Ghost in the Spell, page 3
Great. This was officially a kidnapping, and I was about to get a ransom demand.
Well, shit.
CHAPTER 3
I yanked my pants up because there was no way in hell I would call whoever had Evan with my underwear at my knees. Automatically, I grabbed the bottle of talcum powder from the second drawer in my vanity, cranked the top a half turn, and squeezed a small amount into my hand.
“Beyond these walls, no sound to hear. Within these walls, my words are clear.” I smacked my hands together, scattering the dust around the small room. Now, none of the supernaturals in my living room would hear the call I was about to make. One good thing about the text, Evan was alive. Or at least he’d been when they shot me the message thirty seconds ago. And another good thing, my magic hadn’t been responsible for his disappearance. Not exactly a victory, but the revelation helped me to let go of some of my anxiety so I could focus on what I had to do next to get him back.
I tapped the callback icon on the text message and waited for some asshole to pick up. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Are you alone?” the strange voice asked. I’d watched enough thrillers to recognize a voice modifier when I heard it.
“Why Evan?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” the voice said, evident irritation in its tone.
I should’ve been scared and worried. Instead, I was pissed. I hung up.
The phone rang. I ignored it.
A text popped up on the screen. Call now, or he dies.
Why? He has nothing to do with the world of magic. Why him?
There were three dots, then nothing. Why were they acting coy?
Finally, the words, answer the call, popped up.
The phone rang. I answered. “I swear if you shitheads harm one curly hair on his head, I’ll—”
“You’re not in a position to make threats, Ms. Everlee.”
Ms. Everlee, huh? Maybe this wasn’t Bogmall. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.
The next words from the kidnapper sent ice water through my veins. “Besides, it wasn’t his curly hair that we wanted.”
“Not his curly hair….”
“How could we know there were two people in your home with such pretty blond locks? But don’t worry. We have more samples to choose from. Your place was a bounty of DNA for our spells.”
Shit. My gut dropped, and I felt lightheaded. They’d been trying to trap Michael. Evan had been an accidental get. And from what they were saying, they were willing to keep trying until they got the right Callahan. My jaw flexed as fear burned my throat. “Leave Michael out of this. Just tell me what you want.”
“Better,” the voice said. “Come to Grave Hall at midnight. There is a cabin off double A road about a mile down on the left.”
“Release Evan,” I countered. “You don’t need him. Not if your threat is real.”
“That’s a fair point, Ms. Everlee, but how can I be sure you’ll keep your end of the bargain?”
“Because I want you to leave Michael out of this, and the only way that happens is if I do what you say, right?”
There were three clicks then the voice answered, “We accept your terms, but if you don’t show up and show up alone, we will have a spell ready to take your son, and we won’t worry about the shape he’s in when he gets to us.” Another click ended the call.
Shit, shit, shit. Whoever took Evan had been in my house. They’d taken hair samples, thinking it was Michael, and had accidentally grabbed Evan by mistake. Now they wanted me to meet them at Grave Hall. It was only about twenty miles from Southill Village, but the area was higher on the mountain, and this time of year, it was heavy with fog and clouds. It was going to take me at least an hour to drive it. How in the heck was I going to get away from here without alerting anyone? Was it wise to go without any backup? No, absolutely not. Did I believe they could follow through on their threat to Michael if provoked? Yes, I did. Still, it wouldn’t be easy. I was a terrible liar, so it was best to avoid elaborate stories. I had time to worry and make a plan. Midnight was still ten hours away.
What did these people want from me? The voice had said “we,” but that didn’t tell me anything except there was more than one of them. For all I knew, they weren’t even human. It could be a tribe of angry ogres or vengeful giants. I’d taken on every challenge that had come my way, and I’d won. This would be the first time I was utterly alone. The idea was terrifying. The goal was to burn the motherfuckers to the ground, along with all their spelling supplies connected to Michael’s DNA. Since I couldn’t be sure it would work, I’d leave a note in case I didn’t make it back.
With my mind made up, I canceled the silence spell. After, I washed the powder off my hands and dried them. I wanted nothing more than to immediately tell Keir everything. “Michael,” I reminded myself. “I’m a mother first.”
A knock startled me from my panicked thoughts. “Hey, babe. You okay in there?”
“Fine,” I lied. “Coming out now.”
“We have a situation,” Keir said.
I opened the door. “Worse than the current situation?”
Keir made a face that I couldn’t decipher. “Not worse, but definitely going to need some diplomacy.”
“Iris!” I heard Evan yell. “What in the hell is going on around here?”
My eyes widened. “He’s back?”
“Showed up about ten seconds ago in the same place he’d disappeared.”
The mysterious voice had kept their part of the bargain. Evan was back. Of course, I was left with the fallout of explaining. What a mess.
“Iris!” I could hear his footfalls in the hallway. He was heading to my bedroom.
Hell, no. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I said sharply. “Do not come in here.”
I heard him stop. “I want to know why I disappeared from your living room, wound up in a dark room where someone tied me up and beat the crap out of my face, Iris. What are you into? Is Michael safe? I want an explanation, and I want it now.”
