The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2)

by A. K. Caggiano

  The woman called herself Estrid and used a term that, in her language, sounded like “hexed” to describe herself, but it became clear she was charmed like Bridgette, a witch born with the spark. She told them she had come from across the ocean, the last of her band of compatriots, with the help of another who had used the last of her abilities to craft the mirror but refused to say much more than that. She brought them out into the main part of the cabin, a simple structure with wooden walls but an expertly crafted table and chairs in its center where two others sat.

  “My sisters.” Estrid introduced them, then looked them over. “Cousins, more like.”

  Estrid went up to the man, Patrick was his name, and touched his face gently. A smile grew there, and he welcomed them as if it were completely normal to see two women clad in clothing that wouldn’t even be possible for hundreds of years walk out of a bedroom in one’s own home without ever seeing them walk in. Madeline, a girl of no more than six, was similarly pat on the head—lovingly, Lorelei thought—and she giggled and gave them a sheepish greeting.

  “The enchantment,” Estrid said, and neither of the two seemed to notice. “It makes them accommodating and blind to my craft.” She sighed, looking Patrick and Madeline over, something like a smile on her face for the first time. “I will miss them.”

  “Whoa, she is powerful,” Bridgette muttered to Lorelei, eyes narrowed, then she popped out a hip. “So, where’s the oison root?”

  “We will have to cross out of the wards I have placed around this house.” Estrid stood straight, folding her hands in front of her. “It will be dangerous.”

  Patrick glanced up at Estrid, hopeful. “Will you be back for supper?”

  Her face warmed. “Do not wait for us.”

  She led them out the front door into the evening light. It was not as cold here like in their time, but the forest was dappled with red and orange leaves. From the closest trees were hung dream catcher-like objects, twine pulled taut between sticks shaped into triangles and hexagons. It reminded Lorelei of the owl shapeshifter’s cabin she’d been to with Conrad, only these didn’t give her the same creepy chill up her spine.

  Estrid took a deep breath, steeling herself a few feet from the line of trees.

  “It’s just the woods.” Bridgette trudged past her, her boot heels sinking into the mud.

  Estrid turned gravely to Lorelei. “She is brave.”

  “Or stupid,” Lorelei suggested, watching her tug her boots free from a puddle of mud and stomp off over the wet earth only to get stuck again.

  There was no marked path out in these woods, but Estrid knew the way. She stopped for sounds the other two did not hear, and ignored larger crashes and breaking sticks that made Lorelei recoil. Then she came to a stump, what was left of the trunk blackened and cracked. Pressing her lips together, she whistled sharply into the trees a measure of notes like the beginning of a very distinct tune.

  There was a scurrying, over the leaves and through the brush, and a chipmunk dove up with a squeak to land before her. She bent down and spoke to him in her native language, and it chittered back.

  The little creature hastened off, and they followed, a long walk into the forest, mostly quiet behind the chipmunk’s scurrying, though Bridgette did grumble about being outdoors and how long everything was taking every fifteen or so minutes. Lorelei tried to engage Estrid in questions about Patrick and Madeline, but she pretended to understand less and less English as they went.

  Finally, they came to a stop in a clearing covered in emerald moss with a ring of white toadstools in its center.

  “Is this it? I didn’t think oison root was a fungus.” Bridgette’s face twisted into disgust.

  Estrid shook her head. “That would be a blessing. No, it is more of a curse. Are you prepared?”

  “Duh, like, I was ready to go home yesterday.”

  “So be it.” Estrid took their hands and led them inside the ring, closing her eyes.

  A breeze blew over them, rattling the leaves. “What are we waiting for?”

  Estrid opened one eye with a grunt. “The feer alfer.”

  They stood, hands clasped in the ring of mushrooms for a long moment. And then it came, a chatter, a flicker, voices and wings. Dots of light blinked into existence, faint at first then shimmering over the trees as figures began to form. They were very small, but their bodies were human, suspended by fluttering wings. The forest had changed with their presence, bright and verdant. And then one shot right up to Estrid’s face in a way Lorelei had experienced dozens of times.

