Dweller on the Threshold

by Rinda Elliott

  I started to like her. A little.

  “Anyway, I told her no and asked her if this had anything to do with the soulless people.”

  “Wait.” I held up a hand and leaned forward, my hair slipping back over my chest to pool in my lap. “You mean the comatose people?”

  The witch frowned and I was surprised to catch something fierce passing through her eyes. “Those aren’t comas. Souls stay trapped in comatose people. These people have had their souls taken. I don’t know how, but I know it’s true. You can tell by the auras.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I knew the souls were gone…” My mouth snapped shut.

  “How did you know if you don’t see auras?”

  “I just know, that’s all.”

  Blythe tilted her head and stared. “I’ve never seen an aura like yours. You have a red spot over your heart, did you know that? I usually see black there because of despair or depression. Sometimes, it might look kind of gray if they’re dealing with a mental illness. Yours is a constant, humming red, like a soul-deep pain that never eases.” She paused, blinked at me. “It hurts me to see it. Why are you so sad?”

  Stunned, I could only stare at her. I’d met the woman today and she was psychoanalyzing me like my sister.

  “The rest of your aura is stunning. Like I said, like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s white.”

  “Like an absence of color? Like I have no aura?”

  “Oh no,” she said quickly. “No, it’s a pure, sparkling white like snow. Like the color in your hair. But it’s the silver and copper threaded through it all that I find so unusual. I’ve seen silver in people’s auras before, but never on such pure white and I’ve never, ever seen copper. What kind of creature are you?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Creature?”

  Her cheeks flushed and she squirmed a bit on the cushion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. Of course you’re human. You’re just something more, right? What’s your magic?”

  “I have no magic.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. You can see your guides—that’s something.”

  “I’m not the only one. Not according to the daytime talk shows.”

  “Pshaw!” She waved that off with one hand. “Anyway, when I saw your aura, I knew immediately that you were special in some way.” She gave me this weird smile, kind of like the ones children get from their kindergarten teacher after she tells them paste is not in the basic food groups. “Being special is a good thing.” She tapped a pink-tipped finger on her equally pink bottom lip. “I’d like to help if I can.”

  “Help?”

  “Elsa lost her soul, didn’t she?”

  “She didn’t lose it. It was stolen. I’m getting it back. So are you going to show me this paper or what?” I held out my hand.

  “Oh yes.” She didn’t give me the paper, just unfolded it and held it up so we could both see it. It was copy of a page from an ancient spell book. When I’d first begun searching for answers, I’d started in magic books. My hair, strength and ability to see dead people at different levels, angels even—these things were magical, even if I didn’t have any weird superpowers. It had made sense to start in magic books.

  There were so many books out there, I’d barely made a dent in them and this wasn’t anything I recognized.

  “This is just a copy, but I showed her the real book. It’s too heavy for me to carry. But I think this spell can help us figure out what’s going on. See here?” She smoothed out the paper as she scooted toward the edge of the couch so she could place it on the coffee table. I leaned over as Blythe pointed to a scary-looking black shadow next to another sort of blackish-lumpish kind of human-looking type thing that might or might not have been on a horse type thing. Apparently, there had been a lack of artists when this book had been written. Good ones, anyway. “There’s a reference to a creature that steals souls. A soul eater. This has happened before. A long time ago.”

  “How long ago?” I tapped my fingers on the coffee table, glancing up when Fred sat on the arm of my chair. Phro had come forward to look at the paper, too.

  “Around the time the gods still meddled in our lives.”

  I glanced at Phro, a grin pulling at my lips. She was always trying to convince us she was the real Aphrodite. I’d wondered, but seriously couldn’t come up with why an actual Greek goddess would be hanging out with me. “That long ago, huh?”

  “This spell was put together to find the person giving the soul eater power. It was used in conjunction with a special warrior.”

  I grinned at her description. Couldn’t help it. “A special warrior?”

