by K. J. Emrick
The door flew open as if a battering ram had slammed into it, banging off the wall with the sound of a firecracker popping. Great, Addie thought to herself. Now she was going to have to have the wall repaired, as well as this door.
“Oh, hey,” she heard Darla saying. “I was meaning to tell you about that door.”
She was over by the stove, leaning one hip against the counter with her arms crossed. There was that same smile on her face, too.
Addie frowned at the door, closed it again, opened it again. It seemed fine now. “What’s wrong with it?” she asked Darla.
“Oh, it just sticks at the worst times. It’s been doing it for a while now, actually. Darned thing,” she chuckled. “Just about trapped me in there earlier. Thought I was going to need magic to get it open again. Is that what happened to you?”
There it was again. The feeling that Darla knew that Addie could use magic.
Behind her, the light came on again in the supply room.
In the brighter light, Addie watched Darla’s shadow shift along the floor.
Well, the door was working, and Addie had her sage. No reason to stick around any longer. “Are you okay here?” she asked Darla.
That smile slipped until it was almost a sneer. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Good. Then I’ll see you in a few hours. Um. Lock up if you decide to leave, okay?”
“I know my job,” she grumbled, and then turned away, her shadow lengthening again.
“You’re the best employee I’ve ever had here,” Addie reassured her. “You’ve been a great friend, too. Thanks, Darla. I’ve got to get back to my sisters. You’re sure you’re okay here?”
A ripple passed over Darla’s face. “Yes, Addie. I’ll be fine… thank you, too.”
Then she left the kitchen, her shadow following along behind her in the light.
Something was really going on with her, Addie decided. She’d have to spend some time finding out what it was. Later. Right now she had to get back to her sisters, just like she’d said.
Behind her, in the supply room, the light went out again.
Chapter 8
At the top of the tower at Stonecrest was a room that only the sisters could access.
Not many people, human or otherwise, could even get into the house without invitation. Those who did manage to get into the house, would never get up here. This was where the real magic happened.
Heh. Witch humor.
Just a week ago, Addie had seen an entity of some sort within the walls of Stonecrest. It had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and she still had no idea how it had gotten in, or how it had gotten out. It could have snuck in while it was attached to someone, she supposed, even on one of the sisters if they weren’t paying attention like they should. So, she supposed it could have snuck out on someone as well.
But… who?
That was a question for another time. One more in an ever-growing pile. Right now, they had work to do.
The Family Circle was here, in this room, inlaid into the polished hardwood floor. There were three lines of thick copper wire that created a perfect circle, twelve feet across. Coils of silver and gold were braided around the copper in perfect symmetry, and the whole circle had been sealed in place with an acid-cured finish. This was a focusing circle designed to enhance their natural abilities. Every good coven had at least one.
Coven was a term that called up images of Halloween, and naked women chanting in the woods, and demons leaping in the moonlight. The reality was far from what Hollywood had painted it. A coven of witches was simply a group of like-minded women who could combine and access the Essence of the magics within themselves. Shared power equaled greater power. At its basic core, however, a coven was family.
Individually, the Kilorian sisters were strong. Together, they were nearly unstoppable.
In each of the four corners of the room were five-foot-tall beeswax candles. Wax from years of use had dripped down the sides in irregular runoff and pooled at each candle’s base, sticking them firmly to the floor. A fat, square candle just a few inches high had been set in the exact center of the Circle. With a wave of her hand, Kiera set all five of them alight.
Herbs and special plants grew in their places on shelves hung just below the edge of the slanted, peaked ceiling, growing and alive and spreading their own sort of Essence throughout the room. Maybe they should have some sage plants growing here, Addie thought to herself. It would mean they wouldn’t run out next time they needed some.
Dried sage worked just as well as fresh. What Addie had brought from the Hot Cauldron was for reforming the barrier line in front of the door. Mixed with salt and a few other things, it was part of the special magic that kept out anyone except the sisters.
The three of them stood, equidistant from each other, letting their Essence flow into the Circle at their feet.
As they chanted the ancient words of power their magic built upon itself, more and more, until it reached a pitch that was almost audible. They could feel the Circle close as Kiera spoke the final incantation.
“Bee cooidjaghtys fys cooinaghtyn as graih ain reesht.”
The air around them snapped with blue light, from floor to ceiling, for just an instant. Then the Circle was ready.
Through their connected magic they could feel each other like an extension of their own self. They could feel their thoughts, and their emotions, and sensations that had no words to describe them. Addie felt Willow’s annoyance at how long this was taking. She felt Kiera’s calm determination to do what was right.
What she felt from herself, mostly, was exhaustion. It had been a long day, and she was very tired.
“As are we all,” Kiera assured her. “So then. Let’s begin.”
The sisters silently agreed, and began the spell, lifting their hands and placing thumbs to pinkies to create a focal point for their Essence to flow through.
Inside the circle, at the exact point of the center, the air began to shimmer. Into that disturbance in space and time each sister threaded a little bit of their life force. It appeared as colored mist rising forth and coalescing from each of them, tendrils of wispy magic colored to match their innermost self. Kiera, a deep purple. Willow, a sensuous pink streaked through with a shy yellow. Addie, a pearlescent blue-green.
