A Cast-Off Coven Read online

  The bell tinkled as Bronwyn walked into the shop, coffee in hand.

  “Good morning, Lily, and blessed be,” she said.

  “Morning, Bronwyn,” I said, slipping a Pink Martini album onto the little CD player behind the counter. “There’s still time to escape. Are you sure you want to spend your day off up to your elbows in sudsy water?”

  She gave me a huge, generous smile. “But I’m spending my time with one of my favorite people. What could be better? And you know me; I love to learn something new every day.”

  I returned her smile as I started sorting through the new Victorian-era acquisitions. Bronwyn truly was one of a kind, and I wasn’t sure what I’d ever done in my life to deserve her steadfast friendship.

  “Those look like bloodstains.” Bronwyn frowned, pointing to the brownish streaks on the ruffled ivory petticoat I was holding. “Is that normal or creepy?”

  “Both,” I answered. It wasn’t all that unusual to find all kinds of stains, including bloodstains, on old fabric. And whatever had happened, it took place long ago. I had faith in the power of the spell I cast last night—no one would be hurt by anything here. Still, it gave a person pause.

  “My mother always got bloodstains out with a little peroxide on a cloth, wiping it out,” Bronwyn said. “But I don’t know if it would work on such old stains. You can also leave salt on top to draw the blood out.”

  “We could try that. Sometimes I use lemon juice or a little white vinegar.”

  “Oh hey, Max stopped by yesterday afternoon,” Bronwyn said.

  “Oh?” My head whipped around at the mention of his name. Very cool witch. I caught myself and tried to make my voice sound nonchalant. “What did he have to say?”

  “He said he was in the neighborhood and wanted to apologize to you for acting like an ass.”

  “Really? He said that?”

  Bronwyn nodded. “Eventually. We chatted for a while, and he confessed he hasn’t been sleeping well. I told him he might have been visited by mares, and that you could probably help with a spell, but he insisted there was a logical explanation and that he’d find out what it was. I told him to come by this morning.”

  I felt that now-familiar fluttering in my belly, and momentarily considered changing into something more flattering than the stained T-shirt and simple patterned cotton skirt I was wearing. But it was Wash Day, and somehow I thought Max was a strong enough man not to be put off by a sloppy T-shirt or two.

  Bronwyn and I had our work cut out for us. Waiting to be laundered were not only all the Victorian items from the school, but everything else I had acquired over the past week. Maya gathered old clothes from the elders she met through her oral history project, and I usually hit at least two or three garage sales or estate auctions each weekend. And by now Aunt Cora’s Closet was developing a reputation; I paid well for good items, and news traveled fast.

  We started by separating the clothing into four piles: dry-clean only, machine wash, hand wash, and hard cases. As usual, the machine-washables pile was the smallest. Into this pile we tossed only the most recently manufactured items: vintage T-shirts, classic jeans, and cotton-blend shirts made later than the sixties. Because Bronwyn had come here to learn, I explained the process as we went along.

  “As a rule of thumb,” I told Bronwyn, “nylon goods or mixtures were introduced after 1940, acrylics after 1950, and labels marked polyester after 1960. Some fabrics from the sixties have specific registered trademark names such as Crimplene. They’re usually clearly marked on the tag.”

  “What is Crimplene?”

  “It’s a kind of high-bulk polyester. With lukewarm water and a cold rinse, it washes and drip-dries beautifully.”

  “Is lukewarm a specific temperature?”

  “Blood temperature.”

  “Again with the blood,” Bronwyn said with a smile. The CD had finished, and Bronwyn started humming the song from last night. “Dee dee dum dum dum . . .” I glanced at the music box I’d found in the closet. It sat upon the sales counter, but it was not playing.

  “Where did you hear that tune?” I asked.

  “What?” Bronwyn threw a voluminous plaid skirt into the hard-case pile.

  “That song.”

  “What song?”

  “The one you’re humming. The French naked lady song.”

