Calista turned on her perfectly-pedicured bare feet and stomped away, without a backward glance.
Briar, Josephine, and I stared at each other with varying degrees of disbelief. “She’s just never been the same since Lawrence,” Josephine said quietly.
Briar and I shrugged.
“A story for another day. She’ll bring it up in her own time. He was her great love. In a lifetime that’s lasted thirty centuries, he was the one.”
“She was in love? With someone besides herself?” Briar asked.
“Believe it or not, it’s true,” Josephine replied with a chuckle. “He was quite something.”
“Oh shi-” Briar began. “I bet that’s the guy she was talking about when we were watching Notting Hill. Remember? The one she said Christopher Pine reminded her of?”
Josephine wrinkled her nose. “I never thought of it before, but they could have been brothers. Lawrence and Christopher Pine. Oh, wow, I can’t believe I never saw it!”
“Was he…” I started, then searched for the right words. “Did he have abilities? I mean, like us?”
“He did,” Josephine replied.
“Tell. Us. Everything,” Briar demanded, plopping down on one of the comfy, oversized reading chairs and patting the seat of the one next to her. “Storytime!”
Josephine chewed on her bottom lip and looked nearly ready to burst, her eyes darting toward the door from which Calista had just made her exit. “I wish I could… but I’ve said too much already. It’s a super-sensitive subject with her. For once, I’m going to exercise some discretion and not be the huge gossip I usually am. Forgive me?” Josephine gave us her best sad puppy dog eyes and we fell atop her on the chair where she’d sat down next to me. We tickled and hugged and laughed pillow fought until we all wound up on the floor. I felt a Josephine-inspired wave of joy wash over me, and it was as if nothing bad existed in the world. Like having a syringe filled with liquid happiness plunged into my veins, only with none of the awful side effects most people experience when they chase such an impossible high.
Once we caught our breath, Briar left the room to get us drinks from the kitchen.
“Speaking of Frankenstein,” Josephine said, bouncing up to her feet. “I have something I think you’ll find cool. Let me see if I can figure out where...” Her voice tailed off as she approached the shelves.
I followed at a distance as she began scanning with her eyes and fingertips until she found the book she was looking for.
“A-ha!” she announced, pulling a small, leather-bound volume from where it was wedged between a pair of larger, more impressive neighbors. It was brown, with faint gold edging on the cover. “Take a look at this.”
Jo handed me the book, which I cradled in both hands. It looked and felt old, and I handled it with the reverence due its age.
I took seat at a small table as Briar returned with a tray containing three glasses of sweet tea. Staring at the book, I pointed at the far end of the table, not wanting to take any chances with a spilled glass ruining what I held. Briar set the tray down and Jo thanked her and picked up her glass.
I opened the cover carefully and turned to the title page, where I was greeted by Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus 1818.
“Is this a first printing?” I asked as Jo took a long drink of her tea.
Smiling, she nodded. “It’s a little more than that. Turn the page.”
As carefully as I’d ever flipped a page in any book I’d ever read, I turned it and gasped – in elegant cursive writing, faded, but still easily legible, were the following words: To my dearest friend, Josephine Berkshire, from the author
“Okay, my gast is officially flabbered,” I said, closing the book and pushing it a few inches away from me, as if it were suddenly too hot to touch. Mary Shelly inscribed a first edition of Frankenstein to you?”
Josephine blushed and covered her face with both hands. “Guilty. Yes. She did.”
Briar swirled her glass. “A girl wrote Frankenstein?” Jo and I laughed and nodded our heads. “Oh,” Briar continued. “I guess I just always assumed it had been a dude.”
“No, Mary was definitely not a dude,” Josephine said, smiling. “And if the fact that she was a she isn’t impressive enough, consider that she was only 18 when she wrote the first draft.”
It was my turn to be surprised.
“No way,” I replied. “That’s crazy. I thought Carson McCullers started young. She was 23 or 24 when she wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Josephine nodded. Briar picked up the first-edition Frankenstein and thumber through it carefully.
