“Poker tournament,” Donovan’s father repeated.
Riga stepped in. “You were brilliant to get them back. Poker is such a draw these days. No pun intended.”
Mr. Mosse frowned. “A bit low-brow, isn’t it? Does a poker tournament project the image we want for the casino?”
“It does,” Donovan said sharply.
The assistant looked at him with surprise.
His father shrugged. “Then let’s see the man.” He strolled out the door.
Donovan’s assistant hurried after him. “And you’ve got a three o’clock with Mr. Stevenson. And of course the dinner party tonight, here at the casino.” She closed the door behind her.
Donovan put his head in his hands. “If my father wasn’t already dead… I’d kill him.”
“No you wouldn’t.” She sat down beside him, placed her hand on his knee. “You need your body back. Besides, he’s your Dad.”
He picked up her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. His lips were cool against her skin, and her blood rose in response.
He turned her hand in his and examined the ring. The diamond glittered in the lamplight. “It looks good on you.”
“You’re just marking your territory with shiny objects.”
He pulled her hand to his chest. “If you don’t like it, I can take it back.”
“No take backs!” She snatched her hand away, laughing.
“Never.” One corner of his mouth curved in a smile.
Her body felt suddenly heavy. She looked into the fire. “But we…”
“What?” he asked gently.
She angled herself toward him. “Things haven’t been going so well for us lately, have they?”
“Gregorovich isn’t going to stop coming.”
“That… and the undead problem.”
“Yeah.”
Riga’s throat constricted. “I spoke with someone today who believes Gregorovich is affiliated with a black lodge. And my aunts claim a black lodge interfered with the spell that sent you into Cam’s body.”
“Great. A magic mobster.”
“More of a magic dabbler with powerful friends.”
“Then I can deal with him. And your aunts will deal with the undead issues.”
“What about Cam? Someone tried to kill him – did kill him. What if they try again?”
His brows slashed downward. “Then they’ll be in for a surprise. We’ll get through this, Riga.”
“Well, this is a fine kettle of piranhas!” Dot toddled into the room, handbag clutched in both hands. She tossed it upon the couch beside Riga and sat down heavily, bouncing Riga closer to Donovan.
Peregrine followed, slamming the door behind her. “It’s not my fault you got the incantation wrong.”
Riga wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Burning hair, of course. Mine.” Peregrine fell onto the couch on Donovan’s other side. “Because someone got the incantation wrong.”
“There was nothing wrong with my incantation.” Dot fluffed her baggy skirt. “You got too close to the candle.”
“We weren’t using candles!”
“I told you to light the black candle! No wonder it went wrong.”
“You’re not filling me with confidence, ladies,” Donovan growled.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Dot said. “We’ll get you back in your body. Eventually. Any luck finding Livinia?”
“Not yet,” he said. “My man thinks she may be in Sighisoara.”
Peregrine and Dot leaned forward, and exchanged a look. They nodded.
“Makes sense,” Peregrine said. “Vlad’s birthplace, you know.”
“Vlad…” Riga blinked rapidly. “Not Vlad Draco, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula?”
Dot smiled, her chins wobbling. “And you say you’re no necromancer. You certainly know your vampires.”
“Everyone knows him,” Riga muttered.
Peregrine lowered her spectacles and peered at her. “So what have you been up to while we’ve been working, young lady?”
“Looking for help from the astral… whatever they are. They sent me to someone here, in Lake Tahoe. He runs a mini-mart. He called himself a hunter.”
Dot’s mouth made an o of surprise. “A hunting lodge? Here?”
“Makes sense,” Peregrine said. “This place has been a hotbed of activity.”
“When you say hunting lodge, you’re not talking about people with guns stalking forest creatures?” Donovan asked.
“They hunt dark magicians,” Peregrine said.
“Like you,” Riga said.
“We’re not really dark,” Dot said. “More grayish. Are you sure it’s a hunting lodge?”
“He called himself a hunter,” Riga said.
“It’s a hunting lodge,” Peregrine said. “This gentleman at the mini-mart. Was he an Indian fellow?”
Riga nodded.
The Aunts shared another look.
Dot tsked. “They always go for the cliché, don’t they?”
“Best sort of disguise,” Peregrine said. “No one looks past it. This is good news, though. The hunter won’t bother us while there’s a black lodge operating. We’ll let him take care of the lodge while we work on the Mosse problem.”
Donovan squeezed Riga’s thigh.
Pain exploded in her leg and she gasped. “Undead super-strength!”
He jerked his hand away. “Are you alright? I’m sorry. Dammit!”
“It’s okay.” She grimaced, rubbing her leg. “No permanent damage.”
“I’m just not used to being… this.”
“You never told us how it feels,” Dot said. “I’ve always wondered.”
“Aunt Dot!”
“Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask,” Dot said. “And we really haven’t had much chance to go over what it means to be in your state – what the limitations are. You’re undead – for now – but not invulnerable.”
He made a fist, watched it clench and unclench. “I don’t feel invulnerable. I feel… itchy.”
Dot tilted her head. “Itchy…”
“Someone tried to kill you today,” Riga said.
