Shadow Witch Rising (Copper Falls Book 1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “Yet they still also ended up calling her Migisi the Mad,” Sophie reminded her gently. “Maybe she tried to hold it together as well as she could, but she couldn't hide it forever.”

  Thea shook her head. “I hate this. This is wrong, and we shouldn't remember her that way.”

  “You are a historian,” Sophie pointed out. “History isn't always pretty, as you know. I think we do her an injustice by not knowing her whole story. And I need to know it all. It matters.”

  Thea didn't answer.

  “You said you found Luc as well,” Sophie prompted.

  Thea pointed at one of the gravestones in front of them. Sophie crouched down. The stone was maybe two feet tall, a bear carved above the name “Luc Henri Turcotte.” Below, the dates April 2, 1831 - November 22, 1889.

  “Is the rest of his family here?” Sophie asked, still looking at the stone.

  “Well. That depends on how you define 'family',” Thea said. She crouched next to the stone to the left, gingerly pulled the vines of a wild white rose that grew around it.

  Sophie stared. “Migisi,” she finally said.

  “Migisi,” Thea agreed. Migisi's stone was even more plain than Luc's had been: a rectangle of granite,with the name “Migisi” and, below. “Nimaamaa.” At the bottom were the dates July 1, 1827 - November 22, 1889.

  “Oh, what the hell?” Sophie breathed when she registered the dates of death.

  “I know,” Thea said softly.

  “Why wasn't his wife buried near him? He had one. Children, even. The story is that he committed suicide in front of his own son.”

  “I don't know the story. We'll see what else we can find.” She was studying Sophie. “This is significant to you.”

  Sophie nodded, eyes still on the stones. “I don't know what it means, though.” After a few moments, she transferred her gaze to Thea. “Thank you for this. How did you know about it?”

  Thea shrugged, crouched beside her. “I didn't. I knew her grave was here, because it was somewhat of a scandal that she wasn't buried in our own burial site.”

  Sophie nodded.

  “I would not even have thought twice about who was next to her if you hadn't told me the name. I came to see her grave, to see if there were any answers here. And our talk made me feel like I needed to come and honor her. It has been a while. So I was visiting, and then I glanced over there and there was Luc.”

  Sophie ran her hand over her face, studied the gravestones again. “Why, though? This makes no sense. By all accounts, she cursed him horribly, and he suffered, and they went their separate ways, started their own lives. So why this?”

  Thea shook her head. “I do not believe it's a coincidence,” she finally said.

  “Neither do I,” Sophie said, standing. She held her hand out, helped Thea stand straight.

  “Is it possible she fixed it and they got back together? Maybe the story you know is wrong,” Thea said.

  Sophie shook her head. “The curse still lives. If she'd fixed it, that wouldn't be the case.”

  “You know this, how? How do you know the curse still lives?”

  Sophie looked away. “I know one of Luc's descendants.”

  She watched Thea, saw the gears turning. “Wait. Turcotte. That boy who was always beating up anyone who looked at you funny?”

  Sophie didn't answer.

  “What does the curse do?”

  “It's not my story to tell. But this,” she said, gesturing to the headstones. “I wasn't expecting this.”

  “Be careful,” Thea warned. “I have a very unsettled feeling about all of this.”

  “Well. That makes two of us,” Sophie said. She gestured toward the cemetery exit, and Thea nodded. They walked out together.

  “Is he a danger to you?”

  Sophie shook her head.

  “To anyone else?”

  “He suffers. And he does it alone,” Sophie said quietly. “I'm trying to see if it can be broken. I don't think I have enough power to do it, but I need to try.”

  “I'll pay extra attention to any mentions of curses or spells,” Thea said, and Sophie nodded her thanks. “Be careful,” Thea urged again as she climbed into her truck. Sophie held the manila folder of articles and journal entries to her chest, watched Thea drive away.

