“Besides?” Sam asked.
“Well, you’ve got to understand the people around here,” Tiny said. “There’s a large group of Russian-Germans; folks whose families were Germans who first relocated to the Volga region of Russia under Catherine the Great and then emigrated here when things went to hell later on. They tend to be a close-knit community, and even all these years later, many of them believe in the things their ancestors believed in back in the Old World. That includes a lot of stuff most other people would consider fairy tales or superstition, including ghosts.”
“Huh.” Sam drank some more coffee. “I had no idea. Your family is part of this community?”
“You bet,” Tiny said. “My ancestors helped settle this area. Believe it or not, I’m considered a highly respected man around these parts.” He chuckled again, but then the grin on his face morphed into something more serious. “In fact, I might know of someone who can help you, if you really are being haunted.”
Sam was torn between hope and alarm. “Really? You mean some kind of exorcist or something? I don’t think I’m up to dealing with incense and chanting in Latin.”
“Not an exorcist,” Tiny said. “A witch.”
SIXTEEN
“A WITCH,” SAM said. “You want me to go see a witch about my ghost problem. I’m beginning to get what you mean about me being the saner one here.”
“What, you don’t believe in witches?” Tiny asked.
Sam shrugged. “Theoretically, sure I do. But I’ve never actually met one.”
Tiny laughed. “Yes, you have.”
Sam was beginning to wish he could hook his coffee up to an intravenous line; maybe this conversation would make more sense. “You’re not trying to tell me Mrs. Tiny dances naked under a full moon, are you? Because somehow she doesn’t seem like the type.”
“Lisa does plenty of dancing, but none of it naked, more’s the pity,” Tiny said with a twinkle in his eye. “No, the witch I’m talking about isn’t anyone local. You see, there’s some hereabouts, in that same community I was talking about, that think there’s something that doesn’t feel right about the fires this year. You can’t tell me you haven’t felt it too. Fires popping up in places they shouldn’t, burning in ways that don’t seem natural.”
“I figured that was just me being twitchy,” Sam admitted. “Or not knowing the patterns of the way things burn around here well enough.”
“Well, maybe we’re all being twitchy,” Tiny said. “But when the elders start saying something is really, really off, most of us pay attention. So they called in what you might say is specialized help, using the old ways.”
“Specialized help is a witch?” As a Hotshot, Sam was used to being considered specialized, but this was a little outside of his usual definition of the word.
“Not just any witch,” Tiny said. “If there is such a thing as ‘just any witch.’ We only know about the one type: Baba Yaga. So that’s who we called. And we must have done it right, because she came.”
Sam scratched his chin, feeling the rasp of stubble under his fingernails. If he was going to shave before he went into service, he was going to have to do it soon. But he was having a hard time tearing himself away from this bizarre but fascinating conversation.
“I think I remember hearing stories about her when I was a kid,” he said. “Wasn’t she an ugly crone who lived in an enchanted hut and flew through the sky in a cauldron, or something?”
“Mortar and pestle, actually,” Tiny said, as if they were talking about models of cars and not magical modes of transportation. “Although these days, the Baba Yagas have updated some, so they blend in better with the modern era. Or so I’m told. It’s more of a job title than one particular person. And I don’t know about the others, but the one we’ve got is anything but ugly.” He chuckled again.
Sam got the distinct feeling he was missing something.
“So has this witch found anything, um, abnormal about the fires?”
Tiny lifted one shoulder. “No idea. I’d guess not, since no one has said anything to me and the fires are still going on. Maybe there’s nothing to find after all. But she’s powerful and magic, so I’m guessing that if anyone can help you with your ghost problem, it’s her.”
Sam gazed down into the depths of his mug. “I’m not absolutely sure it is a ghost, Tiny. It might just be all in my head.” He didn’t dare look up for fear of seeing pity in the other man’s eyes.
“If it is, it is,” Tiny said calmly. “But it wouldn’t hurt to talk to the Baba Yaga about it, seeing as you already know her.”
“I do?” Sam sat up straight in amazement. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I’d remember meeting a wicked witch in the woods.”
“Oh, I think she’s only a little wicked,” Tiny said, grin widening. “And since she’s disguised as a wandering artist living in a caravan, I don’t expect it is all that obvious. On purpose, no doubt.”
Sam could feel his mouth drop open. Bella? That wasn’t possible, was it? Or was it? “Huh,” he said. “I suppose that would explain a few things.” Like improbably large cats who fetched mice. “But I’m not sure I’m buying it. You’re not pulling my leg, are you? I mean, Bella, a fairy-tale witch? It seems kind of far-fetched.”
“Right,” Tiny said. “Says the man who can’t sleep because he’s being haunted.”
“Oh. When you put it like that, maybe I should consider going to talk to her about it.”
“What could it hurt?” Tiny asked, grabbing one last donut and stuffing it in his mouth as he stood up.
That was the question, wasn’t it? If seeing a red-haired woman had started this all off in the first place, would going to see her again make it better . . . or worse?
* * *
THE FOREST STAYED calm for a couple of days, for which Sam was grateful. He dealt with a chatty family visiting from Japan who had never seen such tall trees before, another troop of Boy Scouts, and one very lost hiker. But no smokes and no fires.