“We were in Switzerland, Lake Geneva. It was 18… I’m embarrassed, I’m so bad with dates,” Josephine said, smiling. “Anyway, it was 1815 or 16, somewhere around there, and a group of us were staying at this beautiful house at Lake Geneva. Mary and Percy, George, John and I, Claire was there, too, people were always dropping in.
“I need a notebook and pen to keep all this straight,” I interrupted. Mary Shelley, but she would have been Godwin then, Percy Bysse Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, and who was the last name? Claire?”
“Yes, Claire Clairmont. She was Mary’s stepsister, and George’s girlfriend and eventually the mother of one of his children. But good grief, George was sleeping around so much by then that half the women in Europe had his babies.”
Briar leaned in. “Ok, this is getting juicy, did y’all just hang out at the lake all day and party all night, or what? And George, or Byron or whatever, he was some super stud?”
Josephine blushed. “George was very handsome. And magnetic. Like, if he looked into your eyes… damn. But he knew John and I were a thing, so it was never like that with me and George.”
“Did you and John stay together a long while?” I asked.
Jo turned melancholy. “For a few years. But was a gambler, an a few years later he went back to London to try to secure a loan and when he struggled to come up with the money, he took cyanide and ended his life. I was in Rome at the time. It took quite a while to forgive myself.”
“Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry, I had no idea!” I said, mortified. I wrapped my arms around Josephine, and Briar joined the group hug. Once we settled back into our seats, Josephine continued to reminisce.
“That summer, which we planned to spend enjoying the lake, was dreadful. All it did was rain, rain, rain. We barely saw the sun. We didn’t know it then, but a volcano had erupted on the other side of the world, and nobody had much of a summer that year.
“One especially awful night, after we’d spent the afternoon with the green fairy, George challenged all of us to come up with scary stories. So, off we went to secluded corners of the villa, quills in hand, and spent a few hours crafting our tales.”
“Absinthe? Now you’re speaking my language,” Briar said, high-fiving Josephine. It was my turn to be lost, and they picked up on my confusion.
“Absinthe is a green liqueur that some people say has hallucinogenic qualities, right Jo?” Briar asked. Josephine nodded, and my sister continued. “I shared a bottle with a friend last year and it didn’t make me see visions or anything, but it got me seriously messed up.”
“What’s the ‘green fairy’ thing, though?” I asked.
Josephine replied in flawless French. “La fee verte. Elle est fantastique! The green fairy. She is fantastic! I don’t know where the ‘green fairy’ name came from, but it’s a nickname for absinthe. So, where was I?”
“The Vampyre and Frankenstein.”
“Right. When we reconvened in the parlor, and discussed and read some of our stories aloud, we were impressed by John’s vampire story and then totally blown away by Mary’s monster. Obviously neither one was complete, but they’d written rough outlines and there were chunks of Frankenstein that made it into the finished work.
“As good as it was, however, I’d be lying if I said any of us thought it would still be this huge deal two centuries later.”
“Did you write a
story?” I asked.
“I did, and they were polite about it, but it wasn’t any good. Scary isn’t me at all. I think it was about a girl falling in love with a ghost. It was certainly never published.”
“Was it a headless ghost? Of a pirate?”
I spit my tea out laughing at Briar’s question.
“Not exactly. Mine was much more basic. And forgettable. But not even the great Lord Byron came up with anything especially noteworthy that night. We spent the next week or so fleshing out and expanding our stories. And… having fun.” Josephine grinned wildly and blushed.
Our shared laughter was interrupted by the sound of two thumps followed by glass breaking in some distant corner of the house.
Our eyes darted around the room and back to each other, and we exchanged shrugs. Fiona and Chantelle were around, and Calista was off being Calista. Virginia had taken Lukas and Palmer to meet with Henry, the bird shifter we’d met at the funeral on the water. He’d returned from New Orleans with news to discuss with our friend and with Solomon Lambiotte.
