Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1)

by J. Morgan Michaels

  Shit.

  The phone slipped from my hand and dropped to the floor as that familiar cold sweat appeared and guided me into a new vision.

  “Mia? Are you here?” Demarco’s deep voice filled my mother’s house in a lighthearted tone.

  “Hey, good-looking,” my mother said with a smile, appearing from another room. “You look very handsome.”

  “Well, I knew I’d be taking out a beautiful woman tonight.” He smiled back and held up a bouquet of sunflowers, her favorite. “Ready for your celebratory dinner?”

  “What are we celebrating again?” she teased.

  “Hmmm . . . I do believe, Ms. Walker, that we’re celebrating the anniversary of your divorce.”

  “Oh yeah!” she said in between giggles. I had never seen my mother flirt that openly with a man before, and it was both amusing and discomforting at the same time. “Why is it I have more fun celebrating my divorce with you than I ever did celebrating my wedding with him?” She put the sunflowers down on the table and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck, standing on her toes to reach him.

  “Maybe you should have just said yes when I asked you to marry me the first time. Then we could be celebrating our wedding,” he said. As he bent down to kiss her, his expensive suit tightened across his broad shoulders.

  “Mmmm . . . ,” she said into his lips. “Maybe we should skip dinner.” They both laughed, and she grabbed his hand to pull him over her as she laid down on the couch.

  “Ah, ah, ah!” I yelled and cringed while picking up the phone and shaking myself free of my vision before it showed me things that would scar me for life.

  ‘Things I Didn’t Need to See My Mother Do,’ for one hundred, Alex.

  Demarco was calling into the phone as I brought it back up to my ear. “Manhattan? Hello?”

  “Sorry, the phone slipped,” I said. Talking to him got a whole lot creepier after that vision. “Listen, I want to transfer my portion of the house to Charley.”

  “Okay, I’m not going to advise you on how to handle your finances, but I should tell you that the house is pretty much all of the inheritance there is, and it’s worth a sizable amount in its current condition. It would behoove you to . . .”

  “Just do it, please,” I said to the man who had slept with my mother on a couch I grew up watching TV on. “Send whatever you need me to sign to my office, and I’ll sign it as soon as it gets here.”

  That ought to piss Victor off.

  “It’ll take a little time to get everything switched around, but I’ll take care of it.”

  “Listen, before you go, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “That first package of paperwork you sent me had my mother’s necklace in it. Did you put it in there?”

  “No. We were not in charge of any of her smaller personal possessions. Really just the house and some of her accounts. Perhaps it came with something else?”

  “No, it was definitely with that paperwork. You know what necklace I’m talking about, right? She wore it all the time. Did she ever tell you anything about it?”

  “She didn’t. I’m sorry.” Demarco’s voice got a little higher. “She was a pretty private person. I mean, your mother and I were . . . well, we were close, but . . .”

  “Sure! That’s all I needed to know. Please do not finish that sentence,” I said, holding my free hand over my eyes as if it would help me forget where that vision was headed before I checked out of it.

  “Shit.” I jumped when I removed my hand and saw a man standing beside me. “I’ve got to go,” I said to Demarco, hanging up the phone before he could say anything else.

  “You didn’t really expect that lawyer to know anything, did you?” the man said, moving a little too close for my comfort.

  “Who are you?” I asked, taking one giant step back.

  “You don’t recognize me?” He asked, rubbing his fingers along his chin. “It’s okay, I guess. We’ve never actually met.”

  He was lively-looking, young, and handsome. There was something familiar, and warm, about him. He reminded me of someone else I knew, many other people I knew. Then it hit me. “Kevin?”

  “Well, Uncle Kevin, if you want to get technical.”

  Dead Uncle Kevin would have been most accurate. “What are you doing here? No, wait, how are you here? No, you know what? Answer both,” I said. If he really was dead, he certainly didn’t look it. Like when I saw Justin’s ghost, he was as whole-bodied as you or I on any given day.

  “How isn’t important, I don’t think. But why may be. I’m here to help you if I can.”

  “So, are you a ghost or something?”

  “Or something.” He started walking toward me, a soft scent of sulfur drifting up around him.

  “Is this normal?” I asked. “Seeing ghosts all the time?”

  “Has anything really been normal since you found out you were a Caster? I’m here because of this,” he said, tapping the necklace through my shirt. He didn’t feel dead, either.

  “I saw you wearing it once, in a vision I had,” I said.

  “The Opalescence.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what it’s called. The Opalescence.”

  “Do you know how I got it?”

  “From your Mom, sort of.”

  “How? It came with documents that would have only been sent after she died.”

  “I’m going to have to give you a bit of a history lesson in order to explain that. The story, at least as how it was told to us, was that the Opalescence has been in our family for a long time. The first Walker to have it saw what could happen when it got into the wrong hands. She made a promise to keep that from happening ever again and bound that promise in a spell with her blood. And with that, she didn’t just commit herself to protecting it; she committed all of the Walkers that came after her, including me and you. She wasn’t just idealistic, she was smart, too. She knew that death couldn’t be allowed to interfere, so with her spell she made it so that if the person wearing the Opalescence dies without giving it away first, it’ll send itself to another Walker.”

