“Under what circumstances?”
I turned my hands palm-up, a shrug, and said, “Me.”
Tension spilled through Morrison’s expression, aging him years in a few seconds. I looked away, uncomfortable with seeing him look so defeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, but we both knew the growl in his voice was only for show. I pressed my lips together, daring to glance back at him, but only for a moment. He still looked aged and unhappy.
“It means something’s wrong with Cassandra Tucker’s death, sir.” I really didn’t want to sayI think magic may have been involved, sir, and I was pretty sure Morrison didn’t want me to say it, either.
He didn’t let the possibility of clarification linger on the air, snapping, “Of course something’s wrong. She was twenty years old and ended up dead in a locker room. There’s nothing right about it.”
“That’s not what I mean, Captain.” I didn’t want to push it any more than that, but I felt like I had to at least say that much. “I’d like your permission to go talk to her friends.”
He gave me a baleful glare. “Are you going to do it anyway?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but at least I’m trying to be aboveboard here, Morrison. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
He sighed explosively. “They’re doing an autopsy. It’s being investigated as a homicide. Right now that’s all I know.” He clenched his jaw, muscle working. “Get back to me if you learn anything.”
I said, “Yes, sir,” and got the hell out of his office before we were forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Friday, June 17, 7:25p.m.
The graduate library’s reading room was dim and dark, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that the dimness came not from clouds overhead, but from smoky torches that couldn’t possibly meet fire code. I hung in the doorway, squinting into smoke and trying to get the lay of the land before anyone noticed me, but Faye clapped her hands, letting out a squeal of delight. “You came! I knew you’d come! This is Joanne Walker, everyone. She’s the one I dreamed about.” Her voice lowered portentously with the last several words, but I was the only one who seemed to notice.
The rest of the group took Faye’s lead, climbing to their feet and encircling me. There were eleven or twelve of them, all of them smiling politely and offering me their hands to shake. With the exception of a man and a woman both in their fifties, and another man in his thirties, the median age of the gathered group appeared somewhere below the legal drinking age.
I said, “Um, thank you,” with every handshake and introduction and welcome, a little taken aback. I wished I’d brought along a tape recorder so I could be sure of everyone’s names. Faye hadn’t turned up a police record—not even so much as a driver’s license—but I wasn’t above doing a quick investigation on all her friends, too. When everyone was done greeting me and I’d forgotten most of the names already, I asked, “Faye told you why I was coming here tonight, right?”
They all exchanged glances, amusement suddenly coloring the air. “Of course,” one of the young men said. He was Garth; I remembered that because he didn’t look at all like Garth Brooks. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest mnemonic device ever, but it worked for me. Garth-not-Brooks went on, “She dreamed that you would come to lend us your power. With Cassie’s death—” A ripple of pain, tangible, went through the little gathered crowd. I drew in a sharp breath, pushing their loss away long enough to get through the conversation, at least. It was possible I could do something later to ease the sharpness of grief, but I thought it was a bad idea. Only a day after Cassandra Tucker’s death, none of them would have had the time to work through it naturally. Mucking about with it at this stage struck me as premature.
Maybe I was learning something after all.
While I was thinking all that. Garth continued, “—we don’t have a Mother anymore. You must be her—Faye dreamed you.”
“A mother? I don’t know what you’re tal—”
There are phrases that I never think describe a real feeling until I experience them myself. “The words turned to dust in my mouth,” was a new one on me, but it happened. My saliva shriveled up, leaving my tongue feeling thick and dry. My throat constricted, and the taste of ashes, flat and sticky, filled my mouth. I choked and coughed, and one of the young men leaped up and got me a cup of water. Faye hovered at my side, patting my back in concern as I drank. It still took a few long moments before I was able to croak, “Mother. Maiden. Crone.” The older woman’s mouth twisted wryly as I said the third word.
“You’re a coven.”
If I expected this to come across as an earth-shattering revelation, I was badly disappointed. Everyone exchanged glances again, and Faye laughed, a bright musical sound in the gloomy hall. “Well, yes. What did you think?”
My voice rose and cracked. “I thought you were going to give me any information you might have about your friend Cassie’s death. That’s what we discussed this morning.”
Faye went from laughter to kicked puppy dog, her brown eyes mournful. “And I told you I didn’t think we’d be able to help you very much, but you promised to come anyway. I told you,” she said, eager again, “we need you. You must be the Mother. I dreamed you and you were there, and you have power, and we don’t have anybody else for the part. There are already eleven of us, and you’re the twelfth. Youmust be the Mother.”
“I thought a full coven had thirteen.” I let the words come as a barrier to thought, but it didn’t work.
Two children.From my womb untimely rip’d. I closed my eyes. They’d come early, but twins often do. Neither was strong as they lay together, fragile and tiny. The girl’s last breath seemed to strengthen her brother.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Faye explaining thathe, whoeverhe was, was the thirteenth. He led and completed the coven, and there were twelve of us, so I must be the Mother.
Adoption papers signed and the boy—Aidan, though I expected his adoptive parents would change his name—taken away. I knew who his new parents were; the Eastern Cherokee Nation simply wasn’t that big. But I was only fifteen, and I never saw him again. I stared into my water glass, shivering and unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes.
“She’s the Mother,” the Crone said. I felt the older woman’s hand brush my hair. “Leave her alone. She’ll be all right. Come.” She urged me to my feet. “Come and rest a while.”
“Faye doesn’t mean to be insensitive,” she said a moment later, when I was safely tucked into a nook in the wall, invisible from the rest of the coven. “She’s just very young. I’m Marcia. I know there were a lot of names to remember.”
“There were. Thanks.” I glanced up at her, trying to get a feel for her.
She was reasonably tall and attractive, threads of gray through brown hair and wrinkles settling in around her eyes. She could stand to lose fifteen or twenty pounds, but carried the weight comfortably, letting it round her cheeks where age had begun to take the flesh away. There was a sense of strength, of connectedness, about her. “Are you a witch?”
She smiled, thin and only a little amused. “Are you?”
“I don’t think so.” I had no idea, really. I just assumed Coyote would’ve called me a witch if that’s what he’d woken up in me. “If I’m not a witch, I can’t do you any good, can I?”
Marcia’s smile grew, spreading through her voice. “You might be able to. Witchcraft is spellcrafting. We use one kind of spell to call up power that Gaia, the goddess Earth, lends us, and another kind to focus that power and create with it. Spells and witchcraft can be learned.”