Sarah's Inheritance

by Katherine Kim

  “Well, why don’t we just start here at the front door and work our way back?” she said. “I’ll go get my laptop. If we’re going to do this we may as well do it right. We’ll take a real inventory for the insurance.” She ran into the office and grabbed her things, and hurried back to the front door.

  It was a good sized room, with the door opening right into the space. There was a shoe rack next to the door that still held Gran’s well-used hiking boots, and now held Sarah’s sneakers as well. Beside that was a hall tree, with a hinged bench lid for storage. A walking stick leaned against its side, the grip smooth and shiny from use.

  “Well, I wish I’d known that was there this morning,” Sarah groaned. “I’d have felt a lot less nervous about monsters if I’d had something to hit them with.” She knelt down to open the bench lid and started rummaging. Several hats and summer windbreakers, as well as rain gear, were neatly stowed away.

  “Unfortunately hitting them won’t help. They’re literally creatures of darkness. A stick would just pass right through them.” Sebastian started to open the drawers in the bottom of the curio cabinet a few feet further in the room.

  “You sure seemed willing to attack this morning,” Sarah pointed out as she typed.

  “Well, I did mention that I may have been being a bit stupid.” He ducked his head again, and Sarah grinned.

  “I guess guys are guys no matter what species they are,” she laughed. He grinned back at her, then a frown creased his brow.

  “In all seriousness, though. I hoped to distract the damn thing so you could run. I had no idea there was another one behind us. If I hadn’t been wounded already, I probably could have dug up the energy to throw some foxfire at it. That would have hurt it for sure— fire and light are what you fight those things with. Unfortunately, I’d been running for a while, and my shoulder was numb with the poison. I couldn’t focus well enough to form any.” Sebastian sighed and frowned at his hands. He looked so frustrated and unhappy that Sarah found herself scooting over to put her hand on his shoulder before she thought about it much.

  “Hey. It turned out okay, didn’t it? And if you hadn’t been there I probably would have just walked right into that thing. As it was I was almost too scared to move, but you snapped me out of that, too. So you did help, you manly man, you.” She smiled when he looked up at her. “And we finally got to meet each other in person, so there’s an upside there, right?” Sebastian looked relieved and smiled back.

  “Thanks. You’re right,” he said. “And Kai managed to find us in plenty of time, so all’s well that ends well, right?” He nodded firmly and the conversation moved on to safer topics, like why Gran had chosen to store two years of newspapers in the hall closet.

  Eight

  “Hey, what do you want to do about the Christmas lights out front? It’s getting kinda late in the season for them now, and I found the boxes in the garage.” Kai’s voice drifted through the house as he called back to them in the kitchen.

  “Would it be easy to take them down?” Sarah called back. She sat back on her heels, glad to take a break from rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. Most of them were tidy and organized through frequent use, but this one was clearly the catch-all for more specialized and broken items, and it was fairly deep.

  “Well, I’ll need to haul a ladder out, but not too bad. And the ladder’s right here so it’s no trouble.” He answered. “I’ll get Seb to come help and it’ll take us maybe half an hour, then we could break for food? I’m starving!” She heard him close the door and laughed out loud.

  “As far as I can tell, you’re always starving, Kai. Jeez.” She shook her head and stretched. The brothers had come over together that morning to help her plow through the big stuff for her inventory. She was learning all sorts of things about Gran, going through her house like this— like the woman’s apparent love of collecting waffle irons. There were at least three buried in the back of this cupboard. The guys had taken the attic and the garage, respectively, and she’d given them both a stack of inventory forms and freshly sharpened pencils to keep track of everything. If there was one thing she was confident in, it was her ability to organize information. The one skill she’d used at her job as an executive assistant at the investment firm her mother had arranged for her. All her other skills and talents had been ruthlessly suppressed, either by her bosses at the firm or by her mother.

