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

by Juliette Harper

  (Not to mention that he had gifted them with a massive stash of catnip for Christmas. Honestly, I think in the end their capitulation to his “authority” boils down to not wanting to tick off their dealer.)

  Everything seemed to be going great until Dad and the dogs arrived. You see, we all forgot one highly salient factor. Dogs bark.

  The pack bounded down the stairs with their usual boisterous enthusiasm, spotted the cats, and made a beeline for the group howling like the hounds mom accuses them of being.

  When Festus bellowed, “Stop right there!,” Bobber, Dad’s favorite, and the brightest of the bunch screeched to a halt, tilting his head to one side uncertainly. I imagine if you’re a dog, a talking cat gets immediately filed in the “worst nightmare” column of life experiences.

  That bought Myrtle enough time to envelop the dogs in the enchanted Bubble, but Festus wasn’t done yet.

  “Good,” he said. “I see one of you mutts has a functioning brain. Sit!”

  To everyone’s amusement, Bobber’s backside instantly hit the floor. “Excellent,” Festus said. “Down!”

  Again, Bobber complied. The rest of the dogs glanced at each other uneasily and decided to opt for a “follow the leader” approach to this unexpected turn of events, all lying down as well.

  That’s when Winston sat up and meowed at Festus who answered at length in felinese.

  “What are you telling him?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I’m just explaining the boundary system,” Festus said innocently.

  “Explaining how?” I said.

  “You’ll see,” Festus replied smugly. “Go on, Winston, give it a try.”

  As I watched, Winston hopped off the hearth, walked right up to Bobber, and hissed in his face thereby causing the dog to lose his mind.

  Bobber lunged at Winston, who didn’t even twitch a whisker. The dog hit the invisible barrier separating the two of them, scratching furiously at empty air but unable to reach his tormentor. I swear to you, Winston grinned, put out a paw, and delicately shot Bobber the claw.

  The whole pack erupted into a cacophony of frustrated howls and barks that escalated markedly when Yule, Xavier, and Zeke joined Winston for the doggy tauntfest.

  “Norma Jean!” Dad commanded. “Control your cats!”

  “Me?” I said. “How about you do something with your dogs!”

  Amity picked that exact moment to walk in the lair. “What in the name of Merlin’s beard is going on in here?” she yelled. Dropping the suitcase in her hand with a heavy thump she made a slashing motion with her hand. “Silentium!”

  Thunderous quiet fell around us. The dogs’ mouths were still moving, but no sounds came out of their throats.

  Dad’s jaw dropped in outrage. “What the hell have you done to my dogs?”

  “Nothing,” Amity snapped. “I like animals much better than people. I would never harm one in any way. Your dogs are still barking, we just can’t hear them anymore. Am I the only one here who knows how to use practical magic?”

  Feeling the need to put blame where it was due, I said, “Festus egged them on.”

  “And you didn’t expect that to happen?” Amity asked acerbically. “You do know Festus, don’t you?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, caught sight of the smirking old tomcat’s face, and stopped. Amity was right. I should have seen the whole thing coming a mile away.

  “You’re sure you didn’t hurt my dogs?” Dad asked, still sounding belligerent.

  “Positive,” Amity said, “but I might hurt you if you question my use of magic one more time.”

  Before the two of them could start an even bigger dogfight, I said brightly, “So! You’re here! Hi Mom, Hi Dad. Glad you’re okay. Driving must be murder out there.”

  Still babbling, I started steering them out of the lair proper. “Let me show you where you’ll be sleeping. Oh, and Dad, the fairy mound made a grassy patch just down there through the stacks where the dogs can take care of their business.”

  The notion that an indoor comfort station had been created for the convenience of his beloved pack seemed to satisfy my father.

  Rising to the demands of the emergency, the fairy mound did more than just create a mini dog park though. In addition to Myrtle’s quarters and Beau’s bachelor digs on the other side of the stairs, the lair now faced a row of six small, but thoroughly well-appointed guest rooms.

