Legacy Of Magick (Legacy Of Magick Series, Book 1) (12 page)

Three hours later I headed back outside with Emily. We were chatting about the class and it was fully dark. We parted ways and I carted all of my things to my truck. I slid my laptop and books across the bench seat. My mind on the class and the massive reading list that had been assigned, I was fishing around for my keys when I first noticed the smell.

I looked up at the dashboard to discover a rose. I flinched, and started looking around the parking lot, wondering who had left the flower. “That’ll teach me to leave my door unlocked.” I said to myself.

I started up my truck and locked the doors. Then I gently picked up the thorny stem. I had a hunch that the flower was pilfered from a nearby garden. The red and white rose was half open and very fragrant. There was a little card lying under the flower. It read.

Enjoy your classes. If I can be of any help, please let me  know.

Julian    

I flipped over the back of the card and discovered it was his business card for the museum. And Julian Drake was on the board of directors. Which meant the chances of seeing him again at the museum would be high. I noted that his personal cell phone was also listed on the card.

Not sure how I felt about that, I tucked the card in one of my books. It wouldn’t be a smart move ticking off a guy on the board of the museum where I would be working, studying, and doing my internship. I set the rose next to me, and decided it wasn’t the flower’s fault that the guy who sent it was mildly creepy. Besides, I supposed, I’d have to wait and see what, if anything, happened next.

***    

We were rolling towards mid-September, the humidity and the heat were incredible. I went running in the evenings of my days off when it was cooler outside, and I never saw Duncan Quinn. Not even when I casually happened to jog by his family’s home. I didn’t do that too often, though, as the big stone house gave me the creeps now. I blamed that on Aunt Gwen and Bran’s warnings about the Drake family.

Still, I imagined he was busy somewhere in town flipping and rehabbing houses, as I was busy settling into my new schedule with the family and grad school.

At least that’s what I told myself.

I did see Julian at the Museum, usually as I arrived for my evening classes. He was always impeccably groomed, and polite. Julian was respected at the museum and everyone seemed to like him. Especially Emily. For the most part, he kept his distance from the grad students, which relived me, and disappointed Emily.

Feeling happy at having finished another week of classes, I cranked the AC on high in my pickup truck and headed out to go pick up the twins from school, as their shared car was in the shop.

Holly was telling Ivy about the big drama on her varsity cheer squad. Apparently a Senior, named Kellie, had broken an ankle, and was sidelined until November, which meant they would be pulling from the JV squad to fill the position.

I listened with half an ear as I navigated through town. I pulled into our neighborhood and then up to a four way stop sign. That was when I saw an officer in a crisp blue uniform and policeman’s hat standing on the sidewalk on the driver’s side of the car. He looked at me intently and gestured for me to stop with that ‘halt’ hand motion all cops use. It really stood out as he was wearing white gloves. I stayed at the stop sign and wondered what was going on.

I looked to the left and the right, but there were no other cars coming. I looked back at the cop and he was gone. That was weird, and I felt my stomach turn over.

“What are you waiting for, Autumn?” Ivy asked me.

“I could’ve sworn I saw a cop on the corner.” I said half to myself. I double checked, saw no traffic and eased through the intersection. While the twins chattered on about the big cheer squad drama, I continued on down the street past the Drake’s massive, creepy stone house, and on to the next stop sign.

I stopped again and waited for the car across from me to take its turn. I looked to my right and left. All was clear, so I took my foot off the brake and began to go through the intersection. Suddenly, a huge black bird flew right into the front windshield. “Whoa!” I yelped and stomped down on the truck’s brakes.

At the same time, a black SUV roared through the intersection from my left, its radio blaring. Time seemed to slow down as the other vehicle missed the front bumper of my truck by inches and zoomed on without stopping. The crow bounced off our windshield, cawed loudly, scattered a few feathers, and then flew off.

