Sins of the Flesh (Half-Breed Series Book 2) (28 page)

Mmm, Thor. I’d totally wind up pregnant if I did a Thor ritual.

Kristin’s words made me wonder. “How much would the ritual have to change for it not to work, or for it to do something unexpected?”

“It’s intent and faith that makes the spell. That’s how Wicca works. As for other magical systems, change one word, mispronounce one syllable, and all bets are off. Ninety-nine percent of the time, nothing will happen. One percent of the time, you’ll get something weird, like a bag of seeds or a glut of pineapples.”

Or a Pele who takes your pineapple and won’t leave. “What if the caster isn’t religious, or a practitioner, but just some guy trying to get a bit of help on his farm? Would the spell work like a Wiccan was casting it, like a mage was casting it, or something else?”

“That’s tricky. The spell is Wiccan in nature. No ceremonial magic practitioner would perform a spell like that – there’s too much left open to misinterpretation and not enough structure. So if the farmer had faith it would work, the spell would probably perform as a Wiccan one, and he should get some measure of health back to his orchard. If he didn’t have faith, then nothing should have happened. I don’t know about those last two lines, though. Those could be activating something in the native pantheon that I’m unaware of.”

I glanced at Kai. She shrugged. “It offers Pele a pineapple in exchange for growing and multiplying his ‘endeavors’. Again, not her thing. Maybe there was a second ritual? Or by an incredible coincidence, the spraying caused his trees to have a miraculous recovery the morning after the ritual.”

That would be one hell of a miraculous recovery. Nothing beyond magic could heal an entire orchard that fast – especially trees as badly damaged as Hayworth’s had been.

Kristin sighed. “Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe someone else summoned a plant god, and not the farmer.”

“Who? I can’t imagine anyone except Hayworth would care enough to exert magical influence to save his farm. He’s not exactly a nice guy, and his family is back on the mainland. It has to be this ritual, which means Pele.”

“Well then, you’re going to have to ask the goddess what’s going on. Why would she agree to do something so far away from her area of responsibility, and for a lousy pineapple? And the ritual is done. She healed the trees, got her pineapple. Why hasn’t she gone back to rest? She’s breaking contract by staying.”

I grimaced at the thought of trying to have a civil conversation with Cleo after last night. But Kristin was right. The goddess was the only one who could answer those questions.

I said good-bye to Kristin and clicked off the phone. “What do you think?” I asked Kai.

“I think maybe we should do another ritual and ask Lono to bring the rains and chase the volcano goddess away.” Her tone was wry as she flipped through the book. “Or stock up on massive amounts of fire extinguishers, and pineapples.”

“I’m not bringing any more gods or goddess into this. We’ve got one too many as it is. Heck, I’m worried enough about this protection ritual tonight. Who knows how that’s going to go.”

“Well, as your token human for tonight, I’m doubtful it will even work. I’ve no experience in magic. You’re a half-elf, and Irix is a demon. I’m thinking a better idea would be to drag Hayworth down to the beach and offer him up to Pele as a sacrifice.”

I laughed. “She won’t want him. He’s not good-looking enough for her. She goes for the young, virile, sexy types. Besides, as abrasive as Hayworth is, I can’t really blame him. The guy was about to lose his life savings in that farm. Tons of people do spells they find in books or off the internet as a last resort. It’s not his fault this one actually worked.”

Kai shot me a perceptive look. “You’re too nice, Amber. Hayworth is an idiot. This is my home, my island, and I’m not about to watch it burn to the sea because some mainland farmer can’t manage his crops.”

She was right. And I wasn’t about to give up while Maui was in danger. Kai snapped the book shut, and a piece of paper slid from it onto the floor.

“Hey, what’s that?” I reached down and picked it up. It was jagged at one end where it had been torn from a notebook. I unfolded it and saw neat writing – a copy of the fertility ritual. Of course Hayworth hadn’t wanted to lug this big book into the field for his ritual any more than I wanted to drag it around in my bag. He’d copied it for reference. And he’d changed a few things beyond just the offering and the deity’s name. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t read the original spell a million times already.

“No candles,” Kai noted, scooting close to read the paper.

