Ground

by Kirsten Weiss

  My sisters...

  Reality flooded in, and I remembered.

  I wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Nausea choked my throat, and I was on my hands and knees retching, my fingers digging into the soft earth. My back arched, painful. I rolled to my side, panting, my muscles limp.

  Disoriented, I flopped onto my back and stared up at the canopy of branches. The spring had brought me here, and I’d let it happen. It had tried to exert control and almost succeeded.

  I clenched my fist. I had beaten it.

  A murder of crows roosted in the branches above me. The branches swayed, as if the birds had just landed. The branches crackled, brown and dead. An old saying popped into my head on counting crows:

  One's bad,

  Two's luck,

  Three's health,

  Four's wealth,

  Five's sickness,

  Six is death.

  I sat up on my elbows and blinked. There were a lot more than six crows, so they weren’t a death omen. A desiccated branch plummeted to the ground and landed with a thud beside me.

  Scalp prickling, I picked it up, looked around. The branch was completely dead. All the plants surrounding the spring were withered. The redwood needles were yellow. How had I not noticed before?

  A crow croaked above me.

  The others joined in, cawing and making their odd clicking noises.

  I stumbled to my feet and braced my hand on the nearby redwood for balance. The reddish bark was cold. Frowning, I laid both palms against it. Then, still dizzy, I pressed my body to its trunk, extending my aura to feel its energy.

  There wasn't any.

  I stepped backwards and away, craning my neck and now seeing the pattern in the foliage. A ring of dead and brown plants encircled the spring. Fear spun inside me like a torturer’s wheel.

  “What the hell?”

  The crows above fell silent.

  Slowly, I gazed up and into the branches. The ebony birds watched, their beaks glistening.

  Trying not to make any noise, I backed up the first few earthen steps away from the spring. My heel caught on the hillside, and I stumbled, turned, ran, taking the steps two at a time.

  The crows burst from the redwoods. Dead leaves and twigs and needles rained down on me. I brushed them away. The back of my hand struck feathers, and there was an angry squawk.

  Terror thundered in my ears. I reached the top of the steps and pelted down the trail.

  Something sharp and solid hit the back of my head, and I cried out.

  A crow skimmed above me. And another. The crows zipped past. One snatched at my hair, and I swatted it away.

  A beak stabbed at my hand.

  I ran faster, letting gravity assist in the downhill, ignoring the stitch in my side whenever I reached an uphill slope.

  The birds swirled around me, striking, cawing, and I shrieked, flailing my arms. This was an Alfred Hitchcock nightmare, and I tried to blot the image of the eyeless corpse from The Birds. This wasn't happening. It wouldn't happen. I was a witch, dammit. I was one with nature, and—

  “Ow!”

  Another crow had dive-bombed me, striking the top of my head.

  I crested the final hill and pelted down the trail. Karin's shingled cottage — safety — lay on the other side of the low, wooden fence. I vaulted the stile into her garden. The lavender labyrinth lay between me and her rear door.

  I hurtled the first clump of lavender bushes. The crows soared high into the air, shrieking.

  I jumped the second row, the third, the fourth and glanced up.

  The crows circled, a swirling cauldron, flying higher above the labyrinth. I jumped the fifth row, the sixth, and stumbled to a halt in its center.

  The birds were a midnight wall of confetti, their wingbeats percussive. None penetrated the airspace above the labyrinth.

  Yet.

  Afraid to move, I stood in the center of the labyrinth. It was a sacred place, and I'd violated it’s magic by jumping its lavender “walls” rather than walking its single path to the center. But the crows weren’t entering.

  I gulped down painful breaths. How long would the labyrinth’s magic hold them at bay?

  A breeze kicked up, tossing dried grass and leaves and mingling with the beat of the crows’ wings. The sound grew to a roar, and I clapped my hands over my ears. Words formed in the beating of wings, the whistle of wind.

  Rose rabbit.

  The rear door to the cottage flew open, and Karin raced into the backyard, her auburn hair streaming behind her. “Go away!”

