The Sunken Tower

by J A Campbell

  “Are we going to look for your ring?” Elise asked.

  Melanie drew a long breath and considered her empty hand. “I’m not going to get into trouble for losing it?”

  Elise shook her head. “I can safely speak for Marcus in this matter. He’d want you safe.”

  “But I might well get into trouble if I go into a Mafia-owned jewelry store.” Melanie shook her head. “Much as I want that ring back, I’m not going to risk it.”

  “We could use these stones to trace to their last user,” Elise suggested, holding up the heavy bag full of half of Hagatha’s stones. Melanie had insisted on carrying her share.

  They hastened back to the hotel. Hagatha was up with a room service tray on the table. She grabbed the box of baked goods anyway and selected an éclair to eat. Her lavender eyes were wide as a child’s at Yule as she stared between the stones and the chocolate.

  Then she cast the spell on one of the smaller stones, a piece of black tourmaline, which she said was remarkably conducive to magic. Elise watched as the stone spun and then selected a direction.

  “That’s toward the submerged church, I’m guessing,” Hagatha said. The woman had no sense of direction unless she was facing where she was going. “You should be able to use it like a compass. Just set it down on the ground and give it the command I used.”

  “You’re not coming?” Elise asked.

  “I’m not going near water again unless it’s a shower until I hit the Y and learn how to swim. Divide and conquer. I’ll go into town and check out the address the girl gave to the rock shop. What could possibly go wrong there?”

  Hagatha was a woman on a mission. Armed with an address, maps, a burner phone, and hugs from both her kindred, she set out into the village on her own. The last time hadn’t gone so well, but she promised a) not to use any magic, and b) not to steal anything, and c) not to get into any trouble.

  To that end, she’d somewhat disguised herself, magicking her hair to the ash blonde shade she inherited from her mother and dressing in more conservative garments than the tie dye and leather she preferred. She almost looked like a member of normal society—at least, she hoped she’d pass on first glance.

  Truth was, more than anything, she wanted to go home to her tower of solitude and build a blanket fort and hide there. Maybe for eternity. But one thing she knew, she couldn’t sit in the hotel and kick herself for messing up. She had to get out there, even if out there was scary, and the last time she’d tried doing that, she’d ended up at the not-so-tender mercy of the Mob.

  She wasn’t going further back on the list of things gone wrong or she would return to the hotel room and stay there until Elise pried her out. Cousin Marcus and Elise were good at the JM stuff. They seemed to know intuitively what was right and how to fix wrongs.

  Hagatha wasn’t sure she knew which way was up most days.

  She actually found the house fairly quickly with the map Elise had provided. It was in an older neighborhood of the village, away from the ski chalet rentals and other tourist attractions.

  A coin-op laundry with big front windows perfect for spying sat diagonally across the street and currently looked unoccupied. Hagatha used their restroom and magicked up a bag of clothing, coins for the washer and dryer, and a book to read.

  Hagatha started her washing, then took a seat right next to the front window with a view of the house and her book. Periodically, she looked up to see if there was any activity from the house. No one had shoveled the walk outside since the recent snowstorms. Several different tracks in varying shoe types and sizes ranged across the yard.

  An Asian girl left the house and walked across the street. She entered the laundromat, carrying a bag of items perfumed with the unmistakable fragrance of salt water. She paused, staring at the machines.

  Hagatha rose from her chair and went to check on her own wash.

  “Can I help you?” Hagatha said after she’d rearranged the load in the washer so it wasn’t in balance and she’d have to get up again and talk to the girl.

  “How do I use this?” The girl pointed to the washer.

  Hagatha quickly explained, even offering up some of her magicked coin for the girl to do her laundry.

  “Looks like you’ve got several people in your house,” Hagatha commented, noting men’s and women’s clothing in several sizes that would fit people from Melanie’s height to nearly a giant’s physique.

