by Cate Tiernan
This spell was… I can’t describe it in any way that would do it justice. It was an almost crystalline structure, as if River were building a city around us, made of points of light and cords of power. Each layer was another layer of protection: for this house, all our land, our vehicles, our livestock, our crops, each one of us individually. River named each animal, each person, using not our common names but magickal names that were seminal, bred into our bones and blood, names that perfectly and uniquely defined each of us and no other.
My amulet was like a furnace, taking my gray magick and firing it, drawing it through incandescent heat and light. Like iron, it went in raw and unformed and came out tempered, frighteningly strong like a sword’s blade, vibrating with each blow of the smith’s hammer.
I didn’t know how to control it.
My hard magick was laced tightly throughout the spell, informing each part of it, underlining everything River had designed. I saw it more clearly than the others’, perhaps simply because it was mine. River’s silver cord was the only one that shone as brightly, that was everywhere, touching everything.
Then it hit me: the heart-stopping perfection of it, the wonder, my shocked amazement and comprehension of what we were doing, the art we had joined together to create. It was glorious and magnificent, frightening in its strength and glory. I was filled with awe and fear and a trembling, wild exhilaration that I was part of this and this was part of me.
Finally it felt complete. A cloak of protection flowed over us like heavy fog over a valley. Dreamily I felt it settle weightlessly on my shoulders, felt it kiss each leaf on each tree, felt it soothe the animals in the barn and the chickens in the coop. It covered Molly and her puppies, Dúfa wiggling in her sleep. It covered Jasper, the other farm dog, where he slept in the corner of Titus’s stall. It touched the wind, the grass, the dirt beneath our feet, each board of the house, each pane of glass, each pebble in the driveway.
I breathed in, testing my perceptions. My magick still poured strongly through me even as River began the rite of dispelling. Then, with startling rapidity, my magick diminished, edging itself out of the spell, its furious torrent dwindling to a trickle.
When my magick ended abruptly, I dropped to the ground like a beanbag. I didn’t feel sick so much as completely drained, a vase emptied of water and flowers and now containing only air. Brynne knelt next to me.
“You okay?” She sounded limp herself.
I nodded and made myself get up onto my hands and knees. While I waited a few moments to see if nausea was going to hit me, I looked around. River was a bit unsteady on her feet; Ottavio and Joshua stood on either side, holding her up. She was looking up at Ottavio, and they wore identical expressions of… uncertainty?
I got to my feet and felt Reyn’s hand under my elbow, steadying me.
“How are you, my dear?” River asked, searching my face.
I could barely talk, but I nodded. “Okay.” Had she noticed that I joined by force?
“How was your amulet?”
My hand closed around it protectively. “It was good. I worried that it wouldn’t know what to do, but I think it was okay. Could you feel it? Did it seem… fine?”
“I did,” she said thoughtfully. “I felt your magick very strongly and felt how your amulet focused it, honed it to be harder somehow.”
I let out a breath. “That’s how it seemed to me, too.”
She gave me a gentle smile and then we all started gathering our shoes and walking back to the house. It had been the most amazing, most beautiful, and most awe-filled experience I’d ever had. My joining in had been accepted, hadn’t it? I hadn’t done anything to mess it up, had I?
The next morning, Ottavio left us, heading for Boston to get some answers.
CHAPTER 17
At breakfast the next day everyone was solemn, as if we’d witnessed the birth of a planet. I was glad I hadn’t barfed afterward, but later in my room my senses had felt raw, scraped hollow, empty, shocked. This morning I’d practically crawled downstairs, lured only by the smells of bacon and coffee, two of nature’s perfect foods.
“Who is Ottavio seeing in Boston?” Anne asked.
“Our friend Tallis,” River said. She folded her fingers around the warmth of her coffee cup and inhaled its aroma. “Plus I think he’ll poke around. Try to get any sort of information.”
“That will go well,” Daniel murmured, and River glanced at him.
I took another piece of bacon and chewed, reveling in the heavenly explosion of salt and fat and baconness on my taste buds.
Finally I could put it off no longer and stood up, creaky and sore like an old woman. Ha ha ha! I just realized what I said.
River met me out in the hall as I was fumbling with my jacket. She gave me a faint smile, brushed her hand across my cheek, and headed toward her office.
Reyn came downstairs just as Joshua joined me in the hallway. I quickly made plans to duck and run, should stupidity overwhelm them as I stood there.
“Thought I’d go with you to town,” Reyn said, not looking at Joshua. Joshua’s hazel eyes narrowed even as I said brightly, “That would be great! A worker I don’t have to pay!”
“Oh, you have to pay me,” Reyn corrected me.
The next two weeks went by in choppy stops and starts, and I started to count the days until spring officially began.
Despite the spell of protection, there was an undercurrent of tension throughout River’s Edge. Everyone carried on—the spring gardens were being tilled, now that the ground was no longer frozen. The cold frames were set with new seedlings to be planted in the ground eight weeks from now. Molly’s puppies were weaning themselves off but scampered after her wherever she went, five little furry bundles of chunky legs and oversize paws getting under everyone’s feet.
