"The cruiser that just left," Eileen finished, "came to tell us that all three are now in custody, and one of them has confessed. The DA thinks she can charge them with at least two other local hate crimes. And two of them are old enough to be tried as adults. What's more, two of our neighbors on the block have offered to testify to what they saw. The community is being really supportive, I'm happy to say."
"Wow!" I exclaimed, amazed. "That's fabulous!" I nearly collapsed with relief. They had solved their own problem without my help, without magick. The choice had been taken out of my hands.
Aunt Eileen sighed. "I'm glad we caught those kids, but I have to say this whole incident has really shaken me. I mean, you hear about gay bashing all the time, but it's just not the same as when you're actually experiencing it. It's totally terrifying."
"I know," I agreed. Then I couldn't help asking anxiously, "But. . you're not going to move?"
"Nope," Paula promised. "We've decided to tough it out here—at least for now. You can't solve this kind of problem by running away from it."
"That is the best news! I am so thrilled," I told them. I got up and opened the fridge. "Oh, no," I groaned.
“What?" Aunt Eileen sounded worried. 'What's the matter?"
I turned from the fridge, which was full of disgustingly healthy foods. "Don't you guys have any Diet Coke?"
After breakfast with Paula and Aunt Eileen, I helped them rearrange living-room furniture; then I drove to church and met my family there. I made the effort because I wanted to make my parents happy—and because I felt badly in need of a nonmagickal, normal day.
After church the whole family opted out of our normal Widow's Vale Diner lunch so we could go back to Taunton for more unpacking. We got back to our house at three-thirty, and I decided to have a nice, long soak in the bathtub before calling Hunter.
The bath never happened. I'd just turned on the hot water faucet when I felt Hunter and Sky approaching. With a sigh I turned off the bathwater and went downstairs. Now what?
I opened the front door and waited. They both looked grim.
"Yes?" I demanded. "Aren't we scheduled to meet later?"
"This couldn't wait," he said.
"Come in." I led them into the den. After shutting the door I asked, "Is it Stuart Afton?"
"He's the same," Hunter answered. He looked at Sky. "Tell her."
"Last night," Sky began, "Bree and Raven and I were out studying the constellations by the old Methodist cemetery. We saw David. He was performing a ritual. A ritual I recognized."
"So what was it?" I asked.
Sky glanced at Hunter. Then she met my gaze steadily. "He was letting blood as a preliminary ritual to a larger sacrifice that will be performed once the moon moves into a different quarter."
"Bloodletting?" I said. I looked back and forth between Sky and Hunter.
"It's a payoff," Hunter said. "For services rendered. It fits with the ritual markings I found in the field where you had first felt a dark presence. He needs to offer his own blood to call in the taibhs, the dark spirit. Remember, that's how I knew it wasn't Selene. She has enough power to call a taibhs without performing that particular rite."
I felt sick. "Well, I guess that's the proof you were looking for, then," I said to Hunter.
"It's proof that he's using dark magick," Hunter said. "It still doesn't connect him irrevocably to Stuart Afton. But that's just a formality now."
"David may not have bargained on or agreed to Stuart Afton having a stroke," Sky put in. "That's the kind of extra tithe that attaches itself when you deal with the blackness."
"In any case," Hunter said, "I've contacted the council, and they've told me to examine David formally."
There was something terrible in that sentence. "What does that mean?"
"It means that with the power vested in me by the council I am to ask David whether or not he's called on the dark energies," Hunter explained, not sounding like himself. "The procedure requires that two blood witches witness my examination of him."
I looked at him.
"It will be Sky and Alyce," he said, answering my unspoken question. "We're going to do it now, right away. There's no point in wasting any more time."
"I want to go, too," I said.
He shook his head, and Sky looked upset. "No. That's not necessary," he said. "I only came to tell you because I felt you needed to know."
"I'm coming," I said more strongly. "If David is innocent, that will come out in the examination. I want to be there to hear it. And if he's not. ." I swallowed. "If he's not, I need to hear that, too."
Hunter and Sky looked at each other for a long moment, and I wondered if they were communicating telepathically. Finally Sky raised her eyebrows slightly. Hunter turned to me.
"You won't say anything, you won't do anything, you won't interfere in any way," he said warningly. I raised my chin but didn't say a word. "If you do," he went on, "I'll put a binding spell on you that will make Cal's look like wet tissue paper."
"Let's go," I said.
We drove to Red Kill in Hunter's car. My stomach was tight with tension, and I kept swallowing. I felt cold and achy and full of dread. As much as I wanted Hunter to be wrong, all the evidence pointed to David.
When the three of us walked into Practical Magick, Alyce looked up. She looked tired and ill, her face drawn and almost gray. As soon as I saw her, I felt her pain over what was about to happen. She, too, believed David was guilty, I realized.
"We need David," Hunter said quietly.
David emerged from the back room. "I'm here," he said, his voice perfectly calm. "And I know why you're here."
"Will you come with us, then?" Hunter asked.
David glanced at Alyce and said, "Yes. Just let me get my jacket. Alyce, can you get the keys for the door?"
"Of course," she said.
David disappeared into the back room to get his jacket. And then didn't reappear. We waited maybe a minute and a half before Hunter tore behind the counter and into the back room. Sky and I followed. The door that led outside from the back room was ajar.
"Dammit!" Hunter swore, going through the door to a weedy, overgrown lot outside. "I didn't think he'd bolt. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"
I wasn't sure if he was referring to David or to himself, but I was too freaked out to ask. Sky was scanning the trees at the end of the lot. "He's in there," she told Hunter.
The two of them set off at a lope across the snow-patched ground, and I followed, sick at heart. Alyce, wrapped in a lavender shawl, bustled after us.
It was dark and shadowy inside the area of evergreens where David had disappeared. The trees were tall enough to block out most of the fading daylight, and we found ourselves in a murky gray light, peering around shadowy trunks for any sign of David. I cast my senses and felt Sky, Alyce, and Hunter doing the same. It was strange to feel my power joined to theirs in this way.
My senses picked up hibernating animals, a few birds. Was Sky wrong? Had David come in here? Or was he somehow masking himself?
Sky suddenly whirled. "There!" she cried as a ball of witch fire flew straight toward Hunter.
Hunter raised a hand and murmured something, and the witch fire was deflected, bouncing away from an invisible shield and landing in a snow bank with a sizzle.
It seemed the witch fire had come from behind a tall blue spruce. Hunter moved toward it with a predator's quiet intensity.
Another ball of witch fire sped toward him, which he brushed off, not even bothering with the charm this time. I realized something in Hunter had changed. It was as if he was drawing power into him, taking in energies far beyond his own considerable powers, linked to the life force all around us. But it was even more than that.