Witch at Last: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 3 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  From the depth of Chase’s pack, Festus declared crossly, “I could have taken him in a fair fight.”

  If Festus had been anything like Chase in his mountain lion form, he must have been formidable. And gutsy to take on a Creavit wizard.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Chesterfield tried to gain control of the General Assembly in Raleigh,” Chase explained. “He’s a classic example of a Creavit who likes to play politics. He wanted all the land up here in the mountains. He figured if he owned it all and developed it, sooner or later he’d find the aos sí and get into The Valley.”

  From the head of the line, Myrtle said curtly, “Irenaeus Chesterfield is a power hungry fool, or he was, until Festus taught him a lesson.”

  Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it wasn’t doing me a lot of good either. “Would one of you just tell the story, please?” I asked.

  “Dad?” Chase asked.

  “Go ahead,” Festus said tersely. “I was there. I know how it comes out.”

  “It was June 1936,” Chase said. “Congress was just about to green light the Blue Ridge Parkway project under the authority of the National Park Service. Irenaeus was on a train headed to Washington with a bag full of bribe money. Dad and Moira stopped the train right at the Virginia border. It was just supposed to be a delaying tactic. They caused a landslide and covered the tracks with boulders, but Irenaeus detected Moira’s presence. He was so intent on reaching his destination that he was willing to risk exposing his powers. He and Moira dueled in a clearing a few hundred yards into the forest.”

  No longer able to contain himself, Festus sat up in his compartment. He snagged the zipper pull with one extended claw, drew open the flap, and stuck his head out.

  “Damned Creavit fool,” he said indignantly. “All those humans right there milling around the tracks and he challenges an Alchemist to a duel. Irenaeus had Moira’s back to a cliff when I charged him. Took a bolt of lightning to the hip. Melted the bone in the socket, but I bought Moira the time she needed to bind Irenaeus and hold him. The whole thing was a mess to clean up. She had to put alternate memories in the minds of all the humans who were there. After all that, I will just be damned if I can understand why Barnaby let Irenaeus go.”

  Myrtle answered him. “Festus, you know perfectly well why Barnaby freed Irenaeus,” she said. “The immediate alternative would have been to imprison him in The Valley. The problem with housing a poisonous viper you cannot kill is that sooner or later, he will strike at you. Barnaby thought it was better to allow Irenaeus to play his minor games in human society, but to live under the constant threat of true retribution.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “The Creavit are immortal. What could Barnaby possibly do to this Irenaeus guy that would be any kind of major threat?”

  Myrtle stopped and turned toward me. The look on her face made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  “There are many layers to the in between,” she said quietly. “Not all are as pleasant as the one you are about to see.”

  Oh.

  “Irenaeus understands that he was afforded considerable mercy,” she continued. “It has been years since he’s done more than collect rare books and buy and sell antiques. Irenaeus Chesterfield is no longer a threat to The Valley.”

  EARLIER THAT SUMMER

  BRENNA SMILED at the screen hovering in front of her. “The years have been kind to you, Irenaeus,” she said. “You look well.”

  The face of the man who looked back at her was handsome, in the refined and arrogant manner of an aristocrat. His lips curled in a slow smile.

  “Brenna Sinclair,” he said. “My, my, my. Done playing magical games with the native savages, have you?”

  “Quite to the contrary,” she purred. “The games have just begun.”

  12

  Right on the heels of Myrtle’s assurances about Irenaeus Chesterfield, she announced, “We’re here.” I had been so engrossed in the story about Festus and the Creavit wizard, I hadn’t been paying attention to our progress through the basement. Glancing at my watch, I realized we’d spent the greater part of an hour reaching the spot where we now stood, right in front of a very ordinary looking door.

  Apparently Tori was thinking about how far we’d walked, too. She looked down at Darby and asked, "You've been organizing everything down here in this huge space all by yourself?”

  "Yes, Mistress Tori," he said looking up at her, anxious as ever to please, "but if you want me to use a different system I will start over."

