Halfway Dead (Halfway Witchy Book 1)

by Terry Maggert

  I sketched out Jim Dietrich’s presence, his purpose for being in Halfway, and my thoughts on Major Pickford.

  Gran curled her lip in displeasure. “Have you considered the possibility that this Major Pickford isn’t human?”

  “Yes, but he might be a simple thief.” That seemed to be plausible as well, although given the paranormal activity surrounding Halfway, anything was possible. “It’s a lot of money.”

  “True,” Gran said, drawing the word out and adding an element of doubt. “But what if it isn’t about money at all?”

  I looked at Gran sharply. It was an idea that had passed through my thoughts like a will o’ the Wisp, too. It’s easy to be cynical and assume that something nefarious is happening because of money. But witches don’t think like that. When living in the magical world, motivations become skewed by power. Or revenge. Even, on rare occasions, love.

  “I thought the same thing, Gran. But I can’t figure an angle,” I said.

  Gran traced shapes on the table with one long finger. “Have you cast a spell?”

  “No, but I will. Tonight. There’s enough moon for what I want, and I feel like something is under the surface of this whole story. I think that I was meant to find Erasmus, and maybe this entire nonsense about the trees is a vessel to sail me there. To him, to bring him home,” I said.

  She looked out at the afternoon sun, a glorious array just beginning its slide over the western hills. “I couldn’t see anything, and I tried last night. This morning, too. There’s some element of uncertainty, and I know it’s out there.” Her lips pressed together, and for a moment, she look tired. Keeping Halfway safe for all these years had been taxing.

  I took her hand, and it was warm. The comfort of her presence spread through me like the first day of summer, and we both smiled. I could hear Gus bumbling away underneath the table; he’d positioned himself as close to her feet as possible. Gus was no fool. He knew who held the can opener.

  “Before you ask, I’ll be careful, but I’ll be gone for at least two days . . . maybe three. You know the general area, but in the event I don’t come back . . .” I let the sentence die in my throat. It was too strange to say aloud. Gran smiled, and this time it was a warning for persons unseen.

  “I’ll turn the mountains to dust if you come to harm, Carlie.” Her voice was like stone. I believed every word of it. Her power was frightening, even though she controlled it with ease.

  “I know, Gran. I just want to do what’s right, and try not to bring harm to us. Or, to here,” I said with a wave.

  She nodded again, the heat in her eyes cooling, but only just. “Whoever is playing about over a grove of trees will be unmasked, and when that happens, you must preserve yourself first. Thendara is an old place. See to it that your eyes remain open at all times.”

  I considered her warning, and took it to heart. “I will. I leave in the morning, and with any kind of blessings, I’ll be home with answers, and perhaps closure for Erasmus.”

  “Do that, and then we’ll worry about the imposter named Major Pickford.” Gran’s voice chilled me, and I decided that whoever he was, Major had crossed a line from which there was no return.

  The moon was well up when I sat, cross legged and breathing easily on my trusty kitchen floor. I felt that peculiar lightness as the spell built within my bones, a beautiful kind of vertigo that transforms my spirit and frees me from my own mind. I considered the moonlight as it moved across my scrying dish. The ancient black bowl was filled with salted water I’d had under the moonlight since the third quarter; to that I added hyssop and the wilted petals of roses. The surface was mirror smooth and caught the night sky perfectly.

  I let a long breath flow smoothly from my lips, and focused on the surface of the bowl. When my chest began to flutter, the first images crawled across the water like a diorama of woven starlight. First, there was gloom that could only be the forest at dawn. A series of shapes moved through the—chestnuts? It looked like the grove, I decided, then watched as a small figure edged toward the tumbled stones that had been Bentley’s dig site. Was that me? I thought so, although I was barefoot and holding a staff of some sort. I looked to the wobbling edges of the scene as it began to break up, seeing nothing dramatic until two, then three more shapes began to crowd the scene. The woman, if it was me, turned over a flat stone to reveal a small, white skull that was missing its jaw. There were marks on the bone, as if it had been carved, and then the image faltered. I softened my intensity and let my hands fall loose, and the waters of the bowl cleared again.

