Chapter 9
AFTER FINISHING UP some more of my Yule shopping—I found the perfect brandy flask for Sandy and a remote control mouse for Bubba—I stopped at the post office. The return address on the envelope in the box made me blink twice. My mother was writing to me? I hadn’t heard from her in over a decade, since my wedding to Craig. But I’d sent her pictures of the Bewitching Bedlam, and a quick note about what I was up to, and I guess I should have expected her to respond. There was also a packet of papers from city hall, including several approved licenses and another short form to fill out.
As I slid back into my car, I stared at my mother’s handwriting. The letter was postmarked from Dublin, so she must be on vacation because she usually stayed close to her home near Aughrusbeg Lough. She had moved there about thirty years ago, bored and—I think—lonely. She had friends who lived near there, and the change was a fresh start. Over the years, my mother had grown bored of so many of her hobbies. That was one of the troubles of having an incredibly long life span. The same-old, same-old year in and year out made it easy to grow weary and lose heart. I blew on my fingers—my gloves were fingerless for easy driving—and hesitantly edged open the letter.
My mother and I weren’t on the best of terms and she had constantly been after me to find the right man and settle down. Find yourself a nice quiet witch, she had said over and over, someone who could handle the vagrancies of a wife with “too much go in her get-up-and-go.” After a while, I quit protesting and just let her ramble on. Twenty minutes into any subject and she would start to wind down and I’d be able to shift the conversation. I had to face it. My mother was a golden-hearted ditz with a brain that was never going to win any races.
Dear Maudlin,
I read your letter as of late and I don’t mind telling you, I think you’re better off without Craig. He must have been an addle-brain to think he could keep you in the first place. You always were awfully smart, and he just didn’t have what it took to keep you interested. I always, always said you shouldn’t attempt to bond with a human. They just can’t fathom our lifestyle and Craig was too arrogant. He couldn’t handle his wife being better than he was. But darling, that certainly doesn’t mean I meant you should take up with a vampire.
For the sake of the gods, think about this before you get in too deep. You’ve always been on the rebellious side, and I can’t help but feel this is just another way for you to throw dirt in my face. I thought your wild side was firmly in check after that Mad Maudlin business. Granted, you had reason to be upset, but darling, really, turning into a vampire hunter because of a man? If I’d been upset over your father’s desertion, do you think I’d be in the place I am now—
I tossed the letter on the seat beside me. That was as far as I could make it without seeing red. Not only was my mother a ditz, she was a tactless one and she had very little compassion for others. My father had almost died at the teeth of a vicious dog pack. Wild, they were out hunting for food when they found him. He was in the woods, gathering herbs for tinctures and salves when they attacked.
If a friend of his hadn’t been near and heard the commotion, he would have died. After Jonathan brought him home, Father managed to heal up, even with my mother badgering him about how he had almost left us destitute, with “her being so helpless.” After he was able to walk again, he took a job with the Society Magicka, a secret organization that watched over witches. With worldwide branches and a lot of casework, they kept Father away from home more often than not. Finally, he moved out altogether. I kept some contact with him, more than with my mother actually, but she had never forgiven him.
He moved out around the time I took up with Tom. My mother always blamed my father for being a bad influence on me. She still didn’t know that I was in contact with him after all these years, but one of these days she was going to push me too far and it would come out. For now, though, she was safely on the other side of the ocean and I could set her letters down when they got too much to handle.
Shaking my head, I put the car in gear and headed for the Blue Jinn.
SANDY WAS WAITING for me. She jumped in the passenger seat as soon as I stopped.
“It’s freaking cold out there,” she said, clearing the mail off of the seat. As she fastened her seat belt, she smoothed out the pages of my mother’s letter and began replacing them in the envelope when she caught sight of the return address. “You got a letter from Zara?”
“Um hmm. You can read it if you want.” I didn’t care. Sandy knew most all of my secrets, including how batshit crazy my mother was.
As she skimmed through it she snorted, then paused. “Um, have you read all of it?”
