She delved deeper, sensing, feeling, opening herself up. Something incredibly evil had happened there, something that went far beyond the things she had experienced. She narrowed her eyes to a slit. Suddenly the dirt beneath her turned into a lake of blood. Hands reached up for her; the screams of the dying split the air around her. She could feel the lingering effects of an ancient war that had taken place on that site. It had been a battle between man and monsters, good and evil. There was something familiar about it, haunting.
Cathedral Grove, blessed by some, consecrated and made holy, was cursed and damned by others. The roots of the trees had soaked up blood, so much of it that it had fed them and watered them, making them strong physically and psychically. And there were those who had felt that power and gravitated to it. And some of those had sought to claim the power for themselves.
She could feel through the earth the bones and the ashes of so many, both victims and victors of vicious battles. She felt like she couldn’t catch her breath as the bones of hundreds began to whisper to her. The dead remained attached to their remains, their whispers never quite silenced. There was no peace here, not for them and not for her. She clapped her hands over her ears and tried to block out the sounds.
And then ghosts began to rise out of the ground. Most were merely echoes, recorded personalities, and worse, recorded deaths. On the far side of the circle, a three-year-old girl was screaming her head off as a man stabbed her over and over. Samantha shouted at them, but neither specter heard her. They were locked together in their own moment, reliving the horror of it over and over. Even as Samantha watched, the child died again. The man turned, and a knife gripped by an invisible hand slashed him across the throat. He fell to his knees, his blood pouring down into the lake Samantha was standing in.
So many ghosts, many of them playing out the moments of their deaths. It was too much. The pain and fear threatened to sweep Samantha away. Not all of the ghosts were mere recordings, though. Some were much more self-aware.
Such as the young man standing beside her who reached out and brushed icy fingers against her cheek. Samantha jumped backward.
“You don’t belong here,” he said. His voice held friendly curiosity, but his eyes were filled with a malice that was breathtaking. “You’re different. You’re—”
“Alive,” Samantha said, interrupting.
He smiled, a slow, wicked smile. “I wouldn’t call what you do living. More of a kind of surviving, on the edge, the fringe, not of this world, barely even in it.”
“What happened here?” Samantha asked, even as she racked her mind to try to remember what she had once been taught about sentient spirits. Something about not to be trusted came to mind.
He looked around slowly, meaningfully, gazing at the other spirits. “What hasn’t happened here?” he asked.
“What happened to you?”
He gave her that same wicked smile. “I was killed by a woman, a member of my coven. I thought we were making love. She had other plans.”
“Sex magic?” Samantha guessed.
“Combined with sacrificial death. Oh, she got a real power upgrade, courtesy of me.”
“I’m sorry,” Samantha said, not sure what else to say.
The ghost moved closer. “Not your fault.”
He was still smiling, and she couldn’t help but stare at his lips. They were full. He bit the bottom one gently and the motion intrigued her.
“I could use your help,” she said, trying to block out the screaming and the crying of the other spirits around her.
“Whatever you need,” he said, his voice slightly huskier.
“There’s a coven using this grove now. They’re doing bad things,” Samantha said.
“Oh, yeah, they are,” he said, taking a step closer.
“What can you tell me?” she asked. Maybe she wasn’t remembering correctly about spirits. Maybe some of them were trustworthy. After all, what reason did the dead have to lie about anything?
He reached out and took her hand in his. His hand wasn’t corporeal. It wasn’t really there, but the energy was, and she could feel that. Her hand tingled where he was touching her.
“I can tell you that they’ve been here a long time. The current high priestess has always been a badass, a power grabber. But something happened about a month ago. Something I’ve never seen before.”
“What was that?” she asked.
“They were doing some sort of ritual. I usually watch. After all, about twenty years ago it was my coven. Most of the old crew are gone now, though. Most are dead; some just left.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. He had such a beautiful voice. It was a shame he had been killed.
“It happens to everyone.” He glanced down at their linked hands, and so did she. “In the end, we’re all just energy,” he said.
He looked up at her, and before she could say anything, he moved in and kissed her. His lips against hers were soft, the energy rippling between them making them feel warm. And she could swear that the longer the kiss lasted, the more real he felt.
He put both his hands behind her head and kissed her more deeply. She could feel him as his energy merged with hers. And then she was kissing him back and she knew she wasn’t imagining it; he was real, solid. He slid his arms around her and pulled her tight.
And what had happened to him was so terrible. And everything that had happened to her was a nightmare. And she could never share it with anyone. But she didn’t have to lie to him.
“I see you,” he whispered. “The real you. I understand your pain. I understand your loneliness. I’m so sorry for everything that has happened to you.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“No, but I can help you. I can help share the pain, the burden.”
