Casters Series Box Set

by Norah Wilson

  “What’d you buy for us?” one of the girls asked.

  Maryanne clutched the bag tighter. “Nothing.”

  “That’s not very nice.” The largest girl advanced, and Maryanne shrank back.

  “Hey, Shovel Face,” Brooke called. “Leave her alone.”

  The three girls whirled toward Brooke.

  “Look, this is none of your business,” the big girl said. “And if you get your skinny ass out of here fast enough, I won’t even kick it,” she offered graciously

  Brooke laughed.

  “Come on, Brooke,” Maryanne called. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “I don’t think they’re inclined to let us walk away. Are you girls?”

  Actually, with Brooke’s arrival evening the odds a little, they might have done just that, but Brooke’s words and tone were calculated to make retreat difficult.

  The big girl turned to face Brooke squarely. “You are looking for an ass-kicking, aren’t you?”

  Brooke shrugged and smiled. “I keep looking. Haven’t found one yet.”

  Shovel Face lunged. Brooke blocked her with a raised elbow, then lifted her leg and brought the pointy heel of her suede ankle boot down onto the other girl’s foot in a vicious stomp. Her attacker crumpled immediately, screaming and clutching her foot, which probably had a number of small bones broken.

  With a roar, the other two girls rushed Brooke simultaneously. She caught one with a stiff arm to the solar plexus, taking her out of the fight and leaving her gasping for air on the ground beside her friend. The other managed to hook an arm around Brooke’s neck, but Brooke went with the momentum, twisting with the girl’s lunge, pulling her attacker with her. As a result, when the two girls hit the ground, Brooke landed on top. In a flash, she had her forearm pressed to one girl’s throat, cutting off her airway.

  “Stop!” Maryanne cried. “For God’s sake, Brooke, don’t hurt her!”

  Brooke pressed harder. “She tried to take my head off!”

  “But she didn’t. They can’t really fight. Well, not like you anyway. Let her go!” Maryanne’s voice grew more panicked. “The other girls are leaving, Brooke. There’s no need to worry about this one.”

  Brooke eased up on the pressure enough to let the girl beneath her gasp for breath.

  “Guess this is your lucky night,” she said. “I’m going to let you go. But tell your friends not to mess with me. Or my friend, either. And don’t think you can gang up on me some day if you catch me alone. It won’t go well for you. They didn’t call me Miss Gun-to-a-Knife-Fight back home in the Bronx for nothing.” She released the other girl and let her roll away.

  The girl got up and lurched after her limping friends.

  “Holy shit!” Maryanne said. “Is that true? Your nickname?”

  “Lord, no.” Brooke sat up. “But reputation is everything. And I do know a few moves.”

  “A few moves? One stomp and that big chick was out of the game.” Maryanne helped Brooke to her feet. “I suppose you’ve taken lots of self-defense classes, living in New York and all.”

  Brooke laughed. “I did take Taekwondo classes after school for about five years, but that’s not where I learned those moves.” She dusted her butt off. “That stuff I learned from a guy I met who said he was former Israeli Special Forces.” Specifically, he’d taught her a few moves over this past nomadic summer when she’d been avoiding going home. “Krav Maga, he called it, Yiddish for hand-to-hand combat. Basically, dirty, no-holds-barred, him-or-me street fighting.”

  “Wow.” Maryanne’s eyes looked like saucers. “Was he like... your boyfriend or something?”

  “Nah, just someone I met.” He might have become her boyfriend, but even as messed up as she’d been, reason had finally asserted itself. That guy was way too dangerous to be hanging with.

  “Whatever that was, thank you! You saved me,” Maryanne said.

  “Yeah, from a hair pulling.” Brooke brushed more dust off her jeans.

  “They’d already progressed beyond that,” she said, shuddering. “They were going to hit me. Thank you for the intervention. I’ve never been in a fight.”

  Wow. Big news flash there.

  Brooke shrugged. “No biggie. And don’t say thank you again. I was looking for a little stress release therapy and you just happened to provide it.”

