Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  How the hell do you hide two tons of Chevy metal? That was a trick Aunt Jean had never taught. Time to consult with the House, interview a ghost or two. Two women dead and a third threatened? The House didn't like that sort of thing.

  She crested the hump of the bridge and saw the long straight stretch they called Daytona Speedway, just resurfaced last fall. The needle edged past ninety, and the road was clear.

  She'd kicked in over ten grand of Haskell money when the ambulance squad was rebuilding this yard-sale special. Stonefort's normal ER run was over fifty miles — a little speed could make the difference between life and death.

  Right.

  Damn, driving fast was fun!

  Chapter Nine

  Ben Morgan perched in one of the crenels on the top of Morgan's Castle, feeling like the vulture of doom. He ran his hand over the cold green barrel of a bronze cannon, fiddled with the wooden tompion that sealed its muzzle, and stared out across the point and the countryside. The air was still, the fog gone, and rare June sun warmed the stones of the tower, creating an idyllic landscape totally at odds with his mood.

  The gun was loaded — up until Ben's "death," the family had fired a salute each Fourth of July, and Dan still replaced the charge each year. Ben could pull that wooden plug, unseal the touch-hole, prime the gun, and fire it. Damned thing would probably put a six pound cast-iron ball right through the Congregational church roof. The noise and destruction might make the day look better.

  He was getting nowhere. Dan still languished in durance vile, the Coast Guard had no intention of running a detailed look at that stretch of Pratt's Neck seashore, and discreet hints through third parties to the DEA still produced no inclination to search and seize anything in the Pratt compound. Where the hell was the law when you really needed it?

  Four cannon lurked up here on black iron carriages, invisible from the ground, guarding the points of the compass through stone crenellations, and they spoke of a Morgan past that was rather more violent than recent generations. If you took up certain slates on the deck, you'd find waterproof covers protecting the base-plate for an 81 mm mortar and threaded sockets for mounting the tripod of a 106 mm recoilless rifle. Those were more recent Morgan contributions to coastal defense against Russian submarines or the ruthless hordes of invading Canadian tourists. The mounts had been there for decades, never needed, waiting patiently.

  Neither the ancient nor the modern weapons had enough range to touch the Pratts, six miles or so across the bay. It was probably just as well — Ben didn't need that temptation. There were aiming tables, though, down in the cave that housed the actual weapons, with range and azimuth plotted for damned near anything within 10,000 yards. Morgans had even joined the army, to learn how to handle the weapons and pass that knowledge down.

  Weapons. They were tools of desperation, and Ben felt desperate. He'd scouted the edges of the Pratt domain, probing for weakness, and found damned little. Without the power of the Dragon backing him up, he didn't dare to push it further. Maybe Gary could reach that necessary extra step.

  The boy was learning fast. Dan had dangled hobbies in front of his nose: karate, scuba, ham radio, a knack for intricate mechanical models that was perfect preparation for locks and security systems — all the tangled skills a kid needed to grow up to be a Morgan. To grow up to be a selkie and a thief.

  Sooner or later, though, the boy was going to start asking questions, and Ben wasn't sure he had enough answers. Questions about Maria and Dan, for example. About the Dragon. About morality.

  He stood up and stared down the four tall stories of the tower, fifty feet, at the ranks of gravestones and memorials: seven hundred years of Morgans. They'd come close to ending more than once before. He didn't know if the other guardians of the line had felt this helpless. Somebody had always managed to pull a hat out of a rabbit, though, make that little twist that preserved the line. Maybe this time Maria had supplied the new blood that would save the old. Or maybe not — Gary hadn't changed.

  Ben turned and opened a worn oak door set into the curving stone wall. Cool air flowed out, musty-damp with the salt air rising from the Dragon's Pool far beneath his feet. Ben smiled wryly to himself: time to put on the jester's hat he hid behind when dealing with his audience of one. He spiraled down through darkness, one hand on the wall and feet searching the edges of the worn stone steps. They had never run power up this far — didn't want any chance of light showing from an abandoned tower.

