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? "
"That doesn't mean anything," I felt compelled to say. "He could have been talking about work or something."
"There's more," Hunter said. "Remember the dark presence you felt at your garage? I hadn't realized until I drove you there that the garage is right down the road from the Afton gravel pit. But when I saw that I realized that the dark presence might not have been looking for you at all."
I gaped at him. "You mean. .?"
Hunter nodded. "Maybe it was looking for Stuart Afton."
I put a hand to my forehead. I didn't know whether to be relieved or upset. If the dark presence had been after Afton instead of me, that meant I wasn't being stalked. But it also meant that Hunter was right and David had called on the dark side.
"Anyway, I was heading over to his office to do some more checking, then I got this sense that you needed me," Hunter said.
I bristled. "I was fine," I said. "It was just upsetting to think that Alyce might have been involved somehow."
"Well. . good," Hunter said. "So I'll see you later."
I turned in my seat to face him. "I'm going with you."
"What?"
"I am part of this now," I said firmly. "If you're going to check out Afton's office, then I'm going, too."
For a moment it seemed like he was going to argue with me, but then he sighed. "Fine. You'd just follow me, anyway."
I managed a grin. "Gee. I guess you do know me after all."
I scrambled out of his car and into mine. Then I followed him to Stuart Afton Enterprises. Hunter took my arm, and we crossed the street to Afton's building. "I want to get into his office and search for signs of magick."
"You mean like breaking and entering?" My voice sounded strangled. I'd never even so much as shoplifted.
"Well, yes," Hunter said. "Not to put too fine a point on it."
"Don't tell me: You're a Seeker and have some sort of magickal permission that lets you break all kinds of human laws." I crossed my arms over my chest.
Hunter smiled, and I caught my breath at how boyish he suddenly looked. "That's right," he said. "You can back out anytime. I didn't invite you, remember?"