Mark of the Witch (5 page)

“Not at all. Just see no need to offend everyone I pass on my
way.”

“On your way to where?” I asked.

He hesitated just long enough that I knew something was off.
This was not a chance encounter, and given the shit that had been going on with
me, and the fact that I had no memory of a long section of last night, I got a
little shiver right up my spine. I don’t know that I had any specific theory
about what he might have had to do with it, but I was pretty sure there must be
something.

Then he said, “Flowers. I need flowers.”

“Flowers.” I sucked in another drag. Half gone already. They
really ought to make those loosies in 100s. If someone was desperate enough pay
a buck for a smoke, they would certainly pay two for a longer one. “Just by
coincidence, I work at a flower shop.”

“Which one?” he asked.

“Pink Petals. Four more blocks.”

He smiled. “May I walk with you?”

This man was not safe. There were a thousand voices whispering
things in my head, and I couldn’t understand a single one of them, but being
near him made them louder. And yet for some reason I heard myself tell him,
“Suit yourself.”

So we walked. And the quiet got a little awkward, so I said,
“What’s the occasion,
Padre?
”

“Occasion?”

“You’re looking for a florist. That usually suggests an
occasion.” I puffed and savored, and figured his company was a small price to
pay for the pleasure. Besides, his company wasn’t all that unpleasant.

“I just want to send some flowers to a friend. Maybe you can
help me with that.”

“Bet I can. You looking for anything in particular?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

“And is this for what? A birthday? Anniversary?”

“Samhain Eve, actually.”

I stopped dead with my smoke halfway to my lips. He’d even used
the correct Irish Gaelic pronunciation,
Sow-en.

He was watching me, gauging my reaction, I was sure. “Halloween
was last night. You’re a little late, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say Halloween. I said Samhain Eve. It’s the original
Halloween. This year it falls on—”

“November seventh,” I blurted, then barely resisted clapping a
hand over my mouth.

I looked up to see him nodding in a self-satisfied way. “So you
do know about Samhain,” he said.

“I’m a lapsed Wiccan, and yes, I know about Samhain.”

“Lapsed?”

I shrugged. “It’s all just superstition. So’s your path, by the
way. I’m an equal opportunity atheist.”

“Wouldn’t know it by your jewelry.”

My hand flew to the pentacle hanging against my sweater,
between my breasts. “It’s a pretty piece. Nothing more.”

“I see.”

“In addition to knowing about Samhain, I also know that, as a
rule, Catholic priests do not follow witches, lapsed or otherwise, around New
York City on the day after Halloween. So would you mind telling me just what it
is you want from me?”

His smile faltered, and he lowered his head. “I’m not a
Catholic priest.”

Note to self—he didn’t open with
“I’m not
following you.”

“Anglican?” I chanced.

“Gnostic.”

My brows went up.

“A very-little-known Gnostic sect, actually, known as the
Keepers of the Pact.”

“Vroom, vroom.” I made a twisting motion with my hands, and
then, when he didn’t smile, sang a few notes. Nothing. He was just staring at
me, those dark brown eyes trying to swallow my soul.

And my soul was wanting to be swallowed. Utterly wanting
it.

“So you need an arrangement—”

“I don’t need an arrangement, Indy. I need you.”

I closed my eyes tight, sighed hard. “I was afraid you were
going to say something like that.” So, he was some kind of stalker, then. I took
the last puff of my smoke, looked sadly at the butt, wondering how it had gone
so fast, and dropped it down a sewer grate. “Look, I don’t know what you’re up
to here, but—”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll let me. Will you give me five—maybe
ten—minutes? Will you do that for me?”

“Do I really need the whole spiel, Father? Can’t you just hit
the highlights? Nutshell it for me?”

“All right.” He took my arm and led me off the sidewalk toward
a café where they still had a few tables set up outside. It was only another
block to Pink Petals. I could see the sign from here. We sat down as if we
planned to order breakfast. And then he looked me straight in the eyes. “This is
going to sound—well, insane. I didn’t believe it at first. But I’m changing my
mind.” He took a breath, lifted his chin, held my eyes and sort of rushed ahead.
“There is a demon who is going to try to come through a portal into our world on
Samhain Eve. If he succeeds, he could very well bring about the end of mankind.
You are destined to help me stop him.”

