Halfway Drowned (Halfway Witchy Book 4) Read online

I thought about that as the dawning of a horrid truth began to shine in the darkest parts of my innermost heart. I’d crossed the barrier of blood magic to save Wulfric, and now, I stood before a yawning gulf in which I would ask the same question again, but this time, the person who needed saving was me.

  Seated on the floor, I considered the objects I’d arranged earlier in that day. The oar fragment and Viking sword slumped against each other like tired soldiers, leaking droplets of creek water onto the dirt with a near-silent patter.

  But I could hear each drop, and that concerned me.

  I withdrew pouches of things that were specifically meant to bridge a gap between three worlds, but it was a small white candle that was going to be the star of the show. In slow, deliberate order, I placed fern leaves and coltsfoot inside my stone bowl, the candle resting in the middle, on a place well-worn from years of McEwan women and our magic.

  This was a different spell, so I stepped outside my normal lexicon to reach for a word that would ignite the candle, but would stay close enough to our family magic so that my power would not yield.

  “Adhain,” I murmured. The candle popped to life, then the herbs began to curl and wilt in a faster vision of their natural decay. When they were blackened from heat and magic, I circled the bowl with an open hand to let peppermint and orris root drift downward like dark snow. The flakes sizzled as they hit stone, releasing a mélange of scents that drew me inward like tiny hands. I felt myself collapsing into an exquisite point of truth and discovery as the question went from me to the candle.

  Stars above, I have never wanted an answer less, but I opened my eyes to see the herbs flame out into winking motes of light, then fall to the bowl in a liquid shower. They darted about before assuming the form of dark water, subtly glowing with the latent magical heat of a spell that reluctantly began to color the candle with its truth.

  With agony, I watched the color bloom at the base of the candle, then run inward. Upward. The moving shadow tinged the pale wax with a color that sent cold fear into the spaces of my bones and mind. A sob escaped me, and I knew my suspicions were correct. All of the hints, the oddities, and the wildly careening emotions of the past months came to order as the candle bloomed like a poisonous flower with a single, lurid stalk.

  Red. It was red as blood, and it meant the vampire seed within me was growing.

  I had risked everything to save Wulfric. I had lost. And now, I had to decide how to protect my family from the one thing that could surely kill them all. Me.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Nerds, Nerds, Nerds

  “I told you, it wasn’t serious,” Brendan was telling Eli. He sounded a bit peevish, which was unusual for someone as laid back as a small town librarian could be.

  “I know--sorry. This is my baby, in a way. I built her from the ground up, and I’m just irritated that I didn’t see it coming,” was Eli’s response. His frustration was palpable. For someone of his intelligence, the real shame wasn’t damage to Gertie’s lens. It was not seeing that sabotage was a possible outcome here in Halfway. With a rare shipwreck, the pressure for exploitation was enormous. It was a wonder that Officer Domari hadn’t been busier with her duties managing the site, but my town isn’t filled with scofflaws.

  I watched them installing the lens, which was apparently a two-person job. “Why don’t you just put the lens in, turn the lid, and be done with it?”

  They both looked at me like I’d suggested they run naked through the streets, so I patted the air with my hands in a gesture of apology. After rewarding me with separate glares of disgust, they turned back to the lens, cradling it in a pair of what looked to be surgical forceps. Or engineering forceps. Or maybe even a pair of tiny handles welded together, but I couldn’t tell because most of Eli’s gear was custom tailored for his own purposes. I could understand that level of specialization, since I used magical items that were hand-crafted and often more than two centuries old.

  “It’s almost . . . there. That’s it. The cradle is holding it against the flange just right. Let’s close it up,” Eli said like a surgeon who’d just installed a pacemaker.

  Brendan wiped his face of beaded sweat; it had been a tense moment or three while they jockeyed the lens for position in the housing. With a muffled click, the metallic exterior finished its downward spiral to seal the lens away from water and other damaging effects. “The machining is perfect.”

