No Chance in Spell Read online

  “Yes, murder.”

  “Are you certain it wasn’t a spell gone wrong?” This from Violet Bloodgood.

  “No, it was murder. I’m certain.”

  “Well, it couldn’t have been any of us since we’re all walking and talking. Unless there’s a way to avoid the inevitable.” Eyes flickering my way, Violet issued the statement with a delicate, but exaggerated shudder. What was that about? I was beginning to think Violet was a human ping pong ball the way she went back and forth with her opinions.

  “I’m not accusing anyone in this room of murder. What I am trying to make you all understand is that something or someone killed Tansy, and if the crime was committed by a supernatural predator the police are going to hit a dead end. They’re simply not qualified to handle something like this. I shouldn’t have to remind any of you what happens when humans catch wind of our existence.”

  Pansy Pinkerton cocked her head and challenged me. “What do you expect us to do about it, Clara?” Having been friends with the mousy brunette for upwards of a century, I’d hoped for a warm homecoming and been sorely disappointed. “Go poking around in a dead girl’s business, and then wind up dead ourselves? No, thank you.”

  I let out a discouraged grunt. “If my sister and I are the only ones with enough guts to figure out what’s going on here, then so be it. But I swear to Hecate, if any of you withhold information that could be helpful, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

  It probably wasn’t the greatest idea to threaten the women I was trying to convince of my sincerity, but sometimes I have no filter and tonight was one of those times. I could feel a muscle twitch in my shoulder and knew the tension I’d been carrying around would turn into a splitting headache if I didn’t find some way to relieve it. Releasing my wrath on the rest of the coven would make me feel marginally better—for all of two seconds. So I clenched my teeth and ended the conversation.

  Mag stood and spoke aloud for the first time, further delaying the coven’s exit to the chagrin of Calypso, who suddenly looked like she had a giant slice of chocolate cake in the fridge, and couldn’t wait to get home to it.

  “Wait just one more minute. The state of the Balefire has been questioned by several of you tonight, and I think it’s about time we all had a discussion about something—my grand-niece, Lexi, and your treatment of her over the past twenty-five years.”

  You could hear a pin drop when Mag paused and passed the gauntlet, leaving just enough time for Calypso to open her mouth before allowing me to cut her off again. I’d waited a long time to speak my mind, and relished the thought of unloading a quarter-century worth of irritation on the group.

  And my resolve to keep the peace had all but evaporated, so what the hell?

  “Lexi was your Keeper, was she not?” I stared into the eyes of each of the witches who had enough guts to hold my gaze and glared at the tops of the bent heads of the cowards in the room. “Lexi was, by right of birth, a member of this coven, was she not?”

  They all knew the ways of witches as well as I did.

  “Clearly, you all could see that she was struggling. Any one of you could have had the decency to lend your support; to guide her whether she had Awakened or not. But you didn’t. All because you assumed if I harbored a secretly wicked heart, then Lexi must have one, too. Well, I’m not a wicked witch, and neither is Lexi. I’m ashamed of the lot of you. Some more than others.”

  I let my eyes flick to the top of Serena’s bowed head and then to her mother. “Would any of you have treated your own daughter as poorly as you’ve treated Lexi? A coven is a family, and we don’t forsake our own, no matter the transgression. I’ve spent twenty-five years paying for bad behavior. How long do you think you’ll have to pay for yours?”

  LEXI

  Serena didn’t offer one of her customary insults or even make eye contact with me as she shuffled past amid half a coven of shame-faced witches and a few who still refused to admit any responsibility and kept their noses firmly tilted toward the ceiling. I couldn’t really tell which emotion Serena was feeling, but I guessed relief at finally having been dismissed as a major contender for top billing.

  I knew Serena was still angry with me about her lover boy having been blasted into the Faelands, but according to Flix he’d escaped unscathed. Not that Jett had come scurrying back to her side, which was probably a big part of why she’d stopped harassing me about it. Jett had made his own bed since he’d tangled with me and mine, but I was guessing he’d be sleeping on the couch for quite a while if he ever bothered to try and get back into Serena’s good graces.

