Kindling the Moon (18 page)

He gave me a sheepish grin.

“Are you even allowed to see magick without your dad's permission? Or am I going to get in trouble for that too?”

“I don't think there's a rule about that,” he said, cutting his eyes to the side. What a punk.

I debated for a second, wondering if I should let him watch or not. My deflector charm was still around my neck; the wards on the rental car were intact. It wasn't a dangerous spell. I reached down to grab the popcorn bucket off the ground and shut the back door.

“There's not much to see,” I said. “It just dumps images into my mind. You can watch, though, if you stay quiet. Reach over the front seat and grab my purse, will ya? Turn the radio down while you're at it.”

For on-the-go magick, I always carry a small notebook to jot written spell components. I also used to carry a sigil cheat-sheet until I forgot my purse in a restaurant a few years ago; I got the purse returned to me intact, but it made me realize that if it had fallen into the wrong hands, it might cause all sorts of problems.

Scribbling a squared circle on a sheet of notebook paper, I began to draw the symbols inside it that would trigger the information upload from my servitor. Jupe questioned my every stroke, and I explained as best I could until I lost my patience. “Zip it, kid, or I'm going to put you outside.”

“Zipped! Keep going, I'll be quiet—I swear!”

I had a sneaking feeling it wasn't the first time he'd been told to shut up.

When I finished my drawing, I warned him one last time to be quiet—no matter what—and made him watch from the front seat. With intent, I spit on the sigil, charging it as Jupe whispered, “Gross.” The retrieval spell was now ready to be used, so I loosely grasped the head of the clay doll and smashed it against the charged paper sigil. It cracked in several pieces, releasing both the servitor's energy and the information it had collected.

The images it showed me weren't happening in real time, but they were most likely gathered within the last few minutes; once the servitor located its objective, it returned pretty fast. They rushed into my head and began flipping slideshow-style. A bedroom—no, hotel room. A girl sat on the bed. Riley Cooper, I presumed. Early twenties? Long black hair, dark eyes. Petite.

She was dressed like she was headed to fetish night at some goth club: skintight black leather pants, purple vinyl top that was cut low to show off cleavage and high to show midriff. That, and the sides of a really bad tramp-stamp tattoo with batwings and paw prints that circled around from her lower back to her sides. Leather boots laced up the front with ridiculous heels, big silver hoop earrings. Lots of dark makeup and matching black nail polish. A pair of handcuffs sat on the bed beside her, along with a handgun and a large grimoire.

The image stuttered, then focused on a matchbook next to her bed. It read palms casino, las vegas.

Perfect. I had a location, and I now knew what she looked like. Better than nothing, and at least she wasn't in the area.

I expected that to be the end of the servitor's magick-fueled transmission, but I couldn't disengage from the spell. The last image blurred, crackled, then … changed. I wasn't looking at stills anymore. It was the same hotel room, but now it was like a video playing in my head. The girl had moved off the bed. She was looking me square in the face. She walked forward. Toward me. Or toward my servitor? She reached above her head, lips moving, and a green dot appeared in the middle of my vision before darkness ate it all away.

The transmission dropped and my head hit the floor of the SUV as I fell backward. Jupe's face was wedged between the front seat, a look of thrilled wonder glazing over his pale green eyes. As he stared at me, an unexpectedly strong wave of postmagick nausea hit me.

I barely had time to grab the empty popcorn bucket before I threw up.

Apart from making me sick as a dog and giving Jupe his second biggest magical thrill (“The Pareba demon binding was cooler,” he'd remarked), the servitor, I decided later, was a bust. Sure, it was a relief to know that Riley Cooper wasn't in Morella. But unless I planned to chase her down in Las Vegas—no thanks—all I had was a face to go with a name that didn't match up with any known magicians. I had nothing to tie her directly to Luxe or to any other order. Disappointing.

With her identity still up in the air and the glass talon being researched, I really needed to talk to the caliph in Florida. I tried to email him again; it bounced a second time. I tried calling multiple times from public phones and just got his voice mail. That left me one option: the local E∴E∴ lodge.

