Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  He'd never thought about how many rooms hid under his roof, from second cellar to third attic. How many sets of stairs and tucked-away corner turrets only reached by passing through a back door forgotten behind racks of clothes in a later closet and then climbing a ladder through a hatch into ancient dust. The place had just grown, centuries of afterthoughts and additions and changes in fashion, and navigating it had grown in his head as he learned to walk and talk.

  Caroline didn't seem confused by it all. Sometimes she stopped and sniffed, as if tracking down any breath of air that didn't yet carry the smoke of sweetgrass. And she wasn't in any hurry. He swiped his right sleeve across his forehead, mopping at the sweat.

  "Keep drumming!" rasped into the space between two names, the second one being Aunt Jean. "Jeanne Alouette Haskell," it was, pronounced in French and sounding right that way even though he'd never heard her name as anything other than Anglicized "Aunt Jean." He barely remembered her, earliest memories as a child, a round brown wrinkled woman almost as ancient as the drum.

  At least Caroline's voice sounded raw. At least this ritual was stretching her limits, as well. Gary concentrated on the beat, slow and soft. Easy at first, the beat had come to dominate his own heart and throb in his temples. As if the drum was beating him.

  They'd reached Mom's room, last of the second floor. For some reason, Caroline had bypassed this level for the attics and then come back. As if she was building the jaws of a vise to squeeze something in the middle.

  "You saved this one for last, didn't you?"

  Now she swiped her sleeve across her forehead. "Aunt Alice thought it was the most likely place. Shut up and keep drumming!" Then she returned to her chant.

  Place for what? But he kept his mouth shut.

  She opened the door, swung the short rope of sweetgrass until its tip glowed almost to open flame, and then waved smoke into the room like a soldier tossing grenades into an enemy house before searching it. Her voice echoed in the drum, chanting, naming. Naming Haskell Witches, he finally guessed, Witches back to the dawn of time. Invoking Haskell Witches.

  Then she stepped through the door, and he followed her into the smoke thick and sharp and pungent, biting his nose and throat. Those things that weren't air currents teased the smoke back and forth across the room, gathering, gathering, working fingers around the right-most of Mom's three windows. The one closest to the old oak that shaded the west end of the house.

  And then the smoke flowed through the closed window, through the wavy old glass rather than around the sashes and into gaps of the old wood frame, and vanished. A thin tendril rose from the end of the grass rope, glow settling back nearly to darkness, but that was all.

  His half-sister's shoulders slumped, and she took a deep breath. "Done. You can stop now." Then she stepped across the room, to that last window closest to Mom's bed, to the old four-poster with lace hangings and cream silk pillowcases, and looked out. "That branch comes damn close to the house. Doesn't it bang against the wall in a high wind?"

  Gary stopped drumming and flexed his fingers and wrist in the sudden silence, wrinkling his nose. He felt blisters forming on his fingertips.

  He didn't need to look out the window. He knew just which branch she meant. "No. Too thick, too old, too stiff. That's another 'back door' out of the house, in case of fire or raid. Trained there, pruned and tied into place and all, a century or two ago. It's mentioned in the journals."

  "Door out, door in. That's how the brujo got to your mother. It's guarded now."

  Gary winced as things connected in his head. He knew of alarm sensors on that tree, on that branch, on that window. But Ben knew more about the alarm system than he did, more than anyone except Dad. And his parents, all three of them, had lived a . . . tangled . . . relationship. He knew he'd never ask that question.

  Instead, he caught his sister's eye. "What were you afraid of?"

  She wiggled her shoulders, a disturbing move that he thought she'd designed to catch male eyes, and then took an equally-disturbing deep breath that strained her clinging sweat-damp blouse. He hoped she wasn't coaching Ellen through puberty. Lesbian Aunt Alice would be a safer choice.

  But then she let the breath out as a sigh and just looked tired rather than sexy. "Some kind of GOK."

  "Huh?"

  "Gee Oh Kay. Geologist slang — 'God Only Knows.' They use it for weird rocks. Ethnologists borrowed it for strange artifacts. Aunt Alice was afraid that Peruvian slimeball had left some booby-traps behind."

  The thought made Gary wince. "But he didn't?"

