Page 48

Grey

“Thanks again for gettin’ here so fast, Dani,” I say while walking her to her car so she can grab some things for the locator spells.

“Absolutely,” she waves her hand.

“How’s Aunt Mimi doin’?” I ask.

Dani smiles wide. “She’s great. Booked a last minute flight and gone to Europe to meet up with an old friend. Jess and Ronnie dropped her off at the airport this morning. She was agile, happy, and humming a tune. We were a little worried she’d be out of touch as she’s going unplugged for at least a week, but she told me knowing you’re part of the coven puts her at ease that we can handle whatever comes up.”

“Nice,” I reply.

“How about you? How are you feeling with all your new mojo and all? We’ve all felt some… ripples.”

“Still adjusting, I think,” I tell her. “Eyes seem to be permanently gray instead of switching to and from gray and brown. Red sparks fly off when I get really pissed.”

“Hm,” she responds. “Like Erica with the blue.”

I continue, “Always had the ability to persuade people, but when we got here yesterday, I made a clammed-up shithead shifter admit his lies. Felt all sorts of heat behind my eyes when I told him to tell me the truth and he started spewing.”

“Ah. Could be your telekinesis.”

“Used it again last night questioning the men here. But I realized after I spoke up when you got here how every single Silver Hills pack member took your elixir that maybe I was tapping into it without realizing it. Did I persuade them?”

“Probably, since we had a hundred percent consumption rate.”

I wince.

She pats my arm affectionately. “Don’t feel bad. It won’t hurt them. On the contrary, it’ll help. You might be able to learn how to suppress it for when you don’t want to influence people.”

“It’s probably my mindset. I’m in a determined mood today,” I say.

She smiles brightly. “It’s obvious. I can see how intense your energy is. That’s my primary gift besides leveraging what grows for healing. Reading energy. Healing it. Wielding it to do the opposite at times. And using your persuasion gift might have brought it to the surface where you no longer need to work too hard to tap into it. But again you can likely learn how to manage the volume switch on your strengths. Though, maybe not. Ronnie can’t turn off her gifts so sometimes she makes sure not to touch someone or something.”

“Got a lot to learn. Not happy about being a late bloomer, Dani.”

She gives me an understanding smile. “You’re coming into your magic precisely when and how you’re supposed to. Don’t fret about it. I brought you some reading material and a starter apothecary.” She opens the trunk of her car and gestures. “That box is yours. This should get you started and help with any emergencies if Stacy’s brother shows up.”

I lift the banker’s box out and it has weight to it.

She lifts out a large tote bag and loops the straps over her shoulder. “In that box you’ll also find photocopies of some pages of key grimoires, some basic spells, some ledgers to look over. Some meditation guidelines and here’s a…” She reaches into another box in her trunk and hands me a vial with a clear liquid in it… “dose of something that’ll help open you up to the knowledge of the ancestors who have bestowed their magic upon you. We would all love to be there for that if you can wait. Then we can do our little thing where we present you with your wand and cauldron. Sounds corny but we’ve done it for all of us and you’re one of us, so…”

“Sounds nice,” I tell her.

“If you need the ampule sooner because of any emergencies, you can go ahead and take it. But review that material first. When all this is resolved, please try to make time to come, with Stacy, and spend a few weeks with us for more training and we’ll bestow your implements and have a little party.”

“Sounds good, cuz. And obviously I’ll make sure it all stays secure.” I gesture to the box. “Thanks for all this, Dani. It means a lot.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “To anyone without witch blood, the documents won’t make much sense. But this is important: you’ll want to take that ampule in a protected circle. It’ll feel like time is standing still, but it won’t be. Just go with it. Best if you can with more of your coven members present, but if you can’t, it’s okay. We’ve planned for contingencies.” She lifts a box of salt out of her trunk and tosses it into mine. “Never leave home without it.”

I grin. “Thanks. So, Vivi have any idea what’s coming to wrap this up with my mate’s brother?” I transfer the box to the trunk of my car.

“She hasn’t said.”

“Any way she can use magic to nudge to find out?”

She gives me a slightly condescending smile and gets on her tiptoes to pat the top of my head.

“Baby witch, don’t be too overzealous,” she muses and then laughs.

I frown.

“That’s what Aunt Lyrica would say to us when we were newbies if any of us tried to command magic and twist it to our agenda instead of letting magic wield us the way it needs to.”

“Right,” I mutter.

She pats my arm with affection. “She would have loved you. I wish you could’ve met her.”

“Me, too.”

“Read the material. It’ll get you started. You’re getting shortcuts, believe me, because of Aunt Mimi’s link. There may be things you suddenly just tap into or just know how to do. Like your persuasion gift, the telekinesis – you used that the first time at Erica’s party, right?”

“Right with the knife getting pulled from Meadows. Never happened before. I’ve always had the power of persuasion but now it feels stronger.”

