Chalice and Blade Read online

  My mom’s face and vibe said she hadn’t considered she might be in danger—and she didn’t much like the idea.

  Drake sucked in a quick breath, a sort of reverse gasp. We all turned to see what he was looking at.

  Smoke was leaking under the front door into the foyer.

  Smoke was funneling in through the living room windows as well. Not smoke like from a fire. Smoke something like Modis, only blacker and dirtier.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  Dee and my mother were already on their feet. Mom grabbed a walking stick from where it stood in the corner of the room. Dee had moved into his ‘ready to cast spells’ stance. Drake had thrown off his blanket. Thick bandages were visible beneath the over-sized T-shirt he wore. I recognized the shirt as one of my dad’s. Mom must have given it to him to wear since his own clothes were bloody. Drake also wore a clear ‘don’t mess with me’ look on his face.

  In the time it took to notice those things, five smokies had slithered in under the door or through the living room’s open windows. The smoke contracted, pulling in on itself, growing thicker and more solid looking with each second. In moments, five beasts stood in the room: Gray wolf, Polar bear, African lion, Bengal tiger, and a Cape buffalo with long, sharp, curving horns.

  The animals were huge. They stood side to side, pressed up against each other, the only way they’d fit in the living room. My stomach clenched.

  Who are you and what do you want?” Mom demanded.

  All the beasts turned their eyes toward her. The lion spoke.

  “Give us the blade and we will leave you as we found you. Refuse, and we will kill you.”

  Reality or illusion? They could be either. I had a good spell for dissipating illusions and cast it as the last words were leaving the lion’s mouth.

  None of the beasts disappeared.

  Smoke-shifters. Crap.

  The Cape buffalo grunted low. The Bengal tiger roared.

  None of the humans moved. My companions’ fears felt like little knife points pricking me. My heart beat like a crazed metronome and my feet definitely wanted the flight option between fight and flight.

  “We don’t have it,” Dee lied. “It’s been turned over to the Council.”

  “I think you do,” the lion said, shifting it’s gaze to Diego. “I think you will hand it over now or watch my friends eat the wounded one first.”

  Chapter 8

  Dee didn’t cast a glance at Drake, but we all knew whom the lion meant. I’ve felt Dee’s anger and his fear, but the calm, icy determination radiating from him felt more dangerous than either of those two emotions. I felt him ramping up his magic, the sheen of it a silver aura around his body.

  Lightning sparked from his fingers. The lion roared in pain and anger as the lightning hit him. The stench of burned fur rose in the air.

  The Cape buffalo turned its massive head to look. Dee had targeted the lion, thinking it was the leader. The look in the buffalo’s eyes convinced me it was in charge.

  Mother must have thought the same, or it was sheer coincidence that she raised her walking stick high and brought it down hard on the back of the buffalo’s skull while its head was turned. The stick broke in two, the part she wasn’t still holding clattering on the hardwood floor. The buffalo turned its head back slowly to look at her—a look I took for annoyance in its eyes.

  No way was I going to let the beast hurt Mom. I cast a freezing spell on the buffalo before it could take even a step in her direction. It was the spell I knew best, the one I had to think the least about. And it worked.

  Drake was sitting up as straight as he could manage on the couch and chanting. His voice was strong. His hunter brain was on fire. I felt his frustration at not being able to physically fight like a heavy pulse behind my eyes.

  Dee summoned up a fireball and heaved it toward the lion for a second strike. The lion screamed and the stench of burning fur grew stronger.

  The buffalo was frozen. I summoned my will and focus again, readying to freeze the tiger. Before I could, the huge cat leaped toward the sofa and Drake, knocking over a standing lamp with a Tiffany shade that had been in the house since my great-grandmother’s time. The lamp crashed to the floor. Glass from the shade scattered across the floor.

  The crash surprised the wolf and bear and they spun toward the sound. The wolf crouched, ready to spring. I caught it with the freezing spell before it could leap.

