The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  “Oh … that!”

  Zoe shook her head. “You’re such a scatterbrain sometimes.”

  She stepped back into the wardrobe and turned around when she was standing in the hollow again. “Hurry up.”

  “Okay … okay!”

  Zoe pulled the door most of the way closed again to give Penny some privacy, stopping just short of latching it. Penny took quick advantage of it to change into something a little more rugged than her pajamas.

  No time for a shower that morning. Apparently they were having a busy day.

  * * *

  Penny changed and swept a brush through her tangle of hair, then crept downstairs to leave a note for Susan next to the coffee pot, which she regarded longingly before creeping back upstairs. She stepped through the door into Aurora Hollow five minutes later.

  Katie had laid the half-dozen ash sticks on a large rock near the fire pit, next to the assortment of crystals they’d selected. A small toolbox was open in her lap.

  She met Penny’s questioning look with a wide, wicked grin.

  “My dad’s,” she said. “If he knew I had it, he’d be so pissed.”

  She paused for a second, perhaps to take some undiluted joy in the knowledge, then opened the box and pulled out an assortment of drill bits.

  “She’s crazed,” Zoe said matter-of-factly. “I’m just going to stand back and watch.”

  “Oh no, you aren’t!” Katie fixed Zoe with a look that reminded Penny of Aunt Nancy. “You get to match which crystal will fit which wand best.”

  Then she turned to Penny, “And you get to sand them smooth so we don’t get slivers.”

  She pulled out a package of sandpaper and flung it at Penny like a Frisbee.

  Penny impressed herself by catching it as it spun toward her head, then tore the cellophane off and selected a sheet of the finest grain she could find.

  Zoe’s seemed by far the easiest task of the three, but Penny wasn’t going to complain. Compared to Katie’s slow, tedious chore, sanding the already smooth ash sticks to a velvety texture was quick work. Penny and Zoe had finished completely before Katie finished her first.

  “Done!” Katie sounded manic with triumph as she fit a light blue crystal, which Zoe had identified as tourmaline, into the hole she’d painstakingly hand-drilled. The fit was nearly perfect; she’d chosen the size of the drill bit to match the crystal, and, when she’d pushed it in all the way, no more than a centimeter of the crystal’s tip was visible.

  Penny and Zoe waited in growing anticipation.

  “What now?” Penny found the expectation a much-needed distraction from her private concerns of the past few weeks.

  “The First Magic seals the crystal to the wand.” Katie held the wand close to her face, scrutinizing Penny’s work, testing the smoothness with her hands, flexing the wood slightly to feel its strength.

  “Does it matter what the first magic is?” Zoe was almost trembling with anticipation.

  Katie tore her loving gaze from her new wand and regarded them. “It’s called The First Magic. It’s when a wand takes its first breath.”

  “She’s speaking in metaphors now,” Zoe whispered to Penny, then hushed when Katie’s eyes narrowed in her direction.

  “Go on,” Penny said.

  Katie nodded, and now her excitement seemed to be turning to nerves.

  Penny could tell that Katie had no more idea what to expect than she did.

  Katie pointed her new wand skyward, and something began to happen almost at once. Light spilled from between the fingers clenched around the wand’s handle, coursing up toward the tip; and the crystal began to glow bright blue. Then the light faded, the glow around the wood dimmed, but the crystal glowed more brightly still, until it was almost too bright to look at. Then, with a bang like gunfire, the blue light expanded in a bubble that filled the hollow, engulfing them all, and just as quickly vanished.

  But for several seconds, everything in Aurora Hollow glowed: the trees, the rocks, the flowing water, the girls.

  They regarded each other with varying expressions, Penny with near panic, Zoe with wide-eyed and grinning wonder, Katie with clear pride.

  “I think it worked.”

