Spell of Vanishing

by Anna Abner

  “That’s not how I see you.”

  “I appreciate that,” Cole said, refusing to tear his attention from his book. “But you don’t know what it’s like growing up in and out of hospitals.”

  No, she didn’t.

  “His property is down there,” he announced, directing her onto a long stretch of dirt road.

  Derek’s house was situated on a picturesque piece of farmland surrounded by a pine forest.

  As soon as Talia pulled the car into the driveway, she was positive no one was living in the house. The front door was hanging from one hinge, and when she turned off the engine a startled bird flew out of the open doorway.

  Cole watched the large, black bird—a crow, she guessed—fly into the trees long after it had disappeared from view.

  “You were here eight days ago?” Talia asked. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in months.”

  “It’s the black magic infesting the property. It sucks the life out of it, makes it seem older.”

  “Is that what happened to your murder house?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have this funny feeling,” she said, stepping through overgrown grass, “Derek’s no longer in residence.”

  “You may be right.” Cole wandered his way around the house, and she reluctantly followed. Overgrown weeds, spider webs, and fleas all made appearances, but there was no sign of human life. When they circled around to the front door, he entered the house first.

  Dirt and fallen leaves had blown into the living room. Both birds and wasps had built nests on top of furniture and in shadowy corners.

  Was this her fate, too? Someday soon would a couple of strange casters be poking around her abandoned house, swatting at flies and choking on dust?

  “Let’s just go,” Talia said. No one was home. Not Derek. Definitely not Sylvester.

  “This is the last place I remember being before I was taken.” He led her down a narrow hall to the master bedroom. “I need a couple more minutes.”

  At the threshold, Cole faltered, and Talia immediately recognized why. There was a charge in the air, something dark and heavy. The scent of burning flesh and candle wax filled her nose.

  “Can you feel that?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Black magic.” He walked toward the closet, but didn’t enter.

  “I don’t like this place.” She rubbed her hands briskly over her arms, trying to warm them. Dust and cobwebs were one thing, but residual black magic was something else. “I’m leaving.”

  Breathing the stale air was impossible all of a sudden. The last place Cole had been before… Before she, the Carver, and Jeff stopped his car and put him to sleep against his will.

  The memories of Cole injured and helpless were becoming increasingly unbearable. He didn’t deserve what they’d done to him, and she loathed her part in it.

  “I need some fresh air.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He knelt to get a better look at Derek’s glyphs.

  But not even a flutter of inquisitiveness about the unfamiliar marks could keep her in the home. Talia rushed into the tall grass and the warm sunshine.

  “Miss, this is not our fight,” Hugh hissed at her. “He will discover our involvement in his abduction and punish you. He is stronger than you, and unpredictable.”

  “I know,” she hissed back, past annoyed. Guilt was a heavy anchor hanging from her heart.

  Then she spun on him. “Where have you been?”

  “Away,” was all he revealed.

  She scowled.

  Hugh continued as if he didn’t notice. “You should be driving to Springfield and doing the dark master’s bidding.”

  Absolutely not. She wasn’t hurting anyone else. “In case you can’t tell, I’m trying to undue what we did.”

  “I fear that is not possible.”

  “What’s not possible?” Cole asked, appearing on the front porch.

  “Finding Sylvester,” she blurted out. Had he heard everything Hugh said?

  Cole sighed. “Well, he’s not here. Neither is Derek. And I don’t know where else to look at the moment.”

  No, he hadn’t overheard. Thank goodness.

  “Let’s go back to the Couser farm,” he said. “I feel like I’m being watched.”

  “What’s the next step?” she asked, checking the time as they meandered toward the car. Almost two. Fourteen hours left.

  He slumped in the passenger seat. “We’re not getting anywhere. Not a single spirit has come looking for you. Derek’s gone. Your nephew has stayed hidden.” He sighed the sigh of an exhausted man. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

  No, no, no. He wasn’t allowed to give up so easily. She’d risked too much on this one day of rebellion. “You’ve made a lot more progress in ten hours than I have in ten days. So, let’s get back to the murder house and come up with a new plan. Let’s finish this.” She forced a laugh. He did not join her. “You have me for fourteen more hours.”

  She slowed at a stop sign and glanced at Cole, surprised to find him staring at her.

  “If they don’t know it already, they’ll figure out you’re not my captive anymore.”

  She looked away from his penetrating green eyes. “They’re going to kill him either way,” Talia said quietly. It was clear that unless she made a big move soon Sylvester was dead. The cabal was not negotiating, and they certainly weren’t forgiving, so she may as well buddy up to the one person motivated to destroy them. “I have to return to the cabal—there’s no way out of it—but for the next fourteen hours I want to do everything I can to fight back.”

  “Thanks for the help,” he said. “I need it.”

  She sensed him getting comfortable with another comic book.

  He added, “Like you said, let’s head back to the farm and sketch out plan B.”

