Spellcasting with a Chance of Spirits: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Romance Novel (Grimm Cove Book 3)

by Mandy M. Roth

  “None.” He focused on me.

  I sucked in a breath quickly. “You’re Bram’s brother?”

  “I am on one of his brothers, yes,” he said. “You saw another with me earlier. There are more. All of whom pass through here.”

  “Does Bram know you’re here?” I questioned.

  “No.”

  He took an abnormal interest in a portrait that was across from us. One that had extra space between it and the others that were sharing a wall with it. The man had strong features much like Bram and Barend.

  Barend’s face was even, but what I felt coming from him was waves of sadness and regret. The cords in his neck worked and he turned his head, offering me a pleasant—albeit fake—smile. “Show him he’s worth it.”

  “You’re talking about your brother, aren’t you?” I asked.

  He nodded curtly. “Yes.”

  “What is Bram worth?”

  Barend reached out, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. “Love.”

  “He’s spending time with Dana right now, bonding. With time, I know she’ll open her heart to him fully,” I said. “Dana is one of those people who need a bit before they come around and if that doesn’t work, I’ll double-dog dare her not to love her dad. She’ll do it just to spite me.”

  A smile that was a mix of polite yet pleased slid over his face. “Good. But I wasn’t referring to the love between a father and a daughter.”

  “Oh. Then what were you talking about?”

  He started to speak only to pause in reflection. “Tell him that he is not the one in need of forgiveness or absolution. We were wrong. Had we offered help in place of swords, so much pain and heartache could have been avoided.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I replied, emotions swelling in my chest as I watched Bram’s brother doing his best to restrain his. “If the others here need to speak to him, or want him to know anything, please let them know they’re welcome to come to me. I’ll pass on anything and everything—at any time.”

  He studied me for what felt like a very long time. “You are so very different from her.”

  “From whom?” I asked.

  “The one from whence you came,” he said matter-of-factly. “She was darkness, where you are light.”

  Burgess squeaked a few times from the end of the hall, pulling my attention to him as Barend’s words bounced around my head. “Wait. Do you mean my mother?”

  Barend looked up and tensed. “My time is short. They come. You have to—”

  With that, he was gone, taking whatever else he was going to say with him, along with the answer to my question. With how often spirits came and went, his abrupt departure didn’t worry me. Though I was curious as to what he’d been about to tell me, and if he had been talking about my mother.

  “It was nice to meet you, Barend,” I said to his portrait. “I’ll give Bram your message.”

  Heading back to the main area I’d left Bram and Dana in was an option, but the idea of interrupting their time together seemed wrong. Yes, I had a message from his brother, but it had kept for what I was guessing was some time. It could keep an hour or so longer. For now, I’d give Bram and Dana the time they needed to begin their healing process.

  Continuing on, I read more of the names under the portraits, following as Burgess led the way. There came a point where I had to select a left or a right. There was a sword and shield mounted on the wall toward the left. The shield had the head of a wolf depicted on it, and I found myself oddly drawn in that direction.

  Never one to look divine intervention in the face, I went left. Before long I was in another of the large rooms, or vaults, as Bram had called them. This one had a plaque mounted off to the side of the entrance announcing that it contained information on wolf-shifters.

  As I started to enter, a pull behind my belly button left me stepping back.

  Maybe the ether was also telling him my answers weren’t in there.

  Accepting Fate had something else in store for me, I followed after Burgess. I was partway down another of the halls when one of the portraits stuck out like a sore thumb among the sea of dark-haired Van Helsings. Whoever the man was, he had a head of white-blond hair and a rather interesting moustache that matched. His clothing looked to be from the Victorian era. The blue of his eyes was deep, almost unnaturally so.

  I approached the painting and leaned in to read the name. While there was a spot for a name, none resided. From the markings it looked as if someone had ripped off the nameplate.

  Strange.

  Upon closer inspection of the painting, it hit me that without the bushy monstrosity of a moustache the man was sporting, and with a hairstyle that was somewhat modern, he looked a lot like the man I’d seen jogging in front of the mansion.

  The Van Helsing estate sure had some interesting dead folks. It made me wonder if the woman I’d seen first at the Proctor House and then in front of the mansion was connected to the estate as well.

  Burgess called to me in his own special way and I laughed softly.

  “Coming!” I hurried in the direction he’d gone.

  The farther we went into the tunnels, the more vaults and portraits we passed and the more twists and turns we took. So far, none of the vaults felt like the one I needed to be in, so I’d not explored them.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been exploring the tunnels and various vaults but if I had to guess, I’d say it had been an hour or more. Hopefully, it was giving Dana much needed bonding time with her father.

  The dim overhead lighting continued to flicker as I walked down yet another corridor, making me wonder how much of the vault’s electrical system was a fire hazard. The backup forms of lighting weren’t exactly code-worthy either, but that was fine. I preferred candlelight to modern-day options. Apparently, Bram did as well if the built-in shelving unit off to the side near me was any indication.

  There was a box full of white hand-dipped candles and a number of options to carry them within, as well as various ways to light them. Since the overhead lighting continued to flicker, it seemed wise to take a backup source of light. I settled on a brass candleholder.

