Alice wandered the dreamscape of her ancient house, searching through its rooms and centuries for something. But she couldn't remember what.
Bach followed her along the hall, the Goldberg Variations played on a harpsichord, and the tinkling notes echoed strangely off plaster and old wood as if the stereo moved from room to room cast loose from its moorings to the twenty-first century and electricity. The House liked Bach. It did not like electricity.
Alice turned a corner, turned left instead of right and through what should have been a wall of plaster backed by two feet of solid red-oak logs. She met Kate walking the other way. But the blonde giant wasn't Kate, just looked like her. Family resemblance.
Jackie grinned back at Alice, shattered death's-head grin of the corpse Kate's daughter had become in a blasted instant. The face morphed into Tupash, the Inca brujo Alice had shot through the heart with a sterling silver ball from a percussion dueling pistol.
The sound-track flowed seamlessly into the orchestral drama of Moussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain, the visuals stolen from Disney's Fantasia. The demon on the mountaintop wore Tupash's face, melting back into Jackie's. Then it leaped down at Alice, flowing like a cat, and it was a cat, a jaguar spotted and fierce, walking upright like a man, muzzle stained with blood. Human blood, she knew, without knowing how she knew. Jade plaque armor hung about Jaguar's body, coils and fanciful animals of gold gleamed around his neck and dangled from his ears and nose. Jade-green eyes glared at her with mad fire and slashed her heart from her chest like razor-edged obsidian knives. Jaguar lifted her heart to the rising sun and drank her blood from it.
Her eyes snapped open, staring up into darkness. A great horned owl hooted in the distance, who-who-whoooo questions echoing around the bay and silent harbor, and the other side of the bed lay cold and empty. No Kate. Alice winced her eyes shut again, squeezing sudden tears.
No help for it. She slid the quilt back and eased out of bed, floorboards icy under her bare feet and forcing her another step toward waking. Autumn in Maine. Too warm to keep the woodstove going through the night, too cold for comfort in the wolf-hours just before the dawn. But the cranky old bitch House wouldn't allow a furnace or electric heat, and the rug had somehow crept away toward the foot of the bed and she couldn't find her slippers.
Alice draped her robe over her shoulders and shivered, not even trying to do battle with the sleeves. Her back was too stiff, wouldn't work right until she'd warmed up for almost an hour. She touch-tapped her way along the sloping wall of her bedroom tucked under the eaves, slipped through the door, and followed long memory down the turning creaking stairs to the "new" kitchen and the banked fire of the cookstove.
An oil lamp burned low near the kitchen window, traditional beacon of safe haven for women fleeing terror in the night, now working double duty as a night-light in case one of the Morgan girls woke in a strange bed and needed the kitchen's warmth against nightmares. But they were gone, off with Lainie in the Great North Woods playing Indian. Kate was gone, Caroline was gone, the girls were gone, she was back to living alone with her own thoughts, her own nightmares.
Nightmares. Jaguar gods.
Why is the House meddling in my dreams?
Alice shook down the ashes in the firebox, bringing a glow back to the coals and adding splits of birch for a quick fire, then weighed the iron kettle in her hand, decided it held at least two mugs worth of water, and set it over the heat. Coffee. The night was doomed, anyway. She'd never get back to sleep.
Atropos stirred from her sentry-post behind the stove, stretched, and padded silently across the floor. The young calico looked up at Alice, ears forward and whiskers at a quizzical slant.
"Mer?"
"Damned if I know, cat. The House is feeling twitchy. Ask it yourself."
The House sat around her, patient, waiting for her answer to a question she hadn't heard. Or maybe hadn't understood. Tupash. Jackie. Mountains and demon jaguars that walked upright and demanded human blood.
That was Maya, that last. Tupash had been Inca. There must be some connection she'd missed.
The kettle hissed behind her, and Alice measured grounds into the filter and woke them with boiling water. Suddenly the kitchen smelled less bleak, with the aromas of coffee and birch woodsmoke and old furniture wax replacing the damp stone and grave-dirt memories from her dream. Too damn vivid for chance. Whether it boiled down to her subconscious trying to digest mysteries or the long-steeped magic of House and Spring . . .
