“She hasn’t hurt her. Coral, I mean,” Jon said in a rush. “Please. You mustn’t think she’s concealing anything. Ruby is her life. She’s … she’s not doing well, but I don’t think she’s hurt her.”
“Jon,” I said quietly. “We’ll figure it out.”
He nodded, swallowing hard. “I know … I know what a reconstructionist is.” Then he inhaled, gathering his thoughts. “Ruby has been missing since December, as best as I can guess. I’ve been out of the country. I returned two days ago, and …” He swept his hand to indicate the tidy room. “No Ruby. And Coral doesn’t remember she had a daughter. The very mention of it agitates her. She keeps … keeps …” He clawed his fingers and gestured frantically, then dropped his hand. “I can’t talk to her about it.”
Jasmine glanced at me.
I nodded grimly. Though another Adept could have been involved in Ruby’s disappearance, the worst-case scenario was that the child wasn’t missing at all. That her mother, Coral, had murdered her, either accidentally or in some sort of bid for power. And that she was now claiming amnesia when confronted by her brother. Though how or why a witch proficient in herbology — the growing of flowers and plants for magical purposes — would resort to black magic, I had no idea. According to the information Jasmine had quickly put together, there was nothing obvious in Coral’s background that would indicate a propensity toward violent or disruptive magic.
Outward appearances were often contrived, though. The Fairchilds understood that better than most.
“She would never hurt Ruby,” Jon whispered again, as if picking up on my train of thought. “She lost her partner, Bob, three years ago to cancer, and the only way she got through it was devoting herself to Ruby. That included moving to Chicago last year to be closer to the coven when Ruby showed signs of being magically proficient. Coral has even been homeschooling her.”
“Which is why no one else noticed Ruby was missing?” Jasmine asked.
Jon shook his head. “They were supposed to go to our parents’ for the holidays, but Coral begged off, citing the recent move and her new business. She bought into a nursery, and with her skills, it’s flourishing … and … why would anyone else ask? They’ve only missed two coven meetings and haven’t made any other friends yet.”
“Where are your parents based?” I asked.
He glanced uneasily from Jasmine to me. “New Hampshire.”
I nodded. If his parents were practicing witches, they were under the jurisdiction of the Fairchild coven.
“We should speak to Coral, Jon,” Jasmine said.
“Do … um … are either of you a telepath … or a reader?”
“No. But we’ll tackle that when we figure more out, okay?”
He nodded. “I’ll go get her. She, um … she’s not going to be happy that you’re here. That I involved the Convocation. She, ah … she’s accused me of planting things … toys … pictures.” He touched the photo on the mantel again, angling it to face the doorway to the front hall.
“And when you ask her why the toys were here before you returned?” I asked.
“She gets agitated.”
“Okay,” Jasmine said. “Maybe some tea would be a good idea.”
Jon’s face brightened. “Yes, of course. Tea. Coral grows twelve different varieties of mint. And I have some sugar cookies.” He hustled out of the room.
Quickly but carefully, I lowered the personal shields I normally kept tightly layered in place, circling the living room with my witch senses open to any residual energy. Then I retraced my steps out into the hall and the entranceway.
“Magic?” Jasmine asked, pitching her voice low.
I shook my head, stepping back into the living room. The house wasn’t even warded. If we had just entered the domain of a burgeoning black witch, she wasn’t worried about hiding anything. Though I knew I would need to check the basement and the backyard in order to fully assess whether or not Coral had sacrificed her child in some bloody ritual. Most witches preferred to be connected to the earth when wielding their magic — but that didn’t mean the child couldn’t have been murdered in a completely different location.
My gaze fell on the picture of the ginger-haired nine-year-old on the mantel. My chest tightened at the thought of finding evidence of her death. “It’s better to know,” I murmured, speaking more to myself than my cousin.
“It is,” Jasmine said, grimly agreeing with me without the need for any explanation. But then, we shared the same childhood.
