The New Improved Sorceress

by Sara Hanover

  I smiled sadly down at her. She really hadn’t been the same since I’d brought someone into her home who’d possessed her, even if only for a short while, and I didn’t know how to take the last of the nightmares away. Brian and I had been working on it, though. Maybe another visit to the remnants of his library would offer up a spell book that could solve the problem. I hated leaving her unsettled and decided a distraction might help. “So what’s the gossip?”

  She watched as I took the top porch step. “I don’t like to carry tales,” Mrs. Sherman reminded me. She got around her aversion to gossip by averring that she told nothing less than the truth she’d witnessed herself.

  We talked for a few more minutes until Scout nudged my sneaker. The smell of fresh cookies still hung about me as he nagged.

  “Better go. It’s getting late. I’ll stop by again soon.”

  “You do that, honey. It’s always a pleasure seeing you.” The worried look in her eyes told me differently. I vowed to get the professor off his duff as soon as I got home. I couldn’t let Mrs. Sherman continue to suffer because of something I accidentally brought into her life.

  I fed Scout another treat as we headed down the block to the professor’s ruins. Early evening slanted across the homes, sidewalks, and streets in blue-gray shadow, and I watched the streetlights as we walked, wondering if Joanna might make another appearance. Asking about the occurrence now would only point out to the guys that I hadn’t told them about the incident earlier, and upset all three for different reasons. I’d lost one father only to gain three father/older brother types in his place. I didn’t want to encourage Carter to occupy that position as well. Concerned boyfriend should be his speed. I glanced down at Scout.

  “Smell anything odd?”

  He shook himself all over and dropped back a pace or two so his heavy tail could thump across my calf, which I guessed meant negative. I had no doubt, however, that he was as intelligent as Carter claimed. This was one pup I was going to have a lot of trouble staying a step ahead of. We’d slowed from a jog to a walk, which was fine with me, as my legs had begun feeling the burn. I have good legs, thanks to months of bicycling the charity meals route and running for the team, but I hadn’t been terribly active for a few weeks now and could feel it.

  Out of the dusky shadows, the great gaunt, charred bones of a building appeared. Months had not bleached away the smell of smoke and fire, despite summer rains and sun and wind. It came to the nose almost as fresh as it had that first, awful night when the professor had called me for help, gasping, “Fire.” I angled toward the backyard. Daylight had fled completely, but I knew the place almost as well as I knew my home. Night didn’t hide much from me.

  Scout planted his butt on the walkway. I tugged on the leash. “Come on.”

  He tilted his head as he looked up at me but didn’t move.

  “It’s safe. Almost. I’m just going to duck under the tape—” and did so, dragging him after me, the warning tape thin and nearly colorless and practically fragile looking as we went. Inside, the floor crackled under each step. I could understand why the fire department pressed for demolition even as red tape held it at bay. We went cautiously, sidling along until hitting the interior of the house where the professor’s library and study had almost escaped damage.

  Almost because it hadn’t, not really, but the wards there kept it mostly intact, some roof and partial walls, with smoke and water destruction not nearly as bad as the rest of the house, almost as if this room were an egg and the rest of the nest had collapsed about it in protection. I took out my phone and tapped on the flashlight app. Its illumination swept the various bookshelves where edges had been nibbled at by flames, the barest of touches. Some of the books had sagged into moldy lumps from both fire hoses and rain, but a good number of them survived. Their titles, already nearly unreadable because of sheer age and difference in language, blurred as I attempted to make sense of them. Scout whined lightly before giving a sneeze and leaned in his harness. He wouldn’t be happy until we left.

  I stripped off my gloves. “I’m here because the professor and I have to right a wrong. He’ll be back to claim all of you soon, but right now, I need to help Mrs. Sherman.” How do you know if a pile of wrecked books is listening to you? You don’t. I just hoped the professor hadn’t left any death traps behind.

  My beam of light flickered and made as if it, and my phone, might expire on the spot. I shook it. “Don’t you dare.”

