Phantom Quartz: A Stacy Justice Witch Mystery Book 6 (Stacy Justice Magical Mysteries)

by Barbra Annino

  One thing was sure. I would die before I let anything happen to my cousin or her baby.

  Cinnamon was chattering about the baby gifts the aunts and Birdie had bestowed upon her as we gathered up the food and locked up the Black Opal. I walked her to her car, threads of happiness ribboned around her head like a halo.

  Thor came trotting around the corner then, the white rabbit riding on his back. “Hey, Big Man. How’s the training going?”

  Thor grumbled and his lips flapped as if to say, the kid needs work. His tail thumped against Cinnamon’s car, and the rabbit bobbed up and down. Thor sent me a picture of Cinnamon’s house.

  My cousin stopped and turned toward me. “He’s doing it again, isn’t he?”

  Ever since Cinnamon had gotten pregnant, Thor had taken it upon himself to act as her personal bodyguard.

  “Yes, but this time he brought backup,” I said.

  Cin took a closer look and spotted the bunny. Her face turned all squishy. “Oh my god, that’s the cutest freaking thing ever.”

  She stopped, confused at her own emotions and possibly at the use of the word ‘cute’. Apparently the cannoli—whatever the hell was in it anyway—was wearing off. She walked over and caressed the rabbit. He didn’t flinch at her touch as he had with mine. In fact, it sounded like he was purring.

  “I think that’s your baby gift from Thor, Cin. Although I do believe they are a package deal for the moment.”

  Cin shot me a look of dismay. “Are you serious?”

  I shrugged. “You can either let him climb in now or they’ll just follow you home. Your choice.”

  “Fine.” Her phone chirruped then and she checked it. “It’s Tony, threatening to come and get me if I’m not home in five minutes.”

  While she texted Tony back, I walked around and opened the passenger door. The bunny hopped in the front seat and I tilted it forward a bit so Thor could settle in the back. I set the food on the front floorboard, then leaned into the vehicle.

  “Precious cargo, boy. Keep her safe,” I said to Thor.

  He leaned his huge head down, pinned his ears back, and a murderous rumble gurgled in his gut before it charged the length of his throat and out his mouth. His lips curled up and over lethal fangs. He snapped twice, snarled savagely, and a deep, penetrating roar that I felt all the way down to my toes ripped from his throat. If he weren’t my dog, I would have had to change my underwear.

  “Show off,” I said.

  He grouched and set his eyes forward, ears erect. I shut the door.

  I walked around to Cinnamon as she opened the driver’s side door. She climbed into the seat, but before I locked her inside, I stopped. A quiet hum buzzed from the baby bag on the seat next to the bunny, and something glowed through the opening, calling to me clearly is if it were shouting my name.

  “Cin, do you still have the phantom quartz in there?” I pointed to the bag.

  “Yeah, why?” She shoved the key in the ignition and started the car.

  “May I see it?”

  She reached over and plucked the quartz from the quilted bag, handed it to me. It glowed and warmed in my hand, pulsating with urgency.

  Cinnamon said, “Wow, I didn’t know it could do that. With me, it just—” She stopped abruptly. Clamped her mouth shut.

  I narrowed my eyes. “With you it just what?”

  “Nothing.”

  The quartz was heating up in my hand, my skin imprinting on the crystal. “Cinnamon, tell me.”

  She shot me a lopsided grin. “It just shows me pictures. Not of the baby, but tiny little socks, bibs, onesies. And hats. Lots of hats.” She shrugged. “That’s all.”

  The vibration was so strong now it shook my hand, telling me that I had to hold onto the quartz, that it was the key to...something. “Listen, is it all right if I keep it until the baby comes? I was thinking with all the people around, it might be best for now. Don’t want to charge it with any other energy. As soon as she comes, all the Geraghtys can help me bless it in her presence.”

