Wickedly Unraveled

by Deborah Blake

  “That’s ridiculous,” Beka said.

  “It kind of is,” Bella agreed. “I admit, I think that Brenna is capable of almost anything, and I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, but no Baba Yaga would do such a thing to her apprentice. Not even Brenna.”

  “You’re wrong,” Barbara said flatly. She waved her hand in Beka’s direction. “Do you really think this can be explained by a few nights of missed sleep?”

  “Please don’t argue,” Beka said. “You know I hate it. Brenna and I have both been putting a lot of our own energy into this new potion she’s been working on. It’s really important—she thinks it can clean the poisons out of the ocean waters—so it will be worth it if we can make it viable. I’m fine, really I am. Can we just go sit down in the bus?”

  “Fine,” Barbara said, since she clearly wasn’t going to get anywhere with either of them. “But I want you to take that extra dose of the Water right now.”

  Beka shook her head as they walked up the stairs into the bus. “Brenna says it is a bad idea to increase the amount of the Water you drink. She says that can lead to developing the Water Sickness without you even realizing it.”

  She and Bella both sneaked sideways glances in Barbara’s direction.

  “Oh, come on,” Barbara sputtered. “You’re not implying I have Water Sickness, are you? For one thing, I’m only in my eighties. I haven’t been drinking it for nearly long enough for that to happen. The few Baba Yagas who have succumbed to it have all been at the end of their careers, and over two hundred years old or older.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Beka said in a quiet voice. “But if someone had been taking extra doses for some reason, even if it seemed at the time like that reason was a good one, she could accelerate the problem. You know, in theory.”

  “Is that what Brenna has been saying about me?” Barbara could feel her blood pressure rising like the ocean at high tide. She swung her head from side to side, looking at the two women who were closer to her than any sisters, the only friends she’d ever had, other than the Riders. “And you believe her?”

  “No, of course we don’t,” Bella said hastily. “We just thought that it might explain some of the stories you’ve been telling. I mean, if they weren’t true, which of course they are.”

  Barbara couldn’t decide if she wanted to weep or scream. In all the years they’d been working together, there had never been a time when the three of them hadn’t been a united front, an unwavering source of support for each other. First Barbara and Bella, and then Beka, when she grew old enough to join their generation of Baba Yagas. They were the ground under her feet. It suddenly felt like quicksand.

  “I brought you the notes for the spell Jazz has been working on,” Bella said, changing the subject awkwardly. They all settled into seats, Beka and Bella on the futon, and Barbara dragging over a wooden chair from in front of a swing-down desk.

  “Great,” Barbara said, trying to ignore the most recent part of their conversation. “What has she come up with?” She put out her hand for the papers Bella had pulled out of the leather bag she’d slung over her shoulder, but Bella hung on to them for a moment too long.

  “I know you said that Jazz had done this crazy spell in the other timeline after Brenna supposedly stole the Riders’ immortality, but that story still seems pretty far out to me.” Bella paused, as if weighing her next words carefully. “It’s not that I’m doubting you, exactly…but, well, I just wanted to make sure that you aren’t contemplating doing some kind of immortality spell for yourself.”

  Barbara ground her teeth together so hard she was worried she’d cracked a molar. “I wouldn’t have eternal life if someone gave it to me gift-wrapped and covered with chocolate,” she said. “The extended years we get as Baba Yagas are plenty for me. I have no desire to outlive Liam and everyone else I know, and go on forever. Even the Riders seemed to be getting bored with their unending lives before everything went to hell, although I doubt they would have given up their immortality willingly.”

  She understood why Bella felt as though she had to ask the question, but it still hurt that the other woman would even have considered such a thing. It sounded like Brenna had been getting into Beka’s head, and Beka’s doubts had been shared with Bella. Back in her own reality, that never would have happened.

  Barbara wasn’t sure which was the worst aspect of this altered timeline; having lost Liam, or the feeling that she was losing the bond with her sister Babas, the bond which had always been the best part of her life.

  Barbara blinked her eyes rapidly. There must have been something in the dusty hut that made them blurry and moist.

  “You either trust me or you don’t,” she said finally. “It’s up to you. If you don’t want to give me Jazz’s notes, I’ll try and find some other way to fix the timeline.” She got up to leave.

  “I trust you, I trust you,” Bella said, standing up too and thrusting the papers into Barbara’s hand. “It’s just, this is all so strange.”

  “Believe me, it is a lot stranger for me,” Barbara said heavily. “At least you’re still living in the world where you belong, where people don’t treat you as if you have suddenly lost your mind.”

  She stumbled toward the doorway, not looking back at the sister who didn’t believe her or the one who hadn’t yet made up her mind if she did or not. Tried not to worry that she was walking away, leaving Beka vulnerable to Brenna’s evil intentions, and doing nothing to stop them. Trying not to think about that hut that felt so much like the cave from hell.

  Or that if she were going to use elements from Jazz’s spell, she might have to go back to the Otherworld for ingredients that weren’t available anywhere outside than that magical land. Barbara really wasn’t ready to face the Queen again. Not until she had more answers. If anything, she felt as though she knew less now than when she started. And she felt a lot more alone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning Barbara was brooding over Jazz’s notes, making lists of the bits she thought might be helpful, when there was a knock on the door.

