ENTANGLED (53 page)

“There was an altar. Candles.” As he spoke, he unzipped her body bag. He put his hand on her cold body. Amy’s ghost flickered in front of him and she stared at him, shocked.

I can feel you. How did you do that?

I don’t know.

He had a psychic connection with her now, he didn’t need to speak out loud. What he really needed was to see what happened to her, to filter her memories and fear through his experience and knowledge of the Baphomet ritual. He dismissed the fact that he, personally, had never witnessed a blood ritual like this, that until yesterday he didn’t even know it was possible.

Let me see
, he said to her.

She trusted him, he felt it, and she let him into her memories. They revealed what happened when she died, but backwards.

Cold. Stars through leafy trees. Not a park, but a private backyard. Lights on one side, far away; a house closer. Candles. She was elevated, she didn’t feel anything. A pinch. She slept. She was dying.

The house itself. She was in the house for hours of preparation. She wasn’t scared. She was lethargic. A scented bath. Candles. Oils. Chanting. Someone lathered her with lotion. Lavender and something she couldn’t identify. Big house
.

She’d been drugged, or under a spell. The coroner hadn’t found known drugs, but he wouldn’t have been looking for most of the herbs used in black magic rituals. The oils or lotion could have been made with any number of herbs that would relax her to the point of near unconsciousness. The bath, the candles, everything together was part of the purification ritual.

He was so pretty
.

Rafe pulled his hand from the body, the connection lost. He’d seen Rex from Defiance in a car, picking Amy up after school. He’d called her over and asked for directions, then said:

“There is a blood moon tonight.”

Then she’d gotten into the car and kissed him. Driven her to a house on Alonzo Drive. He’d seen the road sign with her eyes.

She had never met him before. He’d been a complete stranger.

Amy saw the truth as Rafe saw it.

It wasn’t my fault
.

“No, Amy, you were murdered. It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know what you were doing.” She’d been hypnotized at the camp—all the dark energy Moira had sensed. Her vision at the willow tree.

Amy’s ghost shimmered in front of him, expanding in a bright light. Peace filled her face, the guilt that had she had been responsible in some way for her death gone, and her spirit was free to leave. For a moment Rafe wanted to touch her body and feel the same peace. To receive the knowledge and truth that Amy had at that moment.

But that knowledge would condemn him. He’d get but a taste of the truth, then it would be ripped away. Some rules could be bent, and some rules could be broken.

This rule was rigid.

Thank you, Raphael Cooper
.

Then her mouth was moving but he couldn’t hear anything.

“What?”

She was worried. She was trying to warn him about something, but all he heard was one word.

Judas
.

“What just happened?” Fern asked.

“She’s gone.”

“Just like that?” Fern seemed disappointed.

“It was beautiful.”

Fern hadn’t seen what he had, and Rafe should have felt lucky that he’d witnessed Amy’s ghost leaving the astral plane in a state of peace.

She knew his full name. She had been trying to warn him about something, but what? Tessa Standler? Rex? What was happening to Tori Schaeffer?

Or was it about him?

Fern zipped up the body bag. “We should go.”

He followed her out of the crypt, concerned that something was very wrong with him. He’d had this fear ever since he woke up from his coma two months ago and walked when he shouldn’t have been able to walk. The fear only increased when he knew things he’d never remembered learning, like knowing what Tessa was planning with the Baphomet ritual.

Was he the Judas? Was he going to betray the people he was supposed to love and protect?

Grant was on his cell phone in the small office used by the intake clerk. He hung up a moment after Fern and Rafe walked in. “Good news, bad news. Good news first—we have an ID on the woman from Defiance off her fingerprints. Smart move of your girlfriend giving me her cameo last night. It kept a clean print. Gwen Simmons, wanted for the murder of her boyfriend. And the bad news? She’s supposed to be dead. Eighteen months ago, her car went off a cliff in Oregon and her body was never recovered. She left a suicide note confessing to killing her boyfriend, and her blood was found on the steering wheel.”

Fern gave a low whistle. “She faked her own death?”

“One year before Amy Carney died,” Grant said. “Did you learn anything?”

“She was killed in the backyard of a large house in the hills. I would know it if I saw it—it’s on Alonzo Avenue. Do you know where that is?”

“That’s in Encino,” Grant said, pulling out his cell phone to map it. “Damn, it’s near where her body was found.”

Rafe suspected Gwen Simmons had made a deal with the demon Baphomet. Her death was faked on the Equinox, and one year later Amy Carney died, her blood taken. Moira would know more about how the deal would have worked.

“Where’s Moira?”

“She went outside, said something about a blood moon.” Grant shook his head. “The moon isn’t even out yet, I don’t know—”

Rafe ran outside and searched everywhere. Moira had disappeared.

Moira’s head ached, not from the mind control but from being hit over the head when she emerged from the morgue.

You were such an idiot!

She had a call, but it was a wrong number. Then she had an urgent need to go outside and look at the blood moon. So urgent that she believed, for a moment, that if she saw the moon, all her questions would be answered.

But even as she stepped out, she knew something was wrong. She was on alert, waiting for something, and she turned just as Rex from Defiance stepped away from the building and hit her with a gun. He had a friend, the bouncer from the night before, who handcuffed her and they lifted her up and carried her to a waiting car. Her scream was cut short by a hard slap across her face, then she was in the back seat of a car and it started moving before Rex even closed the door.

