We sneer at happily ever afters, but they do exist. They're just not always what you expect. But maybe that’s the romance writer in me—I have to believe.
I wove my hands above the floor of my ritual temple/garden shed. I'd just reached the tricky part of a complicated binding spell. It would empower my new, portable magic circle and demon trap, made from two painted sheets of canvas.
Today was the last of a twenty-one-day ceremony to consecrate and empower the two painted sheets of canvas. The past three weeks had involved fasting, meditation, chanting, getting up before dawn, and Nick, the love of my life, wrangling our newborn son, Mitch, and our terrible-two's daughter, Emmie.
I owed Nick. Big.
And I was minutes away from completing the ritual. The shed was freezing, but sweat dripped down my forehead.
I shoved aside thoughts of space heaters and refocused my attention. Focus was critical. We were after big game with this trap—the biggest my sisters and I had tackled so far.
A real demon, bound to a deadly spell book. Or at least it was as real as a thought-form demon created by decades of Lovecraft fans could be. And that was surprisingly real.
By Day Twenty-One, I'd memorized the incantation like nobody's business. My hands now moved in a blur, plaiting my own, personal, binding mudras.
Inside my outdoor shed, turned makeshift temple, the energies built, the hair lifting on my arms. A spark crackled from my fingertips. I blinked. Had that really happened?
A tiny hand banged on the door of the shed, and I flinched. “Mommy, no!”
I forced my muscles to relax and kept weaving. The trap was for my daughter’s safety too. Emmie would have to wait. I visualized the threads of my weaving building into a three-dimensional Eve's grid.
“No,” Emmie wailed. The plastic door shuddered.
Good Lord, was she kicking it?
Cleansing breaths. Emmie would be fine. And the neighbors had heard worse.
My toddler shrieked, entering full melt-down mode. “No magic shack! No magic shack! No, no, no!”
My movements faltered. She'd managed to string three words together? And magic shack? She'd heard me say that? The walls of my shed seemed to vibrate beneath her wails.
I stifled a curse. The whole block could probably hear my toddler.
The canvases were empowered enough.
I dropped my weaving. A sigh of magic fluttered to the canvases. A lock clicked in my center. I blew out my breath. The spell was complete.
Irritation twining with guilt and anxiety, I yanked open the door. “Emmie, good heavens. What’s wrong?”
My daughter stuck her finger in her rosebud mouth. She stood on the lawn dressed in her favorite pink parka. A strand of Christmas lights was draped over one shoulder. The hood stood up like a gnome's.
“Santa.” She pointed at my still-rounded stomach.
Thanks, kid. “You’ve already seen Santa,” I said. “You’re going to have to wait for Christmas now.”
“Want cookie.”
How quickly our priorities change. I smiled and unwound the holiday lights from her jacket. “No. You can't have a cookie. You'll spoil your lunch.”
“No!”
“You're really not going to get anywhere with that attitude.”
I took Emmie’s hand and glanced into the shed. The canvases lay beside a pair of my aunt's best scissors. I'd empowered these as well as an all-purpose ritual tool–a wand and athame in one.
A demon trap in my shed. What was I exposing my children to?
I stepped outside and quickly padlocked the door.
Baby in his muscular arms, Nick hurried around the corner of our ranch house. His t-shirt stretched admirably across his chest. There’s nothing sexier than a man holding a baby. A piece of my heart melted at the sight.
“Sorry,” he panted. “She got away from me.” His thick, carob-colored hair was rumpled. I ached to smooth it.
“It's fine.” My hand automatically went to my stomach. When I’d had Emmie, my body had snapped back into shape like a new rubber band. It had been nearly seven weeks since Mitch’s birth, and I hadn’t gotten rid of the baby fat in my gut.
As Nick neared, I noticed the spit-up stain on the shoulder of his blue tee. “I'm sorry you've had to do double duty these last three weeks,” I said.
“Want cookie!” Emmie's tiny face screwed up into a demonic howl.
“At least she's stopped screaming you-know-what,” Nick said. “How did she even remember that?”
“It must be the rhyme.” Once I'd said the words “magic shack,” they’d been impossible to get out of my head.
Emmie sobbed and kicked at the damp lawn.
“Someone needs a time out.” I scooped her up and walked across the patchy lawn toward our house.
Nick easily kept pace. “Did you finish the circle and triangle?”
