Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Pasquale’s Ristorante
North Boston’s “Little Italy”
7:30PM
A fter an appetizer of fried calamari, a bottle of chianti, and a shareable bowl of linguini and clams, Stella had no choice but to unbutton her jeans before leaving their booth, then rolling out onto the sidewalk.
It hadn’t been the best choice—stuffing herself—when she was supposed to be staying alert and light on her feet, but some things couldn’t be helped, especially with Mr. Russo telling her to “mangia, mangia .”
Now, she and Ethan stood outside the restaurant with Mr. Russo, and two of his sons, Tony and Gino. Ethan maintained the friendly smile he’d worn all evening while simultaneously keeping a vigilant lookout on their surroundings.
Mr. Russo clamped onto both of Stella’s shoulders and pulled her close, kissing one cheek, then the other. “ Arrivederci, bella , and come back sooner rather than later, no? Don’t let Ethan stay away so long next time.”
“It could take me a few weeks to be hungry again,” Stella said, “but we’ll see you soon.”
Mr. Russo rocked back on his heels and folded his hands over his round belly. “ Bene .”
Ethan, Tony, and Gino did some shoulder chucks and back slaps, then Stella and Ethan were off.
“I need to walk off this dinner,” Stella said on a groan.
“Short walk,” Ethan said. “Then we should buzz over to Antoinette’s apartment. See how she’s doing.”
His thumbs moved over his keyboard, punching out a text.
“Antoinette?” Stella asked. “Did you tell her we might be stopping by?”
“No. But as her new high priest and priestess, don’t you think we should pay her a visit while we’re in town?”
“Absolutely,” Stella agreed. It was exactly what Judith would have done, and she was embarrassed she hadn’t thought of it herself. It was just that, lately, sheer survival had trumped all other responsibilities that came with being co-leaders of the coven. “That is, assuming Antoinette’s up for spontaneous visitors.”
As it was, Antoinette said she had nothing better going on than to have them pop by, which—coming from her—was as good an invitation as any.
So, after Stella and Ethan walked past the North Church, then up to the Copp’s Hill cemetery and the site of their recent grave robbing, they hopped into a cab. Minutes later, the driver dropped them off on White Street in East Boston.
It was nearly eight o’clock in late October, so the street was dark, made even more so by a busted street lamp.
Antoinette’s building was a three-story brick structure that had once been a grand home before being carved up into six apartments. Most of the windows were dark, but all the lights were blazing in one of the dormer windows.
Antoinette buzzed them up, and they climbed the steps to apartment 3C.
When the door opened, Stella realized that Antoinette’s fashion sense wasn’t limited to her wardrobe. Her open-concept apartment was dressed in a purple velour couch, red throw pillows, and a white faux-fur area rug. Its black and white checked floor looked original to the building.
“Drink?” Antoinette asked while striding toward the kitchen. Her long, untied, wildly patterned silk kimono fluttered out behind her, revealing glimpses of black leggings and turquoise kitten heels.
“Sounds good,” Ethan said.
“I’ve only got gin, orange juice, tequila, and well…water.”
“Water for me,” Stella said—she’d had enough wine for the evening—and she wandered toward the fireplace, which had been bricked up, but Antoinette had a dozen candles burning on the hearth.
A framed photograph of Lovey DuPre sat on the mantle, and a familiar lump of unresolved guilt lodged in Stella’s throat.
“I’ll have tequila,” Ethan said.
“I’ll join you in that,” Antoinette said. “OJ or straight up?”
“Whatever you’re doing.”
“Best believe I’m doing it straight.”
A faint waft of fermented apples reached Stella’s nose, and she turned toward the scent only to find the Boston coven’s grimoire on a bookshelf. She should have known.
Just seeing the book gave her that odd, contradictory feeling of running into an old enemy, but one with whom you’d shared a traumatic experience. Did you hug, or look the other way?
Then she wondered if the grimoire should still be considered the Boston coven’s grimoire. With most of them dead, was it now simply Antoinette’s grimoire? Or now that Antoinette had joined the Salem coven, was it their grimoire?
Hmmm . She didn’t know how that worked.
