Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set

by Kristen S. Walker

  “But I have proof, I mean, I think I can tell how it’s affecting us, but—”

  “Stop!” She put her hands over her ears. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about this. Get out of my room!”

  I tried to argue with her, but she wouldn’t listen to me anymore. Eventually she forced me out of her room. I left reluctantly, but I knew that I didn’t have any way to convince her right now. Maybe I could try another time if I caught her in a better mood, but I couldn’t understand why it didn’t work—why my sister was so resistant of magic that she wouldn’t even let me talk to her about it.

  The next person to talk to was my dad. I realized, too late, that part of the problem with my conversation with Akasha was that I’d talked to her at home, where the spell was strongest. But while finding time to talk to my dad alone was not hard, getting to see him outside of the house was tricky, especially without my own transportation. It wasn’t like I could just go visit him at the hospital where he worked and pull him aside to talk to me.

  On Friday afternoon, my dad got off work early and he was the one to come pick my sister and me up from school. I told him that I had an idea that we should give my mom a treat by telling her not to cook dinner for one night and ordering take-out for our family instead. “We can go pick something up in town before she gets home from the shop,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of homework to do, so I can go with you.”

  At first, he was reluctant to leave my sister at home alone, but she’d already started doing her schoolwork. We drove to the local Chinese restaurant, Lucky Eight, and picked up food.

  When we got back in the car and started to drive home, I asked him, “Do you think we might go visit any of your family for the holidays this year?”

  He gave the response that I expected: “Your mother likes to stay home for the holidays. She’s not very comfortable traveling.”

  “Well, then, could we go visit them another time?” I suggested. “I feel like I haven’t seen them in ages. The cousins must be so big by now.”

  “Well, I’d have to see if I could get the time away from work,” Dad said slowly. “And I’d have to ask your mother how she feels about it.”

  “Why? Don’t you miss your family? We haven’t seen any of them since before Grandma died.”

  “That’s true.” His hands gripped the wheel tighter, but he didn’t say anything more.

  “So why don’t we ever visit them anymore?”

  He let out a sigh. “We’re just a busy family, I guess.”

  I pouted and turned to look out the passenger window. “We should make the time. Family is important.”

  He shot me a puzzled glance. “Where did this sudden interest in seeing your cousins come from? We always have to remind you when to send them cards for birthdays and holidays.”

  “Maybe I’m just tired of listening to Mom always making excuses about why we can’t do one thing or another. Like visit our family.”

  “We can’t do everything that we want all of the time,” Dad said in his patient voice. “We have to make these decisions together, as a family, and we all want different things.”

  I shook my head. “That’s what she says, but I think we always end up doing what Mom wants and everyone else gets disappointed. It isn’t fair.”

  “Rosamunde, you know that’s not true. I know right now you’re mad at your mother over some boy, but she just wants what’s best for you—”

  I whipped my head around to stare at him. “Aren’t there things that you’d want to do with your life that you can’t because Mom always talks you out of them?”

  He slowed the car to a stop and turned to look at me directly. “I make compromises for you girls and your mother because I love all of you. I don’t regret the decisions that I make.”

  I looked down at the floor. Maybe I was pushing this too hard. With or without the spell, my dad had a good heart, and of course he was willing to sacrifice things for his family. I didn’t want to make him feel bad for that.

  Dad was quiet for several minutes. I thought he was going to lecture me, or just drop the subject completely. Then he said quietly, “I do sometimes wonder if the things that she decides for you girls might be a little too harsh.”

  I blinked in surprise. At first, I didn’t know what to say. Then I asked, just as quietly, “Do you mean like making Akasha go to a school where she doesn’t belong?”

  “Yes.” He paused, then started driving again.

  Hearing him admit it was enough. I didn’t want to push it anymore. I didn’t say anything for the rest of the trip home. When we got out of the car, right before we went into the house, I looked at him and said, “I love you, Daddy.”

  He smiled and hugged me.

  The search for the spell continued as I tried to think of every possible location. Over the weekend, I began to search around the outside of the house. There was the shed where my mom kept her gardening supplies, the trees in the front and back yard and around the edges of our property, the crawl space under the house, and the garage. One thing that I would say about my mom: she was very thorough in her spells for repelling bugs. Going through a crawl space is never pleasant, and neither is digging around in a garage full of junk, but I was grateful that I never ran into any spiders.

  Maybe something could be buried in the garden, but if it was, how could I tell? Mom was constantly digging things up and planting new things, so I couldn’t just look for spots where the dirt was disturbed. And if it had been there for a long time, maybe since before I was born, then it wasn’t going to be in a new hole. For a while I tried to figure out where the most likely location could be, based on which plants might help strengthen the spell and which direction they were facing, but after spending an hour poking into likely spots in the dirt, I had to give up. There were just too many possibilities there and any serious digging would certainly get my mom’s attention.

  On Sunday, I snuck into my dad’s study for a quick look. There was a spell to protect his books and medical journals, but how much else could my mom find to mess with in there?