  Cin stared at the crystal for a long while and her eyes danced away on a moonbeam, as if entranced. I took that moment to hold the quartz, flat side down where the reception was best, to her swollen belly. I closed my eyes and called to Brighid, goddess of fertility and unity, and asked her to infuse the crystal with the spirit of the baby and my own energy. The heat from the crystal ran up the length of my arm and webbed around my entire body in a swirl of stardust. It exploded into the air like fireworks then rained down all around us and sailed straight through Cinnamon’s womb.

  She jolted from her mesmerized state and said, “Whoa, that’s weird. I feel all tingly.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. What were you saying?” she asked, a bit breathless. “Right. The quartz. You can hang onto it if you think that’s best. It’s heavy anyway.”

  I tucked the phantom quartz into my bag and shut the door to Cin’s Trans Am, wondering if she would soon be trading it in for an SUV.

  As she drove away, I felt a shift in the night air as huge fluffy flakes began to fall from the sky. I lifted my head, opened my mouth to catch some of the icy cold glitter like Cin and I used to do when we were kids.

  Something clicked within me as the first snowflake tickled my tongue. A lever pulled. Shades drawn. A door locked.

  Signs that when this was all over, none of us would ever be the same.

  Chapter 36

  The Jeep was parked back behind the bar, and as I got close to it a figure walked past. Stocky build, dark hair, determined gait. The closer I got, the more familiar he felt. When he reached the light near the neon beer sign, it illuminated his angular features, and I could have sworn it was Uncle Deck.

  “Hey!” I ran towards him.

  He didn’t look back, just dashed away. I chased him to the end of the block, the snow falling faster now, whipping wind all around me that seemed to smack me away. The hand of an invisible god holding me at bay.

  He broke around the corner and when I made the turn, he was gone. My head darted left to right down a Main Street of darkened windows and extinguished holiday lights. The only light was a candlelit glow from tired antique lamp-posts that stood guard every few yards like forgotten soldiers. I hunched over, catching my breath for a minute. Tendrils of defeat and betrayal crawled into my heart and tied it up in knots.

  I turned back and hurried toward my car, exhaustion settling into my bones. I had just rounded the corner when something reached out and grabbed me.

  No. Someone. I elbowed the attacker in the ribs, stomped my boot into their foot, and spun around to find someone wearing a ski mask and sunglasses, taller than me, with a wiry build. I felt for the throwing star in my back pocket.

  The blow from behind came before I could use it.

  As my knees buckled and the world faded into a cloud of smoke and mirrors, I felt hands around my throat, grabbing, tugging, pulling. Heard an anxious hiss from an indecipherable, husky voice.

  “Where is it?”

  Where was what?

  The tart aroma of desperation accompanied the hands that moved all around my body, searching.

  My blurred vision cut out completely as another voice came, crackled as burning leaves. “We’ll have to take her.”

  That’s when I clicked the poisoned pen stuck in my cleavage. The head hunched over me screamed in agony as the venom from a thousand fire ants found its target.

  When I came to, he was there. I felt the leather, the revolver, saw the dark hair and warm eyes. The scent of protection, musky and strong, like a lion. Uncle Deck.

  My eyelids fluttered open. It was still dark. Still night.

  “Are you okay? Stacy, can you hear me?” Leo asked.

  I twisted my neck, winced in pain, certain I had felt Deck, but no. It was Amethyst’s current police chief hovering over me.

  Crouched next to him was Chance. “Baby, can you move? Is anything broken?” His face was tight, and a world of worry clouded his blu
e eyes.

  I lay there for a moment blinking myself alert, threading apart fact from fiction. Had I seen Uncle Deck? Did someone actually hit me? I felt around the back of my head. There was a lump, but no blood.

  “Did you slip and fall?” Leo asked.

  “I think...someone hit me in the head,” I said.

  “Who hit you?” Chance asked, anger rising from him in steamy coils.

  “I don’t know.” I felt around for Birdie’s healing energy. Nothing was broken, just a splitting headache. “I think there were two of them.”

  Could it have been one of the guys from the bar fight earlier? Retaliation for getting his ass handed to him by a woman? Or was it the shifter? I tried to make sense of the voices. Male or female? I couldn’t recall. They both seemed...disguised somehow.

  “Do you want to go to the hospital?” Leo asked.

