Moon In The Mirror: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  “Come back here, son,” Darren ordered. He dropped a bundle of shopping bags and blocked the outer doorway.

  “I am not your son. I was your ward. And only because you manipulated my naïveté. I do not have to obey you like that tribe of gangbangers you sired,” Donovan snarled. He raised his clenched fists.

  “Now, boys, there is no need to fight,” Mom said. She fluttered around the inner door, looking pale, fragile, helpless, and more beautiful than I’d ever seen her.

  “There is every reason to fight if this undisciplined child refuses to obey,” Darren said. His eyes narrowed and he, too, brought up his fists. “You’ve only been mortal for fifty years, hardly enough time to learn the proper ways of the world,” he said, so quietly I’m not sure anyone but me heard.

  “Oh, a fight. I do so love a barroom brawl,” Dill drawled from his post in the kitchen nook. “ ’Bout time someone showed D what it feels like to be on the receiving end.”

  Did he mean Darren or Donovan?

  Why had he shown up now?

  My head started to hurt. Like when I’d worn the comb too long.

  Or not enough.

  “I’m here to help you out, of course, lovey. I don’t see an imp around, and there is a fight brewing,” Dill answered one of my unvoiced questions.

  “I have tasted the blood of an honest warrior tonight, D. Do you still want to fight me?” Donovan squared his shoulders and took on an aura of calm authority.

  Darren blanched. He dropped his hands back to his sides, but he kept his level gaze on Donovan.

  Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much they looked alike. Or how closely Dill resembled them.

  My mind whirled in confusion.

  “We will finish this later, D. For now I thank you for the offer of privacy with my bride.” Darren stepped aside.

  Donovan stomped past him and down the two stairs. Before his foster father could gather the bags and enter the kitchen, we all heard Donovan’s car backfire and gravel spray beneath his speeding tires.

  “Oh, dear, I was hoping we could all be one happy family. I do so miss having all my relatives around.” Mom pouted prettily. She did it well and I often wondered if she practiced it before a mirror.

  Darren took his cue and enfolded her in his arms. “There, there, querida.” He patted her back affectionately.

  “Dad and Bill are in the dining room with MoonFeather. Don’t you want to share your good news with them?” I asked.

  “You can tell him. Right now I’m just going to slip upstairs and fetch my toothbrush and my nightie.” Mom kissed Darren long and passionately.

  I rolled my eyes upward.

  Allie caught my expression and shared it with me.

  Gollum looked like he wanted to take notes.

  “Well, if we aren’t going to open a bottle of champagne, I’m going home,” Allie said.

  Darren and Mom didn’t look up from their lingering embrace.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” I said, escorting her to the door. “I had an interesting conversation with Mike tonight.”

  Allie raised her eyebrows in question.

  I shook my head, indicating I wanted privacy for that discussion.

  “And I believe I shall retire to my own rooms,” Gollum added. “Gandalf will need his supper and I have some notes to record. I’d like to share them with you, Tess, when you get a minute.”

  “Sure. I’ll be in when people are settled.” Oh, for the days when I lived all alone and dreamed of going to Mexico for my vacation!

  At last Mom broke the clinch worthy of a romance novel cover. “I’ll just be a moment, cheri.” She positively skipped toward the stairs.

  I made to follow her.

  “Wait a moment, Tess,” Darren said. He grabbed my arm, right over the healing wound. His grip would leave bruises. More bruises.

  I couldn’t help but wince and try to pull away. He held me firmly. Easily.

  “Get your hand off me.” Mom wasn’t around. I had no reason to pretend politeness, or that I liked this guy.

  “Let’s get a few rules straight first.” Darren tightened his fingers on me.

  I nearly dropped to my knees in pain. Only extreme willpower kept me upright.

  “Scrap?” I called. “I might need some help here.”

  “He won’t help you, lovey,” Dill said. He didn’t move from his lounge against the wall by the nook. “But if you banish the imp, I’ll break this guy’s neck. Been wanting to do that for a decade or more.” Dill’s eye sockets glowed red. He loomed larger than life. But he remained across the room, as separate from Darren as Scrap was from Donovan.

  That was something I needed to explore. Later.

  “First off, since your mother and I are now married, I think it more appropriate that you move into the cottage and leave the house to us.” Darren’s dark eyes turned steely.

