Shadow Magic, page 2
“Gee, thanks. I bet you aren’t looking so good there in your grave, either.”
Dominique was Granny’s house ghost. She had been Granny Ledbetter’s nanny a couple hundred years ago, and Domi, as we called her, had apparently never let go of the belief that she was supposed to watch over her. I had talked to her when I was a child, though Granny didn’t know, and I felt like we were picking up again like old friends.
Be that way, then. But I saw you come in late. You can’t expect to keep healthy on so little sleep.
I had felt as if I’d just had my hands slapped. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now. I have errands to run and I’m due down at the shop in a couple of hours.”
I’m trying to—
“Help, I know.” I sighed, finished my makeup, and squinted at the worry lines around my eyes and on my forehead. They weren’t prominent, so I felt I didn’t look half-bad for fifty-two. Not bad at all. I flexed, grinning. I could still give young studs a run for their money—in the boxing ring, at least. I wasn’t interested in giving them a run for anything else. It wasn’t that I had no interest in sex—I loved sex. But I had no desire to entangle myself in a relationship. Dating? Yes. Sharing my bed now and then? Certainly. Sharing a house and life with someone who might try to change me or tie me down? No way in hell. I was too set in my ways to play house with a man. Besides, being Granny’s roommate suited me just fine.
As I headed toward the stairs, Domi got in one last shot.
You know, I’m glad you’re back. I enjoyed talking to you.
I paused, my hand on the railing. “Thanks, Domi. That’s nice of you to say. I miss my brother, too. But he’s not the same sweet kid he was when we lived here. He grew up stuffy and pompous. I’m glad my mother didn’t live to see the way he turned out.”
Sometimes, people have a way of failing us without even knowing they’re doing so.
“Right,” I answered, then headed downstairs.
Granny was in the kitchen, stirring up breakfast.
“Morning,” I said. Her actual name was Nara, but the whole town of Terameth Lake knew her as “Granny.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek as I dragged myself over to the counter with the coffee pot on it. “Is that coffee I smell? I need a good jolt.”
“The pot’s full,” she said. “And breakfast is ready.”
Every day since I had moved back to Terameth Lake, Granny had made sure I was happily fed. She handed me a plate of scrambled eggs, pancakes, and sausage. I carried it to the table—which was in the corner of the kitchen—and poured myself a mug of coffee, adding a little cream. As I settled in at the table, Granny served herself up a plate and joined me.
“Ready for the day? You came in late.” Granny Ledbetter looked old, which meant she was extremely old. Witchblood aged slowly. Magic swirled around her, hanging heavy on her shoulders. She was more powerful than just about any witch I’d ever met.
“Felicia was on an emotional bender last night. She thought we sold her a haunted athame but it was actually the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. Stalker in life, stalker in death. I banished him, but then she subjected me to a three-hour tour through her misery.” I bit into the sausage, delighting as the link burst in my mouth. It was juicy and salty with the right amount of grease. “This is so good.”
“Edie Rosewater makes the best sausage in the state. I won’t buy sausage anywhere else,” Granny said.
“She doesn’t look like a sausage-maker,” I said, grinning. Edie had long platinum hair—not as long as mine but far paler—and she looked like a centerfold. She loved her pigs, though, and treated them like royalty for the lengths of their lives. But she was fully capable of butchering them and breaking them down to make her famous sausage, bacon, and ham.
“Edie Rosewater’s lucky she’s sane. Her parents were a couple of loons, and I do mean loons. The fact that she turned out as stable as she is, well…I give her mentors credit.”
“Is she witchblood?” I finished my eggs and toast, then peeked at the pan on the stove to see if there was more sausage. There was. “Want more?”
“You go ahead and finish the rest. I already had a cinnamon roll this morning.” Granny carried her plate to the sink and rinsed it off, tucking it in the dishwasher. “As far as Edie’s concerned, she’s part shifter. Her mother was a wolf shifter, her father was human. They fought constantly and I’m surprised her father survived as long as he did. Helga had a temper as nasty as a rattler. Anyway, so no, Edie isn’t witchblood.”
