Something Wicked (16 page)

“The candle?”

“All of it. The candle, the paper, the water—well, I poured the water down the drain, but I took the glass. I brought it all for you. I thought you and your cousin would know how to, um…disarm it?”

I took a deep, steadying breath. Then I took another bite of stew. I’d already known his brother had cast that awful spell on Eleni and me, already sensed his presence in the darkness, so that part wasn’t surprising. The idea of Ben skulking around his brother’s room, though, at risk of all sorts of retaliation…“Thanks. We’ll burn it. So…I don’t suppose you thought to bring me some of his hair or something, while you were at it?”

His eyes widened. I guess he hadn’t.

“We’ve got to stop him somehow,” I reminded him grimly.

“Yeah, but…magically? I thought you’d had enough.”

“So did I, but—” I couldn’t help but focus on his mouth, remember his kisses, and I lost my nerve. “I’ll come back to that. What about Al? What did you find out from him?”

Ben looked stubborn.

“I was right about him, too?”

“No! I mean, not about him helping Victor, and certainly not with anything magical. Not exactly.” I must have really been giving him the evil eye by then,
matia
or not, because Ben hurried to explain. “Al says Vic
did
want magical advice from him. But like I said, Al doesn’t know that much about magic. He came to Greece hoping for a story. What he got was Victor’s suspicions that, well…”

Again he averted his eyes. “Ben!”

“Vic thinks you’ve enchanted me,” he muttered.

Oh. Oh my. I slowly took a bite of a bread called
ekmek,
so that I couldn’t say anything. It was very good bread.

“According to Al,” Ben continued, still not looking at me, “Vic thinks there’s no other reason I would be helping you. That’s how sure he is that he’s in the right about this.”

If I’d needed more proof that the man was crazy, that was it. And yet, I
had
put a spell on Ben, not an enchantment but a curse. Everyone thought the name in blood at the crime scene had been written by Diana. So far, I hadn’t bothered to correct them.

Could Ben have kissed me the way he had this afternoon, if he knew? “And what do you think?”

“I think Vic’s paranoid,” admitted Ben. “And sociopathic, which is a bad combination. I think he’s been vulnerable to evil since our parents’ deaths—as if their violence infected him somehow—and this Comitatus group is encouraging his worst qualities. I think he needs to be stopped, and I don’t know how. I mean—Katie, I was right there, standing over him, and he was asleep, completely helpless, and God help me, for a split second I actually thought…”

His elbows went onto the table, his head into his hands, his fingers into his hair. But he didn’t have to tell me. I’d never considered myself a violent person either. But presented with such a quick, easy solution to all our concerns about what Ben’s brother might do to my cousin, or me, to any number of actual innocents in the future…the temptation would have been there. But…I wasn’t related to him.

I reached across the table, stroked my hand across his hair. It curled and licked at my fingertips, so very soft. I wondered what it would feel like between my—

“I don’t know if I could have done it, either,” I said quickly, before I lost all nerve, “and I hate your brother more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life. Maybe in all my lives.”

With a hard breath, he tipped his head up, so that his hands only masked the bottom of his face now. His eyes smiled wanly at me, over his fingers. I was willing to bet his mind was already starting to produce facts and figures about reincarnation…and that info dumps like that might be as close to meditation as Ben ever got.

We had other matters to focus on, of course. But as I drew my hand back, Ben caught it, kissed my knuckles, then let go. Such soft lips. Such earnest affection. He watched me for a long moment and then, when I said nothing, ducked his head and watched me warily through his lashes. It was a great effect, all the more powerful from my suspicion that he didn’t know how good that made him look. And damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I really had to tell him.

Now I was the one taking a deep breath. “Ben, about me thinking I’d had enough of magic, before.”

He waited, hanging on to my every word.

“I thought I had. Maybe I did, at the time. I already told you that I didn’t practice the way my mother and sister did.”

Ben folded his arms on the table, cocked his head. “If what I saw you doing in Athens was amateur stuff, I’m going to have to revamp my ideas about how low-key magic is.”

“Well…I went back into training, with my grandmother, after Diana died.” I liked him kissing me, the way he had earlier. I liked him looking at me as if he was imagining me without clothes. It made me forget…

But if it was the magic drawing him, then he still lacked free will. I needed to know he wanted
me,
not the effects of my curse. “But it felt like circumstances had forced me into it, and I resented that. I didn’t like the person I was turning into, what I thought the magic was turning me into. When I came to Turkey, I really was hoping to leave the magic behind, maybe with the exception…Are you still carrying the
matia?
”

He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the blue glass disk.

