I whipped my head around to give her an icy stare. Once, before everything had changed, the twelve-year-old girl would never have questioned me on such a serious matter. But when Rosamunde broke the spell that kept our family in harmony and forced me into hiding, it seemed that a decade of pent-up attitude had been unleashed in Akasha. She’d agreed to come live with me, since she was mad at her father for taking Rosamunde’s side, but since then she’d been voicing her unhappiness at our living situation on a daily basis. And I was getting tired of her sass.
“Your sister’s nasty faeriekin friends could be on their way here to arrest me at this very moment.” I saw her recoil at the word and resisted the urge to smile; I knew she mistrusted the half-human, half-faerie mortals just as much as I did. “If you don’t want to see me go to prison or worse, then we need to get a move on now.”
Akasha took her suitcase from me and began stuffing clothes in it in a haphazard manner. “Where are we gonna go? Will it be bigger?”
Angelica’s apartment over the store was tiny, and the two of us had been forced to share a single room with the few personal belongings that we’d grabbed from the house when we ran. I hadn’t shared a bed with Akasha since she was a baby, and now we fought over the blankets every night. Having more space might help both of us get along better, but I didn’t have an answer to that question just yet.
“I don’t know,” I said, throwing up my hands in the air with an exasperated sigh. “I have to go call in a few more favors. If I can, I’ll try to find us more room, but I can’t be that picky right now.”
She slammed the dresser drawers as she dug out the last of her clothing. “I don’t see why we can’t just go back and stay at home. Rosie and Dad aren’t even there. And all of my books are still in my room. Why can’t I go get my books?”
“Because they’re watching the house, and I’d get arrested before I got anywhere near it.” I pursed my lips and looked around the room to see if we were missing anything. “Did you check under the bed?”
She kicked the bed corner and flopped back down. “Of course I checked. But I’m not going unless we get my books.”
“We don’t have time to argue about this right now!” I got down on my hands and knees, and found two dirty socks crumpled up under the bed. I threw them in the bag of dirty clothes.
I grabbed my purse off the shelf and dug out my keys. “Start loading everything into the car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Mo-om!” Akasha yelled after me when I started to leave. “You mean I have to carry all of this out myself? I wish I’d never gone anywhere with you!”
I sighed and rubbed my forehead. There was this piercing note that only my children could hit, this whine in their voices that drilled in right between my eyes and gave me a headache that made me question why I’d ever become a mother. “Just carry what you can, sweetie, and I’ll come help you finish it in two seconds. I just have to go talk to someone very quick.”
Before she could argue with me any further, I slammed the keys down onto the top of the dresser and hurried out of the room.
The bottom of my purse was dark and full of junk. I hadn’t had time to clean it out since leaving home. After a few minutes of digging, I managed to find the right ghost-calling charm and summoned the spirit of Sheriff Baumann.
Pulled away from the abandoned town that he usually haunted, the sheriff was only a shadow of his usual self, an incorporeal smudge in the darkened bathroom mirror. He looked around in a daze. “What’s going on? Who’s there?”
“Sheriff Theodore Baumann,” I said, enunciating each syllable of his name to jog his memory. “It’s Rosmerta McAddams. You promised to help me with my daughter, Rosamunde.”
His facial features gained definition and his characteristic lopsided smirk materialized. “Call me Ted. Ah, yes, I remember.” His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Your Rosa’s been poking her nose where she shouldn’t.”
“Yes, Sheriff Ted.” I held up the envelope sealed by Angelica. “She came here today. I need you to deliver a note to her as a warning.”
It took a lot of energy for a ghost to be able to manipulate a solid object. The sheriff had to concentrate in order to reach out of the mirror toward me. I’d already lit incense to help him, and the fragrant smoke curled around his hand. I was careful not to let him touch my skin as he took the envelope from me—it was too dangerous to let a spirit leech magic from me directly, yet he always tried.
When the sheriff had the envelope in hand, it seemed to turn into a smoky shadow, and he drew it back through the mirror. He looked back up at me. “Where do you want me to take it?”
I described my estranged husband’s new house in detail and made sure to repeat Rosa’s name so he could find her directly if he got lost on the way. When she was little, I used to take her on my trips to visit the ghosts, and he should remember her from back then.
“One more thing.” I stopped him before he could go. “Pick up a bunch of roses on the way. I want her to know exactly who this came from.”
The sheriff wavered. “Why am I helping you?”
I clenched my jaw. “If you don’t, Rosamunde could unravel all of the Unseelie’s plans. Remember what you died for.”
His face darkened in anger. “What I died for. That upstart count. Your daughter is working for him?”
“Not directly, but she has already tried to warn him about us.” I gestured for him to go while his purpose was still fresh in his mind. “I release you now.”
3
A Warning
Rosamunde
Kai drove me back to my house. The new place that I shared with Dad was much smaller than our old home, a rental with only two bedrooms and a single bathroom for both of us. When I found Akasha, she would have to share my room, but I would worry about making space once she was safe. The nice thing was the location was only walking distance to downtown Madrone. Now that we only had one car that Dad needed to get to work, I could fly my broom to and from school. But bringing home groceries on a broom was an extra challenge, so when I did the shopping, I walked.
