The North Valley Grimoire

by Blake Northcott

  A familiar purr snapped her from her daze. It was Jackson’s velvet black cat, Brady, massaging himself up and down her boot, using the heavy metal buckles to scrape the underside of his jaw.

  She scooped him up with one hand and gazed into his thoughtful round eyes; the irises were canary yellow, black pupils reduced to vertical slits in the sunlight What really happened here? she wanted to ask. Why did Jackson have to die?

  He ran a sandpapered tongue across her chin. If Brady knew something, he wasn’t sharing.

  “Want me to take him to the shelter?” the fireman asked.

  Calista didn’t answer.

  Her phone buzzed in unison with Kaz’s; his in the front pocket of his khakis, hers buried in her backpack, discarded at the edge of the lawn.

  “Callie,” Kaz called out. “The game is canceled.”

  Calista spent the remainder of the afternoon in her apartment, which was, more accurately, her uncle’s apartment. Since her mother’s arrest, she’d been relegated to the two-bedroom, ninth floor cube on the upper-east side of North Valley, the only place in the affluent suburb where you’d be unfortunate enough to find low-rent housing. The building was an eyesore, but alas, the commoners had to hang their unfashionable hats somewhere.

  She poured Brady milk and fed him leftover tuna from the can. She tried and failed to nap. Then she listened to depressing acoustic songs from the 90s while swiping through photos of herself and Jackson. She thought it might dull her pain, but nothing hurt anymore. She just felt numb. Calista had never lost anyone, at least not that she was aware of; her father could be dead for all she knew—she hadn’t seen him since her parents split in the fifth grade—and her extended family had died before she was old enough to know what grieving even was. Her mother being dragged off to prison was painful, but at least the judicial system could still right things and set her free. Jackson’s death was different. There was a crushing finality to it.

  The fading orange sun dipped out of sight and draped the sparsely-decorated living room in darkness. She curled on the couch, hands tucked under her cheek as a pillow, staring at the wafer of fluorescent light peeking from beneath the front door.

  She didn’t realize she’d dozed off until a key hit the lock and the door swung open. Her uncle stooped to avoid braining himself on the near seven-foot frame, his arms filled with pastel throw pillows. His shoulders were so broad he blocked the entire door.

  “Cal? Why are you sitting in the dark? And why are you still in your school uniform? And why is there a bowl in the middle of the floor?”

  She raced over and threw her arms around Frank’s waist, pressing her face to his chest. The pillows fell around her while she sobbed. He planted a small kiss on top of her head, and a thicket of beard stubble scraped her scalp like steel wool.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered, “it’s all right. Tell me what happened, Tiger.”

  And she did. She explained how Jackson, one of the only threads tethering her to sanity at the ruthless Hawthorne Academy, had burnt to a crisp in his own home. And that she missed him. And that she felt like a monster because as much as she felt sorry for Jackson and his parents, she felt even more sorry for herself—for her own loss. And the more she felt sorry for herself, the worse she felt.

  Without many words of encouragement to offer, Frank opted to make pancakes. A childless bachelor in his late forties, Frank had little experience dealing with teenagers, so he often replaced parenting with cooking. Not that Calista was complaining; pancakes were better than awkward silence—or, at the very least, made the awkwardness more palatable.

  Frank had spent most of his life aggressively avoiding social situations, so by default, chewing became more comfortable than conversation. A powerlifter-turned private investigator-turned interior designer, he was the definition of a jack-of-all-trades. His size made him a natural at dead lifts, though he soon realized lifting barbells didn’t pay the bills. And although his gig as a PI afforded him time alone, his immense stature wasn’t well suited to fourteen-hour stakeouts in a cramped Honda Civic. His passion for interior design paid better than his previous vocations, though he was less-than-enthusiastic about conversing with his clientele; North Valley socialites rarely warmed to the help. “Good money, but you deal with assholes,” he’d often say. If Frank ever wrote an autobiography, that would probably be the subtitle.