  I was giving his desk a quick look-over when I realized that one of the drawers looked shallower than the others. I checked the outside—yes, it looked like it was built the same size as the other drawers, six inches deep, but on the inside there was only half of that space, with a few pens and paper clips. That was odd.

  I took the drawer out of the desk and dumped it upside-down on the floor. The pens and paper clips fell out, but I could still hear something rattling around inside. I shook the drawer. The bottom fell out of it, and with it came a small notebook.

  I picked up the book and flipped through it. The pages were full of notes in my dad’s scrawling handwriting—not as bad as the stereotypical doctor’s, but still difficult to decipher. I squinted and tried to make out a page, dated in March of this year. It read:

  “I wish that I could stand up to her better. Akasha told me again today that she’s scared to go to the magic school. I looked up the transfer requests for the school district to get her into a better public school, but when I showed them to Rosmerta . . .” There were some words that I couldn’t make out. They looked like they’d been crossed out. It continued, “She convinced me to drop it. I love her, but I wonder if she really has the girls’ best interests at heart. The guys at work tell me that I’m whipped. I believe in compromise, but I think I just give in.”

  My eyes widened. Until our conversation two days ago, I never would have suspected that my dad had feelings like this. I flipped to the date on the first page. The diary went back several years, and it looked like he didn’t write in it very often, but still, it was a key into my dad’s inner thoughts that I’d never had before.

  I hesitated about reading it. I’d yelled at my mom for reading Akasha’s diary without her knowledge, and it would be the same kind of betrayal of trust, but this could give me clues that I couldn’t get any other way. But if my parents found out, they could get really mad at me for invading the
ir privacy.

  I had to think about this some more. I replaced the drawer’s false bottom and its other contents, then put it back in the desk, but I took the diary with me back to my room. Hopefully, he wouldn’t go looking for it for a few days, at least. I hid it in the middle of one of my schoolbooks until I could decide what to do with it. Thankfully, the next day was Monday, so I wouldn’t be grounded anymore, and I could get more help from my friends.

  By Monday of the following week I only had one potential location left: my parents’ bedroom.

  I had avoided searching there before. It was a private, personal space for both of my parents and I felt weird going in there. Mom was always very strict about no trespassing in her room. She didn’t let me or my sister sleep there even when we were very young and had nightmares, she kept the door closed all of the time, and she was especially harsh about no snooping in her closet, which was where she hid any Christmas or birthday presents at certain times of year. Snooping in my parents’ room felt like breaking a lot of rules.

  I tiptoed in and closed the door behind me, just in case Akasha came upstairs. I looked around, trying to decide where to start first. There was the furniture: two dressers side by side against the wall nearest me, a bed to my left, two small bookshelves on the other side by the window. There was the window, which looked out over the garden in the backyard across from me, and on my right was the wall with the door to the bathroom and the door to the closet. I’d have to check the furniture, and behind the pictures, but I expected that the real hiding places would be in the walls.

  I decided to work around the room starting with the dressers on my left and continue from there, leaving the closet as the final place to search. Oh—I almost forgot the door. I turned around and reached up on tiptoes until I found the loose board. As I expected, I found another one of the protection spells up there. This one had a piece of my dad’s hair inside.

  This time, I was going to try something different. Instead of just digging around in every nook and corner of the room and hoping that I didn’t miss anything significant, Glen had suggested a technique that I could use to try searching for anything magical. I pulled out a scrying crystal that hung from a cord and held it out in front of me, trying to keep my hand very still. If I concentrated properly, it was supposed to start swinging faster the closer that it got to the source of a spell, and if it was a strong spell, the crystal might even start to glow.

  I tested it out first by the doorway. Sure enough, the crystal pendulum swung faster the closer that I held it to the hiding spot for the protection spell. I moved on to the left.

  Even searching with the crystal to help me, it was slow going. I found lavender sachets in my mom’s clothing, which just kept her clothes fresh. There was a dream pillow under the pillows on the bed to drive away nightmares. I was surprised to find a spell to prevent conception under the bed, too—it wasn’t the same as mine, though, because it was missing sweet pea for chastity and hemlock to decrease the sex drive. In fact, right next to it was another charm that had the opposite effects. I tried not to think too hard about that one, and I went into the bathroom to wash my hands off immediately after I put it away.

  Moving past the bed, I discovered something that I’d missed in previous searches: the window had its own ward for protection. When I checked the bathroom, I found the same thing. At first, I was confused because there didn’t seem to be a specific object creating the spell; the ward extended equally around all sides of the window. Then I leaned closer and I caught a faint whiff of something spicy. I remembered the oils infused with herbs that my mom created, and realized she had spread them around the frame. There was probably the same thing around all of the windows and outside doors in the house.

  There was another spell in the bathroom that I hadn’t found before, either. This one discouraged mold and soap scum from the bath and shower. My mom was very practical about magic. These were the kinds of boring spells that she was always teaching me, and she claimed that I had to master them before I could learn anything more powerful. I thought that she didn’t take my powers seriously, but maybe she’d distracted me with routine spells so I wouldn’t be interested in learning more magic.

