The two of them got into Aiden’s car to wait for the call. It came soon enough. “I got it,” Avery said. “Piper, shine that light here… okay… uh… so, south by southeast… five, ten… one-hundred forty two degrees and… maybe… three minutes?” He related his GPS position as well when asked.
Aiden leaned over Bailey’s lap to reach the dash, and dug through it briefly before he withdrew a compass. He laid it on the stone, shined the light from his phone on it and then ran some quick calculation in his head, ticking off invisible numbers in the air.
“Did we get it?” Avery asked.
“Maybe,” Bailey muttered, and waited for Aiden to finish.
After a moment, he reached over Bailey again and pulled out a map. He unfolded it, turned it one way and the other…
“It’s here,” he said, pointing. “Very near the highway. What’s there?”
Bailey peered. “Nothing, really. It’s just outside down. There’s a hotel, here,” she pointed to roughly where she remembered it being.
“Guys,” Avery said. “It’s changed. Almost two minutes, further south.”
“It’s moving,” Aiden said. “Right. We’d better move.” He pulled out of the parking lot, and floored it to the highway.
Gloria stared at road signs that didn’t make sense. She had just passed this intersection, hadn’t she? She’d taken a right, toward the highway but then… no, then she’d taken another right and and then a left but…
She shook her head. No, she’d gone around in a circle. She remembered, now. Well, then no more turns. She’d drive straight ahead.
It was the stone, she knew. And maybe the Caves themselves, or this town. She had thought Martha was being poetic when she said the Seven Caves had a life of their own but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she meant it. Gloria had a stack of reports and incidents surrounding the place. Strange goings on, the sort that ended up in the National Enquirer, where no one would believe them.
Not her, though. She wasn’t going be an ‘incident’. Gloria Olson was in control of her own mind, her own life, her own destiny, and she was going to beat this thing.
She watched the roads pass by. She saw the sign to get to the highway and paused for a long moment at that intersection to think through which turn she was taking. Right. No… ah, tricky tricky. “Nice try,” she muttered to the backpack. “No such luck.” She very carefully took the left turn. A wave of dizziness hit her. She was tired.
No, no, no. She wasn’t. It was just trying to keep her from leaving.
She was aware, distantly, that there was a part of her that qualified as a raving lunatic. She could feel the quality of her own thoughts, their erratic, manic nature. That wasn’t her. She knew that, too.
All she had to do, though, was think carefully, proceed intentionally.
Okay. The ocean was on her right, the hills were on her left. She could do this. She could beat this thing. She was Gloria Olson and she was going to blow the story wide open.
It took five minutes before she realized that the landscape had, somehow, switched on her. There was a turn in the highway and then… no. There wasn’t a turn. The highway was empty and she had made a U-Turn.
“No you don’t…” She muttered.
Gloria pulled off to the side of the road. It was an insane thought, yes; she knew it when she had it. But if she could lower the variables and limit the choices she had to make, it couldn’t trick her up. She got out of the car and hoisted the backpack over her shoulder.
On foot, then.
Already, she was feeling more clear-headed. Maybe the further she got from the Caves, the less power they had over her. That was the ticket. Just keep moving, Gloria. Just keep moving.
Chapter 19
“Slow down,” Bailey said.
“I’ll gladly pay the ticket if we get one,” Aiden told her, “but time is of the essence.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” she held up the stone. The direction of the glow was veering sharply. “We must be close.”
Aiden did slow down, and they kept their eyes peeled. That was when they saw the car around the next bend. It was pulled off of the side of the road, pointed toward town. The lights were still on; someone had left it there in a hurry.
They pulled off the road themselves and sprinted across, but the light of the stone was pointed off beyond it. “They’re on foot?” Bailey wondered.
“And it looks like they were driving back toward town,” Aiden added. He thumped the car on the hood. “The Caves were trying to direct them back. Whoever has the stone must think that they can just walk a straight line away to outrun it. Feel like a hike?”
