I looked over my shoulder at Torn, but he shrugged. Guess it was up to me how to handle this. We knew that Kaye had this place magically bugged to the brim of every oversized witch hat, and the tip of every broom. That complicated things.
It was obvious that Arachne knew something, but was terrified of being questioned. Not that I blamed her. If she pissed off Kaye, which was likely if she started to spill the beans on the witch’s nefarious dabbling with kidnapping, the kid could lose more than her apprenticeship. Arachne pulled the hair from her mouth, and tucked it behind her ear, lifting her chin. She’d made a decision, and I just hoped it was one we didn’t all come to regret.
“I need…” I said, but Arachne cut me off.
Her hand hit a packet of herbs that had been resting beside the books on the counter, and her face momentarily lit up. Breathing heavy, she lifted the packet with forced cheer.
“Oh yeah, you totally texted to say you needed these herbs for Ceff,” she said. “How is he? That gash to his leg must be pretty serious to bring you all the way here. By the Goddess, Ivy, you’ve even got a priest.”
She started wrapping the bag of herbs in tissue paper, and stuffing them into a Madam Kaye’s Magic Emporium gift bag. Her hands were shaking, but she kept smiling as her eyes pleaded with me to follow her lead.
She’d come up with a logical reason why we might come around, one that had nothing to do with snooping for a backstabbing kidnapper. I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to buy us some time, but I decided to roll with it.
The kid wasn’t stupid. Working for over a year as Kaye’s apprentice had made her a quick thinker. You learned to think creatively and act rapidly when your boss was a nutty, old witch with a penchant for nasty tricks.
And that was before Kaye’s transformation. I can’t imagine what it must have been like working here over the past few weeks. I reminded myself to make some time for the kid if we survived this mess.
“Yes, the…gash…on his leg is pretty bad,” I said.
“She still finds it difficult to talk about,” Torn said, stepping forward. “I told her not to worry. If he loses the leg, it’s not the appendage that really matters.”
He slid a hand to his belt, and Arachne blushed. I would have smacked Torn upside the head if it wasn’t for the fact that his lurid flirtations had distracted the kid from her fear, at least for now. Arachne’s hands were steady as she wrote out a sales slip, and put it inside the bag.
That last was unusual, since I typically ran a tab at the Emporium. Pay days were often few and far between, especially with the recent necessity of playing dead. It’s hard to collect payment on a job when you’re supposedly six feet under.
At a guess, I’d say that either my line of credit had finally been cut off, or Arachne had found a way to slip me a note right under Kaye’s nose. Clever girl.
“That is why I am accompanying Miss Granger,” Father Michael said. “For emotional support.”
Crafty devil. I’d be more surprised if I wasn’t already aware of Father Michael’s past. Most priests wouldn’t have been so comfortable with lying, or so convincing. I guess a youth of grand larceny came with a few beneficial skills.
“Um, cool,” Arachne said. “Well, I guess you need to get this to Ceff right away. Gotta save that leg, and all.”
“Here is the payment we owe,” Father Michael said. “We appreciate your help. And if you are ever near Joysen Hill, please stop by Sacred Heart. You are always welcome to join my flock.”
Arachne came from a long line of Wiccans, but that didn’t matter. The priest’s meaning was clear. If she ever needed help, she’d just earned sanctuary within the walls of Sacred Heart. Since that church came with its very own unicorn defender, it was a significant offer.
She smiled more easily, and nodded.
“Thanks,” she said. “Good luck, you guys.”
Our eyes met, and so much more than a simple goodbye passed between us, but that was all I let past my lips.
“Goodbye, Arachne,” I said. “Safe travels.”
“May the Goddess be with you, Ivy,” she said.
We walked out the door, and I would have missed Arachne’s final words if it weren’t for my enhanced fae hearing.
“May the Goddess save us all.”
Chapter 23
“What…” Father Michael asked, but I cut him off.
“Come on, Padre,” I said. “I won’t be able to live with myself if we’re not in time to save Ceff’s leg.”
