Page 52 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

NINETEEN

Ten minutes later I left my house, dressed in tight black jeans, snug white T-shirt, and motorcycle boots, the Aelvestone tucked into my jeans pocket. I was going to rock that spell circle and bring back Brock. Then I was going to tell the Grove to go to hell. I was the doorkeeper. They weren’t going to closemydoor. I was ready to take names and kick ass…

“Cal…leack?”

The voice from above, calling my name, stopped me short halfway across my lawn. I whirled around, prepared to face an avenging god ready to smite me for my hubris, but it was just Bill sitting on the edge of my roof. Of course, I chided myself; an avenging god would have known how to pronounce my name. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look up at him. He sat with the sun at his back; his face was under the brim of his cap in shadow so I couldn’t see his expression, but his voice sounded concerned.

“Yes, Bill, is something wrong?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. There was a lot of banging coming from inside.”

I’d forgotten about Bill up on the roof while I was throwing around my wards. Thank goodness he hadn’t been knocked off.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I was just…um…rearranging some old furniture.”

“It sounded like you were throwing around the furniture,” he said. “Was it that man who left before who you were angry at? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

I flushed with embarrassment, then anger at being made to feel embarrassed. Then Bill leaned forward and took his cap off, and I could make out deep brown eyes the color of warm chocolate. There wasn’t a smidgen of judgment or censure in them, just concern.

“No, it wasn’t Duncan. It’s just…I had a bad breakup a few months ago,” I said, not sure why I was confiding in him. “And I haven’t been able to…move on. So I thought I’d clean house, so to speak.”

“Oh,” Bill said, his brown eyes looking thoughtful. “So you were angry because of how this ex-boyfriend treated you? Was he that bad?”

“He lied to me,” I told Bill, compelled to honesty by the concern—and pain—in his eyes. I was betting that Bill had a bad breakup in his history, too. “And I was idiot enough to believe his lies. It’s hard to trust anyone after that—it’s hard to even trust myself.”

“You weren’t an idiot,” Bill asserted with surprising conviction. “Your ex-boyfriend was. He’d have to have been to hurt you like that.” He ducked his head back into the shadows, looking embarrassed, and put his baseball cap back on.

“It was a bit more complicated than that,” I said, smiling up at him. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Any time,” he said. “If there’s anything else…”

“Just be careful up there, Bill. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

As I turned to go I heard Bill say, “You too. Be careful.”

•••

I drove out of town, my fiery mood tempered by a few kind words from Bill. I’d left Brock’s iPod plugged into the sound system so I turned it on. Kate Bush’s voice filled the car, singing about something trapped beneath the ice. I’d always found the song haunting, but now it made me think of Brock’s spirit struggling through the icy fogs of Niflheim. I hoped that today’s circle would finally release him.

As I went up the long drive to the Olsen farm, I noticed how the house sat high on a hill above the surrounding countryside. When I got out of my car, I turned to admire the view. Fields of hay, corn, and fenced grassy pastureland spread out north as far as the outskirts of the village and south to a neighboring, smaller farm. I’d always thought of Brock and Ike as small businessmen, running the Valhalla nursery and doing odd jobs in town for extra money. I hadn’t realized that they came from such a prosperous farming family. The Olsen farm must be one of the largest in the valley. It felt, standing here, as if itcommandedthe whole valley—not just its own fields and pastures, but the other small farms dotting the valley, the village to the north, and the dense woods that lay to the east.

I blinked and looked harder at the view. At the golden hay waving in the breeze and the deep emerald pastures. At the neat white fences and bright red barn. All glowing in the summer sunshine. But it wasn’t the sun that made them glow. Everything, from each blade of grass in the meadows to the red paint on the barn, was glowing with golden light. And when I looked even harder, I saw rays of light coming from the fields and fences—delicate gold lines that formed an intricate pattern over the Olsen farm like a foil overlay on a bookcover. A pattern that extended over all the farms in the valley, crossed Trask Road, and stopped at the edge of the woods.

“We can spin wards of protection across the farms and village, but not into the woods.”

I turned around. Ike stood behind me, wearing jeans and the ubiquitous flannel shirt.

“How did you know I wasn’t just admiring your farming techniques?”

“You’ve got so much Aelvesgold in you that you’re disrupting the patterns. Look…”

I turned back, raising my hand to shield my eyes…and saw the net of golden threads ripple over the fields.

“You couldn’t have that much Aelvesgold in you and not see the wards,” he said.

“Am I hurting your…wards?”

“They’re pretty resilient. The Norns reinforce them once a year, always the week leading up to the solstice. That’s when all magic is at its strongest.”

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