Lenore reversed hard, spitting gravel. The anthrophage tumbled from the hood.
I punched my fist in the air. “Not so tough now, are you?”
The car thudded to a halt. We rocked forward in our seats, and my chin smacked into the shovel’s handle.
“Uh, what was that?” I asked, one hand braced on the dashboard.
Lenore grimaced, shifting gears. The engine revved. The car moved an inch, stopped. She reversed and jammed her foot on the pedal. The car didn't budge.
The creature loped into the glare of the headlights. Its arms hung low, claws clenching and unclenching.
“Lenore?” I asked, voice high.
“We're stuck! It's the sand.”
“The sand?”
“I was mixing it in with the soil— never mind!”
The anthrophage hunched. It howled, an eerie sound that rose and fell, and grew more and more piercing with every note. The creature stretched, arching back, the bloody gash filling its entire chest.
Lenore clutched my hand.
I wasn't going to be responsible for my sister's death. Not Lenore’s. “We can do this.”
“Do what?” she asked wildly.
“Send it home.”
I reached with my senses deep into the earth.
Lenore's energy flowed up my arm, into my center.
I chanted the words of our spell. Power surged, flooding my system, and I flew apart, I was everywhere. The barrier between what was me and the earth vanished. I was the ground beneath the tires. The tree roots reaching beneath the house, tangling in the plumbing. The roosting crows. The granite stones. The mountains, their tops shivered with snow.
Far away, I heard Lenore pick up my chanted spell. Our words filled the car, and mine shook the mountains.
“Go home!” I roared.
The trees and rocks quaked. White light filled my vision, telescoping to darkness.
“Jayce? Jayce!” Lenore was shaking me. Something hard and rounded pressed into my midsection.
Wincing, I sat up and unfolded myself from the shovel still angled between my knees. “Ow.” I maneuvered it against the Volvo’s door and rubbed my stomach, where the shovel’s handle had jabbed me. “Did it work?”
“It's gone, for now. Are you okay?”
Her headlights illuminated the yard, stunted by the coming winter.
Wildly, I looked around, clambering to my knees and leaning over the back of the seat to check behind us.
The anthrophage was nowhere in sight.
Not being able to see it didn’t make me feel better.
She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. “Let's get inside.”
“Uh, what do you mean gone for now?”
She stepped from the car, and I followed.
“What do you mean for now?” I repeated, hurrying after her.
She unlocked the front door, and we raced inside. Lenore shut the door and bolted it.
I dropped onto the narrow bench against the wall and automatically tugged off my boots. “Lenore?”
“Your spell hit it hard enough to send it flying over that stand of pines. But it didn't feel… finished.”
“But it could have been?” Who was I kidding? If Lenore said it had failed, it had failed. Lenore got these things.
She toed off her sand-colored sneakers. “Dammit. We left the pizza in the car.”
I couldn't help it. I burst into laughter, bracing my hand against the wall to stay upright.
“I'll get it,” she said, jamming her feet into her shoes.
“Mmph, no, no.” I gasped, clutching my stomach, unable to stop chuckling. “I'll come with you. We need to find out if the anthrophage is gone or not.”
I grabbed a baseball bat from the umbrella stand. Both hands on the bat, I hobbled outside in my socks and escorted her to the Volvo.
Scanning for the anthrophage, we retrieved the pizza and scuttled indoors.
“I didn’t sense it,” Lenore said, her back braced against the front door. “Did you?”
“No.” I shot the bolt over her right shoulder. “Could it be gone for good?”
“Maybe. But if we’re right, and it’s a scavenger, we may have just given it a fight it didn’t want to finish tonight.”
My stomach roiled. I wasn’t going to believe something just because I wanted to, not anymore. We had to assume the spell had failed.
“We should have had Karin,” she said. “Maybe with the three of us—”
“I should have brought the spell bottles.” They had contained our combined powers.
Pain raced up my back, and I gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Lenore asked.
“My back.” I shrugged from my jacket, every movement sending new waves of hurt across my skin.
“You’re bleeding.”
Mournful, I studied my silver jacket. Tufts of down fluffed from the claw marks on its back. There was no repairing it. “That does it.” I tossed the jacket to the blue rag rug. That anthrophage was going down. “It is on.”
“Right. Bathroom.” She pointed down the hall.
Fuming, I followed her to the bathroom. She turned me around, lifted my sweater, and applied a four-thieves healing ointment I’d created. The burning eased.
“Karin might be able to fix your sweater,” she said.
“Why bother?” I didn’t want anything to remember this night by.
Lenore and I returned to the living room. I flipped on every light, and we huddled on the ivory sofa to eat veggie pizza.
“Socks.” She pointed with her triangle of pizza. “I don’t want to have to clean this sofa.”
Grimacing, I peeled them off. The bottoms were filthy. It was a sign of how badly she’d been rattled that she let me eat pizza on her white couch.
Lenore brandished a slice of pizza. “It's ironic, you know.”
“What is?”
“We have a monster problem because we live in Doyle, and we're able to drive off the monster because we live in Doyle.”
“Whaddya mean?” I asked between bites.
