The blinking light of his answering machine stopped his march toward that bedroom. He hit the play button.
“This is Barbara McCauley of Harris Hospice at Presbyterian Hospital calling on behalf of your Great Aunt, Elizabeth Agnesi. Your aunt is not doing well and she asked me to call and see if you would come to see her. I’m afraid she doesn’t have much time left. Our number is…”
Jeremy stood stock still, sleepiness banished. Agnesi, calling for him? What could the witch want and why the pretext? He sighed. There was only one way to find out.
*****
The drive to Presbyterian Hospital was short. McCauley, a kindly fifty-year old with tired eyes, greeted him at the entrance to the ward. She expressed amazement at his great-aunt’s finding him. “She said a friend mentioned seeing your work at the Light Factory show and here you are. What a lucky coincidence and just in time.”
The miasma of a hospital, a mix of disinfectant and illness, bit at his nose as they walked down the corridor, empty at this late hour. They came up to a private room. Inside were a few flowers, from who, Jeremy couldn’t imagine. “I’d like to go in alone if I may,” Jeremy said. “My Great-aunt and I have been estranged for a long time.”
“Of course,” McCauley said. “I’ll be in my office at the front if you need me.
Jeremy walked in alert for any sign of a witchtrap. He looked down at the ancient woman. It was hard to associate the emaciated crone with the gorgeous blonde of mere weeks ago. He fought the urge for pity.
Agnesi’s eyes opened and filled with a bright malice. There was still force to the former coven leader.
“You asked for me, Witch.”
“Yes, Templar,” the voice barely above a whisper. “I have little time left before the dark, the judgment and the fire.”
“Don’t repent to me. I’m not a priest.” Templar he might be but he was not sure of heaven or hell. In that respect he was as much a heretic as she.
“You’re my enemy by blood and oath,” she said. “And it’s too late for me to change. I have too much pride. I’ll pay my bill.”
“But,” the voice strengthened, and she rose slightly from her pillow, “first I’ll be revenged on my coven, on those who turned on me, who betrayed me to a death I could have held at bay for long ages of the world. I’ll tell you how to destroy them, Templar, and perhaps you too will die in the battle, making my revenge complete.”
“It’s nice to have goals,” Jeremy said.
Agnesi glared at him. “The coven is depleted of energy and magic. We invested so much in the ritual for the force pool. All of it was lost when you cheated us and we lost the land where the pool was to manifest. So, Kitsune plans a new ritual. She’ll sacrifice to Shu, Egyptian god of the Storms to summon a Witchwind, a demonic spell that tears the souls from its victims, tumbling them in the night wind for eternity, knowing neither rest nor satisfaction.
“You must turn the Witchwind on them. It’s a dangerous wind, Templar, sentient and malicious. It can only be handled from within a pentagram protected by candles made from the fat of children.” She smacked her lips together and sighed. “So tender, so juicy and so delicious.”
Jeremy’s sword hand twitched. He stilled it. The witch would be dead soon anyway.
“Break the pentagram, Templar.”
“How—” Jeremy began
Agnesi’s eyes drifted over Jeremy’s shoulder and widened. Her face distorted, her mouth stretching open so far it seemed in must unhinge in a scream that did not come. The utter horror on her countenance froze Jeremy for seconds. Then her eyes were fixed forever.
Jeremy slowly turned and saw Shadowheart, not in her great, grim, archangel form but still as the blond teen. She regarded him with level eyes.
“What did she see?” Jeremy asked.
“The face of the bill collector,” Shadowheart said.
“It must be a terrible face,” Jeremy said.
“For some,” Shadowheart replied softly.
“What happens to her on the other side?” he jerked his head toward the corpse.
“It’s not for you to know such a dire thing.”
He looked down at the witch, frozen in her agonal pose. “She made candles of children. I can deal with her fate quite easily.”
“Oh, no, Jeremy. Oh, no,” Shadowheart replied. “I have existed from time out of mind and seen all there is to see yet even I cannot contemplate her punishment with equanimity. The fate of those who prey on the helpless is infinitely terrible. It would break your mind in seconds.”
