Elemental Shadows

by Phaedra Weldon

  "You mean a Cyber Witch?"

  "Yeah. He ever run across others?"

  I pursed my lips. "He's never said. Most of the stuff he can do is self taught, though recently he's been displaying a few more abilities."

  "Like what?"

  I shook my head. "Why are we whispering? There's no one in here but us."

  Crwys's expression worried me. "Are you sure? Can your magic sense things that aren't there?"

  "You mean like ghosts?" I searched his face, my gaze lingering on those red amber eyes. "You think a ghost is in my shop? There's no way, Crwys. I've got wards on wards to keep out the dead—"

  He put a finger on my lips. Man, it was all I could do not to bite it. "Sshh. Just answer me. Do you have magic to detect invisible entities?"

  "No. But I'm sure Kyle can make something." I narrowed my eyes at him. "You wanna tell me what this is about? Why are you talking about ghosts? And why arrest Arden when you know she didn't kill those Elders?"

  "So you know they're Elders."

  I sighed. "Because Arden told me. Weren't you listening? Or were you too focused on her boobs? That's why she was here. She wanted my help finding out who's framing her."

  Crwys nodded slowly, but I got the feeling he wasn't really paying attention. "That's a good theory, but who said she was framed?"

  "She did not kill those men."

  "Can you be so sure?" He refocused on me. "How much do you really know about her? About her past? It's pretty colorful. She likes power. And from what I've gathered, those three were the only ones blocking her bid for Grand Master."

  "I know more about her than I know about you. And you expect me to trust you." A shadow passed along the back wall of the shop and I glanced at the front windows. The clouds were out and the only activity outside was a bunch of tourists taking pictures of the socialite in the back seat of the black and white cop cars.

  Where had the shadow come from?

  "Touché. But, do me a favor, ask Kyle to make something to detect things you can't see, okay? I'll pay him."

  "You want a ghost detector."

  "Yes," he raised his shoulders in an odd shrug. "More like a multi-planner dimensional detector."

  "Crwys—"

  "Say yes."

  I sighed. "Yes."

  He lowered his voice again. "Fingerprints were found on the keyboard they were writing those emails too. And they all matched back to Arden Vervain."

  "That's not DNA. That's fingerprints. And you and I know that kind of thing can be screwed up with magic."

  "The DNA is going to come from hairs."

  "Hairs? This is about hairs? She said she talked to them on Sunday. Had dinner with them. There is a logical explanation her hair might be on their jackets or something."

  "These were in their underwear."

  Well that stopped me. Also deadened any sexual desire I was feeling at that moment. The thought of Arden…ew. "Weren't these guys like, in their sixties?"

  "Two were older," Crwys made a pained face. "Those tests they can't rush, so we're still waiting on the DNA."

  "Meaning it might not be Arden's and you lied. She's going to make bail."

  "Probably. Her lawyer's already at the station. Who else do you know with long dark hair and motive to silence three old men?"

  I put my hand against the wall as another shadow moved over the opposite wall. Again I looked out the window. No movement, other than Levi smoking a cigarette.

  "Why do you keep looking at the wall?"

  "Not sure," I said as I stepped away from him and walked around the shop. I held out my right hand and called up a small white sphere made of Spirit. It was by definition, an extension of my own. It lifted up and moved around the room like a sensor, looking into every corner and crevice of the shop.

  When it came near the computer, the feedback from it felt like knives slicing down my back. I dismissed it immediately and the pain stopped. I'd put my hands to my head and pressed my palms over my eyes.

  "Sam? Baby please…look at me."

  Baby?

  That was the gentlest tone I'd heard Crwys use with me since we broke off the relationship. I opened my eyes and looked up at him through my fingers. He had his hands on my shoulders and he was very, very close. Every magical thread in my body inched toward him. The blood that made me what I was demanded him.

  My breathing hitched and I put my hands on his chest. He was breathing hard as well and we were in the middle of the shop now, almost arm in arm.

  "You're….you're an Incubus, aren't you?"