Together, they cast their thoughts toward Eugene Forrester. The scrying would find him, if he was within the range of their magic.
The circle remained hazy and full of multicolored shadows.
Eugene was nowhere to be found.
“That’s impossible,” Willow said, unnecessarily. Each of the sisters knew what the magic could do. They knew its limitations. This should have been a simple matter for them to accomplish.
Yet they were literally drawing a blank.
Just like when they had searched for Alan, Addie thought. Kiera’s missing son was still missing. The scrying hadn’t found him either.
She was aware that Kiera had heard her thoughts. There was no help for it, not when they were connected like this through the magic. They were all thinking it, in fact, and Addie heard the echoes of uncertainty murmuring through their link.
“Are we doing something wrong?” Willow asked. “Is the warranty expired on our Circle or something? Do these things even have warranties?”
“No,” Kiera said flatly. “They do not. We are doing the spell correctly.”
“Then what’s wrong? Why won’t it work?” Willow scrunched her face up, a motion that rippled through the bond of their life force. “Do you think he’s already gone further than we can see?”
“Impossible,” Kiera insisted. “A man walks at a speed of between four to six miles an hour. Running he would be faster, granted, but he wouldn’t be able to maintain a runner’s speed for more than a few miles and then he would be back to walking.”
Willow pushed her Essence out further, to its very limits. “It’s been a few hours already.”
“I know,” Kiera said.
“Which puts him well within our combined range, no matter which way he went. We should at least be able to see where he’s been.”
Addie knew that was true. The man had to go somewhere after he left Pendulum Lodge. With their magic they could see the trail of his energy. Or at least, they should have been able to. They should be able to peel back the hours, back to when they had arrived there with Herman, and then back further to when the murder happened. Somewhere in that time frame Eugene had to have gone… somewhere.
Try as they might, they could not find any trace of his leaving.
“So what does this mean?” Willow asked.
The obvious answer resonated through the circle, from one sister to the other, and it was impossible to know in their linked state who had thought of it first.
If there was no trace of Eugene leaving the lodge, then he must still be there.
Only, that wasn’t possible either. The sisters had searched all of Pendulum Lodge with their magic for any living soul. Eugene would be able to hide from the police, but not from them. The only people at the lodge who weren’t dead like Danny were not-Eileen, and Dahlia, and Christine, and poor Rosemary.
Danny didn’t count because dead people didn’t have a life force to trace.
Willow began tapping her foot, sending a tremor through the mixing tendrils of their colored magic within the circle. “Are we sure,” she asked aloud, “that there is no magic at work here? No paranormal beings or powers of any kind?”
“As sure as we can be,” Addie said. “We saw through the Masquerade not-Eileen was wearing but if you’ll remember, last week we missed a similar trick when Belladonna disguised herself.”
“That really was magic,” Kiera pointed out, “and Belladonna hadn’t been disguising herself for nearly as long as not-Eileen had. Oh, my. ‘Not-Eileen?’ Is that really what we’re calling her?”
Willow giggled. “That’s what Addie’s been calling her. I think it fits nicely, don’t you?”
Kiera smiled, a rare sight these days. “Yes, I suppose it does. Well. We have to leave ourselves open to the possibility that Eugene does have magic of some kind, then. I don’t see any other explanation for why we can’t find him.”
“There is another possibility,” Willow pointed out. “He might have actually taken a car away from the lodge. Certain metals are hard for our magic to penetrate, and a car could have taken him well outside our scrying range by now.”
Addie shook her head. The magic in the circle reacted with a mini cyclone. “We asked about that, remember? Dahlia said there weren’t any cars missing.”
“That she knows of,” Willow snarked. “Just because she’s a private investigator doesn’t mean she’s as smart as she thinks she is. She is just a Typic, after all.”
Addie glared at her, and sent an image of Gary through their link, directed at Willow.
Willow sent her back an image of Lucian, smiling that smile of his.
In the Circle, their magics formed smoky knots around each other.
“Enough, Sisters,” Kiera warned them. “We have work to do…”
They were surprised when an image snapped into perfect clarity in the Circle. The image of a young man with curly auburn hair and piercing blue eyes. Someone they all recognized. Someone they had already been searching for now for a week.
Alan Pierson.
His face was bruised and cut. Blood was smeared and dried across his forehead. The accident, Addie realized. He was hurt, and he was lost. How did he show up in their circle now?
“I’m sorry,” Kiera suddenly blubbered. “I was thinking of him like you were thinking of the ones you care about and his image just appeared. I didn’t mean for this… I didn’t mean to…”
She trailed off as Alan’s eyes turned to focus on her directly.
“Mom?”
Then the image was gone, the connection snapped apart so suddenly and so violently that the magic of the Circle blew apart. A percussive force threw each of the sisters backwards as cold flames spread over their heads and dispersed again.