“He wasn’t aiming at me,” Donovan said. “He was aiming at my father.”
“He knew who he was aiming at,” Riga said. “He heard me call you by name in the casino.”
“We’ll fix this,” he said. “And I’ll take care of Gregorovich.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, wanting to ask how. Because Riga didn’t know how to stop Vasily. She didn’t know how to get Donovan back. She didn’t know who among her guests was a murderer, might kill again, and it was time she figured it out.
Riga smiled. “I know.”
Chapter 17
Riga ran her hand along the new bedroom door. It looked identical to the one Donovan had smashed, though the swag of holly had vanished. Had Donovan called for the replacement? Had the bodyguard, Ash? It was a minor mystery she didn’t care enough about to explore.
She went inside, and flipped on the light. Outside the windows, snow fell over the lake. Cozy. Someone had lit the fireplace – a welcoming touch, if unsettling. She loved the idea of not having to vacuum carpets, clean sinks. But she couldn’t quite relax with other people in the house. Oh well, as problems went, this wasn’t much of one.
Riga unwrapped the scarf from her neck and tossed it on the silky brown duvet. She ran her hand across the spread, then flipped it back. Brigitte’s claw marks were gone. Someone had replaced that as well.
A Necronomicon, bound in green leather, lay upon her pillow. Frowning, she picked it up. The book looked familiar.
Her expression cleared. She had once picked up a copy for research, thought she’d left it back at her condo in San Francisco. Brigitte must have brought it for her.
It had been years since she’d looked at the tome. Had she ever used it? Riga sat on the bed, and lay one hand atop the book, closing her eyes. It vibrated oddly, though not unpleasantly, and her palm itched, hummed.
/> “Hey,” Pen stomped into the room, black motorcycle boots clomping on the hardwood floors. She brushed crumbs off the front of her black t-shirt. In white text: If you don’t like my opinion of you, improve.
Riga put the book down. “Hey yourself. Have you seen Brigitte?”
Pen jammed her hands in the pockets of her cargo pants, and leaned against the wall, beneath a small painting of a Tahoe meadow. “She left last night, after you did. Said she had an errand to run. I haven’t seen her since.”
Then Brigitte probably had brought the book. It was well after lunch – plenty of time for her to fly to San Francisco and back. She examined the book more closely. Claw marks. The gargoyle, indeed.
“Ash is kind of mad you left without him,” Pen said.
“Yeah. I figured he would be.”
“I heard him call Donovan. I mean, Mr. Mosse. Well, he didn’t know it was Donovan’s dad. He said he couldn’t protect someone who didn’t want protecting.”
“You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”
“He said he’s protecting me now, and he’d take me snowshoeing. Is it okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I just thought, maybe, you had something else for me to do. You know, something magic or investigative or something.”
“Have you been practicing your protection spells?”
Pen made a moue of distaste. “They’re boring.”
“Brigitte won’t let you move on until you’ve got them down well enough to cast under stress.” And that would be a while.
Pen straightened. “Move on? To what?”
“Tarot magic.”
“You mean like telling fortunes?”
“Tarot is the key to an entire system of magic. And the least interesting part of it is divination.”
Pen looked thoughtful. “Huh. So… You don’t mind if I go snowshoeing with Ash?”
Riga glanced out the window at the leaden lake, the pines. Snow drifted steadily downward, insulating a silent, still world. “I think it’s a great idea. Go.”
“Cool. See you.” Pen turned on her heel and left.
Riga picked up the book, opened it, squinting. Why did publishers make the text so small? She flipped the pages. There was a chapter on malefica, dark spells. But most of the spells seemed neutral, though they used death energy for power.
The archetype Hecate, one-time queen of the underworld, featured prominently. But the Hecate in the book wasn’t the archetype Riga knew. This Hecate was ominous, vengeful, with a league of demons to command. Why would the archetype need them? She’d always struck Riga as more of a loner. But that was the trouble with archetypes – they were containers for people to fill. And everyone had some slightly different idea to submit. Hecate was the worst of the bunch – everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere, goddess of the in-between, the cross-roads, magic, the dead.
She skimmed through the chapters, remembering. Though she and the author didn’t see eye to eye on Hecate, the logic behind the magic seemed sound.
Her finger paused over a section header in bold: Unwanted Sexual Attention.
Now that could be helpful.
She read.
Unwanted sexual attention can be emotionally disruptive – no kidding – on par with an astral attack…
She looked up, and stared vacantly out the window.
Vasily. If he was a minor magic worker, as Mr. Gupta had said, was he using his sexual interest intentionally, to disrupt her magic? She shook her head. That was probably giving him too much credit.
But.
She and Donovan needed to get him out of their lives.
She returned her attention to the book. The spell involved sending a thought form to disrupt the energies surrounding the unwanted attacker, around Vasily.
Riga drummed her fingers on the page, her lips curving upward.
It was perfect. And the spell didn’t require sacrificing any animals. To be fair, few of the spells in the necronomicon did – most called for the magician’s blood. Or other bodily fluids. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
But did the spell stray into dark magic? The best defense was a good offense, but she’d never applied that theory to magic, wary of the consequences. According to the book, as soon as Vasily backed off, the thought form would leave him alone. A failsafe.
