by Alex Gordon
Is this a sign, Lady? Lauren asked the question even though she expected no answer. She wondered sometimes whether the tales of the Lady of Endor, who had wandered the world so long ago and gathered followers to guard the “thin places” between the worlds of human and demon, were nothing more than hope-filled fiction, an attempt to explain the inexplicable. A delusion that she herself had come to share.
She looked overhead. Sky’s still blue. Good news there, at any rate. In her limited experience with the nether realms, blue sky had never been a feature. Nothing bright existed there, nothing welcoming or beautiful or sane. “Great time to pull the rug out from under me.” She announced her challenge to whoever, or whatever, might be listening. Heard nothing in reply but silence, and kept walking.
She couldn’t pinpoint when her surroundings changed—she knew only that they had. She sensed it in the air first, the smell, the taste of it. Salt and storm and vast depths. Ocean. But green smells, too, old and rich and mossy.
Lauren looked down at the ground and spotted clusters of ferns. They grow in Illinois, too. But not these trees. Sitka spruce. Hemlock. Bigleaf maple.
Her breath caught. She had become accustomed to the temporal tricks that the woods played on anyone who ventured too deeply, but something other than time had flipped here. I don’t think this is Gideon anymore.
The air in front of her shimmered, and the trail grew steeper. She walked until she arrived at a gap in the trees, and pushed through until she came to a rocky outcropping. Her heart pounded as she scrambled to the top, then slowly stood up straight and looked around.
She stood on one mountain among many, some bare green, others covered partially or totally with trees. Old-growth in some places, the same hemlock and spruce. Younger trees in others, which had been planted by logging companies.
Home. Lauren bit her tongue to keep from saying the word aloud, fought the desire to believe what her senses swore to be true. She squinted into the distance, spotted a jutting, snow-covered peak, then checked the location of the sun. Mount Hood. Okay, so not home, exactly. Oregon. She tried to see if she could catch a glimpse of the Pacific, but the mountains blocked her view. Still, she had a pretty good idea where she stood. The Coast Range.
She breathed deep as much to calm herself as to savor the scents. Her heart slowed, eventually. So who do I thank? Who among those who dwelt in the wilderness had sent her this gift? Were they friend or foe? “Why are you showing me this?” She waited for the answer she knew would never come, as the breeze touched her face, and the tears sprang.
After a while, she wiped her face with her sleeve. Spotted a Steller’s jay watching her from a nearby branch, and tossed it a peanut from her crow cache. “That’s a Gideon peanut. Lady knows what will happen to you if you eat it,” she said as it swooped down and collected its prize, then returned to its perch.
She listened to the tap-tap as the bird cracked open the nut, the whisper of the air through leaf and needle. Then she sat on the edge of the rock and toyed with a scatter of stones, stacking them into a pile, then knocking them down. “If your point was to make me feel homesick, whoever you are, you’re doing a great job.” She waited . . . for what? An answer? A sign?
She remained seated, drank in the views. Every so often she checked the sun—when it had moved almost overhead, she stood, brushed the dirt from her hands.
Then she stilled as bushes rustled at the spot where she had stepped off the trail. Too much noise and movement for a fox or a squirrel. Something tall. A bear? No, a different sort of animal. The worst sort.
“Who’s there?” The movement ceased as soon as Lauren spoke. “I heard you—you may as well come out.” She struggled to get a sense of whatever it was, but felt nothing. Blankness.
Nothing good would hide itself. She wondered who would have lured her all the way across the country just to attack her. “The last demon that challenged me, I left a smoking husk in the snow.” Her voice echoed as the air around her changed, grew heavy and thick with the stink of rotted things.
Then it lightened again, green mountain freshness erasing the stench of decay.
Lauren waited, until she felt sure that whatever had followed her had gone. Knew that its voice was one of the ones she heard, that its presence was what Connie had sensed.