It occurred to me that Edie was able to butcher the hogs so easily because she was part wolf. Wolf shifters made good butchers and ranchers, just like rabbit shifters—who were fairly rare—made great farmers.
“Since we’re getting ready for the Harvest Moon Festival at the shop, what do you want me to do? Set up tables? Make charms?” Over the past few months, I’d settled into working with Granny better than I ever expected to. I tried to put the past behind me, given that my life with the Order of the Moon was over.
Granny paused, frowning. “Every year I put all prosperity and abundance charms on sale during the Harvest Moon Festival, and they sell like crazy, so start with what we have. We’ll need to make more in a week or so. I also like to throw in pumpkin-scented candles, black cat candles, and anything else that screams the season.” She nodded toward the door. “I put a bunch of decorations in the back of your truck. Go ahead and put them up if you would.”
Granny Ledbetter wasn’t really my grandmother, but she might as well be. I’d grown up living in her house for a few years after my father died. My mother had brought my brother and me here, to Terameth Lake, to live with the woman who had been her goddess-mother.
Two years later, when I was fifteen, Mother had bought a small house and we moved there. I left at eighteen, my little brother two years later. I had gone into the agency, and he had gone away to college and stayed there. Now he was an investment banker somewhere in Pennsylvania.
When I was forty, Granny had called me to let me know that my mother had died. I seldom volunteered the facts on how she had died because they sounded ridiculous and I didn’t want anyone laughing about my mother’s death.
After my discussion with Royal and debriefing, I had called Granny to tell her what happened. She invited me home to Terameth Lake. While my mother’s house had been sold years ago, Granny had plenty of room and she told me I could stay with her and help her with Shadow Magic—her magical supplies shop—until I was ready to find my own place. So, on the evening of July 2, I had showed up with my clothes and the few boxes of belongings I had.
I turned to Granny. “What are you doing today?”
Granny Ledbetter was stout, but I had no doubt she could take on a linebacker. Dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a pale blue button-down shirt with a red apron tied around her waist, she was shorter than me by about four inches. Her hair was pure white, pulled back into a ponytail that almost reached her waist. Her eyes were blue like mine—the ice blue of glaciers.
“The yard needs tending, and so do my herbs. In a month, we’ll have a run on protection charms—people change them out in the late autumn, so we’ll need plenty of rosemary and bay leaf for the new season.”
Granny’s yard needed work. It was one step away from a wild patch. The two-story cottage had looked remarkably the same as it had when I was a teenager. Ivy trailed down the walls, and a trellis gate leading to the backyard, covered with wisteria. The place needed some fixing up, but the paint was in fairly good condition, and the porch looked sturdy enough. But the yard had been a riot of color.
Even now, in early September, flowers bloomed everywhere in a profusion of color, while others were past their season and would winter over until the spring. Hydrangeas, roses, primroses, and foxglove all had come and gone. But now, red-hot pokers were still vibrant under the autumn skies, and zinnias and mums were thick, their spicy flowers smelling of autumn. Chinese lanterns hung lush with orange seed pods, and ferns spread thickly through the greenery.
The house was on an acre of land, most of it stretching to the back. The entire acre was bordered by fir trees, a giant cedar, red-leaf maple trees, rowan trees—also known as mountain ash in western Washington—and lilacs and rhododendrons, all shaggy and huge.
“Do you need help? I’m not much of a green thumb, but—”
“Never you mind. I’ll take care of this. You go on.”
“All right. I think I’ll hit the gym first before I head to the shop. Should I bring anything home for dinner?” I picked up my purse and made sure I had my phone and keys.
“A bucket of chicken would be good.” Granny stretched and then stood, looking out the kitchen window. “It’s almost time for Bliss Farms’ annual Red-Pickup Harvest Fair. We’ll need to remember to head over there this weekend. They usually have good specials going and it’s worth the time.” She paused, then pointed toward one of the maples. “Fall is coming in strong. The leaves have already started to turn.”
On either side of Granny’s property were other houses, and across the street, more homes. But Granny’s lot was lined with trees. I joined her, peeking out the window. She was right, the leaves were starting to turn color.