Jeremy looked down at the witch and nodded. “Good.” He turned his back on the dead and walked off.
*****
Morning came and with it, Prosperine. Mike, the photographer next door, mistook the familiar for one of his steady stream of gorgeous models and tried to usher her into his studio. Jeremy rescued him before Prosperine turned him into breakfast. Mike offered to photograph her for free, capturing, as he put it, “her wild, cat-like expression.” But Prosperine’s form was of Bob’s choosing and beautiful as she was, in a leggy, slim-busted fashion, she disdained admiration.
“Well,” Jeremy said, closing the door. “It will be a while before he forgives me for hauling you away.”
Prosperine curled up on his sofa, legs under her, enjoying the coffee she’d helped herself to as Jeremy filled her in. Shadowheart drifted randomly through his apartment. It was easier for her to manifest just as an image, but wherever she drifted she could still watch the familiar. Prosperine no longer reacted with complete terror to Shadowheart’s appearance, at least when she was in mall-rat mode.
Jeremy paced up and down, sipping his own coffee. “How does one break a pentagram?”
“This isn’t just any pentagram,” Prosperine said. Her voice was low and soft, with a hint of growl. She brushed thick red hair out of her green eyes. “One secured with such candles can’t be easily fractured.”
“I could do it with my bloodsword.” He gestured toward the plain Templar long sword with its crystal, resting in wall hooks. Since the familiar entered his apartment, the magic gem pulsed red, as if it too, watched her warily.
Shadowheart floated by him, upside down. “The backflows would tear your human body to pieces. I can’t hold off a whole coven and protect you from the pentagram’s shattering.”
“Worried about your skin, Angel?” Prosperine said.
Shadowheart flipped over and glared down at her. “Quiet, Jaguar, or Jeremy’s home will have a new rug. I can’t be killed, but I can be damaged and driven from time space.”
“Then there’s the Witchwind,” Jeremy continued, ignoring the squabble. “If we do attack the pentagram, how do we avoid the Witchwind to even reach it?”
A smile flashed over Shadowheart’s face. “What if we were to substitute one of the candles?”
Prosperine shook her head. “Witches can smell human essence in these candles and they are surrounded with a magic aura. They could tell an ordinary candle easily.”
“What if,” Jeremy began slowly, “the candle was made from a human, and imbued with magic just not one friendly to the coven?”
“Who’ve you got in mind?” Prosperine growled, putting her feet on the floor.
“Relax,” he said. He walked over to the phone and punched in the number. “Ms McCauley? Jeremy Leclerc here. Sorry I left so abruptly last night. I was upset at my great-aunt’s death…yes… thank you. I need to make arrangements to pick up her body…”
The embalmer at McDougal Funeral Home was appalled by Jeremy’s request, even though he assured the man that it was Great Aunt Agnesi’s last request that she literally light a candle, rather than curse the darkness. Fortunately $10,000 in unmarked bills provided by a grumbling Bob Diablesse soothed the embalmer’s conscience.
“What the hell,” the embalmer said. “Ever since Keith Richards snorted his dad’s ashes we’ve been getting these wacky requests nonstop.”
Jeremy rode back to his apartment with a plastic t
ub of witch fat in the back, hoping none of Charlotte’s lunatic soccer moms, or self-important, Lexus driving, cell phone addicts rear-ended him. Shadowheart, refusing to have anything to do with the project, rode silently in the gold and crystal housing he wore for her on his chest.
Prosperine was off buying the material for a candle-making kit. She met them at the door to his building. Very practically, she’d bought both sushi and sake from Nikko’s next door. Prosperine delighted in spending Diablesse’s money. There was no love lost between the demon and his enslaved familiar.
“Appreciate the thought,” Jeremy said, “but considering what else we are going to be cooking, I don’t think I could eat.”
“Squeamish,” she scoffed, but followed him inside.
