Into the Woods: Tales From the Hollows and Beyond Read online

  Brow furrowed, I puffed a strand of hair out of my face and frowned. I had been in and out of the hospital so often the first four years of public school that I was basically homeschooled. Good idea on paper, but when you come back after being absent for three months and make the mistake of showing how much you know, the playground becomes a torture field.

  Robbie made a rude noise. “I think it’s good for her.”

  “Oh, I never said it wasn’t,” my mom was quick to say. “I didn’t like her with all those damned older men is all.”

  I sighed, used to my mom’s mouth. It was worse than mine, which sucked when she caught me swearing.

  “Men?” Robbie’s voice had a laugh in it. “They’re not that much older than her. Rachel can take care of herself. She’s a good girl. Besides, she’s still living at home, right?”

  I blew a strand of my hair out of the mix, feeling a tug when one caught under the pestle. My arm was hurting, and I wondered if I could stop yet. The leaves were a gritty green haze at the bottom. The TV went loud when a commercial came on, and I almost missed my mother chiding him. “You think I’d let her live in the dorms? She gets more tired than she lets on. She still isn’t altogether well yet. She’s just better at hiding it.”

  My shoulder was aching, but after that, I wasn’t going to stop until I was done. I was fine. I was better than fine. Hell, I’d even started jogging, though I threw up the first time I’d run the zoo. All those hills. Everybody throws up the first time.

  But there was a reason there were very few pictures of me before my twelfth birthday, and it didn’t have anything to do with the lack of film.

  Exhaling, I set the pestle down and shook my arm. It hurt all the way up, and deciding the holly was pulped enough, I stretched for the envelope of roots I’d scraped off my mom’s ivy plant earlier. The tiny little roots had come from the stems, not from under the ground, and the book said they acted as a binding agent to pull the lingering essence of a person together.

  My head came up when the TV shut off, but it was only one of them turning on the stereo. Jingle Bells done jazz. One of my dad’s standbys.

  “Look, it’s snowing again,” Robbie said softly, and I glanced at the kitchen window, a black square with stark white flakes showing where the light penetrated. “I miss that.”

  “You know there’s always a room here for you.”

  Head bowed over the mortar as I worked, I cringed at the forlorn sound of her voice. The spell had a pleasant wine-and-chlorophyll scent, and I tossed my hair out of the way.

  “Mom . . .” Robbie coaxed. “You know I can’t. Everyone’s on the coast.”

  “It was just a thought,” she said tartly. “Shut up and have a cookie.”

  My knees were starting to ache, and knowing if I didn’t sit down they’d give way in about thirty seconds, I sank into a chair. Ignoring my shaking fingers, I pulled my mom’s set of balances out of a dusty box. I wiped the pans with a soft rag, then recalibrated it to zero.

  The wine mixture needed dust to give the ghost something to build its temporary body around, kind of like a snow cloud needs dust to make snowflakes. I had to go by weight since dust was too hard to measure any other way. Robbie had collected some from under the pews at a church while out shopping for a coat, so I knew it was fresh and potent.

  My breath made the scales shift, so I held it as I carefully tapped the envelope. The dust, the wine, and the holly would give the ghost substance, but it would be the other half with the lemon juice that would actually summon him. Yew—which was apparently basic stuff when it came to communing with the dead, the ivy—to bind it, an identifying agent—which varied from spell to spell, and of course my blood to kindle the spell, would combine to draw the spirit in and bind it to the smoke created when the spell invoked. There wasn’t anything that could make the situation permanent, but it’d last the night. Lots of time to ask him a question. Lots of time to ask him why.

  Guilt and worry made my hand jerk, and I shook too much dust from the envelope. Please say I should join the I.S., I thought as I alternately blew on the pile of dust and held my breath until the scales read what they should.

  Moving carefully to prevent a draft, I got the tiny copper spell pot with the lemon juice and carefully shook the dust into it. I breathed easier when the gray turned black and sank.

  The box of utensils scraped across the Formica table, and I dug around until I found a glass stirring rod. It was almost done, but my pleased smile faltered when Robbie asked, “Have you given any thought to coming out with me? You and Rachel both?”

