Casters Series Box Set

by Norah Wilson

  The window was wide open. Smith had already put the bug screens in for the summer and only that thin mesh separated him and Mrs. Betts from the night. Screens in windows were a must in New Brunswick in the spring and summer, especially with the June bugs beating up against them, trying to get to the light. But those loud, annoying bugs didn’t buzz and bat at the screen tonight. They wouldn’t. Not with a caster around.

  It was completely quiet.

  “Did you hear from Alex’s mother today?” John Smith asked.

  The question startled Alex. Huh?

  “Yes, and Alex hasn’t called her either.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be too worried.”

  Mrs. Betts huffed out a breath. “With the head injury she sustained last year? Of course I’m worried. So are her parents. What if—”

  “She’s with the Saunders girl,” he said. “And that nice Hemlock girl.”

  “That’s another thing,” Betts said. “Skip Hemlock has called twice—once yesterday, then again today—saying it’s unlike his daughter not to answer her cell, or not respond to her text messages. I told him about the strange email I got from Maryanne saying she and her friends taken another of their impromptu shopping trips, but he didn’t sound too relieved.”

  “Patricia, you know those three,” he said. “This isn’t the first time they’ve done something crazy.”

  Alex snorted. Crazy? Like digging up a dead body from the basement? Yes, that probably qualified as crazy. Technically, though, Alex hadn’t even been there at the time; she’d been comatose in the hospital, clinging to life. But she’d been lumped in with Maryanne and Brooke and the whole body hunt/C.W. Stanley ugliness.

  “Yes.” Betts nodded. “They’re unpredictable to say the least, but a road trip this close to final exams? I really thought they had more common sense than that. The others girls are studying their butts off. And John, I checked their room. They left their make-up bags behind. Not such a big deal for Maryanne, but for Brooke to go a day without making herself up? Even Alex. You know how she loves that black eye make-up.”

  Smith let out a low whistle.

  Alex fisted her hands in frustration. Why hadn’t they thought of taking their make-up?

  “Did you call the police?” John asked.

  Betts scoffed. “No. They wouldn’t do anything. Not with Maryanne’s email, and the fact that this isn’t the first time they’ve taken off like this. But I…I’m afraid, John. I’ve got a bad feeling. And with everything going on around Mansbridge…”

  Her words trailed off in a meaningful way.

  “You mean everything going on with the Mansbridge Hellers,” Smith said. He wrapped his big hands around the cup.

  “I do. I’m scared of the Hellers. Then all those dead spiders the wind blew in this morning.” She shuddered. “That has a bad feel to it.”

  Alex tightened. This couldn’t be good.

  “That was strange,” Smith agreed. “Can’t argue with you there.”

  “Strange isn’t the word for it! They were all over town, John. On front steps and car windows. All over the roads, until the crows came out to feast. People are saying it was the Hellers themselves that sent them. That it was a warning. A curse.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing. Just wait and see. The government scientists will probably find it’s some new spider virus or something, like what’s killing the bees.”

  “You’re just trying to pacify me, my friend, and I love you all the more for it,” Betts said. “I’m just so scared the Hellers might hurt the girls. Steal their souls and—”

  “Those are just stories, Patricia.”

  “But they’re not just stories,” she protested. “The Hellers are real. It’s not just Kassidy Myers saying she saw them now. Not just that local girl, Melissa Kosnick. I…I saw one myself.”

  “When?”

  “The morning we found the window broken. I saw Melissa go around back with that iron poker. I was going to chase her off, but then I saw the Heller. I was terrified. I ran like hell back into the house. Covered my ears. Closed my eyes. I’d never been so scared!”

  Brooke! So it wasn’t just Melissa Kosnick who’d seen her. Patricia Betts had seen her too.

  “And what was Melissa doing there in the first place?” Betts asked.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” John Smith said, tired resignation in his voice.

  The two friends fell into a comfortable silence.

