The Witch's Initiation

Deme opened the door and glanced out into the hallway. “You can go now. The hallway’s clear.” When Selene passed her, she gave her sister’s arm a squeeze. “Be careful.”

As she closed the door behind Selene, Deme turned to the scratching at the window. The vines now choked out the little bit of light. A chill that had nothing to do with being wet or cold shivered across Deme’s skin.

Gina turned the shutoff valve, and the geyser of water slowed to a trickle and finally stopped. She straightened, soaked to the skin, and shook some of the water from her arms. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know, but you’d better go before the Gamma Omega girls come looking for all the commotion.”

Deme checked the hallway and held the door for her sister. “See you tonight. Be safe.”

Once her sisters were gone, Deme closed the door and leaned her back against it, staring at the wreck of her room.

She wasn’t Selene, but she’d felt it, too. As they’d stood in the circle, the air in the room changed as if drawing on their power.

Standing in a puddle of water, the lights dim and the window blocked by ivy, Deme knew with certainty they were dealing with more than just a kidnapper. Aurai was in a lot more trouble than they’d originally thought.

Chapter 4

After Cal left campus, he returned to the Chicago Police Special Investigations Division. Lead investigator Lieutenant Martin Warner had requested his presence. Cal hoped he’d fill him in on the rest of the details he’d left out in the hurried initial briefing that morning.

Cal passed the front desk, waving at the sergeant who manned the telephone. He wove his way through the office cubicles to the rear of the building, where the Special Investigations Team had set up a war room.

Having been on the team all of four hours and twenty-seven minutes, Cal didn’t know anyone but the lieutenant who’d briefed him earlier that morning.

When Cal entered the war room, Marty had his back to the door. He stood with his feet braced wide and his chin resting in his hand, staring at a white board with a thick black horizontal line stretched across the surface. Taped in one corner was a preprinted map of the Colyer-Fenton College campus. Beside the lieutenant, a woman dressed in black leather with long, ink-black hair hanging down to her waist leaned against the edge of the table, her arms crossed over her chest. “Has to be connected,” she said, her voice husky, yet smooth, like milk chocolate-covered gravel.

Marty, as he’d asked Cal to call him, nodded. “Every one of the incidents occurred either on campus or were performed by people who are related to Colyer-Fenton.”

Cal cleared his throat.

Marty spun and faced him. The woman beside him turned more slowly. When she saw who was standing there, her lips curled up on the sides in a devilish smile. “Ah, our detective has arrived.”

Cal’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t remember meeting this woman, but there was something familiar about her. “I’m sorry, I haven’t had the pleasure.” He stuck out his hand. “Cal Black.”

When she took his hand, an odd burst of heat streamed from her hand to his, shooting like an adrenaline burst up his arm and into his chest.

He pulled his hand back quicker than normal, his palm still tingling. “And you are?”

“Brigid.” Her smile grew wider.

Marty clapped Brigid on the back. “Brigid is one of the team.”

“How long have you been on the force?”

“Counting today?” She checked her watch. “Approximately four hours.”

Cal’s gaze shot from her to Marty.

Marty sighed. “It’s a long story, but suffice it to say, she’s been working with the Chicago Police Department for almost a year and demonstrated her…uh…expertise. Mostly with arson investigations, but we have reason to believe she could be of assistance on this team.”

Cal frowned. “Does she understand the risks of working on the Chicago police force?”

Brigid crossed her arms over her chest, her black leather vest creaking, the black nail polish on her fingertips shining. “I can take care of myself, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Do you have a license to carry a weapon?”

“No.”

“Do you even know how to shoot?”

“No.” She glanced at Marty.

“She’s not a trained police officer, Cal.” Marty grinned. “But she has talents that could come in handy on this case and others we’ve seen like it.”

Not until she stared up at him, forcing him to look directly into her eyes, did he realize how intensely blue hers were.

Cal nodded, not entirely sold on Brigid’s so-called talents, but willing to give the lieutenant the benefit of the doubt. “Maybe you can explain to me what exactly the Special Investigations Team does?”

“Yeah.” Brigid sat on the conference table and crossed her legs Indian fashion. “Tell him what we’re up against.”

