Death's Hand (7 page)

Her dress was gone, and she was naked. His flesh burned against hers, and their dance was the fanning wind, a slow waltz toward an uncontrollable wildfire.

She was trapped.

“You will be
mine
,” he hissed.

Suddenly, Elise knew who he was.

The room exploded into light, and she screamed.

Elise’s eyes flew open, and then immediately flew shut again when light seared her retinas. Her head throbbed and every blat of her alarm made it worse.

Her hand groped blindly for the curtains at the head of her bed, and she jerked them shut. The room fell into blissful darkness. Another fumble, and the alarm silenced.

She sat up, a mess of curls falling around her face. The poster of Black Death’s most recent tour stared down at her:
The Masque of the BLACK DEATH
. The lead singer, Misery, posed dramatically in a white mask with blood pouring from underneath it, and the rest of the band brooded in macabre costumes behind her.

Her door was closed, locked. Her clothing was piled around her closet.

There was no piano. No dark room.

And
he
wasn’t there with her.

Her face fell into her hands, and she let the stress wash out of her in one long breath that made her shoulders shudder. The release was brief, merely seconds long, and then she dried her cheeks and she got out of bed as though nothing happened.

Elise showered, redressed the wound on her arm, and went about her day.

The afternoon arrived bright and sunny despite the steel-gray clouds lingering overhead. The sun should have warmed the air, but the light only succeeded in washing the colors out of the already-barren landscape. Beads of rain quivered underneath the letters on the street sign,
Westfield
.

Anthony Morales slowed his Jeep to a stop in front of Motion and Dance and glanced at the clock on his dashboard. Three-fifteen
.
Betty hadn’t asked him to pick her up until four (or, as the text had said “get me or die!”), but Elise handled the finances for the coven, and she always went in on the esbats.

There was movement beyond the glass doors. It was probably Elise.

He examined his reflection in the visor mirror, trying to order his brown curls by running his fingers through his hair. Anthony only succeeded in messing it up further. He scrubbed at an oil mark on his cheek. It was the best he could do for his appearance—he couldn’t make himself into Don Juan with a little spit and an attempt at a suave smirk.

He tried out the smile on himself, but it quickly faded. Smirk or not, Elise was way out of his league. She usually made him feel like nothing but Betty’s kid cousin.

A man Anthony recognized as James, the high priest of Betty’s coven, emerged from behind the building. He propped the open front door and went inside. All Anthony knew about the high priest came from his cousin, who liked to use adjectives like “dreamy” for him and said he was the most important person in the world to Elise.

“What kind of guy is a
witch
, anyway?” Anthony muttered to himself, climbing out of the Jeep.

Subsiding into half-coherent insults, he slammed the driver’s side door and headed up the sidewalk to the front doors. He heard voices and hung back to listen, easing in sideways to see who was talking.

James and Elise were in the midst of an animated conversation. Her posture was straight, shoulders back, chin lifted, like she was ready to fight.

“You were the one who wanted me to investigate, and I did. You see this?”

“I’m sorry.”

“This is serious, James, real serious, and I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want
you
involved.”

“What will the Ramirezes do? Someone has to help them, and if—”

“I’m not going over this again.”

James shook his head. All the tension drained from his shoulders, and he leaned forward to press his lips to her forehead. She closed her eyes. He whispered something into her hair, but it was too quiet for Anthony to make out.

A swell of jealousy rose in his chest, and he bumped the door with his foot. The entrance bell jingled.

James’s straightened. He glanced at Anthony without expression. “We’ll talk more about this later.”

Elise’s mouth stretched into thin line. “Fine.” James left, and she sighed, rolling her right shoulder to loosen it.

Anthony opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him. Elise always managed to render him nonverbal. Today, she wore a shirt that was swooped low in the front to reveal a lot of cleavage that he had to struggle not to look at. She was wearing gloves again—she always wore gloves—and cutoff shorts.

He cleared his throat and tried to find his voice. “Hi, Elise.” He shouldn’t stare at her legs, either. Really. “You and James... Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just a stupid disagreement.”

“It looked kind of bad,” he said. She shrugged and sat down at the reception desk, dragging a squat filing cabinet to her side. Elise favored her right arm.

“What are you doing here? Did you feel like taking up ballet all of a sudden?”

“No,” he said. “I’m picking up Betty.”

“The coven’s not done for another half hour.”

“I guess I lost track of the time.”

The corner of Elise’s mouth twitched. “That’s fine. You can hang out with me while we wait for the witches to finish. They’re boring when they’re meditating.”

“Awesome,” Anthony said, and he tried not to sound
too
enthusiastic about it. He took the second chair and moved over.

The door between the entryway and the dance hall was open and James’s voice echoed through the studio. “How did that meditation make you feel? Ann?”

“I felt in tune with the Earth,” she responded. “It was relaxing. Finals have been crazy.”

Others made assenting noises. Elise made a face at Anthony, and he grinned.

“You feel like working? There’s a lot of paperwork to go through,” she said. “I need to find where James stashed last year’s registrations that came through the workforce education program. They have to be here. He’s organized, but in the most obscure way possible.”

“I would love to help,” he said, and Elise turned the filing cabinet to face him.

Anthony absorbed himself in his search, trying to forget how tedious he found paperwork. She focused on her laptop, fingers ticking away at the keyboard, and Anthony shuffled through the folders. Elise’s bare legs occupied the corner of his vision.

The seconds dragged. She hadn’t been joking about James’s bizarre methods of organization—everything was neatly tagged and labeled, but with indecipherable codes. He had no idea what “G-3B” had to do with receipts for cleaning supplies, or why the thick folder full of yellow-tabbed sheet music was marked “T6” (or why it was between the receipts and what looked like coven inventory lists), but it meant that Anthony had to read everything to figure out what it was.

