Witch & Curse Read online

Isabeau lifted the sacrificial knife from beside the slaughtered sheep. It had been forged in Roman times, and passed down from mother to daughter since then.

  “I’ll do it myself,” Isabeau announced.

  Her mother smiled and murmured a blessing on her daughter. Then she said, much more kindly, “You will survive this, Isabeau. It’s difficult, I know. But when he’s dead, his charms will lift, and you’ll understand how basely he used you.”

  Isabeau sighed heavily. He had bewitched her, yes; but how could she tell her mother of the fierce magics they had created together, the unbelievable power that was theirs when husband and wife worked as one to bring forth the occult forces of darkness and shadow?

  She had not known such power could exist. And now, to willfully put a stop to it? None lived who were as magically strong as she and Jean de Deveraux—not Jean, his father, nor even her lady mother, the great witch Catherine, whose name was already revered throughout Coventry. Witches made pilgrimages to their castle to meet the grande dame.

  Until she had been bound to Jean Deveraux, Isabeau’s only hope in life was to carry on her lineage with pride. She was not sure how to tell her mother that she, Isabeau, had already surpassed her. She was but sixteen, and her mother, almost thirty, and as the wife of Jean, she was the strongest witch in known Coventry.

  As she bowed her head in obeisance to her mother, she thought, I’ll agree to all her plans, but in the end, I’ll use our magic to save Jean. We’ll run away together, and found a new coven, far away from these two warring families. We’ll make a new House.

  Buoyed by that thought, she slid the knife into her leather pouch, kissed her mother’s outstretched hand, and murmured, “Bonsoir, ma mère.”

  Her mother leaned forward and kissed Isabeau’s forehead. She caressed the bloody dot on Isabeau’s forehead, then kissed it as well.

  “You’re a wonderful daughter. I couldn’t have hoped for better,” she declared.

  Her eyes shone with pride. Isabeau kept her own fear and shame out of her gaze, smiling back with ease. She was a Cahors, and a Cahors could swear passionate fealty with one hand while carving out one’s vitals with another.

  “We will set the massacre for Mead Moon,” Catherine announced. “I will prepare those who need to know.”

  “They should be few,” Isabeau cautioned. She touched her leather pouch for emphasis. “Else, it will be all over Toulouse.”

  “Agreed. Let us swear a blood oath to its success,” her mother added, rising from her stool.

  She swept toward the altar. Isabeau swallowed hard. It was said that to forswear a blood oath condemned one to walk the earth until it was made right; if she promised to kill her husband and then did not, she could become a restless spirit plagued to walk the earth until he was dead by her hand . . . in this world or the next.

  Then I will so walk, she told herself. Forever, if need be; for I shall never kill him.

  Together, mother and daughter laid their hands over the bloody, still heart of the lambkin. Catherine closed her eyes and uttered a sacred, solemn voice in Latin, Isabeau repeating it at the end of each line.

  “Our pact is sealed,” Catherine said at the end.

  “Thanks be to the Goddess,” Isabeau replied, near tears again.

  They kissed again, cheek to cheek, and then Isabeau left the comfort of flame, sacrifice, moon, and mother to kill the overly curious Berenice.

  “Jean,” Holly murmured, as she came out of her daze or her vision or whatever it was.

  Jer Deveraux was staring at her openmouthed. He blinked and whispered, “Ma Isabeau?”

  And then it was as if the crowds swallowed his brother and him up; they seemed to recede from view as Tommy came back to the table with a big tray filled with steaming cups and three enormous cinnamon rolls.

  “You okay?” Amanda asked Holly, peering at her. “What was that all about?” She touched Holly’s forehead. “Are you sick?”

  “Those are Michael’s sons,” Holly said slowly. “Michael Deveraux.”

  “The wild bunch,” Tommy said derisively. “The hell twins.”

  “Jer is nice,” Amanda said. She looked at Holly again, and there was no missing the hurt in her expression. Jer Deveraux hadn’t said two words to her.

  “I . . . I’m not feeling well,” she said to Amanda. “I’m sorry, but do you mind if we go home?”

  Then she saw Nicole sail out the front door with Jer’s brother, who was taller than he but less handsome. In fact, he looked kind of brutal and mean.

