Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (29 page)

My lip instinctively curled
with
distaste.

“Spider venom is just
another
chemical, Adriel. It’s not all that different from drinking cow's
milk.”

I was being foolish. “Thank
you.”
When I would have taken the package, she held it back. “This
second package is...something of mine.” Slowly she unwrapped
the wool covering. “When you read the legend of Spider Woman in
the reference book, you’ll understand how to use this. It's
much like a prayer stick, the reed ones, used in the sand painting
ceremony.”

My stomach lurched a
warning. Every
witch had special spells or objects. Some were from early training
and as such, they contained a unique chaotic power combined with a
power of years gone by. They were also dangerously tied to the witch
in question and could be used as a terrible weapon against that
person. “Granny--”

“Shh. Listen. That vision
you saw
or battle you witnessed--the spider overcame the scorpion. If you
don't want to use my loom, then study the story and make your own.
You might still need mine. You need power that was destroyed in your
great-grandfather’s time. Power we no longer possess.”

She unfolded the last of
the wool. A
miniature loom, perfect in every detail rested inside. A tiny white
shell dangled from one side; a bitty comb used to groom the fibers of
a colorful weave that had been started. My mother and father were
perhaps the only ones who had ever been so generous to me. Well, and
more lately, Martin. This was not a good trend.

“In the original story, the
loom
was created from sunbeams, sky, lightning and crystals. It was the
gift of Spider Woman to the Navajos, meant to protect them from
things more dangerous than any human could handle. I have a special
affinity to her.” She folded the cloth back over. “I
truly hope you don’t need it.”

“But what if I do? What
if...Can
any one person really stop a spirit from the west?”

“There is no council
anymore,”
she said.

That wasn't an answer, not
a real one.
I thought about the fact that most witches, including Mat and my
mother, knew Granny. We all did business with each other. There might
not be a council, but there were witches who knew how to cooperate.
“Could we form a council? Can we close a gate to the west?”

Her fingers tapped again,
rather
frantically. “There were those on the council who could have
closed it. That was the problem.”

“That sounds like the
answer, not
the problem!”

Granny's fingers stilled.
“Adriel,
the council disbanded because of a witch hunt. What nobody talks
about is who was doing the killing.” A dark shadow crossed her
face. In the wake of it, her eyes flashed steely black again. “It
was one of our own, Adriel. One of us killed all the other witches.”

I went straight from
Granny’s to
visit my mother. Mom wasn’t anxious to talk about the past
either, but she confirmed what Granny had told me.

“There can be no council.
Witches
were dying left and right, usually by arcane methods, drained of
magic by magic. Few dared to offer any kind of aid. No one wanted to
be involved with a bunch of witches.”

“So Grandfather Adriel
left? Went
into hiding?”

“He had pleaded to retire
as head
of the council many times. He was old for heaven's sake, but he still
had power. And respect—until he was accused of the killings.
After fingers pointed at him, they accused my father also. Then Dad
was found...his remains...your great-grandfather left. He was
innocent,” she said fiercely. “But they were coming after
all of us.”

I thought about it. “But
after
Grandfather Adriel disappeared, the killings ceased?”

She nodded. “He wasn’t the
only one who left, but when the killing stopped it was proof enough
for some that the killer had been killed.”

“That’s not proof!”

“No, but there was not
enough
trust to even think of rebuilding a council. Any cooperation resulted
in more whispers. There were two more brutal murders a few months
after Adriel left, but whoever did the killing wasn't able to drain
the witches. They were nothing more than personal vendettas that
someone wanted tied to the old killings. None of us were fooled.”
Mom’s hands, busy snipping out my stitches, stopped just short
of stabbing me.

She picked up a healing
balm instead.
“Granny Ruth and my father collected the books, storing them
away from those who demanded everything be destroyed. There was more
to it, of course. There were particular books that the council
wanted to remove from general circulation. No witch wanted to
surrender her books, and in a lot of cases the witches didn't want to
admit to owning certain books.

