by Coralie Moss
“She took it off last night, Mom, after Mal and James left.” Thatcher nudged Kaz and Wes aside and crouched near Sallie’s head. He tore off a handful of paper towels, wiped her face first and then the floor, and bagged the mess without flinching or gagging. Going to his feet and hurrying to the kitchen trash, he said, “Please don’t let her die.”
I darted glances to Rowan and the others. “Is there even a chance of her dying from whatever this is?”
“Either she wears the collar to keep her glamour intact, or someone—most likely her parents—makes her wear it. It could be an ornament that assists with self-control, or it could function as a controlling element,” said Tanner.
“She made my bracelet.” Thatcher returned and sat, cross-legged, at Sallie’s head. “But she didn’t make the collar. She told me her parents made her wear it. She hates it. It’s real leather. And she doesn’t eat meat. She made our bracelets out of that vegan leather stuff.”
“I can stay and take care of Sallie.” Rowan spoke to Thatch. “Can you help me?”
He nodded, jaw muscles clenching, his gaze never leaving his cousin’s pale face.
We turned Thatcher’s room into a mini-medical ward. Rowan put in a call to a witch who specialized in working with the fluctuating hormones of magical teenagers. She added her suspicion that Sallie was going through a kind of withdrawal from whatever influence the collar provided. By the time the teen was tucked into Thatch’s bed, she was awake but groggy, with a death grip on my son’s arm and the occasional fingernail extending and sharpening into a pointed claw. When that happened, Thatch slid one of his fingers between the claw and his skin, much like one would do with a cat kneading a blanket with too much enthusiasm.
I backed out of the room, closed the door, and ticked off everyone’s whereabouts on my fingers as I returned to the first floor.
River, Rose, and Belle were with Peasgood and Hyslop at the Pearmains’. Malvyn was in Vancouver with Josiah and Garnet. James was ensconced at the Brodeur house with Leilani and Harper. Rowan, Sallie, and Thatcher were upstairs.
That left Tanner, Kaz, and Wes. And me. And Christoph, who was nowhere in sight.
“I want to go with you three,” I said. “I feel like there’s not much I can do here.” I patted my chest and spoke to Tanner. “I can keep wearing the pouch. Or leave it here or…”
He blanched a bit and shook his head. “Keep it on you. Hide it under your clothes. Please.”
“You could leave it with me.” Christoph’s sudden appearance unnerved me. I held tight to my T-shirt and the pouch with one hand. “I won’t leave the property, and if that pouch contains what I think it does, I would prefer my granddaughter be kept out of whatever is going on between you,” he glared at Tanner, “and this Apple Witch.”
Wow. This is what is was like to have an adult family member at your back. Literally. Christoph’s hand was on my shoulder, and his feathers pressed against the bared skin of my arm.
Tanner made to respond.
Kaz coughed into his fist. “I understand your hesitancy, Tanner, and though I can vouch for Christoph, I think it best the pouch stays with either you or Calliope or is placed somewhere secure.”
Slipping a couple fingers under the braided leather, I lifted the pouch and bounced it in my palm. The two halves were stitched together with crossing leather laces and polished to a high sheen. The cords were embedded in opposite corners. I’d spent a lot of time wondering about its contents.
Now that I knew seeds to the Apples of Immortality waited inside, the modest leather carrier seemed almost too simple a container for the weight of its great task.
“Thanks for the offer, Christoph. I’ve got an idea where I can stash this.” I repositioned the pouch under my T-shirt, glanced at Tanner, and tilted my head away toward the hall. He followed me toward my bedroom and grabbed my wrist.
“Calli,” he said, his voice cracking. He winced when the backs of his shoulders touched the wall. “Can we talk?”
I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to kiss. I really, really wanted to kiss. I wanted our kisses to wipe away our first mini-fight. Yet, after everything that had gone down in the past twelve hours, especially between him and Jessamyne, I didn’t think I could.
Tanner’s role in all of this was beginning to feel far bigger than I would ever know. Either that, or what we were all getting into was more far-reaching than I first believed.
