Casting Curses

by Yasmine Galenorn

  “Sandy’s been watching a lot of Ghost Inspectors.” Max laughed. The weretiger was bulky, or rather muscled, and when he laughed, his neck muscles popped. “I swear she’s been binge-watching it for the past two weeks. How many seasons of that show have they made, anyway?”

  Sandy stuck her tongue out at him. “Eleven. And I’m on season eight, so I have three more seasons to watch. You’ll just have to deal with it.” Max had recently moved in with Sandy, and even though she owned a sprawling estate, the two were in the throes of growing pains as they learned to live together. They were engaged, but neither one liked to compromise.

  I lay down on the rug, staring at the ceiling. I loved this—cozy evenings spent with Aegis, Sandy, and her fiancé. Parties were fun, but I preferred small gatherings of people I loved. My former life seemed far removed—all of my former lives, really.

  I was 388 years old, and I had lived a number of lifetimes within that block of time. Some of them blurred together, while others stood out as stark and harsh. But they had all played a part in bringing me to Bedlam. To who I truly was—Maudlin Gallowglass, High Priestess of the Moonrise Coven, witch, and owner of the Bewitching Bedlam bed-and-breakfast. And right now, I was the happiest that I had ever been.

  I turned to Aegis. “By the way, how’s Bubba? Did you find him and Luna?”

  Bubba was the cjinn with whom I had shared most of my life. He was a big fat sassy orange cat. Originally from the realm of fire, cjinns were rare over here. Basically a djinn born into a cat body, cjinns were both delightful and dangerous.

  “He and Luna were stretched out on your bed. They didn’t seem perturbed by the thunder at all.”

  I snorted. “It figures. Not much bothers Bubba. I’m glad they aren’t freaked, though.” After a pause, I added, “Anybody want to play a game?”

  “I’d rather just sit here and watch the fire and talk, if you don’t mind,” Sandy said. “I’m not feeling particularly festive. Or maybe I’m just lazy. After the Samhain ritual the other night, I’m pretty wiped out. I’m surprised you aren’t more exhausted, considering you had to lead it.”

  Sandy was one of the higher-ups in the Moonrise Coven as well. We were expected to lead group rituals for the entire town on the quarter days—the solstices and equinoxes. When it came to the cross-quarter days, the coven celebrated them privately. But that still meant an incredible amount of planning, and energy expended during the ritual itself, four times a year, every year.

  “I guess I’m still coming down off the adrenaline rush. Plus, we’re headed into the holidays so I don’t have time to let my energy flag. We’ve got nonstop guests booked through the end of the year, starting tomorrow. It will be good for our bank account, but I’m going to be run ragged. Add to that, the coven has to prepare for the Bedlam Yule ritual. I just don’t have time to be tired.”

  But as I started listing off the things on my to-do list, I felt my enthusiasm wane. I loved having a bed-and-breakfast. That was one of the reasons I had moved to Bedlam. But the realities of owning a business proved far more involved than the fantasy. Plus, I hadn’t counted on being elected as High Priestess of the coven. And given all that had happened over the past year, including a few dead bodies along the way, it was a wonder that I was still bouncing around as much as I was.

  “I take it back. I don’t want to play a game. I just want to crawl under the covers and hide.” I flashed a smile at Sandy, and she laughed.

  “I wondered when you would finally realize how much you’ve set yourself up for. Maybe you need to hire more help. Kelson does a wonderful job, but even she’s going to be hard put to keep up with things if the next few months are as busy as you say they’re going to be.”

  Aegis stretched. He would have yawned, except vampires didn’t breathe. “I’ve been telling her to hire another housekeeper for the past six months. We can afford it—I’ll pay for it, and Kelson will welcome the help.”

  “Why don’t you? There are enough people on this island who are looking for part-time work that you should be able to find somebody without any problem. What about Snow White?”

  I blinked. “Sandy, the last person I want to hire is an ex-porn star who literally jumped out of the pages of a storybook. Although, I have to say, what she’s doing now is a whole lot better than what Ralph had her doing.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s Snow up to?”

