by Norah Wilson
That must have finally sounded alarm bells in Maryanne’s head, because she left the stones and came to hover beside Brooke.
“Why do I think this is going to suck?” Brooke said.
“It does suck,” Alex allowed. “In fact, it sucks so much that I entertained the idea of not telling you guys. But you know, new leaf and everything. No secrets.”
“What is it?” Maryanne asked sharply.
“When I was eavesdropping on Smith and Betts, Betts mentioned how worried she was about us.”
“But we had Bryce send her that message from Maryanne’s email!” Brooke turned to Maryanne. “Unless he screwed that up too.”
“He didn’t screw anything up, Brooke!” Maryanne said, springing to Bryce’s defense.
Alex held up a hand to stop them. “He sent the message, and he didn’t screw it up,” she said. “But we kinda did. We left behind stuff that we’d never be caught dead without if we’d really gone on a road trip.”
“Like what?” Maryanne asked. “We got Bryce to round up all our phones and purses.”
“Yeah, and we left behind our makeup, toothbrushes, toiletries.”
“God, yes,” Brooke said, her mind whirling. “Our overnight bags would still be in the closet too, since we didn’t stop to pack any clothes.”
“We didn’t have time to stop and do that stuff,” Maryanne said, still defensive. “If Bryce had been caught carrying our paralyzed bodies out of Harvell House and stashing us in his truck, he’d have gone to prison for life.”
“You’re right,” Alex said. “We didn’t have time to consider all of that. And the upshot is that Mrs. Betts is worried. She’s not entirely buying the idea of a road trip.”
“I don’t blame her,” Brooke said. “Being spontaneous is one thing, leaving your makeup behind? Whole ’nother thing.”
“That’s not all,” Alex said.
Maryanne groaned. “What else?”
“Your parents have been calling. Apparently, they’re getting a little alarmed that you’re not answering your cell or responding to the voice messages they’ve left.”
Brooke bit her lip. They’d gotten Bryce to turn off all their cell phones that first night, to prevent anyone from being able to locate them through GPS or something.
“My parents have called too. Betts told them about the message she’d received from Maryanne, but they’re still worried.” Alex grimaced. “I know my mother. Right about now, she’s thinking the worst. That I’ve backslid and am partying my face off.”
Brooke knew better than to ask if her parents had called. They wouldn’t have. But she didn’t want to hear the confirmation.
“Oh, this is awful!” Maryanne wailed. “After all my parents have been through, after what I put them through last year dodging their calls…”
“See, this is why Alex didn’t want to spill,” Brooke said to Maryanne. “It won’t help anything to get all twisted out of shape about it. Besides, we’ll soon be back in our bodies and headed back to Harvell House.” Oh God, she hoped! “Your parents will chill again when you call them.”
“Easy for you to say,” Maryanne snapped. “Your mother probably doesn’t even know you’re gone.”
“Maryanne!” Alex hissed.
Brooke felt like she’d been slapped. It was all she could do not to jerk backward. She’d have expected that from Alex, but not from Maryanne.
“It’s okay,” Brooke said. “Maryanne’s right. My mom wouldn’t have called to check up on me. She rarely does.” She forced a laugh. “She says she never has to since I’m so quick to call when I need something.”
“Oh, Brooke, I’m sorry.” Maryanne sounded stricken. “I didn’t mean to say that. It was mean of me. I’m just so stressed about this.”
Brooke lifted her shoulder in a tight shrug. “Like I said, no biggie. Nothing we don’t all know.”
“Well, in this case, it’s a damned good thing she hasn’t called,” Alex said. “I imagine she’d send the cavalry all the way from New York if she thought there was something wrong.”
Strangely, Brooke didn’t doubt that. It was just the day-to-day being there her mother didn’t do.
“And Maryanne,” Alex continued, “I know it’s pointless telling you not to worry. You won’t be able to turn it off altogether, and neither will I. But please, please, don’t make yourself crazy over it. Okay?”
Maryanne sagged. “Okay. Okay, I’ll try.”