  A complete silence. And within it, Alex thought of her parents. Her mother would be frantic. Maybe she’d even be thinking that Alex had ‘fallen off the wagon’ and gone back to her old partying ways. God, it pained her to think that! What about her little sister, Eva? Surely they hadn’t told the kid that her big sister could potentially be missing? Eva was just starting to look up to her.

  Mentally, Alex kicked Brooke’s butt again.

  And how was she going to raise this with the girls? Oh, by the way, Maryanne, according to Betts, your parents are anxious that they haven’t heard from you. Mine too. Sorry, Brooke, your mom hasn’t checked on you. Maryanne would hurt like hell to think of her parents being worried, and Brooke would hurt like hell to know her mother wasn’t. But she had to tell. They’d made a pact. No more secrets.

  Finally, John Smith turned toward the window. “Quiet night, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes,” Betts said. “It is.”

  Still looking out the window, he said, “They’ve formed a Heller hunting party.”

  She was shocked. “What? Who?”

  Alex listened intently.

  “A few of the locals. Cal Kosnick’s one of the main ones.”

  “Cal Kosnick? Isn’t that Melissa’s father?”

  “Yes. He and his family are determined to get the Hellers. Rid Mansbridge of them once and for all. They think they know where they’re holed up.”

  Oh crap! Alex tightened her fists.

  “Oh my land! Where?”

  “The old church at the far end of Robinson Road. There’ve been rumors of Heller sightings there for decades, off and on.”

  Betts straightened. “That place? It’s so broken down, there’s nothing there. Broken boards, holes in the floor, full of rats. Most every window has been smashed out. The only reason the town hasn’t had it torn it down is because the historical society won’t let them. Besides, I heard some sort of cult took it over years ago.”

  “I heard that too,” Smith said. “But whoever owns it, that’s where Cal and his brother are looking to go tomorrow night.”

  “You know this?”

  He paused. “I was talking to Cal myself. He’s trying to round up a few more Heller hunters. He asked me to go with them.”

  “Are you?”

  He shrugged. “I feel I should.”

  “Things are getting so crazy around here.” Patricia Betts laid her head down on the table. “You see why I'm worried about the girls? I just hope those three are all right.”

  John Smith put a comforting hand on her back.

  Alex backed away from the window. She had to get back to the cave. She had to hurry and—

  She stopped cold at the sound of an approaching vehicle. Crap! The tree. She needed to take shelter in the big oak.

  She reached the safety of the branches just as a big pickup truck crawled past Harvell House. All four windows were down, front seat and crew cab, and the occupants were practically hanging out of the vehicle, scanning the Mansbridge sky. Trying to spot the Hellers. Trying to claim the night back in their brutal way. Then a spotlight strobed the night sky. Alex cursed. Some yahoo was sitting in the bed of the truck, operating a light.

  Alex felt sick. If she’d lingered at that window a moment longer…

  She shrank closer into the oak, moving easily through branches and trunk. But then her left hand hit something that it couldn’t move through.

  “What the hell?”

  She grabbed the item she’d bumped and pulled it from where it had been stuck on a branc
h.

  It was a glove. An old and worn, woman’s gardening glove. Lining the palms of it, inside and out, were pennies. Old pennies—copper ones—Alex knew because she could pick the glove up. She slid it on her hand, and immediately felt something else inside.

  Up in the cave on Hants High Mountain, her heart hammered in her chest.

  She retracted her hand far enough to grip the small object and pulled it out. It was a piece of folded paper! A freakin’ note! On each corner of the small page was glued another old penny. Whoever had left this here knew what they were doing. Without them, she never would have known there was anything inside the glove. Her hand would have passed through it. Alex was flabbergasted. Confused. Anxious.

  What if it was a trap?

  Cautiously, awkwardly, holding the paper between the glove and the tree, she unfolded the note in the moonlight that poked again through the clouds.

  This glove will help the Girls of Harvell House. And so will I.

  Chapter 18

  If the Glove Fits

  Brooke

  Brooke carefully placed the last piece of the orangish crystal down. That was the extent of the restraint she had left. As soon as she was done, she flung away the piece of copper mesh she’d been using.

