Heart of the Witch (9 page)

How much to tell? All of it was speculation, but Nick figured Whitehall was out to test him a little. Maybe to amuse himself. Whatever the man's reasons, Nick decided to play along.

"The guy heated the knife in the fireplace—the one he used to burn the girl. He tied her to that hospital bed. She was cut loose, I assume by those boys who found her. The hunters."

Whitehall nodded. "Yep. But that's almost all in the newspaper."

"The guy is about five eleven," Nick offered.

"How you figure?"

Nick motioned toward the window. "Those sheets aren't that old. They were likely hung by our man, in case someone wandered by and tried to peek inside. There's no chair for him to stand on. He probably wouldn't bother, anyway. He stood on the ground to hang the sheets, stretching a little. With the height of the nails and the angle at which they were driven in… I'd say he stood about five-eleven."

Whitehall pulled his cigarette from his mouth and flipped it back and forth between his fingers. "Go on."

"The girl is hiding something. She has to know a few more details about the killer than she revealed. She said she couldn't see very well, but it couldn't have been that dark in here." Nick pointed to the window. "The moon would have been on that side of the cabin. And it was almost full that night. As late as it was, it would have been far enough above the trees to provide some light through the droop at the top of the sheets."

He turned and pointed again. "Also, if our suspect heated the knife in the fireplace, he obviously had a fire going. The angle of the bed tells me the firelight would have illuminated him quite well, depending on which side he stood. And my guess is he'd want to face the door, keep an eye out for intruders. That side of the bed would definitely have been lit well enough that she could have seen
some
detail. Something about his height, weight, eyes…" Nick stopped. He hadn't strung that many words together in years.

"Is that all?" Whitehall asked.

"That's it." Nick didn't tell the sheriff about the pill. He wanted to check that out for himself. It was probably the only piece of information Whitehall didn't already have.

"That's what I thought. You ain't dumb. You could prob'ly find Jimmy Hoffa before those two dimwits could find their dicks." The sheriff took the cigarette he'd had in his mouth and slipped it back in the pack.

Nick looked at the smoke he held in his hand, wondering if it had suffered similar treatment. He stubbed it out on the floor. Picking up the butt, he stuffed it in his jeans pocket.

"Wonder why he calls himself Tin Man," Whitehall murmured.

Nick shrugged. "I wondered about that myself."

"Probably from the movie. You know,
The Wizard of Oz
."

"What was the Tin Man's thing?" Nick asked. "I get them mixed up."

"You seen the movie?"

"A long time ago, when I was a kid."

Whitehall nodded. "The Tin Man was the one without a heart."

Like me
, Nick thought.
Hollow inside
. "The guy's saying he's a heartless bastard. Makes sense."

"Maybe so, maybe so," Whitehall murmured. "Although most serial killers don't think of themselves that way. Maybe he's in the recycling business."

Nick raised his eyebrows. "Recycling?"

"You know. Tin."

Nick gave a small smile. "I guess anything's possible."

The old sheriff put a hand on Nick's shoulder. "You need anything from me, let me know. The case belongs to the city, but I got my finger in the pie. Figured I'd better, if I want to see anything solved. Maybe us two together can get something done."

"Okay. Thanks," Nick said.

Unprompted, Whitehall offered up some information. "The SOB was a customer in the restaurant Miss Skyler ate in that night. Ran a check on credit-card receipts, but nothing came up that caught our fancy. No leads at all so far. You got as much on this guy as we do."

The sheriff sighed and walked to the door. Before he left, he turned back. "You're right about the girl, though, Lassiter. She's hiding something. I just can't figure out what—or why. But she's locked up tighter than Fort Knox." He tipped his hat back and scrunched his forehead. "What sticks in my craw is why she'd want to protect a psycho like this. I don't believe it's someone she knows…" A chuckle rumbled from his chest, and the grizzled lawman shook his head. "If it is, I hope she takes him off her Christmas card list."

"They've called a meeting of the elders," Sorina whispered to Ravyn as they made their way to the meadow where the weekly ritual would be held.

"From all the covens?" Ravyn asked in alarm, also keeping her voice low. She didn't want anyone to overhear.

There were twenty-some-odd covens scattered around the United States and Europe. Ravyn had met some of the other covens' witches, but the only elder she knew was Vanora, the elder of her own group. Whenever the elders called an unscheduled meeting, things were particularly bad. Had they discovered what she'd done? Surely not. Vanora would have called her in immediately.

Sorina shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure they'll just discuss the 'horrors of the outside world.'" She gnawed on her lower lip, her blue eyes clouded with worry. "Though maybe they'll implement more rules restricting our association with mortals."

