Cara gave Amanda a mocking smile. “Have you discovered any other special abilities since then?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, come on, Amanda. You’ve been sleeping with the man for weeks, and his lupusdaemon was a slut. Are you sure it didn’t leave him with any other special attributes?”
Noreen interrupted at that point. “If no one has any serious questions for Amanda, I’ll consider the matter closed.”
Feigning an innocent expression, Cara said, “But I’m completely and totally serious, Mistress. You’re the one who is always telling us that we need to consider all of the consequences of every spell we cast.”
Cara was right, and Kyle did have one residual attribute that Amanda hadn’t mentioned the previous month. “Actually, there is something,” Amanda admitted.
Cara leaned forward eagerly. In a conspiratorial voice, she said, “Oh, do tell.”
“Kyle can see magical auras.”
Cara sat back with a puzzled expression. The revelation was apparently not what her dirty mind had imagined.
Noreen, who was aware of Kyle’s unexpected gift, frowned in disapproval. “You shouldn’t have shared that.”
The Ternion Order had requested that everyone who knew about Kyle’s ability to see magical auras keep it a secret until they could learn more about it. If all lupusdaemons had the gift, then they had managed to hide it for a very long time. As with breaking an encryption code, knowing the opposition’s secret was more useful while they remained unaware of your knowledge.
Amanda believed the covens had a right to know. If demons could detect the use of magic and identify the source element like Kyle could, they would have an advantage in any encounter with a witch who was unaware of that ability. Although they were both members of the Order, Noreen’s loyalty to the organization was much stronger than hers. For Amanda, the Order were mostly a means to an end.
“Sorry, Mistress,” Amanda said. “It kind of slipped out. I sometimes forget that not all of us are in the Order.”
The excuse was a stretch. Technically, Amanda and Noreen were the only coven members who were in the order. Jessie was married to Jonathan Pesce, a journeyman in the Order’s tactical discipline. Cara and Tanya were aware of the Order, but had expressed no interest in becoming members.
The look Noreen gave her showed that her coven leader wasn’t fooled by the lie. “None of you are to discuss Kyle’s ability here or anywhere else. Do you understand?” She looked around at the room and was answered by a chorus of “Yes, Mistress” from the other four women.
Jessie, ever the peacemaker, changed the subject. “Speaking of werewolves, Deputy Arpin brought Reggie into the hospital a few days ago. He had a nasty gash on his arm.”
Amanda clutched Jessie’s arm. “Was he okay? What happened?”
“He was fine,” Jessie said, patting Amanda’s hand. “He just needed a bunch of stitches.”
“I thought werewolves could heal themselves,” Cara said.
“They can,” Jessie confirmed, “but the cut was practically to the bone. Although he would have healed on his own eventually, the stitches closed the wound and sped things along. I’ll bet he was able to pull them out by the time he got home.”
Jessie’s reassurances only partially settled Amanda’s concerns. She didn’t care about what happened to the demon, but she did care about what happened to her brother’s body.
Thinking about the hospital incident, her thoughts took a turn that made her mouth go dry. Whatever plans she might make for getting her brother back depended on her having access to his body. What if the demon left the area for some reason?
Worse, what if the demon transferred to a new body as Clarissa had done? When a werewolf took a new body at Vollmond Ritus, the Full Moon Ritual, the previous body always died. Always. It was one reason why everyone believed the original human spirit that inhabited the body was lost forever once the demon took full possession.
Her mission to save Reggie was on borrowed time. Two years had already been lost since he was possessed. How much longer did she have? There was no way to know. She might have years, months, or only weeks. Or it might already be too late.
While Amanda fretted silently, Noreen took control of the conversation. “Moving on, I have several ideas for topics we can explore next. I’d like to focus on Tanya’s training, so we may have to cover some ground that is already familiar to some of you.”
“You don’t have to make special arrangements for me,” Tanya objected. “We should work on something that will benefit everyone.”
“It’s always about her,” Cara complained. “There are four of us here, and I think we all deserve consideration.”
Jessie shrugged and said, “What’s the difference? Anything we practice will improve everyone’s skills.”
Noreen’s annoyed gaze flicked from speaker to speaker. Then she stared at Amanda with a raised eyebrow, waiting for her to chime in.
Amanda had an idea that might settle the matter. “Divination,” she suggested.
Cara clapped her hands together. “Yes, please! That sounds like fun.”
Cara liked the idea because divination was literally in her element: air. For most of the spell castings, she would be prime, the witch who performed the working, and the rest of them would be pillars, the supporting witches at each compass point on the casting circle.
Noreen gazed steadily at Amanda. She narrowed her eyes in consideration and then nodded. “All right, we’ll start with divination. Did you have anything specific in mind?”
Divination covered a lot of ground, but for Amanda’s purposes, there was one area that would be most useful in the near term. She tried to be nonchalant about her suggestion. “How about location spells?”
“Location spells,” Noreen repeated. “That is rather specific. Do you seek something in particular? Or someone perhaps?”
