Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch

by Heather Hamilton-Senter

  I followed him. “Except for who?”

  He shook his head again. “It doesn’t matter. Someone who is lost and gone.”

  I was hungry for answers. “Who are your kin then?”

  Goodfellow sat down on one of the white leather couches in the center of the room. “I am the Green Man and can walk any Path, but there are lesser beings who can also find them. I call them my kin and the earth magicians call them Guides. They are creatures of the forest—wood sprites, dryads, tree fairies—a network created to transport the earth magicians through the world. To their credit, the magicians are usually fair in their payment, but some have the power to force the Guides if they chose to.”

  “But not you.”

  “No. I am old, Miss Lynne, very old. In a way that I can’t explain to you, I’m a part of those first forests. I feel them still.”

  I glanced back at the elevator door at the end of the hall. “I didn’t exactly come here through a leafy trail.”

  Goodfellow laughed. “I can make a Path look like anything I want, even an elevator in an abandoned office building.”

  Sitting down on the matching couch across from Goodfellow, I noticed the long wooden box and thick folder on the glass table between us. “I really appreciate your help yesterday, but why did you want to see me?” As an answer, he handed me the folder and I opened it and dumped out the contents on the table. There were several bank books, bank cards, and a document which turned out to be a birth certificate with my name on it.

  “It’s a fake, but a good one. Viviane had several made up over the years when she needed to. She destroyed them after she used them.”

  “Why?” I asked in surprise.

  “Names have power, even names on paper. It wasn’t my place to ask what she was protecting you from. Perhaps she was just being cautious.”

  I took a closer look at the paper in my hand. It looked authentic to me. “You did this?”

  The Green Man’s laughter shook the windows. “I’ve kept up with the times, but not to the point of becoming a master counterfeiter. There’s a banshee in Dublin who’s the best in the business. Banshees know when someone is about to die. This one started out in identity theft and then diversified. The money is real though. I made all the deposits myself. You have ample funds in several institutions and currencies around the world.”

  I flipped open one of the bank books and gasped. “Where did all this come from?”

  Goodfellow shrugged. “As a goddess, Viviane had received tribute from her worshippers, but most of it was gone by the time she asked me to take care of her affairs. The Seer of New York gave me a heads up back in the Seventies that a certain company with, shall we say, a very common fruit as its logo would be worth following.” He winked at me. “Even a god is well served by a few good investments. I didn’t do too badly myself.”

  “Why didn’t she give this to me herself? How could she even know I would find your card and contact you?”

  Goodfellow’s smile slipped away. “She didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Viviane was explicit in her instructions. I was to deliver these items to you and provide any assistance you might need, but only if you contacted me. A test of fate, she called it. All she said was that events had not transpired as she had once planned and she would not force their shape going forward. She had left things in place for you, but that greater gods than she would need to guide you to them, or away as fate decreed. I didn’t understand it, but then, you know how she was.” He seemed embarrassed, but I didn’t know if was for himself or for Mom. “Miss Lynne, can I get you something to drink? I was just making some tea when you came in.”

  “No, I’m fine. What’s in the box?” I asked bluntly. He was trying to distract me from the last item on the table.

  “Smart girl,” the Green Man murmured. Clasping his hands and leaning forward, he considered me intently. “I’ll be straight with you. When Viviane told me what she wanted me to retrieve and keep for you, I was shocked. I tried to argue with her, but she wouldn’t listen. ‘Only if Rhiannon comes to you,’ she said, ‘only if she asks.’ Since I figured it was highly unlikely, I agreed. I went to the location Viviane gave me and recovered this box, but I don’t have to give it to you unless you ask. And believe me, Miss Lynne, you don’t want to ask. Some things are better left hidden.”

  I wanted the answers Mom offered me in death that she’d denied me in life. “I’m sorry. You’ve been good to me, but I have to ask. Will you please give me what my mother left me?’

