by Norah Wilson
Then she had another thought, one that accelerated the tremble to a shudder. Spiders!
Maryanne must have had the same thought, because her cast broke away from Alex’s and she zoomed in to hover close over their originals. Animals were terrified of casters. They ran, flew, or scurried away from them. From Alex’s dark exploration through the earth in the basement of Harvell House in search of Connie’s remains, they’d learned that creepy crawlers were no different—they’d flee from any caster’s approach.
Brooke could only pray arachnids were no exception.
Oh God, she’d always hated spiders!
“Warding off the bugs,” Maryanne said, apparently for Alex’s benefit since she turned to her as she said it.
“Good idea,” Alex mumbled. She joined Maryanne in the close hover over their bodies.
Wide-eyed, Bryce stood staring from the back of the cave. The flashlight was nearly dead now, but dawn had broken. Weak light was beginning to spill into the cave. Enough for him to see the casts of Maryanne and Alex leering over their originals like depthless, empty, black echoes of themselves. She almost felt sorry for him. Since he couldn’t hear the words they’d exchanged, he had no idea what they were doing.
What a tableau they made, clustered there against the cave’s back wall—three bodies, two casters, one hunter…
Brooke backed further away. Or tried to.
Maryanne shot over and grabbed her left arm.
“Brooke, don’t go,” Maryanne said. “Like I said, we’re in this together.”
Brooke could hear the exasperation in her voice. And anger, too. But being Maryanne, she was at least trying to be kind. Trying to smooth over this unsmoothable situation.
Alex was a different story. “We’re in this together because Brooke put us in this together. Locked us out of our bodies! Maybe forever.” Alex rose above their bodies, vertical in the air, her hands fisted at her sides. “Dammit, Brooke, do you ever just stop to—”
Maryanne cut her off. “C’mon, Alex, she didn’t mean to do this.”
Brooke rounded on Maryanne. “I don’t need you rushing to my defense, little Miss Sunshine.” As soon as the words were out of Brooke’s mouth, she wished she could call them back. Dammit, would she never learn?
“Hey,” Maryanne protested, “I’m trying to help both of you. All of us! We’ve got to figure out what the heck we’re going to do. How to get out of this!”
“If we ever can,” Alex snapped.
Casters didn’t feel the physical cold, but Brooke felt the cutting, bitter chill of Alex’s words. Then something equally disturbing: the warm soak of urine against jeans on her original. Oh no! She was peeing herself! She couldn’t stop the flow. What if they were in this state for—she did the quick calculation—for six days! She’d be on her freakin’ period. They’d become that helpless. Oh crap, she’d made them—
Maryanne’s tightening grip on her arm pulled her from her thoughts. “Look over there.”
Brooke followed the direction of Maryanne’s nod.
Bryce had turned to the wall.
“What’s he doing?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know,” Maryanne murmured.
Bryce stepped over the bodies carefully, walked toward the flashlight, and picked it up. He shook it. Bashed its heavy bottom against his palm. When the light flickered a little brighter, he walked back to the wall.
“Holy crap!” He ran a hand through his hair. Twice. “It’s like something you’d see in a prison movie.”
With her caster vision, Brooke could see what Bryce had discovered even before she floated with Maryanne and Alex toward the back cave wall.
He couldn’t hear them, nor detect any expression on their dark, featureless faces, but still he looked at each of them in disbelief, as if hoping they had some sort of explanation other than the obvious one. The lonely, heartbreaking one.
They didn’t.
Tentatively, Bryce touched the wall.
Lines. Sets of them, four vertical with a horizontal slash through them, scratched into the wall. Hundreds and hundreds of these sets of five, lonely and looming. There were so many and they were so squished together, it was hard to tell where one set started and another set ended.
“Connie did this,” Alex said. “This…this is where she stayed in the winter.” She touched the wall too, and Bryce’s hand immediately shot back.
“And this is where she counted off the days,” Brooke said.
