Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  Philip blanched at the reproach. “N-No, of course not,” he stammered. “That didn’t come out right. What I meant was, I was worried and I wanted to see if I could help.”

  Maggie’s frown relaxed a bit. After a moment, she uncrossed her arms. Damn it. She was just getting used to working alone. “Okay. Well, there is one thing I can think of that I need help with.”

  Philip stood up straight and offered a facetious salute. “Yes, ma’am. Your wish is my command.”

  Maggie shook her head and wished he weren’t so cute when he was being stupid. “Dinner,” she said. “I hate eating alone. Will you join me?”

  Philip lowered his salute and smiled. “Well, of course. Worth the drive here alone.”

  Maggie smiled back. She might as well enjoy dinner. She’d snuck out of the hotel in Ayrsduff without him seeing her. She was sure could do it just as well again.

  *

  Dinner was nice enough, although it did drag a little as Maggie pretended not to be wishing it away. The after-dinner chat in the lobby was a bit less bearable. Dusk was settling down invitingly. When Philip suggested a walk under the stars that were blinking into the sky to taunt her, it was too much.

  “I-I’m sorry, Philip,” she said. “I’m not feeling all that great. I think I better just go to bed.”

  “Oh,” said Philip simply, but obviously crestfallen. “Okay. Sure. Uh, I hope you feel better. Should we meet for breakfast tomorrow?”

  Maggie offered a friendly smile. “Of course. Tomorrow sounds perfect. I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow.”

  Philip returned the smile. “Me too then.”

  And Maggie hurried to her suite to await the night.

  *

  She knew she had to wait for more than just the onset of darkness. Before Philip arrived, when she still had some anonymity, it might have done to go out around ten o’clock, but with her Canadian suitor in the next room, she needed to wait until midnight.

  Just as well, she thought. If she was going to break into a deconsecrated church to reclaim a lost book of dark magic—and she was—she couldn’t think of a better hour to do it.

  She set the alarm on her cell phone and allowed herself a cat nap. At 11:50, her phone beeped and she swung her feet onto the floor. It was time to go. Phone into pocket, flashlight into hand, and Maggie into hallway. A minute later she was outside, comfortable no one had seen her. She didn’t hear the other door creak as she went by.

  She hurried across the wet grass directly to the kirk. She was curious about the graves, but she would feel much better inspecting them after she had her Dark Book in her hands again. The front door of the kirk had been resealed with new wooden planks—a repair since her last burglary. But, even without the Book, she could enter just as easily as she had then. Combining muscle and magic, she quickly removed the boards and slipped inside, not even bothering to close the door behind her. It didn’t matter. The Book was only yards away.

  There was almost no light. The moon either hadn’t risen yet or was too dim to help. Faint stars were visible through the gaps in the boards covering the stone-framed window above the floorstone that rested over the Dark Book.

  Again the levitation spell. She knew it meant another nightmare, but she didn’t care. She’d gladly suffer a night of bad dreams to wake up next to her Book in the morning. Ever since she’d lost it, its disappearance had lurked in the back of her mind, interfering with more immediate thoughts, clouding her judgment, impairing her ability to see connections and deduce answers. She was sure that once the Book was in her hands again, she would see clearly what had been going on all around her.

  The heavy stone rose easily, the magic fueled by Maggie’s anticipation, and she guided it to one side with a wave of her hand. She dropped to her knees and reached into the gap recklessly, just like that day in the Ancient Book Collection. And just like that day in the library, her hand felt the worn leather of the Dark Book of Rights and Damnation. Her Book of Rites and Damnation.

  She carefully extracted the ancient tome from its hiding spot. She clutched it to her chest and choked back a sob.

  “Finally.”

  And her mind finally calmed down enough to realize what had bothered her about Philip’s explanation of how he’d known she was at Park.

  She never told Ellen she was going to Park.

  Then her phone chirped, a deafening beep in the silence of the ancient church. She shoved a scrambling hand in to her pocket and yanked out her phone.

  There was a text. From Ellen.

  Dougie traced the emails. They came from YOUR laptop. You sent them to yourself.

