Trifles and Folly 3, page 1
TRIFLES AND FOLLY 3
A DEADLY CURIOSITIES COLLECTION
GAIL Z. MARTIN
CONTENTS
Trifles & Folly 3
Introduction
Catspaw
Catspaw
The Adventure of the Melted Saint
The Adventure of the Melted Saint
Keepsakes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Innocence Lost
Innocence Lost
The Piper’s Song
The Piper’s Song
Crewel Fate
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Heap of Trouble
Heap of Trouble
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Gail Z. Martin
TRIFLES & FOLLY 3
A DEADLY CURIOSITIES COLLECTION
by Gail Z. Martin
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64795-025-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-64795-026-2
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Trifles and Folly 3 © 2022 Gail Z. Martin
Catspaw | In a Cat’s Eye © 2016 Gail Z. Martin
The Adventure of the Melted Saint | Baker Street Irregulars © 2017 Gail Z. Martin
Keepsakes | Haven Harbor Halloween © 2017 Gail Z. Martin
Innocence Lost | Release the Virgins © 2018 Gail Z. Martin
The Piper’s Song | Tales from the Old Black Ambulance © 2019 Gail Z. Martin
Crewel Fate | Christmas at Caynham Castle © 2019 Gail Z. Martin
Heap of Trouble | Witches, Warriors, & Wise Women © 2020 Gail Z. Martin
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The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), locales, and incidents are either coincidental or used fictitiously. Any trademarks used belong to their owners. No infringement is intended.
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Cover art by Lou Harper
SOL Publishing is an imprint of DreamSpinner Communications, LLC
Thank you to all my wonderful readers, and everyone who contributes to the book creation process, and to my husband Larry and our family. These books would not exist without you.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to my world. This is the third collection of short stories and novellas from the Deadly Curiosities’ universe, and as odd as it sounds, it began with real life. Authors take inspiration from many places, and for me, life events took me down a dark and mysterious road. It all began with Buttons. (Included in Trifles & Folly, Volume 1) I was asked to participate in the Solaris anthology Magic: The Esoteric and Arcane and had to come up with a new story. I’d written several involving Sorren set in earlier times, but I wanted a fresh take and a modern setting, and Cassidy was born.
At the time, I was dealing with the recent death of my father, and my husband and I were settling his estate, dealing with auctions and appraisers, and sorting through a life-long collection of stuff. Not ordinary stuff, but the kinds of things that provided fodder for ghost stories. Though obviously, I took some creative liberties, some everyday items do have unusual providence, and oh, the things they’ve seen!
Over the course of the short stories and novels, the characters grow and change, as you’d expect if they were real people. When we first meet Cassidy in Buttons and in Deadly Curiosities, she is very new in using her gift of psychometry, and the visions often throw her for a loop. As time goes on, she gains more skill—both in controlling her magic and in using it defensively. Teag also grows in his magical abilities, and Sorren proves that continued growth and change are part of a successful long existence. By the time the stories in this collection happen, Cassidy and Teag have gained much greater mastery over their abilities.
This collection includes seven stories set in the Deadly Curiosities universe.
NOTE: One story—Crewel Fate—is an MM paranormal romance with adult content. (The other stories do not have adult content.) It is a direct follow-up to events that take place in Inheritance at Teag’s birthday party.
I hope you enjoy these stories, and if so, there are more available and more to come, including the full-length novels: Deadly Curiosities, Vendetta, Tangled Web, Inheritance, and Legacy.
CATSPAW
First appeared in the anthology:
In a Cat’s Eye
CATSPAW
“That’s the last of it,” I called back toward the open back door of the shop. I heaved the cut-down cardboard boxes into the dumpster. Teag Logan waited in the doorway, scanning the dark, empty alley. A cat yowled in the distance.
“Come back inside, Cassidy,” he urged. “I don’t know why, but I don’t like the vibes I’m getting out here tonight.”
Teag’s intuition is fueled by strong magic, so I take his “vibes” seriously. I’m pretty good with both intuition and magic myself, and I felt a shiver go down my back. “There’s something out here,” I murmured, looking down the alley toward the streetlight at the end and seeing a dark shape in the roadway I had not noticed before.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Teag said. “Come back where it’s safe.”
Wardings protected the old antique shop against dark magic. Salt and iron lay beneath the sill of every door and window to repel evil, and as an added protection, sometimes we had a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire staying in the secret room in the shop basement. Teag and I both wore protective amulets, and when it came to defending ourselves, we were no slouches. So when I lingered a moment longer, I took a calculated risk.
“We need to see what that is,” I said, jerking my head toward the lump that lay near the far end of the alley. I let my athame slide down beneath my sleeve into my hand and jangled the old dog collar on my left wrist, smiling as the ghost of a large dog appeared at my side. Teag muttered something under his breath and joined me a moment later, carrying a wooden martial arts staff and a wicked knife.
