Witching There's Another Way: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 4)

by Constance Barker

  Chloe hissed, and tapped the water. “Frances,” she sighed, “you lost control. It’ll take months to prepare new water.”

  Frances shook her head and held up her fingers. They weren’t burned—the pads of her fingers looked frozen. She closed her fingers into fists at the same time she closed her eyes, and Bailey felt the stir of magic in the room again, this time just around Frances. A moment later she shook both of her hands vigorously. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “It just went off.”

  All five of them stared at the dish.

  “Does it… do that often?” Avery asked.

  Chloe and Frances stared at him.

  “No, Avery,” Chloe said patiently, “it doesn’t.”

  “Something prevented the spell from penetrating the Caves,” Aiden said. He frowned at Chloe. “Is that part of the protections on them?”

  “You can scry in the caves,” Chloe said.

  “Simplest explanation would be that someone here interfered,” Frances grumbled. She gave Avery and Aiden both a hard eye.

  Both men took a step back and raised their hands.

  “For that kind of magic, I’d have needed my wand,” Aiden said.

  “And I don’t even have a wand yet,” Avery added quickly.

  “Can’t we just try again?” Bailey asked.

  Chloe shook her head. “Not with this, and it’s the most reliable method we have. The scrying water is meant to be reused several times. We’ve only used this batch twice; but once it changes states, the magic is altered beyond repair. Until we manage to make more…”

  “Useless,” Frances grumbled as she lifted and dropped the dish of ice.

  “It’s not completely fruitless, at least,” Bailey said. “We know she was headed toward the caves, right?”

  “It’s a place to start, at least,” Chloe admitted.

  Aiden, though, folded his arms over his chest, pensive and disturbed.

  “Just say what you’re thinking,” Frances sighed.

  Aiden pursed his lips. “I’m just thinking it through carefully, thank you Ms. Cold.”

  Frances looked like she might spit, but didn’t.

  A moment later Aiden leaned against the edge of the service counter. “It seems… unlikely, given the state of the Caves as they are now but… something like this...a lost child... happened elsewhere. In Creswell.”

  “Creswell,” Avery repeated, suddenly alarmed.

  Bailey’s stomach dropped.

  Creswell. Aiden had told her about it before. Like Coven Grove, it housed a network of caves, one of several throughout the world, which, according to Professor Turner’s research, each were connected by means of another world. The world of Faerie.

  In Creswell, Aiden had explained, the door to Faerie in those caves had been breached briefly—and for just a few moments he had laid eyes on not just a number of Faerie creatures—but on what he believed was the queen of Faeries herself: Mab, queen of the Faeries. Given how it had affected him, Bailey didn’t want such an encounter herself.

  “They weren’t using a mirror to find the boy,” Aiden explained. “He had a GPS bracelet, you see. It checked his location in every so many minutes. They followed the trail he left, right up until they were within about two hundred meters of the cave. Then… the coordinates that the bracelet transmitted stopped making sense. One after the other, they showed him all over England, and then in Russia, and then in the Antarctic.”

  “What about the music?” Bailey asked. “Dala’s mother said Isabelle was humming strange music, just like the little boy from the tour group this morning.”

  “Like, we could actually be looking for a pied piper… being?” Avery asked.

  “Where did you hear all this?” Chloe wondered as she loaded materials and reagents back into the little chest Frances had brought down from the attic.

  Bailey waved in the direction of the library. “Dad got the interview with Dala this morning, after she reported Isabelle missing. He knew the sorts of questions that needed to be asked, I guess. She talked about an imaginary friend, as well—one that wouldn’t give its name and which ran off her old imaginary friend. It sounded creepy.”

  “What happened in Creswell?” Avery asked. “With the missing boy?”

  Aiden sighed, and shook his head slowly.

  “You mean to say,” Bailey said, “that… you think the Faeries took Isabelle?”

  “I can’t say that for sure,” Aiden said. “But… I believe that’s what happened in Creswell. Someone was arrested for abduction. He was exonerated, however, when they failed to find any evidence of foul play. It was like the boy, Kieren Pollock, just vanished into thin air.”