“Should we…” Briar began to ask, when her question was answered for all of us.
We heard a shriek from the kitchen just before a bleeding Chantelle stumbled through the door and collapsed just feet from where we sat.
19 Briar
Chantelle rose to her knees and crawled desperately toward us. Her face had been slashed and her right arm likewise sliced deeply in several places.
Before we could act, the door through which Chantelle had arrived flew open again and the most macabre sight I’d ever seen came bursting into the library.
Animals came pouring through, but not living creatures. Two deer, a swarm of squirrels and racoons, and a several waddling possums, all in various states of decay and… decomposition issued forth from the kitchen, all teeth, claws, and hooves, their undead intentions clear. Some of them were little more than skeletal remains.
I grabbed a chair from the table and fueled by an adrenaline rush swung it, connecting with the head of a stag that meant to impale me on its horns. Josephine and Emma scrambled away, running for the other end of the room, Chantelle in tow. They kicked at the shambling remains of the animals accosting them, Josephine screaming as a raccoon latched onto her bare leg and sank its teeth in.
Calista appeared in the doorway behind them as I swung my chair wildly to protect myself.
Animals were still flowing through the door to the kitchen, but Calista put a stop to them.
“Watch out, Briar!” She warned, and I leaned to the side just as the heavy reading table at which Emma had examined the old copy of Frankenstein flew and crashed into the doorway, tufts of fur and bits of bone the casualties as the oak lodged itself in the doorway, sealing off whatever horrors remained in the kitchen.
We were still in immediate danger, however, fighting with our bare hands against what amounted to an army of four-legged zombies.
Calista’s mind broke the legs off the table and what were effectively six baseball bats went to work on our remaining adversaries.
“A little help, Briar!” Calista called out, and it suddenly occurred to me that as gruesome as these monsters were, at their core they were made of bone, and, as such, subject to my whims.
I’d spent some time working with Aleta, Josephine, and Virginia, but my powers were still a bit hit or miss. Try as I might, nothing happened. And the chair I’d been swinging became heavier in my hands. A cat or something like it leapt onto my shoulder and bit down, joined by a pair of dogs who saw an opening and knocked me off my feet.
“Help Chantelle,” Calista ordered as Emma dragged our beloved cook through the door and closed it behind her.
Josephine staggered to my aid as Calista telekinetically orchestrated her weapons and held the table in place against a scratching onslaught.
One of Calista’s improvised wooden swords had removed the dogs who’d tackled me and falling backward onto it had disabled the cat on my shoulder. The number of zombies had thinned considerably, but we weren’t out of danger yet.
Josephine put her hand on my face and I felt a rush of endorphins and a surge in my confidence. I pulled myself upright and clenched my fists, focusing my consciousness outward. The effect was instantaneous.
The remaining undead beasts shattered, exploding into bone fragments.
“Have either of you seen Fiona?” Calista asked. Josephine and I shook our heads as our eyes warily scanned the room for signs that any of our assailants had survived. None of them had, but we were scratched, bruised, bitten, and bleeding.
“Emma, we need you,” Calista called out. Her right arm was stretched out before her, palm facing toward the makeshift barricade she’d put in the kitchen doorway. Her left hand waved toward the door behind her and it swung open. My sister knelt on the floor, tending to Chantelle, who looked almost as good as new.
Emma stood up and approached Calista, who’d sustained only minor damage.
“Not me. Not yet. Take care of them,” Calista instructed, nodding in my direction.
Emma walked carefully across the room, sidestepping bones, books, and splintered wood. She looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
She dropped down next to me, but I shook my head and pointed at Josephine. The wound on her leg looked worse than anything I’d suffered.
“What the hell is all of this, Cal?” I demanded. “More than that, how? I thought Virginia said the house was protected, like, magically or whatever?” “It is,” Calista confirmed. “Nothing and no one unwanted should be able to enter this house. Unless… no, I don’t even want to think it. I’d know it, anyway. We all would.”
