Ground

by Kirsten Weiss

  “Sure.” I walked to the entryway, my bare feet sinking into the blue rag rug.

  Three knocks, hard and purposeful.

  I looked through the peep hole. A burly, weather-beaten fireman in a blue uniform stood on the porch. Officer Hernandez stood beside him. The deputy carried my small safe beneath one muscular arm. He smoothed his black hair with his free hand.

  I yanked open the door and pressed my palms to my heart. “My safe!” Something else of mine had survived the fire.

  “Good morning,” the fireman said. “I'm Lieutenant Anderson. This is Deputy Hernandez. Are you Ms. Bonheim?”

  “Yes, I'm Jayce Bonheim. Come in.” Glancing at Hernandez, I stepped away from the door.

  They walked inside, Hernandez angling sideways to get the small safe through the entry.

  “Thanks for bringing my safe,” I said. “I thought I'd have to dig it from the rubble.”

  “I have some questions for you and didn't want to waste time,” the lieutenant said.

  “Where can I put this?” Hernandez asked. “It’s not exactly lightweight.”

  I motioned to the living room, painted pale blue. A blue-glass witch ball hung in the bay window.

  The deputy set the safe on the wood floor.

  Lieutenant Anderson drew a notepad from his breast pocket and studied me. “Where were you at the time the fire started?”

  “I guess I was at Antoine's bar,” I said. “But I don’t know when the fire started. The building looked okay when I parked behind it, but I didn’t go inside.”

  “So the fire just happened to start after you’d left?” the fireman asked. “Do you know how that might be possible?”

  I shook my head.

  “Run me through your night,” he said.

  “My sister and I had dinner at the Bell and Thistle.” I shifted my weight. “I came home early. Instead of going inside, I parked and walked to Antoine's for a drink.”

  “What time was this?” the lieutenant asked.

  I glanced at Hernandez, who'd remained silent. “Around nine?”

  “Did you see anyone loitering around your business?”

  “You think it was arson,” I said slowly. At least we were on the same page there.

  “The investigation is ongoing.” The fire lieutenant interrogated me — he was friendly, but there was no other word for it. What had I seen? How did I learn of the fire? Who had keys to the building?

  Lenore stopped short inside the living room’s wide entry. She'd dressed in white, wool slacks and a sand-colored sweater. “What's going on?”

  Hernandez smiled. “A few questions for Jayce. Why don't we leave them to it?”

  Hesitant, she looked to me.

  I nodded and hoped Lenore could handle entertaining Hernandez on her own. She spoke easily with Karin and me but tended to clam up around outsiders.

  “I've got coffee in the kitchen.” She pointed down the hall.

  “Perfect.” The deputy ambled after her.

  “Have you got any insurance?” the fire lieutenant asked, suspicion in his voice.

  And with a start, I realized I did have insurance. Our Aunt Ellen had insisted, and since she’d funded my café, I’d gone against my poorer judgement and bought a policy. Beads of sweat dampened the skin above my lip. Had I kept up the payments? “It's in my safe. The policy I mean.” Hands shaking, I knelt on the floor and turned the old-fashioned dial. Had the contents survived? I spun too far, and had to do the combination over. Finally, I cranked open the safe.

  My shoulders sagged. It really was fire proof. My papers were all there. I reached inside and grabbed a stack of file folders. They were warm. “The policy's in here somewhere.” I found the insurance folder. Opening it, I scanned the pages and started breathing again. The policy expired next month. I breathed a prayer of gratitude. I was covered.

  “Ms. Bonheim?” the fireman asked.

  “Oh. Here.” I handed the policy to him.

  He scanned it, making notes. “Thank you, Ms. Bonheim. Was there any unusual activity around your business prior to the fire?”

  “It's not just my business. That was my home.” Anguish tightened my throat. “I live in the apartment over Ground. There was a break-in at Ground last Sunday. The police know about it. My sister, Karin, was shot in the alley on Tuesday. She's still in the hospital. And there was a second attempted break-in two nights ago, though I didn't report it. They broke the glass out of the rear, apartment window, but I scared the person off.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why didn't you report it?”

