The Thirteenth Sacrifice (16 page)

“I’m sorry. I have to go,” she said, trying to force herself to smile and failing miserably.

She turned and left him standing there. When she left the building she was careful not to leave her imprint on
it. The last thing she needed was to lead the witches to Anthony… or to the deadly artifacts he was unwittingly displaying.

On the street she took a deep breath to help clear her mind. She had to focus on her mission. She could do nothing for Anthony’s mother, but there were people out there whose lives were in danger as long as the coven was allowed to operate.

She walked up the street, marking three more places, each with more energy than the one before. She was leaving a magical trail of bread crumbs for her targets to follow.

Finally she arrived at the Witchery, a restaurant and microbrewery. She walked inside. The startled employee looked up at her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re not open for another hour.”

“It’s all right,” Samantha said, allowing her voice to drop, willing her words to wash away any resistance. “I require the use of your private dining room in the back.”

The man nodded slowly, as if that were a completely natural request. “Will you require a menu?”

“No, but in thirty minutes bring four pints for me and my friends.”

He went back to his work while she walked past him.

In the back room she chose a table with a commanding view of the room. She sat with her back to the wall, with clear views of the door and windows. Half an hour later the waiter brought her four pints. “Witch’s Brew,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. “My friends will be along soon. We don’t wish to be disturbed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a quick bow before leaving.

Samantha felt a ripple in the air a minute later. Within
moments three women appeared in the doorway, eyes wide, faces angry and wary at the same time. Power rolled off each of them, causing slight ripples in the air and energy currents in the room.

“Ladies,” Samantha said, gesturing to the table. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

The three witches she had summoned, the three she had
chosen
, stood gaping at her. She smirked. So much of magic was symbolic, subject to interpretation. Every once in a while, though, it was incredibly literal. Each woman was wearing a shirt corresponding to the candle color Samantha had given them. She’d exerted more influence than even she had anticipated. And knowing that, she felt her own anxieties about the meeting ease.

To the one in the dark blue shirt, the impulsive one, she said, “Why don’t you sit and have a drink? You look like you could use one.”

The woman, who was barely more than a girl, took a step forward, but wasn’t yet entirely convinced.

Samantha shifted her eyes to the one wearing purple, the one who craved power. She was probably closer to her own age. “That is, if it’s okay with your leader here.”

“Autumn’s not our leader,” the oldest of the three, the one in the brown poet shirt, squeaked.

“Shut up, Karen!” Autumn said, flushing.

“No? My mistake, then,” Samantha said, forcing a detached, somewhat disinterested note into her voice.

It was just the right tone. The three surged forward and, one by one, took a seat.

The impulsive one reached for the glass.

“Jace, what if it’s poisoned?” Karen warned.

Jace looked uncertain for a moment. Samantha smiled and lifted her own glass, taking a deep gulp of the golden brew. It tasted awful, but then beer wasn’t her thing. It suited the environment, though, and the atmosphere she had taken pains to create.

She set her glass down. “Ladies, not afraid of a little witch’s brew, are we?” she asked, throwing down the gauntlet.

Jace grabbed her glass and downed half her beer before pounding it back on the table, eyes wide as she realized that she might have just made a huge mistake.

“Where’s the fun in poisoning someone?” Samantha asked, easing her hand to her back and grasping the hilt of her athame. “I mean, there’s only one way to really kill someone. Plunge your blade into their heart and feel it stop beating.” She yanked the athame free and lifted it high before plunging it into the heart of the table.

All three women jumped backward, lifting their hands in protective gestures, ready to repulse her with waves of energy if she should come after them.

They weren’t raised as witches. They’d have gone on the offensive, not reacted protectively.
Now she knew the three were relatively new to the black arts.

“Besides,” Samantha said, smiling broadly, like a predator about to devour its prey, “we’ve all got too much to talk about for anyone to worry about killing just yet.”

The three moved back slowly, eyeing her weapon.

“You shouldn’t abuse your athame like that,” Karen squeaked.

Spoken like a Wiccan and not a witch. Karen had been a Wiccan. What had brought her over to the dark side? If she was Wiccan that explained why she had the
most doubts about the rightness of what she was participating in. Wiccans vowed to harm none and believed that whatever they put into the world would come back to them threefold. There had to be a lot weighing on her conscience. And a compelling reason why she was doing her best to ignore it. It was possible, maybe even likely, that she wasn’t aware of the coven’s true plans. Samantha had a hard time picturing her as a killer.

“You worry too much,” Jace said, downing more of her beer.

And you don’t worry enough,
Samantha thought. Jace had low self-esteem, little self-identity, and even less self-control. It made her a slave to her impulses. And the impulses of those around her.

Samantha turned to Autumn, who was studying her even as she was studying them. The girl was smart enough to realize that Samantha was more powerful. She was ambitious enough to want to find a way to use that to her advantage. “So, we found you,” Autumn said. “Since you hit town you haven’t exactly been… discreet. Why are you here?”

Samantha looked at each of them in turn. “To take charge of my coven.”

They all stared back at her in surprise and then at one another.

“What do you mean?” Autumn asked at last.

Samantha stopped smiling and let the mask of jocular civility slip, revealing all that she was underneath. She let everything she had ever done shine in her eyes. She could feel the monster that she had been, climbing out of the deep dark hole she’d kept her in for so long. It sickened her, but it terrified them.

“Did you honestly think that a coven could practice here and I wouldn’t know? Did you think you could use
that house and I wouldn’t hear? Did you believe that you could dare to use my symbol and I wouldn’t feel it?” And the rage that echoed in her voice paled in comparison to that which she felt in her heart.

They stared at her, stunned and speechless. She pulled the edge of her shirt down so they could see the tattoo. They all shrank back with gasps. Karen turned her head away, as if the sight pained her. They knew the symbol, but Samantha was certain none of them was using it herself.

