Bones of a Witch (8 page)

Vroom—Vroom. Oh yeah.

Tony Marcella:

You know, I really don’t understand what’s got
into Lilith. First, I think she’s feeling vulnerable about this
witch hunter thing, and so I go to her and offer her a little
comfort, but she pushes me away. Then when the guy calls and
threatens her life, she jumps my bones and wants to make love all
night. It’s got to be a witch thing, I don’t know. She keeps
telling me that I’m a witch, I should understand, but I don’t get
it…well, I mean I’m getting it, but I don’t comprehend.

The following morning Lilith awoke acting like
the phone call from Lemas never happened. I found her in the
kitchen eating cold Szechuan with a cup of coffee. I told her we
needed to go downtown to the justice center and get with Carlos and
Dominic to figure out our next move, but all she wanted to do was
drive out to Gloucester to collect some damn sand for her silly
scrying sessions.

“You’ve got two full jars of sand in your
closet,” I told her. “Why on earth do you need more?”

“That’s river sand,” she argued. “You don’t
scry with river sand.”

“Why not?”

“You just don’t. If you want to scry accurately
you need beach sand, and everyone knows there’s none finer for
scrying than sand from Cape Ann, specifically Gloucester Beach. If
you took the witch’s coven seriously you would understand
that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means.”

“Is that a dig? Are you making fun of me
because I can’t do all the cool magic tricks that you
do?”

“Tricks?” She marched up to me, inflating her
chest like a bellows. “You consider my witchcraft mere
trickery?”

I backed away in measured steps. “No. I’m not
saying that, exactly.”

“Then what are you saying—exactly?”

“Nothing, it’s just that….”

“What?”

“You keep pushing me with this witchcraft
thing. I mean, come on, what do you want? It’s not like witchcraft
comes with a handbook.”

“Yes it does.”

“Huh?”

“You have the grimoire. You can look up
anything you want regarding witchcraft.”

I blinked a doltish response. “I thought you
lost that book when your house blew away.”

“No.” She crossed the room and stopped at the
bookcase by the window. There on the bottom shelf, disguised as a
dictionary, was the grimoire. She took it out and brought it to me.
“See? It’s been here all the time.”

I took the book and opened it up. It was all
there, every tattered yellowed page with their cryptic writings and
mysterious-looking symbols. Though virtually all the original
script was in some obscured pagan text, Lilith had made
interpretive notes and pasted them between the pages on sticky
notepaper. I glanced up at her and asked, “How did you get it
back?”

She rolled her eyes as if the question had
embarrassed her. “The grimoire always finds its way back,” she
explained. “It’s endowed with a rebound spell.”

Again my fluttering eyes and slacked jaw
conveyed to her my utter ignorance to such things. She snatched the
book away and returned it to the bookcase. “A rebound spell
provides for the object under its charm a way and means back to its
rightful owner in the event it is lost, stolen or otherwise
separated from its possessor.”

Intrigued, I had to ask. “What if someone puts
that spell on you and then—”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“A rebound spell applies only to possessions,
and since one cannot possess another, it means that it will not
work on people.”

“Okay, fine.” I turned and headed for the
kitchen to fix myself a cup of coffee. “But I don’t understand, if
you wanted me to practice witchcraft so much, why haven’t you told
me about the grimoire?”

“I haven’t told you,” she said, following me
in, “because I thought you knew about it.”

“How was I supposed to know about
it?”

“It’s disguised as a dictionary. You mean to
tell me that all this time you haven’t needed to look something up
in the dictionary?”

“That’s right.”

“What, you know every word and its meaning in
the entire unabridged version of the New World
Dictionary?”

I couldn’t resist. “Yes. I do.”

She tossed her hands up in defeat. “Get your
coffee and come on. We’re going.”

“Where to?”

“Gloucester. Jesus, Tony, have you not heard a
single word I said?”

Sometimes I can argue with Lilith, and
sometimes I can’t. I’m beginning to think now that the only times I
can is when she wants to argue; and then it’s only to serve her
perverted sense of entertainment. This, however, was not one of
those times. I grabbed my coffee and my jacket and I followed her
out the door.

Gloucester is barely an hour’s drive out of New
Castle, and a pleasant, leisurely one at that. And though I knew it
was important to get together with Carlos and Dominic as soon as
possible to discuss the pressing situation with Lemas Winterhutch;
more important still was Lilith’s state of mind and well-being. If
she felt that going to the beach to collect a bit of sand was so
vital, then so be it. To the beach it is.

Besides a couple of early morning joggers and a
young treasure seeker sweeping the sands with a metal detector, the
beach belonged to me and Lilith and a dozen or so scrappy gulls
working the surf and gliding the incoming ocean breeze. We left the
car and started along the beach hand-in-hand at the point where the
high water line met dry sand. There the smell of salt and sea mixed
easily with the aroma of seasoned sausage and french-fries spilling
from the vent stack of a lonely concession stand up on the
boardwalk. It made me think of Carlos and how he would not be able
to resist the temptation of the lure. Within minutes of our arrival
he would have scoffed down a sausage or two and had every seagull
within a mile of us swooping in to steal or scavenge what they
could from his oversized bucket of fries. In a way, it sort of made
the trip seem unfulfilling. Of course, I wouldn’t have mentioned
that to Lilith. I believe she actually found our walk romantic, a
measure hard to score with her on most days.

“Here,” she said, stopping out of the blue on a
non-descript patch of bald sand. “This is the perfect sand.” She
reached into her pocket, pulled out a matchbox and proceeded to
fill it with sand.

“That?” I pointed at the pitiful vessel. “That
is all you brought for the sand?”

She looked up at me from bended knee, the
gentle wind teasing her hair in unruly ways that girls don’t
usually like. “Yes. Why?”

