Book of Shadows

Chapter Twenty

The wind was high that evening, frantic and gusting, and the moon fat and nearly full over the waving branches and rustling leaves, as Garrett drove into Salem Town.

Landauer had not picked up when Garrett called him, and Garrett had debated with himself less than ten minutes before he headed up to Salem on his own. For the first half of the drive he had wrestled with half a dozen ways to justify himself: it was their night off; Landauer had made it cheerfully clear that if Garrett called him for any reason whatsoever he was a dead man; Malloy would never approve of consulting with a professed witch so Garrett was forced to hide his activity; he didn’t want to rope Landauer into a wild goose chase, he didn’t want Land to catch shit from Malloy if he found out they were considering information given to them by a witch…

Then he gave up and admitted to himself that every one of his excuses was bullshit. He simply wanted to see the witch alone.

Miraculously he found a parking spot on Essex, and started off through the rippling wind, trees and bushes stirred into green frenzies around him, and onto the cobbled street of the pedestrian mall, the center of town. Entering the warren of narrow streets was like stepping back through time; the tight rows of colonial buildings were carefully preserved, with wrought-iron lampposts lining the walkways and antique signage hanging from hooks and chains above the shops. The town’s theme was inescapable: Essex Street and the town square were crowded with witch supply shops, psychics and tarot readers, and witch history museums, complete with soundtracks of howling winds and creaking doors piped out onto the sidewalks, enhancing the naturally atmospheric colonial storefronts and autumn wind rustling through the trees.

Garrett had learned the story in sixth grade, and it all was coming back to him now: the witch trials of 1692 that started with the “possession” and accusations of a handful of supposedly bewitched teenage and preteen girls and ended in the execution of twenty accused witches, and the imprisonment of 150 accused, five more of whom died in Salem Town’s wretched jail. It was a chapter in American history that had left a lasting impression on him, laced as it was with repressed sexuality, voodoo, magic, torture, execution, and the strong possibility of hallucinogens: Garrett remembered one theory that the witch hysteria was the result of the whole town being high on ergot, a psychedelic mold that grows on rye. And then with a ripple of unease he recalled that lurking in the shadows of the tale, documented in the court transcriptions, was the devil himself, to whom the accused witches had supposedly promised their souls.

The story hit every hippie, punk, Goth, Dionysian, counterculture pleasure center that humans possessed, and modern Salem’s tourist board took advantage of every creepy, erotic, haunting, bloody detail of it.

Already Halloween decorations were everywhere. Women in black clothing walked the streets around Garrett; he even passed some people in full costumes: zombies, pirates, and the ever-present vampires. The whole place had always given him an unsettled feeling. Tonight it didn’t help that he had the dissonant sounds of the Current 333 CD and the strange descriptions of Choronzon working on his ganglia. And even as he thought it, his heart gave a sick lurch… as he spotted a statue of a decapitated man holding his own bloody head in front of the Salem Wax Museum. Garrett walked quickly by, turning his face from the sight; it was too grim a reminder of Erin’s real-life fate. And he felt a flash of anger as well. He himself had fallen away from Catholicism long ago, but this deliberate courting of the dark side still felt to him dangerous and wrong. He was far out of his comfort level in every way. Going to see a witch about a satanic killing.

He had reached the 400 block of Essex, the heart of downtown: rows of walk-in shops with the worst of touristy excess. He began checking the addresses for 411. He had not called ahead, so that he could see Cabarrus in her element but without any warning.

Now he realized even though he’d been watching the numbers above the shops, he must have missed it; he was already at 413 Essex. He walked back to the last shop he’d passed, and found himself staring up at the number 409.

There was no 411 Essex.

Garrett turned in the street, frowning, as he tried to push down an uneasy feeling. Across the street two women… witches… in capes and long black skirts turned to look at him as they passed, and Garrett had a sudden sense of reality wobbling. Get a grip, he told himself.

He looked around him for some sign of the shop. Up ahead was a wooden sign hanging by chains depicting a witch figure hunched over a crystal ball and the lettering: Which Witch? Fog rolled from the doorway onto the sidewalk.