  Greer doesn’t sleep, and Festus prefers to snooze on the hearth, but my parents, Gemma, Tori, Amity, Chase, and Lucas (when he returned from London) would all be afforded some privacy during our forced cohabitation.

  As for my sleeping arrangements, the alcove simply expanded itself to include a recessed space with a comfy mattress and piles of quilts and pillows opposite the fireplace.

  Not long after the initial rumble with the dogs, my cats discovered that secluded haven and claimed the private sanctum. That allowed the dogs to settle enough to accept a shy invitation from Duke for a raucous game of chase.

  The fairy mound obligingly shoved several rows of shelves farther back into the shadows to make a playground for the dogs and Beau. Yes, the sedate Colonel waded right into the middle of the pack, throwing tennis balls, and allowing himself to be tackled by the ecstatic canines.

  “Can you believe what we’re seeing?” Tori asked, handing me a cup of coffee from the rather impressive mini espresso bar that had materialized under the stairs.

  “Beau told me that before the war he had half a dozen dogs that followed him around all day on his plantation,” I said. “Apparently Mrs. Longworth wasn’t any more thrilled about them being let in the house than Mom is, but she put up with it.”

  As we watched, Dad joined the game of fetch in progress, sending a fresh round of ecstasy through the pack. The picture of two grown men — one of them roughly 196 years old — playing like boys with their dogs put a happy grin on my face in spite of everything.

  “You know,” I said, “if the whole world weren’t freezing over our heads, camping out down here like this would be fun.”

  Tori put her arm around my shoulder. “I think we have to let it be fun anyway, Jinksy,” she said. “If we don’t, Chesterfield wins.”

  I told you my BFF is the smart one in the bunch.

  After supper, everyone assembled around the fire to watch the latest weather reports on the big screen TV. To say that the humans were confused doesn’t even begin to describe the befuddled reporting dominating the program on every station.

  “Dan,” one newscaster said in a serious tone, “we have never seen a weather phenomenon quite like this. Across the border in Tennessee temperatures are in the mid-50s, but right at the state line, the mercury plunges into the single digits. The same is true on the border with South Carolina and Virginia. North Carolina has been plunged into a geographically precise meteorological anomaly.”

  “Geographically precise meteorological anomaly?” Tori repeated. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means they don’t know what the hell is going on,” Festus said, “but they get paid to talk, so they’re talking — without saying a damned thing.”

  That assessment pretty much summed up the majority of the “breaking news” alerts, although the journalists did provide us with scary details on the spreading power outages and the proliferation of emergency shelters.

  Chase called up the video feeds from the GNATS drones. The snow had stopped, for the time being, allowing us to see that all of Briar Hollow had gone dark. The only visible lights were those at the high school gym. The Ionescus were making good on their promise.

  As we watched, however, jagged bursts of static interrupted the drones’ video transmission.

  “They’re having trouble with the cold,” Chase said. “The pilots are telling me that even fairy dust can freeze in these kinds of temperatures. We may have to ground the drones.”

  “How cold is it out there?” Gemma asked.

  Tapping commands into his tablet, Chase’s fa
ce paled. “Right now, it’s 2 degrees.”

  We didn’t even have a chance for that news to sink in before Myrtle’s mirror came rolling into the lair.

  “It seems we have a call,” she said, softly chanting the words of the reception spell.

  When the swirling silver glass coalesced into a solid image, my grandfather’s grim face looked out at us.

  “I’m afraid this crisis has reached a new and quite severe level,” he said without preamble. “The Mother Tree feels the cold.”

  26

  Barnaby’s statement didn’t scare me at first. After all, the Mother Trees make up a global grid. Didn’t it make sense that the Great Oak would be able to feel the cold gripping North Carolina?

  That naive reasoning shows how little I understood about the interaction of the realms and how together they create a coherent whole.

  To explain the importance of Barnaby’s words, Myrtle conjured a 3D model of the Great Oak, but where the roots of the tree should have been, there was another tree — or at least the top of one — upside down.

