Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (32 page)

“Maybe it ignores the dead
ones?”

We eased over to the
closet. The light
brightened most of the corners. “Lots of laundry,” I
said, embarrassed at the state of my room and closet.

“It likes your laundry.”

“Too bad it isn't here to
wash it
for me.”

White Feather swiveled
around, which
wasn't easy because we were both crammed in the doorway.

I squeezed through, staying
near the
edge. My head bumped the clothes hanging down along the side. “It
can't be the whole pile.”

Using a hanger, I hooked
the top pair
of jeans off the pile and began slowly spreading the rest. If a
scorpion or other nasty was here, it was probably near the bottom of
the pile.

White Feather knelt down
and grabbed a
piece or two, testing.

“Be careful,” I admonished.
“There were a lot of scorpions out there. I couldn't have
gotten them all.”

“The jeans.” He dragged
them away from the rest, and then kicked them into the bedroom. “Yup.
These are the target.”

“I wore those yesterday.
That was
when they followed me.” The jeans were one of my only pair that
hadn't recently been mangled beyond use.

White Feather stepped
forcefully on the
pants. I winced, waiting for a crunch.

None came.

He checked the arrow again.
“It's
the pants.”

“How did they taint them?
Did
they spray me with something?” I hadn't worn them to the meet
at Hyde Park. That pair was ruined. I didn't remember which pair I
had been wearing when they followed me outside Mat's shop.

Gingerly, I picked them up
by the waist
and shook them. Nothing fell out.

White Feather tracked my
movements with
the watch. “Top of the pants.”

“The pockets?” I held the
waist with two fingers. “I am not sticking my hands in there.”

“Let me see them.”

“No, no, I'll do it.”

“Give me the pants.”

I looked closely at the
white pocket
part inside the waistband. I flicked a finger at each side, but
nothing moved.

“Will you give me the pants
already?”

I handed them over and took
the watch.
While he dug through the pockets, I verified his findings. The thing
pointed right at the top of the pants.

It wasn't until he checked
the back
pockets that we had our answer.

Tucked carefully inside,
where I had
forgotten completely about it, was a black business card. The word
“Charms” was neatly printed across the top.

Magic was a funny thing. It
mingled
through my life so much, it was almost mundane. Even when I knew it
was around, sometimes because I knew it was around, I ignored it.

Walking through a magic
shop that
smelled of cinnamon, I expected magic. Not the tingle of the desert,
not the heartbeat of Mother Earth, but various background prickling
here and there like a musty dust mote that had been tainted by a
spell just by being too close.

Still, I should have known
better. “He
gave me a business card with a spell attached?” I hadn't
muttered a single protection or been the least bit suspicious. “I'm
an idiot!”

White Feather flipped the
card around.
“Looks normal. Looks harmless.”

“I didn't notice anything
at all
when he gave it to me, and I never thought about it afterward. I'm
lucky he didn't attach a worse curse to it.” I flapped my arms
in agitation. “I never suspected a thing!”

“What kind of freak calls
himself
Jack O' Lantern?”

“He said his real name was
too
hard to pronounce. More likely it's a witch thing—he doesn't
want to use his real name.”

“I'm going to call Gordon.
It's
time we had a long conversation with this Jack person and his
friends.”

I trailed him into the
kitchen, still
venting. “He gives his card to whoever he wants. Then later, he
can have David and Blondie follow them. Why not a compulsion to
revisit the store?”

“You would have noticed
that. So
would any witch worth her salt.”

“A normal probably
wouldn't. Then
he could make more money selling stuff.”

White Feather paused with
his hand on
the phone. “Maybe making money wasn't his purpose.”

We stared at each other for
a while,
wondering. He had tracked me. He had apparently tracked Matilda. And
what about Gomez? Gomez had been hit by the Frog and Friend too.

But if he was after magic
users to
thrash them...what was his purpose? To get rid of the competition?

White Feather shook his
head, the
confusion on his face mirroring mine.

