Reach For Me

by Elizabeth Cole

  Oh, no. She’s walking counterclockwise. Around an old summoning circle. Mal realized that and moved to intercept her before she could complete a full circuit. “Here’s your photos back.”

  She shook herself, focusing on Mal at last, but not taking the photos. She gave an obviously forced smile. “Wow. Where did all that come from? I don’t mean what I said about burning, of course. I want to make it beautiful again. Everything should be made as beautiful as we can manage.” Then she ducked her head, as if she hadn’t meant to reveal that last part. As if it were too personal.

  Well, Cara standing in the middle of a summoning circle was starting to feel personal to Mal. He was in over his head. He had to talk to his brothers. For now, he handed the photos back to Cara. “If you’re making this whole place beautiful, you’ll have your work cut out for you.”

  Cara put the photos and the designs in a corner, and Mal itched to “borrow” them one night so Dom and Lex could see the details. But Cara was already ushering him out of the parlor, back in her competent boss mode. “Come on, Mal East. Let’s find the rest of the crew. We got a lot of work to do today.”

  Mal grinned, but hated the way she said his name, because it wasn’t his real name. And the more time he spent with Cara, the more he hated lying to her about his real intentions.

  The bad news was that Egan House was a deeply unsettling place to spend time, even for someone like Mal who didn’t have a particularly sensitive attunement to magic. It suffered from the classic problems of unexplained cold spots, the creepy feeling of being watched, and even changing people’s moods.

  “This place, man,” Reyes said at one point that morning. “Can’t wait to make some progress. It gets me down.”

  And Dan said something similar later, when he’d been caught staring into space. “Sorry,” he’d apologized. “I was just thinking about how sad this whole house feels. Like it knows all the bad stuff that happened here. That poor family and the fire and everything.”

  The good news was that Mal got himself onto the inside crew that day, and he kept an eye on Cara’s movements so he could duck into the parlor over lunch and snap a few forbidden pics of the floor, as well as the old photos and blueprints.

  That evening, he showed his initial intelligence to Lex.

  Lex took his phone and studied the images. “Holy crap, that’s a summoning circle.”

  “It’s the original one,” Mal said. “The hellhole must be centered right underneath that room, and now Cara is re-creating the circle, which might reactivate the hellhole.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “She thinks it’s a fancy Art Deco floor design. She doesn’t know about summoning demons.”

  “The demons won’t care if the creator knew what she was doing. In fact, they’ll probably prefer to take advantage of an innocent person.” Lex peered at one image, zooming in. “That’s a symbol of…the lower hells? And there’s the one to let the undead in. This is bad. I got to show this to Lily.”

  “Yeah, call her.”

  “No, I think we have to meet up. This is too much work for one person.” Lex glanced at his own calendar. “I can head out this weekend. Her parents won’t mind.”

  Lily’s Chicago-based parents never minded Lex staying with them. They treated him as family, since he and Lily were basically best friends since kindergarten. Just as the Salems essentially thought of Lily as a non-blood relation.

  “See what you can find out about the Egans too,” Mal added. “Cara mentioned that they designed it, so it’s likely they were magic users themselves. I know Aunt Jo put together a file, but maybe there’s new info.”

  Lex nodded absently. “Will do. Take more pictures too. Not just the floor but whatever Cara works on. We don’t know what could be relevant.”

  That would mean watching Cara pretty closely. Mal decided he’d be good at that.

  Chapter 5

  Over, the next few days, Cara saw the guys making real progress on cleanup, and soon they’d be able to actually start repairs and installation of the pipes and electrical. Dan had emerged as a quiet second-in-command, able to deal with a lot of the work without needing to involve Cara for the details. Barry was a bit of a blowhard, but he did his work well. The crew, on the whole, made her breathe a sigh of relief. She’d been worried when she learned that the lawyer was going to hire them—some noise about “background checks,” which gave Cara a few sleepless nights herself. But it worked out after all.

