by Cat Adams
Molly and I both stared at them until they were literally squirming. Julie broke first: “It was Beverly. I told her not to touch it. I did, Mom.” Now she started rubbing her earlobe and I saw that there was blood dripping down her neck. “That sound really hurt my ears.”
Her mother raced forward the moment she saw the smear of red. “Oh my lord, sweetie!” I very intentionally didn’t step forward.
But I wanted to. This was twice now that I’d gotten twitchy longer before four hours had passed after a meal. I wasn’t liking the trend.
It took a moment for all the pieces to fall into place. Shattered glass, pain in people’s ears, and one person whom it didn’t bother at all. I looked at Okalani. “Did the sound hurt your ears?”
She nodded and I pointed toward the door. “Go see your mother right now and get checked out. Watch out for the glass.”
Okalani nearly sprinted for the door—probably to get out of the line of fire. I looked at Beverly. “That sound didn’t bother you at all, did it?”
My eyes were locked on hers and she finally shook her head just a fraction.
“Was it one of the shells in the bag?”
She opened her mouth and I could tell from her shifting, panicked eyes that she was about to say something to protect herself. I wanted none of it. I held up a hand to stop her and said, “You won’t get in trouble. Just please tell me. It’s important.”
Part of me knew what she was going to say, but every fiber of my being wanted her to deny it. I felt actual pain in my stomach when she nodded with her eyes fixed firmly on my shoes. “Yes’m. It was the orange one. Okalani said nobody could make it blow.”
Bruno and the others came in as I was staring at the ceiling, fighting back tears with my arms wrapped tightly around my body. He took one look at me and pulled me into an embrace. “What’s wrong, Celie? What’s happened?” I gratefully accepted the comfort and dug my fingers into his strong back muscles. He looked around, trying to find the source of my pain. I could see Beverly out of the corner of my eye, doing her best to look small and insignificant—just a girl trying to finish her sandwich. Molly had taken Julie into the other room to check out the bleeding. I knew Beverly was also wondering what was wrong with me.
It was hard to put words to, and I found I was weeping as I spoke: “She’s only twelve, Bruno. It’s not fair. I can’t do that to her—to her family … and her sister. But if I don’t, how could I live with myself? What if there’s nobody else?”
Bruno tensed abruptly, holding his breath as he got it. He always was one of the smartest people I knew. He looked at Beverly over the top of my shoulder. “Was that sound one of the shells? Was it the orange one?”
She nodded, now with more ease but also more fear. She understood that something significant was happening but had no idea what. Likely Okalani hadn’t had time to explain the whole story.
“Holy Mother of God,” Bruno swore forcefully. I looked over to see Adriana likewise stricken, which surprised me a little.
Mick was just looking confused. He crouched down beside his daughter. “Hon, you can’t touch other people’s things. That’s a very valuable artifact, and magical. You could have hurt it. You could have been hurt.”
She nodded. “I know it was stupid, Dad. I shouldn’t have touched it. But nothing happened.”
“Yet—” The word just slipped out, but it made Mick stare at me with renewed worry. He stood in a rush and put a protective hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong? Do I need to get her to a doctor?”
It was Adriana who put things in perspective and made his face go pale and trembling: “A priest might be more appropriate, for last rites.”
21
It took two hours at a table with Mick and Molly to answer all their questions. And then there was nothing left but the fear.
“No,” Molly said simply and with force. “I won’t allow it.”
There was a television in the corner of the restaurant, on a shelf mounted near the ceiling. Bruno reached far up to turn on the set. As expected, my little town was on every national channel. The rift now was the equivalent of a dozen city blocks across. Bruno looked back at the Murphys with a serious expression. “When we arrived here, the rift was only a quarter the size of what you see here. It’s increasing exponentially. Soon it’ll breach the barrier. I don’t see how it can’t. There aren’t enough magic practitioners in the world to keep up a barrier this size. It’s pulling at me right now. The mages like me who put up that shield are being drained, minute by minute. If some of the people I crafted this with aren’t already dead, I’ll be surprised.”
