Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
F ueled by adrenaline, Cass dashed toward the back exit of the Bell Center under the stark fluorescent lighting of the hallway. He glanced at his brother beside him without truly seeing him. “Give me your keys. I need your ride.”
He had to find her.
“But—” Griff started as they emerged into the back parking lot.
“It’s faster. Take the chauffeured car. I’ll be at Madame Ioshta’s shop. She’ll find her.”
With both Mom and his sister-in-law not currently in Montreal, the magic shop owner was his best bet. Griff knew magic, but not to the level of the elder Mohawk eclectic mystic.
“I’ll get Emme first.” His brother nodded, his mouth a thin line. “And the others. We’ll meet you there.”
Cass barely registered. His brain had razored in on action and he slammed on his helmet as he mounted Griff’s bike.
Within seconds, throttle fully open, he was racing down Notre-Dame Street, past the Basilica and down toward the Sortilège shop in the old part of town.
He arrived in record time and parked Griff’s bike in front of the basement-level store. He had no time to admire the shop’s Halloween décor in the front window, taking the stone steps down two by two in his haste. Cass pushed the glass door with a clang of small bells and was welcomed with the tinny sound of fiddle music echoing from an old-fashioned radio on the counter.
“ Monsieur Cassiodore St-Amand.” Madame Ioshta, hand to her chest, turned from stacking books on a high bookshelf in a shimmer of black skirts. Her raven familiar was perched on her shoulder. “ Chez moi . Quite an honor.”
“Madame Ioshta.” He plastered a charming smile on, forcing himself to stride toward the counter with a relaxed walk while raring to just rush her for help. But he knew the elder liked to take time with niceties. “You look lovely, as usual.”
“Lakota, please.” She patted her long, braided black hair with visible pleasure at his visit. “And you look your usual rock star gorgeous. But I sense trouble.”
“You are correct.” He splayed both arms on the thick, redwood counter, and let out an involuntary sigh.
“And you need my help? What about your maman ,” Madame Ioshta inquired. “Can the Ice Witch not help?”
“I don’t know. She’s gone dark.” He sounded more exhausted than he wanted. He had no solution to find her quickly, and he knew time was of the essence. They would not keep Tilly alive for long. “Something about a rogue coven of witches in New Orleans, apparently. You’re my only hope.”
“Ah.” She slowly took a turn around her cash counter to sit on her stool and studied his features with attention.
“My…” He was about to say his girlfriend but wasn’t sure what to call Tilly. His fiancée? But she was not. He finally settled for, “…the mother of my child. She’s missing. And she’s a banshee.”
“A dame blanche , really?” she said with a raised brow, using the French expression for banshee. “And pregnant. I do read the media.”
“Yes,” he said. “She’s been kidnapped. I’m sure of it. There’s been a failed attempt already.”
“I see.” She nodded before folding her hands over the counter, taking her sweet time as the song on the radio switched to the annoying jingle of a commercial. “The sacrifice of a pregnant banshee can unleash tremendous power.”
“I know.” He tightened and untightened his fist, waiting for her to catch up. “Who could do this?”
“A hell demon does cast a shadow over these parts,” she said. “ He might want that power to walk this realm.”
“A demon?” Could this be Ambrus that she was detecting?
She took a slim but ancient book from under the counter and flipped through the pages, a scent of sage and musty flowers rising from the brittle cream-colored paper.
“Moloch. One of the Princes of Hell.” She stopped at a spot in the book and turned it around to show him an illustration of a demon-like creature sitting on a huge throne of stones overlooking a large forge brimming with a roasting fire. “My granddaughter reported to me that a group of his worshippers dwell at the college here. I have had her keep an eye on them for the last little while. I had a bad premonition.”
“College kids?”
“Apparently.” She shook her head. “Don’t underestimate a group of young people who think they’d been slighted. This club calls themselves The Second Sons. They want their family’s full inheritance, money, glory. The love of their fathers.”
“What would they want with Tilly?” Cass couldn’t believe a group of college kids could be behind this.
“What you should ask me,” she narrowed a shrewd eye at him, “is what the demon Moloch might want from a Davenport banshee.”
“Our baby.” His throat closed in. Followers of this Moloch wanted his baby. And her. They had tried to kidnap her once. And now they had her.
His hands trembled, and he pushed back from the counter to settle himself.
“You should have come to me earlier, mon chou .”
“She was safe with me.” He stared at her blankly. How could he have been so stupid? All of this, the show, the music, was nothing when her life—their child’s life—was in the balance.
“Was she?” She raised a knowing brow at him, stating the obvious. “Weren’t you too busy with your celebrity status to take care of your family?”
He had been selfish, putting his fans before her safety. And she was now paying the price.
“I’ll do anything to save her.” Disgusted with himself, he’d sell his soul to find her and the child unharmed. Anything. To see her safe.
“You and your banshee do look good together.” Madame Ioshta pointed at a gossip magazine on the counter. The front showcasing a picture of him and Tilly at the Vlahos gala. “Interesting how you managed to conceive life together. An immortal and a banshee. Even I didn’t see that coming.”
“I love her.” There he said it. The thought of anyone harming a single strand of her hair was ripping his heart out of his ribcage. “With all my soul.”
“I see,” the elder stated with a knowing nod. “She’s the one for you then. Your soulmate.”
“Yeah,” he croaked. She had been. Since they met in Hyannis. “I gave her my cross,” he suddenly recalled. “The one that my mother gifted me.”
