Wizard Hall Chronicles Box Set

by Sheryl Steines

  “Have a seat, Annie.” He stood, met her at the reception chairs, and sat beside her. “Milo told me about meeting Rathbone. I’ve cleared my schedule.” He took her hand. “You need to see Samantha. She’s—”

  “Angry, pissed, furious.” Annie finished.

  “Confused. Mostly worried.”

  “She blames me,” Annie said.

  Ryan shook his head. “No. She doesn’t. She feels about what Marina feels when she believes her son is in danger. Sami’s worried. Her mom and dad are back from the grave. It’s unsettling.”

  “No kidding,” Annie murmured.

  “Annie, don’t be so hard on her. In the last year, she’s visited you in a hospital on multiple occasions while you were seriously injured. She watched you fall apart from the stress of Amelie and the black market, and she waited for you to come back from the past. You’re all each other has.”

  Annie laughed. “Not all that I have. I have you, Kathy, Cham, friends. We just look at it differently.”

  “Go see her,” Ryan said.

  “I will tomorrow. I have to meet a contact at the Snake Head Letters at midnight. I’d like to take a nap before I go. Still working the market issue,” Annie said.

  “What time are we leaving tomorrow?” he asked.

  “10:00 a.m.”

  “Go home and call your sister,” Ryan said. Annie grimaced and left him alone to his work.

  Chapter 14

  Annie finally shut down her computer, packed her belongings, and headed down the stairs. She pushed out the doors and walked along the back corridor to the main passage to the employee entrance with her head down. She didn’t see who she bumped into until she looked up at Samantha.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” Samantha dug into her bag.

  “How’s Marina and Don?” Annie asked.

  “I feel safe, if that means anything.” Samantha sounded terse, bitter.

  Annie motioned for them to begin walking. Reluctantly, Samantha joined her.

  “I was going to come up tomorrow. I have a… thing tonight,” Annie tried to explain.

  “Suit yourself,” Samantha said as they exited the employee entrance. “Come, don’t come, whatever.” She turned to teleport.

  Annie grabbed her arm and held tightly. “Stop being mad at me because you think this is my fault. I didn’t ask for this. Just as much as you want me to fawn over you, I need you to let me finish this.” She released Samantha and teleported before her sister could respond.

  When she landed on her back porch, she nearly slipped and fell, her thoughts preoccupied with Samantha, her mom, her dad. She grabbed the handle of the door and held herself up.

  She couldn’t help but notice a partially hidden envelope behind a flowerpot. She summoned a latex glove and grabbed the letter, which was addressed to her.

  Annie carried the yellow envelope inside and opened it.

  The handwriting was familiar to her; she had seen it before but didn’t know where. She read the letter.

  Annie,

  You have been a busy, busy girl. As you stumble through your cases, it has become clear to all that you are incapable of investigating them and putting an end to evil. You messed up with the black market. You were unaware of how it changed and would be crashing down around you. You were careless when investigating Princess Amelie’s death. Had you discovered she had been turned, you could have prevented the multitude of deaths that followed. You, Anne Elizabeth Pearce, have been nothing. Nothing. You have screwed up everything you have ever attempted, and you must be stopped before you bring shame and destruction to the world.

  I am coming.

  EKS

  Annie glanced through the kitchen window, past the small yard that had once been her safe playground, where she used to swing on the swing set or dig in the sandbox or eat picnic lunches on a blanket in the grass with her mother. What she remembered most was the joy of chasing billdads in the garden, listening to the Cubs games on the radio as she read in the hammock, or practicing tae kwon do stances before testing. It had consistently remained a safe, loving place, but as she stared out of the window now, she felt exposed and vulnerable. She felt like she should be angry, furious, upset, even shaking, but she wasn’t. Instead she felt fueled and passionate about going after the Fraternitatem. She left the note on the counter.

  “Are you okay?”

  Annie swirled around to see Zola standing in her kitchen. The Aloja fairy moved softly, as if she floated on air.

