“Yes?”
“In the meantime, get out to the library and try to find out what you can about the way this girl died. Knowledge is power, you know.”
I smile. “Legwork. Right.” I hang up the phone. He thinks I’m a blunt instrument, nothing but hands and blade and agility, but the truth is I’ve been doing legwork, doing research, since before I even started using the athame.
After Dad was murdered, I had questions. Trouble was, nobody seemed to have any answers. Or, as I suspected, nobody wanted to give me any answers. So I went looking on my own. Gideon and my mom packed us up and moved us out of the Baton Rouge house we were staying in pretty quickly, but not before I managed to make a trip back to the dilapidated plantation where my father met his end.
It was an ugly fucking house. Even angry as I was, I didn’t want to go in. If it is possible for an inanimate object to glare, to growl, then that’s exactly what this house did. In my seven-year-old mind I saw it pull aside the vines. I saw it wipe away the moss and bare its teeth. Imagination is a wonderful thing, right?
My mom and Gideon had cleared the place days before, throwing runes and lighting candles, making sure my dad was at rest, making sure the ghosts were gone. Still, when I walked up that porch I started crying. My heart told me that my dad was there, that he hid from them to wait for me, and that any minute he would open the door, smiling this great, dead smile. His eyes would be gone, and there would be huge, crescent-shaped wounds on his sides and arms. This sounds stupid, but I think I started crying harder when I opened the door myself and he wasn’t there.
I breathe deep and smell tea and lavender. It brings me back into my body. Remembering that day, exploring that house, my heart is pounding in my ears. On the other side of the front door I found signs of a struggle and turned my face away. I wanted answers but I didn’t want to imagine my dad beat to hell and back. I didn’t want to think of him being scared. I walked past the cracked banister and headed instinctively for the fireplace. The rooms smelled like old wood, like rot. There was also the fresher scent of blood. I don’t know how I knew what the smell of blood was, any more than I knew why I walked straight to the fireplace.
There was nothing in the fireplace but decades-old charcoal and ash. And then I saw it. Just a corner of it, black like the charcoal but somehow different. Smoother. It was conspicuous and ominous. I reached out and pulled it from the ash: a thin black cross, about four inches in height. There was a black snake curled around it, carefully woven from what I knew instantly was human hair.
The certainty that I felt when I grasped that cross was the same certainty that coursed through me when I picked up my father’s knife seven years later. That was the moment that I knew for sure. That’s when I knew that whatever coursed through my father’s blood—whatever magical thing that allowed him to slice through dead flesh and send it out of our world—it flowed in my veins too.
When I showed the cross to Gideon and my mother, and told them what I’d done, they were frantic. I expected them to soothe me, to rock me like a baby and ask me if I was all right. Instead, Gideon grasped my shoulders.
“Don’t you ever, ever go back there!” he shouted, and shook me so hard my teeth clacked together. He took the black cross from me and I never saw it again. My mother just stood far away and cried. I’d been scared; Gideon had never done anything like that to me before. He’d always been grandfatherly, sneaking me candy and winking, that sort of thing. Still, Dad had just been murdered, and I was angry. I asked Gideon what the cross was.
He stared down at me coldly, and then drew his hand back and cracked me across the face so hard that I hit the floor. I heard my mom sort of whimper, but she didn’t intervene. Then they both walked out of the room and left me there. When they called me in for dinner, they were smiling and casual, like nothing had even happened.
It was enough to scare me into silence. I never brought it up again. But that doesn’t mean I forgot, and for the last ten years I’ve been reading, and learning, wherever I could. The black cross was a voodoo talisman. I haven’t figured out the significance of it, or why it was adorned with a snake made of human hair. According to lore, the sacred snake feeds on its victims by eating them whole. My father was taken in chunks.
The problem with this research is I can’t ask the most reliable sources I have. I’m forced to sneak around and talk in code, to keep Mom and Gideon in the dark. Also making things difficult is that voodoo is some disorganized shit. Everyone seems to practice it differently and analysis is damned near impossible.
