“You really do like him,” Beka said with amazement. “I saw you. You smiled at him. And he likes you back, I can tell. My goddess, maybe you really are under some kind of spell.”
Chapter Eleven
“Speaking of spells, Jazz,” Barbara said, deciding that a change in subject was a good idea. “I think the one you wrote in the other timeline might be useful in coming up with a solution to repairing the current mess. Unfortunately, I only remember bits and pieces of what Bella told me was involved. To be honest, at the time, we were all just in shock that you’d somehow managed to age yourself ten years, which took more power than anyone knew you had, even Bella.”
“Cool,” Jazz said.
“Not terribly,” Barbara said in a dry tone. “You nearly died. And then the Queen made Bella take you into the Otherworld for a year of intensive training. Since Bella was still a newlywed at the time, she wasn’t all that thrilled to have to leave home and Sam behind.”
Bella raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to meet this Sam,” she said. “From your description, he sounds hot.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Beka said. “I think my imaginary husband sounds hotter. Almost as hot as that nice Liam.” She hid a laugh behind her hand.
“Focus, ladies,” Barbara said. “One predicament at a time.”
She turned back to Jazz. “I realize that in this timeline, you never wrote the spell. But I wonder if you could put your mind to how you would create such a thing if you had been in alternative-Jazz’s position. If the Riders’ immortality had been stolen away and you were determined to come up with a magical way to return it to them.”
“You said she used my Book, the one that all the Baba Yagas in my line had handed down over the years, which I added to after I took over,” Bella said. “I’m not sure how I feel about letting her have unlimited access to all that magical information.”
Barbara gave Bella a rare, pleading look. “You would supervise her, of course, but there is no way she could come up with the spell without everything she read in there. You could use it as a teaching opportunity.”
“Please? I want to help,” Jazz said. “I wouldn’t actually do the spell. I mean, now that I know it could, like, kill me. You and Koshka could be with me the whole time I’m working on it.” Koshka was Bella’s Chudo-Yudo, although in this case, her dragon was disguised as a gigantic Norwegian Forest cat, instead of a dog.
Bella sighed. “Okay, okay. We’ll work on it and see what you can come up with. But it seems like a long shot to me. I’m not sure how a spell that was supposed to give the Riders’ back their immortality but instead made Jazz ten years older in an hour is going to help you knit time back together.”
“To be honest,” Barbara said with a grimace, “I’m not sure either. It’s not that I think it would work as is, even if Jazz could reproduce what she came up with in the first place. But I am hoping that there is something in the elements she chooses that will give me ideas. If for no other reason than it is the only spell I’ve ever heard of that actually altered time in any concrete way.”
“Don’t worry, Bella,” Jazz said. “I can work on the spell and still do the more practical online search stuff, too.” She gave her mentor a guileless look. “I just might not be able to help quite as much with the housework if I am going to have time to do my homework on top of all that.”
Bella snorted. “Nice try, brat. Speaking of which, we should get back.” She stood up and gave Barbara a quick hug. “I honestly don’t know how much of this I can wrap my brain around, although I do believe that you believe it. But if the Queen says to fix it, that’s good enough for me. We’ll do whatever we can.”
She and Jazz walked over to the closet, wiggled the wonky handle, and opened it up to look at a lot of black clothes. Bella shut the door again with a sigh.
“You are so freaking annoying,” Jazz muttered to the door. “Like should-be-turned-into -kindling annoying.”
The door made a barely audible whimpering noise, and the next time they tried it, the glittering fog that marked the passageway to the Otherworld swirled into view. Jazz turned and winked at Barbara as they walked through.
Beka stood up slowly. “I should be going too. I’ve got a spell to practice that hasn’t been working for me consistently, and I haven’t been able to figure out why. It used to be one of my favorites. Brenna says I just need to focus more, but I swear, I really am.”
“Maybe you just need a little less pressure, and a little more fun,” Barbara suggested. It broke her heart to see Beka so beaten down. The youngest of the Baba Yagas had always had issues with self-doubt and feeling as though she wasn’t quite good enough for the job—a state of affairs due entirely to Brenna’s subtle undermining. But in this timeline, it was so much worse.