What is the House trying to tell me?
Too damn much power flowing around, that afternoon she'd killed Tupash. Kate had tapped enough from the dirt and stone of her native soil that she'd knocked out the power grid on the island, popped transmission line circuits across the bridge on the peninsula. Fed the power through Alice to burn Tupash's body into ash in seconds. Alice knew what that took, just how long and how much heat it took the hospital's incinerator to burn an amputated arm or leg into calcined crumbles.
Alice poured coffee and wrapped her hands around the hot mug and stared at the flickering red glow of the stove firebox. She sipped bitter heat.
Fire. Fire eating Tom Pratt's carriage house, fire spreading to the fake-Tudor fake-thatch cedar shingles of Tom's mansion. Fire on the water, that smuggler's speedboat that Ben Morgan blasted into shreds.
And no bodies.
Anywhere.
Tupash morphing into Jackie morphing back to Tupash. Jaguar gods.
Jackie seen in Naskeag Falls. Seen this summer, after all the fire and death.
And Caroline, Caroline's years of Anthro studies centered on the Southwest Peoples. Some of them believed that a ghost, a spirit, a chindi could leave the dead and take over a living body. Aunt Jean had never said anything about that. Different People, different magic, different myths. But she'd warned time and time again about the dangers of drawing or feeding too much Power. About using too much Power for anything. And the Haskell Witches didn't know everything, whatever folk in town might think. Whatever Kate might think.
The stone circle. Caroline's research, over at Ben's lair. The circle was bound to Rowan blood, sons or daughters. Rowley. Rowan-lea.
Jackie is Rowley blood. Was Rowley blood, whatever she's become now.
Oh . . . sweet . . . Jesus. Her teeth chattered, and Alice gulped another swallow of hot coffee. She'd never learned enough about Tupash. Never had time, and then he was dead. She'd thought he was dead. Daniel had said the brujo was old, centuries old, had studied with a still-older master. Had mentioned Maya rites, Aztec rites. The old Inca had known much more about draining Power than she had. He'd used it to stretch his life far beyond the Biblical threescore and ten. Or by reason of strength fourscore. His body hadn't looked that old, hadn't looked older than forty.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come . . .
Too much Power, too many dead, no bodies.
Jackie seen in Naskeag Falls. The graveyard chill from that slow white watching SUV.
Shivering, Alice gathered red oak and rock maple splits from the wood box and stirred the fire, adding fuel with staying power, adding warmth against the arctic chill she felt. As if physical heat would have any effect on her thoughts. Atropos rubbed against her ankles, offering support. Alice gathered the cat up in her arms and cuddled warm fur.
The House waited, silent in the gray of false dawn, too silent. Alice shook herself and set the cat down, gently, slowly, paying attention to every muscle and every ache. Slowly, gently, as if walking Tai Chi, she crossed the kitchen and reached out to the wall of stereo equipment. She needed music. Something dry and mathematical and precise, Bach, Telemann, a single instrument and just loud enough to break this watching, waiting silence.
She'd loaded old John Dowland into the CD changer, a night, two nights ago, consolation and wall against the lonely silence then. Complete lute works, galliards and pavanes and fancies and such. That would do, no need to make her shaking hands and mind sort out anything more complex.
She punched buttons and the displays lit up, the speakers woke up. But instead of Dowland, she got Johnny Cash, FM radio instead of the changer. Kate listened to that sometimes, had programmed in a preset on the tuner she could use when Alice was out of the House.
Kate. God, her taste in music . . . most of the stuff was hurtin' lovesick truck drivers singing to their hound-dogs, trash or worse, but Alice could stand Johnny Cash. "Folsom Prison Blues" this was, she recognized it instantly and shivered once again. He sang about killing a man, shooting him just for thrills.
Her hand jumped to the selector and switched over to the CD player. Gentle plucked notes filled the air. Alice let them wash over her.
