Alice jerked at a tuft of witch-grass, ignoring the stab of pain that answered from her back. Instead, she reached for another runner that had attempted to sneak away from the carnage and attack the garlic border. Then she settled back on her butt and surveyed the battlefield of her kitchen garden, bedding the herbs down for the winter. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
And witch-grass. Damned weed spread like a resistant staph-A infection. And about as hard to kill. Let it escape now and it would be twice as difficult to root out come spring.
Caroline should be weeding the garden. That's what healthy muscular young backs were made for. But the girl was off in Arizona and out of range of telephones. And pissed off at the House, on top of that. Simmering rebellion. Alice could recognize the symptoms — hell, she wrote the book herself, back at the same age.
A furry nose bumped her elbow. "Mrrrt?"
Alice wiped her hand on her jeans and scratched the cat. That's what humans were for, making life easier for cats. She stared down at the young calico.
"Three to one odds she doesn't come back before she graduates. The damned House pushed her just a bit too far, setting up that chowder. Sure, we needed it, but she could have used canned clams without committing sacrilege."
She paused and a brief smile twitched the corner of her mouth. "Plus the best young studs in this town are all her cousins. Or worse."
Atropos climbed into Alice's lap and started to purr. The quiet buzz blended well with Gregorian chants floating out from the House and the hum of bees in the still air. She plucked a sprig of thyme and rolled its pungency between her fingers, adding to the spell. The sun on her back helped, too.
And the witch-grass served as a target to discharge her tension. Another murder, another heart gone missing from its owner. Fucking Aztecs invading her turf. Three now, if you counted that mummy up in Naskeag Falls. But that one was old news.
Old news. "You're new on the job, cat. Dixie would have seen it coming. She'd been through it all before. I think every one of us has run away. Aunt Jean told me she did. She woke up in the middle of the night and felt the place choking her like a noose. Packed an old carpetbag from the attic, left a note on the kitchen table, and hitched a ride to the train station. Didn't come back for three years. Me, I stayed away for five. And that doesn't count the years in college."
The cat just slitted her eyes above the chin rub she'd deigned to accept. No comment to offer. The House probably felt the same way. It had outlasted centuries of Haskell women trying to run away from their duty. Damn near every one of them had finally come back. Like Alice.
But Alice hadn't been called away in the middle of a crisis. Aunt Jean hadn't needed her. Hadn't faced someone dumping ritual sacrifices all over Sunrise County. And Aunt Jean had been healthy, hadn't started the long slow painful dive into her grave until after Alice gave in to the inevitable.
Let's get a little truth in advertising here. The second time, you stayed away until you finally admitted that Raye wasn't enough. You couldn't face Kate's marriage, Kate's pregnancy, Kate's accident, Kate's baby. Jealous bitch, had to beat it out of your system. Finally understood that just seeing Kate every few days meant more to you than having Raye in your bed every night.
Alice switched hands on the cat's cheekbones and jerked loose another runner of the demon witch-grass. Damned name was a back-handed compliment, really. The weed was a royal pest, hardy and spread like lightning on any disturbed soil. Yankee kudzu. Turn your back on it for a week and it was all over town. And you couldn't kill it off. The best you could do was a watchful draw.
Just like a good witch.
Atropos cocked one ear back toward the village. She lay there for a minute, still purring, then stretched slowly, flowing off Alice's lap one paw at a time, turned, and padded across the lawn, tail up. Finally, Alice heard it too, over the soft chanting from the stereo — the unique throaty bellow of Kate's old truck downshifted for a hill. Whatever engine lurked under that mismatched hood, there wasn't a twin to it still running in the whole county. The cat knew it from miles away. She never guessed wrong.
The cat froze in mid-stride, one paw up like a pointer dog. Then her tail dropped and she slunk off into the roses by the front picket fence. What the hell?
Atropos liked Kate. The big moose had a magic touch, knew exactly which muscles to knead and how hard to press. The calico melted under her hands. Damn sure Alice benefited from Kate's talented fingers, as well. Why would the cat hide?
The truck rumbled around the corner and crunched to a stop on the gravel driveway. Kate sat for a minute, glaring at the House, and then noticed Alice by the kitchen garden. The glare moved to her.
Kate was mad. After thirty-forty years of practice, Alice knew that look. And you didn't mess with a mad Kate.
