Authors: Maralee Lowder
“It was worse.
From what I overheard, everything that had been done to Reverend Elkins was done to Luke, but this time whoever did it left a burn mark on his forehead, just like you’d brand cattle.”
She closed her eyes for a moment,
visualizing the horrible scene.
Her next words were spoken in a horrified whisper.
“It was the sign of a pentagram.”
Her fingers involuntarily reached for the small gold charm she wore from a chain around her neck.
A pentagram.
They were both silent for a moment, Cassie locked in the horror of what she had heard, Mac’s thoughts working frantically for a solution to the crime that would not include this woman who had managed to find a way into a heart he had believed to be impregnable.
Mac was the first to break the silence.
“It’s bull
shit.
Anyone could have killed the guy and put that brand on him to throw the cops off his own trail.
It wouldn’t take a genius to come up with a plan like that.”
“They found his blood on my mother.”
The words, spoken with absolutely no emotion, floated in the air between them.
She couldn’t have said what he thought she said.
Her eyes were dry now.
No emotion showed on her face as she turned her gaze to the vast ocean.
It was as if she could escape a reality too horrible to contemplate by letting her mind join the cold, heaving water.
“It was in her caldron, beside her bed.
And
...
and it was on her lips.”
Mat sat in stunned silence.
What could he possibly say?
“Well, that is they think
it’s
Luke’s blood.
They still have to test it, but
...”
Her voice trailed off as if her mind was too exhausted to deal with her problems.
“Caldron?”
What the hell
was Myra
doing with a caldron, Mac wondered.
“Your mother has a caldron?
”
“We use it for ceremonies.”
She turned to him and what she saw in his eyes turned her stomach.
“It’s all symbolism.
Mac.
W
e don’t do sacrifices.
We never could.
In our religion we venerate all life.
We could never wantonly destroy something created by the God and Goddess.
Life, all life, is precious to us.”
He gathered her into his arms, offering her what little protection he could from the madness that threatened to destroy everything she loved.
“I believe you,” he whispered close to her ear.
“I believe you.”
Only a tiny spark in his brain taunted him with the question,
how can you trust a witch?
Thank the Goddess for the pet shop
, Cassie thought.
No matter what else was happening, the animals still needed feeding, the cages still needed cleaning.
Although neither woman was able to forget, even for an instant, the tragedy
that hovered over them, both Cassie and Shelly found comfort in the simple
,
but necessary
,
chores.
Mac helped out by grabbing a broom and demonstrating that he knew what it was used for.
“But why did they arrest the rest of the coven?” Shelly asked Cassie as the two of them teamed up to bathe a very unwilling puppy.
“I don’t know.
I didn’t hear any explanation
other than something about the coven putting on a black mass, complete with human sacrifice.”
“It just goes to show you how little they know about the Wiccan tradition,” Shelly scoffed.
“If they would bother to ask, they’d know that our cere
monies have nothing to do with masses
, black or white.”
“Well, I don’t see as they are all that interested in learning the truth about us.
Our traditions are far too tame compared to what their imaginations come up with.
All I know is that the only reason you and I aren’t locked up with everyone else is because we have alibis.”
“So what happened to Alan?” Shelly asked.
“I had the impression when they left last night that he would stay with Myra until he was sure she was feeling better.
And from the
way she looked when they left, I can’t believe she could have recovered that quickly
.
”
“That’s what I thought too,” Cassie replied, her brows wrinkling into a scowl.
“After what she’d been through, she shouldn’t have been left alone.
If I’d thought for a minute that Alan wasn’t going to stay, I would have insisted on going home with her myself.”
“Maybe she sent him home,” Mac suggested.
“Your mom doesn’t strike me as they type who would want anyone hovering over her.”
“Usually I’d agree with you,” Cassie turned to Mac, “but last night was different.
I’ve never seen her look like that before.
As independent as she is, I was certain she was glad to have Alan there to take care of her.”
“That was my impression too,” Shelly agreed.
“As crazy as he is about her, I’d have thought nothing would have persuaded him to leave her alone last night.”
His curiosity aroused, Mac made a mental note to have a little talk with Alan.
The man interested him on two levels.
Cassie and Shelly were right.
If he was as nuts about Myra as he appeared to be, wouldn’t he have insisted on staying near her last night?
After all, she had just been through an ordeal
that would crush most women, not to mention the fact that she had looked genuinely ill.
And on a more personal note, Mac was beginning to see that the romance of the small town editor with the leader of the local coven of witches might just make a tasty story for
The Inquisitor
.
He fought off the thought that such a story would be a betrayal to the faith Cassie had put in him.
He had a job to do,
didn’t
he?
The battle between guilt and his journalistic urges was interrupted as the front door of the shop suddenly banged open.
A short, chubby woman, well into her seventies
,
bustled into the shop.