  I was too late to stop the tiger. It pounced toward Drake. He kept chanting, not losing the rhythm. I readied myself to throw another freezing spell. Before I could, Drake’s voice reached a crescendo.

  For a moment, everything in the room seemed frozen—each of the beasts, Mom, and Dee transfixed by Drake’s spell. I stopped where I stood, as transfixed as the others, my inhaled breath caught in my chest. It was almost eerie, the sudden stillness in the room. A stillness I knew couldn’t last.

  A dark sound like the crash of large cymbals jerked me from my stupor. The beasts, seemingly unbound as well, roared, yowled, and wailed as if in excruciating pain. Drake began a new chant, his words nearly forming pictures in my mind, nearly but not quite, like a thing glimpsed on the move that you can’t quite identify.

  The beasts’ outlines blurred as dark smoke began rising from their shapes.

  An acrid smell burned my nose and my eyes watered. Slowly, slower than they had formed, the beasts dissolved back to their true, smoky forms. I held my breath, not wanting any of the smoke-things’ essences in my body.

  “Get the front door,” Dee said, breaking the almost stupor I’d fallen into watching the beasts change.

  I ran from the living room, turned into the foyer, and pulled the door wide open.

  Wind gusted through the rooms—a good stiff breeze that blew my hair around my face and fluttered my shirt. I bent my knees and held tight to the knob so the door wouldn’t blow shut. Dee, I thought. That was definitely one of his spells.

  Five smoke-orbs swirled out of the living room, carried on the wind to the foyer and then out the door and into the yard. The wind blew them across the lawn and out toward the street. Dee came up next to me at the door. Magic poured off him, so strong it felt nearly solid. His chanting changed timbre, his hands lifting as if instructing an orchestra to raise the volume.

  The wind outside changed direction. The smoke began to rise, higher than the house, and then above the old Spanish firs. Higher and higher, the smoke growing smaller and smaller in my sight, like watching a child’s lost kite rise—until all traces of the smoke finally vanished.

  Dee exhaled a deep breath and immediately began putting up wards to keep anything non-human out of the house. Mom wasn’t going to like it, but we’d deal with that later. For now, getting the wards up was paramount.

  I knew the spell he was using. He’d taught it to me and I used it to protect my own house. I nudged him softly and turned my gaze to the stairs, meaning I’d go up and start warding as well. With two of us working, we’d ward the entire house, each door and window with extra protection, much more quickly.

  Drake slumped into the couch as I hurried up the stairs. Casting the spell that turned the smokies’ beast forms back into smoke must have exhausted him. Mom bent over her patient, his wrist in her hand, her ear bent close to hear and feel Drake’s pulse and other vital signs.

  When I came back downstairs, Drake was asleep on the couch. Mom was holding a wooden box in her arms. I knew the box. Made of Honduran mahogany, it was about a foot and a half long, a foot wide, and nearly a foot tall. It may have held something in years past, but it’d been empty, a beautiful curiosity, for as long as I could remember.

  “Take it,” Mom said as I walked into the living room. “I can’t have my clinic being disrupted by whoever or whatever wants this thing.”

  I held out my hands to take the box. She didn’t need to tell me the blade was inside.

  Mom called my phone shortly before midnight.

  “Drake is insisting on going home,”
she said without preamble.

  I wasn’t sure why she’d called this late just to tell me that.

  “And?” I said.

  “And I’m inclined to let him,” she said. “He’s recovering faster than I expected, even with a set back from doing magic against the smoke-things, and will probably do better recuperating in a familiar surrounding.”

  Dee raised his head from the pillow.

  “Drake wants to go home,” I told him, holding the phone away from my mouth. “My mom thinks it’s a good idea.”

  Dee nodded, evidently trusting her evaluation, and lay his head back down.

  “Okay,” I said, the phone back next to my ear and mouth. “And you called to tell me this, why?”

  “Because your grandmother and I are ready to go after the chalice if you are.”

  I blinked in surprise. Mom seemed to have put aside her trepidations about me joining her on this quest. I suspected G-ma had something to do with that.