  “But the door to Faerie here is still locked,” Avery said.

  “As far as we know,” Frances pointed out.

  Bailey shook her head, “No, he’s right. This can’t have happened. How would they have gotten to Isabelle if they couldn’t come through the door? If they could, wouldn’t they just… do it?”

  “I don’t have all the answers,” Aiden said, apologetic. “All I know is what I’ve seen so far and even then… no one can ever be certain about what happened to Kieren. I wish I could be more certain.”

  In the pained moment of quiet, Chloe tapped the top of the now loaded little chest. “Traditionally,” she said slowly, “there are… other ways that Faeries took people from our world. In the folklore, I mean.”

  “Right,” Bailey said. She looked at Aiden. “Circles of toadstools, right? And circles of stone?”

  “The myths hinge on circles,” Aiden said. “Really, it’s those that are key. But, natural circles. Circles of trees, flowers… anything that happens on its own.”

  “Assuming they do happen on their own,” Chloe said.

  Everyone looked at her.

  She shrugged. “Maybe they’re a symptom, not a cause.”

  “Right. It’s possible.” Aiden’s eyebrow rose slowly. “But, in the stories, it’s not as simple as stepping into the circle. Normally there are taboos, things the people that are taken do to offend the Faeries. I think it’s up to them who goes through those doors.”

  “Why does that matter?” Avery asked.

  Aiden looked at him. “Well… because if the Faeries took Isabelle, and we wish to retrieve her… I only see one way to do that.”

  “Don’t say it,” Frances sighed.

  So, Aiden didn’t.

  But Bailey did, shivering with a sudden chill when she did.

  “We have to go into Faerie to get her back.”

  Chapter 7

  “Thomas is going to be so disappointed,” Avery said to Bailey as they descended the path toward the caves.

  She took his hand in hers and held it reassuringly. “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe… time moves differently in Faerie. If we can even get there. Aiden’s research is all hypothetical and even with Professor Turner’s notes… it’s possible the Caves simply won’t let us go through.”

  “Right, I know all that,” Avery sighed. “But I’m tired of being optimistic and getting disappointed because of it.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Bailey said. “Not really, right?”

  Avery shrugged. “One thing after another lately.”

  “You don’t have to come, you know,” she said. “Earlier, I was trying to tell you to go back with him.”

  “Are you serious right now?” Avery asked. He rolled his eyes, and put an arm around her shoulder. “If I had gone, and I found out you did something crazy like went walking into Faerie without me, I would be furious. You know that, right? And if you didn’t…”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Bailey whispered to him. “We don’t even know if we’re going yet.”

  They passed the entrance to the Caves. The place they were going wasn’t in the main network.

  Frances and Chloe had explained—if they were going to go into Faerie—any of them—there was only one way to do that, and it wasn’t going to be as simple as doing some spel
l or another. The keepers of the Caves, the crones of the coven, were the only ones who could urge the Genius Loci of the Caves to act against its nature.

  The thought of finally seeing the eighth cave was one that made Bailey both excited and nervous. She knew that Anita and Rita Hope were the current leaders of the coven, the Crones who guarded the caves themselves; but she’d only met Rita a few times and had so far never met Anita. Officially, the two women vanished from public records in the seventies, although no one appeared to realize that in town. Rita rarely showed herself, but when she did everyone in town seemed to take it as a given that she was still puttering around, despite being well over a hundred years old.

  Likely, it was some aspect of the Caves’ magic. Already Bailey knew that it had a strange effect on people in the vicinity, exerting a subtle influence intended to keep the Caves safe. Tourists that visited took souvenirs home, sometimes, but they rarely remembered the details and specifics of the trip. Geologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists had all come to study the Caves, but none had published papers. Professor Turner had been a strange exception, having visited several such cave networks around the world—and had even discovered that each of them had a particular set of symbols pointing toward Stonehenge in England—but even he had never managed to publish a paper or otherwise popularize his theories.

  Given that his theories had to do with creatures of myth and fantasy, that wasn’t entirely surprising.

  They descended the rocky slope carefully, picking their way in a line along the narrow path that wrapped around the exposed rock of the cave front and down the cliff side toward the ocean. Eventually, Chloe and Frances stopped.

