Daughter of the Spellcaster

by Maggie Shayne

  “What is this, and what’s it do?” he asked.

  “Holy water. Keeps what we just booted out from coming back in.”

  “Ah. Gotcha.” He closed the door and dampened his finger in the water from the bottle, drawing the cross everywhere she’d told him to. “Why do I feel like I should be speaking Latin?” he called.

  She laughed again. He felt warm at the sound and then wondered why that warmth was suddenly chased away by an icy chill. As if someone had just opened the door of a giant walk-in meat locker right behind him.

  He stopped what he was doing and frowned, turning in a slow circle, but of course nothing was there. Still...

  He went back to the door, opened it just enough to squeeze out, bottle and all, then pulled it closed behind him. The stench wasn’t left behind, though. It permeated the entire house.

  “God, what have you two crazy women done to this place?”

  Lena shrugged. “I thought it was time we got rid of our ghost. He was starting to make us feel uncomfortable.” She rubbed her arms and looked nervously around. “Frankly, I was expecting a little resistance from him, but I guess he wasn’t all that strong.”

  “Well, the smell certainly is. How soon can we air the place out?”

  “After a few hours.” She walked with him down the stairs. Selma was going around “sealing” the windows and doors just as Ryan had done in the nursery. Lena set the bottle of water on the coffee table, then tamped out the foul-smelling weed before sinking onto the sofa.

  For a second, Ryan just stayed where he was, standing in the doorway, staring at her. All that wild red hair fell around her shoulders in curls he’d always loved. He remembered them falling onto his chest at night, tickling his face during sex. They’d always been so silky-soft beneath his palms. And they’d always smelled of incense and exotic smokiness. Magic. Her hair smelled like magic.

  Well, most of the time. He figured right now it probably smelled like Devil’s Dung.

  She looked up, caught him staring, smiled. “What?”

  “Let’s go out for dinner,” he said, finally shaking himself free of the spell just looking at her could cast. “Let’s get out of this house for the rest of the night so the stinky smoke can do its work, and when we get back we can open all the windows for a while and air it out. Okay?”

  He saw her delight at the idea right there in her face, but only briefly. She chewed her lip a second later. “I don’t know if I want to leave Mom when there’s so much going on.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Selma said. She was capping her bottle, apparently finished. “Go on, have fun. I can probably have the place smelling like home again by the time you return.”

  “Come with us, Selma,” Ryan told her. “I have a brand-new truck neither of you has even ridden in yet. And you know what? On the way back from town I noticed this restaurant right on the lakeshore. It looked like the kind of place you’d love.”

  “I know the one you mean.” Lena looked at her mother. “The Southern Cross. Remember?”

  “Mmm, nice place.”

  Lena frowned. “It’s a bit of a drive, though.”

  “You have a pressing appointment?” Ryan asked.

  She smiled down at her bulging belly. “Not for a few more weeks.” Then she nodded. “What do you say, Mom?”

  “I say I’m perfectly fine staying home by myself. My goodness, I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Yeah, but Mom—”

  “I want you two to go. Have a beautiful dinner and take your time. I’m going to take a long, hot bath full of scented bath oils, and by the time I’m finished, it’ll be time to open the windows.”

  Lena looked at Ryan, and he frowned. He didn’t like leaving Selma, either, especially given her recent health scare.

  “Look, Bahru is just a few steps away if I need him,” Selma said. Then she blinked as if puzzled by her own words, shook herself and went on. “But I won’t need him. Plus the sheriff’s two miles away and Doc Cartwright’s even closer. If you don’t go, it’ll hurt my feelings.”

  “We really need to get a phone or something hooked up out in Bahru’s cottage,” Lena said, eyeing her mother and looking hesitant.

  “I can flash the outdoor light to get his attention if anything goes wrong. But it won’t. Lena, I swear, I have been fine on my own for years now. I had one bad night. A very oddly bad night, but still, I promise you, I’m fine.”

  Lena nodded slowly. “All right. I guess you’re on. Let me just change into something less...fragrant.”

  “Fantastic, I’ll warm up the truck,” Ryan said.

  He was going to call Sheriff Larry while he was alone, tell him what he’d found in those woods and ask him to check in on Selma tonight. He didn’t think telling Lena he’d found blood—probably all that missing calf blood—on her property would be a very good idea. Stress was bad for the baby, and her knowing wouldn’t do her any good, anyway. She needed less to worry about, not more.

  Damn, but he was going to wine and dine that woman tonight, he decided. Okay, not literally—she couldn’t have wine. But still, he needed to remind her how good it had been between them once. It made sense for them to be together as a couple, to raise their baby together as parents, so she—or he, he reminded himself—could have the childhood she deserved.

  He was going to talk to her about that tonight. And she would hear him. He knew she would. It was all going to be okay.

  If he could just get that smell out of his nostrils.

  When he stepped out the front door it slammed behind him—hard. So hard he damn near jumped out of his skin, then spun to look back at it.

  He looked through the glass pane. But Lena and her mother were right where he’d left them, though they were both staring at the front door as if they were as startled as he was.

