Halfway Dead (10 page)

I leaned back on my haunches, rocking in thought. She wasn’t a nurse, but she was growing. Or had grown.

I snapped my fingers. “Nursery? Like babies? You worked with babies?” I watched her eyes dim again, followed by a slackening of her facial muscles. She was fading away from my spell. I needed an answer, and fast.

“No bay-beees.” One last jerk of her small chin.

Okay, no babies then. I looked around, feeling the chill air of the night descend on me as my heart slowed. The shadow of the forest loomed not far from Brendan’s house. I pointed to the bulky trees that stood in silhouette against the stars. “Trees? Plants? You worked in a nursery?”

A look of triumph crossed her stiffening features, then the skin of her lips began to flake like shale. She was almost gone. With a last push of her calcified chest, the girl pushed air out into the night. Her epitaph was only four words.

“He maaade me therrrre.” Then she was gone.

I rose, wiping my hands across the sweaty fabric of my shirt. The girl was rigid in true death. In a few moments, my spell would fail and she would revert to what was a more natural state. Tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t stop the sense of waste. It was always like this when innocent people were killed by magic, and I had no doubt that this girl had been a mere bystander. Something bad was in Thendara, and I knew the nursery would be there, in the deepest recesses of the forest. Somehow, there were chestnuts soaring over a place of such blackness that I feared what might happen if their seeds were taken into the wider world. I had to question everything I knew—which was precious little—about all the players in this search for secrets. Was Ava a willing agent of evil? Who the hell was Major Pickford, or was he just a common thief? If Ava knew what she was seeking, and the risks associated, could Jim Dietrich be far behind?

Just how far from shore were these people, and before I began using my magic indiscriminately, who could get hurt? My head pulsed with the possibilities, and I rubbed my temples in small circles as I tried not to get sick. I’ll never find death acceptable or common. I pride myself on that.

“Carlie?” Brendan’s hesitant words sifted across the porch from the back door. I turned to see the white oval of his face and two dark smudges where his eyes should have been. He was pale with fear.

“Everything’s okay, Brendan, you can come out.” I sat next to the wight in total disgust. Actually, it was more like defeat, because everything was most certainly
not
alright. A girl had been murdered, and I’d been given yet another tantalizing clue about the evil waiting for me in the woods. “Oh, Thendara. It’s really me.” I spoke our safe word with relief.

Brendan’s footsteps were hesitant. “Who is that?” He hovered a few steps away, then approached at my encouraging wave.

“You may as well sit down.” I called a small light spell to the fingers of my right hand. Brendan folded his legs with the ease of a longtime reader, and tried not to look at the obviously dead woman less than two feet away from his knee. All things considered, he was doing remarkably well, probably due to his curious nature and intellect. Brendan was interesting, and a friend. I decided to treat him as such.

“Let me see your hand.” I gestured to him with all the kindness I could muster. The moon was just bright enough that I felt my heart grow brave.

He gave me a measured look, his head tilting to one side like a cat. “I trust you, Carlie, but . . .” His eyes cut to the girl.

“I know. Trust me for one just a moment longer. Please.” I held out my hands.

Slowly, he put one smooth, librarian’s hand in mine. His fingers were long and cool.

“Stay still. I want to show you something.”

“It’s not how you killed her, is it?”

“No, I swear. I—just let me show you. Still, please.” I put one finger delicately in the center of his upturned palm, and let the magic go. Usually, when someone sees a spell in action, they run. Or shout. Maybe they jump while running and shouting. You get the picture.

Brendan sat absolutely still, his eyes never leaving the trickle of red sparks that fell in a tiny shower to bounce daintily on his skin. “What is it?” His voice was husky with wonder.

“Magic.” There was no need for further explanation, and he sensed as much. I let him absorb the enormity of his world shifting. Watching the light of discovery pulse in his eyes, I was drawn back to the day of my first spell. A smile crept over my face, despite our grim atmosphere. “Are you afraid?” I asked, although I knew he was not. He tore his eyes away with some difficulty, so I broke the spell with a muttered command.

