Casters Series Box Set

by Norah Wilson

  This was copper dust.

  Vesta Walker had covered her grimoire with copper dust.

  Why?

  Maryanne answered her own question. “Because she knew a caster would be coming for it someday.”

  But did she know it would be Maryanne?

  Maryanne picked up the book and held it to her dark chest, and she whispered her silent thanks to the long-dead woman. Minutes later, Maryanne placed the book back on its bed of kyanite. Flipping the stones again carefully, she started to cover the grimoire. When Bryce returned, she would point out a few boxes of stones for him to pack with the supplies. Some bloodstone. Some golden topaz and rhodonite. Moonstone, of course. He knew she liked moonstone. And she’d tell him to pack the whole tray of black kyanite too, for the trip back up to Hants High Mountain.

  Maryanne looked down at the half-hidden grimoire. Bryce wouldn’t be back for a while yet. She’d have plenty of time to read from it and still put it away…

  Even as that little voice in her mind teased her with the possibility, she squashed it. She just couldn’t do that to Brooke. After what had happened with Connie’s diary, no way would she repeat that mistake. The book would remain closed until she could open it and read from it with Brooke and Alex. Poor Brooke. Her heart just ached for that lonely girl. Her mom and step-father were pretty much absent from her life. Then there was the late Seth Walker. Though she’d never admit it outright, Brooke had loved him.

  And he’d wronged her too.

  Maryanne used the copper knife to flip the last few black shards into place. She heaved a small sigh. Darn it. It was more than compassion for Brooke that kept her from reading the grimoire right now, and she knew it.

  It was fear of what she’d find in those pages.

  Chapter 6

  You What?!

  Brooke

  Brooke was the last to ‘wake up’. Well, they were calling it ‘waking up’ even though none of them were sure that they actually slept in their cast forms. She woke with Maryanne tugging on her foot. “It’s nighttime, Brooke. Wakey wakey.”

  The noonday sun had been high in the sky by the time Maryanne had gotten back to the cave. By that time, Brooke was nearly as worried as Alex, who was literally chewing her caster nails. Neither had been able to relax until Bryce had returned with their friend. But as soon as Maryanne flitted into the cave, they’d taken turns resting. One by one, each caster had let the heaviness consume them while the other two stood watch.

  Maryanne had been first. She had to be first, exhausted by her road trip. She was also the most willing to go there, maybe because she’d done it before. When her energy had been depleted from the horrific iron collar around her neck and the hellish fire in the Walker shed, she’d recovered partly by going into this resting/sleeping phase. Though as she’d told Alex and Brooke, she remembered nothing about it.

  After a few short—Maryanne called them blessed—hours, it was Alex’s turn. Between the bits of copper mesh, some pipes Bryce had found, and the jar of old pennies he’d pilfered from his dad’s study, they’d made a small bed, just like the ones they’d seen in Connie’s nest. As soon as Maryanne vacated the bed, Alex lowered herself onto it.

  Brooke had been the last to rest. Though she suspected she could easily have ‘slept’ longer before the wakey-wakey call, she did feel energized. Absolutely light. But it wasn’t just the copper she’d slept on. Not just the rest. Darkness had fallen, sunshine giving way to the moon and stars. Casters could come out and play. How she felt the urge to fly into the night! She wanted to soar with Alex and Maryanne. She wanted to climb high, then dive toward the earth, only to pull up and go racing through the treetops.

  But that would have to wait. They had to talk.

  By mutual agreement, they’d decided to let everything wait until they were rested and could think straight. And when they were all together. That was still a bitter point with Brooke.

  Of course, priority one when Bryce and Maryanne had come back to the cave had been taking care of their originals. Each of their bodies now sported a set of Hannah Walker’s sweats. Though Bryce’s mother was a stylish enough dresser for her age, she was…well, old. Her idea of workout wear…suffice to say it wasn’t Lululemon. And yes, the adult diaper fiasco. Argh!

  “Oh dear God, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in this,” Brooke had said as Bryce adjusted the drab and unflattering gray sweats that were at least five sizes too big.

