Pieces of Ivy (17 page)

He suddenly felt trapped—cornered with no ability to retort. She was right. Thoughts didn’t have material properties, yet, obviously, exist.

He didn’t appreciate the smug
your move, buddy
glance from his partner.

He changed his question. “Seriously, what’s with that bridge?” Hank didn’t want to let on how it had actually impacted him, but its decor alone warranted the obvious question—and he wanted to know.

“I created the Bridge of Death to signify the crossing into my new life. I revisit the old world, your world, only when I must to sustain my life and activities here.” A sly grin formed. “Or when I feel the need to fuck with the townsfolk.”

Vicki tried not to smile at the woman’s cocky self-awareness. Something in the tea was washing through her—pushing away her shivers.

“I cross it every day, without fail, regardless if I go into town or not. When I return, I pause before each first step onto my threshold of death to remind myself of the blessings of life, death and transformation—the passage between life and death. A reminder of our physical mortality and how I can so easily step from the greater world and into heaven—my Eden, every day.” She warmed up Vicki’s tea. “Besides,” she added with a wicked smile, “it scares away the nosy little fuckers.”

“
Eden
?”

“I love nature, the bustling life force of the world—to grow things.”

“Then why live in Deadwood?” Hank asked. “If you’re so intent on growing things and surrounding yourself with life, why would you choose a perpetually dead forest?”

“First of all,
Death
is not bad or good. Death is just death—but it’s the next closest thing to transformation. It represents the passing of energy from this world to the all beyond. Death can be a great lover—a
destroyer
to be true—but a lover nonetheless.”

Hank had always struggled against these unconstrained philosophical conversations. “Well, if you’re so high on
death
, why bother living?”

“Because Death is not time for me yet. She hasn’t called me beyond, as She will, when I am ready. Only then will Death come to claim me.”

Hank smirked.

“You enjoy life’s journey while you have a place upon its path.” She looked directly into Hank, penetrating his soul. “You
never
give up on that … no matter what. We both know this, Hank Dashel.”

Her words plunged into a seeping wound. The directness of her wild guess unsettled him, as did the way Vicki was looking at him now. He wanted to speak in defiance but no words came. Again, trapped.

Without warning, the woman slipped in from behind and glanced her hand across Vicki’s chest without making contact—but leaving the lingering sensation of a touch. Vicki turned up in surprise as the witch drew a quizzical finger to her lips, nibbling the tip of her nail in thought as she processed. “You have a man in your life,” she said.

Vicki fought her smirk. Sky had almost convinced Vicki that the woman possessed some special potential, a mysterious ether of something beyond real about her, but this colossal failure in love clairvoyance shot that to hell—until Sky continued.

“Not a lover. Not a friend. But a darkness. You need to tread very carefully, my dear. I cannot overstate this threat.”

Vicki sat dumbstruck. Hank wanted to press but felt winded still by Sky’s uncanny speculation for him.

Sky released Vicki from her gaze. “I’m going to get dressed since this may take a while.” She stood from the table, slipping off her robe, forcing their breath to catch, and stretched tall on her toes to lay the robe atop her armoire. She strode naked out the rear door and both agents exhaled as if some massive, invisible wrestler had stepped off their respective chests. They watched her through the window as she approached the steaming cauldron and the nearby drying poles. Neither spoke as she pulled down a pair of jeans from one. Slices of sunbeams danced across her taut, creamy skin.

The worn, faded blue jeans slid like paint up her smooth thighs and hugged tight over her perfectly formed bare behind. She reached for a small T-shirt, as gray as the cooled, spent ashes her naked toes sifted through. She pulled it over her long hair, which she then flipped free. Beneath the thin cotton T-shirt she needed no bra to carry the high-held form of her perfectly rounded breasts—her nipples marking the apex of each.

Vicki stood in quiet reverence, without an ounce of shame for watching the customarily private moment. Nor did she feel the need to rob her male partner of the experience, for which he was so obviously taken and the woman showed no desire to withhold.