“No.” I suddenly realized I didn’t know where I was going. We had meant to go into the diner for lunch but apparently neither one of us had remembered that fact. “Where do you want to go? Piper’s Chicken?”
“That sounds good,” she said absently. “Maddy, you need to read the rest of this.”
I turned left into the parking lot and edged into a spot near the door of the fast-food chicken joint. “Why? It’s the same-old, same-old.”
“Not quite. Near the end, she says, ‘So I thought I’d come stay with you for a month in the summer. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It’s been decades since I visited and I can meet this vampire of yours—if you’re still together—and see what kind of business you’re trying to run. If I like it, I might think about moving over there.’ That doesn’t sound like the same-old you talk about.”
Crap! My mother wanted to come visit. And maybe move here? The last time she flew over to hang out with me, we barely made it through my wedding before getting into a huge fight. I put her on a plane back to Ireland first thing the next morning. I loved Zara, but she made me want to tear my hair out.
“No. Just no. She’s not coming here. I’ll call her tonight and tell her to forget it. Last time was a disaster. You’d think she would have learned that we just don’t get along in the same room.”
“Your mother needs a crash course in reality. I hate to say it, but if there’s any way you can waylay her, do it. She’s not a good person for you to be around.” Sandy tossed the letter over her shoulder into the back seat. “So, visit Rose’s parents first?”
As much as I was dreading it, I nodded. “Let’s do this thing. Remember, we can’t say much about the case. Delia would have our hide.”
“I know.” Sandy stared at her hands. “If they act out, just remember, they’re in mourning.”
I nodded. They might very well blame me, since Rose died on my land. And with Rose’s sister missing, they’d already be on edge. “Yeah. I’ll be kind, no matter what they say.”
I turned left on Wolfbane Street, then parked in front of a modest house. It looked like every other house of its generation, but the Williamses kept up the grounds, and the house was clean and tidy. Somehow, the sight of it made me feel sadder than before.
“Let’s get this over with.” I glanced at Sandy. “I’m not sure what the hell to say.”
“Just say ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all we can offer.”
We entered through the trellis-arched gate. A white picket fence cordoned off the yard. A tall maple shaded the right side of the house, and a couple of small firs stood guard to the left, but the overall impression was one of genteel poverty.
The Williamses kept their house looking neat—it was freshly painted—and the yard was manicured, but they probably had lived through some lean times. Usually magical families were fairly well off, gathering centuries of accumulated wealth. But nowadays, that wasn’t quite so true. While there were magical ways to summon up wealth, prosperity spells didn’t guarantee wealth beyond measure, and given the high cost of living of the current days, fewer witches found themselves in the filthy-rich category.
I stomped my feet on the top step to shake off the snow as Sandy knocked at the door. I really had no idea what to expect. The Williamses were nice people, but their daughter had been murdered at my house. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it if the situation was reversed.
The door opened. Mrs. Williams stood there, looking older than I remembered. Her hair was graying and her shoulders sloped, as if she were wearing the weight of the world on them.
“Maudlin, Sandy…won’t you come in?” Her voice cracked as she took a step back, opening the door so we could enter.
The house was as tidy inside as it was out, although everything had a threadbare look to it. I had met too many families in this predicament. Everybody would be friendly and helpful, but when they insisted you stay for dinner, you knew it would come at a dear price for them.
“Thank you,” I said uncertainly. “We wanted to come by and pay our respects. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Williams.”
She led us into a parlor barely big enough for the love seat, sofa, and upright piano that it contained. The walls were papered in a faded hydrangea print, and the fireplace mantel looked like it could use refinishing. But there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. Framed pictures lined the mantel, several of them I recognized as of Rose. Two were current, but in one, she had to have been four or five. She was standing knee-deep at the shore, laughing as she held up a starfish. There were pictures of another girl on the mantel too. She looked a lot like Rose, only she was a little older. In one photo, the girls were hugging.