  "Apparently not. Bastard seems to have had his own peculiar sense of honor. Or didn't feel like wasting time."

  He wanted to get off that subject. "How's Aunt Alice doing? And Ms. Rowley?"

  "They'll both live. Call her Kate. Only the girls are allowed to call her 'Aunt Kate.' But both of those damned women came within an inch of killing themselves. Not the wounds, but the witching. Used enough power to light up half the township like a Christmas tree. Blew out three breakers at the electrical co-op."

  She sighed again, and this time pain crossed her face, some sort of peculiar mix of grief and anger and bone-deep weariness. Gary felt like hugging her, the kind of protective brother-hug he'd give Mouse when she skinned a knee. Caroline had been living in lounges at Sunrise General for three days now, with Elaine Haskell guarding and mothering the girls. It takes a village to raise a child. Or a tribe . . .

  The pause stretched on, awkward, and then she glanced back at the hallway and the main stair leading down. "Speaking of invalids, how's your father? The real one, not ol' Balls-for-Brains Ben Morgan. I didn't want to ask in front of the girls. Or where Daniel could hear your answer."

  Yes, she could be tactful. She just didn't usually bother.

  "He's getting stronger. Gloomy. Brooding over the news from over on Pratts Neck. He managed to change this morning." Gary winced, remembering. "Took him half an hour to change back. But the Dragon gave him another Tear."

  "Ouch. Suppose it wouldn't do a damn bit of good to tell him to take it easy? Just like Aunt Alice?"

  "You got it."

  "God, but Stonefort breeds a bunch of stiff-necked birds. All of us." Then she turned to the door. "Got to drop the girls off at Mom's, get back to the hospital. Before Aunt Alice witches somebody into letting her out. She's giving them a refresher course on how a nurse or doctor makes the worst kind of patient."

  *~*~*

  Daniel sat quietly in his old leather armchair, just drinking in the sight of Ellie and Mouse safe in the second parlor of his home. The whole scene felt so normal — the girls, the dark Victorian furniture, the musty-paper smell of a wall of books blending with Caroline's sweetgrass smoke to bring up memories of his father and an old briar pipe.

  How did Victorian décor come to dominate this place? One fifty-year period out of hundreds? Is it because the stuff is so uncomfortable you'll never use it enough to wear it out, so ugly you can't give it away?

  The girls were playing a game of chess on a rosewood and holly inlay game table with a Chinese ivory chess set looted from the Philippines, not even bickering over Ellie's handicap of one bishop. Which was going to have to drop to a pawn or two, really soon. Mouse was winning. Again.

  He'd have to tell them the history of that set and table sometime. But not today. He still had dark moments where he saw them in the Pratt caves, captured by monsters. By rabid dogs, like he'd told Gary. But they were safe. Unhurt.

  No. Not unhurt. They'd lost their mother. His own feelings about Maria might be touchy, more a sense of failure than of grief, but she'd been a super mother. Raised three super kids. Now Alice and Elaine would have to finish the job. At least Lainie knew how to raise girls — look at Caroline.

  Speak of the devil . . . Caroline slouched through the main hall door and dropped her sweetgrass rope into the parlor hearth, muttering Naskeag that Daniel translated as a blessing on the fire circle. Ancient words, dating back to before houses and hear
ths and chimneys.

  She looked beat, and Gary wasn't in much better shape. Whatever they'd been doing sure drank energy. She blinked at Daniel, coming back into focus. "After the place airs out a bit, you can turn the fire alarm system back on. I'm done."

  "What was that all about?"

  "I just invited some ghosts in to watch over this place. Real ghosts, not you or your brother."

  "Haskell ghosts. Okay. Some of them should know the place already. Maybe they'll show the other ones around, so we don't have to put up with ectoplasm dripping in strange places." Daniel found himself slipping into the kind of banter he'd fenced with Alice, back when she was just Alice. "You're the Haskell Witch now?"

  "Temporary. Military calls it a 'brevet' promotion, do the job without drawing the pay. Aunt Alice gets out of the hospital and back on her feet, I'm busted back to 'prentice. I've wangled permission from my advisor to drop grad school for a semester, minimum. Family emergency."

