by Horn, J. D.
By J.D. Horn
Witching Savannah
The Line
The Source
The Void
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2014 by J.D. Horn
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
Cover illustration by Patrick Arrasmith
ISBN-13: 9781477825747
ISBN-10: 1477825746
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014908567
To beautiful Savannah and the people who love her
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
“Newspaper says a road crew found another part of that poor woman out on Hutchinson Island.” Claire grabbed a towel and a spray bottle from the bar and moved from one table to another, misting each with a cleaner that smelled of mint before wiping them like she meant to purge them of original sin. Magh Meall, the bar she owned along with Peter’s father, Colin, would be opening soon for the evening. Claire’s petite frame buzzed from one task to the next. Her tight dark curls bounced as she sped through her pre-opening routine. I noticed a few stands of silver had worked their way into those curls of late. I felt certain that the graying was due to the stress of losing Peadar, her true son, and the threat of losing Peter, the changeling she had raised as her own—the changeling I had married.
“I wish you’d let me help,” I offered.
She responded by shaking her towel at me. “Sit.” It was a command. “I got this.” I had known Claire half my life, and I loved her with all my heart. I was proud to call her my mother-in-law. “They found a hand,” she said, returning to the macabre report. “Didn’t say which, but they are sure it’s from the same body.” Luckily I was past the stage of my pregnancy that would make the wholesome smell of the mint seem noxious. The image of a dismembered body was nearly enough to send me running to the ladies’ room; two weeks ago the scent of the cleaner would have tipped the scales.
Claire didn’t seem to take note of my discomfort. “Detective Cook and associates don’t seem to be making much headway.” She stopped mid-swipe and looked over her shoulder at me. “He hasn’t shared any interesting tidbits with you?”
No, Adam hadn’t shared anything with me. At least not intentionally. I had—without wanting to—picked up some images. Another wave of nausea threatened to whelm my resolve not to lose my lunch, and I fought to push it away. Outside of his screamingly nebulous impression of the woman’s description—probably middle-aged, definitely Caucasian—a few of his stray thoughts had also registered, the most horrible one being even though parts of the body had been showing up over the Savannah area for nearly two weeks, each part was still absolutely fresh when found. That the parts showed no decay or evidence of refrigeration hadn’t been made public knowledge. Still, it meant one of two things. Either the parts were being removed from a living woman. Or, whoever was behind the dismemberment knew a thing or two about magic. Regardless of which, Adam had been working surreptitiously with both Oliver and Iris to find this woman, another fact that had not found its way into Claire’s paper, and I wasn’t about to mention it.
Claire’s voice went a half octave higher, coming out a bit softer. “Or maybe he’s shared something with your uncle that’s filtered through to you.”
“Good lord, woman,” Colin said, giving his wife a playful swat on the behind as he passed her. His short but wiry body danced away from the swat of her towel. She glared at him, but her mock anger quickly melted into a different kind of heat as she fixed her gaze on her husband. A smile passed between them.
“I tell you, Mercy, I don’t understand this morbid fascination Claire has developed around this murder,” Colin said to me. “It’s the Celt in her, I’m sure of that.” His black eyes sparkled.
“Oh, that’s a fine thing coming from a Paddy such as yourself,” she said taking another swipe at him with her towel. This one connected with a sharp thwack. “I have no fascination, morose or otherwise. I simply want to know that the nutter behind all this will be put safely away,” she said, turning back to her work. “My heart goes out to this poor woman. No one deserves such a thing. I shudder to think that the choices she made, innocent or perilous, could lead to such a despicable end. Although I suppose even the little decisions you make can lead to disaster.”
“September questions every choice, till October chills the air.” Colin sang the words to a melody I did not recognize. “November swears the days grow not short, till dark December her lie lays bare.”
“Don’t make light of my feelings by quoting your maudlin poet.”
“Ah, my love.” The words came out in a warm timbre. “I’m not making light of your feelings, I’m trying to make your feelings light. Besides Mac an Fhailghigh is a fine poet,” he said with a wink at me. “Although admittedly he does suffer somewhat in translation.”
I could see the aura around Claire growing darker as she turned away and began cleaning another table. She had so many feelings, a knotted ball of hopes and fears, disappointments and angers, love and regret. I didn’t read her thoughts as much as I read frustration at failing to find a way to express them. I could almost see her suppressing the emotions that had started to surface. “Which choices do you question?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, dear?” She looked up at me, pretending she hadn’t understood my question as a way to buy herself more time.
“Which choices do you question?”
Her forehead creased and her jaw tightened, but only for a moment. She cast a guilty look at her husband.
“Go on, then,” he said to her. “I’d be interested in hearing your answer too.”