“You said there were two somethings you had to tell us,” Brooke said, hoping there wasn’t another kick in the gut yet to come. “What’s the rest of it?”
“Oh yeah. We’re going to church,” she announced.
“Church?” Brooke blurted. “What? Looking for a nice little midnight mass to terrorize, Alex?”
“Not quite.” Alex drawled. “Betts and Smith were talking about an old, abandoned church out on Robinson Road. Some people in town—Melissa’s family, mostly—think it’s a Heller hideout. There’ve been sightings there over the years. Rumors at least. They plan on going there, and John Smith’s going with them.”
John Smith? Brooke felt the smallest wave of disappointment. He was an odd duck, all right, but she’d always kind of liked him.
“Well, if the hunters are going to be there, why on earth would we go?” Maryanne asked.
Brooke was about to agree, but Alex cut in quickly. “John Smith told Betts the hunting party is tomorrow night.” Alex looked from Maryanne to Brooke. “I think we should go there now, before the hunters sack the place, and scope it out. But we’ll be careful. Any sign of trouble, we turn back.”
“But why didn’t Connie ever take us there?” Maryanne asked.
That was the million dollar question.
Brooke was reading Alex’s body language again. This time, she picked up on the subtle deflation. And fear.
“I don’t know. That strikes me as strange, too. Maybe she was trying to protect us.” She shrugged. “Maybe the rumors are only rumors.”
“Or,” Brooke said. “Maybe there was something there so frightening to Connie, she didn’t dare take us there. Remember how afraid she was of going back to Harvell House? Maybe something in that church scared her.”
“But if there is something there, if there’s a chance of finding anything that’ll help us, I vote we go,” Maryanne said. “More copper, even.”
“More knowledge.” Brooke had to agree; they had to go check it out.
“And God knows we need all the help we can get,” Alex said. “From what Betts said, there are broken boards, holes in the floor, and the place is full of rats. Most every window is broken. The place doesn’t sound like one of Connie’s regular haunts. But—”
“Haunts,” Brooke echoed.
Alex threw her hands up. “I didn’t mean it that way! Anyway, if Connie went there, we have to know why.”
“Most every window is broken?” Maryanne asked.
“That’s what Betts said.”
Brooke knew they all were thinking the same thing. Churches and stained glass windows went hand in hand. What if there was another window like the one she’d broken at Harvell House? Another Madonna smiling benevolently, offering those who suffered a way out…or a way back in?
“Well, ladies,” Brooke said, “looks like we’re going to church.”
“Who’ll stay back with the bodies?” Maryanne asked.
It would be Brooke. Alex and Maryanne would vote against her. She’d be left out again. As always, she’d be the one on the outside. Perpetually. Eternally.
Without saying a word, Maryanne picked up one of the pillar candles that Bryce had brought—a feat made possible only with the glove—and placed it close to Alex’s sleeping body. Quickly, she did the same with the remaining five candles, until their originals were surrounded by them. Then she took the one candle Bryce had left burning and used it to light the others, her hand trembling as she applied the flame to the unlit wicks.
“Animals are scared of fire,” Maryanne s
aid, and Brooke heard the quaver in her voice. After what had happened to her in the Walker shed last winter, Brooke knew she was pretty damned terrified of fire herself.
“No need to do that, Maryanne,” Brooke heard herself say. “I can stay.”
“No,” Alex said, her voice firm. “We’re all going.”
Chapter 19
Way out Robinson Road
Brooke
Brooke went as high as she possibly could in the night sky for a few glorious moments. Then she lowered back down to fly between Alex and Maryanne and that felt even more glorious.
Maybe it was the night they wrapped themselves up in. Maybe it was the beginning of the blessed hope that they would get out of this mess that she’d caused.
And Brooke wanted nothing more than to save her friends. Her soaring sisters.
As they’d left the cave, they’d noticed it—the picture on the pond outside had continued to evolve and take form. It was nothing any of them had been able to observe as it happened, but when Brooke stared down at the ice image, the lines were definitely more clear. The picture was coming together more and more.
