The Water Witch (8 page)

Soheila held her hands above him. “His life spark has left his body, but I feel it flickering not far away. It was torn away by the storm. It might be coaxed back, but it’s not something I can do alone. We need to call his brother Ike.”

“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” I asked as Liz got out her cell phone.

“If he’s taken to the hospital, he’ll be declared dead. They might even …” She held up a finger indicating that her call to
Brock’s brother had gone through and turned abruptly away from me as she spoke into the phone. Diana murmured something about blankets and ran across the street toward her house. I stood around feeling useless while Liz talked on the phone to someone in a language that sounded like it could be Old Norse. I decided the least I could do for Brock was pick up his tools. He’d want them if …

My vision swam as I bent over to pick up his hammer. What if they weren’t able to bring back Brock’s spirit? Would he truly be dead? It seemed impossible. I wasn’t sure how old Brock was, but I knew he’d come to Fairwick in the mid-nineteenth century. He’d been sweet on the romance novelist Dahlia LaMotte when she’d lived in Honeysuckle House in the first half of the twentieth century, but Dahlia’s obsession with the incubus had kept them apart. I’d seen him once or twice out with Dory Browne, the Realtor who’d sold me Honeysuckle House, but didn’t know if they were dating. Maybe I should call Dory, but I also didn’t know what the protocol might be for interspecies dating. Dory was a Welsh brownie and Brock was a Norse demigod. I knew that some of the groups in the Fairwick community were clannish and didn’t mix well with others—succubi weren’t supposed to date witches, Soheila had told me, and I’d learned recently that gnomes had an age-old feud with satyrs. Vampires pretty much kept to themselves. It was a lot for a newcomer to follow and I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I’d learned last fall that I was surrounded by supernatural creatures, but I still knew little about them—or about my own powers. I hadn’t even known that I wasn’t supposed to use a spell in Faerie. The fact was, I kept blundering into situations I knew nothing about and making things worse. That was why Liz and Diana had exchanged that look when I asked if I would be able to keep the door open. They weren’t sure I could.

I circled the house and collected a handful of nails, Brock’s hammer, and the iPod I’d given him for his birthday last month. The iPod was still playing. I tucked one of the buds into my ear expecting … I don’t know … Viking sea shanties? But instead I heard the reedy voice of Bjork rasping out her rendition of “Pagan Poetry.” It sort of made sense, I thought, my eyes filling with tears. I tucked the iPod in my jeans’ pocket, thinking I’d give it to Ike.

When I came around the house I saw that Ike and others had arrived along with a woman with long ash-blond hair. She knelt beside Brock, the skirt of her long green dress spread out on the grass. Her hair was draped around her face, and she held her hand to Brock’s chest. Ike, flanked by two men who looked like they could have been Ike and Brock’s cousins, stood holding an umbrella over her. Liz, Diana, and Soheila gathered on the other side. The scene looked like a Pre-Raphaelite painting depicting an episode out of the Norse eddas—
Death of a Viking
or
A Hero’s Journey to Valhalla
. All it needed was a ship and a funeral pyre.

As I approached the group, the blond woman lifted her head and shook her long hair back from her face, revealing strikingly beautiful features. At the sight of her, I heard bells and felt slightly woozy—invariably my reaction when in the presence of Fiona Eldritch, the Fairy Queen.

“I believe he’s journeying in Niflheim,” Fiona declared.

“The Shadow Land” popped out of my mouth. Fiona looked up and pinned me with two razor-sharp green eyes. She rose to her feet, the folds of her green dress rippling like sea water, and then I was the one looking up. Fiona could make herself seem taller when she wanted to.

“Ah, Cailleach McFay. Are you the one who brought the storm back from Faerie?”

“I asked Callie to herd the undines back, Lady,” Liz interjected
on my behalf. “And it was an undine who raised the storm.”

Fiona’s eyes swiveled toward Liz. As glad as I was to have the force of her gaze off me, I could hardly let Liz take the blame for me.

“I’m afraid I made the storm stronger by using a spell,” I admitted.

“You fool! You didn’t know not to use a spell in Faerie?” Fiona roared, growing even taller as she turned once again on Liz. “Has no one taught this doorkeeper how to use her power?”