  For her own part, she spent nearly all her time in the parlor room, cutting wood pieces for the marquetry design, and prepping the surface of the floor so she could begin assembling the most complex work within the whole house. Around her, she was dimly aware of the guys working at their assigned tasks. Through her industrial-strength earplugs, the sounds of drills and sledgehammering filtered in.

  Early on Friday, she looked over her week’s work. She had cut hundreds of pieces of fine-grained, specialty woods to exact specifications. She’d spend the next week putting all those pieces into place, like a puzzle. The floor would be a whole intricate pattern of various shades of natural woods. She had cherry, ash, mahogany, ebony, naturally colored woods that ranged from palest grey to deep, grainy black. The cost was ridiculous, but the client didn’t skimp. And now, with the materials in her hands, Cara could envision the gorgeous result. She’d make this room into a jewel box, an absolute piece of art. She followed the old plans exactly, by studying the old photographs and reading old accounts of the house to make sure she got it right.

  She was smiling when Dan showed up, leaning in the doorway.

  “Uh, boss? We got a problem.”

  “What is it?” She caught the worried look in his eye and knew she wasn’t going to like what was coming.

  “The copper piping for the kitchen…it’s not in the shed.”

  “What? Of course it is. It got delivered Tuesday.”

  “Well, it’s not there now.”

  “It must be,” she insisted. Cara wanted to think it just got misplaced. Someone moved the shipment to a weird spot because they needed the space.

  But after recruiting all the guys to help look for the copper, not a single pipe was found, even after an hour of searching.

  She questioned each man, not accusingly, just asking if they’d remembered seeing anything, or if they might have covered the copper up and forgot. No one did.

  “Next you’re going to say one of us took the stuff, aren’t you?” Barry asked, sounding wounded. “I need this job, ok? We all need the work. You can’t fire us.”

  “All I’m asking for is a little help! That copper wasn’t cheap, and none of the plumbing can get done until it’s installed. What am I supposed to tell Morningside? He’s going to be pissed, and if that copper doesn’t turn up, maybe we’ll all get fired.”

  Dan pointed to the shed, where the copper had originally been stored. “The padlock was real sticky to open this morning. I didn’t think much of it then, but I bet someone pried it open last night, and jammed it closed after. That way no one would get suspicious.”

  “So it could have been anybody,” Reyes said, sounding depressed rather than relieved.

  Cara sighed. Apart from the fence and some basic locks, there wasn’t any security around the site. It hadn’t seemed to need it, in a small town like this.

  She thought of Mal, who’d said very little during the whole search. Maybe he’d been more annoyed by her dinner refusal than he seemed. Or maybe he just saw an opportunity for a little profit.

  “Boss?” Kevin asked. “What do you want us to do?”

  Cara sighed. “I have to call the police and report it. Kevin, you and Dan got a new assignment. Take the credit card on my office desk and go buy new locks for the perimeter fence, and for the sheds. And the house. We’ll need to be careful until we figure out exactly what happened.”

  “More lights would be good,” Kevin said.

  “Yeah. See what’s available for security lighting.”r />
  “Budget?” Dan asked.

  She frowned. The copper was going to be expensive to replace, but it was only a fraction of the value of all the tools and other materials. “Don’t go over five hundred today. I’ll talk to Morningside and see what he wants going forward.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Cara was in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Morningside was unavailable until later, according to the snooty secretary who never remembered who Cara was.

  For the next couple hours, she holed up in the office, bringing in each worker one at a time to ask if he’d seen anything. She hoped that by doing it in private, one of them might be more honest than he’d be if others were listening.

  But no one saw anything.

  When she at last called Mal in, she was full-on cranky. She toyed with the chisel on her desk, one of the vintage set of tools her father had given her for her sweet sixteen. Other girls wanted cars. She was delighted with woodworking tools from the 1940s. Nerd.

  Mal closed the door and took a seat across from her, his brown eyes decidedly not smoldery now.

