CnC 1 Ghost of a Chance Read online

  “Twit!” I towel-dried and ran upstairs. He joined me in my bedroom while I hunted for something to wear. The room felt odd, and I was struck with a longing to spend the day there, to make my presence known. I almost felt as if I had stumbled into some strange woman’s boudoir where I had no right to be.

  I selected a jersey knit dress and slid it over my head. Andrew zipped me up. He sprawled on the bed, winking at me. “Hey, lady, how about a hug?” As I leaned down, he pulled me on top of him and grinned. “On second thought, what about an early-morning snack?”

  “What about it?” I slipped out of his arms and searched my jewelry box for my emerald studs.

  “I’d like my breakfast in bed. C’mon, give me breakfast, woman…” He patted the quilt beside him, flashing me an ungodly leer.

  “You’re sneering.”

  “No, I’m leering. Big difference.”

  “You need a refresher course.” I sniffed and turned back to the mirror, but I could see his reflection. He knew I was watching him, and so he began to make suggestive gestures. I started to laugh. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “Oh, yeah, un lobo loco. Deseo tu cuerpo.” The next thing I knew, he was naked and standing by my side. He unzipped me and trailed kisses down my back. “I’m hungry, and I feast on only the finest. Come give me what I want.”

  I slipped out of the dress. “Be careful what you ask for,” I whispered as he led me to the bed. “You might be surprised by what you get in return.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  As soon as Andrew left, I pulled out Nanna’s trunk and hauled it into the kitchen. While the water was heating for a pot of tea, I carefully emptied the contents of the trunk onto the table, lifting out Nanna’s journal, piles of charms and incense, and other paraphernalia. Once it was empty, I felt around the edges of the black velvet lining. The smell of old wood, polished with scented oils, made me shiver. Here, in my hands, was living history and tradition, but not one that most people would ever read. This was what lineage was all about.

  After hunting for a few minutes, I found the hidden trigger. The velvet-lined bottom gave a little pop and came loose. I lifted out the cushioned insert and set it aside. Nanna had taught me about the false-bottom trick before she died; I was the only one who knew about it, besides the carver of the trunk, who was long dead.

  Hidden inside, within the folds of a thick satin wrap, rested a scabbard, worked of leather blackened with age. Every month, under the light of the new moon long after the kids were asleep, I oiled this scabbard, rubbing the amber-scented unguent into the leather. Now I unwound the peace binding that held the blade firmly within the sheath. As the leather thong dropped away, I withdrew a gleaming blade. It, too, received a thorough cleaning each month. I would take a soft cloth and polish the dagger, as Nanna had taught me, as her teacher had taught her.

  More than five hundred years old, the dagger was known as a seax. Single-edged, the blade stretched out a good twelve inches from the hilt, which was carved of antler, and the patterned welding had left a brilliant weave of darkened knotwork along the steel. Whether the sheath was the original remained a mystery. I didn’t know and neither had Nanna, but the dagger was old, and she had given it to me on her deathbed.

  I grasped the hilt. It felt heavy, slightly awkward in my hand. I seldom used it except when things felt out of control, and then the heft of the blade, the feel of tradition, passed through the steel to calm and give me a boost of courage. Magical blades sliced through energy; they also amplified and directed it. Attuned to their owners through years of use, they were sacred objects of tradition, treated with respect and care.

  I set the dagger on the counter and stopped what I was doing long enough to pour the water over the tea bags. While the tea steeped, I replaced the false bottom and shifted everything back into the trunk again. The dagger might help me evict Mr. B & U. Then again, it might not, but either way, it wouldn’t hinder my workings.

  After I poured myself a cup of tea, I began a list of everything I could remember about exorcising harmful spirits. There wasn’t much—Nanna had done such a good job of keeping them out in the first place that she hadn’t had much call to evict them. Most of what I knew came from recent texts on the subject.

  Unlike the Catholic exorcisms, folk magic tended to use a variety of herbs and charms to evict the unwanted visitors. I jotted down some of the more common elements used in clearing space: sage, cedar, sweetgrass, rosemary, rue, heather, lavender. Most I had on hand, but since I wasn’t clear on what had drawn Mr. B & U to our home in the first place, kicking him out was going to be more complicated than lighting a stick of incense and showing him the door.

