21 Shades of Night, page 457
Alyse stopped in midair, yet her gown still floated as if caught on its own magical currents. Her stiff frown softened to an almost wistful look, and it seemed as if she were really considering this—but only for a moment. Then she delivered a scathing verdict. “You would only squander the magic, and your affairs, as you’ve done with Peter, like you’ve misused this store.”
“Don’t bring Peter into this!”
“Oh, don’t get in a lather, Fiera,” she scoffed while gliding in front of me. “Peter, eh? Your Achilles’ heel. Don’t you know that your dear, loyal Peter is off on a party boat to Cuba, dancing and boozing with actresses, millionaire ingénues, and ladies of the night?” She chuckled low in her throat. “You can’t hold a candle to the elegant dames on that cruise boat, dripping in diamonds and furs. You have no money, no class.”
That hurt. She might not know me, but she knew where to jab me. “Careful, Alyse,” I hissed. “You’re my mother. If I have no class, well then…” I belted out my own critical laugh as I suddenly saw her in a different light. I took in the clownish, overblown cut of her dress, her painted dragon nails, and those gaudy pumps so elevated it was a wonder she could walk one step in them without snapping both ankles.
“You ungrateful mouse!” she screamed. “I almost killed you as a baby. Until that nosy caretaker barged in and ferried you off to the orphanage. Yes, I had to kill the old bag after that. She knew too much. But now?” Alyse snorted. “Now there’s no hag to get in the way. No little servant named Opal, no white knight Peter to rescue you. Now I intend to finish the job. But first, let’s play, shall we?” Out of her palms flew seaweed vines, reeking and slimy. With an officious swirl of her arms, she slapped me onto my chair, and the vines wound themselves around me until I was trapped in a tangle of them. I tried to shake free, but they were so tight my circulation was cut off.
“Now, tell me where that grimoire is, or—”
“I wouldn’t tell you—”
“Ingrate!” She gave me a wicked slap. My eyes sprang tears from the impact, and it jerked my head sideways. She hit me again, even harder.
“Tell me, damn it all!” She slugged me over and over. In my stupor, it dawned on me her hands weren’t even touching my skin. Her supernatural energy was circulating in a cyclone whorl. Books fell off the shelves, chairs rotated in jerks, and her bottle of absinthe smashed to the floor.
The chair underneath me was unbalanced by an alarming surge of freezing water. My heart clenched in terror. Alyse was forming a black magic ocean right here in the store. The waves rose steadily higher until they reached my neck. I lifted my chin to inhale more oxygen, and then struggled to free my arms in order to paddle. This I was able to do, though I was still trapped in the chair, which was tipping this way and that like a buoy in a hurricane.
No matter I was on dry land, I was drowning. Out of the humid summer air, wave after violent wave overtook me. The magical torrent was so real I could feel its salty spray, the heavy pounding of the breakers, and my dizziness as the chair rolled around in its clutch.
“B—but how did you know it was me? And what have I ever done to you?” I cycled my arms to try to stay on the surface of the rushing current, but I wasn’t strong enough.
“When Peter uttered the name Fiera in that trance you put him in. I was the only one who knew your baby name, everyone else knew you by Ivy. I’ve never met a Fiera before or since. Us witches, we know. You felt our unseen connection too, I knew it from the way you narrowed your eyes at me, even that first night.”
The water was filling my mouth now, cutting off my windpipe. Funny, under the water, I didn’t need to breathe, but up here… I spat out the sudsy liquid and lifted my chin upward for air. “Help, Mother, please, make it stop. For the love of the ocean and your only kin.”
“It’s ironic you’re a sea witch, bred for the water, yet you drown in your very own element.” With this, she brayed. I recoiled at its icy sound.
There was no time to make sense of her murderous rage. I had to find a way out. “I don’t know where the grimoire is; I don’t have it,” I gasped, my head bobbing just above the salty swell. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No. Figure out where it is and find how to unlock its enchantment. It was locked away from me in a generational charm when you turned thirteen. The only way it will revert back to me is if you give it to me—or you die.”
