Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation

A Rowan Gant Investigation

A Novel of Suspense and Magick

By

M. R. Sellars

E. M. A. Mysteries

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events or locales or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PERFECT TRUST: A Rowan Gant Investigation

A WillowTree Press / E.M.A. Mysteries Book

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2002 by M. R. Sellars

Cover design by Johnathan Minton, Copyright ©
2007

Paraphrased Excerpts from
Everyday Magic: Spells and Rituals for Modern
Living
Copyright © 1998, Dorothy Morrison,
Used With Permission

This e-book edition is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only. This e-book edition may not be re-sold or
given away to other people.

If you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
person

This book may not be reproduced in whole or
in part, by any means, electronic or mechanical, without
permission.

For information contact: WillowTree
Press on the World Wide Web
http://www.willowtreepress.com/

Smashwords Edition – 2010

There are so many people who have come into
and gone out of my life over the years that I’ve lost count, and
each of them is in some part responsible for what happens between
the pages of my novels. It is literally impossible for me to thank
each and every one of them here individually, but there are some
who stand out in the crowd, and I feel it a moral imperative that
they be mentioned—

Dorothy Morrison, my own personal Goddess and
friend extraordinaire. How I survived as long as I did without you
in my life, I will NEVER understand. You, my dear, are the REAL
Pro.

Officer Scott Ruddle, SLPD. Best-Bud,
confidant, and real life “copper”—the true inspiration behind
Benjamin Storm.

Trish and A.J. for their friendship through
it all.

Ravenspirit and Chell for their friendship
and a place to crash.

Randall and Angel; and everyone from Mystic
Moon Coven. You are all part of my family.

J.D.—Thanks for finding me when I was
lost.

Aislinn Awatake Firehawk for helping me
breathe credible life into Helen Storm.

My good friends from C.A.S.T., H.S.A.,
S.I.P.A., and S.P.I.R.A.L.

Patrick—Thanks for all the cigars.

My parents for making the written word so
fascinating to me.

Roxanne, Sharon, and Celeste, for reading,
re-reading, and then reading some more.

“Chunkee” for not only reading and
re-reading, but for arguing with me when I was being stubborn—and
for being a brother as much as a friend.

Johnathan Minton for putting up with my
endless changes of mind whenever he sets about the creation of a
truly magnificent piece of cover art for me.

My daughter for making each and every day an
adventure.

My wife Kat, who spent countless hours, both
late and early, editing and then arguing her points when I was
being too stubborn to listen. She has somehow put up with me
throughout it all and for some unknown reason actually still loves
me.

Finally, and not the least of all, everyone
who takes the time to pick up one of my novels, read it, and then
recommends it to a friend.

While the city of St. Louis and its various
notable landmarks are certainly real, many names have been changed
and liberties taken with some of the details in this book. They are
fabrications. They are pieces of fiction within fiction to create
an illusion of reality to be experienced and enjoyed.

In short, I made them up because it helped me
make the story more entertaining, or in some cases, just because I
wanted to.

Note also that this book is a first-person
narrative. You are seeing this story through the eyes of Rowan
Gant. The words you are reading are his thoughts. In first person
writing, the narrative should match the dialogue of the character
telling the story. Since Rowan, (and anyone else that I know of for
that matter,) does not speak in perfect, unblemished English
throughout his dialogue, he will not do so throughout his
narrative. Therefore, you will notice that some grammatical
anomalies have been retained (under protest from editors) in order
to support this illusion of reality.

Let me repeat something—I DID IT ON PURPOSE.
Do NOT send me an email complaining about my grammar. It is a rude
thing to do, and it does nothing more than waste your valuable
time. If you find a typo, that is a different story. Even editors
miss a few now and then.

Finally, this book is not intended as a
primer for WitchCraft, Wicca, or any Pagan path. However, please
note that the rituals, spells, and explanations of these
religious/magickal practices are accurate. Some of my explanations
may not fit your particular tradition, but you should remember that
your explanations might not fit mine either.

And, yes, some of the magick is “over the
top.” But, like I said in the first paragraph, this is fiction…

For Chris, Jo-Jo, Eliot, Kat,

everyone on the hill that stormy afternoon,

the ladies at the Highway K canoe rental,

both sets of ambulance crews,

the doctors and nurses at Ellington Hospital,

the entire staff of Three Rivers Medical Center in
Poplar Bluff,

and most especially Dr. James W. Gieselmann.

You all know why…

Bide the Wiccan laws we must,

In perfect love and PERFECT TRUST.

Couplet One

The Wiccan Rede

Lady Gwen Thompson

Original Printing—“Green Egg #69”

Circa 1975

Late February

Old Chain of Rocks Bridge

Saint Louis, Missouri

Eldon Andrew Porter was trying desperately to
make sense of his current situation.

