The Vine Witch

by Smith, Luanne G.

  “Démon dansant.” Elena’s mouth watered at the feel of the words on her tongue. “But it’s just a childhood rhyme. Are you saying it’s real?”

  “More than one witch has expressed that belief. Do you think your little valley is the only place to have found a trail of dead creatures? I travel all over the Continent. Everywhere I go there are other stories. Theories. Suspicions. The police don’t keep track of such things, but witches do.”

  “What’s démon dansant mean?” Yvette asked, hugging a pillow against her middle.

  Elena recited the rhyme she’d learned as a child, then explained. “It’s magic that hides in the shadows, outside the view of the eye of the All Knowing. And the covenants.”

  Rackham added, “To engage in magic with a demon is to flay your heart, mind, and soul open to him on the promise of an exchange of immense power. In what form, I’m not sure. Money, authority, or perhaps even immortality would be my guess.”

  “Which would explain the extensive trail of dead animals.”

  Yvette flipped over the Queen of Wands. “Merde, you two are giving me the creeps.”

  “With good reason,” Rackham snapped, asserting his air of authority once again. “But if that’s what this murderess was up to, they won’t need a trial. Without more blood for her spells, the pact will be broken. That’s how dark magic works. She’ll wither to a strip of leather like the beasts she’s killed.”

  “But what if the person hadn’t been caught yet,” Elena ventured. “Would there be a way to recognize them? A dark aura around the pupil? Or maybe a mark left on the skin from the exchange?”

  “A smell. That’s what some scholars have surmised. One telltale mark would be the scent the demon leaves in the exchange.”

  Acrid, foul, sulfuric—it was something, however vague.

  Rackham shook himself loose of her sharp gaze. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I must realign my chakras and prepare for my clients.”

  Yvette glanced at Elena out of the corner of her eye before slipping her mask back down over her face. “Thank you for seeing us, Professor,” she said, stacking the tarot cards back on the side table.

  “Certainly. Though I would ask that you keep this conversation just between us,” he said. “A little mischief in the dark arts is a fine thing for the reputation, but I don’t want any of this demon business, if that’s what it is, being associated with my work as a medium. Most mortals are flustered enough when they enter my wagon without talk of devils.”

  “Of course, Professor.”

  He reached out to retrieve the book from Elena. Instead, she made the effort to replace it herself on the bottom shelf. She lingered a second longer, her finger trailing over the other spines, before she twisted around to look at Rackham over her shoulder. “You have a wonderful collection,” she said and tucked her veil back in place.

  He attempted a civil nod, though his eyebrows knitted together in a worrisome expression. “I hope you found it helpful, mademoiselle . . . what did you say your name was?”

  But Elena was already out the door, a palm-size crystal hidden in the pocket of her harem pants.

  They kept their heads down until they rounded the corner of the nearest wagon. The pace of the carnival had picked up as workers scrambled to get ready for the impending crowds. Yvette took Elena by the arm and led her to a quiet space where the outhouses were lined up behind the snake charmer’s tent. There, the younger witch pulled out her cigarettes and struck a match. She sucked in a deep breath of smoke, then let it out slowly. “You’ve got sticky fingers,” she said when she’d calmed down.

  “You saw that, did you?”

  “You might be good at spells, but I’m very good at stealing.” Yvette sat on a bale of hay and flicked the ash off her cigarette. “No one survives on the street without knowing how to snatch a bit of this and that to get by.”

  “I’ve never had to steal anything before.”

  “Lucky you. So why now?”

  Elena took the crystal out of her pocket. “I could sense the strong protection aura emanating from it. If I can find the real murderer, I’ll need all the protection I can get. You won’t tell him, will you?”

  “No one survives the streets for long if they snitch, either.” Yvette took a deep puff on her cigarette.

  The faraway look in her eye when she exhaled stirred a sisterly instinct in Elena. She had to restrain herself from smoothing the girl’s hair back from her face and telling her it would all be okay. Instead, she sat beside her, feeling the morning sun warm her face through the veil.