  He passed the fourth floor, storage and a bed he sometimes used, and turned off on the landing of the third, into warmth and light and the smell of electronics. The family had divided this level into four rooms at the same time they'd blocked up all the windows and arrow-slits, back around the turn of the century. The entry quadrant was now surveillance, rows of monitors and little indicator lights slaved to a set inside the main house. Ben picked up a slice of cold pizza and settled into the swivel chair at the focus of the desk.

  Anchovies. The kid had to like anchovies on his pizza. Ben shook his head as he chewed on spicy shoe-leather.

  He glanced over the board, automatically, reading the green lights of the daytime system and the reds of the infrared and starlight cameras off-line until nightfall. Everything read "normal." No calls logged, in or out, no unusual traffic on any of the scanner channels.

  The monitors read "normal," too, including the road out front. There'd been a car parked out there yesterday, hung around for maybe half an hour, a big blue Suburban with smoked glass and New Jersey plates. Ben had watched it the whole time, an itch he couldn't scratch. When it had finally pulled away, he'd felt as if the sun had come out again.

  Maria was weeding her kitchen garden. Ben reached for a joystick and zoomed the camera in, wondering just how much she knew about the systems that guarded her house. That outfit of halter top and tight shorts . . . damn, she was still a fine-looking woman. He shook his head and zoomed back out to the wide-angle view. If only that damned Dragon had decided otherwise . . . .

  Drop it.

  He wiped pizza grease off his hands, stood up, and stepped through the right-hand door, into the room that served as a clean workshop and library. Gary looked up from the workbench where he was disassembling a complex keycard lockset. He had his mother's eyes, eyes with questions in them.

  Well, it was about time.

  "How did our family turn into robbers?"

  Ben shook his head. "Thieves. There's a big difference: Robbers take things while the owners are right there, and usually threaten force. Thieves just take things, and try really hard to never see the owners. If anybody ever sees you taking the loot, you've made a serious mistake. In fact, if you do it right, they'll never even know the stuff is gone."

  "You mean, like all that gold from Troy?"

  "Exactly." Ben grinned. "You know the real beauty of that job? If somebody ever does notice, they'll assume the fakes are for display only. That the real stuff is in a vault somewhere, safe. Museum people exhibit replicas all the time — no worry about some weirdo smashing the case and stealing something irreplaceable, or destroying it."

  "Uncle Ben . . ."

  "Arrgh!" Ben threw up his hands in mock horror. "Don't call me that! I may be your uncle, and my name may be Ben, but I don't sell rice!"

  "What do I call you, then?"

  "Just 'Ben' will do fine. If you're so overwhelmed by respect for your elders that you have to make it formal, 'Mr. Morgan' will also serve."

  The boy grinned. "Okay, Mr. Morgan. You didn't answer my question."

  Ben waved at a shelf of leather-bound books. "Well, son, you've been reading, but you haven't had time to wade through five hundred years of Latin. Bad Latin. So I'll give you a capsule history of the Morgan clan, as it applies to a cultural predisposition towards kleptomania."

  Gary removed another screw from the cover-plate of the lock, exposing circuit boards and solenoids and springs. The boy frowned and scratched his head, only giving Ben half his attention. Mechanic
al puzzles fascinated him. That ran in the family.

  Ben settled into a chair and picked up an amethyst geode that served as a paperweight in the chaos of the workroom. He stared into the purple depths as if seeking inspiration, and then waved his free hand over it like a Gypsy fortune-teller consulting her crystal ball.

  "The mystic stone sees all, knows all. Once upon a time, in a far-away land, there lived a Handsome Prince. His name was Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd, Madoc son of King Owain of Wales." Ben paused and grinned. "We aren't descended from him, so don't go giving yourself airs.

  "King Owain went and died, as all men must. Now, Prince Madoc had a couple of older brothers who both wanted to rule the land, and they both pestered him for support. He got bored with the situation, and thought life would be easier — and perhaps longer, as well — in some other place. Sailors told tales of a western land found by some fool Norseman named Leif Ericson, and how wonderful it was, full of trees and green grass for grazing and grapes for wine — mighty attractive to a fairy-tale prince tired of politics. So Prince Madoc went sailing, sailing, sailing, over the western sea."