She was bluffing. She needed me alive. I also knew from my readings it was very, very hard to kill a witch. One needed a special bullet, or a bottle filled with elements, which would harm that particular witch or turn her into another sort of less powerful and malignant creature—land witches into owls, for one. But sea witches? I had no idea. “Look, I’ll try to find it. I don’t…”
But I did—I suddenly knew where.
The green siren at the bottom of the sea was guarding it for me. She had beckoned in a language I didn’t understand—until now. Her words sang in my head like dappled sun on water—The ocean grimoire is yours; swim down and get it.
I pictured an image from one of Peter Dune’s spell books I’d read. Yes, this image—it just might work if I only had a nascent strength brewing within me. Desperately, I conjured a skein of protection around my head so Alyse couldn’t pry in and see my vision. I would never tell her what I knew. No chance in hell. Not after learning of her attempted murder, my precarious babyhood, and my natural given powers. I would rather her maim me, banish me.
Well, not that.
The Death card. We’d both seen it. What did it mean?
My body was weary of fighting the water and of her vicious, repeated slaps. As I slipped in and out of consciousness, I had to shake my head to keep from letting it sink below the water. And then, a blurry memory surfaced—of how I got the Tarot deck to fly around Mrs. Cuthbert and cut into her neck.
My power—the cards!
Alyse might have brutal magic, but I had some talent, too. With the little strength I had left, I began to concentrate on my cards. I pictured each one—the cups, the swords, the haughty queens and handsome princes leaning on their marble pillars. The Death Card, too, composed of rattling bones, and the hermit in his forest tree cave. I worked to raise them up into the air and orbit them around Alyse’s head. She hit me once more without contact, but through my swollen eyelids, I saw the cards rise in a line and spin her way.
I gave it my all. Pictured them moving faster, cutting into her flesh. She was a witch, and that meant it would be quite hard to kill her, but I could sure as hell scare the tar out of her.
The cards spun around her, nicking her cheeks, carving into her neck—wop, wop, wop!
She groaned as they diced into her forehead and the exposed part of her arms. And the worst, one sliced right through the jelly of her eyeball. She yelped and grabbed at it.
As this happened, the seawater’s fury subsided a fraction, just enough to take a few decent breaths.
“You bitch, I’ll kill you!” she screeched. “I was going to keep you alive to get more information from you, but...” She plucked out that card, yelping as she did, and swatted away another burst of cards. “This game is over.” She brushed off the cards still clinging to her face, and I saw blood dripping down in rivulets, the heaviest flow streaming from her injured eye.
The front door rattled. The water heaved back and forth as if some great sea monster was pulling at it like salty taffy.
A key turned in the lock, and when it did, the magical water disintegrated rapidly into thick, frothy mounds, which then shrank into smaller phlegm-like pools. The chair I was trapped in clomped onto the floor.
Opal entered the store, just as Alyse’s legs were sucked into the last fizzing puddle. “What on earth was that horrendous harpy up to?” Opal pointed to one of the puddles. “Her legs just got eaten by that filthy blob of water!” Then Opal saw me knotted to the chair and rushed over. “What did that she devil do to you, Fiera?”
With a strange, wet pop, the last thing to evaporate in the turbulent burst of sea foam was Alyse’s purse.
She was going to pay me for a reading. Darn, I lost the money, I thought in my warped way.
Even in my abject terror, I had gallows of admiration for Alyse’s sheer talent.
Opal tried her best to untangle me, fumbling at the knots, and then stretching single vines in vain. They weren’t budging. They’d morphed from oozy, stinking things to crusty ropes with pustule-like bumps. Disgusting, really. Not normal seaweed at all. It was strange how Opal didn’t ask why Alyse had done this, or how she could’ve done it. She simply ran to Peter’s bookshelf, pulled down a dusty tome, hauled it to the wooden table, and rifled through it.
“Opal?”
“Wait. I’m looking for a spell.”
