The Thirteenth Sacrifice (9 page)

She nodded. “They are real witches.”

He slammed the rest of the coffee and thumped the mug down on the table. In that moment something subtle
changed and he seemed more himself, more in control again.

And the truth will set you free
. It had helped Jane and now it was helping him.

“So, when are we going to talk about the broomstick in the room?” he asked.

“What are you asking me?” she said, struggling to buy time. She wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not with him. Not with anyone.
Especially not after what I did today.

“What is your deal?” Ed asked, leaning in close.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“Unfortunately, that’s a luxury neither of us can afford anymore.”

She winced. “I don’t like to think about my past, much less discuss it.”

“No, really?” he said, the sarcasm thick in his voice. “I’ve been your partner for two years. I kind of picked up on that. Look, I have to tell you I’m really freaked out about these killings. I know you know more than you’re saying.”

She dropped her eyes to the table. “I’ve never told anyone.”

“No better person to tell than your partner. You know things about me even my wife doesn’t know.”

“Lucky her.”

He smiled only briefly.

An icy knot settled in the pit of her stomach. He really wanted to know. He deserved to know. And if things got any freakier, he really
needed
to know.

“I, uh, had a bad childhood,” she said, licking her lips.

He leaned forward intently. She glanced up at him and saw burning curiosity in his eyes. He had known for a long time that she wasn’t normal. He had been more
patient than most people, given her space, but it hadn’t meant he didn’t want to know. Looking at his face, she could tell just how badly he wanted the truth.

She got it. Being a cop made you a bit of a control freak. Knowledge was power. Knowledge about your partner was life. He had probably wondered for a long time just what baggage she was carrying and when it was going to become a sudden, unexpected problem for both of them. She had heard stories about officers who froze when confronted with something that came a little too close to their own childhood scars.

She took a deep breath. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. When he tried to pull back, she hung on for dear life. She was afraid and she forced herself to focus on his hand, the look of it, the feel of it, the pressure he was applying.

“I was raised in a coven.”

She struggled to gain control of the emotions that suddenly welled up within her, threatening to overtake her. Fear, rage, shame, pride, and a dozen more that made no sense to her.

“Wiccan?” he asked gently.

If only,
she thought. Wicca was a religion. Those who followed it were peaceful, taking oaths to harm no one. The coven she had been raised in had nothing to do with Wicca, and its members had taken no such oaths.

“No, this was, um, a group that was into the occult.”

She could feel his uncertainty and she didn’t blame him. “Occult” meant so many things. It was a word that was thrown around so often that it had lost its meaning, its power.

“They were into very black magic, the bad stuff, you know?”

“What, like sacrificing animals?”

She laughed. She could hear herself laughing, hear the hysterical edge to it, but she couldn’t stop. She grabbed her glass of water and gulped, choking on it. The laughter that sounded like it came from someone else ceased as water ran down her chin.

She drew in a long breath of air with a gasp. “No.”

A look of relief crossed his face and it broke her heart to say what she had to. “Sacrificing people.”

Ed didn’t have to say anything. The look of horror on his face spoke volumes to Samantha. He tried to yank his hand away again, but she wouldn’t let it go. She looked at him, wishing she could make him understand, but knowing that he never could. She waited for him to say something.

“Please tell me you didn’t—”

“I did… saw… a lot of things I wish I could forget. But, no, I was spared from actually delivering a killing blow.”

And she knew that he had been on the force long enough to know that just because she hadn’t done the deed didn’t mean she was completely innocent. Even still, there were so many things she didn’t remember, but she clung to the belief that she had never killed a person. She had been too young, and only older, higher-ranking members of the coven did that.

After a long minute Ed cleared his throat. “But I know your father, your family.”

“My adoptive family,” she corrected.

He nodded slowly. “Your biological family, your… coven… What happened?”

“They were slaughtered, all of them. I survived.” She shook her head, not wanting to describe it, and still not
entirely sure how she had escaped it. She remembered the screaming, the blood, the monster that they had raised. And then she remembered walking, feet bare, dress torn, until she found what she was looking for. “Afterward I walked to a police station. I told the first officer I saw that my mother was dead.” She licked her lips, shaking at the memory. “It was Captain Roberts, but back then he was a detective in Salem. He went to the house… the house you and I were at today… and everyone was dead.”

Ed swore. “In the basement?” he asked at last.

She nodded.

“And that woman in the kitchen that you said was a ghost?”

“One of them,” she whispered.

“Then what?”

“Captain Roberts felt sorry for me and brought me to this place to eat before taking me to see a friend of his, a psychologist named Aaron Ryan. Later the Ryans adopted me and raised me, taught me not to fear the dark… and not to worship it either.”

They had only half succeeded. She didn’t worship the dark, but she had never overcome her fear of it.

“So Ryan’s not your real last name.”

“It is now. Samantha Ryan. I chose a new name for myself the day they officially adopted me. They gave me Ryan and I chose Samantha.”

“What was your name?”

She shook her head. “I won’t say that name out loud again. The new one is all that matters.”

“Why?” he asked, wrinkling his brow.

“Names have meaning, power. That’s why I needed a new one. I couldn’t deny what I was, where I came from, but I needed to rob it of its darkness, its hold over me. So
I chose the name Samantha in honor of the witch on
Bewitched,
because she was the nicest, funniest, most harmless witch I could think of. By taking her name I acknowledged my roots while attempting to deny them power over me.”

“But why didn’t you choose a name with no witch connection?”

“It wouldn’t have been the truth and I would know and I would give it power by hiding it.”

“That’s really… weird.”

Samantha grimaced. “I even taught myself to twitch my nose like her. How I wished some days that I had been Tabitha and not me. Growing up a witch with Samantha as a mom would have been wonderful.”

