by Nova Nelson
“A different realm and how to get there,” replied Aria.
“How to get there as in where the portal is?”
“Yes,” said Dean. “Except you may have to—”
“Or maybe not,” Aria said darkly. “It might already—”
“You’re right.”
They were doing that thing couples did after being together too long where they no longer needed to speak in complete sentences to communicate effectively. In another scenario, it could be kind of cute, but considering we seemed to be talking about portals to other realms, something I knew very little about other than not to mess with them, I could use a little more information to go on.
“Sharing is caring,” I said.
Aria answered, and I knew before she even got started that I wouldn’t get the information I’d hoped for—she was clearly the more tightlipped of the two, though I wasn’t sure what she was hiding that made her that way.
“Helena still works at the library, I suppose?”
Not what I was expecting. “Yeah.”
“Describe the cover to her and tell her we were likely the last ones to check it out. She’ll have the record, and she’ll point you to it.”
“Why can’t you just tell me what the book is about?”
“We already did,” she said.
“And besides,” asked Dean, “there’s a lot of information in there. Covers a lot of subjects. It’s best if you see it for yourself.”
“Will I even be able to read it?”
“No,” Dean said, sounding unconcerned. “But there are people in Eastwind who can. And I think when you do find it, there will be some other books around it that might be of interest to you.”
Tanner was staring at me, and I recognized that expression, but not from this world. It was the way someone might look at me in my old world when I was having a particularly intense phone conversation and they were trying to deduce what was being said on the other line.
Since he’d been surprisingly patient, considering, and I now had a place to start to deal with—what exactly was I dealing with? To deal with whatever, I figured it was time to wrap things up. If that took me streaking out from under the covers to wiggle a few ceiling baubles until the Culpeppers left the room, so be it, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Can you two meet me downstairs?” I said. “I might as well get started.”
They nodded, finally satisfied that they’d conveyed their message. The ghosts vanished.
“They’re gone, right?” Tanner said, having felt their presence dissipate.
“Yep.”
“For good?”
“No. You’ll see them tomorrow, I’m sure.”
His nostrils flared slightly as he sucked air deep into his chest. “Great. Okay. So… we’re going to solve their murder, right?”
“I actually hadn’t planned on it.”
He set his jaw then said, “Okay. You do what you’re gonna do, and I’ll do what I’m gonna do. Seems like a shame to waste two perfectly good interviewees to an unsolved murder while I have them.”
He was acting way too businesslike for this, which told me he was more emotional about this situation than he felt comfortable letting on. “Okay, Tanner, knock yourself out. I’ll tell you what, if I hear anything in that way, I’ll pass it along.”
He forced a closed mouth grin, long dimples appearing on his cheeks. “Sounds good.”
I snuck a quick last kiss and said, “Before you do, get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”
He nodded, and I dressed, turned off the lamp for him, and snuck downstairs to magically anchor the Culpeppers so I could get started offsetting this unnamed disaster without my boyfriend’s parents hovering over my shoulder…
Chapter Four
When I first walked into Ruby’s parlor, I stopped short on the doorstep, shocked by what I saw.
Was she making jewelry? She’d never struck me as the type.
Wait. Was this a doppelgänger of Ruby? What was going on?
Clearly, my mind was still back in Tanner’s bedroom, swirling around the conversation I’d just had with his parents, rather than where it needed to be.
Of course Ruby wasn’t making jewelry. She was stringing together fresh warding trinkets. Made sense, considering the date.
“The old ones weren’t doing the trick?” I asked.
Ruby spared me a quick glance. “Not this year. And, strangely enough, some crucial ones have gone missing.”
I cringed, but decided against admitting to taking them for Tanner’s room. It was obvious that she already knew.
“Can I help?” I asked, more to clear my conscience than because I had any desire to learn this particular art at this exact moment.
“Probably not,” Ruby replied without looking up.
Touché.
However, I did have a few pressing matters to discuss with the only other Fifth Wind in town, so I decided to butter her up the only way I knew how.
“I’m going to make some tea. You want some?”
“Of course I do.”
I boiled the water and arranged the cups and kettle on the tray in silence, mulling over my encounter with the Culpeppers and trying to formulate intelligent questions about it. There were so many nebulous ideas swirling around my mind, though, that I would grasp at one, but it’d slip right through my fingers.
The Culpeppers were back, but they didn’t really want to be.
Something had brought them back. But why?
Nature was out of balance, they said. Why was it out of balance? What did that even mean? And how the hellhound was I supposed to fix it? Especially with the chaos of Halloween on the near horizon.
I brought the tea tray over to the parlor table and was about to scoot some of the unused materials out of the way before thinking better of it. Some of the objects I recognized, like acorns, yew twigs, and onyx beads. But others I hadn’t a clue about, and I was smart enough to know not to touch things I couldn’t identify. It’s necessary for anyone that finds herself in a magical town.
Ruby carefully made room for the tray, and I set it down before taking a seat and pouring.
