Fire Raiser

by Melanie Rawn

  “Such as?”

  He rattled off the list of spellcasting aids that Clarissa had made him memorize. “Basil, patchouli, peppermint, rosemary, cinnamon, rue, sandalwood, lavender, lemon peel, wormwood—just go look, okay? Soap, bath salts, shampoo, stuff like that.”

  “Your wish is my command, O Master Mage.”

  His own search of the credenza’s coffee-making paraphernalia was interrupted when Jamey returned holding aloft a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of mouthwash.

  “Peppermint and cinnamon!”

  “Candles and a bag of Earl Grey tea.” He displayed his own finds. “Yank off a few threads from the fringe on the rug, will you? They don’t have to be long—maybe four or five inches, so I can tie some knots. And don’t cut them. The wool has to come apart where it’s weakest.”

  “The weak places won’t absorb magic?”

  “Smart man.”

  Ideally, the red, black, and yellow threads for this spell should all have been the same material, preferably wool. On the other hand, the ancient Silk Road ran right through the region this magic came from, so the silk of the fringe and tassels wouldn’t have been unknown to the local practitioners. The real problem with gathering textiles at random was that one could never be sure what had been used for dyeing. He experienced a moment’s longing for the spools of thread Lulah kept for quilting, the bright skeins of weaving and knitting yarn. Those he could have used with perfect assurance. But a mark of the true adept was an ability to work with what one had.

  So. Black for binding negativity, control, sleep, defensive magic. Red: power, pure and simple. Now, were the tassel threads technically gold or yellow? Cam decided not to worry about it. He could conjure strength from the former, though he preferred the breaking of mental blocks he would get from the latter, because he was quite certain that Leather Guy on the bed would not be the only beneficiary of some nice, restful, magic-induced sleep tonight.

  “Will these do?”

  “Yes. Thanks.” He accepted the thick threads, wondering why anyone would fringe an expensive wool rug—no matter how garishly woven—with black. “Tear open the tea bag, please. Earl Grey is scented with bergamot, which is good for restful sleep. I was taught a long time ago not to make any spell needlessly cruel.”

  “Couldn’t prove it by me. I seem to remember freezing my ass off with that afghan around my shoulders. And all the way back to my place that day—”

  “—all you could feel was disgust at what a worthless person I was, and that you had absolutely no desire to be around me ever again?”

  “I got over it.”

  “Once you took your coat off.”

  “I got over it,” Jamey repeated. “Did you?”

  “You know what? Let’s fight about it some other time.” Dumping packets of sugar, fake sugar, nondairy creamer, salt, and pepper onto the credenza, he swiped the bowl clean with a finger and placed within it the loose tea, silk and wool, rose petals, a little salt, a few drops of cinnamon mouthwash, and a squirt of peppermint toothpaste. All of this he mashed together with his knuckle.

  “What—” Jamey began.

  “Quiet.” Cam lit one of the candles from the credenza. Purple was the traditional color of royalty, but it also signified justice, success, and power. What he was interested in most right now, though, was its quality of banishing evil.

  He’d forgotten that Jamey had never seen fire lit without benefit of match. The muffled exclamation startled him as he sank cross-legged to the floor; he glanced up and nearly lost his balance at the wide-eyed shock on Jamey’s face.

  “Come on. You saw me walk through a wall.”

  “Somebody else’s wall.”

  “Oh.” And the shirt cuff had been partly Holly’s doing. This was just him and a flame that was suddenly there. “This is as spectacular as it gets, y’know.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Arranging candle and bowl in front of him, he said, “Stand back. I have to draw a circle around myself.” He did so, using the packets of salt. There was barely enough.

  He had learned this spell in Lebanon years ago from a woman whose Assyrian ancestors had originated it. The magic was very old, and very adaptable. And because he was in spite of himself all too mindful of his audience, he felt a certain pleasure that the chant that went with the spell, as he tied knot after binding knot in the threads, was, even in English, pretty cool.