Claire licked her lips. “I have no regrets over choosing you, Mr. Tierney,” she said trying to adopt a playful tone, but then she shook her head. “I wouldn’t trade you for any other man, my love.” An earnestness now filled her voice. “It’s only sometimes I ask myself how our life might be different if we hadn’t come to America.”
“Coming to A
merica was our dream,” Colin said and raised his hands gesturing around the tavern as he turned. “This was our dream.”
“Of course. And I feel blessed every day to be here with you. Sharing the life we have. I just worry. I worry about the forces that have found us, that have taken root in our lives.” She turned quickly toward me. “I don’t mean you, my girl. I mean . . . the others. I fear for all they can take from us.” I knew when she said “us,” I had been included in the pronoun.
My hand fell protectively to my stomach. I wasn’t exactly sure who she meant by “the others.” There were so many “others” now, so many who wanted to do my family and me harm. The worst of all of them was my own mother, Emily Rose Taylor. Every time I thought of her name, I saw it as it appeared engraved on the tombstone at Bonaventure. The marker still stood there, the name and dates unchanged, but now I knew the grave lay empty.
Claire was right. Emily had nearly taken Peter from us, and it remained still very much in her power to do so. She knew he wasn’t human, that he was a Fae changeling. She also knew all it would take to steal him from us was to reveal this truth to him.
Unlike the child growing in me, Peter had no true footing in this world. The human child for whom he’d been exchanged had been returned to us. Sadly that return had come too late for a joyful reunion. Time moved at too great a differential between the world of the Fae and our own. The baby returned an elderly man; Claire and Colin’s true son now lay buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery.
I didn’t understand the reason for the exchange, but Claire and Colin’s biological son had taken Peter’s place in the world of the Fae, and Peter had taken that of the human child. The Fae who made the deal with Claire and Colin had warned them, the spell that bound him to our world was easily broken. Like waking from a dream, should Peter learn his true nature, the Fae spell would be undone. He’d have no choice but to return to his place of origin. Staying here would only drive him mad or kill him. And that was all the information she’d offered. Just a vague and useless warning. Not a single bit of advice we could use to protect him from learning the truth or fix the situation should the worst come to happen.
“The happiness we’ve built is so fragile,” Claire said. “I love you, my girl, and you know I love the baby you are carrying, but I wonder. I wonder if we had stayed in Dublin . . . or if we’d left Savannah while Peter was still small.” She looked at me. “Or if I hadn’t been such a fool and invited that foul magician and his entourage into our lives—”
“No.” I held up my hand to stop her. “I am convinced Emily knew long before you contacted Ryder. You were somehow led, maybe even spelled into doing so.” It was Emily who had turned Ryder into a collector, a person who could steal someone’s life force and convert it into magical energy. Emily’s consort, Josef, who also happened to be my own half brother through my father, had followed Ryder into this very bar, looking for all the world like Ryder’s devoted puppy. Later, Josef cut his master’s throat, offering him and the demon Ryder had drawn into himself in order to power Emily’s dark spell. At his end, Ryder was so high on drugs, I cannot say if he ever registered that he had been marked as a sacrifice all along.
Claire had asked me to take Peter’s secret to my grave, but that cat was already long out of the bag by the time she’d asked. And I was certain the line’s other anchors had also put two and two together, so Claire agreed it was best to bring my aunts and uncle into the know also. Aunt Iris had been researching tirelessly, trying to discover a loophole, a way to anchor my husband in this world, but witches had very little knowledge concerning Fae magic, and due to the recent conflict with the line’s other anchors, sources that might have once been forthcoming to her veiled inquiries had dried up. The best solution we’d been able to improvise was Ellen’s idea, so Uncle Oliver compelled Peter neither to hear nor see anything that might lead him to ascertain the truth about his link to the Fae. Still, we never spoke openly about the Fae.
Tucker Perry had financed Peter’s dream of starting his own construction firm, but Peter’s fledgling company hadn’t stood a chance without Tucker’s backing and connections, especially since Peter’s pride made him incapable of accepting financial or magical aid from me. I still had trouble processing that my mother had arranged Tucker’s murder for the sole purpose of bringing my Aunt Ellen pain. Another life Emily had ended, wasted, in the sole aim of stealing one more chance of happiness from her big sister.
And since Peter’s old boss was not one to forgive Peter’s attempt to become a competitor, there was no place for him on his old crew. So with our baby on the way, Peter had returned to working at Magh Meall, his parents’ bar, full-time. Even after his dream died on the vine, Peter carried on, his warm and wonderful smile always on his lips. He remained optimistic, sure now that we were together everything else in life would sort itself out, provided he maintained a positive attitude and backed his outlook with enough sweat.
