Witching Your Life Away

by Constance Barker

  “I’ve considered,” Rita said. “Letting a wizard mess around with the Cave spells, even indirectly, is forbidden. Our ancestors, sisters, and Coven mothers for a thousand years have told us this time and again. It’s written on the wall, in the sixth cave. It doesn’t get plainer than that.”

  “What if we could do it without a wizard’s involvement?” Chloe pressed.

  Rita sighed, and made a show of rubbing her knees as though they ached painfully. When she’d spent some time doing this—for all the world as if she no longer had guests—she settled back into her rocking chair and gave her sister at the other end of the porch a long look. Finally she sighed. “Our coven has one job to do. Protect the caves. A job that the Coven is currently failing at. We aren’t meant to safeguard the town, or the world. We’re to mind the Caves; not experiment with them.”

  “And what exactly are the two of you doing?” Bailey asked.

  Chloe shot her a look that was one part warning and one part begging.

  Rita opened her mouth to speak, her eyes flaring, but Anita spoke before she had a chance to let Bailey have it.

  “We are holding the door,” she said quietly.

  Rita’s mouth closed, and for a moment the only sound was the creak of her rocking chair.

  “What does that mean?” Bailey asked. “You’re holding the door… literally?”

  “Day and night,” Anita said. “We are the tumblers in the lock.”

  Chloe looked at Rita. “Is this true? Is that what this place is?”

  Bailey glanced at her mother, surprised. As much as Bailey still had to learn, for the moment she supposed Chloe was in a similar position. How much did the Crones know that the Mothers didn’t?

  Rita didn’t answer them. Instead she spoke to Anita. “Mind your tongue, sister.”

  “Rita,” Chloe said, a horrified note in her voice, “what does she mean by that? That you’re holding the door?”

  “She means what she says,” Rita snapped. “Our job is to sustain the magic of the Caves. To reinforce it. Like the hundreds of Crones before us, and like all those after us.”

  “It’s changed, hasn’t it,” Bailey said. “It’s getting harder.”

  “That’s of no concern,” Rita said. “The spells still hold, and they will continue to hold.”

  “But for how long?” Chloe asked, wide eyed. “Already one of them is in Coven Grove. What if it found this place?”

  “The enemy hides,” Anita said, “so are we hidden from our foes.”

  “The faerie won’t find us,” Rita said. “Not so long as we stay put.”

  “How long will you last, though, Rita?” Chloe asked. “How long before it’s too much for the two of you? Once the faerie host knows that we’re weakened here, they’ll assault in force to push their way through.”

  “As long as the Caves are intact,” Rita said resolutely, “they will sustain us; and as long as we are sustained, we will keep the Caves intact. So it has been, so it will be.”

  “That won’t matter if the Caves are assaulted from our end,” Bailey complained. She leaned forward, imploring Rita again. “What Aiden is proposing won’t affect the spells that compose the caves’ intelligence or our connection to it. We just need to piggy back on it, and if you’re there to help us then—”

  “This conversation is at an end, child,” Rita said imperiously. For a heartbeat, Bailey felt a stirring of power—something deep, and vast, and terrible. It almost made her want to cringe.

  She didn’t, though. Instead, she changed tactics. The Crones might have a special connection to the Caves—but so did she. “I may not need your help,” she said, and stood up. “If you won’t work with us, then I’ll just do it on my own, the best that I can. I’ve communed with the Caves before, and they answered my call. They’ll do so again.”

  “You think I don’t know this, child?” Rita arched an eyebrow, and pointed to the seat. “I said the conversation was over—I did not say you could leave.”

  Bailey sank back into the chair, but grudgingly. “If you won’t help us, then I don’t see why we should stay. There’s work to do.”

  “She did not say we would not help,” Anita chimed. “She said only that we would not let the wizard work his magic on our holy place.”

  “Alright,” Chloe said cautiously, glancing at Anita. “Then, what are you suggesting?”