  Bronwyn’s expression suggested I was nuts. Was it possible that I was thinking about the tune and projecting it? I looked over at Oscar. Could he be doing so?

  Any danger locked within the clothes had been bound and cleansed, I felt sure. Still, there was a powerful force at work if any of those vibrations came through.

  I scooped up several of the Victorian dresses and petticoats and concentrated on their vibrations. They were calm, serene. Foreign, but that was normal.

  “Lily, is everything all right?” Bronwyn laid a hand on my shoulder, startling me.

  “Yes, just fine,” I said. “Would you mind putting another CD on the player?”

  Bronwyn chose classic Jimmy Hendrix, and we continued sorting.

  The wash-by-hand pile included cotton, linen, and wool items, especially those mixed with nylon and acrylics.

  The largest pile by far was the “hard cases.” These were silks or wools likely to “shatter” with washing, quite literally falling to pieces. Any garments decorated with old lace or ribbons also needed special treatment; improperly treated lace would lose its crispness. Taffeta or other stiff material that rustled when it moved, as well as antique items with whalebone cages, celluloid inserts, or special finishes like watermark moiré, also had to be handled with particular care.

  A few pieces weren’t candidates for traditional washing at all. They could be “valeted” by hanging in the fresh air.

  “But don’t hang white or creamy wools or silks in the sun. They yellow in direct sunlight,” I reminded Bronwyn.

  “I thought sunlight bleached fabrics?”

  “It does with cottons, but wool and silk fibers contain cystine, which is sulfur bearing and causes a discoloring reaction in direct sunlight. I hang them in a room with a bowl of white vinegar for a few days and let the vinegar absorb any smells. On a breezy day, open the window and let fresh air into the room.”

  “Did you get a degree in home economics?” Bronwyn asked, awed at my knowledge of fabric.

  “School of Hard Knocks, I’m afraid,” I said, thinking ruefully of a number of pieces I had ruined when I first began. “You should see the meticulous method I saw a clothing conservationist use once. I’ll spare you the details.”

  Sorting finished, we started on the hand-wash pile. After cleansing the garments with low- alkaline flake soap in a large zinc tub, I placed them, one by one, on a white towel and blotted them dry or rolled them in the towel to soak up the excess water. We let the items air dry on wooden racks, or used a blow-dryer set on cool, finger-blocking and coaxing the garments into shape. The goal was to keep the amount of ironing to a minimum.

  “Okay, now I’m sorry I volunteered to help,” said Bronwyn. I noted the sheen of sweat on her brow. Slogging wet clothes was great for the upper arms, but it did make one’s back ache.

  I laughed. “It really makes you appreciate modern fabrics, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll say.”

  I felt a tingle and glanced at the front door where the Closed sign was displayed. It was Max.

  “Sorry to bother you on your day off,” he said, his eyes flitting over my soaked T-shirt as I opened the door. “Catch you in the middle of something?”

  “Washing clothes. The backsplash is an occupational hazard.”

  We exchanged smiles. He looked tired, with dark rings under his eyes, but he was still handsome. It made me wish I had called him last night after all—if we weren’t going to get any sleep, we might as well have been wide-awake together. Neither of us spoke for a long moment.

  I sighed inwardly—I was a goner.

  “Morning, Max,” Bronwyn shouted from the back room, han
ds up to her elbows in rinse water.

  “Morning, Bronwyn. Doesn’t your boss give you a single day off?”

  “Not hardly,” she twanged, mimicking my Texan accent. “She’s a real rhymes-with-bitch.”

  “Very funny,” I said. “Did you stop by for a reason, or just for the wet T-shirt contest?”

  “I am a man of reason. In this case, several. First, I wanted to apologize for the way I acted yesterday. I was out of line.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said. “I wasn’t at my best, either.”

  “Second, I wanted to set Bronwyn straight on something.” He turned to address her. “The sensation of being visited by entities while sleeping is a recognized physiological condition, a form of sleep paralysis called ‘hag syndrome.’ I looked it up. A perfectly plausible scientific explanation.”

