by Norah Wilson
Chapter 11
Clean Sweep
Alex
The wind began to die down at daybreak. Alex readied herself to throw the last handful of dead spiders out into it. This flesh too—dead flesh—casters could touch.
Oh joy. Great perk.
She’d cringed when she’d touched the first few spiders she’d swept away, but that repulsion had given way to anger at the small, eight-legged creatures and any other creatures—eight, four, or two-legged—who would do them harm. Bite them. Threaten them. Call them names.
How dare they! Back in the town square, those people had called them bitches. They’d called them whores.
Alex felt herself starting to boil with rage all over again.
Calm down, Robbins. Take it down.
She did ‘take it down’, but it wasn’t easy. There was no denying it—the longer she remained in cast form, the more it all angered her. What C.W. had done to her, what he’d done to others. The names people hurled at them, and always to do with their sex! The longer she was cast out, the more she wanted to fight back. The more she wanted revenge.
What right did they have? What damn right did any of them have?
Now Alex didn’t just toss the final fistful of spiders out, she whipped them into the last of the wind and what was left of the night.
“Done,” Brooke said.
“Yeah. Done.”
Brooke had worked most of the night too, clearing the cave of spiders and chanting along with Maryanne and Alex. Neither Alex nor Brooke had objected to Maryanne’s leaving the spiders to them to go and pore over Vesta Walker’s grimoire. They said nothing about it. In fact, they barely said anything at all other than to chant, as if they were afraid of breaking her concentration. Or as if afraid of breaking something else, a spell of some kind that hung in the air.
Maryanne had turned page after copper-dusted page, back and forth, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. She’d adjusted the book to every possible angle and scrutinized the pages under the candlelight. And sometimes she would lay her empty black hands on an opened page and, except for the chanting, go completely still.
It had been a long night. Now the candle was almost burned down to nothing. Depleted.
Alex realized how depleted she was feeling too, in both consciousnesses. Morning brought again that tired heaviness to their caster bodies. Their originals, after suffering the attack from the crazed spiders, hadn’t managed much sleep either.
And yes, the spiders had been crazed. There was no other way to explain their aggressive actions. Just like when Missy, Dani Mann’s little dog, had gone ape-shit on them in the town square. Since then, they’d all noticed it. Dogs snarled and barked at them. Cats bristled. Even squirrels scolded incessantly from their perches when the girls walked under the trees. Not at their casts, but at their fused bodies.
Casting was changing them on a level that animals could detect.
“I think I hear the truck,” Maryanne said suddenly. She turned her caster head toward the cave entrance.
“Yeah, I hear it,” Brooke said.
Seconds later, Alex heard the roar of the motor as the big Ford climbed as high as it could along the mountain road.
Yes! Water and a change of diaper coming right up.
God, this was what they’d come to. She was doing a mental arm pump about the prospect of a diaper change. By Bryce Walker.
Yes, their caster hands could touch flesh, but there was only so much manipulation they could do with their crude copper tools. A diaper change was beyond their capabilities. They’d need Bryce’s help with the spiders, too. The ones that had crawled inside their sleeping bags and died there.
Maryanne rose from the square of copper she’d been sitting cross-legged on for most of the night. With Vesta’s grimoire in hand, she crossed the cave to the tray of kyanite where she used the copper knife to gently raise some thin slices. She slid the small book beneath them, then took another moment to rearrange more kyanite on top.
Interesting. She hadn’t hesitated in hiding the book.
Smart girl. After last night’s shotgun blasts, Bryce Walker had some explaining to do.
He’d missed on purpose. That’s what Maryanne had said. Alex hoped she was right.
Ten minutes later, Bryce stood at the entrance of the cave. Though he had bundles in his arms, he looked around for a moment like he was wondering whether or not he should knock. Finally, he just stepped inside.
Bryce looked like hell.
Worse, he looked like hell warmed over.
On crack.