  “Okay, but do we have to stay at the murder house?” Talia ventured as she steered toward downtown Auburn and a superstore to buy household goods for said murder house. She needed basic comforts, even if she was only staying a day. “I have a job. A nice house. I mean, it’s nothing fancy, but it has a shower curtain.” If she were bunking at Cole’s, she’d rather do it in style. And she’d abandoned most of her luxuries in her apartment after they’d fled Harvey.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Cole said, eyes on his book.

  “Do you prefer the Couser farm?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why did you buy it?” Talia blurted out, struck again by the strangeness of his purchase. He was holding on to a property that didn’t really belong to him, a property haunted by death and dark magic, but why?

  When he didn’t immediately answer, she added, “I mean, I get that you feel a connection to Couser since he donated his internal organs to you—”

  “His heart,” Cole interrupted. “And he didn’t donate it to me, specifically, but with his dying wish he sent it out into the world to outlast his body.”

  “That’s an interesting way to put it.” A creepy way.

  “Besides the news reports at the time, there aren’t a lot of articles written about Couser,” Cole said, fidgeting in his seat. “No books. No documentaries. No Hollywood re-enactments or grisly museum exhibits. The house he grew up in was something tactile I could use to understand him.”

  “Maybe this is a mean question, but why are you so excited to understand the mind of a killer?”

  He ceased squirming and rubbed his right hand over the line of scars on his left forearm. “Because he exists inside me, and I can’t do anything about it except try to understand.”

  “He’s not alive, Cole. He’s dead. He’s been dead for ten years. You told me that.”

  He slowly shook his head. “He is very much alive,” he said with a sad resignation. “There are times I try pushing a spell one way, and I feel him pulling in the opposite direction.”

  “Wait, what?” It sounded like he was describing a mental disorder. “You’re telling me you’r
e battling a serial killer every time you channel power?” Just how crazy was he?

  He was quiet for a long time, so long Talia pulled into the store’s parking lot before he answered.

  “When I’m channeling, I feel his influence the strongest.”

  Talia killed the engine. “He wants you to cast black magic?” she guessed. “You think he wants you to do harm?”

  Cole chuckled, but it came out more a disgusted bark. “I know he does.”

  “To yourself or others?”

  “Both.”

  Talia scooted against the driver’s side door until the armrest jabbed her lower spine. “Why do it at all then?” If a psychopath were urging her to hurt others every time she cast magic, she’d never cast again. The very purpose of necromancy was to better the world. The only reason she tapped her power was to help people.

  Except for the past few days. Except for the time the Carver, Jeff, and their condescending spirit friends had cajoled her into hurting an innocent person. Badly.

  She looked away, sick about what Cole had been through and suffered.

  “Because people need me,” he said simply. “The Raleigh coven needs me. My employees need me. Holden, Rebecca, and Dani need me.”

  “Do they know about your transplant donor?”

  “No.”

  He had more secrets than she did, which made her supremely uncomfortable. She didn’t like secrets. Hated the few she kept.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell them?”

  He didn’t respond.

  There was being a good friend and then there was being secretive and a little bit manipulative.

  “Well, I know what’s going on inside you now,” Talia said, “and I’m not letting you cast again if I can help it.” At his raised eyebrows, she added, “I’ll do the heavy lifting, thank you very much.” She opened the door before he could argue and headed for the store’s automatic doors.

  “Get whatever you want,” Cole said, catching up within the chilly, air-conditioned warehouse. “Whatever will make you more comfortable for the next few days. It’s on me.”

  “Thanks,” Talia said, selecting a cart and pushing it toward the hygiene and make-up section, “but I can afford my own toiletries. I have a great job.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I’m a school nurse,” she said with audible pride.

  She’d struggled to finish college and finally land a job where she felt like she helped people on a daily basis. She’d had to work in a couple different assisted living places and a plasma donation center before the school district hired her for her dream position.

  “I work at the high school.” She smiled, thinking of her everyday routine, including being lucky enough to work with her best friend, Jillian.

  When Cole nodded for her to continue, she added, “I try to make every minute count. A lot of the time my job is planning programs and writing e-mails, but there are girls who really need someone to listen to them. And there’s a class of three physically handicapped boys that I visit twice a day, checking feeding tubes and oxygen tanks, but it’s my favorite part of the day.”

  “It sounds like you love your job,” he observed.

  “I do.” She pretended choosing a shampoo and conditioner combo was the most important task she’d ever had.

  He moved into her personal space, so close she caught a whiff of clean, male skin.

  She tried to act like it was no big deal even though every nerve ending stood at attention. Even though his body heat leeched into her. She stared at the bottle in her hand, though she honestly couldn’t say whether it was body wash or whipped cream.

  Cole’s T-shirt tickled her bare arm. Brushing the hair off her shoulder, he bent his head to the nape of her neck and inhaled. Talia shuddered, her eyes fluttering closed.

  “Lavender?” His voice was a puff of air against her throat. He inhaled again. “No. Jasmine.”

  And then he was gone, moving down the aisle, and she wavered on her feet. “Huh?” She felt cold and vulnerable. Hugging her middle, she shuffled after him.

  He plucked a bottle of decadent shampoo off the shelf. “Is this what you use at home?”

  Shampoo. While she couldn’t catch a breath after smooshing up next to him, his mind was on shampoo? She nodded jerkily.