“Give me a damn minute, Evan. I’ll explain everything.” Well, as much of everything that would make sense to him. Maybe his experience could give me a heads-up about what I was walking into tonight.
I leaned into Keir, resting my cheek against his shoulder. I sagged with relief when his arms wrapped around me.
He stroked my hair. “We’ll get through this.”
“Thank you for saying we.”
“Always,” he replied. “You ready?”
“Nope.” I patted his chest, straightened my back, and pulled up my shoulders. “But let’s do it anyway.”
I heaved a heavy sigh, mentally preparing myself, as I opened the door. I winced at the cuts and bruises on Evan’s face.
He stared at me with narrowed eyes, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “Tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to the police.”
I was surprised that hadn’t been his first move.
Keir dipped his lips to my ear. “He can’t find his phone.”
“Ah.” Whoever took him must’ve taken it. “I’m going to explain,” I said. “But I’m going to need you to keep an open mind. But not in my bedroom.” I shooed him away from my door. “Living room.”
“Not if my life depended on it,” he said.
Oh, yeah. He’d been eaten by the living room floor. “My bad. Outside to the garden?” I made it a question.
He glanced around at the walls, ceiling, and floor before glancing back at me. “Outside sounds like a plan.” Evan turned on his heel and headed down the hall into the kitchen.
“He’s calmer than I expected.” I walked back into my room and grabbed my suitcase from the floor. I hoisted it onto the bed.
Keir arched his brow at me.
“Grimoire,” I explained. “A little show and tell.”
“What are you going to say to him?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “I’ll make it up as I go along.”
I asked the others to wait inside while I talked to Evan. The reason was two-fold. First, I thought an audience would make it harder for Evan to process that magic was real. Second, it would allow me to find out information about the people holding him since I planned to sneak off tonight to meet with them.
It was a mild mid-September, and the pink flowering kale and late-blooming purple and yellow pansies splashed the garden with color. My heart squeezed when I saw Evan sitting on the bench at the back of my yard, but no Linda. This was her domain, and for a second, I expected to see her stern, disapproving expression.
Evan interpreted my disappointment as a slight. He pointed to his bruised and battered face. “Explain this, please.”
“It looks painful.” I clasped my grimoire securely to my chest like a shield and sat next to him. “We should put some ice on it before it swells more.”
“That’s not an explanation.” His brows knitted together. “I want to know why the hell I was standing in your living room one moment and tied to a chair by five monks the next.”
“You were being held by monks? What did they look like?”
“They wore robes with hoods, so I couldn’t see their faces.” He rubbed his jaw. “But one of them packed a wallop.”
I noticed a cut near his lip that looked like the start of a zigzag. “What did you get hit with?”
“A fist,” Evan said. “He wore a big ass ring.”
“Did it have some kind of design on it?” I asked hopefully. An insignia would be a clue.
Evan shook his head. “I felt it but didn’t see it.”
“And you’re sure it was a man?”
“I can’t be positive, but the fist was thick, and the knuckles hairy. That doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a woman, but it makes it less likely.” Evan stood up. “But that still doesn’t explain what happened to me.” He scrubbed his face with his palms, then turned his stark gaze on me. “What happened to me, Iris? No bullshit.”
“Magic,” I told him. “No bullshit.”
CHAPTER 4
“You don’t have to gaslight me, Iris. Tell me the truth. I can take it,” Evan said. The way he was pacing and wringing his hands, I wasn’t sure it was true.
I placed my grimoire on my lap and then patted the space next to me. “You’re going to want to sit down for this.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but after what looked like an epic internal debate, he gave me a curt nod and took a seat. “What’s that?” He pointed to the tome of magic.
“It’s the beginning.” I shook my head. “At least, it’s my beginning.”
Evan reached out as if to touch the cover, but he stopped just short of contact. His hand hovered above the symbols. “It’s an old book. Is it about your birth family?” His curiosity was piqued. “Did you find your biological mother?”
“Yes and no,” I answered. “No, I didn’t find my mother, but the book does contain my history, sort of.” I flipped the cover open, exposing the handwritten list of names and dates. “Apparently, I come from a long line of women who possessed a kind of magic called tru-craft.”
“You know how nuts you sound, right?”
I snorted. “You’re telling me. When my power first started to develop, I thought I’d been drugged, and I was living in a psychedelic fog.” I’d had my brother Rowan, an emergency department doctor, do a blood test. He hadn’t found drugs, but the chemical composition of my blood had been entirely out of whack. “Instead, it was my magic sparking to life.”
He gave me a pitying stare. “Iris, are you in trouble? Did you borrow money from the wrong person? You don’t have to make up a fantastical story. We might not be together anymore, but that doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you. You can trust me.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “I need you to listen to me.”
“I am listening,” he said.
“But you’re not hearing.” I leaned over and picked up a pink and white marbled stone about the size of my palm. I offered it to Evan.
He took it. “What’s this for?”
I twirled my finger at the rock. “Take a good look at it and tell me what you see.”
