Veiled Enchantments

by Deborah Blake

  “Manners, Freddy,” Astrid said, sounding just like Donata’s great-aunt Tatiana when she was teaching Witch School. “You’re going to make me look bad in front of our guest.”

  “Council spy, you mean,” Freddy muttered, but added reluctantly, “Fine, just tell me what you want to know.” He dug one booted foot into the dirt, looking down instead of at Donata, and it suddenly occurred to her that he was embarrassed. Good Ulf in training probably didn’t see ghosts and get injured because of it.

  She moderated the tone she was going to use to something a little less aggressive. “Can you just tell me what happened? Don’t worry if it sounds strange. ‘Strange’ is pretty much in my job description.” Even if she was moonlighting.

  “Sure, okay.” He nodded in the direction of the escarpment they were standing near. “So, I was climbing to the top of the cliff when it happened.”

  “Wait.” Donata looked at the almost-sheer rock face. “You were climbing that?” She shuddered. Magnus had told her it was a thirty-foot drop, but she’d thought he was exaggerating. She didn’t even like to go up tall ladders, although she would if she had to. The stone mass was nearly vertical, with very little that looked like it would provide hand- or footholds, and went a long way up before finally ending in a small plateau. “How?”

  “With great difficulty,” Freddy said, a hint of a grin lightening his battered face. “That’s the point. It’s one of the tests we have to pass. Formations like these are all over this area, and that day we were each out climbing a different one.” At her questioning look, he added, “There was a token waiting at the top, which you brought with you to show you’d successfully completed the task.” The smile slid away. He hadn’t completed it, of course, and now couldn’t try again until next year. Astrid had told Donata he’d had to have three pins put into his fractured femur. His arm apparently had so many cracked bones, it was still healing more slowly.

  “Where were you when you saw the ghost?” Donata asked.

  Freddy pointed to a spot just under a scraggly pine tenaciously clinging to the edge of the plateau. “I had almost made it to the top. I had one hand on that branch and was reaching up with the other when I looked up and saw my brother. Well, something that looked like my brother, anyway.” A muscle under his eye twitched, although that was the only indication she saw of how rattled he was under the surface.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Not that I heard,” Freddy said. “Seeing him up there startled me so much, my hand slipped off the branch and I fell.” He gave her a wry look. “Takes a lot less time to come back down than it did going up, I’ll tell you.”

  Donata fought to keep her mouth from dropping open as she stared at the cliff. She didn’t know how the hell he’d even survived the drop at all let alone could be walking around this soon afterward, pins or no pins. “Shit,” she said. “That’s one hell of a plunge.”

  “Yep,” he said. “Bounced off the wall a bit on my way down and then landed in that patch of berry bushes. Scratched the crap out of me, but they probably saved my life. Ulfhednar heal fast, but a broken neck will still kill us.”

  “You’re a lucky guy. You know, other than the obvious. Did you ever see the ghost again?”

  “That’s the weird thing,” Freddy said. “I was pretty stunned by the fall, and it turns out I had a concussion, but I could swear I saw Samuel—that’s my brother—standing over me right afterward. And it looked like he was crying, although he didn’t make any noise. I’d kind of forgotten until Astrid asked me to talk to you about it.”

  “Huh. So you didn’t get the sense that he’d intended to harm you?” Donata asked. Ghosts could be malicious or benign. It would really help if she could figure out what kind they were dealing with in this case.

  “No, not at all. He kind of reminded me of when we were kids and he got us into some kind of trouble. He was a couple years older than me and he’d always step up and take the blame, not that we didn’t both end up getting punished in the end.” He shook his head. “He seemed, I don’t know, sad, or confused or something. But like I said, I was in pretty bad shape, so I’m not sure of anything, even that I really saw him. Until a couple of the others mentioned their own experiences, I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.”

  Astrid sighed. “Ulfhednar, especially the men, aren’t very good at admitting to anything they perceive as weakness. It wasn’t until Lita, one of the two women in training, said something to her mother, who told me, that the whole story finally came out. That’s when Magnus decided to ask you for help.”

  “I see.” And she did. She wasn’t all that good at admitting weakness either. When you work a tough job that most people don’t understand or accept well, you learn to keep your guard up. “How did your brother die, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “You think that might have something to do with this?” Freddy said. “I don’t see how it could. He drowned when we were both in our late teens. He was white-water rafting and went over a rock hidden under the water. The raft capsized; he hit his head and was gone before anyone could get to him. I wasn’t even there.” He bit his lip. “A part of me always thinks I could have saved him if I had been.”

  Astrid patted his arm but didn’t say anything. There really wasn’t anything to say. Donata felt bad that she’d had to bring up such painful memories, but she couldn’t determine what had brought the ghosts out unless she had all the facts. Such as they were.

  “No, that doesn’t sound like his death could have any bearing on current events,” she said. “Although I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks for sharing your story with me. I appreciate it.”

  He gazed at her for a moment without blinking. “I like Magnus,” he finally said. “And I didn’t see what it could hurt to tell you. There’s nothing there that the Council would have any interest in.”