  I was leafing through Nanna’s journal when it occurred to me that since the astral entity had shown up along with Susan’s spirit, perhaps he was related to her. Maybe he was some nasty relative waiting on the other side for her? No, a little voice nagged. If this was true, then he would be focused on her, not on my family, I thought, doodling circles on the paper. Why should he care about us if he was really after her? No, Susan had nothing to do with Mr. B & U except that they were both haunting my house at the same time. Susan could stay, but whatever the source of his power, it was time to take care of it. I wanted the kids home. I wanted the cats home.

  I finished my tea and dug around in the box until I found what I was looking for—an old Egyptian ankh that Nanna used to wear underneath her apron. I slipped the symbol of eternal life over my head and poked around in the pantry drawer for a new white taper candle, then took it and the dagger and a stick of frankincense upstairs. It was time to sort out what I was dealing with.

  Since Mr. B & U had first appeared in Kipling’s room, that should probably be my base of operations. I wandered into his bedroom. A miracle—it was still clean. Though he had cleaned it only a few days ago, I expected it to be a mess again.

  As I lit the stick of incense and set it in an empty quart jar that I assumed Kip used for catching various bugs, the smoldering tip released a whiff of fragrant scent, rich and as ancient as the hills. Frankincense, used in rituals since the time of the pharaohs. Nanna had used it to purify and cleanse space. As the smoke began to fill the room, I lit the candle. After taking my seat on the end of Kip’s bed, I held the dagger in my left hand, took a deep breath, and lowered myself into a trance. Without the kids here to worry about, it would be easier to do what was necessary.

  Down, once again, lower and lower until I felt myself drifting, felt my mind floating. I hovered gently on the edge of consciousness, losing the veneer of panic and fear that had built up over the past few days. I took another deep breath and slowly exhaled, listening as the air whistled through my teeth, taking the last remnants of worry with it. Everything felt calm—I had reached a level of stillness that always awed me, always reminded me that the world was so much bigger than we could see with our eyes.

  I reached out, searching for something to tell me I was on the right track, that Mr. B & U had made this room his home base, but nothing seemed out of place. Had I made a mistake? But then, faintly—on the very fringe of earshot—I could hear some sort of drumming, a steady pounding. At first I thought it might be my heartbeat, but when I checked, I realized my pulse was tripping along faster than the drumbeat. No, this was the cadence of some other entity.

  And then I saw it. A brief glimpse, a quick glance. Dark and shadowy, something that was hiding under the bed, unable or unwilling to come out. Startled, I pulled away and with a jolt shot out of my trance. I blew out the candle, snuffed the incense, and leaned down, shaking as I moved Kip’s quilt. There, just out of reach, rested some sort of bottle filled with dirt, and I could feel a glimmer of energy from it. So, Kip had been playing at magic again without my permission. I would whip his butt for this.

  With a glance toward the door to make sure there wasn’t anything coming through, I reached under the bed with the dagger, using it to maneuver the bottle out to where I could get ahold of it.

&
nbsp; It was a witch’s bottle, all right, but not a thread bottle. Thread bottles were filled with snips and clips of leftover thread from sewing. I’d taught Kip how to make one, how to charm the threads within so they captured and confused negative spirits within the chaos of tangled pieces. But this bottle was one I’d never seen before, packed with dirt, and a few pieces of garlic and other herbs. So Kip had been in my stash, had he? As I moved the jar, I thought I saw something else inside—one of Nanna’s charms!

  “Oh, you are in for it now.” I grabbed the bottle and stomped into my room, where I cleared off the top of my desk. Nanna’s silver ouroboros, a snake with its tail in its mouth, was clearly visible, stuck in the dirt to one side. The top was sealed with melted wax and I hesitated, not willing to break the seal just yet. If there was something attached to the charm, it might be freed to cause more damage if the jar was opened and the spell broken.