And nothing on earth had ever sounded so good to her. He was warm and real and he understood, really understood. And she wanted the closeness he was offering. And with every kiss she felt him more. His hands roamed over her body, sending minor jolts of electricity into her, which felt so good.
And then he was lowering her down onto the ground, still kissing her. And when he lay down on top of her, she could feel the weight of him and he didn’t just feel real, he was real, and he wanted her. And she wanted him.
She opened her eyes. A minute ago, when she had been talking to him, he had been wearing jeans and a polo shirt. And now, now he wasn’t wearing anything.
And in that moment, she knew what he was trying to do. She screamed and pushed him with everything she had. He went flying backward and landed halfway across the circle. Suddenly, he was wearing clothes again and all the thoughts that had been flooding her mind were gone. They had never been hers.
“What the hell were you doing?” she screamed.
He stood up and shrugged. “Just because I’m more than just a mindless recording doesn’t mean much in the big picture. We all relive our deaths in one way or another. You were about to help me relive mine. And, hey, there’s worse deaths to have.”
She felt like she was going to be sick.
“Stay away from me.”
“Your loss. After twenty years, I’ve gotten pretty good at this.”
And she vowed in that moment that no matter what else happened, she’d find a way to destroy this ghost so he could never do that to anyone else.
“I guess you don’t want to know what I saw a month ago.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“Suit yourself. But you might as well trust your own eyes. The echo of it is there. You can see it if you want to.”
“Did someone die?”
He laughed. “Not exactly.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“See for yourself.”
He turned and walked away, dissolving back into the ground slowly.
She took
a deep breath. She knew that traumatic events could leave images, echoes, in the fabric of a place. Death was the easiest way to cause those echoes evidenced by the ghosts around her, but it wasn’t the only trauma that could cause it. The emotional impact was the important part. She was more than convinced that echoes of her haunted at least a dozen places in Salem.
She turned and looked at the ghosts and, one by one, they began to melt back into the earth until only one image was left. She didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed it earlier. Maybe it was because, of all the things to see inside the circle, at first blush it was one of the most innocuous. A woman with long black hair was standing in the exact center of the circle. She wasn’t moving much except to occasionally fall to her knees and then stand back up.
She had her back to Samantha. Samantha walked around her slowly until she could see the woman’s face and then she stopped. It was the witch who had summoned the storm and channeled the lightning into her car.
She was standing, eyes closed, chanting. Samantha struggled, but she couldn’t hear the words. They must not have been important. As she watched, the woman made a small circle with her right arm. Nothing too special there. Could have been any of a hundred different things she was doing, particularly if she was the high priestess.
Then suddenly the woman’s eyes opened wide in panic. The terror in her face was hard for Samantha to look at, but she forced herself to keep watching. And then the witch fell to her knees and her head slumped forward. A moment later, it snapped backward and she stood up. Her face was full of menace. Then a transformation seemed to come over it, and as tears began to stream down her face, Samantha heard her whisper, “The last grave.”
9
Samantha shuddered. The image then began to repeat itself. She turned away, unwilling to watch again. What was it she had just witnessed?
With her back to the image, she stared at the trees around her. The guardians of the circle stood, sentinels, beacons. How much had they seen and how much blood they had taken into themselves?
All she knew was that she couldn’t stay longer. Neither could she leave this place as she had found it, though.
Take the power, her inner voice urged, and she struggled to ignore it. Is that what had happened to the witch she had just seen? This area was dangerous. There were too many spirits, too much power. She had no idea how to solve those problems, though.
Maybe Anthony would know. He knew more about the occult than she did. His lifelong search for the surviving member of the coven that had killed his mother had helped him amass quite a lot of knowledge on the topic. Once she got to the car, she should call him, ask him about all that she had seen and heard here.
Except she wouldn’t tell him about kissing the ghost. It was a memory she’d like to forget herself as soon as possible. She chastised herself. She should have been able to figure out what he was doing sooner. Then again, as he himself had said, clearly he’d had years to get good at messing with people’s heads that way.
There was only one thing she could do. She walked around the internal perimeter of the circle and placed her hand on each tree trunk. She pushed energy from her body into the tree and into the dirt. “I bind this place so that nothing dark may be created here, that no harm may be done.” She repeated the actions for each tree.
When she was done, she surveyed her work. The binding spell she had done could be undone, but not before it would cause quite a bit of confusion and mayhem, she hoped.
Finally, she stepped out of the circle of trees. She put her shoes and socks back on. It was a beautiful spot, and it broke her heart that it was being used for dark purposes.
She headed for the train tracks, intent on following them back to Roaring Camp. There was something incredibly peaceful about the forest, and she breathed deeply of the fragrant air. She was going to have to come back at some point in the future to explore the area more.
