Moonshine & Mischief: Moonshine Hollow #4

by Kathleen Brooks

  Whoever had been coming wasn’t coming quietly. They were plowing through the woods loud as could be. They’d pushed by Slade and Samuel as if they hadn’t been standing there. And that’s when the whole situation got weirder.

  “This is freaky,” Samuel said, looking back toward the jail cells.

  “Something isn’t right. I’m calling Linus.” Slade and the others had agreed to minimize magic around humans, but Slade needed answers. “Sorry to wake you, Grand Master,” Slade said into his cell phone. “We have an issue.”

  Slade explained about the hunters and how when they’d asked the men what they were doing. They’d told Slade and Samuel they were to get Jane. “They haven’t stopped saying it. I want permission to go into their minds.”

  “Are they humans?” Linus asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a pause and then Linus answered. “Do it. Let me know what you find too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Slade hung up the phone and turned to Samuel. “Let’s see what’s going on in there.”

  Slade was about to walk back toward the cells when his phone rang again. “Change your mind?” Slade asked think it was Linus.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Yes?” Slade said, pulled the phone back and saw an unfamiliar number on the display.

  “This is Galen Sinclair. I’m over at Jane Farrow’s house conducting a sleep study and Jud just came in trying to take her.”

  Slade snapped to get Samuel’s attention and put the phone on speaker. “Is Jane safe?”

  “Yes. I knocked Jud unconscious and have him pinned. I don’t know how long he’ll be out.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Slade said before ending the call. “The Grand Master gave us permission to root around their minds. Do it. I’ll be over at Jane’s. Call me when you have something.”

  8

  Slade wasn’t surprised to see Zoey waiting outside of Jane’s house. “I felt your emotions. What’s going on?” His true love knew him as well as he knew himself. Sometimes more since Slade didn’t like to acknowledge any emotions beyond love, happiness, and desire.

  “Samuel and I stopped two hunters who wanted to get Jane. I don’t know exactly what that means, but Dr. Sinclair has another hunter in there who tried to get her as well.”

  His fiancée shook her head. She looked tired. There were dark circles under her eyes and suddenly Slade felt something else—worry for his true love.

  “That must be the woods that I saw in my vision.”

  “At least we stopped it before there was the blood you saw.”

  “I hope. Come on, let’s check on Jane.” Zoey didn’t wait for him, but instead bounded up the stairs and knocked on the partially open door.

  “It’s busted, sweetness,” Slade said, giving her a wink as he pushed it open. He took in the large footmark on the door by the knob. It appeared the door was kicked in and then slammed shut. Well, as much as it would shut. “Sheriff’s Department,” Slade called out.

  It didn’t take him long to see Dr. Sinclair. He was straddling an unconscious Jud in the hallway. Slade let his eyes scan the area and saw the rifle across the room.

  “Where’s Jane?” Zoey asked almost frantically.

  “She’s still sleeping. Let her,” Dr. Sinclair answered as he slowly stood up. “There’s something going on here that I don’t understand.”

  “Tell me everything,” Slade said, knowing he was going to wipe Dr. Sinclair’s memory as soon as possible.

  Slade listened to Dr. Sinclair as Zoey silently went down the hall and peeked into Jane’s room. A second later she was back with a worried look on her face. “Jane is thrashing about the bed as if she’s running.”

  “I would have sworn I locked the door.” Dr. Sinclair shook his head. “Whatever grips her in terror at night is dark and dangerous to her mind. She doesn’t just dream it. She lives it, over and over again. No wonder she’s so worn down. Even though she’s asleep, she’s not getting rest,” Dr. Sinclair told them.

  “Slade.” Samuel was already there and Slade needed Dr. Sinclair gone.

  “One moment, Samuel.” Slade turned to Dr. Sinclair and reached into his mind only to meet a wall. What the heck? “Doctor, you will go into the other room and sit until I come get you.” Slade laced the command with enough magic to control a group of twenty humans.

  “Why would I do that? What’s going on?” Galen asked.

  Something was definitely wrong here. Was his magic not working? Slade reached out again using his magic and was once again blocked.