Bailey did not feel like a hike—her flats weren’t made for it. But that didn’t change what had to be done. She followed Aiden up the steep incline into the wooded hills that would eventually become the mountains. It was madness for anyone to think they could hike to the next town through this unless they were well versed in survival and hiking. Then again, maybe whoever had taken the stone, was.
Ten minutes in, they knew the direction to go, but the light of the stone was beginning to fade.
“We have to do something,” Bailey said. “Can’t you… I don’t know, do magic to make us faster, or slow them down, or… something?”
Aiden shook his head. “That’s beyond me, and most effects are line of sight without something personal to form a link with.”
“What about the stone, then? Like in the cave? If we can’t do something about the person who has it, can’t we do something with this?” She held up the fading stone.
Aiden tapped his lip. “Maybe. Let me think…”
The light was very nearly out. If the thief went even a few degrees left or right, there was no way Bailey and Aiden would find them out here; not in broad daylight, much less night time.
“I do have a thought,” Aiden said.
Bailey nodded sharply. “Anything.”
“The same spell as before, but I can make a minor modification, now that I know there’s a visual effect. Can you do your part again?”
She would try. It was the best she could manage.
The magic was harder here. Much, much harder. Bailey reached for it, and pulled with all her will, and tried to sink and float and all the other things she was supposed to do while Aiden drew thin lines of light in the air with his wand and spoke his staccato incantations.
“Trust your instinct, Bailey,” Aiden told her. “Trust your intention. All you need is to connect this stone to the other.”
“I’m trying,” she muttered, irritated both by his pushing and her own inability to do this thing she’d done not an hour before.
Her irritation grew hotter the more she failed to push any kind of connection through, until her pulse was pounding and she was panicked again. She took that same raw emotion and pushed it into the stone, and chanted like a babbling loon trying to urge the right words the right intention, the right everything, but nothing seemed to be working.
The light of the stone winked out.
Bailey’s heart broke. They’d lost. They’d lost because she had failed. She didn’t know enough, she wasn’t strong enough. She’d tried to do it herself instead of trusting the Coven. Her irritation grew into anger, and she wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair; they should have taught her more, and told her about the stones, and shown her what was important so she could have been more vigilant. All the Coven’s secrets were pointless if the Caves died, weren’t they? What were they protecting?
That anger burned in her. She’d had the magic, and now it was going to go away. Just like it had for Martha.
“Dang it!” She shouted it. It wasn’t cathartic like she thought it would be. But it did do something.
Like the last word of a spell, vocalizing her anger tripped some final gate, and the magic that had been invested into the stone trembled, and then burst with an invisible, cosmic pop that she felt in her hands.
Bailey nearly dropped the stone.
Aiden, ho
wever, gave a hoot of victory, and grabbed her by the shoulders, and pointed into the forest.
Out there, some distance away, a star had lit up in the dark.
The light took Gloria by surprise. Suddenly, the trees around her were lit as if by a small sun. She turned, looking for the source of it, but her shadow only raced ahead of her. Behind her, then. She spun as though she might catch someone with a flashlight, but she was alone.
It only occurred to her then where it was coming from. The stone. The stone was glowing. No, not just glowing—burning, like some radioactive element in a cartoon, bright, greenish white that was so intense that it shown through the fabric of the backpack.
It was magic. That was the missing piece. Actual, real, brightly burning magic. It was beautiful.
It was terrible.
She dropped the backpack as if it were actually on fire, though there was no heat, and she staggered back a few steps. All the pieces seemed to come together in her head, this one missing ingredient—and it was so obvious, right in front of her nose! How had she missed it?—bringing the whole stew of confusing chunks together for her.
There was magic in Coven Grove. Martha had known. She had known about it all along!
A cold, terrible thrill rushed through her veins. If there was magic, then there were people at the root of it. Martha; it had to be. And if she was part of it then the women she was so intimately connected to were almost certainly part of it as well. Maybe that’s what had really happened to Martha.
