Daughter of the Spellcaster

by Maggie Shayne

  Lena nodded. “Go ahead, Ryan.” She watched as he went to the kitchen and picked up the phone, then shook her head at her mother. “He just doesn’t get it.”

  “He said he’d keep an open mind.” Selma sighed. “I’m beginning to think we ought to take a little vacation from here—at least until the baby is born. Just in case. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s a really good idea, Mom. Maybe we can go back to Brooklyn? Or maybe Ryan would let us stay at his dad’s place until...”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. We can decide everything else later.” Selma looked at Ryan. “I wish he believed. You know, really believed.”

  “So do I,” Lena whispered. “But you can’t believe in magic without being in touch with your own emotions. And he’s keeping his all walled up inside him.” She sighed as she gazed into the kitchen at him, willing him to remember the prince he had been—the man she had loved. No. The man she still loved. The man who had loved her back. That was the man she was missing. Aching for. Dreaming about.

  “Tomorrow, honey,” Selma said. “We’ll get out of here tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Selma and Lena saw reasons for everything, Ryan thought, as he stood in that tiny copse of trees in the backyard after the women had gone to bed. To them, everything that happened was some kind of sign, all of it fitting together like the pieces of a big paranormal jigsaw puzzle.

  Well, hell, there was definitely something going on, and it was definitely something weird. And they were the experts on weirdness. So if they thought it was all part of something bigger, then maybe he should be thinking the way they were.

  What if he was here for a reason? What if his coming here when all this was going down was part of some bigger plan? If that were the case, what could that plan be? What was the reason for his presence?

  Well, the obvious answer was that he was here to protect them. Lena, the baby, even Selma. Things were happening around them, dangerous things. Selma in the woods the other night. Locals murdering calves and doing God only knew what kinds of rituals in the woods, either trying to frame the two innocent witches or for some other nefarious purpose. The house ghost who wasn’t a ghost and could conjure storms, hurl trees, rattle pipes and blow cold wind through a house with all the windows closed.

  There has to be a logical explanation for everything.

  Right. And what about the knife? Was there a logical explanation for the knife?

  There has to be a reason why you received this powerful tool just before all this began to unfold. Selma’s voice rang clear in his mind as he stared down at the engraved, antique box. You know there’s no such thing as coincidence.

  Ryan picked up the knife from its red velvet nest, bracing himself for it to come to life. If there really was no such thing as coincidence, then he’d received the blade for a reason. And since that reason could not possibly be to thrust it into Lena’s heart, despite what she’d dreamed, it must be to do something else.

  But whatever it was, he had to master the thing first.

  He held it upright, its blade aimed toward the night sky, and felt torn between God, I must look ridiculous and God, I feel like some storybook hero.

  And then he thought, Storybook. Lena’s storybooks. She thinks I really am some kind of storybook hero.

  Can I ever live up to that?

  He looked at the blade. “Work for me, dammit.”

  It spat a few sparks into the night. He drew it back down and, very intently, pointed it at a tree and tried to mentally force it to release a blast of energy. He actually pushed, but the knife only glowed.

  He lowered it, shook his arm to loosen the muscles, raised the knife again and this time took aim at a rock. Blast it to pieces, he thought.

  Nothing.

  He took a deep breath, lowering the blade again, then closed his eyes and tried to gather his focus. Finally he raised the knife again and aimed it at a clump of weeds that were swaying in the breeze.

  Still nothing.

  “I knew it wouldn’t work. It’s not possible for a knife to shoot fire, and if I think I’ve seen proof otherwise, I must have been hallucinating. Because knives do not have supernatural powers. Even ancient golden ones.”

  In frustration, he stomped back toward where he’d left the box. “Freaking thing. The question is, how am I supposed to use it to protect my—my family—if I can’t even get it to—” A blast shot from the tip, nearly hitting him in the foot.

  He dropped the blade and jumped away from it.

  Dammit! What the hell was he missing?

  Carefully he moved the open box next to the knife and managed to get the blade in using the toe of his boot. He slammed the box shut and carried it back around the house, then returned it to its spot under the front seat of the truck. He locked the doors, dropped his keys in his coat pocket and went inside, prepared to spend another long night reading and researching.

  * * *

  Lena couldn’t sleep. Something was very wrong. She had an entity in her home that was furious about being forced to leave and kept trying to tell her not to trust Ryan. She had a man in her house who refused to believe, even though he said he was keeping an open mind and pretended to be trying to learn about the ways of magic. He might be trying, but he simply couldn’t believe. He was out of touch with his own feelings, and magic and emotion were so tightly entwined that one could not exist without the other. And beyond that, she had a very strong intuition that Ryan was still keeping something from her, starting with what he was hiding in the truck. And that bothered her, given her recent dream.

  So when she saw that truck light come on outside, saw him tucking something under the seat and then locking the vehicle up tight with the remote, she made up her mind. She had to know what he was hiding out there. Had to know.

  He dropped the keys into his coat pocket. She went to the top of the stairs and hid in the darkness, then watched from there as he came back into the house, shrugged off his coat and hung it on a hook near the door. And her decision was made.

