Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles: Multi-Author Bundle of Novels & Novellas

by Rachel Morgan

  I left the door closed. I’d check on her later. What was the worst that could happen? Aside from spontaneous combustion.

  I disabled the smoke alarm.

  I mentally calculated how much five pies would add to our monthly food bill, and how I could hide the excess from my sister Bryn. She doesn’t just pinch pennies, she throttles them.

  My ears were still ringing. Oh, no, that’s right, that would be the phones. Why did I ever think it would be a good idea to have five phones? Thomas Edison, I blame you.

  Two callers: One was from an insurance firm. I remembered hairybeast1855’s warning: The insurance company will be calling you today. I suggest you finish the job as agreed.

  The other was Granny Rose. Sorry, Granny. You’ll have to wait. I haven’t figured out how to tell you I burned your pies yet.

  I answered the insurance firm first.

  “Please hold,” I said sweetly. I muted the phone while I checked the number against my notes.

  Oh, fudgemuffins. The hairybeast1855 job meant a lot of money, but there was something about the case I didn’t like. Okay, a lot of things. It wasn’t the usual sitch, fake glowing job references. No, this client wanted me to claim something about the value of some items that, apparently, had been lost in a fire at an old folk’s home. Why would someone want me to lie about that? How many Benjamins did my client expect to make from my lie? Given how much he was willing to pay me…a pretty fat wad.

  Enough to commit arson?

  I’d just had a close brush with fire. My skin felt itchy.

  I unmuted the phone I had on “hold.” “Thank you for waiting, your call is important to us,” I chirped. “Please hold.”

  I muted it again. I needed to decide about that job.

  Granny Rose called again. I decided to answer after all.

  There are two things you should know about Granny Rose. One, she’s not really my grandmother, or, as far as I know, any blood relation. She’s my godmother. She was my late grandmother’s best friend, and has been a deacon at my grandmother’s church since the coronation of Charlemagne. Two, she’s never grasped the concept of a phone as a device of two-way interaction. She just shouts into it, non-stop, and then hangs up, so any phone conversation with her is more like two goat-herds on distant mountains simultaneously yodeling at one another than a dialog. I answered the phone holding it about a foot from my ear.

  “About the pies…” I began as soon as I answered, hoping to sneak my fraction of the conversation in before she started.

  “HAVE YOU OPENED YOUR BIRTHDAY PRESENTS YET, ROXY?” she bellowed into the phone. “THE ONES YOUR MOTHER GAVE YOU. OPEN THEM. BRING THEM OVER WHEN YOU BRING THE PIES!”

  “About the pies…”

  Granny Rose hung up.

  I heaved that deepest sigh of lament reserved for soldiers besieged by mustard gas in the muddy trenches of futile wars and twenty-somethings trying to communicate with centenarians.

  There was no way I would spend another six hours baking, even if I had the ingredients. Time to hit the restaurant down the street, Casa Juanita.

  The only reason my sister and I still live in our beach house is that Mom and Dad already paid off the mortgage by the time we were in high school. Otherwise, there’s no way we could have afforded it, even though it was only a two-story, two-bedroom, two-bath, box with bars on all the windows. The frontage had been painted bright scarlet, decorated and designed to attract foot traffic from the beach, two streets over to receive “psychic readings and communion with passed loved ones” from my mom, “Madame Hood.” Because, you know, so many people say to themselves, “Hey, let’s hit the beach today, catch some rays, surf maybe, then how about a little necromancy?” Neither my sister nor I had any desire to chat up ghosts, but people saw our sign and kept coming. Yeah, we really ought to paint that over.

  We had no yard in any direction, just a little cement bridge from the front porch to the street over our “moat,” a ditch to contain run-off to the sea. The street was quite steep and rare rainstorms could bring flash floods, even mudslides. Today, as usual, the ditch was dusty dry.

  There were plenty of greasy spoons within walking distance, but Casa Juanita was only a block away, and the best anyhow. It was run by a plump Latina named…well, duh. The building resembled an extremely small Mission, although probably 16th Century Spanish friars wouldn’t have appreciated the Aztec frescos of cheery feathered serpents and women with Princess Leah hair-buns. Red, green, and white streamers hung in the arched doorways, and children’s crayon drawings were taped to one big wall.