My throat was dry as I tried to swallow.
“Sure,” I said, the words coming out more croaky than sultry.
“I want you to…” he said then stopped. He still wore Thatch’s cut-off sweatpants and almost too small T-shirt. His hair threatened to come unbound, his forearms and shins were raw in places, and his eyes broadcast confusion. Lust-tinged, desperate, confusion. “I need you to touch me, Calliope.”
“But your skin,” I said, pointing to the obvious. “It hasn’t healed.”
“What needs healing is inside me. I need you, and I need to be outdoors to start that process.”
“Then let’s go.” I tugged the hem of his T-shirt and gestured the way we’d come, thinking we’d go out the front door.
Tanner put up both hands for me to stop and looked over his shoulder. “Let me cloak us first.”
“How…”
But he put on finger to his lips then said, “I need to get something from your bedroom.”
He ducked away and came out with two purplish-green leaves in his hand.
“Tulsi?” I was confused. Tulsi was one of my favorite healing plants. I rotated small pots of herbs between my bedroom and front porch. Usually, I harvested the leaves for tea, not for whatever the druid had in mind.
Tanner placed both leaves in my open palm, cupped my hands in his, and whispered words over the surfaces. The warmth of his breath brought out the tulsi plant’s distinct clove and pepper scent. Straightening, he pinched one short stem, placed the leaf on my head, and did the same with the other, placing that one over his head.
The little leaf turned up its nose at settling on Tanner’s hair.
“It’s floating,” I said.
He nodded. “I spelled it to cloak us, but tulsi leaves are too tiny to last very long.”
“Cloak, as in no one will be able to see us?”
He nodded again, touched my elbow lightly, and led the way down the hall, out the front door, and down the steps. At the bottom, he turned right instead of toward the heavily trafficked left side of the house and yard.
We stepped into the shadow cast by the long slope of my A-frame’s roof. The grass here wasn’t as dry and crunchy as the patches receiving the full brunt of summer’s sun. At any given point, only three to five feet separated the foundation from the woods, and one branch of an old Arbutus tree looked like it was ready to kiss my bedroom’s window.
“Calliope, I need to be naked for this.” Tanner peeled off the ratty T-shirt, his pectorals and abdominals flexing as he lifted, turned, and dropped the shirt to the ground. He slid his thumbs into the waistband of the sweats and folded forward as he drew the cloth over his buttocks and down his legs, wincing twice.
Tanner Marechal stood before me, all six-feet-something of him naked. I followed his lead, partially, tugged my cargo pants over my hips, and left them beside the sweatpants. I wasn’t going to read his tumescence as anything other than a male thing.
“Now what?” I asked. My tulsi leaf floated in front of my eyes, in that swoopy way leaves do when there’s very light breeze. The leaf that had floated above Tanner’s head was tangled behind one ear. I pulled it away and let it go.
“I lie down.” He went to his hands and knees, patting the grass and ground for rocks. Everywhere his hands landed, the grass went a little greener, a little fuller, until he had prepared an area roughly seven feet long, from the edge of the house to the edge of the trees.
“You made yourself a bed,” I said, marveling at the way the earth responded.
“I made this for us, Calli.” Tann
er stretched out on his back and invited me to lie beside him. I didn’t hesitate. Every time I exhaled, more of my weight settled against him. I used each breath to ease more of the nerves fluttering along my limbs.
Tanner touched the arm I draped across his chest. He closed his eyes as he stroked me from my shoulder, to my ribs, waist, and hip.
“I’m sorry, Calliope,” he whispered. “I’m sorry she followed me here. I’m sorry she’s harassing you.” He shuddered. “I’m sorry I gave in.”
My eyes closed. I stretched my arm until my fingertips touched base with the foundation of my house. If Tanner felt the need to speak, I was there to listen, and as words tumbled from his mouth, I opened the front of my chest and sank my awareness deeper and deeper into his body.
I didn’t know intimacy could be like this, skin cells parting to make way for bones singing to bones. While Tanner spoke of his guilt and everything he was running away from, my skin, bones, and blood invited him to find a home inside me.