The mere thought of his smile brought one to my own face. “Somehow . . . and I don’t know how,” I said sliding myself off the barstool and crossing to Claire, “it will be okay. I promise.”
I kissed her cheek, and she dropped the cloth she had been using on the table. She pulled me into her arms. “I’m holding you to that, my girl.” Her lips arched up into a tremulous smile.
“I should be going,” I said. I had dropped by the tavern hoping to see Peter before opening, but Claire had sent him out on errands, and I was due home. “Y’all need to finish getting ready to open, and I promised Aunt Iris I’d help her and Ellen do the shopping for Thanksgiving. This year we’re pulling out all the stops, since Iris has someone special to impress.”
“She still seeing that young lad of hers, then?” Colin called out from behind the bar.
I laughed. “She sure is, and I think it’s turning serious.” Sam was not a witch, and he was twenty years younger than my aunt. All the same, he was sincere and sweet and doted on her. He had been at her side practically since the night of Peadar’s wake, when Oliver had spun Iris into his arms. Iris was totally besotted with her black-haired, blue-eyed, square-jawed beau. After she had wasted so many years married to Connor, I was thrilled to see her experience this exciting, new, and very much requited love with Sam.
“You’re not worried about her?” Claire asked. “I mean, he isn’t like you. These things usually don’t last long between a normal person and a witch, do they?”
“Ah, my dear, don’t be the dark cloud to one of our few silver linings.” Colin leaned against the bar.
“A regular person and a witch,” I corrected her, flashing back to a similar conversation I’d had with my Aunt Ellen a few months, no, a lifetime ago. I smiled at Claire to let her know I wasn’t really offended. “And you are right. Things like this usually don’t even get started between a regular person and a witch. When they do, they don’t usually endure.” Something about a witch’s otherworldliness usually prevented a regular person from forming a lasting liaison with her. Adam and Oliver were one of the few exceptions I knew of, and the only reason their relationship didn’t suffer was because Oliver had long ago compelled Adam not to sense the oddness that might have otherwise driven the two apart. “Sam had a motorcycle accident a few years back. He was wearing a helmet, but his head still got smacked pretty hard. He lost his sense of smell, and it looks like the aversion most folk have to magic too.”
“Keep Ellen away from him then. We don’t want her patching up his snoot and breaking his heart at the same time,” Colin said and chuckled. He’d meant it as a joke, but Ellen and I had already had a very serious conversation about that very possibility.
“I’ll make sure she keeps clear of him,” I said. “I’ll see you all later.”
Claire reached out to give my hand a slight squeeze. “I wish you’d wait till Peter gets back to drive you home. I don’t like the idea of you traipsing around out there by yourself these days.”
I smiled and held my hand up before her eyes, letting blue sparks of magic dance along my fingertips. “I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, I guess you can at that.” Her shoulders relaxed. I knew she saw my magic as a mixed blessing. A very large part of Claire wished she could have had a normal son who would have married a normal girl. Then there was the side of her that didn’t give a damn about normal. “We love you. We really do,” she said, and her eyes crinkled.
“And I really love you two too.” I rubbed my stomach and winked at her. “We both do.” Her fingers wiggled in the air as a true smile returned to her lips. She grasped my bulging stomach gently. “Good-bye, my little love.” She leaned in and pecked my cheek then released me.
I went to the door and pushed back the deadbolt. I turned back, my eyes suddenly hungry for one more look at them. I raised my hand and gave them a slight wave.
“Our best to Iris,” Colin called out as I let the door close behind me.
Savannah was enjoying an unseasonably warm stretch this autumn; the thermometer had even hit eighty degrees. The air from the river was cooling things off a bit now. Still, the late afternoon was beautiful. Even though I was enjoying the walk, I realized how much I missed my faithful bike, the same beat-up old thing I’d been riding since I’d turned twelve. I missed the woven basket and the jammed and worthless warning bell. I’d stored the bike away a couple months ago, once I had grown too ponderous to ride.
I was only now coming to the end of my second trimester, but I was as big as if the pregnancy had already reached full term. I patted my precocious bump. “Mama’s gonna buy you a bike trailer, little man,” I said to my baby, my little Colin, dreaming of taking him on long rides, giving him his first views of his hometown, beautiful Savannah.
It worried me when I first began to balloon that there might be something wrong, but Ellen assured me that she sensed the baby’s development was coming along fine, if a tad more quickly than anyone might have expected. “Little Colin seems to be perfectly healthy, but he is part witch and part fairy,” Ellen had reminded me. “We have no reason to believe the pregnancy will unfold along a human timeline.”