Neither of us talked about the possibility of moving back into our old house. Although technically the property was in Mom’s name, Dad still had legal claim to it through their marriage, since no one could track down Mom to serve her divorce papers. Now it stood empty and alone in the woods. We went back once to get more of our stuff, and the whole place just felt creepy with the burned remnants of the garden, and Mom and Akasha missing.
The rental was near one end of a one-lane road along the river. The road formed a big loop that connected with the main road, so we had to drive one way to enter from one side and exit from the other. My house was near the end, so getting out was quick, but driving to the house was long and bumpy on an unevenly paved road. Muddy snow collected along the blacktop, hiding the potholes, but Kai’s big pick-up truck trudged along under twenty miles per hour and finally rolled into the gravel driveway.
I’d been going over the encounter in my head. Now I had to admit that the fault was mine. “I screwed up in Cave City,” I said with a sigh. “I should have guessed that the shop owner would know who I was. It’s going to be hard to get any info if everyone knows I’m the one who turned in my mom.”
Kai reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “It’s not your fault. You had to turn her in. She was too powerful to deal with on your own.”
“A lot of good it did.” I gestured at the empty house. “They were supposed to protect us, but Mom took Akasha. They promised to find her, but it’s been months and they have nothing.” I shook my head. “If only there was some way I could get the Unseelie to trust me.”
Kai stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Maybe I could have gone by myself, like an undercover reporter. Do you think she’d recognize me if I went back as a human?”
“Yeah, they probably know who all of my friends are, too.” I grabbed the handle and pushed open the front door. “Do you wanna come in? Dad
won’t be home for at least an hour.”
“Sure.”
Kai carried my bag and his. I pulled my broom out of the back and leaned it against the front door of the house. I unlocked the door and flicked the light on.
An envelope sat in the middle of the kitchen table. Thinking Dad could have left me a note, I flipped it over.
It felt heavy in my hand. The envelope was sealed with wax. I took a closer look at the imprint. I recognized the spiraling vine of thorns: the symbol of the Unseelie.
My head snapped up. The letter had to have been put there by someone. “Is there someone else in the house?”
Kai looked at the envelope over my shoulder, then around the room. His ears swiveled back and forth. “I don’t hear anything.” He sniffed the air. “Something smells like—”
“Roses.” I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. A huge bouquet of red roses sat on the coffee table.
I checked the front door. “This one’s locked. The other one was locked, too. How did they get in?”
“Check the windows.” Kai went to the ones in the kitchen.
I tugged on the windows in the living room, but they were still latched from the inside.
I hurried down the hallway to the bedrooms and ran through both in a panic. Nothing else was touched.
I burst back into the hallway and almost ran into Kai.
He wrapped his arms around me and rubbed my back. “No one’s here. Is anything missing?”
I realized that I was shaking and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Not that I saw. But I don’t know how they got in here. Everything is still locked up like when I left for school this morning.”
He looked back over his shoulder. “Could your dad have found them and brought them in after that?”
I shook my head. “Dad left the same time that I did. And why would he just bring them in and leave them here without saying anything? They’re obviously a threat.”
“Should we call someone?”
“Like who, the police?” I laughed weakly. “If someone was powerful enough to get in and leave those things here without disturbing the locks or the windows, then they didn’t leave behind any kind of physical trace.”
“What about a magical trace?” Kai led me back to the kitchen and pulled out a chair. “The faeriekin could take a look. Ashleigh, or someone with more experience.”
I sat down and looked at the envelope lying in front of me. The calm of certainty settled over me. “No, the best counter for a witch is another witch. I’ll check it out myself.”
I picked up the envelope again and slid my nails under the seal to remove it without breaking the symbol. The paper felt smooth, and the wax peeled away from it easily.
Inside, I found a photograph. I pulled it out and saw myself leaning against the counter in Black Forrest Dreams. The picture was taken from inside the store, from an angle above my head and across the room. There was a timestamp in the upper right corner, like security footage.
I turned it over and saw writing, printed in block letters. “Don’t go poking around in things that you don’t understand.”
Kai read it over my shoulder and put his arms around me. “She’s threatening you? That’s just lovely.”
I shuddered. “But she must be close by, if she’s watching me. And it means that we’ve actually got a real lead now.”
I dropped the picture on the table and pulled away from Kai. The things that I needed for the spell were close at hand in the kitchen: a bowl that I filled with water at the sink, a container of salt, and my knife.
I put the other things on the table and went into the living room with the shears. I cut the head off of one of the roses and brought it back with me.
First I poured a circle of salt around the edge of the table, shielding it from magic. I pushed the photograph into the water, down to the bottom. Then, standing over the bowl, I held the rose in my hand and concentrated. The rose burst into flame in the palm of my hand and in only moments, it was completely consumed, but I never even felt the heat. I crumbled the ashes and sprinkled them onto the surface of the water. I swirled the water with my right hand in deosil, clockwise, and focused my thoughts on finding where my surprise “gift” had come from.