“Well, it’s just that we’ve come all the way
out here because you complained you don’t have any beach sand, and
all you intend to bring back is a lousy matchbox full of the
stuff?”

“It’s all I need.”

“You’re going to need more later, aren’t
you?”

“Yes, and when I do I’ll get more.”

“Why not get it now?”

“Because then it won’t be fresh.”

“Fresh? It’s sand. It’s like three billion
years old. How fresh can it be?” I turned away in disgust and faced
the sea, feeling like I could jump in and swim till I crossed the
Atlantic and washed up on the coast of France, where even though I
don’t speak the language, I might have an easier time communicating
with the people there. I turned again to Lilith. “You know one
thing I…Lilith?”

She was gone. I spun about in a full
three-sixty, panning the surf from one end to the other, but she
was nowhere in sight. The concession stand stood a full hundred
plus yards away on an elevated boardwalk. Even if she could fly—and
I’m not saying she can’t; I just never seen her do it—she couldn’t
have made it there in the split second or two it took me to turn
away and then back again. Overhead, a pesky seagull began buzzing
my airspace, swooping down like a dive bomber and pecking at my
head. I swatted at it, defending my ground with unjustified
tenacity, not wanting to give up an inch, lest Lilith needed it to
reappear from her realm of inconspicuous domain. Within moments
other gulls emerged from the open sea, perhaps drawn by the
activity of the first and whipped into frenzy under the false
pretence of a free meal. They too began buzzing, swooping and
dive-bombing me in Hitchcock fashion until I could no longer defend
my territory. I buried my head in my shoulders, my arms and fists
swatting blindly in dead air. Then a voice behind me called out,
“This way!”

I turned and stole a peek over my shoulder.
“Lilith? Where did you go?”

“Never mind. Come on.”

She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in the
direction of the upper shore, laughing as she ran and tripping in
the bog-effect of the soft sand. By the time we reached the car,
the gulls had given up on making a meal of us and had flown off to
richer shores. I looked at Lilith, who was still trying to catch
her breath between bouts of spontaneous laughter. “You think that
was funny?” I said, though clearly she did, and frankly, so did
I.

“Funny? That was hilarious. You know I think
that grey spotted one liked you.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Yeah, but you know what, I like you, too.” She
leaned in and kissed me.

“Wow,” I said, “what was that for?”

“That’s for being a good sport and taking me
out here. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, but you mind telling me now
just what the hell happened back there? Where did you disappear
to?”

“I didn’t disappear. I was with you the entire
time.”

“You were?”

“Sure. Now what do you say; are you ready to go
back to see Carlos and Dominic down at the Justice
Center?”

“Me? That’s where I wanted to go all
along.”

“All right then.” She turned and practically
skipped around the front of the car to the passenger side door.
“What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

I could tell it would do no good to press the
issue. Had she disappeared? Had she not disappeared? Really, what
did it matter? She had her sand—her precious Gloucester Beach sand.
That’s all that mattered. I jumped into the car and we headed for
home. It wasn’t until we were pulling into the Justice Center
parking lot when the thought hit me. She hadn’t disappeared back at
the beach. If she had, she would have said so. Instead she told me
that she was there all the time. I found a parking spot and pulled
into it, and after shutting off the engine, I turned to her and
asked, “Did you shape-shift into a seagull?”

She looked at me with a semi-guilty smirk. “No,
that was just a little gas. Sorry, I didn’t think you
noticed.”

I sampled the air and grimaced. “I hadn’t, but
thanks for fessing up.”

“No problem. Come on; let’s go in.”

“No, wait. I was talking about back there at
the beach. I turned around for just a second and when I turned back
you were gone, but this seagull was there pecking at my
head.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. What do you know?”

She opened the door and hopped out before I
could grab her arm. From there it was a sprint up to the building
to catch her, and after that there were too many people around to
carry on such a bizarre conversation. So I let it go for the time
being and escorted her upstairs where we found Carlos and Dominic
bullshitting over coffee and donuts.

Dominic Spinelli:

Whoa-ho man, I mean to tell you;
you could have blown me over with a feather the night I saw that
tattoo on Lilith’s rear end. That is one fine…uh, tattoo, for sure.
The girl is just too freaky. I love that about her. Of course, not
that I am ‘
in’
love with her or anything; I’m not. That would be wrong.
Tony’s my friend and I respect him. Besides, Lilith wouldn’t…that
is to say that she…. Ah, nuts. Forget it.

Let me explain what happened the day after the
parking garage murder. Tony and Lilith had gone home after leaving
the Justice Center that night, and my understanding is that they
called for Chinese take-out—probably Tony’s idea. He looked
stressed over the whole witch hunter thing. Not Lilith, though.
Man, she seemed cool as catnip. That girl’s got frost in her blood;
I tell you what.

Later that night they got this call from the
witch hunter, who told them he’s going to kill innocent bystanders
if Lilith doesn’t surrender herself to him. Naturally she’s wicked
pissed and wants him to bring it on, but Tony’s not buying into any
of it. I guess he called the guy back and read him the riot act.
I’ve noticed he can get a bit possessive of Lilith like that
sometimes. I don’t suppose she likes that much, though. She
probably found that a real turn off. That’s why you’d never catch
me trying to fight Lilith’s battles for her.

Anyway, they came here that next morning; get
this, though, after they stopped to frolic on the beach in
Gloucester. I mean, come on, what’s with that? I told them both how
I tried to back trace the phone number Winterhutch used to call
Lilith, via the phone company’s records. But the wolf is cunning.
See, he uses prepaid disposable cell phones to make his calls.
They’re totally untraceable to the purchaser if he pays with cash,
and you can’t triangulate the call if he keeps the conversations
down to under three minutes, which he does.