Halfway Hunted - Halfway Witchy

by Terry Maggert

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Reckoning

  She walked into the diner at 9:25, which was significant because it was the exact moment that our breakfast rush dies down enough for me to call and chat.

  Usually.

  Today, Gran wore a thinly disguised look of genuine anger, something that I’d seen so rarely I had to look twice to make sure she wasn’t just squinting into the sun. It was a bright day for winter, and the cheery mood vanished when she sat at the counter and crooked a finger at me without saying a word.

  I stood before her, watching her lips press tightly as she analyzed the unnatural color of my hair. Without further ado, she stood. “Get your coat. You’re coming with me.”

  “Gran, I know you’re mad, but I can’t leave my shift in the middle. I’m—”

  “Trust me. You want to.” Her voice was gentle, and something in her bearing told me I needed to go. I told Pat I was leaving, got my things, and didn’t even bother removing my apron as we stepped out into the winter glare. Gran jingled her keys as we walked to her truck; it was parked with the nose facing north, just across the street. “Get in. We’re taking a small trip.”

  The silence was a physical, oppressive weight, but I said nothing. I spent the moments staring out the window and thinking about Wulfric. Was it worth the cost? Yes. Would I apologize? No, not if it meant saying that I wouldn’t do it all over again. His fledgling soul was worth any price. Even my own future, if need be.

  After a few miles, Gran turned left, then right, and then left once again in swiftly decisive series of maneuvers that brought us to an unmarked road. There were old logging roads all over the park, and this one appeared to be just like all the others. It was overgrown, vague, and peeling off into a section of forest that no one had logged in a century. Gran put the truck in park and cut the engine. The silence rushed back in like a returning tide, leaving me listening to the ticking engine and my own heartbeat. I realized I was nervous, and not because of Gran. There was something here, and she was going to show me whether I wanted to see it or not.

  We got out, still quiet, and stepped forward to the path. Gran pointed to a slight incline winding up and out of sight. “Do you see that trail, dear? Follow it to the end. You’ll understand when you get there. Then come back to me, and we can talk.”

  “Okay . . . but—”

  Gran waved me off with a gesture.

  “Okay. What am I looking for, Gran? You’re scaring me.”

  “You should be scared.” She turned and went back to the truck without another sound. I faced the path as she started the truck over my shoulder, letting the engine idle at a low rumble. Without a glance, I plunged on into the snow, unsure of what was to come, but knowing that, like all things with my Gran, there was a valuable lesson at the end of the trail.

  I didn’t walk for long. After a hundred yards at most, I came to a small, flat bluff over a stream that was frozen to complete rigidity by the punishing winter. “Well, I’m here.” I panted. “Now what?” Nothing answered me save an odd crackling.

  It was a waterfall, just behind a copse of pines. There were icicles groaning in the direct afternoon sun, their melting and refreezing creating a symphony of groaning cracks like a morose pack mule shouldering a load. I’d neither seen nor heard of this falls, and given the location, I guessed not many other people knew of it either. As I climbed the incline, my witchmark began to hum in a low protest. There was magic nearby, but of such a subtle nature that I might step on it before I ever knew what it was. The next part of Gran’s instructions revealed itself in a shaft of sunlight that spangled into dancing shadows off the thinner ice covering a cave.

  An ice cave—no, I corrected myself, it was a cave behind the waterfall, but only accessible because of the freeze. After finishing the brief climb, I stood before the hidden space and kicked at the ice with one boot. Showers of broken icicles crashed downward in musical destruction, revealing a small space that bent around the rock face and out of sight. It was twice my height or more, lit in an unearthly blue and filled with the echoes of unseen drips. The cave was cold, but alive. I let my charms fall into readiness and drew on my power to push my awareness outward. I was alone, but only if you considered living things. Something was here, and it was close.

  My boots skritched over the icy floor with each step that brought me closer to the back wall of the cave. Through the curtains of ice floe, I saw the shadowy hulk of irregular rocks broken into jagged shapes like the tusks of an ancient beast. The ice curled around them, seeping to the floor in a slow dance that ebbed and flowed with each winter. The sense of age was palpable, and my own youth only served to reinforce the antiquity frozen in each blue column of mysterious ice.

