codeine, PMA, MDMA and Valium in their systems, disguised in the small, benign tablet of Ecstasy that Juri Edvin had sold them.
Taylor couldn’t stand it anymore. She flipped the television off. She wished Baldwin was with her, imagined him encircling her with his arms. The blank of darkness enveloped her, and she fell asleep.
Thirty
Midnight
A riadne glanced at the police car parked in front of her house and sighed. At least they’d let her come home. For a moment there she thought the lieutenant was going to arrest her and toss her in a cell overnight. Instead, she’d been escorted home and instructed not to leave until summoned. That was fine-she had plenty of work to do.
She shut off the lights in the house and prepared herself, taking a long, cleansing bath, rubbing herself with fragrant herbs, allowing her mind to be open and accepting. Once the ritual bath was complete, she went to her drawing room. She built a fire, lit the candles, opened her Book of Shadows and got down on her knees in front of her altar.
“Be true to me, as I am to you. Honor that which I have created, as I honor you. Goddess, hear my prayers. With harm to none, so shall it be.”
She stopped for a moment, let the impact of the words charge through her body. Her deity, the Goddess of the Moon, Diana, was insistent, and she answered. The pulsing energy filled Ariadne, making her gasp.
She’d been chosen early in her practice, when Diana revealed herself during a divination spell. Once Ariadne knew her path, she became stronger. Strong enough to rise to the position of High Priestess of her coven, before she left.
Sole practice worked better for her. She loved to teach the Old Ways, so she maintained a blog, with thousands of daily followers, and kept herself out of the politics that governed their kind.
But the matters of the past two days were too important for her to ignore. While the rest of her followers gossiped and prayed, she felt compelled to help.
Truth be told, the lieutenant fascinated her. She had no idea just how dominant she really was. If Ariadne could only spend more time with the woman, alleviate her skepticism. But no. Taylor Jackson was an empirical being, solid to the core with belief and justice. Even with proof of the other-world, her mind would find a rational response.
Ariadne lit a candle, stared into the flickering flame, conjured a mental picture of Taylor Jackson. The eyes were what stood out. Athena’s eyes, the gray of a stormy afternoon, clouds roiling in the sky. The right darker than the left, the variation even more pronounced when she’d gotten angry. Her nose, slightly off, and that wide, mobile mouth. There was power, hidden behind the fringe of dark lashes. Power that the woman wasn’t aware she possessed. She was fair without being judgmental, skeptical but willing to accept help. So rare to find in any person, much less a cop.
Ariadne’s cat slid sinuously around her legs, drawn to the energy she was putting out. She picked her up, cuddled her face for a few moments, then blew out the candle. She’d invited her subconscious to bed, would let her dreams tell her what she needed to know. She’d felt dread this afternoon, strong and vivid, and was afraid of the consequences.
Still, she must try.
She must.
Thirty-One
Midnight
R aven stood in the cemetery, Fane at his side. They’d drawn the circle, called the corners, done their spell. They had bound Ember, both from saying anything about their actions, and from leaving. It was a very powerful spell-Raven felt sure Ember would be at his house when they returned.
Raven was worried about Thorn. No word from him, and he was the lynchpin. They’d bound Thorn to them, as well.
Just to be extra safe, they’d buried their witches’ bottle in their sacred circle. They’d originally made it a year earlier, and Raven had stored it on the shelf in his closet. Full of dark essences, the special herbs-chamomile and sage, belladonna and mandrake, peppercorns and rosemary-for protection and balance; shavings of their favorite Cruxshadows CD; crushed eggshells and the discarded claw from Fane’s cat; tacks and nails, razors, the shards of a broken plate. Once the pieces were in place, they’d filled it to the brim with first-morning urine collected from both of them. Raven added in his semen, then they’d cut their arms and dribbled their blood into the bottle. Sealed tight with black wax and then electrical tape, it was an incredibly powerful deterrent of negative energy.
They’d been forced to make the bottle after one of their classmates had beaten Raven up. That threat was neutralized now, soon to be rotting in the earth, but it seemed sensible to charge the bottle and bury it, deep into the earth, far away from their daily lives, to draw any negative forces away from them.
Wiping sweat from her brow, Fane asked, “What are we going to do if it doesn’t work?”
Raven turned to her, drank in the beauty of her face, shining in a sliver of moonlight.
“That’s easy, my love. We’ll kill them.”
Thirty-Two
Nashville November 2 7:00 a.m.
T aylor woke with the sun, her mind already deep into her case. She’d dreamed of the dead last night, the ghosts of the children sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her.
Eight dead. How would a troubled teenage boy mastermind such a crime? Her gut told her he hadn’t, that there was someone else, someone older, more devious, who was the guiding hand behind this. The vampire king, Barent? The so-called witch, Ariadne?
She wondered when the funerals would begin.
That was enough to drive her out of the bed. She showered, dressed in her most comfortable pair of Tony Lamas and Levi’s, pulled on a black turtleneck against the chill. She wound her wet hair in a bun, taking care that all the strands were caught back from her face. The nightmare washed from her body, she went downstairs to make some tea.
She sipped the fragrant Earl Grey, staring out into the backyard. It was raining; the soft pattering on the leaves of the river birch made her want to go right back upstairs and get into the bed. She poured some cereal in a bowl and ate it without tasting, peeled a banana, knowing she’d need energy to get through the day.
She had just attached her gun and badge to her belt when the phone rang.
Baldwin.
She answered with a smile, just happy for a chance to hear his voice.
He caught her up on his hearing in the most general of terms. She could tell there was something bothering him.
She filled him in on the killings in Nashville, expecting him to be more interested. She finally said, “Hey, what’s wrong? You are a million miles away.”
“No, I’m right here. I just have to tell you something. I got a call from North Carolina a few minutes ago.”
Fitz. She felt the dread course through her. She missed him so much. Not having Fitz around was like having a piece of herself missing. He’d always been the grounding force in her cases, the sounding board. He kept her
