Spellcasters (46 page)

I called every Coven member, assuring them that Nast was out of our lives for good. I told them what Victoria had done. It didn’t matter. I’d tainted the Coven. Only a handful would even consider having me back.

We stayed in Massachusetts only long enough to file an insurance claim and get the paperwork done. Between the money from the claim, and money I still had from my mother’s estate, I had enough to move anywhere I wanted and start over. For most women my age, this would be a dream come true. It wasn’t my dream, but I’d make it mine. I swore I would.

When we pulled out of Boston three days later, I watched the city lights fade behind me, perhaps for the last time, and a wave of sadness washed over me, but no tears came. Surprisingly few tears had come in the last few days. Even as I’d surveyed the ruins of my life, I’d realized that I still had exactly what I’d fought for.

I had Savannah. I’d known that I might lose everything I had in my quest to protect her, and I’d told myself that didn’t matter. I guess that’s what happens when you make a deal with the Fates. They take you at your word. Still, they did leave me with two consolation prizes, which I valued more than I could have imagined.

First, I still had the grimoires. When the firefighters rescued Cortez from my burning house, he’d still been carrying the two bags, the one with the grimoires and the one with my tools and the material for Savannah’s ceremony.

My second bonus reward? Cortez was fine, and still with us. Through his network of contacts, he’d found a doctor in Boston willing to examine him, no questions asked. He had three cracked ribs, internal bruising, and a possible concussion. The doctor had advised a hospital stay, but Cortez settled for a chest binding and some painkillers, then we’d set out on the road.

I hadn’t told him of his brother’s plan to have me killed. What would be the use? He already knew his brothers hated him. If I told him, he might decide he was putting my life in danger and leave, and I wasn’t risking that.

We’d been driving for two days now. I still didn’t know where we were going. For now, it was a cross-country summer tour. Savannah thought that was pretty cool. She’d tire of it soon. Hopefully I’d find a place to settle before she did.

We’d stopped this morning. Some town in Virginia. At least, I think we were still in Virginia, though we may have crossed into Kentucky. Today was the big day. The eighth day.

Since dawn we’d been preparing for the ceremony. Now that it was dark, we’d driven to a state park, slipped past the locked gates, and headed into the forest. I’d found a site almost immediately, a good-sized clearing ringed with trees, as the ceremony prescribed. We were still early, though, so Savannah had grabbed a flashlight and taken off to see if she couldn’t find something better. My choice was fine, but I suspected she was simply too excited to sit still.

I’d found a fallen log and sat down to pore over my notes. I was reading them through for the third time when a hand pressed between my shoulder blades, fingers rubbing the knot of tension there.

“How are you doing?” Cortez said, taking a seat beside me.

I managed a shaky smile. “It feels like I’m about to do my SATs, driver’s test, and thesis presentation all rolled into one.”

He squeezed my hand. “You’ll do fine.”

I leaned against him and he put his arm around my shoulder.

“What would you think about heading out to the Coast?” he asked. “Washington or Oregon. You might like it there. Lots of open space, and the ocean. It’s not the East Coast, but …”

“I visited Portland once. I liked it.”

“We’ll go there, then.”

“So you’re going to—?” I hesitated. “I mean, we haven’t discussed …” I took a deep breath and plowed on. “Are you coming with us? For now, I mean?”

“For now … and for as long as I’m welcome.” He slid a quarter-smile my way. “The problem, as you undoubtedly have already discerned, will not be keeping me around, but getting rid of me.”

“I can live with that.”

I leaned over and kissed him. When we pulled apart, he adjusted his glasses, then looked at me.

“When I, uh, mentioned the Pacific Northwest, it wasn’t a random suggestion. Oregon is one of the few states without a Cabal satellite office. With Kristof dead, on a case in which I was involved, I may need to lie low for a while.”

“What will happen?”

“I don’t know. I can say, with certainty, that my presence won’t place you or Savannah in danger. I’d never do that. The matter of Kristof’s death will be handled through proper Cabal channels. If I’m in danger, I’ll hear of it long before anyone comes for me. My father should be able to handle it.” He shook his head. “It seems no matter how far and how fast I run, I always end up relying on my father to—” He stopped. “I’m sorry.”

“Tell me.”

