Something Wicked (12 page)

I stared at my sister—or my sister’s ghost—feeling sick as the rest of the memory shoved into place. We’d been studying magic at home, of course, what with my mom being a witch. And I knew our family rules.
Harm none. Ask permission. What you send forth comes back at you three times as powerful.
But I’d been so angry, so very angry, that when I saw one single, sparkling thread of curving red hair on my desk, from where it had pulled from her head…

I’d drawn a picture of Tina with outrageously long, curly hair flowing out behind her. Then I taped the strand of real hair to it. And then—

Then I’d whispered,
Pretty hair isn’t there.
And I’d torn the hair—drawn and real—right off the picture. But the rip didn’t go right, and it took off part of her crudely drawn head. That had scared me.

Once I couldn’t take it back, guilt had set in. I mean…nobody really
wants
to be a bad guy. Do they?

Then Tina showed up outside the window with her friends to laugh at me. As she spun to go, with the usual flip of her hair—it caught in the fan. And the fan kept spinning, making a horrible grinding noise. Tina began screaming, caught, wrenched backward. I began screaming, imagining her face sliced right off, her blood splattered across the classroom, across me, like the worst horror movie.

That last part didn’t happen, of course. It was a safety fan. A wire cage kept her face from being sliced off, though she claimed the blades came very close to her ear before our teacher got it unplugged. But her hair…her long, curly, auburn hair was history. The teacher had to use shears to free her.

And it was my fault. In my eight-year-old mind, Tina had almost died, her hair was gone,
and it was my fault.

I shuddered, wishing I hadn’t remembered. “That’s why I gave up magic.”

Diana nodded, as if she’d remembered with me.

“I didn’t want that kind of power.”

Diana nodded.
“You hit a crossroads, and you made your choice.”

“And
I was right!
Look at what I’d done! And what was my very next spell? I cursed the wrong guy!”

“That was an honest mistake. Anyone could have made it.”

“Anyone tossing curses around, you mean!” Anyone evil.

“Oh, get over yourself. I had a choice that day, too. You asked me not to tell Mom, so I didn’t, and that was the wrong choice. I was only thirteen. What did I know? But Mom could have helped you get through it, could have taught you spells to help fix things. She could have kept you involved in the Craft, kept you from becoming such a coward about magic.”

“Such a
what?”

Diana folded her arms.
“A coward. At least you made choices back then. Now you hit a crossroads and you just…stand here. ‘Do I go this way? Do I go that way? Oh woe, what if one of them’s a mistake?’”

“I have never said ‘oh woe’ in my life.”

“Find the damned chalice, Katie.”

“I don’t even know where to look,” I reminded her.

“Well it’s not like I do—you think death makes me all-knowing or something? Ask Ben. He seems pretty smart.”

I considered it. “No.”

“Why? Because a psycho killer who clearly has his own honesty issues told you not to trust Ben?”

“No, because the psycho killer wants me to find the chalice for him.”

“So you find the chalice and don’t let him have it. How’s that for a solution?”

“
Or I just
let it stay hidden.”

Diana rolled her eyes.
“Coward.”

“No. Sensible.”

She glanced upward and to the side, as if ignoring me, but quietly repeated,
“Coward.”

“And just which one of us is dead?”

She pretended to sneeze, but said, “Coward!” into her hand, and I started to laugh at how stupid that was, and then I remembered she was dead and started to cry. And then, with a final roll of her fingers, she wasn’t there at all….

And I was sitting in our dark, torch-lit circle, my eyes still wet.

Face-to-face with the biggest, mangiest black dog I’ve ever seen.

It panted sour dog breath into my face, its tongue lolling out, its sharp teeth exposed in a canine grin. I slowly slid my gaze to the women across from me, one at my right, one at my left. Neither of them was meditating anymore. They were staring with wide, worried eyes.

It was Thea who croaked the name first: “Hekate.”

Eleni’s eyes widened more, if that was possible, but she blinked then in comprehension. “Hekate,” she said. Her hand trembling, she offered the dog our plate of cakes.

