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

by J. Morgan Michaels

  “Then tell me about it,” I yelled down at him.

  Withers scratched his head and scowled. “A temper only a Walker could muster. For a family that people claim is wrapped up with such great purpose, there is darkness that lurks within you. Pfft. All the sooner you’ll leave me be I guess.”

  He walked to the front and turned his store sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed,’ leaving it crooked in the window before pulling a blind down behind it.

  “For the past year or so, I’ve been hearing rumblings about a man with the power to shift himself in between places. At first, they said he was just collecting things, special spells, potions he couldn’t have made himself, enchanted objects—anything he could get his hands on. No one thought much of it. There always seems to be some new, power-hungry child running around trying to harvest as much power as they can. I didn’t even give him a second thought . . . until the deaths started.”

  “Who is he, behind the mask?” I asked.

  “Look kid, I can see where this is headed. So before you go on thinking I’m some kind of coin-operated swami, here to answer all your questions, let me clue you in on something. It doesn’t matter to me who he is as long as he stays away from me.”

  Withers felt around under his desk before pulling out a box filled with multicolored bottles sealed with tiny pieces of cork. The glass that shaped them was wavy and imperfect, like you’d find on a stained-glass window, and each had a symbol molded into the front, an asterisk.

  “I’ve seen this symbol before,” I said, pointing to the bottle. “It was carved into a man’s chest after he was murdered. What does it mean?”

  “That symbol is from a wretched spell used to steal a Caster’s power before they die. These are called Bottle Robbers, they’re what you use to hold the power after you extract it, so it doesn’t return to the Universe like it’s supposed to. There’s a whole ungodly ritual that has to be performed in order to absorb it afterward. These aren’t exactly something you can just pick up at the grocery store. The glass has to be enchanted in a perfectly corrupt way, and that’s not a skill most people have. They’re expensive too . . . too expensive in my opinion. And right before the murders started, an antiquities dealer I know in Brazil phoned to say that someone here placed an order for them. I’ve since heard that the recipient of that order is the one who stole the Mask of Apate and wears it to conceal his identity.”

  “It just doesn’t make any sense. If he wanted Justin’s powers, he could have attacked him at any other time, or in any other place. Why risk doing it where he could have been caught by any one of a room full of other Casters?”

  “First of all, it’s doubtful that he’s the only one willing to rip power from another Caster, no matter how indecent of an act that is. So, it’s purely my speculation that this was him, but I’ve been around the block long enough to know that power-hungry people like to flaunt what they acquire. So if he killed that man with other Casters around, he did it intentionally. He’s not just killing for sport. He’s making a statement; telling you and everyone else there that he’s more powerful than you, and that he can kill whoever he wants, and steal whatever he wants.”

  “How do I find out who is behind the mask?”

  “Why do you care? What, would you go after him if you found out? Pfft. That kind of stupidity is what gets Casters killed.” He stopped, looked down at something below his work bench, and a sly smirk took over his wrinkled face. “Hmmmm . . . I don’t think that murder is the one you’re worried about, now is it? This is about Amelia.”

  “It’s about a lot of things, but yeah, it’s about my mother too. Did you know her?”

  “Don’t be ignorant. Who do you think sold her that blood lock, eh? And this man without a face, you believe he killed her?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. I try not to get involved in the dealings of Walkers anymore. And it was going all too well until you came around.”

  “How do we find him?”

  Withers caught me off guard by hitting me in the back of the head with his open hand. “We aren’t finding anyone! You can just go ahead and keep me out of this. I’m not your little teacher, or your therapist, or your friend. I’m not here to help you understand the past or to hold your hand while you figure out the future. You’re lookin’ at the one person in this world I care about. And if you were smart, you’d learn to just stay out of the way of people like that.”

  “Then what?” I yelled back. “I just stand around and wait for him to kill me next? What if the next person he kills is someone you love?”

  “Love? Love? Is that what you think matters? Pfft.” He pulled himself up onto his work table. “In this world, kid, everyone you love will disappoint you, everything you believe to be true will be a lie, and no one is ever who they appear to be.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Don’t help me. I’ll just wait here then until he shows up. Then it can be your problem too.”

  Withers grumbled and then rummaged through a box on the floor until he pulled out a well-worn notepad. He ripped a page from it and wrote the words ‘The Trials of Truth.’

  “Here. If you want to know who he is, use this spell. The Mask of Apate is a special piece. It doesn’t just hide his face, it completely obscures his identity. There’s no basic magic that’s going to reveal who he is to you. You need to go further and this spell will take you there.”

  “This is it? Just these words are the spell?”

  “You are quite stupid, aren’t you?” Withers raised his eyebrow. “You still haven’t figured out the blood lock yet, eh?”

  “No, I did, but there wasn’t really anything in the book.”

  “Your mother showed me the Trials of Truth spell once. I’m certain it’s in that book.”

  “And I’m certain that in the entire book there was only one line written. The rest was blank. Maybe it was a different book.”