Garrett walked up and through the open door. Mist swirled around his feet from the fog machine set just inside. The shop was dim and the music was Hollywood eerie. Amid the shelves of crystals and ceramic objets, a sharp-faced woman in her early forties sat at a round table, dressed in a gypsyish purple skirt and a black fishnet shawl. She looked up from the table and a flicker of interest crossed her features as she took Garrett in.

“May I help you?” she purred.

“I’m looking for a shop called Book of Shadows.”

The gleam in her eyes dulled. “You want Essex West. This is East. But you don’t want her, believe me.”

“Why is that?” Garrett asked automatically.

She smiled, and there was something predatory in it. “Believe it or not, our profession attracts some unstable people. Best to steer clear of that one.” She paused suggestively. “But if it’s a reading you want, I can do one for you. You won’t be sorry.” The glitter was back in her eyes, an unmistakable invitation.

“Thanks anyway,” he said, and moved out of the shop.

Garrett found his car again and breathed easier as soon as he was off the main drag. Essex West was a few blocks off the downtown center, a quiet residential street. The house at 411 was a two-story Victorian and well maintained. A discreet hand-carved and painted sign on a column of the porch read:

It looked to be four downstairs rooms: the one Garrett was in, two book-lined rooms to either side of it, and a back room with its doorway concealed by a deep blue velvet curtain embroidered with glittering stars and planets. Glass jewelry cases displayed hand-wrought ornaments of silver, and gemstones on velvet stands. A wall of shelves behind the counter was lined with herbs and powders in glass jars. Another case held an assortment of card decks, variations of the Tarot; silver wands set with crystals, mysterious lumps in velvet pouches—and gleaming silver daggers. Garrett felt his pulse jump at the sight.

And still no one emerged from the back room. Very trusting, Garrett thought. Or maybe there’s some kind of spell on the place.

Since he was alone, and curious, he stepped into the next room to peruse the shelves.

He took a book out of a shelf at random and looked at the back cover—sure enough, the silver Book of Shadows sticker was on the bottom right corner. Then he gave the room an appraising glance, and stepped to a bookcase labeled “MAGICK” and a shelf labeled “C,” where he quickly located the same books he’d found in Jason Moncrief’s dorm room: Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law… The Vision and the Voice… Magick in Theory and Practice…

He heard movement in the main room, and low voices. He turned, walked quietly toward the doorway. He stepped to the side of the door and looked carefully around the door frame.

Tanith stood in front of the silver-starred velvet curtain with a petite young woman, college age at most, dressed in black tank top and jeans, with a punkish blond pageboy, and ear and nose and eyebrow piercings. The gold glitter eye shadow on and under her eyes was marred by streaks of tears… she was still crying as she turned impulsively to Tanith and threw her arms around her, hugging her hard.

Garrett barely heard her whispered, “Thank you.” Tanith took her hand and tucked what looked like a small drawstring bag into her palm.

“Blessed Be,” Tanith said, and stroked her cheek.

The girl took a step back, then walked toward the door shakily. She turned to give Tanith an ambiguous glance before she pushed quickly out the door. Tanith stood with her back to Garrett, watching the girl leave…

Then without turning, she spoke aloud in that velvety voice, “Detective Garrett.”

Garrett felt both a shock and a rush of heat at her words. Tanith Cabarrus turned slowly to face him. She was backlit by the starry lights decorating the store, which emphasized the fall of her dark hair and the tiny tightness of her waist. She was corseted, he thought mindlessly, she must be; he could have spanned her waistline with his hands. The thought and sight did not improve his disposition in the least.

“What a surprise,” Cabarrus said, her eyes on his face and her voice dripping with irony.

“You didn’t see me coming?” he shot back, without thinking. “I thought that was your job.”

He saw the curl of a smile on her mouth. “It’s been a slow day,” she said. “Perhaps it will improve,” she added, and it was all he could do not to shove her against the wall and take her there. Her eyes gleamed at him. “And what can I do for you?” she asked in a sultry drawl, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Who was that girl?” he demanded.

