Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

Aunt Jean. The old woman never just lit up. Tobacco was a ritual for her as well as an addiction. She offered smoke to the spirits, the first four puffs of every cigarette. Kate turned to the west, across the bay, and closed her eyes, searching the inside of her forehead until the direction felt right. Whatever it was, it felt quieter in that direction, as if something was listening. She drew in smoke and breathed it out, gently, asking for help. She repeated the move to each compass point, east and north and south, orienting strictly by the feel inside her head. Calm settled on her, but it definitely felt like that famous calm before a storm. She could see the thunderclouds building on the horizon.

  Speaking of building . . . "I could use a few blueprints here. You guys want something built, you'd better give me some plans and specs."

  A loon called, out in the bay. Some omen. Could you be a bit more specific?

  Alice and the Morgan kids — Kate had caused some kind of personal hell for them. Kate knew she damned well had to do something about it. Head straight in, bull-headed as always. That was the only way she knew. But she needed some kind of compass to give her that straight-line course.

  She paced the grit walkways overlooking the surf, dragging on her cigarette. The spirits or winds or whatever weren't talking. Not unless you counted that loon.

  The cigarette burned her fingers. She snuffed it out in a puddle, stripped the butt, and stowed the little ball of paper in her pocket. Lighting another, she noticed black leaves rotting in the bottom of an ornamental pool. Have to clean that out, she thought. Three days work already, and I keep finding more.

  Then the black shadows wavered into smoke and firmed. They reflected a different mist, showing different trees and different rocks. Someone walked away from her through the fog and drizzle. It had to be Alice. Her back was turned, but Kate had known Alice all her life, knew that walk. Kate followed. Darkness loomed ahead, drew into lines, and became a building with a roof like drooping spruce limbs in the fog.

  A second shadow detached from the bushes and stepped in behind Alice. Kate screamed a warning, but her vision was a silent movie without the piano or the captions. She couldn't touch the figures on the screen, couldn't warn Alice. The second figure crouched and took aim. Its hands jerked. Jerked twice. Alice fell. Kate screamed again, feeling her heart ripped in half.

  Fire blossomed in the mist, small and then larger. The building burst outward, black smoke and orange petals of flame, and the crouching figure jumped up and ran onward into the fog. More fire blazed in Kate's shoulder and hip, and she sank down in the path. The fog thickened and went black. Then the shadows dissolved and the pool was a pool again, in need of cleaning.

  Kate's hands shook too hard to hold her cigarette. Jesus Christ on a godallmighty-damned crutch . . . she'd asked for something specific. She shuddered and drew a deep breath, blinking hard in an attempt to wipe the images from the back of her eyeballs.

  She looked up into the fog, trying to find a target for her terror and rage. "You didn't have to shout!"

  God. Or gods and goddesses, if you took Alice's point of view. Kate knew that building she'd seen, knew the stupid drooping curve of the eaves. It was supposed to mimic a thatched roof. That had been the carriage house at the Pratt's place. She fumbled at her belt, pulling out the handheld radio she carried. Yes, it was still on. She turned the squelch down and got a hiss of static for her effort. It was still working.

  If that explosion and fire had already happened, the radio would have been spouting calls. All Kate had heard had been routine stuff, all day. Traffic stops, license checks, cops out of the cruiser for a coffee and donut raid.

  So all this crap was foresight, not memory. Alice still needed somebody to watch her back.

  Kate glanced at her latest $14.95 watch. 11:25. She tried to remember the schedule for the mid-day ferry loop. Damn. Frigging boat would have just left the Ayers Island landing, wouldn't be back on the afternoon run until 4:15 or so, and then she'd have to poke through the whole loop of five islands before she landed back at the Stonefort terminal.

  With the fog, she hadn't been able to guess the time of her Alice nightmare, but no way was it as late as 7:00 in the evening. That was the earliest she could hit the mainland. And the forecast for tomorrow was clear, dammit, not fog and drizzle. That image was today.

  She had to go. She had to go now, or be too late.

