“This year the full thunder moon happens to coincide with a blood moon,” he continued. “It’s also a super moon, if you can believe that.”
“I’m completely lost,” Kade admitted.
“A blood moon happens when there are four lunar eclipses in a row,” I explained. “Each month there’s a different name for the full moon. We’re entering the full thunder moon. That’s generally nothing to worry about.”
“A blood moon is generally nothing to worry about either,” Raven offered. “It’s simply an odd occurrence.”
“The problem is that all of these moons are happening simultaneously,” Max explained. “What do you get when a blood moon, super moon and full thunder moon coincide?”
“Herpes?” Nellie asked innocently, earning multiple groans from around the table.
Max was not even mildly amused at the lame joke. “I haven’t slept yet, Nelson. I would tread lightly if I were you.”
Nellie was appropriately abashed. “Sorry. It’s not herpes. Please continue.”
“It’s a lunar event,” Max volunteered. “That means a variety of things, including the fact that our shifters will be stronger – and wilder – while our magic is harder to control.”
“That should mean their magic is harder to control, too, right?” Kade asked.
Kade was always one to look on the bright side. I couldn’t help but smile at him. “In theory, yes.” I patted his knee under the table. “The thing is, Amanda Stevens warned us last night. She warned us about the full moon.”
“You’re assuming she was warning us,” Nixie argued. “What if she was actually trying to intimidate us?”
“Why would she do that?” I was honestly curious. “She seemed more intrigued than threatening. I think she wanted us to know something was coming, perhaps to save us from whatever fate befell her.”
“We still have no idea what her deal is,” Luke pointed out. “I don’t spend a lot of time with neurotic chicks, but that one seemed freakier than usual.”
“She was hot, though,” Seth interjected.
“So was the chick in Basic Instinct, and we all know how that ended,” Dolph pointed out. “You said you thought you knew what was going on, Max. The moon can’t be the whole story.”
“The moon has very little effect on what is happening,” Max said. “I only pointed out the moon because it’s going to make things extremely hard for us this evening. That means we need to come up with an appropriate story to close the circus before dark.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t remember Max ever closing the circus early, no matter the danger. “Are you serious? We’re closing at dusk?”
“We have no choice.” Max was firm. “They’re coming for us tonight. They won’t be alone.”
“Okay, back the truck up.” Kade held up his hand to garner attention. “I think you should tell us what we’re up against here. And then, as a group, we’ll decide the best way to plan around the attack.”
“Fine. I called a friend in Europe.” Max shuffled through his portfolio. “I asked if he’d ever heard of a wendigo working with humans. It turns out that’s not nearly as rare as I thought. It was common in the old world, an occurrence that most believed didn’t hop the pond to become part of paranormal mystique here. It still happens overseas all the time.”
“But what do they hope to accomplish?” Naida asked. She was clearly intrigued, but wanted to get the whole story before reacting. “How do they even train a wendigo?”
“They didn’t train it.” Max tapped the top sheet in the file. “This is some information my friend had tucked away. It’s a history of Falk.”
“What?” I craned my neck to read the sheet, ultimately reaching in front of Kade to snag it. “Why would they need a history of Falk in Europe?”
“Because something terrible happened here,” Max replied without hesitation. “You were right about what you saw, Poet. That woman – I think you said her name was Gillian Dodd, right? Well, she’s in this file.”
“Something tells me you’re about to tell a terrible story,” Nixie said.
“I am.” Max sucked in a calming breath. “I’m going to keep it short because we don’t have much time and there’s a mountain of planning to do. Falk did well for a number of years. I don’t want to say that it thrived because survival was always hard in those times. But it did pretty well for itself and the people living there. The residents thought the entire town was somehow blessed.
“Then came a bad year,” he continued. “The gardens struggled. The groves didn’t yield as much fruit. The road between Falk and Eureka became muddy and risky to traverse. That was all before the mill blade warped.”
“Are you saying the blade warped overnight?” I asked.
“That’s the story, but who knows how much of that is fact,” Max replied. “The thing is, it could’ve been warping for years and the workers noticed only when they could no longer use it. The residents freaked out when it happened, thinking they’d fallen under an evil omen.”
“And that’s where Gillian Dodd comes into play,” I mused. “They thought she was a witch.”
“They did,” Max confirmed. “They thought she was a witch, but rather than burn her at the stake they decided to cleanse her. I think it’s fair to say that the means they chose are why we find ourselves in this predicament today.”
I was practically salivating. “What?”
“They whipped her. They starved her. They sexually assaulted her. This was all to cleanse her of the demon, mind you.”
My stomach tilted. “What else did they do?”
“When she was close to death, to prolong her life, they fed her human flesh. They told her it was one of her victims, a small child who’d starved because of the failing crops.”
Things slipped into place. “Gillian Dodd is the wendigo.”
“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.” Max shot me a fond smile. “You always were quick on the uptake.”
