by P. R. Frost
The garden gnomes were nowhere in sight. Scrap remained a peaceful gray, and the hairs on my spine lay flat. We were safe.
For a while.
“You can’t imprison me with that,” she protested the seat belt, swatting at my hands.
“It’s the law, kid. Strap in or walk.” I glared at her.
She stared out the window a moment at the frigid weather. The wind had picked up again, bringing the wind chill even lower. The lowering skies threatened to dump more snow.
Born of nature or the Windago?
“If you insist. But I want it on record that I protest this infringement upon my rights.”
“At the moment you don’t officially exist, so you don’t have any rights,” I said sweetly, putting the car into gear.
Allie had gone back to the station armed with fingerprints and dental X rays to try to match WindScribe to any recent missing persons reports. A DNA swab would take three days to process. Too long for me to wait. Allie also promised to notify any relatives the original WindScribe had left in the area.
Scarcely noon. Would MoonFeather be up yet? I needed to call her. She’d want to know about her Wiccan sister from thirty years ago. A woman who hadn’t aged a day while the ravages of time had worked on my aunt. Though if the phrase aging gracefully applied to anyone, it did to MoonFeather.
Damn, I wanted a vacation. Two weeks alone on a warm beach sipping piña coladas. Maybe find a luscious man who had no connection to demons and monsters and witches who fell out of another dimension. Someone more satisfying than the vibrator I’d considered buying. Almost any man would prove more interesting.
Silently, I drove home. The short distance seemed to take forever with the scowling presence beside me. Even Dill was cheerier than this unexpected and unwanted passenger.
“It’s all so different,” WindScribe murmured. “So different and yet so much the same.”
“Not much changes on Cape Cod. Just the latest tech toys.”
Power company crews packed up their chain saws, having cut up the fallen oak and repaired the lines. My twisting driveway was clear and lights blazed from my kitchen. I pulled into the gravel parking area outside my kitchen door with a sigh of relief. Heat. Hot coffee. Internet!
Not everything was bad.
“I think I know this house. A lawyer owns it.” WindScribe peered through the windshield, leaning forward as far as the seat belt would let her. She released it and twisted around, surveying my entire property.
“I own it now.” All two and one half acres. No mortgage, thanks to Dill’s life insurance.
“Houses are sacred. No bad guys allowed,” I reminded myself. “We’ll be safe here. Or should be.”
Braced for the blast of frigid wind born over arctic snows, I opened the car door and moved around to help WindScribe into the house. “Tomorrow’s the first day of spring, for Goddess’ sake!” I protested to the charcoal-gray sky.
Something rattled in the shrubbery. Hopefully, just the wind.
The wind came in gusts that shook everything in its path.
Only a single bush rattled.
I didn’t want to battle demons outside in this weather. Even demons should have the sense to stay home today.
Maybe it was an animal. Stupid people let their dogs and cats wander in this weather.
Not with my luck.
I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I paused for just a moment, waiting to see if the base of my spine flared in warning again.
Only a tingle of watchful waiting.
Good. I could outwait the best of them.
The storm door to the mudroom stuck. Cursing in Sasquatch again, I kicked the metal door. My big toe threatened to fall off inside my boot and wool sock from the blow. But the door unstuck.
I hustled WindScribe through the kitchen to the butler’s pantry into the dining room. Then up the new staircase (added on in 1850 as opposed to the old staircase from the original building in 1743 between my office and the parlor) to the long attic room. My nose wiggled. The house smelled different. Clean and fresh rather than musty and moldy. Maybe Scrap had done a hasty cleanup.
Normally, I used the attic over the dining room as book storage. It still had a double bed with a brass frame tucked into the corner, left over from the previous owners.
WindScribe wilted with every step. I’d planned to put her in the guest room on the other side of my bedroom above the office. She wouldn’t make it that far. So I tucked her into the bed. Got her a glass of water from my bathroom and left her sleeping peacefully with one tranquilizer in her. The bottle said she could take two every four hours. One seemed more than enough. She was confused and stressed, not suffering panic attacks.
“Woo wee, it is colder than a titch’s wit out there,” I said to no one as I headed for the coffeepot in the kitchen. I rubbed my hands together.
The smell of burning sage stopped me in my tracks. The strains of Heather Alexander singing a Celtic lay about a stag hunt played on the stereo.