  The image reminded me of the way the Tree of Life is sometimes drawn. When I said as much, Myrtle smiled. “Human artists have devised variations on this model for centuries,” she said. “Unwittingly, they have recreated the intricate structure of the Mother Trees. Once, before they turned away from magic, even the humans understood the role the Trees play in the composition of all reality.”

  As she talked, the different parts of her model changed colors. Myrtle described the Mother Trees as they stand in the Otherworld, every one a majestic example of their given species and each the living embodiment of the qualities long associated with their history.

  The Mother Oak, for instance, is equated with strength, stability, healing, protection, and wisdom. The Mother Rowan, on the other hand, enhances psychic powers and can locate precious metals. She is so deeply steeped in magic that the wood of her children is often given for the crafting of the most powerful wands.

  “As the mighty trees descend into the soil of the Otherworld,” Myrtle said, “their trunks pass through the In Between, anchoring with their bodies the connection and relationship of the realms.”

  She went on to illustrate how the trees break through again in the human world to sit at vortices of power on the global network of ley lines.

  “Some of our human brethren are aware of the existence of these geographic lines of power,” Myrtle said, “but the Trees exist over and above those common convergences. They mask their greater role in this place, doing as the humans expect them to do, suffering the annual shedding of their leaves and seeming to be at the mercy of the elements.”

  As I stared at the revolving model of the Mother Oak, I remembered the things Greer told me about the In Between.

  “How do the Trees protect themselves in the Middle Realm?” I asked. “Isn’t it supposed to be a lawless frontier?”

  To my surprise, Mom spoke up. “Stop being so curious about the In Between, Norma Jean,” she said sharply. “There are good reasons why no one goes to the Middle Realm.”

  Greer, of all people, laid a calming hand on Mom’s arm. “One does not have to cross the deepest ocean to study a map of its waters,” she said softly. “Be at peace, Kelly.”

  For just a second, I thought I saw anguish in my mother’s eyes before she gave Greer a wavering smile and said, “Of course, you’re right. I’m just letting this weather get on my nerves.”

  Myrtle, who had watched the exchange with an unreadable expression, returned her attention to me. “The people of Wales, in a medieval poem called Cat Goddeu, recount the tale of the wizard warrior Gwydion,” she said. “He enchanted the trees of the forest to fight at his side in a legendary battle.”

  Next to me, Tori let out a sharp exhalation of air. “No. Way!” she said. “The Ents were real?”

  Myrtle nodded. “Tolkien was quite skilled in weaving the stories of the Fae world for the delight of the humans. He includes in his trilogy a variation on the Battle of the Trees.”

  “Tolkien was Fae?” Tori asked.

  “He was,” Myrtle said, “and save for that ridiculous Tom Bombadil passage, a thoroughly engaging storyteller.”

  The only time I’ve seen Tori more shocked was the first day we walked into Shevington, and she found out unicorns are real.

  “In gratitude for the aid of his forest brothers, Gwydion and his men guard the trunks of the Mother Trees in the Middle Realm to this day,” Myrtle went on. “No creature dares run afoul of their swords, which they wield in utter devotion to the Great Trees.”

  “Okay,” I said, “so what’s the big deal about the Mother Oak in Shevington feeling the cold? Part of her does exist in the Human Realm. It makes sense she’d be aware of what’s happening outside.”

  From the looking glass, Moira cleared her throat. “If I may,” she said, “the Great Oak was not speaking of the cold in the world of the humans. The frigid winds that touch her trunk do so in the depths of the In Between.”

  Gemma sat up. “You’re saying that the cold has reached across the barrier between the realms?” she asked. “That’s not possible.”

  “It should not be possible,” Barnaby agreed, “but that is what is happening. As each hour passes, the cold moves farther up the trunk of the Great Oak deep in the reaches of the In Between. It seeks out her heart here in the Otherworld.”

  His words carried such an ominous tone I said the unthinkable, “You’re telling us the Tree’s life is in danger.”

  “I am,” Barnaby said.

  You’d have to see the Mother Tree to realize the impact of that statement. The sheer weight of her presence gives the Oak an air of invincibility. She looks as if she could stand against any force, but now the chill hand of death crept toward her inexorably from below.