“Rose always loved the water,” Mrs. Williams said. “My girl, she was in tune with the Ocean Mother. If she’d been born one of the Fae, she would have been a siren, or an undine perhaps. She spent every moment she could near the water and loved living on an island.”
“She was smart and talented, that’s for sure.” I glanced over at Sandy.
“We’ll be sending out service notifications soon,” her mother said. “When it’s time for the actual Cord Cutting, we’ll be in touch with your coven. We would like to ask if you would plan it for us, since she was a member.”
“Of course.” The service would be the first of three steps in our death rituals. It was a farewell to Rose, a look at her life—a tearful good-bye. The second step—the Cord Cutting—would be where we magically let her go and wished her well on her transition. That usually happened a year after the service. And shortly after the Cord Cutting would be the wake—the party to celebrate Rose’s life and to close the cycle.
“I want to thank you for being her friend. Can we ask what she was doing at your house? The sheriff didn’t really go into that. But whatever we can find out about our daughter’s last hours, we’d like to know.” Rose’s mother fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and lowered herself to the love seat. “I’m sorry. I’m so tired, it seems.”
As Sandy and I sat on the sofa, I realized there was something I needed to do. “Rose asked me for a Finding spell. To help locate her sister. I gather she’s still missing?”
The expression on Mrs. Williams’s face was painful. “Yes. Lavender vanished a couple weeks back. We know she’s in danger.”
“If you like, I’ll come by in a few days, after you’re over the worst of the shock. I can cast the spell I gave to Rose for you.” I crossed the room and sat beside her on the love seat, taking her hand in mine. “Rose wanted so badly to help find her sister. I couldn’t stop what happened to Rose, but maybe I can help you find Lavender, Mrs. Williams.”
“Please call me Primrose.” Rose’s mother burst into tears as she squeezed my hand. “Thank you. Thank you. We’re kitchen witches. We just don’t have the knack for spells like that. My husband’s been so angry. He thinks Lavender walked away from the family, but I know in my heart that she would never vanish on her own. Not without telling us. You’ll have to work with me—he wouldn’t like it, especially now with Rose…now that she’s gone. But I know my daughters. Lavender loved her family.”
I nodded, impulsively gathering her in my arms. She rested her head on my shoulder, weeping, and the sound of her crying was the sound of her heart breaking.
Sandy motioned for me to stay where I was and headed out into the hall.
A few minutes later, she was back, carrying a cup of steaming tea as Primrose’s tears slowed. Primrose sat back and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief, then blew her nose. Sandy handed her the tea, cadging a grateful smile out of her.
“I can’t thank you enough for your visit. My Oak, he’s hurting so bad that he won’t talk about it. So I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours keeping my mouth shut, but it’s so hard. I felt like I was about to explode.” She dabbed her eyes again, then took a sip of the tea. “Thank you. I feel so lost. I’m not sure what to do next.”
Sandy scooched in on the other side. She picked up a shawl that was draped over the back of the love seat and draped it around Primrose’s shoulders. “I’m going to send my assistant over. His name is Alex and he can help you sort out what to do next. He’ll help you make arrangements for the service and so forth. Will that be all right?”
Primrose nodded, her eyes welling up again. “I can’t thank you enough. Oak will come around. I think he feels he failed them both. If we can only find Lavender and make sure she’s all right, that will help.”
“I’ll call you later this week and we’ll talk over a time for the spell.” I took down her number, storing it in my phone. Then Sandy and I left, after a round of hugs. Primrose waved at us from the door, a wistful look on her face.
As we slid back into the car, I gave one last look at the house. “I know what losing Tom was like for me. I can’t imagine losing a child. Two, actually. I hope to hell we find Lavender alive and well, or the pain is going to be too much for that woman.”
“I suspect Primrose is more resilient than you think. She just needs to be able to express her grief. It’s keeping it bottled inside that does the damage. I hope for her sake, her husband comes around to facing his loss. Grief can turn into a mean bitterness when ignored.” Sandy glanced at me. “We’ve done all we can here today, and I suspect we helped a lot more than you might think. Now, let’s talk about Rachel. I told you I had an idea.”