  He laughed. "No. I'm not. We met one of those, remember?"

  I smiled at him. "Yeah, we did."

  Someone knocked on the front door. Loud.

  We both turned to see Levi visible through the window. He pointed to his watch.

  "I gotta go." Crwys disengaged and my body instantly cooled.

  Well, if he wasn't an Incubus, he sure as hell should be. I took in a few deep breaths but I was gonna have a headache.

  "Sam, if you come up with anything in your case with Arden, let me know?"

  I didn't say a word, nor did I nod or shake my head as I watched him leave. He and Levi got into Crwys's Mustang and pulled away, the black and white carrying Arden, long gone.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. This was never a good sign. I pivoted slowly to look behind me just as I heard Grey growling low in her throat. I tiptoed through my own shop, looking around bookcases and tables to find my wolf and see what she was growling at.

  I was unnerved when I saw her backside sticking out from behind the counter in the back. "Hey girl…you sense something creepy too?"

  She didn't stop growling as I came around. She was low on her front paws, her lips pulled back and all kinds of teeth showing. Her gaze was fixed on the corner of the shop where the computer was.

  Where Ivan usually sat.

  I immediately summoned my dex. White pentagrams appeared in various shapes then switched colors as they took up the Elements to summon Spirit. They spun and rocked in the air between Grey and I and the computer area.

  Nothing.

  Not a damn thing came up.

  My phone rang. I yelled out. The pentagrams vanished and Grey barked.

  My heart was in my throat as I fumbled at my back pocket. Sweet Lady…that scared the crap out of me. I finally got the damn thing out, cursing the whole time how Ivan's presence made electronic devices possible, and looked at the phone's face.

  I paused.

  That wasn't a name I expected to see.

  Pauline Hawthorne.

  My stepmother.

  I thought about sending it to voicemail. But I'd done that for the past three months; avoiding the guilt she was going to lay down on me. When the shop's name showed up in the local papers for vandalism she called every day for a week after that.

  Mom disappeared when I was eight. No one really explained to me what happened. The cover answer had always been she was working undercover—she was a homicide detective—and the job took her away. The truth had been much darker.

  She'd been an Elemental Witch like me, and she was her Coven's Tracker as well as the district's, as I learned later. She'd been after what I discovered was a Leviathan, a creature much like a Revenant (they were from the same family). Revenants were made when the possessing demon was invited in to share the body. Leviathans took bodies, used them, and often times rode the host souls like slaves. So when the body took damage, the soul felt it, not the Leviathan.

  This particular Leviathan, whose demon's name was Dionysus, tracked my mother down and made a deal with the Obsidian Queen of the Faeries, Medbh, to kill my mother in exchange for the Leviathan's host soul. Medbh did take my mother, but Dionysus skipped hosts in her plan to cheat the Queen. He took refuge inside my mother's best friend, the Witch who tried to complete the Arcane spell that would exorcise Dionysus and send him back to the Well of Souls.

  Without my mother, the spell failed. And Inamorata Devonsh
ire became a Leviathan.

  But the story didn't end there. No…Medbh found Dionysus and took the soul, fusing the Leviathan to the host body. Dionysus hid in plain sight after that for eighteen years.

  As my aunt. She moved in with my dad and took care of me. Taught me magic and I had no idea that the reason I didn't have my mother was tucking me into my bed at night. Dionysus was biding her time until the opportunity came to reverse the Faerie Queen's deal and take another soul. It was just magic justice that I ended up in possession of that same Faerie's head nearly two decades later.

  But when I turned twelve my dad met Pauline Willbanks. They fell in love and I thought she was good for him. She didn't get along with Ina and gave my dad an ultimatum. Choose one or the other.

  Dad chose Pauline. And Ina convinced me that I was better off living with her so that she could continue teaching me magic and my dad would have the chance of a normal life.

  Then a few weeks ago, I learned that truth. I killed an innocent. And Dionysus got that poor girl's soul.