“Wait a second, I don’t understand,” Luke pressed. “Are you saying this wendigo has been running around for, like, ninety years?”
“Pretty much,” Max confirmed. “The Falk townspeople assumed Gillian was going to die and tossed her into the woods to suffer until her end. But she didn’t die. Thanks to the human flesh and her anger, she transformed into a wendigo. And when she went back to Falk, it was with a purpose.”
“She killed all of them, didn’t she?” Nixie asked, her voice small.
“No.” Max shook his head. “She killed some to sustain herself, but her anger was the driving force. She was forced to eat human flesh while suffering the torments of the damned. She didn’t willingly consume it. Apparently that allowed her to maintain a remnant of her soul.”
“She’s a wendigo with a partial soul?” I thought about what I’d seen in the dream. “She was trying to warn me away from Falk in my dream. She has more powers than a normal wendigo … by a long shot.”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure she’s responsible for the ghosts, too,” Max offered. “They’re not ghosts, by the way. They’re nothing. I think they’re replicas of the people of Falk – maybe even partial shades, although I think that is a stretch. She’s been trying to keep us out of the woods by utilizing the ghosts.”
“She doesn’t want to eat us,” Raven surmised. “She has a conscience but knows there are times she can’t stop herself. She really has been trying to do right by us.”
“Yes, but the women you saw doing the dance are another story,” Max said. “They’re part of a coven.”
I balked. “Not the one I read about. Everything I saw said they were disorganized and had no idea what they were doing.”
“I don’t know if it’s the one you read about, but the women you saw out there are definitely a coven,” Max argued. “There were three of them originally. Gillian enslaved those who stayed in Falk, forced them to do her bidding and provide her with food – livestock – as long as they stayed. The women didn’t like it, fought back, and tr
ied to enslave her. They succeeded, but the town was too far gone by that point.
“Those women stayed in the area through the years, passing on power and insight to other witches,” he continued. “Their numbers started to grow in the seventies. It wasn’t squatters taking over Falk – er, well, I guess squatters could’ve been there, too, but they weren’t the main problem. It was the witches. They were trying to make Gillian their slave, make her kill for them.”
“They were providing the greed,” I deduced. “Greed is often a motivating factor for a wendigo. Gillian was turned into a wendigo against her will, and then these women provided the energy to keep her going.”
“Yes, but the women became stronger along the way,” Max said. “They became full of themselves and absorbed power whenever they could. Gillian is the one making the ghosts appear to keep us out of the woods. The women you saw dancing are enslaving her and pose a threat to us.”
“So … how are we going to fight this?” Kade asked. “Are you going to kill all those women? They’re human, aren’t they?”
“We don’t discriminate here,” I reminded him. “The human women are worse than the wendigo in this case. They have to be stopped. I mean … they took Amanda Stevens and somehow co-opted her mind to get her to join. They must be trying to grow the coven for a reason.”
“I don’t care about the reason.” Max slowly rose to his feet. “I care about stopping them. I’m leaving this information with you and taking a nap. I expect everyone to have suggestions for the upcoming fight by lunchtime. As for closing early, we have no choice. We’ll have a hard enough time protecting ourselves. We can’t add patrons to the fray.”
25
Twenty-Five
We had a better idea of what was stalking us – and even what we had to do – but that didn’t mean we could ignore our circus duties. Max always stressed that the circus must come first and our monster-fighting efforts second. We had to stick to that.
I changed into my normal clothing for a performance day – an ankle-length skirt, peasant blouse and scarf – and found Kade watching me from in front of the closet when I glanced up. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head and offered a smile. “I was just thinking about what Max told us. Is the moon really a big deal when it comes to a fight like this?”
“The moon is powerful. I know that probably doesn’t make sense to you, but it does influence mood and happiness in humans. We have abilities, so we’re often affected on a grander scale.”
“Are you worried about this thunder moon thing tonight?”
I chuckled at his derisive tone. It felt good to laugh, even if it was only fleeting. “I’m more worried about it being a super moon. That will probably make the witches stronger and more unpredictable. The same can be said for our crew. We have training to fall back on, but … well, it’s going to be a long night.”
“I figured that out myself.” Kade shuffled to a stop in front of me and leaned over to kiss my forehead. “We have time to figure this out. Max said we would talk at lunch.”
I had no idea where he was going with this. “I heard what Max said.”
“I know. It’s just … you’re not going to go running around the woods or something, are you?”
“That’s, like, the fifth time you’ve asked me that since we stopped here. I don’t often go running around the woods for no apparent reason.”
“You did last night.”
“I had a reason last night.”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t a reason I could stomach very well,” Kade hedged. “I want to make sure I don’t have to worry about you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.” I softened my voice and met his gaze. “I’ve got a job to do, and it doesn’t involve moving away from the dreamcatcher. I promise.”
“Good. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I am extremely fond of you. I would be crushed if something happened to you.”
