The Vine Witch - Luanne G. Smith Page 0,34
off the street and into the nearest refuge.
Elena shut the door to the post office behind her, thankful for the mundane scents of polished wood and paper dust. As she regained her bearings, she decided to question the postmaster. Perhaps Jean-Paul had stopped to check on his mail, and maybe he even mentioned where he was off to next. Two women stood in line to collect their letters, so she perused the notices on the wall while she waited. Curiously, she found it filled with several pleas for information on missing pets.
“There’s been another one,” the clerk said after the other women exited.
She turned, still holding her cloak over half her face. “Another?”
“Killing, that is. This one out near the Lambert place.”
“Who’s dead?”
The man looked up from his work to study her over the tops of his glasses. He straightened and blinked twice in sober appreciation. “Ah, you’re not from around here.” He removed his glasses and gestured broadly with them toward the notices on the wall. “The animal killings. Cats, dogs, rabbits, sometimes a fox turns up. Blood drained right out of them. Puts people on edge the way it’s been escalating lately. People are starting to say they’re ritual killings.”
Horrified, Elena glanced at the notices on the wall with new appreciation. As she read, a shadow crossed her vision, nudging a dormant memory to the forefront. Gooseflesh rose on her skin as she recalled another of Grand-Mère’s rhymes from childhood.
Toss crone’s teeth and mystic rune
’neath Jupiter and crescent moon,
Cast your lot into the fire
Thou spinning heart of dark desire,
Bow before the one bedeviled
On cloven foot and fetlock beveled,
Pas de chat, around you go
Dance before the carrion crow,
Once you’ve done the Danse Démon
By blood and bone your fate is sewn
“Démon dansant,” she whispered. But it was just a fable. A story to scare children. She shook her head to clear it of the frightening image before approaching the counter. “I’m looking for Jean-Paul Martel. Have you seen him today?”
The man scratched his balding head with a pencil. “No, he hasn’t been in for a few days. But if you’re hoping to talk to him about offering your services at the vineyard, you’ll have a tough time with that one. City man. Nonbeliever. The grapes suffer because of it, if you ask me.”
“My services?”
The man slipped his glasses back on and smiled. “My mother worked at La Domaine Blanc as their vine witch for decades. I have her vision but, alas, not her talent with the wine.” He shrugged, as if life worked out the way it was meant to in the end.
A faint purple aura peeked out of his shirt collar, confirming his heredity. Trusting he had a sympathetic ear, Elena tapped her finger on the counter and dared to dig deeper. “How long has the animal killing been going on?”
“There was only one poster on the wall when I arrived five years ago. Back then people occasionally mentioned they’d found a dead cat in the road on their way to the village. About a year ago it began happening more frequently. Now it’s almost weekly. If you ask me, it’s just college boys fooling around with the occult. But they’ll find themselves on the brute end of karma’s bad side one of these days. And when they do, they’ll be lucky if they don’t lose a few vital parts themselves.”
University students? Possibly. They’d always flocked to the village on their summer breaks, accosting any woman in a fringed shawl to read their palm or sell them a love potion. Some, though, did go looking for more, like hex stones and evil talismans to use on their enemies. The sort of items a certain pair of witches liked to hawk out of the back of their mule cart. Her skin still prickling from a roused instinct, she thanked the clerk for his help and stepped back onto the street with no better idea of where to find Jean-Paul than when she’d started. How could no one have seen him? Unless he never came to the village after their fight.
Her mind tumbled over demons and dead cats as she turned left at the next street corner. A block later she turned left again, letting her feet lead her far from the center of the village to the low road, where the gutters fizzled into open sewers and dogs with matted fur slinked between overturned rubbish bins. The ugly business with the dead animals still nipped at the heels of her