  Young Gary rolled his eyes, perhaps tired of the fairy-tale format or just asking Ben to cut to the chase. Ben wrinkled his nose at the interruption.

  "Okay. In or about the year 1170, some Welsh guys sailed west and found land. They expected to — it wasn't any mystery. They looked around and decided there were some prime house-lots going begging. They came back. They gathered some settlers, and sailed out, and were never heard from again. That would have been the end of it, because the Welsh still ruled their land and were happy in it. But this guy called Edward came along and decided the English really owned Wales, and proceeded to prove it with steel and fire. That changed the picture considerably."

  Gary put the lock down. Apparently he thought this was worth his full attention. Ben smiled inwardly, feeling his way to a relationship with this boy he'd never dared to meet.

  "Okay. Edward the First of England was a nasty man. He went around destroying castles, killing local chieftains who wouldn't lick his blood-spattered boots, and filling the Welsh countryside with his Norman cousins. In 1282, the last independent ruler of Wales died in battle, one Llewelyn ap Gruffydd. A bunch of his subjects, including the ancestral Morgans, had had enough of the thieving English. We packed up and left."

  "And sailed off to join Prince Madoc's colony?"

  Ben looked up from the depths of the geode. "Nope. Never found him. There are legends that he settled down in Alabama and had all sorts of trouble with the local natives. No, our revered ancestors poked around here and there, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and such, until they turned the corner and sailed up the Gulf of Maine. Morgans always were a picky lot. Us and the Dragon, who had some pretty solid notions of what she wanted."

  Young Gary lifted his eyebrows at this. "Let me get this straight. They had the pick of the whole East Coast of North America, and they chose this poverty pocket? I mean, Sunrise County is a nice place, but there was lots of land with real soil and timber and a climate that doesn't have frost nine months of the year."

  Ben put the geode down and stood up, swapping the stone for three screwdrivers that he flipped from hand to hand like juggling clubs. It was another family trait, busy fingers that seemed to work independently of the mind. Gary was fiddling with the lock again, even though Ben knew the boy was listening.

  "Think about those legends I just told you. What happened to Prince Madoc? What happened to the Vikings, a couple of centuries earlier?"

  "They fought with the Indians?"

  "Yep. Even the Vikings got their butts kicked, in spite of being rough and tough and hard to diaper. Steel swords and axes weren't enough advantage. They pulled out and moved back to Iceland. Madoc disappeared without a trace. We're still here."

  "So the Morgans and the Dragon were looking for friendly Indians?"

  Ben flipped an underarm toss with a double turnover and caught all three screwdrivers in one hand. He bowed to his audience. "Give the boy a kewpie doll. The Naskeag Indians were an oddball lot, matriarchal and matrilineal, and they wanted stuff we had. Iron making, glass blowing, sea-faring and fishing, you name it. Our revered ancestors struck a deal, and settled, and all was right with the world for about three hundred years. Then the snake wormed his way back into the Garden of Eden."

  "The English?" Gary offered.

  "Yep, the damned English. Again. They finally got the balls to do what everybody else had been doing for hundreds of years — sail across the great northern ocean. They stepped off the boat and started right in where they'd left off in Wales, claiming they owned everything in sight. Didn't matter one whit to them that people already lived here. They stole it."

  He waved at the horizon, and then pointed to the door and the stairway. "Climb up to the top deck and look around. Everything you see used to belong to us and to the Naskeags, all the way to Naskeag Falls and beyond. All of Eastern Maine and half of New Brunswick thrown in, plus a chunk of Nova Scotia. Only way we could hold on to this tower and the point, we stole it back from some blueblood in London who'd never even laid eyes on it. The damned English king had given our land to him."

  "And that justified our stealing other stuff?"

  Ben grinned. "Makes a hell of a good rationalization, don't it? But it did teach us that it's hard to prove clear title to wealth in this wide world. Think about that Trojan gold. Can the Russians really claim they own it? Could the Germans? Did digging it out of that mound at Hisarlik give Heinrich Schliemann the right to steal it from the Turkish government? Who really owns it? We possess it, and that's the only claim anyone else could make."

