Chapter 29

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

I opened the bedroom door to find Carly waiting for me in the hallway. I only jumped a little.

Her clothing was wrinkled from sleeping fully dressed and her eyes had shadows, but she was smiling.

"You've really got to stop lurking behind closed doors," I said, and walked into her open arms.

She hugged me tightly and for a long time, smelling of all the herbs and potions she'd used to extract Valas and help me recover afterward.

"I'm so sorry I had to keep that secret from you and the others." She rubbed my back before releasing me. "It hurt me to lie to you, but I had no choice."

"I know," I assured her. "Sean explained everything—or mostly everything. I was upset at first, but I understand why you couldn't tell anyone. You fooled me completely. I have a lot more respect for your acting skills now. Your magic and abilities too. I had no idea you had exorcisms on your résumé."

"A High Priestess has to have a pretty big skill set." She touched my hand. "I know you're angry and hurting about this violation and it's probably dredged up all kinds of past traumas you and I have been working on in counseling sessions. We'll talk through this soon. You don't have to sit with it right now, but try not to pretend it didn't happen."

"Sean and I talked about how and why she'd hidden inside me when I woke up in the tub," I said as she led me to the doorway of Matthias's room. "I'm a long way from working through it, but talking about it right away helped."

"I knew he'd take good care of you, and I'm proud of you for not burying your feelings like you used to do."

"Thanks," I said, with a wry smile. "I'm trying to do better."

"And you are doing better. I'm proud of you for that too. Let's talk about this."

Carly touched a rectangular wooden box with a hinged lid and runes carved on every square inch. It measured about twenty inches long by ten inches deep and ten inches wide. She'd put it on Matthias's nightstand, but I sensed and smelled its powerful witchy wards from the doorway.

"I made this mirror myself using pieces of lapis manalis , stones that cover entrances to the underworld," she said. "To get the stones, I had to call in a lot of favors and ask a friend to fly here from Belgium on a moment's notice with the stones in her carry-on." She held up her hand when I started to speak. "I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad, though I know you'll feel bad no matter what I say. I'm saying it because I need to teach you everything there is to know about this mirror, from its making to its potential, because it's now an object of power. Protecting it and keeping it secure is a matter of life and death for everyone connected to you and me."

I had no doubt that was not an exaggeration. If Valas escaped, she'd rain vengeance on all our heads. Not only that—Carly had created one of the rarest kinds of magical objects: a true object of power. Capturing and containing Valas was only one of its uses. That alone would be plenty to make it not only supremely dangerous but also worth killing for, as Matthias had pointed out .

As an object of power, now it would be worth a lot more, which meant Carly was right: I needed to know everything there was to know about the mirror. All my other obligations would have to wait.

"I'd like to see the mirror, please," I said quietly. Not just because I needed to learn its powers, but because I had to face the horror it contained.

She picked up the box. It looked surprisingly heavy—so much so that I almost offered to have Sean carry it for her.

"We're going downstairs to your workshop," she said. "I won't open this box without your strongest wards around it."

My phone rang. It was Diaz calling again.

I heaved a sigh. "I have to take this," I said, to Carly's obvious displeasure. "I'll try to be quick."

"Alice." She shook her head and carried the box toward the stairs. "I'll be in the workshop whenever you're ready."

I felt another headache building—the kind of pressure-from-the-inside, skull-busting headache that came from being pulled in so many directions at once. And I was so, so tired.

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

Damn it, Diaz probably had info that was time-sensitive about the necromancer we wanted to catch. What was I supposed to do?

As Carly made her way slowly down the steps to the main floor, I leaned against the wall and answered the call. "This is Alice." Hopefully I didn't sound as exasperated as I felt.

"Worth." Diaz's strained voice made me think he hadn't slept since the last time we'd spoken. "I want to see you."

"Detective—"

"I'm not asking," he snapped. "One hour. Pick a place where we won't be seen. Not your house. Somewhere in town."

"I can't meet in an hour," I told him. "I have something I have to do right now that can't wait."

"There is nothing you could be doing that's more important than solving this case quickly."

You have no idea , I thought .

I gritted my teeth. "I assure you I want this person caught every bit as much as you do. I'm working on that, but I still have something I need to do before I do anything else. A lot of lives are on the line with this too."

A grim silence was the only reply to that.

"Okay." I let out a breath. "Make it two hours. I'll try for that. Let's meet in the south parking lot at Fields Park. There's no cameras there except one at the gate going into the park. But I need something from you."

"What?"

I took a deep breath and took my shot. "Bring me the knives from all the murders we think might be connected."