She realized what Rex had done the night before. While she had a face-off with the fake Tessa, Rex had hypnotized her. It was subtle, and because she’d been so focused on the powerful woman, she hadn’t thought the weaker Rex could have gotten through to her.

She’d underestimated him because she hadn’t thought he was a threat. Her ego had defeated her.

You have to get out of this mess
.

“Search her,” the woman behind the wheel said. It wasn’t blondie, it was a dark-haired witch.

They took both her knives, her gun, her holy water—which Rex tossed out the window—and the blessed oil, which he pocketed. He tossed her phone out the window. It shattered on the pavement.

Plan B
.

She had no Plan B. She’d have to wing it.

“April, did you tell Gwen that we have her?”

April laughed and glanced at Moira in the rearview mirror. “She is extremely pleased.”

Rex put his arm around Moira’s shoulders, leaned over so his face was practically next to hers and whispered, “I haven’t seen a bounty so high before. You’re worth a lot dead, but a fortune alive.”

Moira butted her head hard against his. She winced, satisfied only in that Rex yelped in pain.

He grabbed her face with his hand and squeezed so hard she heard her jaw pop. “Do not forget you are worth
something
dead.”

She jerked her head out of his grip and stared out the window.

Once, she’d been a powerful witch. Trained in magic by her mother, Moira thought everything they did was contained in their own world. As a child, she didn’t know that most of what Fiona did was evil. That she’d been conceived in a black magic ritual, a daughter bred specifically to liaison between her mother’s growing coven and the underworld. She was to be sacrificed on her eighteenth birthday to become Fiona’s counterpart in Hell, walking the astral plane to facilitate her mother’s ascension as the head of all united covens, to give her mother direction to the tree of life.

That she’d turned her back on it, renounced her birthright, and ran away only angered her mother. The first time she escaped, Moira had been punished her so severely that even now, she was terrified of being underground. The second time, she’d begged to die.

But the third time...Father Philip found her, saved her, trained her.

She closed her eyes. Ten years ago she would have been able to destroy the three people in this car with little effort. That ability had nearly cost her her soul. She still didn’t know if she’d earned it back. All the damage her mother had done, all that she’d had Moira do as a child...before Moira knew that her actions had terrible consequences.

She couldn’t use magic now to save her life. And maybe that was the only thing that would save her soul.

April took the freeway north, then east. Two, three freeways. They drove for nearly an hour because of traffic.

Rafe and Grant had to know she was missing by now. Surely there’d be video surveillance. Someone got the plates of the car. Maybe the police were already following at a discreet distance.

Moira didn’t like cops. She had some legal issues of her own. But she’d rather risk the criminal justice system and deportation to Ireland than face Baphomet’s puppet, Gwen Simmons.

Finally they turned onto a road called Big Tujunga Canyon that wound through a valley in the mountains, then up a long, private driveway. So secluded that she could scream and no one would hear.

They stopped outside a pathetic house falling apart from disrepair. Magic, dark and evil, surrounded this place and threatened Moira specifically. It was like the spell had been created specifically for her. It was Gwen, the blonde from Defiance. Moira would recognize her magical signature anywhere now.

Rex yanked her out of the car. The ground was muddy from the overnight rain and her boots sank a half-inch. He pulled her hard. She lost her balance and fell in the mud.

He laughed. “Not so cocky now, bitch.”

He lifted her up and she shook her body like a dog, getting the worst of the mud and water off her face. The fake Tess Standler—Gwen Simmons—stepped out onto the porch and smiled widely at Moira. “I knew who you were the minute you walked into Defiance. You made it so easy, I thought I was wrong. Fortune has shined on me.”

She said to Rex, “Put her in the cellar until we’re ready. I don’t trust her, nor do I believe she won’t use magic.”

“Let’s do it again.” Rafe started down Alonzo Drive for the third time.

“Stop.” Grant didn’t follow him, but Rafe didn’t stop walking.

“Cooper!”

Rafe halted. Slowly, he turned around. “She’s here.”

Grant pointed to a house across the street. “You swore to me that house was where Amy Carney died. But a seventy-two year old widow lives there and doesn’t recognize any of the photos we showed her. What do you think a judge will say if I go to him requesting a warrant on the grounds that a
ghost
told me where she died?” Grant put his hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “We’ve knocked on every door and talked to every person we met and no one fits the description of either Gwen or Rex or anyone you recognized from Defiance. We need to think of something else.”

Rafe wasn’t leaving. He trusted the information from Amy. This was where she died.

The sun had set two hours ago, and still they were no closer to finding Moira or Tori Schaffer.

Grant’s phone buzzed. He said to Rafe, “Jeff downloaded the security footage from the morgue. Look.” He turned his phone to Rafe.

The wide-angle camera was fixed to show the rear entrance of the morgue. “This is a secured area,” Rafe said.

“Just watch.”

Moira emerged. She hesitated, then from the left of the screen, Rex Van Allen jumped her with a gun, hitting her over the head. She stumbled, he grabbed her at the same time another guy—the bouncer—came from the shadows. They carried her off-view.

A second later another camera showed her outside the back gates of the morgue being pushed into the backseat of a dark American sedan. It drove off. The plates couldn’t be seen, but through the open side window was a good shot of the driver.

“That’s the woman who poisoned Carter,” Rafe said. He replayed the spliced recording. Moira was confused when she walked out of the morgue, but he recognized the look on her face. She knew something was wrong, she’d hesitated, as if she were going to go back inside. When Rex hit her, Rafe flinched. If Rex and Gwen found out who Moira was, her life was in even greater danger.