  Tori turned and stared back down the long aisle between the shelves. We could no longer see the faint glow from the lamps in the area we called the 'lair,' even though we'd followed a straight line.

  "No, Darby," she assured him, "I'm sure your system is fine. How is everything arranged?"

  "The way Dewey would do it," he answered promptly.

  Tori and I were both library nerds in high school. The board finally scraped up enough funds to computerize the school library our junior year. We made extra money over the summer helping Mrs. Hayhurst set up the digital card catalog. She was already north of 70 at the time and refused to give up the old trays of index cards, which were just transferred to a side room. Whenever a kid would ask for a book, Mrs. H. ducked in there and looked it up the old-fashioned way.

  "Darby," I asked, "Where did you learn the Dewey decimal system?"

  He looked at me like I was speaking Greek. "What is a decimal, Mistress?"

  Okay. So this was going to be one of those conversations.

  “Never mind,” I said, deciding to try a different route. "Who is Dewey?"

  Darby's face brightened. "Dewey is my best friend," he said. "He is Moira's assistant. Dewey is a dwarf."

  Probably one of seven.

  Myrtle took that as her cue to both jump in and get us moving again. "Dewey,” she said, “is someone you will meet shortly if we can quit wasting time and step into the valley."

  Even though reaching Shevington was the reason for this whole excursion, my stomach still did a sudden, unexpected flip-flop.

  "How does this work?" I asked. "It's not going to be like a roller coaster ride or anything, is it? Because I'm not big on roller coasters."

  Chase slipped his hand into mine. "All we have to do is step through the door and we're there," he assured me. "Sometimes it feels a little bit like you're trying to walk into a strong wind, but it won't hurt you. Just put your head down and push through."

  Myrtle took a large, brass key out of the pocket of her sweater and inserted it into the lock. When she turned the key, the tumblers in the mechanism moved smoothly, allowing her to draw the door back on its hinges revealing . . . a blank wall.

  That is, until she raised her hand, chanted something soft and sing-songy under her breath, and a rippling oval of light formed in the center of the doorway. As it flowed outward, sunlight streamed into the basement. On the other side of the opening, I saw a beautiful mountain meadow.

  “Holy freaking Narnia, Batman,” Tori whispered.

  Myrtle looked at me, gesturing with a sweep of her hand indicating that I should enter first. At that instant, thanks to Tori’s reaction to the portal, something Aslan said popped into my head, “To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness in yourself.”

  Nerves or not, I knew I was moving toward a place filled with light.

  Chase described the physical sensation well. For just a second I strained against an invisible barrier, and then I was through and standing in a world scrubbed clean of everything that coats our reality -- the grime of “progress.”

  The scent of blooming flowers flavored the air. Closing my eyes, I turned my face toward the sun. Around me, birds sang merrily in the trees and off somewhere in the distance, I heard the bleat of grazing sheep. The burbled notes of running water rose up in the natural song, playing over a bass line of indolent, buzzing bees. The moment flowed like the opening movement of a symphony. There was no sense
of time or distance, only the mesmerizing difference that is The Valley.

  From behind me I heard a barely muffled cough. I stood frozen in place, blocking the entrance for the others.

  When I moved aside, Tori came through and had exactly the same reaction. I had to take her by the elbow and drag her out of the way.

  Chase and Festus were next, then Amity and Darby, and finally Myrtle. But this was not the slightly severe, basically monochrome, bespectacled librarian with whom we spent so much time. This was Myrtle in her true form, ever young, lithe, regal, emanating a golden glow of her own.

  “Myrtle,” Tori said, “has anyone ever told you that you’re a real looker?”

  The musical lilt of Myrtle’s laugh danced around us. “Several someones over many lifetimes,” she said. “Welcome to the Valley of Shevington.”

  I felt Chase’s eyes on me and looked over at him. “Kinda blows you away the first time, huh?” he asked, grinning.