  She nodded, her expression solemn. She pointed at the picture I thought might be a horse with a lumpy overly–built blob on its back. I supposed it could have been a man.

  “Look at him,” she said. “He’s big. And he must have been special or the gods wouldn’t have picked him.”

  “Does it say he’s special?”

  Blythe bit her lip, blonde hair falling forward to cover one eye as she looked down. “Well, that’s the problem you see. I haven’t been able to translate all of it. I’m not so good with ancient text yet. But I’m working on it.”

  “So why didn’t you just tell Elsa all this last night?”

  “She didn’t have time since she was meeting someone else. We were supposed to meet here today but when she didn’t answer the door, I had a feeling something bad had happened.”

  “Wait.” I slapped my hand on the table.

  Blythe jumped.

  I frowned. “Sorry. But did you say she was meeting someone else last night? Did she say who?”

  The witch shook her head, eyes wide.

  “Damn.” I stared at Blythe a minute. I had a feeling I was going to regret this, but something told me to keep the woman on a short leash for now. “Can you keep working on the spell book?”

  Her entire face changed. Lit up like a Christmas tree. Her expression reminded me of a lab puppy’s. Desperate for love and attention but afraid to hope or be rejected. Crap.

  “Oh yes, I’d love to. I’ve been so bored. I told you my shop had closed and now I have all this free time. Well not really—there’s always something to make, or read, or study. Truthfully, now that I think about it, I’ve never really been bored before. I think the only people who do get bored are those without options.”

  “I’m bored,” Phro said.

  Blythe tilted her head to the side. She’d broken off as if she were annoying even herself. Surely she was. “I would love to help you solve everything,” she said.

  “Uh, no, I don’t need help with all of it—just need that paper translated.”

  “At least it’s something to do until I find a job.” She wrung her hands. “I hope I find one soon. I’m not terribly good with money so I don’t have a savings. It’s so easy to spend, you know.”

  “I know.” I nodded in sympathy. Actually, I didn’t. I found it terrifically easy to stash money away since I liked shopping as much as I liked getting, say, a root canal.

  I stood, ready to get things on the ball. Not only had the citrus smell made my stomach upset, but it was really starting to irritate my nose and throat. I didn’t want to wait any longer to find its source.

  “Before we go, I want to cast.” Blythe once again started digging in that yellow suitcase-thing she used for a purse.

  “Cast what?”

  “I want to see what the runes say. I need to be prepared. Wait.” She stopped, staring at me. “Maybe you should cast.” I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but those guileless eyes turned a little calculating.

  I ignored another urge to bop her one because I had this gut feeling I needed her. I never ignored my gut.

  “Here it is.” Blythe pulled out a beautiful satin drawstring bag. Amber colored with dark bronze swirls, it reminded me of a tiger’s eye—my favorite stone. I wore one in the ankh around my neck. The bag didn’t look manmade, and had the most fascinating iridescent sheen. My interest
must have shown because Blythe smiled, hesitated, then held out the bag. “You can hold it.”

  I took it and felt a slight tremor at the contact. Warmth filled my palms and it was all I could do not to cradle the container to my cheek.

  “Open it,” Blythe urged softly. She laid a soft white cloth on the cherry coffee table then made a circle from a long strip of soft leather. “Cast the stones.”

  I opened the bag and took the warm, smooth stones in my hand. I had a hard time letting go. They tumbled in a uniform spill, then landed in the circle. All but one of them. To my amazement, two of the stones jumped and turned over on their own.

  “Well, that’s one question answered at least,” Blythe said.

  I didn’t take my eyes off those stones. “What?”

  “You have favor from the gods. People without favor can’t touch the bag, much less open it. This isn’t a normal set of runes.”

  I nodded. “I’ve never seen any like these.” They were made from bleached bone and had swirls of shimmery colors in them—colors that seemed somehow alive. I rubbed my jeans—kind of wishing I hadn’t touched the runes.

  “Odin himself gave these to me.”