  The rain started, a soaking, steady drizzle starting all at once, and Sophie got into her car, set the folder on the seat beside her. She sat there, gripping the steering wheel, the heat cranked up. It wasn't just the rain. She was cold to her core. There was hope, too. Impossible though it seemed, had Migisi and Luc worked it out? Had the stories Calder's family uncovered been wrong?

  She knew the curse hadn't been reversed. And it seemed that if Migisi had made up with Luc Turcotte, she would have lifted his curse.

  And she wondered, when all was said and done, if they hadn't ended up being each other's end. The thought sent a chill up her spine as her thoughts went to Calder, to waking up beside him, full of emptiness, facing his anger.

  And later, reveling in the way his touch made her feel, more alive than she'd ever felt in her life.

  If she were smart at all, she'd stay away from him, shut him out of her life now, before things went bad.

  She might as well ask the sun to stop rising.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Determined to keep her hands and mind busy, Sophie went home and got to work. She had soaps to slice into bars, another batch to package, and a few orders to fill. She put on the stereo, unable to stand the silence.

  She'd glanced over at Calder's house as she got out of her car. He hadn't been in the driveway; the rain apparently could keep even Calder from tinkering. His motorcycle was gone, though, which meant he wasn't home.

  And she wanted to see him. Stupid, imbecilic, clueless as it was, she wanted to see him. Seeing Luc's and Migisi's graves that way had thrown her, had made her feel raw, and on top of the weird emptiness she was already feeling, it was almost too much to take. He'd always, when they were kids, been the one to comfort her. Brash jerk though he'd often been to everyone else, he'd been the one she'd turned to when she needed to be soothed.

  How ridiculous that, knowing damn well what he was, he was still the one she wanted to turn to.

  Sophie finished putting the last couple bars of soap on the rack, glanced out the side window to see the rain still coming down in sheets. She jumped a little when she heard a knock at the door. She headed through the house, peeked out the peephole. Calder.

  She opened the door, her stomach twisting, her body warming at the memory of his kisses, the look in his eyes the last time she'd seen him, in her kitchen.

  He held up a bag, and whatever was in it smelled really, really good. “Have you eaten anything yet?”

  She gave the bag another look, raised her eyebrow at him.

  “Is Chinese food an appropriate peace offering when someone spent an entire night terrorizing someone else, and then acts like an idiot the morning after?” he asked. And though his tone was light, the serious look on his face, the intensity in his eyes, nearly made her breathless. The fact that he still felt like he had things to apologize for, when they both knew how hopeless and insane it all was, made her ache for him.

  “I'm a vegetarian,” she said quietly, at a loss for anything else.

  He smiled, just the barest lift of the corners of his mouth. “I know.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, tilting her head.

  “I can smell it. Meat eaters smell different.”

  “Okay. I'm sorry I asked,” she said, and he laughed. “So what did you get?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  “General Tso's tofu, sesame tofu, vegetable chow mein—“

  “You had me at General Tso,” Sophie said, pulling the door open all the way. He nodded, then walked past her, carrying the delicious-smelling bags. He walked into the kitchen and set them on the small table, and she grabbed a couple of plates.

  “You're not a vegetarian,” she said.

&nbs
p; “Nope. That's why I got pepper steak.”

  She nodded and carried their dishes to the table. “Drink?”

  “What are you having?” he asked

  “Green tea.”

  He made a face at that, and she couldn't help laughing.

  “I have water. Or goat's milk. Herbal tea?”

  “Water, thanks,” he said. “There's this thing called beer….” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

  She grabbed their drinks, and he went to work unpacking the bags.

  “You can start. I need to light a fire. It's getting cold in here,” she said. He stood up.

  “I've got it. Sit,” he said. She watched him start loading logs into the fireplace, start the fire like someone who knew what he was doing. It had taken her a couple of weeks to be able to get a fire going easily. City girls didn't usually have a whole lot of experience with that kind of thing. She finished unpacking the food, and by the time she was done, he had a nice fire roaring.