  The girl nodded, her lips pressed firmly together. Hagatha opened the washer and started to load the clothes in, doing her best to draw things out. If she was not mistaken, this was the girl who’d sold her stolen rocks to the local rock shop. She clearly wasn’t as friendly as Darien had been with Elise. Pity, since the girl was pretty cute.

  “I’m here on vacation with family.” Hagatha decided to play Chatty American Tourist. “Are you from here?”

  The girl nodded as Hagatha inserted the coins.

  “It turns out, I don’t like to ski or kite surf,” Hagatha said. “Is there anything else to do around here?”

  The girl shrugged. “Shop?”

  Hagatha smiled. “Where do you shop?”

  “I don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “My family expects me to work for whatever I get.”

  “Mine too,” Hagatha lied. She’d inherited money from her mother, and she could draw on House Macrow funds simply because she was a member. Dr. Harmony S. Hendricks did consult periodically and publish in select journals to keep her rep as a neuro-psychologist solid. “What do you do?”

  “I take things they find and I sell them,” the girl said.

  “Like what?” Hagatha asked.

  “Like these.” The girl gestured to the clothing Hagatha was sorting for the machine. She suspected as much, but still her hands shook when she realized the items might well be…Damn…they were…

  Ghosts swirled out of the pile of salt-scented clothing, their lips moving, whispering stories of their last moments. Of going down, down. Hagatha caught the edge of the table to brace herself. Damn, she’d never wanted to live in the specter of death. Every ghost she’d encountered, save for Elise’s amiable cowboy assistant, Slade, made her uncomfortable. If pressed, she could summon spirits, but she’d rather do almost anything else—and the idea of raising the dead appalled her. She’d done her best to renounce her necromantic gifts and focus on other areas of magic, and had managed to do a pretty fine job of it for nearly thirteen years—until this. She took a deep breath and steadied herself.

  “Where did they find them?” Hagatha hoped her voice didn’t shake too much. Truth was, the girl didn’t seem too disturbed by Hagatha’s discomfort—like she didn’t even register it at all. Hagatha reached out with her senses, as best she could beyond the ghosts, and detected magic of some kind emanating from the girl herself. She wasn’t quite… Hagatha couldn’t put her finger on what bothered her, and that only made her more uncomfortable.

  “I don’t know.” The girl spread her hands, and then made a hurry-up gesture to Hagatha. “They want me to find someone to buy these… So my kindred and I can keep our house.”

  Hagatha started to ask more questions. Instead, she focused on the laundry and sorted it out into the appropriate colors for loads. Then she dropped it into washers across from hers and used her own magicked coins to pay for it.

  “There you go,” she said. “The washing will be done in about an hour. Then you have to dry it.”

  The girl made a face.

  Kids these days, Hagatha thought. I was doing the household laundry before I was twelve. Does this girl expect me to hold her hand or something?

  “Come back in two hours,” Hagatha said. “Your laundry will be done.”

  She thought the girl would protest or say she could do her own damn laundry. Instead, she walked out and headed across the street. Soon, she emerged with another bundle. Hagatha considered following the girl to see where she’d take these items. But, she, or someone else from the house, would certainly be back in two h
ours to collect the laundry.

  Meanwhile, she could watch the rest of the household. And, as soon as that washing was done, she could examine the garments at her leisure and see if they provided any clues about from whom and where the garments came.

  Nobody told her detective work would be this dull. She shook her head; considering what they’d been through, she ought not to be complaining. She picked up her book and commenced to read, spying on the house over the top of the page every few paragraphs.

  When her washer signaled time was up, she moved to shift the clothing to the dryer. The door opened, and a man walked in.

  Darien. She knew it without Elise ever having described him. He was darn near the spitting image of Elise’s crush in the Justiciariate Magus school, back when they were seventeen. He was tall, dark-skinned, curly-haired, with eyes warm as hot chocolate chip cookies, and had a smile that’d melt concrete.

  Damnit, the last boy even close to that good-looking hadn’t survived the semester, thanks to a jealous succubus. Hagatha lowered her book when he approached and smiled.

