Bright Young Witches and the Merry Dead

by Beth Byers

  A thought occurred to her and was chased with an immediate desire to reject it. But…it was the right thing to do, Ari thought. But did she have the courage?

  Early Christmas Eve morning, Ariadne joined Circe and Echo in the library of the house. Circe glanced at Ari and then nodded. She let out a low hum which Echo and then Ari joined. Glancing at Lucian, Ariadne nodded and then Circe’s voice changed as she sang the version of their spell.

  As they worked, Martha appeared in the hall, then George, and the elusive third house ghost who’d disappeared as soon as Ari had threatened removing bones and hadn’t been seen again. Slowly several more ghosts who’d been in the house gathered.

  Circe glanced at them and then dropped the song.

  “It seems to be working,” Circe said quietly.

  “Brilliantly,” Lucian said, glancing at his father, who nodded.

  “I should say so!” Hadley agreed.

  “I didn’t like that at all,” one of the ghosts muttered and disappeared into the walls. With the first leaving, they all fled except for Martha, who eyed Ariadne sourly.

  “Christmas dinners don’t make themselves, you know. Pulling together a steamed pudding without having stirred it up in November requires concentrated magics. Especially with your odd American desserts as well. Bloody hell, woman, test your spells outside and don’t dabble in my kitchens.”

  Ari laughed and then led her sisters to the graveyard with Lucian Blacke, his father, Hadley, and Margot following.

  Circe hummed low again and Echo and Ariadne joined in. Circe’s voice switched to the song and the little girl ghost appeared, looking relieved. She stepped out from behind a large mausoleum and with her were several other children ghosts. Just seeing them made Ari sick. So many kindred dead who had been taken from their families too soon.

  Ari wanted nothing more than to scoop up her own little girls and hold them tight and a little too hard. She met Lucian’s gaze and saw the same haunting love and fear in his gaze. There was a constant fear that they would lose the ones who meant the most. Other witches had. Look at these children. The magic of their kin hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t been enough to save Ari’s mother.

  Ari winced and then watched as Echo used her athamé to cut a slit in the thinning. Ari’s eyes filled with tears as the form of a woman appeared on the other side and the first of the child ghosts went darting through, calling a haunting cry of “Mother!”

  The tears slipped down as another mother appeared with a father behind and they scooped up identical boys. Ari’s crying gaze met the grateful gazes of the ghost parents and they nodded at her. Ari nodded back.

  She looked from the children to the grove. Dark eyes were fixated on her with a coldness that cut through the joy of seeing parents and children reunited.

  “We have a problem,” Lucian declared.

  Ari nodded. They did indeed. And the hours to fix the problem were limited. She bit down on her lip, took her athamé and turned it thoughtfully in her hands. “I’ve an idea.”

  Chapter 7

  ARIADNE EUDORA WISTERIA WODE

  “What in the world?” Circe asked in wonder as Echo breathed out in awe, “That is lovely. Just lovely.”

  Ari gasped as the ghost, Martha, placed a flaming pudding in front of her on the table. Blue flames flickered in the dimmed room, then darkened as the fire burned out. Lucian stood and turned the lights back on and Hadley cheered, “Bravo, Martha! Bravo!”

  “That was amazing,” Ariadne told her. “I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”

  “Did you lose the flaming pudding in America?” one of the Wode cousins asked.

  “So it would seem,” Echo answered. “Happy to reacquaint ourselves with such a wonder.”

  Ari looked at Hadley. “Now how does one eat this?”

  He helped her to serve the meal as they were yet short of anyone that wasn’t otherworldly. As the dessert finished, Ariadne stood and turned to the sideboard where she’d placed a small wooden box.

  “Happy Christmas, everyone,” Ari said to them, looking around the table, which was nearly full and nearly all strangers. “Thank you for canceling your own plans to help us resolve issues here at Wode House. Especially for utter strangers from another country. We are yet kin, however, are we not?”