  “She’s helping out at the library, reading to some of the younger kids for story time.”

  The Snow White incident, as we called it, was better off left in the past. Except you couldn’t leave something in the past when there was no way to send it back to where it came from.

  When Ralph Greyhoof had summoned Snow White and her band of dwarves out of the storybook, he had roped them into working as porn stars in his cheap homemade movies. Luckily, fate had intervened and Snow White and her band of merry men were no longer part of the sex worker industry. Come to think of it, Ralph Greyhoof had grown up a little bit too, although I never expected the satyr to lose his lecherous ways. It was just part of his nature.

  I was about to say as much, when a tremendous crash shook the house. Jumping up, I raced for the stairs. The noise had come from upstairs and I was worried that Mr. Mosswood had taken a tumble, although that wouldn’t have been enough to create the shake that we had felt.

  Aegis was hot on my heels, and Sandy and Max right after him.

  When I got to the second floor, I saw that Mr. Mosswood was standing outside of his room, his flashlight trained on the trapdoor in the ceiling that led to the attic crawl space.

  “The noise came from up there,” Henry said, pushing his glasses up on his face. He looked like he was right out of the 1950s, with thinning hair and round glasses. He reminded me of an accountant, but he was actually a historian who was writing a massive tome on the history of Bedlam. He was human, but he was born in 1840. Thanks to a curse cast on him when he was twenty-five, he was destined to never find true love, but to live for a very long time.

  Aegis motioned for us to stand back. “Let me take a look first.”

  Max joined him. “I’m coming with you, dude.”

  Sandy and I stepped back against the wall along with Henry. We cautiously watched as Max gave Aegis a boost up to catch hold of the trapdoor’s handle. As he jumped down, holding on to the door, a folding ladder extended to the ground. But the moment the trapdoor was open, I could tell something was wrong. For one thing, I could smell the rain coming through the roof.

  Aegis scrambled up, holding the flashlight between his teeth. Once he disappeared through the opening, Max followed him. A moment later, Aegis poked his head back through the hole.

  “It looks like a branch blew off a tree and crashed through the roof. A big branch. It’s a mess up here, with debris everywhere, not to mention a couple puddles that are rapidly increasing in size. It’s pouring outside. If we don’t get this tarped off, by morning we’re going to have a flood.”

  “I think we have tarps in the basement.” Even though I had hired contractors to renovate the mansion when I bought it, we had purchased a number of supplies, given Sandy and I had taken on some of the painting ourselves.

  “I’ll get them,” Sandy said.

  “Are you sure? It’s pretty dark down there anyway, and going with the flashlight isn’t all that easy.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not worried about it.”

  As Sandy headed off for the basement, I began to crawl up the ladder, dreading what I was about to see. Roof damage was always problematic, and when I had bought the mansion, the inspector had estimated I had about five years left before I would need to completely replace the roof. Visions of dollar signs floated through my head as I poked my head into the attic. Aegis held down his hand, and I took it, hoisting myself into the crawl space. Sure enough, there was a massive hole in the roof, with a very large Douglas fir branch poking through it. It looked like the wind had ripped it off a tree and aimed the
projectile directly at my house. At least it had missed the bedrooms.

  “This is not my idea of redecorating,” I said, staring at the branch. I reached out and poked it, reassuring myself that it was actually real.

  “I suppose we’re going to have to look for someone to replace the entire roof,” Aegis said. “I want you to let me pay for it. The Bewitching Bedlam isn’t quite making its expenses yet.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said, stepping back as the rain began to really pour, quickly enlarging the puddles on the floor. In the dim beam of the flashlight, it was difficult to tell just how much damage there was. I hated accepting Aegis’s offer to pay for the roof, but I knew that I couldn’t swing it myself at this point. And my boyfriend was flush with money from all his years as a vampire. I hadn’t known that when we first met, but it was a nice perk once I found out.

