A surge of power rippled through the air, followed by a gasp and the sound of shattering glass.
Desdemona turned impatiently. There, standing behind her, was one of the magic users whose life she had spared back in Salem, a young girl with flaming red hair who was shaking uncontrollably, a broken vase with fresh flowers at her feet.
“Please, please don’t kill me,” the girl begged.
Desdemona turned back. The man had vanished. Her eyes dropped to the corpse and she blinked in surprise as she recognized the frozen features.
The dead guy was her waiter from the café.
What was he doing here? she wondered as she crouched down to get a better look at the corpse. He must have left the restaurant before she and the older man did. Had the other man killed him or just found his body? In either case he hadn’t seemed particularly rattled or surprised.
She looked at the body closely, looking for any obvious, mundane cause of death. There was nothing she could see in the way of marks on the body, no holes, no bruises. There wasn’t any blood on it or on the surrounding ground, either. Just by looking she couldn’t rule out poison or something like a heart attack.
When Desdemona was thirteen she had renounced her old life and taken on a new name, Samantha Ryan. Samantha had grown up and become a police detective in Boston, where she had solved many homicides. Samantha’s carefully ordered life had been turned upside down, though, when she’d been forced to go undercover in nearby Salem to apprehend a coven of dark witches who were murdering people. They had been trying to raise a demon and she had barely stopped them.
Using magic again had opened a door that she had kept firmly shut for years, allowing memories and even old personality traits to slip through. For years, the part of her that was Desdemona, the witch, had been locked away inside Samantha’s mind, struggling to get out.
Following a move to the San Francisco Bay Area and an encounter with another dark coven of witches trying to release a different demon trapped beneath a mountain, Desdemona had finally been freed. The irony was, just as Samantha had not remembered a great deal of her childhood, shutting out the memories, so Desdemona had tried to block memories from her teen and adult years that belonged to Samantha.
Yet, even though she had denounced that part of herself, she could feel herself still trying to solve the puzzle before her. She felt like a cop, and she hated it. That was the imposter, not her. Muscle memory existed, though, that led her into certain old habits, unwelcome as they were.
She heard the slightest whisper of fabric and she lifted her left hand behind her. She pulled energy in from the environment as well as from the girl who was trying to sneak away.
“I compel you to come here,” she said quietly.
She heard feet sliding along the ground, their owner struggling so hard not to comply as if she actually had a choice in the matter. At last the girl was standing next to her, whimpering.
Desdemona didn’t bother looking up from what she was doing. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“I work at the flower shop down the street. I was doing an early-morning delivery, and I just happened to walk by.”
“Not here in this alley, here in New Orleans,” Desdemona said.
She could feel the girl struggling, straining to pull away, but she might as well have been a gnat for all the effect it had.
“I . . . I don’t know. You told me to leave Salem and I went to stay with some friends in Tennessee for a couple of weeks and then I felt something sort of calling to me, drawing me here.”
“A word of advice,” Desdemona said as she stood. “When you feel something irresistible calling you to a certain place, that’s the last place you should go.”
“I . . . I didn’t know. I didn’t know you’d come here.”
“Neither did I. Look at this man. Tell me, have you seen him before?”
As though against her will, even though she wasn’t being compelled to, the girl bent down to get a closer look. Curiosity is a powerful thing in any person regardless of who you are.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He’s not a witch, nor does he have our powers,” she mused.
“I—I’m not a witch.”
“No, of course you’re not. Even if you were, you wouldn’t be very good at it. But still, look at him and tell me what you see, what you feel.”
“I don’t understand.”
For the first time Desdemona looked up and met the girl’s eyes. She saw terror there, running rampant, practically paralyzing her. The curiosity was visible, too, but to a much lesser degree. The memories of Samantha were present in Desdemona’s mind, but it took effort to focus in on them and to pluck out the information she needed.
Back in Salem the dark coven had brought about the resurrection of Abigail, Desdemona’s own coven leader from childhood, killed when Desdemona was twelve. The new coven leaders had not warned all the members what exactly they were doing or that they would be ripping energy from them in order to restore the dead woman to life. The action had killed several of the weaker members and left others badly injured and terrified, suddenly aware of exactly what they had gotten themselves into. Samantha had taken pity on them and, without blowing her cover, had managed to give a few of them a way to escape the coven.
The girl in front of her had been the first to accept Samantha’s offer of amnesty in the graveyard after the resurrection of Abigail. Samantha had given her enough energy not just to rise from the ground but also to run from the place and never look back. She had never known the girl’s name.
That was easily enough solved. Desdemona didn’t bother asking; she pushed her way inside the girl’s mind and took it.
The girl gasped and sank to her knees, a stricken look on her face. She’d never had someone walk through her mind before; that much was clear. In a moment Desdemona knew everything she needed to know about her.
