"Well... darn," Libby said, catching herself at the last moment.

Ten minutes later, after cleaning up as best they could with soap and hot water, Morris and Libby were seated at a corner table. Mac brought over fresh drinks and a bowl of pretzels. "Usually, customers serve themselves," he said. "But since you"re guests and all, I thought I"d make an exception this-oh, look who"s here."

Two hard-faced men in cheap sport coats and awful ties had just come in. They had thick necks, cheap haircuts, and an aggressive way of walking. Had they worn flashing neon signs around their necks that said "Cop," they might have been a little more obvious, but not much.

"Guess I better go talk to the guardians of public order," Mac said. "Excuse me."

"I reckon they"ll get around to us sooner or later," Morris said.

"We"d better not try to leave until they do, then." Libby said. "Just call attention to ourselves."

Morris took a pull at his fresh drink and said, "By the way, I will never, ever make fun of your suitcase again."

"Well, you know, I was thinking of getting some of that soft stuff that"s in fashion these days. It absorbs the b.u.mps better, they say, but it"s not nearly so good as Samsonite when it comes to stopping bullets." For a white witch, the smile that Libby gave him looked positively wicked.

"Okay, okay. I give. Let me up," Morris said. "Sure is a terrific spell you"ve got on that thing, though. Come up with it yourself?"

"Not entirely. It"s a variation on one that"s usually used on more static objects-doors, windows, and so on. But, considering the kind of people I"ve been hanging around with, lately..." This time, her smile was gentler. "I thought it would be useful to have something handy that could offer protection in transit. And speaking of protection, now that we know your friend isn"t here, what did you have in mind?"

"There are a couple of other people in town I"d like to talk to. They"re plugged into the whisper stream, to varying degrees, and might have heard something. I want to get that done quickly, then get us the... heck... out of Dodge, Libby. The bad guys know you"re here."

Libby nodded thoughtfully. "And if we stick around, I suppose it"s only a matter of time before they try again."

"Yeah," Morris said. "And next time, you might not be carrying your luggage."

Chapter 10.

Special Agent Colleen O"Donnell lay sprawled on her back in the dead gra.s.s and dirt of Annie Levesque"s front yard. She and Fenton were covered with small pieces of gla.s.s, but they had been out of the direct line of impact when all the house"s windows magically exploded, and had suffered only minor cuts.

Detective Premeaux, however, was bleeding from half a dozen places, most seriously at the base of his throat, where a long, jagged shard of gla.s.s protruded. Premeaux fell to his knees, one hand gripping the spear of gla.s.s as if trying to pull it out; before he could succeed, he collapsed onto the porch. Blood pulsed from his wound.

Colleen knew that Premeaux was dying, and she ached to go to him. But if she did not deal with Annie Levesque right now, there were soon going to be three dead cops out here, not just one.

Fenton appeared to be dazed. He had not been prepared for the backwards tumble off the porch, and had struck his head on the hard ground. Colleen reached over, touched his head gently, and uttered a phrase that would render him unconscious for a short while. She was probably going to do something in the next few moments that Fenton should not see, or, more importantly, interfere with.

Kicking her legs out in front of her, just as she had learned at Quantico, Colleen did a hip roll and came to her feet smoothly. Annie Levesque, who appeared a bit shaken by the ferocity of the explosion she had caused, was fumbling with the latch on her front door. If she got inside, Annie would have access to whatever black magic paraphernalia and potions she kept there; and for Colleen to follow, into a place charged with Annie"s diabolical energy, would be suicidal.

In unknowing imitation of her sister witch Sandy Jenkins, Colleen kept a wand stashed up the sleeve of her blazer. Colleen"s slim scabbard was not spring-loaded, but she could still pull the wand out fast when she needed it.

Like now.

A wand is a pre-charged instrument, like a battery in the mundane world. It can allow you to work some kinds of magic quickly, but only some, and its power fades with use.

Colleen pointed her wand at the door and uttered a quick spell to jam the latch in place. It wouldn"t hold for long, not on Annie"s own house, but it would prevent the b.i.t.c.h from getting inside for a few moments.

This confrontation would be over, one way or another, very quickly.

Annie Levesque realized what was going on and turned to face Colleen. Keeping one hand touching the arcane symbol on her front door, she used the other to point a chubby finger at Colleen and utter another phrase in ancient Chaldean. Colleen instantly felt the air around her become warm, then hot, then very, hot, and knew that Annie"s spell was designed to cause her to burst into flames.

Colleen pointed her wand at herself and said the words that would dispel Annie"s magic. A moment later, she felt the temperature start to drop and knew she had succeeded. But Annie had now turned back to the latch working magic to dispel Colleen"s spell and get the door open.

