His Dark Magic

by Pat Esden

  Em stopped on a curb, shifting her weight from one foot to the other while she waited for the crossing signal to change. Damp leaves shone in the gutter, their bright autumn colors darkened to brown and black. Some people might have thought this time of year gloomy, but she found comfort in everything about it: the lengthening nights and leafless trees, the pumpkins and cornstalks on the front stoops of homes and shops, all the witch decorations. She smiled. If only those people knew that all the powers they imagined around Halloween were real, that witches and psychic mediums with powerful inborn gifts were right here in their midst.

  A lifted pickup truck with four-doors and oversized tires rumbled up to the intersection. Country music thudded out from the open driver’s window. The driver glanced her way, camo cap pulled low over black curly hair. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel the intensity of his gaze, studying her as if she were someone he knew. But she only looked at him for a second before her attention flicked to the occupant of the passenger seat, an apparition so misty it was almost imperceptible, even to her.

  A haunting, her sixth sense murmured.

  Sadness gathered in Em’s chest. In such a brief encounter it was impossible to know why the ghost was haunting that guy in particular. But without a doubt, the ghost was in turmoil over something it couldn’t resolve. That was the heart of all haunts. In turn, its unrest would reflect in every aspect of the man’s disposition—spikes of frustration, seething anger, restlessness…It was a horrible situation, and the fact that hauntings weren’t common didn’t make it any less so.

  As the truck moved on, the ghostly outline swiveled to watch her out the pickup’s back window. Em sighed heavily. If only she were in a position to help them. But the truck was already disappearing around a corner and she needed to focus on the spirit who’d reached out to her at the meeting. She was certain they weren’t one and the same. The spirit at the meeting had felt small, young.

  Traffic slowed to a stop and the crossing signal changed. Em dashed across to the other side, past a bookstore, and jewelry shop. She let her sixth sense pull her down Church Street with its restaurants and boutiques. The tug grew more insistent, the small spirit’s pull becoming even more desperate and strengthening with each moment that passed.

  She headed into blocks of apartment houses, bars, dim streetlight, vacant lots. Her focus narrowed, her vision of the world constricting into a tunnel. As late as it was, she was grateful the tug was leading in a direction that took her closer to the coven’s complex, closer to home rather than farther away. But what if—

  She shuddered as she remembered only a week ago when she’d been at an A.A. meeting and felt a similar tug only to discover the other coven members had been trapped in a fire at a nightclub. She should have left that meeting—and this one—sooner.

  Something low to the ground slapped her ankle, claws digging in.

  She wheeled around, backing up and glancing down.

  A kitten. A ghost kitten. The small spirit that had reached out to her, she was certain of that.

  It vanished into the roadside darkness, a vacant lot of rain-soaked weeds and tall grass. She followed, the tangle of plants taller than she’d expected, the darkness more encompassing. Muck sucked at her feet. Her teeth chattered from a sudden drop in temperature. Her breath became white vapor. Something was wrong here. Very wrong. One small spirit couldn’t affect the temperature like that.

  The kitten circled back, its ethereal glow urging her on. Another glow joined in. Then a third. A fourth. All ghostly kittens, their mews wailing in the darkness. Their tails swished like eerie torches, leading her farther from the street, past a shack, and up a coarse gravel bank to a line of railroad tracks.

  Something black lay on the tracks. The size of—

  A trash bag.

  Kittens.

  “Fuck!” Em shouted, running to the bag. No need to look for trains. The only light came from the kittens’ glow. There had to be a live kitten in the bag. Why else would the ghosts have reached out to her?

  She dropped to her knees, the railroad bed’s sharp stones stabbed through her jeans. She clawed at the bag’s drawstring, struggling to rip it open. It didn’t give. She tore at the plastic with her fingernails, panic taking her until she remembered her knife.

  Pulling the knife from her peacoat, she flipped it open. Carefully she cut the drawstring, then worked her way down, slicing the bag from top to bottom like a coroner opening a corpse. Garbage and stench spewed out. Milk cartons. Banana peels. Balled up paper towels. Rags. Meat wrappers—

  A dead kitten. Its body cover with coffee grinds, stiff and gray.

  Another kitten. Dead. Cold.

  Her stomach lurched. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she rifled through the rubbish.

  The ghost kittens’ yowls circled her, panicked sirens, bringing on more tears. She winced as one of the ghosts batted her hand, claws slicing. Above their cries another sound caught her ear. The whistle of a distant train. Approaching. Quickly.

  She grabbed hold of the bag to drag it to safety. But she’d sliced the bag in half and the contents tumbled out onto the rails. She dove her hands into the pile, feeling her way through the garbage. It was too dark to see well, just dim outlines—and stench.

  Her fingers found damp, cold fur. Another stiff body. What if there wasn’t a living kitten? What if the ghosts just wanted their murder discovered?

  The clang of railroad crossing arms lowering echoed nearby. Another whistle sounded. Louder. This time.

  Another sound. A soft mew. Not ghostly.

  Her fingernails caught on wet things, hard things.