  Withers started laughing and shaking his head. “I can’t tell if you’re a novice, or just an idiot. Did you trying reading what was written, boy? It doesn’t matter. You’re clearly not experienced enough to handle that spell anyway.”

  “I can handle it,” I said.

  “Hmmm. Really? Well, have at it then. But the reason a spell like this is so exceptional is because it takes you beyond this place, to a higher plane of existence. There’s a journey to get there and it comes with the greatest risk—fail and you’ll be sacrificing part of yourself. People come back from that journey changed. It’s going to change you.”

  “Then I’ll have to change.”

  “That damn Walker stubbornness is going to get you killed one day.”

  * * * * *

  “Test not the force of a Caster’s power, but the reach of their heart,” I read the words from my mother’s book quietly out loud when I got home.

  A soft bell rang in the distance from nowhere and when I looked back at the book, one large word dominated the page above that line, Walker, written in large black letters.

  The book itself hadn’t changed. The word hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere, either. It was like it was written in invisible ink and saying that short spell gave me the ability to see what was always there.

  “Damn, you were tricky,” I said to the sky.

  I flipped anxiously through the book again to find that each page was filled edge to edge with handwritten notes, clippings from other books, random sketches and a few pasted pictures. Some notes were written like recipes, instructions for different kinds of potions. Others were written like reference books, with information like the best use for each color candle, or how the phases of the moon can affect a Caster’s power. There were all kinds of spells, too, with notes scribbled in their margins, mini-accounts of how the spell had worked, or how it hadn’t.

  On the second page, was a small passage outlined by thick marker.


  ‘To give us strength, the Universe gave us family.

  To test that strength, it gave us misfortune.

  In that misfortune we found our path to peace.

  In peace, we came together with our family.’

  The passage was beautiful, and so indicative of how my mother felt about her family, a feeling she spent her whole life instilling in her children. Above it was a note in my mother’s handwriting which said: ‘Nothing in this world is more powerful than the love of a family.’

  A page in the middle was haggardly earmarked, saving the spot of a spell with a name I couldn’t pronounce. It was long and had complex instructions that I didn’t totally understand, but according to the notes it was meant to protect a Caster by suppressing their powers and the powers of all those born to them.

  The first step had some kind of long emulsification process with sweet almond oil and okra. Then it said you had to bless the result of that with cinquefoil. I had no idea what cinquefoil was, or how one would bless anything. After that concoction sat in direct light from a full moon next to something called a hag stone, the disgusting next direction was to mix in nail clippings of the Caster.

  It said if the spell was successful, before the full moon was gone, the concoction would disintegrate into white-colored ashes. As if it weren’t an elaborate enough spell already, those ashes had to be buried next to a tree until the next new moon, where it would somehow unearth a totem of an ancient Irish god with powers of protection.

  At the bottom of the page was a list of all the Walker children, myself included, and the date when the spell had been cast on each of us. I was looking at the spell that had suppressed my powers and changed my life forever.

  Near the back of the book, I found the spell Withers told me about, The Trials of Truth. A brief description with it said it would take the Caster to a place where the truth exists, uninhibited. The instructions looked simple enough, but it required a second person. I’d need help.

  Written in red ink and all capital letters on the bottom of the page was a warning: ‘The truth hurts.’

  Chapter 26

  “Hat, hey,” Liv said from behind her propped open front door that night. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry, I should have called.” I held up a large pizza. “Hungry?”

  She twitched her lips at me a little and then let out a little sigh. “Come in.” I followed her into her dining room, and we attacked the pizza.

  “So, what happened to you in Newport?” she asked. “Cooper said you wigged out and then just took off. How’d you even get home?”

  “I had another vision . . . it was big,” I said.

  Liv chomped down on another slice of pizza and kept talking. “What was it this time?”

  I paused and slowly chewed on my slice of pizza, trying to figure out how to explain to her everything that ran through my mind since that vision. “It was the man without a face. The one we saw in my mind. He’s coming for me. For the Opalescence.” I handed her a piece of paper with the instructions for The Trials of Truth written on it. “I need your help.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From some of my mom’s stuff.”

  “It’s . . . an ambitious spell, I’ll say that. Do you think you’re ready for something like this?”

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m ready to or not,” I said.

  “It does to me, Hat. It’s not that I mind helping you with this, but spells aren’t always black or white. There’s a really big grey area and sometimes there’s just no way to tell what you’re gonna get out of them. I’ve seen spells like this before, and they can be really scary.”

  “I can’t just sit here and wait for him come after me, not after what I’ve seen. Not with what I know. If he gets the Opalescence . . . it’ll be bad. And, I don’t want to die over this thing. If you’ve got other suggestions on what to do here, don’t hold back. But if not, this is all I have to work with. I’m sorry to ask, but you’re the only person I can trust with this.”

  “It’s okay,” Liv said, cleaning off the table. “Let’s just do it.”

  She got up to shut off the rest of the lights in the house. We took a cross-legged seat on her floor in the living room, and she lit a circle of candles around us.