And Maryanne had said she was close to figuring out the third verse in Vesta Walker’s grimoire. “Just a few more twists and turns,” she’d said. Okay, yeah, she’d been talking to herself, but she’d said it with authority.
Plus, Alex had told them about running her hands through the glass-speckled ground below Harvell’s attic window. How she’d not only felt that tingle and tug on her fingertips, but actually seen the light shimmering there. There could be only one conclusion: moonlight didn’t just shine through that stained glass portal, it shone from it.
Alex had practically vibrated as she’d told them about the light on her hands.
Alex… There were times when that girl was so quick to snap, to go ballistic on Brooke. Times when her anger seemed to absolutely boil through her. But from what Brooke had seen, Alex was trying to rein in her rage. Brooke guessed the other girl was figuring out what Brooke had already deduced—that casting was changing them. They’d never been out this long before and it was affecting them all.
It had been Maryanne that Brooke had been worried about initially, and worried about the most. No question, Maryanne was the most hardcore of them all, and she’d be the first to admit that. The normally wouldn’t-say-shit-if-she-had-a-mouth-full-of-it girl lost all her reserve, her mousy inhibitions, out here.
But it wasn’t quite that she lost those restraints, no more than Alex lost her composure. But they put them ‘over there’.
Same with fear, pain, and worry.
And Brooke? When she cast with Maryanne and Alex, she lost something else. She put aside her loneliness.
It hadn’t been that way the few times she’d cast out by herself. In fact, for whatever reason, the loneliness amplified whenever she cast out alone. Brooke had to admit it—hated to admit it, even just to herself—maybe that was part of the reason why she’d broken the window. Maybe she’d destroyed their portal so she wouldn’t have to feel that killing loneliness, that horrific abandonment, anymore. Ever, ever again.
Not that she didn’t regret what she’d done. She sure as hell did. Breaking that stained glass window was the stupidest, most regretted action of her entire life. If she could go back in time and remove that one split second, she’d do it in a heartbeat.
But for now, for this moment—however it came to be—she was feeling the night around her as she flew with her friends. The loneliness abated as they headed toward the church on Robinson Road.
“So are you sure we’re going the right way?” Maryanne asked, and not for the first time. They were heading north over the town, definitely now on the outskirts of it, with fewer and fewer houses below them the further out they went.
Neither Brooke nor Maryanne had ever heard of Robinson Road, and in their current condition, it wasn’t like they could Google it. But as they’d set off, Alex had assured them she knew where it was.
“I’ve been to this church before,” she said.
“You went to church out here?” Somehow Brooke just couldn’t picture it. “When?”
“I partied out here once in my first year at Streep.”
Okay, that Brooke could picture.
“Some of the Goth kids from the high school and community college used to have tailgate parties in the parking lot behind the church. I used to come along once in a while. Naturally, they overflowed into the old cemetery.”
“Are you kidding me?” The silver shimmer around Maryanne’s empty caster form made a strange shuddering movement against the dark night. “How creepy.”
“Yeah, it was kind of creepy,” Alex answered. “I loved it! But it didn’t last long as a party spot. The cops cracked down on it pretty quick after a couple of the really old headstones got busted up. They started breaking up the festivities right after that. Charging all the underage drinkers, confiscating the booze, reporting the out-of-town kids to their houses and the Mansbridge kids to their parents. It sucked.”
“But as it turns out, lucky for us, huh?” Brooke said.
“Let’s hope,” Maryanne murmured.
Alex stopped mid air. She pointed directly down. “We’re here.”
Brooke studied the structure below her as they cautiously descended.
It was a large, dark, cold looking building, its flat roof torn, tatters of shingles flapping in the wind. With her keen caster vision, Brooke watched as bats flew from the dilapidated cross-less steeple at one end. Mist shrouded the surprisingly large cemetery behind the church, but as they descended, Brooke could see the tops of the larger grave markers through it. It was incredibly eerie, looking at those pious pillars and time-beaten angels. Just as spooky were the large trees throughout the cemetery. The roots of those suckers had to be twisting around the graves.
