by P. R. Frost
I wondered if he used the same banker as Donovan. Vern and Myrna Abrams had demon connections but fought on the side of humanity with me last autumn. They’d also required Donovan to sign his mortgage papers in blood.
“I can have the kitchen I’ve always dreamed of,” Mom sighed. “And I’d love to cook for all of D’s family when they come to visit. Did we tell you that he has seven children besides Donovan? I love a big family. Always wished I had more than just you three.” She nearly floated to the table and took her place at the head—the place where I should sit since I owned the house and was officially hostess.
I let the slight slide. This time.
Or was that every time?
“While you take care of the financial things, darling, I’ll call on Father Sheridan and make arrangements for us to have a church blessing of our marriage,” Mom added.
Did Darren forget to breathe?
“I can design invitations and announcements on the computer for you,” I offered. “I’ll send a bunch of them by e-mail to our relatives and friends. We should have a reception at the church. The parish hall will host a lot more people than we could have here.” I narrowed my eyes and watched Darren’s reaction. I needed to know what he’d do if he actually had to enter a church. I’d even show up to watch.
Donovan hid a smirk behind his hand.
“I’ve already told James Frazier from the Gazette about the engagement. He said he’ll print an announcement tomorrow.” Mom looked incredibly proud of herself.
“When did you see James?” The pest hadn’t called today . . . that I knew of.
“He was just driving by the Milner place and stopped to chat,” Mom replied.
“He asked a lot of questions about your other guests,” Darren said, watching me closely. “Like how MoonFeather really got hurt and how you know Miss WindScribe, where she came from, that sort of thing. Sounded to me like he knew things he shouldn’t and wanted confirmation.”
“Strange that he’d be driving past the Milner place. If I remember the house correctly, it’s on a dead end.” I smiled sweetly at Darren, letting him know I would not be drawn into his probing conversation.
“Did . . . did you say the old Milner place?” WindScribe whispered from the doorway.
“Why, yes, my dear,” Mom replied. She looked a little puzzled, as if she couldn’t remember who WindScribe was. I’d only told her that she was a friend, temporarily homeless. “Do you know the house?”
“Yeah. Why is it empty?” The girl looked terribly young and frightened. One of those amazing shifts she did from vicious to vulnerable in an eye blink.
“Old Mr. Milner developed Alzheimer’s. I believe he’s in a nursing home,” I told her. She didn’t register the medical term. I’d forgotten that it had only entered our everyday vocabulary in the past decade or so. “Such a shame when people forget everyone around them.”
Mom jumped in to fill in gaps in the story. “I heard tales that he confused his wife with his mother. He had to be put away when he began accosting every teenage girl he saw on the street, demanding to know where she’d been and why she ran away from home. He thought that every one of them was his missing daughter. ”
“How awful,” WindScribe choked. “Wh . . . what happened to his wife?”
“No one knows. She just locked the house and walked away the day she put her husband in the nursing home.” Mom shook her head in dismay. “Such a waste. Janice Milner was quite an asset to the garden club. She got a little tiddley at parties, but no one minded. She was a happy drunk.”
I almost gagged on that statement. I remembered the old bitch from some of Mom’s garden teas when I was in high school. Janice Milner had a tongue on her that could flay a person alive. Then she’d laugh herself silly, totally oblivious to the embarrassment she caused.
No wonder her daughter had turned to the local Wicca coven as an escape. She’d probably have chosen to stay in Faery forever just to avoid her mother. Except that she’d broken a rule and wound up in an otherworldly prison.
What had she done?
“That family’s tragedy is our good fortune.” Darren didn’t rub his hands together in glee, but he might as well have. “The township just put the house on the market. It’s going for back taxes and the residual on the mortgage.”
Legal wheels grind slowly. It took three years for foreclosure and confiscation.
“But the house was badly neglected even before it was abandoned.” Darren narrowed his gaze to me. “We’ll have to impose on your hospitality a while longer, Tess, until we can get the roof repaired and the plumbing updated. I’ll find a contractor to redo the kitchen to your specifications, querida.” He kissed Mom’s palm, pausing to lick and nibble on her fingers.
Yuck.
“In the meantime, we can plan an exquisite wedding reception,” Mom sighed. She blushed prettily.
“We’ll have to find the perfect dress and veil for you,” I said. I tucked into my soup so I wouldn’t have to engage Darren’s gaze any longer. Something about his eyes unnerved me. They looked human and yet . . . there was a redness to the brown iris and a slight misshapen quality to the pupil—like it wanted to shift to the vertical from round.
