And I hadn't managed to talk to Carole at all, really. Although when I did, I probably would mention Haris, at least for that sharing of power.
I pushed the worries aside. Romance or sex or literal sparks didn't matter. Not with ghosts still being used as conduits for rage and hate.
Other passengers jostled me as we stepped out of the car, but it was normal shoulders and elbows and bags, not the shoving matches from last week. The flow settled as it usually does, a murmuring tide of humanity with occasional splashes of shouts or laughter. The stream flowed around obstacles, with the odd pool where someone stopped to look at a map or listen to a musician. Catching a few notes, I joined one such group gathered around the Lung dragon.
His piece ended, and the pool broke apart. Everyone threw something into the open case before him, even if it was just a couple of coins. He nodded his thanks but did not speak.
After the others had gone, I said, “I'm told I'm making things worse. The air feels peaceful to me, but what if I'm wrong? Am I hurting people by what I'm doing?”
Hsien shrugged. “We all do many things that hurt others — ignoring our friend’s good news, not seriously considering what our children have to say, being certain that everything is about us.”
Ouch.
“Can you eavesdrop through those wards?”
That received a faint smile. “Nothing so direct.”
That reminded me — “Do the wards pull their power directly from you? I was afraid I was doing too many.”
“Think of the power as body heat. I give it off without thinking about it, and usually it regenerates with no effort on my apart. But it is possible for it to be pulled from me, leaving me depleted for a time.”
“Do you ever get too much drained from you, leaving you weakened?”
“A human could not pull so much on their own, but with my own crafting working against me?” His voice was a shrug.
“Glad I didn't use it on the coffee shop, then.”
“Yes, I felt your work.”
No way of telling whether that meant he approved or disapproved. Rather than chasing that brain squirrel, I went back to what the troll had said. “Is my banishing the ghosts causing holes in reality?”
“An interesting question. Say, rather, that the power behind the ghosts has pushed its way into this reality and you are cutting it out.”
This reality? No, that could wait.
“So I am carving holes.”
“Say rather that you are exposing them.” He paused to listen to the announcement of the incoming train — delayed for an unspecified reason — then spoke while still looking off into the distance. “You are the last one touching these gaps, so it is you that the trolls feel when they encounter the holes.”
“Great. What do I fill the holes with? Since evidently ‘you had it last’ is enough to make fixing it my responsibility.”
He shrugged and lifted his bow to his violin again. “If you were a devotee of the Fates, you might sew the gap together. If Gaia were your patron, you could fill it as with mud or clay.”
Exasperated, I huffed, “I don't have a patron.”
“I was giving examples. You will have to find your own magic core to figure out your method.” There was something in that statement that needed to be teased out, but not in my current condition.
Hsien began to play. The notes soared and dipped, and in my mind, I could see a Lung dragon dancing in the clouds, scales glittering gold and ruby when hit by sunlight, coils sinuous and graceful. I stayed to listen to the whole piece. He finished before the next train arrived, but people waiting to catch the Red Line stopped to listen. Did they get the same mental images I did from the music? Or was my imagination primed by my knowledge of who he was?
Not that it mattered. We all stood mesmerized by his mastery.
As he launched into his next piece, I dropped a bill into his case and turned to leave. He caught my eye and raised one eyebrow. I shrugged — why not support the arts? He didn't smile, but his music segued into a Greek-flavored, more boisterous tune filled with joy and dancing. Ode to Terpsichore, muse of dance and Haris’s grandmother. Yes, support those arts, too.
His choice of music was certainly deliberate, but not exactly helpful. My relationship with Haris had never been completely clear — yes, he was gorgeous and had walked into my life with an introduction by Beth, but she hadn't known him long enough to vouch for him. Then there was that stalker vibe as he showed up everywhere I was. The closest thing Haris had to a recommendation was Hsien’s approval, and my own kids were proof enough that he didn't see good and bad the same way humans did.
I love my kids, and they're wonderful most of the time — but saddling a family with twins in perpetuity had a whole host of complications that the Lung dragon would never have to deal with. I couldn't help but wonder whether any connection with Haris would be the same, full of too many complications I couldn't imagine now and wasn't ready to deal with.
Best to focus on one crisis at a time, and right now that was the ghosts, both the ones who still needed to be severed from their power source and the ones who’d left gaps in reality.
Chapter 22
The truth of the troll’s warning quickly became evident. Not three steps out from the Chinatown stop, I saw the ghost across the street. She was paler than she had been in the parking garage, but whether that was because she was weaker or the light was stronger, I didn't know. She drifted along the sidewalk, reaching out to passersby as if for help.
A few shivered or rubbed their arms and hurried past. Others didn't seem to notice at all. Wisps trailed after her, catching on some of the people, indiscriminate of whether they reacted to her or not. The wisps melted into arms, heads, bodies, wherever they touched. What would they do?
She met my eyes, and a chill crept over me that had nothing to do with the supernatural. She knew me, remembered me. She mouthed a single word that I couldn’t make out and started across the street, heedless of traffic. Halfway across, she vanished.