  “Chopsticks or fork?” she asked.

  “Fork,” was his answer. “Chopsticks take too long,” he added, walking back into the kitchen and sitting in the chair opposite hers. She smiled and shook her head, then joined him at the table.

  “I was starting to get worried,” he said, digging into his container of pepper steak.

  “About?” she asked.

  “You. You were gone for a long time. If I hadn't seen that freak wandering around out there, I would have been more concerned that he'd gotten to you.”

  “You saw Marshall?”

  “He was getting into his truck. Gone before I could have a chat with him. Hopefully next time,” he said.

  “Calder…” she warned.

  “I know. No hurting the dipshit. I know. You did say I could scare him, though.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. You can scare him, but I really just wish you'd stay away from him.”

  They ate in silence for several minutes.

  “Where were you today?” he asked.

  “Meeting with Thea… Mrs. Redleaf, about something she found.” She stopped.

  “What, Sophie?” he asked, his fork stopping in midair as he studied her. “What's wrong?”

  “They were buried side by side. They died on the same goddamn day. Did you know that?”

  Calder stared at her. “Who?”

  “Luc and Migisi. I was at their graves today.”

  Calder set his fork down. “I never heard that.”

  “They're buried in the little cemetery outside of town. The one with the wrought iron fence. His wife isn't there. His kids aren't there. But he is, right next to Migisi.”

  “Well. I think that gives us more questions than answers. Don't you?”

  Sophie nodded, her appetite failing her.

  “I wonder if he killed her,” Calder said quietly, and she knew what he was thinking.

  “I actually wonder the opposite,” she told him. “She wasn't right. There are articles about her beating up some woman in Mackinac City, another near Iron Mountain. There are questions about missing children that she was suspected of kidnapping but a connection could never be made. She was messed up, and violent, and I don't doubt for a second that she could have killed him if she decided to.”

  “Doesn't change what the curse does,” Calder argued. “He could have come across her, attacked her, ended her, realized what he did and killed himself after.”

  “But why would he do that? She cursed him. She kinda had it coming.”

  “Unless he still loved her, after all of it. And the beast went nuts and killed her, and he got control and saw what happened and couldn't live with it.”

  Sophie didn't answer. “You're just projecting because that's what you're worried about doing to me.”

  “Look who's talking. You want to believe my line isn't actually capable of killing those they love. Believe me, we are. My great-grandfather killed my great-grandmother. My dad tried hunting my mother down, and she took off on us the next day. It happens, and we are more than capable of it because our beasts are completely out of control and we're not strong enough to keep fighting back..”

  “And yet here you are,” Sophie said.

  “Here I am,” he murmured. “I shouldn't be.”

  “Why are you here? And what exactly is this an apology for?” she asked after a while, gesturing at the containers of food spread over the table. “We've already been over what happened.”

  “I still feel like a jerk. You deserved better than that bullshit. I meant what I said before. If things were different…” He trailed off, looking at her. “But they're not. And I'm sorry I was a jerk before, and I'm sorry I'm holding your land ransom.” He blew out a breath. “If it was just me, I'd give it back now, Sophie.”

  “Your dad,” she said.

  “My dad, and my brother, and anyone else in my family who has to deal with this once I'm gone if we don't solve this. I felt, the other night, what my dad's been going through all these years. You saw what I was like. This has to end.”

  For many reasons, she thought to herself. First among them being there was no way she was walking away from him, or letting him walk away from her. She nodded. “I know. I still can't get your howls out of my head.” She closed her eyes for a moment, his howls still echoing in her mind. “Does it hurt? Because it sounded like it did.”

  He ate in silence for a few moments. She started to feel like she'd asked him something too personal. “It doesn't hurt, exactly. I mean, it kind of does.” He shook his head. “It's like I'm trapped. I can see everything my beast is doing, feel what it's feeling. It feels like I'm suffocating.” He stopped, nodded. “I never really put my finger on it before. That's it. Suffocating, trapped, bound. And there's not a damn thing I can do but wait it out.”

