Tanith moved to the counter beside him and they both looked down at the photos of the forlorn little park. She studied the shots for a long moment. She was wearing a black, off-the shoulder sweater that exposed her long neck and delicate shoulder blades, and Garrett could smell the fragrance she wore, apple musk again, heady and enticing. He had to stop himself from reaching out to touch the curve of her neck. Then he felt an uneasy prickle as she touched her index finger to the photo of the bench that had been Amber’s favorite, the bench in front of the angel on the fountain. Tanith looked up at him, her eyes dark.
“What about this park bothers you?”
Garrett hesitated. Am I really going to trust her?
Then he drew another photo from the file and put it down in front of her: the photo of the footprints burned into the wildflowers, the shriveled weeds around them. He watched her face as she stared down. “The blasted flowers…” she murmured, and sat abruptly on the high stool.
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” His voice was sharp.
She continued to stare down at the photo. “No. No, I haven’t.” Her eyes flicked up at him. “But that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Choronzon.”
“I’m thinking someone else knows the story you told me and is playing games,” Garrett said flatly.
She studied him with an oblique expression. “Did you find these—the footprints—at the other crime scene as well? Where Erin was found?”
Garrett paused, struggling with himself. It was more information than he was comfortable giving her. But she was his only slim lead to something—unfathomable. He gave a brief nod of assent, in answer to her question.
Tanith leaned back on her stool. “What exactly do you want from me, Detective? It’s clear you don’t believe.”
“If there’s another victim out there, if this girl was killed, too, then I need to find her. The body.” He thought of Amber’s booking photo, which he’d pulled up from the system: a stark shot of a waif with a mop of dark hair and burned cigarette eyes. She looked like a junkie, and a child. He didn’t want to think about what her short life—and the last few minutes of it—had been like. He stabbed at the photo of the burned footprints with a finger. “This is the only lead I have. If there’s something you can do with it, I’m all ears.” He knew his voice sounded harsh and strained but it was the best he could manage.
“Did you collect any of the flowers?” Tanith asked, surprising him.
“Yes,” he answered warily. In fact, he had brought samples of them with him; he had been toying with the idea of showing them to her.
“And a photo would be good, if you have it. I can do a reading, if you’d like.”
A reading? Some witch mumbo jumbo? he thought, feeling like Landauer. “What does that entail?” he asked aloud, uncomfortably.
She half smiled. “All you’d have to do is watch and listen. But if you have something from the scene—both scenes would be best—I can try to see. It’s called psychometry, and the principle is that objects retain emotional imprints of the people who touch them.” Her face was shadowed in the starry lights. “If you think the killer has something to do with these footprints, if he touched the flowers, they might retain some essence of him. And then…” She hesitated. “I might be able to see more from there.”
Garrett stared at her, flabbergasted. He had no idea how to answer her.
“No charge,” she added, with a straight face.
What have you got to lose? he asked himself. And some internal voice taunted him, And don’t you want to know?
“I’d appreciate it,” he told her, with no idea what he was about to get into.
“This way, then,” she said, and started toward the curtain in the back, dark as night, with its weave of silver stars.
Garrett followed as Tanith walked into the inner velvet-draped room with the round table and two chairs. She moved to a cabinet standing against the wall and removed a glass pitcher, a goblet, a plate, and a bakery tin, which she took to the table.
What is this now, a snack? Garrett wondered. While he watched in bemusement she filled the pitcher with water from the sink and set it on the table, then opened the tin and placed several small cakes on the plate. She did not offer him any of what she had laid out, nor did she eat or drink herself. Instead she took a key from the cabinet, crossed the room to the door in the back, and unlocked it.
She took a lit candle from one of the shelves on the wall beside the door and stepped aside to let Garrett in to another dark room. It took him a moment to adjust to the darkness but he could feel immediately it was a much bigger room, longer. Tanith took the candle she held and began lighting candles in the tall wrought-iron candelabra that stood in each corner of the room. Garrett looked around him in the golden wash of candlelight. There were no visible windows. Heavy purple cloth draped the walls, creating a womblike cocoon. On the bare black-painted floor was inscribed a white circle of about nine feet in diameter, and there was a five-pointed star inside of that, large enough that all five of its points touched the circle: a pentagram. Garrett felt an uneasy jolt, seeing such a huge version of the familiar yet alien design. In the precise center of the pentagram stood an altar draped in dark silk, on which stood a wineglass, a small bowl, a metal box, and a gleaming dagger with crystals set in the hilt, all laid out like surgical instruments.
Jesus Christ, Garrett thought. What am I doing here?
Tanith turned away from the last candle. She was dark against the light, black spill of hair, black sweater, and that milk-pale skin.
He forced his eyes away from her and moved to lean against the wall, carefully avoiding the circle and the star. Tanith glanced at him over a bare shoulder, and lifted a tall stool from beside the cabinet. She set the stool just inside the circle. “I’ll need you to be inside the circle with me,” she told him.
Garrett blinked. “Why?”
“It’s for your protection.”
He almost laughed, but restrained himself just in time. “Protection from what?”
“The working of magic draws forces of all kinds. The more powerful the ritual, the more powerful the forces, good and bad. I’ll begin the ritual by casting a circle of protection. The circle keeps anything—unwanted—out.”
“Don’t worry about me—” he started.
Her eyes flashed. “You’ll need to stay within the circle, Detective, or we’re done.”
Garrett felt his back stiffening. Then I’m out of here, he was on the verge of saying… but forced himself to suppress the words. Holding her eyes, he stepped into the circle. She startled him by stepping up close to him, holding out her hand. He stood in consternation until she prompted, “The flowers?”
Garrett reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out the glassine bags containing samples of the flowers he’d taken from the crime scenes: one from the landfill, one from the park. He put them in her hand, and felt a ripple of desire as their fingers brushed. She turned to the altar and shook the burnt fragments out into a silver dish.
“And the photo?” she asked. He reached into another pocket and withdrew the photo of Amber. Tanith took it from him and looked down for a long moment, then she made a sound in the back of her throat and turned sharply to the altar. She placed the photo gently on the silk.
Garrett sat on the stool she had set out for him and watched, fascinated in spite of himself.
She left the circle and crossed to a cabinet against the wall that looked antique, from which she removed five new candles: yellow, red, blue, green, purple. She stepped again to the circle and bent to place a yellow candle on the gleaming white line, then moved a few steps and placed the red candle precisely a quarter of the circle away, then the blue one across from the yellow one, and the green one on the fourth quadrant. The purple candle she placed on the altar in the center of the circle.
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