A Cast-Off Coven Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Author’s Note

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for the Novels of Juliet Blackwell

  Secondhand Spirits

  “An excellent blend of mystery, paranormal, and light humor, creating a cozy that is a must-read for anyone with an interest in literature with paranormal elements.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “It’s a fun story, with romance possibilities with a couple hunky men, terrific vintage clothing, and the enchanting Oscar. But there is so much more to this book. It has serious depth.”

  —The Herald News (MA)

  “Lily Ivory is a twenty-first-century Samantha Stevens, minus the nose wriggling. The story combines fun and seriousness for an entertaining read.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Juliet Blackwell provides a terrific urban fantasy with the opening of the Witchcraft Mystery series.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  The Art Lover’s Mysteries

  by Juliet Blackwell Writing as Hailey Lind

  Brush with Death

  “Lind deftly combines a smart and witty sleuth with entertaining characters who are all engaged in a fascinating new adventure.”

  —Romantic Times

  Shooting Gallery

  “If you enjoy Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books, Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy series, or Ian Pears’s art history mysteries . . . then you will enjoy Shooting Gallery .”

  —Gumshoe

  “An artfully crafted new mystery series!”

  —Tim Myers, Agatha Award-nominated author of A Mold for Murder

  “The art world is murder in this witty and entertaining mystery!”

  —Cleo Coyle, national bestselling author of Holiday Grind

  Feint of Art

  “Annie Kincaid is a wonderful cozy heroine. . . . It’s a rollicking good read.”

  —Mystery News

  ALSO IN THE WITCHCRAFT MYSTERY SERIES

  Secondhand Spirits

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, June 2010

  Copyright © Julie Goodson-Lawes, 2010

  All rights reserved

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  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-18798-2

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  To Robert B. Lawes,

  just about the best dad a daughter ever had

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks as always to my wonderful agent, Kristin Lindstrom, and my great editor, Kerry Donovan. It is a privilege to work with you both.

  To Sophie Littlefield, Steve Hockensmith, James Calder, Cornelia Read, and Tim Maleeny for all the writer talk. It sure is nice to know I’m not the only crazy one. And to Mario Acevedo for encouraging my witchy ways. To the Pensfatales for all the support and inspiration. Who knew a grog could be such fun?

  To all the witches and wiccans who welcomed me and shared their beliefs and knowledge with pride and humor. Thanks to Karen Thompson and Peter Simoni for keeping my mind on art in addition to writing. And to my family—Jane, Bob, Susan, and Carolyn; to the whole Mira Vista Social Club; and to Oscar—who won’t leave me alone.

  We writers ask a lot of the people around us—friends and family alike. So special thanks to everyone for putting up with me, and to Jace and Sergio, especially. You two make this home a place of magic.

  My mother says I must not pass

  Too near that glass;

  She is afraid that I will see

  A little witch that looks like me,

  With a red, red mouth to whisper low

  The very thing I should not know!

  —SARAH MORGAN BRYANT PIATT

  Chapter 1

  “I need something to guard against ghosts . . .” whispered the young woman slouching at the counter. She cast a nervous glance around my shop floor, empty but for racks upon racks of vintage clothes, cases of costume jewelry, and shelves lined with hats. “A protective . . . thingamajig.”

  “A talisman?” I asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Talismans don’t really guard against ghosts, per se—”

  “Whatever.” She shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”

  Her feathery bright pink hair put me in mind of a silly children’s toy, the kind one might win after stuffing ten dollars’ worth of quarters into the mechanical contraption at the Escape from New York Pizza parlor a few blocks down Haight Street from the store. But from the jaded look in her heavy-lidded amber eyes and the multiple piercings that marched along her left eyebrow, I suspected the overall effect she was after was “aggressively alienated youth” rather than “cuddly stuffed animal.”

  “You’re a student at the San Francis
co School of Fine Arts?” I guessed as I opened the back of the glass display case and pulled out the black velvet-covered tray that held my rapidly diminishing collection of hand-carved wooden medallions. There had been a run on them lately.

  “How did you know that?” Her eyes flew up to meet mine. “Can you read minds?”

  “No.” I shook my head and stifled a smile. “My assistant, Maya, goes to the School of Fine Arts. We’ve had a lot of students stop by in the past week or so asking for protection.”

