Page 69 of Wicche Hunt

He considered that and then resumed typing. “Boston.” He sat back in his chair. “My son lives in Boston.” He closed the laptop. “I think that’s enough for now. My son is living in Boston and he’s a bookseller.” Tears filled his eyes. “That’s enough.”

“Listen. Since I don’t know what Gran and Mom have told you or asked you, let me ask: Do you know where Calliope could be hiding? Maybe where previous sorcerers have lived?”

He was silent for quite a while. “No one asked me, but now that you say it, I believe I saw a reference to a home owned by a dark wicche we later learned was a sorcerer. Hmm. Let me think and go through some books. It wasn’t an address, in any case, but I believe there was a description…or perhaps the house was named. I remember thinking that might be enough to locate it, but I was researching something else and therefore didn’t—oh, that means I would have added a note about it in one of my journals.”

He tapped his chin. “Give me time to think and search. If I have anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you. Now, more immediately, do you need somewhere to park this?” When he nodded, I continued. “My gallery is on the ocean. It’s a converted cannery. You can park on my property and have a view of the ocean.” I gestured to the large back window behind him. “I should warn you, though. My gallery isn’t sedate.”

He returned the laptop to the bottom drawer and then got up and went back through the RV. “Let’s go see. I’d prefer not to stay here longer than necessary.” He got into the driver’s seat, waiting for me to strap myself in beside him before turning on the engine.

I pointed in the direction of Monterey. “It’s near Cannery Row.”

He drove the behemoth with the ease of a sedan right back onto the narrow twisty road Mom and I had taken here. “I know the one. I remember when Mary bought it. The rest of the family thought she’d tear it down and build a hotel or something, but she let it sit, saying she had plans for it.”

I turned to him. “Really? How odd. I’d never considered why Gran purchased it and let it sit before.” I watched a couple of surfers bob in the water, waiting for a wave. Out of nowhere, a memory surfaced. “We often had family get-togethers on the beach. When I was five or six, I’d wandered away from the group to go see this building hanging over the water. I’d thought it was a house and wanted to live there.”

“No one was watching a five-year-old Cassandra by the ocean? Goddess, you could have been swamped by a wave and drowned.” He shook his head, angry on my behalf. “The carelessness with one so precious.”

“Aww, thanks.” I patted his shoulder. “I’d have been fine, though. Dad wouldn’t have let me drown.”

He turned to me quickly and then back to the road. “I was under the impression your mother had never shared the identity of your father.”

“Oh, she hasn’t, but he’s water fae.”

Bracken’s foot came off the accelerator. At a honk behind him, he continued driving. “She chose a fae father for you?”

“Or they fell in love and nature took over. I’d prefer not to think about that part, though.”

He was silent for a few minutes. “You’re right. Cassandras do, almost exclusively, die as children, either at the hands of humans for being demon possessed or by their own hands because what they see is more than their little minds can process. You, though, being half-fae, have a strength and resilience they didn’t, which is no doubt how you survived to adulthood. Fascinating.”

He paused. “Multicolor hair with a blue halo in the sun.” Laughing, he tapped the steering wheel. “Utterly fascinating.”

“Thanks. All these books you have here, do you have anything about Cassandra wicches?”

“Hmm, perhaps anecdotally. As I’m sure you know, you’re quite rare and while we know Cassandras are a blessing from the Goddess, we also know in times past, anything that drew attention to us could cause our torture and death. And so it happened, sadly, that it was sometimes the child’s own family that took her life.”

A cold chill ran down my spine. I couldn’t imagine fearing my mother as well as the near constant psychic assault. Those poor girls. They’d had no chance.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I interrupted. Please continue. You, as a small child, went on an adventure, marching across the sand to visit the abandoned cannery. I have no idea if you marched, but in my head, you are. Please, go on.”

“I might have marched. I could have skipped. I was, I’m sure, trying to escape my cousins. Anyway, I climbed the rocks, squeezed through a fence, and walked along the rotting deck. I remember a man appeared out of nowhere.” I tried to piece the images together in my head. “He came around the far end. Thinking about it now, he didn’t look as though he’d been squatting there or anything. He was just a man, jeans and a t-shirt. He smiled a razor-sharp smile and I peed myself.

“I remember being ashamed. I wasn’t a baby anymore. But that was in the back of my mind. I was paralyzed. I wanted to run but I couldn’t move. I didn’t understand what he wanted, but I saw violence in his eyes. I saw my death and his euphoria at finding a little girl all by herself. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.

“And then this massive wave came over the railing and slammed the man into the wall of the cannery. It felt like one of my visions. It didn’t seem real. I wasn’t wet, but the man was washed off the deck and into the ocean. Finally able to move, I went to the edge and watched as a shark—a shark—swam up and bit him in half.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet.

I blew out a breath. “I’m okay. Dad saved me.”

“And that’s wonderful, but you saw what he intended to do to you. No one, especially a child, should have to experience that kind of evil.”

It was one of a million horrible things in my head, the fodder for endless nightmares. “Anyway,” I said, “I realized, once the fear was draining away, that my foot hurt. I looked down and saw a sliver—No. That sounds too small. The deck was rotting and a shard of wood was sticking out of my bloody toe. I had a moment of a different kind of horror before the tears began to fall but then, up from the water came a tentacle. It shocked the tears away. The tentacle gently wrapped around my foot and when it slipped back into the water, the sliver was gone and my skin was smooth and unbroken.”

“An octopus and a shark.” He shook in head in wonder. “What I would have given to see that.”

“Welcome to my world. The Sea Wicche is coming up here on your left.” It was a good memory and probably explained my love of octopuses.

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