Elemental Shadows (9 page)

"Sam?"
 

"Sorry. I had a customer." I refocused on what my dad had said. Dad knew,
had
known that is, that I was a Witch. He'd knowingly married one. So calling for me to get rid of a ghost was actual, cognitive thinking. The fact he was
talking
to a ghost or could possibly
see
one well enough to throw things at it? That was a little frightening. I mean was it real considering what had been happening all morning on my end? Or was it the dementia? How did you know?

Him saying the ghost was my mom both intrigued and irritated me. I didn't really know that much about ghosts. I hadn't met many over the years and usually I'd been able to explain hauntings logically. Magnetic fields, noisy pipes, and the usual over active imagination.
 

"Polly…you're a nurse. Do you think he's really seeing something?"
 

Her laugh caught me off guard. And then I remembered Pauline didn't know anything about me, about what I was, or what my mother had been. "I think he thinks he's seeing something in his mind. That's dementia. Whatever is going on, I'm sort of reluctant to take him to the doctor."
 

"You think they'll want him in a home."
 

"Yeah. He was throwing things, Sam. And when they start getting violent, doctors usually like them in a facility where that can be addressed."
 

I knew what that meant. Addressed meaning they could dope him up to make him non-violent.
 

That bruised my heart knowing my dad had never been violent in his life. This was the same man who used to capture spiders in the house to take them outside before me or Ina stomped them.
 

I don't like spiders.
 

But dad? He loved everything.
 

"You think me coming to see him might help?"
 

"That's what I'm hoping."
 

Yeah, I could see that. She and dad still lived in Picayune, which was just over an hour's drive from New Orleans. The problem was everything going on in my life, especially and most importantly, dealing with that threat of Arden's warlocking by Cleric assholes. I checked the clock over the door. The boys had been gone a long time, and I was getting hungry. I was also feeling like the entire world had taken up residence on my shoulders. "Polly, I understand. But there's no way I can get there this week. You think he'll hold out till maybe next Wednesday?" That gave me about four days to clear all this bullshit up, and hopefully clear Arden's name.
 

She didn't answer at first and I could feel her disappointment through the phone. "Yeah. If he asks again I'll tell him you're getting here as fast as you can."
 

"Thanks Polly. I'm sorry. It's just crazy here."
 

"It's New Orleans, Sammie…" Polly said as she laughed. It sounded hollow. "It's always crazy."
 

We hung up and I pulled Ivan's stool from the creepy corner and sat on it. I really did feel the weight of everything at that moment. Mine and Robin's increasing arguments, the stress of worrying if my use of Arcane was going to manifest somehow into something horrible, the truth about Arwen's death I hid from everyone, Arden's request for help to find who was framing her, the warlock threat which now depended on me finding their damn Hammer, and now my dad.
 

Was his dementia getting that bad? I didn't know. I was ashamed I hadn't kept up with him, or Polly. I had been too involved in my own drama to take a peek outside of my own world.
 

What really sucked about it all was that usually when I started feeling like this, I went to Ina.
 

But Ina didn't exist. She'd never been real. To me.
 

And now she was gone, somewhere in the world. I hated to think Dionysus would abandon that body somewhere and leave it to rot alone. Inamorata had been my mom's closest friend. She didn't deserve to have her life taken like that. The only comfort I had was knowing Medbh took her soul and returned it to the well before Dionysus could abuse it.
 

I wiped at my cheek and looked down at the beautiful face looking up at me. Grey whined a few times and I leaned forward to kiss the top of her head. "Just having a little pity party, girl. Not sure where to turn. I need to talk to someone, but it can't be Ina."
 

Grey woofed.
 

"Yeah, and I just can't talk to Crwys."
 

Grey's ears twitched back then forward, almost in a question.
 

"Because he confuses me. It's bad enough he's part owner of this place now. Not to mention every time I see him I want to take my clothes off."
 

Grey growled low in her throat.
 

I laughed at her. "I'm not falling into that trap again. Not till I know exactly what it is I'm sleeping
with
." I cringed after I said that. It was just wrong.
 

Maybe it was time to start confiding in Kyle and Ivan. They were a large part of my life now, and though they we were both around the same age as me; I always saw them as much younger and in need of mothering. Eh…had to be that Elemental nature of mine.
 

I retrieved my phone and pressed the button.
 

But instead of my usual locked screen of a full moon, a shadow looked back at me. I was so startled I dropped the phone and jumped back. The stool fell backward and Grey took off across the room, startled.
 

It wasn't often I was frightened like that. I'd seen a lot of crap in my life, sometimes to a point where what scared the average person barely made a blip on my radar. But that…

I tried recalling exactly what I'd seen from my memory—and that's where it got hard. There weren't any real distinguishing features to it. Just the impression of a face, with sunken holes for eyes and tiny red dots. I couldn't remember a mouth or even a nose.
 

Grey returned, looking a little embarrassed that she ran away. She bent her nose at the phone. It landed with the face on the floor, which of course, just made the idea of picking it up and turning it over to see the face again a bit more scary.
 