“Maybe, but you still would have been a witch.”

She nodded. That was what she had to remember. A witch was the one thing she didn’t want to be, even though she and Ed owed their lives to that part of her that had been able to command the door to open, allowing them to escape.

“How old were you?” he asked.

“Twelve.”

“And they were all slaughtered?”

“Yes.”

“Care to tell me how?”

“Something they were trying to do backfired on them.” That was true, but it didn’t even begin to capture the essence of what had happened that day.

“And you didn’t have any other family?”

She shook her head. “Not that I knew of. Mom never mentioned anyone.”

“What about your dad?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea who he was, or even if he was still alive. My mother refused to talk about him.”

“Ouch.”

“I figure I’m lucky. If I had relatives, who knows where I would be now. I owe everything to my adoptive parents.”

She waited, searching his face to see what his response was going to be. Ed was a good cop, one of the best, and as much as he would want to support his partner, she wasn’t sure that after what she had revealed he would want to be partners anymore.

I can barely live with the things I’ve done. How could I ever ask him to?

“Are we okay?” she asked.

Before he could say anything, her phone rang, startling her. She reached for it, cursing the timing.

“Ryan here.”

“Sam, I want to see you in my office as soon as possible,” Captain Roberts said without preamble.

“Yes, sir. What about Ed?”

“Make sure he goes downtown where they’ve got Katie and then come straight here.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, but he had already hung up. That wasn’t good.

“Captain wants to see me, and you’ve got to see a woman about protective custody,” she said, throwing a few dollars on the table and standing up.

“Seems like you’re not going to get to finish any meal here today,” Ed said as he walked out with her.

“Not in the cards, I guess.”

“So, Roberts knows about you… your past?”

“Everything.”

It wasn’t true. Captain Roberts didn’t know
everything
, but he knew enough.

A minute later they were in her car, and as she drove she kept trying to get a good look at Ed’s face. He spent the
entire drive staring out the passenger-side window. He had never answered her question from the diner and she was afraid to repeat it, since she was pretty sure she knew the answer already. She just didn’t want to hear that he couldn’t deal with her past. Over their two years as a team, Ed had become more than a partner; he had become a good friend. She had been to his house for dinner dozens of times and thought his wife was an absolute saint.

Once they arrived at the precinct, they split up without another word to each other. Ed grabbed his car and headed out for the precinct where they were holding Katie.

Samantha took a seat outside Captain Roberts’s office while waiting for him to finish a phone call. He was the one who had listened to her in Salem the night she showed up with stories of witches and demons and death. He had been the lead investigator, and she remembered endless hours spent talking to him in the weeks after the events. She had thought that once he stopped investigating she wouldn’t see him again, but he and her adoptive family were close. When he transferred to the Boston Police Department, he had quickly made a name for himself, and by the time she was a rookie, he had made captain. She had always been grateful that once the case was officially closed he had never spoken to her about the massacre again, although she knew that in the end he had believed what she told him. Now, though, sitting, waiting, she knew things were about to change. She had a sick, twisting feeling in her stomach that told her she wasn’t going to like whatever it was he had to say to her. At last the door opened and he ushered her inside.

“How are you?” he asked as he closed the door behind her.

“I’ve been better,” she said.

“So I hear. Have a seat.”

She sat and waited uneasily as he did likewise. Finally he leaned across the battered desk that he’d been using for years, and fixed her with steely gray eyes that had lost none of their sharpness over the time that she had known him.

“Are we really dealing with witches?” he asked bluntly.

And just hearing him say the word “witches” brought it all back so clearly that it took her breath away. She swallowed hard and forced herself to meet his eyes. “I’m afraid so,” she said.

He cursed roundly and she could only nod.

“And I understand the house where you found the last body today was the same house from years ago?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “I should have burned that place to the ground when I had the chance.”

“We both should have,” she said quietly. “I thought about it a dozen times, but I didn’t want to get that close to it.”

“No one can blame you for that. Look, there’s no easy way to say this. I’ve been on the phone with the Salem police all afternoon. We all know something big’s happening. They were hearing some strange mutterings. Then these bodies. It’s safe to say that, for whatever reason, witches have returned to Salem. And we all know what that means.”

“More people are going to die. Witches usually avoid Salem,” she said.

“Unless they have a really good reason not to. And any reason they have to be here is trouble for us. Look, you know how these groups are—secretive, suspicious.
It can take months to even hear of one, let alone find out anything about them. If they’re trying to frame the Horn girl, that means she’s already outlived her usefulness for them and is completely expendable.”

“We need to make sure she’s protected.”

“We’re already working on that,” he said. “What we really need is more information. We need someone… on the inside.”

“Salem police have someone in mind?” she asked.

“No, but I do,” he said, leveling his gaze at her.

“I can’t help,” she snapped, pushing back her chair and lurching to her feet.

“Samantha,” he said, his voice quiet, “you’re the only one who can.”

“You can’t make me.”

“No, I can’t. But I’m asking you.”

“I won’t, not even for you.” She groaned, wishing she could tear something apart with her bare hands. She reached for the cross that wasn’t there. She needed something to focus on. She thought of earlier at the house. She had unlocked the door to save herself and Ed, breaking her vow never to use magic again. And then banishing the creature. She hadn’t had a choice; she had to believe that. But deep down inside, she knew she hadn’t needed to slam the front door in its face, since it wasn’t able to leave the house anyway.

I did it because I could, because I wanted to feel powerful
. Rage and shame filled her. She had sworn to turn her back on all of it, and until today she had kept her word. Now everything was falling apart.

She grabbed fistfuls of her hair close to the scalp and yanked hard, needing to feel pain that was external, that was real and tangible. She paced as she pulled on her hair and then finally collapsed in the chair farthest
from his desk and began to rock back and forth, shaking.