Magick Rising (17 page)

Strange diagrams and glyphs surrounded Manon, engraved in soot onto

the wooden floor with, it seemed, a charred piece of wood. Amidst the alien

markings, pools of black wax, the remnants of candles, lay like the

droppings of some strange beast. When Richard took a single step into the

room, his wet shoes still squishing, a terrible stench drove him back.

Death.

That’s when his eyes, his brain, finally made sense of the dead chickens

and, beyond them . . .

The servants.
Or what was left of them.

“What have you—?” Even he could not hear his words over the

tempest that shook the island. He had to swallow and try again. “What have

you done?”

“Not me,” insisted the Creole heiress, a faint cackle to her weak laugh.

“You. You drove me to it, Richard. You rejected me.”

“But . . .” He struggled to grasp the abomination that had taken place in

this room. Not just murder, but some kind of magic. “You cursed me?”

She bared her teeth, then, like a child sharing a clever secret. “I only

called you,
mon cher
. I called you, again and again. And my anger, she called

the storm. It could have gone anywhere, but I offered it my home, my pain,

my beauty, in return for only one thing, the only thing I wanted.”

Richard would not ask what that one thing had been. He would never

have believed such rantings, except for that instinctive hesitation. The

destruction outside. His almost obsessive need to come to her . . .

She had done this to trap him.

Present Day

“NOW YOU understand why Penelope is in danger,” Richard finished.

“You understand how vicious Manon can be. Penelope must be protected.”

And a voice from the dark garage, beyond the chalk circle drawn on its

concrete floor to contain him, said, “No arguments here.”

BEFORE THE SUN rose on the Texas coast, I was awake and dressed. I

opted for protection this time—cowboy boots, heavier winter jeans, and a

leather jacket over my tank top.

I even brought a gimme-hat—what urban folks might call a trucker or

baseball cap—with gardening gloves and safety glasses from my toolbox.

As soon as the eastern sky turned pink, I was driving back to Sorrow’s

End. The day had dawned bright and clear—perfect weather for a beach

town, even for autumn. But I couldn’t appreciate it.

What had the house done with Richard since I left? Was he suffering?

Would I ever even see him again once I broke whatever curse was there or

released Manon?

Gulls arched and spun in the sky over the brick Italianate home as I got

out of my poor, damaged car. I’d looked closely at the building the first time

I saw it and again after escaping Manon’s ghostly temper tantrum. Now,

though, I wasn’t eyeing the place as a stager would—the upcoming

Christmas on the Strand couldn’t matter less to me. Nor was I examining it

for proof of the damage I’d experienced inside. No, this time I was looking

for signs of the story Richard had at least begun to tell me.

The high water mark, I thought, was
there
—about flush to the second

story windows. The bricks did seem the slightest bit different—well

matched but from a different lot—on the side of the verandah that he’d told

me collapsed.

Real.
Everything had been real, including my stroll along the seawall

with a spirit. A spirit who’d been stolen. A spirit I wanted back.

My feelings were also real. For a ghost. After only a day.

I heard Teddy’s pickup truck pull up to the curb, and I turned. He did

his own maintenance on his primer-gray workhorse of a Ford. It always ran

but never smoothly.

Dawn scrambled out the passenger side of the cab and hurried to me.

“Any sign of him since last night? No? Maybe he’s just, you know,

recharging?”

I hugged her, and not even to silence her. Friends sympathize with your

boy problems. Best friends sympathize even when the boy is long dead.

When Dawn hugged back, she wrapped both arms around me, laying her

head on my chest. I bowed my head onto her hair, in return, and felt loved.

“Thanks.”

“I finished the amulets,” she announced, separating what I’d thought

was a multi-strand necklace she wore into four separate loops and removing

two of them from over her head with a tinkling noise. One she handed to

me. The other to Teddy. “Ghosts-be-gone!”

The necklace itself was made of heavy twine with a whole clam

shell—both halves still hinged, I mean—framed by some gemstone beads. I

sniffed tentatively, and it smelled like pleasant herbs, not dead fish. Still,

unlike Teddy, I didn’t put mine on right away. “What’s in it?”

“Shells exist for protection, so I started with those. Each one holds an

old iron nail—not just for fairies anymore!—and pieces of a broken mirror,

plus some coffee, sea salt, and cedar wood. The beads on the outside are

obsidian, with bells.” She jingled one, demonstrating. “It won’t work if you

don’t wear it.”

And if I wear it, it will.
I thought about Richard, about how it had felt to

stand on the seawall, on his arm, listening to his voice, leaning against his

shoulder. “Not until I have to.”

She put a gentle hand on my arm. “But you will, right? You won’t risk

your own safety, will you?”

Of course not!
How hard was that to say? And yet—I couldn’t say it.

Just to complicate matters, a familiar hatchback pulled up to the curb

behind Teddy’s pickup truck, the brakes rasping as it stopped.

Lance?!

“Oh, shoot,” said Dawn. “I thought we’d have more time.”

I turned on her. “You invited him?” It didn’t . . . no! This made even

less sense than me harboring feelings for a dead man. Dawn knew how I felt.

She
knew
it!

But instead of saying more, she just sent me a desperate look and then

turned to watch the newest arrival. If I could trust anybody . . .

“Whoa! What happened to you?” demanded Teddy.

Lance looked like he’d been in a bad fight. Bruises mottled his jaw to

the resemblance of a calico cat’s, and he moved stiff, like those weren’t the

only blows he’d taken.

Lance just shook his head. His downcast eyes lifted long enough to find

me.

“Whatever happened, I’m glad you’re here to help us. Here.” Dawn

even removed the third of her four protection talismans—four. More proof

that she’d planned for his presence. Before he could react, she draped it over

Lance’s head. “I made these last night for—”

“Penelope,” murmured a deep, familiar voice in my ear. “Still not

heeding my warnings, I see.”