  “Took me a year,” Eli said, and there was well earned pride in his voice. Gertie was small, aquadynamic, and absolutely alien to a person like me who was more familiar with witchy things. And waffles. Neither were cast from exotic metals and fitted with rare parts, although great maple syrup was and is among the finest inventions in human history, if you ask me.

  “The only thing I need to know about Gertie is who did the deed,” I said, approaching the workbench to look over the finished product once again. We were at the library, free from prying eyes who might take an interest in seeing Eli’s creation be ready for more exploration. I preferred to err on the side of suspicion in this case, and held a hand over the submersible when it seemed like Eli was going to lift it from the bench.

  “You disapprove of me taking Gertie back out?” Eli asked, but there was no heat in his voice. He was genuinely confused.

  “Not with the sun up. I’m not even sure it’s safe to take her to the beach when the sun is down, for that matter,” and Brendan nodded at my cautionary tone.

  “I must get her into the water. After seeing the oxbow and everything else--this is why I’m here, Carlie. I can’t wait for a sign. I need to find out what happened to those people, and all the others I’ve seen across the lakes,” Eli complained.

  “Others?” I pounce on the word. He’d said nothing of other people, only other wrecks.

  “I forget how you actually listen to me. I’m used to being under the radar.” Eli sighed, then sat down on the floor, motioning that we should both follow. There were chairs, but it seemed more in tune that we should have an informal meeting, like a campsite without the fire. “I didn’t misspeak. There have been other bones, but I couldn’t recover them because of time and the depth.”

  “Time? How does that matter?” I asked him. The beginnings of an angry rant were sparking in my mind, but I held back, determined to listen.

  “Other wrecks. Every time I would get close to opening a site for exploration, we would get a harried call from another lake, another river. There was even a partial ship on a farm in Oneida County, near a town called Westmoreland. It was enough to excavate, and it was old, Carlie. It was old, it was massive, and it had no business being anywhere in a field away from water. The men who carried it overland were doing so on a route that made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and it makes me doubt everything I’ve ever known up to this point.”

  He exhaled in disgust, then threw his hands up weakly. “Yes, before you ask, the answer is yes, and I hate that it’s true. There were bones. There are always bones, like each site is a burial ground, not because they chose it, but because they stopped moving and were killed there.” Eli’s eyes grew distant as he flicked through the memories of places I’d never seen, but could understand. I know bones. I can grasp their meaning and purpose without ever setting foot on their resting places. It’s a grim part of witchcraft that we are cursed to be close to death, despite our dedication to the light.

  “How many people?” Brendan asked Eli.

  “So far? At least fifty, by my count of skulls alone.” We were quieted by that answer. Eli knew many things, and I trusted his grim assessment. Bones were part of his business, too. Like mine.

  “How many people on the crew? Rough estimate, I won’t hold you to it,” I asked.

  Eli let out a breath through his teeth, buying himself a moment to think. “Given the length and beam, that wreck could carry at least ninety people.”

  “Okay. That means that”-
-I started, but Brendan cut me off.

  “What happened to them?” Brendan’s question was urgent. He didn’t like unknowns, a quality we shared. “That’s a lot of Vikings to go missing without a trace.”

  Eli looked toward the lake, seeming to see through the wall as his brow lowered in thought. “They’re only missing because we haven’t found them yet.”

  “And that means what, exactly? We go back under?” I said. I didn’t relish the idea of Wulfric anywhere near the water, at least not at that moment.

  “Not us. Just Gertie. I can pilot her remotely from the shore and never put us in danger.” Eli looked at his submersible fondly, then sighed. “It’s just metal, but--I can’t ask Wulfric or anyone else to go down there, and I know I’m missing something obvious.”

  “When will you send Gertie under?” Brendan asked. He wanted to be there, I could tell.

