The Calling (Mae Martin Mysteries Book 1)

by Amber Foxx

  This also seemed to discount Charlie’s big colorful adventures, and it appealed to Mae. Was this what she could do as a healer? Create that little shift in someone that changed them?

  A young man in a Navy uniform asked, “You said three kinds of people with power. What are the other two?”

  “I don’t like to talk about them.” Bernadette frowned. “I don’t think you’ll find any Apache who does. But there are love witches, people who use their power to get sex. Sometimes it’s only mischief, but sometimes they do a lot of harm. And there are sorcerers, witches who use spiritual power to get money or worldly power. These witches,” she shivered a little, “can send themselves out as owls or wolves. But even then, supernatural as it sounds, shamanism is practical. Even when it’s bad, it’s still about a goal. Sex, money, influence. When it’s positive and sacred, it’s for healing, or in the old days for seeing where the game was for hunting or where the enemy was at war. I think a lot of Americans look at shamanism as an LSD trip. The better the visions, the more spiritual it must have been. But it’s medicine. Even when it’s inexplicable, it’s about outcomes.”

  The entire talk had been an attack on Charlie, maybe even a confrontation about the wolf, if Bernadette knew it was him. Mae wondered what Charlie’s reaction had been. She didn’t have to wonder long. After Bernadette spoke a little longer about Apache healers’ roles in their society, the camera moved to him, in the top row of the lecture hall, a few seats away from anyone else, leaning forward, keeping his thumb on the speaker button.

  “That really bothered you when Willy asked about witchcraft, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t like talking about it. Yes, it bothers me.”

  “So you really believe it, about the owls, and—”

  “I do. Don’t draw it in. Don’t invite it in by talking about it. I’ve said enough.”

  “I’m just interested. That’s all.” He smiled, settled back in his chair. “To know what you think.”

  Bernadette held up a hand, shook her head, and looked at the camera to answer a new question from a distant site’s student about how long it took to become a medicine person.

  Mae stopped the DVD and ejected it. It was disturbing, the way Charlie had been so fascinated by Bernadette’s aversion to talking about witches.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  To Mae’s relief, the wolf didn’t come that night, and her exhausted sleep was peaceful. She wondered, on waking, if the wolf only pursued Bernadette, and if it had followed her on her interview. They had still had never talked about this, and after watching the DVD of the class, Mae wanted to ask Bernadette, awkward though it might be after not seeing each other for a while.

  Mae took care of the cat, took a walk with her thoughts and worries about Hubert and work, then called Bernadette’s work number to see if she was back.

  “You must be psychic. I just got in a few minutes ago.” Bernadette sounded happy to hear from Mae. “I had too much to do here to go home and unpack. Are you staying another night? Will I see you?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Can I come by and talk to you?”

  “Of course. My door’s always open for you, Mae. You need to know that. I don’t have class today until four.”

  The kindness was strangely painful.

  Bernadette’s office looked so much the opposite of Charlie’s that Mae’s first impression of it was emptiness. All the bookshelves were neat, no papers lay in sight anywhere, and the only decoration was a picture of a man in uniform who must be Bernadette’s older brother, still a Marine, and an officer now.

  Soft music playing on her computer, Bernadette sat effortlessly straight with her back to the door, her slender form clad in a coral-pink dress that flattered her copper-brown skin.

  Mae knocked at the open door to announce her presence. “Hey, it’s me.”

  “It’s good to see you.” Bernadette turned with a warm smile, rose, and walked over to embrace Mae. “But I’m sorry for what brought you here.”

  “Thank you.” Mae felt a lump in her throat and pushed the emotions away a few inches. “Thanks for letting me stay in your place.” She took the key off her ring and gave it to Bernadette.

  “You’re welcome. And you can come back, you know. Stay as long as you need. Maybe you should keep this.” Bernadette held out the key, offering it back. Mae took it silently, feeling like she’d taken hold of something heavy. Turning away, Bernadette walked toward her desk, and ran her hands along its surface. “Was it all right there?”