“A client,” she said, and did not elaborate. They locked eyes, staring at each other in the glimmering dark.

“I had some more questions about the case,” Garrett said evenly. “I’m sorry to drop in unannounced.”

She smiled with bitter amusement at the lie. “What questions would those be? You’ve indicted your man. You’ve closed the case. What more do you want?”

Garrett answered patiently. “All an indictment means is that we have probable cause for a trial. I’m still building the case.”

“But your mind is made up,” she challenged him.

He hesitated. “I have questions.”

She looked at him sharply, then something changed in her face and she smiled at him, but he noticed it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Will you have some tea, then?”

His face must have betrayed him because she glanced toward the racks of herbs and added with exaggerated innocence, “Nothing exotic. Just Earl Grey, if you like.”

She turned and stepped through the silver-studded curtain at the back of the room. Garrett stood still in the doorway, then crossed the polished wood floor and moved through the curtain, feeling velvet brush against his face. He found himself in a small, dark-painted room lit only by standing candelabra. Two ornate, high-backed Victorian chairs were set on opposite sides of a round table; a deck of Tarot cards lay in the center of the table. He smelled incense and patchouli.

Cabarrus crossed to the table and folded the cards into a dark piece of silk, then set them on a shelf. She turned to a hot plate on a narrow table and removed a teapot, from which she poured amber liquid into two cups. She brought the cups to the table and set them down before she sat, with that perfectly straight back, and indicated the opposite chair.

Garrett sat, and in all his experience as a cop, all the weirdest places he’d been, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so out of place and uncomfortable. He had the distinct sense that that was the point.

Tanith smiled at him, dark eyes shining, and answered his thought. “I’m sorry. Not exactly your style, is it? But it is more private.” She sat back in her own chair and crossed those endless legs.

Garrett cleared his throat. “I’m a little out of my league with this magic stuff. You were a great help the other night and I was hoping you might be willing to clear some things up for me.”

Her smile died as she stared across the table at him. “I’m more than willing to do whatever it takes to help catch the real killer.”

“I appreciate that,” he said without expression, while thinking: She’s covering for this kid. Why?

Aloud he said, “Are you familiar with this design, or what it means?” He took his notebook from a coat pocket and drew the pattern of three triangles, pushed it to the center of the table between them.

She looked down at the drawing and frowned. “It’s a sigil: a symbol used in ritual magic. This is the sigil of the demon Choronzon.”

Garrett felt an electric thrill, the feeling of puzzle pieces falling together. “Choronzon,” he repeated carefully. “So what would it mean to have this—sigil—written somewhere?”

She looked disturbed. “It depends on where it was written. But it would probably mean that someone was trying to summon the demon. Writing the sigil is a way of calling it.”

It wasn’t written, it was carved into Erin Carmody’s body. The memory made his skin crawl. But that wasn’t information he was willing to share.

He shook his head in real bewilderment. “Why would anyone want to summon a demon?”

A dozen conflicting feelings passed over her face, like the rippling of water on a lake. “To use its power. To make it do your bidding,” she answered.

For a moment he could only stare at her. She actually believes all this.

He shifted in his chair. “This is probably a stupid question, but why would a demon do anything a—human—wanted?”

“It wouldn’t,” she said. “You would have to bind it.” Before he could ask, she answered, “Not with ropes. With a spell.”

This is totally insane, he thought, and forced a neutral tone. “And then it would do what you wanted it to?”

Again, that conflicted look. “If you were a powerful enough magician to control it.”

It was probably the weirdest conversation he’d ever had in his life. “It sounds kind of risky.” Not to mention batshit crazy.

“You are right about that,” she said flatly.

“Are demons stupid enough to let that happen?”

She looked at him in the wash of candlelight. “The demon would have its own agenda, of course.” She sighed, and answered his unspoken question. “Since they have no corporeal form themselves, demons can only do their work through human agents. And they covet our life. Demons are drawn to human life. They envy us desperately.”

