Page 21 of Wicching Hour (The Sea Wicche Chronicles #3)

TWENTY-ONE

Of Turrets and Sorcery

I let out a breath and tapped the screen. “Hey, Mom. We’re on the road. Can we call you back when we get to the gallery?”

“What’s the matter with your voice?” she demanded.

“There was an incident,” Declan said, “but she’s recovering from it.”

The line was silent for a moment and then Mom said, “Can you all come here? This is a conversation that would be better had in person.”

The three of us shared a look and then Declan said, “We’re on our way,” and tapped to disconnect the call. Pushing my hair back from my face, he asked, “Are you okay to go?”

I nodded.

“We need to detour to the water first, though,” he said, “so you can fill this.” He picked up a beautiful ocean blue leather backpack that he must have dropped earlier. He unzipped it and handed me an octopus bottle, like my old honey bear. The tentacles were all wrapped around, so the shape of the bottle was similar. The cap on the honey bear had looked like a yellow cone. On the octopus, it was a starfish that could be pulled up to squeeze out honey—or in my case, seawater.

Why was I crying? I gave Declan a watery grin. “I love them both.” I held the bottle in one hand and the backpack on my lap. How’d I get so lucky?

“Okay? We’ll stop at the gallery so you can fill both up and then we’ll head to your Gran’s,” Declan said.

I nodded again. He made sure I was in and then closed the door, heading back to his pickup.

I turned to Bracken, my neck still sore. As he started the engine, I saw the gold sedan out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t snap my neck around to see if the stalker had been sitting across the road watching us. Doing my best to push him out of my head, I asked Bracken, “Is this okay?”

He nodded, merging into traffic. “Do you think they meant for me to come too? They may not have known I was with you.”

“They knew,” I said. “The whole point of our being on the road was getting you a new car.” I studied the octopus bottle in my hand and wondered where Declan had found it. “You don’t have to go if it feels like too much, but I think it would be really good if you did.” I left it at that.

The earlier excitement of the new car was gone. In its place was death and banishment. The cops were dealing with one of those things and we’d see if Gran was going to step up to confront the other.

Bracken parked next to his RV and Declan pulled in right beside him. I pocketed my phone and then stepped out of the SUV. Declan was already there, taking the backpack and wrapping an arm around me.

“I’m okay,” I whispered.

“Yeah, well, I’m not,” he responded, walking me slowly onto the deck.

“Nor am I,” Bracken said behind us.

I tried to turn my neck, but it made me wince. “Maybe you should get your journal, in case they want to see some of your research.”

He patted his breast pocket. “Already have it.”

Leaning against the railing, I held out a hand and caught a directed splash of oceanwater. Almost immediately, my throat felt better. I turned my neck this way and that, rolling my shoulders, shaking off the aftereffects. Yep. All better. Physically, anyway.

“Thanks, Dad.” I held out my hand again and slowly drew up a fountain of water. This was harder and required more control. I’d taught myself how to shoot jets of water at my cousins when I was a kid. A slow, measured build was trickier. Once the tip of the fountain was within reach, I unscrewed the top of the octopus bottle and scooped the seawater into it before closing it back up again. Just to be sure, I popped up the starfish and dribbled water over the deck.

“We’re good to go,” I said, snapping the bottle shut again.

Declan held up the backpack. “Do you want to put a sketchbook and pencil in here?”

“Yes.” I jogged to my studio. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Wilbur’s ball was next to my back door. “Wilbur! You’re back.” I grabbed the ball, went to the edge of the deck, and threw it as far as I could for my selkie friend.

Admittedly, that wasn’t as far as Declan could have thrown it, but it still gave me a bubble of joy when Wilbur shot out from under the deck to chase it. Cecil, my best octopus friend, slapped the surface with one of his tentacles, and some of the weight I’d been struggling under lifted.

I went in, opened a door in my wall of storage closets on the hot shop side of the studio, and grabbed a new sketch pad off a stack. I also took a box of colored pencils and one of charcoals. With a sharpener, eraser, protein bars, extra gloves, and a bottle of drinking water, I called it good and went back out to the deck.

Declan and Bracken stood side by side, both leaning on the railing and talking quietly.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Both men turned. Bracken still looked shaken, but Declan smiled and came to me, taking my gloved hand.

“Of course,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I responded.

He walked me back to Bracken’s Bronco and waited for me to climb in. “I’m going to follow you. I’m not sure how long this will take, but I’ll probably need to head back to the pack grounds when I leave.”

“Oh.” I secured my seat belt and fought off the disappointment. I was hoping he could stay with me tonight.

“I know,” he murmured and squeezed my hand as Bracken climbed in.

I pushed my hair out of my face. “Trust me, I get it. Yet another reason we have to find my cousin.”

Bracken started the engine and Declan closed my door before returning to his truck. Bracken backed out, using his rearview mirrors while I stared at the rear-facing camera feed. It was so cool.

“Do you remember where Gran lives?”

Still pale, he nodded. “I grew up in the house your mother now lives in. While it’s a very large house, by the time I came around, my siblings had all the bedrooms. I was in the turret.”

