Grave Echoes: A Kate Waters Mystery (18 page)

“I heard voices,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, admitting that she had heard something, but also knowing her agreement would only fuel his theory.

“Someone said, He’s coming for you,” David added, pacing back and forth across the linoleum. “And someone else said something about a witch.”

Kate felt her heart plunge, tumbling to the bottom of a cold, dark sea—they had both heard the same thing, which meant only one thing according to her—someone was in the house with them. Someone taunted them.

Up until now, Kate had presumed they were both just hearing and seeing things, all side effects of emotional stress. But now, there was no mistaking it.

“She’s a witch.” Kate finished for him.

“Now do you believe me?”

“No. This is a real person playing tricks on us,” Kate said, walking over to a hook on the wall by the back kitchen door. She grabbed a hooded sweatshirt and pulled it over her head.

“The doors have been locked,” he said. “Nobody can get in.”

“Somebody is and I think I know who.”

“Sean?” David said.

“Thea.”

His brow wrinkled. ”But I heard the voices say he.”

“Maybe it’s both of them?” Kate questioned.

“You might be right,” David agreed, a light coming back to his face. “Thea’s the witch and Sean is the he they mentioned.”

Kate shook her head. “They are actual people, David, playing a sick joke on us, and somehow Thea is involved.”

“Those weren’t real voices we heard, Kate.”

“Stop this David.” Why did he keep turning to supernatural explanations, Kate thought. Why wasn’t he concerned about real threats? Frustrated, she marched for the door, seizing her purse and keys along the way. She knew where she needed to go, oddly the same place her sister probably went to when she had been having troubles.

Adamant in his beliefs, David didn’t let up. “Those weren’t the voices of real people, Kate.”

The comment disturbed her. They hadn’t sounded real to her either, and at that moment, Kate sensed they still weren’t alone.

Kate’s jeep veered up to the curb of an old, brick abandoned building, adjacent to a white house converted into the magic store. The swinging sign out front read Practical Magic and Occult Supplies, the same store on the bookmark she’d found in Jev’s witchcraft book with the binding spell in it. Across the sign, a dragon exhaled fire as it perched on a crescent moon with its tail looped around the word Supplies. Stars sprinkled the board and near the bottom, next to a pentacle wrapped in vines, were the store’s hours: Open Late. She wondered if that meant they opened late in the morning or that they stayed open late at night, then presumed it probably meant both.

At the wake, she’d met one of the employees, Donna, a friend of Jev’s who hung out with the Goth clan. Kate remembered her clearly: black satin dress, leather choker, red lips, and bright auburn hair. She hadn’t imagine she would ever visit the store, but recent events required that she take action, more importantly by investigating Jev’s crowd of witch friends. Ghosts, secrets, witchcraft, and spells were invading her sanity and if she was ever going to discover what really happened to Jev, Kate knew she had to exhume all of her sister’s secrets. Her friends seemed a likely place to start.

But there was another reason that brought Kate to the doorstep tonight—as much as she had tried to deny it, the voices she and David heard weren’t like those spoken by a person. The acoustics were different, like they were coming from a radio with surround sound. She realized she kept saying, voices. Was there more than one? And how would they have entered the house? Both doors were locked, and David didn’t see anyone, unless the upstairs window provided entry somehow. They could have used a rope and a hook to scale up, maybe even to hide on the rooftop. Kate shuddered at the thought.

She surveyed the storefront from the safety at the end of the block, preparing herself for the people and merchandise inside, knowing they would certainly validate David’s reasoning. Mannequins with facemasks held sickles, stooped beneath cottony spider webs, and brown bats crowded the windows inside, and black tapestries decorated with pentagrams and triquatras hung in the sidelight windows of the doorframe. A bumper sticker on the front door declared, ‘The Goddess is Coming and She’s Pissed.’

“Looks harmless,” Kate mused to herself, stepping from the jeep.

The wind gusted with currents of airborne debris, then calmed into a steady, cool breeze. Kate threw the hood of her sweatshirt over her head, tucking her hair behind her ears and strode to the covered porch front. Thunder rumbled across the sky, slowing her with figurative cold feet. What was she so afraid of?

Brushing aside her reservations, she reached for the knob on the door and gave it a nudge. Bells clanked against the door. So much for slipping in unnoticed, she thought, shutting it gently. The dusky store smelled sharp of wood and grass and light drumming music came from speakers tucked in the corners of the shop. Kate stepped across a black mat with a white pentacle in the center, shifting her eyes at the tall shelves of books, jars of herbs, displays of silver talisman charms, cloth bags, sculpted figurines, rocks, and chalices. Along the wall on her right were long, double-bladed daggers, serpent paintings, and animal skulls.