  “Mommy left me a love letter.” Annie pointed to the note. Zola read it quickly and balled it into a garbage.

  “She wants to unnerve you. Don’t let her.” Zola opened the refrigerator and pulled out a casserole, putting it in the oven. “Call Samantha,” she said.

  Annie took out her phone. “On it.” She snuggled on her sofa with the crinkled note and called Samantha, who was temporarily living with her in-laws, Cham and John’s parents, at their farm in Northern Wisconsin.

  “What?” Samantha said into the phone. Pots clanked on the other end.

  “Would you be more cordial if I come up there?” Annie asked.

  “This sucks,” Samantha groused.

  “Mom left me a note behind the flowerpot on the back porch. She told me that Princess Amelie was my fault, the market was my fault, and that I am responsible for all of the deaths that have occurred because of that,” Annie said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Samantha said. “I’m taking it out on you and you’re the one she’s after for real.” Samantha cried, hiccoughed, and blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t. Just don’t. I can’t do this. Not now. I have to take a nap. I have to go out at midnight. Just no. Not now,” Annie begged.

  “Just do what you need to do and please be careful.”

  Annie held her phone in her hand long after hanging up with her sister. She fell into a fitful sleep.

  *

  The spicy scent of lasagna woke Annie.

  “Baby.” Cham kissed her forehead, giving her time to gain her bearings and become fully wake. He was eating his portion of dinner, his feet up on the ottoman, the television playing the Witch News Network, with Braxton Bourne giving the full day’s news, both magical and nonmagical.

  Before she could ask, Zola handed her a plate. As good as it smelled, Annie had no desire to eat and placed it down.

  “Did you see what Emily left today?” Annie asked Cham.

  “It isn’t true. You know that, right?”

  Annie shrugged. “She’s been watching me. Not necessarily in person, but news. She must get the American Sphinx newspaper and WNN. She knows stuff. She knows how guilt ridden I’ve been over Amelie and Jordan and the market.”

  Cham held her face in his hands. “Listen to me. She has the backing of the Fraternitatem. They are evil and powerful and have the resources. She is egging you on to come to her. She is playing you, trying to weaken you. But I know you. You are brilliant, strong, capable, and not to blame.” He leaned his forehead against hers and kissed her nose.

  She glanced at the phone she still held in her hand and checked for messages and the time. She still had six hours. “My world is falling apart for real. Sami is a mess. All my feelings are churned up. It’s like everything is now coming to a head,” she said.

  “It is,” Jason said. Annie looked up to see her father standing at the entrance of the den with Emily’s note in his hand. “The plan is to unnerve you. Throw you off your game.”

  Jason sat beside Annie and lay the uncrumpled the note in his lap. “It’s her handwriting.” He stared out the window, at nothing in particular. “They really did a number on her. She was a good mom once.”

  “I don’t remember,” Annie admitted.

  Jason held out a VHS tape. “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to see the side of her you don’t remember, but if you still have a VCR, it might would be worth it to look at this.” He stood and left the note with Annie as he made his way out.


  *

  The only VCR Annie owned was in a storage unit in the basement. She pulled it out and dusted it off. After futzing with the cables, she and Cham finally hooked it to the basement television set and sat on Cham’s old sofa. She took a bite of lasagna as the tape began to play.

  It was what she remembered or thought she remembered. A young, redheaded mother placing her baby daughter in a stroller. Annie watched Emily lovingly hook her into the seat.

  “I must have been about a year old here,” Annie said.

  Samantha, who was probably around three, rode a small tricycle, her small legs working hard to keep up. Emily laughed as they finally made it down the street and back to the house.

  Pictures switched to a bubble bath with Annie in a toddler seat, Samantha beside her, helping Emily wash Annie and Annie pushing them away, using the washcloth to bathe herself.

  “You were always independent,” Cham noted.

  “Some things don’t change,” Annie said.

