The Thirteenth Sacrifice (22 page)

She wondered what rituals they were going to do the next night and what they might involve. She had been setting herself up as a seasoned witch, not one with partial memories a decade and a half old. What if they asked her to do something simple and she just couldn’t remember how? It wasn’t just likely that it could happen—given the gaps in her memory it was probable.

After showering she put on her pajamas and sat down on the bed. What she couldn’t remember could get her killed. She dug her fingernails into her palm.

She didn’t want to remember. Once that door was open it could never be closed. And if she remembered too much too fast it might turn her into a babbling, incoherent mess.

She crossed her legs and said a brief prayer before she began. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She pictured a hallway with a dozen closed doors in it.

“My memories are locked behind these doors,” she said out loud. “A childhood lost and forgotten. But the time for remembering is now.”

She focused on the door nearest her and imagined herself reaching out, turning the doorknob. She took a deep breath, twisted the knob, and flung the door open.

The door in Samantha’s mind opened wide. A howling wind came out of it, engulfing her. She tried to take a step forward, but the wind pushed her back. And then it suddenly stopped. Before she could move, a girl walked through the doorway and Samantha recognized herself at about five years of age.

Samantha didn’t want to look at the child. She was terrified of what she would see, what she would remember. She could feel herself crying freely.

“Why are you crying?” the child asked.

“I’m afraid of you,” Samantha said.

The child shook her head. “You don’t need to be afraid of me. You should be afraid of her.” She pointed to a door across the hall. The number 12 was printed on it and Samantha’s skin crawled just looking at it. She turned away quickly.

The child took her hand. “I can help you,” she said. “I can teach you about the snakes.”

Samantha knelt so she was on eye level with the child. “Tell me how.”

The girl waved her hand and then touched Samantha’s forehead. A snake appeared on Samantha’s shoulder and she forced herself to stay still. “A person’s own
fear makes the snake have weight and texture and color. You use their fear to create the snake.”

Like making the tattoo artist feel like he was on fire when he wasn’t,
Samantha thought. She shook her head. “The snake wasn’t just a manifestation of my fear. It was there. It was real.”

“Of course it was.” The girl put her hands together. “You create the energy. The energy is real. It has substance. Then you can mold it into whatever form you want.”

As Samantha watched in amazement, the space between the girl’s hands turned into a small ball of black fur. It stretched, revealing itself to be a tiny kitten. It hopped onto the girl’s shoulder and began to purr, kneading her shoulder.

And Samantha remembered. “Mother wouldn’t let us have a pet.”

“No matter how much we asked,” the girl affirmed.

“So we made ourselves a pet.”

“And we listen to the kitty purr. And when Mother is near…”

Samantha waved her hand through the kitten, dispersing the energy, and the creature vanished.

“But he’s always here in our mind and our heart,” she said at the same time as her five-year-old self.

The little girl reached out and dispersed the energy of the snake and it too vanished.

“And he seems real,” Samantha mused.

“He
is
real,” the little girl insisted.

“Thank you,” Samantha said. “What else do I need to know?”

“All magic is the working of energy, fields, magnets, electricity. You know this, but you forget. I can electrocute
you or make the iron in your blood react as though it’s being pulled by a magnet.”

“You know a lot for one so young.”

“And you know little for one so old.”

They talked together for a while and little by little memories of being that age came back to her. They practiced some magic and when it was time Samantha said good-bye.

The little girl clung to her hand. “I have to tell you a secret.”

“What?” Samantha asked.

The little girl glanced fearfully at the door marked 12. “It took all of us to lock her up. And to do it we had to go away too.”

A shiver went up Samantha’s spine. “Why did you have to lock her up?”

“So that you could be okay.”

The little girl let go of her and began to back into the darkness beyond her open door.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” Samantha said.

“You won’t,” the girl said with a smile. “This door will be open now. I’ll be here when you need me.”

