Halfway Dead (11 page)

Whoever she had been, she deserved peace. And revenge. I would deliver both.

I woke to the sun streaming through my windows in complete disregard for the state of my well-being. My head was thumping like a European nightclub, and I turned my face from side to side with a delicacy I hadn’t known I possessed. It was well after ten, meaning I’d slept about five hours.
Not nearly enough
, I grumbled to the empty house. Gus and his particular brand of disdain weren’t available to hear my complaint, which only confirmed my long-held belief that griping is more fun with an audience.

I glanced down at the bed; my sheets were in near-perfect order. I’d barely moved, so total was my state of exhaustion when I slunk beneath the covers as the sun was pushing the mountain shadows into gray memory. The Wight’s touch had done far more damage than I realized. My bones creaked like the sliding lid of a mausoleum, and I knew it would be a day or so before I felt normal. Even in my healthy, young body, the touch of death would linger. The undead and all of their toxic gifts were unwanted guests no matter where they visited. I knew I couldn’t wait to expel the chill of those claws from my body, if not my memory, and I shook my head side to side like a dog after an unwelcome bath.

“Okay, Carlie. Let’s get this show on the road,” I mumbled to the room. I didn’t feel like rising, and there would be
no
shining prior to coffee, but my legs moved with a glacial slowness to lift me up and away from the toasty nest of my bed.

“Whatever.” I glared at the sun, the floor, and whatever fell under my gaze. I felt a stage-three grump stealing through me, and made the executive decision that a bath and coffee while in said bath were necessary for the safety of the planet in general. I don’t get in bad moods often, but the physical toll of fighting that Wight, along with the utter senseless nature of her death, left me in a rare mood. I shuffled to the kitchen, pushed a series of glowing buttons that mocked me, and stood waiting for the dribble of dark, aromatic liquid that might save someone from getting their head bitten off. Even my coffeemaker seemed quieter, proving that a bad mood can affect inanimate objects, too.

Minutes later, I stood, cup in hand, watching the steam rise in clouds as my shower began to fog the bathroom. I reached through my bare feet to the polished wooden floor, feeling the grains that ran north to south in the burled strips of lumber. I thought about order, and looked at the pulsing clouds of mist above the shower. That was disorder, but even the random nature of the steam followed some sort of general plan. In this environment, steam went up. In my environment, there was also a single direction.

I thought about that as only a witch might. The ghost of Erasmus reached out to me across time and distance, and I was going to him. We all had our parts to play in this . . . whatever it was; I considered the term mystery, but settled on justice.

I was going to salvage something right from a whole lot of wrong.

Stepping into the warmth of the shower, I considered that none of my actions from here on out could be considered random. The steam of the shower wafted above, drifting unerringly toward the merry little chugging of the fan that drew the vapors up and away. I wondered if anyone was looking for the dead girl from Brendan’s porch. I thought about their heartache and uncertainty. Their lack of
knowing.
I’d stood dry-eyed as she sank into the cool earth only hours earlier, but here, in the safety of my own shower, I leaned my forehead against the relative chill of a tile wall and began to cry.

I didn’t even know the girl, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t worth my tears.

It took nearly an hour for me to get it together. I stood for a hesitant moment with my eyes dazzled by the light of a relentlessly cheerful summer day. “Fine, I get it,” I grumbled to the world in general, but even as I said it, the tension began to slip from my spine to puddle at the ground where it would sublime in the face of such natural beauty. My home could do that to the darkest of moods, so I filled my lungs with what should have been a brilliant snootful of mountain air.

I smelled nothing. Great. The Wight’s punch had left my nose clogged, swollen, and sore, which meant I couldn’t really taste anything for the time being. I held back a curse—not a cuss, but a real, witchy curse that might do some damage, and steeled myself for a bland breakfast and dulled senses. At least for today. If I had time, I’d brew a healing draught that would alleviate any magical effects. As for the simple damage from the Wight’s knuckles, that might take a little more time. I resolved to use the day to pack my bag, make sure my Docs were laced tight and ready to rock, and carefully avoid going to Gran’s. Her gentle interrogation was not something I needed.

