Daughter of the Spellcaster

by Maggie Shayne

  He studied her eyes for a long time. “Okay. I guess I deserve that. But...Lena, is it that you think I’m only pretending to still have feelings for you, because of the baby? Because that’s not true. Even Bahru will tell you that’s not true. I’ve been miserable since you left. I wish my father was still here. He’d tell you.” He looked at the chalice. “Maybe you could ask him yourself.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  He nodded. “Okay, I... You take your time. I’m not going anywhere. And, um...I’m sorry I interrupted your...ritual.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Okay. Well. Good night, I guess.”

  “Good night, Ryan.” She closed the door, swept the energy curtain together again. “I want to believe him so, so freaking bad,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Ryan took her rejection on the chin and told himself he just had to work his way past it. Hell, he’d only been there a couple of days. He couldn’t expect her to believe in the new and improved Ryan two-point-oh he was trying to sell her in so short a time. He’d spent way too much time selling her the old version. Ryan one-point-oh. Or one-point-a-hole, which he figured was probably more accurate.

  It was going to take some time.

  Meanwhile, he thought she’d given him some massive insights into what to do about that crazy-ass magic knife his father had left him. He needed to practice with it, to master it. But first he needed to cleanse it.

  She’d started getting suspicious about all his questions, so he’d had to let that part go. But he knew where he could find the answers.

  In the attic, in those boxes upon boxes of books he’d carried up there only a couple of days ago. So that was where he headed. Part of him wanted to get back to work on the nursery, but he couldn’t really paint until the primer was dry enough, which meant tomorrow morning, so he had nothing but time on his hands tonight.

  He found a handy spot on the attic floor and then began pulling the volumes out of the boxes, one after another, flipping through them in search of an explanation on how to “cleanse” a magical tool.

  An hour later he’d found what he needed, a list of numerous methods of cleansing objects.

  1. Tie the object up tight in a netted bag, like the kind onions come in, and drop it into a running stream. Weigh it down with rocks or tie it to something so it won’t float away, and leave it there for three nights.

  Well, that was simple enough, but it would take too much time.

  2. Bury the object in salt, or in the earth itself, and leave it overnight.

  That might work.

  3. Bathe the object in an infusion of mugwort and—

  No, that wasn’t any good. He wouldn’t know a mugwort from a toad’s wart.

  4. Lay the object out in direct sunlight for three full days.

  Too likely it would be seen. And too much time again.

  5. Cleanse and consecrate with holy water, sage smoke, candle flame and sea salt inside a ritual circle.

  He didn’t know enough to do that.

  It looked like number two was the one. He just needed a small shovel, and he prayed he could find a patch of ground that wasn’t too frozen—though that shouldn’t be a problem, given the mildness of the winter. He already knew where he was going to start looking for the right spot. That little patch of trees out back, at the edge of the lawn, where he’d first experimented with the blade. That was it.

  * * *

  Lena frowned at the computer screen where she had uploaded the photos from her mom’s cell phone and clicked the “enhance” button. There was clearly a fire, and there were several figures standing around it, but they were all covered from head to toe in dark, hooded robes. Like monks’ robes.

  She glanced at the stairs, then at the front door. The computer desk was nestled in the little bank of bay windows in the deepest part of the living room. Ryan had gone out. He hadn’t taken the truck, so he was either out walking or he’d gone over to see Bahru. Not very likely.

  He wasn’t around, though, so she minimized the photo-editing software, opened a private browsing tab, so there would be no trail in the history, and then typed P. Reynolds Attorney into the search bar. Her finger hovered over the enter key. Should she do this? It was an invasion of privacy. And yet, if he was laying the groundwork to fight for custody of their daughter, she needed to know, right?

  Lena hated dishonesty, along with lying and sneaking and covert actions of any kind.

  But for her baby, she figured she could put her values just very slightly aside. Decision made, she tapped Enter. In seconds the search results came up. The very first one was Paul Reynolds, Family Law Attorney, specializing in Marital and Custody Law in New York, N.Y.

  “Son of a—”

  The door opened, and she closed the screen so fast anyone would have thought she’d been caught watching porn. Then she looked up at Ryan, her heart breaking. Because it was true. He was talking with a custody lawyer. Damn him for getting her hopes up. She tried not to look guilty, even though she’d obviously had good reason for her snooping.

  Then she realized he was looking guilty, too. Avoiding her eyes and wiping his hands on his jeans for some reason.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked him.

  “Just walking around, looking at the stars, thinking.”

  “Oh.” Lies, all lies.

  “You?”

  “Oh, um, I’ve been playing with those photos on Mom’s phone. Want to see?”

  “Dying to.” He pried off his shoes. Mud was caked on the bottom. Then he headed into the kitchen and washed his hands. “Can I bring you something?” he asked. “Personally, I’d like a hot cocoa. All this tea we drink around here is fine, but sometimes you just need decadence.”