We sat there for a second or two, frozen, and my breathing sounded loud to my own ears. If that crow hadn’t flown into the windshield, I would not have stopped. I would have taken a direct, driver’s side hit from that fast moving SUV. Crap, that was close!

“Is everybody okay?” I asked.

“What the hell did you hit?” Ivy demanded.

“A big crow,” I said as I turned on the hazard flashers and put the truck in park. I heard Holly make a concerned sound for the bird, and I climbed out and looked around, but the stop-sign running SUV, and the crow were nowhere to be seen.

As I looked more closely at the windshield, I saw a chalky outline from where the bird had bounced off, and a large black feather resting on the hood of my tan truck. I reached out to pick up the feather and only then noticed that my hand was shaking.

Nope. Not gonna think about how close of a call that was. Best to get everybody home. Preferably in one piece. A car pulled up behind us in the intersection, and a woman stuck her head out the window to ask if we were okay. I waved, said yes, and got back in the truck. I set the feather on the front seat next to me.

Using her cell phone, Ivy snapped a picture of the weird but perfect chalky outline of the bird on the windshield.

I drove the rest of the short trip home very cautiously, and the girls were silent passengers. When I pulled in the driveway, we all climbed out and stood there staring at each other for a second.

“Good thing that crow bounced off the windshield,” Ivy said very quietly.

“Otherwise that SUV would have hit us.” I glanced down at the feather in my hand.

Holly reached out and took the long black plume. “Mom says that the crow is a messenger from the spirit realm.”

“I think I recall my father once telling me a story, when I was little, about how crows were the messengers of the old gods.” I let out a long breath. “Damn, that was close.”

“You should save that feather,” Holly suggested, and in unspoken agreement we began walking to the front porch. Holly suddenly seemed a lot older and wiser that your average seventeen year old. Probably came from being raised as a Witch.

My feet hit the front steps when I remembered that I had left my purse in the truck. Holly and Ivy headed inside, and I went back to go get my purse.

With it retrieved, I closed the cab door and saw someone standing near the end of the driveway, out on the sidewalk, beyond our wrought iron fence. It was the cop I had observed earlier, standing quietly and watching me.

He was close enough and I had plenty of time to get a good look at him. He had dark hair, buzzed short in a military looking cut. His shirt was starched and pressed, and his pants even had creases in them. His hat sat neatly on his head and I saw that he still had on white gloves.
Dress uniform…
the phrase floated in my mind. And where did that phrase come from?

My stomach jumped. What was he doing here? “Can I help you, officer?” I called politely over to him.

He looked down and smiled at the edge of the driveway, as if he was seeing something I could not.

Curious, I walked down closer to where he was standing. The longer I looked directly at him— the harder it was to focus on him, almost as if the edges of him shimmered. With all the discussion of wards in the past week I wondered if the property line was ‘warded’ as well. If it was enchanted against evil from entering— then it was protected against all sorts of things.

I laughed to myself as I mentally crossed vampires off the list. It was broad daylight, after all. As I stopped about six feet away from where he stood, I felt a noticeable drop in the temperature. Considering that it was in the high nineties today, the difference in the temperature made me shiver.

Vampire? No. But whatever I was seeing was not a regular person. My heart started to pound. “What do you want?” I asked him flatly. Then I noticed I was seeing my breath puff out on the air, as if it was cold outside.

The policeman’s friendly brown eyes calmed me a bit. “Be safe,” he said. With that, he tipped his hat to me, turned to walk back down the sidewalk, and vanished.

CHAPTER EIGHT

And I do mean he vanished. As in, there one second and gone the next. I had actually seen someone go
poof
, right in front of my own eyes.

Goosebumps broke out on my arms and I shuddered, feeling the temperature swing back to hot and stuffy.
Congratulations Autumn
, I thought to myself.
You have seen and communicated with your first ghost.

“Messenger from the spirit realm…” I recalled as I looked down at the feather I still clutched in my fist. Terrific. As if there hadn’t been enough drama lately? I walked down to the end of the driveway and looked up and down the street to be sure.

