Kicking It(49)

They would have to give the money back. Liz drooped. She had, unconsciously, already made plans for that money.

Cia said, “Got something here.”

Liz looked up and found her sister standing in front of a glass case that displayed collectibles, expensive stuff like bronze statues and porcelain figurines. Cia was holding a short black ribbon, and from it dangled a small lacquered figure about an inch high.

Even from where she knelt on the floor Liz could tell it was black magic. Blood magic. Liz looked back at the spatter. Softly, she said, “Damn.”

“What?” Layla asked.

The twins looked at each other, communicating silently.

“What?” Layla demanded, a note of panic in her voice. The goat under her arm bleated in fright and pain; Layla relaxed the grip she had on it and set it on the floor. The baby goat thundered off on unsteady legs, its little hooves a tattoo of noise as it raced out of the room and down the hall. Probably scuffing the expensive wood. Evelyn would have a cow—to go along with her daughter’s goat. If she lived to see it.

“Tell me,” Layla said, calmer.

“You know how we said we don’t do blood magic?” Cia asked.

Layla nodded, drawing the lapels of her leather coat closed over her chest.

“Well, this is blood magic,” Cia said. To Liz she added, “Carved horn. It looks like a set of tiny carved elk horns, layered with blood from past workings.”

Liz set the boot back where she had found it and stepped out of the circle, orienting herself to the north by feel and the position of the sun beyond the windows. The figurine case was on due north and matched the exact spot where Evelyn had started to disrobe. As if the figurine case were the number twelve on a clockface, Liz moved clockwise through the room. At about two o’clock, she found another of the little charms, this one tacked to the back of a dainty upholstered chair. She lifted the charm just as Cia had done and studied the carved figure. “This one’s a tiny knife, carved from old bloodstained ivory.”

“What does it mean?” Layla demanded, her voice cold.

Cia moved to the number five on the clockface and lifted another charm. “This one is an owl, some kind of stone.”

“Bloodstone,” Liz said with a glance, feeling the stone resonate with her own magic. She took the next point, between seven and eight. There she found and lifted a charm that looked like a tooth. She held it in the light at the window and said, “A wolf tooth. A real one.”

Cia nodded and moved to the number ten. This charm, unlike the others, wasn’t hanging from a thin black ribbon. It was nestled in the pile of expensive jewelry Evelyn had been wearing. “Ivory again,” Cia said. “Probably walrus. It’s scrimshaw attached to her bracelet with a silver link.”

It all fit. And it was all bad. “The boot’s in the middle of the pentagram. There’s a splatter of blood under it.”

“Middle of what?” Layla asked. “How did you know where to find those things?” Inherent in her question was the accusation that the Everhart witches had put them there.

“They were on the points of a pentagram, the geometric shape that allows a witch coven to contain their power and safely do workings,” Cia said. “Once you discover the north point of the five-pointed star, you can find the rest based on the angles and the size of the working space.”

“High school geometry,” Liz said softly, remembering that Layla had been in their geometry class. The twins had excelled at geometry. Layla, not so much.

“The charms have nothing in common,” Cia said, “except the fact that they seem to have old blood on them. That lack of similarity of matrix—meaning that some are biological items that an earth witch might use, and some are stone—combined with the old blood, and the fresher blood in the middle, suggest that a blood witch set up a conjure in this room and triggered it.”

“Your mother didn’t run off,” Liz said. “Or at least not of her own free will.”

“Your mother was kidnapped by a practitioner of the black arts,” Cia said grimly.

“With a spell,” Liz said. “And if we’re reading it right, she was taken from the middle of this room.”

“What?” Layla said, pulling her coat tighter, the seams stretching, her face white. “Like, transported out? Like Star Trek?” Her voice rose. “You can do that?”

“We can’t,” Cia said.

“And we’ve never met a practitioner who can.”

“The police won’t believe it,” Cia said.

“No. But Layla will need to tell them. Get them back here, get them working a kidnapping case with witchcraft elements. They’ll call PsyLED and get someone in here to read the room with a psy-meter.”