“How lonely!” Maryanne’s original let out a low moan on the floor. Bryce turned at the sound of her cry and went to her body immediately. He crouched down, took her hand, and looked into her slow-blinking eyes.
“Is this our fate?” Maryanne asked. She looked from Bryce standing guard over her body to the lines marked on the wall. “Crossing off day after day for the rest of our…for eternity?”
“But how?” Brooke asked. “How did Connie do this?”
“What choice did she have?” Alex said bitterly. “Connie was locked out of her body for years. Decades! She had no other way of keeping track but to count every bloody day of—”
“Not that. I meant, how did she manage to chisel those lines?” Brooke demonstrated her point by swiping at the wall. Her whole hand disappeared into the gray rock.
Silence.
Connie’s caster fingertips would have passed right through it too. She wouldn’t have been able to hold another rock to scratch the surface. Iron was out of the question, since it depleted a caster’s energy, even in tiny doses. In larger doses, it paralyzed. She would have had to use copper, the only other element besides iron or flesh that had solidity for them. Fortunately for them, copper was fortifying. The opposite of iron.
Brooke was the first to break away to start the search.
Connie’s various nests in the woods had been created with improvised copper tools. She’d used those tools to weave tree branches together to form living camouflage, and she’d concealed copper just below the earth to create a floor she could rest on without sinking into the ground. This cave was different. A floor of copper could not be hidden. She’d probably kept some copper here, but hid it well in case Heller hunters found this place. The presence of copper would have been a dead giveaway.
Had the hunters found copper, they would have waited for her here. Stalked her. Hunted her down. Or set iron traps. Destroyed the place. Nests in the woods could be replaced; this winter haven? Not so much.
There had to be something here that Connie could have used to mark off the days.
“Where would she have—” Brooke’s voice broke off as she noticed Alex.
The other girl was looking up, straight up to the roof of the cave. Soon she was moving along the ceiling, examining every bit of it. Suddenly, she stopped.
“I’ve got it!” Alex cried.
Her hand disappeared for a moment as it slid into the stone. No, not into it this time, but around a small ledge of it. She pulled something out, then dropped down beside the other girls again.
Bryce gasped when he saw it.
Maryanne shook her head as if to reassure him.
Was he worried?
“Holy crap, a copper knife,” Brooke said. “A really old one.” The blade was as long as the well-worn shaft on the thin knife. Maybe it was just the mood of the place or the mood of the night, but it did look dangerous.
“It’s a throwing knife,” Alex said. “A friend’s brother back in Halifax is into knives. Throwing. Not fighting. Competing even. He’s pretty good at it.”
“So Connie used this to mark off her winter days up here,” Maryanne said.
Alex nodded. “All alone.”
Brooke felt her panic grow as she looked at the sets of five, row after row after row of them. Day after day. She moved closer to the wall, her hands hovering above the scratches.
What if the three of them were stuck out here forever?
Connie had been shut out in her cast form for fifty years. That lonely existence only ended
for her after they’d dug up her body and she’d reunited with her corpse. After she’d shot back in through the window, of course. The same stained glass window Brooke had destroyed.
With the portal broken, what would become of their semi-paralyzed bodies? Would they atrophy and wither away? Oh God, would they die and turn to dust? Her period coming in six days would be the least of her worries!
“If Dad hasn’t cleaned them out, there may be a couple sleeping bags behind the seat of the truck,” Bryce said, suddenly. “They’re ratty, but they’ll help. I…I’ll go get them.”
His shaky words startled Brooke back from her panicky thoughts.
She watched him leave the cave.
“Hey, look,” Maryanne said. “There’s something else here. On the wall.”
“What?” Alex asked.
“Down here, at the bottom.”
Shoulder to shoulder, they all lowered down for a closer look. Even with the help of the pale, diffused morning light now trickling in through the cave’s mouth and their extraordinary caster vision, Brooke had to squint.
Near the uneven floor, not just sets of five, but words were carved into the side of the rock wall.
