by Kater Cheek
“Home sweet home.” I started to walk downstairs with the box, but Elaina stopped me before I went in.
“Wait a minute.”
Elaina sprinkled some salt and herbs over the lintel and threshold and chanted something quietly. A faint glow suffused her head and her hands while she did this. When she stepped in, she set her box at the foot of the stairs, and immediately went to the corners, dropping a pinch of something in each.
“What was that?” I asked when she was done. “Protection spell?”
“The salt over the lintel and threshold is for purification. I’ll get some rue for protection. Now don’t talk to me. I need to concentrate.”
It looked like she was going to take a while, so I unloaded the rest of the boxes from the van. Protection spell. Heh. Next paycheck from James, I was going to buy us a deadbolt. Sure, she had glowed, but a sushi-eating frogman had just assaulted me. It was hard to believe a little salt and chanting would keep it away.
When the van was empty, I unpacked one of her boxes. Elaina had a ton of stuff. She even had glasses that weren’t ripped off from a restaurant. She had so many dishes they nearly filled the cabinets in the small kitchen.
Elaina finished her witchy stuff and came to help unpack. When she saw that I had put the dishes away she frowned, pulled them out of the cabinet, and placed them on the counter. Then she unpacked a rag and some bleach. “Get me that bag over there.”
I handed her the plastic bag from a discount store. Inside were several rolls of shelf paper and some scissors.
“Elaina, if I wanted to find out who was a member of a coven at a certain time, would there be records of that?”
“Yes, we keep records. They’re classified though. What do you want to know?” She wiped out the cabinets with her bleach rag, but didn’t put the glasses back in.
“I want to know who stayed with Sacred Grove, and who went with Monica Delcourt when she left to form her own coven.”
“Inner Sight is a school, not a coven.” Elaina cut paper to length and placed it in the shelves. “And it’s a worthless school, at that. Don’t bother going there.”
“Whatever. I want to talk to some people about my Uncle Fred. Could you get me names?” Taking her cue, I unrolled more shelf paper and cut it for her.
“That’s private information.” Elaina pulled at the last cabinet, trying to get the stuck latch.
I jerked it open for her.
“A lot of people don’t want everyone to know they’re Pa—” Elaina screamed and jumped back. She kept shrieking, shaking her hands in front of her.
I peered in the cabinet trying to figure out what was wrong, but saw nothing but a stack of old paper bags in the bottom of a cardboard box. Then something gray peeked its nose out. A mouse had made a nest in the cabinet.
She covered her eyes and backed out of the room. “Ewww! Take it out!”
I wrapped up all the paper bags and carried them outside, and when the mouse jumped out, I stuffed the bags in the recycle bin. After the mouse crisis had been averted, I came back in to find Elaina cleaning out the linen closet.
“Is it gone?”
“Yes.”
She shuddered. “Mice are gross. I just hate them.”
Elaina’s sheets and towels were already folded, but she re-folded them so they’d fit in the closet just right. James had scrounged a washcloth and a frayed towel for me, and Fenwick gave me some spare sheets from his parents’ house, but Elaina’s linens looked as though they were new, and had been purchased to match. She even had a handmade quilt with hours and hours of loving work stitched into it.
Someone knocked on the door, and at the same time Elaina’s phone rang.
“Get the door,” she ordered, as she dug through her purse.
There was a woman at the door, holding a long tall lamp in one hand and a basket with bread and salt in the other. She had the same shade of brown hair as Elaina, and the same braids on either side of her face, although this woman’s glasses weren’t as round.
Before I could greet the woman, Elaina came up behind me. “Hi, Mom. Did you bring the bed?”
“Right there sweetie.” She pointed up to pieces of a brass bed frame leaning against the door outside. “And you must be Kit! I’m Margaret. Elaina’s told me all about you. Is it true that you’re Frederick Edgerson’s niece?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry to hear about your uncle. I can hardly believe he’s gone. He seemed like one of those people who would never die. Did you see him in Florida or wherever he moved to before he died?”