  Her uncle sat across the table, scratching at his closely cropped hair. He looked like a giant at a hobbit’s table; a weather-worn, crystal-eyed gladiator ripped from a battlefield in 15th century Sweden and dropped into a burgundy dress shirt.

  “How are they?” he asked, shifting his weight in an attempt to get comfortable.

  “Mmph.”

  “Mmph is better than ‘blurgh’.”

  She dabbed maple syrup from her bottom lip with the back of her sleeve. “That was supposed to be ‘marvelous’, but you already knew that.”

  Brady emerged from the hall and padded towards the kitchen, leaping onto the table to inspect the giant. He was less startled by him than most humans were at first glance. Brady twitched his ears and introduced himself with a sound that could only be described as a chirp.

  “Who’s this little guy?”

  “Brady,” Calista said. “He’s … he was Jackson’s. Can we keep him?”

  Their guest stretched up to Frank’s jaw, using the stubble to massage his furry face.

  “I don’t see why not,” Frank replied, offering a rare chuckle. Not that he wasn’t jovial—he was, at least where Calista was concerned—he just wasn’t the chuckling type.

  Calista set down her silverware and chased her final bite of pancake with a gulp of milk. “I need to say something and you’re not going to like it.”

  “Okay.” Frank shooed Brady off the table.

  “Jackson was murdered.”

  Frank sat very still, shifting his jaw back and forth. “Okay,” he echoed after a moment of hesitation. He took another beat to let her words sink in. To digest them. “You think someone set his house on fire.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you saw this arsonist.”

  “Of course not, but I have proof. Check this out.” She scooped Brady back into her arms; he’d been loitering by her feet, trolling for milk. She cradled him with one hand and squeezed his paw with the other. “See this?”

  Frank leaned in for a closer look. “See what?”

  “No claws. Brady was an indoor cat.”

  He nodded stiffly. “So?”

  “So, if the house burnt down in the middle of the night, shouldn’t Brady have burnt along with it? He always slept at the foot of Jackson’s bed. They would have never locked him out.”

  “You’re saying because this cat survived, it was a hit job. By who?”

  “How should I know? You’re the detective.”

  “Former,” Frank was quick to correct her. He chugged the rest of his milk.

  “Maybe it was the guy who murdered those two convenience store clerks,” she ventured. “The North Valley Killer.”

  “Those were robberies. Arson doesn’t fit the killer’s M.O.”

  “All right,” she said, “maybe it was drug dealers? Or a pyromaniac who escaped from a mental institution? Or maybe it was government related—Jackson’s dad worked at the Pentagon.”

  “You can chuck a rock and hit Langley from our balcony. Ninety percent of North Valley has ties to the Pentagon.”

  “I’m right about this,” she insisted. “I don’t know who did it and I don’t know why, but someone is responsible.”

  Frank leaned back, folding his arms over his chest. “Looking for someone to blame for bad luck won’t make you feel any better. Not this time.” His baritone voice suddenly dripped with condescension.

  “Don’t,” Calista snapped.

  “I know your theory about your mom, and I know you’re hurting, but use your head, Tiger. Take a moment. Think about what you’re saying.”

  “You still think mom is
guilty, don’t you? She’s your sister!” Calista’s eyes began to burn.

  “Julia was arrested for stealing government documents. End of story.”

  She stared back, eerily still. “Bullshit.”

  “Calista, you’re—”

  “No.” She shoved herself away from the table, screeching her chair across the tiles. “She was targeted. The same way Jackson’s family was. Someone did this, and I’m going to find out who. I’ll hire an actual detective if I have to.”

  “Want me to put on my detective hat? Fine, here it is: Occam’s razor. The answer is almost always in plain sight: old house plus old wiring equals fire. The cat escaping was a coincidence.”

  “You always say there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

  The wooden chair creaked beneath Frank’s weight as he leaned back, lacing his fingers on top of his head. He didn’t offer an answer.

  “Tell me I’m crazy, Uncle Frank. Tell me there’s no possible way someone could have burnt Jackson’s house down.”