  I’d thought Drake’s injuries and mother taking care of him meant we wouldn’t go for a few days at the least. Days I’d planned to spend with Dee and working on better control over my telekinesis power.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sure. I can be ready. Tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “We’ll pick you up around eight.”

  We rung off and I told Dee what was happening.

  He sighed. “I’d hoped we’d have a little more time together before you left.”

  “Me, too. But the sooner we leave, the sooner we return and placate everyone getting riled up over the thefts.”

  Dee half shrugged. “And the sooner we can start looking for the killer.”

  “Or killers.”

  I drew in a breath, my mind spinning with questions. One killer or two? Modis was right in sensing where the blade had been hidden, but was he also right about the chalice being in the darkling lands? What if we ran into danger there? Were Mom and G-ma up to physical or magical fights, if it came to that? Could I trust my telekinesis to work when the chips were down? What was my fallback if it didn’t?

  Dee took my hand in his. “Slow down there, cowboy.”

  It took me a second to register what he’d said.

  “Wouldn’t I be a cowgirl?”

  “If you like,” he said. “Or the non gender-specific cow person.”

  I shook my head slightly. I had no idea what he was talking about or where it had come from.

  “Oona,” he said, “I can practically see the thoughts spinning in your head.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my index and middle fingers. “Would you mind going home? My brain is in overdrive. I need some time alone.”

  “No problem,” he said and then chuckled under his breath.

  “What?”

  “You’ve changed in a lot of ways since I met you, but some things stay the same.”

  He threw the covers back and dressed in his street clothes. At the door, he gave me a long, lingering kiss and held me close.

  “Don’t forget to be careful,” he said, then turned and walked away.

  I went into the parlor, sat on the sofa, and practiced moving objects with my mind.

  All that remained of my eggs and toast breakfast were bits on the plate. I was swallowing the last of my coffee when the knock came at my door. Little nervous birds fluttered their wings in my stomach as I took down the wards and pulled the door open.

  My mother and grandmother stood on my porch, both dressed in jeans, tee shirts, and hiking boots. Mom wore a dark gray canvas backpack that I assumed held emergency medical supplies. She never went anywhere without some. Her car trunk looked like a mobile hospital supply store. If she was being her usual careful self, there was food in her pack, too.

  The only weapons they had, if you could call them that, were Mom’s and G-ma’s walking sticks—Mom must have gotten a new one, or had several, since I’d watched her break one over a smoke-beast’s head. The two of them looked more like we were headed for a nice hike in the park rather than a hunt.

  Both sticks were oak with rubber tips for stability and a hole drilled near the top with a leather thong threaded through, though Mom’s was a golden color and G-ma’s was stained dark brown and was the longer of the two since she was a good six inches taller than Mom. I didn’t see either of them as the type to be versed in stick fighting, though Mom didn’t hesitate to use one as a cudgel. G-ma also carried a large, orange canvas bag.

  “Come in,” I said, and hugged each woman briefly as they entered.

  Mom hung her purse on one of the pegs in the foyer and leaned the walking stick against the wall. G-ma set her huge canvas bag on the floor next to where she’d leaned her walking stick by Mom’s.

  G-ma walked in slowly, taking in the hall and then the parlor’s blue walls, family photos, old and new paintings, furniture that was a mix of new and family antiques. When she spied the original house blueprints that I’d had framed and had hung on the wall, she smiled so brightly it was like a light had been turned on in her.

  “It’s been a long time since I was here,” she said a little wistfully. “You’ve done a lovely job decorating.”

  “Thank you,” I said, somehow inordinately pleased that she seemed to approve of the changes I’d made. “I’ve remodeled the kitchen and restructured some upstairs.”

  “Oh,” she said, her eyes shining. “I must see. Come show me what you’ve done.”

  Mom sat on the sofa in the parlor. “I’ll wait here.”