  There were family pictures, a soccer game for a three-year-old Annie, dance lessons for a five-year-old Samantha. The tape showed snippets of life, some of which Annie remembered, but most experiences were new and painful to watch. When it was over, Annie’s food was cold, her stomach ached, and she needed to sleep.

  “You okay?”

  “I will be,” Annie replied. She kissed him deeply before turning away for another small nap.

  *

  Spencer stared into the window of the Snake Head Letters as Annie walked toward the store.

  “Anything?” she asked as she stepped up a small stoop and jiggled the handle.

  “Just the normal,” Spencer said. They entered the aged store and walked across the linoleum, which was so old the underlayment was visible. They followed the only light emanating from the back corner, passing the cash register. Walking down the aisle, they eventually turned right and entered Mortimer’s office. He sat behind his rickety desk, with and Arrowhead sitting across from him on a metal chair in the depressing, dimly lit room.

  With a swipe of his wrist, Mortimer locked the front door. “You’re playing with fire. Again,” he said to Annie.

  She took a seat beside Arrowhead and put her feet on a pile of folders at the edge of the desk. “Not my fault I have a crazy-ass woman after me.” She turned to Arrowhead and handed him the note from Fabien. “Is that you?”

  Arrowhead handed it back. “Yes. He’s not working for them.” He summoned a notebook and handed it to Annie. “I come at great risk to myself and others. But that consists of names of those at market, plus maps of several other markets.”

  Annie opened the notebook and shared it with Spencer, pointing out Melichi’s name and further down the pagethe listing of a man named George Worchester.

  “Do you know where the other portals are?” Spencer asked.

  “No. I don’t. What I do know is, that Ezekiel was batshit crazy. Gladden Worchester was a puppet. The Fraternitatem… they are a new level of doom,” Arrowhead said.

  Hearing these words come from Arrowhead surprised Annie. To work in the market, a merchant dealt with the cursed and illegal. As such, they needed to be tough and not easily frightened. Before today, Arrowhead had fit that description. It was jarring to hear him sound this worried.

  “Are you willing to work with us?” Spencer asked. As Gibbs’s partner, Spencer had worked with the merchant for years and developed some trust.

  “They wish for global power. Not just in the magical world but in the nonmagical one as well. They tricked you into believing your mother was dead and they killed your father. They are capable of much damage to both worlds. I would work with you to remove this dangerous and oppressive monster.”

  Annie weighed what he said and how he said it. Fear must be spreading.

  “Annie, they extort money and they kill for very little. The Fraternitatem has established dominance. Even the last market wasn’t this ruthless. I have difficulty making money because my customers, while they are not considered the kindest, are very loyal, and they are frightened. You know who those customers are.”

  While Annie hadn’t worked with Arrowhead in the past, she knew him and was worried by his impression and reaction to the new market. “And you?” she asked Mortimer.

  “Business is booming here because the market is different.” He reached down on the floor and pulled up a jar filled with a yellowish jelly liquid. Inside, a small creature, with pointed ears and a tail. Annie and Spencer moved closer. It was a dead elf. Annie shuddered.

  “They’re trafficking in magical creatures, whole and parted out. Poisons, cursed objects unlike what was there before. Those things were done… in extreme privacy in the past. Not like this,” Arrowhead said.

  Annie and Spencer exchanged concerned glances.

  “If they harness her power, they control the world,” Mortimer said, pointing to Annie.

  Annie looked at her hands. Magic billowed into the office and her palms itched. “This is the power,” she said. Mortimer and Arrowhead stared in awe.

  “What can you do now that you didn’t before?” Mortimer asked.

  Annie shook her head. “In the past, I conjured a ghost and inadvertently turned him corporeal. Aside from that, my powers seem stronger, but nothing else.”

  “The power to bring back the dead is enough; don’t you think?” Mortimer asked.

  “But you don’t need this power to do that. Necromancers have been able to do that through very specific spells. It doesn’t seem like enough to kill me. What have you heard I can do?”

  Mortimer glanced at Arrowhead and shook his head.

