The Amulet of Caorunn (A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 7)

by Juliette Harper

  The real English settlers to the New World ultimately made nice with the Mother Country — after the little matter of a revolutionary war. Barnaby and the people of Shevington, however, never reconciled with their counterparts across the pond.

  In spite of that, agencies like the DGI, the Registry, and International Bureau of Indefinite Species collaborate globally, and nobody bats an eye. The real political split involves Barnaby and Reynold Isherwood, the head of the Council of Ruling Elders, the Fae governing body in Europe.

  Recently the chill showed signs of thawing. The Elders contacted Barnaby to work with them in a diplomatic capacity. He accepted, even going so far as to tell me I would take his place as Lord High Mayor. After that, nothing happened.

  I can’t decide if that’s the usual glacial pace the Fae apply to their affairs or the bad blood between the two men coloring the political waters. So far the situation hasn’t called for me to say, “Granddad, you and Reynold need to get over it,” but I sensed that might be coming.

  “You know that jerkin I made for Rube?” Connor asked.

  A jerkin is sort of a sleeveless jacket. Very Renaissance Faire. When Rube wears it, he looks like an extra in an all-critter version of a Robin Hood remake.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I love that thing on him.”

  “Me, too,” Connor said. “A dragon master saw it and asked him who did the leather work, and Rube referred me. The guy sent me an old pair of his gauntlets, and I used them as a pattern.”

  “The new ones are going to be beautiful,” I said, “and so is the cover of my grimoire. Thank you so much for doing that.”

  A little blush colored his cheeks, but he didn’t turn as bright red as he would have a couple of weeks earlier. We were getting to know each other better through mirror calls, and in-person visits and an easy rapport had begun to develop between us.

  “I didn’t know when Tori was going to give it to you,” Connor said. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Not like, love,” I said. “I have to call Granddad and Moira next about the pen. Oh, and Darby wants to know what kind of cake you want for your birthday. He’s making one for each of us.”

  Connor’s birthday is December 3, mine is the 6th, and Tori’s is the 9th. Mom and Darby were deep into planning a triple celebration.

  “Chocolate,” Connor said firmly. “Always chocolate.”

  “Me, too,” I laughed. “We’re going to eat ourselves into blissful chocolate oblivion.”

  “Good!” he enthused, licking his lips. “What did Tori pick?”

  “The same thing she’s been picking since we were kids,” I said. “Red velvet cake.”

  “What’s that?” he asked curiously. “Is it good?”

  “It’s sort of a second cousin of chocolate cake, and the frosting is made from cream cheese,” I explained. “And yes, it’s good.”

  His interest in Tori wasn’t lost on me at the time, nor was the little spark of interest she was showing in him. The first time she saw a picture of my big brother; my BFF labeled him a “major hunk.”

  Connor and I talked for a few minutes longer. He told me about how fast the new unicorn foal was growing. I helped him with some ideas for Christmas presents for our parents. But then he had to get back to work, and I needed to wrap up my calls to Barnaby and Moira since I had a project brewing in the back of my mind.

  A project I had no intention of sharing with anyone just yet.

  If that statement sticks out for you like a red flag, then you get a gold star for keeping up. Sometimes the scariest thing in the world is me with a bright idea in my head.

  3

  I finished the last of my mirror calls and stuck my head through the alcove curtain. The lair was deserted. Perfect. I didn’t need any prying eyes for what I was about to do. I started to cross the open space to the bookshelves to the right of the fireplace when I saw a light burning in Graceland East. The dollhouse is a replica of Elvis Presley’s mansion that serves as Glory’s home.

  Creeping forward silently, I heard soft snores coming from the vicinity of the tiny living room. Tori wall mounted an iPod Touch for Glory to use as a big screen TV. Most nights our diminutive friend falls asleep watching old movies, hence the snoring. Perfect.

  Still moving quietly, I searched the shelves for my Grandmother Kathleen’s grimoire, slid it free and carried the book back to the alcove, drawing the curtain behind me. Then I dug through the leather satchel under the desk until I located her private notebook. I set them side by side on the desk and took a deep breath.