  Keith Bauer had a boat. Had two, in fact, a big-ass Hinckley ketch he moored out in the Reach and a 19' Boston Whaler he used as a tender and dinghy. The Hinckley hadn't even sailed up from winter storage yet, but the Boston Whaler was here, laid up in the boathouse. Kate knew that because she'd bedded it down for the winter. Wake it up, point its nose at the mainland, puke her guts out on the way . . . .

  Jesus Christ! If she went into the Pratt place . . . That was a shooting war she'd seen, which meant another raid. With the fire and all, no way she could get in and out without being seen. Bernie would have her badge for a tag ornament on his Harley. He'd warned her off.

  Kate pulled the boathouse door open. Her feet had made some kind of decision, and she went with the flow. She dragged the tarp off the Whaler, pulled the battery down from the trickle charger, reconnected fuel lines, checked the oil in the big Honda four-stroke outboard. She reversed the fall lay-up procedure, hands working automatically while her brain dodged around her badge and Alice.

  Alice was in danger. To hell with the badge.

  Fresh plugs, fill the gas, fire the outboard until it caught and then kill it because it didn't have any cooling until it was in the water. Grab a lifejacket. Check the compass on the dash, thank God the Whaler had a simple, straightforward compass instead of the electronic wizardry on the Hinckley. A compass she could read. GPS and radar and Loran were Greek. Open the doors and winch the boat down the rollers into the water and tie it off to the landing float that Ryan's crane had set into the water a couple of days ago.

  Alice. Kate thought about the whole Alice thing. She'd nearly died when she'd seen Alice shot, seen Alice fall. That told her more than those impetuous kisses. Kisses were sex. She'd learned to tell the difference between sex and love, living with Lew Lewis.

  Her feet had taken her back to the truck. She grabbed the big Colt and holster from the glove box, her lunch and soda from the passenger seat, her badge, and the blue windbreaker with "Police" in big yellow letters across the back and front. If she was going to get her ass shot off, at least she could choose which side was going to do it.

  Okay. So she loved Alice. If that was an abomination before the face of the Lord, then Kate needed to swear fealty to a different Lord. Alice seemed to operate with a more accepting pantheon. Maybe it was time to go back to Sunday school.

  That thought carried her through locking up and climbing back down to the float. Kate stared at the boat, her stomach doing flip-flops in anticipation. Everything she'd done up to this point was legit, caretaker work. She was supposed to put the boat in the water. Maybe even take it out for a test run, though nobody who knew her would believe that. But driving it ten miles across the Reach in dense fog and anchoring it off a cliff and abandoning it to the tide while she got into a shootout . . .

  That was dancing along the edge of theft. Felony. Bauer might not choose to prosecute, but he could kill her reputation for fifty miles in every direction.

  Burning her bridges behind her was one thing. Stealing Keith Bauer's boat was blowing up the abutments afterwards. Between telling Bernie to take her badge and stuff it where the sun don't shine, and wiping out the web of trust necessary for caretaker work, she was incinerating more than half her income. She hoped it would at least keep her warm for a while.

  How far do you take this newfound belief in witchcraft? People who let "visions" and "voices" tell them what to do usually end up in straightjackets.

  As far as necessary.

  Kate climbed into the boat and clutched at the railing. Her stomach somersaulted, skipping over the preliminaries. She vomited, started the engine,
cast the line off from the landing stage, and vomited again. That settled her gut for long enough to turn the bow into the fog.

  Aim to hit the coast to one side of the Pratts. Then you know which way to turn once you make landfall. Aim to the west. She visualized the chart in her head, the locations of Ayers Island and Pratts Neck. Halfway between NW and WNW ought to do it. Ignore compass deviation. The State of Maine is a big target. At this range, you can't miss it.

  She rammed the throttle forward, stirring up all those Honda horses. The sea was calm enough that she didn't worry about running it full-bore, and the faster she went, the sooner she could get her feet back on solid ground. She took a swig of ginger ale.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Gary throttled back on the engine and eased the wheel over, bringing Maria head-up into the wind. When she held station, barely idling, he made his way forward and tossed the anchor overboard into green swells.