  “There are rumors. Powers to control the elements,” Arrowhead said.

  “Water, earth, air, and fire? We can all do that to some degree with the proper training and spell work,” Spencer said.

  “Volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, man. Big stuff. They’re rumors though. I can’t believe them coven members didn’t tell you more,” Mortimer growled.

  “So you know nothing. No problem.”

  “Annie, it’s all conjecture. What they know or where they got it from—who told them about the prophecy in the first place?”

  Sturtagaard!

  Annie sighed.

  “We’ll keep you posted, get you what you need,” Arrowhead added.

  Annie leaned against a crooked wall. “In the market accessed through the Louisiana swamp is a man named Joseph. You can pass him info and he can pass it to us,” she said.

  “I know the man. Tell him to expect items from me.” Arrowhead joined Annie at the wall and took her hand. “Melichi has been asking about you. Gathering the smallest bits of news and information. They waited patiently for the power and now they’re taking their time to get it from you.”

  “What do you think I should do?” Annie asked.

  “Run and hide, girl. I’ve told you that already,” Mortimer said, and yet he wasn’t joking or jeering. Annie could sense the seriousness in his voice.

  “I can’t do that,” Annie murmured.

  Arrowhead, still holding Annie’s hand, looked her the eyes. “Gibbs and I worked on opposite sides of magical law, a choice I made long ago. I chose to help in his quest for truth and justice and all that bullshit you guards believe in. Gibbs was a good man who cared deeply for you and for the wizard guard, and I will do what I can to help you.”

  “At a great risk to yourself,” Annie said.

  “All that I’ve learned, I have in that book. I will pass your man anything new. That I promise you.”

  Spencer took the book from Annie, shrunk it, and hid it away. He nodded once and held onto Annie’s arm as they left the store. They found the teleportation area two doors away and hid themselves inside. Spencer said nothing as he teleported her home.

  Chapter 15

  While Annie waited on her back porch for Ryan to arrive, she scanned the trees behind the alley for any signs of movement or voices. She was usually aware of her surroundings, but
the Fraternitatem had made her hyperaware. Ryan landed and observed her watching the trees.

  “What’s out there?” he asked.

  “I think someone’s hiding in there.” Annie pointed past the alley.

  “If not her, one of the Fraternitatem, I suspect. Where are we meeting Jack?” he asked.

  Wolfgange Rathbone was housed in the federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, incarcerated for murdering Princess Amelie of Amborix. To get there, they would need to arrive to the prison by car, but Annie only wanted to drive part of the way. She hoped Jack wouldn’t mind.

  “I’ll teleport you to the location. Jack will meet us,” Annie said.

  She closed the back door and locked it with a very strong spell. She expected the Fraternitatem had tried to get in, but as of yet, they hadn’t succeeded. She glanced inside the trees, thought she saw an arm move, and shuddered. She reached around Ryan and teleported him out.

  They landed in an abandoned parking lot scheduled for demolition. Annie walked to the entrance.

  “You okay?” Ryan asked.

  “Just tired. It’s been a long year of chasing down my father’s killer and way too many cases connected to it. I’m ready to be done.” She stepped onto the sidewalk and checked her phone. They had five minutes.

  “I was sent a copy of the note from your—from Emily,” he said.

  “It just strengthens my resolve to end this. Send my dad back to wherever it is he came from and get married. Get on with my life,” she said.

  “I think Jason’s human,” Ryan said.

  Annie glanced at him and swallowed. “I didn’t imagine the lines around his eyes, the gray at his temples, or his beard?” She glanced down the street, Ryan followed her gaze though he had no idea what car he was looking for.

  “You didn’t imagine it. I’m not sure why it’s happening. Ghosts shouldn’t be able to ‘come alive.’”

  “What do we do? He doesn’t belong here.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose we take that on when it’s time. For now, I talked to the executive council. They’ve agreed to create a position they’ll call Manager of Educational Liaison.”