Jeremy set up the material for making the candle. Prosperine amused herself on the computer and downed a prodigious quantity of sushi and sake. Finally, he dropped into a chair next to her and reached for the sake. “This still seems impossible,” he said. “We have to break into the Pink Lady warehouse, find the candles, photograph one so we can make a duplicate, then break back in to substitute it.”
Prosperine gave him an amused look. “The candles are six inches tall, three inch wide, dyed red with Mandarin Six dye. There’s a pentagram carved on one side and with an Ankh opposite. They are capped with a one-inch white metal bell.”
He stared at her. “How did you know?”
“While you were futzing around I logged onto the coven’s UK webpage. There’s a hidden feature in the Pink Lady webpage, but I belonged to a witch once, so I know all the codes. I got into a chat room, told them I was a journeyman witch trying to start a new coven in New Delhi next to an orphanage. They were happy to help. I sent the photos to your printer.” She pointed to where the machine was spitting out photos.
“They just told you?” he marveled.
“You may recall I’m actually a card-carrying member of Evil Inc.”
Shadowheart blinked in, floating through the air in a lotus position. “Well, you did say she’d be useful.”
“Time to cook the candle,” Prosperine said. “I’ll get the dye and cap—”
“Tell you what,” Jeremy said. “How about you cook the candle and we get the dye and cap.”
Prosperine laughed.
After midnight they drove to the Pink Lady warehouse out on Steele Creek, in a wilderness of giant one-story box buildings south of Charlotte. A few new neighborhoods of cookie-cutter houses and old, smaller, homes dotted the areas in between the giant warehouses and their lakes of asphalt. They found a spot at a nearby diner, dropped the car and walked to the warehouse. Like most parts of Charlotte, it was blessed with trees and undergrowth. They found a small clearing and some large rocks to rest on near the warehouse and watched the staff file out, lighting cigarettes and calling out goodnights.
“I guess we wait,” Jeremy said as he studied the building looking for entrances and weak points. There were still a lot of high-end cars in the lot. Jeremy supposed they belonged to Kitsune and her inner circle. As the sun sank, a small number of automatic lights gave inadequate illumination, though the main entrance glowed.
“I hate this part,” Prosperine said. “I’m bored already.”
“I thought cats were patient animals; sit outside a mousehole for hours, that sort of thing.”
“I’m not a cat; I just play one on TV.”
“Funny,” he said.
“We could have sex,” she suggested.
“I thought you didn’t like me,” Jeremy said.
“I don’t,” she replied with a puzzled air. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“No, thanks. I’m not sure you wouldn’t eat me afterward.”
“I won’t guarantee that I wouldn’t eat you during.”
“Wow, with pillow talk like that, how could any man turn you down?”
“Ah, well,” she said, leaning back against a pillar. “I suspect it would only have killed two or three minutes.”
Jeremy laughed. “You demons sure know how to hurt a guy.”
“You have no idea, yet.”
“My guardian angel will beat your ass like a snare drum,” Jeremy warned. The reminder had a salutary effect on Prosperine. She shut up.
To Jeremy’s surprise, a dozen pink Cadillacs drove into the lot. Some carried several women, also dressed in pink and with a genetically improbable degree of blondness. They gathered and twittered in high voices.
“There must be some sort of meeting,” he said.
Prosperine leaned forward, intent on the group, and Jeremy remembered her superior hearing. “Yes, Kitsune is addressing them. I think this is our best chance to break in.”
He nodded. “Around back.”
The two quickly moved around to the rear of the building. Prosperine proved as sure-footed in the dark as her original jaguar form. Jeremy stumbled behind her. They flitted from shadow to shadow, reaching a back door. Jeremy checked the security system with his tester. It showed no power. They were in luck. Prosperine blocked the view of Jeremy’s penlight as he made short work of the lock.
Then they were in a vast, shadowy space of immense crates and parked warehouse equipment. In the distance there were lights and voices.
“Shadowheart,” he whispered to the crystal housing sitting on his chest. “Do you have us cloaked?”
Yes, she mind whispered. I’m suppressing their magic wards. Don’t distract me! The breaking of the connection was like a slap.
