“The party doesn’t start until the evening, so I’ll be home during the day tomorrow. If you want my help then, let me know,” I offered. “Otherwise, I’ll just be finishing off my homework.”
Mom nodded. “I’ll see how things work out.” She took a sip of lemonade. “Did anything else happen?”
I looked at Heather. “I took Heather to see the photography class today. She’s borrowed a camera and she’s already started taking pictures. I’m going to take her out after dinner so we can get some night shots.”
“Mm, that sounds nice.” Mom looked at Heather. “How do you like Crowther so far?”
Heather put down her fork and folded her hands in her lap. “It’s a nice school. It’s so small that I’ve already learned everyone’s name in our class. Rosa has been very helpful in showing me around and helping me feel comfortable.”
Mom smiled proudly. “I’m glad that you feel welcome. I’m sure it must be a change for you, though, to be at a school with so much magic. You’re not at Crowther because of the magic program?”
Heather shook her head. “It’s not that much of a change, actually. I’ve been at schools with a lot of magikin students before.”
I rolled my eyes at Mom. Did she forget that I told her Heather was used to being around magikin?
Mom leaned across the table and wiped my cheek with a napkin. “You got a little something on you there, honey.”
I flinched away from her touch and dabbed at it with my own napkin. “Okay, I got it.”
Mom turned and looked at Akasha. “How was your day at school, pumpkin?”
I looked at my sister, waiting to see what she would say. She hadn’t asked to stay home again this week, but every day she looked unhappy.
“School was fine,” she said evenly. “I don’t have any tests this week.”
“That’s good, then,” Mom said. “Are you making friends with any of your classmates?”
“Yes, everyone is being nice.” Akasha looked down at her plate.
Heather glanced between my sister and me. “Akasha, I’ve heard that you’re on the school paper. Is the paper running any interesting stories right now?”
Akasha didn’t lift her head. “You missed the first edition. It came out last week. We ran an announcement about Glen being knighted on the Equinox.”
“Okay.” Heather’s face went blank as she searched for a response to that. “I’ll have to find a copy. Are you going to do a story about the party this weekend?”
Akasha looked up at her. “I’m sure Kai will cover it. He always writes about the social events.” She started gnawing on a piece of chicken with a determination that prevented any further questions.
My parents turned the topic of conversation to something else, and Akasha was left in peace.
After dinner, Heather and I went up to my room to grab our cameras. I let her put the school loaner camera in my bag, since she didn’t have her own bag for equipment yet.
“You know,” Heather said in a low voice, “your family didn’t have to act all super sweet and polite just because I was over here for dinner.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Act like what? That’s what dinner is always like for us.”
Heather stared at me. “Really? It just seemed so—forced. Like you were pretending to be the perfect family.”
I shrugged. “That’s just how we are. Why, what’s your family like? Do you even eat dinner together?” I didn’t want to picture what that must be like with two vampire parents.
Heather shook her head. “I usually watch television while I eat. If I see my parents, they don’t do the whole bit about, ‘Oh, hey, how was your day at school?’.”
“Well, we’re different.” I closed my camera bag and stood up. “Are you ready to go?”
That evening was a perfect time for a flight on my broom. The sun was below the horizon, but the sky would stay light for another hour or so, and a crescent moon was already up. “I’ll give you a view of the valley that you won’t be able to see any other way,” I told Heather.
When I took my broomstick out of the shed, Heather looked at it nervously. “You can really fly on that little thing?”
“Of course!” I held the broom horizontally out in front of me and let go. The broom obediently hovered in place a few feet above the ground. “This is one of the things that witches are known best for. Did you think it was just a story?”
“No, just—” Heather glanced at me. “Aren’t you a little new to the whole witch thing?”
“Oh!” I clapped my hand over my mouth in an expression of mock offense. “I’m insulted that you doubt my abilities! No, seriously though, I’ve been flying for three years and I’ve never had an accident. It’s safer than driving, and trust me, you’ll love it.”
“Well, if you say so.” Heather folded her arms and didn’t budge.
If words weren’t going to convince her, then maybe actions would. I straddled the broom. With a thought and a touch, the broom sprang up into the sky, taking me above the tops of the trees in a matter of seconds. Holding on tight, I tucked into a loop-the-loop, then swooped down in a nose dive, pulling up from the ground at the last moment. I was having so much fun that I was tempted to do more tricks, but I was afraid of scaring Heather away. After a final barrel roll, I slowed down and landed delicately in front of her.
I looked at her, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you trust me now?”
Heather looked even paler than usual. “I think I would fall off from all of that!”
I shook my head and crossed my heart with my finger. “No, I promise that I’ll go easy on you.” I hovered the broom right in front of her. “Hand me the camera bag, then just hop on and hold on to me.”
She handed me the camera bag, which I slung diagonally along my chest so that it hung to one side, out of the way. Heather hesitated for a moment, but it was hard for anyone to resist the thought of flying. She sat down on the broom behind me, and at my urging, she put her arms around my waist.