  She had to mean the wolf spirit’s invasion. “It was. We never talked about this last time I was here. But nothing strange came in like it did that night. That wolf.”

  Bernadette shivered. “I’m sorry you had to see that. At least it didn’t bother you, alone there.”

  “Do you still see it?”

  “Yes.” She sank into her chair. “It still comes. A lot. I fight it off. I don’t know what it is.”

  Mae was so sure it was Charlie, it surprised her that Bernadette had no sense of this. And she had to know it was a witch thing, even if she didn’t like to talk about it. “You really don’t know?”

  “No.” Bernadette looked down, her shoulders tightening toward her chest, her perfect posture changing to a protective huddle. “It used to sit and stare at me. Now it flies in though the corners of the ceiling. Sometimes it walks along the floor.” With a deep inhalation, she sat taller again. “I started being able to stop it, though, the night you did the healing for me. To keep it at a distance. I started being able to be angry with it, instead of only frightened. But it still comes after me. Almost every night. At least it didn’t travel with me.” She fidgeted with her silver bracelet, looking down at it. “I’m sorry to offer you shelter in a place with bad spirits.”

  Mae moved the side chair that was near the doorway, drawing it a little closer to Bernadette in case Charlie might walk by and overhear. His office was directly next door and she had no idea if he was back from his time off. She sat down in the chair. “Are you still seeing Charlie?”

  “We’re friends,” Bernadette said. “I think. Just barely. But don’t worry if you need to come back up here. He won’t be dropping in.” She smiled a tight and bitter smile. “Never at night. He doesn’t even consider it.”

  “Except as a wolf.”

  Bernadette recoiled. “No, Mae, he couldn’t—not Charlie.”

  “I’ve seen it in him.”

  Bernadette held her breath for a moment, then closed her eyes. Slowly shaking her head side to side, she whispered, “What have I been ... I thought it had to be an enemy. Not a friend.” She looked at Mae, then rose and walked across the room and closed the door. “A man that can send himself out as an animal is a witch. I can’t believe that Charlie ... Are you sure?”

  Mae nodded.

  “He used to study yoga, and Qi Gong, and Chinese medicine, things for healing people. He was pretty advanced. If someone with that kind of power turns—No, he can’t be. If that wolf is him,” Bernadette stared at the blank wall opposite her as if she could see something in it, “I’m in for a very hard time.”

  “Why?”

  “You helped me. Something I’d wanted to do for so long and I couldn’t. I turned him down, after that healing. I said no.”

  “When he went into your bedroom.”

  Bernadette nodded. “I finally said no. God, what you must think of me now.”

  Mae remembered what Patsy had said, about such a relationship being wrong. “He sexually harassed you. That’s what I think. Why didn’t you report him? To—is it the dean? His boss?”

  “Yes, the dean. I didn’t complain to her because when I started seeing him, he wasn’t the chair and he was my only friend here. I thought I loved him. By the time I caught onto how he was treating me, he was my boss. And the worst part was, I thought I still loved him. So I reported him about Dana—but not for harassing me.”

  “Loved Charlie?” Mae caught her own burst of disbelief, and felt bad fo
r it as Bernadette nodded a sad and gentle yes. She had loved him. “I’m sorry, that sounds mean of me, but he had to have used his witch power. At least it seems that way to me, like there’s no way he could get a woman to fall for him otherwise. You don’t still love him now, do you?”

  “Sometimes I hate him.” These words came out with a thoughtful gentleness rather than hatred, and the next with a weight that dragged them down. “Sometimes I love the person he might have been.”

  Mae thought of Mack. Loving the person someone might have been. She’d done that. But all she could see in Charlie was that he might have been good looking when he was young and slim. That was it.

  “Was the relationship ever good?”

  “No. Not really.” Bernadette returned to her desk and sat down. “I don’t even know where he lives.”

