Chapter Twenty-six

A week later, Donata was feeling more than a little frustrated. She’d called her great-aunt and explained what she needed, and by the following Thursday, a large dreamcatcher with the enchantment already attached arrived in Gimle. According to Tatiana, all Donata had to do to activate it was say the spell. The older Witch was fairly certain that this basic and minor magical task shouldn’t be affected by the baby’s disturbance of Donata’s powers.

After two days of trying, Donata wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t seen or felt any spectral activity at all. By Saturday morning, though, it occurred to her that she might be going about the entire thing the wrong way. The previous sightings had all been associated with one of the Ulf candidates who had a connection with that particular ghost. Now that each of them was wearing Odin’s protective amulet, perhaps there were simply no ghosts around to be caught.

So she’d asked Magnus to join her in the small building she’d used for her previous magical work, and had him take off the charmed rune stone and leave it outside the door. It was a risk, but at least this time he would be prepared and wouldn’t be a hundred feet up a cliff or in a tree. And frankly, it was the only thing left she could think of to try. Magnus, of course, was perfectly willing. He wanted to solve this mystery even more than she did.

Donata didn’t bother to create a protective circle. For one thing, she was pretty sure she couldn’t do it. For another, none of the ghosts had seemed malicious—it was simply the surprise of their unexpected appearances that had caused the accidents. She hoped like hell she wasn’t making a serious miscalculation, but she had the means to get rid of any unwanted spirit quickly, if she didn’t mind destroying their only tool before they got the answers they needed.

She stood in front of the dreamcatcher, which Magnus had hung from a hook on the ceiling. Tatiana had gone all out. The outer edge was woven out of grapevines and was almost two feet across. Iridescent peacock feathers hung down from the bottom, along with matching purple, blue, and green ribbons. The webbing strung across the middle was thin leather dyed in the same colors.

They’d purposely left the room fairly dim, not lighting any torches, so that it would be easier to make out any spirits who appeared. In the gloom, Donata could see a slight glow emanating from the dreamcatcher, a sign of the magical energy her great-aunt had imbued within it.

Magnus was a couple of steps away, off to her left, when she said the spell, praying that she’d figured out how to make the dreamcatcher work as she’d intended. If this didn’t succeed, they’d be back at square one.

“Ghosts so kind, ghosts so dear, speak to us and we will hear. Ghosts, we call you, now appear!”

Tatiana had kept the spell really basic, just in case, and had written it, as Donata had requested, to ensure that they were only calling on the spirits they wanted to see, and hopefully giving them the power to communicate, which they’d lacked during any interactions with the Ulfhednar. Because Donata had a natural gift for speaking to the dead, she thought she would probably be able to hear them anyway—she’d heard Freddy’s brother, after all, although her screwed-up powers made it difficult. But if this spell worked as she hoped it would, then Magnus should be able to hear the ghost as well.

If it worked.

She said the spell loudly and with focus, and then they waited. It didn’t take long.

A figure slowly appeared before them, first indistinct and then becoming clearer, as if it was tuning in on the call of the magic. A tall blond man with short-cropped hair and faded blue eyes, he was a little too rugged to be handsome, but she suspected that in life he had had a certain rough charm. His face bore an expression of mixed joy and confusion when he caught sight of Magnus.

Magnus’s own face mirrored that of the spirit, but sadness darkened his bright blue eyes. “Calder,” he said. “My old friend.” He put out a hand and then dropped it to his side, gazing helplessly at Donata, clearly out of his depth.

“Hello, Calder,” Donata said, taking a step closer to the dreamcatcher and the figure beside it. When the ghost tried to move away, it became clear that the spell had worked. A hint of panic joined the confusion.

“It’s okay,” Donata said in a soothing tone. In her experience, ghosts tended to be somewhat childlike in their reactions, and she tried to talk to them as clearly and simply as she could. “It won’t hurt you. The magic is just there to help you stay here until we’re done talking. I’m a friend of Magnus’s, and we need to ask you some questions. Is that okay?”

Calder nodded his head slowly, his attention mostly still on Magnus.

