Walking Through Shadows

by Sheri Lewis Wohl

  When they reached the ridgeline, he straightened and swept his gaze across the scenery below, or as much as he could see given the lack of daylight. In theory, this was what he hoped for, a broad view of the land below. His instinct to come here had been exactly right. Except for one small detail, it did not provide him with what he needed. He threw his head back and howled. Just as he was being forced to do, they would have to stop and make camp, and his vantage point should have been a perfect place to spot them. The rain made the night cool, and that meant a necessity to build a fire, giving him a glowing beacon to follow. Below him spread out nothing but darkness. No flames, no flickering lights, no campfires. How could that be? Where was the damn fire?

  The thief had nowhere else to go. The witch’s cabin was the only shelter for many miles, as she had chosen her solitude well. Not skillfully enough to hide from him, but none could hide from him.

  Except for this one. Or two. He was not certain how many he hunted at the moment. Not that it mattered. One or twenty, he had faced it all before and come out victorious. Only one was a witch, and his sights were on her. The friends who might accompany her, well, it would be their bad luck, for those who befriended evil were just as guilty as she, even if they knew not what she was. Witches were very skilled at hiding their true nature from everyone except him.

  For a while longer he sat on his horse and scanned the land fanning out below, hoping a light would appear and guide him to his prey. As the time passed and the night grew deeper and darker, it became increasingly clear that he would have to wait. His prey was either very smart or very lucky. He was hoping for the latter. Luck ultimately failed.

  Dismounting, he loosened his saddle and took it from the horse’s back. It was not necessary to tie him up, for the animal was true and loyal despite his own dislike of him. He would wander in search of fresh grass to eat, but he would not leave Matthew. His bedroll was tied to the back of his saddle. Once he had untied it, he spread it out inside a depression in the rocks and lay back against the hard earth. The thin blanket provided some warmth against the cool air, though very little in the way of softness against the rocky ground or protection from the rain that still fell upon him despite the bit of cover from the rocks.

  This was not his idea of relaxation, not at all, and as was often the case, he resented this part of his job. It was necessary and he would endure it. It did not mean he had to like it. After all he had done for the world, he deserved better not part of the time. All of the time. Soft beds and soft women. Good food and fine wine.

  Soon enough he would be done here and, in a few weeks, would be back in the civilized world, where he could indulge in the pleasures he was due. His mind drifted to the magnificent Astor House, its comfortable rooms and delicious meals. As soon as his business was done in this no-man’s-land, he would go directly to New York City and to the front desk of the lovely new hotel. He smiled as he thought about the additional comforts nearby, everything he needed and desired within blocks of Broadway and Vesey.

  With that warm, uplifting thought, he closed his eyes and settled into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The letter to Hannah’s granddaughter intrigued Molly. What had it all meant? How long had it had been beneath the floorboards? Had the granddaughter ever even seen it? Given the apparent newness of the book, she suspected not. It was an intriguing mystery.

  Aquene was right when she said that Molly and Hannah were alike. They were. That then led her to a different line of thought. Perhaps they shouldn’t have taken the grimoire with them. If the person it was intended for came looking, it wouldn’t be there. Earlier she’d felt like it was Hannah’s magic that had brought them here and that the book would take them home. Now she was having second thoughts. She was thinking more about the granddaughter.

  Molly would be devastated if her ancestor left something like that for her and someone picked it up and took off with it. Even though she’d read only the first few pages, whatever was between the covers was vitally important for the unnamed granddaughter. Bottom line: they had to get it back to the cabin. She refused to be the one to upset history. She’d read about the theories on disrupting time continuums. Who knew if any of it was true? She didn’t plan to be the one to find out. Aquene might or might not agree with her, given she seemed to have a pretty set agenda. Rigid agenda or not, Molly’s mind was made up. When daylight made its appearance, they would return it to the cabin and put it right back where they found it.

  She put a hand on Aquene’s arm. “We have to take this back.” She felt her stiffen.

  “No. We cannot return.”

  “We have to. It’s important.”

  “There is too much danger in that place. It is not safe for us to be there.”

  She got it, and honestly she felt as though a spiderweb stretched across the place just waiting to catch them. At the same time, she knew that they had to do this. “I know, and we’ll need to be careful, but it doesn’t change anything. This has to go back.” She patted the grimoire.

  “I do not like this.”

  Molly squeezed her arm gently. “It’s not my first choice either.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I’m sure.” She could feel Aquene’s shoulders slump and knew she would go with her in the morning.

  To decide something gave her a feeling of being back in control, at least a little bit. She relaxed and let her gaze drop to the book. Since they wouldn’t be able to return it tonight, what the hell? She might as well read it through first. The odds of her falling asleep out here were pretty slim, and she figured she could finish it by the time the sun came up again. Besides, what could it hurt if she read it as long as she put it back where she found it tomorrow? No harm, no foul.

  Shifting, she put the book in her lap and opened the cover.

  “I have to read this,” she told Aquene as she pulled her flashlight back out of her pocket.