“It’s Ozarkite.” He turned it over in his hand. “Fairly common. Is it…magical?”
I snorted a laugh. “No. It’s just a rock.” I half-smiled and took it back from him. Holding the rock with my left hand, I positioned it between my thumb and forefinger. With my right index finger, I pressed the tip against the flat side of the rock. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the vibrational energy emanating from the Ozarkite. I manipulated my own energy to match the resonance and slid my finger straight through the surface and out the other end. “Ta-dah,” I said quietly and wiggled my fingertip at him.
“How did you do that? Is that a trick? Some kind of illusion?”
I slid my finger out. “It’s terra-craft. Earth magic.” I gave him the rock back. “See for yourself.”
He examined it a lot closer this time, then shook his head. “Show me something else.”
“Fine. Here’s another element.” I held up my hand and lit my fingers on fire. “This is ignis-craft.”
Evan blanched. “Does it burn?”
I shook my head. “Not my own fire.” I shook my hand, and the flames went out.
“That’ll come in handy if you ever decide to take up smoking.” He chuckled, then winced and touched his fat lip. He still looked skeptical but was willing to go with it. “So, walk me through this, finishing with why those guys took me.”
“I am a witch, for better or worse, and there are people and creatures out in the world who want the power that I have inside me. I think whoever took you is another one of these assholes in a long line of assholes. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.”
“Creatures? As in…what?”
“Well, there was a rock troll, a gargoyle, a fire god, a red cap disguised as dozens of leprechauns, a snotgurgle—”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “That’s not a real thing.”
I shivered as I remembered the horrifying slimy creature with its face-melting mucus. “Unfortunately, it’s all too real.”
The silence between us was long. He was trying his best.
“How did you get the book?”
“It’s a grimoire.” I stroked the vellum page, listing the women in my family that came before me. “It found me. Sort of. It belonged to my ancestors. When I touched it, it triggered the spark in me.” Not completely accurate, but close enough for this conversation. “As to why those men, or whatever they are, took you, my best guess is that they were trying to get to me.”
“They don’t know you very well, then.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that, if they were trying to manipulate you into doing something, kidnapping me seems like a pretty lame way of going about it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you hate me.”
I closed the grimoire and let out an irritated sigh. “I don’t hate you, Evan. Not anymore. And just because I’m not in love with you or even like you much at this point doesn’t mean I wouldn’t care if you were kidnapped and beaten or worse. You’re Michael’s father. For better or worse, that connects us.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “How did you get them to release me?”
“I did nothing,” I lied.
“Iris, we might not be married anymore or even friends, but I spent over twenty years with you. I know when you are holding something back.”
I shot to my feet, clasping the grimoire against my chest. “That’s rich coming from you. If only I could’ve read you as accurately as you seem to be able to read me.”
Evan held up his hands. “I get it. I’m sorry. I don’t have a right—”
“Damn straight, you don’t have a right. The best thing you can do for yourself and for me is to leave town.”
“For good?” He looked upset and confused. “My son is still here.”
“Not for good.” I glared at him, wishing he would just freaking go. I was sick of looking at his battered face, and I had a lot bigger problems than Evan to worry about. He was safe, and if he left town, he’d probably stay safe. “I just can’t deal with you right now. It’s better if you weren’t here. There is stuff happening. Magic stuff. And you will only get in the way of me doing what I need to do to save myself and everyone I care about.”
His brow dipped. “This is about Michael, isn’t it?” His eyes widened. “You think they were after Michael and accidentally got me.”
Jesus, my ex wasn’t stupid. I hoped he was lying about my tells. “No, that’s not what I think.” A technical truth. I knew they’d been after Michael and not Evan.
“I’m not leaving town without our son. This whole situation is a mess, Iris. How could you mix Michael up in all this hoodoo-whacka-doo supernatural crap? You’re supposed to protect him.”
The hairs on the back of my neck raised. His accusations simultaneously fed into my guilt and my rage. I dropped the grimoire to the ground and focused all those negative feelings on something other than killing my ex-husband. I heard the cracking of stone before I saw my precious stone bench shatter and turn to dust under Evan’s ass. The wind spun around my head as I concentrated on the particles of concrete. The pieces floated around Evan like a moving cage.
“Iris, stop,” he demanded. The stone cage shrank. His demand became a plea. “Iris! Stop!”
“Iris!” I heard Keir call from behind me. “This won’t solve anything.”
I let out a scream of frustration, and the wall came down. I jabbed my finger at my chest. “I protect my son. I keep him safe. What do you do? Hurt him. Over and over. But I’m the bad guy? You wanted out of this family. Guess what? You’re out.”
Evan’s voice was shaky as he got up from the ground. He stared at me as if I were a monster. “I never wanted out of the family, Iris. Just out of the marriage. Michael is my son too, and I love him. I will fight you for him if I have to.”
“Dad,” Michael said from the garden gate. He’d come home early. “I won’t go with you. My home is here with Mom.”
How long had he been on the other side? Had he heard our conversation? Shame replaced my anger. “Michael, it’s okay,” I said. “Go inside. We’ll talk in a minute.”