  The birds soared high into the air and vanished over the hill.

  Shocked, I stared at my sister.

  “Come inside.” She smoothed the front of her blue, v-neck sweater. Her chest heaved. She was breathing almost as hard as I was.

  Movements stiff, I clambered over the lavender bushes. At the entrance, I backed out. That last bit of ritual, at least, I could manage. “So the labyrinth works.” My voice trembled. I climbed the three wooden steps to her door.

  “What happened?” She shut the door behind us and locked it.

  I beelined for her kitchen, hoping there was something stronger than coffee inside. “I went to the fairy spring.”

  “Alone?” She slammed shut one of the blue cupboard doors. “What were you thinking?”

  I hadn’t been thinking. That scared me. I’d been fairy struck, in a daze, but I couldn’t admit that to her. She’d freak out. “I've been to that spring hundreds of times on my own. I thought the trees might tell me something about whatever had crawled out of it. And now I'm thinking I could use a drink.”

  Her lips flattened, and for a minute she didn’t speak. “I've got wine.” She moved to the white-tile counter and uncorked the half-empty bottle of zinfandel atop it.

  I leaned against the counter and tried to relax.

  “It's a bit early for drinking.” But she poured a goblet of the red wine and handed it to me.

  “It’s five o’clock somewhere.” I gulped it down. The wine was full bodied and peppery on my tongue.

  She frowned, disapproving. “It’s not even lunch time.”

  I clasped the goblet to my chest.

  “So,” Karin said. “The crows. You did magic to find the unseelie, and you promised you wouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t exactly promise.”

  She glared at me.

  “Look,” I said, “something new is happening. There's a blight. I noticed it in one of the redwoods over the fairy spring, and I cast a healing spell. I thought I’d succeeded. So I went down to the spring and worked through the roots to learn if the fair… unseelie had used the spring as a portal to our world.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I didn't see anything,” I said. “I felt.”

  “Felt what?”

  “Power.”

  She angled her head. “What kind of power?”

  How to describe it? I gazed into the wine glass, unable to meet her eyes. The power had been almost erotic. I didn't mind that so much, but the disdain I'd had about my sisters and Brayden shamed me. “Something dark and bigger than me. I couldn't control it. It had me.”

  “Had you?” She turned from me and grabbed a sponge from the sink. She wiped the counter with hard, jerky motions. “How did you break free?”

  Frustrated, I rubbed the back of my neck. “I'm not sure. I kept hearing this voice, reminding me of what was important.”

  “One of your spirit guides?”

  “No. This was new. Different. And it said...” I bit my bottom lip.

  “Said what?”

  “I thought I heard the words, rose rabbit.”

  She turned to me. Water dripped from her sponge onto the wood floor. “The rose rabbit again. What the hell is it? I've researched and researched, but I can't find a rose rabbit in any literature or anywhere else for that matter.”

  Morose, I studied my empty glass. “It would make a good name for a wine.”

  �
�But what is it? Is the rose rabbit the name of the unseelie? Or is it something else? Was it involved in the crows’ attack on you?”

  Since I didn’t have any answers, I poured another half glass of wine.

  “Forget the rabbit for now,” she said. “So you broke the link, and the crows attacked?”

  “They chased me all the way from the spring to the labyrinth.”

  “You must have provoked the attack somehow.”

  I stiffened. “Thanks a lot!”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Someone rang the doorbell. Karin left to answer it.

  I examined my hand. Blood trickled from a scratch on its back. Setting the glass down, I stepped to the sink and washed my hand with lemon soap and water.

  Karin returned with Lenore, her long, cream-colored duster flowing about her slim form.

  “What happened?” Lenore edged into the cramped kitchen.

  I didn't ask how she'd known something had happened. Lenore always knew. I explained.

  “Were you hurt?” Lenore leaned against the fridge and folded her arms.

  I probed my scalp. No blood stained my fingers. “Doesn't look that way.”

