by Amy Star
“I don’t know.”
“Bethany, something is fishy about this woman, and I need you to get to the bottom of it.”
“I will, Mason,” she said.
“While you’re at it, have your guy look at the property lines between her place and mine. According to her deed, she owns the road that goes around the outside of my property to her place and about half of the other places. If the numbers are right, her ownership extends quite a bit further than we thought, and it looks like the previous owner just built and fenced up what he wanted to.”
“Will that matter once she sells?”
“No,” he snapped. “But I’m not happy about having inaccurate information, and I don’t want anything else that was missed coming back and biting me in the ass. Understood?”
“Of course, Mason. I’ll take care of that.”
He hung up without saying goodbye, turning the Jeep around and heading back toward the mountain.
By the time he made it to the top of the hill, he was feeling a little less angry.
“It’s all going to work out,” he said to himself. “Everyone has a price, and everyone has a limit of what they can take.”
Hearing the words out loud made him feel better. Today was just a temporary setback. Clara was a city girl. She’d never lived in the wilderness.
Give her a few nights and she’ll be begging me to take the place off her hands, he thought, laughing and pulling up to the garage.
Movement out of the corner of his eye startled him, and instinctively, he slammed on the breaks.
“Sorry,” Clara said, waving at him as he rolled the window down. “Hi. I was wondering if you could help me.”
“Help you?”
“Yes. With building a fire in the fireplace. It’s starting to get a little cool now that it’s nearly dark, and I can’t quite figure out how to get one going.”
“Where is your car?”
“I walked.” She turned and pointed to an opening in the trees. “There’s a trail that comes directly to the road there. It’s pretty fast.”
He was floored.
“No one is this oblivious,” he muttered, parking the car and pushing the four-wheeler out of the garage so he could drive her back to her cabin.
It was too late to send her off the mountain, but maybe a night of freezing her cute little ass off would have her ready to leave in the morning. He would take her home, but he wasn’t going to light her fire.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”
“I was just wondering if you knew how dangerous that was.”
“Walking?”
“At dusk in the woods, yes. It’s very dangerous.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, but she didn’t seem bothered. “I guess I’ll carry a stick next time.”
“You can’t be serious. What are you going to do with a stick?”
“A good tap to the nose should do it, right?”
His mouth dropped open. She’d be lucky to last a day, and if she got herself killed without a will and next of kin to pass the property to, he would find himself locked in a battle with Probate Court and hoping that her assets weren’t auctioned off to pay her debts.
He groaned. As much as he didn’t want to deal with starting a fire in the hearth and making sure that she wasn’t going to burn the place down, he knew without a doubt that Clara would walk to his house in the middle of the night if it got too cold in the cabin for her to stay there. For now, he would have to be neighborly. Once Bethany got everything she could on Clara and he had a plan of action to get her to sell the place, he could go back to his aloof, loner self.
“Do you have matches or kindling?” he asked.
“I grabbed a couple sticks from the tree in the yard.”
“You broke them off the sapling in front of the cabin?”
“Yes. Just a couple.”
He sighed.
“Green wood doesn’t burn well. You need something a little dryer.”
“Oh. I’m not really the outdoorsy type, so I don’t really know how to start a fire.”
“No,” he said sarcastically.
“I’m being serious. I love being outside, but I’ve always lived in a normal house, so this is all very new and exciting to me.”
“I’ll bet,” he said over her shoulder, walking into the open garage to grab an ax and a few other things to help him get a fire going. “How is the water looking out of the tap? The rainwater system is solar powered like everything else, and it had a pretty decent filtration system, but it hasn’t been run in a while. I did open the plug and let it drain out completely right before a round of storms came through, so letting it run for a little bit should do the trick.”
“The water is fine,” she said, waiting for him to secure everything before she got on behind him. “It is so much better than city water.”
Mason closed the garage door and started down the narrow road to her house.
“You should try the trail,” she said. “It’s a little narrow for this thing, but it fits.”
“I’ll pass,” he said.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” she asked, hands near his hips again.
“I left it in my other pocket.”
Clara laughed, squeezing him impulsively around the waist in a quick hug.
“You’re funny,” she said. “I like that. We’re going to make great neighbors.”
It was dark by the time they made it to the cabin, but Mason’s eyes adjusted to the dark easily. He could see rabbits nearby, scurrying back to their hiding places after catching a quick meal at twilight. They hid just in time to avoid a small fox that strutted by, turning his head and looking a bit concerned about the four-wheeler. It distracted him enough that he missed the rabbits entirely as he skirted off into the woods and as far away from Mason and Clara as he could get.
Mason followed Clara into the house to check out what she’d done in the fireplace before he gathered wood. As he expected, there were two twigs the length of Clara’s forearm in the fireplace. What he hadn’t expected was for the rest of the house to look the way it did.
