Would-Be Witch (7 page)

Chapter 6

I waited until we were alone in my car with the shiny new bumper to discuss what I suspected with Mercutio. He licked his paws thoughtfully as I talked.

“There was a lot of destruction there. Who’s got that kind of strength? Vampires, but I can’t see them using the energy. They’re kind of like cats that way, no offense. They’ll do something when it gets them what they want, but they’re not known for kicking up a fuss just for the sake of it. Shape-shifters always have energy to burn, but they’re not drawn to witch magic any more than vampires so far as I know. A ghoul or a zombie, but who raised it if it wasn’t Mrs. Barnaby? Unless maybe Dr. Barnaby raised more than his wife.” I shuddered. “If not the doc, maybe a warlock. And that might make some sense if it was the same person who broke in my house to go for the spells, the same person who got my locket. I just know that someone besides those old-timey bandits is behind the robberies. And I can’t see them raising a zombie. A dust storm maybe, but not zombies.”

Mercutio purred.

“You know who I bet knows more than he’s telling? Bryn Lyons. He knew trouble was coming my way and gave me you. How? You think he knows who raised whatever destroyed Dr. Barnaby’s house? You think we should ask him?”

Mercutio cocked his head.

“Yeah, I’m not sure either. But what do we have to lose?”

I drove to Bryn’s house. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, given the list and all, to go inside, but I thought I could ask him to come out and talk to me. And maybe I’d get him to let me borrow a book or two.

I buzzed security, and the guy let me in. I drove to the mansion, got out, and rang the bell. A butler who looked like he’d been chipped from a giant fossil answered. He didn’t seem magical to me, but I couldn’t really rule out that he’d been raised from the dead either.

“Yes?” he asked.

I feigned tripping so I could grab his hand. It was warm enough, barely. I don’t relish the circulation problems that come with old age, but at least he wouldn’t be raiding any chicken farms.

“I’d like to see Mr. Lyons.”

“He is not at home. Business has taken him to the city of Dallas today.”

I sure liked his English accent. “When will he be home?”

“He won’t be available this evening.”

“Why won’t he be available? What will he be doing?”
Conjuring demons and sending them out to smash doll collections?

“He’s a patron of the arts. Tonight, he’s going to a fund-raiser dinner for the SWWA—Southwest Writers and Actors. Would you care to leave a message? He’ll be back to change clothes between engagements.”

“No, thank you,” I said. I went back to the car. When I got in, Mercutio lifted his head and yawned.

“Yeah, I’m sleepy, too. Bryn Lyons is going to a charity dinner for actors. Did you know he’s a patron of the arts?” I shook my head, trying to wake up. It was hot in the car. According to the weather report, Duvall and the rest of Texas were experiencing record high temperatures. I wished global warming would just quit. Summer in Texas already lasts half the year.

“He doesn’t support the community theater here. Never seen him go to a play in town. Don’t you think that’s strange, Merc?”

Mercutio blinked.

“Yeah, me, too. There’s only one type of arts that I believe him to be a patron of. You got it, black arts. What should we do? Tail him?”

Merc didn’t disagree.

“All right, we’ll come back. First I’ve got to figure out a way to put Mrs. Barnaby in her grave. Then I hope we’ve got time for a nap because I have to get back to trying to find my missing family locket, too.” I looked over and found that, conserving his energy in a very catlike manner, Mercutio was already asleep, curled in the passenger seat with the air-conditioning blowing his whiskers back.

I decided I wouldn’t mind being a cat some days.

Sometimes when Momma didn’t have a spell for something, she’d make one up. That’s probably the sort of thing that a very experienced witch should do, not so much a novice one, but I was in a serious pinch here.

I needed to be quick and discreet. There were only six or seven people in town that knew magic was real, which was the way I aimed to keep it.

On the whole, folks in Duvall can be pretty sweet, but you just never know when some little town’s going to get it into its head that Salem had the right idea about what to do with witches. And Aunt Mel always supposed that might happen right about the time folks found out we didn’t keep three hundred and eighty-two Earth candles because we like the smell of dirt.

