Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
E than stood on the sidewalk outside the boarded-up house that had been Stella and Jade’s childhood home. He tipped his head back, drove his hands deep into his pockets, and let out a deep sigh.
Despite his and Stella’s magical pairing, he’d never developed her gifts for detecting the presence of magic. Still, there was no missing the fact she’d found a way to get inside.
He knew this, of course, because Izzy had told him where Stella had gone. But also because he heard her frustrated voice yelling, “Well, this was a waste of time!”
Ethan wandered around the side of the house and found the back door ajar. He entered the house through the kitchen. The electricity had been turned off to the house long ago, but flashlight beams bobbed across the walls in the next room.
When he reached the living room, he rocked to a stop as one of those beams illuminated the face of a woman Izzy had, for some reason, failed to mention. “Goodwife Joan Wright!”
“Master Ethan,” the ancient witch replied with a demure nod.
Stella scoffed and turned toward the wall.
Ethan shot Stella a quick glance, then focused on Abby and something Izzy had bothered to tell him. “I heard something about you getting a letter from Frannie?”
Abby blew out a breath and held her flashlight under her chin. “She said we might find some information about the Collector here. Apparently, he hid something in this house back in 1930.”
“Or at least, that’s the rumor among scullery maids,” Hawk added from a corner of the room.
Ethan couldn’t quite get a read on the shifter’s voice, on whether he’d come to the house expecting a gold mine or a wild goose chase.
“We checked every room,” Jade said. “But no evidence of the Collector having any laboratory here. And there aren’t any witches locked in a pit, or even in the cellar.”
“You know…” Stella said. “I’m starting to get really sick of this. We want to know what he’s up to? Fine. Let’s draw the runes. Let’s open a fucking portal and go right to him. I’ve got the poppet.”
Ethan bristled, remembering the sight of Stella being held captive by her own father. Her body bound to a gurney. The worst thing imaginable about to happen… It was an image that came to him often and one he hoped to someday shake.
“Nay,” Goody Joan said, and her emphatic tone made Ethan flinch. “This time you must be better prepared, especially since you know not whom he will resemble.”
“ This time? ” Stella said. “Wait. Are you saying you know about last time?”
Oh, boy. Ethan braced. This wasn’t going to be good.
Goody Joan tipped her head to the side, but said nothing.
“You saw it in your tarot cards, didn’t you?” Stella asked, but it wasn’t really a question. “Before we went to Trask’s mill. You knew the Collector was hiding under an invisible ward. You knew we’d be attacked. You knew he’d capture me.”
Goody Joan pursed her lips.
“You might’ve given us some intel before we jumped into that mess,” Stella accused.
“Stella could’ve died,” Ethan said, somewhat softer in tone but no less disturbed by the old witch’s lack of charity.
Goody Joan shook her head. “If you thought you needed me, you knew where to find me.”
“Unbelievable,” Stella muttered, and she flung her arms out in frustration.
“Let’s focus on the here and now,” Hawk advised, stepping out of the corner. “What can we do to be better prepared?”
“Too bad Stella’s mother couldn’t have been more specific on that point,” Ethan said.
“Yes. What did your mother say?” Goody Joan asked Stella. “Anything about this dwelling place?”
“I was out in the hallway,” Stella said, and she folded her arms.
“Most of what her mother said sounded like gibberish,” Ethan offered. “The connection was never that strong.”
“Tell her anyway,” Hawk said.
“Well,” Ethan hedged. “She did mention something about a closet. Have you already checked them all?”
“You can’t hide a laboratory in a closet,” Stella said.
“Abby and I checked the closets,” Hawk said. “The hallway. The kitchen pantry. All the bedrooms.”
Abby lifted her chin, and she looked toward the ceiling.
“Abby?” Ethan asked. “Something you wanted to add?”
“What?” She jolted, seemingly startled by his question. “No. It’s just… I was thinking. The bedroom at the front of the house, it didn’t have a closet. It should’ve had one, right? Being a bedroom.”
“That was our parents’ room,” Jade said, and she looked up at the ceiling too.
“I don’t remember if they had a closet,” Stella said, then she shrugged. “We’re here. Best be thorough.”
She aimed her flashlight app toward the foyer and strode out of the living room, her long auburn hair swinging behind her.
Ethan followed several strides behind. Normally, he could have overtaken her, but this was her house. Besides that, it was dark, and he had no idea where he was going.