Ravyn knew Sorina was concerned about effects to her engagement. Her loves of a normal life and Justin were much more important to her than her heritage or witchcraft. From the time they'd been children, Sorina had taken to the coven's teachings with a sort of nonchalance, as if being a witch was an afterthought. For Ravyn, being a witch was who she was,
everything
she was. Ravyn had never felt comfortable in the mortal world. She was out of place there, an imposter. While a child, living in the mortal world with her mother had caused her pain and anguish, and she'd learned early that she didn't belong. The coven was her haven, her only source of peace.

Sorina fit into the coven and the mortal world equally. In school she'd been popular and well liked. The other kids had tolerated Ravyn only because she was Sorina's sister. But being the sister of Sorina didn't always protect her. Once, when Ravyn was in the sixth grade and Sorina was in third, Ravyn had found an injured cat on the playground. She had knelt beside the animal, trying to help, and had placed her hands on it, willing it to heal. The cat had died anyway. Some of the kids came upon her and began screaming that she'd murdered the animal. She'd cried, and they'd made even more fun. She could feel herself losing control, wanting to hurt them… and Sorina had intervened just in time, calming both her and the other children. But from then on, anytime Sorina wasn't around, Ravyn's classmates taunted her.

She'd been chubby as a child, and after the cat incident, in addition to poking fun at her for her weight, they'd added
cat killer
to their insults.

There'd been one boy she thought was different: Brandon Tollers. He had black hair and blue eyes and looked just like John Stamos. Ravyn knew that he wasn't like the others, and that if she told him the truth, or at least part of it, he'd make the others stop. One day she'd found him sitting alone in the cafeteria. She'd slid in the seat across from him. Heart pounding, partly from looking into those blue eyes and partly from what she was about to do, she'd explained that she had powers, could do things other kids couldn't. She'd stopped short of using the word witch, but she'd attempted to explain what had really happened with the cat after making him promise he wouldn't tell the others her secret.

"You believe me?" she'd asked hopefully.

"Sure," Brandon had said, and Ravyn felt like a weight had been lifted. Things would be different now.

And they were. The kids tormented her even more, poking fun at her for thinking she was "magic." One day, she'd gone to her desk and found a pile of dead flies on top. "We want to see you bring them back from the dead!" one of the kids shouted. Brandon had told her secret. Had made things worse. His betrayal was almost the hardest thing about the whole mess. Now when she looked at him, instead of feeling that little lift in her heart, she felt as though someone were ripping at her insides. She should have known. Mortals were not to be trusted.

It took all of Ravyn's willpower to refrain from hurting him, hurting the others. The taunting and abuse carried through the rest of her school years. She was always the weirdo, the freak. As she got older, she could more easily resist the urge to retaliate, but the fact that she'd wanted to hurt the other children scared her. She knew how dangerous losing control of her emotions could be.

And now her loss of control had actually harmed another. It might even have been serious enough to force a meeting of the elders.

Unless they were meeting for some other reason. Perhaps they were convening to engineer a plan to stop the killer. Now that the violence of the outside world had touched one of their own, the elders were likely to become more active in aiding in the apprehension of the perpetrator. But if they were successful, Ravyn's role in what had happened would be revealed.

She and her sister crossed a bridge where the water on either side was clear and trickled melodiously over the smooth stones in the creek. The smell of woodland phlox, henbane and belladonna grew stronger the nearer they drew to the clearing, and as Ravyn took her place in the circle a cool gust of wind whipped the thin robe around her naked legs, making goose bumps shiver up along her flesh.

The night was moonless. The only light came from the fire in the center of the ritual circle and the candles flickering on the altar, miraculously unextinguished by the steady breeze. The reflection of those flames flickered across the faces of the gathered hooded figures.

Sorina stood across from Ravyn, on the other side of the altar. Elsbeth clasped Ravyn's right hand while Elsbeth's husband, Adalardo, held her left. Ravyn wondered if they could feel her misgivings through the simple touch of their hands. Were her palms damp? Did the trembling she felt inside travel through to her fingers?

Along with the pleasant tang of wood smoke from the fire, the air carried the scent of imminent rain. Here, however, in the copse behind the mammoth house of their high priestess Vanora, the coven was protected by the thick foliage of the overhanging trees.

Vanora knelt in front of the altar, her face shadowed by the hood of her robe. She held her athame by its ornate black handle, and she placed the ceremonial dagger's silver tip into a bowl of salt water. Her voice, deeply melodious and haunting, rose over the snap of the flames.

"I beseech thee, O Creature of Water, to cast out all impurities and uncleanliness of the world. Blessings be upon this Creature of Salt; let all malignity and hindrance be cast forth hence, and let all good enter herein. Wherefore so I bless thee, that thou mayest aid me. Guide us to halt the evil. Protect all innocent creatures. Make a shield against all wickedness and malevolence. Goodness and light shall we reap."

Ravyn reached down with the rest of the coven as they lifted their own athames from the ground. In turn, each of the witches placed the tip of his or her dagger in the bowl of salt water just as Vanora had. As one, they lifted the blades to the heavens.