  Amanda huffed and got her cell phone out of her purse. Then she caught herself and said, very kindly, “I’m not mad at you, Holly. It’s just . . . she’s not supposed to see him. And she was supposed to hook up with us. And, as usual, she does what she wants and nothing will happen to her.”

  But her eyes were brimming with tears as she completed the call.

  Tommy frowned at Holly and said, “Did Jer put a hex on you or something? The Deveraux are warlocks, you know.” He wagged his brows. “They’re into sacrificing virgins. So, Nicole’s safe.”

  “Don’t be dumb, Tommy,” Amanda snapped, wiping her face. Then her voice rose shrilly as she said into the phone, “Daddy? Ride? Holly’s sick.”

  She closed the phone and said, “Drink some tea, Holly. You’ll feel better.”

  Holly did as Amanda told her. She was dizzy and hot and sick to her stomach.

  Maybe he did put a hex on me, she thought. Because that was very, very, very weird.

  She scanned the room for Jer Deveraux, but he was nowhere to be found.

  SIX

  WOLF MOON

  Feed us now as hunger grows

  Let us feast upon our foes

  We shall dine upon their eyes

  Hearts and brains, ribs and thighs

  Our Lady listen to our cry

  We throw our heads back to the sky

  Bind our family heart and soul

  Comfort us and make us whole

  As usual, the Deveraux brothers were fighting. Eli had driven their Mustang convertible to The Half Caff, then disappeared with Nicole Cathers. Jer had had to find another way home.

  Wish it had been with Nicole’s cousin from San Francisco. Wow. What was that all about?

  Coming down from his room, where he’d lain thinking about Holly Cathers, he’d discovered his brother alone in the living room. The fight had begun, and Jer was just warming up.

  “You wipe,” he snapped at Eli. “Why do you even bother with Nicole anyway? She’s shallow.”

  “Shallow?” Eli cracked up. “Who are you, Emily Dickinson? She’s hot.” Eli was putting the finishing touches on a black-handled athame. He stopped, admiring his work, and laid the razor-sharp knife on the coffee table. He cracked his knuckles. “She wants to move in together after they graduate.”

  “You must have put a spell on her. That’s the only way she’d want you,” Jer said derisively.

  Unruffled, Eli tested the blade on a piece of thick bark coated with mugwort, the witch’s favorite herb.

  “Hey, man, it’s the Art or my six-pack abs. Some guys lift weights and some guys strangle pigeons. And some do both.” He chuckled. “And I say, whatever keeps that hottie hoppin’ is fine with me.”

  Lighting a candle, he held the blade over the flame, allowing the metal to be scorched. Then he flipped open a smaller version of their family Book of Shadows, looked down to recite the Spell of Dedication, then glanced back up at Jer.

  “Anyway, thanks for entertaining the leftovers. Amanda’s got the hots for you, you know. And you must’ve done something to that cousin. Haley or Kylie or whatever. Went catatonic on you, dude.”

  “Whatever.” He didn’t want to discuss Holly Cathers with his smarmy brother.

  “Of course, she didn’t get to hang with me yet.”

  Jer examined his brother’s blade. No matter what else Eli was, he was a careful craftsman who did awesome work. “Then there is a God.”

  “However, he do
esn’t happen to be the same God we worship.” Eli snatched the knife back from his brother and swung it in a dramatic arc. The blade glowed with the magical green associated with their coven Tradition, which had reached its full bloom in medieval France. Looking pleased, he touched the tip with his finger and nodded approvingly as a dot of blood appeared. He sucked on it as he chuckled at Jer, apparently finding him very amusing.

  Jer didn’t react. His brother was a jerk, always had been, no doubt always would be.

  “You want to help dedicate this?” Eli asked. “I’m just gonna do a quickie on it now. I’ll do the whole deal later, with Dad and you in Ritual.”

  Jer shook his head with disgust. “You don’t dedicate a new athame in your living room with the magical equivalent of Cliff ’s Notes. It totally lacks class.”

  “I say again, baby bro, whatever works.” He held the knife in both hands and began mumbling rapid-fire medieval Latin at it.

