16. Sixteen
SIXTEEN
A unt Tillie’s absence at breakfast didn’t go unnoticed. Steve believed she was feeling poorly. One look at Spencer told me he felt otherwise, but he kept his opinion to himself.
“I hope she’s going to be okay,” Steve said. “I would hate to think that she’s upset about this. It’s probably just a vitamin imbalance.”
“We’ve actually deduced that she’s doing it on purpose,” Landon replied, choosing his words carefully. “That’s what she likes to do.”
“Oh.” Steve nodded. “When people get older, they act out at times because they’re looking for attention. I’m sure that’s what it is.”
“Yes,” I agreed dryly. “You should bring that up when you see her.” I glanced at Landon’s plate. He’d opted for one egg, a quarter of his normal hash browns, and three slices of bacon. It was a refreshing sight, despite his attitude. “How you doing, champ?”
“Don’t push me, Bay.” Landon looked morose. “I’m in mourning.”
“I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’ but?—”
“Then don’t.”
I shot a surreptitious look to Mom, who appeared caught between laughing and growling. Her mood matched mine. “Sorry.” I patted his arm. “What’s on the agenda for you guys today?”
“More questions for the locals,” Steve replied.
“We’re going back to the cabin.” He hesitated.
“You’re welcome to come with us if you don’t have anything on your plate.
” He smiled when he issued the invitation, but it wasn’t difficult to ascertain that he didn’t want me to go. I didn’t take it personally.
“I have some work to do at The Whistler,” I lied. “I might have some things related to Aunt Tillie.” I shot him an apologetic smile. “How about we both get through our mornings and then regroup after lunch?”
His relief was palpable. “That sounds great. Just one thing, though…” He hesitated before continuing. “Do you think we’ll be safe if more of those spider people show up?”
“You’ll be fine. If they do come back, you can shoot them. They’re not magical in the sense that they can cast spells.”
“Can they infect us with anything?”
“Yes and no. I can send some potions with Landon—some healing potions—just in case. You shouldn’t need them, but it’s always good to be prepared.”
“Healing potions?” Steve’s forehead creased.
“They can stop magical infections. Arachnids—at least these arachnids—can’t do a lot of damage. If you were dealing with an alpha, or one that had been amassing power for a long time, it might be different. The arachnids we saw were just drones.”
“So you’ve fought them before?” Steve looked hopeful.
“No, but I know people who have.”
“People here?”
We were delving into dangerous territory.
I had no intention of sitting around chatting about my friend Stormy the hellcat or Scout the pixie apex.
I couldn’t even imagine getting into a conversation about apexes.
I was still trying to wrap my head around it, and I’d been raised in a magical world.
Once I brought the lamia apex who was currently trying to kill Scout into the mix, the day-walking vampire, Charlie the chimera, and our vague association with a magical circus into the conversation, things would derail fast.
It was one thing for me to offer my services—I hadn’t told them the whole truth about myself—but it was quite another to out my friends.
“There are other magical beings,” Landon volunteered, making me go stiff in the chair next to him. “We’re not going to talk about them. Let’s see how things go with Bay, then we’ll talk.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding and shot him a grateful look.
“Of course.” Steve nodded in understanding. “We’re not trying to force you into something you don’t want to do, Bay. We also don’t want you to talk about your friends before you’re ready. We don’t have nefarious intentions.”
“I don’t think you do,” I assured him. That was true. “I trust my friends. They expect the same from me. I want to see how this is going to work before I make any suggestions to them.”
“That’s more than fair.” Steve was somber. “You should know that we have files on some of those friends already. The group in Hawthorne Hollow has been especially active lately.
“The leader, Rooster Tremaine, is supposed to be a badass,” he continued. “I’m sure you know him.”
I had to work overtime to keep my face impassive.
Rooster was a nice guy, and a good leader.
He was not, however, powerful. His magic was weak.
He was in charge because of his organizational skills.
Scout was the power in that group. And Evan.
Scout’s boyfriend, Gunner Stratton, was a shifter and good in a fight, but Scout was the pinnacle of their power.
“Let’s just focus on what we’re doing today,” I said. “I plan to get some work done at the newspaper. I have to deal with some Aunt Tillie stuff—her mood is poorer than usual—but I’ll be around after lunch.”
