Witch

by Kirsten Weiss

  I released a shaky breath, my arms dropping to my sides.

  “The Sanderson kid,” Karin said. “He lives two doors down from my old place. Come on, we can cut off the trail this way and save time.”

  “Isn't it a little late for him to be out?” I asked.

  “Oh, come on,” Nick said. “You remember what it was like when we were kids. Out all night running through the woods, and our parents just glad we were out of their hair?”

  “Didn't you grow up in San Francisco?” I teased.

  “Summer vacations at Lake Tahoe,” he said. “My parents had a cabin next to a state park. Emily and I and some other kids would stay out until midnight playing games we'd made up.”

  “I hope our Emmie can have that kind of childhood,” Karin said, her voice wistful. “It wasn't that long ago, but it seems like a different—”

  A child screamed. I jerked as if struck.

  Nick bounded down the hillside.

  Eyes wide, Karin and I glanced at each other. We charged after Nick, our flashlights bobbing. I skidded over loose stones, scraped against unseen branches.

  We stumbled to a halt in a clearing of dried grasses beside a low wooden fence.

  Nick stood frozen, his arms extended like a cross as if to keep us back.

  Something moved in front of him, and I raised my light. Horror rooted me to the uneven earth.

  The anthrophage’s chest heaved. Its silver-black eyes blinked in the glare of Nick’s flashlight. Long, clawed fingers clenched and unclenched. Spittle crusted the corners of its wide mouth. Spittle and blood.

  Blood. An animal’s. Let it be an animal’s.

  “Jayce,” Nick said in a low voice. “The bottle.”

  I fumbled in my pockets and drew out the bottle. It pulsed with heat. My fear lit the liquid inside it, and it glowed turquoise.

  The creature stepped sideways, and Nick edged to the left, mirroring its movements. “Jayce,” he murmured. “It's not alone.”

  And then I saw the small red shoes, gray in the moonlight. Red shoes. Loose jeans. A tiny, striped shirt. A boy, unmoving on the ground.

  My breath seized in my lungs. No. Not a child. This was my fault. I should have stopped it—

  “Paul.” Karin's voice cracked.

  The thing snarled and lurched toward the tiny figure.

  “Jayce,” Nick shouted, “now!”

  I threw the bottle. It struck the creature in the back. “Yes!” I shouted.

  The bottle bounced off, unbroken, and tumbled to the ground.

  I gaped. Seriously?

  Nick shouted and charged the anthrophage.

  Karin screamed and raced toward him. “Nick!”

  I leapt forward, grabbing for my sister. My ankle turned on a rock. Pain sparked up my leg. I dropped, grabbing the stone, and threw it at the creature. It ricocheted off Nick's shoulder and thunked the thing on the chest.

  Nick shouted a curse.

  The anthrophage veered right and vanished into a stand of pines. Branches crashed and cracked, then silence.

  I aimed my light. Pine branches swayed.

  Nick and Karin crouched by the boy. She scanned her flashlight over his small body. Blood soaked the shoulder of the boy’s thick jacket.

  He’d be okay. He had to be. I’d fix this! “Which house is he from?” I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the renewed pain in my ankle.

  “The blue house two doors down from mine,” Karin said.

  I half fell over the low fence that marked the barrier between public lands and private homes. Limping as fast as I could, I cut through someone's yard to the street and turned, panting, getting my bearings. Karin's house, which she rented now, was half a block away.

  Chest burning, I maintained a hobbling jog, scanning the cottages until I found her neighbor’s blue house. A plastic Santa and five reindeer glowed from its rooftop.

  Stumbling up the two porch steps, I banged on the door.

  A woman with gray-streaked hair and comfortable padding about the middle edged it open. She blinked through the narrow gap. “Can I help you?”

  “There's been an accident. Your son's on the hill about a block from here.”

  She whitened. “Frank! Call nine-one-one!”

  “What?” a sleepy voice called from the house.