  “No. I’m fine, really.” I tried to get up, but the two of them insisted on lifting me to me feet. Leo cringed at what I assumed was another zap from coming in contact with me.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Chance said, “It’s eleven-thirty. I came by to take you home. Thought you’d be too tired to drive.”

  “It just happened, then.” Cin and I had left the bar at eleven. So I couldn’t have been out that long. Maybe whoever hit me saw Chance pull up and decided not to take me.

  Take me. Geez, I had almost forgotten that part.

  “Why are you here?” I asked Leo.

  He said, “I was on patrol and Chance flagged me down.” He looked at me with concern. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded.

  “Then let’s go to the station and fill out a report,” Leo said.

  I sighed. “Leo, I’m tired. Besides, I have no idea who did this. All I saw was a ski mask and black sunglasses. I can tell you the creep was a bit taller than me and lean. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman. And I never even saw the one who hit me.”

  Leo let that sink in for a moment, his eyes held mine for longer than they should have.

  “I’ll take you home.” Chance was staring at Leo when he said that.

  Leo ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Gus said there was another fight at the bar besides the two women he arrested. Two men. What did they look like?”

  He flipped out a notebook and I gave him the description, although I doubted it was those two twitwiffles. Whoever attacked me wanted something they thought I had. Something that was valuable enough to contemplate kidnapping me. Something...around my neck.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

  “What?” Both of them asked.

  The locket. Someone else wanted the amulet. Terrific. Not only was I a marked woman, but I had two targets on my back.

  “Did you remember something? Did they say anything to you?” Leo asked.

  I sighed. “No. Nothing.” If I told either of them what I had heard, I’d never get to pee alone again. “Look, it’s been a long day and I just want to get some sleep.”

  Leo said, “You can’t sleep. You took a knock to the noggin. You could have a concussion.”

  Chance said, “He’s right, babe. You need to stay awake tonight.”

  “What are you, doctors now?” I snapped. I picked my bag up off the sidewalk and checked to see if everything was still inside. The phantom quartz was there along with my wallet, phone and tablet.

  “Is anything missing?” Leo’s voice was like a trombone. Hi and low at the same time, hopeful, but cautious.

  “No.”

  Chance pulled me close to him, his arms tingling with fear. I knew what he was thinking—that the attack might have been a sexual assault if he hadn’t shown up. I couldn’t tell him the truth now, with Leo standing there, but I would. Eventually. I owed him that much.

  He kissed me softly and said, “Come on. Let’s go home.” He held me tight, like I was made of sand that might slip through his fingers, as we walked to his truck.

  Leo called out, “Don’t let her sleep, Stryker.”

  Chance said, “I can take care of my lady, Warick.”

  I hated it when they called each other by their last names.

  Chance opened the passenger door and lifted me up and onto the seat, kissed me quick, then locked and shut the door. He ran around to the front of the truck, not looking in either direction, hopped in and slammed his own door shut, then screeched away from the curb.

  It felt like I was trapped in the scene of a bad movie where Chance had just crashed a wedding and I was the runaway bride.

  I studied his face as he drove to the cottage. His sea glass eyes were crinkled just at the corners, filled with waves of torrent. A shadow of stubble ran along his jawline and threads of gold webbed through his hair like tinsel. He emitted a soft radiance sometimes at night when he was with me. As if he were backlit by an invisible sun that only I could see.

  Finally, I had to break the silence because I could feel there was more to his prickly mood than what had happened. “Your lady? You could have just grunted and tossed me over your shoulder. Maybe peed a circle around my legs. That would have been less subtle.”

  He cut his eyes to me briefly and I could see he was going to hold onto his frustration a while longer like a petulant child.

  “I don’t like the way he looks at you”

  “And how does he look at me?”

  He had both hands on the steering wheel, maneuvering the truck up the hill as the snow spread a layer of frosting across the hood. “Like a present with his name on it that he never got to unwrap.”

  “That’s very poetic. You should write that on a bathroom wall somewhere.”