While he made his call, I
considered
why Charms might track customers. Why he would send scorpions into my
home? I had suspected Claire was responsible for the scorpions, but
Frog and Friend had appeared in the middle of the night, right after
the scorpions appeared. They used magic.

I picked up the pants
again.
“Scorpions. Claire. Charms.” Had Claire hired Charms to
concoct her spells? Even so, how did the scorpions and the tracking
fit?

I shook the pants hard,
checking the
pockets very carefully to be certain there weren't any more
stowaways. One bottom cuff was partially rolled up from being stuffed
inside my hiking boots.

I straightened it to make
sure nothing
lurked there, but with a sinking feeling, I realized why the cuff was
rolled funny.

“Granny's house.” I dropped
the pants as though they had caught fire. “Oh, no!” The
card had been in the pocket. The card had a spell on it.
I
had
taken magic inside the reading room!

“Moonlight madness! I may
have
cursed myself.” The scorpions must have found me because of the
card—both in Granny's reading room and my home.

White Feather appeared in
the doorway. He read the stricken look on my face and was at my side in
two quick
steps. “What?”

In a shaky voice, I told
him about the
reading room and what had happened. “The scorpion must have
used the magic on the card as a gateway into the room. Magic is
forbidden in there for a reason. It reacts with the books, sets off
spells--” I shivered. “I'm lucky that scorpion didn't
suck power from the grimoires and eat me alive!”

“You stopped it though.”

“Not me. The spiders.
That's why
they are there. They protect the magic in the grimoires.” I
told him about the light and the other doorway. “I almost went
through it!”

“Charms. Spelled business
cards.
Scorpions at Sarah's, here and with the grimoires. And what does
Claire have to do with all this? She didn't dabble with magic, not
when I knew her.”

“The witch in Charms has to
be in
cahoots with her. The scorpion showed up in the reading room as a
result of whatever spell was on that card. But why would he bother
tracking me just because I visited his store one day?”

“Gordon might be able to
help us
with that, but I suggested we take a look first. You weren't planning
on trying to sleep again tonight?”

I glanced at the bed. Even
with White
Feather standing in my bedroom, now was possibly the least seductive
moment in my life.

He grinned at my dismay.
“Between
the two of us and our house problems, we might need to check into a
hotel.”

My skin prickled with
electricity, a
combination of fear, passion or...bugs. “I better change
clothes.” My current attire was ruined. Again.

I didn't trust my jeans, so
I donned
black sweat pants and a long-sleeved heavy knit sweater.

The sweat pants pockets
were nice and
loose, readily holding extra spells for blending in the dark. I
retrieved a clean silver dagger and cotton gloves from the lab and
stowed them in a fanny pack.

I was ready to go when I
thought of
something. “Hang on. I want to make sure David and his buddy
don't sneak up on us again.”

White Feather waited
patiently, leaning
against the doorway of the lab.

I unwrapped the dagger with
David's
blood on it and quickly made a witching fork. I hoped David was
sweating bullets somewhere wondering how his blood could be used
against him. “Okay. We’ll be able to tell if they’ve
been in Charms.”

White Feather led the way
out. Using
his car headlights to illuminate the yard, I collected the
heliotrope, my flashlight and the remains of my spells, including the
most dangerous one.

We circled the house,
hunting for any
remaining scorpions. The witching fork spelled with David's blood
pointed at the trees where White Feather had thrown the two jerks.

“Let’s make sure they
didn’t leave anything else unpleasant behind,” White
Feather suggested.

“Good idea.” The fork
guided us to the left of the tree.

“They must have parked up
the
road,” I said. “I heard a car, but assumed it was yours
because I barely heard any engine noise. Instead I got Frog and
Friend parking away from the house so they wouldn't be readily
heard.”

We ducked under one juniper
and around
another, my light illuminating broken branches and scuffed sand.
Within a few yards, the fork twitched low and to the right, under
another tree.

