by Brenda Trim
Violet smacked my arm. “You don’t understand. This is huge. We don’t come into our powers until our twenties. Otherwise it would be impossible to hide our existence. Can you imagine your kids calling ice cream or toys to them as you walked through stores?”
Grams bobbed her head up and down. “That wasn’t due to your nicotisa distinction though. That gives you the ability to cast magic on your own without needing to call on the elements, and your Fae side amplified that. When you were three, I cast a spell on you that diluted your power. Your parents felt you got too much attention from the Fae and decided to move away shortly before your sixth birthday.”
That sounded ominous. And fit with what had been happening since I returned to Pymm’s Pondside a few months ago. Honestly my head was swimming and I had a hard time taking this all in. One thing the last few months had prepared me for was that the mythical was real and I was part of that world. Otherwise I’d have checked myself into the loony bin.
“Let’s dissipate her signature,” Camille interjected as if she read my mind. Violet, Aislinn and Camille gathered around me. Camille cast a circle of salt, enclosing all of us then they muttered, “Sors.”
Share? I was learning Latin thanks to my new witchy side, but their choice of spell made no sense. “Why not dissipo or dispergo?”
“Because we are sharing your signature.” I gaped at Aislinn’s announcement.
Grams sighed and floated in front of me. “That’s only the first step. I can see you’ve already cast protection spells over you and Pymm’s Pondside. Those wards will now be far more effective.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I don’t want to put them in any more danger!” I didn’t mean to snap at Grams, but I refused.
Grams put her hands on her hips in that way she always did and pinned me with a glare. It was a look that took me back decades and reminded me of what it felt like to be punished by her.
I wanted to squirm under my grandmother’s attention. “You aren’t placing them in any more danger. I just hope we aren’t shutting the barn door after the horse got out. The Queen already has you in her targets, but this will stop anyone else from homing in on you. And, you have no choice but to accept their help. Your beacon gets brighter and easier to follow the more you develop your power.”
Grams floated over to the window and looked outside before turning back to the group. “We need to get to work. You need more practice with potions and adding Fae runes to them.”
“Coffee first, then we can get back to work.” I headed for the door, trusting that I wouldn’t lose my grams again. There was no way I could continue without a boost. And some food.
Chapter 2
“Do you think I’m going to need to give Grams back her room? I just got the new mattress. And I created a closet for my stuff.” When my stuff finally arrived at Pymm’s Pondside, I realized the armoires weren’t going to be big enough to store all the clothes I owned, so with the help of Violet and Aislinn we magically created a walk-in closet.
Aislinn set down her cup of coffee and lifted her shoulders. “No idea. Do ghosts sleep? Wait. What are you gonna do when your kids visit during the holidays next month?”
“I don’t think ghosts sleep or have a need for a room, but that’s the least of your worries. You’re a you know what and have to make sure that stays hidden. But now you have Isidora to help you learn everything you need to know.” If I wasn’t mistaken Violet sounded upset.
“That doesn’t change the Midlife Posse. We’re a team, right? I can’t imagine facing the shit with the Queen without you guys. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to have Grams back and I look forward to learning from her, but I need you two.”
Violet smiled and Aislinn nudged my shoulder. “Don’t forget Bas. You need him, too.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. “True. He comes in handy during a fight.” I’d given up on the idea of dating and thought my ‘port’ had been closed for good when I lost Tim, but Sebastian changed that.
“Among other things.” Violet waggled her eyebrows. The bell over the door jingled and they all turned that direction to see their favorite gossip, Mae, enter Violet’s bookstore.
The thick, raised scar along her throat a brutal reminder that she’d been viciously attacked at some point and her voice box was permanently damaged beyond repair. It had rendered her siren abilities useless which meant she could no longer survive in the ocean.
I suddenly wondered if escaping my house and my Grams had been a good idea after all. Sure, my dead grandmother had returned to me as a ghost and spent the better part of the day nagging me to master my power so I could wield it against my enemies, but that wasn’t so bad, right? After all, Mae had never brought good news when she stopped in before.
Violet turned to the newcomer with a smile on her face. “Afternoon, Mae. What brings you in?”
“You were closed earlier. Zreegy was called out to Tunsall and Tierny’s home, but she was too late. She called Gardoss in.” Mae’s voice had dropped at the end and her gaze bounced around the room as if she was checking to ensure she wasn’t overheard.
I tapped the side of my cup and considered what she’d said. My heart raced when she said Tunsall’s name. Tierny had to be her friend, or maybe sister. “Who is Tierny and Gardoss?”
Mae leaned closer to me and lowered her voice. “Tierny was Tunsall’s sister. And, Gardoss is Bruce’s brother and the Fae equivalent of Lance.”
My racing heart skipped a beat and my chest constricted. I rubbed the area absently. “So, he’s a cop?”
Aislinn’s head bobbed and she jumped in before Mae could say more. “He investigates crimes that the Constable can’t respond to.”
“Why is he here?” Violet’s voice wavered as she spoke.