  Rita regarded them both with flinty eyes, her lined face a mask of judgment and distaste. “We are aware of the enchantment permeating the world beyond our sanctum. This place has protected us from it, but we cannot leave—else we will be subject to the glamour ourselves.”

  “But if you can’t leave,” Chloe asked, “then what good is that?”

  “The Caves have gifted another with the seed of protection,” Anita said. “That seed may take root, and spread, if it is tended carefully.”

  Bailey stared at Anita. The old woman’s milky eyes flashed at her, only for a second or two, before she went back to knitting and staring sightlessly out from the porch of the cabin. Or perhaps not so sightlessly. It was hard to tell with Anita.

  “That’s the help you’re offering?” Chloe asked. “Someone in Coven Grove has been touched by the caves? You mean it’s given a gift to someone? That we have to find and teach?”

  Rita shrugged. “You know how Anita is. She says what she means—it’s up to you to figure it out.”

  Bailey’s fingers tapped the arm of the rocking chair she was seated in, and she simmered with impatience and irritation. “So that’s it?” She asked. “We come here looking to save you, and the town, and maybe the whole world, and all you have for us are riddles?”

  “Bailey,” Chloe said softly, chiding.

  “No,” Bailey snapped, and snorted as she stood up and walked off the porch. She turned when she was on the ground, and faced the three women. Neither Rita nor Anita looked the least bit perturbed. Chloe was red with shame.

  Bailey didn’t care. She waved a finger at Rita. “I think you’re just afraid to go out and face our enemies. Do whatever it is you do here. It was a mistake to think that you would be willing to lift a finger to help us in the first place. This whole conversation was a waste of time.”

  Rita’s rocking chair groaned, and then Chloe’s echoed the sound as she rocked forward and stood up. “You’re out of line,” she said. “These are the matriarchs of our coven, Bailey—”

  “Peace, child,” Anita said. She’d stopped knitting. She turned her blind eyes on Bailey as Chloe quieted. “We all will act as we are so ordained to do. Will you act without our aid?”

  “Of course I will,” Bailey said. Anita’s eyes bothered her; not just for their appearance, but for the uncanny way they seemed to see into her, even if they didn’t actually see her standing there. “What choice do I have?”

  “Many,” Anita said. “Countless thousands, spreading out like wings of spider silk in the skein… will you choose?”

  Chloe glanced from Bailey to Anita and back, as confused as Bailey was, it seemed. She didn’t speak, though—she waited to hear what Bailey would say.

  Bailey stood her ground. “We have a plan. It will work. So… I have to at least try.”

  “You are welcome to that,” Anita said, “if you are ready to shoulder the consequences of your actions.”

  A chill spread down Bailey’s spine until her fingers and toes tingled with it. She did her best not to show it. “I’ll take whatever consequences I have to,” she said, though not with the kind of conviction she wanted.

  Anita shrugged a shoulder, and sat back again, her needles clicking away as she went back to her never-ending project.

  Rita looked at her sister with something like a glare, and then furrowed her brow before she ultimately looked to Chloe, and last to Bailey. “Anita has said what she’ll say. You have my answer. Now go. Leave us to our work, you go and do yours.”

  With a last snort of disgust, Bailey turned and left them, not waiting for Chloe to make her own goo
d byes. In time, her mother caught up with her. “What were you thinking? Speaking like that to the Crones? Especially Rita?”

  “You heard them,” Bailey said. “They’re not going to help us. So we’re on our own and that means we have to decide what happens next.”

  “The Crones are wise,” Chloe said sharply. “It’s worthwhile to hear them out and to heed their advice.”

  “That may be,” Bailey said, “but today they didn’t have any real advice. Just riddles and misdirection. You know what I think? I think they don’t know what to do, and that they’re scared and can’t admit to us that they’re stumped. Well, I’m not. Neither is Aiden. So we’ll do what needs to be done, and the Crones can stay out of the way like they always do.”

  “Bailey,” Chloe said, and stopped her just short of the exit.

  Bailey let her mother stop her, and turned to face her.

  “We can’t be reckless,” Chloe said. “Not with something of this scale, something this important.”