Oh, it was too horrible and too perfect to even contemplate. What if these women had driven Poppy mad? Driven her to kill Martha? It made sense; a twisted, awful sense, but it fit. They’d killed her to keep their secret. And made poor Poppy pay the price for it…
Footsteps were approaching rapidly. Gloria panicked, and started to reach for the stone but… no, she would be caught. There was no telling what they would do to her. Cut your losses, Gloria, she thought. Live to fight another day. Expose the secret Martha died trying to reveal.
She grabbed for the backpack, though; it had identifying articles in it. She dumped the small star out of it onto the ground, and then dashed away, beyond the reach of it’s light, to hide behind a tree. It wouldn’t be a total waste. If she could get a good look at them…
There were two. A man and woman, she could tell that much. But with that light between them, burning Gloria’s eyes, she couldn’t identify them. The woman was shorter, the man was taller, maybe… three, four inches, it was hard to say. Details, details… Shoulder length hair for the girl. A jacket, maybe for the man; the lines of his arms and shoulders were stiff and straight.
And then, they picked up the stone. The light went out. It was darker than black for long minutes while Gloria’s eyes adjusted, and the ghost of the burning stone cleared away from her eyes.
When they did, the two people were gone, and the stone, presumably, with them.
But Gloria remembered. There was magic. A man and a woman. She wouldn’t forget. And she was calling in backup.
Chapter 20
It took some convincing, some arguing, and some putting her foot down, but Bailey convinced Aiden that it was her job, as Steward of the Caves—a title she made up just to push her point home, but kind of liked the sound of—to put the stones somewhere safe. When he realized, at some length, that she would not be swayed—and as she pointed out, that she was here first—he relented.
“It’s for the best,” she told him.
“I will… trust your judgment. And I’d hate to incur the wrath of a witch of your caliber.” This he said with a wink that made Bailey blush. She beat a hasty retreat before it got any worse.
She met the Coven Ladies by the Caves, late that night. She was a little surprised to see Rita Hope with them, leaning heavily on her gnarled cane, her face a scowl yet somehow merely passive. That was simply the shape of her face, perhaps after long decades of professional-grade scowling. Francis had nothing on her in that department, but Bailey harbored the private thought that she might, one day, if she kept it up.
“All three stones,” Bailey said triumphantly. She handed Chloe her old, beat up backpack that she’d had since elementary school.
Chloe hefted it, and examined the bag with some amusement.
“Who took it?” Francis asked. “The wizard boy?”
“No,” Bailey assured her. “He helped me find the missing one. We don’t know who took it.”
“Did you tell him about us?” Aria asked; not accusatory, it seemed; just covering bases.
“No,” Bailey said. “But…”
“But?” Francis snapped. “But what?”
“We did magic together, me and Aiden. It was different. I wondered if any of you had done it before…” she trailed off. All four women were gravely silent and watchful.
It was Rita who broke the silence with a long, rattling sigh. “Kids. No sense. I’ve said it all along. Give me those, Chloe,” she said.
Chloe handed the pack over to the old woman.
“Anita and I will keep these safe from now on. They never should have left the caves in the first place.” She started to wander down the perilously sloped and rocky trail along the cliff side. “No respect for tradition…” Bailey heard her muttering before she was out of earshot.
Bailey couldn’t hold back any longer. “When were any of you going to tell me that Rita Hope was one of us? And who’s Anita? Just how many of us are there?”
Chloe grimaced. “It’s—”
“Tradition,” Bailey sighed. “Right. Of course it is.”