Kate opened the cab door, climbed down, and slammed the door so hard the truck rocked on its springs. She'd left the engine running, habit from when she couldn't be sure of starting it up again. She stalked across the gravel and grass to loom over Alice.
"Fucking Highlands Trust. How long have you known about that?"
Alice blinked. "Huh?"
"That land up on the ridge. The stone circle. It's a court day, I had time to kill, so I went over to the Registry of Deeds. The land is owned by something called The Highlands Trust, administered by a bunch of lawyers parked right across the street from the courthouse. The firm dates back damn near to the Pilgrims."
"Huh?" Brilliant response, as well as repetitive, but Alice couldn't figure out how this tied in to her. Kate looked like she had a personal bitch to file.
"Every case I had was uncontested. Traffic stuff and unlicensed dogs. Fucking wasted morning. So I went over and poked at the lawyers to kill some time. Guess what I found?"
"Kate, I don't have a clue. I know you're mad. I think you're mad at me, and I don't know why."
Kate glared down and shook her head. "Goddamn Haskells. Fingers in every pie. 'Don't faint if you find your family name attached to it,' the lady says. 'Bet your truck already knew that road before you ever drove it,' she says. Now she doesn't have a clue." Kate growled deep in her throat and limped to the far end of the garden.
She spun around and pointed one of those huge fingers like a gun. "Turns out Highlands Trust is me. Sole beneficiary, set up by Grannie Rowley. About two thousand acres up on that ridge, a trust fund to pay the taxes, and the excess reinvested over the last thirty years. About fifty grand in excess, goddammit! You got any idea what I would have done for fifty thousand dollars?" She spat into the pile of evicted weeds. "Nah. Fifty grand is pocket change to you Haskells."
"Kate, I . . ."
Kate held up a hand, cutting off the words in Alice's mouth. "Yeah. You don't know a damn thing about it. Bullshit. When Glooscap screwed the river's daughter, some ancestral Haskell sat behind a bush and watched, counting every grunt and naming all the children. Ten thousand years ago, you still remember it. I've heard you do the chants, goddammit! So don't claim you don't remember something that happened thirty fucking years ago."
Alice felt her own temper rising, felt the blood rushing to her face. "Goddammit your own self, Kate Rowley! How the hell would I know about some trust fund in your family? How the hell would I know you didn't know? That's different magic up there, earth instead of water, Welsh instead of Naskeag! It doesn't talk to me."
"More bullshit!" Kate stood there, hands on her hips, about nine feet tall and two axe-handles across the shoulders, eyes and tongue ready to scorch the grass Alice sat on and Alice with it. "I saw you up there on the ridge, running rings around the cops. Ripping Wescott's ears off and making him swallow the pieces. Don't tell me that frigging 'earth magic' wasn't talking to you."
Alice shook her head. "That was you, not me! Those stones were protecting you! They know you. I used their magic, damn straight, but anything they gave me, it was to use for you. If you hadn't been there, I wouldn't have even felt it. Damn sure I wouldn't have been cussing out a state cop at a crime scene. Your sacred stones were using me!"
"Fuck." Kate bit off whatever she was going to say next. "Screw this. I've got a roof to shingle. See you around town." She turned back toward her idling truck.
"Kate . . ."
The big woman stopped with one hand on the truck's door, but she didn't turn around.
"Kate, why didn't the lawyers tell you about this years ago? A trust like that, you the beneficiary, that's skating the edge of professional malpractice. Which edge, I ain't sure, but I think it's the far side."
That drew a bitter laugh, almost a bark. Kate still didn't turn around. "Remember good ol' Frank. The lawyers sent a whole package of stuff to me, about ten pounds of paper, on my eighteenth birthday. They got back a letter telling them to fuck off, signed Katherine Rowley. Or close enough. That stepfather of mine always was handy with a pen, signing Mom's war-widow checks and all. He didn't have big enough balls to try to steal the trust fund, though. Bet he fed all the papers to the stove." Then she climbed into her truck and slammed the door again.
Eighteenth birthday. That would have been about a month after Kate had cold-cocked her bible-spouting snake of a stepfather and moved out to work in the cannery. But her mail still went to the old house. Lovely timing.
Alice stared after the retreating truck, tears blurring her eyes. The way Kate said that, sounds like you're back to sleeping alone. Cold bed, old girl. Empty bed.