  No one was here at this hour except a few tourists. Juanita herself was minding the till.

  “Hey, Roxy,” she said. “Are you here to meet Mr. Wood? He isn’t here yet.”

  “No, our appointment isn’t until noon,” I said.

  “He’s too old for you.”

  I laughed. “I’m not dating him.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “He’s just a family friend.”

  Actually, a friend of Dad’s, and those guys were a bit sketchy. Juanita was right to be worried. Harry Wood was harmless enough, though, and he had a car.

  I explained about the Great Pie Disaster and Juanita, after so many pushy questions that I threatened to go to another restaurant “if she was busy”, finally boxed five and handed them over.

  I paid for the replacement pies and headed home. Some teens in swimsuits and flip-flops laughed passed me, rough-housing. I ceded the sidewalk and trod the slices of grass between palm trees. Really, I did not need to ruin five more pies.

  I wished more than ever I had never agreed to help with the bake sale. Not because of the charcoal pies. So they’d defied all known laws of physics, I could live with that. Physics was overrated, as I had frequently tried to explain to my Junior year science teacher.

  It was Granny’s comment that depressed me. Have you opened your birthday presents yet, Roxy?

  Granny Rose brought it up every single friggin’ year.

  The morning I turned nineteen, Mom surprised me with two presents wrapped in shiny red and silver paper. My b-day party with my friends had already passed the Saturday night before—my birthday fell on a Wednesday that year—so I wasn’t expecting anything else. Mom gave me the presents at breakfast, but she had a call to go into work early, and she asked to be there when I opened them.

  She was hit by a car on the way home. I never opened those presents.

  I figure, when she wakes up, I’ll unwrap them.

  On sunny days, gloomy thoughts suck.

  Back in my kitchen, I washed out the burnt pans so I could transfer all the bought pies into my own pans, so they’d look homemade. Maybe Granny Rose never had to know about the fiasco….

  The phone rang.

  Oops. It was the insurance company I’d put on hold. Can your mother really afford for you to throw away this much money, Ms. Hood?

  No, she really can’t.

  Decide, Roxy, I mocked myself. Integrity or money?

  Put that way, it was pretty clear what I needed to do.

  I decided to use a Swedish accent this time. “Jah, we can confirm the value of my client’s stamp collection…jah, very rare…”

  “Roxy?” The familiar female voice on the phone curled with disgust. “Is that you?”

  I froze. I checked the number on the phone. I didn’t know it.

  I knew my sister’s voice, though.

  I hung up the phone. I already knew it was too late. Bryn had caught me.

  She’d set me up. The call had been a sting. My own sister had set me up.

  Was Bryn really hairybeast1855? No. She would never pretend to be a criminal. Her company must be investigating hairybeast1855. That wanker probably had a rap sheet as long as the credits reel of Avatar.

  Oh, yeah, did I mention that little irony? My sister Bryn works part time, to do her part to pay for law school and keep mom alive. As a fraud investigator. Would Bryn turn in her own baby siste
r? Hell, yeah. Following rules mattered more to her than trivialities like sisterhood.

  Worst. Birthday. Evah.

  Second-worst.

  I decided the time had come to open those presents after all. Before my life behind bars began.

  I stood for a moment in front of the heavy door to my mother’s room before I opened it.

  Then I pushed down on the handle and eased into her sanctuary.

  Mom lay like a sleeping princess in her medical bed, hooked up to a hospital grade monitor and an IV. I fed her six times every day (smaller, more frequent meals were best) and bathed her twice a day. I rolled her to help her body avoid bedsores. I read to her. She was able to swallow pudding-like food, even though she was unconscious. If you lifted her lids, her eyes would stare at the nearest light. Her breathing was even, and her hair still grew long and lovely over her shoulders. But she wasn’t aware of me. Of anything.