Mae lowered her gaze and swiped a finger under her eye. “There’s been another death. Tunsall couldn’t call Lance when she found her sister, so she called Gardoss. The murders show no sign of stopping. I just hope Gardoss can do something before anyone else is hurt.”
Violet gasped and her hand flew to cover her mouth. Her gaze was worried when it met mine. “We thought it was over.”
Aislinn narrowed her eyes and shot Violet a look that said, keep your mouth shut unless you want everyone on your doorstep asking for blood. I appreciated the support. It would be easy for both of them to turn on me and blame me for the recent deaths in town. After all, it was because of me and my bat signal that the murders started. That’s what I suspected, anyway. And, I could see Mae going around telling everyone what I was and inciting a riot with the supes out for my blood.
Mae tossed her long gray locks over one shoulder. “It seems our brief reprieve is over. I wish your grandmother were still here. She’d know what to do. I’m off to see if Bruce has any more information.” At the door, Mae turned back to me and scrutinized me for several seconds. “You feel different. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but something has changed.”
I shrugged one shaking shoulder. My poor middle-aged heart couldn’t catch a break. Just when it started to slow, it kicked right back up. I had to be careful. I wasn’t twenty anymore. If my inability to run more than a mile was an indication, there was only so much that old muscle could take.
“I’m closer to forty-one today than yesterday. And, I haven’t had enough caffeine today.”
Mae chuckled. “That must be it. I’m like a rabid beast without my cuppa Joe in the mornings. See you all later.”
I turned to my closest friends. “We need to find out if it was the Queen. If she’s back we need to know.”
“You’re right. Let’s go to her house and see if we can pick up on anything,” Aislinn suggested then turned to Violet. “We will come back and fill you in after we’re done.”
“Do you have that invisibility potion we made last week?” That was not what I expected to hear Violet say.
I blinked and shook my head. “I didn’t bring it with me. Besides, I’m no
t sure it’s a good idea to take it. Seeing as it didn’t blow up, I’m fairly certain I did something wrong.”
Aislinn laughed at that. “We’ll be fine. If Gadross is there the Queen wouldn’t dare stick around.”
Another customer walked in and we took that as our cue. With a wave, I followed Aislinn out the door and headed to my vintage mustang. Vintage was code for rusted and barely running.
Aislinn grabbed my hand and stopped me before I unlocked the door. “We don’t need to drive. She lives close enough to walk.”
Nodding, I scanned the street. The sun was still out, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Ever since I stepped out of the shop my neck prickled with awareness.
Aislinn was several feet down the street by the time I gave up searching for what I couldn’t see and hurried to her side. “We will need to stay out of Gadross’s way if he’s still there. He won’t take kindly to us conducting an investigation of our own.”
I quirked an eyebrow at my friend. “Is there something going on between you and Gadross? I sense some deeper animosity.”
Aislinn’s mouth pursed like she’d just sucked on a lemon. “That was a long time ago and it never went beyond a couple dates. No. That’s not quite right. They were more hookups than anything else.”
The image of Bruce flashed into my mind and a laugh burst from my mouth. I couldn’t picture the tall gorgeous woman having sex with a guy not even four-feet tall with a big, bushy beard and coarse attitude. “He doesn’t sound very smart if he let you get away. Is this going to be a problem?”
“That’s the past. I took a vow to never go there again. We’re good.”
“Oh, good.” The rabbit hole couldn’t get much weirder. Thank God I speak weird. “Where are we going?”
Aislinn had led us off the main street and into the woods that dotted the countryside. About ten feet from the road, she veered toward a large evergreen that had smoke billowing out of the back. In front of it there was a short, stalky man that looked a lot like Bruce.
It had to be Gadross, only he was slightly taller than his brother. And his hair was a lighter shade of brown, but their golden eyes were identical. Aislinn ducked behind a bush and I dropped down beside her.
When I peered around the shrub, I didn’t see Gadross, only the tree. Specifically, the house in the trunk. I wondered how they hid this from humans. There was no mistaking the neon purple door set in the bottom of the wide trunk. About three feet above that were a set of windows on each side of the portal at the base.
There was smoke behind the glass, but I could see what looked like doll furniture in various colors. I had a pink couch and a yellow punk bed for my American doll when I was a kid. The couch through the window looked the same.
Even the bark at the base was a lighter shade of brown than the rest of the tree. The color differential encompassed the trunk and up about six feet. It even came to an inverted v at the top like the roofline of a regular house.
The branches were far lower on this tree than those surrounding it, as well. That had to be intentional seeing as it gave some protection to the second set of windows, that I hadn’t seen until I titled my head for a different view.
“Let’s go around back,” Aislinn whispered.
I nodded and gestured for her to take the lead. I could have made it there, but she knew the way and regardless of what she said, I’d bet the supernatural cop would go easier on her if we were caught.
My thighs immediately started screaming as we walked while squatting low to the ground. I exercised regularly but hadn’t been as consistent as usual. Nor had I kept to my New Year’s resolution to add lunges and the like to my routine. My ass needed to be toned up.
I wasn’t sporting cottage cheese yet, but it was only a matter of time. Plus, as my daughter, Emmie, told me, my ass had fallen and was flattening with as much speed as my breasts were reaching for my belly button. I swear those body parts stuck to their goal like there was a key lime pie when they reached the finish.