Nope. No one was out walking, and everything was dead quiet.

Ha. Dead quiet. Shaking my head at my own inner monologue, I made myself turn around and walk calmly and deliberately back to the house.

It took everything I had not to look over my shoulder.

I made it to the big covered front porch without further incident. I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding. Feeling a little light-headed, probably from the adrenalin and from inadvertently holding my breath, I moved over to the front porch swing for a few moments. I sat on the wooden swing and watched the butterflies and hummingbirds zip through the front gardens and, well, I won’t lie. I kept watch.

While I sat there waiting for my heart rate to slow down, I thought about what I had just seen, or
seen
. Call me old fashioned, but I had always figured ghosts typically appeared in a foggy graveyard or in a creepy old house during a dark, stormy night. It seemed spookier somehow, that this had happened to me in broad daylight. I knew next to nothing about ghosts. But I could fix that pretty quick, couldn’t I?

Ten minutes later I had a haul of books from Gwen’s room spread over my bed. They covered psychics, psychic abilities, ghost, and spirit communication. Boy I loved research, and these books appeared even more interesting than the one I was supposed to be reading,
An Introduction to Museum Studies
. Merlin peered up at me from the foot of the bed where I had disturbed his nap, then padded over and stretched out beside me. I took plenty of notes, and gave the psychic and paranormal books my undivided attention for a few hours.

It was well worth my time, and I soon discovered what the term
postcognitive
meant. When Ivy tossed that out after Bran’s light show, I’d been too shell-shocked to ask.

So according to the reference books, it meant the experience of acquiring psychic information form the past. Depending on the ability of the individual; a postcognitive experience could manifest as hearing voices and music from the past, sensing old memories, or even having a clairvoyant vision of past events. Which is what I had done when I strolled through Bran’s memories the other day. I took more notes on postcognition, and started to feel like I was getting a better idea on what I had been dealing with. I also decided to keep the ghostly police officer to myself, for now.

By six o’clock, my stomach was rumbling and I set the books aside, looking forward to the Chinese takeout that was being ordered tonight. I padded barefoot downstairs to find Holly and Ivy sitting at the kitchen table having a hushed discussion with Bran.

I stood out of sight, around the corner of the dining room, and shamelessly eavesdropped on the three of them. Seeing their heads close together, I could really see the family resemblance. Which, I admit, made me feel a little out of place again. Their voices were low, but I began to follow their discussion: what was to be done about the Drake family’s current activities. Particularly, they did not seem happy about Julian being a new board member at the same museum where I was taking classes. I quietly backed up a few feet, and then purposefully walked back towards the kitchen humming to myself.

As I expected, the conversation switched off immediately, and I was met with three fairly strained smiles, which I pretended to be oblivious to.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” I asked them, all smiles and pseudo good cheer.

Ivy and Holly jumped to their feet and began pulling dishes out of the cupboards to set the table. No, they didn’t look guilty at all...

“We were discussing the ramifications of the Drakes’ movement into our territory.” Bran said.

I rolled my eyes, “Territory? You make this sound like a border skirmish.”

“You are not far off. Duncan Quinn walked right into our store a few weeks ago.” Bran reminded me.

“Yeah, and I take my classes at the museum where Julian is a board member every week.”

“Yes we know.” Bran narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like that either.”

“He seems well respected at the museum and he’s been very polite every time I have seen him.”

“Julian better leave you alone, or else.” Bran growled.

“Or what?” I asked. “Spell books at twenty paces?”

Clearly frustrated with my snarkiness, he sighed long and loud.

“No wait, I’m getting a mental picture…” I put my hand to the bridge of my nose as if in deep concentration. “I foresee herbs and insults flying. A showdown at midnight…This town ain’t big enough for the two of you, type of thing?”

“I accept that you are not ready to believe, or even understand the importance of, our history. However, the sarcasm is out of place and, quite frankly, offensive to this family.” Bran lectured me while I stood there and grinned at him.