“I’m sorry. Are you a business partner of his?” I asked, muddled.
“No, as I said, I’m the estate’s executor. There’s no way to say this but to say it. He left his book business to you. Every bit of it.”
My legs folded beneath me, and I collapsed onto the white sofa. “What?”
“You helped manage the bookstore, and he knew how passionately you felt about literature. He felt his legacy was best left in your hands.”
“The bookstore,” I repeated, not quite believing.
Hex leapt onto the sofa and settled beside me, his calico fur icy pinpricks against my bare thigh.
“Not only the bookstore,” the lawyer said. “You may not be aware, but Mike also dealt in rare books. That part of the business he ran from his house.”
I hadn’t known, and my mind whirled like a demented merry-go-round. Rare books? Why hadn’t Mike mentioned anything about rare book dealing to me?
Interpreting my silence correctly, he chuckled. “As I said, Mike liked to compartmentalize. At any rate, the important thing is to keep the bookstore running. I’m not sure how you want to handle the rare book side of things, but all his inventory belongs to you.”
“I see.” But I didn’t see – not at all.
“We should meet. There are funds available so you can continue to run the bookstore. Fortunately, it’s moderately profitable. The rare books are where his real income came from though.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry. “I had no idea.”
“He said you wouldn’t. Oh, there is one thing. I’m afraid his niece and nephew may be a bit unpleasant. They believed everything was going to them. If they give you any trouble, please let me know at once.”
“They came by my house tonight,” I said dully.
“To your house? Did they threaten you in any way?”
Hex rose and kneaded his two front paws into my thigh. It felt like a tiny ice cube massage – not an entirely bad thing in this heat.
I thought back over the conversation. “I don’t think so. But they were upset.”
“I’d recommend firing young Peter. I’m afraid keeping him about won’t go well.”
“Firing him?” Peter worked for me now?
“He is on the payroll.”
“I don’t think I could do that. It doesn’t seem fair. And he is Mike’s nephew.”
He sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Well, the decision is yours. But if he causes you any trouble, let me know. I’ll help in any way I can. My specialty is estate law, but I do know a thing or two about employment law. Do you have the keys to the bookstore?”
“Yes.”
“Does Peter?”
“Yes.”
He sighed again. “You might want to ask him to return them.”
“But...”
“But what?” he asked.
My chin dipped toward my chest. “Peter did get something, didn’t he? I can’t believe Mike would have left him out of the will.” I’d feel terrible if he had. Peter might be shiftless, and his wife might be evil (or at least unpleasant), but he was Mike’s family.
“Don’t worry, the remainder of the estate went to Peter. Mike’s house will sell for a pretty penny.”
“Good,” I said, but guilt gnawed at my bones. I couldn’t blame Peter and Gretel for being upset about the will.
“The bookstore will be closed this weekend, of course. We’ll have to go to the bank on Monday to get you onto the accounts, and then you can reopen for business. In the meantime, are you free on Sunday? I’d like to go over the papers for the other side of his business. They’re all at his house. Can you meet me there?”
“Sure. What time would you like?”
“I’m a morning person. Nine o’clock?”
I was not a morning person – the bookstore opened at eleven. But I agreed. We said our farewells, and I hung up.
My arms fell, limp, to the couch cushions, and my right arm dropped through the cat.
Eyes burning like only a dead cat’s can, Hex leapt to the floor and turned to glare at me.
I barely noticed. Mike had left me the bookstore.
My eyes warmed, and I rubbed them. I didn’t want to cry anymore. I was tired of it. But this... I’d always thought of Mike as more than an employer. Now I knew he’d felt the same. I guess I’d always known it, but I’d never expected being remembered like this. Mike and I weren’t blood. Peter was.
The oven timer dinged. I zombie-walked to the kitchen and slid the pizza from the oven. Mind churning, I drizzled chopped basil over it and set the pizza to cool on the work island.
Slipping into my sandals, I walked out the back door and into the yard. Stars appeared in the darkening sky. The moon wouldn’t be far behind.
Solar-powered lights dotted the garden paths. I walked past knots of herbs and bunches of flowers – purple foothill penstemons, pink showy milkweed, yellow bush poppies. I trailed my fingers across the cool surface of a bird bath and walked on. Oaks lined the property boundaries. I walked to one now and lay my hand against its rough bark, feeling the pulse of its sap, feeling its roots reaching into the earth. I let the tree ground me.
I had a job again. More than a job. I had an actual business. Two businesses, if I could figure out what to do with the rare books. I rubbed my throat, which had gone painfully dry. But could I? I knew enough about the rare book world to know it was cutthroat. I couldn’t count on an honest deal for Mike’s inventory. I’d have to do some serious research before I made any decisions. The most likely one would be to sell the inventory and be done with it.
Reluctantly, I stepped from the protective embrace of the oak and walked toward the house. Lights in the windows shone, inviting.
Things would work out.
From behind me came a terrible groan. A crack.
Startled, I whirled.
The oak tilted toward me, and there was a rending sound, its roots tearing from the earth.
I stared, uncomprehending.
And then I ran.
A crash. Something caught the back of my leg. Pain flashed through my calf. I kept moving, branches snapping.