  Well, that thought wasn’t especially cheerful. Not that she knew what sort of talents or skills she might have anyway. Mom always said she was flighty and foolish, and she did like to just run with an idea when she had one, without researching the plausibility of it all. Ok, it might not be sensible to make a rooftop garden paradise on a high rise in New York City, but rooftop gardens were a popular thing these days, right? Who cares if access to the HVAC stuff would be completely blocked and the roof wasn’t designed to support the weight of all that dirt…

  She shook her head. There were things to do, especially if they were going to eat soon. She dusted her hands and tidied up the mess of unused kitchen equipment in front of her. If the guys were going to be generous enough to help her out with this search— not that she expected to find any personal notes in the attic or the garage— then the least she could do was treat them to a civilized meal. Ok, so Kai had actually done the cooking for the chili simmering on the stove, but that was beside the point. She had helped by chopping onions and opening cans. And then sworn to herself to take cooking lessons as soon as possible. Cooking was another skill her mother had discouraged. That was for other people to do for you.

  Well, she could set a table, dammit. So she did, digging up the nice cloth napkins she’d found in the hutch, and setting out the pretty dishes her grandmother had apparently used. They were a mismatched collection of patterns that she guessed Gran had bought whenever she saw something she liked. They should have clashed horribly when set out together, but somehow they looked completely charming instead. Sarah looked at her handiwork and wished she’d been able to know her grandmother better. This inventory was revealing all sorts of things Sarah hadn’t known, and it made her both excited to learn it all and sad that she hadn’t been able to see it firsthand.

  “Hey, I’m going to start calling you Sniffles if you keep tearing up like that,” Kai said. He walked past her to the stove and stirred the chili. Sarah smiled and blinked the tears away.

  “I keep wishing that I’d been able to know Gran better, that’s all,” she said. Kai nodded and shot her a sympathetic smile.

  “I bet everyone will be happy to tell you stories,” Sebastian said, giving her a quick, one-armed hug. “Miss Rosie was as much one of us as anyone. There’s plenty of humans living over at the Village, and she was far from ordinary herself anyway.”

  “Okay, now you’ve lost me again. Granted, that’s been happening an awful lot since yesterday morning, but still.” They all sat down around the table. “God, Kai, this is amazing.” He winked at her, and started eating instead of replying.

  “Well, where’d I lose you? We’ll start there,” Sebastian said between bites.

  “Okay, how about what you mean about plenty of plain humans living at the Village. I take it you mean your apartments?” she asked. Kai nodded.

  “The Village at Rancho San Calafia,” Kai said. “Or the Village for short. We sure feel like a small, independent community, that’s for sure. It’s something like eighty percent spirits living there.”

  Sarah’s eyes got huge. “You mean there are more fox people over there?”

  “Kitsune, not ‘fox people.’ And there’s spirits there from all over the world, not just Japan. My father, for example, is from America. You’ve met Jennifer Anderson? There are representations of her family in Babylonian art, then later all through Europe, even though I’m pretty sure she herself was born in Colorado. The Village at Rancho San Calafia was actually built by our grandmother as a sort of sanctuary for spirits to live without being afraid of discovery. I mean, we just want to li
ve our lives and not get hassled, you know?” Kai shrugged. “Way back in history it was easy enough— humans left spirits alone pretty much. Either because they were afraid, or they thought we were gods or whatever. The past few centuries have been rough, though, and now? Well some of us think we’ll get abducted to Area 51 or something, others think that there will be some sort of Frankenstein-style monster hunts, others think we’d be closer to rock stars. Those’re mostly kids though. It only takes one experience where someone starts throwing rocks or screams in terror right to your face even though you’ve known them for years to convince you otherwise.” He added drily.

  “Yeah. It’s not a strict law or anything, but it’s a pretty big taboo in our community to talk about it much to ordinary humans.” Sebastian added.

  “Wow. There are laws just for… what did you call it, spirits?” Sarah asked. This was fascinating. Literally a whole world she had no idea about, layered on top of the one she’d lived in her whole life.

  “Nah, nothing like that organized. We have rules for the residents though. I mean besides the usual stuff for an apartment complex, there’s stuff about magic damage and causing peasants-with-pitchfork style riots and stuff. When Gramma built the place it was a lot less built up around here so there was less risk.” Sebastian said.