  “Are you the lady who helped my family with the laundry?”

  “If you mean a young Asian girl who brought in some clothes she was going to sell, I’m her.” Hagatha pretended to mark the place in her book and stood. “Her clothes are over here. The washer should be…”

  The washer signaled.

  “You have perfect timing,” Hagatha said. “I’m Hagatha. You want to help me move this clothing to the dryer?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course, and thank you.”

  Unlike the girl, he had manners. He was unsure, but Hagatha sensed the sincerity and smiled at him.

  “It’s not so important to sort by color for the dryer,” Hagatha said, noting he was moving the colored loads into separate machines. “If it’ll fit, you can dry them together. Fabrics don’t usually bleed in the dryer.”

  “Bleed?” His eyes widened.

  “The dyes that give them their colors can run.” Hagatha explained. “That’s why you wash red separate from white. Otherwise, you’ll get pink.”

  He nodded, his springy curls dancing just a little.

  Hagatha shoved coins into his dryer and set it working. Then she loaded up her own false wash and paid for it.

  “I’m Darien,” he said, smiling.

  “It’s a pleasure,” Hagatha told him. She couldn’t decide whether that doomed feeling she had abruptly acquired in her gut was due to him being so much like Elise’s old boyfriend and her old friend as well, or if it was just too many éclairs from the bakery.

  “So you’re from here?” She turned away from the dryer to face him.

  “My family’s lived here for centuries,” Darien said. “Are you from here?”

  Big slip, Hagatha thought. In a village this small and clannish, everyone knows everyone else. Or knows of them.

  “No,” Hagatha said. “I came here with my cousins, Elise and Melanie.”

  If she had any doubt he was that Darien, all of it washed away when he smiled at Elise’s name. She wasn’t the only one smitten.

  “I missed her at the bakery today,” he said.

  “She’s off on an errand,” Hagatha answered. “To the old church.”

  Did he pale beneath that gorgeous, tan skin? She couldn’t tell, but the room-brightening smile dropped from his mobile mouth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The church is a bad place,” he said. “Ill-omened. I warned her.”

  “Oh?” Hagatha faked ignorance. “What’s wrong with the historical site? Ghosts?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a portal. Bad things come out of it.”

  “I should call her and warn her.” Hagatha picked the burner phone out of her pocket and pretended to dial. He definitely wasn’t from around here. He didn’t seem to know anything about cell phones. “I’m sorry, I can’t reach her. If you want, as soon as the laundry’s done, I can take you back to the hotel where we’re staying.”

  Okay, she certainly was going to take him to the lobby and wait in the chairs there for Elise and Melanie to return like a proper lady. Melanie might have forgiven her for having sex with her ex-boyfriend in their shared room, but Elise might flame her if she brought him up to their room, even if her intention was strictly honorable. And the truth was, if Elise wasn’t interested in him, her intentions wouldn’t be.

  He fidgeted. “It’s a dangerous place.”

  “Should we go and stop them?” Hagatha asked. “I can leave the laundry.”

  Darien nodded. “Come with me.”

  She scarcely matched his stride as he hastened out of the laundromat. They headed toward the lake as fast as she could follow. Hagatha’s heart sped, wondering if Elise and Melanie had indeed made a mistake going to the church on their own.

  “Hey.” Her belly did a flip-flop at the sound of a familiar goon’s voice. He was the biggest of Don Giovanni Machiavelli’s men, and he stood beside a big black SUV right in front of them.

  “These are bad people.” Hagatha nearly suggested they run, until she realized the goon’s evil twin was right behind them. “You don’t want to mess with them.”

  “Go!” Darien gestured to an alleyway.

  Hagatha didn’t stop to consider what he asked her to do, she just ran.

  “Look!” Darien yelled. “She went around the corner. Follow me!”

  Hagatha braced, a magic bolt at the ready, but none of the three came down the alleyway after her. Darien must have led them off.