“Well, she certainly caught you a good one,” Gran said from behind me.

I whirled fast enough to send a wave of pain through my nose, and reached up instinctively to cover my face. Too late. Gran waved at me to drop me hands, so I did, and she took the last step up to me while tut-tutting at my general condition.

“Who ratted me out?” I asked, as she ran cool fingers over my face.

“No one tattled, dear. If you think I don’t have wards to indicate my only grandchild is in a fight with an undead monster, then you know precious little about the role of grandparents in general.” She frowned slightly at the bruise that ran sidelong up the bridge of my nose. “And I saw Brendan looking quite sheepish at the Diner. He was clearly looking for you, so I imposed on him to help me into my booth.” She laughed at the memory of tricking Brendan into thinking she needed help of any kind. “Over a rather guilty plate of eggs, he eventually caved in to my . . . ah, gentle queries.”

“You mean you ran a charm spell on him? Gran!” I winced. I didn’t need to be yelling, it seemed.

“Nothing of the sort, you rebel. I used my aura as a woman of a certain age to shame him into telling me the entire gruesome story. He’s quite impressed with us, by the way.” She nodded at me, indicating I should coo with approval.

“Ooo. There, happy?”

“Quite. Now, as I was saying before you sassed me, he’s rather fascinated to find that the world is a bit more complicated than he’d previously imagined. In fact, so curious that I saw only one possibility of assuring his silence,” Gran said with a smirk. She was so sneaky. I thought people stopped being underhanded when they became grandparents, but then Gran isn’t exactly average.

“You turned him into a frog?” I asked, smiling. I love little myths like that. Witch humor tends to be rather campy.

“Nonsense. He’s delightful, and frogs are often sticky. I offered him a job.”

I looked at her through narrowed eyes. She seemed sneakier than a moment earlier.

“What
kind
of job?” I ran down the possible uses for a librarian while solving a supernatural mystery, and came up empty. Unless we needed to file something, or tell people to hush.

She looped an arm through mine and pulled me into a gentle walk. There were birds everywhere, and I heard the distant complaints of ducks. It was a typically busy, fresh, summer day, but I felt that curious disconnection with my body that pure exhaustion can bring. Cars were crawling past us as we walked. Both directions of traffic were crowded with people who felt that relaxation only came from being on the go. I shook my head ruefully at the line of minivans and SUVs. Sometimes, you need to be still.

“I hired Brendan to do research. A simple thing, really, but it will help you on your walk in the woods. I think that you’d best be prepared for some unpleasant moments.” Gran was famous for understating things, but I knew that she loved me as no one could. If she thought that I couldn’t handle what was coming, she would, quite simply, step in. As my grandmother, I took her word without hesitation. As a witch, I took her word as law. “I’ve asked Brendan to commit a tiny act of vandalism in the name of a greater good.”

I stopped in our tracks, letting a couple of giggling kids run past us. Their skin was pink with mild sunburn, and they chattered in an accent that was pure New York—the city, not our state. “Define this
tiny
crime. Do I dare ask why you’ve requested he enter the ranks of scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells?”

“You may, and since I’m feeling charitable, I’ll even answer you.” Gran sniffed primly, then gave me a sidelong smirk. “He’s going to steal the photographic plates from the library and bring them to me.”

I knew that could mean only one thing. “What kind of spell?”

“A rudimentary location casting, but I’m going to use rare elements to craft something you’ll need.”

Knowing Gran’s level of skill, it could be virtually anything magical in nature. I ventured a guess. “A talisman, I assume?”