“A base education on our coven’s history, on our guidelines, and on some basic dos and don’ts will help you immensely. You’ve got a leg up on the rest of us, Greyson… we were all enrolled in the tortoise-speed witchcraft school. You get to do the self-paced version.”

“Not if problems show up soon, Dani. I’ll need to know damn quick, maybe quicker than I’d like.”

“Like I said, Fate’s timing seems to be right on-time when it comes to the Arcana Falls pack.”

“With a little help from some Young witches,” I add.

She smiles and holds her hand aloft with an inch between her thumb and index finger. “Maybe this much. Don’t be surprised if Erica, being the one to wait the longest, is particularly salty about your expedited experience.”

“Oh shit. Is she?” I ask.

She winks. “Not really, no. Erica learned some harsh lessons about patience.” Her expression goes serious. “So, you can help me with the locator spell by tapping into your coven link and borrowing some of Ronnie’s mojo. Aunt Mimi explained the process, so I’ll show you how.”

“Meaning?”

“As the coven head, you can summon some of the strengths of the members of the coven. Tap into Vivi’s clairvoyance, though you might have some of that yourself. Ronnie’s psychometrics and then by touching things that belong to Wyatt and Halla and setting them into a circle we’ll make, we could get inclinations of where they are, what they’re doing. This means you could tap into my strengths if you need help with healing. I can read what people need for physical and sometimes emotional healing. Tap into me and you’ll know what I know about herbs or tinctures, for example. You could look at someone and know what might help them. Into Jessie’s if you need to tap into her medium strengths or leverage cellular lines to connect or disconnect.”

“I get to do all that?”

She nods. “If you focus on what you want and meet one of us even briefly on the astral plane you can leverage our strengths. I’ll show you how to summon one of us.”

“An hour ago, I could swear I had Ronnie’s gift to see Stacy’s history.”

“What happened?”

“I was furious, wanted with a passion to know it all, and suddenly, my hands on her … a whole lot of her memories flooded in. I could even smell and taste those memories.”

She looks intrigued, then says, “I suspect your prominent gift is telekinesis. We felt your strength in the circle for the lunar event as well as over the phone when we helped Amelia with her ex-fiancé. Instead of it just being that you can move objects, you can will things. Will people to see your side of things. Will information. Will a knife out of someone’s hand. Maybe even will magic via the link, so an astral plane meetup might not be a necessity.”

“Hm.”

“Let me message Ronnie and ask if she granted you anything.” She pulls out her phone and taps away while continuing to talk. “We’ll figure it all out. You’ll connect with your magic over time in a way that will mean it’s an extension of you instead of being a mystery.”

“Good to know. So… Vivi pissed at me?”

“Vivi?” She looks up mid-text. “Because she thought she’d lead the coven?”

“Well, yeah…”

“Not remotely. Vivi is very good at what she does. It’s also a lot of work. A lot. Having to manage the coven on top of what she already does? She’s told us she’s actually relieved. We all are. Just like you all felt like you got your missing piece back with Tyson? That’s us with you. We didn’t feel like our coven was incomplete before you joined, Greyson, but we do feel now like we are more complete. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Because I feel more complete, too.”

She affectionately bumps me with her shoulder and finishes tapping out her text before she says, “You’ll learn as time goes on what you can and can’t do. What you should and shouldn’t do. You’ll find we’re pretty self-sufficient, so we won’t likely need to call on you often. Vivi won’t have it all on her shoulders and neither will you. We’ll all help one another. Day to day we know your priorities are in Arcana Falls, but we will need you at times. At times you may need us. Between your responsibilities with the pack, your family, and the coven you shouldn’t be stretched too thin. Mainly because you were made to handle it all. And having you to link us up and leverage your strengths and the strengths you get from the ancestors and your birthright… it’ll help us not feel stretched so thin because sometimes we are.”

“Right. Happy to help wherever I can.”

“Magic can be the biggest gift but also… it’s a lot. A lot of responsibility. And sometimes it can feel like a burden. Talk to us, any of us if you need to vent, get guidance, or just to talk. Me and my sisters are all so happy to have you in our lives and we want you to feel comfortable talking to us. How do you feel about all this?”

“Good, I think. I reckon I’ll know more when I dig into the meat of the magic.”

“Right.” She smiles.

“Feeling all that with my mate, feeling her pain and seeing some of the images that probably both haunt and partly define who she is? It wasn’t easy to deal with. I’m still a little shook from it.”

“Believe in the process, believe in fate. Things aren’t always easy but cause and effect, Greyson. Now you know your mate better and can be in the right mindset for her as she gets stronger.”

Her phone pings and she looks at the screen. “Ronnie says you must have summoned her strength yourself. She granted no access and she feels no depletion, so this is very interesting, indeed.”

“Depletion?”