Months before, she had been sent back from the realm of the dead with a warning that other dangers existed, and that she would need to face them. Now it looked as though that time had come.
Lauren allowed herself one last, long look at the mountains. Then she turned and walked through the gap to the trail, the scenery wavering like the air above a hot road.
She started her descent. Soon, too soon, the ground leveled, the trees changed back to oak and ash and elm.
And the voices returned.
CHAPTER 3
Lauren stepped out of the woods and onto the road that led to Virginia Waycross’s ranch, and spotted the woman standing on the front step of her old farmhouse. She waved when she saw Lauren, then folded her arms and waited, a lean, tall figure in her work-hardened fifties. She wore jeans and a long-sleeve shirt despite the heat, gray curls hidden under a wide-brimmed straw hat.
“Wondered if I’d ever see you again, or if this time you’d just keep walking.” The remnants of a summer cold added a rasp to Virginia’s mellow voice. “Rocky called a couple of hours ago to say he saw you head through town and up the hill. Lost sight of you after that.”
Lauren struggled to hide her irritation. One of the less enjoyable aspects of living with Virginia Waycross. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. “You’ve got folks watching me?”
“Always. Zeke thinks we should stick one of those GPS units on you while you’re sleeping.”
“I like to walk. Gives me a chance to think.”
“About what?”
“Whether we’ll be the only two people left in Gideon by the end of the year.”
Virginia didn’t reply. She waited for Lauren to mount the steps, then opened the door for her and followed her inside. “Parkinsons weren’t one of the first families.” She took off her hat and set it on the entry hall table, then fluffed out her hair with one veiny hand. “They arrived after the Civil War. Council recruited them—that was one of the things they did back then. Looked for folks with potential, who could be trained. Brought them into the fold.” She passed through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen.
“What does Council do now?” Lauren fell in behind her. The interior of the old house felt cool and close, scented with the mustiness of old furniture and a hint of the morning’s coffee.
“Lady knows.” Virginia snorted. “I sure don’t.” She took a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator, then collected a couple of glasses from the cupboard. “Back when I was Mistress, I used to get letters from them every few months, asking me to submit reports about skill levels and training programs.” She sat at the kitchen table and poured. “I used to file them in the compost pile.” She hesitated, jaw working. “Of course, now that you’re Mistress, you might wish to do things differently.” She spoke slowly, haltingly, as though every word had been extracted with pliers.
“A little help from an outside source wouldn’t hurt right now.” Lauren sat down and concentrated on slicing a lemon into wedges. “Maybe we should get in touch with them.” She sensed Virginia watching her, and kept her eyes on her task. “It couldn’t hurt.” She waited for the protest she felt sure would come, heard nothing but the muttering in her head, and looked up to find the older woman stalled in mid-pour.
Virginia set down pitcher and glass with a sigh. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”
Lauren shrugged. “You know that as well as I do.”
Virginia nodded. Then she walked out of the kitchen to the dining room and opened the sideboard in which she kept her small stash of liquor.
Shit. Lauren turned away just as Virginia returned, refused to look at the whiskey and vodka bottles that the woman set on the t
able until she picked them up and set them back down hard.
“Three inches out of each, give or take.” Virginia pointed to the pair of black lines drawn in marker along the side of each bottle. “That’s about two days’ worth, I’m guessing, though I didn’t start to measure until I hunted for that raspberry liqueur last week to use in Zeke’s birthday cake and couldn’t find it. Or the rum.” She set the bottles on the counter behind her chair, then finished filling a glass with tea and placed it in front of Lauren. “Anytime you’re ready.”
Lauren set down the knife and arranged the lemon wedges on a plate. “I thought it would help me sleep.” She forced herself to look Virginia in the eye, saw fatigue and concern and the barest hint of fear, and focused on her glass instead. “Did you know that Connie can sense what you put down the drain?” She nodded toward the liquor bottles. “No secret is safe, I guess.”