  Shaking his head, Jer walked away from the blasphemer and headed for the weight room. He flexed his arms and shoulders, warming them up in preparation for serious lifting. All the Deveraux men worked out; they stayed in good shape, ate well, and slept heavily. Michael had instilled lifelong habits in his sons; practicing the Art could drain a man’s vitality, unless he was careful. Part of being a good warlock was tending to the vessel the God had given you.

  He started to lie down on the bench, when he heard his father chanting in the dark, hidden chamber in the rotten heart of their house. By the rhythm of the litany, he knew that his father was summoning a spirit. That was a common enough occurrence in the Deveraux household.

  Some guys watch football, we raise up the dead.

  He scooted beneath the weight rack and gripped the bar.

  His father’s voice grew louder. The pitch grew higher, the rhythm staccato and punctuated with shouts. Intrigued, Jer half-listened.

  Dad’s arguing with someone.

  Whoever it was answered back, also extremely pissed off. Jer cocked his head. He had never heard his father argue with a spirit before. That wasn’t the way it worked. Mortals summoned spirits and the spirits did as they were bidden, more often than not without ever saying a word.

  There was a lilt to the language he could almost place.

  It’s French, he realized. Maybe it’s a human man. Some guy who found out my father’s been seeing his wife—that narrows it down to half of Seattle—and followed him down there. . . .

  The voices rose; the argument was growing heated. Jer closed his eyes and uttered a spell to increase the power of his hearing just as Eli swung into the weight room with his knife at his side. There was a fresh bandage over his wrist.

  At least my brother had the respect to spill his blood to the God on his new blade, he thought.

  “Hey, dork, what’s going on?” Eli asked. “Who’s Dad with?”

  “I thought he was yelling at you,” Jer replied evenly.

  Eli snorted. “Yeah, right. Dad never yells at me.”

  “Then I don’t know. Maybe he’s giving some witch a bid on a new Bed of Aphrodite.”

  There was a witch in Nairobi who had hired their father to design a new villa for her, including a chamber designed to engender lust in her male companion. But something had gone wrong; the handsome, deep black sorcerer she had lived with for years had informed her that he had fallen in love with another . . . a man . . . and he never slept in her brand-new Bed of Aphrodite.

  Shrugging, Jer picked up the barbell and raised it, straightening his elbows. He started pumping iron.

  “Hell with you,” Eli said reasonably, and left the weight room.

  Jer’s older brother went into the kitchen. That seemed like an odd place to go if Eli wanted to find out what their father was doing; it was located farther away from the Chamber of Spells than even the weight room.

  Curious, Jer listened for a moment, but could hear nothing but normal kitchen noises—the clink of a plate, the hum of the microwave. The yelling downstairs had stopped. Quietly, he put the barbell down and rose from the bench. His chest sweaty beneath his T-shirt, he felt a sudden chill as he moved down the same hallway, also heading for the kitchen. With a deftness born of habit, he avoided all the creaking floorboards. He had long ago decided that his father, who was a perfectionist as well as an architect with connections in the building trade all over town, had intentionally left those boards loose so that he would be alerted to the comings and goings of his sons by the telltale sounds.

  When he reached the threshold to the kitchen, he stopped just outside the line of sight, then peered around the doorway in search of Eli. The pantry door was open, and Eli stood just inside it. His back was to Jer. He was muttering an incantation in Latin, a standard spell for invoking the power of seeing something at a distance.

  He’s got some kind of magic mirror and he’s spying on Dad with it, Jer realized. Clever guy.

  There was a scraping sound in the pantry—brick on brick—and then Eli started to come back out of the pantry. Jer dodged away from the threshold and continued down the hall toward the downstairs guest bathroom. He pushed against the door hinges to keep them from squealing, then went inside and pulled the door closed.

  Eli moved on, tramping over the loose floor-boards.

  His brother checked the weight room for him, then began humming to himself and headed right. The door to the dark chamber was there; both the boys had been taught since infancy that they could never, ever go down there without express permission. They had had one chance each as tiny boys to learn that without an advance invitation, they would be in very, very big trouble. Eli hadn’t listened, just plowed ahead and tried it more than once. Only their mother’s intervention had saved him from a punishment so dire that it had proved the last straw for her: She’d left less than a week later.