Like he’d been up most of the night doing nearly as grim a chore as Alex and Brooke had. Or up hunting Hellers. They couldn’t directly ask him questions, of course. Well, not verbally. But Alex felt pretty certain she could get her what-the-hell-dude point across, and she wouldn’t have to resort to writing it in the dirt with a stick to do it. Except Brooke beat her to it.
Brooke charged up to Bryce, miming holding a shotgun in her arms, and blasting away into the air.
The boy wasn’t slow; he got her meaning loud and clear.
“Just let me put these down first.”
Brooke crossed her arms, waiting impatiently, tapping a foot on nothing as she hovered in the air.
“I saved your asses last night,” Bryce said.
Maryanne made a rolling motion with her hands, over and under. Bryce took it for what it meant: go on.
“Melissa Kosnick called last evening,” he said. “She said she and her father and a few others were gathering in the square to watch for the Hellers. She wanted me to bring my shotgun. I told her I wasn’t interested. Then she said her father had several shotguns of his own, and all she really needed was the iron buckshot. She knew from Seth that we kept it.” He looked slightly sickened at the thought. “She said she’d be out to get some. What could I do? If I refused her, she’d be suspicious. So I backpedaled and said I’d go with them after all. That Grampy said we were never to share our ammunition—not when it came to Heller hunting. I’m a lousy liar. I’m not sure Melissa believed me, but it worked. That way—”
He stopped as Alex zoomed toward him and set a hand on his forearm. She could feel his body tightening.
It was her turn for the mime routine. She raised an imaginary gun in the air, aimed, then swung it away as she pretended to blam, blam away.
“Exactly!” Bryce said. “I missed on purpose.”
“Not by much,” Brooke grated.
Bryce couldn’t hear her. Alex chose to ignore her. Maryanne did too, apparently.
“Besides,” Bryce said. “I didn’t use the iron pellets. I used plain old buckshot. Even if I'd missed and hit you, it wouldn’t have hurt you.”
“Oh, thank God,” Maryanne whispered. She looked as though she’d wilt with relief. She flew to him with open arms.
And the look on Bryce’s face was pure shock. Barely restrained fear. Absolute repulsion. Maryanne stopped short and Bryce turned away. That was when he got his first real look at their bodies on the sleeping bags.
“Holy shit!” he said, his voice rising. “What happened to your faces? Your hands?”
Brooke zoomed between Bryce and their originals, spread her fingers and made a crawling motion in the air.
“Holy shit!” Bryce repeated.
It was the first time Alex had really paused to look at her face, and Maryanne’s and Brooke’s. She’d blocked the need to scratch while they’d cleared the spiders away. She’d been concentrating so hard on her work, so immersed in the chanting, it had been surprisingly easy to do. But now—
“Yuk!” Brooke was by her side. “I look like a blowfish.”
Alex couldn’t resist. “Wow, do you ever! Hope it isn’t permanent.”
“Alex!” Maryanne shook her head. “Brooke, she’s only teasing. The swelling will go down in a day.” Maryanne cast a glance at Bryce, and Alex saw how she wilted again. That bastard. “I’ll ask Bryce to bring some calamine lotion.”
“
You’re lucky we don’t have many poisonous spiders in New Brunswick,” Bryce said.
Many. Alex would have preferred it if he’d said none.
Bryce looked down at their originals. “Geez, Brooke. Let’s hope that isn’t permanent.”
“What the hell!” Brooke huffed.
Bryce crossed the small cave and picked up a new pillar candle from basket of them he’d brought earlier. Unbidden, he crouched down and lit it off the small wick of the old one just before it died out.
When he stood, Alex pointed to the bags of sustenance he’d brought, then to the sleeping bags. She didn’t try to mime ‘spiders’. He’d figure it out as soon as he unzipped them. Then there was that whole changing them thing. She could see he’d brought their own clothes back, washed, dried, and folded. Alex’s skinny-leg jeans were barely manageable when she could wriggle and shimmy herself into them. It was going to be pretty damn difficult for Bryce to get them onto her lax body. Especially over a diaper.
But first things first—he had to get them out of the sleeping bags.