  I glanced at my watch. I’d been searching the room for more than an hour. How much time would I have left before someone came home and noticed what I was doing?

  Then I heard something scraping against the bedroom window.

  I whirled around, my heart pounding.

  There was a tree branch blowing in the wind outside. As I watched, it moved again, scraping along the glass.

  That freaked me out. I couldn’t imagine trying to sleep in a room with that noise going on all night—why hadn’t my mom just flown up and pruned it?

  But I didn’t have time to let myself get distracted. I had to keep moving and find the spell.

  The only thing left to check was the closet. I opened the door, reached inside to turn on the light, and looked around.

  It was a large walk-in closet with clothes hanging up on either side, most of which were my mom’s. There was a dim light in the middle of the ceiling. There were boxes of junk on shelves above the clothes—it looked like my mom hadn’t started collecting Christmas presents yet, since it was only the middle of October—and a few more boxes on the floor at the far end.

  The crystal in my hand started glowing bright red. I looked up and saw a magitek alarm directly above me. It made no sound, but no doubt it had been triggered the moment I opened the door.

  Uh, oh. While I’d been careful not to leave any physical signs of disturbance when looking for my mom’s spells, I hadn’t thought about the possibility of leaving behind magical traces or looking for any spells that would let her know I was snooping. Now it was too late.

  I left the room in a hurry. Then I went into my room and hid the scrying crystal in the bottom of my school bag. My mom would be coming home soon, and when she did, I was probably going to be in big trouble.

  I sat down at my desk and tried to concentrate on my homework, but I was nervous and my mind kept calling up gruesome images of what might happen when my mom confronted me. Would I be grounded again? Would she know what spell I’d been looking for and check it—and then would she be able to realize that I was wearing a charm to block it from me? Would she come up with an even worse spell to control me and keep me from disturbing her illusion of a peaceful family?

  I needed to warn my friends in case she erased my memory. Thankfully, Mom had ungrounded me that morning and given me back my phone. I pulled it out of my bag and sent a text message to Heather, Glen, and Ashleigh: “I was looking for the control spell. I’m pretty sure I set off a magical alarm and so now my mom probably knows that I was looking where I wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know if she’ll be able to find out how much I know or how much trouble I’ll be in, but if she casts a new spell on me, I hope you guys can find a way to fix it! I’m really scared right now!”

  A minute later, Heather sent back, “Good luck! I’ll check to make sure you’re not acting weird tomorrow.” I thanked her.

  Glen’s message said, “Do you need me to come pick you up? You can always stay at the castle if you need someplace safe!”

  I had to stop and think about that one. What place could be safer from hostile magic than a castle protected by Faeries? But I sent to him, “Thanks, but I don’t think I can get Dad and Akasha to go with me, and I don’t want to leave them behind. I’ll try to stick it out.”

  “Okay. Tell me if you change your mind,” Glen said.

  There was another wish for good luck from Ashleigh. I thanked her, too.

  Well, now I’d warned them so they’d help me if something happened later, but for now I had to face this alone.

  It was two hours before my mom got home, and during that time I got almost none of my homework done. I watched her nervously from the top of the stairs, trying not to let her see me. She came in with the grocery shopping for the week, put the food away, and starte
d making dinner as if nothing had happened.

  A little while later, my dad came home, too. “That smells delicious,” I heard him say. “What are we having?”

  “Tacos. I don’t have the energy to do anything fancy.”

  While I hid behind the corner of the wall in the hallway, I overheard him talking to Akasha about her day. She asked him for help on her math problems, so he sat down and they went over the equations together.

  Soon the taco meat was done cooking and my mom told my sister to put away her school work and set the table. “Then go get your sister,” she said.

  I hurried back into my bedroom, leaving the door open, and sat down at my desk to look like I was working on my own assignments. A few minutes later, Akasha came to the doorway. “Mom says dinner is ready,” she called in.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” I said.

  I went to the hall bathroom and washed my hands, then went downstairs. I tried not to look anyone directly in the face as we sat down to eat.

  There were several minutes of small talk and passing bowls back and forth as everyone assembled their tacos on their plates.

  But it was inevitable that my mom would turn her gaze on me and ask me about my day. I mentioned a few things that had happened at school, keeping my eyes down on my plate.

  “And since then, you’ve just been up in your room?” she said.

  “Yeah, um, I’ve got a lot of homework.”

  “I see. No plans with your friends, then?”

  I shook my head. “No, they’re all busy.”

  She left me alone after that. A few minutes later, I glanced up at her to see if she knew that I was lying, but she looked as calm as ever.

  For some reason, that made me even more nervous. Maybe she wanted to confront me alone.

  When we’d finished cleaning up after dinner, I went back up to my room and sat down at my desk. I actually only had a normal amount of homework—some reading for English and a set of math problems—but it was taking me longer than usual to finish it because I just couldn’t put my mind to it.