  “You’re kidding. He never had you to his house, ever?”

  “No. He said it was inappropriate for people to know about us, but ... I think it was so he could look available, to people like Dana. We never went out to movies, and he’d make it look like work-related meetings if we went out to eat. Sometimes he’d even want to meet me out in the country somewhere, where no one could see us.” She looked at her clean, neat desk and wrapped her hands around a mason jar that held pens. “He said it was because he liked it, but I knew his real reason.”

  “I don’t understand.” Mae struggled to imagine enduring this kind of treatment. “How could you let him?”

  “I told you, I thought I loved him. He might have made me do it. Witches do something with people’s energy, like it’s food they get power from. Everybody does that, but with normal people it’s back and forth, through love. But witches just take, and they can get really powerful.”

  “I still don’t get it. I’m sorry I keep saying this stuff if you thought you loved him, but I don’t see how you even liked him.”

  “Witches go after people who are sad or sick. It’s like a cut, an infection gets in that wouldn’t get into unbroken skin. It’s like a cut in their spirit. The witch can get in.”

  “He could see that in you? You’d have to tell him your secrets for him to know that. I think you come across as strong.”

  “Strong but wounded. A feast for a witch.” With a distant look Bernadette tilted her head, and the hint of a smile dawned. “The wound is healing.” Her eyes met Mae’s. “But you know that. You helped me.”

  “Then he shouldn’t still be sending that wolf after you, if the healing worked.”

  “It’s not that simple. If witches lose their victims, they don’t have this life force of their own any more. Like an alcoholic when he stops drinking. He doesn’t have any peace and quiet of his own anymore—he’s been getting it all out of a bottle, so he just goes crazy when he dries out. Has seizures, sees things. You take other people’s life force away from a witch, he’ll be craving it.”

  Charlie had to be desperate, then, if he was losing Bernadette. Mae thought of Dana. The source of her wound was unknown, maybe from war, but like Bernadette she had to have that broken place within the strength, the opening that he could use to steal her spirit. “Should I try to stop him? Can I do anything to un-witch him? Will I get messed up if I try? It sounds sort of conceited, I guess, as if I’m someone who can do that. But if I’m a healer, I feel like I ought to.”

  Bernadette shook her head. “If he was a thief of things, you could arrest him. But he could go back out and steal again. If he was a drinker, you could take away his liquor and hope he’d quit. But you couldn’t really make him. He’d drink again.”

  Mae knew that. She’d dumped Mack’s liquor down the sink more than once. It didn’t stop him for long. “So you mean I could stop him one time. But I can’t un-witch him.”

  “If he wants it done, a medicine person could. But you don’t know your way around that well, yet.”

  “Around where? The spirit world?

  “Do you?”

  “No, I surely don’t.” She was not so much navigating as drifting or jumping whenever she crossed over into that realm, trusting the crystals’ power more than her own skills.

  “But if he faces up to himself, spiritually sees his own face, he will stop. That’s a hard thing for anyone to do, but harder for him.” Bernadette looked sad. “For who he’s become.”

  “Then everyone should cut him off, so he has to.” Charlie shouldn’t be getting his way, sucking the life out of people. “I think you should tell Dana he’s a witch. Or I should.”

  “Let it go,” Bernadette said. “Or find some other way to protect her. But don’t tell her that. She’d tell him. You don’t want him for an enemy.”

  As Mae drove south, she could still feel the impact of Bernadette’s warning. While it had alarmed her, it made her more angry than frightened. Maybe she did want Charlie for an enemy. Wanted to be the one that put him out of business. Even if all he did with that power was scare people in the middle of the night, that was bad enough. And what he did with relationships ought to be stopped, too—lying and cheating and witch-stealing women’s love. Mae couldn’t leave something like that going on, but she had no idea how to stop it. She couldn’t figure out her own life, and here she was trying to find a way to save Dana’s marriage and unplug Charlie.