“Good.” Damn, this was going to be hard. “Something happened during the rally, when the police came after the demonstrators.”

“You did magic to help get people out,” Ben agreed. “Eleni told me about it. It must have been some kind of whammy, if the backlash of it knocked you out for three days.”

“That was part of it, sure. Even real magic has its limits. For me to be able to protect not just myself against the police, but everyone Eleni and I helped get out of there…magic on the demonstrators, magic on the police, magic on me. That’s pretty big mojo. On top of that, especially since I didn’t ask anyone’s permission, I had the recoil to deal with.”

“Come on, Katie. Do you think any of the people you rescued would have refused permission if you’d offered first?” I loved that Ben accepted the magic part so easily, and was only debating the ethics part with me. He really was a good guy. With the brain of a computer. And really remarkable lips.

But…“Who can say what their karmic journey is about? And you can bet, a lot of the police wouldn’t have wanted me interfering.” Although, remembering the horror that ravaged that one man’s face as he came aware of what he’d been doing, maybe some of them would. “The point is that I was able to do some pretty huge magic. And the only way I was able to do it was to recommit myself to Hekate. To realize that this isn’t all about dark magic, and curses, and revenge. It’s about women who are trying to change the world, needing an extra push of magic to protect them.”

The Goddess is only as strong as her children.

“Maggi Stuart was right, Ben. Even your brother was right. The time has come. I need to find the Hekate Chalice.”

Then, before Ben could express the approval I saw in his eyes, I quickly added, “But you may not want to help me.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to—” Ben began, but I interrupted.

“I cursed you.”

W
ell—that shut him up pretty quick. The understanding, then betrayal on his expressive face, made my heart hurt.

“The name in blood at the crime scene,” I continued, hurrying to make a full confession while I still had the backbone. “Diana didn’t write that, I did. Your brother told me his name was Ben, and I believed him, and even though I hadn’t done magic in years, it was the only thing I could think of to stop him.” But that wasn’t completely true. Something about Ben, about his sheer decency, forced me to be true. “Besides, I wanted to. He’d killed Diana. He deserved everything horrible that hell and Hekate and I could throw at him.”

Ben continued to stare at me.

“It wasn’t until the second lineup that I realized he wasn’t you. Or…vice versa. And by then it was too late. You can’t exactly
modify
a curse. That’s why I started training with my
nonna
again. While I figured out what to do next, I needed to learn how to protect you.”

“And you,” guessed Ben. He knew about karmic blowback.

“Yes, and me. I’m not saying I’m the good guy here. I know I’m not.
You’re
the good guy here. I’m just trying to get through all this.”

“With curses?”

“Only the one.”

“‘I don’t suppose you thought to bring me some of his hair or something, while you’re at it?’”
That was his voice, still, but my words. Word for freaking word, damn it.

“Okay, one? I was joking.” Sort of. “And two? If anyone deserves to be cursed—”

“Who are you to decide who deserves to be cursed?”

“Your brother’s a murderer!”

“And you still don’t care why! You still don’t know if he’s a victim, too. So yeah,
stop him.
Don’t
curse
him. You stopped a car in midair. You stopped some kind of nightmare entity. Hell, Kate, you stopped police in full riot gear! Or did you curse all of them, too?”

The worst part about it? He was right. If I’d been more practiced, if I’d thought more clearly, maybe I could have used magic to knock Victor unconscious. Or to paralyze him. Or to make sure he ran out the door and right into a police car. If I’d done any of that, he might be in prison right now…or, considering how fast the legal system moves, at least facing trial with a better chance of conviction.

Instead, my sister’s killer was walking free. Eleni was in danger. Ben and I were still suffering side effects of the curse—the really enjoyable effects, like a few hours ago, and the more dangerous ones. And now, on top of cursing the poor guy, I’d also betrayed him. Way to go, Katie.

But hindsight is twenty-twenty, right? We were where we were.

“You need to know one more thing.” Keeping my voice level was a challenge, but it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to use magic to help. This was too real, too…
us.
“Because I did a spell on you, we’re connected. So any attraction we’ve been feeling, it’s…it’s not real.”

Then I waited.

Ben Fisher wasn’t a sit-still kind of guy. He looked down, looked away, shifted in his chair, glared at me. Then he looked away again. Was he remembering how I’d woken up, too? Or was that just me? I didn’t want to have to say it again.

“I said, what we’ve been feeling—”

“I heard,” he snapped, and he was angry enough that I guess he really had. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to your hotel.”

And dropping some lira banknotes on the table, he stood.

I stood, too, but to protest. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No.” He held up a flat hand, to cut whatever I meant to argue. “I do have to.”