  One of the figures, a man—yes, it had to be a man, he walked too broadly, with too much heft—charged the woman. Charged me. I wanted to cry out, but my training kept me silent until the two figures were nearly touching, their poses rigid with anger. He raised a cudgel, its woody knots gleaming with polish, and swung it at her head—

  My phone rang, and I squeaked in shock. I looked back to the bowl, now a shattered pastiche of fragments, like a small pond raked by a hard wind. The scrying was ruined, my own lack of discipline to blame. I swore softly and lifted the phone to my ear.

  “Carlie?” It was a male whisper, barely audible. It was also familiar, but so soft I strained to hear.

  I found myself whispering back. “Who is this?”

  There was a long pause, and a rush of breathing. It was fearful, and I grew cold listening to it. “It’s Brendan.” Again, a long pause. I heard the smallest noise of footsteps on hard wood, then nothing. “I have a stupid question to ask you. Wait a minute, don’t answer.” The footsteps came again, heels thumping lightly across wood, then faded again.

  “Brendan, you’re scaring me. What is it?” I did not have time to wait if he was in danger.

  “Umm, are you on my back porch, dressed up like a . . . well, in a black dress and boots?” He paused again, and his breathing quickened once more. The footsteps returned, then faded, but this time more slowly.

  My blood went to ice. “Brendan, listen to me very carefully. Take your phone, and go into your cellar as quietly as you can.” He lived two blocks from me, and I was already on the move. “Do not open your door until I tell you a safe word, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Umm, what’s the safe word?”

  “You know that place I was looking for? Don’t say it out loud. That’s the word,” I said as I gained speed. I was barefoot and running at full tilt now, my feet barely touching the pavement. I could see his house as he said yes and we hung up.

  I ran in a soundless fury after casting a spell of silence on my body. My legs are short, but anger pushed me into a streaking rush until I pulled up three houses from Brendan’s tidy bungalow, letting my breathing normalize with a few great drafts of the cool night air. A single sodium light burned overhead one house down from my position next to a looming clump of birch trees.

  I glared at the light, then muttered, “Mall scáth.”

  A nebulous shadow crept over the streetlight, and the area began to dim gradually. It wouldn’t due to merely cause the lamp to explode; I wanted some degree of surprise for who or whatever was lurking on Brendan’s porch. I was barefoot, and my soles tingled from the run across gravel and pavement, but I pushed the discomfort from my mind and opened my senses to the scene before me.

  I heard it first. A low, short creak of the boards on the side porch gave away something moving with incredible delicacy, and my eyes zeroed in on a dark patch that seemed to flow from one window to the next. It was looking for a way in. A quiet way, I decided, and my witchmark began to flood my neck with a heat that could only mean danger. I flicked both hands outward, fingers spread, and spells at the ready. I knew nothing, except that Brendan was in danger, and I was still unseen.

  Good enough for me, I thought, and began running across the dew-slicked lawn with both hands held before me. As my feet hit the smooth wood of the porch, the woman turned, her eyes a seething red in a face of inhumanly blank whiteness.

  “Wrong house,
love.” I released the bolt of sunlight dead into the creature’s chest, blasting her backward with the force of an oncoming truck. I’m not big, but I hit hard.

  She skidded across the boards before crashing headfirst into the decorative spindles, shattering four of them with her skull in a spectacular spray of wood chips and blue light. Without stopping, I shouted a cantrip of cold to slow whatever she might be, but not fast enough. Before my second spell hit, I knew she was not human. Her feet hit the porch, and I took a horrendous punch in my stomach, sending white stars flickering across my vision like I was in a vintage cartoon. I heard a hiss and mumble of something in a tongue even I didn’t recognize, and felt my eyes clear just as the second blow caught me clean in the neck.

  Big mistake. The creature’s hand hit my witchmark, and a shockwave of golden light raced up her, or him, or whatever it was, terminating by setting its hair on fire with a muffled whoomp.