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
“Well, it needed a good cleaning and luckily, I brought my mop and broom.”
“Okay, but it looks like you’ve been living here. How did you unload your car that quick?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t have much to unload. And I don’t have anything in two of the rooms.”
Mason couldn’t believe how much she’d done while he’d been down the highway, looking for a cell phone signal so he could chew Bethany out. It looked like an entirely different cabin.
“Go ahead and stay inside, and I’ll go cut some wood,” he said, changing the subject. “I’ll be right back.”
She shook her head.
“No. I need to learn how to do this. I’m not going to depend on you to do everything for me.”
“Suit yourself; just don’t get in my way.”
“Got it,” she said.
Mason didn’t have to go far to find a fallen tree that looked perfect. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Clara wasn’t in range of the ax, then he went to work cutting part of the tree into neat logs, then splitting the logs.
“You make that look so easy.”
“It isn’t too hard,” he said.
“I thought people cut live trees for firewood.”
“You can, but you want to use what you can first. Plus, the wood from live trees needs to dry out first, and it’s already getting really cold. The temperature plummets when the sun goes down. Even in the summer, there’s still a bit of chill in the air.”
“Good to know. I brought extra blankets, but they weren’t going to be enough.”
She took an armful of wood and walked beside him back to the cabin.
“I appreciate you helping me with this. Finding out this place existed was a dream come true, but I didn’t have any time to prepare. When Bethany called me, I was t
rying to figure out where I was going to go.”
“Go?” he asked over his shoulder while he got the kindling going.
“The little cottage I was renting was sold. The new owners want to move in, so I had until the end of the week to find somewhere.”
“The end of this week?”
“Yes.”
“Clara, that’s tomorrow.”
“It is.”
“What about your grandmother’s house?”
“It’s in escrow. I sold it, thinking that I could buy the place I lived in and put the rest of the money away. But they’d already sold it.”
“Where are the rest of your things?”
“This is all I had. I’m not really into material possessions, and the cottage was already furnished. It was perfect.”
“I’m sorry, finding out it was sold must have been disappointing.”
He started to mention that she could buy any house she wanted if she sold the cabin to him, but he stopped. Something told him that, despite her sweet and fanciful nature, trying to run Clara off again so soon after the mess that afternoon would backfire. People like Clara were the kind of people who succeeded because no one believed in them. Trying too hard to get her to sell would surely drive her to stay until the bitter end just to prove a point.
“Make sure you keep the grate in front of the fire,” he said after an awkwardly long silence. “The fire should burn most of the night. Maybe put another piece in right before you go to bed, but be careful not to throw it in.” He added another small piece of wood, showing her how to ease it in without disturbing the fire. “I’ll come by to check on you in the morning.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m so excited to spend the first night in my new home.”
He groaned inwardly. She was making this harder than it needed to be.
“Make sure you lock the door after I leave,” he said. “And do the same with the back door and the windows.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, stretching and yawning. “I’m already tired. I’ll see you in the morning, Mason.”
She smiled sleepily at him and followed him to the door. He waited until he heard her lock it, then he climbed on his four-wheeler and set out for his home. With any luck, Clara’s first night would be her last, and she’d be packing her things when he showed up in the morning.
CHAPTER FOUR
Clara watched Mason drive away on the four-wheeler, waiting until he was around the corner and out of sight before she let out a sigh of relief. If it hadn’t gotten so cold since she’d tried and failed to build her own fire, she would have let it be. But the mountain was chilly, even in the late spring, and Clara knew it would only get worse. Still, it didn’t make waiting for Mason to leave any easier. She had things to do, and she didn’t want him there.
“Finally,” she said, going back to the kitchen where she’d left the heavy book open next to a clear glass bowl of water.
She’d expected him to make a fire and leave, but Mason had lingered. She appreciated him showing her the proper way to do everything, but he kept explaining everything twice, as if she needed him to in order to understand. She got that a lot, because she was bubbly and outgoing, and she wasn’t shy about speaking her mind when it suited her, but she was far from ditzy. This time next month, she would have all this down pat, and she wouldn’t need any help from Mason at all.
Maybe she would be helping him.
“Don’t kid yourself, Clara,” she laughed. “Mason doesn’t need anyone’s help, least of all mine. Alright, let’s try this again.”
She rolled up her sleeves, holding her right hand over the water and moving it slowly in a circle. The water stayed still, mocking her.
She read the passage in the book again, muttering words under her breath and concentrating as hard as she could. Slowly, the water started to swirl counterclockwise, following the direction of the outstretched hand above the water.
“Yes!” she whispered excitedly.
Moving her hand faster, the water followed suit, until it was moving so fast that a tiny water cyclone formed. She giggled. Looking at the book once more and quickly reading the next passage, she nodded to herself while her hand still circled in the air above the bowl.
“Seems simple enough,” she said as she absorbed the instructions.