I felt the magic rising to answer me. The ashes of the rose spun a final time and came to rest in the center of the bowl. They formed a five-pointed star. In the middle of the star, I could just make out small letters, an “S” and an “R” and— My head snapped up with a gasp. “It says ‘sheriff.’” I looked around the room a second time, peering into the corners and up on the ceiling, but I still saw no trace of the intruder. “That’s how he got in so easily. These were left by a ghost.”
Kai froze and sniffed the air again. “He must be long gone. I would smell it if a ghost were still here. But how do you know?”
I pointed at the bowl. “It’s his tin star. Sheriff Baumann of the ghost town—Byrnes Camp, one of the abandoned mining towns. Mom used to take me there, she introduced me to some of the residents.” I grabbed his arm, frightened. “I haven’t been back there since—since Heather and I found the Unseelie mark there.”
Kai pulled out a chair and eased me into it. “Whoa, slow down. You found signs of the Unseelie near here?”
I nodded. I let my hand slip down his arm to take his hand, and he squeezed mine back reassuringly. “I didn’t think about it until now. It didn’t seem related at the time. We found it by accident, before I knew anything about my mother. I didn’t even know what it was, but Heather told me.”
Kai pulled out another chair with his free hand and sat down next to me. “How does Heather know about the Unseelie?”
I shrugged. “From her parents, I guess. If anyone would want help from the Unseelie, it would be vampires, right?”
Under current Seelie law, vampires were forbidden from drinking human blood. To live in an area, they had to be registered with the government and demonstrate that they could get their nourishment from legally approved sources. Heather’s parents owned a cattle ranch, and as far as I knew, they had never caused any problems in our area. But I also knew from Heather that they moved around a lot, and their whole family felt the sting of prejudice, including Heather, who was still only human.
The Seelie protected humans, because they believed humans and the other magical races could live better through cooperation. They let human governments rule and the Seelie Court only dealt with the magikin population, acting as a diplomatic embassy between humans and magikin. But the Unseelie believed that magikin should rule over the humans. If they gained power again, I guessed they might let vampires hunt humans freely.
Kai’s mouth gaped open. “If Heather’s parents had any kind of ties to the Unseelie, the Count would never have let them move here. Have you asked her about it?”
“No, I—I didn’t really get the chance. Things happened that night, and I kind of forgot about it.”
I turned my face away to hide my embarrassment. That had been only one of the times that I’d tried to improvise beyond my knowledge of witchcraft and had my spell backfire in a bad way. I took a deep breath. “All she said was there are still a few small groups of Unseelie hiding out here, and they like to use abandoned places like the ghost town to meet and pass messages. That could be where my mom is getting help.”
He leaned closer and took my chin in his hand, turning my face back to him. “Hey,” he said, smiling at me with his kind, dark eyes. “You can’t keep taking this out on yourself so much. This isn’t just your fight.”
I rolled my eyes, but the corners of my mouth turned up a little in response. “I’m just worried. It’s been over two months now, and we haven’t gotten anywhere. Mom and Akasha are just—gone.”
He drew me in to him and kissed me softly. “Let me take your mind off of it for a while. You deserve a break.”
I let myself relax under his lips and kissed him back. He was right, I had to learn to let it go sometimes. Witchcraft was
taking over my life.
The next day at school, I was distracted all through math lessons and I barely paid attention in my favorite subject, English, until our teacher Julie announced the next Shakespeare play we were reading: Twelfth Night.
“Or What You Will,” she said with her little laugh. “As we read it, I want you to think about the way the story turns gender roles on their heads. For example, why do you think that Viola chooses to disguise herself as a man?”
Zil, a pookha girl who always insisted on wearing the boys’ school uniform and wouldn’t be caught dead in a skirt, raised her hand. “Because she has a lot more freedom than she would as a girl,” she said in a sarcastic tone.
“You can write an essay about what kinds of freedoms Viola gets from her disguise—and the ways that it restricts her,” Julie said with a nod. “Also, what does her disguise mean for the relationships in the play? After all, both a man and a woman end up confessing their love to Viola. Do you think Olivia and Orsino are attracted to her as a man, as a woman, or as something in between?”
Zil snorted. “I doubt that Shakespeare meant to write any gay subtext into his play. He lived a long time ago.”
One of the human boys, Robert, snickered. “That frilly collar he wore was totally gay.”
Julie gave him a stern look. “Robert Fallon, the word ‘gay’ is not an insult or a joke, and you may not use it that way in my class.”
I sat up straighter and opened my own mouth to protest.
“I just meant that it wasn’t accepted back then,” Zil said defensively.
Robert coughed. “Says the dyke.”
“Mr. Fallon,” Julie said more sharply. “Would you like to visit Dean Crowther’s office to explain your behavior?”
He sank lower in his chair. “No, ma’am. Sorry.”
Julie went on with the lesson as if nothing had happened, but I grinned proudly. School was the place where I was out as bisexual, the only one in our tiny class of thirteen. I was happy to hear my favorite teacher stand up to Robert that way.
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 28