“That’s just it.” Marty shook his head. “We don’t know what we’re up against. We’ve taken a select few of Chicago’s finest from the police force and a couple detectives like you and a few trusted civilians we’ve worked with in the past…”

Brigid shot a frown at the lieutenant.

The man’s lips twisted. “Okay, one trusted civilian…to form this team.”

Brigid’s frown smoothed.

The lieutenant stared hard into Cal’s eyes. “We get all the cases no one knows what to do with, the ones that don’t make sense, and we try to make sense out of them.”

Brigid snorted in a very unladylike manner, yet in keeping with the black leather, bad-ass persona she’d adopted. “What the lieutenant is trying to say, but isn’t quite nailing, is that we will be investigating the cases involving paranormal activities. Incidents that defy the norm. The quirky, weird, bizarre, uncanny and downright strange occurrences that usually get shoved under the radar because they make people feel too uncomfortable to address.”

“What are you talking about? I thought I was investigating the disappearance of a girl.” Cal reminded himself this girl wasn’t just any girl. She was his ex-girlfriend’s sister.

“And you are,” Marty assured him. “First and foremost, we want to retrieve the missing girl and reunite her with her family.” The lieutenant stared over at Brigid. “While I have both of you here alone, I need to know something.”

“Know what?” Cal demanded.

“I need to know that your connections with the victim’s family members will not get in your way of performing a thorough investigation.”

“What connection?” Cal’s heart beat faster, but he played dumb to the lieutenant’s question. What did Marty know about his relationship with Deme Chattox?

The lieutenant shook his head. “We conduct a thorough investigation of all our team members, security check, background check down to what vet you take your dog to.”

“I don’t have a dog,” Cal stated flatly.

“Well, we knew you had a thing going with Deme Chattox, the victim’s oldest sister.”

Brigid’s eyes narrowed. “Were you doing my sister? Tsk, tsk. And here I thought we’d have a shot at making things happen.”

“Sister?” Cal glanced from Brigid back to Marty. “What do you mean, sister?”

“Our missing girl, Aurai Chattox, has four sisters.”

Brigid gave him a little wave with the tips of her fingers. “Brigid Chattox, Deme’s younger sister. She didn’t tell you about us, did she?” She tapped her chin with her fingertip. “I wonder why.”

Cal wondered, too. Seems like when you’re sleeping with someone, they’d tell you all their secrets. Family shouldn’t be a secret. But not Deme. From the get-go, their passion singed any other thoughts from his head. When he finally got around to asking, she’d gone. Completely out of his life. There one day, gone the next.

“One of the reasons I brought you in on this case was because I knew you had dealings with Deme Chattox and probably knew a little about her and her family. When Brigid told me what the Chattox sisters had planned, I knew I needed one of Chicago’s best detectives on the inside.”

Brigid shook her head, her lips twisting. “He didn’t trust us to do it on our own.”

“Damn it, Brigid!” Marty pounded his fist on the conference table so hard, even the ubercalm Brigid bounced, her eyes widening.

Marty’s lips pressed into a thin line, his face beetred and getting redder by the second. “We’ve already lost one young woman to whoever or whatever kidnapped her. I don’t want to lose four more.”

Brigid uncurled her legs and pushed off the table, standing tall. “She’s not gone for good. We just can’t find her.” Her jaw tightened. “But we will, I have no doubt. I only told you because I wasn’t going to refuse a little help.”

“And rightfully so. A missing girl on a campus is not something to take lightly. The police need to be just as involved in returning the girl to her family as bringing the perpetrator to justice.” He aimed the remarks at Brigid, then he turned to face Cal. “Back to my original question. Is your relationship with Deme Chattox going to cause you any difficulties?”

“I don’t have a problem keeping on track.” Heat rose in Cal’s belly as he recalled the feeling of Deme’s lips on his. She could be a major distraction, but he refused to let her. Their “thing” had ended a year ago.

Brigid’s hand brushed his, ever so lightly and briefly, the heat burning a path across his nerve endings. “Yeah, and you didn’t want to kiss her, but you did,” she whispered to him, low enough only he could hear.

“Huh?” Cal jerked away from the woman. How’d she know?

