by E. Latimer
“This is horseshit.” A thumping sound, like Cora had smacked something with her fist. “As soon as this is over, we’re out of here. I’m getting us out of this backwater dump and away from these bitches. We don’t need another coven.”
“Don’t get too confident.” Grandma King’s voice was dry, but Meiner was barely listening anymore. Her heart was pounding in her ears.
Cora had spoken about it so casually. She was getting them out of here. She had decided they didn’t need the other coven. And Grandma King hadn’t protested. Was she handing over the coven soon, while she was still alive?
There was a low murmur as Grandma King said something, and Meiner frowned, straining to hear.
“She’s right anyway.” Cora’s voice again. “She’s just as bad as you are. You’re both out of control.”
“Which is why you fit in so well.”
Gran’s voice sounded amused, but Meiner placed a hand on the wall, anger boiling through her. A moment later there was a shuffle from around the side of the house, the crunch of footsteps on the gravel. She pushed off the wall, moving farther into the middle of the driveway so it didn’t look as if she’d been eavesdropping.
When Gran came around the side, Meiner glowered at her, and the old woman simply looked at her blankly and passed by. Meiner’s nails cut into the palms of her hands. Her whole body was rigid as she watched her grandmother reenter the farmhouse.
A second later Cora came around the corner. She stopped short when she saw Meiner, and her expression went from sullen to suspicious.
“What, were you spying on us?”
“Wondering if I heard you plotting, you mean?” Meiner kept her voice cool, folding her arms across her chest. “Yeah, I did. And as far as I’m concerned, Gran is out of her fucking mind. Dayna is okay, by the way. If you even care.”
Cora’s smile was vicious. “I don’t, actually. None of them matter.” She started to move around Meiner, toward the door.
A growl ripped loose from Meiner’s throat, and she shot a hand out, catching Cora’s arm and jerking her back. “What the hell does that mean?”
Cora pulled out of her grip, face flushed with anger, eyes glittering. “It means we’re leaving as soon as this is over. I know you want to stay here and join them or something, don’t think I haven’t guessed. You want to leave our coven. To get away from Gran and me. Well, you’re not. We’re leaving.”
“You can leave,” Meiner snapped back at her. “Good riddance. You two can leave and run your own coven together and you can be in charge all you like. Then she’ll die and you’ll be on your own.”
Unshed tears were glittering in Cora’s eyes now, and her face was twisted in fury. “You are so stupid, Meiner King,” she hissed.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Meiner took a step toward her, fists clenched, but Cora didn’t move.
“Once I’m gone, how long do you think it will take for you to start taking out your temper on your little girlfriend? You need me. All that pent-up aggression has to go somewhere. And believe me, she can’t handle you.” Cora whirled around, marching for the door, turning to say over her shoulder, “We’re damaged, Meiner, which is why we work together. If you stay here, you’ll spread that damage to her.”
All the words Meiner wanted to scream after her seemed to have turned to ash in her mouth, and she stayed frozen in place as Cora vanished into the house, slamming the door shut behind her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
DAYNA
They left the house in a convoy, Dayna riding in Meiner’s rust bucket Datsun, and the rest of the witches piled into Reagan’s minivan. Grandma King stayed behind with Cora, who Dayna suspected was in for a long lecture.
The road they found themselves on was a winding, dead-end affair, with cherry blossom trees along both sides. It was not so much a road as a forest trail pretending to be one.
In spite of the late afternoon sunshine, Dayna was plagued by a persistent chill. The dark shape that had seized her in the vision had been unspeakably terrifying, filling her stomach with sick dread. She had felt hands on her arms, ice-cold fingers biting into her skin.
Whatever it was had gripped her so fiercely she’d felt it was about to break through her skin. In her panic, she’d reached into her own core and drawn out all the magic she could, tearing herself from the creature’s grasp.
It felt like she’d used up all her power at once, and yet she’d barely pulled herself free.