“Claudia.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to look at this body and tell me what you see, not with your eyes but with your powers.”
The girl hunched her shoulders and turned agonized eyes onto the body. “There is a faint shimmer about him.”
“Very good. What else?”
The girl strained but finally shook her head. “I don’t see anything else.”
“If you can’t see, then you should hear.” Desdemona tilted the girl’s head slightly to the side so that she could see what had been standing there the entire time.
The dead man’s ghost was present, a look of terror and confusion on his face.
Claudia tried to jerk away, but she was still under Desdemona’s control.
“It’s a ghost,” she whimpered, fear filling her voice.
“Yes. I’m surprised you’ve never seen one before. Tell us, spirit, how did you die?”
The ghost shook his head, refusing to speak to them.
“Very well,” Samantha said, lifting her hand toward him. “If you will not tell us, you will show us.”
Then the spirit disappeared and reappeared a moment later several feet away. It began walking. It halted, then half turned as though sensing someone behind it. “I did what you asked!” he screamed.
Then he seized up, bending nearly double. An invisible force lifted him about a foot off the ground and then dropped him. He went straight down, and she could tell from the reenactment that he’d been dead when his head hit the pavement.
The spirit lay there for a moment and then got up and repeated the entire thing again.
“Why—why is he doing that?”
“It’s a ghost’s natural function to replay his death over and over like a bad recording. Some grow more sentient and become more creative. He was in shock, those moments just after the soul has departed from the body, when it doesn’t understand what has happened to it. I just pushed him out of that slightly faster.”
“Somebody was following him. They killed him. It was someone with the powers,” Claudia said.
&
nbsp; “Very good. Now the only questions that remain are who and why.”
“He said he did what they asked. And yet whoever it was killed him anyway.”
Desdemona shrugged. “He was clearly only a tool and a disposable one at that.”
“How sad,” Claudia murmured.
Desdemona looked up at her and smiled. “How touching you should think so since you, too, are disposable.”
Claudia took one look at her smile and began to scream.
2
Don’t kill her, a voice whispered deep inside Desdemona. She scowled. There was nothing that could stop her from killing Claudia if she chose to. As she imagined the girl spontaneously combusting, burning from the inside out, she realized that she really wanted to. It had been ages since she had held life and death in the palm of her hand, another creature’s fate dependent solely on her whim.
Use her. Find out what she knows, the voice whispered.
She hissed under her breath. That annoying voice that sometimes came to her usually didn’t make so much sense.
“You know how they used to kill witches?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
Claudia was ashen, trembling from head to toe. She shook her head.
“Oh, come on, of course you do. They’d tie them to a stake and then set them on fire. They’d burn them from the outside until there was nothing left. It’s a terrible way to die, but one of the first things that’s destroyed is your nerve endings, so you stop feeling the pain, the heat, all of it.”
“That’s awful,” Claudia sobbed.
“Yes, but not half as awful as what I’m going to do to you if you don’t tell me everything I want to know. I can burn you from the inside out and I can make the pain last much, much longer.”
“Please, I don’t know anything,” the girl begged.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“I don’t, really.”
“How many other witches have you met here in New Orleans?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Desdemona tsked. “Come, come, you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t know how many witches, honest. I’m not—not a witch . . . not since you . . . please, don’t kill me.”
Desdemona rolled her eyes. “How many others with power have you met?”
Spittle was dangling off the girl’s chin, and her eyes were wild. The terror coming off her was almost overwhelming in its intoxicating effect. “A lot. There’s a lot here. I don’t know why. There seems to be more every day.”
“Interesting. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. Some of them try to talk to me and I get scared. I want to leave, but—”
“But you can’t?” Desdemona guessed.
The girl nodded, spittle flying.
“Almost as though some invisible force compels you to stay?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Interesting. What type of people are they?”
“I don’t know. All kinds. I don’t know if they’re witches, but they seem to come from all over and be all different kinds of people. Rich, poor, young, old.”
“And there’s nothing tying them together?”
“Not that I can tell.”
It was interesting. If a magic practitioner were calling all these people to him or her, from all different places and all different walks of life, that person would have to be very powerful. It was very indiscriminate as well, which would seem to indicate a need for these people’s powers and not necessarily their will or ability to use them.
Something stirred in the back of Samantha’s mind. Something had happened not that long ago in Salem, where mass numbers of people had been drained of energy, used as human batteries. But if her shadowy memory served, those had been just ordinary people, not ones with power.
Which meant that whoever had called these people here to this place must have much bigger plans than resurrecting a single person.