“Your mother’s cross,” she said. “That’s good. It’s an ancient Celtic artifact with some power. Yes, it could help me find her.”
“I also have her phone with me. Griff tried a locator spell with it, but he couldn’t get far.”
“Your brother is not bad but is no eclectic witch whose ancestors have been on this land far before his birth.” She smiled. “And I don’t need her phone when I have you. It’s much better.”
“Huh?”
“The pendant is with her. That thing is older than you and me.”
“How old are you, anyway?” he asked as she took a path around the counter.
“Oh my, Cass. Didn’t your mother raise you not to ask a lady her age?” She grinned as she motioned him toward the back of the store.
“Sorry. I meant no offense.” He followed her past tall shelves filled with crystal balls, candles, and skulls of various sizes.
“None taken.” She glanced back at him. “I am as mortal as anyone here in the city. You, your mother the Ice Witch, and your brothers are legends to us. The Mont-Royal Immortals, living among us. One of the first stories told at our mama’s knees.”
“I met your mother through my grandmother,” she continued. “And Valerian when I left Kahnawake to set shop here in town decades ago.”
“You were always a witch?”
“My grandma taught me our ways, your mother, hers, and countless others taught me theirs. I am not faithful to one tradition but use them all.”
“You have to find Tilly.” He willed his brain to focus on action and not panic at the thought of her being in the monster’s clutches.
“Here,” she said in a soothing tone while leading the way through the glazed back door. “Let’s use the pond in the garden.”
The sound of gurgling water met him as he found himself in her peaceful garden illuminated by patio lights hiding in the branches of desiccating birch trees that creaked in the autumn wind. The koi pond, edged by tall carved stones and statues of female deities, took up a large part of the garden hidden from view by a thick cedar tree hedge. Underwater lights gave the water a peculiar glow in the night.
A sliver of hope settled over him. The eclectic witch would find Tilly. She had to.
He followed Madame Ioshta to the very edge of the water.
“I should have brought Tilly to meet you.” He mused out loud. Tilly seemed so alone in the supernatural world, knowing only her three banshee elders, and having only just recently met some of his family.
“You will,” the witch said with certitude.
“You’ll find her?”
“Yes. But we have to hurry. Samhain is upon us. I fear the sacrifice will be planned for tonight.”
Icy tendrils of panic wrapped him in a near state of paralysis. Shit.
How had he forgotten the very basics of magic? Samhain was when the veil was thinnest between the worlds. He knew this. But all that had been on his mind recently had been the more mainstream Halloween celebration, with parties, candy, and costumes. He’d been engrossed in his concert and nothing else.
Of course the power would be amplified with a sacrifice on this very night.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Give me your hand.”
She grasped it as soon as he extended it to her. She snapped her fingers and the next thing he knew, they were standing on a flat rock formation in the middle of the pond.
Her voice rose in the dark as she called out the spell. “ Aradia, Aradia. J’implore ta presence.”
Smoke slowly emerged from the water around them, the swirls within the fog dancing in the radiance of the pond’s lights. Tingles of magic coursed through his veins.
“Aradia, révèle l’emplacement de l’amulette de Callan,” she continued, asking her deity for the location of Cass’s pendant and its wearer. “ Dis-moi où se trouve l’ame perdu qui la porte.”
Her eyes rolled back into her skull, and she grasped his fingers tighter. Cass prayed that this was it. That Tilly had been found.
“It’s a church. And old one.” She shook herself from her brief trance. “I feel a part of your aura there. I sense her fear, her discomfort.”
“She’s been hurt?” Angst caught him like a vice seizing his throat.
“No. Not yet. I can only feel what she feels. She doesn’t know exactly where she is. I see depilated statues, a chipped hardwood altar. It’s a condemned church.”
He suddenly remembered her dream. “She had visions of this.”
“She foretold her own demise?” A deep frown appeared on the witch’s forehead.
“There was a choice in her vision,” he explained. “A chance for a happily ever after. Us. With our baby.”
“I can’t see beyond what she sees. They created some sort of barrier, maybe salt circles?” she wondered. “It’s preventing me from seeing her location outside of her.”
“Dammit!” He had never felt so helpless in all his immortal life.
She dropped his hand, her face taking a determined expression. “I need more power.”
“My family is meeting me here,” he suggested. “I heard you took from Emme to make Maisie immortal.”
“No. I actually need more from you .”
“How?
“She’s carrying your child,” she declared, lifting her skirt, and unsheathing a white-handled knife. “I need your blood.”
“Do what you have to.” If bleeding him raw was the solution, so be it.
She sat cross-legged in front of the pentagram that had been carved into the rock under their feet and motioned for him to do the same. “Your arm.”
He crouched in front of her, presenting her with his forearm, and she drew the blade across his flesh. Beads of red blood emerged from the cut and soon he was bleeding over the stone-carved pentagram.
“This stone here, has been in this location since the Ordovician geological period, hundreds of millions of years ago.” She etched the blood into the rock carvings. “It’s connected to those where your mother comes from. All the way to the original black oak tree of life in the beyond. Your DNA coursing through your girl via her child will tell you exactly where she is. I’m calling a guide from the old ways who will aid you.”
“You’re calling Morag,” he asked, referring to the First Witch, Mom’s coven sister from millennials ago before the First Coven’s reincarnations. His brother Val had seen her when he’d restored his fiancée Maisie back to sanity. “She’ll find Tilly.”
“No.” She looked at him and he gulped at her dark expression. “I’m summoning Death.”