  Goodfellow sighed as he slid the long box across the table toward me. It scraped across the glass; whatever was in it was heavy. Flipping open the silver clasp on the side, I lifted the hinged lid to reveal a long shaft of distorted grey and yellow metal. Something had been melted and left to harden into an ugly mess, but I couldn’t tell what. Goodfellow made a soft noise and I looked up to see tears running down his cheek and into his beard.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Excalibur,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I spent most of the night too excited to sleep. The Excalibur—sword of legend and magic—was wrapped in a t-shirt in my underwear drawer.

  How cool is that?

  I was up and ready for school too early, but there was less chance of running into Peter’s parents if I left at an unexpected time. I parked in the half empty lot and was dropping my books off in my locker when a dry voice said, “How wonderful it is to see a student arrive on time these days.”

  My heart jumped and pink sparkles danced across my vision. An older woman with short grey hair stood in the classroom doorway across from my locker.

  “Oh, hi, Mrs . . .” The teacher seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think of her name.

  The woman cocked her head at me like a bird. “Come.” She motioned for me to enter the classroom. “I would like to discuss something with you.”

  “OK.” I followed her and sat down at a desk in the front row. She remained standing.

  “I am Cailleach,” she introduced herself. “I am taking over Senior English for the rest of the term.” I fidgeted in my seat as she fell silent and stared at me with round, strangely opaque eyes. There was a strange flapping sound. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the impression of white wings beating against one of the windows, but when I turned to look, there was nothing there.

  “Calm yourself, Miss Lynne,” she murmured. “There is much we need to discuss.”

  The woman tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and I realized I did know her. “You were there!” I said in surprise.

  The woman frowned, but before either of us could speak, Miko poked her head in through the open doorway.

  “I thought I saw you come in here. We need to . . .” Miko faltered. Rushing forward and grabbing me by the wrist, she pulled me out of the classroom. “I need Rhi right away!”

  “Sorry,” I muttered as I passed the woman. “I need to go.”

  Ms. Cailleach never spoke a word, but I imagined I felt her watching us all the way down the hall until we turned a corner. We were inside the nearest bathroom before Miko slowed down.

  “What were you doing with her?” she demanded.

  I pulled away and rubbed at my wrist—the fairy’s black-tipped nails had left crescent-shaped marks on my skin. “She said her name was Ms. Cailleach. She’s the new English teacher.”

  “No, no, no!” Miko had her hair pulled into a high ponytail and it was shaking back and forth furiously. “Not Ms. Cailleach, just Cailleach.” She stressed the pronunciation of the name—kaliex. “That was the Ancient Owl, the White Woman, the Great Hag!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Miko looked like she wanted to strangle me. “Don’t you know anything? Think of the eternal archetypes: Maiden, Mother, Crone. Every culture in the world fears the Crone.”

  I leaned back against the side of one of the stalls. “A Crone or the Crone?”

  More
exaggerated shrugging and eye rolling. “How should I know? The Celts called her Cailleach, but she has other names in other places. Maybe there’s one. Maybe there’s a whole bunch. Who cares? She’s Beira, the Queen of Winter, and she rises at Samhain to bring death to the world!”

  Great.

  I went to the sink and splashed some water on my face. “I’ve seen her before.”

  “What?”

  I watched Miko through the mirror. “She came to the hospital the day my mother died. I didn’t recognize her at first because her hair was in a long braid that she had wrapped around her waist.”

  Miko was pacing now. “Cailleach cut her hair? That has to mean something.”

  I grabbed some paper towel and patted my face dry. “Like what?”

  She stopped and frowned. “I don’t know. Cutting hair can be a way to show grief or begin a new phase of life. Sometimes hair holds power—think of Samson or Rapunzel.” Miko snorted. “I finally caught that cartoon on DVD, by the way. All the parents who took their kiddies to see it would wet themselves if they knew Rapunzel was actually a serial killer who used her hair to open locks from the inside.”