  I shall twist the threads into a cord, a strong and mighty cord,

  A cord to knot and bind up evil, with my own hands I knot this cord.

  By tying knots, the evil is bound, and sorcery is brought to nothing.

  I bind therewith the head, the mouth, the limbs, the fingers.

  I cast the water of incantation, the smoke of incantation,

  I cast the flame of incantation, the flower of incantation,

  That evil may be bound, that it may not escape my knotted knots,

  That there may be no evil spirit, nor demon, nor djinn,

  That there may be no evil fiend, nor ghoul, nor phantom,

  That there may be no evil sorcery, nor magic, nor spells.

  By these knots I bind and command, and evil is brought to nothing.

  THE UPSTAIRS DOOR WAS WIDE OPEN. Lachlan had watched his wife go through the process of childbirth and had absolutely no inclination to watch it happen to somebody else. From the look on Holly’s face, she was of the same mind. They went inside anyway.

  Lulah glanced around. “Busy,” she said succinctly.

  Nicky left the bedside and joined them in the doorway. “She hasn’t reacted at all since I came in swearing in Hungarian. Not a cry, not a whimper.”

  Evan took a step closer to the bed. The girl was no older than sixteen, probably younger, with dark braids and blue eyes and a face that would be pretty if a smile ever touched it. But she looked as if she didn’t even know how to smile. And when she caught sight of Holly, her face simply contorted, from a flinch of recognition to a furious snarl. “Fapicsa!” she screamed. “Baszódj meg!”

  It took Nicky and Lulah both to keep her on the bed. She shrieked and clawed until he took her head in his hands. A moment later she sagged, unconscious.

  “I don’t like doing that to a pregnant woman,” he said, standing back, shaken.

  “She doesn’t seem to like you,” Lulah told Holly, breathing hard with effort.

  “Not conspicuously, no,” Nicky said, rubbing both hands over his face. “Don’t ask for a translation.”

  “I thought the tone of her voice was fairly explicit,” Holly said, eyeing the girl warily. “But why me?”

  “Literary critic?” Nicky shrugged. “She was reading Jerusalem Lost when I found her.”

  She digested this, then wandered over to the easy chair—stained with amniotic fluid—and picked the book off the floor. Righting the crumpled dust jacket, she held it up to show the back: a photo of her wearing a dark shirt and her mother’s pearls. “I never did like this picture,” she said, and placed the book on a shelf. “And while I have no idea what’s going on around here, I’m reasonably sure I don’t like it, either.”

  “That makes it unanimous.” Evan reached for her hand and tugged lightly. “We’ll leave you to it,” he told Lulah, who nodded distractedly.

  Outside, they sat on the steps, Holly leaning close to him. He waited a few moments, then nodded at the laptop beside her. “So what exactly is in that thing?”

  “It’s not real evidence, you know.”

  “I’m thinking Homeland Security, for one thing, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some of these names might be interesting to them, if only to put on a watch list. In fact, I don’t know that Jamey and I will be able to do anything at all.”

  “What about the clinic?” she asked. “OR, exam rooms, records, cryogenics—”

  He held an inner debate, then said, “What gets cryogenically frozen?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Filthy rich people who want to be thawed out when the cures for the
ir diseases are found sometime in the future.”

  “And what else?”

  “I don’t know—blood products, I suppose.”

  “Come on, Holly.” But she wouldn’t say it, so he did. “Sperm and ova.”

  She huddled in on herself, arms wrapped around her knees. “If I’m right, and the girls were trafficked, then it wasn’t just to become prostitutes.”

  Surrogates were used all the time by women who couldn’t carry to term or whose lives would be endangered if they attempted it, or male couples who wanted to raise a child and for whom adoption was impossible. Somehow he couldn’t see Herr Weiss as a benevolent and compassionate patron of gay or infertile couples. More likely he catered to rich people—extremely rich people—who wanted a kid without the bother and inconvenience of enduring a pregnancy and undergoing childbirth. The kind of people who hired two live-in nannies so they wouldn’t have to deal with diapers and three a.m. feedings. Baby as status symbol, or heir to the family fortune. The essential accessory for the perfect American life.

