Zach and Gilbert Altman arrived at Deegie’s house just as the sun was going down, and when Deegie opened the door to greet them, they were silhouetted by a glorious sunset of purple and gold, the colors of royalty. She took this as a good omen, and let them in. Gilbert was a little shorter and two years younger than his brother, but his hair was every bit as red. When she met his eyes, Deegie saw that Zach was correct: they were the exact shade of pale ice-blue as her own. Despite the still-hectic and unpacked condition of her home, she greeted them confidently enough, and ushered them into the living room.
Before he seated himself on Deegie’s couch, he surveyed the room, head cocked to the side as if he were listening to something. “There are quite a few entities in here,” he said as he slowly lowered himself to the couch.
Deegie frowned. “One. Unless you count the—”
“Cats? Is that what I feel?” Gilbert leaned forward and peered down the long hallway. His smile wavered around the edges. “And is that the basement door down there?”
“Yes, and yes.” Deegie glanced over at Zach, who shook his head and shrugged.
“I didn’t tell him any of this, I swear,” he said. “I just asked if he wanted to check out an old house.”
“He didn’t,” Gilbert confirmed, and he settled back against the couch cushions with a smile. “I never want people to tell me what’s going on in their homes. I insist on finding out myself.” He cast his eyes around the room again, then settled his gaze on Deegie. “There’s a lot going on in here. Interesting.”
“It has been interesting, yes.” His frosty blue eyes were a little unsettling, but only because they were so very much like her own. Deegie felt no ill will from him, but there was an odd sort of connection, a kinship almost.
“You should visit her shop someday,” Zach put in. “Now that’s interesting!” Even as he jested, Zach shivered: Deegie could tell he felt the presence of something else here.
“Get comfortable,” Deegie said, “and I’ll be back with tea. I have a bunch of herbal teas from the shop; I’ll bring them out.”
In the kitchen, she filled a basket with the teas and arranged slices of store-bought banana bread on a platter. When she turned to a cabinet to reach for the teacups, she wasn’t at all surprised to see Gilbert, leaning against the door jamb and smiling his serene smile. “I’ll help carry some of this for you,” he said.
“Thank you. That would be nice.” She handed him napkins and plastic forks and tried not to look at his eyes. “I really appreciate you coming here to check things out.” She kept her tone casual and light; she was not quite ready to reveal her true self to him, although he was a witch just like she was. She’d felt it the minute he walked through the doorway.
“Hey, you can stop pretending you don’t know what’s going on,” Gilbert said around a mouthful of banana bread.
“I don’t know what you mean.” She pretended to study her chipped red nail polish.
“Your parents told you to never tell anyone too, huh?” He picked up the basket of tea and tucked the napkins and plastic forks inside. His voice was casual, as if he’s been chatting about the weather. “We natural-borns get that all the time. Did you make up your own names for spells when you were a kid? I sure did.”
Deegie picked up the kettle and set it down again. She picked up an embroidered dishtowel and refolded it over the oven door handle, then gave up. There was really no point in denying it when they both knew what was going on. “Yes,” she said, and ventured a laugh. “Yes, I sure did.”
“We should compare notes sometime.” Gilbert nudged open the kitchen door with his shoulder and paused. “But right now we have a unique set of ghostly circumstances to investigate, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do.” Relief and elation mixed and showed on her face; it had been so long since she’d met another like herself.
“Tea first,” Gilbert said. “Come on!”
“Wait!” Deegie held up a hand and lowered her voice. “Does Zach know? About me, I mean.”
“He told me he had his suspicions, but he wouldn’t bring it up unless you did first. Said he could tell by your eyes. Magical people tend to have unusual eyes, didn’t you know that?”
“Well, I—”
“Another thing we can chat about! Cool!” Gilbert shoved open the door again, and Deegie followed him out into the living room to rejoin Zach.
The three of them drank their tea and ate their banana bread, and finally Gilbert just came right out and said it: “So what’s in the basement, Deegie?”
She was caught off-guard all over again, and her teacup and saucer jittered in her lap. “Oh! Well, it’s, ah ...” She sipped tea and tried again. “I found jars full of strange herbs. Stuff that ... witches ... rarely use anymore, poisonous stuff.”
“What else, Deegie?” Zach leaned toward her encouragingly. “It’s cool, I know what you are.” He chuckled. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
She shrugged. “I already have the reputation for being the town weirdo. I don’t usually tell people unless I’m very close to them. Spencer—my ex-boyfriend—he didn’t even know. He just thought I liked the Goth look.”
Bast awoke from his nap under the kitchen table and joined the trio of humans. He stalked across the coffee table, investigating cups and plates, then found Deegie’s lap. He sat there, purring incessantly, and watched the conversation.