  “I refuse to live like this, nor to allow my children to live like this,” she had said. Even though he’d been no older than three, Jer still remembered how she’d stood there with her arms around her sons.

  But somewhere along her path to freedom from Jer’s father, those arms had loosened. She had left in the night without warning, leaving both her boys behind. Jer remembered his father’s rage, and all the lightning and thunder, and the rain. There had been so much rain. Buckets and torrents and floods; he remembered sitting in the dark black chamber with his father, whose voice was low, Michael murmuring, “Their God hated them so that He tried to wipe them out with a flood. Remember, my boys, that that is not our god. Our God looks after us always.” And then he had added, so softly that Jer wasn’t sure at first that he had heard it, “Unlike your mother.”

  Eli had hated her from then on. The next time Jer had mentioned her, Eli had beaten him to a bloody pulp; if their father hadn’t stopped his older son, he might have killed his younger brother.

  Jer liked to think that Eli’s evilness had started then, out of the rage he felt at being abandoned. That would explain his cruelty.

  And my own.

  There were times when being a Deveraux was more than Jer could feel, or explain. There was something in the Deveraux blood, bone-deep and simmering, that if Jer didn’t keep watch over it, bubbled up and boiled over. The need to hurt appalled him. The need to dominate made him break into a sweat and keep himself apart. He had only his close friends Eddie and Kialish, who, with their interest in shamanism, at least had some protection from him. Kari courted the danger in him; maybe that was why he was pulling away from her so hard these days.

  In a crowd, Jer was a loner. And he was aware enough to know that that in itself made him attractive to girls. They liked a mystery. They liked to break the shell of a guy who had something to protect them from.

  Amanda Cathers was a girl like that. Nicole might like to play the bad girl, dress sexy, and hang with his scary brother, but Amanda wanted to save Jer from himself. He didn’t know which was sadder: that she imagined that she could, or that he knew that she couldn’t.

  We Deveraux are curse
d. And how to explain that to some sweet, shy girl like Amanda, who would rather read about mystical priestesses and unicorns than see the truth?

  Jer moved silently down the hall, bringing his mind back to the task at hand. He, his brother, and his father had all placed wards around the star chamber, magical spells that caused the minds of potential trespassers to wander, so that they forgot to investigate further the halls and stairs that led to places best left unexplored. Now those wards were acting against Jer himself as he drew closer to the shadowed realms of Deveraux conjuring and deathdealing.

  He was sure that Eli and Michael had killed human beings in their quest for Dark Magics. He couldn’t prove it, but he often asked himself why, if he believed such a thing, he stayed with them in the house in Lower Queen Anne.

  Am I a coward, or am I waiting for a chance to strike, and stop them once and for all?

  It was a question he had often asked himself. So far, he had no answer.

  Until I can answer it, I have to stay here. And after . . . who knows?

  Maybe I’ll go somewhere completely unexpected.

  Maybe I’ll even find my mother.

  Jer walked to the door that led to the chamber, or rather to the staircase that led down to it. The door blended in perfectly with the hall, the only indication of its presence a subtle swirl in the wallpaper. He pressed it and the door fwoomed open like an airlock in a science fiction movie. He crept down two stairs in the pitch-black corridor, and listened.

  He could hear murmuring, but only that. Two voices, one raised in anger. Dad. One answering. Eli.

  Frustrated, he kept listening. If he moved one step more, the wards that protected the chamber would alert his family to his presence. Then he remembered his brother’s incantation in the pantry.

  He climbed the two steps backward, then pulled the door shut and walked back along the hallway.

  I wonder if any other family spends their nights together like this, he thought bitterly. Spying on one another, invoking demons, lifting weights. . . .

  He glided into the kitchen and from there, the pantry. Feeling along the walls, he whispered a Spell of Seeing, searching for the hidden artifact his brother had employed. There was no result. He’s used a ward to protect it, Jer realized. He recalled a litany from one of the Books of Shadows his father had used to instruct them in the Art: “Things that are Hidden are Things worth Discovering.”