Chapter 24 Ghost
The door to the cabin creaks open. “Mamá?” I call out.
I know better than to knock. The rapt of knuckles on wood still sends her into a panic attack.
And a witch as powerful as she, lost in a panicked trance, isn’t good for anyone within a mile radius.
Inside, the heat hits me like a wall. Despite it being summer, the fireplace blazes, casting flickering shadows across her slight frame, hunched in her armchair. Her head snaps up, eyes widening.
“Mijo!” She leaps up from her chair and flies toward me, thin arms outstretched before pulling me into a hug.
For a moment, I’m enveloped in her scent.
Earthy stone magic. Our lineage is ancient, and though it will likely die with me, when she holds me like this, I can feel our ancestors all around us.
But then her muscles stiffen, and she pulls away, fingers trembling as she delicately buttons her cardigan, needing something to do with her hands.
Her gaze drops to the worn floorboards, she won’t meet my eyes.
Nearly sixty years since my father was killed, and she still can’t bear to hold me much longer than a breath. But her smile remains—a little broken, it doesn’t quite reach her eyes—and she gushes after me like I’m a child, putting on a kettle for tea, asking about my journeys.
She doesn’t own a phone—has zero interest in technology, though that is more common amongst shifters, not witches—so I haven’t spoken with her since my last visit over a month ago.
“I brought you a book,” I tell her, unwrapping the tome and placing it on the table.
“Oh?” she raises one dark brow. Fine lines are more prominent around her face these days.
Powerful witches age slowly, but only if they practice their craft.
And if they have the will to live fully.
Mamá does neither. And so, each time I see her, she looks a little older.
Beautiful, as always, but she appears closer to my seventy years than I do, with gray streaks in her black hair, threading from her temples into her braids.
She’s small, barely five feet, and seems more frail these days than she used to.
I resist the urge to hug her again—it wouldn’t be welcome—and pour the tea while she looks through the book.
“De Medica Magica,” she harrumphs, and nudges the book aside.
Sighing, I push it back toward her, along with her cup of tea, and take a seat at the table. “I need your help.”
“With what?” She shrugs, tucking the shawl around her shoulders closer. “You know I don’t practice anymore. I thought you brought me something juicy to read. Like that vampire series Trin likes.”
“Why don’t you just borrow Trin’s?” I ask. Trin Halperin has been Kendrick’s clan doctor for the last hundred years or so. Edgar, Silent Peak’s current doctor, used to fill that role, but he found Maine to be a more agreeable climate. I’d never given much thought to the region before Mona.
“I’ve read them all.”
“I’ll bring more next time, I promise.”
“Lo que tú digas.” Whatever you say. She waves a hand, brushing me off, then takes a sip of her piping hot tea.
“Can I open a window?” I ask, since I know better than to request we put out the fire.
She’s spelled the hearth to continue to burn.
The wooden logs never char, and it offers so much relief to me she’s even using her magic at all, even in such a small way, that I never complain. But it’s fucking hot in here.
She gets up, her body seemingly frail. I try to help, but she nudges me back to the table. While she cracks a window, tugging her shawl even closer, as though there’s a chill in the air, not a stifling stream, she says, “So, what did you need my help with?”
“There’s this shifter… I believe she’s a Seeker.”
“Ahh. One of the Sages. Are you certain?”
“She has dreams. She sees things as they are, things she has no other way of seeing or knowing.”
“Is this Kendrick’s newest pet project? He hasn’t been by in a while, I assumed he was away on business. Only, he doesn’t usually leave for so long. Not since his wife’s passing.”
My stomach tightens. So much in that sentence. “Yes, it involves Kendrick. Do you remember her? Amy, his wife?”
“Oh, of course,” she says, sitting back down at the table, curiosity piqued. The text I brought inches closer to her, fingers trailing up the spine.
Desperate to see more of a spark in her eyes, I add, “And Desdemona? His daughter?”
Mamá’s eyes water. She smiles warmly, lost in memory.
I was working as The Ghost by then, rarely home, but I met Mona one time when she was just a baby, when Amy was visiting with my mother.
She was far too young for me to recognize as my future mate, she’d barely emerged as an omega.