“Maine. Yes, my family went to visit him.”
“Oh, that’s right, James is your brother. That’s how you know Elaina.”
“You know James too?”
“Mom knows everyone.” Elaina was carrying her bed pieces into the larger bedroom.
“Not everyone,” Margaret said with false modesty. “But I do know many of the Pagans in this city. It’s a tight community. Say, you want to hear a funny coincidence? I just ran into Theresa the other day and she asked about you.”
“Who?” I stepped aside to let Elaina carry the rest of her bed to her room.
“Theresa. An old friend of your uncle’s. She said she wanted to meet you. Ever since we heard about Freddie dying and someone inheriting the jewel, we’ve been chatting about nothing else. Everyone in my circle knew Freddie Edgerson. He was famous. Theresa was asking whether he had family, and Elaina had just told me you two were moving in together. Isn’t it funny how the Goddess brings these coincidences into our lives?” Margaret walked to the kitchen and set down her basket of bread and salt.
“I heard he had a lot of enemies. Why did she want to meet me?” The bread smelled fresh. Was she going to bake for Elaina often? One could only hope.
“Just to chat, I’m sure. Theresa’s always been friendly with everyone.”
Elaina was pushing a mattress down the stairs. “That’s not what I heard, Mom. I heard she curses people. Tell her about the curse.”
“Oh, Elaina, you and your stories.” Margaret waved her hand. “Funny you should bring up old times, all these people I haven’t seen in years and years.”
“Mom, Kit wanted to know if you had the names of some of the people who were in Sacred Grove with her Uncle, and who went with Monica when it disbanded.”
“I want to know who his enemies were,” I took the bottom of the mattress before it fell over.
“Enemies? How melodramatic! No one remembers these things, and that’s all water under the bridge. Anyway, let’s go get the box springs. I have to bring the truck back before three.”
It took the better part of an hour for the three of us to unload the rest of Elaina’s belongings from the truck, after which Margaret waved goodbye cheerfully and drove off.
The moment the door shut, I turned to Elaina. “So, tell me the rumors.”
“My mom is so stupid sometimes. I swear, she doesn’t think anyone ever casts curses against each other. Like just because someone is Pagan means they’re all about karma and that. Theresa is not even a hereditary witch. No offense.”
Elaina started re-washing all her plates before putting them in the cupboard. “Anyway, the story goes that Theresa got this dog, I think it was a Weimaraner, but maybe it was a Dalmatian. It was this really expensive dog-breed-of-the-moment, with papers.”
“What does this have to do with a curse?” I picked up a dishtowel to dry plates.
“I’m getting to that. Anyway, one day the dog got loose, jumped the fence, and bit her next-door neighbor’s kid. She says the kid was provoking it, but the neighbors disagreed and the dog was put down.
“Of course, she was really pissed off about this, but she didn’t say anything. And then, not three weeks later, the kid comes down with this really rare respiratory disease.
“They took him to the hospital, but he didn’t get better. He was in ICU for weeks and weeks, and he didn’t recover until they moved away. Everyone is pretty sure she cur
sed the kid.”
“Where did you hear this?”
“Sunwise.”
“What?”
“It’s a forum for Pagans in Seabingen. Mom says it’s full of rumors and gossip, but she reads it too. I used to spend hours reading posts. I had to cut back.”
“James said witches never curse anyone. He said the threefold law would bring it back onto you if you tried.”
She made a snort at my naïveté.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” The world just doesn’t work like that. Nice guys usually finish last, from what I’ve seen.
“I’m not saying karma won’t get you in the end, but I’ve heard of plenty of people who curse each other. There was this one woman who was caught actually selling curses for money.
“When her coven found out about that … whew! They were pissed. They cast a binding on her so strong she couldn’t say boo to a telemarketer.”
“So, is that what happened to Theresa? Did she get bound, binded, banded or whatever?”
