Halfway Dead (Halfway Witchy Book 1)

by Terry Maggert

  “Why did she try to”—he searched for the words—“get at me?”

  “She wanted to kill you.” Simple and honest. “Next question?”

  He edged away from the corpse out of instinct. “Why? And who is she?”

  That required more thought, and a little conjecture. “I don’t know who she is, but I know what she is.”

  “Is she a vampire?” he whispered, as the librarian in him broke free. He was mulling all kinds of wild possibilities, and none of them would be close to the gritty truth. “How did you stop her?”

  I sighed. “No, but she is—or was, rather—undead. I killed her with magic, which I’m sure you will conclude makes me a witch. Does that scare you?”

  He snorted. “Of course it scares me. I’m terrified. I check out books to tourists who want to read in a chair. I loan movies to locals. I don’t know about magic. Until three minutes ago, it wasn’t real. And now, there’s a dead girl who wanted to eat me flopped on my porch, my friend the cook just cast a spell that made my skin glow like garnets, and I think I might faint.”

  He let a modest shudder expel some of the stress in his muscles, then looked at me again with a wary interest. I put a friendly hand on his knee. He twitched, but didn’t pull away. Progress was being made. “I’m a witch. A real one, not some amateur who reads things on the internet and likes to dress up. Magic is pervasive, and, for whatever reason, the land around us is a sort of zoo for magical beings. They’re everywhere.”

  “What?” He rolled his eyes like a horse, then focused on me again before drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly through his nose. He folded his hands with some effort, then asked, “Exactly what kind of creatures are around us? And why? I’m a little more concerned about them than I am you.”

  I smiled, if only because he was in need of a friendly face. I didn’t feel particularly jovial just then. “As to what’s out there? Everything. And I don’t know why. I’m a white witch; my magic is primarily related to the moon and the land. I don’t fool around with blood or demons, but I’ve heard of some witches who do. Very few of them live to old age, if you catch my meaning.”

  He grunted, the librarian within his personality shining through. “Demons? What about her? Was she a demon, or just a victim?” He looked at the body with pity. “She doesn’t look evil. She looks like a kid who got in front of a train.”

  “That’s exactly what she was.” I intended to find out who was driving the locomotive, but I needed Brendan to listen, so I continued in my quiet, patient tones. “Thendara. The place I was looking for on those old photographic plates.” His eyes opened wider, and I nodded, confirming the importance of the forgotten place. “There’s something out there. She told me that was where he made her, whatever that means. But there’s more, much more. I think that a ghost is waiting for me.”

  “For you? Specifically? Or just—is it just a haunted place?”

  “No, this is something from my family history. A boy named Erasmus vanished there, and I think he was taken by whatever is lurking in the woods. His death stopped the canal from being built through here, and now, the evil is making young women into these things and sending them to hunt down people who know about Thendara. That’s a small, specific club, and I think I know who’s doing it. What I don’t know is why,” I said, feeling the frustration in my voice. I pushed one finger against the edge of my nose; I’d have quite the shiner tomorrow, I could already feel the bruise swelling like a ripening plum.

  “You’re going out there to . . . to, confront this thing?” His voice was fat with awe.

  I guess to people who know nothing of magic, it would be kind of amazing. I do have some skills, it seemed.

  “I am. Or, I was until that girl bopped me in the noggin. I think I might wait a day or so. I wasn’t going alone, either. I have help.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

  “An investigator. Sort of like a cop, but he works for someone who wants to find Thendara, too. But for different reasons,” I explained.

  Brendan snorted, and I knew why. He was having a hard time imagining anyone could want to find Thendara willingly, particularly if creatures like the girl before us were waiting there. I found myself agreeing with his overall assessment of the stupidity in going to the woods to find an unknown evil that turned girls into death machines. He had a point.

  Brendan shifted on the wood slats of the porch. The moon was a silver witness to the body that lay inert, and quiet reigned across the neighborhood. He cleared his throat. “Have you ever hurt anyone with your magic?”