Samantha pulled herself out of her mind and slumped, exhausted. There was much that she had forgotten, but it had been such a relief to see that a part of herself still seemed innocent. It was well past midnight when she crawled under the covers and shut her eyes, hoping that there would be no nightmares, just dreams.

But she felt so alone. She wished she could share what had happened, what she’d learned, with someone else. Her mind drifted from memory to memory, some good, some bad, and it was like discovering herself.

She turned onto her side and then put her hands
close together and created a ball of energy. “Kitty,” she whispered.

And a moment later a furry black kitten was snuggling against her side, yawning and purring as he kneaded the blanket beneath him.

When Samantha woke in the morning she could feel something swatting at her nose. She opened her eyes and saw the kitten batting at her.

“You’re still here, Freaky?” she asked in surprise.

The kitten mewed and jumped on top of her, making Samantha smile. Her phone rang and she reached for it. It was Ed.

“What’s happened?” she asked by way of answering.

“It’ll be all over the news in a minute,” he said, his voice grim. “Two more girls showed up dead this morning.”

She waved her hand through the energy kitten, dispersing it even as it tried to chew on the phone, and she sat up. “Where?”

“Both in Marblehead. One just across the city line, and the other close to Salem.”

Marblehead was a town between Salem and Boston. The locations of the other murders flashed through her mind and she suddenly realized that like the energy trail she had left for Autumn and the others to find, this was a trail of bodies, leading straight to Salem.

“Any connection to the others?”

“Not that we’ve found so far. I’m just finishing up here at the second scene. I’ll call you in a little bit.”

“Okay,” she said, but he had already disconnected.

She made her way to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She took her time getting dressed. Every instinct in her wanted to head to the crime scenes,
but she forced herself to stay put. After a few minutes she turned on the television and saw that reporters were indeed already at both scenes.

Samantha watched, feeling somewhat numb, as the two murder scenes were described. Reporters recklessly threw around the words “witch” and “sacrifice” until she felt like she was going to be ill. If this kept up, pretty soon any death in the area would be attributed to witches whether it was true or not.

Finally she’d had enough and she turned the TV off. She wasn’t doing anyone any good by letting herself dwell on it. Any real clues wouldn’t be broadcast on television anyway.

She left the hotel and headed up Essex Street, her mind churning with everything that was happening. She looked intently at every person who passed her, wondering whether they knew who was involved with the coven.

When she got to Red’s, she froze for a moment when she saw Ed sitting at one of the tables, staring at her.
What is he doing there?
His hand rested protectively on a manila envelope on the tabletop.

Samantha sat down at his table, glancing around quickly to see if anyone was paying attention. No one seemed to notice or care.

“I’m guessing this isn’t good news,” she said softly as she picked up her menu and pretended to peruse it.

“The pancakes are bigger than some countries,” he noted. Speaking more softly he said, “I brought you pictures from this morning. When you’ve looked them over you can destroy them.”

“It was a risk bringing them here.”

“Worth it. Besides, I hear they have great breakfast here.”

“What else is happening?”

“People were already going nuts when I left Marblehead.”

“How nuts?”

“Looking to burn a witch nuts.”

“That’s not good,” she replied.

“No. No, it’s not. But that’s not all. Gus, one of the frat brothers of Katie’s ex, has gone missing.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Inconclusive. Although I have a hunch that wherever he is, he went of his own free will.”

“And why is that?” she asked.

“Remember Gus? Remember what he said to you that day we went to examine the body? Gus told you that people like you, people with power, scared him.”

“I remember. It seemed very odd at the time.”

“To me too, although it’s starting to make a lot more sense than it did.”

“What about the other guy and the current girlfriend?”

“Accounted for. And they’ve already moved on with their lives,” he said, a look of disdain on his face. “Yeah, they got their fifteen minutes of fame and they used it to scream ‘witch’ to the whole world.”

“What else is going on in Boston?” she asked.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“You really do need to turn on the news every once in a while.”