Brigid’s lips twitched. “You heard me. Play nice with my sister. She had a nasty time of it with a man almost a year ago and hasn’t dated since. If I’d known who it was, I might have been tempted to inflict some bodily harm on him.”

Cal almost laughed out loud. The petite woman with the long, black hair didn’t look as if she could harm a fly, much less a full-grown man. Besides, she had her facts all wrong.

A year ago placed Deme with him. He had to be the man Brigid was talking about. But Deme hadn’t had a nasty time of it. More like she’d given him a nasty time. As soon as he’d asked her to marry him, she’d left. Talk about cold feet.

It wasn’t as if he’d meant it—he’d blurted it out immediately following the most mind-blowing sex he’d ever had. Hell, they’d spent every night for a month in his bed, in his apartment. It must have seemed like a natural progression for her to marry him and move in permanently.

He’d waited two days, thinking maybe she’d been thrown off balance by his proposal.

Those two days had been the longest he’d ever experienced. When he’d gone by her apartment in downtown Chicago, she’d moved out. Nothing left but an empty roll of box tape.

Apparently Deme hadn’t told her sisters any more about him than she had told him about them. Why all the secrecy? If she didn’t want to be a part of his life, all she had to do was say so. Moving away had been extreme.

When Marty had told him about Deme’s involvement in the case, his first instinct was to walk away. Getting answers to why she left was one of the reasons he’d agreed.

In the back of his mind, the need for a little payback had spurred him into action. Thus his kiss in the student commons. And if he wasn’t mistaken, Deme Chattox was not immune to him…unfortunately, not any more than he was immune to her.

“Very well, then.” Marty turned toward the white board hanging on the wall. “Let me fill you in on what’s been happening on or around campus. Maybe you’ll understand why the Special Investigations Team is working this case.”

Brigid shot a narrow-eyed glance at Cal before turning her attention to the board as if to say, I’m watching you.

Cal could have laughed out loud, but the lieutenant was talking.

He pointed to a time line on the board with a tick mark near the start of the line. “Two weeks ago, a male student attacked a female student while she was walking through the campus. She’d never talked to him, he’d never expressed any interest in her. Up until the attack, he’d been a model student, making good grades, working toward a prelaw undergrad degree. Clean record, no criminal history. Nothing. Out of the blue, he attacks a girl.”

“So? Doesn’t it happen every day?”

Marty nodded. “You’d think. But when questioned, he broke down in tears claiming it was as if he had no control over his actions. One minute he was worried about his economics test, the next he’d jumped a girl and practically raped her before a member of the faculty came along and pulled him off.”

“Again…so?” Cal had seen rapists claim temporary insanity too many times to believe. If a man could rape a woman, he had to have something wrong with him and needed to be taken off the streets.

“At first, it looked like a cut-and-dried case of attempted rape…but then it happened again.” Marty shot a glance over his shoulder at Cal and Brigid before he pointed at the second hash mark. “Two days after the first incident, another boy attempted rape.”

“Same one?”

“No, a different boy. Same thing. He was a model student, premed degree. On his way to the library when he lost it and tried to rape a girl.”

“Power of suggestion?” Cal offered.

“You mean because news got around the other boy wanted to get in on the action?” Marty shook his head. “That’s what I thought at first. The university didn’t let the information out about the previous attempted rape for fear the parents would yank their kids midsemester. That and we had their rapist.”

“Is there any connection between the two guys? Are they in the same fraternity? Do they live in the same dorm? Involved in a hazing event or something?” Cal asked.

Marty shook his head. “We checked into all that. Again, one of the students is prelaw, the other premed. Neither has joined a frat house. One lives on campus and the other in an apartment nearby. As far as both are concerned, they didn’t even know each other existed until these events occurred.”

“Where did the attempted rapes happen?” Brigid stared at the campus map, her gaze so intense her blue eyes appeared steel-gray.

Sweat popped out on Cal’s forehead. “Is it me, or is it getting hot in here?”

The lieutenant tugged at the tie around his neck, loosening it, a bead of perspiration sliding down the side of his head. “It’s getting hot.” He stared across at Brigid. “Do you mind?”

