Eric stood in front of the massive doors of the sorcerer’s castle perched high on a mountain in Egregore, the land of the watchers. He pondered Guiden’s ruthless reputation. As a rule, Viking warriors feared nothing, but Eric feared Guiden.
The doors blew open as Eric touched the brass handle. The grand hall, appointed with marble floors and pillars had a magical-regal ambiance. Gothic candelabras sat on polished mahogany side tables. Finely crafted crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The air smelled of spring flowers. The fairy tale scene dissolved as he walked towards the door of the wizard’s private chambers. The door to the sanctuary opened, and a cold, purple mist greeted Eric.
A new trick? Great.
“Guiden, we must talk,” Eric said, or at least, tried to say. The mist compressed his words to a sound similar to an ocean wave breaking on the shore.
“Ah, my favourite warrior. Welcome.” Guiden stood four feet tall, almost three feet shorter than Eric. A gray hooded cloak hid his slight frame. His eyes drew Eric in. More unearthly than any he had seen in all the realms of the multi-universe, the orbs filled with a magic fluid that ebbed and flowed. They held more depth and dimension than anything he had witnessed. Blue one moment, gray the next and sometimes white, they constantly changed as if they had no point of origin or point of destination, as if they were beyond all such concepts, as if they were a reflection of life and the universe itself. Creepy was the word that stuck in Eric’s mind. Creepy and evil. He swallowed.
“Guiden, please,” Eric tried to speak again, but the mist stole his words.
Guiden laughed. “You think you are big and tough, but remember, dear Viking, I am the one with the power.”
The mist thickened around Eric’s knees pulling him down to a kneeling position in front of the mästere. Anger boiled inside his gut, but he told himself to smile. He needed Guiden. If he had to be humbled, so be it.
“You want to talk to me?” Guiden put his hands on his hips. His eyes turned a stormy dark blue, the color of the ocean before a gale.
“I ...” Eric stopped. As long as the mist surrounded him there was no point trying to talk.
“I imagine this has something to do with that woman.” An impatient smile tugged at the corner of the wizard’s mouth.
“Please ...”
“The blond with the curves.”
Eric hung his head back in frustration. Why had he thought he could reason with this miscreant.
“The one I let you have for hours.”
I didn’t have her. We made love. Sweet, pure ... Eric stilled his mind. There had to be a way to communicate.
“The one you say you are in love with.”
Eric nodded.
“Ah, but you see you’re wrong there. If you loved her, truly loved her, you would do anything for her.”
Eric grumbled, but the mist reduced his voice to a purr.
“You aren’t man enough to accept my proposal.”
A fury stronger than the high seas in a hurricane rose in Eric, but he could do nothing. Guiden was right. The sorcerer had offered him immortality, a way of being with Abby in a live human form, but he had turned the offer down. He had no one but himself to blame for the impossible situation he now found himself in.
“What? You have no words left?”
The purple mist dissolved.
“You know my thoughts, oh wise one. I do love Abby and she me, but I won’t become your assassin.” That was Guiden’s price for Eric’s immortality in a human form.
“Would not even kill one for me? I could give you another taste of immortality.”
Taste? The taste of death, dark and final, flooded his senses. He had killed many men in his life, but always for a reason. To be someone’s assassin went against his personal code. He would not, could not, do it. Besides, even if he could come to accept himself as a murderer, he knew Abby would never forgive him. She had a strong sense of right and wrong. They had talked it over many times. Eric could not become the evil sorcerer’s assassin, no matter what he offered him. He would be selling his soul. Eric shook his head.
And yet a glimmer of possibility played inside him urging him on, as if it were a candle flame in a darkened room, giving him hope, whispering, “There are many things done under the midnight sun … all is possible … for those who want it.” The world had not been created in black and white, in absolutes. This he knew. Things weren’t all good or all bad. And perhaps ... perhaps ... in that moral sludge of ambiguity there could be a way.