  The friendly gazes who nodded and the singular, “Hear, hear,” from Hadley warmed Ari’s heart.

  She smiled at them. “I never thought this would be my fate, and I will do my best.”

  Her gaze met Circe’s and then Echo’s, knowing that she was telling her sisters that she was staying in England. Echo bit her bottom lip and Circe’s gaze filled with sadness.

  Ariadne pulled a pendant from the box and asked, “If you’re a Wode, please stand.”

  Nearly all the guests rose and Ariadne gave them each a Celtic cross that matched her own. She’d made them with a song and a spell, inspired by both the one she was wearing and her pentacle necklace. As she went around the room, she used a spell to remember each name, speaking it and handing over the necklaces. Each of the wearers would be able to access some of the excess magic of the Wode House, and she’d had Echo add necromancer wards to protect them against the ghosts. Ari handed everyone else a separate pendant to protect against ghosts.

  All except Circe.

  In front of Circe, Ari paused for a long minute, and Ari was crying as she slowly pulled the pentacle necklace from her own neck. Circe’s gaze widened as Ariadne placed it over her neck and then whispered into her sister’s ear the proto-Romanian words that passed the status of being the American Wode to Circe.

  “You’ll be excellent,” Ari whispered. She wanted to say a hundred other things. That Lindsey Noel was a snake, that Aunt Beatrix would try to take over, that the job was far harder than she’d ever expect, but instead Ariadne said, “They’re lucky to have you.”

  Circe squeezed Ari tightly as she whispered, “These Brits are lucky to have you, darling.”

  She stepped back and then hummed low. Echo joined in, her athamé in her grip, and then Ariadne. She glanced back and nodded at the Wodes who’d come to join them in the spell. As one, each of their guests reached for the candle that had been laid at the front of each place setting. Magic was taken into focus by each of the witches present, and they followed Echo through the house. She was trailed on the right by Ariadne and on the left by Circe. They were followed by the rest of the Wodes.

  ECHO BEATRIX AZALEA WODE

  Once the family witches joined in on the spell, Echo could feel the ghosts as though she were seeing them. Martha in the kitchens, George in the tower room that had belonged to his brother. An incredibly ancient Wode, offended by Ariadne. Not because she was an American, but because she was a woman. A few with seething fury. Perhaps at being dead, perhaps at what had happened to their line over the generations, perhaps simply because they were inclined towards being angry, but Echo shivered at the feel of them in her head.

  It was only together that Ariadne, Circe, and Echo could be the pied piper of these ghosts, and they walked the house as Hadley had described, holding spelled candles in their hands. They went towards the graveyard, walking through it, around the perimeter of the grove, and ended in the center of the grove where the pentacle rested.

  It was there that the angry ghosts had gathered.

  “You can’t send us back,” one cried out.

  Echo’s connection to the dead identified the fellow as George’s father, the one who had exiled the head of the American Wode line. His fury at his disowned son’s heirs being the ones that were able to re-open Wode house was a physical presence. The man would have vastly preferred the house to have remained closed and in decline until the magic dissolved and leaked into the world around, and the spells and wards were broken.

  His gaze turned on Ariadne and Echo whispered, “Careful, Ari.”

  “I see him,” Ariadne said. “He’s so dark.”

  “It’s his hatred,” Echo said. “Dying didn’t cha
nge his nature. He is what he was, and he was a man who despised people like us, his own son, and everyone who ever failed his own impossible standards.”

  He flew at them, but Echo lifted her athamé, focused her will, and threw him back.

  “A necromancer?” he bellowed. “I shouldn’t be surprised such a thing came from Benjamin.”

  “Thing?” Ari demanded. She met his black gaze with her own. “Are you so ill-informed? Do it, Echo.”

  Echo nodded, but Ari was facing off with the head of the dead who did not wish to leave.

  George chuckled. “Oh, Father. I never realized that the one thing I always wanted to see would be you denied by Benjamin’s child.”

