The agent paused a beat. “Dozens.”
“Dozens?” Bobby repeated, and the chief and the doc sat up straighter, both reaching for, then finishing their whiskey.
“So far,” Franklin allowed.
“And you didn’t connect them?”
“Burned bodies? No. They were in different places, different methods of death, different means of burning.”
“What about the brand?”
“Once I started asking, the brand turned up. Some thought it was a tattoo. Or some new fad. I’ve seen similar marks on a lot of professional athletes lately. Not the wolf brand, but brands. I don’t get why kids would mark themselves that way, which my wife says makes me old.”
The guy must be beyond tired to ramble like that. Bobby could relate.
“Anyway, the brand was in the reports—at least for those bodies where there was enough left of a body to find one.”
“Did you get anything off Wellsprung’s ring?” Bobby asked.
“No.”
Figured.
“Was he obsessed with witches?”
Silence loomed. “How’d you know that?”
“Wild guess. What about the victims? Any of them practice Wicca, belong to a coven?”
Papers rustled. Franklin cursed, and Bobby knew.
The Venatores Mali had been busy.
*
“‘The Raising of Spirits-Both Good and Evil,’” I read. “Why would anyone want to raise an evil spirit?”
Samhain, who had just crept out from beneath the bed and into the living room, made a gurgling-purring sound and scooted back where she’d been.
One spell required the breath of a witch, the other the blood of one. I’ll let you guess which was which. Witch.
“Black candles. Sage.” I moved into the kitchen holding the book, opened the corner cabinet. Bizarrely, I had both.
I had gone shopping with Jenn on State Street, right after Halloween last year. I’d bought a deeply discounted bag of votive candles in black and orange. I snatched up the bag, started extracting the black. “Is four enough for a circle?”
Samhain yowled once from the bedroom.
“Five?”
She yowled twice, and I pulled another candle free.
The spell called for a sage stick, but I only had flakes in a jar, which I pulled from my spice rack. It would have to do.
I used chalk to draw a pentagram on the table. I erased and redid it twice before I got the thing right. My hands were a little unsteady. Then I set the candles at each of the five points, which formed a circle.
After dropping the sage into a glass bowl, I went over the spell one more time, then lit everything and chanted the words written there. As instructed, I allowed my breath to cast over the flames so that they flickered but didn’t go out.
“I call the spirit Henry. Come in peace or not at all. As I will so mote it be.”
My gaze flitted around the room. Nothing. The book said this was a spell to call good spirits, burning the sage would ensure no evil ones slipped through. But what if I really needed a sage stick instead of just sage? Would that difference keep Henry from coming? Would it allow evil to arrive instead? What if Henry was evil?
Was there a spell to determine evil?
I closed my eyes and recited the spell again. Chanting did indicate more than once. Probably more than twice. I continued to say the words, the scent of the sage and the candles, the sound of my own voice, the lethargy left by the long day, several long nights, and—I admit it—the great sex made me trancelike. For an instant, I saw Henry—I saw Pru—in another town, with another woman who looked a lot like me, except for her hair, which was as red as flame.
“Henry,” I said, and he glanced over his shoulder, right into my eyes. His mouth formed my name, then, No! and then …
He flickered.
Pru howled so loudly the sound trilled along my skin like an ill wind. Outside my door, Larry cursed. Had he heard it too? That was impossible. However, so many things I’d once thought impossible no longer were.
The air stirred. My eyes opened. I held my breath.
And the candles went out.
Chapter 20
“Raye?” Larry knocked on the door. “You okay in there?”
“Fine.” I kept my gaze on the man-shaped shadow in the corner. “Thanks.”
“You hear that wolf?”
Henry stepped forward, and I held up my hand. “You’d better check that out, Larry.”
“I’m not as dumb as Brad. Your new boyfriend would kick my ass if I moved an inch away from this door.”
Henry’s eyebrows shot toward his eternally black hair.
“All right. I’m headed to bed.”
“It’s seven-thirty.”
“Good night.” I went into my room. I didn’t bother to wait for Henry before I shut the door. He walked right through.
“Why did you summon me like that?” he demanded.
“That’s the way the book told me to.”
“I didn’t mean—” He frowned. “What book?”
I held up Anne’s Book of Shadows, and his frown deepened. “Where did you get that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
I sighed and told him.