Every morning, Sam decided to stay in the fire tower come evening, and every night he ended up eating dinner at the caravan anyway. It was as if his feet took him there of their own volition. But he didn’t mind, not really. He found Jazz amusing, Koshka both intimidating and adorable in his own odd way, and Bella . . . Sam didn’t know what he thought about Bella. But somehow watching her in the dimming summer sunlight made him feel better than he had in a long time. Besides, Jazz and Koshka were helping him with the owlet, which was growing stronger with every passing day, and he didn’t have to cook. Win-win.
Every evening he resolved to talk to Bella about the ghost, whose intermittent appearances were growing more and more unpleasant. Or ask her if she was really a witch. And every night he chickened out. Maybe he just didn’t want to hear the answer.
So for the most part, he tried not to notice that this was more time than he’d spent with other people in years. As long as he didn’t pay attention to what was happening, he didn’t have to decide whether it was okay or not. But the nightmarish visitations were beginning to fray his nerves and make him wonder if the answer was “not.”
* * *
JAZZ WOKE UP every morning sure that this would be the day she’d be on her way, and yet every night she went to sleep in the caravan anyway. Bella wasn’t like any other adult she’d ever met, which Bella said was because she’d been raised in the woods by a witch out of Russian fairy tales, but Jazz thought was most likely just because of Bella being Bella.
Bella was funny and kind, even though she made Jazz do her share of the chores around the caravan, and Jazz knew somehow that Koshka would never let anything bad happen to her. Jazz even liked it when Sam came and hung around in the evening, although she didn’t like most men as a rule.
She didn’t get that creepy vibe off of him, and besides, it was clear—to her, at least—that he had a serious thing for Bella, a
lthough he hardly even looked at the red-haired woman. Instead he told bad jokes and played rummy with Jazz. She had already won almost twenty bucks off him, and he didn’t even sulk about it, which made her like him more. At first his scars were kind of shocking, but after a while she didn’t even notice them anymore. He was just Sam.
Jazz had even convinced Bella to teach her a few basic bits of magic, like lighting a candle without a match and making a glass globe glow. Bella told her she had a natural talent, which made her feel like glowing herself. Nobody had ever said she had a talent for anything, much less something as way cool as magic. She thought she might stick around, for another day or two, just to check it out. But something, some itch at the back of her head honed by years living on a knife’s edge, told her that nothing this good could last. Something bad was coming and coming soon.
* * *
BELLA SPENT THE next couple of days searching the woods for any sign of the Riders or anything else out of the ordinary. She hadn’t smelled so much as a whiff of smoke or the tiniest scent of magic. It was a big forest, and she was only one woman. She was feeling both frustrated and nervous—not just because she would have to report back to the Queen soon empty-handed, but because she had a bad feeling that something was about to break. The moon would be full in another day, and besides, it was too quiet.
Bella felt guilty about how much she was enjoying her evenings with Sam and Jazz when she wasn’t accomplishing any of the things she was supposed to be doing. She had always thought of herself as the consummate loner, needing only her faithful dragon-cat for company. She knew these pleasant nights were just a temporary aberration and kept reminding herself not to get used to it.
She really should be spending her time doing something more useful. If only she could figure out what that might be. And she’d better come up with some answers fast. The Queen wasn’t going to be satisfied with, No, I haven’t found any signs of the Riders, but I’m getting much better at gin rummy. And I think I might be falling for a completely inappropriate guy. People had been turned into swans for far less. Something bad was coming; she could feel it in her bones. If she didn’t find any sign of the Riders soon, she vowed to tear the forest apart with her bare hands.
* * *
BRENNA WAS FRUSTRATED and annoyed; rarely a good thing for anyone around her. She was never the most patient witch even at the height of her power and influence, as that idiot child Beka would attest. She’d spent days going over and over the ancient book of instructions (if you could call anything so vague by that name) for creating the immortality potion and doing small experiments to try and figure out where she’d gone wrong.
She had no more answers than when she started, and it was beginning to piss her off. To make things worse, she was almost certain that Bella was doing something to put a stop to what magic she did manage to create, and that stubborn fire watcher still hadn’t gone away, despite her best efforts to drive him out.
It was time to do something big. The moon was going to be full that night. Time to go all out. Perhaps the smaller fires she’d set simply didn’t cause enough anguish to the forest. Today she would bring on the mother of all magical storms and see how it liked that.
Stupid trees and bushes. Stupid wild animals. Stupid young Baba Yagas. She was tired of being thwarted. She could feel her strength and power waning without the boost she used to get from the Water of Life and Death. Every day of her two hundred eighty-nine years of life weighed her down like ice on a glacier. The potion’s limited effects were only temporary and wore off faster every time she used it.
To muster the magic required for this kind of storm, even with all her skill and experience, she would drain all three Riders at once, a task she approached with the first hint of joy she’d felt in days. Brenna found the fear in their eyes to be almost addictive, their screams of pain a balm to her troubled soul. Well, she probably didn’t have a soul, but still, the screaming made her feel better.
