Obsidian Curse (A Stacy Justice Mystery Book Five) Read online

  Leo looked at me. “I won’t be too long.”

  I asked Leo to lock up, washed my face, and changed my clothes for the third time that day, then I went over to the Geraghty House.

  Cinnamon was just pulling up into the driveway when I got there. She wobbled out of the car, opened the back door, and Thor came charging at me.

  He jumped up and gave me a hug. “Missed you too, buddy.”

  “That was fast,” I said to Cinnamon.

  “Daphne finally showed up. She said she’d been sick as a dog all day, but she was feeling better and wanted to work.”

  I was really sorry to hear that. Because that meant I was wrong. She wasn’t the Leanan Sidhe. I wondered if the coven had performed a false-memory spell to make her forget what had happened. I hoped so anyway.

  “She kept babbling on about you too. I think she’s got the hots for you.” Cinnamon shrugged her purse up her shoulder.

  Now I felt really guilty. The poor girl probably thought I was hitting on her. I hoped that spell reached far enough back that she forgot I was ever at Tony’s shop.

  But I had an even bigger problem than leading on the bartender. I had no idea who the Leanan Sidhe was.

  And Monique was still missing.

  Chapter 38

  I retrieved the sword from Birdie’s car, thinking I’d be able to consecrate it faster with a full coven around me.

  The front door of the inn was unlocked. Thor trotted inside and howled to Fiona that he was hungry.

  She got up to feed him and I said I’d take care of it, but she turned to me and said she needed to have a “talk” with him anyway. She nodded toward Cinnamon. I stuck the sword in the umbrella rack.

  The rest of the coven, as well as Birdie, Lolly, and Blade, were all sitting in the parlor. Blade kept looking around the room, grinning like a loon, as if he’d won the mother of all lotteries.

  Cinnamon shuffled off to the kitchen behind Fiona, saying she was hungry too, and I went to join my new team for a debriefing.

  “Hey,” Blade said. “I had the best day.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  I glanced upstairs.

  “Yvonne’s still shopping. She’s picking me up for dinner in a couple of hours,” Blade said.

  “So what have we got?” I asked.

  Birdie started to answer, but Blade interrupted. “We think whoever killed my parents must have killed the Council member who tracked the skull to them.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Oh, yeah. I know all about the Council. I’ve been anointed as the Scribe.” Emphasis on anointed.

  “Congratulations, Blade,” I said.

  Birdie rolled her eyes.

  Lolly stood. She was wearing a glittering gold ball gown and a grapevine crown. Grapes still attached. She walked over to the whiteboard and flipped it around, sucking down a mimosa.

  I said to Birdie, “So I guess Daphne wasn’t the Leanan.”

  “The Leanan? Who’s that?” Blade set his gaze on me. “You mean Daphne, the bartender from last night? What’s a Leanan?”

  Birdie shot me a shut up look. I guess that part of the story was above his pay grade.

  “Never mind. Do we know where the skull is?” I asked.

  Lolly was aiming a long pointer at the whiteboard. She touched the tip to the phrases the coven and I had extracted from his books the night before, and Blade read them aloud.

  “The skull was shiny, as if it had been picked clean,” Blade read. “That was from Hollow Stone,” he said with a look back to his audience.

  “We don’t need all the details, Mr. Knight,” Birdie said.

  Blade gave a sheepish smile.

  Lolly pointed to the next line.

  The author stood. “It was a dark, damp place, like a thousand rains had washed out all the color.”

  The stick jumped down.

  “There, hidden beneath old rubble, was the key to his past.”

  Lolly pointed again to the board and Blade stepped forward. “Secrets lie in the echoes. If you listen carefully, you can hear the truth whistle through the walls.”

  The next line he read was, “It was the source of all his passion.”

  Lolly looked at me as Blade spoke the phrase after that. “It wasn’t until he met her that he knew a piece of him was missing.”

  Blade glanced my way too and I shuffled uncomfortably.

  The last line Blade read was this: “The river was shallow that day and even the fish looked forlorn.”

  And that was all.

  Heads swung my way. I walked over to the board and touched it, closed my eyes, then pulled the locket out and asked it a silent, penetrating question.

  I didn’t open it. Not yet.

  The talisman vibrated softly in my hand as my fingers trailed the length of the board. The locket moved faster and faster as my hands moved, building into a frenzy of jerks and pulls until I arrived at the end of all the passages. Then it stopped.

  “We’re still missing something,” I said when the locket came to a limp rest.

  Birdie frowned. “Blade, is there something else you’ve written in this series? A short story, perhaps?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve seen everything. I have other novels, though.”

  “No.” Birdie shook her head. “It would somehow be connected to these works. I can feel it.”

  “Unless—” I looked at Blade. “You told me that when you left home, when you went into foster care, you took one book with you from place to place. Surely that must have inspired you.”

  Blade locked eyes with me. “Every writer is inspired by something.”

  I gave him a look of annoyance. “What was the book, Blade?”

  “Huckleberry Finn.”

  I read each passage carefully again. “That’s it.” I pointed to the last line. “The river was shallow that day and even the fish looked forlorn.” I looked at Blade.