“Why aren’t you in Valhalla, where you belong?” Magnus asked, his tone strained. He’d probably rather be fighting a herd of wild boars than doing this.

“I wish I was,” Calder said. Donata breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at Magnus to see if he’d heard.

“You were in Valhalla, my brother, weren’t you?”

A smile lit up his friend’s face and made him almost handsome. “Oh, yes. It was just as wonderful as they had always promised us. All my friends and family who had gone before were there, and we spent the days drinking and feasting and playing games. There was no more pain, and I never grew tired. The sun always shone.” His expression darkened. “But then something happened, and I was pulled away.”

“Pulled away by whom?” Donata asked. “Do you know?”

He nodded unhappily, tiny wisps of ectoplasm floating off into the air around him. “It was a priestess of the goddess Idunn. She said it was the goddess’s command that I had to leave Valhalla and go home, and if I did, I would be reborn and be a youth again, free to live my life all over. I didn’t want to go—once you are in Valhalla, existence on this plane doesn’t seem so appealing—but I found I couldn’t resist her pull. She must have had the goddess’s blessing, to have been so strong.”

Huh. Somehow Donata wasn’t so sure.

“Why appear only to Magnus?” she asked. “Why not your family or your other friends?”

“I don’t know,” Calder said. “It was as though I was directed to him. But I was only able to come through to him once, and then he couldn’t seem to hear me.” Agitation made his outline waver. “He got hurt because of me.”

“It’s okay,” Magnus said. “I’m fine. It was just a surprise, that’s all.”

“Did you know that others had been brought back as well?” Donata asked.

“I thought I saw a few of my friends from Gimle who had been with me in Valhalla,” he said. “But I could never get close to them to be sure.”

“Hmm.” It was about time to wrap this up. Both Calder and Magnus were getting more miserable by the minute. And really, she only had two more questions to ask.

“This priestess,” she said. “Could you tell what clan she was from?”

Calder wrinkled his forehead, as if remembering something. “Yes, I could. I recall thinking it was odd that a priestess from the badger clan would be contacting me, and not one from our own Bear clan.”

Next to her, Magnus stiffened, and she held out an unobtrusive hand to keep him from saying anything.

“Did you see anyone else with this woman? Was she alone, or was there someone with her?”

Calder scratched his head, not realizing his fingers weren’t quite touching his skull. “Now that you ask, I think there was a figure standing behind her, in the shadows where I could barely make out anything but a glow in the shape of a person.”

“A glow,” Donata repeated, a trifle grimly. Damn it. She’d known there had been someone else’s magic mixed up in this somewhere. “Thank you, Calder. You have been really helpful. Can you do one more thing for us?”

“I’ll try,” he said. “Will it help me get back to Valhalla? I don’t belong here anymore.” He gave a sad look in Magnus’s direction. “Although it has been good to see you again, old friend.”

Magnus nodded, trying to smile. “You too, Calder.”

Donata gestured at the dreamcatcher. “Can you put your hands on that, and call all the others? The ones who should be there and not here?” She turned to Magnus to explain. “My great-aunt designed this so it would only call one ghost initially to make it easier to communicate. But Calder should be able to call in all the others.” She turned back to Calder. “Go on, see if you can do it.”

The ghost reached out his hands, which seemed to become more solid as they entered the slight glow of the dreamcatcher. Slowly, one by one, all the other spirits appeared, standing in a circle around the dangling feathers and ribbons. Magnus spoke each of their names under his breath as they solidified enough to be recognized, and nodded his head at Donata when they were all present.

She pulled a small pair of silver scissors out of her pocket. “Rest well, play well, and be at peace,” she said, and then she cut the webbing that ran in crisscrossed lines through the middle of the dreamcatcher. Like popping bubbles, each of the ghosts vanished instantly.

Magnus made an involuntary move forward, as if to stop them.

“Where did they go?” he asked plaintively.

“Back to Valhalla, where they belong,” Donata said. “Hopefully this time for good.”

Magnus’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Damned straight. Come on, ’Nata. I think it is time we go have a talk with the Lawspeaker and the rest of the elders. They need to know about what we learned. And man, are they going to be pissed.”