  But he continued choosing toiletries and shower aides, unaffected by their near embrace.

  Talia forced herself to take a minute and get her shit together.

  “Jasmine. You bet,” she said, sounding like a lunatic.

  Cole led her through the kitchen-and-bath section. “I’ll help you keep your job,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  He sounded incredibly sincere, and she began to understand why he enjoyed such loyal friends. Maybe he honestly was a good person. Which only made her feel worse about what she’d done.

  “The best thing we can do,” Talia countered, “is find Sylvester as quickly as possible.”

  “I agree,” he said, tossing a bath mat and a matching shower curtain into the cart. “Believe it, or not, I don’t want to draw this out. I don’t like sleeping in the Couser house anymore than you do. I want to get back to my real life, too.”

  Of course he did, and it stung a little that he was in a huge hurry to be rid of her. Which was ridiculous.

  On the next aisle, she spotted an all-inclusive kitchenware starter kit. She dropped it into the cart.

  “Do you have any objections to using a microwave and plastic dishware?” she asked.

  “No. That’s fine.” Cole chose blue disposable plates and bowls. “We won’t be stuck there for long.”

  “Good.” She threw in plastic silverware and paper towels. “Do you think it’s possible to find Sylvester by morning?”

  He groaned, leading the way toward the grocery section. “We’ve got so many unknown components and dead ends… But we haven’t gone by the cabin yet. There has to be someone, somewhere who knows what’s going on.”

  “Without the White Wraith, he’d be nearly powerless.”

  Cole nodded. “Do you know how to find her?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t. No one trusted me with significant information.”

  They both tossed in some nonperishable food to last a few days—pretzels, organic peanut butter, and granola.

  “The first thing we ought to try,” Cole said, adding popcorn, “is summoning more of the Dark Caster’s spirits. I want him to know I have you captured. I want to see him blink.”

  “Sounds good.” Except the spirits she’d met who were loyal to the cabal were mean and scary. She never enjoyed calling them into her personal space. She’d be happy if none of them even knew who she was. “Tonight?”

  Cole gestured for her to precede him down the aisle. “The sooner the better. I hate peanut butter.”

  He turned a corner, but spun and crashed into Talia, shoving her further down the aisle.

  “Not that way,” he hissed. “It’s Harvey.”

  “Oh, crap.” She flattened against the shelving, rattling bins and boxes overhead.

  “Don’t move. And don’t call any spirits.”

  “Right.” Be incognito. Smart.

  He peeked around the corner, though he didn’t actually need so much covertness. They wouldn’t be able to see him.

  “They haven’t spotted you. They’re still searching,” he said softly. “Leave the cart. We’re getting out of here as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  He clasped her hand, pulling her toward the pharmacy. “This way.”

  She plowed into him when he stopped abruptly at the end of the aisle. She saw, around him, Harvey jogging in their direction.

  “Fricking ghosts,” Cole grumbled, yanking her back the way they’d come.

  “Harvey can’t hurt us, right?” she asked, wanting to be calm and collected, but failing. “Not with all these witnesses.”

  “Let’s not test that theory.” Cole led her through the bedding section.

  The shelf ah
ead of her on the right exploded, sets of sheets and pillowcases tumbling onto the floor at her feet. She sidestepped most of it, but a stupid taupe pillow sham tripped her up. She twisted her ankle trying to hop over it and fell hard among the mess.

  “Get up,” Cole said, lifting her off the cold, tile floor. “We have to run.”

  “I rolled my ankle,” she panted, struggling to find her balance.

  He didn’t say, tough it out, but he must have thought it because he didn’t give her two seconds to test the injury before they were sprinting through the clearance aisles headed for the gardening section and a potential exit.

  The shelves to the left and right burst, blowing cheap toys and junk onto their heads. A reduced priced toaster hit her so hard in the back it stole her breath.

  “Faster,” Cole said.

  A spirit appeared at the exit ahead of them, but Cole didn’t slow down or even make a course correction, just ran right through its shimmery shape.

  Every step was an agony, sending sharp slices of pain up her leg, but she couldn’t rest. Talia sprinted around a pair of checkout registers and out the garden center doors.

  Chapter Ten

  Building permit applications tucked into her shoulder bag, Rebecca strolled through the doors of Auburn’s City Hall, her stilettos clicking pleasantly on the marble tiles. Though it was Saturday afternoon, she knew from experience the real go-getters in any industry worked all hours of the day and night. Someone would be around. And if they weren’t, she happened to know the mayor personally. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for her to drop by his house for a quick chat if the topic was important to her.

  David Wilkes’ office was dark, but she’d expected as much. Since he’d met Daniela, David wasn’t as focused on being city manager as he used to be.

  Some folks were laughing in the parks and recreation department, but none knew how to answer her questions.

  Unfortunately, the permit office was dark and locked tight for the weekend.

  Becca turned to leave when she spotted a light on in Mayor Paul Westfield’s office. Taking a chance he’d be willing to help, she passed the empty reception desk and knocked lightly on his closed door.

  “Rebecca Powell,” he greeted, swinging wide the door. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”