My usually overactive brain hung out on the sidelines, kicking back on a lawn chair and sipping lemonade, a straw hat pulled over its face. I nestled my nose into Tanner’s armpit. His pulse beat against my cheek while his voice created rock slides of my remaining resistance.
And his. I knew the moment he dropped more of his guard. He stopped talking and took more of me in. The stone at my fingertips warmed in reaction to our progress and shifted. A chunk of the plaster overlay fell off, revealing the perfect hiding spot for the pouch.
Druids welcome.
I swiped at an ant crawling across Tanner’s collar bones and came up on my elbow. Slipping the dual cords over my head, I stuffed the pouch into the crack and wedged the fallen bit of plaster over the opening. Pressing my palm over the area, I asked the house to keep my secret safe.
The stone shifted.
Tanner’s embrace tightened in response to my movements. Fanning his fingers over the dip in my waist, he whispered, “You okay?”
“I’m okay. Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m better. Thank you for listening.” He started to shift. I slid my knee up his thigh and pressed down to stop him getting up. I wanted to see his eyes.
They glowed, a deep amber hue. We weren’t anywhere near direct sunlight, yet flecks of gold danced along the planes of his face and through the grass around his head.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
Tanner stared hard into my eyes, his gaze flicking from one eye to the other and back. “Oh, you mean the special effects?”
I giggled, “Yeah, we can call the golden sparkles ‘special effects,’ sure.”
“They show up when I feel light, feel the light,” he said, not a trace of irony in his voice. “We all have access to the elements, Calli. When I’m in balance, I can manipulate those elements.”
“Like what you did with the rocks and using them to smash Meribah?”
He nodded. “Yes. I used her momentum and my connection to you to work with the rocks and get them to do what I wanted.”
“Can you manipulate people in the same way?”
“Only under extreme circumstances would I do that,” he said. “Say, if my life—or the life of someone I care about—was threatened.”
I let that sink in then poked at his words. “Are you saying that you care about me, Tanner Didier Marechal?”
“I’m saying, yes, I care about you, Calliope Jones, and one of these days you’re going to tell me your middle name.”
I giggled and lowered my face to his chest. “First I have figure out what it is.”
Chapter 6
Between Tanner and myself, I was dressed and on the front porch first, watching the trio of men surrounding the crabapple tree, deep in a discussion about something likely portal-related. They did not appear to have noticed our extended absence.
“Wes, Kaz, you two ready?” I yelled, waving my arm and gesturing toward the line-up of cars. The day was marching on, and the latest text from River included no news on Cliff and Abi.
“Two minutes.”
I toed off my boots and tiptoed up to the second floor landing. Thatch’s bedroom door was ajar. He was reading on his phone. Sallie was next to him, asleep on top of the covers, and Rowan was curled into the orange-and-white-striped bean bag chair, her hands tucked under her cheek. I blew a kiss into the room and made my way downstairs.
At the last step, I was overcome with uncertainty. Maybe I should be staying at home, getting one-on-one time with my grandfather, possibly with Rowan. Or maybe the universe would smile on me more kindly if I headed into my office and caught up with Kerry on the status of our ongoing investigations, complaints, and certifications.
None of those options got me any closer to finding Abi and Cliff, and I wanted to meet my first necromancer. Lucky for me, someone had remembered to plug in my car. The battery was full.
The three druids piled into Kaz’s sedan. Before starting my car, I dialed Kerry, put her on speaker phone, and made my apologies.
“If I wasn’t driving right now, I would be on my knees,” I joked.
“Calliope, I am all for us taking days off in the summer. Rainy season will be here in another month,” she said. “Besides, you know if anything really important was happening, I would call.”
“I know you would, but I feel badly for not even leaving you a message.”
“You can make it up to me by giving me a day off next week.”
I laughed. “You got it. Hopefully it won’t coincide with me forgetting to come in.”
Hanging up, I felt the tiniest bit lighter.
Spotting Kaz’s car ahead of me, I followed him the rest of the way and tucked my little two-door nose-in near the Pearmains’ fence. I turned off the engine, swiped my hands on my thighs, and checked my face in the make-up mirror.
