The Hell Yo - lanyon Josh - Страница 66

“Why?”

“There’s a possibility that it might be where they killed the Perone girl. She wasn’t

killed at the scene, right? None of them were. So there’s a chance this might be the place.”

“Did you get that from the kid?”

“The kid?”

“Angus,” he said tersely. “We know he spent Wednesday night with you. Did it not

occur to you that he was being watched?”

“Not by the cops.” I added, although I wasn’t sure why, “I let him sleep downstairs. He

didn’t have any place else.”

“You seem hell-bent on getting roped into this investigation.”

Which would endanger Jake. Got it.

I said, “Yeah, something Angus said makes me think this might be the place. Can you

get a search warrant?”

He didn’t answer that, saying instead, “Do you know where he is?”

“Angus? No.” His words sank in. I felt a tingle of alarm. “You don’t think something

happened to him?”

“I have no idea. We lost him shortly after he left the bookstore.” He said into my

stricken silence, “Relax. My thought is he ditched us.”

I let my breath out on a long sigh. All at once I was very tired. I wanted to go home

and sleep for a year. The problem was, unless I was mistaken, I had been made an offer I

could not refuse. From now until this mess was resolved, I needed to sleep with one eye

open.

“Will you try to get a search warrant?”

“You sure there’s something to find?”

“I’m not sure, no. But I think there’s a strong possibility.”

He was silent.

“I also think that there may be a chance that Gabriel Savant is alive. If so, they could be

holding him there.”

I waited, knowing that it all hinged on how much he trusted my instinct and my

judgment.

“Why did you wait till now to tell me this?” he asked finally.

Right, he thought I’d been sitting on this information since Wednesday. I said, finding

it unexpectedly hard to get the words out, “I was afraid you’d…misread my reason for

calling.”

Silence. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well. I’ll see what I can do. No promises. What’s

the address?”

I gave him the address, clicked off before he could.

* * * * *

I rounded the corner to pull into the back parking of Cloak and Dagger when I noticed

commotion out front of the bookstore. I pulled to the curb, got out, joining the crowd

outside my front step.

Three women in white gauzy dresses stood inside a large ring of white candles. They

were chanting.

By the power of She

By the power of He

By the power of Three

We call upon thee and CAST YOU OUT!

The tallest woman, a freckled, rawboned, red-haired lady, sprinkled water from a silver

bowl in three shakes of her hand.

Next to her, a plump, middle-aged woman in spectacles solemnly rang a silver bell

three times.

Holy moly. It was the Wiccans from Dragonwyck. Despite the early hour, their

performance was drawing quite an audience. The Sunday before Christmas is one of the

busiest shopping days of the year. People who normally react like vampires to cock’s crow

hit the streets early, shopping lists clenched tight in their sweaty paws. Several people poked

their heads out of shop doorways to watch.

The third woman, whom I did not recognize, made a production of pulling out a

decorative-looking knife. The crowd around the ring of candles backed away. She held the

athame in front of her and began to trace the outline of a pentacle over where I had scrubbed

and painted over the inverted pentagram.

“What are they doing?” one woman asked another bystander.

That bystander shrugged, but another answered knowledgeably, “A purification rite. I

saw this on the Discovery Channel.”

I edged around the crowd toward the front of the bookstore. Velvet must not have

arrived yet. The doors were still locked, the security gate pulled across the front. But the

lights were on inside.

By the power of the pentagram we lay

Protection here both night and day

We now invoke the Law of Three

This be our will, so mote it be!

Three more shakes of the bell, three more sprinkles of water, and the show was over.

The Wiccan I didn’t recognize pulled out a candle snuffer and went counterclockwise

around the circle of candles, putting them out. The other two began to shake hands with

people, murmuring those “Blessed be’s” as they worked the crowd.

I approached the plump lady who had given me Selene Wolfe’s business card. She

looked up, beaming. “There you are! Blessed be!”

“This is a surprise,” I said.

She took both my hands and squeezed them tightly in hers. “I know. But we tried, you

know. We had so little to go on.”

The tall one, who I seemed to recall had been named Ariel, reached us. She also took

both my hands and squeezed them warmly. It was hard not to feel touched by all this

apparent goodwill. “Blessed be!”

“Hi again.”

She shook her head at me as though I were a naughty little boy. “It took us such a long

time to find you,” she said. “You didn’t contact Selene for ages!”

The third woman approached, nodded gravely. “Blessed be.”

“Blessed be,” I said, giving up. “And…er…thanks.”

She nodded, like, Damn straight! And don’t let this demon stuff happen again! Then

she turned to the other two. “I’ve got to get home. I’ve got so much shopping to do, you

would not believe!”

There was a sudden flurry of activity while they gathered their candles and chalice and

bag of salt. The crowd had mostly dispersed by now. I glimpsed Velvet moving around inside

the store. Had she barricaded herself in?

I went to move my car. The last I saw of the three witches, they were squeezing into a

blue pickup truck. I pulled around the corner, parked in back, and slipped in through the

side.

Velvet was behind the counter. She glared at me.

“Give me ten minutes,” I told her, starting the stairs to my living quarters. “I want to

take a quick shower and change.”

“Forget it,” she said. “I quit.”

I stopped. “Huh? Why?” I came back down the stairs. “What’s going on?”