  He shrugged at them in a “damned if I know” way and headed out to start the truck. Must have been a draft.

  12

  Lena was excited about her night out with Ryan. He was her golden prince, after all, and she’d waited a long time for him to start acting like he was acting now. Attentive, kind, interested in her spirituality and, apparently, in being a parent.

  There was still something lacking, though. The passionate I’ll-wither-and-die-without-your-love-ness of her desert prince. He was still very practical, caring, polite, but...ah, hell, she didn’t know. She told herself that maybe that part of it had been only her own fantasy all along, not a true memory. More like wishful thinking. But then again, it felt real and always had. And she wanted it. Whether it had been true in the past or not, she wanted it now. Fire. Passion. Someone who would kill for her, would die for her, would give his all to make her his own. Instead of waiting around for her to chase him.

  Still, tonight was progress, and Lena was glad. So they climbed into the giant truck, and he pointed out its many high-tech features. “There’s a backup camera,” he said, pointing at the screen. He even demonstrated when he put the truck into Reverse and it showed a wide-angle—almost fish-eye—view of what was behind them.

  “Nice,” she said.

  “Navigation system.” He punched in the information and hit Search, and within seconds their fully mapped route popped onto the screen.

  “That’s fantastic. Mom would love to have one.” She nodded at the dash. “Sound system?”

  “With satellite radio.”

  “You thought of everything.” And had shown her everything, too, she thought. Except for whatever he’d hidden away in the big truck.

  “They hated to part with it. It was their floor model, the one they use to show off every imaginable extra. But I wanted the best, all the safety features. They even threw in a top-of-the-line baby seat, but they had to have it shipped from the manufacturer.”

  She couldn’t stop her adori
ng gaze from roaming his face, and hoped it didn’t show too much, how this touched her. “You’re really excited about being a father, aren’t you, Ryan?”

  He slanted her a smiling look but let it die, his eyes turning serious. “More than I ever imagined possible.” He had to look back to the road, but he wasn’t finished. “If you decide you don’t want me at Havenwood, I’m going to buy a place as close as humanly possible.”

  “I guess that would be the log cabin perched on the hill above us. You can just see it from the second floor of the big barn. I’ll have to show you sometime.”

  “Is it within walking distance?” he asked.

  “Yes, if you’re up for a hike. There’s a path through the woods—not the woods Mom was in but the patch off the other side of the drive, between the house and the lake.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You head out to the cliff about halfway up the mountain and then twist back the other way up a pretty steep slope. There’s a log cabin up there. Really nice. I think it’s owned by a priest.”

  “Really?” He shrugged. “Well, priest or not, I’ll bet I could make him an offer he wouldn’t refuse. Though I really hope I won’t have to.”

  He was asking. Or was he?

  It was so hard for her not to scream Yes, yes, yes! and say to hell with everything else. But she wasn’t yet sure of him. He wasn’t giving her all he had to offer. And there was still the dream of him getting ready to drive a blade of gold into her heart. The silence was becoming awkward as she tried to figure out her reply, and then she was saved by the navigation system.

  “Turn right ahead,” it said, in an inflection-free female monotone. “Then take the highway.”

  “Huh,” she said. “Your GPS sounds just like Nurse Ironbottom.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” He laughed.

  Great. Tension broken.

  As they drove onto the more well-traveled highway and headed south, the evening skies changed.

  Lena looked through the windshield and pointed at the oddness unfolding in the sky. “What the hell, Ryan?”

  He frowned, too, easing off the accelerator. Earlier they had been treated to a clear blue sky that had darkened as nighttime gathered, dotted with twinkling stars that had blinked on one by one at first, then two by two. But now a thick black wall was literally crossing the sky in front of them. On their right the sky was still clear and star-spattered. On their left a towering smoke-black cloud looked like a dark curtain being pulled across the universe, dragging an ice storm and tree-bending wind behind it.

  “That came out of nowhere,” Ryan said, slowing still further, cranking on the wipers as the sleety mixture began to pound the windshield. He strained to see. The sleet was horizontal, dense as a deluge. The wind blew so hard it actually forced the huge black truck to shudder. “I can’t see crap. We need to pull over.”

  There was a flash, and she jumped. “My God, was that lightning? In January?” She knew it was by the crack of thunder that followed. It resonated in her chest as she hugged her belly in the instinctive need to protect her child.

  Ryan continued driving, or trying to, with visibility down to a few feet, at best. He inched the truck forward in search of a safe place to stop, so they wouldn’t get rear-ended by another vehicle coming from behind—although at that point the road seemed deserted. Still, he couldn’t stop in the middle of the lane. That would be suicidal.

  * * *

  And then suddenly something huge came crashing down as if from the sky, landing crossways in front of the truck, hitting so heavily that it felt as if the vehicle bounced up into the air with the force of its impact.

  Ryan hit the brakes, and Lena braced her hands on the dash and thanked her stars she was buckled up as the truck came to an abrupt stop.

  It was a tree, a giant tree, with a trunk three feet in diameter and limbs reaching up as high as a house, dark against the night, wet with the freezing rain that was rapidly becoming a coat of ice.

