“Let me call the station. I’ll try to verify whether Charge is still alive and if he’s still living here. If not, then something mighty strange is going on.” Millie crossed away from the table to stand by the bay window.
At that moment, the camera came back online, and we saw Rowan there, going at it with the ghost. She was standing, hands on her hips, reading him the riot act. Caitlin gingerly turned up the volume and Rowan’s throaty voice came echoing through.
“You get the hell out of my granddaughter’s house or I’ll come after you and there won’t be a place you can hide that’s outside my grasp. And given you’re a ghost, you can see how strong I am. You don’t want to mess with me.”
The ghost was staring at her, not doing a thing. In fact, he had a shocked look on his face and he was glancing around, as if he was waiting for someone to come break up the fight.
“This is the damnedest case I’ve seen,” Tad said. “First, the ghost goes crazy upending your house, then Rowan goes in there and he’s sitting still for a scolding? This doesn’t track.”
“That’s Rowan,” I said. “She can freeze a ghost into inaction. What’s—” I paused as Millie returned.
“Charge Maxim Briarson vanished in December 2010. He was divorced, and worked at a garage. The missing person’s report was put in by his girlfriend at the time. She said that he went to work, told her he’d be home late, and never arrived home. Sometimes he went on a bender for a day or so, but after two days, she contacted the police. The cops checked with his employer and he apparently left work early, around two p.m. two days before—the day he told his girlfriend he’d be late. So, he disappeared sometime after four p.m. on December…13, it looks like.” Millie was staring at her phone. I assumed that her office had emailed or texted her the information.
“So, if he disappeared in 2010, and my parents kept the storage room locked and hid the key since I was a child, then there has to be something else in there they were trying to hide besides a skeleton. They updated the house in 2018…so…” I hated thinking that my parents were responsible for killing and hiding someone, but the guy sounded like a squirrel, and he had a history of harassing my mother. Maybe he had threatened them and something went down that they didn’t trust telling the police about.
As I turned back to the monitors to see what was happening with Rowan, the mic cut out again. Rowan was fully engaged with the ghost, but none of us could hear a word she was saying. The hand gestures were coming thick and fast, and for a moment I thought they were signing, but then Charge flipped Rowan the bird.
“He oughtn’t to have done that,” Caitlin said, shaking her head.
“Yeah.” I grimaced. It wasn’t wise to make the strongest witch in town mad at you, even if you were a spirit.
Rowan stared at him for a moment. Then she began to stride toward him. His eyes widened and then, frantically looking over his shoulder, he turned tail and vanished through the wall. Rowan held up her arms and at that point, Hank—who had been fiddling with the microphone—apparently fixed it because we heard her.
“Begone!” Her voice was so commanding that I thought about taking cover. The next moment, all the chairs and other bric-a-brac that were floating in the air went crashing to the floor. Rowan turned and left the room.
She returned to the dining room. “Well, we’re going to have to blast his ass out of here.” She settled in the chair next to me. “So, tell me everything.”
I sighed. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“At the beginning is usually the best place. Assume I know nothing, because except for the interaction I had in there, I don’t.”
I told her about the contractors finding the hidden door, about how my parents warned me to never go in there when I was little and kept it locked, about the discovery of the skeleton, and then, I finished with the hauntings that were going on.
“All right, I think that brings you up to date.”
Rowan sat back in her chair, eyeing the bank of monitors and laptops. “I’m not certain of what the ghost has to do with everything, but there’s more than a simple ghost in that room. He’ll be easy to deal with, but there’s something in there giving him power. I didn’t look for it, but whatever the underlying force is, I think it’s amplifying the spirit’s behavior.”
“You mean there may be something behind the ghost’s appearance other than the skeleton and the renovations?” I asked.
“I think those set it off, but…I want to have a good look at the room. Grab a fresh lightbulb and bring extra lights. Keep recording. I’m not certain what we’re looking for but I have a feeling that when we find it, we’ll provoke a response.”
She led us into the storage room. I nervously followed, waiting for the chairs to go flying around the room again. But they didn’t. Whatever Rowan had said to the ghost had, at least for now, quieted things down.
“What should we look for? The room’s practically empty.”
“Look along the walls, near the molding for any catch or lever. Also along the floor.” Rowan began running her fingers over one of the walls, as though she were reading braille.
“We’re looking for another hidden room?” Hank asked.
Without looking at him, Rowan nodded. “Yes, actually.”
We hunted. Even though I couldn’t imagine another secret room in my house, I crawled around on my hands and knees near the back wall, which was next to the pantry and utility room. Using a flashlight, I looked for any nook or cranny that might indicate a recessed opening.
I was about four feet from the side wall adjacent to the library when I felt a loose piece of the molding, about four inches wide. I examined it closer with my flashlight. The molding flipped up, like a cover, and beneath it was an indentation. I pressed my fingers into it and heard a click as I pushed a button that was about an inch wide and three inches long.
“Found something!” I said, shifting as a rectangular part of the floor began to lower, hinged to the wall. A trap door swung open, folding back. I had the impression that the entire apparatus was built on a hydraulic system because the trap door didn’t just drop open, but smoothly folded back, exposing a steep, narrow staircase.
