“Yeah, let’s do it,” he said. “In fact, how about we grab some lunch?”
They headed toward Royal Street and a quiet restaurant, where Rowenna ordered tea and crawfish and he decided on jambalaya.
“So go on,” he told her, once they had been served. “I want to know more about what witches are today.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes, really.”
She arched a brow, doubtful, then plunged on. “The Salem witch community started in the early 1970s, when a woman named Laurie Cabot, who’s now considered the official witch of Salem, moved to town. There are now several thousand practicing wiccans in the area. They would have been in real trouble back when the Puritans were in charge. Ironically, they left England looking for religious freedom, then went on to persecute anyone who didn’t worship as they mandated. But wiccans—if there had been wiccans back then—would never have practiced Satanism the way the Salem witches supposedly did. The devil is a Christian concept, a fallen angel. So wiccans can’t worship the devil or sign a pact with Satan, because in their religion, he doesn’t exist. That’s not to say there aren’t Satanists out there, because there are, but that’s a different philosophy entirely.”
He stared at her and nodded gravely. Was it a lecture on the ironies of man that he really needed? Maybe, in a way.
Brad and Mary had gone to Salem. Mary had disappeared. He needed to know anything he could about the place, and Rowenna knew a lot about it. She was also beautiful and, frankly, enchanting, and the scent of her cologne was arresting. Mesmerizing. He felt his pulse stutter.
She had never claimed to read minds, but he felt that she knew what he was thinking. That he didn’t really think witches or Satanists, real or imagined, past or present, had anything to do with Mary’s disappearance and the probability that something terrible had happened to her.
Unless someone out there believed he was following the dictates of Satan.
She smiled. “You think anyone who decides to practice an ancient and long-dead religion is an idiot.”
“I don’t care if you want to worship palm trees—as long as you don’t use your belief as an excuse to hurt or kill anyone else,” he told her.
She laughed. When she did, her eyes were like liquid gold, he realized. “You’d like the wiccans just fine, then. Like I said, they do no evil, because evil comes back threefold.” She shrugged. “I don’t think anyone has the answers to the questions that plague the universe. We all want to think people who hurt others will be punished—in this world or the next. Or, better, now and in the afterlife, assuming you believe in an afterlife.”
“Are you saying you don’t?” he asked her.
“I definitely do.” She gave a little shiver as she said it. “You’re thinking about something else, aren’t you?” he asked.
She looked startled, then offered him a rueful grin. “We have a legend up where I live about a sort of bogeyman. We call him the Harvest Man. He’s a creature of evil—drawn from old pagan practices, even Native American beliefs, and the concept of Satan, as well. When someone disappears, when something awful that can’t be accounted for occurs, we chalk it up to the Harvest Man. He doesn’t have horns and a tail. In fact, he doesn’t really look all that scary. He wears a crown of autumn leaves and a cape the color of the earth. He’s taller than most men, too. Huge.”
“So he goes after young women?” he asked.
“I don’t know how the legend got started, to tell you the truth, but the oldest story I know is from a few hundred years ago, sometime after the witch trials, when a series of young and beautiful women disappeared. They never caught the killer, so colonists, probably influenced by the local tribes, said the Harvest Man was out there, stealing their souls.”
“Don’t tell me you’re saying Mary was taken by the Harvest Man.”
“Of course not. I’m just saying it’s New England, there’s a story to go with anything that can happen. But if you’re wondering if I think there’s a real-life killer out there, someone just as evil as the Harvest Man, then I’m afraid it’s a real possibility.”
Just then his phone rang, and he had the strangest feeling, even before he glanced at the number, that it was going to be Brad.
It was.
He excused himself, and stepped outside.
Rowenna played idly with the straw in her iced tea, wishing she’d made a hasty goodbye when Jeremy had taken the call.
Maybe it was just having too much time to think while their conversation was still fresh in her mind, but she had an awful feeling she knew what was going to happen. Brad was going to call Jeremy for help—in fact, for all she knew it was Brad who had called just now—and Jeremy would come to Salem.
She felt her heart pounding a bit too hard, and she tried to still it. She wouldn’t see him, even if he did. He didn’t like her, so he would hardly give her a call or ask for her help.