Holy crap! These weren’t Connie’s words. That much was obvious from the message. So whose words were they?
“Oh wow, someone knew!” Maryanne whispered. “Someone knew Connie was here.”
The letters were clear yet uneven in height. Deeper in some places than others. It was as if the writer’s hand had tired every third letter or so and then rejuvenated. Or maybe whoever had written this did it over days. Weeks. Months, even.
Years.
Alex must have noticed the same thing. “This was done in spurts and stops. Someone came back again and again to write this message.”
“And I’m guessing it wasn’t in the winter,” Maryanne mumbled. At first, it sounded as if she were talking to herself. Again. But then she turned to Brooke and Alex. “Guys, it couldn’t have been in the winter.”
“Why?” Alex asked.
Brooke provided the answer. “No one would dare come here to do this then. Connie would have scared them off. Shrieked him mad.”
“Shrieked her mad,” Maryanne corrected. “It was a woman who carved this.”
Alex angled her head. “You can tell just by looking?”
“Yes. No. Okay, I can tell just by feeling,” Maryanne said. “She had to have been scared of Connie, but I think…I think she was more worried she’d scare Connie away from here.”
Maryanne was undoubtedly right. She was always right about these things. The girl had a sixth sense when it came to feeling the vibes of places. And her theory certainly fit with the message.
Brooke read it again.
Let me help you. Come to me when you need rest. Come to me when you want out. When you need help. I will forever be waiting. I PROMISE—V.W.
“V.W.” Brooke said.
“Bryce’s grandmother, Vesta Walker,” Maryanne said. “Those are her initials. Remember I told you about the trunk full of stones and crystals at the Walker place? The same initials were on the trunk—V.W.”
“The hunter’s wife,” Brooke grated.
“Chill, Brooke,” Maryanne said. “She wasn’t anything like Ira Walker. Bryce says she was spiritual, but that it was a different kind of spiritual. I got the feeling the rest of the family didn’t exactly approve.” Maryanne paused. “A while ago, Bryce and I were looking through the crystals. Well, I was looking through them, Bryce was patiently waiting. Anyway, Mr. Walker had bought two new horses. The first they’d gotten since Seth…” She let her voice trail off, and Brooke knew it was for her benefit.
She was going to say since Seth had been killed.
Maryanne continued. “So while Bryce and his dad were getting the new horses settled…”
“You dug a little deeper into the stones,” Brooke said.
“Yeah, I did.” Maryanne shrugged. “I picked up a box with some small slices of black kyanite. I’d never handled them much because they’re so flat and frail,” Maryanne said. “I planned to take some for my dream work, after exams were done. Grandmother Beach swears kyanite will help me remember my dreams more clearly, and I really find myself drawn to it.”
Despite everything, Brooke smiled. Maryanne was crazy over stones. She had a passion for crystals like some people had for designer shoes or fine art. Except more so. And she talked all the time about this Grandmother Beach, the straight-from-the-sixties old lady who owned The Beach of Everything, a hole-in-the-wall spiritual shop in Fort Fairfield, Maine.
Maryanne, Alex, and Brooke had stumbled onto that shop in January when they’d crossed the Canada/US border to do a little shopping. Maryanne had been fascinated by the dusty, tiny place, bursting at the seams with candles, odd books, and a crazy assortment of stones. She’d been equally fascinated by Grandmother Beach. Since then, Maryanne had made at least two trips a week to the store during the school semester.
“Anyway,” Maryanne said. “This time while Bryce was gone, I dug a little deeper into those babies. I pulled the pieces out one by one and set them beside me on the floor. I kept telling myself I was looking for the right one—the perfect one—for dream work. But something else was niggling at me. That’s when I saw it.”
“The perfect stone?” Brooke asked.
Maryanne shook her head. “No. It was something else that had once belonged to Vesta Walker. That could have only belonged to her.”
“What?” Alex asked.