I wonder about asking Gideon again, after this business with Anna is over. I’m older now, and proven. It wouldn’t be the same this time. And even as I think that, I sink farther into my tea bath. Because I still remember the feel of his hand across my cheek, and the blank fury in his eyes, and it still makes me feel like I’m seven.
* * *
After I get dressed, I call Thomas and ask him to pick me up and take me to the shop. He’s curious, but I manage to hold him at bay. These are things that I need to say to Morfran too, and I don’t want to have to say them twice.
I’m bracing myself for a lecture from my mother about missing school and some grilling about why I needed to call Gideon, which she no doubt overheard, but as I walk down the stairs I can hear voices. Two female voices. One is my mother’s. The other is Carmel’s. I tramp down the staircase and they come into view, thick as thieves. They’re sitting in the living room in adjacent chairs, leaning toward each other and chatting away with a tray of cookies between them. Once both my feet are on the ground level, they stop talking and smile at me.
“Hey, Cas,” Carmel says.
“Hey, Carmel. What are you doing here?”
She reaches around and pulls something out of her schoolbag. “I brought your assignment from bio. It’s a partner’s assignment. I thought we could do it together.”
“That was nice of her, wasn’t it, Cas?” my mother says. “You don’t want to fall behind on your third day.”
“We could get started on it now,” Carmel suggests, holding out the paper.
I walk up and take it from her, glance over it. I don’t know why it’s a partner’s assignment. It’s nothing more than finding a bunch of answers from the textbook. But she’s right. I shouldn’t fall behind. No matter what other important, lifesaving stuff I’ve got going on.
“This was really cool of you,” I say, and I mean it, even though there is some other motive at work here. Carmel doesn’t give a crap about biology. I’d be surprised if she went to class herself. Carmel got the assignment because she wanted an excuse to talk to me. She wants answers.
I glance at my mom, and she’s giving me this creepy once-over. She’s trying to see how the bruises are healing. She’ll be relieved that I called Gideon. When I came home last night I looked beaten half to death. For a second I thought she was going to lock me in my room and dunk me in rosemary oil. But my mom trusts me. She understands what I need to do. And I’m grateful to her for both of those things.
I roll up the bio assignment and tap it in my hand.
“Maybe we can work at the library,” I say to Carmel, and she shoulders her bag and smiles.
“Take one more cookie for the road, dear,” Mom says. We both take one, Carmel a bit hesitantly, and head for the door.
“You don’t have to eat it,” I say to Carmel once we’re on the porch. “Mom’s anise cookies are definitely an acquired taste.”
Carmel laughs. “I had one in there and almost couldn’t do it. They’re like dusty black jellybeans.”
I smile. “Don’t tell my mom that. She invented the recipe herself. She’s totally proud of them. They’re supposed to bring you luck or something.”
“Maybe I should eat it then.” She looks down at it for a long minute, then lifts her eyes and stares intently at my cheek. I know there’s a long streak of black bruise across the bone. “You went back to that house without us.”
“Carmel.”
“Are you crazy? You could have been killed!”
“And if we had all gone, we would all have been killed. Listen, just stick with Thomas and his grandfather. They’ll figure something out. Keep your cool.”
There’s a definite chill on the wind, an early taste of fall, twisting through my hair with ice-water fingers. As I stare up the street, I see Thomas’s Tempo puttering toward us, complete with replacement door and a Willy Wonka bumper sticker. The kid rides in style, and it makes me grin.
“Can I meet you at the library in an hour or so?” I ask Carmel.
She follows my gaze and sees Thomas coming closer.
“Absolutely not. I want to know what’s going on. If you think for a minute that I believed any of that nonsense Morfran and Thomas were trying to tell us last night … I’m not stupid, Cas. I know a diversion when I see one.”