I watched her sniff it, and then she wagged her tail. I took that as a sign and retrieved it.
 

When I turned it over, I gasped.
 

A crack moved from the lower left corner all the way up to the upper right corner. I stared at the crack for a while as Grey whined at me. At first I thought…I could have sworn…I saw a thin, red worm crawling out from the crack across the glass. Then another one popped out.
 

More of the red worms poured out from the crack and squirmed around on top of the glass. I recognized what I was seeing—this was Ivan's description of what he saw when he viewed Arcane Magic. Usually, I saw it as red and sparkling. Like glitter.
 

The smell followed the worms. The rotting chicken aroma.
 

Grey barked.
 

The phone buzzed, and then rang as Crwys's number showed up. I slammed the phone on the counter. The worms abruptly disappeared. There was no way I was answering that.
 

I ran my fingers through my hair. I needed to find my center and think. Times like this, I wished I had a bunch of white boards I could throw up in my apartment and just write everything down like a detective would. Put all the tiny pieces together and look at things in a whole instead of feeling overwhelmed by a dozen little things.
 

Though my dad losing his mind and me being threatened with being warlocked weren't
little
things.
 

Ina had white boards in her house. She used to use them to teach students.
 

Well, she used them to teach her ghouls how to kill people and do her bidding. But they were still white boards. As far as I knew, no one had been in the house since the night I killed Arwen and ended up in the hospital. My hand went to the spot on my neck where Dionysus bit me.

The house was legally mine. Ina—Dionysus—had insisted on us jointly owning it. I never understood why. He was gone. Crwys suspected he was off starting a new life, probably one he'd been planning on for a while. Might have even taken a new body. Probably a man this time.
 

Me? I wasn't so sure. Dionysus had invested a lot of time taking care of me—but I didn't know why. Me. The daughter of his tormentor. I had this bad suspicion I wasn't going to find that out for a while, and when I did, I wasn't going to like it.
 

Going back into that house wasn't my top priority. But I needed to be away from everyone for a breather. How was I going to react emotionally to returning to a house where I murdered someone?
 

I didn't know. But if there was one thing Dionysus had taught me it was to face my fears head on. Don't run from them, but run into them.
 

And right now, I was afraid of that house. Of what I did. And that fear had kept me in a state of hesitancy for the past two weeks. I felt if I moved through this level, I could think clearer and pick a direction.
 

Any freak'n direction.
 

I grabbed my phone with a dishtowel, even though I didn't see anymore of those little red worms, slipped it into my bag, grabbed my guns and loaded Grey in the Jeep.
 

It was time to face fear number one head on.
 

T
he smell that hit me when I opened the door knocked me back a few steps. Grey whined but she went inside. It wasn't like a garbage smell. More like an earthy, compost heap smell. And I had a pretty good idea where it came from.
 

I learned about Dionysus’s plan for my mom and Ina's unwilling part in it all on Halloween. Ina had been in the kitchen making pies and the center island had been filled with baskets of all sorts of apples. Granny Smith, Fuji, Pink Ladies, MacIntosh…
 

Now, all of those apples were little more than rotted husks in ruined baskets in the kitchen. The pies she'd made sat on the stove where she'd put them to cool and each one was covered in a thick, green mold.
 

I stood by the island looking down at the place where Dionysus tried to drain me. My blood, now stained brown, still coated parts of the white tile floor. There weren't any black dusts of powder where a CSI team looked for prints. No police tape in the back yard around the Circle.
 

Because Crwys had taken care of everything. There was no body to find. No evidence of what I'd done. Except what I held in my memory and the sparkle of glittering red I sometimes saw when I worked magic. It was small, just a tinge of it, but it was there.
 

Arcane.
 

It was permeating my magic. Slow but steady. Was this what it was supposed to do? Everything I'd ever been told about Arcane Magic was that it was forbidden, that it was evil and it would destroy a Witch's soul. And I guess it had destroyed mine in a way. I'd been so focused on thinking Arwen was the Leviathan I was looking for that I couldn't see the reality in front of me.
 

Something moved out of my peripheral vision. It was fast and low, and I thought for a second it was Grey, but she was at my feet. She was looking in the same direction, her ears perked forward.
 

The motion had been in the dining room just off the kitchen. I summoned a Salamander as my hand burst into red flame and moved cautiously into that room. The Salamander hovered nearby, watching the room too, and turned as if watching something move past it.
 

"Is there someone here?" My voice did nothing to reassure me. It was possible there were transients, or homeless kids in the house. Dionysus had usually opened this house to them, and now I shuddered thinking of what he might have done to them right under my nose.
 

The Salamander turned to me and shrugged. I dismissed him with a thank you and cautiously moved through the rest of the lower level. Nobody but me.
 

I put my hands to my face and took a deep breath. All this talk about ghosts, Shadow People and Crwys wanting a Ghostbusters Spell was making me jumpy. It didn't help that my own dad wanted me to exorcise mom. The best thing to do would be clean it all up. Wash it away. And
Cleanse
the house.