She pulled out her phone to check the time. She was pleased to see that she had a signal. It was going to be a long walk back. She wanted to take the time to just be still and reflect, but she could already feel the rest of the work she needed to do pressing down on the back of her neck, seeking to crush her. She remembered that she wanted to call George Wakefield, and that was something she could do while she was walking.
She dialed his number and, to her relief, he answered. She hadn’t been savoring the thought of trying to leave him a message.
“Hello, Dr. Wakefield. My name is Samantha Cas—er, Ryan. I’m a detective with the San Francisco Police Department.”
“Detective, how can I help you?”
“I wanted to discuss with you your theories about earthquake detection.”
“I’d be happy to. Forgive me. I’m just surprised that someone from the police department is interested.”
“I apologize. I’m not calling officially. This is more of a personal interest.”
“Ah, I see. How can I help?”
“Did you really see a significant increase in runaway pets right before the earthquake hit?”
“Yes. It was up fifteen percent in the days before.”
“Wow, that is significant.”
“Yes, but not nearly as significant as what I’ve seen since the earthquake.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s up by sixty percent.”
“Sixty percent? Are you sure?”
“The numbers don’t lie.”
“Is that normal for after an earthquake?”
“Detective, I’ve got studies that go back twenty-five years. I’ve never seen anything like it. Neither has anyone else I’ve spoken to.”
“I’d love to talk to you about this further. Is there a good time we can meet?”
“I’m free tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be downtown.”
“Great. I’ll call you and we’ll set something up.”
“Okay.”
After hanging up with him, she called Jada.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Samantha. I’m calling about the Lightfoot case.”
“It’s about time you or your partner called to check in,” the coroner said.
“What do you have?” Samantha asked.
“I can tell you this much. That wood- or stonelike consistency of her skin when we found her?”
“Yeah?”
“It goes straight through.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I needed to use a bone saw just to get through her skin.”
“What could have caused that?” Samantha asked.
“I have no clue. True petrification is when minerals leech into the porous parts of an organism, slowly replacing the original parts. Eventually, the original parts are worn away, and what you have is a combination of minerals like quartz and calcite that end up being an exact model of the original wood or bone.”
“I take it that’s usually not a quick process.”
“As far as I know, there is no flash-freeze version,” Jada confirmed. “I’m telling you, though, I’m taking notes. When I’m done writing this baby up, it’s going into some science and medical journals.”
Crap, Samantha thought. Now she was going to have to deal with that as well. The prospect left her feeling more than a little ill.
“So, anything on possible cause of death other than too many minerals in her diet?” Samantha asked, trying to make light of it so that Jada wouldn’t suspect her when the research went missing.
“Nothing, as far as I can tell. This really is fascinating. I’ve got to hand it to you. You’ve certainly livened things up around here.”
“Oh, goody.”
“Look, the second I know anything more, I’ll call you.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Samantha said.
She hung up and could feel her blood pressure skyrocketin
g. Focus on the case.
Winona Lightfoot had been receiving threatening letters and then she showed up dead, basically petrified. The work had to be that of a witch. But why would a witch, or anyone for that matter, want the woman dead? As things stood, it made no sense. She had to stop looking at the witch angle for a minute, because it was clouding her judgment. Instead she needed to take a good, hard look at the victim herself.
She was a bit of a local celebrity, a champion for cultural treasures and a historian. We need to be talking to her business colleagues and see what she was actively working on.
That was the only way they were going to make real progress on this case. Hopefully, her colleagues could shed some more light on Winona’s current work. Perhaps some of them had also been contacted by her killer.
The killer was obviously searching for something since Winona’s office had been ransacked and Jill, the woman she was supposed to be meeting with a few hours after her death, had been contacted.
I need to get home and talk with Jill. She doesn’t remember what happened to her yesterday, but maybe I can help her remember. What is it the killer thought she had?
And what if the person who contacted Jill and the person who ransacked Winona’s office were two different people? The circle had shown Samantha the faces of the two witches she’d had confrontations with. Were they working together, divvying up the workload, or working at cross-purposes?
If she could figure out why Winona was killed, everything else would fall into place. The best place to start was with Jill. Even if her roommate was angry with her, she would still want to help catch Winona’s killer.
Samantha picked up her pace. She had been so sleep deprived and running around from one thing to the next for the last several hours that she hadn’t stopped to think like a detective. That was changing immediately. When Jill got home that evening, they were talking, even if it made both of them squirm.
She was practically jogging beside the train tracks now, trying to remember how far away from Roaring Camp she had to be at that point. She wanted to stop and pull out the map, but that would just waste time. If she stuck to her course, she would get there.