Dilly’s face went still, but then reanimated after some unseen internal discussion. “He is a thief.” Three unembellished words, and he folded his hands to wait.
I adopted a casual air and began examining my nails with great interest. Without looking up, I prodded him. “I empathize with you, Mr. Dillingham.”
“Please, call me Dilly. I feel we’re at least to that point,” he replied equably.
I had to admit, his manners were impervious to shock. “Dilly it is, then. Well, I confess to being a bit confused. Why would you entrust something as rare as Reina’s pelt to a miscreant like Plimsoll? He is, after all, a warlock, and you know how they can be. So wanton and unscrupulous. I daresay you’ve made a deal with the devil, in a manner of speaking.” My smile deepened. He was a fool for dealing with a warlock, and doubly so if he’d done so on good faith. Those points were mere chaff in the face of the real issue.
What did he want with the remains of a young woman, killed in a magical state of being?
Dilly steepled his fingers to buy a moment. At length, under my unwavering gaze, he spoke. “I see you’re aware of the darker aspects of Plimsoll’s existence. Well, to be fair, he was the first warlock I’d ever met.” In that phrase, he revealed his awareness of the Everafter, meaning that my questions—and answers—could me more direct.
“But not the last?” It was rhetorical. As a witch, I knew that seeking out one warlock invariably led to many. Their potent magic was universally evil, but wildly varied in style and execution. For normal humans seeking magical services, warlocks were a bad bet since their grimoires were highly specialized to certain goals. All of their expertise pertained to pain and suffering; two things that I’d spent my magical career trying to prevent.
I stood, arms akimbo, and regarded Dilly once again, taking in all the details of his face with exaggerated care. He shrank back slightly, then looked down at his clothing to see if there was something wrong. After a moment of this scrutiny, he narrowed his eyes. The friendly, bumbling man faded, if only for a second, and I saw something underneath that was tougher than what he was showing the world.
“Why are you examining me, young lady? Not that the attention isn’t welcome at my age, but it does raise my curiosity.” He lifted a hand, cupping his chin and affixing the mask of aged innocence once again.
“I don’t know who or what you are, but you’ve given no offense.”
He inclined his head politely until I held up a hand in mild rebuke.
“Don’t thank me yet. There are two reasons for me to memorize your features, and I’m not sure you’re going to like either one of them; although since you’re dealing with a warlock, I believe they make sense.”
“May I know these reasons?” His voice was polite, but neutral.
Louis called to me from the kitchen where tickets were piling up. He gave the universal shrug, meaning get your butt to the grill, earning the usual eyeroll. I resisted sticking my tongue out because of my proximity to a British person. For some reason, I felt the need to defend my nation’s honor by keeping my normally crude expressions in check. Louis waved his hands in frustration before dropping his eyes to the grill.
“In a moment, Louis.” I turned to my guest, who sat patiently.
He was incredibly still, taking on the posture of a statuary in a forgotten temple. It wasn’t magical, but rather spoke of a mastery over his physical body that could only come from years of training at something. He was interesting, all right, in the same way that a serpent could be beautiful. As I watched him staring at me in the bubble of his own quiet, whatever trust I had drained away.
“The reasons, Carlie McEwan?” he asked.
I hadn’t told him my last name, and my eyes went dead with anger. If I’m yelling, all is well. If I’m quiet, things might get a bit ugly. This was one of those moments.
“Of course,” I said, smiling broadly. “I memorized your face in the event the police ask us to identify your body.”
His laugh was instant and genuine. He pointed to me, nodding with respect at the brash joke. “And the second?” His voice burbled with mirth.
“Oh, that. Well, this is a bit awkward, but . . . ” I started, and an apologetic twist of my lips bloomed beyond my control. “That’s just for me, so I know who to look for in case I’m the one who has to kill you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Cabin Fever
Gran’s truck sat idling outside the diner as I stepped into the chilly winter day. Iron gray clouds scudded low, bulging above me with menace as the sun suffused the sky with weak light made dim by the afternoon hour.
I slid in next to Exit, who gamely took the middle seat despite our considerable height difference. He was rigid with focus, giving me a terse nod and then returning his gaze forward.
