Tierra seemed to have thought it all out already.
We closed up the house, turned off the lights, and quietly went upstairs, the weight of grief over us. I watched Tierra disappear up the stairs to the third floor and said good night to Birdie, who was yawning again as she closed the door. I knew it would be hours before I’d be able to fall asleep. I kept picturing Crystal’s ashes abandoned under the shrubbery in a funeral home’s parking lot. It bothered me, and I didn’t even like Crystal. How could her own husband have left her there?
I made myself a cup of ginger tea, annoyed with myself for knowing too little, understanding less. The answers were right there, maybe even floating around in the air I was breathing. What use was magic if it didn’t illuminate the secrets hidden in Shadow?
Cradling the tea, I sat on the floor in front of the fireplace. It was always easier for me to think on the floor. I pressed my open hand against the wool rug and invited the secrets to reveal themselves. This was Crystal’s house; if she was trying to avenge her death, she could act through—
My phone rang. For a deluded moment I thought it might be Crystal herself checking in. I fumbled in my pocket and pulled it out to see Raynor’s face on my screen.
Well, I’d learned my lesson; before I answered it, I put down my tea and wrapped my fingers around the thickest redwood bead at my throat. Only after I’d surrounded myself with a barrier did I answer, and even then I kept the phone at arm’s length.
“Your friend the changeling is living next door to you in Silverpool,” the voice that sounded like Raynor said, “and you, like me, can hear fairies.”
I brought the phone to my ear. “We need a better code word. Neither one of us wants those secrets getting out.”
“Zoe has escaped,” he said.
Chapter Forty-One
“What do you mean, she escaped?” I asked. “How?”
“The usual way,” Raynor said. “Secretly. Without our knowledge or consent.”
“Did somebody help her?”
“Presumably.”
“You don’t know?” I asked.
“She has access to hundreds of millions of dollars, here and abroad. Her late husband was a demon. Of course she had help.” His tone was mild, but I could hear a thread of controlled fury running through it. “For the right price, anyone might help her.”
“Even you?”
“They’ve already questioned me,” Raynor said. “I expect another Emerald mage to come out from New York tonight and question me again in the morning.”
“Don’t buy any expensive new toys,” I said.
“No kidding. They already gave me a hard time for a diamond earring I bought last week.”
“Does this mean she… she might’ve been involved in Crystal’s death?”
“She might’ve been involved in a lot of things. We just don’t know.” He paused, and I heard him sniff twice, cough, exhale. “I’ve already talked to Darius. What’s your impression? Was Zoe playing a double game? Could she have deceived you?”
“It’s always possible,” I said. “There are so many spells up here with too many witches. It’s like trying to feel a cat’s footsteps in an earthquake. The signal-to-noise ratio—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your disclaimer. Now what do you really think? Did she fool you?”
I remembered Zoe’s reaction to Phil’s scorched body. Remembered the long drive back to Hawk Ranch with her crying in the back seat.
“She loved Philip Thornton,” I said. “I’m not sure about anything else.”
“Like what?”
“She has no alibi for Crystal’s death,” I said.
“Neither do you, as I recall,” he replied.
“Excuse me?”
“Alone in your room, Darius told me. You sticking to that story?”
“Why would I—? You’re the one who—? I’ve never even—” I sputtered.
“Relax.” He sniffed. “Just making a point. Witches can make alibis. They don’t mean much.”
“The moment Darius climbed out of his Protectorate SUV wearing a silver jacket, every witch here seemed like they had something to hide.”
“I’m sure they all do,” Raynor said.
“Your decision to send him set something in motion, and it’s still moving.” I took a deep breath. “And now two people are dead.”
“One person,” he said. “And a demon.”
“He seemed like a better man than most witches I’ve met,” I said. “But the Protectorate doesn’t need evidence of a crime to order an execution.”
Raynor fell silent. He didn’t even snort his herbs. Finally he said, “We didn’t kill the demon. Zoe has resources. If you’re right and she really loved the monster—”
“She did.”
