Blood Moon (13 page)

She lay there admiring him for a half an hour or so, before sneaking out of bed and grabbing the Book of Shadows and the paper on the front porch.
 
She set both on the kitchen table, as she made the coffee and gave some loves to Harry.
 
Harry rubbed on her legs, round and round, and then decided the bunny ears on her slippers needed a little biting. When she finished reading the paper and doing the Jumble in the comic section, she set it aside and opened the Book of Shadows.
 

She wanted to look at the doodle page again, the one with the creases in it, and check to see if there were any pages that looked odd. She opened the book to a random page and got up to get another cup of coffee.
 
She set the hot coffee cup on the left page of the book and had a good look at the loose doodle page and its creases.
 

There were definitely readable words on it.
 
The words that were written on the sheet all seemed to have the first letters circled.
 
The words were coupled together for some reason; April Egg, September Corn, May Flower. She started to write them down.
 
Interesting: all of the months of the year were here. On the backside of the sheet were more couplings of words but there were no letters circled on this side: White Snow, Orange Honey, Black Beaver, a total of thirteen. In the middle of the back of the page was a pictogram: at the top a sun, in the middle a word that looked like OR, but Darby wasn’t sure, at the bottom a candle, at the left of the ‘OR’ was a book of spells/charms or maybe a Book of Shadows and to the right of the ‘OR’ was a single page or piece of paper with an evil spell on it. It must be a clue, but either she hadn’t had enough coffee or it just wasn’t making any sense to her.
 
She set the page on the table next to the book and grabbed her cup of coffee off the Book of Shadows and just about dropped it when she saw on the nondescript page a perfect circle the size of her cup with words to what looked like a spell written in red.

ffer F.
   
M.
     
As I will, so

call on the power of the full Honey

ansformation I light an orange candle

ndle and offer H.
     
J.
     
As I will, so shall

we call on the power of the full Buck Moon

f spiritual psychism I light a dark green candl

 
and offer B.
     
J.
     
As I will, so mote it

call on the power of the full Sturgeo

bol of thanks I light a gold cand

and offer S.
     
A.
     
As I will, s

 
he power of the ful
 

She set the cup down in another area of the page and the same thing happened. The words seemed to be showing with a heat source.
 
What a great way to hide something.
 
A totally common potion was written on the page and you would never suspect there was anything under it unless you just happened to set your coffee cup on it.
 
SWEET!

At least they knew where the evil spell was now, concealed under a boring old potion to cure a headache. Rowan was going to be thrilled when she saw this.
Guess that creased doodle sheet is what it is, a creased doodle sheet
, she thought, but she wasn’t ready to give up on it just yet.
 
Something told her it may still be important; she just didn’t know why.

Carly Smith was a tiny shop owner in the touristy town of Halfmoon Bay. She had closed up shop this evening as she did every night and locked the front door.
 
She went through the nightly ritual of counting the register and emptying it of its credit card receipts and excess cash for the next day.
 

She was distracted with making a shopping list while she was doing her closing ritual.
 
Her husband was inviting some work colleagues over the next night and she wanted everything to be just right.
 
During the day she had come up with the menu and now she was jotting down things she knew she didn’t have at the house.
 
As she was wondering if she had any bay leaves in the spice cupboard that were not too old, she proceeded out the back door in the alley behind the shops to empty the trash for the day.
 
Yes, I do have some,
she thought as she opened the garbage bin to dump the trash.
 
When she dropped the bin lid down and turned to go back to the shop, something came up from behind her and all went dark.

Chapter 12

Darby had a long day at the bookstore and Devon had flown to Seattle for an interview for some consulting work and wasn’t due to come back until the morning. She took another look at the creased doodle page while drinking her tea and getting into bed with Harry.
 
Harry decided he was taking full advantage of Devon’s absence.
 
Apparently he wasn’t exactly happy with only having a spot between them, when he used to get a whole half of the bed or more.

