Hunting Death

Chapter 8

Why did it matter what Keith did in his spare time? None of her business, and besides, for all she knew, they might have gone to a movie or had coffee or something. In her opinion, two hours with a man like Keith wouldn't have been near enough time to do the kinds of things she imagined doing.

Which only served to make her flush harder.

Shaking her head and laughing at herself, Madison flipped the lid on the box, the air getting trapped in her lungs as she looked inside. After slapping her chest a couple of times and choking, she finally managed to calm herself down.

What the hell?

Old and intricate, were the first two words that came to mind. It hung on a tarnished silver chain, and she wondered if it might be some kind of charm or talisman. She worked with a girl named Ona at the zoo, she and her family had come from New Jersey, having split from Massachusetts after the Salem Witch Trials, and had spoken many times about voodoo and witchcraft.

Pulling out her cell phone, Madison took a picture of it and sent it to Ona, asking her if she'd ever seen anything like it before.

While she waited for a response, she examined the charm a little closer. It had a circular pendant made from silver with different symbols etched into it. One that looked like a stick figure, but without a head. Another that looked like a crude heart, one shaped like a pitchfork, and the last one, a little more familiar, the symbol for eternity.

In the middle of the pendant, she noticed an off-white cylinder that while slightly stiff, rotated. The same symbols as on the silver part of the charm had been etched into the tube as well, one on each of the four sides and the middle of the cylinder at first glance appeared to be glass. A beautiful, shiny, blood red glass.

Upon closer examination, however, two things became apparent to Madison. The center of the tube wasn't glass, but rather, made of diamond instead, and the more she turned it, tilting it this way and that, she discovered that someone had hollowed out the diamond and placed a red liquid in the middle.

A small sadistic part of her wondered if it might be blood, but since that idea seemed too morose for her, she decided, at least for the sake of her own peace of mind, that it had to be red wine.

As she worked on chasing the last of the morbid thoughts away, her phone began to vibrate, nearly startling the crap out of her. She picked it up and read the display, Ona.

"Hey, Ona!" Madison exclaimed, both happy to hear a familiar voice and curious to see what her friend thought of the antique charm.

"Hey, Maddie! How're things in PA? I mean, I know you just got there and all, but what's it like?"

"It's pretty great, my father's farm, gosh, you'd love it here. You'll have to come visit. Soon."

"Oh, for sure!" Ona agreed readily.

"How are things at the zoo? Are you guys going to be able to manage without me?"

"I think so," she laughed reassuringly. Gosh, it'd only been a couple of days, but Madison already missed Ona and the rest of her friends at the zoo so much. She'd have to go home and visit in a couple of months. "Now," Ona said, cutting into her thoughts of nostalgia, "About that talisman."

"Talisman? Is that what it is? I mean, it sort of looks like that necklace you always wear."

"Yeah, that's definitely what it is, but it's not one I'm familiar with. Probably not from here in the U.S., it looks way too old for that."

Turning the talisman over in her hands, Madison looked for something that might indicate its origin, but other than the symbols she'd already seen, she didn't find any other markings on it.

"Well, my mom told me that my dad has some Romani in his ancestry, maybe that's it?" Madison asked, remembering the conversation she'd had with her mother when she'd first found out about Rick not being her biological father.

"Yeah definitely could be Romani, the gypsies are known for magic, legend has it that the gypsies first harnessed magic and made it their own. My grandma told me I'm descended from some gypsies that later moved to Africa after being cast out of Europe."

"Oh wow, that's pretty cool, you never told me that."

"Yeah," Ona chuckled. "Who knows, we might be related! Anyway, I'm getting ready to head to a party at a friend's house, if you send me some better pictures I'll email them to my Grandma and see if she can help."

"That would be great! Thanks, Ona, I'll get them to you tomorrow. Have fun! Miss you!"

"Miss you too girl," Ona replied, ending the conversation.

With a smile on her face, Madison looked at the talisman again and put it safely back into its little box, setting it apart from the rest of the surrounding clutter. She'd take pictures in the morning when she had better light.

With her earlier headache gone, and her sense of energy renewed, as well as her curiosity now thoroughly peaked, Madison slid another stack of files and folders in front of her and started going through them.

She'd decided that she wanted to try and make some kind of sense out of everything, and because so much stuff had been, well, stuffed, into that safe, she'd buy a locking filing cabinet the first chance she got and put the files where they belonged.

Over the course of the next hour, of the three piles she rummaged through, as well as separating the piles she'd looked through earlier, only one of them contained anything of interest, not until she got to the very bottom of the pile did she'd find it though.

Opening a thick envelope that had once been sealed by a wax stamp, something she didn't even realize existed anymore, she came upon an extremely detailed report of her family's ancestry. At least, her father's side of it. The report even included a DNA analysis on her father. Pages upon pages of records detailing her father's background and family history. Starting with his parents and heading all the way back to the first record, recorded in the 1200s.

She had no idea how her father had gotten such an extensive report, or why he cared enough to go back as far as he had, but it amazed and intrigued her all the same. Al had told her that her father's ancestry included the Mellon's of Pittsburgh, but he'd forgotten to mention exactly how big her extended family was.

According to the report, Madison discovered she still had a lot of living relatives, most of them in Germany, where the Mellon's had migrated from, their name changing from Mellor to Mellon after arriving at Ellis Island. And finally, her great-great-grandfather, who had split from his family in Pittsburgh to move to Lancaster, changing his name once again, from Mellon to Melton.

But she supposed he did that as more of a financial move than a personal one, while he'd broken from his family, he didn't break from the family business, going into banking himself, but he'd wanted to be set apart from them.

Madison wondered if her father had ever reached out to any of the Mellons.

Setting aside her family tree, Madison focused in on the DNA test results. It appeared that her father, despite relatives moving to America, which had become a melting pot full of immigrants, remained nearly eighty percent, Romani. The other twenty a mixture of Irish and German. Madison understood that genetics were a tricky thing, so she wondered how much of her father's Romani blood she had inherited herself.

Her mother claimed to be English and German, or at least, that's what she'd been told by her own parents, and it made sense, given her fair skin and features, but Madison had dark, and exotic looks, which only meant that she favored her father. She became more interested now though in finding out what her DNA said about her after seeing her father's test results.

Definitely something worth looking into.

And with that, Madison yawned, realizing that midnight fast approached, and she'd need to get up at 5:00 to make herself presentable before Keith came over at 6:00 for breakfast. One of these days she would have to get to bed early and make up for her lack of sleep lately.