by Scott Tracey
He rolled his eyes and continued. “As far as they were concerned, Lucien Fallon, or Lucas Fallon as he was in the ’50s, worked in town for a decade or two and then supposedly left for New York. When he came back pretending to be his own son, no one batted an eyelash. Everyone thinks his family’s been working for the Thorpes for generations. But this time around, Lucien didn’t disappear after showing up.”
“So how’s he do it? Some kind of spell?” My head was already buzzing with ideas. Magic was possible, but how would he have sustained the effect? Hypnotizing the entire town permanently would take a lot of juice. An impractical amount of juice.
Then I remembered the shadow eye—both the visions I’d seen and that dark blanket of energy curled atop the town like a tourniquet. Was that what it really was? Some giant spell over the town? Stretched so tight over everything that I couldn’t see it for what it was?
“Probably.” Gregory shrugged. “Or there’s something else going on. Maybe he’s cursed, forced to live out his life over hundreds of years trying to right the wrongs done to him in search of atonement. Or he could be of a race of immortal men and women who must fight to the death.”
He didn’t have any idea how ridiculous he was sounding. “What about the downtime? Any idea what Lucien’s doing when he’s not in Belle Dam?” I asked, but Gregory immediately shook his head. “He’s got to be doing something, right?”
“Sleeping? That’s what I’d do, if I could live forever. Take a nap for a few of the boring years. Like the seventies, or the boy band era, y’know?”
Think, Braden. Figure out what he is, and maybe that’ll help figure out how he did it.
I’d seen him in daylight, so he wasn’t some sort of vampire. Courted fey were immortal, but I’d spoken to Lucien, and he was too … sane to be one of them. Plus they preferred chaos to order, and Lucien was all about his timetables.
Demons didn’t have the power to just … hang out. They could be summoned, but they were too strong to stay here. Gravity dragged them back to where they came from. Anything else was too powerful to even care about this dimension.
“Besides, he’s not the most interesting part of that legend,” Gregory went on. “You know the stories about Grace, right?”
“More than you think,” I muttered.
“Highly doubt that,” he sniffed. “She’s our very own Dumbledore. Until she vanished, never to be seen again.”
“I know all this. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Well, did you know that Grace was the one that picked this spot?” He waited pointedly while I didn’t say anything. “Grace wanted the town built here, and so it was. She picked the location, and while the public records don’t give her the proper credit, they do frequently mention her sketching ability.”
“So she could draw?”
Gregory smiled. “I wouldn’t imagine you could understand. She was an artist. Some may say an architect. It’s notable that right from the start, Belle Dam was organized in a way most other towns were not.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that the popular theory among people in the know,” Gregory puffed out his chest, “is that Grace designed the town. The layout, the mix of residential and commercial areas, the local parks. Belle Dam’s been the same size it’s always been.”
Grace designed the town. My mind flashed back to the image of Belle Dam from above, ebbing and weaving with energy. “How is it no one knows about this?”
“There’s a … separate archive for sensitive information,” he said slowly. “Certain information would only stir up trouble in town.”
“So you’re censoring the info that’s out there,” I reasoned out. “Trying to keep the Lansings happy?”
“It’s not like that.”
I crossed my arms in front of me. “Really? Because everyone else in town’s picked a side. Why not you, too? But you are going to give me everything you have.”
His face was turning a deeper red. “I don’t work for you. Besides, this is why things need to be carefully monitored. Or something like Carmen would happen again.”
“Who’s Carmen?” The name was familiar, but there was so much I’d picked up since coming to Belle Dam, it was hard to remember where I’d heard it.
“She worked for me, too. I mean, Catherine employed her,” he said, almost dismissively. “Brought her to town and all, but she wasn’t just here to do witch stuff. She worked here in the shop.”
Of course. The two witches who’d come to Belle Dam in hopes of a freelancing job or something. One had gone to Jason, the other to Catherine. And now both were dead.
“What happened to them?”
Gregory shook his head. “No one’s really sure. Drew was too young then, and Catherine wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me what happened. But it must have been pretty bad. She was in some kind of fury. Said that the town had gone nuclear the night before. Whatever that meant.”
I wondered. Witches could sense magic, like a tingling on the skin. Nowhere near as well as I could, but they could feel a tremor when powerful spells were being worked. For Catherine to say it was “nuclear” meant it was some serious magic. “She came here the other day, right? After the spell I cast?”
Gregory nodded. “She was concerned.” I saw the connection finally trigger, and his eyes lit up. “I thought summoning things was powerful stuff. So you’re thinking she should have been more concerned?”
I shook my head. “No. I think she was just concerned enough.” Which was really making me worry. If what I’d done had amounted to a grenade explosion, then what happened to Carmen and the other one would have been a nuclear bomb. How would second-rate witches have raised that kind of power? And if they hadn’t, then who had?
“Can—can I interview you for the site?” Gregory asked with hesitation. Like I would really waste the time to blast him across the room for it or something.