Together, we advanced on the shape, which lay still in the dim glow of the distant street light. A mangy cat paced near the body, staying just out of reach as we approached, even though Bo’s ghost growled and stepped toward it. If the cat could see Bo, the ghost dog didn’t intimidate him. I paid attention to what my senses were telling me, shivering at the resonance something evil left in its wake. Yet the closer we got to the thing in the road, the more certain I became that the threat itself had come and gone.
“So much blood.” I hadn’t realized that I spoke aloud until Teag glanced at me, eyes wide with the same horror that thrummed through my gut. A woman’s body lay at our feet, clothing soaked red, wreathed in a pool of crimson. Then Bo growled, and I followed his gaze to the necklace around the dead woman’s throat. For all the mess, the body appeared intact, no claw or bite marks, nothing to explain why she bled out on the cobblestones.
“I don’t think this was a mugging,” Teag murmured, bending down beside the corpse, careful to stay out of the blood. He brushed the back of his fingers against the cuff of the woman’s jacket, one of the few places not saturated with gore. At the same time, I crouched down on the other side of the body, letting my hand hover above the necklace.
Teag’s hand jerked back. “Seriously bad juju. She never knew what hit her,” he muttered, having picked up that much from the brief contact. He’s got Weaver magic, the ability to weave spells into cloth—or recognize magic woven into fabric. I recoiled an instant later, without ever having to touch the piece of jewelry.
“It’s the necklace,” I said, breathless from the dark power I sensed. “I’m certain it’s what killed her—and it’s too dangerous to let it out of our sight.”
“Then we’d better get it off her before the cops come,” Teag replied matter-of-factly. “And there’s no way in hell you’re touching it, so don’t even try.”
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, a 350-year-old antique and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. Nothing about us is what it appears. For one thing, I’m a psychometric—able to read the history and magic of objects by touching them. Teag is my assistant store manager, best friend, and sometimes bodyguard, and he’s got his own powerful magic.
My business partner, Sorren—the vampire who keeps a safe room in the store’s basement—founded Trifles and Folly back when Charleston was new, always working with a member of my family throughout the years. Sure, we buy and sell antiques. But our real job is fighting off supernatural threats and getting haunted and cursed objects off the market. When we succeed, no one notices. When we fail, the aftermath gets chalked up as a natural disaster.
Which is why we were crouched over a dead body in a back alley, preparing not just to “tamper” with evidence, but to remove a key piece from the scene of a crime—because whoever worked the magic that killed this woman was out of the league of the Charleston PD.
Teag ran back to the shop and returned a moment later with a pair of pliers, a lead box, and a long strip of cloth. I recognized the fabric as a piece Teag created, with protective magic woven into the warp and woof. I kept a lookout while he wrapped the fabric around his hand so that no skin touched the pliers, then snipped through the chain that held the necklace in place and gingerly placed the jewelry inside the lead box. The mangy cat watched every move from a distance.
“We need to get out of here,” I muttered as he snapped a picture of the necklace with his phone, then flipped the lid shut. Bo’s ghost wagged once, satisfied that I was in no immediate danger, and winked out. The odd alley cat rose from where it sat and padded off into the shadows. Teag and I jogged back to the store, closed and locked the back door, and exchanged a look.
“The sooner we’re gone from here tonight, the better,” Teag warned, placing the lead box on a shelf in my office for safekeeping and locking the door, just in case. “The bar up the street has pay phones in the back; I’ll call in a scuffle in the alley and let the cops take it from there. Nice and untraceable.”
I nodded, still feeling shaky from the sight of all that blood. “I’ll call Sorren and let him know, and then I’ll see if Rowan or Lucinda have heard anything or picked up any bad mojo.” Rowan is a witch who’s worked on a few situations with us, while Lucinda is a good friend who also happens to be a powerful Voudon mambo. If someone was working powerful dark magic in Charleston, odds were good that one or both of them sensed it.
“Okay,” Teag agreed. “I’ll walk you to your car. And when I get home, I’ll see if I can find out anything about that necklace—and monitor the police chatter and hack their system to see what they learn about the vic. I’ll call you later, let you know what they said.”
“Deal.”
As it turned out, Lucinda was waiting for me on the piazza of my Charleston single house, what most people call a porch. I didn’t have to ask how she got past the wardings since she’s the one who put them in place. Lucinda’s suit suggested she had come straight from her work at the university, and its sand and ochre colors offset the darker tone of her skin. “Child, there’s trouble brewing,” she greeted me.