“That was my room too,” I told him.

Brow furrowed, he glanced over before returning his focus to the road. “With all the bedrooms in that house, why in the world did you end up on the third floor in a circular room? Wasn’t it just you and Sybil?”

Watching the scenery change from oceanside to woods, I shrugged. “Mom says I just started moving my stuff upstairs and told her that was my room.”

“Something else we have in common,” he said. “I did enjoy the view of the garden.”

I nodded.

“And it was quiet up there. Even then, I spent the majority of my time reading, so I think they forgot I was there.”

“Oh,” I said, turning to him. “I’m sure they didn’t.”

He gave me a quick look as he turned onto Gran’s road. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I wandered downstairs, hungry, only to learn that I’d missed dinner. Mother always put it back on me, that I should have known it was dinnertime, but a shout up the stairs would have proved helpful, especially as there are rarely leftovers in large families.”

I rubbed his forearm. “Sorry.”

“When my sister Martha moved out at eighteen, they offered me her room, but I’d become used to the quiet and solitude. Plus, I liked Martha. I wanted her to move back, so I didn’t want to take her room.” He made the quick turn into Gran’s drive. The entrance was hidden, but he remembered where to slow and drive between large, sheltering trees. Declan was right behind us and parked beside Bracken.

“Sam told us about Martha,” I told him.

“Sam? Quinn? Bridget’s daughter? How in the world would she know my sister?”

Declan opened my door but waited while Bracken and I spoke.

“She told us that Martha and her partner Galadriel, an elf, owned a fae bar near San Francisco,” I said.

He sat back in his seat, absorbing that information, and then a slow smile finally brought color back into his face. “She found love and a purpose?”

I nodded. “Apparently, they were together for something like fifty years.”

Sighing, he tapped his heart. “Oh, I’m so glad. She deserved happiness. As much as my family ignored me, they badgered her. She wasn’t as powerful as Mary, or our mother, or any of our siblings for that matter, so she was treated quite poorly, I’m afraid.”

“She was a necromancer,” I said. “That was how Sam met her. Sam’s a necromancer too. She went to Martha for training. Sam believes that her seeking out Martha is what called Abigail’s attention to her. Martha had stayed hidden in the twilight between this realm and Faerie for most of her life and then was murdered horribly a week or two after meeting Sam.”

“So,” he said, a look of disgust on his face, “Abigail not only trained Calliope in sorcery, she also killed her sister Bridget and her aunt Martha?” He shook his head. “We have to find that grimoire and destroy it. This has to stop.”

“We will,” I promised, not at all sure we had the ability to destroy an ancient demonic grimoire.

Bracken got out and moved in a slow circle, taking it all in. Declan stepped back so I could slide out.

“How old were you when you moved out on your own?” I asked my great-uncle.

“Hmm?” He looked up into the branches of the trees above. “I left for college when I was seventeen. I returned for short visits after that, but it was clear, even then, that they’d rather I didn’t.”

“You have a home with me now,” I told him as I slipped a gloved hand into the crook of his arm.

He patted my hand, the tension in his shoulders beginning to ease. “I suppose we should go in and hear what they’ve decided.”

When we approached the front door, it swung open. Mom stood on the other side and waved us in. Gran was sitting in her rocking chair by the fire. As we entered, she stood, her gaze on her younger brother.

“Bracken,” she began but then faltered. I’d never seen my grandmother so unsure of herself. She crossed the room and took his hand, so I moved back.

Declan pulled me to the side, his arm wrapped around me.

Blinking rapidly, she straightened her shoulders and said, “I don’t know how I can ever make it up to you, brother. Please forgive me.”

Bracken swallowed and then cleared his throat. “Can I ask? Why did you immediately believe I’d betrayed the family? I know I was an odd child, but why did everyone assume that oddness meant I was traitorous?”

I turned my head into Declan’s chest, and he held me tightly. I knew exactly how it felt to be the sketchy outsider no one trusted.

Gran shook her head. “I don’t know,” she responded slowly. “Mom believed it. Gran did too, so it had to be true.”

“I see.” He nodded, staring at his sister and then over her shoulder out the window. “I don’t believe I was our father’s son.”

Gran flinched and Mom’s hand went to her mouth.

“Research is what I do, you see,” Bracken explained. “There have been other eccentrics in the family. Why was I shunned? Given when I was born and my weight and size, I believe I was probably born to term. That being the case, I couldn’t have been our father’s. Forty weeks earlier, he was in Massachusetts at his mother’s deathbed. He’d already been there a month.”

He shrugged. “I have no idea of she had an affair or was attacked. Given the way Mother and Grandmother treated me, I lean toward the latter. Nothing was written about it, at least as far as I’ve found. And certainly no one spoke to me about it, so this is conjecture. I believe it to be correct, though.”

Gran, like Mom, looked stricken. I could see the wheels turning as this new information altered her memories. Looking more frail than I’d ever seen her, she stepped forward and hugged Bracken to her.

He stood stiff and shocked for a moment before finally wrapping his arms around her.