Oh, yes, this man was part demon. I wondered that everyone he met didn’t notice it.
But not everyone knows that demons exist. And not everyone is on the lookout for them.
I checked Donovan’s eyes for any hint of otherworldliness. Nope. His pupils were perfectly round, and the iris remained that rich chocolate brown I’d almost fallen in love with. Damn, I wished he weren’t so attractive.
Time to change my attention.
“A pity about the Milner daughter,” Darren pushed, shifting his attention to WindScribe. "She’ll never get to go back home now.”
“If she’s even alive. Thirty years is a long time to go missing.” Mom’s gaze turned wistful and she turned an unfocused stare out the window toward the garden gnomes that had multiplied in the yard between the house and the cottage.
“Maybe she had a good reason for running away and staying away,” WindScribe whispered. She kept her eyes down as she tiptoed to the table.
“From what I heard, she was running with a bad crowd, a bunch of witches intent on disrupting the town.” Darren fixed WindScribe with an intent gaze. “Bad thing, witches and black magic. I think the Milner girl did something terrible, committed some crime, so that she shouldn’t come home, even if she could.”
I don’t think I could have kept my head down and my eyes averted under such scrutiny.
MoonFeather gasped. “Have you ever heard of the threefold law, Mr. Estevez?” she asked sweetly. Too sweetly.
He blinked and shifted his attention.
“Whatever you do in life, good, bad, or indifferent comes back to you threefold,” MoonFeather continued. “I believe that firmly. I make a point of never saying anything bad about someone, even if they deserve it.”
Silence rang around the table at my aunt’s oblique put-down. She hadn’t said anything bad, yet still she’d let the man know he’d stepped over the line.
“Now, now, no fighting while we eat. It upsets the digestion. We should say grace, even if it is a bit belated.” Mom held out her hands to join with Donovan and me.
I grabbed one of Mom’s hands eagerly and took Gollum’s in my other. He joined the circle to WindScribe. Would she, in turn, take Darren’s at the end of the table? Donovan reluctantly placed one hand in MoonFeather’s. She extended hers to Darren.
I bit my lip, wondering if he dared exclude himself from a family tradition. A family he’d joined by marriage. He was a part of us whether he liked it or not.
Whether I liked it or not.
I wondered if he’d survive family game night tomorrow. Sunday, with Uncle George, Grandma Maria, and my sister Cecilia. Maybe Dad and Bill would show up for a change.
Just when I thought Darren would push back his chair and leave us, rather than say grace, he clutched hands wi
th MoonFeather and WindScribe and bowed his head. His lips even moved as Mom recited her favorite prayer and invoked her Christian Trinity.
Chapter 28
Highly prized among Masonic memorabilia is a jewel of black onyx with a carved head of Isis set in an ivory crescent Moon. Below that, dangling within the curve of the Moon, is a five-pointed star representing Sirius—the Dog Star.
"TESS, CAN I talk to you a moment?” Mom asked from the doorway to MoonFeather’s room.
“Sure. Just a minute while I finish changing this dressing, ” I replied. I steeled myself to look at the angry and seeping wound. The doctor had packed it with collagen to fill in the gaping hole left by the gnome ripping a chunk out.
The skin knit cleanly beneath the stitches. Scrap’s ministrations had worked miracles in just hours.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Mom said, peering over my shoulder.
“It’s a mess,” MoonFeather grunted.
I’d done my best to keep from hurting her when I ripped off the old bandage, but I could tell from the strain around her eyes and the whiteness around her lips that all was not well yet.
“I need to go home,” MoonFeather continued. “I need to poultice this with special herbs and spells to negate any . . . foreign infection.”
Demon venom, in other words.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said looking directly into her eyes. “Much of the infection is gone.”
“Actually, what I have to say might be better said in front of witnesses. D is very big on witnesses to this sort of thing,” Mom said, hardly pausing for breath.
That surprised me enough to look up from placing new gauze over MoonFeather’s war wound. This sounded akin to the argument I’d had with Darren.
“Since I cut my hair, and I’ve already married D, I won’t be needing your comb to hold my wedding veil. I know you treasure this and I want you to have it back.” Mom thrust the antique into my suddenly shaking hand.
“Mom, I wanted you to have this for a reason.” I examined her expression, posture, and her eyes for signs of what was truly going on and found only my Mom.
