Casters Series Box Set Page 34

  Alex’s black fingers made contact with the bracelets. Yes! They were still there, hooked on the branch where they’d left them. Not that they couldn’t easily have made new ones. But these particular bracelets had been gifts from Connie.

  Alex slid her slim bracelet on, then handed the others to Brooke and Maryanne, who did likewise. Already she could feel the surge of energy from the copper. Good. They might need it.

  Snow. It coated the branches around them. Pure, pretty, and dangerous.

  The white stuff was going to make things more risky for sure. More than ever they’d have to find and keep to the shadows. Connie used to take to the isolated caves at nearby Hants High Mountain in the winter, ensuring nobody would spot her lonely black form, but that wouldn’t do for these three. No way in hell.

  Normally, they would use the river. They could soar close over the dark waters of the Saint John without too much risk of being sighted, since they appeared only as depthless black shadows to human eyes. People couldn’t see the shimmering edges of their silhouettes like the girls could with their caster vision. Now, though, the cold, dark water they’d skimmed over before the Christmas break was a long stretch of white. Not exactly conducive to keeping hidden.

  “Come on!” Maryanne floated slowly down to hover closer to the ground. “Hurry up.”

  “Guess the river’s out, huh?” Alex said, dropping down to join her.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to stick to land,” Maryanne agreed. “We should be all right if we stay low, around the darkest buildings and hedges until we’re out of town a bit where the trees are thicker.”

  “Then where?” Brooke asked, clearly ready for anything.

  “Let’s stick to what we know,” Alex said. “Cruise some of the old places. Just for tonight, anyway—our first night back.” She was hoping they’d end up back where Connie’s nest had been, where she’d found Lily Michelle, deep in the woods. Even after the desecration of her nest, there was still something of Connie there. An echo.

  “Perfect,” Maryanne said. “Let’s go.”

  With that, Alex joined them and they soared behind the nearest house, an old Victorian almost as large as Harvell House. No matter what path they took, there was always a risk. There were bound to be angles where they would be starkly contrasted—black casters in the grey night, standing out clearly against the winter world. Their only defense was to move swiftly. At this low level, with all the houses around, no one could keep them in sight for long. They’d be nothing more than passing shadows.

  Powered by the copper bracelets, they moved quickly. Main Street was quiet, and they streaked across it at top speed, shooting in behind a row of close-set old buildings. From there, they soared along Camden Road, moving more easily when they got over Camden Park. When they reached the Trans-Canada Highway, it was simply a matter of skimming close along the treetops. Alex told herself that to a speeding vehicle, they would look like a scudding cloud. When they reached a familiar junction, they paused and hovered. By now, the houses were few and far between, and the cars even fewer.

  “Out the Old Road to Jacksonburg?” Brooke proposed. “We’re almost there anyway.”

  Silence hung in the night air between them. That route led to one place in particular—the Walker Farm. Brooke had been obsessed with Seth Walker before Christmas. Before he’d died…

  “Relax,” Brooke said. “I’m not going to slide into his house and—”

  “Weep at his bedside?” Alex finished.

  “Yeah, right,” Brooke said. “That’s so me. Not!”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Maryanne said. “Taking the Old Road, I mean. It’s not well travelled and even less well lit. And…familiar.”

  “Okay, I’m in,” Alex said, even though that direction wouldn’t take them to Connie Harvell’s old lair. It was, however, where they’d first met Connie. That memory tipped the scales for Alex, and she felt the excitement now. She felt it all. She twirled in the air and laughed. “God, it feels good to be out here again. I can feel the night around me.”

  “And it can feel us too,” Maryanne said.

  “Oh, I like that! Let the night feel us all!” Brooke laughed her delight. “Come on, sisters, let’s soar.”

  As one, the three casters rose up into the dark night sky.

  Chapter 4

  Legends and Legacies

  Maryanne

  Maryanne drank the night in.

  It was so much better here!