  “I need a moment with my deputy. Zoey, can you take Dr. Sinclair into the other room while we talk and get Jud out of here?” Slade asked her as he sent her a look to convey it was important.

  “Sure thing. Maybe Dr. Sinclair can tell me more about night terrors.” Thankfully Zoey understood and steered Galen down the hall and away from Samuel and Slade.

  “Give me a second,” Slade told his deputy as he reached out with his magic and entered Jud’s mind. “Son of a—” Slade took a deep breath and turned with thinned lips to Samuel. “Did you see him?”

  “Yes. Ian is spelling the humans to capture Jane and bring her to him.”

  “The question is why.” Slade looked down at the unconscious man as he placed his hands on his hips. “I’m going to have to tell the council.”

  “I’ll let you have the honor of that. I’ll take Jud to jail with the others.” Samuel leaned down and hefted Jud up and over his shoulder.

  Slade sent out a text. He’d meet with them in ten minutes, but first he needed to get Zoey. Slade headed down the hall. When he heard screaming, Slade burst into a sprint as he ran toward the sound. Zoey’s hand was covering her mouth, but it wasn’t her screaming. Jane was sitting straight up in bed and looked as if she were being choked. However, there wasn’t anyone in bed choking her.

  “Wake her up!” Slade demanded but Dr. Sinclair stopped him.

  “Quiet. I hate seeing her like this too, but it’s necessary for the sleep study. I need to find out how long she’s in the grips of these terrors, and I’m hoping she’ll say something to indicate what they’re about,” Dr. Sinclair whispered as he dropped his hand from where he’d gripped Slade’s arm.

  Slade looked at the doctor and saw that he flinched with each of Jane’s screams. “I’m entrusting you with her care.”

  “I’ll protect her with my life,” Galen swore, and Slade believed him.

  “I know you will. I’ve already seen evidence of it. I need you to stay with her. There are other threats, and we have to get to the bottom of them. Call me when she wakes or if you need anything at all. No matter the time.”

  “I will.”

  Slade held out his hand and Zoey immediately placed hers in his. They didn’t talk again until they were outside.

  “What is going on, Slade?” Zoey finally asked.

  “Ian is sending humans to get Jane. They didn’t say, ‘kill’ so I think he wants her for some reason.”

  “Is all this because she was engaged to him?”

  Slade stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”

  “Before the war. She was engaged to him against her will.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?” Slade asked as he began to run down the sidewalk, dragging her behind him. He needed to get to Lauren’s house and luckily it was only a couple blocks over.

  “It was so long ago I didn’t know how it could still be relevant. I didn’t see him in her future. Where are we going?” Zoey asked as she kept her pace with him.

  “Emergency council meeting at Grand Mistress Lauren’s.”

  Zoey ran next to Slade as they cut through a dark backyard and into Grand Mistress Lauren’s backyard. The lights were on and her curtains were drawn. Slade knocked on the back door. When it opened, Neferu was there in a burnt gold tunic over leggings. It didn’t matter that the tunic was modern, Neferu still looked like an Egyptian ruler from thousands of years ago.

  “W
hat is this emergency?” she asked in her superior tone that Zoey had learned wasn’t her being unkind. It was just her. Neferu’s long black hair laid stick straight down her back, but it was highlighted with streaks of steel gray, unsurprising considering she’d been around since before Cleopatra. Neferu and Cleopatra had been besties.

  “I’ll tell you once everyone is here,” Slade told her, not intimidated at all. Zoey was still intimidated.

  They stepped inside as Polly, Vilma, and Agnes poofed into the living room from their homes. Grand Master Linus was already there talking to Grand Mistress Lauren. Linus, Slade, Samuel, Niles, and Raiden made up the Tenebris council.

  Zoey looked around and found Niles talking to Neferu. Neferu was the history keeper for the Claritase. Niles, while young in comparison to Neferu, was the history keeper for the Tenebris. Niles looked to be in his mid to late twenties, and Slade said he was a baby compared to Neferu’s thousands of years, Niles was only about four hundred and twenty years old. However, he was a natural researcher who loved details and that made him perfect to be history keeper.