  He stood for a moment, swaying as the boat rose and fell, flexing his injured hand. Each time he changed, it got a little better. His body seemed to know how flesh and bone should be shaped, whether they started out that way or not. Maybe it was why werewolves were supposed to be so hard to kill. He sure could have used that trick when a slight miscalculation in the dojo had left him with two cracked ribs. As it was, it had taken him months before he could swim comfortably, and the injury had kept him out of three meets.

  He made his way aft again, sure-footed along the narrow strip of decking next to the lobster boat's wheelhouse, and swung back into the open cockpit. Then he cut all power and let her drift back on the scope until the anchor snubbed her against the current.

  He turned to Caroline. "Okay, Witch. Someone keeps singing in my head, sounds like Aunt Alice. What gives?"

  She shook her head. "Yeah, that's her. She can't be more than a couple of miles from us, and she uses music to help weave her spells. I'm sensitive to her, and you're picking it up from me through our Tears. I think that because you wore both of them, they've become twins. Tuned together. Do me a favor, eh? Next time you settle down to make out with a girl, take your pendant off?"

  Sisters. Gary felt a blush flooding out to the tips of his ears. Years of half-friendly sniping with Ellen and Peggy made him counterattack. "Hey, with the Haskell reputation, I'd think you'd want to take notes."

  She grinned back at him. "Yeah. But you'd be doing it all wrong."

  Time to change the subject. "You sure you can handle a kayak?"

  "Hey, Naskeags invented the canoe. You remember, those birch-bark things? Mom tells me I was conceived in a canoe, and came within about ten minutes of being born in one. She took me out on the lake before I could even crawl. I spent last summer kayaking Grand Canyon."

  So that was where she got those shoulders. Still, she wasn't some freak like the Lewis kid, built like a tank so you weren't sure whether you were looking at a boy or a girl. On Caroline, muscles looked good. Even the baggy cargo pants and top didn't disguise her curves. Any man within a hundred yards knew she was a woman.

  They'd made jokes in school about suiting up the Lewis girl and putting her on the football team — in a uniform and pads, no one would have known the difference. And she sure would have improved the team. But God help you if you said that where she could hear it. She'd decked the quarterback with one punch when he'd made some kind of lesbian joke behind her back. Of course, he was fighting out of his weight class.

  Touchy. Jackie Lewis, that was her name, a year or so younger than him, he only knew her by sight. Mother was the town cop, bigger than the daughter. You didn't want to cross her, either. He'd heard stories about some cases that never made it into court. You did "hard time" right on the spot. At that, he knew kids who preferred her brand of "justice" to a juvie record.

  The fog was lifting. He tried to judge visibility, making sure he'd anchored far enough down-current from the Pratts so Maria wouldn't attract the attention of any lookouts. They must be used to lobster boats, anyway — Dad hadn't fished these waters, but Gary recognized buoys of at least three of the Stonefort licenses. Just as long as none of them thought he was hauling their traps, he'd be okay.

  Caroline was staring at him with an enigmatic smile, one eyebrow lifted. Gary started to blush again. He had to strip, get ready to change and swim into the cave. He could change with clothes on, but the result would be a royal mess. Funny — for years he'd dreamed about getting naked with a girl who looked like her, and now she had to be his sister. It wasn't fair.

  She nodded and then shook her head, agreeing with his thoughts in sequence. The smile turned crooked. "You sure that both Ellen and Peggy can fit into one cockpit in this thing?" She waved at the two-man kayak they'd loaded on Maria.

  "Yeah. Dad took them out just last month. Peggy sits between Ellen's legs. Mouse is small enough, the spray skirt fits over both of them."

  They lifted the green sea-kayak over the side, keeping both ends tied off. Then Caroline winked at him and turned her back, fiddling with gear and her PFD. Gary swallowed and headed forward again.

  Ben had given him a rig Dad used, bungee cords and a waterproof pack that snugged around his shoulders and across his chest and waist. Seals had shoulders, sort of, and the waistband ended up on the other side of the flippers. The bungee cords would adjust to the changing shape. According to Ben, it had stayed on Dad in both his forms.

