by K.N. Lee
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. If I hadn’t found you...” He pulled her back again but didn't let go of her arm. Or rather, he did, but only to take her hand in his, and she could tell he wasn't going to release that hand anytime soon. "That's what willowisps do, Elora. They lead the unwary to their deaths."
“But why?”
He ran his free hand through his hair again. He was still too serious, but the Ripley she knew had started to win free of the fear. “Who knows? All I know is they’re pretty to look at but deadly if you’re not careful.” He squeezed her hand as he looked down at her, and his voice dropped to a whisper so soft she wasn’t sure she heard him right. “All I know is I almost lost you.”
Chapter 17
He didn’t let go of her hand, not as they walked, not when they reached the clearing. Willowisps shadowed them, though not as many as before.
I wonder if I would have even noticed when I stepped off that cliff.
The thought was unsettling.
In the light of day, such as it was, Elora could see the narrow road. It was overgrown with brush to snag clothes and tangle feet where they went straight. The more obvious road turned, promising easier travel. She blinked and shook her head.
“It plays with your mind, doesn’t it, Pretty Eyes?” Ripley was back. Something inside her relaxed.
She looked up at him. “Do your glasses help with that?”
“Nope. I’m not sure there is anything that can help with it. You get used to it.”
They came to the break in the trees and Ripley stopped. Only then did he release her and turn to face the spot that somehow hid an entire castle.
“That language you used last night, what was it?”
He looked back at her, the weak sunlight glinting from the lenses of his glasses. “The opening charm?” She nodded. He held out his hand, gesturing for her to stand in front of him. When she did, he set his hands on her hips, guiding her to a specific spot. “Do you see the shimmer?” His breath was warm on her ear, and she fought off a shiver, hoping he wouldn’t notice. But of course, he did. He blew on her ear. “Focus, Pretty Eyes. Look for the shimmer where things don’t quite mesh.”
Elora squinted. She scanned the area looking for anything not quite right. Up, down, side to side. And then she saw it. A line of lighter gray-green to the left ran from the ground up about ten feet. It arched and then descended to the ground on the other side. She and Ripley stood in the center of the resulting shape.
“Got it?”
“Yeah. Now what?”
“Now if you come back here on your own” – he pulled her back against him so he could catch her eye – “and if you ignore the damn wisps, you know where to stand and what to look for.” He let her go, and she quashed the tinge of disappointment that followed. “The charm is in Gaelic.”
“I knew it!”
Ripley said each word for her, one by one, making her repeat them until she got them right. Then he did the same thing again but in three-word phrases and then again in two halves. When her pronunciation satisfied him, he told her, “Go for it.”
Elora took a deep breath and found the centered spot. “De réir an grásta na déithe, a dheonú dom mbealach isteach.” The illusion melted away, and Ripley stepped past her to open the castle doors.
Chapter 18
“I did it!” Elora turned to Ripley. He watched her with that lopsided smile, and she couldn’t name the emotion she caught in his beautiful eyes. Her heart seemed to skip a beat, but he blinked. That sweet smile shifted to his more normal expression, and the moment was gone.
“Was there any doubt, Pretty Eyes?”
There had been a ton of doubt, at least on her part, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she pushed open the heavy, studded door. It was dark inside with neither torches lit nor Mer’s magic light.
“I wish I’d thought to bring a flashlight.” Not that she had one, but she could have walked to the campus book store before heading into the woods. She could have thought things through a little better.
“You know you don’t need one, right?”
She turned back to Ripley, who still stood in the doorway, still watched her. “What do you mean?”
He walked in, walked past Elora. He stopped at what looked like a coat rack fixed to the stone wall at just above her eye level, swiped at the layer of dust on one of the iron pegs. It looked like iron, anyway. He turned back to Elora, wiping his hand on his jeans.
“You remember what you did when you dusted that vamp?” Frowning, Elora nodded. The sensation of power that rippled through her body was vivid in her mind. That’s the same thing Mer used for her witch light.”
“You think I could make one of those… witch lights?” She thought of what she and Ripley had done that night – God, was that only last night? – as a fluke, an accident born of adrenaline and need.
“Of course. You’re a witch.”
She snorted. “You make it sound so easy.”
He grinned. “Maybe not yet.” He wandered farther into the entryway, digging into his pocket and pulling out a lighter. “It’s right there inside you, though. It can’t be too different to when I tap into the power for a shift.”
“I don’t know how to control that.” What little light seeped into the cast from the open door dimmed.
“But I do.” Elora’s heart leaped.
Mer. A half second later, the entryway lit up with a handful of witch lights. They resembled larger versions of the willowisps in the woods outside. Elora wondered if the witch lights were as dangerous.
She turned around as Mer walked in, followed by several other people. They were all men and women she had seen on campus. One woman, older than the others, was a professor of Art History. She had taught the History class for three days after Professor Goggins’ death.
“What?” Ripley stood arms akimbo and feet wide, staring at Mer. “Are you moving in or something?”