Addie lost her footing entirely and landed hard on her hip, her hands barking against the polished wooden floor. Pain jarred through her bones. There were going to be bruises tomorrow.
On the other side of the Circle, Willow was just getting back to her feet. The only one of them to remain standing had been Kiera. She stared into the middle of the Circle, reaching out for an image of her lost son that had shattered to ethereal pieces and then into nothing at all.
“He was there.” Kiera’s voice broke. The sound of it nearly crushed Addie’s heart. “That was him. You saw the way he spoke to me. That was really him. He was right there and… he knew who I was. He couldn’t know me. He’s never seen me before. Not since he was a baby. How could he know who I was?”
Addie could feel her sister’s emotions pouring out of her. They were sharp edged and dark and for once, she was glad the three of them weren’t linked. Just having them brush against her mind was bad enough without experiencing them firsthand.
“I don’t understand.” A shaky breath escaped from between Kiera’s trembling lips and she dropped to her knees, her hands falling flat against the floor in front of her. “I don’t understand.”
Willow got to her feet again, and came over to offer a hand to help Addie up. Together they went over to Kiera, putting their hands on her shoulders, lending her their life force as the tears began to fall in earnest. She reached up, her fingers touching Addie’s gently.
“I have to find him,” she said.
“You will,” Addie promised her.
“How? How, Sister Addie? Tell me that!” She grasped at the air, clawing at the tattered remains of the magic floating through the room. “How can we find him, when we can’t even find Eugene? We’ve been searching for that man for less than an hour and we’ve been looking for my son for a week! Where is he? Where is he!”
When she ran out of breath, when she ran out of words, she doubled over with her arms crossed over her chest, and sobbed.
Addie and Willow held her while she cried. It was a long time before she could pull herself together and when she did, her face could have been chiseled from stone. She stood up with a deep breath. She tugged her brown robe back into line on her shoulders. She straightened the belt. She picked at imaginary pieces of fuzz on her sleeves.
Once again, she had her emotions back in their box.
“I’m sorry, sisters,” she told them, swiping the moisture from her cheeks with her fingertips. “I didn’t mean to let that unsettle me so.”
Willow crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “This is your son, Kiera. We understand. Imagine what Mom and Dad would have done if they had ever lost one of us.” She laughed softly at the thought of it. “There wouldn’t be any force in Heaven or on Earth that would keep them from finding us. You’re a lot like them.”
Kiera favored her with something close to a smile. “Yes, they would. How would you know that, Sister Willow? You were so young when our parents left this mortal coil.”
“I know. You’re right. I was very young, but everything I remember about them… I see in you.”
Addie felt a lump form in her throat. Willow was always so self-absorbed, so caught up in what she desired for herself, but then, every once in a while, she would go and say something like that and they could all be a regular family again for just one moment in time.
Kiera’s stalwart expression cracked, and she threw her arms around Willow and held her tight. “Thank you. You will never know how much that means to me.”
“Yeah, well. What good is being sisters if you can’t remind each other that everyone turns into their parents eventually? You’re just doing it quicker than most.”
“A-a-and, she’s back,” Addie teased. “Can we reform the Circle? We need to find Eugene. I think we might have better luck looking for Alan now, too. We’ll find him, Kiera. Even if we have to ask Alan’s father for help.”
“Yes,” Willow added enth
usiastically. “I haven’t ever met your ex. Don’t you think we should at least tell him his son is missing?”
Kiera obviously did not like that idea. At all. “No. I do not want to involve him,” she said. After a moment, she changed that to, “At least, not yet.”
Addie could understand at least some of Kiera’s reasons for that. After all, her ex was a fallen angel. Not the sort of someone you invited over for Sunday brunch. Smart people avoided having anything to do with them at all.
Which really piqued Addie’s curiosity. Her sister Kiera had done a lot more than socialize with her fallen angel. She’d produced a child with him. As hard as she tried to imagine that, she had a feeling that nothing she could picture would ever do the real story justice.
And some of the things she’d imagined had been rather… torrid.
For now, none of that mattered. It was Kiera’s decision to include Alan’s father, or not to include him. If she didn’t want him around then the sisters would just have to take care of the situation on their own. “We’ll find Alan,” she promised again. “It’s just going to take time.”
Kiera reached out to place her hand against Addie’s cheek. “When you say it like that, I can almost believe you.”
“Faith is the evidence of things not seen. No one knows that better than a witch.”
“Hmm. Do you suppose St. Paul the Apostle had us in mind when he wrote that?”
Addie took her sister’s hand in hers. “Kiera, I don’t think anyone ever imagined the likes of us.”
Willow snorted out a laugh at that, which made Addie laugh, and Kiera relaxed enough to smile with them. It felt good to be able to disperse the bad feelings that had been building in the room. This was what their family was all about. An Irish family will argue and fight, as it was said, but let a shout come from without and just watch them unite.
They turned back to the Circle, preparing to do the ritual all over again, taking their positions around the perimeter. Lifting their arms, they placed thumbs to pinkies. Kiera relit the candles with a wave of her hand. The sisters sent their Essence flowing outward to the scrying...