“That was the problem.
After a
killing, the books belonging to each dead witch were deposited with
either my father or Grandfather Adriel. It marked them as guilty.
Then, someone got to my father and Grandfather Adriel left.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell
me all this?”

“It was a long time ago. I
was
very young. My father’s death—one doesn’t forget.
And after Grandfather Adriel disappeared, along with some of the
others, it stopped. For the most part, the killing stopped.”

She attacked the last
stitch. I held my
tongue until she picked up the balm again. “What about the book
he supposedly had? One on magic?”

“Ah, mi hija. He never
showed it
to me. He said if anyone ever found it it would be because Mother
Earth herself sent it.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “Right before
he
disappeared, he came by to give you and the rest of us his blessing.
Do you remember?”

I nodded, although it was
impossible to
separate out a single memory. I remembered his dark steady eyes, a
deep laugh and walnut skin. To this day, my strongest memory was him
grounding me to Mother Earth. I didn’t understand magic and
certainly couldn’t manipulate it then,
but
sitting on his lap, he
smelled of herbs and rich dirt,
desert
sand, and sunshine.

Mom said, “I didn’t care
about the book, not then. It was all so horrible. There were evil
people after him. Some even claimed the books did the killing. Either
way, he gave you his blessing and then he was gone. We never heard
from him again.”

I was sorely disappointed.
Irrationally
it seemed that if I had Grandfather Adriel's book, everything would
be solved. “I want to find it.”

Mom kissed the top of my
head. “You
aren't the first one. The priest demanded it after your grandfather
disappeared. Said giving it up would purge your grandfather's sins.”
She made the sign of the cross. “Grandfather Adriel's magic
existed with God.”

“But what about the book?”

“My father talked about it,
along
with a lot of other books. He was one who believed that no matter who
was using knowledge to kill witches, the books needed to be kept, but
guarded. After he and Grandfather were gone, we searched everywhere.
No book.”

I sighed. “Did it have sand
paintings in it?”

Mom smiled. “Who can know
what
Grandfather Adriel put in the book?”

I felt oddly cheated even
though I
hadn't known about the book a day ago.

“Now then,” Mom said,
pulling her earlobe, a signal that she had been conversing with her
network. “My friends tell me that White Feather’s house
is very damaged. What is this about?”

The last thing I wanted Mom
to do was
worry, but this thing after White Feather was bigger than the two of
us. I shared the highlights of Sarah’s death and the ill wind.
“Claire released something from the west. It's been plaguing
us. Every time White Feather uses wind, it comes after him. That’s
how his house was wrecked.”

Mom crossed herself again.
“Ah,
this is why you have all the questions about the council. Mija, a
wind spirit. This is not good.”

“I know.”

She paced away. “We are not
meant to mix in the spirit world, but this makes some sense with
something Gomez said.” She nodded. “Maybe you are
right. Grandfather’s book would do us some good right now.”

“Was Gomez on the council?”

She slanted her eyes at me.
“These
questions will bring you trouble, mija. No one talks about who was on
the council. There is no council, nothing like it. Remember that.” She
waited until I nodded my agreement, but her very insistence told
me she was trying to protect me.

After a long pause, she
sighed. “There
is a reason witches stay underground. It is why I was not trained to
my full potential. After my father died, my mother was not eager to
see me trained only to be killed for my skills.”

“Granny Ruth must have been
on
the council.”

“Just how old do you think
we
are? She was too young to be on the council, and she is nearly twenty
years older than I am!”

“But she has all the books!”

Mom shook her head. “She
had a
possible means to protect them, and she was the only one. Because she
wasn’t on the council and was young, Father hoped she’d
be considered neutral and not someone powerful enough to use the
books or be guilty of all the killing.”

I snorted. “And after she
perfected their protection using spiders, I bet no one was too keen
on retrieving them either.”

Mom smiled her agreement.