“Something strange happened today,” I said.
Ruby hardly registered with a “Mm?” as she poked a thin leather cord through a tiger’s eye bead.
I realized that “something strange” was hardly worthy of discussion, so I spelled it out. “Tanner’s parents showed up.”
That got her attention. Her head snapped up. “Dean and Aria Culpepper?”
“Yep.” I intentionally omitted where I was and in what state of dress I was in when it happened. “They came to see me.”
Her eyebrows inched up toward her wild gray hair. “I assume it wasn’t to vet their son’s girlfriend.”
“Nope. Something drew them back.”
“Ah.” Ruby’s interest waned visibly on her face. “That would be the Halloween effect. It’s not unheard of for spirits to be sucked back, even if they’re not at all restless. Usually, they’ll just mill about until they get sucked back to the afterlife.”
“But they seemed to think they were pulled here for a reason. They said something about nature’s balance being off.”
The old Fifth Wind cocked her head slightly to the side. “And?” she asked impatiently.
“And… isn’t that bad?”
She waved it off and blew a raspberry. “Well, sure, if you want to call it that. But the most natural state of nature is to be unbalanced. Nature is a swinging pendulum. It goes from one extreme to the next, the time between each getting smaller and smaller as it moves closer toward center. But as soon as it gets there and nearly comes to a rest, something grabs it, pulls it all the way back, and lets go.”
“That doesn’t necessarily sound good,” I said.
“Good, bad—who’s to say? It is what it is. Sure, some of the larger swings end up deadly, but…” She caught my eye and perhaps realized how insensitive she was being, because she took a new tack. “Lo
ok, balance isn’t a state of being. It’s just a goal. And it’s nature’s number one priority. But if there was ever a moment when nature or anything found perfect balance, I must have slept through it.”
“Does that mean you don’t think I should worry about their warning that something terrible is coming and I may be the only one who can stop it?”
Ruby grabbed a jagged piece of metal from the table and held it up to the nearest candle for inspection. “Of course you should worry about that. Seems pretty important, doesn’t it?”
“But you just said—”
“Nature takes no prisoners when it’s trying to right itself. From an objective standpoint, I tend toward the side of ‘c’est la vie.’ But I’m not an objective observer, am I? I’m a retired witch who still has thousands of books she’d like to enjoy before she croaks. And from that perspective, I’m going to fight nature tooth and nail to stay alive.”
I considered passing on the information I’d received from Dean about how one could read any book one chose in the afterlife simply by thinking about it, but before I could say a word, she added, “Also, you and I are not natural, remember? We’re not like the other kinds of witches. We don’t deal in earth, wind, water, or fire. We deal in spirit. Much different thing. Nature is both our friend and our nemesis.”
That didn’t exactly clarify, so I jumped to the next topic on my mind. “What about portals?” I asked.
She appeared much less interested in this topic. “What about them?”
Unfortunately, I had even less information to go on for this subject. “Aria showed me a book she wants me to find. She said it had something to do with another realm and how to open a portal to it.”
Ruby chuckled. “That kind of magic is what I consider self-correcting. It’s so dangerous and hard to sustain, the person conjuring it often ends up dead, and poof the magic crumbles.”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t mess with portals?” It was perhaps too late for that, since Donovan and I had already crossed through one in the Deadwoods to banish the drought demon. Granted, neither of us had to open that portal before we could pass through, and neither of us bothered to try to close it, either.
“No,” Ruby said firmly. “You shouldn’t ‘mess with’ portals. They have a specific purpose, and it’s not our business to bend them to our will.”
“And that specific purpose is?”
She looked up at me again, her eyes uncrossing slightly to adjust from staring at a complicated knot she was tying to my face. “Haven’t a clue. Never really had an interest in them after I managed to die and pass through the one that got me here. Sure, I tried to figure out how to get back through for a while. But once I remembered that in my old world I had little going on in my life, was disrespected, and would most likely struggle for money my whole life. Meanwhile, in Eastwind I was generally feared and could name my price for work that came naturally to me. It wasn’t terribly difficult to decide where I’d rather spend my time. So, I dropped the nonsense about returning home, and settled in. Since then, I’ve been through a portal a few times on my way to and from Avalon for work. ”
It was, in essence, the same process I’d gone through after entering. Shortly after I’d first crashed my car, died, and woken up in the Deadwoods with Grim licking my face, I’d felt a great sense of urgency to get back to my old world and my old life. Never quite desire, though. It was more a craving for the familiar rather than any genuine attachment to the strange, lonely life I had called my own, the one that had been built around the mistaken belief that if I could only do X, Y, and Z well enough, I would get the respect and money I needed to buy happiness.
And then I got X, Y, and Z, and neither respect nor happiness was anywhere to be found.
“I think I’d better head to the library,” I said once I finished the last of my tea.
Ruby sipped hers but glared down at it suspiciously after each sip. Guess she didn’t approve of my new mix.