The big dog twisted around to gulp our “feast,” but her body still faced me. She could turn back at any moment.

Part of me thought,
Oh, please. No wonder nobody takes magic seriously. A stray dog shows up, and we think it’s a goddess?

But Diana’s voice—or probably just the part of me more open to magic—retorted,
“Oh, please. An impossibly huge animal thought to be a symbol of Hekate walks into your witches’ circle in the middle of the night, and you think it’s what, a coincidence?”

Maybe I was rejecting the possible symbolism because of my supposed fear of magic. But I had that right, didn’t I?

The dog licked the plate across the rocky ground with her big tongue, then gave up on the chance of more food appearing on it and turned back to me. She sat and said, “Whuff!” Once. Sharply. Like she was trying to tell me something.

I could think of only one thing Hekate would be telling me.
“No,”
I said clearly. “Witches have free will, too.”

The dog whuffed at me again, more quietly, then turned and padded away, and that was that. I was done. Finished. I would tell Ben my decision, do what I could to keep an eye on Eleni, and deliberately
not
do what Victor wanted, because he had no more say over me than Hekate did. Less, in fact.

Why the hell would I find an even older chalice for a man who hadn’t returned the first one, just so that he could steal it, too?

On the bus ride back into the city, away from those particular ruins and everything they held, Eleni and Thea were a lot more excited about the “sign” from the goddess than I was. Afterward we grabbed a quick dinner at an outdoor Gyro stall, savoring delicious lamb stuffed in a pita pocket with a yogurt dill sauce drizzled onto it. Athens was still wide awake—if anything, it woke more as the night went on. Maybe part of it was finally getting some food, but I felt surprisingly…free.
Normal,
even.

I didn’t have to be anything I didn’t want to be.

Eleni and Thea told me about the upcoming International Women’s Day rally. Eleni was part of a contingent of female doctors and nurses traveling to Turkey to provide education, counseling, and free well-women exams near the demonstration area, and with my nursing background I could definitely be of help. With patients who weren’t dying.

And then, promised Eleni, we could go to the beach.

For what felt like the first time since Diana’s murder, I began to think about something other than death.
And
this was the perfect way to keep an eye on Eleni, just in case.

We’d be leaving the day after tomorrow, so I decided to tell Ben tonight. At least, that’s what I told myself; why else would I want to see Ben? Eleni helped me find the hostel where he was staying but agreed to wait outside with Thea, looking over the selection of paperback books at yet another vendor’s stall, while I went inside.

I’ve got something to tell you,
I thought as I headed into the cramped, scuffed-linoleum-floor lobby, practicing.

No. That made it sound like I owed him something.

Ben, I don’t know what else to do. Yeah, Victor’s in Athens, but unless we can extradite him, what good does it—

No. Too wimpy.

Or maybe I could just say—

But someone grabbed me from behind, his hand curving over my mouth, before I could even
think
of saying anything else.

“S
hhh,” warned the man whose hand covered my mouth.

I might not be much of a fighter, but I still had the good sense to stomp down, hard, on the guy’s foot.

“Son of a—!”
He let go as he pulled away from me, drawing his hurt foot up, gasping. “Ow!” he whispered.

I knew that raspy voice, and I readied myself to try another of the sloppy but effective moves my cousin the cop had taught me over the last few weeks. This one would consist of jamming the heel of my hand into my attacker’s nose. And it’s not like Victor Fisher didn’t present me with a damned easy target.

Luckily, his eyes widened before I could strike—and I recognized my mistake. There was no missing the immediate connection, now.
“Ben?”

“Shhh!” he repeated, wincing. And standing on one foot. “And
ow.
”

“What the hell do you think you’re—”

He widened his eyes insistently, and pointed.

I recognized the large redheaded man emerging from the bathroom right off the lobby. This time when Ben pulled me around the corner into the kitchenette so we wouldn’t be seen, I let him.

