Daughter of the Spellcaster Read online

  “No. We got worried and went looking, and we found your car along the side of the road, near the woods. Apparently you went into the woodlot, then tried to cut across the field to the house.”

  Selma blinked rapidly. “I don’t remember any of that. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I was out looking for you when you came stumbling out of the field. You were muddy, confused....”

  Her mother blinked, then said, “No. No, I don’t remember that at all.”

  “What do you remember, Mom?”

  Selma took a deep breath, pressed her hands to her forehead. “I remember the ritual at Betty’s. I remember getting into the car to come home....”

  “Was there mead?”

  “Yes. Jean’s homemade honey mead. She gave me a bottle to bring home. I promised to save it till after the baby comes and toast her with it.”

  “Did you drink any of the mead before you left Betty’s?” Lena asked.

  “Just the usual sip during the blessing of the cakes and ale. You know.”

  “Yes, I know.” The customary Wiccan circle closing included the sharing of a bite of food, often fruit or a baked item, and a sip of some beverage, usually wine or juice, to acknowledge the blessings of the earth. “So you didn’t drink any more than that? After you left or anything?”

  Selma shook her head, her eyes vacant. “No, honey, I don’t drink to excess, you know that.” She frowned. “It’s odd, though, I don’t remember much after leaving Betty’s house. There’s a big empty hole in my memory, and my head feels like it’s stuffed with wet cotton.” Squeezing her eyes tight, she said, “And it’s pounding pretty good, too.”

  “We’ll get you something for that. And I’m gonna call Doc, too, let him know you’re awake and everything.” Lena studied her mom’s face, looking hard for the telltale signs of a stroke or any other medical issue, but there were none. No lax facial features on one side, and she was speaking clearly and logically.

  The phone, she thought. I never looked at the phone. She had wiped it free of dirt and plugged it in to charge, then had gone to sleep before doing anything more.

  Nurse Eloise was back, tapping on the door frame, even though the door was open. She had a tray in her hands, with a bowl of oatmeal, a tall glass of water and a cup of tea.

  “Wow. You work fast,” Lena said.

  “Instant oatmeal, two minutes in the microwave. She needs something in her stomach.” She moved closer, and her demeanor changed just a little bit. She seemed lighter, friendlier. “There now, Selma, how are you feeling?” Her voice was lighter, too.

  This must be her bedside manner, Lena thought. Odd, how she turned it on like a light.

  “My head is pounding, and I seem to have lost a chunk of time, but other than that...” Selma shrugged. “I’d rather have you fussing over Lena, though.”

  The nurse slid a sideways look at Lena as she lowered the tray across Selma’s lap. As she bent over, a pendant fell from the neck of her white uniform, dangling over the bed. A quartz crystal point on the end of a long silver chain.

  Selma grabbed it. “Oh, how pretty! It’s just like the one Bahru has.”

  “Who or what is a Bahru?” Eloise asked, snatching the necklace and dropping it back inside her blouse.

  Though her mother only laughed, Lena found herself shivering. Everyone in her dream had been wearing a crystal like that. What the hell?

  “As for your daughter, I intend to offer my services, though Dr. Cartwright assures me she’ll refuse.”

  “I’m gonna call Doc right now and let him know you’re awake,” Lena said. “Be right back, Mom.” She left her mother to enjoy her breakfast and the nurse to figure out what else she might need, and headed down the hall and into her own bedroom. She left her door open, listening for any sign of a problem, and located her mother’s phone on the nightstand where she had left it to charge last night. Quickly she turned it on, and checked the call log. Nothing of interest. Recent text messages—nothing there, either. The last one had gone out to Helen soon after Selma had left the house. On my way. C U soon. Emails? Nothing near the time when she’d apparently blacked out.

  She checked photos on a whim, not expecting to find a thing. But there were three of the same exact blurry, dark shot.

  Squinting, Lena tried to decipher them. They’d been taken in the woods at night. There were people standing around a fire, but it was impossible to see who they were.

  She supposed the shots could have been taken at some ritual her mother had attended, though unless last night had turned into something completely unexpected, they had to be from sometime earlier. Easy enough to check the time stamp.

  A vehicle pulled in, loud, powerful. She couldn’t see out front from her bedroom, but she could tell by the feeling in her belly that it was Ryan, so she pocketed the phone and quickly trotted downstairs to the front door, arriving just as he opened it.

  Beyond him she could see a huge, shiny new truck, glittering with raindrops as more pinged off its surface. There were several items in the back, tall boxes covered in clear plastic to keep the rain off them.

  She looked from the truck to his face and tried to ignore the warm, gooey feelings coursing through her veins. “What, they didn’t have a bigger one?”

  “Aw, come on, you don’t like it? It’s my trusty charger. My noble steed.”

  “I don’t even care what you drove, I’m just so glad you’re back.” She was almost embarrassed by how emphatic she sounded, but it didn’t even faze him.

  “Yeah, me too. We need to talk.” He looked worried.

  “What’s up?” She closed the door behind him.

  “You first,” he said, taking off his boots. “Whose car is that out there?”