Noreen undoubtedly suspected Amanda’s true intentions. As her coven mistress and her former training master for the Order, Noreen knew Amanda far too well. The question was whether or not she would interfere. Noreen had opposed Amanda’s exorcism of Kyle’s demon because she thought it was too dangerous, but in the end, she had helped Amanda perform the ceremony.
As long as Amanda respected the needs of the entire coven, Noreen probably wouldn’t get in her way. “We should probably practice object and person location spells. The spells work differently, and they’re both useful.”
Noreen stared at Amanda for a moment, debating the suggestion. She looked around the room and saw the eagerness in the faces of the other coven members. “All right. Location spells it is. We’ll do object location first. Cara, you will be prime. Tanya, I want you to pay close attention because you will be prime for the second casting.”
“Yes, mistress,” Tanya responded.
Object location was generally easier than person location, so the approach made sense. Amanda could be patient and wait for the chance to practice person location, which was what she truly wanted. When the time was right, she had to be able to find Reggie no matter where he might be.
Chapter 5
Desecration
The next morning, the jarring ring of the phone awakened Amanda from a Sunday-morning sleep-in at Kyle’s. After a disturbing and brief conversation with Lucille, Amanda and Kyle were out the door within minutes, driving to the farm as fast as traffic and safety allowed.
Amanda opened the passenger door and jumped out as soon as the Explorer’s tires slid to a stop. Kyle turned off the engine and was right behind her as she hurried toward the farmhouse.
Lucille stood waiting for them at the screen door. Her glaring eyes and furrowed brow reflected the anger and concern Amanda had heard in her voice when she called to let them know that someone had broken in and ransacked Amanda’s workspace. Amanda wasn’t sure what to expect, but her heart was in her throat in anticipation of what she might find.
Amanda slowed in response to a nagging feeling and suddenly came to a stop
. Kyle bumped into her and mumbled an apology. She held up a hand to silence him. “Wait. Something’s wrong.”
Hayworth Farm was a designated Order sanctuary, and, as such, it was warded against trespass. Amanda had set those wards herself, so their presence hummed reassuringly in the back of her mind whenever she was within their perimeter. Standing quietly, she sensed nothing. “The wards are down,” she said.
Lucille frowned. “I suspected as much. When you come inside, you’ll see why.”
Amanda followed Lucille into the house and up the stairs to her office. She stood at her office door, stunned by the mess that greeted her. Every drawer and file had been dumped onto the bed. The thief had taken Amanda’s computer, pulling free all of the cords and leaving all of the peripherals behind.
“Can you tell if anything is missing?” Kyle asked, looking over her shoulder into the room.
“My computer,” she answered in a subdued tone. “I’ll have to reorganize everything before I can tell what else they might have taken.”
As Amanda walked farther into the room, a chill worked its way up her spine. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and realized she was shaking. Thank goodness Lucille had taken an overnight trip to Spokane, and she had been at Kyle’s house when the intruders broke in. Amanda whipped her head toward Lucille. “Could they still be here in the house somewhere?” she said in a whisper.
“No,” Lucille answered without hesitation. “This has been my home all my life. I would know if anyone unwelcome were here. A stench lingers just from their passing through.”
Amanda nodded and relaxed a bit, trusting her psychic friend’s instincts. Then she jumped at the rumble of an arriving vehicle outside.
Lucille gave her a reassuring wave of her hands. “I called the Order. They said we shouldn’t touch anything until their techs have had a chance to investigate.”
Amanda nodded again and visually inspected the mess, hoping to spot a pattern that would reveal the thieves’ intentions. One word immediately came to mind: thorough.
“There’s more,” Lucille said. She hesitated before adding, “They visited the moon shrine.”
Dread gripped her heart as Amanda hurried past Kyle and Lucille to the attic stairwell. She ran up the steps and paused in the open doorway at the top. Her nose tingled from a metallic odor, and it was then that she became certain they weren’t dealing with ordinary thieves.
The bench Amanda used for her altar had been tipped over, her glass water pitchers shattered into pieces across the wooden floor. Her bookshelves had been emptied of the tomes and artifacts she’d carefully arranged upon them. The books had been thrown haphazardly into a pile as if they were fuel for a bonfire. Every other item had been hurled against the back wall, the more fragile items reduced to a heap of broken trash along the baseboard.
But the state of her casting circle disturbed Amanda most of all. The five-foot-diameter circle was engraved into a two-inch concrete pad with round candle depressions at each of the cardinal compass points. When casting spells, Amanda poured holy water into the circle to purify the workspace and protect herself from dark spirits. Someone had filled the circle with a dark red liquid.
As Kyle came up the stairs behind her, Amanda took a few stumbling steps into the room. Unable to believe the scope of the desecration, she uttered a cry of despair. Her stomach lurched, and she dropped to her knees with her hands covering her mouth. Tears mercifully obscured her vision.
Kyle knelt next to her and put his arm around her. He probably didn’t fully understand the depth of the violation he was witnessing, but he had no difficulty interpreting her reaction to it. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t believe someone did this. It seems so … extreme.”
Amanda closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe evenly, fighting against hiccups. Kyle was right. What someone had done to her precious moon shrine was extreme. Hateful, even. And dark. Oh, so very dark.