  Raiden Ilmarinen was new to town. He looked to be a thirty year old elite soccer athlete, but was really almost eight hundred. He was the go-to guy on family trees and the newest appointee to the Tenebris council. Apparently family tree research was all there was to do in the cold Artic days and nights in Finland. Well, among other, hotter things. And hot he was. He had all the women, human and witches alike, swooning over his Nordic good looks.

  At last, Samuel poofed into the room and Grand Mistress Lauren called the council to order and turned the meeting over to Slade. Zoey sat and listened as Slade and Samuel told of the night’s events. What caught Zoey’s eye was that neither Agnes nor Vilma didn’t look as surprised as everyone else.

  “Ian?” Lauren gasped in anger. Her teal eyes narrowed in anger. “I will root him out and hang him by his testicles from the tallest tree.”

  “Agnes? Vilma? Do you have something to add?” Zoey asked as she cocked her head at them.

  “We had a feeling it was him,” Agnes admitted. “The Irises and the Opossums have been reporting aliens in the woods.” The Irises were a married women’s club. The Opossums were a married men’s club. You had to be married over twenty-five years to join either club. However, most of the members had been married closer to forty years. Agnes and Vilma were honorary Irises. They’d told the members that their husbands had passed away long ago. Which was true. They’d married humans and outlived them . . . and their children.

  “Aliens? They think we’re aliens?” Neferu spat.

  “They saw red glowing lights coming from the woods,” Agnes explained. Ian drew his power from the fire element.

  “What are we going to do?” Polly asked, drawing attention back to the problem at hand.

  “We need to figure out why he wants Jane and what these nightmares are that she’s suffering through each night.”

  Lauren crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t like this. I feel as if Jane has lied to us.”

  “She was engaged to Ian before the wars. Does that help?” Zoey felt like she betrayed Jane’s trust by telling the council, but it was clear all cards needed to be on the table.

  “Engaged!” Lauren and Neferu skipped right past mad and went directly to enraged.

  Linus held up a calming hand. “Raiden, can you look into the family trees to see if you can find a marriage contract? If a marriage was to be performed before the wars, there were contracts, just like the humans had.”

  Neferu stood and turned to the man who looked to be her opposite. Everywhere Neferu was dark, Raiden was light. “I’ll summon Fern Langley. She’s the family history expert for the Claritase. She’s in the process of packing up to move here from New York City where she worked with the museum’s ancient texts.”

  “We can send some men to move her,” Master Linus said. “Niles, can you make that happen?”

  “Yes, sir.” In a flash, Niles was gone and so was Neferu. Zoey checked her watch, poor Fern was about to have a rude awakening.

  “I think we need to move Jane,” Zoey told the group. “If Ian is after her, we need to get her someplace safe.”

  Polly nodded her head in agreement, but Lauren shook hers.

  “I want to get to the bottom of this first. We’ll keep her safe until then.”

  “Dr. Sinclair will protect her,” Slade told them.

  “He’s a human. He can be spelled,” Samuel said cautiously. He didn’t want to insult his best friend.

  Slade shook his head. “Yes, he’s human. Or at least I think he is. But he can’t be spelled. I tried to get into his mind and couldn’t. I tried to cast magic against him and couldn’t.”

  “That’s not possible,” Raiden said, sounding shocked. Not with disrespect, but because it shouldn’t be.

  Suddenly, Neferu was back with a woman who looked as earthy as her name. Fern Langley looked to be a sweetheart. Her light brown hair was tucked behind her ears, but was wild everywhere else. It was clear she had come straight from bed. Her green eyes were focused though and the kind smile she wore as she pushed up her glasses made Zoey like her instantly.

  “Grand Mistress Lauren,” Fern said with a deep bow. “It’s such an honor to meet you in person. I am truly touched that you approved my application to be head of genealogy for the Claritase. I haven’t been around many of our kind in four hundred years,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  Raiden stepped forward and with an elegant bow handed her a tissue.

  “Raiden Ilmarinen, at your service.”