  I scrunched the paper towel into a ball. “Please don’t ever, ever tell me anything that horrible ever again.” I shuddered. “So Cailleach is going to kill us all in our sleep? Or should I be more worried about Cinderella showing up to take us out with Uzis?”

  “You really don’t know anything, do you.” It wasn’t a question. “Cailleach isn’t evil. She just is the same way winter is—and just as dangerous. Let the witch do her thing and don’t get in her way.” Miko smirked at me. “And I don’t know about Cinderella, but Snow White was a baobhan sith who used her fingernails to slit her victim’s throats.”

  She dodged the paper ball I threw at her face.

  I opened the door a crack and peeked out, but the hallway was empty. “C’mon.”

  Miko followed me into the hall. “Taliesin did say that once word started to spread about you, others would come.”

  “But how would she even know?”

  “She knew Viviane. And most high-level Greylanders have their ways. Are there owls in the barns at your place?”

  I thought of the beating of wings at the window. “Yeah.”

  “Owls are sacred to Cailleach. Maybe that’s how she found out.”

  Owl spies—it gets better and better.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Miko had somehow scored Taliesin’s Jag so we left my car in the lot. Miko drove too fast and had a tendency to grind through the gears. I hoped she was casting some sort of glamour over us because she would get her license taken away if we passed a cop.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  She grinned. “I think we need to eat breakfast and then drop a whole lot of money on crap we’ll never wear.”

  I grinned back. “Agreed.”

  A few minutes later, we were sitting in the only restaurant at the Center open for breakfast. The rest of the complex was empty except for senior citizens doing a walking class and a few women with babies in strollers waiting for the stores to open. I’d ordered waffles and Miko was devouring an obscene mound of bacon, sausage, and egg.

  Maybe Peter’s right about the superhero metabolism.

  “So this Cailleach, have you ever met her before?”

  Miko shook her head and mumbled something around a mouthful of sausage.

  I laughed. “What?’

  She gulped down some juice and swallowed. “Sorry. I told you magic makes you hungry.”

  “You were doing magic?”

  She arched her eyebrow at me. “Interesting that you couldn’t tell. To use sci-fi parlance, I was cloaking us from the moment we left Cailleach until we sat down here. We were a couple of football jocks at the school and then two senior citizens doing the speed limit in a Jetta.”

  It felt like ants were walking across my back. “So Cailleach is big time dangerous as opposed to run of the mill, every day dangerous then?”

  Miko snorted. “Who isn’t in our world? The question is whether she’s dangerous to you. She came to see Viviane when she died, so that’s a plus. Maybe she cut her hair in mourning. Your mother was a real big deal once upon a time.”

  “I know what Taliesin said but what could she want with me?”

  “Are you kidding? The Lady of the Lake called you her child. You have a mysterious, unknown power. The great Taliesin is frightened of you. Even Morgan-le-friggin-fay accepts you! Everyone is going to try to use you to their advantage.”

  I dropped my fork as the waffles heaved in my stomach.

  “Whoa,” Miko said in alarm, “are you OK?”

  I nodded but didn’t trust myself to speak.

  Miko shook her head. “Sorry, but Viviane was cruel to not tell you about any of this. She must have known how dangerous it would be for you once she was gone.”

  I didn’t answer until I was sure the waffles weren’t going to make a reappearance. “A test of fate,” I murmured.

  “Huh?”

  “Something Goodfellow said to me. Maybe Mom wasn’t sure what to do and she decided to leave it to fate.”

  Miko gnawed on a piece of bacon. “Maybe.” Shaking her head and dropping the bacon, the fairy pushed her plate away. “Let’s talk about something else. Me first. Is Peter as much of a boy scout as he seems?”

  “More.”

  “Too bad. Though I suppose it would be a step up from my last two boyfriends.”

  “Why? What were they like?”

  Miko held up two black-nailed fingers as she counted. “Boyfriend number one—psychopath. Boyfriend number two—vampire.”

  Vampire and psychopath aren’t mutually inclusive?

  “Vampires are real?”