My attempt to spare Liz blame for my behavior had backfired. I didn’t seem to be able to do anything right today. When Fiona had finished berating Liz, she turned back to me.

“It’s unfortunate you’ve been trained so poorly,” she said, managing to encompass both Liz and me in her icy green glare. “But still you should have known better than to attempt a spell when you didn’t know its consequences. It’s your fault this has happened to Brock.”

“Your Majesty,” Liz said urgently, “I don’t think we should blame Callie …”

“No,” I interrupted, “Fiona’s right. It
is
my fault.” I turned to Ike and his two companions. “Tell me what I can do to help him.”

Ike shook his head. “I don’t hold you accountable, Cailleach McFay,” he said formally, “nor do I know if you can bring my brother back from Niflheim. The Norns, who are here on other business, may be able to bring him back …” His eyes flicked toward Liz. “For that I believe we need to call a spell circle.”

“A spell circle,” Diana echoed, her face pale. “We haven’t had one for …”

“For too long,” Liz said grimly. “I’ve been too lax. It’s time we marshaled our powers.”

“Can I join the circle?” I asked, desperate to find any way to help Brock.

Fiona snorted. “That would be like lighting a match in a gunpowder factory. You have no control, no—”

“But she does have the essential spark,” Liz broke in, surprising all of us, apparently herself most of all, by interrupting the intimidating Fiona. She swallowed and went on. “Callie might be woefully untrained, but she has power. I’m sure of it. I will take it upon myself to train her. We need her—to help Brock and also to keep the Grove from closing the door.”

Fiona’s green eyes widened at Liz’s last words and her skin seemed to stretch tighter over the fine bones of her face. I had never seen Fiona display any emotion but anger so it took me a moment to recognize her expression.
Fear
.

“May the Goddess Danu help us if
she’s
our best hope of keeping the door open,” she spit out, glaring at me. “But I will leave it to your questionable judgment. I will make preparations for the likely possibility that you fail, in which case I must set my affairs in order and decide in which world to stay forever.”

She turned on her heel, the folds of her dress snapping like a sail in the wind. I heard bells chiming again, but now they sounded as if they tolled for a funeral.

“I’ve always wondered,” I said when Fiona had disappeared around the corner of my house, “why she’s here at all. I mean, if she’s Queen of the Fairies, why isn’t she in Faerie?”

“She left because her husband, King Fionn, was unfaithful,” Soheila replied. “He betrayed her with a human girl.”

“Is that why she hates humans?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” Soheila answered. “Although the first thing she did on arrival here was to take a human lover. I believe she has stayed here to taunt Fionn with her own affairs. But now
she has to choose between never being able to return and returning forever.”

“As will we all,” Ike said.

I stared at him, startled. Ike seemed such a fixture of Fairwick. Would he really consider going? And what about all the other supernatural creatures at the college and in the town? Liz had once told me that about 30 percent of the town, and 40 percent of the faculty, were otherworlders. What would the town and college be like without them?

“We must find a way to keep the door open,” I said, looking from Ike to Soheila to Diana and finally to Liz. “Did you really mean what you said about me having a spark?”

“Yes,” Liz said firmly. “Although your magic is erratic, you possess a great deal of it. In addition to your fey ancestry, you come from a line of powerful witches. We could train you.”

“Can I join this spell circle you’re calling?” I asked.

Unsure, Liz looked toward Ike.

“I think Brock would want Callie to be there,” he said in response. “The Norns are arriving tomorrow. We can hold the circle at our house and they can help.”

“We’ll work together to bring Brock back,” Liz said, “and find a way to keep the door open.”

Ike held out his hand and Liz took it. Liz’s elegant, manicured hand seemed to disappear in Ike’s broad calloused palm. Looking at the two of them I understood something about Fairwick I had never before fully appreciated. It had been founded as a place where fey and human could live together, but it was more than a neutral Switzerland between the warring factions of witch versus fey, human versus otherworlder. The conjunction of fey and human was precisely what made Fairwick strong. Without the fey, Fairwick would be a pale shadow of what it was now. As I watched Ike and
his two companions lift Brock up and carry him to a red pickup truck with the Valhalla Landscaping logo on its side, I swore to myself that I would find a way to keep the door between the worlds open.