“You don’t even
like
me right now.”

“I don’t know what to think about you right now! But Katie—” Scowling, he ducked closer to me, as if he had a secret. “Have you ever considered that the way you treat people should be more about who you are than who they are?
Think about it.
”

And that was the last I got out of Ben.

Damn it.

This wasn’t the sort of man problem most women have. I told Eleni about it, when she got back to the hotel full of news about how successful their temporary clinic had been.

Not surprisingly, she wasn’t sure what to say.

“Perhaps he sees that this is a mistake,” she suggested, at last. We were lying on the bed we’d had to share, staring out the window at our view of the Beyazit Tower on this, our last evening in Turkey.

“The curse?” I asked gloomily, trying not to remember Ben on the bed with me. Kissing me…“Or him helping me at all?”

She punched me lightly in the arm. “The curse! Ben helps you to stop his brother, does he not? That is not a mistake.”

“But the curse was.”

Eleni turned, pillowing her head on her elbow, and watched my face, letting me answer my own question. It was exhausting, doing those protective rituals for me and Ben every night. It was disheartening being a bad guy. And now, losing Ben just as I’d begun to realize I wanted him….

Except that I’d never had him.

Right now, I seriously hated that curse.

So…
were
there other kinds of magic that could stop Victor Fisher? Immediately I thought of the Hekate Chalice.

“I’m supposed to make a pilgrimage to Hekate’s source.”
Only there can you truly commune with Her. Only then can you right your wrongs and fulfill your destiny.

That’s where I’d probably find the real cup, too. How convenient.

“Then we will return to Eleusis,” decided Eleni, with a satisfied nod. “Or other temples. I must work tomorrow and Friday, but when weekend comes, we will start. We can visit Delphi and Argos. If you stay another week, we travel north to Thessaloniki and Samothrace.”

That idea worked so well for her, she sat up and stretched, mission accomplished. “Are you hungry? Gaye has invited us for dinner. The Turks, they are very hospitable.”

But I felt sick to my stomach, and not because of the big meal I’d eaten recently.

Besides, I’d already been to Eleusis. I’d gotten nothing more than a walk down bad-memory lane with my dead sister and a big dose of dog breath. Then again…what was it Ben had talked about back at the Acropolis? The goddess Hekate hadn’t begun in Greece. She began in a place called…K-something. I couldn’t remember the specifics, but…hadn’t it been in Turkey?

And now I was in Turkey.

Coincidence, my ass.

“You go ahead,” I assured my cousin. “I have to work through some stuff.”

She scowled dramatically. “No, come! Celebrate with us! The clinic, it does well. We give many exams, we educate many women.”

“Go ahead and enjoy yourself. I’ll be here when you get back, really. I just need to…to think.”

It took more arguing before she left, but finally I was alone.

Dusk was drawing across Istanbul, certainly the part just outside our hotel window. But staring out the window wasn’t the kind of thinking I had to do.

Instead, I placed a long-distance call to the number on the card Maggi Stuart had given me.

Maggi’s voice sounded gravelly when she answered and accepted the charges. “Katie? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry about calling collect. My cell phone doesn’t work in Europe. Or Asia.” Which side of the Bosphorus were we on, again? “And the instructions here for how to pay for a call—”

“It’s not a problem. I can cover a phone call, really. What are you doing in Istanbul?”

I gave her the short version, leaving out most of the magic. “Now Ben and I have had a sort of falling out—not his fault, but still, I can’t ask him for more help. And he once said something about Hekate coming from an old country that starts with a
K,
around the time of Egypt, that’s in Turkey now.”

“Karia,” she supplied easily. “Sometimes it’s spelled with a
C,
too, like Hekate. Alphabets change. Do you think he meant from the time of the Egyptian Dynasties?”

She didn’t say it, but I guess since there was still an Egypt, “the time of Egypt” hadn’t been very smart phrasing. How had Ben kept me from feeling stupid all the time? “Oh.”

“Which, sorry—” She yawned. “That’s a roundabout way of saying yes, he’s right. Hekate’s roots are probably Karian.”

“Since Eleusis was such a bust, and since I’m in Turkey anyway, I think I should find the oldest Hekate site I can. But I don’t know where to look.”

“Are you sure your mother or grandmothers never taught you a rhyme or song about Hekate? Something like, ‘Here in Anatolia lies…’or ‘With the Cup of Hekate’? Songs like that can make pretty good treasure maps.”

She’d mentioned that once already. All I’d been able to think of was a song about fairies, and one about a bunny rabbit.

Hekate has connections to frogs, bats, big black dogs. Not bunnies.