Sky slipped each of her bare ashen feet into the soft tan leather of her cowboy boots and walked back to the agents with the flowing saunter that comes only from a woman who truly knows her body and how to work her curves.

Hank found her as mysteriously vexing and alluring in clothes as out of them. Nowhere was the haggard, frumpy old witch of Hank’s childhood imagination. Instead, she exceeded every male fantasy.

Vicki wanted answers. She stepped up to the woman, her question about this dark man cocked and like a bullet in the chamber; but the words locked in her throat. The T-shirt allowed a small sneak of flesh to be exposed high above the woman’s left breast. Without thinking, Vicki reached out and touched a finger to the witch’s warm skin; Sky didn’t move or resist in any way. Hank didn’t understand, but Vicki looked from the tear in the cotton to the woman’s serene face and thought,
bullet hole
, remembering the shaky video captured the other night. This raised a hundred practical questions that never came.

Instead, Vicki asked, “How old are you?” A rude question, but suddenly Vicki had to know.

“Seventeen.”

Seventeen
. They shot glances at each other.

Ah, yes,
Vicki remembered,
the lies about her age.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to need your real age.” Then she added, “You are beautiful, Miss Veil, but you’re not seventeen.”

“Seventeen since my
rebirth
.”

“I see.” Vicki sighed. “Okay, then, what was the year of your
first
birth?”

“Nineteen sixty-seven.”

This was equally jarring. There was no way this woman was forty-four. At most, she looked five years older than Vicki—maximum. The relevance of the date was not lost on Vicki. Tanya Kilroy was also born in 1967, but, staring at this woman now, Vicki knew that was impossible.

Sky insisted, “I have no reason to lie.” She looked lovingly along her bare arms and down the rest of her body. “I can understand your confusion. It’s the way I feed myself, care for myself … pleasure myself. My body has responded directly to the way I honor and worship my temple.”

Hank tried to suppress his misgivings about her. “If you could bottle that—”

“You can’t bottle the spirit, Agent Dashel,” she insisted. “And I would never
sell
what should be granted freely.”

“If it’s so free, why doesn’t everyone look like you?” He didn’t bother editing his compliment.

“That’s a good question,” she replied. “Like all things, it’s a choice.”

“Okay, so what’s a rebirth?”

“I met with a horrible experience early in life. I thought I could know no worse misery, and my life spiraled into a living hell.” She looked directly at Hank. “I wanted to
die
.

“Then came a sleep of such devastation. If I had hit rock bottom before, this had bored me further into the depths of absolute despair. Simple death was not sufficient—I needed
oblivion
. For countless nights, I lay unconscious on this very ground, the blade stayed in my hand, not allowing me my final cuts. Instead, I was to be tormented further. A child again, I was taken, I was going to die …
die horribly
. Facing such a horror was made worse through the innocence of my child-mind, without the emotional experience of adulthood. I was with my child self, the fast coming of my death—not understanding the cruelty the world was capable of but realizing its face absolutely. Yet this was no dream. The smell—” She stopped.

Vicki shuddered with the same horrific knowing. Though confused by Sky’s words, Vicki’s sensation of terror touched too close to home—the memory of gasoline.

Sky looked at Vicki. “I was about your age. Death came but refused to take me. Instead,
She
gave me a new birth, a new start and transformed my life into who you see before you now.”

Hank bristled. Watching the woman walk around her home as if it was any other was frustrating. No pointy hat or gnarled broomstick; just an amazingly stunning woman wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt, looking more like a sexy neighbor than a mysterious witch. “So part of your transformation, did that include the dye job and contact lenses?” he asked.

“Oh, this is real.” She tugged strands from her head and handed them to Vicki instead of Hank. “For your skepticism. You’ll be asking for a sample soon anyway.” Then she looked to Hank. “Look at me.” Her gray eyes widened and became shocking crystals of ice.

Hank stiffened, certain she was attempting to imprint a spell upon him. Her body’s uncomfortable proximity sent tingles, like electromagnetic induction, coursing through his flesh. He couldn’t discern if the sensation was sexual polarity, excitement or fear.