  "Were we always thieves instead of robbers?"

  Ben grinned and shook his head. "Remember that gravestone you were sitting on, when you first met me? Old Dan Morgan and that ship he lost for the cause of freedom? It was a privateer — a twelve-gun sloop that could outrun anything it couldn't outfight.

  "I don't know if you've ever heard the definition of a privateer, but it meant a pirate with a license. Governments used to license private vessels as warships to attack enemy commerce, issuing papers they called 'Letters of Marque.' Capture an enemy ship, you could make a hell of a profit — the ship and cargo were yours to keep or sell.

  "Old Dan sailed first for the English, against the French, and then for the Continental Congress against the English. In neither case did he ever bother much about what actual flag his victims flew. He wasn't the first Morgan who sailed as a pirate, and he wasn't the last one, either. You can get away with a lot when you've got a whole town ready to swear you were in port when some ship disappeared."

  The boy grinned like he didn't mind having a pirate or two in his family tree. Then he frowned. "But we don't still do that, do we? We don't kill people?"

  Ben hesitated, ran both hands through his hair, and then settled on a wry shrug. There was no point in sugar-coating life. "Son, we do whatever needs doing. That Trojan gold — we worked with the Moscow Mafia on that job, and some bent KGB apparatchiks. They tortured and killed three clerks, covering their tracks. That's the world the KGB lived in. We didn't tell them to do it, but there's blood on that pretty jewelry."

  Gary swallowed and stared at his hands, as if he expected to see bloodstains.

  "Son, I can just about guarantee murder was done for that gold, long before we ever heard of it. Wealth is like that. Some guy once wrote that all property is theft. I wouldn't go quite that far, but an awful lot of ownership traces back to a man who was handy with sword or gun.

  "Those pots you helped me unpack yesterday — they'd been stolen twice before we got our hands on them, and the first time was grave-robbery from national monument lands out west — and those lands were stolen from some Navajo or Hopi band. Whoever rightly owns those pots, it sure wasn't the guy we took them from."

  Gary nodded and then wrinkled his nose at the lock in his hands. "How do you open this darned thing, anyway? Some kind of electronic reader
to pick out the code?"

  The puzzle-solver mentality showed through again. Ben laughed. "The easiest way is with the keycard. 'Social engineering.' You usually can get your hands on one through bribery, blackmail, or plain and simple theft. Barring that, what would you hit if you drilled in about three-quarters of an inch below the center of the 'R' in Renwick?"

  The boy checked. "Looks like the positive terminal of a solenoid."

  "Bingo. Feed a twelve-volt DC lead through the hole, touch the negative to the lock plate, and you're in."

  Gary put the lock down again. He glanced vaguely off into a corner of the room as if thinking, and then focused those eyes, Maria's eyes, straight on Ben's face. "Why are you dead?"

  Ben sighed. "Long story, son. There are three basic reasons why Morgans vanish. First, you make a mistake. If it looks as though one of us is going to get caught, we fake a death. It's simpler than getting convicted and less painful than being hung. No Morgan has done jail time in two hundred years.

  "Second, ever since the government started to get real nosy, we've found it useful to have some people who don't exist — Morgans who pay cash for everything, who have verifiable fake ID, who can't be traced by any record. We started it back in the Civil War, when Lincoln decided to draft men into the army. Old Ephriam Morgan said he didn't want the expletive-deleted government to ever be able to put their slimy hands on every member of the family or every dollar we owned."

  Gary chuckled at that, and nodded. Looked like Dan had laid some groundwork there, a little Libertarian political philosophy.

  "Finally, the Dragon has some medieval notions about how the world ought to work. Primogeniture wasn't really a Welsh concept, but neither is she. Anyway, the oldest son rules the family, inherits the title and the castle. Doesn't matter if he's a drooling idiot or thinks he's an eagle and has to be forcibly restrained from trying to fly off the castle roof, he's The Man.