I tightened my lips, inhaled, nodded slowly, surreptitiously
looking around us to see if I could spot a cop. Just my luck, not a single one
in sight. “Hoookay. Um, I am pretty sure you have the wrong girl, Father Tomas.”
(Emphasis on the
Mahs.
) I got to my feet, inching
sideways, clear of the table.

“The woman I’m looking for has lived many lifetimes, Indy,
including one in ancient Babylon in which she and her two sisters were executed
for the practice of witchcraft.”

His words slammed into me like a baseball bat in the hands of
Derek Jeter. I stopped moving and tried very hard not to look the least bit
intrigued, not to meet his eyes as I asked, “Executed…how?” Despite my best
efforts, my voice came out hoarse and wobbly.

“Pushed from a cliff.”

I felt it again, those hands at my back, warm, the touch
filling me with utter pleasure and horrible grief all at the same time. I felt
the moment when my feet left the solid earth, and the sickening way my stomach
seemed to float upward as my body fell. I heard the wind whipping past my ears,
tugging my hair.

I sank into the chair again, shook the vision away before I had
to relive that horrible impact, and kept my eyes lowered. “I think you’re
probably a little bit disturbed, and maybe not even a real priest.” My voice was
very low, very soft, the words delivered in a slow, deliberate monotone. “I’m
going to go now, and if you follow me, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the
police.”

He sighed, lowering his head. “Call them with what, Indy?”

Frowning, I started to reach for my BlackBerry in its handy
pocket on the side of my French vanilla suede Louis Vuitton bag, but it wasn’t
there. I must have lost it…probably in the subway last night.

When I looked up he held it in his hands.

“Where did you get my phone?”

Touching the screen a few times, he laid the phone faceup on
the table and slid it across to me.

“How did you…”

“Look,” he said.

I frowned down at my phone at the familiar black box of an
online video just as it began to play. It took a few seconds for me to realize
that I was the star of the piece.

I snatched up the phone and stared in disbelief as I, Indira
Simon, wearing the very same clothes I’d had on for the ritual last night, flung
my hands out toward a knife-wielding gangbanger and without so much as touching
him, sent him flying so hard his pants fell the rest of the way down before his
butt hit the concrete. Then I spun around, flinging my hands toward another, and
his head bounced back as if I’d delivered an uppercut to the jaw. Only, like
before, I’d never touched him.

The way I was moving was like tai chi on fast-forward.
Graceful, rapid, powerful. I yelled something at them, but in some strange
language that sounded made up. The old man ran away, looking back over his
shoulder at me like I’d sprouted horns or something. And then I got nailed from
behind and went down hard. But I sprang up again, did a flip—
a fucking flip
—that seemed to defy gravity and every
other law of physics and whipped my hands once more, shouting more words in that
same foreign language. I missed that time, nailing a big metal wastebasket and
sending it flying like a missile. It came apart when it hit the wall, clanging
and banging to the floor. And then the punks closed in on me all at once,
kicking the shit out of me for a minute, before someone off camera—probably the
person holding it—shouted, “Hey, get the hell away from her. I’m calling the
cops!”

The voice was female. And familiar, though I couldn’t quite
place it.

The punks ran for it. Well, two of them did. The third was
basically being dragged between them. And then the camera came closer, as if the
person carrying it were bending over me. “Are you okay?” a male voice asked.

I heard the woman ordering this guy away, too. Demanding to
know if he’d actually been filming an assault instead of helping. I couldn’t see
her coming closer, as the camera was still on me as I stared up at it. Close up,
my eyes were black—jet-black—except my eyes are blue—and then I said,
“Milik ša zanunzê ihakkim mannu?”

The camera backed away and the video abruptly ended.

I blinked, staring at my BlackBerry, swearing under my breath
as I dragged my finger along the bar at the bottom, managing to rewind the video
just a little. Then I hit Play and stared again at the close-up of my face.