Instead of freezing the latch again, Colleen aimed her wand at Annie"s right hand, and said the words that would paralyze her fingers temporarily. After fumbling with the door a moment longer, Annie turned back to Colleen, who was ready this time for another fire spell. But instead, Annie waved her hand in a sweeping gesture that seemed to encompa.s.s her whole yard and shouted something in an arcane language, her whole body shaking with the power she was expending.

Colleen was concentrating on keeping the paralysis of Annie"s fingers going while simultaneously trying to figure a way to bring this chess match to endgame. Annie was considerably older than Colleen, and had clearly been practicing the craft much longer. Colleen was younger and somewhat faster, but Annie was stronger-and on her home ground. In a protracted contest, Annie was going to prevail, which meant that Colleen, and then Fenton, would die here.

There was a ritual in the Sisterhood, rarely practiced, that involved the sacrifice of some of your own blood to temporarily increase your magical power. The potential benefits were great, as were the risks- but there was no way to bring that to bear here. Colleen was juggling too many things, as it was.

She had enough awareness left to hear the sound of the earth cracking in several places around the yard, and from the corner of her eye she could see a patch of ground open as something horrible crawled out from beneath it.

There were bodies buried in Annie"s yard, probably victims of her magic in years past. Annie was now calling them forth, and it wasn"t hard to predict what she would command them to do. Colleen could protect herself against these reanimated corpses, but at the expense of taking her attention, and power, away from Annie, who would then be able to get into her house and access all the power stored within. Checkmate.

The creature that Colleen could see in her peripheral vision was almost out of its grave now, and she a.s.sumed the others were making similar progress. In a few more seconds they would be on her. She would either fall victim to their attack, or to the one Annie would level at her as soon as she gained entrance to her house.

If Colleen could hurt Annie, the necromancy would stop instantly. But white magic cannot be used for that purpose.

But a white witch was not all she was.

Colleen O"Donnell was also an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Bureau doesn"t deal in magic, but it does instill in its agents another, more temporal kind of power.

Colleen transferred her wand from her dominant, right hand to the weaker left. She would not be able to hold Annie much longer, now. She could hear dragging footsteps as the revenants approached her from behind. An unpleasant leer grew on Annie"s sallow, heavy face. It lasted for, perhaps, two seconds.

That was as long as it took Special Agent Colleen O"Donnell to draw the Glock 10mm from the holster on her right hip and fire two rounds into Annie Levesque"s black heart.

Eleanor Robb had just sat down to watch American Idol when the telephone rang. She was tempted to let the answering machine take it, but something in her witch sense told her that this call was important. Wishing she had invested in a TiVo, Eleanor switched the set off and answered the phone.

"Eleanor, it"s Rachel. Are you all right?"

"Sure, I am. Why wouldn"t I be?"

"Because something"s going on, something bad. I don"t know what it is, but in the last seventy-two hours, two of the Sisterhood have been murdered."

"G.o.ddess save us! Who?" Fear reached out an icy finger and touched Eleanor Robb"s heart.

"Andrea McKinnon in Detroit, and Cindy Presler in Wilkes-Barre-that"s in Pennsylvania."

"May their souls be at peace," Eleanor said. She tried to force herself to think rationally. "Are they sure it"s murder?"

"No doubt whatever-and there"s more. Sandra Jenkins sent me an email that two men tried to kill her in her apartment yesterday."

"Merciful mother! Were they using magic?"

"Sandy says no. But they must have used some to get past the wards she"d set up."

"Who are these people? Crazed witch-hunters, or something?"

"Sandy thinks they were hirelings. It wasn"t possible for her to question them at the time, and they"re now in the hands of the police. Sandy says she"ll monitor the investigation, to see if these creeps tell the cops anything."

Eleanor stared at the wall opposite her, without really seeing it.

"Ellie?"

"Thinking. Just a sec."

Half a minute pa.s.sed in silence, then: "Rachel, there are three things we need to do, and quickly."

"All right, I"m taking notes. Go on."

"We need to find out if any other Sisters have been victims of these... whoever they are."

"Which means getting in touch with all of them-to see who answers the phone, or responds to email, and who doesn"t."

"Exactly. And in the process, we can do the second thing, which is to warn the others about what"s happening, and urge them to be on guard."

"Gotcha. What"s the third thing?"

"I"m still working on that one."

Two days later found Quincey and Libby back in Mac"s pub, one of the few places in Chicago where they felt reasonably safe. It was lunchtime, and they were pleasantly surprised to find that the food was good; a lot of places that call themselves "pubs" focus on providing booze, with the cuisine something of an afterthought.

"I wish your reporter buddy had more specific information about that guy in Ohio," Libby said. She sat with her back to the door, but knew that Quincey was vetting anyone who came in behind her.