  “Nurse Ironbottom. Though she prefers Eloise. Doc Cartwright got busy and sent her to check on Mom, though I think he had ulterior motives.”

  “As in?” he asked, dropping his new keys into his coat pocket and then hanging his wet coat on a hook.

  “He’s been trying to get me to hire her as a live-in until the baby comes.” She thought of the pendant. Coincidence? Would she sound insane if she told him about it? She hadn’t yet decided. “But that isn’t the big news. Mom’s awake.”

  His head came up fast, eyes wide. “She is? She okay?”

  “As far as I can see, she’s fine. Certainly doesn’t look like she’s had a stroke or anything like what I was thinking last night.”

  “Did you ask her about the mead? The woods?” He moved to the fireplace and started adding a log as he spoke.

  “I did. She doesn’t remember a thing after getting in her car to come home. But I finally remembered to check the phone.” She pulled it out of her pocket. “Take a look at these.” She handed him the phone as they walked to the stairs together and started up.

  He looked at the photos, frowning as deeply as she had. “Have you asked her about them yet?”

  “Not yet. I want to wait until we’re alone for that, and the nurse has been here ever since I saw them. It’s hard to see, but it looks like some sort of a ritual circle. And that’s where she was last night, before all this happened—but the thing is, they use Betty’s backyard for circles. These look like they were taken in the woods.”

  “We can upload them, see if we can enhance them at all, maybe get a better look at a face or two.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll ask Mom if she took any pics last night. As soon as the nurse leaves,” she whispered as they stopped at the top of the stairs. “If you click on the info tab, there should be a time stamp.”

  “Good thinking.” He frowned, thumbing the phone. “Just after midnight.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, and she felt heat rush straight to her toes. “Lena, there’s something else you should know.” />
  She gazed up at him, and if the circumstances had been less troubling, she would have been tempted to lean a little closer and see if he would turn it into a kiss. But the nurse came out of Selma’s room into the hall just then.

  “She looks very good to me. I don’t see any reason to be concerned. I gave her some ibuprofen for the headache. She ate her meal just fine. She’s gone into the bathroom for a shower—told me to take a flying leap when I tried to go with her.”

  “Nurse Sheldrake, do you—”

  “Eloise,” she corrected.

  “Right. Do you think it’s possible she had a stroke or a TIA, as Doc Cartwright mentioned?”

  “I don’t see a single thing to indicate that.”

  “Well, then, what did happen?”

  “I don’t know. Frankly, we might never know. Did you phone Dr. Cartwright?”

  “No, I...got distracted.” She glanced up at Ryan, then looked away when he met her eyes. What was wrong with her?

  “Well, I’ll stop by on my way home and fill him in. Now, as long as I’m here, why don’t I take a look at you?”

  “No.”

  The nurse blinked at Lena’s quick response and even looked slightly offended. “Are you sure? Dr. Cartwright says you’ve been under intense stress for the past couple of days.”

  “I’m fine. My baby’s fine. I don’t need a nurse.” Lena turned and headed right back down the stairs. “Thank you so much for coming by. I appreciate it. We’ve got an awful lot to do, though, so—”

  She was at the bottom of the stairs by then, and since she’d kept on talking, the nurse had no choice but to follow. Ryan stood at the top, watching, looking surprised by her rudeness, but...whatever. She couldn’t explain it. She just didn’t like the woman. Nurse Ironbottom followed Lena to the door, and Lena took her raincoat off the hook and handed it to her.

  Hint delivered. “Thanks for coming. Bye, now.”

  The nurse held her gaze for an extended moment, no expression visible. She was completely impassive. Not angry, not amused, not hurt, not impatient. Just sort of there. She put on her coat, and then, hat still bobby-pinned in place, headed out the door into the rain.

  “I do not like her,” Lena said, watching through the small oval glass inset until the nurse was in her car and bouncing back down the rutted driveway.

  Ryan was halfway downstairs, but Lena headed right back up. “I’d better get into the bathroom, make sure Mom doesn’t fall and bash her head in.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I know you wanted to talk about...something.”

  “And you wanted to show me something. Something about a storybook, you said?”

  She looked at him. “Yeah. That’s right.” Then she gnawed her lip. “Later tonight, after Mom’s in bed and we can be alone. Okay?”

  “It’s a date. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy until then.”

  She looked at him curiously, but he didn’t fill her in. “You’re heading back to those woods, aren’t you?”

  “Actually, no. I called Sheriff Dunbar on the way home. He asked me to hold off until tomorrow, so he could come along. Didn’t want to risk my disturbing anything out there.”

  “You agreed?”

  He nodded. “I think the rain’s probably already erased anything we might have found, anyway. Another day won’t make a difference. And I kind of like the guy. He seems...real.”

  “I’ve always liked Larry, too,” she said. “He and Molly are a real pair of characters. Punch and Judy, only playful, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “So what’s going to keep you so busy today?” she asked.

  “I’m going to finish the baby’s room for you. I know, I know. You had your own notions, and I’m gonna stick to them, just maybe add one or two of my own. And you’re not allowed to see it until I’m finished.”

  She blinked. “You...know how to do that sort of thing?”

