Casters Series Box Set

by Norah Wilson

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Straight to—”

  “In a minute,” Maryanne cut in.

  Alex stopped short. “Why?”

  Upon Maryanne’s prompting, they flew toward the school. “I’ve got a hunch,” she said.

  “About what?” Brooke asked.

  “Humor me.”

  Less than two minutes later, they all saw her hunch had been right. Mr. McKenzie’s shiny new car was in the parking lot.

  Not in the teacher’s parking lot at the front of the school, but in the student’s lot at the very shadowed back of it. There were two people in the car steaming up the windows. From the way those bodies were moving, they definitely were not engaged in scholarly activities.

  “What’s he doing here so late?” Maryanne asked. Clearly, she didn’t have the viewing vantage point that Brooke had.

  “What do you bet he’s not grading papers?” Alex said.

  “Yeah, but someone’s working for that A,” Brooke said. She swooped closer to the car, right up to the window.

  True enough, McKenzie wasn’t grading papers. However, he seemed to be grading a junior on some of her other skills. Brooke recognized the kid, a junior from Calais, Maine who already had a reputation for drinking too much. Her name was Gertrude. He was holding her close as he groped under her untucked shirt.

  “That sick bastard,” Maryanne said. “I’m glad I ran him off the road last fall.”

  “Now let’s run him off the girl!” Brooke laughed.

  “Amen to that!” Maryanne laughed.

  Brooke flew up over the car to the passenger side of the vehicle.

  “What are you going to do?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah, what?” Whereas Alex’s tone had been wary, Maryanne’s was totally excited.

  Brooke showed them what she was going to do.

  Carefully, she reached her arm into the car window, past the blond curls of the junior who was facing away from her. That was good. She had no real desire to terrify the girl. McKenzie’s eyes were closed, and he moaned. God, he made her sick! He didn’t see Brooke’s reaching hand, but moments later, he sure as hell felt the smack of it upside his head. His eyes shot open. Brooke waved a tsk-tsking finger in his face. She pulled her arm back out and, laughing hysterically, shot up toward the sky

  Maryanne and Alex were right behind her and they all stopped mid air when they heard the high-pitched screams from below. They belonged to McKenzie.

  The car lights came on and he sped out of the parking lot at breakneck speed. Two blocks away, he pulled his car up in front of the Lady Shannon Student residence, and Gertrude, looking very confused and not too sober, stepped out on the curb. She tucked her shirt in. Then, tires screeching, McKenzie raced away like the devil himself was on his horny ass.

  “That was brilliant!” Maryanne laughed. She twirled in the air. “Absolutely freakin’ brilliant!”

  “It felt great!” Brooke executed a similar spin.

  “High fives!” This from Alex and again caster palms were slammed together in a satisfying shimmer.

  Brooke was feeling it, the intoxication of the night. She twirled a few more times. Then just that quickly, she stopped. Reflexively, she jerked a shoulder up and back. Back in the cave, there was that feeling again. And again. The lightest touch on her sleeping body, but it was on her left shoulder this time.

  Weird.

  She was going to say something about it, but things suddenly got serious.

  “We have to head to Harvell House,” Alex said. “We have to see if John Smith cleaned up the glass. All of the glass.”

  “I’m betting he has,” Brooke said. “I mean, we’re talking about John Smith here. He’s as anal as they come. He probably took it to the town dump rather than leave it in the garbage trolley for Tuesday pickup.”

  “Even if he has,” Alex said. “We have to check. We might not be able to pick it up, but there might be something we can learn from it.”

  “Right,” Maryanne said. “If you felt some kind of tug when you tried to lift the glass, then maybe there is something to it still. Maybe there is—yikes!”

  Yikes?

  “What?” Alex asked.

  “Something pinched my hand! Back in the cave. It must have been a mosquito. I’ve been feeling them for the last fifteen minutes or so. Geez, I wish I could slap at them.”

  That was something their caster selves wouldn’t have to deal with. Mosquitos, black flies, no-see-’ems. But their originals? Different story. They should have thought to put insect repellent on that shopping list of Bryce’s.

