lot in class. He wouldn’t have a lot of friends, maybe one or two people that he would spend time with, girls and boys like him. He may be religious, or actively keep himself isolated from the rest of the students. Watchers. We’re looking for the watchers.”
Taylor raised an eyebrow at him. That made sense.
Poston shook his head. Taylor was reminded of one of Christopher Robin’s friends, Eeyore. “You’ve just described half the student body. The other half are the jocks, into sports and girls,” he said.
“What about the Goths?” Woodall asked. “I heard that there was a pentagram at each crime scene. That might fit.”
“A pentacle,” McKenzie corrected. “Pentagrams are a geometrical symbol, just a simple star. Pentacles are stars within a circle. Do you have any students who seem to be into the occult?”
“Well, sure. The Goths celebrate their differences, cover their notebooks in strange drawings, write bleak poetry. They’re hassled from time to time, but they manage to keep to themselves. We’ve got a strict policy against the makeup-we don’t want to encourage them to be that different from their peers. But they do congregate together, take some of the same classes.”
“Who’s in the Goth clique?” Taylor asked. “And do any of them show up in these files you pulled for us today?”
Woodall flipped through the pages, as if refreshing her memory, though Taylor got the sense she knew them backward and forward. “Strangely enough, none of them. They’re all so sad, but not what we deem threatening. We try to get them to open up, but they hang back, don’t want to be a part of things.”
“What about a boy who may be dealing drugs to the upperclassmen, specifically to the popular crowd. He’s been described as short with blond hair, possibly named after a comic book character, like Thor.”
“Thor?” Woodall looked puzzled for a minute. “Could you mean Thorn? I’ve heard that name. But I can’t remember from where. Ralph, do you know?”
“I thought it was a code word for getting out of class. Like a thorn in my side.”
Woodall openly rolled her eyes this time. “No, I distinctly remember a conversation I heard last week about a boy named Thorn. It was two of the seniors…well, my goodness, it was Jerrold King and Brandon Scott. They were having a fight, actually. I stepped in before the fists began to fly. But for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what they were so upset about.”
“Any idea who might know?”
Woodall bit her lip. “You can ask their friends, see if they know. But after I broke it up, they scattered, and I didn’t give it another thought. Boys will be boys.”
Taylor made a note to ask around about the fight. Too much of a coincidence for her taste.
“We’d like to get a list of the kids you’d term Goth,” McKenzie said.
“Certainly. I’ll pull it together for you.”
“Thank you. Did any of the students who were killed have any problems with their classmates? More fights between them, things like that? And are you aware of drugs on campus?”
“We’re allowed to do random locker searches, and we find all kinds of things. There’s always some drugs- marijuana, Ecstasy and the like.”
Taylor leaned forward in her chair. “Can you remember whose locker had Ecstasy in it most recently?”
Woodall went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a manila folder. She flipped it open and perused, taking her time about it. Taylor was getting fidgety, felt like they weren’t getting anywhere, until Woodall turned with a smile.
“We expelled a boy just last week. He had pills. I was surprised-he’s a lovely young man. Claimed they were his mother’s and had gotten into his backpack by accident. Thinking about it, he’s one of the quiet ones, like you said.”
“What’s his name?” Taylor asked.
Woodall closed the file. “Juri Edvin.”
Twenty
Nashville All Saints’ Day 10:00 a.m.
R aven and Fane had followed Ember, trying to stop her, but she’d been too quick for them. They couldn’t go to her house; Raven didn’t want to insert himself into the crime scene. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew if they showed up-their faces pale, their hair jet-black-the people running the investigation would see them and put it all together.
They’d driven out of downtown in silence. Maybe he could buy a baseball cap and some chinos, try to get in that way. He discarded that thought. No matter what he tried to do to look like everyone else, he was always apart, always separate. They’d pick him out as an imposter in a heartbeat. He had the shadows of the night etched across his face, as permanent as a tattoo.
They spent the rest of the night together, just the two of them. They slept late, then he dropped Fane at her house with a soulful kiss. Back home again, his house was silent, waiting. He took some milk from the fridge and went to his room.
What to do about Ember?
He went to his small altar, the one in the corner on the floor, the one he used for his darkest path work. The small table held a chalice, his athame and a lidless black box. His implements, his tools. They were waiting for him, their energy rising out of the box in waves.
These were his portable paraphernalia, something he usually carried in his car for times of extreme unction. He’d brought them last night, to the houses of his enemies, for strength. A feather for air, a piece of obsidian for earth, a match for fire and a shell for water, each imbued with spells conducted in the moonlight to give them power and anchor them to him. He didn’t need fancy things, didn’t need to be surrounded by opulence. He worshipped the earth, and his tools represented that.
He arranged the items in their appropriate spots on the altar-North, South, East and West-lit a candle scented with jasmine and ylang-ylang, then sat on the floor facing the flame, and watched. He ignored the phone when it rang, knowing it was Fane. He needed peace and quiet. Oh, how he wished it were dark out. He could concentrate so much better when there wasn’t sun and light.
He relaxed into deep contemplation, meditating on the correct path, until the flame of the candle finally guttered out in the melted wax.
He came back to himself then, knew what he needed to do. He opened his Book of Shadows, searching for the right spell to counterbalance Ember’s anger, to draw her back to them.
He found the spell. He went back to his altar, took up the poppet he’d designed two weeks earlier, just in case. As much as he hated to do it, he was going to have to punish Ember. She’d see the path after she suffered. He thought as he worked, molding the wax into a more feminine shape.
The pentacles were a masterful stroke. The police would be off chasing their tails, looking for suspects who fit their stupid profiles, combing the bushes and dark churches for Satanists and such. Satanists. What a joke. They had no power in his world-Satan didn’t exist. Dark angels, purveyors of evil, certainly, but with the right spell, the right amount of control and power from Elysium and the netherworld, they too could be cowed into work.
He sent a quick mental thank you to Azr?l, felt his skin grow hot as the thought coalesced. Azr?l was with him, inside him now. He’d opened his soul to the dark angel, allowed him passage into the deepest recesses of his mind. He was becoming more powerful. Shedding the blood of the nonbelievers gave him a new gravitas. He wondered for a moment just how strong he was going to become, then set the poppet down. It was finished, and at midnight he’d go to the graveyard, speak the words that would finish Ember’s independent streak and secure her back to his side.
Raven was counting on the ignorance of the lay community to assure confusion, to buy himself time. He just needed another couple of days to get the rest of his plan in place. Thorn had dropped off the face of the earth; he assumed Ember had been in contact with him and was trying to draw them apart. Ember herself had turned off her phone, wasn’t responding. He felt the bits of his life, his world, unraveling, but assuaged himself with the knowledge of what he had left to do. He was almighty, and he had Fane. Fane would never leave his side, would never betray