  She smiled, growing warm. Loving him. Then she squashed it all down. “Cocoa sounds great. If you use two packets in a big mug and add whipped cream, it’s even better.”

  “I’m all over that.” He rattled around in the kitchen. She took the time to make sure that her recent web search had indeed vanished from the history and then shut the browser down.

  A few minutes later he brought in the cocoa, whipped cream piled on top like soft-serve ice cream on a cone. He handed her a cup, and she made a heartfelt “mmm” sound and took a sip.

  When she lowered the cup, he looked at her, and there was something beaming from his eyes that looked like adoration. Yeah, he was that good. “How did I ever think...no, never mind.” He reached out to touch the tip of her nose and said, “Whipped cream. Just a little.”

  “Oh.” She lowered her eyes. It would be too easy to believe what she was seeing in his.

  “What did you find out?” he asked.

  Her head came up fast. “F-find out about what?”

  “The photos?” He was looking at her oddly, as if he’d totally noticed her defensiveness. She might as well have blurted “I wasn’t snooping on you!”

  Oh, right. She nodded at the screen, where the first image was enlarged but blurry.

  He frowned at it and said, “I’m really sorry if this offends you, but that photo gives me the creeps.”

  “Why would that offend me?”

  “Well, they’re witches. Aren’t they? The fire, the robes, they’re standing in a circle, in the woods, at night....”

  “I don’t think they’re witches.” She put her finger on the screen. “No cords. Witches who wear the same ritual robes would more than likely be part of a coven. In most covens there are cords to signify the various degrees. A novice wouldn’t have any cords, but after a year and a day of study, should he or she pass muster, he or she would become an initiate, a first-degree priest or priestess, and would normally receive a cord. A second-degree, or adept, would get a second cord, and a third-degree, or master, would have three cords. Sometimes a
n elder receives a fourth.”

  “Do you have cords?” he asked.

  He seemed genuinely interested. He was awfully convincing, if it was all an act. She wasn’t usually easily fooled. “No. Mom and I are—well, not exactly solitary. More a fam-trad. Family tradition.”

  “Like Hank Williams Junior?”

  She grinned, growing warm again, then forced it away. “We don’t do cords or degrees. We just...be.”

  “You’re a rebel, even among witches. I should have known. So you don’t think the people in the photo are a...fam-trad?”

  “No. Those robes are dark. Formal. But no cords. I don’t think they’re witches at all. I don’t see any of the traditional tools of the Craft nearby. Do you see a chalice or candles, a sword...anything?”

  He leaned closer, scanning the screen, and she felt his breath right on that sensitive area where her neck met her shoulder. She wished he would put his lips there instead. No, she told herself, she didn’t.

  “Not a pentacle in sight. Just them.”

  “We witches like our stuff. We take rattles and drums into circle with us. We wear our pentacles outside our robes, we don’t hide them within, not in circle. And the hoods. The hoods are weird.”

  “I can’t see a single face,” he said. “Just those damn hoods.”

  “It’s like they planned it that way.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to walk back out there tomorrow. With the sheriff or without him. In between working on our little guy’s room.” He gave her a grin.

  “Girl. She’s a girl. I hope you’re trusting me on that as you work on her room.” And why is he doing all that anyway, if he’s planning to take the baby and leave?

  “I’m making it unisex. We don’t want her growing up thinking she has to love pink just because she’s female, do we?”

  “You know me too well.” She blinked slowly and pushed her chair away from the desk, then got to her feet. “It’s late. And I get tired really easily these days.”

  “I’m not surprised. You’ve been carrying a lot of extra weight around—not just physically, either.”

  He straightened, clasped her shoulders, looked into her eyes. “Good night, Lena.”

  She could tell that he wanted to kiss her, but he was waiting for her to make the first move, to lean closer or close her eyes, or even just lick her lips. A signal. She sighed, wishing she could trust that his concern for her was real, and forcibly lowered her head.

  He let his arms fall to his sides, and she felt his disappointment wash over her.

  Just as if it was real.

  Turning, she headed up the stairs, checked quickly on her mother—who was sound asleep—and went into her room. As she closed the bedroom door behind her, she glimpsed that shadowy form, now so familiar, lurking near her window. She waved dismissively at it. “Go away. I’ve got no patience for you tonight.”

  Do not trust him.

  She had accompanied her command with a flick of her hand, as casually as she would tell a dog to “go lie down,” and she had fully expected the house ghost to comply.

  But he hadn’t. He’d pressed his message into her mind instead. And that made her stop in her tracks. Since when could a ghost refuse to obey the command of the home owner—particularly if that home owner was a witch?

  She blinked at the shadowy form, wondering for the first time if it was really a ghost at all...or something else. Because a ghost should have vanished almost before she had finished telling it to. Oh, it might have come back later, but...

  This dude was breaking the rules. “What are you?” she asked.

  You must send him away. Send him away now.

  “I asked you a question,” Lena said, her voice soft but firm. “You’re not a ghost at all, are you? What are you, then? And why are you here?”