  “Did you just sigh?” Slade whispered in Zoey’s ear. Oops. What that out loud?

  “Maybe,” Zoey confessed.

  “He may be older than me, but I have youth on my side. I’ll show you the difference when we get home.”

  Zoey smothered a laugh. “It’s all the same once you’re older than five hundred, isn’t it?”

  Slade growled in return and it had Zoey biting back a smile. They needed to wrap this meeting up because she needed to kiss her true love something fierce.

  “Raiden, I need you to take Fern to our records and fill her in on what’s going on. Find out who Ian was engaged to and if there’s any record of what happened. Did they marry?”

  Fern gasped. “Ian? Married? If he were married, he’d have a claim to whoever his wife is. There’s no time to lose.” Fern grabbed Raiden’s hand and Zoey couldn’t help but smile. Fern didn’t make it to Raiden’s chin, and the timid looking girl next door was suddenly looking rather fierce.

  “Hang on.” He told her as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and then they poofed off to the hidden records.

  “Neferu, I want you and Niles to work on finding out why Dr. Sinclair is immune to magic. I’ll send word to Niles to wrap up the handling of Fern’s apartment and meet you in the archives.” Grand Mistress Lauren sent a text. Zoey almost laughed. All the magic in the world and texting was still the way to go.

  “Thank you, Master Slade, for bringing this to our attention. Lauren and I will meet the prisoners tonight and wipe their memories after seeing them for ourselves,” Linus said as he reached out to shake Slade’s hand. “Keep the council informed.”

  “Come on, let’s leave before she asks about my wedding dress,” Zoey said with a wink to Grand Mistress Lauren as she grabbed her love’s hand and poofed away.

  9

  “It was aliens.”

  “Peach, there is no such things as aliens in Moonshine Hollow.” Otis, her husband of forty or so years groaned at his wife’s declaration. “They’re all out in Area-51. That’s way on the other side of the country.”

  “Then you explain the crazy lights we all saw last night in the woods. They were so bright they woke Fay up,” Peach said as she placed her hands on her hips.

  “Fay likes to get in the moonshine,” Billy Ray, the large lumberjack of a senior citizen who was the bartender at the married men’s club, said. Zoey knew it to be the truth,
Fay liked her drink. Only this time, Peach was right. There were lights and they did wake Fay up.

  Sally June nodded her head and backed up her fellow Iris member. “Fay wasn’t the only one who saw it. I saw it too. Are you going to say I was drunk on moonshine, Billy Ray?”

  “Are you all talkin’ about those lights?” Dale asked as he came into Zoey’s shop. It wasn’t even eight in the morning and the place was packed. Everyone was talking about the lights in the woods the night before. “Scared the hell out of my sheep.”

  “See? Young Dale saw them too,” Peach said with validation.

  “Yup. Woke up Maribelle and we stepped outside to watch them. Think they’re the northern lights?” Dale asked.

  “But these were red,” Sally June pointed out.

  Dale shrugged his wide shoulders and ran a hand over his neatly trimmed beard. He wore the perpetual smile of a newlywed, even when talking about mystery lights. “Yeah, but we’re in the south. Maybe they’re red down here?”

  Zoey’s morning went like this until she sold out of breakfast and shooed everyone from the shop. She needed to talk to Jane because this wasn’t southern lights. It was Ian spelling people to kidnap Jane.

  Air. She needed air.

  Jane opened her mouth on a gasp as her eyes flew open. The first thing she noticed was she was covered in sweat. The second was the man in her room. Before she knew it, her hands were raised and she drew all her magic to rush forward.

  “Jane?”

  Jane snapped her fingers closed, holding the magical energy in check. She felt it swirling down her arms and balling in the palms of her hand ready for release.

  “Jane. It’s me, Dr. Sinclair. It’s okay. You just woke up from a night terror. I’m going to turn on the light, okay?”

  Jane was breathing hard, trying to fill her body with as much oxygen as she could as she nodded her head at the shadow. She kept her arms outstretched and at the ready though.

  Click.

  The light reached every shadow in the room. Jane had to blink a few times, but then quickly lowered her arms when she saw Galen standing there.