“Floating would be the least of its powers,” Red said. “Aisha, your deputies should look for an abandoned cargo truck.” The notion didn’t soothe her, unable to shake the idea that the statue had compelled him. She rummaged through her pack and pulled out a gallon-sized jar of salt mixed with rosemary and cold iron powder.
Hyperventilating loudly, Olivia clutched the threshold of the entrance into the cave, staring at the statue of Chronos.
Callaway shared a worried glance with Red. “Hey, Benston, it’s okay. Breathe. We’re going to seal this up.”
Olivia nodded and inched inside. “We need to hurry. Please.”
“Did you see someone coming?” Callaway asked.
“No.” Olivia shook her head. “It’s watching us. It wants to be here.”
Callaway groaned. “Don’t say that looking like a grown version of Children of the Corn. I’m going to guard the cliff top while y’all do your witch thing.”
Once alone, Red urged Olivia, “Focus on the sigils. Put that fear into containing it.”
Closing her eyes as if prayer, Olivia nodded. She pulled off her backpack and pulled out their supplies with shaky hands. Back firmly to the statue, she painted sigils that glistened neon on the wall to the third eye.
Red poured a sacred salt mixture around the cave, skin crawling the whole time. She felt as twitchy as the other witch looked. Rushing to the next task, she retrieved a paintbrush from her bag. It was crafted from the whiskers of a black cat, which Olivia promised packed a punch. Fingers crossed, it could make a dent. They scrawled the magical symbols to turn this cavern into a prison as quickly as they could.
“We’ll save the rest for the other door,” Olivia said, putting away a nearly empty jar of sacred oils in her pack.
“Have we done enough in here?”
“You’re asking me like I know. We can use every drop, and it might not be,” Olivia said, wringing her hands. “I can’t focus here. We don’t need to be looking at it to ignite the spell.”
“I’m not arguing.” Red gathered up their supplies and left the cave with her.
They were running by the end of the tunnel. Sunshine felt amazing after the oppressive gloom.
After they scribbled sigils on every inch of the weathered hatch, Olivia grabbed Red’s hand. “Chant quickly with me. I want to soak in cleansing salts as soon as possible.”
Red asked, “Aisha, will you grab the sage from my backpack? The lighter should be in the small pocket.”
The sheriff retrieved the items, holding the sage awkwardly as if it might explode. “Do I something special?”
Olivia replied, “You ever have a hippie roommate in college? Mimic them.”
“I went to college in Utah,” Callaway answered dryly. “My roommate was Mormon.”
“Just wave the sage around!” Olivia didn’t wait for questions. She dove into a singsong chant from her family grimoire, and Red repeated like a Greek chorus.
The back and forth stretched on as sage smoldered, agitated by the wind. Sweating, they combined their magic and forced it into the earth to their sigils. It was like closing the hood on a smoking grill. Some energy seeped out around the edges.
Good enough.
The witches hunched over, panting, and releasing hands.
Olivia puffed out, “That will hold it for now.”
Red smiled, dialing up Kristoff. “Sheriff, get your people while I start planning how to remove it. Olivia, do you think you could find more witches to help us hold the ward?” She raised her phone at her boyfriend’s answer.
Gunshots cracked the air. Callaway and Olivia stumbled into the dirt, blood staining their chests.
Red dropped the phone to run to them. A familiar sizzling wet pain dug into her side. She tumbled over, her eardrums throbbing from the blasts. A hiking boot crushed her device. Another bullet tore into her back.
“The object has been located and contained for retrieval. Waiting for extraction. Police down,” an unseen distorted female voice said as if reporting to a distant superior. She paused, listening. “Yes, I read the brief. No survivors.”
10
Chapter 11
Time Loop #92 – July 2, Sunset, California Arms Apartments, in Los Angeles, California
Red cursed the walls in her old room in LA.