  “You said there wasn’t a pattern to the killings, but there is,” Yvette said after a pause. “I didn’t want to say in front of the Professor, but I’ve seen the same thing before.”

  “You recognized something?”

  “It’s the craving. That’s why they keep doing the same spell over and over again. To feed some hunger,” Yvette said, as if staring at memories. “Only after a while whatever they’re doing isn’t enough anymore, so the next score has to be a little bigger to get the same result. Ever been with a gent who can’t wait to put the white powder up his nose? Trust me, you don’t want to get between him and his next hit of madness. Or a drunk and his next bottle,” she said with a nudge of her chin toward Jacques the clown, who exited the outhouse wearing his pointed hat and white blouse with the black buttons.

  “A pattern of addiction?”

  Yvette nodded and tossed her cigarette away. “Worst kind of habit.”

  Immortality. Power. Money. They would all qualify as powerful drugs. If Rackham were to be believed, it’s what the murderer killed for, driven by a compulsion so strong it defied law and logic.

  A vision of a fiendish obsession flashed across her mind. A slathering craving. The murderer would be wide-eyed with madness. But then Jacques, who she’d seen wrapped around an empty gin bottle only an hour earlier, sauntered by and waved, thanking her for the remedy to his headache. There wasn’t a stagger in his walk or a tremble in his speech. Even his face, which had been an abstract mess, was now covered in fresh white greasepaint.

  If addiction were the motivation behind the killings, would the murderer vacillate between extremes too? Between the craving and the satisfaction? Between living a life and taking a life? Yes, of course, but the mark of the demon would be permanent, just as Jacques’s costume remained whether drunk or sober. The stench of bonding with a demon would be imbued in the host. It must.

  Elena’s head snapped up. “The smell.”

  “Yeah, the back end of a carnival always smells like that.”

  “No, I mean the demon. You could hide the behavior of addiction, but you couldn’t cover up the smell. Not without a potent fix.”

  “I’d just drown myself in a bottle of L’Origan. Ha, I’d do that anyway. Divine stuff.”

  “Perfume . . .”

  Elena saw again the image of a scented gift box dangling from a feminine wrist as her scent-memory recalled the odor of rotting meat, so misplaced at the time. Realization coursed through her, every nerve alert to the truth.

  “How could I have been so stupid?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jean-Paul woke in the dark. His back rested against rough-hewn boards, and his legs would not move. Could not move. His arms, too, were useless to him, tied down at right angles to his body as if he were prostrating himself to God. A six-foot-square pallet rested against his chest, leaving off just enough pressure for his lungs to expand. Above the pallet, restrained by the mercy of a single rope attached to a steel crank, hovered a giant metal wheel on a helical screw.

  He took a reflexive breath to calm his fear of suffocating. The heavy musk of oak, earth, and fermenting fruit overrode the stench of his sweat and fear. He was in a cellar, though not his own. And yet there was a familiarity to the surroundings. He tried to turn to get his bearings, but his head spun with a nausea-inducing bout of vertigo. He steadied himself and swallowed. The taste of black coffee furred his tongue.<
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  And then he remembered.

  The swish of a long skirt on the flagstones forced him to turn his head and suffer through the dizziness. The smell of decay, like cut flowers that have sat too long in their own water, wafted toward him, making him ill. A flicker of candlelight erupted in the dark, and Gerda’s face came into focus.

  “The effect of the sleeping powder was shorter lived than I’d expected,” she said. “I must have misjudged your weight.” She placed the candlestick atop a polished wood table, one that guests to the cellar might stand at to sample the latest vintage, or perhaps a cherished bottle of vin ’99, opened for a special occasion. Of course. He was in Monsieur Du Monde’s coveted wine cellar. It housed a hundred barrels in the catacombs beyond. And, as he uncomfortably recalled, it also retained its original sixteenth-century press, on which he now lay helplessly constrained.

  “For a city-born elitist, you’re in surprisingly fit form,” she said and removed the bung from a barrel of wine.