  “Now it’s a fight,” I muttered, then saved my breath for another spell. To keep my opponent busy, I stomped on its foot with my heel, and heard a satisfying squeal like an enraged piglet. In that brief second, my next spell was ready.

  “Cnámh clack!” I shouted, loud enough that my ears were ringing, and the beastie began to stiffen, but not before catching me with another one of those damned hard punches. This one clipped my elbow and my whole arm went dead, a chill running up into my shoulder like I’d lain in the grave for a week. My silence spell had failed, and, with it, the additional bubble of magical protection. I was now open to all manner of attack, and apparently loud enough to blow my own eardrums out. I was hit again, a thunderous punch to the side of my nose. Stars shot through my vision in a brilliant spray, and I felt the cartilage shift. Blood flew from my nostril and I spun, halfway, thinking that I might not win this one.

  I staggered, then righted myself like a floundering ship. My spell was currently turning the skeleton of the creature before me into something like stone; it wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, and I could ask a few questions while I shook off the chill—

  —Aha! I’d been touched by a wight. The cold, the numbness—it all added up to a rather nasty variety of undead who almost never came after people in their own homes. Wights are antisocial by nature, and this one appeared to be relatively fresh, if I’m any judge of magical hooligans. She still had vestiges of makeup on her face, and could not have been dead for more than a few days at most.

  The wight collapsed to one side and folded conveniently for me to kneel next to her without moving my feet. That was good, because I was already sore. I couldn’t imagine how crappy I’d feel in the morning. I sensed a healing tea in my future, preferably after a few hours’ sleep. With a grunt, I settled next to the creature, who was trying to hiss at me and having more than a little trouble. My spell had some punch.

  “Who sent you?” I asked, getting right to the point. Wights tend to eat people; they don’t necessarily go on excursions in town without someone else calling the tune.

  She turned her head from me, and a gray tongue lolled to one side. I felt a wave of uneasy anger. This woman had once been quite pretty. She still looked young, maybe late teens.

  I placed a hand near her eyes and began a low, complex chant. Wights, being dead, generally have fairly low cognitive capacity. I like to think of them as exceptionally nasty teenagers who like to bite people. There was confusion in her eyes, and I sensed a geas upon her. Someone had pointed this poor, dead woman at Brendan for reasons unknown, then placed a spell of silence upon her. If there was any spark of the girl left in this wight, I could only imagine the howling frustration at being turned into a repulsive, dead tool, incapable of speaking the truth. My spell concluded, and I waved my fingers near her mouth, which hung slack from my earlier magic that slowed her so badly.

  A shower of carmine sparks rained into her mouth, and the area they touched became free of both my magic and the geas holding her prisoner. Whoever I was up against knew nothing about keeping a wight silent; the magic had been badly formed and was easy to circumvent.

  She turned her head to me incrementally as my spell allowed her body to regain some degree of control. I wasn’t afraid of her attacking me again, so I leaned close when she tried to speak.

  Her voice was a gravel whisper. “Nurse.” Two eyes bore into mine, begging me to understand.

  I let my eyes roam over her body, but there was nothing indicting she was referring to herself. “You were a nurse?” That was unlikely, given the apparent youth under her deathly pallor.

  “N-o-o . . . ” she stammered in a painful ratcheting series of sounds that were more cough than word. “Nurs-seee.” Her eyelids flickered rapidly over orbs that were milky with decay. Her small shoulders lifted in frustration, and one arm flipped back and forth slightly. She was angry. “Grooooowwww.” The last word came out in a fetid blast of air. Her lungs were ripe, and I began to feel the beginnings of a dangerous rage. Someone had done this to the girl.

  I leaned back on my haunches, rocking in thought. She wasn’t a nurse, but she was growing. Or had grown.

  I snapped my fingers. “Nursery? Like babies? You worked with babies?” I watched her eyes dim again, followed by a slackening of her facial muscles. She was fading away from my spell. I needed an answer, and fast.

  “No bay-beees.” One last jerk of her small chin.