She’d been so close to containing the statue. Who was that unseen shooter at the caves? It wasn’t the Bigfoot hunter as she’d speculated before. The gun blasts had damaged her hearing too much to identify the female voice.
Her killer was a professional who hadn’t paused between shots and must have been sent by the statue’s last owners. She hadn’t been surprised to find them. Was she one of the out-of-towners? She could have overheard at the diner.
Was it the black-haired woman who’d wanted to hire a witch to find a lost object? She’d been at the diner counter. She’d seemed benign, almost meek, easily the most forgettable part of her original Fourth of July. Red had figured then that the female supernatural was looking for an heirloom since the statue radiated too much energy to imagine anyone losing it.
Now, nothing felt like a coincidence.
Taking out the statue was the main objective. That seemed impossible enough without a dedicated henchwoman on the trail. Who had sent her?
Red was less scared than frustrated. Trying the same thing over and over for a different result was supposed to be the definition of insanity. She felt crazy from doing everything different and getting the same result. What hadn’t she tried?
She darted into the conjoined kitchen and living room to where her phone charged on a stand. There was a friend in LA that might know. One who still thought she was dead. If she weren’t desperate, she would have kept it that way.
The Supreme of LA answered on the second ring. Her voice wavered, “H-hello? Is this really you, chica?”
“Hey, Miss Cora,” Red said, settling onto the couch, biting the inside of her cheek, knowing what the vampire must be thinking. “This isn’t a call from beyond the grave. I’m very much alive. Beating heart and all.”
Cora replied in a blast of relieved Creole. She cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.” The airiness in her yoga teacher tone hardened. “Why now?”
“I need to pick your brain. Do you remember that warehouse that Michel de Grammont was interested in? You had me and Quinn check it out before it burned down. Did you ever find out more?”
“Couldn’t forget it, not with the story you two told. The trail ended at a defunct shell company in England. I’ve kept tabs but haven’t heard of any movements from them.” Cora dropped her voice. “Red, if you are in trouble, you can tell me. Rumor had it you were assassinated by a renegade bard.”
“That’s almost true.”
“If I hadn’t heard that Kristoff took care of her…” Cora paused, sighing. “You were mourned is all I’m saying.”
“I’m sorry for that. If it helps, you’re not the only one. I have to be off-grid for a bit,” Red said. The apology was underwhelming, but she’d always lived like a tumbleweed. She’d never sunk roots deep enough anywhere to really disappoint anyone when she left. It was an odd feeling. “The killing telegram was sent by a Mr. Gabriel. The alias hasn’t turned up anything. Does that jiggle a memory for you?”
“Now that’s interesting.” The Supreme didn’t say it like it was a good thing. “I’ve seen that name. You’re not going to believe where. When my people went through Michel’s lair, we found a list with a Mr. Gabriel on it. It was in a folder with surveillance photos of the warehouse. No title on it, just names. Another one was Archibald Fowler. Wolfmage of some infamy; it’s why I remember.”
“What about Frank Lopes? He was pretty infamous.”
The line fell into silence before Cora said, “Him too. Never did figure out why Michel was interested in him. It’s been a while, but I want to say most on the list were already dead.”
“A hit list in progress or what?”
Cora seethed, “The one-eyed bastard left it on his desk. It was older than the folder it was in, almost like he had stuffed it in there temporarily. Something to do after he stole my throne.”
This wasn’t the first time that Red had wondered what Michel had known before he was executed. He’d been a spider with a web that stretched far outside LA, gathering secrets instead of flies. His last words echoed in her ear. I would have shown you who you are…
Cora prompted, “What does this mean to you?”
“It connects some dots, but I still don’t understand the bigger picture. I think it’s helpful though. Thank you. If you could text me a picture of that list, I might figure out why he was so interested in them.”
“You know who to tell the hot gossip to. Stay safe in the meantime. It makes me happy to know you’re still raising hell out there.”