Dúfa became a construction dog downtown, starting each day by following Reyn purposefully as he worked but then petering out by nine o’clock and collapsing on someone’s jacket or under my feet at my card table.
My project was visibly nearing completion. The four downstairs shops were finished, with each store having a main showroom and, in back, a small room for storage, another small room for an employee lounge, and a bathroom. All the sinks and lights worked; everything felt fresh and clean. Ray and Tim, the couple who had wanted to open a coffee shop, were in the last building getting it ready. They’d painted the walls a deep eggplant and were installing refrigerated cases, a counter, and adding another sink to the front room. I planned to be first in line for a latte.
The outside was completed; seeing the freshly painted building was still a bit of a surprise when I first turned the corner down the block, but I thought it perked things up.
As the guys finished up their jobs inside, some of them moved to work on the empty lot next door. The workers had broken up the concrete and were using it to make raised flowerbeds along the sides of the two buildings that bordered the lot. The trash was gone, the old concrete steps had been set against a wall to serve as seating, and in general, it was much less heinous.
I felt protected. I did. But I also felt—like something was about to happen. The first day I was back downtown, I was in one of the upstairs apartments, looking over what the builders had been doing. I was all by myself, things were quiet, and something made me quickly write the rune eolh in the air and do a little ward-evil spell, right there. Which was like swinging a flyswatter around after we’d already chewed up the landscape with the huge guns of the circle. But I did it anyway.
River was continuing to search for any trace of Innocencio. It was hard to believe that someone so flamboyant could disappear into the wind. I prayed over and over that he wouldn’t come find me again.
Ottavio called River nightly from Boston. The news he had was unsettling: He could find no sign of the building where Miss Edna’s club had been. I’d told him everything I could remember about its physical location, but despite going practically door to door for a couple square miles, he’d found
nothing.
River had told him where to find the warehouse where Incy had taken me, Katy, and Stratton; and he had. But he reported that it looked completely unused—a thick layer of dust covered everything as if it hadn’t been disturbed in years. Upstairs in the loft, he saw no trace that anyone had been there—no footprints in the dust, no signs of a struggle, no wide stain of Katy’s blood. River, Asher, and Reyn had all seen it; I didn’t have to worry about not being believed. But it was bizarre and scary that such a scene should be able to be so completely erased.
Anyway. The apartments were almost finished. I’d wondered if Dray would come back, try to rent one, but days went by without her return. Reyn and Joshua worked at opposite ends of the building, like third graders separated by a teacher, but they didn’t cause trouble and I didn’t have to kick either of their asses.
Brynne did indeed come to see “how things were.”
“Good lord, what are you eating?”
I tried to swallow the too-big bite I’d taken. “Mpf,” I said, waving my hand. When I could speak: “A quesadilla with shrimp, polenta, peas, and shallots. I’m praying that Julie Pitson gets pregnant again so she won’t have so much time on her hands.”
Brynne sat on the other folding chair and held out her hand. I put a quarter of the quesadilla in it, and she took a bite. She rolled her eyes happily, making ecstatic sounds, while I watched her and grinned because Joshua had come up silently behind her and could hear everything.
“Oh my God, that was orgasmic!” Brynne said, waving her hand in front of her mouth.
“Better than Anne’s mocha layer cake?” I asked innocently.
“Oh, well, that—that, I just want to rub all over my body. But this was damn good.”
I looked above her. “Yes, Joshua?”
Brynne froze, her eyes completely round.
“José’s guys want to know if you can get a ghost out of apartment C,” Joshua said, his face expressionless.
With very small movements, Brynne mimed strangling me.
“Ghost?” This was different.
Joshua nodded, and I got up. “Come on, Brynne. If you get scared you can hold—ow!” I took a couple hops, rubbing my shin where Brynne had kicked me. That girl had an anger-management problem.
The apartments’ entrances were all in the back of the building, accessed by a single staircase and a balcony that ran the length of the rear wall. Upstairs I found José and his crew. Several of them quickly finished up their quesadillas and stood.
“What’s up?” I asked José in Spanish.
“Hay un fantasma,” José said, and several of his workers nodded solemnly.
I looked at Joshua. He shrugged: Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t.
“Qué tipo de fantasma?” I asked. What kind of ghost?
“Una mujer, señorita.” A woman, miss.
“Y qué dijo?” What did she say?
José and the men exchanged glances.
“Ella dijo que quería a la mujer con el pelo de nieve.” She said she wants the woman with the hair of snow.
“Whoa,” said Brynne as I felt a cold breeze brush my face.
“Tell me more,” I said faintly.
“I thought the shops were covered,” I said to River that night.
“They are,” she assured me. “They absolutely are. This is very strange.”
“You think?” I snorted and poured myself some Wednesday wine.
Do immortals believe in ghosts? Of course we do. We’re not stupid.
“What else did she say?” River asked.
“José said that was all,” Joshua said, dipping a hunk of bread in his pea soup.
“How do you know about it?” Well, that was a mean voice, coming from Reyn.