Investigating a missing child with an expectation of her having been murdered was a miserable prospect for us — but not a shocking one.
A woman appeared in the doorway leading to the hall. She was tall and dreadfully skinny. Her short-bobbed hair hung limply around her face, a shade darker than her daughter’s in the picture on the mantel. Her clothing was at least two sizes too large, as if she’d suddenly lost a lot of weight she really couldn’t afford to lose in the first place. As if she was sick.
Or … fighting off a malignant spell.
I glanced over at Jasmine, whose gaze was glued to the woman. She nodded shallowly, seemingly coming to the same conclusion as I had with a single glance.
Stepping forward, Jasmine offered her hand to the woman. “Hello, I’m —”
“A witch. I know.” Coral crossed her arms, her sleeves riding up with the motion. Both of her wrists and forearms were wrapped with a thick, white bandage over gauze. “I don’t know what Jon has told you.”
“And why would he lie?” Jasmine asked softly.
Coral pursed her lips, then shook her head vehemently.
“Will you at least let me check you for spells?” I asked.
“Fine.” Coral crossed into the room, sitting stiffly on the arm of an overstuffed chair that sat perpendicular to the couch.
I closed the space between us, carefully keeping myself in her line of sight. Then I opened my perpetually locked-down witch senses to her quiet, gentle magic. The tenor of that magic, holding no traces of malignancy, instantly informed me that Coral was in no way responsible for anything nefarious that might have happened to her daughter.
I glanced over at Jasmine. “I don’t sense any foreign magic.”
“I could have told you that,” Coral snapped.
Jasmine pulled out her phone, thumbing the screen for a moment before she turned it toward the witch. “You registered Ruby’s birth with the Convocation. August 14, 2007.”
“No,” Coral said, shaking her head too quickly again. “No. No.” She started scratching her arms, worrying the edges of the bandages — an action that obviously and heart-wrenchingly spoke of self-harm. Given her behavior, it seemed likely that Coral was punishing herself for something she couldn’t remember, but that she subconsciously blamed herself for nonetheless. Her missing daughter.
“It’s okay, Coral,” I said. “It’s all right. We’ll sort it out. We’ll help you sort it out.”
Coral met my gaze intensely. “I know something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong!”
“We’re going to figure it out,” Jasmine said. But she stopped short of touching the witch on her shoulder. Adepts didn’t voluntarily touch each other. Not easily, at least. And the last thing Jasmine or I wanted to do was to provoke Coral in any way. Even a witch who practiced herbology could lash out with wild magic unintentionally.
Jon hustled into the living room, carrying a tray laden with a green teapot, mismatched mugs, and a plate of cookies. Glancing worriedly at his sister, he quickly placed the tray on the low coffee table in front of the fireplace.
“Please.” Coral gasped for air as if suddenly pained. “Please.”
Jon crossed around Jasmine, laying his hand on Coral’s shoulder. His sister settled under his touch so quickly that I assumed he must be wielding some sort of soothing magic, but so subtle that I wasn’t sensitive enough to pick it up.
Coral turned her hollow gaze to the photo of Ruby on the mantel. Even completely unt
rained in any sort of psychology or mind magic, I could see that the witch was slowly going mad denying the existence of her daughter.
“May I have permission to walk the house and grounds?” I asked. “I’ll need to look for residual magic. Anything that wouldn’t naturally be in the house. Perception or persuasion spells. Masking charms and the like.”
Coral didn’t respond.
Jon nodded stiffly, then crossed to the coffee table to pour a cup of tea.
Jasmine followed me out into the hall, texting.
“Are you requesting a reader?” I pitched my voice low as I watched Jon through the doorway. He was trying to coax Coral into drinking the tea.
Jasmine nodded. “The local coven doesn’t have one. The Convocation is going to send us a specialist.”
“I’m certain Coral hasn’t had anything to do with whatever happened to Ruby,” I said, though I knew I was basing my determination on instinct rather than rational reasoning. “I know it’s been months, but if she was capable of black magic, I’m certain it would leave a taint. And if it was an accident, then why the amnesia act and the self-harm? Did you double-check Jon’s itinerary?”