Landon cast me a sidelong look. He knew my schedule at the newspaper as well as anybody and was well aware I likely had no work that needed to be completed. He didn’t say anything, though.
“Sounds good.” Steve bobbed his head. “I have to admit, I’m excited to go back to the cabin. That’s the first monster I’ve ever seen. I know you’re not impressed with those things, but I am.”
I managed a flat smile. “Be careful.” I leaned closer to Landon. “You too. Don’t let the smaller portion of bacon distract you.”
That nudged a grin out of my husband. “I’ll try not to feel too sorry for myself.”
I glanced to the swinging door that led to the kitchen. Aunt Tillie still hadn’t surfaced for breakfast. I didn’t take that as a good sign. “I think it’s going to be a long day.”
Landon squeezed my knee under the table. “Call me if you need me.”
LANDON CAUGHT ME OUT BACK waiting for Evan, who I texted halfway through breakfast to meet me. He lived in Hemlock Cove but worked in Hawthorne Hollow. He texted right away that he would meet me at the greenhouse.
“Where are you really going?” he asked me. He’d stopped being theatrical about his lack of bacon and instead seemed concerned about my plans.
“I’m going back to where we found the bodies,” I replied.
He looked pained. “Why?”
I shrugged. “It’s something that needs to be done.”
“You were just out there yesterday.”
“I feel I missed something.” I sent him a rueful smile. “About this morning…”
“Bay, you don’t have to apologize for wanting to protect the others. I’m right there with you. This is an experiment. We might be able to put together a fearsome monster-fighting team with endless government funds to fuel us.”
“It’s also possible this will blow up in our faces,” I finished.
He brushed his thumb over my cheek. “Be careful with Evan. Keep me updated.” He hesitated. “I have to ask you something, and I’m really uncomfortable about it.”
“You don’t have to be afraid to ask me anything. Ever.”
He exhaled heavily. “It’s Millie. I hate thinking about her as a separate entity, but I don’t see that we have a choice. She showed up right before the bodies were found.” He gripped his hands together in front of him and sent me an imploring look. “Did she kill them?”
I’d already considered that possibility and immediately ruled it out. “There’s no way she had the time. And what would be the point? What would she get out of it?”
“What is she getting out of any of this?”
“I think she just wants freedom.”
“What is she?”
“I think she’s a figment, or close to it. She might be her own thing.”
“What’s a figment again?”
“A figment can be almost anything. They spring up, seemingly out of nowhere, when one’s imagination is big enough. Then they start doing their own thing.”
“And you think Aunt Tillie’s imagination was so big that she created a second version of herself?”
“Aunt Tillie unleashed Millie to do something specific.” I’d been thinking about this a lot too. “She let her out, something happened, and then she put the genie back in the bottle.”
“Then why is she out now?”
“I think Aunt Tillie used too much magic with Mrs. Little. Whether she was showing off or it just got away from her, I can’t say. Millie is a problem, and Aunt Tillie knows it. She’s afraid.”
“Because she thinks Millie is going to kill people and string them up in the woods?” He obviously couldn’t get over that possibility. I didn’t blame him.
“Millie didn’t do that,” I assured him. “We’re dealing with something else.”
He exhaled heavily, relieved. “I was just checking. I didn’t want to believe it was her.”
“She didn’t have time.”
“Okay.” He smiled.
“That doesn’t mean Millie isn’t a problem,” I cautioned him. “She could cause a lot of trouble … and she’d do it while wearing Aunt Tillie’s face.”
“Which means we might have to start covering for her,” Landon realized. “We can’t explain how there are two Aunt Tillies to Steve.”
Just imagining that gave me the heebie-jeebies. “We’re going to have to figure it out, and we don’t have much time. Once I finish in the woods, I’m going looking for Millie.”
“What can you do if you find her?”
That was the question. “I have no idea. I have to find her first. We haven’t confirmed she actually exists. So far, the only thing we have to go on is my dream.”
“Aunt Tillie seemed convinced.”
“I fear what she’s going to do to fix the problem.”
Landon blew out a sigh. “Well, keep me in the loop.”
“You do the same. If you run into any arachnids, call me. I can get Evan to you fast. He can help kill them without being seen.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need to go there. Steve is really gung-ho to take the whole team out to look around.”
