shelf, behind the dog food bin.”
Again, I was at a loss as to where exactly this was heading, but at least it was moving forward. I sat my coffee cup on the table then turned and stepped over to the pantry. I swung the tall door open and knelt down in front of the wooden cabinet. I inspected the contents but at first glance saw nothing unusual.
“What am I looking for?” I asked aloud.
“You’ll know it when you find it,” she replied.
“Behind the dog food bin you said?” I repeated her earlier instruction.
“Yes” came her clipped reply. “On the bottom.”
I reached in and pulled a plastic kitchen organizer full of cling wrap and sandwich bags off the top of the clear food bin and set it aside on the floor. Leaning inward and tilting my head away from the next shelf up, I thrust my arm back into the recesses of the cabinet and began groping around. It didn’t take long for my hand to brush against something angular that was wedged in behind the dog food container. It felt roughly like a rectangle as I ran my fingers around in search of a place to grab hold.
Using my free hand, I slid the bin slightly forward then grasped the object and twisted it upward. When I had finally worked it around the other stored items and managed to extricate it from the cabinet, I found myself kneeling on the floor with a shoebox in my hand.
I wouldn’t have given the item a passing thought had it not been for the fact that it was purposely hidden. However, that was far from the only reason for suspicion. What immediately caught my eye, as well as my breath, was the length of bright red ribbon tied securely about its girth.
“Gods, Felicity,” I murmured as I stood. “You didn’t…”
“What did you expect me to do, Row?” she asked, blurting the words, all of which were underscored by a sharply defensive tone. “I’ve watched you go through too much these past few years. Then when I called home yesterday, and you said it was happening again… I couldn’t just stand by and watch. Not again. Not this time.”
“You did this yesterday?” I asked, surprise in my voice.
“Yes. When I got home and you weren’t here,” she said as she nodded. “But I didn’t expect it to work as quickly as all that, then.”
“Yeah, well we all know you’re a hell of a Witch. Guess this just proves it.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Cally finally drummed up the courage to ask.
“It’s some kind of a binding,” RJ interjected before I could answer.
I glanced over at her and nodded. “Yeah. I’m afraid so. And just like any other binding done where strong emotions are involved, it backfired.” I leveled my gaze back on my wife as I dropped the box onto the table in front of her. “Unless it was your plan all along to bind this crap to yourself.”
“Of course not.” She shook her head at me quickly and then screwed her face into a scowl as if I had just made the stupidest comment she’d ever heard. “It was only supposed to bind you from the ethereal. It wasn’t supposed to bind anything to anyone.”
“Well, let me ask you this: If you wanted this to all go away, then why didn’t you just do a banishing instead? That would seem more appropriate.”
“That was my original plan after we got off the phone,” she answered. “But then the thing happened with Brittany Larson, and I started thinking… And, I couldn’t be sure… And, if I had done a banishing, that could be far more permanent, and…” She kept halting, searching for words to explain. Finally, she gave up trying and simply said, “I just didn’t want to close any doors, that’s all.”
“Even so, Felicity, of all people you know better than this,” I admonished.
“Don’t lecture me, Rowan Linden Gant,” she returned. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done yourself and you know it.”
“That’s not the point,” I told her.
“It is as far as I’m concerned,” she countered. “Do you think you’re the only one who’s allowed to do the protecting?”
She had me there. I shook my head and glanced around the room in resignation. “I never said that. But, to be honest, right now I don’t want to argue about this. I know why you did it and I appreciate it, really I do. But,” I reached out and pushed the shoebox closer to her, “undo it.”
“What if I say no?” she contended.
I sighed. “You know as well as I do that there are ways to get around bindings, especially now that I know about it.”
She didn’t reply. She knew I was correct.
I pressed forward. “Look, we’re both just going to be wasting our energies with this, and that won’t do anyone any good. Undo the binding, and let’s get back to normal.”
She let out a ‘hmph’ then told me, “In case you haven’t noticed, Rowan, our lives haven’t been normal for a few years now.”
“All right then, status quo or whatever you want to call it, Felicity. Just break the spell. Please?”
She stared back at me in silence for a moment then turned her head slightly to the side and looked past me.
“Cally,” she said with quiet resignation. “There are some scissors on the altar shelf in the living room. Could you bring them to me and a book of matches please?”
I gave my wife a thin smile and then said, “Thank you. I’ll go call Constance now.”
“Mandalay.” The federal agent’s businesslike voice issued from the earpiece on the telephone amid a rumble of indistinguishable background noises.
I had parked myself in the bedroom so that I wouldn’t disturb the magickal workings in the kitchen. On the way through the house, I had taken notice that Ben had finally slumped over to the side and was now snoring at a somewhat lower volume.
Cally had been taking pity on the unconscious cop and was covering him with an afghan at about the time I was making the turn into the hallway.
“Hey Constance, it’s Rowan,” I replied, as I finished picking up some of the items the cats had scattered. I piled them back on the nightstand before taking a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Oh, hi Rowan.” Her voice brightened a notch but remained all business. “I’m just a little busy at the moment…”
“I know, Ben told me you were working the Larson abduction,” I interjected before she could rush me off the line. “I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t important. Can you talk?”
There was a brief pause then she replied, “Hold on a second.”
I heard shuffling noises, some voices- hers included- and then footsteps. A handful of moments and a few more unidentifiable sounds later, the background noise dropped noticeably.
“I’m back” her voice came again, and then she barreled straight into questions of her own. “So have you talked to Storm recently? He missed a seven-thirty briefing and that’s not like him. I’ve been trying to call him all evening, but I keep getting a message that his phone is turned off and no one picked up at his house either.”
I hesitated for a moment before answering. I guess I’d been the lucky one when I got hold of Allison. “Actually, he’s passed out on my couch.”
“Passed out?”
“Long story.”
“Is that why you called?”
“I wish it were,” I replied.
“Okay, so what’s up?”
“Nothing good I’m afraid.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your kidnapping just became a homicide,” I offered succinctly.
“How do you…” she started. “No, forget I even said that. So fill me in, what’s going on?”
“Well, it gets a little complicated.”
“Un-complicate it for me.”