  The train’s rattling vibrated through the tracks on either side of her. The brightness of its headlights reached her, widening, surrounding her, moving closer.

  Please, please, she prayed. Please. Let me find it.

  Light brightened the wasteland all around her, the tracks, the garbage bag. Brightness growing stronger by the second. Rattling echoed in her ears.

  She touched something tiny and warm. Her fingers found a second one. Lukewarm, gritty fur. Unmoving.

  The train’s whistle blared. The ghost kittens scattered into the weeds. She scooped up the warmer body, then the cooler one. Not wriggling, but maybe alive.

  Another mew came from the rubbish.

  With one hand, Em claimed the third kitten. Then she slid down the gravel bank and away from the tracks, just as the train’s engine screamed past.

  The ground shook, the train clattering and clanking behind her as she wiggled out of her coat and bundled the kittens up in it. She was sure they were alive, right now. But how close to death they were, she wasn’t certain. They were far too still and quiet. And small.

  She got out her phone and called the Northern Circle’s complex.

  “Hello.” Chloe—a woman who was another recent initiate to the coven—answered.

  “I need a ride,” Em blurted. “It’s an emergency.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m okay. Sort of. I found some kittens. They’re in bad shape.”

  “Is that a train I hear?”

  “Yeah. Hurry. I’ll be on Pine Street. The north end.” Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t certain where she was. Sometimes when she was with ghosts it was like that, time and space evaporating as she reached into the ethereal. “If I’m not there, look down by the ferry docks.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  As Chloe hung up the last of the train cars rattled past behind Em, dragging their noise and vibrations with them as they moved on. The air stilled. Darkness settled back around her, except for the glow from her phone. She realized then that she could have used its light to help her find the kittens in the garbage. But she couldn’t change that now. The important thing was that the ghost kittens had vanished, a sign that she’d found all the living ones. Li
ving for now, at least. Truthfully, she might have been a skilled medium, but she was no kind of adept witch or healer. She’d never even had a pet. All she could do was keep them warm and hurry.

  Em gathered up the coat, snugging it against her chest as she started back through the weeds. When she reached the street, half of her wanted to keep walking toward the complex. A wiser part pulled her under the safety of a streetlight to wait for her ride.

  Minutes passed, then more minutes. Finally, a familiar orange BMW coupe appeared and pulled up to the curb. Em carefully climbed in with her bundle. The car belonged to the coven’s young high priest, Devlin Marsh, but Chloe was driving. Em was glad about that. She really liked Chloe. She was not only pretty in a long-legged and fashionable-blonde sort of way, Chloe was also kind and headed for med school smart. Best of all, it wasn’t just people Chloe cared about. She loved animals, especially cats and Devlin’s excitable golden retriever. She’d know what to do for the kittens.

  “How many are there?” Chloe asked, pulling the car away from the curb.

  “Three. But one is barely moving.” Em dared to open the bundle and take a closer look under the brightness of the car’s interior light. Two sets of shiny eyes stared up at her. The third set were closed. The kittens didn’t look quite as tiny as she’d thought. Still, they were really young.

  “I messaged my friend, Juliet. She used to volunteer at a cat rescue. I’m sure she’ll have all kinds of advice.”

  Em cradled the kittens closer. “I just hope they all make it.”

  “I do too.” Chloe fell silent, then stepped heavily on the gas.

  Em glanced Chloe’s way. She’d expected her to ask how she’d found the kittens or to give her advice about what they should do until Juliet got back to them. But Chloe’s attention was trained on the road ahead, her jaw working as if she were lost in thought.

  “Is something wrong?” Em asked.

  Chloe skimmed her hand along the steering wheel, leaving behind a slight glisten of sweat. “Yeah. Something happened at the complex while you were gone.”

  Em swallowed hard. There was only one thing the coven had been worried about that could have upset Chloe this much. Despite the upturn Em’s life had experienced since she’d joined the Circle, the coven itself had gone through a terrifying upheaval that culminated on the night of the club fire. Actually upheaval was far too mild of word for what had happened, and for the depth of the threat it represented to the coven and complex.

  Rhianna Davies—a middle-aged witch with a longstanding grudge against the Northern Circle—had murdered Athena Marsh, the coven’s high priestess and Devlin’s sister. She’d then used necromancy and strips of Athena’s skin to create a necklace that allowed her to transform into a likeness of Athena. In that disguise, Rhianna had manipulated the coven members into awakening the wizard Merlin’s demonic shade. The coven had managed to banish Merlin’s Shade. But Rhianna had escaped, leaving the Circle holding the bag for bringing the Shade into this world, an incident the High Council of Witches and their legal system would never overlook.

  Worry sent a chill up Em’s arms, and she shivered. To make matters worse, awakening the Shade wasn’t the only violation the High Council could accuse the coven of committing. Their battle to banish Merlin’s Shade had caused citywide chaos and briefly exposed the existence of true witches and magic to the mundane world at large. No matter how good a cover story the coven created, it was still impossible for an entire city to overlook flying monkeys made out of scrap iron rampaging through the streets, not to mention glowing swords, energy balls and strange lightning that had caused the club fire.