“Maybe you should go surf. You know, commune with the ocean and the waves and such. You are as strongly connected to the element of water as I am to the element of earth. I always find if my powers need a little boost, the best thing I can do is spend time with plants, play with my herbs, sit under a tree, that kind of thing.”
“Oh, I don’t surf much these days. Brenna says it is just a waste of time, and I should have outgrown such childish activities. Besides, the bus is parked further inland now, so it isn’t as though I can just walk across the street to the ocean like I used to.” A tiny smile flitted across her face. “It does sound like a wonderful idea, though. Maybe I’ll go during the next mission that takes Brenna out of town without me.”
“You do that,” Barbara said. I wonder if that is why she never met up with Marcus, since she was out surfing the first time they came into contact. More evidence of unraveling, but she wasn’t sure how knowing that helped her, if it even did.
She gave Beka an unusually gentle hug before letting the blonde head toward the closet. Which behaved itself perfectly for a change. “Don’t forget what I said about watching your back, Beka,” Barbara reminded her.
All she got was a wave as Beka disappeared through the door.
“What a mess,” she said to Chudo-Yudo and Babs. Chudo-Yudo growled agreement, and Babs padded over to the cookie jar and brought it to Barbara. It did, in fact, have cookies in it, although Barbara didn’t remember either buying the treats or putting them in there.
She gave Babs a suspicious look, but the pixie-like child just gazed back with her usual deadpan expression. Barbara shrugged. It had been a long day, and she definitely deserved a cookie. Sometimes it was better not to ask.
The sun was getting low in the sky and Barbara was starting to think about what to make for dinner, and whether or not it would be pushing her luck to ask Liam if he wanted to join them. He was still over at the house, banging away at something or other. She’d had the electricity turned back on, but she wasn’t sure if many of the bulbs in the ceiling fixtures worked, so she was on the verge of going over to check—and not just so she could see Liam again—when there was a noise from the closet that led to the Otherworld.
Maybe Bella had come back to talk to her about Beka, or tell Barbara that Jazz had already found something?
But no, it turned out her long day was about to get longer.
The distinctive odor of patchouli wafted through, followed a moment later by a woman of indeterminate years with long frizzy gray hair, wearing a funky purple, blue, and red crinkled skirt and tunic top with tiny silver mirrors sewn on in random spots. Her ample bosom was adorned by multiple strands of long colorful beads that jangled together when she walked. Her face was wrinkled and brown like an apple that had been sitting out too long, but sharp black eyes belied any illusion of decrepitude.
Given that she could have looked like anything she wanted, Barbara was always amazed that this was the appearance the former-and-returned Baba Yaga chose. Still, it did have a tendency to encourage people not to take her seriously or see her as a threat, so perhaps that was its purpose. The modern version of a witch with a house made out of candy. Only more dangerous.
Out of
the corner of her eye, Barbara saw Babs make a face and duck out of sight. Chudo-Yudo, who had been napping in a stray sunbeam, went from resting to alert faster than you could say treasure trove.
“Brenna.” If Barbara’s greeting had been any cooler, it would have had icicles on it. As it was, a tiny film of frost formed on the inside of the nearest window. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I hope this isn’t a bad time, dear,” Brenna said, gazing around with open curiosity. “I heard you finally got yourself a permanent home and I just had to come see for myself. And congratulate you, of course.” She walked over and peeked out of a window, fingers like brown twigs twitching the curtains out of the way.
“Hmph,” she said. “It doesn’t look like much, does it? And it is so very yellow. I’ve always found yellow to be rather bright for a house color. Not that anyone could call that shade bright.” She made a tutting noise. “That poor building has seen better days, hasn’t it?”
“Look who’s talking,” Chudo-Yudo muttered.