  Chance slammed his hand into the steering wheel, rattling me. He wasn’t the kind of man who angered easily, and I had to admit I hated that I could dig in and pull it out of him.

  “Dammit, Stacy, I’m serious. The guy is always around you. It’s like...he’s got a trace on you or something.” He glanced at me, his jaw hard. “Don’t you find it odd that he’s always nearby whenever something happens to you? Whenever you’re in trouble, the guy just shows up, like you lit the bat signal.”

  My head told me to tread cautiously, but my mouth and my brain weren’t on speaking terms. “He’s the chief of police, Chance. Of course he comes when a crime is committed. It just so happens that I’m a magnet for psychopaths, and I can’t help that. I really think you’re overreacting.”

  We pulled into my driveway, and the audible tension that followed left me feeling like there was a bee buzzing in my ear, warning me not to stick my hand in the hive.

  He turned, draped his arm across the seat. “Really? You think I’m overreacting?”

  Apparently my ears weren’t communicating with my mouth either, because I said, “Yes, I do. You sound like Fred Flintstone.”

  He set his jaw. “I heard about the little rescue operation today. When the cave collapsed? Was there a psychopath chasing you around then?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “There may have been a psychopath, but I’m pretty sure he was dead.”

  “Your sarcasm really isn’t helping.”

  “It never does, but that part is actually true.”

  He looked at me long and hard for a moment, as though cautious about speaking his mind, but with Chance it was all or nothing. He’d never be the kind of guy to sit on a bench and hold his wife’s purse while she shopped. He’d either be in the store helping her pick out a new dress or playing basketball with his friends.

  “You know what I think? I think you like the attention,” he said. Which was the wrong thing to say to a witch with a blade in her boot.

  “Tread lightly, buddy. I’m feeling stabby at the moment, and I’m always a little pumped up after a near death experience.”

  He looked out the windshield for a moment. Finally, he said, “I can practically see a wire connecting the two of you. It’s like some sort of tether that stretched, but never broke.”

  I twisted to face him. “
That’s ridiculous, and jealousy is not a good look on you.”

  “I am not jealous of Leo, Stacy. I just don’t like how chummy you are with your ex.”

  I truly didn’t know what he was talking about. Leo was in my life, yes. But it wasn’t like we had lunch together or chatted on the phone or texted. I only ever saw him in an official capacity. “Where is this insecurity coming from, Chance? God, I love you. Don’t you know that?”

  He turned his head away, shook it, and I caught his reflection in the pane of glass as he covered his mouth with his hand. He held it there a while, trying to swallow a question he didn’t want to know the answer to. But he asked it anyway.

  “Do you love him, Stacy?”

  He lifted his head slowly, cautiously. We both waited for a bomb to detonate.

  I chose my words cautiously because I’d sworn, after I had told him my secret, that I would never lie to him again. Sometimes I didn’t tell him things right away. Sometimes I might omit something temporarily, like Tisiphone’s warning, because it wouldn’t do any good to worry him. But I always got around to it sooner or later.

  I reached for his hand. It was as warm as an electric blanket. “Whatever Leo and I had was brief, and now it’s over. I am utterly, devotedly in love with you, Chance. You’ve held my heart and my secrets in the palm of your hand for as long as I can remember. I don’t trust just anyone with that. You’re like the moon to me. A beacon of light that shines on even the darkest nights. You remind me of what’s real and what’s worth fighting for. You’re my best friend because you’re thoughtful, funny, generous and kind. You’re what I want at the end of every day, because you’re the strongest, softest place to land in the entire world, and I wish I could be like that, but I’m not so I siphon it from you and it makes me feel like I can conquer anything. Like I really am who they think I am, and you know something? I feel so much better, so much more at peace because of that. Just knowing there’s someone like you in the world gives me hope. Because you taught me that acceptance is a choice. You took me for who I was and that gave me the courage to do the same. I’ll always be grateful to you for that lesson. There’s not much I’ve learned in the way of honesty and loyalty from anyone else in the world. But from you, it’s a daily reminder of what made me fall for you in the first place. Because it’s us. It’s why we fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It’s why we’ll always be unshakeable.”