  I looked at him, mustering as much sincerity as I had, and shook my head. “No. Nor have any of the witches in my family; it’s against our nature.”

  “Other witches?” He raised a brow.

  “It’s best you don’t know. For now, anyway, but yes, I come from a family of witches that goes back several centuries,” I told him, hoping to keep my exposure to his curiosity at a bare minimum.

  It didn’t work. He was on the trail of something new and dangerous, and his inquisitive heart fairly thudded against his ribs with the excitement of sitting across from a real live witch and a really dead wight. “What do you expect to find at Thendara? Other than a ghost?”

  I drew shapes in the growing dew on the porch, my fingertips lazily scribing glyphs that were meaningless to Brendan, but part of my family history. “Trees. And some stones, but I was mainly going to find the trees.”

  He perked up even further, and I thought there was a real possibility he might faint from excitement. “What kind of trees? Like, magical ones?”

  “Sort of. They’re just trees, if an unusual kind. I think that where they are is a lot more important than what they are.”

  Brendan chewed on that. “Are they planted in a circle?”

  I looked at him sharply. For a guy with a dead female beastie on his porch, he could still think on his feet. Librarians impress me. “I’m not sure.” I let my eyes close, remembering the detail of the plates. “A half circle, maybe? Around some sort of water, maybe a rectangle?”

  Brendan tapped his fingers on the wood before him, flicking his eyes nervously at the wight. Okay, so he wasn’t immune to the presence of death. That was good; no one should be free of emotion in that manner. It bodes ill for their dealings with other humans. “You still didn’t say what type of tree. Is it a national secret?”

  “Chestnuts. American chestnuts, and big ones, maybe a couple hundred years old, at least.”

  He whistled low, recognition on his face. He was a native to these mountains, so he understood what I was saying. “So they would be— ”

  “The only ones in the world. Right. There’s a lot at stake,” I finished for him.

  “It isn’t just money, though, is it?” he asked.

  “I thought so, at first. Now?” I looked meaningfully at the wight, who was now glistening with dew. She had cooled incredibly fast after her second death. “I think there’s more to it than just profit. Whatever is out there waiting has something in mind other than money. Evil doesn’t really care about simple cash, you know?”

  “You’d get quite some argument with that idea, but I think you’re right.” He rubbed his fingertips together, thinking. “When do you leave?”

  I looked at the first whispers of dawn creeping through the mountain notches like a lover sliding into bed, careful not to disturb anything, lest they be discovered. “Not today. I’m sore, and I need to be rested and fully prepped with spells. I can’t cast properly when I’m exhausted.”

  He smiled, a hopeful little grin at odds with our scene. “I was hoping you’d say that. Come to the library. I may be able to help.”

  “What do you have in mind?” All I could think about was my bed, and a giant purring cat to serve as my white noise. Gus and three pillows sounded really good to my tired soul.

  “I’m a librarian. I know things.” He smiled again. “Or I should say, I know where to look.”

  He stood, and I
let him pull me to my feet. He looked nervously at the wight, and raised his brows in concern. “”I’ll take care of her. Do you have an old sheet?” When he nodded, I told him, “She’ll be safe. I will pray over her.” And I would. He relaxed at that, and I realized that he wasn’t concerned about the body, but the girl who had once been inside it. I added Brendan firmly onto my list of good people, and readied a spell to sink her gently into the earth nearby.

  Whoever she had been, she deserved peace. And revenge. I would deliver both.

  Chapter Eight: Now It’s A Party

  I woke to the sun streaming through my windows in complete disregard for the state of my well-being. My head was thumping like a European nightclub, and I turned my face from side to side with a delicacy I hadn’t known I possessed. It was well after ten, meaning I’d slept about five hours. Not nearly enough, I grumbled to the empty house. Gus and his particular brand of disdain weren’t available to hear my complaint, which only confirmed my long-held belief that griping is more fun with an audience.