I lifted the broom up slower this time, but Heather still let out a squeak and held on to me tighter. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that her eyes were squeezed shut. I stopped the broom in midair, just high enough to peek over the first row of trees in my backyard. “It’s okay, take a look around. Don’t look down if it makes you nervous, but look—out there.” I raised one hand and pointed out across the sea of tree-tops.
I knew when she opened her eyes because I heard her gasp behind me. “Wow, that’s beautiful.”
“I know, isn’t it?” I grinned. “Are you ready? We’re going to go a little higher to clear the trees, and then I’ll head that way—” I gestured southeast in the direction of Quiggs Mountain. “But I’ll go slow and gentle.”
Heather’s arms tightened around my waist. “Um, okay, sure.”
“Don’t look down, look out.” I pointed the broom toward the mountain and off we flew.
As promised, I flew slow and steady, and after a few minutes I could feel Heather start to relax her grip on me. I made a little detour to the west so we soared over the main street of downtown. I heard Heather gasp again when she saw the huge madrone tree in the center, our town’s namesake.
“It looks even bigger from up here,” she said near my right ear.
I turned my head back to her so that she could hear me over the wind. “It’s a pretty impressive old tree.”
I circled around the town once so that she got a good view of all of the old buildings, and then I hovered for a minute over the madrone tree again and opened the camera bag. “Do you want to try taking your first aerial shot?”
Heather kept her arms wrapped around me and didn’t take her borrowed camera when I held it out to her. “I don’t want to fall off.”
“It’s okay, I’ll stay very still.”
She peeled one arm away from my waist and took the camera from me, leaning into my back and gripping my shirt with her free hand. I heard the shutter go off a few times, rapidly, then stop.
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“Take lots more, to be sure that something comes out.” I considered how much light was left in the sky. “Do you want to get another angle?”
Heather took one more picture and handed the camera back to me. “No thanks, I think that’s good. Can we get down now?”
I dropped her camera back into the open bag. “No, I wanted to take you somewhere with even better scenery than this. Have you ever been to a ghost town?”
She tensed up again. “Is that safe?”
“Oh, sure, we’ll just go to a small one.” I started flying southeast again. “This was a little mining camp that only lasted for a few years during the Gold Rush, so it doesn’t even have a cemetery or anything. There’s just a couple of old spirits who like to hang around for some peace and quiet. I’ll introduce you.”
The ghost town at Byrnes Camp, at the foot of Quiggs Mountain, was just a few run-down buildings and several stone foundations, now over-grown and reclaimed by the forest. Like many of the local ghost towns, it was an official historic landmark and taken care of by the California State Parks, but that only meant that a ranger came by once or twice a week to check on it. The camp was miles away from anything else, only accessible by a dirt fire road—and by air. The ghosts had the place to themselves.
I landed us on the fire road just outside of the town and looked around. At first glance, the place looked deserted. Behind me, Heather peered through the darkness under the trees. “Is there even anything here?”
I pointed to the outlines of buildings. “That small one there was the post office. The main street ran through here, and across there was a general store.” I pointed to a dry creek bed, now full of bushes. “There was water here, once, but now it’s over a mile away.”
Heather took a step forward. “I mean, are there any—you know—”
I nodded. “Let me go first and introduce you. They’re nervous around strangers.”
I stepped forward on my own. As soon as my foot stepped over the border of the town, a ghost drifted through the wall of the post office and looked at me. He was an old ghost and not very powerful anymore, so he was mostly shapeless, but the features on his face were defined enough to show a wary expression, and on his chest there was a very clear tin star that read “Sheriff”. The rest of his body was a formless mist that shifted and swirled as he approached me, and the air grew colder.
I raised my open hands and stood very still. “Hello, Sheriff Baumann, I’m Rosamunde McAddams. We’ve met before. It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?”
When I spoke his name, his form coalesced together, and for a moment I could see the man standing tall in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. He didn’t have the strength to hold the image, and it disappeared just as quickly. I could still see the lines on his face when he smiled. “Good evening, Rosamunde. I do remember you. It’s nice of you to visit us.” He looked past me to where Heather stood, waiting. “You brought a friend with you?”
“Yes.” I turned and motioned for Heather to come closer, but stopped her before she stepped over the boundary. “This is Heather Prasolov. She’s new to the area.”
The sheriff nodded. “I knew a Russian fur trapper with a name like Prasolov, once upon a time.” He drifted closer to her, then suddenly recoiled. He gave me a sidelong glance. “But this girl—she smells like blood and death.”
“Heather is human,” I said quickly. I stepped back and touched her arm. “She has—medical problems, so she spends a lot of time at the hospital. You probably just smell that.”
Heather glanced at me with wide eyes. “I—I did just have a b-blood transfusion, b-before I could start school this week.”
The sheriff stared at her for a long moment. I didn’t know if it was safe to tell him the truth about Heather’s parents. But in the end he tipped his hat—the hat only appeared for the gesture, and was gone when he forgot it again—and drifted to one side. “Welcome, Heather, to Byrnes Camp. Both of you ladies are welcome to come in for a little while, but I must ask that you conclude your visit before midnight tonight.”