  Maryanne’s forehead puckered in a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just ran into a jerk I used to know.”

  A pause. “Want to go find him and dish out some of that Kraft Mega stuff?”

  Brooke laughed, genuinely amused. “Krav Maga. And no, that’s all right. I already got him where it hurts.”

  “In the... um... jewels?”

  Brooke snorted. “Almost as good. I pretty much claimed that he gave me HPV in front of his new girlfriend and all their friends.”

  Maryanne clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a laugh. “You didn’t!”

  “I’m afraid I did. And it was so worth it. Of course, I’m not going to get laid in this town any time soon.”

  “Come on.” Maryanne indicated the direction of Harvell House with a tilt of her head. “Let’s go back and tell Alex about our adventures.”

  “Why not?” she agreed. “I need a change of... boots anyway.”

  Feeling considerably less crazy, Brooke fell in beside Maryanne as they headed back to the dorm.

  Chapter 8

  Slide

  Maryanne

  “And side A, Ms. Hemlock?”

  The question caught Maryanne off guard. She dragged her attention back from gazing out the window to the illuminated diagram on the Smart Board. After a brief pause, she answered. “Side A equals 6.78 centimeters.”

  Phew! Thank goodness this was math. It had always been her strong suit. Had it been anything else, she likely couldn’t have produced an answer so quickly.

  “Very good,” the teacher said, but he wore a tight look on his face as he turned back to the board. Disappointed, probably, that he’d failed to embarrass her even though he clearly knew she’d been daydreaming.

  In truth, Maryanne’s mind had been drifting through most of this first-period class, far away from the parallels and bisecting angles and congruent triangles in front of her. Now, she sat up a bit straighter, adjusted herself in the seat, and tried to pay attention to what he was saying. Tried to focus on Mr. McKenzie’s geometry lesson. He didn’t make it easy, though. The guy had no enthusiasm for teaching, and it showed as he stood in front of the class. She’d had teachers like him before, men and women who’d found themselves in the wrong profession too late to do anything about it. When you got stuck with one of them, it sure made for a long academic term.

  McKenzie’s story—so the schoolyard gossip went—was that he’d applied for several principalships, but found himself second-best man for the job every single time. And every time, he’d been beaten out by a woman. Apparently this pattern of losing to women only helped cement him as a total misogynistic prick. McKenzie loved to grill the girls on the tougher questions. Then he would sigh and roll his eyes when they flustered over the answers, or better yet, got them completely wrong. If he found a crier in the class, the man was reputed to be relentless. It had taken Maryanne all of two days in his class to realize this guy’s rep was bang on.

  But still, even after nearly being caught daydreaming, she couldn’t keep her mind on the class today. Not for 6.78 seconds. Not that she tried very hard. She found her head turning and her gaze drifting back to the window and the gray day beyond. She couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. Not with everything happening in her world. And of course, not with this being a Jason day.

  Jason. Her dead little brother. It was another counting day.

  Maryanne had woken this morning shortly after 6 a.m. as she always did, glanced at the calendar and saw it was the 15th of the month. Another monthly anniversary of Jason’s death. Tonight at approximately 9 p.m. would mark the last time she’d heard his cry.


  Despite what she’d told them.

  Maryanne knew that right about now in Burlington, Ontario, her mother would be riding the GO train in to work, no doubt with the newspaper opened in front of her. But she wouldn’t be reading a single word of it. Her father would already be in Jason’s room, most likely. Perhaps determined to finally take the crib down. Skip Hemlock hated that crib. Standing there silently in that boy-less room, that mournful piece of furniture owned him now. Which was why Maryanne knew the chances were that it would still be there when this counting day rolled to an end.

  As for Maryanne herself... well, she’d get through this day somehow, in her own way.

  Ty Piper waved a hand from his desk and Maryanne caught the movement in the periphery of her vision. Ty smiled widely. Oh, crap! From his seat by the windows, it must have seemed like Maryanne had been staring at him rather than the outside world. Now what?