  I glanced down at the bed; my sheets were in near-perfect order. I’d barely moved, so total was my state of exhaustion when I slunk beneath the covers as the sun was pushing the mountain shadows into gray memory. The Wight’s touch had done far more damage than I realized. My bones creaked like the sliding lid of a mausoleum, and I knew it would be a day or so before I felt normal. Even in my healthy, young body, the touch of death would linger. The undead and all of their toxic gifts were unwanted guests no matter where they visited. I knew I couldn’t wait to expel the chill of those claws from my body, if not my memory, and I shook my head side to side like a dog after an unwelcome bath.

  “Okay, Carlie. Let’s get this show on the road,” I mumbled to the room. I didn’t feel like rising, and there would be no shining prior to coffee, but my legs moved with a glacial slowness to lift me up and away from the toasty nest of my bed.

  “Whatever.” I glared at the sun, the floor, and whatever fell under my gaze. I felt a stage-three grump stealing through me, and made the executive decision that a bath and coffee while in said bath were necessary for the safety of the planet in general. I don’t get in bad moods often, but the physical toll of fighting that Wight, along with the utter senseless nature of her death, left me in a rare mood. I shuffled to the kitchen, pushed a series of glowing buttons that mocked me, and stood waiting for the dribble of dark, aromatic liquid that might save someone from getting their head bitten off. Even my coffeemaker seemed quieter, proving that a bad mood can affect inanimate objects, too.

  Minutes later, I stood, cup in hand, watching the steam rise in clouds as my shower began to fog the bathroom. I reached through my bare feet to the polished wooden floor, feeling the grains that ran north to south in the burled strips of lumber. I thought about order, and looked at the pulsing clouds of mist above the shower. That was disorder, but even the random nature of the steam followed some sort of general plan. In this environment, steam went up. In my environment, there was also a single direction.

  I thought about that as only a witch might. The ghost of Erasmus reached out to me across time and distance, and I was going to him. We all had our parts to play in this . . . whatever it was; I considered the term mystery, but settled on justice.

  I was going to salvage something right from a whole lot of wrong.

  Stepping into the warmth of the shower, I considered that none of my actions from here on out could be considered random. The steam of the shower wafted above, drifting unerringly toward the merry little chugging of the fan that drew the vapors up and away. I wondered if anyone was looking for the dead girl from Brendan’s porch. I thought about their heartache and uncertainty. Their lack of knowing. I’d stood dry-eyed as she sank into the cool earth only hours earlier, but here, in the safety of my own shower, I leaned my forehead against the relative chill of a tile wall and began to cry.

  I didn’t even know the girl, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t worth my tears.

  It took nearly an hour for me to get it together. I stood for a hesitant moment with my eyes dazzled by the light of a relentlessly cheerful summer day. “Fine, I get it,” I grumbled to the world in general, but even as I said it, the tension began to slip from my spine to puddle at the ground where it would sublime in the face of such natural beauty. My home could do that to the darkest of moods, so I filled my lungs with what should have been a brilliant snootful of mountain air.

  I smelled nothing. Great. The Wight’s punch had left my nose clogged, swollen, and sore, which meant I couldn’t really taste anything for the time being. I held back a curse—not a cuss, but a real, witchy curse that might do some damage, and steeled myself for a bland breakfast and dulled senses. At least for today. If I had time, I’d brew a healing draught that would alleviate any magical effects. As for the simple damage from the Wight’s knuckles, that might take a little more time. I resolved to use the day to pack my bag, make sure my Docs were laced tight and ready to rock, and carefully avoid going to Gran’s. Her gentle interrogation was not something I needed.

  “Well, she certainly caught you a good one,” Gran said from behind me.

  I whirled fast enough to send a wave of pain through my nose, and reached up instinctively to cover my face. Too late. Gran waved at me to drop me hands, so I did, and she took the last step up to me while tut-tutting at my general condition.

  “Who ratted me out?” I asked, as she ran cool fingers over my face.

