by Delia James
“You may, however, have had the opportunity to notice us witches do not always get along,” said Allie blandly.
“And some of those arguments go waaaaaay back,” Trish added with a grimace, and a thumb hovering restlessly over her phone’s screen.
“Well, I mean, I know about the feud in the sixties.” That feud, in fact, was why Grandma B.B. had left Portsmouth in the first place.
“Tip of the iceberg,” said Trish. “Like, sinking-the-Titanic-sized iceberg.”
Allie nodded in agreement and flicked a strand of dark hair back over her broad shoulder. “There are at least half a dozen different covens up and down the seacoast. Once you get down to Salem, that number increases pretty drastically.” Salem, Massachusetts, is Grand Central Station as far as the witch community is concerned, even after all this time. “Those covens, unfortunately, have bred a whole set of ongoing quarrels.”
“Family fights are the worst kind,” said Martine. “Doesn’t matter who’s in the family.” She might not be a witch, but working in restaurants gave you a front-row seat when it came to watching people.
Val nodded in agreement and cuddled her baby a little closer. Like me, Allie had a magical family. Val and Trish, though, did not. They’d both come to the true craft on their own. Some hereditary witches considered people like Val permanent outsiders, or, worse, thought they never should have been taught the true craft. This little difference of opinion could make things awkward at the intercoven potluck.
No, I don’t know that we actually have intercoven potlucks, but you get the idea.
“Anyway,” said Allie. “Ramona decided since she was a veterinarian and had a duty to care for all the familiars, she couldn’t be seen to be favoring any of their human partners, so she never joined any coven.”
“Ramona and Julia always respected each other, though,” said Trish. “And Dorothy was always one of her biggest boosters. In fact . . .” She turned her phone over again. “I’m surprised Frank Hawthorne isn’t here.”
“He’s probably way too busy,” said Val.
“Really?” I admit, I hadn’t thought about Frank before Trish mentioned him. I plead the fact that my morning, not to mention the night before, had been kind of eventful. Now that his name had come up, though, I was surprised I hadn’t at least gotten a phone call from him. “I mean, I know it’s news, but—”
“News?” Allie’s jaw dropped open. “It’s a tsunami!”
“Anna!” exclaimed Val. “I told you to turn on the TV! I left you about a billion messages.”
“Erm . . . ,” I started, and then I decided that wasn’t going to go anywhere useful. Anyway, Val was already on her feet, shifting her hold on Melissa. “Martine, do you mind?”
Martine waved us toward the main dining room, and we all followed Val (with Melissa smiling over her mom’s shoulder and trying to grab a chunk of her ponytail). There was a screen over the antique oak bar, but it was turned on only during major sporting events. This mild concession to the twenty-first century came from Martine’s recently discovered enthusiasm for baseball, which, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that her new boyfriend was an athletic trainer for the Red Sox.
Martine pulled the remote out from under the bar and hit the Power button. A news channel with a toothy blond guy front and center flickered into life. To my surprise, the Piscataqua Small Animal Clinic was framed in the background.
“Coming to you live, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the shocking murder of a local veterinarian coincides with the disappearance of America’s most famous cat . . .”
Martine pressed the Change Channel button. Another toothy blond appeared, female this time, and this time standing in the middle of Market Square.
“. . . we’re still trying to get you all the details on the shocking murder and disappearance of the world-famous Attitude Cat. So far no ransom . . .”
Martine hit the button again.
“. . . calls coming into tip lines from all over the country from people claiming to have seen Attitude Cat, but no ransom demand . . .”
And again.
“. . . we’ve got a clip here of Attitude Cat . . .”
Again.
“. . . the stunning disappearance of Attitude Cat. While the nation waits breathlessly to hear of any ransom . . .”
“Wow.” Trish’s thumbs danced across her smartphone screen. “It’s all over the Web, too. Tops all the lists and stuff.”
“So, yeah,” said Allie. “Frank is probably a little busy right now.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I admit, I was more than a little surprised. “I mean, I knew the cat was famous, but . . .” I couldn’t finish. I was thinking again about Ramona and the anger and the greed I’d felt inside her home. Not to mention the phone calls to Ruby’s owner and her publicity representative. No wonder everybody was waiting for a ransom demand.
And then there was that other one, to Pam Abernathy’s cell phone. The one I could only partly hear but that was asking if everything was good with the vet.
Val saw my troubled expression and laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Anna. Kenisha and Pete will find out who killed Dr. Forsythe.”
“We will find out,” said a voice behind us.
11
A WITCH AND her familiars walked into a bar. But one glance at Julia’s stony face and none of us felt like making a joke.
Julia wore a long black coat with billowing skirts and a shoulder cape trimmed in black velvet. Her scarf was amethyst and her hat was black shearling wool with an amethyst pin on the turned-up brim. She looked like a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Mae West come in from the cold. It was a sight to make even Martine hesitate, which was something I hadn’t witnessed since high school.
“Uh, Ms. Parris, your dogs . . .”
Max and Leo were with Julia, of course. Max wore a green sweater and booties, and Leo was fetchingly decked out in red.