  “I was getting tired of police interviews.” The lieutenant had seemed more surprised by the last break-in than by Karin getting shot. So he'd known the story already — Hernandez must have filled him in, if someone else hadn't.

  He asked more questions. Did I own or rent? Had the insurance policy changed recently? What was inside the building? (Oh, so much).

  Finally, he closed his notebook. “Thank you, Ms. Bonheim. If I have more questions, I'll be in touch.”

  I rescued Lenore from Hernandez in the kitchen, and we saw the men to the front door.

  We returned to the kitchen.

  Lenore leaned one hip against the counter. “They think it’s arson. I guess I'm not surprised.”

  “Hernandez told you?”

  Her cheeks pinked. “He wasn't supposed to, but we've known each other a long time. And I can read between the lines. Why else would a fire investigator be here?”

  I hunched over the butcher block island, gripping its edges. “Dammit!” I struggled to slow my breath. “We know who's really responsible.”

  “We do?”

  “Belle, the unseelie, or whatever she calls herself.” I paced. “My truck was parked in the alley. Whoever set that fire thought I was inside.”

  “It was a human who set the fire.”

  “Belle engineered it. She's wrecked the life of every woman in our family since God knows when.”

  “Jayce—”

  “No more. I'm done.” I stormed out the back door and into our aunt’s garden. Dark clouds massed above the hills. I stalked through a knot garden of low herbs, brown in the winter. Picatrix scuttled from a lavender bush and streaked away, rounding a corner of the house.

  Past the bird bath, the ground sloped upward, the property line ending in a line of oaks. Behind them, slightly up the hill and beyond the property boundary, stood a trio of pines.

  I stared sightlessly. Darla wasn’t the unlucky one. I was. No matter what I did, disaster found me, and now Ground was gone. It was only thanks to our aunt I had insurance. I couldn’t remember how much it covered, but I had something.

  A crow squawked at me, and I blinked, returning to reality.

  The bottom branches of the three pines were bare, and I frowned. The trees’ upper branches had faded to yellow. Dry needles lay thick on the ground beneath them.

  I stooped and ran my fingers through the prickly needles. A chill ran up my arm. The blight.

  I scanned the treeline. Other trees were dying as well — none on Ellen's property, but... Didn’t blights usually keep to one species of tree? This had hopped from redwood to pine, another sign that magic was at work.

  Red heat blazed in my mind, my rage mounting. The unseelie. It wasn't enough for her to burn me out of house and business, she had to blast the entire mountain with her curse. Something hard and ugly stirred inside my chest.

  The unseelie had woven a powerful curse — maybe more than one — but witches could curse as well.

  I picked up a handful of needles, their ends pricking my palm. All the better. The blight had to be the unseelie’s work, so the dead needles were connected to her. “You think there are no consequences?” I shouted.

  A breeze soughed in the pines.

  “Right back at you, Belle!” I imagined the unseelie, saw her stiffening to granite, unable to attack me or anyone else. I imagined the roots of my power sinking into the earth and branching into the sky, and I
felt the power flow through the roots, into me. It was time to fight back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Cold wind whipped my hair and tossed dirt into my eyes. The dying pines bent, branches snapping.

  I was done being a victim. It was time to return the favor in a language the unseelie understood. “I cur—”

  “Jayce?”

  I started and turned.

  Karin stood on our aunt's back porch. She leaned one hand on the wooden railing. Nick's arm coiled around her waist.

  I stared.

  “What are you doing?” Her hazel eyes flashed, and her hand gripped the rail a little too hard, the whites of her knuckles showing.

  The breeze died. I relaxed my hands, and the dry needles cascaded to the ground.

  “Karin! You're out of the hospital.” Stunned, I walked down the path to them.

  “Is everything all right?” Nick looked to Karin, his expression uncertain.

  My sister’s jaw clenched. “Yes.”

  Shame cascaded through my veins. “Karin, I didn't—”

  “Nick,” she said, “can we have a minute alone?”