“Yep. He’s on the up and up. Out of town on business for the last six months. Numerous verifications. Rare antiquities, the nonmagical kind. The family runs a business out of New Hampshire.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. I’d hate for it to be the brother.” Jasmine looked up from her phone to meet my gaze. “Not that it would stop me from ripping his heart out.”
“Investigating, you mean. Gathering evidence for a tribunal.”
“Yeah,” she said, turning back into the living room. “Sure.”
Uneasy, I watched her for a moment as she settled on the couch with her back to me, snagging a cookie from the plate and updating Jon in a low murmur. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea for Jasmine to be investigating incidents involving young children. But turning down a case without cause could have damaged her reputation. And even though we bore the Fairchild surname, it was our individual reputations that actually paid the bills.
I turned to the stairs, then slowly moved up through the house. Looking for any residual magic that might yield a reconstruction.
Jasmine was still healing after being badly bitten by the vampires that had kidnapped her in January. Working through this case would help her regain a sense of control. And finding Ruby alive would be an even better balm to her bruised soul.
I kept that positive thought in the front of my mind as I opened the door into a tiny bedroom swathed in purple and pink. The air in the otherwise tidy room was stale, and the bureau, brass bed frame, and empty shelving was covered in a thin layer of dust. The closet doors weren’t fully closed — revealing that it was stuffed full of the clothing, books, and toys that must once have filled the room. I kept firm hold of my resolve, casting my senses out for any residual magic.
Alive or dead, we would find Ruby Cameron. No one magical was capable of concealing their crimes from my reconstructions. And though I didn’t know much about the human psyche, Coral’s mental state made it more than clear that an Adept was involved in Ruby’s disappearance.
Someone had targeted a widowed mother in a new city without friends or family. They’d taken a nine-year-old prodigy witch from her home, drastically altering her mother’s memory. But they most certainly weren’t going to get away with it. Not if it was within my power to do something about it.
Chapter 2
A text message from Jasmine pinged through on my phone just as I finished checking the master bedroom on the top floor. It was perfectly tidy but sparsely and impersonally furnished.
>Meet me in the backyard.
I headed swiftly downstairs. I hadn’t had a chance to check the kitchen or the basement for residual magic, but whatever Jasmine had discovered certainly took precedence. The house had an empty, almost sterile, feel to it — maybe partly owing to Coral and Ruby’s relatively recent move, but more likely due to the missing child. It also didn’t contain any residual magic intense enough to manifest as a reconstruction. If Coral Cameron was a practicing witch, she didn’t wield her craft in the house as far as I could tell.
I grabbed my coat from the closet at the base of the stairs, then headed back through the house toward the kitchen, where I assumed I would find an exterior door to the yard. I glanced into the living room as I passed the open doorway. Perched on the couch, Jon was holding Coral’s hand and murmuring quietly to her. He looked up and caught my eye, giving me a stiff nod.
I smiled back reassuringly — or at least as reassuringly as I was capable of being while searching for clues that would lead me to a missing child. Continuing along the short hall, I came into the U-shaped kitchen. The tile, countertops, and appliances looked as though they hadn’t been updated since the early nineties. Beyond the far counter, a round pinewood table was tucked into a tiny windowed eating area. An empty patio stood just beyond sliding-glass doors to the left of the table.
Sliding open the door, I stuck my head out, looking for Jasmine. A set of wooden stairs led down into a tiny fenced backyard featuring a lawn maybe eight feet across. The space was crammed into the footprint of the property, next to the short drive that led to a partially aboveground garage beneath the kitchen. A private alley abutted the property, with a gated entrance a couple of houses down, off the side street.
One level below me, my cousin was pacing the length of the back fence while peering at her phone. She looked up, beckoning as I slid the door closed behind me. “We need a circle.”