Dayna darted a sideways look at Meiner, who’d been sullen and silent for the entire car ride. She kept drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and glancing in the rearview mirror, brow furrowed.
The silence made Dayna antsy, and she wracked her brain for something to talk about, anything at all. She didn’t want to think about the fact that her arms burned in five perfect fingerprints on both sides. She’d rolled her sleeves up to look earlier and it had made her stomach roil, her skin prickling hot and cold with dread.
Her insides felt strangely hollow, as if she’d used the last of the extra magic from the ascension. She felt…drained.
After several more moments of sullen silence from Meiner, she finally worked up the courage to ask, “Did something else happen while I was…well, you know. Something you’re not telling me?”
Meiner blinked, narrowed her eyes at the rearview mirror, and answered without looking at her. “When what? When Cora nearly got you killed with the stupid, reckless idea you went right along with?”
Dayna sat up straight, bristling. “Excuse me?”
Now Meiner did look at her, and her face was dark. “You could have died. Cora doesn’t care about your safety; she cares about results, power. What those things can get her. If you listen to her, you could very well end up dead.”
“I’m an adult.” Dayna could feel her temper surging. This had been her choice; she’d known what she was getting into and she’d made a conscious decision that the benefits outweighed the risk. And now Meiner was lecturing her like…like she was a child or something, “And I’m a damn good witch, Meiner King.”
“Not good enough, though. You could have died.” Meiner cast a pointed look at the marks on her arms, and Dayna’s mouth dropped open.
Anger made her chest tight. She drew a breath and spat, “I’m ascended, which makes me a full witch. I handled it.”
At the word ascended Meiner’s mouth twitched down. Her fingers tightened on the wheel. “You don’t get it. Cora will get you killed. And when she does, she won’t feel any kind of guilt. She’s a monster.”
Dayna took a deep breath and tried to keep her voice even. Meiner wasn’t mad at her, not really. She was mad she hadn’t listened to her warning, maybe. She was mad at Cora. “I can handle myself.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Meiner muttered. “Because apparently as soon as this is over, we’re gone.”
Dayna stared at her in disbelief. “You’re seriously leaving just like that?” It shouldn’t have been an issue; people had long-distance relationships all the time. But they weren’t actually together, and the way Meiner was talking…Her throat felt tight, and she didn’t know how to ask the question she wanted to.
“There,” Meiner said, her voice flat. “There’s the address.”
The car hunkered under one of the trees, engine idling bad-temperedly. Meiner’s hands were nervous on the wheel, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm. Dayna sat on her own hands to keep from fidgeting. She didn’t want to sit here; she wanted to argue, to seize Meiner by the collar and make her look at her. They needed to talk about this, to fight about it instead of sitting there in angry silence. But the inn beside them was probably where the murderers were deciding on their next target, and now was simply not the time.
The inn itself was unspectacular. Somehow rustic without being quaint, like someone had slapped a B and B sign on the family cabin. The shutters were green, and someone had planted begonias in the window boxes.
There came the familiar squeal of
a fan belt, and Reagan’s patchwork van pulled up behind them, her mother in the passenger seat. The witches spilled out of the van one by one, with Bronagh the last to climb ponderously out of the sliding door.
“Callighans in front,” Bronagh said. “If the brothers aren’t there, we go through their room, see what we can find. If they are there, well”—she lifted her brow, expression dark—“they won’t be happy we’re dropping in on them like this.”
Faye followed close on her grandmother’s heels. She rotated her wrists and cracked her knuckles. “I do hope they’re in.” She tilted her face to the windows of the inn and showed all her teeth in an approximation of a smile.
The driveway leading to the inn was a narrow dirt lane with a red mailbox at the end, and the name of the place—the Willow Moon Inn—was stamped on it in the same gold letters that had been on the leather binder.
The front door was unlocked, and the foyer, which was done in rich red and burnished gold wallpaper, was empty when they walked in. The small, cluttered desk at the front was unmanned, and there was a bell sitting in the center of the papers and files. The grubby index card beside it read, Ring for service. Reagan reached for it, and Brenna tapped her shoulder, shaking her head.