  “Not on your life, buddy. In case Mom hasn’t told you, the entire property is mine. She lives off my largesse, not the other way around.” I held his gaze, promising him retribution if he didn’t let go of my arm. My fingers were already turning numb.

  He looked surprised. Then his eyes narrowed. “That can be changed. We will live in this house. With the ghosts and all of the other garbage you’ve collected. It will make a nice retreat for my people. Good thing you left the zoning for a bed and breakfast intact.”

  “You are welcome to the ghosts. But the house is mine. In fact, I think you should start looking for new accommodations immediately. You aren’t welcome here. So make the new house big enough to host family game night. Surviving that is more challenging than fighting a Warrior of the Celestial Blade.”

  Darren smiled knowingly. Like he knew he’d get the last word. “And another thing. I’ll take the comb.”

  Everything inside me froze. So this is what it was all about. The Kajiri wanted the comb and the magic it gave me.

  “The comb is mine.”

  “Not anymore. You gave it to your mother, in front of witnesses. I am now her husband. What is hers is mine. Legally and now metaphysically.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “Are you forgetting who and what I am?” Scrap, dammit, get your ass back here.

  “Never. But I have you in a bind. Hurt me, and you destroy your mother.”

  “She’ll recover.”

  “Will she? Look how long it took her to recover from your father’s betrayal. How much worse will it be if her beloved daughter hurts or kills her new husband. No, I think I’m safe. Safe enough to take the Kynthia brooch as well as the comb.”

  How did he know about that? Scrap had found a gold brooch in the shape of the Moon, Star, Milky Way configuration the Goddess assumed in the skies. Only after he gave it to me did I discover that the brooch signified leadership of the Sisterhood of Celestial Blade Warriors. It was mine now, not that I lead the Sisterhood, but because of some metaphysical law of finders keepers.

  “The entire otherworld knows you have those two artifacts of power. If you want your mother safe, alive, and happy, you will turn them over to me.”

  “I’ll kill you first.”

  “Tess!” Mom screamed.

  Darren dropped my arm as if I’d burned him.

  “Take that back,” Mom raised her voice further. “You just don’t want me to be happy. You want me dependent and needy so you can have control over everything you touch.”

  Psycho babble from Mom? What had Darren done to her? Again, she gazed soulfully at him rather than look at me.

  Probably just the dim light, but I thought her eyes reflected red for a moment, like a flash in a photo. Gone the moment I thought I detected it.

  “I told you that all that mucking about with fencing would come to no good.” Mom stamped her foot in a most unladylike manner. “You were never a violent person until you started playing with swords. Now take that back, or I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Promise?” I s
miled sweetly to cover my own amazement. How much had she heard? Not enough if she still defended Darren.

  “I meant what I said, Darren.” I left the room as fast as I could and still maintain a fragment of dignity. I nearly ran through the house and upstairs, frightened out of my wits, for myself and my mother. What could I do to separate her from Darren now that they were legally married?

  Killing Darren seemed the only way.

  Too late. Too late. I return to Tess, cooler, composed, ready to do her bidding and not mine.

  Too late. I should never have left. Then we could have slain Darren out of hand. I would have tasted his blood and known that I had done a good thing. Mom would have seen Darren for what he truly is, a demon bat who sucks blood.

  I know now that Darren must die. For Mom’s sake. For Tess’ safety. For my own satisfaction.

  Chapter 24

  TIME TO CHECK ON all my responsibilities. Josh tucked MoonFeather into her bed. Dad and Bill packed up the Scrabble game, kissed me good-bye and went home. That left WindScribe. I wondered why she had refused to talk to our local pest . . . er I mean reporter. She seemed the type to want to flaunt her “otherness. ” Why not to the press?

  “We need to talk, WindScribe. Or should I call you Joyce Milner?” I said as I topped the stairs and entered my room.

  “Joyce is dead,” she said from her perch on my bed in front of the blaring television.

  I switched off the set.

  “I was watching that!” she protested and pouted as prettily as my mother.

  What is it with these ditzy dames that they always look beautiful when their petty emotions should make them ugly?

  “Now you and I are talking. We can’t do that with that mindless stupidity intruding.”