“Go ahead, look closer.” She whispered, “I won’t bite.”

No contact lenses at all—natural … yet unnatural.

“Granted these come with a life of devotion.”

Sky had to have been born with them. “What does your eye doctor say?”

Sky laughed. “Why would I ever need an eye doctor or any doctor for that matter?” She scanned the room. “
She
takes care of me.”

Vicki understood now why Dr. Collins despised the woman. Sky deemed both him and his practice irrelevant.

She turned to answer Vicki’s question before she could ask it. “You’d be surprised at the control we truly wield over our physical forms. You shouldn’t be—no one should—but they don’t believe it’s possible, and that’s why the world is in the state that it’s in.”

Hank threw up his hands in a hallelujah gesture. “There you go—magic cures everything.”

“It does.”

“What about dark magic?” Vicki asked. “I understand you’re apt to use it against your detractors.”

“Then you understand nothing.”

“Are you saying you’re not familiar with the dark arts?”

Her tone cooled. “No, I’m
more
than familiar—I’m a master.”

Vicki and Hank exchanged glances, but the witch intervened before they could speak.

“And
because
I have a deep knowledge and expert understanding, I would
never, ever
use them against another living creature, under any circumstances. No, only someone who doesn’t truly know the dark arts would ever use them against someone else—the price is too high.”

With contrived relief, Hank announced, “Well, I’m sure we’ll all sleep better knowing that
you
don’t believe in killing people.”

“I never said that.”

“That makes no sense. After what you just said, you have no problem with killing?”

“If it serves a purpose, it’s justified.” She didn’t waiver. “I just wouldn’t be foolish enough to use the dark arts to do it.”

Hank scoffed. “So you won’t use the dark arts because they’re, what,
evil
? The devil’s work?”

She leaned in closer to ensure her next point was driven home. “No. Dark is not evil, just as light is not good—and the devil is just a ghost story. Dark is simply the antilight rather than the absence of it. Light is the creation. Dark is the destruction. You can’t have one without the other.

“The Universe is infinite, but this material plane is finite. Only the Great Spirit can create the new from nothing. So to destroy for good purpose is appropriate. But to use the instruments of dark in hateful intention is to beget destruction upon oneself manyfold. Use dark destruction only to create new space and matter for the light of creation.”

She traced a finger along a bronze goddess statue. “Too many fail in this regard, failing to use the magick to destroy the unwanted to make way for the desired. They focus on the happy wants, without creating
room
for the wanted to come forth. They fail to destroy so that the creation can live. Without this transformation—the transmutation of matter or energy—it is why we sacrifice,
perceive
scarcity.”

Her eyes were filled with such intense belief that it unsettled them both. But Vicki felt a powerful, unexpected draw to the woman’s words.

“I’m sure that’s why people who have heard my spells here in the dark places see it as a threat. They only focus on what they want to hear—a crazed witch chanting calls for destruction. Because they fear me, they only hear through the filter of their—”

“Hearts,” Vicki guessed, nodding in rapt understanding.

“No,” she corrected. “
Minds
.”

Placing her hands upon Vicki’s, an unexpected tickling pressed between their respective flesh like the tiny push of similar magnetic poles. Vicki wanted to move away but couldn’t. No, Vicki wanted the woman’s hands to remain on hers, forever.

The witch stared into Vicki’s eyes. “Beautiful, beautiful girl, the
heart
cannot fear or hate. That is the dominion of the mind alone.”

Hank stared uncomfortably at the lingering joining of hands. “
Vicki
?”

She looked up at Hank without removing her hands.

Vicki didn’t want to release her hands—couldn’t. Feeling Hank’s eyes linger on them, she glanced from the witch’s eyes to their paired hands in a gesture to have the woman let go—because Vicki couldn’t.

But the woman didn’t take her eyes off Vicki. “I like being around you, Vicki.”

