started sucking. On the vamp’s feet were a pair of old, tattered, lace-up short boots from the nineteen hundreds. They had once been very fancy shoes. On the blanket beside her were other shoes, all expensive—made with lace, and woven with beads, satins, and tooled leathers.
Liz, still frozen in place, analyzed the vamp and their quarry. Evelyn was emaciated and paler than the moonlight, her skin a grayish hue. Black circles ringed her eyes. Her veins were dark blue in her pale skin, and her tendons stood out starkly in the dim light. She looked as if she’d had no food or drink in days, probably since she’d been abducted. Humans could live for forty-eight to seventy-two hours without fluid. That time period was based on their being healthy to start with, and not if they were being used as a juice box by a vamp. Evelyn moaned, a harsh sound full of desire and need. She was blood-drunk—the chemicals in vampire saliva and blood, and a vamp’s ability to mesmerize victims, were working like a drug on her mind. She had no idea where she was or what was happening. She wouldn’t be helping to save herself.