  Maggie frowned at the text, not understanding. But she didn’t have time to figure it out. The blow to the back of her head knocked her quite unconscious.

  44. Last Rite

  Her name was Maggie Devereaux.

  She had the second worst headache of her life.

  And something smelled terrible.

  Last time, the smell—she’d soon learned—was the smell of recent death. This smell—she’d since learned—was the smell of old death. Decay. The grave.

  In part because of the pain in her head, and in part because she was afraid of what she might see, Maggie delayed opening her eyes while she assessed her situation as best she could.

  Her hands were bound behind her back. Her ankles were bound too. She was outside, the air cool, the grass damp, and the ground bumpy. She was, she knew, not alone.

  She opened her eyes.

  She found herself inside a circle of standing stones. She recognized them. They were the ones from her last nightmare. And now she knew they were the ones at Callanish too. She’d been transported there somehow, likely in the boot of someone’s car. But, as troubling as the circumstances were, they could have been worse.

  “At least I’m not in a grave,” she whispered to herself.

  “Not yet,” came a cold reply.

  Maggie recognized the voice. Just like in her dream. But it wasn’t her mother. She looked over at the woman standing at the center of the stone circle—the tomb. “Sarah MacKenzie.”

  “Oh, Maggie,” Sarah folded her hands melodramatically across her chest, “you remembered me. It’s so nice to be remembered after you’ve passed away.”

  “You’re not dead,” Maggie observed.

  Sarah laughed. She was definitely not dead. Indeed, she looked quite lively, animated even, as she stood over an open casket, surrounded by the circle’s thirteen interior stones. She was smiling ear to ear, her hair blowing in the breeze, and Maggie’s Dark Book in her hands.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” she replied. “That was a necessary ruse. I needed cover for what I had planned. And for what I did to Derek unplanned. It was easy enough to find a transient about my age and size. It was also relatively easy to strangle her to death with a length of rope. The hard part was hoisting her over the door. And waiting two days to call the police. I thought a little extra decomposition might discourage too aggressive of attempts at identifying the body.”

  She grinned at the memory, obviously pleased with her own cleverness.

  “But don’t worry.” She went on, gesturing grandly toward the box at her feet. “We’ve got plenty of dead people in here.” She frowned into the coffin, then looked back at Maggie with a dark grin. “Well, parts of them anyway.”

  Maggie winced.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” Sarah assured as she stepped back over to where Maggie lay helpless, “you get used to the smell. Well, I did anyway. I’ve even come to like it, because I know what it means.”

  Maggie felt her head clearing. She subtly tested the bonds on her hands. They were tight. Maybe the burning spell, she thought. It would hurt, but likely not nearly as much as whatever Sarah had planned. Keep her talking. “What does it mean?”

  “It means the white magic is coming back, Maggie.” Sarah turned again, pacing between her live and her dead victims. “Isn’t that wonderful? And it’s all thanks to you and your ancesto
rs. And your book.”

  “Oh, well, great,” Maggie replied. “You’re welcome. Glad to have helped. Can I go now?”

  Sarah laughed. A long, disturbing laugh. “Oh, no. You’re the key to this entire endeavor, dear Maggie. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Maggie nodded weakly. “I figured.” She pulled again at her wrists, but the rope didn’t budge. She wondered if she could burn the ropes at her wrists and ankles at the same time. No use having her hands free if she couldn’t stand up. Well, less use anyway.

  “I realized my mistake at Visegrád,” Sarah went on. She stopped at the coffin and leaned onto its edges, as if examining her reflection in some unseen fountain. “I thought the magic was still here. In the air. Just waiting to be tapped into. But it’s gone, isn’t it, Maggie? It’s gone. But not forever. Nothing is forever. They’re about to clone mammoths from frozen bones. And I realized that’s where the magic is too. In the bones of those who used it.”

  “My ancestors,” Maggie realized.

  “Exactly,” Sarah answered. “I can do research too, my little student. It didn’t take long to find the graves of everyone from you back to your glorious Healer ancestor. The magic is in their bones, and now their bones are together again.”