  “Huckleberry Finn takes place mostly on the Mississippi,” said the author.

  “The river line refers to the location of the last clue,” I said. “Do we have Huckleberry Finn?”

  “We have it in the library,” Birdie said.

  Shannon jumped up. “I’ll get it.”

  Her movements were swift and she had Mark Twain’s tome in my hands in seconds. I set the book down on the piano, closed my eyes, and opened the locket. I pointed it facedown over the closed cover, conjuring an image of a skull in my mind’s eye.

  There was a whooshing sound and I opened my eyes as the spine of the book cracked open. The pages flipped back and forth for several moments until finally coming to a rest.

  Everyone had gathered around me. I shut the locket and let it dance around until I saw a passage of text shoot out at me as if in 3-D.

  I read it aloud. “There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs like a puncheon floor in summer-time because it’s cool.”

  I looked at Birdie. “A church. It’s in a church.”

  Blade said, “The book is also about freedom and race relations.”

  Birdie snapped her fingers. “The old underground Baptist church.”

  Blade asked what that was and Birdie explained that it was the first African-American Baptist church in the state.

  “Amethyst, being so close to the Mississippi, was a prime stop on the Underground Railroad,” I explained.

  Lolly said, “Sadly, the church was burned to the ground years ago. All that remains is the foundation and pieces of rubble.”

  Blade looked at me and said, “Let’s go get it.”

  “Easy, cowboy. I’m not sure you’re equipped to handle this rodeo,” I said.

  Cinnamon returned from the kitchen and asked, “Hey, has anyone seen Mon
ique? Someone from the reunion committee called me. Said she’s supposed to have all the booze and the decorations.”

  Fiona and Thor were behind her. Thor plopped himself on a plush rug near the fireplace and settled in for a nap. Shannon went to sit by him. As she stroked his fur, I couldn’t help but think this girl was after my job.

  “The decorations are in the back closet,” Fiona said. “I took them out of Birdie’s car.”

  “Thanks, Fiona. I forgot all about that,” I said.

  She patted my arm, then smoothed a rogue hair on my head.

  “Well, I can give you an update on the booze. It was destroyed when her pipe burst. She said she used up all the funds too,” I said.

  “I knew she’d cock it up,” Cinnamon said. “At least there will be food.”

  The Pearl Palace restaurant was catering the event.

  Blade said, “You can’t have a reunion without liquor.” He looked at me. “What do you say we make a deal?”

  I crossed my arms. “What kind of a deal?”

  “Include me in the mission and I’ll spring for an open bar.”

  Cinnamon pursed her lips, looking from me to Blade.

  I looked at Birdie.

  “It’s up to you, Seeker,” she said.

  “What do you say, Seeker of Justice? The Mage is cool with it,” Blade said.

  Apparently, he had been granted the security clearance to know who Birdie and I were. I guess he just couldn’t know about the Otherworld.

  Cinnamon looked confused, but decided she didn’t want any part of whatever it was we were talking about. She sank into a chair and kicked her shoes off.

  “You can’t have an open bar without bartenders.” I smiled at Birdie and the aunts. Blade watched as the three of them crouched into a huddle.

  Birdie popped her head up. “Done.”

  Good. Because I had a sneaky suspicion that something awful was going to happen that night and I could use all the help I could get.

  Chapter 39

  It took two hours to consecrate my sword, but I was confident that it was back to full throttle, and I warned Blade that if he touched it, I would shank him. It was resting in front of the life-sized portrait of the Goddess Danu.

  Birdie thought it was best to retrieve the skull in daylight, as there would be less of a chance of the Leanan’s army attacking then. We didn’t know if there were any soldiers left, but I agreed that it was a good idea to wait for daybreak. She chose three witches to accompany our mission, one of which (of course) was Shannon.

  The author went to dinner with his agent, and I spent a good deal of time trying to contact Chance until, eventually, Caleb texted me and said he was at home sleeping.

  I was relieved to know that he was safe. For now.

  Cinnamon went home to Tony, and Thor and I were about to call it a night as well when Fiona pulled me aside to tell me that she believed Thor was indeed just protecting the baby.

  One more thing I didn’t have to worry about.

  With all of that out of the way, I finally was able to concentrate on studying the binding spells and tricks that Birdie had outlined for me. I read through her notes back in the cottage, but none of them seemed particularly effective. Which was understandable. We were sailing on unknown waters. No one had battled the Leanan since the last Geraghty she had cursed.

  And that didn’t end well.

  I spent the rest of the evening and well into the night poring over the Blessed Book, my reference materials, herbal grimoires, crystal enchantment texts, and the Council’s database.

  There were a few promising options that I jotted down, along with some curse-reversal spells I cooked up on my own, but the truth was, until I was in her presence, until I understood her power, I had no clue how to fight her.

  And if all else failed, there was always the locket. It had served me well since I had been gifted it, and I had to believe it would aid me in this quest. I had to. Lives depended on it. Humanity and all that was beauty in the world depended on it.

  I fell asleep in the Seeker’s Den, dreaming of ancient battles, evil fairies, and Geraghtys long deceased.