“I want a beating heart.”
Guiden smiled widely. “Then I will tell you who to kill.”
“But I can’t.”
“Oh, yes, you can, and you will.”
Chapter 3
The Dead Man
“Curiosity is not a sin … but we should exercise caution with our curiosity.”
Dumbledore, Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
Guess who got to stay with the dead body? Yup, that would be me, Abby Jenkins, the night janitor in the haunted teahouse and, I might add, the newest and only private detective in town. I attract ghosts, ghouls and let us not forget poltergeists, vampires and an odd assortment of supernaturals. I swear I have a target on my forehead that draws the strange, the weird and the wicked. While it used to creep me out, I’ve gotten sort of, almost, used to it. I say it that way, because over time I’ve learned to shrug my shoulders at the universe and tell it to bring it on.
And really this situation wasn’t so strange, I told myself as I kneeled beside the dead human male. I exhaled slowly as I looked at his body. Who could have done this?
The others vanished one way or another.
Elif the vampire zapped into the night faster than the speed of a coffin closing. His kind—and I don’t mean to sound prejudiced here, just truthful—his kind don’t like to be seen around corpses. The Mounties had been cracking down on them lately, threatening them with fines and, worse, sunlight.
After fainting dramatically for a millisecond, Ophelia ran out of the room crossing herself. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Yea, though I walk ...” Psalm 23.4 if I remember right. Who knew Ophelia was a Christian?
With a face whiter than the vampire’s and eyes wider than a full harvest moon, Margaret waved and left. “I can’t be here. Pretend you never saw me.”
Ming checked Kumar’s pulse. Her eyes filled with tears and she left without saying a word. But the pain etched on her features spoke volumes.
Joy raised her brows. “I didn’t expect this.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens, even in the supernatural world.”
“I’ll call Azalea.” That’s her aunt, the owner of the house, on paper, and the most famous medium on the west coast. Definitely a good person to call in a death crisis.
I nodded and took a deep breath. “I’ll phone Zane.” He’s our local cop in the know, the one who deals with all the super weird shenanigans that go on around here with a sympathetic ear. We have history.
Thunder broke the silence. The windows rattled. The mysterious storm from nowhere continued. Joy left the room to talk with her aunt and that left me alone with Kumar, dead Kumar, very dead Kumar. I swatted at a tear rolling down my cheek. I didn’t know the man very well, but he had been so alive just a few minutes ago. It didn’t seem right, or fair. Nothing in life and death ever does. I sniffed.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He didn’t respond. His dead eyes stared at the ceiling. Should I close them, in respect? I probably shouldn’t touch him or anything else. I looked around.
While I trusted Zane Reynolds to do a thorough investigation and write down only the facts that could be consumed by normal mortals, my curiosity pushed me to look for more. That’s the thing. I have a natural inclination to figure things out. I’ve read all the Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie and Charlaine Harris books in the library. It was time to look for clues.
First, I needed a sense of the scene. The air smelled of snuffed out candles with a tinge of vampire. I couldn’t see or sense ghosts or any other supernats. Just me and Kumar.
I knelt beside him on the floor. He wore jeans, which I knew fit his perfect ass well, as I had seen him earlier that day in town. A black tee-shirt with a Deadhead logo on it peeked out from his well-tailored, leather Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket. I guessed his attire to be pretty usual for his job as a vampire’s layman.
Spark sniffed his head. “Guess he’s a deadhead in more ways than one.”
“Not funny,” I said, but it was kind of funny. When you hang around the dead a lot, you can’t help but pick up their black humor. “What do you think?”
Raising her feline nose in the air, she sniffed. “He’s dead, Blondie. Dead and gone.”
“I thought you were supposed to help me.”
“I magnify your witchy powers, not your stupidity. What do you want from me?”
“A second opinion.”
“He’s ...”
“I know, I know. He’s dead.” Blood flowed freely from the knife wound. Color drained from his face. I shuddered. “He didn’t see his murderer.”