I nodded. Even though we had the next day off from school because of the Fall Equinox, I knew that our parents would expect us home well before then. “Don’t worry, Sheriff, we won’t stay long. I just want to show her the sights—Heather’s never been to a western ghost town before.”
The sheriff nodded and drifted away.
We stepped over the boundary together and walked slowly into the ghost town. Inside, the temperature dropped about ten degrees from the presence of the dead. Up close, we could see more of the buildings’ foundations underneath the brush. Occasionally we saw a ghost drift through the ruins, but there were only a few resident haunts here, and they mostly preferred to keep to themselves.
Heather and I took our cameras out of my bag and started shooting the buildings around us. I explained to Heather that we could photograph the scenery as much as we liked, and if a ghost chose to be in a picture, that was okay, but not to focus on the ghosts.
Heather stood in the middle of the town and turned in a circle, taking pictures of the buildings. Then she tilted her camera up and took pictures of the moon and the trees.
I saw how stiff she was and laughed. “It’s okay, you can move around.”
She looked at me, then walked closer to the post office. She aimed her camera inside the front window. Before she could take the shot, I saw the ghost of a woman drift out of the side wall of the building. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she looked worried.
I went over by her and tried to look inside the building. “Do you see something?”
Heather lowered her camera and walked up to the front. There hadn’t been glass in the front window for a long time, so she could just stick her head inside. “It looks like someone’s been here.”
I opened the front door with a gentle push and stepped inside. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, but then I noticed how clean the place looked. Someone had swept the floor clean of dirt and leaves. There was almost no dust on the counter across the room. Behind the counter, the wall was full of little boxes to hold sorted mail—and in one of the spaces there was something there.
I reached over the counter and pulled it out. It was a scrap of paper, too crisp and white to be as old as the town. On the outside, there was a tiny drawing of a thorny vine coiled into a spiral, and next to it was a rose. When I unfolded it, the inside was covered in strange figures and scribbling that I couldn’t identify at all, like an ancient language that had been transcribed by a demented alcoholic.
“That’s weird,” I said aloud.
“What’s weird?”
Heather’s voice was right behind me. I jumped and spun around, and saw that she had followed me.
“Oh! You startled me.” I held out the piece of paper. “This was just sitting here. I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.”
Heather turned the paper over and frowned. “It’s some kind of code. I don’t know what the message is, but I do know that this symbol is one of the marks of the Unseelie. That’s why the spiral is widdershins—I mean, counter-clockwise.”
“I know what widdershins means,” I said automatically, and then the rest of her words sank in. My head snapped up. “The Unseelie? I’ve only met one once—I didn’t think they had any power here.”
Unseelie was an old name, a tale to scare children. Most magikin belonged to the Seelie Court: faeriekin and other creatures who were willing to cooperate and live with humans, following human laws. The magikin who didn’t agree with them joined the Unseelie Court, which saw humans as weaklings who should be subservient to the magical races. But when the Seelie Court signed the treaties that allowed Fae and human governments to rule side-by-side, they agreed to banish their Unseelie rivals into the Realm of Faerie and prevent them from returning through the Veil.
Heather looked up at me. “There are small groups all over, underground. Sometimes they use ghost towns and other remote areas as places to hide out or leave mess
ages.” She folded up the paper again and put it back in the wall. “We should leave this here so they don’t know anyone messed with it.”
“How do you know about that?”
“My family’s moved around a lot.” She looked away, and although it was hard to see her face in the darkness, I thought that she was blushing. “In some places I’ve lived, I’ve—heard things.”
“But there couldn’t be Unseelie here. The Court would know about it.”
Heather just looked up and pointed at the ceiling.
Scratched into the wood was the same coiled vine of thorns. I squinted at it. The scratches looked as old as the building itself.
“Why was this town closed down?” Heather whispered. “Was it always Unseelie?”
“I—I don’t know.” I turned around and walked out of the building. “Maybe I can ask one of the ghosts. They might remember. The sheriff—where did he go?”
I looked around. I saw one ghost at the opposite end of the town, but when Heather came out of the post office behind me, it slipped behind a tree.
“They won’t come near me,” Heather said. “Isn’t there something you can do so I don’t, you know, smell funny to them? Like a spell or something?”
My first thought was that I should say no, because I didn’t know a spell off of the top of my head and I didn’t have any of my tools with me. But I didn’t want Heather to think that I was useless as a magic user. “I, uh, might be able to think of something.” I put down my camera. “Let’s step out for a bit.”
Heather followed me off into the trees for a distance while I scrambled to come up with a plan. I hoped that this was going to work.
When we were alone in the woods, I dug through my pockets. “What do you have on you?” I asked Heather. “I don’t generally carry spell components around with me.”
“What about something like this?” Heather reached into a pocket in her dress and pulled something out. She held it up in front of me.
In her hand was a small blue cloth pouch. I looked at the pouch, but couldn’t guess what it was. “Can I see that for a minute?”
“Sure.”
I took it from her and turned it over in my hands. The outside was printed with a white pattern full of symbols that I didn’t recognize. One looked like a spiral with spikes along the outer coil, another looked like a slanted eye, and a third was a circle with a cross in the middle.