  Gary slipped off his shirt and shrugged into the harness. It felt tight around the shoulders and loose at the waist — another funny yardstick of growing up. He used to feel lost inside one of Dad's coats. Now he couldn't make the buttons meet across his chest. He still felt weird every time he looked down into his father's eyes.

  And now he had a chance to look into them again. He finished stripping and glanced back at Caroline. She was staring at him with a Groucho Marx leer, licking her lips.

  She grinned, unabashed. "Hey, it's just aesthetic appreciation. I like to look at statues, too, but I don't go to bed with them."

  Gary dove over the side. His only other choice involved some kind of wisecrack about tit for tat, and even he couldn't stomach that pun. Besides, the air was too cold for a strip show.

  The icy water took his breath away, just as it had yesterday. Changing would make it seem comfortable, but first he sculled back to the stern and tread water for a moment. With just his head and shoulders out of the water, he could have been wearing a bathing suit. "Remember to leave that net over the side. Getting back into a boat isn't easy, and I don't know how strong Dad will be. If we don't show up in time, bug out. You know enough about running Maria to make it back to the town dock without us."

  She nodded, solemn. He suddenly thought that he should have hugged her, just like he'd have hugged Ellen or Mouse before going off and doing something dangerous. Touch said so much. He'd barely met her, but she felt like he'd known her forever. Some parts were as comfortable as an old shoe. Some parts could turn him on like a spotlight if he let them.

  Some parts scared him silly.

  For example, he knew what she was thinking, whether by way of their Tears or not. Right now, she felt as single-mindedly lethal as a bluefish closing in on a school of mackerel. "Remember what Aunt Alice told you. We're mice at a cat show."

  She wrinkled her nose at him. "O . . . kay." She stretched the word out with her reluctance. "If I gotta."

  He dove and remembered the feeling of bones and flesh flowing like warm wax. The water lost its icy grip and came alive with the touch of currents, the thousand tastes of the sea, and the strange symphony of underwater life. He'd changed a dozen times since learning how. Practice, he'd told Ben, but it was more like repeated doses of a drug. The world was so different to a seal.

  He'd learned to keep his mind, though. The first time had taught him the dangers lurking down that current. "When you change, remember to change back." Aunt Alice had put her finger on the greatest threat.

  Up the current. Search for the taste of fresh water and gasoline and the tang of sun-
dried hemp. He'd smelled the weed, smelled the burned-rope reek when kids in school played around with drugs. He'd never tried it because of the swimming. Cigarettes, pot, booze: Any of those drugs would have cost him that state freestyle record. Even if pot didn't show up on the mandatory drug tests, smoking anything would have slowed him down.

  He tasted iron first, old rust dripping into the water. It wasn't what he sought, but he followed it anyway, because it was a strange thing in the water. He swam quartering across the thread of it to trace the strongest line, the line that led back to its source.

  Soon enough, traces of gasoline joined in and then the same taste of cut stone he'd found in the passage to the Dragon's Pool. All the flavors he sought wove their way through the symphony. A clear voice cut into the clicks and squeaks and booms of underwater life, another touch of witchcraft, Aunt Alice reaching out across the distance between them and singing the threads of her plot.

  "I am a man upon the land,

  "I am a silkie on the sea,

  "And when I'm far and far frae land,

  "My home it is in Sule Skerrie."

  Skerry — Scots, for an island or reef. So that song couldn't be about his family. He wondered if he'd ever meet another selkie, either by land or sea. The voice sang him into darkness.

  Yes, all the flavors came from this shadow in the water. Black closed in around him, but loss of sight didn't mean the same thing to a seal that it did to a man. He could hunt in the deep, finding fish or crab or mussel by vibrations in the water. Find them by touch, by taste, by day or night.

  He eased back to the surface, barely allowing his nostrils to break water for a breath. Ben had taped every word, every click or hiss of static from Dad's radio. Snatches had come through, his capture and the voices afterwards. He'd triggered some kind of alarm, but what?

  Aunt Alice's bats and cliff swallows hadn't set it off. They hadn't heard ultrasound motion-detectors, hadn't tripped any infrared beams. They'd mapped out a floating dock, a boat, a ramp, a maze of old iron overhead. That's where the taste of rust came from. He should have remembered.