I shone the light over, but
it bounced,
glinting right into my eyes. White Feather leaned closer, very
carefully, until we both identified a very large glass jar. There was
no lid.

“How many scorpions did you
kill,
anyway?” White Feather asked.

“Not enough, judging from
the
size of this jar. It must have been a concession stand pickle jar.” A
quick sweep with the light found another jar. “So they
delivered the scorpions and centipedes. They could have spelled the
things to head for the business card. But then what? They come back
later?”

“The scorpions needed time
to get
inside,” White Feather said. “Scorpions eat centipedes.
A clever witch could hide the compulsion to go to the business card
underneath a normal hunting instinct. Done right, it might not be
detectable as magic.”

“And then what?”

“Maybe they expected you to
be
incapacitated from bites and be easy pickings?”

That thought was so
unpleasant I nearly
dropped the flashlight. “Sarah didn't die from scorpion
bites. But they were at her cabin.” I nodded. “Use a
hidden spell to get the scorpions inside, then use them to trigger a
spell that would welcome Claire or the thugs past any wards. Act out
the sand painting at leisure with Sarah an unwilling part of the
summoning.”

“But how did Claire know
Sarah?
Or maybe all it took was Sarah accepting an innocent looking business
card from Charms.”

I agreed. “That or maybe
she
bought the sand painting we saw at her cabin from Charms. Claire
didn't wait for you to shop at Charms. She spelled a painting
specifically to you, one with a compulsion to keep you near it. Then,
when it was your turn to be a part of a real sand painting ceremony,
she'd send scorpions. Her thugs could waltz in, make sure you were
incapacitated or defenseless, and she could perform whatever ritual
she had planned.”

White Feather lifted the
glass jar.
“And those two guys tonight were sent here to hold you captive
until you could be used in a sand painting like they performed with
Sarah.”

The electricity of a
dangerous
thunderstorm raised the hair on my arms. It took me a moment to
realize the energy was coming from White Feather.

He said nothing more, but
his jaw
clenched as he picked up the second glass jar.

“I wonder how they chose
who to
follow? Did they just wait for witches to come into the shop? No,”
I answered myself, “Frog and Friend tried to hire me through
Lynx before I visited Charms. I bet they would have used the meet to
either tag me for later tracking or hog-tie me right then. They also
went after Gomez. He's not the type to wander into a shop like
Charms. Somehow they heard about him and went after him.”

My comment did nothing to
improve White
Feather's mood. He strode past me. The trail of snapped twigs and
scuffed soil leading to the road was obvious enough that he didn't
need the witching fork to provide directions.

Five or so yards away from
the
blacktop, we spotted several exploded pear cacti. A branch from a
juniper tree was stripped as though it had exploded. The needles
littered the ground nearby.

I hoped the needles had hit
their
target.

A few feet from the tree,
we found tire
tracks. David the Frog and his friend had simply parked a few yards
from my driveway and snuck up to the house. Had I not been outside,
I wouldn't have heard the car.

“Time to tackle them back
at
their headquarters.” White Feather said.

I didn't like the idea,
because a witch
in his own territory was extremely dangerous. Unfortunately, we had
no other leads.

Charms, like much of Santa
Fe, was
quiet at three-thirty in the morning. Even this far inside the heart
of the city, the desert seeped in at night. At this time of the year,
she was a cold, calm presence; a dryness that spoke of peace, but
also of danger. Anyone not prepared for her wrath could die of
dehydration, but a spirit in need of soothing could find comfort in
the cool nights as she rested, floating along with a billion stars
and the moon.

I wished we were more in
the desert and
less in town. Charms wasn’t likely to yield anything useful
anyway, especially since we didn't know what we were looking for.

There was a lone light
halfway up the
block where another alley ran perpendicular to the main street.
Typical of Santa Fe, the shops were crammed into an old building that
had been one large space but was now renovated into smaller
individual shops.

“It isn't wise to break
into a
witch's lair,” I whispered.