  “They chased you all the way from the spring?” Lenore asked. “That's nearly two miles, and there's lots of open spaces for them to attack. I'm surprised all you got were a few scratches.”

  “Weren’t they enough?” I grabbed my goblet and took another swig of the zinfandel. Bad enough someone had used my truck in a murder and an evil fairy was out to get us. Now, even the local fauna wanted me dead.

  Lenore shook her head. “I thought we were going to tackle the fair…”

  Karin shot her a look.

  “…unseelie problem together,” Lenore said, her blue-gray eyes accusing.

  Karin shrugged. “I said the same thing.”

  “Well,” I said, “I'm kind of stuck on the question of who stole my truck and killed Matt Zana. I had to do something.”

  “You could have asked us for help before running into the forest,” Lenore said.

  “I wasn’t planning…” I stopped myself. If they knew I’d been drawn to the spring, they’d really go nuts. “Have you done any better?”

  Lenore pinked. “Maybe.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Matt may have been having an affair with the new realtor,” she said, “Phoebe England.”

  I straightened off the counter. “Where did you hear that?”

  Her flush deepened. “The bookstore.”

  “Really?” Who’d of thought a bookstore could be a hub of gossip?

  “The owner, Mike, told me she and Matt were giggling over the Kama Sutra,” Lenore said. “She bought it, and they walked out together.”

  Not definitive, but definitely worth following up on. “Thanks, Lenore. That's good intel.”

  “Intel?” Karin grabbed the wine bottle and jammed the cork in, not noticing it was empty. “Maybe we shouldn't be sticking our noses in this at all. Last time—”

  “Last time you did all the work and nearly got killed,” I said sharply. “I'm not letting that happen again.”

  “Exactly,” Karin said. “I nearly got myself killed. Doesn't that tell you anything?”

  “This is my problem, my responsibility.” Coming from me, the words sounded false. But this mattered, and I was damned if I was going to let a killer push me around.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Frustrated, I stared at the ingredients lined up on my kitchen counter. Dried rose petals in a mortar. Epson salts in a box. Glittering blue bottles of essential oils and dried herbs.

  The attack at the fairy spring that morning had left me rattled. Worse, Brayden hadn't returned my call today. And my sisters and I hadn't come up with any better answers for what had happened at the spring. So I'd spent the afternoon online, searching for rose rabbit references. I don't know why I bothered. Karin was a master researcher, and if she said nothing was there, nothing was there.

  Nothing was there.

  I glanced out the kitchen window overlooking Main Street. The light from the street lamps cast beer-colored triangles across the road. Its pavement glittered black, damp from a sudden shower. A harvest moon – burnt orange and pendulous – rode low over the Sierra peaks. On the sidewalks, people stopped outside restaurants to chat.

  And Picatrix still hadn’t returned. I’d called the pound, but no black cat had been brought in. I was starting to worry, even if she wasn’t my cat.

  I lit a cluster of candles, turned off the lights, and centered myself, setting my intention.

  It was the hour of Venus, and the moon was in Taurus — an excellent time for the magic I planned. I returned to the kitchen and ground the rose petals.

  I was making bath bombs spelled with love and confidence to sell in Ground. It wasn't usual café fare, but the bath bombs made a pretty display in their wooden bowl. And lots of people bought my used coffee grounds scrub, so the bath bombs were a natural, complementary product.

  In my aunt’s favorite cast iron cauldron, I stirred herbs and dried roses and other, more mundane ingredients. I muttered blessings over each.

  Carefully, I added drops of lavender essential oil, and then water. The citric acid in the mix fizzed, and I winced, stirring fast. The fizz was a natural reaction to the liquid, but I didn't want to activate the citric acid too soon.

  When it looked right, I grabbed a fistful of the salt mixture and squeezed, opened my palm. Like damp sand, it molded to the shape of my clenched palm.

  The candles flickered.

  I added a pinch of crushed rose petals to the bottom of my metal forms — globes cut in half — and filled the rest of them with the mixture. I pressed two forms together, squeezing hard, and set the ball aside, filled another form.