But I recognized her scent when we met in that dingy basement in Canada. I knew instantly who she was.
“She was a sweet little thing. So red though!”
I laugh. Mona had pale skin, like her father. So when she screamed, as babies do, all the blood flushed beneath her skin, making her appear as a little, angry red ball. The soft, downy red hair on her scalp didn’t help matters.
Most ancient shifters and witches, like Kendrick and my mother, pre-date modern borders.
But Kendrick was born in Europe, when the English language was still breaking from its Germanic roots, and he looks every bit the early Anglo-Saxon he is.
Unlike my mother. Though she speaks mostly English these days, when I was young it was Spanish, and many years before I was born, before my father entered her life, it was Nahuatl.
She was born in Mexico City—though it was called Tenochtitlan at the time, when the Aztec dominated the area, before the Spanish arrived—and she still carries her history with her.
It comes out in little ways. It comes out in her magic, in her customs.
People like my mother and Kendrick, they have lived far too long. They’ve witnessed atrocities most of us think we’d never survive in one lifetime, let alone many. But they’re still standing. My mother is stronger than she ever gives herself credit for.
Today, she goes by Tali, but her given name, Tlalli, means of the Earth.
She is an Earth witch, and while most possess some form of elemental powers, they often excel in only one or two.
My mother can keep a fire burning. She can keep the small garden patch outside her cabin full of water as she manipulates the air to feed the plants. But her skill is Earth.
Which is why she’s always had an affinity for alchemy and healing magic.
And it’s why she’s always had a fondness for shifters, even taking one as a lover, though it was strictly forbidden amongst her coven.
My mother didn’t care, and my father cared even less.
He loved my mother more than all the stars in the sky, and he took her as his mate the moment she agreed.
My mother’s voice pulls me from the memories. “It was such a terrible thing when they died. Kendrick’s never been the same.”
“He hasn’t. Mamá, the Seeker… I know it sounds impossible, but she is Desdemona. The High Priestess of Northwood kidnapped the baby and used magic and some of Mona’s blood to stage the scene.”
She gasps, fingers clutching the shawl tight against her neck. “But the bodies?”
“It was likely Amy and another child. Deidre took Mona and, to avoid suspicion for a while, hired a human to play her father. He raised her as human in New York, kept her drugged with an herbal compound to keep her wolf from manifesting.”
My mother’s shock keeps me going. It’s a balance.
Not wanting to push her over the edge, but to keep her engaged enough to stay with me.
To stay present. So, I tell her about Silas and how Mona had to find her own way.
She already knew about the missing shifters.
She was actually the one who, over the years, warned Kendrick that it was likely the witches were involved with all the kidnappings. He believed her, but had no proof.
I don’t tell her about invading the compound. She doesn’t like to hear of my work, it worries her, and she especially doesn’t like to hear I’ve been near witches.
“You’ve heard of The Great Yolanda, yes?”
I frown. “The spiritualist?” In the late eighteen hundreds, there was a revival of humans who were convinced they could communicate with the dead through séances and spiritual mediums. Witches have always profited from human desperation, but the spiritualism craze was a gold mine for them.
She dips her chin. “Yolanda was a spiritualist, working with the veil. She became quite famous among humans as well. As her reputation grew, her power magnified. During that time, Deidre was still peddling cheap prosperity spells to humans. It was the Great Depression era and, frankly, Deidre was barely scraping by, falling on the power scale. I cannot say for certain what happened—these are old rumors—but the scales of power tipped overnight. Yolanda vanished without a trace, and suddenly Deidre’s amassing great power.
By the time the fifties rolled around, before we had you, she’d become a force in the West. Whatever bargain she struck, whatever dark magics she employed, it didn’t just elevate her.
It affected her entire bloodline. They all rose in power. ”
“Do you know what spell she did to gain that power?”
Her eyes darken as she shakes her head. “It was no spell, son. It was a curse. She did something terrible, sold a piece of herself she’ll never get back.”
“What did she sell?”
She shrugs half-heartedly. “I do not know. Her soul?” She laughs weakly, which turns into a light cough. “In any case, whatever she is up to now… I believe it’s connected to that old debt.”
I let the weight of her suggestion sink in, and what it could mean for Mona.