“Can I help you?” she heard a voice behind her say. The woman at the counter wore nothing but a faded, maroon vest and jeans. Tattoos peeked from her neckline where bright wisps of purple hair curled down.

Probably not, Kate thought. “Is Donna working tonight?”

“Behind ya’, in the back corner.” Only the bottom half of her face smiled.

Kate turned, eyeing a path to the back of the store. “Thanks,” she said, winding her way through the tight space. She spotted Donna stacking books on a clearance rack, having traded in her black satin dress for a white, cotton T-shirt, bleached, black jeans, and purple-checkered Dockers. Her bright red hair was pulled high into a stiff ponytail, revealing a black star tattooed on the back of her neck.

Not wanting to scare her, Kate cleared her throat before she spoke. “Hi Donna, it’s Kate, Jev’s sister.”

Donna spun around with surprise on her face. “Oh, Kate,” she said. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be home resting.” She set the stack of books down on the floor.

Kate flushed at the memory of her sleep attack at the wake earlier that day. “I know. I should be taking it easy, but I didn’t get a chance to visit with you much, and there were some things I wanted to discuss with you about Jev.”

Donna’s eyebrows furrowed together, shifting the earring pierced at her brow. “Sure, whatever I can do to help.”

Through her sincerity, Kate sensed apprehension. She didn’t think it would be wise to come right out and ask Donna about Jev’s witchcraft, her protection spell, or what Thea was really like, so she chose an empathetic route.

“I’m trying to find closure…on Jev’s life. I just wanted to know how she was doing, if she had any unfinished plans or goals she might have mentioned to you.”

Only after speaking it aloud, did Kate realize its truth. The unknown particulars of Jev’s life and her estranged relationships had become the driving force behind her worry. The key, binding spell, prints, and matches were obvious riddles she wanted to solve, but underneath it all, Kate wanted to know how Jev had been doing, personally, spiritually, and emotionally. Her throat suddenly tightened and she bent her head down as salty pools surfaced in her eyes.

Donna put her hand on Kate’s shoulder. “It’s healing to cry. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. Here, come sit down.” She led Kate to a pair of chairs nearby.

Kate sat down next to her, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I suppose I’m having troubles saying good-bye,” Kate said.

“There are no good-byes. As long as you are alive, so will Jev—she lives forever in our hearts.”

“Right,” Kate said. She appreciated Donna’s simple view of the world, even if she didn’t necessarily agree with it. Kate would always love and remember Jev, but she was dead. She was gone. Kate sniffled back tears. “I listened to a message you left Jev a few nights ago on her answering machine at home. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, right, about the herbs,” Donna recalled. “She must have been getting ready to do a spell.”

“A binding spell,” Kate clarified.

Donna flinched with rounding eyes.

“Is something wrong?” Kate asked.

She took a moment before speaking. “Jev said she was going to perform a rite. She never mentioned a binding.”

“Is that bad?”

Donna gave a quick glance around the store. “It’s not good.”

“Do you know who it was for? She mentioned a man in a note.”

“A man…I can’t think of anyone. I mean, there’s her boyfriend Sean… and a few other guy friends, but no one that I could see her doing a binding spell on.”

“Maybe a girlfriend’s boyfriend?” Kate suggested.

Donna shook her head. “Maybe Thea?”

The suggestion didn’t surprise Kate. “Why would you say her, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well…I shouldn’t start rumors, but she’s been acting unusual lately. It started when her dog passed on. She said Cernunnos just up and died, like he’d been poisoned. She took him to the vet, and they told her it looked like he had eaten something toxic. She’s been shadowed ever since.”

“Shadowed?”

“Very dark, reserved,” Donna smiled, rolling her eyes. “I mean more than usual.”

Kate noticed the similarities in how both she and Sean described Thea.

“In fact,” Donna continued, “a few members of the coven believe she’s been practicing black magic.”

The voices came back to Kate…she’s a witch…get out! It seemed obvious they were talking about Thea…but then who did the voices belong to?

***

He sat outside the occult shop, after following Kate there. A storm blew fiercely outside, but compared to the frigid temperatures on the mountain, it felt like an early spring evening. He hung his arm out the window, flicking ashes and checking the clock on the radio—9:40 pm. He loved the early hours of night, the feeling of time on his hands, fisted with revenge. His caution, though normally a positive quality, had cost him another opportunity and risked exposure. Now, more than ever, he needed to be at the top of his game, setting traps. Strategically, he’d placed twine, leaves, and sticks in a twenty-foot perimeter around the vault. If Kate had gone to investigate, he would know by the displacement of the items. So far, she hadn’t, leading him to think she didn’t know anything about the tomb.