Guilt nibbled at Red. She hadn’t left Cora in the dark because she was a bad person, or well, vampire. It was more that Red didn’t need another debt over her head on the cusp of her fresh start. Or news to get back to the Blood Alliance.
She said, “You told me to spill the tea when I had it. Gary O’Sullivan is going to move against the Alchemical Synod. This time for keeps. He thinks he’s going to surprise them, but… Well, if you want to play kingmaker again, you’ll have a chance soon.”
“You made my day all over again.”
“Oklahoma City, Utah, and now Las Vegas? They’re going to start calling this the Soul Belt instead of the Sun Belt.”
Cora laughed. “I love the sound of that.”
Red had made her goodbyes and disconnected when she noticed Vic had wandered into the living room and was staring slack-jawed at her.
“You’re telling people you’re alive now?” he asked. “And how do you know that about Vegas?”
“I can’t explain again and stay sane, but Mr. Gabriel is somehow connected to this. How the hell he got onto Michel de Grammont’s radar—of all people—I don’t know. That’s not even where it ends. We’re going through the looking glass on this.” She leaped to her feet, pacing as she thought aloud to herself.
Vic was the conspiracy theorist, but right now she was ready to dive down the rabbit hole.
“Tomorrow Gary will unleash the Skull of St. Benedict. Even if I hadn’t found the business card, I should’ve guessed where he got it. It’s not something you’d buy at Walmart. But why was Mr. Gabriel on that list? Dammit, I’ve been so focused on the Bethesda Group, but that warehouse was only the storage place. It was full of goods from Uriel & Sons. They specialize in exotic imports…” Red caught her reflection in the balcony glass door. She whirled around. “What if I was one of them? An import! Don’t you get it, Vic?”
“No, I sure don’t, buddy, but that must have been some nap you had. You’re a real live wire right now.” He flashed her a fixed smile, more unnerving than comforting, like he thought she went nuts. “Could you toss out a little context for me so we both know what you’re speaking incredibly fast about?”
“Archibald Fowler had two amulets with my magic. How did he get them? If a strange wolfmage came to Charm around the time that I went missing, Gina McGregor would have recorded it. She interviewed every shifter in town. What if Fowler got those amulets from Uriel & Sons? Michel might have had a list of buyers. Not a hit list.” As she explained, Red hailed a ride on a taxi app and gathered her purse and overnight backpack by the door. “That’s not all, but I need to check something out first. You’ll have to do the Oregon drive solo.”
“Where are you going?” Vic asked.
“New Jersey,” Red said, as if she flew back east every day, and exited into the open-air hallway.
He trotted after her. “What’s in New Jersey?”
She grinned, even as she tried to stuff down the hope. “My grandparents.”
---
Descending through the morning storm clouds over the Newark airport, Red gripped her armrests and braced herself for the worst. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the airplane would fall out of the sky.
At least she was the only passenger onboard.
She’d failed to acquire a ticket at LAX despite her clean bill of health. The strict airline rules were why she’d driven into California in the first place. She had called Sheila Jones, her agent at Smith and Reaper. The shady bank could help. For a steep fee that made her wince and hope this loop reset for her financial sake.
It resulted in a flight out of San Bernardino on a dodgy economy airline that felt like a bus in the sky.
Over the entire overnight flight, her nerves only allowed her a catnap. She’d never strayed so far from the original timeline before. A part of her had always wondered if the strange spell over the statue would let her.
On her sleepless night, she’d researched her quest using the two leads that Kristoff found. She managed to reach him during a break between meetings. One of his minions, Gord the former Mountie, later emailed her with the results of his investigation.
The email contained biographies and internet links on each potential dad, one a dentist and the other a professor. The dentist had a well-documented social media history that included a young family and a bird-watching blog. Theorizing that her father must have died nearly fifteen years ago, Red crossed him off the list somewhere over the Midwest after calculating the too-recent death date.