  All of this I noticed in passing. Watching Gran and Aunt Mag read the coven the riot act for having shunned me all those years brought up a wealth of emotions. Of course, I was grateful for the gesture itself, but what really had me choked up was how happy I was to call myself a Balefire. I’d always regarded my position as Keeper with the utmost respect, but familial pride had ended there. I was, after all, descended from the wickedest of witches.

  Except I wasn’t, and it felt good for all those old biddies to realize it. The young biddies, too.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A WANING MOON CAST writhing shadows against the back door of the mortuary. Between the chill darkness and the knowledge of what type of business we were breaking into, I wondered how long before my total revulsion of things most of my kind took for granted would require me to turn in my witch card.

  I am witch, hear me cackle madly at creepy things. Nope. Not me, not so much. Not when we were about to step into a darkened house of the dead. And not the part where bodies are put on display in doily-lined boxes like macabre candies, but the hidden area where all the mysterious preparations take place.

  The days of wrapping a witch in a clean white cloth, taking her into a clearing, building a pyre, and feeding her body to the hungry flame while her sister witches chanted and danced around her were long behind us. There’s little of ritual to be found in a crematorium, but we abide by the rules, and Tansy’s body lay somewhere inside, awaiting its turn in the burning box.

  “You’re going to get me arrested before this is over,” I grumbled while my grandmother reached into her pocket. “Feels like the world’s worst role reversal when the adult is the one dragging the next generation along on an illicit mission.”

  Arched windows trimmed with newly-painted molding lent a tasteful gingerbread-like air to the Victorian-era building that had housed Crandall Funeral Home since the late 1960’s when Morticia Crandall decided to live up to her first name. Set into a shallow alcove, a plain back door matched the less showy side of the old home.

  “Quit complaining, or I’ll start to wonder if you’ve got any more guts than the rest of the coven,” Mag ordered while I waited for Clara to cast a spell on a door lock that looked like it had been the best security money could buy. In 1976.

  “Don’t be such a killjoy.”

  Killjoy? A shoe-in for a Miss Marple lookalike contest winner was calling me a killjoy? “No one says that anymore.”

  “Hush up.” Clara put an end to her sister’s sharp tongue and my tendency to bicker when feeling nervous. “I’m not sure I remember how to do this.” To my utter shock, she pulled out a credit card instead of a wand and proceeded to pop the back door with a flick of the plastic.

  “Killer security system. I mean, spring for a deadbolt at least.”

  “Shh.” The command slid out between Clara’s gritted teeth as she slipped into the dark recesses beyond the open door. Mag gave me a shove when I didn’t move fast enough to suit her, and I practically tumbled inside. How had I let them talk me into this? Oh, right, the alternative was being branded a coward—that’s how.

  Faint witchlight conjured into Mag’s palm threw more shadows against a wall lined with steel-fronted drawers and my heart sped into a double-time drum roll that beat a tattoo against the back of my ears.

  “I see dead people.” No one got the joke because I forgot to play to my audience. Didn’t
matter anyway, since the two sisters ignored me. Clara prowled the line of cold storage drawers and cast her senses into the spaces behind clinical steel until she found what she’d been looking for.

  “Here.” Gently and with stealth, she twisted the handle and began to pull. Can you throw up and faint at the same time? I thought I might test the theory when a low screech of metal on metal announced the sudden appearance of Tansy Blankenship.

  Pale and perfect she lay in death’s slumber, and the twisting in my belly shouted it was a cardinal sin to disturb her peace. But, disturb it we must. Mag twitched the pristine sheet down Tansy’s body inch-by-inch, and revealed the Y-shaped horror left by the medical examiner’s scalpel.

  “You think there’s any paperwork with the body that tells the cause of death?”

  “How would I know?” I answered Mag’s question sharply then paused while an idea struck. “I’ll look for the files.” Anything to keep from looking too closely at Tansy’s face.