  The curve of the highway as it headed out of town past the skyline of the city towards North Carolina felt different today. It used to be the moment when she felt she was going home, that transition point in the drive. Now it felt like Mae was going into the unknown in every aspect of her life. Would this be a chance to start over with Hubert—to find a compromise, to talk about counseling, some kind of hope—or was it the end? She wanted the first, but feared it was the other.

  To her surprise, Hubert called as she neared their house, to tell her he’d gone from the garage to his parents’ to do some work on their farm equipment, and that he’d had the bus drop the girls there after school. He’d already changed the bus? As if Mae weren’t coming back, ever. She kept driving, to the Ridley farm on the outskirts of town.

  Jim and Sallie were out in the front yard of the old, pillared house with Brook and Stream and the three farm dogs, playing with a Frisbee the dogs caught better than the children. Somehow, this made Mae uneasy. It wasn’t normal for her in-laws both to be free this early—farm work was endless. It felt like Hubert had arranged something to keep the children busy and cared for. Mae stopped to hug the girls, and her heart swelled full at the feel of them in her arms again. This past night away from them had been so much harder than the first.

  After a short talk with the twins and Jim and Sallie, and a few dog-licks, Mae went inside to find Hubert washing up in the kitchen. Unlike the twins, who had exploded with joy at seeing her after their separation, he didn’t even look up when she walked in.

  “Hey.” She approached, uncertain if she should give him a kiss. The impulse was strange, as much as he’d hurt her, yet it still rose—and fell. He seemed walled off. “What’s going on?” she said.

  He scrubbed and dried his hands, commented that the new solar hot water was working well, and finally looked at Mae. “I think you know.” Solemn, he nodded towards the outdoors, and she followed him to the back porch, where he took the swing and put his feet up in it. She took the old, half-broken rocking chair with its faded gray pillow that once was floral. It rocked with a thunk. The swing swung with a creak. “You and me haven’t had a whole lot of fun lately.”

  His way of putting it almost made her smile. Gentle. Less threatening than the talk she’d been afraid was coming. “I know.”

  “I even kind of miss you when we’re together. Seems like we’re pulling different ways.” Hubert’s dark eyes fixed on her. He pressed his lips together, seeming to hold his breath for moment before he spoke again. “It’s not working. Us being married. It’s just not working. You know it, and I know it, but we just don’t say it. Neither of us wants it to be true, but there it is.”

  “But—” She felt her voice shake a little a
nd tried to steady herself. “We have—” She wanted to say a promise, a commitment, but it fell apart in the face of their history, both divorced before. “I’m your girls’ mama.”

  “Stepmama.” The weight of his words sat in the warm, wet air like a wall dropping between them. “I know you love ’em, and they love you, but we need to be a family, all four of us, not you and them, and me and them.”

  “No—slow down. We got a lot to sort out, but—I can’t believe you’re pushing me out this fast. We can do weekends together, get counseling, some kind of compromise. We can’t just have one big fight and quit.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not just one big fight. It’s like you said. We can’t go backwards.” He gave the swing a push then stopped it again with one foot. “We’ve been heading this way a long time. We’ve hit the wall.”

  A flicker of a struggle against what he’d said beat against the coldness spreading inside her. “That’s all you can say about it?”

  “It’s all I can figure. We had close to six good years, and we both know that’s more than some relationships ever get. Hell, Edie and me had three bad months being married, and one bad year screwing each other in cars. Got the twins out of it, but that’s all. And you and Mack—what? How long did that last? Too long if it was two years.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with us. We were never like that. All that wild and messy stuff like with Mack or Edie. We’ve been steady. It’s what I always thought was good about us.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Seemed that way to me, too.”

  The surrender in his voice struck her harder than his anger had during any of their fights. “You make it sound like we’ve been in trouble a while. Like some long downhill.”

  “Don’t look at me like that, Mae. I can’t help it. It’s the truth.”

  “I want us to work it out.”