“What?” Emma asked, her hands conveying healing energy into Josephine. “What would we all know?”
Josephine answered Emma’s question after a pause and exchange of eye contact between Calista and Jo.
“As long as Virginia is alive, this house is bound to her and under her control. If these things were able to get inside, she’s…”
20 Emma
“She’s not dead,” Calista insisted. “We’d know it. We’d have felt it. She’s not dead, but something’s happened to her. Ezekiel’s done something. It must be him. We have to find Aleta.”
“And Fiona,” Josephine added.
“We have more immediate concerns, don’t we?” Briar asked, pointing toward the kitchen, where the scratching and scuffling had grown more intense. We could also hear sounds coming through from the ceiling above us. The house seemed to be filling with creatures like those who had attacked us.
Josephine’s wounds were healed, and I turned my attention to Briar, with Josephine boosting my efforts with her own gifts.
“I couldn’t directly affect them. I tried to fling them away, throw them across the room – nothing,” a troubled Calista explained.
“Thank the stars for Briar, then,” Josephine replied.
Calista nodded begrudgingly.
“Could Ezekiel animate the dead?” I asked as the last of Briar’s injuries mended themselves. “Because these animals, some of them looked like roadkill. And they all looked messed up. And wasn’t it odd that they weren’t growling or anything like that?”
“No, Ezekiel didn’t do this. This was hoodoo.”
“Like Dr. Ibis?”
Calista nodded in response to Briar’s question. “Yes, but Ezekiel himself doesn’t traffic in it. But he has plenty of allies who do. I’m thinking the twins must be involved. Jo, Aleta’s not answering me, and I’ve been screaming at the top of my telepathic lungs for her. Let’s get out of here and regroup.”
Josephine stood up and walked over to the bookshelves behind us. She pulled down three books from a shelf she could reach only on tippy toes. She crouched low and removed three books from the bottom shelf. When she finished swapping the six hardcovers, she stepped away from the shelf, which groaned and recessed into the wall, revealing a small trapdoor on the floor.
“Seriously?” Briar asked.
“U
nless you want to go through the kitchen? If so, be my guest. I’ll drop the table just as soon as we’re down below. Good luck.”
Briar rebuffed Calista and we walked over to the trapdoor, which Josephine lifted and bade us to enter with a flourish of her slender arm.
Chantelle joined us, and in single file we descended a spiral staircase into a dimly-lit corridor.
We arrived at the bottom of the steps, Calista last, shutting the trapdoor above us. Josephine threw a heavy black lever and we could hear the bookcase shifting back into place. Once it was finished, Calista let her concentration lapse and we heard the table come crashing down and subsequently the room begin to fill with all manner of beasts.
“Ms. Fiona was upstairs turning down the beds,” Chantelle informed us. “I heard a crash in the sunroom and when I went to see what it was, and that demon spawn started just rushing in through the broken window. I tried to get away, but my running days are behind me, don’t you know.”
Chantelle wiped tears from her cheek and Josephine hugged her neck, soothing her.
“What is this place?” I asked. We were in a tunnel with a dirt floor covered with irregular slabs of stone. Recessed alcoves near the ceiling emitted light, but the source was unclear. The walls were rough stone, almost like a cave.
“Somewhere safe,” Calista answered, and she began to walk down the dark hallway, which illuminated as she approached. “Come on, all of you. It’s best we put distance between ourselves and the house right now.”
“Fiona’s still up there,” I interjected. “She’s in terrible danger. I’m not leaving without her.”
Briar stepped next to me and took my hand in hers as we stared down Calista. Josephine and Chantelle filled the space between us.
“Can you hear what’s happening up there?” Calista asked. “The house is overrun. We need Aleta and Virginia and Dr. Ibis, and that’s just for starters. There’s a reason police don’t charge into schools when active shooters are present. I appreciate you wanting to help Fiona. I do, too. But I told you, my powers can’t touch those things. And if who I think did this is up there, trust me, you want no part of them.”
Carolina Conjuring Page 11