"MoonFeather,” I greeted my father’s sister. She must have been in my office or parlor, so I didn’t notice her when I hastened upstairs with WindScribe.
I like my aunt. She’s the closest thing to normal in my life, less than twenty years older than me and ten younger than Dad, we’re closer in age and philosophy to each other than to most everyone else on either side of the clan.
My aunt is only MoonFeather. She’d never taken the names of any of her four husbands when she dropped the family name of Noncoiré. That was thirty years ago when she embraced her true calling as a witch, just before her coven disappeared on the night of the summer solstice.
I needed to talk to her about that.
“Is it family game night already?” My odd assortment of relatives on Cape Cod gathered every Sunday night to play Trivial Pursuit®. We didn’t have to pretend we liked each other the rest of the week because we had spent four hours of quality time together.
Their presence might make talking about WindScribe difficult.
“It’s only Thursday, Tess. I decided to clear your house of evil spirits now that you have finished that manuscript. You need to invite good spirits back into your home. You drive them away with your foul moods when you are on deadline.”
“Foul moods on deadline are part of the job description. ”
“Yes, I know, but this is something . . . different. More intense.” She scowled and added lavender to the burning sage wand.
A waft of smoke brushed my nose. I jammed my finger under it to keep from sneezing. This smoke smelled more like Scrap’s black cherry cheroot than MoonFeather’s herbs. First time I could remember welcoming his bad habits. I wanted the imp close right now.
“How did you know I finished the manuscript?” Despite myself, I found my foot tapping the rhythm of the next tune on the CD.
MoonFeather gave me that look that said I was stupid for asking how she knew.
She knew things. I had a lot of trouble keeping Scrap a secret from her. She was the one person who might believe my tale of spending a year in a hidden Citadel learning to be a Warrior of the Celestial Blade.
I’d fallen to pieces after Dill died and the Sisterhood welcomed me, nursed me through a near-lethal fever, gave me a reason to live beyond my grief. Our purpose was to keep demons from crossing into this dimension. Good thing they kicked me out of the Citadel for questioning too many rules and asking why ten times too often. If I’d still been stuck there guarding a single doorway to another dimension, I’d never have been available last autumn to close a rogue demon portal they missed.
I wouldn’t have been under WindScribe when she fell out of Paradise.
Maybe it was time to use the ultra secret, in life or death, emergencies only phone number Sister Serena had given me.
Probably no one would answer the damn thing.
Chapter 6
"YOU READ A completion or closure for me in the tarot, MoonFeather.” I was sure I hadn’t said anyt
hing about my progress or my deadlines last Sunday at game night. Uncle George, my sister Cecilia, and Grandmother Maria never paid any attention to my career anyway. The money I earned just made it more convenient for them to gather in my big house.
Dill and I had bought it right after our marriage. He’d liquidated his trust fund for the down payment. Then we’d returned to central Washington to collect his stuff and gather a few more rock samples before he began teaching at the local community college. He’d died before we could get back here. His death was another convenience for the family, if not for me. He had a Ph.D in geology and usually beat the pants off the entire family combined against him on game night. They wouldn’t allow me to team up with him; the two of us together made an even more formidable team.
I really needed the last cup of coffee in the pot.
But not garden gnomes with ten extra sets of teeth.
Or a Windago with a grudge.
“I saw the end of a segment in your life and the beginning of a new one in the cards. So of course I knew that you finished a book and I knew you’d need help cleaning house.” MoonFeather waved the glowing sage wand at a dark corner where a cobweb had taken up residence and threatened to engulf the refrigerator.
I knew it was there and meant to clean it out when I finished the book, when I had a few spare minutes, when I couldn’t find anything better to do.
Or when Mom came home and cleaned it out for me.
“You made a new pot of coffee,” I sighed in relief.
“I also scrubbed the pot,” MoonFeather said emphatically.
I cringed. I hoped she hadn’t collected all my discarded, half empty mugs with a thick patina of mold growing in them. I was saving those for Scrap when he got back from wherever. Beer and orange juice might revive him after a battle, but he craved mold like I crave chocolate and coffee. Only mold was more essential to his metabolism than chocolate and coffee were to mine.
Maybe not.
“You washed the dishes.” So much for the mold farm for Scrap.
A chuckle in the back of my mind told me that Scrap had gotten to a couple of them before MoonFeather did. I relaxed with a sigh.
Now how to ask her about WindScribe.