“Then she might be going back up there to get even,” he said. “So be careful.”
“Me? Why would she—” I cut myself off. He was just like Darius. “I didn’t kill Phil. What’s with you guys? I have an Incurable Inability, remember?”
“What you have is a conscience,” he said, “but I’m not sure if it’s incurable. Maybe we’ll find out.”
“I didn’t—”
“We’ll keep in touch.” The line went dead. I punched at the screen, trying to get him back, but it wouldn’t connect. I had to drop my phone on the rug to stop myself from smashing it against the fireplace.
This was why I didn’t work for the Protectorate anymore. They were insufferable, secretive, authoritarian, irrational—
I sat on my hands to stop myself from destroying the phone. He’d just find another way to contact me, and then I’d still have to hear his annoying voice and also not have a phone.
I punched the floor. Pain shot up my arm, clearing my thoughts a little.
What about Darius? Was he chasing Zoe or coming back up here?
Of course Raynor hadn’t told me.
And nobody had said anything about a service for Phil. The Protectorate would arrange a cover story of travel, maybe a move overseas, a sudden illness. Now they’d have to decide if they should include Zoe too. Until they found her, they’d have to delay making the story public. She might turn up and do an interview for the mainstream media.
As I thought through the implications of that, I realized Darius’s priority would be finding Zoe, not coming back to Mendocino unless she did. A few witches in the wild north coast killing each other wasn’t nearly as important as keeping the Protectorate’s secrets from the nonmagical world.
My own interests tended in the opposite direction. My priority was that no more witches died at Hawk Ranch. Not even me.
On my way downstairs the next morning, I noticed Tierra out in the garden, sitting under the rhododendron on a stepping-stone. I smiled at first because I saw the gnome standing next to her, pointing a finger at her chest, seemingly annoyed with the intrusion; but then I noticed Tierra’s face.
All the heartsickness that hadn’t been on display last night was now streaming down Tierra’s cheeks. The tears spilled out of reddened eyes, over splotchy cheeks, and then clung for a moment to a quivering chin before falling on the twisting, clasping hands in her lap.
And the gnome, whom I’d thought was pointing at her in anger, was in fact collecting Tierra’s falling tears in a cupped, waxy magnolia leaf. I’d never seen any fae do such a thing before. Maybe our tears held magical power I didn’t know about. Or maybe the gnome was simply being kind.
I hurried down the stairs and went out the front door, noting the clear sky, the lack of wind. It would be nice to have a sunny day after all the fog and death.
“Morning,” I called out from beneath the arbor, far enough away, I hoped, not to startle her.
Tierra didn’t look up right away, and her tears continued to fall into the gnome’s magnolia-leaf cup. But then she blinked a few times, shook her head, and wiped her cheeks, and after a long moment staring at her hands in bewilderment, turned to me.
“Alma?” she asked weakly.
I walked under the arbor and felt something—a tension, a bubble popping, a film of plastic wrap tearing—as I walked past a pungent Mexican sage, a row of golden-yellow rudbeckias, and a patch of lavender that had been pruned too short.
Reaching out to a lonely, remaining branch of the lavender, I realized my thoughts were clear and sharp, unfettered by Crystal’s spells in the farmhouse. I hadn’t noticed it the other day when I’d come into the garden, perhaps because her death had been too recent. Now the gnome had reestablished her domain, and it was pure and fae.
“Do you want company?” I asked. “I saw you from upstairs. Can I make you tea or coffee or toast maybe?”
Tierra stood up, wiping her face again. “I don’t know what came over me.” She joined me near the lavender, snapped off a tiny stem, and rolled it under her nose, shaking her head. “He’s so not worth it. I didn’t see it until we got here, what a drag he’s been on my spirit. You get out of your daily routine and suddenly realize you’re going through the motions, not thinking, not living in so many ways.”
She threw the lavender aside and walked out of the garden to the farmhouse. I followed her, striding ahead to open the front door. “How long were you two together?”
