Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

And then, unbelievably, the figure seemed to melt into the greenery, disappearing into the hedge with no crash of branches, no rustle of leaves.

Garrett stared.

After a moment he strode toward the hedge. He pushed the branches aside where the figure had vanished—melted—and was startled to see a solid brick wall. There was no gate, no opening through which a person could have exited.

This is crazy, he told himself. I saw him. Her. It.

Garrett stood in consternation, then looked behind him. The street was deserted, no cars coming and no sound of any approaching vehicle.

Garrett reached up to put his hands flat on top of the wall and pushed himself up, swung a leg over.

The wall enclosed a luxurious garden, deserted and luminous in the twilight. Garrett dropped to the ground and looked around him, quickly taking in a landscape design laid out in a spiral, with a profusion of flowering plants: white roses and gardenias and some kind of big white daisy, and the large pale bells of deadly nightshade, all glowing under the moonlight. In one flower bed was a very feminine statue, draped in a marble gown so flowing that every curve of its body was revealed. One corner of the yard held a graceful white gazebo, a water fountain whispered from another corner, and the fragrance of gardenia and lavender and roses mingled in the cooling air, subtle and intoxicating. A line from some poem or play floated through Garrett’s head: “Soft moonlight sleeps upon the bank…”

Then a living shape popped up in front of him so quickly he caught his breath—and stared, eyes widening. What the hell is this?

The garden was dark, but he could tell instantly that the— boy? —standing in front of him was strange, small and slight, with fiery red hair and pale freckled face and pointed nose and pointed chin. The hair was longish, covering his—its—ears, but Garrett had to forcibly stop himself from imagining points on the tips of those, too. The boy wore thonged leather sandals and short tan trousers and some tuniclike open weave sweater of coarse cloth. It was impossible to tell—its—his—age.

The boy grinned and there were points on his teeth as well, as if the canines had been filed, and his eyes were slits of blue fire.

“Who are you?” Garrett managed. The boy shook his head, still grinning, and waved an index finger in front of his face. Then his hand moved so fast Garrett had no time to react, and he was whipping something out of the tunic, though the motion was such a blur that something white seemed to simply materialize in the boy’s hand.

In his palm was something the size and shape of a business card, which he presented to Garrett with a mock bow. Garrett’s fingers had no sooner closed on it than the boy turned and lifted his arms to his sides, spinning in a circle like a child, like a top. Then he suddenly broke into a run, straight for a hedge of night-blooming jasmine growing in front of the garden wall.

This time Garrett was anticipating the boy’s move and grabbed for him. His fingers closed around nothing and he stumbled, nearly falling on his face on the path. He threw himself upright and looked wildly around him…

He saw a flash of white by the hedge and said sharply, “Wait”—but the branches had closed around the boy without so much as a rustle.

What the fuck?

And when Garrett shoved his way through the branches, he came up against the stone wall again.

He backed out of the branches, caught his breath, and looked down at the card in his hand. It was not a normal business card, but a bit smaller and longer, gold-embossed letters on heavy stock. Calling card, his mind said, and he had no idea how he really knew that. The card held an address in Cambridge, and the handwritten notation: 10:00 A.M.

Nothing more.

Garrett turned and looked around him. The garden was empty… he was alone in the light of the rising moon.

And once again he was left with the shaky feeling of reality crumbling around him.

The address was an elegant old Cambridge house, a two-story stone Tudor in one of those unattainable dream neighborhoods with lush backyard gardens, waterfalls and arbors, and trellises and terraces.

The tall woman who answered the carved oak door was as aristocratic as her house; at what must have been past seventy she was still as slim, upright, and graceful as a dancer, her years only slightly softening classic aquiline features. She wore a loose silk caftan in shimmering apricots, creams, and golds, and looked Garrett over with penetrating sky-blue eyes.

Garrett silently handed her the card.

“You’re prompt.” She smiled at him without introducing herself. “I like that.” She stepped aside so that he could enter the hall. Garrett’s eyes swept the rooms that he could see from the entry; they were large and light, and crammed with antiques, real oil paintings, silk rugs on hardwood floors gleaming with age.

“If you’ll follow me,” she said, and glided down the hall past equally elegant rooms toward a high arch of double glass doors. She opened a door for him and Garrett stepped into an atrium with octagonal walls of glass enclosing a jungle of exotic plants, from orchids to tropical trees and all manner of flowers with riotous colors and voluptuous blossoms. The atrium overlooked the garden, and autumn sunlight poured through the walls of glass. As Garrett followed the older woman through the greenery, they passed a waterfall whispering into a series of connecting pools; Garrett caught glimpses of fat pale fish through the green water, in the same colors his hostess was wearing. He half expected to hear the calls of tropical birds.

Sure enough, as they slipped through an arrangement of plants that opened up into a seating area of wicker furniture, he was confronted with a cream-colored cockatoo perched on a stand.

The woman indicated a wicker sofa with a wave of her hand and seated herself on one of twin wicker chairs with high arched backs. On the low table in front of her was a silver tray with a tea service and a plate of cakes. “Would you like tea, or something stronger?”

Garrett remained standing. “I’m sorry, I like to know who I’m eating with.”

She smiled at him. “Oh, come now, Detective Garrett—surely we can dispense with the obvious.”

“Selena Fox?” he asked sharply.

“That will do.”

Garrett wasn’t in the mood for word games. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“In time,” Fox said serenely as she poured amber liquid into eggshell-thin cups. She lifted the cup and saucer toward him.

Garrett stared at her. “Lately I’m not so hot on drinking anything a witch hands me.”

Fox lifted her shoulders, a smooth, lithe gesture. “I can understand your reluctance. Still, don’t you find the end sometimes justifies the means?”

Garrett’s mind wanted to rebel against the elliptical conversation, but he honed in immediately on what she was implying: the drugged trip Tanith had induced in him had led to the discovery of McKenna’s house.

His face hardened. “My partner is in Mass General, lying in a coma. I don’t think that end justifies anything.”

The older woman’s eyes contracted in sympathy. “I’m very sorry about that, Detective. I think you’re misattributing the cause, however.” The sound of water from the fountain echoed, a whisper against the glass around them.

Garrett finally sat, though he didn’t reach for the tea. “What do you want from me? Why did you call me here?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I understood it was you who were looking for me.”

His eyes narrowed. You’re not going to trip me out with these witch games. That shopkeeper called you and said I’d been by asking for you, that’s all there is to it. Then his mind flashed on the strange red-haired boy. “Who”—he’d almost said what —“was that you sent for me?” he asked abruptly. “The kid?”