• • •
At dusk, Brax drove up to Monique Ravencroft’s house in his unmarked police car, parked, and joined us in the foyer. I had already cleansed the house by burning some dried sage, the acerbic smoke strong on the air. The chalk circle, the lit candles, cut-crystal bowl, bell, and Bible were in place again, and, with the cop staring at the house and my equipment, I explained what I was going to do.
When I was done, he looked at Evan and said, “I get why you’re here—to protect your wife.” He looked at Jane and said, “What’s your part in this?”
She shook her head. “The vamp I saw was sane, and I don’t have a contract. You, however, can kill a sane vamp if one attacks. Think of me as your helpful witness.” She held out a silver-tipped stake. “Just in case.”
I knew that she had a half dozen identical stakes in her boot. If Brax missed, Jane would not let the vampire go free. She would take care of . . . well, everything and everyone around her. It was what she did.
“And this”—Jane handed him a silvered blade—“is for cutting off his head. You know, if needed.”
“Helpful, huh?” Brax shook his head, turning the blade so the candlelight caught and reflected off the silver. “You do know that this is longer than the legal limit on concealed carry for bladed weapons, right?”
“I wasn’t carrying it. It was in my saddlebag on my bike,” she said with her humorless half smile.
“Uh-huh. You Southerners are even more polite and obliging than I was led to believe.”
“That’s us. Just itching to help out the New York Yankee cop.” Jane handed him a sheath for the blade, one that strapped at waist and thigh.
Brax chuckled. “I’ve never used my vamp-fighting techniques, but I’ve kept certified and in practice.” He strapped on the blade and accepted the stake. “I’ve never had to kill a vampire. The Master of the City of New York keeps a firm hand on his underlings. So this is a first for me.”
“We hope you won’t have to kill one tonight,” I said. “We hope he’ll be saner than he looked last.”
“But we won’t bet our lives on it,” Evan said. “If he attacks and you need backup, you can deputize Jane.”
“I’m not the sheriff,” Brax said, “but consider Jane deputized if it’ll keep my butt alive.” He looked at Evan. “Okay, Mr. Trueblood, Mrs. Trueblood. Ready when you are.”
• • •
It didn’t take us long to prepare. I was wearing the same white dress, slightly grimy from the last time I’d worn it here. I gathered it close and sat behind the bowl, cross-legged, the bowl of water between my knees. Just like last night, I opened the Ziploc bag and held Jane’s shirt over the bowl, shaking it with a snapping motion this time. There wasn’t much dust from the parlor left, but what there was sprinkled onto the still surface of the water. I took my three deep breaths to settle myself and nodded to Evan, who lifted the silver bell. As I spoke the words he rang the bell with the silver mallet. “Bell, book, and candle. Bell, book, and candle. Bell, book, and candle.” The tones were rich and true, echoing through the house. “Dust to dust, through time to now. Dust to dust, through time to now. Dust to dust, through time to now. Time of warding. Time of blood. Time of attack. Time of betrayal. Time of undead. Time of change. Time of vampire. Time of transference. Time of death.”
As before, the bell chimes shivered through the empty house, leaving the air expectant. As the last tone faded, the water between my knees brightened, and so did the floor of the parlor. Twin green, luminous feathers of light rose, twining and twisting like smoke, up to the ceiling overhead, pooling against the high corners, spreading toward the center of the room.
The old-fashioned electric ceiling light appeared, adding light to the falling dark, revealing the furnishings of the past: the blood rose walls, the velvet upholstered couch and wheeled tea tray, the wing chairs and card table. The man’s squeaky song came from the old-fashioned phonograph, hollow and cheery. The small, auburn-haired woman once again sat in the wing chair, the basket of yarn at her feet. I heard Brax take a slow, shocked breath.
The woman looked up, turned. Her eyes widened, mouth opened. The small form fell upon her, the pop of vampiric speed making Brax flinch. The child attacked, grabbing up the woman. She screamed. His fangs latched on and her scream stopped, to be replaced by a single strong sucking sound.
The woman lifted her knitting needles. She stabbed the child.