  “You can't control it at all?”

  “On an ordinary day, I can. I can still do that. For the most part, I just focus on fighting him down. I try to limit how often I shift, because it feels like he gets stronger when I do that. Sometimes I can't avoid it.” He shook his head. “But he's way stronger during the full moon, apparently. That was the first time it's been so bad, where I was at its mercy all night. Before, I could usually wrestle control back after a while. It's been getting harder to do all the time, though.”

  “And what's that like?”

  He set his fork down, crossed his arms over his chest. “It's like playing tug of war. It always has been. My beast is wild. It has no interest in being tamed. So it was always something I needed to fight, and I tried really hard to get good at it, because I knew what was coming.” He blew out a breath. “Now, it's like the beast starts out with more of the rope on its side, you know? And he just gets more and more of it all the time, until the day comes when I start out with pretty much nothing, and all it takes from him is one good tug to make me lose it.”

  She took another small bite of her food, forced herself to focus on the spicy bite on her tongue rather than Calder and his damn eyes. The way he'd said that last. He'd sounded so defeated.

  “I'll find a way,” she said. “I found the spell to help me translate the journal, and like I mentioned before, I tracked down Mrs. Redleaf. She's like a walking Ojibwa history book, and she's helping me learn more about Migisi. And two of those journals are full of writing. There has to be something of use in there.”

  He seemed to perk up a little at that. He pushed his empty food container aside and rested his elbows on the table, leaning forward, closer to her. “Yeah? So you're pretty sure they're Migisi's?” He gestured to her half-full container of food, and she pushed it across the table toward him, watched him finish it off. The man had eaten four and a half containers of Chinese food, all of the rice, and bread. She wondered what his grocery bills were like.

  “Remember when I showed you the carving on the cover of that one?” He nodded. “That's Migisi's rune. So right now, I'm going with the theory that they're her books. And if not her, then maybe a close descendant.”

  He nodded,
and she could tell he was trying not to get his hopes up.

  “And there were things in her correspondence that Thea translated for me. Mostly spells.”

  “What were they for?”

  “One was a ward, and another was a healing spell. They both looked kind of out of my league, but I still want to try them, because that's my thing, you know?”

  He nodded, watching her.

  “There was a love potion recipe, which I don't think I'll ever use, because that just seems kind of wrong. And then there was another spell in there that was just kind of weird.”

  “Weird, how?”

  She shook her head. “The stuff in it, the items used in the spell. I've never seen those items used in a Lightwitch spell. And it wasn't named and there was no description of what it did.”

  He didn't say anything at first, seeming to think. “If it is Migisi's book, I think it's pretty clear that she went dark at some point, right? So maybe she wrote the letter or whatever it was after she cursed Luc.”

  “It just makes no sense. The dates were wrong. It was from after she met him, based on what we know, but before she supposedly cursed him. I mean, Thea was going on about what a hero, what a legend she was. So she's this hero, and Luc does something stupid and all of a sudden she throws it all away? She becomes what she worked her whole life against?” She paused. “Thea also said that Migisi was later known as 'Megisi the Mad.'”

  “Mad like pissed, or mad like crazy?”

  “I'm guessing the last one,” she said, getting up and carrying their empty food containers to the trash. “Though she might have been pissed, too. She cursed Luc for whatever reason, and I have no doubt it diminished her powers, because we aren't supposed to do things like that. And maybe being pissed and less powerful, having her magic corrupted, drove her mad.”

  “Or whatever Luc did to her drove her mad, and everything else happened after,” he pointed out. She turned and looked at him.

  “I hadn't considered that.”

  “It makes more sense to me. I mean, I don't know anything about this witchy stuff other than what I've heard from my family. You all are a secretive group,” he said. He stood up and took his glass to the sink, washed it, put it in the drying rack. “But a Lightwitch wouldn't mess up her power if she was in her right mind, right?”