by E L Wilder
“She was a shameless cheat,” said Hazel, smiling.
“That she picked up on her own,” Cass said, rolling her eyes. Hazel chuckled and Cass joined her. “I never minded. I was in it for the company, not the victory. But your Gammy—she was always the showboat. Now why are you here, dear? I’m assuming you didn’t come to watch an old woman while away her hours.”
“The Postern. It’s been destroyed. Oddlump and his group pulled down every stone.”
Cass looked up, her eyebrows arched. “That is most unfortunate. The Council will need to address it.”
“The Council!” she blurted. “Circe tried to have me arrested.”
Cass turned over a card, revealing a seven of clubs that she moved to another row. “Tried?”
“I got agitated and when that happens . . . sometimes I cast without meaning to.”
Cass continued to turn over cards and reassign them to different rows. “You are a very curious individual, Hazel. Just like every Bennett woman before you. I’ve never known another witch to cast without the aid of a wand, never mind a whole clan of them.”
“I ran,” Hazel said.
“I know,” said Cass without looking up from her game.
Hazel looked around the room frantically, half expecting somebody to enter with a pair of handcuffs.
“Settle down,” said Cass. “Nobody knows you’re here. I just have a way of finding things out.” She flipped over another card from the draw pile. “It was a dirty trick Circe pulled—calling an impromptu meeting like that. She has half that council in her pocket, and unfortunately half is all she needs for a quorum.
Hazel relaxed a smidge but hardly felt settled. Even if Cass was trustworthy, Hazel didn’t know the extent of the Council’s reach. Could they track her? Surely Oddlump would inform on her if given the chance, adding another assault to the growing list of charges Circe was no doubt putting together.
“How goes your investigation?” Cass asked as if there were nothing the matter at all. “To be clear, I’m asking as a concerned citizen harboring a fugitive—not a member of the Council harboring a fugitive.” She flipped over a card, revealing the Ace of Diamonds, smiled and moved it into one of the foundations.
“It’s not my investigation anymore,” said Hazel.
“No?”
Hazel stuttered, flustered at the question. Cass had acknowledged that she was on the lam, why would she ask about the investigation. “Do you see a badge?”
“You solved a murder on Bennett Farms. Did you have a badge then?”
“Well, no.”
“And did you have a badge when you went to Quark to investigate Silas’s death?”
“No . . .”
“Why did you go?”
“Because Clancy asked me to, and I wanted to help.”
“What has changed, dear?”
“Everything!” Hazel broke open like a bursting dam. She poured out all the details, from the moment the dragonfly messenger had brought Clancy news of Silas’s death, to the discovery of the lesions, to her misadventures in the Silverwell library. “And I haven’t done a lick of farm chores in two days—I can only imagine what everyone has had to do to pick up my slack. And after all that I’m still no closer to solving this murder.”
Cass flipped over another card and considered her game, before frowning. “Huh. Snookered.” She swept the cards together and with almost supernatural grace, shuffled them like a cardsharp, twisting and flipping packets of cards in ways that seemed impossible for her wrinkled and liver-spotted hands. “Perhaps you already have everything you need to solve this. You just haven’t dealt the cards in the right order. Can I help?”
“Please.”
Cass slapped the cards in front of Hazel. “Cut the deck.”
“Oh,” said Hazel. “I’m not much for cards.”
“You’re lost,” she said. “Let the cards guide you.”
“Oh . . . I . . . what?”
“A reading, my dear,” she said. “I’m an oracle. You said you needed guidance. Haven’t you ever had your cards read?”
Hazel laughed nervously. “Only by county-fair charlatans—and never with a deck of playing cards.”
Cass shrugged. “Every carpenter has their own tools. Now shuffle the deck.”
“Doesn’t a tarot deck have more cards than a deck of playing cards?”
“About twenty more,” Cass replied matter-of-factly. “But tarot has never done anything for me. Now give me a pack of Bicycles and I can tell you your future. Though if we wait any longer, your future will have come and gone.”
“Right.” Hazel complied, clumsily shuffling and pulling off a gory riffle shuffle in which she only sent a few cards flying. Cass smiled politely through the ordeal, finally saying, “That’s good enough, dear. You’re trying to shuffle them, not accelerate the erosion process.”
Hazel placed the deck on the table, and Cass scooped them up, dealing them the tableau for a game of Solitaire. When she had finished, she set the remainder of the deck in the draw-pile position and looked expectantly across the table at Hazel.
“Now what?” asked Hazel.
“You play.”
Hazel started, moving the cards from place to place. She had never felt more nervous about a game of Solitaire in her life. Like playing Solitaire with somebody standing over your shoulder wasn’t bad enough, she was certain she would make a move that would unveil her soul in all its tarnished glory. That the reason she had been stripped of her position as a Wand of the Council was because she was not worthy of the title. That Circe may have been a heartless hag, but she was a heartless hag that had been right about her all along.
But her fears about her playing prowess had been unfounded. As the game unfolded, she was sure she had never played a better game of Solitaire in her life.