“I know you’re not stupid, Carmel. And if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll stay out of this and meet me at the library in an hour.” I go down the porch steps and walk down my driveway, making a little rolling gesture with my fingers so Thomas won’t pull in. He gets it and slows down just enough for me to open the door and vault inside. Then we drive away, leaving Carmel staring after us.
“What was Carmel doing at your place?” he asks. There’s more than just a little jealousy there.
“I wanted a backrub and then we made out for about an hour,” I say, and then cuff him in the shoulder. “Thomas. Come on. She was dropping off my bio assignment. We’ll meet her at the library after we talk to your granddad. Now tell me what happened with the boys last night.”
“She really likes you, you know.”
“Yeah, well, you like her better,” I say. “So what happened?” He’s trying to believe me, that I’m not interested in Carmel and that I’m enough of a friend to him to respect his feelings for her. Oddly enough, both of these things are true.
Finally, he sighs. “We led them on a royal goose chase, just like you said. It was a blast. We actually had them convinced that if they hung sacks of sulfur above their beds, she wouldn’t be able to attack them in their sleep.”
“Jesus. Don’t make it too unrealistic. We need to keep them busy.”
“Don’t worry. Morfran puts on a good show. He conjured blue flame and did a fake trance and everything. Told them he would work on a banishing spell, but it would take the light of the next full moon to finish it. Think that’ll be enough time?”
Normally I’d say yes. After all, it’s not a matter of locating Anna. I know just where she is.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. “I went back last night and she kicked my ass all around the room.”
“So what’re you going to do?”
“I spoke to a friend of my dad’s. He said we need to figure out what’s giving her all this extra strength. Know any witches?”
He squints at me. “Isn’t your mom one?”
“Know any black witches?”
He squirms around a bit and then shrugs. “Well, me, I guess. I’m not really that good, but I can cast barriers and make the elements work for me and stuff. Morfran is, but he doesn’t practice much anymore.” He makes a left turn and pulls up outside of the antique shop. Through the window I can see the grizzled black dog, its nose up against the glass and its tail thumping against the ground.
We go inside and find Morfran standing behind the counter pricing a new ring, something handsome and vintage with a large black stone.
“Know anything about spell-craft and exorcism?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says without looking up from his work. His black dog has finished welcoming Thomas and moves to rest heavily against his thigh. “This place was haunted as shit when I bought it. Sometimes still is. Things come in with their owners still attached, if you know what I mean.”
I look around the shop. Of course. Antique stores must almost always have a wraith or two swirling around. My eyes fall on a long oval mirror set onto the back of an oak dresser. How many faces have stared into it? How many dead reflections wait there and whisper to each other in the dark?
“Can you get me some supplies?” I ask.
“What sort?”
“I need chicken feet, a circle of consecrated stones, a banishing pentagram, and some kind of divination thingy.”
He gives me the stink eye. “Divination thingy? Sounds pretty technical.”
“I don’t have the details yet, okay? Can you get them or not?”
Morfran shrugs. “I can send Thomas down to Superior with a bag. Pull thirteen stones from the lake. They don’t come more consecrated than that. The chicken feet I’ll have to order in, and the divination thingy, well, I’m betting that you want a mirror of some kind, or possibly a scrying bowl.”
“A scrying bowl sees the future,” Thomas says. “What would he want with that?”
“A scrying bowl sees whatever you want it to see,” Morfran corrects him. “As for the banishing pentagram, I think it might be overkill. Burn some protective incense, or some herbs. That should be plenty.”
“You do know what we’re dealing with here, don’t you?” I ask. “She’s not just a ghost. She’s a hurricane. Overkill is fine by me.”
“Listen, kid. What you’re talking about is nothing more than a trumped-up séance. Summon the ghost and bind it in the circle of stones. Use the scrying bowl to get your answers. Am I right?”
I nod. He makes it sound so easy. But for someone who doesn’t do spells and spent the last night being tossed like a rubber ball, it’s going to be damn near impossible.
“I’ve got a friend in London doing the specifics. I’ll have the spell in a few days. I might need a few more supplies, depending.”