“We don’t want to tip them off if they’re here.” The Callighans moved behind the desk, and Bronagh began prying open one of the cupboards on the wall. Rifling through the folders inside, she pulled one out with a noise of triumph.
“Guest log.” Bronagh set the book on the desk. “Look for three people, same room. The place isn’t big.”
They crowded around the desk, and Brenna flipped through the book, which consisted of rows of orderly handwriting logging each room number and the amount of guests, their check-in and -out time and the date. She skimmed until her finger had reached today’s date, her long nails a splash of red against the faded pages. There was only one entry of three, and it was a check-in with no check-out.
“That’s them.” Dayna took the book from Brenna, and when she rolled a fingertip over the black lines of the words party of three, a shiver seemed to trail down her back. The man from her vision might be there. When she walked in, would she feel the same way she had in the vision? Would she find herself frozen on the threshold, arms stiff at her sides, chest tight as she struggled to drag in breath?
She clenched her fists, trying to force her thoughts away from their usual course, from fixating on her breath. “This is them.”
Nobody asked how she knew. Not only because there were only two other guests staying the week, both parties of two, but because all of them were staring down at the paper like they’d felt the same chill.
It was them. The witch hunters. Here in this inn, somewhere over their heads.
“Well,” Bronagh said, “let’s go see who we’re dealing with.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
DAYNA
It was the room from her vision.
The main difference was, of course, that the beds and the chair were empty. The sheets on the beds were thrown back in a careless tangle, and the room was filled with drifts of laundry and papers scattered across every available surface. Dayna wandered in before she really thought about what she was doing, and Bronagh hissed at her. Something about checking for traps.
She hung back and looked around while the Callighans moved past her, muttering spells under their breath, hands in the air. The hotel room didn’t make her feel the way she’d thought it would. Now that she was here in person it didn’t seem all that threatening.
“All right, come in, it should be fine now.” Brenna waved at them, and Dayna glanced over at Bronagh, who was still muttering and tracing a finger in the air as if she were admonishing any dark magic that might be hiding in the corners and then up at the black marks and swirls on the walls. They were done in a smudgy, shaky hand, as if whoever had traced them had been in a hurry.
“It’s fine,” Faye said waspishly. “Hardly expert-level work.”
Dayna wandered in, staring down at the papers strewn on the desk. She picked one up, and then dropped it as if it burned her hand. The symbol on the paper was not well drawn, the lines shaky and heavy-handed, but she recognized it as the Butcher’s symbol.
There were no names on the wallpaper, though. That had simply been a part of…what? Whatever was going on in the man’s head?
The room seemed to have passed inspection, for Bronagh had finally paused in front of a cupboard in the wall, head cocked to one side. As she stared, the cupboard door drifted open a bit at a time, as if entirely of its own volition. Faulty hinges or a warped door, perhaps, though Dayna thought it probably had more to do with Bronagh’s stern gaze. You tended to do what you were supposed to when the oldest Callighan looked at you that way, even if you were only a cupboard door.
Behind the door was a heavy iron safe. Bronagh sank to her knees with a grunt. She did not touch it, just let her hands glide over the door, as if she were warming her palms on some sort of heat radiating from the surface.
“Spelled,” she muttered. “Nasty, too.”
Yemi shifted uneasily, placing herself in front of Dayna and Reagan.
“Ugly stuff,” Bronagh said, and she waved Faye and Brenna over. “We’ll need to concentrate. Reagan, watch the hallway.”
Reagan didn’t argue. She seemed almost relieved to shuffle out of the room and plant herself as sentry at the door, and Yemi followed, the two of them speaking in low whispers.
While the three older women broke into the safe, Dayna drifted around the rest of the room. The symbol that had appeared at the crime scenes repeated itself on many of the papers. Like one of the brothers had drawn it over and over in the heat of obsession.