“You?” The world was shifting its axis so fast it was dizzying. Aside from the fact that I was already feeling claustrophobic trapped in this black magic web. “You know spells!” I tucked this neatly in my mind.
Opal groaned, continuing to shuffle through the book. “Not well. I’m just learning. I know some rudimentary ones. Ah, here.”
She came over, hauling the book, seemingly as heavy as her entire being, and she balanced it on my chair. “I think it will work best if I’m close to you.” Brushing her wispy hair from her eyes, she proceeded to chant in Latin or some other ancient language.
She squinted, sweated and strained. Nothing. She chanted the spell again for a second and third time. Just when I thought I’d have to endure the rest of my years in this dreadful chair, the vines began to make a strange scratching sound.
And to unwind!
The scraping was a bit like a cat playing with sheets of crackly cellophane. And once the petrified old vines dropped to the floor, they disintegrated into black, foul-smelling powder.
Revolting. But what a huge relief!
I stood up, tested out my legs. Asleep, and now beginning to prickle, but usable!
Stumbling through the ashy residue and over to Opal, I hugged her. The poor thing, I was afraid to let her go.
When we finally broke apart, she asked me what happened.
I told her everything—everything.
“We have to find another place to live,” she said without blinking.
“Yes, sanctuary somewhere. But where?” I started to pace. “I know, at Dulcie’s. Her father owns hotels.”
“Do you think she’d let me—?” Opal looked unsure, her eyes misty.
“Don’t be silly, Opal, you saved my life! Dulcie may be territorial and a bit on the snobbish side, but she’s got a big heart.” I hugged Opal again. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I know where that grimoire is! I saw it in my vision. It’s out past that jetty, the place I keep trying to swim to.”
“Shall we go to the beach soon to fetch it?” Opal asked with a grin.
“Yes! Let’s.”
“I could help you practice your spells.”
“For a shy little gal, you sure are a firecracker,” I said. “Now let’s head to the Starfish and get packing.”
Chapter 24
IT WAS ONLY ten in the morning, and already the library below deck was thick with private dicks puffing on Cuban cigars and swilling drinks. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a wise guys’ juke joint. After spending the night tossing and turning, I ordered nothing but black coffee. Again, I sat as far as possible from Tim. He glared at me from across the table while Dickerson interrogated Brockman and Ellis, the two PIs working in Atlantic City. We were next on the chopping block. The damn party was over, and I knew there would be some hell to pay.
“Yeah, yeah,” Brockman was saying, “we raided their crystal ball palace when they least suspected.” His partner Ellis snickered in agreement.
“But did you get hardcore evidence on her, Brockman?” Dickerson spat. “We need hardcore evidence for the cops to lock her in the slammer. Understand?” He was still spraying an offensive mist, but at least not with a drunken, leering grin. Instead, he wore a vinegary frown, with one palm to his bloated stomach. His cheeks were even more florid than last night—like purple bruises from a sucker punch.
“Sure, sure, we got a wire recording of Turban lady and her shill. They were talking about all the fools they gypped that day, joking about all the lies she filled ‘em with. Not only that, he was dealing some big scores of opium on the side. It’s all on this recorder. Good device, this thing.” He gave it a chummy pat.
I flinched. Opium had been my sister’s drug.
Brockman played the most outrageous section, where the fortuneteller’s sidekick was counting up the drug money, “Seven hundred, eight hundred …” while she laughed about how gullible her clients were. This had all of us shaking our heads.
“You got the cops to slap them with a warrant?” Dickerson asked.
“Done! In the bag,” Brockman gloated. “The gypsy and her big-shot doper are airing their heels in the Lewisburg Federal Pen for a good ten years.”
This induced rowdy huzzahs and backslaps. It was exhilarating that one more rotten drug pusher was safe in jail.
Even Dickerson creaked out a dyspeptic smile. “Atta boy, fellas, good job.”
But when he turned to me, his grin faded. Perhaps he’d already heard what happened to the doomed wire recorder. “Dune? Stevens? Let’s hear what you got.”