She waved aside my question with a smile. “Too long.” Leaning her head back, she shook out the long waves of her hair and combed it with her fingers. “My God, I feel free. I could fly.”
I didn’t know what to say. She’d just been sobbing, so offering congratulations seemed risky. “Would you still like that coffee?” I asked clumsily.
She marched ahead of me through the doorway. I hurried to keep up with her as she walked through the downstairs rooms to the dining area.
“I’m making scones,” she said. And then, laughing as she pushed through the door to the kitchen, “Extra gluten.”
Instead of following, I stopped near the bar, painfully aware of Crystal’s domestic spells descending again over my thoughts, body, and spirit. Breathing for a moment in the oasis of the garden had made them much more obvious. Some magic could be cumulative, like an allergen, pooling inside you over time until it reached an intolerable level.
I was reaching that level. Perhaps Tierra, an old friend of Warren’s, had some immunity. But Birdie and I did not.
I went into the kitchen where Tierra was cutting some butter. “Would it be helpful if Birdie and I went to get, you know, the remains?” I touched my bracelet and sent out warm wishes to the dead. Somehow mentioning Crystal’s name aloud in her kitchen, with Tierra, seemed dangerous. If Nathan was right about adultery and Warren was right about a curse, I didn’t want either Warren or Tierra in my Jeep while I was driving along the deadly curves of Highway 1, right above the spot where Crystal’s body washed ashore.
“Would you really do that?” Tierra put a buttery hand over her chest. “That would be fantastic. It’s called Angel Pines. I might have a card—”
“I’ll find it. What spells did you use to hide the box?”
She took a stick out of her bra, kissed it, and held it out. “Here. It shouldn’t be any problem for you, being into wood like you are,” she said. “It’s under that, whatever that’s from. I tore off a branch to mark the spot.”
I took the stick carefully between my fingers, immediately aware of the enchantment twining around its length. “I’ll find it,” I said.
“You should wait for the scones—”
“No, thanks. We should do this as early as we can, in case somebody sees us poking around.”
“Don’t worry. They actually have graves on the property. It’s a little cemetery. You can always pretend you’re there to pay your respects.”
Chapter Forty-Two
An hour later, Birdie and I sat in the Jeep outside the parking lot of Angel Pines. Flat grave markers dotted a small lawn to our left under a grove of trees, none of them pines. That was all right; I hadn’t expected angels, either.
Birdie was excited to be on a mission. Her job was to carry the flowers, which we’d bought at the Safeway, in her role as grieving granddaughter of whatever gravestone we ended up nearest to.
But nobody was around, and I found the box with Crystal’s ashes as easily as if it had been a speaker blasting dance music with a strobe light flashing on top.
“Can you feel it?” I asked Birdie.
She pointed with the sunflowers at a ten-foot-high oleander bush. “There?”
“It’s not subtle, is it?” Glancing around the empty lot, I walked over to the bush and waved the stick in a small circle. It grew hot in my hand, shimmied a little, then was still. A glossy walnut box with rounded corners appeared under the branches. I looked around again, picked it up, and strode toward my Jeep, pulling a cloaking spell around me for the ten seconds I was exposed to the windows from the funeral home.
I set it on the black bag I’d laid out in the back and quickly pulled the drawstring shut around it. Sweat beaded on my forehead and under my armpits. I slammed the back hatch door and tripped over my own foot as I turned away.
There’s a dead witch in that box, I thought. I could feel her spirit.
Birdie was biting her lip, watching me with wide eyes, waiting.
“I’m kind of creeped out,” I said.
“Cool,” Birdie said.
Laughing weakly, I walked to the driver’s side, momentarily tempted to call Birdie and me a ride to Silverpool and leave the whole business just as it was, Jeep and dead Crystal and everyone and everything.
And then I felt it. Or maybe it was a him… or a her.