  Max returned with the tarp, and together, he and Aegis managed to cover what they could see of the hole, nailing the tarp as best as they could to the ceiling. I held the flashlight for them, praying that Aegis wouldn’t slip and impale himself on one of the branches forking off the giant limb. The last thing we needed was accidental death by tree.

  Once they had finished, there wasn’t anything else we could do. Nobody would be able to get over here in the middle of the night, and with the power out, it would be dangerous on the country roads anyway. I let out a long sigh, more out of frustration than anything else, and scampered back down the ladder. Aegis and Max followed, closing the trapdoor as they exited the attic.

  “Well…I’m not quite sure what to do now,” I said. “That was quite enough excitement to end the evening on, but I’m almost afraid to go to bed. What if the storm gets worse and causes more havoc?” Right about then, we heard a piercing noise coming from the yard. “Lovely, whose car alarm is that?” I glanced at both Sandy and Aegis. I didn’t have an alarm on my car, and I didn’t think Max did either.

  “I’ll go check. Chances are something brushed against the door,” Aegis said.

  “I’ll go with you in case it’s mine,” Sandy said. She drove what looked like a retro hippie bus, but it was an expensive one and about as green as a car could get—both environmentally and in color.

  As they started downstairs, I looked at Max.

  “Seriously, you better stay here tonight, given the state of the storm. If it’s bad enough to throw a branch through my roof, you know trees are going to be down on some of those roads that lead to your place. The guestroom is all made up, so you guys can sleep there.”

  “Where’s Kelson? I haven’t seen her all evening,” Max said, following me toward the guestroom.

  “I gave her the night off, considering she’s going to be busier than hell the next few weeks. I hope she’s okay. I haven’t heard from her since she took off for the movies.” I pulled out my phone, punching in her number. After three rings, it sent me to voice mail and I left a message asking her to call me.

  After making sure that there were battery-operated candles in the guestroom, I laid out the bathrobes that Sandy and Max had left at my place. They stayed here often enough that we finally encouraged them to bring pajamas and robes from home and leave them for when they needed to stay.

  Aegis and Sandy returned, looking glum.

  “Well, my van is trashed. One of the trees lining the driveway toppled over onto it. Damn thing is crushed.” She shook her head. “That cost me a fortune to have retrofitted. I’m going to have to have it completely rebuilt. Either that or I just commission a new one.”

  “How’s the storm?” There was no way to console her. That van was her baby, and she had guided the mechanics who worked on it in everything from what she wanted under the hood to the exact color to every single option that she had chosen for it.

  “I’m hoping that we’re near the peak,” Aegis said. “We can’t afford much more damage. This is one of the worst that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen storms over my lifetime.”

  “I’d swear those are hurricane-force gusts out there,” Sandy said. “It was hard to stand up out there. I think I’ll give Jenna a call, just to make sure that she’s okay. I know Neverfall is built to withstand a war, but you never know.”

  As she moved off to the side, I walked over to the window to stare out into the darkness. The entire neighborhood was black. It suddenly occurred to me to report the outage, and I pulled out my phone. I kept the power company’s number in my contacts, just for times like these. I placed the call, waiting and punching in the numbers as the options kept coming. Finally, the automated voice on the other end told me that my outage had been reported, and that most of the island was without power. There was no estimated time of restoration.

  I was about to tell the others when a shriek echoed down the stairs.

  “What the fuck—?” Aegis whirled around.

  “Was that Bubba?” I raced toward my bedroom, slamming open the door. But Bubba and Luna were there on the bed, staring at me with looks of alarm on their faces.

  “Mr. Mosswood? Are you all right?” Sandy knocked on his door.

  “I’m fine,” Henry said, poking his head out. “Who screamed?”

  “We’re not sure. We were worried it might be you.” I popped back into my bedroom. Looking at Bubba, I said, “Listen, Bubs, you and Luna stay here. Don’t go prowling around, okay? It’s a dangerous night.”

  Bubba let out a purp. “Murrow.”

