I roll up the bio assignment and tap it in my hand.
“Maybe we can work at the library,” I say to Carmel, and she shoulders her bag and smiles.
“Take one more cookie for the road, dear,” Mom says. We both take one, Carmel a bit hesitantly, and head for the door.
“You don’t have to eat it,” I say to Carmel once we’re on the porch. “Mom’s anise cookies are definitely an acquired taste.”
Carmel laughs. “I had one in there and almost couldn’t do it. They’re like dusty black jellybeans.”
I smile. “Don’t tell my mom that. She invented the recipe herself. She’s totally proud of them. They’re supposed to bring you luck or something.”
“Maybe I should eat it then.” She looks down at it for a long minute, then lifts her eyes and stares intently at my cheek. I know there’s a long streak of black bruise across the bone. “You went back to that house without us.”
“Carmel.”
“Are you crazy? You could have been killed!”
“And if we had all gone, we would all have been killed. Listen, just stick with Thomas and his grandfather. They’ll figure something out. Keep your cool.”
There’s a definite chill on the wind, an early taste of fall, twisting through my hair with ice-water fingers. As I stare up the street, I see Thomas’s Tempo puttering toward us, complete with replacement door and a Willy Wonka bumper sticker. The kid rides in style, and it makes me grin.
“Can I meet you at the library in an hour or so?” I ask Carmel.
She follows my gaze and sees Thomas coming closer.
“Absolutely not. I want to know what’s going on. If you think for a minute that I believed any of that nonsense Morfran and Thomas were trying to tell us last night … I’m not stupid, Cas. I know a diversion when I see one.”
“I know you’re not stupid, Carmel. And if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll stay out of this and meet me at the library in an hour.” I go down the porch steps and walk down my driveway, making a little rolling gesture with my fingers so Thomas won’t pull in. He gets it and slows down just enough for me to open the door and vault inside. Then we drive away, leaving Carmel staring after us.
“What was Carmel doing at your place?” he asks. There’s more than just a little jealousy there.
“I wanted a backrub and then we made out for about an hour,” I say, and then cuff him in the shoulder. “Thomas. Come on. She was dropping off my bio assignment. We’ll meet her at the library after we talk to your granddad. Now tell me what happened with the boys last night.”
“She really likes you, you know.”
“Yeah, well, you like her better,” I say. “So what happened?” He’s trying to believe me, that I’m not interested in Carmel and that I’m enough of a friend to him to respect his feelings for her. Oddly enough, both of these things are true.
Finally, he sighs. “We led them on a royal goose chase, just like you said. It was a blast. We actually had them convinced that if they hung sacks of sulfur above their beds, she wouldn’t be able to attack them in their sleep.”
“Jesus. Don’t make it too unrealistic. We need to keep them busy.”
“Don’t worry. Morfran puts on a good show. He conjured blue flame and did a fake trance and everything. Told them he would work on a banishing spell, but it would take the light of the next full moon to finish it. Think that’ll be enough time?”
Normally I’d say yes. After all, it’s not a matter of locating Anna. I know just where she is.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. “I went back last night and she kicked my ass all around the room.”
“So what’re you going to do?”
“I spoke to a friend of my dad’s. He said we need to figure out what’s giving her all this extra strength. Know any witches?”
He squints at me. “Isn’t your mom one?”
“Know any
He squirms around a bit and then shrugs. “Well, me, I guess. I’m not really that good, but I can cast barriers and make the elements work for me and stuff. Morfran is, but he doesn’t practice much anymore.” He makes a left turn and pulls up outside of the antique shop. Through the window I can see the grizzled black dog, its nose up against the glass and its tail thumping against the ground.
We go inside and find Morfran standing behind the counter pricing a new ring, something handsome and vintage with a large black stone.
“Know anything about spell-craft and exorcism?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says without looking up from his work. His black dog has finished welcoming Thomas and moves to rest heavily against his thigh. “This place was haunted as shit when I bought it. Sometimes still is. Things come in with their owners still attached, if you know what I mean.”
I look around the shop. Of course. Antique stores must almost always have a wraith or two swirling around. My eyes fall on a long oval mirror set onto the back of an oak dresser. How many faces have stared into it? How many dead reflections wait there and whisper to each other in the dark?
“Can you get me some supplies?” I ask.
“What sort?”
“I need chicken feet, a circle of consecrated stones, a banishing pentagram, and some kind of divination thingy.”
He gives me the stink eye. “Divination thingy? Sounds pretty technical.”
“I don’t have the details yet, okay? Can you get them or not?”
Morfran shrugs. “I can send Thomas down to Superior with a bag. Pull thirteen stones from the lake. They don’t come more consecrated than that. The chicken feet I’ll have to order in, and the divination thingy, well, I’m betting that you want a mirror of some kind, or possibly a scrying bowl.”
“A scrying bowl sees the future,” Thomas says. “What would he want with that?”
“A scrying bowl sees whatever you want it to see,” Morfran corrects him. “As for the banishing pentagram, I think it might be overkill. Burn some protective incense, or some herbs. That should be plenty.”
“You do know what we’re dealing with here, don’t you?” I ask. “She’s not just a ghost. She’s a hurricane. Overkill is fine by me.”
“Listen, kid. What you’re talking about is nothing more than a trumped-up seance. Summon the ghost and bind it in the circle of stones. Use the scrying bowl to get your answers. Am I right?”
I nod. He makes it sound so easy. But for someone who doesn’t do spells and spent the last night being tossed like a rubber ball, it’s going to be damn near impossible.
“I’ve got a friend in London doing the specifics. I’ll have the spell in a few days. I might need a few more supplies, depending.”
Morfran shrugs. “Best time to do a binding spell is during the waning moon anyway,” he says. “That gives you a week and a half. Plenty of time.” He squints at me and looks a whole lot like his grandson. “She’s getting the better of you, isn’t she?”
“Not for long.”
The public library isn’t all that impressive to look at, though I suppose I’ve been spoiled growing up with my dad and his friends’ collections of dusty tomes. It does, however, have a pretty decent local history collection, which is what’s really important. Since I’ve got to find Carmel and settle this whole bio assignment business, I put Thomas on the computer, searching through the online database for any record of Anna and her murder.
I find Carmel waiting at a table back behind the stacks.
“What’s Thomas doing here?” she asks as I sit down.
“Researching a paper.” I shrug. “So what’s the bio assignment about?”
She smirks at me. “Taxonomic classification.”
“Gross. And boring.”
“We have to make a chart that goes from phylum to species. We got hermit crabs and octopus.” She furrows her brow. “What’s the plural for octopus? Is it ‘octopuses’?”