  My mind was made up. I knew what I was going to do — and still, my inner good girl tried to pitch a fit. “No,” I told her — myself — firmly, “you do not need to ask anyone’s permission. Now get on with it.”

  I opened both books and started to read, flipping back and forth in search of matching references in the texts. Grandma Kathleen possessed the same signature power I have, — psychometry — and I needed some advice from an expert.

  From the start, I’ve been able to touch objects and get visions. It doesn’t happen every time I pick something up, I just intuitively know how to ask when I want to extract images and impressions stored in the item.

  The experiences that come to me feel so real; it’s as if I’ve entered an alternate dimension. Through hours of practice, I can now summon up instant replays and even share them with another person. What I can’t do — or couldn’t do then — was use an inert object, one with no infused memories or life energy, to search for information.

  I had a photo of the Amulet of Caorunn that Chase and Festus retrieved from the law offices of the late Anton Ionescu, Esquire. The same Ionescu who was Chesterfield’s attorney and the strigoi who cursed my mother and caused Connor’s exile to Shevington.

  The strigoi are a type of vampire. They feed on energy, not blood. Anton lived on a vendetta — the belief that Mom and Gemma were responsible for the deaths of his daughter and niece. He didn’t like me much better since I was the one who inadvertently raised the girls from the grave as actual bloodsuckers.

  Anton redeemed himself prior to his death, but not before he facilitated putting the Amulet of Caorunn in Chesterfield’s hands via the meeting with John Smyth.

  No matter how much I tried to use that photograph to have a vision about the amulet, all I saw was the inside of Anton’s desk and the inner workings of the printer that produced the picture from a digital file.

  That left me with the firm assurance that Anton had a thing for binder clips and the printer needed a new magenta ink cartridge. Not exactly vital information.

  Then the idea came to me to search Grandma’s notes about her own psychometry to see if I could find a way to fine tune my signal.

  No two witches keep their grimoires in the same way. Some of my ancestors recorded nothing but precise spells and incantations. Others made notations in the margins, included diagrams, or composed outright journal entries.

  My only memory of my grandmother was of an old woman who went to church a lot. Festus and Mom both assured me, however, that Kathleen Ryan had enough power, as the ginger cat put it, “to curl your whiskers.”

  After spending an hour with her grimoire and notebook, I could see that Grandma had been a learned magical scholar and a sharp, inquisitive woman. In addition to the sorts of things I would have expected to find in her notes, I was surprised to see that she also cataloged some of the artifacts that found their way into the archive.

  One, in particular, jumped out at me — the Casket of Morpheus. In her neat, precise hand, Grandma described an ivory box that contained some type of horn. To my consternation, the writing was smeared, so I couldn’t tell if I was looking for a wooly mammoth leg bone or a moose antler.

  According to the notes, the bone and ivory together allowed the person in possession of the box to request a specific type of dream. Bingo! Surely someone with my psychometric power could use that sucker like a metaphysical homing pigeon.

  (For the record,
I chose to ignore what Grandma wrote in the margin. “Artifact produces unpredictable results.” In case you haven’t guessed, that might have been a poor decision on my part.)

  The reference number for the Casket said it was shelved in Section 57, Row FF, Shelf 9. Normally I wouldn’t have had a clue how to find that, but Darby and Glory just completed a sort of Google Maps for the lair. In addition to keeping our domestic world in order, Darby knows the archives like the back of his hand.

  Pair his knowledge with Glory’s archival skills and add a dash of Tori’s ability with computers and you get a location finder app for the collection. I switched on my iPad, punched in the information, and followed the pulsating red dot on the screen straight to the Casket of Morpheus, which turned out to be roughly the size of a cigar box.

  When I had the item in hand, I returned to my alcove and examined the casket. Grandma didn’t leave any instructions on how to use the thing, so I went with a standard approach. I folded the photograph of the amulet, put it inside the casket, laid my hands on the box, and chanted a simple spell asking to locate that which had been lost.