  Yeah, he was a good guy. She hoped to the Goddess he wasn’t a dead one.

  Where is Darien? Where is anyone from that house, for that matter?

  Hagatha waited when the dryer dinged on the laundry. When no one came in a few minutes, she gathered their clothes along with the miscellaneous stuff she’d magicked all up in the bag she’d made and took it across the street.

  “Hey,” she said when a red-haired freckled girl answered the door. “An Asian girl from this house left these in the laundry across the street. I thought I’d take them to her so they weren’t left unattended. Someone might steal them.”

  The girl smiled and accepted the bag and actually said thanks.

  “I’m Hagatha,” she offered. “I’m just here on vacation.”

  “I’m Cady,” the girl replied. “We’re local here. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea or something in thanks for your kindness to Jun?”

  Hagatha smiled. “I’m always up for a cup of tea.”

  The place looked worse than the house she’d shared with half a dozen people while going to Stanford. Various belongings were strewn everywhere, with no discernible order. She didn’t see furniture, either.

  But Cady led her into the kitchen and poured her a red plastic cup of tea from a pot already steeping. Hagatha smiled and inhaled the fragrance. It was more herbs and flowers than actual tea. She didn’t detect anything poisonous or magical, so she took a sip and smiled again.

  “Looks like a lot of you are living here,” she said.

  Cady nodded. “We moved away from…our parents…a bit ago.”

  “It’s hard,” Hagatha said. “But you have a lot more freedom that way.”

  “We’re still working for them,” Cady told her. “We are selling the things that they find.”

  “Yeah, Jun told me about the clothes,” Hagatha said, noting the girl lowering her eyes at the mention of them. “What else do they find?”

  “All manner of things,” a male voice answered. He was tall and raven-haired, with a bronze complexion only slightly fairer than Darien’s. If pressed to identify his nationality, she’d guess a mix of Hispanic and Native American. “They’re scavengers.”

  Hagatha bit back a sharp response and smiled at him.

  “This is Javier,” Cady said cheerfully. “He’s right, of course. Our family finds things from shipwrecks. We’ve been selling them to shops in the area so we can live out in the world.”

  “Sounds like risky busines
s for them.”

  The two exchanged a look.

  “They’re not very good people.” Cady lowered her eyes. “That’s why we’re moving out. They gave us the stuff to sell, but we’re looking for work, too.”

  “What can you guys do?” Hagatha asked.

  “We’re doing whatever people will pay us for.” That, from Javier. “Our families don’t care about us anymore, so we have to take care of ourselves.”

  Orphans. Hagatha’s heart grieved. Her adoptive Mom was killed when she was sixteen, and she’d had to create her own family fresh from kind strangers and her biological relatives. It was hard, and she still missed the connection to someone who’d raised her. She couldn’t imagine what being rejected felt like. When she got back to the hotel, she’d talk to Elise and Melanie about helping them.

  At that moment, the door opened and Darien arrived, breathless and grinning broadly.

  “Thank you,” Hagatha said to him. “I think you might have saved my life.”

  “If anyone told me a year ago that I would be using a rock as a bloody SatNav, I would have called them a daftie.”

  Melanie scowled at the black tourmaline plinth sitting on the dash between her and Elise. So far, the thing pointed them to the lake. That wasn’t a big surprise. They could have guessed the magic was happening at the sunken tower, but it never hurt to have verification.

  If they could find the lake, that is, and if she didn’t drive into it by accident. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. Snowflakes, tiny as raindrops and a whole lot drier, came down in a thick veil. The windscreen wipers weren’t keeping up. Worse, the winter tires on their tiny rented Fiat made a wa-wa-wa sound in time with the cadence of the wheels’s spin that was making her nearly half-mad.

  In her head, she composed a snowy blues song with the backup singers doing the wa-was in three-part harmony. The skid of those tires as they hit a patch of ice totally threw her out of the groove.