“Sorry about the foot,” I whispered as he leaned against me to share the best view and we peeked back out.

“Sorry about the scare,” Ben whispered back, his breath pleasantly warm across my temple. “I just didn’t want—”

But that part was kind of obvious. “What the hell is your radio partner doing in Greece?”

“He said he’s here to help,” Ben explained. “He said since he set up our meeting that night, he feels responsible for Vic getting off.”

He drew a deep breath and added, “He’s lying.”

His voice fell hollow on that last part, and I turned from my view of Al Barker consulting a folding map to better see Ben. His dark eyes radiated accusation that I felt glad wasn’t aimed at me. “How do you know?”

“I know Al. I know how he gets when he’s on a story. I guess this time, I’m the story.”

He couldn’t trust anybody, could he?

“So you decided to follow him when he left?” I asked.

Ben nodded. “But he went into the bathroom first, and then you showed up.”

“Why didn’t he use the bathroom in your room?”

“You haven’t stayed in a lot of hostels, have you?” When I shook my head, lost, Ben smiled his lopsided smile. “Private bathrooms aren’t very common.”

In the meantime, Al was heading out. So Ben and I followed—

Only to be intercepted by Eleni and Thea. My cousin brightened with recognition and started to make introductions, but I interrupted. “You go ahead,” I urged Ben. “Go!”

With a guilty look toward my cousin, he did, leaving me to make our excuses. Eleni thought shadowing a radio personality through nighttime Athens sounded exciting, but I convinced her that even two of us were pretty obvious. Four was closer to slapstick than I wanted to go. So with a final, quick hug, she and Thea headed back for the flat, and I tried to catch up with Ben past all the cafés, gift shops, clubs and jewelry stores of the Plaka.

If Ben hadn’t been watching for me, and caught my hand as I passed, I might not have found him at all.

Or maybe I would have. That residual energy link between us, from the curse, seemed stronger the more time we spent together. When we touched, it was like completing a circuit.

For me, anyway.

“You haven’t lost him yet?” I asked, as Ben drew me through the crowd of clubbers and tourists wandering the cobblestone streets.

“It helps that there aren’t a lot of Greek tall redheads,” he noted wryly.

Good point. Other than Ben’s slight limp, the two of us blended in pretty well, with our black hair and olive complexions. Ben’s cheekbones were an added bonus, and the angle of his jaw, and his long, dark lashes…anyway, he looked Mediterranean. Al didn’t have that benefit.

It also helped that Al didn’t hop any public transportation. After some blocks—hard to count, in this maze—he stopped in the street and looked around.

Ben drew me quickly back into the cover of a gift shop, still open and bright with artificial light despite the late hour. It said something about my appreciation for holding hands with him that I didn’t pull loose and complain that I knew when to duck. I did know, of course. And I didn’t have a lot of free hands lately. But…

Backlash,
I reminded myself.
It’s not a real connection; it’s residual energy from the magic.

“What did you see?” I asked instead, watching his profile.

“Al’s stopped to look around.” Ben leaned back out to take another look. “Oh, damn.”

“I help you?” demanded the shopkeeper, who looked more like he should be herding sheep. “You wish postcards to remember your stay in Athens? Pistachios, for your friends back home?”

I looked for myself. Yeah. Al was gone.

“He was there a minute ago,” said Ben. “Great.”

“Worry beads?” suggested the shopkeeper.
“Matia?”

Matia?
I looked to see what he meant—and was struck by a sudden awareness of real magic, right here between snow globes of the Acropolis and dolls wearing those funny pleated tunics and pom-pom shoes of Greek soldiers.
Matia
turned out to be those blue glass disks with round eyes painted on them, like the one Eleni had sent me after Diana died, to ward off the evil eye. Mass-produced protection.

Even after saying no to Hekate—literally—I could still sense the magic, like someone seeing green and red in a mostly color-blind world. Damn it.

“I guess we should just keep walking,” suggested Ben. “Maybe we’ll catch up to him.”

