Page 52 of Wicche Hunt

“Yep. I’m painting the walls.”

“Oh, good. I’m on my way to pick you up. We need to go to your Gran’s. She says she feels a dark presence circling the house.”

I sealed the paints, cleaned the brushes with a spell—which I hated doing, as it often left the hairs of the brushes in a sorry state. Climbing down the scaffolding, I said, “I’ll be out front in a minute.”

I studied the wall so far and felt like I was making good progress. It wasn’t there yet. I needed to think about how to amplify the illusion of ocean water.

Grabbing my backpack, I locked up and jogged around the side of the gallery. Damn Calliope. Why wouldn’t she leave Gran alone?

Mom wasn’t in front yet, so I paced. I did, of course, know why. Gran was the matriarch. She held the family in check. Cal and her demon wanted us in shambles so we’d be easier to pick apart. Was the goal money? Power? It wasn’t as though Gran’s power could be transferred upon her death.

I kicked a rock. Maybe laying waste to the family was the point. Tires kicked up pebbles behind me. I got ready to jump out of the way in case it was Sweaty Guy again. Thankfully, Mom’s tasteful sedan pulled up beside me.

“I was with John and Roger at Hester’s when your Gran called. John gave me the baby prints. They’re in the back seat. We need to have you look for Calliope when we’re done building wards,” she said.

I glanced over my shoulder at the bag on the back seat. “Okay.”

Gran didn’t live far away, so we were there in no time. Mom slowed as we neared, turning through a narrow break in the foliage. Pacific Madrone and Monterey Pine created a canopy over the hidden driveway, with white camellia bushes, elderberry, hostas, and hydrangea filling in the pockets around the circular cobbled drive.

She parked by the glossy wooden front door, carved with protective sigils. Gran’s house was like a bag of holding. It appeared to be a tiny forgotten stone cottage, clinging to the edge of a cliff. When you walked in, though—over polished wood floors, laid in intricate patterns mirroring the sigils on the door—the ceiling rose higher than the roof. A one-room hovel became a three-bedroom, three-bath showplace, with every room boasting huge windows overlooking the ocean.

Gran opened the door as we got out. “It’s gone now. It was poking at the windows and doors, trying to slide past the wards.”

I was happy to see anger and not fear on her face. “We’ll bolster the wards, just like we did at the cannery, to keep it away.”

Nodding, she waved us in.

When I walked through the door, I felt something off. Stopping short, I caused Mom to run into me.

“Really, Arwyn, what are you doing?” Bumping into people was rude and undignified. She wasn’t happy I’d made her do it.

“Sorry, Mom.” I stepped out of the way. “Could you two go in? There’s something around the door that’s bothering me.”

They got out of my way and I moved in and out of the door, pausing on the porch. Like a divining rod, I was trying to find the smudge of darkness attached to Gran’s home. My head started to pound. “It’s the door itself.”

Taking off a glove, I touched the door.

Smoke hangs in the flickering torchlight. The heat is oppressive. Delicate hands work a mortar and pestle, grinding something into a paste. My head begins to throb in time with low chanting. I recognize the voice. Calliope is twisting a spell, doing black magic. On the large wooden table is a headless chicken and an open book, a grimoire.

The ancient spell book is bound in cracked, peeling leather. I can’t read the open page, but it contains cramped handwriting and stains that have amassed over the ages. She picks up an athame, a wicche’s ceremonial dagger, and slices her palm, dripping blood into the concoction. Next, she tips in the contents of a small vial and then circles the pestle counterclockwise, the chanting getting louder and faster.

Outdoors now. In the night. Gran’s house. That same delicate hand dips a small paintbrush into a jar holding the cursed potion and she begins to alter the blessed sigils on Gran’s door, unwinding, one by one, the protections.

Blinking, I caught myself before I hit the ground. Touching those damn curses was what was making me so sick. “We need a nulling draught,” I told my mom as I slipped my glove back on.

“What is it?” Gran asked.

I explained what I’d seen. “We need to wash all the sigils, null all the spells, protective and cursed, and then we need to build the wards again.”

Mom and Gran stared at me. “It took days for us to create those wards. A nulling draught won’t undo our work.”

“No,” Gran admitted, “but the three of us working together can strip it down and build it back up. Good,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “We know what she did, and we know how to fix it. Let’s get started.”

We worked well into the evening, hands held, as the Three touched each sigil with our magic, purifying it and then rebuilding the ward. As each mark was stripped and again blessed by the Goddess, a part of the door burned bright and then went out. When we were finally done, the door was filled with scorch marks, but all the protections and then some were back.

I hadn’t been one of the original ward makers. That had happened before I was born. Now, though, there was fae magic threaded through, making it far more difficult for a sorcerer to dismantle.

Since Gran had felt the presence circling her house, we did the same, looking for weak spots. I found two more areas where Calliope had corrupted the wards. Afterward, exhausted, we went in and collapsed in the living room, Gran in her rocker by the fireplace, Mom on the couch, and me in the chair to the side.

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