And through the opening to the kitchen, on the floor, a pair of shoes peeked out from behind the counter.
No, not shoes. Feet. Men’s feet. I ran into the kitchen to find Eric sprawled on the kitchen floor. His shirt was open, and on his bare chest, as though burned into flesh with hot metal, was a sigil. Xolotl’s sign.
I knelt beside him, put my hand to the side of his neck. The vibrations were still strong. He was still alive.
I grabbed his arms and used all my strength to pull him out the front door, where I left him on the stoop, praying emergency workers would arrive any moment. But for now I had to find Renna. I prayed she wasn’t here, but if she was . . .
Wetting a dish towel under the faucet, I wrapped it around my nose and mouth to shield my lungs from some of the smoke. The house was filling with the acrid scent as the small flames grew. In the living room the curtains burst into flame, and a pile of newspapers blazed in one corner. Large black pieces of ash, lined in burning red, floated on air and landed around the room, spreading the sparks.
“Renna! Can you hear me? Are you here?” I yelled. Fire was louder than I had ever expected. The whooshing sound of flames and the crackle of whatever burned resounded through the house. “Renna?”
I ran down the hall to Renna’s bedroom, where she had once read her tarot cards for me, back when we worked together to cast a spell that defeated a powerful witch. Though strangers to each other’s methods and magic, we had felt a sense of mutual respect, if not kinship.
The bedroom had been destroyed, the drawers emptied and clothes strewn everywhere. Lamps lay broken on the floor, the bookshelf was turned over, and the mattress upended. Her tiger-striped bedspread lay in a heap with her tarot cards scattered over it, but the Queen of Swords was pinned to the wall with Renna’s jeweled athame.
The flames hadn’t reached the bedroom yet, but the smoke was thickening. I was about to search the rest of the house when I decided to check the bathroom and closet, just in case.
I opened what I thought was a closet door, but it led instead to a small writing nook that Renna apparently had used as her private altar.
And hanging from the ceiling was Renna, her arms tied and yanked up behind her. Her shoulders were probably dislocated. I recognized the torturous method as strapatto. Yet another traditional technique for extracting information from witches.
“Renna! Can you speak to me?”
She made a raspy, croaking sound deep in her throat; her eyes rolled back in their sockets. She seemed barely alive.
I yanked the athame from the wall. Holding Renna up as best I could with my left arm to relieve the tension, I started sawing through the rough rope tethering her to the beam. She was deadweight, too weak and injured to help me. I heard the faint sound of sirens approaching, and thanked the goddesses that the neighbor must have called 911, as I’d asked.
The cutting seemed to take forever. One strand snapped at a time, with hundreds to go. My muscles burned with the strain of holding Renna in my left arm and with the staccato motion of the sawing back and forth with my right. The stench of smoke assailed my nostrils, despite the wet rag that was still over the lower half of my face.
Finally the rope snapped. We both fell onto the floor, our combined weight hitting with a solid thud. The fire was growing quickly in the outside bedroom; already in one corner of the room smoke was filling the chamber and moving our way. I climbed out from under Renna and threw a small stool to break the glass of the window, which led to a narrow side yard. To avoid pulling on her injured arms, I grabbed her by her waist and dragged her, but she had a good twenty or so pounds on me. After much heaving and tugging we were finally next to the window. I took the dishcloth from my face, wound it around my hand for protection, and cleaned the glass shards off the windowsill. Thrusting my head out, I could see emergency vehicles in front of the house and firefighters running to connect their hose. I tried to call to them, but no one heard me over the noise of the truck, the fire, and the shouting.
Renna’s candles, amulets, and small prayer tokens scattered around the room like confetti as I grabbed the heavy cloth off the altar and threw it over the shards of glass on the sill. I used my last reserves of strength to hoist Renna up, draping her body facedown over the sill. I then climbed out around her, and while breathing in great breaths of blessed fresh air, pulled her the rest of the way out of the building, trying to break her fall with my own body.
I laid her down as gently as I could on the sparse, crackly yellow-brown grass of the yard, and ran for the emergency workers in front of the house.
“This way! An injured woman. Quickly, please,” I said as I found a uniformed EMT and grabbed him by the hand. He gestured to a few others and they all ran down the side yard toward Renna.
Then I stood, gulping fresh air, indecisive and stunned. Paramedics were loading Eric onto a stretcher, his sooty face obscured by an oxygen mask. It took three men to control a strong blast of water from a huge hose they had aimed at the upstairs windows.
Just then a hand touched my shoulder from behind. I whirled and let out a blast of energy that threw the poor emergency worker down on her butt.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I exclaimed. “Let me help you up.”
The woman looked confused, as did most people who received a blast from me. They didn’t usually connect it with me; they simply didn’t understand what had just happened.
She got up, still looking perplexed, and I let her lead me to the open back doors of an ambulance. She wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and started asking me a number of questions. Only then did I realize that my arms and hands were wounded, covered in soot and small scratches, and some bigger, from the glass.