  Chapter 11

  The Snake in the Grass

  Katie finished a second wand with a deep-orange topaz while Penny searched the old book for the spell that had gotten her and her bicycle airborne the day before. She finally located it, a single page filled with writing, surrounded by dozens of blank pages. Most of the pages in the old book were still blank. Still a lot to learn.

  Bright light filled the hollow again, drawing Penny’s attention away from the book. She waited for the final echo of The First Magic spell to die out and the bright topaz glow around the hollow to dim.

  “I bet that’s beautiful at night,” Zoe said, then joined Penny in regarding the page before them. She read, bending low over the page when she reached the invocation. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Penny said. “I don’t speak … whatever that is.”

  Zoe passed the tip of her wand over the two lines, but they resolutely refused to change to something she could understand.

  “I don’t think saying it in English would work,” Penny said.

  “But we have no idea what it says,” Zoe said. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “No,” Penny said in perfect honesty. “We’ve been following this book’s instructions for months and it hasn’t hurt us.”

  Zoe remained dubious.

  “Kind of looks like Latin,” Katie said, joining them to show off her handiwork. “This one’s for Ellen.”

  She passed the wand to Zoe, who nodded in evident appreciation and gave it a little wave through the air. A faint orange trail followed the topaz tip, lingering for only a second. Zoe pointed it at a sapling that stood at the hollow’s perimeter, dwarfed by its nearest neighbors. The little tree shuddered, then grew half a foot before their eyes, twisting its way upward through the air and sprouting new branches along its narrow trunk.

  She passed it into Penny’s waiting hand, then regarded her old one, the black wand they’d taken from Tovar, with something like disappointment.

  When the wand touched her hand, Penny knew why. The long, shiny black wood with the tiny jewel point felt different than the old bent wand she used, or the new ones Katie was making. Penny knew which she preferred.

  “We can make yours next,” Penny said, then pointed the topaz wand at the fire pit and lit a fire. It worked well … perhaps too well.

  Katie flinched from the inferno but refused to let it out of her sight until it had died down.

  “Latin,” Zoe said, attempting to get back on topic. “Are you sure?”

  “No,” Katie said, taking the wand from Penny and admiring it one last time before placing it in the chest with their incomplete wands. “I said it looks like Latin. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.”

  “How do you know what Latin looks like?” Penny didn’t doubt her but was curious. She didn’t think they taught Latin at middle-school level, even to advanced students like Katie.

  “My dad’s a lawyer,” Katie reminded Penny. “Half the books in his library have Latin in them.”

  “Well, I guess we should go get our bikes,” Zoe said, her desire to get airborne clearly winning out over her apprehension to recite the indecipherable invocation.

  Katie nodded and dashed to the door, using her new wand with obvious relish, then stepped back into her bedroom.

  “I’ll see you guys a bit later,” Penny told Zoe, starting for the steep trail to the field above them. “I told Susan I was going out for a walk so she’ll be expecting me to walk back.”

  “See you,” Zoe said, stepping through the door to her room.

  It took only one trip up the steep old trail for Penny to decide that she preferred traveling to and from the hollow by magic rather than the old way. The door was much more dignified than slipping and falling in the dirt. Much less
sweaty, too.

  * * *

  Penny found Ronan crouched in the grass at the edge of the downward slope to her house, watching intently.

  “Hey,” she said, keeping her voice low. Susan probably already thought she was weird enough without hearing her talk to invisible animals. “What’s so interesting down there?”

  Ronan did not turn, did not move so much as an inch.

  “Ronan?”

  “Quiet,” he said. His voice was only slightly louder than a whisper, but the anger in it was evident. “Get down here … hide yourself in the grass. Don’t let them see you.”

  Penny lowered herself and crept to his side.

  She could see the house below them, a strange truck parked in front. New and shiny black. No one she knew in town owned a truck like that.

  “Who’s …,” and before she could even finish asking the question, she saw the truck’s owner.

