Play with Fire

chapter Nine





COLLEEN O’DONNELL, FBI Special Agent and practitioner of white witchcraft, pulled the Caddy’s door closed and looked at her partner, one eyebrow raised.

“Mass spectrometer? For goddess’s sake, Dale.”

“Best I could come up with,” Fenton said. “Anyway, it worked, didn’t it?”

“We should count ourselves lucky he didn’t ask to see it.”

“If he had, I was counting on you to work some hocus-pocus and convince him that we’d showed it to him.”

O’Donnell just shook her head. Then she said, “Speaking of hocus-pocus, I might as well get on with it.”

“Right.”

O’Donnell closed her eyes and began to breathe very slowly, very deliberately. After five such breaths, she began to speak softly in a language they don’t teach in any university. Fenton wasn’t conversant in the language, but he’d heard these words before and knew what they meant.

O’Donnell continued in the arcane language for perhaps two minutes. Then she took a deep breath and expelled all the air from her lungs in a vigorous exhale. After a slow count of three, she inhaled loudly. Again that slow, silent count of three before she let the air out and began to breathe normally again. With her eyes still closed, she said “Yessss. Oh my, yes.”

She opened her eyes half a minute later to find Fenton looking at her. He did not appear happy. “Black magic,” he said.

“Undeniably. And fairly fresh – it certainly could have been conjured five days ago, when the car was stolen.”

Fenton nodded glumly. Making a slight gesture toward the house, he said, “I don’t suppose it’s possible that Swenson in there is a practitioner?”

“No – I’d have known the moment we walked inside.”

“Figures – our luck never runs that good.”

The two of them sat quietly for a few moments. “So a black magician rolls into town and ritualistically murders a priest,” O’Donnell said.

“Uh-huh. Then burns the church down around him. Just to hide what they did to the poor guy?”

“No, that’s too... elaborate,” she said. “If that’s all they wanted, it would have been a lot simpler to just take the body away and bury it someplace.”

“In Minnesota? In January? Somebody around here dies this time of year, they either cremate ’em, or keep the body on ice until the ground thaws in April.”

“That’s a point, but not a huge one. There’s lots of ways to hide a corpse that don’t involve that kind of arson, Dale. Burning the church – that was part of the ritual. I’m sure of it.”

Fenton shifted in his seat. “You’re pretty well versed in what black magicians do, and how they do it. It’s part of your witch training, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You ever hear of the bad guys using a ritual like this?”

“No. Nothing that even comes close,” she said.

“Well, shit.”

They got out of the Caddy making sure to lock it behind them. By prior agreement, Fenton went to their rental car parked at the curb while O’Donnell rang Swenson’s doorbell.

When he answered she said, “Here are your keys, Mister Swenson. We want to thank you for your cooperation.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “Where’s your partner?”

“Oh, he’s putting... our equipment away.” O’Donnell did not trust herself to say “mass spectrometer” with a straight face.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” she lied.

As Fenton pulled the car into traffic he said, “I’m trying to get my mind around this mess. Somebody conducted a black magic ritual at the church, but it’s one you never heard of.”

“Correct, unfortunately.”

“People do black magic in order to get something, right? Power, riches, revenge – something they can’t achieve on their own.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what does this f*cker want?”

O’Donnell looked out through the side window, at all the innocent, unaware people who went about their lives oblivious to the darkness that was all around them.

“I don’t know,” she said. “And that’s what frightens me.”