  I froze, heart pounding. What in hell? We had a deal!

  “No,” she said, a soft regret in her voice, and I stirred the dust in with a clockwise motion, paying more attention to the living room than to what I was doing.

  “Dad’s been gone a long time,” Robbie pleaded. “You need to start living again.”

  “Moving to Portland would change nothing.” It was quick and decisive. When she used that tone, there was no reasoning with her. “Rachel needs to be here,” she added. “This is her home. This is where her friends are. I’m not going to uproot her. Not when she’s finally starting to feel comfortable with herself.”

  I made an ugly face and set the stirring rod aside. I didn’t have many friends. I’d been too sick to make them when younger. The girls at the community college treated me like a child, and after the guys found out I was jail bait, they left me alone too. Maybe moving wasn’t a bad idea. I could tell everyone I was twenty-one. Though with my flat chest, they’d never believe it.

  “I can get her into the university,” Robbie said, his voice coaxing. I’d heard him wield it before to get both of us out of trouble, and it usually worked. “I’ve got a great two-room apartment, and once she’s a resident, I can pay her tuition. She needs to get into the sun more.”

  We had a deal, Robbie, I thought, staring at the empty hallway. He was trying to work an end around. It wasn’t going to work. I was going to do this spell right, and he was going to sign that paper, and then I was going to join the I.S.

  “No,” my mom said. “Besides, if Rachel wants to pursue her studies, Cincinnati has an excellent earth magic program.” There was a telling hesitation. “But thank you.

  “Did she tell you she’s taking martial arts?” she said to change the subject, and I smiled at the pride in her voice. The lemon half was done, and I reached for the mortar with the wine and holly mix.

  “She got her black belt not long ago,” my mom continued as I stood to grind it up a little bit more, puffing over it. “I wanted her to tell you, but—”

  “She sold The Bat to pay for it,” Robbie finished glumly, and I grinned. “Yeah, she told me. Mom, Rachel doesn’t need to know how to fight. She is not strong. She never will be, and letting her go on thinking she can do everything is only setting her up for a fall.”

  I froze, feeling like I’d been slapped.

  “Rachel can do anything,” my mom said hotly.

  “That’s not what I mean, Mom . . .” he pleaded. “I know she can, but why is she so fixated on all these physical activities when she could be the top witch in her field if she simply put the time in? She’s good, Mom,” he coaxed. “She’s in there right now doing a complicated charm, and she’s not batting an eye over it. That’s raw talent. You can’t learn that.”

  Anger warred with pride at his words on my skill. My mom was silent, and I let my frustration fuel the grinding motions.

  “All I’m saying,” he continued, “is maybe you could get her to ease up on trying to be super girl, and point out how some guys like smart chicks wearing glasses as much as others like kick-ass ones in boots.”

  “The reason Rachel works so hard to prove she’s not weak is because she is,” my mom said, making my stomach hurt all the more. “She sees it as a fault, and I’m not going to tell her to stop striving to overcome it. Challenge is how she defines herself. It was how she survived. Now shut up and eat another damned
cookie. We get along just fine here.”

  My throat was tight, and I let go of the pestle, only now realizing my fingers had cramped up on it. I had worked so hard to get my freaking black belt so the I.S. couldn’t wash me out on the physical test. Sure, it had taken me almost twice as long as everyone else, and yeah, I still spent ten minutes at the back of the gym flat on my back recovering after every class, but I did everything everyone else did, and with more power and skill than most.

  Wiping an angry tear away, I used the stirring rod to scrape every last bit off the pestle. Damn it. I hated it when Robbie made me cry. He was good at it. ’Course, he was good at making me laugh, too. But my shoulders were aching beyond belief, and a slow lethargy was taking hold of my knees once more. I had to sit down again. Disgusted with myself, I sank into a chair, elbow on the table, my hair making a curtain between me and the rest of the world. I wasn’t that much stronger now than when they kicked me out of the Make-A-Wish camp. I was just getting better at feeling it coming on and covering it up. And I wanted to be a runner?