I figured sticking to Arachne’s story was the smartest move, for now. Thankfully, Father Michael was a quick thinker.
“Oh, y-y-yes, of course,” he said, catching on.
“Yes, don’t they shoot horses with bad legs?” Torn asked.
I rolled my eyes at Torn, and hurried my pace. We needed to get out of Humphrey’s hearing range before discussing Sparky or Arachne’s mysterious bag of herbs. Leave it to Torn to find a way to make every second even more agonizing.
“I’ll shoot you if you don’t keep your mouth shut,” I said, showing all my teeth in a smile.
“Lord, they do not mean these things they say,” Father Michael whispered.
“True, I’d never shoot him,” I said. The priest started to smile, but it froze awkwardly on his face as I finished. “I’m not much of gun person. I’d use one of my blades, or a fireball.”
Father Michael was only momentarily fazed, his mind latching onto my mention of magic. The man was a sucker for the supernatural. He peppered me with questions, head bobbing and hands fluttering in excitement, until we turned the corner a good two blocks from the Emporium.
Torn scanned the sky and the rooftops, while my eyes darted into darkened doorways and alleyways.
“All clear?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at the cat sidhe.
“Yes, Princess,” he said with a nod.
I forced my fingers to relax their death grip on the Emporium shopping bag, and dug out Arachne’s note, careful not to let the bag or its contents touch any exposed skin. Normally, that wouldn’t be much of a problem, but my trip to Faerie had done a number on my gear. My leather jacket, and the shirts and wrist sheaths I wore beneath it, had seen better days.
“What does it say?” Torn asked, leaning in and licking his lips.
Father Michael wasn’t much more patient, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Oberon’s eyes, give me a second,” I muttered.
I lifted out the slip of paper between a gloved finger and thumb as if it may bite. Since it had come from the Emporium, it wasn’t a bad guess. I just had to hope that Arachne was truly on our side, and trying to help. I flipped over the paper, and frowned.
“It’s...it’s just a sales receipt,” I said.
“Witches,” Torn said with a hiss. “Nothing is ever what it seems when witches are involved.”
Father Michael nodded sympathetically, though the same could be said of dealing with the fae. Rather than remind Torn of that fact, I considered his words again. Nothing is ever what it seems when witches are involved.
“Torn, you’re a genius,” I said, rocking back on my heels.
“Yes, I know, Princess, but what does that have to do with the deviousness of witches?” he asked.
“I’m willing to bet that there’s more to this receipt than it seems,” I said, a grin tugging at my lips.
“Ah, like a code?” Father Michael asked, hands fluttering. “I am quite good at ciphers. Perhaps, I can help to crack this code…or were you thinking something less mundane? A secret message hidden by magical means? That would be quite brilliant really. If I only had access to my library, I could begin researching encoding spells…”
I shook my head, and cut him off. If not, the priest would have rattled on all day with his theories, and we were nearly out of time as it was.
“Let me try something first,” I said. “It might not be that complicated.”
At least, I was hoping that Arachne wasn’t requiring
the magic equivalent of an Enigma machine to decode her message—if there was a message at all. I thought back to the kid’s worried face, and meaningful glances. I had to believe that she had information about Sparky, and was willing to help us, even if that meant going against her uber-powerful witch boss.
That was a lot of faith to put in one person, but this was Arachne. She might be young, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t just as passionate, and stubborn, about what she thought was right. And, let’s face it, she’d screwed up recently. Big time. This was her chance at redemption. I just hoped that she knew me as well as I thought she did, and had decided to play to my strengths.
I lowered myself to the sidewalk, and sat cross-legged with the receipt on my lap, ignoring the heat of the pavement seeping through my jeans. I took a deep breath, and began stripping off my glove.
“You sure about this, Princess?” Torn asked, eyeing the receipt in my lap like it was a viper ready to strike out at my bare hand at the littlest provocation.
I swallowed hard. The exposed skin made me vulnerable, and there was no saying what vision Hell I’d be sucked into once I touched the Emporium receipt. There were too many variables that could make this go inexorably wrong.