She stopped abruptly, balling her hand into a fist above the center of the bowl, then twisting her hand so her knuckles faced upwards and flinging her fingers wide. The water stopped, completely still. Her triumph was short lived when there was a light pop and the water splashed out of the bowl, drenching her instantly with far more water than the bowl should have been able to hold.
She sputtered, looking at the now empty bowl in shock. What had she done wrong?
Clara grabbed a towel she’d brought to the kitchen just in case, drying herself off quickly while she pondered her mistake. Had she gone too fast? Was it the cyclone that had caused such a simple spell to go awry? Shaking her head with laughter, she took the bowl and put it upside down in the sink so it could dry out. I’ll try again tomorrow, she thought. Maybe outside next time.
The book was still open on the counter beside her, bone dry despite being so close to her. She read the entire page a few times, but she couldn’t figure out where she went wrong. She picked up the heavy tome, closing it gently and holding it tight in her arms. The only dry spot on the counter was where the book had been, leaving a perfect outline of the edges.
She didn’t worry about the water on her clothes ruining the cover as she clutched it to her chest; this book had been through the unimaginable and still looked pristine. According to the note her grandmother had left her, the book was hundreds of years old, yet it looked brand new.
She took it to the little built-in shelf in the living room, sliding it into place between the other cherished books she’d brought from the collection her grandmother had given her. There would be time for more play in the morning when she was feeling rested. Maybe she would walk out to the lake and enjoy the view while she explored her new-found talent.
Clara walked around the room, running her fingers along the walls and imagining every memory that had been made in this cabin before her family had moved to the city and embraced normal society. She didn’t know what had precipitated the move, but she knew that her grandmother had never shared her secret with Clara.
Thinking back through her life, so many things made sense now, but Coral had taken her secret to the grave, leaving only a single letter to explain to Clara what she’d hidden and why. Coral had written the letter on Clara’s twenty-fifth birthday, placing it in a lock box with everything else she was to receive when Coral died.
Did her grandmother know she only had two years left to live? Was this the only secret Coral had kept, or were there more?
Clara laughed. “Hey Clara, by the way, we’re witches’ is a big enough secret,” she said out loud to the empty room.
Clara kept the letter in her purse, tucked down at the bottom so it was always nearby. She didn’t know what had possessed Coral Finch to reveal a secret she’d kept for over two decades, but she was glad she had. Now that Clara had somewhere quiet and grounded in nature to practice using her gifts out of sight of regular people, she knew she would one day be as powerful as her grandmother had once been. It was just going to take time.
She decided to leave the door open to her bedroom so the heat from the fireplace would reach her. Exhausted from moving and from trying the spell several times before she finally gave up, she climbed into bed and pulled the familiar comforter up to her chin.
The soft glow of the fireplace stopped at the doorway of her room, leaving it dark enough for her to see out the window right above her bed. There were so many stars, even though she could only see a small portion of the sky through the trees. That sight was staggering, making her feel infinitely small in the vast universe.
She smiled as she started falling to sleep, thinking about the day ahead. Tomorrow was going to be
a wonderful day. She couldn’t wait.
***
Down the winding, rutted dirt road and through the dense trees, Mason was still struggling to fall asleep, eager for the day to end. What had started out the perfect day had ended with an unwelcome neighbor, at least for the night. Until he figured out a way to convince her to leave, she was going to be a thorn in his side—a gorgeous thorn, but a thorn nonetheless.
Pacing his bedroom floor wearing only a towel around his waist, he kept replaying the day in his head, over and over. She didn’t even know how to build a fire in her fireplace, but she thought she was going to live here year-round? The mountain was high, and while there was a pretty decent summer season, fall and winter could be brutal.
Cursing under his breath, he gave up on sleep, taking the stairs to the living room two at a time and throwing his towel off as he burst through the back door and into the night. He gritted his teeth against the painful shifting of cells, his anger and frustration forcing the process to move faster. Hands and feet morphed into thick, padded soles, sharp claws replacing his fingers and toes. Thick, shaggy black hair sprouted as his face elongated until the human side of him vanished and all that was left was a large black bear on all fours, running straight for the forest.
The cold air felt great in his lungs, and for the first time since Clara had announced she was moving in, Mason felt the stress starting to slip away. He could figure this out, and he could make everything right before the first families showed up in eight weeks to see the community he’d worked so hard to plan. His kind would be free to be themselves again, even if they had to hide away on this mountain to do that.
No matter how badly Clara wanted to live out some fantasy life, she couldn’t stay. Her presence would ruin everything.
He was still running when he broke through the tree line and found himself at his favorite spot east of his home. Unlike the lake, which was to the west on Clara’s property, this stream and the crystal pool fed by elegant waterfalls were all his. While the lake would be community property, as would the stream downhill from his house, this pool and this waterfall would belong only to him.