  It flared strongly, its light centering on a bookshelf just off the floor where only three items remained. I knelt to examine them. Their titles reflected back at me, all short and sweet: Aftermath, Clean Sweep, and Remedies. I plucked all of them up and straightened. My phone flickered a last time before the flashlight app went off. I couldn’t get it to work again although the rest of the phone seemed fine. The omen seemed obvious.

  “All righty, then. Thanks. I’ll be back soon to rescue the rest of you.”

  Scout couldn’t wait to pull me out of there. We came out the back of the house, across the remnants of a screened-in sun porch and rickety steps. In the depths of the backyard, the grass waved high as a sea. Scout plowed through it as he might two feet of snow, bounding up and down in the blades. The redwood arbor and arch beckoned at me, reminding me of late spring days when the professor himself and I used to sit while he ate his dinner and we discussed history and the city and other odds and ends. He’d had a lined face, wrinkled as much with laughter as wisdom, a thinning gray hairline, a bristly chestnut-and-gray mustache, and ear hairs that sprouted everywhere, and he’d lectured me at end from this patch. I’d no idea that the history we’d argued about, or at least a chunk of it, he’d experienced personally.

  A little surprised no one had made off with his wooden patio furniture, I sat down. Across from me was the massive chair, more like a throne, which Brandard had procured for Mortimer’s Iron Dwarf frame. Scout snuffed it all about with great interest.

  “They say scents can last a really long time when they’re embedded in a substance, so what you’re getting is the essence of the Iron Dwarf Mortimer Broadstone. He was a great friend of mine and the professor’s, and Hiram’s father.”

  The ruined house groaned faintly and creaked, but it had nothing on the noises my house could, and did, make, so I ignored it. I rubbed the arm of my chair. “This is redwood. You won’t see it much in Virginia because we use pine and other woods. Redwood comes from the west coast. It’s a protected wood, so we don’t build from it very often, but the professor says it has warding qualities, so he had this shipped in. It’s like a guardian wood. Like, mmm, rowan from England and such. He can explain it better, so I’ll have him do it when we get home. Like it? I can’t smell it, but I see its beauty.”

  Scout wrinkled his nose. He turned his head, looking behind me, then back at the house, and his lips lifted away from his teeth as he began a low and warning growl. Though still a half-grown pup, he looked menacing.

  Shit. I’d forgotten all about Joanna. I inched about in my chair, the tiny hairs on the back of my neck prickling, wondering who had caught up with me.

  “Not my friend,” a hollow voice said softly as a blurry figure emerged out of the very ashes of the sun porch. “Not a true friend of Mortimer’s.”

  I swung about completely. Not Joanna. Not anybody—yet. The apparition continued until disclosed in all its dimensions. I cleared my throat. “Maybe both were a little selfish, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen better friends.” I approached the sun porch cautiously, cloaked in night and soot as it was.

  A half moon appeared just above the rooftops, throwing a little illumination across the backyard. It revealed a statuesque woman in leather corset and leather skirt, with battle weapons strapped about her waist. A gasp died in my throat.

  A harpy. Her wings must be folded tightly behind her, so I couldn’t catch the full glory of her plumage and coloring, but she loo
ked down at me with a severe frown. I had half a second to wish I’d worn my bracers.

  “Think you that you know my Mortimer better than I?”

  “Your Mortimer—are you Germanigold?”

  “Once upon a time, as you might say it.”

  I faced her. “Where have you been? And, no offense, you don’t look like you’re all here, as it is.”

  “I have been where I still am, held by enemies. If I were not imprisoned, you’d see me in all my winged glory but they’ve been taken from me, and illusion is all that’s left.”

  And a drama queen, too. I put my hand down to stifle Scout’s growling, as her hollow voice did not carry well enough for me to hear as clearly as I would like. His hackles stood up like a ridge under my fingertips. “Do you know we’re looking for you?”