  Ty was one of the few local boys who actually attended the Streep Academy. He was a tall, gangly farm boy who stuck out hopelessly, with his shy quietness and slightly-too-small school clothes. Obviously smart—brilliant, actually—he shared several other classes with Maryanne. And right now, his face was glowing red as he waited on Maryanne’s acknowledgement of the wave and smile that must have cost him to toss her way. Maryanne offered what she hoped would be construed as a ‘friendly’ smile, not an ‘I’m interested’ smile. Then she looked up again at the board. Guys were the furthest thing from her mind this year.

  “Ms. Saunders? The answer... ”

  “Nine?” Brooke ventured in a bored voice.

  “Wrong!” There was true glee in McKenzie’s voice.

  She shrugged. “Okay, how about sixty-nine, then?”

  There was a short-lived chorus of snorts and giggles.

  Mr. McKenzie’s face burned. Brooke would be the absolute last one in this class he could reduce to tears. Or rattle. He should have learned by now to stop trying. And despite her apparent inattention in class, Maryanne knew Brooke was fine with math. Not a whiz, but comfortable enough that she’d pass. And that seemed to be all she was looking for.

  As if feeling Maryanne’s stare, or maybe just to share the moment, Brooke turned in her seat. She smiled at Maryanne, but as always it slid to a slightly snide expression before she turned herself back around. It was as if Brooke couldn’t help it. Or as if she raced to get that snide look in, before anyone else trumped her on it.

  Maryanne was truly grateful for Brooke’s intervention the other night when those local girls had surrounded her. And Brooke, of course, had delighted in administering the shitkicking. Had grinned all the way home. But Maryanne had seen the anxiousness rising in Brooke as she told the story to Alex. It climbed even higher as Brooke elaborated on the fast one she’d pulled on Seth—proclaiming their mutual STD before his new girlfriend. Maryanne recognized that anxiety. Hard as it was to believe of Brooke Saunders, the girl desperately wanted to be liked, to belong. And it made the other girl spill her words out quickly, even while she somehow tried to bite them back.

  That anxious desire for friendship had crept out again before the three girls left their third floor room at Harvell house this morning. They’d stood in the middle of the quiet room, beds made behind them, book bags at their sides as they looked from one to the other. And they’d stood there with the promise that this evening, they’d return to the attic.

  To read more from Connie’s diary.

  Maryanne hadn’t seen the old diary since the night Alex’s accidental... adventure. She was quite sure that Brooke hadn’t seen it either. Though she was equally sure Brooke had searched for it amongst everyone’s things in their shared room at Harvell. But there were stretches of time when Alex would be gone for an hour or more at night. Only to return ashen and quiet and so lost in thought. Maryanne expected she had been reading the words of Connie Harvell. From the little she already knew, that was one sad tale.

  Once, when Alex had crept into the room and crawled into bed well after lights out, Maryanne had heard soft crying from the other side of the room while Brooke gently snored and she herself pretended to be asleep. She had said nothing, of course. Not then and not the morning after when Alex had awoken with her gray-blue eyes red-rimmed.

  Jason’s eyes had been gray-blue.

  “I’ll ask you again, Ms. Hemlock!” McKenzie snapped his pointer on the whiteboard, bringing it down hard on the triangle’s lower corner. “What is the answer?”

  Maryanne started. Crap! Had that question been directed to her? Had she been that zoned out? But ten studying seconds later, Brooke answered for her:

  “Seventy-two degrees.”

  With obvious disgust, Mr. McKenzie cast a dirty look at both Maryanne and Brooke before he turned back to the board.

  And that was a very good thing because if he’d stared at her for one minute longer, he might have seen the tears welling in her eyes. And she didn’t want him to think they were because of him.

  The tears that threatened were for her little brother, not this jerk of a teacher. They were for this counting day. And maybe too, a bit for herself.

  At least tonight she would have some distraction. She, Brooke and Alex had agreed that they would sneak up to the attic again after lights out to hear more from Connie’s diary. But they wouldn’t stop there. This morning in their room as they’d prepared to go off to school, they’d agreed to simultaneously tap on that window and beg to fly out through the pane as Alex had done once before. As Connie Harvell had done. If that couldn’t distract her, nothing could.

