Living in a coven with ninety witches from childhood, Maeve had seen more than her share of strange behaviors and people. Witches ran the gamut from buttoned down to eccentric, and their gifts could create even more havoc. She had not, however, experienced anything like Roz.
Coming to the kitchen for breakfast the following morning, Maeve was greeted by Roz, the oddest of the lot, squatting on the kitchen table, doing that sickening head turning thing and shrieking loud enough to wake the dead.
“What the bloody hell is she doing?” Sinead stood behind Maeve, as if this was something she should handle. “It is too bloody early for this.”
Whipping her head around, Roz fixed her with a strangely lucid light in her green eyes as if trying to convey something.
“I don’t understand.” Maeve threw up her hands.
Roz screeched, sharp enough to curl her toenails.
“Holy fuck!” Sinead clapped her hands over her ears. “Whatever she wants, can someone please give it to her. Now.”
Alannah stood beside the stove with a pot of oatmeal forgotten in one hand. “We should get Niamh.”
“Niamh is already here,” Niamh said as she streamed into the kitchen amidst a stoat, two cats and a small raptor perched on her shoulder. The raptor bobbed taller and flapped its wings.
Roz stared at the raptor, puffed up her chest, flapped her arms and screeched.
Sinead yelled, “Get that falcon out of here.”
“Kestrel,” Niamh said and stroked the bird’s cream and black dappled chest. The kestrel calmed down and tucked her wings into her body. “And Roz is trying to tell us something.”
“Whatever it is, can you make her do it without that godawful noise?” Sinead stomped over to the range and snatched up the large copper kettle. “We’re all going to need tea if this carries on.”
Niamh approached Roz slowly. “I’m not sure how to understand her.”
Bobbing her head up and down, Roz seemed to be encouraging Niamh to come closer.
The kestrel chirped and fluted as if offering encouragement.
Niamh looked to Maeve. “Any ideas?”
“Um…” She ventured closer, ever cautious of upsetting Roz and punishing all their ears. “Thomas!” The idea popped into her head. “He bonded Lavina, and she was a guardian. He might be able to tell us how she did it.”
“Let’s get him here.” Sinead filled the kettle and plunked it back on the range. She looked at Maeve. “How does one summon a ghost?”
“You ask.” Alannah smiled sweetly, and without raising her voice, simply said, “Thomas?”
“Sweetheart.” Thomas strolled into the kitchen like he was a living, breathing man. “You called?” He glanced at Roz, and then snapped his gaze back again. “Why is someone sitting on the kitchen table?”
“That’s Roz,” Niamh said. “And she believes she’s an owl.”
“Indeed?” Thomas looked at Maeve and raised an eyebrow.
Maeve was hard pressed not to giggle. “She’s a guardian, and as best I can understand has her awareness trapped in an owl’s.”
Thomas raised his brow. “She did not take her pact with Goddess?”
“What does that have to do with it?” Niamh turned to stare at him.
Thomas approached Roz, and she cocked her head and watched him. “It’s something Lavina used to warn all acolytes and apprentices about when they used their gifts before their pact. It’s a danger guardians face when Goddess is not present in their magic, tethering it to her.”
“That could happen to Niamh?” Alannah paled.
“It does not always happen.” Thomas ducked his head until he was eye to eye with Roz. “Some witches are more susceptible than others.”
“How would I know if that might happen to me?” Niamh stared at Roz with trepidation.
“When you become like Roz,” Thomas said. He looked to Alannah. “Is that why you summoned me?”
“Er…no.” Alannah glanced at Maeve to take over.
Nobody in her old coven had looked to her for anything, let alone as if she had some authority. Maeve wasn’t entirely sure she liked it. “Niamh thinks Roz is trying to tell her something, and we thought you might know how guardians manage to do what they do.” Maeve didn’t have the right words to describe guardian magic. All she’d ever done was transpose the story of their lives and magic on the cavern walls.
“Hmm.” Thomas studied Roz. He clicked, remarkably like an owl.
Roz fluttered her arms and clicked back at him.