  “That’s correct, dear,” Bronwyn said. “But did you ever wonder why you’re experiencing sleep paralysis? What if the ‘hags’ for which the syndrome is named are making you enter that so-called physiological state?”

  Max grinned. “Why do I bother arguing with a true believer?”

  “Because you’re stubborn?” I suggested.

  “Must be.”

  “Besides,” Bronwyn added, “witches are called hags, did you know that?”

  A bang on the front door signaled someone else trying to open the locked front door. It was Luc, the sculpture professor from the School of Fine Arts, carrying two cardboard cups of coffee. He spilled some coffee on himself, jumped and swore, and shook his hand.

  “Luc,” I said, opening the door. “What—”

  “The hell are you doing here?” Max interrupted.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” Luc said, eyes on Max.

  “Lily’s my . . .” Max paused, and I wondered how he’d complete that sentence. What were we to each other, after all? “Friend.”

  “I take it you two know each other?” I asked the men.

  “You could say that,” Luc muttered.

  “Luc’s my brother,” Max said. “My baby brother.”

  I now realized why Luc felt familiar—the men shared a family resemblance. Luc was the pretty one; Max the more mature, manlier one, rougher around the edges and with those heart-stopping light eyes.

  “Who’s no longer an infant,” Luc said. “Lily and I are . . . ‘friends’ . . . as well. As a matter of fact, she and I were trying on corsets together, just last night.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You were doing what?” Max demanded.

  “It’s an ancient bonding ritual,” I said, annoyed with both men. What, were they thirteen years old? “Invoked to ward off childish displays of sibling rivalry. Obviously, it didn’t work.”

  Bronwyn laughed, and Luc smiled a crooked, sexy smile. “I, for one, was letting my imagination run free.”

  “Run amok, more like,” Max grumbled.

  “Stop it, both of you,” I said. “Luc, you’re deliberately provoking your brother. And Max, it would help if you didn’t rise to the bait.”

  Max glowered. Luc grinned.

  “I brought you coffee,” said Luc, handing me a paper cup.

  “Thank you—how kind. What can I do for you?” I asked. Luc looked around the shop floor, but his gaze seemed to settle on Bronwyn’s herbal stand and the painted sign with the amiable slogan from the Wiccan Rede: AN IT HARM NONE, DO WHAT YE WILL.

  “I was hoping to talk to you about something . . . odd.”

  Max snorted, arms crossed over his chest.

  Luc’s happy-go-lucky visage hardened. “You can leave now, Max. I came to talk with Lily, not you.”

  “I was here first. Anything you have to say to her you can say in front of me.”

  I was hoping I wasn’t about to be treated to a Carmichael family smack-down.

  “Oooo, this is so exciting. So manly,” Bronwyn sang out above her energetic rinsing of the clothes. “I can’t wait to see how this turns out.”

  The tension in the room eased a bit.

  Luc shrugged. “Here’s the deal. I think I’m . . . That is, I’m afraid I might be”—he took a deep breath and blew it out—“possessed.”

  I choked on my coffee.

  “Possessed,” I repeated.

  “Possessed?” Bronwyn asked.

  “Possessed,” Luc confirmed.

  “Give me a break,” Max scoffed. He leaned back against a jewelry display case, the picture of world-weary cynicism.

  “Max, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an open mind,” Luc said, and I noted his vibrations shimmering with anger—and fear. “Just because you had a bad experience doesn’t mean everyone who believes in these things is nuts.”

  “Sure, little bro, whatever you say.”

  “Max, please,” I said. “Luc, what makes you think such a thing?”

  “I’ve been blacking out, losing time. It’s happened a few times now.”

  “When?”

  “Last night, after you left. I’ve got a half-finished sculpture, but the thing is . . . I don’t remember doing it.”

  “Did you . . . hurt anyone?”

  He shook his head.

  “Tell me exactly what happened. What’s your last recollection?”

  “I remember I was working in my office, but I went back into the closet because that damned music box we found kept on playing.”