“This should be interesting,” Brooke mused as he started unzipping Maryanne’s bag.
“Shiiiit!” Bryce stumbled backward.
Alex couldn’t contain a snicker, but to his credit, Bryce jumped back to it, unzipping the bag and throwing it wide open. His eyes widened as he took in the dozens and dozens—oh, God, hundreds, maybe—of dead spiders.
Maryanne made a mewling sound. “I wish he hadn’t seen that.”
“Yeah, another one of those woody-killing experiences, huh?” Alex said. “You may never get laid.”
Brooke snorted a laugh.
Maryanne did not.
Gently, Bryce removed each one of them from their sleeping bags and with their help, laid them out on the cave floor. Then he shook the sleeping bags outside the cave. The dead spiders dropped to the ground. The few that fell onto the cave floor as he worked, Maryanne picked up and tossed outside.
By the time he’d finished with everything and had tucked the three bodies again inside the sleeping bags, his face was grim. Pale. Without a word to any of them, he turned and walked out of the cave. Alex followed him to the cave entrance and watched him taking a wide berth around the pond as he stalked away.
“He’s going back to the truck,” Alex said, turning toward the others.
“He’ll be back,” Maryanne said. “He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. Right?”
Brooke hesitated. “Right,” she said. “Unless, um, something suddenly comes up.”
God, that sounded lame.
Maryanne was not consoled. “I’m going to lose him,” she said bleakly. “This is all too much for him.”
Alex felt for Maryanne. Alex had never had an even remotely serious boyfriend and she was pretty sure she never would. She just wasn’t into the whole boy-girl thing. But Maryanne did really care for Bryce. He had to care for her, too. He was going well above and beyond the normal boyfriend call of duty. Yet, she’d seen the way he’d been shocked and freaked out when Caster Maryanne had tried to hug him. He’d been repulsed. Maryanne had seen it too.
She would be so hurt if he didn’t return. Alex was just about to abandon her watch for him at the mouth of the cave when she heard him, then saw him, coming up the path. He grunted with the burden in his arms.
“He’s coming back, and he’s carrying something,” Alex said.
“What?” Maryanne and Brooke both shot to the entrance.
“That’s Vesta Walker’s trunk!” Maryanne said. “The one she kept her stones in.”
Bryce was sweating bullets as he lugged the trunk into the cave. He set it down with a solid thud close to the newly lit candle. He opened the lid then one by one began removing the trays of stones. He placed them around the candle.
“I know how much these mean to you, Maryanne,” he said. “I just thought they’d help somehow. You know, give you that woo-woo strength or whatever you get from them. I didn’t know which ones to bring, so I brought them all.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Maryanne knew enough not to zoom in for a hug this time, but that didn’t stop her from voicing her gratitude, even though Bryce couldn’t hear her words. Of course, maybe she wasn’t talking to Bryce. Or at least not entirely. Alex’s gaze sharpened on Maryanne, who was practically vibrating now. No doubt about it—she was talking to the stones, too. Connecting with them.
Bryce grinned, obviously picking up on Maryanne’s excitement. “You’re welcome."
He finished arranging the trays, then stood and reached into his pocket to pull out one last stone. This one hung on a length of leather cord.
Alex watched warily as he went to Maryanne’s original and placed it around her neck.
Chapter 12
Stone of a Hag
Maryanne
Bryce left right after hanging the stone around Maryanne’s neck, promising to be back when he could. He’d looked absolutely bushed, having been out with the hunters last night, and then coming to the cave at the crack of dawn.
Maryanne was incredibly tired herself. Heavily tired. Even sheltered from it inside the cave as she was, the sun was absolutely draining.
Soon she’d rest. Soon each of them would.
But right now, Maryanne’s cast hovered mere inches above her original. In both consciousnesses, she longed to reconnect. There was a lonesomeness between the two halves of herself that was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Her dark caster self absolutely ached to shoot back into her body. Considering how long she’d been cast out, it would no doubt be one heck of a blast back in, but she didn’t care.
