Strangehold (Crossroads of Worlds Book 1)

by Rene Sears

  "I doubt you're the only one." He glanced back at me. "A colleague north of here tells me at least one gate is guarded by a phouka."

  "Well," he murmured. "Indeed. And who else might await us?" The thought seemed to brighten him a little.

  My phone rang. The number was unknown, but I answered anyway. "This is Morgan." Falcon watched curiously.

  Static crackled down the line, but nothing else. Hairs prickled along my arms. "Hello?"

  "Morgan....I need your help..." The voice was male, and familiar, but tenuous with distance and I couldn't immediately place it.

  "Who is this?"

  A choking laugh. "It's Marcus."

  "Where are you?" I put the blinker on and pulled onto the side of the road. Almost running off the highway twice in an hour wasn't on my agenda today. My body felt cold and still with shock. I hadn't spoken to my mentor, much less seen him, in eighteen years. After Matthew's disastrous stunt, Marcus Grey had stopped taking students and dropped out of the network of spellcasters entirely. Eliza and I had speculated many times that he was dead because it was almost preferable to his being alive and rejecting us so thoroughly.

  The sound of his voice, even distant and staticky, woke a confusion of emotions in me: relief, joy, anger...and even the student's eagerness to please that I thought I'd outgrown twenty years ago.

  I retreated in my own way, moving to a small town where no one knew me and I'd always be an outsider, but I hadn't disappeared as he had. I was still helping Eliza and the Association, still helping the people around me. The man who had taught me the responsibility a caster has to her community had gotten in touch precisely once after the mess with Matthew, and that was right now.

  "Strange...hold..." A burst of white noise interrupted him and I wasn't sure if I'd heard him right. The phrase rang a vague bell, but nothing solid. A person? A place? A jiu-jitsu move? I couldn't bring it to the tip of my brain.

  "Marcus...What? Where are you? Give me something more."

  Distant, tinny static.

  "Marcus! Hello? Are you there?"

  The line went dead.

  "Damn it!" I beat the steering wheel in frustration and tried to redial the number, but it went straight to a busy signal.

  My passenger cleared his throat delicately. I had almost forgotten he was there, which was suicidally stupid around the fae. "Your caller...Was that Marcus Grey?"

  I managed to keep my mouth from dropping open, barely. "You've heard of him?"

  "Indeed I have." His smile was sharp, edged. "I have been in the mortal realm a long time, Morgan. Marcus and I worked together, decades ago." He shot me a sidelong look that I couldn't interpret. If Marcus had mentioned him, I didn't remember, or he had spoken of him with a different name.

  "I haven't seen him in almost twenty years." Would my passenger have heard of what Matthew did? Doubtless. Everyone had heard of Matthew. He had nearly ended the truce between our peoples. "But I don't know where he is, or how I can help him. And the feygates are still shut. My friend in New York tells me another of our people is sick. But not just sick—somehow it's affecting him magically."

  Falcon looked at me without comment. He was fae, not human; maybe the fae had magical sicknesses all the time. I'd have to ask Gwen, if I could. There was so much going wrong. A pulse of panic brought bile to the back of my throat. How could I possibly do everything I needed to do? I checked the link to my nieces for the umpteenth time since the gates had closed. It was still there, cobweb-thin but undisturbed. They were still okay.

  "You are fatigued," Falcon observed.

  "Yes, tha—I do appreciate your noticing." I refrained from rubbing the corners of my eyes. We were still in Alabama. I didn't think I could make it to Louisiana without a break.

  "You should rest before your abilities become compromised."

  "I will. After we check on Helen."

  He hesitated. "I am fatigued as well."

  "After Helen," I said, "we will rest."

  He nodded, not as if he were pleased, but it wasn't far to Helen's. I called her again with no better result than any of the other times. She'd answer if she could. I tried not to think of all the possible reasons she couldn't.

  The sun was well up and my eyelids felt like someone had stapled weights to them by the time I pulled up in front of Helen's house. It was the house her children had grown up in; she had not moved once they were grown and gone, and not when her husband had died.