He turned to me, slowly. “No. Not of you. But, magic?” He looked at my hands with burning curiosity. “And, no offense, but you’re a cook. You make
waffles
.” He rubbed his face vigorously before jerking a thumb toward the girl. His shoulders were tense, and I knew the ugly facts were intruding on his mind. “I have many, many questions.”

“And I will answer them. I’m not here to deny you the truth, Brendan. You’re a friend.”

“Why did she try to”—he searched for the words—“get at me?”

“She wanted to kill you.” Simple and honest. “Next question?”

He edged away from the corpse out of instinct. “Why? And who is she?”

That required more thought, and a little conjecture. “I don’t know who she is, but I know
what
she is.”

“Is she a vampire?” he whispered, as the librarian in him broke free. He was mulling all kinds of wild possibilities, and none of them would be close to the gritty truth. “How did you stop her?”

I sighed. “No, but she is—or was, rather—undead. I killed her with magic, which I’m sure you will conclude makes me a witch. Does that scare you?”

He snorted. “Of
course
it scares me. I’m terrified. I check out books to tourists who want to read in a chair. I loan movies to locals. I don’t know about
magic
. Until three minutes ago, it wasn’t real. And now, there’s a dead girl who wanted to eat me flopped on my porch, my friend the cook just cast a spell that made my skin glow like garnets, and I think I might faint.”

He let a modest shudder expel some of the stress in his muscles, then looked at me again with a wary interest. I put a friendly hand on his knee. He twitched, but didn’t pull away. Progress was being made. “I’m a witch. A real one, not some amateur who reads things on the internet and likes to dress up. Magic is pervasive, and, for whatever reason, the land around us is a sort of zoo for magical beings. They’re everywhere.”

“What?” He rolled his eyes like a horse, then focused on me again before drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly through his nose. He folded his hands with some effort, then asked, “Exactly what kind of creatures are around us? And why? I’m a little more concerned about
them
than I am you.”

I smiled, if only because he was in need of a friendly face. I didn’t feel particularly jovial just then. “As to what’s out there? Everything. And I don’t know why. I’m a white witch; my magic is primarily related to the moon and the land. I don’t fool around with blood or demons, but I’ve heard of some witches who do. Very few of them live to old age, if you catch my meaning.”

He grunted, the librarian within his personality shining through. “Demons? What about her? Was she a demon, or just a victim?” He looked at the body with pity. “She doesn’t look evil. She looks like a kid who got in front of a train.”

“That’s exactly what she was.” I intended to find out who was driving the locomotive, but I needed Brendan to listen, so I continued in my quiet, patient tones. “Thendara. The place I was looking for on those old photographic plates.” His eyes opened wider, and I nodded, confirming the importance of the forgotten place. “There’s something out there. She told me that was where he made her, whatever that means. But there’s more, much more. I think that a ghost is waiting for me.”

“For you? Specifically? Or just—is it just a haunted place?”

“No, this is something from my family history. A boy named Erasmus vanished there, and I think he was taken by whatever is lurking in the woods. His death stopped the canal from being built through here, and now, the evil is making young women into these things and sending them to hunt down people who know about Thendara. That’s a small, specific club, and I think I know who’s doing it. What I don’t know is why,” I said, feeling the frustration in my voice. I pushed one finger against the edge of my nose; I’d have quite the shiner tomorrow, I could already feel the bruise swelling like a ripening plum.

“You’re going out there to . . . to, confront this thing?” His voice was fat with awe.

I guess to people who know nothing of magic, it would be kind of amazing. I do have
some
skills, it seemed.

“I am. Or, I was until that girl bopped me in the noggin. I think I might wait a day or so. I wasn’t going alone, either. I have help.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

“An investigator. Sort of like a cop, but he works for someone who wants to find Thendara, too. But for different reasons,” I explained.

