by Coralie Moss
“One more question, Rose,” I said, lifting my hand like I was back in grade school, “and then we can call it a day.” Clifford looked to his wife and they nodded in agreement. “You returned to the house after your walk Sunday evening.”
“That’s right. Went to bed around ten.”
“Did anything unusual happen on Monday?”
“The realtor that pesters us about selling stopped by, like she does most every Monday. Said she had a new client who was very interested in acquiring orchards. I stuck her card on the side of the refrigerator, underneath one of those big magnets from the hardware store.”
“Can you describe what she looked like?”
Cliff turned to Abi. “You have a better eye for that sort of thing.”
She nodded. “She always dressed in a skirt and jacket. Short, dark brown hair. Not what I would call a soft woman, all angles. And not very amiable, considering she wanted our business. She never once stayed for tea.”
“And after she left?”
Cliff and Abi exchanged confused glances. “Next thing I remember was waking up with Abi lying next to me. And an awful headache.”
Chapter 9
“What’s your take on all this?” Tanner asked when River returned from helping Rose escort the older couple into the house for a rest. “You’ve been with them for two days. Have they mentioned anything else?”
The two men and I headed to the newer section of the orchard with the intention of looping around to collect water samples from the three ponds before finishing with the section of trees that housed the tunnels. Tanner took over labelling the individual vials and bags as I handed them to him.
River placed marks on a map to indicate where the samples had been taken. “Neither of them mentioned the realtor before today,” he said, digging into a back pocket, “but the business card was stuck to the side of the fridge.”
He handed the card to Tanner, who passed it to me.
“I don’t recognize her name, but she works for my ex-husband’s family,” I said.
When I flipped the card, the familiar tingle of magic prickled along my skin and the printing on the front disappeared.
“Tanner, quick, write this down.” I recited the name and phone number and handed over the piece of paper. “Bag this too. It might be useless, but I want to keep it just in case.”
“Will you look at that.” Tanner examined the now blank business card and swore under his breath. “Clever.”
Clever—not a word I would use when describing Doug. But his mother? The mounting connections to the Flechette family were putting me on edge. I stuffed back my discomfort to mull over later. “River, want to check out the tunnels? Plenty of light.”
“I’m game.”
“I want to go down too,” I said. If staying front and center in this investigation meant I had to confront old fears, I was ready. Mostly. Maybe it would help knowing Tanner and River didn’t seem the types to toss taunts down the ladder and refuse to help me if I freaked out underground. After Cliff’s story, and this morning’s wild ride, I needed to see and experience the tunnels for myself.
“I wonder if Cliff has a map.”
“Bet he does.”
We looked at each other before mutually deciding to forego the map.
“Shall we each take a tree?” asked River.
Tanner shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “One of us should stay above ground. You two feel free to explore.”
“Fair enough. You might be a little on the long side anyways. Calli, do you know where you want to start?”
I smiled at River’s reference to Tanner’s height and closed my eyes. Sniffing at the sun-warmed air led me to the grass, beyond its roots, and into what lay below the field and rocks. I shifted my weight, opened my eyes, and pointed to the tree tugging at my pant legs. “That one, the second one in.”
River strode past. “I’ll take the farthest. See you in a bit.”
“If you were investigating this alone,” Tanner asked, once River was no longer within earshot, “what would you do?”
“Create a grid, take samples of plant matter and soil like we’ve been doing, and photographs too.”
“What else? What would you do, as a witch?”
I laughed. “I’d take off my boots and read the ground and the trees.”
“So do that.” He slipped his feet out of his flip flops and waited at the edge of the path for me to do the same.
“I think I want to keep my feet in my boots during my first foray underground.” I waggled my fingers in his direction. “These should be enough for now.”
Tanner smiled. “Okay, partner.”
Reassured, I detoured off the curving path to where I’d heard the humming the day before, the loud thump-thump in my chest a clear warning I was about to step out of my comfort zone. Way out. I had something to prove to Tanner and River—and myself. It was time to bring my magical talents to the forefront.
Clifford said the tunnels were places of refuge. I swept my flashlight’s beam over the interior of the tree trunk before directing it down the ladder.
Here goes nothing.
After a twist, a wiggle and a push, my feet met solid ground on the third or fourth rung down. I gripped the vertical beams of the ladder and paused to remind myself to breathe. At the bottom, carved walls bowed outward, giving the appearance of a barrel-like antechamber. The tunnel went off in one direction only, giving me no choice where to go; I just had to choose my method of locomotion: crawling, crouching, or scuttling sideways like a crab.
I chose a modified scuttle, directed the flashlight’s beam in front of me, and left the fresh air and weak light at the bottom of the ladder.
Sound was muffled underground. Rocks and roots bumped out of the walls, giving the surface a rough finish. I inured myself to the few crawly creatures I could see in the beam of my light and went deep into denial about how many more I might be missing. Progress was slow. My heart rate and breathing were slightly accelerated but steady. Mostly. When I stopped, musty air irritated my nostrils, and I sneezed twice, almost knocking my head against the wall to my left.
And that was when the presence inside the tunnel made itself known.