So far, we’d had good luck keeping it a secret, which wasn’t the easiest thing in a small town. Now, I’m not saying that people in Duvall are nosy, but just because I don’t say it doesn’t make it not true. And if it got around that someone used my blood and hair to raise the dead, we’d probably have two camps. Some people would come on over to ask me to raise all their aunt Marlenes for an occult iced-tea party, and other people would start collecting wood for a town barbeque with yours truly as the main attraction.

So time was important. Zombies are basically nocturnal, and night was in an all-fired-up hurry to take over the sky. I went in the kitchen and dug out the mortar and pestle. I knew at least two ingredients that I’d put in for certain: my blood and my hair. To undo a spell, a little of the hair of the dog, or in my case, pastry chef, seemed logical because they must have been the active ingredients, but I was pretty much stumped at the rest. I consulted the Internet, vowing never to tell Momma about this. I searched by herbs and found that passionflowers are good for peace and sleep, which was exactly what I wanted for Mrs. Barnaby. I wondered if we had any dried passionflowers in storage, but then when I checked to see what passionflowers look like, I realized that the big star-shaped violet blossoms blooming in the backyard were exactly what I needed.

“Well, fancy that,” I said to Merc, who was half-asleep on the counter. “My luck is changing for the better all the time.”

I didn’t totally believe that, but I was trying to think and act positive, to give myself the best chance of success. I walked outside and stood looking at the green vine that had climbed all the way up the tallest tree to get out from under a shady canopy. Bursting purple in the sunlight, passionflowers beamed down at me. I kicked off my slip-on shoes and climbed up the lowest branch of the tree. It was fun, like when we were all kids and used to climb trees. It had always been a competition to see which boy could climb the highest and which girl he’d pull up with him. The first day Zach took me to a treetop was one of my happiest memories. When we were kids, Zach did all sorts of stuff to get my attention. By the time we got married, he acted like all the sweet things he’d done as a boy meant he didn’t need to do anything new, like love was money in the bank that would be there if you just left it alone.

I thought about the time I’d wanted to go to Galveston for a romantic weekend. He thought it’d be a waste of money to stay in a fancy hotel, and maybe he was right about that. But it didn’t hurt my feelings any less when he bought a new fishing rod and splurged on a charter with his buddies to go deep-sea fishing. When I got mad about him not spending time with me, his response was, “Hell, sweetheart, you can come fishing with us. Not like we’ve got kids you need to stay home with yet.”

I shook my head. Like deep-sea fishing with him and the boys was any woman’s idea of romantic. But I could’t change his mind by talking to him. He always did what he felt like doing, except that one time I got my way. Too bad it was in divorce court.

I plucked a flower and climbed down. In the house I showed it to Merc. “Look how pretty that is,” I said, and he blinked. A deep violet color, the ten petals were arranged like a pinwheel, contrasting nicely with the silvery strands that pushed out from the center. In the middle there were thick pale flower parts crisscrossed into a pattern that reminded me of a pentacle. I decided that was a good omen.

I wasn’t sure if live flower parts were more or less powerful than dried herbs so I decided, better safe than sorry, I’d use the whole thing. Then I lit a match and sterilized a sewing needle and pricked my finger.

I yelped, and Merc meowed in sympathy. I dripped blood into the purple mush then ground it all together with a few strands of my bright coppery hair.

“It’s too thick. I don’t want to have to get close enough to smear paste on her. I need something I can splash from a goodly distance away.”

Merc cocked his head.

“What do you think? Mix some water in? That’s what I do when I get a batter that’s too thick.”

Merc licked his paw.

I poured half a cup of water into a small metal mixing bowl and dumped the mash in it. I stirred it all up then put it in Tupperware and sealed it with a rubber lid.

“We’ll start at the cemetery and see if we can follow her tracks. How are you at tracking?”

Merc didn’t answer, but he was more energetic after his nap, and he hopped down and headed to the door to wait for me.

“I still probably need an incantation, you know.” I shook my head. Momma and Aunt Melanie’s spells always sounded pretty, like song lyrics, but I’d gotten a C-minus in poetry. I’d never heard that witches had to know poetry, so I didn’t think iambic pentameter was necessary for a spell, but I figured I’d better at least make it rhyme.

With my passionflower mash tucked under my arm, I let Merc out the front door and locked it.