She was up the stairs before he’d climbed the first few steps, and when he reached the bedroom, he found that Stella had stopped just inside the door. He nearly collided with the back of her.
The room was even darker than downstairs with now just two tiny flashlight beams between them. Still, he could make out the worn floorboards, the peeling wallpaper, and an old mahogany wardrobe standing against an interior wall.
Stella stared up at a massive piece of furniture, and Ethan pulled her out of the way so that Jade and Abby could enter.
“I forgot about that thing,” Stella said. “Our parents kept their clothes in a wardrobe.”
“Why was it left behind?” Abby asked.
“It was probably too heavy for Marietta and George to move into storage,” Jade suggested.
Stella stepped up to the piece of furniture. “Maybe if it had been in better shape, they would’ve bothered to keep it.”
She picked at some of the decorative molding on the wardrobe doors, and the strip snapped right off.
“Hawk,” Ethan called down the hall because the shifter had hung back to help Goody Joan, and they were still coming up the stairs. “I could use your help with something.”
“ Shhh ,” Goody Joan scolded. “Do not shout. The magic holds many secrets.”
“Secrets?” Stella called out. “What kind of secrets?”
Ethan focused his attention on the wardrobe as Abby opened the doors and felt along its bottom. As far as he could tell, it was completely empty.
“Someone has been planning,” Goody Joan said as she hobbled into the bedroom. “It was not as strong down stairs, but now that I am up here… Ah, yes. A most devious scheme.”
“You’re talking about the Collector,” Stella said. “What’s he planning?”
Goody Joan furrowed her brow, then reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a handful of some kind of herb. She trickled it along the bedroom wall, reached the corner, and made a ninety-degree turn while trickling some more.
“The planning has taken years ,” she said. “The intent behind the magic is strong.”
“Is the magic coming from inside the walls?” Ethan asked, because if that was the case, they’d have to strip all the wallpaper and maybe even pull up the floor.
Goody Joan closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, as if she’d just been served a delicious meal. “Can you not smell that?”
“I can smell the trace remnants of my family’s magic,” Stella said. “It’s faint, but it’s all over the house.”
“Cedar,” Joan said.
“A lot of closets are lined in cedar,” Hawk said
“Maybe so,” Abby said, “but this wardrobe isn’t.”
Ethan glanced up at the bulky furniture, an idea suddenly coming to him. “Come on, Hawk. Let’s move it. It could be blocking something.”
Hawk took one end of the wardrobe, and Ethan took the other. They rocked it toward Ethan so it was tipped onto two of its stubby feet, then walked Hawk’s side out a few inches from the wall, just enough to see behind it.
“There’s nothing there,” Abby said, peeking around the edge of it.
A wave of defeat flooded Ethan’s chest. There was no closet door, nothing but more wallpaper, though it was more pristine than the rest of the room.
Stella sighed. “I thought for sure…”
“Move it some more,” Hawk said, and even though Ethan saw no point in it, they both put their shoulders to one end and pushed it a few feet down the wall.
Goody Joan shuffled forward and slowly raised her withered hand.
She extended her index finger and touched the newly exposed wall, leaning in. Her finger went right through the paper.
“Ah,” she said. “As suspected.”
The scent of cedar washed into the room, and Jade jumped in to tear down a larger section of wallpaper.
Abby helped, and Ethan watched as, very quickly, they revealed a shallow recess in the wall.
“It’s not much of a closet,” Hawk said, shining his flashlight around. “I can see why they needed the wardrobe.”
“It’s not a big enough space for a gurney,” Stella said. “My father couldn’t have used it as a laboratory in the 1930s, and he couldn’t have imprisoned more than one person in here at a time.”
Abby gave a whole body shiver.
Hawk threw his arm around her shoulders saying, “It’s not too small to hide a bunch of cash though, and that’s what Frannie’s letter suggested. He could store all the cash he’d need to support the different lives he’s been leading.”
Ethan shone his own flashlight around the narrow space, moving lower than where Hawk’s light had hit. The beam illuminated a spot at the bottom of the wall where someone had cut out a perfectly square hole. A hiding spot within a hiding spot.
Ethan dropped to his knees and shoved his arm into the hole, all the way up to his shoulder.
“Anything?” Stella asked, crouching right behind him and resting her hand on his back.
