Romancing The Dead (22 page)

“Yeah,” he said around a mouthful of green pepper. “But we’d have to be sure of what they want in order for the trap to work.”

I looked up at the spider’s web I’d noticed earlier. It bobbed and swayed with the multiple impacts of the gnats getting snared.

“Something bright and shiny,” I said.

Mátyás’s eyes followed mine to where the bugs encircled the light. “Yes, we need bait.”

I frowned at my own bland dish and wished I’d ordered what Mátyás had. I poked at the macaroni with my fork, watching the sheen of buttery sludge ooze between the noodles.

“I couldn’t get Lilith back, Mátyás. I don’t have anything anyone wants anymore,” I said. It seemed true. If the ghouls wanted Sebastian, well, someone else had him. Micah stole the Goddess. Hell, even my apartment was wrecked. I couldn’t even offer real estate as bait.

“Don’t be so sure,” Mátyás said. “I’ve been thinking about the order of events and something doesn ’t add up. First, Papa disappears. He’s clearly not the main target because if that’s all the attacker wanted, he’d be done—no need to go after you. So, whoever put a spell on Sebastian wanted him out of the way to get to you. Which makes sense if Micah is your bad guy and he ’s after Lilith. You said there was someone at the store just before the wind chime fell on you, someone interested in Lilith?”

“Yeah, Marge,” I supplied, taking a tentative swallow of my pasta. The cheese was actually very tart and the congealed butter nicely spiced.

“So one possibility is that she’s connected somehow to Micah.”

I had seen them talking at the meeting at William’s place. “Yeah, I could see that.”

“All good so far: Sebastian is taken out of the picture somehow by Marge and Micah, which is also plausible because Micah being Coyote might have the strength of a God at his disposal.”

“Oh Goddess,” I interrupted, the noodles sticking in my throat. “Just before the wind chimes fell, I’d asked Marge if she’d seen Sebastian. I thought she looked panicked at the time, but I chalked it up to her poor social skills. What if she dropped the chimes on me because she thought I was on to her?”

“Maybe she was trying to scare you off the scent,” Mátyás said. “See, this all makes a kind of logical sense. Then Micah lures you into letting the Goddess out, and whammo, they’ve absconded with their treasure.”

“Yeah, this is good,” I agreed, remembering how Micah promised to help me find Sebastian and how the silver cord had frayed in the astral plane when I’d seen him there. “This makes sense. A lot of sense. You should have stuck with the whole detective thing, Mátyás. Seriously.”

His lips quirked slightly and I could tell he was pleased by my compliment. His only acknowledgment, however, was a slight tip of his head. “Here’s the wrinkle: the tree. A magical attack so powerful it smells like the handiwork of your coyote, but he has no reason for it at that point. Lilith was in his hands. Why would he toss a tree at you?”

“To finish me off?”

“Because you’re such a threat now that you’re back to being a plain, old Witch?”

Ouch. That hurt, especially since it was true. “Yeah, well, I don’t know then. Why else do it?”

“See, that’s the thing. I’m not convinced it was Micah or Marge. I mean, okay, maybe they’re tidy little Goddess-stealing serial killers and they want to leave no trace of their mystical crime behind. But if that was the case, why aren ’t you dead? You pointed out that they missed. Don’t you think a God would have better aim?”

There were plenty of trees in the backyard. If the attacker was a God and omniscient, then he’d have known I wasn’t sitting on the couch. Maybe Coyote’s power didn’t work that way; I had to focus Lilith’s energy and she was only as effective a force as I made her. It was possible that Micah missed because he didn’t channel Coyote’s energy properly. “Not necessarily,” I said. “What are you trying to say, there’s someone else after me?”

“Your list was a mile long, darling.”

I winced. Hearing Sebastian’s pet name for me on Mátyás’s lips surprised me. “Don’t call me that.” Then realizing how harsh I must have sounded, I added a soft “please.”

“Right. Sorry,” he said. “The point is, you might make perfect bait. Maybe someone in the coven wants you dead, someone jealous or power hungry like that Xylia woman you mentioned. Maybe at your next coven meeting . . .”