On the one hand, not an hour ago I was arguing with Diana about how badly my magic usually turned out.

On the other hand, I
wasn’t
a coward. Diana might be a figment of my imagination. This wasn’t the same as finding the grail for Victor.
And what the hell was Al doing here?

“Let me try something,” I suggested. With an apologetic smile toward the hopeful merchant, I led Ben in the direction we’d last seen Al. I could do this.

Thoughts hold power, words more so, spoken words more, and rhymes even more than that. “What rhymes with Al?”

“Pal?” Ben suggested quietly. “Shall? Guadalcanal?” Then he thought to ask, “Wait a minute…why?”

I took a deep breath, let it out, and tried to concentrate. Like Diana had said, minimum effort can still bring maximum results. Magic also worked by natural means. Looking around, I located more of those ever-present pots of geraniums nearby. Crouching beside them, I collected a small handful of fallen red petals, dry and curling, from the cobblestones beneath.

Ben’s gaze on me made me self-conscious.

“Wait here,” I suggested, and left him to go ahead, to the last spot we’d seen Al. I took another deep breath, tried to sense the energies around me, and deliberately believed in them even if I couldn’t sense them.

“We shall,” I whispered simply, “find Al.”

Opening my hand, I blew gently on the petals.

They fluttered off to the side of me, landing at the doorway of a narrow building called the Hotel Zeus. I shivered—but in a good way, for once.

I beckoned to Ben before ducking into the lobby.

To judge by all the shiny glass and marble and dark paneling in the lobby and the posh bar beyond it, rooms in the Hotel Zeus had more luxury than just private bathrooms. This place compared to Ben’s hostel the way…well, the way Victor Fisher’s clothes compared to Ben’s.

Coincidentally, the concierge said, “Mr. Fisher! Is there anything I can do for you?”

Ben and I exchanged telling glances. Well, now we knew where Victor was staying, didn’t we? But why did Al…?

When Ben said nothing, I stepped in. “This is kind of embarrassing,” I admitted, smiling, “but Mr. Fisher? He forgot his room number. What with it not being printed on the key card or anything, you know…”

Ben’s gaze cut to me, doubtful. But when I pleaded with him with my eyes, he nodded.

“Ah, yes—a security precaution,” agreed the concierge, and wrote something on a memo pad. “Here you are, Mr. Fisher.”

Ben took the memo, dark eyes flicking across the number on it. “Oh. Yes. That’s it, all right.” He wasn’t real convincing, but that might have been more obvious to me. “I transposed the eight and the…uh, thank you.”

“Any time,” smarmed the concierge, while Ben led me to the elevator.

“I don’t like doing that,” he muttered, as soon as the door closed.

“Doing what?”

“Pretending I’m Victor.”

“
He
pretends he’s
you.
”

Ben widened his eyes, as if I’d made his point for him.

“Fire with fire,” I reminded him.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he reminded me back. “Do you even have a plan here? I’d think you’d want to stay as far away from Victor as you can get.”

“I do. But what are the chances that Al and Victor just happen to be registered at the same hotel?”

Ben rolled his eyes. Chances were low.

“Wait here, then,” he said, as we stepped off the elevator. “I’ll see if he’s inside. Al’s voice carries.”

I nodded, and he did. I didn’t like how exposed we were in this beautifully carpeted, darkly paneled hallway. But Ben wasn’t outside the doorway for long before he came back to me, edgier than ever. “I can’t make out what he’s saying, but Al’s definitely there. Why don’t you go down and wait for me in the bar—”

“What? No!”

“I don’t want you anywhere near Victor, Katie,” Ben insisted—and maybe he saw something in my expression, because he changed that to, “He’s my problem. He’s always been my problem. Let me handle him.”

“By what—knocking on the door and asking what’s up?” From his stormy expression, that’s exactly what he had planned. “Like they’d tell you the truth.”

“It’s a better chance than if I
don’t
ask.” Good point.