“Oh, yes,” said Julia as she stripped off her gloves and removed her hat. “I apologize. Max. Leo. Wait by the door.”
The dogs yipped and scampered back past the hostess station. They both hunkered down by the door, heads up and ears pricked.
I was suddenly, painfully aware that Alistair had not yet put in an appearance. Well, I told myself, he knew how Martine felt about animals in her restaurant.
Martine looked like she wanted to say something, but from somewhere in the depths of the kitchen came what I can only describe as a mighty crash. This was followed by a whole lot of rapid-fire Spanish, most of which you would never be taught in high school. Martine groaned and darted through the kitchen door, leaving us witches to file back into the private dining room.
“Pppbbbttt,” announced Melissa.
“Uh, Julia?” Trish said as the door swung shut behind us. “Maybe I misheard, but it sounded like you said we were going to find out who killed Dr. Forsythe?”
“I did.” Julia settled down onto one of the banquettes and folded her hands on her walking stick. “We are the very at least going to help. There are some things that need to be ruled out, and which Kenisha cannot address in her official capacity.”
Allie looked at Julia carefully from under her dark brows. “You mean magic?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I mean.”
“But . . . you can’t believe that a witch had something to do with Ramona’s murder,” whispered Val.
“It is a possibility,” said Julia grimly. “There are signs.”
“What signs?” breathed Trish. She was looking a little green around the gills, and frankly, I couldn’t blame her.
“Ramona’s home was warded against evil influence,” Julia told us, and we nodded. All of us had wards around our homes. “When I was there this morning, the wards were shattered. Not just breeched, but shattered.”
“You could tell that?” I said, impr
essed. I mean, I could sense magic, but not with that kind of nuance.
“Of course I can’t,” said Julia, sounding a little like my first-grade teacher.
“But . . .”
“Max and Leo can.”
Oh. Of course.
Val shifted Melissa uneasily from the crook of one arm to the other. “Ramona would have felt the wards break, wouldn’t she?” Wards are like psychic burglar alarms. The person who set them can tell if they’re even challenged, never mind actually broken.
“She certainly should have been able to,” said Julia. “Unless she was magically prevented.”
“Or unless they were broken after she died,” put in Allie.
“Or were deliberately broken by the murderer to get Ramona to come back home to . . .” Trish didn’t finish, but she did turn her phone over a few more times.
“Any of these could be true,” agreed Julia. “That is why we need to know more. We must make sure that Ramona’s death was not caused by someone using the true craft.”
“But . . . but . . . how?” The idea that someone would, or even could, use magic to commit a murder seemed to be raising Cain with my powers of rational conversation. The magic I’d learned so far had been about influencing probabilities and energies, cleansing and clarifying. I’d broken a couple of small objects, either accidentally or on purpose, and I’d conjured some visions of various kinds. But nothing in the books or the lessons I’d been given even talked about enchanting people directly. I’d started to think that was, well, something out of a fairy tale.
“It is not something we discuss,” Julia said grimly. “Perhaps, considering the circumstances under which you came to your practice, I should have broached the subject earlier.” Julia is not one for revealing facial expressions. But when she’s really upset, her language gets increasingly formal, as if she were building a fortress with her words. “However, yes, it is possible to use the true craft to exert a strong influence over others, and that influence can be highly detrimental.”
“Do you mean we can really use magic to force a person to . . . hurt themselves?” I looked around the table, but no one looked back. Allie was studying the tabletop. Val rocked Melissa slowly, her face uncomfortable and crestfallen.
I swallowed, hard. Images of dolls with pins sticking out of them rose in my mind. I pushed them aside immediately. First, because thanks to my acquaintance with Martine and her Haitian family, I knew enough about the religion of vodun to know that “voodoo dolls” were pure pop-culture invention, and second, because . . . well, frankly, because I just plain didn’t want to think about it. Not with the image of Ramona sprawled on the rocks filling my mind.
“We can’t make a person do something that goes directly against their nature,” Julia said. “No matter how powerful I might be, Anna, I could not make you hate your grandmother, or Valerie abandon her family; not for long, anyway. But”—she lifted one finger in case any of us were getting ready to interrupt; we weren’t—“if someone is, for example, attracted to another and wishes that feeling to be reciprocated, an unethical practitioner can push that other person into experiencing lust or some other emotion that could be mistaken for genuine affection.”
Love potions. She was talking about love potions. And she wasn’t done.
“If a person is angry, hatred can be inflamed. If a person is sad, they can be pushed into depression. If a person is genuinely depressed, then . . .” Julia stopped. She didn’t do anything so obvious as swallow, but she clearly needed a moment to collect herself.
I thought about the rocks under the balcony.
“I thought Ramona only lived on the second floor.” Allie broke in on my thoughts, and I was grateful. “You’d have to jump from a lot higher up than that to kill yourself.”
“We don’t know she fell from her own balcony,” said Julia. “I saw the police up on the roof this morning.”
“Do you seriously think a witch, one of us, could have . . . used magic to force Ramona to commit suicide?” said Val.
“It must be considered.”
