The Thirteenth Sacrifice (15 page)

She chose her wardrobe carefully. Black jeans, a black
scoop-neck sweater, and black boots that she could easily run in if she had to. It was a statement, but she was out to make one. She fastened the moon pendant she’d found in her mother’s jewelry box around her neck. It was made of deep blue lapis and had miraculously been untouched for so many years. It seemed she was not the only one who had avoided the house. Despite the obvious signs of decay, there had been no evidence of vandals or trespassers.

She touched the necklace. Lapis gave the wearer strength and vitality. It also helped one tune in to higher spiritual vibrations. She desperately missed her cross. But given the dangers inherent in practicing her Christian faith while undercover, she wouldn’t have been able to wear it even if it hadn’t been lost. So the necklace she wore in its place seemed to her the only connection she could achieve with God.

She left the hotel and walked the few blocks to Red’s Sandwich Shop. Once there, she headed inside. The building dated back to the 1700s, when American revolutionaries had met there. Now it boasted the tastiest, cheapest, most filling breakfast to be found pretty much anywhere. It was also the place to learn just about anything about the goings-on in town.

Tables were squeezed together in the small space. A bustling waitress zipped by with an order of pancakes that flopped over the sides of the plate. It was just like she remembered.

She glanced around the room, noting that all the tables were taken. At a table close to the door a guy sat by himself, sipping some orange juice. She made eye contact and he smiled and gestured to the empty seat across from him. She hesitated for only a moment. Normal Samantha would have preferred to wait. Undercover Samantha
needed all the time and information she could get.

With a smile she sat down. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he said. He had short, wavy brown hair and intense green eyes. He wore a long-sleeved button-up black shirt. “I’m Anthony.”

“Samantha.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Samantha,” he said, a glint in his eye. “We’ve got a famous Samantha right here in town, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Statue of Samantha from the television show
Bewitched
.”

Before she could respond, the waitress arrived with a monster omelet for Anthony. She set it down and turned to Samantha. “What can I get you?”

“Two eggs scrambled, corned beef hash, and coffee, please.”

The waitress hurried off and Anthony continued to study her. “You should know, it’s always this crowded in here,” he said.

“I know. Some things never change.”

He cocked his head to the side. “I took you for a stranger, tourist, maybe.”

She laughed. “I’m not a tourist. I grew up here. Just moved back.”

“Good to know,” he said, his smile widening. He fished a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her.

She read it aloud. “Anthony Charles, Proprietor. Museum of the Occult.”

“That’s me.”

She tucked the card into her jeans pocket. “I don’t remember a Museum of the Occult.”

“I opened it about three years ago,” he said.

“Because there weren’t enough witch museums in town?” she asked drily.

“Most of them are very limited in their view. Mine covers more aspects of the occult, both historic and modern.”

“Intriguing,” she said. She could sense no power coming off him, but because of his interests, she still had to wonder if he might be tuned in to what was going on in town. She’d been trying to finalize her plan of attack in regard to contacting the coven, and now she made a decision. “I’ve heard rumors that there are witches back in Salem.”

“Despite what we tell the tourists, there are no witches in Salem,” he said, his smile faltering.

He didn’t believe that.

He picked up his fork and dug into his omelet. She sat for a minute, studying him as he ate. She thought about compelling him to tell her the truth. Something told her, though, that she’d get a lot more from him if she let him come to her with the information.

“It’s too bad. I would be curious to meet a real live witch,” she said, keeping her tone light.

He looked up at her, his fork suspended in midair. “You really wouldn’t,” he replied, his voice husky.

Something flashed in his eyes. Fear? Hatred? She looked at him hard and realized that it was both.

Her food arrived and a minute later he paid for his meal and left. “See you around,” he said, his smile strained.

“Sure.”

He knew something about modern witches; that was for sure. And whatever it was, he had no love for them. Could he be a potential ally?

She finished her breakfast and hurried back to her hotel room, where she sat down on the bed to think. The symbol that she had on her chest stood for something dark and dangerous. That was who she had to be. She couldn’t wait for the coven to find her. She had to summon them to her. It was risky and aggressive, but it was what her mother would have done. It was who she had been raised to be.
Who they would be expecting.

She opened the bag she’d brought with her from her mother’s house and carefully pulled out a box of candles.

She cleared the top of the chest of drawers to set up a temporary altar. She placed a white candle to represent herself, seeker of truth, pure of purpose, on the left side. “I name thee Samantha,” she said.

Then she carefully selected three candles from the box. She placed the first one, dark blue, on the right side. “I name thee the most impulsive member of the coven I seek.” Next to it she placed a brown candle, saying, “I name thee the member of the coven I seek who is most uncertain about the right of what they are doing.” Finally she placed the purple candle with them. “I name thee the most ambitious member of the coven I seek who yet is not a leader.”

She lit the white candle. “I am immovable, fixed.”

Then she lit the other three candles. “They are not.”

She let the four candles burn as she selected a final candle from the box, a yellow one. Yellow was the color used when it was necessary to convince someone that they should do something. Samantha set it next to the white candle that represented herself and lit it. “They must come to me.”

A Wiccan practitioner would take several days to perform the ritual, each day moving the candles slightly
closer to each other until the objective was reached. But the brand of witchcraft she’d been raised with was all about power, brute force, shortcuts.

She waved her hand, feeling the energy crackling from her fingertips, and the three candles representing the other people moved almost imperceptibly. They would continue to do so until they reached her candle. She knew from experience that she had about three hours before the three witches she’d summoned found her.

She picked up her athame and tucked it in the back of her waistband, where she had often carried a gun instead.
An extension of a cop’s power just as the athame is an extension of the witch’s power.