With luck and God's grace, she might simmer down enough to speak to you in a month or so. Might. Hasn't spoken to her mother in twenty years.
And that's what you get for a few hundred years of Haskell witches pretending to know everything that happens in this town. Sometimes it twists around and bites you on the ass.
She stood up, slowly, painfully. Soft warmth brushed her ankles, Atropos offering what little solace a half-grown kitten had to give. Alice bent down and gathered the ball of fur in her hands, standing up with a grunt of pain. "No more back-rubs for a while, youngster. For either of us. The House is gonna miss her, too."
Blind to the world, Alice drifted back into the House by the kitchen door, the real door of the House where life came and went. The kitchen felt empty in spite of the savor of garlic and onions and sage from a chicken roasting in the oven. For a single customer. Caroline gone, Peggy and Ellen gone. Now Kate gone. Back to square one for the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Haskell Witch. The damn room looked blurry. Alice set the calico on the kitchen table, forbidden ground but the cat had sense enough to jump right to the floor.
Or the House had jogged her memory with a slight jolt to the paws. The damned place wasn't above doing that. It had stolen Alice's slippers from the bedside more than once, when it felt she needed the rude awakening of bare feet on a cold floor. Kate said it had popped a circuit breaker just to get her attention.
Kate.
Highlands Trust.
That stone circle, and a couple thousand acres of land.
Six hundred and forty acres to a square mile — that worked out to some three square miles, maybe a mile wide and strung out for three miles along that woods road. A riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a whatever, the quote eluded her.
Kate Rowley, Kate Rowan-lea, who thought her family name sailed from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony back in the 1600s. Highlands Trust and Caroline's notes both argued for an earlier date.
Alice really wondered what had been in that package from the law office. More than just legal mumbo-jumbo, for sure. There'd be copies of that in the files. But Grannie Rowley might have left other stuff, sealed stuff, no copies. A letter, a journal, original blueprints and operator's manual for Stonehenge, something.
And Alice couldn't help with it. She'd told Kate the truth. Anything the stones had given to Alice, they'd been helping Kate. The big woman would have to work this out on her own.
But . . . a tan deerskin pouch lay on the table, next to a flat pack of cigarette papers. Kate's tobacco. Alice could beg some help for her friend's quest. Earth and water, sun and wind and stone, the powers talked to each other. They lived together. Between the storms, because of the storms, they found a balance.
Like a family.
Alice gathered the tobacco pouch, a lamp filled with olive oil, and her courage. The Spring hid dangers. More than one Haskell had been found dead in the cellar, over the centuries they'd tended this sacred water. The Spring hoarded its power and preferred to sleep.
Fur brushed her ankle again. "Me!"
Alice shook her head, staring down at Atropos. "No. House rules, you know that. You have to wait outside. You're the last guard. If I don't come back up, you'll have to hold the fort 'till Caroline gets here."
"Mrrrrf!" The cat switched her tail, irritated, but stalked over to the door. Alice let her out.
Then she checked the firebox of the old stove, adding two splits of seasoned red oak and adjusting the damper to hold the oven temperature for the chicken in case she did survive to eat supper this afternoon. She lit a pine splint from the coals and used it to light the lamp, no match-taint of sulfur or phosphorus to annoy the House and spirits. She calmed her heart, standing and letting the chants of the Benedictine monks wash over her and through her and echo back from the corners of their chapel.
Some people thought witches were all Pagans or worse, worshipping strange powers or devils. Haskells had been Christians for centuries. They had just worked their own Reformation to adjust the faith, allow them to use God's creation as they found it.
She wasn't asking help for her love life — that would waste the power on selfish aims, and could get her killed. But the town needed Kate. Someone, some power, stalked the shadows, snatching victims and drinking their lives. Death magic. The land needed Kate. And Kate needed help. This was important.
Up three steps and through a heavy six-panel door, she entered the sewing room that now served as a bedroom for Peggy and Ellen. They'd even straightened up the strew of clothes and "stuff" before leaving with Lainie. Initiation rites. Lainie had asked, and some older women had ruled that the Morgan daughters had enough Naskeag blood to join the Turtle Clan. So the girls were off in the woods somewhere, sweat lodge and fasting and bathing in the icy water of an October stream, smudging and drumming and chants.
Plus, it kept them out of the way of whatever shit had hit the fan over on Morgan's Point. No chance of their becoming hostages for a second time.