“Trust me, if things don’t get better, you’re not going to want to.” And it was true. If the truth got out, then half the people in town were going to wash their hands of me. Trey, Jade, and Gregory for starters.
“Do you have any idea what kind of megapocalypse we’d have if things really heated up?”
“Mega … ” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“Belle Dam history is full of genocide. They’ve just got really good press.” Gregory started typing away on the laptop. A few minutes later, he swiveled it around to face me. “The last big struggle was in the twenties. The Armstrongs were siding with August Thorpe at the time. Jason’s grandfather.” On the screen was an image of a newspaper clipping. Floods Swallow Town.
There was a picture in the yellowed clip, an image of the Belle Dam docks nearly submerged. I said the only thing I could in that situation. “Oh.”
So if it got bad, then we were talking major damage. Not just to me, but to everyone in town. Until then, I needed Gregory. Him and Riley both. “Listen, I need you to start pulling out anything even marginally related to the feud. Anything that you’ve taken off that website.”
“But what about Catherine?” He seemed shocked. The idea of going against her was nearly blasphemy.
“Greg? If you help me?” I struggled for some description he would understand. “You’d be like Jimmy Olson jumping in to save Superman before the world ends. You’d be doing everyone in town a favor. They’d owe you.” My geek-fu was sadly lacking. It was the best I could come up with.
I could see the idea taking root in his head. Slowly, the gears started turning, and he got behind the idea. “So I’d be a hero.”
“And then some,” I agreed. “There’s a really good chance something bad is going to happen in the next day or two. Just be careful.”
The idea of being a hero was new to Greg. He was staring off into the distance, the lines of his forehead thick
as he lost himself in thought. I took the opportunity to start heading out, taking the pictures with me.
When I got outside, Riley wasn’t there. I’d figured she and Drew would have stuck close, waiting for me, but no. Leave me alone to figure out my next move. Perfect.
I started heading for the library, not even sure if it was open on Sundays. I’d barely started to cross the street before my cell phone rang. I left it in my pocket until I crossed, then finally slid it out.
Trey’s cell. Should I pick up? The last time we’d really talked, he’d had a gun on someone. Not entirely without reason, but that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t sure what to do with that new facet of his personality. If he could pull a gun on Drew, then he could certainly do the same to me. Or worse.
“Hello?” Like it or not, I still wanted to hear his voice.
“I didn’t think you were going to pick up,” he admitted after a moment of static.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to. You pulled a gun on someone,” I said slowly.
There was a draw of breath on the other end of the line. “Braden, you don’t understand what you got involved in. I tried to warn you.”
“Yeah, you did. And I didn’t listen.” Somehow, that didn’t make it any better. “But you went out there with me hoping he’d show up, didn’t you? You knew he’d come back.”
“You’re feeling better? You were out of it last night.”
That’s right. Trey must have taken me home. I didn’t remember anything after the cemetery. “Better now. What do you want, Trey?”
“Dinner. A chance to talk. And, remember? My mother’s expecting you.”
That was all I needed. Having Catherine breathing down my neck while I was trying to figure out what was going on with Lucien wasn’t the best idea. Then again, maybe I could learn something if I went to dinner with them.
There wasn’t much Catherine could throw at me that I couldn’t stop. But the encounter with Jason had just stressed something I hadn’t thought of before. Endurance. Jason had it, and if Catherine was even close to as strong as he was, then she could probably outlast me in a fight.
“You still there?”
“Today’s not a good day. There’s a lot of stuff going on,” I said, trying to find some way out of it. Our parents want each other dead, you hate my father, and your mother’s going to try to kill me when she realizes what I see.
There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “Maybe you’re not understanding me. When she invited you to dinner, she wasn’t leaving you an option to cancel. There’s enough going on out there without her thinking you’re going to fall under Jason’s spell.”
I laughed. Couldn’t help it—that was funny. Falling under another witch’s spell. Trey wasn’t laughing, of course. “Why? This isn’t the meet-the-boyfriend dinner. We’ll do it another time.” Like never, if I could help it.
“Where are you at?” Trey’s voice was full of curiosity, as a car horn blared behind me.
“Somewhere in town.” At some point in the conversation, I’d stopped paying attention to directions, and now nothing really looked familiar. “I told you, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I already missed a day of school, and I can’t get behind.”
Trey wasn’t buying it. “I’ll come pick you up,” he assured me. “She’ll calm down once she’s had a chance to get to know you, I promise.”
I debated. More research, or a chance to learn more about the Lansings firsthand?
“Fine, whatever. Let me just figure out where I am first.”
¤ ¤ ¤
There wasn’t any talking on the drive. It was an unspoken rule from the moment I stepped inside. Trey barely looked at me, just pulled up to the curb and waited.
Maybe I could use the time with Catherine to find out more about Grace. A family anecdote, or some sort of ghost story that had been passed down. I glanced at Trey, and saw the way the muscles in his jaw were clenching and then releasing. Clench. Release. Maybe talking to him right now wasn’t such a good idea.