  Nothing happened, but since I was working with a dream-based magical item, I expected sleep needed to be part of the equation. I was exhausted anyway, so turning in for the night seemed like a good next step in my big master plan.

  That first night my mind conjured up what amounted to a three-dimensional floating hologram of the amber pendant. The detail came through so vividly the three crimson berries glowed. When I reached for the pendant, however, the colors faded. As soon as I drew my fingers back, the hues grew vibrant again.

  That was it. No plot. No purpose — and no useful information. Just bling suspended in mid-air like a sleep-induced visit to the Home Shopping Channel.

  Still, I recorded every detail in my grimoire. Rather than keep two separate books, I flipped pages toward the center of the volume and started to write the word “Notes” at the top of the page. Then, just for the heck of it, I closed my eyes and envisioned a decorative divider page that looked like something out of an illuminated manuscript.

  Barnaby and Moira’s pen pushed gently but insistently against my fingers. I opened my eyes and released the writing instrument, watching with delight as the nib began to draw, changing ink colors spontaneously as needed with no further input from me.

  Tendrils of ivy flowed from the gold point, entwining with climbing flowers to encircle the outer border of the page. When that was finished, the pen hovered over the paper for a second as if assessing its work before writing, in an elegant, calligraphic hand, The Notes of Jinx Hamilton - Witch, in anno domini 2015.

  “Nice touch with the Latin,” I said.

  The pen turned to face me, bowed, and then gently settled back into my waiting fingers.

  “Wait,” I said. “Can you draw a picture of the Casket of Morpheus for me on the next page before I start to write?”

  Obligingly, the page of the book turned, the pen levitated again, and quickly produced a precise black ink sketch of the artifact.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking charge again. “I’ve got it from here.”

  Even though the first dream didn’t tell me much, I wanted to record the details of my experiment — from the methodology I used to the images that came into my dreams. Hopefully, at some point, it would all start to make sense, and I would get the information I could use to recover the amulet.

  Unfortunately, I had more or less the same dream three nights in a row. After the last one, I came downstairs grumpy enough that Tori asked me what was going on.

  Pulling her into the storeroom, I came clean about what I’d been doing.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Tori hissed. “Why would you try to find the amulet without coordinating with Barnaby or for that matter, Lucas, and Greer?”

  “Because,” I hissed back, “I don’t need anyone’s permission to use artifacts housed in the archive under my own store, and I’m trying to let everybody enjoy the holidays. Mom and Dad are over the moon because Connor is home. He certainly doesn’t need any more chaos after what he’s been through. Barnaby hasn’t said a word about the amulet since Connor’s kidnapping. Granddad may be content to sit around and wait for his lunatic brother to make his next move, but I’m not.”

  Tori blinked at me a little dumbfounded. I’d just spit out way more of an answer than she was expecting. “Okay,” she said, reluctantly, “I get the thing about the holidays. If you’re bound and determined to do this, then count me in. What can I do to help?

  “You’re the alchemist,” I said. “You tell me. Can’t you mix up something to supercharge the effect my spell has on the box?”

  “Bad idea,” she said emphatically, “bad, bad, and bad in case you didn’t hear me the first three times,” Tori said, shaking her head and backing up. “You do not try to enchant artifacts that are already enchanted. It’s just not done, Jinksy. There’s no way to tell what the result might be.”

  That did nothing but make me more insistent. “I’m not asking you to mix magic,” I said stubbornly. “I just want you to amplify the box’s . . . signal. Stick an antenna on the danged thing. I need a dream that tells me something.”

  We argued about methodology all day under our breath and in the storeroom — any place where the customers or Mindy, our barista, couldn’t hear us. By closing time, I’d worn Tori down — and she’d had enough time to think about the casket and come up with an idea.

  We spent the evening in the lair, excused ourselves at a normal workday bedtime, and half an hour later, Tori came upstairs with a small vial of pale greenish blue powder.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Ground blue kyanite,” she said. “It’s used to amplify psychic powers.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “So how do we do this?”