Ethan felt around blindly. There was plenty of dust coating the framing and plaster laths. He felt a few stubby nails. Some kind of dry, pebbly detritus that he didn’t want to think too much about. But nothing that screamed of a magical discovery.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s empty.”
He pulled his arm out and, after Stella backed up, rose to his feet. He brushed his hand off on his pants.
“You know,” Jade said, crouching down at the base of the closet. “That hole is about twelve inches square.”
“Yeah?” Hawk asked. “Does that have magical significance?”
“Not normally,” she said. “But isn’t that the exact same size as the witch board you found? And it’s made of cedar.”
“What?” Stella asked. “Let me see.”
Jade leaned to her right.
Stella peered inside. “Oh my god.”
Ethan’s chest tightened with a mixture of apprehension and excitement.
“Is she right?” Hawk asked.
“I’d bet my life someone cut the witch board out of this closet. But was it my mom or my dad?” Stella glanced over her shoulder at Goody Joan who was trickling more herbs along the interior wall.
“I see a highway,” Goody Joan said. “A path forward.”
Ethan glanced at Goody Joan, not sure what she was talking about.
Goody Joan looked just as confused by her words and not ready to explain.
Stella frowned, then looked up at Abby. “Think hard. Did Frannie’s letter say anything else that might shed some light?”
Abby shook her head. “The only other thing of note was that the Collector told the neighbors that he was a psychiatrist.”
Stella scoffed, and Ethan had to agree. It was an interesting ruse for a man who was most definitely insane.
“What about Stella’s mother?” Hawk asked. “Did she say anything more when you summoned her?”
“A line of communication,” Goody Joan murmured to herself.
“Not really,” Ethan said, answering Hawk. “Jun asked her about the witch board, and the only thing she said was that Stella had the key?—”
“Which I obviously don’t,” Stella said.
Ethan exhaled heavily. “And something about squid metal, a round key , and her arrest. ”
“Squid metal?” Goody Joan asked, tipping her head to the side like an eagle studying a mouse.
“That’s what I meant before about gibberish,” Ethan said. “It’s too bad we don’t have the planchette. We could just ask the witch board what it’s all supposed to mean.”
“The planchette?” asked Jade, who hadn’t been present when they were doing their research.
“Those things that move around on the board,” Stella explained. “The things that relay the messages. You know. Like on a ouija board. Without planchettes, the boards are useless.”
“Aye, aye,” Goody Joan said. “She wants to speak with you.”
Everyone looked at Goody Joan, whose face was creased—even more than normal—in intense concentration.
Stella turned back toward the closet. She took one finger and traced the edges of the twelve-by-twelve-inch hole.
Ethan knew what she was doing. It was similar to the way he used to run his fingers along the edges of the antique desk he’d inherited from his father, back before he knew where the monstrosity had come from. He’d often run his fingers across its worn surface, trying to imagine the original owner who’d done the same thing before him.
“Unless that planchette is hidden somewhere in the closet,” Hawk said. “We should get out of here before the neighbors notice we’ve broken in.”
“Should we move the wardrobe back into place?” Abby asked.
“I can help,” Jade said.
Stella remained transfixed by the inside of the closet. She didn’t show any signs of being ready to leave. And then she snapped up some additional finger flames and held them down low by the bottom corner of the hole. “Ethan, look.”
Ethan squatted beside her and peered inside.
It was hard to see, even with the flames, but he knew immediately what had piqued her interest. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it the first time, but an “M” and a lightning-bolt “S” were written in black Sharpie at the base of the closet wall.
Or more accurately, someone had written the runes ehwaz and sowilo —the runes he understood to mean powerful travel ; the runes that were engraved on Stella’s bracelet; the runes that allowed them to open a portal and hop through time.
“Thank you, Frannie,” Ethan murmured. Without her letter, they never would have found this, and it was too coincidental to be meaningless.
“Are those the same runes?” Abby asked, leaning over the top of them to get her own look at the closet wall.
“Does this mean Mom’s bracelet and the witch board are connected?” Stella asked, her wide gray eyes bright with possibilities.
“They have to be connected,” Ethan said.
“Whoa,” Abby said, stepping back. “Can we just sit with this for a second? My head is starting to spin.”
“Let me see,” Jade said, drawing closer.
