Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (14 page)

“Yeah, but what did she just say?”

“I don’t know. Those were a couple of new
ones to me.”

“He’s a useless drunkard” came her
retort.

“Settle down, Felicity,” I told her,
realizing that she was as in the dark about Ben’s circumstances as
I had been just an hour ago. “He’s got his reasons.”

“They’d best be good,” she remarked with a
hard edge to her voice, looking up at me with anger flashing in her
eyes.

I certainly understood the turmoil and sense
of urgency she was going through. It wasn’t like I had been guilty
of it myself. However, I didn’t want to get into Ben’s personal
life in front of Cally and RJ.

I looked back at her without a word, hoping
that the look on my face would get through to her and that she’d
drop the subject for now. She glared back for a moment, and I
simply held her stare. I don’t know if it was my expression or just
the fact that her brain had to be swimming in an untold number of
directions, but she moved on, or back as the case may be.

“Fine. So what are we going to do?” she
demanded. “Sit around and wait for him to come to?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I returned, trying not
to snap at her. I knew all too well how she felt.

“What about Constance?” she declared. “Didn’t
you say Ben told you she was assigned to the case?”

With the turmoil of the evening, I had
completely forgotten about the federal agent.

I nodded assent. “You’re right. He did. I’ll
try to get hold of her as soon as Cally’s off the phone. In the
meantime, maybe we could try to jog your memory so we have
something more to tell her.”

She looked back at me and shuddered
involuntarily. “I’m not so sure I’m ready for that.”

I added, “I can understand that. Truth
is I’m not so sure that
I’m
ready for you to do that either.

“You know, something else we could do is put
our heads together and try to figure out why this is happening to
you instead of me.”

Even as I was finishing the comment her face
went blank. At first I thought she was about to have an episode,
but instead of tensing up, she simply turned her face away from
mine. In that instant, the thick ethereal walls she had constructed
around herself palpably strengthened.

My own psychic alarms began ringing in the
back of my head as it became obvious that she was steeling herself
not against the unknown but against me.

“What’s going on, Felicity?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she returned flatly.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Nothing’s going on,” she stated again.

“I know you better than that. You’re not
telling me something.”

Her voice continued to be cold and defiant.
“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Felicity…”

“Fine,” she spat, wheeling back to face me.
“I’ve got your answer. I know EXACTLY why this is happening to
me.”

I
had absolutely no idea
where my wife was heading with this, but the sharpness of her
present attitude told me it was a place I wasn’t going to be happy
about. I knew her well enough to tell that her temper was flaring
because she had been backed into a corner, or at least that is what
she perceived to be happening. The fact that those green eyes were
focused so intently on me and no one else was more than just an
overt clue that I was the one who had chased her there— they were a
proverbial smoking gun.

I ran down a mental list of hastily formed
theories but still came up empty. I simply couldn’t imagine what
she could feel so strongly about keeping secret, given the
circumstances. Unless, of course, she was about to issue the blame
for her plight directly upon me, and by pushing I was inadvertently
forcing her to voice that fact in front of friends. I hoped,
however, that such was nothing more than my own insecurities about
the pressure everyone had been under and that they were simply
bubbling to the top at a less than opportune moment.

I heard Cally re-enter the room behind me and
drop the handset back into the cradle as she announced, “The twins
are bringing Felicity’s Jeep over right now. They can ride back to
Nancy’s with us.”

“They didn’t have to do that,” I told her
evenly without turning away from my wife’s molten stare.

“They were already… on… their… way,” she
replied, voice fading into a stutter near the end of the sentence.
“I’m sorry. Did I interrupt something?”

“I guess that depends,” I replied as the
tension continued to swell. “Were you planning to expand on that
last comment, Felicity?”

Faced with the query, my wife backpedaled.
“The phone is free. Shouldn’t you call Constance,” she said. The
last part of the statement came not as a question but as an
instruction.

“In a minute,” I replied. I didn’t know if I
was only serving to bring myself more grief, but something was
telling me not to let this go without an answer. Her attempt to
slam the door she had just opened a moment before only steeled my
resolve to get it. “What did you mean you ‘know EXACTLY why this is
happening’ to you?”

She made another verbal attempt at escape.
“Just forget it.”

“I don’t think so.”

We searched each other’s faces for a long
moment, and while looking at her, I realized there was something
more to this than I had first thought. Something was hiding in the
shadows. What I had initially taken for anger alone now held what
could have been a hint of embarrassment peeking around from behind
the bolder of the two emotional masks.

At the same time, I knew that what she had to
be seeing in my face was stark determination. This was very simply
one argument my petite, Taurus wife was not going to be able to
stampede her way through.

“Okay, fine then,” she replied, turning her
face away and breaking the stare. “Look in the pantry. Bottom
shelf, behind the dog food bin.”

Again, I was at a loss as to where exactly
this was heading, but at least it was moving forward. I sat my
coffee cup on the table then turned and stepped over to the pantry.
I swung the tall door open and knelt down in front of the wooden
cabinet. I inspected the contents but at first glance saw nothing
unusual.

“What am I looking for?” I asked aloud.

“You’ll know it when you find it,” she
replied.

“Behind the dog food bin you said?” I
repeated her earlier instruction.

“Yes” came her clipped reply. “On the
bottom.”

I reached in and pulled a plastic kitchen
organizer full of cling wrap and sandwich bags off the top of the
clear food bin and set it aside on the floor. Leaning inward and
tilting my head away from the next shelf up, I thrust my arm back
into the recesses of the cabinet and began groping around. It
didn’t take long for my hand to brush against something angular
that was wedged in behind the dog food container. It felt roughly
like a rectangle as I ran my fingers around in search of a place to
grab hold.