  "All right," I told Falcon. "Let's see what's going on, and then we'll find a place to rest." He nodded, frowning, and stared at the house. I followed his gaze, but couldn't tell what was bothering him. "Are you okay? Is something wrong?"

  "I...am well. But this place...the wards..."

  Well, that told me nothing solid and raised hairs down my arms. I took a breath and summoned my spellsight. A net of fading silver draped around the house—Helen's wards, in the looping swirls that I associated with her casting—with a black hole in the middle of it like a cigarette burn in a wedding veil. A shudder rippled the skin on my back. There were only a few reasons her wards might be fading, none of them good. And I'd never seen anything like that hole.

  We walked to the door and I leaned on the doorbell. Helen lived alone; there was no one I could bother, unless she had guests, and if her guests were keeping her from answering the phone I was happy to bother them. No one answered, and I heard nothing.

  The door was locked, but I was a spellcaster. I pulled energy from the ouroboros tattoo at my shoulder and forced the lock. This was crude magic, simple application of force to create a "key," with none of the elegance of the spells Marcus had taught us, but it was also much faster, with much less in the way of set up. Falcon watched, frowning, but said nothing.

  The door swung open and I stepped into the dark front hallway. It smelled wrong. Helen was a meticulous housekeeper, much more so than I, and there was a faint scent of vomit underlying that of cleaning products and air freshener. I called her name a few times, but there was no answer, so I went deeper into the house, Falcon at my shoulder. It was a split-level, with her kitchen, living room, and office on the first floor, and a den a level down—all empty. The stairs creaked as I went up them; they were silent under Falcon's feet, and I focused on my annoyance at typical fae ubercompetence rather than the unease dogging me through Helen's silent house. I stopped at the hall bathroom. The smell of vomit was stronger. I braced myself.

  "Helen?" No answer. I pushed the door open, then took a step back, swallowing hard.

  She was leaning against the wall across from the toilet as though resting, but her eyes were wide and staring and she looked—well. I ran to check her pulse to be sure, but I already knew.

  "Back away," Falcon said from the hallway. "Stop touching her and back away."

  I let my fingers slide away from her wrist and did as he said. "What is it?" I had to clear my throat before my voice was steady. After two decades of working together, she had been more than an ally. Most spellcasters felt a bit like family simply because we all shared the same secret—some of them the weird dysfunctional family that you wanted to avoid, to be sure—but Helen had been a friend as well. Not the first friend I'd lost, but it didn't get easier. Each grief added up, took a little more sunshine out of the world.

  "Look at her." I glanced back at her body, but I saw nothing. "No. Use your sorcerer's sight."

  His voice was sharp, so I did as he suggested rather than inform him that no one said sorcerer anymore. Silver veiled my vision, surrounded by the slowly-dissolving wards and enchantments that had run through Helen's home. Reluctantly, I returned my gaze to Helen.

  And sucked in air. Her magic should have been fading like her wards, the silver strands dimming and falling apart, but hers were still bright and moving, knotting more tightly about her. They looked like worms sinking into her dead skin, and I flinched back reflexively, swallowing hard to keep my coffee from coming back up my throat. She was my friend, and she was being eaten by the ma
gic she had mastered. Bile burned the back of my throat.

  "What is it?" I couldn't keep revulsion from my voice.

  "It's nothing I've ever seen. Might I suggest we leave this house?"

  A glint of metal against the tile floor caught my eye. A bracelet. Helen hadn’t gone in for tattoos as I did—not many casters did; you could get a lot of power from them, but it could be dangerous to hold that much magic next to your skin all the time, and if something went wrong it was right there on you—so like many folks, she wore wards and spells in jewelry. Among a number of silver charms, there were three spheres of clear quartz, clouded and shot through with cracks. I scooped up the bracelet with one finger and shoved it into my pocket, then beat a retreat out of the room.

  The worms of Helen's power surged above her skin and sank back down into it. I was only too happy to take his suggestion—and, I noted, his voice had wavered as well. Whatever scared a fae into audibly losing control was something I didn't want to deal with.

  Unfortunately, I didn't see a whole lot of other options.