  Miserable, I held my arm against the ache, both inside and out. But the spell was done apart from the three drops of witch blood, and those wouldn’t be added until we were at the square. Mom and Robbie had lowered their voices, the cadence telling me they were arguing. Pulling a second dusty box to me, I rummaged for a stoppered bottle to put the potion in.

  The purple one didn’t feel right, and I finally settled on the black one with the ground glass stopper. I wiped the dust from it with a dishtowel, and dumped the wine mix in, surprised when I found that the holly and the ivy bits went smoothly without leaving any behind. The lemon half was next, and my fingers were actually on the copper pot before I remembered I hadn’t mixed in the identifying agent.

  “Stupid witch,” I muttered, thinking I must want to go to the West Coast and bang my head against the scholarly walls. The spell wouldn’t work without something to identify the spirit you were summoning. It was the only ingredient not named. It was up to the person stirring it to decide. The suggested items were cremation dust, hair . . . hell, even fingernails would do, as gross as that was. I hadn’t had the chance this afternoon to get into the attic where Dad’s stuff was boxed up, so the only thing I’d been able to find of his was his old pocket watch on my mom’s dresser.

  I glanced at the archway to the hall and listened to the soft talk between Mom and Robbie. Talking about me, probably, and probably nothing I wanted to hear. Nervous, I slipped the antique silver watch out of my pocket. I looked at the hall again, and wincing, I used my mom’s scissors to scrape a bit of grime-coated silver from the back. It left a shiny patch, and I rubbed my finger over it to try to dull the new brightness.

  God, she’d kill me if she knew what I was doing. But I really wanted to talk to my dad, even if it was just a jumbled mess of my memories given temporary life.

  My mother laughed, and in a sudden rush, I dumped the shavings in. The soft curlings sank to the bottom, where they sat and did nothing. Maybe it was the thought that counted.

  I gave the potion another quick stir, tapped the glass rod off, and poured the mess into the glass-stoppered bottle with the wine. It was done.

  Excited, I jammed the bottle and a finger stick into my pocket. The book said if I did it right, it would spontaneously boil when I invoked it in the red and gray stone bowl I’d found in the bottom of a box. The spirit would form from the smoke. This had to work. It had to.

  My stomach quivered as I looked over the electric-lit kitchen. Most of the mess was from me rummaging through mom’s boxes of spelling supplies. The dirty mortar, graduated cylinder, plant snips, and bits of discarded plants looked good strewn around—right somehow. This was how the kitchen used to look; my mom stirring spells and dinner on the same stove, having fits when Robbie would pretend to eat out of what was clearly a spell pot. Mom had some great earth magic stuff. It was a shame she didn’t use it anymore apart from helping me with my Halloween costume, her tools banished to sit beside Dad’s ley line stuff in the attic.

  I dunked the few dishes I had used in the small vat of salt water to purge any remnants of my spell, setting them in the sink to wash later. This had to work. I was not going to the coast. I was going to join the I.S. and get a real job. All I had to do was this one lousy spell. Dad would tell me I could go. I knew it.

  THREE

  The temporary lights of Fountain Square turned the falling snow a stark, pretty white. I watched it swirl as I sat on the rim of the huge planter and thumped my heels while I waited for Robbie to return with hot chocolate. It was noisy with several thousand people, witches mostly, and a few humans who were good with ley lines or just curious. They spilled into the closed-off streets where vendors sold warmth charms, trinkets, and food. The scent of chili and funnel cakes made my stomach pinch. I didn’t like the pressing crowd, but with the fridge-sized rock that the planter sported at my back, I found a measure of calm.

  It was only fifteen minutes till midnight, and I was antsy. That was when the lucky seven witches chosen by lot would join hands and close the circle etched out before the fountain. The longer they held it, the more prosperous the following year was forecast to be. My name was in the hat, along with Robbie’s, and I didn’t know what would happen if one of us was drawn. It would have looked suspicious if we hadn’t added our names when we passed through the spell checker to get into the square.

