Sisters Of The Craft: Heat Of The Moment Part 37

"Wasn't that a miracle?"

She shrugged. "Semantics."

"June wasn't able to raise Roland the last time she tried," Raye said.

"Why not?"

"She took too long to kill me. I doubt she'll make the same mistake twice."

"If she needed a full moon why didn't she use one?" I asked.

"She needs the moon, a sacrifice, believers," Ca.s.sandra clarified. "A full moon should speed things up, give her more juice. Since she's failed once, she's gonna want both."

"If she fails again?"

"There's always All Hallows' Eve. It's one of the most powerful nights of the year."

"For magic and witchcraft, right?" I asked. "But the Venatores Mali hate witches."

"They do, but power is power, and raising the dead is magic. Dark magic, but still magic."

"That makes no sense."

"You expect them to make sense?" Raye shook her head. "Don't."

"She's going to move soon." Ca.s.sandra noticed I'd finished my coffee and handed me another. "The longer she waits, the more chance there is that someone else will kill more witches than she has." At my bemused expression, she continued. "The nut job with the most witch kills is considered the leader of the Venatores Mali and is the one who raises Roland. The longer she waits to bring him back, the less chance she has of being the one to do it."

"If she raises him, what does she get?"

"Whatever's behind door number three." Ca.s.sandra shrugged. "It's a mystery."

"We should set a trap."

Everyone looked at the FBI agent.

"We know Mistress June is here. We think she'll try and raise Roland again tomorrow night. She'll need a witch to kill." Franklin's forehead creased. "As the two of you will be ultravigilant, and a lot harder to s.n.a.t.c.h than your run-of-the-mill witch, I think she'll look elsewhere for her sacrifice."

"How are we going to keep an eye on every witch in town?" Ca.s.sandra asked.

I burst out laughing. "Every witch in town? This is Three Harbors. There aren't any."

"That's what I thought about New Bergin," Raye said. "I couldn't have been more wrong."

"How'd you find out who was a witch?"

"They turned up dead and branded."

"We need a better way."

"You think?" Raye asked, with the exact inflection I would have.

How strange. Or maybe not very strange at all.

"Is there a coven here?" Ca.s.sandra asked.

"If there were, I wouldn't know about it." I paused. "Jeremy was going to check on that."

"Jeremy?" the priestess repeated.

"Reitman. He's a forensic veterinarian. He came here to examine the animal sacrifices at Owen's house. He also happens to be a witch."

"Coincidence?" Franklin murmured. "I don't think so."

"He's the best forensic veterinarian in the state," I protested.

"Which means if there were animal sacrifices, he'd be called. I don't suppose anyone tried to kill him while he was here."

"Owen's mom, but she's schizophrenic."

"Did she try to kill him because a voice told her to?"

"Maybe?"

"That voice could very well be Roland's," Edward said.

"Are you trying to tell me that Owen's mom isn't crazy? That the voices she's been hearing for most of her life are real?"

"Is the voice of a dead man real?" Edward wondered.

"Yes," Raye said. "Although I doubt that Roland's been whispering to Owen's mom since she was young. We weren't even born then."

"According to you we were born four hundred years ago, which means we were."

"Time travel gives me a great big headache," she said.

I couldn't argue there.

"Has Owen's mother tried to kill anyone before?" Ca.s.sandra asked.

"Owen."

"Because?"

"She was never very forthcoming on that."

"Does she hate witches?"

I shook my head. "There were times she thought she was one."

"Is she?"

"I..." I paused. "I don't know. Until a few days ago, believing you were a witch was nutty. Although, if she is, why did she try to kill one of her own?"

Which only brought us back to nutty, unless ...

"She's been in a mental health facility for a long time. According to her now-dead caseworker, she's escaped several times in the past few months, and no one knows how."

Had it been magic? Maybe.

"A crazy woman on a mission would be the perfect weapon." Edward lifted one bushy white eyebrow. "I have seen such things before."

"You've seen everything before," Ca.s.sandra said. "Is Dr. Reitman still in town?"

"He took the evidence back to Madison."

"He's from Madison?" Raye asked.

"The UW has the largest veterinary college in Wisconsin."

"Did he say if he belonged to the coven there?"

"He does, and he was going to ask about a coven near here, but his priestess had been-" I paused, blinked. "She was killed. Did you know about that?"

Raye and Bobby exchanged glances with Franklin and Ca.s.sandra. Together, they nodded.

"Can you call him?" Franklin asked.

I was already dialing my phone. It was early yet. Jeremy shouldn't be in cla.s.s, but the phone rang so many times I was expecting voice mail when he answered.

"Becca! I was just going to call you."

"Great." My voice sounded both too cheery and kind of stiff.

"Something wrong?"

"Beyond the animal mutilations?" My lips were poised to say "yes." But Raye started shaking her head like Moose after he'd gone for a swim, and instead I said, "I was wondering if you'd found anything yet?"

"I haven't. The evidence is not in good shape."

"Do you have any idea who might brand and burn sacrifices?"

Now Raye nodded, encouragingly. I must be on the right track.

"I don't," Jeremy said. "I've never seen anything like this."

Raye waved to get my attention, then mouthed: "Coven."

"Were you able to find out if there's a coven in my area?"

"I wasn't."

I shook my head, and everyone frowned.

"My coven has been thrown into a bit of an uproar," Jeremy continued.

"I can imagine."

Franklin held up a sheet of paper, on which he'd written: Is there a natural altar near here?

I repeated the question into the phone.

"Not that I know of."

I shook my head again, and the FBI agent crumpled the paper in his fist.

"That's the kind of thing local witches would know," Jeremy continued.

"I suppose so. Well, thanks."

I disconnected. It wasn't until Raye said my name that I realized I was standing there frowning at the phone in my hand.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

I shoved the phone into my back pocket. "He said he'd never heard of branding and burning sacrifices. But being a witch, wouldn't he know about the Venatores Mali?"

"Considering Roland died in the seventeenth century, not necessarily," Raye said.

"Wasn't his high priestess branded?"

"Those details aren't common knowledge," Bobby said. "Which was why it took me so long to connect the dots among all the cases. I thought I was tracking a serial killer-"

"It was a serial killer," Raye interrupted. "Witches are people too."

He laced their fingers together. "The brand and the burnings were the only link between the bodies. And a lot of the bodies were burned so badly, the brand wasn't a certainty. We didn't find the connection until we started searching for burned witches. Not easy since being a witch still isn't something people advertise."

"How did you figure it out?" I asked.

"One of the victims didn't die right away." He swallowed, and Raye's fingers tightened around his. "She told me about the Venatores Mali. From there it was all downhill."

"How did the FBI get involved?" I asked.

"It's a long story," Franklin said. "Short version, anything weird gets pa.s.sed by me."

"Weird is awful wide."

"I've become pretty good at separating normal-weird from weird-weird."

Sadly, that made sense.