  “Damn it!” I had told him time and again to leave the trunk alone unless I was there to supervise, and what did he do? Steal Nanna’s talismans and proceed to disobey every rule I had set for him. That was it—Kip would be leaving the magic to me until I decided he had bailed himself out of this mess. As I turned the bottle over and over in my hands, a shiver raced through my arm. I heard a faint laughter, and something inside told me that whatever this was for, creating it had been a horrible mistake. How, I didn’t know, but I was all too sure that we would find out.

  When I called Murray to tell her what I’d found, she suggested we have a little talk with Kipling. The exorcism was on hold until I knew what I was dealing with. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.” I packed up the bottle, Nanna’s journal and trunk and anything else I thought we might need and headed over to Murray’s. My hands were shaking as I grasped the steering wheel, and I knew that we were in more danger than I had believed possible.

  * * * *

  Murray scrunched her forehead as she eyed the bottle. The kids didn’t know I was there yet, and I didn’t want them to until we had a chance to talk. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Ghosts don’t invade a witch’s house in such a thorough and frightening way without help,” she said. “Have you been doing any sort of magic lately, other than the warding and general cleansing?”

  I thought back over the past month and shook my head. “Nope… nothing. Earlier this autumn I made a wishing-bone charm for a prosperous Christmas season at the shop, but that’s it. I should have been able to feel the wards ripping if something tore through my protection.”

  “Then maybe this is the key.” She called Kip and Randa into the room. After a round of tight hugs, I motioned for the kids to sit down and, once they were comfortable, held up the bottle. “Recognize this?” I asked Kip.

  He paled, pulling back so fast that he almost knocked his chair over. I set the bottle down in front of him and he pressed his lips together and hung his head. I could hear him breathing, too quick and too loud. My son was terribly afraid of something.

  “Kip,” Murray said, giving him a contemplative look, “your mom and I were talking about the ghosts. We were thinking that maybe somebody tried to do some sort of spell and it backfired. I wonder if that might have happened?” She flashed me a warning smile to keep quiet and let her talk. “Do you think you can help us? Do you think somebody might have tried to cast a spell that backfired? Maybe it was somebody who realizes now that he made a mistake? What do you think?”

  His bottom lip began to quiver. “Maybe… maybe I know somebody like that.” Eyes tearing up, he bit his lip.

  Murray tipped his chin up so he was looking into her eyes. “Kipling, this is serious—we aren’t dealing with very nice entities here, and there are dangers that you can’t take care of on your own. Did you try to open some sort of gateway?”

  He attempted to speak, but his teeth were chattering so hard we could barely understand him. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to! Honest, I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.” He broke into loud tears. I’d never seen him so upset before—even when his father left, he managed to retain some sense of composure, but now he was falling apart. I started to reach out but stopped when Murray shook her head at me.

  After a moment, she lightly touched him on the arm; her fingers barely brushed his sleeve. He began to quiet down. She handed him a paper napkin and he coughed into it, then blew his nose loudly. It was obvious that he was afraid to tell me what happened. How bad could it be? I wondered. Then I stopped myself: Mr. B & U was bad news, big bad news.

  “Kip, you have to tell us exactly what you did. Don’t leave anything out. We might get mad, but we still love you. Your mother loves you and you know I adore you, even when you make mistakes.”

  I reached out and took his hand, clutching the still-so-small fingers inside my own. He was trembling, but I could feel him start to calm down. “Honey, she’s right. Whatever you did, we’ll deal with it, but you have to tell us. We can’t do anything if we don’t know what we’re facing.”

  Kip took a deep breath. “Well, a couple of weeks ago, when Sly stayed overnight… remember?”

  I remembered, all right. Sly had wolfed down two huge servings of stew and bread, and I wondered what they were feeding the scrawny runt at home.

  “I was telling Sly about Nanna. He said that spells have to be like on the movies—like that old show Bewitched, and like Charmed. We got in an argument and I told him I’d show him real magic. So… so… I got out Nanna’s book and a charm and we cast a spell after you went to sleep.” He ventured a look up at me.