Morfran shrugs. “Best time to do a binding spell is during the waning moon anyway,” he says. “That gives you a week and a half. Plenty of time.” He squints at me and looks a whole lot like his grandson. “She’s getting the better of you, isn’t she?”
“Not for long.”
* * *
The public library isn’t all that impressive to look at, though I suppose I’ve been spoiled growing up with my dad and his friends’ collections of dusty tomes. It does, however, have a pretty decent local history collection, which is what’s really important. Since I’ve got to find Carmel and settle this whole bio assignment business, I put Thomas on the computer, searching through the online database for any record of Anna and her murder.
I find Carmel waiting at a table back behind the stacks.
“What’s Thomas doing here?” she asks as I sit down.
“Researching a paper.” I shrug. “So what’s the bio assignment about?”
She smirks at me. “Taxonomic classification.”
“Gross. And boring.”
“We have to make a chart that goes from phylum to species. We got hermit crabs and octopus.” She furrows her brow. “What’s the plural for octopus? Is it ‘octopuses’?”
“I think it’s octopi,” I say, spinning the open textbook toward me. We might as well get started, even though it’s the last thing I want to be doing. I want to be getting newsprint on my fingers with Thomas, searching out our murdered girl. I can see him at the computer from where I’m sitting, hunched over toward the screen, clicking away feverishly with the mouse. Then he writes something on a scrap of paper and gets up.
“Cas,” I hear Carmel say, and from the tone of her voice she’s been talking for a while. I put on my very best charming smile.
“Hm?”
“I said, do you want to do the octopus, or the hermit crab?”
“Octopus,” I say. “They’re good with a little olive oil and lemon. Lightly fried.”
Carmel makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“No, it isn’t. I used to eat it with my dad all the time in Greece.”
“You’ve been to Greece?”
“Yeah,” I say, talking absently while I flip through pages of invertebrates. “We lived there for a few months when I was abou
t four. I don’t remember very much.”
“Does your dad travel a lot? For work or something?”
“Yeah. Or at least he did.”
“He doesn’t anymore?”
“My dad’s dead,” I say. I hate telling people this. I never know exactly how my voice is going to sound saying it, and I hate the stricken looks they get on their faces when they don’t know what to say back. I don’t look at Carmel. I just keep reading about different genuses. She says she’s sorry, and asks how it happened. I tell her he was murdered, and she gasps.
These are the right responses. I should be touched by her attempt to be sympathetic. It isn’t her fault that I’m not. It’s just that I’ve seen these faces and heard these gasps for too long. There’s nothing about my father’s murder that doesn’t make me angry anymore.
It strikes me suddenly that Anna is my last training job. She’s incredibly strong. She’s the most difficult thing I can imagine facing. If I beat her, I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready to avenge my father.
The idea makes me pause. The idea of going back to Baton Rouge, back to that house, has always been mostly abstract. Just an idea, a long-range plan. I suppose that for all of my voodoo research, part of me has been procrastinating. I haven’t been particularly effective, after all. I still don’t know who it was that killed my dad. I don’t know if I would be able to raise them, and I’d be all on my own. Bringing Mom is out of the question. Not after years of hiding books and discreetly clicking out of websites when she walked into the room. She’d ground me for life if she even knew I was thinking of it.
A tap on my shoulder brings me out of my daze. Thomas sets a newspaper down in front of me—a brittle, yellowed old thing that I’m surprised they let out of the glass.
“This is what I could find,” he says, and there she is, on the front page, beneath the headline that reads “Girl Found Slain.”
Carmel stands up to get a better view. “Is that—?”
“It’s her,” Thomas blurts excitedly. “There aren’t that many other articles. The police were dumbfounded. They hardly even questioned anybody.” He’s got a different newspaper in his hands; he’s riffling through it. “The last one is just her obituary: Anna Korlov, beloved daughter of Malvina, was laid to rest Thursday in Kivikoski Cemetery.”