“Here, Carlie. Something for your troubles.” Gran reached across the seat to hand me something, slipping it into my open palm as she pulled away from the curb toward the Limberlost Cabins. Straight to business it was, then. I hoped that Gus would be okay for a while longer, and then amended the thought to include all of us. It wouldn’t do to disregard the skills of a warlock, no matter who was on my team.
Opening my hand, I looked closely at Gran’s creation. It was a silver amulet three inches across—circular, slender, and graceful. At even spaces around the outer edge, bloodstones the color of wine were wrapped within silver cages.
There were four in all, but it was the center that caught my attention.
A moonstone pulsed with gentle strength, casting a polite shadow in my palm despite the full light of day. It was awash in white, buttery yellow, with the occasional flash of cool blue, and I felt its power down to the very core of my body. This was magic of the highest order; a kind of spell encased in something so pure that to shatter it would be unthinkable, and yet I was expected to use its beauty to cast a warlock into oblivion.
“It’s perfect. How did you—never mind. I’ll ask someday, or find the answer on my own.” It hung on a simple jute cord polished with beeswax and herbs. As I hung it around my neck, a subtle hum of power tingled in my witchmark, even as the aroma of fresh-cut lavender filled my senses. It was overwhelming, and not for the first time was I thankful that Gran was on my side. Her spells had a life of their own.
“When you confront him, I’ll be nearby, but you must do this with Exit. Do you understand why?” Gran asked, slowing the truck to a crawl. We were nearly at the pine-shrouded entrance to the cabins, and time was short.
“No, Gran. I’m sorry, I don’t see how you staying out of this can be anything but an unwarranted risk.” I didn’t challenge her often, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t encouraged. Witches weren’t doormats, even when dealing with family.
“Jonny.” One word, and it became clear. She knew that someone must protect the innocent, and if Plimsoll could release a curse, Jonny would be dead in seconds. Warlocks don’t accept betrayal in any form, and what Jonny had done was nothing short of high treason. We could not leave him to die. It was against our very purpose.
“Understood.” I looked to Exit as the truck rolled to a stop. “Are you ready?”
We climbed out of the truck and stood in silence as snow fell on the pines lining the entrance. It was quiet, late afternoon, and the sun was reduced to a roseate blush in the west. Shadows began to stretch toward us like beckoning hands, and I felt the cold wrap me in an unwelcome embrace.
“Plimsoll is in cabin number six. Jonny is in fourteen. I’ll walk directly to Jonny and ward him from any blood-related magic. You’ll have to wait about one minute after I get to his door. Watch for me to go in, all right?” Gran was moving spryly across the snow, her breath trailing in coiling plumes.
“Got it.” I touched Exit’s arm before looking down at his hand, curled easily around his pick. “You ready to use that thing again, just in case?” I plucked a hair and gestured for him to hand over the soon-to-be weapon. “I’ll do the honors, you beast.”
His grin was tight, but prese
nt. I wrapped the white hair around the metallic nose of his pick, finishing with a brief prayer. The pick thrummed with magic. It was ready, and so were we.
“Shall we?” I asked, reaching out to my new amulet and touching it with the boundless power of moonlight and free will. Exit’s nod was somewhere between fear and feral. He wanted this, as did I, but his anger radiated outward hungry waves. I knew we couldn’t bring Reina back, but we could stop Plimsoll from adding to his grotesque menagerie.
Gran waved, opened the door to Jonny’s cabin, and vanished inside. Raising my hands, I muttered, “I’ll knock.”
My bolt hit the door, slamming it inward with the fury of a storm. I darted through the opening, amulet raised in one hand, and my charms jangling with flashes of actinic fire as the spells waiting just beneath the surface begged to come out and play. Plimsoll was there in the center of the room, a leer on his face and a bubble of repugnant magical power surrounding him like a balloon made of hate. The surface of his defensive sphere shimmered and wobbled with each movement of his plump, childish hands. A pocket watch of dull silver hung around his thick, sweaty neck, glowing softly from the inclusion in a magical process I could not immediately describe. He was spellcasting, and I could neither see nor hear what he was doing behind the barrier. Both of those facts made me quiver with rage, so I fired off a sunburst of lemon-colored magical energy that splashed against his shield like an angry wave.
