BY WIND
The Witches of Portland, Book 3
T. Thorn Coyle
Copyright © 2018
T. Thorn Coyle
PF Publishing
Cover Art and Design © 2018
Lou Harper
Editing:
Dayle Dermatis
ISBN-13: 978-1-946476-07-4
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
By Wind
Sometimes the voices in your head are real.
Brenda should be happy. She runs a successful esoteric shop in Portland. She has a great coven and good friends.
But a voice she doesn’t recognize has taken up residence in her head. It’s not one of her spirit guides. It isn’t her matron Goddess. What does this voice want from her?
Then Caroline walks in, beautiful, with a sheet of perfect black hair, and a face that makes Brenda melt.
She’s on the run from danger…
This is a standalone book in a linked series.
The series can be read in any order.
1
Brenda
The first pangs of a headache started at the base of Brenda’s skull. It felt like pressure, building up inside of her, waiting to burst free. Or crush her in its wake.
Don’t be so dramatic, she thought. It’s just a change in barometric pressure or something.
Except the sky was blue today. There wasn’t any storm on the horizon.
As a matter of fact, Brenda should feel energized. This was her time of year. It was almost Vernal Equinox, and the moon was waxing toward half. Everything should feel as if it was tipping toward balance, but instead, everything felt wrong.
She needed balance this year, more than ever. Portland did, too, after the scandals that had rocked local government during the fall and winter. Scandals that Arrow and Crescent Coven had been smack in the middle of.
The sun was out, though the cold rains would be back soon, Brenda was sure. But today was one of those rare, perfect, late March days when people pretended it was warm enough to leave their heavy coats at home and venture out only in a sweater or light jacket.
She should have felt awesome. Instead, it took everything she had to pay attention to the customers, and to keep her psychic shields up and at the ready. The headache made both almost impossible.
The Inner Eye was busy for a Wednesday, late morning. Not jammed, but there were several people browsing the books, gems, divination tools, and herbs.
Lead crystals in the windows caught the sunlight and refracted it into tiny rainbows that danced throughout the store. Brenda tried to soothe her jangled nerves and increasing pain by humming along to Loreena McKennitt’s voice and harp.
Tempest, her part-time worker and full-time coven sister, walked toward the back room, with a box of books UPS had just delivered. They would need pricing. This month, the back and sides of Tempest’s head were shaved, and a straight fall of teal hair fell down around her delicate face.
“Can’t we listen to something other than this caterwauling?”
Tempest was a gifted massage therapist and also a young smart-ass.
“No. The customers like it.” Brenda had loved this album since it was new. She didn’t care how many years ago that was. It made her feel like her best, most witchy self, even on days like today, when she really wanted to crawl back into bed with an old favorite book, like one of Charles de Lint’s.
It was weird that she felt in such need of comfort. She wondered what was coming. What was wrong.
The bells over the door rang, and young Black man, dressed neatly in a red windbreaker, a retro Run-DMC T-shirt and skinny jeans over Chuck Taylor sneakers looked around, and approached the counter.
“Um…do you have any Palo Santo?” he asked.
Brenda smiled. “I do. Just got some in, as a matter of fact.”
She scanned the shelves on the wall, behind the counter, eyes searching the large glass jars. “I put it on this shelf just yesterday…” she muttered. “Tempest? Did you move the Palo Santo?”
Tempest came back, sans box of books. “Yes! Sorry! I took it down for another customer this morning, got busy, and forgot to put it back. It’s here.”
The jar was down at the end of the long glass display counter, tucked behind some other jars that also needed re-shelving. She held it out to Brenda.
:The wood reveals the seeker’s heart. The young man needs not only cleansing, but protection. Care for him well, before the light around him dims.:
Brenda almost dropped the jar. That was not her intuition, her inner psychic voice. That wasn’t even one of her usual spirit guides. It was an actual, practically physically audible, voice inside her head. What the…?
“Whoa!” Tempest said, catching hold of the jar again. “I didn’t realize you didn’t have it yet before I let go. Sorry about that!”
Brenda shook her head. “It’s fine. My fault.”
Tempest gave her a look, but didn’t say a word, just turned to show some Tarot decks to a couple of Goth teens, their already white skin made paler by black lipstick and layers of black eye makeup.
Brenda took a breath, trying to quiet the sudden inner turmoil, and turned to the young man. “Do you know what size stick you need? I can pour some out for you, so you can choose.”
He looked slightly uncomfortable. “Um…I’m not sure. I’ve never bought any before. Someone just told me it was good….”
His voice trailed off, as if he was embarrassed to be talking about it.
Brenda opened the jar and shook out several pieces of the fragrant wood, inhaling the scent. It was one of her favorites. Palo Santo wood was slightly sweet, smelling of frankincense and copal.
