by D. G. Swank
He rolled his eyes and locked his jaw, looking out the driver’s window, presumably so I wouldn’t see his irritation. Didn’t matter. I knew he was pissed off, but so was I.
“So you’re telling me you’re going to be flipping through dusty old books all day.”
“No,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up in tentative excitement.
I couldn’t help feeling a little evil when I said, “There’ll be lots of digital and microfiche too.”
Hours later, I was in the second basement of the National Archives at University of Missouri, Kansas City, surrounded by old books with cracked bindings and yellowing pages, plus one of the archive’s research laptops I’d managed to beg off the lady at the front desk.
After the librarian showed us to the journal, I’d taken careful notes, then pulled other books about the human, nonmagical history of Kansas City.
Brandon paced the perimeter of the small room, occasionally grunting or muttering a single word under his breath, probably his thoughts on what we should be doing instead. Nothing seemed to jump out at him enough for him to try dragging me out of the archives, though, so I kept going.
Even though he was flustered, I was reading, researching, deciphering.
The history of this area was fascinating. The Kickapoo, the Iowa, the Potowatomis, plus the Sak, Fox, and Miami tribes were all moved from their far-flung Midwestern homelands onto tiny Kansas reservations during the middle half of the 1800s. German settlers arrived not long after that, largely in response to the Land Act, which gave them land for homes, farms, and businesses for free.
That was when things started to get crazy.
According to Council records and the journal, the ratio of magic people had been much higher in Kansas City in the late 1800s than in any other early American town. It wasn’t even close. At that time in history, there was usually one magical family for every one hundred nonmagical ones in any given settled area. But there had been twelve known families with strong magical talent in their bloodlines in a single Kansas town, within a sixty-mile radius.
As I arranged the family trees I’d hastily sketched on notebook paper across the large library table, the picture became even clearer. The twelve families were all descendants of two families—Mayer and Kaiser.
I slammed my palms on the table in excitement, startling Bran. He crossed the room, probably expecting to see me frustrated or panicked, but found me grinning like a fool instead.
“What do you know about the Mayer and Kaiser families?” I asked, my words rushing out.
Brandon screwed up his face. “Old American families. Came here not too long after Salem, and made their way from the East Coast inward.”
“Yes,” I encouraged. “And the names tell you they’re from—”
“Germany,” Bran said. “Those names are titles of power in old German. German, not Druid, and if you’re tracking family trees, you’re wasting your time. There’s no magical census to track witches and mages.”
“Sure, with the magical census,” I said in dismissal. “But not the U.S. census.”
“It won’t tell you their magical ability,” he countered.
“No, but we’ll know who’s still here and what talents their ancestors possessed.”
We flipped through a few books until we found the family histories we were looking for. Searching through magical books was a much easier prospect than doing the same with plain paper books, crumbling with age. One of the Council’s rules was that records must be written on specially crafted and charmed paper that could never be erased nor destroyed. It was a real treat to be here, surrounded by old archives and some official. Every breath that passed my lips was full of gratitude for the opportunity, if not the circumstances surrounding it.
We searched awhile in silence before I found what I was looking for. “Okay. So the Mayer family lists talents with healing via herbs, encouraging crops’ growth, animal communication…even some skinwalking. Over and over, just a bunch of witches and mages with green thumbs and animal whispering. What about you?”
“Same with the Kaisers,” Brandon said.
“Twelve families, all of them German, all with strong elemental magic. I don’t know about you, but they sound like the descendants of Druids to me.”
“Could be,” Brandon said. “But why here? The Druids mostly got their power from their ancestral lands. Never could move around that much. Kind of like you, actually.” Brandon tilted his head, considering.
“Yeah, but you know which group could have drawn magical power from this land, right here?”
Brandon arched an eyebrow and drew in a long, labored breath. “Native Americans.”
“So, say the Druid families want to create their sources of power in Kansas. They plant oak trees and mistletoe, the two plants most commonly associated with their branch of magic. Look,” I said, drawing up a couple of maps I’d found showing the preponderance of oak trees and mistletoe in the area. “The tribes teach them how to commune with this nature, and they start to rebuild the Druids. Quietly. Because it took thousands of years to sink deep roots into Scotland, Ireland, England.”
“You’re telling me this whole time that the Council has been monitoring magical activity in America, there’s been a secret sect of Druids sucking magical power from the earth?” he asked.
“Exactly. The Druids have been rebuilding that magic while flying completely under the radar. They were farmers, fabric dyers, tanners, anything where their magical talents could make them the best at what they did. Look at this—Mayer Muslin Creations. A corn farm. This ranch belonged to the family of one of the Kaiser girls. Here’s a picture—”
My words caught in my throat as I stared at the picture of a farmer and his wife standing beside a freshly branded cow. A symbol was burned on its backside, and even though the picture was old and grainy, there was no mistaking it—the symbol I’d first seen on the way to the Protocol Thirteen Small Council meeting.
The symbol on the cloaks of the people who’d tried to kill me, more than once.