A creak and a pop and another pop went off, like a membrane stretched to the breaking point, between me and the ladder.
I flared my nostrils and inhaled through my nose, using my connection to the earth entombing me to keep me calm as I pivoted and dropped my butt to the ground. Tender. Green. Fresh. Curious. This was similar to the presence I had encountered earlier in the day.
I planted my left palm to the packed earth, fear and excitement flooding my muscles, and pointed my flashlight’s beam at the wall to my right. Little rootlets, three or four inches long, sprouted out of one of the exposed roots. I scrabbled closer, intrigued.
Not rootlets. Branches, with tiny stems and glossy green leaves. I went to touch them with a fingertip.
Mine.
The voice reverberated through the earth, shaking loose bits of dirt and pebbles embedded in the archway over my head.
Mine.
I dropped the flashlight and fisted both hands against my chest, the seared skin on my fingertips burning like lemon juice on paper cuts. The voice was terrifyingly close, and my legs wouldn’t obey my brain’s command to move. I retrieved the flashlight with shaking fingers. Dirt crammed under my fingernails, and flashes of my aunt’s dank cellar mingled with the stale underground air. Overwhelming claustrophobia and the voice, with its warning, possessive message, suffocated my curiosity.
“Calli, what’s wrong?” Tanner’s concerned face met my dirt-streaked visage once I made it to the base of the ladder.
I threaded one arm through the closest rung, my legs shaking.
“Panic attack,” I huffed. “I thought I outgrew a certain childhood incident. Guess I haven’t.”
Next time—if there was a next time—I’d come prepared, with one of those big, black police flashli
ghts. And maybe a hard hat with a headlamp so I wouldn’t have to pick bits of bugs out of my hair. And knee pads and leather gloves and a counter-spell to prevent that voice from chilling me to the very marrow in my bones.
“You okay to come up on your own, or do you need help?” he asked.
“Give me a sec to get my legs back under me, and I’ll be fine.”
His head and shoulders disappeared, along with the light from his cell phone. I clung to the ladder, rested my forehead on my hands, and sneezed again. The dull thud of Tanner moving about overhead provided a lifeline to freedom.
“Tanner?” I called. “I’m coming up.”
Three closely spaced rungs rose above my head. Getting up the ladder and out of the tree’s innards entailed twisting the upper half of my body, ducking my head, and not caring at all how dirty my shirt was about to get. I didn’t stop moving until I’d crawled out from under the shade cast by the tree’s wide reach and dropped onto a patch of sun-warmed grass.
Dry stalks prickled the back of my neck and arms, but at least I could breathe. My knees gave silent thanks before they finally gave out.
Tanner crouched beside me and nudged my hip. “Have some water.”
I rolled to my side and cracked open one eye. The lukewarm water was like nectar. I drank half the bottle. “Save the rest for River.”
Tanner chuckled. “River’s in his element down there. He may not emerge for a while.”
I hung my head and shook out my hair, struggling to sit cross-legged.
“Hold on a sec.” Tanner screwed on the bottle’s cap, dropped it on the grass, and positioned himself on his knees in front of me. “You’ve got an assortment of…” he began, eyeing my hair.
“Don’t tell me what’s in there.” I held up my palm, pressed my fingertips to his chin. “Just get it out. Please.”
He laughed softly. “I thought you earth witches loved dirt and crawly things.”
“I do love dirt. And I love the crawly things most when they stay in the dirt and out of my hair.”
Tanner breathed steadily through his nose, tugging at strands of my hair and proceeding methodically, section by section, all over my scalp. The soothing rhythm of his fingers wove a wordless familiarity between us. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched me in such an oddly intimate way.
When he finished, he brushed off his hands and sat back on his heels, tipping my chin up with two fingers. When had his eyes gone from golden brown to a startling topaz? “I think I got them all,” he said. “See anything interesting down there?”
I nodded, still enamored with the gem-like quality of his eye color. “I was mostly fine. Then I heard these odd noises, and when I went to touch these little things that had sprouted out of the roots, I heard a voice. All it said was, ‘Mine,’ which completely spooked me, and that’s when my fear of tight, dark places took over.”
While I was talking, a halo-like light suffused the air around his head and shimmered off the hairs on his forearms. The cord looped around his neck pulsed in time with the beating of his heart, which made my heart rate ramp up again.
Leaning in, I imagined stroking the shadowed patch of skin revealed by the undone buttons of his shirt. Instead, I reached for the woven leather cord and pulled.
Tanner grabbed my wrist, his thumb sliding into my palm, applying pressure to my smaller bones. He didn’t move my hand away and the compression didn’t hurt, not a lot, but the message in the gesture was clear.
“I’m not ready to share that with you,” he whispered.
“What are you ready to share?” I kept pulling, prodded into bold behavior by the impatient layers of accumulated desire rumbling in the rich earth below. But the mine on the tip of my tongue and the laughter burbling deep in my chest were coming from me, not some ghostly entity that liked to inhabit tunnels and apple trees.