  “I knew you’d doubt my construction skills. But yes, as a matter of fact I do. I actually do a lot of this sort of thing.”

  “How did I not know this?”

  He drew a deep breath, let it out. “Because it was one of the parts of me I kept away from you. I was an idiot, Lena. Do you trust me now?”

  Trust him? Trust him when he seemed to be trying to convince her he was the prince she had always believed him to be—after convincing her that he wasn’t? Hell. “What if I hate it?” she asked.

  He smiled. “You’re going to love it. I promise.”

  “But what if I hate it?”

  He crooked a brow. “Fine. If you hate it, we’ll strip it back down to the drywall and start over.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. Now go take care of your mother before she hurts herself.”

  So she did.

  10

  Aside from a big blank spot in her memory and a persistent headache, her mother seemed fine. Still, Lena spent the entire day sticking close to her side. She finished her stenciling project in the kitchen and decided to declare the rest of the afternoon a baking day. It was something she and her mom did every so often, especially on really cold days, so the oven would do double duty by heating up the house. Today wasn’t particularly cold, but it was damp and miserable.

  Her mom fell right into the rhythm. They spent hours mixing and kneading and rolling and measuring. And laughing. Lots of laughing. They had music blasting from the iPod, nestled in an impossibly small speaker dock that had concert sound quality. They sang along at the top of their lungs, puffed flour into each other’s faces and tasted their efforts way too often, and they laughed until their sides ached.

  They enjoyed each other. Always had.

  It was a good way to distract herself from giving in to her curiosity about the nursery. Ryan had been upstairs all afternoon, and he’d made several trips out through the rain to the truck and back, carrying stuff upstairs each time. Big stuff. Lena smelled paint. She’d seen the cans he’d carried up the stairs, but it had been impossible to tell the colors. She’d already had paint picked out, and she hoped he wasn’t replacing her colors entirely. She was just about dying to peek by dinnertime.

  He came downstairs, not even a speck of paint to be seen anywhere on his person, the cheat. He’d showered, changed clothes. He took one look at the kitchen counter and his eyes went round. “Is this what I’ve been smelling every time I poked my head out of the nursery?”

  “Uh-huh,” Selma said, waving a hand like a TV spokesmodel. “Apple pie, carrot cake, chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon-swirl bread, whole wheat rolls and, since we had extra pie-crust, homemade chicken and veggie pot pies for dinner.”

  “This, after the night you had?” he asked.

  “Pssh. Lena did most of the work.”

  But Lena saw the color rushing into her mom’s cheeks. She was eating up the flattery.

  And he was eating up the chocolate chip cookies.

  “Dinner is only five minutes out,” Lena told him. “Save some room.”

  “Oh, trust me, I’ll manage to stuff it in.” He popped another cookie into his mouth. “If I stay here very long I’ll have to take up jogging again.”

  “Yeah, well, if you stay here very long,” Lena said, “you can tag along behind me. ’Cause I’m gonna need to jog off a ton of baby weight pretty soon.”

  He stopped with a cookie halfway to his lips, and his eyes took her in, head to toe and up again, slowly. “You’ve never looked more beautiful, Lena. And that’s the truth.”

  Not only did the blood rush into her face, but hot moisture flooded her eyes, as well. She had to turn away to hide it from him, because it was so inexplicably sappy of her. Her excuse was to reach up into a nearby cabinet for dinner plates.

  But he was behind her, pressing up against he
r back and reaching around to get the plates himself. “Let me do that. You should be sitting with your feet up. It was a long, hard night, and you’ve obviously been knocking yourself out all day.”

  She frowned and looked up at him.

  Don’t do it. Don’t fall head over heels again, not until you know for sure he’s not up to something.

  But he wasn’t up to anything. He couldn’t be. She would know. Wouldn’t she?

  Both Bahru and the ghost tried to warn you. Maybe you should check the chalice again later. Maybe you can scry for the truth. It’s the most powerful tool you’ve ever had. Use it.

  Or maybe she could just check his cell phone. See who he’d been calling. If he’d been talking to a custody lawyer just before coming here, it would probably still show up in his call log.

  Absolutely not. I’m not that woman.

  “Lena?” Ryan was looking at her funny, probably because she’d stopped moving to have her internal argument. “Okay. I’ll sit. Come on, Mom. You too.”

  “I think I could get used to this royal treatment, Lena. Maybe we ought to keep him around.”

  She was pretending to be teasing, but Lena knew she wasn’t really.

  * * *

  Dinner was over and the dishes waiting for morning, because she was beat. But she and Ryan kept their date. Doc Cartwright had come by to quickly check on Selma, who had gone to bed afterwards, still seeming fine. Now Lena and Ryan were sitting together on the little sofa in front of a roaring fire.

  Lena and the Prince in the Oasis was open on his lap, and he was smiling indulgently as he flipped the pages.

  “I hope you’re right and our baby is a girl, and I hope she’s just like her mother,” he said.

  “That’s a lovely sentiment, but it’s not why I showed you these.”

  He met her eyes, and she swallowed hard. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He thought he wanted her and the baby in his life, well, he might as well know it all. “I didn’t just make up these stories, Ryan. I...I saw them.”