  She waited until he’d returned to his bedroom. Even after that, she gave it another hour, pacing her bedroom floor in her socks, trying to be quiet so he would drift off to sleep and she could go snooping.

  Snooping. God, she hated the idea! She was racked with guilt before she’d even done anything. And yet she had to know. She’d been hurled back and forth with the shifting currents of her belief in him. Not her love for him, never that. But dammit, she had to find out about his feelings for her, had to know whether they were genuine, even if shallow and cool. She got up, crept to his door, which was slightly ajar, and peered inside.

  He’d fallen asleep reading. His head was crooked over onto one shoulder, his dark hair falling across his forehead in a way that made her ache to tiptoe closer and smooth it out of his eyes. But she resisted that urge and backed away.

  Softly, so softly that her steps made no sound, she went down the stairs and to the door. As she slipped her hand into his coat pocket she caught his scent in the fabric, and her heart twisted into a knot. God, she loved him. And she hated spying on him this way.

  She cupped the keys in her hand, so they wouldn’t jingle, slid her feet into a pair of boots and didn’t bother with a coat. She would only be a minute.

  Twisting the doorknob as gently as if it might break, she opened it, almost holding her breath, willing it not to creak or groan, then breathed a silent thank-you when it didn’t.

  She stepped out, closed it behind her ever so carefully, and then she turned and faced the big black truck. Everything in her rebelled against doing this. Sneaking, spying, snooping, deception, they were the last things she had ever thought she would do.

  And yet she found herself walking down the porch steps and across the crispy frosting of ice on the ground to that truck. She turned to look
up at Ryan’s bedroom window. Empty. Taking the key ring from her pocket, she clicked the unlock button and the truck obeyed with a snapping sound.

  Her hand trembled as she touched the driver’s door, and the night wind drove goose bumps across her skin as she pulled it open. Swallowing hard, she reached beneath the seat and felt a box there. She pulled it out, admiring the elaborately engraved wood. It looked like an antique.

  Don’t do this, Lena, her mind told her. Just slide it back under the seat. You don’t have to look. It’s not too late. Stop now, before it is.

  “I have to know,” she whispered.

  Bracing herself, she opened the box.

  And there was the knife. The golden athame she had seen in her dreams—her nightmares. The one she dreamed Ryan used to kill her. She flashed on the recurrent vision again. Saw him standing over her bed with the others all around, wearing those stupid crystal pendants, their eyes gleaming red as they reached for her baby and Ryan, her child’s father, lifted the knife and prepared to drive it straight into Lena’s heart.

  It wasn’t a dream. It was a premonition. A warning. The ghost was right. So was Bahru. She couldn’t trust Ryan. He wasn’t seeing a lawyer to steal her baby girl from her. He didn’t need to. He was just going to murder her instead.

  * * *

  The next morning, she managed to keep her horror from showing, or hoped so, anyway. She hadn’t told her mother yet, because she would want to murder Ryan if she thought he was a threat to Lena and the baby. And not Bahru, because she hadn’t seen him yet. But she was remedying that now.

  Right after breakfast she had piled a basket full of fresh fruit, a couple of blueberry muffins and some of her mother’s specially blended teas, and tucked a towel around the lot of it, and now she was on her way to see Bahru. A shiver ran up her spine as she passed by the big black pickup truck with that golden blade hidden inside.

  She kept telling herself that there could be a dozen reasons why Ryan would hide the blade away, keep it a secret from her. But that dream kept returning, fluttering through her mind like a giant hairy moth, confronting her with the vision in which he plunged that blade straight into her heart in the seconds after their baby was born.

  Her dreams were never without meaning. Even if they sometimes seemed random and nonsensical, they always made sense eventually. And yes, sometimes in hindsight the meaning turned out to be something far different from what she had at first believed. But it didn’t seem there were too many ways to interpret this one.

  Were there?

  Bahru opened the door to her knock and greeted her with a genuine smile. “I am so glad to see you, Lena. Come in, come in. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired, stressed. A little bit paranoid, maybe. But I think the baby’s fine. How about you?”

  “Good,” he said. “I am very content here.” He closed the door behind her as she entered his cottage. She handed him the basket, and he moved the towel aside to see what it held as she shrugged off her coat and stepped out of her boots. “Oh, this is wonderful. Thank you, Lena.”

  “Don’t thank me. It’s a bribe. You mind if I sit?”

  “Of course not.” He quickly set the basket on the small wooden table and pulled out a chair for her. “You’re troubled, you have been since we arrived here. I can see it in your eyes. What’s happened, Lena?”

  She sighed, wondering where to begin. “Well, a lot, actually. There’s a ghost in our house...or something. It’s never been a problem before, but now I’m feeling impatience, even anger, from it. And it feels...I know this will sound odd, but it feels possessive of me.”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes hooded, as if he were looking inward. “Yes, I, too, have sensed the presence in your home,” he said, stroking his beard. “But the energy I picked up was more protective than possessive.”

  “Protective? Really?”

  He nodded again. “Yes, definitely protective.”