  He sat next to Susan on the cozy porch swing. Though they sat at opposite ends, maintaining a prim distance between them, the man leaned toward her as they spoke, as if pulled by gravity. For a moment they seemed frozen in place, facing each other, then Susan leaned toward him and their lips met in a short kiss.

  The large bald man who had been charming Susan in her store over the past few weeks, Susan’s “kind of boyfriend,” was now charming her at home.

  “What do you know of that man?” Ronan growled as he spoke, and Penny felt her arms ripple with goose bumps. After the initial shock of their first meeting, Penny had never feared Ronan. Now he was scaring her a little.

  Penny thought hard to remember the details of her single meeting with him.

  “He’s a developer … someone who buys land and then builds things on it.”

  Ronan turned his eye from the pair on the porch to Penny.

  “Why?”

  “To make money,” Penny said. “He tried to buy Clover Hill but Susan wouldn’t sell. Now I think he just wants to date her.”

  She didn’t add that she thought Susan already had a large crush on the man. Ronan didn’t need to know that.

  “They aren’t from around here,” Penny added when Ronan’s gaze didn’t budge from her face. “I think they come from somewhere in the South.”

  Ronan’s eyes were the exact orange as the topaz Katie used for the last wand, Penny realized, and she wished he would point them somewhere else.

  “His son is here, too.” Penny suppressed a shiver at the memory. “He’s creepy.”

  “What else?” Ronan’s unwavering gaze was unnerving.

  “What else do you want?” Penny tried to inject the proper irritation into her voice, something to mask the unease Ronan was causing her. “I only met them once.”

  Ronan seemed to realize he was bothering her and returned his glare to the man on Susan’s porch.

  “His name is … Duke,” Penny recalled. “Morgan Duke.”

  “He works for them,” Ronan said flatly. “He’s a snake in the grass, blending in until the opportune time to strike.”

  Penny didn’t need to ask which them Ronan was referring too.

  “Snake in the grass?”

  “Too archaic for you, Little Red?” A fraction of his usual good humor had returned. “How about spy, saboteur, a foul and malevolent trickster.”

  “I liked ‘snake in the grass’ better,” Penny said.

  “Where were you going?”

  “To get my bike. I was going to meet Kat and Zoe back at the hollow.”

  “Flying lessons?” Ronan actually smiled for a moment. “Go on then, and meet us back at the hollow.”

  A second later Penny was alone. Ronan had slipped away silently and completely. She steeled herself, then rose and jogged down the hill, trying to hold on to the cover story she’d made up for Susan with all the new and crazy thoughts competing for space in her head.

  Morgan saw Penny coming before Susan did and hoisted himself from the swing to greet her like a favorite niece or neighbor kid.

  “The charming Miss Sinclair has returned from her morning commune with nature.” He chuckled when Penny only gaped at him. “It’s a rare child who chooses the great outdoors over idle hours gawking at a television in this day and age.”

  Penny wasn’t sure, but thought he was trying to compliment her.

  “Uh … thanks?”

  Susan joined him at the steps, and the look she gave his turned back made Penny sick.

  If you break her heart, Penny thought, I’ll break your neck.

  Something of this thought must have shown in her face because Morgan Duke’s smile seemed to wilt on his face, and his air of confidence dissipated. He considered her with poorly disguised alarm.

  “I think it’s the internet that kids are addicted to now,” Susan said. “But she is rare.”

  Penny sent Susan a mental thank-you for not referring to her as a child. As far as adults went, Susan was a rarity. She never patronized Penny. She had always treated Penny like a person rather than a child.

  “I’m just gonna go for a ride ….” Penny grabbed her bike and backed away from the porch, afraid that Susan would ask her to stay and get to know Morgan. “I might see what Zoe’s doing.”

  “Maybe we’ll meet in town.” Susan turned her happy face back to Morgan Duke. “Morgan’s taking me out for lunch.”

  If you’re looking for a boyfriend, you can do a lot better than him.

  Penny knew better than to say what she was thinking. If she couldn’t mask her emotions in front of him then it was time to get away.