The idea that the symbol had meant something to some others in my community for so long, and I’d had no idea, felt like a punch to the gut. My hands shook as I reached once again to sift back thought the records so widely available to the public. I took little comfort that the Small Council and Protective Force seemed unaware of it too.
“Look for ads,” I hurriedly instructed Bran. “For their feed stores, for their farms, anything. The Mayer and Kaiser families. Labels from bottles, bills of receipt.”
In my trembling hands, I offered him a book on early immigrant business endeavors. I kept the one about farms. Silently, we flipped through them, his fingers much clumsier than mine with the pages.
“Ah!” I stabbed my finger at a page like it crawled with spiders. “Mayer Family Maize Growers. Look!” Atop a single stalk of corn in the logo was that symbol of two interlocked triangles.
“Here we have the Kaiser General Store,” Bran said. “The name is actually written inside that triskelion.”
“What did you say it was?” My eyes darted up, frantic for Bran’s answer.
“It’s a triskelion,” he said, shrugging like he’d thought it was common knowledge. “Three interlocking shapes—spirals, swirls, whatever. Norse mythology used them for three fates, or the three creator gods—”
“Odin, Vili, and Ve. Okay. But that’s not Druid.”
“Not yet.” Bran shrugged. “But people and their religions like things in threes. Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Past, Present, Future. Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Maid, Mother, and…”
“And crone,” I finished for him. “Right. So you’re saying this was used by the Druids too?”
“I think I remember they had one, but it was swirly. Spirals twisting out of a center. This is not like that at all, although it’s definitely a triskelion. For Druids it would have been Earth, Water, and Air, I believe. “
“So if the interlocked triangles are the symbol of the Da
rk Set,” I said, pacing, “and triskelions are a Druid thing, does that mean the New Druids revived the Dark Set?”
Shit. He’d probably been right about Gwen and Henry, after all.
He frowned at me, not gloating like I would have expected. “Let’s not jump to conclusions, but they could be. Gwen isn’t from here, remember. She just feels compelled to stay.”
“Okay, but why did her brother choose to come here, of all places?” He shrugged, indicating he had no answer for that. “What do we do now?”
“Exactly what you said we would,” Brandon said, approaching me and wrapping me in his arms. “Research. Let’s spend some time trying to find some of your ancestors’ bones.”
Chapter Twenty-One
It could have been worse. After driving a short loop around the city, I found ancestral ties in the area that included aura magic—which wasn’t quite as good as mind reading but would help me in a fight—another skinwalker, and an elemental witch, but with less power than my grandmother, Imogene. The best I could probably hope for from her would be to kick up some dust. But combined with the telekinesis and the other talents I had lugged along, I felt reasonably confident I could defend myself if anything went awry. And that didn’t include the talents of the other ancestors scattered around. Maybe they’d have something even better.
But it all depended on where Markus, the Bbook, and my sister were located. The witch with aura abilities did me no good if she was twenty miles away.
“It’s late,” Brandon said. “Let’s get some dinner, then figure out where to go from here. Maybe we go back to talk to Henry about other local Druids.”
I nodded, agreeing on all accounts.
We headed to a restaurant and the meal eased the headache lurking in my temples. Brandon was paying his check when my phone rang with an unknown number.
“Hello?” I asked.
“I found the book,” a woman whispered.
“Gwen?” I asked in shock. “How did you find it?” I quickly dissolved my link to Josie so Brandon could listen to my thoughts.
If I’d had any doubt about whether Josie truly blocked his ability to hear me, the look of shock on his face was all the confirmation I needed.
“One of Henry’s friends said he saw someone who looks like Markus out on an old farm. I’m sure the book is with him. Thomas said the magic there is dark.”
I gave Brandon a glance. “Where is it?”
“Your mom was a good witch,” she said. “Truly good.”
“You knew her?” I choked out.
“Met her, once, while we were passing through. You weren’t born yet. I remember thinking to myself that I could never be stuck in one place my whole life, guarding something like that. I wasn’t supposed to know about the book, of course, but we Druids knew… Your mother, she seemed happy.” She paused a moment, as if collecting herself, and when she spoke again, her tone was more brusque. “The book is in Stull, Kansas. I’ll text you the address.” Then she hung up.
I stared at Brandon, confused. “Do we trust her?”
“I don’t know.”
“That just seems too easy. Too convenient.”
“I know,” he said, his brow furrowed. “Yet I can’t ignore it either.”
“Do you think she told me the part about my mom to make me trust her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I’d like to think she was being sincere, but…”
“Yeah, my thought exactly.”
“There’s a strong likelihood it’s a trap.”
“But we’re going anyway, aren’t we?” I asked.
“You don’t even have to ask.” He stood, then reached out a hand, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s go find your sister.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
True to her word, Gwen texted an address. I plugged it into my GPS.
“Stull, Kansas, huh?” Brandon said with a grim look. “The locals say it’s one of the seven gates to hell.”
I snorted. Nonmagical people were always coming up with crazy theories about our world based on weird weather, spooky graveyards, sickness they wanted to blame on the supernatural, you name it. The truth was that there wasn’t much someone nonmagical could do to make something supernatural happen, including communicating with the dead, casting spells, performing incantations, or even accessing other planes.