“Maybe he didn’t have to.” Sparky sniffed his right hand.
I looked closer. His fist was closed. If I opened it, I would be interfering with a crime scene. But heck, this murder had happened on my turf. I uncurled his fingers and found a manly locket. “Interesting,” I said out loud.
The sound of two people climbing the outside stairs caught my attention. I pocketed the jewelry, let his hand rest and tapped the local cop shop’s number into my phone. By the time Azalea and Joy entered I had finished my official request for help.
Azalea rushed in. “Do we need to hide anything?” A thin woman in her sixties with gray eyes the color of wet cement, she strode in and assessed the scene in a glance. I knew from experience; those eyes took in more of the world than the rest of us combined. I avoided looking at her directly. “Abby?”
“I don’t think so. I thought I should leave everything in place.”
Azalea’s right brow rose.
Had she nailed me? Azalea, being a psychic, could see a lie a mile away. I was just about to share the locket with her, when I heard the siren. At least I like to think I was going to share my clue, but I probably would have stalled. Call it intuition. Heck, maybe it was my witchy senses kicking in. I had a strong feeling I needed to keep this clue safe.
I looked at my hands. They were covered in blood. “Excuse me. I’m going to wash up.” I ran into Zane in the hallway. He had let himself in. Dressed in his police uniform, he looked reassuringly official, but I doubted his starched shirt would solve this knifing.
“Who’s dead now?” he asked.
Chapter 4
Graystone Manor
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
Dumbledore, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
After hours that felt like centuries, I arrived home. I trudged through the rain and the mud to my front door. Jill lay snoring on the sofa with a half-filled wine glass in her hand. I took the glass from her, placed it on the table and pulled the couch blanket over her. I hated seeing her like this. Ever since her break-up with her husband last month, she had been crashing at my place, with the help of a lot of wine and Oreo cookies. We loved having her, but it saddened me to see her suffer a broken heart.
I lived at Graystone manor—and yes it was actually called a manor. It came to me as payment for my first detective job. Vacant for decades and previously owned by a witch with a warlock lover, it had a whole lot of occult baggage, and had been a challenge to tame. Over the last three months, I had cleaned out the cobwebs and neutralized most of the lingering magic. I think I got it all, but time would tell.
Every so often something weird happened. Just last week our puppy Shreddie pulled a stuffed eagle from a closed room and it came to life and flew away. Such is my life.
Despite all that, Graystone felt more like home every day and would feel even more like home at the moment if Eric appeared. I wondered for the millionth time where he had got to. I hadn’t had a word from him for three days. I needed to put him out of my head, but I couldn’t.
The house smelled of mac and cheese and popcorn, an oddly comforting smell, the essential eau de life with my crew. My sense of smell had increased since I became a witch, which made doing the laundry a bit horrific, but for the most part it enriched my life. Flowers smelled sweeter, coffee smelled incredible and, well, you get the idea.
I tip-toed upstairs to check on the kids. Jonathon, my seven-year-old, had his arm around his skateboard. How could anyone hug a plank of wood? I smiled as I pulled his Spiderman blanket up over his shoulders and kissed his soft cheek. His hair smelled fresh and earthy, as if he lived in the outdoors, but the room smelled of farts. I’ll never understand how little boys can fart so much. It’s like they store them up.
Next, I went into Jinx’s room where an old cassette tape of nursery rhymes played. Stepping carefully over piles of clothes and toys I found her in bed curled around a family of Barbies dressed for a party. My gut cringed. Geeze Louise, I hate the whole plastic-Barbie thing: the pointy-breasts, the matching clothes, the reduction of beauty to a single, white-doll image, but Jinx loved them and I loved her, so the dolls with the perfect brows stayed. I stroked Jinx’s soft brown hair. Only five, she looked like an angel when her eyes were closed.