“There’s something else in that basement though, Deegie. What else did you find? I can feel it, but you saw it.” Gilbert reached out to pat Bast’s tiny head as he asked his question.
“Fingers.” said Deegie. “I found a jar with human fingers in it. I put it back on the table and got the hell out of there.” She shredded the edge of her napkin as she spoke; her own agitated fingers needed something to do. “It looks to me like someone was trying to raise demons. It had to have been a long time ago though. Those jars are almost black with crud.”
“We ran into Shit Storm Murphy the other night,” Zach put in. “He was babbling on about a couple of brothers who rented rooms here and tried to raise a demon way back in the 1920s, then supposedly committed suicide. We thought he was just telling another one of his tall tales, you know how he is, then Deegie finds this stuff, and, well, maybe he wasn’t fibbing this time.”
“Really? Old Shit Storm’s still alive? I’ll be damned. I never heard anything bad about this old place, though. It’s been sitting here boarded up since we were kids. It would be interesting to do a little research on it, though. Perhaps a trip to the library is in order.” He scanned the room again, paying special attention to the high, pressed tin ceiling. “I don’t feel any residuals from a suicide, though. Do you, Deegie?”
“No, but if what Murphy said is true, then the Underworld would have gobbled up their souls immediately. Demons love suicides.” Her lips tightened in a forced smile. “But I’m sure you know that, right?”
“Hmm. Interesting concept. We’ll go down there later and check it out. All three of us. Maybe all we need to do is throw all that crap away and give everything a good psychic scrubbing.” Gilbert put his hands briefly to his forehead and drew in a deep breath. “Now then,” he said. “The ghosts. A female, correct?”
“Yes. I’ve heard her voice. I’ve contacted her a couple of times.” Oh for crying out loud! she raged inwardly. I finally get a chance to talk to another witch, and he turns out to be an uppity know-it-all! She sat on her hands and made her face serene.
Gilbert nodded, and smiled with his eyes closed. “Yes, a woman. An older lady, and she’s a little slow, isn’t she? Mentally challenged, maybe. Sweet, though, and kinda timid.”
“Yes, that’s her. She has trouble communicating, but it never occurred to me that she might be, um, slow. Is she here?”
“Standing right over there by the door.” Gilbert pointed in that direction. “She’s looking at you, I think, and—oh! Cats! So many of them! I think it’s safe to say that you have a ghostly crazy cat lady living here with you.”
“Yeah, I think so too.” Deegie said. “There’s a pet cemetery in the backyard, as a matter of fact.”
“I’d love to see it sometime.” Gilbert made a dismissive gesture with his hands and stood up. “Now then. The basement. Tell me how you found those jars. It’s important. Did you go down there of your own free will, or was something calling to you?”
Deegie lifted her chin, and she heard Zach snicker. She couldn’t decide whether to be amused or annoyed by Gilbert’s take-charge attitude; he reminded her of one of those motivational speakers who think they have all the answers. She admitted to him that she had indeed felt overwhelmingly compelled to find the key to the basement door, unlock it, and go shuffling down those stairs in her bunny slippers and explore the still, shadowy bowels of the house.
“Yes, I thought it was the cat lady, but when I got down there, I felt something else. Residual energy, maybe? It felt completely different than the energy from the lady and her cats. It was far from friendly. The second time I went down there—well, I really don’t remember much about that. It was like ... like sleepwalking. I’m not really sure what happened.”
“Interesting. And yes, sleepwalking is one possibility.” Gilbert extended his arm in the direction of the basement door. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what’s down there.”
The three of them headed down the hallway with Bast bringing up the rear. When they got to the door, Tiger Spirit rose up and blocked the way, his nebulous form rasping against the old wood. His jungle-like smell was thick and cloying.
Gilbert stumbled back a foot or two, as if he’d been pushed aside. “I see we’ve met your guardian,” he said stiffly. “My parents never summoned one for me when I was a kid, but I sure wanted one. Tiger, right?”
“Yes, a Bengal. I call him Tiger Spirit. He doesn’t want us to go downstairs.”
The old four-panel door rattled against its frame as Tiger brushed past it again. A hot, damp cloud of his breath billowed out and warmed the space in front of them. Zach picked up Bast, backed up a few steps, then hurried back down the hallway, trailing his apology behind him. “Sorry, guys. I’m sitting this one out! Getting a little too weird for me!”
Gilbert looked like he wanted to laugh, but didn’t quite make it. His freckled cheeks reddened and his voice lost a great deal of its former confidence. “Can you ... call him off or something? Nothing will happen down there, I promise.”