  But then Sarah frowned and her brow creased deeply. “Well, not everyone. We’re missing two.”

  Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. Her mother and grandmother hadn’t been disturbed after all.

  “I didn’t get the most recent bones I needed,” Sarah admitted with a scowl. “I had that planned out too, but I trusted a man to do it, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s never to trust a man.”

  Maggie didn’t really care about Sarah’s romantic history. But she was curious what had happened to spare her most immediate relatives from the unseemly fate of her older forebears. Plus it gave her time to remember the burning spell and consider how to administer it as maybe just a smoldering-and-weakening-the-rope spell. “What happened?”

  “I discovered a Canadian professor on his way to Aberdeen,” Sarah explained. “He was from Vancouver, not far from where your mother and grandmother are buried. I would have preferred someone even closer, but fortune grants wishes in her own ways. It was simple enough to friend him online and then start sending suggestive messages until he thought he’d arrive in the Highlands with a Scottish girlfriend ready to service his every desire. He had quite the interest in the occult—or so he claimed—but when he got here he didn’t bring the bones I told him to bring. He said he’d do it, but he didn’t. I told him exactly what to do, exactly where to go and what to get. I needed to start with a backbone. Your mother’s backbone. Something sturdy upon which to build the frame of a new white magic wielder. But he failed me. He said he thought I was joking. I wasn’t joking. And I showed him I wasn’t joking.”

  “So you killed him?” Maggie asked, certain now that she would be lucky to escape with only burnt wrists and ankles.

  “Well, I admit I lost my temper,” Sarah said. “I gave him a chance to redeem himself. If we couldn’t use your mother or grandmother as the base, maybe we could use you. We found you in Edinburgh, hooking up with that awful Sinclair man, and we came up with a plan.”

  Hooking up with Sinclair? Maggie thought. Eww. Sarah had that part wrong. Maggie didn’t remember what happened during The Lost Weeks, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have hooked up with Sinclair. On the other hand, she did wake up in his hotel room….

  “What was the plan?” Maggie propped herself up into a sitting position. She hoped Sarah wouldn’t notice as she continued to rant.

  “To murder you and take your spine, of course,” Sarah turned to tell Maggie, very matter-of-factly. She didn’t seem to care about Maggie’s altered position. “But that stupid Derek couldn’t do that right either. You were late. He said he couldn’t do it. And quite frankly, I’d lost my patience with him.”

  “Of course,” Maggie replied. She said the burning spell inside her mind, hoping she was doing it just slightly enough to damage the ropes without searing her flesh. After a moment she thought she felt some heat at her wrists.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Sarah thrust a finger at Maggie. “Not on purpose. I did punch him though as we waited for you in the bathroom. I guess he wasn’t expecting it. He fell straight back and into the bathtub. He hit his head on the spout. It cracked his skull wide open. It sounded like a watermelon hitting the sidewalk after being thrown of a roof. It was a sign. Since he hadn’t brought the bones I needed, I’d just take his.”

  “Makes perfect sense,” Maggie assured, her wrists growing uncomfortably warm.

  “Don’t patronize me,” Sarah snapped. Then she looked back into the casket and frowned. “I’m afraid it may compromise the spell, actually. His spine doesn’t have the magic in it. So I’ll need to make up for that.”

  Maggie didn’t like the sound of that. She suspected she was somehow going to be the remedy. “So what’s the plan then?” She looked around. The sky was beginning to lighten beyond the stones. “A spell at sunrise on Samhain? Kind of clichéd, don’t you think?”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes at her captive. “Still sassy, eh, Maggie? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. A resurrection spell. But instead of resurrecting one person, I’m going to resurrect the power of a dozen people.”

  “Well, ten anyway,” Maggie corrected, subtracting her mother and grandmother.

  Sarah frowned for a moment, then grinned at her. “Eleven.”

  Ugh. Maggie knew she was the eleventh. No need to ask more about that. The ropes were loosening. Keep her talking. “How are you going to get the white magic from the bones?”