I looked at him with abrupt fear. I hadn’t known it was a continual drain—that he was somehow tied to the shield. “Bruno…”
He waved it off, but now that I knew I saw the weariness around his eyes. The laugh lines were deeper, as were the creases of his brow. “I’m one of the most powerful mages in the country, Celia. It’ll be a week or better before it starts to pull on my life force. The shield won’t last that long.” Then he turned back to the Murphys, who were holding white-knuckled hands and staring at the screen. “When it fails, we all die. The priests, the Pope … they’ve tried everything in the Vatican vault. Things hidden from the public eye for centuries. Yesterday I heard from some friends back east that black-arts sorcerers are volunteering to help, knowing even they’re at risk from this. We have no choice but to ask this of you.”
“But she’s only a child.” Mick’s voice was soft and frightened and it was hard to blame him. “She doesn’t understand what—”
“Yes, Dad. I do.” We turned to see Beverly standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Her words were calm, but there was a fierceness in the set of her jaw and cold clarity in her eyes. I’d seen that face before in the mirror, and at that age. Was I a different person now than the child I’d been when I’d looked like that?
I knew. I wasn’t.
She walked forward a few steps and then stopped again to take us all in. “I do understand what this means. If I can stop that, then there’s no choice. I’ll blow the horn or do whatever the instructions say I have to.”
I stood and walked over to her and put both hands on her slim shoulders. She’d taken out the pigtails so that her bright red hair flowed like waves around her face. She looked like an adult suddenly, trapped in a body that didn’t match the strength inside those green eyes. “You could die, Beverly.”
She reached up to touch my hand and there was a hint of something in her eyes, another expression familiar from my mirror. Was it cynicism, so early? But then, I had no idea what trauma she’d had in her life. Perhaps this was just one more piece of a terrible pie that she shouldn’t have had to eat. Like me … so very like me.
She curved one side of her mouth into an ironic smile. “So could you. But us tone-deaf people have to stick together.”
That was the real key, according to Bruno. Beverly and I were old-fashioned tone-deaf. It was why the horns didn’t bother us like other people. Why we could sound them without our eardrums breaking. Yes, there might be a hundred thousand clinically tone-deaf people out there and yes, it was possible we could find others who had siren heritage and could blow the horns. But could we do it in time?
Adriana motioned from the window. “Mr. Fulbright is back. Are we ready?”
“No,” I said honestly, still staring into those bright green eyes. “But that doesn’t really matter.”
* * *
“Are you sure you want to do this, Nathan?” Standing in the small courthouse, Mick was staring at a piece of paper with a fine trembling in his hands. “I’m not positive it’s legal.”
The old man nodded once, firmly. “It gives the terms in writing, it’s signed, and Joe’s signed as notary. Once you hand me a ten-dollar bill, it’s a deed. You’ll own this land and there’s not a thing anyone can do to take it from you provided you eventually pay off the twenty-four-million-dollar note.” He shrugged. “And the
first payment isn’t due for two years. If you don’t have the money by then … and we’re not dead, I or my heirs will just take back the land.”
Mick looked truly torn. Being in law, no doubt he knew how many things could go wrong. I shrugged. “Couldn’t you add in a sentence that nullifies the deal if you don’t get the bequest? In case the challenge to the Will succeeds?”
Fulbright nodded his head. “I’d agree to that. Seems fair.” He pulled the paper out of Mick’s hands and proceeded to carefully print the words and initial them. He handed it to the other man—Joe, who was acting as notary. “You need to initial it, too?”
The man nodded and did. “For a situation like this, I’d suggest the Buyer also sign.” He pushed the pen across the desk toward Mick, who was nearly as pale as me. “Then there’s no questions.” When Mick didn’t move, Joe half-stood from his chair. “Mick. Look at me.” The terrified man did. “Would I ever suggest anything that could ruin your name or family or stand you in front of me?”