  He lifted his shoulder, testing the strength of the medieval contraption and finding no give. “Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s nothing personal.” She smiled out of the corner of her mouth, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. She sunk a wine thief inside the barrel to obtain a sample, suctioning up a vein of red into the tube.

  “This is absurd. Untie me.”

  “I think not.”

  Angered, he thrashed his body against the wood, but it did nothing to loosen his restraints.

  “I really do need you to stay put, Monsieur Martel,” she said, filling the silver tastevin hanging from her waist chain with the wine from the barrel. She gave the cup a slight swirl and studied the contents.

  Jean-Paul stared at the ceiling. His shoulder hurt from the dull ache of a bruise, and his temples throbbed from the lingering effects of the drug, but it was his growing fear that disabled his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut and pleaded with God for all of this to be a wicked dream. But when he opened them again he saw once more the face of his unlikely captor. Only something had changed. Was it just a trick of the candlelight, a smudge on his glasses, or was there something different about her face? He lifted his head to see her at a better angle. Yes, he thought, her skin sagged jowl-like around the mouth now, and her eyes appeared heavy and hooded. Even her hair had lost its luster, frizzing and dulling as strands came loose from its tight updo. The change so intrigued him he lost his fear long enough to recoup his wits.

  The witch, for he remembered in earnest that’s what she was, sniffed the wine in her cup. “I was always better at brewing ale,” she said after running her tongue over her teeth. “But this red will have an enviable life once it’s had time to mature.” She stepped up to the press and held out the cup. “Care for a taste, vigneron?”

  The wine, a deep red that clung to the sides of the silver tasting cup, had the hue and vigor of blood. He recoiled with new understanding as his mind made the connection. “It was you, wasn’t it? The cats, the blood, Monsieur Du Monde.”

  She stuck her finger in the wine and stirred. “It’s always been me,” she said, then licked the wine off and straightened. “And will be again.”

  She picked up the candle and carried it to the center of the cellar floor. The light from the candle illuminated a circle of symbols drawn on the flagstones in chalk. He didn’t recognize any of the marks, though they set off a tremor in the roots of his instinct when he saw them for what they were: symbols of wicked, illegal magic.

  He was not going to live through this. She was going to kill him and drain him of his blood. Bile rose in his throat at the thought. But then why hadn’t she done so yet? What had she been waiting for? Was there some ritual she must perform?

  And then he recalled the note.

  “Before. In the conservatory,” he said as she incanted words so foreign to his ears he thought them gibberish. “You said Elena escaped.”

  “Mmm.” The witch didn’t bother to look up from her work as she drew three new symbols above the rest. “Which is why you’re going to be my staked lamb.”

  Just as he feared, the witch knew Elena would try to find him. “But why? Why involve her? Why not just escape? Get as far away from here as you can.”

  “Because she knows who I am now and how to find me. And I have ever so much more living to do.”

  The witch knelt in the center of her macabre scribblings and then poured the wine over the stones as if in offering. He squinted at the circle of candlelight. Her hair had been bleached of its blonde sheen, paling to dull silver, and her hips had lost their curve. She smiled, knowing he was watching the transformation, and let out a sly laugh as her knuckles gripped the wine cup with knotted joints.

  Terror shuddered through his body, knowing he was at the mercy of a murderer’s magic.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Yvette watched Elena draw a circle with a stick in the dirt. She added a cross in the center and then stood back to judge the balance of the four quarters.

  “You’re sure you can find him this way?”

  “I have to try.” She knew the chances weren’t good, but it was all she could think to do. She had to warn Jean-Paul before he went to see the bierhexe.

  “A circle in the dirt doesn’t seem like very good protection.”

  Elena tossed the stick aside. “No, it isn’t.” She felt in her pocket for the crystal. “But I’m hoping it’s enough to let me slip in and see what I need to see without being noticed. Keep a watch out while I’m . . . away.”