She felt as though her thoughts were flowing like quicksilver, as if she was almost free-associating rather than thinking. It was as though a part of her, her subconscious, had struggled to work it out and now it was whispering to her—
“No!” she shouted as she realized that it was that other version of her, the one who had been a cop and witnessed those events in Salem, that was trying to talk to her, warn her about something. She wouldn’t listen; she couldn’t. That other self was weak, foolish, afraid. There was nothing Desdemona would take from her.
Isn’t that weakness, too? the hateful self whispered.
If Desdemona could have figured out what part of her carried that wretched voice, she would have ripped it out days before. The only thing it had to offer her was fear.
And Desdemona had sworn to herself that she would never be afraid again. “Have they seemed to gather in one place? Have you felt a call to any place specific in the city?”
“No, I haven’t. I don’t know about the others, but I heard that some of them, some kids and homeless, are actually camped out at an old abandoned amusement park that closed after Katrina. It’s called Jazzland.”
“There’s a witch in town, a very powerful witch.”
“I’ve heard there’s a witch who lives in the Garden District. Everyone knows about her. I haven’t seen her, so I don’t know how powerful she is.”
“Or even if she has powers,” Desdemona mused. “No, the witch I’m looking for would cloak herself more in secrecy, in shadow. Have you heard any whispers, rumors?”
“No, I swear it.”
The girl didn’t know anything else, of that Desdemona was certain. She still wanted to kill her, but she realized it might be useful to keep her around. The girl had only been there a few months, but she was already far more familiar with the city. She, and her powers, could prove very useful indeed.
“Claudia.”
Claudia jerked at the sound of her name.
“You belong to me now—do you understand?”
“No.”
“You live only because I wish it. If I were to stop wishing it, even for a moment.” She snapped her fingers and Claudia stifled a scream.
“Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You will learn for me all that you can about the witches who are already in the city and the magic possessors who are coming here. You have no other role, no other purpose in life, but to serve me.”
“My job—”
“Is over.”
Claudia licked her lips, the distress mounting in her eyes. Desdemona started to think the girl was going to have a heart attack on the spot. In fact, she could actually feel the girl’s heart, skittering out of control, fast, erratic.
“How will I live?”
Desdemona smiled at her. “I’m sure you’ll find a way. Now go. I’ll be in contact with you soon.”
It wasn’t exactly true. She would be in contact with her constantly. Being aware of the fact that Desdemona had that much control over her, that much insight into her every thought, would only terrify her beyond the point of being an effective tool.
Claudia turned and scurried toward the entrance of the alley. She stopped before leaving and turned. “You—you’re different than you were.”
“I was . . . sick. I’m better now.”
She didn’t know why she felt the need to explain. Perhaps it was because she didn’t want the girl to doubt for a minute, to have even a shred of hope that the other personality was coming back.
Because that was never going to happen.
She turned and surveyed the rest of the alley, her thoughts returning to the man she had followed into it. He had claimed to be a Druid. She instinctively felt that doing a summoning spell on him wouldn’t work. She remembered now how to block those. It was complicated magic and she knew her other self would have paid dearly to remember how to do it back in Salem a few months before. Desdemona was sure the Druid had taken precautions. He struck her as the type somehow.
It was
possible he was just one of the nameless hoard who had been called to this place. Then again, maybe he was someone of significance. He was powerful, that much she knew. She thought about trying to pick up his trail, but something told her to wait. No, better to deal with him later. There were others she should seek out now.
“I did what you asked!”
Desdemona turned. It was the ghost screaming. While she and Claudia had been talking, it had continued to replay the death of its human body. Pathetic. Just one more ghost in a town crawling with them.
A tinge of something touched her, sorrow perhaps? That was a useless emotion. She made to turn and leave, but instead she found herself lifting her hand and sucking the energy of the apparition into herself. She could feel a spike in her energy, her power. It was actually quite pleasant.
A moment later, the ghost had vanished. She looked down at the body. A police investigation would be one more distraction she didn’t need to deal with, especially since her little minion had left her shattered vase of flowers all over the alley entrance.
Desdemona called a fireball to her fingertips and she dropped it on the body, which ignited in a flash. The smell of burning hair and charred flesh filled the air around her, a reminder of so many events from her childhood. She wrinkled her nose, turned, and left the smoldering ashes behind.
She walked a ways, planning her next move in light of the morning’s events. She was here in this city to find the witch that had called her out when she left the picture of the stolen necklace for her to find. That witch she had been coming to realize had been behind all the events in Salem and in San Francisco even though she had never been present or revealed herself. She had used her, just as she had all the others, but to what end? In both cities the covens had been trying to raise a demon. Something told her that the endgame was much bigger than that, though. The morning had been interesting, but she still had no idea where to look for the witch that had used and manipulated her.
Her phone rang and she pulled it out. The caller ID said Anthony. He had called several times in the past few days. The name seemed familiar to her, but it was part of Samantha’s life, not hers. She ignored the call as she had the others and continued walking.