  Well, that part was true. And he'd learned enough about Caroline by now that he thought the university would bend over backwards for her. They might not realize just why . . .

  "So why are you adding guards to this house. Don't your ghosts have enough work back home?"

  "Just following orders. Aunt Alice figures we can't protect the girls without guarding this house as well. Or protect Stonefort, either. We've just been through proof of that." Her hand crept up to her chest, over the Dragon pendant tucked into her blouse. "Besides, I've got a personal interest in some of your secrets."

  Secrets. Well, she was a certified Morgan now, recognized and accepted by the Dragon. And knew the ancestral heap of dryrot inside and out, from years of visits and babysitting the girls. No reason why she shouldn't see this, as well. If she didn't already know it. Damned witches . . .

  He pointed to Gary and waved him over to the fireplace. "Something I would have shown you, if I'd been around after you met the Dragon. Push on the far left-hand panel over the mantel, then pull out the matching panel on the right."

  Caroline made a noise, choking back a laugh or something. Daniel turned to her. "You got a problem?"

  "Just another old family connection, that's all."

  Gary did as he was told. The second panel uncovered a gray-enameled steel face with a dial in the center. A dial with numbers up to a hundred — damned complicated combination lock, on a safe that Dan's grandfather had built from scratch. Anyone who tried to burn through the door or took more than three tries at the combination would get a rude surprise.

  "Wait a couple of days and then check that safe. Combination is Elijah Morgan's birth and death years, closest gravestone to the castle, left-right-left-right." He stopped and glared at Caroline. "You Witches know about that one, too?"

  She shook her head. "Nope. None of our business. Contrary to popular opinion, we don't stick our noses into everything. Don't have time."

  Yeah. Give a pragmatic reason, not a moral one. That's a Haskell for you. But that's why we get along okay.

  He turned back to Gary, with a sideways nod at Caroline. "I'd suggest you reset the combination after opening it. Remember the family motto.

  "Anyway, you'll find my will in there, and Maria's, and keys to some official safe-deposit boxes up in Naskeag Falls. There's a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo in the paperwork about trusts for you kids, residual estate to spouse, and a clause saying each had to survive the other by a month in order to inherit. Tax dodges. If we both are dead, the wills name Aunt Alice as guardian for the three of you. She'll be trustee, too, until each of you is twenty-one."

  Gary blinked and then slid the panel closed again with a click. He turned back to Daniel. "Why? Can't you just come back alive, tell the cops you'd been held prisoner by the Pratts and escaped during the fire? And why wait?"

  Well, there was a whole pile of reasons for staying dead, none of which Dan wanted to discuss in front of the girls. Maria's death, for example: some of their fights were Sunrise County legends. The police would be very interested if they found out he was still alive. Then there was a hefty chunk of insurance. There was a damned persistent private investigator tracking down some Moche artifacts. There was a . . .

  "Too complicated. We don't know where things stand with the Pratts, or with Ron Pelletier. Fire, shootout, cops till hell won't have 'em. If I show up now, we'll never hear the end of it."

  Caroline nodded. "Aunt Alice isn't happy with reports on the moccasin telegraph. Things they've found over at the Pratts, things they haven't found. She says you don't want to talk to the cops right now."

  Damn. Alice Haskell "isn't happy." Daniel shook his head. If Aunt Alice ain't happy, ain't nobody gonna to be happy. That was a fact of life in Stonefort, had been for decades. Caroline had his deepest sympathy. "Anyway, being dead is simpler. No awkward questions. And you have to wait a couple of days to give the ink time to dry." He grinned. "Don't worry — the witnesses will be legit. Besides, it's time you took over the Maria and ran your own lobster license."

  Caroline nodded again. Studying anthropology, she would understand. Guardianship be damned — the license meant that Gary was a man in Stonefort, captain of the Maria, head of the family.

  The Morgan. Seventeen had been plenty old for that, plenty old to swing a sword or buckle on a swash and climb over an enemy's gunn'l with pistols smoking in each hand and a cutlass between your teeth, back in the days of the clans.

  "And," he added, "we need time to move some stuff around before the executor does an inventory for inheritance tax. Otherwise, we'll be right back to those awkward questions."