  “Did I hear my name?” Maya emerged through the classic brocade curtains that separated the back room from the shop floor. Petite with delicate, unadorned features, she wore her hair twisted into thick locks, ending in a series of beads that clacked pleasantly against the silver rings and cuffs embellishing each ear. “Oh, hey, Andromeda.”

  “Um, hey,” the customer said to Maya with a nearly imperceptible lift of her chin. Pink feathers swayed as she tilted her head in question. “Where do I know you from again?”

  “Sculpture class,” Maya answered. “We’ve met a few times.”

  “Oh, right—my bad. So, you’ve told her about the ghosts at the school?” Andromeda asked Maya. “The footsteps out in the hallways, the heavy breathing, doors opening and closing . . . ?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “It turns out that the main building”—Andromeda leaned across the counter toward Maya and me, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper—“was built on top of an old cemetery.”

  “That’s mostly a movie device,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t actually mean there are ghosts lingering.”

  “I’ve heard something, too, though, Lily, along with half the school,” Maya put in.

  The trepidation in my assistant’s serious dark eyes gave me pause. Maya rarely asked for—or needed—anyone’s help, and she retained a healthy dose of cynicism about the world of the paranormal. So I had been more than a little surprised a few days before when she asked me for a protective talisman, and even more so when she brokered an unusual deal with the school’s provost, Dr. Marlene Mueller: If I could calm the students’ fears of ghosts running amok in the campus hallways, I could help myself to the contents of a recently discovered storage room chock- full of Victorian-era gowns and frilly unmentionables.

  As a purveyor of vintage clothing, I leapt at the chance.

  There was only one fly in this supernatural ointment: I didn’t know much about ghosts.

  I’m a witch, not a necromancer. Few outside the world of magick appreciate the difference, but trust me: The two vocations don’t necessarily involve the same skill set. My energy attracts spirits like flies to honey, but I can’t understand a cotton-pickin’ word they say. Interdimensional frustration is what I call it.

  One thing I do know is that all of us walk over interred corpses all the time. People are born; they live; they die. It’s been the same story throughout the millennia, and the physical remnants of our earthly sojourns—our bodies—have to go somewhere. If simply walking across a grave incurred a curse from beyond, none of us would live long enough to graduate from kindergarten, much less college.

  “We’re supposed to meet Dr. Mueller’s daughter, Ginny, at the school tonight to take a look around,” Maya told Andromeda.

  “You’re trying to see ghosts on purpose?” Andromeda gaped at both of us for a moment, then shivered as though a goose had just walked over her grave. “With Ginny Mueller. Huh. It figures. I hate that bi—” She stopped herself and looked up at me. “Never mind.”

  Looking down at the selection of talismans on the counter, she picked up a medallion, weighing the cool wooden disk in her hand. Each full moon, I make the talismans from the branch of a fruit tree, carving ancient symbols of protection and consecrating them in a ceremony of rebirth. However, just as in the natural world, there are few absolutes in the realm of the supernatural. The medallions are powerful sources of spiritual support, but they can’t stop a determined force of evil on their own. I liken it to having a big dog at home: It might not chase off every ne’er-do-well, but your average mischief-makers go elsewhere.

  “Does it matter which one I get?” Andromeda asked. “Or are they all the same, protection-wise?”

  “They’re—” I began.

  Andromeda dropped the medallion and screamed, flattening herself against a stand of frothy wedding gowns. The rack teetered under the pressure.

  “What the eff is that?”

  Oscar, my miniature potbellied pig—and wannabe witch’s familiar—snorted at her feet.

  “That’s Oscar, the store mascot.” Maya smiled. “He sort of grows on you.”

  “He won’t hurt you, Andromeda,” I said to the pink-haired young woman still cowering against the pure white wall of silks and satins. Clearly she wasn’t a pet person, or maybe she just wasn’t a pet pig person. “Oscar, go on back to your bed.”

  Oscar snorted again, looked up at me, rolled his pink piggy eyes, and finally trotted back to his purple silk pillow.

  Andromeda wiped a thin hand across her brow. “I’m a nervous wreck. Ghosts, now pigs . . . I just wish everything would get back to normal.”

  “This should help,” I said, holding up a pendant carved with the ancient symbol of a deer—a powerful sign of support and protection—and an inscription in Aramaic. It hung on a cord made of braided and knotted silk threads in the powerful colors of red, orange, turquoise, magenta, and black. It suited her.