  “Unfortunately. There are a lot of different blood-loving creatures—like our friend Snow White—but true vampires are rare and most of them keep a low profile. All those books and movies mean even the stupidest human knows how to pick one out and kill it.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “So what are they like?”

  Miko rolled her eyes. “Forget all the crap in all the teen paranormal romance books you’ve ever read. I wish they would. Vamps have bought into their own press in the last few years; they all think they’re tortured and misunderstood. The truth is they just like to drink blood. They don’t even need to. They could get by just fine on cheeseburgers and pizza if they wanted. The one I dated even had acne.”

  I sputtered and tried not to lose the mouthful of cranberry juice I’d just sipped. “So why did you date him then?”

  Miko looked embarrassed. “I hate to admit it, but I bought into the whole tortured soul routine too. It was before I left home. Business was bad. Dad wasn’t taking it well. Dad was taking it out on me with his fists. The guy with the really white teeth who played bass in a punk band seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “What happened?”

  She grinned. “Well, you know the story. Boy meets girl. Boy turns out to be a vampire. Boy tries to eat girl. Girl kicks boy in the nuts.”

  I knew I was opening myself up to all kinds of ridicule, but I couldn’t help it. “And werewolves?” I asked eagerly.

  “Dirty. Hairy. Smelly. More interested in camping than killing anyone. They usually end up on the west coast and become snowboarders. And forget the turning at every full moon thing. They can’t control it, but most of them only turn once a year or so when there’s a supermoon.”

  “Is that even a real thing?”

  “Of course, dummy. Even though I had to lurk around your crummy school to flush you guys out, I graduated early and even have a few college credits.” She straightened in her seat and pointed her finger at me. “A supermoon—or ‘perigee moon’ as we Astronomy 101 grads call it—is the moon when it is closest in its orbit to the Earth.”

  “And what about the psychopath?”

  Miko’s smile faded away. “Nothing much to say. Psycho liked his knives. Cut me up outs
ide of a nightclub we were partying at—said I was flirting with the bartender and he was going to teach me a lesson.”

  Shock was like losing all my colors at once. “What happened?”

  Miko’s eyes glittered. “I survived and made sure he’d never get close enough to anyone to ever do that again. A little fairy glamour makes him look like he’s covered in scars and boils to any girl he shows an interest in.” She hesitated and then passed a hand over her face. The jagged scar sweeping from the corner of her mouth to her ear was angry red against the pale gold of her skin. “He gave me the idea.”

  I swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry.”

  Another pass of her hand and the scar was hidden under glamour. “Don’t be. He paid for what he did. I call it poetic justice.”

  After a few minutes of silence, we settled the bill and went into the mall. As we wandered in and out of the stores, our good moods began to return. We shopped and laughed as if we weren’t a wingless fairy and a dangerous anomaly.

  For one precious day, we pretended moms didn’t lie and boys didn’t hurt.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I didn’t follow Miko to the mansion when she dropped me off at my car, even though I’d said I would. A day at the mall had made me feel normal again and I wasn’t sure I wanted to re-enter Taliesin’s world. The thought of what Miko did to the guy who scarred her was proof that it was strange and dangerous.

  A week went by and each morning it took more pills to make the pain in my head go away. I missed Peter. I stayed away from the empty guesthouses even though Old Tom had locked them up again. He’d shaken his head at the sight of the rotting seaweed in the bathtub, but hadn’t commented. I wasn’t even sure he’d told the Larsens. As far as he was concerned, his horses weren’t bothered so there was no problem. Peter texted that he’d reminded Taliesin about it too, but the bard hadn’t come up with any answers.

  But it was the dream that kept me from returning to Taliesin. Maybe it was just superstition, but the holly above my door seemed to have made a difference and each night the details became clearer. I was convinced at least some of it was an actual memory. Not Tynan, of course, but the other elements seemed so real. In the dream I was about three years old—the same age as when we came to live at Windfield. Maybe my childish brain had somehow interpreted the day I was given to Viviane into a vivid dream.