“I know that, but he obviously senses something or he wouldn’t be doing this.”
Deegie reached down and made stroking motions in the empty space between herself and the door. Her fingers found the ruff of fur around Tiger’s neck, and she muttered soft words into his velvety ear, telling him she would be fine, that she was protected and would be right back. The grunting huff of the big feline receded down the hall a few paces, and the pressure in front of the door eased. Deegie and Gilbert switched on their flashlights and crept into the yawning black throat of the basement, and Tiger brought up the rear in a sinuous ripple of air.
The work table with its grim cargo appeared further away than it had on her first trip down here, and the back wall was canted somehow, sloping at an angle she hadn’t noticed before. Tiger Spirit paced close to their legs as they drew closer, and a soft growl hovered in his throat. Deegie saw the blurred footprints her slippers had left behind the other night, saw the smudges her hands had left on the filthy jars.
“The one with the fingers is right in the middle,” she said when they got to the edge of the table. “There are at least five of them in there. Didn’t really stick around to count them once I realized what I was looking at.”
“Can’t blame you for that.” Gilbert used his flashlight to spotlight the rows of mysterious jars. They reflected muted, sooty light, and exuded a graveyard chill. He picked up the jar with the most disturbing contents and held it in front of his face so he could examine the things inside. “Yup, those are fingers all right!”
“Put it down.” Deegie patted the clean spot on the table where the jar had sat for so long. “Don’t even touch that one.” She slid another jar to the front of the table, the one bearing the label Roots of Both Hellebores. “Look. When was the last time you saw or even heard of herbs like this? This shit was used for raising demons, according to what my dad used to tell me. And look at this one.” She slid another jar though the coating of dust on the table. “Black Henbane. Necromancers use this stuff!”
“Whoa. You weren’t kidding, were you?” Gilbert reached out for the jars again, but she slapped his hands away.
Tiger Spirit paced anxiously, and he nudged repeatedly at the two witches. His great, unseen body scraped against the table, and the jars rattled together. The motion caused one of the dried fingers to roll away from its partners, and its yellowed nail clinked against the glass.
“I don’t understand the fingers, though,” said Gilbert. “The herbs, sure. Looks like someone was determined to raise a demon, or Ol’ Scratch, or something, but why use fingers in the spell?”
“An offering, maybe?”
“Could be, could be.” He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered extravagantly. “And you were right about the residual energies down here! Whoo! Brrr!”
The motivational speaker was back, arrogant and a trifle condescending. Deegie smiled anyway; he was irritating, yet charming in an odd sort of way. “Yeah, it’s creepy,” she agreed. “I don’t feel any actual entities, though.” She hesitated and added, “Do you?”
Gilbert scanned the room, one loosely curled hand raised to his chin in a pose that looked more affected than wise. “No, nothing.”
“Okay then. Let’s just find a box and start getting rid of this stuff. I’ll probably never use this room for anything but storage, but I sure don’t want these jars in here. Afterwards, we can smudge the place. I brought a couple of sage bundles, and I have plenty of salt.”
***
Upstairs in the living room, Zach sat on the patchwork couch with Bast on his lap as he listened to the muffled voices of Deegie and Gilbert drift up through a vent on the wall. He could still hear the sound of Deegie’s spirit guardian, that menacing ungh, ungh, ungh that a big cat makes just before a roar. He hadn’t meant to run off like that, but Zach had never experienced anything like Tiger Spirit before. Not even being the only “normal” in a magical family had prepared him for that. He was a little embarrassed for running off, too. Now his brother was down in the basement with the girl he liked. Zach glared at the basement door and ran a gentle hand over the purring black kitten on his lap.
“What the heck’s going on around here, kitty?” he asked, watching the little animal swat at his hands with its tiny paws. “Are there ghosts in here? Huh?”
Bast raised his head and eyed the kind human with the big red beard. His lap was a nice place to hang out for a while, but the tiny black kitten had important cat things to do, like finding out who was calling here, kitty, kitty ... over by the stairs. Bast leaped off the human’s lap and only stumbled a little when he landed. The voice called to him again, gently, hesitantly, and the black kitten homed in on its source. Just right over there, next to the kitchen doorway. It was one of those hazy, indistinct humans, the kind that looked like they were made from smoke. Oh, and a few of the smoke cats, too! Bast loved to play, and he didn’t mind if his playmates were a little different. The smoke cats played a great game of hide-and-seek; sometimes they disappeared entirely!
Here, kitty, kitty ... Come to Lisbet ...
The human’s outline wavered as she knelt down to stroke his fur.
Good kitty ... won’t hurt you ...