While my encounter with the doppelgängers only a couple of days before wasn’t ideal (to say the least), one positive that came out of it had been my realization that it was about time to start buying tea I liked, rather than the bitter stuff Ruby had served. Granted, I didn’t spike mine with befuddlement brew, but otherwise I tried to replicate the delicious sweetness of what Imposter James Bouquet had served me. Kayleigh Lytefoot at the apothecary had helped me mix the perfect combination, and now I was almost to the point where I didn’t miss my daily six cups of diner coffee.
Almost.
“We have a lesson scheduled this afternoon, dear.”
“I thought, in light of Halloween and everything, we could cancel. Just this once.”
She sighed, looked at the mess spread out across the table and nodded. “Oh, all right. But you still need to meet with Oliver.”
“Yep. I’ll send an owl his way telling him to meet me at the library. I’m sure he won’t be upset about being somewhere with more books.”
Grim was licking his paws by the fire when I called for him to follow me.
“We’re going back out?”
“Yep.”
“But it’s so much better not going out.”
“Too bad.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go with you if we swing by Medium Rare on the way and you cook me up some bacon.”
I shut my eyes and shook my head slowly, asking the universe for patience. “Grim, I think you have a problem.”
“Yeah, it’s ‘not enough bacon.’”
“No, I think you have an addiction.”
“Do not.”
“Do so. You’ll do anything I ask if there’s bacon in it for you.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“Okay, you’re right. Unrelated, will you come to the library with me where I’m going to try to figure out how we can open a potentially deadly portal to another realm? There’s bacon in it for you.”
He jumped to his feet. “I’m in.”
Oh boy. I knew I was overdue for an intervention with him, but it would have to wait until after I got him to do everything I requested of him. He wouldn’t be happy when he discovered I’d lied to him about the bacon at the end of the tunnel, but I could deal with that when it came.
I grabbed my things, opened the door to the bitter Winds of Change, and Grim and I left Ruby to finish making more warding trinkets.
Maybe I’d snatch a few to wear around my neck later.
She never need know.
Chapter Five
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Oliver said, his eyes darting around the library entry as he sensed the dozens of ghosts floating around him. “It’s just that the last time you wanted to meet here, you were up to something.”
Grim swiped a paw at a passing spirit, knocking the book out of her hands then chuckling as she cursed at him.
“I’m not up to anything,” I lied. “Or rather, not more than anyone is when they head to the library. I mean, why even go to a library if you’re not trying to thwart something?”
Oliver narrowed his eyes at me. “Last time it was the love spell. What is it now? Out with it.”
I grimaced an apology. “I’m not really sure. I just know that I need to find a book.”
“Uhh… Okay. You might need to be more specific than that.” He motioned with a wave of his arms the hundreds of thousands of books surrounding us.
“I only know how to describe it.”
“Then Helena is your gal.”
I glanced over his shoulder at the elf librarian. She sat behind her desk, her back straight as a board, even while she worked on one of her puzzles.
“She would be,” I said, “but I don’t think she likes me. You, on the other hand.”
“I’m not sure she’s a big fan of me, either,” said Oliver. “I returned Guide to the Medicinal Herbs of the Northwest a couple of days late, and I don’t think she’s forgiven me.”
“When was this?”
He shrugged. “
Ten, twelve years ago.”
“She holds a grudge that long?”
He nodded and I wasn’t sure if I should be annoyed or impressed.
“Okay. We’ll go ask together, and worst-case, we have Grim pee on her desk.”
Oliver snuck a glance at my familiar next to me. “And what would that accomplish?”
I shrugged. “Payback? We’ll keep that as our last resort, only when we know for sure there’s no chance of her helping.”
My tutor didn’t appear completely on board for it, so I added, “Right, Grim? You’d be up for it?”
He nodded his shaggy black noggin.
Oliver said, “How about we talk to Helena before we start planning for the worst?”
“Fair enough.”
As expected, Helena didn’t seem excited when she looked up at the two faces leaning against the tall desk and saw it was us.
But as soon as I described the book and name dropped the Culpeppers, her bored and tedious expression changed. She blinked and pulled the reading glasses from her nose rather than peering over them like she’d been doing.
“The Culpeppers? You mean Aria and Dean?”
I nodded.
“Huh.” She nibbled her bottom lip, staring at me dreamily. “Yeah, okay. I can look up their records. One moment.” She stood from the desk and disappeared through a door a few yards behind her desk, leaving Oliver, Grim, and me to wait.
“I guess all it takes to get her help is to be interesting enough,” I said.
“Or more likely,” Oliver added, “she was friends with the Culpeppers. Pretty much everyone was, as my parents tell it.”
Helena emerged from the back again with a small card in her hand. “Follow me,” she said. “It will be bit of a walk.”
For only the second time since I’d been in Eastwind, I entered into the library’s underground tunnels.
The first time had been unpleasant, speaking with the minotaur ghost in my search for information on what turned out to be the Ba. I hoped this search didn’t also take me into the Deadwoods.