He swallowed a bite of his tortilla and said, "Yeah, I hear you. Carl keeps his ear to the ground for goings-on in the occult world, but it"s more of a sideline with him. Tony, his boss, doesn"t approve of what he calls "all this superst.i.tious claptrap"-he keeps sending Carl off to cover flower shows, stuff like that."

"I"ve never heard of this guy he mentioned, Tristan Hardwick. Sounds like a character out of Jane Austen."

"I don"t know him, either. But, hel-uh, heck, Libby, we can"t keep track of all of "em."

Libby speared a crouton with her fork. "What I don"t get is why the police released him. If they had reason to believe he was involved in that poor kid"s murder..."

Morris gave her a crooked smile. "You don"t watch Law and Order, do you?"

"No-what does that matter?"

"It"s just that if you did, you wouldn"t be surprised by what happened. Cops make a bust, then the judge decides the key evidence against the guy"s inadmissible. Maybe somebody forgot to get a search warrant, or something. But without that evidence, whatever it was, the D.A."s got no case worth a d.a.m.n. So the b.a.s.t.a.r.d walks."

"It still doesn"t seem right."

"That just proves you"re a better witch than you are a lawyer, Libby."

"Thanks for the compliment-both sides of it."

They ate in silence for a while. Then Libby said, "Kent, Ohio. Isn"t that where they had those shootings, at the university there?"

"Yeah, but that was a long time ago. I"m pretty sure they don"t do that anymore."

"But it"s still a college town, though."

"As far as I know, it is. So?"

"So that means they probably have some good bookstores. You know me and bookstores."

"Just so long as you don"t go there alone," Morris said. "You never know who might be lurking among the do-it-yourself books. Speaking of which..." Morris hesitated. "We need to get us some help, Libby."

"Another investigator, you mean?"

"Uh-uh. You and me, we"re about the best investigators I know, at least for this kind of stuff. I was thinking more along the lines of a bodyguard."

"Oh, come on, Quincey."

"What-you don"t think we need somebody? If you weren"t quick with the magic yesterday, you"d have been dead out there in the street, Libby. Probably both of us would be."

"But I was quick enough, that"s what matters."

"But next time you might not be, or might not get any warning. That"s what really matters."

Libby put her fork down, frowning. "So, what, we"re supposed to have some gorilla with no neck and a .45 under his armpit following us around?"

"No, I had something a little different in mind." Morris cleared his throat. "Libby... look, I"m sorry, but it"s the best choice under the circ.u.mstances. It really is." Morris looked past her and nodded his head, once.

Libby blinked, then her eyes widened. "Quincey, tell me you didn"t-"

That was when Hannah Widmark slipped into the vacant chair next to her. "Hi, kids," she said, pleasantly. "How"s ghostbusting?"

Charlotte Kenyon drove through the suburban streets as fast as the traffic and prudence would allow. The line at the grocery store she"d stopped at on the way home from work had been both long and slow. Sort of like a good f.u.c.k, she thought. But not nearly so much fun.

It had been quite a while since Charlotte had had a f.u.c.k-good, bad, or indifferent. As a working single mom she barely managed to juggle all the duties of both job and family and still manage to get (if she was lucky and none of the kids was sick) six hours of sleep a night. Doing the horizontal polka with somebody (even a.s.suming a likely candidate were available) would require scheduling weeks in advance, just like a play date.

That"s what Mom needs. A play date of her own, preferably with some hot guy who"s hung like a horse.

Her driveway was coming up, so she pushed thoughts of s.e.xual longing aside and began to focus on her present responsibilities. The first of her three kids should be home from school in about fifteen minutes. She could give Mark a gla.s.s of milk and a cookie, then ask him about his day while she began dinner preparations.

Household ch.o.r.es were actually somewhat easier for Charlotte when n.o.body was home, since she could use a little magic to move things along. Dishes might wash themselves, or dust could be commanded to fly off surfaces and into the trash bin.

Charlotte juggled two bags of groceries while unlocking the back door. She noticed her key slid into the lock more easily than usual, as if the lock had been oiled. Sliding right in because it"s so well lubricated. Get it out of the gutter, Charlotte. She plopped the bags onto the kitchen table, scattering a number of toys in the process.

She had started taking the groceries out of the bags and putting them on the table, when she heard a floorboard creak behind her-a floorboard that should not have creaked, on its own.

Charlotte Kenyon picked up a can of peas to use as a missile, if necessary. She was about to pivot and face the threat, whatever it was, when the .22 slug entered her brain. She collapsed to the floor, dead before she even knew she"d been shot.

The man who had killed Charlotte was uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the silencer from the barrel of his .22 pistol when the phone started ringing. He did not, quite, jump. "I oughta answer it," he said to his partner. "Say something like, "Hi! Charlotte can"t come to the phone right now. She"s, like dead.""