  In a tongue that could only be described as Irish but backwards, Estrid spoke to the floating being. She was stern, and her grip on their hands tightened.

  Then the creature spoke back, and Lorelei recognized the voice immediately if not the language. She leaned over, the features made clear. “Bur! Hey!”

  The faery was just the same as who had charmed Lorelei when she first came to the manor, giving her the ability to hide amongst the others.

  “Oh, of course you know this one.” Bridgette rolled her eyes, never much a fan of the help.

  The faery’s bright red ringlets were perhaps a bit wilder, and her clothing, a skirt constructed out of leaves and some well-placed shells on her chest, a bit more revealing, but it was Bur, no doubt, the surly look a dead giveaway. She had painted her pale limbs with bands around her arms and thighs in a rich mud and had stripes across her face too. Lorelei almost commented how she looked nothing like herself until she realized that she was no one to this version of the fae and wouldn’t be for many, many years.

  Bur spoke in the same, thick language, almost English but decidedly not, pointing a tiny finger into Lorelei’s face and jabbing the tip of her nose. Then her eyes widened from their angry slits, and she looked to her own hand like it were an enemy. Her shock quickly turned back to anger, and she flew into Estrid’s face, shouting.

  Estrid took a shaking breath.

  “What is she complaining about?” Bridgette demanded.

  “She thinks we mean to deceive her. That we are mimicking her magic.”

  Lorelei blinked, trying not to catch Bridgette’s eye. She hadn’t seen her own face since they’d been thrown back in time, but she knew now the freckles of her glamour were still stippled over her cheeks and nose.

  “Ugh, fae are all the same.” Bridgette stomped again with a squish in the muddy circle. “Just ask her where the root is.”

  “I know where the root is.” Estrid lifted the hand that still held onto Bridgette’s and pointed at a cluster a few paces ahead. Absent before they stepped into the ring, now there was a brilliant sprawl of deep, blue flowers and velvety green leaves amongst the newly fertile forest around them.

  “Great.” Bridgette stepped out of the ring, pulling away from Estrid.

  “Stop!” she shouted but a moment too late.

  The dancing lights converged on Bridgette, illuminating her as she batted at them, but she didn’t manage to connect with a single one. In an instant she was swarmed, her whole form turning into a glowing orb, and then it vanished.

  Well, that was one way to get rid of her.

  “What just happened?”

  “You cannot simply walk into the feer alfer’s domain.” Estrid’s now free hand hesitated at her waistline where her wand was stuffed. She spoke hurriedly to Bur again.

  This time Bur was smiling when she responded, slower, lyrical, and clearly pleased.

  “They offer a trade,” Estrid translated. “We can take the root if they can keep your friend.”

  “What? No!” Lorelei said without really thinking about it.

  “No?” Estrid leaned closer to her. “Are you sure?”

  The thought passed cruelly through Lorelei’s mind like someone walking into a public restroom to discover they weren’t where decorum dictated they should be, but she quickly backtracked away from it. She knew she couldn’t really leave Bridgette to suffer—they wouldn’t have curling irons for at least three hun
dred more years. “I’m sure,” she admitted through grit teeth.

  “That will make bargaining more difficult.” Estrid spoke to Bur again.

  Bur stuck out another tiny finger and pointed at Estrid with a vigorous nod.

  “They want protection,” she said to Lorelei, not looking away from the faery. “These woods were safe once, but I brought danger.” Her free hand came up to rest on her chest. “Well, it followed me here.”

  Lorelei addressed Bur directly. “You want a place to live? To be safe?”

  Bur simply glared back at her.

  “They want something specific,” Estrid explained. “The source once belonged to their ancestors, they can tell even though none of these ones have ever seen it. But one of their own corrupted it, and I intend to bring it with me, away from him, through the…the mirror.”

  Estrid said something to Bur again, and this time Lorelei recognized the name Zyr.