  No, she was better. Free and brave and strong. Maryanne the mouse was left behind. And the pain, the grief…it was still there, but it was away somehow. All of her turmoil was ‘over there’ when she cast out, set aside. Not forgotten, but at least distanced.

  The wind blew and she turned with it, over and over again.

  They’d been out for almost an hour now. They’d be yawning in class tomorrow. Well, Brooke and Alex would be. Maryanne wasn’t sure she’d bother going.

  She’d cast out over Christmas, despite the pact she’d made with the others. Oh wow, she’d had to. There wasn’t the same freedom back home in her Burlington subdivision as there was here, in the small town of Mansbridge. The houses back home were so close together and there were more streetlights to light up the night sky. So she’d planned her casting excursions very carefully and kept them short. Yet, brief as they were, they’d been such a relief. Enough to get her through the holidays.

  The one advantage she’d had in Burlington was that people weren’t always scanning the night skies for casters as they were in Mansbridge, especially now that the rumors were flying again. Connie had stayed incredibly well hidden for decades. Maryanne, Brooke, and Alex? Not so much.

  In fact, Maryanne had noticed new hex signs on the sides of a few houses along their familiar paths, where none had been before. Iron horseshoes hung over more door frames than had been the case before Christmas. She’d even seen some wreaths fashioned out of what appeared to be old railway spikes. Probably had heavy iron content in them. Maryanne shuddered just thinking about the pain of those spikes ripping through her caster body, the massive, debilitating energy drain.

  Iron. Nothing was more terrifying to a caster.

  Nor more dangerous.

  “Listen!” Alex commanded, stopping abruptly.

  Maryanne and Brooke stopped. They were very near the Walker farm now. Out of habit, rather than necessity, Maryanne cocked her head to the side as she listened.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  “Me neither,” Brooke said.

  Alex shook her head. “I could have sworn I heard a door —”

  A door slammed. Then it slammed again, like someone was having a hard time closing it. Then silence reigned again.

  “That came from the Walker place,” Maryanne said.

  “Well, duh.” Brooke splayed her hands. “Where else would it be coming from?”

  True enough. The closest house to the Walker farm was a good mile and a half up the road.

  “Lots of history here, huh?” Alex said.

  Neither Brooke nor Maryanne answered her, but by unspoken agreement, they all started toward the property. Just for a look. Just the memories drawing them closer.

  Yeah, right! As they moved through the tall pines near the property, her gaze was already raking the yard, looking for someone in particular. No dogs barked. Chances were, the Dobermans that normally guarded the property at night were already hightailing it away from the presence of the casters. Animals were terrified of them. As she, Brooke, and Alex drew closer, the horses in the barn begin to snort and whinny.

  They rested by the edge of the property, safe from detection amid the shadows of the trees.

  Maryanne stole a glance at Brooke. In their dark, empty caster forms, they couldn’t see the features of each other’s faces or read expressions. Well, except when they screamed the primal scream, but that was another matter entirely. But as Maryanne watched, she saw Brooke’s silhouette changing, tensing. She even seem
ed to take a shrinking step back somehow, as if the memories of all that had happened here were heavier than she let on.

  “Wonder who was slamming the door?” Alex murmured.

  The house was in darkness and no cars stood in the yard. But somewhere on the property, a wooden door had slammed several times, as though someone fought the frost to muscle it completely closed. Just as Maryanne’s eyes drifted over to the horse barn, a light came on in the smaller work shed nearby. The shed’s only window glowed a lonesome yellow in the grey night.

  “Bryce Walker.” Brooke said instantly, though the shed’s occupant couldn’t be seen.

  “How do you know?” Alex asked.

  Maryanne was more than curious herself.

  “He practically lives in that shed. Or so Seth used to tell me. He builds things out there. His grandfather used to do that too. The old man left all his tools to the boys when he died a couple years back. Seth wasn’t much interested in the carpentry stuff, but Bryce likes to build things.”