  Her heart skipped a beat, making the wind chimes hanging outside the window jingle even though there wasn’t a breeze, but when Babs opened the door it was only Mikhail standing there, his blonde head haloed by the sunlight behind him. Not that Barbara wasn’t happy to see a friendly face.

  “Hey there,” she said. “What brings you around? I thought you were going to try and stay out of sight.”

  “Oh, I was,” Mikhail said, dropping gracefully onto the couch and putting his feet up on the coffee table. “But things are getting a little weird, and I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Weird how?’ Barbara asked, fetching him a cup of coffee and refilling her own. She sat back down on the couch next to him, with Babs perching like some strange exotic bird on the edge of the table.

  “Has your friend Liam mentioned anything odd happening to him?” Mikhail asked in an apparent non sequitur.

  “No,” Barbara said. “But I haven’t seen him all that much.” Not nearly enough, anyway. “Why?”

  “Well, I decided I would keep an eye on him, since he seemed to be so important to you,” Mikhail said. “I mean, it’s not like I’m stalking him or anything. I’m still checking on other things around town, and all. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to check in on him periodically.”

  Barbara bit back a smile. She was pretty sure that Mikhail had been watching out for her, not for Liam. Making sure the former sheriff wasn’t seeing anyone else, for instance. Or doing anything else that might hurt Barbara. She thought either circumstance was unlikely, but it was sweet of Mikhail to worry about her. Considering that she had never expressed interest in a man (at least, a Human one) before, she could understand why he might feel a bit protective of her feelings.

  And after the way things had gone with Bella and Beka, she appreciated it more than she might have otherwise, so she refrained from scolding him for interfering.

  “S
o, did you find out anything particularly interesting?” she asked. “Something you thought I needed to know right away?”

  “Maybe,” Mikhail said. “To be honest, I’m not sure if it is a something or a whole bunch of nothings.”

  Barbara blinked at him. “You’re not making much sense. Do you need breakfast? Maybe you have low blood sugar.”

  “My blood sugar is just fine, thank you, Baba Yaga,” Mikhail said with his usual charming grin. “Although I wouldn’t mind a bacon sandwich if you feel like magicking one up. I’m sorry I’m not sounding more coherent. I just meant to say that a lot of odd things have been happening around your Liam, and I wasn’t sure if they were just strange coincidences or if they added up to something sinister.”

  Barbara started assembling his not-breakfast, making extras for her and Babs while she was at it—then adding a couple more portions after a pointed look from Chudo-Yudo. There was no such thing as too much bacon. Under the circumstances, it probably counted as a form of therapy.

  “What strange things are happening to Liam?” Babs asked before Barbara could. She could detect a worried note under the usual calm of the girl’s voice.

  Mikhail shrugged. “He had a tire blow out the other day. That’s not so unusual, but I overheard the mechanic say that the rubber had been sliced most of the way through, but not completely, so it wouldn’t give until he had been driving for a while. Fortunately, he wasn’t going very fast when it blew, and there was no one right behind him, so he was able to steer his truck safely to the shoulder. But if he’d been on the highway, it might have been another story.”

  “Teenage vandalism?” Barbara said. “Or someone with a grudge against him from his sheriff days?”

  “Those seemed to be his two theories,” Mikhail agreed. “But I thought it was curious that his mechanic mentioned that it was the third time something had gone wrong with the truck in a week.”

  “Huh,” Barbara said. “You don’t happen to know what the other two things were, do you?”

  Mikhail grinned. “As it happens, I do. After Liam left, I stopped loitering around the back door of the garage and brought my motorcycle around front to have the guy look at my brakes. Which kindly acted up for a couple of minutes at my request.”

  “That was very nice of it,” Babs said.

  “It was.” Mikhail took a large bite out of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a minute. “Anyway, we got to talking, and he happened to mention that the guy who was there right before me had his brake line fail on him earlier in the week. We had a good laugh about the brake fairies being on the rampage.”

  Babs’ eyes grew wide. “There are brake fairies? I never met one of those.”

  Barbara covered a smile with the hand not holding her sandwich. “No, honey. That’s just a Human joke. There is no such thing. But it is kind of odd that Liam would have problems with both his brakes and a tire. Is his truck old or in bad shape?” She’d seen it, of course, but she didn’t have much interest in non-magical forms of transportation.

  “Not particularly,” Liam said. “And he also had a window smashed earlier in the week. Again, it could just be random bad luck or someone with a grudge.”

  “Huh.” Barbara frowned. “Maybe. Never underestimate the universe’s ability to screw with you just for the heck of it. Still. You said some other weird things happened to him?”

  “He’s apparently been getting a lot of hang up calls, some of them at rude hours. Could be telemarketers.” Mikhail gave Barbara a wicked look from under blonde eyelashes. “You haven’t been calling him up and then losing your nerve to talk to him, have you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I may not have much experience with relationships, but I am not a teenage girl. So no, it wasn’t me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve also been keeping an eye on him while he’s been working around the house. Three days in a row, I saw him searching for his lunch, which seemed to have moved from where he left it. He could be getting absent-minded, I suppose, but he seemed a bit frustrated by the third day.”