He screamed, the horrible note of true death.
The second pop sounded and the taller, adult vampire appeared. He pulled the woman and child apart. Blood pumped scarlet from her throat, all over her white gown and out into the room. The child dangled, the wooden knitting needles in his body.
The woman’s blood pumped over the man’s chest and the Kerr Symballophone. The child’s blood splattered it again. The man roared the single word “No!” vamping-out and falling to the floor beneath the two, cradling the woman, pulling the stakes from the child. He tore his own wrist and dribbled his blood into the child’s mouth, scooping the woman’s blood in as well. Letting the woman die, the woman he might have saved. Everything was just like the last time I had seen it.
The vampire screamed, his fangs nearly two inches long, lifting to the light. His bellow was powerful. And as he sat there, the two bodies embraced on his lap, he looked right at me. He saw Jane behind me. Saw the cop and Evan.
Evan rang the bell again, one strong tone for each word of freedom and free, as I released my intent and purpose, saying, “Freedom be and freedom bought, freedom from the dead past sought. Free the house and end this spell. Free the dead to heaven and to hell.”
As I spoke, the vampire raced at us. With each tone, he aged and shrank, his tissues draining and flesh caving in. His bloody eyes going feral, rabid, insane. He roared again, this time for blood.
The green light exploded out, the candles snuffed all at once. Dark fell on us. I was yanked back, Jane’s hands shockingly like steel, bruising me. I was shoved into Evan’s chest so hard my breath whuffed out of me. I heard the battle around me as Evan shuffled me out of the house into the night.
But I saw, in the moonlight through the open door, Jane Yellowrock, as she raced toward the vampire, her body moving far faster than human, her eyes glowing golden, her face frozen in a rictus of action, lips pulled back, showing her teeth. And the cop, staking the vampire, but clearly too low, a belly stab. Instantly Jane staked the vampire, one hard thrust in the heart. Brax mirrored her move, stabbing up with the knife, roaring with a battle scream. And then I was outside. In the cool night air, the breeze raising gooseflesh on my arms. And silence descended on the dark.
The sounds of battle had gone on for only seconds, but it seemed much longer. The scream of the vampire, the grunts of the people, the sound of blows hitting the night. Into the silence, I heard Jane say, “Not bad. You got your first vamp kill. But you have to take the vampires’ heads. Both of them.” And Brax cussed, long and hard, while Jane laughed.
Evan wrapped me in his arms, murmuring to me, “It’s okay. It’s done. It’s okay now, sweetheart.” And I could smell the stink of bowels on the air from the witch who had died so long ago, and only moments in the past.
Jane had told me about her inner beast, and I hadn’t understood, not at all. I was pretty sure I had seen it tonight, however, in the golden glow of her eyes, in the way her lips pulled back like an attacking cat’s. In the pure violence of her body flowing forward, supple and svelte and . . . and violence personified.
I had thought of her as human, as softer than she really was. While Jane Yellowrock had a soft side—the side I saw when she was with Angie Baby, or when she went into “protect mode” around the abused, or when she prayed—she was not human. And she was anything but soft.
I buried my head in Evan’s chest and closed my eyes, blocking out that image of Jane—warrior Jane—attacking. Moments later, s
he came out of the house and down the stairs, her eyes on me, evaluating, questioning, conjecturing. As if she could smell my new awareness of her on the air. For all I knew, she could.
Behind her, Brax called out to Evan to come help him. He didn’t say why, but my husband patted my arms and left me. The night air was cool on my flesh where he had held me, and I shivered.
Jane lilted up her lips at my shiver, the smile cynical and defensive. “I’m not a big, bad ugly,” she said, her voice stiff. “I won’t hurt you. And I’d never hurt your daughter.”
I realized I had hurt her, though I had no idea how. “What?” I asked, perplexed. And then it occurred to me that tonight she had allowed me to see a part of her kept hidden until now. I had to wonder if anyone had ever seen her in killing mode. Well, anyone who was still alive. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered again, thinking about warrior Jane near Angie. She was right. Jane would never hurt my daughter. And Angelina would never be safer than when she was with Jane Yellowrock. “You’re an idiot,” I said, putting all the asperity I could into my voice. “I’m not scared of you. I’m cold.”