Pain flared in my palm, and I rubbed the spot of an old spider bite. “Barely. Now I just need the disk of Solomon.” A local garage mechanic who dabbled in alchemy was making it for me, and it wasn't cheap.
But it would be worth it.
He opened the door for me.
I caught him glancing over his shoulder at the shack, a pensive look on his chiseled face.
“I'll be glad when this is over too,” I said quietly.
“I know,” he said. “And there's no one else to do it. I just don't like having that book so close to home.”
“I've been reinforcing the protective wards around the house and the shack every day. No one magical is getting in, and the book’s not getting out.” Not on my life. Not with a demon locked inside.
The sun vanished behind a cloud. I shivered and stepped inside the house.
Nick’s mouth firmed into a line. He nodded. “And it's our turn to keep the spell book. Fair’s fair. But when each of your sisters held the book, they nearly got killed. First Lenore by that murderer, and then Jayce–”
“What murer?” Emmie demanded.
I started, then relaxed. She was asking what the word meant, not for the identity of a killer.
“Those problems had nothing to do with the book,” I said. “They were only a coincidence.” But I frowned. Had they been?
I was so sick of the book. I was sick of its dark magic hammering at me no matter how much salt we buried it in. I was sick of the fear. The image of that dark smoke I’d seen in the hospital rose before my eyes, and involuntarily, I glanced at Mitch.
My stomach tightened. Had the black book known it would come to me, even then? Dread wove through my gut. Had the demon inside it—?
I stumbled over the entry rug and managed not to swear.
Nick smiled. “You look tired. Want me to draw you a bath?”
“Then I’ll fall asleep. I've been cooped up in that mag—that shed since dawn.”
“A hike?”
I set Emmie down and studied him. “Are you trying to get rid of me? Because you’ve watched the kids every morning for the last twenty days.”
“I promised Emily I'd bring Emmie and Mitch Christmas shopping with her today.”
“That's a wonderful idea. I'll come along...” I trailed off.
Nick stared hard at the coat tree, and my chest pinched. Nick's sister was afraid of me.
My hometown, Doyle, existed on a thin place between the worlds. Something once had gotten through and taken Emily. My sister-in-law knew it hadn’t been my fault. My sisters and I had actually saved her. But she sensed our connection to Doyle’s magic.
That wasn't her fault. It wasn't mine either, but I wasn't the one with PTSD.
I swallowed and nodded. “A hike’s exactly what I need. I'll change.” I picked up Emmie and moved down the carpeted hallway.
“Karin.”
I turned.
Nick's handsome face twisted with pain. “She still hasn't recovered.”
“I know,” I said gently. “It's okay. Emily’s why we’re going to destroy the black book. We can’t let others go through that horror.” I forced a smile. “And maybe I'll get some Christmas shopping done after my hike.”
He reached for me with his free hand and pulled me and Emmie closer. Nick brushed his mouth against mine, then kissed me more firmly. “I love you.”
My eyes heated. I pulled away and stepped toward the living room.
Emmie rested her head against my chest, the top of her blond curls brushing my neck. She’d calmed, no time-out needed.
An ache swelled my heart. Since we'd brought Mitch home from the hospital, Emmie hadn't been getting as much attention. And lately, I'd been spending my mornings in the shed.
All my daughter had wanted was time with her mom. I, of all people, couldn't blame her for that.
I brought Emmie with me as I changed into my hiking gear, which consisted of a few pastel layers. It wasn’t that cold for December. This would be a simple walk in the woods and maybe some quality time with my sisters later.
But I packed extra food and water in my backpack. The trails in Doyle had a tendency to shift in odd directions when you weren't looking.
Reluctantly, I handed Emmie off to Nick and caressed her cheek. “Maybe the twos aren't so terrible,” I said.
“We’ll all get through them,” he said, smiling.
I tried to swallow and found I couldn’t.
I hugged the people I loved goodbye and walked to my cherry-red SUV, parked on the street. The skin at the back of my neck prickled. Stilling, I looked around.
The charming residential street was empty. The bare branches of the elms and pines were twined with unlit twinkle lights and oversized Christmas ornaments. A few of my neighbors’ cars were parked in front of their Victorians, but no one was in sight.
Biting my lip, I trotted back into our yard. I unlocked the shed and grabbed the black book in its cereal box packed with salt. I put that inside my pack too and tossed it in the passenger seat of my car.
I took another long look at the street then glanced back at my house, a rude newcomer among the graceful Victorians. Starting the SUV, I pulled from the curb.