“Yeah, of finding her and staking her. If what Delia told me is true, then that would make Essie mighty happy.”
“It would make you happy too, don’t deny it.”
I grinned. Then, sobering, I said, “How can I, though? What do you think? You’ve lived on Bedlam a lot longer than I have. Why do you think Linda wouldn’t talk to Delia? Do you really think Essie might be looking at staging a coup and overthrowing the coven’s rule? And, by the way, where are we going next?”
“Why don’t we drive through the Bouncing Goats Espresso Shack and get a mocha while we talk?” She grinned at me. “Don’t tell me you’re going to pass up free caffeine?”
I snickered. “Of course not. Bouncing Goats it is.”
As we pulled into line, I told Sandy about the text. “What’s Durholm Hall? I don’t think I remember it from when I lived here last.”
Sandy stared at the screen. “Crap. That’s where I suspect Rachel might be hanging out. Durholm Hall was a private estate at first. The Durholm family owned it—well, the last of the Durholm family. Sheila Durholm. She was a dryad. The house is like a massive ode to nature with a tree growing right through the center. The entire mansion was built around it. But Sheila developed root cancer and she willed the house to the Arborview Society.”
The Arborview Society was a fraternal order of woodland-oriented Otherkin. Dryads, centaurs, nymphs, earth witches, anybody whose focus was on the preservation of nature and the practice of earth and water magic was welcome. They were a generally peaceful but powerful group who kept to themselves. Yet their lobbying powers in Congress were a silent, quiet force behind the scenes. They had affected a number of human measures regarding the forest industry, but managed to work so far under the covers that practically nobody outside of Bedlam—at least nobody in the human world—had heard of them.
“Why would she be there? A vampire? You think they’d hide her?”
“No, I don’t. But the mansion has a number of tunnels beneath it. The perfect place for a vampire who’s rogue to hang out. Nobody lives there. It’s a day-use facility for their organization. Generally, they roll up the sidewalk at sunset and seldom start before sunrise from what I understand. Sheila died three years ago and I doubt if the Society has explored even half of what’s hidden below that old mansion.”
“What made you think of it? What made you think that Rachel might be hiding there?” I edged up toward the speaker. “What do you want?”
“Triple-shot large mocha with a dusting of cinnamon.”
I ordered that, and a quad-shot white chocolate peppermint mocha for me. As we rounded the corner toward the service window, I started to pull out my card, but Sandy shoved a twenty my way.
“Let me pay today. Tell her to keep the change. It’s the holiday season. She can’t make all that much money.”
“Okay, but I buy the next one.” I eased into place at the window, handing the barista the twenty. As I accepted the drinks and handed them over to Sandy, she nestled them into the cup holders. Then I pulled into an open space in the parking lot next to the mini-mall adjacent to the coffee shop.
Sandy yelped as she burned her tongue on the hot drink, leaving a mustache of white foam on her lip. “Yowch. You’d think I’d learn to be patient one of these days.”
“Yeah, well, you’d think we’d both learn that finding an unopened bottle of tequila doesn’t mean we have to make a pitcher of margaritas and then drink them down in one sitting. But we know that’s not going to happen. We’re both unbalanced as hell and we probably always will be.” I scrunched up my nose at her. “So now, tell me why you thought of Durholm Hall.”
“Well, I was trying to think of all the best places on the island for a vampire to hide out. I realized there are far more than I could possibly come up with, so I began correlating what we knew. Rachel, as much as she’s a vampire, doesn’t seem the type to want to hide out with the worms and bugs in a cave. She probably wants to be near your house, given the object of her obsession is there. And did you forget? Aegis and the band are playing at a benefit for the Arborview Society for New Year’s—they’ll be right there in the hall.”
I blinked. How had that slipped my mind? “I’ve been so focused on the bed and breakfast that I haven’t paid much attention to his band schedule. If she’s there, it means easy access.”