Maybe in the near future we would have a burn-the-Barbie party. Well, no, that would smell, and pollute, but we could have some sort of ceremony and pass them on to another little girl. And corrupt her? Okay, I was tired, I realized, and not thinking straight. I tucked Jinxr in and kissed her sticky cheek. She smelled of the green peppermints Jill hides in the kitchen.
When I entered the baby’s room, I smelled trouble. Jane was two now, but I still called her my baby. She will always be my baby. Wearing a bright-pink tutu and nothing else, she lay on top of all her blankets and in her hand she held a mushed banana. I wondered what kind of dreams she dreamed. Was she dancing with the fairies? Maybe the monkeys. After getting the banana out of her hand, I took a fleece blanket from her cupboard, covered her up and kissed her gently so as not to wake her. Of all my kids, she was the lightest sleeper. She smelled like she needed a bath. I laughed. That’s my baby girl. Into everything.
As I wandered to my room at the end of the hall a sense of peace drowned out all my thoughts. My kids made my crazy, upside-down world right-side perfect. Normally I shared these gushy, family moments with Eric, but I wasn’t going to get stuck on that thought. I wanted to hit my bed with the thought of my children and nothing else. Hang on to the good stuff, Abby. Hang on.
I sighed as I crossed the threshold. It was my sanctuary, a place where I could be me with no one watching, or having expectations of me. It was my place. Twice the size of any bedroom I had ever had, it came with its own full bathroom and a view that overlooked the forest.
I had replaced the bed, wanting something new. The idea of sleeping on a mattress once used by a witch and an evil warlock didn’t appeal to me. They had an amazing canopy bed with pillars and an engraved headboard that had enough mythical creatures on it to send the devil to the library to figure it all out. The knife marks on the posts gave me the chills. It smelled of magic: dark, twisted magic.
The first thing I did after taking ownership was get rid of the bed. I paid the high school football team to take it out into the back yard and I burned it. Then I performed my first of many cleansing rituals in the room, so that I would feel safe.
And for the most part I did feel safe in my home, as safe as anyone can feel in this uncertain world. Sparky curled up on the chair by the window. As I crawled into bed I thought once more about Er
ic. No matter how much I tried to keep him out of my mind, he slithered in. Where the hell was he? I missed him so much I ached.
We had an unusual relationship, but a strong one. I could count on him and our love. But he had vanished like a darn regular ghost. Ugh.
A knowing shudder slithered up and down my spine as if my bones were a zip line for anxiety. Yeah, I had a good idea where he had gone, but I didn’t like that idea. I put it out of my mind for the millionth time. I had told him not to go back there. He had promised not to go back there.
Eric was the perfect boyfriend in so many ways. Kind, thoughtful and fun to be with; an easy-going companion, and one I couldn’t live without. What I loved most about him was his solid moral compass. In his mind there was right and wrong, plain and simple. I liked that. He thought people who wanted to negotiate the gray areas were lesser humans. As old-fashioned as his ideas sounded, they felt right in my heart. He would lay his life down for the people he cared about. He never bothered with gossip, always saw the good in people. He was, as they say, a good man.
But I wasn’t kidding when I said old-fashioned. Eric was ancient, as in over a thousand years old. Eric was a Viking ghost.
But hot. Did I mention how hot he looked, even in his shimmering state? All muscle and brawn, with arctic-blue eyes and wavy blonde hair, he takes my breath away every time I look at him. The first time I got to touch him in the flesh, I thought I’d found heaven. But that’s another story. He was back to being a specter, and he was missing.
If only ghosts used cell phones.
I looked over at my wing chair, trying to get my mind off the Viking. If not now, then when, I asked myself. It didn’t seem fair that now I owned a perfect reading chair I couldn’t use it. Hmm. Okay, if I solved Kumar’s murder I was going to have a date with the chair, the latest Charlaine Harris book, and a cup of hot chocolate. At least a one hour read. Maybe I would even put my feet in a bucket of hot water. I deserved it, or would deserve it, when I figured out who done it.
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