  I slammed the door behind us as we tumbled out onto the front porch—more like children who'd been dared into a witch's house than like a veteran spellcaster and a fae whatever-he-was. My chest was heaving and sweat cooled the small of my back. Falcon looked none too sanguine either, which was some small consolation. I took out my phone. Falcon shot me a look I couldn't quite interpret, so I held up a finger in the universal signal for just a second. The fae had so many more years than the rest of us, there was a real possibility that to him it meant wait a month, but he waited and didn't tap his foot or vanish into nothing. With the feygates shut, maybe he couldn't.

  Eliza picked up after the fourth ring, right when I was sure it was about to go to voice mail. "Yes?"

  "Helen's dead." I took a breath to keep my voice steady. "It's weird. There are spell lines around her body when she's clearly gone. All her wards are dissolving, but the magic is still doing something. I don't like it at all. I'm going to cast a ward around her house until Dr. Ramachandran can get a look at her."

  "Morgan...have you turned on the news at all?"

  A retort almost made it past my lips, but I bit it back and came up with something more measured. "I've been a little busy, to be honest. Did you not hear me that Helen is dead?"

  "Morgan..." It was bad if she was calling me by name this much. "...She's not the only one. A lot of people are very sick."

  My stomach dropped. "Is it...?"

  I didn't even know what I was asking, but she had an answer to the question I couldn't formulate. "Casters are getting sick, Morgan. Lots of us. Even the mundane world has noticed. Be careful." Something hit the phone and I heard a muffled cough. She had put her hand over it to quiet it.

  "You be careful, too, Eliza." Ice curdled my gut at the thought of her like Helen, wormed through by her own magic.

  "Cast the ward. Saranya will come or—or—someone will." She coughed again.

  "Eliza—"

  "I'll talk to you tomorrow. Maybe I'll have something better to tell you."

  "Tomorrow." I only said it so I wouldn't have to say goodbye. I ended the call with a feeling of all-too-specific dread.

  Falcon was standing a few feet away, arms crossed. "I have to ward this," I told him. "Whatever that was, we can't leave it where anyone might stumble in and touch those—those worms."

  His mouth twisted, but he nodded. "I'll help."

  My eyebrows shot up, but I managed to keep from blurting out anything stupid in my surprise. The fae and mortal spellcasters had been in a state of uneasy détente for decades now, more likely to circle each other warily than offer aid. But then again, the feygates were shut and something nasty was happening, so if there were ever a time for cooperation, this was it. "I'd appreciate that. My thought was to cast a circle with salt and stone, rowan and ash." And yes, salt and stone were both rocks, but salt affected magic differently than other crystals did. If we were casting a circle inside, I might have gone with just salt, not stone, but I wanted something more permanent, that couldn't be washed away—although it meant it would take longer, and I was so tired. But if Falcon truly meant to help me...

  His lips twisted in a faint smile and he nodded thoughtfully. "I'll add my power to yours."

  It was a generous offer. I'd never cast with a fae before—I didn't know anyone who had, besides possibly Gwen; maybe someday things would be easy enough between both lands to share knowledge freely, but the time wasn't yet—and I wasn't sure what to expect. Human magic was relatively slow and ponderous, and required set up. I used props, like salt or circles or incense, to alter the flow of magic, or sifted and stored it in my tattoos—an arduous process, but one that allowed me to perform some kinds of spells more quickly. The fae worked with glamours and curses, mostly, and their methods were quicker and more intuitive than the ones we used, as far as I knew, anyway. There could be a school for fae magic underhill, and how the hell would anyone know about it?

  Gwen might. The girls might.

  I shoved them out of my head with an effort and went to the truck to get my tool bag. Falcon followed behind me, casting an uneasy look over his shoulder at the house. A few weeks back I had cleared out a half-full bag of river stones I'd used in a garden project; a shame, because they would have been useful now. But I never went anywhere without salt—there was a small Ziploc bag of kosher salt in my tool kit, and a forty-pound bag of extra coarse in my truck bed. Crystals held spells particularly well, like the quartz on Helen's bracelet, and salt had other properties that made it useful. It both held spells and could break them. I grunted as I lifted the cooler that I kept the salt in and dropped it to the ground. I opened the cooler and ripped open the bag, pulling out a handful of salt crystals to show Falcon. They were bigger than table salt, the size of small pebbles themselves.