“He used cane brush and pineapple twigs instead. And he burned the offering.” I pointed to a few lines scrawled at the bottom. Burned it. That would reinforce the whole Pele theme. “Is this Hawaiian? What does it say?”

Kai frowned as she read. “It seems your farmer was hedging his bets.”

“He’s asking for another god’s help too?” I looked through the Hawaiian text, hoping to find a second spirit that might have actually been responsible for healing the trees. It made sense – one spirit takes the pineapple and heals the trees, and Pele comes in on the fringes of the ritual. “Is it Brigid? Hestia?”

“No. We’re stuck with Pele, and only Pele. But I knew I recognized the earlier phrase – it
is
part of an offering incantation to Pele. We don’t use it here, since we don’t have an active volcano. On the Big Island, it’s used to appease the goddess and quiet the volcano. Farmers give her an offering from their crops, and, in return, she spares them from fire. But Pele is a capricious goddess, and your farmer left one word out of his incantation.”

“Which word?” I asked with dread.

“Some. The offering is “some” of their crop. This idiot offered Pele his entire crop, and everyone else’s on the island. Assuming she’s a real spirit, she’s come to claim her due.”

Chapter 23

I
shoved the paper at Dennis Hayworth. It had taken me a while to locate the farmer. Kai and I had wandered through rows of pineapple trees until we found him sorting fruit and raking twigs and leaves into piles.

My head throbbed. Each tree I’d walked by had suffered some degree of the fungal infection. The only healthy tree in the whole damned place was the one I’d healed this morning. What had happened to cause the fungus in two trees to re-infect the entire lot in a matter of hours?

“Is this the ritual you did?” Kai shoved the paper at the farmer, unaware of what I saw on the trees. “Did you say it exactly as you wrote it, or did you make further modifications?”

Hayworth ignored the paper. “You!” He pointed, taking a menacing step forward. “What did you do? My entire orchard is reinfested.”

I backed up a step. “The tree I healed is still fine. I didn’t do this.”

“You cursed me. You cursed my farm, and now everything is dying again.”

“I didn’t!” I put a few more steps between the farmer and me. If he got physical, I could defend myself, but I didn’t exactly want to kill this man with a bolt of lightning because he took a swing at me.

“Maybe Pele didn’t get enough pineapples.” Kai still held the paper but was watching the man carefully. It was nice to know she had my back. Or front.

He turned to Kai, his wrath at me momentarily forgotten. “I offered a pineapple and delivered. I even went back last night and threw more of them into the fire. I gave her what I offered.”

“You
offered
the entire island.” Kai waved the paper in the man’s face and growled. “Not just your crop, but everyone else’s as well.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He spat then glared at me. “The trees are dying. I did a spell for healthy trees and harvest. Whether you cursed them or Pele went back on her word doesn’t matter. Dead trees means the deal is off.”

I frowned. Had Pele revoked her cure because she hadn’t gotten what she’d been promised? According to Kai, the ritual had offered her the entire island. What did Pele want to do with it? Burn it to barren rock? I couldn’t believe she’d want to be lonely on a dead island. What constituted her ‘having’ the island?

I needed to talk to the goddess. Not that she was going to be in a talking mood, given how we’d last left things. The message in the burning coals this morning had made that quite clear.

“Can you please look at the paper,” Kai pleaded. “We need to know exactly what you did so we can figure out how to fix this.”

“I don’t care. You can’t ‘fix’ this. My trees are infected. I’m ruined and broke. And I’m not going to mess with any more of this magical stuff.”

He turned away and picked up his rake. I had to do something. I had to figure out a way to show him he had a stake in all this.

“Infected trees are better than ones that are burned to the ground.” Hayworth paused, rake in hand. “I cured one tree. I can cure more, but not if you don’t help us, and not if Pele continues unchecked and burns your orchard down. Did you think she’d ignore you, the one who brought her here? She’s going to turn on you, make you suffer. You’ll lose everything to her flames.”

I should have been an actress. I would have easily won the Best Demon Liar Ever award. There was no way I could cure his entire orchard. The amount of energy it would take was beyond what me, Irix, and a whole host of demons combined could muster. And I had no idea what Pele’s intentions were concerning Hayworth’s farm and his person. It was a plausible threat, though, given her famous temper and love of vengeance.