Yes, my eyes were black. Irises, pupils, everything. Just two
black marbles. Dead-looking eyes.

The woman in the video, a woman I still couldn’t think of as
me, uttered her strange words again, and I whispered along with them, “Who can
know the minds of the Underworld Gods?”

“What’s that, Indy?”

I’d forgotten the priest was still sitting there and looked up
at him quickly. “It wasn’t me.” I barked the words so fast, I didn’t take time
to think about them first. But once they were out, I knew it was the only
possible argument I could make. I turned the phone toward the priest. “Look at
the eyes. Those aren’t my eyes. This is just some chick who looks like me. My
eyes are blue. Not black. All right?”

“But she looks
just
like you,” he
said.

“No, she doesn’t. She has black eyes. And she knows a lot of
martial arts shit I wouldn’t even begin to be able to do. And how the hell did
you get my phone?”

“You left it at your friend’s place.”

“My f-friend?” I blinked at him, looking like a doe in the
headlights, probably. “You mean Rayne?”
I thought that was
her voice on the recording.

He nodded. “She went after you to return it and saw the last
bit of the attack. Then she realized that guy was recording it. She tried to get
him to delete it, but he told her to go to hell, that it was going to go viral.
She took you home and put you to bed, but she was so upset she forgot she still
had your phone on her.”

“So…you know Rayne?”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate. “She knows about my…mission.
That’s why she told me about you.”

I was feeling horribly betrayed by my friend, and there were
tears in my voice when I asked, “And have I gone viral?”

“Thankfully, no. Most people who commented seem to think it’s a
hoax. But you and I both know it wasn’t. Was it, Indira?”

“It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t real, and I don’t want to talk
about it anymore, okay?” I got up, hitched my bag higher on my shoulder, turned
to leave. “I’m going to be late for work. I have to go.” I started walking.

He came with me, damn him. “Trust me, I know how hard it is to
believe all this. It took a lot to convince me, too. Took seeing the impossible
with my own eyes, and I’m still arguing with my doubting side.”

“Your doubting side is right. I’m not a demon fighter. I’m just
a simple ex-witch trying to eke out a life in the big bad city. You’ve got the
wrong girl.”

“You’re a Warrior Witch. One of three. And I need your
help.”

“You’re not getting it.” I strode faster, aiming for the big
pink sign on the front of the shop up ahead.

“The dreams are not going to stop, Indy.”

“She told you about the dreams, too?” No wonder he knew
details—the cliff, the location. Everything.

“The dreams have come to call you to action, to make you
remember your mission, your duty, your calling.”

I reached the door of the Pink Petals, yanked it open hard and
looked back at the priest. “My only
calling
is going
to be to nine-one-one unless you get the hell out of my face—now.” I swung my
arm out, aiming my forefinger back the way we had come, and a gust went with it,
just as if I’d caused it, blowing over a wastebasket and sending every discarded
piece of sidewalk litter airborne all at once.

Could have been a breeze. Had to have been
a breeze.

He lowered his head—I hoped in defeat—took a card from his
pocket, and a cigarette along with it, and closed the distance between us. “My
cell number is here. I’ll be in the city for a while. If anything else happens,
please call me. I’m the only one who can help you, Indy.”

He handed both the card and the cigarette to me. I would have
refused to take the card, but I wanted that smoke—badly—and he knew it, damn
him. So I took them both.

His fingers brushed over mine.

I jerked as if electrocuted. A flash, white-hot, blinding
bright, flesh on flesh, coppery naked flesh on flesh. Thick black hair, bodies
entangling through veils of silk.

I feel his hands on my back.

He gripped my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

His touch burned. And he felt it, too, I knew he did. He held
my eyes for a long moment, and chills rushed right up my spine. Tears—tears, for
crying out loud—burned in my eyes.

He blinked as if stunned, dragged his gaze from mine, pushed a
hand through his thick, dark hair, much the way I wanted to do.

Stop it! He’s a priest!

I straightened, realizing he’d grabbed me because I’d nearly
fallen over backward, knocked off balance by that brief, vivid flash of lovers
entwined. “I’m fine.”