He knew that he shouldn’t be unsteadily
perched here on this cold steel girder high above the icy waters of
the Mississippi river. He also knew that he shouldn’t be forced to
finish by hand a job meant for, and started by, a hangman’s noose.
But the most important thing he knew, without any sense of doubt,
was that he was short on time.

What he
didn’t
know was just how this peril had come to
pass.

The thing that kept going through his
mind was that this very simply was
not
how it was
supposed
to happen. Still, no matter how hard he
tried he couldn’t focus on exactly what had gone wrong.

Once again, he mulled through the last few
events leading up to this particular moment in time.

He had lured the warlock to the bridge.

He had applied the razors of the Malleus
Maleficarum, a mere formality as such, because by the warlock’s own
public actions and admissions he was quite obviously guilty of the
sin of WitchCraft.

He had even applied the test of “pricking” in
order to be certain of the accused one’s guilt. Of course, the
warlock had tried to deceive him in this test by screaming out in
pain when the ice pick pierced his flesh, but Eldon knew this to be
a ruse. A trick used by the impenitent sorcerer in order to avoid
his due punishment.

He had not been fooled.

With the warlock’s guilt proven, Eldon had
then set forth the judgment as decreed by Almighty God and the Holy
Church.

He had proceeded with the sentence by placing
the noose about the man’s neck and pronouncing his punishment as
death by hanging. And finally, he had executed that sentence by
throwing the warlock over the side of the bridge…

That should have been it. End of story. But
something had gone quite terribly wrong.

Eldon was finding it hard to think, his head
ached so miserably. As he mulled over the events yet again, he
vaguely remembered that for some reason he had pitched over the
railing himself. Somewhere within that ghostly memory he also
recalled feeling a jarring impact against the steel girder that
stopped his fall. Then, everything had faded to black.

The top of his head burned like fire whenever
he touched it. There was a tortured spot on his scalp that seemed
devoid of hair. It was damp and sticky and the wetness clung to his
hand when he pulled it away. From its feel, he assumed it must be
blood.

The raucous clamor of loud music blaring from
the warlock’s vehicle on the bridge above blended hesitantly with
the eerie sounds of the ice-choked river. The cacophony was
disconcerting, and when combined with the pain, it made it even
harder for Eldon to concentrate.

“What could have gone wrong?” he wondered
silently.

Again, he rewound the sketchy memories and
thought through the scenario yet another time.

He had lifted the warlock upward, pronouncing
the punishment as he did so. Then, straining against the man’s
weight, he had pushed his arms outward to thrust the condemned over
the railing and into the foggy night.

It was then that his head suddenly began
stinging.

His scalp had felt as if it was on fire, and
he was instantly doubled forward against the railing himself.
Gasping, he was deprived of the breath that had been forced from
his lungs by the sudden crush against the blue and green steel
barrier. The rest of it was a blur, and a split second later he had
blacked out.

The fact that he had blacked out was
troubling. He hadn’t had any of those episodes for such a long
time. Not since prison. He didn’t even want to think that it could
possibly be happening again. It had been years since he had blacked
out, hadn’t it?

Or had it only been months? He couldn’t
remember. The uncertainty forced him to consider another option.
Could this predicament be his own fault? Had he simply fainted and
fallen over the side?

No, he decided. There was something different
at work here. There was the burning in his scalp. His episodes had
never been preceded nor followed by pain, ever. This felt like
someone had physically ripped the hair from his head.

But how could the warlock have done that?

His hands were bound.

He had tied the warlock’s hands, hadn’t
he?

Surely he had done so.

The sudden rush of the real-time events
brushed aside his fractured attempts at reasoning and flooded in to
answer the question.

Eldon watched his hand as he sought to choke
the life from the warlock hanging in front of him. He also watched,
as well as felt, a smaller hand desperately clawing at his own bony
fingers.

The warlock’s hands
weren’t
bound. They were
free.

Had he been in such a rush that he had merely
forgotten to bind the hands of the condemned?

No, he couldn’t have been that careless. He
refused to believe it. He wouldn’t have forgotten to do so simple
and necessary a task before hanging one accused of the heresy of
WitchCraft.

Somehow the warlock had tricked him. He had
conjured a glamour that made him believe he had completed the
necessary tasks when in fact he had not.

But…that couldn’t be. He should be immune to
the conjurings of the demonic, for he was righteous in his path.
This revelation was almost as disturbing to Eldon as the fact that
the warlock still lived. He felt certain that it bore a need for
inner reflection and perhaps even judgment upon one’s self.

But not right now.

Not at this particular moment.

There was a more pressing judgment at
hand.

Still, Eldon found himself unable to
ignore the question of why the hangman’s noose had
not
done its job…

In a burning fit of curiosity, he
relinquished his single-handed grip around the man’s throat for an
ever so brief moment and quickly felt for the nylon rope.

It wasn’t there!

In that fateful second, the warlock coughed
and gasped, quickly sucking in the air he had previously been
denied.