  The next morning I woke up groggy and unfocused, like I had already waged war. My muscles ached, my head throbbed, and there was a pounding at my door.

  Thor was sleeping on my exercise mat. He groaned and rolled over.

  I looked at the clock and was surprised to see that it read ten-thirty.

  When I answered the door, Blade Knight was standing on my porch in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, two coffees in hand, accompanied by a box of Milk-Bones.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Hi, Blade.”

  I left the door open and shuffled into the bathroom.

  When I came out, Thor was on his back and Blade was feeding him treats. The author handed me a coffee and I thanked him.

  “Just let me change and we can get going.”

  I threw on a long-sleeved tee shirt, jeans, an old sweatshirt, rubber boots, and a baseball cap. There were gardening gloves in the shed out back, so I ran to grab those, and the lot of us piled into Blade’s car, while Thor trotted off to Cinnamon’s place.

  Birdie had warned us not to touch the skull with our bare hands. Since it wasn’t a manmade artifact, she was afraid of what human contact might do to it, so I, Blade, Shannon, and two other witches about my age were all wearing gloves when we arrived at the site of the old church.

  Lolly and Fiona had given Blade a velvet-lined safe to cart the skull home safely. It was agreed that after we found it, I would keep it locked up in the Seeker’s Den until a Council member could arrive to retrieve it.

  Blade pulled some shovels out of the trunk of his car and he, the coven members, and I hiked through a small forest, past faded oaks, coppery maples, and crimson ash trees, until we came upon the site of the old Baptist church.

  All that remained of the house of worship was a boxy rock-wall foundation sunken into the earth. The edges were charred in spots and tendrils of ivy curled around the cold stone, while moss and brambles carpeted the parts of the dirt floor that weren’t covered in debris. There was an old brass cup perched on one of the corner stones as if someone had performed a ritual recently, and along the outer bank of the far wall was a rotting tree stump littered with walnut husks. The music of a nearby stream was all but drowned out by the chatter of excited birds preparing for their autumn journey. A few steps away, two squirrels chased each other around an old tire.

  I watched them for a moment until the woman next to me blew out a shaky sigh.

  The witch was an African-American woman with tightly cropped hair and I wondered what she was feeling in that moment, standing on the ruins of what her people had worked hard to build. Ignorance and fear are the food of hatred and, right now, we were looking at the devastating destruction that human beings do to one another when common sense is discarded for intolerance.

  She looked at me, shovel in hand, and said, “Let’s do this.”

  We all climbed into the pit, kicking boards and cola cans out of the way, moving rocks and fallen limbs. Above, a ray of sunlight punctured the tree canopy, providing a soft glow of light and welcomed warmth.

  The five of us dug for hours. Our feet were caked with mud, our backs aching. We had made a fair dent in the rubbish pile, but there was still only a small area of the floor that was uncovered.

  Shannon said, “Stacy, can you try to use the locket?”

  I didn’t like to use the locket outdoors, especially in the daytime. While the sun could often cleanse a crystal, charging it with power, I was afraid of what it would do to this delicate heirloom. Because, like artwork, ancient talismans have been known to be washed by the sun, draining them of their energy.

  But, as Birdie said, desperate times.

  I pulled the locket out from beneath my tee shi
rt, wiping the sweat from my brow. As I had done yesterday with the Mark Twain novel, I centered myself, concentrating on the image of a black skull. I walked to the center of the church’s foundation, removed the locket, and held it briefly to my third eye. Then I unclasped it, dangled it in my hand, and watched it spin.

  It sputtered around for just a second and then stopped. I tried again, but the piece didn’t seem to be picking up on anything.

  “It’s not working,” I said.

  “So we keep digging,” said Blade.

  The African-American woman said, “I have a better idea.”

  She pulled out a Tibetan skull amulet that was often used by voodoo practitioners to remove revenge spells and curses.

  I smiled at her. “Do your thing.”

  I stepped away from the center of the church and the woman took my place. She held her arms up high, chanting in a language I didn’t understand. The skull danced in her hand, spinning in a wide circle. She walked with it, carefully moving around the space, stepping over rocks, discarded liquor bottles, and fruit crates until the skull finally tightened its circle near a spot in the corner of the foundation. Then it spun into a frenzy.

  “Here,” she said.

  Blade got busy tossing out rotted wood, broken glass, and piles of rocks. After a while, he said, “I see something. It’s shiny.”

  We all knelt down, dusting away the dirt with our hands, until eventually a set of glimmering black teeth appeared.

  Chapter 40

  It was dark by the time we had carefully dug up and dusted off the skull and placed it in the safe.

  Shannon offered to hold it on her lap on the way back to the Geraghty House. She had called Birdie earlier to tell her we had found the obsidian skull and now she was texting that we were on our way home.

  I texted Caleb and asked about Chance. Caleb said his brother was working late and that he had just texted to say he had left the construction site to head home and hook up with Caleb for dinner.

  I hadn’t eaten all day, so I was thrilled to smell baked ham and sweet potatoes when we got back to the Geraghty House. Lolly was playing a Billie Holiday tune on the piano and Fiona was singing. We all kicked off our muddy shoes and left them on the porch.