Killed just for thrills. But those sacrifices weren't thrill killings. Mayan or Aztec ritual, instead. Offerings to the gods to make the sun rise every day. Or to drink the Power that death released.
Jackie. Tupash. Jaguar. The stone circle. Rowan blood.
Alice felt sick. Her knees turned shaky and she sank back into a chair. Atropos flowed into her lap and bumped noses with her, concerned, offering warmth and purrs and silky fur to stroke.
I've got to find Kate and warn her.
*~*~*
Kate had vanished. No answer on the cell phone, no answer at her trailer, no answer over at Lew's old house where she still had the phone connected. No echo of that distinctive Dodge truck engine rumbling through the village. Not parked at the trailer, not parked at Lew's. Alice checked, prowling the twisted autumn streets of Stonefort in her battered rust-bucket Subaru. And then she had to get back to the House. Wood delivery, scheduled weeks ago.
She watched Em Beals and his crew stack firewood in the second shed, frowning. Not at the quality of the wood, not a rotten stick in the load, all clean and it rang damn near dry when the chunks thumped into the stack for all that she'd ordered green, but at the count.
"That don't look like five cord to me."
Em didn't even turn. "Racked it up at my wood-yard. Five cord plus. I give good measure."
"Don't doubt. But I know how much that shed holds. Six and a half, maybe seven, I make it."
Now he stopped tossing splits to his helper and shrugged. "Loose-stacked for dryin'. Spreads out."
"I know how much that shed holds, 'loose-stacked for drying.' You'll never feed the wife and kids by giving your work away. How much do I owe you?"
He turned back to unloading his truck. "I'll send you a bill."
Oh, hell. He was going to be difficult. "Emmanuel Anson Beals, I asked how much I owe you. You got a family to feed."
He tossed the last two sticks over the tailgate and stood up in his truck bed, hands on his hip-bones, and stretched kinks out of his spine. "Seems I remember you spent two weeks solid with Millie, after she lost the baby. We never saw a bill for that."
Pigheaded clamdiggers . . . "The hospital paid me."
A shake of his head. "Hospital never paid for two weeks care, twenty-four hours a day, plus cooking, cleaning, sleeping with the kids. We still owe you. Wood's just on the account. I've got maybe two days in it, total, plus diesel and chainsaw gas."
"Em, either you take a check with you or you leave this dooryard with some bad thoughts following you. Take your choice."
He winced. His family had lived in Stonefort long enough to know damned well what "bad thoughts" meant from the resident witch. "Five cord, fifty bucks a cord."
And he'd charge family or close friends a hundred a cord. Going rate this fall, cost of fuel oil being what it was. But if she wrote out a check for that, he'd never cash it. Come to think of it . . . she ducked back into the house and came out with her wallet instead of the checkbook. "Six cords, fifty bucks a cord, three hundred."
She counted out cash, tens and twenties plus some slight-of-hand. He shook his head and took it. Sometimes you just had to be firm with these people.
Switch the subject before he gets stubborn. Or counts the bills himself and sees the fifties you palmed in to make fair value. "You seen Kate around town? Her cell phone's switched off and I need to talk to her."
That drew a lifted eyebrow. "I think I saw her headed out by Davidson's Brook. Maybe an hour, two ago. When we were bringing the second load."
He climbed into his truck with his helpers, started it up with a diesel roar, and pulled out, leaving her frowning. Davidson's Brook? Damn-all out that way, scattered houses and the tidal creek where Morgans used to careen their ships to clean the hulls.
Kate's mom and stepfather lived out there, but that just meant she'd be more likely to take another road. Kate avoided them like they carried plague. Probably even worse now that those missing legal papers had added tension to the mix.
Alice shook her head and turned back to the woodshed. World might be screwed up and all, but she had next year's wood in while she was still burning the last of last year's. Dry wood under cover was money in the bank. That had been true since before Stonefort ever heard of banks.