  “I guess it makes sense, then, that it would be acting out more now that Ryan is around. It doesn’t seem to like him. Even warned me not to trust him.”

  He watched her, listened intently, but didn’t say more.

  “Bahru, do you think Ryan is capable of harming me?”

  His eyes widened. “Why would you ask such a question?”

  Lena got up from the table, paced slowly away. Bahru sat down, the picture of patience. “I keep having this dream about having the baby. You’re there, and Doc Cartwright, and that nurse he keeps pushing on us, Eloise Sheldrake. And Ryan’s there, too. You’re all standing around my bed, and he’s right beside me. Mom is in a chair in the corner, but she’s either asleep or unconscious or...or I don’t want to think what.”

  “Bizarre.”

  “Oh, I’m just getting started on the bizarre part. Everyone’s eyes are glowing red,” she said. “And they’re all wearing quartz pendants, like yours.” She frowned as Bahru lifted his necklace and examined it.

  “Where did that come from, Bahru?”

  He smiled. “I was meditating in a cave not far from here the last time Ernst and I came to town. We were just getting things ready to put Havenwood on the market. I’d discovered the cave before and been drawn to it. Always...so drawn.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, and his voice had softened, deepened.

  “And...?”

  “I found a very large deposit of quartz, and I just couldn’t resist helping myself to the few pieces that were loose. It felt...it felt like they were meant for me. Like a gift. I kept one for myself and gave the rest as gifts to people who admired them. They’re harmless, Lena. I promise you.”

  She sighed, nodding slowly. “I don’t know why they would seem so important in my dream,” she said softly.

  “Nor do I. But go on. Tell me the rest. You are in your room. We are all there around you. And you’re about to give birth.”

  She nodded. “The ghost, or whatever he is, he’s there in another corner, watching, waiting, bigger and...denser than ever before.”

  She paused in her pacing to look at Bahru. He was listening intently.

  “I feel the baby emerge from my body. And I feel consumed with fear. And then I look up to see Ryan raising this blade up over me, like he’s going to plunge it straight into my heart.”

  Bahru jumped to his feet. “Ryan is holding the blade?”

  She nodded, pacing away again. “I wake just as he starts to bring it down, but I feel the horrible pain in my chest even though the dream is over. Bahru, what can it mean?”

  He was standing in front of his chair, his palms pressed to the table. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he had to steady himself. Softly he said, “In the dream, what does the blade look like?”

  “It’s very unusual,” she told him. “Gold, not silver or stainless. The hilt and the blade are both covered in odd etchings, symbols, like some kind of ancient writing. Double-edged. Like an athame.”

  She shook her head slowly as the guru listened. He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold, and his eyes were so intent on her that she knew this all meant something. “There’s more. I can see there’s more,” he said softly.

  She nodded, swallowing down her fear and heartache and nerves. “Bahru, I told Ryan about the dream. He swore he would never hurt me. But I saw him hiding something under the seat of that new truck of his, and I couldn’t bear not to know what it was. So last night I sneaked out there after he’d gone to sleep to take a look.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head as she lowered it in shame. “I know it was wrong.”

  His hands on her shoulders startled her, and she looked up fast, surprised he’d crossed the room so quickly.

  “What did you find?” he asked.

  “The blade from my dream. The same one.”

  “Ryan has the blade?”
>
  A red flash in his eyes made her suck in a sharp breath and jerk backward, so that his hands fell to his sides. “What the hell was that?”

  13

  Bahru frowned. “What was what, child?”

  “Your eyes. Your eyes, they just... They were...”

  His expression turned to one of extreme sympathy and concern, and he studied her with care. “Dear, sweet Lena. You asked for my advice, and I will give it to you now. I believe you are suffering from an extreme amount of stress. It makes sense, with your body in flux, your hormones raging in your bloodstream, your mother having just suffered a health scare. You’ve lost a friend in Ernst—more than a friend, the grandfather of your child. And you’ve been reunited, for good or bad, with your baby’s father. I believe the things you’ve been observing of late are more medical than magical. The nightmares, the fear, the hallucinations—symptoms, Lena, not events.”

  “I did not hallucinate that blade.”

  “Are you sure, Lena? Are you very sure?”

  “Positive.” She’d backed up all the way to the door and was reaching behind her for the knob, fumbling to grasp it.

  “It makes no sense for you to be afraid of Ryan, nor of me, Lena. Think about this. Neither of us would harm you, not ever. I distrust Ryan, but I know he wouldn’t physically hurt you. And I’ve lived my entire lifetime as a pacifist, you know that.”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s fine. I have to go.” She got hold of the knob, twisted the door open and all but stumbled outside.

  “Talk to Doctor Cartwright, Lena. At least consider that there might be more at work here than you realize.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that.” She turned and ran down the three short steps to the driveway, then kept on running until her side cramped up so bad it almost put her on her knees. As she stumbled to a stop, bending over and clutching her belly, that black cat darted across the drive in front of her and vanished into the woodlot that overlooked the lake. Black cat crossing my path. Again. This can’t be good.