There was something about the way he said it that caused me to look around the room. Ah. A brass plaque was screwed to the door behind the swinging wooden gate that separated the room. Judge Joseph Robertson. I could tell the old stone courthouse had recently gotten a face-lift to return it to its original glory. The dark wood gleamed and pale blue paint the color of robin eggs on the walls was edged with white woodwork all the way up to a hammered-tin ceiling that was nearly identical in design to the one in my office. Must have been a common pattern back in the day.
Mick picked up the pen and initialed, then handed the paper back to the judge. “I’ll trust you to get this recorded, if you don’t mind.” He pulled out his wallet and took a deep breath before opening the double fold. “May my wife forgive me if this goes badly.” He gave a nervous chuckle. “I’d ask the Good Lord’s forgiveness instead, but I’m more afraid of Molly.”
“It’ll be okay, Dad. You’ll see.” Beverly came up behind him and gave him a bear hug while he handed over the money. His eyes shut and his arm snaked around to pull her tight against him for a long moment.
He snuffled hard once. “Damned allergies. Well, we’d better get going before your mother changes her mind about me keeping you out of school for the da—”
Nausea hit my stomach hard enough to raise bile into my throat and mouth. I wasn’t the only one feeling that way, either. Bruno was heaving whatever he’d had for breakfast into a patch of cactus and Beverly was on her knees in a wide expanse of knee-high dry grass that had abruptly replaced the courthouse. She vomited noisily and even Okalani looked a little unstable. “I’m sorry, Highnesses. I tried to teleport us to the cave the princess saw in Mr. Fulbright’s mind, but we were pushed away.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer before Fulbright was spitting fire: “Damned fool know-it-all mind readers!” He was the picture of backcountry fury, shaking his walking stick at us and spewing spit with each word. “If you’d waited five minutes I woulda explained why it was so important we had to finish the deed first!”
Bruno had recovered and was waving his hand in the air in slow arcs. As I watched, symbols appeared and disappeared as though he were shining a black-light bulb past fluorescent stone. “Wow, this is very old magic. And Nathan’s right. It’s pagan … land based. Mick, see if you can walk across this line.” He picked up a wide stick and pulled it hard across the ground, creating a rough line in the grass.
Mick approached Bruno tentatively, hands stretched out like he was reaching for a wall in a dark room. Nothing stopped him and he walked forward. He shrugged and looked backward. But Bruno still couldn’t enter and I could feel the pressure of the barrier even from where I was standing, a dozen feet away.
Fulbright stepped right across, which confused Mick. The old man pointed a shaking finger at him with a self-satisfied smile. “Yep. You’re the owner, but now you know why I hold the mortgage. Till it’s paid, I still own rights in the land.” He walked forward pretty quick, a snarky laugh wheezing out of him. “C’mon then. I’ll show you what you own.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know he was going to do this.” Mick had no choice but to shrug at us and chase Fulbright. Then Mick turned in mid-jog and called back, “I’ll take pictures if I can—there’s a camera in my phone!”
I threw up my hands in frustration and looked at Bruno. “Isn’t there anything you can do to get through this barrier?”
He squatted down and then sat in the grass, patting the dirt beside him in invitation. “The only thing anyone can do at this point is pull up a rock and wait. I guess you’ve never heard of a fee-simple barrier?”
I thought back to my college classes and even my recent library acquisitions but finally shook my head. “Does that term mean something?”
“Well, it’s a big thing in real estate law, but it’s also what puts pagan magic in priority over any ritual or innate magic.” He must have seen my confusion, because he twitched his finger for me to step forward and then patted the ground again with an expression of impatience. Okalani and her mother sat on the dirt, as did Beverly, but Adriana found a relatively flat boulder to perch on.
What the hell. I sat where his hand was patting.