  “Are you? I can’t imagine why you haven’t found me if you are. Perhaps you all need to exert a greater effort.”

  “Nobody but Mortimer seemed all that interested, frankly. Being a harpy and all.”

  Hard to tell in the moonlight, but she might have paled. Her mouth twisted unhappily. “I do not think I deserved that.”

  “Nor would Hiram. He’s asked me to find you.”

  That brightened her face just a touch. “Hiram? He thinks of me?”

  “Yup.”

  “A good man. He had an excellent role model in his father. His mother as well, may she sleep in peace until the great day.”

  “If I may ask, what are you doing here?”

  “Haunting Brandard’s ruins? Trying to reach that worthless, irascible old man. I had no idea he’d been burned out.”

  “He’s gone, too, although not quite the way of Morty.”

  “Dead?”

  “Revived. But not successfully.”

  “By the gods. Tell me he’s not a zombie.”

  “Oh, no. No, no. Nothing like that.” The thought that Brian could have become a zombie made my legs go weak. Scout butted up behind my knees to bolster me. “Just incomplete.”

  “Then he’ll be looking for all his goods. Mortimer told me once he’d scattered them, having mastered them, so that no one could steal his knowledge from him and misuse it.”

  I edged a little closer. She didn’t look like a haunt, nothing transparent about her, and if Germanigold projected her form, she did a great job of it. “Did Morty share a lot with you?”

  “We were husband and wife.”

  I smiled. “And he adored you.”

  Her eyes glistened. “Yes. Yes, he did, and I loved him back.” She put her chin up as if blocking a weakness. “I came to extract vengeance for his death.”

  “Mmm. Awkward. I saw it . . . and couldn’t stop it . . . but it was a harpy who stabbed him.”

  “In self-defense. The attack was reported to me.”

  “Then you were lied to. They attacked us in Central Park. Took Brian . . . the professor . . . off. There was a skirmish getting him back. The leader, I don’t know her name, but she had steel-colored hair and magpie wings, stabbed Morty from behind. He pulled the sword out and got her in the gut when she jumped him again. It was swords and daggers everywhere as I pulled Brian out of there.” I ground to a halt, my throat tight, my words thick as the sorrow flooded me and made it nearly impossible to tell her what had happened and my last sight of Mortimer. Of the look he’d thrown me. The victory he’d eked out for himself, after betraying us at the beginning. But he’d gotten Brian back, and the relics we’d come for, even if it cost him everything. I swallowed and couldn’t get anything else out.

  She reached out, and I felt the faintest touch on my shoulder. “There was a time,” she said sadly, “when I could have known without a doubt if you tell the truth. Now I have only my own senses, but they tell me you do.” Her eyes narrowed. “Which means I have been lied to again, by someone else.”

  She stood close enough that I could see the wings folded tightly behind her, as softly golden as the sunrise, feathers gleaming through night’s veil. But more than that, I imagined I saw the strong woman shining through as well.

  “Mortimer’s memory deserves the best,” I said, voice still tight. “Who lied to you? Where are you being held?”

  She made a sharp movement with her head. “A Society judge. It will be difficult to pry the truth from him, and very dangerous to face them. He must be a betrayer to all, but only you and I know it. His name is—”

  A sharp clang rang out and with it, her form disappeared in mid-sentence. The air thundered about me, as the displacement slammed shut, and the burnt timbers of the professor’s house trembled in her wake. I swayed back.

  “Wow. That was an exit.”

  Scout made a rumble. He nosed forward, among the tall grasses, retrieved something, and brought it back to me.

  A beautiful feather, gleaming like molten gold in the moonlight.

  At least I had proof. Now all I had to do was decide how to investigate a magic Society who thought itself above human rules. And yell at myself for not asking her about the Eye when I’d had the chance.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A TISKET, A TASKET

  SOME DAYS YOU think you make it through free and clear and others you get nailed right away. Nobody said anything until after the dinner dishes were done and the laundry folded, but when I started up the stairs to get ready for bed, the professor was waiting for me on the steps. He wasn’t smoking, but he had a pipe in his hand that he kept turning over and over. Normally, I can tell when he’s dominant just by the way Brian speaks. The pipe was just another one of his tells. The professor likes a pipeful now and then while Brian is a nonsmoker.