I had much to accomplish,
so I
exchanged a kiss good-bye for many admonitions to be careful. She
also threatened to send Dad to help White Feather fix his house.

“Don’t worry, Mom. When
White Feather completes the protective barriers, I’ll let you
know. I’m sure Kas will be thrilled to have her husband do the
plumbing too.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s a good
idea.”

Though she had fed me well,
I stopped
at the grocery on the way home because it was past time to buy cat
food.

No way was I leaving
Granny's spells
or mine in the car, even if everyone in the store eyed my backpack
suspiciously. One other shopper even winked at me when he saw it.

After the store manager
accosted me to
search the backpack, I regretted being overly cautious, but my
remorse didn't last long. Three turns out of the grocery store, it
became obvious an old green Corolla was following me.

“Shrivel and die,” I
muttered, recognizing the two bible thumpers. “Sit in a pew and
rot.” The goons had better hope they had stumbled across me at
the grocery because if they caused my family trouble, I'd toss them a
spell straight from their nightmares.

I set a new standard in
road-rage as I
raced through the winding streets of Santa Fe. A bat on steroids
couldn't have caught me.

By the time they were good
and lost
behind me, I was dreaming of a new, lethal spell. There was no point
in continuing this game. If I didn't stand and fight, eventually
they'd get lucky.

Once satisfied that no one
with
murderous intent was behind me anymore, I cruised home. After feeding
the cat, I closeted myself in my lab. Granny's gifts went straight
into my safe. The cat must not have liked the new food because she
started wailing and screeching every few minutes.

Knowing she wouldn’t
starve, I
ignored her.

Because of the cat, the
spells for my
two religious friends were suffused with an extra helping of
irritation. “You think the petunias are a problem
now,
just wait.
” I mixed in enough nitrogen to keep a nearly
dead flower growing well into next year. Since tear gas would hurt
the flowers, I substituted the searing oils from my recent attempt to
communicate with Mother Earth. As a finish, I added a healthy dose of
habanero pepper oil.

I didn’t dare test it, not
anywhere near where I lived. “Maybe I should just carry a gun.”
Grumbling, I created one last spell, a last-ditch measure, but it
made me nervous. What if it killed someone I didn't want dead?

The howling and whining
from the cat
escalated as soon as the sun went down. I offered the cat fresh water
and more food to no avail. As soon as I was tucked inside, the cat
hopped on the porch and scratched along the side of the house as if
it were a tree.

I phoned Lynx, but he had
very little
advice.

“She's trying to tell you
something.”

“Unless she learns English,
we're
at a stalemate.”

Darkness was deepening,
limiting my
ability to discern anything outside other than looming shapes. There
were messages in everything, but deciphering them was magic, and I
was fresh out.

Back in the lab, I opened
the safe. It
was impossible to ignore the loom. I arranged the books, the loom,
Martin's gifts, and the heliotrope that Mat had given me on the
table.

Since Mat's green stone was
well-used,
I dipped it in a mug of holy water to purify it.

The cat quieted for a bit,
allowing me
to read the story of Spider Woman. Next up was the book on sand
paintings. Sand paintings were a magic that was meant for good; a
combination of history and warnings. The artist created a medium for
the sole purpose of calling to the good spirits.

There was no better teacher
than
experience.

I started with Martin's
gifts. The
minerals were as precious as spices, gifts of the desert. I ground a
bit of each, filtering them with my fingers. The elements drew
things or repelled them, much as a magnet was attracted to iron, but
was repelled by another magnet.

The Indians used sand
paintings to
touch a deeper magic in the earth. The tiny grains were Mother
Earth's building blocks, and as I painted, the sand tugged at other
things. Therein lay the danger, but also the magic.

Every chant, whether it was
the
shooting chant, the holy man captured by thunder, or the legend of
Spider Woman had specific requirements. Granny Ruth's loom watched
over me as I sprinkled sand in the most common designs.