by Ann Gimpel
The girl eyed her appraisingly, almost as if she were considering some sort of direct attack. Abigail’s magic was depleted from fighting the wraiths. Likely Carolyn/Goody knew it. “When did the other side start using children to fight their battles?” Abigail asked. Beneath her discomfort with the girl, she felt sickened, outraged.
“It’s logical. People trust us.”
“What were you going to do after the wraiths killed us?” Abigail wove a small spell into her question, hoping for at least a halfway truthful answer.
“Well,” the girl leaned forward as if to impart a secret, “I hadn’t counted on that man joining us. If it weren’t for him…” Her words trailed off.
“Where were you going to slip away to?” Abigail persisted when it was apparent the girl wasn’t going to say anything else. “It’s pretty unforgiving country out there.”
The same supercilious smile crossed the girl’s face. Abigail gave up. It was possible part of the child’s assignment was to take out the Girauds. At the top of the Coven’s hierarchy, they’d be a worthy goal. The reason the couple relocated was to provide a base for operations west of the Mississippi. Did Carolyn/Goody look enough like their true daughter to pull it off? Abigail thought it unlikely. Maybe she really was their daughter, conned by inducements from the other side. Or else possessed.
“What do you want me to call you?” Abigail asked.
“Why, Carolyn. It is my name.” Innocence practically bled from her pores, as if as if their earlier conversation had been a hallucination. Abigail fought a sick sensation that raised goose bumps and stifled a shudder.
The stagecoach slowed, and then stopped. Abigail withdrew her magic from the gearing mechanism. When she pulled the curtain back, she saw the stones of an Overland Stage Station. Good. They’d pick up another driver, though it might be a bit of a wait for the Overland Stage Company to send one.
“I’m getting out,” Carolyn announced. She pushed one of the doors open and trotted nimbly down the metal steps.
Abigail considered a spattering of motherly advice about not straying too far from the station, but bit her tongue. Frankly, she hoped to never see the child again. Then she thought about the inadvisability of letting something that wicked run about loose and hurried out. The earth, packed hard by stagecoaches and horses, felt welcome after the swaying carriage. For once, it wasn’t windy, but the November day was growing much colder as evening neared. She caught up to Luke as he emerged from the small office.
“Gave the driver’s packet to the station manager,” he said. “Fortunate for us someone’s here.”
“Are they going to send another driver?”
He nodded tersely. Taking her arm, he pulled her off to one side. “Can you hear me this way?” he said into her mind.
“Yes.”
“I listened to the conversation you had with the kid. Deucedly unsettling. I say we kill her.”
Abigail started to protest that Carolyn was just a child, but the words curdled in her throat. Maybe a child in years, but scarcely in any other way that counted. Still… “I’m not sure.” She sorted through her thoughts, cataloguing pros and cons.
Luke started talking again before she’d come to any sort of conclusion. “I sensed something was amiss with her the minute I got on in Colorado. It’s like there’s two of her, ’specially when she’s asleep and her glamour slips.”
Possessed.
Damn! I knew it.
Abigail kicked herself for being gullible and a fool. She’d never thought to question the child of someone so high up in her Coven. “How long will we be stuck here?”
“A day. Maybe two.”
She met Luke’s clear, green gaze. “What are we going to do with her? I don’t trust her not to harm us while we sleep.”
“Humph. Maybe something in her trunks will tell us more.” Even his mind voice sounded dour. It was obvious, if he had things his way, he’d simply murder the girl, douse her in mage fire so she stayed dead, and be done with it.
“Good idea. With everything that’s happened, I nearly forgot about the trunks.”
No matter how appalled Abigail was by the dark luring children to serve them, she didn’t want to have to kill Carolyn unless there weren’t any other options. The girl had gotten sucked into something far too sophisticated for her to understand. Maybe Goody Osborne really had possessed her—but it was more likely the child had been a street urchin, eager for the promise of hot meals and soft beds…
Maybe she really is the Girauds’ child out for revenge—or power.