  Em steadied her voice. “I’m guessing you heard from the High Council?”

  “Worse. They’ve sent a special investigator.”

  “What? You mean, the investigator is here already—without any warning?” Em rubbed a hand over the bundle in her lap, feeling the stir of the kittens’ tiny bodies. An investigator. At the complex. That wasn’t good. They could recommend the coven be disbanded for their violations. If they saw fit, they could even abolish individual coven members’ ability to work magic and seize their assets—including things like sacred objects or the complex itself.

  Though Em hated how selfish it made her feel, an investigation like this could also put an end to her personal plans. She’d joined the coven mainly so she could live in the sanctuary of their complex while she got her act together. Once she reached a year of sobriety, she intended on leaving and never being dependent on anyone or thing again. But right now, she wasn’t ready to go. She didn’t have any money, no job, no other place to live—other than returning to the hellish halfway house or the streets.

  “The investigator is interrogating Devlin right now.” Chloe’s voice strained upwards, her anguish for her boyfriend undisguised.

  “Shit.” Em’s chest tightened. Devlin was usually cool and collected, the epitome of the upwardly mobile guy that he was. But right now, he was suffering deeply, full of remorse and guilt, shaken by the loss of Athena, a sister he loved with all his heart.

  The car’s tires skidded as Chloe winged into the complex’s driveway a little too fast. Anger tinged her voice. “I can’t believe the High Council sent someone this soon. It hasn’t even been a week. Devlin—all of us—are grieving. It’s not fair.”

  “It’ll be okay. Devlin can handle himself,” Em said. A lump knotted in her throat. She looked down at the bundle of kittens. This certainly wasn’t the best night for bringing home orphans.

  Ahead, the outline of the complex’s main building came into view, an old three-story brick factory that the Circle had transformed into an artsy group living quarters. Devlin and Athena technically owned it and the adjoining smaller buildings, all surrounded by a chain-link fence broken only by an elaborate and funky arched gateway—or more correctly, Devlin owned the entire complex now that Athena was gone.

  Em’s gaze went back to Chloe. “So what’s the investigator like? A man or a woman? Suit and tie, by-the-book asshole?”

  “You got the asshole part right.” As Chloe drove under the gateway, she glanced through the windshield toward the peak of the gate where the remaining flying monkey sculptures stood sentinel, their non-animated wings glistening in the darkness. “I bet the inspector will have a field day quizzing Devlin about them.”

  Em cringed. “I feel so bad for Devlin. What’s wrong with the investigator? Is he just old and crotchety?”

  “No, not at all. He’s only a little older than Devlin, maybe thirty. He’s more of a backwoods enforcer, all alpha and bad attitude. Not at all like the elderly examiner that investigated my dad’s business. His name is Gar Remillard…”

  Chloe kept talking, but her voice faded into the background as Em’s entire focus went to a vehicle parked by the front door of the complex’s main building. Most likely the special investigator’s ride. A vehicle that should have been unfamiliar to her. But she knew the big, lifted truck instantly. Its oversized tires made for mudding. The truck she’d seen right after she’d left the A.A. meeting. The guy with the camo cap, the black curly hair, and intense stare.

  The haunted man.

  DON’T MISS THE DARK HEART SERIES

  A Hold On Me

  Annie Freemont grew up on the road, immersed in the romance of rare things, cultivating an eye for artifacts and a spirit for bargaining. It’s a freewheeling life she loves and plans to continue—until her dad’s illness forces her return to Moonhill, their ancestral home on the coast of Maine. There she meets Chase, the dangerously seductive young groundskeeper. With his dark good looks and powerful presence, Chase has an air of mystery that Annie is irresistibly drawn to. But she also senses that behind his penetrating eyes are secrets she can’t even begin to imagine. Secrets that hold the key to the past, to Annie’s own longings—and to all of their futures…

  Beyond Your Touch

 
Annie Freemont knows this isn’t the right time to get involved with a man like Chase. After years of distrust, she’s finally drawing close to her estranged family, and he’s an employee on their estate in Maine. But there’s something about the enigmatic Chase that she can’t resist. And she’s not the only woman. Annie fears a seductive stranger who is key to safely freeing her mother is also obsessed with him. As plans transform into action and time for a treacherous journey into a strange world draws near, every move Annie makes will test the one bond she’s trusted with her secrets, her desires—and her heart.

  Reach for You

  A world of deception and danger separates Annie Freemont from her mother—and from Chase, the enigmatic half ifrit with whom Annie’s fallen in love. But she vows to find her way back to them, before Chase succumbs to the madness that threatens his freedom. The only person who can help is the magical seductress, Lotli, a beautiful, manipulative woman…a woman who has disappeared…

  Available where books are sold.

  About the Author

  PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scithers’s anthology Cat Tales. You can find Pat online at PatEsden.com, Facebook.com/PatEsdenAuthor, Twitter @PatEsden, and PatEsden.blogspot.com.