She started cleaning me up, wiping off the soot and blood, then applying antibiotic cream and wrapping my wounds in gauze. Vaguely I thought it was a shame I didn’t have any mugwort salve handy, as it was good for burns. But then I saw the stretcher coming. They had hooked Renna up to an IV and oxygen and were rushing her into the back of an ambulance. The doors were slammed shut behind her, and it sped down the street. As I watched its flashing lights grow smaller in the distance and the siren came on when they neared the intersection, I thought to myself, Someone has to tell Sailor. He wasn’t close to his aunt and butted heads with her. But it was a family tragedy. Surely it would draw him home?
I felt a surge of sick pain in my gut. Nausea swept over me as I thought of Eric lying there on the floor, and Renna hanging from her arms in strapatto.
I lost my lunch, right there on the neighbor’s nicely trimmed hedge.
• • •
The acrid scent of smoke does not wash out of hair easily. This I know from experience, unfortunately. I soaped myself up twice with lemon verbena soap and washed my hair three times, but it still lingered.
Despite my own sooty stench I had fallen into a fitful sleep just after one in the morning, but awoke, groggily, a while later. Visions of fire and smoke, Eric lying prone; Renna hanging . . . They attacked my senses so I felt like a castle under siege.
I heard the cuckoo clock in the hall sound: cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo. Three in the morning. Renna had been taken to Summit Medical Center and, when I had called last night, was said to be in serious but stable condition. They wouldn’t give me more details over the phone, even though I immediately lied and said I was her sister.
In a way it was true. All of us witches are sisters under the skin.
Now I struggled with what to do next. Should I call the hospital and try for an update? Would they talk to me at three in the morning? I let out a little sigh upon the realization that I spent way too much of my time and energy trying to get hospital personnel to share private medical information with me. How was it that I knew so many people who ended up hurt and hospitalized? Was it me?
But finally I realized something else had awakened me. Not my cuckoo clock—I was used
to its chiming and found it comforting. No, there was something more. . . .
Slowly, carefully, I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked around.
Sailor.
I smiled, reveling in the dream. I had had similar ones before. Repeatedly since Sailor had left town. Dreams in which Sailor came back to me.
He was sitting in the armchair by my bed. Strong arms crossed over his broad chest. Unshaven, unkempt; eyes as dark and intense as always. Brooding. Sexy. Delicious.
“What the hell happened?” he growled.
Well, that was new.
“Lily?”
And just that fast, the scene went from dreamy fantasy to cold reality.
“Sailor?”
“I haven’t been gone that long. You don’t recognize me?”
Chapter 19
He was here. He was real.
I let out a ridiculous squeak as I flung myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
But rather than returning my embrace, Sailor remained rigid. I pulled back and tried to study his face in the dark. I have excellent night vision, but all I read in his countenance was barely repressed fury.
“I said, what the hell happened to Renna and Eric?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there; I could feel it.”
I let my arms drop, sitting back on the bed and pulling the old hand-sewn quilt over me. My snowy white Victorian nightgown covered me from neck to ankle, but somehow I still felt exposed.
“How are they?” I asked.
“They’ll both survive. It’ll be a long recovery, the psychic scars worse than the physical ones.”
“Sailor, I am so very sorry. I—”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know much,” I said, swallowing hard. His chilly disposition was difficult to reconcile with the moments of closeness we had shared not so very long ago. “I really don’t know anything about what happened with Renna and Eric, but strange things have been occurring since a few days ago, at a big jewelry expo at the Cow Palace. I bought some jewelry from a woman named Griselda, who was later killed there. She was pressed. And I think someone’s been after me ever since.”
“Pressed? As in pressing a witch?”
I nodded. “And my father’s back in town, and was briefly held on suspicion of her murder. And a couple of thugs have been trailing me, but I obviously got off a lot easier than Griselda or your aunt and uncle.”
He went still. “You’re saying your father’s involved?”
“No. I mean . . . I guess I don’t really know.” Could he have done such a thing? He seemed so old when I saw him, somehow, though he’d always been strong. And accompanied by Clem and Gene, who knows what they might have done in their quest for the ring? Now the question was, How much should I share with Sailor? He was known to fly off the handle with the proper motivation.
“Here’s the thing: I think Griselda had in her possession a ring that could be used by a strong practitioner to exorcise an elemental demon. The ring has a fire opal in it and I think it’s connected to a Mexican fire demon. I think my father and others are in town looking for it. We’re having an unusual heat wave, and I think it’s connected to the fire demon coming to town.”
He swore under his breath. “Okay. What’s the connection to Renna and Eric?”
“It might just be that Renna is known to be powerful. She was on a list, as was I. One of the screwups who was following me is in the hospital”—If he survives, I thought to myself—“but the other one could have gotten to Renna.” Or Gene—he seemed more likely to be that vicious.
“You put one of them in the hospital? Good for you.”