  “I disagree,” Bailey said. “The Faeries are getting reckless. They’re not going to wait for us to decide by committee, or to figure out how to appease two old ladies.”

  She turned away, and stalked toward the entrance. “Reckless is exactly what I intend to rely on.”

  Chapter 16

  “Bailey, wait,” Chloe called as Bailey stormed away from the now hidden entrance of the eighth cave, smoldering at having wasted this much time.

  “Catch up,” Bailey said. “We don’t have time to waste. I’m going to get Aiden and Avery and we’re going to go to the Caves and do whatever we can. We’ll figure it out on the fly. We’ve done it before.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Chloe said.

  Bailey’s eyes widened and she turned abruptly so that Chloe almost ran into her. “Do what? Protect my home? Exercise my birthright?”

  “If you call up the Genius of the Caves, and it answer, and you expose the essence of the spells to Aiden and Avery,” Chloe said, genuinely concerned about it, “the kind of damage they could do with that knowledge would be catastrophic. It just isn’t safe; they can’t help themselves, and I’m starting to think that you can’t either.”

  “Well maybe I get it from my father,” Bailey said, biting off the words even as they cut her to perhaps the same depth they cut Chloe. What was worse, she knew the moment they left her lips that she’d said them intentionally to hurt her mother. It was getting to be a habit, almost.

  Chloe stiffened. “I know,” she said quietly, “that’s what scares me.”

  Bailey held her ground, though, and folded her arms. “Please, suggest to me the alternatives that you and Aria and Francis have come up with. If you have other ideas, I would like to hear them.”

  “Young lady,” Chloe said, looming a bit even though Bailey had at least an inch on her, “you are the junior member of this coven. The three of us have almost sixty years of experience between us, and we understand things you haven’t even been exposed to yet. We haven’t even scratched the surface of the options we might have available—we need to do more research, learn more about our problem before we—”

  “With what time, Chloe?” Bailey asked, almost shouting as she threw her arms up, and looked around as though she might find it laying somewhere nearby. She caught a glimpse of something at the edge of the ridge—another shadow?—but when she looked back it was gone. That alone incensed her even more. “People have died, and almost died, and will almost certainly die any time now. If we know that we can do something to stop this, and we waste time looking for the safest way, and more people are killed—isn’t that on us? Isn’t that blood on our hands because we didn’t act when we were able to? And what happens if you do all the research you can, and we learn all that we can, and in the end Aiden’s plan is the only way?”

  Bailey shook her head. “I won’t be able to live with that. And if you could, then I’m not the one anyone should be worried about.”

  Chloe stared at her, an expression of shock and outrage that was somewhere between that of a mother and a superior, each bleeding into the other as she processed Bailey’s tirade.

  “You are completely out of line,” Chloe whispered.

  Bailey sighed, and turned away from her mother. “If the three of us have to save this town ourselves, then we will. Go hide in a hole like the Crones if you want, but I’m not letting anyone else die because I failed to act. And you know what? Aiden is—” Bailey paused as she turned to give her mother another helping of what was on her mind—she’d seen movement again, just over the ridge. This time, though, she was certain of it.

  She walked toward the ridge to see more of the beach. Probably it was just someone taking a morning walk while the tide was out, but she had to find out.

  “What is it?” Chloe asked, more alarmed by Bailey’s sudden distraction than by what her daughter had said just moments ago.

  Bailey took another step, and then saw a shape pushing a stroller. The light caught something on the person’s wrist—a flash of blue. In that, she suddenly recognized Piper’s stroller, and her gait, and the bundle strapped against her chest.

  She frowned, though—Piper didn’t normally like to take the stroller on the sand, she’d have to clean the wheels later and she hated that. And instead of walking well above the tide line, she looked as though she were headed straight toward the surf.

  “Piper!” Bailey called out.

  Piper didn’t stop, or look up, or seem to have heard Bailey at all.

  So Bailey focused on Piper’s presence and opened her mind wide, reaching out with the equivalent of a polite knock on someone’s door—just a quick and non-invasive attention grabbing maneuver, to get Piper to have that feeling that someone was looking at her and glance up.

