Casting Curses

  “Actually, it’s supposed to burn off the clouds for a while. You’d better get downstairs now. I’ll see you tonight, my love.”

  Aegis gave Kelson a wave, then blew me another kiss as he headed toward the basement door. Another moment and it shut behind him, and he was off to his lair for the day.

  I sat back down to finish my breakfast.

  Yes, my life had changed drastically. At one time I had been one of the most feared vampire hunters in the world, rampaging across Europe, staking the bloodsuckers right and left. And now? Now I was in love with a vampire. But I had brought out my tools again, because there was a new danger, one that I didn’t want to talk about—didn’t dare talk about where people could hear. I had long hoped that part of myself had been put to rest, but sometimes the past caught up to us, and reminded us that we wouldn’t be who we were, without the person we had been.

  KELSON HAD TAKEN the bread out of the oven, washed the dishes, and was now writing up a new grocery list. I stepped onto the patio, surveying the back yard. Most of the trees were near the house, and the rest of the lot was open grass before hitting the edge of the forest.

  I decided that it really was a good day for a walk, and it would give me a chance to oversee some of the work that Aegis had done on creating the campgrounds we wanted. I glanced at my watch. It was seven thirty. I had plenty of time before Leonard and his Pack got here. I slipped back inside long enough to grab a light jacket. Shrugging into it, I headed across the lawn, thinking that we should have a meteor watching party in August when the Perseids streaked across the sky.

  The leaves still left on the trees glimmered in the morning light, in shades of burnished bronze, of copper and red and brown, mottled yellow and rust. But there weren’t many. The windstorm had stripped away most of them, and now they carpeted the lawn and the forest floor in a quilt of earthen tones.

  There was a pungent smell to the forest. It was that deep autumn scent of toadstools and muddy trails, of decaying leaves and moss hanging off the sides of trees. The slow drip of water echoed as raindrops fell from the branches, jarred loose as the sun burned away the clouds.

  A slow mist rose, boiling up where the sunlight warmed the chilled ground. The forest felt empty, the way it always did when the leaves were off the trees and winter was on its way. Overhead, a murder of crows swept by, their caw caw echoing through the air.

  I had let Lanyear out last night to hunt, and now I looked around to see if I could spot him. He hung out here in the thicket, when he wasn’t inside with us.

  As I looked around, I could see the progress that Aegis had made. He had begun trailblazing through the undergrowth, creating trails into areas we planned to turn into campsites. We wanted to keep most of the acreage forested, but two acres was plenty of room for at least ten campsites. The other acre of my land comprised the house and yard.

  I wandered down one of the trails and realized that Aegis had established the way with stone pavers, a nice touch that I hadn’t thought of. When I got to the area for the campsite, I saw that he had cleared out a good-size area. I found a fallen tree, a nurse log covered with moss, with toadstools and ferns growing out of the cracks, and sat down, huddling to keep myself warm. I could see my breath, but even though it was chilly, it felt good to be outside.

  My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket, cringing as the harsh tone broke the stillness. It was Sandy.

  “Hey Maddy, I have a favor to ask.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Now they’re saying our power won’t be back till tomorrow morning. Do you mind if we come over tonight? And if we bring Mr. Peabody? It’s awfully cold here. Alex is going to spend the night with his girlfriend.”

  I smiled, tracing a ring around the brightly colored toadstool sitting next to me. “Of course you can come over. Aegis made a couple loaves of fresh bread, so we can have bread and soup for dinner. Come over whenever you like. I’m just out taking a walk before the Alpha-Pack gets here to work on the roof.”

  Sandy paused, and I could hear the hesitation in her voice. Finally, she said, “Have you heard anything more from Craig?”

  “No, and don’t get me started. I don’t ever want to hear anything more from him.” I bit my lip, chewing on it for a moment. “Aegis visited him at his hotel. He warned him to back off. What do you think I should do?”

  “I think you should trust Aegis. You have to admit, he’s far smarter than anybody else we know. Of course, he’s got years of experience under his belt. Well, thousands of years.” She paused again, then said, “I hate Craig. I hate what he did to you and what he did to your self-confidence. You’ve got it back now, but I’d still like to punch him in the nuts.”

  I broke out into a broad smile. “I’m grinning. I’m nodding. I’ll see you when you get here. I might go out shopping for a bit, but feel free to come over when you like. You’ve got a key in case Kelson and I are both gone.”

  And with that, I hung up. I leaned back, resting my head against the trunk of another tree. After a moment I took several deep, slow, breaths, letting the pungent tang in the air waken my senses. There was something about this time of year that made me feel so alive and vibrant. Summer was okay, and I liked spring, but autumn and winter were my times of the year. Autumn and winter made every inch of me feel all tingly and energetic.

  I glanced at the clock on my cell phone. Eight thirty. With a sigh, I stood and started back toward the house, deciding that I would take this walk every day. It made me feel good, and it made me feel like I was looking more toward the future than staring at the past. And that was always a good thing.