  “What is so important about this thing?”

  “Do you remember what happened with you and that dead Caster? How it connected your spirits together?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I do. You don’t forget something like that.”

  “Well . . . that’s just the beginning.”

  “Of?”

  “Of its power. Has it done other things yet?”

  “It trashed my bathroom once, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Ha. Yeah, that’s what I mean. The power to move objects with your mind is just one of the many things it can do. Even after having it myself, I still don’t know everything it’s capable of. And I’ve heard from others that it changes with each person. The easiest way anyone ever explained it to me is to think of it like a sponge. It absorbs energy, holding onto some of it, growing or contracting some of it, or changing some of it altogether. At its best, it can be wildly impressive. At its worst, it can be . . . explosive.”

  “I’ve got more than enough going on right now. I don’t want that kind of stress.”

  “None of us did, I don’t think. But it’s sort of a necessary burden—a destiny thing. And it’s just your turn, I guess.”

  “But why me? I mean, it could have gone to anyone else, right? What about Gloria? She can take it. If she and my mom knew that it would send itself to another Walker after she died, why would they suppress our powers?”

  “I don’t have all the answers, Hat, and I was long gone by the time that decision was made. All I know is that having the Opalescence is serious, and it’s yours now. When I saw that you got it, I worried that without anyone to explain it, you might not understand why you had to keep anyone else from getting their hands
on it. And after that murder, maybe I worried too that you’d walk away from it, not knowing that doing that would put everything in jeopardy.”

  “Are you really trying to lay some sort of cosmic duty on me here? What if I do just walk away from it? What if I just say no?”

  “That’s not an option, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s always an option, Kevin. And I have to tell you—it’s looking pretty fucking appealing right now after what this thing did when Justin got murdered.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, to feel that. I know it’s not easy. None of this is.”

  “Hey look, you’re my family and I love you because of that, but you were dead before I was born. Don’t come to me and act like you know what I’m feeling.”

  “I’m not just being sympathetic, Hat,” Kevin said to me. “Once you’re connected to the Opalescence, you’re connected forever – and that connection doesn’t end with death. I can feel it always, just as I can feel you and ever other person who has ever worn it. You will too, with time.”

  “But I don’t . . .”

  Kevin stepped forward abruptly and grabbed both of my shoulders. A cold sweat followed and pulled me into a place of weightlessness as another vision appeared.

  A woman with bobbed hair and a colorful, ankle-length dress with sleeves stood on a hill overlooking a small town. She was holding the stone of the Opalescence and its powers spilled out of her hand and swirled, creating a vortex around her.

  Streams of murky light protruded from the vortex, attaching to and pulling at the life force of anything alive. The trees around the woman were dead, the bark stripped, and the branches barren and rotting. The grass under her feet was brown and limp. Even the clouds overhead lost their opaqueness and descended from the sky before disappearing completely into the vortex.

  Dead bodies littered the hill and the road to the town. The town itself was ablaze, and as people fled from it toward the hill, their bodies connected to the vortex’s streams of light. It wrenched at them, taking everything they had.

  First to go were their cries, ripped from their throats and pulled into the vortex until they were mute. Then their strength, slowing them from a run, to a walk, to a crawl, and finally to nothing. Then skin turned a pasty yellow as they fell to the ground. The last thing to go was the color in their eyes. The vortex easily pierced and drained it, pulling it into its center until their eyes turned hollow.

  Everything around the woman was at risk as she commanded the power of the Opalescence. The pain she was inflicting was unbearable—I could feel it from the people but also from nature itself. The desolate vortex ate at all life and didn’t show any signs of stopping.

  All the suffering, all the pain, and all the devastation stayed with me as I stumbled out of the vision. “What . . . what was that?” I asked.

  “The end . . . or as close as we’ve come to it. That’s what happens when the wrong person gets ahold of the Opalescence. Its power is not just scary, it’s catastrophic.”

  I circled around the boxes in silence with my eyes on the floor.

  “I know this a lot to take in, and the responsibility of what I’m telling you is heavy,” Kevin said. “There’s nothing fair about dealing with the Opalescence, especially for you since you’ve been kept in the dark about magic for so long. I’m sorry for that, but it’s not something you or I can change.”

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Nothing. Really. The best thing you can do, the safest thing you can do, is just keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone, including the family, that you have it. Go about your life , try to ignore its powers when you can, and silently hope that no one comes after it.”

  “And if someone does?”

  “Then, well, you’ll have to protect it. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to die for it like I did.”

  Chapter 16

  I laid low for the next few weeks, from my family, from Liv, from everything. What Kevin had told me was major, more major that I could process at the time especially given Justin’s murder. A break was well warranted. I did miss Liv, though, and despite what happened the last time I was at Equinox, I craved the comfort and excitement that came with hanging around her and her friends. I was starting to feel out of place in my own life again, and with each awkward interaction I had with anyone I couldn’t be myself around, I yearned to go back there just a little bit more.