Mer and her friends carried buckets and boxes, and the Art History professor held a mop and a broom. Elora finally remembered her name. Sara Trainor.
“No, but I figured since the heir showed up, we might as well clean up her ancestral home.” She focused those gray eyes on Elora. “She might even live long enough to use it.”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Mer.” One of the girls who had been in the laundry room the day Elora had first run into Mer stepped forward. She took off her glove and held out her hand for Elora to shake. “I’m Serena. So good to meet you.” Her hand in Elora’s was warm.
After Serena broke the ice, the others stepped up to introduce themselves to Elora as well. They all jumbled together, speaking over each other. She gave up trying to remember them all. One of the men made a show of sniffing the air when he passed Ripley. His nose wrinkled as though he smelled something unpleasant. When Ripley didn’t react, the man pushed it.
“You can leave now, Shifter. She’s safe with us.” A couple of the others looked like they agreed. Elora made a mental note to ask Ripley about tensions between the Witches and the Shapeshifters. Maybe it was some kind of a class thing.
She expected Ripley to make a snarky reply to that. Instead, his expressive face unreadable, he backed away from the group surrounding Elora. “If you need me, Elora, I’ll be up in the library.” Only half listening to the woman in front of her, Elora watched him walk away.
The group around Elora broke up soon after Ripley left and began cleaning. They removed dust and cobwebs from the entryway and the attached hall, witch lights following them as they went. The man with the buckets disappeared through a door to the left. Professor Trainor insisted on giving Elora a tour of Castle Caldwell.
“You must call me Sara. Your mother and I were inseparable growing up. I spent as much time here as I did in my own home.” She smiled at Elora and for a moment Elora feared she was going to hug her. “You look so much like her. I’m glad you found your way home. The Phantoms need you.”
“I thought Mer’s family was in
charge.”
Sara snorted. “They try.” She led Elora toward a double set of doors. “Supernatural attacks on the general population are at an all-time high. They’ve been getting steadily worse at least the past year.” She pushed open the doors, revealing an enormous dining hall on the other side. A cloth-covered rectangle dominated the space. It spanned the room from end to end, leaving only enough open space at either end to allow movement.
“Do you mean like vampires and ghouls?” Elora suppressed a shudder at her memories of those childhood monsters come to life. They had both smelled of death and decay.
“Yes. Exactly.” She walked into the room and then closed the doors behind Elora.
A crystal chandelier hung over the center of the lengthy table. Smaller satellite chandeliers hung along the outer walls as well as along the table. With a flick of Sara’s hand, they all lit up with a warm yellow-white light.
“There was a ghoul at the cemetery when we buried Professor Goggins.”
“Really.” Sara stopped and turned to face Elora. “I don’t recall seeing it.” She paused and cocked her head to the side, and a lock of honey blonde hair fell over her eyes. She blew at it to clear her view. “Or smelling it either.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste, exactly the way that guy had when he passed Ripley.
“Yeah. I didn’t know what it was at the time.” All I knew was that it was trying to dig up my mom’s grave.” She moved closer to Sara and looked up at the sparkling chandeliers. “When I yelled at it to stop, it attacked me. I guess if it wasn’t for Ripley, it might have killed me.”
“Ripley is the Shifter?” There was a slight hesitation and a subtle change in Sara’s tone at the term, as if she wanted to say something less than nice about him, just as Mer had. There was definitely something between witches and shifters. She’d have to find out what.
“He is. He came out of nowhere and chased the ghoul away. He helped me with a vampire last night, too.”
“Oh, my. You have been busy, haven’t you?” Sara started walking again, making a broad gesture with one arm. “This hall has seen many a feast over the centuries.” She stopped again at a painting at the end of the room. It hung above another large fireplace. “Even a coronation or two before the Caldwells moved here to the New World.” The painting depicted such a scene. A red-robed man crowned a man wearing an Elizabethan collar. Sara gave Elora a moment with the painting before leading her through a door to the left of the fireplace. There was a huge kitchen on the other side. Another flick of her hand, and the lights in the dining hall fell dark once more.
“How did you evade the vampire, Elora? They’re difficult to kill unless they’re very young.” She didn’t stop in the kitchen, treating it as a mere pass-through.
“Ripley shared some kind of energy with me, and we blasted it.” She shrugged. “It made kind of a mess, you know? All that dust.”
Sara’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “You shared a Shifter’s energy? That’s unheard of.” One hand drifted to her throat as though clutching as invisible string of pearls. “Although I supposed, if the rumors are true, you are half Shifter.” She turned a speculative gaze on Elora. “Perhaps it’s not so far-fetched after all.”
They continued the tour of the castle. From dining hall and kitchens, they visited pantries and laundry rooms and bathrooms, servant quarters and sewing rooms, all on the ground floor. They passed by a staircase leading down. Sara didn’t respond to Elora’s joke about dungeons. As they went in and out of each area or room, Sara waved light in and out of existence.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” Ripley had said Elora had the innate ability to manipulate that same energy. He’d also implied he didn’t know how to do it himself. She had no reason not to believe him. Mer and the others she referred to as witches did it with ease. It was second nature to them, as natural as breathing. In spite of that and the evidence of her own experience, Elora didn’t quite accept any of that applied to her.