The clock on the wall read three o’clock.
Plenty of time.
She went to the bookcase and pressed the knob of wood that released the catch. Silent, the secret door swung open. She went inside and felt the tension in her shoulders relax. Real privacy. No interruptions.
Riga chalked a protective circle on the wood floor, and conducted banishing and cloaking rituals.
She put a cushion in the center of the circle and placed a pillar candle before it. Riga sat on the cushion, and lit the candle, closed her eyes, breathed.
Thoughts of Donovan, her aunts, Pen, Vasily, rose in her mind. She watched them, and let them go. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. Repeat. And then, just when she thought she’d never reach her center, she was there. The world fell away, and she could touch it all.
Hecate, triple-aspected: maiden, mother, crone.
Riga chanted, and her call to Hecate rose, swirled around her. She picked up her knife and pricked her finger, wincing. Squeezing her fingertip over the candle, a fat drop of blood splashed onto the melted wax.
The temperature in the room dropped.
Note to self: wear sweater when dealing with death energy.
Riga pushed that thought away, and envisioned the thought form as a panther. It prowled toward Vasily.
Her stomach twisted.
Cold. Cold. Her teeth chattered.
A growl raised the hair on the back of her neck. Something padded, stealthy, outside the circle. And it was hers. Her muscle. Her teeth. Her claws.
She had the sense of moving in between, sliding doors, and then the energy caught, snagged. And it was gone.
The air sucked from her lungs, left her gasping. Pain exploded inside her head, knives trying to slash their way out. She was spinning, falling. Blackness.
*****
Her eyes opened to candlelight, dim, wavering across the walls and bookshelves of her tiny room. In a rush, she bear-crawled to the wastebasket, heaving. And then the smell of her own vomit hit, and her stomach turned over again.
Spent, she rested on her side, studying the metal basket’s herringbone pattern. The spell had gone wrong. The energies had broken cleanly. There’d been no outside interference, the problem had been hers. It had gone wrong, and it should have worked.
Her head was splitting, and she pressed her palms into her eyes.
It should have worked.
On the other hand, that meant she probably wasn’t a necromancer. Glass half full?
She reached up and clutched the edge of the desk for balance, staggered to her feet. Dutifully, she cinched the garbage bag in a knot.
Wrinkling her nose, she unlatched the door, and exited into the bedroom, bag in hand.
Brigitte perched on the foot of the bed, head turned toward her. “I sense magic gone wrong. What happened?”
“Looks like I’m not a necromancer after all.”
“But what—?”
“Hold that thought. I’ll be back.” Riga trotted downstairs and outside, dumping the bag in a bear-proof garbage bin. The sun had set, a gray twilight, and snow fell with single-minded determination. It felt good on her face, a shock to her senses. She inhaled deeply, and her stomach steadied. Shivering, Riga hurried back upstairs, closing the bedroom door behind her.
Brigitte hadn’t moved. The gargoyle’s head rotated toward her. “I smell broken magic.”
“It beats the other smell.”
“We shall agree to disagree. What happened?”
“I tried a spell in that Necronomicon you left. You did leave it, didn’t you?”
The gargoyle inclined her head. “Yes. It was ze one you stole from ze necromancer, Lefebvre�
�s library.”
“Rescued, not stole. The place was on fire.”
“And?”
Riga sat upon the bed. “The spell broke.”
“Which spell?”
“Unwanted sexual attention.”
Brigitte edged along the footboard. “That is a good one. And not terribly difficult. What went wrong?”
“It just…” Riga leaned against the headboard, swinging her legs onto the bed. “It didn’t feel right.”
“How did it feel?”
“Nauseating. The book…” She groped with her hands, finding her way. “It sort of made sense but some bits didn’t seem right. The author’s understanding of Hecate isn’t like mine—”
“And so one spell goes wrong and you take that as proof you’re not a necromancer. Your magic has been off for months now—”
“And we thought that was because I wasn’t doing the right kind of magic – necromancy.”
“Did you follow ze spell accurately?” Brigitte asked.
“Yes.” She’d done the spell perfectly. It had made sense to her.
“Why? Why didn’t you use your own spell? Why ze spell from that book?”
“Because I don’t know what I’m doing. Because when my magic has gone wrong, there have been some spectacularly bad effects. Because I needed this to work.”
“So you are insecure.”
“Of course I’m insecure about necromancy! I’ve never done it before, and I’m still not convinced I should.”
“Magic is an art, Riga. When you were great, you made ze magic your own. You need to make it your own again. And if you cannot with necromancy… Then perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is not for you.”
“I don’t think it is.”
The gargoyle flapped her wings for balance. “No! You understand ze principles of magic. Death magic is a part of you – it always has been! You know how to create spells. Now stop being such a coward, and do what needs to be done! Be an artist. Make necromancy your own!”
“Well, if that’s all I have to do, the problem is as good as solved,” Riga said, sarcastic.
“Excellent. I shall leave you to it.” Brigitte hopped off the footboard and to the windowed balcony door. “Now open ze door so I may go.”
4 The Infernal Detective Page 13