Misfit Fortune

by Stephanie Foxe

“What are you reading? You never read.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she realized how rude that sounded.

  Amber scowled at her. “I read. I’m just busy…”

  “I was just surprised.”

  “You still meeting with Ithra today to talk about that curse?”

  “Yeah, just as soon as I have some coffee.” She narrowed her eyes. Amber was avoiding her question.

  “Great.” Amber nodded uncomfortably and tried to scurry away to her room without answering what the book was.

  Ceri grabbed it before she could get away.

  “Wait––” Amber cut herself off with a sigh, then crossed her arms, waiting for Ceri’s reaction.

  The book was old and the pages were protected with magic. She opened it and saw the book was on tarot.

  “Still determined to figure out this stupid card, I see.” Ceri muttered, flipping through the pages.

  “Well, a tarot card appeared for me too when I ran into that guy. I’d rather know as much as I could about it than nothing, even if it might be total crap,” Amber said firmly, as if she’d rehearsed this argument in her head before.

  She rolled her eyes. “It is crap.”

  “How do you know? You do magic. Why is this any different?”

  “Fortune tellers are all about illusion and conning you.”

  “Dr. Stone isn’t trying to con us. He didn’t ask for money, just offered help if I wanted it, then told me to research it myself.”

  Notes in a strange text were scribbled in the top corner of one of the pages. “Where did you get this book?”

  Amber scratched her head and shifted on her feet. “Kadrithan.”

  She slammed the book shut. “Are you serious? What did he get you to agree to in exchange for this?”

  “Nothing,” Amber snapped, truly irritated now. “He said it was a gift, no strings attached. I’m guessing he just wants me to trust him or something. The book helps. I still don’t trust him. It was a win-win.”

  “I don’t like it,” she muttered, staring at the book like it might bite her.

  Amber sighed. “You’ve really got to let go of your prejudices.”

  “I don’t––”

  “Yeah, you do. Maybe these tarot cards can tell us something. Is yours still following you around?”

  Ceri glared at the card in her hand. “Yes.”

  “Mine isn’t. It seems content that I’m trying to figure it out. Keep the book. Read about your card. Maybe it will help. If it doesn’t, I’ll slap Dr. Stone around until he gets them to go away.” Amber crossed her arms, daring Ceri to argue with her.

  “Look, it’s experience not some kind of preju––”

  “I’m taking Tommy back to the woods to look for Deward. Good luck.” Amber walked back into her room, shutting the door behind her and cutting the argument off.

  Ceri was half-annoyed, half-impressed. Amber knew she’d look at the stupid book now because she’d challenged her. Sighing, she glared at the hideous card again. If she was being honest, she was somewhat curious what it meant. She was also worried it would be something bad.

  There was nothing to do but find out unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life haunted by a sassy tarot card.

  Resigning herself to her fate, she slipped back into her room, shutting her door firmly behind herself. She’d never live it down if the pack caught her reading this.

  Woggy poked his head up from the nest he’d made in her bedroom window, squeaking imperiously for his breakfast. She felt guilty after forgetting to feed him the other night and had been conned into delivering him breakfast in bed.

  Grabbing a can of tuna from her drawer, she handed it to the greedy little pixie, then settled back in her bed. This book was very old, possibly the oldest thing she’d ever held. Maybe tarot and fortune telling was crap but she couldn’t deny how cool it was to get to examine a piece of history like this.

  She flipped through long-winded introduction expounding on the ‘venerable and arcane arts involved in channeling magicks through the hallowed vessels of the tarot cards’. She rolled her eyes. At most they were a psychological trick favored by con artists.

  Impatient, she flipped through until she saw a full page drawing that matched the tarot card Dr. Stone had given her. The fat devil leered at her making her skin crawl. She flicked him on the nose, feeling dumb for letting a drawing get to her like this.

  With a sigh, she began reading the description.

  Rather than signifying doom, as one might expect from a card whose appearance is moste evil, The Devil, which is the fifteenth card in the Major Arcana, may instead represent the shadow self. It calls attention to the darkest desires which hide within our souls.

  Let it call you forth to action. Root out this darkness and take control of it. This darkness may be fear of something within or a threat from another, and fear will always limit any of us blessed with the gift of magick. One must always deal with the shadows within lest they consume us or weaken us.

  The Devil may also warn us of a situation from which there is no hope of escape. Let traps and betrayal not catch you by surprise if this card appears for you. Root out the darkness lurking around you.

  “Well, isn’t that positive,” she muttered, her eyes drawn back to the demon and the two people chained at his feet. As she stared at him, she felt a tug. Her vision darkened and she felt the same oppressive warmth that had pushed her out of the spirit realm. It pressed in all around her, suffocating her.

  She grabbed the totem hanging from her neck and its power flared around her, shoving the darkness away. Tossing the book to the side on the bed she gasped for breath, heart still racing from the moment of panic.

  Woggy grunted as he munched on some tuna. She was jealous of him. His biggest struggle tended to be trying to convince them to feed him an hour earlier than normal. The pixie life was a simple one. He didn’t have unwanted visions of darkness that seemed to be haunting him after an ill-advised trip to the spirit realm.