A phrase from the Crowley text popped into Garrett’s mind: It craves to become real.

“That’s how they’re able to be lured,” Tanith said, as if she’d heard him. “Of course, arrogance has something to do with it. Thinking they’re too powerful to be bound.”

She glanced at his face and leaned forward slightly, startling him. “Detective Garrett, you might be more comfortable with this conversation if you thought of it as a metaphor.”

“Did I look uncomfortable?”

“Just a bit,” she said drily.

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, he thought. But the idea of wanting to summon a personification of evil was incomprehensible to him.

“Do you think of demons as metaphors?” he asked her.

She narrowed her eyes. “We’re not talking about me. Why do you want to know about Choronzon?” she said, with obvious tension in her voice.

He ignored the question. “Do you do that kind of thing—summoning demons?”

A strange look flickered over her face in the candlelight. “Regardless of what you may have seen in the movies, witches don’t have anything to do with demons.” She pushed back her chair.

Afraid he’d lost her, he half rose and said quickly, “I’m sorry, this is all new to me.”

She stared at him across the table, and then relented, sinking back into her seat. “I understand that.”

He grappled with his thoughts. “How many demons are there, exactly?”

She looked bleak. “Legions.”

He felt a twinge at the ancient word. “So what do you know about this one… Choronzon?”

She paused before she spoke. “Choronzon is not one of the host of more well-known Solomonic demons. He’s in a class by himself. He was made famous—relatively speaking—by the magician Aleister Crowley.”

Garrett kept his face still and wrote on his pad. “Aleister Crowley,” he repeated, with no expression. “Can you tell me about him?”

She looked at him stonily in the orange light. “You know of him.”

He blinked. “Why would you say that?”

She glanced at his pad and he realized she had been aware of what he wrote all along. “You spelled his name correctly. It’s not a common spelling. In fact, Crowley made it up himself.”

“I’ve only seen the name,” Garrett said stiffly, annoyed at being caught. “Jason Moncrief had quite a few books by this Crowley on his shelf.”

She looked amused. “What a surprise.”

“What do you mean? Do you know Jason Moncrief?” he demanded, perhaps jumping the gun.

She frowned. “No. I know the type.”

He felt a twinge of disappointment—and anger. She’s lying. Unless… He glanced out toward the shop. “Do you have any employees helping you here?”

“No. I work alone.”

And I doubt you’d not remember Jason Moncrief buying a set of books on Crowley. I doubt you miss much of anything at all. But he kept those thoughts to himself. Don’t confront her. Not yet. Better to see what else she might let slip.

“You said this magician, Crowley, made the demon—Choronzon—famous. Can you tell me about that?”

She studied him warily. “What do you need to know?”

“Everything.”

Her eyes held on his face… and Garrett suddenly found it hard to move. Then she got up and left the room, pushing the velvet drape aside. Garrett sat in the flickering dark of the velvet room, his heart beating faster than it had any right to. After a prolonged moment, she returned carrying several large volumes and he felt himself breathe again.

She sat back in her chair and opened a book, turned it toward him to show him a black-and-white portrait of a man with a handsome but dissolute face and burning, compelling eyes. “Crowley was an early twentieth-century magician and author of numerous occult books on spiritualism and magick practices. He was a Cambridge graduate, a chess master, a voracious drug user and voracious bisexual, and some say a British spy. His father was an English gentleman and a preacher, but from an early age Aleister Crowley sought what he called ‘Satan’s side.’ He had a lifelong obsession with the nature of evil and with Satan particularly. At first he joined and studied with a group of magicians called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but when he began studying the demonic system known as Abra-Melin, a higher magician in the Golden Dawn accused him of dabbling in malignant forces beyond his control. So Crowley left the Order and founded his own magical order: Astrum Argentium, the Silver Star. And at some point…” She paused, her face going blank for a moment. “Crowley started to go off the deep end, indulging in sexual sadism and fetishism, abusing absinthe and other drugs. He was infamous for orgiastic parties and bizarre sexual exploits, and became known as ‘the Great Beast,’ ‘the Wickedest Man in the World,’ and even ‘Antichrist.’ ”

Garrett stared at her. “You know a lot about it for someone who has no interest in demons.”