“I also took a bunch of messages for you,” MoonFeather continued. “Two of them from men I don’t know.” My aunt raised her eyebrows in speculation. She might be nearing fifty, but she still had a fine figure and great legs. She’d divorced three husbands, buried a fourth, and now lived with a man fifteen years younger than herself. She’d raised two daughters, mostly on her own, who were now off at college. She knew every eligible man on Cape Cod and a good many more throughout New England. With way too much info on each one.
And she didn’t like sharing.
I poured coffee, thick cream—the real thing—and three sugars into my favorite cup; heavy natural-colored pottery with a bulbous center and a blue dragon circling it. Then I reached for the notepad hanging on a string beside the telephone.
“Donovan Estevez?” My heart went pitter-patter. I’d met Donovan last autumn and slept with him. Once. He was the sexiest man alive and he had the hots for me. He’d make a good diversion on that beach in Mexico....
At the same time my spine bristled with anxiety. I couldn’t trust the man. No, I’d never invite Donovan to meet me anywhere. Well, maybe on vacation if no demons threatened.
“Mr. Estevez is a very spiritual man. Is he part Native American?” MoonFeather gazed into the ether as she drew information into herself.
I nodded. Part Sanpoil Indian, Russian, Dutch, and a few other ancestors, as well as possibly Damiri demon. I didn’t know about the spiritual part. I’d leave that assessment to MoonFeather. I don’t do spiritual or religious.
“He says he will be on the Cape tomorrow on business and hopes to meet you at the salle d’armes for a fencing bout in the evening.” MoonFeather read her scrawled handwriting over my shoulder.
“And Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe.” I looked at the next message. Gollum to his friends.
“Quite a nice and scholarly gentleman. Isn’t he the one who called to reassure your mother when you were kidnapped by terrorists last autumn?”
I nodded again. Those terrorists had been Sasquatch demons. I didn’t like talking about that episode. That’s where I learned to curse in Sasquatch.
“Mr. Van der Hoyden-Smythe says that he is lecturing to the National Folkloric Society in Boston tomorrow night and requests that you attend.”
“Can’t,” I said. I didn’t want to explain about the two men who were almost in my life. For various reasons, neither one of them was always welcome.
Should I invite Gollum to join me in Mexico? He might be a comfortable companion, but a sexy one . . .? Tall, lanky, with glasses that slipped down his nose, he always looked crisp and pressed. He also had a tendency to drone on and on and on about obscure topics of interest only to himself. A true nerd—um—scholar.
Gollum’s expertise might be valuable in figuring out what happened to WindScribe and where the garden gnomes with teeth came from.
MoonFeather added her sage wand to the fire in the breakfast nook. “Do you want me to exorcise your ghosts?” she asked.
I needed a moment and several sips of coffee to jump thoughts with her.
“Why would I do that? I’m comfortable with them and they with me.” Except for Dill. I wasn’t sure if I wanted his ghost in or out of my life. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be room for me in the house with all of the ghosts.
“They bother your mother.”
Since Dad moved in with his much younger tennis coach, Bill Ikito, the rest of the family tried to take care of Mom. They failed, and most of the responsibility fell to me.
“Mom isn’t here.”
“But she is coming back. When the weather breaks. Soon, I think.”
“It’s my house. She lives in the guest cottage, which is not haunted.”
“That’s what you think.”
“Have I acquired a new one?” Half jokingly—but only half. The previous owner had included the ghosts in the earnest money agreement along with the monster dining room table and twelve chairs as part of the sale.
If I did burn the table and chairs, I could turn the dining room into more library space and not have room for family game night. Hmmm. Something to think about.
“I’m not certain. There is a new presence hovering nearby. It could be a ghost returned to a place of comfort or something else. The air tastes of . . . I don’t know what. Something odd.”
“Uh, MoonFeather, we need to talk about something odd that happened today. Or, rather, thirty years ago . . .”
Her eyes narrowed in speculation and . . . did I detect worry behind her scrutiny?
A flicker of bright red and green flashed before my memory.
That’s right, babe. We’re about to have a close encounter of the weird kind, Scrap laughed in my ear as he settled into my hand, flashing neon red, ready to transform into a weapon.
Why couldn’t these guys wait until I was safely snoozing on a sunny beach somewhere?
Chapter 7
It was once believed that the Moon was a spinning wheel, upon which the Goddess spun the lives of Men and Women.