In spite of the early afternoon sun pushing into the room through the glass cupola, the space was gloomy with shadows that seemed thick enough to taste. The blood that desecrated her circle had not only wiped away every vestige of her most recent consecration, but it had attracted dark spirits like a carcass attracted vultures. It would take days of cleansing before she could use the moon shrine again, and she’d probably need help to eliminate the spiritual stain.
While she stared sadly at her ruined casting circle, a flash of violet caught Amanda’s attention. Crawling on hands and knees, she moved to the edge of the concrete pad. Sitting at the center of the circle was a small black figurine of a frog with tiny violet gemstones for eyes. The gems caught the light perfectly, reflecting it directly into her eyes.
Had something survived all the destruction? She didn’t remember owning a black frog figurine. But it was beautiful, and she felt compelled to hold it. She reached out to pick it up, but Kyle’s hand grabbed her arm when her fingers were just inches away.
An edge of panic tinged his raised voice, ripping her attention from the frog. “I said, don’t touch it!”
Waking from the daze that had gripped her, Amanda snatched her hand back from the figurine and sat back on her heels. She turned her head and looked at Kyle uncomprehendingly. “Why are you yelling at me?”
Kyle waved his hand in front of her face. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? There’s something wrong with that thing.”
“He’s right. Stay back,” said a male voice from behind them. Amanda and Kyle turned around to discover a tall figure standing in the doorway. He wore a knee-length black duster over black jeans and a black silk shirt. To complete the dark ensemble, he wore a wide-brimmed felt hat, also black. All he needed was a white priest’s collar and he would look like a refugee from a Saturday Night Live skit.
The man strode forward and knelt at the edge of the concrete pad. He muttered what sounded like a prayer and reached toward the frog. As his hand crossed the red-filled circle, a blood-freezing screech filled the room. An unseen force hurled the man backward. He hit the floor in a tuck and rolled smoothly to his feet, as if he’d practiced the maneuver dozens of times. He picked up his hat and brushed at his duster, giving the figurine a disdainful glance. “Cursed. Just as I suspected.”
“Who are you?” Amanda asked, getting to her feet.
The man stepped forward and held out his hand. “Amanda Clark, I presume? I’m Father Guido Sarducci.”
Amanda hesitated before shaking his warm hand. His deadpan expression and dark eyes gave no hint of a jest. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
He winked at her and smiled. “Admit it. That’s what you were thinking.”
Amanda lowered her eyes and felt her cheeks heat. “Maybe a little.”
He released her hand and shook Kyle’s. “Nathaniel Blackstone of the Ternion Order at your service.” Tilting his head toward the desecrated casting circle, he added, “Cleaning up this mess won’t be easy.”
“So it seems,” Amanda agreed. After watching Blackstone get blasted half-way across the room, she was sure that won’t be easy was an understatement. Amanda frowned at the frog and the sinister violet glint of its eyes, embarrassed at how easily it had beguiled her. “You said the figurine is cursed?”
Blackstone slowly walked around the casting circle, using the toe of his boot to kick aside the shards of glass and ceramic that littered the floor. “Indeed. A strong one, at that. Someone really doesn’t like you.”
Granted. But who?
The Selkirk Pack was the obvious answer, but the only magic the werewolves could command was their ability to heal themselves and to transform.
The desecration of Amanda’s moon shrine appeared to be the work of a dark coven. Yet the Order had stamped out every known dark coven long ago. The few that were rumored to still exist were as secretive as they were rare. Invading a sanctuary of the Order and using dark magic so openly was like sending up a signal flare. It was as if they were daring the Order to come after them.
“What would it have done to me?” she asked. “Do you know?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’ll know more when I dismantle it, but my guess is that it was designed to lure you and kill you.”
Amanda’s mouth dropped open. Her blood froze when she thought about how close she had come to falling into the trap. Kyle put his arm around her to comfort her, and she touched her hand to his to let him know she appreciated it. She’d been in some nasty scrapes, but no one had set out to take her life before. Circumstances were worse than she had imagined.
“What I’d like to know,” Blackstone continued, nodding toward Kyle, “is how your friend knew about it.”
Kyle hesitated and looked at Amanda for guidance. She nodded encouragement to answer since Blackstone was apparently there to help. He would need all the information they could provide.
“I can see an aura when magic is active,” Kyle explained. He pointed at the frog. “That thing was drawing Amanda to it with some kind of violet energy.”
Blackstone took a step closer to Kyle and looked directly into his eyes. “Interesting. Tell me, Kyle: does violet energy have special meaning to you?”
A brief look of confusion crossed Kyle’s face. “How do you know my name?”
Blackstone smiled. “How could I not? You’re famous. The first person to survive the werewolf’s curse.”
Kyle gave Blackstone a sidelong look. “You mean the second.”
Blackstone scoffed. “Technically you’re the second, but not from a practical standpoint. The first survivor of a lupusdaemon exorcism was murdered by the local pack three days later.”
Kyle’s face went pale, and Amanda returned his favor by slipping her arm around his waist. “How do you know that?” she asked Blackstone. “I couldn’t find anything about the survivor of the first exorcism.”
Demon Witch (The Ternion Order Book 2) Page 3