Spirits, Spells, and Snark, page 1
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This book is for Laura, the love of my life
And in memory of Mike Levy, a scholar and a gentleman
1
When Trouble Knocks
“ARE YOU SURE this thing is magical?” Dave slowly turned the Crown of the North under the bright basement lights. The seven diamonds adorning the simple silver circlet barely flickered. “It doesn’t look it.”
“I’m sure.” I touched a finger to the place above my left eye where I carried a mirrored imprint of the Crown’s peak—a metallic silver triangle perhaps an inch across with a circle in the middle, like the eye in the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill.
“Have I mentioned how much I dislike that mark, Kalvan?” The rangy fire hare was stretched out on the thick green carpet my erstwhile stepfather had used to mimic the lawns in his model of the Minnesota state capitol. Sparx’s fur burned a merry sort of red, though the flames never ignited anything he didn’t want them to.
“Only about a million times, familiar mine, but most people can’t even see it.” The scar was invisible to most everyone who didn’t have magic—Dave being a notable exception.
“That’s a good part of why it makes me nervous,” grumbled Sparx. “I’ve never seen a mark like it before, and I’m old enough to find strange magic alarming.”
I leaned over and poked his belly, sending the flames dancing through the red fur. “You sound more like a mother hen than a magic bunny.”
Sparx gave me his best disappointed-teacher stare—it was a shame he didn’t have glasses to peer over. “That’s fire hare, as you well know, noxious child.”
I was thirteen, but I let the child thing pass. Sparx is an elemental spirit and old enough that my mom probably counts as a child for him. Or my great-grandfather, for that matter. Instead of arguing with Sparx, I ran a finger around the edges of the silver scar again. I’d gotten it when my stepfather, Oscar, threw the Crown at me during our duel at the Winter Carnival a month and a half ago, and I was kind of disappointed so few people could see it. I thought it made me look more adult, not to mention mysterious and even a little heroic, the way a pirate’s patch or a mystical tattoo might.
“Do you think it’ll do anything special today?” Dave turned the Crown so it framed his dark face—like some antique portrait. “Because it’s the equinox and all? Sundown’s only moments away.”
“I hope not.” I shrugged. “What do you think, fuzzball?”
Sparx snorted grumpily. “Given the Crown remains fallow until Summer’s reign begins in a month, it seems unlikely, O Accursed Master.”
And that told me I’d been riding him a little too hard. Technically, Sparx is my familiar, but he only calls me Accursed Master when he’s teasing or really irritated, and this didn’t sound like teasing. “Sorry, Sparx, I’m kind of flipped out about the whole thing. I know Oscar’s not the Winter King anymore and we warded the house nine ways from Sunday, but I keep expecting my earth power stepfather to come back up through the floor like something out of a horror film.”
Sparx shook his head. “The wards will hold and they run very deep, and I doubt he’d come at you openly even when you are beyond their protection. You beat him at a symbolic level as well as a sorcerous one. That puts a great weight of magic on your side in any future conflict.”
I was letting out a little sigh of relief when—
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
“Is that someone knocking on your front door?” Dave’s voice came out tight and strained. I couldn’t blame him—there was six feet of dirt between the roof of the ancient cellar and the much newer house above.
“There’s no way we could hear it throu—”
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
I felt a fresh touch of winter run icy-footed down my spine. “Sparx!”
The hare vanished in a puff of flame, leaving an arcing trail of smoke that ran from the table where he’d been sitting to the limestone barrel vault above. Several seconds flickered past.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Sparx returned with a flash, his expression simultaneously serious and bemused. “Sunset has brought you an interesting visitor. You’d better answer that door before your mother thinks to.”
I doubted there was much risk of that. Not with my mother … the way she was now. Her mental health issues had gotten considerably worse since the Crown went fallow, but I pushed that thought aside. Something about Sparx’s tone made me dash for the spiral stairs leading up to the house proper. Dave dropped the Crown back into the warded circle on the table and ran after me.
I half expected to find a splintered ruin when I got to the front door, but the wood looked fine. The knock came again, only …
rap rap rap
The taps sounded so gently this time I could barely hear them.
What the … I yanked the door open and found myself facing a tall, slender, professionally dressed woman with sooty-black hair in a pixie cut and the amber eyes I’d only ever seen on my mother and in the mirror.
“Hello?”
“You must be Kalvan.” Her voice was rich and full, yet somehow colder than it had any right to be. “I’ve so been looking forward to finally getting the chance to meet you. I can see a lot of Genevieve in your face.”
Okay, that’s a little weird—Genevieve is my mother’s name. “Got it in one. But I’m afraid I don’t recognize you…”
She extended her hand and I shook it bemusedly. Her fingers were icy—literally, like a steel handrail in the winter cold.
She smiled, and the expression set a weird combination of concern and anticipation dancing along my nerves. “Don’t you, then? I’m your aunt Noelle.”