“Niamh is right,” he said. “She is trying to tell you something, and for her to be here and communicating directly has to mean it’s of vital importance.”
The kestrel bobbed and whistled from Niamh’s shoulder.
Thomas held up his hand and the kestrel flew to him and perched on his fingers.
“Such a pretty girl,” he crooned, stroking her downy breast. He looked up and saw them all watching. “What? You think I could have bonded a guardian if I didn’t have a natural affinity for animals.”
“It’s not that.” Alannah cleared her throat. “She’s sitting on your hand as if you’re corporeal.”
Thomas blinked at her and then looked at the kestrel. “Bugger me!”
“Never mind that.” Sinead jerked her thumb at Roz. “Can we get her off the table.”
Roz shrieked and this time Sinead shrieked back.
“Dear Sainted Mother.” Thomas looked ill. “By all means let’s get her off the table. How can I help?”
Niamh motioned Roz. “How did they do it? The guardians. How did they get inside an animal’s mind?”
“I only ever observed it through Lavina.” Thomas stroked the kestrel. “And it seemed less of a getting into the animal’s mind and more a surrender to that animal.”
“Oh-kay.” Niamh took a breath.
“Wait!” Maeve held up her hand. Someone needed to be the voice of reason. “We cannot risk Niamh ending up like Roz. We have few enough witches as it is.”
“Yeah.” Niamh bit her lip and eyed Roz. “I’m not so keen on ending up like that either.”
“Tether yourself to your element,” Thomas said. “Use it as an anchor to find your way back again.” He came to stand beside her. “Lavina would spread her mind wide, like a fog and the animals would be in the fog.”
Maeve rummaged in the dresser and found some candles. She lit them with a flick of her fingers. “Here.” She put the candles close to Niamh. “Use these as your starting point and know you must always return here.”
“Your magic grows stronger,” Thomas said. “Goddess wakes.”
Alannah looked at the kestrel. “Do you think that’s why—”
“Middle-age woman sitting on the kitchen table and screaming,” Sinead said. “Can we deal with that first?”
“Good idea.” Alannah shot Thomas a secretive smile.
Maeve knew that sort of smile, and it gave her pause. Thomas had been too charming as a man, and he’d lost none of his appeal as a ghost, but that’s what he was, a ghost, and it would do Alannah no good to develop feelings for him.
But that was not their current problem. “Thomas, do you think you can track her as she works?”
“I can try.” Thomas shrugged. “But she’s not my witch, so I can only be of limited use.”
Niamh breathed deep and stared at the four candles, their flames flickering.
Thomas said to spread her awareness like a mist.
She tried, but thoughts popped into her head. Her worry for Bronwyn, the awareness of the entire kitchen watching her, feeling inadequate and silly for even trying it.
“Pull the flame.” Thomas spoke from right beside her. “Reach for it and pull the power it offers.”
The earthy tang of basil twined with the sweet of strawberries rose around her.
“That’s it,” Thomas said. “Your magic is there, waiting for you.”
She focused on the candle flame nearest her. It jumped and flared. Spreading her magic further she encompassed all four candles. They flared high and stayed steady and strong.
“Yes,” Maeve whispered. “Exactly like that.”
Niamh’s gift swelled within her, a bubble rising from a dark, unexplored center within her. That was what Maeve was talking about? She locked her attention on the mysterious unplumbed depths of her gift. There was so much latent power there that she had never suspected.
Maeve gripped her hand. “Stay on the surface, Niamh. You can’t go there yet.”
Every part of her being strained to get closer to that untapped well. Then she caught the flicker of something in her web. It was the kestrel, it’s eyesight disconcertingly sharp. She touched on it and the cats, the stoat and finally an awareness that felt human but other.
Reality lurched in a sickening spin, and she was looking at a service station. The scene was mostly monochromatic, but the detail was startlingly clear. She was seeing this through bird’s eyes. The realization amazed her so much she almost lost the connection.
Roz whistled and clicked.
Niamh drew on the candles and surrendered to her connection with Roz. Details became clearer and she saw a small redhead being bustled out of an SUV and into a sedan. “It’s Bronwyn,” she said. “She’s alive.” The scene played out in front of her. “She’s with those two women and Rhiannon is there. Alexander too.”