  “Oh, for the love of goddess,” she said. “I am not a Council spy.”

  He just shrugged, nodded at Astrid, and stomped off into the woods without another word.

  “I think that went reasonably well, don’t you?” Astrid said, pointedly ignoring their last interchange. “Do you want to see the top of the cliff where the ghost first appeared now?”

  Donata stared up the side of the rock wall and swallowed hard. “Uh, I might as well check the spot down here first, even if Freddy isn’t sure if he really saw his brother after he fell or not.”

  Astrid followed her gaze and chuckled. “Don’t worry, there is a longer but much less steep path if we go up the side way. I don’t have any desire to make that climb either.”

  Whew.

  In the end, it didn’t much matter. Donata didn’t get any particular sense of a spirit lingering in either place, although she did find some curious scratches in the dirt up on the plateau. She took a few pictures of them with the camera on her phone, but she couldn’t honestly tell if they were something—rune symbols maybe—or just lines etched by time or wind or even kids. There was a small stone circle where someone had once lit a fire, but there was no way to tell how long it had been there or when it had last been used. She took a picture of that, too, then gratefully followed Astrid down the side of the hill and back to the creek-side clearing.

  “Do you think you can find your way back to the house if I take you part of the way there?” Astrid asked. “I want to go looking for some ginseng I spotted near here in the spring. But I can come back for it some other time if you think you’ll get lost.”

  Well, that explained the backpack the other woman had slung over her shoulder. Donata had thought maybe it held some lunch. Drat. It felt like they’d been out here all day.

  “I’m pretty sure I can find my way back if you can get me down to that big oak we passed,” Donata said. “The trail was easy enough to follow from there.”

  “Great,” Astrid said. “Feel free to help yourself to anything in the fridge when you get
back. I won’t be more than an hour or two, probably, but I expect you’ll be hungry before then. All this fresh air can work up quite an appetite, even in a city girl.” She grinned.

  Donata didn’t know if it was the fresh air or just getting away from her problems for a while, but she felt better than she had in ages. She marched along with a spring in her step, and after Astrid dropped her off at the trail, she might have even been humming a little. Right until a strange man stepped out from behind a tree and into her path.

  “Donata Santori,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Crap.

  He didn’t have the feel of an Ulfhednar; they tended to have a particular wild-tinged aura about them. Donata supposed he could have been one of the Humans who lived in the area, but something told her he wasn’t just a random hunter looking for game. Maybe the fact that he knew her name. Her hand strayed toward her jacket, but of course, she’d left her gun back at the house, not having foreseen any need for it while out on a walk with Astrid to talk to a man about a ghost. She was an idiot.

  “You seem to have found me,” she said, more casual than she actually felt. Although the guy wasn’t particularly menacing—an inch or so taller than her, with a sandy brown crew cut and mild brown eyes, and dressed in clothing not terribly well suited for a stroll in the Maine woods—something about him made the tiny hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She’d learned to pay attention to that feeling. “What can I do for you?”

  He took a step closer to her, blocking her way back to the house. “You can tell me where Anton Eastman is.”

  Double crap with a side of onion rings.

  Chapter Seven

  This was bad. Really, really bad.

  Anton Eastman didn’t exist. That name was the identity given to the man Donata had dated for months, only to find out that he was actually one of the lost sixth race, the Major Anemoi—incredibly powerful beings who drew their energy from the natural forces of earth, air, fire, and water. The Compact had essentially erased them from the memory of all the other Paranormal races and taken away their ability to manifest in physical form.

  Only with four Major Anemoi working together—a rare occurrence—could they create a temporary body, much like the golems of Jewish legend, to house the spirit of one of their kind. Anton had taken form for the express purpose of seducing Donata and then persuading—or tricking or coercing (it had never been quite clear what either his intentions or his limits were)—her into having a child with him, in an attempt to save the dying race.

  In the end, he’d refused to take no for an answer and, with the arrogance of a being whose very existence was far beyond what most people could imagine, attempted to take what he wanted by force. Luckily for her, if not for him, Donata had figured out what the code embedded in the Pentacle Pentimento painting meant and, with it, obtained the means to destroy the body the Major Anemoi had created, along with the being who animated it.

  In short, she’d killed Anton Eastman. Turned him into a pile of dirt and water by slicing through one of the Hebrew words that appeared as a tattoo on the back of his neck.

  And now there was a man standing in front of her in the middle of the Maine woods, asking her where Anton was. Or something that looked like a man, because she couldn’t think of any reason why anyone except another of Anton’s kind would be looking for him. Swell. A year ago, she hadn’t even known of the existence of this mysterious lost race. Now she might be in the presence of her second one. She’d liked it better when she was blissfully ignorant.

  “I haven’t seen Anton,” she said truthfully. Witches believed in the power of words and tried not to lie when they could avoid it. Which didn’t mean they couldn’t dance a mean mambo around the truth when necessary. “We broke up some time ago, not that it is any of your business.” Also true. “Are you a friend of his? He didn’t mention knowing anyone in Maine. For that matter, how did you know where to find me?”