  “I hope we’re not caught semi-paralyzed in them either!” Alex's words had been cutting, and there was no mistaking the fact that it was aimed at Brooke. Of course, her unresisting form had been decked out in a very girly pink, so Brooke could forgive her. It kinda made the washed out gray seem attractive.

  But Bryce had drawn the line at buying clothing. “The whole diaper thing was bad enough!” With the casters' help, he’d changed them all. They could handle the bodies—flesh on flesh. However, he had to manipulate the clothing, the water, and the Gatorade bottles.

  “His hands are cold! Maryanne, did you know that?”

  “Oh God, I’m wearing granny panties. White ones!”

  “Snort! Like he’d notice.”

  “I think he’s concentrating more on the diapers.”

  “Oh, geez, I haven’t shaved my legs in—”

  “It’s not a date!”

  And there was of course a whole chorus of “oh craps.”

  To Bryce’s credit, he’d kept his gaze discreetly directed. Most of the time.

  Brooke couldn’t help but see it through her caster eyes—he’d given more than a passing glance to the tattoo on her leg. Three linked dark stars shooting up to the sky. Soaring sisters. She knew he’d gotten the symbolism by the flash in his eyes.

  The only consolation to her mortification: Bryce Walker had seemed to mind the chore just as much as they did. He’d moaned about having run into not only his hockey coach and that ‘old guy from Harvell House’ at the pharmacy, but the town gossip, Dani Mann, as well.

  He’d also brought a proper, foil-backed ground sheet and self-inflating foam pads to put under them, the kind they sold at outdoor outfitters. The tarp and sleeping bag helped, but after all the hours of inactivity, the cold from the cave’s floor had seeped into Brooke’s very bones. He’d also brought polar fleece throws. By the time she was dressed and zipped back inside her sleeping bag with the fleece tucked around her and the insulating ground sheet and pad beneath her, Brooke could have wept with relief. Actually, she did, but so did the others.

  Now, Brooke rose a few feet above the copper bed and stretched.

  “Did you dream?” Maryanne asked.

  “No.”

  “That makes it unanimous,” Maryanne said. “Alex and I didn’t either.”

  “How long was I out?” Brooke asked

  “Not sure,” Maryanne answered. “I’d guess close to two hours. But without a clock—”

  “Can you get Bryce to bring us one?”

  “Shit, Brooke!” Alex snapped. “Are you looking to set up housekeeping? Should we start decorating? Hang up our grad photos? Oh right, we may not even be graduating. Ever!”

  She shot away. But not far away. Brooke could see her hovering just outside the cave’s entrance.

  “Give her a minute to cool down,” Maryanne said.

  Brooke’s stomach dropped. “She’ll never forgive me.”

  “Yes, she will.” Maryanne put a hand on her arm. “We will get out of this…somehow.” Maryanne turned and looked toward their helpless originals on the floor. Brooke couldn’t help but follow her gaze.

  It was as if they were caught in time. Trapped in two different worlds. Locked in and locked out.

  No, it wasn’t ‘as if’. It was the disturbing reality.

  When he’d brought Maryanne back, Bryce had also brought some small pillows and a third sleeping bag. Now each of their helpless forms was tucked into their own cocoon, arms out on top of the bags. Alex’s and Maryanne’s hands lay flat to their sid
es, while Brooke’s own hands were fisted. Their expressionless faces were ghostly pale in the candlelight that flickered around the walls of the cave.

  The candles had been Bryce’s idea. He’d packed several large, thick pillars he’d dug out from his grandmother’s closet. He blown off the dust and lit one for the girls. When Alex had tossed her hands up in the air to ask why, he really couldn’t say. He really wasn’t sure. He lit one of them—a white one—and set it at the back of the cave near their prone bodies.

  Bryce had hightailed it out of there as quickly as he could after they were settled, taking their soiled clothing with him to wash. It was obviously the guy desperately needed some sleep, but he’d promised to return the next morning.

  And he’d promised to send the email.