  “Are you okay?” Ryan asked.

  She nodded, then realized he wasn’t even looking at her and said, “Yeah, I think so.” They sat there, the windshield wipers snapping back and forth at full speed, staring through the storm at the enormous tree. Lena was shaking, vibrating with an awareness that was only just beginning to make its way into her brain.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  Ryan nodded, the motion jerky, and he managed to back up and turn the large truck until they were facing the other way. He started toward home.

  Within seconds the storm stopped.

  The skies ahead were clear. The clouds skittered away, leaving a pristine starlit night ahead. Lena looked back. The tree was still there, but the sky was clear in that direction, too. Even weirder, it was also clear to either side—including in the direction the storm had been moving.

  “Ryan, pull over and look back.”

  He did, coming to an easy stop on the shoulder and turning in his seat to stare behind them. “It’s gone. Where the hell did it go?”

  “I don’t know, but that was just...weird.”

  “More than weird.” He pulled back onto the road.

  “You’re right, more than weird.” She swallowed hard. “It didn’t feel natural to me, Ryan. It felt...it felt supernatural.”

  He smiled over at her, not like he was happy or playful, but with more of a comforting smile, like he was trying to be reassuring. He put his hand over hers. “Well, maybe you’re in a bit of a supernatural state of mind right now. I mean, you and Selma did just perform a full-fledged, foul-smelling, ghost-be-gone ritual, after all.”

  “Mom!” Lena’s heart thudded hard against her rib cage. “We need to go home right now. This was related.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “Please, Ryan?”

  He met her eyes, nodded. “Okay. Okay, we’ll go home.’”

  “Just...drive fast, Ryan. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  * * *

  Lena burst through the front door, Ryan at her side.

  Selma was standing in the middle of the living room, looking around with round eyes.

  “Mom, I—”

  “Shh!” Selma held up a hand. “Listen.”

  They went still. In the silence they heard a distant rattling sound, like a vibration. At first Lena thought the heating system was responsible. Maybe the furnace was shuddering or there was air in the pipes, or... But then it grew louder.

  The windows were all open. She knew, because she felt the cold draft wafting through the house. They must have been open for a while, because the smell of the Devil’s Dung had dissipated, and the scents of lemon balm and mint had replaced it.

  The vibration got louder. The cool breeze lifted her hair and sent icy chills down her neck.

  “There are storms in the area,” Ryan whispered. “We should close the windows.”

  “I did—twenty minutes ago,” Selma replied, speaking very softly, her wide eyes meeting his.

  Suddenly the rattling and the wind died at the same time.

  Selma stayed where she was, standing in the middle of the room looking ready to flee. “That wasn’t...earthly.”

  “Neither was the freak storm that came out of nowhere, knocked a giant tree across the road in front of us and then vanished without a trace,” Lena said.

  “Freak storm?”

  “Thunder and lightning, Mom. In January. In upstate New York.”

  “But you’re okay,” her mother said, looking her up and down as she came closer. “You’re okay, right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Me too. I’m fine, too,” Ryan said.

  Selma looked at him and smiled. “I’m glad. And how did the new truck fare?”

  “Not a scratch.”

  “Well
, thank goodness for that.” She drew a deep breath, looking around the house. “Something’s going on here,” she said. “Though whatever it is, it seems to have calmed down for the moment.”

  Lena did not like the feeling that her haven had become unsafe. “Do you think our house cleansing today—”

  “Pissed off our supernatural houseguest?” Selma interrupted. “Yeah, I’d say so. Big-time.”

  “I don’t think he’s a ghost, Mom.”

  “No. Neither do I.”

  Lena hugged her mother. “What are we going to do?”

  Ryan was looking at them oddly. “You two really think you have a ghost who’s not a ghost, and that he got mad because you tried to bust him today?”

  “Yes,” Lena said.

  “And that this...this thing, whatever it is...”

  “I’m leaning toward demon,” Selma said.

  “Maybe a really pissed-off Elemental,” Lena suggested.

  “And you think this thing,” Ryan went on, “managed to throw a storm and a stray tree at us out of anger?”

  “Yes,” Selma said. “Yes, that about nutshells it, wouldn’t you say, Lena?”

  “Uh-huh. And if he can do that, it worries me what else he can do.”

  “Come on, now. I mean, I’m trying to keep an open mind, but you guys are over-the-top here.”

  Lena rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t you feel it, Ryan? Just stop thinking with your damned logical mind for two minutes and feel, will you? Something is wrong here. It couldn’t be more obvious to me if there were a fire-breathing dragon in the middle of the living room.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Selma said. “Maybe you should try scrying in that chalice again, Lena. I know it’s been frightening for you so far, but there must be a reason you received this powerful tool just before all this began to unfold. You know there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

  “You’re right. I’ll try, Mom.”

  “And as for you, Ryan, you keep an open mind. Okay?”

  Ryan sighed, then nodded. “Okay, consider my mind wide open. Now, in the meantime, does anyone care if I order pizza? I’m starving here.”