  “So… are you guys in trouble because of me?” Sarah was suddenly worried. “I mean, I’m not anything special, and now I know.”

  “What?” Sebastian looked scandalized. Even Kai looked shocked.

  “What are you talking about?” Kai asked. “For one thing you’re not an outsider. Miss Rosie was practically family, so it’s pretty much assumed by everyone that you know already, considering what you guys are and all.”

  “Wait, what? Considering we’re what? What was Gran?” Sarah felt the chili settle like lead in her stomach and twisted her napkin in her lap.

  “Well, she was a witch,” Kai said. His tone implied that it was pretty obvious, like saying ‘she was old’ or ‘rain falls from clouds.’ Sarah could only swallow and stare. The men exchanged glances when the silence stretched out for almost a minute.

  “Sarah, we assumed you knew. I mean, yesterday…” Sebastian let his voice trail off.

  “How did you know that spell then? When I got there you were on the ground chanting a shielding spell.” Kai said, leaning forward. Sarah blinked, the shock finally subsiding a bit. She still couldn’t bring herself to say she believed, but there was that small voice in the back of her mind that had helped her accept kitsune and wights, and it was telling her that she had known. Of course, she’d known, but she had suppressed it.

  “I wasn’t thinking at all. I don’t really remember what I said. I thought it must have been a prayer I picked up somewhere.” She spoke so quietly that she was almost whispering. All at once a memory came rushing back. She was visiting Gran for the summer with her parents, and they had left her at Gran’s house for the night to go to a reception in San Francisco. Gran was tucking her in and looking under the bed for monsters. After assuring the preschool Sarah that she was totally safe from monsters here, Gran had taught her a little rhyme to say in case she got scared. She’d said it every night after that, right after her mother left the room and closed the door. She’d said it for years, maybe all the way until high school. How weird that she’d forgotten that.

  “Oh my God. Gran taught me a spell,” she whispered. Sebastian put a steaming mug in front of her.

  “Here, you look like you need something. It’s the kind labeled ‘Some days you just need a hot cuppa.’ So it should be good,” he said.

  “I think I need something stronger than just tea. Check the next cupboard,” Sarah said, but she dutifully sipped the tea anyway. It helped and she felt more grounded as she drank. She idly wondered if Gran had cast spells on the teas as well.

  “This has definitely not been the relaxing, quiet retreat I expected it to be when I bought the plane ticket,” she said. Kai smiled and looked relieved.

  “I didn’t mean to spring it all on you like that. We honestly thought you knew. Miss Rosie didn’t keep it very secret, really,” he said. “And she was always saying how proud of you she was, stuff like that. I guess we all assumed you were studying her magic in New York.”

  Sarah shook her head, smiling up at Sebastian when he added a dollop of brandy to the tea.

  “Gran and Mom had a huge fight when I was a kid. She forbid me to even mention Gran, let alone talk to her. That’s when we stopped visiting.” She rubbed her finger along the rustic wood grain of the dining table. “I never understood what it was about, but now… I bet it was about magic. My mother loathes anything that even might be related to fantasy and fiction and stuff like that. I remember I had a class project on mythology in high school and she called the principal to complain. I ended up doing a solo project on the architecture of Roman forums instead. It was so humiliating.”

  “Wow. I bet.” Sebastian reached over to pat her arm.

  “I bet your mother knew about our apartment community. At least slightly,” Kai said. “Although why Miss Rosie’s own daughter would react that way makes no sense. She would have been a witch too.” He looked disgusted. Sarah looked up at him.

  “In-law. Gran was my Dad’s mother,” she said. “Dad died when I was a kid. Maybe the year before Mom and Gran had that fight, now that I’m thinking about it. I was eleven, I remember, and the police came and said he’d been in a car crash on his way home from some business meeting in Boston. There was an investigation because the first people on the scene couldn’t figure out why he’d crashed, but they ended up declaring it a simple accident.” She stared at Kai in shock. She was vaguely aware of Sebastian scooting his chair over and putting his arm around her shoulders. She swiveled her head to look at him.