  That had been Alex’s idea, and it was a pretty good one. Bryce would send an email to Patricia Betts from Maryanne’s Gmail account to tell her that the three girls had taken off to Presque Isle for an impromptu shopping spree. They’d used the road trip excuse before and were willing to endure the wrath of Mrs. Betts to use it again. Maybe this close to the end of the school year, the housemother would just throw up her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture rather than get truly bent out of shape. Especially since Brooke and Maryanne had already turned eighteen, and Alex would in July. There wasn’t much she could do.

  Brooke could feel her original drifting off to sleep, which felt strange while her caster self was more alive and alert than ever. “I feel the night around me.” The words were out before she’d even thought to say them.

  “Oh wow, I feel it too,” Maryanne breathed back. This didn’t surprise Brooke. Maryanne was practically addicted to casting. It would take no amount of arm twisting to get her to put the talk on hold and fly into the night. They moved toward the cave’s exit.

  “Hold it right there,” Alex said. “We can’t cast out just yet.”

  “Ah, come on, Alex. Just for a while?” Maryanne coaxed.

  “We agreed,” Alex said sternly. “We have to talk. Figure this out.” Alex turned toward Brooke, her voice rising with expectation and accusation. “Right, Brooke?”

  Alex was probably right, and since this was all her fault… “Right. We have to figure this out.”

  “Okay, then,” Maryanne said. “We investigate the grimoire. Then we soar.”

  “And there’s something else we have to talk about,” Brooke said. How hard it had been for her to not share her news earlier about her trip to Harvell House, and Melissa’s being there. But she’d start with something else…

  “Spill it,” Alex said. “What the hell did you do now?”

  She ignored the dig. Sorta. “I went through the pond’s ice this morning.” Before either of them could say so what, she held up a hand. “No, I didn’t pass through it. I broke through it.”

  Maryanne grabbed her arm tightly, excitedly. Alex held perfectly still. Brooke smiled to herself.

  “You mean you were wearing copper and that broke through the ice,” Alex said. “Right?”

  “Nope,” Brooke answered.

  “That’s impossible!” Maryanne said.

  “Apparently not.”

  They both knew as Brooke did that this had to be significant. A slight wind blew into the small cave, and for a moment, the candle’s flame flared higher.

  “How?” Alex asked. “Explain it to us.”

  Brooke shrugged as if it were nothing. “I dove down into the pond and didn’t slide through the ice. It cracked around me. I ended up in the water.”

  “Then what?” Maryanne asked.

  “I shot back up as fast as I could through the broken ice.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Alex accused. “You didn’t think that was important?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the fact that you still had Connie’s diary? And her doll?”

  “That’s different!”

  “Yeah,” Brooke scoffed. “Because it was me you were keeping the secret from.”

  She knew she was doing it. Wounding. Lashing out because she was feeling threatened. It was so easy to teeter over that edge. Dammit!

  “Like I told you, Brooke,” Alex said. “Maryanne didn’t know either until last night when you walked in.”

  Brooke knew this now, but she didn’t give an inch. “You still kept it to yourself! Who lied about it? Who lied to me?”

  “And you’re the one who locked us out! Who do you think’s the bigger shithead in this scenario?”

  “Hey!” Maryanne shouted. “Both of you are shitheads! Now shut the hell up!”

  They shut up. Maryanne rarely raised her voice, so when she did, it worked.

  After a minute Alex said, “Well she screwed up more.”

  Brooke scoffed. “But you screwed up deeper.”

  Maryanne raised her hands. “And there's nothing we can do about any of that now except call a truce and get out of this mess.”

  Maryanne turned to Brooke. “You were gone quite a while. Were you in the pond all that time?”

  All that time… Brooke recalled the panic her original had felt when her cast submerged. She shuddered.

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, where were you?” Maryanne asked.

  “I went to Harvell House. I wanted to see if there was any way I could…I don’t know…do something with the glass, I suppose.”

  “Like smash it all the more?” Alex said.

  So much for the truce.

  “Like pick it up,” Brooke snapped.

  “Could you?” Maryanne’s tone was hopeful.

  “No, I couldn’t pick it up. But it felt different.”

  Brooke explained about the feeling she’d gotten when her hand had slid through the glass. The tug. The tingle.