  “The music box? You’re sure?”

  “Positive. I saw something in the mirror, something indistinct, kind of like mist. And that’s the last thing I remember.” He paused. “But there’s something worse.”

  Max sighed, and I glared at him.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Now I’m afraid I may have killed Jerry Becker.”

  Chapter 10

  Max gave a loud, dismissive snort.

  “Max,” I said, “feel free to leave, if you’d rather.”

  Arms crossed over his chest, Max looked as though he was here to stay.

  “What happened, Luc?”

  “That night, I remember being at the café. I remember seeing Becker there, and you, and walking back up the bell tower stairs toward my office. But that’s it. When I came to, I was sitting in the third-floor hallway.”

  “So why would you think you killed Jerry Becker?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s as though I felt a sense of blind rage, like in a nightmare.”

  Luc might have been sensing the fury of the demon, I thought . . . but would he have acted on that rage?

  “And,” Luc continued, “I lied to you yesterday about what Becker and I were arguing about. He actually accused me . . . of sending him a blackmail note.”

  “A blackmail note? About what?”

  “I don’t know; we didn’t get that far. That’s what he was coming up to talk to me about.”

  “But you didn’t send anything?”

  “I don’t think so, but like I say, I haven’t exactly been in complete control of all my actions lately. I can’t imagine what I would be blackmailing him over, though, since I don’t know anything about him, except that he’s a cold-hearted jerk, and the whole world knew that. Anyway,” Luc said, downing the last of his coffee and tossing the paper cup into the trash basket by the register, “I’ve got to go. I’m already late for an appointment down the street. This stuff has just been preying on my mind, and after I saw you in action yesterday, then happened to pass by your store, I thought I should get your opinion.”

  “Here,” I said, taking a small ball pendant from my display and crossing over to gather herbs from Bronwyn’s stand. The filigree ball opened to form a little pocket, in which I placed some black cohosh, eupatoriam, and Devil’s Pod. “Wear this. It’s a little stinky, but it will help. Is there any chance you could stay away from the school for a few days?”

  “We’re in the middle of midterm projects. But I’ll be more careful; won’t hang out alone up on the third floor anymore.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  With a pat
for Oscar, a smile at me and Bronwyn, and a curt nod to his brother, Luc left the shop. The door had barely closed before Max started in.

  “Don’t tell me you believe that cockamamie story?” Max demanded.

  “I didn’t say I believed it. But I think he does.”

  “And he’s virtually admitted killing Becker?”

  “He did no such thing. He said he was afraid he might have but didn’t remember it.”

  My mind was racing ahead: How in tarnation would a person explain that if Luc killed Jerry Becker, it wasn’t his fault? I was no lawyer, but I was pretty sure the state of California would not recognize a plea of innocent-by-reason-of-demon-possession. Back in the burning days, a person could claim that “the devil made me do it,” though all that ever accomplished was a conviction and execution for witchcraft rather than the original crime. Indeed, in past centuries, the mentally ill, or people suffering from occasional “fits” such as epileptics, were often branded as possessed by evil and subjected to torturous exorcisms. But today, the pendulum has swung the other way; those who might actually be demonized are given enough antipsychotic medication to turn them into walking zombies.

  Just as the old exorcisms failed to help those with mental illnesses, modern pharmaceuticals were of no use to the demon-possessed.

  By far the easiest way to go about this, I decided, was to first see if there was another explanation for Becker’s death. Still, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether, if I learned that Luc had indeed pushed the Big Cheese down the stairs to his death, would I inform the police?

  “But you agree he’s possessed?” Max persisted.

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Lily, please. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “ ’Fraid not. What did Luc mean about your having had a bad experience with the supernatural?”

  Max shrugged and pressed his lips together. His hands rested on his hips. Tension and anxiety pulsed around him. “It wasn’t something supernatural, exactly.”

  “What was it, exactly?”

  “Bad experience with a so-called psychic.”

  “What happened?”