He distracted himself from his chore by scooting his chair back enough to peek through the door to the next room. An assortment of women and men rested comfortably on cushions around a small altar. Smoke rose from a censer between them.

Anthony’s cousin sat beside James, her blonde hair pulled into loose pigtails. She listened raptly to the high priest, nodding along with everything he said.

“As we discussed last week, Marisa’s family is facing some troubles right now,” James said. “An exorcist determined that Lucinde may be possessed. I believe we should partake in a cleansing ritual.”

Elise began typing with renewed vigor. “Do you hear this?” he whispered.

“I don’t listen to their crazy witch nonsense.”

“Who’s the exorcist?” Ann asked.

“She prefers to preserve her anonymity,” James said.

“It would be so interesting to talk to her for my thesis. It’s on the supernatural and old-world religion in modern times.”

“I can pass along questions for you.” His tone left no room for argument. “What do you all think of my proposal?”

“An exorcist,” Anthony murmured. “It’s like they think they’re in a movie or something.”

Elise typed harder.

“Do you mean actual demons, or the kind of demons we regard as goddesses, like Lilith?” asked a man whose voice Anthony didn’t recognize.

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” James explained. “This one may be little more than an angry spirit, though. As such, it can be cleansed and cast out with ritual and positive energy.”

“I don’t think we should get into it,” Ann said. “Demons are risky business.”

Elise sighed and stretched in her chair, drawing Anthony’s attention away from the conversations in the other room. “God, it’s hot in here,” she said, slipping off her sweater. He had to look. Her tanned skin was flecked with freckles, creating alluring trails that dipped down into the neckline of her shirt and out along her shoulders. He would happily explore those paths with his fingers and lips, if he could just get the balls to make a move.

And then the sweater dropped enough for him to see the gashes—three deep, parallel slices on her arm. That was what James had apologized for. Had he hurt her?

“What happened to your arm?” he asked.

“What? Oh. I got attacked by a bush when I was out running last night.” She pulled her sweater back on. “It’s nothing.”

“I thought you said you felt hot.”

“I changed my mind. I’m going to close this door,” Elise said. “I don’t want to hear them anymore.” She shut it and the conversation became an inaudible mumble.

He struggled to think of something right to say. He had a hard time imagining James, who was a witch (of all the stupid things) and a dancer (even stupider) managing to injure Elise. But if he had, Anthony couldn’t let it slide. He just wasn’t sure he could take James in a fight.

Suppressing the wild and ridiculous urge to challenge James to a duel, Anthony held up a folder. “I think I found the registration forms.”

She gave it a quick scan. “That’s it. Great.” Elise immediately turned her attention back to the computer. “Thanks for the help.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said, and then he took a deep breath. “Maybe you’d like to hang out tonight. There’s this band performing at the Knitting Factory. I know you listen to Black Death, and this band is supposed to be a lot like their early work.”

“Yeah? What time?”

“Doors open at eight… but we could get dinner, if you like. Before the show.”

Elise’s eyes narrowed. “Are you asking me on a date?”

He gave her his attempt at a suave smile. “Yes?”

The time until she responded dragged on. It couldn’t have been longer than a moment or two, but the sudden racing of Anthony’s heart made it feel like hours, and Elise’s expression was unreadable.

She didn’t smile at his suggestion, but she didn’t laugh at him, either, which had to be a good sign.

“Yeah,” Elise said. “That sounds good.”

Relief washed through his body. The next second, it was replaced with nervousness. “Cool,” Anthony said, jamming his fists in his pockets. “Cool. Since I’m just in the duplex next to yours, we could go together. That way, only one of us has to drive. With the price of gas and parking and stuff.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Gas is a huge concern from here to downtown.”

Anthony shrugged sheepishly. “Well… you know.”

“I have things to do tonight, so I don’t have time for dinner, but I can meet you for the concert. I’ll get myself there. Thanks.”

“Then it’s a date,” he said.

Elise nodded, turned back to her laptop, and started typing again. Why did he feel even more nervous now that he had asked her out?

The door between the rooms opened, and the coven emerged. James exited first, accompanied by a leggy strawberry-blonde at his side. “We’ll need more information on Lucinde before we decide to do a cleansing,” the woman said. “I don’t feel comfortable performing a ritual unless we’ve ruled out a health problem.”

“Your concerns are reasonable. What do you suggest?”

“Lucinde has had extended hospital stays, so her medical records should be there,” Stephanie said. “I could look at them.”

James cast a glance at Elise. “We should discuss this somewhere quieter. Come upstairs.”

Ann trailed behind the last of the coven. Her ratty brown hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, tangled into one giant knot between her shoulders. She hauled a heavy backpack over her shoulder and wandered over, waving at Elise.

“Hi guys,” she snuffled, digging through her pockets and coming up with a packet of tissues.

He gave a weak wave. Through Betty’s chronic inability to dislike people, she had managed to collect some bizarre friends over the years—Elise included—but Ann might have been the weirdest. She was an undergraduate at the university where Betty worked on her thesis. They met at the library while researching obscure blood diseases, which led to Ann joining the coven, and now she was Betty’s latest pet project.

“Weird stuff, huh?” Ann asked Elise.

She didn’t look up. “Yes.”

“What do you think about this whole thing with Marisa’s daughter?”

“I don’t think much about it at all.”

“Just seems too bad, you know?” Ann stepped closer to allow Morrighan to pass, and Elise rolled her chair a few inches back. “Poor kid. Still going to the gym tonight?”