  Other than the medical bed, the master bedroom looked as it had when it had been Mom’s and Dad’s room. A bureau nuzzled against one wall, under a mirror. A bathroom and two closets budded off. A picture hung on the wall over her bed, once mom’s favorite. It showed her own mother, my grandmother, Granny Ruby, as a young hippie. She dressed more like a biker chick than a flower child, though, looking totally badass in a red leather jacket. The snapshot had captured my grandmother with her mouth open in laughter. Beside her was her best friend, Rose, long before she was my Godmother, also young and strikingly beautiful. Rose dressed like a go-go girl. My grandmother carried a sign: SEEK TRUTH, SPEAK TRUTH.

  This, from a woman who had talked to “ghosts” for a living. Riiiiiight.

  Mom lay still, neither seeking nor speaking. Her chest rose. Her chest fell. Her eyes were closed. I could open the lids, but she’d see nothing more than she saw now. I preferred to pretend she was just napping. Her chest rose. Her chest fell.

  I deflated, watching her.

  The presents were in the closet. One was big and cubical, the other flat and long. The red shiny paper had lost its shine to six years of dust.

  “Mom, I said I’d wait to open these until you were back,” I said. I felt like a woman speaking to an empty room. “I guess this is as close as we’re going to come. So…”

  Her chest rose. Her chest fell.

  I opened the big cube first. “I’ve gotta warn you, Mom, I’m gonna feel pretty stupid if this holds keys to a Porsche.”

  A plain cardboard box revealed…a picnic basket. It was wicker, with a cute gingham lining, and slots to hold pies.

  “Perfect, Mom.” Even in a coma, Mom could make me laugh. I ran my hands over the basket. “Granny Rose must have known, that’s why she wanted me to open the presents, right? Hey, what’s with the bottom…”

  The basket had a false bottom, which was strangely weighted. Had the basket come with its own pie pans, or perhaps a picnic set of flatware, bottle-openers, napkin holders…?

  I found the toggle to open the hidden flaps and gargled in shock. The basket hid something all right, and it wasn’t napkin holders.

  A fitted foam insert cushioned ammunition and a gun.

  A gun. A friggin’ handgun. If it had been from Dad, I’d have thought, “Where’s the silencer?” Dad’s the one who took me shooting. Mom hated that. (Did I mention my grandmother was a hippie?) Why had my mom given me a secret gun for my nineteenth birthday?

  I glanced at the woman in the coma suspiciously. “You’re freakin’ me out here, Mom.” My gaze slid to the other package. “Please say that’s bunny pajamas.”

  I opened the second gift more slowly. As if snakes might jump out.

  The flat box fell away. Under tissue paper, the kind used by boutiques for packing clothes, was an exquisite leather jacket. I held it up. It was totally badass. It looked hard as nails, blood red nails, yet the leather, deep ruby red, was soft as velvet. It had a hood.

  Something fluttered to the floor from my pocket…the black business card of Domitian Drake.

  Dread cold as a melting ice cube dripped down my back.

  This was it. This was the crossroads. I could contact Domitian Drake (how was a little unclear, but I could find a way) and I could collect that $100,000 check after all. Or, if I’d rather keep the jacket but still make money, I could call hairybeast1855 and warn him that his scam was under investigation. Or I could do both, and really milk it.

  But I knew wouldn’t help either Drake or the hairy beast.

  I stroked the red leather. To the touch, it was supple and cool. Mom had given me this. I could never give it up.

  That’s when I heard the front door open and someone heavy—definitely not my petite sister— stomp into the house.

  Chapter 4: This is Exactly What Gives Necromancy a Bad Rap

  I almost left the red leather jacket and the gun in Mom’s room, but I just couldn’t. The desire to put them somewhere safe itched between my shoulder blades. I tried to ignore the itch. I couldn’t. I also couldn’t think of any safe place for a gun or a jacket coveted by a handsome yet intimidating billionaire.

  I tucked the gun into the back of my jeans and pulled on the red jacket. I left the hood down.

  Someone sat at my kitchen table, and it wasn’t a green-eyed mystery billionaire, but a four hundred pound lady in orange pants and a sunflower print blouse.

  Lillian. Insert resigned sigh. I mean, relieved sigh, relieved.