“It’s a work in progress,” Barbara said. “If you don’t like the color, feel free not to look at it. If you switch windows, you have your choice of a faded red barn on one side or a bunch of lovely green trees on the other. Or you could go back through the doorway and stroll through the Queen’s garden. I hear her flowers are looking quite spectacular this millennium.”
“Oh, I have seen Her Majesty’s garden quite recently,” Brenna said. “She summoned me for a visit and we had a very interesting chat. Did you know that one of the moons is crooked now? It was very odd.” She sat down on the couch with an unmusical clatter of beads and fluffed her skirts. “Aren’t you going to offer me a cup of tea? My goodness, your manners are dreadful. Your mentor would have been appalled.”
Barbara sighed and eyed the kettle, then decided she couldn’t be bothered, under the circumstances. Instead, she snapped her fingers and two steaming glass mugs of tea appeared on the table between the couch and the chair across from it. A tiny white jug of milk, a plate with a few slices of lemon, and a footed bowl with lumps of sugar and a pair of silver tongs appeared next to them.
“Help yourself,” she said.
Brenna plucked out a cube of sugar with her fingers, ignoring the tongs, and placed it between her teeth, then slurped her tea around it. Barbara hadn’t seen anyone do this since she was a child, back in Russia.
Barbara ignored her own tea, sitting upright with her hands folded in her lap. She had a feeling Brenna would get to the point of her visit eventually. In the meanwhile, Barbara sure as hell wasn’t going to make small talk. It wasn’t her strong suit to begin with, and definitely not when it was taking all of her willpower not to simply leap across the table and strangle her unexpected guest. Only the thought of the Queen’s reaction stopped her. For now.
After a few moments of silence, Brenna crunched the rest of her sugar viciously and set down her mug with a thump that cracked the glass. Barbara didn’t bother to mend it. Some things were beyond fixing.
“Very well, dear. Shall I tell you about my conversation with the Queen and King? It was most peculiar, I must say.” She stared across the table at Barbara, her lips pursed so that the wrinkles spread outward in like corrugated tissue paper.
“Her Majesty asked me some highly offensive questions about my activities and intentions. Highly offensive. And then she and her consort proceeded to inform me that you had accused me of various heinous crimes.” Brenna fanned herself with her hand, as if overcome. “Crimes that I apparently committed in some imaginary alternative timeline, of all things.”
“Is that so?” Barbara said in a mild tone. “It’s nice to know that the Queen is taking me so seriously.”
The benign expression dropped away from Brenna’s face and she rose to her feet with an indignant screech. “Seriously?” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “No one is taking you seriously, Baba Yaga. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you are playing it with the wrong person.”
“No games, Brenna,” Barbara said, standing up too. “In the timeline I came from, you did some horrible things to people I love. I don’t know what you’re up to here, but I damn well know that whatever it is, it isn’t going to end well. Take my advice and go back into retirement while you still can.”
Chudo-Yudo bared his teeth and nodded his huge head in agreement.
Brenna dropped the polite old lady act as if it were a flaming bag of poo. “I will give you some advice instead, you interfering pest. You are out of your league. You may be the oldest of the current Baba Yagas, but I have lived centuries longer than you, and I know tricks you haven’t even dreamt of. You do not want to mess with me.”
“Oh no?” Barbara said. “I rather think I do. Unless you promise to go away and leave Beka alone, and stop plotting whatever the hell it is you’re plotting.”
“I will go where I want, when I want, and you will shut up and stay out of my way,” Brenna spat. A pair of doves woven into a wall hanging pulled themselves away from the rest of the picture and flew out the window, tiny threads dangling from their feet and wings.
“Dammit, I liked that piece,” Barbara said under her breath. Then to Brenna, “And if I choose not to? I mean, you’ve met me. Shutting up and staying out of the way has never been my best thing.”
“Well, you might wish to reconsider your approach, dear,” Brenna said. Her black eyes glinted. “Or I will be forced to convince the Queen that you are suffering from delusions brought on by The Water Sickness, and suggest that she have you confined to some dank, dark corner of the Otherworld. For your own protection, of course.”