Even if Arachne was motivated by the best of intentions, the receipt book could have been handled by various persons, or kept in storage with a number of arcane items of dubious provenance—any one of which could fry my mind, permanently. I shook off the creeping chill of fear, and focused on calming my breathing before responding to Torn.
If Arachne was willing to risk Kaye’s ire by leaving us a message, then I could damn well suck it up. And if this really was a trap, intentional or accidental, then at least Ceff wouldn’t be here to see Torn slit my throat and put me out of my misery. The cat sidhe could be a fickle, impulsive pain in my ass, but I knew I could count on him to be ruthlessly efficient in doing what needed to be done. Leaving me to an eternity of madness, a situation that Mab was likely to exploit, wasn’t an option.
“I’m sure it’s the right thing to do,” I said, meeting Torn’s furrowed gaze.
He hesitated, then nodded and turned his attention to the darkening street. Shadows were lengthening as the sun slid behind the brick buildings of the Old Port Quarter, and I was glad to have Torn on lookout. Most fae have enhanced night vision, but nothing rivaled the cat sidhe’s affinity for shadows and darkness.
“A-a-are you…I mean…” Father Michael stuttered.
“Yes, Padre,” I said, recognizing the eager gleam in his beady eyes. “I’m going to touch the receipt and see if I can learn something from the vision.”
I sent up a silent thanks to Jenna for doing something similar not so long ago, otherwise I might not have thought to give this a try. Then again, I might be barking up the wrong tree—an unpleasant irony considering our current situation with Herne’s hounds—maybe even walking into a trap.
“Fascinating,” he said, head bobbing in excitement.
I sighed. At least someone would be enjoying this.
Father Michael started to prattle on, but I tuned out his discussion of everyday uses for supernatural abilities. I closed my eyes and reached out with my bare hand, fingers brushing the thin paper. I frowned, and cracked open an eyelid. Maybe I needed to touch the spot where Arachne had written in the price, or where she’d signed her initials at the bottom corner of the page?
I slid my fingers along the paper, and gasped. As my fingers touched Arachne’s signature, I threw back my head, body going rigid. I caught a glimpse of towering brick walls before my vision narrowed, and darkness swallowed me whole.
Chapter 24
I blinked, heart racing. Whatever I’d been prepared to see, it wasn’t this.
I was inside a storage room where the boxes had been rearranged to resemble a table and chairs, and the box table was set with an altar cloth and topped with mugs and a platter of cookies. Sparky was running around his chair, long ears trailing behind him as he giggled, stopping only long enough to shove fistfuls of cookies in his mouth.
I’d been sucked into an impromptu demon-witch tea party. If it wasn’t for the perspiration soaking my shirt, or the ominous location of the windowless storage room, I might have thought the two kids had run off for a bit of harmless fun.
Too bad that wasn’t the case. I tried to make a mental note of every detail, hoping it would help me find Sparky and figure out how to bring him home safe.
I tasted shampoo as Arachne chewed on the ends of her hair, but my time training with my uncle was paying off. Successfully using faerie magic required unwavering concentration. I’d had my concentration tested repeatedly with beatings from uncle Kade, and eventually I’d mastered the basics of controlling my wisp magic. Taking the reins while riding out a vision worked on similar principals.
I forced my real body to inhale deeply, and I focused my mind, managing to experience what Arachne had felt earlier today, yet holding on to my own sense of self.
It wasn’t easy. Everything that I was seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling was from Arachne’s memories. It would be so simple to just relax and let the vision take over.
The door to the storage room opened with a blast of magic, and Arachne tensed, nearly breaking the pen that continued its looping signature on the piece of paper beside her on the table. She only flicked her gaze to it once, but it was long enough to realize that the pen wasn’t filled with normal ink. Suddenly, the vision’s clarity made perfect sense. Arachne was doodling the loops of her signature over and over again, in her own blood.
“M-m-madam Kaye?” she asked in a weak, stuttering voice.