  The dark gaze turned to George as Echo cut through the thinning with her athamé, and those who wished to go back to where they belonged went through without urging. Faces appeared on the other side as the dead made their way through.

  Echo couldn’t let herself get sucked into the emotions of watching the dead reunite. Instead she moved them as quickly as she could with Ari helping to support the hole in the thinning.

  When the last of the willing left, Ariadne reached out with their combined power and threw one of the ghosts who went at her through the thinning. Her eyes were not blazing with their usual green, but with the ghostly, otherworldly light that usually marked Echo’s gaze when she was using her necromancer magic.

  “Ari!” Echo said, surprised. “Darling, that was fabulous.”

  Ari gasped and threw another unwilling ghost at Echo, who shoved the fellow through the thinning of the veil. All around them, Wodes united in directing the magic used by Echo, Ariadne, and Circe, with a few engaged in shooting spells at the ghosts.

  Streaks of light flew among the family and a fellow with red hair gasped, stumbled back, and dropped his candle. When the light went out, Echo felt a small dip in the power and the ghost that was struggling with Ari looked up in glee. He said something so low the living couldn’t hear and then at once, the ghosts flew at the candles and they went out.

  “Oh gods,” someone cried. Another person screamed, and then another.

  “Circe,” Ariadne hissed, “sing something calming. Echo—you’ve the dead.”

  Ariadne stepped into the pentacle and she slammed her hand down and spoke light in proto-Romanian and then reached a hand into the air. Echo felt the surge of magic run through her sister and an orb of light slammed the sky, throwing the ghosts back.

  “Enough!” Ariadne said. “You are no longer the Wode!”

  The leader of the ghosts balled his hand into a fist and attempted to slam it into Ariadne, but she was within the pentacle and not driven by hatred and anger. Echo saw their chance and she pushed necromancy magic at her eldest sister, who fed upon it as she grabbed hold of the ghost’s wrist.

  “I am the Wode!” Ariadne told him, and then using the magic Echo sent her, she chained the ghost to her.

  He had been the focal point for the angry ghosts and when she trapped him, they were all trapped. Echo didn’t hesitate but took her athamé and Circe’s magical strength and threw as many of the ghosts through the thinning as she could. One after another, she banished the ghosts. Finally, Echo paused. She felt three ghosts left and only one concerned her.

  “He’s the last of the angry ones,” Echo told Ariadne, who nodded.

  “Go,” Ari ordered, giving him the same look she gave Medea and Cassiopeia after they’d gotten out of bed for the fifth time.

  “I am not yours to order,” he hissed at her, and then laughed horribly.

  Ari gestured grandly towards the graveyard. His gaze widened as Ariadne asked him, “Do you want me to remove your bones?”

  He growled. “Banish your own kindred from our lands? You would not dare.”

  “I will,” Ariadne said flatly. “Was it not you who broke ties with our forefather? I will not hesitate to break them again. Go.”

  The ghost met her gaze and then stepped through the thinning, glancing back as he said, “We’re not done, girl.”

  Ari’s answer was to wave her hand and shove him the last of the way through. She let go of the spell linking them all together and the clearing broke into cheers as Echo said to Ari, “We have two left.”

  Ariadne stared at Echo in horror.

  “It’s George and Martha,” Echo offered and the worry faded from Ariadne’s face.

  Ariadne knelt in the pentacle and glanced at the Wode who had joined into the battle.

  “I suppose we should be glad we were dealing with ghosts and not Vikings.”

  “Or witch hunters,” Lucian said, taking a seat on a nearby log. “I feel quite ready for an extra pudding and a long winter’s nap.”

  Ariadne laughed and then glanced around. “How can I tell you how grateful I am?”

  “Given that I recognized some of them,” one of the Wode cousins said, “it is we who thank you, Madam Wode.”