“Can you smell the candles?” he turned to Prosperine.
“Yes,” she said. “And more. There are guard dogs in here but they must be locked away because of all the humans over there. Good thing too, or they'd be all over me. I smell witches as well.
“There’s a boxed room over there,” she said peering into the dark. “We can reach it by climbing these crates and making our way across the top.”
Jeremy spotted the room, one of number of enclosed plasterboard structures in the building, rooms for computer, phones or people to work out of the unheated and uncooled space.
Prosperine boosted Jeremy up the twelve-foot high stacks. Then, with claws and legs stronger than human, she followed on her own. Music started up at the other end, along with the flashing of colored lights. Whatever the Pink Ladies were up to, it sounded like a party and provided cover to their progress across the crate tops.
Soon they were leaping across to the roof of the boxed room. Jeremy pried up the hatch next to the A/C unit for the office space below.
Halt, Shadowheart demanded. There’s a ward below I can’t neutralize. Any soldier of light will set it off. I can do nothing about it.
“What?” Prosperine said.
Jeremy remembered the familiar could not hear Shadowheart and relayed what she’d said.
“Fine,” she whispered back. “Give me the candle. I’m evil. I won’t set it off.”
He handed her the satchel with the Agnesi candle safely packed within. The familiar dropped a distance that would have tasked human knees, then disappeared inside. Jeremy waited in the increasing cold of the warehouse, though sweat trickled down his back. It seemed forever before she reappeared, leapt up and caught at his arms. Jeremy pulled her out and secured the roof hatch.
“Done,” she said handing him the satchel.
“I want to get closer to the action,” he said. “Find out what’s going on.”
Prosperine gave him a look. “Wasn’t in the plan, Templar.”
He grinned at her. “Bug out if you like, but now who’s squeamish?”
“Kiss my…”
He raised a finger. “My angel doesn’t like bad words.”
Bullshit, Shadowheart whispered in his mind.
They made their way more carefully to the area of light and music. When they gained sight of the mass of pink-clad women before a dais, Jeremy felt they couldn’t risk getting closer.
Kitsune and several other gorgeous witches of the coven entered from behind a curtain
to loud applause and cheers. The music cut off.
The gorgeous Asian witch with her three feet of silky black hair and perfect complexion mounted the dais.
“Pink Ladies,” Kitsune announced. “Tonight is a special night. Pink Lady Cosmetics announces a new line of ultra-rejuvenating moisturizing creams. The Bewitching line of creams firms wrinkles, plumps lips, literally takes years off your body.”
The women undulated like a pink tide.
“And you, our loyal staff of Best Sellers, will be the first to receive the benefit. Tonight at the Sleeping Dragon Restaurant you will be gathered for a special demonstration.” She smiled with the benevolence of a saint. “Ladies, if any one of you does not feel and look ages different I will personally pay you $10,000.”
Applause filled the room.
“Fiendish,” Jeremy whispered.
“Yes,” Prosperine said with a clear note of admiration. “The coven has a stock of willing victims, delivering themselves to the slaughter gladly. The Witchwind will tear their souls free and Shu will enrich the coven.”
“Time to get out of here,” Jeremy said. The back door was hundreds of yards away and he wasn’t sure how long Kitsune was going to keep haranguing the crowd.
As they moved back to the door, Jeremy opted for a short route. The crate stacks petered out and they dropped to the floor.
It was a mistake. A ghastly green spotlighted them and the universe turned into whirling maelstrom of colors.
“Witchtrap,” Prosperine shouted. “We’re being transported. Grab onto me.”
Jeremy could barely make out Prosperine’s silhouette in the clashing colors but he reached out at something human-shaped and found his hand on her lean waist.
Suddenly the universe stabilized into an unending purple plain of swirling fog. A trio faced them, the buxom Welsh witch, Llewellen, and the beautiful, redheaded Echols twins. The witches seemed both shocked and surprised
“What?” said Llewellen in a high breathy voice. “You two!”
Jeremy drew the bloodsword; its red jewel glowed with a sullen anger.
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