“It’s Agent Starr,” she replied with a forceful, yet hesitant, assertion.

“I am aware of that.”

“I need you to—” Vicki leaped to her feet, breaking her connection with Sky to point to an altar in the corner. “Where did you get that?”

Ivy’s charm necklace was draped across what looked like miniatures of ancient esoteric statues made of pewter and stone. Vicki whipped out a pen and hooked the necklace. She turned, dangling it at the woman. “Where did you get this?”

“It was returned to me.”

“This was in evidence!” Vicki remembered seeing the necklace in the sheriff’s lockup. “It’s evidence in a murder investigation. It was on the victim. Now where did you get it?”

“I find that difficult to believe. It imbues the wearer significant protection. I highly doubt it would’ve been worn by a murder victim.”

“
Highly doubt
—” Vicki was incensed; something about this woman suddenly prickled at Vicki. She snapped, “
Protection
? This was found stuffed into the victim’s throat, along with all the shattered pieces of her teeth. How the hell can you say it was for protection?”

“Well, if it was in her mouth, then she wasn’t wearing it—so how could it have protected her?”

The confident calm in Sky’s tone couldn’t fully mask the undercurrent of tension in her voice. In fact, Vicki saw guilt swimming though the woman’s eyes.

Hank noticed the vulnerability as well and addressed her previous assertions. “Was Ivy Turner’s murder
justified
?”

“What happened to Ivy can never be justified!” Sky roared. “The hands that defiled Ivy’s sacred temple so brutally will be met with vengeance—
She
will see to it.”

Sky’s words sent shock waves through Vicki’s body. “How do
you
know how brutal it was?”

“I saw her dead.”

“You what?”

“I saw her desecrated body, but I didn’t see the amulet.”

Hank took a sudden step forward. “You were there?”

She looked at Vicki and nodded.

“When? Why didn’t you report it?”

“She came to me in a dream. She needed a quick release from her body. Her soul was enduring unimaginable torment.”

Vicki’s hand rested instinctively on her weapon. “You … you killed her?”

“No, after. A part of her soul remained attached, burdened by brutality—refusing to let go of this life. That often happens with violent, unexpected deaths. The soul refuses to believe it was truly dealt such a vicious, unfair means of dispatch. She needed my help, so she came to me.”

“Bullshit, you knew,” Hank said, but Sky ignored him.

“Enlighten me,” Vicki said, thinking about the rumors that the witch was performing a demonic ritual in the forest the morning Ivy’s body was found. “How exactly did you
release
her?”

“All I needed was her hair, blood, the right invocations and—It’s too challenging to describe.”

“You took evidence from the crime scene?”

“I took what I needed to release her soul. You have to agree
that
was more important.”

She didn’t. “Where is it? The hair and blood.”

“In ashes on the sky stone three hundred yards that way.” She pointed at her east wall.

“You burned it?”

“I released her.”

“That’s interfering with a criminal investigation!”

“How would missing a small bit of blood and hair impede your investigation? We both know there were plenty of each available.”

For all her candor, the woman was hiding something. Rather than pull out a plastic evidence bag, in Vicki’s frustration, still trying to decipher the unnatural woman before her, Vicki grasped the chain and slid the amulet in her jacket pocket.

The witch was startled. “You shouldn’t have touched that.”

“Why?” Vicki asked, realizing her error but doubted the witch’s warning had to do with procedure.

“You just … shouldn’t have.”

“Explain.”

But the woman continued to stare at her, unfazed. “You’re a lot like her, you know? Ivy came to me, initially, out of curiosity, but we became fast friends.”

“Is that why people say that Ivy was viciously protective of you? Calling them out if they criticized you or your craft?”

“If Ivy did come to my defense, then I am grateful, but I wasn’t aware. And I don’t care what people think of my choices.”

Vicki recalled Ivy’s curious bisexual history. “Even when they’re rumors of Wiccan lesbian trysts?”

“Rumors like that are typically made up by sexually frustrated men with numerous shortcomings. I can’t be attached to that.”