Cass sat quietly, only occasionally nodding or giving a silent mmhmm as Hazel moved the cards about building her rows and foundation stacks, inching ever closer to victory. Her confidence grew and she started to delight in the play, her concerns about everything that was happening melting away as she fell into a warm meditation.
And at the last moment, the game seemed to fall apart. All because one suit eluded. The Hearts. Her tableau was littered with Hearts, all in the wrong order, all of them sabotaging each other—and her.
“Interesting,” said Cass.
“What does that mean?”
“That you’re a decent Solitaire player,” she said. “And that you’re horrible at relationships.”
“Excuse you?”
“Your Ace of Hearts is buried.” She pointed to the card in question, trapped beneath a stack of other cards. “The Ace of Hearts represents love—the communion between two souls. Your efforts are blocked because the communion is buried too deep to access.”
Hazel glowered. Was Cass implying that all her misfires—Clancy, Cordelia, Charlie, Tyler, her mom, Harper—all of them were her fault? “This is stupid. I don’t have time to sit around and play cards. I need to find a way home.”
“Giving love is not the same as giving ourselves. A sick relationship requires us to give something away—to divide ourselves. But a true relationship—true love—lets us remain whole.”
“Together but separate,” Hazel whispered to herself.
“See, here’s your problem.” She tapped the Queen of Hearts. “She’s blocking the whole thing. If you could find a way to move her, it would all come together.”
Hazel inspected the board, but there were no moves remaining. “So it’s hopeless.” She sighed.
“Maybe.” Cass smiled. “You do have one move left.” She pointed to a single card remaining in the draw pile. Somehow Hazel had failed to notice it. She reached for it, but then hesitated.
“Go on,” said Cass. “This will be the most important card in your reading. The fate card.” Hazel flipped it over, revealing the King of Hearts.
“The Suicide King,” Cass said with hushed reverence. “Called such because h
e’s put a sword through his own head. This card represents self-sacrifice, whether metaphorical or literal. In order to find closure, somebody must put the greater good of others over the greater good of self.”
“But I still don’t know what has caused all these lesions or how to fix them,” said Hazel. “Or who this werespider is.”
“A reading is sometimes most powerful because it tells us the things we already know to be true, Hazel Bennett. Whether or not we are willing to accept them is something else entirely.”
She struggled to hold back her tears. Hazel Bennett did not cry in front of people unless she was doing some damn fine scene work. Instead, she opted to look out the double doors and onto the green just beyond the grounds of Harmony House. Something—or rather someone—that she saw there gave her pause.
“Hazel, dear . . . are you listening?”
“It can’t be,” said Hazel. But she would have recognized that curvaceous figure and wild mane of hair anywhere. Hazel bolted up from her seat so fast she upended the card table, but she couldn’t be bothered to pick it up. She rushed to the double doors.
The woman had almost reached the other side of the green before Hazel caught up with her. Hazel shouted, but the woman didn’t turn around. Had she been mistaken? But no. Those tight black curls. She grabbed the woman by the shoulder and wheeled her about.
As she had suspected, it was Charlie, from her dimpled chin up to her perfectly tweezed eyebrows. But the eyes. They were dull, lackluster, and Hazel saw no recognition.
“Charlie?”
The woman looked at her, confused, scared.
“Oh no, no, no,” Hazel stammered, still grabbing Charlie by the shoulders, as if afraid to let her go. “Charlie, it’s me, Hazel.”
“Hi,” Charlie said flatly. “Do I know you?”
Hazel’s stomach sank. Charlie had been riven.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Hazel pushed riven-Charlie through the double doors and into the Harmony House sunroom. Cass still sat calmly in her chair, watching the proceedings with bemused interest.
“A friend of yours?” she asked.
“Not just a friend, my best friend,” said Hazel. “She’s been riven, Cass.”
Cass peered over the top of her spectacles. “Are you certain?”
“One hundred percent. I know my Charlie. She must be in danger.”
“How can you be certain?” said Cass. “Perhaps she had a chance encounter with a lesion on the farm. They seem to be growing in spades these days.”
It was possible, Hazel supposed. Charlie had been touring the farm extensively in the last few days with her Nancy. “Oh my god,” she gasped.
Cass looked on patiently, saying nothing.
Hazel suddenly saw everything clearly laid out before her. How had she not put it together before? Nancy had appeared on the farm around the same time that Silas’s riven half had been mauled by a wild animal. And, dressed like a black widow, she had spent the last few days exploring every barn and hay bale between the lake and Old Farm Road. Hazel thought of the smudge of red lipstick she’d found on the corner of the library book.
Nancy.
And the name. Nancy. Like Anansi. Those spider stories that her Gammy had read to Hazel when she was just a kid.
“How does one remove a werecurse, Cass?”
“Werecurses are tricky things. There are no werespider curses or werewolf curses. The beast is already contained within the person. The curse merely lets it out. Curing a riven requires unifying both halves.”
“How do I do that?”
“First you have to be certain that you have the right person. You need to make the beast within show itself. All werecreatures have an allergen, a substance that is so abhorrent to its animal nature that it will force the beast to retreat, if only temporarily. With werewolves, it’s wolfsbane. I once heard a story of a weremosquito that was done in by a citronella candle.