I slipped on my trench coat and descended steps of silvered wood to join my cousin. Though the air still felt damp from the thunderstorm that had just passed, it wasn’t currently raining. “You found residual?”
She shook her head. “They’re transporting the reader.”
“What? Here? Outside? What about the basement?”
Jasmine glanced up at the neighboring townhouses, both of which had a clear view of the backyard from their rear windows. “The neighbors appear to be at work or at school. The basement is actually the extremely tiny garage, which is concrete on all sides and barely holds the car currently parked in it. Can you set up your candles?”
I nodded, obligingly pulling a white pillar candle from the huge bag I carried with me everywhere, whether or not I was working a case. “Where is the reader coming from?”
“The Academy.”
“They’re sending a student?”
“They’re sending the best they have on hand. No one is happy about a baby witch going missing … or whatever else has happened.” As before, Jasmine’s tone was dark. “They just need an active circle.”
I dutifully paced a circle in the center of the wet lawn, which was composed of more weeds than grass. A few scraggly red and yellow tulips next to the fence had lost most of their petals, possibly during the thunderstorm. It occurred to me that they had bloomed and died without Ruby Cameron having ever seen them.
I shook off the morbid thought, pressing the grass down again as I circled a second time. Placing my candles at the east, south, and west points, I paused at the northern edge with my green pillar candle still in hand. Jasmine remained glued to her phone.
“Pearl Godfrey sent me to London a few years ago the same way,” I said, crouching to set the final candle in the grass. Green for earth. As a witch and a Virgo, I almost always closed my circles near the earth-element candle. “At least the Academy has the necessary number of witches to cast on their end. Pearl drained her magic sending me. Usually, it takes a full coven. Thirteen witches, minimum.”
Jasmine’s jaw dropped. “Pearl Godfrey transported you to London? On her own?”
“From her home territory. Which the Godfreys have held since there was such a thing for immigrants to hold in the Pacific Northwest. And my magic is receptive to the spell.”
Jasmine was still staring at me. “But on her own. She could have … botched it. She could have hurt y
ou.”
I laughed lightly. “I doubt it. It might not have worked, but it’s not like I would have dropped into the middle of the Arctic.”
“That’s exactly what could have happened!”
I snorted at Jasmine’s exaggeration. Then I leaned down to snap my fingers over the wick of the green candle. Magic sparked. And as the earth candle caught, the three other pillars flared, instilling the circle with the touch of my magic.
I still didn’t cast carelessly, but calling forth simple spells had become almost effortless for me since I’d bonded with the Fairchild estate magic. Such spells had always been within my ability, truth be told, so Jasper reclaiming the manor for himself wouldn’t affect them. I’d just been out of practice — by choice — focusing all my efforts on being an excellent reconstructionist. And though I was still careful to not contaminate residual energy when collecting magic for a case, it was necessary for me to imbue my magic into a dormant circle such as the one I was currently constructing. It would give the Academy witches an anchor point for their transportation spell.
Stepping back from the circle I’d paced, I raised my palms, gathering the magic that had been left in my wake as I placed and lit the candles. Then, with a tiny push of my will, I closed the empty circle. It was ready to be utilized.
I glanced over to Jasmine, who had stepped back from the magic I was commanding in order to protect her phone. I had a habit of eroding technology unintentionally … and shorting it out completely intentionally on occasion. My best friend nodded to me without looking up from texting.
I looked up and around at the neighbors’ houses again. The fence was tall enough to block most of what was about to transpire from the back alley, but not from the houses on either side.
“Did you place distraction spells?” I asked Jasmine.
“Oh, shoot.” She dug in her satchel while she dashed around the circle, toward the back gate opening onto the alley.
I frowned at her retreating back. Jasmine wasn’t usually so easily distracted while on a case. Perhaps having the magic of the estate ripped from her had affected her more than it had me. Or it might have added to her current emotional vulnerability. Another loss. Another wound inflicted by our uncle Jasper.
Unleashing Echoes (Reconstructionist 3) Page 2