Book of Shadows

CHAPTER Sixteen

THE HAND OF GLORY
To make a Hand of Glory, you must acquire a corpse no more than twenty-four hours dead. Sever the left hand at the wrist with a sharp knife.
Take a winding sheet and squeeze out the blood of the hand to dry it. A pound of flesh should be cut from the corpse and rendered down to produce a bowl of fat. Preserve then the hand for two weeks in an earthenware jar filled with salt, saltpeter, and black pepper—all well powdered and mix’t.
Remove the hand and dust off all of the powder. Place the hand in a hot oven that is fired with vervain and fir. Leave it for an hour and then remove. Mold the drying hand into a fist, with space in the center to take a candle.
Fashion a candle from the previously rendered corpse’s fat and virgin wax. The wick should be made from freshly spun flax. Coax the candle into the curled fingers, and squeeze them tightly, gripping the candle firmly in position. When complete with the candle fixed into the mummified fist, you have a Hand of Glory!
With a Hand of Glory, you have a power. You have magic! As you light the candle, you cast your spell: “Hand of Glory, Hand of Glory, put my foe to sleep, in a sleep that is fast and deep!”
Your intended victims will not be able to rouse themselves . . . you will be free to do whatever mischief you wish to do.
Do what Thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Zazas Zazas Nasatanada Zazas!!
Landauer lowered the translated page, shook his head to clear it, and looked over to where Garrett sat on the windowsill, nervously drinking coffee.
The dawn light was gray behind him, and Landauer’s face was gray as well. Garrett suspected it was not entirely because of the lighting.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Garrett said quietly.
Landauer dropped the page down on the table, and was probably unaware that he wiped his hands on his pants after he did so. “So . . . this was in that—book.”
“Grimoire.”
“And you seriously think he took Erin’s hand to make a f*cking candle out of it?”
“There’s the drawing of it, right there.” Garrett nodded to the grimoire, open to the page with the sketch of the Hand of Glory. “And the spell calls for a left hand . . .”
Landauer pushed the grimoire away from him at the table with a queasy expression that Garrett found painfully familiar; he remembered his own trouble touching the book. “This is some seriously sick shit we’re talking about, G.”
“Yeah.” Garrett stood, and walked around his living room restlessly. “But it’s a direct link between Moncrief’s grimoire and Erin’s murder: her left hand was cut from her body. And less than a month before her murder, Jason Moncrief wrote out a black magic spell that called for the left hand of a dead human being. I’d call that evidence of premeditation.”
“Yeah . . .” Landauer said. He looked down again at the open grimoire. “That’s some good work, there,” he said, finally.
“God bless Google,” Garrett said, keeping his voice even as he lied.
He had been back home just under two hours after he’d left, to find Landauer still sleeping hard in the bedroom. Garrett had stood in the hall feeling both as if he’d gotten away with something and as if he’d never been gone at all, that he’d simply fallen asleep in his chair and experienced a quickly fading but disturbing dream.
He’d spent most of the rest of the night using the code sheet Tanith had written out for him to translate the candle spell, and then the titles of the other spells in the grimoire to see if there was anything else that deserved immediate attention. Then he stashed Tanith’s code sheet in a desk drawer, looked up a rune substitution code online, and printed it out, to explain how he had been able to break the code. Tracks covered, no need to elaborate. And as long as it got done, what difference did it make how it got done?
Landauer looked at him appraisingly, but after a minute looked away. “Well, if it wasn’t a slam dunk before, it sure as shit is looking like one now.”
They finished the charging package together, with the Hand of Glory detailed under the section titled “Motive,” and at 10:00 A.M. they were in the conference room on the second floor of Schroeder, drinking more coffee as Carolyn and Lieutenant Malloy read through the evidence at the long table.
“Spells,” Malloy muttered, with a tone of biblically righteous anger. “Black magic.”
Carolyn looked up from the charging package with that gleam in her eyes. “Gentlemen, this is very impressive. This is a solid suggestion of premeditation. We may very well be able to force a plea.”
Malloy hesitated, then nodded acknowledgment. “Fine work,” he said gruffly, and Garrett felt a sharp stab of victory.
Take that, tight ass.
______
As Garrett walked back toward the homicide room, he heard a female voice behind him. “Detective Garrett.” For a split second, as he turned, he was sure he would see the witch.
It was Carolyn, of course.
She stopped at a formal distance, and looked him over. “You must be dead,” she said, but there was a suggestive warmth in her voice.
“I got a few hours,” he said, dismissing it.
Her eyes shone at him. “It’s a huge case, Garrett. Huge. You’ll get national attention, and you deserve it.”
He was annoyed at the thrill that gave him. “You may be right. Right now I just want to make sure it’s all lined up.”
“Well . . .” She glanced to the side to see if they were still alone. “Call me.”
“You know it,” he said automatically, but for once the thought didn’t give him an erotic charge.
He drove home on autopilot, and didn’t even remember how he got to the bedroom. The last image in his mind, before he fell into a comatose sleep, was the yellow flame of a lit candle clutched in a severed human hand.