  I had known about the spell checker, of course. But I’d never tried to sneak a charm in before and had forgotten about it. Apparently a lot of people tried to take advantage of the organized yet unfocused energy that was generated by having so many witches together. My charm was uninvoked, undetectable unless they searched my pockets. Not like the ley line witch ahead of me who I had watched in horror while security wrestled him to the ground. It was harder to smuggle in all the paraphernalia a ley line spell needed. All I had was a small stoppered bottle and a palm-sized stone with a hollowed-out indentation.

  My heels thumped faster, and in a surge of tension, I wedged my legs under me and stood above the crowd. Toes cold despite my boots, I brushed the snow from the ivy that grew in the small space between the rock and the edge of the planter. I searched the crowd for Robbie, my foot tapping to Marilyn Manson’s “White Christmas.” He had set up on the far stage. The crowd over there was kind of scary.

  Fidgeting, my gaze drifted to the only calm spot in the mess: the circle right in front of the fountain. Some guy with CITY EVENT blazoned on his orange vest darted across the cordoned-off area, but most of the security simply stood to form a living barrier. One caught my eye, and I sat back down. You weren’t supposed to be on the planters.

  “Take a flier?” a man said, his voice dulled from repetition. He was the only person facing away from the circle as he moved through the crowd, and I had prepared my no-thanks speech before he had even gotten close. But then I saw his “Have you seen me?” button and changed my mind. I’d take a stinking flier.

  “Thanks,” I said, holding out my gloved hand even before he could ask.

  “Bless you,” he said softly, the snow-damp paper having the weight of cloth as I took it.

  He turned away, numb from the desperate reason for his search. “Take a flier?” he said again, moving off with a ponderous pace.

  Depressed, I looked at the picture. The missing girl was pretty, her straight hair hanging free past her shoulders. Sarah Martin. Human. Eleven years old. Last seen wearing a pink coat and jeans. Might have a set of white ice skates. Blond hair and blue eyes.

  I shoved the flier into a pocket and took a deep breath. Being pretty shouldn’t make you a target. If they didn’t find her tonight, she probably wouldn’t be alive if and when they did. I wasn’t the only one using the power of the solstice to work strong magic, and it made me sick.

  A familiar figure captured my attention, and I smiled at Robbie in his new long coat. He had a hesitant, stop-and-go motion through the crowd as he tried not to bump anyone with the
hot drinks. Besides the new coat, he now sported a thick wool hat, scarf, and a pair of matching mittens that my mom had made for him for the solstice. He was still in his thin shoes, though, and his face was red with cold.

  “Thanks,” I said when Robbie shuffled to a halt and handed me a paper and wax cup.

  “Good God it’s cold out here,” he said, setting his cup beside me on the planter and jamming his mittened hands into his armpits.

  I scooted closer to him, jostled by some guy. “You’ve been gone too long. Wimp.”

  “Brat.”

  A man in an orange security vest drifted past, the way opening for him like magic. I busied myself with my drink, not looking at him as the warm milk and chocolate slid down. The bottle of potion felt heavy in my pocket, like a guilty secret. “I forgot tapping into the communal will was illegal,” I whispered.

  Robbie guffawed, taking the top off his drink and eyeing me with his bird-bright eyes brilliant green in the strong electric lights that made the square bright as noon. “You want to go home?” he taunted. “Come to Portland with me right now? It’s freaking warmer.”

  He was getting me in trouble, but that’s what he did. He usually got me out of it, too. Usually. “I want to talk to Dad,” I said, wiggling my toes to feel how cold they were.

  “All right then.” He sipped his drink, turning to shield me from a gust of snow and wind that sent the crowd into loud exclamations. “Are you ready?”

  I eyed him in surprise. “I thought we’d find a nearby alley or something.”

  “The closer, the better. The more energy you can suck in, the longer the magic will last.”

  There was that, but a noise of disbelief came from me. “You really think no one’s going to notice a ghost taking shape?” It suddenly hit me I was stirring a white charm in a banned area to get into the I.S. This will look really good on my employment essay.