Jane blinked, opened her mouth, and closed it, thinking. “You’re not scared of me?”
I shook my head no.
Jane walked away a few paces and came back with her jacket, which she wrapped around my shoulders. “Thanks,” she said, which I figured was my line, but I understood what she meant.
“You are welcome,” I said. And she smiled at me, a real smile, soft and full and lovely.
• • •
The police investigation lasted for three weeks, with a complementary media hue and cry over the “unexplained appearance of people from seventy years in the past, all looking unchanged, yet all freshly killed,” and the “witch paraphernalia found at the scene.” The media attention went on until something more interesting happened and the news vans disappeared.
And, of course, even when the crime scene tape came down, I still didn’t get paid. The lawyer didn’t answer or return my calls. The morning my old fridge finally wore out, shutting off with a small cough of what sounded like apology, Jane called Brax. I didn’t want her to, but Jane had a mind of her own and pretty much did what she wanted.
A wire transfer for the full amount appeared in my bank account that afternoon, only minutes after the newly transplanted local cop paid a visit to the lawyer, off the record, and suggested that he pay his bill. Evan and Jane delivered my spanking new fridge that evening, just in time to save my frozen food.
I fixed steaks that night, and the four of us—Jane, Evan, Angelina, and I—sat on the back porch, under the moonlight, eating and drinking and talking like old friends. It was a perfect night. Or almost. Until Angelina turned to me and said, “Mama. You gonna have a baby!”
In the shocked silence, Jane leaned in too and sniffed me, delicately, like a kitten exploring the world. “Huh. Angie Baby’s right. And ten bucks says it’s a boy.”
Signatures of the Dead
It was nap time, and it wasn’t often that I could get both children to sleep a full hour—the same full hour, that is. I stepped back and ran my hands over the healing and protection spells that enveloped my babies, Angelina and Evan Jr., also known as Little Evan. The complex incantations were getting a bit frayed around the edges, and I drew on Mother Earth and the forest on the mountainside out back to restore them. Not much power, not enough to endanger the ecosystem that was still being restored there. Just a bit. Just enough.
Few witches or sorcerers survive into puberty, and so I spend a lot of time making sure my babies are okay. I come from a long line of witches. Not the kind in pointy black hats with a cauldron in the front yard, and not the kind like the Bewitched television show that once tried to capitalize on our reclusive species. Witches aren’t human, though we can breed true with humans, making little witches about fifty percent of the time. Unfortunately, witch babies have a poor survival rate, especially the males, most dying before they reach the age of twenty from various cancers. The ones who live through puberty, however, tend to live into their early hundreds.
The day each of my babies was conceived, I prayed and worked the same incantations Mama had used on her children, power weavings, to make sure my babies were protected. Mama had a better than average survival rate on her witches. For me, so far, so good. I said a little prayer over them and left the room.
Back in the kitchen, Paul Braxton—“Brax” to his friends, “Detective” or “Sir” to the bad guys he chased—Jane Yellowrock, and Evan were still sitting at the table, the photographs scattered all around. Crime scene photos of the McCarley house. And the McCarleys . . . It wasn’t pretty. The photos didn’t belong in my warm, safe home. They didn’t belong anywhere.
Evan and I were having trouble with them, with the blood and the butchery. Of course, nothing fazed Jane. And, after years of dealing with crime in New York City, little fazed Brax.
I met Evan’s eyes, seeing the steely anger there. My husband was easygoing, slow to anger, and full of peace, but the photos of the five McCarleys had triggered something in him, a slow-burning, pitiless rage. He was feeling impotent, useless, and he wanted to smash things. The boxing bag in the garage would get a pummeling tonight, after the kids went to bed for the last time. I offered him a wan smile and went to the AGA stove; I poured fresh coffee for the men and tea for Jane and me. She had brought a new variety, a first-flush Darjeeling, and it was wonderful with my homemade bread and peach butter.