  “If you're sure you're steady enough,” he said.

  She nodded, and he retreated inside our aunt’s house.

  “It's not what you think,” I said.

  “That you were casting a curse?” Wearily, she lowered herself to a deck chair missing its cushions. Lenore had packed them up and stored them inside for winter.

  “All right,” I said, “it was what it looked like. But not a curse against a person, against Belle.”

  She rubbed her face. “I worked dark magic once. I had all sorts of justifications for it too. But I knew it was wrong. And someone I cared about paid the price.”

  My legs folded abruptly. I sat beside her, the wooden chair creaking beneath our combined weight. I knew what she'd done. It hadn't been easy to forgive, but a part of me had understood. Karin never had forgiven herself.

  “I'm not sure it's the same,” I said in a low voice. “The unseelie keeps coming after us. It's time we fought fire with fire.”

  “Is it?”

  Unseeing, I stared at the hillside and the dying pines. A crow rose from behind a tuft of tall, brown grass and flapped away. “The blight is spreading.”

  “Curses don't belong in this world,” Karin said. “Their effects ripple outward like waves on a pond. We can't predict who they'll harm.”

  My cheeks burned, and I angled away from her on the chair. Karin was right. I'd been reckless. As usual, I'd been avoiding my real problems — Brayden's lack of belief and the murderer who’d tried to burn me like a witch.

  And I'd always been that way. I’d slam headfirst into something I didn’t want to face, so I'd spin off in another direction. A college test I hadn't studied for — skip it! A guy I liked but wasn’t ready to unveil myself to — find someone I didn't care about and go too far. The only part of my life where I'd taken the roll-up-your-sleeves, responsible path had been Ground. And now that was gone. My throat swelled, choking.

  “I'm sorry about Ground,” she said.

  I glanced at her, startled, and wondered again if Karin had picked up some of Lenore's talents. “Thanks.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I forced away my hurt. Ground had been my talisman, my guiding star. I'd always known what to do there, even when what needed doing was difficult.

  The building was gone, but I couldn’t give up on Ground yet. “I have insurance,” I said. “Ellen insisted. I need to call the agency and let them know what happened. And then there's the company that manages the property.” I spoke more rapidly. “The police have probably contacted them, but I need to ask about rebuilding. Once I know their plan and the details of the insurance, I can decide what to do. What are you doing out of the hospital?”

  “There was no reason to keep me there anymore.” She nudged my shoulder with her own. “Being a witch isn’t all bad. That miracle tea of yours and whatever Lenore’s been doing got me on my feet faster than the doctors can explain. The surgeon said he wants to do a paper on me. I think he was joking, but my fast recovery may have made him suspicious.”

  “Maybe you should have taken it easy on that tea,” I joked.

  “That would have been the smart thing,” she said. “But we can’t always do what’s smart, can we?” She smiled, and I knew she was talking about my attempted curse.

  The deck lightened, and I glanced up. A break appeared in the gloomy clouds. “I'll be okay.” I laid my hand on Karin's knee. “No more crazy curses.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I know what I need to do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The clouds pressed Saturday’s sun into a hard, white disk. Alone, I stood in the weak afternoon light and stared at the fractured shell that had once been my home and business. Heat from the fire had shattered the windows. Shards of glass lay in piles behind yellow police tape. The bricks were blackened, the exterior stairs gone.

  It was a miracle the firemen had kept the fire from spreading beyond my coffee shop and apartment. The buildings next door were singed, but otherwise unharmed. I had been the only loser.

  Something snapped inside me, the crack echoing in the empty alley, and I gasped. Last night my clothes, my talismans, my work had burned, vanished in smoke, floated to the sky. Now, my tiny, fearful self rose up to join them.

  I’d lost everything.

  A gust of chill wind tossed ashes into the air. They spiraled above me, and then descended like flutters of doves’ wings. They landed, feather-light on my upturned face, and stillness descended. Maybe like snowflakes, no two ashes are the same, but in that moment, I could see every wrinkle and jagged edge. And they were beautiful.