  Okay, no babies then. I looked around, feeling the chill air of the night descend on me as my heart slowed. The shadow of the forest loomed not far from Brendan’s house. I pointed to the bulky trees that stood in silhouette against the stars. “Trees? Plants? You worked in a nursery?”

  A look of triumph crossed her stiffening features, then the skin of her lips began to flake like shale. She was almost gone. With a last push of her calcified chest, the girl pushed air out into the night. Her epitaph was only four words.

  “He maaade me therrrre.” Then she was gone.

  I rose, wiping my hands across the sweaty fabric of my shirt. The girl was rigid in true death. In a few moments, my spell would fail and she would revert to what was a more natural state. Tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t stop the sense of waste. It was always like this when innocent people were killed by magic, and I had no doubt that this girl had been a mere bystander. Something bad was in Thendara, and I knew the nursery would be there, in the deepest recesses of the forest. Somehow, there were chestnuts soaring over a place of such blackness that I feared what might happen if their seeds were taken into the wider world. I had to question everything I knew—which was precious little—about all the players in this search for secrets. Was Ava a willing agent of evil? Who the hell was Major Pickford, or was he just a common thief? If Ava knew what she was seeking, and the risks associated, could Jim Dietrich be far behind?

  Just how far from shore were these people, and before I began using my magic indiscriminately, who could get hurt? My head pulsed with the possibilities, and I rubbed my temples in small circles as I tried not to get sick. I’ll never find death acceptable or common. I pride myself on that.

  “Carlie?” Brendan’s hesitant words sifted across the porch from the back door. I turned to see the white oval of his face and two dark smudges where his eyes should have been. He was pale with fear.

  “Everything’s okay, Brendan, you can come out.” I sat next to the wight in total disgust. Actually, it was more like defeat, because everything was most certainly not alright. A girl had been murdered, and I’d been given yet another tantalizing clue about the evil waiting for me in the woods. “Oh, Thendara. It’s really me.” I spoke our safe word with relief.

  Brendan’s footsteps were hesitant. “Who is that?” He hovered a few steps away, then approached at my encouraging wave.

  “You may as well sit down.” I called a small light spell to the fingers of my right hand. Brendan folded his legs with the ease of a longtime reader, and tried not to look at the obviously dead woman less than two feet away from his knee. All things considered, he was doing remarka
bly well, probably due to his curious nature and intellect. Brendan was interesting, and a friend. I decided to treat him as such.

  “Let me see your hand.” I gestured to him with all the kindness I could muster. The moon was just bright enough that I felt my heart grow brave.

  He gave me a measured look, his head tilting to one side like a cat. “I trust you, Carlie, but . . .” His eyes cut to the girl.

  “I know. Trust me for one just a moment longer. Please.” I held out my hands.

  Slowly, he put one smooth, librarian’s hand in mine. His fingers were long and cool.

  “Stay still. I want to show you something.”

  “It’s not how you killed her, is it?”

  “No, I swear. I—just let me show you. Still, please.” I put one finger delicately in the center of his upturned palm, and let the magic go. Usually, when someone sees a spell in action, they run. Or shout. Maybe they jump while running and shouting. You get the picture.

  Brendan sat absolutely still, his eyes never leaving the trickle of red sparks that fell in a tiny shower to bounce daintily on his skin. “What is it?” His voice was husky with wonder.

  “Magic.” There was no need for further explanation, and he sensed as much. I let him absorb the enormity of his world shifting. Watching the light of discovery pulse in his eyes, I was drawn back to the day of my first spell. A smile crept over my face, despite our grim atmosphere. “Are you afraid?” I asked, although I knew he was not. He tore his eyes away with some difficulty, so I broke the spell with a muttered command.

  He turned to me, slowly. “No. Not of you. But, magic?” He looked at my hands with burning curiosity. “And, no offense, but you’re a cook. You make waffles.” He rubbed his face vigorously before jerking a thumb toward the girl. His shoulders were tense, and I knew the ugly facts were intruding on his mind. “I have many, many questions.”

  “And I will answer them. I’m not here to deny you the truth, Brendan. You’re a friend.”