  The current generation of Crandalls now worked the family business while Morticia enjoyed her retirement in Florida. They kept the place tidy, I gave them credit for that. Tansy’s folder was neatly stowed in the filing cabinet under B for Blankenship. I pulled it out and scanned through it quickly.

  “Tox screen came back negative. The cause of death listed as unknown/natural. Looks like there wasn’t anything definitive to find.”

  “They have their ways, we have ours.” Clara chanted an invocation that built in rhythm until the room thrummed with her words.

  “Ladies, light your flames,” she ordered when the sound of her voice had finally echoed into silence.

  Color by color, we ran a series of conjured witchlight over Tansy’s body. Red, orange, yellow, green revealed nothing out of the ordinary. As the blue and then the indigo light rimmed their faces in shadow, I watched Clara and Mag’s expressions turn grim and then grimmer until, in the violet flicker, a sigil surfaced on the death-blued skin covering Tansy’s collarbone.

  I heard Mag draw in a quick breath on a gasp. “Holy Hecate. Do you see that? We were right. It’s a demon mark.”

  “I’m not blind, am I?” Clara hissed. “You recognize it?” Her face took on the blank look of someone rooting through the back rooms and recesses of memory.

  “Not off the top of my head, but I swear I've seen it somewhere before. What about you, Lexi?”

  “I’m the newbie, remember?”

  Mag prowled around the room looking for I don’t know what, then returned and, hovering a finger over the glowing mark, traced its contours several times .

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Committing the shape to memory,” she said absently. “Unless you’ve got a notebook on you somewhere.” The quick look she swiped over me carried more than a hint of condemnation for wearing tightly fitted clothes with little room for stashing away tools of the witchly—or, more importantly, of the cat burglar—trade.

  “No, but I have something better.” I pulled my phone out from where I’d tucked it into my bra and clicked off a couple photos while ignoring Mag’s raised eyebrow and smirk. “Are we done?” I’d had just about all the fooling around with dead bodies I could stand for one night, and if they even thought about asking me to help turn Tansy over, I was taking my heebie-jeebies and going home, thank you very much.

  “A couple more things, and then we’re done.” Clara stared down at Tansy’s face with a mix of compassion and regret. Not regret for her own actions, but for the loss of someone who had barely had time to get started in life.

  Laying one palm against the dead woman’s head and the other against her heart, Mag assessed the situation.

  “The killer was after her soul, not her body.” She paused and closed her eyes to divine information about Tansy’s final moments. “Didn't get it all, though."

  Despite feeling squicky, I was curious enough to take a long look at Tansy's body. "How can you tell?"

  "By the design, of course. It's a soul binding, not a drawing." To Mag she might be stating the obvious, to me she might as well have said hibbitygibbity, so I waved a hand to get her to elaborate.

  "A demon's mark can only be burned into the skin when soul essence is present. The brand usually marks a soul to be drawn and sent to the underworld after death. This one bound the soul to the body."

  "Okay, but couldn't Tansy have been marked before she died? Or even while he was killing her?" My questions made Mag look at me with grudging respect.

  "Smart, but no. A binding like that was meant to hold the soul. See this pattern here? The way it curves inward." She pointed to the spiral that made up the outer ring of the mark. "That bit in the center, that's the demon's signature."

  She no more than finished the sentence when Clara whipped a ceremonial athame out of some hidden pocket and slashed a pentagram shape in the air above the light-tattooed sigil. Her eyes glittered as the color of her witchlight turned red and she pressed it into the mark. There was a flare, then the ball of flame dimmed.

  We all watched the mark writhe against pale skin like snakes in the grass before dissipating in a wisp of shivering smoke, a tiny tendril of which Mag inhaled and then swallowed. My eyes were still dazzled by the flare, so I couldn’t swear I actually saw what I thought I saw, but it looked like her irises flashed to black for a split second, and a new wrinkle etched itself into the corner of her mouth.