  Something creaked downstairs.

  I stilled, my heart thumping.

  The clock ticked on my fireplace mantel.

  My grip on the metal form relaxed. The building was old and the walls were constantly settling, shifting. The sound was probably nothing.

  I scooped the salt mixture into the bottom of a form.

  Downstairs, something scraped.

  My head jerked up. That wasn’t the building settling.

  Setting the form down on the counter, I tiptoed from the kitchen. I was light as a feather, praying my footsteps were soundless. At the top of the staircase, I edged open the door.

  The stairwell was dark, its base in the coffee shop lost in inky blackness. I extended my senses and sensed... nothing.

  No one was there.

  Was I going crazy? I'd swear I heard someone in my coffee shop. Could an animal have somehow gotten inside? Maybe one of my employees had let Picatrix in earlier, and I hadn’t noticed?

  Right, just the cat.

  Barely breathing, my ears straining, I crept down the steps, cold beneath my bare feet.

  At the bottom, I paused, listening. I stood in a narrow passage between the Ground kitchen and the alleyway door. The candlelight upstairs had adjusted my vision to their dim light, but this was a different level of darkness.

  I widened my eyes, straining to see more. And then I realized how ridiculous this all was. If it was Picatrix, there was no reason not to just turn on the light.

  I reached for the switch.

  A dark shape rushed toward me. There was a metallic clank.

  I cried out, flinging my hands up in a warding gesture.

  Something pummeled into me, knocking me to the linoleum floor. The door slammed open, and frigid air rushed inside.

  I rolled, pressing myself against the wall as if I could make myself smaller, squeeze through a crack like a mouse and vanish. Chest heaving, I stared, open mouthed, at the open, metal door, swaying in the breeze.

  I stumbled to my feet and closed it, flipped the deadbolt. Panic filled my lungs. My magical sensing had failed me. What if someone else was in here with me?

  I raced up the steps to my apartment and slammed the door, locking
myself inside. Enough playing Nancy Drew.

  Hands shaking, I scrambled in my purse for my cell phone, couldn't find it. I turned my macramé bag upside down and dumped the contents onto the soft couch.

  No phone.

  I shook my purse. The phone plopped onto a cushion and bounced to the rug. Swearing, I grabbed it, called nine-one-one.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  “This is Jayce Bonheim. Someone broke into my coffee shop, Ground. It's at three-thirty-three Main Street.”

  “Are you there now?”

  “Yes. I'm in my apartment over the store.” Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  “Is the person still there, in your coffee shop?”

  “No,” I said, “he ran out. I think he was alone, but I'm not sure.”

  You must have provoked the attack. Karin’s words echoed in my head, mocking.

  “I've dispatched units to your location. They should be there in five minutes. Stay on the line with me.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I paced, glancing at the clock.

  Five minutes passed. I strode to the front window.

  A police car sped up Main Street, siren off, lights flashing. “There's a police car here,” I told the dispatcher and sagged against one of the white-brick walls. “I'll go downstairs and let them in.”

  Hanging up, I hurried down the steps, flipping on lights as I jogged through the narrow hallway, into the tiny kitchen. I brushed through the brown and grey-streaked ikat curtains and flipped the light switch.

  Pendant lights illuminated natural brick walls lined with paintings and wall hangings. Ferns twined with white twinkle lights hung above the long wooden counter. More white lights hung draped from the rafters. Someone banged on the red-painted front door, rattling the mistletoe and berry wreath. “Sheriff's department!”

  “It's me, Jayce! I called you!” I shouted and trotted to the red-paned door, unlocked it.

  Two grim-faced deputies stared down at me, and I relaxed. I knew these men. Good natured and not much older than me, they were regulars in Ground. Denton, the blond, had a baby face. I suspected they’d both grown stubbly beards to make them appear older and tougher.

  “What happened?” Officer Hernandez asked, his hair tousled and nearly black.

  Officer Denton walked through the coffee shop, his expression wary.