  I sat very still, remembering his admission that he’d been in the trunk. If I’d only insisted on him telling me the whole story that day, we might have saved a lot of time and worry. Torn between wanting to kill him and wanting to snatch him up and protect him, I could only wonder what the hell we were going to do now.

  “What did you do?” Murray sounded like she’d swallowed a frog.

  Kip frowned. His lip was so chapped that it was going to be a mess in a few days when the skin started peeling. “I-I-I tried to call Nanna in to visit.”

  ”Nanna!” I shot up like a bolt. “You tried to summon a spirit? You know better than that!”

  Murray sighed. She knew, as did I, that invoking entities was work best left to advanced practitioners, never beginners. I thought I’d taught Kip this lesson, but obviously my influence wasn’t as strong as Sly’s. “What spell did you use? Do you remember what you said?” If Kip had said something in such a way that it could be misunderstood, or twisted by some force stronger than he was, then all hell could break loose, and obviously it had.

  Kip stuttered a little while I sent Miranda off to carry in Nanna’s trunk from the car. He watched as I flipped through the pages of her journal, then jumped when I came to a page with a long incantation written on it, in a mixture of English and German. The spell was titled “Summoning Spirits.”

  As I scanned through the words, a lump began to form in my stomach. “This is a charm for summoning the ghost of a person who has been murdered, and it calls on the astral forces for vengeance!” I set the book down, unable to continue. “Why on earth did you use this for summoning Nanna? She wasn’t murdered, she died of a heart attack.”

  “I didn’t know. The title says it’s for summoning spirits. I didn’t know it meant ones who’d been killed!”

  He was right. The parts in German gave the specifics but Kip didn’t know German. He wouldn’t have known that the spell wasn’t a general summoning charm, and if he mangled a couple of the German phrases he would have been calling for the astral forces to attack our home rather than avenge the murder. I finished reading the pages and then closed the book. “That explains a lot. What talisman did you use? It says to use the Celtic cross encircled by an ouroboros, but that’s inside this bottle, and I don’t see any mention of making a witch’s bottle in the instructions.”

  His cheeks reddened. “The next night I got scared and made the bottle. I put the charm in there, hoping to tangle up anything that showed up. Si
nce I didn’t have time to save thread pieces, I used some dirt, thinking that maybe it would bury the spirit again. I guess it didn’t work.”

  “Damn! Damn it, damn, damn, damn.” Whatever he’d done, we were seeing the ripple effect as the spell backfired all over the place. “You screwed up, big time. We’re in trouble here.. I hope you realize how much havoc you’ve managed to cause.”

  He hung his head, weeping silently. I had tried to drum into his head the same cautions Nanna had taught me.

  Obviously it hadn’t worked. He was either too young or too reckless to handle the energy.

  Kip slowly met my gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Murray was reading the invocation. “This is a nightmare. You used this to invite your Nanna?” He nodded. “Em, I don’t speak German and obviously Kip doesn’t either. Tell us what the words mean—and Kip, you better listen so you can learn what you conjured up.”

  I took the book and struggled to translate. “Let’s see… here it says… the gateway is open, enter you unsanctified and wandering spirit, avenge our household. If you read it wrong, you probably asked it to exact revenge on our household. Essentially, Kip, you managed to extend an open invitation to any nasty spirits who might have heard you.”

  Miranda freaked. She turned to him, shrieking. “You did it! You’re the reason that ghost came, and you’re the reason why we aren’t safe anymore!” Before I could stop her, she jumped up from her chair and landed on Kip, knocking him onto the floor. Startled by the sudden squall, it took me a moment to realize that my sweet, brilliant Miranda was actually straddling her brother, slapping him soundly on the face and chest while she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Murray was quicker than I was. She leaped in and grabbed Randa by the shoulders, dragging her off even as Randa continued to scream. “You’re an idiot! You’re an idiot, and if the ghosts kill us, it’s all your fault!” The last was uttered in a shout rilled with spit. She sprayed him square on the face, and I didn’t know who to feel sorrier for—my terrified daughter or my son who was reeling under the impact of the attack.