Will didn’t look convinced, but he was staring at Reyes with less concern than a moment ago. “We’ll get the dog,” he said after a moment. “But if the dog says the car is clean, then it is.”
“Deal,” Reyes agreed.
They had their canine unit—a German shepherd named Glover—by that afternoon. Used to sniffing out cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine, Glover had a glowing track record for everything from narcotics to cadavers to missing children. His handler, Deborah, insisted he could find a rat turd in a barrel full of coffee grinds if she asked him to. She held the berries they’d taken from the Davenport residence in front of him in one hand, while her other was fisted around some treats. Every time he sniffed the berries, she rewarded him. In no time, they’d moved on to placing the berries inside a box that she set on the ground. After a few rounds where Glover correctly indicated the box and got his reward, she felt confident moving on to the car. She let Glover sniff the berries a final time, then passed them to Will, leading the dog to the Jaguar.
“You guys stand back,” she told them. “Let him work.”
Will leaned over and whispered in Reyes’s ear. “This better work.”
Reyes swallowed. In truth, he didn’t know if he was chasing a shadow or if he was really onto something. He’d felt so confident before, but the car search had him rattled. For once, he prayed the way he’d often heard his sister do, begging God for a break.Please, God,and he added at the end,don’t let this asshole win.
Just then, shrill barking rang out. Glover had reached the side of the car behind the front passenger-side tire and his tail wagged frantically as he indicated the spot again and again.
“Gotcha,” Reyes whispered.
Beside him, Will’s arms fell to his side. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Deborah gave the dog a treat and called them over. “It’s here,” she told them. “No question.”
Reyes raised the hood and studied the area near where the dog had gotten so excited. The cap for the windshield wiper fluid reservoir caught his eye. Lifting the container, he leaned over to look inside. “Bingo,” he told his partner and the handler. “We got the bastard.”
They used some long-handled tongs they rustled up from a nearby grill store to wiggle it free. When they finally got the whole thing out, Reyes couldn’t believe his eyes. The ziplock bag had been tightly rolled around whatever was inside, all the air squeezed out so it would fit. Emil laid the bag on the ground.
“Open it!” Will insisted.
Reyes glanced up at him, then carefully split the seam, opening the bag and pulling the item out. It was dark, black, probably cotton fabric with a single zipper. He shook it free and held it up for him and Will to see, feeling his stomach drop as he registered what they were looking at.
“The black hoodie,” Will said with awe.
“Is that what you boys were after?” Deborah asked them.
“Oh, yeah,” Reyes told her. “This is exactly what we were after.”
He checked the right pocket. Inside was a paper towel wadded around several dried berries.
21Flos Mortis
The light is thin in this part of the forest, dreamlike. It haloes the uppermost branches as if we are on sacred land. The black-throated wail of a loon rides the scattering fog from nearby Crow Lake, and I can picture those red eyes splitting the morning like heralds of hell. Myrtle leans down over a tangle of tree roots, her long hair sliding over a shoulder, ends grazing the dirt. She looks like some ancient earth goddess with that green knit scarf about her shoulders, a grandmother of trees. She points and turns her face to mine, smiling. “Yellow wart.”
I step closer and study the small mushroom, a golden scepter marked with rough patches. It is unassuming, a child’s toy among giants. Hard to imagine it’s just a part of something larger, something vast sleeping underground. A network of dread.
“An amanita. To be avoided at all costs. Except by us of course.” Her grin is infectious. It’s easy to forget we are plotting someone’s murder. “Most amanita are poisonous, though the effects vary. Still, in a pinch, an amanita will do. You can recognize them by this telltale collar—the annulus. When they grow, this tears away from the veil as the cap opens to expose the gills.” She tickles the fleshy skirt of the stalk with a finger. “They also have a volva near the base. This cuplike structure here that they erupt out of.”
She straightens, her mouth screwed up to one side, thinking. “The man in the café succumbed rather fast, even for a destroying angel exposure. I don’t typically get results that quick, and I havea certain affinity forAmanita bisporigera.Tell me again what happened in the car with that man.”
I sigh. I’m tired of recounting the details, of flashing back to the look of horror splashed across his face. But Myrtle attends with tedious scrutiny, as if she is a conductor listening to the homogeneous tones of the orchestra tuning their instruments, searching for that one off-key. “I told you. He forced himself on me, pushing his mouth over mine as I was struggling. A moment later he started wheezing. It all happened so fast. He turned purple and kind of seized up. He got out of the car and vomited. Then he was dead.”
She regards me thoughtfully. “I believe you might have a gift for concentration that is unique among our kind. Your work in the café was fast, but Don even more so, likely because your fear, your need to defend yourself, further amplified your magic. With my first mark in the deli, I had to sit there for nearly an hour waiting for the affliction to take hold. It’s not always ideal. I have since learned ways to achieve more immediate results, but it takes effort for me. Clearly not for you. Though, there are occasions where prolonging the effect is better. I know how to accomplish that, too. You will need to learn. You can’t be standing idly beside every mark that falls or you will start to look guilty by association.”
I gaze down at the mushroom, a sickly sort of gold now that I really look at it, like jaundice. The man in the café teeters in my mind, yellowing like an onion. “You call what we do magic, but magic is an art; it requires something on the part of the wielder, the right word or gesture, an elaborate ritual, a set of special tools. Knowledge or skill. Even TV witches have cauldrons and brooms and black cats to do their bidding. This doesn’t feel like magic to me. I don’t feel like a witch. I feel like a freak of nature.”
“Oh, Piers, you’re wrong,” Myrtle says, stepping toward me. She wraps her cold fingers around my arms. I feel them through my jacket like bands of ice. “We carry an ancient magic within us. You’ve only just begun to experience your power, but you’ll find there’s as much knowledge and skill involved in this as any otheresoteric craft. Your body is the instrument, yes. The plants your ingredients. You don’t have to speak an incantation, it’s true, or point a wand. But your abilities will grow as your understanding and experience do. Your learning will inform your craft, just like any other. Do you think if you’d swallowed a fistful of radishes before that man kissed you that it would have had the same impact?”
I shake my head briskly, conceding her point.
She places a hand on my stomach. “When you feel that gnaw in the pit of your belly for something noxious and death-dealing, where do you think it comes from? That is your magic speaking to you, waking up your senses, your awareness, informing you of the things that move between sight and sound, the unseen world. That is your power, your teacher, your god. If you don’t trust it, if you don’t partner with it, you will not survive.” She drops her hand, stepping away. Her eyes are clouded, hard to read. “No, we don’t fly on brooms or work through black cats, but we aren’t normal witches. We’rebanewitches—a different breed. Our magic is unparalleled, but it has its limits.”
A snuffling sound catches my ear, and I look over to where Bart, the black Lab, is pawing ferociously at the earth, having caught the scent of something beneath the ground. He presses his nose into the shallow hole and snorts, drawing back. He looks at us, ears cocked.