I didn’t want to encourage him – the mother hen routine was getting a bit old – but I couldn’t help taking pity on him. He was dealing with a lot and was essentially admitting he couldn’t take another blow. “I’ll stick close to the circus grounds. You have my word.”
“Thank you.” Kade gave me a soft kiss, lingering a moment before pulling away. “I’ll be making the rounds all day. I’ll stop to see you a few times just to make sure things are okay.”
“That sounds lovely.” I winked as he moved to leave the bedroom. “By the way, I’m really fond of you, too.”
Kade’s grin was so quick and sly it warmed my heart. “Keep it that way. We still have to christen the other rooms in our new trailer.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And the office trailer.”
Oh, now he was just being a perverted pain. “Don’t push it.”
“I have to be true to myself.”
“So … basically you’re saying you’re a sex fiend.”
Kade nodded without hesitation. “Basically.”
MY FIRST CLIENT OF the day was a thirty-something housewife. Upon initial entry, I thought she was going to be an easy read and quick twenty-five bucks. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“I want to know who my husband is sleeping with – I’m sure it’s that girl who answers phones at his office twice a week – and I want to know which hitman I can hire to bump them both off.”
I wasn’t often surprised, but this was a new one. My mouth dropped open as I stared her down. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Nicole Haskell, all platinum blond hair from a bottle and overdone makeup from Wet N Wild, rested her hands on the table. She wore a well-pressed pink suit and a grimace that made my stomach clench. “I want to know who my husband is having an affair with and who I can hire to kill him and get away with it.”
I shuffled the tarot cards and searched for the right way to approach the request. My first inclination was to hop in her head and see how serious she was about the murder aspect. I was barely inside when I realized she was very serious and took a mental step back.
“What makes you think your husband is cheating on you?” I asked, briefly wondering if I could talk her out of the belief. “I mean … you need a solid reason to want him dead.”
“I have a solid reason. He’s cheating on me.”
“But … how do you know that?”
“You’re the psychic. Shouldn’t you already know the answer to that question?”
I pasted a pleasant smile on my face even though the last thing I wanted was to be nice to the woman. “I haven’t dealt the cards yet. I can’t see anything without the cards to guide me.”
“Oh.” Nicole was properly abashed. “I guess that makes sense.”
“It helps to have a foundation in place when you cut the cards and I start dealing.”
“And why is that?”
The question caught me off guard. Most true believers – and that’s what Nicole apparently was – fell over themselves to agree with whatever I said because they believed I could change certain outcomes. “I don’t make the rules. I merely have to follow them. The spirits make the rules.”
“And what are these spirits telling you now?”
“That I should find out why you believe what you believe,” I replied without hesitation. “So, again, why do you think your husband is cheating on you?”
Nicole heaved out a sigh that was more petulant teenager than grown wife and mother, but she tapped her fingers on the table and was resigned when she answered. “At first it was just little things. He got a call after dinner one night – we never get calls that late – and he took the phone in another room to talk. Obviously he was talking to his girlfriend.”
I forced myself to remain calm. “Perhaps he was planning a surprise for your anniversary.”
“Our anniversary isn’t for six months.”
“Maybe he was talking to a work colleague.”
“He owns his own business – he’s a real estate agent – an
d there are only a few other people in the office. The work colleague I’m concerned about is Kelly Biscuit. No, that’s her real last name. She’s eighteen and perky.” Nicole made a face as she imitated the young girl, forcing me to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “She’s been at the office for six months and she’s always hitting on all the men. I know she’s the reason that Daryl has been acting odd.”
“You must have more evidence of an affair than what you’ve shared so far?” I certainly hoped so, because I was under the impression that Nicole was completely off her rocker.
“Of course I have more evidence,” Nicole scoffed. “The call was just the start of it. He’s also taken to having late dinners twice a week. He never had late dinners before. He says he’s trying to woo clients in a different way, but I know that’s not what he’s doing.
“He also started going to the gym to get in shape,” she continued. “He says he wants to share a long life with me, but he spends all his time looking at what he thinks are muscles – he’s started shaving his chest and everything – and posing in front of the mirror.
“He’s on a diet, has a computer I can’t get on so he can surf the web, and he had a strange charge show up on his credit card last month that he doesn’t think I know about,” she said. “I looked at the bill when he was in the shower, and I know he bought something at Victoria’s Secret. He didn’t buy that for me. That means he bought it for someone else.”
Huh. I hated to admit it, but she had quite the case of circumstantial evidence. That couldn’t be good. “Okay. Cut the cards.” I handed over the deck and waited for Nicole to hand it back. “Are you sure you want to go the hitman route?”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Nicole made a face that would’ve been hilarious under different circumstances. “I want him to pay for what he’s done, for ruining our family, and for making me crazy.”
Despite the husband’s actions, I had trouble believing Nicole wasn’t crazy before Daryl married her. He might have lit the fuse to help her blow up Wacky Town in her brain, but she was well on her way to planting the dynamite before that.
Freaky Rites (A Mystic Caravan Mystery Book 6) Page 23