  That was Bubba-ese for “Okay, I promise.” I shut the door after making sure the doors to my balcony were tightly shut and locked. Then, returning to the hall, I found that Aegis and Max had gone down to the first floor. Cautiously, Sandy and I followed.

  Once downstairs, we searched through the house, but we couldn’t find anything. But the shriek lingered in my ears. We had all heard it—I knew it wasn’t my imagination.

  “Maybe it was a cougar—there are cougars in the hills here on the island. Also, plenty of shifters. Maybe somebody is hurt out there in the storm.” Sandy pressed up against the kitchen window, staring out into the rough-and-tumble night.

  “Possibly.” I joined her. “But we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to find out.” And right then, I realized we were in for a long, exhausting night.

  Chapter 2

  BY THE TIME we woke up, the storm had passed. The sky was overcast, but the clouds looked lighter and they lazily drifted past. The house was chilly. The power was still out, but the tension of the storm had broken and it felt like a normal November day again.

  Max, Sandy, and I gathered in the kitchen for breakfast at around eight. Aegis was asleep, of course. Sunrise had come at seven, so he had to be in his coffin by then. Vampires and sunlight made for a bad mix. Kelson had arrived home at about three a.m., having to take a few side roads to avoid fallen trees. Mr. Mosswood appeared to be sleeping late.

  “What do we do about the caffeine situation?” I asked. I was a caffeine junkie. There was no way I could make it through a day without my fix, and cola just wouldn’t work.

  “I can run out and look for an open coffee shop, but I can guarantee you that the power’s out over a good share of the island.” Kelson took off her apron and folded it, hanging it over the back of the rocking chair.

  “If you have a pot, I can fire up the grill and make coffee over the flames.” Max jerked his thumb outside toward the barbecue, which had weathered the storm. “I’ve had plenty of experience on camping trips. Don’t worry, one way or another you’ll get your fix.”

  “We have bread and cheese. If you start up the grill I’ll make grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast,” Kelson said. “We shouldn’t trust the eggs or meat, given the power’s been out for some time, but the cheese should be fine.”

  I glanced out the window at the yard. It was littered with debris. Fallen branches carpeted the ground. Electrical lines were probably down all over the island.

  “Go ahead, Max. I’m not sure that it’s safe out on the road yet
. Plus, we need to crawl up on top of the roof and take a look at what happened.” I turned to Kelson. “Big branch through the attic. We’re going to have one hell of a cleanup job on our hands. Plus, we have guests coming in today. We can’t let them stay here if we don’t have electricity, so I need you to give them a call and cancel. Assure them we’ll refund their deposits as soon as we’re up and running with power. We should also check the estimated time of restoration.”

  I phoned the power company again. As I listened to the automated message, my heart sank. Power was out for more than sixty percent of the island. Crews were out and about, assessing damage, but there was no way to tell how long it would take. It could be today that our power came back on, or it could be a week. Next, I phoned Delia, the sheriff. She might have more information.

  “Hey Delia, it’s Maddy. I was wondering if you could give me an update on what’s going on out there. Power’s out here, and I gather over sixty percent of Bedlam’s in the dark. Is there anything we should know about?”

  Delia sounded harried. “Hey Maddy, good to hear from you. Power lines are down on a lot of the side roads, so be careful if you go out. The power company is doing its best to clear the main roads first, so that people can get out. The ferry’s not running right now. The pier was damaged last night and there’s no place for it to dock. Crews are on the job, but I can tell you this was one hell of a storm. At least two houses burned down and there are trees down all over the place. No fatalities, though, thank the gods.”

  “I know. There’s a big branch poking through my attic right now. We were just about to go up on the roof and check it out.” I thanked her, and asked her to keep in touch.

  The others had been listening in on the conversation. I glanced at Kelson.

  “That’s it, then. I doubt we’re going to be open to business for at least for a week.” I slumped back in my seat. I hated having to disappoint people, and I tried to keep our reputation for reliability high. Granted, this was an act of nature, but it still sucked.