  I stopped walking because I realized the reason Gran sent me into this secret place. The body in the ice was twisted with a torment of seasons, but easily recognizable as human. My witchmark fairly burned with agitation as I leaned forward toward the white face clad in a sheet of ice. It was nearly even with mine, turned slightly to face outward in the direction of the dying sun. I slid to the right in order to get a better look. There was no danger; I’ve been around the dead. If they aren’t chatty or howling, then they’re just a husk and harmless.

  This was a husk, a vessel. Something that had been a woman at some time, but not for many years. After a careful look, her clothing was at least fifty years out of date, and there was something off about her limbs. I crouched to examine a hand that hung loosely from the tattered sleeve of a dark gray shirt; the fingers were unnaturally long, with knobby joints and a fine dusting of hair along their length. They weren’t animal, but they weren’t human, either. I’d seen something similar once before, but it was only in a photograph that Gran had taken during a bit of preventative maintenance from a time before I was practicing magic.

  I resolved to know who this woman had been, so I held up my phone, thumbed the flashlight on, and flooded her face with the harsh light of mankind’s technology.

  I dropped the phone and staggered back, my breath leaving in a hot rush. Stars filled my eyes as I swayed, leaned forward, and banged my cheek against the wall of ice with a dull crack. The hot taste of pennies flooded my mouth, and my sight swam until I slumped to the ground, fighting hard for every breath.

  It could not be. My mind rebelled in waves of nausea and fear as I scrambled to pick up my phone, fearing I’d broken in it my shock. Through teary eyes, I saw the screen was whole, so I slipped it into my pocket and began to stand in a motion that tested my resolve in ways I’d never known possible. Grief was as much a wound as the thrust of a knife. I knew that now, and as I stood with my gloves spread in an entreaty to the body frozen in the ice, I raised my phone and took a picture, vowing that even if my mind refused to believe the sight, the camera would not lie.

  Click.

  The phone made its obligatory noise. I turned it over, my hands shaking with fear and revulsion, and the image was true. There she was on my screen, her silver hair spread like a halo in the ice, mouth opened to reveal half-grown tusks of yellow ivory that had no place in the mouth of a small, petite woman with gray eyes and a witchmark over her right ear. He hunched shoulders were covered in skin the color of slate, skin loose and rugged like that of an aged elephant.

  There, frozen in her agony and caught between the form of human and troll, was a woman who could be my twin.

  Chapter Thirty: His Last Mistake

  I’ve been in some quiet cars, but the ride to my house made a graveyard seem like Mardi Gras. She didn’t say a word, and neither could I. The cost of a lesson is rarely so horrific, and Gran had never, in all my training, caused me to endure something like seeing myself frozen in a rictus of pain. Dead. Forgotten.

  Inhuman.

  We were sitting still, listening to the engine cool with its myriad of tiny protests, when she spoke. Her voice was soft, but commanding. “She is your Great Aunt Rosalie, and she died at the age of nineteen. I’ve known of her body and its location since I was
just a girl.” Gran didn’t look at me.

  I felt small, and awash with disgust at having lied to her. I was a fraud and wanton and thankless. I didn’t know where to begin. I could make some assumptions about Rosalie, so I started there.

  “What did she use blood magic for?” It seemed obvious, only the reason remained clouded in the mysteries of the ice.

  “Love.” Gran sighed, long and mournful. “You couldn’t pick a more ill-suited weapon to use in the cause of love, but Rosalie did. She was always so gifted, but wild and feckless. Taken as a whole, she was beyond dangerous, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that her death wasn’t something of a relief to all of us in the family. Had Rosalie lived, she would have brought ruin to everyone in Halfway, and possibly beyond. Her respect for magic seemed to ebb even as she became more powerful, and then she went and fell in love with a man who was even more shiftless than Rosalie on her worst day.”

  “What happened? To her, I mean. Not him.” I didn’t care to know of this man who inspired moral decay in a woman of my own blood.

