Kitty Takes a Holiday (Kitty Norville 3)

“Your spell called out to evil. You may have drawn it here, yes.”

She rubbed her face—wiping away sudden tears, springing from reddening eyes. “I’m so sorry. I thought I knew what I was doing, I was sure I knew—I have to fix it. How do I fix it?”

“Apologizing is always a good start,” Tony said.

Alice looked at me, and for a moment I did feel sorry for her. She obviously felt so badly, and so tortured when the true consequences of what she’d done sunk in, I didn’t want to be angry at her anymore. The words—Oh, it’s all right, just as long as she never does it again—were on the tip of my tongue.

But the Wolf in me shifted testily. And you know, she was right. Alice wasn’t going to get off that easily. I waited for the apology.

“I’m sorry, Kitty,” she said. “I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

You’d better be… “Thank you,” I said instead.

“I think I can help clean all this up,” Tony said. “There’s a ritual I know, it’ll clear away the curse. Heal some of the bad feelings. Will you all help?”

He looked at each of us, and we all nodded. Even Joe.

“Good,” he said. “Be at Kitty’s cabin at twilight, about five o’clock. We’ll get this taken care of. Oh—and I’ll take those. Thanks.” Smiling amiably, he grabbed the bag of crosses off the counter.

We left the store, Tony bringing up the rear, almost like he was herding us. Or keeping me from lingering and doing something stupid. Within minutes, we were in the car and back on the road.

“Cormac wanted me to have those melted down,” I said, nodding at the bag of crosses in his lap.

“That’d work, but I was just going to hold them under running water.”

“You mean that’s all we had to do?” I shook my head. The more I learned…

He said, “I’m curious where Alice learned her magic. If she was raised in some kind of tradition—healer or witchcraft or something—or if she got those spells out of a book somewhere. That’s the trouble with you white people, you read something out of a book, you think you understand it. This kind of magic, though—you really have to live with it to know it.”

That reminded me of learning a language, how really learning it requires living it, speaking with native speakers, growing up with it—total immersion. Repeating vocabulary words in high school wasn’t going to cut it.

I said, “I can assure you, everything I know about the supernatural I’ve lived with personally.” That didn’t mean I understood any of it.

Tony laughed. “I believe you.”

From the backseat, Ben said, “You really think what they did caused what happened to the cattle? What about what we saw in New Mexico?”

“Maybe what Alice and them did drew it here,” Tony said.

“Or did it follow Cormac?” I said.

That left us with an ominous silence. Because it made sense. There’d been two of them. Cormac killed one, and the other followed him, seeking revenge. Only Cormac wasn’t here anymore. So it went wild, killing, like it had before.

If that was the case, Tony’s cleansing spell wouldn’t help. We needed Cormac back. If for no other reason than to warn him.

chapter 12

Twilight settled over the forest, clear and stark. The sky turned the beautiful deep blue of prize sapphires. The first star shone like a diamond against it. That clean, organic pine forest smell permeated everything.

Ben and I sat on the front porch and waited, watching Tony make preparations. He’d parked his truck at a national forest trailhead a few miles up the road, and moved it to my driveway during the afternoon. He pulled a box of supplies out of the back and got to work. First, he leaned a broom against the porch railing, then placed unlit white votive candles along the porch and around the clearing. Moving around the clearing to the four quarters of the compass, he drew something out of the leather pouch he carried and threw it into the air. A fine powder left his hands, and the smell of home cooking in a well-kept kitchen hit me. Dried herbs. Sage, oregano. I felt better.

“You think this’ll work?” Ben said.

“I’ve learned to keep an open mind. I’ve seen something like this work before. So, yeah. I think it will.”

“You look better already.”

I felt a smile light my face. “What can I say? The man inspires confidence.”