She bit her lip, suddenly uneasy. It reminded her a little too closely of her mother’s chaotic scribbles on the page at the library.
When she glanced at Meiner, she was frowning thoughtfully at the twisted sheets on the bed. Then she turned, stooping to pick through the nearest pile of clothing.
“Have these people never used a dresser drawer?” Dayna wrinkled her nose. “Uh, why are you touching their manky clothes?”
Meiner didn’t look up. “Ticket stubs, parking slips, anything to give us a clue where they’ve gone.”
It was smart, and as much as Dayna’s skin crawled, she forced herself to join Meiner in pawing through the dirty laundry. She found nothing in the pockets of a sweater, and a pair of grass-stained jeans proved empty.
She saw Meiner pick up what looked like a silver snuff box on the nightstand by the bed, flinch, and then put it back in place, face twisted in disgust.
Fishing in a pair of torn corduroys earned her a slip of white paper. She unfolded it, finding a receipt for gas from an area she recognized. It seemed the witch hunters had visited the Cliffs of Moher. Dayna frowned, puzzled. Why visit a tourist spot in their hunt for witches? Maybe they’d been following someone?
Meiner made a noise of triumph, straightening up with a white slip in her hand. “They went to Glendalough.”
Dayna waved her own receipt. “Moher.”
Meiner shook her head, brows creased. “What the hell?”
Another slip revealed a pamphlet about the tombs at Newgrange and a receipt from somewhere in Cork. “I don’t get it.” Dayna let the receipt flutter to the floor. “They went sightseeing between murders?”
“Sacred sights,” Brenna said from her crouched position by the safe, and then went quiet as Bronagh snapped at her to concentrate, unless she wished to lose a hand. Dayna took a step away from the safe.
Brenna was right though; the tickets and receipts were from locations that all had some link to the gods.
From the safe cupboard there came a sharp click, and Bronagh made a noise of disgust. “Nasty magic, but it fades fast. Give it a moment.”
There was a second of loaded silence while they all stood in front of the safe, and Dayna tried to peer past the Callighans. There was something flat on the floor of the safe. Her stomach flutte
red.
It was the right shape for a book.
Let it be the book.
Finally Bronagh reached in and pulled out a heavy brown leather journal. Etched into the cover was Carman’s symbol.
For a moment Bronagh only stood there staring down at the book. Her face looked stricken. Then she shook herself, tapping the cover with one finger. “There’s powerful magic in this.”
Dayna couldn’t seem to stop herself from reaching for it. Something about it drew her almost helplessly, a magnetic pull she felt deep in her guts. This time there was no wild dog to stop her. She needed to touch it.
Her hands shook as she wrapped her fingers around the spine. Bronagh blinked, but she didn’t protest when Dayna drew the book away. In fact, Dayna could feel the older woman studying her with interest while she cradled the book in her arms. She didn’t care; all she could do was stare at it.
It was so strangely familiar that an ache had started in her chest. It was like something in her had been missing, a memory, a stretch of time she had not known was gone. She badly wanted to sit down and pore over the pages, to rediscover what she’d forgotten.
Dayna smoothed one hand over the cover, and as she did she was hit by the unshakable certainty that she’d done this before. This cover, the symbol on it, smooth and flat under the tips of her fingers, was familiar. She’d held it before.
Just as fast as it had come, the feeling was gone, and Dayna stared wide-eyed at the book, feeling a little dizzy. The book was magic, obviously. It was some kind of spell. Simply another of those strange déjà vu surges.
She’d never held this book before. Had never even seen it before the joint reading.
“Let’s go.” Bronagh straightened up, her lined features filled with satisfaction. “I think we’ve some reading to do, but they’ll be back in…” She checked her wrist, or maybe the back of her hand, Dayna wasn’t sure. There was no watch. “They’ll be back soon.” She frowned then, suddenly uncertain, eyes searching the room. “Yes, they’ve gone to do something.” She squinted at the doorway and then blinked when Reagan appeared suddenly, Yemi hovering behind her, face anxious.