She
gripped her handbag in one hand
and in the other Mac saw she had a copy of
The Inquisitor
.
The unexpected sight of the paper he worked for set off a sudden alarm in Mac’s brain.
Why here?
Why now?
“Mrs. Werner!
How nice to see you.
But you must not have seen the sign on the door.
We’re closed today.”
“Hah!
I can just imagine y
ou are.
After everything that’s happened, I’m proud of you girls for sticking around.
The way this town has turned on all of you is just a crying shame.
And now this!”
She slammed the paper down on the counter.
All eyes wer
e drawn to the huge headlines.
INTIMATE DETAIL
S OF THE WITCH’S CURSE MURDERS!
Without saying a word, Cassie picked up the paper and leafed through it until she found the story.
She didn’t need to read it, only the byline.
Her heart plu
mmeted when she saw the words, ‘
submitted by staff
writer, Robert (Mac) McCormick’.
The gaze she turned on him burned a searing hole in his heart.
He had never seen so much pain, so much grief, and so much anger in anyone in his entire life.
“Just get out,” was all she said, but those three words spoke volumes.
The urge to get down and dirty drunk hit Mac with an intensity he hadn’t felt in months.
As he walked away from Pet’s-n-Stuff, the need grew stronger.
At one point in his life he had believed that through his own indulgences he had lost everything, but now he realized how wrong he had been.
Before Cassie,
he had had nothing worth losing, b
ut now,
now that she had come into his life, now that he had fallen in love with her, now he knew what it was to lose something far more precious than life itself.
He had thought he’d hit bottom and was on his way back up.
How wrong he had been.
Nothing he had experienced in the past could compare with the despair he felt at this moment.
Chapter 6
In the week Mac had been in Port
Bellmont
he had barely noticed the small neighborhood bar, but now it beckoned him, promising to comfort him with its own form of magic.
As if propelled by a force beyond his control, he was drawn to it.
Obeying the magnetic pull, he entered, allowing himself to become part of its soothing darkness.
He stood just inside the entrance for a moment.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply of the familiar scents - stale smoke, spilled beer, men who had spent too many hours tossing back shooters of whiskey.
A flus
h of warmth swept through him. H
is pulse quickened.
He was home.
He licked dry lips and
swallowed hard.
His throat had never been so dry.
He too
k a hesitant step forward and
stopped, willing himself to get out, reminding himself what a dangerous place this was for him.
He was about to leave when he heard his name being called from a booth near the back of the room.
Squinting
his eyes to see through the murky gloom, Mac spotted Alan
Boatright
.
Holding a glass aloft, Alan gestured for Mac to join him.
A small but insistent voice warned Mac to get the hell out of the bar, but he ignored it.
Alan was the man he needed to talk to, he reminded himself.
He should be grateful that the guy had been so conveniently dumped in his lap rather than wasting his time worrying about dealing with the nearly overpowering urge to get down and dirty drunk.
Alan was part of the story, right?
Mac had mo
re than a few questions for him, t
he biggest one being, why
had he
left Myra alone last night when it was so obvious the woman needed someone with her.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Alan called as Mac drew closer.
“You’re just the guy I wanted to talk to.”
Mac couldn’t help but notice the slur in the guy’s speech. He wondered how long Alan had been here, suspecting it to be ever since he had gotten the news of Myra’s arrest.
Alan signaled to the waitress as Mac slid into the booth on the bench facing him.
“Bring me another one of these.” H
e lifted an empty glass that had apparent
ly contained a double martini. “A
nd make it a boiler maker for my buddy here.”
Mac counted six plastic toothpicks lined up neatly in front of Alan.
If each one represented a double martini, and Mac
felt fairly certain that they did, it was amazing that the man wasn’t comatose.
He was still contemplating Alan’s remarkable accomplishment when the waitress returned with their order.
And then he was a
ll alone.
Everyone else -
Alan, the waitress,
the blaring ballgame on the TV -
everyone and everything ceased to exist.
It had been so long, nearly a year, b
ut as he gazed into the amber liquid he realized he hadn’t left those times behind.
Nothing had changed.
His eyes never leaving the shot glass, he reached out to touch it.
Next to it stood the
tall frosty glass of beer
waiting to quench the fire the warm whiskey would set off deep in his gut.
His fingers encircled the smaller glass, remembering so well the feel of it in his hand.
He licked his lips and swallowed.
A boilermaker.
His signature drink.
How
had Alan
known, he wondered.
For some reason the thought of the man sitting across from him snapped Mac out of his hypnotic state.
With a slightly sardonic smile, he sat back and watched as Alan removed the plastic pick from his drink and nibbled at the
two green olives and one small pickled onion.
With the infinite care that only a drunk can achieve, he lined up the empty pick with the others, precisely one-eighth of an inch from the last one in line.