“I will file that away for future reference. Now could we please stick to the matter at hand?” Virginia sat, then took a wedge of lemon and squeezed it into her tea, twisting it until it tore in half. “Why do you need help sleeping?”
Lauren thought about denying it, even as she knew it would do no good. Difficult, lying to another witch, especially one as perceptive as Virginia. “Voices. I hear . . . voices.”
Virginia pinched the bridge of her nose, then shook her head. “What kind of voices?”
“I can’t tell what they are. I don’t understand what they say.”
“But it’s more than one?”
Lauren thought back to her forest encounter. Did more than one thing follow her? No. But the voices? They were a jumble, layers of sound she could never sort out. “Yes. I think so.”
Virginia scraped the dregs out of the sugar bowl and added them to her tea. “Your daddy saw things. That’s rare. Hearing them’s bad enough.” She got up and carried the bowl into the pantry to fill it. As usual, she grew restless when she talked about Matthew Mullin. “It started after he lost his folks. I think whatever it was tried to use his grief as a way in.” She paused, sugar bag in hand, eyes soft with memory of the man she never stopped loving. “He used to draw them. The things he saw. He’d buy special notebooks. Then he’d tear the pictures up and burn them. He said it was like erasing them. He said it helped.”
Lauren sat back. Her father had taken such pains to hide his past from her. How many times a day did she wish she could talk to him now, about the things he knew, the things he had seen? “What did they look like?”
“He never let me see.”
“How long did it last, for him?”
“About four months.” Virginia added sugar to the bowl, tapping the spoon on the edge with each scoop. “When did yours start?”
Lauren counted on her fingers. “Eighteen days ago.” She tapped the side of her head. “At first I thought I was going nuts, or that it was a brain tumor.”
Virginia put away the sugar and returned to the table, cradling the bowl like an offering. “You’ve been through so much since you came here, you must feel ready to explode. You’ve held it all back and you won’t let anyone try to help you.” She set the bowl on the table and sat down, brow furrowing as she struggled for the words. “What I’m trying to say is that it can go away like that”—she snapped her fingers—“and you have to wait it out. Because the drinking will just make things worse, inside your head and out. They want you to destroy yourself, you know. Saves them the trouble.”
“I didn’t have anything to drink last night.” Lauren hoped she kept the edge out of her voice. She knew that Virginia was only trying to help, but still. “I dumped it down the drain.”
“Lauren, you can’t keep these things to yourself. Being Mistress of Gideon means—”
“I know what it means.”
“I’m not sure you do.” Virginia leaned forward, hands clasped like a child at prayer. “I can guess what you think. That I’m meddling. That I can’t let go. But I can see what this is doing to you. You can’t keep it bottled up until there’s nothing for the rest of us to do but bury what’s left.”
“That’s why I went to see Connie. I thought she might have gotten a sense of whatever it was.”
“And did she?”
Lauren nodded.
“All right—what does that mean for us?” Virginia sighed. “You see, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re not disinterested bystanders here. We each have our own skills, our own talents. We can help.” She reached out until her hand brushed Lauren’s. “Yes, you’re Mistress. What you’re not, is alone.”
Lauren took a sip of tea, which proved strong and a touch harsh, like the woman who had brewed it. “When I was in the Cateman house, with Blaine, when I fought him—”
“When you destroyed him.” Virginia sniffed.
“Yeah.” Lauren paused, searched for the words to describe what she still couldn’t believe had happened. How she had released the memory of fire from wood once used to burn a witch. How that fire had almost consumed her as well. “The flames engulfed Leaf’s office, and the smoke . . . I died, I think, for a little while. Dad came to get me—I saw him as clearly as I see you now. He led me into the borderland.”
Virginia sat back, arms folded, one hand pressed to her lips.
“I met Eliza Mullin—she was waiting for me. She told me that it wasn’t my time to go, that I had more work to do. She said that there were other thin places that needed to be dealt with, and that this was my job. To deal with those places.”