She ran from cage to cage, as gleeful as a child let out of school early, stabbing and kicking and tormenting them as she pulled the blood from their wounds with a combination of magic and twisted science. None of them had the strength to resist, nor dared to do so for fear of what she might do to the others. The first time Alexei had tried to fight back despite his enchanted chains, she’d nearly sawn Mikhail’s arm off with her athame. He had healed that time—it was earlier then, before their powers to heal themselves had waned, but none of them had ever tried anything like that again.
As she poured more and more of their blood into the cauldron, even with the muted effects of their strength, it started to make a difference. Brenna could feel her vitality returning as she breathed in the magic, the energy running into her extremities like the pins and needles of returning circulation. It burned like acid, like the sun, like lava from a volcano of never-ending life.
“This,” Brenna whispered to the gods. “This is mine. I swear to you, I will never give in to weakness and age. No matter how many trees have to burn. No matter who has to bleed. This is mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.” Her laughter leapt to the roof of the cave and swirled down around her like ashes.
SEVENTEEN
THE STORM STARTED normally enough, with light rain and some intermittent rumbles of thunder. But as the day went on, it grew wilder and wilder until the entire fire tower shook with the force of the winds and the constant lightning. Sam could feel the panic building inside, making his stomach muscles quiver and his hands clench.
He tried to focus on doing his job, but the visibility was so bad, he wasn’t sure he could see a smoke if there was one. And there was almost certain to be one with all this lightning. There was rain, but not enough to put out a truly fierce fire. There was one coming—he could feel it in his bones—and he was helpless to do anything about it. All he could do was to wait and watch, and hope he caught it early.
Part of Sam wanted to run down to the caravan and warn Bella to be careful. Wanted to keep her safe against the possibility of harm, even though he knew she was smart and alert and didn’t need him for that. Of course, he couldn’t leave the tower anyway, even if there were some point to it. So he just watched and waited for the worst to happen, getting tenser and more tightly wound by the hour.
* * *
THE RAIN STARTED as a drizzle and kept getting worse, the intermittent thunder and wild winds making it impossible to go outside and search. Instead, Bella set Jazz to working on another magical task—this time moving a shiny copper penny from one side of the dining table to the other. It seemed simple, but in truth it was nearly impossible unless you had the knack for it.
Bella leaned back in a chair across from her and sketched the girl as she sat staring at the coin. It was as good an excuse as any to watch her closely, since the exercise was less about keeping Jazz entertained on a rainy day and more a matter of testing the scope of her natural ability. Not that Bella was going to tell her that.
There were always human beings with some talent for magic, little gifts that eased their lives or changed their luck, or more often than not, got them deeper into trouble. But very few had the aptitude that was required to become a Baba Yaga. Even with the boost in power that came from drinking the Water of Life and Death plus years of training from her mentor Baba, a girl had to be born with a certain potential and into the right (or wrong) set of circumstances.
For the first hour, Bella watched in silence, with only the scratching of her colored pens on paper and the sound of the storm outside as music to draw by. She waited for Jazz to get bored, to get frustrated, to bounce around in her usual fashion and give up. Instead, on Bella’s pad a picture grew of a teenage girl sitting in front of a table, her face set and determined, her posture straight but relaxed. The ragged hair and holey jeans seemed a strange contrast to the intensity in the girl’s eyes.
As the storm grew louder, Bella found it harder and harder to concentrate. At around noon, she said
quietly, “Do you want to take a break for lunch?”
Jazz just replied, “Nope,” without taking her eyes off the penny.
At one, Bella asked, “Do you remember the three basics of magical work?”
“Focus, intent, and belief,” Jazz said, still not looking up. “Got it.”
At two o’clock, Bella said, “If you’re tired, you don’t have to keep going.”
“I’m fine,” Jazz said. “Stop bothering me.”
“Okay.” Bella and Koshka exchanged glances, and Bella pointed at the cupboard where the tuna was. The dragon-cat just shook his shaggy head. Bella went back to sketching, the skritch, skritch, skritch of her pencils loud against the quiet of the room.
At around a quarter after three, a particularly violent clap of thunder made them all jump, rattling even the caravan with its magical protections, although Bella probably could have driven it across the floor of the ocean if she was insane enough to want to. Bella was about to say something to Koshka when she heard a whoop from across the table.
“I did it! Come look!” Jazz said, jumping up and down in her seat. “Look, I moved it!”
Bella thought maybe Jazz had simply jarred the table when the thunder had startled her, but when she checked, the girl was still sitting a couple of inches away, and the penny was smack dab in the middle of the circle Bella had drawn in chalk on the woven tablecloth.
“Impressive,” Bella said, raising an eyebrow. “Good job.”
Jazz grinned from ear to ear and held one hand up in the air. “High five!”
Bella just looked at her. “What?”
The teen snorted. “Man, you really were raised in the woods, weren’t you?” She stood up from the table and stretched muscles stiff from hours of sitting in the same position. “Holy crap, I’ve had to pee for, like, forever. I’ll be right back.” She headed off toward the tiny bathroom tucked into the back corner by the bed.
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