  “Do… do you think it wasn’t an accident?” she asked. She could feel herself start to shake and her voice felt scratchy in her throat. Sebastian hugged her again.

  “I don’t think either of us could even guess, Sarah. Is there any reason to think it wasn’t an accident?” Kai asked slowly.

  “I don’t think so. I never thought about it before, it just suddenly seems so…” Sarah said. “I mean…”

  “Seems like we have several mysteries on our hands.” Sebastian glanced out the window at the darkening sky. “I’d say that most immediately we need to figure out the wight thing. It’s unnatural for them to come out of whatever cave or tomb or crypt they were born in, and they’re dangerous.”

  “What are those things, anyway?” Sarah asked, snapping back from her shock in the face of a current problem. Her father had been dead for almost eighteen years, answers wouldn’t come quickly even if she knew what questions to ask, of whom, and could start right now.

  “As far as we can figure out from the sketchy reports we have about them that I’ve found so far, they spring into being when there is some sort of very intense negative emotion collected in one place. A wight is a creature that was once human, but some event pushed it over that edge into monstrosity.” Sebastian settled back in his seat, leaving his arm draped across the back of Sarah’s chair. “Someone is murdered or does a murder, or sometimes a group of people is involved. Also, a wight can leave behind a poisonous residue if they inflict a wound.”

  “That’s why Doc was worried about him the other day,” Kai added. Sarah glanced over at Sebastian’s shoulder with the stitches still in it, and Sebastian nodded.

  “That’s right. I’m fine though, she made sure of that. Finally, wights have to stay in dark places like deep in a cave or in an underground crypt— as soon as a bright enough light or the warmth of more positive emotions hits them, they’re toast. That’s why there aren’t more of them around— if they haven’t found a dark enough hiding place before dawn, it’s all over. They’re basically an animated form of bad feeling given form. They don’t however, tend to leave wherever it is they settle, which is why those two were so odd. There were three more before them, as well, tha
t you didn’t know about. That’s why I was out at all that morning. I wanted to make sure it was clear before the kids started to head out to school.”

  “Did we mention that Seb’s dad is a professor? I think it’s genetic.” Kai winked at Sarah. She knew she must have gone pale again, and wondered when she’d gotten so easy to scare. Kai’s expression became sober again as he continued. “At any rate, considering the five wights in ten days situation, I think I speak for both of us when I say that I hope you’ll stay inside while it’s dark out until we can figure out what’s going on, or until you learn a bit more about casting spells.”

  “Can wights come inside? Could they get in here?” Sarah asked. Maybe she’d just sleep with all the lights on tonight.

  “No, usually a night light is more than enough to make them avoid a building. And in your case, I know that Miss Rosie had several protection spells set up to keep the place safe. I’m sure they’re still active.” Sebastian said.

  “And we’ll make sure to swing by here a few times overnight on our patrols, just to check in,” Kai said. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to throw you in the deep end and leave you. And hopefully tomorrow we’ll find Miss Rosie’s notes or spell books or something, and you can study up.” He grinned at her, his face full of reassurance.

  Nine

  Sarah settled down on the floor next to one of the boxes Sebastian had hauled out of the bedroom closet for her before the brothers had left for the night. She leaned back on the side of the bed that had been her grandmother’s, covered in the faded patchwork quilt that she remembered snuggling under as a child, after coming in from playing in the sprinkler. Just looking at the pink and white squares and triangles that were priced together to form a slightly bubblegum galaxy of stars made her feel warm and cozy and slipping under it every night had felt a little bit like coming home.

  She turned her attention back to the box in front of her. It looked like it contained a few mementos, but mostly seemed to hold some photo albums and journals, and she had no idea how Gran had gotten the heavy box up onto that top shelf. She sipped her tea and tried to relax a little, the conversation from dinner jumbling up in her mind. It was giving her a headache.