  “Brood mares,” Evan muttered. “Jesus.”

  Holly raked her fingers through her hair—dry now, curling around her neck, threaded with white. “It’s horrible, Evan. That girl in there—hidden away like this for who knows how long—and those two other girls—”

  “But why hide them inside all this magic? Can magic influence a pregnancy? I don’t recall that Lulah was careful around you, but—”

  “I’m not a real Witch, remember? I’m not sure if a pregnant Witch is supposed to swear off working magic, like it’s alcohol or something.”

  “So what’s being hidden around here? The girls—at least one of them about to deliver—the medical clinic downstairs with the cryogenics—”

  “Why down there and not up here?”

  He shrugged. “How big is the clinic?”

  She considered, then nodded. “You’re right, there wouldn’t be room for it all up here. But why hide everything with spells?”

  “Which brings up another question. Why here? Why in Pocahontas County, where they’ve got to know about the population of Witches?”

  “Well, I’d ask Lulah and Nicky, but they’re a little preoccupied right now.”

  Seventeen

  ONCE CAM’S LITTLE LASSOS were finished, he and Jamey returned to the stairwell. Cam kept popping back and forth into the room as if to reassure himself that the door was still there. Jamey occupied himself with not watching this ridiculous little dance, and picked at the mud beneath his fingernails. He glanced up as Evan called out from the stairs above him.

  “I was starting to think you’d gotten lost, except there’s nowhere to go but up and down—” And, as Cam stepped back into view, “—and through that wall.”

  “You found another door!” Holly beamed at her cousin, who paused in his two-step to scowl. “Clever boy.”

  “I’m a fucking genius,” he snapped. “Whatever locking spell Lulah put on the hotel rooms, it’s going to get unlocked pretty soon. There’s a guy in there—”

  Jamey interrupted. “We took care of him, Evan; flip the safety back on that cannon.”

  “—who was expecting a visitor. The kind you pay for. My finely honed sense of sense suggests that when the visitor couldn’t get in, he went looking for a night manager. Or security. Or Weiss. Take your pick. But somebody’s trying to get into that room—they’ve been knocking for a couple of minutes now.”

  “So why didn’t you tell them to go away?” she demanded.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Jamey said at the same time.

  “Like you could do anything about it? And how am I supposed to talk to somebody who can’t hear me because of a spell I cast?”

  “And he scores—twice,” Evan remarked.

  “How did you hear the knocking?” Holly pressed.

  “I didn’t. But I could see the door rattling.”

  “Hat trick,” Jamey said sourly. “And the crowd goes wild.”

  “At least I’ve been doing something useful with my time.” Cam dug two bits of knotted wool out of his jeans pocket. The threads still smelled of roses, peppermint, cinnamon, and Earl Grey tea. “Tied around a finger, they’re good as handcuffs plus about twenty milligrams of Ambien.”

  “That’s why Leather Guy in there won’t be any trouble,” Jamey added. “But somebody’s going to get through that outer door somehow, and fairly soon.”

  “Reinforcements,” Evan announced with a sardonic smile, “have arrived.” He arched a brow at his wife. Her lips compressed and rebellion flared in her eyes, but then he touched his chest near his heart. Evidently it was some sort of private signal. She plopped herself down on the footstool, the laptop cradled to her chest. “Good choice,” Evan approved.

  “May I point out,” she said, like a professor with a trio of none-too-bright students, “that if they’re trying to break the door down physically, it means they haven’t got anything magically. I would also remind you that the carry permits for their firearms are in your office files, Sheriff Darling.”

  “I remember. I signed them. Gentlemen,” he said to Cam and Jamey, “stay behind me.”

  Through the wall and inside the room, Jamey was just as happy to have six-foot-four of sheriff with Glock between him and whoever was trying to get in that door—especially when the door crashed right off its hinges to reveal two strapping specimens of security guard (it said so right on their pale blue windbreakers). Both stumbled into the room, caught their balance, and brought up their pistols.