To the far back of the lot was a ravine, and on the other side of the ravine was a thin strip of woodland that backed Bliss Farm.
Bliss Farm erected roadside stands on the turnout to their farm where they sold cider, apple jelly, homemade applesauce, vegetables, jerky, ham, bacon, and pepperoni, honey from their hives, and during the autumn, they held a harvest ritual on the equinox. Granny bought a lot of vegetables and apples from them, along with the best applewood smoked bacon ever.
“Are we going to have time to visit the Harvest Moon Festival this weekend?” I asked. Terameth Lake’s official harvest festival was held on consecutive weekends throughout September and October. “Wait, we’ll be at the shop, won’t we?”
“You’ll be at the shop on Saturday. I’ll take Sunday so you can go out and about. Now get along with you, and don’t forget the chicken for dinner. And the mashed potatoes and gravy, too.” With a wave, Granny motioned me off.
I clattered down the front steps, wincing ever so slightly as my knee twinged.
I’d never be 100 percent—the doctors had been right about that. And I’d never fully be capable of what I had been before the accident. As I inserted the key into my truck, it occurred to me that if I’d stayed in service, I would have been miserable in a desk job. I would have hated every minute of it and only succeeded in building resentment. With a sigh, I hauled myself into the truck and fastened my seatbelt. Sometimes fate worked out, even when we didn’t think it would.
CHAPTER TWO
At first glance, Terameth Lake seemed like any quaint town out in the boonies. But when you really stopped to look, the beauty became apparent. Terameth Lake resembled a Bavarian village, complete with the center town square. In the center of the square, in a central rotunda, a massive twenty-two-foot blue spruce grew, surrounded by benches on the outer circle.
One week before Thanksgiving, the annual tree lighting ceremony brought the square to life with a cascade of sparkles and lights. All of the merchants joined together to create a vista that looked straight out of a snow globe. Given Terameth Lake was high enough in the Cascade foothills, we actually got snow. Close to Winter Solstice, the town looked like some gleaming gem with thousands of facets.
Terameth Lake was one of the shadow towns—towns where Otherkin thrived and lived. Shadow Towns were magically engineered to repel those who weren’t welcome. As I drove toward the center of town, the quiet hum of magic rippled beneath the surface. It was a beckoning sound, murmuring soft whispers in my ears that felt so familiar it was like a lullaby.
I reached the curve on Roundabout Road, pulling off into a turnoff where I could safely park. From here, I could see the Mountain in all her glory. That’s what all the locals called Mount Rainier—from Bellingham up near the border down to Olympia, she was mostly known as the “Mountain.”
The ice-bound peak rose gracefully out of a low-hanging mist surrounding the base. Currently, the volcano was relatively quiet, but she was still active. At any time, she could—like her southern sister, Mount St. Helens—come rumbling back to life.
If she did, none of us in the area beneath her shadow would have to worry about the future, because Terameth Lake and the surrounding towns would be covered with ash. Or if a lahar happened instead of an eruption, we’d all risk being buried—so much history. It had happened before. The biggest lahar had sent long fingers of debris flowing down through the coast, overcoming what were now the towns of Tacoma and Nisqually. Like so many of the towns around here, Terameth Lake had volcano evacuation signs posted throughout the town, as well as tsunami evacuation signs.
Mama Nature was awake, alive, and active.
In the daylight, Terameth Lake had a real old-world charm. An odd cross between Cabot Cove of the Murder She Wrote television series and Twin Peaks of the Twin Peaks series, Terameth Lake was both delightful and spooky. Luckily, we didn’t have Mrs. Fletcher with her extensive body count, but the weirdness factor was leaps and bounds ahead of Twin Peaks.
I stopped at the Glacier Creek mini-mall, pulling into a parking spot in front of the 24+ Gym. It had all the standard equipment, a pool, and was open twenty-four hours a day. I waved at Chaz as I entered the main floor and he grinned as I slid my membership card into the scanner.