A tiny figure ran toward us before we even made it to the other side of the house. “Tunsall?”
Tears brimming in her big green eyes, Tunsall looked at me with a quivering lower lip. “Have you come to help?”
My head bobbed up and down before Aislinn could say anything. “We will do what we can. What happened?”
Tunsall’s gaze shifted from me to the back of her house. I noticed the light brown coloring continued. I couldn’t tell if there were windows back here, because the entire back of the tree was missing. I got a perfect glimpse of the embers and charred furniture.
“My sister and I were attacked an hour ago. Fire shot through the windows and Tierny tossed me out the window right before a bomb went off. She…she’s gone.” The tiny brownie started wailing and wrapped her arms around her waist.
Aislinn laid a couple fingers on one of her shoulders. “Has Gadross discovered anything?”
She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything yet.”
“Where was your dad when this happened?” I scanned the area but didn’t see anyone else. My hearing wasn’t sharp enough to pick up on movement in the area surrounding us.
“He hasn’t been released. I’m so sorry, Fiona. I sabotaged you for nothing.”
Aislinn snorted. “I could have told you she wouldn’t let him go. Evil people like that never follow through on their promises.”
I wanted to stand up for Tunsall, but I agreed with Aislinn, so I kept my mouth shut. Tunsall stiffened and moved away from Aislinn. “I know you’re right, but what would you have done if she was threatening your family? I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. And, what matters most is whether or not you can live with your decision and look yourself in the mirror. There is nothing worse than betraying your integrity. You never get a reprieve from the contempt in the mirror or disdain in your mind. What you did hurt me and my friends, but I understand that you were doing it to save your family. I only hope you learned your lesson in this process because Aislinn is right, you can never trust someone who doesn’t value life.”
Tunsall’s head dropped. “I will make this up to you, I promise.”
I waved that away and fell onto my ass. I couldn’t keep crouching anymore. My thighs were burning like a sinner in church. “Ouch!” Lifting one cheek, I picked up a dark green oval from beneath me. It was iridescent and harder than steel. It glinted when I lifted it above my head.
“Where’d you get that?” Aislinn demanded as she took the object from my hand.
“I sat on it. Why? What is it?”
“It’s a dragon scale, but what is it doing out here?” Aislinn’s eyes bounced between Tunsall’s house and the object in her hand.
I’d read about dragons the other day and recall something about them breathing fire. “Oh my God. A dragon did this? Why would the Queen call in the big dogs when she could use far less resources to get rid of Tunsall and her sister?”
“You’re right. A dragon couldn’t have done this. If one had nothing would be left standing,” Aislinn explained.
“That makes sense. I don’t imagine they can customize the size of fireball they spit out of their mouths.” I turned to Tunsall. “Did you or your sister piss anyone else off?”
Maybe the Queen hadn’t been behind the deaths after all. Perhaps they’d been looking in the wrong place. The Queen used others in her plot to steal my power, but when it came to the nitty gritty, she did the work herself.
I appreciated that work ethic. And, understood it. There was nothing like the satisfaction of shocking people and proving precisely what you could do. Especially when they underestimated you, or judged you based on something like your title. Most would think a Queen never got her hands dirty. Just like few doctors saw me as capable of hooking patients up to ECMO when it was usually a doctor’s job.
“We keep to ourselves. I don’t even know how we got on the Queen’s radar t
o begin with. I’ve always thought it was because Isidora trusted us and always allowed free passage through Pymm’s Pondside. Now, I have no idea.”
“Maybe it was the Queen,” I ventured. “This scale could have been planted as a diversion.”
“There’s one way to test that theory. Do you sense her presence here? After your encounter with her you should be able to detect remnants of her presence,” Aislinn informed me.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and focused on the elements surrounding me. Initially, the magic well I’d become used to calling upon was a dry lakebed. Within a few seconds power trickled in and filled my gut.
Without any direction, I focused on the earth then the plants and trees then the beings close by. My finger tingled with each new element. I was surrounded by every element and they added another layer to the magic I carried in my chest.
At first it was a jumble of feedback in the form of energy and elements. I tried to pick Aislinn out of it all. My skin buzzed when I was able to isolate her signature from everything else. It was easy to pick apart the different threads after that.
I recalled the way the Queen’s energy suffocated me and pulled at my insides. I now knew she was trying to steal my battery, for lack of a better description. Thanks to how it was explained to me, I would always see a lithium cylinder in my chest, feeding my magic.
Keeping the Queen’s signature in mind, I searched the area around us. There wasn’t even a hint of her presence. What I did sense was pure evil. It’s what I imagined looking into the mind of a serial killer would feel like.
“It wasn’t her. It was something far, far worse than that.”
Tunsall was shaking like a leaf and Aislinn’s complexion had lost all color. “What are we looking at now?”
I shook my head and tried to push the heaviness that weighed on me away. “I have no idea, but I have never felt anything so horrible.” None of us will survive what it has planned for our town. I kept those thoughts to myself, not wanting to cause mass panic.