“It’s good for cleansing,” she said, briskly. She found that if customers were ill at ease, it was best to act as though every single thing in the shop was ordinary, as though it could be found anywhere. She dropped her voice then, fingers playing over the pale, jagged sticks, careful to not look at the young man’s face. “Some people also use it for various types of healing work. They say it’s good for easing certain types of depression and anxiety.”
She looked up again, brightening her expression. “So, do any of these sticks appeal?”
He turned each one over, carefully, fingers sliding across the wood. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
He finally looked up at her, and she could see the fear and confusion in his eyes.
“It only matters to you,” she said, putting a slight push of power behind her words. “Everything you choose should be because you want it.”
He breathed in sharply. Then shook his head. “If only.”
“Don’t let them do that to you.”
“What?” He backed away from the counter.
Damn. She shouldn’t have said that. Don’t scare the customers, Brenda. She could feel Tempest staring at her, likely wondering what the heck was up. Non-consensual psychic reading. Rookie mistake.
She held her hands up, palms out, in a placating gesture.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t fishing around in your brain, I promise. It’s just that sometimes I get hits. Psychic information.” She’d already messed up by saying something, so might as well say some more. “And it feels like someone is trying to make you feel like nothing you do will help. I don’t know who those people are, but I don’t think that’s true. I think you have a lot to offer. It’s all around you. In your aura.”
He kept backing up, slowing, almost crashing into a
display of crystals and gemstones. Luckily, he caught himself and veered into the aisle.
“I’m sorry,” Brenda said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She held up a stick of Palo Santo, the first one her hand touched. “Let me give this to you. Please.”
He shook his head. “No. Thanks.” Then turned and left the store. The bells jingled him out the door. Brenda sighed, scooped the blond shards of wood back into the glass jar, and snapped the lid closed.
Then she put it in its place back on the shelf where it belonged. Something buzzed at the back of her brain. That phrase, “Where it belonged.” There was something about the young man…as though he was out of place. No. As if part of his soul was out of place.
Well, that happened sometimes. People gave parts of themselves away to others all the time, actually. It was why soul retrieval was necessary. She just didn’t like doing it. It made her sad to have to seek out lost shards of soul like that. Even though reunion should have been a happy thing, something was always different when the piece of a soul came home again.
“It’s just change, Brenda. Everything goes through it,” she said.
“What’s that?” Tempest said from right behind her.
Brenda jumped a little. What was wrong with her today?
“Sorry. Just talking to myself. Did those girls buy anything?”
Tempest gave her another look. “Yeah. They wanted to look at the Thoth deck, but frankly, they’re not ready for the study it requires yet.”
“Sometimes that’s how we learn, Tempest. You know that.”
“Yeah, yeah. I sold them one anyway. But they also wanted Brian Froud’s Faerie Oracle. I figured that even though it’s not really Tarot, it’ll help teach them how to use the cards in general.”
Brenda smiled. The Faerie Oracle was a strange deck, and seemed lighthearted at first, but wasn’t really, not when you got right down to it. Brian and Wendy Froud were amazing artists, and Brenda knew they had some real magic between them.
“They also took a flier for the pendulum class. Did you miss this?” Tempest asked, holding up a piece of Palo Santo.
“Damn. I guess I did.”
Tempest reached for the jar. Brenda stopped her. “No. Clearly we need to burn it in the shop today. Our usual incense isn’t clearing the space well enough. The spirits seem to want something different today.”
She just hoped that wasn’t an omen. She really just wanted to enjoy this spring.
But for now, there was work to do. She bustled over to a white woman wearing blue jeans and a long, burgundy sweater, who had been steadily taking book after book off the shelf, and was now plopped into one of the two damask reading chairs, looking thoroughly confused.
“Were you looking for something in particular?” she asked.
The woman looked up at her, brown eyes stricken, furrows running alongside her mouth and a crease between her eyebrows.
“I need help,” she said. “But I just don’t know what kind.”
And then she burst into tears.
2
Caroline
The desert was unforgiving. Harsh. Beautiful. Dry. The variegated shades of sand and rock soothed the eye with shades of tan and ochre.
The Jeep SUV handled well, and was comfortable enough that driving for several hours at a time the way she did on her buying trips was no hardship.
She’d actually grown to enjoy driving. Enjoyed the time spent listening to music, eating snacks, watching towns and cities and wilderness roll by. Enjoyed the time spent alone.
Air-conditioning set just high enough that she wasn’t sweating, but not so cold as to make her forget she was in a hot, sere place, she drove. The P!nk album she’d been listening to had ended thirty miles ago and she hadn’t clicked on anything else. The hum of the car was enough for her, though Caroline’s thoughts had started crowding in again. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not, but for now, she let it be.