Then she noticed Daniel Morgan by the corner of the house, that Morgan way of never being visible until he wanted to be seen. She wondered how long he'd been there. He still seemed more Indian than any dye job had a right.
"You look like a man with a question."
"Two, really. You got a minute?"
She nodded and led him into the house, into the parlor, sat, and waited. He didn't look happy.
"Couple of things, like I said. Ben's been an ass, not like him at all, that blow-up about Gary and his girlfriend. Now the boy's gone missing. You've got a way of finding people. I don't want to know where he is, just if he's alive and healthy."
That one was easy. She knew Gary. The House knew Gary, he'd been here many times. His sisters, both sides, had lived under this roof. Spirit bond, DNA trace, whatever. "You want to find Gary, Caroline would be the better bet. Not just those Dragons they wear. I think they share about half their souls."
Daniel nodded. Still, she could use a focus. She opened the old china cabinet and pulled out a massive chunk of sea-green tourmaline. Haskell women had been finding visions in its crystal depths since a glacier peeled it out of some rockface and dumped it alongside the bay far back in the aboriginal dreamtime. It pulled your eyes into its endless heart and cast your thoughts free to wander.
Wander.
Wander.
Alice shook herself loose and found the parlor around her again, no clue how long she'd stood there lost. "He's alive. He's hurting, I can't tell if it's physical or mental, but he doesn't think he's in danger. He does not want to be found."
Daniel nodded again, looking grim, and stared out through the plaster walls. She put the crystal back and returned to the parlor, sitting across from him. Going by his face, Gary wasn't the worst puzzle he wanted solved. She waited.
Finally he took a deep breath and focused on her. "Second thing is this. Like I said, Ben's been acting strange." Daniel handed her a photo he'd pulled out from inside his jacket.
"We had someone prowling around Morgans' Point, before and after that body showed up. We moved stuff out of the house and tunnels, in case people started poking noses where they shouldn't be poked. Including that.
"Then someone followed me out to the . . . where I've been staying. Stole that. Didn't take anything else. Makes me wonder if the someone was following me, or that. That thing has a strange feel about it. As if it's in your territory. Witch territory."
Alice stared at the photo in her lap. It was a beautiful photo, as sharp and detailed as the object it portrayed. And the object was beautiful, delicate, a priceless masterpiece of pre-Colombian art. Mayan, she'd seen its cousins in Caroline's Anthro texts. She could almost touch it. She felt it. Felt the menace of it, chilling her spine and waking the memory of hot red blood on hungry stone. Her stomach clenched with fear, and her fingers trembled and plucked at her jeans rather than hold the photo of the thing.
There sat the jaguar out of her dreams.
"You fools. You damned, larcenous, blind fools. I thought Ben had learned when he brought me that Kachina, so I could send it back to the People where it belonged. These things have power. These things live. You don't own them, they own you. At least that one helped her People. This one ate them. I can't even begin to guess how much blood this thing has drunk, how many lives."
Photos captured the soul. That thing held an evil soul. She didn't want to touch the photo. She tore her eyes away from it and stared off into nothing, afraid.
"You broke it, you bought it. You have to get that damned thing back. Don't let your damn fool brother anywhere near it, either. It owns him. He wouldn't do what it wanted, so now it has found someone who will. Pray to God and all His saints and angels that Tupash doesn't have the strength to rule it yet. If he does . . ."
Alice shook herself, trying to work off the chill. "Sometimes you damned Morgans are more trouble than you're worth. I'll see if the bats can find it. Take the picture. Take it and get the fuck out of here."
The witch tells you to leave, you leave. Daniel left, with the photo. The House told her that, told her the door wouldn't open again for man or beast unless she willed.
Jackie. Tupash. That thing, Jaguar. She had to find Kate.
Jaguar was out there. Jaguar hunted blood to slake the thirst of dry centuries. Alice tried to calm her shaking hands. She was safe inside the House. Pass through the door . . .
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou are with me . . .
The Valley had come to Stonefort, and Alice felt fear in spite of King David's bravado.
Our Father, who art in heaven . . .