“No, there was no proof. They’d have to find the actual spell bundle she made the curse with.” Elaina looked at her watch. “Oh no. I’m late for work. Here’s your key. Lock the door when you go. I’ll teach you the closing spell later.”
“Okay, sure thing. See you then.”
Elaina had conveniently forgotten to tell me the names. Elaina’s mother didn’t want to talk about it, and neither did Silvara. That meant asking John again.
Or maybe I should see Virginia Molnar? If she was Uncle Fred’s teacher, she might know the gossip.
***
Ipswich is one of the older neighborhoods of Seabingen, just south of Ipswich Park. The park had a well-deserved reputation for danger after dark, but since most drug dealing and gang activity took place downtown, Ipswich proper maintained its reputation as a respectable place to own property.
Virginia Molnar owned a tiny house with redwood siding and white trim. The yard was weedy, the leaves unraked, and the cracked asphalt drive held four old metal trash cans but no car. Three tabby cats watched me climb the steps to the brick front porch, and a fat calico purred and rolled around my feet as I rang the doorbell. By the time Virginia came to the door my legs from the knees down were encased in a cocoon of cat hair.
“May I help you?” Virginia was older than I had expected, perhaps eighty-five or even ninety, with pale translucent skin and watery blue eyes. The hands that gripped the walker had large turquoise rings on the middle fingers and thumbs. The turquoise on her fingers and the blue of her eyes matched her polyester pantsuit and dress shoes.
“Are you Virginia Molnar?”
She nodded.
“Hi, um, my name is Kit. Can I ask you a few questions about Frederick Edgerson, if this isn’t a bad time?”
“I told him the moment I saw that bindi it would bring sorrow to his family, but Freddie always had more brilliance than sense.”
“What?” It was like pushing on a door only to have it pulled open from the other side.
She was already walking back into the house. Her walker, the wooden floor and her joints creaked greetings to one another. She called over her shoulder at me. “Well? Are you going to stand there on the porch like an uninvited vampire or are you going to come in?”
I opened the screen door and stepped inside. The house was overly warm, and had the burning dust smell of an old-fashioned heater. A worn piano with a stack of sheet music on the bench sat along the left wall. I tapped a key as I passed, and its wan vibrato died quickly in the close air.
“I was expecting my daughter-in-law to help me get the rest of this packed. She’s late, as usual. You can help me with it while I tell you stories about your uncle.”
“How did—” But my hand flew to my forehead, where the bindi was in plain sight.
“Come now, Miss Melbourne. My old student dies, and a strange young woman shows up with his bindi on her forehead, wanting to know about him? It doesn’t take a soothsayer to figure that out.” Virginia walked slowly past the dated couch, struggling to get the walker up over the braided rug on the floor.
I followed her into the kitchen, which looked as though it had last been decorated when Eisenhower was in the White House. Tiny colored glass bottles caught the sunlight pouring through the rippled sash window. The narrow wooden cabinets were painted white and distressed with age, and the green Formica counters showed decades of accidental cuts and burns.
The kitchen smelled of years of fried chicken, pies, and morning coffee. It was the kitchen my grandmother would have had, if the fates had made her kindly and competent instead of a bitter drunk.
Virginia had apparently been in the middle of wrapping juice glasses in newspaper and packing them in a cardboard box on the counter, because she went back to her task.
“What did you mean when you said you knew this bindi would bring his family sorrow?”
“It’s already brought you some, or you wouldn’t be here. Who’s been troubling you for it?” Her eyes flicked to the henna on my hands, but she didn’t comment.
“Monica Delcourt.”
“Yes. She would. Nothing but bad blood between those two from the day she tried to steal it from the museum. Shame too. Everyone thought they’d have a great marriage. You can start packing up those glasses. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, as we used to say.”
I picked up a glass and began to wrap it in newspaper. “I heard something about a museum, but I never heard the whole story. Which museum was it?”