  Barbara sighed. “That’s probably the ghost. I’ll have a word with her. She doesn’t much like men, although she doesn’t bother me or Babs. She has never been aggressive, though, so other than playing tricks on him, she’s not likely to be a real problem.”

  “She certainly wouldn’t have fiddled with his brakes, then,” Mikhail said. “What about leaving random pieces of fruit around the house for him? One day there was an apple in his toolbox. Another day it was a banana on the top of his ladder. I thought that was a bit odd, since he clearly wasn’t expecting them.”

  Babs ducked her head. “That was me,” she said in a small voice. “I wanted to make sure he was eating right without us to take care of him.”

  “That’s very considerate of you,” Barbara said, tugging on the girl’s hair. She and Mikhail exchanged sympathetic glances. “Next time why don’t you just walk over there and give him the fruit yourself. It might be less confusing for him.”

  She put down the rest of her sandwich, appetite suddenly gone. “So we can explain some things, but not others. I know you’ll say I have a suspicious mind, but I have to wonder if Brenna isn’t somehow behind these ‘accidents.’ It would be just her style to hurt someone I love, in order to distract me from whatever she is up to.”

  “You have a suspicious mind,” Mikhail said obligingly. “But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. I think maybe I’ll keep a closer eye on him for the next few days. I’m not learning anything in town that you didn’t already know, as far as I can tell. Kids disappeared, no one has a clue where they went, and nothing has happened since Maya left town. Not that anyone else is making that connection. I’d probably be more use trying to figure out if Brenna is actually causing trouble for your man.”

  “Probably,” Barbara agreed. “I’ll see if I can spend more time over at the house, too. But I can’t figure out how she’d get here from California in order to mess with his truck. She’d have to use the doorway in her bus to get to the doorway in the Airstream, and surely I’d know if she’d been in and out, even if she somehow timed it for when I wasn’t home. I’d notice the stink of patchouli, if nothing else.”

  “Could be she’s found some local sprite to do her dirty work for her,” Mikhail suggested. “Or even paid a Human criminal type.”

  “Maybe,” Barbara said. She thought about her visit to Beka when Brenna had been off on some mysterious errand. “Or maybe there is another doorway nearby that I don’t know about. She could be using the undersea portal that belonged to the Selkies and Merpeople before they were forced to move out of their homes in the Monterey trench, if she doesn’t want to go through her own doorway in front of Beka.” She shook her head. “Or maybe I am just being paranoid.”

  “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, as Alexei always says.” Mikhail finished off her abandoned sandwich and wiped his hands on his white jeans, which somehow managed to stay pristine regardless of the blatant abuse. “Tell you what. When I’m not watching Liam, I’ll scout around to see if I can find anything that looks like it might be a portal. Maybe this fracking nonsense opened up more than the one you already know about.”

  It was good to have friends. Friends who didn’t question your every move. “Thank you, Mikhail,” Barbara said with perhaps a bit more force than usual, based on his started expression. “I really appreciate it.”

  “That’s what us Riders are for, silly Baba,” he said. He winked at Babs, thumped Chudo-Yudo affectionately on the head, and walked out the door.

  Barbara watched him go, filled with mixed feelings that were rare for her; she was usually certain of the path she was on. But Mikhail’s loyalty and kind heart just reminded her that if she succeeded on her mission, he and his brothers would no longer be immortal. Or enjoy that same lightness of spirit he had just displayed, which had disappeared during their ordeal and never returned, even when their lives had turned around for the be
tter.

  The rest of the day was fairly quiet, thankfully. She spent some more time fiddling with Jazz’s spell and some ideas of her own, and then she and Babs went over to the house and helped Liam for a couple of hours, putting down new tiles in the bathroom. Other than occasionally catching Babs using magic instead of grout, it went pretty well. The ghost stayed out of the way, which was just as well for her, considering the mood Barbara was in.

  Barbara was still a little grumpy later as she stirred something that resembled dinner on the stove in the Airstream. Her plan to use rehabbing the house as a ploy to hang out with Liam was working, but she missed his presence the rest of the time.

  Evenings together as a family had always been her favorite part of the day. Liam would cook—he was much better at it than she was, and, unlike Barbara, actually liked to do it. Her idea of cooking was to throw a bunch of things into a pot and then mix them together until they looked more or less like food. The magic in the Airstream could make almost anything taste good, but that didn’t carry over to a regular kitchen.

  Babs would usually sit at the kitchen table doing homework or perch on a stool by the counter and study whatever Liam was doing. She rarely said much, but it was remarkable what skills she had picked up simply by watching in her usual intent manner. Maybe Barbara should ask the little girl to do the cooking.

  Barbara herself usually helped with prep, cutting up onions or chopping whatever other vegetables were needed. In the nicer weather, she would wander out to the garden and pick fresh herbs to add to whatever Liam was creating. Sometimes she just sat and watched him work, reveling in the feeling of love that permeated the kitchen and feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.