He finished his cigarette and adjusted the bandage on the back of his hand from the wolf’s bite. After a couple days of healing, the stitches had started to itch. He hadn’t anticipated the need to protect himself from wild animals when he went to the mountain. Wolves that big were rare and as far as he knew, weren’t even supposed to be in Oregon. For this reason, he believed it was a sign, even though he was an atheist. It warned of flawed strategy that could lead to hasty mistakes, and consequently, jail time. The intensity of the wolf plagued him, for he knew now that he’d strayed from what the wolf embodied: focused aggressiveness—the ability to react, corner, intimidate, and frighten its prey. He had to mimic its behavior, study his victim, its movement, and learn its patterns, so he would know when and how to strike.

He pulled a stocking cap over his head and left the truck, walking causally across the street toward the shop. A quick glance around the neighborhood told him he was alone, and he slipped into the brush surrounding the store, skirting the old house and peeking through the windows when chance permitted. He saw Kate sitting in a chair next to a woman he didn’t recognize, though she definitely looked like a friend of Jev’s with her bright red hair and tattoos. They seemed to be in a deep talk and he fretted it might have something to do with his key and the vault it opened.

***

Kate shifted in her seat, disturbed by Donna’s last statement. Wind gusted outside the window, shaking the panes of the old house and stirring the trees to scratch against the glass.

“What exactly is black magic?” Visions of the witchdoctor in the movie The Missing came to Kate’s mind.

“It has to do with death and…,” but before Donna could finish her sentence, a loud crack boomed outside, sending the store into blackness. Having already been through this once tonight, Kate clenched the arms of her chair, anticipating the voices again.

“Ah, crap,” the woman at the counter said.

“Hold on, Kate,” Donna said. “We’ve been having problems with our electricity lately.”

You and me both, Kate thought.

“A transformer down the street keeps blowing,” Donna said, rummaging around in the corner.

Kate glanced around the room for even a speck of light, but because they were in the back room of the old house, sheltered beneath limbs of a giant fir, the darkness draped over them, thick as a blanket, like the black fog beginning to shroud her every move.

Light flashed in front of Donna as she lit a few more candles and then set them around the windowsills, casting shadows on the walls. Just great, Kate thought. She didn’t intend to discuss Jev’s binding spell with one of her witch friends in the ambiance of a séance—it almost felt planned.

“As I was saying,” Donna continued, “some witches believe that to be truly connected to nature, you have to balance your magic. Nature is a cycle of death and birth, strong and weak, the whole yin and yang thing, and so they practice both light and dark magic.”

“Witches like Thea,” Kate said.

“Yes.” In the fractured light of the candles, Donna’s teeth looked stunted, almost pointed at the tips, perhaps an illusion from the dark purple lipstick she wore.

“What kind of witch was Jev?” Lightning flashed again outside, throwing sharp angled shadows on bone white walls. “I take it she was a dark witch too,” Kate said.

Thunder rolled overhead as if the stars were falling, crashing through the atmosphere. If seconds equaled miles, the lightning had struck just three miles away.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Donna replied. “Everybody loved Jev, and I’ve never heard of her ever doing a dark spell, but she understood Thea like no one else. They had a unique bond.”

One that couldn’t be broken, Kate wondered? “Donna, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to have the list of the herbs you were going to give Jev?”

“Sure.”

While Donna retrieved her purse and wrote down the list of herbs, Kate browsed through a few of the books on the shelf, not wanting to admit to herself that her eyes searched for paranormal topics. Some of the titles included animal guardians, divination, and psychic dreams. She thought about her hallucinations of Jev, the sound of the car crash she thought she’d heard in the street, and the gold key. She didn’t believe in premonitions, but the coincidences between her visions and Jev’s unraveling secrets made it difficult to sort reality from fiction.

“Here,” Donna said, handing her a piece of paper.

Kate tilted it toward a candle, glancing at the names. She only recognized a few of them. “Thanks,” she said, and then folded it into the back pocket of her jeans.

“No problem.”

“I have just one more question,” Kate said. Hesitantly, she pulled the key over her neck and held it up for Donna to see. If she didn’t start asking about it, she might never know what it unlocked. “Have you ever seen this before?”