I locked the door leading off the side of the piazza to the street and let us into the house. Baxter, my Maltese, yipped and bounced in greeting until I scooped him up in my arms as we entered. “Tell me what you know,” I said to Lucinda as I led us into the kitchen.
I poured glasses of sweet tea for both of us, then fed Baxter his dinner, and motioned for Lucinda to have a seat at the table. She savored the ice-cold tea for a moment and let out a long sigh.
“Someone is messing around with very bad magic,” Lucinda said, giving me a sharp glance that told me she suspected I already had an inkling about that. I nodded, confirming her hunch. “Whoever’s doing the magic is sloppy—which makes things even worse.”
“You think he—or she—doesn’t know what they’re messing with?”
Lucinda shrugged. “Or maybe doesn’t have the training to handle what they’re attempting. Don’t know. There’s no mistaking that it’s dark magic, so I don’t think it’s something someone blundered into by accident.”
“Can you locate who’s doing it?” I toyed with my glass of tea, reaching down to lift Baxter onto my lap, where he settled down, content to be in his rightful place.
Lucinda concentrated, then shook her head. “No. At least, nothing I’ve tried so far has worked. I’ve sensed the…ripples…of power, but it’s too quick to get a lock on it. And there’s something very odd about the way it feels. Not quite…human.”
“What kind of ‘not human?’” I asked.
Lucinda was quiet for a moment, sorting through her thoughts. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say right now. I wanted to warn you—but I get the feeling you already knew.”
I told Lucinda about the woman in the alley. “I’ll come by tomorrow and have a look at that necklace,” she replied. “Don’t you touch it. I’ll look into it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But we’ve got to hurry. Whoever’s behind it—they’ve already killed once.” I paused. “Maybe that’s all there’ll be. Maybe it was something personal. Still bad, still murder—but it might not be a crime spree.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. The ripples—I’ve felt them before, not long ago. I think there’s been at least one more. We just don’t know who it was.” Lucinda finished her tea and stood.
“If anyone can figure that part out, it’s Teag,” I replied. “Let me see what I can find out from my sources, and I’ll see you tomorrow at the shop.”
I walked Lucinda to the door. “Cassidy—you and Teag need to watch your backs,” she warned. “What’s Sorren have to say about all this?”
I sighed. “He and Archibald Donnelly went to Philadelphia yesterday. I’ve left a voicemail, but he can’t always reply when he’s handling a problem.” Donnelly was another ally, a powerful necromancer. He and Sorren went north to help my Philadelphia counterparts deal with something nasty and undead. “No idea when they’re planning to get back.”
“Then you and Teag take extra care,” Lucinda said in a no-nonsense voice, the one I’m sure she used in her day job as a professor to chastise errant college students. “Someone finds out you two are looking into this; you might draw the wrong kind of attention.”
“Will do,” I promised as I saw her out. I locked the door and leaned against it. Baxter trotted out of the kitchen and sat down in front of me, blinking his black button eyes. “Not sure what to do, Bax,” I said, running a hand back through my hair. “We’ve got a dead body, a cursed necklace, and a rogue witch—who might not be human. Even for us, that’s a lousy way to start the week.”
The next morning, I found a witch waiting for me as I opened the door to the shop.
“We need to talk,” Rowan said. Anyone watching might have thought she was a tourist jumping the gun on a day of shopping, but I heard the serious note in her voice. I unlocked the door and gestured for her to enter first. The blast from the air conditioner made me tilt my face back in bliss since outside was already broiling and heavy with humidity.
“Teag called you?” I locked the door behind us and headed toward the office, knowing what Rowan came to see.
“Was he supposed to?” She looked honestly surprised. I slid her a sidelong look. Tall and slender, blonde hair up in a twist and wearing a loose green summer dress, Rowan didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a “witch”—unless you knew enough to recognize the protective runes on her bracelets and the sigils carefully stitched along the hem of her dress. “I felt a pulse of dark magic last night and came to warn you—except that the closer I got to the store, the stronger it felt.”
“I might know why.” I led the way into the office and pointed at the lead box on the shelf.
Rowan’s eyes narrowed, and I could have sworn she let out a soft hiss. “Oh, that is not good.” She glanced at me. “What’s in there?”
“A necklace we took off the body of a lady who bled to death in the alley with no visible wounds.” I fixed her with a look. “And no, I’m not touching that box.”
Rowan smirked. She knew about my magic. She said a warding against evil under her breath and pulled a cloth down from a peg on the wall, a piece of fabric the size of a bath towel that Teag wove with protective magic running through its fibers. Then she took a deep breath, centered her power, and wrapped the cloth around the lead box, lifting it down carefully. I moved ahead of her into the break room and drew a thick circle of salt on the table. Rowan placed the box in the middle of the circle and withdrew the fabric.