“Kids okay?” Brax asked, amusement in his tone.
I retook my seat and used the tip of a finger to push the photos away. I was pretty transparent, I guess, having to check on the babies after seeing the dead McCarleys. “They’re fine. Still sleeping. Still . . . safe.” Which made me feel all kinds of guilty to have my babies safe, while the entire McCarley family had been butchered. Drunk dry. Partly eaten.
“You finished thinking about it?” he asked. “Because I need an answer. If I’m going after them, I need to know, for sure, what they are. And if they’re vamps, then I need to know how many there are and where they’re sleeping in the daytime. And I’ll need protection. I can pay.”
I sighed and sipped my tea, added a spoonful of raw sugar, stirred, and sipped again. He was trying to yank my chain, make my natural guilt and our friendship work to his favor, and making him wait was my only reverse power play. Having to use it ticked me off. I put the cup down with a soft china clink. “You know I won’t charge you for the protection spells, Brax.”
“I don’t want Molly going into that house,” Evan said. He brushed crumbs from his reddish, graying beard and leaned across the table, holding my eyes. “You know it’ll hurt you.”
I’m an earth witch, from a long family of witches, and our gifts are herbs and growing things, healing bodies, restoring balance to nature. I’m a little unusual for earth witches, in that I can sense dead things, which is why Brax was urging me to go to the McCarley house. To tell him for sure if dead things, like vamps, had killed the family. How they’d died. He could wait for forensics, but that might take weeks. I was faster. And I could give him numbers to go on too: how many vamps were in the blood family, if they were healthy, or as healthy as dead things ever got. And, maybe, which direction they had gone at dawn, so he could guess where the vamps slept by day.
But once there, I would sense the horror, the fear that the violent deaths had left imprinted on the walls, floor, ceilings, furniture of the house. I took a breath to say no. “I’ll go,” I said instead. Evan pressed his lips together tight, holding in whatever he would say to me later, privately. “If I don’t go, and another family is killed, I’ll be a lot worse,” I said to him. “And that would be partly my fault. Besides, some of that reward money would buy us a new car.”
“You don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Mol,” he said, his voice a deep, rumbling bass. “And we can get
the money in other ways.” Not many people knew that Evan is a sorcerer, not even Brax. We wanted it that way, as protection for our family. If it was known that Evan carried the rare gene on his X chromosome, the gene that made witches, and that we had produced children who both carried the gene, we’d likely disappear into some government-controlled testing program. “Mol. Think about this,” he begged. But I could see in his gentle brown eyes that he knew my mind was already made up.
“I’ll go.” I looked at Jane. “Will you go with me?” She nodded once, the beads in her many black braids clicking with the motion. To Brax, I said, “When do you want us there?”
• • •
The McCarley house was on Dogwood, up the hill overlooking the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, not that far, as the crow flies, from my house, which is outside the city limits, on the other side of the hill. The McCarley home was older, with a nineteen fifties feel to it, and from the outside it would have been hard to tell that anything bad had happened. The tiny brick house itself, with its elvish, high-peaked roof, green trim, and well-kept lawn, looked fine. But the crime scene tape was a dead giveaway.
I was still sitting in the car, staring at the house, trying to center myself for what I was about to do. It took time to become settled, to pull the energies of my gift around me, to create a skein of power that would heighten my senses.
Brax, dressed in a white plastic coat and shoe covers, was standing on the front porch, his hands in the coat pockets, his body at an angle, head down, not looking at anything. The set of his shoulders said he didn’t want to go back inside, but he would, over and over again, until he found the killers.
Jane was standing by the car, patient, bike helmet in her hands, riding leathers unzipped, copper-skinned face turned to the sun for its meager warmth on this early fall day. Jane Yellowrock was full Cherokee, and was much more than she seemed. Like most witches, like Evan, who was still in the witch-closet, Jane had secrets that she guarded closely. I was pretty sure that I was the only one who knew any of them, and I didn’t flatter myself that I knew them all. Yet, even though she kept things hidden, I needed her special abilities and gifts to augment my own on this death search.