Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [35]
“You’re going to need to find an occult supplier.”
“Huh?”
“This girl must be made to give up her secrets. Something has—happened to her, something has affected her and before you can exorcise her spirit from that house, you must find out what it is.”
That’s not what I expected. He wants me to do a spell. I don’t do spells. I’m not a witch.
“So what do I need an occult supplier for? Mom’s an occult supplier.” I look down at my arms under the water. My skin is starting to tingle, but my muscles feel fresh and I can see even through the darkened water that my bruises are fading. My mom is a great herbal witch.
Gideon chuckles. “Bless your dear mother, but she’s no occult supplier. She’s a gifted white witch, but she has no interest in what needs to be done here. You don’t need a circle of posies and chrysanthemum oil. You need chicken feet, a banishing pentagram, some kind of water or mirror divination, and a circle of consecrated stones.”
“I also need a witch.”
“After all these years, I trust you have the resources to find at least that.”
I grimace, but two people have come to mind. Thomas, and Morfran Starling.
“Let me finish researching this, Theseus, and I’ll e-mail you in a day or two with the complete ritual.”
“All right, Gideon. Thanks.”
“Of course. And Theseus?”
“Yes?”
“In the meantime, get out to the library and try to find out what you can about the way this girl died. Knowledge is power, you know.”
I smile. “Legwork. Right.” I hang up the phone. He thinks I’m a blunt instrument, nothing but hands and blade and agility, but the truth is I’ve been doing legwork, doing research, since before I even started using the athame.
After Dad was murdered, I had questions. Trouble was, nobody seemed to have any answers. Or, as I suspected, nobody wanted to give me any answers. So I went looking on my own. Gideon and my mom packed us up and moved us out of the Baton Rouge house we were staying in pretty quickly, but not before I managed to make a trip back to the dilapidated plantation where my father met his end.
It was an ugly fucking house. Even angry as I was, I didn’t want to go in. If it is possible for an inanimate object to glare, to growl, then that’s exactly what this house did. In my seven-year-old mind I saw it pull aside the vines. I saw it wipe away the moss and bare its teeth. Imagination is a wonderful thing, right?
My mom and Gideon had cleared the place days before, throwing runes and lighting candles, making sure my dad was at rest, making sure the ghosts were gone. Still, when I walked up that porch I started crying. My heart told me that my dad was there, that he hid from them to wait for me, and that any minute he would open the door, smiling this great, dead smile. His eyes would be gone, and there would be huge, crescent-shaped wounds on his sides and arms. This sounds stupid, but I think I started crying harder when I opened the door myself and he wasn’t there.
I breathe deep and smell tea and lavender. It brings me back into my body. Remembering that day, exploring that house, my heart is pounding in my ears. On the other side of the front door I found signs of a struggle and turned my face away. I wanted answers but I didn’t want to imagine my dad beat to hell and back. I didn’t want to think of him being scared. I walked past the cracked banister and headed instinctively for the fireplace. The rooms smelled like old wood, like rot. There was also the fresher scent of blood. I don’t know how I knew what the smell of blood was, any more than I knew why I walked straight to the fireplace.
There was nothing in the fireplace but decades-old charcoal and ash. And then I saw it. Just a corner of it, black like the charcoal but somehow different. Smoother. It was conspicuous and ominous. I reached out and pulled it from the ash: a thin black cross, about four inches in height. There was a black snake curled around it, carefully woven from what I knew