I took a moment before beginning. “We’ve obtained lots of falsified spirit photo evidence on the Circle of Light group.” With that, I unlatched my briefcase and tossed the bulk of the array on the wide table. The men studied and passed them around.
“Have you gotten the cops to serve a warrant?” Brockman ventured.
“Not yet. We were working on infiltrating their séances down in Belmar.”
“Yeah, yeah, and?” Normally, Dickerson’s patience had a very short fuse, and when he was hung-over, he could blow at any second. “You got the wire recorder here? You got something juicy for us to listen to on it?”
I glared at Tim across the table. His frayed nerves and incompetence had botched the operation. Let him share the damned heat for it. “Tim, you may want to tell them what happened.”
“And I may not. You’re doing quite fine.” Tim glared back, his pale face mottling under his freckles.
“Look, I’ll tell you straight,” I said. “The recorder got confiscated by Talcott, the head of the Circle of Light cult.” The sudden lull in the library was deafening.
“Say what?” Dickerson leaned forward, his forgotten cigar close to scorching his fingers.
“The Circle cult leader in Belmar,” I repeated. “Tim took the wire recorder in and ran out with it just when the meeting started. I was worried it was all too obvious, and… well…” I shook my head.
Tim snorted in disgust. “Dune forgot to say that it was his little bug-eyed Betty who got us into a mess with Talcott. What Talcott really wanted in exchange for the recorder back was dirt on Fiera, Dune’s spiritualist lady pal, and the older broad who owns the taffy shop in Asbury.” Tim glowered at me. “Yeah, that’s right. To get the recorder back, Talcott is blackmailing us for information on the old taffy lady.”
“Well, did you give it to him?” Dickerson cut in.
“I’ll get to that,” Tim said vaguely, choosing to ignore the request. Clearly, Tim wanted to unload the dirt on me before anything else. “Dickerson, listen to this wheelbarrow of pig crap. When I finally lured Talcott into the store for a card reading to get more dirt on him, Dune’s lady pal, Fiera, did some witchy things to make the cards fly in Talcott’s face. She scared him right off after all of my hard work. How’s that for sabotage?” Tim paused for dramatic effect before landing the final punch. “So, why don’t you ask Dune about his card reader, Fiera? He’s been going soft on the operation, jumping in the sack with the vixen. That’s right—sex.”
The room whooshed to a shocked silence.
“Tim, enough, you fool!” I shouted. “You have no proof of that.”
“Where’s the goddamn recorder now?” Dickerson barked.
“At the Circle of Light premises,” I said.
Dickerson stalked over and stuck his red face and whiskey breath right in mine. “You better get that recorder back. We’re paying a golden sow for that rental. And with this country, this here agency practically in a goddam financial collapse, why, I…” He lobbed his balled fist in my face, but he must’ve thought better of hitting me. Instead, he took an even worse tactic. “Where’s this Fiera dame you’re shacking up with? I want her hauled into the New York office as soon as we get off this rig. Dune, I should dock your goddamn pay for this… I should—”
“Fire him,” Tim blurted.
“You shut up,” I seethed. “You’re the one who botched the Circle recording.”
I stood up and glared at the men. Things were becoming very clear, as if I’d been living in a blinding fog for weeks but the wind had swiftly blown it all away. “We’ve made a huge mistake; we’ve all been wrong about the spiritualists.”
“What?” barked a Dickerson clone. “Why should we listen to you?”
“Because you’re not seeing the whole picture!” With this, the crowd was shocked into a disbelieving silence. “Open up your narrow minds,” I shouted. “There is magic in this world.”
Flustered murmurs trundled around. I let them settle, and then continued. “Like you, I assumed all spiritualists were criminals and we rational men had every answer to the universe. No worth in magic, mysticism, psychics, readers of the cards, none of it.” Though every man was scowling at me, they were listening.
“What about your own sister?” Tim retorted. “You’re being disloyal to her by saying all of this. In fact, I believe you’ve gone stark raving mad. Men?” Tim looked around the room for agreement.