“College of Magic’s Artifact Collection. No, I know you’ve never heard of it. It never existed. Freddie had the idea that the university would start a whole new department devoted to the magical arts. He wanted a museum too. The bindi was to be their prize possession. Can you get those down for me dear?” She pointed up to the top shelf in the cabinet.
I pulled a metal stepstool over. It squeaked alarmingly with each step, but didn’t wobble too much. “So, what happened?”
“Money, of course. He had too many kettles on the stove, and something had to go. First it was the museum, then the college itself, and then that ridiculous mayoral bid. Careful dear, you don’t want to fall.”
I stacked ancient green tinted tumblers and handed them down to Virginia’s liver spotted arms. “But they do teach mage-craft at the university, don’t they? I’ve heard that somewhere.”
“Yes, they do. Call it something else though. Level five hundred classes in the Department of Alternative Studies, something like that. Freddie had nothing to do with that. That was the work of some other fellow, Gregor something or other, years later, after Freddie had already left for Maine. Don’t stack the glasses like that. They crack.”
“Sorry.” I carefully pulled them apart, and handed them to her one at a time. “So, what happened with the museum?”
“Monica pulled the purse strings shut on the college, and Freddie decided he didn’t want one without the other, so he let his museum plans falter while he tried to find new funding for a college of magic. Monica pitched a fit about that. Came out that she had her heart set on owning that jewel, borrowing it once the museum was done. Freddie heard from someone that she was planning to take it, and he got madder than a hornet. He took the bindi back from the collection, and canceled the project. Course, the building was half done, and there were still bills to be paid, but at the time those two didn’t care about much except hurting each other.”
The back of the cabinet held long forgotten junk: a small porcelain salt shaker shaped like a dog, a shot glass full of toothpicks, a package of cocktail napkins with Happy New Year 1972 written on them. I sneezed on the dust and handed them down. Virginia threw some into a trash bag and set others on the counter to be packed.
“So, who else wanted the bindi?”
“Well, no one really knew much about it until the museum thing. Those on the museum committee knew how much it was worth and what it could do. Who’s to say who knows about it now? Maybe everyone’s forgotten.”
Virginia frowned at a cracked glass and threw it into the trash bag. “Course no one ever got the thing to work for them, but Freddie swore up and down that it had magic powers. Anyone else and we all would have figured he was putting one over on us, but Freddie said his grandma had worn it for years and could see all kinds of things. He had faults, but he wasn’t a liar.”
The cabinet was empty, so I climbed down.
“It’s true, isn’t it? You’ve been seeing things, and you don’t know quite what to make of them. That’s why you went to talk to Freddie’s old teacher.” Virginia smiled, as though I had told her the answer to a difficult riddle.
I looked out the window instead of answering. A gnarled apple tree, long since grown too old to bear fruit, dropped yellow-orange leaves onto the yard. “I came to see you because someone wants this bindi, maybe enough to kill me for it. I want to find out who.”
She was silent at that, though since I had my back turned I didn’t know if she was admiring the view or scrutinizing to puzzle me out. Finally, she let out a, “Hmph!” and spoke again.
“Follow me. I’ve got something to show you.” Virginia grabbed the walker and creaked her way down a hallway so awkwardly long it was obviously a later addition to the modest floor plan. The hallway led to a pink painted bedroom. By the amount of cat hair covering the white tufted coverlet, and the embroidered chair cushion, it was evident that this was the lair of Virginia’s pets.
“Open that door.”
The door had swelled shut with the autumnal moisture, and turning the brass knob accomplished nothing. I had to ram my shoulder into the door to get it to squeak open. A click of the light chain revealed, not a skeleton, but mounds and mounds of daunting clutter. Old newspapers, books, and magazines filled the small room waist high, barely leaving enough space for the door to swing. The shelf above held hatboxes, and a row of moth-eaten coats gave off a musty scent.
“See if you can find my old Book of Shadows for me.”
I had seen it right away, a greenish flicker like peripheral foxfire halfway down one of the paper stacks. I turned back to face her. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”