“Come on.” Luke put a hand on each of her shoulders and shook her lightly. “You’ll never get it sorted out. There’re too many what ifs. I’ll get the steamer trunks down and move them into the coach, one at a time.”
Closeted in the stagecoach, Abigail used magic to defeat the locking mechanism on the last trunk. The first two had proven to be the ones she’d packed back in New York. Luke checked for hidden panels, but found nothing.
“What are you doing?” Carolyn screeched, catapulting into the coach. “Those are mine. Why are my other trunks outside in the dirt?”
“You will leave now.” Luke’s voice held compulsion. The girl’s slight frame rocked backward before she turned to climb down. “Won’t hold her for long,” he said to Abigail. “Best hurry.”
She pushed the lid up; it creaked on unhappy hinges. Her mouth fell open and she drew back, feeling the bite of foul magic immediately. The trunk was full of ancient books. If they were all like the ones on top, they dealt with arcane magick, and the Black Arts.
“No wonder it was so heavy.” Luke reached out a hand and turned a leather-bound volume on its side. Alchemy for Dark Wizards, Volume I, sprang into view in gilt lettering, edged with red. His mouth set in a hard line, he picked it up and flipped it open.
“Go ahead, look through it.” Carolyn’s face was framed in the open doorway. Her lips were parted and spots of color rode high on both cheeks. “That’s one of my favorites. You can read to me.” She paused. “I like it when men read to me, probably ’cause my daddy read to me a lot.”
Abigail blanched at the fascination in the child’s voice. When she turned to stare at her, she was horrified to see Carolyn bouncing up and down, vibrating with eagerness to hear a tale fraught with evil. “Luke—” she began, but he’d noticed too and dropped the book. It made a slithery, slapping sound before the thud of the trunk lid slamming shut drowned it out.
“Oh.” Carolyn’s voice bled disappointment. “You’ve gone and closed it.” An uncomfortable look flitted across her features. “What I said about Daddy… He’d read me school books and such.”
Feeling ill, Abigail opened her mouth to try to talk with the girl, but Carolyn turned and fled. Abigail gathered her skirts close and started out the door. “I hate the idea of her next to me, but we can’t just let her run off.”
Luke latched a hand around her arm. “We can catch her later,” he muttered. “Devil’s spawn. There’ll be no saving that one.” He eyed Abigail, a resigned expression on his face.
She tried to shake off his hand, but he held tight. “I really think I ought to—”
“Stay put. Please.” He softened his tone. “We need to talk.”
She stared at the place Carolyn had disappeared over a draw and sucked in a tense breath before meeting Luke’s gaze. “I suppose you’re right. How hard could it be to track a child? Frankly, I’m more worried about the parents. Whose side are they on?”
“She already told you she’s not theirs.”
“And then she told me she’d lied.” Abigail hesitated a beat. “I’m fairly certain she’s a Giraud because I used magic just now to check.” She frowned and bit back a string of curses at what a mess this had turned into. “I didn’t get all that far inside her, but far enough to sense the parents’ blood. And something else too.” She blew out a harsh breath. “The more I think about it, the more I believe Goody Osborne possessed her. It’s the only explanation th
at makes sense.”
Luke shook his head and a resolute expression hardened his features. “It doesn’t matter. We need to find her and…alter things. Did you see that unnatural hunger in her eyes? I’ve known kids like that before. Can’t salvage ’em. Waste of good magic to try.”
“Yes. You already said that.” Abigail closed her eyes. Something about having all those books right next to her did odd things to her mind. The trunk must have been spelled to contain their wickedness, but enough had leaked out to make her light-headed. She gripped the hand guides and helped herself down from the stagecoach.
“Come on.” He followed her out and took her arm, but she shook him off.
“There’s nothing so urgent we have to act in the next ten minutes,” she argued. “I need to think. I’m tired and hungry. Besides, I don’t know a thing about you other than that you have magic.”