  Sarah held Maggie’s Dark Book aloft. “With the dark magic!”

  “But you don’t know how to use the dark magic,” Maggie protested.

  “No,” Sarah lowered the book and smiled at Maggie, “but you do.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I won’t help you.”

  Sarah’s grin widened. She reached into her jacket pocket and extracted a rather large handgun. “I think you will.”

  Maggie was startled enough that she lost her concentration on the burning spell. The ropes were weakened, but still bound her. “You’re going to shoot me?!”

  “Of course,” Sarah replied calmly. “I need your bones too. You’re going to complete my Frankenstein’s monster.” She reached into the casket and extracted a hacksaw. “It needs a head.”

  Maggie felt the adrenaline dump into her system. “Y-You’re crazy if you think I’m just going to let you cut my head off.” You’re crazy anyway, lady.

  “Well, you’ll be dead already,” Sarah explained. “I’m going to shoot you through the heart first. But not before you tell me how to use this book.”

  Maggie shook her head defiantly. “I’ll never tell you.”

  Sarah smiled sweetly, almost like a mother. “Of course you will,” she said.

  Then she shot Maggie in the foot.

  Maggie screamed as the bullet shattered her bones and sent blood pouring from the wound.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah laughed. “Can’t heal yourself?”

  Maggie just glared up at her tormenter, blinking back tears against the pain of the gunshot wound and the echo of her dreams.

  “Guess you better help me get the white magic back,” Sarah said.

  Maggie bit her lip against the pain, but couldn’t say anything.

  “Now,” Sarah moved the pistol slightly so she was now aiming at Maggie’s shin. “How does it work?”

  When Maggie didn’t immediately reply, Sarah shook the gun slightly. “You’d better tell me, Maggie. I’ve got five more rounds in the magazine and no one knows you’re here.”

  “Wrong!”

  Maggie and Sarah both turned to see four figures climb the hill and enter the stone circle. Ellen. Stuart. Dougie. And Iain.

  “Iain!” Maggie cried. A tsunami of emotions nearly overwhelmed her. Relief. Joy. Surprise. Worry. Fear.


  He strode purposefully ahead and stood between Maggie and Sarah MacKenzie’s gun. “This ends now,” he declared.

  “Oh, good Lord,” Sarah sighed and rolled her eyes. Then she shot Iain in the stomach.

  “Iain!” Maggie shouted again. With barely a thought, the ropes binding her burst to flame and dropped to the ground as so much ash, blistering her wrists and ankles. She ignored her own wounds and crawled over to Iain, who lay curled up on his side, holding his stomach and moaning.

  “Maybe I—cough, cough—shouldn’t have come back for you—cough—after all,” he joked through the pain.

  “Ah, the boyfriend,” Sarah said slowly. “Maybe if I make him suffer…”

  Maggie glared up at her former professor. Maggie could feel the panic gripping her heart. But she could still control it. Barely.

  Sarah flashed the gun at Ellen, Stuart, and Dougie. “You’d better run,” she warned. Stuart and Dougie didn’t need to be told twice. They sprinted down the hill. Ellen didn’t. She retreated, but only as far as the nearest stone, crouching behind it for protection. Sarah turned back to the two in front of her.

  “He’s dying, Maggie,” she said. “And there’s no healing spell—unless you tell me how to use the dark magic.”

  Maggie hesitated. She laid a hand on Iain’s shoulder. His breathing was labored. “Don’t do it, Maggie,” he wheezed.

  “Hush!” Sarah commanded. She shot him again, this time in the leg. Blood spurted from the artery.

  “Time’s up, Maggie,” she said. “Make a decision. I promise. I promise I’ll heal him after I get the white magic back. The white magic is still there, Maggie. It’s just waiting to be pulled out again.”

  Maggie looked around wildly. The coffin, the hill, the stones.

  The stones.

  And she realized Sarah was telling the truth. Not about Iain—she’d never heal him. But about the magic. She just needed a moment to think clearly. She had to stall somehow, but Sarah was right: time was up. She looked back up at Sarah and realized she wouldn’t need to stall after all.