  “It's Paul! Call nine-one-one,” she shrieked again and ran into the street. “Where? Where is he?”

  Her husband raced outside, barefoot, a phone in his hand.

  I led the two through the yards and over the fence to their son.

  The boy sat between Nick and Karin, and his mother sobbed with relief.

  “He's conscious,” Nick said. “But he's got a nasty bump on his head and a bad bite on his shoulder.”

  “A bite?” his mother's voice rocketed higher. She shoved Karin aside and raced her hands over her son.

  Her husband spoke low into the phone. He pressed his hand over the receiver and faced Nick. “What happened?”

  “We didn't see much,” Nick said. “Looked like some sort of animal. We scared it off.”

  We stood awkwardly while Paul's parents alternately gave the kid hell and cooed over him. The boy was awake and alert and wasn’t bleeding too badly. But his face was a death mask. I knew the anthrophage would haunt his nightmares.

  We waited with the small family on the street until an ambulance arrived.

  Was I an awful person for hoping Brayden would be in it?

  He wasn’t.

  A Sheriff's Department SUV glided to a halt behind the ambulance, and my shoulders pulled in. Blue and red lights flashed across the fronts of the small cabins and cottages.

  Lenore’s boyfriend, Connor, stepped from the SUV, and my muscles relaxed. At least we wouldn't have to give statements to Sheriff McCourt. She'd never believe the truth, and while Nick could hold his own with misdirection, Karin and I weren't good liars.

  Connor spoke to the parents then drew us aside. “Okay, what really happened?”

  “It was the anthrophage,” I said.

  He cursed. “That thing Lenore told me about? Which way did it go?”

  “Into that stand of pines.” Nick pointed. “We scared it off, but I wouldn't want to go after it alone. It’s about the size of both of us put together.”

  Connor swore again. “All right. You didn't get a good look at the animal – couldn’t tell if it was a bear or mountain lion. But it’s attacked a child. We're going to have to go after it now.”

  “I doubt you'll find it,” I said.

  The deputy rounded on me, his eyes flinty, his nostrils wide. “Why not?”

  I took an involuntary step back. “Because it's protected by magic.”

  He winced.

  “Its tracks appear and disappear,” I said. “For all we know, it's teleporting.”

  “Don't say that.” He groaned. “A headless monster is bad enough. One that teleports…” He shook his head and stalked to his SUV. Beneath the flashing lights, his shadow leapt and danced across the pavement.

  Nick reached into his pocket and handed me the bottle. It wasn’t even cracked. “There’s a small flaw in your plan.”

  I stared at the unbroken bottle. “Uncool. Next time, I'll use a water balloon.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “The attic needs better lighting.” Karin flipped a page on a massive, leather-bound tome and scowled at the desk lamp.

  Through the octagonal window, moonlight silvered the bottoms of the clouds. It glinted in the glassed-in bookcase of the nearby antique secretary.

  In unspoken agreement, neither of us had sat at the secretary’s fold-down desk. That desk had been our Aunt Ellen's. Karin and I sat at a card table surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes.

  Lenore still hadn’t returned from the signing at her bookstore.

  Karin looked up. “At least we saved Paul.”

  “For all the good this did.” I plunked the small
spell bottle on the card table.

  “It might have worked.” Karin returned to scanning the pages. “But I think we need a backup plan.”

  “No kidding.” Not only had the bottle been too thick, I’d twisted the same damn ankle I had before.

  She checked the clock on her phone.

  “Still worried about the babysitter?” I asked.

  “She said she doesn't mind keeping Emmie longer, but I still feel guilty. I’ll pay her a bonus for staying late. Right now, stopping the anthrophage is more important.”

  I studied my sister. Her finger seemed to have gotten stuck on a page. “Find anything?” I asked.

  She shook herself and looked up, her face pale. “No, I— You weren't kidding about the anthrophage. I thought I was prepared, but… that's the worst thing I've seen.”

  And Karin must have seen a lot. I leaned back in my folding chair and crossed my arms. “What happened when you went through the door last summer. The door to Fairy, I mean?”