The next door was a four-panel, older, hand-planed boards with the faint ripples still showing through the paint. Kate told the history of the House by materials and styles, and had no need of the long Haskell chants to name which rooms went with which century. Rear hallway, two generations farther back, stairs down and around into the old kitchen with its cooking fireplace, spit and iron pot crane still ready. She ought to teach the girls how to bake bread in the side oven. Living history.
Plain board door, uneven pit-saw grooves still showing, hand-wrought iron latch, through the Revolution and into Colonial times. In the center hall of the old cape, the wide pine boards of the floor creaked under her feet, reminding her that she was waking something that preferred to sleep.
And then she was in the old parlor, the heart of the House, the oldest, oldest single-room cottage covering and enclosing and guarding its secrets. The original frame had been built elsewhere for some other purpose and then moved here, a gift to the Woman. Only God and the Spring knew when and where the first mortises and tenons had been cut — Kate said parts of the timber-framing style were Medieval, but the technique could have been passed down for centuries. The only way to tell would be tree-ring dating, and Alice saw no point to that — a reputable lab report would draw more attention than anybody wanted.
Alice lifted the trap door in the parlor floor, hinges complaining, and stared down into the waiting darkness, nervous sweat cooling her forehead. She took a deep breath, let it out, and climbed down steep stairs onto smooth rounded stone. Shadows retreated from her lamp, leaving granite and basalt behind.
And a pool of flowing crystal water. The Spring watched her, already awake, its patience wearing thin. The House had been spreading tales again. Hairs stood up on her arms and the back of her neck.
This place is in a dangerous mood. Don't keep it waiting. Alice skipped the preliminaries. With shavings of cedar, finger-thick splits of apple wood from the orchard out back, she built a tiny fire on the stone at the base of the oldest chimney and lit it from another pine spill touched to the lamp flame. She felt the tension rise around her.
"Stone of the sun, water of the sky, air of the sea, I ask you to bless this house." It didn't seem to matter if the words were Naskeag or English — the Powers answered to the thought. And the words echoed from someplace far away, much farther than the walls of the small cellar.
Aromatic smoke curled out and around Alice, searching shadowy corners, and then returned to the flue to vanish upward. Green flame danced on the wood, and rust orange, and blue, the elements of water and earth and sky. She added sweetgrass from bundles stored nearby. She scattered leaves of sage and watched them dissolve into a tracery of glowing skeletons. The smoke turned pungent, waking things best left undisturbed. But she didn't have any choice.
"Spirits of the earth, spirits of the water, spirits of the sky, I send smoke to you. I send sweet smoke to you. Hear my cry. Stone of the sun, water of the sky, air of the sea, our people need your strength."
The fire had burned to a double handful of red coals, watching, waiting, echoing the hard-eyed feeling of the Spring. Smoke caught raw at her throat, daring her to cough and retreat and let Power go back to drowsing.
"Wind of the west, wind of the east, help her." She didn't need to name Kate. The spirits knew.
"Wind of the south, wind of the north, guide her.
"Wind speak to the stone, water speak to the stone, sun and moon and stars speak to the stone and the hollow places within the stone. Help her, guide her, speak to her. Teach her what she needs to know. Help her guard the people of this land. Guard the giver of this gift."
She opened Kate's tobacco pouch and shook a generous mound into her right hand. Sparks danced upward, greedy, reaching for food, and she tipped the sacred leaves into a matching shower of flame down to the coals. Dense blue smoke poured out, thicker than possible, clouding the space and closing tight around her, testing, probing, weighing, guarding the Spring's Power, guarding the spirits' Power.
Black dots danced and grew in her eyes, and the weight of the centuries settled on her chest. Power did what it wanted to do. A witch risked her life each time she summoned it.
And then the lamp flared back to full brightness and the smoke vanished, leaving cold clear winter air in its wake. The fire lay dead, pure white ash, no charcoal. Alice wiped a sleeve across her forehead and felt sweat soak through the cotton, felt equal cold across her aching shoulder blades and under her arms.
She'd lived through another one.
She slumped flat on her belly on the rough granite, face in the Spring, and drank deep. The water burned like icy fire that spread from her throat out through her body to the ends of her fingers and toes. It stabbed a knife into her injured shoulder, but she welcomed it. It proved that she was still alive. It gave her enough strength to face the stairs back into the world.
A world without Kate.