“Exactly that. It will be light, compact, and silent.” She closed her eyes momentarily as her voice slipped into the lilting descriptive mode of a teacher. “The talisman will be small enough for the hand of a child, light in weight, and tied to the aura of the bearer.” She looked at me pointedly, saying, “That means you must keep it on your person at all times. To lose it means you will not only forfeit your direction, you will forget all of the progress you’ve made up to that moment. Do you understand, sweetheart?” Her eyes creased with concern.

“I’ll be lost in the woods, and I won’t know where to go,” I answered gravely. Unlike Tyler Stinking Venture, I respected the mountains.

“Worse than that, I’m afraid. In order to cast on an object of this age, I’ll have to add layers of magic. It won’t be a simple spell, Carlie, and the loss of it will cause a dispersal of anything supernatural, within a considerable range. You’ll be confused, perhaps even a bit sick, and you will have amnesia that will last until the rays of the following dawn.” Her eyes were dark with worry. Being a witch, even a good one, was dangerous business.

“How will I carry it?” My voice sounded small in my ears. It seemed like Halfway was behind a muted curtain, and I was standing with Gran in a bubble of silence.

“Leave that to me. You are to rest today. Eat something, look at your lake, and perhaps even feed the ducks. Rest, child, and meet me at moonrise underneath the spreading limbs of the Mountain Ash growing at the edge of my property.” She softly kissed my cheek, then pulled back to look at me while smiling. I smelled the bright herbs of her kitchen and the powder on her skin. There was a world in that scent, and I wished the wight hadn’t hit me, so that I could truly savor the harbor of her presence.

“I’ll be there, Gran,” I promised.

She said nothing, but turned from me with a final squeeze of my shoulder. The noise of town came rushing back like an early tide, and I began to walk with purpose. Breakfast, then time in the sun with the lake sprawling before me, I decided. Everything else would wait, except the moon.

The moon waits for no one. Neither does a witch seeking justice.

I was as good as my word, and woke to the darkness of my house, well past sunset. Looking at the clock, I saw I’d slept nearly nine hours. The moon would rise soon, so I stepped gingerly to the floor and, for the hundredth time in a day, missed the presence of Gus. He was still at Gran’s after her announcement that no giant, slothful cat would be permitted to interrupt my rest. No matter how useful he might be to me, Gran put Gus second.

I detest the feel of an empty house. It leaves me unsettled and open to pangs of loneliness. I stood next to my bed and began taking stock of the general condition my body had to report.
So far, so good.
I was stiff, but only a little, and my nose still pulsed with each heartbeat, so I knew the bruise would still be there, but I felt rested enough to assist Gran with her casting. Assuming she might need my help was quite a leap of faith, if not outright arrogance on my part. I doubted that my magic could augment her particular skill at this spell, and might actually interfere, given that I was to be the bearer of Gran’s creation. I pulled my hair up and away from my face, then slipped on running shoes. I squared my small shoulders, resolute in my need for coffee, and walked to the kitchen with one eye cast to the darkened floor. In less than an hour, there would be a buttery pane of moonlight moving across the wood, but I would be gone. I sighed with resignation, pushed the glowing green eye of my coffee maker, and waited for it to phlug to life, while I stood quietly running cantrips through my mind’s eye. With a cup in hand, I slung my bag over one shoulder and stepped out into the cool night air. The fat, merry moon was rising now, a silver coin of light that beckoned me to walk faster. My feet seemed lighter and, in minutes, I was running, the coffee slung into a shrub as I let the call of magic pull me to the distant shadows of Gran’s expansive yard.

She was waiting there, tall and lovely in the growing light. I saw her smile as I slowed, letting my heart adjust downward to the silence of the scene. It seemed crude of me to roust the quiet from such a place, so I put hand on hips and took several deep, deliberate breaths, and felt my calm return like the gloom around a tired candle that gutters out, its work done.

The tree was large but friendly, with a barrel-shaped trunk that flared into wildly divergent branches, all hanging still in the moist air between midnight and dawn. The sky was spangled with stars, but, even as I watched, the faintest among them yielded to the power of moonlight, winking out in bands as the Milky Way became narrower with each passing moment.