  “No one tattled, dear. If you think I don’t have wards to indicate my only grandchild is in a fight with an undead monster, then you know precious little about the role of grandparents in general.” She frowned slightly at the bruise that ran sidelong up the bridge of my nose. “And I saw Brendan looking quite sheepish at the Diner. He was clearly looking for you, so I imposed on him to help me into my booth.” She laughed at the memory of tricking Brendan into thinking she needed help of any kind. “Over a rather guilty plate of eggs, he eventually caved in to my . . . ah, gentle queries.”

  “You mean you ran a charm spell on him? Gran!” I winced. I didn’t need to be yelling, it seemed.

  “Nothing of the sort, you rebel. I used my aura as a woman of a certain age to shame him into telling me the entire gruesome story. He’s quite impressed with us, by the way.” She nodded at me, indicating I should coo with approval.

  “Ooo. There, happy?”

  “Quite. Now, as I was saying before you sassed me, he’s rather fascinated to find that the world is a bit more complicated than he’d previously imagined. In fact, so curious that I saw only one possibility of assuring his silence,” Gran said with a smirk. She was so sneaky. I thought people stopped being underhanded when they became grandparents, but then Gran isn’t exactly average.

  “You turned him into a frog?” I asked, smiling. I love little myths like that. Witch humor tends to be rather campy.

  “Nonsense. He’s delightful, and frogs are often sticky. I offered him a job.”

  I looked at her through narrowed eyes. She seemed sneakier than a moment earlier.

  “What kind of job?” I ran down the possible uses for a librarian while solving a supernatural mystery, and came up empty. Unless we needed to file something, or tell people to hush.

  She looped an arm through mine and pulled me into a gentle walk. There were birds everywhere, and I heard the distant complaints of ducks. It was a typically busy, fresh, summer day, but I felt that curious disconnection with my body that pure exhaustion can bring. Cars were crawling past us as we walked. Both directions of traffic were crowded with people who felt that relaxation only came from being on the go. I shook my head ruefully at the line of minivans and SUVs. Sometimes, you need to be still.

  “I hired Brendan to do research. A simple thing, really, but it will help you on your walk in the woods. I think that you’d best be prepared for some unpleasant moments.” Gran was famous for understating things, but I knew that she loved me as no one could. If she thought that I couldn’
t handle what was coming, she would, quite simply, step in. As my grandmother, I took her word without hesitation. As a witch, I took her word as law. “I’ve asked Brendan to commit a tiny act of vandalism in the name of a greater good.”

  I stopped in our tracks, letting a couple of giggling kids run past us. Their skin was pink with mild sunburn, and they chattered in an accent that was pure New York—the city, not our state. “Define this tiny crime. Do I dare ask why you’ve requested he enter the ranks of scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells?”

  “You may, and since I’m feeling charitable, I’ll even answer you.” Gran sniffed primly, then gave me a sidelong smirk. “He’s going to steal the photographic plates from the library and bring them to me.”

  I knew that could mean only one thing. “What kind of spell?”

  “A rudimentary location casting, but I’m going to use rare elements to craft something you’ll need.”

  Knowing Gran’s level of skill, it could be virtually anything magical in nature. I ventured a guess. “A talisman, I assume?”

  “Exactly that. It will be light, compact, and silent.” She closed her eyes momentarily as her voice slipped into the lilting descriptive mode of a teacher. “The talisman will be small enough for the hand of a child, light in weight, and tied to the aura of the bearer.” She looked at me pointedly, saying, “That means you must keep it on your person at all times. To lose it means you will not only forfeit your direction, you will forget all of the progress you’ve made up to that moment. Do you understand, sweetheart?” Her eyes creased with concern.

  “I’ll be lost in the woods, and I won’t know where to go,” I answered gravely. Unlike Tyler Stinking Venture, I respected the mountains.

  “Worse than that, I’m afraid. In order to cast on an object of this age, I’ll have to add layers of magic. It won’t be a simple spell, Carlie, and the loss of it will cause a dispersal of anything supernatural, within a considerable range. You’ll be confused, perhaps even a bit sick, and you will have amnesia that will last until the rays of the following dawn.” Her eyes were dark with worry. Being a witch, even a good one, was dangerous business.