“Merc, what rhymes with grave? How about brave? ‘Now you’ve got to be brave, and just go on back to your grave.’ ”

Merc batted roughly at his whiskers in a gesture that looked suspiciously like the way Zach thunked himself in the forehead when he thought I’d done something really dumb.

I opened the passenger door, and Merc hopped in.

“What? You don’t think I should mention grave? You think it’ll upset her? I guess maybe she might not know she’s dead. Like all those people in
The Sixth Sense
. And we don’t want to upset her; she might decide to do something mean to us. Not that it’d be intentional.” I closed his door and walked around the car.

I got in and glanced over at him as I turned the key in the ignition. “All right. What rhymes with ‘go back to sleep’? Hmm. ‘Now, no more counting sheep, it’s time to go back to sleep.’ Ugh. Too corny and who really counts sheep anyway?”

I drove to the Duvall cemetery. As cemeteries go, it’s nice. Most everybody in town has kin in the ground there, so it’s always a competition to see who keeps the family plots the prettiest. Some people literally are pushing up daisies. But plenty have roses, sunflowers, and hydrangea. My favorite area is the plumeria section where the Gaffney family is buried. It smells prettier than a bottle of perfume over there.

I walked up and down the rows looking for Mrs. Barnaby’s grave. I found it at the east edge of the cemetery with all the flowers ripped loose and the ground broken open. I shivered and looked at Merc. His fur stood straight up on his back, and he hissed and backed away.

“C’mon. You’re brave. Let’s go,” I said, marching past the grave, following clumps of dirt to the field behind the cemetery.

“We don’t even need a bloodhound,” I said, looking at the smashed grass. “This is going to be no problem.”

Daylight faded, and the air was hot and stagnant. What was with this stupid freak heat wave? Sweat trickled down my neck and made my shirt stick to my back. I grimaced. I needed a tall glass of iced tea or a mojito. I wiped the sweat off my forehead, sighing.

“This is a fine cat on a hot tin roof, huh?” I said to Merc, trying to keep things light and positive. I looked over and realized he was gone. “Merc?” I called out. I waited, and when there was no answering meow, I scowled. He’d deserted me. “You better not be lying in the shade under a plumeria plant!”

The trail had gotten thinner and the grass taller. I picked up a switch and started to beat the brush. The last thing I wanted was to get bitten by a copperhead. I hadn’t thought to put on boots. I looked sullenly at my bare legs, shaking my head. Shorts and open-toed shoes were just plain foolishness for a hike through knee-high grass. I slapped a mosquito on my thigh irritably.

“I shouldn’t even be doing this. It’s not my fault Mrs. Barnaby got raised from the dead. I was poisoned into unconsciousness. I should march right back to my air-conditioned car,” I muttered.

I reached the edge of the field and stared at the wire fence closing off Glenfiddle Whiskey’s property. Glenfiddle’s one of the three main businesses in Duvall. It’s owned by the Gaffney family, who came from Scotland six generations ago. At first, they only had little stills and made moonshine, but then, three generations back, they started putting fancy labels on recycled whiskey bottles and selling their homemade stuff all over the Southwest.

Maybe it says something about my hometown that the second largest business also makes booze. Armadillo A le’s owned by the workers who make it. It’s only sold in Texas, and that’s the way the Armadillo boys plan to keep it, although the people who smuggle it to Oklahoma and Louisiana have other ideas. I don’t suppose Armadillo’s going to have a choice about expanding soon.

The last big business in Duvall is one that no native Duvallan ever thought would work out. It’s energy. We’ve got a queer amount of wind in Duvall. I’m guessing it has something to do with the tor and the magicks in the area, but nobody else knows about my theory, of course. Anyway, a retired college professor from Austin, with Bryn Lyons as a silent partner, bought a plot of land and put up a bunch of super-tall metal windmills. We power the whole town off the wind, and now we’re shipping our wind power out. Professor Rubenstein’s just about the smartest man anybody’s ever met, although his silent partner’s not shabby either. To hear rumor tell it, Bryn’s investment had paid a 300 percent return so far.

I wished that Mrs. Barnaby had wandered into the windmill field. The grass there is very short, and you can see all the way across it with a glance.