  I could deal with Lillian Gorm. Besides, I couldn’t turn her away. If Bryn busted me for my “lying business,” as she doubtless would even if she didn’t turn me in to the authorities, pretending to “read” sweaty palms and “channel” ghosts would be my only way to earn cash. By my calculations, that would only take five millennia to pay off Mom’s medical bills, so, yay! I felt guilty about taking advantage of her gullibility though. Life is already hard enough when you have to lug around an anvil’s worth of unwanted flesh, so hurting Lillian would be like kicking a puppy. Telling her what she wanted to hear couldn’t hurt her though. I told myself what I wanted to hear all the time.

  I dredged up a bright smile for Lillian.

  “Lillian, lovely to see you, sweetie!” I burbled. “Let me, um, just clear that mess.”

  I scooped up all the papers, phones, and laptops off the table. From under the table, I brought my mother’s box of “mystical” tools—Wand, Keys, Coin, and the Book of Names.

  “What can I do for you, Lillian?” I asked. I already knew. Every time Lillian came to me, it was to hear from her dear departed mother, who, of course, always had sweet things to say to her. It was an easy job. I just mouthed the kinds of things my mom would have told me.

  “I’d like to hear from Mommy,” Lillian said. “I’m in sore need of her advice. I never told you this, but shortly after Mommy bought into a wonderful retirement community, her house burned down. Fortunately, she had a wonderful insurance policy that gave us more than enough money to put her in a wonderful rest home.”

  “When was this?” I asked, to be polite. I was getting ready for what I would say when I “channeled” (hahaha) Lillian’s mother “Meredith,” and not paying much attention.

  “Just a few years before she died from diabetes. I’m just so thankful her last years were comfortable. The place they rebuilt for her after the fire was amazing! A real mansion! It’s a pity she didn’t live very long to enjoy it.

  “Now that same retirement community is offering me a discount too, but I don’t know, I think I’m too young. The nice man I spoke to said you can never be too young to set yourself up, someone with my health issues couldn’t be too careful. But I wanted to talk to Mommy about it.”

  “Of course, I understand,” I said. “What was the name of the retirement community?”

  The more details I had to spin, the better.

  “Blazing Sunset Home for Seniors.”

  I frowned. I’d heard of that place before, but it eluded me. I hate a thought that darts out of reach. It’s like trying to babysit an annoying ten-year-old boy who runs
away from you to play hide-and-seek in a parking lot full of drunk drivers. You knew you had to catch the runaway thought, it was important, life and death important, but it stuck its tongue at you and snickered, “Nah nah na-naaaaah nah!”

  “Can you sense her presence?” Lillian asked. She clenched and unclenched rumples of tablecloth in her hands.

  I pasted on a smile and patted Lillian’s hand reassuringly. I used the movement to surreptitiously smooth out the wrinkled tablecloth. “We must first invite her to Midgard, our earthly plane.”

  Lillian bobbed her head. Midgard, ha. Mom’s term. Lillian ate it up.

  I made a show of looking up the name of Lillian’s mother in the Book of Names. My mom had written Lillian’s mother’s name in the book, a plain artist’s sketchbook filled with lists of her clients. After each blue or black inked name, Mom had inscribed in scratchy brown a special, “magic” word with an “explanation” in parentheses next to it. The word next to Meredith Gorm’s name: “Wreyth.” Rhymes with “Wraith.” The explanation: “(Ghoulie).” Yeah, not too helpful. (In her book, Mom used four parentheticals: “Celest.,” “Faerie,” “Ghoulie” and “Hades.”)

  Wreyth. Not much of a magic word—whatever happened to Abrakadabra? But whatevs. I stuck to the script, and that satisfied Lillian.

  There were several hundred Keys in the box. They looked pretty much like ordinary keys, some older, some newer, but each one had a tiny ribbon tied to the end with a handwritten label. I found Wreyth.

  I outlined the Painted Door on the wall with the Wand, laid the coin on the floor in front of the painted doorstep, and tapped the painted handle with the Key. Everything has to match, you see, and I was meticulous about that.

  I chanted an invitation: “Meredith Gorm, we call you from Wreyth to Midgard. Let the Door open, let the Passage be paid with the Coin of the Soul, and let the Dead return to Speak Truth.”

  By coincidence, a chilly breeze brushed us both. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Lillian looked at me wide-eyed. “Is she here now?”

  “Yes…I’m sensing her sweet, loving presence now. She has a message for you…”