She flushed, a weak smile crossing her lips. “Sorry.” Then her smile disappeared, she clasped the medallion hanging around her neck and closed her eyes.

Within a few seconds, the room temperature dropped enough that Cal could tell a marked difference. He looked around for who might have adjusted the room’s temperature. When he located the thermostat, nobody stood near it. The only occupants of the room were the three of them.

His gaze returned to Brigid, who clutched at the medallion, her eyes blinking open. She met his gaze with quirked lips and raised eyebrows.

“The Chattox girl disappeared here.” Marty poked the time line, smearing the black hash mark identified with a date and the letters AC for Aurai Chattox.

Cal lifted the dry erase marker and added a dark slash before all the hash marks three weeks prior to the girl’s disappearance.

The lieutenant’s brow rose. “What’s that for?”

“One missing maintenance man. I spoke with HR this morning. I’m their new maintenance man as of today. The prior guy never showed up for work three weeks ago. Since he had only been on the job for a couple of months, they assumed he’d just quit. They didn’t have any emergency numbers to contact next of kin, and he didn’t return their calls.”

Marty’s brows pulled together into a V. “And they didn’t file a missing persons report?”

“No family to miss him.” Cal shrugged. “Think he might be our kidnapper?”

Brigid shook her head, her gaze fixed on the board though she appeared lost in thought. “I don’t think so, but we should add him to our list of people to find.”

“Two other incidents happened off campus involving a professor and a student,” Marty continued. “Both separate, but somewhat the same. A female student who’d been part of the sorority Aurai was pledging tried to commit suicide by slashing her wrists,” Marty said.

Cal sucked in a breath. “How is she?”

“She’ll live, but she’s in the hospital, recovering from blood loss and she’s under psychiatric observation.”

“The professor?”

“Ran her car into the Chicago River.”

“Accident?”

“No, she’d left a suicide note at her apartment. Her sister found it.”

“And her prognosis?”

“Dead.” Marty pointed at the time line where two more marks broke the line, one before Aurai’s disappearance, one after. “Her car was found this morning by a bicyclist.”

Marty faced Cal. “Your job is to work the school staff, ask questions, get answers. Your connection to the sorority will be Deme Chattox. I expect you to pass information to her and gather it from her on a regular basis. Brigid will be working with the rest of the team on the outside of campus, questioning other victims’ families and acquaintances.”

“When will I meet the other team members?” Cal asked.

Marty smiled. “Soon enough. For now, get inside the campus and find out what the hell’s going on.”

“Will do.” Cal stood tall, all but saluting his superior. “And thanks for your confidence in my abilities.”

“Don’t thank me. Prove you deserve it.” Marty started to turn away but stopped. His voice lowered, and he pinned Cal with an intense stare. “And Cal, be open-minded about the strange and unexplainable. There’s been some really weird stuff going on you probably aren’t aware of.”

Cal’s gut tightened at the tone of Marty’s voice, a chill rippling across his skin. “Yes, sir.” As he turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of Brigid fingering the medallion she wore around her neck. The metal was shaped into a star with five points inside a circle. He’d seen a similar one, but where?

As Cal left the war room, Brigid fell in step beside him, her fingers still wrapped around the metal.

An image of Deme lying nude in his bed flashed through his mind. When they made love, she’d taken off everything but the medallion—a pentagram just like the one Brigid wore. She’d said it was a gift from her mother and she never removed it.

When Cal stopped to face Brigid, she looked up at him, her brows rising up into her black hair.

Cal reached out and touched the pentagram at Brigid’s neck. “Does your medallion have meaning?”

Brigid’s lips curled upward. “Deme didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” He had a feeling Deme had kept a lot more than her family from him, and the anger at being kept in the dark rose to the surface and boiled there.

“It’s a pentagram. The sign associated with the Wiccan.”

He had an open mind when it came to people of different religious persuasions. To each his own as long as it didn’t interfere with others’ beliefs.

But he also believed that everything had a logical explanation. Magic and what some would call woo-woo was just superstitious bullshit some people used to scare and control others. The lieutenant had said the Special Investigations Team, or SPIT, as Cal had shortened it, was responsible for taking on the cases that didn’t have an obvious explanation. It was up to them to find it. But logic could be found in every situation.