  The tarot card drifted into her view. She sighed, staring at the pushy thing.

  “What do you want me to do? I read the book. It’s not helping.”

  The card shimmied, floating closer to her.

  “You want me to look at you again?”

  It bounced mid-air excitedly.

  “Fine.” She held out her hand and let it flip into her palm. It didn’t look any more appealing upside down but at least this time she wasn’t overwhelmed with another vision. “Are you warning me about some darkness within, or a terrible, unavoidable situation?”

  The first thought that came to her was that it was both. She frowned, feeling a slight tingle of magic in her fingers.

  “Was that…you?”

  The card twitched.

  “Can’t you just pick one? Does it have to be both?”

  The insight bloomed in her mind as clear as if the card had spoken to her. The answer remained the same: both.

  Just what she needed to hear before she met with some trolls to try to break an ancient curse.

  Chapter 34

  Ceri

  She’d never had much to do with trolls. Not for any particular reason, the circles she ran in had simply never overlapped with the intellectual trolls. Her family and coven hadn’t been big on sharing or on mingling with races that couldn’t wield magic like they could.

  Knocking on the door, she waited nervously for someone to answer. After two failures to make any progress in the spirit realm her confidence was at an all time low. Her talents lay in breaking spells other witches had cast though. Theoretically, she was the best possible person to help with this.

  Ithra opened the door. She wasn’t quite what Ceri had expected. A finely-made, white silk blouse flattered Ithra’s dark green skin. Her hair was bright blue, just like Deward’s, however it was pulled back into a braid instead of a mohawk.

  “You must be Ceridwen,” Ithra said, extending her hand. “I am Ithra Tuskbreaker, pleased to meet you.” />
  “Yes, pleased to meet you as well,” Ceri said with a smile.

  “Come inside and make yourself comfortable. The elder and my brother –– who is most familiar with curses –– will be joining us today.”

  Ceri followed her inside, admiring the inside of the troll’s home. It was spotless, not a speck of dirt on the ground or a single thing out of place. The decorations were minimal. Instead of pictures of family, they had hung framed math equations and essays. She couldn’t help but smile at that.

  Ithra led her to a room on the second floor. The elder –– who she recognized from the day spent with the trolls –– and another troll whose muscles looked likely to bust out of his shirt nodded in greeting.

  “This is my brother, Velgo, and Elder Xenya,” Ithra said in introduction. They all shook hands, getting the formalities out of the way. “Please, tell us what you know of this curse.”

  “How familiar are you with spells cast by witches?” Ceri asked.

  “I have spent my life studying your magic. I am as familiar with it as one can be without being a witch,” he said with a humble nod of his head.

  “Excellent, that will make this easier.” She reflected for a moment on what she’d felt at that doorway. “The curse has faded in power, which is good for us. The problem lies with the sheer number of witches involved in creating it. I believe this course of retreat was a last resort for them, so the power they poured into the curse was amplified by their determination.”

  “How large was the circle that cast it?” Velgo asked.

  “Thirteen witches large, at least. Similar to the runes that hid the main entrance to the tunnels, I believe they cast it alongside the cycle of the moon.”

  Velgo nodded as he walked over to a large whiteboard that took up one of the walls. He began writing down notes with handwriting that was unfairly perfect. “How many witches do you estimate you’d need to break it?”

  “Three.”

  He stopped, looking back at her in surprise. “That’s not many. Amber said you thought you’d need a large coven to break it.”

  She shook her head. “Not a large one, simply a skilled one. However, there is not a single witch in Portland I would trust to help with this.”

  “I believe the tribe can help you by standing in as a coven,” Elder Xenya said.

  “I am certainly willing to try, though I have no idea how many more trolls I would need in place of a skilled witch.” She paused, noting a frown tugging at the elder’s mouth. “I am completely uneducated in how a troll can manipulate magic.”

  “That will take some experimentation,” Velgo said, unconcerned. “I believe the best test of that will be casting a spell with you first. We certainly can’t have our first attempt at channeling your magic be with a dangerous curse.”

  “That’s logical. Perhaps…” she’d dismissed the idea initially because she didn’t have a coven to help her, but if the trolls could, that would change everything. “We might be able to scry Deward, see where he is and what he’s doing.”

  Ithra’s head popped up at that. “If it is at all possible, I want to try.”

  Velgo tapped his marker against the whiteboard. “Theoretically, if we can act as your coven, then scrying would be as good a test as anything else. It is fairly complex.”

  Ceri nodded in agreement. “I brought as much as I could with me today, however we would need a gallon of fresh water, not distilled.”

  “There is a creek two blocks from here, will that work?” Xenya asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll fetch it.” The elder hurried out of the room, leaving them to the rest of the planning.

  Ceri threw herself into the joy that came with planning a spell like this. It had been a long time since she’d been able to share this with someone and she’d forgotten how thrilling it was.

  If Deward’s life hadn’t been at risk, she could have even called it fun.