His hands never stopped moving. In seconds, I saw two tendrils of something black curl together in the space between his fingers, weaving about in a repulsive dance of magical eroticism that told me I would not like whatever happened next.
I was wrong. I loved what happened next. The shield fell with a liquid splash of corrupted Everafter, revealing Plimsoll to my amulet. I thrust it forth just as he began to cackle in a maniacal rasp, pointing at me with his right hand as if the punchline of a joke had sent him over the edge of sanity. His eyes were ablaze with gleeful hatred, and he flicked a bolt of withering energy that struck me squarely in the chest, sending my legs into a drunken wobble. The room tilted as Plimsoll’s spell concluded with a flash and the stench of burning hair, but my amulet was already reaching critical mass, even as my body betrayed me. Like an anxious horse, I opened the gate to the amulet’s magical reserve as my head caromed off the thick border of a chair, sending flashes of white light in my vision that made me wonder if I’d been rendered blind by my own magic.
I had not.
The bolt of moonlight struck Plimsoll low and left, thrown off target by my fall. He squealed in rage, trying to raise a wand of blood-rubbed wood that had been in his left hand all along. The wand coughed forth a sinuous, knurling ray of dark green magic that looked like nothing short of a demon’s worst intentions, speeding up as it left the pulsating tip of the magical weapon.
It never reached me. Exit’s pick whistled past in an explosion of silvery light, striking Plimsoll dead center in his throat. The spell he’d been mumbling sputtered out like a dying candle as the pick collapsed the warlock’s neck into a ruin. Plimsoll looked surprised, and angry, and then he just looked dead.
Bits of dust and debris began to rain down inside the cabin with little flicks and pocks that marred what would have otherwise been total silence. Blood roared in my ears as a groan escaped me; I’d made the error of moving too quickly after absorbing a punishing hit of dark magic. “Ugh.” That was poetry compared to what I was thinking.
“Yes. Ugh, indeed.” Exit slumped against the bedframe, his wary eyes still on the warlock’s corpse.
“Can you walk?” I asked him, because the next few minutes were going to change my life forever if he could. At his nod, I looked toward the cabin where Gran had gone. “Go to her. Tell her what happened. Then come back double time so we can dispose of this—thing.” I looked at Plimsoll with braided disgust and pity.
“I shall. Are you—”
“He’s quite dead. I’m fine. Go, now.” At my urging, he surged out the door in uneven steps, vanishing from my view in seconds.
I regarded the corpse like any other necessary evil, standing, with some effort, then bending over the body. My own mind whirled with sickness at what I was about to do, but the die was cast. Even so, I still felt the voice of temptation urging me forward, even as my hand darted to pull the broken watch from Plimsoll’s neck.
What could it hurt, right? My own conscience mocked me as I tucked the heavy watch away into a pocket before wiping my hands at the sensation of being suddenly unclean. Gran’s shadow darkened the door in the last light of the day.
“Jonny’s fine. A bit shaken, but none the worse for wear. He’s going into town for some supplies later on with the manager of the cabins.” She stopped her report with a tilt of her head. “Are you all right, Carlie?” Her eyes searched me with the concern that only family can bring to bear.
And then, for the first time in my life and to my everlasting shame, I lied to her, and I wasn’t even sorry.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Call of the Wild
I slept for nearly nine hours, but that was primarily due to the fact that Plimsoll’s body was heavy and resistant to forest magic—dealing with him had been exhausting even after magical warfare. It took all three of us to carry him into the nearest stand of timber, where Gran cast a powerful wave spell that opened the soil and took him in to be reunited with his original purpose. It was my hope that he felt no pain, even though his entire life had been predicated on hurting the innocent. I felt sad, and guilty, and hot with barely-contained joy, because the broken watch in my hand was going to bring Wulfric home to me. Thank you for that, Roderick Plimsoll. Your evil will not go without some use this night.
Gus watched me with an intensity that was weird even for a cat, so basically he stalked me from a distance of six inches. I rubbed his massive head, letting my fingers knead the magnificent ruff of tabby fur around his neck and shoulders until his purrs drowned out my own hesitation at what I was going to attempt.
Purity, I thought, lacing my boots up as I sat on the edge of my bed. I had a pure love for Wulfric. That would have to be enough.