  And now, thinking back on it, I wondered if dad knew the truth all along about why mom disappeared. I thought about visiting him and asking him about that time. That night. I wanted to pick through his memories.

  But that just wasn't possible anymore.

  Because George Hawthorne had been diagnosed with dementia a year ago and it was a rare day when he knew who I was.

  "Hello Pauline," I said as I leaned against the register counter. I wasn't completely over my little ghost scare and Grey looked like she was still watching Ivan's computer. Crwys's ghost spell request wasn't helping my mood either. "How's it going?"

  "Well I'll be," came the surprised response. Pauline was a kind woman, a retired nurse and a Godsend when it came to handling dad these days. "You actually exist."

  I ignored the barb. "Yes. I've been busy."

  "I'll say. You fix things after that vandalism? Those cops in New Orleans find those wretched people?" Pauline had a very southern accent, something that wasn't exactly Mississippi or Louisiana, but more mid-Georgia.

  "Yes ma'am. They caught them. Everything's fine." I kept looking at the computer and at the corner as I put my free hand on Grey's neck. "What's up, Polly. Why did you call?"

  "Oh Sam, it's your father."

  "What…he didn't run away again did he?" To say dad ran away was a little funny to me. The truth was he tended to start out on an afternoon walk and just kept going. "Did he mess with the hospice nurse again?"

  "No, Adelaide doesn't work with us anymore. She complained about him and vice versa. New nurse is named Robbie. She's a doll. I like her a lot," Polly paused and I stopped petting Grey. "This is something else."

  "It's his condition, isn't it? It's gotten worse?"

  "I can't tell. He's started talking to the wall in the den."

  I blinked a few times, trying to digest that as the door opened and a customer came in. She was tall and well endowed and waved at me like she knew me. I smiled and made sure she saw I was on the phone. Yeah, I know, it was rude for a store owner to be on the phone while a customer was around, but…eh…screw it. "What exactly does that mean?"

  "It means he's in his chair facing away—the one by the fire—and he's talking away to the corner where the computer sits. Just having a conversation. I mentioned it to the doctor, but he seemed to think it was normal. I don't. He's never done that before."

  "Polly, it is dementia."

  "I'm a retired nurse, Samantha, I know what dementia is. But I also know every patient is different and it effects people different. I might be a bit more forgiving of the doc's assessment, except…"

  I kept an eye on the customer as I moved behind the counter, in case she wanted to buy something. "Polly…except what?"

  "Yesterday, George was talking to the wall and it was like an argument. He started yelling and shouting. I was in the kitchen making us lunch. I heard something crash so I ran in and found him hurtling things at that same corner. He busted three of those antique vases on the shelf."

  Now I had a better idea in my head what part of the den he was talking to. Polly's computer was in the farthest corner, in the nook where mom and dad once had matching chairs. It was where they liked to unwind and talk at the end of the day.

  But even though I knew in what direction he was hurling things, the panic my dad might be becoming manic in some way and could hurt Polly kicked in. "Is he okay? Are you okay? He didn't try to hit you, did he?"

  "No. He didn't. But he…when I took the last vase from him and told him to calm down, he grabbed my arm and said…" Polly breathed into the phone. "Sam, he said I had to call you."

  "Call…me?"

  "His exact words were, call Sam. She's got to come and exorcise her mother."

  The woman browsing the small, engraved stones in the far corner made a strange movement with her hand. I reached out with a few of what I called my feels, extensions of me that could sense and sort of 'see' things. Like what she just put in her pocket.

  It was a small stone, engraved with the word Laugh on it. It was all of three bucks, and this chick was going to shoplift? I pulled on the strings of those feels, willed a bit of Earth down the connection—specific to rock—and launched that rock right out of her pocket so it landed a few feet from the door.

  The woman looked startled when the rock made a noise on the hardwood floor and looked at me with a confused look on her face. I smiled and waved goodbye as she left the shop.

  Probably going to think the place is haunted now. And with that thought, Medbh came to mind. Though she'd been a pain in the ass since I brought her home, she had given the place a sort of atmosphere with her sporadic giggling and singing. And yeah, everyone heard her.