  “Ask away,” he said.

  Despite the late September afternoon, Cara was uncomfortably warm. “I got a problem. I’ve already asked everyone else, and they haven’t seen or noticed anything.”

  Mal crossed his arms and raised one eyebrow, waiting. He wasn’t going to make this easy on her. “And?”

  “Well, I want to know if—”

  “If I stole it?”

  “Did you?”

  “No. You can put that weapon down.”

  Cara sighed, relieved to hear such a simple, unequivocal denial. “Good.” She took her hand off the chisel. It did have a pretty sharp edge.

  “And I didn’t see anything.” Mal paused for a second. “But if you want, I could ask the neighbors.”

  “Maybe it was the neighbors who took it. From the look of that house, whoever lives there needs the dough. They can’t even fix a stupid mailbox,” Cara said glumly. “Think about it. A job site right across the street with no security.”

  He gave a snort. “Doubt it. But you can ask the cops to look if you want.”

  Cara only shook her head. She didn’t want to involve the cops any more than she absolutely had to. “I was an idiot to not take steps. I just assumed it would be safe here.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Mal.

  “I’m the foreman. It’s exactly my fault. Buck stops here and all that.”

  “Cara, whoever took the copper wasn’t going to be stopped by a lock. Yeah, maybe it was easier than they expected, but it probably would have happened anyway. And just because we’re in a small town, it doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.”

  Cara wasn’t really listening, too busy doing calculations in her head. There were ways to cut costs, to make back the loss of the copper. The last thing she wanted was for the client to think she was incompetent or worse, untrustworthy. “I’ll make the numbers work,” she muttered. Christ, that was probably what her dad said.

  “Cara? You all right?”

  “No, I’m not all right. I need to work on something.” She stood up, eager to create, to make something with her hands. She needed to take the ugliness of the afternoon and fashion something beautiful out of it.

  “What are you up to?” Mal asked, watching her a little warily.

  “None of your business. Things are upsetting right now, and when things are upsetting, I need to take steps. Now go away. Your shift is over. See you on Monday.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * * *

  The next morning, Mal was woken up by Lex prodding him in the shoulder. “Up, bro. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”

  He sat up, groaning. His job and his practice regimen were working together to make him exhausted. “It’s Saturday and I want to sleep in. What happened?”

  But Lex was already gone, his footsteps echoing on the stairs. Damn Lex and his morning energy.

  Mal dressed and went downstairs. “What?”

  “Look,” Lex ordered, pointing out the front window. Dom was there too, arms crossed over his chest.

  He looked up at Egan House, expecting to see something horrible, possibly a vortex of death or a cloud of demons or something.

  “Lower down. Our yard.”

  “I don’t see anything diff—” There was a new mailbox, sitting on a new post. A heavy-duty, thick wooden post, stained to a dark tone.

  Lex was practically jumping up and down. “We have an entirely new mailbox and post instead of what was there last night! Someone stenciled Salem on it in cool lettering. There’s a chrysanthemum planted at the base! Which Lily says is good luck,” Lex added. Of course he’d already discussed the potential issues of surprise mailboxes with poor Lily. Being a smart witch known to excel at research must make for some weird texts. “Who does something like that?”

  “Cara did it,” Mal said firmly. “I’ve heard her bitching about the mailbox. She thinks our house is a wreck.”

  “Our house is a wreck,” Lex said. “But I’m more worried about logistics. Why didn’t we wake up when she snuck onto the property and stole our old mailbox, and then drove a new post into the ground in the middle of the night? We do have wards and cats and stuff, right?”

  Dom frowned as he thought it over. “The mailbox is technically not our private property—the postal workers have a legal right to get in there. That must somehow negate the general warding.”

  “Yeah, but the cats should have noticed a woman stealing the mailbox in the middle of the night!”

  “They probably did, and didn’t care.”

  As one, they all looked over toward Behemoth, who was fake sleeping.