“I know. And I want you to have it back for a reason. Now put it away before D stashes it in a safety deposit box or finds a more obscure hiding place. You need this.” Mom turned abruptly and flounced away.
“My, my, my. So my ex-sister-in-law has a spine after all,” MoonFeather mused.
“Or was that a plea for help?” I asked, more worried than ever.
“I give this marriage three months max before she dumps him.”
“Maybe not quite so long,” I returned. “She’s seeing him for what he is.” I held up the comb and nodded to it.
“And that is?” MoonFeather raised her thick eyebrows at me.
“Would you believe me if I told you he’s a half-blood Damiri demon?”
“From the dangerous energies that swirl around you, and the evidence of garden gnomes come to life with more teeth than a shark, I’d believe almost anything, Tess. Now why don’t you sit and tell me precisely what is going on. Maybe I can help.”
And so I told her the entire story. I spoke of my time in the Citadel learning to be a Warrior of the Celestial Blade. My adventures on the high desert plateau of central Washington last autumn came out a bit more hesitantly. Then the words flooded out in a torrent. I felt lighter and freer with each revelation.
Her brows sank lower and lower as she narrowed her eyes and tensed her shoulders.
“Make certain the votive offering you give to your Goddess is something you treasure above all things. Not because of monetary value, not because the world is jealous you possess it. Give what your heart clings to. Nothing less will ensure your safety tomorrow in battle, ” she whispered as she clung to my hand. “The world cannot afford to lose you.”
MoonFeather’s advice to make a votive offering to a Goddess I didn’t believe in was just too weird. Even for me.
Scrap’s suggestion to seek advice from my friends at the Citadel sounded more logical. They didn’t answer the phone, so I had to revert to other methods that didn’t rely on technology.
But where in this very full household could I find the privacy to properly meditate?
Gollum’s apartment of course. He was still at the college. I called his cell for permission to take refuge there.
“My door is never locked to you, Tess,” he said quietly. “Do you need some background music. I can recommend . . .”
“Thanks, but I have my own.”
“You might let Gandalf help.”
“The cat? How can that pesky critter . . . ?”
“Take him into your lap and let him purr. You’d be amazed at how much easier it is to meditate with that rhythm echoing your heartbeat.”
“But Scrap is allergic to cats.”
“Does Scrap help you reach out through the ether beyond mortal awareness?”
“Noooo . . .”
“Then try Gandalf. If it doesn’t work, lock him in the bathroom.”
That sounded like a wonderful idea. So I grabbed a CD from my collection, a couple of blue candles, and a stick of incense in a scent compatible with the candles. I chose these because I liked the color, not because of any spiritual symbolism.
“Are we having a pot party?” WindScribe asked when she saw me lugging my stuff out of my office.
“No.” I didn’t feel like explaining myself to her.
“I’m bored. What am I supposed to do all by myself?”
“Read a book. I’ve got lots all over the house. Take your pick.” Then I slammed the door to the apartment in her face.
Deep within the apartment I found some cherished peace and quiet. The sounds of life from the house and the road remained outside these insulated walls. I set up my candles and incense on the coffee table in front of a worn leather recliner. Why fight an uncomfortable posture with no support sitting in the middle of a cold floor? The idea in meditation was to relax. So I stretched out and let the chair cradle me.
The upholstery still smelled of Dill’s aftershave and his unique male scent. I drank it in along with the incense. A gentle throbbing drum and wordless chant from a Midwestern tribe wafted over me from the stereo.
My body eased immediately. Some tension lingered across my shoulders and my fingers still clenched.
Starting with my forehead, I consciously tensed and relaxed each muscle group until my entire body felt more liquid, my spirit lighter. Then a series of visualizations stripped more and more tightness from my psyche.
Gandalf levitated to the arm of the chair. I reached over and ran my hand the length of his silky body. He vibrated from head to toe in a pleasing rumble. I didn’t have to look at him to invite him closer. He stepped lightly into my lap, circled once, and stretched out with paws and head on my chest. That rippling purr caressed my soul.
With a sigh I let my mind drift in ever expanding circles. Gradually, I sent those circles west, across mountains and plains, jumping mighty rivers and climbing bigger mountains and plunging down to the high desert plateau of the Columbia River Basin. Mile by mile I sped across my memory of the route to the Citadel hidden in a deep ravine not far from Dry Falls.
A question mark appeared in my mind. Telepathic contact is not exact, often symbolic.