  The man’s somber visage made a not terribly successful attempt at a smile. Either he didn’t have as much practice animating a body as Anton had, or he simply wasn’t as smooth. Anton had taken on the persona of a reclusive millionaire businessman, probably originally created to represent the interests of the Major Anemoi, so it made sense that he’d had more experience.

  “I am an associate of Mr. Eastman’s,” he said. “He seems to have disappeared, and a number of us have grown concerned. You were his last known contact, so I tracked you down. You didn’t make it easy.” He made it sound as though she had avoided him on purpose rather than simply headed out of her usual stomping grounds to help a friend.

  “I suppose your name is West,” she said, suddenly tired of playing games. “Or maybe North?” The elements had long been associated with the different directions, and the Minor Anemoi, a lesser race, were still known by them. When Anton had shown up using the name “Eastman,” it was clear that was trait the Major Anemoi shared with their less powerful brethren.

  “Ah.” There was a glint of intelligence that had been hiding behind an otherwise bland exterior. “So it is true. You are aware of our existence. Anton said as much, but when there was not so much as a whisper about us in the Paranormal community, we thought perhaps he had misled us.”

  “It wasn’t my secret to share. Publicly, anyway. The Alliance Council knows, of course,” Donata said, not mentioning that there were a few people besides her and the Council who also knew. “I saw no benefit in breaking centuries of silence, as long as Anton left me alone and the Major Anemoi stopped attacking people with destructive natural disasters. I trust he passed that word along as well.”

  “He did,” the man said, not sounding impressed. “You may call me Mr. West, if you choose. It is a convenient enough name. And you can hardly expect us to be intimidated by one Witch female. We do as we wish, and the Humans have wreaked enough havoc in the natural world. They deserve to be punished.”

  “Maybe they do; maybe they don’t,” Donata said. She didn’t much approve of the way the dominant race had treated the world either. But that didn’t mean she thought that innocents deserved to die in earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tsunamis. “But that’s not up to you. And while I agree that there is nothing I, personally, can do to stop you, the Alliance Council can be a force to be reckoned with.” She gave him a wry smile. “Believe me, I know.”

  West sneered at her but didn’t disagree.

  “Maybe you should go and see them,” she suggested. “Perhaps it is time for you to come out of hiding, at least among the Paranormal people, now that the knowledge of your race has been rediscovered.”

  He shrugged. “The possibility is being discussed. But it is no concern of yours. I have sought you out to ascertain the whereabouts of the one you know as Anton Eastman. You will tell me where he is. Now.”

  “I told you already,” Donata said. “I haven’t seen him. I can’t help you.”

  “I do not believe you,” West said. “He would not have just disappeared without a word.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I mean, if I was used to being a disembodied spirit, albeit a powerful one, having a physical form might prove quite tempting.”

  West raised a disdainful eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that Anton is out cavorting in brothels or bars? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Donata gestured at the trees surrounding them. “Well, he’s not roaming around the woods, that’s for sure. If you followed me here, then you already know I am staying with my friend Magnus at his family’s house. I’ve moved on. I assume Anton did, too, when I told him I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. Sorry, but I can’t help you.”

  She couldn’t either. She could have told him where Anton was, swept into a dustpan at Peter’s father’s house, but that wouldn’t have helped him at all. And she was pretty sure admitting she’d killed Anton wouldn’t help her, for that matter.

  The Major A
nemoi stared at her silently for a moment. “This is not the end of our discussion, Witch. If we do not find the one you knew as Anton Eastman, I shall return to speak to you again.”

  “Yippee,” she said. “Something to look forward to.”

  Apparently the Major Anemoi had no sense of humor or little tolerance for sarcasm, because West turned on his heel and walked away without another word.

  Great. Things were getting interesting. Donata so preferred it when they didn’t.

  Donata thought about telling Magnus about the meeting with West when she saw the Ulfhednar later, but she was pretty sure that would fall into the category of “distractions he wasn’t supposed to have.” Besides, as it turned out, he didn’t show until long after dinner, coming in filthy and terse and staying in the kitchen just long enough to bolt some reheated dinner before staggering down the hallway to fall into bed. His own, not hers, which she told herself sternly was all for the best, although when she was curled up alone in the chilly sheets, she wasn’t sure she was completely convinced.

  The next morning, he was gone before she got up, so that was that.

  In fact, he was gone every morning for the rest of the week and rarely came in before the household had retired for the night. When she did see him, it was usually on his way into the kitchen to refuel before going to sleep to do it all over again.

  It wasn’t until Friday night that he actually made it back in time for dinner, although everyone else was already seated at the table when he come through the back door and went to wash up at the sink. He greeted the family cheerfully enough, tickling the kids and hugging his mother before taking his place at the table. But Donata thought he looked tired and thinner than the last time she’d seen him, and there was a streak of blood down the side of his face that he’d obviously missed when he’d cleaned up.

  “Hey, stranger,” she said, heaping extra mashed potatoes onto his plate. “Rough week?”