  “Yeah, I think I got a few bites, too,” Alex said, even as she started off toward Harvell House.

  Brooke and Maryanne soared by her side. The closer they got to the residence, the closer they bunched together. They had to be careful.

  Melissa Kosnick had attacked Brooke here. Though there was no sign of her now, that didn’t mean she wasn’t a threat. What had Melissa told the others about her morning confrontation with a Heller? How many would believe her? Not many, probably. After her own personal encounter with a Heller—Brooke herself—in Seth’s bedroom, she’d ranted on about it with that wild-eyed intensity that made people nervous. Then after Seth died… Well, most people in town thought Melissa had gone crazy.

  On the other hand, people were talking about the Hellers now, more and more every day. And they were believing what they heard, judging by the iron crosses hammered onto doors.

  From the river side, Harvell House was in near darkness. Only the lights in the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms glowed. But just because the bedrooms were all in darkness, though, didn’t lessen the worry of being seen. If someone looked out the window of a darkened bedroom, they’d see the casters, but the casters wouldn’t necessarily see them, even with their caster-sharp vision.

  “Over to the oak,” Alex instructed.

  Brooke and Maryanne followed her into the branches.

  This was where Brooke had hidden that very morning. But it was safer now. Not just because night had fallen and casters belonged in the night, but because they were together.

  Security in numbers. But someone should still watch out.

  “You two go,” Brooke said. “I’ll keep watch here.”

  Maryanne spoke up, “But don’t you want to feel—”

  “I already know what that glass feels like. Someone has to keep watch. It’s safer that way. I’ll do it.”

  Alex, then Maryanne, nodded. They eased down toward the ground, then lying horizontally just above the dew-slick grass, made their way to the house. Brooke watched as they stopped just below the window. She looked up.

  There was a sheet of clear plastic over the frame that had held the glassed Madonna and child. It waved in and out in the light breeze, making a gentle rustling. That had to be John Smith’s doing. Crap! Well, that was the end of that hope. He would have cleaned up the glass.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Brooke lowered her gaze and watched Alex and Maryanne. Smith might have cleaned up the glass, but he couldn’t have gotten every minute of particle of it, not judging by the look of the other two casters. Maryanne and Alex were running their hands through the ground over and over again. Though no expression showed on their caster-black faces, Brooke knew they were feeling what she’d felt. The tug of that glass. That strange tingle. Maybe not as strongly as she had, but definitely—

  Damn mosquitos! They were getting worse as the night wore on. And oh great, now they were inside her inside her sleeping bag! And not just one or two. She must be feeling a dozen bites now up inside her pant leg, her body flinching as she slept. Those pins and needles were all over her body, heavy on the exposed parts, like her hands, her face.

  Her original had been dreaming of Times Square at midnight. Dancers on every corner, spinning around the guys selling tickets to underground comedy clubs. A bouncing man waved a sign that read Need money for weed. The billboards all around flashed: Don’t go, but come, with the wind. Yo Scarlett O’H
ara! I’m a talking to you!

  But then her original woke up, choked on the scream as her eyelids flew open and eight legs crawled across her lips.

  Brooke’s cast choked back a scream, too, when she realized what was happening. Saw what was happening through her original’s eyes. Saw what was crawling all over her!

  “Spiders!”

  Alex and Maryanne whirled toward her.

  “Oh God, spiders! We’re not being bitten by mosquitos! We’re being eaten alive by—”

  She didn’t have to say another word. The others shot into the sky. Brooke joined them in the race toward Hants High Mountain, shrieking as only casters could when they were threatened.

  Chapter 10

  The Itsy Bitsy Spiders Crawl

  Maryanne

  Maryanne dug deep, soared as fast as she could, but she only just kept up with the others.

  Lights snapped on in the houses below, up and down the river. Frightened cries broke through open windows as the casters raced through the sky. They’d stopped their shrieking, but it had already wakened half the town, evidently.