Barbara snorted. That was rich, coming from Brenna, who had actually succumbed to the rare but terrifying madness that sometimes affected Baba Yagas who had spent too many years drinking the Water of Life and Death. “Why would she believe you over me?” Barbara asked.
“I can be very persuasive,” Brenna said, twirling her beads. “The King is not nearly as certain of your story as the Queen is, and they both find your accusations against me to be ludicrous. Beka is already half certain that you are either crazy or under some kind of evil spell, and I am quite sure she will take my side, the darling girl. I did raise her, after all.”
“The Queen would never believe you,” Barbara said. But in her heart, she wasn’t so sure. As mercurial as she was beautiful, it was always difficult to predict which way the Queen might swing on any given day.
“Oh, I think she will,” Brenna said. “But if you aren’t concerned enough about your own welfare, you might wish to consider the possibility for collateral damage. Beka is a powerful witch, but she is also trusting and naïve. And Human sheriffs—even former sheriffs—are vulnerable to attack from all sorts of things.”
Barbara growled low in her throat, her hands clenched into fists. Beka must have told Brenna everything they’d talked about. Or perhaps the Queen had mentioned Liam, when telling Brenna whatever part of the story she’d shared during their “chat.”
“Let me eat her, Baba Yaga,” Chudo-Yudo said, taking a step closer, his form starting to waver between dog and dragon. “I’d get indigestion, but it would be worth it.”
Brenna backed rapidly toward the doorway, although she never took her eyes off of Barbara’s. “You just think about what I’ve said. I have big plans, and I have no intention of letting you ruin them. Go ahead and play with your run-down house and your pathetic Human lover. But stay out of my way, or you’ll be sorry.”
She reached behind her for the wonky handle, which opened under her touch as if it were as happy to see the last of her as Barbara was. Then she was gone, with only the echo of a slamming door and the lingering smell of patchouli to mark her passing.
“You should have let me eat her,” Chudo-Yudo said in a grumpy tone. He pulled a fresh bone out from underneath a cabinet that, strictly speaking, didn’t have an underneath, and started crunching on it morosely.
Another cabinet door swung open and Babs crawled out, her sho
rt dark hair more disheveled than usual. Barbara wasn’t sure how the girl had even fit into that space, not to mention where all the things that had been stored in it had disappeared to, but she figured this wasn’t the time to ask. She had bigger things to worry about.
Apparently Babs shared her concern. “I think you should have let Chudo-Yudo eat her too,” the girl said flatly. “She is a very bad woman. She wants to hurt Liam.” The normally mild-mannered child suddenly looked surprisingly fierce. “I will not let her.”
Barbara reached down and gave Babs a quick hug. She couldn’t have said which one of them it was intended to comfort. “No, we will not let her hurt Liam.”
But if she was being completely honest, at least with herself, she had no idea how she was going to keep him safe, short of shadowing him night and day, which might be a bit difficult to explain. As tempting as it was. As for Beka, Barbara felt completely helpless to protect the younger Baba Yaga. And helpless was not a feeling Barbara enjoyed.
“The Queen would have been very angry with Chudo-Yudo if he had eaten a Baba Yaga,” she explained. “It isn’t a good thing to have the Queen mad at you, even if you are a dragon.”
Babs thought for a minute. “I think we need to make more cookies,” she said.
“O-kay,” Barbara agreed, a little confused. “But I don’t see how that is going to keep Brenna from hurting people.”
“The cookies are not to keep Brenna from hurting people,” Babs said, looking very serious. “The cookies are for the Riders. They like cookies. Especially Alexei. You said before that we should not call them because we needed magic help, not brute force help. Do we need brute force help now?”
“Yes,” Barbara said, thoughtfully. “Yes, I think we do.” She had no idea how she was going to convince them to believe her, but it was worth a try. If nothing else, it would be wonderful to see them with their immortality intact, the way they were before Brenna broke them with torture and black magic. That might be the one bright spot in the middle of all the changes for the worse. The Riders were still themselves, whole and unbroken.
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