  “Down!” Evan yelled.

  Jamey lunged and tackled Cam too high, catching him in the ribs rather than around the thighs. They both crashed to the floor, the noise of an overturned table nowhere near loud enough to drown out four quick gunshots.

  Cam was squirming out from under him, cussing creatively. Jamey rolled onto his back. Something twinged above his left knee. He looked down his own body to where Cam was pressing both hands against his thigh.

  “Evan—Jamey’s hit—”

  It wasn’t painful. Just stung a little, at a remove, as if he knew it really ought to hurt like a motherfucker but the signal hadn’t quite gotten through yet. He propped himself on his elbows and looked curiously at the blood now covering Cam’s long fingers. He did have the most beautiful hands. . . .

  “Stay with me,” Cam ordered.

  He wanted to tell him not to be a jackass, of course he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d been shot, for Chrissakes. But his brain was finally catching up with things, and his leg was starting to hurt, and he lowered himself carefully down to lie flat on the rug. He watched Cam drag the heavy crimson velvet bedspread down.

  “Jamey, don’t you dare zone out on me,” Cam warned.

  “Damnation!” This from Holly. There were more hands now, and a pillow under his left knee, and he could smell his own blood. It sickened him a little, and he closed his eyes.

  “Artery?” said Evan from very high above him. Pretty close to the ceiling, actually.

  “Nope,” Holly replied. “No pumping blood. And a clean exit wound.”

  Well, that was good. His first big case had been a gang murder in Richmond, and the only person who’d survived had been the one with a through-and-through gunshot wound.

  “Press harder, Cam. Are they dead?”

  Of course the other four kids were dead, they’d been shot point-blank and there’d been no exit wounds—

  “Nah. Kneecap and shoulder. They’ll bleed, but they’ll live.”

  Wait a minute. That hadn’t been in the file. Nobody had said anything like that in the depositions. Was there a new witness? New evidence? He needed the medical reports, and the ballistics—

  No, he’d won that case in Baltimore . . . or had it been Richmond? . . . four dead and one survivor . . . six gang members would never breathe free air again . . . it was over and done with, and he didn’t have to worry about surprise testimony or overlooked evidence or anything but the smell of his own blood and the pain
of—

  But there was no pain.

  And that made no sense.

  “Can you stop the bleeding, Cam?”

  “I kept it from hurting. I don’t know about the blood. I’ve never tried anything like that before.”

  “Let’s get him onto the sofa. Holly, grab the blanket, that bedspread is soaked. Wrap him up—yeah, Jamey, you’re gonna be fine, just relax. You take his feet, Cam.”

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Never better. . . .”

  “Of course you are,” Holly said in a humor-the-children tone of voice that he found both tactless and irritating. He was about to tell her so when he felt himself being hoisted up, and the nausea got worse, and the fabric shifted off his leg, and pain roared up from his thigh and his brain said Oh, the hell with it and he passed out.

  CURSING HIS AGING KNEES, Nick stopped abruptly as Holly came through a wall. It took him a moment to find his voice. When he did, he was dismayed to find himself yelling. “What in the unholy hell have you been doing? We heard the gunshots all the way at the top of the house!”

  “Well, Uncle Nicky,” said Holly, “not to put too fine a point on it—Weiss knows we’re here, Jamey’s been shot, and we found a way out but it’s bound to be guarded from now on. I was just coming to get Lulah.”

  Processing this as they went into the room beyond, Nick decided he really, truly needed his partner right now. Some leather-clad personage was trussed up on the bed; Cam was on his knees beside the sofa, on which Jamey reclined, wrapped in a blanket, pale and oblivious.

  “Know anything about gunshot wounds, Nicky?” Cam’s voice was quite calm; all the frantic worry was in his eyes as he looked up, silently pleading. “I spelled against pain, but I set it into the bedspread and it fell off when we lifted him and his face sort of twisted up. I could work it again on the blanket—or maybe we ought to stitch it up, and I could do something to the suture thread.”