  When Andromeda bowed her head to allow me to slip the talisman on, my gaze landed on the vulnerable curve of her pale, slender neck. Her vibrations were as clear as a bell: bright and frightened, almost tangible, and though I was only ten years her senior, I felt a surge of maternal protectiveness. Like her mythical name-sake, who had been offered—bound and naked—as a sacrifice to the sea monster, this young Andromeda had a whole lot on her mind.

  As we used to say back in Texas, she was scareder than a sinner in a cyclone.

  But not only of a ghost, or even a pig.

  Andromeda was scared of something altogether human.

  “Don’t you need any, ya know, ghost- hunting stuff?” Maya asked later that night after I managed to squeeze my vintage Mustang convertible into an impossibly small spot in front of Bimbo’s on Columbus Avenue. Proud of my parking prowess, I led the way up Chestnut toward the San Francisco School of Fine Arts. The cool night air was fragrant with a whiff of salt off the bay, the aroma of garlic from nearby North Beach restaurants, and a heady floral perfume—early flowering brugmansia and jasmine were my guess. San Franciscans did like their flowers.

  Slung over the shoulder of my vintage dress was my trusty Filipino woven backpack, filled with a few talismans and charms; on the knotted cord at my waist was my powerful medicine bag; and on my feet were easy-to-flee-in Keds.

  But no legitimate ghost-hunting stuff.

  “Oops,” I said. “Guess I left my catch-a-spirit kit in Hong Kong.”

  “Very funny. Seriously . . . you don’t have any special equipment or anything?”

  “Like what? Stakes and crosses?”

  “Those are for vampires,” Maya pointed out.

  “Right. I get that mixed up. Stakes would be immaterial. Get it? Immaterial? Like ghosts?”

  Maya gave me a pity smile. “The guys on that TV show haul a lot of equipment around with them. Mostly electronic stuff.”

  “No doubt they bought most of it at RadioShack’s annual clearance sale. Just how do they expect to capture energy on videotape?”

  “I’m just saying”—Maya shrugged—“you should get cable. It’s very educational.”

  “But if I watched TV,” I said with a smile, “when would I find time to traipse around town looking for phantoms?”

  Besides, I thought to myself, I don’t need to watch a videotape to know that ghosts are real.

  We arrived at the campus. Our footsteps echoed off the ochre stucco walls of the covered walkway as we trod upon earth red Saltillo tiles worn down by t
he feet of scores of nuns, and now art students, for more than a century. The San Francisco School of Fine Arts was housed in a gorgeous example of Spanish-revival architecture, complete with red-tiled roofs, intricate plasterwork, graceful arches, and a bell tower. So far the vibrations of this convent-turned-art school felt largely positive . . . with just enough negative thrown in to prove its claim of being a historic building. After all, bad stuff happens. Shadows are necessary in human life, if only to emphasize the light.

  “Didja see anything yet?” asked an eager young woman leaning against the wall outside the heavy carved wood door of the school café.

  “We just got here,” said Maya. “Ginny, this is my new boss, Lily Ivory. Lily, meet Virginia Mueller.”

  “Hey. Call me Ginny,” she said, thrusting out a hand to shake. She wore a once-white work apron over faded Levi’s that clung to slender, boyish hips; her honey brown hair was cropped as short and shaggy as her paint-stained T-shirt. With her big eyes and piquant expression, Ginny had a sexy, pixyish style often found among free-spirited young artists; such were the kind of looks I had aspired to—but failed to achieve—when I was seventeen. Now, at the ripe old age of thirtysomething, I doubted the wood- sprite appearance would have aged well. Maybe that was why real elves are immortal.

  Ginny’s blue eyes swept over my vintage outfit, focusing on my empty hands. “Didn’t you bring any, like, ghost-hunting stuff?”

  “She left it in Honolulu,” Maya said.

  “Huh?”

  “She doesn’t use anything like that.”

  “Oh.” Ginny looked disappointed. I couldn’t help but notice more excitement than fear shining in her big eyes.

  “I’m happy to take a look around, see what I can see,” I said. “But if there are ghosts in the building, and you really want to communicate with them, you should probably bring in a skilled psychic.”