  I was okay.

  I had everything I needed and more — my sisters, a good bed in my aunt's house, a future. A peace I’d never felt before flooded my cells.

  I was still standing, and I’d survive.

  Ducking beneath the police tape, I walked inside the ruins. A blackened curve of wire stuck out from a pile of rubble. I reached for it, pulling the bits of broken wood and crumbled brick away.

  My aunt’s cauldron.

  I sat back on my heels. The cauldron had survived.

  I glanced up. The ceiling here seemed intact. How had the cauldron gotten from my apartment to the coffee shop? I picked it up, unheeding of the soot darkening my palms. Not everything had been destroyed.

  I searched the rubble and picked up a coffee mug, shockingly white and undamaged. I set it inside the cauldron.

  There, a butter knife.

  I moved into the seating area. One-handed, I lifted a table, weirdly unscathed, and tilted it upright. I had a table! I ran my hand along its top. How had it survived?

  Above me, the ceiling sagged, black and ragged, curtains of singed insulation hanging through gaps in the wood. Melted cables of twinkle lights, each bulb burst into a jagged flower, dangled alongside them. I climbed over the detritus, loose boards and unidentifiable bits of wood skidding beneath my feet.

  I stopped at the base of the blackened stairway leading to my apartment. The door above was closed. I wasn't supposed to even be in the coffee shop. Did I dare go upstairs and try my key?

  No, I didn’t need to risk my life for things. I carried the small items I’d gathered to my F-150, parked in the alley and laid them in the cab. Returning to Ground, I picked up the undamaged table and lugged it outside, hefted it into my truck bed.

  “So it's true,” a woman said.

  I whipped around.

  Melanie stared at the wrecked building. Her red hair was wild, and for a moment I saw her as a forest witch, crouching, primitive, leaves tangled in her hair. Then the image cleared, and it was only Melanie.

  Melanie, the woman with the most to gain by Matt and Phoebe's deaths. Melanie, the wronged wife. Melanie, smelling faintly of stale alcohol and cigarettes. And we were alone.

  I stepped away, my b
utt hitting the lowered tailgate. “What are you doing here?” My voice cracked, the moment of zen gone.

  “I heard about the fire and came to see for myself,” she said without tearing her gaze from the building. She rubbed the arms of her brown sweater, its loose hem curling over the top of her rumpled jeans. “Someone really hates you.”

  “Oh?” Is it you?

  She glanced at me and one corner of her mouth curled. “Don't worry. You're in good company.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone hates me too. I expect the cops will arrest me any day now. I'm only surprised it hasn't happened yet. But they will. I don't have an alibi for this either.” She motioned toward the ruin. “Amazing you weren't killed.”

  “I wasn't home.”

  She nodded. “The killer won't make that mistake again. But who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky, and I'll be arrested first. Then whoever bashed Matt’s head in won't need to kill you.”

  I edged around the side of the pickup. “Why do you think you'll be arrested?”

  “All signs point to me. It's why I'm here. You've been asking questions, poking around.” Her smile turned bitter. “All things I should have been doing, but I was too busy feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Your husband was murdered. You were in shock.”

  “I was wallowing in self-pity. And now I'm afraid it's too late. Did you learn anything?”

  My hands gripped the tailgate. “I heard that Matt enjoyed holding things over people.”

  “He did.” She nodded. “Maybe this is my punishment for not speaking up, stopping him. But I thought he was clever, and this town was full of hypocrites who deserved what they got.”

  “Who was he blackmailing?”

  “Lately? I don't know. He stopped confiding in me the way he used to. Now I know why.” Her voice hardened. “He had someone else.”

  “Phoebe.”

  “The police have it wrong though. He wasn't using Phoebe as a blind to keep me from knowing he’d bought into the wellhouse property.”

  “Oh?”

  “I knew. He never made much money. I supported him in everything. I paid rent for the storage space where he kept his equipment. I paid for his office. I paid for the food, his clothes, his debts, everything.”