Brendan snorted, and I knew why. He was having a hard time imagining anyone could want to find Thendara willingly, particularly if creatures like the girl before us were waiting there. I found myself agreeing with his overall assessment of the stupidity in going to the woods to find an unknown evil that turned girls into death machines. He had a point.

Brendan shifted on the wood slats of the porch. The moon was a silver witness to the body that lay inert, and quiet reigned across the neighborhood. He cleared his throat. “Have you ever hurt anyone with your magic?”

I looked at him, mustering as much sincerity as I had, and shook my head. “No. Nor have any of the witches in my family; it’s against our nature.”

“Other witches?” He raised a brow.

“It’s best you don’t know. For now, anyway, but yes, I come from a family of witches that goes back several centuries,” I told him, hoping to keep my exposure to his curiosity at a bare minimum.

It didn’t work. He was on the trail of something new and dangerous, and his inquisitive heart fairly thudded against his ribs with the excitement of sitting across from a real live witch and a really dead wight. “What do you expect to find at Thendara? Other than a ghost?”

I drew shapes in the growing dew on the porch, my fingertips lazily scribing glyphs that were meaningless to Brendan, but part of my family history. “Trees. And some stones, but I was mainly going to find the trees.”

He perked up even further, and I thought there was a real possibility he might faint from excitement. “What kind of trees? Like, magical ones?”

“Sort of. They’re just trees, if an unusual kind. I think that
where
they are is a lot more important than
what
they are.”

Brendan chewed on that. “Are they planted in a circle?”

I looked at him sharply. For a guy with a dead female beastie on his porch, he could still think on his feet. Librarians impress me. “I’m not sure.” I let my eyes close, remembering the detail of the plates. “A half circle, maybe? Around some sort of water, maybe a rectangle?”

Brendan tapped his fingers on the wood before him, flicking his eyes nervously at the wight. Okay, so he wasn’t immune to the presence of death. That was good; no one should be free of emotion in that manner. It bodes ill for their dealings with other humans. “You still didn’t say what type of tree. Is it a national secret?”

“Chestnuts. American chestnuts, and big ones, maybe a couple hundred years old, at least.”

He whistled low, recognition on his face. He was a native to these mountains, so he understood what I was saying. “So they would be—
”

“The only ones in the world. Right. There’s a lot at stake,” I finished for him.

“It isn’t just money, though, is it?” he asked.

“I thought so, at first. Now?” I looked meaningfully at the wight, who was now glistening with dew. She had cooled incredibly fast after her second death. “I think there’s more to it than just profit. Whatever is out there waiting has something in mind other than money. Evil doesn’t really care about simple cash, you know?”

“You’d get quite some argument with that idea, but I think you’re right.” He rubbed his fingertips together, thinking. “When do you leave?”

I looked at the first whispers of dawn creeping through the mountain notches like a lover sliding into bed, careful not to disturb anything, lest they be discovered. “Not today. I’m sore, and I need to be rested and fully prepped with spells. I can’t cast properly when I’m exhausted.”

He smiled, a hopeful little grin at odds with our scene. “I was hoping you’d say that. Come to the library. I may be able to help.”

“What do you have in mind?” All I could think about was my bed, and a giant purring cat to serve as my white noise. Gus and three pillows sounded
really
good to my tired soul.

“I’m a librarian. I know things.” He smiled again. “Or I should say, I know where to look.”

He stood, and I let him pull me to my feet. He looked nervously at the wight, and raised his brows in concern. “”I’ll take care of her. Do you have an old sheet?” When he nodded, I told him, “She’ll be safe. I will pray over her.” And I would. He relaxed at that, and I realized that he wasn’t concerned about the body, but the girl who had once been inside it. I added Brendan firmly onto my list of good people, and readied a spell to sink her gently into the earth nearby.