Despite what I'd told Nick, I didn't like to leave the dark spell book home alone.
I didn't know if the demon trapping spell we’d planned would work. I didn't know if the black book was safer with me or surrounded by my property's wards. I didn't know if removing the demon from the book would finally enable us to destroy it. We'd already thought we'd solved this problem once.
We’d been wrong. And when you're a witch, ignorance is not bliss. It’s deadly dangerous.
I drove up the mountain highway toward Doyle. Clumps of snow thickened on the side of the road. Pines took the place of oaks.
I wanted to take my family and run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to be one of those witches who could see the future, who knew what to do.
But the book was too dangerous to run from. In the wrong person’s hands, it would open gates between the worlds and let in all sorts of things that didn't belong here. Like the thing that had hurt my sister-in-law and so many others.
Four dangerous magicians had made a try for the book last May. Bad people still wanted that book. So did some good guys we didn’t quite trust.
My knuckles whitened on the wheel. The black book had to go.
The road straightened, and I accelerated. The backpack tipped over on the seat beside me.
Suspicious, I glanced at it, a knot forming in my belly. I told myself gravity had been responsible, not a demon in a book. But I didn’t know that either. Not for certain.
I drove for another thirty minutes before I pulled into a dirt parking lot, half-hidden by a stand of pines. My SUV bumped to a halt in front of the wooden sign that marked the trailhead.
After double-checking that I had all my gear and plenty of battery power on my phone, I strode down the narrow path. Not that battery power meant much. Cell service was a distant dream in this stretch of woods.
I crested a hill and felt a lightening in my chest. Nick may have been trying to get rid of me, but he'd been right. I'd missed the woods these last three weeks. I wasn't an earth witch, like my sister Jayce, or a shamanic witch, like my sister Lenore. But I'd grown up in these woods. These had been my childhood playground, and the familiar bounce of adventure tickled my heart.
Also, I really needed to work off this baby weight. It was getting embarrassing.
I lengthened my strides. My breath came in quick, happy gasps, cold stinging my cheeks. The trail was in decent shape—muddy in places and icy in others. Tree limbs dripped with snow melt. Rushing water played nearby, out of sight.
I clambered down a steep incline of massive granite stones. The stream glittered dully at the gully’s base, the water moving faster than I'd expect in winter. And even though it was rumored to be a fairy stream, I paused atop a boulder to admire its swirls and eddies. Stones flashed gold-brown beneath its clear water.
Sitting on a dry boulder, I pulled out my notebook and pen and jotted notes on the scene. I wasn't working on a manuscript now, but I had an idea for a new paranormal romance. There was no reason I couldn't write a love scene beside a mountain stream. I'd just make it summertime, when clothes were more likely to come off.
I grinned and finished my notes and clipped my pen to the notebook's cover. The rush of the water was soothing, its movements by my boots hypnotic.
But that was just my inner witch reacting. Streams symbolized all sorts of things—life and death, waking and sleep, speaking and silence.
A fairy stream.
And running water was also magically cleansing. Running spring water, associated with the fae, might have even more power.
Heart speeding, I looked around. I was alone in the high, narrow gully.
I pulled the cereal box from my pack and lifted the lid. Carefully, I tilted the box, pouring the salt into one of the pouches in my backpack. I didn't want to waste salt, and if this didn't work, I'd need it again.
Submersion in running water is a classic method for ridding a haunted object of attached entities. We’d tried and failed at destroying the spell book many times. So, this probably wouldn't work either. But I'd feel really stupid if banishing the demon was as simple as a bath in the local stream, and I hadn't tried.
The black-leather book fell forward. I lunged and caught it with my forearm, pressing it against the stone before it could fall into the stream.
I blew out a shaky breath. The book had nearly touched the skin on my wrist. Nearly, but not quite.
“Why do I even care if it gets wet?” Submersion was the whole point. Roughly, I shoved the book with my elbow. It splashed into the water.
The black book sank to the bottom. Its pages waved violently in the flow of the stream.
I knelt on the boulder and leaned over the water, watching. How would I know if I’d succeeded in banishing the demon? Would the ink bleed off the pages? Would the book disintegrate?
The rush of water grew louder. I pushed back and onto my knees. My mouth went dry.
A roar of foaming water raced toward me. A masculine figure flailed in the surge. I lurched to standing, too late.
The flash flood ripped my feet from under me, and I was gone.