Willow blinked at me and a tear rolled down her blank face, leaving a streak. “Shea can’t have done it. He’s not strong enough.”
“He was strong enough to steal your mother’s circle.”
“Why do you think it was him? It could have been—”
“Nobody else. No one else needed it except you and no one else who could use it is still here except Shea. It has to be Costigan’s child—who turned up as soon as I found the circle—Shea. He steals magic; that’s why he’s here. I can tell from the color of the energy he leaves behind. He uses Costigan’s hoodoo and he ‘borrows’ your family’s energy, too. I think he gave the ley weaver the hand-spiders and said they were from Costigan. Then he could get help from that creature, too. I think he’s used his access to people’s houses to set traps and drive other, weaker mages away now that he’s getting closer to his goals. He comes and goes wherever he pleases and no one pays him any mind—they even ask him in! He must be clever enough to get his master’s loa to help him hide the Subaru after he rigged the brakes and set it on fire when it crashed. I saw the memory of it in your mother’s circle.”
“He used my mother’s circle to kill my father?” Willow looked appalled and started shaking her head desperately. “That can’t be. The divine horsemen would never obey Shea. He’s only a hoodoo-man, not a real votary of the loa.”
“He’s not ‘only’ anything. That’s how he’s tricked all of you for so long. But if not the loa, then it must have been Jin who helped him. Which might be why Shea banished him.”
Willow stared at me. “Banished Jin? He couldn’t. . . . He wouldn’t know how. . . .” She put her hand on her chest and closed her eyes, whispering words that circled into the air and died. Her eyes flashed open in shock. “Jin’s gone!”
I nodded. I wished we were having this conversation somewhere warmer, but I suspected she’d never agree to sit in the Rover where the steel and glass would cut her off from the streams of magic that flowed underfoot.
“Willow, how would you banish a demon like Jin? Or May?”
“I’d cast it out by force. I can. Now. But I didn’t banish May. I liked her, and I wasn’t strong enough then to force a demon. I barely managed to bind Jin so he wouldn’t kill anyone after Jonah.”
“Couldn’t you have used a spell on yellow paper?”
“If I could have bought one. I never learned the characters for a major banishment. The best I could do with the Chinese I can write is scatter the stupid guai. It’s much easier to just shove them out.”
I knew it wasn’t easy to shove anything in the Grey, but Willow seemed to have a greater command of the local power than she realized. Shea had been wise to keep her distracted for a while, but he’d been terminally foolish to let her stay alive so long. I imagined he had plans to change that soon. “You must have learned more since then. . . .”
She cocked her head and pulled a sarcastic face. “It’s not like English letters, where it doesn’t matter which stroke comes first. Especially for magic, the characters have to be made right. Who would teach me? Jewel? One of the old women—oh, but I forgot: There are no old Chinese grandmothers left here. I know—I could have gone to Olympia! Except I can’t leave here for very long; the magic owns me.”
“Maybe, but you also command it. It’s yours—or it should have been. Your mother’s family have been taking care of the magic here for generations. I’m guessing you should have been next. Shea knows it, and he’s been perfectly happy to keep you from learning what you needed to, to keep you on the run and unable to repair the damage to the leylines that were your mother’s legacy while he played games and set everyone against one another. He got the other sorcerers around here to fight and waste their time while he became stronger, keeping Ridenour occupied with May and then with hating you. Now he’s got to make a move, and banishing Jin must have been his first step to weaken you.”
“I knew the demon worked for others, but I didn’t know who. I didn’t have the skill to bind it exclusively to me, but so long as it didn’t kill anyone else, that seemed good enough. But Shea . . .” She shook her head. “I told you he couldn’t possibly banish Jin.”
“I’m pretty sure he did. First he bribed Jin to do work, and then he got rid of the demon now that push has come to shove.”
She scoffed. “How? He has no power over the gate to Diyu.”
“He only needed a banishment that he stole from me last night. Anyone can use one, right?”
“Yes,” she replied, slowly, as if waiting for the “gotcha.”
“I thought the purpose was to kill us, but now I think he just wanted this.” I pulled one of the scraps from my pocket and held it out to her. She took it and gave it a wary look for a moment, as if she could read what had been written on the vanished silk. Then she handed it back to me.
“How did he get it from you?”
“He borrowed Costigan’s zombies and attacked your father’s house last night while we were sleeping there. The zombies tore it out of my pocket and Shea picked it up in the aftermath. He probably stole things from this house to bribe Jin with, too—Jin had a pair of your father’s cuff links. And when that wasn’t enough, Shea gave him information gleaned in Seattle, where Jin couldn’t go.”
Her face grew dark with fury and she muttered under her breath.
“Don’t waste your time on him just yet,” I warned. “There’s a party at your sister’s tonight and I want you to crash it. Then you can raise some hell for Mr. Shea. Of course, I imagine Jewel and Costigan will have some of their own to sling around, so hold on to your resources until then. In the meantime, I want you to get in touch with Soren Faith—he’s the man investigating Alan Strother’s murder.”
“Why should I? He can’t help—”
“Don’t be an idiot. He has the anchor stone and he said he’d give it back if you would meet with him.”
“He only wants to arrest me!”
“He said he’d come on your terms to whatever spot you designate. I think he really does just want to talk. He doesn’t believe you meant to kill Tim Scott,” I added.
She stared at me, conflicted and confused.
“Come into the house where we can speak in private,” I suggested. “We need to get that rock back and I’m afraid it’s up to you. But if we keep talking here, someone is bound to overhear us. . . .”
“The trees will keep them away,” she objected.
“Maybe, but I’d still prefer somewhere drier and more private.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re very soft for such a hard-ass.”
“Yes. I have a lot more to do today and hypothermia won’t help.”
The trees swayed away from the Rover, and Quinton jumped out to join us, apparently relieved to get out of the truck at last. Willow gave him a crooked smile and shot a funny look in my direction before she shrugged and started walking to the house, letting us fall in behind her.
THIRTY-TWO
Willow seemed a bit uncomfortable indoors, glancing around continually and unable to sit still. She walked around the living room, noting the repositioned couch and the ashes in the Franklin stove, and grinned at us. “What have you two been up to in Mother’s house?” she quipped, not really expecting an answer and not getting one. I bit my lip and brushed absently at my cheek with the back of my hand.
Quinton came back into the living room from starting up the generator—he’d taken the gas can from the Rover. Since the cat was already out of the bag that we were staying in the lakefront house, it seemed pointless to live rough. There was nothing we could do about the propane stove and fridge, but electricity did make things a little cozier and helped push back the Grey fog and swirls of color that seemed to be seeping into the building, deepening, and growing thicker since we’d followed Willow inside.