She stared back into his eyes, and hers were like onyx. “I didn’t say I had no interest. I don’t work with them, myself. But any student of magic knows Crowley. He casts a long shadow.”

Garrett backed down, glanced at his pad. “So—Choronzon.”

“Choronzon is a demon from Enochian magic—a system supposedly dictated by angels to Renaissance occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley. Dee and Kelley called Choronzon ‘that mighty devil,’ and ‘the deadliest of all the powers of evil’; they equated him with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.”

She turned the pages of another book to reveal illustrations that chilled Garrett’s blood: spiny, bestial, deformed, reptilian creatures, with split tongues and lizard hands, eyes like black holes and jagged rows of spikes for teeth. Garrett had to suppress a shudder of revulsion; they were creatures from the hell grimly detailed by the nuns who had taught him, in stories that had given him screaming nightmares as a child. Superstitious crap, he told himself, but the thought was hollow.

He glanced again at the twisted things in the illustrations. “You said demons have no corporeal form.”

Cabarrus nodded to him, impressed. “Very good, Detective. This is merely how we see them. A projection of evil and bestiality. Choronzon in particular is said to cause madness, chaos, and decay, by his very presence. He is variously described as the Lord of Hallucinations, the Dweller at the Threshold, the Demon of the Abyss, the Demon of Dispersion, ‘He who causes mental chaos,’ ‘He who blasts the flowers of the field.’ ”

Garrett sat up at this. “The flowers.” Tanith looked startled, and he realized he’d nearly shouted. “I’m sorry. Tell me about the flowers.”

She answered slowly, studying him. “It’s a quality associated with the demon—that it scorches the flowers where it walks.”

Garrett sat still and didn’t like the swirl of sensations he was feeling. “What else?” he asked tightly.

She gave him a strange look, but resumed. “The story is that in his later years Crowley, along with Victor Neuberg, a male initiate who was also Crowley’s lover, tried to summon and bind Choronzon in a magical triangle during a ritual in the Sahara Desert. The demon manifested in the triangle but was more powerful than Crowley anticipated and it took control of his body. It’s unclear what happened, but contemporaries said Crowley’s mind was never whole after the attempt. He became a slave to drugs and died in disgrace. And Choronzon… developed a taste for humans.”

Garrett sat back with his mind reeling. “That’s—quite a story.” It was a more coherent narrative than what he had read on his own, but no less disturbing. He sat in silence for a moment, then something occurred to him. “Do the numbers 333 mean anything to you?”

She stared at him. “It’s another sigil for Choronzon. Three-three-three is the number of the demon. What does Choronzon have to do with this investigation, Detective?” she asked tensely.

“I’m not at liberty to say—”

Tanith put her hand out and pointed at the page where Garrett had drawn the triangles. “Was this sigil what was carved into that girl’s body?”

Garrett looked at her with a jolt—and knew he had betrayed what he was thinking.

Tanith stood in agitation, smoothing her hands on her skirt. “So whoever killed her is trying to summon Choronzon. You don’t want that to happen, Detective Garrett.”

He stood as well. “I don’t want any of this to happen. It’s my job to prevent it from happening, and I’m good at my job, Ms. Cabarrus.”

Her dark eyes flashed. “I have no doubt. But in this case the killer is playing to your weakness, because you’re going to ignore evidence that you don’t want to believe.” Her words struck Garrett with a cold shock of truth.

“You’re right, I don’t believe in demons,” he answered her. “I think that’s a bullshit way of excusing the evil that people do all on their own, all the time. We have free will. We always have the choice.”

“I agree,” she said instantly, surprising him. “Demons may well be no more than concentrated and projected human desires.”

He looked across at her, trying to understand. “So you don’t think they’re real?”

