“Just a second…” I got up from the table and went across the room to the bookshelves. “I just want to verify something real quick to make sure I’m right.” I scanned the shelves reserved for our Wiccan and alternative religious literature and quickly found what I was after. “Here it is…”
I pulled the book from the shelf and leafed quickly through it as I strode back across the room and once again took a seat at the table.
“What is that?” Ben asked as I continued rapidly turning and perusing the pages.
“A grimoire,” I told him. “Kind of like a recipe book for Witches.” I stopped leafing through the book, and my eyes followed my finger down the text while I quietly mumbled to myself. Eventually I came to rest halfway down the page. “Yes, it’s a variation of an Expiation spell.”
“A what?” Ben’s still confused voice reached my ears as I handed him the spellbook and quickly leafed back through the pictures I had already seen. According to the grimoire, a piece of the spell appeared to be missing. I felt sure it was there but that I simply hadn’t noticed it.
“An Expiation spell,” I repeated. “A ritual to rid yourself of guilt and regrets-a way of asking forgiveness from yourself. I’m not finding it…” I stated hurriedly. “Was there a cup or goblet there? It would have had wine in it. Or maybe water.” Only silence met my ears. “Ben?” I queried again, looking up.
He was staring at me across the table, face ashen, the spellbook held loosely in his hands.
“Are you okay?” I asked, growing mildly concerned.
“Yeah, we found a wine glass all right,” he said quietly. “But, it wasn’t filled with wine.”
The look on his face told me that which I needed but didn’t want to know.
“It was filled with blood wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “We think the bastard drank her blood.”
The two of us shared a wordless stare as we were simultaneously bludgeoned by the revolting possibility he had just voiced. I swallowed hard and slowly forced my eyes back down to the permanent visual records of the abomination. Five photographs later, it was my turn for the greyish pallor to overtake my face. The glossy color image before me showed a bed with the nude body of a petite young woman draped across it. Her mouth was frozen in the oval shape of an agonized scream, her dull eyes staring horrifically into space. The wall next to the bed was spattered wildly with blood. Her throat had been cut, and her long, strawberry-blonde hair was matted into the sheets, which flowed to the floor like a crimson waterfall. From the ragged incision at her throat to a point just below her waist, and from shoulder to shoulder, she was nothing but bare exposed muscle. She had been skinned.
As if that weren’t enough, there was something else that made me hold my breath a beat longer. That something was the fact that her face held more than just a passing familiarity to me.
“An invocation rite,” I stated flatly, fighting back insistent waves of nausea.
“What’s that?” Ben asked.
“A ritual used to call forth someone or something from another plane of existence.”
“You mean like a spirit or somethin’?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “it’s the ‘or something’ that bothers me.”
“How can ya tell that’s what it is?” Ben pressed. “All the symbols were with that Expiation thing.”
“The flaying,” I answered. “Skinning and mutilation are considered parts of a ritual sacrifice for invocation in some old religions. Have you gotten a report from the coroner?”
“No, not yet…Why?”
“Whoever did this…” I caught my breath and started again. “Whoever did this probably skinned her alive. The sonofabitch performed two rituals. One to invoke who knows what, and one to forgive himself for doing it.”
“Jeezus,” Ben whispered.
“I need to see this crime scene, Ben,” I told him, still staring at the two-dimensional horror.
“I don’t know, Rowan…” he began to protest.
“No, Ben,” I shot back, “I’m serious. I don’t know for sure what this guy is up to yet, but you’ve already told me that your expert can’t find his way around the block. If this bastard is really trying to do what I think he is, then I doubt if he’s going to stop here. If I’m physically on the scene, maybe I can find something that will help.” Without realizing it, I had stood up from my seat and had begun pacing. “Besides,” I stopped, looked down at the picture for a moment and then back to Ben’s face, “I know the victim.”
“You know ‘er?” He stared back at me incredulously.
“Her name’s Ariel Tanner,” I stated quietly and then turned away as if having the photographs behind me would make them magically disappear. I took a deep breath before adding, “She’s a… was… a Witch.”
“How did you know her?”
“I was her teacher. I instructed her in The Craft.”
I could hear him scribbling quickly, making notes like a good cop was supposed to do. I had started him on the road to solving one of his mysteries, but an entirely new one was unfolding before me. A new one that my instincts were telling me would need to be solved very quickly.
“Shit,” Ben muttered as he made his decision. “Okay. I’ll pick you up in the mornin’.”
“I’ll be here.”
CHAPTER 2
I didn’t have any of the nightmares Ben warned me of-of course, you have to go to sleep in order to have nightmares. I was still sitting at the dining room table, absently studying the pattern of the sponge-painted walls when Felicity awoke and wandered in.
“Aye, it’s four A.M.,” she said with a yawn as she hooked her arm around my neck and fell into my lap. The fact that she wasn’t fully awake was allowing a hint of her Celtic brogue to show through. “How late were you and Ben drinking, then?” She reached out to the table and picked up my coffee cup then took a swallow. “Yech, needs sugar.”
I wrapped an arm about her waist and held her close. I had never been any good at breaking bad news to people, and I wasn’t really looking forward to doing it now. I let my head rest against her chest and took in the sweet scent of her long auburn curls. I felt comfortable and safe against her, and I held her even tighter. A foreboding deep inside told me that this was the last time I was going to feel this way for a while, so I allowed it to linger as long as I could.
“Row,” she asked, resting her cheek against my head. “What’s wrong?”
Her drowsy voice threw back my thin security blanket of denial and exposed me once again to the frigid reality I had come to accept only a few hours before. I took in a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh, and then reluctantly, I spoke, “Remember Ariel Tanner?”
“Of course,” she replied. “What about her? Is everything okay?” She pulled away, remaining in my lap, and bringing a hand beneath my bearded chin, raised my face to meet her concerned gaze.
“She was murdered,” I told her. “Ben is the investigating officer.”
“Oh no…” she whispered, her voice trailing off, and then hugged me tightly. “When did it happen? How?”
“A couple of days ago. As for the how…well, it wasn’t pretty. It looks like it might have been a ritual murder.”
“A ritual murder!” she gasped. “You mean as in someone sacrificed her?”
“That’s how it appears.” I continued, “In the crime scene pictures Ben showed me, anyway.”
Her voice suddenly took on a sharp, almost angry tone, “Why would he show pictures to you, then? Has he lost his mind?”
“Now don’t go off the deep end.” I helped her gently from my lap and stood up. “He had no idea that I knew her, and he was showing me the pictures because I offered to help. It seems his expert wasn’t having much luck deciphering the symbols left at the scene.” Picking up my coffee cup, I went into the kitchen to freshen it, Felicity trailing along behind.
“I see.” She calmed and held out a cup she had retrieved from the cabinet. She stopped me when I had filled it just over halfway. “Were you able to figure anything out for him?”