  A text from Liv on an otherwise quiet Friday afternoon tested my resolve, and I failed quickly.

  “Nine, tonight. Be ready, I’ll pick you up,” it said.

  “Equinox?” I replied.

  “Negative. We’re going to the playground.”

  Another one of Liv’s mysteries. “Where?”

  “Be intrigued,” was all she wrote back.

  Without any hints about where we were going, I got in Liv’s SUV that night. We were somewhere in North Providence when she pulled into the driveway of a small, one-story house. It had dingy green vinyl siding and a four-bay garage that was almost larger than the house itself. Every window was obstructed by a drawn shade from inside, but with its long driveway and bordering hedges, you couldn’t see any of the neighbors anyway.

  Several other cars were already parked around the yard when we got there. “Where are we?” I asked as we got out of the SUV.

  “The Playground,” Liv said, facing me as she walked backward toward the house. She held her hands up on each side as if to impressively introduce the very unimpressive house.

  “You made it,” Elle yelled ecstatically as she opened the door for us. She let the door close behind her and jumped from the doorway straight into my arms, wrapping her legs around my back and kissing my cheeks rapidly.

  “Back off, Man Trap,” Liv said, trying to pull Elle off me.

  “Don’t be jealous because he likes me more than you. Besides, it’s not like he’d be the first guy we’ve shared,” Elle said to Liv. She ogled me with her sultry eyes, and her audacious black hair tickled my face. She leaned in to kiss me, only to back off and jump away right before our lips met. “It’s cute when you blush,” she said to me, playfully slapping my arm.

  We followed Elle into the house, and the front door led directly into a long, narrow hallway. It had no windows, nor any other doors except the one positioned at the other end. It was painted a flat shade of green, almost like a muddy olive, and it got darker as the hallway went on, giving it the illusion that it got smaller the further you went. I caught myself crouching; my head knew that the walls and ceiling weren’t closing in, but my eyes didn’t. I tried to focus on Elle as she confidently walked in front of us.

  Elle’s body was tight, yet curvy, and undeniably sexy. Her tight denim skirt with its low waist and thick, brown leather belt highlighted each of her curves as she walked, with her hips swaying from side to side in time with the sharp click of her heels against the granite floor.

  Half looking back to see if I was watching her, she pushed her hands out to either side of her body and separated her fingers. Vibrantly colored silk-like ribbons flowed from her fingertips into the air, brightening the dismal space and leaving me awestruck in their wake. Blue at first, the ribbons swirled effortlessly behind her as she walked. I reached out to touch them and felt nothing more than air before they dissipated as effortlessly as they had appeared. The ribbons turned red next, rippling through the air like brilliant flags on a windy day. Yellows, greens, and purples followed, until we reached the door and she pulled her hands back to her hips and blew an air kiss at me.

  “Impressive,” I said.

  Liv pushed past Elle and walked through door. “Please, it’s nothing you couldn’t see for twenty bucks in Vegas.”

  The door at the end of that odd hallway dumped you right into an outdoor courtyard that sat at the center of the house. It was warm, like it was the start of spring, and so unlike the burgeonin
g cold weather outside. Flowers in full bloom scattered themselves around a blanket of lush green grass that had the aromatic hint of being freshly cut. They were interrupted only by the oversized tree trunks that shot up from below them and draped the area with their green, leafy branches.

  Past the opening of the courtyard’s ceiling, you could see that any of the trees’ branches that weren’t directly over the courtyard were either barren or holding onto the last of their colored and dried-out leaves, much like every other tree in that late New England autumn. Like an idiot, I kept walking without letting my eyes leave the mystery of those trees and stumbled directly into a chair.

  Stone walkways extended from four doors on each side of the courtyard, one of which we had just walked through, and met in a patio area at the center. Music streamed from large speakers attached to the house on two of those walls. Half empty carafes of Blue Ice, a stack of glasses turned upside down, and a big bucket of ice were on a wicker bar by one of the doors.

  The whole crew from Equinox was already there, including a few people I still hadn’t been introduced to yet. They were all casually sipping on Blue Ice and waiting for Cooper to finish cooking on the large built-in grill in the corner.

  “All right?” Cooper asked, extending his hands to present the courtyard. “What do you think?”

  “It’s warm,” I said, looking around for heaters. “And what’s the deal with the trees?”

  “Ah . . . all part of the wonder that is The Playground,” he said, smirking at the others.

  “Are we all just going to hang out like nothing happened?” I asked Liv as she was pouring us drinks at the bar.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Justin, Liv. I mean Justin. Does anyone else even remember what happened?”

  “Of course they do, but this is what our life is like sometimes. Justin wasn’t the first Caster to die, and I wish he hadn’t, but he did. It sucks, but we’ll stick together and move on from it.”