“In most cases a coven link works within the balance. Remember how Erica’s strengths after mating now allow her to work outside the balance? Well, seems like you’ve got a bit of that, too, otherwise Ronnie might feel exhausted, might feel like she has to bank more good will. But she’s feeling a hundred percent so that tells me you willed her gift in a way that replicates it rather than drains it from her.” She nods sagely. “You could have a large amount of goodwill banked already so I’d say continue to always do your best to work within the balance, giving more than taking, but you’ll be formidable, Greyson. Truly.”

I fuckin’ hope so, feeling like something is coming. Something big.

And now we’re near Wyatt’s steps and I see Stacy sits on the stairs waiting for us, holding a bag. Jase is standing beside her.

“Good you’re here, Jason,” Dani remarks.

He gives her a once-over from face to feet and back up. “Good to see you, too, gorgeous.”

“You can help us with the locator spell,” she goes on, “by sharing the circle and being open to the magic in it… it could bring insight about your sister. Between your relationship to her and Greyson’s abilities along with having Wyatt’s and Halla’s belongings, the culmination could make the locator spells more fruitful.”

“Glad to be of service,” he replies, tipping an imaginary hat and smiling big.

She looks at Stacy instead of responding and I see Jase notice her lack of reaction to his charms.

Dani asks, “What do we have?”

“Halla’s hairbrush,” Stacy pulls a small brush out of the bag. “Her toothbrush, too. And a stuffed butterfly. She slept with all her stuffies, but this one was the only one left. It’s her favorite. I found it under her bunk.”

“Excellent,” Dani says. “Is there something here in this house that’s meaningful to your brother? Not just something he owns, something he’d not want to part with?”

“Give me a second?” Stacy requests and goes inside.

I follow her.

This house pisses me off. Severely. Meadows had his people living in water-damaged, subpar cabins and trailers and his place is an obnoxious show of what he thinks of himself. While it’s no palace, it does show how full of himself the fucker is with stuffed taxidermy trophies and the asinine portraits of himself on the walls looking like he fancies himself a king. But what pisses me off the most is how it’s miles better than what his people live in.

When I walked through it I noted how the kitchen was stocked with canned and dry goods. There’s a full liquor cabinet. There are ten cases of drinking water in the corner of the kitchen and a top-end multi-stage water filtration system in the place while his people drink tainted tap water.

He has a seventy-five-inch television and three high-end laptops that can’t be more than a year old. He has a king size bed that reeks of his seed and multiple females. He’s got three fucking generators in his basement. Did he leave those where his people could use them while he was gone knowing he didn’t pay his electric bill? No. He left his people vulnerable.

I also found another one-pound supply of the herb he’s been having Larry feed his people. I’d like to feed him the entire goddamned jar.

“What is this?” I ask Dani, showing her the jar.

She removes the lid and takes a whiff. “Stillshade, lilac root,” She thinks for a second, then adds, “a mushroom powder, and rosebay. The mushroom powder was toxic, has been digested first, by something that perished.”

“Stops shifting, causes wicked headaches, fever and vomiting, and think if it’s fed continuously over a few days or more… liver failure.”

“That tracks,” she agrees.

***

We’re inside the salt circle my cousin has drawn after she performed a cleansing ceremony while meditating with white crystals. We’re sitting cross-legged and facing the center where a computer tablet lies flat with a map application open.

Dani holds a pocket watch belonging to Meadows on a chain over the tablet. Inside the circle she’s also got Halla’s belongings. We’re watching the chain swing and we’re doing this after she asked me to hold the objects and advise what I feel and see. I felt nothing when I held Halla’s stuffed toy, her hairbrush, her toothbrush. I saw nothing in my mind either. Ditto for Wyatt’s pocket watch given to him by his father when he turned twenty-one as well as his childhood yo-yo and the slingshot he carried around for a big chunk of his childhood. I got a little frustrated, but it’s clear I need to do more than just want magic to work for me.

Extreme emotion must be what pulled all those images from Stacy’s memories into my mind. Extreme emotion and adrenalin seem to be what have brought magic to the forefront for me. I’ll need to learn to wield it when I’m not ready to shift and rip shit apart.

Jase and Stacy watch me with concern when I show frustration, but Dani squeezes my forearm and tells me not to worry about it, to read the material she gave me. She tells me we’ll have time to hone my gifts. She redirects us to all focus on the pocket watch and clear our minds of everything but our intent to find Wyatt Meadows, Sherry Creed, and Halla Starling.

And I do that. I intend to find him. Find him and punish the fucker. Punishment is what I focus on now, envisioning what I’d like to do to him and suddenly the locket switches from swinging slowly to and fro to circling in a counterclockwise direction.

I stare at the watch dangling from the chain with determination, feeling the heat behind my eyes for what seems like a long time before Dani speaks.