“Or how’s this? We separate them. We’ll wait in the bar for Al to leave, assuming he does. I’ll run into him and ask him what’s up, and…you really aren’t scared to talk to Victor?”

“He won’t hurt me.” Maybe Ben saw the doubt in my expression, because he ducked his head, widened his eyes. “Really. He’s had plenty of chances over the years.”

“Then while I’m talking to Al, you talk to your brother. Afterward, you and I hook up at your hostel and compare notes. Maybe between their two versions, we can piece together at least some of the truth.”

Before I leave for Turkey.

“And you won’t just let me handle this?” asked Ben. But when I folded my arms, he pressed the down button for the elevator.

That’s how I ended up having a drink with Ben Fisher, at midnight, in Athens.

“So…that was pretty cool,” he said after a long, awkward silence, once the waiter brought glasses of red wine for us. “The thing with the flower petals.”

Observant, wasn’t he?

I shrugged, watching the lobby reflected in the mirrored wall behind him. What could Al and Victor have to discuss that would take this long? Hell, what could they be discussing at all?

I thought of something Maggi Stuart had mentioned, about the kind of men who joined the Comitatus. “Would you say Al’s a powerful presence in the telecommunications industry?”

“He’s a well-known personality, anyway,” Ben admitted, but didn’t seem to be catching on to what I was thinking. He seemed distracted. “So how long have you been practicing magic?”

I must have looked surprised, because he quickly added, “If you don’t mind my asking. I mean, if you’ve taken a vow of secrecy or something, I completely understand….”

At a loss, he took a sip of wine and watched the lobby.

My sister had attended public rituals and given continuing-education workshops on witchcraft. Secrecy wasn’t the issue. “We’ve got witches on both sides of the family,” I told him. “My mother tried to teach us, but Diana was a better student than I was. She understood so much more about the energies, about the ethics…” Maybe I wasn’t the right person to discuss ethics. “And she stuck with it. I decided to become a nurse, instead.”

“Are the two paths that incompatible?” he asked. “I thought a lot of witches were healers.”

I remembered the second grade, and poor Tina’s face squished against the safety grating on the fan, her hair being twisted tighter and tighter…. “Not always.”

He continued to watch me a little too intently. When he noticed me noticing, he smiled, dropped his gaze and took another sip of wine. This was the perfect time to confess the curse to him, wasn’t it?
Hey, Ben, speaking of the dark side of magic…

“Diana was the real witch,” I insisted, instead. “I’m just doing what I can to protect my cousin, and then I’m done with it. Tell me more about what you found on Victor’s computer, about Eleni and why he wants the Hekate Cup?”

“Victor’s always kept journals.” Ben eyed the lobby over my shoulder, but I suspected that was to avoid looking directly at me as much as to spot Al. Either that, or he seriously disliked the lobby. “Like an autobiography. Now that I’ve read them, the challenge lies in differentiating between what’s real and what he’s fantasized in order to make himself sound important.”

“Like?”

“Like the business with that secret society, the Comitatus. The way Vic tells it, our father was a member but our mom convinced him to quit. She said she’d go public if he didn’t get out. Vic writes that they were murdered to keep her quiet. He says…he says he saw it all.”

Just like Maggi and I had guessed. The murder part, anyway.
Knives.
But—“How could he even remember? You two were so little when it happened.”

“I remember some of it.”

Oh. I didn’t know what to say about that, so I reached across the bistro table between us and covered his hand with mine.
Connection.
“I’m sorry.”

Maybe we had more in common than I’d ever thought. Except…I hadn’t been only six, when I’d walked in on a murder.

Ben leaned suddenly closer. “The thing is, I saw these guys, too—before I ran for the neighbor’s, I mean, to call for help. They were thugs. They wore black ski masks, not cloaks or hoods. So the whole secret society thing could still be a figment of peoples’ imaginations. Except…our parents really were murdered. The killers never were caught. And if Vic didn’t find where Mom hid her alleged proof, how would he have known about the rest of it?”