  Phro came around the couch to sit on the coffee table. She looked at Blythe with a new respect. “Ask her when he gave them to her.”

  “How long have you had these?” I finally looked at the woman to find that dreamy, glazed expression back on her face.

  “Since I was nine. He was sitting in this big oak tree in my backyard, but jumped down to help me put out a small fire I’d caused with a spell gone awry. I used to be really bad with spells. He told me his name, only he said Vak, and he said I was a very special young lady. He stroked his hand over my hair and gave me this bag. I’ve noticed over the years that anyone with a bad streak can’t touch the bag.” She giggled. “It’s a good test for boyfriends.”

  Phro reached out to touch the stones, but her hand hesitated over them. “I can’t touch them. For Odin himself to give her these…” She turned to me. “We must let her read the stones. Then we must keep her.”

  “Keep her!” I yelled. Completely forgetting to not speak to my spirit guides in front of Blythe, I shot to my feet and placed my hands on my hips. “A minute ago you said she should be put out of her misery.”

  “I certainly did not.” Phro shook her head as a sly smile stretched her lips wide. “You must have been thinking that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.” I paused. “Wait. Maybe I was.”

  “Hey,” Blythe protested.

  “Stay out of this,” I growled at her. Blythe shut her mouth and sat back. I turned back to Phro. “First of all, we don’t keep human beings. You may have done some pretty wicked things back in your days, but in mine slavery is illegal—it’s always been wrong. Second—”

  Phro cut me off. “Now, you wait just a sec—”

  I held up a hand. “No, you wait. I wasn’t done. Second, what are we going to do with her? Take her back to the swamp to dig in the sand? Jeez Phro, get a grip.”

  “You know as well as I do that we won’t be going back there.”

  My eyes flew open wide. “What do you mean we won’t be going back there? That’s my job! I’m going to find my sister’s soul then I’m going back.”

  “Um, excuse me?” Blythe had stood, but she still looked at the stones. “I don’t mean to interrupt. The conversation I’m hearing is one sided but I can tell that your guide is right. You’re not going back to whatever it is you did before. Not for a long, long time anyway. All eight maidens are in the circle.”

  I looked down at the pretty bones with symbols. All I saw was something that looked vaguely like letters and a few other weird shapes and signs. My searching hadn’t yet reached the rune stone phase, so I was clueless here. “What do you mean all eight maidens?”

  Blythe pushed the table out and knelt, patting the floor next to her. She waited for me to squat down before pointing at the one that looked like an R. “This represents a journey. You have all eight of the maidens inside the circle. Two jumped in when they should have fallen to the floor. These two.” She pointed to ones that looked kind of like an F and an X. “Awareness and partners.”

  “I don’t work with partners.”

  “You do now, but you already do anyway. You stood right before me talking to your spirit guides.”

  “They aren’t partners. They’re more like leeches.” I ignored Phro even though I could see out of the corner of my eye that she stuck up her middle finger.

  “Well, you’ll have more. Plus, you have hardship, transformation, magic and power from the mother set. The crone is showing us that you’ll find balance and a really big growth. Internal, not physical—which is a good thing for you, right?” She giggled.

  I glared.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, uh, so… you have so many from all three sets, maiden, mother and crone and all eight of the maidens, so your whole life is about to change. Everything you thought you knew about yourself will change and maybe some things you didn’t will be answered.”

  That I could deal with. Answers. “Are you sure you know how to read these?”

  “I read them the way I’m supposed to.”

  That was no answer. I frowned. “So, you think I won’t be going home anytime soon?”

  Blonde curls bounced with the force she used to shake her poor head.

  “Thank Zeus,” Phro muttered.

  “I don’t want a new life.” I glared at Phro.

  “You don’t have a choice.” Blythe offered a kind smile. “The stones don’t lie.”

  “Listen, there’s always a choice and when it comes to my life, only I decide.”