  Alex had been gone what—two, maybe three hours now! What could be keeping her? More to the point, who could be keeping her?

  “I’m going after her,” she announced.

  Maryanne looked up from Vesta’s grimoire. “Give it a few more minutes.”

  Maryanne had been so absorbed in that book, it was no wonder she didn’t feel as anxious as Brooke did. Brooke had sorted through the angelite and started on some golden healer quartz, but the more time passed, the less she could concentrate on the tiny pieces.

  “A few more minutes? That’s what you said—”

  “Yeah, I know, just a few minutes ago. But Brooke, we’ve both checked her body. Except for that one time when her heart rate shot up, there’s been nothing. No indication of distress at all. She’s probably on her way back right now. Don’t worry.”

  Brooke huffed her exasperation. She went back to hover over Alex’s body. It looked exceptionally pale in the flickering candlelight. Exceptionally helpless. Again, she felt extraordinarily guilty.

  “Dammit, Alex!” Alex’s original couldn’t hear her caster curse, but the cursing felt good. “Give me a sign you’re okay.”

  “How’s this for a sign?”

  Brooke turned to see Alex at the cave’s entrance, her black hand raised in an unmistakable one-fingered salute. Yeah, that would be an Alex sign. Brooke fought back a grin even though she knew Alex couldn’t see it.

  Maryanne soared toward Alex. Brooke followed.

  “Where have you been?” Maryanne snapped. “We’ve been so worried.”

  Brooke did a double take. We’ve been worried?

  “You were supposed to check out the broken glass and come right back!” Maryanne crossed her arms and stomped a dramatic foot mid air.

  “I got sidetracked,” Alex said.

  “With what?” Brooke’s eyes narrowed. Alex was holding one of her hands behind her back.

  “Eavesdropping on Patricia Betts and John Smith.”

  “Did you find out anything?” Maryanne asked.

  “Plenty.” Alex moved further inside the cave and Brooke and Maryanne followed. “But you’re not going to believe what I actually found.”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to be dramatic, and Brooke waited as she paused for full effect. She stood straighter, making it all the more evident that she was hiding something behind her back.

  Whatever it was, it was big. Brooke knew it. She could sense the smile on the other caster’s face, caught the giddy tightening of her shoulders. Their faces were dark blanks even to each other. Well, except when they did the primal scream thing, in which case gray lines appeared, delineating every last bit of their soul-deep pain. But Brooke was getting very good at reading caster bodies, the most subtle tensions, rushes of excitement, the nearly indiscernible rise of elation off their dark forms.

  It wasn’t a feeling or a vibe like Maryanne got about things—and got more and more as she learned to trust it. Nor was it like the writers’ way of reading people that Mrs. Fredericks had told Alex she had, and that Alex was really starting to embrace.

  With Brooke, it was a watching-the-world thing. She knew it was. She watched the world closely to see the subtle changes, to see who was going to screw her over the moment she let her guard down. Like Seth Walker when he’d rejected her. Like her mother, when she chose her new husband, Herr Kommandant, over her only daughter. Like when she was seven, just before her father left. But now it wasn’t restricted only to those defensive situations.

  Brooke could often read what others were thinking, what they were going to do, just from a quick look or by the different pitch to their voice. There was that time when Ty Piper stopped having feelings for Maryanne and got interested in that tree-hugging girl in their math class. Brooke had seen it. Known it. Ty’s knees had locked a little tighter whenever he walked by Brynna Gravelle’s desk. When Mr. McKenzie called on Brynna, he sat up a little straighter, thinking that prick of a teacher was going to give her a hard time. Or like when Dani Mann sat down with them at the food court looking for gossip. It wasn’t just the titillating, vapid stuff Dani was set on finding out. There was an intelligent flare in the girl’s eyes when they touched on certain topics. And hello? Brooke had always been creeped out by C.W. Stanley. If only she’d listened more to that feeling…

  Yes, Alex was hiding something important. It wasn’t just the excitement in her voice as she’d answered Maryanne’s question that tipped Brooke off. It was more in the way she unfolded her arms, in the lines of her body.