  Tori examined the casket sitting on my bedside table. “What have you been doing so far?” she asked.

  In response, I handed her my grimoire. She opened the book to a blank page and looked at me questioningly.

  “Sorry,” I said. Then, speaking to the book, I said, “Can you show Tori the notes section please?”

  The pages riffled in her hands, and Tori let out an appreciative whistle. “I see you guys are getting to know each other,” she said. Then her eyes landed on the illustrated page. “Wow! Did Barnaby and Moira’s pen do this?”

  In its leather ring beside the pages, the pen let out a tiny, indignant growl. “Sorry,” Tori apologized hastily. “Of course you did it. Fantastic work.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and read my notes on the first four dreams. “You just put the box on the bed, recite the invocation spell, and go to sleep?” she asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “That’s the drill.”

  “And you get the same dream every night?” Tori asked.

  “Pretty much,” I said. “The amulet is either suspended in thin air or lying on a piece of black velvet. Usually the berries in the amber glow. In one dream, the pendant was slowly turning with a light falling directly on it.”

  “Well, let’s just go with that for starters,” Tori said. “I’m going to sprinkle the kyanite powder over the top, so the grains sit in the grooves of the carving. You say your spell, and let’s see what happens.”

  As she twisted the top off the vial, I felt my first flicker of doubt about the wisdom of our plan. “You’ll stay close?” I asked, a little uncertainly.

  “You couldn’t blast me out of here with one of those blue energy bolts of yours,” Tori assured me. “I’ll be on the sofa in the living room.”

  As I watched, she dusted the box. I recited the spell. We said our goodnights, and to my surprise, I fell asleep quickly and immediately entered the dreamscape.

  This time I found myself standing on a street corner in the middle of a full-blown action movie. Swiveling my head around, I took in the vaguely European style of the buildings. Movement across the street caught my attention. I saw an elderly man wobbling and swaying along t
he sidewalk. Even at a distance, I could tell he’d been drinking.

  As the old gent passed by a shadowed, recessed entrance, a second figure stepped out of the shadows. I tried to call out a warning, but my throat refused to produce any sound. As I watched helplessly, the newcomer held out one hand palm up and blew some sort of dust toward the man’s face. He gasped and inhaled the powder.

  Unfortunately, I did the same thing.

  A reeling maelstrom of confusion slammed into me with such force I woke up with a startled cry. Tori was instantly by my side. “Easy there, Jinksy,” she said. “It was just a dream. Are you okay?”

  Through gritted teeth, I managed to get out the word, “Dizzy.”

  “Lie still,” she said. “Let it settle down.”

  When she started to move away, I panicked. “Don’t leave,” I said.

  “I’m not,” she soothed. “I’m just going to bring a chair in from the kitchen. I don’t want to sit on the bed. The motion might make you dizzier.”

  “Okay,” I said, staring straight up at the ceiling. “Hurry.”

  I heard chair legs on the linoleum, and then Tori’s returning footsteps. “I’m back,” she said, “just breathe. In and out, deep and steady.”

  “Open the grimoire,” I instructed, “and take the pen out of the leather loop.”

  “You can’t even sit up.” Tori protested. “How are you going to write anything.”

  “I’m not going to try,” I said, “just put the pen in my hand.”

  When I felt the smooth barrel between my fingers, I concentrated on the scene I’d just witnessed. “Draw it,” I said softly.

  The pen tugged against my fingers, and I released it. I lay still, listening to the gold nib scratch against the page. The rhythmic strokes eased my thudding heart, and the spinning stopped.

  “What’s it doing?” I asked Tori, still afraid to move.

  “Drawing,” she said in an awed voice. “Every little detail.”

  “I want to see,” I said. “Help me up.”

  With her steadying arm for support, I managed to get upright and turned slightly to watch the pen dancing over the page of the grimoire. The book was resting beside the Casket of Morpheus on my bedside table.