  Bailey gazed at the apparently solid rock wall. This was the place she’d first spied Chloe, Frances, and Aria making a visit to the deepest cave in the network. Then, she’d been certain they had something to do with Martha Tells’ death. That same night, Chloe had told Bailey the truth about herself.

  Well, some of it, in any case.

  Now she was standing with them in the same spot, and growing more and more curious about what they’d been doing here to begin with.

  Frances reached a hand out to the rough, jagged rock wall, and rapped several times on it as though knocking on a door.

  Several long moments crept by. Neither Frances nor Chloe seemed concerned by it. Then, from out of nowhere, a voice snapped at them.

  “What do you think you’re doing, girl, bringing a maiden and two wizards to our door?”

  It was so sudden, and so unexpectedly loud, that Bailey nearly leapt off the ground. Avery did, just a little, and grasped Bailey’s shoulder to steady himself. Aiden merely stiffened, but it was still as startled as she’d ever seen him get. Only the coven ladies seemed unperturbed. They turned toward the hunched, gnarled old woman standing a few feet away, supporting herself on a smooth, knotted cane.

  Rita Hope rarely wore any expression other than a scowl. Bailey had never seen her smiling, never heard her speak with anything other than a clipped, sharp tone. That was no different now, except that her tone was a bit harder and her scowl a bit deeper. She stared daggers at Aiden, and then Avery, and for a moment Bailey wondered what Rita’s particular gift was and whether she would use it to send the two wizards away by force—or worse.

  She didn’t, though. Instead, she hobbled closer to them, taking the rocky path like a mountain goat with short hops between slow steps until she was near enough that she didn’t have to shout over the dull roar of the ocean.

  When she was close enough, Frances begged forgiveness. “There’s a girl missing,” she explained. “We think… well, we tried to find her with the scrying mirror but when it took us toward the cave the spell broke.”

  “Did you attempt a dweomer for the interference?” Rita asked, as though Frances had been confused by something obvious, like the setting of the sun.

  “The water was ruined,” Chloe said. “It turned so cold it boiled, and then froze solid in the space of a few moments.”

  Rita grunted. “What do you want from us? We don’t have any more scrying water.”

  “We have a theory,” Aiden said, respectfully enough but still somehow offending Rita, who glared at him. “We believe the girl may have been taken to Faerie.”

  Rita tapped her cane on the rock thoughtfully. Then, she waved a hand. “Then she’s lost. Go home.”

  Chloe and Frances both sighed, but Bailey charged forward between them to stand before Rita. “That’s it? You just want us to give up? How can you just dismiss it like that?”

  She felt Chloe’s hand on her arm, and tugged it away.

  Rita turned dark eyes on Bailey, and took a step forward. It forced Bailey back. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” she said, her voice raspy and grave. Rita surveyed them all. “None of you do. So go home. Let this run its course. Let the parents mourn their child and move on with their lives. None of you are going to Faerie on our watch.”

  “So, there is a way,” Avery said tentatively. “If we wanted to go… it’s possible.”

  Rita ignored him. “Faeries aren’t to be messed with lightly. They aren’t like you or I. They are creatures of wickedness, through and through. To us, they’re hopelessly insane. You can’t talk with them, can’t reason with them, can’t understand what motivates them.”

  “What will happen to Isabelle?” Bailey asked coldly. Rita met her eyes, but Bailey didn’t look away, no matter how much Rita terrified her. There was something… otherworldly about the woman. Like she no longer belonged in the world. Maybe that was why she supposedly lived in the cave. Though, no matter how Bailey tried to make that fit with the geography and the structure of the caves, it didn’t make any sense. “If the Faeries took her… what happens to her, then?”

  Rita sighed. “You don’t want to know.”

  “We do,” Chloe said. “We know the stories but… they go light on the details. Do you know, or not?”

  With a heavy sigh, Rita nodded. “Oh… I do know.”

  For the first time, she looked haunted instead of angry.

  “Tell us,” Bailey urged. “Please.”