She didn't reappear, and I was blocking foot traffic, which was almost as much of a crime in Boston as blocking vehicular traffic. I headed home.
The troll had been right — the ghost had not been banished. Nor was she any longer tethered to her body, although she might have a range limit. At least I hoped that's what her disappearance meant.
With luck, my home was outside her area, too. I was pretty sure she couldn't cross the Lung dragon ward, but I didn't want to walk out the door and bump into her, either. I needed home to be a sanctuary, apart from the weirdness that seemed to be taking over my life.
As opposed to the normal weirdness that was my life.
Although — if she were tethered to her body, the obvious thing to do was make sure her body was taken elsewhere, so she would be even less of a threat. I pulled out my phone and made a note to send an anonymous tip to the police as soon as I was sure I had enough magic to mask the source of my call.
With so much on my mind, I skipped the restaurant when I got home. There was enough going on in my head without adding more voices. I headed to the third floor and knocked on Vanessa and Jeixing’s door — even when Matt’s oldest sister wasn’t home, this was usually where the twins headed after school, probably to protect Wei and Benjamin’s furniture.
Tina’s voice came through the door. “It’s Mom!”
Her brother answered her. “Duh. Dad doesn't need to knock.”
The door opened at that moment. “The children are getting their things,” Celeste said, as though our kids didn't run up and down the stairs a dozen times a day. She stepped out into the hall and pulled the door to behind her. “I'm worried about them. Did you and Matt have a fight? I've never seen Gavin so much on edge!”
Given my son’s mercurial temperament, I doubted that — he’d been on edge at least as often as he’d been sulky or ecstatic — but I wasn't about to call her a liar. “Not exactly. It's complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it. You're
not the one who suffers.”
“Do you honestly think I hurt the twins deliberately?”
“I don't know why you do anything. I don't know why you broke up with Matt, I don't know why you had his kids, and I absolutely don't know why you didn't insist on getting married first.” Her voice rose gradually, and by the end of her speech, she was yelling at me.
She didn't know the reason Matt wanted kids? No, she had to mean she didn't know why he picked me. Although it didn't make a lot of sense for her to say that and then say that we should be married.
I rubbed my forehead. “If he wanted you to know, he would tell you.” Matt was nothing if not direct. “So I see no reason I should.”
“That's fine. You're the one who has to face yourself in the mirror.”
The door eased open behind her. “We’re ready.” Tina’s voice was quiet, and I wondered how much she had heard.
I didn't have long to wonder. On the way upstairs, Tina asked, “Did you really leave Daddy?”
I would not hex Celeste for putting thoughts into the kids’ heads. I would not, I would not, I would not.
Sure, I wanted to. On the other hand, Tina and Gavin knew that Matt and I weren’t together, and beyond them wanting us to be, they had to have questions. As far as I could tell, from age two on, that was all kids had, question after question. It was only a matter of time before this particular set got asked.
“Yes, pumpkin, I did.” I sighed. “As much as your dad and I like and respect each other, we wanted different things out of life, and we have some very different values. It wouldn’t be fair for either of us to ask the other one to change, so I decided we should split up before we both got hurt.”
“You hurt him,” Gavin said definitively. “He still wants to be with you.”
I shook my head as I unlocked our door. “He wants to be with the person he’d like me to be. That’s not who I am.”
“It could be.”
Smiling sadly, I said, “As people get older, they tend to become deeper entrenched in their beliefs. If I’m changing, it’s to become even more of the person he doesn’t want.”
Especially since he didn’t like my magic, and my eyes had been quite literally opened to a wider world of magic than the one I’d known more than half a dozen years back when we had been dating. I could just imagine how he would feel about trolls in the T.
In the routine of making dinner and having the children set the table, the subject of Matt and me was dropped, but I knew it was just a temporary reprieve. Sure enough, as I helped Tina pick out her pajamas, with a final decision of Pinkie Pie, she asked, “Mom, are you sure you and Dad aren’t fighting?”
I rubbed my arm absently, thinking of the last time Matt and I had talked. I couldn’t pass off his anger by blaming it on the neighborhood ghost, not unless she’d been trailing wisps all over him. Pretty sure I would’ve seen some sign of those.
If we were fighting, I didn’t start it, but I couldn’t tell the kids that. It was one of my personal rules — no trash-talking of their father or other family members. I could talk about specific things that had been done, but in general, I only did if the twins would find out anyway. I didn’t want them to think I was hiding things from them. Ethically, there was a difference between not telling kids things they weren’t emotionally ready to cope with and hiding things from them because I didn’t want to talk about them.
Me and Matt? Probably fell into the latter category.
“We’re trying to figure out whether we need to change our relationship. It’s hard.”
“Change it like get back together? Or like move away and never see him?”
I hugged her hard. Noticing Gavin standing in the doorway, I waved him in and hugged him too. “I will never take you away from your dad. That wouldn’t be fair to any of you.”
If she realized I hadn’t answered her question completely, she didn’t say so. “Can I pick out tonight’s story?”
“You picked last time!” Gavin cried.
To keep the peace, I said, “You may both choose a book. I’ll read Gavin’s first since I read Tina’s first last time.”