Liz, Soheila, and Diana left soon after the Norsemen did to make arrangements for the spell circle. I asked again if I could help but they all insisted what I needed most was rest. I suspected they wanted to explain the volatility of my magical power to the members of the circle without my presence. I watched them leave the shelter of my front porch, wondering who belonged to the spell circle. Was it just witches? Or witches and fey? Well, I’d find out soon enough. I turned and went inside my house—my big, empty house.

I’d been doing a pretty good job this summer of not feeling too lonely. In the last two months I’d joined a yoga class, a book club, and a gardening circle. There was even a craft circle that Diana had convinced me to join though, as I kept explaining to her, I didn’t practice any crafts. I’d also been working to make my house more homey. But right now, with the clatter of rain echoing through it, it felt larger and emptier than ever. I stood in my foyer and listened to the echoes and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed me to buy this huge, rambling old Victorian.

A flicker of colored light on the floor drew my attention to the stained-glass fanlight above the door.
Oh yeah
, he’s
what possessed me
. The face in the fanlight was that of a beautiful young man. The first time I’d glimpsed it I had recognized the face of my fairytale prince, half-remembered from childhood dreams. I’d thought I made him up as a means of coping with my parents’ deaths. But I hadn’t. He was my incubus.

Huh
, I thought,
what if I had never moved here …
?

The thought was interrupted by a plaintive squeak. I looked down and saw a small gray mouse sitting at my feet. I knelt down and held out my hand. He hopped on, his little body trembling.

“Hey, little guy, did the thunder scare you? Or are you worried about Brock?”

Ralph had started life as an iron doorstop forged by Brock with a spark from Muspelheim. He’d come to life during my first attempt to exorcise the incubus. I’d learned over the winter that not only could he understand me, he could also type messages on my laptop. I took him into the library now, explaining as we went the events of the day, ending with what had happened to Brock, thinking he might want to type a message for me on the laptop now. Instead he scurried up onto the bookshelves and disappeared behind them. A moment later a book fell to the floor—
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
by Beverly Cleary. I’d named Ralph for the motorcycle-riding mouse in the book and it had become his favorite since I’d first read it to him a few months ago. Apparently he wanted me to read it to him again. It was, I thought as I settled into the Morris chair by the fireplace and opened the book while Ralph curled up on the hearth, the one thing I could do that wouldn’t cause more trouble.

The rain lasted all that day and into the night, flinging sheets of water on the windows and pounding on the roof, a clamorous reminder of Lorelei’s rage. It was especially loud in my bedroom, where the ceiling had recently been raised to add a skylight. Brock had thought it would be good to let more light into the room.

“People around here sometimes get depressed in the winter when they don’t get enough light,” he’d told me.

Instead of light, though, the skylight now afforded me a view of murk-green sky the color of Lorelei’s eyes. In spite of how tired I was, I lay awake for a long time, twisting back and forth so often that my newly knit spine felt like a wrung-out dish towel, listening to the rain, hearing in its mournful sough and sigh a thousand recriminations for all my mistakes. I’d led the undines into the Borderlands and nearly gotten them killed, I
had
gotten Brock killed, I’d used a spell in Faerie, I’d had sex with Liam …

Twice!

True, women hooked up with their exes all the time, but most ex-boyfriends weren’t incubi. What had I been thinking? I’d taken one look at his sad eyes and forgiven him all the lies he’d told me, brushed my face against the rough stubble on his cheek, and shed my panties …

As he knew I would.

Each detail of his physical manifestation—the stubble on his cheeks, the way his arm muscles strained against the weight of the manacles I’d clamped on him, even the scars they left—all were calculated to make me feel sorry for him. How could I have forgotten that he was an incorporeal being? Those scars on his wrists weren’t real. He’d played on my sympathies just as he’d tweaked certain other attributes to play on my desires.

At the thought of those other attributes I felt a twinge low in my belly and between my legs. I squirmed at the memory of him above me, teasing me, and then … finally entering me.

I moaned at the memory and clamped my thighs together, but the pressure of my flesh only made me recall
his
flesh.