  My shoulders tensed at her words. Not her words so much as her vibe. She was not at all pleased to have her mother here with her in my house. She wasn’t pleased to have her mother around me at all. She wasn’t pleased that Modis had come to her door, insisting that G-ma be included on the hunt.

  I gently felt around her vibe. Lingering anger from her own childhood rose off her, little tendrils of resentment. And worry. Worry about me.

  I rolled my shoulders to work out the tension. “Come see the kitchen first.”

  I gave my grandmother the grand tour. She ooh’d and aww’d at what I’d done, saying how clever I was for this change or that. She meant it, too. You can’t fool an empath with pretty words.

  On the upstairs landing, G-ma stopped me and said, “Don’t worry about your mother and me getting along. Once we hit the darkling lands, the three of us will be a tight team.”

  I hadn’t felt her in my mind, but it didn’t take mind-reading to know I’d paid attention to the dynamic between the two of them and reasoned it could be a problem. I walked down the stairs hoping she was right.

  “We need to do a protection ritual,” G-ma said when we returned to the parlor. Mom looked up from where she sat on the couch. G-ma remained standing.

  “I usually cast a spell,” I said, standing next to G-ma. “I have some good ones I can cast for us.”

  “Yes,” G-ma said. “A spell can work. I understand you’ve done a few dangerous things in the company of your wizard. Since you’re still here, all in one piece, your spells seem to have worked.”

  I forced myself not to glance at my mother. I didn’t know what ‘dangerous things’ G-ma had heard about, but I hoped that whatever they were, Mom hadn’t heard about them as well. She liked Dee. I wanted it to stay that way.

  “What do you need for the ritual?” I asked.

  G-ma rubbed her nose, thinking. “Steel nails. They must be steel, not iron. You know cold iron is bad for us fae.” She thought for a moment. “We’ll need the last page from this year’s calendar. If you don’t have a paper calendar handy, you can print the page out.”

  She walked over to the foyer and grabbed her huge canvas bag, and came back into the parlor. She drew a pair of glasses from the bag. “We’ll need these. I snagged them from your father. Since he has a wizard’s perfect vision, the glasses are strictly for show. Did you know that, Oona? Your father has absolutely no need for the glasses he always wears. The glass in them is clear.”

  I glanced at Mom who
was glaring at her mother. A sense of betrayal wriggled through me. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s all symbolic anyway,” G-ma said. “The spell I mean. So these fake glasses will work just fine.” She focused on my face. “How about those nails and calendar page?”

  I scuttled off to the garage to get steel nails. I didn’t have a paper calendar—I used the one on my phone—so I went upstairs and printed one off the computer.

  When I came back downstairs, Mom and G-ma had moved to the kitchen. Mom sat at one end of the rectangular oak table. G-ma had taken a chair in the middle. The room smelled like the contents of my spice drawer had spilled. I picked out anise, sandalwood, and cinnamon among others.

  G-ma’s giant canvas bag sat on the floor next to her chair, unzipped, the top open. I presumed she’d brought the candles in it that she’d set at the four corners of the table. The candles had been oiled, so they had a sheen, and rolled in herbs. That explained the wonderful smells. The canvas bag was probably where she’d gotten the square of purple silk laid out centered to the candles. And the sand she’d sprinkled on the silk square. And the small white down feathers scattered on it.

  “What’s all this?” I said, waving my hand vaguely at the table.

  “Sit.” G-ma gestured toward the chair at the end of the table opposite where Mom sat. A small porcelain plate sat at that spot. No one else had a plate.

  Once I’d sat and handed her the items I’d gathered, she nodded toward each of the candles in turn. “Purple for spiritual and psychic power. To increase our natural abilities. Light blue for protection from evil.”

  I flinched slightly. Whoever or whatever had taken the sacred items intended evil—probably was evil—but I didn’t like to think about that in advance. Prepare, yes. Dwell on it—no.

  G-ma shifted her gaze to a brown candle. “That one is for confusing an enemy.”

  I smiled. Confusing the enemy was always a good thing.

  “And the orange?” I said, nodding toward the fourth candle.