  The old woman made a disgusted face, and stared at the rock wall. At length, she spat, and then struck the wall with her cane.

  There was no shifting of stone, not rush of magic—no indication at all that anything had changed. And yet, Rita took a step forward and there before here was a cave entrance—not a small crack, easily overlooked, but a four or five foot wide archway, easily accommodating Rita’s form, and then Chloe and Frances as well as they passed Bailey and followed the old woman in.

  Bailey just stared.

  Behind her, Avery whistled. “That’s… some trick. Where’d they just go?”

  “A glamour of some sort,” Aiden said. “If I were to guess.”

  Chloe said something quietly to Frances, who in turn caught up to Rita and passed along the message. Bailey couldn’t hear them clearly from where she was.

  Rita turned, frowned at Bailey—or at the two wizards behind her—and finally rolled her eyes before she pointed, her lips moving. Frances returned, and stepped out of the entrance. She pointed at the nearest wizard, Avery. “Take my hand. You,” she said to Aiden, “take Bailey’s.”

  Avery did as he was instructed, and blinked with surprise when Frances led him, inexplicably, into the cave mouth. He was staring around at the cave walls as he was drawn along.

  Bailey turned and took Aiden’s hand in hers. He smiled at her, and when Bailey turned back toward the entrance she caught a concerned look in Chloe’s eyes just before her mother turned and made her way after Frances and Avery.

  Bailey followed them, and a moment later heard Aiden gasp.

  “What?” Bailey asked quietly.

  Aiden shook his head slowly in amazement. “It’s just… impressive. I didn’t even notice the transition. And… I don’t think I can remember what the rock face outside looks like. It’s unsettling—I’m quite well shielded against intru
sions, but it’s as though the magic here just ignores them.”

  “Are you alright?” She asked.

  He didn’t look like he was sure either way. “It is unsettling. But I’ll cope. I feel very much like an intruder, though. Like being in someone’s house whom I’ve never met.”

  “In a way,” Bailey said, “I suppose you must be. I’m surprised Rita let the two of you in. For that matter, I’m a little surprised she let me in.”

  “Perhaps they recognize the gravity of the situation,” Aiden suggested.

  “If they do, hopefully that means they’ll help us get into Faerie.”

  Aiden hadn’t yet let go of Bailey’s hand, though ahead of them Frances and Avery were no longer in contact with one another. It seemed that all that was needed was to bring the wizards into the cave for them to remain there on their own.

  Bailey didn’t bother to let go just yet.

  “Rita does make a valid point, however,” Aiden said, almost a whisper, as though he might offend the Caves. “The beings that I saw before… they were not beings I’d wish to encounter again, Bailey. I can’t quite convey the sense of dread they filled me with. Listen; wait a moment.”

  He tugged her hand, and she stopped, turning to look at him.

  Aiden seemed troubled, and a moment later he confirmed as much. “Even if we can go… even if Isabelle has been taken… perhaps Rita is right. Perhaps—”

  “Don’t,” Bailey said. She let go of Aiden’s hand.

  “I’m only thinking of you,” Aiden said quickly, and then closed his mouth. It was out now, though, and so he passed a hand over his eyes, looked everywhere but Bailey for a second, and then sighed. “What’s said is said, then. I care for you, Bailey. I have for some time. There are things you still don’t know, and I want to tell you; all of it. But if we go to Faerie, we could be in a great deal of serious danger. You and I have magic, and I suspect that in Faerie that magic will be much stronger—but Faeries are creatures of magic. They live and breathe it as naturally as you and I breathe the air and walk on the ground. We aren’t equipped, and I’m not sure any mortal is.”

  Bailey’s heart fluttered a bit, and then clenched tightly in her chest. She searched Aiden’s eyes a moment, and found only sincerity there; she had no need to search his mind with hers, even if she could; even if he let her. So she took his hand again. “We’ll talk about all of it when we get back. We have to convince Rita and her sister to help us, Aiden. We have to try. If we know what needs to be done and don’t do it… I’m not sure I could live with myself. I’m not sure that I should be able to live with myself if that’s the case. I just have to try. With or without you, or anyone else. You understand that, right?”