“Of course, dear.” Sara stopped in the middle of the landing at the top of the main stairs.
To the left was the library. Elora didn’t know what was to the right, although she thought it might be bedrooms. Mer had said the family had lived on the second floor.
Sara turned toward Elora.
“Close your eyes.”
Elora did as Sara asked. “Now, you said you tapped into the power inside you with your Shifter’s help. Do you remember how it felt?”
“Yeah.” Elora nodded. It was the same thing Ripley had asked when Mer and the others showed up.
“Tell me about it.” Sara’s voice took on an almost musical quality. She wasn’t singing, there was no actual music, but there could’ve been and it would not have been out of place. “Tell me how it felt. Tell me how it tasted. How it smelled.”
Elora didn’t open her eyes when cool hands grasped hers and lifted them, turned Elora’s hands so they were palms up.
“Was it hot or cold? What color was it?” She released Elora’s hands, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Make me live it as you lived it.”
Elora let her mind drift backward. She told Sara about the feel of the breeze through the open window, the smell of the leaves, of old blood and decay. But then she stopped. Those things had been present, but they weren’t part of her. They were external.
She took a deep breath and started again. The tingle, her dancing nerve endings when she joined hands with Ripley. She told Sara of things she hadn’t been conscious of then but knew were there as well as she knew her own name. Better than that; her name wasn’t quite what she’d always believed it to be.
The scent of watermelon and mint. The tang of copper on her tongue. Gold and green and darkest blue. The heat radiating from Ripley and mixing with the brilliant white fire burning cold within Elora. She felt that cold fire kiss the palms of her hands.
“Open your eyes, Elora.”
A ball of shimmering, pure white light burned between her hands. There was no heat, but the light of it reached all the way to both ends of that hallway. Ripley stood at the far end, watching from the open door of the library.
“Damn, Pretty Eyes. Warn me next time so I can make sure I have my shades.” He made a show of trying to block the light with his outstretched hands, and Elora grinned.
She looked at Sara. “That’s all there is to it?”
Sara nodded. “Witch lights are the first things we learn to make. Fix this experience in your mind, and you’ll be able to call on it at will.”
“You might want to figure out how to tone it down a notch.” Ripley was right behind her. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“I guess it is a little bright.” She squinted at the ball of light in her hands and thought about how it would look if it was dimmer. Even as she thought it, the light’s intensity dropped. Experimenting, she thought about it turning blue, and it did. Smiling, she tossed it up toward the ceiling. It hovered a few feet above her head.
“I think I’ll rejoin the others downstairs, Elora.” Sara didn’t sound as friendly as she had. “We’ll continue our tour some other time.” The Art History professor turned and headed back down the stone staircase.
Frowning, Elora turned to Ripley. “Was it something I said?”
“Nah. A lot of Witches don’t like Shifters, especially the older ones.” He snorted. “They equate ‘Shifter’ with ‘shiftless.’”
“Well that’s not fair.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is.” Taking her hand, he started toward the library. She hadn’t heard him coming earlier because he wasn’t wearing shoes. “To be fair” – he squeezed her hand – “they might not trust me because of your parents.” He looked over at her. “They weren’t supposed to run away together.”
“And they blame my dad for that?” He shrugged again. “Whatever.” Miffed at Mer and her friends, Elora walked faster toward the library. From what she remembered, her father would have done anything for her mother and vice versa. Her mom could talk her
dad into anything. If the witches downstairs blamed anyone for Mallory Caldwell’s disappearance, they should start with Mallory Caldwell.
At the threshold of the library, Elora slipped her hand from Ripley’s. She stalked straight to the desk in the corner and boosted herself up to sit on it. Her heels drummed on the solid wood face.
Tap tap, tap tap.
Her witch light floated in, bobbing under the lintel and then upward. Its glow competed with the sunshine streaming through the window to bathe the desk in light.
Ripley sauntered in and shut the door behind him. Elora leaned back onto her hands; her right hand brushed against a book, shifting it an inch or so to the side. She moved it to where she could see it and picked it up, a leather-bound book with what looked like handmade pages, jam packed with cramped handwriting.
“Is this what you’ve been doing? Reading someone’s diary?”
He shot her his trademark cheeky grin. “Not just anyone’s diary. Read the nameplate inside the front cover.”
She set a finger between the pages to keep Ripley’s place in the book and flipped to the front. “This was my mother’s.”
“Yep. It looks like she finished with it just before she and your dad left for the mundane world.” He walked around the desk and pulled from the middle shelf another leather-bound book, thicker and a half-inch taller. He tossed it onto the desk with a loud thud.
Elora twisted around to glance at him. “This one looks to be pretty interesting, too. It belonged to a Rupert Frost. The guy died in a fire right around the same time as your parents.”
“Mer’s family.” She slid from the desk and turned around to better see what Ripley showed her.