Hand on the car door, I scanned the bushes and trees around the parking lot. The ocean was to the west, gleaming blue under the cloudless morning sky, a mist of sea fairies dancing in the waves. Nothing strange there.
The one-story building of the funeral home itself was quiet, the door hadn’t opened, and there was no movement in the windows. Only two vehicles, a sedan and a pickup, were parked in the lot; I couldn’t detect any life or magic near them.
It had to be in the trees. Something watching us. I put my hand on my necklace and reached my senses into the shadows of the undergrowth. A few wood sprites were sleeping in a hollow tree, a family of quail were hiding in the underbrush, and a fawn was grazing—
No, it wasn’t a fawn.
“What is it?” Birdie asked me.
“Do you see anything in the woods?” I asked.
She came up behind me and was quiet a moment. “I don’t think it’s dangerous.”
“We can’t know that. I don’t like it.” I might be able to handle it on my own, but I couldn’t guarantee I could keep Birdie safe. “Let’s go.”
“Maybe it needs our help,” Birdie said.
I squeezed her arm. “In the car. Now.”
She kept peering in the woods until I took her by the shoulders and propelled her to the other side of the Jeep. Ten seconds later Angel Pines was shrinking in the rearview mirror.
“Maybe it was just another witch,” I said, mostly to myself. Crystal’s funeral was set for tonight; witches coming for the rites might want to come early to ensure their own safety and comfort. Witches were a paranoid, finicky bunch. Even with the shrouding spells Tierra had set, Crystal’s remains could’ve called to them.
They were certainly calling to me from the back of my Jeep. The drive north felt ten times longer than usual, the sharp curves over plunging cliffs seemed sharper, more frequent, and I was forced to brake and creep along with the heavy, grim presence looming behind me in her walnut box.
After what felt like three hours, a bend in the road showed Hawk Ranch on the horizon, just on the other side of the next cliff.
It should’ve been easier to drive north, being on the inside lane, but some switchbacks twisted tightly into the cliffs, leaving so few inches between my tires and open air and then so many feet down and down and down, around and around…
Dizziness swept over me. My fingers went numb and began spinning the wheel the wrong direction. I stared at my h
ands in horror, commanding them to do what I told them to, but it was as if they belonged to someone else.
“Careful!” Birdie shouted, bracing herself against the dash.
A hunk of refrigerator-sized granite rolled down into the road in front of us. Terror shot through me like electricity, bringing sensation back into my wooden hands. Just in time, I regained control of the steering wheel and jerked it to the left. Tires squealing, I swerved around the boulder, missing it by a breath, got us back into the right lane, then pulled off onto the gravel shoulder.
Clutching my necklace with both hands, I flung a bubble of safety around us, my vision flickering for a moment as I drained my energy. No time to be cautious. As I lost control of my body, my head fell back against the seat.
A full ten seconds later when I could see and breathe again, I lifted my head and looked in the rearview mirror. The boulder squatted in the right lane surrounded by a sloping mound of rocky soil.
I swallowed hard, tasting blood. I must’ve bitten my tongue. “Are you OK?” I weakly asked Birdie.
She was turned around in her seat, staring at the boulder. “Did I do that?”
I blinked at her, trying to bring her into focus. My breathing was still unsteady. “What?”
“I was looking at that rock right before it fell,” she said. “Could I have—I don’t know—knocked it down? Like I did with the book?”
“I don’t know.” I swallowed again and reached unsteadily under the seat where I had a small felt bag filled with emergency supplies—a pebble from my driveway, a four-leaf clover I’d made myself from a three-leaf one, and an unfinished strip of hairy redwood bark. I took them out and cupped them between my hands. Each item was from my garden and held traces of the heightened power of my home; after one use they would be drained.
I used them. It was the only way to get my hands to stop shaking.
Delicious energy flowed into me, refilling the well of my magic, my spirit. I breathed deeply.
“I was staring at it,” Birdie continued, “thinking I saw something. But maybe I was just imagining it.”
Hex at a House Party Page 28