“You think those voices you hear—” Virginia stopped, coughed. “You think they’re from another thin place?”
Lauren nodded, then hesitated as she considered what to say and how to say it. “I had a vision, today. A little while ago. I saw it. The place. In the woods here, except that it wasn’t here. It was back home. I’m pretty sure it was in Oregon.”
Virginia slumped back and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, Lady love us all, but you terrify me.” She drummed her fingers on the table, quickly at first, then more and more slowly, until eventually she stilled. “It could be a trick. A trap.”
“I’m sure it is. Baited with homesickness, concern for those I left behind.” Lauren rose, paced. “Still, I need to go there.”
“They could be trying to lure you away from here to split us up, make us weaker.” Virginia held up her hand, index finger extended. “During all the years I served as Mistress of Gideon, I took one overnight trip. To Chicago. I was gone two days.” Her hand dropped. “Some folks never let me forget it. They felt I had abandoned them.”
“The difference this time is that you’d be here.” Lauren boosted herself atop the counter. “I think Zeke and the others still consider you their Mistress.”
“You’d be wrong.”
“No, I don’t think so. For some of them, you’re the only Mistress they’ve ever known. I’m still the outsider. They acknowledge me, yes. But they don’t come to me when they’re troubled or need to discuss a personal matter.” Lauren caught the distant look that filled Virginia’s eyes and softened the hard lines of her face. Connie had been right, as usual. Her friend did miss her old job. “Funny how this works out. We both get back something we’ve lost, at least for a little while.”
“That’s not what I want. That’s not—” Virginia quieted. Then came a long, slow smile. “Oh, they play dirty, don’t they?”
“Like we didn’t know that?” Lauren could barely keep from knocking her heels against the cupboard doors. Home. Home. The word sparkled in her mind like some inner star, and it occurred to her that she had fallen under a spell, that she could no more reject this invitation than she could stop breathing. “Something has contacted us. I think what happened here last winter got their attention.” She pushed off the counter and headed out of the kitchen toward the back stairs.
“What do you think they want?” Virginia stood, her voice soft and touched with worry. “Whoever—or whatever—they are?”
“Same thing they always want.” Lauren paused i
n the doorway. “They want in.”
SHE STARTED TO pack, then sat on the narrow bed in her tiny bedroom and pulled together thoughts that had scattered like dried leaves in the wind. But every time she tried to concentrate, the memories flooded back of the mountain views, the smell of the air.
I’ve been bewitched. Damn. I’m not even scared. With that realization, she felt the first loosening of the spell’s hold. Fear snaked in to take its place, touched with the anger that drove her to walk her days away and try to drown her nights in liquor. Anger over all she had lost—her parents, her career, her friends. Her life before Gideon.
Anger with herself. For letting her weakness show. For letting it in.
She imagined taking that seed of rage and planting it in the ground, watering it and nursing it until it burst forth, a tangle of red and black that filled her mind with sharpened fury that staked her false happiness like the foul lie it was. One thing she had learned about this new life of hers—lies meant death. They stripped her ability to reason, left her unprepared to face all those things that now defined her.
You’re a witch of Gideon, Reardon, for now and for always. Get used to it.
Another tremor of fear. Nicholas Blaine, the thing that had first called her to Gideon, had gone to Seattle for her, shattered her world like glass and dragged her into his. He had been strong, but this thing that had shown her visions of home felt stronger, knew enough to mask its strength in sweetness and beauty.
Remember the smell. Funny how that always seemed to slip her mind. Like something crawled under the house and died. Something foul, desecrating her home.
Her fury chilled now, to something gray and weighty and coated in frost. Something that would fight to protect its own.
Something that, if necessary, would kill.
And now that she had come to the place where she needed to be, Lauren veiled the fury, drew a curtain around it. Let whatever it was think that it had her. Let it think it had won.