  Maryanne’s original’s heart was hammering. She knew her pulse beat dangerously high. She was too helpless to even brush the spiders away as they ran along her hands, over her fingertips, as they bit her over and over again. She couldn’t even scream at those that crawled over her moaning lips.

  Spiders! Spiders were crawling all over their bodies.

  Oh God, they had to get back to the cave!

  They tore through the main part of town like bats straight out of hell, but when they passed over the Town Square, they were suddenly bathed in blinding bright light from below.

  “What the—” Alex shouted. Startled, she stopped. They all stopped their mid air surge.

  “The bastards!” Brooke shouted.

  Maryanne was speechless. Light streamed up from below, a floodlight aimed directly at them. Then came the voices. The shouts. The hatred.

  “Kill the evil bitches! Kill them! God in Heaven, help us send them back to hell!”

  Maryanne fisted her hands. These were her sisters! If anyone hurt them, this ‘evil bitch’ would shriek them mad.

  As always, fear was set aside when she cast out. When she soared, it was ‘over there’, along with grief, sadness, timidity, and yeah, inhibition. Maryanne the Mouse didn’t exist when she cast. It was almost as though setting aside those other things made more room for raw and righteous anger. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt Alex or Brooke. Or herself.

  “Whores!” Someone shouted. “Get back to hell where you belong!”

  “Bitches? Whores? Let’s get these assholes,” Alex screamed. “Let’s swoop them!”

  “Damn right!” Maryanne cried. “Let’s do more! Let’s—”

  Bam!

  A blast from a shotgun tore the night sky.

  Brooke’s hand gripped around Maryanne’s arm and yanked her out of the spotlight just as a second gun blast erupted. She was doing the same for Alex with her other hand. The shots missed all three of them, but not by much. They soared higher, hopefully out of shotgun range, but not away.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s get out of here,” Brooke shouted.

  “They called us whores!” Alex yelled.

  “I’m going to make them pay!” Maryanne screamed. Her fisted hands shook at her sides. She wanted nothing more than to terrify the townspeople below. “They want to hurt us. They want—”

  “God, listen to yourselves! When did I become the voice of reason?” Brooke’s voice cut through the red fog of rage in Maryanne’s head. “We’ve got to get back to the cave. We’ll make them pay later. Right now—spiders!”

  Spiders. Spiders and hunters. Would this be their lives from now on?

  “She’s right,” Alex grated. “Come on.”

  When they’d left the town behind, Alex spoke again. “Was that iron? In the gun, I mean.”

  “I…I don’t know,” Maryanne said.

  It could have been.

  Once they’d gotten out of the light’s harsh beam, Maryanne had looked back at the handful of people gathered in the square. She could clearly see those who surrounded the light on the ground. She recognized three faces in the sparse crowd: a vindictively grinning Melissa Kosnick, a frightened John Smith, and an angry looking Bryce Walker. It was Bryce who’d held the gun. All were shaken. All had the haunted look of those who’d heard the Heller shriek.

  “Was that Bryce shooting?” Brooke’s voice rose.

  So Maryanne wasn’t the only one who’d looked back.

  “He…he missed on purpose!” That had to be it!

  “You did this to us!” Alex whirled around. She turned on Brooke. “Damn you, Brooke! This is all your fault!”

  Maryanne cringed at Alex’s words, then cringed even more at Brooke’s response.

  “I know!”

  Brooke surged ahead of the already racing pack. Yes, she was the fastest of the three, hands down. But Maryanne recognized that explosion of speed for what it really was. She was trying to outrun the rejection.

  “Listen,” Alex cried.

  Sirens. From the sound of them, they were heading west out of town, the same direction as the casters flew.

  “Into the trees!” Alex shouted. They dropped their copper bracelets.

  Brooke was way ahead of them now, but Maryanne and Alex didn’t fly between the trees, they truly flew through them, the boughs of the pines undisturbed by their passage.

  “Alex, fly low!” Maryanne called. She could only hope that up ahead, Brooke would do the same.