  “What’s this source you keep mentioning?”

  Estrid hesitated again then stuck a hand into her collar to pull out a braided leather cord from around her neck, at its end a kind of stone, weird and metallic and unmistakable. Lorelei’s mouth fell open. She had seen both of these things, very briefly and at different times, but she’d never expected to see them here.

  Bur started gesticulating and speaking at an exceptionally fast rate.

  “I would never,” spat Estrid, sticking it back into her collar, and Bur huffed back.

  If Lorelei understood correctly, Estrid wanted to take that stone, the very same one she’d seen in the fireplace on her first day at Moonlit Shores Manor that had riled up the hearth sprites so much, and the braided cord, the one Conrad’s father had left in a jinxed box for him and his brother to fight over, into her time through the mirror. And if Lorelei understood anything about time magic, which strangely enough in this instance she seemed to, she had the distinct feeling that Estrid’s plan was not supposed to come to fruition.

  “Why not the house for protection?” Lorelei said quickly, looking from one to the other. “You said there are wards there. I saw them, in the trees. It’s safe, and that’s what they want.”

  Estrid looked very displeased, more than normal. “It is safe while Zyr is weak, and he is at his weakest now, but the house is not mine to give, and they do not want a human dwelling anyway—they want magic.”

  “Yeah, but you live there, isn’t that magic enough? And wouldn’t you be stronger together anyway?”

  Estrid looked at her like she were crazy. “Zyr is of them. More ancient, but still feer alfer.”

  “Well, they sound like perfect allies for you then.” Lorelei eyed Bur. “How about it: the house for the root and my…friend. There are some humans there you have to be nice to, but it’s got protection wards, and if everything goes right this witch and the source thingy might stick around.”

  “The house is not yours to give either,” hissed Estrid.

  “Hey, I just dealt with the local government to get the business license renewed on it,” Lorelei said with a sigh, “I think I can bargain with the place.”

  Bur and Estrid looked at one another sidelong, then the faery started chittering about something very quickly.

  “I’m not trying to trick you, Bur,” Lorelei said as if she knew what she was saying. “I don’t have that power, but I am from a different time.” She took her free hand and tapped the freckles on her nose. “This is a debt repaid. Do you understand?”

  The faery floated back from them a short distance, looking over the two women, one from her time and the other clearly not, holding hands in a circle of mushrooms. Then she spoke in her language again, and one of the remaining lights flitted over to the oison root, plucked out a whole stalk of it, and brought it to Lorelei.

  Before she accepted it, Lorelei pointed at Bur. “But you have to be helpful. Like, you need to clean up and stuff around the house.”

  “Ie, ie, ie.” Bur rolled her eyes and gestured to the other faery holding the root.

  Lorelei put out her hand. “We have a deal?”

  The oison root fell into her palm.

  Bridgette burst into existence with a shriek that cut up into the trees and sent a flock of crows skyward. She started swatting at herself again, her hair mussed up and full of leaves, but there were no lights swarming her this time. She scurried back into the mushroom ring looking horrified, her makeup smeared and her face blotchy.

  “Welcome back.”

  “What in the deepest abyss was that?”

  “Your friend bargained for your life,” Estrid chastised her, grabbing her hand. “They would have kept you forever if not for her.”

  Bridgette only scowled and pushed a droopy curl out of her face.

  Bur nodded at them again and beat her iridescent wings so that she flew backward. The lights of the fae dimmed until the forest fell into darkness all around them. Finally, Estrid stepped back and brought them to the empty, autumn forest once again.

  “Hey, look at that.” Lorelei held up the oison root. “I did get it.”

  They traipsed back through the dark wood, a bright, full moon lighting the way. Estrid was slightly more talkative this time, telling them Patrick’s stew would be well earned and proclaiming she’d never had such good luck with the feer alfer, but when the house came into view through the trees, she threw her arms out so that they would stop. She looked about at some unheard sound, and then the unheard made itself known.

