Witch Risen: A Paranormal Adventure (Bad Tom Series Book 2) (13 page)

Me? I barely count as a magical contributor. Even before Eunice bound my magic, I wasn't much of a warlock. The only thing magic about me is my ability to shift, and I needed a few drops of Cassie's blood to gain control of that. Any magic I have now is borrowed.

I have a strong male essence, though. Gillian assures me of that, although it sounds like an accusation the way she says it. In this aging-itself-out-of-existence coven town, only Robert, Darrin, and I are left to provide the essential whiff of testosterone to keep balance.

At the moment, Robert's barely functional. Back in the day, me and my buddies would have written off his expressions of grief as unmanly. We would have told him to buck up, get a grip. Or just avoided him until he could hold it together. Times change. I know better now. Since the night he prevented Kevin from touching magical objects so he couldn't abuse his gift, he has shown me over and over again what it means to be a man.

Natalie encourages the guests who were participants in Anat's ritual to talk about what happened. The first to speak, Prudence, holds tight to Sarah's hand.

"I can tell what I remember, but it's patchy," Prudence says, her voice wavering. "I wanted us to stay. We haven't missed a full moon together since we met. Cassie said she was drawing the Goddess down, but the goddess never acted like that before. She named herself—said she's called Anat. And then she…dear Goddess." Prudence starts to cry quietly and leans into Sarah for comfort.

"And the fertility ritual," Jane adds quickly, avoiding looking at Robert. He wouldn't see her anyway because his swollen eyes are hidden by the hands which cradle his down-turned head. "It was weird. I'm afraid for her daughter if Maureen puts that teddy under her bed. It jumped around like something from The Exorcist."

Nat takes a noisy swig of water from the water bottle at her right hand before she speaks. She spent the night at the hospital and then discharged herself to get back to business. I gotta give it to her, she's a trooper. But she isn't up to snuff right now. She looks exhausted.

"Nat, I think it's best if Gillian leads for now." I hand her another bottled water to replace the empty one. "You're too weak."

She takes another swig and purses her lips, then says, "Yes, and I'm too tainted by my more gray-area experimentations to feel comfortable fighting something that clearly draws its magic from the darkness anyway." She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand and you can see she's fighting a yawn. "When I thought we were dealing with Eunice, I was sure I could beat the rancid old biddy. But not now. Gillian's the only one of us who's managed to keep herself away from darker temptations over the years."

"Have I?" Gillian shakes her head. "When Martin got sick..."

"You what? You lit selfish candles, hoping he'd live? You cursed the goddess for turning her face away? You stopped believing for a moment he would only be stopping for a while in the Summerlands?"

Gillian's eyes close softly, but her face is impassive. She opens them again and a line of moisture glimmers on the top of her lower eyelids. "Yes. I called on the Goddess, I begged her to allow him to live. And I got angry when she didn't heal him. I procured some things I'm not proud of. I came close to using them."

Natalie pats her hand. "But you didn't use them, did you?" Gilly shakes her head. "What you did wasn't dark, dear. I'm sure the Goddess has forgiven you for being only human."

Everyone knows Natalie doesn't believe. She's an atheist pagan who sees the Goddess as a euphemism for the magical force in nature. That's not a problem here: the witchery in Giles has always been eclectic. The words don't mean much coming from her, but none of the ardent believers in the circle disagree when she continues.

"You're the cleanest of us. You would have been high priestess if you had accepted the coven's offer. And that's why you'll need to lead whether or not Tom thinks I'm up to snuff."

Gillian looks around the room wistfully. "If that's true, then Goddess help us all. We've wandered so very far from where we started."

I shove the big couch and coffee table into a corner of the room so that we can form a close circle. Natalie settles onto the couch after offering Gillian a crystal ball. She soon closes her eyes. Good. She needs to rest.

Gillian arranges us.

"Tom, you take the quarter. Janice, you across from Winifred—oldest and youngest just so." She sorts us all into our positions efficiently.

The locals know to stay away from "Natalie the Gypsy Queen" at the annual Witching Faire because Nat has no talent for telling the future. She does, however, have a well-developed talent for finding "lost" items her patrons somehow left behind. But the crystal itself, like all crystal, is a true conduit for magic. Gillian places it in the center of the circle where we all now sit cross-legged, except for Winifred, whose ancient knees no longer easily bend that way. She perches instead on a kitchen chair.

Gillian takes the hands of the witches on either side of her. She has always had the talent to see behind the locked doors of the past and sometimes, of the future. But she never liked it. She avoided it. Said it wasn't right to push into someone's life that way.

Hands raise and grasp now all around the circle. Although I can no longer feel magic, I'm sure it flows through me, picking up some of my essence and contributing it to the flow.

She begins the chant. The golden candles around the colorless globe flare as the power streams around the circle. The candles are the good ones, the ones that contain some of the noble metal rather than being colored completely by a substitution. The radiance is nothing like the lights that the Cassie-thing raised the night before, but it sure feels like a nod from the Goddess that the prayer was heard.

I never take my eyes off the picture that develops in the globe. On a throne sits a woman in an Egyptian robe and headdress. Next to her, a man dressed in nearly the same attire. And before them, hundreds, on their knees, their foreheads touching the floor.

Gillian speaks, but her voice is hushed. "This is no demon. At least not as I understand demons to be. This is worship. Organized religion. I think Cassie was right—we're dealing with a goddess."

Then, the picture in the globe changes and the body of the woman from the throne is being wrapped in cotton strips and placed within a sarcophagus. Natalie sits up, immediately alert, and pulls a small sketchbook from beneath her robe. She sketches as many of the symbols that are engraved on the lid as she can before the flash of history in the crystal is gone. Too soon, the images fade. We've seen all that will be seen tonight.