  They’d be searching the skies for the Hellers, and she didn’t want anyone to see them heading straight toward their mountain hideout. Fortunately, the boughs and branches didn’t slow them down. Nothing could slow them down as they headed to their shaking, assaulted bodies.

  Brooke was the first back to the cave, but Maryanne and Alex were right behind her. Again a caster shrieked through the night. Brooke shrieked for all of them as she hovered over their bodies. Then Maryanne and Alex joined the fray.

  Animals were terrified of casters.

  Coyotes pissed themselves. Dogs ran away yelping, and those that couldn’t run died of fright. Horses were ruined. People were shaken to the very foundations of their psyches. And now…spiders dropped dead as if their hearts exploded.

  Those on the girls’ bodies froze as though suddenly petrified. They tumbled down their cheeks. Those on the ceiling who’d yet to descend fell like drops of black hail.

  Maryanne watched this bizarre and disturbing event, but there was something she watched even more avidly. Something she couldn’t pull her eyes away from.

  Brooke.

  The longer Brooke shrieked, the more her pain showed in the gray lines of her face. The girl was full of torment. Anguish carved so very sharply and deeply, it had to go right to her soul. Lonely anguish.

  It damn near broke Maryanne’s heart.

  As if by mutual consent, Alex and Maryanne stopped shrieking all at once.

  Instantly, Alex was at Brooke’s side. “It’s done!” she said. “They’re dead. We’re safe.” She grabbed Brooke’s shoulders and shook her. Then shook her again before Brooke finally stopped. Thankfully, stopped. The lines of gray pain etched on her cast face vanished. Darkness so black it was empty again claimed her completely.

  Maryanne had never heard a shriek like that! That hard, that brutally cutting. Even in her caster form, Maryanne shuddered at the memory of it.

  “I…I hate spiders,” Brooke said.

  Alex hesitated. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, me too.” She turned away.

  Maryanne looked at the dead spiders covering the cave floor, their sleeping bags, and their relieved, panting bodies. Within the fluttering circle of candle light, the spider corpses close enough to the flame looked as if they were still quite alive, or somehow dancing dead. Her heart slammed against her ribs. The spiders were no longer biting them, but many were still on them. She had to brush them away
! Off their originals! Now!

  Maryanne flew to their bodies and began batting the corpses away. Even when she heard the barking of dogs, her hands only paused a moment.

  Dogs. She had no doubt they were after the casters. On the hunt with the hunters.

  And she had no doubt that they were the Walker Dobermans. She knew the pitch of their barks.

  “They won’t come to the cave,” Alex said.

  “No,” Brooke agreed. “But that in itself might clue the hunters in.”

  How long before the hunters looked for them up on Hants High Mountain? In that highest cave?

  Silently, Brooke and Alex joined Maryanne in brushing the spiders away from their bodies. The ones inside the sleeping bags they were able to brush off their bodies since their caster hands travelled through the fabric. Unfortunately, the spider carcasses couldn’t also travel through the material. Which meant they were still inside the sleeping bags. Still, piles of spiders beside their bodies were infinitely better than piles of spiders on their bodies.

  Once they’d done all they could do, they began working to get rid of the dead spiders littering the floor. They flung them out toward the cave’s opening where a stirring wind pulled the feather-light corpses away.

  It wasn’t until the task was nearly finished that Maryanne realized she’d somehow—some time—begun to recite Vesta’s words as she’d worked.

  Water blessed can make one well

  But doesn't last long, before back to hell

  Fly with the silver, cry with the gleam!

  Not from the river, ocean, or stream.

  Her words had been monotonous at first. But not so now. Now she spoke with purpose, and Alex and Brooke joined her in the chant. It made those words more determined; it made them more powerful. As they raised their voices together, their cries were anything but helpless.

  She didn’t even think about it, and no excuse or explanation was necessary. Maryanne left the spider-ridding chore to Alex and Brooke and the wind. She settled down close to the floor on some copper mesh, in front of the candle. It burned low. But the waning flame was all she needed as she opened Vesta Walker’s grimoire. It too seemed to be quite alive, dancing. Anything but dead.