" What? "

I held the phone away from my ear while Diaz yelled at me about chain of custody, his career, the district attorney, his lieutenant, and a lot more besides.

When he paused for breath, I cut in. "Detective, you can leave them in evidence tubes. I will wear gloves if you don't want my fingerprints on the containers. I won't be able to get as much from them as I would if I touched them, but I understand you have to preserve and protect your evidence. Sign them out, bring them with you, let me see if I can get anything that will help us, and put them back. Only you and I will ever know."

"Worth…"

This time Diaz's weary tone made me swallow hard. He'd had to look at the victims up close. Had probably attended their autopsies. Maybe made the death notifications. Put up with Ferguson's bullshit and probably pushback and pressure from his bosses too.

"I wouldn't ask you this if I didn't think it might make the difference between catching this person tonight or not catching them," I said. "I might not always follow the law, but I respect people like you who work hard to uphold it and save lives and bring murderers to justice. I am asking you respectfully to try to bring me those knives so I can help you put an end to this killing spree. "

"Do you know who's behind this?" he grated.

"I have a strong suspicion," I said. "I think I'm close to finding them. And I promise you will be the first person I call when I do."

"Two hours. Fields Park south lot. I'll do the best I can." He ended the call.

I stuck the phone in my back pocket. "Me too," I said to no one in particular.

Back downstairs, only Sean remained in the kitchen. No sign of Malcolm or Matthias. I poured myself another cup of coffee and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge.

"Alice, food?" Sean said, pointing to a plate piled high with casserole.

"I have no appetite," I told him wearily. "I'm sorry. I know your wolf worries and drives you up the wall about this. I'm just sick to my stomach right now and I can't even think about eating a bite. I promise to try when Carly and I are done downstairs, before I go…run errands."

"Given these two phone calls, I'd like to hear about your errands." He scrubbed his face with his hands. "I love you."

He said it in that tone when I sorely tested his patience.

"I know you love me." I gave him a kiss. His body nearly vibrated with anger and worry. "Carly is going to teach me all about that mirror so I know how to keep it secret and safe. Then I'm meeting Detective Diaz to talk about the case and maybe get my hands on the murder weapons."

"Looking for magic trace on them?"

"Yes." I sighed. "After that, I'm off to Merrum Manor. I'd like to take Matthias with me."

Sean studied me. "Matthias and not Malcolm? Why?"

"A couple of reasons." I explained why I was going and what I hoped to get. "I can't risk taking Malcolm this time," I added as Sean processed what I'd told him. "Matthias will guard me with his life. He might not have magic, but he's got plenty of FAFO energy, as Arkady would say. "

"FAFO?"

"Fuck around and find out."

"Ah." He kissed the tip of my nose. "How much do you plan to tell Matthias about your dealings with Moses?"

"I'm thinking about that. I'll figure out the answer by the time we're headed that way."

"Okay." He caressed my butt rather than smacking it. I didn't hate that. "Get to class, Miss Magic."

"Yes, sir, Mister Wolf." I headed for the basement door.

When I arrived in my workshop, I found Malcolm and Matthias watching Carly draw spellwork with chalk in my largest inlaid circle.

I opened my mouth to ask Matthias to go upstairs, then thought better of it.

"I need to face her too," Matthias said quietly. "Carly says it's all right with her if it's okay with you."

That explained why Carly was prepping my largest circle for wards. Squeezing the four of us into either of the smaller circles when Matthias took up a significant percentage of the basement as a whole would be borderline hilarious and definitely uncomfortable, even if one of us was a ghost.

"We have a couple errands to run after this," I told Matthias in an undertone as Carly continued to draw spells. "I'd like you to come with me, if you're available. I'm going to meet semi-secretly with a homicide detective about the murders, and then I need some supplies for tonight's ritual."

Carly flicked a glance up at me and then went back to work, her expression unreadable. I wondered if she could tell I was up to something. Ugh. Probably.

"What about me?" Malcolm asked, floating back and forth next to us with his hands on his hips. "I thought I was your errand buddy."

"You are," I assured him. I'd tell him about my plan to visit Merrum Manor after we got done learning about the mirror. "But today I need you to stick close to home and keep an eye on things, unless I summon you. Build your most heavy-duty wards on this basement before Katy gets here for the ritual tonight."

"What am I keeping an eye on?"

I used my chin to indicate the wooden box containing the mirror, which Carly had left on the work table. "That thing. I need your best ideas for containing it not just with spellwork, but physically. We're sitting on a nuke."

"Well, when you put it like that." He flitted. "You just had to end up with a vampire-sorcerer's spirit inside you, didn't you? It couldn't have been just the spirit of a funny retired car salesman with a ton of good stories."