He pulled a battered, leather wallet out of a pocket. From within its folds, he extracted a thin, wooden card. It had two five-pointed stars encased in circles with a triangle scribed about everything. The unmistakable signature of their founder scrawled across the triangle from lower left to upper right in faded red, which was likely blood. Luke flipped the card over. His name was engraved across the back. She recognized the insignia, felt power ooze from the slender piece of sacred balsam wood. Coven enforcers carried those. She narrowed her eyes. “I thought I knew all the enforcers.”
He shrugged. “Guess you missed me.”
“Is that why you picked this stage? To protect the Girauds’ child?”
He looked at her for a long while. “You know I can’t answer questions about Coven business. I wouldn’t have identified myself, but I need for you to trust me. I can take care of the girl by myself, but it would be easier if you helped.” Balancing on the upper stagecoach step, he heaved the book trunk back onto the roof and barked a command to seal it from prying eyes.
By the time he stood before her again, she’d made up her mind. Swallowing her reservations, she set off on foot with Luke in search of Carolyn. They hunted for hours, magical senses on full alert, with no sign of her. “Goddammit! She went to ground and shrouded herself.” Luke pulled the black cloak he’d tossed over his leathers closer about himself. “It pains me to admit it, but you were right about going after her earlier. She’s had too long to cover her trail.”
Abigail glanced at the moonlit terrain, all shadows and scrub oak and sagebrush. “I need to eat something and sleep. I don’t have enough magic left to call a mage light.” She shivered. Once she’d stopped moving, the chilly night air sank into her bones. Lots of places hurt too. She hadn’t been able to spare any magic to fix herself up since right after the wraith attack.
He nodded, draped an arm around her shoulders, and steered her back toward the stage station. The stationmaster had told them they could sleep on the floor of the office with him, but the coach at least had cushions. Luke helped her inside and Abigail dug some nuts and dried fruit out of her valise. She chewed automatically and washed everything down with half a water skin.
“Here.” He handed her a silver flask. Whiskey burned as it tracked down her throat to her stomach, but it warmed her, too. “Sleep. I’ll take first watch.”
“She’s not anywhere near here,” Abigail protested. “We hunted for hours. You could probably get some rest.”
Luke shook his head. “Nope. She’s around. I feel it. Soon as we bed down, she’ll show herself, hopefully not with reinforcements, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Wake me.” Blackness closed about her almost before the words were out.
Chapter Two
Luke listened to the rise and fall of Abigail’s breathing. Even asleep, tension fairly bled from her, and he sent threads of magic to soften her agitation. The current turn of events was damned upsetting. The child, Carolyn, reminded him of an older version of Tamra, in appearance more than actions, but still… For her to look so much like his sister and be chockfull of wickedness was unnerving. His current assignment from the Coven was to guard Carolyn against harm on her journey, a duty he’d been ambivalent about since getting on the stagecoach and sensing the girl’s disturbing dual nature.
He’d traveled a long road since that hideous morning in the Waverlys’ living room when he’d discovered his favorite sister was dead. At first he’d thought it a kindness for Aethelred to take him in, but the mage quickly disabused him of that notion. The older man’s primary interest in him was honing his magic to the sharpest possible edge. “There’s a war coming,” he’d told Luke. “There won’t be near enough of us, so each of us’ll have to do the work of ten.”
Luke shook his head and stifled a sigh, lest he wake the woman across from him. One of Aethelred’s talents was prophecy. Luke had spent ten years with him. In that time, wraiths had turned from an occasional annoyance to an outright scourge. Their alliance with black magick, the kind spelled with a “k” at the end, lent them an even more unnatural power. When he and Tamra cowered in the cave near his home, scared half to death, fire provided a hedge. Not anymore. Wraiths not only weren’t afraid of fire, they used it as a weapon regularly. And not just those who’d been dead for a while. Newly turned wraiths were just as likely to burn their enemies as those who’d been dead for a hundred years.