Memories of old conversations and older pictures shocked through me and I suddenly had trouble breathing. Now she’d said it, there was no doubt this was my mother’s older sister. Noelle looked exactly as she had in the picture on my mother’s dresser. A picture that had been taken three years before I was born and a few weeks before Noelle died.
“Don’t look so surprised, nephew. I can see from your heart and your familiar you’ve learned how magic runs in our family.” She nodded at Sparx, who had taken up a perch on the railing of the stairs to the upper level. “I’ve known Genevieve needed me for some time, but the bonds of the grave are horribly strong, and I hadn’t the power to burn them away. Not till tonight’s turn of the fallow months severed the last vestiges of Winter’s hold on both power and my sister. Now, how are we going to break it to her?”
My dead aunt stepped past me, and I started to turn to follow her. “I, uh … huh, ooooooof.” But then—as my back touched the wall—I found myself gently sliding to the floor when my knees turned to butter.
“Are you all right?” Noelle stopped midstride.
“I … maybe?” I felt awfully light-headed.
Dave pushed past her and squatted in front of me. “You don’t look so hot.”
Sparx nodded. “Try putting your head between your knees.”
Something about the hare’s voice made me suspicious. “You knew!”
Sparx blinked innocently and his eyes seemed to grow to three times their normal size—like a cartoon rabbit’s. “Knew what, O Accursed Master?”
“That it was my aunt at the door!”
Sparx shrugged. “There’s a strong family resemblance in the hair and eyes, even if your coloring is more like your father’s.” I was much darker than either my mother or my aunt. “What’s your point?”
“I … but she’s, uh…” I trailed off as I caught an amused twinkle in my aunt’s eyes.
“Dead?” she asked gently.
“Yeah, that.”
Now she laughed. “He’s a fire hare; he couldn’t possibly have missed it.”
Dave abruptly sat down beside me. “Wait, you mean that thing she said about the bonds of the grave…”
Noelle nodded. “A major difficulty, but not impossible given the proper circumstances and sufficient motivation.” She canted her head to one side. “Right; I’m guessing neither of you is a tea drinker, so it had best be hot chocolate.” Without another word, she turned and headed deeper into the house with Sparx trailing along behind.
Dave reached over and pinched me viciously.
“Ouch! What’s that for?”
“I wanted to make sure you weren’t dreaming.”
I blinked. “Aren’t you supposed to ask someone else to pinch you?”
He shook his head. “When I dream about zombies they look like zombies, not like some lady who could be a partner at the law firm where my mom works. If it’s a dream, it’s all you, buddy. Mine are nothing like this crazy.”
I glanced at the red spot on my forearm. “
“Then we’d better go after her.”
We found Noelle in the kitchen with the teakettle held between her hands like a basketball. Even as we entered, steam began to pour from the spout. “Now, where are the mugs?”
“Left of the fink, fecond felf up.” Sparx dropped onto the table and let a pair of hot-chocolate envelopes fall out of his mouth.
Within a few moments, Noelle had offered us each a neatly stirred mug, though she didn’t take any herself. “My sister is above.” It wasn’t a question, and she turned toward the back stairs as she spoke—the house was a duplex my stepfather had converted to single-family living. “Come on, you can drink on the way.”
I looked at Sparx, hoping for some clue. I mean, the script for pretty much every vampire or zombie movie ever said I should be trying to put her back in the grave. Like, yesterday. But movies about the undead didn’t normally start anything like the way the last ten minutes had unfolded. Add in that Sparx didn’t seem alarmed … In fact, he just smiled and jerked his chin toward the stairs my aunt had already started climbing.
So, taking a huge slug of hot chocolate, I followed her. “Aunt Noelle?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Mom’s not really herself.” Understatement of the year! She’s never been all that tightly moored to reality’s shore, and now that I’d driven my stepfather away, she seemed to be drifting slowly but steadily farther and farther out to sea. “In fact, she’s pretty fragile.”
“I know. It’s not the first time. I’ll see what I can do.”
Riiiiiight. The dead lady was going to bring my mom back to reality. This was so not going to end well.
My mother was sitting cross-legged on the floor of what had been the upstairs dining room, with all the lights out. Her back was to us and she didn’t turn. Her long black hair hung in thick tangles, and the red velvet dress she wore had broad tears along the hem. She’d arranged the full skirt around her in a loose circle and the rips showed dark in the moonlight.
I turned on the kitchen lights and a bright rectangle reached across the floor, stopping just short of the edge of her skirt. “Mom?”
“What is it, Kalvan?” She still didn’t turn around. “I’m trying to find the place where flint meets steel.”
“Uh…”
“It’s important because steel and flint are earth, but together they beget spark, and spark becomes fire.”
As with so many things my mother said these days, I didn’t know how to answer. “We’ve got a visitor.”
Noelle walked around in front of my mother. “Genevieve?” Her voice came out as gentle as if she were trying to soothe a fussy baby.
“There you are.” My mother sounded relieved. “How was the drive-in? I’ll never understand what you see in those awful spy movies.”