She brushed her hand against her throat, missing again the cross that used to hang there.

Finally, she was ready. She left, closing the door behind her. She walked to the Salem Common and then across the street to the beginning of the Essex Street walking mall.

Her first stop was the Witch History Museum. Obvious, but it suited her purposes. She stood on the threshold.

Marking doorways was an ancient practice, done by people of different cultures and beliefs for similar purposes: to claim and to warn. The Israelites had painted their doorframes with lamb’s blood to mark themselves as chosen so the angel of death would pass over them. In the Dark Ages the doors of plague victims were marked to warn others and to help identify them. Many Christians used chalk to mark above their doors for Epiphany, welcoming God into their homes.

Witches could leave psychic impressions on doors, marking them so that others would know they had been there. It was something she had learned to do at a young
age. Hiding your presence altogether was actually much harder than broadcasting it.

She took a deep breath and then put her hand on the doorframe. She pushed energy through it, into her fingertips, and then out and onto the wood, which warmed perceptibly. And even though she was forcing energy out, she felt the rush that came with using the power. It felt intoxicating and she realized just how much she’d missed it.

She removed her hand and turned away, horrified. She’d worked so hard to give up this life and everything it entailed. It was unsettling how easy it would be to fall back into it.

She moved on, struggling to get a grip on her emotions as they roiled within her. She walked briskly to her next target, a few doors down. It was a New Age shop that sold a complete hodgepodge of materials, but given the extreme range of colored candles and gemstones on display in the window, it would make a good place to pick up supplies. When she put her hand on the doorframe a chill went through her.

Another witch had been there less than a day earlier. Her stomach twisted hard and she realized that despite everything that had happened, she had still been hoping that somehow it had nothing to do with Salem.

She swallowed the bile in her throat and pressed her hand more firmly against the wood, imprinting her energy more strongly than at the museum. Finished, she left quickly.

She walked past a few more doors and then stopped suddenly at an all-black one. She looked up at the sign overhead.
MUSEUM OF THE OCCULT
. Anthony’s museum. There was a crescent moon with a candle sitting on it. There were half a dozen witch museums in town, along
with a pirate museum, a shipping museum, and a Nathaniel Hawthorne museum. There was something different about this one, though. She put her hand on the wall away from the door and closed her eyes. Instead of planting her energy, she sought to read the energy that was already part of the place. When she was a child, she had learned to sense power even before she learned to use it to leave an impression.

Power, real power, thrummed through the wood and into her fingers, faint but unmistakable. She opened her eyes, pulled the door open, and walked inside. The door shut behind her and she looked around the darkened interior. Dozens of mannequins in old-fashioned dress reenacted various scenes from the witch trials. Nothing original there.

But something called to her and she allowed herself to drift farther into the building. There were no other customers there that early. The tourists were still lingering over their breakfasts and locals weren’t likely to come to the place. Eventually the older displays gave way to objects from the town’s more recent history.

And then she found what she was looking for. In a glass case against the back wall was a collection of newspaper clippings and artifacts. A sign in the middle of the display read:
UNCOVERING THE TRUTH ABOUT MODERN WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM
.

Her gaze fell on a ceremonial goblet with faces carved all around it, and her heart stopped for a moment. From it her eyes flew to a black robe, torn and stained with what she knew to be blood. A wicked-looking athame was displayed beneath a picture of a woman she knew well. It was Abigail, the high priestess of her coven. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she tried to look away. But though the woman had been dead for years, it
seemed that even the photograph of her was enough to strike terror into Samantha. It was as though Abigail’s eyes were looking straight through her, judging her, cursing her for having turned her back on who she was.

Samantha wrenched her gaze free and next it fell on pictures of two different dead women and a newspaper article recounting the massacre of almost two dozen people.

The room felt like it was tilting and she grabbed the edge of the case to steady herself. At her touch the goblet inside the case began to glow. She yanked her hand away and turned to leave.

A figure blocked her path. Without thinking, she lifted her left hand, prepared to repel him. Just in time she recognized Anthony.

“I’m glad you came,” he said with a smile. “Although frankly I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” His eyes held open curiosity in them.

She shook herself and stepped away from the case, hoping to lessen her influence on it and its effect on her.

“Well, you know, how could I resist?” she asked. “You made it sound fascinating.”

“I see you have a talent for spotting the most important details,” he said, glancing behind her.

“What?”

“The display you were looking at. It’s the one that’s the most important, the one that really means something.”

“Oh, and why is that?”

He cocked his head and stared at her for a moment, studying her. Then he nodded to himself as though he had come to some sort of decision. “You see that woman, the one with the long brown hair?”

She didn’t want to look, but he expected her to. She
glanced over her shoulder. The woman in question looked out from the photo, her smile wistful, her eyes gentle.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you know who she was?”

She trembled. She did, but he could never know that. She didn’t know her name or really anything about her. She only knew how she had died.

“Her name was Laura Charles. She was my mother.”

She turned to look at him, her heart feeling like someone was squeezing it.

“When I was a kid she was… murdered.” He took a deep breath. “By witches. That’s why I got a little touchy in the restaurant when you mentioned meeting a witch.”

“I am so sorry,” she said, tears stinging her eyes.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching out and brushing her cheek with his finger.

His touch sent electricity through her, but not like any other jolt she had ever felt. She had felt power, fear, darkness, but never this. There was some sort of connection.

He looked at her in surprise and she could tell he had felt it too.

“Do I know you?” he asked at last.

She shook her head.

“We’re going to have to change that.”

And something sparked between them. She started to reach out to him and then caught herself. She had work to do, dark and dangerous work, and for both their sakes he needed to stay away.