  Brian, when he’s home and in charge, is rather like a left coast surfer dude, easygoing and sometimes a little clueless about the big picture. He’s not dumb or anything, just doesn’t have a keen edge. The professor is much more well-spoken and grouchy and cynical and would never say “cool” or let things slide. In fact, Professor Brandard never lets anything slide if he’s interested in it. Getting his attention when he doesn’t want to give it, however, can be a completely different matter.

  “You were trespassing again.”

  I stopped as he peered up at me before taking the stair step one down from his position. “I swear, how is it you know things?”

  “For one, I can smell the smoke on you. It has a subtle reek that never seems to clear.”

  I sniffed my hands and shrugged. All I could smell was dog as I’d just put Scout to bed in the mudroom. “Teach me, O wise one.”

  “Teach you? I ought to have Mary paddle you. I’ve told you the house is dangerous and you shouldn’t go traipsing around in it alone.”

  “Just because the second story has collapsed onto the first story, and there’s not much left except the study, I don’t see the problem.” I blinked at him.

  “It has magic seeped into its very bones. I lived there a very long time and made sure of that. It was my shield and my comfort.”

  “And now it’s your excuse.”

  He looked up sharply from the pipe in his fingers. “Beg pardon?”

  “I have a duty to fix Mrs. Sherman and you tell me you might have something on it that will help, but you won’t come with me to retrieve it. You tell me that it’s not right to sift through the debris just yet. It’s dangerous. It makes you melancholy. It’s a reminder of your current situation.” I ticked off the most popular excuses. Then I untucked my T-shirt and pulled the three slim books from my waistband, dropping them in his lap. “And it was the books you smelled, not me. I think.”

  “Nothing happened when you took them?”

  “I explained you sent me because we needed certain information. Really weird, I had my flashlight app set on my phone so I could see, and these three lit up. Then the app refused to work, and I thought my whole phone had bricked.”

  He blinked. “Your phone mo
rphed to brick? That’s not one of the wards I had set up . . .”

  “No, no, not like that. Just nothing worked right for a few minutes.”

  “I see.”

  I don’t think he did, not really, but he’d obviously decided it wasn’t important to the current topic. He tapped the books. “What are we fixing on Mrs. Sherman?”

  “She’s the one who got possessed, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Unfortunate.”

  “It’s like PTSD, but she doesn’t know why. She looks worried and has trouble sleeping. I can’t leave her like that. She doesn’t deserve it, just because she got caught in the middle.”

  “Right, right. We should do what we can. Well, there may well be something in here we can use. It’s the ingredients that worry me, not the execution.”

  “Execution?”

  “Method. No, many of my ingredients I had stowed in the root cellar and I know that is gone, burned away before that corner of the foundation caved in. I’ll have to look for something simple and perhaps substitute a few herbs.”

  “I’ll take Brian to the garden supply in Home Depot. Lots of herbs there. The university has an arboretum, too.” I didn’t like the idea of swapping out important elements. We might end up with inedible cookies or explosive spells.

  “Do that. In the meantime, it appears I have some reading to catch up on.” He stood and paused, one hand on the banister. “Anything else to tell me?”

  I debated a split-second, but he caught me thinking.

  “Out with it! What other mischief have you gotten into tonight?”

  “First, not tonight but the other night, I saw something.”

  He gave me an exasperated, stone-cold expression.

  “The streetlight just split into shadows that shouldn’t have been there. Not to mention the lamppost shouldn’t have been there either. Anyhow, I saw Joanna in her Kitsune form, three fox tails and all. She attacked me. Now, after what happened last spring, I thought she’d been gathered up and removed.”