Page 1 of Cursed (Witchbane #8)
SETH
“I have waited long enough. Avenge me!” The furious ghost sent a frigid wind through the small parlor, sweeping papers from the desk and swaying the curtains. The candle in the middle of the séance table guttered but didn’t go out.
“That’s why we’re here.” Seth Tanner had never considered himself a ghost whisperer, but recent situations dealing with angry spirits made him wish for those skills. “We want to stop the man who killed you.”
“He took everything from me!”
The spirit of Rod Jennings looked like a tough stevedore in his middle years with a fringe of gray hair around his trucker cap and a muscular body gone soft in the middle.
Seth looked at Alicia Peters, the medium, and saw the strain in her face.
Evan Malone, the third person at the séance table, squeezed Seth’s hand as a warning to wrap up the conversation.
The ghost made himself heard because Alicia lent him enough energy to speak aloud.
Seth knew that meant their time was short because she couldn’t sustain that for long.
“Who killed you?” Seth needed to hear his suspicion confirmed by the killer’s victim.
“Sterling Vernon,” the ghost spat, loathing clear in his expression.
“I worked on the docks, and I saw what was inside one of his refrigerated shipping crates. There were body parts—not normal butchered cuts of meat. Except, they didn’t look like they came from people or farm animals. I swear they were monster meat.”
“And he killed you because of what you saw?”
“I didn’t know he was behind me. He said something witchy, my heart stopped, and I fell down, dead,” Rod replied. “I had a life. A family. That bastard took everything. I want revenge.”
Seth could sympathize. He had lost his parents and younger brother to one of Vernon’s fellow witches.
Rod’s body had been returned from Savannah to be buried in Charleston, making it possible for Alicia to contact his ghost. That was one of many reasons Seth and Evan had stopped in Charleston on their way to deal with the Savannah witch-disciple.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about Vernon that would help us stop him?” Seth asked.
“He got regular shipments of cold crates like that, so if they all had monster meat, he must be doing something with it,” the ghost replied
“Do the crates still arrive on schedule?”
“Yeah. Nothing changed—except that I’m dead.”
“Alicia can help you pass over if you want to go,” Seth offered the irate spirit.
“Not until I’ve seen that son of a bitch get what’s coming to him,” Rod’s ghost snarled. “You need help nailing his ass to the wall? I’m your man.”
“Rest now,” Alicia said, and murmured an incantation to release the ghost, who winked out of sight.
She slumped and let go of their hands when the spirit departed. Seth moved to help Alicia lie on the divan while Evan fetched the sports drink and candy bar they had set out to help replenish her energy after the working.
Seth stood a few inches over six feet tall with dark blond hair, chocolate-brown eyes, and an athletic build. Evan, his partner, was just as tall, but he had chestnut hair and hazel eyes.
“We’ve had witch-disciples selling pharmaceuticals for supernatural creatures and warlocks trafficking shifters and psychics, but monster meat is a new one,” Seth said as he and Evan found chairs nearby.
“What do you think it’s for?” Evan asked. “Rituals? Spell components? Aphrodisiacs?”
“I don’t think I want to know, but we need to find out anyhow,” Seth replied. “Sterling Vernon’s one of the stranger disciples, and that’s saying something.” He paused and was quiet for a moment before Evan spoke.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Just thinking about Jesse,” Seth admitted. “Like always.”
A few years ago, Seth and his younger brother, Jesse, had camped out near a haunted bridge on a lark.
They intended to spend the night doing silly videos for social media, drinking beer, and hanging out.
A mysterious force attacked them, leaving Seth unconscious and killing Jesse.
Then his parents died in a suspicious wreck, and the house burned, leaving Seth with a pickup truck, his parents’ fifth-wheeler, and the black Hayabusa motorcycle he had bought when he got out of the Army.
No one believed Seth that the causes were supernatural, but obsessive research led to the unlikely truth: Jesse had been a sacrifice for a dark witch in a ritual cycle going back over one hundred years.
“I’m still amazed that for a whole century, no one else noticed the pattern with the deaths,” Evan said.
“Cops are trained to look for human patterns, not supernatural ones,” Seth pointed out. “What doesn’t make sense, they ignore as impossible. And don’t forget—my parents never mentioned the deaths that happened in my own family. They never recognized the pattern, either.”