  “Ahh, to understand that, you must know what she lost. She fell in love with a man who had two great loves in his life: himself, and women. After Rosalie married him, it wasn’t long before his eye began to wander. He’d taken up—this is in secret, of course—with the wife of an itinerant school teacher who came to Halfway on his way through the mountains to Syracuse. I met the man once or twice when I was a newly-minted witch; he was kind and soft spoken, to the point of shyness. How he married that fiend Arabelle is beyond me; she oozed contempt for everyone except those who could give her things she wanted. And, stars help me, she was beautiful, like a serpent. Long legs and acres of black hair that fell in curls around a face like a nymph. She dressed primly, but only to create a mystery around herself that men would fight to discover, like a continent that was shrouded in mist but ringed with coral reefs just waiting to gut their ship. Arabelle was human, of that I’m certain, but her behavior was purely demonic. She placed her target on Rosalie’s husband and began the kind of onslaught that everyone in town could see except for the two fools being cheated. It was shameful, and wicked, and sad.”

  “What was the husband’s name?” My curiosity crested and broke like a wave. I had to know.

  “Thomas Hanrihan. A handsome devil, he was, but possessed of a soul that was clogged with the oil of shame. He pretended, in public, to resist Arabelle, even going so far as changing churches and taking a job logging up past Raquette Lake. Arabelle followed him there when her husband was out seeing parishioners, and soon she was pregnant with Thomas’ child.” Gran made a rude noise I’d never heard before, and flicked her fingers in disgust. “It took two weeks for Rosalie to go from capable witch with bad tendencies, to a wild, disjointed creature who would do anything to see Arabelle dead and her husband returned. You must understand, there were fewer people, and less influence from the outside world. Rosalie’s fall was done wholly in secret, and didn’t conclude until she was well into her third day of spellcasting.” Gran paused, then made a decision. “Did she look like she was in pain? The body?”

  I thought of the agony on her frozen face, jaw thrown wide like a howling beast in its death throes. I nodded, not looking at Gran. My cheeks burned with shame. And fear.

  “How much blood did you use in your spell?”

  By way of answer, I held out my hand to show Gran my palm. The score was small and healing. “Maybe ten drops. I pierced my hand with a blade while casting—”

  “Were you alone?” Her interruption was urgent and borderline caustic.

  “No, Wulfric was there, or close by. He was coming toward me as I cast.” I pushed the memory of his approach away, lest my face show the fear I had felt in that moment.

  “Carlie, I’m going to ask you something. You may answer me honestly without fear of repercussions at this time. But should you lie, our lives are going to change this very instant. Since you’ve engaged in blood magic, you’re not just at risk of the darkness. You may in fact become a creature of the night, and that scares me terribly. I love you too much to allow you to be swept away by vampirism, or the needs of human flesh, or a lust for the dreams of innocents.”

  I didn’t realize that blood magic could jump the tracks and take me without warning. A chill struck me at that. Gran watched me fight this knowledge, then drew a breath to calm herself. I noticed the sun was nearly gone. Gloom crowded the truck, and the town around us. “Tell me. Did you involve any being other than yourself in the spell?”

  “I did not summon anyone or anything, Gran. I stole Plimsoll’s talisman and used my own purity and will to finish a spell that I’ve been writing for nearly a year. I swear it, on my own honor.” I knew that my honor was a currency in freefall, but it was all I had to offer.

  Gran considered that. “You wrote the spell on your own? Truly?” Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. Street lights threw irregular orange wedges of light into the truck, casting us both in angular shadows.

  “Yes. I—I thought about it every second of every day, and even in my dream state. I wanted him back, Gran.” Tears began to fill my eyes like rain-soaked panes. The world blurred and my breath grew erratic with the shame of my own weakness. I’d taken a stand to save the love of my life, but in doing so had burned the trust of my mentor. It was a horrendous trade, and I found myself praying that she wouldn’t ask me if it had been worth it.

  Gran reached out and pulled me to her. “You are my own flesh and blood, Carlie. I should have seen this coming, because I have done things nearly as reckless myself. The fault here is mine. It’s my responsibility as your teacher to anticipate such things, and I didn’t.”