Tanner brought his face close enough I could see his individual eyelashes, the pulse at the base of his throat, and the sharply edged curve of his full lower lip—the one that looked wine-stained. Or bruised. I stared at that lip, pulled harder on the cord in my hand, until he lowered me onto a hillock of grass.
His upper body followed the arc of my descent and his mouth came into high relief. He slid one, strong hand to the back my neck and lifted, exposing my throat. “I want to share a kiss with you.”
The ground below me lifted in response, forcing my back to arch until my breasts met his chest. I unfurled my legs and nodded consent, never loosening my grip on the cord.
Tanner angled his head and kissed one corner of my mouth, and the other corner, and when the crush of his lips met mine, dark cherries ripened to perfection burst open and flooded my tongue. Bottled water slaked one kind of thirst. Tanner’s kiss invoked a wholly new need to drink and get drunk and never get up.
I invited his juiciness to pour into me and through me and feed the land at my back.
He hovered the full length of his body over mine, supporting himself on elbows and forearms planted to either side of my shoulders. His hands cupped the sides of my face, and his thumbs explored the contours of my cheekbones and eye sockets while his lips continued to conquer and cajole, offering bribes by way of an endless supply of over-ripe cherry and hints of mint.
Tanner released my lips and bit my chin, trailing his tongue from the edge of a collarbone as he followed the taut edge of a tendon, over my jaw and back to my mouth. The line he left burned below my skin, melting any residual resistance.
I bent my knees and pressed my heels into the backs of Tanner’s thighs, urging him to give me more of his weight, insisting he meld his body with mine.
When he broke the extended entanglement of our mouths, arousal connected the landscapes of our chests and bellies, leaving little room for discerning who ended where. Even the tree branches, furiously weaving a protective canopy overhead, seemed invested in us continuing to kiss.
Until Tanner suddenly peeled himself away, leaving the front of my body bandage-ripped raw. He stood like a toppled tree springing back into place.
A tremor, rising from behind me, pushed at my back. I took the hand Tanner offered and joined him, unsteady in the double whammy delivered by the unexpected kissing and the end of the unexpected kissing. He brushed the dirt and dried grass off my back, and when he finished, he grabbed my elbows and faced me.
Despite the strength of the afternoon sun, the earlier glints of golden light that radiated off his body had disappeared. A cloud settled across his eyes, the gem-like clarity disappeared, and a denseness claimed his body. He pulled me into a hug and spoke into my hair, sounding more like a government agent delivering a summons and less like a man who’d initiated and followed through on a series of succulent kisses.
“I should not have done that, Calliope. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
My voice was muffled by his armpit. “What if it’s okay with me? What if I want you to kiss me again?”
“I…”
My arms circled his waist. A few minutes earlier, the man lying between my legs had pulsed with desire, need, and sexual power. The man who helped me stand was as wooden as a coat rack. The Tanner who held me tight in this moment and nuzzled my hair was somewhere in between, and whatever was going on in his body—and maybe his heart or his soul, I didn’t know—was big enough to split him into pieces.
Mine. The voice was muffled, and I finally understood what it meant.
The voice didn’t want the old tree in the other section of the orchard or the tender green leaves popping out underground. The voice wanted Tanner.
I hugged him a little tighter and a little longer until his heart rate slowed. His arms and legs relaxed against my body.
A shout from River startled us apart.
Tanner took a step back as the other agent jogged into view.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Find anything interesting? Calli was just debriefing me on her adventure.” He squeezed my hand before he released it. Nothing in my body reassembled in i
ts right place.
River wasn’t even breathing hard when he plopped onto the grass and helped himself to what was left in the bottle of water. “I think we need to come back with full spelunking gear, more lights, more help. The tunnel’s a marvel of engineering and magic. Or magical engineering. Anyways, count me in when you’re ready to explore further.” He drained the refillable bottle and handed it to me. “And you?”
I blew out a fast breath and shook off the sensation of Tanner’s mouth consuming mine. “I’ll frame this by confessing I’m not fond of tight, dark places.”
River chuckled. “You were right at home, then, hey?”
“Not exactly,” I said, joining him on the grass. “But something magical’s alive in this section of the orchard, and I connect with it.”
“Me, too,” Tanner murmured, although he didn’t look as blissed by the connection. Or any other connection.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a container of dried fruit, tearing a piece of pear in half for a needed boost of sugar. River’s interest in my story piqued when I got to the part about the voice saying mine in the tunnel.
Tanner paled slightly. “Was it male? Female? Other?”
“Female. -Ish?” I picked at the other piece of pear and thought about it. “Definitely female. Any thoughts? Either of you?”
“I didn’t hear anything underground,” River said, “but I get an overall sense of well-being when I’m amongst these trees. Or maybe it’s that Rose and I have gone twenty-four hours without irritating each other.” He laughed to himself. “Speaking of my favorite sister and witch, I should get back to her. We’re hoping we can leave the Pearmains to their own devices.” He flopped onto the grass and sighed before he bounded onto his feet and extended his right arm. “Calliope Jones, it has been my pleasure to begin to get to know you.”
“River, same here. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
He released my hand. “Tanner, what’s your plan?”