“Good,” Thomas said. “Now use the bird to look around.”
Niamh frowned. “I can’t. It won’t let me.”
“That’s because you’re seeing a memory,” Thomas said. “This isn’t happening now.”
“How is this happening at all?” Maeve asked. “Roz did not fly off and watch this happen.”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I’ve never known this to happen before, but it’s information we didn’t have two minutes ago, so I’ll take it.”
Something brushed against Niamh’s awareness, like the lightest touch on her skin. She pulled more fire and tracked it.
The scene skewed into a distorted view. A large dark shape loomed in front of her, and she tested the air—with her whiskers. Somehow she was in a different animal’s perception now. Niamh widened the connection and opened her senses. She sampled the air. Scent broke into its myriad components: wood, wood polish, dust, fabric, sacking, feathers—it all came at her in a rush, and she nearly panicked.
“Breathe,” Thomas whispered. “It’s disorientating the first time because animals perceive things differently. They notice different things. Tell me what you see.”
“It’s blurry.” The image moved and she was looking at more gray objects. A large rectangular shape hung above her and to her left a vertical cylindrical object that smelled of wood and metal and polish, and so many other scents she had no name for.
She clung to the calm of Thomas’s voice as he spoke. “Are you bigger or smaller than the objects around you?”
“Smaller, much smaller.” That cylindrical thing was a furniture leg, and the thing above her was the underside of a piece of furniture. “I’m under the furniture.”
“Good,” Thomas said. “You’re probably sharing headspace with a rodent of some kind.”
That fit, so Niamh nodded. Her legs were limber and supple. Claws extended from all four of her feet and her whiskers moved constantly, sifting sensory information. She almost laughed as she realized what she was. “I’m a rat.”
“Lavina always liked rats,” Thomas said. “She said they were a lot brighter than most animals and easy to guide.”
“Guide?” Niamh’s heartbeat sped up with her host as he tested the air in front of them. He poked his head out to another battery of new scents and more light.
Thomas grunted. “This is the tricky part. If you push, the animal will frighten and shove you out of his mind, but if you don’t try to manage what it sees, you won’t get the information you need.”
“What does this rat want to show me?” Niamh spoke the question aloud, but the rat looked about as if responding to her request. She sent a questioning pulse to the small beast.
“It must be trying to tell her something Niamh really wants to know.” Maeve’s voice sounded closer. “Is it possible Roz or one of Niamh’s other friends sent a request through to other animals, and they are responding?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Sinead’s voice. “Niamh is not Dr. Dolittle.”
Not far off though, and Niamh motioned them to silence. She kept a tight hold on the power, not wanting to startle her host.
Opening to her invasion, the rat let her take over his senses. No fight for supremacy or instinctive panic. The rat seemed to want to help her. Niamh loved all animals, but this was giving her a greater appreciation for rats.
They were under a wardrobe, peering out from beneath it. The wood smelled old, petrified. She bet with time she’d be able to smell the difference between types of wood, but this wood smelled old, so they were probably in an old building.
The wrong almost made her gag. It smelled like decay and blood, and Rat’s instinct was to flee. Niamh tightened her hold on the animal and kept it beneath the wardrobe.
Keeping them still, she let the rat assess for possible danger. Their heartbeat slowed, and their breathing returned to normal. Their whiskers absorbed more information. The room was warm with a trace of damp.
Her hearing was so much sharper, and the steady breathing of a living creature nearby sounded unnaturally loud.
Rat’s peripheral thoughts flit through her. He was hungry and had more hunting to do before the night was over. He’d been drawn into this room by the strong smell of food and...something else.
Tingles danced down her spine. She coaxed the something into the forefront of Rat’s mind. Magic and the right kind. Her kind of magic.
“Bronwyn,” she whispered.
Thomas’s voice was in her ear. “Find her, Guardian. You can do this.”
His words gave her the confidence she needed.
The rest of the kitchen occupants’ intense waiting energy pushed at her awareness. She sensed a change in the kitchen’s power as Roderick walked in. His energy was ascendant and powerful, an apex predator.