We nearly drove out of town, heading the way I’d come in from the bus station. Trees lined one side of the road, thick and green and barely touched by the onset of fall. There was only a hint of red to the leaves, almost as if they’d decided that this year they wouldn’t bow down before the cold season.
“She’ll think you’re trying to play both sides. Jason’s back in town, so she doesn’t have the luxury to ignore it. Everything’s been quiet since he tried to kill my dad, but something like this would start it all over again.”
It wasn’t so much his words as the sound of his voice that surprised me. I’d gotten used to the silence during the ride. We were turning down into a long and elegant driveway with little brick markers leading the way. “I thought it stopped after whatever happened to Carmen?”
Trey shook his head. “Jason really didn’t do anything that time. Nothing that could really violate their truce. But Mom never got over the first time he tried to kill my dad.”
“Is that why you hate him? Jason?” I asked gently.
He didn’t say anything, but I saw the jaw flex again. Hesitating, I reached out for his hand, clutched around the stick. The skin was cool, a dampness I didn’t expect. Trey was always so in control, always comfortable taking the lead.
“You’re just not thinking clearly,” he went on, as though nothing had happened. “She’ll take care of you. I will too. Jason wouldn’t touch you after that. Besides,” he added, with a semblance of humor streaking through his eyes, “you can take care of yourself. Can’t you?”
All he wanted was to take care of me. I knew that. He knew Drew was a threat, and that’s why he’d pulled the gun. Something wrenched itself in my stomach. Someone finally cared about me, and I didn’t deserve it.
The path of trees cleared. We were there.
Twenty-Six
Even knowing the size and prowess of the Lansing name, I was stunned to see the house. The mansion. It was every bit as elegant as I should have expected from someone like Catherine, a brownstone complex that was full of large windows and gardens everywhere.
It was one part English manor and one part Gothic Revival, which somehow made perfect sense. The Lansing house was far enough away from town that you could almost forget it was within the city limits. It was exactly the sort of place you’d expect one of the founding families to live—isolated from the locals, and yet completely majestic.
Trey slowed the car as we pulled around the circular end of the drive. Everything I saw, from the hint of rose gardens off to one side to the sculptured ferns and bushes, suggested someone with exquisite taste had gone to town all over the property. It wasn’t over the top; in fact, if anything, it was understated compared to the house.
Thick auburn stones made up the bulk of the manse—not quite a mansion, but something far grander than a house. The building gently sloped off to the sides, hints of expanded wings in the back with a much lighter, newer-looking stone.
“You ready for this?” Trey was all cool and calm once more, unaffected by our conversation.
Was I? “Sure,” I said, sounding a lot more positive than I actually felt. Keeping secrets in town was one thing, but walking right into the Lansing home and lying to Catherine’s face was something else entirely.
Part of me felt like the longer I was around Catherine, the faster my secrets would come spilling out. Like all she had to do was look at me, and she’d know.
“There’s still an hour or so until dinner,” Trey said after a glance down at his watch. “C’mon, let me show you the house.”
I wiped my hands against my jeans, trying to stave off the dampness as he led me through the foyer.
Trey saw the movement, and he smiled. “No reason to be nervous. She already likes you.”
“Only because I’m a witch. She doesn’
t know me.”
“She will,” was all he said.
I expected to walk into a museum, but the interior of the house surprised me. Everything was done in shades of creams and whites, but everything was functional instead of standoffish the way I’d assumed. Despite the colors, everything felt warm and used.
“C’mon, I’ll show you the kitchen.”
He led me through the back of the living room, down a hallway, and through a formal dining room that was already set with four plates. My stomach turned again, seeing double. But I wasn’t having some sort of vision problem—there really were two spoons and two forks on opposite sides of the place settings. I was totally out of my element.
Everything I’d seen so far was a mixture of taste and restraint. I didn’t need to be told that Catherine had decorated everything herself; I could almost see her walking through the house, pulling the decorations back just a little bit.
But what about the secrets, I wondered. All the places that she doesn’t want the public to see. I half-expected Trey to point out the bricked-up wing of the house where they’d chained their enemies, or the rooms that Catherine had devoted to her dark magic.
“Braden?” I looked up to see that Trey had left me far behind. Or I’d slowed on my way down the hall. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, glancing down a darkened hallway to my left. Victims trapped in guest rooms. Conditioned. Manipulated. And why is the house so quiet? Don’t they have servants? “I’m … I’m fine,” I finally managed, tearing my gaze away. Trey was giving me a look, but I ducked my head and stepped into the kitchen.
Massive. All the appliances were stainless steel, the countertops were dark marble, and everything else was white. White cabinets, flooring, a white chandelier over the islands in the center of the room. And as much as I’d have liked to imagine Catherine hanging people from the hooks in the ceiling, the only thing they actually held were copper pots.
It was also empty. No sign of the meal we were supposed to be eating soon, or anyone to prepare it.