“You know, we're more powerful together, but we're also more powerful because of Doyle.”
I set my slice on the plate. “Like the other witch. That's why Maya’s here.” In a flash I understood it all. “That's why she's messing with us.”
“Jayce, we don’t know for sure—”
“Buying Mike's house and remodeling it. Rebuilding the library. Messing with Brayden's head!” I leapt from the couch, my fists bunching. It was Maya.
“But—”
“Twice, we lost the trail of the anthrophage by Maya's house. It's her! My God, and she was flaunting it, hinting she was a witch, and I was too dense to see it.” Do no harm. She’d recited the freaking Wiccan Rede, though Maya was no peace and love Wiccan, that was for damn sure.
Lenore eyed me. “Um, that's kind of a leap, isn't it? Why would Maya kill Alex and Candace and David? She just moved here. She’s got no connection to Doyle, does she?”
“Well, no, but—”
“So, you did check her out.”
“Not because I was being a jealous girlfriend.”
“There’s no reason for her to kill those people.”
“What about human sacrifice?”
Lenore just gave me a look.
“Who else could it be?” I asked. “She's new in town. She started a Tarot website. She's led a charmed life, and now she's in Doyle? It all fits.”
“She was raised in a foster home. I wouldn't call that charmed.”
I waved my hands in the air. “She even stole Karin's favorite window seat!”
Lenore arched a brow.
Maybe that hadn’t been the best example of Maya’s perfidy. “It's Maya.” I retrieved my crumpled socks from the floor. I wasn't going to wait another minute. She was going down.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m do
ing?”
“It looks like you're about to charge off to Maya's house,” she said, “and that would be a bad idea. You're guessing she’s involved. Plus, she’s dating Brayden, which means you're really not thinking clearly.”
“Brayden's the reason we have to stop her. Don't you get it? She's done something to him. Who knows what effect being forced to act against his will is going to have long term? This isn't a joke. He could be seriously hurt.”
“Act against his will? Where are you getting this?”
“Those weird, jerky movements he was making that night on Maya’s porch. He was being forced.”
“You don’t know that. We can't be sure he's under a spell.”
“I can,” I said, frantic. She had to see this. “It's clear as the crust on this pizza!”
“It's not,” she said gently. “You should sleep on this.”
New plan. Lenore wasn't going to help me kick down Maya's door, and it wouldn't be right to ask her to. “Then… let's make water balloons.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Next time I encounter the anthrophage – and we both know there will be a next time – I plan to be armed.”
Lenore dug some old balloons from a downstairs closet, and I filled a copper bowl with tap water. I added a drop of four-thieves vinegar and a drop of banishing spray I’d created last year beneath a waning Aquarius moon.
At the hour of Saturn, we called Karin.
“What’s up?” she asked sleepily.
“Distance magic,” I said. “Lenore and I are charging more water for the Go Home spell. Are you in?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t get touchy,” I said. “I’m putting you on speaker.” I put the phone on the butcher block island. Lenore and I stood on opposite sides of it and clasped hands around the cell phone and the bowl of water.
Together, we chanted the words to the Go Home spell. Karin’s energy felt a little weaker than ours – reedy and wavering – but our combined power shivered through me when we finished. The water glowed with white energy, and then it was just water again.
“Did it work?” Karin asked.
I looked to Lenore, and she nodded. “It worked.”
A child’s cry wailed over the phone. “Great,” Karin said. “I’ll stop by tomorrow to pick up my share of balloons. I’ve gotta go.” She hung up.
We made enough water bombs to fill both Lenore's purse and my arms. Lenore insisted on driving me home. She drove slowly, and I leaned closer to the windshield, searching the road for my purse.
“There,” I said. “Stop!”
She slammed on the brakes, flinging me forward.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
Wary, I leapt from the car and ran to my purse, tumbled beneath a manzanita bush. Glancing over my shoulder, I ran back to the Volvo, but the anthrophage didn’t appear.
She drove me back to my apartment, waiting to leave until I’d gone up the stairs and inside.
I walked to the window overlooking the alley. The light above the exterior stairs switched off.
Picatrix hopped onto the sill, and we watched my sister’s boxy car cruise down the alley and disappear.
I checked the time on my phone. “It's not quite the witching hour. What do you think?”
The cat lashed her ebony tail, her green eyes gleaming.
“I think so too.” I might not be able to prove who killed David, Candace, and Alex, but I wasn’t going to let a witch mess with Brayden's head a moment longer.
*****
I hesitated on the icy sidewalk. Maya's porch light was on, turning the patches of snow in her yard a sparkling, antique gold. But the Victorian’s windows were dark.
Blowing out my breath, I pushed through the low, picket gate and walked up the steps like I'd been invited.
The doorknob was antique, with an elaborate floral design engraved in the metal. Unexpected nausea roiled my stomach, and I rubbed my arms. Had the antique been one of Brayden's finds?
I raised my hand above the knob and extended my senses into the door. My palm tingled with a lacerating cold. My stomach heaved.
I yanked my hand away and rubbed it against the thigh of my jeans.