“Spare me the lecture and just tell me.”

“Protests, riots. Two more women were killed late last night as they left a concert because people thought they were witches. Now activists on the other side are getting involved.”

“How?” she asked.

“There’ve been calls for people protesting the witch hunt to come here to Salem to do it.”

“Here?” she reiterated, the blood draining from her face.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“This weekend. They’re planning on using Salem and the upcoming Halloween parade as a forum to protest the mistreatment of witches and everyone else. Wiccans, pagans, humanists, Satanists. You name it, they’re invited.”

“But it’s going to be a disaster!”

“I know. That’s why I’ve come to warn you. I think you need to get out. We’ve been in contact with federal authorities to try to get their help. This thing is beyond all of us at this point.”

“There’s no reason for them to dump the bodies the way they’ve been doing,” she said. “It would have been easy to just kill them and either hide the bodies or make it look like something else. I can’t think of one good reason why they put them on display that way, risking exposure, almost welcoming it. They’ve been leaving the bodies like a trail of bread crumbs leading right here.”

“I know. I can’t figure it out either,” he admitted. “They must have known it would create an uproar.”

Understanding dawned on her. “They didn’t just anticipate an uproar—they engineered one!”

“I don’t follow.”

“Remember when we saved Katie?”

“Of course.”

“It took more energy than I alone had, so I pulled some from you.”

“I’m not likely to forget.”

“If they’re actually going to pull off a resurrection spell, it will take an overwhelming amount of energy, more than they have in and of themselves. I should have thought of it before. This is the witch capital of the world, and all these murders have been happening right around here. The Halloween parade always draws huge crowds. This year, with all the attention and the craziness, there will be even more people here, some of them decrying witches, some defending them. Think of all that emotion, all that energy, all those people focused on witches in one way or another. The amount of power they’ll generate will be astounding. The coven is going to kill the final victim once people are crowded into downtown when they can siphon off the energy of the crowd, the fervor of the protestors.”

“They’re going to do what you did to me on a grand scale?”

“Yeah. All those people are going to help bring about a monstrous thing.”

“Great. There’s no way to stop the people from coming either. Some of them are probably already here.”

“Sorry about that,” one of the waitresses said, bustling over. “What can I get you?”

Samantha ordered quickly while Ed just sipped his coffee. As soon as the waitress had left, he put down the mug. “How exactly does a resurrection spell work?”

“There’s two parts to it. The first part involves the taking back of the soul. To do that requires the sacrifice of eight young women, all completely pure. Think of it as a bribe to the devil, or whatever it is that has the soul, to let it go.”

He grimaced. “We know they’re at least up to five. Heaven only knows if there’ve been more. So, what’s the second part?”

“The second part is the hardest, the one that requires vast amounts of energy. In order to do a resurrection spell, the body has to be restored.”

“Restored? So it looks like the person and not like a rotting corpse?”

“Exactly. Matter is never created or destroyed; it just changes form. So with enough energy, specific matter can be called back to a form it once had.”

He stared at her, clearly not quite comprehending what she was saying.

“Say, for instance, that one of the women who was killed this morning was to be resurrected. Any hairs that she had on her head, any bit of skin that was on her neck where the mark is, anything that was a part of her right before she died, has to be called to wherever the body is. So if you found, for instance, a lock of her hair at the crime scene and you put it in evidence, the hair would have to be transported from that baggie in the building to her head in the coroner’s office.”

“Wow. Okay. But they need enough energy that they have to siphon it off thousands of people to do it?”

“Not in the example I just gave you. But if someone had been dead—say, for sixteen years—parts of them could be scattered everywhere. Drops of blood or saliva that were found at the scene and cleaned up or just left. Any minute particles that didn’t get buried with them could be in a number of places. And what has been buried, well, if the coffin has decayed to the point where worms could get at the body, then you’re going to have a huge problem.”