Tina’s objection was interrupted by the ring of my cellphone. It was Carole’s ringtone, and I pulled the phone out of my pocket to confirm. Her face flashed on the screen in time to the ringing.
“I’m sorry sweethearts. I have to take this call — Carole’s in a different time zone, and it’s hard for us to catch each other. I won’t be long. You can look at books quietly while you wait for me to come back and read to you.”
Gavin’s token protest consisted of making sure I remembered that I was going to read his book first when I got back. Tina didn’t even bother with a protest, just rolled her eyes and plopped on the floor in front of her little bookcase.
I dropped kisses on the kids’ heads and answered the phone on my way out the door. “Busy day?”
“When you called, I couldn’t talk freely, and I wasn’t somewhere I could do a privacy charm. Not without drawing more attention.”
“And you assumed I wanted to talk about something you couldn’t say in front of others?” I tried to make my tone light.
“Don’t you always? Lately, it’s been ghosts, trolls, and the other witches in town.”
I chuckled ruefully as I settled into my favorite corner of the couch, this time without a drink. “I’m afraid that’s what it’s going to be until this thing gets solved.” I brought her up to speed on my efforts with the ghosts, including the fact that I’d seen one I thought banished and now I wasn’t sure what to do.
“You started it, you have to see it through.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” I sighed. Snapping at her wasn’t going to help. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit tense because it feels like the witches and trolls are threatening me for trying to do the right thing and coming up short when they’re not even doing anything. I don’t know if I’m actually in danger or what else I can try to get rid of the last vestiges of the ghost or how to scale up to protect the rest of the city or anything.”
“Breathe,” she advised me. “Stressing about it isn’t going to get you any closer to a solution. Now, you already told me about the witches threatening you, although frankly I can’t imagine most of them being brave enough to go after you. Foolish enough, absolutely, but I think the average witch is terrified of your revenge spells if they don’t get you the first time they try.”
“Dorothy isn’t average.”
“No, but she’s canny. She’ll try to provoke others to test your defenses before moving against you herself. So you’ve got some time before that’s pressing.”
Time, but she wasn’t denying that it would come up eventually.
“And the trolls?” Which reminded me — “Hey, how come you know about the trolls? I couldn’t even see them until I was touched by the ghost.”
“One of the curses of the Sight, dear.”
“Curses?”
“You are aware of what generally happens to people who insist they can see monsters?”
Right.
“So are they likely to do something to me to stop these holes they see in the magic?”
“Doubtful. If they thought they could repair it, they would. This was probably just a friendly nudge, telling you about something you should follow up on. Professional courtesy, if you will.”
More than I got at work. “Good to know. So now I just need to figure out how to scale up without killing myself in the process, and then what to do with the ghosts wandering loose afterward.”
“If you can find the person behind the deaths, that should cut free all the ghosts, without leaving the holes in the magic.”
“Let me know if you have any ideas how to find the needle in the haystack. I’m also open to ideas on how to recharge faster. I couldn’t have managed that second ghost without drawing on someone else’s power, and I’m absolutely in no shape to take on whoever did these rituals in the first place.”
“This would b
e so much simpler if you had a patron like a normal witch. Are you sure you can’t just draw power from an outlet or something?”
“I tried it once. The results weren’t pretty.”
I had been a teen, invincible, just figuring out what I could do, and absolutely convinced I had no limits. So when one of the mean girls at school picked on me, I decided to charge up first to do maximum damage. I blew every single surge protector in the computer lab, half the computers, all the lights in the building, and the traffic lights for half a dozen blocks. And all I got to show for it was catching my hair on fire. No power, no magic, no awesome revenge.
I never tried again.
She hummed a bit, a habit she had when she was thinking deeply. “There’s a tea that opens people up to the Sight. Our family brews it for children starting on their sixth birthdays, so that even those who make no pacts understand what the rest of us are talking about. It might open you to allow more power in from other sources.”
“But?”
“It could open you to other influences.”
Which meant she was worried about what might become of me, but I had to take the risk. As she had said, I started this, and now I had to see it through. “Will Maggie have some on hand?”
“Hmm.” This was less thoughtful and more negative. “I’ll text you the recipe.”
So she didn’t think Maggie should know what I was doing. Curious. “Thanks. Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go read the twins their bedtime stories.”
“Hansel and Gretel?”
“I don’t want to put ideas in their heads.”
Chapter 23
Friday, I stared at Carole’s recipe, now sitting in the notes section of my phone, looking from the list to the teas on the shelf at the coffee shop. We had a couple of teas that I could use for ingredients — jasmine green tea for the flowers, ginger — as well as some spices like mace, star anise, and bay laurel leaves. Other flowers I could probably pick up at the nearby florist, but there were a couple of things on her list I wasn’t sure where to find — honeysuckle sounded like a trip to somebody’s garden, and I was pretty sure my parents didn’t have any, although I’d look when I got there on Sunday. I’d just popped open my phone to search for borage when my arms started tingling, a faint echo of their usual warning. Another witch was coming to visit and I had next to no magic to call on.
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