“There’s more. I decided to do a little digging, since I had some free time this morning. I searched for Rachel on Wyrdwix.”
Wyrdwix was a Pretcom-oriented search engine. While it rivaled the other big ones, it also gave higher priority to the Pretcom and nature and focused on information not readily available to humans. Most of the humans hadn’t even caught on that it existed, though a few diehard ghost-busting types had, and word was slowly leaking out.
“What did you find?”
“Rachel tried to buy Durholm Hall seven years ago. There was a scuffle between her and Sheila Durholm that resulted in Rachel being ousted from Bedlam. Apparently, Sheila threatened to stake her if she didn’t leave well enough alone, and Lena ordered Rachel to leave the island. Rachel didn’t belong to Lena’s court, of course, but she acquiesced.”
“Do you think Essie knows about that?”
“I don’t know, but Rachel isn’t supposed to even be here, given nobody lifted Lena’s sanctions against her. I think Linda has to know this. She and Lena were actually friends.”
“So, if Rachel wanted to buy Durholm Hall, there had to be a reason. I mean, there are a lot of estates on the island and some of them have been sitting empty for a few decades. Why not buy one of the other ones if she couldn’t buy Durholm?”
Sandy consulted her notes. “I think I can answer that. Durholm Hall is built over a vortex—a land vortex. That’s why the Arborview Society was so grateful that Sheila willed it to them. The earth energy there is strong. But it also acts as a gateway, from the bits and pieces of information that I found. There are rumors of something buried in the tunnels. A powerful artifact or gem, perhaps. I don’t know. But there’s something down there that amplifies power. Rachel is all about power.”
That made sense to me. “Maybe it’s something that would help her fight Essie for control. If Rachel is looking to oust the vampire queen and take her place, she’s going to need help. Essie is too strong, otherwise. And Essie has a small army behind her. Not just the members of her nest here, but the members of her court.”
“Do you think that they might be working together?” Sandy’s question jolted me out of my thoughts.
“Why do you say that?”
“Consider this: Essie tells us that Rachel is out for control. The coven’s concerned enough that we turn our attention in Rachel’s direction. Rachel, of course, stirs up trouble and we take her out. That leaves Essie free to move, to start her revolt while everybody’s focused on Rachel.”
I thought about it for a moment, but it didn’t track. “Unless Essie’s the best damned actress there is, that doesn’t track to me. But the idea that Rachel could be searching for something buried below Durholm Hall makes sense. I wish I’d asked Aegis more about her last night.”
“Well, do you want to go out to the hall?” Sandy’s tone was on the verge of a dare.
I thought about it for a moment. “Don’t you think that members of the Arborview Society are there right now? It’s only 1:00 p.m.”
“No, they’re closed for the holidays except for a Solstice bash and a New Year’s Eve party. We can sneak around the grounds and have a look, if nothing else.”
Laughing, I capitulated. “Remember, we have an Esbat meeting tonight that we need to get ready for.” I glanced at the clock. “We’ll go, but we have to leave there by four o’clock at the latest. If Rachel is hiding out, I don’t want to be around when she wakes up. Sunset falls at 4:18 today.”
“You know to the exact moment, huh?” Sandy let out a snort.
“Hey, I like to keep tabs on my boyfriend’s schedule.”
“Let’s get a move on, then. You dressed warm enough for this?”
I nodded. “Yeah, unfortunately I am. You know, the last time I went along with one of your bright ideas, I bought the house.”
Sandy laughed as she leaned back in her seat. “See? I know what I’m doing. Besides, you know our pact.”
“By heart. I still think we’re a couple of fools.” But I joined in as she started to sing. We had thought up the chant centuries before when we had sealed our friendship in a blood-bound oath, binding ourselves as sisters of the heart.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
To the adventure, we always aspire.
Though the flames may be harsh and the smoke may be thick,
Whatever may come, together we stick.
Still singing, I put the car into gear and we headed toward Durholm Hall. Probably to our deaths, I thought, but hey, at least we’d be together.