Her original stared up wide-eyed into her empty-black caster face. Though her cast couldn’t cry, her original could, and she shed a few tears for both of them. Then Maryanne looked down at the hagstone that Bryce had given her. Inexplicably, she felt a surge of strength. More importantly, a dawning understanding.
Then a thought struck her—maybe Bryce had just loaned her the hagstone. Maybe he’d want it back afterward…
No! Her mind rejected the notion instantly. He’d definitely given the stone to her. Or he’d better have! She was not giving it back. Her heart clenched just thinking about it not being there on her chest. It was as if her heart was trying to jump right out and wrap itself around the hagstone before it could get away. At the same time, inexplicably, she felt the gentle press of the stone down between her breasts, as if the stone was reaching for her, too.
On that thought, Maryanne made a decision. If they ever got out of this mess—no, when they got out of this mess—she wasn’t going back to Burlington following graduation as planned. At least not to stay.
She’d gotten into Queen’s University, but she hadn’t yet accepted the school’s offer of enrollment. The paperwork lay back at Harvell House, still in the envelope tucked beside her laptop.
As far as her parents knew, she’d be going home to Ontario to study computer science. Do her undergrad studies at Queens, close to home, after which she’d likely move on to do her graduate studies elsewhere. A Masters for sure, maybe even a PhD. Then she’d go back and settle in the Toronto area to be close to the ’rents.
That, for a while at least, had been Maryanne’s plan. After she’d told her mother and father how Jason had died and made her peace with the tragedy, going home to Ontario had once more seemed like a logical plan for her life. Or at least a logical possibility. But now, with the hagstone lying over her chest, Maryanne had to admit that her heart wasn’t there anymore.
It hadn’t been for a long time.
“Look at these,” Brooke said. “Seriously, Maryanne, come and look.”
Maryanne floated over to Brooke and Alex. The two hovered near the newly lit pillar candle, moving around it slowly in a clockwise circle as they stared down at the trays of stones.
She’d seen them all before, of course, but the effect of the candlelight within the dim cave, plus being there with Brooke and Alex, was mesmerizing.
&
nbsp; Mystical.
Awesome.
She joined in the circle effortlessly. There was no elbowing or attempt to coordinate the joining. It was like she was riding a dreamy and gentle tide. And though tired, she felt their growing excitement and matched it with her own. The rock walls of the cave itself seemed to vibrate with their strength and be glad of it.
Vesta Walker’s crystals were more alive than ever.
While most of the stones were still snugged in their trays, a few had spilled as Bryce had unpacked them. For a guy who’d been star defenseman on his high school hockey team, he was surprisingly uncoordinated when it came to finer jobs. It looked like he’d laid down a trail of crystal around the boxes, a crude and crooked necklace. It was eye catching. Fascinating. It was as if the stones were crying out to Maryanne, ‘Look at me now!’ in every way that they could.
“It’s like an artist’s pallet,” Alex said. “Look at the blues, greens, yellows. Look, even reds! So many shades. There must be every color of the rainbow here.”
“I recognize hematite and rose quartz,” Brooke said. “And the Apache Tear, like in your ring, Maryanne.”
Maryanne was impressed. She herself was passionate about crystals and pretty good at distinguishing them, but not everyone could recognize the different stones in different forms. Hematite and rose quartz were easier to pick out than most, though. Last winter, Bryce had given her the blackest hematite she’d ever seen, but the ones in the trays now were more of a steel gray. Maryanne had always thought the gray ones were prettier, but she wouldn’t even think of saying that in front of the blacker stones.
And wow, wouldn’t Brooke have a field day if she’d said that out loud!
“You know the names for all of these?” Alex pointed to one. “What’s that purple one?”
“Sugalite,” Maryanne said without hesitation. “Some call it a love stone. I’d have to agree. It’s also good for aligning the chakras.”
“And people actually believe this stuff?” Alex scoffed. Or rather, tried to scoff. She really didn’t sound that disbelieving.