The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(55)

“Ah.” He gave a slight flinch of his shoulder, dismissing the subject as no concern of his. “So, what sort of help may I offer you and your acquaintance today?” His hawklike eyes traced their silhouettes as Yvette pointed her thumb toward Elena before reaching for the deck of tarot cards on the side table.

“I’d like to borrow a book,” Elena said. She kept her face covered, preferring to address the professor from behind her veil. He could stare at her aura all he liked, but he’d not see beyond the purple veil there either.

“Any particular volume you’re interested in?” He folded his hands in his lap, his long fingernails yellowish against his pale skin. “Love potions, luck amulets, or moon magic perhaps?”

“May I?” She leaned forward and tilted her head to the right to read the titles on the spines: A Compendium of Herbal Magic; Lady Everly’s Grimoire; Shamanic Practices in the Southern Hemisphere; Book of the Dead. There were treatises on voodoo, necromancy, shadow vision, and one palm-size book entitled Curses and Maledictions that made Elena blink twice. In truth, his collection rivaled Brother Anselm’s library of magic at the abbey, save for a copy of The Book of the Seven Stars, though as she examined the lower shelf it was apparent Rackham’s taste skewed much more toward the dark end of the spectrum. A fortunate omen for her particular need. She pointed to a black-and-red leather book labeled Sanguinem Artes Ocultus. “That one would make a good start.”

Rackham did a double take, his eyes shifting between her and the book. “Not the usual fare for a young woman on a beautiful summer morning.” He plucked the volume from the shelf, though he didn’t hand it over right away. Instead, he casually flipped through the pages, as if reacquainting himself with the subject matter. “Might I inquire what this is about? It’s rather complex magic, requiring a firm mind.”

Despite her promise to Yvette, she didn’t have the time to play the coy dumpling, not with so much rich information just outside her grasp. “Exsanguination, to be precise. I’m interested in how it works in ritual spellcraft, and to what purpose.”

Yvette tapped the cards against the table and stared at her with angry owl eyes.

Rackham, on the other hand, no longer tried to control the smile that had lodged in the corner of his mouth. “Ah, if this is in reference to the cat mutilations and recent murder in the valley, you wouldn’t be the first to speculate on the subject. It’s been the driving talk among magic folk across the countryside for years. Though I hear they’ve made an arrest to spoil all the fun of guessing who the culprit might be.” He handed the book over. “At any rate, chapter thirteen likely has what you’re looking for.”

Elena turned to the pages, scanning quickly, feeling him watching her as she read.

“Blood,” he said, “is neither good nor evil in spellcasting. It’s simply a highly concentrated conduit for energy. Blood is life, after all. Where and how one directs that energy is what determines its effect.”

“None of these spells have any continuity to them,” Elena said, looking up from the chapter. “They’re one-offs with specific outcomes in mind. But the cat killings present themselves as ritualistic, repeated over and over. Perhaps timed with the moon or some other cosmological signal.”

“You seem rather well informed on the subject.”

Elena felt a pinch on her thigh. A signal to dumb it down. “Just curious how it works.”

“Bit of dabbling in the dark arts, is it?” He ran his tongue over his eyetooth. “Everyone comes around to shadow magic at one point or another. No harm in appeasing one’s curiosity. After all, without the dark the good would never shine.”

“I’d never keep body and soul together if people didn’t get curious about the dark side now and then,” Yvette added, adjusting the exposure of her cleavage before shuffling through the tarot deck again.

Rackham’s eyes lowered perceptibly. “Quite.”

“Why would there be so many animals involved?”

“Several deep thinkers on the craft, myself included, believe the cat killings may have been a mere flourish, a setup for the real murder. To establish a ritualistic pattern, as you noted.” Rackham ran his hand over the shelf and then slid a folded page out from between a pair of books. “Others suspected a timed relationship with the moon or Saturn or even Jupiter,” he said, spreading the paper open to reveal a list of dates and locations. “But you can see by the entries of when each known animal corpse was reported in the valley, there’s no precision to the killings. And as I said, they’ve already arrested the guilty party, so there’s little point in dredging the matter all up again. It’s been solved. All we can do is hope she reveals her methodology before she’s executed.”

Elena gripped the edge of the bench and fought back her own grim urges. “You honestly believe all those cats were killed to cover up a single premeditated murder? Nothing to do with a blood ritual? That’s a lot of dead animals, Professor. Half a dozen would have been enough to form a pattern and get tongues wagging, if that’s all the murderer had wanted.”

Rackham shifted his weight in his chair uncomfortably. “There are others who entertained the idea there was something more sinister going on. But there was never any real proof.”

“Sinister how?” she asked and thought again about the Charlatan sisters and their appetite for hoarding dead animal parts.