  "Sam?"

  "Sorry. I had a customer." I refocused on what my dad had said. Dad knew, had known that is, that I was a Witch. He'd knowingly married one. So calling for me to get rid of a ghost was actual, cognitive thinking. The fact he was talking to a ghost or could possibly see one well enough to throw things at it? That was a little frightening. I mean was it real considering what had been happening all morning on my end? Or was it the dementia? How did you know?

  Him saying the ghost was my mom both intrigued and irritated me. I didn't really know that much about ghosts. I hadn't met many over the years and usually I'd been able to explain hauntings logically. Magnetic fields, noisy pipes, and the usual over active imagination.

  "Polly…you're a nurse. Do you think he's really seeing something?"

  Her laugh caught me off guard. And then I remembered Pauline didn't know anything about me, about what I was, or what my mother had been. "I think he thinks he's seeing something in his mind. That's dementia. Whatever is going on, I'm sort of reluctant to take him to the doctor."

  "You think they'll want him in a home."

  "Yeah. He was throwing things, Sam. And when they start getting violent, doctors usually like them in a facility where that can be addressed."

  I knew what that meant. Addressed meaning they could dope him up to make him non-violent.

  That bruised my heart knowing my dad had never been violent in his life. This was the same man who used to capture spiders in the house to take them outside before me or Ina stomped them.

  I don't like spiders.

  But dad? He loved everything.

  "You think me coming to see him might help?"

  "That's what I'm hoping."

  Yeah, I could see that. She and dad still lived in Picayune, which was just over an hour's drive from New Orleans. The problem was everything going on in my life, especially and most importantly, dealing with that threat of Arden's warlocking by Cleric assholes. I checked the clock over the door. The boys had been gone a long time, and I was getting hungry. I was also feeling like the entire world had taken up residence on my shoulders. "Polly, I understand. But there's no way I can get there this week. You think he'll hold out till maybe next Wednesday?" That gave me about four days to clear all this bullshit
up, and hopefully clear Arden's name.

  She didn't answer at first and I could feel her disappointment through the phone. "Yeah. If he asks again I'll tell him you're getting here as fast as you can."

  "Thanks Polly. I'm sorry. It's just crazy here."

  "It's New Orleans, Sammie…" Polly said as she laughed. It sounded hollow. "It's always crazy."

  We hung up and I pulled Ivan's stool from the creepy corner and sat on it. I really did feel the weight of everything at that moment. Mine and Robin's increasing arguments, the stress of worrying if my use of Arcane was going to manifest somehow into something horrible, the truth about Arwen's death I hid from everyone, Arden's request for help to find who was framing her, the warlock threat which now depended on me finding their damn Hammer, and now my dad.

  Was his dementia getting that bad? I didn't know. I was ashamed I hadn't kept up with him, or Polly. I had been too involved in my own drama to take a peek outside of my own world.

  What really sucked about it all was that usually when I started feeling like this, I went to Ina.

  But Ina didn't exist. She'd never been real. To me.

  And now she was gone, somewhere in the world. I hated to think Dionysus would abandon that body somewhere and leave it to rot alone. Inamorata had been my mom's closest friend. She didn't deserve to have her life taken like that. The only comfort I had was knowing Medbh took her soul and returned it to the well before Dionysus could abuse it.

  I wiped at my cheek and looked down at the beautiful face looking up at me. Grey whined a few times and I leaned forward to kiss the top of her head. "Just having a little pity party, girl. Not sure where to turn. I need to talk to someone, but it can't be Ina."

  Grey woofed.

  "Yeah, and I just can't talk to Crwys."

  Grey's ears twitched back then forward, almost in a question.

  "Because he confuses me. It's bad enough he's part owner of this place now. Not to mention every time I see him I want to take my clothes off."

  Grey growled low in her throat.

  I laughed at her. "I'm not falling into that trap again. Not till I know exactly what it is I'm sleeping with." I cringed after I said that. It was just wrong.