This stretch of desert was one of Caroline’s favorite places. Completely different from her childhood home of Atherton, a wealthy suburb on the edges of Silicon Valley.
She craved something different than that. Craved a space where a person never knew what might happen. A place that wasn’t as dangerous as it had been one hundred years ago, but lethal all the same.
Her people weren’t the ones who had built the railroads with aching backs and shoulders, heads protected from the all-seeing sun by flat-brimmed felt hats or the woven rice cones from home. The people who had worked alongside natives and people from Africa, all of them indentured in some way or another. All of them with little choice but to keep going toward the promise that life would become better once the railroad got to wherever the tracks were headed.
But she thought about those people, all the same. It was hard not to, looking out at this landscape. Funny, though, she’d never thought of them until she began to feel so trapped herself.
Her people came from Hong Kong, and had always had enough money to not want for much. In the years since her parents’ families had emigrated, they’d become pretty wealthy indeed.
She said it didn’t matter to her, but supposed that was easy enough to say, wasn’t it?
Caroline needed to start thinking about a lot of things she hadn’t thought about before. Her life was cracking open around her, and the light piercing through was practically blinding.
What would be revealed once her head cleared, she didn’t know. She just knew she needed to keep moving.
The gem show had been successful. She’d found some amazing pieces, some of which she would have kept in the past, setting them up in displays in the home she and her husband had lived in the last ten years. But she really needed the money now, and those key gems and crystals could sustain a significant markup, which would net her far more than the more common stones she bought in bulk to resell to shops and jewelry makers who catered to people who loved rugged things that shone.
She’d been tucking money away for years, into a business account Rafe had no knowledge of, but all of a sudden, the nest egg didn’t feel nearly large enough. She was grateful for whatever instinct had caused her to open the account in the first place. Once it had been set up, it was easy enough to keep going.
Caroline had a gift for rocks and gems. She started off by collecting bits of rock polished by sand and ocean, mixing them with mottled beach glass shards in green and amber and the rarer shards of blue.
She saw things in stones that others often missed. It was what made her such a good picker, and had enabled her to build this business that her husband used to encourage, and now called “your addiction to sparkly shit and wish fulfillment.”
He didn’t know just how much money she’d made the last few years. That was deliberate. She let him think it had remained a harmless hobby, something nice to make her feel like she was doing something with her time, and contributing a little to the household budget.
It was such bullshit. The only things Rafe respected anymore were razor-sharp intellects, pixels, and money. Caroline was smart, but not in a way Rafe understood. And money? Raised by affluent parents, she had always taken it for granted. Her mouth twisted at that. She popped the lid up on her sports bottle and took a long drink of water.
It wasn’t something she was proud of, her disregard for how things worked in the world, but it was just the way her life had been. Rafe had always scrambled for money. He had needed that brain of his to set him free from poverty.
Where she had been free to pursue her passions, Rafe had to be passionate in order to pursue anything.
Caroline felt the difference now. She felt it in the sharpness of her hipbones and the planes of her face, slowly revealed as the roundness slid from her muscles and bones. Even her hair, once thick and dark, had started falling out.
But all of that was going to change. Being in hall after hall of gemstones had cleared her confusion. She had invested in some healing gems this trip. Those she would keep for herself.
&
nbsp; Mostly, though? Her healing process was kicking itself off with one huge realization: Rafe was a miserable asshole, and she wasn’t going back.
Her parents had warned her that he was an unhappy man, though she couldn’t see it, early on. Over the years she had explained it away as “Just the way he is. Melancholic.” But then he had grown angry. She thought it would pass.
Caroline hadn’t realized until recently just how unhappy he would try to make her, too.
It had started off in subtle ways. Undermining her ideas. Mocking her gifts. Then he started escalating. He held her against the wall during an argument, refusing to let her go until she looked at him.
She hadn’t wanted to look at him. She didn’t like what she saw anymore.
That encounter had left bruises on her upper arms. Other bruises followed.
Oh, he never actually hit her, but he started to control her in other ways.
The night before this trip, he had smashed her prized amethyst cluster with a hammer. It had been waiting for her when she got home from a small gem show in the Monterey Bay. The purple crystal tips were left in tiny shards, scattered across her workroom floor. The overhead light had shown the carnage. It was all that she could see, her body rigid, the handle of her rolling gem case still clutched in her right hand.
Rafe had come up behind her then, and touched her. She could feel his fingertips resting lightly on the tops of her shoulders. He leaned his head in close, and kissed her ear, then murmured, “I’m so sorry, babe. I just got so mad at you. I’ll buy you a new one.”
Caroline forced herself to stand still. She forced steel into her legs and arms and felt it locking up her spine. Then she forced the words out from between her lips. “It’s fine. Really. Don’t worry about it. I understand.”
By Wind Page 1