  “That’s nice,” Maryanne said.

  “Yeah well, the old buzzard left them something else you won’t think is so nice,” Brooke said. “All his notes.”

  Oh, crap. Maryanne’s heart sank. “What notes?”

  “Ira Walker’s notes on the Mansbridge Heller.” It was Alex who supplied the answer, though they all knew it. “On casters. On us.”

  Inside the shed, a figure passed by the frost-edged window, its quick pace showing purpose and determination. From the figure's height, Maryanne knew Brooke was right. It was Bryce.

  Her heart beat a little faster back in the attic, and queasiness rolled in her stomach. For some inexplicable reason, she found her caster hand wrapping around the thin band of copper on her wrist. It wouldn’t help her original back in the attic. This co-consciousness thing sucked sometimes. It would be so much cooler out here if she weren’t aware of every stress response of her original. Not to mention easier on her body back there if she didn’t have to sweat it every time their cast selves took a tiny little risk.

  The girls hovered in the silence.

  Ira Walker. The old man had been a mad ‘Heller’ hunter. He’d spent years pursuing the cast of Connie Harvell, believing her to be an evil abomination, a soul-stealing black ghost. And he’d spent his twilight years telling his young grandson, Bryce Walker, everything he knew—or thought he knew—about Hellers. Including how to hunt them, no doubt. How to trap them. Or worse.

  “I think it’s time to call it a night and head back to Harvell House,” Alex said. “And I vote we never come back here again.”

  “Yeah, amen to that,” Brooke agreed. Surprisingly, and perhaps a bit too easily, Maryanne thought.

  More surprising still, Maryanne found herself moving toward the little shed and its lighted window.

  “Maryanne!” Brooke hissed, surging up on Maryanne’s left. “What are you doing?”

  Alex cursed as she came up along her right side, but the hand she laid on Maryanne’s shoulder was a protective one.

  Maryanne shrugged it off. “I just want a closer look.”

  “At Bryce Walker?” Brooke shrilled.

  Back in the attic, the flop of a foot brushed against her shin, as if Brooke’s mostly-paralyzed original was looking to give her a kick.

  “Chill, Brooke. I just want to see what he’s doing.”

  And she did. She wanted desperately to sneak a peek at Bryce Walker. They hadn’t crossed paths since just before the American Thanksgiving when she’d seen him in the little hardware store on Main Street, but he’d certainly crossed her mind. More than a few times. And sometimes he’d appeared in her dreams. Not that she was about to tell that to Brooke or Alex.

  She moved toward the shed, part of her marveling at the risk she was taking. Thrilling in it.

  There was always a loss of inhibition when they cast out. Fear just seemed to…recede. That was true for all of them, but even more so for herself, she suspected. Yet even in this fearless state, she knew what she was doing was a little reckless.

  “It’s too dangerous!” Alex protested, but Maryanne ignored her. A quick look wouldn’t hurt anything.

  Reaching the window, she hovered in front of it, peering in. Bryce Walker stood with his back to her, his tall frame stooping over an old fashioned workbench. With two portable hanging lights shining down on his work area, the room was well lit. As long as it was brighter on the inside than the outside, he wouldn’t be able to see her. Well, see them. Alex and Brooke had joined her now and stared in, too.

  She looked around the room. It was like stepping back in time. A small, pot-bellied stove squatted in the corner, a full wood box beside it. The unfinished walls were lined with old license plates, discolored calendar pages, and rusted saws, some of them the largest Maryanne had ever seen, obviously used in the forest industry before chainsaws took over. High on the wall just above Bryce’s head, on a slightly off-kilter, plain board shelf, sat some small sculptures. They were not especially well done, but the subjects were recognizable. A brown owl, a green-shelled turtle, a leaning, peg-legged pirate with a parrot on his shoulder. Then there was the last thing resting on that crooked shelf. Or rather hanging from it.