  Piper didn’t respond to that, either. Something flickered at the corner of Bailey’s vision, and she looked in time to see a squirming shadow vanish before her very eyes in Piper’s direction.

  Panic grabbed her, and she opened her mind to Piper’s thoughts.

  Whispers. Hundreds of them, all tangled and tumbling over one another, so that Bailey couldn’t make out what any one of them was saying.

  “Oh, dear God,” Bailey breathed. “No, no, no… Piper!” She took off running along the ridge, to the nearest slope that she could use to get down to the beach without breaking her neck.

  “Bailey!” Chloe was behind her, but Bailey didn’t slow to let her catch up.

  Bailey continued to call Piper’s name, her heart pounding, her legs already burning. As she descended the slope she slipped, stumbled, and fell. A moment later Chloe dragged her to her feet, and the two of them sprinted across the sand to get to Piper before she walked right into the freezing Pacific surf with her children.

  Chapter 17

  The longer she was out, the less chilly it seemed to be. Some of the clouds had cleared up, and a bit of morning sunlight managed to reach the beach where Piper was walking, pushing the stroller along as Riley continued to have a conniption fit. He had his snack.

  Piper’s mother had always been of the mind to let a child cry it out, and she was starting to think that was sound advice. She remembered being just two or three years old, sitting in time out after she’d bitten her older brother, wailing at the injustice of being punished. Her mother had been firm, letting her know that she could cry all she wanted if it would make her feel better but it wasn’t going to net her a get out of jail free card.

  The tide was coming in, making the ocean noisy. The constant rush of moving water was soothing, filling her head with a kind of background noise that drowned out some of her stressed thoughts, and even drew her into a kind of hypnotic reverie. She was almost there.

  Where that was, she didn’t know, but she knew that she was walking to some specific place. She’d know it when she saw it, she was certain. Maybe then, Riley would calm down and she could have some peace.

  William began to cry as well, but she barely noticed. It was a distant kind o
f sound, washed away by the waves. The water was starting to get close, coming in fast. Piper glanced up at the ridge, at the towering stone outcrop under which those creepy old caves were located.

  The Seven Caves. They were the whole reason all of the trouble here had happened. Unnatural forces at work where they had no right to exist. Probably they had some hold on Gavin, too. He’d had the chance, years ago, to get them out of this place. Amos Freeman had convinced him that he belonged here. Piper remembered being excited at the time—she hadn’t wanted to leave her friends, or the town that had been home for almost ten years, but her brother had already left with her parents and it was scary being on her own, even if she had her husband.

  What did they know? They were still kids. In a lot of ways they still were. They were young, and Gavin could learn a different skill if he had to. Why did he want to stay here so badly?

  Icy water splashed over her shoes and into them, and onto her ankles. It was bracing, and she sucked in a sharp breath and danced a little sideways away from it. She must have wandered a little too far out. The stroller’s wheels stuck in the wet sand and she had to give it a tug to get them loose and steer them further up the beach.

  As she did, the blue stone from her bracelet caught the sun and flashed. It was like no stone she’d seen before. Maybe it was some kind of sapphire, but there was no way Mr. Dove would have given her a stone that large as a gift. Generous as he had a reputation for being, no one was quite that generous. Maybe it was something synthetic. It was marvelously beautiful, whatever it was.

  The next surge of seawater washed over her feet, but it didn’t feel quite so cold. These shoes were old anyway, and they were already wet. A little more seawater wasn’t going to hurt them anymore than it already had.

  She followed the edge of the water. Just a little further, then the sense inside her whispered.

  Piper sped up a bit to keep the wheels from getting bogged down in the sand again, some inner voice urging her on, just a little closer to the incoming waves, just a bit ahead; she could almost feel the place she wanted to find now, it wasn’t quite on the beach but a little off into the water and as her eyes started to search the surf she turned the stroller toward it—a flash of blue just vanishing beneath a crashing wave, just like the blue of the stone in her bracelet; captivating, inviting her—