Noelle blinked once, then smiled. “It was all right. Not my favorite by a long shot, but not bad. The popcorn was terrible.”
My mother laughed. “It always is.”
Dave poked me in the ribs and mouthed, What the heck?
I shook my head. One of my mother’s more bizarre habits is restarting a conversation in the middle, days or even weeks after you thought it was over. I couldn’t tell whether this was that or something else related to her current condition.
My mother leaned back and put her hands on the floor behind her. “Have you changed your mind about Nix? You know how much I hate to fight with you about anything important.”
I twitched. Nix was my long-absent father’s name, and it almost never passed my mother’s lips. Or mine, for that matter. I knew so little about my father, but asking Mom to tell me more was pretty much the same thing as asking for a fight or a flip-out, so I’d learned to avoid the subject.
But Noelle made a noncommittal gesture with her hands, and went on as if it was nothing important. “I’m still not sure I think Nix is the best idea you’ve ever had, but I’m no longer convinced he’s the worst.”
“I said he’d grow on you.”
I held my breath as I waited to hear more, but Noelle caught my eye, lifted her chin, and flicked her gaze beyond me, suggesting without saying a word that I find something else to do. I didn’t want to go, but her expression told me I’d better. I nodded and caught Dave by the wrist before heading back down the stairs. Sparx seemed to think it would be all right, and I didn’t know what else to do.
I dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and glared at my familiar. “I want some answers, bunny boy.”
He responded rapid-fire style. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me. And, I think she’s going to do more good than harm for your mother.”
“Huh?” This came from Dave, behind me.
Sparx rolled his eyes. “Yes, she really is dead. No, it’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this. I don’t know how it works, but sometimes the door to death swings the other way. Maybe it has something to do with Oscar’s scheme to keep the Crown going back and forth between him and your mother. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case. As I mentioned when we first found out about Oscar, the Crown is supposed to pass to a new head with each turn of the seasons. Interfering with that was bound to have some very unpredictable and nasty effects.”
“You are the most frustrating creature I have ever met.” I glowered at Sparx.
“Hey, I live to serve.”
“Sure you do.” I sighed. “Do you really believe she’ll do more good than harm?” I’d cheerfully invite a dozen zombies into the house if they could help my mom.
Sparx flicked his ears back and forth in the rabbit version of a shrug. “Your mother’s reaction gives me hope. Sometimes the ties of the past can shift things magic dare not touch.”
I winced. While my mother’s problems were mostly brain chemistry, the fire in her nature only made them worse. When her condition first started deteriorating I’d asked if we could use magic to help, but Sparx felt it would do little more than add fuel to the flames already consuming her.
Sparx put a paw on my wrist. “Why don’t I stay home and keep an eye on things while you’re at school tomorrow.”
I nodded. “That’d make me feel better.”
Dave punched my shoulder. “Come on, let’s watch a movie and pretend we’re normal teenagers with normal problems.”
* * *
Dave yanked the covers off my bed. “Get up, slughead, you need to shower so we can catch the school bus.”
I wanted to strangle him, but he was already off to the bathroom by the time I finally worked up the energy to move. Normally, I hate morning people, but Dave is a rare exception. Sort of. Anyway, I owe him. Since the end of Oscar’s run as the Winter King had pushed my mom across the line into deeper instability, he’d been staying over pretty often to help keep me sane.
Shivering in the early chill, I stepped over Dave’s sleeping bag and grabbed the first pair of jeans and tee I could find. By the time I caught up to him in the bathroom, he was already showered and dressed. Twenty minutes later we were at the stop and waiting for a bus to take us to the hippie experiment where we both go to school, better known as the Free School of Saint Paul. Or, more simply, Free.
I missed Sparx, but knowing he had my back with my mom was a huge relief. Also, as much as I hated to admit it, not bringing him meant I would be less distracted. He was invisible to most people unless he made an effort to show himself, but that only made it worse when he played silly tricks no one but Dave and I could see.
When the school bus arrived, we headed for the back. We were first aboard for the long ride and had our pick of seats. As usual, Dave pulled out a book while I just leaned my forehead against the window and stared blankly into the predawn streets of Saint Paul. We’d had another snowfall a few days previously so the yards were all white, but it wasn’t very deep and temps were running above normal.
Somewhere along the line I drifted over the edge from mostly awake to mostly asleep, which was fine till the bus hit a pothole big enough to house a hippopotamus and bounced my head off the window so hard that sparks danced across my vision. I was still trying to shake off the impact when a glance down a passing alley made my blood run cold as meltwater.
For one brief instant I saw—or maybe only thought I saw—a man, tall and gaunt, clothed all in rags, with skin like granite and eyes colder than the hardest ice. He was crowned with silver and leaning against a wall, his arms crossed as though he were waiting for something or someone. He smiled as our eyes met—a terrible, predatory smile, and I shivered. His features reminded me of Oscar as he had looked in the moments before our duel, but he was bald above the Crown and far too thin. Between that and the whack I’d taken, I couldn’t be sure if it was my stepfather or not.