The farmer blanched.

“Your pineapple trees,” I said softly. “I can cure them all. The only tree in this whole grove that isn’t infected is the one I healed. The disease would be gone, and it wouldn’t come back. No more spraying. No more throwing away hundreds of fruit. Or you can tell us to go away and wait for Pele’s wrath.”

He looked up. “Okay. I’ll help. But I want the whole orchard healed.”

I took a deep breath. Impossible, unless I stayed here and slowly cured one tree at a time while screwing everyone on the island for energy. Luckily neither of us had mentioned a time limit. It would take me about a year. Less if Irix helped.

“Deal.”

Hayworth dropped his rake and snatched the paper from Kai. “The spell had to be done at night, and I was worried I might accidently burn the pineapple trees down, so I did it on the beach instead of the farm like I was supposed to. Oh, and I did wind up using some candles I found in my kitchen – a yellow and a red one.”

Sheesh, this guy had thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this ritual. “Did you honestly believe it would work? Did you have faith the spirits would come to your aid?”

“No,” he scoffed. “I’m Lutheran, but when you’re in Hawaii and there’s idols all over the place, dancing and fire stuff... when in Rome, you know. I figured it might just work. What did I have to lose?”

Kai bristled at the man’s disrespectful tone, her hands curling tight. I needed to move this along before she lost her temper.

“So what happened during and after the ritual?”

“There was no wind that night, but sparks kept flying into the brush. I put them out, so nothing got out of control. At the end, the fire went crazy. Flames were ten feet high. Then they walked across the sand and into the trees.” Hayworth shook his head. “Thought I was seeing things. I tried to put the original flames out with my shirt, but I couldn’t do anything about the crazy fire in the trees. When the fire department arrived, I got the heck out of there.

“When I went back the next morning and looked where I’d built the bonfire, there wasn’t anything left. No ashes, no charred wood. The pineapple was gone. The trees were all burned, as well as the surf shack, but where the bonfire had been, there was nothing but clear white sand.”

“And you thought a pineapple offering would be an adequate exchange for eradicating the fungus from your farm?”

“Yeah. That was the ritual. I give Pele a pineapple and my orchard is healthy again. She could have said ‘no’. In fact, that’s what I assumed would happen. The whole thing seemed kind of stupid, but if natives traded off their lands for a bunch of beads, maybe a goddess would heal my farm for a pineapple.”

Kai snarled. “You idiot. You offered the whole island to her, not just one pineapple.”

“I didn’t offer the island. I don’t own the island. How can I give away something I don’t own? And I gave the fire one pineapple. That was what the spell said – one. Stupid goddess. How could she think I would let her have my whole farm?”

I didn’t know much about demi-gods, but with demons, the devil was in the details. I was ready to leave and concentrate on how to work the spell tonight, and how to get Pele into civil discourse, but Kai wasn’t done with Hayworth.

“If you’d done more than read tourist books, you would have realized what Pele was like and stuck with some other god, like Lono, instead. She’s jealous, grasping and greedy. She’ll take whatever she can get – including someone else’s spouse. She’s a goddess. You don’t bargain with a goddess.”

“I didn’t,” Hayworth shouted. “I did the ritual in the book. Nowhere was there a warning about substituting stuff. Sue that Celestina woman if there’s a problem. It’s not my fault.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I waved the two apart. “Let’s figure out how to stop this thing, then we can point fingers and cast stones.”

I turned to Hayworth. “Was there anything you read about sending the goddess back?” It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.

“Just keep feeding her pineapples? I don’t know. I asked some Hawaiian goddess for help; I didn’t think about having to send her back.”

Now
I
took a calming breath and turned to Kai.

She lifted her hands helplessly. “Pele will want the sacrifice she’s been offered. Maybe you can get her to agree to a substitution. Find some good-looking guy with a suicide wish. That might work.”

She’d jump at the chance to walk away with Irix, but
that
wasn’t going to happen.

“Are there any instances of Pele being tricked? Of her being appeased by something other than the originally promised offering? Besides throwing a gorgeous guy at her, that is?”

Kai grimaced. “Yeah, there are stories of her being tricked, but they didn’t end well. Pele always finds out, and her revenge is brutal.”