  “Well, asshole?” Dom asked.

  One emerald eye slitted open, like a dragon.

  Correct.

  Then the eyelid dropped again, indicating the end of the conversation.

  “Great protection we’ve got,” Lex muttered. “Mal, you have to ask her why she did it. And maybe slide in a question about whether she cursed it or something.”

  “Who curses a mailbox? Anyway, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t do magic.”

  “Pretty sure is not enough. Charm it out of her. Not like magically charming, just be nice and friendly.”

  He’d been trying that tactic for days, and all it got him was Cara’s icy death glare.

  “I need coffee,” he grunted. “It’s too early to think.”

  “Can you sneak into the job site this weekend?” Lex asked over breakfast. “I wouldn’t mind seeing the actual design blueprints.”

  “Not since Cara installed her new security system.” As soon as the guys returned from the store on Friday, she’d put the locks on the doors and gates, and rigged the floodlights with motion sensors. Mal was sure she secretly went out on her own and bought a camera too. Whichever dumbass stole that copper piping was making Mal’s life hard. “I’ll get some more details on Monday. Promise.”

  Mal was hoping for a calm weekend, but of course right after Lex left for Chicago, they got an emergency call. A terrified man in Arizona had the family scrambling to get a team ready to head out. After assessing the situation, which sounded like a curse put on the client due to an unfortunate run-in with a book that was once the property of a demon, it was decided that Dom and Vinny would go together. Dom was a skilled spellcaster who could handle it on his own, but Vinny was learning the ropes of the family business, so she was excited to go along. Piewicket also volunteered to go. She liked road trips.

  Mal spent much of the morning running all over the house helping to get all the needed supplies together. They gathered in the driveway early in the afternoon.

  Vinny walked up to Dominic and dropped her bag to the pavement. Dom slipped an arm around her waist and dropped his head to her neck. Whatever he did to her made her squeal and then throw her arms around him.

  Mal hid a smile and turned away. It was still weird to see Dom happy, because for years, he’d
been, well, not happy. But from the moment he’d met Vinny, it was like he’d forgotten the last decade of angst and brooding.

  So this was better.

  Vinny glanced at her watch. “We should hit the road if we want to get enough driving hours in today.” For someone who looked like an anarchist, she was very organized.

  Dom nodded. “We got everything?”

  “My clothes, your clothes, ritual kit, bag o’ demon slaying stuff, extra supplies for curse-breaking, and Piewicket’s travel carrier and extra cat food.”

  “And where is Pie?” Dom asked, looking at the empty carrier.

  I am here, Piewicket announced as she bounded over the lawn.

  “Ready to go, Pie?” Vinny asked. “We got a long day ahead of us.”

  Cars are excellent for napping, Pie replied, even though Vinny couldn’t hear the response—the cats only ever communicated telepathically with members of the Salem family. The cat wound itself affectionally around Vin’s boots.

  “All right, let’s load up,” Dom said. He looked back at Mal. “We should be gone for about a week. Depends on how bad that curse is. And who knows how long Lex’s research might take.”

  “No prob,” Mal said. “I’ve got eyes on the hellhole.” He glared up at the house on the hill.

  Piewicket also looked toward the house. The things that house is hiding won’t wait long. Don’t let your guard down.

  “I’m on it,” Mal assured them all.

  For what that’s worth. That opinion came from behind Mal. He turned to see Behemoth on the porch.

  “Nobody asked you,” he retorted.

  Mal spent Sunday alone. He trained in the basement, working on forms and then shifting to weights, which were surprisingly easy. All his work on the construction site was keeping him in shape.

  On Monday, he made sure to be the first of the crew to get to Egan House, except for Cara. Did the woman sleep? He found her in the parlor room, already absorbed in assembling the pieces of marquetry for the summoning circle.

  “Hey Cara, how do you like your coffee?” Oops, he didn’t realize how cheesy that sounded until the words were out.