  “Can you read it all with your magic light?”

  Molly smiled at the amazement in Aquene’s voice. She wondered how she’d see things if, instead of going back in time, they’d been propelled forward a few hundred years. If technology advanced as much in that time as it had since the early 1900s, it would be a world she’d find as astonishing as Aquene found her small flashlight.

  “I think we need to.”

  “Her words contain much truth.”

  Probably, and if nothing else, the book would give Molly some perspective. It would be hard to put it in context, not being all that familiar with the time or Hannah’s family. Some things, however, were timeless, and that’s what she was looking for. “Perhaps for the person this is meant for, though I’m not tracking where she’s going with her diary-type entries. It’s unusual for a grimoire to have letters included. I’m curious what passage the book secures for her granddaughter. A ship? Except if the granddaughter is coming to the cabin, we’re inland a fair distance for it to be a ship. A wagon perhaps. Or I guess it could be a barge on the river.”

  Aquene was shaking her head. “I do not believe that is the passage she speaks of.”

  “It would have to be. How else could this mysterious granddaughter show up out here? I’m thinking a group of travelers in wagons would be the most logical, though she might have to make the last bit of the journey on horseback.” History hadn’t been her best subject, and she was searching for the tidbits she could remember about the area.

  Aquene studied her face. “I believe you must read what she has written, for only then will we understand all that she writes of.”

  Molly didn’t know what there was to understand. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Despite those second thoughts, she still sensed that the book somehow had a hand in their arrival here, even if it was written for someone else. After all, they’d both touched it at the same time and ended up together. So Aquene wasn’t wrong in saying they needed to read it through to figure it out. It had brought them here, and hopefully it would take them home. This wa
s a beautiful place in Molly’s century, and it was even more so in this one, but still, she wanted to go back. She had a bakery to get up and running again, and a dog to find. She had to hope that, just as Hannah promised her granddaughter passage, she too would find it for her and her friends.

  “Agreed. Let’s see what else she can tell us.” She twisted the light on and turned the beam of the light to the pages of the grimoire, careful to make certain the illumination stayed inside their tiny shelter. A thread of excitement trilled through her as her fingers touched the pages. She had grown up with magic, even if she hadn’t been the enthusiastic student her mother hoped for. Truthfully, she’d been less than thrilled about having to train. She’d spent her whole life constantly barraged by her duty, and frankly, she resented it. All she really wanted was to be like her friends, a regular girl. What was so important about being a hereditary witch anyway? She’d often thought the craft was an art no longer needed in the world. Science and progress had made it obsolete, so what was the point?

  Of course, she kept her opinions to herself. She loved her family and wasn’t willing to purposely hurt her mother and grandmother or any other of the women of her blood. Their heritage was incredibly important to them, even if she believed it good history and was more than content to leave it at that. In the interest of family harmony, she tried to be a student of the craft and thus keep everyone happy. The fact that she still hadn’t come into her full powers was further proof, in her mind, that she wasn’t really witch material.

  Her heart lay in the kitchen. The true magic she was able to create was her food. As much as she failed to understand her mother’s embrace of the craft, her mother still struggled with Molly’s decision to be a baker. Time and time again they’d argued over what her mother saw as Molly’s destiny. She just couldn’t understand that, for Molly, genuine happiness was in every cake she baked, every muffin she created, and every cookie she handed to a child at her counter. Most were healers through and through. Doctors, nurses, therapists. They all looked at her as if she’d lost her mind when she’d announced she planned to go to culinary school. In short, her family simply didn’t get her.

  And if she was being honest, she didn’t really get her family. Not that she tried very hard, and that was on her.

  Now, however, she called upon the lessons of her mother and opened her mind. Time and time again, Mom had admonished her to stop thinking so hard and simply be. If she’d rolled her eyes at that suggestion a hundred times, that was probably a low estimate. Funny how things change when seen in a different perspective. She liked to make sense of things, to put them in order, like perfecting the best cake recipe possible and lining up a perfect row of cupcakes in the display case. Order made her happy. This grimoire was important, if not to her, then at the very least to the granddaughter Hannah wrote it for. She wouldn’t analyze it or try to read between the lines. She wouldn’t try to make it fit into what she perceived as the perfect grimoire. She slid her fingers across the page with the old-fashioned script handwriting. “Tell me your secrets, Hannah. Tell me how to get home.”

  * * *

  “Hello…” What else should she say to someone who appeared out of the air in the doorway? After all, they were in the middle of nowhere. She’d hoped Molly and Aquene would find their way back here, but no. It wasn’t them. By all rights, Angus should have been standing there looking at her. Not Angus by any stretch of the imagination. At least it wasn’t the frightening guy who rode out on his horse.

  That guy was definitely a scary bastard, and she didn’t want to find herself alone with him. Come to think of it, she didn’t want to face him even with Angus here. Something about him, even from a distance away, gave her the full-on creeps. It was beginning to dawn on her that she wasn’t a frontierswoman out to settle the new world. Nope, she was just an ordinary city girl who loved civilization and all its comforts.