Using my free hand, I slid the bin slightly
forward then grasped the object and twisted it upward. When I had
finally worked it around the other stored items and managed to
extricate it from the cabinet, I found myself kneeling on the floor
with a shoebox in my hand.

I wouldn’t have given the item a passing
thought had it not been for the fact that it was purposely hidden.
However, that was far from the only reason for suspicion. What
immediately caught my eye, as well as my breath, was the length of
bright red ribbon tied securely about its girth.

“Gods, Felicity,” I murmured as I stood. “You
didn’t…”

“What did you expect me to do, Row?” she
asked, blurting the words, all of which were underscored by a
sharply defensive tone. “I’ve watched you go through too much these
past few years. Then when I called home yesterday, and you said it
was happening again… I couldn’t just stand by and watch. Not again.
Not this time.”

“You did this yesterday?” I asked, surprise
in my voice.

“Yes. When I got home and you weren’t here,”
she said as she nodded. “But I didn’t expect it to work as quickly
as all that, then.”

“Yeah, well we all know you’re a hell of a
Witch. Guess this just proves it.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Cally finally
drummed up the courage to ask.

“It’s some kind of a binding,” RJ interjected
before I could answer.

I glanced over at her and nodded. “Yeah. I’m
afraid so. And just like any other binding done where strong
emotions are involved, it backfired.” I leveled my gaze back on my
wife as I dropped the box onto the table in front of her. “Unless
it was your plan all along to bind this crap to yourself.”

“Of course not.” She shook her head at
me quickly and then screwed her face into a scowl as if I had just
made the stupidest comment she’d ever heard. “It was only supposed
to bind you
from
the ethereal.
It wasn’t supposed to bind anything
to
anyone.”

“Well, let me ask you this: If you wanted
this to all go away, then why didn’t you just do a banishing
instead? That would seem more appropriate.”

“That was my original plan after we got off
the phone,” she answered. “But then the thing happened with
Brittany Larson, and I started thinking… And, I couldn’t be sure…
And, if I had done a banishing, that could be far more permanent,
and…” She kept halting, searching for words to explain. Finally,
she gave up trying and simply said, “I just didn’t want to close
any doors, that’s all.”

“Even so, Felicity, of all people you know
better than this,” I admonished.

“Don’t lecture me, Rowan Linden Gant,” she
returned. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done yourself and you
know it.”

“That’s not the point,” I told her.

“It is as far as I’m concerned,” she
countered. “Do you think you’re the only one who’s allowed to do
the protecting?”

She had me there. I shook my head and glanced
around the room in resignation. “I never said that. But, to be
honest, right now I don’t want to argue about this. I know why you
did it and I appreciate it, really I do. But,” I reached out and
pushed the shoebox closer to her, “undo it.”

“What if I say no?” she contended.

I sighed. “You know as well as I do that
there are ways to get around bindings, especially now that I know
about it.”

She didn’t reply. She knew I was correct.

I pressed forward. “Look, we’re both just
going to be wasting our energies with this, and that won’t do
anyone any good. Undo the binding, and let’s get back to
normal.”

She let out a ‘hmph’ then told me, “In case
you haven’t noticed, Rowan, our lives haven’t been normal for a few
years now.”

“All right then, status quo or whatever you
want to call it, Felicity. Just break the spell. Please?”

She stared back at me in silence for a moment
then turned her head slightly to the side and looked past me.

“Cally,” she said with quiet resignation.
“There are some scissors on the altar shelf in the living room.
Could you bring them to me and a book of matches please?”

I gave my wife a thin smile and then said,
“Thank you. I’ll go call Constance now.”

* * * * *

“Mandalay.” The federal agent’s businesslike
voice issued from the earpiece on the telephone amid a rumble of
indistinguishable background noises.

I had parked myself in the bedroom so that I
wouldn’t disturb the magickal workings in the kitchen. On the way
through the house, I had taken notice that Ben had finally slumped
over to the side and was now snoring at a somewhat lower
volume.

Cally had been taking pity on the unconscious
cop and was covering him with an afghan at about the time I was
making the turn into the hallway.

“Hey Constance, it’s Rowan,” I replied, as I
finished picking up some of the items the cats had scattered. I
piled them back on the nightstand before taking a seat on the edge
of the bed.

“Oh, hi Rowan.” Her voice brightened a notch
but remained all business. “I’m just a little busy at the
moment…”

“I know, Ben told me you were working the
Larson abduction,” I interjected before she could rush me off the
line. “I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t important. Can you
talk?”

There was a brief pause then she replied,
“Hold on a second.”

I heard shuffling noises, some voices— hers
included— and then footsteps. A handful of moments and a few more
unidentifiable sounds later, the background noise dropped
noticeably.

“I’m back” her voice came again, and then she
barreled straight into questions of her own. “So have you talked to
Storm recently? He missed a seven-thirty briefing and that’s not
like him. I’ve been trying to call him all evening, but I keep
getting a message that his phone is turned off and no one picked up
at his house either.”

I hesitated for a moment before answering. I
guess I’d been the lucky one when I got hold of Allison. “Actually,
he’s passed out on my couch.”

“Passed out?”

“Long story.”

“Is that why you called?”

“I wish it were,” I replied.

“Okay, so what’s up?”

“Nothing good I’m afraid.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Your kidnapping just became a homicide,” I
offered succinctly.

“How do you…” she started. “No, forget I even
said that. So fill me in, what’s going on?”

“Well, it gets a little complicated.”

“Un-complicate it for me.”

“Okay, in a nutshell, Felicity had two
ethereal episodes tonight and…”

“Felicity?” she interrupted. “Felicity did
the woo-woo stuff? Not you?”

“That’s the complicated part.”

“Okay, I’ll catch up on that later. Go
on.”