Niamh dropped deeper into Rat. His incredible sense of smell battered her at first, until she retuned her mind to accept the sensory overload. The food smell came from deeper in the room.
Cheese. She almost laughed. Go figure! Bread. Ham. Mustard. Butter. A sandwich.
There. On one of those 70’s TV trays sat a plate with half of what her nose identified as a cheese and ham sandwich. A pack of unopened crisps lay beside it, and a glass of milk.
She couldn’t see farther into the room, but the tingle of Bronwyn lit her up like fireworks.
Obligingly, Rat sniffed for danger, then pattered out of their hiding place. He hesitated at a piece of cheese on the floor. It only seemed polite to let her host eat it before they went on.
They scampered over wide wooden planks that were scent laden. She let Rat sniff for danger again. He’d survived this long on his instincts, and they would probably keep her alive as well.
A bed leg came into view, half concealed by a frilly white bed skirt. The sort one expected to find in a teenager’s room. Rat moved her to a good vantage point.
Bronwyn lay on the bed, eyes closed but her limbs too tense for sleep.
Beside her lay Alexander. He didn’t look well, and Rat’s nose confirmed the truth. The wrong pulsed inside him like a living thing, but it was a parasite, draining the life from him. Rat identified blood, dried now, but shed within the last few days.
“Alexander.”
“I knew that whoreson would be neck deep in this,” Roderick said. His predatory energy washed over her and she shut it down before it could panic Rat. “Is she hurt?”
“No.” It was disconcerting operating in two realities at once. The room swirled around her, and for a sickening moment, she couldn’t tell it if was the kitchen or the room the rat was in.
“The flame.” Maeve gripped her hand and squeezed. “Find the flame again, Niamh.” Speaking to someone else, she said, “She shouldn’t stay there much longer.”
Running out of time, Niamh leaned into Rat’s thoughts. It took some exerting of her will to get Rat to climb the bed skirt to the bed.
Bronwyn’s eyes snapped open. She opened her mouth to scream.
Rat froze.
Alexander opened his eyes and touched Bronwyn’s arm. He peered at Rat and shook his head. “It’s Niamh.”
“Niamh?” Bronwyn stared at Rat.
Rat wanted to flee. It went against every instinct to be this close to a human. Not wanting to terrorize him by forcing him closer, Niamh let him remain in an alert crouch. She moved his gaze about the room. They were in a bedroom, on a beautiful canopied bed. The old wardrobe they’d been hiding beneath was to the left of a large, mullion-paned window. Through the aged wavy glass, dawn limned a church spire.
Yes! A point of reference.
“Is that you?” Bronwyn shifted closer.
Rat nearly bolted then.
Bronwyn eased back. “Okay, I won’t come any closer.” She closed her eyes. “Goddess, I’m talking to a rat. I damn well hope it’s you, Niamh, otherwise I’m going to never stop screaming.”
Alexander chuckled. “I don’t know how she’s doing it, but Rhiannon will know.”
Reacting to her fear, Rat scented the air. There were other scent markers close to them. Several people had been in this room. Without a prior reference, Rat couldn’t produce an image to go with the scent. But there were three distinct scents other than Bronwyn.
“I’m not sure where I am,” Bronwyn pulled a face. “But Alexander is with me, and he’s hurt.”
“Bronwyn hasn’t been hurt, but Alexander has.” Niamh spoke aloud for the benefit of those in Baile’s kitchen.
Roderick grunted. “Best news I’ve had today.”
Rat tensed.
Bronwyn looked alarmed. “He—”
Pain speared through Niamh’s head. Everything went dark. Absolute nothing. No sound, smell or sight. The only thing here was pain pounding into her brain.
She needed to get out of the nothing. Panic turned to acid in her throat.
“Very good, Niamh.” A woman’s voice raked through her brain like claws. “So quiet I nearly didn’t pick you up.”
Niamh reached for the flame.
An oily backlash gripped her and flung her away. She may have screamed and screamed, but the nothing absorbed everything in it and around it.