Heart thundering, I didn’t turn around again until I’d reached the door. I grasped the knob, leaning against the door and panting. The oak lay on its side, plants and the bird bath crushed beneath its swaying branches. Leaves showered the ground.
I stared. I had just communed with that oak, and I hadn’t felt any signs of illness or weakness. Its roots had been healthy, digging deep into the earth.
There was no reason that oak should have fallen.
I slid down the door and sat on the wood porch. There was only one reason that oak had fallen.
Magic.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Legs shaky, I returned to the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the tap. We’d believed this house had been a safe zone, protected from the unseelie’s dark magic. But I saw how dumb that idea was now. Doctor Toeller had been inside this house, ministering to my aunt in her final illness. Or killing her.
In spite of the stifling kitchen, my sweat felt cold against my skin. We’d trusted the doctor with our lives. What fools we’d been.
My elbows pressed into my sides, as if I could make myself smaller, disappear from her radar. And that was even stupider.
Tight bundles of fear knotted my muscles, and I rolled the cool glass across my clavicle. The doctor had lived for centuries. She’d moved among us, manipulated our town, made people vanish without a trace. Blessed some with good luck and others with bad. Inflicted – I suspected – strange compulsions that were too easy to chalk up to psychological disorders. The modern world, in its attempt to label and categorize every oddity, had made us blind and vulnerable. But even if we’d all known the truth, what defense was there against an evil this strong?
The front door banged open.
I jumped, dropping the glass.
It shattered on the tile floor. A shard nicked the top of my foot, drawing blood. It was
a tiny cut, but the pain was sharp, and I flinched.
“It’s me!” Jayce called.
“Back here,” I said, and my voice wasn’t wobbly. I plucked the biggest fragments of glass from the floor and deposited them in the trash bin beneath the sink. A crimson bead trickled along my foot, formed rivulets between the bones. I grabbed a paper towel and blotted the blood.
My sister strode into the kitchen. Her hips swayed, the charms on her long, silver necklace bouncing against her flat stomach. A piece of sawdust clung to the low-cut front of her amethyst tank top. Beneath her gray shorts, her legs were impossibly tan. Her feet were bare, any footwear no doubt kicked off in the entryway and lying about for me to trip over. She braced her hands on the butcher block island and sniffed. “That smells fantastic. Mushrooms and olives?”
“Don’t move. I broke a glass.” I went to the tall cupboard and got a broom and dustpan.
She straightened. “What’s wrong?”
My throat closed. We were no longer safe in Ellen’s house, but maybe that safety had always been an illusion. I swept up the glass, and drops of moisture dampened the straw broom.
She jammed her hands on her hips. “Something’s wrong. The house smells like sage and pizza, and you broke a glass.”
“I drove through a crosswalk the other day. I didn’t even notice someone had entered it from the other side.” I’d tell her about the tree once I figured out what it meant. And my crap driving bothered me.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No, but I should have seen him. I was thinking and not paying attention.”
“That’s the life of a shaman,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be.” My jaw tensed. “I’m supposed to see more, not less.”
“But our brains are built to filter out the noise, so we can pay attention to what’s important. Yours doesn’t.”
“A pedestrian isn’t noise. Maybe I shouldn’t be driving.” Seeing too much was the danger of Middle World. Unable to meet her gaze, I stared at the drying herbs hanging over the island.
“How close was this?”
“Not that close, but still... He was really mad.”
“He who?”
“Some guy named Van Oss. He was in the bookstore earlier.”
“And he’s still in Doyle?” Jayce frowned. People didn’t linger in Doyle – it was a transit point to the Sierras, no more.
I pinched my bottom lip. Why had Van Oss stayed? And what had he been talking to Mike about?
“That’s not enough to make you cry,” she said. “You have been crying, haven’t you?”
“Mike left me his business.” The admission was easier than telling her about the oak, the failure of our aunt’s magic. It had been bound to fade at some point. Nothing lasts forever. But it was a knife twist reminder of our loss.
Her mouth fell open. “What? But that’s wonderful! Isn’t it?”
“It is. It was... I never dreamed I was in his will.” Or that dark magic could attack us in our safe haven. I swallowed. “The lawyer called. He wants me to get the bookstore started up again as soon as possible.”
“That makes sense. You have to pay rent on the space.” She grabbed a pizza cutter from a drawer and a plate from the cupboard, and cut herself a slice.
“A mortgage,” I corrected. Good God, did I own a building now too? Or had Peter inherited it, and now I’d have to pay him rent? I shook my head. I couldn’t delay any longer. “There’s something else.”
“What?” She bit into the pizza and closed her eyes. “This is good.”
“A tree fell in the backyard.”
She grabbed a paper towel and wiped her hands. “Is that all? You had me worried. I guess we’ll have to get some tree trimmers out here to take it away, but–”
“It wasn’t natural. Not normal, I mean.” Because there was nothing more natural than magic.
She stilled, the paper towel crumpled in her hands. “Which one?” she asked, her voice hardening.
“One of the oaks.”
She hurried from the kitchen.
I followed her out the back door and to the porch.