“How’s it hanging, Marquette?” He was sweet and cute, and had asked me out a couple of times, but he was well below the threshold of what I considered a datable age. He was human, and at thirty, he was too young. But he made one hell of a personal trainer, and he kept it professional when he was spotting me.
“Same as ever, Chaz. I’m going for cardio this morning, so you can sit today out.”
The gym was spacious. Two women were manning the treadmills, and a bodybuilder named Trent was working out at one of the weight benches, pressing what looked like about three-sixty. A fox shifter, he was in his thirties and had long red hair carefully swept into a long ponytail. Through the window that overlooked the pool, I could see several members of the Terameth Lake high school practicing for the swim team.
In the women’s locker room, I changed into yoga pants and a loose tunic, then slid my backpack and clothes into a locker and clipped the key to my waist band. I exchanged my boots for lightweight sneakers, then headed out to the elliptical. I made it a habit to hit the gym at least three times a week. It helped my mobility and stiffness, which was still a problem after my accident, and it gave me a rush. I used to train five days a week when I wasn’t on assignment, and I missed that dedication.
As I built up to a brisk speed, I watched the news, which was on the TVs mounted to hang down from the ceilings. I loved working out, and as I raised my pace, that familiar endorphin high swept over me. I focused on the television, wishing Chaz would change over to a music channel, but then something caught my attention.
On the KC-12 news, the station devoted to shadow towns and the goings-on there, the reporter was standing in front of the entrance to Tiger’s Eye Park.
“Tragedy struck when the body of Patricia Henson was found on the outskirts of Tiger’s Eye Park this morning. The twenty-eight-year-old woman has been dead for several days, although the exact time and date of death haven’t been determined yet, according to the county medical examiner. Her husband reported her missing two days ago when she failed to return from a weekend trip to Seattle. While the reason for her death has not been yet determined, Terameth Lake Police Chief Dagda Bruin reports that her death has been deemed suspicious and they have not ruled out foul play. If anyone has information pertaining to the case, please contact the police.” A phone number appeared on the screen before the news switched to another story.
I slowed, coming to a stop, and hopped off the machine.
Patricia Henson was a regular client at the magic shop, and she had come to see us about ten days ago. I’d scheduled a reading with her for the upcoming Friday because she was frightened out of her mind. I paused, wondering if I should continue my workout, but my intuition urged me to head back home and talk to Granny, so I hurried back to the locker room and changed clothes again, slinging my pack over my shoulder.
As I pushed open the front door, Chaz jogged over. “Done so soon?”
“I forgot about something I need to do,” I said. “See you later.”
“Hey, Marquette, how would you like to go out Friday night? Maybe take in a movie?” His eyes were so hopeful, I hated to break the light in them. Chaz kept trying to hit on me, but he was polite about it.
I winked at him. “Sweetie, as I told you last time, I could be your mother. And even if I was comfortable with dating someone your age, I’m not in the market for a boyfriend.” Before he could answer, I headed for the parking lot.
Granny was busy in her garden. I found her hunched over a row of tomato plants in the kitchen garden, harvesting a basket of ripe orange globes. As I approached, she looked up, startled.
“Back so soon?” She placed one hand on the ground and pushed herself to her feet, grimacing as she arched her back. “I swear, I need to start doing yoga again. My back’s as stiff as a dried stick.” She sighed. “The ladybugs have vanished for the season. I found a few aphids this morning, but luckily, I’m almost ready to harvest so I’ll wash all the plants with a soap wash and that should do it for this year.” She stood. “What happened? I thought you were heading to the gym.”
“I got there as the news came on. Patricia Henson was found dead in Tiger’s Eye Park.” I sat on the bench next to the tomatoes. The smell was overwhelming—in a good way. I loved tomatoes and was grateful Granny had planted so many.
The smile slid off her face and she paused, then sat next to me. “How did she die?”
“They didn’t say, though they hinted her death might be suspicious.” I paused. “Granny, last time Patricia came in, she told me that her husband’s been messing around. She suspected that he’s been having an affair with a vampire, though she couldn’t prove it. And she was worried about something. She said she felt like she had a target on her back.”