Maryanne drew a shaky breath, a betraying breath. “It was the old woman’s grimoire. I could tell just by holding it. This was one very powerful book.”
Chapter 2
Crack
Brooke
Brooke looked up as Bryce walked back into the cave carrying several sleeping bags and a flash of bright blue plastic that had to be a tarp. With a quick, sidelong glance at the casters, he headed toward their bodies—their originals. But though Brooke took those details in, it was only on an automatic level.
Both of her consciousnesses were locked around one amazing fact—Ira Walker’s wife had a grimoire. A powerful one, according to Maryanne.
She felt her original’s heart clench.
“A grimoire? Is that like a book of shadows?” Alex asked.
“Not quite,” Maryanne said.
“It’s a book of magic,” Brooke said. “A very personal one.”
“Yes, it is.” Maryanne’s tone conveyed her surprise that Brooke would know that.
In junior high, Brooke had a friend, Caitlyn Snow, who knew all about these things. They used to hang out after school quite often till the Snow family moved out of state. They weren’t close-close friends, but as close as Brooke ever got to anyone, even back then. Mr. Snow kept his own personal grimoire, and though Caitlyn had talked about it, hinted that she knew where her father kept it hidden, even with Brooke’s most passionate pleading, she wouldn’t let her see it. “He’d know,” Caitlyn used to say.
“But how?”
“He just would. The energy would be off.”
Back then, Brooke had scoffed at the idea. Now…
“Was Ira’s wife a witch?” she asked.
“She may have been, but I never asked, and Bryce never said. All Bryce ever told me was that she was a very spiritual woman.”
“Well, witches are very spiritual,” Brooke said. “They just get a bad rap in our society because—”
“Guys, I have something else to tell you,” Alex said. “Something about Vesta Walker. Well, two things—the dream I had about her and the message on the back of Connie’s doll.”
Whoa? A message on the back of Connie’s doll?
“Message? What message?” Brooke demanded.
Alex groaned. “Dammit, Brooke, don’t start with me. I was going to tell you. Both of you. Come with me and I’ll show you.”
She led them over to their bodies.
Bryce stood quickly at their approach. He had unzipped and roll
ed out the two sleeping bags and was resettling the girls on them, wet jeans and all. Bryce backed away. “I…I’ve got to run to the truck again for a minute,” he said.
Pressing as flat to the wall as he could, he slipped by the three of them. It didn’t take caster vision to see the slump of Maryanne’s shoulders as he passed by.
Brooke turned her attention back to Alex, who plucked Connie’s copper doll out from her original’s grip. Alex must have retrieved it before they’d left Harvell House while Bryce was lugging their bodies away from the attic.
“I found this at Christmas,” Alex said. “Sorry. I…I should have told you.”
She felt guilty. Good.
Maryanne’s gaze had been following Bryce to the cave’s opening, but now she turned back to Alex. “We’ve all seen Connie’s doll.”
“Not like this.” Alex flipped the doll around. She jiggled the back and it snapped off in her hands.
“Holy crap,” Maryanne breathed. “Is that…did Connie write a message on the doll?”
“Yeah,” Alex said.
“To whom?” Brooke asked.
Alex shrugged. “To herself, I guess. A reminder, maybe. Or maybe she just needed to get the words out. Listen to what it says.” She paused before she began:
She cowers before me, yet she keeps coming back, claiming she wants to help me. I am tempted, but I dare not trust this Vesta, wife of my enemy. I carve this so I am reminded when I hold my Lily Michelle—NEVER TRUST A WALKER. They’re hunters, every one.
“Oh, wow,” Maryanne said. “So Connie knew Vesta.”
“Sort of knew her. Somehow knew her,” Alex said. “And here’s the other part. I dreamed of her—Vesta, I mean—months ago. If you hadn’t mentioned dreaming and dream work just now, I don’t know whether I’d have thought to mention it. It was so vivid. There were these two old women walking on the railway tracks. They looked at me and it was as real as anything. They were talking—”