  Ariadne breathed in, feeling the beginnings of belonging. “We need to drain the magic off the house still. Perhaps those of you who need power for complicated spells might come by and we’ll do what we can to help while we have it.”

  They made their way slowly back to the house in duos and trios. Closer friends and siblings linked arms and talked low and then one person broke into a Christmas song and one-by-one they were all singing Jingle Bells and letting go of the haunted holiday memories and embracing the one of family united.

  Lucian brought the girls back that evening and Ariadne curled up into her bed with them on either side. Echo and Circe joined them in the massive bed and Circe started speaking first, “When you were born, Cassiopeia, Mama said the stars themselves had stepped down from the heavens and into her arms.”

  Even though Cass had heard the story hundreds of times and every Christmas evening, she asked, “She did?”

  “She did,” Ariadne agreed. “And then she cried. She held you to her chest and she rocked you, crying in joy.”

  A slow tear rolled down Cassiopeia’s face as Medea looked up, waiting.

  “Mama knew she wasn’t going to live when she carried you, Medea,” Echo told the littlest sister. “But she said she could fight for you because she felt your fighting spirit.”

  “But Medea murdered her children,” Medea said as she always did.

  And with the same reply, Circe scoffed, “Mama never believed that.”

  Medea grinned, weaving her fingers through Ariadne’s.

  Echo took the next piece of the story. “She said that you could be sure of a woman’s dangerousness based upon whatever crimes the men who told her story pinned upon her.”

  “Mmm, if the woman was horrible—” Ari started.

  “Then you could be sure she was a fighter,” Circe finished. “Mama knew that our Medea would need to be a fighter, just like the sorceress Medea. After all, our Medea would need to survive without Mama.”

  “I wish I could have known her,” Medea said quietly.

  “You feel her, don’t you?” Echo asked. “In your heart?”

  “I do,” Cassiopeia said and Ariadne agreed.

  “What would she think of us now?” Medea asked. “We left home.”

  “Home isn’t a house, silly,” Echo said. “It’s just us, together.”

  Their gazes turned to Circe, who had been handed the ability to return to America. Circe leaned back, wrapping her arm around Medea. “I was thinking that after these needy Wode houses are in order we should take the chance to visit Belgium. They make the best chocolate in the world there.”

  “You aren’t leaving?” Medea breathed in hope.

  “Not yet.” Circe glanced at Ariadne. “I never wanted anything more than to be the Wode. But it turns out what I really want is to be with my sisters. Merry Christmas, darling.”

  The sisters settled back into the pillows together and when Christmas morning came, the stockings were filled, the presents were under the trees, and the clever Martha who had escaped returning to the other side of the veil had filled
the table with an excess of holiday treats. Christmas had come.

  The END

  Hullo friends! I am so grateful you dove in and read the latest Bright Young Witches Book. If you wouldn’t mind, I would be so grateful for a review.

  The next book in this series will be available in early 2020. Until then, you might just enjoy the next book in the Violet Carlyle Historical Mysteries. Hijinks & Murder will be available at the end of this month.

  January 1926

  Violet has received an obscure note, a strange request, and the claim of a murder. She’d like to ignore it, but the writer knows too much about her.

  Has someone died? Who is the author of the note and why are they dragging Violet into this crime? Just what is going on and will Violet be able to reach the bottom of this madness?

  Also By Beth Byers

  The Violet Carlyle Historical Mysteries

  Murder & the Heir

  Murder at Kennington House

  Murder at the Folly

  A Merry Little Murder

  New Year’s Madness: A Short Story Anthology

  Valentine’s Madness: A Short Story Anthology

  Murder Among the Roses

  Murder in the Shallows

  Gin & Murder

  Obsidian Murder

  Murder at the Ladies Club

  Weddings Vows & Murder

  A Jazzy Little Murder

  Murder by Chocolate

  A Friendly Little Murder

  Murder by the Sea

  Murder On All Hallows

  Murder in the Shadows