“The runes,” Stella said. “The ones on the bracelet are written inside the closet right where the cedar was harvested for the witch b?—”
Stella sucked in a breath and pushed herself backward, nearly knocking Ethan over in the process.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“Her arrest,” she said scrambling to her feet. “You were right. She was talking about me.”
“Huh?” Jade asked.
“Oh my god,” Stella said, blinking rapidly.
“What’s going on?” Hawk asked.
Stella laughed, and flashlight beams reflected off the tears in her eyes. “The connection wasn’t great. You said so yourself, Ethan. So, maybe it wasn’t gibberish. Maybe Mom wasn’t saying ‘her arrest’…”
Stella cleared her throat and held up her hand. “Maybe she was saying, ‘her wrist. ’ The key was a round my wrist.”
Ethan’s gaze focused on the bracelet.
“Mom said I had the key to understanding the witch board, and it’s been around my wrist this whole time.”
“The key to understanding ,” Ethan said. “And it’s round. Mom’s been wanting us to find a round key. Could that mean the bracelet is the planchette?”
Stella laughed and cried at the same time. “What did that book say? That gold made the most powerful ones?”
“Yeah, but it also said that whoever made the board also made the planchette that went with it. Your bracelet is old. It’s been in your family for generations, but your parents only bought this house after you were born. The same person couldn’t have made both.”
“Oh…” Stella furrowed her brow and bowed her head. “Damn.”
“Do you speak of that bracelet?” Goody Joan asked, pointing at Stella’s hand.
“It’s been passed down my maternal line,” Stella said.
“ Our maternal line,” Jade interjected.
“’Tis not the bracelet that has been in your family for generations,” Goody Joan said. “Only the gold.”
Ethan turned toward Goody Joan and held his breath.
Goody Joan smiled softly. “Pardon my delay. But the magical intent is now clear. There is no such thing as ‘squid metal.’”
No one said anything, primarily because there was no reason to argue that point.
Jade slapped her palm over her forehead. “But there is such a thing as li quid metal.”
“She melted down gold to make the bracelet,” Ethan whispered, mostly to himself.
“And if she made the bracelet…” Jade said.
“Then we’re right. It’s not just a bracelet,” Ethan said, circling back to his earlier hypothesis. “And she didn’t just give us the runes. She gave us the key to it all.”
“Mistress Claire Aldren has opened a pathway of communication with her daughters,” Goody Joan said.
“You’re saying Mom made the witch board to talk to us?” Jade asked, and her voice broke on the end.
“That would explain something else, too,” Stella said.
“Explain what?” Abby asked.
“It explains why the Collector hid the board. He saw us take the bracelet. He didn’t want us to have them both, together , because then we could use them.”
“How could he have seen us take the bracelet?” Jade asked. “When I found it on his work table, he’d already disappeared.”
Stella shook her head while rising to her feet. “He was in the room with us.”
“What room?” Jade asked, as if she expected him to jump out of the walls.
Ethan slid his gaze across the shadowy faces of everyone present. Hawk frowned down at Stella. Abby stood wide-eyed.
Goody Joan’s lips curled up at the corners, and her eyes seemed to dance with possibilities. She looked quite pleased and, if Ethan wasn’t mistaken, calculating.
“Not this room,” Stella said, easing her sister’s obvious misapprehension. “Trask’s Mill. It was dark in there. I think he adopted the appearance of someone we expected to be there. Not for long. Just long enough to hide in plain sight before he could make his actual escape.”
“He disguised himself as one of us?” Jade asked, looking around.
“You really think he saw you take the bracelet?” Hawk asked, and they all moved closer together, forming a circle.
“The timing works,” Ethan said. “We found the bracelet a month ago. About the same time he started using Hurley’s face. The same time Hurley started working from the satellite office.”
“The same time the Collector would’ve hidden the witch board,” Stella added.
“But we already had the bracelet,” Abby said. “With its runes and the anchor in Stella’s poppet, we could already find him, wherever he is.”
“Sure,” Stella said, “but the witch board is prophetic magic. So, it can tell us not only where he is, but where he’ll be.”
“That would give us the advantage,” Ethan said. “We won’t be going to him, he’ll be, unwittingly, coming to us. Where we’ll be waiting.”
“But we already know where he’ll be on at least three dates,” Abby said. “The dates he abducted Jun, Alastair, and me. So, how’s this any better?”
“If you want an answer to that question,” Goody Joan said, stepping into the center of their circle, “you should listen to your mother.”