Slowly Joshua turned until he and Reyn were facing each other. I can speak only for myself, of course, but I think I can safely say that all of us at the table were expecting Joshua to tell Reyn to go screw himself. I held my breath, easily imagining either or both of them leaping up with a roar and going for the other’s throat.
“I was in the next room, painting,” Joshua said. His voice was even, but his fists were white-knuckled. “José asked me to tell Nastasya. He didn’t think she’d believe him.”
“And she would believe you?” Reyn sneered. River put her hand on his arm, and he almost jumped. The look he gave her was instantly aware, instantly embarrassed.
“Those buildings aren’t that old,” Anne said in the awkward silence. “I wonder who it is?”
“I wonder if it’s a ghost,” said Solis. “Or if it’s someone trying to get at Nastasya by pretending to be a ghost. Or not even pretending—but the workers could only experience her as a ghost.”
“But you felt nothing?” Asher asked me.
“I felt a cool breeze on my face,” I said. “But that might have just been, you know, feeling creepy. I stayed awhile and walked through each room, and I didn’t see or feel anything else.”
“Hmm,” River said, looking thoughtful.
The next day, she, Asher, and Anne all came down to my shops and examined every inch of every building. They even scried a bit behind closed doors. But they too found nothing, felt nothing.
The rest of the week was quiet, ghostwise, and I went back to dealing with business at my card table in the bay window. One day, late, most of the workers had left, but I was catching up on writing checks, which seemed to be a full-time job. José came up and stood by me, holding his baseball cap in one hand.
“Uh-oh,” I said, examining his face for clues. It was dark outside, and most of the lights were off inside as well. The streetlamp shone in through my window, casting an amber glow on the floor. “More trouble?”
“No, senorita. I want to thank you for hiring my crew.” His English was so heavily accented that I wished he would switch into Spanish. But I got that he had rehearsed this and wanted to show respect by speaking in what he didn’t know was not my first language. Or even my third or fourth.
“Well, Bill hired you,” I pointed out. At least I hoped Bill had hired them. Were people now just showing up and working? The thought made my head ache.
“But you pay us.”
I was apparently paying the larger part of the West Lowing population, but whatever.
“You guys do good work,” I said.
José stood there, shifting his cap from hand to hand. I was starting to get uncomfortable: Okay, he had thanked me, now move on.
“Is there… something else?”
“Your money made—I sent my pay home to my wife, and she came here,” José said in a rush. “She had my son here last week.”
Oh. It all became clear. The baby was an American, born on American soil.
Because I’d given José a job.
“Congratulations,” I said, trying to inject warmth into my voice. “But Bill is the one who hired you.” Go thank Bill. I didn’t know about you, I didn’t hire you on purpose, it was a fluke, I didn’t mean to help you or your wife.
But no good deed goes unpunished, as they say, and José wasn’t letting go of this.
“You allow him to hire us,” José persisted. “Many people would tell him no, no foreigners. Bill is my neighbor. He told me to come work here. He say there is a girl who will pay you for hard work. She pay everybody.”
So I had a reputation as a sap, a soft touch. Excellent. Hundreds of years of hard-boiled toughness stripped away with one stupid project that River had made me do. Goddamnit.
“I pay everybody who works,” I said limply, my hands balling up at my sides. I felt like such a fraud. Didn’t he get it? I wanted to scream, I’m not trying to help people here! I’m trying to help myself!
“I work hard for you, miss,” José said proudly. “And I thank you.”
“You’re welcome, José,” I said with clenched teeth. I tried to stretch my lips into a smile, and finally, nodding, José gathered his tool belt and left.
I was near tears. I just wanted people to get on with
their business and let me get on with mine. My chin trembled, and I gritted my teeth harder, furious. I wanted to torch the building, to run through and break everything, so I’d never have to endure someone’s thanks again.
I sank down at my card table and covered my face with my hands. A slight sound made my head jerk up—was it the ghost?
It was Reyn. He walked over, silent as a leaf in his work boots, and held out one hand.
“What?” I snapped.
He bowed, like an old-fashioned courtier.
“I’m not in the mood for this,” I spat out. “What do you want?”
With a look of exasperation, he grabbed one of my hands and pulled me to my feet. Then he half led, half pulled me to the middle of the shop. I dragged my feet, seething. He started humming something and then, holding me at his side, began to move. Being stiff and unresisting got me nowhere. After several moments I recognized archaic dance steps.
My eyebrows rose. “What the hell are you doing?”
“How about,” he said softly, “if I just think of you as a person who does good things?” He forced me to move with him, two small steps forward, two small steps backward, a step to the left, a turn. He hummed, matching his steps to music I’d heard recently only in BBC costume dramas.
His hand on my back was warm, his steps light, soundless, and of course, incredibly graceful. This marauder, this Butcher of Winter, was being kind. And thoughtful. And romantic.
My shoulders relaxed a bit as my feet struggled to remember the steps.
Back then—the late seventeenth century—couples didn’t dance alone. Everything was done in groups, all sorts of weaving in and out and tangling your skirts and forgetting who your partner was or where you were in the dance. Plus it was always muggy, even in winter, the ballrooms brightly lit with a thousand candles, all of them putting off smoke and heat.