The morning after my date with Jupe, I headed to the lodge after checking on my car in the body shop. When I arrived, Soror Yolanda was speaking to a member on the far side of the main temple. Trying not to pace, I looked around at all the sigils painted on the walls and waited for her to finish. Just when I thought I couldn't be more miserable, her blond assistant, the over-friendly Frater Kantor, appeared.

“Soror Seléne.”

“Keep it down,” I cautioned, quickly glancing across the room. “If the FBI comes knocking at my door because of your indiscretion, I'll hex you before the oath spell even has time to shut your mouth.”

An idle threat. I really didn't know much about hex spells, but whatever.

“Frater Hadler couldn't hear me if he was a foot away. He refuses to wear the hearing aide that his doctor prescribed,” Kantor replied. “Anyway, back so soon? Does this mean you've reconsidered my offer? I'm quite skilled in the art of tantric sexual rites, you know.”

“Okay, seriously. Let's pretend we're normal people, not magicians. If you saw me in a coffee shop, would you really think that you had a chance with me? I'm not trying to be mean, just realistic.”

He gave me a confused look. “Ritual sex does not require a mutual attraction between partners, you know.”

“Are you deaf, or can you really not imagine a life without magick?”

“Why should I? You're here, I'm here, we're both talented magicians.” He ran his fingernails through the blond, cropped hair over his ears. His nails were too long. Disgusting. I wanted to find a nail clipper and chop them off.

The Grandmaster interrupted us before I had to endure him any longer.

“Sorry, temple business,” she said wearily.

For a second, I wondered if she and Frater Kantor had ever engaged in ritual sex; maybe they got it on with her husband right here in the temple. Nothing would surprise me.

“Can we talk alone?” I asked, shaking that thought away.

“Of course. Frater Kantor?”

He bowed his head obediently and turned to leave, but not before winking at me as he exited. I might not be able to hex him, but I could brew up something that would knock his ass on the floor for the better part of the day. If only.

“I've been trying to get in touch with the caliph,” I said once we were alone.

“Look, Seléne. I'm going to be frank. No one in the Florida lodge knows where Caliph Superior is. Not his children, his assistant, no one. He disappeared three days ago.”

“What?”

“I've sent my guardian to find his, but he's warded and refusing communication. The elite mages at the main lodge have sent out servitors. Only one has returned, and the transmission was too weak to decipher much of anything. All we can gather is that Caliph Superior is in San Diego.”

“The Luxe Order?”

“We believe.”

I clicked my jaw. “Kidnapped?”

“Not exactly. He was stubborn about trying to find a solution to your problem, and I personally think he went there willingly to try to negotiate in secret. No one in the order would have allowed him to go if he had told someone beforehand.”

“They won't hurt him, will they?”

“No, no. Not yet, anyway. The council they offered us was binding. They'll stick to their word until the final date. Which is seven days away, by the—”

“Yes!” I snapped. “I know damn well how far away it is. Do you think I'm not trying? That my parents' lives being at stake—my own life—isn't motivation enough?”

She ignored my rising anger. “Do you have anything to report?”

Total attitude.

Suddenly furious, I realized that I didn't trust her or Frater Kantor or anyone in that damn lodge one bit. I had planned to ask her advice about Riley Cooper, and the strange green dot that had appeared in my servitor transmission … I had even planned to tell her about the glass talon. Not now. No way in hell.

“Nothing that I can tell you,” I said coldly. “When you get an update on the caliph, you call me immediately instead of waiting around for me to come to you. Otherwise, I'll speak with you before the final date for the council.”

“Of course,” she said with forced politeness, inclining her head.

It probably wasn't the brightest idea for me to piss off my last possible link to the caliph, but I didn't care anymore; I was tired of being nice to people I didn't like.