  “I love you,” Frank said, not much louder than a whisper. His eyes were fixed on his half-eaten plate of pancakes. “I don’t say that as much as I should, but I do. I’ve done my best this year, and whether you agree with all my rules or not, I want what’s best for you. So I’m going to tell you something that might save your life.” He refocused on his niece. “Let this go.”

  “Let this go?” Calista repeated, biting off each word.

  “Yes. Because no matter how far you go down this rabbit hole, you’ll find nothing but heartache. If you find out this was just an accident, you’ll still feel helpless, because you couldn’t have prevented it.”

  “And if I’m right?”

  “If a drug cartel or a government hitman torched Jackson’s house?”

  She barked out a caustic laugh. “It sounds crazier hearing someone else say it, but yes, what if that’s exactly what happened?”

  “Even if you have something that resembles evidence—you know, something non-cat related that you can bring to the cops—then what are you going to do? What do you think they’re going to do about it?”

  Tightness gripped Calista’s throat. She excused herself and went to her room, not bothering to turn on the light before slamming the door behind her.

  Half an hour floated by. She sank into her duvet, letting the gravity of Frank’s words press down on her, permeating her pores. He was right. Of course he was. If this was the work of drug dealers or some random whacko, how would she find them—and what would she do about it if she managed to track them down? And if someone at the highest level of government wanted her mother in prison, or a house burned to the ground, there was nothing she could do about that, either.

  Calista was a seventeen-year-old girl with no connections, no favors to call in, and no levers to pull.

  She was no one.

  And, at least for the moment, she was powerless.

  It was another hour before Calista summoned the strength to reach for her lamp, casting a dim cone of light onto the ceiling. She rubbed her eyes with her fists. Her room was small but organized, mass-produced Swedish furniture melting blandly into unpainted walls. She wasn’t as compulsive as her mother when it came to cleanliness, but she ran a close second; keeping things dusted and polished gave her a sense of order in a world filled with chaos. Aside from her grandmother’s vintage desk it was like living in a slightly muted stock photo.

  Calista reached for her phone and scrolled through her contacts. Jackson’s name appeared above a pair of numbers: primary and emergency. Maybe Frank was right. Maybe the only way to maintain a sliver of her crumbling sanity was to accept facts. To realize that terrible things happen to good people. That the concept of karma exists only to sell bumper stickers and dime-store trinkets. That the universe doesn’t care about your feelings. And maybe, the sooner she accepted the cold nature of reality, the more quickly she could move on.

  She highlighted Jackson’s name with a quick tap of her thumb and hovered over ‘delete contact’. Step one towards moving on. Just a button push away.

  The gesture was symbolic, but she hesitated. Erasing the numbers felt like erasing a little piece of Jackson—as if he’d be even more gone when they vanished from her phone.

  She called. His cell had been destroyed in the fire, so it went straight to voicemail. She wiped away tears while listening to Jackson’s voice—‘Sorry, can’t talk, leave a message and I’ll get right back to you’—again and again, until the five-second loop had burnt into her memory.

  It struck her that she’d never dialed the secondary number. ‘If you need me in case of emergency, call my burner,’ Jackson had recently told her. It was a disposable convenience store flip-phone he kept as back-up. He was every bit the conspiracy theorist as her; they joked endlessly about the impending zombie apocalypse, and other less-fanciful cataclysmic events, sometimes collecting little items in preparation for just such an event (much to Kaz’s dismay, who wasn’t a big fan of apocalypse humor.) Maybe there was an outgoing message at that number, too.

  She dialed. Jackson’s burner rang, over and over, never going to voicemail. After the tenth chime she bolted upright in her bed.

  Maybe, during the fire, Brady wasn’t the only thing that made it out in one piece.

  Incoming message.

  Secure link request, code YELLOW, 09845

  Link secured.

  APHRA: Do you ever think about the nature of our existence?

  MALEK: You’re texting me on a secure line to chat about this?

  APHRA: I’m bored. Indulge me. I don’t get to chat about anything here at Hawthorne besides keggers and lip gloss.