“No,” I said.
Julia turned to me, her glare absolutely icy. “I beg your pardon, Anna?”
“The Vibe I picked up in Ramona’s apartment was really strong,” I said. “My shields were up,” I added hastily. I didn’t want Julia to think I’d been careless. Really careless, anyway. “She wasn’t killed long-distance. Somebody was there in the apartment with her.”
No one doubted me, not even Julia. They all knew what my Vibe could do, especially when the emotions trapped in a place were intense.
“That leaves another possibility,” said Julia.
“Oh, no,” breathed Val.
“You don’t think . . . ,” said Allie.
“It couldn’t be.” Trish blanched.
I raised my hand. “Ummm . . .”
“Someone might have used the craft to influence the murderer,” said Allie, more to the bottom of her teacup than to the rest of us. “Somebody used a spell to inflame their anger or their greed, and made them mad enough to kill.”
12
I FELT THE blood drain out of my face. “That’s . . . that’s . . .”
Wicked. Evil. Foul. Wrong. Bad. Really bad.
“Yes,” said Julia, as if she could read my thoughts, which I’m sure she couldn’t. Reasonably sure, anyway. “It is as great a transgression as any practitioner of the true craft can commit.”
“But what about the threefold law?” I asked. “If they used their magic to hurt somebody, it’d come back on them. They’d have to know that, wouldn’t they?”
The threefold law is the first and last principal of the true craft. It’s even carved on my wand, in Latin no less: WHAT YOU SEND OUT INTO THE WORLD RETURNS TO YOU THREEFOLD. It means that the good you do comes back to you, increased. So does the bad.
I looked around at my coven sisters for reassurance. They all suddenly seemed to be very busy studying other parts of the room.
“Unfortunately, a witch’s urge toward self-justification can be as strong as anyone else’s.” Julia’s voice took on a ragged edge. I got the feeling she might be remembering something specific, and specifically bad. “However desperate the act, usually the witch feels she, or he, was driven to it, and that whatever it is, it is forgivable, perhaps even laudable.”
“And if Ramona was killed by magic, or if magic influenced the murderer?” asked Allie. “Then what?”
“Then we will act,” said Julia firmly.
“And just what are ‘we’ going to do?” inquired a new voice, and it did not sound at all happy.
We all looked up. Kenisha stood in the doorway with her arms folded and her grimmest expression tightening her face. She was back in uniform, and clearly back on duty.
“Kenisha,” said Julia. “I did not expect you could be here. How are you doing?”
Kenisha decided not to answer that. “If you’re having secret meetings, you shouldn’t all park your cars right out front.” The glance she shot me was particularly sharp, and I cringed inside.
“It’s not secret,” said Allie.
“Then why didn’t I know about it?” Kenisha snapped.
This shocked me, badly. I mean, I had just thought Kenisha couldn’t be there because she had to be on duty. It never crossed my mind that she hadn’t been told we were getting together.
“That was my decision,” said Julia. “I didn’t want you to feel conflicted.”
“Too late.” Kenisha pulled out a chair and sat. “So you might as well tell me what ‘we’ are planning.” She settled back, very clearly getting ready to wait as long as it took.
I wished Alistair were there. I needed a friend to hold on to.
“Julia says the wards on Ramona’s apartment were shattered,” Val told Kenisha. “There might be magic involved in her murder.”
Kenisha let out a long breath of air. She reached out a hand and touched Melissa’s damp little fist. Melissa grabbed hold of her finger immediately and held on.
“Kenisha,” began Julia. “I respect your boundaries, but this is time . . .”
“No.” Kenisha bit the words off. “It isn’t time for anything. Lieutenant Blanchard is all over this one.”
“Uh-oh,” murmured Trish, and I agreed. We all did.
Michael Blanchard (Jr.) was Kenisha’s superior officer, and he was . . . a difficult man. People said he was a good police officer. Well, some people said that. He did, however, have definite ideas about what kind of a town he thought Portsmouth should be, and life could become noticeably trickier for those people he decided did not fit.
It could also become trickier for those people on the force he decided were not getting with his particular program.
“If Blanchard catches any of you messing around with this case, he’s gonna have an excuse to . . .” Kenisha bit her lip. “Sorry. This is my problem. Not yours.”
“It is ours. We’re your sisters,” said Trish.
“Has Blanchard got a suspect he likes?” I asked, which was the closest I could get to changing the subject.
“Not yet, but he will.” Kenisha spoke softly. She was suppressing so much emotion, I wondered where she found the strength to hold it all inside. I moved to reach out to her. But the tiny headshake Val gave me stopped me.
“Has there been any movement at all this morning?” asked Trisha.
“That you can tell us about,” I added quickly.
“Yes, of course,” said Trisha. “Like, you know, a ransom demand or anything? It’s all over the news that Ruby was cat-napped.”
Kenisha made a face. She also clearly made a difficult decision. “No,” she told us. “No ransom demands. That we know of.” I wished she hadn’t been looking so closely at me when she said that. But then, after the stunt I pulled with Pam Abernathy’s phone, I suppose I kind of deserved it.