  “The first time?” I asked in a stunned voice. “Do you ever get used to it?”

  To my surprise it was Festus who answered.

  “You do not,” he assured me, his usual raspy voice striking a gentler tone.

  In a purely practical sense, the meadow below the town of Shevington has all the technical features of any meadow. But that’s where the comparison stops. The colors are more vibrant than anything in our part of the world. The grass beneath your feet pulsates with the greenness of life. And the sky overhead? Well, it’s . . . limpid.

  I honestly can say I'd ever even thought that word until that exact moment, but trust me, when you see limpid blue for the first time, your brain supplies the right descriptive.

  It’s more than the colors, the clean air, the blooming flowers, the slight whiff of fires from the city itself. There is something uniquely, transcendently Shevington. I’ve been to the Valley many times now and I still can’t give that redolence a name.

  As my senses began to adjust, I took note of my immediate surroundings. Shevington proper lay about half a mile ahead, nestled in a rugged mountain cleft. Gray stone walls surrounded the city, glinting brightly in the sunlight. Initially, we thought we were looking at flecks of gold until Myrtle explained that the granite in the mountains contains pyrite deposits.

  You may have figured out by now that just because I had come into my powers, I wasn’t exactly running around using them every day. Any new discoveries in that regard had to pretty much land at my feet, which is precisely what happened next.

  A sound overhead attracted my attention. I looked up to see a small flock of six miniature dragons circling over us. I heard a worried “eep” from Rodney as he hastily shrugged out of his tiny pack and ducked under my shirt collar.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” I said, giving his head a soothing pat, “nobody is going to hurt you.”

  Myrtle looked up and said, “Ah, Draco Americanus Minor, the New World variant of Draco Europa Major.”

  She might as well have had binoculars around her neck and a copy of The Field Guide to Dragons of North America in her hand.

  As we watched the creatures dip and circle, Tori said, “So that’s ‘draco’ as in ‘dragon,’ right?”

  “Dragonlets,” Myrtle corrected her, in the same clinical tone. “They’re quite harmless and rather attracted to the company of the Fae. Many creatures considered to be mythological by humankind have found sanctuary here in The Valley.”

  As if to prove her point, and completely without warning, the dragonlets all dove at the same time, landing in front of me in a straight line, their curved talons digging into the dirt as they grounded themselves. They were roughly the size of large dogs, covered with blue and purple iridescent scales. Tilting their bird-like heads to the side and regarding me through faceted, amber eyes, the dragonlets spread their wings and bowed low, touching the earth with their beaks. Adrenaline-charged fear rushed through my veins until I realized that the rumbling sound I heard from them was purring.

  Curious, I started to step forward, only to be stopped by furious chattering from the depths of my collar. Rodney didn’t want me getting anywhere near the dragonlets. One of the creatures looked up with a hungry gleam in his eye. “Okay,” I said, “we are getting something straight right now. Rodney is off limits. He is not a menu item and you will not hurt him, got it?”

  All six dragonlets raised their heads and nodded. “Okay, Rodney,” I said, “suck it up, we’re going in.” I approached the first dragonlet, held out my hand, and began petting its head. The purring increased to a thrumming roar. Moving down the line, I petted each one in turn, until they were all staring at me with open adoration. I turned around to say something to Myrtle only to discover that she, Chase, Amity, and Tori were staring at me -- with their jaws hanging open.

  “What?” I asked.

  Myrtle recovered first. “When I said that dragonlets enjoyed the company of the Fae,” she said, “I meant that they are content to live in proximity to the city. I have never seen any member of any magical race tame a dragonlet.”

  What can I say? I carted a snapping turtle home from the river when I was a kid and insisted on keeping it over my mother’s dire predictions of lost fingers and bloody stumps. I fed Boxy by hand and she never even tried to bite me. For the record, do not try that at home.

  “Uh, I’ve always been good with animals?” I offered lamely.

