As always, the pedestrian-only walkway was full of revelers: pirates, sexy witches, monsters, and zombies. Lots of zombies. The undead outnumbered the pirates and witches about ten to one. From the middle of the crowd, he could hear the amplified voices of the evangelists preaching fire and brimstone to the revelers, damning their souls to Hell unless they repented and stopped partying. They had added drums this year and cymbals that clanged each time a preacher mentioned Hell. The partiers were laughing and applauding. It didn’t seem like there would be any confrontations between the groups tonight.
At a gathering on the corner, Rafferty saw a family wearing homemade costumes that featured bloody stumps where their limbs should have been. They were pulling a little red wagon full of body parts. He watched another man who stood on the sidelines dressed as an oven, complete with burners that turned off and on. A very convincing set of duct-taped Siamese twin dogs ran in front of his cruiser, nipping at each other’s faces, frustrated by their unnatural confinement. The usuals were present and accounted for, too, the Frankensteins and the mummies posing for photos at their regular posts by the Peabody Essex Museum, out-of-touch vampires still sporting sparkling glitter in homage to Twilight. They’ll be zombies next year, Rafferty thought. Vampires had been passé in Salem for quite a while now.
He felt sorry for some of the store owners, the ones who paid rent for shops no one could get to through these crowds. It happened every year. Dozens of fortune-tellers set up their booths on Essex Street right in front of the year-round shops that were vying for the same customers. The competition between the resident and visiting psychics had been a big problem a few years back. As a result, Salem now licensed its psychics before allowing them to set up their temporary booths in October.
“How the hell do you license a psychic?” Rafferty had asked when he’d heard about the plan. “I mean, do you have them do a reading and then just wait a few months to see if any of their predictions come true?”
“We’ll follow San Francisco’s lead,” the town clerk had told him. “We’re going to use their psychic licensing standards.”
“Of course we are.” Rafferty had laughed, relieved he didn’t have to figure out how to do something so ridiculous. It turned out that all they had to do was check criminal backgrounds before granting licenses. Anyone without a past could now read the future.
From Essex Street, Rafferty drove over to Pickering Wharf. Traffic was bumper to bumper. Some partiers were heading out of the city before the fireworks at the end of the evening, but many were still trying to get in. He was happy to see that the group down by the harbor was fairly docile. He rolled down his window to speak to a patrolman who’d come up from Jamaica Plain.
“Just stick around long enough for the traffic to die down, then either head home or over to the party at the Hawthorne. Best Halloween party in town.”
“Will do, thanks.”
The Hawthorne Hotel hosted the famous Witches Ball annually, a few nights before Halloween. Tonight would be their more traditional costume party, with prizes given for the best creations; a few years back, Rafferty and his wife, Towner, had been judges.
He parked his car by Bunghole Liquors and walked over to the wharf.
Ann Chase was locking up her Shop of Shadows early tonight.
Six feet tall with thick red hair free-falling halfway down her back, and a “grey witch” by her own admission, Ann practiced neither white nor black magic but something in between. Tonight, she was wearing her traditional black witch’s robe. It moved with her stride like a flock of blackbirds, making her look even more magical than usual, if that was possible.
People claimed Ann had a magnetic charge that defied normal boundaries. Depending on your own polarity, you generally found yourself standing either too close to or too far away from Ann Chase. Rafferty intentionally placed himself into the latter category—as much as he wished it weren’t true, their history meant he kept her at arm’s length whenever possible.
Ann had once explained to him why it was her choice to practice grey magic instead of the more common “white magic” that most Salem witches were into. A black magic witch—the bad, menacing kind you saw on television or in The Wizard of Oz—was an unnuanced caricature no self-respecting Salem witch would embrace. Besides, any witch worth her salt knew that every “black” spell you performed came back to you threefold.
“So why don’t you stick with the love potions and lottery ticket enhancers that most witches sell around here?” he’d asked.
“The world is too messed up to be a bliss ninny, Rafferty. Sometimes you need to fight back. You of all people should know that.”
Ann normally played the good witch, selling everything from herbal remedies to lace. But sometimes, when she got bored with the tourists, she liked to scare them. Especially on Halloween.
“Had enough of the tourists, have you?” Rafferty laughed.
“That’s an understatement.”
“Mickey tells me you started a rumor that there’s some weird energy out there tonight.” His tone was dismissive. He looked at the wharf again. Nothing seemed amiss. People were now watching the fireworks exploding over the harbor, illuminating the docked replica of the Friendship. Looking at the great sailing ship, he imagined himself—for an instant—back in the early 1800s, when hundreds of the huge vessels still sailed from Salem, once the richest port in the New World.
“You doubt me, do you?” Ann’s expression was one of amusement.
“Wouldn’t dare.” He laughed again, in spite of himself.
“It’s the blood moon,” she insisted, “and the eclipses.” She gestured to the sky. The clouds had lifted, and now the waxing quarter-moon shone with no remaining trace of red. The lunar eclipse a few weeks ago had occurred during the day and wasn’t visible from the East Coast, but that night, the full “blood moon” had been the color of rust.
Rafferty knew the lore. His Irish American grandmother had called it a hunter’s moon, but the Pagans had coined this more ominous phrase. It was simply October’s full moon. “The blood moon rose a couple of weeks ago,” Rafferty said. “So I doubt that’s the culprit.”
“It’s the tetrad, Rafferty.” Ann sighed as if explaining to a child. “Four lunar eclipses. This weird energy you don’t believe in isn’t going to end until September of next year.”
As if to prove Ann right, a wind suddenly gusted around them, creating a screeching sound that would fit right in at the haunted houses on Derby Street. It stopped as quickly as it had started.
“You doing parlor tricks again?” Rafferty asked.
“Hey, I didn’t do that. That one came from the other side.”
More Pagan lore. Halloween and its Pagan predecessor, Samhain, were the time of year when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was supposed to be at its thinnest. The things Rafferty had learned since moving here! He didn’t buy any of it, of course. “You think it’s some kind of warning?”
“I think it’s more like a preamble.” She stared at him as she spoke. She was serious.
Despite his skepticism, Rafferty shivered.