“Anita is Rita’s sister,” Aria said gently. “The way that Chloe and I and Francis are sisters. They’re the mothers. Or…” she glanced, horrified, at Francis and Chloe, who seemed to share her distress. “Oh, dear. No, they’d be the Crones now, wouldn’t they. That makes us the Mothers. And Bailey the Maiden. We’re getting so old…”
To hear Aria, beautiful, youthful Aria who didn’t look a day over twenty five though she was nearly forty, lament getting old made Bailey have to stifle a giggle. “Ahem,” she said, “well, okay. I should be used to surprises at this point, I suppose. So… Aiden and I? That magic was different. Very different.”
Aria gave a pretty sigh.
Francis grunted once, and then shook her head. “Deal with this,” she told Chloe. “It’s your mess.”
She stormed off, back toward town. Aria pressed her lips into an apologetic frown, and scurried after her.
Chloe and Bailey were, again, alone. Maybe because of their shared gift, the others seemed to be setting a pattern of leaving Bailey in Chloe’s hands when it came to what Bailey assumed was something difficult to deal with.
“I’m ready,” Bailey said. “Read me the riot act. What did I do wrong this time?”
Chloe laughed quietly and pulled Bailey into a short, but full hug. “Nothing, Bailey,” she said. “Sit.”
Bailey and Chloe settled onto the cool grass. It was a clear night, rare this time of year, and the stars sparkled above them winking happily as they drifted through space.
“I know you’ve told someone,” Chloe said. “I can feel it.”
With a sigh, Bailey admitted it. There was no point hiding things from Chloe. “Avery and Piper. And, Aiden, now, of course. But that was necessity. Avery was an accident. But Piper wasn’t. I wanted her to know.”
“I understand,” Chloe said. “Believe me, I really do. It’s lonely, this life.”
Bailey started to assure her that she thought of all three of the women as friends and teachers, but Chloe didn’t give her the chance.
“I know having us isn’t the same as having them,” she said. “I was your age. We all were. It was never hard for Francis… or at least, she never said it was. Aria and I are so close, I think, because we’ve always had one another and she very much needs close friends. Martha was always proud of her secret… like it made her better than everyone else.”
She glanced at Bailey with sad eyes. “I don’
t want you to be lonely, Bailey. I hope that, in the end, you aren’t.”
It sounded like another prophecy, like the admonishment that magic would have a cost. Tonight’s magic hadn’t seemed to. Unless the cost was getting the stone back and she couldn’t see how it was.
But Bailey kept all of this to herself. She listened to the ocean. After a minute, she asked again. “What happened between me and Aiden?”
Chloe hesitated, and then turned to face Bailey, instead of the ocean. “I imagine it was something special. Wizards and witches… our magic is different. Under the right circumstances it can be complimentary. But Bailey… I won’t tell you what to do, or how to live your life. I promise you that. Just… be careful around him. With your heart. Wizards are manipulative by nature.”
That seemed like quite a line, coming from a witch, but Bailey kept that to herself as well. “More ancient traditions?” Bailey asked.
“Of a sort,” Chloe said. “You’ll understand one day. I promise, Bailey, all of these questions you have… they’ll be answered. It just takes time. It’s not enough to know an answer to a question. Not when it comes to magic. You have to really understand why the answer is the answer. The biggest difference between us and them—us and the wizards—is that our power is tempered by wisdom. Their magic is handed to them as is. That can be dangerous. So, be on your guard is all I’m saying.”
It wasn’t far from what Bailey herself had thought about the whole thing. “I will be,” she said. “And… thank you. I realize I haven’t said it. Not since all this began… but thank you for giving me this. Your guidance, and wisdom, and teaching me… thank you for the magic. I was worried about it, at first, but tonight… I think I started to understand how important it is to me.”
“My sweet child,” Chloe said, drawing Bailey into another, longer hug.
“You know I have one more person to tell,” Bailey said into Chloe’s shoulder. “I will anyway, honestly. But, I’d really just like you to tell me it’s okay.”
“Your father,” Chloe said. She let Bailey go. “I know. Of course you should. And I believe we can trust Ryan. Wendy…” she hesitated.
A Witching Well of Magic: A Cozy Mystery (Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 2) Page 13