  Blythe pointed to the runes. “But the gods have already chosen.”

  “Screw the gods.”

  The witch gasped and covered her mouth, her eyes darting left and right and up as if she were looking for one of the gods to arrive in a great fiery gust of wind and smite me.

  I kind of glanced up myself. Who knows? I’d come across many a strange thing over the years. Hell, I was a strange thing. Maybe there were gods. Maybe they could get pissed enough to smite.

  I looked at Phro.

  It didn’t make me feel any better to see the would-be goddess glancing up as well.

  Chapter Three

  “They’re dusting the car now.”

  Frustration turned Jed’s tone gritty. I tightened my fingers on the phone. I’d picked up a cheap new cell phone because the last one hadn’t dried out yet from the marsh.

  Hot sunlight poured through Elsa’s front window, making my black T-shirt cling a bit despite the chill coming from the air conditioner. I plucked the fabric away from my chest before pulling the filmy white curtains aside so I could watch the witch get into her yellow Volkswagen Bug.

  Figured.

  The woman drove off with a good five inches of peach skirt hanging out of the door. Smirking, I turned from the window. I heard metal clatter to the floor at the other end of the line. It echoed like he was in a warehouse. “You doing the work yourself?”

  “Some.”

  “I thought you guys went over the car on site.”

  His sigh was loud. “We did. The site was clean so we brought it here.”

  I knew he was going over everything again. They had nothing—no clues, zilch. Frustration crawled through my gut. “I’ll look around here and see if she left any notes. I’ll call later.”

  “Beri.” Flinty insistence underlined his voice.

  “Yeah.” I started toward Elsa’s bedroom then stopped. Phro had already been down the hall and now she stood, obviously tense and impatient, waiting for me to get off the phone. Normally, she wasn’t that polite. I frowned and glanced around for Fred. Where had he gone?

  “You will tell me when you find something. Right?”

  I had to give Jed credit for softening that request up at the end. “As soon as I have something you can use, you get it.”

  He was quiet
a few seconds and I knew he weighed my words. Like me, Elsa had a talent for twisting things to suit her own purposes. Jed had worked with Elsa for years, and I had worked cases with them for several of those years. He knew both of us too well.

  “Good.” He hung up.

  I blinked at the phone, surprised I’d gotten off that easy. He must have realized it would do little good to argue. It was all he was getting and that was that. I looked at my guide. “What’s wrong?”

  A curtain of black hair swung as Phro quickly glanced back down the hall. “Something went down here. I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean by something went down?” I slipped my cell back into my back pocket. Her modern jargon cracked me up sometimes. “You know, I don’t get the point of having all those spirit powers if you don’t ever know what’s going on.”

  Phro rolled her eyes and adjusted the thin straps of her ridiculous blue outfit. It looked like she’d put it together out of electrical tape with narrow strips barely covering all the strategic places. I hadn’t missed Frida’s reaction earlier. Those black eyes had locked like missiles onto the goddess’s chest. Phro was such a slut sometimes.

  I waited for the answer to this often-asked question and—as always—didn’t get one. Old, familiar disappointment tightened my chest. I stared for another few seconds before stomping down the hall.

  Notoriously private, Elsa took her paranoid streak further than most and locked up any and all pertinent information. Came from years of living with the constant turnaround of foster brothers and sisters. I wasn’t the only kid who hadn’t worked out in her family. I had been the last, though. Freaked her parents out too much to try again.

  Elsa’s bedroom was the last room in the hall and I could see the unmade bed through the door. It was the first sign that something hadn’t gone right here. The thick, black comforter lay bunched up at the bottom, the cream-colored sheets twisted into a tube that fell over the edge of the bed. Elsa always said, “If everything is in its place, you don’t lose track of it.”

  I flashed back to how small Elsa had looked on that hospital bed. Her soul wasn’t in its place. Fear beat a solid, fast rhythm against my ribcage. I refused to entertain the idea that my sister was beyond reach.