  Gran’s forehead crinkled enough that she looked a few years closer to her actual age, and a round depression appeared in her cheek as she nervously chewed the inside of it. “Are you all right, Maggie?”

  Aunt Mag declined to answer, fixing Gran with a quick, pointed look and a raised eyebrow. Then she nodded, but I suspected the nod was the answer to a different question. One Clara hadn't asked in front of me.

  “Is it safe to mess with the mark when you don’t know more about why or who put it there?” Sometimes I’m as fascinated by magic as any straight mortal.

  “We had to free Tansy to move on.”

  “But did you have to...you know.” I mimicked her breathing in the essence of ick. The light wasn’t so dim I couldn’t see the way Mag’s gaze shuttered or the tightness around her mouth. Or my grandmother’s enigmatic expression. There were secrets between them, lines they might have crossed, a history I would never share, but that defined their relationship.

  “I’m not a child,” and, of course, the necessity of making such a statement only proved it false. When it became clear they weren’t having this discussion—whether here and now, or ever, I couldn’t have guessed—I reluctantly gave in. “Fine. Are we done here?”

  “Just about.” If I sensed a gentle mocking flavor to Grandmother’s tone, I ignored it, and when she laid her lips on Tansy’s forehead, I held back a shiver. Did I mention dead people creep me out? Sorry, maybe that makes me a substandard witch, but it’s true. “Blessed be, little one.”

  “You didn’t forget the charms, did you?”

  “Why does everyone think my head is still full of rocks? Of course, I have them.” Using a magician-like flourish Copperfield would envy, Gran called an old coin and a crudely wrought straw doll into her palm.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “A coin and a poppet.”

  “I can see that much for myself. What do they do?”

  “Coin’s a relocation charm and the poppet,” Mag plucked a single hair from Tansy’s head and handed it to Gran who wrapped the hair tightly around the neck of the straw doll, “will provide misdirection.”

  Clearly, I was missing the point of all this, so I circled a hand to indicate I needed more information.

  “Taking the body would alert the authorities, would it not? And performing the proper rites and rituals isn’t something we do in public, so...”

  Oh, I got it. The charms would send Tansy to the place of ritual while allowing the mortician to think the body had been properly cremated. Very sneaky. I guess I was wrong about us adhering to the letter of the law
when it came to dead bodies. Wonderful.

  Gently, and with great reverence, Gran tucked the poppet into Tansy’s hair where it would be safe, but stay concealed until needed. Next, she placed the coin on Tansy’s heart, and it sank into her breast where it would remain until activated.

  “Blessed be and safe passage, little one.” A tender kiss landed above Tansy’s brow.

  “Blessed be,” Mag added her kiss, and her blessing then looked at me expectantly.

  “Oh, no. Nope. Not happening.”

  There are looks, and then there are looks. Some of them weigh little more than a feather and caress the soul with their lightness; others carry the weight of displeasure and expectation. Very heavy. Enough that I crumbled under the pressure.

  The way Tansy’s skin felt so cold and lifeless made mine crawl. It would be one thing if this were a beloved family member who lay before me and needed my benediction before traveling on to the Summerlands, but Tansy was a stranger.

  “Blessed be,” I murmured half-heartedly, my mind on getting this over with before my lips tried to crawl back inside my mouth.

  “Need.” Tansy’s voice whispered through my head, and her hunger yawned over me. The smoky quartz pendant I’d worn for protection frosted over, and I didn’t care if Clara and Mag wanted to paint the word coward across my backside, I was out of there.

  Out. Of. There.

  A herd of rampaging centaurs couldn’t have caught me between the mortuary and the van we’d parked a couple blocks away—not the best vehicle for a stealth mission given its size and a paint job that looked like Rainbow Brite had barfed all over it.

  I drove while my aunt and grandmother carried on a cryptic conversation.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, Clarie, I'm sure."

  "But I thought you said they were all gone."

  "Well, I guess I was wrong. Thanks for pointing out my mistakes." Now Mag was annoyed, and she wasn't the only one.