  He stood up. "Speaking of that wreck out in the bay, you'd better fire a memorial salute from the tower cannons. That'll cover up any nitrate residue up there. Details, boy, God is in the details. Use the fireworks powder — lots of trace minerals to confuse any snoopy noses. You'll find charge tables in the magazine. Just tell Eric Peterson first, over at the fire department, say Aunt Alice gave permission. He'll pass the word around."

  Then Daniel stepped across to the chess game, kissed two furrowed brows, and walked out into the hall. It wasn't as if he'd never see them again.

  The side door stuck a bit as usual, warping and expanding with the damp spring fogs along the shore. But if he planed it down to fit, it would rattle and leak cold air when it dried out again in the winter wind. Life in Stonefort was like that. You worked the best average you could with harsh extremes.

  But this morning certainly wasn't harsh. Bright sun, sky so dark a blue you thought you might spot stars, a sea breeze to cool his face and blow the bugs away — Daniel breathed deep through his nose and savored the day. Even the bay looked serene, just long gentle rollers coming in off the Gulf of Maine, the sort of sailing that the yachties dreamed about when they planned summer cruises up from Boston or Newport in their varnished gleaming Hinckleys.

  Tomorrow or next week or next month the sea would turn killer as it always did, slashing wind and bitter rain across waves pounding on sharp rock. Then the "sailors" would be hiding from its true face and wishing themselves back in safer waters.

  Hiding from the powers that had molded Stonefort and its people.

  Did you enjoy the first book in the Stonefort series? Read on for an excerpt from the next installment, Dragon's Teeth!

  Excerpt from Dragon's Teeth

  The Stonefort Series, Book #2

  CHAPTER ONE

  Something smelled wrong. Kate Rowley wrinkled her nose, sorting through truck-cab air for the difference. Flinty, the sharp dusty semi-ozone tang she got when her mason's hammer struck sparks from a piece of granite she was shaping for a wall. That smell didn't belong in the autumn woods. Nobody had been striking sparks from stone in this forest for at least a hundred years. But that's what she smelled, strong enough to reach her inside her old truck, like she was standing downwind from a quarry drill.

  Kate slowed and then stopped on the narrow woods road, consciously setting the nose of her green Dodge stakebed at the head of a slope. S
he switched the ignition off and set the brake and listened to the snaps and ticks and groans of cooling machinery, the only sound. No jays, no crows, no chickadees — not even the rustling of dry leaves in the wind. The trees, the dirt, even the stone seemed to be watching, listening, waiting.

  She sniffed again, window down, nose sorting through stale cigarette smoke and oil and hot metal and cold morning coffee for whatever troubled her. It had vanished. She heaved the door open and climbed down, the old springs and shocks sighing with relief to be rid of her bulk. She tended to think of her weight in tons — an eighth of a ton sounded heavier than two hundred and fifty pounds.

  And that estimate was being kind, assuming she'd lost weight in the hospital. Kate had quit stepping on scales a couple of decades back. Not that she was fat, just big. She stretched the kinks out of her spine and straightened to her full six-foot-six height.

  And then winced. Week in the hospital, two months in bed and then gimping around with a cane. Bullet wounds, shoulder and hip, mostly healed now but they still bothered her when the weather changed or she spent too long in one position. Like sitting in the truck. Still, the physical pain hurt less than her memories.

  A raven croaked omens down at her from above the sun-dappled tunnel through ancient fat birches and maples yellow with the bloom of Maine autumn, a single lane leading down into a hollow dark with cedar. Dry brittle weeds stood tall between the ruts, broken off where her truck had passed. Nobody had driven this road for days, maybe weeks, and she was supposed to meet a man about an addition to his house?

  Kate shook her head. The last pavement was two miles back, the last power and phone a mile beyond that. She'd lived in Stonefort for forty years, most years never even been out of Sunrise County, and she'd never driven on this road before.

  She reached in behind the truck seat and pulled out her tattered Maine atlas, thumbing through to the local page. She measured distances by the scars on her finger and compared them to the scale. Even the dotted line of a jeep trail stopped a half-mile in from the Haystack Road. She'd assumed her map was out of date, a new road, developers selling off back land. Wrong.