  I lit the candle and continued on my way. The extra source of light helped me to see a little better, but not enough to keep track of where Burgess was. He blended into the darkened sections of the corridor, becoming visible whenever he ran under a section of torch lighting.

  The current corridor we were in was aptly named the Hall of Swords. It certainly fit, since there was a wide array of swords fixed to the stone, lining both sides of the hallway. There were portraits spaced between the swords, each with nameplates like the others.

  Bram had a rather interesting decorating motif going on. I’d lost track of the numbers of mounted weapons and portraits I’d walked by and started using them as guide markers for finding my way around.

  I’d taken a left near the sword and shield that had a wolf head on it and then had walked past three—no four—crossbows before taking a right at some freaky battle helmet that was near a portrait of a man with a vicious scar on the right side of his face. The man had looked so much like Bram that I honestly thought for a second it was him.

  “Wait for me,” I said to Burgess, moving as quickly as I dared with a lit candle. While I was all for hot wax dripping on my skin as bedroom play, I wasn’t totally on board with wearing it while searching through underground vaults.

  He stopped, and I assumed it had been at my request.

  When the temperature around me began to drop at a rapid rate, I knew better. He was tapping into the Otherworld.

  Part of what Burgess did as a magikal familiar was help me straddle the divide between the realms of the living and the dead, not to mention the certain voids that existed. He helped amplify my gifts as well. There were a lot of other areas I needed assistance with. Like the demon attack that had happened in New York when I’d been conversing with Jack. Had Burgess been in my life, I might have been able to sense the demon coming ahead of t
ime. I might have also been able to figure out why it had come for Jack.

  He’d been evasive when I questioned him and then simply shut the topic down. The next time he’d left, he’d not returned.

  Sadness filled me once more as I thought about him. Maybe the Van Helsing vaults had something on spirits and what happened when they couldn’t be reached via normal means (fine, as normal as normal could get when it came to people seeing and hearing the dead).

  “What do you sense?” I asked, easing up alongside Burgess.

  His eyes narrowed as he looked ahead into the darkened recesses of the upcoming turnoff. His unease found its way to me and a case of the willies came over me, catching me off guard. I wasn’t one who got creeped out by much.

  The darkened area, on the surface, seemed no different from the others we’d encountered over the course of our expedition. The temperature continued to plummet to the point it was uncomfortable, especially considering I was dressed for summer in South Carolina.

  I lifted the candleholder more to get a better look down at Burgess. The overhead light was so faint that without the candle, I’m not sure I’d have seen much. “What is it? What’s wrong? Are you tired?”

  He made tiny clucking and clicking noises before outright shaking his head as if to say “no.”

  Bending, I put a hand to the ground, palm up. “Come on. I’ll carry you.”

  He didn’t budge.

  Tipping my head, I watched him, waiting for impressions as to what he was thinking and feeling.

  Oddly, none came.

  The more I concentrated, the more I noticed the absence of any kind of vibe. Nothing from Burgess or the ether. Just silence on more than one level.

  “That can’t be good,” I whispered, only to hear my voice echo back at me.

  Dread filled me as I realized it was just like in my dreams. Where everything around me emotionally was a void of nothingness, leaving me feeling cut off from the senses I’d come to rely on over the years. And just like my dreams as of late, an uneasy sensation crept over me, seeping through my skin, settling deep in my bones.

  The last time I’d felt something close in my waking hours had been when I was with Donald.

  The second his name popped into my head, the hair on the back of my neck began to rise.

  Burgess made more noises, sounding distressed.

  Scooping him up, I put him on my shoulder, wanting to keep him safe and sound. I met with no protest as he clung to one of my braids, pulling it loose in the process.

  Reaching up, I undid it and the other, putting the ties in the small pocket of my skirt. I used the distraction to center myself and still my nerves. It was entirely possible that I was letting my imagination run wild. That the stage had been set perfectly for me to be uneasy, from the dark, spooky underground tunnels, the flickering overhead lights, and the draft that seemed to come and go at random.

  I knew plenty of people who, under the same circumstances, would have been frightened. Some wouldn’t have even ventured off on their own, but I wasn’t like most people. My entire life had been spent straddling the line between the living and the dead. I embraced the weird and off-putting, often embodying it myself. For me to be this rattled, this anxious, something was amiss. That, or I’d been spending far too much time with Poppy and her fear of spirits and other unexplained phenomena was rubbing off on me.

  Then again, there could have been a perfectly logical explanation for why it was I suddenly couldn’t sense any spirits or mystically connect with anything from nature. Perhaps there was something about the stones the vault system was built with that was interfering with my natural-born abilities—my psychic antenna.

  “Now you’re just grasping.”

  My voice echoed once more but didn’t sound right. It sounded almost as if someone else was repeating me in a mocking tone.

  I’d experienced a lot in my life. So much so that very little rattled me. But the bizarre echo managed to do just that, causing me to stiffen.