Time. I hefted the broken watch, its face stopped at 2:59 on a day that could have been yesterday or a century earlier. It didn’t matter. The metal throbbed with magic, and I knew, without looking, that the gears inside had been removed and ensorcelled one by one until the entire device was nothing more than a spell of time made real. My witchmark was careening with energy at the touch of—well, whatever it was. The actual item was irrelevant, as its purpose would shortly be fulfilled.
For the last element, I would wait until I was where I needed to be. I tucked a small, sharp pocketknife into my coat before zipping it up. The weight of the small blade was nothing, but its meaning was nothing short of cataclysmic. I thought of the blade’s point slipping home into my palm, the hot jeweled drops of my own blood running free, and I knew fear. No witch could treat with blood magic and survive unscathed. In thousands of years, every person who sought the power of blood ended up dead, enslaved, or insane. It was arrogance of the highest order that I thought I could be the first to break this hideous chain of failure, but then, there was only one Wulfric. His power and love would pull me back from the precipice, and my faith would burn bright enough to keep the shadows and cost of blood magic at bay.
I had to believe it, for to think otherwise was an admission that this walk I was taking was straight into the gates of inescapable blackness and cold.
I squared my shoulders, stepping out into the night air. I am the granddaughter of Tess, and I am a McEwan woman whose magic burns with the clarity of truth. My voice rang inside me with conviction and will, and in less than thirty minutes I was standing before a monstrous ash tree that sprawled at the border of Halfway and Wulfric’s lands. The moment was now, I decided, so I sat in the deep snow, legs folded, and began to prepare for what would be the single most important spell of my life.
Then Wulfric stepped out into the moonlight, his
body a looming shadow of angular beauty and menace. “I told you,” he growled, “to protect yourself.” His eyes flared to life like distant watchfires, and I saw him decide if he was going to attack me or not. His hair was unbound, a dark blonde halo framing his face, moving and alive in the light breeze. He wore buckskin pants and nothing else, his skin an expanse of alabaster, perfect in its undead state. A smear of blood ran from the divot of his collarbone down to the first rib of his unmoving chest, and his eyes glittered with something toxic, the pupils enormous in the broad planes of his face. I cast a small prayer to the former owner of the blood and knew that I was in more danger than ever before in my short life.
I didn’t care.
As a vampire, he wasn’t in control; but as a white witch, my dominion over magic and the space around me was nearly complete. I could be strong for both of us, if only for a little while, and that was all that really mattered as I began to draw huge gusts of magical power from the reserves in my charms, my mind, and then finally, tapping into the very nature of my own soul. It was small, but strong. Like me.
He wavered as my eyes flickered under the influence of my spell. I’d been thinking about this moment since the day Wulfric left, and now that it was here I felt fear and joy and hope at war within every muscle. My fingers twitched in rhythm to the pulse of magic that coursed through my blood, demanding more, more, more from me until I felt that my heart would burst with need. My life raced past under closed lids, a film of such speed and intensity that my body began to rock with the shifting angles of images from my childhood, my teen years, and finally, moments with Wulfric. I watched my mom and dad smile down at me as I stood, chubby legs taking wild, awkward steps in little white shoes, their faces alight with pride and awe at the life that they created. I saw the world through sheets of tears as my father explained death, while we buried a robin who’d struck our living room window with an alarming crack, its neck breaking, the body tumbling to our porch in a spray of feathers and, for me, awareness that death was real, and at times, instantaneous. I saw Gran redirect a wasp with her power, moving it along from a path that would have let it land on the pale flesh of my arm. I could hear my voice, high and piping, asking her why she hadn’t smushed it like everyone else would do. Her patient words, muffled but the intent clear. “Because it does no good to kill without purpose, Carlie, no matter how small the creature.” I felt myself nodding with understanding all those years ago, and then I felt my first kiss, and my first broken heart, and the boy who’d done both wondering why I looked through him as if he were a ghost that next summer when he visited from Maine. I tasted my first wine and felt the thrill of my first spell, and I did it all inside the maelstrom of my head while Wulfric made up his mind if he was going to kill the woman he once loved, back when he was half human and all mine.
Halfway Hunted - Halfway Witchy Page 14