A century ago, a sheriff’s posse hunted and killed Rhyfel Gremory, a powerful warlock.
His devoted witch-disciples stalked and murdered the sheriff and his deputies, and used spell work to create a bond to their dead master’s spirit, requiring the murder of the eldest male of each of the posse’s families.
In Jesse’s case, the warlock accidentally chose the wrong brother, leaving Seth guilt-ridden as well as bent on revenge.
Seth set out to hunt down Gremory’s disciples and stop the carnage, trying to save other families from the heartbreak he had known.
He never expected to fall in love with the coven’s next intended victim—Evan.
Together, they dispatched that warlock, started hunting the rest of Gremory’s coven together, and became partners in every way in the process.
Seth watched Alicia to make sure she was okay.
She waved off his concern as she ate and drank, regaining her color.
Alicia was in her late thirties, plump and unassuming, which made some people underestimate her ability as a powerful psychic and medium.
Her black hair fell in waves over her shoulder, a contrast to bright blue eyes.
“Take your time and get your second wind,” Seth cautioned. “Megan will whip my ass if she doesn’t think I took good care of you.” Alicia and her wife, Megan, shared the modest white clapboard house where Alicia did her readings.
Seth turned back to Evan. “We found Vernon’s aliases over the years. He’s stayed pretty close to the shipping company his father started back in the 1800s. Quite a rise from a sea captain with a single cargo vessel to a small fleet specializing in high-end, unusual cargo.”
“ Very unusual,” Evan added. “I figured they’d be smuggling rhino horns, pangolin scales, or tiger bones for ritual ingredients. Not shifter filet or yeti tenderloin.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Makes me wonder who his customers are.” Seth leaned back in his chair. “Other immortals? High-status non-humans like vampires, werewolves, and lesser witches?”
“No one’s ever been able to pin a smuggling rap on Vernon in all this time,” Evan pointed out. “I doubt monster meat is the only thing he’s moving in those ships. He’s either got protection spells out the wazoo or he’s paid off all the right people.”
“Probably both,” Alicia said in a smooth, low-country drawl, already bouncing back from the energy expended with Jenning’s ghost. “He’s smart, and he’s had time to diversify. Savannah’s a major port. If he’s stayed in business this long, he’s learned to change with the markets.”
“Why can’t these guys find a way to earn a living that doesn’t involve killing people?
” Seth muttered. All of the disciples made their fortunes and kept their wealth in decidedly illegal ways.
While the underworld warlocks weren’t friends, they did work together when power and profit aligned.
Between manufacturing and distributing recreational drugs and pharmaceuticals designed for non-humans and shifter trafficking, the remaining dark witches had begun to function more like a cartel than a coven, bound together by their need to sacrifice to their dead master’s ghost to retain their magic and immortality.
“Because there’s money in murder,” Evan observed. “And as we’ve said before, wealth buys security if you don’t want people noticing that you never age or die.”
“We’ve talked with three ghosts so far who were killed by Vernon outside of the ritual cycle,” Alicia pointed out, taking another gulp of the sports drink.
“They all got too close to whatever’s coming and going in those shipping containers.
That’s good to know, but I’m not sure how it gets you what you need to stop his next sacrifice. ”
Seth sighed. “I’m not sure yet, either. Evan and I are still working on a plan.
We talked with a friend in Pittsburgh on our way here from Cleveland.
He knows a lot about lore and magic, and he’s got access to an arcane library.
That gave us some ideas, on top of what we’ve learned the hard way dealing with the other witch-disciples. ”
He and Evan had destroyed six of Gremory’s disciples so far, and one had died of indirect causes.
That left five more—including Vernon and the witch responsible for Jesse’s death.
The very first of the coven they fought had sacrificed victims from Evan’s family for a century and would have murdered Evan if Seth hadn’t intervened.
“I know you’re a hot stuff hacker, but Teag’s got magic going for him.” Alicia set aside her empty bottle. “If there’s something to be found online, he’ll do it.”
Seth grinned. “I’m hoping to pick up some of his tricks. We’re going to get together with him, Cassidy, and Rowan, and see if we can figure out Vernon’s weak spot and a strategy to take him down.”