  It would have been easy to succumb to fear and let my imagination run wild. If there was something dangerous lurking under the Van Helsing estate, Bram would have known, right? He wouldn’t have brought Dana and me down if there was a threat, would he? And he certainly wouldn’t have let us wander off on our own.

  Sighing, I realized that he hadn’t let me wander off so much as I simply had taken it upon myself to give him and Dana alone time. While I may have been having bizarre dreams about him, and felt an odd pull to him, that didn’t mean he had my best interests at heart. His first priority was his daughter—as it should be. I was just his daughter’s friend.

  Granted, it wouldn’t end well with him as far as Dana went if he let me be murdered by a threat under his estate. She wasn’t exactly a turn-the-cheek kind of gal.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I was worried for myself because self-preservation was instinctual or if I was more concerned that I’d be killed, and Dana would then turn on Bram, somehow blaming him. I didn’t want to know who would come out the victor if they were to come to blows. And I certainly did not want the two of them to lose the connection they’d only just started to form.

  That meant being murdered in the underground labyrinth wasn’t an option, nor was allowing my mind to run with wild ideas that would cause me to panic.

  People who panicked tended to do stupid things. Sometimes those actions put them directly in harm’s way instead of helping them out of it.

  With a slow, steady step forward, I did my best to set my mind at ease. “You’re not going to be slaughtered. This is all in your head. You’ve not gotten enough sleep lately and you’re overly tired. That’s why your sixth sense is off. There is nothing nefarious afoot. What you heard was just your voice bouncing off all the stone down here. There isn’t something sinister waiting to gobble you up. That was last month.”

  The overhead lights picked then to flicker, only this time they didn’t come back on. The candlelight barely pierced the darkness, leaving me standing in what felt like a black void.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure about the pep talk I’d given myself. Maybe the echo that had come back at me and the lack of sensing anything really did mean I was in danger.

  “Bubbles. Bubbles. Bubbles,” I whispered.

  Burgess wrapped himself tightly in my hair, near my ear, going uncharacteristically silent. I didn’t need to tap into his emotions to know he was afraid. It was pretty obvious.

  “It’s fine. We’re okay,” I said melodiously, wanting the words to manifest into truth. The hope was if I put it out there, the ether—which was still oddly silent—would listen and make it so.

  From the way Burgess tightened his grip on my hair, he wasn’t buying what I was selling. Sadly, neither was I, which was rare.

  The temperature dropped at a rate that was more than noticeable. I watched a puff of my breath in front of me and couldn’t stop the shiver that raced down my spine.

  “Marr-cee…”

  I gasped at the sound of the deep voice that pierced the darkness. At first, it scared the living daylights out of me, and I wasn’t exactly proud of that fact. After an initial sharp intake of breath, I realized the voice had been laced with an English accent.

  Hope sprung from me and I perked.

  “Jack?”

  Was he back, but having issues reaching me mystically? If so, what was playing interference?

  As much as the unknown factor in the scenario unnerved me, the need to see Jack once again and be sure he was all right and not spiritual demon fodder won out.

  Swallowing hard, I glanced upward as I made a soft plea to whatever spirit guide, god, or goddess might be listening. “Please be Jack. Please be Jack. Please be Jack.”

  “Marr-cee,” the voice said again, sounding as if it was closer than it had been before.

  “Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles,” I repeated. My go-to happy word did nothing to chase away the fear.

  “Marr-cee.”

  I stiffened and clo
sed my eyes tightly. “Okay. If that is you, Jack, you need to know you’re scaring me.”

  Laughter that was anything but jovial was the reply I received.

  My eyes snapped open and I tensed. “That is so not Jack.”

  Burgess yanked hard on my hair, causing me to yelp, before he scrambled down me and ran off in the direction we’d only just come. I’d have judged his hasty retreat if I wasn’t so busy being envious of how fast he could move. Unlike Dana, I didn’t make running a habit. In truth, I avoided it whenever possible.

  But Burgess’s plan to live to fight another day sounded like a great one. So much so that I seriously considered joining him—complete with the whole running thing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bram

  Bram turned the page in a journal that he and Dana had come across while looking for information on Marcy’s birth parents. There had been no reason for the journal to be in the main library section, and for the life of Bram, he couldn’t figure out how it had come to be there.

  But Dana had found it all the same and had taken a keen interest in it from the second she opened it.

  The only problem was, it wasn’t written in English.

  Bram had been left to translate it to his daughter. At first, he’d hesitated because of who the journal’s original owner had been—his mother. But seeing the excitement on Dana’s face at the find left him giving in and reading aloud to her. “This says she completed her first week of slayer training and was given high marks.”

  Wonder showed on Dana’s face as she eased her fingers over the old paper of the journal, open on the table between them. Reading from it had Bram and Dana sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. She didn’t seem to mind the closeness and Bram was thankful.

  It was almost as if his mother had found a way to reach beyond the grave to help him forge a bond with his daughter. Bram’s mother had long since passed but her words were as powerful today as they had been over a hundred years ago when she’d first penned them.

  Dana shook her head faintly. “Finding out your mother was a demon slayer is seriously blowing my mind. I was already having issues with the idea I’m some supposed demon hunter and that my father is alive.”