I knelt by the chest she had kept most of her ritual gear in.
Hand carved of cedar, the chest was old and smelled like incense. It was the size of a coffee table—about four feet long and three feet high, and it must have weighed a hundred pounds, given the dense wood. It had first belonged to my grandmother, who had given it to my mother.
My grandparents on my mother’s side had moved back to Ireland years ago, when I was a little girl, and I had seen them twice since then. My grandfather had passed, but Granny was still alive and kicking. It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from her since I talked to her shortly after the funeral and I needed to call her.
I stared into the trunk at the tools. They had been exquisitely crafted for my mother.
I slowly lifted out her athame—the ritual dagger she used to cast circles and in certain spells. It had a grip carved from holly wood, and the blade was long and curved, with a silver pommel and cross guard. It felt heavy in my hand, like it belonged to me. I brushed my fingers over the flat of the blade. My mother had kept it well polished, and it was sharp.
Setting the blade to the side, I lifted out her crystal ball. She had a number of crystals scattered around the house, but this was her private one—the one she used to scry and divine with. It must have weighed fifteen pounds and was about eight inches in diameter. The quartz was filled with fractures, and rainbows sparkled through it. There were other things in her chest, too, but I finally found what I was looking for—a small wooden jewelry box that contained her ritual jewelry. There, on a velvet pad, was a black opal ring and a matching necklace. I slid the necklace over my head and slipped the ring on.
Finally, Esmara whispered. We’ve been waiting for you to do this.
“I needed time to process being home. Doing this…claiming my mother’s ritual tools…makes the fact that she’s dead very real,” I said. “I’m taking her place and it feels very odd and…almost disrespectful.”
You’re not taking her place. She’s here with us, watching over you, but until both of you are more settled into your new lives, it’s best she doesn’t speak to you. Think of it as a training program for both of you. Now, take these things and create an altar.
I frowned, looking around. This seemed the logical place to put together an altar. Besides the built-in bookshelves and desks for both my father and mother, there was a loveseat in the library, and behind that loveseat, a console table that was the perfect size for an altar.
I cleared it off and moved it to the center of the room.
My mother’s trunk also held a black altar cloth, decorated with silver stars, a Waterford goblet, and several decks of tarot cards. There were other things in the chest, but they weren’t meant for display. I found her sage spray—my mother had been allergic to smoke, so she cleansed with charmed water instead. I sprayed around the table, then misted myself. The magical water immediately calmed me down.
Spreading the altar cloth on the table, I then positioned the dagger and the crystal ball on it, and stood back. It looked right, but I needed candles, and there were other tools I felt should go there.
“I suppose I’ll figure that out in time,” I said, waiting for Esmara to say something. But she kept quiet, and so I repacked everything else in the trunk and, carrying the cleanse-spray, headed into the kitchen to turn on the dishwasher. Tired and feeling a little at loose ends, I collected the kittens from the powder room, then headed upstairs. Xi and Klaus immediately claimed the bed as theirs. As they curled up by my feet, I drifted into a vaguely troubled sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
Next morning I once again locked the kittens in the spare bedroom and headed off for work. Demolition on the asylum was set for ten a.m., so I fortified myself with a sausage cheese muffin and a quad mocha on the way to the office. When I arrived, Hank was poring over something on one of the monitors.
“Find a new case?” I asked, breezing by him.
“Maybe,” he muttered, shaking his head. “It’s odd, to say the least. I’ll have to look into this more before I see if it’s something worth pursuing.”
Caitlin waved at me. She was in the middle of taking apart one of the computers.
“When does Wren get back?” I asked. “I’d like to meet her finally.”
“Week after next,” Tad said, from his desk where he was staring at a printout of what looked like a planet.
“Don’t tell me we’re going after aliens next,” I said.
“Nope, but we could. We’ve got plenty of reports lately about UFO sightings. I’m just looking through some of the reports the Pentagon recently declassified and boy, you wouldn’t believe some of the crap these guys saw.” He paused, pushing up the glasses that had slid down his nose. “So, ready for today?”
“I wish we could have taken care of things for good. It feels like we didn’t finish anything with the asylum.”
“That’s the way some cases go, January. You’ll get used to it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have to like it,” I muttered. I hated unfinished tasks. I was one of those annoying people who thrived on checklists and planners and schedules.
I finished my breakfast while I typed up all the notes I could think of from the past week, then glanced at the clock. “If we’re going, we’d better leave now.” It was 9:40.
We decided to take the van and, once again, Tad drove. We arrived at the site about ten minutes later, to find the supervisor of the demolition had brought in a number of big machines—bulldozers and dump trucks. That made sense. After the building came down, they’d have to haul away all the debris. Val himself wasn’t there, given…well…vampire. But a man who introduced himself as Daniel Ashante was.
“I’m Mr. Slater’s administrative assistant.”
There was something about him…he wasn’t human, that much I could tell. I closed my eyes, trying to home in on his energy. Yep, there it was—he was a shifter. And a powerful one at that. Shifters and vampires didn’t get along too well, so Slater must be paying Ashante a fortune.
“How are you going to do this?” I asked. “Just start knocking it down?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, we’re imploding it. The dynamite’s been set, so don’t go near the building. Here.” He handed us a bag containing earplugs. “You’ll need these. Also, wear these masks and goggles. The dust will be horrendous.”
We gratefully tucked the earplugs into place and put on our masks and goggles, then pulled back to the other side of what had been the parking lot.
I wondered what the hell the land elemental would do once we exploded its shell. Anxious, I glanced at my phone. Nearly ten. Apparently they’d been here setting up all morning because they were ready to go on at the top of the hour.
We huddled near the tree line.
“I really hope the workers who placed the dynamite know the difference between an implosion and an explosion,” I muttered as a few snowflakes began to flutter down.
I glanced up at the sky. It was starting to come down again, and everything seemed so picture-perfect when I looked at the Mystic Wood behind me. I felt a pull to wander into the thicket, but kept myself from doing so. That could easily be the land elemental enticing me. After all, the creature had two acres to prey on.