I was still fuming and stressed over the Grandmaster's news when I pulled into Lon's driveway after lunch. He greeted me at the door in his typical stained T-shirt and faded jeans that had holes in both knees. Not fake deconstructed holes made in some factory, but the real kind. I wondered how many years of wear it took to get them. He was on his cell, so he waved me inside and pointed me to a set of sliding glass doors at the far end of the living room that led out to a patio.

I made my way across the room and dumped my purse on an olive-colored sectional sofa. A plush area rug was here, along with a couple of leather chairs that looked comfortable and inviting. I glanced around looking for examples of Lon's photography; I hadn't noticed any the first night I'd been here. Just a couple of large paintings and a colorful 1920s print advertising a circus. I spotted a few small photos hanging high above the sliding glass door, but before I could examine them closely, I became distracted by what lay on the other side of the glass. Amanda had been so excited about Lon's property; now that I was witnessing it in the daytime, I understood why.

I slid the door open and stepped outside onto a deep patio covered by matching modern cement ceiling that sheltered it from the weather. Where the patio stopped, a large, wraparound redwood deck started, with three tiers of long steps that led down to a narrow yard filled with native California plants: small palms, lavender, coastal sagebrush, and several stunning Monterey cypress trees with their unusual wind-sculpted trunks that curved beneath the flattened evergreen tops. The verdant patch was well tended inside curving stone borders that wrapped around the side of the house.

Beyond the small garden of Eden lay a long, wide strip of bright green lawn; past that, the land became rocky. The house stood on the edge of a steep cliff that dropped, leveled off, then dropped again and fell into the ocean. Miles and miles of the blue Pacific. The tree line had been cut to reveal a spectacular unobstructed view, but became dense at the edges of the property so that you couldn't see another house, building—not another living soul. It was as if civilization didn't exist. I stood at the top of the tiered steps and looked out over it in amazement as the coastal wind whipped my hair around my face.

A couple minutes later, a glossy black dog with a purple collar emerged from the garden and bounded up the steps to greet me.

“You must be Foxglove,” I said as I bent down to offer her my hand. She sniffed twice, then nuzzled her nose against my arm. Two powerful paws lurched up on my knees as she shot toward my face and began licking my chin. “Whoa, down, girl!” I said with a laugh, turning my face away. “You're definitely Jupe's dog—no boundaries, huh?”

I stood and wiped my face as she looked up at me, panting happily, tail wagging. I scratched her neck as she sniffed
my legs; maybe she smelled Mr. Piggy on me. Then her ears cocked at the sound of a bird, and she darted away as quickly as she'd arrived, disappearing through a small cypress grove at the side of the property.

“Do you like it?”

I turned to find Lon sauntering up behind me. “The view? Unbelievable.”

“See that bit of land jutting out down there? The sea stack?” He pointed to the coast below where the waves were breaking furiously against several rocky columns of graduated cliffs that extended into the sea. “That's Mermaid Point. Ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“It's what La Sirena was named after. The local Pomo Indians say that their ancestors believed a strange spirit lived in the water there. They'd offer it gifts for good luck—floated planks of wood with food and flowers in the water.”

“Interesting. I wonder if there really was something there? Sometimes there's truth in old myths.”

“I don't know, but Jupe swears he's seen a ghost out there a few times. Foxglove sometimes howls out there.”

“Mmm … sure it's not an imp?”

He chuckled. “Probably.”

We stood together in happy silence, and for a long moment, I forgot about everything. My mind just went blank. It was so peaceful. Morella seemed so far away … Then it all came back in a jarring rush—my parents, the albino demon, Riley Cooper, the caliph. I wanted to kick something.

Lon must have sensed my mood change; he gave me a sidelong glance and tapped my elbow. “Come and sit with me on the patio.”

I followed him up the wooden deck stairs and back
under the cement ceiling to a small metal table with four chairs. A pot of steaming tea sat there along with a book and his silver cigarette case.

“You want the heat on? It's kind of chilly out here today. Overcast.”

“Uh, sure.”

He punched something into a panel on the stone wall near the sliding door, then sat down next to me and poured us each a cup of tea without asking if I wanted any.

“Jupe at school?” I asked.