“Nothing. Do you suppose that means I’m not a Grail Keeper after all?”

“Hardly. It just means the song got forgotten, just like so much else about the Goddess.” But she really was a mythology expert. “Okay, so in Turkey, the biggest problem will be narrowing down the possibilities. The country’s full of goddess sites. I’d love to visit sometime.”

A man’s voice, apparently very close to her, murmured something I couldn’t make out. She whispered back, “I didn’t say right now, Your Highness.”

Oh, no. “What time is it there?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get on the computer and see what I can find out. Give me the number there, and I’ll call you right back. How’s that?”

“All right. And Maggi, thank you.”

“Me?
You’re
the one who’s taking up the quest while I’m out of circulation. I’m thrilled to do anything I can to help. I’ll call within the hour.”

She was as good as her word. Within an hour she’d called back not only with what she called a “likely candidate”—a place called Stratonikea—but with reservations for a sleeper car on a train leaving the next night for a town called Pamukkale and a reservation for a hotel once I got there. They were paid reservations.

I protested, but Maggi insisted that she had a fund especially for Grail Keeper business and that she desperately wanted to contribute.

“I put you down for a week’s stay.” She sounded a lot more awake this time. “If you don’t find anything in Stratonikea, you might want to check out some other sites in the area before you move on. Hierapolis has the biggest necropolis in Anatolia, which, considering Hekate’s connections to the dead, might be worth a look. Besides, it’s practically next door to your hotel. There’s Ephesus—that bunch was so into their goddess that St. Paul had to write a letter instead of giving a speech there—and then Aphrodisias, which of course is the sacred home of Aphrodite.”

Of course.
Damn, I missed Ben.

“They should all be day trips from Pamukkale,” Maggi continued. “But if you need more time, just let me know. And hey, Artemis eventually replaced Cybele as patron goddess of Ephesus. You know what Artemis’s name was in Latin, right?”

I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but I took a good guess. “Diana?”

“You got it. So…is there anything else I can help with? Really, I’m happy to. I feel so useless, not being there to help look.” There were no low-voiced comments from the background, so I figured she must have changed rooms to call me back. “No, edit that. Not useless. Marginalized, maybe, but in other ways, I’ve never felt so important. So…to each our own quest, right?”

Not everything was about me, was it? “When are you due?”

“Two months, so it’s not as if I’d fly to Boston, much less Turkey. You’ll call me if you find anything, right?”

“I promise.” And that should have been it. But…“Maggi?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you really call your husband ‘Your Highness’?”

She laughed. “Sometimes. But I still outrank him. He calls me ‘Goddess.’”

Now I laughed, too.

“Goddess bless,” she wished me, before we hung up.

I couldn’t help thinking, just then, that I’d need it.

But something interesting began to happen, very gradually, with my decision to travel south. It continued when I ran out early the next morning to buy something I’d seen in a street vendor’s cart, for Eleni—he called the glass disks, hung on a string,
boncuk.
But as far as I was concerned, they were close enough to the Greek
matia
—just with a light blue eye instead of a golden one—that they had to serve the same purpose.

I got two of them, keeping one and making Eleni take the other before she caught her flight back to Athens. She didn’t want to leave me alone in Turkey, but I insisted.

“Just be careful,” I told her, hoping fervently that this was the right choice. And since her job needed her, she reluctantly left.

The change in me continued as I spent the day by myself in Istanbul before catching the 17:35 Pamukkale Ekspresi. I wasn’t scared to be alone. I didn’t feel awkward, the way I had when I first traveled to Athens. Despite my inability to speak the language, the Turkish people I met were wonderfully patient with me. I ended up taking a sightseeing tour on a double-decker bus, and saw more wonderful things—palaces, mosques and markets—than I could have imagined. Then I picked up my luggage at the hotel and hailed my own cab. I found my own way to the train station, to the express I needed and then to my private compartment.

Maggi Stuart didn’t do things by halves. She’d reserved both berths in my sleeper car, so that I wouldn’t have to share with a stranger. But by now, I felt pretty sure I could have shared without worries.

I slept deeply in my berth, lulled by the slight sway and clacking of the train.

So what was going on with me? Maybe I was growing up a little, but that’s the sort of thing you think as a teenager, back when you believe some perfect moment will arrive—graduation, or a driver’s license, or sex—and poof, you’ll be an adult. Or maybe I was coming into my power, accepting my role as a witch. Or maybe I was resigned to this quest, finally, and to learning from Hekate, Herself, what she wanted from me.

Yeah. Probably that last one.

I woke the next morning, well rested, with plenty of time to have breakfast in the restaurant car before we reached Pamukkale.