  Much as part of her yearned for it, Maryanne was terrified of what the night might bring.

  I bet poor Jason was terrified that night, five months ago today.

  One tear slid slowly down her cheek, followed by another. It was just a small mercy that Mr. McKenzie didn’t turn around to see. But shy and quiet Ty Piper was watching her, she saw through tear-filled eyes. A couple others too, no doubt. More than anything right then and there, Maryanne wanted out of that classroom.

  She just wanted out.

  Chapter 9

  Into the Brilliant Darkness

  Alex

  God, she hated it here. Hated the very air in the room. Hated everything about it.

  Alex felt her throat constrict as she ascended the final step and walked the length of the dim attic. The candlelight flickered crazily as her hand trembled. Just like every other time she’d entered this room since waking here that awful morning, the almost-memory hammered at her. Rhythmically, relentlessly pounding outside the barrier of her mind as she looked around at the now familiar space. Dresser, rocking chair, crib, cot, musty trunk, old coat tree... Something would surely trigger a memory. But it didn’t. As she stood there—right there on the very spot where it must have happened—she still had no recollection of the attack. No picture of her attacker.

  “Spooked out?”

  For once, Brooke’s voice didn’t have that taunting edge.

  “Scared stiff,” Maryanne breathlessly confessed.

  Alex didn’t doubt it. She was scared herself, and she’d already done it once before; they hadn’t. And though she’d loved the exhilaration of joining in with the night, loved knowing that part of her had slipped through the stained glass unscathed to fly into the darkness, it was still a frightening prospect. A slip into the unknown. Yet as this week had passed, Alex had thought about little else, and the niggling craving to do it again had grown into an itch. She wanted to do it again.

  She would.

  The three girls placed their candles carefully, strategically, so no flopping bodies would knock them over. Two on the dresser to their left, one on an old trunk to their right. Then they sat down in front of the window. Between the candles and the wide wash of moonlight falling through the window, there was plenty of light. Alex and Brooke sat easily cross-legged, while Maryanne sat with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around her legs.

  Brooke leaned to peer out the window. “Not a cloud in the
sky.”

  Alex followed her gaze. Brooke was right.

  The stars shone against the beautiful blackness. The half-moon hung brilliant and unobscured. She knew it was cold out, though. That crisp cold you get with a clear autumn night. She could feel the chill just sitting here so close to the heavy glass. A tiny shudder skated over her skin and she shook it away.

  The single candle to the right flickered, causing their shadows to dance.

  Maryanne had bought three candles—one for each of them—at a local craft shop. They were wide and white and stood on their respective perches without worry of tipping. Brooke had suggested that big, heavy-duty flashlights or Coleman lanterns might have been a better choice when she’d seen Maryanne’s purchases, but Alex and Maryanne had overridden her.

  They both understood. Connie had lived by candlelight as a prisoner in this attic. They could ask for no more. It just wouldn’t feel right.

  And as Alex looked over at Maryanne in this moment of reflection, it struck her again how tired she looked. More lost than usual today. Was it just the revelations of Connie’s diary? The dark secrets of Harvell House? That was a big part of it, no doubt, but it wasn’t the whole story. There’d been something lost about Maryanne from the moment she’d stepped into Harvell House. Something that had come with her.

  “Want me to read tonight?” This from Maryanne, but not asked with any real belief she’d get a positive answer.

  Oh, crap! Alex had been staring at her. No wonder the girl thought something was expected of her. Alex shook her head. “No, I’ll read.”

  She opened the book carefully. She wouldn’t dream of dog-earring a page, and so the tiny slip of paper she’d inserted as a bookmark earlier, now drifted down to the floor as she found the spot she’d chosen to read from tonight.

  The guilt arose the moment she angled the book toward the light and looked down at Connie’s small, compact writing. Just like last time, something deep inside balked at sharing Connie Harvell’s words.

  “Why not start where we left off the last time?” Brooke asked. “September 9, 1962.”