Mama.
I swayed in place, spitting the dirt and undissolved crystals off my tongue. I knew this salt; it was produced locally, from seawater pulled out of the deep trench off the coast of British Columbia. But why it called forth memories of my mother and the Atlantic…
I left that for another time.
Straightening, I brushed my fingers over my pants and headed away from the circle and the gate. When I last walked this property earlier in the spring, the grass was newly trimmed and the fruit trees were covered in delicate, pale pink blossoms. But in the heat and sharp yellow sunlight of high noon, the place appeared deserted. I pulled out my cell phone, brought up the Pearmain’s phone number, and waited for theirs to ring.
In the distance, long, insistent peals from a landline pierced the stillness. Rounding the final curve in the road, I stopped and gaped, the cell phone forgotten in my hand.
Clifford Pearmain sat upright in a once-red rocking chair on the farmhouse’s wrap-around porch. Abigail sat in another, her hands resting on a faded, flower-print apron. Both stared forward, rocking slowly in time with an invisible force. Abigail’s feet left the porch every time the front of her chair lifted and settled softly on the boards when she pitched forward.
Competing telephone rings snapped my attention off the zombie-like couple. I thumbed the red circle on my phone and ended the call, stopping the other phone in the middle of a trill. The rockers continued their syncopated rhythm. Beside me, grasshoppers clung to chest-high stalks of Sea Holly thistle and kept their silence.
I pocketed my phone and crouched again. Knees and palms to the ground, I spread my fingers and waited. The soil was dense underneath its warm, powdery surface. I took a slow breath, exhaled in a stream through pursed lips, and pressed down, reaching toward the house and the gate, the woods and the orchard.
Earthworms slumbered. Tree roots remained mute to my probing.
The quiet underneath my waiting palms connected with a dull pang feeling its way blindly from the vicinity of my heart. Once again, I would be forced to admit my magical skills were functioning below par, call it a day, and count on local law enforcement to solve whatever mystery I’d stumbled onto.
Chapter 2
I stood, made a fuss of brushing off my hands to give my urge to mourn a moment to ease, and palmed my wand before heading toward the porch. Scanning Clifford’s face and chest for signs of life, I stopped beside his rocking chair and placed a hand on his shoulder. A short-sleeved, tattersall plaid shirt draped over the protruding bones.
Closing my eyes again, I sensed my way through the threadbare cloth to the ropey muscles of his bare upper arms. I could do this; Cliff was connected to his land through his years of stewardship and the dirt clinging to his boots, and at the very least, I was adept at reading dirt.
I waited. The grasshoppers remained silent.
A pulse rose—a heavy, viscous bubble—and bounced against my fingertips before it turned and made its way back toward the innermost chambers of the older man’s bones. I squeezed Cliff’s arm. Not a flinch or a quiver. Whatever held him mute was heavily cloaked.
I gave Abigail a quick glance and stroked the old woman’s gnarled fingers and wrist. More of the same lethargic slumber. A momentary breeze lifted wavy strands of silver hair off her cheek and settled them on yellowed skin sagging with the weight of her seventy-plus years.
Catatonia.
Once, I could read my aunt’s basic spell books, and before I understood that waving a wand around had very real consequences, I practiced magic on our barn cats. As soon as my aunt de-spelled the catatonic felines, the book disappeared. And I never saw that wand again.
Shaking off the memory, I rechecked Cliff and Abi’s pulses. Satisfied they were alive and hopeful they would remain so, I opened the screen door and stepped into the farmhouse’s dark interior. In the sitting room—preserved like a museum display from the early twentieth century—dust motes twinkled in lazy spirals. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, my gaze was drawn to a carved couch littered with needlepoint pillows, all of them variations of dainty pink and white blossoms on black backgrounds. A grouping of photographs was displayed on the wall behind the couch’s curved back.
Horsehair stuffing crackled as I kneeled gingerly on the cushions and lifted the first frame off its nail. The glass front needed cleaning; the back was dusty but unremarkable. Tiny brass tacks around the edges looked undisturbed, probably since the frame’s initial assembly. Plucking a tissue from a box covered in more needlepoint roses, I wiped the glass.
The image underneath revealed younger versions of Clifford and Abigail seated stiffly on the elegant settee with three young men arrayed behind them and everyone dressed in finer clothes than farming required. I found nothing unusual in their semi-blurred features before returning my attention to the frame.
Like others arrayed across the wall, this one was hand-carved. And old. Probably a family heirloom.
I squinted, holding it farther from my face. A repeated decorative element of curving lines turned into roots and branches, with tiny, carved apples and pears dotting the branches. On closer look, four faces emerged, one near each corner, each graced with an elongated nose, slightly pointed ears, and hair that intertwined with the tree.
I scanned the wall. All the frames in the grouping over the couch were carved in a similar fashion. Rehanging the one in my hands, I stepped into the middle of the room and listened.
High-noon cloaked the house with a blanket of heat and kept the grasshoppers on mute. The creak of a floorboard as I made my way back to the hall startled me into joining the ambient stillness.
It’s an old house, Calliope.
Blowing out a short breath, I squeezed the