“Not a car in sight,” Brooke said. “Awesome.”
She started to glide down, but the touch of Maryanne’s gloved hand stopped her. “There may not be cars,” she said. “But what about wheelers? They could be parked back in the woods.” She nodded to indicate the thick pines that surrounded the cemetery.
“Wheelers?” Brooke asked. “What the hell is a wheeler?”
“You know, wheelers. ATVs? All terrain vehicles?” She mimed a two-fisted handlebar grip. “Vroom vroom.”
“Let me guess,” Alex said. “Bryce has been taking you out on his ATV.”
“Well, not lately. We’ve been out wheeling a few times…”
Been out wheeling? Apparently Miss Hemlock of Burlington, Ontario was turning into a real country girl.
“That would be a sight to see,” Alex laughed.
“What?” Maryanne asked defensively.
“A caster, with her arms wrapped around a Walker, beating it down the trails on an ATV. The whole town would freak out!”
“Ira Walker would roll over in his grave,” Maryanne said.
“Good, I hope he is rolling around down there right now,” Brooke cackled. “And landing sharp on his elbows with every single flip.”
Alex and Maryanne both joined her in a laugh, one they didn’t even try to restrain. Ira was the original enemy, and thoughts of his turmoil were happy ones. The vengeful thoughts were good. Welcome and perfect in a go-to-hell-Ira-Walker kind of way.
Sometimes it really was a clear-cut us and them world.
Their laughter subsided and things got serious again. Maryanne and Alex followed Brooke’s lead, lowering into the concealing mist of the cemetery.
“Let’s wait here a few minutes,” Alex said. “Just to make sure the coast is clear.”
It was a logical suggestion, and Brooke was happy to comply. She wanted to look around the cemetery a bit. Apparently Alex and Maryanne did too, because they each sidled off in different directions to investigate tombstones.
Brooke drew up beside a towering old grave marker. The surname MANN was carved deeply into the granite.
Ancestors of Dani Mann? That could ver
y well be.
Brooke moved through the mist to some of the other graves. There were a couple more names she recognized as local Mansbridge names: HANTS, MILLER, PIPER. Others names, she didn’t recognize at all. As she glided along, a small and unassuming grave maker—not even a stone, just a plaque on the ground—caught her attention. She paused to examine it more closely, and the mist seemed to peel back like a curtain, just so she could read it.
HARVELL.
Oh shit!
This wasn’t an old grave marker. It was a brand new one.
This was the Harvell family plot. Connie’s bones, and those of her murdered baby, were going to be interred here. By the time the police had finished processing everything on the murders, winter had come, the frozen ground making burial impossible. So they’d vaulted the remains for interment in the spring. For reasons she couldn’t fathom, that hadn’t happened yet. The ground beneath looked undisturbed.
“Alex,” Maryanne cried out. “I cannot believe you guys used to party here!”
Brooke left Connie’s gravesite and glided through the mist toward the others.
“Scared, Maryanne?” Alex teased.
Maryanne snorted. “Dude, we’re casters! What have we got to fear? Let the ghosts be afraid of us!” She soared over the graves, giving her best evil laugh. Brooke had to admit it sounded diabolical. It looked diabolical. And yes, it looked divine. Alex joined Maryanne in her fear-defying flight around the graveyard. Grinning, Brooke flew with them.
They were casters! They owned the night! They had nothing to fear.
They were what inspired fear!
Then Maryanne stopped suddenly. “Oh, wow,” she breathed, pointing to a grave marker.
Brooke moved in for a closer look.
“Vesta Larlee Walker.” Alex read the name aloud before Brooke had a chance to read it.
“This is Vesta’s grave!” Maryanne cried. “Bryce’s grandmother.”
It was a single, small gravestone. Not a joint stone as one would have expected of a married woman of her era. Ira Walker’s name was nowhere on it. He was obviously buried elsewhere. This was Vesta’s grave alone.
And if what Maryanne said about the grimoire was true, Brooke guessed Vesta would have been quite okay with that.