  Chapter 5

  BY THE TIME I reached the house, Leonard Wolfbrane and his crew had arrived. Kelson had shown them in and they were waiting for me in the kitchen. She had found a package of cookies and spread them out on a platter, and offered the men coffee. Leonard stood up as I entered the room. He was moderate height, well muscled, and had short, sandy hair. His eyes were pale gray, common to many wolf shifters, and he nodded to me, waiting for me to hold out my hand. I extended my hand and he shook it formally.

  “I’m so glad you could make it today. There are several things we need to talk about besides the roof.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. First, I need your opinion about whether we can wait on a new roof for a while longer. Ideally, I’d like to wait until spring, but if you think the patch job won’t hold, or if it looks like there are other problem areas that are just waiting for a storm, then I suppose we better have a new one now. One way or another, the roof needs to be fixed. I also want you guys to open up something in the attic. When the tree branch punched through the roof, we found a hidden room on the other side of the attic wall. We traced out the area on the paneling that leads to the doorway, and I’m wondering if you could open that up for me today.”

  Leonard scratched his head. “A secret room? Really? Isn’t that a little on point?”

  “Didn’t you get the memo? All mansions are required to have a secret room somewhere.” I laughed, and he joined me.

  “I’ll remember that next time. Okay, why don’t you take me and the boys up to this room, and we’ll take care of that before we head up onto the roof. You said you wanted an estimate before we do any work up top?” The tool belt around his waist jangled as we headed upstairs.

  “Yeah, an estimate for just a patch job if we can leave it at that, and also what we can expect to pay for a new roof.”

  I showed them the trapdoor that led into the attic crawl space. They opened it in the blink of an eye, and I slowly ascended the ladder, Leonard behind me. Once we were in the attic, I led them over to the wall, flashing a light on the paneling. “I’m a little afraid to turn on the lights up here. I don’t know if any of the wiring was damaged when the tree broke through the roof. So, better safe than sorry.”

  “We can take a look at that, too. So this is the area that you want cut open?” He traced all aro
und the pencil marks. “That’s a short door.”

  “I know. Actually, if you could just remove all of the paneling, I’d like to see if there’s anything else behind there that we should know about.”

  Leonard motioned for me to get out of the way. “You don’t want to be in the way if any nails go flying,” he said. Like most werewolves, especially the men, Leonard was a little presumptive, but that was just the way of shifters in general. Werewolves were definitely patriarchal. So were lion shifters, but bear shifters—on the other hand—were matriarchal.

  I crossed to the other side of the attic, sitting down on a box to wait. I had to admit, I wasn’t comfortable in the attic. I seldom came up here and I used a small spare room on the second floor to store most of my things instead of putting them up in here. We were slowly clearing the basement, and when it was empty we would put the trunks and boxes down there. But something about the attic had always bothered me. Perhaps it was that you had to climb a generally hidden ladder to reach it. Or perhaps I just didn’t like the claustrophobic space. There was barely enough room to stand up straight.

  The Alpha-Pack made quick work of the paneling, pulling it off the wall in three pieces. When they were done, Leonard motioned for me to join him. I made my way back across the unfinished plywood floor, stopping as I stared at the door that had been covered up. Max had left it open, and now, the pale sun flickered through the tarp into both the attic and the secret room.

  “Do you think they built this room as an add-on? Was it originally part of the attic, or can you tell?” I asked.

  Leonard and his men examined the wall. It didn’t take long before he had an answer.

  “Oh, they walled this off after the original attic was built. So yeah, they closed it off sometime after the house was built. Do you want to do the honors, and go through first?”

  I took the flashlight from him, and ducked as I stepped through the door.

  As I entered the secret room, it was still hard to see into the corners. Even though sunlight was creeping through the tarp, the room seemed to extend back quite a ways. I realized that the attic actually extended the full length of the house rather than half of it as we had originally thought.

  “Hold on, wait just a minute.” Leonard motioned to one of his men. “John, bring up the LED lantern.”

  John ducked back into the other part of the attic and returned with a large battery-operated LED lantern. The light illuminated most of the room with a surprising brilliance. I stared at the walls, trying to comprehend what I was seeing.

  In this part of the attic, the walls had once been painted a dark blue, with silver trim. There was something at the end of the room, a large table that looked like it might be marble. On the table was a jug, with a narrow bottom, a wide body, and a narrow neck, plugged by a stone stopper. The floor itself was painted a faded silver, and as I headed for the table with Leonard behind me, I realized there appeared to be paintings on the walls. They were tone on tone—a light blue against the dark, and hard to see, even with the LED light. I couldn’t quite make them out, but they seemed to be life-size figures with pictograms or glyphs written between them.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  Leonard had stopped a few steps behind me. His eyes were wide and I recognize the scent of fear emanating off of him.

  “Maddy, there’s some strong magic here. Can you feel it? It’s raising my hackles.” Werewolves didn’t like magic very much.

  I stopped, closing my eyes and holding out my hands as I tried to sense what was going on around me. And then it hit me, full force. A heavy magic lingering from years past. It was ritual magic, structured and ancient, and it was trapped here in this room. I had no idea what we were dealing with, but it set my stomach to quivering, and I had a distinct feeling that we were walking in dangerous territory.