"You know that's not how things work around here." I drank some water to help dilute the coffee in my otherwise empty stomach. "Thanks for making the casserole, Matthias. It looks amazing."

"Not amazing enough to eat, apparently," he rumbled, and gave me a look so identical to Sean's disapproving stare that I chuckled and almost snorted water out my nose.

Carly sat back on her heels and studied her work. "I think I'm happy with this."

I set my water on the table and stood outside the circle. "What kind of spellwork am I looking at?"

"A smaller, focused version of my umbrella spell." She rose and grimaced. Drawing spellwork on the floor made muscles ache. "The concept is to keep anyone from seeing what it is we have or what we're doing with it, even if someone is scrying or using their Second Sight to see." She held my gaze, then did the same with Malcolm and Matthias. "Above all, no matter what, this mirror and what it contains should not even be glimpsed ."

I'd just called the damn thing a nuke, but now I was thinking it was something way worse and way more volatile than that. "Understood."

"Understood," Malcolm echoed. He looked every bit as unhappy as I felt.

"Shoes off," Carly said. "Wait to get in the circle until I tell you. "

Matthias and I removed our shoes and socks and left them over by the table. Malcolm changed his ghost attire to have bare feet to make me smile.

"Come this way," Carly said.

We lined up at the spot in the spellwork where she wanted us with me in front. She dipped her fingertips into a small pot of fine powder that smelled like freshly burned wood and hints of something sweet. Matthias's nostrils flared and he inhaled deeply to get a good whiff.

"Bend your head," she said to me.

I did. She ran her fingertips over the crown of my head, on my hair, and murmured something. "Step over the spellwork," she said.

I did as she asked and moved to the far side of the circle. Carly repeated the process with Matthias, but he had to nearly crouch so she could reach the top of his head. She chuckled, then murmured the same incantation before telling him to step into the circle.

I wondered how she would dust Malcolm. As it turned out, despite not being able to see him, she passed her fingers directly over the top of his head the same way she'd done for us and then invited him into the circle.

"How does she do that?" Malcolm muttered when he reached my side. I shrugged.

Carly dusted her own head, then stepped over the spellwork. My skin tingled. Matthias let out a little growl but didn't move.

In the center of the circle, Carly had prepared an altar cloth with the box in the middle. Around it, on the cloth, she had placed seven candles—one each at the corners of the pentagram and one on the left and right sides of the box.

Ever the teacher, Carly explained the altar's arrangement to us. "The purple candle at the top of the pentagram is for spirit. The blue candle in the top right corner is for water. Red in the lower right is for fire. Green in the lower left is for earth, and at the top left the yellow candle is for air. On the right side of the cloth, the black candle will draw negative energy, and the white candle on the left brings in positive energy. I've brought two athames today, each cleansed by moonlight and spring water on the new moon. I will use the selenite athame for opening and closing the circle. The other is made from obsidian and will be for our protection."

While the selenite athame was clearly ceremonial, that obsidian edge looked perfectly capable of being used in both symbolic and very real ways.

"Sit around the altar, please," Carly said.

Matthias and I sat. Malcolm floated down and sat cross-legged across from me.

She took a beautiful athame from the altar and walked around the circle three times. "We call upon Archangel Michael to hide us from the people and spirits we are trying to see with your shield. Use you sword to cut down anyone or spirit that tries to see around your shield. Bathe us in your white light to protect us from anyone or spirit that might wish us harm. Let your light shine into the eyes of those who follow the creature contained in this mirror so that they might turn from their dark practices, or that they may at least run from your righteousness and might."

I kept my reaction off my face, but the invocation left me conflicted. By sharing some of Ronan's memories, I'd seen a being I believed to be the Archangel Michael. Those glimpses of bladed wings haunted me. And Michael had tortured and imprisoned Ronan for a century, sentenced him to a mortal life among humans, and carved the record of his trial into his skin, all in retribution for breaking angelic law, and all without caring how many lives Ronan had saved by drawing his celestial sword in battle.

To say I mistrusted Michael was an understatement. I didn't like people who hurt my friends, even if they happened to be archangels. Or maybe especially if they happened to be archangels who were supposed to be the good guys. Then again, righteous didn't necessarily mean good. I'd done a number of things in my life I considered righteous, but I couldn't really argue they'd been good by most people' s definition.

I supposed for all our sakes I had to put my distrust aside if Carly wanted Michael to protect us and hide the mirror from those who might look for it, but I did it with serious misgivings and a lot of internal grumbling. Come to think of it, that was how I did most things these days.

All my misgivings and grumbling would have to wait, though. Right now, we had work to do.