“Touch the tablet to bring it alive again, Greyson?”

I do and we all peer down at the map on screen.

Jase speaks up. “That’s the block Brody says the massage parlor is on.”

Dani remarks, “Thinking he’s not there now, but he’ll be there soon. The way it switched directions has me thinking he’ll either materialize there or that he’s planning on it but his plan could change.”

“How do you know?” Stacy asks.

“Skeptical?” she inquires.

My mate shakes her head. “No, I just wonder how you know.”

“Practice,” Dani explains. “Assessing things after each spell to decode what the implements were communicating. When the direction changes it’s often been because either the individual will be redirected somewhere or because they’re on a course to that location, but something is preventing us from seeing where they are now. Since your brother is dabbling with witch potions that were prepared for him, this could be the case. It’s also highly possible it’s because of a contingency spell Aphra Starling worked into his cloaks. Being a prisoner of his, she likely had to do what he asked under threat.”

“Definitely under threat,” Stacy advises.

“Right. So she may have put in contingencies. It’s what I’d do. Make sure there are little easter eggs, if you will, in case other witches are working to disable him. Hiding him under a cloak but making it so that other covens could peek under it if they try hard enough. I can’t say for sure this is what’s going on, but it’s how I’m reading it.”

“What about my sister?” Jase asks.

“You didn’t bring anything of hers with you, did you?”

“No, but she made this for me.” He takes off a braided leather bracelet on his wrist. “Could it help?”

“It might. But this will help more. ”

She grabs Jase’s hand and pricks his finger with a needle, then squeezes his fingertip so three blood droplets land on the tablet. She gestures for Stacy’s hand and my mate holds her hand out eagerly as Dani uses the opposite end of the needle to get blood droplets from her finger on the map as well.

“Hold that over the iPad, Greyson? Let’s focus on these questions as we watch the blood droplets of the siblings of the two people we’re attempting to locate right now. Is Sherry with Wyatt Meadows?”

We all stare at the tablet and the droplets of blood trail toward one another and join up.

“Is Halla Starling with them? Let’s focus on that.” She pulls a strand of dark hair from the hairbrush and sets it across the edge of the tablet, then ties a piece of waxed cotton string around the hairbrush handle and passes it to me.

We wait at least five minutes before the hair floats off the tablet, away from the mingled drops of blood.

Dani wipes the screen with a Kleenex and lifts the hair and sets it back on the edge of the tablet.

The hairbrush on a string I’m holding swings like a pendulum, slowly.

“Let’s focus on the map and hope the hair will float to where Halla is.”

I stare for a long time, it seems. Frustration bubbles up and I feel heat behind my eyes again as I stare harder at the single strand of hair at the edge of the dark screen. It hasn’t moved.

My gaze darts to Stacy’s face and I see how much she wants this to work. She’s worried about this child. Cares about her. I want her to have her answers.

Dani gestures for me to pass the string. I do and it stills. I stare at it with frustration and suddenly it begins twirling forward, then backwards. And then it does it again. It twirls for ten or fifteen seconds and then the direction changes. Dani touches the screen to bring it alive again and the map is now on and the screen zooms on its’ own to Arcana Falls.

“What? Does this mean Halla could come to the village?” Stacy asks.

“Could be,” Dani says. “Maybe someone is going to bring her to you guys. Maybe you’ll take her there after you find her. I don’t know, but I don’t think she’s with Wyatt right now based on how things have gone. I think she’s under a shield and I think you’ll find her but I think what’s in front of that is a shield for Halla but that you will reunite with her.”

Jase asks, “So, we’ve got my sister and Stacy’s brother on their way to the place Brody found the girls.”

“Maybe. But maybe not,” Dani corrects.

“And we’ve got Halla showing up in our neck of the woods, but we don’t know yet how she gets there. What do we do to deal with all that?”

“We don’t know if your sister will show up too, only that she’s most likely with him now, Jase,” Dani corrects.

“Let’s make a plan to see if we can catch up with Meadows tonight,” I say. “We’ll go to the massage parlor. Then have to see what happens with Halla Starling, I guess.”

“Wait,” Dani instructs. “Let’s join hands. I want you three to meditate on the positive. Positive thoughts. I want you to focus on having what you’ve earned delivered to you. Safety. Abundance. Okay? Do so until I tell you we’re good, then we can rise and break the circle.” She sets the Kleenex with the blood and the strand of hair on the tablet.”

“Okay,” Stacy agrees and grabs my hand. I grab Dani’s. She grabs Jase’s and Jase takes Stacy’s hand.

The Kleenex suddenly catches on fire before it turns to ash and a breeze picks up. I watch the ash from the Kleenex go left while the hair strand floats up and away in another direction.

And I suspect, though can’t be certain, that this is confirmation Halla Starling isn’t with Wyatt Meadows and Sherry Creed.