“Any moment now, Carlie. Time for quiet.” Gran had expertly answered any question I may have had about the need for participation. I was to observe and open myself to her magic, and nothing more.

A silver chain hung from one of her fingers, each link glistening with a liquid brilliance born of moonlight and dew. Gran had been standing there for some time, it seemed. She looked upward, face alight with the ecstasy of witchcraft in its purest form, and began to speak in a voice so soft I could discern nothing, save the glottal chirps of her own unique casting. It was eerie and beautiful, and I was reminded once again that all magic is utterly unique to the user. Gran had been placing her own stamp on our family magic for more than six decades, and it could be heard with each elegant, alien syllable that she cast upward to the distant moon. In her free hand, she held a jagged piece of glass that could only be from one of the antique photographic plates I’d seen at the library. The edges were sharp and irregular, and her fingers wrapped around the shard with such delicacy that it seemed to float in her hand.

With deliberate, slow motions, she wound the silver chain around the glass, whispering softly. A smile danced on her lips and, for a fugitive moment, I saw Gran as a young woman. The moon’s magic was powerful, lifting years and experience from her skin to leave an illusion of dewy youth.

In a silent trickle, the moon began to flake into brilliant motes, streaming downward to light upon the glass, now held in Gran’s outstretched palm and elevated upward. The dancing lights seemed joyful to me; as they pinged upon the silvery glass, each miniscule apparition vanished, and, after a long moment of this mending, the fragment began to glow. It stretched like a lazy cat waking from a nap in a sun-warmed windowsill—slowly, without direction, and free of care. Gran seemed to notice none of this as her eyes were glazed with the ecstasy of a spell blooming deep within her spirit; I knew the feeling, and found myself taking short, shallow breaths in order to preserve the silence.

“Chain of light, in four directions, wound upon themselves,” Gran said, and her smile deepened with the pleasure of a new mother looking at her babe. “It took me decades to understand how to forge a link between the moon and Ever After. So delicate.” Again, that smile as the glass drew together in a perfect circle, a reflection of the moon captured within. It bound to the last links of the chain with a faint pop, releasing the scents of cinnamon and cedar, and the stream of dancing lights slowed, then stopped. Gran eased back from her toes—she’d risen on them like a dancer, and I noticed that she was barefooted. Around her, in a perfect circle, the grass was dry and I sensed warmth, but not damage. She’d protected the earth, even while acting as a bridge between the moon and the glass, and the entire world beneath her feet.

When her eyes locked on mine, I felt an involuntary shudder at being in such proximity to that kind of power. With a steady hand, she held the newly-minted necklace to me, beckoning that I should try it on.

“Where is the clasp?” I asked, seeing her smile at my confusion.

“You need none, Carlie.” Gran laughingly put the necklace around me, and the ends drew together like old friends. I could discern no magic in the attraction, which was yet another indication of just how serious Gran’s witchcraft was.

Around my neck, the miniature moon glowed with a warm, golden hue, casting a circlet of light on the skin of my neck. There were tears in my eyes as I asked, “How long will it glow?”

Gran lifted the bauble, smiling again, and this time, there was something more like pride in her eyes. “Until you have stood before the place of chestnuts. Let the spirit of Erasmus be your guide, Carlie.”

I stood mute, letting the delicacy of the moon wash over my face. I turned toward the deepest woods, and the necklace flared incrementally. Erasmus would show me the way, just as Gran had given me the means. Now, all I needed was the will, and I suspected that with the rising of the sun, I would have that and more. I was granddaughter to the most powerful woman I’d known, and our shared blood would guide my hand and keep me true. I hugged her, letting my head fall naturally into the nook of her shoulder and, as one, we began to walk back to her house.

I toyed with the necklace, and let my thoughts cast out over the darkened trees that soared away into the night.
Soon, Erasmus. I am bringing you peace. To your killer, I will bring justice.