  “Can’t this Gwydion and his men do something?” I asked. “Build a bonfire and drive back the cold?”

  “They are doing just that, stoking the flames around the clock,” Barnaby said. “The fires have done nothing but slow the progression of the cold. If the climate in your realm is not restored to normal soon, the killing frost will reach the Oak and no power will be able to drive it back.”

  I may not be good at bluffing, but I don’t back down even when I’m holding a hand full of rotten cards.

  “You’re actually telling me there’s nothing we can do?” I asked indignantly. “Come on! I don’t believe that for a minute. We’re sitting in an archive packed to the gills with magical stuff, and we don’t have a single enchanted space heater?”

  The corners of Barnaby’s mouth quirked in a smile. “I did not say that, granddaughter. There is an artifact housed in the fairy mound, the Jar of Prometheus, which would provide ample heat to protect the Mother Oak, but someone would be required to deliver the object to Gwydion and his men.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Great. We can do that, right?”

  The force of my mother’s voice almost knocked me out of my chair. “Wrong!” she said vehemently. “No one, most especially you, Norma Jean, is going into the Middle Realm and that’s the last I want to hear about it.”

  An uneasy silence fell over the group. Finally, Amity took the bull by the horns and faced my mother.

  “So just like that you decide your girl will fail like all the others?” she said. “I thought you’d found a particle of courage, Kelly Ryan, but I’m not seeing any of it right now.”

  Festus instantly bristled, arching his back at Amity. “That will be enough out of you, witch,” he hissed. “It is not your place to speak so insolently to a Daughter of Knasgowa.”

  “Really?” Amity said, raising her hands menacingly in response. “I’m the last practicing member of the Briar Hollow Coven, and I will not endure insolent back talk from you, Festus McGregor.”

  Without warning, the telltale ripple passed over Festus as he shifted into his mountain lion form. I saw Chase tense, but Greer was faster. In a blur of motion, she placed herself between the wereca
t and the irate witch.

  “You’re developing bad habits in your old age, laddie,” the baobhan sith said tightly. “If there is to be a dance, Festus, then dance with me — if you dare.”

  Festus didn’t shift back, and he didn’t say anything, but he did sit.

  Gemma turned tolerant, loving eyes toward my mother and said, “Now see what you started?”

  In all my 30 years, I’ve never seen Mom and Gemma fight. Not once. I thought this was going to be the first time. Then the tears started — heavy, hot rivulets that spilled over Mom’s cheeks and stained her blouse.

  “My girl isn’t going into the Middle Realm,” she said, her voice breaking. “Not because I think she can’t, but because I will not have another of my children pay the damned price that magic always exacts.”

  Dad, who couldn’t have possibly been more out of his element in a conversation of this type, turned to Myrtle with appealing eyes. “I have no idea what’s going on here,” he said, “but I don’t like it. Somebody explain it to me.”

  “You began this, Amity,” Myrtle said curtly. “Tell the tale.”

  It was a tale, all right. In 1815, on the Island of Sumbawa in Indonesia a volcano threatened to erupt — not just any volcano, a seriously big one called Mount Tambora. Two of the Great Trees, the Ficus and the Eucalyptus, appealed to the Mother Oak for help.

  The Oak directed Myrtle to locate an artifact stored in the fairy mound that could diffuse the pressure building up under Mount Tambora. Awenasa, Knasgowa’s daughter, volunteered to enter the Middle Realm to deliver the item — the fastest route to reach the endangered region.

  Once inside the Middle Realm, however, the people of the Moss Forest, the Golem, confronted Awenasa as a trespasser and presented her with a test to gain safe passage. If she merged their hidden lights into the single white beam, they would allow her to continue on her way and even illuminate the next perilous stage of her journey.

  When Awenasa failed, the Golem exacted their stated revenge laid out in the terms of the test, taking from her the thing she loved most, her husband, Thomas Page. Awenasa was left alone with a four-year-old daughter to raise, Sarah, who was my great-great-great-great-grandmother.