He nodded toward the pendant. “Does it represent your religion? Your faith?”

“Most definitely.” Brigid held the pentagram out in front of her to the end of the chain. “You see, our mother was a witch.”

Chapter 5

After Deme cleaned the water from her dorm room floor, she set out to find Rachel, Aurai’s roommate. She’d scanned the roster she’d been given as the resident assistant and found her listed on the same floor several doors down from where Deme’s room was located.

Girls ducked in and out of rooms, wafts of perfume or hair spray filling the air with each passing. The cloying scents overwhelmed Deme. She didn’t use scented candles in her apartment or in her rituals, preferring the natural odors the earth gave off. The sharp aroma of pine sap, the earthiness of decaying leaves or the extravagant natural fragrance of roses blooming, in her mind, could not be duplicated.

On every door she passed, the Greek letters for gamma and omega hung. Some of the rooms had the girls’ names hanging on cute signs. The more young women she saw, the more surreal the experience became. Each girl seemed perfect. Thick, beautiful hair, perfectly coifed, figures a model would die for and skin as smooth and blemish-free as a newborn babe’s.

Where were the late teens with acne scars? What happened to bad hair days and the few extra pounds the sedentary life of a college coed generated?

Perhaps Rachel was a thorn among the roses of the sorority sisters. Deme had received text messages from her sister describing her first impressions of her dorm room and her roommate. Aurai had given Deme the impression that Rachel was a plump young woman with frizzy hair and thick glasses, her face riddled with pockmarks from a bad case of acne.

After all the Barbie look-alikes, Deme could appreciate a real girl with curves and flaws. She’d be more human, more approachable than the other residents of the Gamma Omega dormitory.

Deme paused in front of the room her sister had occupied up until forty-eight hours ago. Her chest tightened, her hand shaking as she reached out to knock. Deep in the back of her mind, Deme desperately hoped Aurai would open the door and hug her, telling her the cry for help was all in her imagination and that everything was fine.

Her eyes stinging, Deme blinked. And if wishes were horses…She tapped her knuckles on the hard wooden door and waited, refusing to hold her breath. No matter what she told herself about wishing things better, she couldn’t slow her heartbeat. As she waited, her blood slammed through her veins, pounding against her eardrums.

“Just a minute!” a voice called out from inside.

After what seemed a very long time, but in fact had been only a matter of seconds, the door swung open.

A dark-haired beauty peered out, her eyes widening when she saw Deme. “Oh.” Her gaze darted to each side of where Deme stood. “Can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m Deme Jones, the new R.A. for the dorm.” She stuck out her hand. “Are you Rachel?”

Rachel nodded, taking Deme’s hand in a limp grip, her dark, shiny hair falling into her smooth-skinned face. She had her purse slung over her shoulder and appeared to be on her way out.

Deme frowned. This girl was not what she’d expected. From Aurai’s texts, she’d conjured an image of a shy girl with self-esteem issues because of a less than perfect body and face.

This young woman was like so many others in the building, beautiful and too perfect for her comfort. Deme touched her own chin, conscious of the scar there from the time she dove into a creek as a preteen and hit the bottom. The mouthful of rocks had been the least of her worries at the time—the scar a constant reminder to look before you dive into unknown waters.

Deme swallowed hard to keep from choking on her next words. Words she fought hard to keep natural. “I hear your roommate bailed on you.”

Rachel’s elegantly arched brows drew downward into a frown. “What did you hear?”

“Only that she bailed. Do you want me to find another girl to share your room?” It cost Deme to offer. More than anything she wanted to find her sister, but she didn’t want the girls of the dorm to know that was her real reason for being there.

“No!” Rachel reached out to touch Deme, her hand shaking, a pained twist in dark brows. “Aurai will be back. I just know it. She probably just got homesick or something and went home for a few days. She’ll be back, I tell you.” Her hand fell to her side, her voice fading. “She has to come back.”

“Rachel?” A male voice called out behind Deme. “Is that you?” The voice belonged to a tall, gangly young man, more typical of what Deme expected from a college student. His hair hung too long around his ears, the excess flesh around his cheeks and middle gave him a big teddy-bear look.