  No reply.

  “I command you to answer me. What are you, and why are you here?”

  It refused to respond. She felt its resistance, like a solid brick wall, and then she felt more. Anger. Rage. Menace.

  The child in her belly kicked her so hard she gasped in pain and pressed her hands to her belly. And then there was a rush of silence, of emptiness, and she knew the being had gone.

  11

  The shadow dissipated, vanished. Just like that. Lena rubbed her arms and decided a major house cleansing was in order. She was no longer comfortable with that dark presence hanging around.

  Moreover, she was sick to death of beating around the bush with Ryan.

  He had gone to bed. She’d heard him come up while she’d been arguing with the ghost, or whatever it was, in her room. So she flung her door open and marched across the hall, opened his without knocking and walked right in as if she owned the place—because she did.

  He looked up fast, his expression guilty again. He’d been reading in bed, and she was stunned to see the titles, not only of the book in his hands but the other three lying open, facedown, on the bed beside him. Every single one was about the practice of witchcraft.

  He set the books down as she frowned at him. “You okay? Is your mom—”

  “Fine, I just— What’s up with the books, Ryan?”

  He shrugged. “Like I told you, I want to know about...you know, what you believe in. And you got so suspicious when I asked you that I figured I should just find out for myself. Seemed like everything I could ever want to know was probably in those books up in the attic, so I picked a few that looked interesting and brought them down for some bedtime reading.”

  She drew a deep breath, sighed and reaffirmed that honesty was the best policy here. Because what if he was being sincere? What if he really meant it when he said he wasn’t the man he’d been pretending to be?

  Moving closer, anger dissipating, she sank onto his bed. “When we were kissing before, and your phone rang...”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was a lawyer.”

  He blinked. “Yes, it was. How did you...?”

  “The phone was practically under my nose and I saw the caller ID. “

  “Oh.”

  She swallowed hard, lifted her chin and went on. “I looked the name up online tonight. I know it was really awful of me, snooping like that, but I had my reasons. He practices family law, Ryan.” She watched him closely, probing his eyes, waiting for the guilty reaction, but there wasn’t one. “Are you planning to fight me for custody of Eleanora?”

  He blinked three times, slowly, and then he smiled. “Eleanora? That’s what you want to call her?”

  She lowered her eyes, trying not to sigh in frustration. “That’s her name. She sort of...told me.” Glancing up at him nervously, she added, “But if you don’t like it...”

  “I think it’s beautiful.”

  “You do?”

  “Maybe I can pick the middle name?”

  Shrugging, she chose not to answer. “What about the lawyer, Ryan?”

  “Paul is my best friend. My only real friend, I guess. He happens to be a lawyer, but he’s not working for me. Not in any way, Lena.”

  “Then...then you weren’t discussing a father’s rights with him?”

  “No. I wasn’t.”

  Lena frowned. That meant Bahru had lied to her. But why?

  “Paul has a side project going with a small group of engineers and inventors, and I’m funding it.”

  She set aside her concerns about Bahru, for the moment. “I didn’t know that.”

  “No one knows that. I’ve kept it very quiet.”

  “But why?”

  “Frankly, because I was still trying to keep my facade intact. You know, unattainable, irresponsible, self-centered playboy. It would have blown my image. And besides, I didn’t want my father or his boards of directors swooping in trying to take it over.”

/>   She was even more interested now. “You think they would have done that?”

  “If they thought they could make a profit off it? Sure they would. And it’s not that kind of a project. It’s not about profits. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday, but the important thing is to get it up and running.”

  Sinking onto the edge of his bed, she let herself indulge her curiosity. Everything about him was fascinating to her, especially now that she was—maybe—seeing the real Ryan. “What kind of project is it?”

  He closed the book with a snap and set it aside, then yanked his laptop from the nightstand and opened it, excitement glittering in his eyes. A few keystrokes later she was looking at a full-color drawing of a sprawling field filled with solar panels.

  “Solar farms, but with a twist. Paul’s group is buying up land with excellent sun exposure all over the country and installing these solar panels that follow the sun’s motion across the sky.”

  Lena frowned in thought. Not because of what she was seeing on the computer but because of what she was seeing in his eyes. Something she had never seen before.

  He spun the laptop toward him again, clicked a few more keys and spun it back. Now she was looking at schematics or blueprints or something, and it was completely Greek to her.

  “This is the home conversion kit, the key to the whole thing. The batteries that store the excess energy will be small and affordable, unlike the bulky, pricey ones available up to now. Plus they’ve come up with these conversion kits that they’re going to provide free of charge to every household within range of the solar farms. The goal is to make everyone in the immediate vicinity of our farms one hundred percent solar by the end of the first five years. The people would pay only for the energy, not for the equipment. And we’d guarantee to keep even that cost capped at whatever the big power companies are charging. But that means the initial funding really has to come from investors. The start-up costs, the equipment costs, the research and development, and then buying the property, all that is expensive.”