My fork clattered into the porcelain bowl. “Oh crap! That would be tonight! At my place! That’s why William was taking an early night!” I smacked my forehead. Suddenly, I imagined the scene: people showing up with crab dip and corn chips and finding a tree slammed into my apartment. They’d all be milling around, wondering if I was okay. William would try my cell phone, only it wasn’t working. He’d try Sebastian’s house and get no answer. I found myself standing up. “Great Goddess, everyone probably thinks I’m dead.”

“Everyone except the person who tried to kill you,” Mátyás pointed out from where he sat. He took a long drink from his water. I could hear the ice knock against his teeth.

“We should go,” I said. Not only was I anxious to put any rumors of my untimely demise to rest, but I was also getting tired of the mop guy giving us more and more openly hostile looks. I glanced around for a clock on the wall. We had about six minutes until people would be arriving. “It’s not too late to catch them if we hurry,” I said. Mátyás stood up and gathered his things together on a tray. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Call William,” he said. “You should at least warn him.”

While Mátyás bused our dishes, I dialed William’s cell phone.

“Hello?” William sounded very skeptical when he answered, probably baffled by seeing an unfamiliar number on his caller ID.

“It’s Garnet,” I said. “Have you gotten to my place yet?”

“Uh, yeah. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a great big tree in the middle of your house.”

“I know. Listen, we need to have everyone meet at Sebastian’s tonight. Do you think you can direct everyone?”

I heard some fumbling. “Yeah, what’s his address?” I told him and he said, “I’ll just pull it up on my BlackBerry. Doesn’t look too bad. Let me read you what MapQuest says.”

I listened. As someone who is usually a passenger, I had no real idea if the route was the most direct, but it certainly sounded familiar enough.

Mátyás came up and mouthed, “Wards.”

“I’ll be waiting outside the place,” I added. Or maybe I could do a little counter-magic just for one night.

“Are you okay?” William asked after we’d confirmed everything. “The house looks totaled. Maybe we should postpone this.”

“No,” I said. “I think the storm damage had something to do with Sebastian’s disappearance—”

“You’re telling him?” Mátyás cut in.

“It’s William,” I protested. “Anyway, I really want to do the spell of finding tonight.”

“Okay,” William said. “Oh, hey, people are arriving. I’ve got to go.”

Mátyás and I walked out into a cocoon of a yellowish haze of streetlights. The inky blackness of the sky above pressed close. Our heels echoed on the empty sidewalks. The air carried the fragrance of cooling asphalt.

“You know,” Mátyás said, as we reached his car. Leaning on crossed arms, he stared at me over the roof. The paint reflected a deeper metallic under the streetlamps. “A sting only really works if you have the element of surprise.”

“William isn’t trying to kill me,” I said, my hand on the door handle he hadn’t unlocked yet. “Besides, he was going to cancel the meeting. I needed to give him a sense of urgency.”

“Which he could be sharing with the whole coven right now. You didn’t ask him not to tell anyone.”

Oh. “I’m not used to being a spy.”

“Clearly,” he said dryly, opening his car door. I heard my lock click open.

I slipped into the passenger seat, feeling a little stupid. “Maybe William won’t say anything.”

Sarcasm oozed from Mátyás’s tone. “Because William is the soul of discretion.”

I looked up at the crescent moon barely visible through the cloud cover and prayed, for once, he was.

“We’d better have a plan,” Mátyás said as we pulled into Sebastian’s driveway. He put the car in park and turned to face me, an arm resting casually on the steering wheel. “Can you act arrogant?”

This was one of those questions I dreaded answering. “Uh, I don’t know, why?”

“You need to irritate the attacker into making a move,” he said. “That’s the whole bait thing.”

“Don’t they already hate me just the way I am?”

“Who doesn’t?” He smiled softly, and for the first time I actually thought he might be teasing and not trying to insult me. “I was thinking that maybe you should try to take control of the coven or something. If the issue is really jealousy, maybe one of them will out themselves.”

Oh boy. Well, it was a better plan than no plan at all.

I stood out at the end of the long, gravel road that served as Sebastian ’s driveway and swatted mosquitoes. They seemed particularly attracted to my ankles and the wounds on my neck. Slapping another one, I scanned the county road for headlights. Crickets chirped softly in the tall grass that grew wild in the drainage ditch. A lone highway light illuminated the county cemetery next door. Most of the few, scattered markers were at least a hundred years old, knee-high obelisks that listed to the side or were overgrown with plants once left as offerings. Names had worn off the soft stone now riddled with lichen and moss.