But we never had a basement. “I had no clue about this,” I said. “I thought the house only had a crawl space.”
“Well, apparently you have a basement now,” Rowan said, crouching to peer into the darkness below. “There’s probably some sort of light source down there, given the extensive build on the trap door, but it’s too dark to see. We’re going to have to take our own light with us.”
I stared at the opening, my stomach knotting. The last thing I wanted to do was to go down those steps. Just being close to them made my skin crawl.
“There’s something down there, something that I don’t want to tangle with,” I said.
“I can feel it too, but we have to find out just what we’re dealing with,” Rowan said. “You can’t just close it up and hope it won’t ever affect you.”
“I wish I could,” I said, but I knew she was right.
“Let me get some of our gear,” Hank said. “I’ll grab a couple cameras, an EVP recorder, and we have some lights out in the van. Caitlin, help me?”
She nodded, following him out of the room.
“I wonder if this is the reason my parents told me to stay out of this room.” I glanced over at Rowan. “You’re my grandmother. I know you didn’t bring him up, but do you think my father—or my mother—was capable of committing murder?”
Millie started to say something but Rowan motioned for her to be quiet. She thought for a moment, then said, “Your father was one of the least imposing men I’ve met—except when it came to protecting his family. He loved your mother and you with a passion. That much I know. I assume you’ve told everyone here about our connection?”
I nodded. “Yeah, they all know.”
“Your father had my blood in his veins, and though he never had the confidence to pursue magic, and I don’
t think he believed in his own abilities, he wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to protect Althea and you.” She shrugged, looking over at Teran. “Do you concur?”
“Yeah, I do,” Teran said.
Millie, who had followed us into the room, asked, “Who owned this house before your parents? Was it a new build?”
Teran answered. “No, I was here with them when they looked at the house to see if they wanted to buy it. They bought the house in 1979, the year before my sister had January. It was built in the 1950s. It was updated shortly before they bought it. I remember…” She paused. “Wait a minute—I remember Althea telling me she was having nightmares. We thought it might be from hormones, with the pregnancy. She was dreaming of some nebulous mass, a dark creature that was following her in her dreams.”
I glanced at my watch. It was almost six. “It’s almost night. Can we go down there tomorrow? I need to text Killian to let him know what’s going on,” I said, edging away from the opening.
“Six? Crap,” Teran said. “I have a meeting tonight. I have to go home and get ready for it.” She reluctantly stood. “Keep me informed on what’s going on, chickadee, and be careful.” She kissed my forehead and headed for the door, waving at everyone.
Tad was tapping away on his tablet, taking notes. As I pulled out my phone to text Killian, Hank and Caitlin returned with two handheld cameras and our helmets with lights.
My feeling of dread was climbing. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to go down there right now—”
Rowan interrupted. “You know, she’s right. Not now. Not at night. We should start again tomorrow morning. There’s…” she paused as a deep rumble, as though someone was yawning, echoed up from below. “Close the door, now.”
I slid my fingers into the recess again and pressed the button. The hydraulic door swung shut, locking shut just as something smacked against it from below, loud enough to send a ringing sound through the room.
“What the hell was that?” I jumped away from the section of floor.
“I don’t know,” Rowan said. “Before we head down there, I think that we need to know who owned it before your parents, and who built the house and when. I recommend we do that before meeting back here.”
“I’ll hit city hall tomorrow,” I said.
Millie pocketed her notebook. “I’ll check with the ME and see if he can make a connection between the skeleton and Charge Briarson. Maybe there’s something in the clothing that matches what he was wearing. Meanwhile, I’ll call his old girlfriend and see if he’s ever surfaced. Just because someone’s on the missing list doesn’t mean that they haven’t been found.”
I divvied up the sandwiches before we broke for the evening. As we were gathering our things and eating, Tad excused me from work the next morning.
“Take the time, go to city hall and find the blueprints. See if the trap door is marked on them. A number of homes with secret doors and rooms don’t include them on the official plans—especially older ones. The owners pay off the architects and contractors to omit them.” He motioned to the others. “Gather the equipment. I’d leave it, to try to pick up more activity, but when we come back, we’ll want to reconfigure everything, anyway.”
As we headed for the door I invited Rowan to come over to Killian’s and talk. I wanted to pick her brain on several topics. She agreed to stay to dinner. Stepping out into the night, I noticed the wind had picked up. A musty scent filled the air.
“What’s that smell?” I asked.
“Hay bales, I think. The Equinox Fair is setting up, not half a mile from here in the two vacant lots on Manchester. I thought you knew about it,” Rowan said. “It’s a relatively new tradition. We have the annual Samhain dumbfeast, and of course, earlier that night it’s Halloween for the children, but most of the town agreed that we also wanted an actual autumn celebration, so the Equinox Fair was born. It’s like a state fair, but on a much smaller basis, including canoe races down at the bay and an autumn clam bake on the beach.”
“Well, it smells good, even though it makes my nose runny,” I said, sniffling. I wanted to forget about what was lurking in the hidden room.