  Her hazel eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Unsaid was the word, “finally.” And I guessed I deserved that. I nodded.

  “Nothing too bad.” She shook her head, her auburn hair rumpled from the knit cap discarded on the card table. “I spent most of my time hiding, because I wasn't sure how anything there would react to me.”

  “Any thing?”

  Her mouth twisted. “Does that sound species-ist? The point is, I didn't see anything like the anthrophage. Soldiers, mostly, on patrol. They almost looked like people, but they were taller and unspeakably beautiful.” She carefully studied the page. “There was something awful in that beauty.”

  I shifted, and the chair squeaked beneath me. “We tried so many spells to get you back. I never understood why the last one finally worked. Why do you think it took you so long to return?”

  “The door on my side, the Fairy side, was guarded. It's a miracle I wasn't caught when you nudged it open wide enough for me to escape.” She shuddered and rubbed her arms. “I don’t like to think about what would have happened if your timing hadn’t been right.”

  “All that time there, and you just… hid?”

  “I used a cloaking spell too. My magic worked amazingly well on the other side.”

  This was all new to me. Karin had been closed-mouthed for months after her disappearance. That had probably been down to my skepticism too. Later, Lenore and I hadn't pushed. We'd been afraid to, both of us half-convinced her disappearance had been some sort of mental break.

  Hot shame washed over my face. After all we'd seen and done, we should have believed. But believing meant we were still in danger.

  She laughed brokenly. “Anyway, whatever finding spell you used was powerful enough to reach me where I was and bring me back. So, thanks.”

  “We should have believed you,” I said in a low voice. “I’m sorry.”

  She met my gaze, her eyes seeming to bore into my core. “But you still don't believe, not really.”

  “Of course we do. You were in Fairy last summer. The door is open, and something came through. We saw the anthrophage. Even Nick saw it, and he doesn’t have magical sight.”

  Karin shut the massive book. “It's more than that. What's happening now, the anthrophage, the murders, even Brayden, it's all connected.”

  “Brayden's got nothing to do with any of this,” I said quickly.

  “And yet out of the blue, he broke up with you right after the murders began and the anthrophage appeared.”

  My throat tightened. “He told me I was a rebound.”

  “Bull. He was in love with you for years before Alicia died. It might not have been right, but it was there.”

  “His wife was murdered inside my coffee shop. How was he supposed to feel about me?”

  She braced her elbows on the card table. “Guilty, I imagine. But you two waited and got past that. You've been together for nearly a year now, and not once in that year did you doubt each other.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “He said he was holding me back. That I needed someone more fun.”

  “And do you believe that?”

  “No! But, I guess I had been getting a little impatient. It’s felt like we’ve been in a rut lately. I mean, home repair. Antoine’s every Friday. Brunch at Alchemy on Sundays.”

  “Is that how you really felt?”

  Unable to meet her gaze, I picked at a fingernail. I had thought life had gotten a bit boring. But bored with Brayden? With our relationship? Never.

  I’d wanted to shake things up. Now, I just wanted my life back to normal. So much for my gratitude practice. I’d taken so much for granted – even that silly outdoor light he’d installed.

  My jaw clenched. “It’s too late.” He’d sensed my dissatisfaction, and I’d driven him off. I’d never be able to convince him of how wrong I’d been.

  Karin stood and walked to the secretary. She pulled an ancient-looking book from its glass case and handed it to me. “It isn’t. Don’t you see? There's fairy magic at work, and it's affecting everything, even our relationships. And it's happened before.”

  A light passed across the small octagonal window. Shadows shifted across the table, the dusty boxes of old clothes and family mementos. Gravel crunched in the driveway.

  “That must be Nick,” she said. “I'll go help him with the takeout.” She clambered down the attic ladder, the top of her head vanishing through the cut in the dusty wood floor.

  I ran my fingers along our family spell book’s soft, leather cover. It didn't take a genius to figure out what Karin had wanted me to read. I opened to the last page.