He entwined his fingers with mine and smiled. “Later. I only wanted you to know that I’m not placing you in danger, but that it would be wise for me to keep out of sight for a while. My father may—will summon me home to Miami. I’d prefer to be as far away as possible when that happens.”

Savannah burst from the forest. “Is it time?”

I nodded. “Wait here. I’ll cast a perimeter spell around the site.”

“We’ll have everything set up when you return,” Cortez said, dropping the knapsack from his shoulder.

“No, I’ll do—” I bit my lip. “Sure. Thanks.”

I walked until I could no longer hear the murmur of their voices, then continued another ten feet before casting the perimeter spell. Fighting my way through the thick woods, I circled the site, casting as I went. Then I looped around again, just to be sure. When I returned to the clearing, Cortez and Savannah were kneeling on the ground, laying out the final objects.

Cortez shifted to a crouch. “Is this correct?”

I took the notes from him and walked around the tableau, scrutinizing it from every angle. Along both the north and south sides of the cloth they’d laid a quartet of tools—a small pot, an athame, a candle, and a chalice. The north candle was purple, for power. The south one blue, for wisdom and truth. Off the cloth they’d left the Baggies of dirt, the juniper, and a bottle of water.

Savannah handed me a necklace, a lodestone on a strip of rawhide, like the one now around her own neck. I put it on, surveyed the tableau once again, and bent to move the blue candle an inch to the left and rotate the northern athame about twenty degrees east. They’d probably been fine to begin with, but I felt better making the adjustments. Control isn’t a habit you can break overnight.

“Okay. We’re almost ready. Savannah, have you buried the cloth?”

She nodded.

“Good, then you need to kneel on the north side, in front of the purple candle.”

“Shall I move elsewhere?” Cortez said. “Only if you want to.”

“I’ll sit back on the log and watch. If that bothers you, tell me and I’ll get out of sight.”

“Thanks.”

When he went to take his seat, I cast a protective circle around us. Then I turned to Savannah.

“Before we start, I want you to know that I really want this to work. It’s possible, though, that I might not have the power or the experience to do it properly. If it seems to fail, I’ll keep trying, but—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll know you tried. Thanks, Paige. For doing this, I mean. I know it’s not what you had in mind for me.”

“It’s what your mother wanted. That’s good enough for me.”

I laid my notes before me.

“Okay, first the elements. If anything sounds wrong, stop me. Even if you aren’t sure, don’t be afraid to speak up. Better to restart partway through than repeat the whole thing later.”

She nodded.

“Here we go then. Air.”

I slashed the athame through the air.

“Earth.”

I poured the grave dirt from the Baggie into each shallow clay pot.

“Water.”

I uncapped the Evian bottle and filled both chalices.

“Fire.”

I struck a match and lit the candles.

I paused then, closing my eyes and clearing my mind. When I opened my eyes, I focused straight ahead, seeing nothing. With a brief Latin invocation, I called on the power of the elements to heed my will. Then I blinked, allowing myself to see again, and motioned for Savannah to watch carefully, since she’d need to repeat the next steps.

“Air to the north,” I said, taking my athame and placing it before me.

“Earth to the east.” I put my clay pot to my right.

“Water to the west.” I moved my chalice to my left.

“Fire to the south.” Taking the blue candle, I twisted, being careful not to fall, and laid it behind me.

I touched each in turn, the athame, the dirt, the water, and the flame. When it came to the last, panic darted through me and I hesitated, then gritted my teeth and forced my finger into the flame.

“Air, earth, water, fire. At their center, I sit in balance. All nature in harmony.”

I turned to Savannah and motioned for her to copy me. She did, intoning each phrase without faltering. When she’d finished, we repeated the last part together. Then Savannah shifted onto her knees, lighting the candles as I resumed my place. Fingers trembling, I held the juniper branch over my candle’s flame.

“With this offering, I beg protection,” I said in Latin. “Hecate, Selene, Artemis, goddesses three, hear my plea. We ask this in your name. Grant this, your child, all the powers you can bestow.”

I looked Savannah in the eyes, lifting my hands and voice.

“Grant her power without bounds. Give her the strength to wreak vengeance on her enemies.”

The ground beneath me rumbled, but I held Savannah’s gaze and kept going.