  MALEK: Touché. As far as undercover work goes, I’m sure it’s on the mundane side.

  APHRA: Being popular is exhausting. My face hurts from smiling.

  MALEK: Sometimes.

  APHRA: Sometimes what?

  MALEK: Sometimes I think about where it comes from. The magick.

  APHRA: Do you think it all comes from the rift?

  MALEK: That seems unlikely. Magick was around before The Incident.

  APHRA: Saoirse thinks the rift is a wormhole to the other side of the universe.

  MALEK: I wouldn’t put much stock into what Saoirse thinks. She’s usually off with the sodding fairies.

  APHRA: And Gavin thinks Gravenhurst was just the beginning, and that more rifts will start opening.

  MALEK: Like poorly installed faucets all over the planet? The universe just needs a good plumber, I suppose. Sounds plausible.

  APHRA: Surely The Agency knows more than they’re letting on. Why don’t they tell us more?

  MALEK: Because we’re pawns. They’re going to keep using us until we’ve outlived our usefulness, and then we’ll be knocked off the board.

  APHRA: I don’t believe that.

  MALEK: Of course you don’t.

  APHRA: Once the threat is contained, this will all be over.

  MALEK: Of course it will.

  APHRA: It WILL be. We signed a contract. When the machine is back online and the rift is sewn up they’ll let us go home.

  MALEK: Yes, I’m sure that’s precisely what will happen. A big cash bonus. Fabulous prizes. A month in Ibiza. It’s going to be bloody brilliant.

  APHRA: You should have faith in the system.

  MALEK: Keep our noses to the grindstone? That type of thing?

  APHRA: Something like that.

  MALEK: Well if we don’t start producing results, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a first class ticket home. This assignment is taking longer than usual.

  APHRA: Has a Copper Alert gone out?

  MALEK: Issued it myself. Civil servants have been warned to look out for sigil tattoos.

  APHRA: The usual story?

  MALEK: Of course. They were told gangs are running guns in North Valley, and to ring the authorities if they spot anything suspicious. Every bobby, traffic warden and dustman is on the lookout.

  APHRA: That should s
peed things along.

  MALEK: Hopefully. But if you want to finish this assignment we need to be cleaner. We can’t afford another disaster like the one at the Carter residence.

  APHRA: It was an accident!

  MALEK: The summonings are driving you mad, and I won’t always be there to protect you. As it turns out, telepathy is somewhat ineffective after my cerebral cortex has been blown out the back of my head.

  APHRA: Protect me? That’s what you’re calling it now?

  MALEK: It’s for your own good, love.

  APHRA: This hex itches ALL THE TIME. It’s like insects crawling beneath my skin. I can feel them congregating in my scalp.

  MALEK: No one said hexes were pleasant, but it’s the only thing standing between you and another meltdown.

  APHRA: You can’t cage me forever.

  MALEK: No, I certainly can’t.

  APRHA: When I get loose, things are going to be very different between you and I.

  MALEK: Yes, I suspect they will be.

  5. Imprisoned

  THE CULPEPPER CORRECTIONAL FACILITY for Women sat on a muddy, treeless hillock off an unpaved road, a bleak tableau against an even bleaker sky. When Calista woke that morning it was bright, sunny—surprising for late October. She’d left her apartment in jeans and a light sweater. By the time her taxi arrived at Culpepper’s gates there was a teeth-chattering chill in the air, and an impenetrable haze had banished the daylight. A little cloud of hopelessness loomed overhead, adding a fresh layer of misery to the surroundings. She wondered if it ever left.

  She stepped out of the car and got a better look at the prison. The hulking fortress had a medieval quality to it—a squat exterior with towers overlooking the yard and a colossal iron gate blocking the archway. It looked secure enough to fend off a battalion.

  It was the fifth prison her mother had been transferred to in eleven months. And it was the first time Calista had visited. Shortly after Julia’s arrest, their court-appointed lawyer relayed a hand-written note, and her mother’s wishes were simple: stay in school, keep living a normal life, and please, don’t come visit.