"Overwhelmed but okay." I couldn't help asking, "Did you hear about what happened to Stuart Afton?"
"Yes, poor man. It's awful." She shook her head, her blue eyes troubled. "I thought maybe we would try to send him healing energy at our next circle."
"So. . how is your coven going?" I knew that Alyce had been asked to lead Starlocket now that Selene was gone.
Alyce tucked a strand of gray hair back into its twist. "Selene is a hard act to follow. I don't have nearly the power she had. Then again, I've never abused my power the way she did. Our coven has a great deal of healing to do, and since I've always loved healing work, that will be my focus, at least for the present."
"Morgan, good morning," David said, emerging from behind a bookshelf. I noticed his hand was still bandaged and that some blood had seeped through it, staining the gauze. "Nice to see you."
I hoped my voice sounded natural as I said, "You too. Um, I need some ingredients." I took my list out of my pocket.
If he noticed anything in my manner, he didn't mention it. He simply took the list and scanned it. "Oils of cajuput, pennyroyal, lavender, and rose geranium," he murmured, nodding. "We've just gotten in a fresh stock of pennyroyal, haven't we, Alyce?"
"Yes. I'll get the oils," Alyce said. To me she explained, "We keep the big bottles in the back, by the sink. They're rather messy to handle. I'll be back in a few minutes."
She bustled off, leaving me alone with David. He looked up from my list. "Burdock, frankincense, and a sprig of ash," he said in a neutral voice.
"Do you have them?" I asked. I couldn't read him at all, and it was making me nervous.
“We've got them," he replied. He added in a conversational tone, "These are the ingredients for a protection charm. So what are you protecting yourself against?"
"It's not for me," I told him. "It's for my aunt and her girlfriend. They just moved into a house in Taunton, and they're being harassed because they're gay."
"That's a shame. It's never easy to be different," David said thoughtfully. "But I guess you know that, being a witch."
"Yes," I agreed. "Do you think this charm will really help?"
"It's worth trying."
"I used my power to stop the guys who were scaring them," I admitted. "With witch fire." I wanted to see how he would react to this turn in the conversation.
David raised one silver eyebrow but said nothing.
"Even now I want to see them suffer. It makes me worry about myself," I added.
David pursed his lips. "You're being very hard on yourself. You're a witch, but you're human, too, with human weaknesses. Anyway, dark energy is not in and of itself necessarily evil." He slid his hand into the display case beneath the counter and took out a necklace with the yin-yang circle worked in white and black onyx. "To me, the most interesting part of this symbol is that the white half contains a tiny spot of black and the black a tiny spot of white," he said. "You need both halves—bright and dark—to complete the circle. They're part of a whole, and each contains the seed of the other. So there's no such thing as dark magick without a bit of light in it or bright magick without a bit of dark."
Alyce, who'd returned with some vials of oil while he was speaking, shook her head. "That's fine as philosophy, David, but on a purely practical level, I think we'd all do well to shun the dark."
David smiled at me. "There you have it, the combined wisdom of Practical Magick. Make of it what you will."
A customer came in, and Alyce went over to help her.
David rang up my items. Then he reached down and pulled up a paper shopping bag and put it on the counter. He set the vials inside it. "Like it?" he asked, seeing my eyes on the bag. "We had them made as part of our celebration of Practical Magick's new lease on life, as it were."
"It's nice," I managed. Grabbing the bag, I mumbled a good-bye and hurried out of the store.
Outside, I held up the bag and stared at it. It was forest green, with silver handles. Just like the bag I had seen lying crumpled in Stuart Afton's hallway the day he'd had a stroke.
17. Breaking In
August, 1999
Beck contacted us today. I knew as soon I saw his face in my leug that the news was bad. But I didn't imagine it would be this bad.
Linden was killed. Beck told us, trying to summon the dark spirits. “He called on the dark side to ask how to reach you and Fiona,” was what Beck said in his blunt way.
Goddess, what have I wrought? I've abandoned four children, and now one is dead because of me. I didn't know this kind of pain was possible.
— Maghach
I sat in Das Boot, trying to take meditative breaths to calm down, it doesn't mean anything, I told myself. It's just a shopping bag.
Right Afton was just the type to shop at Practical Magick, Twenty minutes later I pulled up in front of Afton's sprawling home. What was I doing here? How was I going to prove anything?
I gazed gloomily out my car window. It must be garbage day, I realized, spotting the cans lining the curbs.
Could my proof be in those cans? I wondered. I scrambled out of the car and raced to the cans in front of Afton's house. I opened one, and the stink hit me. Ew. Was I really going to paw through someone else's trash?
I held a hand over the can, trying to get a sense of what I was looking for. I seek witch power, I thought. If there is an object that has been handled by a witch, lead me to it please. The tips of my fingers tingled, and I ripped open one of the black plastic bags.
A green shopping bag with silver handles lay on top. The logo for Practical Magick was stamped on its side in silver. A gift card was tied to one of the handles. With shaking hands, I pulled it out of the garbage. I flipped open the card and gasped. These are for you, the card read. You know why.
The card was signed, Blessed be, Alyce.
I dropped the bag as if it had bitten me. Home-baked muffins tumbled out into the snow.
A car drove up and stopped behind me. Once again, I realized, Hunter had tracked me down. "Morgan, what is it?" he asked.
I lifted my stricken face to him. "It can't be," I whispered.
If Alyce had used dark magick to cause Stuart Afton's stroke, then everything that I thought I knew or understood was wrong. And no one was to be trusted.
"Get in the car," Hunter ordered.
I simply obeyed. My mind whirled. Alyce? Then she was an amazing liar because she had seemed to be very certain that no one should mess with dark forces.
Hunter got out of the car and picked up the bag I had dropped. He gathered up the muffins, sniffed them, gazed at them. Then he dumped everything back into the garbage can. He climbed back into the car.
"They're not spelled," he said.
"Wh-what?" I asked.
"The muffins, the bag, the note," he explained. "None of it is spelled. Alyce had nothing to do with Afton's stroke."
I leaned back and let out a sigh of relief.
I felt Hunter's eyes on me. "You suspected David, though, didn't you? That's why you came back out here?"
"I–I don't know what I thought," I said.
"I went to Red Kill, to Memorial Hospital. I saw Stuart Afton," Hunter said.
I didn't bother to ask how he had been able to see Afton since he wasn't a relative or even a friend.
"I had heard he'd been acting strangely for days, which they believe may have been signaling the stroke, despite the fact that there was no medical reason for it to have happened. And he was sort of babbling while I was there."
"What did he say?" I asked apprehensively.
"He said, I did what they wanted. Why isn't it over? "