“Real isn’t the question. Demons are, Detective Garrett.”

Her eyes went to the tabletop, to the page with the three triangles, and she began to pace the room. The candlelight gleamed off her silver and crystal jewelry. “If the killer carved that sigil into Erin Carmody’s body, he is using human sacrifice to summon the demon. For your purposes, it doesn’t matter if the demon comes or not. What you need to know is that the killer believes it, and he won’t stop killing until he gets what he wants.”

“We have a suspect in custody—”

She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “You know a boy didn’t kill those three people—”

“I don’t know there are three, either,” he lashed back. But even as he said it, he was remembering his initial certainty that Erin’s murder could not be a first killing.

“Because you haven’t looked.”

“Are you sure you’re not covering for Jason Moncrief?” Garrett demanded.

She made a scornful noise in her throat. “Why would I do that?”

“You haven’t been straight with me, Ms. Cabarrus. Moncrief had numerous books by Crowley on his shelf. He got those books from your shop.”

She stared at him in what looked like genuine bewilderment. “That’s not true.”

“The stickers are on the back,” Garrett said.

“Then he shoplifted them. Crowley’s books are expensive, and they tend to walk away on their own. A certain kind of teenage boy…” She trailed off, staring at him. “Do you think I’m involved in this, somehow?” Her face was so incredulous he faltered.

“I think you’re a pretty staunch defender of someone you don’t even know,” he said flatly, and stood his ground.

“I don’t know him. I know what happened,” she flung back at him. “I understand what happened,” she amended, and there was a tremor in her voice.

“What happened?” Garrett demanded.

“He opened a door,” Tanith said. Her eyes were bleak. “And something reached through.”

Garrett stared at her. She must have realized she’d lost him, because her next words were deliberate and rational. “He’s a teenager who dabbled in something he doesn’t understand. But he didn’t kill her—”

“What are you saying, then, a demon did?” Garrett scoffed.

“Maybe,” she said seriously. “Or someone under its power.”

Garrett had an unwelcome flash of Jason’s coal-black eyes, that stretched-taut face. “Everything you’re saying about this ‘demon’ still points to Jason Moncrief. He had the books, he wrote songs about it, he had all the ritual items in his room—”

“Items any magician might have—”

Garrett’s eyes fell again on the book open on the table between them, the reptilian forms, and suddenly understood what he’d been trying not to think about.

“I saw it,” he said violently.

She stopped, stared at him, into him. His heart was pounding as if he had run a mile. “What did you see?” she asked softly.

He struggled with himself. “Something,” he said, with effort. “I saw… something.” In the mirror in Jason’s room… “I heard something…”

She moved a step closer, searching his face. “Tell me.”

“Voices. Layered on top of each other. On our interview tape.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was saying them. Across from him, her eyes were dark and still. “What does it mean?” he demanded.

She bit her lip. “It’s an early sign of demon infestation.”

“Possession?” he asked, incredulous. “You’ve got to be—”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been thinking?” she asked quietly.

“No,” Garrett exploded. “What I see is a disturbed young man with a history of antisocial behavior and what looks like a hell of an obsession with this—Choronzon. Whose ‘sigil’ just happened to end up carved in Erin Carmody’s chest. All the evidence points to Moncrief, Ms. Cabarrus—”

“Then why are you here?”

The truth of that froze him. Then he reached out and grabbed her wrist and it was like an electric shock between them, a shock he felt through his entire body. “All right. All right. Then give me something,” he said, and his voice was harsh.

She wrenched her arm away. “I did. The dates. There are three dead. Two other people have been killed on those dates I gave you—”

“There are no missing persons on the dates you gave me. Don’t you think I’ve checked?”

“Then you’re not looking in the right place.” She slammed her hands on the table, startling him. “He’s killing on the holy days. And while Jason Moncrief sits in jail—you have less than a month until Samhain.”

“Until the demon strikes again,” he mocked her, to make it less real.

“Until someone does.” Her eyes lasered into his. “Unless you do something about it, Detective.”