There was a magical barrier here. I blew out my breath and extended my hand again. Maya’s ward was enough to deter the average bear, but I wasn’t average. I was a Bonheim, part of a long line of fairy-fighting witches. Her lame spell wasn’t going to beat me.
Because the knob was old, it had other people's energy on it too — like the prior owners’. That energy gave me an in. It meant the knob wasn’t completely Maya's yet. It also meant she'd been sloppy. And because metal is of the earth… Smiling grimly, I pushed my energy into the intricate doorknob.
“Open,” I whispered.
A click, and the front door creaked open.
I hesitated on the threshold. In the foyer beyond, the staircase spiraled upward, into darkness.
“Let’s go, Jayce.” I strode inside and pushed the door shut with my elbow. If things went wrong, I didn’t want to leave prints.
The porch light streamed through the stained-glass windows in and above the door. The colored glass painted misty patterns on the ceiling.
I flipped on my phone’s flashlight.
Pulse fluttering, I crept into the library. Empty shelves lined the walls. The grouping of modern furniture stood beside a cold fireplace.
I tapped my chin with one finger. After Mike’s death, Lenore had discovered a hidden room in his library. There, he'd kept his most precious books. If I were a witch with something to hide, that’s where I'd keep my goodies. Lenore had told me about the hidden latch in the bookcase.
At the other end of the long room, something shifted outside its trio of gothic-arch windows.
I stilled.
Light from a neighbor's house filtered past the ivy covering their glass.
Nothing moved.
I’d imagined it.
I blew out a shaky breath. Passing the fireplace, I walked to the only bookcase that still held books. They were all paperbacks – Maya's, I guessed – except for one, a hardback with a cloth-covered spine. I pulled it forward.
A snick, and the bookcase swiveled inward.
I stepped inside and felt for the light switch, flipped it on.
Drying herbs hung from the rafters of the octagonal room. Sigils in gold paint covered the walls. Glassed bookshelves held a few, ancient-looking tomes.
In the center of the room stood a table covered in a purple cloth. Atop it lay a knife, a metal chalice, a wand, a metal disk, and lots of black candles.
I smothered a shout of triumph. I’d been right! She was a witch, and Maya was old school. These were the tools of ritual magic. But they weren't what I was looking for.
A three-ring binder sat angled against the small collection of books. Sliding open the glass case, I pulled out the binder. I opened it and gasped.
My photo stared from a corner of a sheet of paper kept in plastic.
Stunned, I flipped through the plastic sleeves. Maya had compiled dossiers — professional looking ones — on me and my sisters. Where we worked. What Lenore and Karin had published. Our family tree. Where we'd gone to college and what we'd studied…
Hands shaking, I slid the binder back onto its shelf and took a closer look at the other books. They weren't spell books, as I'd originally thought.
They were fairy tales and histories of the Sierras.
My blood turned sub-zero. She was researching the magic of Doyle.
I shook myself. “Okay,” I muttered. I'd suspected this already. Now I needed to figure out what she'd done to Brayden.
I found the answer in a small, wooden chest, high on a glassed shelf. Inside was a bundle of sticks, shaped into a crude human figure. Tied together with bits of plaid cloth, the twigs were interlaced with short, dark hair. Brayden's hair.
A poppet. Blood pound
ed in my ears. She’d done this to him, spelled him into loving her.
I’d kill the witch.
I picked the thing up, my hand clenching, the sticks digging into my skin. A sticky coolness wrapped about my hand. My stomach twisted, bile rising in my throat.
I moved to fling it away and stopped. It was only a poppet, and it wasn’t going to beat me.
Only a poppet? Karin’s voice echoed in my mind, disdainful.
Briefly, I closed my eyes. The Karin voice was right. There was no only about this thing.
Poppets were powerful, creating a physical connection between the victim and the spell. But beyond the fact they were wicked scary, I didn’t know much. If I destroyed the stick figure, would it end the spell or hurt Brayden?
“I'd put that down if I were you,” a woman said.
I spun, the figure dropping from my nerveless fingers.
Maya leaned against the door frame and smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Breaking and entering?” Maya strolled into the small, octagonal room. She smiled, innocent and elegant in a black wrap tunic with pink peonies, faded jeans, and high, black boots.
I took an involuntary step backward. “Just entering. Your door was open. I thought something might be wrong.”
Her gaze dropped to the stick figure at my feet. “I think we're beyond that now, don't you?”
Yeah. We were. My heart drummed in my ears. “Why are you doing this? Brayden hasn't done anything to you.”
“It's this place.” Her gaze traveled the room. The glassed-in bookshelves, the altar with its purple cloth. The golden symbols glittering on the walls. “There are other places, of course, where the veil is thinner, where magic leaks into the stones and water. But I like California, and there's less competition here.”
My shoulders sagged. “Competition?”
“Other witches, gaining power off the source.”
I shook my head. “Wait. You mean us? My sisters and I aren’t competition.”
“Aren’t you?”
We weren’t, but I wasn’t going to let her throw dark magic around my town either. “You want Doyle all for yourself,” I said slowly.
“I don’t want Doyle. It’s Doyle's power source. I just need to learn to control it like you three have.”
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