Joe was a decent fellow, and always helped her bring in her groceries. Milly quickly undid the spell that she’d just cast over him, then reminded herself to look at Joe’s nose tomorrow morning to be sure he was all right.
“Does this visitor have a name?” Milly asked.
“It’s your niece, Holly.”
So that was who’d called her cell phone. And when Milly hadn’t answered, Holly had rushed over to see her. Something told Milly this was about Peter, and could wait.
“Tell her that I’m busy, and will call her later,” Milly said.
“She says it’s a matter of life and death, and that she must see you now,” Joe said.
“Really. Well, I guess you’d better send her right up.”
“Will do.”
Milly hung up the phone. This sounded serious. She returned to the living room to check on her guests. Their teacups were full, their conversation light and pleasant.
“I’ll just be a few more minutes,” she promised them.
A witch’s life was filled with drama and suspense. It was part of the job description, and there was no getting around it. A light tapping on the door announced Holly’s arrival. Milly ushered her niece into the foyer with a finger to her lips and shut the door behind her.
“There are clients in the living room. What’s wrong?”
Holly pulled the wool cap from her head and shook out her hair. Her cheeks were without color, her eyes glassy from crying. She struggled for a proper reply.
“This is about Peter, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you’ve been scrying on the poor boy again. I see it clearly in your face. You must leave Peter alone!”
“But I can’t,” Holly said, the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Peter wants to kill himself.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“He nearly jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon. I was scrying on him, and I saw the whole thing. He would have done it, but his girlfriend Liza came to the rescue. I’m so worried about him, Aunt Milly.”
“Lower your voice,” Milly said, glancing at the living room. “Tell me something. Why do you assume Peter was going to jump? He might have just been out for an afternoon walk.”
“Peter gets depressed sometimes. He wants his life to be different. Sometimes he can’t handle it. He told me once that he imagined himself jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, and coming out of the water a different person. I told him that if he jumped off the bridge, he’d surely die. He said, ‘If that’s what it takes…’ and his voice trailed off.”
Milly squeezed her niece’s arm. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
“Peter swore me to secrecy.”
“You still should have told me. I would have talked to him.”
“It won’t make it any better. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
Milly wanted to grab her niece by the shoulders, and shake some common sense into her. Milly understood who Peter was, and what he was, better than anyone else, except maybe Max. If anyone could talk the boy off a ledge, it was her. Not that she could convince Holly of that.
“My powers of persuasion are far greater than yours,” Milly said. “I will go see Peter tomorrow, and talk some sense into him. He’ll listen to me.”
Holly shook her head and stared at the floor. A tiny sob escaped her lips. “It’s too late. Max told Peter about some horrible things he did when he was a little boy. I heard the whole thing. Peter ran out of the restaurant with the most horrible expression on his face.”
“You mean Max told Peter about the killings,” Milly said matter-of-factly.
“You know about them?”
“Of course I know about them. Come on, dear girl, I helped raise Peter.” A noise from the other room caught Milly’s ear; her guests were growing restless. If she wasn’t careful, the subtle spell she’d cast over them would evaporate like a puff of smoke, and they’d seek out another psychic in the city to look into their futures and soothe their fears. “I must get back to my guests. Come back later, and we’ll go have dinner and talk this through some more.”
Holly shook her head, still miserable.
“What is it now?” her aunt said stiffly.
“Peter’s going to do harm to himself. I can feel it in my bones,” Holly declared.
A feeling in the bones was the window to a witch’s soul, and could not be denied.
“And what do you propose we do?” Milly asked.
“We must protect Peter,” Holly said.
Her niece didn’t understand. Milly didn’t have the time or the patience to explain it to her. Holly would have to learn on her own about Peter, just as Milly had done. She opened the front door and gently but firmly pushed her niece into the hall. Nearly fifty years separated them in age, but sometimes it felt more like hundreds, the different between them was so great.
“What are you doing?” Holly said, sounding hurt.
“Showing you out, my dear.”
“But why-what have I done?”
“You don’t understand what’s going on. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have raced across town, and barged in on me like this.”
A hurt look crossed Holly’s face. “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me.”
Milly stuck her head through the open door. “You and I were not put on this earth to protect Peter. Peter was put here to protect us. Now go home. I’ll call you later.”
Holly looked stunned, the words slow to sink in. Milly shut the door firmly in her niece’s face, and returned to her guests in the living room.
PART IV: DANTE
43
“Call her,” Ray said.
Early Wednesday morning, the sun was barely up. Munns stared at the cell phone lying on his kitchen table. It was a clamshell Motorola, ancient by today’s standards. He would have bought a newer model if he’d had friends to talk to. But Munns had no friends. Few serial killers did.
“Come on, call her,” Ray implored him. “You need to set this thing up.”
Munns lifted his eyes to stare at the tattoo artist leaning against the sink. He didn’t like the tone of Ray’s voice, or that Ray had driven to Munns’s house so early in the morning, and banged on his front door like an irate bill collector.
“It already is set up,” Munns said irritably. “Rachael is coming out on the train Friday night. If I call her now and tell her to come early, she’ll get suspicious and stop trusting me.”
“You’re not going to do it? Not even for me?”
“Nope, not even for you.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
Munns’s silence was his answer. He knew how to draw victims into his web, and did not appreciate Ray’s interference into the one thing he did rather well.
Ray pulled up a chair and sat backward in it. Whenever he could, he liked to show off the demonic-inspired tattoos that covered his arms. Like wild reptiles moving across the jungle floor, they slithered across his skin in perfect synchronicity. “I had a dream last night. Rachael came out on the Friday night train, and she had a pair of detectives with her. Something happened on Friday morning that made her suspicious, and she decided to call the cops.”
“You saw this in your dream,” Munns said.
“I sure as hell did. The detectives busted you and searched your car,” Ray said, not missing a beat. “They found rope and handcuffs and a bottle of chloroform. Then they came here, and tore your house apart. They found your trophy collection of clothing and jewelry of the women you’ve killed. They threw your ass in the county lockup, and the judge refused to grant you bail. You know what that means, don’t you?”
Munns shuddered, and drew his bathrobe tightly around him. When a judge didn’t grant bail, it meant the system thought you were guilty, and was not going to let you back into society no matter how fancy your lawyer was.