  Chapter 35

  Amber

  There was no trail in the woods. No one had passed this way in ages. Amber shifted back and yanked her shirt on in annoyance.

  Tommy was justifiably frustrated as well. His emotions were pounding through the pack bond like a headache.

  “They can’t have just disappeared completely.”

  “We might have to wait for Ceri to break that curse to pick the trail up.”

  Tommy sighed, dragging his hand down his face. “He could be dead by then. If he isn’t already.”

  She shoved her feet back in her shoes. There was nothing she could say to that. He was right.

  “Maybe we should go to Laurel’s house and try to catch the scent of the murderer. It’s only been a day, there’s a chance we can trace her back to wherever she was before the murder.”

  Her head snapped up. “A crime scene is the last place we should be wandering around.”

  “If someone is there we’ll hear them and we can leave.”

  She hesitated, but knew she would have done it for Ceri in a heartbeat. Deward needed their help. “Alright, let’s try. But if anyone is there, we turn right back around.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to get arrested any more than you do.”

  Instead of driving closer to Laurel’s house, which would be suspicious, they walked through the woods. Amber listened intently for any sign they weren’t alone but other than a few birds, the forest remained silent.

  Laurel’s home was part of some kind of estate that butted up to a state park –– which is where they’d been searching. The trees and underbrush were dense so she wasn’t able to see the house until they were almost on top of it.

  Wordlessly, both she and Tommy stopped, taking cover behind a large tree as they scoped the area out. The yard and driveway were empty, guarded only by yellow police tape strung around the property. Based on the varying scents, dozens of people had passed through here recently.

  “I don’t hear anyone, do you?” Tommy whispered.

  She shook her head. “Nope, but we’re still going in carefully. Just in case.”

  Tommy nodded curtly and ran toward the house, staying low. She followed him with all her senses on high alert.

  They stopped and pressed their backs against the outside of the house, checking one last time to ensure it was vacant.

  “It’s weird they left it empty, isn’t it?” Tommy asked in a hushed whisper.

  She shrugged. “Maybe they can’t afford to have someone sit here. Not really sure how it works.”

  “You think they have the place warded?”

  “We’d be able to smell the magic if they did. Just keep moving slow.”

  Tommy nodded, stepping back to look up at a second story balcony. “Let’s go in up there. Less likely to be warded if any of it is.”

  Amber shrugged. “Alright, stand back. I’m going first.”

  “Sure thing, alpha,” Tommy said with a hint of amusement in his tone.

  She threw him a mock glare before launching herself up to the balcony, catching the top of the banister easily. It was too bad she couldn’t do all this when she and Dylan had been sneaking out of the house as teenagers. It had always been getting back in unnoticed that had been difficult.

  Throwing her legs over the side she dropped onto the balcony and paused. The house remained silent and no magic tingled over her skin. She waited three breaths, just in case, but it was clear.

  “Are you meditating up there or what?” Tommy hissed from the ground.

  “I’m being careful,” she said, leaning over the banister to glare at him. “But it’s safe. Get up here.”

  “Finally.” He jumped up and pulled himself over with a practiced ease that made her think he’d done it before.

  Amber tugged on the window but it was locked. “Well, should have thought about it being locked. Any other ideas?”

  “Scoot over.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, but did as requested.

  He peered through the window then nodded his head. “I can open this.
”

  “I’m not even going to ask how you know how to do that.”

  “Probably for the best.” He pushed both hands firmly against the window and began moving it up and down in incremental motions. Slowly but surely, the window lock began to raise.

  “Is it seriously that easy?”

  The lock came free and the window slid up. “Yep.”

  “Wish I’d known about that last time I locked myself out of my apartment,” Amber muttered as she followed him into the the house.

  Tommy smirked at her, then gestured down the hallway. “After you.”

  The house was newly built and the interior had all the trendy decorations she saw on TV. Light gray walls, tall windows with gauzy curtains, and abstract prints hung without a frame. It all felt impersonal, like a stage instead of a home.

  “She must not have lived here very long, her scent hasn’t…settled into the place, you know?” Tommy said quietly.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like she barely ever walked through here.” Amber frowned, poking her head into what appeared to be a guest bedroom. It smelled like bleach and fabric softener. No one had slept in here in months, if ever.

  “Some news articles did say she mostly stayed in the city. This was her ‘country house’,” he said with finger quotes, “that she stayed at when she was fighting with her boyfriend –– the mysterious angel.”

  The hallway opened up with a wide staircase leading down to their right and a balcony that overlooked the entryway. Little evidence markers were laid out in various places, including a single bloody footprint that trailed down the stairs like someone had hopped on one foot all the way down.

  “That looks a little big to be a woman’s footprint,” Tommy said in confusion.

  “Maybe it’s Kadrithan’s. He grabbed that piece of evidence, I guess he stepped in her blood somehow.”

  Tommy grimaced. “Must have been a lot of blood.”

  Amber stepped around the evidence markers, following them into a large bedroom. The center of the room was empty except for dried blood that had spread across the floor. Straight above the blood, the ceiling had strange holes in it.