  A dark caster, about seven inches tall with a long neck and outstretched arms and legs. Around its neck was a length of rope from which it dangled. As if alive, the caster—the Heller, as Ira Walker would have called it—seemed to sway and twist on the rope ever so slightly now and again, whenever Bryce nudged against the workbench, sending vibrations up the wall.

  “Oh, God! You’ve got the hots for Bryce Walker!” Brooke accused.

  “What?” The frown was clear in Alex’s voice. “No way!”

  “Haven’t we all had enough trouble from the Walkers?” Brooke’s voice rose again. “All those damn Walkers!”

  Maryanne didn’t miss that—we all. They all. Legends and hunters. They all had legacies.

  Nor did she answer. She kept staring in through the window, her eyes riveted on Bryce.

  “What’s he doing?” Alex asked, her curiosity apparently trumping her anxiety, at least for the moment.

  “I don’t know.” Maryanne said. “Something…something for shop class maybe?”

  “Right, Maryanne,” Brooke said. “Bryce Walker is in there finishing up that smokin’ bird house he’s been working on over the Christmas holiday! Give me a break! He’s just—”

  “Standing too still.” Maryanne’s words were a whisper, even to the casters’ ears. They all watched, silently now, as Bryce stood there, stone still and tense. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Then he did move, and suddenly. His right hand shot sideways to an electrical outlet just above the table, below the shelf. With one quick snap of the electrical cord, the shed was in darkness, and then the casters were not.

  As Maryanne processed what was happening, Bryce flew to the door and snapped on the yard light. The three of them were suddenly bathed in brilliant white light.

  “Go, go, go!” Alex shouted.

  They tore away from the window, just as the door flew open.

  “You soul-stealing bitches! You damned black ghosts!” Bryce’s breath emerged in great clouds of vapor that drifted in the cold air. “You’ve haunted us Walkers long enough! You’ve taken enough from us! Too damned much! I’ll send you back to hell if it kills me! All three of you! You hear me? I’ll send you all there if I have to take you there myself!”

  He’d seen them! All three of them. Oh, crap! He’d caught them spying!

  They were long out of range as he continued to rant, but Maryanne looked back to see him throw something in their direction. She watched the object sail through the air and fall to the ground. Manacles. Iron manacles, black against the crusted snow. She lifted her eyes to see Bryce Walker coming after them, breaking through the crust of the deeper snow banks and stumbling, the look of a madman on his face.

  No, not a madman. What had Connie told them? It was the look of Ira Walker.

  “O
h, Maryanne, what have you done to us?”

  Alex’s soft question made Maryanne’s heart pound even more painfully back in the attic. What had she done? Why had she acted so rashly?

  “Come on,” Brooke growled. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  They raced home, keeping low to the ground when it offered cover, and high in the sky when it didn’t, until they reached Harvell House again.

  They removed the copper bracelets quickly and hung them in the tree. Without the copper, Maryanne felt the drain of the evening pouring in. The three of them dragged their tired caster bodies over to the high window.

  Maryanne was first to the window, and meant it with every fiber of her dark being when she tapped her fingertips on the glass and started chanting, “I want in. I want in. I want in!”

  In an instant, she was. As always, the energy of the fusion of her caster form rejoining her original caused her body to skid halfway across the attic’s painted softwood floor. Alex and then Brooke plowed into her, the latter Maryanne suspected, with a bit more force than necessary.

  Brooke was on her feet in a flash. “What the hell, Maryanne?” Even in the dimness of the attic, Maryanne could see Brooke’s widened pupils. Pupillary dilation was a normal aftereffect of casting back in, but Maryanne suspected the force of Brooke’s fury had something to do with it too.

  Maryanne glanced toward Alex. If she’d been hoping for an ally in the other girl, her hope was short lived. Alex was on her feet, pacing. Then she stopped abruptly. “How did he know we were there? How the hell did he know?”

  Maryanne just lay there on the floor on her back. She threw her hands over her eyes.