  “It’s not stupid. It’s funny!”

  I let that one pass. "WindScribe, I’ve promised to go into battle for your freedom. I’m putting my life on the line to keep you here in your home dimension. I need to know something before that happens.” I remained standing, in a position of authority. She didn’t strike me as the kind who would open up to a friend sitting next to her.

  Reticence and evasiveness are habits long learned and hard to break. I realized she needed time to formulate her story before going public to James Frazier, or even private to me. She’d had all day. What else had she been up to?

  Maggie, the upstairs ghost who usually flitted from room to room, seemed entrenched in the guest room where Mom had slept last night, refusing to come near WindScribe.

  “I don’t know anything.” She suddenly found the candlewick pattern of my bedspread fascinating.

  “Then tell me about Faery. What’s it like?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just another place.” She still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Must be a special place if your coven put together a tricky and dangerous spell to take you all there.” I let my voice go soft and a bit dreamy. “When you first stepped into this world, you said you’d been kicked out of Paradise and wanted to go back. So tell me about it.”

  “It’s pretty there. Lots of flowers. Always warm so we didn’t need the artificial confines and pretenses of clothes.” Her face took on a wistful look.

  “What kinds of flowers?”

  “All kinds. Some from here. Some from every other dimension in the universe. Everything grows and flourishes and becomes better than they are in Faery.”

  “Sounds lovely. Healing. You needed healing when you went there,” I said. From what Allie had said, Joyce had suffered a difficult life with an abusive mother.

  “Wicca healed me,” she asserted. Finally she looked me in the eye.

  "MoonFeather says Wicca offers spiritual healing to any who ask.” I doubted WindScribe had healed as much as she claimed. Not with her drug-induced nightmare of being locked in a closet beneath the stairs. Some nightmares we never recover from.

  “I couldn’t have gotten into Faery without healing.”

  “Did something happen in Faery that allows you to see Scrap?”

  “I can’t see him anymore.” She looked off into space beyond my left shoulder. “The touch of Faery that allows you to see things as they truly are lingers in your perceptions. But not for long.”

  She’s lying, Tess. She sees me now. Look at the way her pupils contract and the lines around her mouth tighten.

  “Can you hear him?”

  Of course she can’t. We’re communicating on a tight beam rather than a broadcast.

  “I didn’t know he talks.”

  Lying again. We had a talk about her choice of lace over brocaded ribbon to lengthen your blue slacks.

  Traitor! I slammed back at him. Couldn’t you have talked her into asking my permission or for a loan of other clothes?

  “I never see . . . saw his mouth move.”

  “Sometimes Scrap talks way too much.” I glared at him before turning back to WindScribe. “Who rules Faery these days?” I asked more gently.

  “Some silly king. He had lots and lots of rules that were impossible to learn. And he kept changing them without telling anyone.” The pout came back.

  “Did you break one of his rules? Is that why he kicked you out?”

  “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.” She slithered off the bed and ducked around me so fast I couldn’t catch her.

  My protest was still forming in my mouth when she slammed the door to her attic room. The lock snicked closed like a period at the end of a paragraph.

  Desperate for answers, I used my cell phone and dialed the secret phone number of the Citadel.

  A phone on the other end rang once. Then the signal died, cutting me off from help.

  “Where is the brooch now?” Gollum asked when I’d told him about my conversation with Darren.

  Talking to WindScribe wasn’t doing me any good. So I decided to brainstorm with Gollum. He might not talk about himself, but he’d talk endlessly on a variety of other subjects.

  “In a safety deposit box in Providence,” I replied quietly, in case anyone was listening outside the apartment. Actually the repository for the sacred brooch was a jeweler in Boston who specialized in storing valuable pieces and heirlooms while providing good replicas for everyday wear. My replica was in the bank in Providence.

  Paranoid? Me?

  Of course. I feared retaliation from the Sisterhood who felt that the piece belonged to their elected leader more than I feared a demon would steal it. Until tonight.

  “You might look for a different repository. If it gives off a magical aura, a gifted hunter could home in on it with no trouble.” Gollum’s eyes lit with a bit of excitement. Was he a “gifted” hunter?

  “Scrap tells me there are a couple of other pieces in the vault with a stronger magical aura than mine.” The jeweler’s vault, that is.