Giving herself a little shake, she trotted down the steps and into the garden. Jayce paced around the fallen tree. The solar lights still glowed through its branches, though most had been knocked sideways by the impact.
She paused in front of its exposed roots. Crumbles of dirt sifted from their wooden tangle and into the pit gouged from the earth.
Jayce raised her hand, palm toward the roots, and closed her eyes.
A breeze stirred her mahogany hair, and I felt the swell of her magic, a current that made me think of earth and sky. I smelled a warm forest, mosses and wild grasses and water on stone.
Opening her eyes, she dropped her hand to her side. “You’re right. This wasn’t normal. We should call Karin and get her over here. She may be able to sense something we can’t. The three of us can cast a cleansing and protective spell.”
“No,” I said quickly. “The tree was meant to fall on me. It’s not safe here anymore, and Karin’s more vulnerable than we are.”
She gnawed her bottom lip. “Why would the fairy knock over one of Ellen’s trees?”
I relaxed. She wasn’t arguing about bringing Karin into this. “I was beneath it at the time.”
“But you weren’t hurt. Was this a warning? Something to shake us?”
It had sure shaken me. “It is strange that something with that much power hasn’t acted directly against us,” I said. “I wonder if Toeller can.” Something had stopped her display of power on the street earlier, and it hadn’t been us.
“Do you think...? Well, the curse is specific, isn’t it? Maybe she’s bound by it as well. We have to die in childbirth, not crushed by falling trees.”
“There are rules.” Rules were Karin’s specialty.
As if she could read my mind – and I think subconsciously she could – Jayce said, “We need Karin.”
“Not here. Not now.”
She studied the tree and grimaced.
Something small shifted beneath the oak’s branches.
We took quick steps back.
An animal, anonymous in the darkness, scampered away.
“All right.” Jayce blew out her breath, her gaze tracking the animal by the rustling in the bushes. “We’ll tell her tomorrow. But we do need to tell her. The two of us will have to do for now. Where’s Ellen’s book?”
“The attic.” I hadn’t had the heart to dismantle our aunt’s magical workspace.
My sister gave me a long look, and nodded. We walked into the house together. She went upstairs to find my aunt’s “recipe” book.
In my workroom, I gathered my sage bundle and mason jar filled with Jayce’s black salt mixture. She was our mistress mixologist, and had created an anti-fairy blend of dead sea salt, ash from a sacred fire, and iron filings. Fairies hated iron. I only hoped we had enough.
Jayce walked inside my room, her head bent to the open, leather-bound book in her hands. “I’ve got the incantation.” Her hip banged against the rolltop desk, and she winced. “Ready?”
I lit the smudge bundle, watching the flames grow at its tip, and blew it out. “Ready.”
We walked upstairs and up the ladder to the attic, through the maze of cardboard boxes and family antiques.
In the center of the unfinished wood floor, Jayce took my hand and began to chant. Energy grew between us, a living thing that pulsed and made my scalp tingle.
We walked in a circle around the attic, then down the ladder to the second floor and repeated the process. On the first floor, we spiraled outward and then outside, pacing the garden. The stream of sage and lavender smoke trailed behind us. A fingernail moon crested the mountains, bathing the garden in silver. The leaves of the fallen oak gleamed. A branch swayed, as if moved by an invisible hand. A bat flapped overhead, its dark track blotting out the stars.
At the property boundary, by the uprooted oak, I uncapped the mason jar.
I poured a thin line of the black salt mixture along the edge of the garden, around the side yard, across the driveway, and back.
When we reached the fallen tree, Jayce closed the book and took my hand. We stood in silence. White light streamed from the sky through the crown of Jayce’s head and out every pore. She glowed, though I knew she couldn’t see it. I was seeing with my Middle World vision, and I was glowing too, an enlivening, hot-cold electricity.
At the same instant, our muscles relaxed, shoulders lowering. Her light winked out.
“Well?” Jayce asked.
“I felt it, but against something that powerful, it still may not work.” If Karin had been here, her magic would have added to ours. But I didn’t know if it would make a difference against something that could make a pub and twenty-two people disappear.
Jayce smirked. “Toeller won’t like those iron filings.”
“Which will stay in place exactly until someone drives a car across the driveway,” I said.
“Don’t be so negative.”
“We need more iron.”
Jayce laughed, a rich, unstoppable burble.
“What?” I asked.
“You. All of this,” she said between snorts.
And then I was laughing too. But it was laughter tinged with fear.
A male figure, stooped and round, paced outside the boundaries of the yard, and I stilled.
“What’s wrong?” Jayce said.
“Mike.” His spirit had come at last. And we’d just set up a nuclear version of a protective barrier, keeping him out.
He stopped and stood facing me, waiting.
“Wait here,” I said.
I picked my way down the moonlit path. Mike looked as solid as any living person. But moonlight shone through his khaki trousers and his short-sleeved, brown plaid shirt.
“Mike.” I smiled sadly at his suspenders and stopped at the magical boundary. “I’m here. I’ll help you any way I can.”
He gazed at me, his expression sorrowful, and my throat squeezed shut.
“Mike.” My voice broke.
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