  “Tonight, same policy. Fewer people watching, and a reduced risk. All I care about is making sure that everyone is safe, and something tells me I can’t do that with questions still surrounding the wreck. I’m in charge, but there are limits to my resources. We get answers, or we leave. Simple as that,” Eli said. There was determination in his tone, but underneath it all, I could hear a note of fear.

  “Moonrise, then. See you on the shore,” Brendan said, clapping Eli on the shoulder. I made my mind up to be there, too, but for a different reason. I’d have a spell on my tongue and charms at the ready. If the lake so much as rippled, I was going to send enough sunlight into the depths to cook any beasties to medium well. And beyond.

  Something about that seemed like a waste, and I caught myself licking my lips. Inside me, something began to uncoil. I looked down at my feet, suddenly ashamed-- but of what, I couldn’t say.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Diver Down

  Broken clouds kept the moonlight in a kind of heavenly peek-a-boo while Eli adjusted something for what seemed to be the billionth time.

  “Dude,” Brendan began, using a word I’d never heard him utter in all my years, “if you don’t put that hunk of tin under the water, I’m going to die of old age on this beach.”

  “Fine, I get it. I just want to make sure the cowling is sealed,” Eli grumbled, but he pushed Gertie off into deeper water with his foot. Bubbles rose around the slick little housing as she vanished under the surface without a sound. It was a quiet night, late enough that Halfway was asleep, but not too close to dawn. Domari and her crew were gone, shooed away by Eli during a tense discussion nearly two hours earlier. The ship’s prow loomed out in the water, but it seemed somehow diminished after days in the sun. I knew that exposure to light could be fatal for things that were old, and the ship seemed to be proving me right.

  “We’re live,” Eli muttered. His eyes were locked on a small screen in the middle of the handheld controls. It looked a lot like what a kid would use for a radio controlled race car, but more substantial and bristling with flashing numbers at the edge of the display.

  Under the water, all was dark and quiet. A family of perch swam lazily away as Gertie glided down, over a log, and through a bed of grasses that sprouted from a rock like waving feathers. The water was clear save odd bits of things floating here and there. The lake was alive, but still.

  I ran a casual hand over my face as if to clear my vision, freeing my witchmark from occlusion behind a lock of hair that draped over it, limp in the night air. After a mental note to condition my hair more often, I reached out with whatever senses were working overtime, letting my witchy instincts run free as Brendan and Eli commanded the robot to do their bidding. Let them rule with metal. I would seek with magic.

  “There’s no one home,” I whispered, not meaning to speak out loud. Gertie was in the midst of a second pass over the elegant sweep of the Skraelingsdottir, the timbers still bowed to the will of a maker who was long gone. At odd points, the pegs and bindings had broken free, making the planks ripple like uneven teeth under Gertie’s paired lights, but nothing moved. No sign of life, or occupation--

  -- And then they flashed over something metallic that had not been there before. It shone in the glare, small and hot, then vanished under a small swirl of debris as Eli expertly fanned Gertie to a hover. A small claw extended, snatched the thing from the bottom, and retracted smoothly as the view swung up to reveal a distorted view of the moon that hung overhead.

  “There’s nothing down there except what we found, so let’s hope it gives us some sort of direction,” Eli said. His fingers played over the controls in a small symphony of motion, bringing the little robot up and away. Gertie bobbed before us in less than a minute, the robotic arm reaching out like a dutiful pet. From the claw, something dangled, metal gleaming at the end.

  “It’s a collar,” Brendan said. His disgust was complete, just like mine. Eli looked confused, then his features twisted into a frown.

  “I’ll look.” I stepped forward and took the sodden collar from the claw, wiping a smear of algae away from the tag. It was small, probably for a little dog or an adult cat, if one believed that cats would tolerate things like collars. Some did. I read it aloud. “Jinx. It’s one of Mrs. Perlmutter’s cats.”

  “It was,” Brendan spat. His anger was almost visible, like heat waves in August.

  “Why take a cat?” Eli asked. “What’s the point?”