"Thank you, Goddess, for what has been revealed." Gillian lets go of the hands that hold to hers and steps back from the circle.

I go straight from witch mode to detective mode. "Does anyone know what the symbols mean?"

Heads shake in the negative. Natalie says, "It was definitely Egyptian. The class I took in costume and fashion design in college was years and years ago, but I've got a good memory for that kind of thing." She holds up her drawing. "These are the symbols as close as I can capture them."

I take the drawing and study it. "That's it exactly."

"Do you recognize them?"

I reply, "I do know a few hieroglyphs, but I don't know these."

Robert contributes more than a nod for the first time since Gillian and I carried his son's body to the basement the night before. "I know someone who can help. I have a friend at the University who's an expert in Egyptology. I'll take the drawings into Boston tomorrow and see if I can get us some information."

"Are you sure?" I ask. I don't think he's ready to take an active part in this.

"Yes. Yes, it will keep my mind occupied."

I start to move the furniture back into place. "If you're feeling up to it, then I guess that's it. If everyone could leave at random intervals like you did when you got here so that it doesn't look like we've been together, that would be great."

The group breaks up, parting more solemnly than usual as group members leave every ten to fifteen minutes.

Robert nurses a whiskey, lost in his own thoughts.

I grab a blanket from the linen closet and cover Natalie on the couch. Her snoring is quiet, but persistent. She's not going anywhere tonight.

I walk Gillian to the door. When I return, Robert has moved to the study. I signal him good night on the way to my room. I think about stopping to keep him company for a while, but I know what's on his mind, and what could I say? There was no love lost between Kevin and I. I continue down the hall.

I won't be going out the window tonight. The danger is too close, too real. How in the world can this small group of mostly old biddies, two old roosters, and whatever I am, challenge a being who drained the life out of a man with nothing more than a full moon and a small circle of elderly witches?

I stop a moment, think about going back to Robert. He's offered me nothing but support since Eunice took Cassie. I should be able to offer him mine in his grief. Kevin wasn't much of a legacy to leave, but he's the one that Robert had.

But I can't do it. It was only a month ago that Kevin grabbed Cassie outside the shop and threatened her, terrified her.

No, I can't say I'm sorry that he's dead. Not even to comfort a friend.

"Robert?"

He raises his head, his eyes not focusing fully for a moment.

"Tom. I must have fallen asleep." He looks at the empty glass his hand still cradles on the side table. "I guess I had a little more to drink than my doctor would advise."

I shrug. "No one would blame you. I just thought…well, I was on my way to the bathroom and I thought you'd be uncomfortable in the morning if you stayed in the chair overnight."

Robert stands, and I turn to leave, but I turn back when he says my name quietly. I turn and look into his red-rimmed eyes, then look away, uncomfortable as always with emotion.

"Tom, I wanted to say…I know Kevin earned your dislike, but…"

I cut him off. I can't deal with this. Soppy man emotion—no way. I do my best to sound adult about it. "Robert, I can't imagine what it feels like to lose a son. I don't know what to say to you." I pause to push back the selfish worry that's beginning to surface. "I'd understand if you didn't want me around right now."

"No, Tom. This doesn't change anything. I was going to tell you that I'll do my best to put aside my pain and stay focused on this so that we don't lose Cassie, too." His voice breaks, then he regains control. "Cassie's a good girl. Kevin was…damn it, you know what he was. But I was only starting to come to grips with that. I'd hoped, with time…"

I dip my eyes, ashamed that I was only thinking of me.

"The box, Tom. Did you get close enough to see the box?"

"Yeah, it…" And then a flash of memory comes to me, pictured the way that Cat sees the world. "It could have been the twin of the one Eunice put in the attic, except it was a little bigger, I think, and it was painted differently. But it had the same symbols Eunice taught me: life, death, rebirth."

"So, it's a box to preserve him somehow? She preserved Kevin's life?" His expression turns suddenly hopeful.

"I don't think so, man." His expression falls again. "I don't mean to be harsh, but don't get your hopes up. What she did to him wasn't gentle. I'm pretty sure she used him for something the box needed."

Robert sits back down, and I take the chair across from him, leaning forward onto my arms, working to bring the fuzzy cat memory of the box into focus. "Cat saw something once that didn't really register with me at the time. Probably because I was more focused on the bedspread fringe than on what Eunice was doing. But I saw her take a box out of the heating vent above her bed a few months ago."

"So, that was the box she had when…"

"No, that was the one she took to the attic. The one that got Cassie. When she came back from the attic, she looked almost joyous, despite having to lay down almost immediately, saying she felt ill." I don't mention it was probably due to a little something extra in her tea that made her weak and sick after a meeting with Kevin.

"How does that help us?"

"Well, first, it helps us by pointing out that I'm a jerk for not remembering it sooner. Because if she's hiding the boxes in the house, I bet that's where she put them. I could have had them the first time I went there, I could have…."

I stop myself: bad timing. I don't need to tell Robert that if I'd latched onto Cat's memory sooner his son might still be alive. What do they say? Hindsight is 20/20? "I have to get in there again. Because I think I know where to look." I stand and lean over, put my hand on his shoulder. "I'm doing this for Cassie, but I'm also doing it for you now, to help you avenge Kevin."

He still looks rough when he answers, but his voice is stronger, calmer. "I could lure her away from the shop again. We just need a better plan than last time. I couldn't hold her interest long enough."

"We need to get her farther away so she can't get back so fast." I snap my fingers with a flourish and finish the move with a well-executed point. "You know what she really wants, right?"

"Other than to destroy us all?"

"She wants me."

I can tell he's surfin' my waves when the corners of his mouth turn up in a faint, sad smile.