“So I just go around spraying everyone with an allergen?”
“It helps to have a good idea first, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t even have a hunch.”
“Perhaps you need to find your King of Hearts. I’ll keep your friend safe. And if anyone asks, I never saw you.”
* * *
The Carriage House looked no different from its Bennett Farms version. A single-level, horseshoe-shaped building with dark slate roofs. But here it was more than a relic of a bygone era. Through the courtyard archway, Hazel could see a young woman leading a horse by its reins.
As she stepped inside, she heard horses whinnying and snorting. She hurried to the back of the barn, the place where she had battled Ronnie. The architecture wasn’t a complete mirror, and where she expected to find a storage room, she found instead an open space where stood a black lacquered carriage embossed with the Silverwell Academy logo.
As she neared the carriage, she felt something in the air like static electricity. Her skin rippled with goosebumps and the hairs on her arm stood on end. A lesion was near. She quickly cast her detect magic spell without bothering to scrape any dust from the floor. Clancy was right, she was getting better at that.
A pink light emanated from the carriage windows. She opened the door. A jagged, rippling tear floated in the center of the carriage. If she harbored any lingering doubt as to what had caused these lesions, the discovery of another one here put them to rest.
Hazel climbed inside, closing the door behind her and slipping onto the black velvet seats, careful not to touch the lesion. She set her satchel on the seat next to her and pulled down the curtains to make it dark.
She eyed the lesion warily and caught flickers of movement through the portal. The longer she stared, the clearer the image became. She could see the storage room in the Bennett Farms Carriage House. So close to home, but so far away, she thought.
Hazel leaned a little closer. An intense pressure pushed against her eardrums.
“Clancy!” she shouted into the lesion. Her voice sounded distorted—like yelling into a spinning fan.
Maybe he wasn’t home. She needed him to be there, she needed him to hear her. She leaned in closer, too close, and her nose brushed the lesion. An instant wave of nausea swept over her and she had to lean back in the seat and concentrate to keep herself from getting sick.
When the feeling had passed, she tried again. “Clancy!”
Still no reply. Screaming was clearly not going to work. She had to try something else.
She thought back to her training sessions and their games of astral hide-and-seek. Perhaps this was no different, though she had no idea if she could project through a lesion, or what the consequences would be if she did.
But there was no time to consider that now.
If her magic had resulted in these lesions, then maybe her magic was strong enough to navigate one.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Hints of old leather and stale hay drifted through the portal. She put her hands out in front of her and focused her energy there until her palms started to tingle.
She exhaled with a single image in mind: her Suicide King. She breathed in. Together but separate. Hazel exhaled forcefully, expelling all the air in her lungs. Her consciousness followed, tumbling through the lesion.
Suddenly, she was moving through the Bennett Farms Carriage House like a kite caught in a violent windstorm. Her passage was not completely ethereal. She crashed into boxes, sending them flying, like an angry spirit on a rampage.
She found Clancy—or rather Clancy found her—when he bolted out from the shadows, back bristling, tail flicking, and ears pressed against his head. She focused on his double set of ears, imagining it as a landing strip, and hurled herself at him.
She crashed into him hard enough to send him flying backward and momentarily knocked both of them out of their senses. Then she had the distinct sensation of having ears and a tail—no tails. A familiar container indeed.
A thought rippled into her head. Hazel?!
“Clancy!
”
Clancy’s ears perked up. What are you doing? Where is your body?
“It’s at Silverwell Academy.”
Hazel, you did it—we bonded.
“We did?! I didn’t think it would work!”
How did you get to me?
“I projected through a lesion!
I told you to stay away from them!
“Too late. The Postern has been destroyed. Clancy, I’ve figured it out. I’ve identified the murderer, but I need your help. Charlie is in serious danger.”
Spit it out.
“Nancy. It’s Nancy, Charlie!”
Who?
“Charlie’s girlfriend!”
The girlfriend? Why?
“I don’t know why! But I’m pretty sure she’s led Charlie to a lesion on purpose, which means—”
She could be dining on the other half as we speak.
“We need to do something.”
I don’t see what. I’m not sure what you expect me to do. I’m not sure I can shriek my way through this one.
“We need somebody with thumbs and a little knowhow.”
Tyler?
“Not quite who I had in mind for this one.”
* * *
I don’t think this is a good idea.
“You said yourself—you don’t have thumbs,” Hazel said. “And so far Tyler has been deaf to your psychic messages, so we need to try for somebody else.”
The floor-to-ceiling windows of the Hearth stood wide open, inviting the cool lake breeze inside. Clancy bristled only slightly as he stepped into Bennett Manor.
What is that stench?
Hazel still marveled at Clancy’ heightened senses, and almost gagged at the intensity of the peppermint vibrating in the air like a cymbal crash. Was this what everybody else had felt like the last few days? She really needed to clean out her satchel.
Her mother was creeping around the edges of the room, attacking inset bookshelves and cupboards and corners, fanatically spritzing with her peppermint spray.
Clancy padded to the coffee table in the center of the room and hopped onto a fan of Smithsonians.