  The house wasn't too big, but my back ached before we made it halfway around. I scattered herbs mixed with chips of ash and rowan, and then followed it with chunks of salt. All the while I was coaxing magic stored in my ouroboros knot tattoo to follow the spell, encouraging the various rocks and pebbles that lay on Helen's property to join with the ward. A faint trace of silver showed when we made our way back to the beginning. We walked three times around and when we overlapped our footsteps the final time, silver soared up into a dome around Helen's house. Even if her sons came to the house, they would turn away, forgetting why they were there in the first place.

  Her daughter was another matter; she was a caster herself. I would have to call her. Someone had to tell her that her mother was dead, and as far I could see, that person was me. I swallowed again and turned to Falcon. It hadn't been too different, working with him. Now all that was left was to tap the leyline and write the rune to seal the circle, and we were done. "I appreciate your help," I began, but he shook his head, eyebrows drawing together.

  "Wait." He turned back toward the house. I listened, but I couldn’t tell what had caught his attention. He stepped carefully across the circle we'd made and headed for the back door. The silver wall rippled around him, as yet unsealed. I watched, frowning, as he bent to the door and listened for a second, then straightened and yanked the door open.

  A little poodle-y spaniel-type dog spilled out the door and down the steps. Its tail wagged furiously and it looked up at Falcon like he was its savior. He bent down and rubbed its ears as it ducked and barked frantically around him. I dug in my backpack and found a half-empty packet of jerky, and walked over to the fae and the dog.

  "I forgot Helen had a dog." I'd never seen it for very long before she put it in the laundry room if there were people coming over. Now I couldn’t remember its name. Biscuit? Cookie? Something food-related.

  "The poor creature will hardly know what to do with itself with no mistress to serve," Falcon said. I leaned down and fed it jerky, which disappeared in seconds. How long had it been locked in the laundry room waiting for Helen to let it out? My throat tightened with grief I'd been t
oo freaked out to feel when confronted by her body.

  I coughed. "I've got more jerky in the car. The back yard is fenced in. I'll let Helen's daughter know the dog is here when I call her."

  He looked at me thoughtfully, then bent down and spoke to the dog in a fae language. Which one, I didn't know; I spoke a few words of High Court, but I didn't recognize this. The dog barked back. Falcon gestured a spell out of the air, but I couldn't tell what it was.

  "He will wait in the back yard," Falcon said.

  "What did you do?"

  "If his new masters are unsatisfactory, he may come to Faerie. I have shown him a way to get there, once the gates are open again."

  "He understood about feygates and underhill?"

  "He understood enough to have a choice."

  I nodded, accepting it. The dog leaned against my leg, tail wagging furiously. I opened the gate to the fenced-in back yard and let him in, dumping out another pack of jerky for him. One we were back outside the circle, it was time to seal the ward.

  "All right," I said. "Let's get this done." I pulled the silver energy of the dome together, closing the place where we'd walked through it, and drew a rune of warning to communicate my intent. It was as solid as I could make it now, and I started to reach for the ley energy to bolster my strength. But Falcon wasn't done.

  He took my hand, turned to the silver dome, and spoke to it.

  Magic is stronger in Faerie, or more pervasive, anyway. There are no thin spots like there are here, no danger of running out of power. As Marcus explained it to me, magic comes from the space between our world and Faerie, leaking in from between the worlds. There are other worlds, it's been theorized, hanging next to each other like pearls on a string, touching but not overlapping. Faerie is the closest one, and smaller than us. Unlike here, where magic is spread relatively thinly over the earth, there it saturates everything. That's why the fae and even their landscape are so mutable, and why there are stories of people going underhill and coming back a hundred years later.

  Here, you have to seek it out. There, it's everywhere. It soaks into the land, the people, the food, the air, so the way the fae interact with it is different than the way casters here do. I couldn’t tell how Falcon pulled the energy to him, but it wasn't how I'd have brought it from the leyline. He turned to me, and it was there.