“You should get your beau to take you there,” Rowan said. “He seems a good sort.”
“He is,” I said. “I’m not ready to jump into a long-term commitment just yet, but we’re good where we are. My ex…I’m still embarrassed I stayed with him so long. I didn’t believe that I would find anyone else. He was good at gaslighting.”
Rowan followed me into the living room, laughing as Klaus leaped on her shoulder from one of the coffee tables. “Oh, to be as spry as a kitten.”
“You seem pretty spry yourself,” I said, hesitating before I asked, “What’s it like to live so long? You knew my great-grandfather.” Ever since I discovered she was my grandmother, I had tiptoed around the subject. Rowan was good at keeping people at arm’s length.
“Oh, not much different than living the time a normal human does. If you keep your mind agile, that is.” Rowan paused, then turned to me. “What do you want to know?”
I let out a deep breath. “Everything. Who’s my grandfather? Have I met him? Why did you keep it quiet that you gave birth to my father? You’ve said to protect him, but never explained just what you were protecting him against. Why did you sleep with Teran’s fiancé? The Aseer said my powers are located within the earth, and speaking with the dead. What does that mean for me? Do you know why my mother didn’t let me visit the Aseer when I was a teenager—when most witchbloods do?”
The questions poured out in one long stream. I hadn’t realized that I had been so curious about my background. But now, after verbally vomiting all over my grandmother, I settled down in the rocking chair. Xi jumped on my lap and I began to pet her.
“Well, you’ve been saving them all up, haven’t you?” Rowan asked, but she smiled.
“I guess. I didn’t realize how important knowing about my background is. I thought I knew—when I believed the Jaxsons were my grandparents. But…”
“But now, you know that everything you grew up believing about your father’s side of the family was…well…a lie.”
I nodded. “Right.”
“Well, let me see what I can answer for you. First, about your aunt—she and I are friends now. We weren’t always. But back then, I knew Caine better than your aunt did. And I knew he was going to break her heart. He used to talk to me about how he wanted a wife to take care of him, and I heard him tell a friend that although he wasn’t attracted to Teran, she’d be a suitable bride to get his family off his back.”
I winced. “Did you ever tell Teran that?”
Rowan shook her head. “I never wanted to hurt her feelings. You don’t do that to someone you consider a good person. So, when he hit on me—don’t fool yourself, a lot of young men like older women and I was definitely what you would call ‘older’…I slept with him, and I made sure to engineer it so that Teran would find out. We weren’t the best of friends, and it seemed kinder to blame me rather than let her know what Caine really thought of her. I knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t take him back after that.”
I stared at her for a moment. Rowan was sly and crafty, and though I knew she had a good heart, I couldn’t help but wonder. “Are you sure you just didn’t want to sleep with Caine?”
I was afraid I might offend her, but Rowan just laughed.
“Touché. And though I admit, with a few other men, you’d be right. But in this case, I didn’t fancy Caine much at all. He wasn’t my type. I only slept with him the one time. Trust me, it was not good. I could hear the chickens in my yard pecking for food, I counted how many times I heard the kids next door screaming. I made a grocery list in my mind—”
I snorted. “Okay, I get the picture. So you saved my aunt from embarrassment and a misfortunate marriage. I just wish she knew.”
“She does, now. We talked about it oh, about ten years back. Your aunt’s older and wiser now. She’s no
longer in love with love, which is what she was feeling back then.” Rowan slipped off her shoes and folded her legs into the lotus position on the sofa. She was limber, all right. “As to your grandfather and why I’ve never mentioned him… There’s good reason, or there was until recently.”
“Oh?” I watched her. From the look in her eyes, I could tell she was debating whether to tell me the truth. “I won’t say anything, if it’s that important.”
Rowan let out a long sigh, then shifted on the sofa. “Most people know I’ve never been married. And they think I’ve never had a serious beau. But the truth is, I was seriously involved with someone for a number of years, but he was married.”
“Oops, I suppose that’s a good reason for keeping something secret.” I wasn’t sure how to feel. I had been cheated on and I hated it—I knew how stupid I felt. The fact that my grandmother seemed predisposed to sleep with married men, or engaged men, bothered me. But talking back to your grandmother about her sexual habits? That was so not on my radar.
“Back in the mid-1940s, the head of the Court Magika was Farlow Bell, one of the strongest witches of the area. He was also a judge, presiding over the Court Magika. He was smart and witty, and brilliant with his magic.”
“What was his wife like?”
Rowan shrugged. “Effie was about as smart as a boiled peanut. He married her because it was expected he make a good match and—while she was a dolt—her family was well-placed. They never had any children, and Effie took up with every member of the household staff who had a dick. She was having affairs from the beginning. But socially, they were upper crust, and it would have been a scandal if he left her. Farlow never said a word against her, even when she began taking months-long trips to Europe. She appeared in some of the tabloids with rich sheiks and tycoons, but Farlow told his friends that it was all lies. Truth was, the lies were all true. He was lonely when we met, and we were well matched.”
I was beginning to get the picture. A lot of political marriages were empty on the inside, while everything was picture-perfect from without.
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