My eyebrows were overdue for shaping. And the look in my eyes reminded me I had a whole lot more than the Blood Ceremony to process. Let me find Abi, I promised my reflection. Then I’ll take time off.
* * *
We exited our cars and made our way through the gate and around the bend. I stumbled at the sight of the empty rocking chairs lined up to either side of the door before I noticed the bright pink Volkswagen parked next to River’s nondescript sedan. The urge to proceed barefoot, my wands at the ready, was overpowering.
I tugged the intertwined pieces of wood from a thigh pocket and brought them up for inspection. The old wand was cracked and a bit stubby compared to the new one, which had been donated by the crabapple tree adjacent to my garden—the same crabapple now known to house portals. The fresher piece of wood was slowly and surely incorporating the older wand into its embrace. Protruding branchlets had created a live, organic filigree running the entire length of both.
Tanner cleared his throat behind me.
“Witches first,” he said, waving me up the stairs.
“You go on. I need to take a reading.” I finished removing my boots and let the dust settle under and around my feet. The ground below responded to my inquiry with a nervous flutter.
Witches welcome. Druids walk. Hidden folk return.
From a far-off section of the property came a wave of melancholy, and from a different quadrant, a sensation of…
I probed deeper, waited, held out a metaphorical hand to steady and support.
One who talks with the dead.
Blank space. Shrouded—or perhaps cloaked?—in a thick mist the color of newborn clouds rising from fir trees.
I focused on the task ahead and made my way up the steps and into the farmhouse. Tanner and the others were inside. The murmur of their voices rose and fell, circling through the rooms and toward the yard in back.
Hand on the knob of the screen door, I paused and looked behind me. The paint on the Volkswagen had to be a custom job, draping the curves of the vehicle like shimmery fondant on a wedding cake. I had never seen the car before, and the cheery, optimistic color evoked an immediate invitation to play.
; Instead of taking up the offer, I pivoted to face the darkness of the long hall and the silhouettes of Belle and Rose bustling between patches of shadow and light.
“They’re out back,” said Belle, lifting the lid off a wide-bottomed pot hunkered on a burner of the old propane stove. An intensely herbal smell permeated the small room. Rose gave me a curt nod and disappeared behind the refrigerator door.
Folding chaise lounges, stacked with extra pillows, had been set up for Peasgood and Hyslop.
“They intercepted us at the ferry,” Hyslop was saying. He rubbed at his forehead then glanced at his brother. “We were expecting Gramps, but Pea got a text saying one of their workers would pick us up. The guy had one of those hand-lettered signs and everything.”
Hyslop wore his hair close-shaved at the sides and back and let the top section flop over his eyes. Peasgood’s hair was twisted into a man bun I knew Harper would envy.
“He frikkin’ wore overalls,” Peasgood said. Anger rose in both their faces. “But the second we got to their car, we knew something was up.”
His brother picked up the story. “They had it planned out,” he said, his arm movements growing more animated. “They parked on one of those little side streets up the road from where the ferry docks, wedged their SUV right into the bushes, so when we got close, the driver—the woman—popped out. They had us by the neck one moment, bagged and face down the next.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Ten years of druidic training and we were completely overpowered.”
“And it wasn’t so much a physical overpowering as a…a…” Peasgood looked to his brother for help. “Hy, how would you explain it?”
“One, we didn’t think to put up our defenses when we got off the boat. Never even occurred to us we could be walking into a trap. And two, the second the guy’s hand was on my neck, I felt collared. My free will was gone.” He lifted his chin and leaned forward. “Can you see if anything’s there, any marks?”
“Puppeteer,” said Wes. “It’s the Puppeteer Lock. Calliope, come here. You should see this. I didn’t think of it when Sallie collapsed. I’ll call Rowan and have her look at the girl’s neck.” He kneeled next to the chaise and swiped the flashlight on his cellphone. “See these residual pinpricks? That’s how the collar attaches. Goes right into the skin, releases a spell-laced liquid, and you do what you’re told.”