“No, it wasn’t me. I think someone was trying to keep him quiet, maybe. I don’t know, actually.” Now that I thought about it, it wasn’t as though he was about to tell me anything. Why would anyone want to keep him from running away with my medicine bag . . . ? Or was it simply about the ring?
“You think someone followed you to Renna’s and thought you gave her something or told her something?”
“I wasn’t followed—I arrived on the scene after they’d been there. But it’s possible Griselda sent the opal ring to Renna, or they thought she did.”
“So whoever killed Griselda went after Renna and Eric. It would make sense.”
He fell silent for a moment. Silvery moonlight slid in through the sash, highlighting the strong planes of his face. I could see his jaw clenching.
Finally he blew out a loud breath, sat back in the chair, and ran his hands through his hair.
“What are we going to do about it?” I asked.
“We?” he said with the sardonic tone I knew so well. “There is no ‘we.’ I will track these folks down and make them tell me what’s going on. How can I find your father?”
“Last time I saw him was at the police station,” I lied. If Sailor went to the Hyatt and confronted him, I was afraid he would run into Gene. He wouldn’t be able to handle the situation without me. Heck, he might not be able to handle it with me.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
I felt it then, the fingers of Sailor’s psychic ability reaching out to me, trying to read my aura, my thoughts. Sailor had never been able to read my mind, for which I remained profoundly grateful. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. Still, I had never felt him try so hard, trying to force me. It ticked me off.
“Enough,” I said. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Worth a shot,” he said with a casual shrug. “You said you bought some jewelry from Griselda at the Gem Faire. Let me see it.”
We spent most of the rest of the night with him feeling the jewelry. Unlike me, Sailor had a gift for psychometry. He bent his head low over the jewelry as he inspected the pile, piece by piece. It took a long time, with me simply watching as he methodically eliminated one item after another.
There was no small talk, no discussion of where he had gone and why. I supposed now was not the time. Still, it was hard to act as though we were strangers. I found myself wondering how close to stand to him, not sure where to put my hands. Accustomed as I am to feeling awkward, this really took the cake.
Finally he reared back and blew out a loud, frustrated breath.
“Not a damned thing. It’s a bunch of junk.”
“Aidan mentioned the ring would be good at hiding its powers.”
“Aidan,” he sneered. “Where does he fit into all this?”
“He possessed the ring once, years ago, in Germany. He passed it off to a witch for safekeeping, but he thinks she might have been sending it back to him. I guess the demon’s henchmen tracked her down. She was killed, as was her sister who came to San Francisco, possibly to bring the ring back to him.”
“What’s he done to find the ring, and the killers?”
“He’s been keeping a low profile.”
“He’s hiding out while witches are being maimed and killed?” Outrage sparked in his eyes.
“I’m sure he’s doing what he can. You know how he is: He must have dozens of people working for him, trying to figure this all out. It wouldn’t do any good if he put himself in danger, much less let himself be killed.”
He stuck out his chin and gave a little shrug. “It might do some good.”
I wasn’t sure whether to smile in response. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, about us. To talk about what had happened, ask him where he had gone. But I couldn’t find the words.
Suddenly Sailor stood and reached out for me. I remained stock-still, not knowing what to do, but knowing I wanted him to touch me.
He laid his large, warm hand over the medallion on my chest.
“What about this? Aren’t these opals?”
“I wondered about it, too,” I said, shaking my h
ead. “But I’m looking for some kind of ring. And when I offered this to Clem and Zeke, they weren’t interested.”
I looked down at it. His hand still lay on it, and I was hyperaware of his fingers touching my chest.
“D-do you, uh, feel anything from it?”
At first I thought the medallion had started madly humming with vibrations, but then I realized it was the energy transferring from Sailor’s hand to my bare skin.
I looked up into his dark eyes.
A long moment of silence passed. My breathing came faster. He leaned toward me, just a tad, and I did the same . . . and then, as though in unspoken agreement, we both pulled back.
Sailor turned to look out the window, his hands riding low on his narrow hips.
He cleared his throat. “So, where do we go from here?”
“Carlos Romero was going to arrange for me to examine the jewelry from Griselda’s stand. It’s a long shot to think the item’s still there, since everything’s been gone through already, but it might be worth a look, just in case it’s managed to go undetected. The thing is . . .”
“I’m afraid to ask, but what?”
“As you just witnessed, I really suck at psychometrics.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so good at reading textiles.”
I just shrugged and shook my head.
“I’ll go with you, then.”
“Yeah. That might be a problem. I’m not sure Carlos is all that fond of you.”
“You mean he hates me.”
“That’s a little strong. I’d say he doesn’t trust you.”
“He’ll have to get in line.”
“My point is that it might be difficult to convince him to let you study the evidence with me. I’ll call and see. Are you . . . are you free today? Any plans?”
“Well I was planning on having my nails done, but I’ll put that on hold if you get us into the evidence locker.”
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