I balked. “Cam and Hodgins too?”
“Yup. He eventually wants them to know everything we know. We’re not there yet, so don’t get worked up.”
“Okay.” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. “This is turning into quite a day.”
He leaned in and kissed me. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve taken on bigger enemies than whatever this is.”
He sounded certain of himself. “Talk to me again if Millie makes her presence known.”
“Don’t get me going on Millie. The whole thing freaks me out.”
He wasn’t the only one.
EVAN WAS PROMPT. HE DIDN’T SAY MUCH before we headed out. I had to fill him in on the Millie problem.
“What?” He was flabbergasted as I pulled to a stop on the road.
I nodded. “I’m ninety-percent positive that Millie is real and she’s running around freely.”
Evan waited for me to reach him in the tall weeds before speaking again. “It’s probably not good I saw Tillie leaving her greenhouse with a sword right before you found me, right?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yup.
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
He shot me an incredulous look. “Since when can anybody stop her?”
“You could’ve taken the sword from her.”
“I think the four-wheeler is more dangerous. She can’t even hold the sword up for more than a minute or so. It will be fine.”
I wasn’t so certain.
“We’ll look for her when we’re done here,” he promised. “If I’d known she had a doppelg?nger running around I would’ve said something.”
“Do you think it is a doppelg?nger? I thought maybe she created her own figment.”
He considered it for several seconds. “I actually don’t think it’s a figment.”
“Millie said that Aunt Tillie let her out before. That doesn’t sound like a doppelg?nger. Doppelg?ngers are from mirror worlds.”
“How do you know Tillie hasn’t accessed our mirror world?”
I’d never really considered the existence of mirror worlds. I knew they existed—I’d read about them in various books—but they were supposed to be virtually impossible to access. It wasn’t like opening a plane door. A mirror world was too similar to the original to allow access between the two.
“How would she have gotten her doppelg?nger out of the mirror world?” I asked. “That’s supposed to be impossible.”
“A lot of things are impossible,” he replied. “That doesn’t mean they really are. We’re talking about Tillie. If anyone could find a way around the rules, she can.”
“Any ideas on how we get Millie back across once we find her?”
“If Tillie did it once, she can do it again.”
“Then why does she need the sword?”
“She’s probably just angry.”
Back at the clearing, we split up to look around. I kept finding myself near the central tree, the only one where the blood rune was bright enough to still see. The mark had faded on the other two trees.
“What are you thinking?” Evan asked as he joined me.
“There’s something familiar about this. Thistle has been trying to identify it.”
“Doc has been trying too,” Evan said. “I swear it seems familiar to me too and yet…” He trailed off as he shifted his head to study the image from a different angle.
“What is it?” I asked, picking up on a shifting of his mood.
“Have you reversed it?”
“What?”
“The image. Have you isolated the rune and reversed the image? Sometimes the best way to see something is to look at it from the other side.” He took out his phone and drew a copy of the rune in one of his apps. Then he flipped the image, as if looking at it in a mirror.
We both sucked in a breath.
“Wait a second.” I grabbed his phone and looked at the rune more closely. “I recognize it. I’m not sure from where, but I know I recognize it.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Evan replied. “I can tell you exactly what that is.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s the mark a naiad uses when claiming a territory.”
My heart skipped, and I looked at the symbol again. “You’re right. I saw it in a book Aunt Tillie was reading. She said we couldn’t look because it would give us nightmares.”
“Naiads aren’t for the faint of heart.” Evan’s hand landed on my back.
“We need to shift the research. I’m familiar with the symbol.
I haven’t crossed paths with a naiad since I was in Detroit …
and that one was more interested in playing games with a group of mobster-like witches than anything else.
I didn’t actually communicate with her, I just heard about her. ”
I was taken aback. “They have mobster witches in Detroit?”
Evan chuckled. “They call themselves the hags, and they’re ghouls to boot.”
“Sounds lovely.” I stared at the rune. “Did the naiad or the hags win?”
“The hags. The naiad did a lot of damage on its way down, though.”
“Why do you think we have one here?”
“I don’t know. We’d better figure it out, though, because the only thing I can say with any certainty is that she’s likely not done.”