How much courage had it taken the kid to hold that connection with the paper, knowing that she was documenting all of this in hopes of sneaking a message to me? Double-crossing Kaye meant facing the wrath of one of the most powerful, and possibly unstable, witches on the entire east coast. Arachne must have been terrified.
My heart, no Arachne’s heart, pounded as Kaye strolled into view. The bells on the old witch’s skirts were jingling, a sure sign that she wanted to attract attention. If she wished to, Kaye could move as silent as death.
Sparky paused in his cookie chewing, tilting his head.
“Jingle bellllls!” he sang. “Jingle bellllls! Jingle all the waaay!”
He started dancing a circle around the box that was his chair, singing and clapping his hands. Cookie crumbs crunched beneath his tiny feet, and Kaye frowned.
“I told you to keep the demon busy, not fill him full of sugar,” she said.
“You said to keep him safe…u-u-until the ritual,” Arachne said.
“Yes, I suppose,” Kaye said with a toss of her hand. “The spell won’t work if he’s dead. More’s the pity. That’s what makes this spell so difficult, and powerful. Tezcatlipocan demons are rare enough, but the blood of a living one is rarer still.”
“So, you want me to, um, keep him safe?” she asked. “Here in the Emporium?”
Smart girl.
I could have kissed Arachne. She was letting me know that, for now, Sparky was safe with her. At the time of the vision, they were at the Emporium, and in one of the storage rooms by the look of it.
The public areas of the shop, and Kaye’s office and spell kitchen, were most heavily guarded by spells that kept out intruders. Sparky could get up to no end of trouble if allowed to wander the building. I figured that even if Arachne had to step out into the shop now and then, she’d keep Sparky in the storage room for as long as possible.
Kaye may not want Sparky dead, yet, but I couldn’t say the same for The Emporium. A tangled network of spells had been laid on that place for so long, magic had seeped into the very wood grain and brick mortar. More than once I’d been convinced the place had a disturbing sentience that reflected Kaye’s moods.
With the witch’s rapid descent into madness—the only explanation for her actions my brain could possibly begin to believe—I had no illusions about what The Emporium would do if it t
rapped a demon within its walls of power.
I was so busy planning a way to get inside The Emporium, and battling images of Sparky being crushed by book cases and suffocated by packets of herbs, that I nearly missed Kaye’s reply. But I needed to focus, for all our sakes.
I pushed through my anger, and Arachne’s fear, and listened.
“Of course, you foolish girl,” Kaye said, tone sharp. “I need the creature close by for when I do the binding ritual. Until then, I will tolerate no interruptions. Keep that in mind, and keep that thing in here.”
Arachne flicked her eyes upward. I looked for potential clues, but the movement may have been nothing. All I saw on the ceiling was a skylight with an unhelpful view of a fluffy cloud above the Emporium. Without a frame of reference, it was difficult to even pinpoint time of day from my vantage. Other than the fact that there was still daylight, the glance skyward had provided nothing new to work with. I focused instead on Arachne’s words.
“The CIRCLE will stop you if they find out what you’re doing,” she said. “I won’t interrupt you, but if they come, I’m not strong enough to keep them from taking Sparky.”
What the hell was the Circle? It sounded like a coven, or maybe a governing force for witches, but Kaye had never mentioned them before.
“And how will they find out, child?” Kaye asked, dark thunderclouds swirling in her eyes. She lifted a hand above Arachne, and the kid tensed. “Will you tell them?”
“N-n-no, no w-w-way,” she said, shaking her head, eyes wide. Her gaze flicked to Sparky, and she flinched. “If the CIRCLE found out, they’d come and stop you. If they knew about your power, and your, um, plans, they’d take you away. I’d never learn anything then.”
“Ah, your concern for your own rise to power is endearing, child,” Kaye said. “I knew I chose my apprentice well.”
“Yeah, well, um, it wouldn’t do me much good with you in one of the Circle’s prisons,” she said.
“No, child, it wouldn’t,” Kaye said. “You’d be wise to remember that.”