In a notebook, Darby wrote down all the paired words and then made another list of the circled paired words in hopes that seeing them in list form would help her make sense of them.
 
Her brain and her eyes were not cooperating.
 
Once she got the words all written down, she tucked the doodle sheet in the notebook, took a sip of tea, and snuggled into bed petting Harry’s soft tummy. It was about 9:55.
 

Rachel set up her altar on the table in front of her.
 
Four candles were placed around the tiny cauldron and the athame lay next to it.
 
Inside the cauldron was a picture, some herbs, and some oils.
 
On a piece of paper she had written the sleeping spell she was about to cast on the house of the person pictured in the photo in the cauldron.
 
She lit the candles one by one and then recited the spell:

Darkness steals away the day

The sandman tosses sand your way

The stars above are shining bright

The silvery moon bids you goodnight.

I cast a spell upon this house

Sleep all who dwell here – even cat and mouse

Neither pin drop nor thunder will you hear

Til morning glories and doves do appear.

So rest ye household, don’t make a peep

Happy dreams to you and have a good sleep

Then with the candle flame, she lit the paper on which the spell was written and dropped it in the cauldron, letting all in it go up in flames including the picture of Darby. Rachel looked at the clock; it was 10:07 as she grabbed her keys and a sweater and walked out the door.

Devon’s interview had gone much faster than he had anticipated and rather than sleep in Seattle alone, he opted to go to the airport and catch a standby flight home.
 
He lucked out all the way around.
 
His flight got into San Francisco about 9:30 and he was out of the airport and in his car heading back to Darby by 9:45.
 
If he leaned on the pedal a bit he could be home by 10:15. There was a little back up getting out of the airport as a tour bus had a lane blocked, but after that it was smooth sailing. He looked forward to sleeping at home with Darby. There’s nothing worse than sleeping in a lumpy hotel bed when you could be home with the one you love. He smiled the rest of the way home thinking how surprised Darby would be to see him.

He got home in record time.
 
Parked his car next door in the driveway and came in the back door very quietly and locked up behind himself.
 
The house was quiet and he found it odd that Harry hadn’t gotten up to greet him in hopes of an extra serving of food, but then maybe he was hoping if he didn’t move off Devon’s side of the bed, Devon would go sleep somewhere else.
 
The light was on in the bedroom, so there would be no tripping over things or accidentally sitting on Harry.
 
He could see that Darby and Harry were sound asleep;
must have been a tough day
, he thought to himself. He stripped down and grabbed a pair of pajama bottoms out of the clean laundry pile on the chair.
 
Darby was so sweet doing his laundry for him while he was gone. He grabbed a contract that was given to him during the interview that he wanted to look through.
 
He wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep.
 
Reading law jargon was always a good way to put a person to sleep. Now the challenge was to move the enormous cat so that he too could have a tiny portion of the bed.
 
Harry was lying on his back, head on Devon’s pillow, and arms curled over his face.
 
Devon picked up the massive beast and set him closer to Darby – how strange, he didn’t grumble or move a muscle.
 

Devon pulled the covers back and sat in bed with his back against the head board. He started to read the contract after giving a couple of belly strokes to Harry.
 
Harry didn’t move or purr – must have been a VERY tough day for the giant cat to be sleeping that deeply.

As he sat there and read for a little bit, he heard noises in the backyard; it was totally normal for a vampire to hear things all the time with such sensitive hearing.
 
If he got up and checked on every noise he heard, he’d never sleep.
 
It was probably a raccoon or one of Harry’s buddies stirring around.
 
Then he heard the turning of the doorknob.
 
This was perfectly normal too, as he wasn’t sure when Rowan and Blake were coming back with Dean and Allison.
 
Could be them coming in late and trying to be quiet.
 
Devon kept reading; besides, if something were out of the ordinary, it would be Harry that noticed it first and he didn’t seem to care one way or another about what just came in the back door.