  There was a rumbling from the sky, like the hoof beat of many horses coming swiftly nearer. They could feel it in the ground, a sudden quaking, and Estrid breathed out sharply, “Run.”

  The three bolted for the house, the wind picking up, throwing leaves in their faces and snapping branches that struck the ground around them. There was a call out in the woods, the voices of an army charging into battle, but when Lorelei looked over her shoulder, she only saw darkness between the trees. The clashing of metal was on the wind, the whinny of a falling horse, the cry of a gutted man, though none of it was real, only sounds on a moving shadow. But that shadow was advancing.

  With a final push, they broke through the line of trees where the wards hung, falling forward into the dirt and leaves. The deeper darkness ran up against their backs and pinged off some unseen barrier. The shadows hit Estrid’s protective shield and recoiled with a shriek that shook the trees, so loud they had to cover their ears and could still hear it as if it were projected into their minds.

  Then the shadows coalesced, coming together in a single point to form a human figure. A man, tall, thin, dressed in a tunic and leather armor. He put up a hand, pressing it against the invisible barrier as if there were only a thin sheet of glass between them. His features were shadowed but scowling. Estrid backed up in the leaves, her hand once again going to her chest. “No,” she whispered.

  He pressed harder, veins in his arm flexing, his face twisting with pain and anger. For as much like a man as he appeared, Lorelei could see the parts of him now that were not human, ears pointed and long, teeth that came to sharp ends, and pupils that swam and rolled over on themselves like angry, crashing waves.

  “No!” Estrid shouted again, fumbling for the wand in her waistband and flicking it out at the figure. A great wind blew up from behind the house, and the man was ripped backward, but held steady, a pulse coming off of him that pushed back.

  Bridgette got to her knees and threw an arm out to Estrid, grabbing the woman’s shoulder. Pink static jumped from her hand to the woman’s body, and with a shock that even Lorelei could feel, the air crackled with a bolt of bright, rosy light that shot out from the wand’s tip and caught the form. The elf-like man was torn right from the ground, and his figure slammed into the trunks, splintering them as he broke into hundreds of ashy pieces. What was left of him rose up above the trees, formed into a stack of smoke, and dispersed.

  Estrid was panting on the ground, her eyes locked on the place where he had been.

  “Let me guess.” Bridgette p
icked a leaf out of her hair. “Zyr?”

  The witch steadied her voice and got to her feet with a nod. “Zyr.”

  CHAPTER 8

  NO BIGGIE

  Estrid could not complete the spell that night. She didn’t know the word overtoiled, but Lorelei could recognize it now when she saw it, the circles under the woman’s eyes deep and her voice hoarse after the encounter with Zyr. But Madeline brought her a bowl of hot stew, and when she climbed up onto her lap to show her a figurine she had whittled that day and called a chipmunk, Estrid hugged her close and looked that much more renewed. “Your father is teaching you so well,” she said, flicking her eyes over to Patrick who turned a deeper shade of red than his already ruddy complexion was. “He is very talented.”

  “That’s a strong spell,” Lorelei whispered to Bridgette from her place across the table from them, the two humans so blind to Estrid’s magic they could speak freely about it in front of them.

  “Spells can’t do that,” she replied hollowly. “Trust me.” Bridgette looked even worse than Estrid, her experience with the fae, which she had used every expletive and some Lorelei didn’t even know to describe, debilitating enough, but the assistance she had given Estrid drained everything that was left. Lorelei was at least a little relieved to see Bridgette had gotten her magic back, but the witch was still sour about the whole thing.

  They ate quietly, and when Patrick and Madeline cleared the bowls away, Lorelei leaned over to Estrid who stared wistfully after them. “Why don’t you tell them the truth?”

  She scoffed. “I would rather not be burned.”

  “Burned? Like at a stake?” Lorelei choked on her stew.

  Estrid’s light eyes stared down at the table, and she seemed to look right through it. “I am all that is left of my family after my uncle…” she whispered then cleared her throat. “Though drowning is common as well.”