  I could think of several, none of which were anything I wanted to say out loud. “I’ll tell her, in the morning. Where does this leave us?”

  Eli sighed, and it was a noise of retreat. “For me? Nowhere, which means I’ll stick around for a day and then hope something else shows up. It’ll take Domari at least a week to arrange for the removal.”

  “Removal?” Brendan and I asked dumbly and in chorus.

  “We can’t leave the ship here. It’s too valuable.” Eli was right, but the cavalier notion that Wulfric’s people were being taken away struck me as wrong. Bones have power, and then there was the simple truth that I was raised to respect the dead. I wasn’t going to abandon that now, so I held up a hand in the universal gesture that said not so fast, buddy.

  “That ship isn’t just an archeological site. It’s a graveyard,” I stated flatly.

  Eli looked uncomfortable, but shrugged as if he was powerless to argue. “You’re asking the question that plagues historians. When does a grave become archaeology instead of someone’s family?”

  “Well, yes. Since I happen to know who some of those bones belong to”--I said, then closed my mouth with a click. Oops.

  “Oh really?” Eli and Brendan said together, both leaning back to look me over with suspicion. They were rather like twin nerd inquisitors, both with their heads cocked to the side and brows raised.

  The cat was out of the barn, or whatever, so I shrugged. “Wulfric’s sister.”

  “Really?” They both repeated.

  “Guys, get a new word. Seriously. Yes, her name was Hallerna, she was a Viking, and Wulfric found a ring that belonged to her. So to him, it isn’t a ship. It’s a grave, and you’re going to have a mighty hard time convincing him he can’t keep her burial place right here.”

  Both men were silent as they worked through the calculus of an angry Wulfric and the possibility of taking a link to his family away. Based on their sour expressions, they both reached the same conclusion.

  “So, if it’s okay with you guys I’m going to go rotate the tires on my car,” Brendan said, rising from his seat on the sand.

  “Siddown,” I told him. Pointing down, I glared at him until he eased back into a partial recumbent position, unsure if he would simply make a break for it. “You’ve known him almost as long as I have. How do think it’s going to play out if Domari tries to actually move that ship? To a museum, of all places?”

  Brendan looked pale. More pale, I should say. He really needed to get out, and not just in the moonlight. I could hear his breathing f
rom where I sat. After a gravid pause, he looked to Eli.

  “I’ve got nothing. He’s not letting that ship go anywhere without his--what’s her name?” Brendan asked the question as an afterthought, his mind clearly in turmoil.

  “Hallerna, and she’s down there. May I make a suggestion?” I was going to give Eli an out, and do what I thought was the right thing. It was a rare overlap, especially for me. Problems usually sprouted thorns, not roses.

  “Please. Seriously.” Eli looked like he was on the verge of pleading. The future was coming at him, and it was tall, angry, and good with an axe.

  “Send Gertie down there right now and find her. Find Hallerna and gather her bones with respect. Put them in a sheet and bring them to my house after sunup, and I’ll take care of the rest. Tell no one, and for stars’ sake, do not let anyone know what you’re doing, not even if they ask. I’ve gotta go home to Wulfric and Gus, and then figure out what’s next.” I stood, brushing dew from my shorts. The air was damp and cooling as the moon tracked across the sky, ever in a hurry.

  “Um, Carlie? What is next?” Brendan asked.

  I held up my charms, their silvery tinkling brighter than my mood. “I’m going to cast a spell that crawls back into the shadows and brings our friend down there into the light. Might take a day or two, but I’ll get it done.”

  Eli looked out over the water. The ship was still, a bright smear of light on the upper edge of the dragon’s head. “His sister, huh?”

  “Yep,” I said. Simple and true.

  “And you can bring this thing up into the sun?” Eli asked, still getting used to asking questions about magic as if it was real.

  “I can, and I will.” Again, simple truth.

  Eli smiled. In the broken moonlight he looked dangerous. “I’d like that very much indeed.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Mailed Threat