I spun on Richard, partly furious but fully relieved, and my own amulet

fell from my numb fingers into the grass. “Where
were
you?”

“Someplace I could not escape—even for you.” He looked exhausted,

but he wore it really well. It just gave him a brooding, Byronic look.

I tried to hug him—and stumbled right through.
What?

He nodded toward the others, and I glanced in their direction. Teddy

and Dawn didn’t look confused, exactly. This wasn’t their first rodeo. But

they wore the questioning expressions of someone who can’t speak a

language, waiting for the translation. Of course; he’d explained last night. In

the same way that my ability to see him helped make him solid, their
inability

to see him did the opposite.

Lance, being a medium, could see Richard. The glum expression on his

mottled face said that much. But that wasn’t enough to give my ghost

solidity.

“Yes, he’s here,” I translated impatiently to my friends, then turned

back to Richard. I held my own hands, since I couldn’t hold his. “You’re all

right?”

“I’m dead. Difficult to hurt,” he reminded me—with a dark edge of

warning. “As will be Manon.”

“Is she the one who took you?” God, but I wanted to touch him so

badly. I wanted to cup his strong, bristled jaw in the palm of my hand. I

wanted to ease at least some of that old pain from the corners of his fierce,

tired eyes. I wanted to loop my arms over his strong, solid-looking shoulders

and lean into his chest and relish the miracle of his existence here, across so

many decades, across the veil of life-and-death itself.

“That,” Richard assured me softly, gazing down into my eyes, “is one

power she will never have.”

At which point he began to fade.

Dawn said, “Not so fast, Ghost Boy!”

Richard and I both turned to her, surprised. Could she see him, after

all?

But it wasn’t Richard she’d spoken to. It was Lance.

Lance, who’d started to remove his amulet.

Caught, Lance released it to fall around his neck again, spreading his

hands as if to show he wouldn’t go for his gun, marshal.

At first, I didn’t get it. Then I caught the belligerent lift of Richard’s

now less transparent chin as he faced my former boyfriend—and way too

late, I understood.

When Dawn put the amulet over Lance’s head, Richard had returned. It

hadn’t been a coincidence. It had been as if the ghost-be-gone juju had cut

some kind of psychic restraints Lance had been holding in place.
Restraints on

Richard.

No wonder Dawn had invited him! She’d suspected him all along.

“
You
?!” I demanded of my ex, our medium.

“Wait,” protested Lance, blinking faster. “You don’t understand.”

It was the same way he’d protested that he’d planned to return the

money to my checking account. The same way he’d protested that if he

hadn’t been high, he never would have slept with his dealer.

“You bastard!” I spat at him. “
You stole Richard
!”

“Summoned, actually,” clarified my ghost. “But Penelope, that is

between he and—”

“Like hell it is!” I stepped toward Lance. “How could you
do
that? Yes,

I get it, you’re a jealous loser. But I thought you at least respected the spirit

world. And maybe, just maybe, me.”

“I
do
respect you!” insisted Lance, almost in tears. That was new. “You

don’t understand, Penny. Losing you was—”

“It was your own damned fault is what it was!”

“
Do you think I don’t know that
?!”

When Teddy tried to take Lance’s arm, Lance shrugged him off. “I get

it, Pen. I get that I screwed up, and I get that you can’t ever trust me, can’t

ever forgive me. Fine! But I had to make sure that
this
guy—”

He gestured toward Richard.

“—That he wasn’t evil. I wasn’t going to let some trickster out of a

Brontë novel get his ghostly claws on you. So yeah, I summoned him, and I

interrogated him.”

Teddy said, “And he seems to have beaten the holy crap out of you.”

Because with Lance, too, Richard could be corporeal.

“A pleasure,” acknowledged Richard, to me.

“Which just goes to show how serious I was,” Lance insisted. “It just

goes to show how much I care that you’re safe.”

“So what did you find out?” That was Teddy again, his big arms folded,

his posture as matter-of-fact as if our discussion didn’t include someone

invisible to him. “Is the dude dangerous? I mean, other than to your face?”

“I . . .” A lot of Lance’s righteous fury drained from him, at that. “No. I

guess not. He seems on the up and up.”

“Vindication at last.” Richard had a sarcastic streak.

“But you held him captive all night anyway,” challenged Dawn and

poked his chest. “Let me guess. You drew a magic circle then summoned

him so he couldn’t get out.”

“
Despite
him beating the holy crap out of you,” teased Teddy.

“You held him captive,” I deduced, “because you were jealous.”

Lance’s eyes flashed. “Yeah. I was jealous. So kill me. It would save me

the trouble.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Again, Teddy reached for Lance’s shoulder.

Again, Lance flinched away. “Don’t say crap like that.”

“You don’t get it. None of you
get
it. I screwed everything up—”

“
So move on
!” I told him. “I’m not the only girl in the world.”

“But you’re the one who really mattered. If I couldn’t change for you, I

guess I can’t do it for anybody.”

“Read my lips,” I challenged him. “Go. To. Rehab.”

Lance’s gaze held mine. For the first time, he seemed to be honestly

considering it. “And then you’d take me back?”

Just like that, I found myself the center of attention for four pairs of

eyes. The ghostly pair held me more impatiently than the others.

Was it a moral imperative to lie, if it got Lance the help he needed? But

he had to do it for himself, for it to truly work. Rehab is all about facing the

truth, right? And the truth was that in only one day I cared more about

Richard—someone who shouldn’t even exist—than I’d ever cared about

Lance.

“No,” I admitted, frustrated at the guilt I felt at the admission. “If you

go to rehab, I can try to be your friend again. But I’ll never love you the way