I was locked in a box, chained, paralyzed. My mouth was dry as ashes, and the pit of my stomach felt like a ball of barbed wire. I couldn’t breathe, as if a huge stone was crushing my chest. I could only gasp in ragged, shallow breaths, fighting for air.
Someone was watching me from a corner. I could hear them breathing hoarsely.
I pulled against the chains. I kicked. Something moved beside me and then kicked me back.
Suddenly my hand was free. I punched upward, heard a shout of anger, and punched again. Then something clamped down on my arm, and I rolled over, panting, as a fist pounded my shoulder. Something felt familiar about it.
“Wake up! Goddamn it, Tom, wake up and stop hitting me!”
Rachel. Oh hell. My eyes opened, and I could see Rachel on her knees, shaking me with one hand, her other fist raised to punch me again
“Whoa, whoa! Sorry.” I rolled away, almost falling off the bed until Rachel caught me. “Sorry.”
“I ought to let you fall on the floor.” She rubbed her arm. “You hit me!”
“S-sorry.” I sat up. “Is it bad?”
“Oh, please. I’m a lot stronger than you.” She dropped her arm and glared at me. “I love you, Tom, but I can’t go on like this until those pills kick in.”
“I know. I know. Sorry.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’ll sleep in the other room. You can chain me up.” Chains . . .
“Maybe I’ll sleep in the other room and lock you in here.” She stood up. “I need a drink of water. You?”
“Yeah, thanks.” I went to the bathroom toi splash water on my face. My body was covered in sweat. Back in bed Rachel handed me a bottle.
“What was it this time?”
I swallowed. “Different. I wasn’t running. I was chained up. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. Then something started hitting me—”
“That was me. You were kicking me first.” She groaned. “It wasn’t that hard, thank God, or you’d be in a lot more pain now.”
“Small favors.” I looked past her at the moon. Then I stood up again. “I’m not getting back to sleep soon. I’ll watch some TV. Or check my email.”
“Sounds good.” She laid down and pulled the covers over her. “Don’t wake me.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed a T-shirt.
Nothing vital waited in my email. I checked the news, watched a few YouTube videos, and yawned until I felt ready to go back to bed. The moon was down as I slid next to Rachel and kissed her.
She kissed me back, then rolled over. “No funny business tonight.”
I chuckled. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
Ginny May called me the next morning. “I just got a call from the guy at the jewelry store. Zachary Silk? It was kind of weird.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to buy that necklace back. He said he’d pay what mom paid, eight hundred dollars. He was pretty anxious about it.”
I picked up my coffee. “Did he say why?”
“Just that it’s a signature piece, and very important. It was all kind of creepy, actually. I don’t even know how he got my number.”
Oops. My fault. “I, uh, gave him your name when I talked to him. Sorry. I had to say something.”
“That doesn’t matter. And he didn’t mention you or anything. He just wanted the necklace.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I’d think about it. He was really insistent on me calling him back. I mean, I think I could get more money from him for it, that’s how he sounded.” She laughed. “What should I do?”
I didn’t know. “Let’s think about it. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay.” She sounded puzzled. Just like me.
I went back to what I’d gathered about the Silk brothers. They’d been sued several times, but never arrested for anything criminal. Jonathan’s Marine discharge was honorable. Zach had been a middling student at Harvard Business School, but he did get his MBA. He rowed crew, joined the anime society and the chess club, and been part of a Dungeons & Dragons group.
His résumé on the Silk Enterprises website also listed membership in something called the Quetzal Club as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, before going to Harvard. A little digging told me it was named for Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec feathered serpent, and the club had been dissolved by the university after a fire in the building where its meetings were held. A little more digging told me that the Quetzal Club played with magic.
I found a partial list of members, cross-referenced it with public records from the alumni list, and spent half an hour making phone calls and sending emails. A few emails bounced back immediately, and a few phone numbers went nowhere.
Finally I reached Donald Franchot, a marketing executive in Boston. He seemed embarrassed at talking to me, but he did answer my questions.
“Yeah, we tried casting spells. Some of them seemed to work. We did a few séances, levitation, even a love spell that got a guy named Kirk laid, and he never had any luck with girls. But that might have been a fluke.” He laughed.
“What about Zachary Silk?”
“He was all about making money. He was trying to turn stuff into gold. Alchemy, you know? Nothing worked, and he got mad about it. We finally had to kick him out when he wouldn’t stop talking about it. That was right before the fire.”
“What happened there?”
“We were doing a séance. One of the candles exploded. Zach was in charge of the candles. We always thought . . . Anyway, after the fire, the administration shut us down and we had to pay for the damage. We managed not to get anything on our permanent records, though so that was good.”
I thanked him, and we hung up.
Rachel came into the office. It was 10 a.m., late for her. But it was my fault she hadn’t slept well, so I didn’t say anything.
She kissed my cheek. “Don’t think you’re not in trouble.”
“Never.” I squeezed her hand.
“Anything new on the case?” She sauntered to her deck on the other side of the office. I watched until she sat down.
“Zach Silk tried to make money with magic in college,” I told her. “And he may have set a fire.”
“Cool.” She turned on her computer. “Did you call Neral?”
“Left a message.” I’d done that first thing. Now I turned back to my computer, drank some coffee, and started poking into Zachary Silk again.
Twenty minutes later I found something that sent a chill through my body. I doubled checked my dates, then sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “Oh hell.”
Rachel turned. “What?”
“I cross checked the disappearances around the brothers’ stores. Took out all the ones that had realistic explanations, like spouses running away and all that. The ones that are left all happened around a full moon.”
“Okay.” She was skeptical. “Was that—”
“That’s when Veronica May disappeared right after going into that jewelry store. And tonight’s a full moon too.”
“Is it?” She cocked her head. “I guess it was pretty big last night.”
“I checked.” I waved a hand at my screen. “And suddenly Zach wants the necklace back. The one he sold to Veronica May.”
“Huh.” She stood up. “So what are you thinking?”
“I don’t know.” I folded my arms. “Some kind of—ceremony around the full moon? With the necklace?”
“What about the disappearances? Oh, wait.” Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Oh, hell, no.”
“Yeah.” I picked up my phone. “But there’s maybe one bright spot here.”
“What the hell would that be?”
I started punching numbers. “Veronica May might still be alive.”
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