The next candidate didn’t have a helpful Facebook profile. Even his last-known mailing address was noted to be his parents’ home. His little bio was shorter than the other, with only a link to an archived Maine University staff profile. No other internet history had been discovered.
She clicked the link on her laptop after a sip of wine and a wish to the universe. The small picture of the anthropologist revealed curly brown hair and a laid-back smile. Maybe it was a foolish hope, but it was easier to imagine Red’s archeologist mother with him. A list of publications drew her gaze from Russell Goldberg’s face. The word witch popped out at her.
That couldn’t be right.
She rubbed her straining eyes and leaned closer. Holding her breath, she skimmed through titles like From Medieval France to Starbucks: Melusine in Popular Folk Culture and Myth and Mysticism in the Arbonne Forest. Resting her hands on her trembling chest, she leaned back in her chair.
Had the folklore anthropologist found a real witch?
It wasn’t until she was dozing while reading his work that she let herself rest, uneasily trusting the universe to deliver her to New Jersey.
The plane landed like an eagle, rolling smoothly down the runway, and she was the first off. Her backpack bounced against her shoulder as she trotted through the airport to the taxi stand. No thunderbolt or out-of-control baggage trolley brought her down. There was no one in line for a car.
It was like luck was finally on her side.
She handed the cabbie an address scrawled on a napkin and slipped into the taxi. Jazz played softly on the radio as they zoomed away. A gray rain obscured the city outside the windows, leaving it a mystery. After nearly a hundred resets of morbid monotony, the novelty stirred her like a new day.
Red looked up the address, finding only a real estate value and crime rates instead of her grandparents’ names. Vic kept texting and distracting her, so she turned off her phone, deciding to conserve the battery instead. She fidgeted from sickly anticipation like waiting for the results of a biopsy. She’d tried to find her father once before and had broken her own heart when the seemingly solid lead fell apart. Would she be left empty-handed again?
Hope broke through the cynicism.
Morning rush hour slowed their progress, giving her time to practice what she would say i
f anyone turned out to be at home. What would she say, “Hi, I’m your long-lost grandchild?”
It wasn’t exactly news to toss out casually. Especially if Russell had kept his wife’s magic a secret.
The taxi’s GPS announced their arrival into a neighborhood of tidy homes with rusted fences guarding tiny lawns. It clung to the lower middle class as the nearby streets fell into decay. Her throat tightened at the sight of her destination—a one-story house. Its Venetian blinds were closed to her curiosity. The rain glossed over the edges like an old photograph.
Red fought against her vivid imagination conjuring up halcyon childhood days of visiting grandma.
“Could you wait?” she asked the cab driver, handing him the fare. Her heart skipped in her chest.
“Sure, miss.”
Pulling up her hood, she walked up to the front door. What answers were behind it? Eyes slipping closed, she lifted her fist to knock.
“That’s empty, honey.” A gravelly voice called out from next door on a covered porch. Gray hair in curlers, an old woman in a bathrobe waved from her rocking chair. She held a cup of coffee, steam rising over her friendly lipsticked smile, eyeing Red as if memorizing her for later gossip with the girls. “No one lives there anymore.”
“Thank you for letting me know. I was looking for—” Swallowing her disappointment, Red plodded over to the woman, stopping on her porch steps. She leaned her head under the metal awning. “Have you lived here a while then?”
“I might as well be the neighborhood historian. I’m Esther. And who are you?”
“Great to meet ya. Maybe you could help me,” Red said, breezing over the name request by pointing to the empty house. “Did you know the family who lived there before? They were an older couple, had an adult son.”
“The Goldbergs were lovely.” Esther wheezed out a sigh. “Shame how it ended. They died nearly a decade ago.” She set down her coffee on a wicker stand, flapping her hand. “What am I thinking? Aiden—my grandson—was born a month later, and that little delinquent is in high school. It was at least fifteen years ago. God rest their souls.”
Witch in Time: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 6) Page 16