  I was crying freely now, my tears soaking Gran’s coat as I let the doubt and fear break loose from without holding back. “I’m sorry, Gran. I missed him, and I thought that I could be pure enough for both of us to push the darkness back, if only for a while, so that he wouldn’t be alone and hurting. Out there, in the cold. It was killing me.”

  She patted my hair and made a noise of comfort that mothers and grandmothers have used since the beginning of time. After a long while, I felt my breathing slow as her presence gave me comfort. Turning bleary eyes up to her, I saw a different woman than who I’d known before our conversation. There was something to be said, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. She’d called herself reckless. What did that mean?

  “You may ask.” Gran deduced my expression and waited for the question.

  I swallowed nervously as the blood pulsed in my ears. My lips moved on autopilot, and our lives were going to be different from the moment she answered. I could feel it. “How did Rosalie get in the cave?”

  The silence stretched into a judgment, and when she answered, I already knew. “I put her there after I killed her—moments before she could be taken by the demon inside her. And I have carried that with me since I was nineteen years old, Carlie, just as you will bear the ghosts of the beasts you kill in the coming century.”

  The snow began falling again, cutting through the sodium lights on the street in gouts of moving shadows, and my porch light came on as the door opened to frame Wulfric like a demigod. In the glare of the single bulb, his face was a mask of pain.

  “Go to him, dear. He need not fear me, but he will respect you in the event that you must release him from the spell. In the game of allegiance, you come first, no matter how much you love the man.” Gran nodded to Wulfric, and I kissed her cheek, inhaling the scent of her French powder to tie me to this life, if only by another tiny thread. With enough normalcy, I would never drift again, and her fears for my soul could be allayed.

  The truck door closed, I waved, and Wulfric drew me inside where I could see his expression in better light. He was wan, and sick with worry. For the first time, he looked truly mortal.

  “What is it? Where’s Emilia?” I reached up to stroke his cheek. It was hot with fear, and perhaps something else.

  “She’s sleeping, upstairs.” He swayed on
his feet. I led him to the couch. He fell into it and looked at me with haunted eyes. “They’re gone.”

  “Who?” One word, but I already knew.

  “Alex and Anna. Emilia was alone, crying and hungry. They’ve been gone for some time, perhaps a day or more. She was—” He broke off, a strangled cry of anguish dying in his throat. “She was scared, and afraid. I fed her, and bathed her, and she finally fell asleep on my chest out of sheer exhaustion. I carried her here, wrapped in a blanket, and she’s eaten twice. She cries for Anna, and she doesn’t understand what is happening, but I believe I do.”

  “Can she tell you what happened?” Emilia was old enough to speak, but she was just past the toddler stage. Anything she might say would be from the standpoint of a three year old.

  “Only that Uncle Alex and Mommy heard a bell and had to run away. I cannot grasp her meaning. Bell? Where is there a bell that might ring, and why would they answer such a noise by leaving an infant alone? Even for Anna, this is inexplicable.”

  I looked up the stairs. “Take me to her.”

  She slept on a bed made of quilts, guarded by Gus. Wulfric had pulled a chair to hand, doubtless watching over her as well until my return. Emilia was a beautiful child, round of cheek and blessed with a head full of dark curls. She was plump, and pink, and chewing lightly on her index finger as her mouth worked in an unseen song that only sleeping babies can sing. I felt the urge to wake her, but fought it back and just stood drinking in her innocence, a moment of quiet before the coming storm.

  “Did you look for prints outside the house?” I didn’t look up from Emilia. It was critical that my memory be filled with good things prior to the task at hand. There would be more than enough heartache and violence to go around, and soon.

  “No, but I felt them.” His reply was swift, certain.

  “Felt them? How?”

  He flashed a look at Emilia. “As I carried her out, my feet struck several divots. They were prints from Anna. And Alex, now that I think of it. They were too far apart to be from one creature, but my concerns were elsewhere. She was distraught, and crying.” He shook his head slowly, but I put a comforting hand on his arm.