Still, it said a lot about Stull, Kansas, that people were creeped out enough to call it a gate to hell.
“I’m guessing whatever Dark Set scum set up shop there chose it because of the low population and the distance from the Council,” Brandon said. “And because they generally love drama.”
“Anyone who wears a black cloak and goes to the trouble of embroidering a half-assed retconned symbol on it loves drama,” I conceded. “Celeste loves drama too.” But even as I said the words, I regretted them.
No. There was no way she was involved in this.
Right?
My GPS led us to an old farmhouse.
The thing hadn’t been painted in at least a decade, and the porch sagged. Absolutely no light came from the windows, making it look abandoned, but I could feel the presence of heavy magic.
“Something about the magic feels off,” Brandon said in a tight voice. “Could be the whole weird Druid thing, or that these Dark Set assholes have poisonous magic. But it could also be a trap.”
Both of us seemed to agree on the latter, but we were still here. What did that say about us?
“That we’re determined,” he said, watching the farmhouse through the windshield, not even pretending not to hear my thoughts. I was too far away from Josie to use her as a shield, and surprisingly I hadn’t been tempted to try.
Grasses grew wild in the field next to us, tall and waving slightly in the gentle breeze. The soft whisper of the stalks filled the night air. The windows had long been knocked out, and the stones that formed the root cellar on one side were partly crumbled away. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, marking the only interruption in an otherwise static scene. It might as well have been a painting.
Except for the smell.
It was faint at first, but the closer we drove, the more pronounced it became—that scent we now knew as the sickly-sweet smoke of a cured sessile oak.
Brandon pulled up to the house, parking a mere hundred yards from the entrance. I raised an eyebrow at him. His intense caution and overprotectiveness was really easing up.
“If they’re in there, they’ve already figured out we’re here. Doesn’t matter if we try to sneak up on them,” he explained, taking in the house with a steely gaze. “I want you to stay in this car, and if anyone or anything comes near you, throw it in reverse and get the hell out of here. Do you understand me?”
“I understand you,” I said, seething, “but I’m not agreeing to this macho bullshit.”
“It’s not macho bullshit if it makes sense,” he said, his jaw clenching as he tried to keep his cool. “I’m trained in fighting. You have considerable talents, but you haven’t spent hundreds of hours in simulations and in the field like I have. And if I’m thinking about your safety, I’m less likely to recover the book and your sister. Please.”
“My sister is in there.” Just saying the words seemed to activate our coven bond, searching blindly for her and coming back empty. Desperate energy shot through my veins. “I’ve tried to keep her safe her entire life. She’s right there, and she needs me.” I shook my head. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
Bran turned the car off and closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath. Then he turned to me and cupped my face in his hands. “Don’t you get it? I’m falling in love with you, Phoebe, and I’m not going to lose you because you had to be the one to rescue your sister. Let me do this. It’s my job.”
I sucked in a shuddering breath. I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t playing fair, that high-stakes moments were no time for declarations of love. I wanted to slap him for thinking his feelings were more important than mine.
Most of all, I wanted to make him understand that protecting the book was my job, even more so than it was his.
Yet before I could say anything, the look in his eyes softened, and he leaned in, planting his lips on mine in a hard, hot kiss. One breath later, he’d hopped out of the car and glamoured himself to shimmering translucence as he approached the house.
One second after that, my whole world turned inside out and upside down.
Celeste was in my head—the real her, through the bond that connected us.
I was becoming her, feeling her pain, despairing in her immobility, her weakness. Her hopelessness. Something slid, clean and smooth, sliced across my forearms, splitting the skin and letting hot blood trickle down my—her—arms.
I stumbled out of the car, tripping once and falling to my hands and knees. The pain intensified to the point that I was surprised that no blood darkened the dusty path beneath me. Celeste’s second scream ripped through my brain, leaving me heaving on my knees while my body shuddered with pain.
Only this scream wasn’t just in my head. It filled the night sky.
Our coven bond had taken over, stronger than I’d ever felt it. In a distant echo, Rowan’s voice begged, Get up, Phoebe. Get up and help her. They did something to her. She’s dying.
How I could hear Rowan this clearly so far away was a mystery, yet I had no doubt I was really hearing her voice. It must have been the same magic that made me feel Celeste more strongly than I had in my life. I could only imagine what Rowan was going through, so far away and utterly helpless.
I had to be here for the both of us.
I’d never thought I’d leave the bubble of safety that was our home. But with every staggering step I took closer to that farmhouse, each one stronger than the last, I realized that I had always known I would do anything for my sisters. To protect them, and to protect witchkind from suffering the horrors of 1600s Salem ever again.
Our coven bond drew me to the house like a magnet—I couldn’t have strayed from its path if I’d tried. As I gathered more will, Rowan sent me a flush of power and strength that made my feet move faster. The pain faded to a dull ache, persistent but no longer debilitating. The whimpers and whines no longer existed only in my head—I could hear my baby sister making those horrible noises, so close.