She entered the kitchen area just as Antoinette filled a glass with ice water from a filtered dispenser, then held it out to her.
There was a magnet photo of a chubby baby with a big gummy smile on the fridge, and Stella remembered the night she’d first met Antoinette. They’d convened a circle to help out her cousin’s baby who’d been born with a heart murmur.
“Is the baby okay?” she asked.
Antoinette smiled. “Collette’s doing fiiiine . Cute as a button.”
She poured two tequila shots, downed hers while Ethan did the same, then led them to her purple couch where Stella and Ethan took their seats. The glass coffee table was scattered with paperwork.
“Excuse the mess,” Antoinette said as she dragged a black plastic chair from her bedroom. “Work’s been a nightmare.”
Stella had never considered what Antoinette did for a living, and she felt kind of bad about that. “What do you do?”
“I’m a fashion buyer for Macy’s.” Antoinette set the chair—which turned out to be one of those vintage accent chairs that looked like a cupped, upturned hand—at the end of the coffee table.
“Really?” Stella asked, though she guessed that made sense. Still, it was hard to picture Antoinette doing anything corporate.
“Mmm-hmmm.” Antoinette sat in the palm of the chair. “Now. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been thinking about the Collector.”
Stella exchanged a glance with Ethan and cleared her throat. So much for small talk. They were getting right down to it.
“I think we all have,” Stella said.
Antoinette gave her a single nod of approval. “It’s odd that he took off whenever he was faced with more than one of you at a time.”
“We think so too,” Ethan said, “but we can’t figure out why. He’s stolen so much power at this point. He shouldn’t have felt outnumbered.”
Antoinette leaned back a smidge, and the base of the chair—the wrist —rocked against the floor. She folded her arms in a peevish pose. “ Exactly . Anyone who’s been trying to perfect his magic for twenty years should be at the top of the food chain, so why bolt?”
“Got any ideas?” Stella asked.
“Only that this idiosyncrasy might give us a clue as to who or where he might be.”
“We know who he is,” Stella said. He was her father. She shared his blood. And she wondered, even though no one said it, whether they felt she, indirectly, shared his guilt.
“Girl, we know who he was ,” Antoinette corrected. “These days, that man’s no more your father than I am.”
Another lump rose in Stella’s throat, and it took more of an effort to swallow it down, because Antoinette’s words answered a whole lot of questions. That is, if she really meant them.
And at the same time, as much as Stella hated her father for what he’d become, she still wanted a father— her father—the way things used to be. Or at least, the way she remembered them.
“Just ask yourself…” Antoinette leaned forward and opened a drawer under the coffee table to retrieve a pen and a small notepad.
The notepad had several pages of scribbled notations, arrows, with some things circled and others crossed out.
“Why might someone who’s so powerful want to disappear the moment all of the people he’s been trying to collect are standing right in front of him?”
“I’ve been working on a theory,” Ethan said. “What if it’s not a matter of what he wants to do? What if he has a wide variety of magic at his disposal, but he can only access one type of magic at a time? If that’s true, when he’s encountered by a group that would present a diversified attack, he’s no longer at the top of the food chain, and he has no choice but to disappear. It would also explain why he depends on an army.”
“Could it be even simpler?” Antoinette asked. “Could he just be a coward?”
Stella looked down at her hands. She often wondered what parts of herself had come from her father, besides her wide, gray eyes.
Lately, despite Ethan’s assurances that she was “the bravest, most stubborn, most frustrating woman” he knew, she’d felt more than a little bit of fear and self-doubt.
You didn’t find yourself magically strapped to a gurney with your father about to suck the magic right of you and not come away emotionally scarred.
“Or…” Ethan said, suggesting another one of his theories, “his powers could be mercurial like Stella’s used to be before we paired our magic. Maybe her endurance problems came from him. Maybe his strength fizzles out. He is getting older. He’s gotta be nearly sixty by now.”
Stella snorted, and they both looked at her. She realized she hadn’t contributed much to the conversation so far, but her stomach felt funny. Whether it was the clams, the wine, or thoughts about her father, she couldn’t be sure.
“Stella?” Ethan asked.
“Lovey was a force of nature,” she said, “and she was in her seventies.”