“Pagan magic is tied to the physical world. Father Sun, Mother Earth, Sister Moon, et cetera. Land used to belong to anyone at large … until people began to allow others to rule over them. Then the Crown became the owner by mutual consent of all. The Crown granted fee estates to people—giving them a freehold interest.”
“Wonderful history lesson on land. But does this have anything to do with the barrier?”
He dipped his head once, bemused as usual at my impatience. He always found my frustration at his calm amusing. “It does. When the Crown granted the ‘fee-simple’ freehold, it decreed that the ownership was”—and he raised fingers into the air to make quotation marks—“ ‘from the heavens above to the center of the earth.’ Magic that’s tied to the land to prevent entry follows those same markers. There is no way—and I mean no way—to cross a pagan fee-simple barrier while the owner is present. You can’t dig under it or fly over it. It’s a solid mountain of magic that passes beyond our reach.”
I shook my head. He was wrong. “But that makes no sense. If that was true, then any Pagan priest would be completely safe at home just by casting a simple spell on the ground. And we know that’s not true.”
One finger rose into the air with a peaceful, patient expression on his face. “Ahh … grasshopper. You need to listen closer. I said pagan magic. I don’t mean magic created by the Pagans, the religion with a capital P, but old pagan, with a lowercase p. It’s the land itself that’s casting us out, not a mage or witch who’s raised a circle. This barrier has been here for a very long time. It could have been cast by the original Captain Fulbright or his wife—if she was a siren witch—or even by an older group of humans or protohumans. It’s part of the land, like oil or gas or even fossils. This is a really unique thing. I hope I survive this mess so I can get Mick’s and Nathan’s permission to study it. A person could make a doctoral thesis about just this one piece of ground.”
“Interesting,” was Adriana’s only comment while the others just nodded.
But I saw a pretty big downside. “So, basically, if they can’t find any instructions, we can’t go look. Nobody can. You’re saying we’re screwed if they don’t come back.”
Another small twitch of his lips. “Not at all. It’s quite possibly the best thing that could ever have happened. Whatever’s inside the cave Adriana saw is completely protected from anything—including demons. The magic’s all-inclusive and keeps this one small bit of the world safe from even the rift. It has all the strength of every heavenly body in space and the molten core of the Earth. It means the world can never be fully destroyed and with careful planning mankind can survive, because this place will always be. So long as there’s an owner who truly believes the magic’s real, that is.” He smiled brilliantly, with the exuberance of a child. “It’s a ve
ry cool thing.”
I guessed if he was happy about it, I should be, too. He was a true student of magic. Just then his face contorted into a small grimace and he reached up to press on his torso near his diaphragm.
“You okay?’
He shook his head in tiny movements. “Probably pulled something when the magic knocked us back. I need to walk it off. Wanna go with?” He pushed off and got his knees under him. I did, too. We might as well walk around. It sure beat sitting and staring at the lack of scenery.
He reached out his hand to me and I took it. I said to the others, “We’ll be back in a minute.”
We started down what looked like it was once a wagon path—two narrow lines of hard-packed dirt tracing through the weeds and grass. When we were mostly out of sight, I quietly asked, “So, what did you want to say that you couldn’t say in front of the others?” The I’ve got a stitch in my side ploy was one we’d used before.
“Actually, I really did need to walk.” He pointed to the first place he’d touched. “It’s starting to bug me.”
We stopped and I looked at him with concern. “Did you maybe get a spider bite or something? Lift up your shirt.” He rolled his eyes, but I twirled my finger in the air. “C’mon, Bruno. Don’t be such a tough guy that you wind up with something really wrong.”
It was hard to fault that logic. He sighed and pulled the pale blue cotton shirt out of his pants. It would have been fun to watch him lift it up to expose bare skin, but what I saw when he did made me suck in a harsh breath. He noticed the look on my face and turned his eyes down. “What…? Oh, crap.”
There were three raised red marks in a long diagonal line across his chest. That was no spider bite. It looked like something had clawed him. “Is that from the barrier? Are you sure it’s a friendly one?”