  “Have fun,” she managed, then spun her bike around and mounted it.

  “Absolutely adorable,” she heard Morgan say as she pedaled down the driveway. “Never had a daughter myself but always wanted one.”

  She pedaled harder, her speed approaching reckless as she turned onto the blacktop and steered toward town.

  The road was, thankfully, deserted. When she was far enough away that she could no longer see the marker for Clover Hill Lane, she slowed and scanned the highway in both directions. Still empty. Before anyone could come along and spoil her chance, she pulled up on the handlebars and guided her bike off the road, flying only inches above the rough, stony ground and up the sharply rising hill.

  A few minutes later she heard the sound of moving water and knew Little Canyon Creek was close.

  Dodging the trees and shrubs that grew high on the hill, she followed the sound and found the spot where the creek emptied into the river.

  She no longer pumped the bike’s pedals, but when she wished to go faster, she did. Past more trees, weaving around jutting rocks, then down to the water. For the next few minutes Penny flew inches above the surface of Little Canyon Creek, a stretch she’d never be able to visit on foot. The banks were too steep, too crowded with trees.

  She soared inches above the swift, splashing water, avoiding boulders, her shoes and pant legs soaking. She ducked the outstretched limbs of the crowding trees, nearly crashed when she turned a sharp corner too fast and found herself facing the churning white spray of a waterfall. She shot straight up, passing the edge of the falls, shooting from the protective cover of trees like an arrow, and found herself facing nothing but blue sky. Ignoring the impulse to go higher, she dropped down until she was safely hidden again.

  Penny didn’t think her heart would ever quit racing with the exhilaration, the fear of it. She never wanted it to.

  A few minutes later she reached Aurora Hollow, and found Zoe, Katie, and Ronan waiting for her.

  * * *

  “In the time since you sent Tovar off, I've been doing more than just searching for the stray mirrors he left behind.” As always Ronan seemed to consider his words carefully, measuring their need to know with his own internal yardstick. As always, it drove Penny nuts.

  “What exactly have you been doing?” Katie pressed him. Her voice displayed some of the irritation Penny felt. “And why haven't you told us before now?”

  Zoe cut in, drawing his impatient orange
glare to her. “Yeah, have you ever considered the very slight possibility that we could actually help? We’re not completely useless, you know.”

  “Are you bulletproof?” he snapped, moving suddenly in Zoe’s direction.

  She flinched back a step, then moved forward again, determined to hold her ground.

  Katie stepped to her right side in a silent show of support, and Penny joined them on Zoe’s left.

  After a silent moment, when Ronan visibly worked to calm himself, he spoke again, adopting a gentler tone. “The place I’ve been going is guarded. I can sneak in but it’s hard work not being seen. You girls wouldn’t be able to.”

  “Fine,” Penny shouted, losing her temper. “We’re not sneaky enough for you, but you could at least tell us what’s going on.”

  “I could,” Ronan agreed. “And then endure the constant fear that you might go there yourselves.”

  “But what if something happens?” Katie finally spoke from near Zoe’s elbow. “What if you never come back?”

  “How could we look for you if we don’t know where to start?” Zoe spoke again, though her anger had eased.

  “If I were to not come back some night it would probably mean I was captured ... or worse.” He paced in front of them now, his agitation growing again. “And if that is to ever happen you must not try to find me.”

  Penny was about to share her thoughts on what she must or must not do. Ronan saw the gist of it in her eyes and lost his temper again.

  “I’ve told you before that this is not a game! You have a serious purpose here ... more serious than you could understand now, and you will not get yourself killed on my account before you have had a chance to fulfill it!”

  He paced more quickly, leapt up into the ash, and resumed his pacing on the low limb he usually reserved for lounging.

  “Then why bother telling us anything at all if there’s nothing we can do?” Penny regretted the words as soon as they had passed her lips. She thought she had just made Ronan’s point for him.