  “That,” Myrtle said, “would appear to be something of an understatement. I know your powers have depths you have not yet plumbed, but you are proving to be a constant wonder, Jinx.”

  I have to tell you, I wasn’t sure I was thrilled about that, and I was less thrilled discussing it in front of everyone. Thankfully, Darby came to the rescue. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fidgeting next to Tori. Scratch that. Squirming. Perfect. Just the change of topic I needed.

  “You really want us to get a move on, don’t you, Darby?” I asked.

  He looked like a kid who just got caught with his hand in the candy jar. “Oh, no, Mistress,” he hastily assured me. “I just . . . had . . . an . . . itch.”

  I grinned at him. “Itching to see your friend is more like it,” I said. “I’m sorry. We haven’t been thinking about how much this trip means to you.”

  Turning back to Myrtle, I asked, “Do I need to . . . dismiss . . . the dragonlets or something?”

  Myrtle eyed the creatures that were still sitting quietly on the ground watching my every move. “I think we should leave that up to them,” she suggested. With a gesture toward the path, she added, “Shall we?”

  13

  I hadn’t taken two steps before the dragonlets rose into the air and settled into a perfect “V” formation over our heads.

  Tori moved up beside me. “You’re stepping up from bringing stray cats home,” she observed wryly.

  “Let’s just hope there’s no litter box training involved with this crew,” I replied.

  Ahead of us, Myrtle and Amity were talking quietly, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I did hear Festus behind me declare loudly, and in a highly annoyed voice, “Boy, it is none of your business how much time I do or don’t spend in a pub.”

  Chase tried to pitch his voice low, but his words still came through. “Dad, I would just like to avoid a repeat of the incident that happened during our last visit to The Valley. It’s pretty embarrassing to have to spring you from the local gaol.”

  I didn’t need a dictionary to figure out that “gaol” was a 75-cent word for “jail.” It took all of my self-restraint not to giggle.

  And then he said something so sweet, I had to resist the urge to turn around and hug him.

  “Would you please just behave yourself this one time for me?” Chase asked. “I’m trying to make a good impression on Jinx. That’s kind of hard to do with you catting around in some werecat dive.”

  “The Dirty Claw is not a dive,” Festus said defensively. “It’s a retired gentleman’s drinking establishment.”

  “Righ
t,” Chase hissed, “where retired gentlemen werecats smoke catnip, drink creamed whisky, and caterwaul at the top of their lungs.”

  “You know, boy,” Festus said amiably and loudly, “you really ought to do something about that hairball stuck up your . . .”

  Before Festus could finish the thought, I hastily called out, “Hey, Myrtle, can I ask a question?”

  As Myrtle told me to go ahead, I heard Chase whisper furiously behind me, “We will finish this conversation later, Dad.”

  Parents. They will grow up to embarrass their kids.

  I had been studying the landscape while I eavesdropped, and I really did have a question. “Why don’t these mountains look like the ones around Briar Hollow?” I asked.

  “They are the same mountains,” Myrtle replied, “but remember, they developed along a different path of time.”

  That didn’t mean a lot to me and I would have been willing to let the answer go at face value, but Tori was determined to understand the whole alternate chronology question.

  “I thought the two time streams were parallel,” she said.

  “The streams are parallel, but they are not identical,” Myrtle replied. “They flow side by side, but events affect the depth and nature of each stream. This is a line of time in which the land you think of as North Carolina remained remote and wild. It was subject to a variant of the forces that formed the mountains, one that was more violent and forceful. Barnaby chose this stream for those very reasons.”

  We took a few more steps, during which I could almost hear the gears turning in Tori’s mind. “Are you saying that the Valley of Shevington is the only settlement in this time stream?” she asked.

  When Myrtle answered, there was a note of approval in her voice. “Very good,” she said. “You are correct. It might be most accurate to think of Shevington as an island in the river of time.”

  I have no doubt Tori could have taken that conversation all the way to the gates of the city, but a booming voice stopped us dead in our tracks. “HALT! Who goes there?”