  “Okay, so what do we know so far?” Maryanne’s features were invisible, but her posture conveyed her intensity. “The ice broke, the stained glass pulled, or tugged as you say.” Her voice rose with each word. “Guys, this is important. Good work, Brooke!”

  “It was still risky to go in the daylight,” Alex said. “You could have been seen.”

  Oh man, Brooke hated—really hated—to have to say the next part. “I was seen. By Melissa Kosnick.”

  “What?” Alex screamed.

  “Melissa saw me at the house. She—”

  Brooke had been about to say she attacked me, ready for some of that sister love/sympathy. Alex didn’t give her the chance.

  “How could you be so stupid? So careless? So wrong!”

  Alex’s diatribe continued, and Maryanne wasn’t defending Brooke anymore.

  Screw it, then. She wouldn’t tell them about Melissa’s attack. How scared she’d been. How much it had hurt when those blows had landed, or how close she’d come to being trapped. She definitely would not tell them about what else she’d found at Harvell House.

  Yes, this settled it. What she’d found this morning—what she’d salvaged—was hers alone. To do with what she would.

  Chapter 7

  Vesta Walker

  Maryanne

  Brooke was hiding something.

  Maryanne knew it by the way Brooke had silenced so quickly and stayed quiet even after Alex calmed down. Now, that defensive wall she’d thrown up was practically visible. Maryanne watched as Brooke moved around the cave, pretending she hadn’t been fazed by Alex’s outburst, yet keeping her distance in the enclosed space. There was no sense trying to pry anything from her now.

  “Are you guys ready?” Alex asked. Her tone was civil again.

  Maryanne moved to join the other two close to the back of the cave, where the tall candle burned.

  And burned, dammit!

  It took everything she had to plunk herself down on the copper bits and pieces they’d placed around the candle. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but fire scared her. No, not just scared her. It terrified the heck out of her. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she raised a hand to her throat. Where the iron collar had bit into her so vici
ously. The fire itself couldn’t hurt her cast, but as the heated molecules in the iron had started to dance, the pain had been beyond anything she could have imagined. Just thinking about it, Maryanne pulled a tight breath—her original physically, her cast mentally.

  It hit her like a hammer, the reality of all of it. Oh God, they were doing it, gathering the copper pieces, putting them to practical uses. Hiding away in the highest cave of Hants High Mountain—just like Connie had.

  Were they already defeated? The question roiled through her soul.

  “Are you okay?” Alex asked.

  Again, Alex was playing den mother, except now she was doing it inside a literal den.

  Maryanne lowered her hands to her lap, forcing down the hysterical bubble of laughter that threatened to burst out. “I will be,” she said. “We will be.”

  She glanced over to their originals lying behind them. Their bodies looked disturbingly like life-sized dolls. Spooky, creepy dolls.

  Already their bodies were feeling the effects of no food, limited liquid, near complete immobility, and helplessness. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, it was taking a toll. “We have to be okay.” She couldn’t help it, her voice broke.

  Oh no! She did not want to cry. Couldn’t be mouse Maryanne! Not this time.

  “Here,” Brooke said quickly. She held out Vesta Walker’s grimoire. Brooke had been holding it for the last few minutes. Alex had taken her turn holding it too, but none of them had cracked it open since Maryanne had brought it to the cave. She’d dug it out of the kyanite after Bryce left, but they’d just let it lie on the floor.

  “You read it, Maryanne,” Brooke said. “You’re the one who found it.”

  “Thanks.” Maryanne took the book from Brooke, though she didn’t open it right away. She just stared down at the embroidered cover.

  “Do you guys feel it too?” Alex asked. “The déjà vu?”

  Brooke nodded.

  “Me too,” Maryanne said. It was all very familiar. Eerily familiar. Last fall, all three of them had sat in the attic of Harvell House poring over another book—Connie Edwina Harvell’s diary. By candlelight they’d read her fate, learned her secrets, and learned to cast. Now, it was Vesta Walker’s beyond-the-grave words, her secrets, they were about to delve into. Back in the fall, all they’d worried about was getting caught sneaking up to the attic by Mrs. Betts, the housemother, or maybe the old caretaker, John Smith. Now, the stakes were so much higher.