  “Nathaniel hied away to the fae spring

  To gather herbs and flowers for his bride.

  Belle, mischief mad, behold anon the man.

  Oh Moon, she raved, smit dreadfulle to her heart,

  She wove her magic spelle and bound him close.

  Away to me, she called, forget your love,

  Forget your mortal pledge, a haunting cry.

  Three days he tarried in the fairy bower.

  His home and hearth forgotten in her couch.

  Then pow'r more fierce than fae's blew through his soul,

  And waking, stumbled to his mountain home.

  Return! She cried. I bind you with my charms,

  I call the Morrigan, tie fast his fate,

  If he resists, its Uffern's gate he'll knock on.”

  Centuries ago, a fairy had tried to seduce my great-great-to-the-something-degree grandfather. She'd kept grandfather Nathaniel at that fairy spring for days until our ancestress had broken her spell and called him home. In revenge, the fairy had cursed our female line.

  I really hated fairies.

  I closed the worn cover and returned the book to its spot in the secretary’s glass-fronted bookcase.

  My family had paid a price for that witchcraft, every woman dying while giving birth to her firstborn daughter. Little wonder if Karin was paranoid about fairies and motherhood.

  Or we had paid the price, until my sisters and I had come along. Triplets, we'd managed to break the curse and kick the fairy's butt back to her world.

  I sighed. It had been easy to believe Karin had been suffering post-partum depression. We'd been so wrong.

  Was I wrong about Brayden now?

  A chill swept through the attic, and I rubbed my arms, glanced at the closed window.

  When we'd last talked, Brayden hadn't acted weird. But that night at Maya's house, when he'd been stumbling as if drunk… Something had been wrong then.

  But I wanted that to be true, just like I'd wanted Karin's post-partum depression to be true. How could I trust my so-called intuitions?

  The ladder creaked, and Lenore's white-blond head poked through the floor. “You eating with us?”

  I smiled and closed the glass case. “I didn't know you were back.”

  “Nick and I arrived at the
same time.” She climbed into the attic holding a slim hardback. “I would have been here sooner, but I got this.” She brandished the book.

  “What's that?” I leaned closer and peered at the book. Had she found something to help us?

  “It’s a first edition of A Book of Images by William T. Horton, from 1898. I've been looking for one for months. His art is incredibly mystical – like a modern version of William Blake. It has this art deco vibe before art deco was even a thing.”

  “Oh.” My voice dropped with disappointment. “You're really getting into rare book dealing.”

  She slid the book into an open slot on the secretary's shelf. “I love it. I still love the bookstore and dealing with customers. But the books themselves… Have I mentioned they're amazing?”

  I grinned. “A few times.”

  “Karin told me what happened tonight.” She sobered. “Thank God you got to Paul in time.”

  “Yeah.” I braced my elbow on a stacked cardboard box, realized it was covered in dust, and brushed off my sleeve. “The anthrophage isn't a scavenger anymore. It's attacking kids.”

  She canted her head. “They're easier prey. This is still scavenger behavior.”

  “Karin thinks Brayden's somehow being magically influenced,” I blurted. “Is it possible?”

  “Of course it's possible. It's happened before. But that doesn't mean it's happening now.”

  “No,” I said dully. The most obvious explanation for our breakup was probably the right one. He was over me.

  “Have you checked?”

  “For magical interference? Is there a spell in one of your books for that?”

  She frowned. “No, but you feel things.”

  “The problem is, all I'm feeling now is hurt.”

  Her mouth squinched sideways. “Yeah. That could be a problem. We could try journeying though.”

  “We?” I eyed her, askance. “You're the shamanic witch, not me. I don't journey.”

  “But we could try together.”

  I stalled, rubbing the back of my neck. Right now, I'd try anything to know the truth, even if it was what I didn’t want to hear. “If it might help, yeah.”

  “Come on.” She moved toward the square cut in the floor, where the tips of the ladder stuck out.