Book of Shadows

CHAPTER Forty-one

According to her psych file from McLean State Hospital, Teresa Smithfield, a.k.a. Tanith Cabarrus, had been released to one Selena Fox after she was discharged from that institution in 2000. Garrett had no idea whether or not Palmer and Morelli had decided to follow up, but his own calls to the DMV and the credit reporting companies and searches on AutoTrack turned up no such person as Selena Fox, so he doubted the other detectives would have spent much time with it. They had other things on their plate.
Garrett knew that the other detectives were following McKenna’s trail, so he headed in the opposite direction, out of the city and off the map: to Salem. An absurd little chant looped through his head as he made the drive: Takes a witch to catch a witch.
All that damn rhyming of the rituals. He couldn’t get away from it. But the theory behind the taunting little homily was sound, he thought. The witch community seemed tight-knit.
So he strode again through gusting wind and swirling leaves on the Essex pedestrian walk, toward the witch souvenir shop he’d gone into by mistake on his first trip up to visit Tanith.
The day had been warm, Indian summer, but the slanting light was most definitely autumn, with long evening shadows beginning to creep across the cobblestones of the mall, shifting cerily with the wind. As Garrett walked the mall it was impossible not to note the explosion of Halloween decorations. Now, upward of seventy-five percent of the people around him were already in costume, and the shops were festooned with lights, pumpkins, black cats, the cornstalks lashed to lampposts and pillars. The sight made Garrett cold, despite the warmth of the evening.
The same beshawled proprietor was at the counter of the shop at the heart of the mall, and she looked him over with that same greedy interest before her smile curled cynically. “Back so soon? I told you you didn’t want anything to do with Tanith Cabarrus.” News of Tanith’s wanted status had hit the papers. Garrett imagined it had caused quite a stir in the small Salem community.
“You were right about that,” he agreed neutrally. “It’s someone else I’m looking for now, though. Selena Fox.”
There was an uneasy flicker in the witch’s eyes. She looked away. “I can’t help you.”
“Well, you see, I think you can,” Garrett said. He kept his voice casual, but there was an edge.
She shook her head. “I have no idea where Selena is. She hasn’t lived in Salem for some time. But I can tell you this. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll find you. And if she doesn’t, you won’t.”
Garrett looked at her, startled. She gazed at him intently—no, not at him, but somehow a bit above him, and to the sides. “Are you sure you don’t want a reading? Your aura doesn’t look good.”
Garrett had to bite his tongue. “I bet it doesn’t. Thanks anyway.”
Though he knew it was pointless, he drove by Book of Shadows. The shop was itself a shadow against the darkening sky and there was yellow police tape crossed on the door.
For no reason that he could think of, he got out of the car and moved up on the sidewalk to stand just before the porch stairs.
The cornstalks were still lashed to the porch columns, and Garrett wondered briefly what Palmer and Morelli and the other officers had made of that.
There was a stirring of wind, and then he felt an unsettling sense of presence behind him, the visceral sensation of being watched. Garrett turned quickly—
—to see a flash of pale skin, a shock of fiery red hair, as a slight, agile figure darted toward the bushes beside the house, heading straight on toward the thick hedge. Garrett tensed and reached automatically for his weapon, before he remembered that it was in lockup at Schroeder; he’d had to turn it over.
And then, unbelievably, the figure seemed to melt into the greenery, disappearing into the hedge with no crash of branches, no rustle of leaves.
Garrett stared.
After a moment he strode toward the hedge. He pushed the branches aside where the figure had vanished—melted—and was startled to see a solid brick wall. There was no gate, no opening through which a person could have exited.
This is crazy, he told himself. I saw him. Her. It.
Garrett stood in consternation, then looked behind him. The street was deserted, no cars coming and no sound of any approaching vehicle.
Garrett reached up to put his hands flat on top of the wall and pushed himself up, swung a leg over.
The wall enclosed a luxurious garden, deserted and luminous in the twilight. Garrett dropped to the ground and looked around him, quickly taking in a landscape design laid out in a spiral, with a profusion of flowering plants: white roses and gardenias and some kind of big white daisy, and the large pale bells of deadly nightshade, all glowing under the moonlight. In one flower bed was a very feminine statue, draped in a marble gown so flowing that every curve of its body was revealed. One corner of the yard held a graceful white gazebo, a water fountain whispered from another corner, and the fragrance of gardenia and lavender and roses mingled in the cooling air, subtle and intoxicating. A line from some poem or play floated through Garrett’s head: “Soft moonlight sleeps upon the bank . . .”
Then a living shape popped up in front of him so quickly he caught his breath—and stared, eyes widening. What the hell is this?
The garden was dark, but he could tell instantly that the—boy?—standing in front of him was strange, small and slight, with fiery red hair and pale freckled face and pointed nose and pointed chin. The hair was longish, covering his—its—ears, but Garrett had to forcibly stop himself from imagining points on the tips of those, too. The boy wore thonged leather sandals and short tan trousers and some tuniclike open weave sweater of coarse cloth. It was impossible to tell—its—his—age.
The boy grinned and there were points on his teeth as well, as if the canines had been filed, and his eyes were slits of blue fire.
“Who are you?” Garrett managed. The boy shook his head, still grinning, and waved an index finger in front of his face. Then his hand moved so fast Garrett had no time to react, and he was whipping something out of the tunic, though the motion was such a blur that something white seemed to simply materialize in the boy’s hand.
In his palm was something the size and shape of a business card, which he presented to Garrett with a mock bow. Garrett’s fingers had no sooner closed on it than the boy turned and lifted his arms to his sides, spinning in a circle like a child, like a top. Then he suddenly broke into a run, straight for a hedge of night-blooming jasmine growing in front of the garden wall.
This time Garrett was anticipating the boy’s move and grabbed for him. His fingers closed around nothing and he stumbled, nearly falling on his face on the path. He threw himself upright and looked wildly around him . . .
He saw a flash of white by the hedge and said sharply, “Wait”—but the branches had closed around the boy without so much as a rustle.
What the f*ck?
And when Garrett shoved his way through the branches, he came up against the stone wall again.
He backed out of the branches, caught his breath, and looked down at the card in his hand. It was not a normal business card, but a bit smaller and longer, gold-embossed letters on heavy stock. Calling card, his mind said, and he had no idea how he really knew that. The card held an address in Cambridge, and the handwritten notation: 10:00 A.M.
Nothing more.
Garrett turned and looked around him. The garden was empty . . . he was alone in the light of the rising moon.
And once again he was left with the shaky feeling of reality crumbling around him.