Alice shook her head without stopping. “Not here, anyway,” she called over her shoulder. “You can see why the vampire needed Samuel’s help to find the right place.”
The place may have looked pedestrian, but it was huge. Alice threaded them through rows and aisles with no hesitation, and Jesse was grateful she was there. “I’ve been thinking about that,” Jesse said, “about Olivia needing his help.” He told them, with as little detail as possible, what the cop outside had said about Samuel suffering before death. “Why would Olivia have to torture the rabbi instead of just pressing his mind?” Jesse asked. Before either woman could answer him, Jesse remembered what Kirsten had said about canceling out magic. “Wait, was he a witch too?”
Kirsten and Alice exchanged an uneasy look that Jesse couldn’t interpret, and Kirsten said, “No. There are a handful of male witches, but Samuel wasn’t one of us. He was considered a Friend to the Witches.” The way she said it made it sound like a title, but Jesse didn’t push it for the moment.
Alice stopped abruptly, pointing forward. “Here,” she said unnecessarily. Jesse saw the mess right away: several tubs had been enthusiastically dumped on the ground. Shards of broken glass were scattered on the ground like sequins, and Jesse squatted down and saw bits of dried herbs and battered books mixed in with other unidentifiable wreckage. He looked up at Kirsten, whose face was stricken. “I didn’t move anything,” Alice volunteered. “I wanted to clean up, but you know…I watch TV.”
Jesse nodded absently. He was staring at the wreckage, wishing Glory was there to help him understand what he was looking at. There were definite trails in the glass, like Olivia had dragged Samuel back toward the door when she was finished. They weren’t neat, though, so Jesse thought Samuel must have been struggling.
“So Olivia was just torturing him for the hell of it?” Jesse asked. “I know she’s nuts, but that seems sort of risky, given how public Beth Israel is.”
“It’s possible,” Kirsten said hesitantly.
He straightened up to meet her eyes. “But…?”
She sighed. “The witches keep certain things private. Certain things we can do, I mean. One of those is to create protection amulets.” She gave Alice a meaningful look, and the heavyset woman pulled a long chain out of her button-down shirt. Jesse saw a locket at the end of the chain, in the shape of a stylized Star of David. She held it in her palm as Jesse stepped forward to get a better look, but he instinctively knew not to touch it.
“Alchemy again,” he said, looking at Kirsten.
The witch nodded. “Alice, like Samuel, knows about and deals with this repository,” she said. “The handful of humans who know have protection amulets. They cannot be pressed by vampires, nor can they be turned.” Her face was grim. “Although they can be killed, as you can see.”
“Would Olivia have known about these?”
Kirsten bit her lip again, thinking. “Probably not,” she said at last. “I created these myself, and I’m very careful about who knows about them. Honestly, I’m not even sure if Dashiell knows about these. It may have frustrated Olivia, that she couldn’t press Samuel, which might be why this was so violent.” She stared at Jesse, and he got the message. Keep it to yourself.
Alice put the locket back under her blouse, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Jesse realized he was making her nervous by being there. She wasn’t used to outsiders, and she had said she wanted to get the mess cleaned up. Jesse took one more look around and stood up. “We should let you get back to work,” he said kindly to Alice.
Her shoulders slumped in relief. “There’s so much to do,” she murmured, distractedly. “I need to call his brother and sister-in-law in Montana, and speak to the board…” She headed back up the aisle in the direction of the door, still muttering under her breath. Kirsten gave Jesse a questioning look—did you get what you came for?—but he just shrugged and tilted his head to follow Alice. He didn’t want to talk in front of the older woman in case there were things she wasn’t supposed to know.
When they were almost to the door, Kirsten stopped in her tracks. “Wait,” she said urgently. “I have to check one other thing.”
Alice called a question after her, but Kirsten had spun on a heel and was hurrying down one of the labyrinthine corridors. Alice looked at Jesse, but he just turned and followed along in the witch’s wake. Kirsten completely ignored both of them, scanning the tub labels and hurrying from one shelf to the next. Finally she found the tub she wanted and ripped it from the chest-high shelf. Jesse made a move to help her lift it, but she shook her head without looking at him. Dropping it on the floor with a hollow thud, she tore the lid off and looked inside. Jesse leaned forward to see, but the only thing in the tub was three empty glass jars. There was nothing overtly special about them—in fact, Jesse thought, he had seen similar jars at Target. But when he looked up at Alice, she was as pale as she’d been when Jesse told them about Samuel’s injuries. He opened his mouth to ask, but Kirsten had sagged down on the floor next to the tub, head in her hands. “We’ve got a problem,” she said to the concrete floor.
Jesse touched her shoulder, trying to be patient. “What is it? What was in the jars?” he asked gently. He peeked at the side of the tub, but the label just said “Spices.” No date, no country.
Kirsten looked up at the two of them, and from the corner of his eye Jesse saw Alice shaking her head no. Kirsten’s gaze landed on him as she pulled herself up using one of the shelves as balance. “I’ll tell you in the car,” she said to Jesse, and Alice’s eyes widened.