Except one. At the edge closest to Sebastian’s farm was a brand-new marble headstone bearing the name Daniel Parrish, no dates. Parrish had “died” in order to help clear my name with the FBI. Even though I woke up to discover his body gone, I had insisted on buying a gravestone. For me, it was a place to grieve, and more important, I wanted some kind of acknowledgment of Daniel’s bravery, his sacrifice.

Honestly? I was pretty sure he’d managed to escape the grave. It would be weird to think of him buried alive there, even if he was in torpor.

The sound of a car’s tires woke me from my reverie. I waved at what looked like William’s Prius. Once the car was close enough, William powered down the window. Xylia’s friend Robert sat in the passenger seat, and Marge and Max huddled together in the back. Max waved at me.

I smiled and waved back.

“Are you sure this is right?” William asked.

Sebastian’s wards made his house looked like an abandoned farm, a common enough sight in the back roads of Wisconsin that most people drove past it, even in broad daylight. At night the illusion was especially strong.

“Trust me,” I said. “Mátyás will let you in.”

William looked doubtful but he pulled into the drive. I continued my vigil.

Wind rustled the stiff stalks of corn that surrounded Sebastian ’s farmhouse. Though it was June, the phrase “knee-high by the Fourth of July” came into my head. In straight rows, the broad leaves reflected moonlight like sword points. Across the road, I could see the stalks shiver and shake as something passed through them. The rows parted for silver fur and a black-tipped tail. Four legs took the coyote quickly into the steep dip of the drainage ditch filled with tall fronds of white sweet clover.

Up onto the road came a man: Micah.

“What are you doing here?” I sounded angry, but my stomach tightened with fear. Had he come to finish me off, after all?

Instinctively I reached for Lilith for protection. I felt her, though not where I expected to find her. Her presence stretched between Micah and I, like a rubber band.

She wasn’t mine, but neither, I could tell, was she entirely his.

His eyes glittered obsidian-hard under the streetlight. In black-and-white relief, he looked otherworldly. And angry.

Maybe Mátyás was wrong about the second party that wanted me dead. Maybe, somehow, I still had a connection with Lilith, one Micah couldn’t break. Perhaps in order to get complete control over her, Micah needed me dead.

“Uh, William?” I called behind me, taking a step back. “Mátyás?”

Micah started slowly across the street.

Just when I was considering making a run for it, a rusty Honda slowed its approach, coming between Micah and me. Xylia stopped at the top of the driveway. Over the roar of a shoddy muffler, Xylia said, “This must be the right place.” She smiled. Then seeing Micah on the other side of the road, she turned and said, “Hiya, Micah. Want a ride?”

He flashed a dark grin as he got in.

Well, that seemed ominous. Talk about a wolf in the fold. But Micah wouldn’t be crazy enough to try to kill me in front of the entire coven, would he?

As I waited for the stragglers, I considered my options. I could stay with the plan as Mátyás outlined it, although given how pissed off Micah already seemed I didn’t think I needed to add the whole “act annoying” shtick. Or I could run away and hide. Frankly, I was kind of liking door number two. But really, where would I go that a God wouldn ’t be able to find me? And, if Mátyás was right about Marge and Micah, then one or the other was responsible for Sebastian’s disappearance. After directing the last of the group, I walked up the long drive now lined with cars. I felt a little like I was headed to the gallows, and it was hard to believe that I’d talked Sebastian into starting a coven because I thought it would ground me, help me settle in. I should have known things would end badly; we’d started off on such a wrong foot with Sebastian’s flirtation with Blythe. Hey, Blythe never showed!

Had I been wrong about Sebastian? Was it possible that the day after he proposed to me, he ran off with another woman? I shook my head. Not Sebastian. There had to be another explanation. Quickening my pace, I was determined to find out. I walked into chaos. Books were flying everywhere. Windows were slamming open and closed. Lights switched on and off, like a strobe.

I pushed past a clump of people who stood near the doorway covering their heads with their hands and screaming. William and Xylia sat in the middle of the floor in the lotus position, chanting something. Griffin stood off to one side shouting,

“What the fuck?” over and over. Mátyás, who sat on the steps with his head in his hands, looked up with a long-suffering sigh. Micah, meanwhile, lounged on the couch, calmly eating from a bag of potato chips, watching the whole thing like it was the best show he’d ever seen.