Someone who knew too damn much about the use and abuse of Power.
Chapter Three
Caroline Haskell stirred her pot of chowder, dipped out a spoonful, blew on it, and sniffed. The taste of Maine, the taste of home. Soul food, Down-east style. God, she'd missed it. Somehow, clams and onions and the lingering thick greasy smell of fried-out salt pork blended perfectly with hot apple pie and woodsmoke. She tasted the cooling spoonful and then dumped a guesstimate of salt into the pot before sliding it all to the back corner of the black iron stove.
Old habits made her duck low to check the firebox, rattle the grates to shake down ash, and cock her head as she gauged the coals. One more stick of oak, that was the call. Cooking on the ancient Atlantic Clarion had little in common with setting a gas burner to "simmer" and turning your back on supper to watch Oprah on TV. Or punching a few buttons on a microwave.
Of course, the House wouldn't have let a TV through the door in the first place. It barely tolerated indoor plumbing and only allowed electricity in three of the newest rooms. The rest of the rambling collage of additions still lived in the eighteenth century. Or seventeenth.
Hell, the heart of it was Neolithic. And Caroline ought to know — parts of the place were as old as the potsherds and chipped flints she uncovered in Anasazi ruins, summer fieldwork for her Anthro post-grad studies.
This sudden attack of domesticity puzzled her. It was out of character — she never had time for puttering around the kitchen, what with her TA class sections and fieldwork and roughing out that damned dissertation. And where would she be finding clams in Arizona, anyway?
But Ray Guptil had dropped off a heaping peck of softshells that had spent a couple of days in clean salt water to wash the mud out of their meat, and Alton Frost had left three sacks of fresh-dug spuds last week, "finest kind," and Amy Wetherall had come by with two loaves of whole-wheat still hot and fragrant from her oven, and then the Greenings were just hanging there on the apple trees out back, calling to Caroline . . . .
Stonefort people took care of the Woman, the Witch, the matriarch of the Haskell House. Women, right now, five witches rather than Shakespeare's three, more bodies than had lived in the House in decades. Aunt Alice, "Aunt" Kate, Caroline, the Morgan girls — poor kids, Maria Morgan murdered by the Peruvian brujo and Daniel vanished into that kinda sorta "dead" that Morgans cooked up if cops or insurance adjusters or rivals started sniffing too close on the trail. "Dead" with a legal certificate and a memorial marker like so many others in the Morgan graveyard, "Lost At Sea."
With Dan Morgan, that dodge had been damn near necessary rather than just convenience. He'd been held prisoner in the Pratt tunnels when Maria drowned, already "lost," memorial mass and all. If he'd come back from the dead after she'd died, he'd have been an obvious suspect. Some of their fights had become Stonefort legends. Not a smooth marriage, by any measure.
So now Aunt Alice was guardian of Peggy and Ellen Morgan, AKA Mouse and Ellie, and sole trustee of the Morgan estate. And it was a hell of a lot safer for them to live here rather than at their house. Less chance of them ending up as hostages again. Plenty of room still — Caroline wasn't sure exactly how many rooms the old pile of dry rot actually held. It probably changed with the weather, and the place would be growing more with winter coming on. Chance of more bodies to shelter, more mouths to feed.
Anyway, the House had to grow, with Kate living here. The big lug almost brushed the kitchen ceiling beams with her buzz-cut and made any room she was in feel cramped. People averaged smaller when the House was built, and Kate most certainly averaged larger. But she strengthened the place, for sure. The floors and stairs didn't creak anymore, just from that magic of wood and stone sleeping under their roof. The chimneys drew better, window sashes didn't rattle in the wind, doors no longer stuck.
Speak of the devil . . . Kate's truck rumbled into the driveway, as distinctive a sound as the foghorn on the Morgan's Point buoy. Aunt Alice's Subaru crunched over the gravel behind it. They must have met up somewhere for lunch, for them both to get home at the same time.
Caroline glanced out the kitchen window, verifying evidence like a good research assistant before she set the table. Then she stopped and stared. Both of the women sat behind their steering wheels for a full minute, shoulders slumped, and then climbed out with a weariness Caroline could feel from thirty feet away. Aunt Alice had to brace herself against her car's doorpost in order to pull her bag out, and then staggered with the weight of it.
Caroline felt a sudden flash of rage. She knew what had caused her sudden impulse to putter around the kitchen. Why she'd felt possessed to pick and peel enough Greenings for a pie.
Damned House.
It wanted hot food, hearty food, easy food, ready the moment Alice and Kate walked through its door. It felt quite comfortable with manipulating people to make it happen. Times like this, she felt like ramming the entire witch thing up someone's ass. Look at where it had gotten her aunt.
Next thing to dead, that was where. And damn few of her line had died of old age, either.
Caroline met them at the door and grabbed Alice's bag. She pulled up just short of throwing it across the room, stopped by the memory of exactly how many sharp and breakable things it held. Sharp and breakable and expensive things. She set it down carefully on top of the boot rack, exactly