  “I can feel it too. I suggest that perhaps we should exit this room—” I started to say, but was interrupted when one of the workmen raced by into the room, screaming at the top of his lungs. His arms were flailing, and the scent of sheer terror lingered in his wake.

  “Come back!” I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want him near that table. There was something there that was dangerous, something old and gnarled and twisted. I started to run forward, trying to stop him, when he lurched into the table, crashing against it.

  He fell back, sprawling on the floor.

  I watched as the urn tilted from the impact and went hurtling down to land next to him. The urn hit the wood and shattered on impact. A plume of black powder filled the air, roiling into smoke, and I screeched to a halt, trying to avoid it. Unfortunately, I was too close and found myself breathing in the acrid smoke that boiled up from the powder.

  I scrambled back, trying to get away from it.

  The workman was on the floor, flailing and screaming. The next moment, he went limp. I turned to see Leonard snap out of his paralysis. He motioned for me to get out of the way as he ran toward his worker.

  “Trey! Are you all right?” Leonard started to cough as he entered the smoke-filled area. He leaned over, slipping his hands beneath Trey’s underarms and dragging him back away from the table. The other men had fled, running into the other part of the attic. I hurried over to help Leonard pull Trey through the door, then slammed it shut.

  “Quick, get him down the ladder,” I said, still coughing.

  A couple of the men had come to their senses and were standing next to the trapdoor. One of them scrambled down, holding his arms up for Trey. Together, he and Leonard managed to wrangle the unconscious werewolf down the ladder into the hallway. Leonard called for me to head down the ladder.

  “I’ll shut the door from up here, and go out through the roof. We don’t want to leave the trapdoor open into your hallway. Robert, go get the ladder and prop it up next to the roof so I can climb down.”

  Within minutes, I was standing in the hallway, watching as the other workmen carried Trey’s unconscious form toward the stairs. Robert had run on ahead, to do as Leonard asked. I glanced back up at the trapdoor. What the hell had just happened? What was in that room?

  My mind filled with questions, I headed downstairs to join the Alpha-Pack.

  THE FIRST THING we did was ascertain Trey’s condition. He was still unconscious, and Kelson had cleared off the dining room table so the men could lay him there.

  She looked up as I came in. “We’d better call the doctor. He’s not coming around.”

  I nodded, tapping Leonard on the shoulder. “Does he have a doctor? I can call Jordan Farrows. He specializes in magical afflictions. I used to go to a different doctor, but he’s extraordinarily competent.”

  “I’m not sure who Trey’s doctor is, so go ahead. Please, hurry. His breathing sounds labored.”

  I stepped away from the pack and put in a call to Jordan. He had helped us out on numerous occasions now, so I had him on speed dial. He answered on the third ring.

  “Maddy? What’s up? What happened?”

  On one hand, I hated that his first response was to ask me what was wrong. But it had become par for the course.

  “The Alpha-Pack came to check out my roof. Long story short, one of the workmen is unconscious. He inhaled some sort of magical smoke.” I began to cough, feeling the residue rumble around in my own lungs. “So did I. But whatever it was knocked him out. Can you come over right away? His breathing is shallow and we’re worried about him.”

  “I’m on my way. You said he’s a werewolf?”

  “Yeah. One of the Alpha-Pack.”

  Jordan signed off. Returning to the table, I told them he was on his way.

  “Should we do anything until he gets there?” Robert asked.

  Leonard shook his head. “I don’t think so. We don’t want to make a bad situation worse.”

  He glanced around at the men, then over at me. They were milling around, looking mildly agitated. Leonard knew as well as I did that you don’t let werewolves
get antsy or have too much downtime.

  “Why don’t you guys head up to the roof and start assessing the situation? Everything should be okay up there. Just don’t take the tarp off. Take a look for any other leaks. I’ll wait here for the doctor.”

  “What about Trey?” one of the men said.

  “There’s nothing you can do until the doctor gets here. So you might as well get on with the job. That’s what we’re here for.” Leonard shooed them out the door. They seemed relieved to have something to do.

  Kelson returned from the kitchen with a cold washcloth, which she laid over Trey’s forehead. “He seemed a little hot to me.” She motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen. “What happened? I didn’t want to ask the men because they seem so freaked.”

  I told her. “There was something up in that room. I felt it wake up. I have no idea what it is, but I guarantee you it isn’t anything good.”

  “Is it loose in the house?”

  I shrugged. “I think so. I’m hoping it was just residue energy that was trapped within the urn. But we need to figure out what the writing on the wall is, and what the pictographs mean. I didn’t recognize it, so we should bring in a linguist, I suppose.”

  “Maybe one of the professors from Neverfall could tell you?”

  That was a good idea. Neverfall had a plethora of instructors from all walks of magical life. They had to have someone who specialized in ancient languages.

  “I’ll give Leroy a call as soon as Jordan gets here and we figure out what’s wrong with Trey. Meanwhile, why don’t you put on some coffee and get some refreshments for the men. I have a feeling they’re going to need something to bolster their spirits. You wouldn’t believe how afraid that pack of werewolves was up there.” I paused. “Or maybe you would. You’re a werewolf yourself. The magic was overwhelming, Kelson. It scared me, and I’m used to magic.”