“Give her the power to overcome and the wisdom to do right by this gift. Give her all that you have to give.”

The earth quaked, toppling the candles and igniting the cloth beneath. I raised my hands to the sky and stood, closing my eyes and pouring everything into the last few words.

“Hecate, Selene, Artemis! Hear my plea!”

For a split second, all went still. Preternaturally still and silent. I could hear nothing, feel nothing. No, I did feel something. I felt peace. Complete peace.

“It worked!” Savannah said, launching herself across the space between and falling into my arms. “Can you feel that, Paige? It worked! You did it!”

“Yes,” I said, smiling. “We did it.”

“G
ot another
CSI
question for you,” Gloria said as Simon walked into the communication hub with an armload of papers. “If you’re not busy.”

“Perfect timing,” Simon said. “I’m just about to start my coffee break.” He started pulling a chair to Gloria’s workstation, then hesitated. “Can I get you something?”

Gloria smiled and shook her head. Simon moved the chair beside hers, being careful not to block her view of the digital-display city map on the side wall. That’s what Gloria loved about shamans, they were so damned considerate. You want a nice guy, you get a shaman. You want a self-centered jerk, you get a half-demon.

Her shift partner, Erin, hated it when Gloria said that. Racial discrimination, she called it. Of course Gloria didn’t really believe every half-demon was a jerk—she was a half-demon herself—but that didn’t keep her from saying so to Erin. Night shift in the communication hub could get deathly dull, and there was nothing like a good political correctness debate to liven things up.

Gloria pushed her chair back, one eye still on her monitor. “Okay, so I’m watching
CSI
last week, and they trick this guy into giving them DNA. Then, like five minutes later, they tell him it’s a match. Can you really analyze DNA that fast?”

“Can
they
? Or can
we
?” Simon said. “For a municipal crime lab, it’s damn near impossible. With our lab, though, there’s no political wrangling about overtime and budgets and case precedence. We can’t analyze a DNA specimen in five minutes, but—”

Gloria’s headset beeped twice: an incoming call on the emergency line. She lifted a finger to Simon, then swung around. Even before the call connected, data began flashing on her computer screen as the call tracer went to work. She glanced over her shoulder to see the map of Miami replaced by another city: Atlanta.

Gloria reached for the button to page Erin back from lunch, but Simon beat her to it, simultaneously grabbing Erin’s headset to put it on.

The line clicked.

“Cortez emergency services,” Gloria said.

A female voice came on, shrill and garbled with panic. “—help—park—man—”

Gloria soothed the caller with reassurances that help was on its way. She could barely make out a word the caller said, but it didn’t matter. The computers had already pinpointed the location, a pay phone in an Atlanta park. The Cabal had an office in Atlanta, which meant they had an emergency crew there, and the computer automatically dispatched them the moment it located the call’s origin. Gloria’s only job was to keep the caller calm until the team arrived.

“Can you tell me your name, honey?”

“D—na M—ur.”

Sobs punctuated the words, rendering them unintelligible. Gloria glanced at her monitor. The computer was analyzing the voice, trying to match what it heard against the roster of Cabal employees and employee families. A list of several dozen names appeared. Then the computer factored in gender, an age estimate, and the call location. It came back with a list of five names. Gloria focused on the top one, the computer’s best guess.

“Dana?” she said. “Are you Dana MacArthur, honey?”

A muffled “Yes.”

“Okay, now, I want you to find someplace—”

The line went dead.

“Damn!” Gloria said.

“The Atlanta team just phoned in,” Simon said. “Ten-minute ETA. Who is it?”

Gloria waved a hand at her screen. Simon leaned over to look at the photo. A teenage girl grinned back.

“Ah, shit,” he said. “Not another one.”

The driver swung the SUV into the park and dowsed the lights. Dennis Malone stared out the window into the overcast night. He turned to tell Simon they’d need good lighting, and saw that the crime-scene tech was already fiddling with his flashlight, replacing the batteries. Dennis nodded, stifled a yawn, and rolled down the window for some air. On the jet, he’d loaded up on caffeine, but it wasn’t kicking in. He was getting too old for
this. Even as the thought flitted past, he dismissed it with a smile. The day he retired without a fight would be the day they found him cold and stiff in his bed.