“Nearly eighty,” Antoinette amended.
“And then there’s Goodwife Joan Wright,” Stella added. “She celebrated her four hundredth birthday a while back, and I’d think twice before even considering crossing that witch.”
Antoinette pointed to one of the scribblings she’d made on her notepad. There were several pages of them, as if she’d been brainstorming for days. “Let’s go back. You’re theorizing the Collector is disappearing either against his will, or because he has no other choice. But what if it’s a strategy?”
“You think he’s disappearing to gain an advantage?” Stella asked.
“It’s certainly freaking us out enough,” Antoinette said. “That’s giving him a certain kind of power. How long have you two been looking over your shoulders?”
“A while,” Stella agreed. “We’ve warded every property owned by the coven.”
Antoinette nodded; they’d taken care of her apartment too.
Ethan put his hand on Stella’s knee.
She liked the feel of his warmth. Just knowing he was close softened the edges of her worry.
“And then there’s the question of whether he’s disappearing from the site, or just disappearing from sight,” Antoinette said.
“I’m sorry?” Stella asked, not hearing the difference.
“Site like location and sight like being able to see him,” Antoinette explained. “Is he disappearing and leaving the physical spot? Or is he still there, but you just can’t see him?”
“He leaves the location,” Stella said, grateful to know one thing for certain.
“Aren’t you the confident one?” Antoinette said with an inflection of mock admiration.
Stella narrowed her eyes at Antoinette’s tone and explained. “If he was still there, I’d sense his magic, even if I couldn’t see him. He must be opening portals so quickly he’s gone before anyone realizes.”
“You’re really so sure?” Antoinette asked. “What if he could become a shadow? Something without any mass. Would you still sense his magic?”
Stella felt Ethan’s gaze slide to her, and her heart stuttered at the apprehension on his face. How was she even supposed to respond to Antoinette’s question? She’d never encountered a witch who turned into a shadow.
Ethan’s focus returned to Antoinette. “You think that’s what he’s doing? Turning into a shadow?”
“ Pfft. ” Antoinette rolled her eyes. “I don’t think anything yet. All I’ve got are questions.”
Stella was still stuck on her last question. Would she sense the Collector’s magic if he had no physical mass?
“Okay, well,” Ethan said, addressing Antoinette. “Have you ever heard of a witch who could assume the shape of other things? Is that even a possibility? Because if the Collector collected that kind of magic…”
His voice tapered off, but Stella heard the end of his sentence loud and clear in her head.
If her father had collected that kind of magic, they were all screwed. He could be anywhere, any time, and now any thing .
Kind of like the demon they’d faced. It had fluctuated between having mass and being something akin to a shadow, but either way, she’d always been able to sense its magic. If her father was doing something similar, she’d know it.
“No matter what the Collector turned himself into,” Stella said with one-hundred percent confidence, “I’d still sense his magic.”
Antoinette and Ethan both looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Magic—no matter its source—is independent of physical mass,” she explained. “Its source isn’t connected to any particular shape, height, or weight. If he turned into a shadow—which, by the way, I’m not convinced is the case—it wouldn’t affect the properties of his magic.”
“How do you know that?” Ethan asked. It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed before.
Stella squirmed in her seat. She’d hoped they’d simply take her word for it because, for Antoinette’s sake, she wanted to avoid any unnecessary reminders of the demon that had decimated the Boston coven. “I just know.”
Antoinette frowned. “You just… know? ”
“Right.” Stella readjusted the red throw pillow behind her back.
“And you’re willing to operate on that basis?” Antoinette asked. “Hunches and gut feelings?”
Stella inhaled through her nose and blew it out through her mouth. “It’s not a hunch.”
“Okay, then,” Antoinette said with some obvious reluctance. “You’re the high priestess, and despite the fact that I refuse to think of that man as having any relation to you, I will concede that you know him better than anyone else.”
Ethan moved his hand from Stella’s knee and slid his arm around her shoulders. Their paired magic crackled along every inch of their contact.
Antoinette crossed out shadow theory in her notebook, but only lightly, and rose to her feet. “Another shot of tequila?”
“I’m not driving,” Ethan said with a smile.