“So, why am I here?
You summoned me
. And now you have to face the consequences of that action. I’m here either to kill you all… or to lead you.”

They stared at her, dumbfounded. After a minute they began to look at one another. She had made an impact for sure. She took another sip of her brew while she waited for them to say something.

“We already have a leader,” Karen squeaked at last.

“Shut up!” Autumn snapped.

She looked at Samantha, who smiled at her. Autumn was weighing her options, trying to decide what would get her power and what would get her killed. She hadn’t yet realized that she was in a no-win scenario.

“You’ll have to meet with our elders,” Autumn said at last.

“Fine. You can find me here tomorrow at the same time.”

Samantha stood, yanked her athame from the table, and put it back in her waistband. “And tomorrow the beer’s on you.”

Samantha swaggered out. When she got to the sidewalk, her knees started to buckle and she braced herself for a moment against the wall. She could feel her blade against the skin of her back and she felt like she was going
to be sick. Had the three witches at any point in the conversation decided to pool their power, she would have been no match for them and would have been pushed into a corner where she either had to kill or be killed.

I don’t want to kill anyone with magic,
she thought, shivering.

She forced herself to straighten up and walk. She wanted to conceal herself and then follow them in hopes that they would lead her to the others. She didn’t know if that was what they would do or if they would simply make a couple of phone calls. Without knowing more about the way the group functioned, she couldn’t risk it. If she was caught following them, her chances of infiltrating the coven would be pretty much shot. Better to make them come to her; assume the high ground and fortify it.

Politics had been as much a part of the coven she’d grown up in as magic had. She remembered her mother taking five hours to dress for a meeting with their high priestess. She’d agonized over everything in her wardrobe, looking for something that showed respect but not weakness.

The high priestess had been Abigail, a woman with flaming red hair and eyes blacker than night. She’d been old, but not old enough to be weak. She’d been killed in the massacre along with everyone else. One of Samantha’s few memories from that night was seeing the witch’s face, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, as she fell backward.

She still had nightmares about Abigail and would wake screaming. The woman had perfected a masterful use of terror.

And now someone else was following in her footsteps,
leading a coven that was doing unspeakable evil. Who were they trying to resurrect and for what purpose? She was frustrated because every minute that ticked by meant one minute less to save the next victim. She’d never been patient, never been a fan of waiting, but that was all that was left to her now.

She put the walking mall behind her and headed toward the harbor. She wasn’t ready to go back to her hotel room just yet. She didn’t think she’d be able to stay cooped up within those four walls for the hours ahead.

She breathed deeply of the salty air as she reached the waterfront. She turned down the street and moments later walked past the house that had inspired Hawthorne to write
The House of the Seven Gables
. The mansion had always fascinated and frightened her as a child. It was rumored to be haunted and she believed it. Why wouldn’t she? Her entire life was haunted by specters of her past.

As she walked, the air swirled around her, eddies of energy moving as she passed through. She had worked for years to ignore them and had come close to succeeding. But the energies were always there, just as her powers were. When she was a child she had asked her mother why some, like the two of them, were gifted with abilities that others did not have.

Her mother had laughed the question away, telling her that they were simply favored, “blessed.” As she grew older and came to see the evil that so many had done with their power, she realized that it was no blessing but a curse.

She hated feeling the things she did, seeing what others could not, and hearing what others missed. Her father had said more than once that it helped to make her a great cop. She knew that what it made her was a freak.
And with every spell she was performing she could feel herself sliding back into the hell she had once lived in.

She kept walking, trying to calm herself and center her thoughts for the task at hand. It would be difficult to convince the leaders of the coven to accept her quickly, but she had to pull it off. Only from inside would she be able to know enough about them to stop them.

A sudden wave of sorrow hit her broadside and she gasped at the feelings of pain, fear, and anger that accompanied it. She turned and saw a cemetery. Ancient monuments stood, proudly reaching for the heaven that their cherished dead had dreamed of as mortals.

The cemetery was old and Samantha knew that her ancestors were buried there.
Including my mother,
she realized.

As if compelled, she walked through the open gate. She had never known her father, not even anecdotally, since her mother wouldn’t talk about him at all. Samantha didn’t even know his first name. Castor was her mother’s last name. He could be anywhere, anyone, for all she knew. He could even be one of the corpses rotting in the ground beneath her feet. She had spent hours as a child wondering about him, who he was, what he was like. As she grew older she even daydreamed that he would come and take her away, rescue her from the coven and all the things she was being asked to do. She hadn’t thought much about him since she had left that life behind. Now she thought of the photograph she had seen, wondered if it was him.

She wandered through the cemetery, picking her way around graves, until she came to the mausoleum that housed seven generations of her family. Someone had added her mother’s name to the door when they’d interred her. It hadn’t been Samantha—she hadn’t even
attended the funeral. She reached out a hand and touched the name. Her skin tingled and she pulled her hand away quickly. Even in death her family was still practicing its magic.

All the better to haunt me with.

She turned aside, preparing to leave, but something stopped her. There was power in the cemetery, more power than there should have been. She followed the feeling, twisting farther into the depths of the graveyard. She passed ancient monuments mixed with new. Rich or poor, colonist or modernist, everyone in Salem eventually died.

At last her steps brought her to a grave marker only slightly weathered. A fresh bouquet of flowers was propped against the stone. She bent down to read it and her blood ran cold. It was Abigail’s grave. She felt suddenly dizzy and pitched forward. She caught herself with a hand on the grave marker. The stone felt hot to the touch and suddenly the air around her was filled with the sound of laughter, hard and cruel and menacing. Samantha gasped and jerked back, but something tripped her and she crashed to the ground on top of the grave.