  “The spell calls for a small tree at the center of our circle,” she said, holding out a cactus. “This was the best I could do on short notice. It said it needs to be tall enough to cast a shadow.” She held it up against the light of the candles and watched the shadow move across the wall. “This should work.”

  Then I started to read the spell aloud.

  “Wait,” Liv said, “you can’t just read the words,” she looked at me like I was stupid, “you have to connect first. Remember before? That connection to the Universe, that’s what gives us the ability to cast spells and makes us different than any random idiot reading words off a piece of paper.”

  “Did you just call me an idiot too?”

  My eyes closed, and my thoughts drifted to the first time I had made that connection to the Universe. I lacked some form of discipline or experience to be able to readily find that place on my own, but something about Liv’s presence, and the scent of her ocean breeze candles, brought the waves of power through me again, faster than I expected.

  Liv brushed her thumb against my forehead, smearing a drop of oil against it. “A good spell is a lot like good sex,” she said softly. “You need to put your whole body into it. Give me your hands.”

  I put my hands in hers, and they were soft and warm. “You go on this journey alone,” she said, “but I’m here to anchor you to our world. I just hope it’s enough to bring you back.”

  I rolled my neck from shoulder to shoulder, relaxing and letting more of the magic take solace in my body. When I opened my eyes, even the cactus was glowing with the power of the Universe. The simplicity of the plant brought balance to my body and helped ground me from the feeling that I was floating.

  “Come forth Alethites, followers of the goddess of truth. Come to me, draw me near,” I read.

  Nothing happened. I said the line again, louder and still nothing happened. But the connection was growing strong, the magic was there and just waiting to be wielded. It was cascading around me, down my arms and into the palms of my hands, only to evaporate into the ether and start over.

  “Come forth Alethites, followers of the goddess of truth. Come to me, draw me near.” The candles began to flicker. The shadows cast from the cactus formed unusual shapes on the walls around us.

  “Come forth Alethites,” I said again, “followers of the goddess of truth. Come to me, draw me near!”

  Liv was there, but her figure had become distorted. I saw around her, through her even, to the shadows on the walls. They had broken free from the candle’s static hold and circled around us slowly.

  “Come forth Alethites.” A light chanting filled the room and the shadows moved quicker.

  “Come forth Alethites.” The chanting was louder, and the shadows moved so fast that I was no longer certain what was moving, them or the room itself. Their figures started to grow and look more human, crouching over themselves to dance along the wall. “Draw me near!”

  The shadows pulled themselves off the wall, becoming fully dimensional. Their mouths continued to move with the pace of their chant, and the sounds grew louder with each pulse. They circled around me, like savages dancing around their nightly feast as it roasted on an open fire. If I looked fast enough, I could almost catch a glimpse of eyes forming in the shadowy figures as they closed in on me. When a dark shadow’s hand reached out and touched my shoulder, my eyes became heavy and my head dropped to my chest.

  When I opened my eyes again, I was standing alone in a forest. Thousands of white birch trees surrounded me and extended as far as the eye could see. Their paper-like bark peeled
off the trunks and they were so tall and expansive that they obstructed what little light was coming from the dusky skies.

  “Liv?” I called into the silent forest. My voice rolled off the trees and back at me.

  In the distance, a figure appeared and started weaving through the trees toward me. “Kevin? What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “That’s a great question,” he said, his voice scratching past my face. “That spell you just cast . . . it called forward a spirit guardian to bring you through The Trials of Truth.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that it . . .”

  He anxiously scratched his chin and the dimple in it wrinkled. “Exactly,” he said. “You shouldn’t be playing around with things you don’t understand. But it’s too late now, that spell has pulled me into this, so I don’t have a choice.”

  “How does this work? Should I be . . .”

  Kevin held up his free hand to stop me from talking. “I want to help you, Hat. I do, but . . . I have been given strict instructions on my place here and what I’m allowed to say or do during this journey. Follow me.” He turned, and I followed him into the trees.

  “That spell brought you here in search of answers, but before you can find any, you must complete The Trials of Truth,” he said. “It’s a statement to the spirits within this place that you’re worthy of hearing the answers you seek. The trials you’ll face will be the worst truth you know.”

  “Okay.”

  “You can stop this at any time by simply telling me to.” He held his hand out for mine. “Take my hand when you’re ready.”

  Swallowing hard, I put my hand into his. As soon as I did, the forest disappeared, and I was alone in darkness. I struggled to gain control of my hands, which had been somehow secured above my head.

  “Kevin?” I called, pulling at my bonds.

  Kevin appeared in the distance holding a small lantern. It illuminated his body and nothing else. “You can’t face the future until you can accept your past,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” Chains rattled above my head as I tried to free my hands. The light from the lantern expanded and I could see the thick black metal that encased my wrists, keeping me close to the stone wall behind me. Chains ran from those cuffs up the wall, attaching to it with oversized rings drilled into the stone.