“Say goodbye to your friend.” The woman’s voice pounded in her head.
Another sharp spike of pain and she knew Rat was dead. The voice would die. She wanted to smash her beneath her heel like she had Rat.
“That’s not very nice, Niamh.”
The voice saw every thought she had.
“Yes, I do,” Rhiannon said. “Everything.”
Niamh hunted for some point of reference in the nothing. Something she could hang on to. The flame. Maeve had told her to stay anchored to the flame. She reached for it but there was nothing there. Blank. Not even a shift in the darkness. “Say goodbye, Niamh.”
Her imminent death swelled through Rhiannon’s voice, and Niamh knew she would die. Like Rat.
Goddess, Rat deserved better than such an awful end. The rage gave her a grip.
A dog howled in the terrible dark, and she used the sound as an anchor.
The nothing grew more intense as it chewed through her connection with life. She was cold, freezing, her teeth chattering in the absolute silence. This death would be more than physical. Cut off from all sources of life, her soul would drift into nothing and never be reborn again. The power to do such a thing was terrible.
Niamh refused to go out like that. She could flee or fight. Instead of trying to escape the nothing, she threw herself into it. Sharp edges sprang out of her, points that she drove into the nothing.
A tiny shift of two darks beside each other gave her an opening.
She grabbed for the candle flame, reaching out blindly. Fire flared as a tiny spark. Not enough. Throwing her power out further, she seized all four candles and heaved. Fire swelled through her. Not much, but enough that she shaped it into a javelin and plunged into the subtle shading between the two darks.
It tossed her back.
Niamh dragged more fire, gathered and thrust.
A crack appeared in the nothing.
Fire in the kitchen range responded to her call and gave her more power.
Pain ricocheted through her head with each beat of her heart. Life waited for her on the other side of that crack.
Niamh split her power into hundreds of needles and drove them against the crack. A wedge opened. Gray poured through, tasting bitter and burning acrid in her nostrils.
“Niamh!” Maeve’s voice, but so far away she didn’t think she had the strength to reach it. Already the nothing coalesced back into shape again and closed the wedge.
Heat touched her skin as she drew all her power into one word, sucked a breath, and drew more and more and more again. It swelled in her.
The nothing kept coming.
She poured all that power into one word and came to screaming, “Baile!”
Sights, sounds, smell, touch, taste all rushed at her at once, and she whimpered under the excruciating barrage.
“I’ve got you.” Even whispered, Maeve’s voice dug into her sore head.
Her hand rasped like sandpaper against Niamh’s spine, but she needed that connection to life.
Stoat brushed her bruised consciousness lighter than thistledown, letting her know they were there.
Her cats kneaded her thighs, purring loudly.
“Maeve.” Her throat hurt like she’d been screaming. It came out as a croak, and she swallowed and tried again. “Maeve?”
“We’re all here”
“She had me. She wouldn’t let me go.”
A glass appeared at her lips. “Drink it,” Alannah said.
Niamh took a careful swallow. Apple juice.
“So strong.” Niamh shuddered. It would be a long time before she forgot the sheer helplessness and how effortlessly Rhiannon had held her there. “She could have done anything she wanted with me.”
“You did well.” Thomas crouched in front of her, and Roderick stood behind him. “Could you see where Bronwyn is?”
“Jesus.” Thomas scowled over his shoulder. “Did you miss the part where Rhiannon nearly fucking killed her?”
“Sorry.” Roderick gave her an apologetic grimace. “But my duty here is clear. I have to get to Bronwyn.”
She’d almost died. It took a second for the panic to subside.
Niamh’s nose itched, and she wiped it. Her hand came away covered in blood.
Alannah hovered in front of her and passed her a damp cloth. “You’re bleeding from the nose and ears.”
Niamh touched her neck where it itched. Russet stains under her fingernails confirmed blood. “I must look a mess.”
“Going to be honest with you, girl.” Sinead leaned into her field of vision. “You remember the time you spent a weekend with that rugby team?”
Snarled hair, stinking to high heaven and covered in stale beer. “Yes.”
“This is worse.”