  “You must find her.”

  Hmm, no hello? No saying my name is Jane Doe? Just “You must find her?” Nothing too weird about that, lady. Then again, everything that was happening right now was weird, so why not the woman standing the doorway? No sense changing things up now. This little time shift they found themselves in was consistent if nothing else.

  Thin, almost anorexic thin, with long, black hair and dark, haunting eyes, the woman who stood in the open doorway struck Winnie as somehow familiar, though, for the life of her, she didn’t know why. Her threadbare dress and dirt-streaked face were from another era, this one where Winnie knew she personally didn’t belong, though the woman speaking to her obviously did. Not surprising there either. She wasn’t really expecting any additional time travelers to come waltzing through the door to say “Hey.” On the other hand, it was hard to figure where she’d come from, given this wasn’t exactly a suburban neighborhood. Maybe there was another cabin nearby but she sure hadn’t seen it when they were stumbling about outside. Of course, she wasn’t looking either, so what did she know?

  Returning to the odd question, she asked, “Who must I find?” Let’s narrow down the list of suspects.

  “My granddaughter.”

  That declaration didn’t narrow down a single thing. “Your granddaughter? Lady, I wouldn’t know your granddaughter if she was sitting right next to me. I’m not exactly from around here, if you know what I mean.”

  She didn’t blink and continued to stand rock still, her hands at her sides. The wind from outside caught her hair and blew it around her face. She didn’t try to push it out of her eyes. “You know her well.”

  Not likely. What part of the I’m-not-from-around-here was she not getting? All she had to do was take one look at Winnie to drive home that point. “Look, I’ve never been here before and haven’t met anyone from this place.” Winnie waved her hands toward her body. “I would think my clothes would be a dead giveaway that I’m a stranger.” In a strange land, she thought silently but didn’t add.

  “This I know well.”

  Rolling her eyes, Winnie repeated herself. “We don’t seem to be making any ground, ma’am. I can’t help you find your granddaughter. I can’t even figure out how to get home, let alone track down some stranger.”

  “You must listen to me, for I do not have much time.” She glanced over her shoulder as if looking for someone. “Soon I must leave, so listen carefully.”

  Winnie shrugged. “It appears I have all the time in the world.” Given she didn’t have the first clue how to get back home, all she could do was hang out here. All this woo-woo stuff sounded so much easier on TV. When it was happening, it was as confusing as all get-out, especially considering that the only one of them with any juju was MIA at the moment. If they’d ever needed Molly and her witchcraft, it was now. But no, was she here? Nope, she was off somewhere in the Wild, Wild West with a cute Native American woman, and who knew when or if she’d be back? Top it off with Angus out there stumbling around in the dark looking for wood, and things were most definitely messed up in her world.

  “No,” the woman said. “You do not have all the time in the world. He will be back, and he will kill you. I cannot help you if you do not listen.”

  “How do you know that?” She didn’t need any clarification on what guy she was talking about. What had she or Angus done to him anyway? Sure, from the temper tantrum they’d seen him throw earlier, he was a brick short of a load, but that didn’t mean he was the killing kind of crazy. Even as the thought flew through her head, she knew the woman was right. He actually was the killing kind of crazy. There was only one running around with the hit-man vibe, and he was it.

  “You must trust me, for I know of what I speak.”

  Where was Angus? The longer Ms. Strange stood in the doorway prophesying doom and gloom, the more Winnie was buying in. Not in any detail, just in that pit-of-the-stomach, twitchy kind of way. That and something about this woman still bugged her. Maybe it was her eyes or the shape of her mouth. Maybe it was all in what she was saying. While Winnie couldn’t pinpoint what
it was, something tickled her subconscious, and damn it, she didn’t like it. Things were so much easier in her time.

  “I don’t know what you want from me. Details, you gotta give me details if you want me to help.”

  “You must find her, and you must stop him. He is dangerous, and he cannot be allowed to continue. Too many years and too many lives. He is the devil.”

  Apparently, her request for details went right over the top of her head. Telling her somebody was dangerous and the devil didn’t mean jack if she didn’t tell her why she was supposed to be afraid. And what did she mean by too many years and too many lives? Since she wasn’t giving her much, Winnie tried for something a little more basic. “Who is he?”

  “You know.” Her words were a whisper.

  No, actually she didn’t. She fielded a wild guess. “The guy?” She had to mean the man who trashed the cabin, because he was the only one besides Angus they’d even seen, and no way was she referring to Angus. This was going to be a really long conversation if she had to pull every single detail out of her.

  Her nod was barely perceptible. “Find her, for she is the only one who can stop him.”

  “Your granddaughter?”

  “Your friend.”

  Seriously, this was like talking to a room full of first-graders “Make up your mind. You want me to find Molly or your granddaughter?”

  “They are the same.”

  “What?” Craziness had just cranked up to another level. “Not likely. Trust me, there’s no way they can be the same person. My girl is way too young to be your granddaughter.”