  Cradling the box of allumettes and cigarettes in her hand, Elena knelt inside the circle. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the items. The sensation was faint, a single thread floating on the wind, but it was there, an imprint of his aura. She took a deep breath and sank below consciousness until the shadow world closed over her head. A whisper of “good luck” reached her ears just as she slipped from the physical world into that of shadow.

  The trace of his energy was nearly imperceptible. She worried he’d not held the matches in his possession long enough to get a bearing on his location, but she persisted, widening her focus to concentrate on Jean-Paul’s warm brown eyes, the scent of his skin after he shaved, the way his hair fell forward when he plowed the field without a hat. And how his palm electrified her skin when they held hands.

  It worked.

  The emotional pull she could no longer deny drew her senses deeper until her shadow-self emerged in a cold room swamped by darkness. The stone beneath her feet and the echo of space around her made her think of the abbey’s cloisters or an underground cave, but the smells were wrong. Her nose detected oak, vanilla, and fermenting wine. And something sulfuric. She was in a cellar, a large one, but the silence made her fear she had miscalculated.

  She was too late.

  But then a spark of candlelight flared at the other end of the room, and the Gothic ceiling, with its arched ribs and center posts, came into view. She knew the space at once—Bastien’s famed cellar, a series of caverns and tunnels begun eight hundred years earlier by the same ambitious monks who’d planted the first vineyards. She knew if she touched a finger to one of the supports she would still hear their workaday chants droning in the stonework. Yet she dared not move lest her spirit disturb the air and cause the candle to flutter. Instead, she tilted her head and listened for a heartbeat.

  In the corner near the light, two of them. No, three. One beat at the frantic pace of a panicked human, one with the cold tick-tock of a serpent on the hunt, and the third tapping out a frenzied rhythm like wings battling a storm. It was not the heartbeat of a creature of this world. Then a head bent forward into the light, the hair gray, and the skin creased and flaccid with age.

  It was the face of an older woman . . . but the eyes . . . they flashed in a familiar glittering blue as they stared out over the flame. Then they narrowed to peer into the darkness, and the nose twitched, seeking out her scent.

  Elena let go. She reeled herself in, hurling backward t
hrough the liminal space to reenter her body. She woke from her trance with her head spinning and her heart galloping.

  “Thought I’d lost you for a minute. You went all creepy quiet and still,” Yvette said.

  Elena pulled her veil free and sucked in deep gulps of air. “I saw her.” She shuddered recalling the wrinkled face that stared out at her with those piercing eyes. They were the same stunning blue she’d remembered and yet full of malice. As if a mask had been ripped away.

  “You saw her? You mean the cat killer murderer witch lady?”

  “I’m too late. She has him. In the cellar tasting room. I think he was tied up.”

  “Merde,” Yvette said, covering her mouth with her hand. “You don’t think she’ll kill him too, do you?”

  The thought fish-hooked Elena right in the heart. “Yes, but not yet. She’s waiting for something. Me, I think. But why do it underground? Why hide in the dark?”

  Yvette looked over her shoulder at the carnival coming to life. “Because she feels safe there. It’s familiar. Just like the carnival is the first place I run back to.”

  Elena’s head snapped up. “She gets her energy from the damp and the dark. Things underground. Unseen. Out of the light.”

  “Like a—”

  “Like a demon.”

  Elena got to her feet and passed Yvette the crushed box of allumettes and cigarettes, apologizing absentmindedly for the damage.

  The young woman tossed the useless tin to the ground. “Never mind those. What are we going to do?”

  “We? We aren’t going to do anything.” Elena retrieved the crystal shard from her pocket and thought about the meager herbs she might gather for a spell. It would never be enough.

  Yvette lifted her mask. “Like hell we’re not.” She stepped in front of Elena, blocking her path. “You can’t let her get away with it.”

  “I don’t intend to.”

  “Look, I know you don’t think much of me, but I want to help.”

  “No offense, but how is a carnival worker who runs a kink trade on the side going to help me confront a power-addicted witch who, in all probability, is bound to a demon? You can barely read a spell book.”