His thoughts returned to Aethelred. He’d resented the old man once he’d discovered if it weren’t for his magic, the wizard would have left him with the Waverlys, but then he’d grown up. What had wakened in him that awful night when he was fifteen was shockingly powerful. If it hadn’t been for Aethelred, he might have gone mad. As it was, he’d cried himself to sleep many a night, a thin pillow stuffed into his mouth to muffle the sound. Magic raced through him like lightning, setting his teeth on edge and his nerves on fire. He’d railed against it, tried to jam it back into whatever box it came from, but nothing worked.
One long, winter night after he’d been with the wizard for more than a year, Aethelred had come into his room. It was one of the bad times, and Luke’s pillow was wet from his tears. Usually, he did a better job controlling them, but that night things had gotten away from him, maybe because he’d visited the Waverlys, and his sisters, and seen the house all decked out for the upcoming Christmas holiday. It had driven home the fact he’d never have a family again, or anyone to care about him. It wasn’t that Lily and Marta had forgotten him, but they’d settled into the Waverlys’ household. Despite Joad’s words about keeping up both farms until Luke returned, he knew he’d never be back—and so did Joad.
His narrow cot had creaked when Aethelred balanced on its edge. “I’m sorry,” the wizard said. “I wish it were different, but it isn’t, and it never will be. You are…altered and it sets you apart from everyone you ever loved.”
Luke sat up then and called a mage light, one of the first magics he’d learned and by far the easiest. He didn’t try to hide his tear-blotched face. “I don’t begrudge them moving on…” His voice faded, because it wasn’t true. Not really.
Aethelred narrowed his eyes. “In a corner of your soul, you do, though. Change is hard. You didn’t just lose your folks that night, and the one sister. You lost your family, and the reality of that is just now sinking in.”
Luke’s throat thickened, but he’d pushed past it. “They looked at me funny when I was visiting today. Like they didn’t quite trust who—or what—I am.”
“They don’t,” Aethelred spoke flatly. “Those without magic don’t trust us. What we can do makes them uncomfortable.” He heaved a sigh and quirked a shrewd brow. “Remember how you felt about me? And not so very long ago.”
Luke had winced. He did remember, and it wasn’t pretty, but reality often wasn’t. It was one of the things he’d learned that he wished he hadn’t. He opened his mouth, but the wizard waved him to silence. “I had a family once. A wife and children, since my power came to me much later than yours.” He blew out a haunted-sounding breath. “I still remember the day Hagan, my wife, told me she was g
oing back to her folks—and taking our children with her. Magic terrified her.”
Luke stared at Aethelred then, really seeing his mentor for the first time. Puzzle sections clacked into place, but the result wasn’t very attractive and he felt ashamed. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and forced his next words. “I’ve been so sunk in feeling sorry for myself, and wishing my life hadn’t gone to hell, I haven’t appreciated much of anything you’ve given me.” Remorse swamped him. “I’m sorry. Truly I am.”
Aethelred held up a hand. “Stop. You owe me nothing, least of all apologies. We were part of something bigger than both of us when you lost your sister and your folks. Never forget that. The goddess brought you to my door that night, and then she chivied me out after you. So long as evil lurks, there will be those like us to fight it.” The wizard had leaned close. “If we die out, there’ll be no hope for humankind.”
Luke came back to himself and looked around the dark stagecoach. He’d turned a corner that night in his little room under the eaves in Aethelred’s rambling house and learned to focus on what was important. The boy in him died, making room for the man he’d become. He’d developed his magic, embraced it for the gift it was, and helped tutor Aethelred’s students. None of them had much ability, but he’d found grace and patience for those less skilled than he.
On his twenty-fifth birthday, the wizard had given him a horse and told him it was high time he made his way in the world. He’d known the day would come, welcomed it because it meant he’d be leaving the relative safety of Aethelred’s compound and testing his mettle against whatever fortune threw at him.
He’d freelanced for a while, and then the Coven had hired him as an undercover enforcer, which was why Abigail hadn’t recognized him. It was useful for the organization to have those like him—and there were an even dozen—to do jobs the Coven needed to distance itself from. He hadn’t been slated to keep an eye on the Girauds’ child, but the man who’d drawn that duty had been killed in an unexpected skirmish.