  Alex pulled her hand out from behind her back. A few gleams of tarnished metal caught the candlelight. She was wearing a penny-covered glove.

  Wearing a glove. On her freaking caster hand!

  Maryanne squealed, her annoyance at Alex’s tardiness forgotten. “Are you kidding me?” Alex, this is awesome! How did you do it?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I found it in the branches of the oak.”

  “Our oak?” Maryanne asked. “The one by the river?”

  “Yes!”

  Brooke felt an iciness—both on her original and her cast—that had nothing to do with the night. “Who could have left it there?” she whispered.

  Alex shook her head. “I don’t know. But whoever it was, they also left a note.” She pulled her hand from the glove, and a folded piece of paper along with it. Alex handed the glove to Brooke as she unfolded the slip of paper.

  How was she doing that? Then Brooke saw it: pennies glued to each corner of the note.

  Brooke glanced down at the worn gardening glove in her dark hands. This was incredible. Simple, yet ingenious!

  She transferred her attention back to Alex in time to see a penny drop from the bottom-left corner of the paper and clatter on the cave floor. Alex barely glanced down at it before she read the note. She wasn’t really reading it, of course. Brooke could tell she already had it memorized.

  “This glove will help, Girls of Harvell House. And so will I.”

  “Oh shit—girls of Harvell House,” Brooke breathed. “Someone knows it’s us. Knows that the three of us are the casters…Hellers.”

  “Not necessarily,” Maryanne countered quickly. “Maybe they just know the Hellers are coming from the house. Coming through that window—”

  “And now that the window is gone?” Alex tensed.

  “They know we’re in trouble.” Brooke felt sick. Her original started to sweat. “This is so not good! Not at all. We’re vulnerable, now more so than ever.”

  “Or are we?” There was something in the tone of Maryanne’s voice that caused Brooke and Alex both to turn.

  Maryanne began to chant: “One who watches over and one who watches out. One who knows the stories is one who has the doubt.” She paused. “
Maybe whoever left this glove…maybe they’ve watched over us, watched out. And because they have, they doubt that we’re evil and they want to help. I mean, this glove is going to be pretty useful.” She took it from Brooke and slid it on her black hand. Maryanne did a very un-funny—okay, it was a little funny—jazz hand movement.

  “But what if they’re not trying to help us?” Brooke asked. “What if they’re trying to lure us in, make us feel safe in order to trap us? Hurt us?”

  “Screw us over?” Alex offered. “Isn’t that what you mean?”

  That punch to the gut. That was the story of her life.

  Brooke nodded.

  Maryanne soared over to the golden healer stones. She easily picked up one of the stones by squeezing it between a penny covered forefinger and a penny covered thumb. She turned back to the others, victorious, with the stone held aloft. “Check it out! This is going to make the work a lot easier.”

  “You think we should use it?” Brooke asked, still dubious. “Even though we don’t know where it came from?”

  “Absolutely,” Maryanne said. “It’s too valuable. What else can we do until we know more?”

  Outside the wind blew, not in a howl but in a low whistle, and Brooke found herself drawn mentally out to it, beyond the walls of the cave. Someone out there knew more. Maybe simply from their absence from Harvell house, they’d identified the three of them as being the ones who cast out…

  Maryanne, who’d gone back to the stones, chuckled as she collected a small pile of golden healer stones and pushed it beside the angelite. “Alex, you’ve had quite the night.”

  “And the night is far from over,” Alex murmured.

  Something about Alex’s tone had Brooke looking closer, but Maryanne obviously didn’t detect anything.

  “Right,” Maryanne said. “Still hours left till morning. We’ll sort the stones. Time’s running out. Every day it’s getting warmer and—”

  “I have something else to tell you,” Alex interrupted. “Well, two somethings.”